Tag: IWSG

#IWSG – The Path to Publication

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, which means it’s #IWSG day! That would be the Insecure Writer’s Support Group if you didn’t know, started by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh. Be sure to pop over to the website and check it out. You’ll find a fantastic community of like-minded writer types, all at varying stages of their writing careers. You’ll also find resources up the wazoo on all things writing and publishing related.

The awesome co-hosts for the September 5 posting of the IWSG are Toi Thomas, T. Powell Coltrin, M.J. Fifield, and Tara Tyler! Visit their sites, say hello, and give them a big thank you for hosting.

The question prompt this month is…

What publishing path are you considering/did you take, and why?

That’s me, dreaming of making it in the publishing world.

At this stage in my writing career, I’ve got my sights set on the traditional publishing route.

I just finished up a manuscript and submitted it to Pitch Wars, in fact! I’m pretty darned proud for having entered a competition of this magnitude. Over 3,500 people submitted this year. My chances of being selected are slim, to say the least. But if you don’t try, you fail by default, right? And, if my manuscript is chosen, I’ll work on it with a talented author mentor for a few months. Then, come February, I’ll post it in the agent showcase. Who knows what might happen?!

I want very much to secure agent representation. Getting my manuscripted picked up by big five publishing houses is a dream of mine. My reasons are simple: self-publishing sounds like a massive amount of work.

Not that securing an agent and then working with a team of folks at one of the big houses wouldn’t also be a tremendous amount of work. From everything I’ve read and heard, things just aren’t what they used to be.

Debut authors are being asked to pick up way more marketing and publicity weight much earlier in a book’s release and run with it. But, still. That weight is not 100%, as it is with self-publishing. And then there are the editors and copy editors and proofreaders and cover designers and people who know when the best time of year to release a book is. Stuff like that.

I’m not sure I’d have either the time or the energy to try and do all that. As with teacher, self-publishing requires a particular type of

person. Don’t know that it would be a good fit for me.

I’m thinking about my “other” life as I contemplate all the work that would go into self-publishing a novel. As a high school teacher, my year just started yesterday.

The new crop!

A new crop of students filled my classroom, and I had to do all the stuff that needs doing to be ready for them. And once it begins, it’s really just a continuous, barely controlled fall to June. Not unlike jumping onto a treadmill cranked up to maximum speed. With a broken deceleration button. You can’t ever slow down. I suspect self-publishing is like that.

It’s that way for big name authors, too, I know. Folks like Victoria Schwab and Jason Reynolds come to mind. They’re red hot in the traditionally published world right now, and they’re both exhausted all the time. Jason flat out told me during my final residency at Lesley University that he’s living an unsustainable life at the moment. He doesn’t know when he’ll collapse, but he feels it coming. Victoria has said much the same thing in a few of her videos over on Instagram.

So, yeah. I’d love, love, love to travel the more traditional publishing path, but life does run in straight lines. Who knows how I’ll feel about this question in a week, a month, a year…

How about you? Are you published? Traditionally or via self-publishing? Or, maybe you’re an aspiring author, like me. Which path are you hoping to travel?

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.

September 5, 2018
The Biggest Pitfall for Aspiring Authors

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means. It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…

What pitfalls have you encountered on your journey to publication that you can share with others?

Well, uh… hmm. I don’t actually know of many pitfalls from direct personal experience. To date, I only have two minimal publishing credits to my name. This post, therefore, will focus on the one that I feel is the biggest and most fatal pitfall facing all of us creative folks: the pitfall of giving up.

But first, allow me to drop a plug for the Insecure Writers Support Group. The IWSG, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff. There’s a Twitter Pitch (just happened in July), contests, books, swag, conferences, and more. Be sure to jump over there and check them out!

The awesome co-hosts for the August 1 posting of the IWSG are Erika Beebe, Sandra Hoover, Susan Gourley, and Lee Lowery!

Okay, back to this month’s topic: pitfalls to void.

A Lesson from Stephen King!

Back in my early 20’s, right around the time I got married, I bought a copy of Stephen King’s semi-autobiographical craft book On Writing. In it, King shared his youthful adventures in writing an submitting short stories with blind optimism to the magazines he loved to read: Analog, Asimov’s, Amazing Stories, etc. He started submitting in his early teens. As you can imagine, he got a lot of rejection letters.

King did something great, though, in turning the submission/rejection thing into a game. Upon receiving his first rejection letter–a form letter–, he drove a nail into the wall of his bedroom and impaled the letter upon it. How quickly could King accumulate enough rejection letters to overwhelm that nail? Understand, please, that King didn’t compromise the quality of the stories he wrote and submitted in an attempt to grow the stack with artificial speed. That would have been cheating. His primary goal was always to write the best story he could and get it published. He merely created a synergistic secondary goal that he could work towards when he wasn’t making progress toward his primary goal.

The important lesson I took from reading his book was that it’s possible to find ways of turning failures into successes. There are ways to immunize ourselves against the discouraging sting that comes with rejection. A sting that all too often ends up crippling creative individuals and ending their careers before they begin.

Playing the Game

Upon finishing his book, I decided it might be fun to try my hand at King’s game. I’d been writing stories all my life and harbored secret fantasies of becoming a successful author. But that required sticking my vulnerable neck out and submitting the stuff I wrote. The “Rejection Game,” as I called it, gave me permission to expose myself to the volley of rejections I knew would ensue.

Over the course of the next year, I researched and submitted to close to fifty magazines. This was in the very early days of the internet, so most venues still required print submissions sent via snail mail with self-address-stamped return envelopes for letters of acceptance/rejection. Of those fifty submissions, I received 48 rejection letters. Two magazines took a story from me. Tiny publications that paid out in single contributor copies, but still, two out of fifty. I was pleased.

Confession: I miss getting rejection letters in the mail. Even a form letter felt a tiny bit nifty when presented in a physical envelope that arrives in your mailbox. A digital email just doesn’t carry the same special weight.

Watch Out for That Pitfall. It’s a Doozy.

If only I’d kept at it! Remember, this was happening the year after I got married. And changed my job. And got pregnant with my first child. Guess who stopped writing and submitting stories? Yeah, me.

Thirteen years would pass before I sent out another story on submission. What can I say? Life got busy. I got distracted. Not an excuse, just my reality. I didn’t give up intentionally. Many folks probably wade into the pitfall of giving up slowly, day by day. So many things can fill up our lives that we can feel as though we’re drowning in quicksand. I was certainly feeling that way last October when I wrote my post, “Life, Will You Just Chill Out Already?”

Lots of people never figure out how to strike a balance between their writing goals and life obligations, or maybe they fail to immunize themselves against the sting of having their creative work turned down over and over again. That didn’t happen to me, but I’ve witnessed it happen to other writers. Without some way to turn each “no” into a positive, the weight of all those “thanks, but no thanks” can accumulate until it’s crushing your soul. And Odin knows, it’s the easiest thing in the world to set that weight aside and do something else.

Mr. Reynolds, an incredible writer and mentor in our program

On my way out the door of my MFA program at Lesley University, I was reminded of the lesson I’d gleaned a decade and a half ago from Mr. King’s book. If you want to succeed, you must keep writing, keep submitting, keep querying. Young Adult author Jason Reynolds told me and a small classroom of other impending graduates that the difference between those that make it in the publishing industry and those that don’t is persistence. The authors who find success are the ones who don’t give up. They kept playing their very own “Rejection Game” until something stuck. Talent helps, but even the most talented writer in the world can fall into the pitfall of giving up.

Lessons from Vigo Mortensen

Have you ever seen the movie G.I. Jane with Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen? I love that movie. Whatever. Don’t judge me. I’m not judging all the fans who love 300. It’s all love here!

Anyway, there’s a scene in that film where the cadets are doing push-up’s and leg lifts and other generally awful forms of exhausting exercises in the ocean. They’re right in the middle of the breaker zone, icy waves crashing down over them again and again. It’s been hours. They’re soaked, sand-blasted, shaking with fatigue and the early stages of hypothermia. And the Master Chief (Viggo) is walking up and down the line shouting all kinds of philosophical musings at them. This is the moment when he delivers a few lines that resonated to my core.

“Pain is your friend, your ally. It will tell you when you are seriously injured. It will keep you awake, and angry, and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain? It lets you know you’re not dead yet.”

Viggo’s basically telling his cadets to embrace their pain and frustration and exhaustion because it means they haven’t given up. Stephen King and Jason Reynolds were preaching less intense variants of the same philosophy.

As creative folks, rejection hurts. Of course it does, but that sting you feel means you’re still playing the game, you haven’t quit, you’re not dead yet. So there you have it. Giving up is the first and biggest pitfall you can fall into on your way to getting published.

Don’t give up.

Find a way to turn the rejections into positives. Make the pain be your friend. Keep writing, or painting, or sculpting, or composing, or whatever it is that you make. In this world that is becoming more and more obsessed with consumption, we need folks who engage in glorious acts of creation.

What’s your strategy for staying resilient and skirting the pitfall of quitting? Help the rest of us out by sharing in the comments!

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.

August 1, 2018
Book Titles and Character Names: An IWSG Post

This month’s IWSG Question: What’s harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names?

Before I get talking about book titles and character names, allow me a moment to give a shout out to this month’s most excellent hosts: Beverly Stowe McClure, Tyrean Martinson, and Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor. Thank you all for hosting this month’s IWSG blog hop. And if you haven’t heard of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, you should take a moment jump over to their website and check them out. In addition to being a fantastic community of writer’s focused on supporting each other, the IWSG website has compiled a tremendous library of resources (articles, websites, opportunities).

Shout out finished, let’s get back to the question at hand.

Okay, confession, I don’t put a lot of thought into either of these two processes. I know, I know. That’s terrible of me. I agree with you.

A Rose By Any Other Name

A book’s title is critically important. It’s on the cover. Part of the “hook.” It helps a potential reader make that all-important snap-judgment decision to investigate further or pass over a book on the shelf for something better. I know that. But, I also recognize that an agent and/or an editor will be far more skilled at coming up with a title than I ever will be. If I pick a stinker of a title for a great story, and that story gets scooped up by an agent and sold to a publishing house with editors and marketers and publicists, someone, somewhere is going to notice the terrible title. Someone (with far more skill and expertise that I) will almost certainly come up with a knock-my-socks-off dazzling replacement that I would never have thought of.

And, I’m fine with that. Better than fine. I feel relieved in my certainty of it. The pressure is off for me. Heck, I might as well title everything “This title is temporary,” because if the story is good enough, someone will help me come up with something better.

Culture and History

I’ve read countless articles about the importance of picking the right name for characters in a story. In my first semester of grad school, I used an online name generator to name my characters. Then, my mentor at the time– Tracy Baptiste–sat me down and gave me a heart to heart on how careful I needed to be when naming my characters. Unfortunately, many of the names I’d chosen carried various Judeo-Christian legacies and meanings of which I was unaware. Oops. I was writing a secondary world fantasy in which the Abrahamic religions weren’t even a thing. Yet, I’d populated it with people bearing Abrahamic names like Jordan and Goodman. Didn’t work so well, even if the names sounded “nice.”

So, that’s a thing to consider. Does a particular name have historical meaning, context? Is it the product of a culture with distinct identifiers? Maybe that’s something you can use. A shortcut strategy for characterization. Is your MC a self-entitled rich snot? Well, you could do what Mackenzie Lee did in The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and name him Montague. Gail Carriger gives her high society ladies names like Sephronia and Primrose and Prudence. If you’re going for irony, you might call the shrinking violet in your story Maxwell Steele (a power name if ever I’ve heard one). Maybe you want your readers to sense the strength and moral conviction at the root of your leading heroine’s personality, so you name her Joan (as in Joan of Arc?).

There’s a danger in being too overt with this technique, though. Stephen King got a raft of criticism for naming his main character in The Green Mile John Coffey because the initials were J.C. ( as in Jesus Christ) and John Coffey was kind of a sacrificial Christ-like figure in the book. Now, King is huge. He’s well established in his career, so he basically told his critics to stop taking everything so seriously. One day, I hope to be in a similar position, but that might take a while.

Sounds like…

Sibilance is also an important consideration when choosing a name for a character. Lyricism can’t be underestimated. It’s what I tend to focus most on. Does the name have a pleasing sound? The flow of consonants and vowels, soft or hard stops embedded within a name, which syllable carries the emphasis all affect the emotional centers of the brain.

I’ll give you an example. Consider these two names: Daphne, and Korinn. Physically, who is the taller, more athletic character? Who is more emotionally sensitive? Can you tell what gender the two characters are? With Daphne, that’s a classically female name, but what about Korinn? I made it up. It’s gender ambiguous but carries psychologically masculine overtones because of the hard “K” sound, and the long (powerful) ō, which also carries the syllabic emphasis, that rolls into that “r” sound. R’s sound animalistic. The sounds of the two names are already impacting your pre-conceived ideas about the characters.

Persons as Places or Things

Nothing subtle happening here.

Truth? This technique tends to rub me the wrong way if it isn’t done in an ironic or comedic capacity. Naming characters after actual places, objects, professions, or locations is just… in-artful. Judge, Everest, Nile (which, by the way, is my middle name, so I’m allowed to throw stones here). Neveah? [Rolls eyes]. I was SO disappointed when that one took off and became popular.

So, yeah, people do it. They’re usually trying to evoke emotion or invoke some spiritual quality inherent in the place or object. I know I’m making an assumption, but I don’t think parents name their daughters Rose or Lily or Summer because they want them to grow up to be hard-core, kick-ass, rule-breaking feminist. Nor do I think parents choose to call their son Hank or Don or President because they’re hoping the boy ends up with a high EQ score and decides to become a stay-at-home dad. More likely, they’re trying to invoke a legacy of athleticism and authority and traditionally masculine power and social status. If that’s all you’re trying to do when you name your characters after things or places or professions, your readers may get annoyed by the blunt force trauma of such a clunky and transparent technique. If, however, you’re doing it to characterize the people in the story who gave the character that name, or to showcase the the character is all the things their name might suggest they are not, then I think you’ve made an interesting and nuanced choice.

Do Your Homework, Then Trust Your Instincts

I guess I put more thought into my character’s names than I first realized. It isn’t a conscious effort, though. It’s instinctive. Which, before going through a Creative Writing MFA program, maybe wasn’t the best approach. Now, however, I have a better understanding of the underlying principles behind why names have such impact on readers.

Thanks to the advice I got in my first semester at Lesley University, I make up names (mostly) from scratch whenever I write fantasy stories, just to make sure I’m not accidentally tapping into any cultural or historical baggage.

If I someday choose to write a story that takes place in this world, with all the factual human history that comes with it, I’ll probably research geography and culture before settling on names. I mean, Ashika is a beautiful, feminine name. The sound if it is lovely. But it’s of Sanskrit origin and is a typical girl’s name in India. Maybe not what I’d go with for a female character of Irish descent living in Canada unless I had a specific and legitimate reason for it that was clearly conveyed in the narrative.

And, of course, if a name I pick doesn’t ring true or has some hidden meaning of which I’m unaware? Well… that’s what editors are for, right?

How do you select names for your characters? How do you settle on a title for your stories? Do you research intensively, or do you let your instincts guide you?

June 6, 2018
IWSG February Post – Why Write for Kids?

This month’s IWSG post asks the question:

What do you love about the genre you write in most often?

Well, what’s not to love about children’s literature? I love writing for young audiences. For teens in particular, but the idea of writing for children of any age thrills me.

Before I continue, however, allow me a moment to give a shout out to this month’s most excellent hosts: Stephen Tremp, Pat Garcia, Angela Wooldridge, Victoria Marie Lees, and Madeline Mora-Summontel. Thank you all for hosting this month’s IWSG blog hop.

Shout out finished, I’ll get on with it.

I am currently in my fourth and final semester of a low residency MFA program in creative writing at Lesley University. The program offers six concentrations: General Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Writing for Stage and Screen, Graphic Novels, and Writing for Young People. That last one is my focus.

I adore writing fiction for kids, specifically for teens, but broadly I just love writing for kids.

Why Write for Kids?

I suppose it started with my own kids.

[Disclaimer: I don’t like sharing too many personal details about my family members on this blog. This is, after all, my blog, not theirs. They have a right to privacy, especially my children. Who knows what they’ll grow up to become? I’ve no right to start generating their digital footprint and shaping what the online algorithms think of them.]

For this post, however, I will share the couched detail that one of my kids got off to a very rocky start with regard to learning to read, and because of a number of factors I won’t delve into, they were on the cusp of loathing reading by the time their sixth birthday rolled around.

Can you imagine how terrifying that was for me to watch? Me, who fell in love with reading long before I had the skill to do it on my own. Me, who used books to get through difficult periods in my life. Me, who loved fictional worlds and the characters that lived in them so much that I began creating my own when I was still in elementary school. Me? Have a child who hated reading?

There was only one thing to do. I ignored the advice of my child’s well-meaning but MCAS-driven and test-score-fearing teachers, and I did not sit my child down daily and force them to slog through the most awful, boring, black-and-white photocopied and stapled together early reader’s imaginable, struggling through tear-blurred vision to sound out the next word.

Instead, I read to them.

Every night. Sometimes, for hours. Until my voice grew hoarse and my throat began to burn.

My child loved this map, just as I did the first time I saw it!

I sat in my one-time nursing chair at the foot of their bed and worked through The Hobbit, then the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, then all seven of the Harry Potter books, then two-and-a-half of the Inheritance Cycle books, then the Inkspell books.

A funny thing happened during those years. Yes, it took us years to get through reading those books a bit at a time each night. My child grew older, their brain matured, their teachers worked with them during the day on the concrete skills of reading, and my child learned to love books and to love reading them.

They’re off and running on their own now, I’m pleased to say. They read voraciously, thank Thor.

Books for adults are all well and good. I read my fair share of them every year. Not so many since starting my MFA program, as you might imagine.

It’s just that books for children are, and I know I’m going to ruffle a few feathers with this sweeping declaration, far more important than books for adults. I mean, it’s kind of obvious when you stop and think about it. When did you fall in love with reading? When you were a kid, probably. Some book touched your soul, gave you the big time feels, sent shivers down your spine, and woke you up for life.

That’s why I love writing for young people.

What was that first book that marked your soul, by the way? (For me, it was Bridge to Terabithia.)

February 7, 2018
IWSG January Post – Making the Writing Happen
This month’s IWSG post asks the question:

What steps have you taken to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing?

How apropos.

Before I continue, I must give a shout out to this month’s most excellent hosts: Tyrean Martinson, The Cynical Sailor, Megan Morgan, Rachna Chhabria, and Jennifer Lane. Thank you all for hosting this month’s IWSG blog hop.

2018 is right around the corner, and in my household, it is a big deal. I and my beloved don’t usually enjoy marching to the beat of a predictable, trite, or clichéd drum, and the whole tradition of making new year resolutions certainly fits that description. That said, new year resolutions are, in fact, something we do, and we get jazzed about it, too.

I’m all about the power of positive thinking and positive visualization. Think forward, not backward, I say. What do I want my future to look like, I ask, and then I act to manifest that future. The first step in that process happens in my own mind.

The act of ticking over a new year on the first of January is, as I well know, an imaginary contrivance of human perception. Not to mention, it’s dependent upon which calendar you follow. Sumerian? Aztec? Norse? Celtic? Nubian? Heck, I could invent my very own calendar system and start the year on November 12th. Why not?

Okay, so the start of a new year is a fictitious concept, but it’s one that I enjoy celebrating, almost worshiping. It provides me with a stimulus, a prompt, a chance to pause and contemplate my accomplishments (and failures) of the past spin around Solaris, and look forward to imagine what the next spin might be like.

What am I proud of doing? What are my regrets? How can I transform those regrets into positives moving forward? What challenges can I throw at myself that will test me and improve me either physically, intellectually, or spiritually? That’s what celebrating the new year and making resolutions is all about in my house.

It’s serendipitous that this month’s IWSG prompt deals with finding ways to fit writing into my life because it’s already one of my resolutions for the new year.

2017 was an unacceptably sedentary year for me in which I got a lot of writing done, but not enough and it always felt shoved in last minute. Most of my writing happened in the late afternoons, at the end of a long day of teaching, or worse, after dinner when all I wanted to do was go to bed. It always felt forced. I was Sisyphus, standing at the bottom of the hill, hands against the boulder. Not good.

Here’s my plan for 2018:
1. Wake up at 5 am every day except Sunday, so that I have time to:
2. Work out for 20 to 30 minutes with my beloved, then:
3. Write for one hour.
That’s right, the big new year’s resolution for me is to become–wait for it–a morning person! My writing time will become part of an established routine. I’m not stipulating what I’ll be writing. It could be rough drafts, editing work, blogging, journaling, anything as long as it is writing.

The great thing about my plan is that I’m not alone in it. My beloved and I are engaging in this resolution together. We’re going to support each other, motivate each other, hold each other accountable. In other words, misery loves company, and I’m going to have some. Technically I already do, because I wrote this post on December 27th, but it won’t go up until January 3rd. By the time you read this, I’ll have three early mornings under my belt. Feel free to ask me how it’s going a month from now; most failed resolutions die in the third week of implementation. (Not me, not me, not me, not me <– see that? Positive thinking, baby!)

2018, here I come! If all goes as I’m visualizing it, 2019 will see me healthier and much, much farther along in my writing career.

If you’ve got a plan for getting more writing time worked into your schedule, or if you’ve already successfully done it, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Happy 2018, everyone, and happy writing.
January 3, 2018
Good News, Bad News, and Trouble in Writing Town

I’ve got a thirty-minute break before my next parent-teacher conference, so I thought I’d use this time to do some writing. I know I won’t be able to get any meaningful creative writing done, sandwiched as this moment is between long and stressful blocks of trying to calm down nervous parents and stressed-out students. My stress levels are elevated today, too. Not a great place to be, mentally, when you want the ideas to flow. The doors of my imagination just can’t swing freely on their hinges at the moment.

Since I’m currently stress-blocked and don’t feel up to generating anything creative right now, I figured I’d use this time to sneak in a blog post and try to unpack a problem that has been dogging me of late.

Creative Constipation

Over the past week, forward progress on my WIP has slowed to a snail’s pace. I need to figure out what’s going on. What has changed? What can I do to unblock myself?

You know how everyone always says stuff like, “You can’t edit a blank page,” or “The first draft is supposed to be terrible?” Of course, you do, if you’re a writer. It’s inescapable, especially during the month of NaNoWriMo. I firmly buy into those clichéd tidbits of advice. If I had more time (hahaha) I’d needlepoint it onto a cushion and then sit on that cushion as I wrote.

However, something happened on the 15th that seems to have changed things and not for the better. We (being the folks in Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program) received our mentor pairings for next semester. Fourth semester students (like me) work on one thing and one thing only: our creative theses. Or, in layman’s terms, we’ll be trying to shine up a reasonable draft of a book. Up until last week, I was feeling pretty good about that. Looking forward to it, in fact.

Good News, Bad News

Then, we got our pairings. Good news: I got my first choice for a mentor. The esteemed Chris Lynch, author of Inexcusable, Little Blue Lies, and Angry Young Man, and others. I also got my first pick for my Thesis Reader: Jason Reynolds, author of Patina, When I Was the Greatest, and All American Boys among other books. To invoke Chandler Bing, “Could I be more excited?” Maybe, but it would be difficult.

Anyway, I got that news and fist-pumped the sky, did a dance of joy, and then froze. Oh, sugar-honey-iced-tea. Chris Lynch and Jason Reynolds are going to see my story. Turns out the good news is also the bad news.

Here’s what that sudden, stark realization felt like. Imagine you’re at the grocery store, heading back to your car carrying two extremely heavy and overpacked bags of foodstuffs, and you’re feeling stoked because you hit some sweet sales and managed to stock up for the week and then some. You’re crossing a busy throughway in the parking lot when the bags let go. All at once, the bottoms rip wide open and vomit your stuff all over the pavement. Cans are rolling everywhere. The milk carton is ruptured. A white puddle expands at your feet. Dented boxes, broken eggs, bruised apples racing away, and cars coming at you from both directions. What you thought of just moments ago as an awesome bundle of tasty treats now looks like an embarrassing heap of trash.

My “book” now feels like those groceries lying broken and hopeless and ugly on the pavement, and Mr. Lynch and Mr. Reynolds are the drivers who have to stop and get out of their slick cars to help me to scrape all my crap up off the ground. They know how to bag groceries. This would never happen to them. I’m a schmuck, and now they have to deal with my foolishness.

Perception versus Reality

I’m not saying that’s my actual situation. Maybe my “book” isn’t as big a mess as all that, but that’s how it feels right now.

I’ve got this thing, this rough draft, and it’s terrible in all the ways that I usually tell myself a first draft is allowed to be. But…

Two authors whom I respect (and, okay yes, idolize) are about to put eyes on it. All of a sudden it no longer feels okay for my rough draft to be messy. I want to turn my work-to-date over to Chris, have him read it, and then get an email from him expounding upon how wonderful it is and how excited he is to help me cut and polish this diamond of a story.

I want that, but I don’t have a rough diamond to give him. I’ve got a pile of ruined groceries hastily scraped up off the blacktop, possibly destined for the garbage. And he’s going to judge me!

He’s not going to judge me.

The man is amazing. So is Jason, who will read my “finished” product at the end of this semester and either give it the thumbs up (I pass) or thumbs down (I still pass, but let it be known that I am a talentless hack). Every student who has worked with these two men has sung their praises.

The point is, I no longer feel okay with my rough draft being terrible. In my desire to impress two incredible authors, I’d want it to be perfect, spotless, shiny. Glittering to the point of blinding in its utter fabulousness. Is that too much to ask?

We’re Our Own Worst Critics

Yes, as it turns out. Perfection is too much to ask, and my self-imposed, unattainable new expectations have bogged down my writing process. My muse has curled up in the fetal position at my feet beneath my desk. She’s utterly useless under pressure, I guess. Meanwhile, I am getting hung up on every single sentence I try to write. Is this description strong enough? Are these verbs punchy enough? Am I rambling? Should I cut this? Do I need to elaborate here? Why’s there so much dialogue in this scene? What the H am I doing?

That’s me, snail-crawling along, doubting EVERYTHING about my writing and my characters and my story. Whereas I normally can pump out a solid 1,500 to 2,000 words a day, I’m now down to less than 500.

Which I guess would be okay if it weren’t for the fact that I’m supposed to turn in 13,000 words of new material on December 1st in preparation for my January residency. I’ve only got 6,200 words so far, and that has taken me almost two weeks to generate. And it’s all rough draft quality work.

Sigh.

This really should be an IWSG post, because I am feeling more insecure about my writing than I have probably ever felt before in my entire life. It’s cool. It’ll pass. I’ve doubted myself before this, and I always get over it…

Eventually.

Until then, I’ll continue to plug along and hope that, with the help of an incredibly talented (and patient–dear Freya, please let them be patient) mentor and reader, some of my groceries will turn out to be salvageable. Because what else can to do? It’s part of being an aspiring writer, right? I either quit now, or I push through the doubt and continue to dribble the words onto the paper.

Okey-dokey. Break time’s over. Back to the day job.

Has anyone else had nearly paralyzing moments of doubt brought on by the prospect of having a legitimately talented author/agent/editor reading your stuff? Please, tell me I’m not the only one.

November 21, 2017
IWSG – On Finish NaNoWriMo Projects

It’s IWSG Day again! The question this month is…

Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?

This is a doozy of a question, but allow me to drop a plug for IWSG before I dive in. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff. There’s a Twitter Pitch, which I haven’t checked out yet, contests, books, swag, conferences, and more. Be sure to jump over there and check them out! The awesome co-hosts for the November 1 posting of the IWSG are Tonja Drecker, Diane Burton, MJ Fifield, and Rebecca Douglass! Do follow the links and jump over to their sites to say hello.

Okay, back to the question. NaNoWriMo. Do I usually finish my projects, and have I gotten any of them published? I’ve written about my views regarding the merits of NaNoWriMo before this. If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, check out this earlier post I wrote that explains all (well, nearly all).

Here’s the thing. I’m a fiercely competitive person. It’s ugly, or rather I turn ugly when I engage in activities with a competitive component. There are dark times in my childhood related to Red Rover, pick-up games of football at recess, gym sports.

Despite what some might argue, NaNoWriMo does have a competitive edge embedded into it, and if I’m not careful I could slice myself wide open on it. Not to mention my friends, my family, my graduate studies, my job.

Do participants actually compete with other folks during the event? No. However, there are achievement badges we can earn, forums where people can “support” each other. I have “Writing Buddies” whose progress I check on. There’s definitely an inherent feeling that I need to keep up with the authorial Jones going on when I participate.

I Always Win, but…

I cheat. Oh, Thor! Do I ever cheat! The first year I did it, I won fair and square. But that was the only

That guy running up the steps during the bike race? Yeah, that’s me.

time I penned all 50k in November. And, that project was far from “finished.” That draft didn’t wrap itself up until March! It’s not getting published, by the way. It’s a steaming pile. Which is fine. I learned a LOT writing that draft. Of course, cinderella stories exist about breakout authors whose best-selling debut novels were drafted during NaNoWriMo. I remain highly skeptical. To discuss further would merit a whole other post.

This year is the first year since my original foray into the world of NaNoWriMo that I haven’t begun working on my WIP early. No, wait. Scratch that. I totally gave myself a 12,000-word head start. Why? Because I have a problem, that’s why.

If I don’t take some of the pressure off by getting a block of writing done in advance, thereby lowering the daily word count goal from a genuinely challenging 1,667 to something closer to 1,000, ugly me might emerge once more. Plus, it makes the volume of words I need to write in November actually fit into my life without harming my spouse or my children. Yes! My children! I do it for my children! Justification accomplished.

It’s Not Really About Winning or Losing

The spirit of NaNoWriMo is about getting writers to put words on the page. If that’s the ultimate goal, who cares if I get a head start, especially if the story is calling to me?

It’ does, too. The closer November first gets, the more I find myself thinking about the story and itching to get at it.

For me, that itch is one of the biggest pros to taking part in NaNoWriMo. I just need to mitigate the underlying competitive aspects of the event, dull the sword’s edge if you will. 30,000 words in a single month is still a challenging goal for me. It’s just… less challenging, and therefore less likely to bring out the I-must-win-at-all-costs-and-if-you-get-in-my-way-so-help-me-I-will-end-you side of my personality.

At the end of the month, I log my wins. That first year, when I won fair and square, I celebrated by purchasing Scrivener, a new fountain pen, and a new notebook. Every year after that, I’ve rewarded myself with a new fountain pen and a new notebook, but I don’t feel right about taking advantage of the coupons and discounts and whatnot if I don’t load all 50,000 words into 30 days.

When my kids get a little older and I’m not in the midst of a graduate program, then maybe I’ll put the edge back on NaNo. For now, though, I’ll stick with my Bokken sword. Speaking of which… I do believe it’s time to do battle!

I can’t be the only person who does this. Fudge the start date, I mean. How about you? Do you usually finish your NaNoWriMo projects?

November 1, 2017
#IWSG – Adding Personal Details to Stories?

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means. Or, well, maybe you don’t. It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…

Have you ever slipped any of your personal information into your characters, either by accident or on purpose?

I sure have, but first, allow me to drop a plug for IWSG. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff. There’s a Twitter Pitch, which I haven’t checked out yet, contests, books, swag, conferences, and more. Be sure to jump over there and check them out!

Okay, back to the question. I often work personal information into my writing on purpose, but sometimes I do it unintentionally, too.

Here’s an example of when personal stuff just sort of slips in there when I’m not paying attention. This past winter, during one of my critique sessions for my Lesley University Low-Residency master’s program, someone pointed out that my main character sounded like she was from the Midwest. The story being workshopped was something I’d discovery written. I hadn’t generated any character dossiers and hadn’t fleshed out a background for anyone.

The comment left me agape. You see, despite the fact that was born and raised in Massachusetts and am surrounded by Bostonians with the classically difficult to imitate accent, I’ve been told multiple times that I don’t sound like I’m from the area. In fact, people often tell me I’ve got a midwestern accent and drop midwestern slang. I chalk that up to the my father’s influence. He was born and raised on a farm in Iowa, and we visited his family often when I was a kid.

Who knew my father had shaped my psyche so deeply that it was affecting my writing! In any case, I decided to have my main character be a girl who grew up on a farm in… you guessed it, Iowa. Why not just roll with it, right? So now my dad is a teenage girl fighting for her life in the Canadian wilderness. Fabulous!

More often, personal information makes its way into my stories on purpose. I’ve written stories that take place in my hometown, at my place of work, or that involve events I’ve lived directly. All fictionalized to varying degrees, mind you.

My current WIP is a young adult SciFi horror story about a group of youths trying to survive the elements (and other things) in the backcountry of Canada. As a teen, I was a wilderness backpacking enthusiast, and a couple of times I and my group members found ourselves in genuinely dangerous situations. I’ve incorporated fictionalized versions of those events in my WIP.

So, yeah, I draw on my life experiences to add authenticity to everything I write.

What about you? Do you slip personal details into your writing? How do you feel about it?

October 4, 2017
Why Did I Try Writing a Book in the First Person POV?!

This past Wednesday, I took part in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group’s monthly blog hop. The prompt dealt with trying new things and surprising yourself with your writing. My response to that prompt lives here. I am not a professional blogger, nor do I aspire to become one. I’ve only been tracking my adventures and misadventures in the writing realm for a couple of months at this point, so that post is long and rambling.

Since writing it, though, my mind has returned to the question again and again. In what ways have I surprised myself with my writing? With the hope of releasing that question from my brain (so I can get on with other things), I’m returning to it. This time, however, I have a specific topic to address: Point of View.

What We Read Shapes What We Write

I grew up reading (mostly) fantasy stories, and they all used either the third person limited or omniscient viewpoint. My very first introduction to the genre came in the form of my mother reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy to me when I was six. A few pages at a time each night. It was love at first reading.

As soon as could, I found and read as many books as I could by C. S. Lewis, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Jordan to name just a few of my early favorites.

In middle school, I stumbled across a battered old copy of Stephen King’s short story collection, The Skeleton Crew. It was spine-tinglingly incredible, and it sparked my love affair with King’s writing. It also inspired me to start writing my own stories.

I turned into a rabid Stephen King super fan. I mean, I never sent him letters asking for his fingernail clippings or anything. He’s way too smart to fall for that, anyway. Still, there was a time when I wouldn’t drive through Bangor because I didn’t trust myself not to go full-on creeper outside the gates of King’s house. King wrote some of his short stories in the first person POV, but not many.

Trying New Things Lets Us Grow

Fast forward to now. I’m halfway through a master’s program in creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They’ve got six concentrations from which to choose. I’m focusing on writing for young people.

From my limited research, there seems to be a growing first person trend in the YA genre right now. To be clear, I know there’s always been plenty of first person stories in YA, but in the past five or so years it’s exploded in popularity, so much so that I began picking up and reading a bunch of first person YA books to expose myself to the viewpoint and its use in my genre concentration. Sadly, I found that many of the books I read made me want to gag. Many were self-centered, angst-ridden “I, me, me, I me” tripe.

But, like it or not, first person POV is hugely popular in YA these days. Combining it with present tense seems to be really hot right now. Recognizing my limited exposure to that viewpoint as a reader and a complete lack of experience writing it, I decided to focus on first person as an element of my coursework last semester. What’s the point of a master’s program if not to push yourself as a writer and try to improve?

Ugh! First person POV, why are you so hard?! Also, what the heck was I thinking?

At least with third person, I have years of reading and thousands of stories to draw on as I write my own stuff. There are narrative techniques that I find natural and intuitive. I don’t have to think too hard about it as I’m writing. Not so as I struggle to write a book in the first person. Two books, actually, for two different classes. One is a middle-grade steampunk piratical fantasy adventure. The other is a gritty YA wilderness survival story with science fiction and horror elements. Both are presenting unique challenges for me. Let me repeat myself: what what I thinking?!

Diving Into the Craft of POV

I own and have read numerous craft books, too many to list, but I took a photo of my collection. It’s over on my “Useful Articles” page. Anyway,

when I told my mentor (last semester) that I wanted to stretch myself as a writer by trying to write a novel in the first-person viewpoint, she assigned me excerpts from two different craft books to read, then crossed her fingers and whispered a quiet prayer to the Gods.One was a book I already owned, put out by Writer’s Digest and written by Nancy Kress titled Characters, Emotions, and Viewpoint. It’s a great craft book, and it was good for me to revisit it. I hadn’t cracked its pages in over ten years.

If you don’t own this craft book, your collection isn’t complete. It’s outstanding!

The other was a craft book I’d never heard of before by an author I was unfamiliar with—David Jauss. The book isn’t in print anymore. I struggled to find a copy on Amazon, and when it finally arrived I thought, “Wow, this thing even looks old. That makes it even more awesome!” I was right, by the way. Alone With All That Could Happen is my new favorite craft book. One of the best I’ve read, and if you checked out the picture of my collection, you know that I’ve read quite a few of them.

Here’s the rub. It’s one thing to read about a bunch of excellent techniques to develop characters and engage in world-building in a particular viewpoint. It’s another thing to sit down and execute those techniques with any degree of success.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly (and the Hopeful)

I am particularly bad at going all the way inside my characters’ heads to share their thoughts. Too familiar with outside narrators sharing character insights from a distance, I guess. Most recently, my current mentor gave me feedback that included, “You’ve got a lot of third-person narrator techniques embedded into this scene. Try adding more first-person elements to bring us closer to your main character.”

Yep. That’s the face I made. Oh, yeah.

Guess I’ve got some work to do, and while I could get discouraged by that (and sometimes I do get discouraged), I prefer to remind myself that I chose to give first-person a try to see what it felt like, to see what I could do with it. I actively sought to surprise myself. Thus far, I’ve succeeded, and as difficult as it’s been to stretch my abilities as a writer, it’s also been tremendous fun. I mean, come on. Who doesn’t love surprises?!

Have you ever intentionally attempted something new and different and risky as a writer with the hopes of learning and growing? Tell me about it in the comments section.

As always, keep writing. Keep creating. Keep striving to make a mark on this world by building and sharing other worlds.

September 10, 2017
#IWSG: Creative Insecurities, Community, and Surprises!

Creative Insecurity:

Creative people of all types tend to be insecure folks, I think. Creative folks are bold, daring, maybe a little crazy. They push the boundaries, lean into the unknown, risk failure. But because of that, they occasionally run afoul of moments of doubt and insecurity.

Unfortunately, those are the moments that, from a psychological standpoint, really sting. Those nagging thoughts are what our brains remember, obsess over, amplify in orders of magnitude until we can’t see beyond them.

That’s how it is for me at least. Most of the time, I’m good. Like, 80% of the time. 20% of the time I feel like a fraud. I’m wasting my time. What I’m trying to do is ridiculous and unattainable because I have no talent whatsoever and how could I have ever thought that I could succeed as a creative writer. Chuck Wendig wrote a great post about this over on his Terrible Minds blog. (Be warned, his language is fabulously profane).

The life of a writer can easily become a life of solitude, one in which the only people you can talk to are the voices in your head, most of which are nasty jerks who thrive on negativity and despair. I’ve sort of given up reaching out to friends and family members for reassurances. I’m lucky in that my friends and family members are supportive, but they also don’t really get it, so I never quite trust their words of encouragement, and my insecurities remain.

Building a Community of Supportive People Who Get It:

To help me cope, I’ve sought out other writers who are down in the creative trenches, pushing their own boundaries and taking risks. They’ll understand. They’ll know. Their support and encouragement carry more weight and really do help to dispel those horrible moments of insecurity that sneak up on me here and there.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been a member of the North Shore Writer’s Group in Massachusetts. I can’t begin to tell you how great it has been for me as a writer and as a creative person in general to be able to gather in a room with a bunch of other writers twice a month to chat about life, our creative struggles, and then discuss our work.

Online writing groups are great, too. I recently discovered The Insecure Writer’s Support Group. What a cool organization/site! Their mission is to recognize the dark moments of the writing process and the writer’s life and connect people to each other. They help writers find and build a support network. One of the many things they do over there is to host a monthly blog hop. Budding and established authors are all welcome to participate (I current fall into the former category). The group posts a monthly prompt, and we can use it to spark a blog post.

IWSG Question of the Month: Have you ever surprised yourself with your writing?

Yes, definitely. Frequently, in fact. On the spectrum of plotter/pantser (pantser is a term I don’t care for, by the way. I prefer to call myself a “discovery writer.” Not my term. Picked it up from fantasy author Brandon Sanderson in one of his co-hosted Writing Excuses podcasts. Fabulous podcast. You’ve got to check it out), I’m pretty far over toward the discovery writer end of things. I’ll sketch out a loose outline of where I want the story to go, but mostly I just start with a “what if” premise, conjure up some imaginary person to throw it at, and see what happens.

A couple of weeks ago, I started writing a scene that came to me as I was drifting off to sleep one night. It had nothing to do with anything that had happened in the story or that I had visualized happening, but it was an intriguing “what if” situation.

I had no expectations when I started writing that scene. For all I cared, I could finish it up and trash it if I decided it wasn’t something I liked. No harm, no foul. Everything I write is an opportunity to practice my skills, and Gods know I have a lot that I can practice. Pacing, description, POV and perspective, character development, world-building, dialogue, even basic sentence structure.

So, I started writing. What the hay, kids. Let’s hop in the car and go for a drive. Why not? See where the open road takes us. We might stumble across something interesting.

What I stumbled across was an unexpected plot twist that I’m super, and I mean SUPER excited about pursuing.

When my explorations, my unsupervised road trip inevitably leads me and my characters down a dead-end street of ugliness, I will despair. My insecurities will breed like gremlins and grown in size until all I can see is how awful I am. But that’s okay because I’ve taken steps to find and connect with other creative writers. I have not one but several support groups who will help me defeat my doubts. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group being among them.

So, how about you? Do you have a support group of like-minded folks who help you keep pushing your boundaries, keep taking risks? And when you do stick your creative neck out, do you ever surprise yourself? I’d love to hear about it.

September 6, 2017