Tag: Lesley University

Writing in a Time of Climate Anxiety

A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a panel discussion during Lesley University’s 2020 Creative Writing MFA winter residency. The topic: “Writing in a Time of Climate Anxiety.” Joining me on the panel was author and photographer Tony Eprile, children’s author Tracey Baptiste, and poet and environmental activist Andrea Read.

What Was on Everyone’s Mind?

Tony shared some of his gorgeous photographs of wild places, green spaces, and rare species. He opened up about his fear that the next generation will grow up having no knowledge that these species and places ever existed. What kind of psychological and social impact will losing our green spaces have on our children, he asked?

Tracy talked about how she dealt with the theme of climate change and loss of habitat and home in the third book of her Jumbies series. She revealed that sea-level rise is predicted to eat up her childhood home of Trinidad. The island is going to vanish beneath the waves, where it might become mythologized like Atlantis in the minds of future generations. Who will she be, Tracey wondered, without her home?

Andrea spoke about her experience purchasing 500 acres of clear cut land in Maine. She (and others) planted thousands of hardwood saplings on the site to restore the native habitat. The farmhouse and barn on the property sat atop a plot of land whose topsoil had been stripped off and sold. Andrea and her husband used permaculture techniques to bring it back to a lush and productive garden in a single season. She then co-founded an art and nature nonprofit called the Newforest Institute (no longer in operation).

I focused on the power of writers (and all creative artists) to inspire the imaginations of the general public. I pointed out that, when it comes to writing about climate change, we have generally failed to do our jobs well. For decades, there has been a collective failure of the imagination. I challenged the audience of MFA candidates to do better.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

We are, as the title of Jonathan Gottschall’s book indicates, storytelling animals. The stories we read (and write) have the power to influence cultural values. They can spark technological innovation. They can inspire people to take action and make changes. Consider the works of H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Jules Vern, Isaac Asimov, Jack London, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Shelley, among others. Their stories changed the people who read them.

Writers are a rare and valuable breed. We’re blessed with active imaginations paired with an ability to use the written word in ways that let others imagine things they might not otherwise. And sometimes, when we do things right, our stories influence humanity’s path forward. Consider Jules Verne, who wrote about men flying to the moon in rocket ships in 1865. Or Mary Shelley. To this day, Frankenstein invites readers to consider what consequences may result should science and morality become uncoupled. Michael Crichton updated that cautionary tale for modern readers. He got people thinking about the unforeseen repercussions of genetic engineering technologies and demanding regulation and oversight.

When it comes to imagining mankind’s future in the face of large-scale environmental disasters, however, writers have historically given the topic only the most superficial of examinations.

Most of what’s been written thus far are plot-focused action and adventure stories. While such stories definitely have their place, they are meant to be an escape for readers or viewers. They are entertainment. They are NOT stories intended to spark reflection in the hearts and minds of the masses.

Dig Deeper

What we need right now are stories that will get people engaged and thinking, not checking out. Only when people engage with a problem and start thinking about it can they then solve it. If you, as a writer (or an artist), feel anxious when you think about climate change, dig into your emotions and unpack them. Use that brilliant imagination of yours to visualize your fears in a visceral way.

Worried about widespread famine, war, disease, a population crash? Nuclear Annihilation? Write about it, but do so in a way that is emotionally honest and that has character, not plot, at its core. Make it believable. Draw your audience in, connect readers to your characters. Write a narrative that strikes a deep emotional cord and demands reflection for years, decades, centuries to come.

We need climate change stories that will get people thinking–really thinking–about the messy moral and ethical issues tangled up in large-scale ecological disasters. I’m thinking of stories like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, or P. D. James’s Children of Men. More recently, HBO’s dramatic series Chernobyl highlighted what a failure of leadership could bring about during an environmental crisis.

Is There Space for Happy Endings?

I would argue yes. Showing hopeful outcomes is not just okay but necessary, as long as they’re handled in ways that are emotionally honest.

Neal Shusterman’s YA novel Dry is an excellent example of how to write a hopeful ending that doesn’t patronize readers. Shusterman wrote about characters uniting despite differences. They pooled their resources, developed believable solutions, and then implemented them successfully. But they made all kinds of mistakes along the way. They suffered, and they almost failed. Shusterman used his power as a writer to make his readers care. He made them WANT to avoid a catastrophe. And isn’t that the point? Because if we can divert the disaster, we can avoid the suffering that will come with it.

A Call to Action!

If you’re a writer and you’re feeling anxious in this time of climate change, pick up your pen and do what you do best. Write a story daring enough and honest enough to inspire the masses, influence thought and maybe change the future. Be the next Mary Shelley, the next H. G. Wells, the next Jules Vern. That was my message to the audience at the panel discussion two weeks back, and that’s my message to every writer who reads this post.

Do you feel anxious whenever you think about climate change? Have you attempted to explore your fears through your writing? If not, maybe it’s time to start.

January 18, 2020
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
The Value of a Creative Writing MFA – A (sort of) IWSG post

My first semester at a glance

In the very first post for this project way back in July of 2017, my entrance into an MFA graduate program of studies spurred the creation of this site. I’d been studying creative writing at Lesley University for just over a year at that point. Someone–I don’t remember who–suggested I start a blog.

So, I did. I called it a project rather than a blog, though, because I don’t really understand what a blog is. Is this site a blog? It’s irrelevant, I supposed. The point was to document my journey through my MFA program.

Which brings me to the main point for today’s entry.

I GRADUATED!!

Holy shoot! I’m done. It’s over. No more assigned books to read, reflective papers to write, deadlines to meet. No more feedback letters to read, mentors to pester with longwinded emails that are 90% anxiety dumps and 10% legitimate questions, no more residency classes to prep for. As of this past Saturday, I am Katherine Karch, MFA.

Thoughts are bouncing around in my noggin about the experience. Fresh, virgin, unanalyzed ideas. And they might be important, so I’m writing them here before I forget them. No doubt, I’ll be processing my MFA experience for years to come, but right now, one thought is burning brightly in my mind:

What did I get out of this crazy, two-year-long journey?

There are a few possible answers. The literal education, for one thing, was outstanding. I am definitely a more skilled writer now than when I entered the program. The daily discipline I developed over these past two years will serve me forever as I pursue a career in writing. But I think the community I got plugged into via this program might be the most important thing I gained.

The community? I can practically hear doubters rolling their eyes (that’s how hard they’re rolling them). You want a community? Babe, that’s what Facebook groups are for. You didn’t need to pony up X dollars for a masters program to get a community.

Firstly, don’t call me babe. Secondly, Facebook is a false community. So are all the thousands of other online communities that exist for writers, several of which I am a member and enjoy. The Insecure Writer’s Support Group is one. And since this is technically (although not completely) an IWSG post for the month of July, let me pause for a moment and plug that particular group. As far as online communities for writers go, it’s one of the best. Thanks to this month’s hosts: Nicki Elson,Juneta Key,Tamara Narayan,andPatricia Lynne!The question for this month was: What are your ultimate writing goals, and how have they changed over time (if at all)? I’ll be partly answering that question later on in this post.

NaNoWriMo and CampNaNoWriMo are two branches of another online resource. The Hatrack River Writer’s Workshop is yet another. They’re all great, but none of them is an actual community in so far as I’ve never met any of the other members in real life. The camaraderie and support I can garner from these groups is inherently limited.

I cannot speak to other MFA in Creative Writing programs, and I cannot speak to other people’s experience in the MFA program from which I just graduated. I can only tell you that, for me, the price tag worth it. The education I received at Lesley was outstanding, but the friendships I made might be even more important to my long-term success.

Contrary to the age-old cliché, writing is not a solitary process. Not if you want to be successful. A writer needs support from other folks, real folks they know in real life. People they can call, or have dinner with, or go to conferences with. People with whom they can stay up late talking about ridiculous things. That’s probably been true since the beginning, to be honest.

I entered graduate school two years ago not knowing any other writers. Today, as I sit and write this overly wordy blog post, I am thinking of a long list of writers both new and established whom I can now call “friend.” A select and small group of them might be (if I’m exceedingly lucky) my friends for life. And, now that I’m no longer their student, I am going to try on the descriptor of “friend” when referencing the mentors with whom I worked–Tracey Baptiste, Mikki Knudsen, Susan Goodman, Chris Lynch, and Jason Reynolds. It feels audacious of me, but be bold, I say. They were/are amazing people, and I hope to stay in touch with them (professionally, even, if everything goes according to my evil plan, mwah-ah-ah-ah).

A very well established and successful author who shall remain nameless told me just two nights ago that success in this industry (publishing) is as much about who you know as it is about what you know. That probably sounds very cynical, but I suspect it’s also true. Having navigated this program all the way through to the end, I am delighted to say that I am on stable ground on both fronts. My writing is better, and I know a lot more people. In knowing more people, I am significantly better positioned to achieve my ultimate goal as a writer, which is to support myself and my family by writing books. I have networking connections within the traditional publishing industry, and I have a community of people whom I know and like and trust. Folks who care about me and want to support me. Likewise, I care about them and want to support them. That’s going to make the road to success far less jarring and far more enjoyable.

I did it. I graduated. I am a creative writing “master,” which is a little weird to write. The title “novice” would probably be more accurate. But, two days out from having received my handshake and diploma (not really, just a certificate. The diploma will arrive in the mail a month from now), I am feeling most grateful for the people I met and the relationships I forged. If anyone ever questions my choice to pay for a masters in creative writing, citing the fact that I could have learned “all that stuff” from craft books and YouTube, I will simply smile at them and give them a pacifying nod. I will never regret my choice to do this because if I hadn’t attended Lesley, I would probably never have met and become close friends with the people I did. And isn’t that what life is all about? The people we meet? The relationships we form? The communities we build? It is for me.

How important are your friends for your long-term success in achieving your goals?

July 4, 2018
Writing That Hooks Readers – Neuroscience Hack #1
The final requirement for my Masters in Creative Writing program at Lesley University is to teach a graduate student seminar, and I’ve chosen a topic that merges my two great passions in life: biology and writing. More specifically, neuroscience and literature. I’m going to drop a little science on my fellow writers next week by teaching them three inescapable brain hacks they can employ to suck readers into their stories.

It occurred to me that these neuroscience hacks would make some cool blog posts. Today’s neuroscience hack is subtle but incredibly useful.

Brain Hack #1: The human brain evolved to monitor the immediate environment for signs of change.

It’s true! From an evolutionary standpoint, the brain is an organ with a singular purpose. To keep us alive. An essential part of “not dying” is noticing any kind of change to the current situation.

Change grabs our attention as we assess whether it is positive or negative. The brain then forms a “survival goal” based on the conclusion and takes steps to achieve that goal. It could be as simple as putting on a sweater when the temperature drops. Or eating food when blood glucose levels fall. Or running for cover when a strange shadow shifts position in the tall grasses of the African savannah.

Changes such as a hulking figure with a knife stepping from a shadowy alley come with potentially extreme consequences. Experiencing that situation firsthand could mean death. Thankfully, our brains developed workarounds that let us gain knowledge and experience safely.

We have the somewhat unique ability to learn by watching others deal with problems.

Forget it, babe. You’re hooked!

Whether the observed individual lives or dies, we gain knowledge that might keep us alive should we encounter a similar problem.

When we read fictional stories, we get to practice identifying changes and assessing their potential positives or negatives.

In 2007, researchers found that when people read stories, there is a significant increase in brain activity during narrative moments containing changes in characters, scene locations, or changes in characters’ goals.

Changes that Really Light Brains Up:
- Words that suggest the passage of time, such as later, soon, shortly, or immediately.
- Descriptions of spacial changes, such as characters moving from one room to another, or even moving from one side of a room to another.
- Descriptions of characters changing their interaction with objects (picking up or putting down objects, or opening or closing things like doors or windows).
- Showing characters starting a new, goal-oriented action with a clear intent. For example, initiating a conversation, preparing to jump over a puddle, or thrusting a sword during a fight.
Consider the following excerpt from Cressida Cowell’s middle grade novel How to Train Your Dragon:

The Dragon had crawled down into the depths of the ocean and gone into a Sleep Coma. Dragons can stay in this suspended state for eternity, half-dead, half-alive, buried under fathom after fathom of icy-cold seawater. Not a muscle of this particular Dragon had moved for six or seven centuries.

But the previous week, a Killer Whale who had chased some seals unexpectedly deep was surprised to notice a slight movement in the upper eyelid of the dragon’s right eye. An ancestral memory stirred in the whale’s brain and he swam away from there as fast as his fins could carry him. And, a week later, the sea around the Dragon Mountain—which had previously been teeming with crabs and lobsters and shoals and shoals of fish—was a great, underwater desert. Not a mollusk stirred, not a scallop shimmied.

Admit it, that’s some engaging writing. One of the reasons why it pulls you in so fast is because it contains so much change. Your brain locks onto the text as it tries to figure out whether those changes are good or bad. Cowell employs another interesting neuroscience hack in this excerpt, too, but that’s a topic for another post.

Regardless of the quality of the actual story being told (Twilight? The Da Vince Code? Fifty Shades of Gray?), certain tricks can grab readers by the brain and engage them. Change is one of them. Take a look at your writing and see if adding a few elements of change livens things up a bit.

Have you ever gotten so into a book you were reading that you lost track of time and literally forgot about the real world? What was the book, and what was it that sucked you in so effectively?

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you!
June 21, 2018
Surviving the Creative Wilderness—Attitude is Everything

How Not to Die in The Woods

I own a book called “Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival.” It’s a great book. It doesn’t teach you how to read a map or use a compass. It doesn’t explain what gear is essential for an extended wilderness trek. It does explain how to keep yourself alive in the wilderness if you have absolutely nothing with you but the clothes on your back. And for creative folks navigating this life, isn’t that a great analogy for how we must exist? We’ve got nothing but the clothes on our back. Metaphorically only, I hope.

Tom Brown’s book is divided into four parts, arranged in order of importance from the perspective of not dying. Parts two, three, four, and five are (in this order): Shelter, Water, Fire, Food. If you stop and think about it, that order makes perfect sense. You could die of exposure in the first few hours without shelter from the elements. You could die in three days without water, give or take. You can go for a long time without food, but most of it will kill you if you don’t cook it first, so fire comes before food.

The first part of the book, and therefore the most important in terms of not dying when lost in the woods, is Attitude. It’s all about psychology. About the inner voice that gets louder and louder as things get tougher and tougher, whispering, stating, screaming that the situation is hopeless and we’re stupid, that we deserve to die out here. Tom Brown argues that most people who get lost in the wilderness and die do so because they give in to a creeping attitude of defeat.

Why, you might ask, am I writing about a wilderness survival guide? Because I’m a creative writer. I’m a creative person. I spend a lot of time wandering around in the wilderness of my psyche. And, like all creative artists, I find myself, from time to time, lost in those woods. Tom Brown is right. Whether the forest is real or psychological, attitude is the first and most important determiner of whether we’re going to make it out alive or not.

The Creative Life is a Hostile Wilderness

Between January 8^th and May 7^th, I wrote and revised 51,000+ words of a YA fantasy novel for my MFA thesis project at Lesley University. My goal was to finish an entire first draft of the novel by April. That, I’m sad to say, did not happen.

The writing process for grad school is interesting, especially during the thesis semester. Most students enter their final semester with a first draft of their thesis already written. They’ll spend four months revising it before submitting it. They’re traveling a well-worn path by that point.

I didn’t do that. I started from scratch. I took the road less traveled.

Let me tell you, the less-traveled path is not easy-going. It’s grown in and full of brambles and twisting roots to trip on. It’s hot and buggy, and most of it is uphill on a treacherous slope. There are many places where the trail just peters out and vanishes. And there’s quicksand. No one tells you about the quicksand!

My most excellent mentor!

For this final semester, I found myself wandering, slightly lost in the forest, losing the path and then stumbling upon it again. And as someone who does not plot well, I rarely knew in which direction I was traveling. But, I did manage to write 51,000+ words of a story that, with the help of my incredible mentor—Chris Lynch—was of graduate-level quality. I’d bushwhacked my way through some pretty dense, unforgiving territory.

I formatted everything according to spec, typed up the synopsis for the rest of the story as I imagined it, the path I thought lay before me, and I sent it off. I was out of the woods!

Losing the Way

And then I stopped writing.

Which wasn’t supposed to happen.

See, in my head, I’d have the rest of the novel written by June 1^st. It was going to be excellent. But, my brain was experiencing a level of fatigue I wasn’t prepared for. I just… couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even write a blog post. I looked around, and realized that I wasn’t out of the woods quite yet, as I’d thought.

A week went by. Okay, I thought, Time to get back to it.

Nope.

Two weeks. Surely, now. Two weeks must be enough time to recover from the mad dash I’d just been through, but no. In fact, something new had snuck into my brain to replace my mental exhaustion. As I stood looking around and what now seemed frighteningly unfamiliar territory, something snaked its coils around my chest and started to squeeze.

Fear.

Each time I thought about sitting down to work out the details of the next chapter of my story, my pulse quickened, and not with excitement. I started shying away from the story out of fear, though fear of what I didn’t know. Heck, I didn’t even know what was happening at the time, only that it had suddenly become very important that I not work on my writing. My writing was stalking me like some unseen creature in the underbrush.

As the days continued to slip by, a horrible pressing guilt settled on my shoulders. I should be writing, I chided myself, but I’m not. I’m failing. This is me, failing. I’m awful. I’m a loser. A joke. I’m never going to succeed at this because I’m supposed to be writing and I can’t even muster the simple will power needed to do touch my fingertips to a keyboard. It became a nasty feedback loop. Each day I didn’t sit down and write made it that much harder for me to get back to the chair, sit down, and write. I started hating myself. I stopped trying to get my bearings. I sat down on the cold, wet ground and started to let the ruinous forest of my blackest doubts leech from me my will to continue.

Odin help me, I was lost! Lost in a hostile forest, with the shadows of fear, doubt, and self-hate blinding me so that I couldn’t see a path forward, couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten there. I was becoming more and more certain that my journey was at an end. It was awful, and it felt inevitable.

The thing is, getting lost is a hazard of living a creative life. In some ways, getting lost really is inevitable, because the creative path is not well-travelled. I’d argue that if you’re doing things right as an artist, you’re blazing a new trail through the deepest, darkest woods of your own psyche. There are no paths here, children. Only shadows, and stones, and giant trees that might eat you if you get too close, and creatures too beautiful and terrible to look at directly. And, wait, haven’t I gotten snagged in this same bramble patch before? Oh, Thor! I’m going in circles! I’m lost, and it’s cold, and the sun’s getting low, the night creatures are coming, and I’ll never find my way out of this forest. Why did I think this was a good idea? I’m an idiot. I’m going to die in these woods, and no one will mourn my demise.

Countless talented artists wander into the creative forest with good intentions and never make it out again. They get lost, hit that moment of doubt and despair, give up, and die. Metaphorically.

For me, May has certainly felt like a slow death in a wild and inhospitable landscape.

Finding My Way Back

But then I received my feedback letter from my thesis reader—Jason Reynolds.

That’s him, the self-professed hater of fantasy stories. And the guy who got me moving again!

Quick back story. At the residency program back in January, Jason sat in a classroom with a bunch of us from the Writing for Young People concentration, and went off on a (gentle) tirade about how irritating he found the fantasy genre. Details are not important here. Suffice it to say, the man is not a fan. As he spoke, I sat with a polite smile cemented to my face and did my best not to freak out. You see, by that point, I already knew I was going to be writing a YA fantasy story for my thesis, and I’d already requested him as my thesis reader. A guy who hates fantasy is going to put final eyes on my fantasy thesis. Fantastic.

Anyway, four months later, I’m slipping into creative hypothermia, curling up in the fetal position, and making peace with my end, when I open his feedback letter and read it.

I was expecting lukewarm but professional feedback on my prose, my character development, my pacing, scene structure, etc. You can hate a story, after all, and still give constructive feedback on the writing, right? Lukewarm but professional feedback was not what I got.

For almost three weeks at that point, I’d been lost in the shadowy part of my self-made forest, under thick canopy, feeling the slow creep of horror setting in as I realized that the trees were endless and I was a hopeless, pathetic fool. Jason’s feedback was like discovering a high-powered flashlight in my back pocket, switching it on, and finding out that I’d been following a path the whole time without realizing it.

I can see again. Maybe I don’t have to die out here all alone in the cold, unforgiving forest of my mind. The book I’m writing is my destination once again. Chris Lynch had been my shelter. A few close writing-friends I’ve connected with through the program had been my water, my spouse is my fire, and all the fine books I’d been reading this semester have been my food.

So, with the help of Jason Reynold’s incredibly generous and encouraging words, I’m standing up, brushing the duff off my backside, and moving forward again. Sun’s up. The canopy is starting to thin out again, and I’m pretty sure this trail is not leading to pit trap filled with poison-tipped spikes. If it is, I know I can find a way to disarm it. I’ve shifted my attitude. I’m getting out of this alive.

Have you ever gotten lost in the darker parts of your creative forest? How long did you wander before finding your way out?

May 29, 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
Writing is like Baseball: You Gotta Swing for the Fences!

Writing is like baseball. Most of the time, you recognize the pitch coming in and you manage a solid single when you swing at it. Occasionally, you strike out. Every once in a great while, though, you hit a grand slam. Or, if you’re new at it, like me, you dream about hitting a grand slam and when it’s your turn at bat, you give it everything you have and swing for the fences.

Between now and April 9th, I’m going to try to crank out an entire novel, start to finish. It’s okay, coach told me to do it.

Here’s the Pitch

I just got back from my amazing, energizing, mad-capped Residency at Lesley University. This was my fourth and (almost) final trip to geeky writer’s camp for grown-ups. That means I have officially entered my fourth semester of a four-semester-long program. This is it, folks. Everything else was just practicing in the batting cages. The lights are up, the bleachers are packed, it’s the bottom of the ninth inning and the bases are loaded. I’m going to use a bunch of baseball metaphors in this post in case my Thesis Advisor, Chris Lynch, catches wind of this post and reads it. You know him. He wrote Inexcusable, Irreversible, Killing Time in Crystal City, Little Blue Lies, Gold Dust, and a bunch of other incredible award-winning novels.

Anyway, residency is a mixture of seminars, panel discussions, and workshop sessions in which a bunch of us sit around and give critical feedback to each other on pieces we submitted at the beginning of December.

The workshop sessions are one of the highlights of residency for me. I absolutely love reading other people’s writing, digging into it deeply, and then discussing it with other serious and passionate writers. I also love receiving feedback on my stuff. Even when folks point out more problems than positives in my work, I find the experience hopeful.

This time around was a slightly different workshop experience for me for a couple of reasons.

First, I’m entering my “Thesis Semester.” On May 7th, I must turn in between 100 and 120 pages of a “finished” piece of writing to someone who has never set eyes on it before–Jason Reynolds. Ever heard of him? Of course you have, you’re using the internet and you’re reading a blog about writing.

So, yeah. No pressure, right? Riiiiiiight. [takes a moment to breathe into a paper bag] Okay, I’m good.

Most students entering the Thesis Semester have a working draft already completed, or at least a very solid chunk of it.

The second reason why it was a different experience was because Mr. Lynch pitched something at me I was not expecting.

A Curve Ball

Six days before my residency workshop pieces were due (we need to write two pieces, each between 3,000 and 6,500 words long), I contacted Chris Lynch with a question. It was via email, but this is how the conversation sounded in my imagination (I may have taken extreme liberties with the details).

“Hi, Chris.”

“Oh, hey, Kathy. Great to hear from you. I’ve heard so much about you from my colleagues. Can’t wait to work with you!” (He said none of that, by the way.)

“Thanks, Chris. Same to you. So… I’ve got two different books going right now.”

“Okay.”

“One’s a fun MG steam punk piratical fantasy adventure story. I’m enjoying it, but it’s not quite your style, I think.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The other is a gritty YA post-apocalyptic wilderness survival story. Totally up your alley, but it’s a hot mess at the moment. Needs a ton of work.”

“Right.”

“Maybe I could submit some of one novel for my Large Group Workshop and some of the other novel for my Small Group Workshop, and then you could tell me which one you like better, and we could use that for my thesis.”

“Hmmm… when are they due again?”

“Six days from now.”

“Yeah. Okay, so, why don’t you make up a completely new story from scratch and submit that for both your workshop pieces.”

[Eyes bulging with terror] “Are you sure?”

“Definitely. That’s what I want you to do. I’m your all powerful Thesis Advisor. Do you really want to say no to me?”

“Hahaha, no. No, definitely not. I mean, yes, that sounds great. I will totally do that for you. New story. Six days. Not a problem. Thank you so much.”

“You’re so welcome. Glad you called. Take care now. Bye-bye.” [click]

Did I freak out after I got his email reply? You bet your buttons I did. I wrote a post about it, actually. But then I did what he asked me to do and cranked out about 7,000 words of a brand-spanking new story. I wrote that sucker so fast and in such a panic that I didn’t stop to question anything. Setting, characters, plot, dialogue, point-of-view, nothing! I put my fingers on the keyboard, cleared my mind, and wrote Ouija-style!

Swinging For the Fences!

Turns out, the thing that fell out of my brain was… kind of cool. It feels a little weird to write that, but there you have it. Once I got over the shock of what I’d produced (a militant feminist world dominated by psychic women who are into all kinds of stuff our society has deemed taboo), I had to admit to myself that I kind of liked the story. Okay, I fully liked it.

I think all my pent-up rage from the past two years of… I’m not going to that dark place…came bubbling to the surface when Chris was all, like, “write me brand new stuff NOW!” My beloved called it my “man-hating” story. Chris called it a “black-widow feminist” piece. I’m calling it The 42nd Queen. Eh, it’s a working title.

Chris also told me I should make it my thesis project. In all fairness, he didn’t order me to do it. He’s not a monster, for Thor’s sake. I might even go so far as to say he’s a pretty awesome, inspiring, and kind guy. And, if I’m honest, what I wrote at his request (though I cursed him as I wrote it) is one of the first things I’ve written in a long time that gave me the feels as I was writing it. That means something, I think.

So, yeah. I’m going to make it my thesis project. Fourth semester shall not be my revision semester. It shall be my militant feminist, Ouija-style writing semester.

And if I’m going to take a swing at this, I’m going to swing for the fences.

120 page? Pshaw! Too easy.

Let’s try for a grand slam. An entire draft of a novel. In 82 days.

If I’m going to take a crack at this, I’m going to swing for the fences, Babe.

I mapped it out and it’s definitely possible. Assuming (perhaps naïvely) that I write 810 words every single day between now and then, I can hit 75,000 words (about 350 pages) by April 9th. There’s no guarantee they’ll be good words, but that’s beside the point.

The pitch has been thrown. It’s a curve ball breaking to the inside corner, and I’ve got a bead on it. The bat’s beginning to come around. My hips are cocked. Body weight shifting off the back leg. Here it comes.

Think I can do it?

January 17, 2018
From the Heart of the Bombogenesis

Before I dive into what “living through a Bombogenic event” felt like, allow me to begin by saying that as of this morning I failed at one of my three New Year Resolutions. If you’re curious about which one that might be, keep reading and see if you can figure it out, or click the link to the post where I laid them out.

I’m not proud of my failure in resolve and will power this morning, but I do at least have an excuse that (to me) feels less like an excuse and more like an explanation. I and my family spent the day dealing with a Really Freaking Big Snow Storm. Not blizzard of ’78 big. I’m not making a boast that ridiculous. I get to call it Really Freaking Big because of how it pitched my life sideways and what that felt like.

How Do You Stay Warm in a House with No Insulation?

Our house was built in the 1950’s on land that was part of a government veterans program post WW2 in which veterans were sold land for $1.00/acre. The program was a “Hey, thanks for doing that dangerous, deadly, horribly traumatizing thing for not just your own country’s citizens but for everyone pretty much everywhere” gift from US taxpayers. That was awesome, but in the 1950’s, insulation just wasn’t… good.

Imagine insulating a house by laying a piece of cotton felt between the studs and joists and then gluing a piece of aluminum foil to it. That’s about what we’ve got. The result is, heat bleeds out of our house at a prodigious rate.

We usually deal with this inconvenience by keeping our thermostat set to 55˚F, except for first thing in the morning when we indulge in a toasty 63˚F while everyone’s getting ready for school and work. Not so, when the Bombogenesis struck.

The temperature over the past two weeks has been abysmally cold. This morning, I heard a news reporter crow like a rooster that Boston was officially colder than Bismarck, North Dakota. Also, at what point did “who’s colder” become a thing to compete over? Anyway, we’re talking a two week period where temps regularly dipped or flat out stayed in the single digits. If you’re someone who lives where that’s a regular occurrence and you’re scoffing, I’d ask you to pause for a moment. Weather that cold is not a typical thing on the eastern coast of Massachusetts. Many homes (mine included) weren’t architecturally designed for such conditions. Freezing and bursting pipes is a genuine threat. The easiest way to avoid that happening is to crank the heat in your home.

Our heat-leaking home has had its thermostat set to 65˚F night and day for the past seven days.

What To Do With All That Snow And Nowhere To Put It?

Yesterday, ten inches of snow fell on us. It may have been more or less than that, but the wind was blowing so hard that there are bare spots in some places and giant snow drifts in other places. Point is, a LOT of snow.

I and the kids got a snow day, which we were all pretty stoked about.

All of Thursday, we listened to the wind roar through the trees around our house and slam itself against our northern face. We stood at our picture window and watched it drive sheets of snow almost parallel to the ground, so thick there were moments when we lost sight of the neighbor’s house across the street.

We stayed inside and sipped cocoa. I did some writing. The kids spent way too much time playing video games. My beloved got down into the studio and did some photographating. We cooked dinner and ate as a family and counted our blessings for being fortunate enough to have a warm home and plenty of food and electricity.

But today was (and I’ll get to the “was” thing in a moment) supposed to be my first day of my fourth and (almost) final nine-day-long, on-campus residency for Lesley University’s Low Residency Masters in Creative Writing program. Which meant we needed to get the cars dug out so I had a way to get to the train station this morning, because even if I wanted to walk the mile and a quarter to the train station, the sidewalks wouldn’t be dug out. No way I was going to walk the narrow, snow-plowed streets. I’d get creamed.

The photo really doesn’t do it justice. We also had to shovel our way down our front steps to even get to the cars.

So, after dinner, we ALL suited up and headed outside, shovels in hand and began the two-hour-long torture session of shoveling during the Bombogenesis. Odin, let me tell you, snowflakes sting like [insert preferred curse word here] when they’re pelting your face at 50 mph… in the dark… in single digit temperatures. I don’t usually post photos online of the areas in or around my house, but I think it will help give context to the volume of snow that we had to move and where we had to put it.

By the time we were done, I was done. Toast. Not physically sore, no. More like numb and flacid, as if my muscles had been replaced by jelly. I was moving slow, and it was an effort.

When the 5am alarm sounded this morning, my beloved (cut from a stronger cloth than I) rose to do our morning workout routine. I did not. I slept until 7am, when I was woken by the sound of the porch door being wrestled/slammed shut and someone stamping snow of their boots on the porch. Then the kitchen door opening and closing.

I went downstairs and learned that, during the night, plows had come by and undone most of what we’d shoveled the night before. And by undone, I mean they put back the 3′ high by 5′ wide mound of wet, grimy street snow that had blocked our driveway entrance. Instead of waking me and asking/demanding I help dig back out, my better half simply suited up and took care of things so that I could sleep in. Because today was my first day of residency, and it was going to be a long day for me. I know, I am blessed!!

But the Bombogenesis wasn’t finished with us yet.

No Insulation Plus A Ton of Snow Equals Ice Dams

As I grabbed my cup of coffee, sipped it, and strolled past our bathroom on the way to waking up my oldest child to let them know that their school had been cancelled for a second day, I glanced out the bathroom window and beheld an icicle as thick around as a grown man’s thigh streaming down glass like a frozen mountain stream.

Oh. My. God.

No one ever went out yesterday with the roof rake! Not once did it occur to me that with the heat up so high, all day long, the snow landing on the roof was melting, dripping into the metal gutter that was the same temperature as the air (9˚F) and freezing. We probably had an ice dam the size of Fort Peck sitting on our back roof.

I chugged my coffeed, and together I and my beloved suited back up and went back outside to deal with all the digging out we didn’t do last night. Luckily what at first appeared to be the mother of all ice dams ended up being a gigantic cornice of wind-compressed snow. We easily knocked off and then raked off the rest of the roof. Thankfully, it didn’t have a lot of snow on it because the wind was so fierce during the Bombogenesis. We shovelled a path to the basement door and cleared that out, then dug our way over to our dryer vent and cleared that out, then dug a path out to the middle of the yard so that our medium sized mutt could have a place to do his business without freezing his wiener off in snow up to his shoulders.

I may have slept in this morning, but I still got my workout in. Thanks mother nature.

Okay, potential ice dam crisis averted. I still had just over two hours before I had to catch a train into Cambridge for my first seminar of my Residency. How I was going to muster the physical energy needed to pick up a pen and write with it, I wasn’t sure, but I was ready. In fact, I was excited.

At Least I Had Residency To Look Forward To

Pretty much since December 1st, I’ve been counting down the days until my (almost) final residency. I’ve made some incredible friends through this program. They are spread out all over the country: Texas, Las Vegas, Seattle, Georgia, West Virginia, New York City. I get to see them face-to-face just twice a year for nine days during residency. For that reason alone, I’ve been looking forward to today. But, the program is so much more than that. The instructors, the seminars, the intensity of the learning process, the raw energy of being surrounded by other writers equally passionate about creative writing as I am? It’s intoxicating. It’s exhilarating. It’s nerdy writing camp for grown-up’s and it’s awesome!!

About a half hour before my train was scheduled to depart, I got an email from the director of my program stating that, because so many of the residency students and professors’ flights had been cancelled or delayed, today’s residency program had been cancelled. We’ll be jumping into Saturday classes on time tomorrow.

Well, Sugar Honey Iced Tea. That certainly does suck eggs. Glad I thought to check my email on last time before I took off.

Guess I’ll have to wait one extra day to see my friends again and experience the joy that is living, breathing, and eating all things devoted to the art and craft of creative writing. I still can’t wait.

In the meantime, since I feel I just need a few hours to recover myself, physically from lifting and throwing 15 to 25 lb loads of snow over and over again for a total of four of the past twenty-four hours, I thought I’d set up camp on my couch and blog about what it was like at my house during the Bombogenesis.

And by the way, please don’t be fooled by that term or by the giddy meteorologists dancing around up on top of big piles of snow singing the word at you. This Bombogenesis was just a typical New England Nor’easter with lower than typical temperatures. New Englanders are used to crazy and sometimes difficult to deal with weather. We deal with it.

Did the Beast of Bombogenesis impact you? Tell me about it in the comments.

January 5, 2018
The Plot Bunnies Are Winning!

I’m usually pretty good at handling the plot bunnies when they take up arms and attack. At least, that’s what I’ve always told myself. Upon reflection, however, I’ve reason to question that.

Trish Marie Dawson wrote a funny little blog post on this topic (I grabbed the drawing from her article). Check her out, folks. Very talented.

Trust not the adorable plot bunny!

But back to my dilemma. They’re sneaky, those bunnies. They usually hit me when I’m not paying attention. In the middle of a basketball game, or while I’m proctoring a test, or (most often) while I’m driving home from work. Never in the shower. Not sure why.

My strategy for dealing with them is to keep a notebook with me at all times. Except in the car, this doesn’t work, and the bunnies have finally figured this out, I think.

Anyway, a story idea will strike like an invisible punch to the face. I’ll gasp, get wide-eyed with excitement, garner a few sidelong glances from anyone nearby, then whip out my notebook and begin scribbling as fast as I can. A tricky feat when I’m supposed to be running the clock during the JV Boys basketball game, but I’ve only had folks scream “start the clock!” a couple of times, so it’s all good.

It’s the drive home that’s killing me. With no notebook handy (and I don’t use a dictation app because my brain isn’t good with verbal stuff), I have no shield to protect me from the bunnies. They attack me, defenseless, and burrow in deep. I spend twenty or thirty minutes mulling over the “what if,” inventing characters, hearing snippets of dialogue, visualizing a setting, a scene, an entire world.

By the time I get home, it’s too late. I can’t let go of the story. Even if I head straight to my desk, plop down in the chair, whip out my notebook and start writing it all down, the bunnies have nested.

The result? My current project loses appeal. It fades, becomes uninteresting. I’ve got something new and shiny to play with. Am I playing with it, or am I being played? I don’t know. Either way, the outcome is the same. I accumulate unfinished projects.

I try to make myself feel better about this nasty tendency to start stories, write like a demon, and then abandon them to start something new. It’s a bad habit, but I tell myself, “I’m a new writer, which means I’m also sort of a crappy writer. These story ideas are great, and in a few years, I’ll have gotten the whole storytelling thing figured out well enough so that when I finally go back to them, I’ll be able to do them justice.”

So really, I’m just building up a library of great ideas and practicing my writing skills as I do it. I’m still in control. I’m still winning. The plot bunnies aren’t the boss of me. Just let me have it, okay.

Meanwhile, I now find myself in the irresponsible position of juggling three novel projects simultaneously as I approach my (almost) final residency for my MFA in Creative Writing program at Lesley University. Dystopian YA, Steampunk Piratical Fantasy MG adventure, and now let’s add Feminist YA Epic Fantasy to the mix. Sure, why not?

Don’t blame me. Blame those adorable plot bunnies.

December 15, 2017
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