Would there be Life without Windows?

This is my May offering for Alex Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  To read from other posters, click here. 

Yesterday, I spent time revising my current writing project.  I had my third draft open, as well as edits and recommendations on my second draft from two amazing (and patient) readers. Page by page I compared, analyzed, cut, moved, clarified and rewrote.  And, while I wouldn’t describe the effort as easy, it was—manageable.  However, at the end of the day, when I clicked the documents closed, I wondered if I’d ever have attempted something as complex and challenging as a novel if technology hadn’t become so helpful.  

About 25 years ago, I thought I’d try and write a book. That hiccup was going to be a memoir, and back then, it meant either typing the thing on a typewriter, (and I was NOT/am NOT an accurate typist) or writing it with a ballpoint.  I picked up a pen and a lined yellow writing tablet, plunked down at the dining room table and completed perhaps 20 pages, before my hand grew permanently tired.

Bringing up this topic dates me.  I am well aware there are folks reading this who may have never seen a typewriter outside of an antique store.  But I do wonder.  If Steve Jobs and Bill Gates hadn’t been so brilliant, would I be plugging through round three of my WIP?  Would I have the perseverance?  Does it make me less of a writer because I’m afraid the answer is “no?”  Not that I wouldn’t write—I know I would. I always have.  But would I try something as challenging as my 88,000 word wonder, if I couldn’t cut from one document, paste to another, take a chunk from Part One and move it to Part Two, or change a complete chapter from one character’s point of view to another—without developing an inoperable case of writer’s cramp?

Trust me.  I won’t lose sleep over this.  But golly gosh, I wonder how people like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens did it.

February and the Insecure Writer

This is my entry into the monthly Insecure Writers' blog hop.  To read posts from other participants,  click here: Alex J. Cavanaugh, Insecure Writers Support Group.

Become a better writer by writing.  I’ve been practicing this for three years now.   I’m committed to improving.  That’s why you are getting this “brain dump” of a blog post.  I haven’t written anything of substance for a few weeks now, and someway, somehow, I’ve got to keep going, to keep chugging, to force myself to write even when no great inspiration percolates.  

Dry spells come to all.  I’ve had my share.  Enough to know the way to get the word-water running again is to turn on the faucet and keep it on until thoughts work through the clog the way the degreaser powers through a hairball in your drain.   

So I’m here, typing the keys, thinking about how the hot bean pad I have on my shoulder is burning my skin but not reducing the stiffness from sleeping wrong the night before last.  Thinking about the farm we passed on our way to the mall the other morning, and how the rusted shell of an old tractor parked in front of two grain silos would make a lovely black and white photo if I can get back there again soon.  

I’m pondering the “resting” WIP, and trying to figure out how so many writers write new works while editing others.  I worry I’ve got too much singular focus to manage that, but if I want to keep writing I need to figure out how…

I’m thinking about my most recent blog post pertaining to a breakfast/lunch joint for South Shore Living and what a blast it was to write.  On the other hand, last week's monthly contribution to the local newspaper on behalf of seniors didn’t flow—I’m not surprised because I wrote from an “assignment” frame of mind and not from a place of passion, as the subject matter didn’t touch me.

And lastly, I am thinking about The Artists Way and morning pages and how this spew of words on the page would be acceptable if they were in a notebook no one was going to read, but since they are here out in public, in hindsight, it's a strong possibility I'm going to wish I never clicked “publish.”

January and the Insecure Writer

This is January's post for  Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.  Click on the link to find other participants.

I have always been a late bloomer, one to consider things, to analyze the ramifications before moving forward.    (I wish this trait had resulted in the practice of thinking before I speak, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic, as they say.)   This quality has resulted in a long life of waiting before I act –and you know what they say about “she who hesitates.”  

 

Anyway, experiences in more recent history delivered the message that chasing after what I want feels a lot better than delaying—which is why I dared myself to write Novel #1, the first draft of which I completed early in 2011.  I went through one re-write before abandoning it. I didn’t know how to make it any better than it was, and trust me, it wasn’t good.

Novel two was born, no word of a lie, when the first sentence came to me in the middle of one sleepless night.  I wrote it down and let it sit on my desk for several months until I was ready to write the story it belonged to.  During the time I was writing it, I took a fiction writing workshop and joined two writing groups, where I have learned more about conflict and back story, character building, dialogue and story arcs.  As a result, well, I have a little hope for it this second work

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott says, “For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts."  The insecure writer in me is well aware that my own first draft is a piece of mud covered dung. I have a goal now, one that looms large and scary, of editing the heck out of it and then letting some folks I trust read it and critique it.  

For the year ahead, I’m wishing for the vision to see what is broken, the openness to listen, the strength to respond to difficult criticism, and the skill to make my story cohesive and readable.  

Then we’ll see if there is a query letter in my future.

I guess my practice of taking things slow hasn’t changed much after all.

Insecure Writer's Support Group - November

This is my monthly post for Alex Cananugh’s InsecureWriter’s Support Group.

Over the twenty-plus years I worked in HR for a national retail chain, I never knew what I wanted to do when I grew up.  Over the course of that career, I performed as a high-functioning “square peg in a round hole.” Since the job paid well and the location and challenge level enabled me to be an available mom for our growing daughter, I stuck to it.  When the business began to struggle and layoffs occurred, I thought, “If I go, I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I won’t do this.”   Of course, I said those things thinking: “It will never happen to me.” 

Until it did. 

 

Most Middle Passages readers know that the day after my job disappeared, words welled up inside me, and a blog was born.  Two months later, I’d scored a personal essay relating to my layoff in the Boston Globe Magazine.  I’d been published in a niche magazine a few times prior, and won a monthly writing contest on WritersDigest.com.  But an essay in The Globe fulfilled a long-held dream, and for the first time in my life, I thought, “Good gosh, maybe I really am a writer.”

Working with my outplacement coordinator, I sculpted a freelance writing business, then took a part-time job to help tide over the uneven nature of the freelance beast, and continued my own writing.  Through the encouragement of The Artist’s Way, I challenged myself to write a book.  I “finished” that one, if you call getting the story down on paper and muscling through one revision “finished.”  A print out sits in a folder on my desk in my living room under a pile of books.  Last winter, I started writing another one and currently hover at about 50,000 words and change.

Here is my insecurity. I’m starting a new part-time job on Monday, which is a marginal economic improvement over my current situation. Until the layoff, I was a significant contributor financially to the bottom line.  For the last 2.5 years though, I’ve been a drag on our resources and yet for the first time ever, I’m doing what I know I want to do.   I’ve earned a few more publishing credits.  The writing friends I’ve made on line and in person support and challenge me and my husband stands beside me.  But guilt wheedles its way in and tweaks down deep.  Our daughter has just started college.  My lack of earnings impacts not only our present circumstances, but our future retirement, yet, when I contemplate going back full-time to the business world, nausea ensues.  

What if my focus on writing is nothing more than a big excuse to avoid doing what I should be doing?  Sometimes I’m afraid the word after my name shouldn’t be writer.  It should be fraud.

The Truth of "Time"

This post is my contribution to Alex Cavanaugh’s “Insecure Writers Support Group.”    For More information and to find other bloggers who are participating, clickhere.  

28,717. 

That number represents the word count on my current project as of 9:00 yesterday morning.  Last week sometime, I forced myself to sit down and log 1000 words.  Other than that, it remained in an untouched folder on my flash drive for close to a month. During that time I wrote blog posts here, and for a regional magazine, and completed bi-monthly public relations articles for the local newspaper I’m being paid to write.  So I can’t cop to “writer’s block.”  But when it was time to sit down and move forward with the story I’ve been working on since this winter, I veered away from the computer.

This year spring arrived, then summer, delivering a basketful of emotional produce related to endings and beginnings associated with our eighteen year-old only child.  I felt the need to work my way through all that fruit, to juggle a few oranges and to chew on the ripe plums at the bottom of the pile before I could focus on my story again.   So I gave myself a "pass."  With the arrival of Labor Day, the summer milestones were all crossed off.   

Time to get back to the thing, right?  

Yet, here I am, writing this post on writing insecurities, instead of, well, writing.

So many times writers are asked:  “How do you make the time to write?”  I have a theory and it is pretty simple.  There is always time to write, we simply have to make a choice to find it.  Over the last few months, I’ve chosen not to.  Now I’m worried.  The distractions are over, and if I mean it, it’s time to call my own bluff.  

PS…There’s hope.  Word count as of 3:00 p.m. Tuesday: 30,057.