Writing for Release: IWSG March 2018

IWSG: Writers helping writers. The brainchild of our fearless ninja leader, Alex Cavanaugh, this month's co-hosts are: Mary Aalgaard, Bish Denham, Jennifer Hawes, Diane Burton, and Gwen Gardner.  

To read posts from all other members, click here.

I wrote a poem the other day. I’d been on social media, reading a post that shared texts between children trapped in school during the shooting in Florida and their parents, and when the tears started to dribble, I needed to get the raw pain out. That’s when I realized there are two kinds of writing for me.

The first, I’ll call release writing and it appeared inside the multiple diaries I kept from the age of 15 to 25. The journals were lined notebooks in which I spilled emotions from everyday life without worrying about being criticized or judged. My first poems appeared in those pages and for many years, the diaries and the poems were my go-to when it was time to let the air out of my feelings. For the longest time, all my writing was personal. The early posts from this blog came from a similar place.

But, then I started writing fiction. And while creating fictional is personal too, in a way, it’s not. Yes, they’re my stories, but they’re not stories about me. And yet, the time I take to think, edit, to rewrite in order to make something read “real” feels as authentic as when my heart is bleeding and I have to get it on to a page.

An acquaintance of mine, a talented pianist, recently suffered an unspeakable tragedy. I saw him today for the first time since, and he spoke of how his music has changed, has been enhanced by his loss. “Pain,” he said, “brings one to a deeper level.” After he left, I thought of the poem I’d written about Florida and how the pure ache that colored it helped me let go of something I may not have been able to, any other way. 

The same way my acquaintance turns to the piano, I write to purge the hurt or get to a truth, whether it’s one that lives inside me, or one that rests at the core of my story. And, after an unplanned poem, or an hour trying to formulate one perfect sentence in a novel, I’m wrung out, clean, and able to start again. 

Which is perhaps why I love writing so very much.

Why do you write?

IWSG February - It ain't Over 'til it's Over

IWSG: Writers helping writers. The brainchild of our fearless ninja leader, Alex Cavanaugh, this month's co-hosts are: Stephen Tremp, Pat Garcia, Angela Wooldridge, Victoria Marie Lees, and Madeline Mora-Summonte.

The holidays had passed and it was time to get back to business. I sent out my first query since early December and the ensuing rejection arrived in my inbox less than two hours later. Yikes. Record-breaking in terms of turn around, wouldn’t you say? It would have been a demoralizing, too, if there wasn’t a proverbial silver lining attached. In her response, the agent included two sentences of thoughtful, specific criticism that stopped me dead, because it related to something that had been worrying me. “Ditch your prologue,” she said.  It eliminates the conflict right up front.”

Gulp. Yes, but…

That.

Means.

More.

Revulsion. 

Sorry. I mean revision.

Now, I’m not going leap into the “to prologue or not to prologue discussion.” In my mind, there are places for them, if executed correctly. Note the key words…”if executed correctly.” I had begun to wonder if my prologue was hurting me, and the agent’s feedback validated my concerns. Now, I had actionable feedback I suspected was spot on. This was the first response that said anything more than, “I like your voice, feel free to query me with your next project,” and “Thanks, but the story is not for me,” or “Nice idea but I don’t think I’m the one to sell it.” But, was I supposed to tear up my manuscript based on one agent's feedback? 

After wringing my hands for a while, I sent the manuscript to a trusted author/reader who hadn’t seen this version of the story. Surprise, surprise, she agreed with the agent, but, God love her, she talked me off the ledge by convincing me the changes would be easy to make. Before long, I tamped down on the urge to stab out my eyeballs and got back to work.

That means, rather than participating in the IWSG Twitter Pitch on January 18th as I had vowed to do in my last post, I cut and pasted and layered in detail…AGAIN. I’ve edited this manuscript so many times now, I‘ve lost track. 

A month later, I’m grateful. That agent did me such a good turn. Instead of replying with a standard rejection or worse, deleting my book into a black hole, she took thirty seconds to offer her opinion on corrective action, and I've learned a hard lesson. It's not over until it's one hundred percent the best book I can write. Had I listened to my gut, I would have known it was only ninety-five percent there. Several months lost and queries wasted, simply because I wanted to believe my story was done.

I understand I’ve lost my chance with this particular agent, but I tell you, if I wasn’t respectful of how much junk must hit her inbox, I’d write her a thank you note.

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Thirty Minutes a Day...and then Some

It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader. Co-hosts this month: Tyrean Martinson, The Cynical Sailor, Megan Morgan, Rachna Chhabria, and Jennifer Lane.

To read posts from all other members, click here

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

This could be the shortest IWSG post on record as I answer, nothing new. So as not to waste your valuable, IWSG-perusing time though, I’ll elaborate.

Many moons ago, I read a successful author (Sorry. I can’t remember which one.) who suggested a novel could be completed by writing 500 words a day. Do the math. Even taking weekends off, over the course of a year that’s 130,000 words—far more than enough for a novel. I’ve also read of writers who’ve completed books by writing half-an-hour a day. Another author (This one I remember: Claire Cook.) wrote a novel in the car while waiting for her daughter to finish swim practice. A combination of the three works for me. 

Those who read me regularly know I get up an hour early five days a week to write before work. Factoring in social media distractions and days it takes longer for my brain to click in, that ends up being about a half hour of dedicated writing/editing time. Sometimes, I get more in after work. On the weekend I write as inspiration dictates—for ten minutes or three hours or not at all. Along the way, when time has allowed, I’ve written in the library, in coffee shops and on the beach, as well as on trains, ferries, and planes. I’ve even edited a manuscript during an 18-hour car ride from Massachusetts to Charleston, South Carolina while crammed in the back seat with our daughter’s belongings. Following that kind of schedule since 2011, I’ve completed countless blog posts, a handful of poems, two hide-in-the-drawer novels, a novel I’m currently querying and a fourth that’s in decent shape, though it still needs tweaking. Add in a couple of thousand words on my flash drive that may or may not be another novel. Clearly, other writers have accomplished more than I have in the same amount of time, but at minimum, I’m proof to two theories. Taking Baby Steps and Finding a Way, work.

As for a publishing schedule, well, my aim is to be traditionally published. I have faith in the book I’m currently pitching and I’ll continue querying as I have for the last few months…a letter out for every rejection received. 

In addition, I’ll join the IWSG Twitter Pitch on January 18. I’ve never done anything like that before. Aha. There IS something new for me in 2018. Writing it here makes it a goal.
 
Bonus: If you've made it to the bottom of this post without clicking off in boredom, here's a reward. Check out this article from Writers Digest: 15 Motivational Tips to Help You Achieve Your Writing Resolutions in 2018.

Wishing you happiness and writing success in 2018.

IWSG December, 2017, As it Was and How it Is

It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader. Co-hosts this month:Julie Flanders, Shannon Lawrence, Fundy Blue, and Heather Gardner.  To read posts from all other members, click here

I walked outside looking for the newspaper at 6:00 this morning. It was dark and the moon was still full on high, glowing pale through a light cloud cover. Somewhere in a tree behind the house an owl gave a couple of low hoots. I walked up the driveway shivering, remembering a similar morning seven or eight years ago when there, out in the first breath of morning, the traffic hiss on the two-lane highway a quarter-mile away traveled on chilled air. Like today, a faint breeze rattled the remaining paper bag oak leaves, and I’d stopped to drink in the world, the quiet, the peace, the smoke drifting out of my neighbor's chimney. If it wouldn’t take me forever to find it, I’d search for the post I wrote about that frozen moment, all my writing then so in tuned to the present.

Bursts of description are no longer my practice, those brief essays, definable instants fashioned into the blog posts that prodded me along in my writing life. Sometimes, I miss the sense of accomplishment attained via a five-hundred word spurt. Now it’s all about the long haul. First the idea, then chapter-the-chapter-by-chapter grind. A hundred million edits, critique partners, writing group reviews. Almost incomprehensibly, years have gone by and my focus remains on the same two projects. 

As I write this, the sky through the shadow trees across the road brightens to a peach grey. A teenage neighbor has slouched-walked down his driveway. He stares at the ground, his hands deep in his cargo pockets while he waits for the air-brake hiss of the school bus, for the yellow doors to split open and swallow him into day. Around me, the cast iron radiators clank, the house pops as it settles, the air vent  in the kitchen kicks on with a whine. Commuters have begun their short-cut travels by our house, taillights glowing red behind them. Day has begun. Before long I’ll have to get ready for work. I've done nothing on my projects today. But I do have this. Evidence of a short haul and it's been fun. Tomorrow I'll put my head down and write.

Wishing you all wonderful holidays and blessings in the new year.

No, No, NaNo. IWSG November 2017

It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. The brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader.  To read posts from other members, click here. This months co-hosts:

Tonja Drecker, Diane Burton,  MJ Fifield, and Rebecca Douglass.

Today's optional IWSG Question: Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project. Have any of them gone on to be published?


November sweeps in here amid the yellow leaves of the black birch trees, the in-and-out light from storm clouds scuttling across the skies. I’ve transitioned from my back-room writing desk where I freeze in the winter to the living room at the front of the house. There, sixty-year-old cast iron heaters keep my hands warm enough to type. My writing table is positioned in front of a window and when not concentrating, I watch squirrels scavenging for acorns and black walnuts while the last of the rusty pine needles float down. We live on a busy street. I’m an early morning writer and now, the sun comes up so late I have to turn on the light while I’m working which makes me feel exposed. The other day, a neighbor I rarely see said, “I see you in your front window when I leave for work. What the heck are you doing there?”  

“I’m writing,” I said and it’s true. But these days, I feel like a fraud.

November. The month during which many with drive, ambition and more creativity than me jump into National Novel Writing month, aka NaNoWriMo or NaNo for short, while, I as usual, do not. Actually, I gave it some thought this year. I’m an inch into a new project. No—a centimeter. For me, that means thinking time. Do I really have a story? I can see the beginning, perhaps the end, but there’s a whole lot of pondering to be done to flesh out the middle. Without a clear idea, I couldn’t possibly get fifty thousand words written in thirty days. I marvel at those with the focus and planning to do so.

 

And then there’s this. I’m weary. Can I do it again? Can I spend years working on another book that will only remain stored for oblivion on my flash drive?

Confession time. Each November, I feel left behind in the writing world. When I dared myself to try to write a novel seven years ago, I had no idea how hard it would be. Nor did I understand what a struggle it would be to improve oh, just about everything related to my writing while working on my second, third and fourth attempts.

Then there’s the reading. So many talented authors out there. The three novels I’ve read and loved over the last month alone have me wondering if I have it in me to create a story good enough to raise an agent’s eyebrows. 

This month things become grey and drab and my feelings mirror the weather. During November, my most insecure insecurities rise up like leftover Halloween ghosts. I’m getting older. I’m running out of time. What do I leave behind if I never publish a book?

Gloom and doom, baby. I know this is just the pre-winter blues. Nonetheless, I leave Nano to those with stronger hearts.

What's your NaNo experience been like?