My neighbor is moving. The Fam and I live in a duplex, so really we only share a few walls with this one single, chain-smoking, cat-loving woman who's relatively quiet, as are we. Today there's a moving truck in the drive and a million adults and children working like a nest of ants to haul all the belongings of the last seven years into this truck, and let me tell you, it's loud. Through all the clanking and yelling, thumping and banging, there isn't much room for having a quiet day on our side of the unit.
Initially I was doing a lot of eye rolling. This was my writing day and they were altering what I had preplanned for. But then I shifted gears, calmed down, and thought that for her this is a huge day. She's starting over in another state and everything familiar about her routine and day to day life are ending. Of course, there's bound to be a ton of noise. She's branching out and growing like a freshly pruned plant and frankly, I'm surprised there's not more noise in this act of rebirth. Sure, she may not be thinking of it like that as she carried box after box to the truck in ninety degree heat, but I'm certain she's changing in this experience. Hell, she's even literally uprooted all of her plants and bundled them for transplant at her new home.
Then something occurred to me: I've just returned home from a few days with fantastic writer friends and I think the only time we shut up was to sleep. We gabbed and giggled for hours. There was nothing but noise from sun up to sun down, but I promise you, I've grown richer in terms of my experiences and writing because of all that wonderful noise. So while I'm still and always will be a relatively quiet person, I've learned the value now of making some noise and breaking the shells around us that we thought we permanent. You need noise in your life sometimes so you can enjoy the richness and growth of the silence afterward.
On Writing Gods and Summer Vacations
It's June. Kiddo is home for the summer and the Writing Gods seem to have a knack for cramming tight deadlines into the whims, wants, and needs of bored school children with a sudden expansive estate of open, unstructured time. That's right, my "writing" days of free time, alone, by myself, uninterrupted, are gone until the middle of August.
So let's talk about excuses. This is a PERFECT time for me to say, meh, guess I can't write today--gotta watch the child, got to clean the house, got to make babysitting plans for the days I work. All of those sound like the easy way out of writing. They are. These days/weeks/months (summer, for me, other times for you) turn into the best excuses. It just makes sense to "take a break" or "relax a little."
For me, however, the excuses (even mine) are heard for what they are: procrastination with a backstory.
While it seems very convenient to bow down to the Writing Gods' will and just give in, because, hey, the kid's got to eat/play/be taken to gymnastics, this scenario is totally the tunnel painted onto the brick wall. I will slam into that sucker at full speed if I'm not careful and by the time I come to, months will have past and no writing will have been done.
What I have discovered over the years is that the kryptonite of excuses is dedication and a plan. As I mentioned above, I'm working on some tight deadlines right now. If these dates aren't hit, I will crumble. I need to hit my mark each time in order to feel progress within myself. A sense of accomplishment cannot come without measured goals, after all.
What I didn't mention above is that these deadlines which are so tight and foreboding are my own. This is where dedication comes in. Yep, they are MY push on myself to produce X amount of work by Y date. If I miss them, no one but me notices. If I hit them, no one but me notices. The key is that I'm building and nurturing a discipline for myself which is productive. And each time I build up a new discipline, I find it easier to tack a little more on.
Initially (ten/twelve years ago?) my writing discipline was about just shitting or getting off the pot in terms of writing regularly. Then, I started to make it a daily goal. Then, because I had written, I began a routine of regular editing paired with daily writing. All of this is to say that there was, in fact, a summer season during each year of my discipline journey and each year I've grown better able to tackle the excuses and power through the temptation to "just take a break for a little while." I manage my time tighter to offer loads of interaction with kiddo followed by down time where we each do our own thing, mine being writing.
So, as the Writing Gods poke and prod at my deadlines, and glare at my late nights spend hunched over the keyboard, I know that I'm creating something here that I'll be proud of come fall. To me, that is more satisfying than any well said excuse.
So let's talk about excuses. This is a PERFECT time for me to say, meh, guess I can't write today--gotta watch the child, got to clean the house, got to make babysitting plans for the days I work. All of those sound like the easy way out of writing. They are. These days/weeks/months (summer, for me, other times for you) turn into the best excuses. It just makes sense to "take a break" or "relax a little."
For me, however, the excuses (even mine) are heard for what they are: procrastination with a backstory.
While it seems very convenient to bow down to the Writing Gods' will and just give in, because, hey, the kid's got to eat/play/be taken to gymnastics, this scenario is totally the tunnel painted onto the brick wall. I will slam into that sucker at full speed if I'm not careful and by the time I come to, months will have past and no writing will have been done.
What I have discovered over the years is that the kryptonite of excuses is dedication and a plan. As I mentioned above, I'm working on some tight deadlines right now. If these dates aren't hit, I will crumble. I need to hit my mark each time in order to feel progress within myself. A sense of accomplishment cannot come without measured goals, after all.
What I didn't mention above is that these deadlines which are so tight and foreboding are my own. This is where dedication comes in. Yep, they are MY push on myself to produce X amount of work by Y date. If I miss them, no one but me notices. If I hit them, no one but me notices. The key is that I'm building and nurturing a discipline for myself which is productive. And each time I build up a new discipline, I find it easier to tack a little more on.
Initially (ten/twelve years ago?) my writing discipline was about just shitting or getting off the pot in terms of writing regularly. Then, I started to make it a daily goal. Then, because I had written, I began a routine of regular editing paired with daily writing. All of this is to say that there was, in fact, a summer season during each year of my discipline journey and each year I've grown better able to tackle the excuses and power through the temptation to "just take a break for a little while." I manage my time tighter to offer loads of interaction with kiddo followed by down time where we each do our own thing, mine being writing.
So, as the Writing Gods poke and prod at my deadlines, and glare at my late nights spend hunched over the keyboard, I know that I'm creating something here that I'll be proud of come fall. To me, that is more satisfying than any well said excuse.
Complete and Total Distractions
As a writer, my job is to sit still and dump out words onto the page to make a story you can read. My hope is always to give you the best ride I can with great characters and rich development of plot and said characters. This requires many, many, m a n y hours of solitude. As an introvert, I'm not complaining, but it is important to leave home every now and then and see the world around me.
Well, along comes "spring break" for kiddo. Suddenly there's this beautiful child in the house with me and she's not so keen on me sitting in the same chair all day. So, I went outside. We explored the NC Zoo (amazing) and she started taking a gymnastics class that she loves. Yes, I can still do a cartwheel and a round-off, thank you very much.
I also took this time to clean the entire house minimalist style and we donated boxes and boxes of items to our local Goodwill. It also got me thinking that I'd really like to replace our current sofa and loveseat since they don't match and are really old. I mean, one of them is, I swear, thirty years old. I made forts from those cushions when I was a kid. No lie. That means I started to shop online and out and about in town. There's a lot to consider when buying something like this and I'm terribly frugal, so this will not be a quick decision and I expect to shop for months to come.
But what does all of this activity mean? I've not gotten as much writing done as I planned. I aim to pull down 500 words every day no matter if I worked that day at my job or I was off. 1000 words is ideal; 500 is my minimum. It just didn't happen this week. I got totally distracted from my personal goals, and I became disappointed in myself for that.
In life we're often harder on ourselves than anyone else. It just happens. We make choices for one thing knowing full well we're turning our back on the other. However, as much as I dissed on myself for not getting my full writing goals met, I did get time to think, to ponder my characters. I have to say, sometimes that time away from the keyboard, when no words get out, can be some of the most productive story time ever.
So, while I don't have my new couch (yet), and while I still have closets full of things I don't need, and now I'm set to take kiddo to gymnastics class weekly, I did gain a lot in terms of plot which makes me happy. I guess the point is that sometimes our distractions can give us something in return we didn't expect. There's a beauty to losing yourself in another task and then returning to your "regularly scheduled program" renewed.
Well, along comes "spring break" for kiddo. Suddenly there's this beautiful child in the house with me and she's not so keen on me sitting in the same chair all day. So, I went outside. We explored the NC Zoo (amazing) and she started taking a gymnastics class that she loves. Yes, I can still do a cartwheel and a round-off, thank you very much.
I also took this time to clean the entire house minimalist style and we donated boxes and boxes of items to our local Goodwill. It also got me thinking that I'd really like to replace our current sofa and loveseat since they don't match and are really old. I mean, one of them is, I swear, thirty years old. I made forts from those cushions when I was a kid. No lie. That means I started to shop online and out and about in town. There's a lot to consider when buying something like this and I'm terribly frugal, so this will not be a quick decision and I expect to shop for months to come.
But what does all of this activity mean? I've not gotten as much writing done as I planned. I aim to pull down 500 words every day no matter if I worked that day at my job or I was off. 1000 words is ideal; 500 is my minimum. It just didn't happen this week. I got totally distracted from my personal goals, and I became disappointed in myself for that.
In life we're often harder on ourselves than anyone else. It just happens. We make choices for one thing knowing full well we're turning our back on the other. However, as much as I dissed on myself for not getting my full writing goals met, I did get time to think, to ponder my characters. I have to say, sometimes that time away from the keyboard, when no words get out, can be some of the most productive story time ever.
So, while I don't have my new couch (yet), and while I still have closets full of things I don't need, and now I'm set to take kiddo to gymnastics class weekly, I did gain a lot in terms of plot which makes me happy. I guess the point is that sometimes our distractions can give us something in return we didn't expect. There's a beauty to losing yourself in another task and then returning to your "regularly scheduled program" renewed.
Going to make this quick
Hey guys, just checking in for the first time since I've decided NOT to attempt only big, life altering posts anymore. In all honesty, it's rather freeing since I'm not waiting for a spark of insight to happen before I post.
So, what's been happening? Queries are big talk in my world right now. The quest for an agent is one thing, but this is a quest for the "right" agent, so there's a lot more research and thought put into who I send my work to than I originally lied to myself about. That said, I did get a request for a full manuscript that made my day and since I've rewritten my query (for the umpteenth time), I've noticed I get a lot more personal rejections. (If you aren't in the writing world, just know that 'personal' rejections are actually a positive.)
Also, I'm past 20,000 words on Wild Type, and have been doing lots of really interesting research about explorers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of it is just interesting, but some elements have been really useful for me. Also, I've been looking at Lewis & Clark pretty carefully since their journey west is similar in some ways to my main character's journey west. (And I'm reading Manifest Destiny, the comic put out by Image, which makes Lewis and Clark into monster hunters and Sacagawea is pretty well badass. Not research, but fun.) Anyway, Wild Type will be out of first draft stage come the end of June. I'm on track for that.
Lastly, edits of The Unruly are going strong, I'm a week behind my regular schedule, but it's due to some necessary restructuring and I'll recover that ground over the next two weeks and be back on track (my preplanned track) to finishing all edits of that book before the end of the year.
Otherwise, I'm good. Been an Olympic watching addict and reading The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin. I just finished The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan and it was flipping amazing. Sometimes you realize when the bar has been raised and Kiernan certainly did it. It will be a long time before I find a book as good as that again.
Ha, and I said this would be quick. Okay, forget that. I apparently can't make it quick so you'll have to settle for this long "quick" post. Thanks for reading!
So, what's been happening? Queries are big talk in my world right now. The quest for an agent is one thing, but this is a quest for the "right" agent, so there's a lot more research and thought put into who I send my work to than I originally lied to myself about. That said, I did get a request for a full manuscript that made my day and since I've rewritten my query (for the umpteenth time), I've noticed I get a lot more personal rejections. (If you aren't in the writing world, just know that 'personal' rejections are actually a positive.)
Also, I'm past 20,000 words on Wild Type, and have been doing lots of really interesting research about explorers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of it is just interesting, but some elements have been really useful for me. Also, I've been looking at Lewis & Clark pretty carefully since their journey west is similar in some ways to my main character's journey west. (And I'm reading Manifest Destiny, the comic put out by Image, which makes Lewis and Clark into monster hunters and Sacagawea is pretty well badass. Not research, but fun.) Anyway, Wild Type will be out of first draft stage come the end of June. I'm on track for that.
Lastly, edits of The Unruly are going strong, I'm a week behind my regular schedule, but it's due to some necessary restructuring and I'll recover that ground over the next two weeks and be back on track (my preplanned track) to finishing all edits of that book before the end of the year.
Otherwise, I'm good. Been an Olympic watching addict and reading The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin. I just finished The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan and it was flipping amazing. Sometimes you realize when the bar has been raised and Kiernan certainly did it. It will be a long time before I find a book as good as that again.
Ha, and I said this would be quick. Okay, forget that. I apparently can't make it quick so you'll have to settle for this long "quick" post. Thanks for reading!
Sports, and Stuff, and Decisions
I've been thinking a lot about the blog lately. A LOT. Mostly, I've been entertaining the idea of maintaining balance while still managing to keep up with my contact with you. So here are my thoughts, right up front: I'm going to stop waiting for those big moments when I have "something major" to say or address. Too often I'm waiting for something pivotal to happen, so no post happens at all or they end up several weeks apart. Not that suddenly my blog, which I hope people enjoy, will turn to fluff, but that there will be some lighter elements too so it feels less daunting to me to write in it regularly. That's first.
Second, sports, I suppose. Feels like this should be a longer post already because I have a lot to say about sports as a whole but here's the simple meat of what I want to say about that. My firmed-up, writing discipline came from NaNoWriMo. I know how to write, I was taught great things about writing, but NaNo gave me that kick in the ass to sit down and have some damn self-discipline. How that relates to sports is this: When NaNo time comes in November, the NFL is in full swing. I get super excited for football because when I see football, I associate that with whole blocks of writing time I can squeeze in while in front of the TV. That said, the Superbowl just ended football season for me, so now we're on to the Olympics. That's right, if you're a wanna-be writer, don't just sit there and watch the "games," write through them. Squeeze out that writing time. I'm doing it right now to create this post.
Lastly, stuff. My stuff. What's been happening for me since the last post. I've put my query in a contest to get feedback and that's helped tremendously. I've written over 15K words on Wild Type, my current WIP, and I've edited up to chapter six in The Unruly, the sequel to The Flame Wars. Basically, that's it. I have another round of queries going out to agents coming, so that always takes a lot of work to research and prepare and reread and reread and reread again. Otherwise, I keep a steady pace of edits and new writing daily. SELF-discipline is the key there. And self-reliance. Never underestimate the power of "self."
Have thoughts on my thoughts? Share in the comments below.
Second, sports, I suppose. Feels like this should be a longer post already because I have a lot to say about sports as a whole but here's the simple meat of what I want to say about that. My firmed-up, writing discipline came from NaNoWriMo. I know how to write, I was taught great things about writing, but NaNo gave me that kick in the ass to sit down and have some damn self-discipline. How that relates to sports is this: When NaNo time comes in November, the NFL is in full swing. I get super excited for football because when I see football, I associate that with whole blocks of writing time I can squeeze in while in front of the TV. That said, the Superbowl just ended football season for me, so now we're on to the Olympics. That's right, if you're a wanna-be writer, don't just sit there and watch the "games," write through them. Squeeze out that writing time. I'm doing it right now to create this post.
Lastly, stuff. My stuff. What's been happening for me since the last post. I've put my query in a contest to get feedback and that's helped tremendously. I've written over 15K words on Wild Type, my current WIP, and I've edited up to chapter six in The Unruly, the sequel to The Flame Wars. Basically, that's it. I have another round of queries going out to agents coming, so that always takes a lot of work to research and prepare and reread and reread and reread again. Otherwise, I keep a steady pace of edits and new writing daily. SELF-discipline is the key there. And self-reliance. Never underestimate the power of "self."
Have thoughts on my thoughts? Share in the comments below.
Looking Backward, Looking Forward
So We Press On
I think about my characters always. In the shower, in the car, at work (sorry, Terry), and even when I'm playing games with the kiddo. I can't not think about them. This mental work tires me, and yet, I can't have it any other way. If I back off to "get a break" it's as though a jar of marbles just smashed on the floor and I spend the next "writing day" trying to find all the loose pieces to recover ground.
I can't say I have a writing process as much as a writing lifestyle. Finding the magic, losing the magic, refinding the magic. It happens in cycles, but they are familiar cycles. (There is no angelic muse on my shoulder, mind you. Just me.)
And then there are times when I get discouraged.
Times when confidence flutters in the breeze because it's not anchored to anything. Times when I don't feel appreciated, or times when I do but I don't believe what people are telling me. And there are times when, for no good reason, I just don't know that anyone cares about my work--the hours spent writing that they don't see. (That is the biggest issue with the writing profession, I believe.) And times when depression creeps in and all my characters whom I spend every day with go silent.
" . . . "
In those days/weeks, there's this other thing I try to remember. My [good] warlocks' motto is, "We press on." I think that's key in anything you do whether it's writing, art, relationships, horrible-awful-no-good days, parenting, having a career, anything. We must press on. Always. Push yourself to be better than you are today in whatever measure of progress you need. The world will wait for you simply because that's what it was made for--you. Then you go and make it what you need it to be. Press on.
Pippa
(Sometimes I write these short pieces to clear my head, break up--dare I say it--writer's block, or to hang out with a character I can't get a handle on. Not sure what to call them, but here's another one.)
Pippa
When she pulled the magic, it was
like drawing a thread from a spool: slow, steady, friction warming everything.
Pippa gripped the spell’s silver coil and grazed her finger over the surface of
her own power. Technically, the world could
wait for the enchantment. But for how long?
A rustle sounded in a dark corner
of the vacant motel room.
“Quiet, you,” she shouted to the
nothingness behind her. Her hair bobbed in front of her face, red ringlets
corkscrewing into her vision.
She sidestepped to the window and
glanced across the parking lot. Rain tossed itself about in waves, falling into
shallow cigarette-littered puddles like pennies in a fountain. The candlelight
flickered. The storm’s heart wasn’t far off.
The shuffling came again. A deep
whispered voice followed by a hush. “What’s she doing?” it said.
Pippa slid her feet along the
baseboards, marking the parameters of the dark, empty room, feeling for the
creature her eyes couldn’t see. “None of your damn business, that’s what.” Her
fingers went to work, toying with the spell coil again. Once she released the
fibers a sequence of events would begin. Sorcerers should calm. Warlocks still.
Witches would reign supreme.
“Don’t toy with it,” a growl came
from the darkness. “Don’t play with us.”
“Shut up.” Pippa tugged her leather
jacket around her shoulders and zipped it tight. “I’ll do as I desire.” She
inspected the silver shimmer in her palm. The magic called to be used like a
dog holding a leash between his teeth. “It doesn’t control me.”
Grating giggles ripped from the
corner before twisting into a gravely hiss. “Then do it.” Panting followed
rapid footsteps. “Spellcast. Let us out.”
Only because I want to, she
thought. Pippa threw the coil into the air and ran from the abandoned room into
the downpour. She slammed the door behind her and snatched the knob to keep it
closed.
Vibrations shook the entire
structure. Flashes of light exploded outward from inside the tiny room. The
knob heated.
“No,” she screamed. Her skin
pricked with pain as the metal grew orange. “Stay back.”
High laughter stung her ears. A
bang knocked her backward. Her fingers slipped. Nursing her hands, Pippa
watched the knob turn. The door squealed open. They were free.
New Territory and a New Title
And then it occurred to me: I'm in a brand new territory I've never seen before. I've written many books, but never taken one of them this far before. This is the farthest I've ever been from the Shire. (*If you're a geek and got that reference, pat yourself on the back.)
I want to underline for you how great it feels to push yourself. Challenge yourself daily, weekly, monthly, whatever. But do not let your days bleed into one another. Instead, mark each day with an asterisk. Make them noteworthy in your life and for yourself and/or others around you. (Note the "and/or" there. It's okay to pick you as the only one enriched.) That's what I feel like I've been doing by quietly working on this book while the rest of the world slept. I'm proud of each day I put into it.
That said, I've also played around a lot with the title. Burning Spirit always felt like a placeholder for me, so now, the current working title is The Flame Wars. That's how I'll pitch it from now on and if further down the road it needs changed, then I'll change it again. So there you have it.
* The Flame Wars by Margaret Telsch-Williams *
I rather like it. What do you think?
Getting Shit Done
While you've been missing me terribly and suffering through having to read other fantastic things, I've been editing. If writing a novel from beginning to end was a fifty step process, I'd say I'm somewhere near forty-four or forty-five steps in.
Today I'm prepping the novel Burning Spirit to be sent to beta readers. While I'm glad to be nearing the end, I'm terrified of how much these amazing readers may point out my flaws. That's writing in a nutshell, I suppose.
Self doubt + hard work = a better book than when you started.
Take away either of those elements and the story/characters/magic may fall flat. But this isn't a writing blog, you say, so what else has been going on?
We moved! Yep, through all of this novel writing journey, the fam and I picked up and moved across town. We've done a move like this before, but for whatever reason (perhaps because it feels like I lost about 40,000 square feet of space), this move has been a challenge. I don't know where anything goes, and I don't know where anything is. Don't ask me, okay? 'Cause I don't know where it is. I'm just thankful I know where my laptop is and I can find the printer. That's really all a girl needs anyway, right?
Also, I'm still getting the plot and first draft of Burning Spirit's sequel on paper. Everything I've written I cannot wait to share, and then--much like our move--I don't know where anything goes or where it is after that. Don't worry though. About eighty percent of the story is in first draft form, so it's just the last twenty percent that needs to be written and I'm working out the best place to stop and leave off for the third book in this series.
Lastly, when I haven't been pulling my hair out with edits, I started a few boards on Pinterest. There's one for each book, in fact, so check them out and see what interests you over there. Now that's a website I could get addicted to.
There you have it, so I better get back to edits, huh?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)