Finding home, finding love – writing romance, making clothes, growing food, and growing up

Adventures in living an authentic creative life

Tag Archives: procrastinating


by 5 Comments

Help! I write more ABOUT writing than I write!

Logo for 100 k words in 100 days

It’s April 10,  so the results are in for the writing challenge I joined, 100 k in 100 days.

They’re a shocker!

The good news- in 100 days I wrote 198, 183 countable words.

The bad news – my story word count was only 41,837.

The rules were:

What you CAN count towards your 100k

  • Novels
  • Short stories
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Creative non-fiction (i.e. self-help books, humour, histories, biographies etc)
  • Articles
  • Notes for any creative piece you write, or exercises from creative writing courses.
  • Writing related or creative blog posts. But they must be of the creative variety (i.e. writing related or related to some other interest, incl. pets, children, flowers, photography or your life as an ex-pat) and not just what you had for breakfast that morning. Unless you’re Jamie Oliver and what you had for breakfast is very interesting (so recipe blogs are fine to include).

What you CANNOT count towards your 100k

  • Twitter status updates
  • Facebook status updates
  • emails
  • letters to the editor
  • notes to the milkman
  • letters in general
  • memos or reports at work though I will allow contributions to in-house magazines or newsletters.

I stuck carefully to the guidelines, made sure I only counted permitted words. So considering things were insane at the Day Job for the first six weeks, plus I had my mother-in-law ill and was busy there too, the total word count is pretty darned good.

But the worrying thing is the story word count. Less than a quarter of the total. Sure, I was editing a story and needed to write loads of notes for that. Sure, I’m now planning another story and it’s a historical needing loads of research and working out so I have over 40 k of research and planning notes. Sure I set up a new website for a little sideline business (Vegan Water Kefir) and wrote around 10 k there, and in some related articles.

Even taking all that into account,  for every story word I wrote I wrote three or four times as many other words! I’m obviously a lot better at writing about writing than I am at actually writing! That’s scary and makes me wonder if it’s another procrastination method. The answer is a big loud “YES!”

So, I’m doing Camp Nanowrimo now, with a total story word count of 60,000. Guess how many words I have now?

Zero. Zilch. Nought. Nothing. A big steaming pile of non-existence.

Okay, I have 1752 words, if I want to count the false start, which I’m not. I started writing the story on April Fools day, and looks like I was the fool! I had a load of research and absolutely no planning, and ended up the day with a fab start to a completely different story.

Which is a good and useful thing, because I recognised straight away the story I aimed to write had headed in the wrong direction, and I love the other story that emerged. I’ll have fun writing that next month. But it wasn’t hugely helpful for my April target and the story I want at least first drafted before I pitch it to an editor for my target line on May 8! It did tell me I needed to plan. So planning’s what I’ve done for the last week. I still don’t feel “finished”, but I have enough.

Tomorrow, I start writing again. It’s my 10th wedding anniversary, so it feels like a nicely symbolic day to make another new start.

We’re off to Paris (where we spent our honeymoon) for the day. A looooooong day. We leave home at six am and won’t get home until well after midnight. I still have no idea what to wear, and whatever I wear will be wrong anyway, seeing it will be -1 c when we leave home, about 18 c in the afternoon, and -1 again when we come home. Layers, but which ones? And which shoes for all the walking we’ll do?  And which bag to carry around all the discarded layers until I need to put them on again? Decisions!

Anyway, that’s another story.

But surely somewhere in the seven hours travel time, I’ll be able to pull out my PDA and get Kezia and William butting heads and arguing about whether he should allow her to travel to Australia on his ship. I have a lot of catching up to do to get this story finished in time!


by Leave a comment

Resistance- friend or enemy? Or- How not to kick your own butt

Resistance 
Photo by Michael_Swan
 

So I decided not to enter the Romance Fast Track with Tash and Morgan, because the story isn’t quite right. I should feel relieved, the pressures off, but I don’t.

Because I’m just putting more pressure on myself- now I’m telling myself I ought to switch stories and go back to the Medical idea for the Medical Fast Track, and I’m resisting.

My Resistance is taking a sneaky form. I write, but I’m spending a lot more time on what I call parawriting, writing about writing, than I am actually storifying, creating story word count. I love my characters. I love thinking and writing about them and their motivations and their emotions. But when it comes to actually writing the story? My gut clenches, my shoulders tense, I want to throw up. I can’t stay focused.

I used to be better at this than I am now. Of course, when I was at my last job I wasn’t so tired and I had more time. That’s only part of it though. Even at Christmas  when I did the first draft of Morgan and Tash, I was a lot more focused than I am now. It’s definitely fear of rejection. That’s probably the real reason I’m not going for the fast track too, why I’ve procrastinated on this story.

Fear of rejection has me in it’s nasty little clutches and I have Resistance with a capital R. It’s worse now than it was when I was merrily writing and subbing stories all over the place. I knew what I was subbing was crap. I had nothing invested in it, so the R didn’t hurt as much. Now I’m taking my time. I’m going deeper. I’ve learned more craft. Those rejections have a lot more bite now.

So I procrastinate and resist writing, while kidding myself I AM writing because of all the parawriting. I do my morning pages. I blog. I write character notes and do my little charts and all the rest. But I’m not actually doing what it’s all about. Creating Story.

I’m back in Resistance.

Normally, when I get like this, I try to battle it. I read The War of Art. I know what I should do. Treat Resistance like the enemy. Kick butt and take no prisoners. This is War. Except it doesn’t work, or if it does, not for long. That battle is bloody tiring. It just makes me want to give up even more.

Yesterday, I read this post by Cathy Yardley- A steaming pile of should.

Cathy says-

But when I hear someone say “well, I need a drill instructor, because otherwise I’m lazy” all I’m hearing is:

“I don’t like myself, I don’t believe in myself, please beat me until I do it right.”

The other thing with that — it only works as long as you have the energy and resources to devote to the battle.  It’s not a natural system.  So if you need a drill instructor to sit down and write, then as soon as the drill instructor goes away, so does the writing.

And as someone who has had terminally low self-esteem for years, I can vouch:  an internalization of  “you maggot, get out of bed!  Sit down at the computer!  Write, you lazy asshole!” really does nothing for your writing.

Because the writing will never be good enough to satisfy it; the speed will never be fast enough, the productivity will never be sizable enough.  And at some point, you’re going to go from soldier to prisoner — and you’re going to start fantasizing on some level about beating that drill instructor to a bloody stain on the pavement.

What if we didn’t have to be miserable?

What if we loved our talent, and respected it enough to nourish it by taking care of ourselves?

What if we stopped assuming we’re lazy gits and started assuming we’re naturally wonderful people who rock at writing?

What if we figured out what our resistance is trying to protect us from, and then negotiated a compromise that let us move forward without the fear?

That resonated. Because there’s resistance and then there’s Resistance.

One is a useful warning sign that there’s actually something wrong in the story. The Muse is telling the Editor Mind Go Back, You Are Going the Wrong Way, and she goes on strike and refuses to play any more. The answer is to find out what’s erong and change it. Usually for me this is Editor Mind turning the characters into puppets and trying to make them do stuff they don’t want to do.

Then there’s the Resistance that needs to be overcome. It’s overcome far better by working with it to understand what the message is than trying to bully ourselves on and through.The Muse has gone completely on strike because she’s had enough of the Editor Mind bossing her around. Fear of another rejection. Writing something that’s just plain wrong for us, trying to fit a line or write what we think the editors are looking for when our voice isn’t a good fit. Writing characters who don’t interest us or who we don’t  understand.

Or maybe it’s nothing to do with the writing. Maybe you are just plain exhausted and need to give yourself a break. None of us live in a perfect world where there are no financial pressures, and our time is 100% our own. food and housework magically gets sorted without us raising a finger. Spouse, family, friends and anything else never intrude into our magical bubble of peace and serenity.

If your life is like that, lucky you, please share the secret in the comments!

For most of us, it’s not quite like that. I get up at 5.30am. I’m out of the house from 6.30am to 8.30pm at a high-stress job where I’m lucky to get five minutes to eat lunch. I have aging parents and a mother in law all needing support. My husband has multiple chronic health problems and can’t work. I’m tired. I’m a bit depressed. My stomach hurts.

So, I’m not writing as fast as I wish I was.

The last thing I need is to be kicking myself in the arse for not doing more, more, more. It’s time for a moratorium on self-loathing, and on beating myself up.

Trying to use the kick-in-the-butt approach to bust through these sorts of blocks just plain won’t work. It may produce a short burst of activity, then the resistance returns, bigger and badder than ever. Because it has a message and if you aren’t listening, it’s going to starting SHOUTING!

And when we don’t listen for long enough, it isn’t pretty. We get physically sick. Or we get depressed. Or we give up, decide it;s just too hard. Or if we’re very strong willed we force ourselves to keep writing through gritted teeth and we hate it.

Every. Fracking. Word. We. Write.

The answer isn’t to keep plodding on. The answer is to listen. Talk to the Resistance. It thinks it’s job is to keep us safe. It’s trying to protect us from hurt, like the husband  or friend who says “Just stop trying” when we’re upset over another rejection. Maybe we can negotiate. Once we know what the message is that Resistance is trying to give us, we can work with it. Use it as a tool rather than treat it as the enemy.

Maybe we aren’t just lazy slobs who need a drill sergeant to knock us into shape. Okay, maybe now and then that approach is called for. But not all the time. And usually, it we really tune in, we know the difference. And even then, its more likely to be that the Muse is whingey and whiney and wants to play and not work. Bribery might work better than bullying then. “let’s write a thousand words then we can go for a walk/ to the coffee shop/ to the gallery/ for a swim/ take a bubble bath/do some sewing/ go on the internet/have  a nap/go to the book shop/ your muse’s bribe of choice.

Listen to what the Muse wants for this story, what’s right for these particular characters, not what we think the editor is looking for or what’s flavour of the month.

Maybe even instead of forcing ourselves to keep writing we can do something fun, but all the while keeping that question simmering in the back of our minds- “What does this story need? What do these characters need?” And trust that the answer will come, and when it does, the writing will be fun and easy again.

Anything but beating ourselves up once again.

Or maybe we are just lazy slobs who need Bootcamp!

Somehow though, I doubt it. We wouldn’t have tried so hard and worked at it so long if we were.

So, how do you deal with resistance? What works for you?


by 10 Comments

Dealing with fear and unhappiness – being published won’t fix everything

I’m trying to feel my emotions more honestly. Because how the hell can I hope to write emotionally real stories if I’m suppressing my own feelings, too scared of ever letting myself feel anything?

Two big emotional issues have come up this week and I need to deal with them. That’s just as important a part of my preparation for writing full time as studying craft skills and learning how to use Facebook and making sure I write at least a page on the story every day no matter how bad my work day is. Maybe more so.

So- fear and happiness. Too much of one, and not enough of the other. I’m stuck between wanting out of The Day Job, wanting more time to write, and being equally scared of that happening. On the whole, I’ve done a pretty good job of suppressing the fear.

It’s only as I sit here untangling my feelings to write the blog post that I realise just how strong the fear is. I thought it was the unhappiness that was the issue, and I’d been telling myself off for not being happy now, for always looking to the future. But as I’m letting myself feel it, the fear is stronger.

Well, that kinda explains the knot in my stomach and the headaches and the trouble sleeping all week! How thick and blind to my own emotions can I be? 

The Day Job has been particular busy this week. Super-stressful and exhausting. I’m not happy.  So much so that this week, I’ve found myself thinking- “I’m not happy now, but once I quit this job, then I’ll be happy.”

I’ve always seen happiness as something that would happen in the future. When I moved out of my parents’ house. When I had my own home, not a room in the Nurses Home. When I had a different job. When I was married. When I had a baby. Now it’s When I have a story published. When I quit the Day Job. When I can make my living from writing. When I move back to Australia.

Always looking for something outside of me to make me happy. And guess what?

It doesn’t work like that.

There’s such a risk of letting myself be unhappy now because I still have to do the Day Job, to miss out on living in the present because I’m so focused on the future, telling myself THAT’S when I’ll be happy. And when I am published, when I am a full time writer, what then? Will that make me happy forever, or will I just find other things to be unhappy about?

I need to learn habits of happiness now. Happiness can’t be something that’s perpetually postponed to some perfect future.

I read a lot of different blogs yesterday about being happy, chaining from a post on Shannon McKinnon’s fabulous Happy Writer blog - How Can We Be Happily Unpublished.

 Shannon’s post is all about needing to be happy NOW. How so many of us have the illusion we’ll be happy once we’re published. How being published won’t make us happy for long if we don’t build habits of happiness now.

As she says-

The problem is that by thinking we can’t be happy until we get somewhere other than where we are is that we miss all the happiness along the way.

 Her series is worth reading. She gives a whole blog post worth of tips about being happy as an unpublished writer. Deciding it’s more important to be happy than published. Being mindful of the day to day- focusing on the little achievements we make each day, even if all we managed was to show up at the page and write one good sentence. To know we have value and worth as we are. To focus on the things that make us happy as a writer and stop doing the things that don’t. To know that being happy isn’t dependent on externals, it’s a choice we make, every day. All true.

I tell myself that. And then I feel like maybe I should just be happy now. Maybe I can be so happy I don’t need to leave the job. Maybe I can keep trying to balance job and writing and make it work. Because then I don’t have to deal with the fear of quitting, of the insecurity of not having a job and a steady income.

I don’t think that’s Shannon meant! She’s not saying that the recipe for happiness is putting a Band-Aid on our unhappiness and denying it exists. Being happy now is not an excuse for settling for less than we can be, for letting fear stop us following our dreams.  It’s not a fake telling ourselves things are okay, to keep us where we are and stop us striving about more.

It’s being realistic about what that “more” can give us. Being realistic about where we are and what we are achieving right now.

Sometimes, unhappiness is a gift. It’s what drives us through our fears. That doesn’t mean we stay being unhappy. It means we look at what the unhappiness is telling us.

Mine is telling me I need control in my life, but I’m fearful of changing. Fearful of quitting my job, of losing that security. I’m in full fight or flight mode. Part of me wants to leave work sooner, doesn’t see how I’ll get through seven whole months of things being this bad at work, of pushing writing to the periphery. Part of me is terrified. That part is sometimes shrieking and sometimes whimpering that I’ll never get such a good job again.

 It’s true. When I leave this job, I don’t think I will ever have a job that will pay this well again. And it’s unlikely I’ll make this much from writing. Realistically, I think the most I can hope to make from writing is the bare survival minimum.

I tell myself that will be enough. I have a big cushion of savings. I’m not jumping blind hoping there will be a safety net. I’m building the safety net before I jump.

I’m still scared.

I make myself focus on the benefits- that when I quit the Day Job I will be more in control of my life, not my boss and my patients and anyone else who decides to call or email or come into the office wanting something done. The jobs in my life I’ve liked the least, are the ones where I have little control. Where it’s furiously treading water just to stay afloat, dealing with what gets thrown at me from all directions.  The jobs I’ve enjoyed the most were the ones where I got to structure my days and my time use. Maybe someone else set the goals, but it was up to me how I met them. I want that again, except more so.

I want to be able to set my own goals and meet them. My current work situation is so far away from that it’s laughable. I know life doesn’t always feel so under control for published writers. There are deadlines and revisions and proofs that arrive today and need to be sent back tomorrow. Not one of us, even the most Alphaed up billionaire romance hero, lives a life totally under personal control.

I can tell myself all that, focus on the benefits, but the fear’s still there. The fear of crashing and burning. Of trying and failing. Of spending all my money chasing this dream and not being able to achieve other dreams I could have used those savings on. The house in Australia, the garden, the life I imagine I will have there.

Which brings me full circle, back to the things I think will make me happy. The fear and the unhappiness are linked.

I read this article on dealing with fear, and took it a step further. What I need to look at is what the real need is underneath those things I think will make me happy. What the real thing is I’m afraid of losing.

Just like for characters. They have a surface goal- keep the family home safe from the property developer, make their business a success, have a red sports car, whatever. But that’s not enough to write a story from. That’s not really what they want. The inner need, the motivation, is what they really need and fear losing. The heroine wants to save her family home from developers because she needs a sense of home and belonging to give her security, and she’s afraid of losing that. Or she needs her business to be a success because that will show everyone who told her she’d never amount to much as a kid that she can make it- she needs self-worth and acceptance, and fears getting confirmation she is the failure they told her she’d be.

My fear comes from the same place as my unhappiness. The fear is that I’ll never get what I really need to make me happy, and that I’ll lose what happiness I have. 

Quitting up my job will give me a lot. But it also means giving up things I need, on a very deep level. Security. Getting feedback that I am doing well. A sense of self-worth and acceptance. Having a sense of who I am in the world. I know I am good at my job. I don’t know that I am good at writing.

So I latch onto the hope of publication, as so many other unpublished writers do. Publication is a biggie. it symbolises so many things.

The inner meaning many of us hang on publication is acceptance. Acceptance of our writing, and acceptance of us as writers. Finally being told we are good enough. Especially important for those of us who may have been put down for our writing or told we couldn’t write well enough to make a living from it. The word is even there in the language of publishing- our story is “accepted” by an editor. But being unpublished doesn’t necessarily mean we’re less of a writer.

Publication also means being paid for our writing. For me, that is a first step to making my living from writing. The deeper meaning of that is getting that control I want over how I use my time.

I think those are the two main things I’m looking for. The two things I need to be happy. Acceptance, starting with self-acceptance. And a kind of freedom, the freedom that comes from self-control, discipline and setting my own goals. Which loops back around to a sense of achievement when I reach those goals, which also ties in to self-acceptance.

And so acceptance is the biggie for me.

I’ve been paid for writing before. I’ve had two articles published, one when i was sixteen, another when i was thirty eight. I’ve been “accepted”. but they were articles, not stories. The stories are closer to the truth of who I am. The articles were more like essays for school, it was nice getting paid for them but it didn’t mean anything about the truth of me as a writer. They weren’t created from my mind and heart and guts.

That’s where I really want acceptance. And it’s too much to hang on a fragile novella or category romance or single title story.

I need to find that self-acceptance first, or every rejection will feel like a catastrophe. Even a revision letter will feel like a devastating personal criticism. And as for bad reviews- don’t even go there!

Publication won’t fix what I want it to fix.

Only I can fix that. That’s the real truth Shannon is talking about. I need a self-acceptance that’s separate from my writing. And I need to see that writing well or not so well has nothing to do with getting published.

Jennifer Cruisie wrote-

What’s important in our lives… is not our publishing status but our writing, putting the story on the page, breathing life into the characters, making sure what we write is so true that it reaches somebody’s heart. Perfecting our craft and our art should be our first obsession; the publication we sometimes earn when we’ve mastered writing should come second.

 That’s what I want. And now is the time to start, before I lay myself on the line any further. No wonder I’ve been procrastinating on writing, putting off having something completed to submit. When acceptance for publication is our sole criteria for whether we are “good enough”, rejection cuts into the soul, into our very sense of who we are as a person.

Some practical advice on how to deal with that now-

Start with today, not yesterday.
Over the past few years, I have been very hard on myself for taking so long to plunge into my writing and never look back. I decided not that long ago to only focus on the moment at hand, not on what I didn’t do but should have, and not on how long it will take me to get to a comfortable place in my writing career. Focusing on today’s agenda and today’s only will keep your frustration and uncertainty at bay. As you begin making consistent steps forward, your motivation will continually build, and the disappointment you feel will become a thing of the past (and stay there).

If I don’t do this now, just focus on that page of writing I produce today, then no matter what else I do, no matter how many stories I get published, it won’t make me happy. 

And as a bonus, writing this gave me insight into my last rejected story and the fact I hadn’t noticed that the heroine had no GMC!


by 3 Comments

How to keep writing despite those demons

Long time no blog. Long time no write too. Because those doubt demons really have me. No real writing for weeks, or is it months? Apart from a couple of thousand words on a new story that will probably never get finished, nothing since New Voices. Even writing this post is a bit of a cheat as it’s a cross post with the Sassy Sisters blog!

Oh, I have plenty of excuses. I was sick. The Day Job has been even more hellish than usual. I had two weeks holiday and was too busy to write (not to mention,  in a campervan with my oh-so-lovely and oh-so-attention-seeking husband for the whole time!). I have too many ideas and half finished stories and I can’t decide which one to work on now. I woke up this morning to find my brain had been removed and replaced by an alien implant.

Okay, that last one might be a slight exaggeration. But excuses, I haz them.

Problem is, we all have excuses. If excuses were reason not to write, none of us would ever get anything done. So this post Megan Crane (aka Caitlin Crews) put up on Facebook last week especially resonated with me. If you can’t see it because you’re not on Facebook yet, don’t worry, I’m going to summarise!

It would be easy to dismiss what she says with “Yeah, sure, she’s multi-published, she can write full time, it’s easy for her.” But that would be a mistake. She wasn’t always multi-published. At some stage, I’m pretty sure she was where I am right now and maybe where you are too. Written plenty, had some rejections, and just not cracked it yet. Struggling to find time to write with the demands of a full-time job and/or family responsibilities. Battling that horrible, sneaky little voice that whispers ”Why don’t you just give up. You’ll never get published. It would be so much easier to stop wasting your time.”

Somehow, she kept going, kept subbing, told that lying little voice to bugger off because she wasn’t listening.

 I need to do that too! So what can I learn from a fab seemingly natural writer like Megan/ Caitlin that I can use to get going again, get motivated, get the words flowing?

 Here’s her Ten Things I’ve Learned after Writing Ten Harlequin Presents (and Some Other Books Too), and how I can use that.

  1. Category romance novels are very, very hard to write well.  And also fun!  But first: hard.  Too true! Sometimes I do expect it to be easy, or at the every least not quite so hard. I grew up being constantly told something very wrong - that if we’re talented, it comes easy. Therefore, if it doesn’t come easy, we mustn’t be talented, and should stop trying. Crap, of course. But unfortunately kids believe the crap their parents tell them. Now I’m more grown up, I need to start believing otherwise. Like “Yes, it’s hard, but I can learn how to do it.”
  2. You must write the book in order to have written the book. This is the basic truth- just write it. It doesn’t matter if it’s the worst rubbish ever seen, if the characters seem as passionate as last night’s mashed potato, if the dialogue is stilted, and if the Black Moment Big Sekrit Reveal so obvious as five year old could have seen it coming. That’s what self-editing is for, fixing all that dreck. But if it doesn’t get written in the first place, it can’t get edited.
  3. Your process is your process, and beating yourself up because you don’t have Writer X’s process–which, from the outside, looks so reasonable and thoughtful and calm and balanced and  CORRECT–is actually just a form of procrastination. Ooh yes, I’ve done this one. I should just write a first draft and not care how rough it is. No, I should take my time and get each scene right before I move on to the next. I should have it all plotted out before I even start, make sure I know all my turning points and story structure. No, that will kill my creativity, that all comes later in edits. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle for me. A bit of planning. A good idea of what my characters core issues are, what brings then together (aka external conflict) and what keeps them apart (aka internal conflict), before I start writing. To stop and go back if I sense I’m drifting away from the essence of the story and writing stuff that is fun but doesn’t add anything to the story or is irrelevant to the central romance, but not to be so rigidly attached to the plan that I’m not willing to let things so a little off track and see where it takes me. To get things as good as I can at the time, but not insist it all has to be perfect before I can keep writing, even if that means writing myself a note of where things went wrong and picking up again where I want the story to be. Trying too hard to “get it right” definitely stopped my writing dead more than once and led to me giving up completely for over ten years!
  4. Read.  Watch.  Become a story slut. A real biggie I need to make time for. We need other people’s stories. Not to steal their ideas, but to feed our imagination. To get a sense of what a good story is. Or to see what doesn’t do it for me in a story, even if my Mum and my neighbour and my best friend adore it. Books that make me think, how on earth did this get published when I get rejected? Books so beautiful, so emotional, so darned good they make me know why my stories have been rejected and cry because I’ll never, ever, write that well, and yes, I probably never will but hey what does it matter? I’ve noticed since I seriously started writing again, I don’t read nearly as much as I did. I can’t think of the last time I watched a film. We don’t have a television, and I tell myself I’ll watch things online, but I never do. Not good. My brain is full of work stuff and dry financial worries. My imagination is story starved. I forget what shape a story that works really is. Gotta make time for this.
  5. Fill the well. A bit like being a story slut, except without the stories. Feeding our creative self with other things. Walks, galleries, being in nature, cooking a new recipe, finding the perfect fabric for that dress I want to sew, being with people I love, people watching strangers. Anything we do that isn’t directly work or writing related, but that makes us feel good, that feeds our creativity. This is what Julia Cameron calls the Artist Date, making time for us. Play time. With a reason.
  6. Celebrate your accomplishments. We may not have had that Call yet. But we’ve done what a lot of other people dream of doing but never do. We wrote stories. We were brave enough to send them out into the world, enter them into a contest or submit them to an editor. These are achievements worth celebrating. It’s important not to let the rejection or the bad contest score take away from that.
  7. There is no shortage of words. The words are there. The story is there. If  I feel blocked, if I’m waiting for inspiration to hit, I need to just open that story file and write. Write whatever comes. Talk to my characters. If I can’t write the story in pretty scenes like I want to, write what I want to happen in this chapter. If I don’t kbnow that, write what my character wants. Switch it around, write a different scene that may never appear in the book. Write in first person to get right inside the character’ head. Anything that gets me focused on the story. And not ebay, other writers’ blogs, or needing to catch up on the five thousand Tweets I missed since yesterday.
  8. What you experience while writing this book is not what readers will experience when they read it. Those pages that write easy may be hard reading. On the other hand, those pages we torture ourselves over may be the ones the reader races through, because they read so effortlessly. Or the other way around. I need to remember this. Just because it’s hard to write, doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it isn’t good, either.
  9. The solution to most of your writer angst is simple:  Finish the book.  Then write another. This is it. Write. Write. Write some more. It doesn’t have to be perfect yet. It doesn’t have to be better than Nora and JC Rowling combined. It just has to be better than what I wrote last year and the year before that. The more I write, the more I’ll learn, the better I’ll get. It won’t be as good as the story in my head, but it can be good enough.
  10. This is a love story, not a life sentence. Even when the writing isn’t going well, it’s better than the pain of not writing. I love writing. I love creating characters, I love giving them their stories. So I need to do it more. Actually do it, not just think about it, or agonise over which story is “right” for me or what to do next. Just write the story. And give those fricking demons the flick.

Oh, and you know I never need an excuse to post to pic of a yummy man. Especially one with chest hair- I hate waxed chests. There has to be a hero in this one (thanks Maisey!).

And even if none of my rave helps you with your writing at all, at least you get to see a cute guy as reward for reading this far.


by 2 Comments

A cure for premature subbing or a new improved way of procrastinating?

Another cross posting with the group blog- Seven Sassy Sisters.

I’ve decided not to stress about subbing this year, after spending most of September getting anxious that it’s three quarters through the year already and I haven’t actually subbed a single thing yet.

This year I want to make my submissions the best I can before I hit send or put that big airmail envelope in the post. I’m making this my year of learning, instead.

Last year was a rush of crazy, all-over-the-place writing and premature subbing to four different lines, which scored me loads of rejections and a load of potentially interesting half finished stories.

Premature subbing is very like premature ejaculation. Just like PE, it doesn’t leave anyone feeling very satisfied, and there are several possible causes.

 There’s the aspect of performance anxiety, making sure the main event is over before it even begins. Sub first draft and I never have to worry about my very best work being rejected. I know what I subbed wasn’t my best. I can keep on being a coodabeen. I’ll also never need to worry about my writing catching an editor’s eye.

There’s the aspect of being so focused on the end result that the process is rushed through in the race for the finish line. I want to be published, if I don’t sub I can’t be published, therefore lots of quick-fire subs will increase my chances. Uh… no. Not if I’m subbing dreck.

There’s plain old self-doubt, not believing and trusting I can sustain a full story, so I get it over with quickly. Lots of first chapter contest entries mean never having to deal with developing conflict, getting through the saggy middle, going right into the emotional pain of the Black Moment, and crafting a satisfying ending. The pressure is off, straight away. So much easier to keep it quick and superficial, jumping from first chapter to first chapter to first chapter.

So this year, I’m taking it slower. Forgetting the goals. Focusing on learning and on digging deeper into the story. As Anna said in the last post, the learning never stops.

I’ve been doing loads of workshops. Developing one new story and three older stories. Figuring out character arc and what makes for good romantic conflict. Trying to get a grip on story structure.

Of course, carried too far, it can be a fun new improved version of procrastination, with far more glow of moral rightness than playing computer games or ebay shopping in my computer time.

Waiting to start the story until I have the character arc and conflict figured out just right, when I know sometimes that stuff only becomes obvious when the story is underway? Filling out endless forms and charts and graphs about the story, kidding myself I really am writing when the word count stays stationary? Holding off on subbing that partial or that contest story until it’s perfect, absolutely positively as good as I can get it which means doing that additional workshop and that one more pass through and…. never submitting a thing?

Like everything else in life, there’s a balance here. Somewhere between 90 seconds and 90 minutes, somewhere between impulsive premature subbing; and holding back working and reworking a story that never gets subbed at all.

I know I have a load more craft to learn, I know that subbing first draft is NOT the way to do it, but I also need to know when enough is enough. When this story or that chapter are not yet perfect, but as good as I can get them for now and worthy of subbing.

The fine art of knowing when enough is enough. Of trusting that we are enough.

So, how do you know when you have it right, when it’s enough, when the story is “there”? How do you balance the need to learn and the need to do and the need to simply be?

Image from art.co.uk


by Leave a comment

Layering Conflict- When is Enough, Enough

I’m feeling a bit frustrated with my Memorial Day Challenge story and not wanting to write much.

I think if it’s not chosen as one they want to see more of (announced tomorrow afternoon, my time), I might go back to Cady and Lock.

Jack and Kate’s internal conflict feels a bit pathetic. It’s like if someone (maybe his Mom) sat them down and said “Can’t you see he’s crazy about you/ he’s crazy about you?” that would be that for the conflict.

There’s a bit more to it than that, hopefully a lot more to it than that, but that’s the surface layer and it feels weak.

I don’t want to fall in my usual trap of overcomplicating things, but them both feeling rejected because neither of them knew how to handle it when they kissed in their teens so they both played it way too cool is simply not enough to keep two people so right for each other apart!

Next layer- she needs him to keep what is most important in her life, custody of her nephew Mikey. So how does he know she wants him for himself, and it’s not just gratitude.  She knows he promised her brother he’d look after Mikey, so how does she know he really wants her and isn’t just doing the right thing for Mikey and easing his guilt over her brother, and over not being there to help when her sister-in-law was dying.

But there’s more again beneath that- she has so much grief in her recent past, she can’t risk loving anyone else, especially someone set on going back to a war zone. He has this incredible guilt that her brother died and not him. He can’t stay away from his team, because how will he live with himself if more of them die because he’s not there. He has to go back, it’s his whole reason for still being alive.

I guess that should be enough. My old bad habit used to be heaping in more and more external conflict, which just made a huge hot mess of a story. Now I’m aiming to layer deepening internal conflicts. I hope I’m getting it right this time!

I feel better about getting back to the writing now.

And I just realised, what I am really doing is giving into resistance and avoiding the challenge of writing the scene I know will be hard for me, the funny one.  Strange that since I worked out yesterday that’s what I need to do, I’ve found all sorts of reasons not to write! Or not so strange. Understandable really.

I’ve been reading this-The War Of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle this week. Powerful stuff. He issues a full-on head-to-head challenge to writers and anyone working creatively to look at the ways they avoid doing the work.

I guess I better go write that scene.

I also guess I better post date this post so it doesn’t appear until tomorrow, seeing I’ve broken the rules by saying which entry was mine. Can’t wait to find out who wrote the entries I loved most!

I also want to study the Super I read last week after I subbed my entry- Beth Andrews’ A Marine for Christmas. A good read! There are some similarities between her heroine and mine- both in the past have been ditsy and irresponsible, now deciding to take on the big responsibilities fate throws at them.

I really want to look at the story structure, pacing. What happens where, where do the turning points fall in the stories, how does she infuse some humor into what is a pretty terrible situation no matter which way you look at it?

I hope that doesn’t count as Resistance too.

I guess it is, as is writing this post, but it’s far more useful procrastination than looking at things on eBay. At least this little bit or procrastination made me properly articulate my characters’ conflicts. That’s my short synopsis half written then!


by 6 Comments

Proactive heroine needed- oh sh*t!

This isn’t the post I planned to write today. I wanted to write a happy upbeat little post about staying positive and reaching goals and all that lovely sweet fluffy stuff. That post will come, but today isn’t the day!

Because I’m stuck. I’ve hit a wall. I’ve gone from being ahead on my targets to waaaay behind. Underachievment, your name is Autumn.

Started with winning the weekly five page critique on the SuperRomance Authors blog.

Now that should be a good thing, and it is.

I kinda had a feeling I might get my name pulled out of that particular hat soon. It will be brilliant to get some feedback from an author writing for the line I’m targeting. My CPs are great, but none of them are aiming for the same line, and there’s an element of being nice to the class dunce too. The criticism is tempered by ”Poor Autumn, she’s just not getting it but let’s be nice to her so she doesn’t feel bad.” In other words, it’s not criticism. Plus I can be stubborn and pig headed on certain issues, like drastically shortening but still hanging on to the Prologue that all my CPs said to ditch.

Now an anonymous Super author won’t have the same constraints. She’ll tell it like it is. It she thinks what I’ve written is total crap, that I’ve missed the mark by a mile, oh and BTW, get rid of the Prologue, she’ll tell me straight. In a kind, constructive, supportive way, of course. And that’s what I want. Someone who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t feel the need to be  nice to me, telling it how it is.

But oh my, is that scary! Somehow editing and sending off those five pages felt more of a big thing than subbing. I didn’t do any writing for a few days, madly procrastinating so I didn’t have to deal with it. I knew I was avoiding it, and that made it even worse. Self-awareness can be a curse at times!

Eventually on Tuesday I did it. Chopped around the first five pages, like you won’t believe, and emailed it off before I had a chance to think about it too much.

Chapter One looks like a jigsaw puzzle now, with a bit cut out from here and a bit cut out from there. I tried to reduce the infodump, internal monologue, and exposition, but there’s still waaaay too much of it there. And the blessed Prologue stayed too. I’m at the stage now (version 7 of the rewrite of the chapter!) where I have no idea if I’m editing the life out of it or making it stronger.

Anyway, that’s not what I want to write about today. I want to write about what happened next. LOL, no wonder I overwrite in my stories so badly, I do it here too!

What happened next was, with that out the way, I needed to get on with writing Chapter 3. And I do not have an idea what happens in chapter three. It’s a kinda critical chapter. I want to end the partial on a hook, have the editor wanting to read more. It’s also a crucial point in the story structure.

End of chapter 3 is where things change, permanently. The first act is over, the second act begins next. In Save the Cat, it’s Break Into Two. In the Hero’s Journey, it’s Crossing the Threshold. Either way, it’s that no-turning-back point, where a decision on the part of the character propels them forward into a new world. The character’s life will be different, from now on.

Technically, in a longer story like a Super, this would happen in Chapter 4, purely based on word count. But it makes sense to me to get into the core of the story quicker, and use those lovely extra words on exploring the middle more. Also, I kinda feel the editors make a partial 3 chapters for a reason- that’s where they should be seeing things really start to happen.

My problem is, the heroine isn’t the one instigating things any more. She started it, she proactively went out and found the hero and asked for what she needed from him. But now he’s come back with an ultimatum of his own, and is about to deliver an even bigger one. She feels weak, like she’s been pushed around and lost control (something that’s very important to her). It’s an uncomfortable place for her to be, and it’s uncomfortable for me to write. So I’ve stalled, wondering if this is how it should be, if I’m on the right track.

I hadn’t fully realised this till this morning when I read a post (very late!) on our group blog Seven Sassy Sisters, by the fabulous Maisey.

Maisey says-

There was a day when the doormat heroine was the norm. Not just in romance, but in a lot of different mediums. Women who simply reacted to the situations they were in. (sometimes by screaming…or breaking their ankles while running…or both)
But that day is not today. Those aren’t the women we want to read about. We don’t want to see a woman who just lets everyone in her life take advantage of her. We don’t want a heroine who doesn’t seem to have existed until the hero walks into her life. A woman with goals, ambition, drive, talents, something! We want a proactive heroine, not one that’s simply reacting.
You need a heroine who can stand on her own two feet and give as good as she gets. Of course, she still has to have softness and she has to be relatable, flawed but likable. Easy, right? Ha.
But it is possible!

So, with that summary…The Proactive Heroine: (note, it doesn’t mean she does these things all the time, but these are signs you might have a proactive heroine!)
1. Makes decisions, doesn’t just get dragged along for the ride (even if she does end up in a situation she’s not entirely happy with!)
2. Initiates. Conversation, sex, a marriage of convenience…she’s not afraid to get what she wants.
3. Speaks her mind/doesn’t take no crap. (In a recent MS the hero asks my heroine how many men she’s slept with, to which she responded: how many women have YOU slept with?)
4. She can still be vulnerable. Strength doesn’t mean being unemotional at all times, it’s at her core. It doesn’t mean she can’t cry, or feel lost, or like she’s done the wrong thing. It doesn’t mean she can’t be unsure and insecure when in a situation that she isn’t accustomed to. Just like a real live woman!

Now go forth, and write some awesome heroines!

Now, that got me thinking. I hate those old films where the monster or the bad guys are after the hero and heroine and of course she sprains her ankle so he has to carry her and it’s just, oh purleese, give us something original! How about a heroine who can solve her own problems, thank you very much.

I realised what was stopping me writing was feeling I was doing much the same to my heroine. Because she’s going through the motions and smiling and not giving us any hint how much she hates this. How out of control she feels the situation is spiralling. How this is so not how she wanted it to be. How to get her original goal, she’s going to have to give up a lot of other stuff that’s important to her.

Maybe that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

She has to do what she doesn’t want to do, give over some control to the hero, but that doesn’t make her a wimp. That makes her a woman who’s making personal sacrifices in pursuit of her high stakes goal. 

What’s wrong with my chapter isn’t that she’s doing that, it’s that she’s not fighting it! That’s why she feels like a wimp. She’s given in too easy. And I just realised- I missed a stage in the Save the Cat beatsheet- Debate. That’s what chapter 3 is all about.

I defined it as -

The hero or heroine must decide what to do. This tells the reader a lot about them and what’s important to them, and their decision making process shows their beliefs. By here, all the key characters should be introduced, and the reader should have been shown six things about the hero, heroine, and their worlds that need to be changed.

The key word there of course, is “shown”. Not “told”.

So by the end of chapter 3, Cady has made her decision. She’s not happy with it, but she’s not fighting it any more either. It’s not what she wants, but she’s going to live with her decision and make the best of it. I skipped that whole section. I thought as I started chapter 3 with her doing what Lock asked, the decision was made. Wrong!

I was worried showing that would slow the story down even more, that things wouldn’t really start happening until too much of the word count was gone. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Things can be happening, but she’s still emotionally resisting, fighting, going along with things on the surface but beneath that she’s conflicted, she hasn’t at all committed to this course of action yet.

Sheesh, I have no idea how to write that, but at least I have some sense of direction, better than stumbling around in the dark!

I love this quote from author Robyn Carr, taken from her Harlequin bio-

I’m naturally drawn to strong, capable female characters, and when I begin a story I ask myself, ‘What is she up against?’ I try to write about issues that every woman faces at some point in her life, without ever losing sight of the basic sense of humor that helps us all through hard times.

Thinking about this, about who my heroine is, I’m also starting to feel I simplified the story too much. I took out a big part of Cady’s emotional issues, to see if the story still stood without it, and I think I went too far. I took out a key issue she’s faced bravely for years. She’s tough, a survivor, an odd mix of rebel and conformist. But without that past history, she’s a rebel without a cause.

And I’m a writer without a clue!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 529 other followers