'Fessing Up

I have been debating about this, and can argue both "fer it" and "agin it", but I've decided to do it anyway.

Those of you who follow this blog (and I hate to admit how few of you there are) know that I've referred to it, but I've generally kept my fiction writing out of my blog. Lately my fiction writing has taken off (which is one reason I've been ignoring this blog: there are only so many hours in the day even for someone who sleeps as little as I do).

Recently I created a pseudonym under which I plan to publish my stories. I did that partly because my real name doesn't have much of a ring to it, and because I want to reserve it for use in my day job. [My boss has no use for blogging, bloggers, or people who waste time on the Internet. Taking a lesson from Dooce, here.] After creating my alter ego Writer Identity, I set up a blog for my fiction writing, and even self-published my first novel. There are eight more in the pipeline!

I'm coming clean with this here and now, mainly because I'm trying to steer as much traffic to my fiction site as I possibly can, and to let anyone who might care know why I've gone "silent" around here. This blog will remain active for my personal ranting, raving and commenting. I'm going to use my other blog for writing on writing.

Here are the Links:

Fictional Life - Writing samples and writing on the subject of writing (plus a whole lot of bitching and moaning about the process of trying to get published).

Always Faithful - A love story, on several levels.

Caught in a Vortex

Lately I have been caught up in a whirlwind of demands from many sources. I am unbelievably busy at work. The issues with my mother have been temporarily eased a bit, but they have not gone away. Other family issues continue to grow, and there is no reason to expect they will get anything but worse at least for the next year or two. After that, they will change, but not necessarily for the better.

Faced with so many demands on my soul and psyche, I feel as though I have only a few options. I could give myself over to depression and panic, which would only make matters worse on all fronts. I could run away, which -- tempting though it might be -- is not really an option. Or, I could find a way to cope. My way of coping has a lot in common with running away, with a twist.

My way of coping is to stay where I am and to do what I have to do to respond to the demands, but in every spare moment (and some I probably shouldn't spare) to throw myself into writing fiction in order to "process" the issues I'm facing. That has worked for me in the past. I need it to work for me now!

Until recently, I have not shared my fiction online because I was hoping to be able to publish my stories in the traditional manner. Lately, I have become increasingly unwilling to play that game. I know my stories are more entertaining than some I've read, but I can't get anyone to read them. I have only a limited amount of time to write (and that time is even more compressed than usual). I can't afford to spend time querying agents who send rejections via auto-responders.

I've been thinking a lot about it, and I've decided to self-publish. I haven't totally decided what form that will take. I'm researching my options.

When I am in crisis mode, I need to create. I'm in full crisis mode now, so I plan to get very creative, in some form or another

On Why I Really Need a Literary Agent

Rita Arens has been blogging about getting rejected by literary agents. I can totally relate.

I still operate on the antiquated notion that the only "legitimate" way to publish a book is through traditional publishing houses. Apparently the only way to publish fiction is to first find a literary agent to pitch the manuscript to publishers. Publishers evidently no longer accept queries from unpublished authors. NOBODY accepts unsolicited manuscripts, even electronic versions which could be quickly browsed and deleted if they don't suit the agent.

"Hiring" an agent is a total misnomer. What it actually amounts to is pleading with agents to consider permitting the writer to send him/her a writing sample. This is done by means of a query letter. A query is supposed to be only a few paragraphs that summarize the story, ascribe it to a given genre and tell about the author's qualifications in a way that might capture the attention of a busy person who's seen it all before. The skills required to write such a potent marketing blurb strike me as almost exactly the opposite of the skill set required to weave a complex story of up to 100,000 words.

In the past several years I have queried dozens of agents, pitching several different stories. Some of them do not respond at all. Some send automatic email responses, mostly stating they are inundated with queries at the moment and suggesting authors try back at a later date. Occasionally an agent will take the time to say something useful. Several have commented that I have a strong writer's voice. I take that as a good thing, especially since I've actively tried to develop my voice.  

Several have commented that the premise for my story is interesting or creative, although, it is never what they are looking for, of course. Nevertheless, I put those comments in the column of "positive feedback", and cherish them because it constitutes at least some encouragement. That has kept me from giving up.

Several things seem glaringly obvious about this process, besides the fact that it is indescribably time consuming and demoralizing for the writer (who has a job and prefers to spend every spare moment actually writing stories as opposed to querying agents). Quite simply, the current system is not working. Now that nearly everybody has access to a computer and I believe everybody has a story to tell, more people than ever are actually writing down the novels they have in their heads. It is probably true that agents and publishers are deluged with more stories than they could read in a lifetime. It seems to me some kind of winnowing process is necessary.  The querying process is not it.

For one thing, the current process does not necessarily weed out bad writing or reward good writing. There are a lot of terrible books on the shelves of bookstores. Plenty of them are published by the standard houses. I'm guessing there are a lot of really great stories that are not getting through the process. I'd like to think that one or two of mine are among them.

From reading articles on how to get published, I have learned that in addition to being a writer, any would-be-published author has to also be a marketing maven as well. There are some people who are comfortable in both of those roles. I will go out on a limb, however, and say that I think probably most novelists are by temperament not likely to be good marketers. The very part of us that makes us willing (and even eager) to sit alone for hours upon hours and weave stories out of the air is unlikely to make us want to go out and market our work, especially not in person ... to strangers. (Yikes!!) Nevertheless, that seems to be what is expected: recently I seem to encounter two articles on marketing for every one article on how to write well. That's depressing. I want to be a writer not a sales person!

The newest thing in literary marketing appears to be evaluating the author's "platform" for marketing purposes. To me that seems as though it could be important for certain non-fiction writers. For a non-fiction book about cancer research, the fact that the author is a prize-winning biologist with a degree from MIT might be pertinent information. That kind of thing doesn't seem nearly as important in the world of fiction. Fiction writers, by definition, use their imagination and build worlds out of thin air. Unless one is writing some kind of special "niche" story (i.e. John Grisham writing about lawyers or a Andrew Greeley writing about the Church, etc.), it seems to me that the "platform" of a general fiction writer is just not very relevant to the merit of the work. What is more, I mortally hate fiction that preaches at me, so, for me, a fiction author with too strong a "platform" might actually be a turn off. But that could just be me.

I used to think that people who self publish were bad writers who couldn't get published any other way. I'm beginning to rethink that prejudice. Perhaps some people who self publish are actually good writers who can't break through the barriers and/or who are unwilling to spend valuable time querying agents when they could be using their time writing stories.

The issue of time is important. Most unpublished authors have jobs and/or families and/or some semblance of a "life". We can steal only so many hours a week for writing. It could be just my own twisted priorities, but I'd rather spend those stolen hours working on my stories instead of trolling the internet looking for literary agents who might be interested in the genre I'm working in and then spending more hours (upon hours, upon hours) trying to craft zippy queries to try to get their attention.

Perhaps the new world of publishing could combine self-publishing with standard houses. Authors could write their stories, and self publish them. Agents and/or publishers could troll CreateSpace or the other self-publishers for likely looking prospects in the same way real people browse for books: by paging through the text and reading parts of the actual manuscript. Stories with literary merit could be selected for editing and print publication.

Sigh.

All that said, I'm still not quite willing to let go of the dream of having one of my stories published in the regular way by a standard publishing house.

But I'm getting close.

On Disappointment

I have never taken rejection well.  As a matter of fact, I have avoided the occasion for rejection. I think that is perhaps the primary reason I avoided writing seriously.  Other than perhaps the performing arts, I can't think of anything one can do that is more demoralizing than spending months or years of your life pouring yourself into creating a story and then having nobody want to read it. [Maybe having people read it and hate it would be worse, but I haven't got that far.] 

This year I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.  I thought I had a good strong contender, but I didn't make the quarterfinals.  I thought I would be very disappointed.  I took it better than I expected.  

So, now, I'm  back to square one.  Starting over.  Maybe the next time will be the lucky one. Maybe not.  Every time is one closer to "The One."

On the Writing Life

The first time I wrote a fictional paragraph, I was in the fourth grade. Mrs. P____ was my English teacher. The first or second week of school, she gave us a standing assignment that involved writing a story (fact or fiction) using our spelling words for that week. 

The first week I was required to do that assignment, I completely froze. I had no idea how to go about it it. My dad actually wrote the story for me, and he explained how he did it as he went along. That was the one and only time he ever actually helped me do my homework. For every other homework assignment I ever had, he waited until I had struggled through it, and then he reviewed it and make me correct the errors he found. That one and only time, he actually did the assignment for me because was so freaked out by the fact that I had no idea how to go about doing it myself.

The next week, I asked for help again and he turned me down. He said he'd shown me the process. It was up to me to do my own homework. I wrote the story. He ripped it apart and corrected all my mistakes. I don't remember if it was that week or some week shortly thereafter when Mrs. P______ wrote on my assignment the encouraging words that she thought I had a flair for writing. She suggested I might consider becoming a writer.

That comment, in red pencil, written with her totally perfect school-teacher handwriting, has lived in my soul ever since. I can't say for sure if it inspires me or taunts me. I guess that depends on whether I am writing regularly or not.

I'd love to say it caused me to embark on a career as a serious writer. As a matter of fact, it had almost the opposite effect. While I dabbled in "scribbling" and talked a good game about wanting to be a writer "someday", I never made any effort to develop my writing skills nor did I try to develop the discipline required of a writer. I spent several decades avoiding serious writing opportunities at all costs. Why? Because I was afraid. Writing is very demanding: it demands time, honesty and (sometimes) courage to look into places we would rather not see. I didn't think I had it in me.

There were a few periods, however, when the creative urge was so strong, I was compelled to respond to it. Before I turned fifty, I had penned (literally with a pen!) four novels. I haven't looked at them in ages. I honestly don't know where they are or if I even still have them. I doubt they would be redeemable if I could unearth them. Doesn't matter. I cherish the joy I felt writing them. 

I wrote most of the first one during my lunch hours at work. I worked for a law firm in a building that had a huge cafeteria in the basement. I went to the cafeteria every day at lunch and write furiously for fifty minutes. The manuscript that resulted was written on note pads, notebooks, loose leaf paper, and a variety of other whatever-I-could-grab-to-write-on material, including a few napkins, probably. I've never even tried to type it up because I would not know where to look for the beginning. Writing that story took months, but I loved every minute of the process, even if the ultimate result was an unholy mess.

I wrote the other stories when my daughter was very small. I wrote one when my daughter was a baby and I was not working. The others I wrote after I went back to work part time. The only time I ever called in sick when I wasn't actually ill was the day I finished the first draft of my fourth novel. I had so many ideas bubbling up and I was so excited about the ending I had envisioned, I called in sick, took my daughter to day care, and spent the entire day furiously writing and sobbing joyfully (because the story had an absolutely marvelous ending).

After that, I quit writing fiction for years. It was too intense, too demanding, too scary. Instead, I kept a journal. I wrote all kinds of first person essays that I kept in folder on my computer (I was blogging before there was such a thing). I carefully steered clear of fiction because I was not willing to surrender to the process of writing to the degree fiction demands. I even stopped reading fiction for the most part, focusing almost exclusively on reading  theology for years. 

During that period, we moved from Ohio to Florida. The emotional aftermath of that took years to process. Shortly thereafter, my father died. I wrote furiously in my Journal. Fiction writing was totally out of the question at that point in my life. I wasn't strong enough to risk it.

In 2006, I discovered blogging. I wrote two different blogs, one that involved serious reflections and the other my lame attempts at writing humorous observation. I'm very proud of some of the stuff I wrote during that period. In early 2008, I switched identities and combined all my writing on one blog.  This blog is kind of all over the place, and it probably violates all the "rules" for what a good blog might be, but I like some of the stuff I have written here.  The crap in between the gems is merely there as a testament to my commitment to write regularly. When I'm not blogging, I'm writing fiction. When I hit a dry spell writing fiction, I blog. Either way, I'm writing nearly every single day.

In September 2005, Always Faithful was born. I was lying in the pool, half asleep and feeling really awful about our country, what with the wars, Hurricane Katrina, George Bush, etc.  I started contemplating what was good and decent about America.  I started thinking about growing up in the midwest, with people who believed in the real American values and were living the American Dream.  Two characters suddenly appeared to me. They insisted I get out of the pool, go inside and write down their story. 

I finished the first draft in something like six weeks. Since then, I have written nine complete novel manuscripts. [I type a lot faster than I could write longhand, and I can type for hours without getting writers cramp!] I have two more in progress right now. I wrote all that in about three and a half years, while blogging quite a lot and working full time at a job that involves a LOT of writing. Holy cow! I must be nuts, or I had stored up a lot of stuff over the years. 

The key that opened the flood-gates was making the commitment to write something every day. Sometime in early 2005 I ran across the quote that said: "Would-be writers write when they are inspired. Real writers write every day." I made the commitment to write every day. Immediately, the quality of my writing began to improve. I found stories popping up from everywhere, demanding to be written.

I obeyed my characters' bidding to write their story, and I've written a bunch of other stories as well. I have barely taken a break. Lately it has started feeling a bit more like a chore than my greatest passion. I am committed to taking a break from fiction for a few weeks in the belief that it will allow me to fall in love with it again, and (maybe) allow some new ideas for future projects to bubble to the surface.

On the Sacredness of Story

I believe in the power and magic of Story.

Story has the power to heal, to redeem, to entertain, to educate, to inspire -- and a whole lot of other things, but that is enough of a list for starters. There are millions of individual stories, in endless variations, on archetypal themes. Most of them are fundamentally sacred stories because they reveal certain truths about Life, and orient the hearer/reader toward The Holy.

Storytellers are shamans, clowns, teachers and preachers, to mention just a few of their roles. In their shamanic role, Storytellers make the myths that become gods (for good and for ill). They tell Stories that offer potential explanations for Mystery, quell fears and give hope. As clowns/jesters they entertain us, making us laugh when we are sad, and reminding us that we are not alone when we feel lost and afraid. Storytellers are humanity's guardians, guides and companions. They are mouthpieces of the gods. Occasionally, Storytellers become creators of gods, when they spin webs of sacred myth that resonate with certain human groups over long periods of time, ultimately becoming what we know as religions.

Story-making is an act of Creation ex nihilo, like what happens in the first Chapter of Genesis: God said the words, and Creation happened. Even more on point, in John 1, the Messiah of God is the Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In my experience, we don't actually "create" Story. Story emerges from the mists of our subconscious, like the dry land of Genesis emerges from the waters of chaos.  Stories, like Creation, exist as potential in the heart of their creators.  They emerge when the creator loves them enough to let them go and take on a life of their own.  How many Stories are locked forever in the souls of people who don't know they are there or who know the Stories are there but fear to let them go?

For those of us who are blessed/cursed to have been called to be Storytellers, sharing Story is as natural and as vital as breathing. For nearly everyone else, whether they are aware of it or not, receiving Story is also a Life-enhancing, and, therefore, sacred act.

I no longer know if I believe in a personal God of the kind revealed in the Bible. Sometimes I do. Most of the times I don't, but wish I did. Increasingly, I have a much different sense of the Holiness that people call God. It is not a personal being. It is a Power. Most of the time I call it "The Holy". Sometimes I refer to it as "Life". I don't know (and can't know) its true nature, but I believe that whatever it is that people generally refer to as "God" expresses itself to humans in Story, whether we call it myth, scripture, or simply tales. The Holy is made manifest in Story. 

Storytellers bring that Divine Story to humans and, in so doing, orient us toward The Holy, which appears to me to be both our source and our ultimate destination.  (ooooooo, a bit of Teilhard de Chardin dredged up from some long-ago catechism class!?) 

I wouldn't want to push that metaphor too far, but there are sparkling little flecks of truth glittering out from all that tortured language, whispering to me that I'm not wasting my time when I spend so many hours of every day struggling to find the right words to tell the Stories that have been given to me, even the ones that are not overtly about spiritual themes.

Novel Update - 3

Naturally, I couldn't resist working on the book some more, filling in some detail, but now I am finished! Well, sort of. At least the first draft is done. I'm going to put it away for a while and let it rest. Then I'll take it out again and work it over some more before deciding whether or not to submit it to any prospective literary agents. What a dreadful ending to the magnificent process of writing!

I stuck to my outline and discovered that writing to a plot was a lot easier than just letting the story meander along at the characters' whims. That did not mean the characters didn't throw me curves. The ending turned out to be very different from what I originally expected. I started out with three possible endings. Naturally, the actual ending was none of those, and it all happened because I could not convince the male protagonist to put down the phone!

Anyway, it was a totally fun way to spend a couple of weeks, and I think I really did learn some valuable lessons about "loosening up" a bit.

Novel Update - 2

I have written over 60,000 words and already have a more-or-less complete first draft. And it's only half-way through the month! I guess I accomplished the goal of writing a complete novel of 50,000 words in a month. It is time to put it away for a while, let it settle down and then start the editing process after a few weeks.

Frankly, I knew I wouldn't have any trouble getting to 50,000 words in a month. I wrote more than 20,000 words the first weekend. I probably crank out up to 50,000 words-a-month on various projects on a fairly regular basis.

In this exercise, I focused on letting my imagination go nuts and not worrying about sticking with only "what I know" -- as in what I have more or less experienced first hand or can at least extrapolate from first hand-experience. That is very limiting and keeps the stories small and, perhaps, very narrow in their appeal.

For the purposes of this story, I concentrated instead on "what I can imagine." That was a huge breakthrough for me. I have a wild imagination that can spin off all kinds of wild tales. I've never really let it loose in a novel before, preferring simple stories about "real" people. Wildish characters are a lot more fun to read about. It turns out they are also a lot more fun to write about.

The other "breakthrough" was that this was the first time I have started out with a plot. Usually I start with characters and let the plot come out of their interaction. This time I started with the idea for a plot and let the characters emerge to fill the roles necessary to further the plot. It was totally amazing how easy the story was to write. Quite honestly, it wrote itself. All I had to do was to transcribe it. Some days the characters raced ahead in their adventures so fast, it was all I could do to keep up.

I can't wait to try using that technique for my next story, just to see if I can do it again.

Novel Update

After a marathon writing session beginning last night, I hit 50,000 words (50,146 to be exact) in one week!!!

And that includes working a full 50-hour work week at my day job as well as sort of, attending to my family.

I am not finished with my story, but I'm coming down the home stretch on the first draft. I have to say this blitzkrieg writing stuff is loads of fun.

Novel Update

SP asked for an update on the novel. I'm about 2/3 to the 50,000 word mark and the story has taken on a life of its own. The event that I thought was the ending turned out to be the final scene of the first half. An entire second story emerged that wasn't part of the original outline.

Too much commotion chez nous tonight for me to write more than a couple of hundred words, partly because I wanted to debrief the election a bit.

I have planned a big weekend writing blitz.

I'll make an effort to check in with updates periodically.

Thanks for asking!

Little bit of Schizo

Early this afternoon, DH and I drove over to the Speedway to have lunch and wander around the pedestrian zone outside the venue. When we go to the races we always schedule our time to arrive at the last possible second after the traffic has subsided and before the race starts (sometimes we walk a long way and hear the race start from down the road). He was going to the race tonight, but I do not care to attend the really "big" races due to my anxiety in crowds. We have never taken the time to wander around the grounds. I thought it would be fun to walk around, drink a beer and maybe eat some redneck food (i.e. barbecue or hamburgers).

Anyway, we had lunch at a restaurant near the speedway (neither barbecue nor burgers, but I didn't have to cook it and it wasn't Hooters so I'm not complaining), and then we wandered around the grounds.

My DH is a Kyle Busch fan (one of maybe two or three, counting Kyle's mother, I think). I wanted to buy him a #18 tee-shirt or hat, but he said he would be afraid that would get him killed in Daytona Beach. Good point, given the overwhelming Earnhart-mania that seems to infect Daytona during a race event.

It was interesting to see all the souvenir booths and read the clever tee-shirts. As a passionate people-watcher, I loved just walking around taking in all the bizarre-ness. We arrived around 1:30 p.m. and the race didn't start until 8:00 p.m. There were thousands of fans already at the Speedway when we arrived, and they were positively streaming in when we left about 2:30. What in the world were those people going to do out in the hot sun all afternoon? And how drunk would they be by the time the race started?

I almost asked if I could go to the race because I had such a good time last night and DD gave us two tickets. DH has a friend who is a true fan and would enjoy the ticket more than I would have. I probably would have freaked when the place really started filling up, and made my evening and DH's miserable. It was just as well I didn't attempt it, I know. Still, there's nothing quite like a race at Daytona!

So, while DH and DD are off at the race with their respective friends, I spent the afternoon at home with the pooches, revising my query letters to pitch my growing pile of novels. I found an outline for query letters which is different from the one I have used in the past and even my pea brain understands that it's much better, albeit, infinitely harder to write. I have spend the better part of the last five hours revising three letters of three paragraphs each.

I'm drained and exhausted and sweating harder than the folks at the Speedway.

Time to call it a day!

Out of season, but oh so timely!

Gordon Atkinson aka Real Live Preacher blows me away on a regular basis. He makes me laugh. He makes me cry. He makes me think. He makes me wish I lived a whole lot closer to San Antonio. He makes me know that if I did live closer to San Antonio, I'd become a Baptist (which is so damned funny I giggle out loud at the very thought).

Anyway, RLP is running a bit behind these days, I guess. Today he posted this item having to do with sacred abbreviations for Holy Names. Boy, did it hit a hot button for me. I grew up in a RC congregation where IHS was emblazoned upon the front of the priest's vestments. I knew what the Chi-Ro meant before I could read. In my word processor's Auto Correct dictionary, Xn=Christian; Xy=Christianity, Xmas =Christmas. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Not very many years ago I noticed for the first time people complaining at Christmas-time about the use of "X" in the word Xmas. It was allegedly "disrespectful". The first time I read a statement to that effect, I truly thought I was reading satire, until I realized the person was serious. I still can't believe it, but know it to be true.

To my mind one of the most amazing things about the Bible is that we have any copies of it at all. For that we can only thank the holy men who crouched over their vellum in monasteries all over Europe and the Near East for hundreds of years, copying and preserving the Holy Words. Like Gordon, whenever I use the Chi, I do it for the same reason the scribes did, to save space and effort. In so doing, I intentionally pay homage the thousands of nameless holy men who cherished, saved, copied and handed on to us the Scripture we know today.

Since I believe that writing is a sacred act almost regardless of the subject matter, and since I spend many, many hours a week crouching over my laptop struggling to put down words that I am inspired to write, honoring Scribes is especially significant to me.

However, in the interest of fairness and balance, I feel the need to give equal time to Jesus, and to recall that the description of the scribal profession attributed to Him includes the word "Vipers". ['Course I like to think Jesus was referring more to the Pharisees when he used that world, but that could just be me.]

Regardless, I'm guessing it would probably be best not to get too terribly cockey about the "Sacred Scribe" business..... The important thing is to do the work the Lord has set for us to do. Abbreviations and all!

Splat!

Until yesterday I was making great progress on my new story. It was cranking along great. I had written just under 45,000 words in a little over a month. That's fast progress even by my usual breakneck pace. Unfortunately, I must have been watching too much of the qualifying at Indianapolis this week: I hit the wall last night. Today I'm suffering from emotional whiplash ...

What happened?

Where do I start?!

While I still like the overall story idea (it's about lies and deception among friends -- you can do a lot with that!) and I like the cast of characters, just about everything else has gone bad. For one thing, I got to the end too quickly. There is not enough narrative. My original idea was to sketch the characters in very broad strokes and to focus on the sequence of events that ultimately destroy the various relationships. That was a bad idea. I ended up with an unadorned story that starts in the middle, goes like a bat out of hell to the end and then is simply over. There is not enough narrative, not enough romancing of the characters, not enough meandering about at the beginning so the reader can get to know and care about the people. As interesting as the events are, if the reader doesn't know and care about the characters, what difference will it make when their worlds fall apart? Answer: so little that even I didn't care very much.

I typically write like Kathleen Turner's character in the movie "Romancing the Stone." I laugh and cry and live the story with the characters. If the tragedy at the end didn't make me cry -- and I have been living with these characters for a month -- then nobody else would possibly care.

Now the question is: how do I fix it? I don't want to just "fill in" back story. I'm afraid that will read like "padding". The details have to be necessary and they have to support and to move the story forward. How can I do that?

As a preliminary matter I decided to try moving the original end to the beginning. That, of course, means that I need to figure out if the original beginning can be salvaged and put someplace else. At this point, it's looking a whole lot like I may scrap the entire thing and start completely over. Same characters. Same overall plot. Start over with the writing-it-down part.

[Aside: I love writing on the computer (due in part to atrocious handwriting and arthritic fingers that cramp when holding a pen), but I discovered something today that is not as much fun about writing on a computer as on paper. I don't have the cathartic pleasure of wadding up the paper and throwing it in the trash!]

Sour Grapes

DH and I went thrift store shopping today for the first time in several weeks. I picked up a bag of paperbacks for a quarter a piece. Typically I read books from the library, but I like to have a reserve supply of paperbacks on hand for reading in the pool and traveling. If I only spend a quarter on the book, I won't mind terribly if I drop it in the pool or leave it on a plane.

Because I was in a hurry to get to the beach, I sort of randomly picked out a handfull of books. This afternoon, I sat down to read one of them. I should have known better than to buy any novel labeled as a "Romance." I bought it because I always did like to read trashy stuff at the beach. I thought romance novels were the sort of raunchy stuff I have always referred to as "beach reading," such as novels by Erick Von Lustbader and the like. (Is that not the very best nom de plume ever??) Anyway, I used to read Victoria Holt and Mary Stewart books. I rather liked Gothic romance. "Bodice rippers" I think they call them. I always thought of them as Romance novels.

So, today when I picked up a novel classed as a "Romance" novel by a "New York Times Best Selling Author," I thought I was getting either a trashy beach novel or a bodice ripper. Oh, my dear God in heaven! The book was what I would describe as extremely poorly written soft-core porn. After reading the first dozen pages or so, I was ready to give up on it but I kept reading in utter disbelief, sort of like you watch a car wreck. I just could not believe something so awful could be published by an actual, legitimate publishing house.

I can't get an agent or a publisher to so much as read my stories, but this tripe is actually published and ends up on the "best seller" list.

God, it's frustrating. In my heart, I want to be thrilled at the success of writers who make it. I really do. I am awed and inspired by good writers whose books do well. It is hard not to be demoralized and depressed reading crap that can get published when no one will even read my stories.

So Much Fun

I am writing fiction again after an incredibly long hiatus of, what, three months. In the big scheme of things that does not seem like such a long time but it is a very long time indeed to go without doing the work I need to do in order to be who I am!

This week, in addition to working and trying to act like I care at least a little bit about my life, I have been working on a new story. I have written more than thirteen thousand words in less than a week. When you consider that, in addition, I managed to write a couple of blog posts along the way, the output is more along the lines of my initial output three years ago when I started this new phase of fiction writing.

I am inspired and excited. I am also tired. I would love to quit for the day because I've been up since 5:00 a.m. and have been writing a great deal of that time (with interruptions for going to the beach and walking for two hours then walking for another hour plus around the neighborhood, helping DH put up the pool and watching the NASCAR race).

I am home alone tonight, and feel the need to take advantage of the quiet.


Lord, I am happy when I am writing. (But then, again, I'm pretty happy most of the time no matter what I do.)

Writer's Block

The best way for me to combat the onset of depression is to sink into the negative feelings and let myself experience them. Once I do that, it seems I can work through whatever is bothering me without getting sucked into the quicksand of a depressive episode.

For me, anger is best dealt with by ruthlessly refusing to allow it to get the upper hand. When I feel angry, I acknowledge the feeling and then do something besides dwell on it or express it until I find the energy dispersing. At that point if I still feel strongly about whatever pissed me off, I address it. 99% of the time, once the initial wave passes, the energy dissipates and there is no need to do anything about it. God, how I wish more people handled their anger like that!

This writer's block thing has me baffled. For a while I tried not writing at all. That was not unlike quitting a 2-pack-a-day-cigarette-habit cold turkey. In fact, it was a whole lot like that. Next, I tried writing a whole lot. I started journaling again, I started a new blog, I even looped back and started editing stuff I've previously written. (I absolutely love to edit!) That was fun at first. Blogging is fun and writing essays is relatively easy. Writing good essays is very difficult. At this point I am not shooting for "good"; I am simply shooting for some avenue to get back in the groove. The problem with blogging is that while I'm messing with my blog I tend to buzz around other peoples' blogs. Lord, can I waste a lot of time on that kind of thing! It is fun and entertaining. The theory is that I'm trolling for ideas. The reality is that I am frittering away valuable hours I could spend writing.

So, I decide not to spend so much time reading other peoples' blogs and to get serious about my own.

And?

Well...

Um ...

Duh.

You see I have this writer's block thing going on.

Tee Hee. I guess in trying to write my way out of a block I am standing in a long tradition. I just Googled the words "writer's block" and got more than 2.5 million hits. I the first two I looked at basically said the same thing: write something. Anything.

So, I'm writing about writer's block.

Who says blogging isn't narcissistic?? This is stupid.

Later.

Writing about the block worked!! I wrote a bunch of incoherent stuff and came out the other side with a couple of good ideas and a good start on a new story. It remains to be seen if it will pan out, but I spent several hours today writing 1500 words of new fiction! Wahoo!

On Blogging v. "Real" Writing

Several years ago I read something in a book or article about writing to the effect that "would-be writers write when they are inspired, real writers write every day." I started blogging that very week. I did not set a word-count goal as some writing experts suggest, but I did try to post something semi-coherent a few times a week. Soon the practice of regular writing empowered and inspired me to the point that I started writing novels. I spent a couple of years working on several novels during every spare moment. I have never worked so hard or slept so little. The result of that effort has been four "completed" draft novels and several good starts on a few others. In the last three or four years, I all but gave up blogging, along with cooking, keeping house, and almost everything else in my life except going to work and exercising regularly.

Recently I found myself mildly depressed (I'm probably a hell of a lot more depressed than that, but that's as much as I'm admitting to because I don't have time or energy for a breakdown), confused, unfocused and rather aimless. Part of it is very likely the accumulated effects of a lot of things going on in my life, some of which I can/have/will blog about and some of which I prefer to keep private. In this frame of mind, I sort of ran out of steam before getting very far with my current novel. Rather than the joy and delight I took in writing the others, I found working on the story had become a chore. I decided I needed a break. Maybe it's a bad story and I need to give up on it. Maybe I just need to take a breather from the daily grind of fiction writing.

I remain committed to writing every day. Blogging was something I enjoyed when I did it before. It helped me muster the courage and inspiration to try my hand at fiction. Instead of wrestling the Muse and forcing myself to continue working on something that felt out of whack, I decided to take up blogging again. It is therapeutic. I am not sure why blogging online is better than journaling privately, but I think part of it has to do with the fact that I am more careful about my writing when I am making it public. Constant focus on writing as well as I can is important to me. The stuff I write in my private journal is usually raw, inarticulate (sometimes borderline incoherent) howling. Forcing myself to write carefully helps me keep my writing edge. (I confess that, in the interest of keeping up with regular posting on current topics, I am nowhere near as careful with word selection and grammar in these essays as I am when I am writing fiction.)

Writing daily helps me grow as a writer. Writing on a variety of topics helps me look at the world through a wide lens. I think trying to focus carefully makes the journaling process even more effective in processing emotional crap. The chance to share and to receive affirmation and support from others is an added, and wonderful, bonus.

My inner-novelist is a bit of a literary snob who thinks that spending so much time reading other peoples' blogs, websites, zines, etc. and then blathering on about it in my own blog is a waste of time that potentially could dilute whatever writing skills I may have. "She" may be right.

Then again, I realized over the weekend that I am out of story ideas. I had to stop with my story because I didn't like the direction I had originally planned to take it but I couldn't think of a better one. I was out of creative gas. This may be rationalization, but I think I'm back to blogging as a means of trolling for story ideas. Looking at the stories I have written in light of my previous blogging, it appears to me that the things that capture my attention enough to blog about sort of sink down into my unconscious and come out later as story ideas. So perhaps I am not wasting my time after all.

Or at least it is not a total waste.

I hope.