Toes, Fabulous; Writing, Crap

*****

I’m in a funk lately. None of my writing projects seems to be going quite right. The last scene of Folly’s chapter one needs work. The flash piece I started in Rhinelander over the summer is…not quite right. I’ve shared it with writing buddy Jane and she says she likes it. But something about it just…isn’t right.

It has me wondering: why can’t there be some universal rule about writing that, when things aren’t right, we know to check a certain thing and—VOILA!—we arrive at the answer. Or why can’t someone invent the Revise-O-Matic? We plop in the rough draft, press a button, and –WHAMMO!— out spits a polished manuscript. But I guess that’s the thorniest bitch about writing: it’s never easy. If it is, I know better than to trust it.

Personally, I think it’s the pressure that’s getting to me. I’m a one-track thinker and having two projects really messes with me. And deadlines are doing me in. I need to get both these pieces done before I go to Vegas next week. But I sit down and don’t know where to begin. I’m on overload.

I have no answers. Vegas is looming and I’m excited. In the meanwhile, I need to clear the decks. After the two projects, my top priority should be spending this week thinking of what I want to research while I’m in Vegas. Instead, I spent the morning giving myself a pedicure. My toes look great, but my writing is in shambles. It makes no sense, but the whole writing process rarely does. The biggest mystery: why we do it at all.

The Beauty in Rejection

*****

A week or so ago, a writer friend emailed to ask what was new with my writing. I filled her in on the highlights: small forward progress on Jamieson’s Folly. Two rejections on short stories I’d submitted.

She emailed me back how badly it sucked that I’d had my stories rejected, how awful she felt for me. As I read her response, I remember shrugging my shoulders and thinking, “Gee, it’s not that big of a deal.” I appreciated her commiserating with me—that’s what friends are for—but what interested me most was that I’d crossed an important threshold in my writing career. I’d learned rejection is part of the process.

It got me thinking. Back a year or so ago, I was sick at heart over every single rejection I got. I remember whining (and I mean WHINING) to my writing workshop buddies over the endless rejections I’d gathered. I was angry, too. How could these editors not think my work was gold? Were they just too stupid to get it?

They weren’t. But I was. Back in those days I didn’t see rejection for what it is: opportunity and conditioning for publishing.

As for opportunities, I think rejections offer a few:

One, rejections opened the door for me to view my work with fresh eyes and see where I could grow and develop. Any time I get better at my craft, that’s a very good thing.

Two, the opportunity to mature. My stack of rejections fueled my hunger to publish and to do that, I needed to improve. To improve, I needed to get past my fragile ego. To do any of this, I needed to work hard and persist. I think rejections serve to separate the wheat from the chaff. Quitters get rejections and give up. Those who persist grow and develop into better writers. Writers who persist and work hard eventually get published.

Now conditioning: It’s hard when an editor responds to a hopeful submission by saying he thinks my story sucks. But it’s harder to have my work published for all the world to see and have people flagellate me publicly. Rejection taught me: some people say rotten, mean things about my stories just because they’re rotten, mean people. And some people just don’t like my style. But those early rejections helped me toughen up. To learn we’re all different and we all like different things. To not to take people’s opinions too seriously. Rejection taught me to be tough and discerning. I listen to everyone, then sift through for what’s useful.

Back to my friend: she’s an extremely talented writer with lots of potential. She’s new to submitting, so I think those rejections have more sting. She received her first acceptance a few weeks ago and I confess, I was a little jealous. Everything seems so easy for her. Her acceptance came on say her third or fourth-ish submission. As for me, I’d gotten something like 15 rejections before I ever had anything accepted. (To make things worse, that magazine failed before my story got published, and I persisted through another long dry spell.) But in retrospect, I’m grateful for the beauty that came from the rejections. I hope she gets to endure them, too. Her potential will only be met if she faces a little adversity. Like in life, it’s the way we grow.

A Matter of Voice

*****

I’m back into Jamieson’s Folly again, after a rocky start.

I started reworking the beginning last Friday and, from the start, it was an uphill climb. First, beginnings are just damn hard for me. But it was more than that. I felt pressured to produce something respectable for my Tuesday night workshop. So I spent a whopping one day analyzing themes and picking one to focus the opening on. By Saturday, I was running with it.

Running at the mouth is more like it.

See, the problem is that I need downtime. I’m a slow thinker. Not that I’m dumb. I’m just a person who needs time to reflect. And a four day deadline to rewrite the beginning of a novel doesn’t cut it for a slow thinker. So I did what the most desperate writers do—I overwrote. I threw in descriptions, adjectives, adverbs and similes. Writer padding that makes us look like we know what we’re doing.

I didn’t.

I rushed the piece, printed it off (even the printing gods tried to thwart me by running out of ink) and took it to class on Tuesday. I apologized, handed out copies and read it. And the class shocked the hell out of me by raving over how fantastic it was. Vivid, beautiful, poetic, amazing. One of my fellow writers even called it brilliant.

You think I’d be satisfied with that kind of praise, but it left me empty. Something still stuck in my craw. The piece wasn’t right. I knew it was off. I sifted through the copies everyone had marked, looking for some kind of clue. I got miscellaneous nits that all seemed to point in different directions—someone thought the pacing felt a little slow, another didn’t feel clued in to the narrator. One person didn’t realize my narrator was a man until halfway through the first page, someone else commented on the beautiful but overly-abundant descriptions. I tried to make sense of the remarks, but no one seemed to echo the same sentiments. It was a hodge podge that I could have dismissed.

I asked my husband. He read the piece.

“I don’t know. It just feels off,” he told me.

I thought about it overnight and the next day. I let it sit, let my thoughts germinate. At four this morning (I wake up and think about my writing a lot, as you may have noticed.), it came to me in a predawn flash:

Voice.

I’d overwritten the crap out of the thing and it felt like that for a reason. Twenty-two year old guys don’t spend a paragraph contriving gorgeous verbal pictures of dusk in a canyon. They don’t. My husband’s thirty-something, “I don’t know. It just feels off” says it all. Guys are brief. They say stuff. They shut up.

I wrote the same thing with Nick’s new voice. His real voice. And it really works.

I’ve given the problem thought since and come up with some type of explanation. Usually I write from character as a starting point. Voice is natural then, inherent to the inspiration. But because I wrote Folly during NaNoWriMo and move far forward every day, I chose instead to write from a loosely outlined plot. Nick as a character had never fully developed in my mind and it showed in every word.

I’m taking the new piece to class next Tuesday. I’m anxious to hear the reactions to the massive change. I expect some won’t like, at least the devotees of poetry, but I’m thrilled with it and that’s what really matters.

The Good, the Bad and the Over/Underwritten

*****

I’m about halfway through my reread of Folly’s first draft. I started out with a bang last Wednesday and Thursday, then progress fizzled over the long holiday weekend. (Although, on a positive note, I did see two excellent plays at American Players Theatre over the weekend, so that has to count for something.)

It’s been interesting thus far, to reread the manuscript with fresh eyes. The flaws stand out a little taller, as if they’d leapt into gawkish adolescence during my absence. Jamieson’s character quirks clearly needs some explanation. There’s way too much telling. And most of the scenes seem scanty and underdeveloped. It’s a daunting list and, at first, I felt like I was in the same boat as I had been with Somewhere. But as I read on, the flaws seem clearer and the fixes more apparent.

But just as the flaws seem to glare, so the strengths glow. If I say so myself, there are some stunning visuals in the first draft. The setting glows with the magic and glamour of Las Vegas. Nick’s character is likeable and sympathetic (for the most part) And the storyline is cohesive and interesting. It wasn't long before I was actively caught up in the story and resented having to set it aside to make dinner.

So it’s once more to the drawing board. A few more pages to read, then a whole darn book to revise. I's be intimidated if it weren't for the most encouraging sign: I woke up around 3 Friday morning and fumbled in the dark for my nightstand notebook. I know I'm on to something when my subconscious is vested and churning.

Somewhere on the Road to Folly

*****

I’ve been in a slump lately. Not writer’s block. My burner’s on and ideas are simmering. But more like I’m stuck on what to write.

My problem is that I’m at a crossroads. I’ve had some success with short fiction. I’ve even begun the transition from non-paying to paying markets. Now it’s time to take the next step.

Yep, it’s time to finish a novel.

Here’s where my dilemma comes in. For months, I’ve been torn over which project to finish first. Somewhere on the Road to Me and Jamieson’s Folly are both finished in first draft form. And I’ve even taken a beginning whack at revisions on Somewhere.

Logically, Somewhere should be my first finished novel. I wrote it first. And in many ways, it’s the novel that lives nearest to my heart. But the problem lies in the sheer amount of work needed to get it into saleable shape. I wrote it without any cohesive plan and meandered my way through the entire sprawling first draft. As much heart and soul as the story has, technically and artistically, it’s a train wreck. To get it into shape, I’d have to toss out 60% or more of the existing text and completely rewrite it from scratch.

Folly is much better, from a first draft standpoint. I wrote it during last year's NaNoWriMo and, knowing I was working under tight time constraints, I approached the story with a well-conceived story arc. In spite of my haste, the overall writing is more sound. I know with a little review, a little research, I could step right in and run with it.

The answer came to me over the weekend. While at a party, I got talking about my writing with a friend of mine. (surprise, surprise) She asked me what my novels were about and, after my horrified, deer in the headlights response, I did my best to give her brief summaries. Her response settled the issue somewhat. She was interested when I told her about Somewhere. It’s the kind of story I know she likes to read. But when I told her about Folly, her eyes lit up and she said, “Wow, that sounds really good!”

I’ve given her response a lot of thought.

I don’t think her interest means that Folly is so much better than Somewhere. Instead, I think it’s just that I’m clearer on Folly and, subsequently, able to communicate it better. I’m closer to doing that elevator pitch agents talk about, where I corner a prospective agent in an elevator and summarize my novel in a sentence or two. And as any writer knows, clearer in the head means clearer on the page. Clarity should always be the writer's touchstone.

So I talked it over with my husband, who added more fuel to the Folly fire. He gave me his blessing to go to Vegas for a few days in November to do the necessary research on Folly.

I guess I have no choice but to go.

So I set aside Somewhere, though it breaks my heart, and pick up my first draft of Jamieson’s Folly. I have hard work ahead of me, that’s for certain. But I feel like I can do this. The signs are there. The time is right. It’s time to step into the world of Nick and Nathan Jamieson and his marvelous seven natural wonders.

What a journey I have ahead of me...

What I’ve Learned About Writing…So Far.

******

My friend Jane asked for some writing advice the other day and, in my usual style, I thought why use a spade when I can dish it with a shovel? So here are a few things I’ve learned thus far on my journey as a writer. Most of these were learned the hard way. And this list is by no means exhaustive. But this is what came to mind as I tried to answer Jane’s questions. I offer them from my humble perch, one rung up from rock bottom on the ladder. Enjoy.


1) Don’t give up.

Persistence plays a large role in reaching your goals. Keep moving forward, even when things look glum. The people who make it are the ones who keep trying. You learn something when you try, even when you fail. Wear your lessons like a cloak and just keep going.

2) Writing is both a process and an end product.

Trust the process, that you’ll get there if you jump on board. Sit down and write every day. Trust your imagination to take you somewhere. Everyone has something unique and interesting to say.

3) Writing is 10% talent and 90% commitment.

Potential without action equals a big fat zero. Give up TV. Enlist the help of friends and family. Write when it’s easy and when it’s hard. Just write.

4) Sit your butt down and write.

You can’t be a writer if you don’t actually write. Stop talking about it and do the work. Don’t wait around for inspiration, that lazy ne’er-do-well. Inspiration only shows up when you reach for it.

5) Be open to new ideas.

Try writing a poem if you usually write fiction. Write a play. Talk to other writers and listen to their experiences. Go to the mall or the airport and watch the crazy people around you. Everyone has a story. Watch someone and find it. Then, write it down.

6) You can learn from anyone.

Even non-writers can help us get better. Emulate your spouse’s professionalism, your grandmother’s patience. Being a successful writer takes more than just writing talent. It’s a package of affirming attitudes and qualities.

7) Sift through all feedback carefully, looking for hidden gems.

Even the stuff that seems way off base may make sense on closer examination. Try to understand where your critics are coming from. Mull it over a few days. Reread and try to see their point of view. Then use what works for you and forget the rest. Don’t change your style to please a critic.

8) Understand the rules before you break them.

Learn what conventions are, then break them with purpose. Only break a rule when it adds to your work, never when it detracts.

9) Humility goes a long way.

Don’t fall in love with your own voice. Authorial self-indulgence makes readers feel unnecessary. Step out of the way and let your writing be about your characters. If you must write about yourself, get a blog or do something interesting enough to sustain an autobiography.

10) Read everything you can get your hands on.

Learn what’s been done already, dream of ways to do it better. Learn from other people’s triumphs and mistakes. Read authors who inspire you to write. Avoid those who make you feel inadequate.

11) Write the stories only you can tell.

Write from your life experience, your unique point of view. Don’t be like anyone else. Above all, do your stories justice. Be honest, unapologetic and unflinching.

12) Revision is your friend.

The best writers are re-writers. Sharpen your sentences, tighten your dialogue. Remove as many adjectives and adverbs as possible.

13) When the going gets tough, get tougher.

The world is full of nay-sayers who want to see you fail. Prove them wrong. Keep at it no matter what. Believe you can learn. Steamroll through the tough stuff.

14) Develop a thick skin.

When you get hurtful feedback or a painful rejection, bitch about it to a friend you trust, then forget about it and keep moving forward. Don’t get hung up on what other people say, good or bad. Just keep your eyes on your writing and keep working.

15) Put yourself out there. Don’t be afraid.

Pass your work around to friends. Take a writing class. Join a workshop or online writing group. Enter contests. Submit your work. If you only want to write for yourself, then keep your writing hidden. But if you want to improve, solicit feedback.

16) Take yourself seriously and others will, too.

Tell people proudly that you’re a writer. Then write. Let them see how hard you work at it. Show everyone that you don’t give up. Make them respect your dedication.

17) Adopt only the best people for your writing friends.

A network of supportive friends and fellow writers is worth its weight in gold. Treat others like you want to be treated. Respect others’ voices. Be encouraging, kind, and honest. Set aside small-mindedness and petty jealousies. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Most importantly, do no harm.

And don’t be afraid to cast negative writing relationships adrift. As you move forward, let these slackers drift, bobbing in your wake. Don’t drag them along and let them drain your energy. Anyone who weighs you down doesn’t want you to succeed.

18) Learn to give quality feedback.

Analyzing writing makes us better writers. Frame your thoughts in concise language. Offer suggestions and opinions designed to help. Respect an author’s voice and his or her authority over her story. Don’t issue mandates or edicts.

19) Know when to step away.

Be honest with yourself. Walk away when a project doesn’t work. Think it over, then fix the fixable. Let the fundamentally flawed rest in peace on your hard drive. Don’t let undeserving stories drain your creative energy.

20) Writing is tough. Be tougher.

Don’t give up on a good concept. Recharge, then come back to it. Send it off to a different agent or publisher. Fight your way through sluggish middles. Learn to be ruthless in revision.

21) Trust your creative subconscious.

Push yourself harder. Trust your creativity to rise to the challenge. Step out of your creative comfort zone. Commit to NaNoWriMo. Don’t hold ideas in your ruthless control; let the best ideas assume their own unique shape.

22) Harvest stories at the proper time.

Let ideas ripen in the depths of your subconscious. Don’t force ideas like potted hyacinth bulbs. If something isn’t working, go weed the garden or read a book, then come back to try again later and even later again, if you have to. Keep a story ideas file. Pick through it when you’re looking for new projects. Realize half-finished projects aren’t failures, but are stories waiting for their season to bloom.

23) Always keep paper nearby.

Keep a notebook in your purse, in your nightstand, on the table next to your favorite chair. Write down every crazy idea, every stroke of creative genius, then add them to your story ideas file. Write down snippets of dialogue while they’re fresh and beguiling. You won’t remember them after you dry off from the shower.

24) No matter how much you know, it’s never enough.

Be a lifelong learner. Take a class. Attend a conference. Read a book on writing. Don’t become complacent. Don’t slip into the trap of thinking you know it all. Always strive to be better.

25) Don’t ever give up.

It bears saying again. Quitters don’t make it. Don’t be a quitter. A life of striving is more interesting than a life wallowing in regret. Plodding steps in a consistent direction eventually reach their destination.

This Present Moment

*****

Last week, I was sitting in the sunshine at the picnic table outside our cottage. The lake sparked diamonds, sharp to the eyes, the bright sun catching the tips of the ripples. Out in the middle of the lake, a wave runner buzzed across the surface of the water, then disappeared around the green, densely forested bend into the next bay. For whatever reason, no one else was around other than a few ducks looking for a handout. I had the lake to myself. And I needed its peace. It had been a busy week, my classes and homework more demanding than I’d anticipated. Every morning and evening were spent glued to the laptop, in between making meals and trying to be an entertaining wife/mother/travel companion. By Thursday, fatigue oozed from my pores. It was nice to sit in the sun and watch the water, to set aside my writing and just enjoy the moment.

After awhile, I pulled out The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller, a book I’d been reading before we left home, but had barely touched since we’d arrived in Rhinelander. The book felt good and right in my hands, full of that pleasurable feeling I get when I’m about to step into a compelling narrative. As much as I enjoy staring at lakes, I also enjoy reading by them. In moments, I was re-immersed in the story.

I was perhaps five or six pages in when something astonishing happened. From overhead, I heard the loud rush of air being displaced, a whoosh-whoosh that dragged me from the story. And there he was, before my eyes, a bald eagle, massive and majestic, taking flight from the top of the pine tree no more than fifteen feet from where I sat.

He hovered a moment, then his wings flapped again, powerful strokes so wide and so deep, I couldn’t fathom his wingspan. His tail feathers spread white against the blue sky, his chocolate brown body and wings so rich and regal by contrast. Before I could commit every aspect of him to my memory, he’d flown away. With three strokes of those wings, he was halfway across the lake and I, at my table on the shore, book forgotten, was left behind, awed and heartbroken.

In the afterecho, all I could think was that I’d done the unthinkable. I'd committed the writer’s cardinal sin. Somehow in my fatigue and lake-induced lethargy, I’d missed being in the present moment.

I thought about him all day. I’d seen bald eagles before, but always in captivity or, in the wild, only from a distance. Several years ago, my buddy Randy and I saw an eagle atop a dead tree across the bay. Even from that distance, he dwarfed the tree. We’d tried, but couldn’t get closer before he’d flown off. This eagle, my eagle, had been so close. How I would have loved to watch him, to sense his keen intelligence. I’d looked in the eyes of a bald eagle before and been humbled, had been made aware of my minion status. And that had been an eagle in captivity. I could only imagine how lordly and majestic he must have appeared, his gold eyes peering down at his dominion on Lake George. At the tired lady reading the book at a picnic table, unaware she was in the presence of royalty.

I can’t stop thinking about him. About the present moment.

The best writing brings a present moment to us. We feel it, we smell it, we taste it on our tongues. Our skin prickles from the sense of being immersed in it, in this other place someone has created on the page. I’d had an opportunity. To see something unique and frame it in language, to bring it to life for another human being. And I missed it. I’ve fixed the lesson firmly in my heart. Be in the moment, taste and feel it, rub myself across its textures, because the moment may never come again.