Moving Forward – CoronaLife Day 152

August 13, 2020 By Leave a Comment

So last week was a bad week. I felt so completely stuck in so many areas of my life, I was quite down about it. This week has been better because I had a plan and I actually followed it!

I have been avoiding returning to my YA sci-fi Veritas. I did a major rework of it last year, and managed to make it worse instead of better. So back to the drawing board, but I have been struggling with the lack of energy and motivation that comes with anxiety and prolonged stress.

I have sporadically reworked the opening chapters since January, ending up with about 14,500 words done. But then I ground to a halt, because I wasn’t quite sure where to go next. So I returned to the notes given to me by my trusty developmental editor Kathryn Craft, looking for clues as to how to move forward.

Kathryn did not let me down! She suggested I use Lisa Cron’s Story Genius book and Jennie Nash’s Inside Outline to zero in on motivation and connecting all the emotional/psychological beats that would make the story compelling. I was already familiar with Story Genius, having read it and used it for another story, and knew I would find it useful for this one. After I looked at the Inside Outline, I knew I couldn’t use it at this point. I am not an outliner, and just looking at it made the enthusiasm drain right out of me. But it will definitely be a tool I will use after I complete the new draft I am working on.

I didn’t want to set myself up for failure. So I decided to set a goal of doing one step in an exercise from Story Genius a day. If I wanted to do more, fine. But one was the goal. And I have been doing that. Walking through Story Genius, I am getting a handle on the inner conflict that drives my protagonist and the misbelief that must be resolved by the end of the story. I am getting more excited as I see thing more clearly. I finally feel like I am making progress.

Granted, it’s not actual writing yet. But I think once I get all this straight in my head, the manuscript words will come more easily. And even though I haven’t added words to my manuscript with these exercises, I have written 1,500 words of exercises. Which is something.

So I am finally moving forward with my writing, and it feels good.

What have you done lately to get yourself moving forward?

A Present Normal – Lockdown Day 47

April 30, 2020 By Leave a Comment

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is May 1st. The month of March seemed to be about 3 years long, but April sped by. Perhaps this is a sign that I am adjusting to the new normal. Or perhaps I should call it the present normal, because the situation is ever-evolving, and there can be no true new normal until we have a treatment or vaccine for this virus.

In my present normal, I am able to indulge my night owl tendencies to an extent, by getting up a couple of hours later than I did when we had to be out the door for school, and therefore be able to stay up a few hours later at night. In spite of this, I really don’t feel well-rested. I am too on edge to sleep deeply and well. My anxiety is strange, in that when I am at a certain level of anxiety, I feel the urge to not sleep. As if my being awake can stave off whatever impending doom I am fretting about. I did this the night Superstorm Sandy blew through, as if my prowling the windows all night long could keep us safe. Apparently, that’s the level of stress I am currently experiencing. If I move into deeper stress, I move into the I-want-to-sleep-all-the-time escape mode. I am not there yet—and hope to avoid getting there.

Also in my present normal, I spend more time than I thought I would helping my daughter with her schoolwork. A large part of that is organizing and time management. My daughter’s organizational and time management skills are non-existent, so I spend a lot of my day putting her back on track and helping her with things she doesn’t understand. I also spend a lot of time feeding her. She eats constantly, but you’d never know it to look at her. Of course, she has grown an inch and a half in the last 4 months, so perhaps that explains the voracious appetite!

The one thing my present normal does not have is writing time. Part of it is because I am doing a lot more work with everyone home. Part of it is “pandemic brain” where a lot of the time my brain is fuzzy and it’s all I can do just to put out fires, forget about creativity. But even when my creative brain is working, I can’t seem to get to putting words on paper. I need some quiet alone time to do that, and that simply does not exist right now.

So hopefully my future present normal will have some time for that. I might have to wait until summer, when my daughter’s school will be out and I won’t have that time issue. But finding that time is my next challenge, the next step toward an inner normalcy, if not an external one.

How are all of you doing out there? How are you finding a new balance in this new world?

When a Story Refuses to Work

March 5, 2020 By 1 Comment

I’ve been working on my science fiction YA story Veritas for a long time. Maybe 5 years. Which isn’t as long as some people have worked on books, but it’s long for me. Finally, about a year ago I felt like I had gotten it to a good place, and sent it to my editor.

She and I both felt it was the best thing I had ever written, and after I fixed a few flaws she’d pointed out, I sent it around to agents.

No one wanted it.

I finally found one agent who loved the writing but was less enamored of the story as told. Gave me some feedback and said she would be happy to look at it if I revised it. I hemmed and hawed for a long while—I wasn’t a fan of some of the changes she wanted, and it took me a while to find a way forward. So I sliced and diced and added and pretty much rewrote the whole thing. It came out very different.

But was it actually any better?

I knew something wasn’t right, but I had worked on Veritas so long and hard that I had lost objectivity. So I sent it back to my editor, hoping the edits needed would become clear and not be too onerous.

The result was not good.

My feeling that something wasn’t right was correct. In fact, most of the story wasn’t correct. And before you think I am just accepting the editor’s notes at face value, I agree with what she’s saying. I’d just been too close to see it—but I knew it somewhere inside. I’d done a lot of work and gone backward. I had been left with a disaster wrapped in a catastrophe.

So now what? I think I finally figured out why I am struggling so much with the story. My protagonist’s goals aren’t clear enough. So I need to think about that. But I also need to think about whether I want to invest more time and emotion into this story.

If I do go forward (and I likely will, because I am nothing if not stubborn), I may go back to my original manuscript and start over from there with the new perspectives of the agent and this misfired rewrite. Just because version one was the best thing I had written to date doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved. I’m not vain enough to think anything I write is perfect.

I will likely put Veritas aside for a bit, though. Let my subconscious chew on everything. I have a first draft of a manuscript I want to work on, so will probably jump to that and get that moving.

Have you ever had a story that was SO CLOSE but you just couldn’t get right? How did you overcome that?

Professional Development

February 27, 2020 By Leave a Comment

This weekend I went to training for my Board of Education position. It was intense. Classes from 6 PM – 10 PM Friday and 8:30 AM – 10 PM Saturday, then 9 AM – noon on Sunday.

I. Was. Fried.

Despite being tired (but not hungry—they fed us well!), I learned a lot. And there is so much more to learn. It will take years to become truly knowledgeable.

A writing career is no different–it takes years of continuous professional development to even approach mastery. You work on one craft element, then another, then another, constantly learning as each element intersects and influences the others. David King calls this the “web of writing” and it’s one of the trickiest parts of writing. No element exists in a vacuum.

So we learn about each element separately (because it’s the only way to stay sane), but then have to integrate it into the whole. Which can lead to your story feeling lopsided as you excel at some elements but not at others. Continuing professional development will eventually smooth it out as you bring all the elements up to par.

But even after mastering the basics, the learning never stops. Writing is a craft of infinite depth, and I am not sure there is an actual bottom. Creativity has no boundary, the horizon is ever just out of reach.

One time, a friend asked me why I continued to come to the same writer’s conference every year. I replied that I learned something new every year, because I was in a different place as a writer than last year. Things I could not grasp the year before, I could this year. Learning is a constant process of building on what you already know. It never ends.

And that is one reason I love writing so much.

Sick Days February 2020

February 13, 2020 By Leave a Comment

It’s funny how much we rely on routines to define time. Here it is Wednesday, and I feel like it’s the weekend. Why? Because my daughter is home sick from school for the third day in a row. She’s home, so my brain tells me it is still the weekend.

It’s hard to get work done when she’s home. Not so much because I am nursing her a lot—she’s old enough that she can take pretty good care of herself. But she needs little things, like water and food and sometimes just a cuddle because she feels awful. Things that individually do not take a long time, but add up. And the constant interruptions splinter the work flow and make it harder to complete a task efficiently.

I did still get some things done this week. This blog post, for one. And the weekly one I do over on The Author Chronicles. I also finished my last go-through of my YA sci-fi manuscript Veritas and sent it over to my editor. I went to a cyber-bullying presentation one evening at the school. I went food shopping. And I somehow managed to clean out the hall closet.

Still, it was hard with my daughter laying on the couch—especially when she was napping. I don’t know what it is, but when someone else is sleeping, I want to conk out. Maybe it’s a throwback to the old advice, “Sleep when the baby sleeps.” She’s not a baby anymore, but she still exhausts me.

Of course, I am tired, too. She had rough nights the past two nights, which means so did I. Helping her get changed 3 times in one night because she fever was breaking and she would wake up drenched in sweat. Cuddling with her at 4:30 in the morning because she was too congested to sleep. She is sleeping as I write this, and I hope she sleeps all night.

I hope I do, too—so I am heading up to try.

How about you? Do you get completely lost when your routines are messed up?

3 Ways Writing is Like Swimming

February 6, 2020 By Leave a Comment

My daughter likes to swim. She started swimming at age 3, was on her first swim team at 6. She has been on a swim team every summer for 4 years.

In order to compete in swimming, you need 3 skills: form, speed, and stamina.

Turns out, you need those same 3 skills if you want to compete in writing, too.

FORM

In swimming, getting your body to form the right patterns in the water is vital. If you perform the strokes correctly, if your body parts all work in perfect sync, you go faster with less effort.

Writing is similar. Our craft is our form, and the sooner we master the elements, the smoother our writing process becomes. As we get the myriad craft elements from structure to grammar to work in sync, the stories flow faster and with less effort.

SPEED

Efficiency of form helps you cut through the water faster, so you increase your speed. You can’t win if you are slow. However, swimming is not just about beating the other people.  It’s also about personal bests, competing with yourself and trying to lower your times every time you compete.

Writing efficiency will help you compete in the publishing trenches, because you can put more work out more quickly. This does not mean you need to be a speed demon in writing. I am not, and other successful writers are not. Some are. But you can’t focus on other people’s speed. All you can do is hone your process so you can write efficiently without losing quality in your work. You are always looking for a personal best.

STAMINA

Competitive swimming requires endurance. When my daughter started swimming, her first races were more a matter if she would make it the full 25 meters without having to stop. Now, at age 10, the freestyle is 50 meters and the other strokes are still 25. But next year they all go up to 50 meters. That will require building stamina (and mastering how to turn).

A writing career is a long-haul career. Success usually does not come early or quickly. And if you write novel-length books, each project can be a marathon in itself. We need to cultivate creative and emotional stamina to get us through. There are many paths to success, so we need to master turning when one route is blocked. Sometimes our muscles hurt and we can barely catch our breath, but if we persevere we will eventually touch the wall.

Whether we write for fun or for profit, all writers share the joy and passion for writing. But for those who do want to publish, we also need to develop form, speed, and stamina.

Once we do, we can swim with the best of them.

The Goose’s Quill Top 10 Posts of 2019

December 26, 2019 By Leave a Comment

I always like to see what my readers responded to in the past year. I found a mixed bag this year, from writing-related posts, to personal celebrations, to the on-going drama of my daughter’s fish tank. In case you missed any, here are the 10 most popular posts of 2019:

10. A Successful, Grateful Book Launch for The Witch of Zal

9. A Muddy Revision Slog

8. Three Benefits of Reading to Older Children

7. Revision Difficulty? Maybe It’s Your Theme

6. The Fish Saga Continues: RIP Gem

5. Celebrating 50 Years!

4. Considering a Social Media Break

3. On Being a Low-Energy Person in a High-Energy World

2. Book Fair Magic: Casting a Reading Spell

And my number one post of 2019:

1. Speak Up: Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport

I hope you all enjoyed this look back at 2019! May your holiday season be happy and safe, and I will see you all back here in 2020!

NaNoWriMo 2019: Week 3

November 21, 2019 By Leave a Comment

When I started this project, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to week 3. It’s a difficult thing, trying to write 1,667 words a day when you have multiple other responsibilities. But I surprised myself by managing to stay on top of things.

Until this week. This week killed me. I have been so busy with other obligations that I have had to schedule time to breathe. Write words? Forget it! I’ve lost 2 days to zeros and am likely to lose one more.

All is not lost, however. November 21st (today) is 3 weeks. If you wrote 1,667 words a day, you would have 35,007 words by the end of today. As of this writing, I stand at 37,007 words. So even with those 3 zero days this week, I am 2,000 words ahead. A little over a day’s work ahead. It just feels like I am falling behind because I am losing my cushion.

I should be able to keep up and hopefully forge further ahead in the coming days, as my schedule lightens considerably. Thanksgiving may well be another zero day, but hopefully I will be comfortably in the home stretch by then.

I’m also not trying for the 50,000, although if I do it will be icing on the cake. I am trying to get a first draft of this story. I figure I have about 8 more chapters at most, so that would put me short of the 50,000—maybe about 45,000. But as long as my last two words are THE END, I will count this as a success.

I will be writing over my holiday, as much as I can. I wish all my fellow authors some productive creative time, whether you are doing NaNo or not, and I wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving with friends and family.

NaNoWriMo 2019–hitting the wall

November 14, 2019 By Leave a Comment

I told you all last week that I am unofficially doing National Novel Writing Month. Only I guess since I’ve announced it to all of you, it’s semi-official now. But I haven’t joined on their website, so it’s not official-official.

Anyway, I’m doing this thing. 50,000 words in 30 days. And I’m a bit shocked at how well I’ve been doing. I’m almost halfway there. As of Tuesday night, I was at 24,500 words. Cool, right? But then Wednesday I hit a wall. Kinda like a runner when they’re on that last few miles of a marathon.

I guess I should have expected a wall at some point. I am not an outliner, although I have a basic plan to follow for the book, and I’ll admit I am a tad unsure of where to go next. But I think my brain is also just tired. I mean, I just spewed 24,500 words out in 11 days.

That’s a lot of words.

It’s also cold as all get out here right now, so it’s perfect weather for curling up with a warm drink and a good book, not for pulling words out of your brain. On Wednesday I realized I wasn’t going to write. I scrolled Facebook, I fought with a webpage as I tried to make an appointment, and did other work–like this blog post and the links-roundup over on The Author Chronicles. So while I didn’t write any fiction words, it was overall a productive day.

Hopefully this “day off” will let me jump back into my manuscript today with some energy and push through that notoriously difficult middle of the story. They don’t call it the “sagging middle” or “muddy middle” for nothing, after all.

So that’s where I am in NaNoWriMo–a bit lost, a bit tired, but not giving up. Any other fellow NaNo writers out there? How are you doing? And if you’re not doing NaNo, what are you up to these days?

5 Lessons about Writing from Recess Runners

October 24, 2019 By Leave a Comment

My daughter’s school has a program called Recess Runners. It is a totally voluntary program where kids can come at recess and run or walk around a 1/4 mile track. When they amass a mile, they get a token to hang on their necklace.

Now, if anyone had told me in school that I had the option of running a mile at recess for fun, I would have told them “No way!”. But the program is very popular. Lots of kids running/walking. And I realized I could take some writing lessons from those kids.

1. Find the joy

These kids are having fun. Some are running because they love to run. Some enjoy walking and chatting with their friends. But it is fun for them. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the business side of writing that I forget to have fun. Or I lose the fun of writing under the constant worry that this book won’t be good enough. I need to find the fun again—feel the wind in my face as I write.

2. Go at your own pace

They all start at the same line, but they all go at their own pace. Some zip around 4 or more times in one recess. Some make it twice. For some it’s a struggle; for some it’s easy. But they all made progress. It can be hard not to compare your own career to other people’s. Some authors are prolific, pouring out books like coffee. Some are snails, a book every few years. My journey is different from theirs, and I need to remember that.

3. Remember this was voluntary

The kids don’t have to participate. They don’t even have to participate in every session. It’s a choice for them. Writing is, too. Well, maybe not the urge to write, but the choice to write for publication. I chose to go the extra mile to continually improve my craft and pay for workshops and conferences and edits. I chose to seek representation and the rejection that inevitably comes with that process. So if it ever becomes too much, I can choose to reassess and see if it’s still where I want to be.

4. Set your own goals

Every kid has a different reason for being there. Some just want to run and get energy out. Some are competitive and want to rack up as many tokens as they can. Some are there because they want to be healthier and get more exercise. Some just want to walk and chat with their friends. Every writer has their own goals, too. Some only have one book and just want it out there. Some don’t care about the money and just want to see their work available. Some want to make a living at this writing gig. My own goals are modest, realistic, and so far largely unattained. But I am working toward them, just like all those kids are.

5. It’s the effort that counts

The biggest thing I’ve taken away from this, however, is that it’s all in the journey. The striving is what needs to be applauded. We can’t always control the outcomes of our efforts, and we won’t always reach our goals. But we are in control of our effort, our dedication, and our attitude. I won’t use the platitude that the work is its own reward (although sometimes it is), but sometimes the effort leads to opportunities and rewards we didn’t expect, if we are open to them.

So kudos to all the kids having fun running, and I hope to incorporate the lessons I have learned from them in my writing life.

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