writing

Back when I was researching ADD, my good friend Chalain recommended a book to me. He then went on to describe the content of the book so well that I never bothered to actually get the book. The basic premise of the book is that ADD brains are not broken. They are just wired for hunting/gathering rather than for farming. These people latch onto a project and push themselves past reasonable limits to achieve it, like the hunter pursuing a deer. Sometimes the huge effort is hugely rewarded, other times the hunter goes hungry. This hunter/gatherer brain is contrasted with a farmer brain. Farmers are wired to do the same things over and over regularly. They plant lots of seeds. Then they tend lots of little plants. Then they harvest lots of big plants. Then they plow it all under and start again.

I am definitely a hunter/gatherer rather than a farmer. The farmer tasks in my life, dishes, laundry, house cleaning, fixing regular meals, these are the things that I always feel like I am failing at. I’m not very good about putting in small regular efforts even when I can see that it is the best way to maintain the system. It feels much more natural to me to wait for things to pile up and then to make a big effort to organize it all at once. I have known this about myself for a long time and I try to create my systems for getting things done so that they are complimentary to my inclinations. Some people run loads of laundry and fold a little bit every single day so that they don’t ever get too far behind. I do laundry only twice per week (sometimes only once) thus I focus on laundry for a morning and forget it for the rest of the week. But some things simply have to be done in a farmer way. Letting the dishes pile up makes the job harder and results in a chaotic kitchen. So I’m constantly trying to train myself to clear up dishes and load dishwaser every time I cook or eat. I’m better at it than I used to be, but it still isn’t instinctive.

The reason I bring this all up isn’t about housework at all. It is about writing. I haven’t written any fiction for weeks. As soon as I declared my intention to write at least 500 words of fiction per day, I stopped writing it at all. As I fell behind schedule I got angry with myself and frustrated over the lack of writing. But then I realized that dictating a daily word count is a very farmer way to approach writing and I am not a farmer. I was taking writing, which was very natural to me, and translating it into something foreign because that seemed the “correct” way to be proffessional about writing.

If I require myself to write a certain number of words per day, then that requirement sits in my brain like a burden. It adds to the stress of the day. If instead I allow myself to put down writing completely for a time, then I can pick it up again with joy at a later time. During the days I am not writing, I can still do things that will make me better as a writer. I can analyse movies and books for characterization and plot arcs. I can collect ideas and fragments to be used later. I can watch people and ponder why they behave the ways that they do. I can sit down and brainstorm to connect fragments and observations so they can be used later. In short, I can be gathering. Then I can sit down to do the necessary making.

This approach to writing probably means I will never be a prolific writer. I’m alright with that. I don’t need to write a story every week. Perhaps I’ll get better at this and I’ll write faster. That would be okay too, so long as I am still working with my natural rythms instead of against them.

I now have a writers group. We met for the first time last night. It was a meeting to set up ground rules and for all the members to get to know each other a little better. There are five writers in the group and two additional readers. I’m told this is a good size for a group. It is also a gender balanced group, which I’m also told is a good thing. Since I’ve never been in a writers group before and all of these other people have, I believe them.

I have mixed feelings about the group. I recognize some of the reluctance as the same feeling I used to have whenever I was given group assignments at school. Working alone always seems so much easier, so much less emotionally risky. But if I’m going to make risk-avoidance a priority, then I should stop writing right now. Everyone else in the group has known each other for years in various capacities. This makes me the social newbie as well as the writer’s group newbie. I’m certain that this will shake out as this group forms a group identity. Everyone was welcoming. They laughed when I made jokes. It was very comforting that I could see where the jokes should go and that my jokes fit into the social structure. I’m going to fit into this group, I just don’t quite fit yet.

I’m nervous about the reading load. It is something of a silly worry considering that I go through a novel or more in a week. But reading for critique is a little slower and more involving than reading for pleasure. As soon as I get into it, I’m sure it won’t be much of a burden. It’s just the anticipation of a task that I haven’t done before. And that anticipation is going to drag out because our first official meeting isn’t until August.

Part of my reluctance about the writer’s group is my simple resistence of being labelled or pigeon-holed. I know so many writers who have writers groups. A piece of me wants to separate myself from the crowd by NOT having a writers group. That one is just silly. The reason that so many writers have groups is because the groups are so helpful. I would be stupid to pass up this opportunity to interact with other writers on a weekly basis. Particularly these writers. They’re worth knowing as people and studying as writers.

I got a place in this group because I’m female, reliable, and a friend vouched for me. I’m looking forward to earning the place I’ve been given.

I’m having a “My writing stinks” kind of a day. Every project I currently have in the works looks lame. My completed projects still look alright, so it isn’t as bad as it could be. I guess I just look at the unfinished work and don’t know how to fix it. Not only am I unsure how to fix it, but I can’t find any enthusiasm for doing so. And yet in this same time frame I’ve written three times as many blog entries as I usually do. Some of them felt pretty good too. Of course even the ones that seemed good garnered little response. So perhaps they weren’t as good as I though they were. Perhaps they just mean something to me and I need to be content with that.

I’m starting to doubt that I can pull off my intended middle-grade novel. I’m confident that I can push it through to completion, but I just don’t know that it will be worth reading when I am done. Supposedly the book is just to help Link deal with issues, but that focus seems scattered. I don’t know how to put the necessary threads where they need to be. I don’t know if it will mean anything to him. I want it to mean something to him, but I don’t know that it will. I’ve got two chapters done. I was supposed to finish Chapter 3 this week, but I haven’t even started it. This week was really busy, which is a good excuse, but it doesn’t change the fact that every time I open the file I have no clue what to write next. Writer’s block. urgh. I guess it is more accurate to say that while I know what comes next, I can’t make myself care. And if I don’t care, that comes through in the writing.

I should probably read the first two chapters to Link to see if he cares. If he doesn’t, then I should probably pack it away for awhile and let it go.

Creative people collect projects the way that lonely old ladies collect cats. There are always projects laying around and begging for attention. Then we feel guilty because we have all these projects languishing and none of them are getting the attention they need.

I’ve known many creative people. I am one. I know that creative people get seized by an idea and bend everything else around the idea or project. Then they grow weary and are seized by a new idea. To succeed creatively you have to find ways to break the cycle of seizure and abandonment. The following are some of the ways that I’ve figured out how to stay focused and bring a project to completion.

Define goals: Pick a time when you are not enthralled by a project. Create a quiet space where you can look at your life and what you want to do with it. If you are happy with your day job, then your creative endeavors will just be a hobby for you. Hobby projects get different treatment than hope-for-the-future projects. It is perfectly acceptable to abandon a hobby if it gets difficult or boring. But if you are one of the many who want to make a living on creative endeavors, then you have to find a way not to abandon projects when they inevitably become boring or difficult. By defining your long term goals you provide a measuring stick for all your projects. I would love my house to be beautifully decorated, but for me that is a hobby project. It has to give way before book production projects which pay our bills. I know this because I know that I hope to be an author not an interior decorator. Knowing this helps me to rein myself in when I really want to tear down walls and repaint everything.

Define goals by asking yourself where you want to be in 5, 10, 20 years. Then each time you are seized by a fantastic idea, ask yourself if the idea is contributing to your goals or detracting from them. Periodically re-evaluate your long term goals. As your life changes, they may change too.

Make a project out of finishing projects: When the project is new, it grabs me and runs. That phase of the project is thrilling. Then my enthusiasm wanes and I decide whether the project is worth the time necessary to bring it to completion. If it is not, I abandon it completely without guilt. If I do want to have it done, then I dare myself to complete it. I start feeling compelled to finish just to show that I could get it all done.

Schedule time: Pick a time of the day that is devoted to your creative project. The positioning and length of this time will be dependent on other factors in your life. Some people may only have 30 minutes per week for creative endeavors. Others may have two hours per day. The point is that during that scheduled time you are only allowed to work on your project. Plan ahead for the scheduled time and put yourself in a place where you can get it done. This may mean getting a babysitter and going to a library. It may mean getting up at 5 am. It may mean cleaning the house so that you don’t feel cluttered and guilty. But create that sacrosanct project space in your life.

Make a chart: Track the progress of your project. If you’re quilting, count completed squares. If you’re writing a novel cross off chapters as you finish them. Having a visual representation of how much work you’ve done and how much is left to do can be extremely motivating.

Know there will be hard bits: At the beginning of your project take a few minutes to map out the steps needed to complete it. Look closely at these steps to identify which ones will be quagmires or roadblocks to the project. Spend some time thinking about how to overcome these challenges. Do all of this before you hit the difficult spots so that you are mentally prepared for things to be difficult. Writing my children’s book was fun. Getting the pictures from the artist was enthralling. Laying everything out was something that I wasn’t sure how to do and was daunting. So I lined up help for that piece long before I needed it.

Collaborate: Working with someone else provides an additional impetus for completing a project. Sometimes you’re both excited together and that is wonderful. Other times one partner is excited and the other is not. Then the excited partner can rekindle the excitement of the other partner. Alternately, a sense of responsibility can keep the unexcited partner working anyway in an effort not to let the other down. Collaboration is not all roses. There is the possibility that your partner will abandon or change the project. However collaboration has the potential to be very rewarding.

Enlist a cheering squad: Howard would not be doing Schlock Mercenary today if there had not been fans emailing to tell him how much they loved it. I know several people who finished their first novel simply because someone else bugged them for the next chapter. Find friends, neighbors, family who will cheer for you and encourage you to finish what you have begun. Then be brave enough to share your endeavors with these people.

I’m sure that there are other ways to stay focused. If you think of one, please post it in the comments so that others can benefit from the idea. As for me, I need to go work on a project now.

I did not want to go to the workshop yesterday. There were good things I was looking forward to, but they were completely overshadowed by the likely emotional aftermath. But I had goals I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to meet the other attendees and talk to them. I wanted to feel a sense of creative community. So with determination rather than desire I departed for the workshop. I then did a very girly thing. I stopped at Payless shoe source and bought myself a new pair of shoes. I was wearing ratty old shoes and I wanted to feel pretty and confident. I haven’t bought new shoes for myself since Howard quit Novell three years ago. So I walked into the conference feeling better about the whole thing because of my pretty new shoes. I was later rewarded by new shoe blisters because wearing brand new shoes to a convention does not rank high on the list of smart convention behaviors. My feet will recover and I’ll be breaking the shoes in more gradually.

I survived the third day of the workshop with a complete lack of “emotional heap.” Since this was my last day I am now suffering from a few mild regrets. I wish I had gone to lectures by Carmen Deedy and Dandi Mckandall. I got to speak to both of them briefly and they both were delightful and fascinating. Dandi did a reading from her book Larger Than Life Lara and I loved the segment so much, that I had to buy the book. Carmen Deedy did a reading too. That was when I realized where I’d heard her name before. My mother met her at a storytelling conference. Carmen signed a book for my mom, but signed it incorrectly. It was the last copy available, so she mailed out a correctly signed copy after the conference was over. The book was for me, so now I have both copies. I mentioned this to Carmen and she remembered the incident and my mom. That was fun. Carmen even smiled and waved to me later. She is a person I’d love to sit down with and just listen to. She’s funny and full of stories.

In all it was a worthwhile expenditure of time, effort, and money. I’ve made first contacts with several people whom I’d love to meet again. Hopefully I’ll get to meet them again someday.

The conference did have a few quirks. It was very Mormon, which is to be expected I suppose. At the “follies” the conference director called each of the teachers/guests down and told an embarrassing/amusing anecdote about them. They then called upon those same guests/teachers to take part in karaoke. Some of the guests loved this, some did not. For me it was like watching an embarrassing aunt make a public scene yet again.

At one point I got to listen to the conference directors talk about the time they went to Life The Universe and Everything which is the Science Fiction and Fantasy symposium at BYU. They thought that the people at LTUE were frightening because they wore costumes and were attending classes on weaponry. It made me realize that what feels normal and comfortable to me is possibly very uncomfortable to someone else. I need to write a whole essay on comfort zones sometime.

Anyway the conference was good. Now it is time for me to get back to normal life. I’ve got piles of housework to catch up on. And I need to get back to the actual writing part of being a writer.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Howard and how lucky I am to have him? Last night I was worn and weary. The workshop was exhausting and discouraging because I was not being able to build social networks the way I wanted to. I wanted to be able to walk away from the conference feeling like the editors and agent would recognize me if they saw me again. That is probably not going to happen. Howard kindly reminded me that it would probably be more rewarding to be building a social network with the other attendees, particularly those who live locally. In hindsight this is obvious. I’ve found tremendous joy in connecting with other creative people, but somehow I was so focused on the guests that I wasted two days of opportunities to get to know people. The structure of the conference doesn’t leave much time for just chatting, but tomorrow has some spaces for it and I intend to use them.

My attendance at this conference has really outlined the business aspects of writing. I’ve found myself thinking and planning for my future as a writer. I realized yesterday that I’m planning a career. I’ve never planned for a career before. Being a mother WAS my career. Being a mother still comes first, but the kids are growing up and they don’t need me the same way they used to. I have this developing empty space in my life and I’m filling it up with a writing career. There are other things I could do to fill that space. I could be volunteering or tutoring or decorating my house, but I’m choosing a career. That feels so odd. It requires me to redefine myself. Or rather to make my internal definitions match what I’ve been doing for nearly a year now.

This switch is scary. If writing is just a hobby, then I don’t have to worry about editors or agents or the opinions of anyone else. Hobby writing can just be, without having to be good. I still do some hobby writing, but other projects I want to have recognized, respected. This means I have to care what others think. Caring what others think is frightening because I have no control over their opinions. This makes me want to crawl into a hole and hide. Hole hiding is safe and secure. In fact I’ve been doing just that during this conference. I’ve been coming home and collapsing into a little heap of exhausted emotions. Fortunately I have Howard to pick me up and talk me through it. Then I can go out again the next day.

Why is it that at the conference I can feel confident and self assured, but I do the emotional heap thing at home? It is almost like I’ve deferred all the emotions to deal with later. I would much prefer to skip the whole “emotional heap” step of the process. Yesterday was better than Monday. Perhaps by Friday I’ll have learned how to not do it. I had today free. Tomorrow I’m headed back. I hope I can handle this without unraveling again.

Today’s visit to the writing workshop was not as emotionally wracking as yesterday. This is probably because I did not even try to pitch any of my projects. Instead I viewed the whole visit as an information gathering endeavor. I gathered a lot of information, but most of it only applies to my future projects rather than my current ones. I’m still very tired and very aware how much work this whole writing business is.

I looked on Julie Czerneda’s website and saw that she is out of town for a week, so I emailed the other editor Rob St. Martin. He was glad I did because he’s the one in charge of contracts and had incorrect contact info for me. He told me what he needs and said that he likes my story. So now I’ve had my affirmation that my story is really sold AND I’ve identified the cause of the missing emails as an incorrect address. Yay for no evil email eating gremlins! Yay for story sale! Yay! Yay! Yay!

Ahem.

I should go to bed now.

So today I went to the Writing for Young Readers Workshop at BYU. I was told exactly what I expected to hear and I still came away discouraged. This is because the hopelessly optimistic part of me was hoping that the miracle would happen and an editor would fall all over herself to accept my children’s book. I knew it would never happen that way, but a piece of me is ridiculously disappointed that it didn’t.

Also I am used to meeting honored guests as the spouse of an honored guests. When the honored guests get hustled away to have break from the masses I’m used to getting to sit down with them and really talk. This time I was one of the masses that the guests were hustled away from. That experience isn’t nearly so nice. What I really want to do is have dinner with these people and just talk to them about the business of creating books. Not that I expect that to change whether they print my book, but it is nice to have them meet my eyes and see me as an interesting individual and not just as a face in the crowd.

I’ll go back and be part of the crowd again tomorrow. If nothing else I’ll collect more information. I’m not truly making contacts here, just the beginnings of contacts, but that is still better than nothing. At least I didn’t fold and try to hide during the event. I’ll not mention the fact that I’m currently hiding in my office because I’m totally worn out from doing all that talking to people. The focused meeting and greeting definitely has an emotional aftermath for me. But hopefully I’m beginning to learn the shape of it and will recognize it when I see it again.

I did get to meet up with Emily Sorensen again. I met her several years ago when she and Howard were on a webcomics panel together. She’s a very nice person and I’ll probably hang out with her again tomorrow. Having a familiar face to talk to is nice.

I went to the Writing for Young Readers Workshop at BYU today. I did not get a chance to pitch my book one on one with an editor. I was misled on that point, or perhaps I misled myself. All attendees were invited to submit directly to her, which is good, but not the same.

Over and over I was told that a picture book that already has pictures will be rejected. There are rare exceptions, but not many. I know Angela’s pictures are good, but I hate introducing myself with the assumption that I’m the exception to their preferences. All the editors and agents were very agreeable about looking at previously self published or small press published material.

The going-forward plan that makes the most sense and makes me happiest would be to print the book through Tayler Corp and then submit it to larger publishers at my leisure.

The problem with that plan is that the Tayler family has a finite amount of resources. We only have so much energy, money, time. Any of those things that go toward my project do not go toward Howard’s next book. Howard’s books pay the bills. The logical Tayler corp plan is to push out the next Schlock book while shopping my picture book around to larger publishers.

But I personally contracted with Angela to print her book. The longer this spins out, the more I feel like I’m stringing her along and not doing the work that would get her paid. Part of me argues that my book should not impact Howard’s book because I’d be the one making it all go. Only I’d be using Howard’s layout guy. I’d need Howard to talk to the printer for me. I’d need editing help. Even if I handle all of those things completely by myself (daunting thought) the project would still be using my time which means I wouldn’t be doing the necessary support things to help Howard’s book along.

Shopping to publishers is a process that could last 6 months to a year. If I embark on that process, I have to give up my dream of having books for sale at Ad Astra in March 2008.

While I’m whining, I haven’t yet received any contractual information about the Ages of Wonder anthology. A piece of my brain is now convinced that this means that my story sale was somehow a mirage. Or if it wasn’t a mirage, then I’ll never actually be able to make it happen because emails from Julie Czerneda just disappear into the ether and never get to me. If I hadn’t emailed to ask, I would never have gotten the official invitiation. If I hadn’t emailed to ask, I wouldn’t have known they accepted my story. Now I’ve had to email to ask about the contract. And I’ve gotten no response. Now I’m left wondering if my email even got to Julie. I don’t want to email again and be a nuisance, but I don’t know if she got the first one.

So I’m tired and discouraged and feeling like nothing will come to anything. Logically I know this is ridiculous, but I still want to curl up into a ball and cry. Everything is still pending. I still don’t have any writing in print that I can point to and say “Here is my work.” Yesterday I was going to have a picture book out in July and a short story out in the fall. Today it feels like neither one will actually happen.