writing

I’ve set a goal for myself. By the time that I leave for Seattle (March 27) I need to have a functioning website for myself. It will host some of my stories and other pieces of writing. I will also have a fistful of business cards which direct people to my site. I really wish I’d had this done before LTUE. I definitely want it done before Emerald City Comic Con. I won’t be able to attend much of the con because I’ll have all four kids in tow, but if I do meet interesting people, I want to be able to hand them a card.

To accomplish this goal I’m drafting the help of my web designer brother-in-law. I’ve already got the URL and hosting. He’s created the framework for my site. I just need to get him over here to teach me how to edit what goes into the framework.

I also need to fill the site with content. This means sorting through the things I’ve written to decide what I want to make available online and what I want to hold in reserve for print publication. Some of the pieces will require re-writing to make them a better fit for the website format. I can’t just throw blog entries under the heading “essays” and expect that to be impressive.

I need to get a photo taken. I haven’t had a portrait done since 1999. I didn’t like those portraits. I don’t think I want to go to a studio. I want to barter with a friend or local photographer to do a several hour photo shoot in various locations and several changes of clothing. That way I won’t end up with a single photo that I use for everything, but a stack of photos from which I can pick.

With a website in place I am much better positioned to put myself forward as a professional writer. I hope I can squeeze all this work in around my regular things and the two anthology submissions.

From 1985 by Bowling for Soup

Debbie just hit the wall
she never had it all
one prozac a day
husband’s a CPA
her dreams went out the door
when she turned 24
only been with one man
what happened to her plan?
She was gonna be an actress.
She was gonna be a star...

The lyrics go on to describe how Debbie is fixated on 1985 because she feels like that is the last time that her life was good. The song is amusing, but every time I feel sorry for Debbie. Not because she has failed to achieve her dreams, but because she fails to recognize the dreams she has achieved. What happened when Debbie was 24? Somehow I doubt anyone forced her to get married and settle down. It was her choice. She must have chosen it because part of her wanted to be married and have kids. She dreamed of being an actress, but she also dreamed of being a mother and having a home. She chose the second dream and is now making herself miserable by forgetting why she chose the path that she did. Why is she dwelling on old, lost dreams when she can be creating new ones?

Some people are caught in traps that are not of their own devising. But most of us aren’t trapped at all. We only think that we are. Sometimes I feel hemmed in by all the responsibilities of being the mother of four kids. I feel oppressed by the endless stream of dishes, laundry, and housework. I feel exhausted by the demands that the business makes on me. I feel worn out from the effort of stretching small amounts of money to cover a multitude of expenses. All of these things can make me feel trapped. But I am not trapped. I walked into all of these things with my eyes wide open. My eyes are not the only thing that is open. The door is right there. I can choose to walk out of here any time want to. I continually choose to stay where I am because to walk out from under these pressures would be to abandon many of my dreams. I would be abandoning people I love for things which ultimately have less value to me. Do I dream of success as a writer? Absolutely. But not at the expense of my family life. This means that I may never be a famous author. I’m alright with that because I am surrounded by the wonderful, exhausting dreams I have chosen instead.

Becoming a writer is the process of acquiring skills. Many of these skills are directly related to writing. Skill in grammar, spelling, scene structure, descriptive language, characterization, and plot structure are all obvious necessities of the craft of writing. A less obvious skill is being able to receive criticism and use it wisely. I am still growing as a writer and I will be unable to grow in necessary ways unless I am able to accept criticism and glean useful information from it. Criticism can be painful, so I’ve developed a set of guidelines for myself to help me use criticism constructively.

Critics will see problems with my story that I do not see. I know what I meant to say, but a critic will only see what I actually said. I need to listen when my critic is confused or frustrated by what I wrote.

Criticism must come from two or more sources before I accept it as valid. If a criticism is made that I agree with, then I have my two sources and a change needs to be made. If I disagree with a criticism, I hold onto it to see if any of my other critics comment on the same thing.

If I have two critics with the same complaint, I compare the two critics. If they are both male computer tech guys who write high fantasy, then I can probably count those as a single complaint. However if the same complaint comes from a computer tech fantasy guy and a stay at home mom non-writer, then I should pay close attention to the complaint and change something even if I like it the way it is.

I need to have a waiting period between receiving a critique and responding to it. I should always thank the critics for the time they spent, whether or not I agree with the opinions or make any of the changes they suggest.

An insightful critic is a gem, and should be treasured as such.

Another factor which I use to decide whether to make the changes a critic suggests, is a comparison between the critic and my intended audience. If I am writing for children and the critic complains that the work is too simplistic/childish, that may actually be good news.

Today has been a day for putting things in order. Mostly that has meant housework. It has also involved some small organizational projects. It makes me feel much better about life. I’m also mentally organizing for next week. I sat down and wrote an event by event schedule for Monday and Tuesday next week. No wonder I’ve been going crazy trying to keep up. The schedule is packed. But today I’m putting things in order and preparing in advance so that next week can go more smoothly. This includes housecleaning, laundry, meal planning, and getting extra sleep.

In August I spent some time feeling guilty over all the brain space that I was devoting to writing. I wondered if I should be writing at all because all the creative energy I spent on writing could have been spent on helping my kids. Now it is September and the pendulum has swung the other way. All of my creative energy is being funneled into helping kids adapt to school and into creating a workable system for keeping the household running efficiently. I’m hoping to put writing in as part of that schedule, but it might be a few weeks. I feel really reassured that the needs of my kids have regained precedence over my writing. In the grand scheme, I’d much rather fail as a writer than as a mother.

My sister nancyfulda is a slush reader for Baen and she has lots of good thoughts on writing. Today she has some good thoughts on writing in first person. (http://nancyfulda.livejournal.com/83225.html?view=170009#t170009) I commented to her entry and I’m posting my comment here for my own reference.

Telling a story in first person has the power to draw a reader into the story, because theoretically the reader is sitting next to the teller and hearing the story. Because of that I often spend a great deal of time wondering when the narrator is telling the story. Who am I supposed to be? Is the narrator an old man telling a story of his youth with me as one of his grandkids? Is the narrator a young man telling what happened last week and I’m one of his friends? Those two different situations will radically change the narration of the same story. It should also change the voice of the story. If the narrator is 14 he should not be using the vocabulary of a college graduate. If the narrator is 60 he shouldn’t be using the teenage street slang of today. It may be that none of that information actually makes it into the story, but the writer needs to know it or there will be inconsistencies that will bug the reader.

Also first person removes the fear that the protagonist will fail to survive a life/death situation. After all, he’s here to tell the tale. Unless of course we’re all dead and the narrator is telling this in the afterlife. I’ve seen that done enjoyably.

First person narrators often give brief glimpses into the future. It is a tool that can be handled to amazing effect, but more often isn’t. As a reader I don’t want to end a touching scene by being told that then next time I see this person she will die. The narrator just ruined the suspense and the natural unfolding of the story.

First person narration has a powerful set of tools. Unfortunately powerful tools used incorrectly just make a mess.

Last month I used ljbook.com to create a pdf file of all my 2004 entries. I then used Lulu.com to turn that pdf into a printed book. Today that book arrived. I love it. It is beautiful. There is something truly magic about having my very own words printed in a real book. I’m so pleased with the result that I’m planning to do the same thing to all of my 2005 entries and in January I’ll do the same for 2006. I love having these hardbound copies for me and for my kids. I may even get some copies for family members.

Creating this livejournal book was the first in many steps toward publishing and selling a book of my writing. I needed to see how publishing through Lulu worked. I’m very happy with the result. The next step on the learning curve is for me to create files in Word and translate them into pdf. This is stuff that I need to know so that my projects are not stymied by waiting on someone else.

My currently planned writing/publishing projects:
The book of stories for and by my kids (Won’t be selling this one)
A compilation book of the best of my LJ entries adapted into an essay format. (under consideration, If I do it, I’ll sell it.)
A book of my fiction writing (This one will be for sale.)

Finding out I was a finalist in the Blogging for Books contest made my whole day into a bright and cheerful place. Finding out that I didn’t place in the top three sucked all the life out of yesterday. I wept my tears and today I get to the “moving on” part of the experience. Being a writer means having rejections to weep over.

I want today to be very different from yesterday. I was very task oriented yesterday. Today I want to be more experience oriented. I made a good start by getting outside to garden first thing. Being outdoors is good for me. Then I took our digital camera and followed Patches around the house taking pictures of him. I plan to use these pictures in a personalized story just for him. It will be the story of How Patches Went On A Picnic. He loved being the star of a photo shoot and obligingly posed for all of the story parts.

I’m writing stories for all my kids this summer. The kids are writing stories too. They’re very excited about it since my mother volunteered to buy one story per week for $5. They all have plans for what they’re going to spend the money buying. At the end of the summer I’m going to take the stories I wrote and the best stories the kids wrote, format them into a pdf, and have them bound into a book at Lulu.com. This kind of thing will be great for the kids and will make a great gift for grandparents for christmas.

I knew that the Blogging for Books results would be posted this morning, but I was too busy to check until around 2 pm. That’s when I found out I didn’t place. I was exhausted from the morning. I hadn’t eaten lunch. And my head was still full of Things To Do. My first reaction was “oh well.” For about 20 minutes I honestly believed that I didn’t much care. But all the life had gone out of my day and eventually I realized that I do care. I care very much. I wanted recognition for something that was completely mine. I know I do stuff all day long. I know I do important stuff. Not just important, but critical. All day every day I do stuff. Most of it is for other people. Most of it is invisible. And most of it goes completely unnoticed. Or at least unremarked. I wanted to do something remarkable. I wanted recognition for an accomplishment.

I didn’t get all that I wanted. I need to be content with the measure of success that I’ve achieved. I was a finalist and now I get to try harder.

A week ago I entered Joshilyn Jackson’s Blogging for Books contest. Since then I’ve been trying to play it cool. I’ve been trying to pretend it doesn’t matter. But I’ve also been obsessively reading all the other entries. There was some pretty hefty competition. I particularly liked a story about a Magical Milkcrate. (I wish I had one of those.)

Today the list of finalists aired and I’m one of them! I’m trying really hard not to read too much into the fact that my name is first on the list. I really do hope I win. In part because the books look like fun but also in part because I love my entry and I want to see it do well. Now I just have to wait for the winners to be announced. I hope it’s soon or Joshilyn is going to notice a traffic spike on her site from me hitting “reload.”