WTF Blogger...

I have had two comments for Nee that were eaten by Blogger. On the first one, I later heard scuttle that all of Blogger went phooie and mine was not the only to disappear. The second one could have been operator error while attempting to post via cell phone.

Nevertheless, I couldn't remember specifics so that I could repost.

I'm off to work but had one bit of wisdom to share. I keep repeating this to myself everyday. "If you're not making progress every day, you will never get to the future you want."

It's been making me actually work on the manuscript I carry with me instead of leaving it in my purse for the next day.

Put-putting along

My output of "official" writing (my Word doc) slowed to a standstill once I hit 1200 words, but I am still jotting notes and individual sentences in my journal for the next bit of this chapter, so I am not dissatisfied with my progress at the moment.

I spent most of yesterday working on a business web site. Our internet service contract includes one free web site, so I am going to get a site for my editing business up and running right away. It will take me a little longer to get the text written for a German-language translation site, but then I would like to have one site that directs to the two options--editing or translating. So that is where my creative efforts are going at the moment, but I hope to be able to switch gears this afternoon and get back to fiction writing.

I changed the background of our blog (duh!), but am not sure I like it. Any feedback, dear readers/seestors?

Surfing instead of writing *sigh*

I read a great post over at The Intern just now about how we as writers shouldn't compare ourselves to other writers. Here's the take-away quote (emphasis added):

You write what you write. You are what you are. And, no matter how anxious you may be to have everybody like you, you’re not going to get there by scrambling to become what you think the world wants. You will never be young enough/old enough/smart enough/dumb enough to please everybody, so you should really just do what you love and let the world take care of itself.

I think that is something we can all keep in mind at those times when we start to lose our sense of fabulousness. Perhaps you really really really want to be published, but it is not going to happen by second-guessing what "the reader" wants. There is no such thing as THE reader, only readers: some like monkey-thrillers, some like Star Trek slash, some like cozy murder mysteries, but somewhere out there will be one or more who like what you write.

First step, take it out and treat it like a story

After more revising--always with the revising!--I sent off the first 500 words or so to Kee, and she gave me some very useful feedback. What I took away from it was a reminder not to be afraid of "telling". There has to be some narration along with all the doing and saying, or my readers are going to be left to their own devices in constructing the story. Then when they get more information later, it may clash with the stories they have in their heads, and that's where I'll lose them.

Then Kee sent me another email with a line-by-line critique, and now I feel like a giant jackass because I hadn't even realized I had mixed up 2 C-names in only 500 words. That might explain some of the confusion, DUH! I think I'll change my C-Cheryl to S-Sheryl, just to keep it from happening again. And did I mention D'OH!?

Ditto Kee

It's funny that Kee posted a link to a blog entry from Janet Reid, because I was mentally preparing a post on that very subject. So here goes...

For me, the crux of the quote by Ira Glass was this:

[Y]our taste is why your work disappoints you.

Recently, I have found myself in a rather unattractive wallowing phase, which is one reason why I haven't been posting here. I don't want to write about it, and no one wants to read about it, so why bother. But if I think back on it, I recognize that I was playing the self-blame game, and the main thing I was accusing myself of was a lack of creativity. "If only I were creative enough, I would be able to make this writing thing work."

That, to use the words of one of my characters, is total bullshit.

When I look at what was really going on, I was regularly going back and considering new scenarios, new contexts, new angles for my story, i.e., I was being creative. It's just that the new scenarios, etc., were not actually to my taste.

In my last couple of posts, I talked about things "clicking" and "falling into place", and they did, *for that particular version of the story*, but that turned out to be a version that was also not to my taste. But that doesn't mean that the effort was totally in vain. It was a good exercise in plotting.

I will admit that it was disappointing to have expended so much mental effort and then not be able to use the fruits of it, but then I remembered that I am the person who will rip out rows and rows of crochet or cross-stitch to fix a mistake, not because it would be glaringly obvious to other people, but because I would know it was there and would be dissatisfied.

I just have to keep in mind that, ultimately, my writing has to please me.

And I am happy to say that once I used my creativity--which I definitely have, thank you very much--and murdered a few of my darlings--that is to say, tossed out some firmly held ideas I still had about who was the main character of my story, etc.--I have come up with a beginning that I am excited about it. I don't have an ending yet, but I am eager to just follow and see where it takes me, and none of my beginnings so far has managed to do that.

*Note to Kee: I will probably be sending it along to you soon, short though it may be.

Hoping I bridge the gap soon

You have to read the April 29 entry. I totally believe this is true.

www.jetreidliterary.blogspot.com