I don't feel like writing. Does that mean I'm not a writer?
from Cary Tennis’s advice column on Slate

I printed this out, because this line in particular really made an impression on me:
“But I have observed that mastery of a craft is personally satisfying, and that failure and frustration are not.”

I have been in a bit of a funk lately, which I mentioned in my last post. Getting advice at third-hand from the Internet seems to have been my only connection to writing recently, and it didn’t feel good. It made me feel like crap.

But I have realized something about myself. Look at my description of myself on my user profile:
“I am a wife, mother, master's student, freelance copyeditor, and aspiring writer.”
I have been doing a shitty job of actually *being* the last three. It is so much easier to just *think* of oneself as something than to actually do it. And I hadn’t exactly realized that was what I was doing. It’s not as simple as it sounds.

Take, for instance, the statement, “I am a master’s student.” Yes, I am enrolled in courses, which I attend. Yes, I think of myself as intelligent. But I must admit that I have not been engaged in my courses. I complained about not knowing what was going on in one of my classes, but that is because I was not putting the necessary work into it. I was doing the bare minimum and expecting to be able to coast on my brains and my ability to read English. I wasn’t actively engaged with the material, and that is why I scraped by. For someone who considers herself to be intelligent, that was a really dumb thing to do.

Same thing with writing. *Thinking* about writing and actually *writing* are two different things. So it will take time. It will take effort. But doing it will be “personally satisfying”, as Mr. Tennis says above.

Now I must work on the paper for my class that I scraped through.

I haven’t managed to sit down and crank out a complete story, but I have been putting words on the page, so that is a start. So far I’ve managed to write more than 5 words *each* on:

my Godred story
my dragon fetishist story
my children’s book (not fantasy)
my Cinderella story

For whatever reason, I have been in a bit of a funk recently. If I manage to write anything, I immediately develop a block/aversion/something that keeps me from progressing. I guess I’m just mental.

And more advice from someone more experienced than I:

Slushmaster (at Realms of Fantasy): „A Reason to Keep Submitting“
The point is, for all you fledgling writers out there, you have to keep submitting. There is a good chance that if you refine your writing skills to a publishable level there will always be that one editor who doesn't get/connect with your stuff, and your stories will be rejected no matter how brilliant they are, and no matter where else you've been published. But, and this is the most important part, one rejection from a market tells you absolutely nothing. You have to keep submitting, over and again. Some of these markets will keep sending you standard rejection letters. It doesn't mean you should stop submitting to these places, but if you've received a dozen standard rejections in a row, now you can safely assume this will be a tough market to crack. Meanwhile, if by your second rejection from a good market the editor is telling you "try us again," well, your chances of cracking this market are obviously better. But you'd never learn this by giving up after one rejection.


And in the comments to the above, someone helpfully linked to the following:
James Van Pelt, from "Perseverance, Publishing and the Urge to Write"
I have never sold a story to the first market that saw it. However, last year I sold a story that had been bounced thirty-one times previously.

Not much to report on writing, just dribs and drabs, but I thought I would pad, ahem, enhance the content here with bits and pieces from other people's blogs. To get you (and myself) thinking, not just to hijack content.

Jay Lake, from his blog post “Goals, Behaviors and the Writer's Mind”
There are so many writers I know who have high minded goals, but don't align their behaviors with those goals. "I'd like to be published by the time I'm [age]." "I'd like to sell this novel." But they don't write consistently, or submit consistently, or seek out paths to improve their work. Almost all of us writers have an astonishing capacity for self-deception, and it gets deployed to great advantage in this arena.

My suggestion is if you feel you aren't achieving your goals as a writer, examine your behaviors. If you want to be published, are you writing consistently? Sending those stories out? If you want to be a novelist, are you working on novels? It doesn't matter what you're goals are, only that you understand them.

Hey, don't knock spending large amounts of time in bed or in the shower (or extra large bathtub). I prefer the bath for creative thinking but you have a point about losing the thread while spending pesky minutes drying off. Fortunately for me, the bath (and the handy shelf next to it) lend themselves to quick jotting of important notes.

I have no time, and lots of urges, to write. Isn't that my luck!

I picked up something I had started writing as a whim between editing my most complete work and threatening to throw it out, and I was surprised at how much I liked it. Oops, I forgot what I had written at the end, but it was definitely some good stuff.

Maybe I need some more bathtime so I can finish it.

I do all my best thinking in the shower. (1) Unfortunately, by the time I dry off and dress, those brilliant thoughts are long gone, washed down the drain. But today, I managed to hold on to a glimmer or 2; I hope that’s enough to find my way back to the original ideas.

First, I’m not sure I can pull off my Godred story in first person. I’m afraid I just don’t have the chops for it. BUT, I don’t intend to throw in the towel without at least trying. One piece of writing advice I have never been that enthusiastic about is doing a character interview. Now, however, I think that is exactly what I need. I don’t think I have a firm grasp on Godred’s voice, and that is what is tripping me up on the beginning. I still may go back to third person, but first I’m going to let Godred tell me about himself.

I love analogies. I explain everything via analogy, and a new one came to me today. I was thinking of the differences between short stories and novels, and it seems to me that the main difference is not so much one of length or scale, but of the level of immersion. In a short story, you get just a snippet, a snap-shot of a small part of a much bigger world. It’s like jumping into the ocean without any gear, taking a quick look underwater, and climbing back in the boat. Afterward, you could only describe a small part of that undersea world; your description might be beautiful and detailed, but it can only encompass a limited amount.

For a novel, you get a scuba suit and two full air tanks, or a submarine. You have the time and space you need to immerse yourself. (I seem to have a water-theme running today.)

So in summary, all thinking and no writing, as usual.

(1) My former boss, a PhD in education, once told me that people are most creative when in a womb-like environment, frex in bed or in the shower. Haven’t you ever had a brilliant idea right as you’re dropping off to sleep? She’s definitely on to something, but it doesn’t really seem feasible to spend large amounts of time in bed or in the shower trying to boost your creativity.

I managed to stick with my resolution of keeping work and home separate for the first week, and then I fizzled out. I still intend to keep it, but it is proving very tiring.

I read Septimus Heap, Book One: Magyk this week. It is a kid’s book, labeled for age 12 and up, that I found while looking for books for Hannah at the library. I thought it was well-written and inventive. I did figure out the twist ending early on, but that is my forte. (I knew the “big secret” in The Crying Game the first time the love interest, Dil, appeared on the screen.) Anyhoo, I liked it well enough that I stayed up until 11 one night to finish it, something I try not to do since I know I sleep like crap if I stay up past 9:30. I am 2 weeks away from the end of the semester (and finals), so I can’t go back and dissect it the way I would like to, but I plan to recheck it over the break and see if I can’t put my finger on what I really like about it.

I have become, not obsessed, but close, about my Godred story. I have rewritten the first bit about 5 times in the last few days, because I know that once I hit that, I will have the formula for finishing the damn thing, but I just can’t find the right...style? voice? I don’t know, and not knowing is driving me to distraction.

I figure since the writing content on this blog has been (and may continue to be) somewhat sparse, I could include my book list here instead of on my personal blog. Reading and writing go together like peanut butter and jelly (mmm... pb&j), and writers are readers first, so I feel that it is a natural extension of the original purpose of this blog.

The public library here has very few books in English (Duh! It's Germany!), and even fewer I recognize the authors of, so it has been a bit hit or miss, finding a book I enjoy. Beyond the books I already own, I mean.

I recognized Things Fall Apart, but I don't think I had ever read it before. (I think John read or saw a movie version of it when he took an African literature class back in the day.) It was very interesting, written from the perspective of an African (in what was to become Nigeria) during the period of European colonization. I liked it, but I didn't get really excited about it, if that makes sense.

For my next book, I gave Paul Doherty a try. He has a whole series of medieval novels, according to the book jacket, and I like historical novels, both fictionalized history (I, Elizabeth, Girl with a Pearl Earring) and fiction in a historical setting, so it seemed like a promising choice. But I was just not impressed. All the characters sounded roughly the same, and the description didn't manage to pull me in. Sad to say, I skimmed the bulk of it. The story is actually a murder mystery in a medieval setting, and I wanted to see how it ended, which is the only reason I stuck with the skimming instead of putting the book back in the library book basket.

Welcome to the newly remodeled site! I had faffed about with the old version so much that it was looking a bit ragged. Blogger has made some upgrades recently, so I was able to make this new version look how I wanted it to without having to write my own HTML. Woot!

Despite the rush online to declare one's writing resolutions, I have decided not to make any. My big problem is time management (i.e., getting my work done instead of farting around in the guise of housework), so that is what I am actively working on at the moment. I'll eventually figure out how writing fits into my schedule, but for now I am militantly sticking to work hours M-F, 8-5, for schoolwork and teaching, and weekends for household stuff and personal stuff like reading.

I bought a small spiral notebook and am trying to contain all my writing in it. One bad habit I have is procrastinating via organizing my various bits of writing. Since I am not actually trying to do anything in particular with all the bits and pieces anytime soon, I might as well just keep it all together in one place until I have enough to constitute a story or a blog post, and then type it up. Besides, I like to view my writing output by volume of paper instead of by the number of words.

Otherwise, I am still lurking on the writing site and trying to decide whether to filter one asshat to the trash. I don't know when he actually has the time to write fiction, because each one of his posts is a tome. He also attracts flames like 3-year-old lumber, so I don't know why he sticks around, unless it is to poke the hornets' nest some more. For every 1 thoughtful, useful post, he puts up 9 or 10 inflammatory posts. My finger is wavering over the keyboard on this one, but even if I filter him out, I can go back and read the archives online if I see a response to one of his posts that would make it worth my time to go back and read the original. And if I don't filter him out, I'll know which threads he started so I can delete them en masse. hmmm...

BTW, Kee: The new version of Blogger requires a Google Mail password. I don't know if Blogger will set you up with that when you try to log in, but let me know if you need me to send you an invitation for a gmail account.

Needless to say, there's no writing news for Nee or Kee. I am 2 days away from flying to the States for a xmas visit, and Kee is recuperating. Maybe one of us will get her shit together in the new year (I'd put my money on Kee *g*).

I’m making some progress on Godred. I think I have finally reached a turning point. Earlier, I thought what I was writing was good, but now I think what I am writing is *right*. There is a big difference.

***

You’d be surprised at how often real life tosses you a nugget that applies directly to writing. I don’t mean, “Ooh! Shiny! Something I can plop as a detail into my story.” I think anyone who disconnects themselves from the flow of habit/daily life can have one of those moments where you see your surroundings with fresh eyes. (Or if you live in Austin, can notice that it is slowly morphing into Dallas. *ugh*)

I am taking a teaching class this semester, and we were talking about reading strategies for foreign language learners. One way to help them understand more of what they read is to help them use their knowledge of the world to decode what is one the page. We don’t just have disconnected bits of info about the world floating around in our heads. We make connections between them, or organize them in other ways. One way of doing this is by means of “schemas” and “scripts”.

Schemas are like a diagram; they include all the most pertinent information about a thing. Take a move theater, for example. Most American (and German and French, from what I’ve seen) movie theaters have posters and a ticket booth out front, a snack bar inside, someone to tear your ticket, one or more screens/theaters, rows of plush seats, sticky floors, etc. If someone says “movie theater” to you, all of these things are activated, so to speak.

Scripts are a sequence of actions, like a movie script. For the script “going to a movie”, you can expect certain things to take place, with little variation. If you go to a movie, you will need to buy or pick up a ticket, walk past the snack bar (with or without snack purchase), find the right theater, pick out a seat, the lights will go out, you will watch previews, then the film, then the credits, and so on.

This real-world knowledge on the part of the reader is something a writer has to keep in mind. If you describe every part of the movie theater, or every step in going to a movie, the reader will be bored out of his skull, because he already knows how it will go. I guess if you were writing about a person who had never experienced these things, you might be justified in such extensive description, but then again, you may just be writing a rip-off of _Splash_. *g*

You can ground the reader in the setting with just one or two small details that let him know, “Hey! Movie theater here!” For example, two characters converse while waiting in a stupidly long snack-bar line, or complaining about the lack of a favorite movie-going snack, or laughing at the trailers. *Your* mental movie theater may not be the same as the reader’s, but the reader will get that much more out of your story if you let him use his own as the background to *your* story.

But if your character is at a 3D movie or the IMAX, I think that would be an important detail to mention, because that is additional info about the character, not just the setting. When I think about 3D movies, I think “camp.” When I think about IMAX, I think “educational” and “expensive”. Those associations (which are personal and not the same as schemas or scripts) add a little more nuance to a character.

On the other hand, it is easy (and the 7 Dwarfs know I do it) to not put in enough info, or put in the wrong info and lead readers astray. WesTexGirl pointed out in an earlier version of Godred that she got that he was on a college campus, but she couldn’t tell for certain if it was supposed to be a modern or pseudo-medieval setting. I wanted the reader to be able to “plug into” the story, but I didn’t give her enough info to do that sufficiently, and that made it less enjoyable. No one wants to be in limbo, even when reading a made-up story.

For the record, the next time I ask someone to read my pitiful 2 pages of output, just pat me on the head and send me on my way. I haven't even heard back from WesTexGirl, and I am already revising what I sent her, so the whole issue of feedback is a moot point. GAHHH!

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.' -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

Sorry to miss a post for last week. I haven't gotten back to my story. Which I think is okay because I am looking for that perspective that only being away from it awhile will give me.

And I have been busy getting ready for, going on, and recuperating from my shopping trip with Anna and Lisa. That said....Christmas is done!!! Nanny Nanny Boo Boo, Stick your head in ... well you get the idea that I'm rubbing my greatness in your face. Sorry about that. But shopping early for Christmas is my 'thing' that I get to brag on.

But I plan to get back to some writing. And reading. I'd love to read what you have done.

Oh, I've also got to decide on taking a job. I went on an interview for a part-time/seasonal tax accountant. And they recently found they need some part-time bookkeeping work too. They sound really family friendly. But when they checked my references, the firm I used to work for here in town called me and said, "If you're wanting to go back to work, come work for us." So as of right now, I have two offers on the table because the interview one called and wanted to make sure I was still interested in coming to work for them and offered me a position-without specifics yet.

But whatever I do...I have to keep time for writing.

Wish me luck.

I typed up what I had written on Godred and ended up with 509 words. It was a lot more than I expected. It is pretty different from earlier attempts, but I am having a hard time telling if the changes are an improvement. Maybe someone would like to volunteer to read my 509 words (hint, hint)?

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Despite having an ass of fire, I have managed to do some writing on Godred and my Cinderella story. It feels good to put words on paper, but who knows how long it will last. So says the Realist Nee.

Words of wisdom from Miss Snark:

The Daily Tao of Snark

1. You are not your work

2. An agent is not a dream

3. The SASE is the path to bewilderment; as is no SASE

4. There is no why in no, there is only no

5. There is more than one path to yes, all obscure; all dangerous.

6. Nitwittery abounds.

7. The end is only the beginning.

I want to say that I am very proud of Kee for getting back in the swing. It can be hard after an extended absence, but I am glad that her writing was calling to her again.

Which is a bit of hand-waving to draw attention away from the fact that I am not managing any writing myself. It is kind of frustrating, because I actually have some time for it, but I can't seem to get past certain scenes, or more than a line here and there of a story. Oh well. It's not my career, at least.

Here's my sporadic post as promised.

Since last week I have completed my review of chapter one. Reworking has put a new spin on it somewhat, but not as much as an earlier attempt to make it more chick-lit like. I think it makes it a bit more modern and takes out some of the woe-is-me feelings for Breck. And it gives it more of a hook.

I have let it set for a few days and want to re-read what I've done over the weekend to see how I feel about it.

I have been skimming my outline and trying to find a good place to add some Dusti scenes. Hopefully that will gain me some ground on feeling like it's up to par.

I've sent in an email to Miss Snark asking her opinion on the Harlequin submission process stating that they take unagented submissions. Maybe she'll have something positive to say and I can take that route.

We'll see.