Forced to Write

I haven’t written in a while, having spent some time querying and some time prepping for classes and some time traveling the past two weeks. But I’m here at Starbucks, waiting for my husband to show up for lunch. It’s only 10:45 and I expect him here at 11:30. Or noon. And I have to do something.

So I’m forced to write, starting with this blog. The words are flowing out after feeling blocked for the longest time. From here, I’m going to look at Maker’s Seeds and see what might have inspired me in the hiatus and tweak, then find new purchase in the story.

Maybe I should trap myself into writing more often. That should be a good way of forcing me to write.

Rituals (again?)

The semester is approaching, and I’m sitting in the neighborhood Starbucks. Two days until my freedom (such as it was) ends, and my fall semester begins.

Rituals and the new school year

Fall semester, for faculty, begins with an all-faculty and staff picnic at the Pavilion on campus. It’s a ritual, one of many that start the school year. The Friday meetings (I’m booked from 8-4 and expect my eyes to glaze over by then), fireworks, even cleaning my office and buying office supplies I don’t need are my beginning of semester rituals. (I tried to convince my husband that a new iPhone fit the category of something I didn’t need but he didn’t jump on it.)

Rituals as a part of my life

I am a great fan of rituals. Perhaps this comes from my childhood as a marginal Roman Catholic that helped me spot rituals in the least likely places (like a Quaker meeting) and caused me to make my own. Rituals help me focus, help me change my direction or rededicate myself to my intentions.

For example, let’s take the shopping for office equipment. Even though I do almost all my work on computers, I still associate pencils and pens with cognitive work and scissors and markers with creativity. Hence my ritual of buying those for the new school year. To be honest, I do use them (although with the markers, not as often as I should.)

Applying this to writing

I’ve been struggling with writing lately, focusing instead on marketing and this blog and TikTok. I wonder if rituals would help me in writing as much as they help me at the beginning of the semester. A new start, a refocus — I need this in my writing because I have drifted away from writing again.

What would be a good ritual to start me writing again? I asked my husband, whose response was “I don’t know”. Guess I’m on my own for this.

I don’t think I need new pens for motivation. I might need to do something in the office to make it feel more mine and less like some place my husband has sentenced me to. I used to work in the living room, and I felt more motivated because I wasn’t alone. The office is small and cluttered, and there is little to be done about it because much of it is items needing to be filed with no room to file them.

A ritual … I’m going to have to think about it.

Feeling the Tension

I’m once again querying, sending out a manuscript and all the trimmings to agents looking to see if any of them want to represent my book.

It’s a nerve-wracking proposition, especially as I have had no luck so far with getting agents to look. It’s difficult putting one’s best work out there, not knowing if this time it will get some traction. Face it, rejection is difficult to face, and no, I am not used to it.

I’ve sent ten queries out today and I don’t expect to hear from any of them today, as it’s Sunday. Tomorrow, the early rejectors will reply, and I will wait on the others as I send out more queries. I’ve done this before.

I have made some important changes to this version, some having to do with grammar throughout and the more important ones having to do with something I should never have attempted with the story.

Wish me luck!

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

As the End of the Summer Approaches …

I can feel the end of the summer. The County Fair is over, the weather is boiling, and I’ve done all my digital setup for the fall semester. I always do it early, according to my Facebook posts from years past, mostly to prepare myself for the fact that my days will be fuller and more carefree, and there will not be nearly as much free time to write.

School starts August 17, less than a month from now. Meetings start a week before that, and there will (hopefully) be a beginning-of-semester cookout for faculty and staff which represents the beginning of the semester more than any ritual could.

What have I accomplished? I’m a quarter of the way through one book, an eighth of the way through another, and I don’t know which one to write. I have finalized It Takes Two to Kringle, which is waiting only for some last minute putting together before I submit it to Kindle. I have edited an old but (in my opinion) outstanding book called Prodigies, which I hope to send off to agents soon. I neglected my garden again. I relaxed.

Life is good and I passed through the summer doldrums without much damage. Soon I will go through the beginning of semester highs (If this sounds like bipolar, it is, sort of). But it’s my cycle of the year and I will do my best to meet it.

Blessings in Disguise

I have a tendency to feel rejections keenly, thinking that they are a personal judgment of me. But what if they’re blessings? What if they’re there to keep me from really embarrassing myself with a mediocre (or worse) submission?

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I’ve been going over old works I have written. I’ve written so many half-developed character sketches that aren’t stories, so many poems of the same, with no hook. Novels with plot twists that became deal-breakers.

I’m not a poor writer, but I want to be a better one. I want to be accepted for publication more often. Someday I want to have a novel professionally published. This won’t start happening unless I see these rejections as blessings in disguise. (Or even if I do, I suppose, but I’d like to be optimistic.)

A Poem in Retrospect

I have a poem that I think is great — almost. Except for the last line:

Deep Touch

He took me on a tour of the city –

tumbling water and greenbelts

and always, always the wind fluttering flags

in concrete forests. Over coffee at Timmy’s,

he said he craved deep touch,

choirboy eyes showing bleak around the edges.

I asked him how that worked,

nervously eyeing the billowy bed

which whispered raw suggestions in my mind.

He crawled onto the comforter,

A wild brilliant bird. He whispered,

“Wrap yourself around me.” So I did.

I buried my face in midnight hair, and pulled

my arms around his chest — warm, warm

with muscles steel potential under his skin.

He took my hand in his and placed it

over his heart. I felt wind fluttering flags

in a concrete forest inside me.

I dreamed the bird revealed himself in my arms –

A rising phoenix, poised for flaming flight,

melting the tall city buildings in the night.

Without the weight of concrete, I, too, could fly

with wings made up of flags and colorful banners,

with the song I had lost as a child.

Five or more years after I wrote it, I think the last line is disingenuous and a copout. Maybe even everything after “Melting the tall city buildings in the night” is disingenuous and a copout. I begin to think so. The poem is about noise and silence and don’t forget sex.

Let me know what you think

Progress

I got 500 words written today on my book!

Technology Hates Me

I have so many things I need to do today — put up a TikTok video, insert some front and back matter into the latest book, and tweak the cover for the same novel (which will be a Christmas novel, It Takes Two to Kringle, out October 1).

But technology hates me today:

Atticus (a book formatting app) keeps stalling out.
Atticus also is missing its back matter section so I can’t put in an afterword, acknowledgements, or disclaimers in my novel.
Photoshop (where I design my covers) won’t let me copy and paste a picture.
Crazy Video Maker will not let me stretch out the time pictures stay on screen for as long as I need them to.
ProWritingAid thinks I am making run-on sentences. (I am not).

At least WordPress is not throwing hitches in my writing.

And, to be honest, Photoshop functioned well when I figured out I used the wrong command.

But the level of frustration! I had hoped to have my book ready on Amazon (just in case) this weekend, and that will not happen. I hate being derailed.

Oh, well, need to find something to keep me occupied.

Progress!

Now, finally, as the summer winds down, I’m feeling motivated! The book and cover for It Takes Two to Kringle are almost done. I have brushed up my query letter and synopsis of Apocalypse in case I get motivated to query it. I have done little with Avatar of the Maker, but I have reconciled myself with the fact that Leah is going to be a pregnant eighteen-year-old.

I think I’ve said this before — my mind needs to be split between two things for me to be productive in writing. I’ve proven this every summer, when the first half of the summer is free, while the second half sends me chasing down interns and expecting the beginning of fall semester.

It’s possible that this is what it takes to be distracted from my perfectionism. Maybe it’s inertia taking over during free times. Perhaps I just need the dichotomy of work and writing to turn my mind toward writing. The best use of my time is all or nothing. But at least I’m making progress.

Characters First

When I write a story, I begin with the characters, because without them there would be no story. The story is theirs; it’s my responsibility to get the characters and story on paper.

In the current story, Avatar of the Maker, there are three main characters: the sheltered but headstrong eighteen-year-old Leah Inhofer; her devoted half-Archetype boyfriend Baird Wilkens; and Luke Dunstan, a six-thousand-year-old Archetype.

From there, I want to know what their motivations are. Leah’s is to be independent, which seems contradictory to having a child on the way. Baird’s is to support Leah, however possible; another goal is to find his way into a human adulthood. Luke’s goal is to keep a calamity in the Archetypes from happening, weighing potential harm to Leah and her unborn child with harm to humanity if she doesn’t act.

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It’s necessary to get their speech cadence, their mannerisms, their word choice, all the things that make the characters distinctive and alive. Luke keeps pulling his blond hair back in a ponytail and letting it loose. Baird ducks his head sometimes because he’s shy. Leah talks emphatically; Baird talks in a slow drawl. Leah braids her hair tight. Luke’s accent is Yankee.

When I feel comfortable with these, I feel much more comfortable putting in the plot.