Christmas is over, and I am back from my holiday trip. New Year’s Eve is coming, and thoughts of the New Year flit through my vaguely ADHD mind.
As I’ve shared on this blog before, I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, finding them a setup for failure. In short, a resolution looks like a goal, but it’s lacking the plan. And without the plan, the resolution fails. Plans fail as well, but built into the best of plans is a feedback loop where the planner diagnoses where and how they’ve failed and reworks the plan to take that into account.
I like the ritual part of resolutions and the clean slate of the new year, however. So I have my ritual. I think of all the things I want to accomplish for the year, and I do a little of each on New Year’s Day as a commitment to those things in my life.
These are the things I will be doing a little bit of on New Year’s Day:
Writing
Work
Leisure
Housework
Quality time with my husband
Petting cats
Promoting my writing
Indulging my warped sense of humor
Showing compassion
Socializing (at least on Facebook)
Although I won’t make any resolutions, I have goals I will pursue in 2023. The goals I have for my writing career are:
Revisit Apocalypse and send out queries
Finish Kringle on Fire and Avatar of the Maker
Develop an advertising plan for my existent books
Develop promo for Gaia’s Hands
Find a Big Audacious Goal
2022 was a low-key year for me. I’m willing to ramp up a bit for 2023.
I have been writing on Kringle on Fire for the last couple of days. Slowly; only 500 words a day instead of my usual 2k, but I have been writing something.
I’m still wading in misgivings about the book, which does not feature firefighter heroics, hunks, or grateful victims rescued from conflagrations. I wonder if I should even bother to write romance novels, because I don’t write heroics, hunks, or grateful victims rescued from conflagrations. My books have good-looking but quirky protagonists, a lot of personality, and odd situations. And big misunderstandings.
I’m afraid my books are not fantastic enough to be romance novels, but I want to write romance novels for quirky people who don’t want their stories to manipulate them emotionally, but want to be woven into a story. It might mean they don’t sell, though, because there may not be a market. I have to write at least this book, because I’m almost halfway through it.
A common piece of advice given to writers is “write what you know”, which is why there are so many books about writers. (This suggests to me that we need to get more variety in writers, because I’d like to read something with some detail about wait staff or electricians, but that’s off topic.)
To grow, however, a writer has to write about what they don’t know. This requires research, not just assuming that you do know. For example, Nora Roberts wrote a novel where, in the prologue, a character in Ireland is cultivating potatoes a long time before potatoes arrived in the Old World, being a New World vegetable. It’s natural to assume “Ireland = Potatoes”, but Ireland didn’t have potatoes till 1589. As much as I like Nora Roberts, here’s a historian’s take on what she gets wrong in one book.
Another example was a Jayne Ann Krentz novel (forget the name) whose male protagonist owned a winery. In this case, she got the details right, but the details were so sparse that the book didn’t have to have a winemaker protagonist at all. In this book, he strolled through the winery, and there was a little detail about a room with big barrels. I, as an amateur winemaker, expected at least a bit about him checking in with his chemist and taking a sample from a barrel to check out the taste. I expected my winery owner to be involved with the winery somewhat, for the sake of romance.
The takeaway is that your reader is going to know the details if you don’t. And the inaccuracy is going to take them out of the story.
Back when I was young, I wanted to write a story based on a long dream I had while sick with a kidney infection. My problem was that it took place “in the desert” and doing the level of research I would need just to show the characters’ interaction with the desert (wherever that was) would have been immense. I didn’t have time for immense research because I was trying to finish up a PhD. So I wrote a couple character sketches and segments of scenes and put it away.
Years later, the Internet made it possible for me to do the level of research I needed to finish the book. I chose the Owyhee desert (alternate future with demise of the US makes it no longer Bureau of Land Management land) and studied the flora and fauna as well as what food animals and crops would do well there for small landholders. I could not have researched that, nor could I have researched experimental underground habitats and water recollection. The book is named Whose Hearts are Mountains, and I’m going to publish it someday.
My advice for writing what you don’t know:
Look up basic facts, making sure that your sources are reliable. For the sake of writing, Wikipedia is usually concise enough, and its footnotes carry more information that will be helpful.
Provide enough detail that your readers are satisfied. This can vary, depending on who your readers are. But assume they want at least some accurate setting and background to feel engaged with your story. In romance, setting and background are one of the ways novels distinguish themselves with their time-honored plots and tropes. In fantasy, believable setting and background help you build a consistent world.
Ask yourself “what are my readers going to poke holes through?” Reinforce those areas with more real information.
Right now, I’m struggling to research the logistics of small town fire departments, fighting fires, and combustion in general. Luckily I live in a small town with a volunteer fire department, but I’m having trouble coordinating with the fire chief. I’ve been reading a lot online, especially things about fire trucks, firefighting gear, uniforms, and mutual aid. I have a couple small details I still need to find out. And this is just background to make sure the firefighting feels right. But I don’t want to write the book that people say “That’s not how it works” about. So it’s time to research.
Sometimes I write because I see it as a method of getting an idea out there into the universe, as if the universe will supply me with something I need to deal with it creatively. Part of my belief system holds that, if one listens closely enough, the answers or comfort or solution is out there. I like whoever’s providing the aid to know what I’m asking. It comes from Quakerism and it also comes from the Christian belief of praying for what you need. I don’t know if I believe in what would be called “intercessory prayer” in some circles wholeheartedly, because my spirituality has become a muddle from the time a psychiatrist diagnosed me as bipolar. But I put words out into the universe occasionally, with some witnesses to hear. That’s you.
My life with the muse
Right now, I struggle with creativity. The spark is gone. I am writing without that burning desire to see what comes up next in my work. Everything I write feels pedestrian. I lay my problem on the muse I have had throughout my career. Muses exist to give motivation. For example, my writing life goes like this:
Inspiration>Obsession>Writing
I assume the muse enters at the inspiration part of the equation. I used to get inspiration from my dreams. My dreams haven’t come from a muse lately. They’ve come from the Karen of my subconscious. In my dreams, I forget little things like showing up for class (I’m the professor) and wearing clothing. I’m doing everything wrong, and I am about to be discovered as a fraud. My bad dreams don’t even have the courtesy of being a dystopic plot line, preferring instead pedestrian impostor syndrome.
As muses are notorious for whipping up their subjects into a creative fury, I lay the problems of my obsession stage on the muse I’ve had as well. The obsession is the need to get into the story to interrogate the dream. I want not just to know the story but to be in it. To be it. It’s an exhilarating feeling, like flight. The obsession part is alright, unless it’s not. I know writers go a little crazy when they write, but my obsessions come with hypomania. I get into mood swings that swing between elation and Subconscious Karen, telling me I’m out of control, as if she fears I will skip class and run around naked. (Thank God I have done neither.) So I don’t get wild, but I fear giving creativity any quarter will cause the calamity I dream of.
Go away, muse
So I fired my muse. Those obsession parts were too wild, and I feared sliding down a slippery slope to a bacchanalia in the middle of the University Ballroom and all those other explosions Subconscious Karen feared. I never have experienced the wild elation since I fired my muse. I miss it sometimes, but it’s nice not having Subconscious Karen around all the time (she’s only around sometimes now, usually when I’m under a lot of stress).
Now I wonder if I can hire a new muse. I don’t want an erratic, frenetic, startling muse anymore. But I want a muse to inspire me without the feeling that I’m about to choose to swing naked on that chandelier. There has to be a middle between swinging on a chandelier and Subconscious Karen.
It’s not about a muse, is it?
Writing this article has been alchemy. I discovered, in writing this, that it was about writing with bipolar disorder. Although I am convinced that I am not less creative with the bipolar meds, I don’t know how to grasp my creativity as readily as I would like to. In a hypomanic state, ideas jump at me and I grab onto them and run. I feel touched by the muse and my self-doubts melt. I feel gifted, and this makes writing easy. Subconscious Karen keeps me from veering off the deep end but makes my life uncomfortable and my mood swings worse. I have given up those things which encourage artificial highs (irregular sleep, extended stress, obsessive crushes) and thus have robbed myself of the muse.
My thought going out into the universe: Help me live with Subconscious Karen in a way that doesn’t rob me of joy. Help me find inspiration without obsession, intensity without disruption, creativity without condemnation.
This is how I’m feeling these past few days. The weather is finally trending cooler, and autumn has arrived. A gentle rain fell yesterday, and I traveled in its chill. I love Autumn — even the rain, especially the rain.
Missouri Hope last weekend was successful, and I’ve heard lots of good feedback, which makes me feel like I’m doing something right.
A couple of things have happened this week to make me chuckle. The Interim President of the university missed me at coffee the other day. I never thought I’d be able to say that. An acquaintance of mine ordered a paperback copy of my latest romance. He’s a retired Brigadier General. So, yes, a Brigadier General is reading one of my romance novels. I should offer to autograph it.
I’m (or rather, my husband and I are) making progress on the latest Christmas romance. He’s supposed to do some background research for me and I’m looking over our notes. Things are going well, and I feel a hiccup of happy in my chest.
Sorry I haven’t written the past couple of days, but I was setting up for Missouri Hope, our big disaster training exercise. Then I was doing moulage for Missouri Hope, which means making up 185 volunteers in two-hour stretches (with two other moulage artists). Then I was recovering from Missouri Hope. It’s the most intense weekend of my year.
So, it’s Tuesday, and I have a spare few minutes to write my blog in-between grading and an online meeting that shouldn’t go too long. I have time to think. Today, I’m thinking of the things I love and the things I do well, which are not necessarily the same things.
I enjoy doing moulage, and I do it well. I know I do it well because I get a lot of compliments and attention for it. Doing moulage gives me a boost. I get high from the attention.
Trigger warning: Below is a simulation of a crushed hand:
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Back to writing:
I enjoy writing, too. I’d like to believe I do it well, but I get little feedback from publishing my writing. Few people have read my three Kringle novels, my fantasy romance novel, or my Vella serial. I’m not sure this has to do as much with my writing as the whole struggle to get the word out about my writing. I’m not good at putting myself out there because I feel insecure about my writing in a way I do not about my moulage. A vicious cycle, apparently — no praise means insecurity; insecurity means I don’t push myself forward; not pushing myself forward means no readers; no readers means no praise.
I need to find a way out of the vicious cycle, because I want to have the relationship I have with my moulage with my writing, something that I both enjoy and which feeds my need for recognition (which is a small thing, actually). I’m willing to entertain ideas …
I have been working on preparing the Christmas romance novel Kringle on Fire with Richard, and we are way ahead of our goals. We are adopting a variation of the method I use to plot a book:
Use a Scrivener template (Romancing the Beat or other variants on the Save the Cat method). I do this because I want to make sure the story develops as expected by the reader.
Write character sheets for each character with appreciable dialogue (Scrivener has these).
Use the writing template in 1) to lay out descriptions of action at each plot point.
Write the book using these plot points as guideposts.
This is the writing method known as plantsing — neither as structured as planning, nor as free-form as pantsing (aka flying by the seat of your pants). We’re planning a bit more than usual because I want to make sure that Richard has enough input into the book to justify co-authorship. (In other words, I want to work his butt off.)
The goal: a decent plan by November 1st so that I have a foundation to write this book. And an enjoyable November listening to Christmas music and writing.
In my family, we have our midlife crises late in life. I’m 59 years old, and it’s past time for me to have a midlife crisis.
I know I was supposed to have one in my forties. But I was a late bloomer. I got married for real at 43, and I had just gotten tenure and promotion a couple of years before. In my fifties, I fulfilled a lifetime dream of writing and even getting published.
Now I’m looking back at my last fifty-something years and asking myself if I should have pushed myself further. I’m looking forward and realizing that I’m too old to be a cougar (mostly kidding here; I’ve had my share of crushes on younger men).
What does it mean to be in one’s sixties? For a woman, I think it means not being taken as seriously. I don’t have to worry about that; I don’t know if anyone’s taken me too seriously, and I don’t miss it. It means not being considered beautiful, and I don’t have to worry about that either. Maybe it’s the beginning of being old, although I don’t feel old.
I’m going to have to figure out some way of having a midlife crisis, though. Buy a red car? Too late. Become a crazy cat lady? Definitely too late. Revamp my wardrobe? It definitely could use one, but I like the fuss-free style I’ve adopted.
Well, here’s a development I couldn’t have predicted — my husband is coauthoring my latest Kringle romance.
It’s an annual tradition (i.e. something I’ve done more than twice) for me to use NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) to write a novel in the Kringle Chronicles, a set of light, quirky Christmas romances with the Spirit of Christmas in the forefront. You can read about this year’s in my latest posts.
Yesterday, my husband was presenting ideas for the coming novel, and I told him that if he wasn’t careful, I was going to have to give him a writing credit. He said “Ok.” After twenty minutes of interrogation, I discovered he wasn’t joking, that he wanted to co-author a romance novel with me.
If I don’t seem like the typical romance novel writer, he seems even less so. A bookish-looking guy, greying at the temples, stocky, librarian. But he wants second billing on this romance novel I’m writing.
He spent a little while this morning blocking out the first five chapters — not so much an outline as chapter synopses — and helping refine characters. He didn’t do too badly. I think this is going to work.
I’m doing more plotting on November’s Kringle book (now tentatively called Kringle on Fire) than I have done on any book up till now. This is evidence that it hasn’t truly grabbed me yet, so it concerns me. The process is usually easier than this, with my characters and plots developing organically during discussions with my husband.
There are benefits to plotting a book, especially if one uses a framework like Save the Cat! or Romancing the Beat. You can find information on these online. One can also find derivatives of Save the Cat! and Romancing the Beat as Scrivener templates. The templates have significant advantages for writers and readers. Writers use someone else’s research to develop the story in a way that makes sense and the structure takes away a big concern when editing. Future readers can find the peaks and troughs of the plot where they expect.
Because I want to write this book for NaNoWriMo this November, and be part of a worldwide group of writers, I’m going to have to write however I can. That, in this case, means plotting.
Words Like Me 