Discovering perseverance

Today is post number 976. In a little under a month, I will write my 1000th post.

This is probably the most consistent thing I’ve ever done in my life. Almost every day, I’ve written this blog as a way to reach out and as a way to help manage writers’ block. I guess I’m in it for the long run.

I’m serious about this being the most consistent thing I’ve done in my life (other than things like breathing and eating). I’ve had a habit of being really excited by a new hobby or skill and doing it for a while, but not completing it. Gardening is a good example: I will start seeds of all sorts of edible plants in January through March, plant them, and then give up right around the time weeds sprout. My yields go to zero because I can’t find my plants through all the weeds. I’m not planting this year — I’m letting my raised beds go fallow with tarps on them to kill the weeds.

I wonder if my blogging will help me make more habits in my life stick. One of these is eating more healthy so I can lose weight again (Yeah, I didn’t stick to that too well) and maybe walking. I may have to set New Years’ resolutions (although I hate those). Or maybe I just keep doing the right thing.

Back to Work

My writing time yesterday was taken up by 1) signing the contract to have my poem “Limerance” published in the Winter 2019 issue of Wingless Dreamer; and 2) replacing 56 passwords that Google said had been compromised. This took pretty much all my writing time.

Back to “no excuses but I don’t know what to write” mode. I saw a flash fiction item on Submittable with the theme “Your character feels submerged but valued”. Just about anything in the Archetype universe fits that category. Problem is that I think it’s due today. Or yesterday. Let’s see.

I’m once again not writing another novel by suggestion of an awesome editor I met at Gateway Con (an artist’s conference). The plan is short stories, flash fiction, and poetry until one of the books gets picked up.

So wish me luck.

On My Way Back Home

I’m spending my last couple hours at Starved Rock sitting in front of the fireplace in the Great Hall, soaking up the atmosphere. It has been a good vacation despite my frustrations borne of childhood issues temporarily clouding my perception.

I need to get back to writing. This will be easily cured by a big project in the form of my developmental edit of Whose Hearts are Mountains. The frustration, though, is that I don’t have any ideas on the back burner, neither short story nor novel. I don’t like feeling so tenuous about my attachment to writing.

I need to have a resolution that I will write two hours a day once more. It’s been a while since I’ve spent that much time — no, I take that back; I was writing/editing four hours a day cleaning up Whose Hearts are Mountains in November.

Does anyone have any story ideas I can play around with?

Apprehensive about the dev edit

Maybe I’m a bit apprehensive about my dev edit. My new dev editor says she wrote 2500 words on the first two chapters alone. That’s about half the words in the actual chapters.

I’m afraid I’m going to be overwhelmed with the whole thing. Maybe I will go through the list and come up with short summaries of what I need to do.

I mean it’s a good thing she’s this thorough. I asked for it — in fact, I paid her to be thorough. This is what I want. But it’s still intimidating, and still difficult, and still likely to make me feel like I just can’t write. I’ll need to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and tell myself it’s for my own good.

I will be editing a bit over Christmas at Starved Rock; I always bring my laptop on trips for that reason. But the bulk of this editing will be when I return from my trip.

Wish me luck.

The semester is winding down …

It’s finals week, and after I do some wayward grading, all I have left is the finals, which are multiple choice and computer graded. And then I will be done with the semester and get some quality time with my brain.

I wonder if I will feel possessed to write a new novel? I said I would back down from noveling because I have five I can release to the querying process. I could query — I think it’s been enough time. I could write short stories or poetry. I can’t just sit around and do nothing.

So my break will be at least partially a writing break. It will also be a research break, a class-tweaking break (most of this is, however, done). A sit and pet kitties break. A big coffee break. A sit at the massive fireplace at Starved Rock with a mug of Irish coffee break.

I’m looking forward to it.

Writing and the Art of Concealment

Writing is like performing magic in a way —

Writing utilizes misdirection — sometimes a misinterpretation of facts, or an unreliable witness, or an ambiguity can draw the reader’s mind away from an early conclusion.

Sometimes the omission of one sentence can conceal the plot twist from the reader. Agatha Christie does this well in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the narrator leaves out important actions he has performed.

A hint should not be too obvious, too direct, too revealing. In effect, they’re like the baffling prophecy in Oedipus Rex, where we can’t see how Oedipus is going to kill his father and wed his mother until it unfolds.

At the same time, the misdirection can’t be an outright falsehood, unless that falsehood is in the hands of an unreliable narrator or witness. The writer cannot lie; the characters can lie, or misinterpret, or make mistakes.

I was reminded of this yesterday when editing Whose Hearts are Mountains, because my developmental editor noted that I made something too obvious to readers who would have read my other work. How to make it less obvious? At one place, keeping silent. At another, misdirecting. Making things less obvious at another.

I feel like a magician when I can do this, knowing that words are as concrete or wispy as I need them to be.

Writing for Myself

I think I’ve passed through the other side of my dejection about not getting published. I’ve received enough rejections (for novels and poems and short stories, by publishers and agents and Pitch Wars). What does that leave?

Writing and improving for myself, primarily. Not letting my self-esteem be at the mercy of publishers and agents. Of course, I would like to be published (I have a couple little things published, and it’s fun). I’d like to have a novel published. I’d like to be published somewhere that people actually read.

I’m willing to keep trying, because the rejections aren’t really that painful anymore. I can take more until my writing hits the right person, whoever that is.

Wish me luck.

********

I took off yesterday from writing the blog because I’M ON VACATION FOR A WHOLE WEEK!

Ok, I got that out of my system.

I’m a writer, though. I have things to do over vacation:

Edit one short story for a short story contest.
Edit a couple poems (minor edit)
Edit Whose Hearts are Mountains, which seriously needs a developmental editor because I don’t know if I’m going in the right direction
Rethink this whole writing thing (which I do once a week).

Hope and the writer

An acquaintance told me the other day that every single last one of you are bots.

It may be true — for some reason my readership is down to ten most days. (Probably the fact that I was doing short NaNo updates, which aren’t all that interesting, I guess).

I’m still writing in my blog, and I will keep writing in it for one reason: Hope. Hope is the conviction that there will be better outcomes. It’s what helps us through those things we have no power over — after I have done all the corrections, the dev edits, the query letter improvements, I hope that I will get published. If I keep publishing blog entries and advertising them on social media, I hope I will have readers.

Hope is what keeps me going in the absence of progress.

I don’t know where I’m going

I know I’ve been writing very boring posts lately, and for that I apologize. My justification (not excuse) is NaNo and projects.

What have I been thinking about lately? NaNo and projects. Ok, that’s not a good start to a blog.

I’ve also been thinking about my relationship with writing. On one hand, I’ve hit some very positive rejections that have 1) given me ideas of how to improve, and 2) have said positive things about my writing.

I might actually be taking my writing more seriously than I have before, and with that I wonder more if I can get my writing to the point where it deserves being published. I don’t know if I’ve gotten there with my stories, and I wonder what it would take to get to that point.

I still have some big things out there — I have Prodigies at DAW, Apocalypse at Tor, Voyageurs in a novella contest, a submission to Pitch Wars, and — well, I don’t think I will win any of these. And I don’t know what to think about this.

Writers’ Balk

I woke up this morning not wanting to write.

Actually, it’s an editing day — Whose Hearts are Mountains won’t edit itself. But I am not, as they say, feeling the love.

It might be that the 50k/10 days binge edit of Gaia’s Hands has taken a lot out of me. It could be because it’s a week and a half till Thanksgiving Break and I’m on break already. It could be because I’m discouraged from the latest rejections. It could be because I’m not sure why I want to get published at the moment.

At any rate, I’m staring at the draft thinking, “How do I fix this?” This meaning one of the big flaws of the first half of the book (having fixed the other two) which is pacing.

I was told there was not enough of import happening in the first half, despite the fact that she gets shot at, rammed into, kidnapped, and exposed to a virus. And has flashbacks from being captured by a paramilitary group. You can see why I’m bewildered.

I HAVE to work on it tonight, because I’m having a NaNo Come Write Me space at the Board Game Cafe. So maybe I wait till then.