Tag: writing

Indolent Days

Hours stretch into nothingness on a hot Sunday — no reason nor inclination to go out, no desire. But I do desire — it’s time for me to finish a long, drawn-out wrestling match with a novel.


I spend a long day writing in the corner of the living room, held in a bubble where the outside world with its triple-digit heat index doesn’t touch me. I triumph over the tangle of words I sorted out to create this story.

In this, I have privilege, a virtual room of my own and the space to be creative, an air conditioner in the heat, time enough for timelessness. 

What can I give in return? Gratitude for this moment, this place, this space in the universe. Time and heart to help those who struggle. My words, that they may comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as Mother Theresa once said*. 


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*To those who object to my quoting Mother Theresa, I agree that Mother Theresa was a disturbing figure who had the means to lift her afflicted charges rather than comfort them, yet did not because she believed that suffering glorified God. As such, she has much to answer to. On the other hand, her statement makes a great mission statement even though she failed to live up to it.

Wait for it.

So what happens when you come out of an affirming moment into ordinary life?

If you’re me, you feel like someone launched you out of a cannon into … a field. A muddy field. In the middle of nowhere. With cows placidly munching on grass.  

“What should I be doing in this field?” I ask, realizing that a chair and my laptop have materialized in the field beside me. I sit down; the chair sinks into the mud about an inch or so, and I realize these shoes will never be the same. 

I set myself to writing on a story, but I don’t know which one to write on — the serious rewrite of Gaia’s Hands? The attempt to write a short story out of the long lost Gaia’s Eyes?  Some other short story? A new novel? 

I ruminate: Will I ever get an agent? Will I ever get published? Is there a reason for all this? Is this God’s will? Is there really a God, and if so, doesn’t She have something better to do than land me a writing career? A placid bovine eyes me with sympathy.

Restless, I stand, setting the laptop on the chair. The cows low about me. Disgruntled, I take a deep breath and remind myself:

I am out standing in my field.

Working on a marketing plan

Even if I don’t have a book to sell yet, I (optimistically) will. So I’m going to start playing with a marketing plan here.

Who is my audience — other than my current followers here? 

  • Readers of intelligent contemporary fantasy/magical realism.

 Where do I find them? (I have 20 regular readers of this blog and 100 readers of my page on facebook — I don’t think new people will find me if I don’t look for them).  So where are they hiding?

  • fantasy writer groups on facebook
  • fantasy READER groups on facebook

  What will I talk about?

  • being a writer
  • progress on books
  • anything published

 
How will I present the message?

  • craft messages/blurbs about my writing
  • consider excerpts of my work
  • use hashtags: #gardenofeden #archetypes #prodigies #talents #fantasybook
  • use instagram and twitter (I hate twitter; I don’t ever have good pictures for instragram, but time to up my game)

   How often will I send messages?

  • continue to blog/hootsuite the blog to twitter and facebook daily 
  • newsletter monthly

 Ha! A marketing plan!

The Conference

Sorry I haven’t written for a couple of days, but I’ve been busy busy at the conference. It’s been a very positive experience, and here are some of the things I’ve learned:

  • A lot of the people here write science fiction and fantasy. And the stories are all very different from each other.
  • Character may be more important than plot in hooking an agent in.
  • My work is good — I was told by one editor that my work was “going places.” I hope so.
  • The same editor told me I need to back off on the novels (high effort) and start writing some short stories to submit to journals. I have 5-6 novels, none sold yet. He is probably right.
  • The same editor teased me about my character padding her calves to look like a man, saying that several females he knew had more muscular calves than he did. Well, shit.
  • Comp titles (“Twilight meets Hunger Games”) really exist for a reason.
  • I made a friend who’s about my age who introduced me to Broad Universe, a writing space for women (love the pun) and might get me into a critique group if there’s a space. 
  • I made another friend in Kansas City (about my age) who writes stuff with similar worldview quirk (turning mythologies on their head).  
  • I need to put the fact that I was a runner-up in Cook Publishing’s Short Story contest in my query letter.
  • I need a business plan
  • I need a marketing plan (this blog is part of it)
  • I need to quit using so many dashes — and ellipses …
  •  The conference has coffee service ALL DAY.

That’s probably not everything, but the experience has been affirming and I’m a little giddy thinking about it. I’m sure the impostor syndrome will take hold tomorrow, but for now, I feel like a writer.

How I started writing novels

Well, I finally wrote/revised for three and a half hours yesterday, fueled by copious amounts of coffee. I didn’t accomplish that much word-wise — maybe 1500 words at most. But I think I’m getting closer with Gaia’s Hands. Lots of work to go, though.

Gaia’s Hands is my first novel. It’s always been a problem child of a story. When I wrote it, I had no intention of writing a novel. I had written a short story based on a dream I had about an encounter between myself and a younger man. (If you think the dream had to do with the fact I was approaching my 50th birthday, you’d be right. And the dream was far more bizarre than anything I wrote from it.)

I wanted to know more about the dream, so I started doing a Gestalt dream analysis method where one tells the story from the viewpoint of the different characters, and even the important inanimate objects of the story. (I didn’t go that far). During this set of writing exercises, a story developed. And then another.

After the third story that developed from the dream, my husband Richard looked at me and said, “You’ve got all these stories. Why don’t you write a novel?”

I had never written a novel before because I think in terms of short stories — small plots with big twists, big themes. Novels have big twisty plots, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to plot those. I wrote Gaia’s Hands anyhow. Its original name was Magic and Realism, and it was heavy in theme and extremely light in plot. It was basically a love story, and although I have nothing against love stories, the characters did little more than hang out together.

And then I wrote more novels, some of which collapsed into each other (For example, Magic and Realism became Gaia’s Hands, and then it subsumed another novel during the same time period called Gaia’s Eyes and that’s the novel I’m currently re-editing) and somehow I got better at writing big twisty plots.

It’s been a lot of hard work editing and re-editing, and then getting help editing from a developmental editor and re-editing, but I’ve learned my goal has shifted from getting published to getting good, then getting published. I don’t want to grow to regret anything I’ve published.

I guess now I can call myself not only a writer, but an author, because I have devoted myself to growth. And it literally, cliche notwithstanding, started with a dream.

Questions I ask myself

Questions I ask myself while writing:

  • Do my characters ring true?
    • Do their emotions and actions fit their character?
    • Does their trajectory make sense?
    • Do I care about my characters?
  •  Does the plot deliver?
    • Does the plot build in suspense?
    • Does the action make sense as it unfolds? 
    • Do consequences logically follow actions?
  •  Does the story flow?
    • Is the time and scene progression clear?
    • Does it avoid getting bogged down?
    • Is too much going on at once?


I feel discouraged looking at all these questions — how can I manage to do all this? Much of this happens subconsciously, or by trial and error. Sometimes it’s hard, because I don’t (obviously) write the whole book at once, but by bits and pieces. A lot of this I miss with my own tired eyes, which is why I have a dev editor and I let others read my stories.  

So in actuality, it’s a matter of trusting myself, trusting the process, and just writing.

Routine and Discipline

Scheduling writing has been a pain lately. Remember yesterday, when I was so excited to write? By the time I drove around Kansas City, visited an intern, and wrote a major homework for my online class, I was no longer in any shape to write.

But that’s why I write the blog every morning — so at least I’ve written something. No matter how short, no matter how trivial, no matter how moody. No matter how much I don’t feel it.

Without routine, I would forget I was a writer during busy times like these. I would forget how to write and all the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I would lose my identity as a writer. 

In other words, even when I don’t write, I write.

Excited about Editing

I really want to get done with my work today (readings for online class, taking the Introduction to National Incident Management System course and exam, driving to Kansas City, visiting an intern). I REALLY want to get done with my work today.

I’m very excited about where Gaia’s Hands is going.

I knew there was something wrong with it before, but I didn’t know what. But after editing Apocalypse and understanding that it got into the plot too quickly, I realized that Gaia’s Hands needed buildup in the early chapters as well, but in its case, the beginning meandered and the plot appeared out of nowhere.

So I’m excited about the editing. I’m excited about seeing what is possible for the book now that I have a handle on editing. There’s going to be a bit of editing. 

But I’m looking forward to editing.

Powered by Science and Coffee

I need coffee.

I’m still at the conference; I will be presenting my poster on “Do Euphemisms Influence Car Buying?” (The answer is No) this morning and maybe get to the zoo this afternoon. 

I’m getting everything done except my writing/editing but that’s to be expected. Not enough brain cells for the writing. 

But at least I’m getting this out today. 

Discipline in a time of busyness

I might write irregularly over the next few days, as I am traveling to a conference in Washington DC to present a poster. This is for my day job, being a professor of human services and the internship coordinator for the department.

This summer is proving busier than I had counted on. Evidence:

  • Richard and I have two moulage gigs this summer, one in August and one right around the corner on June 4-5th. 
  • I have twenty interns to supervise; next week I’m spending an overnight in Kansas City to visit two or four of them.
  • The garden! It’s not quite done yet; I’ll be spending next Tuesday finalizing it. 
  • The summer class I’m taking (Management of Disaster Mental Health, which is more interesting than I thought) rolls right along like a Mack truck, and I’m working hard to keep it from rolling over me.
  • Writing? Writing! I almost forgot about that! I will write any chance I get — if nothing else, I’ll write in the blog at least once.

It’s all about discipline. I am a writer because I keep the discipline to write. I write at least the half-hour a day it takes to maintain this blog, and hopefully at least an hour of writing/revising a day. 

I notice myself improving, and that’s a good thing.