Mood and writing status today …

I need to write on Prodigies today.
I’ve been getting work done in other places — taking the class is most important; editing what my betas are telling me about my books is important (I love fixing problems!); writing this blog is important, gardening is important …

Writing Prodigies is important, So why is this getting none of my attention? Because it’s been difficult getting my mind back into it. Yes, it still bothers me that I haven’t gotten published, and I do lose my motivation to write, especially when there are so many more things I want and need to do.

But I finished my weekly class activities the first week of classes, and I’ve set up 1/3 of my internship visits up. I’ve gotten the basic layout of my renovated class together, and I have to wait till later in the summer to get the rest done. I’m antsy — I don’t want to spend all my spare time vegetating on the couch.

So I’m a bit cranky today. I’m working on it.

A Pattern to my Days

As a professor, summer has a different pattern than the rest of the school year. The belief is that professors are “off for the summer”, and that’s generally not true for the faculty I know. The focus of our work changes, and we teach more concentrated courses and hold our office hours in Starbucks. We do research projects and revamp classes and write, and we may supervise internships and field experiences.

I’m currently splitting my days into three parts. Early in the morning, instead of writing this blog, I work on the next week in my drastic revision of People, Money, and Psychology. Instead of running it as a cognitive psychology class about money, I’m creating a class about poverty and all the ways it’s not just about lack of money. I’m two-thirds the way through the lesson plans. The rest is easier once I have a shape to the class.

After that, I write the blog. Not that I don’t love all twenty-something of you, but I have to give my freshest coffee-fueled brain cells to the classwork first. I haven’t felt too inspired lately on the blog front, and I apologize.

Finally, my day is split between getting some sort of walk in, editing Voyageurs, and planting plants in my soon-to-be amazing garden.

So what are you up to today?

Editing, as much as I dislike it, may be where the magic happens.

Writing is delightful, full of beginnings — meeting the characters, exploring their world, setting them on an adventure. Writing feels like the first of May — trees in bloom, journeys started.

Editing feels like carving into a knotty tree with a chainsaw. Every spare subplot, every awkward sentence, every cliche causes the saw to buck. And then, when all the negative space is trimmed out, the question becomes whether or not what’s left is the true seeming of the story.

I had a revelation about where a couple of my stories (novella? novel?) should go, and I’ve been wielding the chainsaw lately. I think they’re getting better. I think. It’s sometimes hard for the one with the chainsaw to judge.

Where Did I Get Lost?

Once upon a time — no, I’m not starting a blog with something as lame as “once upon a time”!

Then again, it is like a fairy tale — but I’m up to the part with the swamp, and the rodents of unusual size, and Baba Yaga with her hut on chicken legs trying to put me in her cookpot …

I’ve been writing all my life. My first recognized work was that Groundhog Day poem my third grade teacher posted on the classroom door. I’m not sure my sister, ten months older, has ever forgiven me for a day full of “Did your sister really write that poem?” It was the first time I’d been complimented on my writing.

My eighth grade English teacher kept all the poems I wrote in a folder, and gave them back to me when I graduated eighth grade. She told me to keep them, so I did. If she hadn’t told me that, I would have thrown them out, because I hadn’t gotten any indication from my parents that they were important.

When I was in high school, the people who sat around me in General Business class — well, let these lyrics speak:

John told me he would marry me

Right in the middle of Civics class –

I guess I never believed him;

You had to know how I was –

A girl who hid inside her coat

And startled at shadows, wrote poetry

That Marsha and Tammy read to him –

But I never wrote a poem for John.

John and Tammy and Marsha told me I needed to get published someday, and I realized that getting published would be a way to get the recognition that was so rare in my home life.

In college, my repertoire for poems (and later lyrics) fit one of two categories: “life sucks” and “there’s this guy.” Nope, I forgot the third — “life sucks because there’s this guy”. My first college boyfriend broke up with me on my birthday because he met a woman at a party he liked better. But, according to his fianceé, he kept all the poetry I wrote him, even though he “didn’t understand it”.

I was once a singer-songwriter, during grad school, until I divorced my guitarist. It was the first time in a long time where I was allowed to bring my writing out in the open for recognition. Those lyrics above were from that era, and time spent in open mic and in jam sessions exposed people to my writing.

It was only a few years ago that I wrote a novel. My first novel exists because I kept writing short stories around a dream I’d had, and my husband (not the guitarist) told me I might as well write a novel, so I did. And then I wrote more, and I improved, and I had a pile of novels on my hard drive. Three things occurred to me as I wrote novel #5:

1) These were novels, which were things that publishers actually liked to publish!

2) Nobody would ever see them unless I published them

3) I was hungry for recognition on my writing, and I hadn’t had any for 20 and a handful of years.

(Recognition, as you might have guessed from reading this essay, is a difficult subject with me. According to my mother, she never complimented me on anything because I was a gifted student who read at age 3 and she was afraid I’d get a “swelled head”. Instead, the school district treated me like a little prodigy and the praise I got from them wasn’t enough because it wasn’t from my parents.)

So I explored getting published. I started the traditional method, which was sending to agents, and I got a bit bucket full of electronic rejections. I wrote to a couple publishers directly, with equal results. I tried Kindle Scout, and neither time were my books ever regarded highly enough to pull into contract.

I decided to try Wattpad after a friend’s suggestion I publish something there, and I came out of terribly disillusioned. It appears that if one wants to be seen on Wattpad, one must carefully calculate how to “sell” the book. I admit that I have no talent for selling things — my pitch tends to sound like “well, if you have to read a book, you might not mind mine.”

So now I’m at a crossroads. Not as in “Will I keep writing?” but as in “How can I try to be heard/read without losing my humanity?”

Any suggestions welcome.

Discovery

Why am I writing?

The first and most important reason is that when I quit, my characters call me back until it becomes an obsession. The less I write, the more ideas pop in my head. Or ideas on how to edit an old story to make it better haunt me (I’m probably ready to embark on the sixth iteration of editing Gaia’s Hands.)

The second reason I write is because I want to be read. I want people to see my characters and what they go through. I want them to fall as much in love with my characters as I do. I may never get read. Currently I’m putting some of my short stories on Wattpad, because I want to attract readers. I don’t know if I will, honestly. I don’t know how to attract people to my stuff, and both agents’ slush lists and Wattpad are stuffed with hundreds of books from people who were told “the world needs your books”.

The third reason? Maybe I need more friends. I am currently in the large group of people for whom social media is an attempt at social contact. We count likes on Facebook, votes on Kindle Scout, comments on Wattpad, and followers on Twitter as if these likes translate into a real sense of belongingness, safety, esteem, and love — all of which live on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

I am one of the many people out there for which friendship is a problematic construct. It may be because I’m neurodivergent; others I know who are neurologically different report the same things: the difficulty in doing small talk (such as remembering to ask after someone’s kids), the feeling like one’s breaking unwritten rules; the general sense of the moment when ‘keeping it real’ silences a room; overhearing the word “weird”, “crazy”, or “different” when referring to you. (I didn’t overhear these; I’ve seen them on my course evaluations as well as “all over the place”).

I have a few close friends who also hate small talk, and after the “how are you doing?” question, we talk about politics, explore our similarities and differences, laugh, drink coffee, and shine. I have friends on Facebook, with some friendships spanning thirty years, but I can’t feel the glow of those conversations. I love them anyhow.

I’ve tried to meet these needs (especially esteem — notice that’s not just self-esteem) through trying to get published, envying the kinship popular writers have enjoyed with their fans. For whatever reason, this is not in the cards for me. So now what I need is to find other ways to get those needs met.

Why Novels?

Even though I still ponder whether the world needs my novel, I am still prepping for NaNo, which starts this Saturday. My goal is to finish Prodigies at a clip of 1000 words per day, or 30,000 words for the month-long session. That’s a lot of words, yet I’ve written 50,000 words or more during regular NaNo season.

I used to write at a much more relaxed pace, a short story here, a poem there, and occasionally a chunk of song lyrics. I mostly used to write about my feelings without much artistry (although in my defense, without too much cliché.) On rare occasions, I would show someone and they’d say “That’s really nice.”

I wanted to know how good I was and how good I could be. I read others’ poetry, and felt I didn’t quite have what contemporarily published poets had in terms of their raw emotion and immediate imagery. At the same time, I had to write my truth, which was that of a woman who lives her life in a clear glass bubble, sequestering her emotions. I felt an affinity with Emily Dickinson, another woman who lived in her own clear glass bubble, and I remembered that she died with most of her poems unread. My own truth has a very limited audience — 385 hits a week. or about 45 hits a day (Thanks, readers!)

Once I found out from my first NaNo that I can write over 50,000 words with a coherent plot, I realized I could write novels. However, I didn’t know that I could write good novels. I wrote those novels about other people, other situations, other plots — yet we write what we know, so the brittle beauty and the emotional turmoil still show up.

I hoped to prove my talent by getting an agent and, eventually, getting published. That has not happened. I have gotten over 200 rejections, and almost all of these read “This isn’t grabbing me” or some variation. I may still write novels. I may burn out and develop a project obsession (although we don’t have enough room room in the yard for a 4-season greenhouse with a hot tub. Believe me, I measured).

I’m rethinking a lot of things right now. But I will still finish those 30,000 words.

Reflection

Every morning, I sit in the living room on the loveseat where I keep my computer desk. I stare at the screen waiting for inspiration to write this blog, and to write on my latest creation. As I’m a morning person, morning is my best time to write, uncomplicated by the day’s work and accompanied by coffee.

I literally stare at the post editor of Blogger every morning wondering what to write about. I don’t ever think I’ve come up with a topic the night before. Writing this blog is like Chicago-school improv* — I pay attention and see what see what hits me.

I’ve written on writing techniques, psychological techniques used as writing techniques, and writers’ block. I’ve talked about characters, themes, and storylines, both in general and in my writing.

I’ve written about my life — journeys, mental health issues, rejections, and deep depression. I’ve mused on muses and coffee and other sources of creativity. I’ve shared emotions — sometimes deep emotions.

I write about social issues such as ostracism, sexual and physical abuse, discrimination, and abuse of power. I don’t write about politics for the most part, because politics aren’t going to be what cures these social ills — the Peaceable Kingdom, you and I and all those who want to share the world with those not like us, we will lessen those social ills if we extend our arms to help, one tiny moment at a time.

I have been writing in the blog since April 10, 2017, so I’m approaching the one year anniversary of the blog. I’ve never written this regularly in a journal since — since ever. I think it’s because you’re reading, whoever you are, that I feel obligated to keep on writing. I don’t know why you read this blog — you’re a Facebook friend of mine, you’ve stumbled on this blog by way of the labels on notes; a friend of a friend told you to check it out, you have a secret crush on me (just kidding!), you’re an agent on the verge of adopting me (I wish!), you’re a stalker … it doesn’t matter; you keep me going.

* Chicago-school improvisation (improv) is a form of humor I grew up with. Its best applications, believe it or not, were in children’s television programs of the era.

I have a lot to think about on this plane trip home, and it’s all about writing. I’ve been warned not to make decisions when either manic nor udepressed, so I’m not giving up writing yet. I’ve made two decisions thus far:

I’m going to publish Gaia’s Hands on Kindle regardless of whether it makes it through the Scout campaign or not.
I’m not querying agents for a while; I’ll let the rest of the queries out there get rejected.
(Did I say only 2)) I might put another book, Voyageurs, through the Kindle Scout process.

What decisions does that leave? Whether or not I can keep writing when I have no audience who reads my work. (I know about 40 of you read this, but for Lanetta and Lynn, I don’t know if the rest of you like my writing, follow because you know me, or visit to keep up with the dumpster fire that is bipolar disorder.)

I can write for myself, but creativity is not meant to be hoarded. It’s meant to entertain, to make people think, to foment revolutions of the hears. To do that, it needs to be shared with people. When I wrote and performed folk music a lifetime ago, I reached very few people, but the words mattered to them.

’

What do I want when I write? I want to feel, as NaNo proclaims, that the world needs my novel.

voiceless

To be a childhood abuse survivor is to exist without a voice.

Nobody hears when you tell them to stop. Nobody hears when you tell them why you’re crying.

The pain of being voiceless gets better, but the desire to be heard never goes away. It permeates one’s being like a curse that has settled into one’s DNA — “Until you get people to listen to you, you will never be whole.”

Sometimes you get people to listen to you, but it doesn’t break the spell. It never will, because it cannot erase the memory of adults saying, “Are you sure?” and shrugging off your story because you are a child and they are trusted more than you.

This is what mixes up with my feelings about getting published, and it has complicated my decisions about publishing. I want to be heard but I want to be true to my experience and ideals as well. The data from Kindle Scout doesn’t bode well for me. The last two days I’ve gotten less than 20 nominations a day; my writing doesn’t grab people. I have to accept this and go on.

My next step will be to self-publish this first work (despite the fact no one will likely not read it in the swamp of Kindle) and I’m probably going to quit querying. I then have to consider whether I will continue writing just for myself. Writing takes lots of time and I don’t have a muse to energize my soul right now, so my writing is up in the air.

So I hope you’ll stick with me and keep supporting me:

Fictionalizing my Morning.

First person:

I faced the bathroom mirror. My eyes still squinted from a swollen face; my cheeks had faded from magenta to the pink of a first-degree sunburn. My nose had developed a smattering of tiny scabs near the tip. The rash that lined my cheeks and chin could not be seen, but felt. I placed my hands on my face to cool the burning and soothe the itching; scratching the itch would only make it hurt worse.

The sullen pink cheeks and nose formed a roughly butterfly-shaped rash that could, if I squinted, be the butterfly rash of lupus. It’s always lupus, isn’t it? Instead of indulging the hypochondria I inherited from my mother, I grabbed for Occam’s razor — the answer that requires the least mental contortions and complications is the correct one. That was easy: On Saturday or Sunday, I put an acne treatment product on my spotty forehead, nose, and chin. Monday, I woke up with the rash, which worsened on Tuesday, and lingered through this morning. I was not suffering from a chronic autoimmune disease.

I ran into Richard in the hallway. “Your face looks better,” he announced. Easy for him to say — he wasn’t wearing my face.

Third person:

Lauren peered into the bathroom mirror. Her eyes still squinted from a swollen face; her cheeks had faded from magenta to the pink of a first-degree sunburn. She spied a smattering of tiny scabs near the tip of her nose. She raised her hands to her face and felt the pebbly rash across her cheeks and chin. Her cool hands felt like ice against her burning cheeks.

The sullen pink cheeks and nose formed a roughly butterfly-shaped rash. Lauren searched her mind for a reference to a butterfly-shaped rash. Lupus — it’s always lupus, isn’t it? She turned away from hypochondria and grabbed for Occam’s razor — the answer that requires the least mental contortions and complications is the correct one. She racked her memory: On Saturday or Sunday, she had put an acne treatment product on her spotty forehead, nose, and chin, having heard about it from the pimple-popping videos she’d binge-watched the night before. On Monday, she had woken with the rash, which worsened on Tuesday, and lingered through that morning. By Occam’s razor, then, the acne cream was the likely cause of the rash.

She ran into her husband in the hallway. “Your face looks better,” he announced. Easy for him to say, she mused.

Future tense

In the morning, I will face the bathroom mirror. I will observe my eyes squinting from a swollen face; my cheeks having faded from magenta to the pink of a first-degree sunburn. My nose will sport a smattering of tiny scabs near the tip. I will place my hands on my face to cool the burning and soothe the itching; I will feel the pinprick rash that I cannot see in the mirror.

I will touch my cheeks, wondering if my face bears the butterfly rash of lupus. It’s always lupus, isn’t it? Instead of indulging the hypochondria I inherited from my mother, I will grab for Occam’s razor — the answer that requires the least mental contortions and complications is the correct one. I will review the sequence of events: On Saturday or Sunday, I put an acne treatment product on my spotty forehead, nose, and chin. Monday, I woke up with the rash, which worsened on Tuesday, and lingered through this morning. I will reassure myself that it’s not lupus.

I will run into Richard in the hallway. “Your face looks better,” he will say. I will grumble at him — “Easy for you — it’s not your face.”