Tag: writing

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:

  1. I’m going to publish Gaia’s Hands on Kindle regardless of whether it makes it through the Scout campaign or not.
  2. I’m not querying agents for a while; I’ll let the rest of the queries out there get rejected.
  3. (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.
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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.”

P.S.: An excerpt from today’s work:

Of course I dreamed again after Ichirou left. Of course, I dreamed about being shot. And, of course, I dreamed about Greg:

I experienced the dream as if I was outside myself and inside my body at the same time.  I saw the sniper level his gun. I heard the shot, and I felt the tearing pain from the bullet. This time, I looked down at myself as the bullet tumbled out of me, and there was a tear in my shirt and a blossoming of blood. 

I collapsed, and everything happened in slow motion: I felt my heart stop; then I felt every cell of my body yanked backward by a second, maybe two seconds. I wanted to scream from the pain, but it was over almost before it had begun. I peered down to see the hole in my chest mended. Greg dropped to his knees, exhausted, and muttered, “O mój Jezu, przebacz nam nasze grzechy …” 
When I awoke again, the barest tinge of sun could be seen through the trees from my window. Greg stood over me, his long hair falling into his face. He pushed it back with one hand in a gesture that had long become habit, revealing his long, homely visage. I noticed his eyes looked hollow in the sparse light.

“Are you an angel?” I asked in a parody of awe. Joking was the only way I could encompass what he had done.

“Definitely not,” he muttered. “I’ve done a couple things in my life that might actually keep me out of heaven.” He bent down by my side and inquired, “How are you feeling today?” Unlike Ayana, Greg spoke English in a definite accent, with rolled r’s and subtle accent differences.

I sat up. “I can sit up without help. I’m hungry — are you sure I can’t eat anything but chicken broth and rice? Don’t I have red blood cells to build up or something?”

“We could make you some befstyk tararski. That should set you up good.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Which is — ?”

“Raw beef with a raw egg in it.”

I uttered a long sound that resembled wretching, then managed to choke out, “Gross!”

“You’re missing a treat, let me tell you.” Greg shook his head. “It looks like you’ll be eating some of Ayana’s rice porridge again. Yours will get a little spinach.” 

The porridge, it turned out, wasn’t bad at all. Certainly better than that raw beef Greg was talking about.
I whiled the time after breakfast trying to guess the implications of being resurrected. Nobody had come in to visit; I fretted about what they discussed in my absence. My viola was, as far as I knew, still packed in the truck, and I was pretty sure Greg was guarding the front door. I was ready, if not to run, to at least venture as far as the living room and eat lunch there. When I suggested the venue change to Greg, he scowled at me from the doorway.

“Why not?” I snapped at him. “I’ve got enough energy to —”

“Yell at me, it sounds like,” he smirked in his oddly accented English. “Maybe you are ready to come out and visit with us.”

“You mean — have tea, and talk about the weather?” I inquired.

“Not exactly. We’re having a debate about what we should do from here — running appears to be no longer an option.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok, stand up so I can help you out to the living room.”

“I don’t need help!” I snapped. I stood up and promptly felt my knees give out from under me. Greg glared down his nose at me.

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“Ok, so maybe I do need help,” I sighed. I was an emancipated minor, with all the responsibility that entailed — which was very little up to this point. Even now, I relied on Ayana and Greg to keep me safe. I stood again, this time supported by Greg, and we ambled into the living room.

Progress Report

Honestly, I haven’t been writing much since the depression hit. I’ve been revising the first chapters of Whose Hearts are Mountains to incorporate some ideas that Richard (my long-suffering husband) suggested, but revising  — “Oh, let’s change this verb to be more descriptive!” — doesn’t feel like writing.

Yesterday, I finally dug out Prodigies to write on it a bit when I had some downtime between classes and meetings.  That book is only half-done, and I had written it as far as the first of the BIG plot points. This next part is crucial and a bit of a challenge because I have to document how four prodigies make the change from being hunted to being — well, proactive.

I haven’t been able to put much time in on either, because it’s also seedling season in my basement. I have a grow room, and if that makes you think of Cannabis sativa, you’ll be greatly disappointed. At the moment it contains a moringa tree sprouting from its roots, seedlings of two tomato varieties, two eggplant varieties, and two pepper varieties, one of which is “Peter pepper”. Look it up. Better yet:

Use a little imagination and you’ll see it.

I also have a couple experiments — cardoon (which I’ve never been able to grow before, but — bam! — I have an army of cardoon. Other experiments are perilla (a Japanese/Korean/Southeast Asian herb), and a Southeast Asian vegetable whose shoots are eaten in curry. I don’t have much hope for the latter; the seeds looked like they were firing blanks when I soaked them. There will be many more seeds — unusual herbs, edible flowers, and flamboyant beans — by the time the garden is put in.

I think the garden helps, rather than hinders, the writing. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before — taking breaks refreshes my mind, and I hear my characters’ voices again when I go back to write.

Tightrope walking

When I was in junior high school (middle school for you youngsters), I was walking home from school with my sister and a couple friends, and we came across a familiar piece of abandoned infrastructure from the old Illinois-Michigan canal: the remains of a lock that helped boats navigate the changing heights of the channel. It looked like this:

If you look closely between the massive retaining walls, you can see a concrete wall going from left to right. On the side closest to you, you see what is about a seven or maybe ten-foot drop into damp reeds. (This picture was taken too early for you to see the full-grown invasive Phragmites reeds dead and broken on the green side. Trust me, that’s the green you see.) On the side you can’t see is a shorter drop into what is brackish water most of the year. The wall itself is no more than a foot wide, and to access it you must sit on the retaining wall with your feet dangling and slip downward, landing on the retaining wall.

This is important, because my sister’s two friends decided we would take this route instead of the perfectly safe footbridge a half-block west. I expected Juli (not her real name) to navigate the treacherous path relatively well, because she was pretty slim and a tomboy, but then Bobbie (also not her real name) managed it despite her plump, awkward build.

Because these were my sister’s friends, they called out for my sister to try the path. I didn’t even exist to them, being younger and awkwardly embarrassing to be around. Lisa, who has a fear of heights, passed. I, seizing the chance to prove myself to them, shimmied down to the five foot jump onto the wall. Walking it was easy, if I didn’t think of the scummy green water on one side or the sharp canes on the other. And if I didn’t consider how immensely uncoordinated I was. I didn’t think about them, because I was working hard to walk fast across a balance beam when every other time I’d been on a balance beam I fell over. And trying not to pass out.

Somehow I made it, only to find the real challenge: trying to climb up that five-foot retaining wall with only a sharp, rusty bracket to hold onto. I withheld the desire to cry. Or barf. Luckily, Juli and Bobbie helped pull me up, after waiting a suitable time to make me suffer.

Why did I tell this story? To use it as an analogy for writing. Writing to be read is like walking a narrow beam where there’s a brackish pool of familiarity on one side, and a deep fall with sharp sticks on the other.

What do I mean?

Most people need some familiarity in what they need — whether topics, themes, plots, characters, or setting. For example, I’ve been told by a psychologist (of course!) that Jungian archetypes — Persona, Shadow, Great Mother, Wise Old Man — are necessary to sell a book. Genre fiction has its own tropes — where would science fiction be without the amusing alien (porgs in The Last Jedi), the ancient conspiracy (also in The Last Jedi), and the balance between Good and Evil (also in the Last Jedi)? Familiar topics help us place ourselves into the action, and familiar plots help us feel that an age-old myth unfolds before our eyes.

At the same time, people need their minds to be challenged, but not so challenged that they can’t identify. There’s a whole range of challenge from what we call “beach-blanket books” — light romance and slice-of-life books that are a vacation in a paperback — to Umberto Eco, whose books are so dense that one had to make a concerted effort to read.

In other words, people read things that affirm them, but at the same time they like some unfamiliarity. Danger, even — if not danger of being impaled on reeds, the danger of having their minds changed, their hearts broken, their lives expanded.

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Writing this blog also compares to that tightrope I walked as a child. My most read topics are the more personal ones: No Coffee, Marcie, Graduation, Bipolar disorder, Richard’s aunt dying. The creative pieces get a moderate number of visitors, thank goodness. The technical ones perhaps the least, but they’re not sparsely subscribed to, either.

I want to pick topics that appeal to everyone, but I don’t want to lose the writing/writer aspect of it. I want to share my creative writing, of course, and walk through the joys and sorrows of being a writer. I want to teach techniques in case I have writers out there. (Notice I don’t say “aspiring writers” — if you’re thinking about it, you’re a writer.)

So unless you object to the mix, horribly, I’m going to keep walking that tightrope.

What is my blog about?

I’ve noticed that the tone of this blog is not consistent. I originally set out writing about the craft of writing, writing the blog entries as I learned. I still write this way from time to time (yesterday’s post). I decided that I sounded a little didactic (i.e. like a professor teaching class), and I included personal writing examples in the analysis.

Then I realized that people reading — most of whom I suspect aren’t writers — enjoyed reading those excerpts and short stories and poems, so I sometimes posted creative writing without analysis.

And then my depression leaked in. You likely knew when it did, because my normally positive self despaired over every rejection and my writing took on a tone of desperation. In retrospect, I kept it in the blog because the experience of depression is real and maybe one of my two readers struggled with it or its mirror twin, mania. And now I’m writing on a semi-creative book about living with bipolar disorder.
So what is my blog about now? I believe it’s still about writing — writing on one’s journey through a forest of skeletons, writing about delighting in a beautiful creature, turning one’s visions into a character’s journey. It’s about the practice of writing — the choice of words, the way they’re used, and sometimes the way they’re misused. It’s about being a writer — publication joys and woes (in my case, it’s woes), lost material. It’s about writing as a way of understanding one’s personal baggage and acknowledging our common humanity.
Most of all, it’s about honesty — I choose my words, but I don’t censor my image. I claim the adjectives “raw”,  “honest”, and “TMI”. I speak to the people who haven’t found their voice, whose voices shake, and whose voices have been taken from them. I also speak to the people who have had smooth lives, that they understand the world of those of us who haven’t. This is my calling as a writer, more than just putting pretty words down. I want us all to find our true homes.
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The reason I’ve written this is because yesterday, I was interviewed by Jennifer Peltz of the Associated Press about the progress of women speaking out about sexual assault over the past twenty years, from Take Back the Night marches to today’s #MeToo movement. I spoke both as a professor and a role model, as a victim of rape and as a survivor. I don’t know how much of the interview, if any, will be included in the article, or whether anyone will read the article. If it gets published, I may stay in relative obscurity. I may get harassed, have my life threatened and my contact information published on the Internet. I see my honesty about my experiences as my calling at least as much as my writing is.
If the worst happens, I may need your support. Please keep that in mind.
And thank you.