This is from my former blog, but I thought I would share it here. The story the post mentions is now complete, edited and ready for…what? I don’t know what will happen with it, but it feels great to have it done.
If you have time to read the story (attached as a PDF file) I’d love to hear your feedback. And feel free to comment with any links you have to your own Works In Progress. Let’s support each other. Happy writing!
This joke came to my attention this week. I don’t know where from but I know I didn’t make it up (see, no copyright infringement here):
Question: What do you call a fake noodle?
Answer: An impasta.
Okay. Okay. Settle down. Take a breath or you’re gonna get the hiccups. I know it is funny, but it’s not that funny. Well, maybe it is, but let’s move on.
This week I feel like a fake noodle. I haven’t gotten anything in print for a couple months, my writing efforts in December were frequently thwarted, and I won’t hear back on three other submissions until the end of January. A whole month! That’s a lifetime from now. I’m back on elementary school time, where each day felt like the equivalent of a month.
There’s a guideline out there about having 13 in play at all times, saying that at any given moment you should have at least 13 projects at some stage of development. My measly three hardly even merit mention on that scale (wait, maybe I can finesse that number up by two because I have two – no, three! – other projects I’m working on. Where does that leave us? Six? Can that be right? *sigh*)
I hope I haven’t led anyone astray as they visit this blog, possibly someone hoping for tried and true tricks that will assure a publishing deal. There’s no one formula for that. And when you hear about most people’s writing story, it usually involves grinding it out for quite a while before something “happens” to take things to the next level.
I swing wildly in my confidence about this happening for me. One moment I think I might actually have the gumption, fortitude and creativity to make it for the long-haul as a extremely minor writer. On a different day I am pretty convinced that I’m fooling myself and should be realistic and quit being too big for my britches.
The irony is that this is supposed to be a blog about writing. Inherent in that purpose comes the assumption that the person writing knows something about writing, or that she has achieved some level of success.
Nope, not me.
I’ve had a bunch of things published in random places along the way, I’ve finished and revised my first novel, I’m more than 3/4 way through writing my second novel, but I always thought I would do something working with youth or kids in some way (kids other than my own).
All my energies were directed that way.
But here’s a secret I discovered.
God had/has a lot of work to do on me. I had a lot of identity tied up in vocation and job, particularly because I thought I would work with youth in a church setting. If I wasn’t going to be a youth minister for a long haul, what the heck was I supposed to do? Who was I? If I’m not doing something that is dubbed significant by others, where do I glean my significance?
More on that another time, but suffice it to say that it took YEARS to field that question, and it is still my fallback issue when I start to wonder if it matters that I fold that load of laundry or write that blog post.
Maybe I’m less of an impostor than I initially thought. Maybe I’m just at the beginning stages of taking writing seriously enough to do it publically and take credit for it. In addition to fiction, I’ve written scripts, devotionals, newsletters, curriculum and news articles. That all counts towards refining my skills. Maybe acknowledging the journey is a good place to start.
The next step is to clean up my writing area.
hebkoords.jpg (Photo credit: pkicken)
Sometimes I get super frustrated when things don’t go the way I want.
I feel a little like a toddler who doesn’t get her own way — I secretly want to throw a little temper tantrum (and maybe I throw one internally anyway, just a little one).
This December was a good example.
First one of my kids got the stomach flu, right when my husband and I were supposed to go away overnight for the first time in years. Then just when we thought we were in the clear, my other two kids came down with it. At one point I was holding the buckets for both of them simultaneously. Nasty. Once we got through the worst of that (the sanitation process, the washing, the disinfecting),my husband came down with it.
In the midst of all that, both our cars needed work, our stand-up freezer conked out and the cat had a near death experience. My honey missed one Christmas and we had to reschedule a second. Nothing went according to plan.
Have you ever felt like that with your writing?
I have. I don’t mean in the sense of discovering themes or plot twists you didn’t anticipate. That’s all fun. I mean those times when all your timing seems to go out the window.
I’ve set goals I didn’t meet, missed self-imposed deadlines, tried to do things only to be thwarted at every attempt, run into obstacles that seemed to almost be put there by an invisible force.
It is immensely frustrating.
The crazy thing is though, that many many times, there ends up being a reason why my plans didn’t work out, writing plans or other plans. And almost every time I forget what has happened in the past, so it surprises me anew (short memory? slow learner? non-detail-oriented person?).
The reason why my plans didn’t work out? Many times, more times than I have kept track of, there was something bigger at work.
Let’s be clear. I do not believe in a Calvinist theology of God ordaining every little detail of our every day lives. However, I do believe that God steps in and…tweaks things when they need tweaking. Some things are part of the plan. I don’t think He cares if you eat a peanut butter bagel or cereal for breakfast, unless this has some impact on things. Lots of details don’t matter, but some matter deeply.
My encouragement to you is to look for the reasons why something didn’t work out. These reasons can be a while in coming, but they often will come, if you watch for them. If you cultivate an awareness of patterns and “coincidences” you might be excited as details start to pop out in greater relief for you. You might even start seeing them all over the place. I hope you can remember them better than I have!
Here’s a New Year’s wish for you in 2013 — I wish you productive, fulfilling, creative genius as you work in whatever arena you choose, and greater awareness of the way God is at work in you life (even if you don’t pay Him much attention. He is no stranger to unrequited love). 🙂 Blessings!
Oh. My. Word. I usually sit quietly and let others have their little rants and soapboxes. Often I just skim over them, avoid checking the news or Facebook for a couple days and things settle down again. But I just can’t get over the way some people are using a tragedy to further their own agendas, many of which have NOTHING to do with the main issue at hand, a.k.a. control of automatic or semi-automatic guns.
For the record, I still cannot say more than about 10 words about the horrific event at Sandy Hook without being overcome with grief. I’m not exaggerating. 10 words. That’s all I can get out before I start crying.
Also for the record, I believe in God and His Risen Son Jesus Christ.
However, DO NOT tell me that if we had just allowed church and state to mingle and allowed open prayer time in schools, somehow that would have averted that terrible Friday.
DO NOT tell me that if the country would just turn back to God that somehow all the bad guys would just magically go to some other country that hadn’t turned back to God.
And DO NOT tell me that somehow God is punishing us, punishing our children, for the direction our country is going.
To quote the movie Madagascar 3, that is all a bunch of bolshevik.
That’s all I can manage for now and still keep my wig. On behalf of other people who believe in and follow Jesus, I am so very sorry for how in many online venues, Christ has been misrepresented to the bereaved people dealing with the Sandy Hook ordeal. Please do not equate Jesus with the idiots who claim to follow Him in their misguided, often harmful ways. I’m one of those followers, even though sometimes it pains me to say it, but that doesn’t mean that those vocal block-heads represent an accurate picture of Jesus. What some people are doing now is almost to the point of being a spiritual misdemeanor, bordering on a form of spiritual abuse. Somebody ought to take away their microphone privileges for a good long while.
Sandy Hook, I’m deeply, deeply sorry for your terrible, mind-numbing loss. You are not alone in this; the parents of this entire country stand with you. You will never be the same, and in our own pathetic version of it, neither will we.
English: Access Denied (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
After NaNoWriMo I happened across a literary agency that was having a contest. People were supposed to enter the first 500 words of their NaNo work and the prize was a professional critique of the work.
It sounded easy. I mean, how many other people could have come across the website and contest?
I never did find out what my odds were but no matter what they were, I didn’t win.
It’s fine.
There are other contests I haven’t won; a couple of them anyway.
I’m not dwelling on it though. Here’s why:
I don’t need a contest to validate my passion for writing. I don’t need someone else to tell me that its okay for me to write. Someone else’s opinion of my writing is based on so many factors that I don’t need to be disappointed if they don’t dig what I write. If you asked me to read some erotic, violent apocalyptic sci-fi story, I wouldn’t enjoy it. It would be hard for me to see past the details and analyze the writing for its merit. Conversely, if someone is into the aforementioned genre, it would be hard for that person to appreciate a quiet novel about four moms trying to figure out how to be friends and feed their families (yes, that’s my NaNo Work In Progress novel).
The point is, if you want to write, do it.
Don’t wait for someone else to tell you its okay for you to write.
You don’t need someone else to validate the thing that drives you to write or create.
If you want to write, do it. And do it now. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission. Don’t wait for your life to settle down or for that long-standing issue to be resolved. If you wait, it won’t happen. You won’t ever be given any more time than you have now, there’s no squeezing another hour out of 24. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. You have something to share and even if it takes many attempts and a lot of rejection, only you can write what you can write. No one else can do it, so don’t leave the rest of us hangin’. Go find the time and make it happen.
English: A backspace key in its natural habitat, having been removed from a keyboard. Backspace is the computer key used to delete prior text. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When you are writing, how often do you use the backspace key? How often do you hit delete? Do you use spell-check frequently as you go along (maybe you’re word processing program does it for you, which can be less than helpful at times)? Do you find that these activities break your writing rhythm or are you possibly using them to fill the time when you can’t think of what should come next? Do the words seem to pour out or come out in dribbles?
In the last week of November, someone gave me a seriously helpful tip. I was skeptical until I actually tried it. She suggested that I try typing in white.
Huh?
She said that if you type the words in white, you can’t see them against the background of white, and therefore can’t stop and correct every little typo or misplaced word.
This trick almost doubled my productivity. You’ve probably heard about these things called sprints or wordsprints, but before November I hadn’t; the idea is to write as much as you can in a certain amount of time. The time varies but I found that I could stay focused better when the sprint was shorter, about 15 or 20 minutes. It starts feeling more like a long distance jog when you increase the time to, say, 45 minutes.
When I typed in white, I found that I didn’t worry about getting all the spellings right or fixing it if I mixed up the name of the diner. I just told the story. When I couldn’t see the words, I thought more about the story I already had in my head, and then that story came out in complete sentences rather than word by word.
You know you’re going to go back over your work, you know some of the characters names will always show up with red spelling squiggles under them, you know there will be things to flesh out. Until you get to that point, and while you’re working to get the full first draft complete, your inner editor will be much more tame if she’s blindfolded. See what kind of results you get when you try typing a section in white. Give it 15 minutes, and I bet you’ll be surprised.
First page of the Gospel of Mark, by Sargis Pitsak, a Medieval Armenian scribe and miniaturist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At the bottom of this post I’m attaching a video from a pastor I deeply respect. I sent his blog a question and he answered it in this video. I feel like I won a radio call-in contest or something.
This whole blog post is off topic since it doesn’t have to do with writing per se, but I think each of us has worldviews that seep into our writing, whether we intend it or not. That’s how I’m justifying it at least.
Lately I’ve been grappling with the entrenched concept in evangelical Christianity that unless people speak with their mouths a “sinner’s prayer” that confesses sin, admits that Jesus is the Savior and asks for redemption from Him, then they are pretty much screwed (pardon me). However, some of Jesus’ statements seem to be at odds with one another, plus, Jesus’ stated purpose in coming to earth was to offer life. Does that mean that once Christ was resurrected anyone who lived more than a camel-ride away from Jesus’ neck of the woods was suddenly out of luck?
We could get into the finer points of this but I’m no theologian. What I do know is that there is a lot of church history and tradition that clouds the written words of the Bible. And I think there ought to be room to discuss this without calling into question the vibrance of someone’s faith.
Here’s the video for you to check out. I’d LOVE to hear your reactions and thoughts on this non-writing topic, and please know that I welcome all civil conversation but don’t have much patience for name calling or mean-ness. There, we got that out of the way. Whew. Have a great Friday!
december greenery (Photo credit: postbear)
It is now December and National Novel Writing Month is complete. (Did I mention I made it to 50,000 words? I did mention it? Oh. Right. Sorry to bring it up again…but did you know how hard that was? I finished almost a whole novel!) Now it is time to reintroduce myself to my children and husband.
So far it has had mixed results.
Last night I was whistling. I whistle. I know this is not a common habit these days, but sometimes I do it without realizing it. My middle son does it too. He got in trouble at school for whistling a tune in the hallway, and I just wanted to explain to the teacher that he only does it when he’s happy, so it was a good thing that he was whistling. I don’t think she’d agree.
Whistle! (Photo credit: castle79)
Back to last night — I was whistling in the kitchen. I hit an impressively high note, and I looked over to see my husband covering his ears. Perhaps it was too loud? The funny thing was that he looked to my oldest son for validation, and my son said he didn’t even hear it. I managed not to laugh in my tiny moment of victory. You’d think that was enough annoyance, but there’s more.
I also sing.
Usually this gets my kids in a twist because they don’t like me singing along with music. But last night there was no music, so I was making my own. I have an amazing talent to be able to mimic other singers (okay, maybe it’s not so amazing and I might not sound exactly like them, but it’s still fun. Try it and you’ll be hooked, especially if you try to convince everyone around you that if you just had the connections you could have been that person on the radio). The song I was singing was in the tradition of Ethel Merman, and I forgot that my husband was on call this weekend. Suddenly he evacuated the area and I found out later that he was trying to take a work phone call and couldn’t hear because I was singing so loudly. Whoops.
Here’s a video of one of Ethel Merman’s last performances, in case you’re curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s62MrU8mHx4
The kids seem to be taking it better. I played an attacking game with one son last night, played a chasing game with my daughter, and body-slammed my eight-year-old in a wrestling match. These were all met with happy squeals and laughter that lasts so long it leads to the hiccups. Clearly, their regular mommy is back. (Don’t worry, no one gets hurt…usually. This is just one way we play.)
NaNo was great and I’m looking forward to finishing the two chapters that remain until the novel is complete. But it’s also fun to have mental energy to be more present with my family. That’s why I don’t write a novel in a month every month! No one around me could stand it, except my long-suffering husband, who might be hoping I get another project idea so I can go back to the quieter version of myself. The odd are not in his favor.
Boom. Booya. Kachow. Kazaam. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
50,000 words in 30 days (or just under 30 days). Right now the novel stands at roughly 180 pages. The story is not quite done, but I passed the 50K mark late last night.
It. Was. Fabulous.
I’ve tried to explain to people about what I’ve been working on this month, and I admit that before this year, I would not have understood the appeal. When you inflict an arbitrary deadline on yourself, it is hard to help people understand how compelling this deadline pressure feels. I tried to explain that if you make it to 50K words you “win” but when they ask what you win and I say, somewhat sheepishly that you don’t actually win anything, their expression of confusion is understandable. Until a person feels that irrespresible urge to write, how could they empathize?
I’d love to hear from any fellow Nano-ers out there. You get what I mean about it. How did it end up for you? Are you going to finish? Scratch that — of course you’re going to finish! You can do it! Don’t give up, crank it out, let your fingers fly with no pause for correct spelling or fixing ANY mistakes. Let me know how you feel when you finish. (It is still sinking in for me, and because I have a couple more chapters I want to write, the novel doesn’t feel done yet, but it is close.) I commend anyone who sets a goal for themselves and achieves it. It is no small feat. Go go Na-No!
Galeries Lafayette – christmas decorations (Photo credit: whale05)
This will have to be a quick update because all my word-power needs to be channeled into my efforts to finish NaNoWriMo, a.k.a. National Novel Writing Month. Maybe I’ll tell you about the project I’m working on for it?
The story is roughly (and I mean roughly) based on experiences from my real life, so it is a realistic fiction set in small town Minnesota. It follows the lives of four women — four moms with young kids — who are a part of a mom’s group. They form a co-op that makes and delivers meals to each other each week.
What it is really about is the development of these relationships and how they respond to challenges that arise. Will they stick together or decide that friendships (and the meal co-op) are too much work?
I’m sprinkling in recipes for a little fun, since the story has a cooking element to it.
There you have it, the dry bones of the story. But the characters are what make it, and I think there are some people everyone can identify with. I still need a really catchy title, so if anything springs into your mind, PLEASE comment and help me out!
I look forward to returning to “real-life” once I get this done. I did pull out some Christmas decorations but haven’t taken the time to put them up yet. Every free moment I have feels like it should go to writing. It is intense but it is a limited intensity, since it is only this month. So far, my husband is still speaking to me, so that’s good.
Until the end of the month, I hope you’ll forgive very light, short posts, if I’m able to do them at all. After that, I hope to keep things updated every couple days (I don’t want you to get sick of the blog, but I don’t want you to forget about it either!). And please allow me to take this moment to thank anyone who is a recent follower…or a long-time follower. I appreciate your clicks!
Off to go create some havoc in the lives of four make-believe women! Wish me luck!
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