Layers of story

Sunday. Coffee and classical time. We're listening to Max Richter, because I have the control of the music. Otherwise the Sunday classical would be Mozart or Beethoven. I am the more exploratory of the two of us, but I've actually gotten Richard to tolerate Philip Glass. 

I want to write today. I need some earth-shaking ideas to motivate me. Right now, I'm plowing through potential plot difficulties that require some research and thought. I want to be thinking more fancifully; I feel that's what I'm missing lately in the book. I'm frustrated with this book, because it's like the inspiration and development is coming in layers, and I keep having to go back and review and add. 

I thought the romance rewrite of this book was going to be so easy! Gaia's Hands proves again to be the most difficult thing I've ever written and there's no reason for it to be so. 

Coffee and Struggle

#nomakeup #nofilter #quarantinehair 

This is me at the local coffeehouse I've been talking about. I haven't been going very fast with my writing -- this novel just doesn't want to be written. 

I think I've written 1500 words in the past two days and rearranged another 1500. Usually when I write, it's 2000-3000 words a day, especially when I have this much free time. 

Despite my outline and my general idea of how the story goes, I'm having trouble writing it. I'm having trouble feeling the story. This shouldn't surprise me; I've been very discouraged lately. Too many rejections. Too many "this story isn't really grabbing me". I've changed the beginnings of the stories to help people get into them more, but I still fear more rejections.

So, despite that smile, I'm struggling right now. I'm looking for a breakthrough. I'm looking for a chance.

Day 27 Lenten Meditation: Struggle

In this time of contagion, all of us are struggling.

We struggle through anxiety, isolation, sleepless nights. Essential personnel struggle with overwork and worry about their own health. We all suffer uncertainty about whether we can be infected.

We were created or evolved to be concerned about our tribe, to find comfort in each other. We were created or evolved to help each other in times of struggle. In our current case, it is hard to seek comfort in a time of social distancing. Hugs are prohibited, as are gatherings. We make do with the Internet. We comfort ourselves with the belief that this will not last forever. 

In this, we are united with others worldwide -- with China, with Italy, with all the world that has been touched by COVID-19. It is a sign of our shared humanity that we can worry, we can sorrow, we can all catch this disease. The world is our tribe, and although we may be powerless to help others through their struggle, we can at least think charitably toward others, even though they are not of our tribe. Because that is how we survive in struggle.

Day 27 Reflection: Gratitude

Everyone knows that gratitude makes people happier. 

Maybe not everyone, but popular psychology instructs us to write gratitude journals, naming a magic three things per day that we feel grateful for. One can find gratitude journals in hard-bound form, in smartphone apps, and in Facebook memes. That's because gratitude journaling works, according to research in positive psychology (Emmons and McCullough, 2003). 

Some days it's hard to write anything in the gratitude journal. Days when little things go wrong one after another, we hug those hurts to ourselves as if to use them as currency to bargain with our Maker for better luck. When we fall into negative self-talk, learned patterns of pessimism, we can't find a thing to be grateful for. Gratitude doesn't come to mind when we suffer from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

I have those days of suffering, given that I live with Bipolar 2, which I've been open about in these pages. I also wrestle with negative self-talk. I've wrangled these two into submission for the most part, but still depression and darkness pop out at times.

I challenge the darkness with gratitude:

I am grateful for my bipolar disorder, because it has made me take care of myself. I am grateful because it has given me insight into suffering.

I am grateful for getting my manuscripts rejected because it has forced me to work harder and improve my writing.

I am grateful for my struggles because they remind me that nothing is simple in life.

 

Day 6 Reflection Part 2: My struggle

I may be moving away from writing. Or at least writing novels.

I just haven't felt it lately. The thrill of writing hasn't been there since I finished Whose Hearts are Mountains in December. I haven't started a novel since then; now I have struggled with proofreading/editing the last of my backlog of novels before developmental edit. 

 

The fantasy of getting published has pretty much died. I don't know if the average of 250 readers per self-published novel is worth $500 in developmental edit fees and sixty to 100 extra hours of work per novel. I don't know if I could even get that many readers.  I'm wary of the pitfalls the vulnerable writer can fall into: vanity presses and publishing mills, and will not consider those as choices.

The thing that really worries me is that, when I say "I could quit," I often don't feel a thing. No cheer, no relief, no regret, almost like I hadn't spent five years, countless hours, $2000 and an investment of identity into writing novels and trying to get published.

 

I don't feel bad about quitting until I write this out: I might quit my quest to be published. When I say that, I feel the death rattle of a dream, but at the same time I wonder if that dream of being published, being read is unreasonable, unworkable, pie-in-the-sky. I wonder if there are more reasonable things to dream about.

This is my struggle. Pray for me, or wish me luck, or whatever you feel moved to do.

Day 6 Reflection: Struggle

I think society needs to be careful about how it views struggle.

Struggle is inevitable. In Genesis, the Judeo-Christian origin myth, struggle results from the fall of Man:  By the sweat of your brow  you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:19, NIV). Other origin myths describe the struggle between chaos and order, with humans caught between the forces, if not put to the test to choose.

The stories bring us to the modern day, where we try to accomplish small and large things, buffeted by external circumstance, burdened by our frail bodies and our baggage and the injustices of our worlds. Struggle is inevitable.

Society has come to believe that struggle, and particularly succeeding in the face of struggle, ennobles people. This admiration of those who succeed in struggle spawns a phenomenon with a name: Inspiration porn. We read about and praise those people who have "risen above" their struggle: the homeless teen mom who finished college, the paraplegic athlete, the lawyer from the ghetto. 

There are many dangers inherent in our idealizing those who have succeeded despite the odds: We make mascots of those who succeed, summarizing them in terms of what they have overcome: "boy from the hood who beat the odds", "disabled woman who overcame her limitations", "anyone can become president". 

More harmful, though, is that we absolve ourselves of the work of addressing inequity. We have our shining examples of those who have succeeded; therefore it's possible to succeed. Or we see our work as nurturing those shining individuals and becoming the hero in our minds.

Our work is to address the inequities that complicate the struggles of everyday people. If one group suffers more than others, there is an inequity. Systemic poverty, inaccessibility, discrimination all exacerbate an individual's struggles. Those of us whose struggles are minor are not absolved of the need to address these inequities for the sake of our fellows.

One of the biggest inequities is our definition of success, which we define by a model that looks suspiciously upper-class, able-bodied, white, and male. The college graduate we praise chooses a predominantly male profession. The woman with cerebral palsy competes in a traditionally able-bodied marathon. The man who came from a poor black neighborhood who becomes a music mogul is looked at with suspicion by the mainstream. This just increases the struggle for those who are driven by success.

Struggle may be inevitable. Struggle may be ennobling. But struggle should be eased where we can.

Think good thoughts -- I'm struggling to write.

Sorry I haven't been writing lately. I've been on the road for a friend's birthday party, and today I've been writing -- very slowly. It turns out my "revision" of Mythos/Apocalypse is actually becoming a serious rewrite of the first section of the book. As in starting from scratch, in third person, new information, and cutting back on some of the extraneous storybuilding.

I don't know what I think about it. This is why writing is going so slowly -- two hours later and I'm still on the same page, two paragraphs down. I usually write faster than that. Much faster. I'm hoping that this is just a temporary slowdown and not a serious writer's block.

Think good thoughts for me.

Clawing My Way Out

A friend of mine, upon reading my missives of the past few days, declared, "It's worse than I thought."

He's right. I stepped into a maelstrom of selling myself, and it drowned me. And I'm practically dead, washed up on shore, and I'm the only one there to resuscitate me. 

Ok, the first thing is to claw my way back up the beach before the next wave takes me back out. One dragging crawl at a time. 

Once I'm far enough from the waves, I flop on my back and think: What do I want out of writing?

I want to write well and improve.

I want to be read by more than just my husband.

I want people to enjoy my work.

I don't want to be big; I just want to be read and enjoyed.

I don't know how to do this, which is why I waded into what ended up being the SEO maelstrom, the belief that selling one's work is more important than writing and that quality is defined by how many page hits one gets.

There was a saying once upon a time: "Do what you love and the rest will follow." I don't know if I believe this; it assumes that there is a force in the universe that will promote my project over someone else's.  I don't want a God who will prioritize my dreams over Flint's water problem or Puerto Rico's ravaged infrastructure. I'll do what I love, but I don't have faith that the rest will follow. Which is why, I suspect, I walked into the shrieking maelstrom in the first place.

  

The World Needs

The motto of NaNoWriMo is, as I have shared before, "The world needs your novel".

I have doubted that, since the world hasn't yet published my novel. There's so many novels out there, however, that the world can't see my novel.  Too many people write, too many people get rejected because they're not guaranteed in the current fashion -- I may not be good at writing, but being rejected by the current agent process won't tell me if I'm good.

I have an acquaintance who's my role model -- when a project doesn't catch fire, he tries something else. He doesn't have to deal with the huge time commitment of novel-writing, so it's not quite the same. But I watch him keep trying and learning, and the story it makes is totally fascinating.

I am working to model his persistence. Nobody's representing me? I seek out small press and publish my least sellable works on Wattpad. These aren't likely to make me the "It" person at writers' conventions, but I find hierarchies of fame tiring.

The world needs my perseverance.
The world needs my compassion.
The world needs my struggle.
The world needs my love.
The world needs my optimisn.


If you want to help -- WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A BETA READER?
This means you take on a manuscript and read it, making notes on parts you liked or didn't like about it, places that you felt needed more description, more action, etc. I would like us to work through Mythos, which has been rejected once but is the first of a series I'd like to publish.

If you want to be a Beta reader (I need at least 3) please email me (soon!) at:

My email address

AAAAAAAAGH! Writer's Block!

In the last couple days, I have written six lines of my story. Normally, I write up to 2000 words/day, as when I participate in NaNoWriMo  (http://nanowimo.com) or Camp Nano (campnanowrimo.org). I've only not won NaNoWriMo once (50,000 words) and that's when Trump had just gotten elected. (I didn't have the heart to write.)

I'm not sure why I struggle to write right now. The current book (working title: The Ones who Toppled the World) isn't much more difficult than most of what I've written. I have a relatively good outline to plantz from. I have more time to write than I do during the school year.

This leaves me with several possibilities:

1. I need a kick to the imagination. 
2. I need a vacation from writing 😕
3. I'm letting my discouragement get to me.
4. I find the current story more challenging than I'm letting on.
5. I'm writing in my blog too much 😜
6. I need a more atmospheric place to write than my couch.
7. I need a soundtrack to write with.
8. I haven't fallen in love with my characters yet. These characters -- the sardonic Grace and the analytical Ichirou; the calm and prepared Ayana and her partner, the chameleonic Greg -- I've barely scratched their surfaces. Maybe I need to have a chat with them to get to know them better?
9. I'm not seeing myself as a writer lately.

Ok, I have ideas to play with now. Let's chat sometime!