Many stories, from mystery to science fiction and fantasy have inspired and awed me. But my road to writing has been a tough and painful one. It wasn’t so much inspiration I needed as the courage to overcome an environment that discouraged reading, let alone writing for a living. One author gave me that courage.

Imagine growing up in a family where reading was never encouraged and was viewed as being lazy. Where farm chores and homework were the priorities. My father occasionally read westerns and Archie comics and then only after we were in bed. My mother just read recipes. Now, imagine the frustrations of a child whose imagination is so taken by the rich worlds in books that she wants to write but must suppress that desire and limit it only to school assignments.

What did I love to read? I still remember Dick and Jane’s antics in the grade one picture books –  ‘See Dick run. Run Dick run!’ – those first words excited my tiny heart and showed me the power of words on paper. Then came rhyming and Dr. Seuss filled my world – ‘One fish two fish, red fish blue fish’. By grades five and six, I was sneak reading the mysteries of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys on the bus ride home – a book a day. Somewhere in junior high school, I discovered science fiction, fell in love with it and then got into trouble with teachers because my imagination and verbosity were greater than assignments demanded. When I took a degree in English and drama, I had relatives who shunned me for years.

Perhaps I should have quit then and for a few years life took over and I almost did. But I always dabbled and always loved reading. So, what changed? What gave me the courage to write and to overcome all the discouraging influences? Where did I find the confidence to achieve my goal of mastering and communicating in my second language? Oh yes, English isn’t my first language and throughout my life, I’ve had a desire to master it and rarely feel I have. Yet, one book, one writer gave me the courage to pursue my dream wholly – to throw myself into it with a modicum of hope to succeed. I owe my courage to J.K. Rowling.

When I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I thought that if she could do it, so could I!”. Her life story, her courage to write and  her perseverance to find a publisher were the inspiration I needed. Since then, I’ve written many wild tales. I can write! My childhood desire to engage in worlds so far removed from reality, to master their voices and breathe life into them in words not my own has blossomed!

Which authors inspire me today? They all do as do the readers who buy their books. Everyone who has the courage to pen their imaginations, to give life to new worlds and voices, and to all our readers who encourage us, I give you my heartfelt thanks.

Cheers and happy writing (and reading too)!

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… what the heart wants. Right? As a kid, fairy tales were the reading fare. You know – Rapunzel (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Sleeping Beauty (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Snow White (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Cinderella (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after). The list goes on. And as a kid, I thought that was the height of romance.

So, when I hit my teen years, I had a firm foundation of romantic beliefs built up. What did I read then? I read Harlequin Romances (boy and girl have struggles, fall in love and live happily ever after). My allowance money went to belonging to a Harlequin book club.  I chose the Historical club. Every month I got a box of four to six novels that were some combination of medieval romances, western romances and regency romances.  I’d start with my favorite, the medievals, move on to the westerns and then read the regencies.

I read them voraciously and then would have to wait weeks for the next box. Back then, I’m not sure if my library carried romance novels or not. I don’t remember looking.  Libraries do now though, I’m happy to say. In between, I’d read fantasies, sci-fi, biographies and whatever else my parents had sitting around. But it was all on hold once I got my new box of romances.

I’m grateful for Harlequin romances for taking up where my fairy tales left off and providing me and millions of women with stories that give us what our hearts want. Not to mention being a major market for romance writers for decades. I still read Harlequin’s and my first dreams of writing included being published by them.

Fast forward thirty years and what do I read and write? Romance. Despite three failed marriages, and the occasional jaded cynic’s hat I wear, beats the heart of a die-hard romantic. My favorite movies are romantic. My favorite storylines in other genres are the romantic ones. Even when dramas and stories end on a sad or bad note, I always think – we just need one more chapter, one more scene and this can be fixed. They can have a happy-ever-after. I know it.

Is it naïve? Maybe. But what I love about romance is that no matter the journey I go on – thrilling, sweet, harrowing, magical, tragic – I KNOW that at the end, everything will be okay, the couple will be together and all will be right in the world. Okay, it probably is really naïve. I don’t care. I’m a happier person because of it.

This may be a really strange analogy, but bear with me. Romance is like a good natural disaster flick (2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon) which I also love. They’re hopeful. They end on a positive note. And I want that.

Natural Disaster:

•  Everything is going wrong (global temperature shift/giant asteroid is about to destroy earth)
• We rise to the occasion and fix the problem (mankind joins together in global effort to save earth)
• When all is said and done, regardless of the fact that maybe the majority of mankind has died horrifically, mankind triumphs and earth survives. YAY!

Romance:

•  Everything is going wrong (boy and girl have conflict – internal and external)
• We rise to the occasion and fix the problem (boy and girl each overcome their own character flaws and whatever else is preventing their relationship)
• When all is said and done, regardless of the problems encountered, love conquers all. YAY!

This is why I write romance. My heart wants happy endings. Now though, I want modern fairy-tales where boy and girl save themselves and each other from bad choices/tendencies and work to keep their happy-ever-after  happy. That seems more realistic, less naïve and still hopeful.

What do ya’ll think?

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The last post of 2012. Oh, the pressure!

This makes me think of endings… and beginnings. These ideas fortuitously play into the topic at hand – when should a writer abandon a scene/plot/character/work that just isn’t working rather than rewriting for the fiftieth time?

My story, A Guardian’s Destiny, was a work in process for sixteen months, give or take.  I wrote, rewrote, edited, revised, rewrote and on and on for what was longer than was good for me or it. I was halfway through rewrites that added a major character when I couldn’t take it any more.  I knew it needed fixed, but  I couldn’t figure out what the fix might be.  Frustration didn’t begin to cover how I felt.  When I stepped back and looked at it with some small measure of objectivity, I could see it had “Edit Face.”  Not pretty. So, I put it in a virtual drawer and began something else.

When do you make that call?  End one thing, begin another?

That is a personal decision, but here are some things to consider.

• Time – How long have you worked on your scene/plot/character/work?  Think about Return on Investment or Lost Opportunity Costs.  Yes, we want our writing to be its best, but it will never be perfect and we need to recognize the tipping point where we have gone beyond productive effort.  If you could have written a multitude of other scenes/plots/characters/works in the time you’ve spent on this particular one, then maybe it’s time to let it go and move on.
• Sanity – Is it making you crazy?  My story was.  That’s not constructive and it’s stressful.
• Distance – Sometimes, it isn’t that you need to completely abandon your scene/plot/character/work, it’s that you need some distance from it.  Your muse may need time to gel. Time to work out exactly what the problem is and how to fix it.  It may be weeks, months, years or never.  You just never know.
• Perspective – It’s just a story.  We’re not curing cancer. Don’t marry your scene/plot/character/work.  You need to have some perspective.  Sometimes, things just aren’t working and you need to stop.  If it helps, save all the drafts or put any deleted text into a different document.  Then it isn’t really gone, just not where it isn’t working.

A Guardian’s Destiny has been tucked away for six to ten months.  My critique partner asked to read it anyway despite my protestations that it seemed hopeless.  After all this time and with her help, I think it may be time to take it back out and finish it. With a second set of eyes and ideas, it may yet be salvageable, but I know now that if it isn’t complete in a reasonable amount of time (not months on end), then back in the drawer it goes.

Here are some sayings that I keep in mind to help me.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to man.  Kites rise against, not with, the wind……  John Neal

It’s only a book.  If nothing is happening – hit delete and start over. …..  I don’t remember where I heard this, sorry.

When your moment of truth comes, remind yourself: They told me it would be hard. This is what hard feels like. I can do this. …..  Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent

What do y’all think?  I’d love more great quotes and/or tales of death, birth and maybe rebirth of your scene/plot/character/work.

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Have you ever had a great idea for a story that thrilled you with the possibilities, only to struggle to develop it into a fully realized manuscript?  You have that scene that burns so bright in your mind, but just can’t seem to expand it into a full novel, or that character you know as intimately as yourself, but lacks the right scenes to shine? Or, maybe you just finished a work and you’re searching for the next big idea, but aren’t sure where to start?

Whatever stage of your project you happen to find yourself struggling in, there’s a simple yet powerful tool you can always turns to for inspiration.

The “What if?” game.

This game casts you beyond all bounds, out into the realm of pure imagination. There are no limitations, no hesitation. No idea is too crazy, no disaster too terrifying that you cannot consider it. Don’t hold back when playing the “What if?” game. Ask yourself, “what’s the worst possible thing that could happen in this scene, or to this character?” and then explore the possible answers.

The results can be a little scary. We need to torture our heroes, but sometimes we cringe back from the awful reality of just how bad we can make things for them. Or we hesitate because if we follow the newly illuminated road our ideas have revealed, it’ll mean a lot of mental struggle to figure out how to guide the heroes through the new difficulties to their eventual triumph.

Don’t hold back.

These are exactly the moments to take a second look and ask “what if?” again. That new, twisted, crazy idea might just be what our story needs to drive it from mediocrity to excellence. It might require more work on our part, it might torture our characters until we cry out with them, it may challenge assumptions we’ve made.

It may be awesome.

Of course, it may kill our story too by taking it off a cliff. In that case, discard that idea, ask “what if?” again, and explore a different road.

Sometimes we play the “what if?” game in the middle of free-writing a scene, when we’re struck by a sudden burst of inspiration and type a few lines that veer the story off the expected course. Again, we need to explore it, consider it, and decide if it was a false start or an exciting new twist.

In one manuscript, I wrote a scene where one character’s powerful magical weapon, which was critical to the plot, unexpectedly fell into the sea and was lost. I hadn’t planned it, but while writing the scene, I realized this was the worst thing that could happen, and I wrote it. The resulting scene became more powerful by entire magnitudes, although it left me quite literally shaking from the shock. At first I wanted to delete it, to shy away from the disaster I’d revealed, but that would have weakened the story and been the easy way out. Eventually, I figured out how to deal with it, and the story proved the stronger for it.

Recently I played the “What if?” game with a friend to explore the deep back story of a current work in progress, and after traveling far afield, we came up with some wonderful ideas I never would have considered without casting myself out into the world of limitless possibilities opened through “What if?”. Those answers now tie in aspects of the plot that were hanging a bit loose, and the resulting whole is consistent and far more powerful.

What experiences have you had with the “What if?” game? If you’ve never tried it, what are you waiting for?

What if it revitalizes your story?

What if . . . ?

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It was breathtaking and I couldn’t stop reading it!

That’s the experience every reader wants and those are the words every writer wishes to hear. The adage that if your character is sleeping, so is your reader is all too true. So if your novel is stuck in the big swampy middle, so will your reader be and he may not have the fortitude to move on. So, how does one gracefully dance across the swamp without getting stuck? There are many books written on the topic but here are three things I’ve learned:

1) you have permission to make things difficult for your protagonist.

When a fellow writer made me aware that it was my duty to make things difficult for my protagonist – that I was supposed to be mean – writing got a whole lot easier and the middle became so much more fun! Disasters, unexpected problems, the fatal character flaw, the goal he so desperately wants is within reach yet is maddeningly elusive, twists and turns, the mentor dies, red herrings  … the list of trouble goes on.

Through the middle, there will be many mini-problems which escalate into bigger ones and culminate into the BIG middle disaster. The BIG middle disaster is the lynch pin of a problem that propels the protagonist into the third act where he rises to the challenge in the smashing climax. This disaster can happen anywhere from the mid-point to the end of the middle.

Most importantly, the protagonist complicates the situation, makes it more complex, worsens it and raises the stakes. How can your protagonist worsen the situation? By having a fatal flaw that he must overcome in order to achieve his goal such as shyness, insecurity, impulsiveness, greed, play-by-the-rules, or risk taker. Sometimes the character may experience success but that can have unintended consequences such as: the antagonist’s reaction; there’s a worse problem he wasn’t aware of; or a secondary character has a bad reaction to the achievement.

2) plan your BIG middle disaster and work toward it

The plan doesn’t have to be overly detailed. Even if you’re a pantster, it helps to know where the BIG middle disaster will occur and what it will be. This will keep you from being derailed, from writing scenes that don’t support the story goals and the final conflict. There’s still lots of room for pantster creativity in getting to the BIG middle disaster and moving beyond to the climax.

As you’re working toward the BIG middle disaster, as you’re ramping up the tension by increasing emotional, physical and psychological conflict, as your characters reactions and actions are met with resounding consequences and reactions, keep in mind the story telling technique you’re using. For example, is this primarily an action oriented, plot driven story? Are you using a mini-arc, a smaller story within a larger one which although connected, serves to reveal information about the characters? Are you following a sub-plot? Is there a new character to add an unexpected dimension to the tale? It’s too easy to get derailed and fall into the swamp if you’re not clear about which technique you’re using.

And it can never be overstated: increase conflict to increase tension to keep readers wanting to know what’ll happen next. For every event, there is a reaction with resounding consequences and more reactions and actions. This will make writing the story exciting for you and a white-knuckle read.

3) focus on the prize

You’ve got your beginning with the story problem clear in your mind. Your protagonist has faced an opening disaster that commits him to solving the problem. You know the prize, the novel’s ending. Now, you must focus on that prize with your protagonist to get him to the ending. At this point, it doesn’t matter if he succeeds and this is a happy ending, or if he fails and this is an unhappy ending or if this is a bittersweet ending with mixed results. What matters is keeping an eye on the goal, working toward the climax by making sure all events -setbacks, triumphs, actions and reactions – somehow contribute to the end result.

Subplots, side trips that reveal character only count if that incident or revelation shows us something significant about the character in relation to the story goal. Saving a cat may be important if it shows a compassionate, compulsive need to act which gets him into trouble later on. For example, it’s a laudable trait to get the cat out of the tree because grandma’s upset and her blood pressure is rising. But, when escaping from the bad guys, he stops running across rooftops because he sees a half starved cat that’s too scared to jump and the six year old kid is on the ground crying. You can imagine how his compassion may get him into more trouble. The rule is that everything you reveal or use must contribute to your character working toward the prize.

The middle is really the fun part of writing the novel. It’s where you can explore your character, exploit his weaknesses and strengths, and keep ramping up the excitement. There are times when I stop writing and ask my character: What do you see? or Oh, oh, what are you going to do now? Your character will answer those questions for you and stay true to the story goal if you’ve done your homework in your character profile, and if you keep your focus on the prize.

For me, the middle is an incredible adventure where the protagonist and I journey through murder, mayhem and have the time of our lives!

What works for you?

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One of the wonderful things about NaNoWriMo is it forces thousands of writers to get the writing party started. This raises the question of: Now what?

The answer is deceptively simple: FINISH  IT.

Okay, I can’t leave it at that. Simple answers just aren’t in my nature. Why? It’s because the simplest answers often hold the hardest truths, and most difficult objectives.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in a month. Keep in mind that the goal isn’t 50,000 immediately publishable words. I’ll circle back to that point in a moment. Most adult-reader novels (and no, I’m not taking about those at the top of the rating system, but all books that fall outside the picture, children’s, and middle grade markets) these days are more than 50,000 words.   Young Adult novels use to fall into the 50-60,000 range, but with the breakaway success of the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises, Young Adult often exceeds this mark as well. Books in the fantasy genre tend to be on the  higher end of the word count spectrum. If you’re not Brandon Sanderson or George R.R. Martin, your likely word count is between 80,000 and 120,000 words.  Romance and Thrillers tend to ranger closer to the70- 80,000 word mark.  So, our task isn’t done when at the end of November we hit the magical 50,000 words. We can’t spell check and e-mail the partially-finished manuscript out to our top ten fantasy agents and expect them to rush to represent us. Seriously, don’t do this.

Tip #1 then is to write until done. Whether you need another 20,000 words or another 60,000 words, you must finish the story and type “THE END.” Having the privilege of typing that phrase a number of times, let me tell you it’s the best feeling. Revel in it for a day or two. By typing ”the end” you’ve done what most of the want-to-be writers never do. You’ve finished the story. Congratulations. It’s a huge accomplishment.

But, you’re not ready to hit send yet. RULE 1 – and unlike pirate “rules” you are not allowed to ignore this one - No story should go from the first time you type “the end” immediately into an agent’s or editor’s hands. The story isn’t ready, and worse, if you had a connection with that person, you might have wasted your ”big chance” on an inferior product. Hopefully, your first draft isn’t far off the mark, but everyone needs some editing before publication.

A very wise and funny lady once told me “give yourself permission to write a crappy first draft.” Thank you, Lisa Scottoline for that advice. The saying isn’t unique to Lisa, but she’s the first person I heard it from where it sank in. I mentioned above  very few people can write 50,000 publishable words on the first pass. I think outliners have an advantage over pantsers like me because the outliner already beta-tested, as it were, the story’s structure. For most of us, the hard work comes after we type “the end” and start the editing phase.

Tip #2 – Put the draft away.

We fall in love everytime we write. I love my characters, even the really horrible people, and their story by the time I type “the end.” I’ve spent months or years with them. Like any other parent, this unconditional love means I’m blind to the characters’ and story’s flaws.  I generally need at least a month before I can objectively look at a novel I’ve written before I can wade into the forest of words with a machette. Take at least a week. Longer if you can. The distance will grant you objectivity, and you’ll need that for the editing/ rewriting process.

Tip #3 – Outline the story.

Okay, this is where opinions will vary widely and you’ve going to need to experiment to find out what works for you. Tip 3 is where the editing process starts. Whether you are an outliner or a pantser, my recommendation is to outline your completed story to ensure you hit all the “beats” you need.  I’ve written about the Hollywood Formula of story telling here before and we just had a great review of Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat which uses this formula here so I won’t replow this ground.  Please check out those two posts because the outlining and story telling techniques set out in both are helpful in structuring a story or fixing one when it’s leaped the tracks.  If you use this method to dissect your story, the “what’s missing” to take this from fair, to publishable, to kick-butt runaway sucess become obvious which makes the editing process less painful.

Tip #4 – It’s okay to delete.

This tip is a version of Stephen King’s imfamous phrase, “kill your darlings.”

I had a professor who was also a playwright. He’d adapted a well known classic novel that hadn’t been previously adapted to the stage. One of the reasons, I think, this particular work of this very well known and revered writer hadn’t been adapted was the “novel” was originally published week-by-week in a newspaper. Sometimes the week’s episode fit into the overall story arc and sometimes it didn’t. The professor overlayed a plot line of the writer’s actual life with the story. The idea was brilliant. The first act’s execution suffered because the professor wouldn’t kill his, or the original writer’s “darlings.” The tech crew (of which I was one) spent the act-break telling the audience the one scene they needed to know from the first act, and  begging them to stay for the second act.  On a good night we only lost half the house at intermission. The second act was brilliant, beautiful and heart-breaking. The problem was almost no one saw it. Instead of listening to advice, killing the scenes which were neat but interrupted the story, and making the play a long one-act, the professor insisted on his version which kept all these odd-ball bits. Because he wouldn’t “kill his darings”, the professor killed the entire play.

If you have a bit you love and that’s the only reason you’re keeping it, use the cut and paste function. Cut it out of the current story. It’s a cancer that will infect the whole work. Paste it into a file named “darlings” or “neat bits” and save. At some point that darling will rise from its technological grave and be given new life in a story it belongs in. Have faith in yourself that you’ll find a home for it in some other work. If a bit isn’t advancing character and plot, it doesn’t belong in this story. Take it out.

Tip #5 Stop editing when it’s time.

People who advocate for limited editing have a valid point. You can edit a story to death. At some point, you have to say it’s as good as I can make it and let it go. Do you send it to agents and editors now? No.

Tip #6 When you’ve gotten it as good as you can, phone a friend.

Remember when I said writers are parents who are blind to their child’s faults? This is where that maxim comes into play again. You need a trusted reader or six. These people are new to your story and can see what you can’t. Whether you’ve had other readers in the editing process, this group’s purpose is to give you impressions (not line edits). This is the group I want to come back to me with emotional comments like “hu?” or “I cried here.” and not technical ones.  You want cheerleaders out of it. If you get people who finished only because they are your friends or, worse, get the DNF (“did not finish”) comment, you have a problem that needs to be corrected before you go past “Go” and collect your book advance.

Tip #7 Send it out.

A professional writer’s light at the end of the tunnel is publication. You can’t get published if your story languishes on your computer’s harddrive.   You must submit.  Do your research. Meet agents and editors. Send the story to the person it is a good fit for. Self-publish if that’s what you want to do. Then the waiting begins.

Tip #8- Start all over.

While you are waiting, guess what you need to do. Yup. That’s it. Write another story. Kismet happens, but you need to put yourself out there. Finish more stories. Give them wings and send them out to the world. Keep at it long enough and you’ll suceeed, whatever that term means to you.

For me,. suceess means writing another 2,500 words today. I best get started.

See you at:

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What do you do when you’re sitting there – ready to write or edit or meet that deadline – and you just aren’t inspired or motivated to do so?  Any distraction is a good distraction, right?  Sigh.

This is how I’ve been feeling recently, so I said to my friend, “I need some methods to keep me motivated when I feel blue and unmotivated.” And I sighed.  And then I remembered I needed to write this post.  Perfect timing to go find some methods to combat this melancholy or apathy or <insert your own feeling>.

After reading several articles… here is what I found.

Have One Goal – when we take on too much in our lives, it’s difficult to find energy and focus to accomplish our one goal.  Clear your plate, that other stuff isn’t going anywhere.  Make writing your one goal for a set amount of time and get to it.  I am notoriously guilty of over-loading my plate.  Must learn to say no.

Be Excited – Don’t write the scenes that you’re struggling with at this time, save them for when you’re on a roll.  Talk about, think about, find inspiration in the fun scenes, the scenes that you can’t wait to write.  That yummy sex scene or that juicy action scene.  We don’t actually have to write in a linear fashion. Yes… I’m guilty of this one, too.

Be Accountable – Post your goals for pubic viewing or be accountable to someone. I always get more excited about writing when I discuss it with my critique partner.  And, it always helps to have goals and accountability(see this post).

Be Positive – Be aware of negative self-talk or that all-too-critical self-editor we have in our heads and hush it up with some positive talk about how great it’s going to be when this scene is done and how we can always edit later.  Harder than it sounds, but practice helps.

Baby Steps – My mom is a great proponent of ‘people can do anything for fifteen minutes’.  So, write for fifteen minutes.  It may be crap and might get deleted later, but so what.  Write for fifteen minutes.  It may turn into two hours or two chapters.  If after the fifteen minutes, you still got nothing, then repeat the next day and the next… at some point the cobwebs will clear and your inner genius will come out to play.

Stick With It – NaNo is all about this!  Just stick with it, even a page a day results in a novel in year.   Focus on the baby steps and do it daily.  This also helps with creating a habit.

Make Writing a Habit – If you create a routine, you can create a habit and that can get you into your writing ‘head-space’ really fast.  Sit in the same place, play the same music, turn off your phone, get your drink, settle in… whatever you need to do to write.  Do it the same way, day in and day out and make it a habit. Then when you’re struggling, this can often get you into the zone because your body and mind know what they are supposed to do next… write.

Use Your Subconscious – If you have a scene you don’t know how to fix or a problem to solve or a plot line to repair, think on it just before you go to sleep.  Seriously, think about what you have already and what you need to continue as you are falling asleep and let your subconscious work it out.  I’m pretty sure mine is smarter than I am.  I always get what I need when I do this. 

So, I’m feeling better already and hey… I wrote this post when I didn’t want to write anything.

Any other suggestions?

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In case you missed it, this month is National Write a Novel Month or NaNoWrMo (NaNo) for short.  Yea, I know. If you’re reading thos post, you know all about NaNo since we’ve been talking about it all month.

By this point, you should have written 31,654 words. I’ve written about 20,000. I’m almost 12,000 words “behind”. In the picture, can you see the black dog who’s looking up over the pack in front of him? Yea, that’s me. With only eleven days left in the month, I’d need to write almost 2,800 words a day to make it to the magic 50,000 word count. My chances of doing this are slim given my trial schedule for the rest of the month. Now, I’ve done it. I usually lag behind and spent most of Thanksgiving weekend writing. But that’s not likely to happen this year for lots of reason.

So, why push on? Why keep trying to hit that goal. Shouldn’t I just take my squeaky toy and head home?

NO. And neither should you.

“But why not?” you ask.

You can’t be a professional writer if you give up. The number one mandate of any writer is to FINISH the story. Keep slogging through it. Taking your toys and hiding out in your doghouse is not an option.

If you are struggling to meet your goal, whether its this month as part of NaNo or at any other phase of writing, redefine it. My husband, a criminal defense attorney, does this all the time. Most criminal cases that go to trial will end in a conviction. If your definition of “win” as a criminal defense attorney is an acquittal, you are going to have a short and frustrating career. Similarly, if your goal is a writer is to have all your stories make a billion dollars, get ready for disappointment. The husband defines “win” as any time he can get hisb client less than a full sentence.  As a writer, I define the writing portion of winning as getting to “the end.”  Every word I put on the page for NaNo is a win.  As long as you keep writing, you are winning.

I did a post a while back on my blog about writing when the world conspires against you or   inching toward success.  I find that when life conspires against me, I need to write to escape into another world and regain my balance. Use NaNo as a tool to help you inch toward success. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with aiming for 50,000 words and writing 30,000 or 20,000. The point is to write.

As Jonathan Coulter said in A Talk With George:

Enjoy yourself, do the things that matter

Cause there isn’t time and space to do it all

Love the things you try, drink a cocktail wear a tie

Show a little grace if you should fall

Don’t live another day unless you make it count

There’s someone else that you’re supposed to be

There’s something deep inside of you that still wants out

And shame on you if you don’t set it free.

To buy this fabulous song you can go to JoCo’s website or Itunes. It’s one that’s helped me over some real tough roads.

If you’re discouraged about your word count, there’s only one cure. Sit down in front of your keyboard and make the words appear. You can do it. And sometimes, there’s a cocktail waiting. Whether you write 500,  10,000 or 50,000 words, you can only succeed if you show up.  If you’re at the point that you need to redefine “winning” do it. There’s no shame in that. In fact, it’s a tried and true technique. You can find the time to write, even if it’s only 15 minutes a day. You can do this.

Inch by inch and word by word, you’ll cross that finish line. I’ll see you there.

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Back over the summer I wrote a post on my blog about how I’d never run out of inspiration because I had children. You can find the post >here<.  The summer had my children (and I include my husband in this designation) building a boat in our pool (see, the photo). It also had the children playing putt-putt golf in a thunderstorm. Needless to say, at the first sign of lightning, my boys abandoned my husband, holding all the golf clubs, and bolted for our room. For more details, please check out my post on my blog.  Anyway, I have a somewhat colorful life. But sometimes even that’s not enough to get the words on the page.

Hopefully, you’ve read James A Owen’s fabulous post on this site. He might call it inspiration, but what he’s done in his life takes a whole heck of a lot of courage. He awes me.

A deep dark secret is I tend to lean toward the depressive side. It’s often hard to find the reason to get out of bed, or not crawl back into it, pull up the covers and hide in the dark once I’ve gotten out the first time. How strong the urge to hide is depends on what’s going on. My last three months have been chaotic. The law firm I was part of split up months before it was projected to and left me scrambling in the busiest month I had to make agreement for a new practice, whether it was solo, with most of the original partners but as an employee rather than a partner myself, or a new firm where I would likely be a partner by the end of the year. The woman I consider my second mother is dying of cancer. It was caught late, and  she opted not to undergo chemo. She’s getting hospice care now. My father has Lewey Body Dementia. It’s a nasty disease where, essentially your brain forgets how to talk to your body. He’s having more bad days than good.  My folks are trying to take a Disney cruise for their 51st anniversary this week, but now there’s a hurricane threatening. Thanks Sandy.  I have a crazy neighbor, and that’s a whole ‘nother story.  And that’s just a list of the big issues. There were, of course, other challenges. As a result, earlier this month, I learned what it took to break me. Not an experience I recommend to anyone or wish to repeat. So, lately,  my reason to get out of bed was solely that I had no choice.

Well, not solely. There were those pesky kids again. And the peskier husband. And James and his Superman ring.

Those pesky kids that spent all summer sailing that boat from one side of our very small pool to another. If we’d actually had a breeze, the boat probably would have broken the pool. But they loved it. My husband and I kept promising we’d get the boat out of the pool and into the nearby lake. Didn’t happen.  And the kids didn’t care.

We have fabulous kids even if they have no common sense. Even as I write this they are fighting over who has to change the “input’ for the TV so they get cable rather than snow. This fight become more ridiculous when you consider that the TV has to be turned on manually – we’ve lost the original remote and no universal one works with this TV- so my oldest was next to the button he needed to push to fix the problem had he waited 5 second instead of walking back to the sofa. Instead. I had to get up, go down stairs, yell/laugh at them for the lack of common sense and hit the input button. Sadly, this wasn’t their most asinine fight.

Here’s the thing, for me at least.  I’ve lived through some terrible things, and I’ll live through more as long as I keep seeing the sun rise. Although this last thought is a good argument for becoming a creature of the night. There are always going to be terrible things happening in life. Sometimes all those terrible things will happen at once.

And then there’s the Superman ring. For a very sick child, Superman became a symbol of hope. We still have James A. Owen because of it. Because of hope, James has found the strength to say “no” and the strength to go on through some really terrible things.

What’s my Superman?

My family.

My husband does fairly outrageous things to make me laugh. I can’t tell you what he just did without losing our “clean” rating, but I laughed so much I had tears streaming down my cheeks.  Where was I again?

Oh, yes, finding the strength to chase the life you want. Not the dream. Staying something is a dream means it’s not, and can’t be, real. You fight toward The Goal, the straight line James talks about. Life’s about finding the will to keep walking that thin line, even when you stumble, even whn you have to resist the urge to lie down and give up, it’s about moving forward when you have to crawl and your knees and hands are bloody from the effort.

You have to believe.

I believe in my sons’ laughs. I believe in fighting through one more day that brings me closer to The Goal. I believe that standing for what I want most makes me a better person for my family, makes me a better writer, makes me a better lawyer. Time in the crucible stinks, but it reforges us stronger.

What do I want most?

I want to spend more time with my family,  continue as a professional writer (to put the right words for the story on the page), and have the freedom to take the law cases I want, not that I have to to pay the bills.  I want to see my epic fantasy in print, to hold that book in my hands regardless of how long that takes. If I keep The Goal in mind, the choices I need to make are obvious, even though they are often not easy.  So, I get out of bed, throw the curtains open wide and get down to the job of life.

What do you want? What inspires you to keep pressing forward to that goal?

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Everyone loves those moments of inspiration, when we get that light bulb flashing in our brains like a cop car in a high-speed chase. There’s nothing like those electric moments when it seems like the heavens open for us and the words write themselves. They are epiphanies that make life as a writer so magical.  They make us feel gifted and help us believe that we might actually have a shot at this crazy creative enterprise of writing fiction.

But, they don’t happen every day, do they? And you’ve got pages to fill and transitions to make to tie those multiple moments of inspired text come together into a cohesive whole. It’s hard when the muse has taken a coffee break and the fires of inspiration go cold. And to wait for that next inspired spark doesn’t get the words on the page, does it? Call it writer’s block, or a lack of motivation, those dry spells can really put the brakes on our egos and make us wonder if we really have what it takes to make it in the publishing world.

I’ll confess, I’ve been going through that second phase a lot lately. I suffer from periodic bouts of depression, and if you don’t know, that can make it really hard to be creative. Of course, my primary defense mechanism for fighting my depression is to wander off into flights of fancy that, when the bout passes, can make for some pretty cool story ideas. But most of this summer, I didn’t write a single word. Even getting a post up for this blog, at times, was a struggle. I started to wonder if maybe I should just put a cap on the idea of chasing that publishing dream.

But struggle doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. I don’t know about you, but there have been times when writing felt like pulling teeth. It felt forced and flat because the words just didn’t flow the way I thought they should. The prose fought me because I wasn’t in one of those inspired moments, but I had to soldier on to get the work done. The crazy thing is that, on re-reading those difficult patches later on, they tend to be far better than the stuff that flew out of my fingers.

So, here’s what I’ve learned. Maybe those moments of inspiration are just as fantabulous as they seem, and maybe the uninspired ones are hard, but we should never let our writing be guided only by inspiration. Love the gifts when they happen, but never let a reliance on those moments hamper our productivity, or make us doubt that we can or can’t do the thing we love—write a darned good story.

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In conclusion to our book give-away, we have procured a very large, metaphorical hat. It is black and felty and often has rabbits in it. And those are Raisinetes. Everybody loves Raisinetes. No rabbits today, however. Today we find only a name:

Michelle Beal

Congratulations, Michelle! You’re the winner of one of the LAST of the limited-edition hardcover copies of “Drawing out the Dragons,” personally signed by James A. Owen.
Michelle, please send your mailing address to colette@fictorians.com.

We promised some big James Owen news today, but publishing and deadlines being what they are, we can’t say anything yet. However, when a big deadline is looming, it is a fantastic time to post art.

A portrait of an author contemplating a looming deadline.

A portrait of an author contemplating the next deadline.

 

Concluding point: he just made a deadline. News to come!

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Life is busy. We all have tons on our plates: family, day jobs, church, hobbies. Amid everything else, we aspiring writers struggle to squeeze in time to write.

Just about everyone I know is racing full speed ahead, myself included. Many of us fall into the trap of taking ourselves too seriously, and when life hits those ever-present road-bumps and fails to meet our expectations, we get stressed and cranky.  Not only does that make life unpleasant for us and anyone unfortunate enough to be around us at the time, tension and anger usually serves to block access to the creative side of the mind.  When trying to write, this kills productivity, which results in our becoming more stressed, and leads to a downward spiral that usually ends with any pages we’ve managed to write in that state having to be thrown away.

It’s time to lighten up.

Dr. Richard Carlson, in his best-selling book Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff, said, “People are frustrated and uptight about virtually everything – being five minutes late, having someone else show up five minutes late, being stuck in traffic, witnessing someone look at us wrong or say the wrong thing, paying bills, waiting in line, overcooking a meal, making an honest mistake – you name it, we all lose perspective over it.

The root of being uptight is our unwillingness to accept life as being different, in any way, from our expectations.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Sure, life is busy and there’s a lot to do. As authors it’s far too easy to think about all the pages we haven’t written, or to curse the fickle muse who led us astray, resulting in yet another draft.

But that’s no fun.

I’ve decided to focus on the other side of the coin. When I get in ‘the zone’, focused on nothing but the story as words fill the page as fast as I can type, all those worries float away.  Those moments can be magical, and productivity soars.  So despite the fact that I’ve been writing for seven years with nothing yet published, I choose to focus instead on the skills and mastery of craft I’ve developed that I didn’t even know I needed to know when I started down this road. I now have three viable manuscripts in various stages of editing, with clear goals to work them to completion.  It’s been a long, difficult road to get this far, but it’s also been a wonder-filled journey I am deeply grateful I experienced.

Like Dr. Carlson says in his book, if we can learn flexibility and stop trying to control things we cannot control, we can evolve from battling life to dancing with it. Challenges will come, unforseen edits will be required, life will throw unexpected curves in our path. It’s going to happen anyway, and we already know we can’t control it. All we can control is our reaction.

I’ve decided to dance more and fight less.

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Back in April, I posted about procrastination.  Since then I’ve been thinking about writer’s block and whether or not it actually exists.  Sure, I struggle to write at times.  Actually I struggle to write most of the time.  But I can usually identify a reason: fatigue, stress, not knowing my characters well enough, not knowing where the story is heading, not being in a creative mood…  I can give you any number of reasons why I can’t write today.  But is it ”writer’s block”?  Or is it just me making excuses?

In the movie Stranger than Fiction, one of the lead characters is a writer who is unable to come up with a way to kill off a character in her book.  The plot paints her as a wildly successful writer who is paralysed by her own success.  But is this necessarily “writer’s block” or a case of someone who lets herself be overcome by circumstances to the point where she can no longer write?

I’ve read several theories about what causes writer’s block – it’s a result of stressful conditions, it’s a disruption to activity in a particular part of the brain, it’s a writer running out of inspiration…  I’m not arguing these aren’t all real issues that can halt the flow of words but aren’t we using them as excuses?  We’re too tired, too stressed, too busy to write, so we tell ourselves we have writer’s block.  What other profession would accept this as a valid reason for not producing the required work?  I’m sorry, I can’t paint your house today because I have painter’s block.  I can’t clean your teeth because I have dentist’s block.  I can’t sell you any milk because I have shop assistant’s block.  It’s really quite ludicrous when you think about it.

So I’ve decided I will no longer believe in writer’s block.  If Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny stop coming around because we no longer believe in them then I choose to believe that writer’s block will disappear if I don’t believe in that either.

This doesn’t mean I won’t ever be too tired or too busy to write.  It doesn’t mean I won’t ever have one of those days when I sit at the computer for hours without writing a single word.  It doesn’t mean writing will suddenly become easy.  It just means I have one fewer excuse for why I’m not producing what I know I can.

What excuses do you dress up as writer’s block?

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Inspiration? Motivation? Publishing news?  Check out today’s reads:

Cory Doctorow – Apple Won’t Carry an Ebook Because it Mentions Amazon

Amanda S Green - Where Are the Howls of Outrage?

Chris Meadows – Is David Pogue Bourne to be Wild, or a Bourne Loser?

James Scott Bell – 7 Things Writers Need to do Right Now

Ed Cyzewski – When Self-Publishing is More Useful as a Marketing Tool

Jane Friedman – What Authors Seem to Forget About Marketing – Especially Those Who Dislike It

Self-Publishing Review – Book Sales Aren’t Everything

Adrien-Luc Sanders – Six Minutes

Joanna Penn – Marketing Direct to Kindle Readers

August McLaughlin – Pinterest-Friendly Blog Posts: 5 Important Steps

Missed any Fictorians articles this week?

Nancy DiMauro – Promises to Keep

David Carrico – It’s a Book Review! (Fictorian style)

Frank Morin – Building Wisdom

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Looking for some reads to inspire you?  Check out these.

Brian Keene - How to Write 80,000 Words in a Weekend

Erin Bowman - Facing the Blank Page

Guest Blogger Patti Larsen at The Other Side of the Story - One Writer’s Process

James Scott Bell - Successful Fiction Begins With a Great Concept

Roger Colby - 5 Ways to Work With Stubborn Writing

Kyle Wiens - I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

Rachel Aaron - A New Look at Plotting

Amanda S Green - And Now We Wait

Dystel & Goderich - What Really Happened with the Pulitzer

Alison Strachan - Writing Goals: Learning How to Learn About Writing

Missed any Fictorians articles this week?

Evan Braun – Interlocking Pieces (a.k.a. The Martin Effect)

Leigh Galbreath – How to Make Highway Robbery Work for You

Matt Jones – Distractions – Stop Working Against Your Technology

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