Write. Nurture. Repeat?

Posted by 4amWriter

Apple blossom in bloom, 4am photo files

All books start out as a seed, a breath. Only with nurturing can that seed bloom. Some writers are unable to move on after the initial burst of growth. They put away their stories which are nothing deeper than that first layer of imagination. An onion-skin of creativity. That is how we all begin, with an onion-skin, a transparent membrane too fragile to stand alone.

There aren’t many of us who go back and try again. Quite a large percentage give up. Reasons vary. We can’t take criticism. We can’t keep our minds open. We’re tired, maybe even bored with the story, and we just want it out of our lives. We let friends read it too soon, or we query too soon. Our will power declines, our passion dwindles, our dream fades. Suddenly, writing isn’t as much fun as we thought it would be.

Then there are those of us whose calling it is to be a writer. We square our shoulders and return to our struggling creations. We prune the growth, dig up the root ball and transplant it. Hopefully this second time, we’ll be able to offer more wisdom, more honesty, more vulnerability. We complete it for the second time, but we’re not finished. We likely love it more, but something is not quite right. The ending is rushed. The antagonist is one-dimensional. The setting doesn’t fill the senses. Too many words. One problem or a web of problems, whatever it may be.

Suddenly we have a tough choice to make. We invested a huge chunk of time by this point. And the book won’t soar. You probably know this or maybe you don’t know. Either way, you hold out hope for its success.

I have reached this fork in the road at least half a dozen times with my novel. Do I pack it in? Do I self-publish anyway? Do I roll up my sleeves and dig again?

As much as I may have clawed, scratched, kicked, and screamed—I always rolled up my sleeves and dug around for a stronger story. I revised my years-old manuscript until it hurt, literally.

So, how do I know when I’m done writing and nurturing? How do I know when it is time to send it out? As a writer who isn’t exactly brimming with confidence, I don’t know if I’ll ever see the day where I am 100% satisfied with my work. I can always find a glitch, a hiccup, somewhere. Then there is the public. No way in Hellula can writers please every single agent, publisher, or reader. So, one rejection does not necessarily mean I’ll get 50 rejections. But one rejection could mean I’ll get 50 rejections.

How do we know when our book is ready?

Perhaps the question needs to be, how do we know when we’re ready to let go?

This post by Kourtney Heintz is a friendly warning to writers who have a hard time being objective with their books.

I think writers need to bond with their books in order to write them. However, I think writers need to break that bond in order to sell them.

I think, with practice, letting go gets easier. We begin to see our book in a different light. We happily whittle away words or whole scenes–passages that we once hung onto with desperation. The characters, who used to tread through our minds as we washed dishes or drove a car, visit less frequently, are less demanding. Perhaps other characters, from story ideas that have been waiting anxiously for their turn, are knock-knock-knocking on our imaginations. You go through your final draft with more confidence, satisfaction. You realize that you have written this novel to the best of your ability, you have done the story justice.

Suddenly, it feels okay to let go. You know there are no guarantees. You know it might be rejected. But you’re okay because you’re ready for whatever happens. Even if no one else wants to take a risk on it, then you will figure things out. You’ll be disappointed, but not beaten. You’ll still move forward because in your heart you know you accomplished a mind-blowing goal.

What about you? Have you been able to move on from your book? How did you do it?

When Opportunity Knocks, Should You Answer?

Posted by 4amWriter

Opportunity

is turning left when the sign

tells you to turn right

Over the years I have missed multiple opportunities. Mostly these chances had to do with my writing in one way or another. I always had an excuse, a reason, to not take advantage and so the opportunity would slip by untouched, unlived, like a blossom that never unfurls.

Missing an opportunity is seemingly harmless. It’s easy to say, well, it’s not like I’m losing anything by not following up on such-and-such because I didn’t have it in the first place. But it’s easy to forget opportunity can lead you down unbeaten paths, open doors that might have otherwise been closed and locked to us. If we don’t follow up on something that avails itself to us, then we won’t ever know if we’d want to make it a part of our lives forever. We also won’t know what it’s like to take a risk.

I’m a firm believer in that opportunity is a regular visitor to everyone. But we don’t always recognize it. Opportunity is notorious for visiting in disguise, appearing as though it won’t be beneficial to your life, or seem too complicated or risky to take on. In fact, I’m willing to bet that the best, most fulfilling opportunities are the ones that are difficult to fit into your schedule, the ones for which you have to sacrifice something.

And yet, there is something to be said for balance. Unless I’m independently wealthy and have oodles of time on my hands (the word ‘bored’ could again become part of my daily vocab), I obviously can’t accept every opportunity that comes my way. I have to be discerning, which means I really need to examine the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether or not I can fit this into my crammed life, if it will be an enriching experience.

I still cringe over a decision I made 15 years ago that could have changed the course of my life. A rare offer was made to me, but I declined because it was bad timing. It was inconvenient. I would have had to give up much of my life as I knew it, move to another part of the country, say goodbye to family, friends, a new boyfriend, yada, yada, yada.

Looking back, I am fully aware of what I missed out on, and that my life would be completely different today had I accepted. Now, mind you, I’m not saying it would be better, just different. And that’s something we have to consider when opportunity knocks.

When faced with a tough decision, ask yourself about your goals. Are you looking to change your life? Or are you looking to enrich your life? Consider all angles. Don’t only think about the short-term impact, because that is likely to be detrimental anyway. Make sure you examine how this opportunity can affect your life over the long-term. Do you think you can endure the sacrifices if the pay-off in the next 10, 14, 23 years is worth the struggle? Will you learn something new? Could this be a life experience, a cultural education or would it merely be a mediocre lesson, a passing of time?

Be honest about whether you’re living your life the way you always dreamed, imagined, wanted. You need to know if this opportunity will help you on your chosen path, or if it will lead you astray. And, if it does lead you astray—ask yourself if that might be a positive change. Sometimes, we run into obstacles on our chosen paths, and you need to detour for a bit before you can get back on track.

What is especially important to remember is that we are blessed as human beings to have choices. Gifts from the universe. Accept them graciously, open them carefully, and use them joyfully.

“Opportunity does not trouble dead men, or dead ones who flatter themselves that they are alive.” Elbert Hubbard

How about you? Have you ever regretted a missed opportunity? Do you take advantage of as many opportunities as you can?

Sunday Spin-My Life’s Journey

Posted by 4amWriter

Welcome to Sunday Spin, where I blog about life beyond the realm of writing.

The other day my son had his friend over for a play date. When his mother and sister came by to pick him up, I welcomed them into the living room where we chatted for a while. I had to go rustle up the boys from their Lego-building adventure, and I went upstairs. When I came back down, I was surprised to see the mom sitting on what we normally use as the coffee table.

I was so pleased! Honestly, I was happy because I HATE that stupid, sorry excuse for a coffee table that my husband bought, thinking it was so cool. I told him then, and continued to remind him in the three years we have owned it, that it looks more like a bench than a coffee table.

You be the judge:

Leather top on a coffee table? Really? Do you think I can balance my steaming mug of coffee on that thing?

Note the chew marks on the bottom rungs? Even the dog thinks it’s something other than a coffee table.

In my wanderings on blogosphere, I came across this site, My Life’s Journey, where I see yet another coffee table that isn’t just a coffee table. Now, would you even dare to place your steaming mug of coffee on that???

In Search of the Elusive Right Word

Posted by 4amWriter

Welcome the fourth installment of my guest blogger, Tony Cappasso. He is the author of a self-published travel narrative, America’s Highway: A Journal of Discovery Along US Route.

Here’s a bit of writing advice you’ve no doubt seen: Read all the time, read everything.

I’ve always been skeptical about advice that is so absolute. But this bit has really worked for me.

Writing is description. It is putting words together to create an image, a sensation, an emotion, in the reader.

It’s what I love the most about reading the works of other writers. It is what I find the most difficult to do in my own writing.

All my experience is in non-fiction. I wrote for newspapers, newsletters, magazines, and the web. All the topics I covered, all the subjects I wrote about were real. No making things up allowed.

It’s tough to be flowery when you’re describing a surgical procedure or a mass immunization.

But I like brilliant, descriptive writing; that is, I like reading it. I’d love doing it, too, but it has never been my forte. Oddly, it doesn’t come naturally to me in my writing although it does in my speaking. But I’ve gotten better.

Before setting out on my trip from Maine to Florida on US Route 1, I reread three of my favorite travel writers. Paul Theroux (Kingdom by the Sea), Bill Bryson (Notes from a Small Island), and William Least Heat Moon (Blue Highways).

All three are masters of description.

This is Theroux describing trains: “It was man’s best machine traversing earth’s best feature — the train tracking in the narrow angle between vertical rock and horizontal water.”

Or William Least Heat Moon from his book Blue Highways: “With a nearly desperate sense of isolation and a growing suspicion that I lived in an alien land, I took to the road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected.”

Here’s Bill Bryson musing about tourism: “What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.”

I try to imitate them; to learn from them.

I look for inspiration in description. I carry a notebook and a pen to jot down observations about persons or places, and practice sharpening my skills at describing what I see and hear, taste and smell, so my readers can also.

What about you? Is it easy for you to write description? Which of your favorite authors do you think write great description?

And You’re a Writer

Posted by 4amWriter

106

One day during summer vacation, my husband, two children, and I were in a taxi. The cabbie asked my husband what he did for a living. They shared a small exchange before the cabbie looked at me in the rear-view mirror and asked me what I do for a living.

I said, “I take care of these two sugar cubes,” referring to my two children sitting on either side of me.

My 7-year-old son, Riley, looked up at me and said, “And you’re a writer.”

I chuckled, feeling embarrassed, and I mumbled something that resembled an agreement but let it go.

For the rest of the day I dwelled on the incident. This wasn’t the first time I didn’t mention writing when someone asked me about my job. I’ll say I’m a mom, or that I’m a freelance editor, or that I teach creative writing to children.

Why do I have trouble referring to myself as a writer? Is it because of the way he phrased the question? I’m certainly not making a “living” in my current status as writer. But I don’t get paid as a mother either, so that answer wasn’t appropriate in the sense of ‘making a living.’ Besides, we all know when people ask that kind of question, they’re simply asking what we do for work. I answered that I am a mother—and I didn’t mention that I’m a writer.

Here, in this blogging community, I talk about being a writer with raw honesty. And I don’t feel ashamed I’m not published save for one short story. But out there, beyond the writing world, I duck from that identity, from the dream I want to live.

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window. ~Burton Rascoe

In my experience, non-writers rarely understand that writing in and of itself is a job—whether we’re published or not. I think, in general, non-writers have difficulty accepting writing as a job unless payment is involved. We writers probably look like spinning globes to non-writers, with the illusion of action but going nowhere fast. Non-writers generally see only the end-product. And if they ever have the opportunity to witness the sweat, blood, and tears leading up to the final creation, they still fail to appreciate the journey like another writer might.

However, I can’t blame the non-writers in my life for my own lack of pride. I should recognize the obstacle, but I should not let it stop me from defining myself.

I am disappointed I was unable to describe myself as a writer. But what opened my eyes is that my seven-year-old son calls me a writer. To him, that means something special and he’s not ashamed to announce it. So, the next time someone asks me what I do for a living I will take pride in the words, “I’m a writer,” because I’m in a crucial phase of my journey.

To be an author, I must first be a writer.