April 29, 2009

The book club I started last fall (for writers to discuss current children’s books) has been eye-opening. The club members have widely divergent tastes sometimes, and it’s been a good lesson for us all not to take rejection personally. With any title we’ve read so far, at least one or two people hated the book while as many absolutely loved it.

I’m finishing a middle-grade novel right now for Thursday’s book club. It’s a Newbery Honor Book from a few years ago, and it deserves the honor. At least, that’s what I think today. Last week, as I struggled through the first 70 pages, my thoughts were less charitable, like How in heaven’s name did this thing win an award? If I had been reading for pleasure, or if I still had my old job of reading “slush pile” submissions for a publisher, I would not have finished it.

And that would have been a terrible shame.

A Diamond in the Rough

You see, this book (unlike many others I’ve read) really did get good about Page 75. It turned into something focused instead of fuzzy, funny instead of slapstick, with deeper themes and real tug-at-the-heart moments. If I had not had to finish the book (I’m in charge of the book club, after all), I most certainly would have quit along about Page 25.

The opening chapters were all over the place, I couldn’t figure out what the conflict was supposed to be, the humor was stupid, the hero was a combination of a ninny and whiner. If the author hadn’t been very well known, I wonder if this book would have been given a reading by an editor or agent at all. Maybe not–and a really terrific book would have been rejected.

At the Starting Line

All this is to say that first impressions do count. We can’t expect editors and agents we query to be like a child forced to read a book for an assignment. They won’t–and they’ll never know that your book really DOES hit its stride in another fifty pages or so. Instead of hoping for that particular miracle, take extra time to make your opening its best. Study books like Hooked! by Les Edgerton or Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy Kress.

First impressions count in other areas of our writing life as well. How you present yourself to other writers when you first attend a conference or meeting counts too. If you’re unsure of yourself, study books like Networking at Writer’s Conferences by Steven Spratt and Lee Spratt.

On the Right Foot

There’s an old saying: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Even Jane Austen knew this. She changed the title of her famous book from First Impressions to … Pride and Prejudice.

April 27, 2009

“The only copy of your manuscript is stolen from your car. Articles and stories come back with unfailing rejection…Finances grow ever more perilous. This is, with variations, the script for the first ten or fifteen years of many successful writers’ careers. But they hung on.”

This quote comes from one of my favorite book of meditations for writers called Walking on Alligators. It talks about the nearly universal experience of published writers: their successes are interspersed with fairly regular setbacks.

Have you accepted that truth yet?

Re-framing Failure

Even though the overall pattern of your writing experiences will probably be upward (assuming you don’t quit), it will be full of ups and downs. Ups will include sales and good reviews and awards. The downs–those drops on the chart–include rejections and delays and canceled contracts.

The setbacks are NOT failures or reasons to quit–unless you allow them to be. They’re both places of learning and places of rest. They are simply steps on the way to the top. More importantly, they can have a positive effect.

Upside of Down Times

Compare it to climbing a mountain. It’s usually an up-and-down experience as you work your way to the top. There are periods where you climb upward steadily. Sometimes you also go down–lose a bit of altitude–before starting the next steep climb. Are the downhill stretches failures? No. Setbacks? Not really, although it can feel like that.

Downhill spots have their bright side though. For example, when I “fail” to sell something, it forces me to slow down and ask some questions. And more than one time, the failure to sell a series idea gave me an initial disappointment (lasting about five minutes) followed by a rush of relief that I didn’t have to force my exhausted body into another grueling writing stint just yet. The setbacks can be restful, if we let them be. They can allow you to recoup some energy.

The periods in our writing life that seem “down” can also be times to rethink and regroup. Maybe we need a course correction. Perhaps that rejection is trying to point us in a new direction in our writing. Or that negative review might be telling us that our real love (and talent) is in writing poetry, not baby board books.

What about when the negatives are too frequent? As Harriet Beecher Stowe once said: “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you until it seems that you cannot hold on for a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” Judging from personal experience, I have to agree with her.

Have you ever seen a negative happening (bad critique, rejection, few people coming to your workshop, etc.) be transformed into something positive? No need to give specific names or publications, but can you share an unwanted writing experience that turned out, in some way, to be a good thing?

April 24, 2009

I’ve been reading a book on how fear affects writing (and art-making of all kinds). Fear is what holds most of us back from being the writers we dream of being–and probably could be.

Art & Fear suggests that these fears fall into two main categories: (1) fears about yourself, and (2) fears of how others will receive your work.

The fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work. Fears about your reception by others prevent you from doing your own work.

The Great Pretender  (or fears about self)

When you doubt your own abilities, you feel like a fake, an impostor. You feel like your best work was an accident, a happy fluke that you can’t seem to duplicate. It feels as if you’re going through the motions of being a writer–typing, reading how-to books and magazines, attending conferences–but you suspect that you don’t really know what you’re doing. (And we wrongly assume that all those other writers DO know what they’re doing.)

You also suspect you don’t have any real talent. After all, talented people perform their art with ease. Writers might start out that way, but inevitably you reach a point (if you’re truly working) where it definitely is NOT easy! You take that as a sign that you don’t really have enough talent to be a writer after all. (Truth: talent is a gift, and most people have enough talent. Probably 95% of success is what you do with it–and for writers, that means showing up at the page consistently.)

These fears WILL keep you from doing your best work.

Whose Priorities Count? (or fears about others)

The best writing is not produced by committee. It’s produced when a writer who is passionate about an idea is left alone to create. At these times we aren’t even thinking about others.

Problems arise when we confuse others’ priorities with our own. In our heads, we hear these critical voices. (Some come from our pasts, some from current writing friends, some from what we read in magazines and publishing journals.) Since published writers depend on reviews for sales, what others think has to matter at some point. However, when others’ opinions–how they think we should write–influences you too much and too soon in the process, you stop writing what you truly love and start writing what “they” have said is better or more salable.

Wanting to be understood is a basic need, and writers want others to understand their stories. They don’t want to be booed off the stage for being too different. (We all learned at an early age the dangers of being considered different or weird.) So the inner war continues with writers: can I find the courage to be true to what I need to write, or will I buckle to others’ opinions so I have a better chance of being received well? Buckling to fears of being misunderstood makes you dependent on your readers or audience.

These fears WILL keep you from doing your own work.

Ponder This…

Over the weekend, when you’re out walking or weeding your flower bed or riding your bike, give these two questions some thought:

What fears do you have about yourself that prevent you from doing your BEST work?

What fears about your reception by others prevents you from doing your OWN work?

And if you’re REALLY brave, leave a comment about one (or both). It will give me ideas for future topics!

April 22, 2009

My grandson (3 1/2) has always been terrified of thunder. Last week he was with me during a rare downpour. No lightning, just rumbling thunder and a curtain of rain falling from the eaves. We sat on the back porch swing, Caleb with his head tucked under my arm and hands covering both ears.

I kept swinging, enjoying the rain. When there was a rumble, he’d cringe and yell, “Nana, thunder!” After the fourth rumble, I said, “I think that noise was a plane.” (We sometimes have Air Force cargo planes that fly over, sounding very much like thunder to me.) He opened one eye, looked up at the gray sky, and said he couldn’t see any plane. “They fly up in the clouds,” I said.

But Just Suppose…

I won’t bore you with the ninety minutes we sat there, discussing the probability of the noises being planes or thunder. But by lunchtime, he was sitting up on his side of the swing, hands in his lap, and discussing a cargo plane he remembered from an air show. Noise from the sky (either planes or thunder) had continued the entire time. I was amazed that you could teach a three-year-old to re-interpret events and thus regulate his emotions.

If you’re a writer, it’s a skill you’d better learn too.

We all interpret our emotions. As Beth Jacobs says in Writing for Emotional Balance, an emotion is first a physical response, the stimulation of a pathway of nerve cells in the brain. (e.g. a specific pathway has been identified for the feeling of anxiety, which activates certain physical responses) You interpret–you make decisions about–the physical symptoms and the stimulus that caused the anxious reaction.

In Caleb’s case, his fear that the thunder would hurt him was irrational. His was a false fear. (F.E.A.R. often stands for False Evidence Appearing Real.) After suggesting just one other plausible cause for the noise, he was able to calm down and eventually enjoy being outside watching it rain. (Of course, if there had been lightning, we’d have headed inside. I wasn’t asking him to deny reality.)

So many of a writer’s fears are just like my grandson’s terror of thunder. It’s False Evidence Appearing Real. We take “evidence” like a rejection, and we birth a host of fears: I’m afraid I’ll never be published, I’m afraid the economy is too weak for me to succeed, I’m afraid I’m wasting my time writing, I’m afraid I’m too young/old to write. Or we look at our past failures and conclude, I’ll never succeed at writing either. (I remember that one well. I had tried four or five work-at-home endeavors before taking the Institute’s writing course, and I could have let those failures persuade me I’d fail at writing too.)

Re-frame and Move On

Most often, our writing fears have no more substance than my grandson’s deathly fear of thunder. Fear makes a lot of noise, but it’s just noise. When we decide to interpret circumstances a different way–one that is just as plausible–the fear will eventually evaporate.

Got a rejection? It’s just as likely that the reason is the economy, or maybe the magazine already accepted a similar piece. You have a series of failed home businesses in your past? That’s no predictor of future success. It’s much like Edison’s response when someone asked him how it felt to fail to invent the light bulb 1000+ times . He claimed that none of those efforts were failures. He had been successful at finding 1000+ things that didn’t work. He always expected the next try might be the one to succeed. Eventually, it was.

When your negative writing circumstances could be interpreted in a more positive light, do that for yourself. You’ll get rid of irrational fear, you’ll free up your creativity again (which thrives on hope, not pessimism), and you’ll be prepared for a writing career that can last for decades. Re-framing fear is not an optional skill. It’s a must-have for your writing survival.

April 20, 2009

I read something this weekend in Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland that I found very encouraging. Maybe you will too. It was about being a perfectionist–and how to deal with the pressure it generates in all artists, including writers. Read about this experiment:

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class, he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot–albeit a perfect one–to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work–and learning from their mistakes–the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

Quality from Quantity

Isn’t that a fascinating experiment? I know that we get better by writing more, like a piano player gets better by practicing more. But what struck me is how much more FUN the first group must have had (while at the same time producing superior pots.) They were just trying to create a lot of pots, without any emphasis at all on the finished product.

Could I use the results of this experiment to revamp my own writing that was often stalled by the perfectionist demon?

I decided to try an experiment of my own this morning. Most days I more closely resemble a pot maker from Group B: stewing, not writing, being unhappy with results and scrapping them, judging, blocking, and finally quitting for the day. Today I decided to be a Group A pot-making writer and just relax. I stayed off the Internet till noon and just wrote–a lot. My only goal was to produce a lot of pages. I wrote for three hours, and I had fun! From what I can tell, the finished pages aren’t half bad either–and I produced more than three times my usual daily quantity.

I think I’m onto something here! (How about you? What mental tricks do YOU use to keep the fun in writing?)

April 17, 2009

Last night I attended my grandson’s preschool Easter program. Yes, it was four days after Easter. Several incidents and illnesses had conspired to make the delay unavoidable.

However, the program was fun, the kids entertaining (especially my grandson!), and the delay made no difference. If anything, the program was better than ever because they’d had a few more days of practice.

Writing Delays

Sometimes our writing goals get postponed like that. Mine do–and more often than I like to admit. I set deadlines for myself–always have–but sometimes I don’t meet them. Often it’s my own fault, but frequently it’s due to events beyond my control.

Life simply happens to everyone–family issues, health issues, day job issues–and those events often cause delays in meeting our writing goals.

What’s Your Response?

My usual attitude toward myself for missing a deadline I’ve set is to beat myself up. As if berating myself (calling myself lazy and unfocused and a procrastinator and a people pleaser) fixes anything! What good does that do? None–and it does a lot of harm.

I decided last night that the next time I miss a deadline, I’m going to try to be like my grandson’s preschool teacher who was showcasing the Easter program four days after Easter. She didn’t beat herself up, blame anyone, or act like an apologetic failure. She was relaxed and happy and glad to see a great turn-out. The program was delightful. Next time I’m late with a goal, I’m going to make no apologies, relax, and enjoy life. If it’s important, it will get done eventually.

April 15, 2009

Are you climbing the writer’s ladder of success, but beginning to suspect that your ladder is leaning against the wrong building?

I’d been wondering this for a month. I reviewed my goals for the year made in December and saw that I was moving fairly steadily toward each one. Mostly that made me happy. But my life is too busy, and two goals I’m moving toward make me uneasy. I realized I really didn’t want to reach some of those goals. They were things the experts said I needed to do to be a successful writer, but they appeal to me less and less, the closer I get to the goals.

Your Goals? Or Someone Else’s?

Then I read Randy Ingermanson’s free newsletter first thing this morning, and it was one of those “aha!” moments. He was talking about creating your “approximately perfect life.” In part, this is what he wrote:

“What’s your ‘approximately perfect life’ look like? Have you made a list of the things you’d like to have or to achieve or to be that would make your life the one you want?…Nothing happens unless you take action. But you can’t take any meaningful action until you define your direction. And you’ll never have direction until you know what your ‘approximately perfect life’ would look like.”

How do you even know the kind of writing life you would like to have? (And by writing life, I mean to include family and other goals you have. For example, my writing life works around the four hours I spend after school each Tuesday with my granddaughter, and four hours each Friday with my preschool grandson. I won’t give that up, so my ideal writing life has to leave room for this.)

There are a number of ways (books and websites) to help you define what YOUR perfect life would include. Randy recommended an online free website that he faithfully uses called Simpleology. They promise that:

Within minutes of setting up your account, you will:

• See your day with instant clarity
• Focus instantly on what´s important
• Dump the rest (liberation is a click away)
• Clear your brain of clutter and distraction
  

Let’s Get Personal

What’s important to you? What would spell success for you in the writing life? Have you written down your goals? Look at each one closely. Are they truly your goals and desires? Or are they goals–like several of mine–that were dictated by others but, in your heart, you know they don’t fit who you are?

Today I have a very long walk planned to think about these issues. I suspect, that when I get home, I’ll be doing some restructuring of my goals. My life has become too busy and fragmented, and something’s got to go. Why not start with those things that really don’t spell writing success to me?

If you’re willing to share, leave a comment below. Does your own goal list need simplifying? Mine does. I’d love to know which goals you’re going to keep–and which ones you’re going to let go.

April 13, 2009

When I started writing, I lived on an Iowa farm, in a county known nationwide as the “black dirt capital of the world.” Record crops were grown there, in the most nutrient-dense soil in the country.

Then I moved to Texas five years ago. I have tried for two years to grow something–anything–in my front yard. I water faithfully, but after a few weeks, the bushes curl up and die, the flowers shrivel, and the firm succulents go squishy.

What passes for “dirt” here is a bit of leached-out clay embedded with rocks and gravel. There is almost no soil at all, and certainly none of it is black. Not even brown. Just sort of dingy gray. Over the weekend, I asked the advice of the older man across the street, a retired wheat farmer from Nebraska whose vegetable gardens were green and lush.

“Compost your yard,” he said. “Get bags and bags of compost, make some raised beds, and give your plants something to grow on.”

Something to Grow On

When he said that, I realized he was talking about more than my dried-up yard, although he didn’t know it…  I was twenty-seven years old when I took the Institute’s writing course. I’d had twenty-seven years of experiences to write about, twenty-seven years of books read and absorbed. I also had three small children, so ideas were unfolding before my very eyes on a daily basis. I had more ideas than I had time to write down, much less develop.

Fast forward thirty years to arid Texas. I’ve had 35 books published, plus scores of articles and some short stories. My inner reservoir of ideas feels a lot like my gray hard rocky soil out front. Some days I feel like I am about as successful growing stories as I am at growing flowers.

I think my writing life needs composting.

Artist Dates

One of the things Julia Cameron advises in The Artist’s Way is to take a weekly “artist date.” It’s for feeding your mind with images and experiences you need as a writer. Weekly nurturing experiences restock the pond that perhaps you’ve fished from for years. An over-fished pond leaves us with diminished resources. Our work dries up. The pond needs to be restocked. You do that with artist dates.

“An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you pre-plan and defend against all interlopers.” You go alone–no spouses, friends, or children.

She suggests things like a visit to a great junk store, a solo trip to the beach, an old movie seen alone, a visit to an aquarium or art gallery. A long walk, sitting to watching a sunrise or sunset, going bowling, a concert: all such experiences qualify.

Crop Analysis

Are you expecting a bumper crop of writing to come from soil that was depleted some time ago? Is the fruit of your writing labor smaller than it used to be? It could be that it’s time to do some composting.

What are some of your favorite ways to feed and nurture your creative side? I’m most interested in those ways that are inexpensive or free, with the easiest access. What do you do to fit creative composting into your writing life?

April 10, 2009

The guy who goes to bat the most runs the most risks–and receives the most bumps and bruises. The player who gives it his all receives more scrapes sliding into home than the guy seated safely on the bench. But this player also scores the most runs. The wounds are simply part of being successful.

During the 1988 Jamboree encampment of 32,000 Boy Scouts, one troop (38 Scouts) led the entire Jamboree in cuts treated at the medical tent. The huge number of nicks from busy knives sounded negative until someone toured the camp and saw the unique artistic walking sticks each boy in that troop had made. They led the entire encampment in other kinds of woodcarving, too.

Wounds simply mean that you’re in the game. It’s true for Boy Scouts and ball players–and it’s true for writers as well.

What Wounds?

I know an excellent writer who has revised a book for years–but won’t submit it, even though everyone who has read it feels the book is ready. What benefit does she get from sitting on the bench? She never has to face rejection. She never has to hear an editor say, “This is good–but it needs work.” She never has to read a bad review of her book, or do any speaking engagements to promote her work, or learn how to put together a website. She’ll end the game with no scrapes, bumps or bruises.

She will also never feel the exhilaration of holding her published book in her hands. She won’t get letters from children who tell her how much her book means to them and has helped them. She won’t get a starred review or win an award or do a book signing. She won’t move on and write a second (and third and fourth) book.

If you want to be a writer, you have to get into the game and risk a few wounds. Figure out ways to bandage them and recover from them, but don’t be afraid of getting them. They’re simply a sign that you’re a writer. Wear them proudly!

April 8, 2009

When my kids were toddlers and in grade school, I was wired shut for eleven weeks after two jaw surgeries. I’d had some health problems over the years, but being wired shut topped them all. I couldn’t talk to my four small children or even call a friend.

I was dying to talk, but couldn’t. So I hurried to my computer where my characters “talked” onscreen. Dialogue flew back and forth, and (rather surprisingly) this mental conversation went a long ways toward satisfying me. It took me two months to write Danger at Hanging Rock, turning this post-surgical problem into salable writing.

A Real Pain

Writing about pain and writing through pain is possible. Not FUN, but possible. Health problems crop up routinely. They range from short-term problems (like your son’s broken leg), to things needing constant close attention (like diabetes or arthritis). The most serious problems (like terminal illness or a death in the family) affect us all, sooner or later.

However, instead of quitting, we can also transform these experiences into publishable writing, whether it’s a simple case of the flu or a stay in the hospital. It’s tempting with short-term health problems to abandon our writing “until things settle down.” If at all possible, don’t do that.

Instead, stand back, rethink, and keep going. For example, I finished a mystery called Cast a Single Shadow during my daughter’s hospital stay. I couldn’t sleep, so I borrowed a nurse’s clipboard and wrote while the rest of the hospital slept.

Chronic Pain: Another Story

I’ve had TMJ, facial nerve damage from several surgeries, and arthritis in my jaw joints for 30 years. I’ve also had five neck surgeries to deal with a chronic pain condition. The two main challenges for writers and artists with chronic pain are (1) finding the energy to write, and (2) fighting depression.

Writing, as you know, demands a high level of energy, and people fighting chronic pain may use 30-50% of their daily energy just fighting their pain. If chronic pain threatens to stop you from writing, try these things:

*Accept pain as a fact in your life.  Don’t compare your life with anyone else’s or brood about “how life should be.”  It won’t help. Books like Judy Gann’s excellent title The God of all Comfort: devotions of hope for those who chronically suffer will help and encourage you. You’ll realize that many others deal with chronic pain–and overcome  it. You can too.

*Fight the depression.  If possible, try writing about the positive aspects of your situation. (”Life’s Simple Pleasures” was an article written by a migraine sufferer about learning to appreciate what most people take for granted, like a night’s sleep, a picnic with the family, or planting tulips.) Any type of writing you enjoy is helpful in fighting depression because it tends to distract you from your pain (like when you forget your headache during an exciting movie).

*Find the energy. Create mini-goals (for example, writing just fifteen minutes at a time). Divide each writing task into thin, achievable slices. Assure yourself that you only have to complete one mini-goal or slice, then stop if you need to. Pace your activities, even on the days you feel better than usual. Pushing yourself only increases chronic pain.

Terminal Illness

Terminal illness and a death in the family tax your creativity the most. The shock, numbness, and months of extended grief can derail even the most  dedicated writers. However, even in these cases, certain strategies can keep you going.

Why would you even want to keep writing during such a stressful time? The point of it is so that you still have a career when the weeks or months have passed. You don’t have to start over at Square One. Yes, you take the necessary time to grieve or deal with things. However, if you put your writing “on hold” until things are “back to normal,” you may find it too difficult to get started again.

Keeping that in mind, some tips during a really rough patch might include:

*Journal your feelings.  Journal in hospitals, waiting rooms, and cafeterias. Your deepest heart-felt thoughts will provide excellent material for later. They may become fillers, daily devotions or even greeting card verses for people in similar circumstances.

*Encourage and coax, but don’t push yourself to write. Burnout occurs when the demands we put on ourselves outweigh our energy supply. Some days you just won’t be able to put pen to paper.

*Again, write about your experiences.  It can be the best healer of all. To deal with the pain after my dad died twenty-five years ago, I wrote The Rose Beyond the Wall, a middle-grade novel about a grandmother with terminal cancer.  It was a book written from the heart. Despite its subject, it’s a hopeful book for children, and it sold well in hardcover and paperback. Think about doing the same thing with your experiences.

Remember that “this too shall pass,” and when it does, you’ll be in a position to share with others what you’ve learned. That’s a writer’s satisfaction that money can’t buy.

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