I’m at Word Whores today, talking about what happens when I don’t write.
On Being Driven to Write
//Tag: writers life
//Shaken Baby Syndrome
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Here in Santa Fe, our clouds have a golden lining.
Snazzy, eh?
So, when I was in Memphis a few weeks ago, talking to the River City Romance Writers (many thanks to LaTessa Montgomery for inviting me!), we had a long and winding conversation. I asked them what they wanted to hear about from me: career path, digital first publishing, writing erotic, writing short, writer’s life? They said, yes.
We ended up talking about all of those things, which made for an interesting conversation.
The thing about being a professional writer, and by that I mean, wanting to make money from your work, is that most discussions about it naturally include both aspects of creativity and considerations about the market. Neither aspect can be escaped. Stories must come from our creative selves. I know there are some authors who say they care nothing about art and treat writing entirely as a business. I suspect they simply view their creativity in a different way. And, no matter how much other writers cling to the purity of art over commercialism, we’d all like to be paid well for our stories. The demands of the market cannot be ignored.
However, I’m a believer in making sure these things occur in the correct order: creativity first, then market. If you put these two things too close together, guess what results? Yes. Shaken baby syndrome.
See, our new stories, or even story ideas, are like infants. They have soft spots in their skulls. Their plot backbones can’t hold up their heads. They can’t stand alone, much less feed or defend themselves. When we have a new story, we must cuddle it close and nourish it. Lots of quiet. Some silliness and fun. Maybe long walks and wordless humming. It’s a special, intimate time.
When your story is new, you can maybe show it to a few special people. The ones you know will coo and tell you how beautiful your baby is. They might cuddle it too and speculate on what a fabulous future your baby might have. Choose these people carefully.
Because there are other people who won’t be so careful. There’s the selfish love-interest who’d just as soon kick your baby into a closet, all the better to have your attention. There’s the careless teenager who criticizes your baby. Worst of all are the industry professionals.
It’s their job – and they’re good at it – to take your baby and shake it. To shake it hard and see if it’s neck snaps. Then they’ll hand it back to you with a sorrowful look and suggest that it might be brain-damaged. They’ll tell you your baby can’t hack it in the market.
Of course it can’t – it’s just a little baby. And now they’ve damaged it. Perhaps fatally.
Now if you grow your baby up, feed it the best nourishment, work with it to make it strong and smart then, when it walks into your agent or editor’s office, it can take a bit of slapping. And likely give back what it gets. Then they give you the happy smile and say, yes! Now this kid has got what it takes. Let’s send her out on the town! She’ll take the city by a storm!
I know this can be difficult, especially when you have an agent. After all, an agent’s job is to look over your babies and tell you which ones might make it and which she thinks you should just smother in their cribs. This happened to a friend of mine. She took her new novel idea – that she was tremendously excited about – to her agent and the agent said, Meh. She said there were too many other kids out there like it. Don’t feed it, she said. Let it die.
My friend isn’t working on it. But I know she still has that baby tucked into a back room and she’s feeding it on the sly. She can’t let it die. She loves it.
I’m totally behind that. I think she should grow this kid up, like the princess hidden away in the deep, dark forest. Then, when she’s sixteen and more beautiful than anyone else in the kingdom, she can trot her daughter out and say, see? Look at *this* kid! She could be Queen of the realm.
So, my point is, baby your new stories. Realize how fragile, how vulnerable they are. It might take a lot of time for them to be strong enough to take the vicious blows of the marketing end. Don’t expose them to that. Protect them. Be good to them. Love them.
Then bring out the tough love and put them through the wringer before they face the world.
Your stories will go on to lead brilliant lives. I just know it.
Antisocial or No?
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Here we are, at that place when we realize the 4th of July is next week and we feel like summer is already half over. It’s a false perception. We still have all of July and August. Really September, too, though emotionally that feels like fall, not summer.
Anne Lamott, a writer I’ve liked for some years, wrote an essay recently on finding time. I’m usually a huge proponent of making time for the important stuff and I often agree with Anne’s take on things. However this time I found myself disagreeing.
Oh, yeah – don’t watch the news. It just makes you sad. House-cleaning isn’t important in the grand scheme, sure. But she makes a basic assumption that meeting with a “close friend” for a couple of hours is more meaningful and nurturing than all the Twitter and social media “noise.”
Frankly, I’m getting tired of hearing this.
If you read this blog at all regularly – and I know many of you do, which means a great deal to me – then you know I greatly value my online community. I believe these online contacts are indeed real, actual friends who play meaningful and nurturing roles in my life.
And *now* I have data to back my opinions up!
I know – we should mark this date on the calendar.
A recent study of Facebook users shows that they “are more trusting, have more close friends, and are more politically-engaged.”
So there!
I absolutely see this. Social is social and the idea that one on one physically present interaction is the only “real” kind is just splitting hairs. Would it be nice to spend one or two hours a week with my close friends? Sure it would! But with KAK and Laura off in icky Ohio, Kerry and Tawna up in the Pacific Northwest with Marcella sailing around god knows where, that gets a little difficult. That only scratches the surface. I went to Memphis last weekend partly to see my friend Karen, who was my sorority sister in college and is one of my oldest friends. When I can’t do that, I talk to her on Twitter and Facebook. I talk to Kev, another lifetime friend, on IM.
I won’t even try to list all the people on Twitter I chat with day in and day out, whose insights and feedback form the watercooler of my days.
Please don’t tell me that’s not meaningful or nurturing, that communications with these people is noise to be eliminated. How poor and silent my life would be without them.
One of my college friends, Felicia, commented on Facebook that she doesn’t know how she would have coped for the last year, facing breast cancer, without her Facebook community. This is someone I would have long fallen out of touch with, if it wasn’t for the online interaction.
Yes, make time for what’s important, but make it wisely. One person’s noise is another person’s lifeline.
Good Business – Please Don’t Be Difficult
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The longest day of the year comes to a close. The sun is now at its most northern point, shining into the Secret Garden. The pendulum hits the end of its arc, hesitates, and swings back.
So, I’ve been talking to people about redoing my website. Yeah, it’s old. I’ve bastardized it over the years. I *ahem* rarely update the thing. I kind of hate even looking at it and the prospect of dealing fills me with this formless sense of dread. Nevertheless: the site needs help and it’s time to do it.
Always an interesting thing, when you step out into the world with your fistful of money and say “hey, I’d like to purchase this service.” You’d think, especially with the economy as it’s been, that people would love to have your money and provide that service. Odd that it doesn’t exactly work that way.
I’m totally not counting all the people that suddenly followed me on Twitter the second I mentioned web design.
The first guy I talked to didn’t get my first email. Then, when he got my follow-up email, gave me a lot of complex feedback. As the astute Laura Bickle says, “I don’t want to know how sausage is made.” Don’t tell me about code, please. If I cared about that stuff, I’d be doing, um, web design. He charges by the hour, wasn’t sure how many hours it would take, and seemed to be going in directions that confused me. I expressed my confusion and he never replied.
Guess I was difficult.
After a week, I asked for other recommendations yesterday. KAK gave me one, and a Facebook friend gave me another. I filled out the form requesting proposals on both sites. One of those I still have not heard back from, which I wouldn’t think too much of, except that the other called me within about 1/2 hour. This gal chatted with me about what I wanted, didn’t treat me like I was crazy and explained in exact dollars what it would cost me and what I’d get for that.
THANK YOU.
Later in the day, the company owner emailed to tell me they were enthusiastic at the prospect of my business. She will be at RWA National next week and wants to meet with me. The fact that she runs her business this well makes me think that she will represent *my* business well, also.
My feeling of formless dread has transformed into enthusiastic hope.
Which is exactly what I’m hiring someone to do. Handle this for me, please.
I think it’s good to pay attention to how people handle their businesses, both good and bad. As writers, we are necessarily business owners, whether we want to be or not. More and more I think the key to running a good business is to make it easy for people to do business with you.
In short: Don’t Be Difficult.
I could wax on with specifics, but I’m sure you all know what I mean. Be easy to communicate with. Be clear. Know your price points.
Oh – and have a good website.
Ahem.
How to Get Everything Done
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Yes – it’s the moment you’ve anxiously awaited. The beaked yucca bloomed!
Isn’t she pretty? Or he. We’re not sure how to tell.
If you haven’t been following the slow progress of the yucca bloom, you can see it here, here and here. Yeah, it’s been a long, slow process. Delightful result.
I mentioned last week that I went to Memphis this weekend to talk to the River City Romance Writers. It’s always a real treat to talk to other authors about the industry and process and writing time. They asked me to talk about writing novellas, then we worked into epublishing, do you need an agent and which epubs are the best these days and why I think so. We talked for two hours.
One thing that struck me was they wanted to know how I get it all done. This is always the hard question. It’s an easy answer, but no one really likes to hear it. I’ve talked about prioritizing before, so I won’t wax on about it right now. However, one thing that occurs to me is this old adage:
The more you do, the more you can do.
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how the writing fuels us, rather than the reverse. I think it’s a fallacy to say “oh, I’ll write when I have more time.” Or “I’ll start exercising when I have more energy.” The thing is, time and energy don’t just appear on their own. It’s kind of a “if you build it, they will come” proposition. If you insist on having the time to write, the time will be there. If you exercise, you’ll feel better and more energized. Just talk to anyone who’s retired or has been laid off from their jobs – they’ll tell you they don’t know where the time goes. I’ve been this soldier many, many times. When I have plenty of time to do something, I fritter 90% of it away. If I have only a short space of time? Boy, do I pile on the effort and get it done.
When I was in college, the president of the sorority was awarded most improved GPA. The former president leaned over and whispered in my ear, “that proves it right there: the more you do, the more you can do.”
The best thing about getting all those things done?
The rush of energy, baby!
Now git ‘er done.
Beaked Yucca Lessons
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Update on the yucca flowering:
Not so much?
If you haven’t been following along with the Blooming of the Rescue Yucca, it started sending up a spire here and was much bigger here. I should have done an update last Monday, but I clearly had important ranting to do about appreciating the role of serendipity and chance in life.
So, you’d think there would be actual flowers by now, that there would be fragrant blooming. After all, it’s been weeks and weeks. Surely that’s enough time and effort? But no – the buds are covered with some kind of sticky stuff that the bugs seem to like. It’s all alien-looking and kind of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
The moral here is obvious.
Not all stages of growth are pretty. Things progress on their own schedule.
It always seems like a long time, when you’re waiting for the blossoms.
A few of my own flowers opened this weekend, though. Ellora’s Cave is making an offer on a short story tentativley called Feeding the Vampire. That’s right – it’s my Post-Apocalyptic Erotic Vampire story.
What?
Hey – I don’t tell the dream faeries what stories to send.
Also, Petals and Thorns finalled in another contest – More Than Magic – for best novella! I’m so pleased to see P&T getting some love.
I don’t even mind the little bugs.
Why Writing Is Like a Forest Fire
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One thing about forest fires – they make for dramatic sunsets.
A lot of people here are bemoaning the fire. For those not up on Western news, the Wallow Fire is now the third largest in Arizona’s recorded history. The fire covers 486 square miles, has been burning for over a week and firefighters have zero containment. Fortunately they’ve been able to keep it away from the towns so far and let it burn away at the dry forested hillsides.
But people have been saying things like “why do there have to be forest fires?” And I hear them blaming oil companies for global warming.
They really don’t like it when you point out that forest fires are part of nature and play an essential role in the cycle of the forests and fertilization of the soil. Nature isn’t always a pretty, happy place with serene lakes and chirping birds. Sometimes it’s ugly and violent. Plants and animals are consumed and remade. Flames and smoke boil through and overcome everything.
We’ve had to seal up the house, to keep the smoke out. The other night it was so thick, it was like night fell hours early. I worried about the birds, with their tiny lungs.
But in the morning, the hummingbirds were out as usual, feeding in the clear morning air.
David pointed out something to me the other day. He says I said it to him, but I don’t remember it. We’d watched Creation, a really excellent movie about Darwin, with Paul Bettany (yum!) and Jennifer Connelly. In the movie he struggles with Parkinson’s disease, the death of his daughter and a spiritual crisis that threatens his til-then strong marriage. Writing his manuscript is a huge effort.
David used that as an example and said that, when we have an art or a pursuit we’re passionate about, it nurtures us. It’s wrong-headed to think we live our lives to nurture it. Rather, it’s when people lose their passions that they falter and waste away.
I don’t live to support my writing. My writing is what keeps me alive.
It’s all part of nature.
Why Me?
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David had a classmate, Marjorie, who died of cancer this last winter.
I never got to meet her. Not for any particular reason. At first we just weren’t in the same place at the same time. Then her tumors came back and she finally withdrew from the acupuncture college. Because I wasn’t a friend, I didn’t go visit her when everyone went to say good-bye. It just didn’t seem right.
But I felt like I knew her, because David liked her so much and often related to me the things they talked about.
One thing that stuck with me – she told David that she finally had to get over the idea that she was a bad or negative person because she developed the cancer, because it ultimately defeated her. See, when you’re in the natural healing world, there are strong ideas that your mental attitude governs your health. Negativity or bad emotions promote chronic disease states is the thinking. Positive thinking creates health and healing.
All of this success stuff comes from similar philosophies. “I create my own success.” Your life becomes what you envision it to be. Anything can be yours if you simply envision it, be positive and make it happen.
The flip side, of course, is that if you don’t get what you want, it’s because you failed. Failed to envision enough, be positive enough, what have you.
Like with Marjorie. She failed to cure her own cancer. But she ultimately decided to refuse to accept that as a personal failure.
She lived ten years past her initial diagnosis of terminal cancer. She enjoyed her life and continued to follow her passions. Part of that meant coming to terms with not seeing herself as a bad person because she got sick. How she dealt with the disease truly showed her strength of character. And she died surrounded by friends and loved ones, both animal and human.
This is what I was trying to get at on Friday. I’m not sure I did a very good job.
(Either that or everyone was out enjoying their summer weekend, which is all to the good.)
I absolutely believe we have a hand in our own successes. But I think there’s danger in believing we can control fate. It would be nice, sure. Tempting to try. Ultimately, though, the universe goes where it goes and takes us with it. Sometimes beautiful summer days fill our weekends. Sometimes tornadoes hit. The weather falls equally on the good people and the bad people, the positive thinkers and the bitter, angry ones.
The differences show in how we handle it.
We love to tell stories about grace under pressure. The heroics, large and small, that shine when disaster hits. We rarely talk about how well someone handles success.
My favorite religious studies professor, David Hadas, who I quote often, pointed out to me that, when tragedies occur, we look up to whatever gods we follow and ask “why me?” Rarely, he said, does anyone look at some amazing bounty they’ve received and ask the gods, “why me?”
It’s easy to believe that, when our efforts are rewarded with success, it’s because we are so wonderful and deserving. But that’s as much of a trap as believing that we deserve cancer. Or tornadoes.
The true test is how we handle it.
Blooming
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Our yucca spire continues to get taller. Some days you can almost SEE it grow. Just amazing. You can compare it to a week ago.
Sometimes I think writing success can be like this. Your life can go on with no apparent change while you work away at something. Every day you add a little bit. You extend the novel by another 1,000 words. You refine the story, make the character arcs stronger. You take in what you are fed and you grow, by infinitesimal amounts, day by day.
Often it may look like nothing at all is happening.
Then one day – it all pours forth. The work comes to fruition.
This is the overnight success. Where suddenly someone bursts forth upon the scene, in full flower, towering above everyone else. Never mind the years in the desert, the months without rain. The flowering unseen.
In this era of full-disclosure, it’s hard to imagine anyone flowering unseen. Everyone out there seems to be yammering away at top volume to declare their wares. In a crowd like that, it’s easy to fade to the back, to be just another yucca.
Just wait. Keep adding to the roots. Enjoying the sunshine.
When that spire shoots up, oh yeah – they’ll notice then.
Live by the Sword
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I hope this threatening sky promises rain -we desperately need it.
David’s been talking about some of the patients he sees and how the ailments they come in with so clearly reflect how they live their lives.
I think it’s easy to see that those who choose a violent path stand a greater chance of dying a violent death. Live by the sword, die by the sword. It’s a simple matter of percentages. But I think it’s less easy to see that, if we choose to spend our lives in service of our children, then that’s how our lives will look in the end. If we choose not to accept responsibility, then we’ll have no control over anything. My stepdad Dave loves order – thus he’s been in the military and prioritizes creating order.
It’s that aspect of choosing that’s most important. Stepdad Dave doesn’t spend every minute of every day making lists and planning for the future. It’s just his priority. It’s what creates the foundation under everything else. And it’s characteristic of him – enough that we all tease him about his lists.
Kristen Lippert-Martin mentioned on her blog that Virginia Woolf wrote only one hour every day. Not all that much time, out of her 24. And yet, we think of her as a writer. The quintessential writer, for many. That’s because being a writer shaped her life, more than anything else. She made all her choices around that idea and it became her salient characteristic.
I think that’s the key: what we choose to live by is what defines us. The warrior who chooses to live by the sword might retire from the field between wars, but she remains a warrior in her thoughts and actions.
We spend a lot of our lives with things being chosen for us: our families, where we live, our friends, often our professions. In the hustle of day to day, we tend to fall into what other people declare is most important. And we often have to abide by that: children must be fed, paying bosses must receive deliverables. Still, those things don’t have to define us.
Even if we spend only an hour a day writing, we are writers by definition, if we choose that way of life.
Live by the word, die by the word.