A Challenge to Writers: The Balance Between Dreaming and Working
By Annie Neugebauer | January 18, 2017 |
Photo by Alex Mertzanis
How many times have you fantasized about what blurbs will someday grace your book covers?
Embarrassed?
Okay, I’ll go first: countless. From the day I decided I was going to write a book, I was dreaming about what already-published authors might say about it. Spoiler: they’re all rave-reviews, and they’re all from the best in the business. (Hey, it’s my fantasy, okay?)
Early on in my writing life, I was isolated and novice enough to be totally uninhibited in this practice. I didn’t tell anyone, but I did make long lists of authors to approach for blurbs someday and imagine what they’d say. This is before I even finished writing the first book, mind you. This was back when I thought “difficult” was an apt enough descriptor for the journey to getting published. It’s almost charming for me to think about newbie me making those lists, crafting those faux blurbs, and thinking – even a teensy little bit – that some of them may someday actually happen.
Writers, here’s my challenge to you today: do this.
I’m not kidding. Do it right now. January is the perfect time for dreaming. Newbie or seasoned vet, zero books out or fifty, open a blank document or grab a notepad and, literally, make up the blurbs you wish your favorite authors would say about your books – written yet or not. I promise that you will never have to show this to another soul, so be shameless. Be fearless. Be ambitious and ridiculous and absolutely naïve. Run with it. Have a blast. Take as short or long as you want. Five minutes or an hour.
Seriously. Go do it, and then come back. Don’t look ahead yet. This is one of those exercises that won’t work right if you cheat. I’ll wait.
.
.
.
.
Done? That was fun, wasn’t it? I don’t know about y’all, but Stephen King called my novel “terrifying,” Sharon Olds said my prose “sings with poetry,” Jack Ketchum proclaimed me “gutsy,” and Anne Rice called my book “a literary masterpiece.”
Okay, now put back on your Grown Up Author Specs and take a look at your list. Suddenly, this becomes more than just a silly exercise in dreaming big. It becomes two very important things: an authorial style map and a challenge. What a dream blurb list actually tells us is who we admire and why. I can’t get over how well Stephen King understands and creates fear, which is why I chose him to call my work terrifying. I genuinely marvel at Anne Rice’s artistic skill and breadth, which is why I chose her to call my work a literary masterpiece. Yes, those are silly – that’s the point – but looking beyond the improbability of such daydreams becoming a reality shows me what aspects of different writers I most aspire to master.
These are the things I need to aim for. Taken all together as a whole, these are the pieces that map out my ideal authorial style. These are the things that I want all of my work to exemplify.
Pretty neat trick, eh?
So now that you have your ideals written down in black and white instead of just floating around in the nebulous old noggin void – along with your examples of authors who embody them – what do you do with them?
This is where the real challenge hides: you work your ass off to actualize them.
If you were hoping for an easier answer, I’m sorry. This isn’t a shortcut; it’s a roadmap. This is where the concept of balance comes in. Some people will tell you to get your head out of the clouds and put your butt in the chair. Other people will tell you to dream big, because that’s how ambition is born. I say do both. Dream as big as you want, and then put your butt in the chair to make it happen.
Now, to be clear, when I say “actualize them,” I don’t mean the blurbs themselves. Not only are Jack Ketchum and Sharon Olds probably really freaking busy making their own spectacular art, but who knows what they may actually think of my writing even if they had the time and generosity to read it? No, that’s not a healthy goal.
But what is a healthy goal is the study of the authors you admire and the constant, intentional striving towards building the strengths you most value. I’ll never be Stephen King, nor would I want to be, but I can study fear. I don’t write the same way as Anne Rice, nor would I want to copy her, but I can strive to equal her literary ambition. Do you see? It’s not about the blurbs: it’s about the vision. The art. The words themselves.
Because at the end of the day, that’s how dreams become reality: really, really hard work – one word at a time.
I know I promised you wouldn’t have to share, but if you want to join in the fun, feel free to comment with your ambitions. :) Shy of that, let’s discuss dreaming big and working hard. Do you have the individual facets of your aspirations plainly mapped out? How do you keep those intentions in mind as you work? How, in short, do you balance dreaming and working?
[coffee]
Annie Neugebauer is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author with work appearing and forthcoming in more than a hundred publications, including magazines such as Cemetery Dance, Apex, and Black Static, as well as anthologies such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volumes 3 & 4 and #1 Amazon bestsellers Killing It Softly & Fire. She’s a member of the Horror Writers Association and a columnist for Writer Unboxed and LitReactor. She’s represented by Alec Shane of Writers House. She lives in Texas with two crazy cute cats and a husband who’s exceptionally well-prepared for the zombie apocalypse. You can visit her at www.AnnieNeugebauer.com for news, poems, organizational tools for writers, and more.
This is a great idea! I’m a novice writer (with a theatrical background) and I’m on a bit of a journey and trying to shake off the feeling of ‘why me?! I’m not trained, why should I think I can be an author?’ – this is a little visualisation task that helps you to put things in a perspective a bit…well I hope so anyway! Thanks!
http://www.englishgirlinnewyork.org
Hi Elishia! If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure every writer ever has thought “why me?” a time or two. And my answer always come back to: Why not me? If you want, you can go get it. I hope the visualization helps! Good luck!
Great post and very unique! I’ll admit that I often rehearse answers to questions an interviewer might ask about different aspects of my books–very particular questions, often hard ones about touchy topics, that I want to be ready to answer. No books published yet, but I do a great interview in the shower. :)
The practice you outline above reminds me of the practice of writing out what you want your eulogy to say about you–how do you want people to remember you when you are gone? Once you have that, you start looking for ways to live that will build the legacy you want to leave. What a good idea to turn that toward what you want people to say about your writing!
Thank you, Erin! Ah, the old shower interview. A tried a true. :D The fact that you ask difficult questions to challenge yourself (instead of just fluffy, fun-to-answer ones) is actually really impressive. I think that takes the play from fun to truly useful. We could all benefit from forcing ourselves to answer the questions we quietly dread getting! And the eulogy idea—wow. I absolutely love that. I’m going to do that. Thank you so much for sharing that with me!
Annie-
My version of daydreaming is fantasy casting the movie of my WIP. While it does give me visuals of my characters, it isn’t nearly as useful as your approach.
My new project is fantasy blurbed by Dean Koontz and Nicholas Sparks. It’s a lost love story with a supernatural twist. My challenge is to make it both real and unreal,
I’m worried that in a world of urban fantasy novels and supernatural TV shows that it’s weird element will seem tepid. Or that it’s love story will feel watered down.
But then, King and Koontz manage this balancing act. Sparks has used mildly eerie elements without diluting his stories romantic appeal. So there you go. My job: top them.
Easy. Thanks for the challenge, Annie, appreciate it.
Oh, I’ve definitely done the movie-casting version too! That’s a fun one! Your choices of blurb-givers showed me something else, too: this exercise also works to pinpoint who serves as a good comp author for a pitch. So not only does this lay out a challenge for you, it might just give you a few authors to serve as market comparison when it comes time to pitch or market your book. Work to meet (or top, as you say) the challenge, and then utilize it. Win-win. :)
For me, the hardest part of balancing dreaming and working is holding on to the dream when my work isn’t working :p
In my early days of creative writing, I thought of a five-star review as a label of “good writer,” not “story that struck the right chords with readers.” Any fewer stars than that was a label of “bad writer,” not “story that didn’t work for readers.”
It didn’t help that many fellow writers and reviewers also think in terms of “good writer” and “bad writer,” not “good story” and “bad story.” Even Stephen King says things like, “Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.” Not “Meyer’s characters are too idealized,” not “Meyer tells too much and shows too little,” but “Meyer can’t write worth a darn.”
It was a long and hard road for me to learn how to ignore snarky comments on my writing skills or character and to see the value in criticisms of my work. Still when I receive less than stellar feedback, and I have to remind myself that there’s a problem with the work, not a problem with me.
Yeah, I feel that. It’s hard to keep the vision when you’re slugging through the muck. And wow, what a fantastic insight. The problem is with the work, not us. Really, really beautiful. I’m going to carry that with me too. <3
Great twist with this post, Annie. Inventive! I’m still at the point in my work that I write sentences in my head that will go into the novel itself. And I find this happening at the very end of the night–after I have been reading a good novel! Obvious connection. And I’m making my way to bed with sentences spinning in my head and I write them down. Sometimes they are kept, sometimes not. Anything that can accelerate the creative process and stimulate ideas from the core of creation works. Thanks.
Thanks Beth! That’s a great place to be, if you ask me. Swimming in creative inspiration and ideas – I hope you savor it!
Just curious, but am I the only one who tempers their own dreams out of a fear of jinxing things? Seems like the best stuff always happens when I’m head down and working, and not too focused on hoped-for results. The added bonus? Unexpected success is all the sweeter.
Good idea, though, Annie. I can see the benefit of the exercise… (If I can just get past the jinxing possibilities of briefly partaking. ;)
Haha, Vaughn this cracked me up! Admittedly, I am the least superstitious person you will ever meet, so maybe I’m not the one to ask. But I see it less as jinxing and more as setting the subconscious with positive intent. The idea here is to still keep your head down and work hard, focusing on your work, not the dreams. The dreams are just sort of… given names and allowed to float. :) And I’d say success hard-earned is way sweeter than unexpected! But then I’m a sucker for punishment, so… again… maybe not the one to ask. ;)
Annie, I love this, esp. since I’m doing nitty-gritty polishing work. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve dreamed of the Newbery!!! Can’t wait until Monday to read the results.
Okay, here goes: Francisco X. Storck “a novel about choosing the higher good,” Amy Tan “nuanced, richly textured,” and Flannery O’Connor “brilliant, a grace-filled story” (you didn’t say the blurbers had to be alive :)
I’ve rec’d excellent editorial feedback and the one thing I always remember is what my writing teacher, Nancy Butts, said to me at the outset, that it was a luminous book. I carry that in my heart.
This is great, Vijaya! If we’re making up blurbs, they might as well be from ghost authors too, eh? :) “Luminous” is a really beautiful compliment. I’d carry that one too.
Not just writing, but isn’t all endeavor a magical blend of dreams and working? A marriage, a meal, the new release of software . . .
Indeed, I think it might be, Kevin.
Loved the article especially: If you were hoping for an easier answer, I’m sorry. This isn’t a shortcut; it’s a roadmap. This is where the concept of balance comes in. Some people will tell you to get your head out of the clouds and put your butt in the chair. Other people will tell you to dream big, because that’s how ambition is born. I say do both. Dream as big as you want, and then put your butt in the chair to make it happen.
Too many times we read blogs such as WU hoping for that quick fix or that perfect thing that will propel us toward fame and fortune, and there are no quick trips. Well, maybe for a small handful that happen to be at the right place at the right time when Lady Luck smile. For others, like us, it is work, work, work and sometimes a touch of luck. But I read somewhere that success doesn’t happen unless we put ourselves into a position where success can happen; as in writing the best book we can. And then writing some more.
As for dreaming. I have cast the movie versions of my books. And I have imagined a big-name mystery writer doing a blurb for my book – although I never wrote it down until today doing your exercise. “Read Maryann Miller’s Seasons Mystery Series for a taste of a top-notch police procedural with tough women homicide detectives in Dallas.” Lee Child
Awesome! Thanks for sharing your dream blurb, Maryann. :) And yes, I do actually think luck/chance is quite important, but if we’re not already there, working hard, when it shows up, we might miss it entirely. That’s how I like to look at it, anyway. We position ourselves to best take advantage of luck, and keep working and working until it eventually strikes.
A terrific idea! Thanks!
Thanks! It’s my pleasure.
I love this exercise, Annie. Imagining what we would like people to say about our work also helps us clarify our mission as writers, what we hope to accomplish.
Exactly. Thank you, Barbara!
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who’s daydreamed about all the praise I want to be showered with! It feels so corny, but at the same time, it’s really helpful on days when the writing is a struggle and you just need something positive to think about. Never thought about using all those imaginings as a road map before, but it makes total sense!
Definitely not the only one! Yes, it is uplifting, isn’t it? It’s just plain fun, to me. And then when I realized that fun actually served a purpose, I studied it with more intention.
This was great fun, Annie – and eye-opening, too.
I’d never done blurbs before today, but I confess that I like to imagine review in loving detail. I have a few favourite reviewers in mind – some for plays, some for novels – and in greyish days I lift my own spirits by writing their reviews in my head… (They usually like my stuff quite a bit – but I’ve been known to give myself the occasional nudge this way, about hard-to-murder darlings, lazy shortcuts or the like. )
Thanks, Clara! I’m glad. As far as the purposes of this exercise go, reviews work just as well as blurbs, I’d say. Good on you for giving yourself a little pushback, too! That’s quite practical of you.
Like Vaughn, I sometimes think I need to just focus on what’s in front of me, but I decided today that was exactly the reason to stretch out from the norm and play with short blurbs. My first immediate insight: I need to *read* more of a few of the authors I included in my list! (In particular, Sarah Waters and Ursula Le Guin.) It seems so simple, and there are so many authors I love, but my choices were like a big arrow and a note–go back and see why these folks stand out to me.
Secondary insight: two blurbs used “engrossing”…so apparently that’s a high priority in my subconscious. ;-) Especially next to adjectives like “vivid” and “resonant.”
Neat exercise!
Awesome! I’m so glad you got something out of it, Alisha. I’m on a Sarah Waters kick myself right now. I just can’t get enough; and she definitely strikes me as a terrific example of “engrossing.” A great thing to aim for!
Annie, I never thought to do something like this actually. I swear I am also obsessed with my own works and imagine success, but I’ve never done something so imaginative and specific. Thank you for making me. It’s important to dream as much as we work, else, what are we working for?