Lamentations
How’s that for a title? But then, it’s not really a title so much as a statement of fact, a warning perhaps, that this post may be complete higgledy-piggledy, self-absorbed author neurosis. I had every intention of not subjecting you, great reader minds and esteemed unboxed writers, to the behind-the-curtains peek at my obsessive underoos. I had an entirely different blog charted out: a composed, erudite, literate essay on my three years of fictional archaeology while crafting the dual narratives of my forthcoming novel The Mapmaker’s Children.
But when I sat down at my computer to write, all I could think was, “Bollox, my book is coming out in a flippin’ week!” That’s 7 days, 168 hours, or 10,080 minutes, depending on your level of countdown compulsion. (I’ll let you guess what my craze-o-meter is set at.) I beat my knuckles against my keyboard for a few hours attempting to thump into existence the aforementioned essay when it dawned on me: This is Writer Unboxed. I am the definition of a writer come completely unboxed! So I’m giving it to you uncensored.
I would place the week before an author’s book publishes up there with weddings, house moves, and child births in the top most stressful events in an individual’s life. Why? Because the author has just spent God knows how long (4 years from idea to shelf for The Mapmaker’s Children) nurturing relationships in a story world, carrying the weight of the characters everywhere she goes, and feeling each kick and heartburn of the book’s gestational development. So in that sense, when release day finally arrives, she is the celebratory bride, the moving man, and the doting mother all in one. Sure, there are those who might find each of those singly enticing, but all three simultaneously? That’s a maelstrom of anxiety.
[pullquote]Publishing a book is like giving the world sudden X-ray vision. Everyone sees my inner bits and is invited to judge them.[/pullquote]
Being writers, there is also a general proclivity toward being an introvert. The spotlight is not our preferred modus operandi. I champion my quiet nest, my home comforts, my hours of makeup-less pajama parties of one. Publishing a book is like giving the world sudden X-ray vision. Everyone sees my inner bits and is invited to judge them. That’s the very nature of our business. A book is not merely a collection of words bound together in paper and glue. It’s an author extending herself to the universal reader population saying, “Here—I give you my creation. Please come, walk the streets I’ve created in this imaginary realm. Discover its nooks and crannies. Solve the mysteries. Love and/or hate its people. Love and/or hate the story. Love and/or hate me.”
Read More
Today’s guest is Erika Mitchell, author of Blood Money and Bai Tide, the first novel of a new series about CIA case officer Bai Hsu (Champagne Books, 2015). Erika cut her espionage teeth on James Bond marathons with her father at a formative age and has never looked back. She lives in the Seattle, WA area with her husband and their two tiny spies-in-training and welcomes new online friends at her blog, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
Of today’s post, Erika says:
One of the things that meant the most to me when I was just starting out as a writer was how helpful the more successful authors were to me. If, from my tiny corner of the Internet, I can promulgate that attitude of kindness, I will be well pleased.That being said, lines do occasionally need to be drawn. Equipping fellow authors with ideas for addressing these situations when they strike is as important to me as spreading the love. It’s vital that authors be able to mean what they say, and it should be understood that sometimes a kind “No” is an invitation to keep working on something that might not be finished yet.
That Awkward Moment When…
I’m going to paint you a picture. You are at a writer’s conference (let’s make it in Hawaii because I’m nice to you). You’re standing on a lanai with a dozen other writers, a sweating hurricane glass full of sunset-colored Mai Tai in one hand, a business card in the other. The person who just handed their business card to you is standing about a foot away, jabbering about their novel because you asked, “What’s your book about?” Let’s go wild here and say the other person’s novel is about a zombie love affair set in apocalyptic Boston. And there are lasers in it for some reason. Oh! And cat vampires!
[pullquote]The awkward moment comes in a variety of flavors, but many of them share a common theme: Someone wants something from you you’re not willing to give. A review, a blurb, an endorsement, an introduction to your editor, a private meeting in an alley somewhere. You get the idea.[/pullquote]What happens next slows everything down. Suddenly you’re Quicksilver from the X-Men movies. Your brain chugs along at normal speed while the world around you lurches to a stop. Your eyes track a single drop of condensation as it zigzags down your glass, out the corner of your eye you can see each flap of a hummingbird’s wings, and you know with some kind of creepy, prescient pessimism what’s going to come next:
The person in front of you is going to take a deep breath, blink, and then blurt out, “I’m actually going to self-publish my book next month. Will you blurb it for me?”
Welcome to the awkward moment (author edition).
The awkward moment comes in a variety of flavors, but many of them share a common theme: Someone wants something from you you’re not willing to give. A review, a blurb, an endorsement, an introduction to your editor, a private meeting in an alley somewhere. […]
Read MoreYou type “The End.” Then what? If you’re like me, first you cry. (I always do.) One part of you is happy. I mean you’ve worked a long time on the manuscript. Maybe you’re on deadline. Maybe you have a publisher or agent waiting. Maybe it’s the first novel you’ve written, and it feels really good—really really satisfying to be done.
But maybe, you’re like me. The deadline is of your own devise. Maybe it’s not your first rodeo (as one of the characters in my just-finished-manuscript would say). Maybe you’ve been through this a few times, maybe even with this particular manuscript. Maybe it was a major revision. Then maybe (if you’re like me) you have mixed feelings.
On the one hand, I’m happy. I’d been working on this book for a long time, a really long time. I wrote it once for NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago. Rewrote it after that because it was a disaster. Rewrote it a third time with this major revision.
On the other hand, I’m ready to move on to something new. New characters, new storylines.
On the other hand (can there be three hands? I say yes: it’s fiction after all.), I can’t stop thinking about what the other people are doing—you know, those characters—the ones who’ve been keeping me up at night. For the last month or so (who’m I kidding, it’s for the duration) of writing a manuscript, I don’t sleep well. I wake up early and they (those people, those characters) are the first thing on my mind.
In the past few days (since I finished said manuscript), in no particular order, I’ve run the gamut of these emotions about the characters I just bid adieu to.
These characters are like friends. Except they aren’t. Some of them I really don’t like very much. But I dreamed about them. They live and breathe within me.
Read MoreIn a twist of fate, former contributor MJ Rose sent an email this morning mentioning she had written a from-the-gut post that seemed right for WU. We had no post scheduled for today. The rest is history. Please welcome MJ Rose back to WU for a post on the after-pub blues, which comes on the heels of the publication of her latest novel, the beautiful The Witch of Painted Sorrows.
Apropos of a few blog posts I’ve read elsewhere and posts here and there, and my own book coming out last week… I’ve been thinking about “post-pub-blues.”
I think one of the real problems we authors face is that in order to write a book–to do all the research, to juggle day jobs and family and make sacrifices to find time to write, to sweat over words and paragraphs and characters, to sometimes bleed on the page–we have to believe what we are creating is not only wonderful and amazing and worth what we are giving it, but that there is no other book like it.
We have to be huge optimists.
We have to believe in the impossible.
Certainly our books are good. But in reality, there are hundreds of good books published every month…and thousands and thousands every year. And no matter what I tell myself while I’m writing, to keep myself writing, I know the truth. And the truth is I don’t write miracles. I just tell stories.
Yes, they are often fine stories. But are they really wake-up-in-the-morning-and-shout-from-the-rooftops-no-one-has-ever-written-a-book-like-this-before-oh-my-god-stop-the-world stories?
No. Not even if that’s what it took for me to believe that in order to write it. They are not.
And that’s where the problem lies.
Read MoreI don’t tell my ‘academic’ colleagues that I write fiction. I don’t talk much about my non-fiction writing to my fiction-writing community. I LOVE e-readers because they don’t reveal whether I’m reading a steamy romance, popular history, angst-ridden literary novel, nineteenth-century article on hospitals, or an idiot’s guide to something technical that even my nine-year-old already knows how to do.
Why do I do this? Why hide my reading and writing habits? Am I ashamed of something? Scared? Yes, of course. But of what?
In switching between genres I’m scared of crossing social boundaries—of entering unknown, perhaps even unfriendly, territory; of not knowing the rules of acceptable behavior; of feeling like an outsider; of being judged, teased, criticized, left out . . . wait, this is starting to sound like conversations I’ve been having with my daughter about playground interactions.
So, does this mean genres are the literary equivalent of cliques? Hmmm. Bear with me for a little while on this.
First off, I’m not saying cliques (or genres) are good or bad in and of themselves. They exist. I’m also not interested in examining the varying characteristics of different literary genres. I do want to examine how we use them, what we potentially get from them, and what we lose by them.
Read MoreI feel lucky. I love being a writer and part of why I do is because it allows me to work alone, be alone. It’s not exactly that I don’t like being around other people (I do, kind of). But when I worked in corporate America, I couldn’t get away from people, couldn’t find time for myself. Maybe because I’m an introvert I love spending time alone. I am actually happiest alone and in my head.
But the flip side? Alone can lead to lonely.
It used to be that I’d get my “human fix” by having coffee with a friend once a month. That was when my kids were home and there was the predictability and clamor of the day. Once the kids were at school, I’d come home and walk the dog, then I’d write. I had several business clients who kept me busy. At the other end of the day, the kids would come home and life was a whirl.
Things changed. I live in an empty nest now—my two kids successfully (and happily) launched. There have been other life changes as well. More stressors. My husband was unemployed for a while—which was nice because he was home so I had company, but worrisome in many other ways. When he started working again he was gone all the time. Then one of my closest friendships ended abruptly. I stopped freelance writing to focus on fiction.
Then our dog died. And my world kind of bottomed out. My daily companion, my beloved soul-dog was gone.
And for the first time, I really felt like the lonely writer.
By the time I realized I was in trouble, I would often find myself at tear’s edge. I started writing in a local coffee shop many mornings, found solace (if not conversation) in “the regulars.” But it wasn’t enough. I started craving human conversation. I’m usually a very independent, self-sufficient, bounce-back kind of person, but I didn’t feel very resilient anymore.
Signs you might be lonely
In case you wonder what loneliness looks like, this is what it looked like for me.
You know that overly-chatty mailman you usually run into your house to get away from? You invite him into your mudroom when he delivers a certified letter—then you chat for five minutes. You’re sorry
Read More© iStockphoto.com
Earlier this year, at an online forum for writers that I frequent, I watched a familiar scenario play itself out. A new member joined the forum, full of excitement (and not a small amount of hubris) about the novel he’d just completed. As he posted his early attempts at a query letter for others to review and critique, two things quickly became clear:
The first one is not necessarily a bad thing. We should be excited about what we’ve written. And we should believe in the literary merit of our work (but not to the extent that we let our egos blind us to the possibility of improving our work).
It’s the second thing that can be the real killer, and yet it’s so common. Many new writers assume the way to write their first book is to simply sit down and start typing. On one hand, this sounds wonderful, and artistically pure. But on the other, imagine applying that logic to some other large task. If you wanted to build a house, and you had no background in construction or architecture, would you just grab some boards and nails and start hammering? Or would you perhaps want to put some planning into the project first?
Over several days and numerous threads on that forum, I watched a painful but increasingly familiar cycle unfold, as this new writer came up against some of the harsh realities of writing and selling commercially viable fiction. So, to borrow from the Kübler-Ross Model (AKA the five stages of grief), I thought I’d share my observations with you, and see if perhaps any of these stages sound familiar.
1. Denial
What do you mean my 375,000-word opus is too long to be marketable?! And what’s this “genre” of which you speak? I refuse to limit my creativity by trying to confine my work within a single easily identifiable genre! And why on earth should I have to bother with writing a query letter? Can’t I just call up one of the top agents and hire her – after all, she works for me, right?
It quickly becomes clear when a writer hasn’t done much (or any) homework on how the publishing business works. And when the harsh realities of this business begin to reveal themselves, some writers are not exactly open to the information.
Lest you think I’m a “man-hating feminist,” let me assure you I am not. In fact, I like to think that in my day-to-day life mine is a pretty equal world—all things considered. But when I hear things that make me think that women aren’t equal (for whatever reason), I pay attention. And we’ve all seen the tweets about gender inequality in the publishing industry: the rumors (and more) that men are more published than women; that more men’s books are reviewed than women’s books; even that there are better roles for women than men in movies.
It’s something I acknowledge—it’s there—but to be honest, I never really give it much thought on a daily basis. I certainly never let it preoccupy my time. And it would never, ever discourage me from writing. And so I’ve never considered blogging about it… until three things happened, three things that brought it into focus, that made me want to find out more.
Those three things.
[pullquote]A movie passes the Bechdel Test if it “features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.”[/pullquote]
What’s the Bechdel Test?
I’ll admit I’d never heard of the Bechdel Test until I read the article. So I looked it up. It’s not without its critics, by the way, but according to Wikipedia, a movie passes the Bechdel Test if it “features at least two […]
Read MoreI find myself in the writing phase I call Rumination. Julia Monroe Martin’s great post on this topic reminds me that some writers take and find pleasure in this phase. There are times I do, too, when I love the Rumination phase because everything—every character, every plot—is possible. The world feels like my oyster!
But after six months stuck in Rumination, the world just feels like my goiter.
I want to be in the phase called Putting Story on Paper. Or, Now We’re Cookin’. How about Actual Writing Beyond Page 30. In Rumination, the phase of infinite possibilities, I have shared no fewer than ten versions of the same thirty pages with my dear and patient writing partners. I have shared no fewer than five of these drafts with my dear and patient agent. Bless them. It’s embarrassing, really, to keep believing I have finally figured out this story, only to sit with a draft of a few scenes and realize, No. It’s not quite there. This is, for some reason, not quite right.
I like efficiency. I like doing things right the first time. I don’t like dillydallying. I am impatient. I never cook risotto because I lack the patience to stir and stir and stir. It’s a good thing that God or Someone invented Italian restaurants; otherwise perfectly cooked pearls of risotto would ne’er have passed my lips.
But I am determined to out-patience this motley cast of characters, this recalcitrant, tight-lipped bunch that’s driving me crazy. Crazier. They are making me work for this paycheck.
Or maybe they are simply gestating. While I am ready to get this story-baby rolling, perhaps these characters are still too tiny to be born, too comfy in their partially-concealed literature-wombs. I remind myself that I don’t want these characters coming out before they (or I) am ready. Preemies have a hard time thriving in this rough, dark world.
I must be patient.
Read More- « Previous
- 1
- …
- 11
- 12
- 13
