Do It Anyway

I am the little sister in the mosaic of my family.  With that title comes a certain reputation: the spoiled one, the brat.  I'm sure my siblings would agree with that stereotype.  I even agree.  It's okay.  I've accepted it because, hey, it's okay to be spoiled.  Being the baby also comes with its own set of negatives, though.  Even though I'm mumble-mumble-mumble years old now, I'm still widely viewed as twelve years old.  

As a perennial tweenager, clearly I do not have a career.  How could I?  I'm a child!  All of my years of working with expectant families hasn't counted as a legitimate job.  Writing certainly doesn't count, either, because I write in my pajamas while my kids (and usually other neighborhood kids) destroy my house.  Plus, I like writing.  People don't like their jobs.  That's against the rules.

But writing is what I want to do with my life.  It is what I want as my career, but I don't want to call it my career because that word just sucks the joy out of all of it.  But this is what I do.  

I didn't go to college and rack up student loans to learn how to write.  I didn't intern anywhere to prove myself.  I merely sat down with a laptop and the words in my head and let them fly off into the atmosphere.  Most days it feels like I don't have a clue what I'm doing, but the words are finding other people and doing something so unimaginably far beyond me.  

This is real.  It doesn't feel real at all, but it's real.

Half of my family and a great deal of my friends don't really understand the person I've become.  They don't appreciate the long nights composing sentences and developing characters.  They don't care.  Well, maybe they care, but in that disjointed way someone pretends to be interested so feelings won't be hurt.  Truth be told, they don't have time for books, they'd rather save themselves the trouble and wait for the movie adaptation.  If I waited for these people to open their eyes and see that this is important, even as their 9-5 office job is important, I'd be waiting a long time.  Forever, maybe.  

Is that discouraging?  Sure.  But I don't let it stop me.  I pick myself up, knock the dust off my sandals, and find people who want to support me--and people I will support in return.  My Cartel.  My Skywriters. My posse.  My kindred spirits.
.  
Conditions will never be 100% perfect for me to write, and people in my own village will never fully respect me because they see me that same old bumbling kid, but I'm doing this anyway.  

What about you?  Do your friends and family support your writing or your career goals?

2 Legit, 2 Legit 2 Quit.

I need help.  I need your help.

I need you to throw anything you have at me--prayers, good thoughts, jingles, spare coins, whatever.

It's an unholy time of the morning and I am up because my blistering shoulders told me to get up and rub the lotion into the skin (I really did NOT want the hose again).  Once the lotion soaked in, though, my mind couldn't turn back off.

This publishing thing has me all sorts of conflicted, y'all.  Reviewing the facts (or lack of facts) I have on my prospective publisher, I should continue on my merry little way.  But here I am, pausing.  It makes no sense.

A friend of a friend told me that if my goal was getting my book out there no matter what, even at the cost of my own legitimacy, to go ahead.

At the cost of my legitimacy?

Ouch.

My work--my status as a writer--could be construed as unworthy should I chose Publisher B over Publisher A?  Or, in another example, self-publishing vs. traditional publishing?  I presented this idea to my husband, who assured me that reasoning was flawed.  "If you're on the worst baseball team in the division, that makes you less of a baseball player?"  Some would say yes, but I understood what he was trying to get through my skull.

I get it.  I wouldn't have asked this friend of a friend to drop some knowledge (or, at the very least, scathing opinion) on me unless I didn't really want to hear it.  And I'm trying to be open to what is coming back to me--good and bad.  The problem with this particular company is that it sounds so promising, but it is so new that that's all there is right now--promises.  I'd sincerely hope that people would caution me about what I'm considering.  I'd likely do the same in their shoes.

The answer to all of this seems so clear sometimes, and, at others, I can appreciate the views on the other side.  Frustrating.  Where is my Magic 8-Ball when I need it?

I'm obviously still weighing the plusses and minuses of this particular company and publishing traditionally at all, and I'm still on the fence.  That being said, I'm supposed to talk with their contract guy later today to explain their process.  I'll update when I know more, if I even know how to decipher any of the legal mumbo-jumbo into words any of us can wrap our brains around.  In the meantime, I'd reallyreallyreally appreciate it if you could think of me and help me to receive clear direction as to whether I should proceed or not.

Thanks.  You're a peach, I don't care what the others say about you.

Like Falling In Love

I'm currently in a holding pattern, waiting for beta-readers to finish up with my first book and get back to me with their comments.  Another writer confessed to me that the waiting period always makes her nervous.  It made me think.

As a writer, you spend thousands of hours pouring words onto a page or screen. Ideas are born, full of promise and excitement.  You grow and change with each character.  Together you encounter a full range of problems, from tiny bumps to impassable mountains.  When tears roll down their cheeks, your tears follow suit.  Heart in throat, you wait by their side as their last breath falls from still lips.  After 'The End', you discover that you've become someone richer in experience than the person you were before it all began.

To share that with others, especially others whose goal it is to point out your scars and imperfections, is frightening.  It is opening yourself--and your new friends--to attack, no matter how well-intentioned your attacker.  It is lowering your defenses in the hopes that the arrows will serve to build you up rather than fatally wound.  You make yourself vulnerable.  Vulnerability is unnatural for us.

In many ways, this feedback process is like falling in love.  It is delivering your beating heart on a platter and hoping it returns safely--that they love in return.  It is trusting that the other person has only the best intentions, only the purest motives.  It is the hope that they are skilled in architecture and demolish only what they must in order for us to rebuild stronger and more complete.

There is such great and awful responsibility in love and art.

Maybe you don't write and you find it difficult to relate to my illustration because of that.  That's okay.  I think it still applies to many of our passions, not only the crafting of sentences.  Do what you do with love, because of love.  Accept the help of others with love.  Extend your hand to others with truth and compassion.  

Making yourself vulnerable and opening your heart to others is scary.  Sometimes you'll bleed and wish you'd kept your shield tucked tight around your chest.  At other times, bringing others alongside you on the journey reveals unspeakable beauty.  The joy is nearly always worth the splinters along the way.

It's a Virtue, and I'm Not Particularly Virtuous

Nothing I've written is remotely near being ready to publish.  There are sentences to weed and phrases to prune.  Characters to cultivate or burn away, the choice is up to me.  Plots need water or redirection like vines on a trellis.  In other words, a ton of gardening.

Have I mentioned I'm not particularly great at keeping green things green?  Gardening is a bad metaphor.

This week I gave myself the option of writing or not writing, editing or not editing.  Laying in bed catching up on bad t.v. and afternoon naps instead of deadlines and writer's block.  Staying up late watching Conan because I can or going to bed obscenely early because there's no word count left.  My break should be refreshing.  My synapses should be snoozing so they can return ready to fire more quickly and easily.  But no....  That's not what's happening.

Instead, my stomach is churning with each day that passes in which no forward progress has been made on my dream.  I don't like being in limbo.  I don't want to rush this thing, but I hate being suspended in this void.

I'm reading to distract myself, to refuel my creativity and see how others more successful than myself spin a tale.  Apparently it's not working, because instead of losing myself in these books, I push my way through each one.  My brain is persistant, nudging me every few pages.  "Pssst!  Hey!  If she can do this, so can you!"

My husband is not helping.  "Finish that book yet?"  Every. Single. Time. He. Walks. In. The. Door.  I love him, I do.  But sometimes, I loathe him.

Mommy Dearest isn't helping, either.  When I described to her why I was overwhelmed about editing my first book (a.k.a. "The Book Written Entirely In Passive Voice"), she shocked me by telling me I was probably over-analyzing my book.  A few minor changes, she said, and I would think it's ready to go!  She's my mama.  It's written into her job description to believe I can do no wrong--except for that typo on page 35 and the other one on page 110--but it's still strange to have her on more of an accelerated timeframe than myself.  I probably owe her money.

It's all about patience.  When God handed out patience, I think I was in the back of the line, and by the time I reached the front, there were only crumbs left in the bag.  "Here."  I imagine God said as he dropped the specks of patience in my palm.  "Good luck with that.  And, remember, 'thou shalt not kill'."  Then He walked away bent over in hysterical laughter.  To make it even more hilarious, He pumped my veins full of the blood of Irish, Scottish, and German ancestors.  Well-played, God.  Welllllll-played.

On top of it all, the crazy (and not-so-crazy) thought occurred to me to write the third installment first just to see if I could and the stars aligned.  And by "stars aligned", I mean "does any of this make a lick of sense?"  If I chose to write more now, I would need to find another place to live because I am pretty sure that would be the end of my marriage, right there.  My husband's already convinced these books will never see the light of day past my computer screen and I'm just pretending to write.

So, yeah.  There's a lot of pressure.  From books that aren't but very well could be my own...  From my well-meaning (but adolescent) husband...  From my usually well-planned but impetuous mother.  But mostly, and most deeply, from my own self.

I'm not letting anyone talk me into putting anything out there before it's really and truly time, but I sure hope this feeling of suffocation decides to leave me soon.

She Should Be Ashamed.

Since deciding to pursue writing last year, I have been anxious to learn more about the practice of writing--the habits, struggles, and other odd things that make up this calling.  I enjoy reading other books now to see how authors describe characters and paint their worlds.  Lately I've been reading nearly as much as I've been writing, which I consider refueling and instruction.  As I was riding home from a family Christmas meal this evening, I began re-reading Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" on my Christmas present, my awesomely awesome Kindle Fire HD.

Tonight I found myself thinking specifically about Stephenie Meyer's writing process, so I did what anyone curious about any topic would do--I Googled it.  Turns out, she literally dreamed up the story for "Twilight" and wrote it down once she took care of her errands for the day.  The fact that it was a dream is probably the best explanation for the storyline:  Sparkly hot vampires and buff werewolves?  Nah....  Totally not a dream.

What I loved most was reading about her background.  Stephenie was a novice writer, with "Twilight", the first book of the series, being her first completed work.  She is a mother, and completed much of her writing at night when her kids were supposed to be in bed sleeping so there would be less interruptions.  That sounds vaguely familiar.

While reading about her process, I stumbled across a blog where the blogger was exploring how many writers completely dismiss or downright loathe Meyer's writing.  The one and only time I read the series (four years ago), I was merely a reader, totally unaware that I would be writing a young adult novel of my own not that far off in the future.  Reading back through the book again now that I've studied more on the art of writing, I find that I do still like her and the story--though I now find her a bit more wordy and repetitive.  Lots of words, that's the best way to make a 200-page novel 500 pages, I guess.

And, yes, I've already embraced the fact that the Twilight franchise is my guilty pleasure.  For sure, I know it's not the basis of good writing, but I always enjoy finding a book I can't put down... no matter what the reason.

Anyway, someone on the blog said, "McDonald's has sold tens of billions of hamburgers, but all those sales don't make them a gourmet meal or even a gourmet hamburger. It's the same with Meyer's writing. It's not art. Sure, art has a subjective component, but it also has objective components and Meyer didn't meet those....  I would NOT have wanted to be in Meyer's shoes. Oh, the money is nice, but one has to be able to hold one's head up about how he or she made that money, not that Meyer did anything illegal. Had I written the "Twilight" books, I'd be ashamed, not proud."

Ouch.

Critics are everywhere, and with any measure of success there will be haters.  I have been guilty of mentally picking apart others' novels (even though I still generally support the writers in question), but I try not to.  Writing is difficult and intensely intimate work.  Hearing that you should be ashamed of something that has consumed you for years, characters who have become close as family, locations that feel like home.... well, that has to hurt deep down to your core.

Do I have thick enough skin required for putting myself out there?  I fully intend to find out, but right now I am a swirl of self-doubt.