Category Archives: Self-Awareness

I love the theme this month and the stories that have been shared. It reminds me that we all struggle in life and in our chosen profession. I do wonder if any non-writers reading these posts might assume we’re all lunatics sharing our stories in an online Writers Anonymous meeting. We’ve proven it’s a tough, crazy journey on the road toward publication, but we keep plugging away, pursuing the dream, chanting, “Keep at it, and we’ll get there.”

Well, we’ll get there as long as we’re open to learning and growing. As they say, “Continuing to do the same thing while expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

So we’re either on our way, or we’re nuts.

Growing up I always dreamed of being a writer and I hand-wrote hundreds of pages of drafts as a teen-ager. But life got in the way and I pretended to be normal and pursued other interests through college and the first years of family and career. Then through a series of events in 2004 the desire – the need – to write reignited, and I embraced all those imaginary friends I’d been pretending not to listen to for so long.

I remembered some cool ideas I had worked on all those years ago and thought, “Yeah, I’ll just write that. I read a lot, so how hard could it be?”

Now almost ten years and millions of words later, I laugh every time I think of that naïve wannabe writer sitting down and typing out those first words, “It was a dark and stormy night. . .”

Actually, those weren’t the first words, but they might as well have been for how terrible they were. But I didn’t know better so I wrote, and then I re-wrote. For almost four years I worked on that monstrous first novel that stood at about 300,000 words despite multiple re-drafts. I confidently sent out query letter after query letter to agents, and accumulated scores of rejection letters.

A wiser man might have quit at that point.

Actually, a wise man would have quit after his wife read the first frantically written 80 pages the very first weekend. With love in her eyes, she said as kindly as she could manage, “This stinks.”

But real writers are slaves to the Muse, or we are tired of people looking at us funny when we talk to ourselves. Or maybe we’re just a lot more stubborn than most people, so I kept writing. The problem was I had no idea why the book wasn’t selling. I had no clue what was wrong with it. I mean, my mom loved it, so it had to be ready.

I didn’t even understand enough about writing to work on other projects on the side. I was blind, stuck in a place I could not get out of, but didn’t realize it. Think Maxwell Smart, but without Agent 99 to bail him out.

Thankfully I found a way out of that rut of insanity. I took the Professional Writers Workshop from David Farland.

Amazing. What a revelation. They actually train people to write! I’d been doing it all by pure gut instinct for years, and proving why there was a better way. In that writing workshop, Dave took the time to meet with me over dinner and discuss my project. Using small words, he explained some of the reasons why the book would never work – like it was waaaay too long. I learned many things in that class and some of my blind spots were revealed.

What a milestone! I finally understood some of the reasons why I was not yet successful.

If I were really humble, I would have appreciated that much honest insight into my many writing flaws. What really slapped me in the face though was the magnitude of the challenge I faced: Either walk away from the entire writing gig, angry that the industry didn’t understand a brilliant talent like mine – walk away offended and console my wounded pride by thinking “they’re just not ready for so much pure awesomeness.”

Or I could admit that first attempt amounted to the scribblings of an uneducated beginner not even smart enough to take a class for four years, and all the hard work I’d poured into that novel counted as practice. I’d written enough to qualify a couple times over for ‘the half million words of crap’ we’re told new writers need to complete prior to writing anything good. Over-achiever all the way.

So I had that going for me, which I took to mean everything I write now will be awesome.

Bottom line, the goal remained: I will be a professional writer. So I had to choke down my pride and, after surviving that, I took my first major step wearing big boy writer pants. I acknowledged that first epic fantasy story could be treated as an Epic Fail.

Then I threw it away. All 1000+ pages of blood, sweat and tears.

And I started again from scratch.

Out of pure stubbornness, I didn’t even start an entirely different story. There was a little more blood to squeeze out of that first stone. I loved the core of that original idea, so I salvaged some of the world building, some of the characters, and the nucleus of the conflict. Then I redesigned the plot from the ground up.

Like building modern-day Rome on top of the ancient catacombs.

The resulting story is infinitely better than the original, and I’m now working with an agent to try to find it a home. And instead of waiting forever for that sale to happen, I’ve actually moved on and since written three other novels and e-published one of them. Four others are in various stages of outlining, all of which I plan to complete next year.

Still plenty of blind spots, but I try to identify them one at a time. It’s more satisfying that way and a lot less painful – like lancing a single blister instead of performing open heart surgery on yourself.

Still, it was that first major awakening that salvaged my writing career. I’ll always be grateful to David Farland for beating me down so thoroughly (in a nice way). Now that I can walk again, I’m a better writer for the experience.

And now I’m looking forward to paying forward the favor. You may find me roaming the halls at conventions and workshops, looking for blind spots to destroy.

It’s for your own good. Some day you’ll thank me.

The Impact of Mere Words

December 20, 2013

Gregory D. Little

Gregory D. Little Motivation The Writing Life 1 Comment

Growing up, I was never a fan of English class. It’s not as though I didn’t have some great English teachers, because I did. It was the curriculum. I can appreciate grammar for the sake of what it brings about, but I’ll never love it for its own sake. And as for the literature side of things, for every The Count of Monte Cristo (Murder! Betrayal! Intrigue!) there were three or four nightmares along the lines of The Old Curiosity Shop (Walking! Talking! Dying of natural causes!).

It’s therefore safe to say I didn’t hold out much hope for AP English in my senior year of high school. I figured it would net me some credits that would get me out of what would probably be an even worse class in college, and that would be that for my formalized English education. Earlier in the week I talked about a crisis point where I nearly gave up writing. Today, because I apparently enjoy working in reverse chronological order, I’m going to talk about how critical my AP English teacher was to my decision to become a writer. Because while I’d learned I could enjoy writing two years prior (as detailed in this old post), she was the person who convinced me I was good at it.

I’ve never been a particularly self-confident person. It’s a problem that persists to this day. In high school I was a very good student but never top in my class, and I was content to let the truly elite students grab all the embarrassing attention that came with all that confidence and all those As. But my teacher in twelfth grade ran a different kind of English class. She postponed tests on a whim. She let us play croquet outside once the AP exam was over in the spring. She would regularly trade examples of Simpsons trivia with me. She was a lot of fun, and she enjoyed her job. When a teacher cares about what she or he is doing, it’s always obvious.

Now because the senior reading curriculum was a little more flexible we were able to tackle books that had more complex themes. I found these more complex ideas interested me. Her writing assignments held my interest and weren’t just a rush to put down on paper what I thought the teacher wanted to hear as quickly as possible. I was really analyzing the stuff I read, thinking hard about how I interpreted books like Heart of Darkness and The King Must Die.

Which brings me to another thing my teacher tended to do that would prove significant. When she’d hand back essays, she would mention aloud the one or two she thought ranked among the best in the class. Just rattle off the names to give a little public praise, always a good thing. And because I’d been going to school with the same group of kids my whole life, those names were rarely surprising. Until one day, getting near the semester break. Our teacher listed off the same one or two students who, as usual, had produced sterling essays analyzing whatever book we were reading at the time. And then she said “but Greg is really turning out to be a dark horse candidate for best writer in the class.” I’d known she liked my writing from her comments on my papers all year up to that point. But I remember being startled to hear it spoken aloud and phrased in such a fashion. Not just good, but one of the best? I’ve never forgotten that comment.

I learned to like writing my sophomore year. But I started believing I could be good at it my senior year, thanks to Mrs. Whitten. And however good a writer I was then or have become now, I doubt I can ever fully convey my gratitude in mere words. So please keep in mind, whether you’re in the position to influence a young mind or not, how much of a positive impact your words of praise can have on a person. I know I count these particular words among my greatest gifts as a writer.

Solitude – A Lonely Gift

December 19, 2013

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Author's Perspective Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life Work-Life Balance 2 Comments

Imagine being alone in a cabin, writing without being disturbed by anyone and without a cell phone or internet. The basics are there – plumbing, electricity and a land-line phone for emergencies. The cabin is as cozy warm as the ability to remember to stoke the old wood stove. Sitting in the comfiest recliner, laptop propped on the lap, flying fingers blurt out vivid scenes. You write, you sleep, you go for the occasional walk to clear your head or to work out a problem and then you begin again. Word count rises and spirit soars.

This was the greatest gift I ever gave myself – a whole month of writing, thinking and sleeping. Beyond the accomplishment of a story told, it transformed my understanding of what I need to be a writer.

We try to balance our writing life with our everyday lives which includes work, family, friends and fun in our marvelous technological society. These things are important yet equally important is the need for time to think, create and write. So we plan and eek out snippets of writing time – an hour here, an hour there, a workshop here and a two day retreat there – and we write. Yet, as important as those snippets of time are, they are not solitude for solitude is immersion without expectation of interruption or immediate cessation.

Solitude provides the luxury to explore, think and integrate. Sometimes it isn’t the word count that’s required but the ability to think, brainstorm and plot without distraction. The balance now is that I create opportunities for solitude (even if it’s half a day) and the results of being centered, free-flowing creativity and the calm from problems solved spill into those precious snippets of writing time.

On that month-long journey of solitude, I discovered that in order to achieve solitude I must walk down the path of desperate loneliness where there are no people, no events, no media – nothing exists but me and my thoughts. Junk-noise and junk-thought withdrawal can be a painful albeit rewarding experience. Now I make a conscientious effort to shut out the junk-noise and junk-thought. Yes, people aren’t happy when I don’t respond to texts or phone calls for hours but they aren’t writing my stories and the unplanned interactions dissolve the state of mind I need to be in.

I never wrote so much so quickly and I never slept as much before! The experience made me aware how exhausting the creative process is. After writing for hours, I’d inhale some food and collapse into a stone-dead nine hour sleep and then do it all over again. So sometimes when I’m reluctant to write it’s because I know I don’t have the energy it takes to be fully engaged nor do I have the time to allow the grey cells to warm up to enough to integrate ideas before creating a coherent symphony of words. Now, I’m a little more forgiving of myself in those moments and I work hard to make sure the time and the energy I need are there.

Solitude allows the brain to become more sensitive to the emotional tenor of words, to the rhythms of not only speech but of story pacing – it’s the crescendo and denouement of action and reaction, heightened and relaxed emotion, the interaction of protagonist and antagonist, the prose of world building mingling with characters experiencing the dynamics of the world. Having an extended experience of the rhythm of words, images and scenes, and having done it long enough to integrate it, I go back into that state when I write. For me, it’s meditation through writing.

I always thought that solitude was the ideal writing state and had dreamed of being sequestered in a cabin writing forever. Not anymore. Surrounding ourselves with family and friends, experiencing life, those are the things that are fodder for our creative selves. We are creatures of the pack and loneliness in the extreme can as easily erode our ability to write as can the distractions. Balancing solitude and writing with family and friends – that’s what I need. I’ll take my month of solitude again and I’ll keep finding small blocks of it in the meantime. But, I’ll also cherish my time with family and friends for solitude works best when we have something to leave and go back to again!

Happy writing!

Blood, Sweat & Hooked on Phonics

December 17, 2013

Nathan Barra

Motivation Nathan Barra The Writing Life 2 Comments

I was born and initially grew up in a bilingual country. My Canadian public school system sought to make its students proficient in both French and English by high school graduation. French was taught from kindergarten to sixth grade and English from six grade through twelfth. The problem was that my dad was transferred when I was nine, and though I had French proficiency at a third-grader’s level, I was effectively illiterate from the perspective of my new, all English school.

Elementary school in a new country was difficult enough without having to simultaneously catch up and keep up. It took an incredibly difficult couple of years for me to reclaim my literacy. I was incredibly lucky however. When my dad’s company arranged the paperwork for us to immigrate, they were unable to acquire a work visa for my mother. She decided to devote her time to tutoring my brother and me after hours.

To this day, I remember coming home from school, completing my assigned homework to the best of my ability, and then sitting with my mom at the kitchen table for hours. My nights were largely occupied with hooked on phonics, supplemental workbooks, and educational games. As any third grader would, I resented the extra homework, but I hated feeling stupid more, and so I worked my butt off.

Over the months, I struggled my way to literacy, graduating from games and primers to picture books, and eventually working my way up to novels. My mom gifted to me my love for reading through patient hours, frustrated tears, endless encouragement and enthusiasm. Though hesitant to give us toys, treats, and video games, my mom was ever generous with books. I could have as many as I could read. The library became an awesome place.

Eventually I caught up to my peers, but the momentum I had built up in my struggle carried me forward, past many of my classmates. My mom’s work permit was eventually granted, and she returned to a day job. By that time, however, working on my reading was no longer extra homework. I loved the stories and the adventure. I loved to read.

I never knew how much my mom kept from those early years until I was packing everything I owned to move halfway across the country. A few nights before I was scheduled to leave, with most of my life packed away in boxes for storage or for travel, my mom found me and showed me a giant Tupperware box, grayish from years of dust dulling the maroon of the plastic. Together, we opened it and inside I found not only the standard detritus of a young child’s life, but those months of workbooks. More importantly, I found stacks of stories written by a barely literate me. I thought that writing was a passion I had picked up in high school and college, but she showed me that I have been writing quite literally since I learned to read. Some of the stories were even in French.

I credit my mother with giving me the gift of literacy. Sure, I worked for it. I shed blood, sweat and tears, but without her patience and love, I would not have the passion for storytelling that is my calling. It is because of her that I can be a writer at all.

Thanks mom.