IWSG: In Which My Ego Turns Everything into a Blistering Inferno

The first Wednesday of every month is Insecure Writers Support Group. A fabulous blog-hop. Head to the list and support some other writers today. 

 I'm halfway through my big picture edit/rewrite of this manuscript and I'm ready to set it THE FUCK ON FIRE.

No but seriously. Burn it.

I thought I had my subplots tightened up. I thought I had my  hero and heroine figured out. I've written the story essentially three times now. But here I am, ready to scream and break things as this manuscript refuses to be... GOOD.

Okay I have a couple of issues at play here. One is that I have been using scenes I've already written sort of piecemeal. "Oh, this scene will work right here!" So I move it. And now, I'm halfway through this rewrite/revamp/hell and I have completely lost the thread of tension and narrative. I don't know if it's moving too fast or too slow. No idea if it even makes sense any more. Argh!

The second, larger issue, is my ego.

My friend Lyssa Kay Adams just indie published her first novel and it's effin' good, ya'll. So effin' good. Funny and snarky and well-written and the reviews are pouring in and they are all saying what I'm saying. The book is freaking GREAT. I'm super happy for her. She's rad and she deserves the applause.

What if I don't get that? What if my first book comes out to the sound of crickets chirping? What if none of our mutual friends say a word? I didn't become a writer for applause, I really didn't (and if you did, you're in for some pain, I fear) but I also don't want to be the suckiest writer out of my group of writer friends. This worry comes from a place of deep insecurity within me, I know. Many of my writer friends are professional writers. They were journalists or work in publishing or advertising. They know a side of the business that I don't and they are way more educated than I am.

Often when I'm forced to defend my genre from people who want to make me feel small about it, I say that many romance writers are highly educated and that a great deal of my favorites went to ivy league schools and teach writing. Which is all true and it's a great brag, but I'm not one of those people. I dropped out of community college because it was putting me into debt and it wasn't actually helping. I consider myself a fairly smart human being and I stand by that decision. Community college wasn't preparing me for a writing career and it wasn't worth the stress or money. But I never expected to be surrounded by so many educated, brilliant writers. I figured my smarts would carry me through. But I'm still never sure when I should be using a semi-colon and I still have to Google how to punctuate parentheticals in parenthesis and I feel like at any moment, I could screw something up and no one will ever take me seriously and I'll deserve it because I couldn't even hack community college and who do I think I am trying to write novels?

Worse yet, am I going to be the kind of unskilled writer used as kindling on the blaze of derision that eternally burns the romance community like wildfire? Is that labored simile my fate?

This has been bumping around in my head, bruising my brain for a month now. I am burning with insecurity and it's making my editing clunky and impossible. I am losing perspective faster than Supernatural episodes lose narrative cohesion, which is to say, FAST.

Angels are so touchy.

IWSG: Remove Your Pants!

The first Wednesday of every month is Insecure Writers Support Group. A fabulous blog-hop. Head to the list and support some other writers today. 

This is going to seem like a weird thing to talk about in February but bear with me.... Do you know why I love NaNoWriMo?

It's because, back before 2009, I couldn't finish a draft. Or even come close to it. Then my fantastically talented friend Jean said,"Hey this thing? We're doing it!" It wasn't even November--I think it was March. But we read No Plot, No Problem, made a whole bunch of horrible videos on writing that no one thought was funny except for us and then wrote some damn novels. And it was rad.

NaNoWriMo gave me one of the most valuable tools a writers needs (in my humble blah blah blah). It taught me the value of a deadline. It cannot be overstated that just sitting down with the vague notion of write something, is a recipe for avoidance. You check Facebook. You snap a selfie, annoy your cat with a paper bag and  then take a Buzzfeed quiz to find out which Friends character you'd be.**

And after all of that, you'd open your writing software or notebook and write... nothing. Absolutely nothing.

So once I had a deadline, I wrote. I wrote a lot. And it was THE WORST writing. But that was okay, because I got better. And since 2009 I've written three full manuscripts. But I haven't successfully edited any of them. I fell into the same patterns with editing that I did with writing. I'd sit at my desk with the vague intent to "edit." This often became an exercise in futility as I rewrote and rewrote, hoping the problems with plot and pacing would fix themselves.

I'd somehow missed the most important thing NaNoWriMo waved in front of my snoot... the knowledge that a deadline is nothing but a goal and it's goal-setting that matters most if you want to achieve a dream.

I feel a little dense that it's taken me so long to realize this. If I want a writing career, I can't pants it. I just can't. Now I know, you can probably name someone who is doing it. Some famous person who doesn't take notes or make outlines and if they exist, GREAT. But I think once you get to editing, being a pantser is like putting on a blindfold while walking backward and sideways at the same time. Yeah, you might get somewhere but it's more likely you'll just fall on your ass.

I think this is the point in the process where pantsers just throw their hands up and shout "Fuck it!" They have the story. They wrote it and liked it. But now they don't know how to make it better. So vague promises to edit turn into guilt and self-doubt and then you set fire to the manuscript and start a new one.The bird toy endlessly drinking... never satiated.

 So I've set a deadline for my editing and a goal. First goal was an outline. I outlined the story as it was. Then I wrote a rough synopsis of how I wanted the story to flow with better character arcs and a stronger secondary plot.  Then I re outlined it, scene by scene on color-coded sticky notes. Coral for scenes I've written from my hero's POV, blue for my heroine's. Neon yellow for scenes I haven't written yet.

Look at all this m-effin' cohesion

What I ended up with was a cohesive look at my novel and a very measurable method of goal-setting. writing lobster and I set a deadline of March 31st, for me to do a complete big-picture edit and for her to finish her current novel. So we set word count and edited-page goals, and we printed calendars that we could put stickers on to mark our progress. When one of us hits so many stickers, the other buys that person a small gift.

We are plotter-ing it up over here and we're both making progress.

I guess what I'm saying is pants the crap out of your story if that's what you want to do. But if you're struggling, whether in the writing or the editing, it's time to set some goals. Make some deadlines. Be a plotter. Because it's really effing hard to work when you are vague about what you want to achieve.

Plot on!

**The answer of course is... I'm what would happen if Chandler and Monica fell into a puddle of nuclear waste and melted into one neurotic, funny, perfectionist mess.

My Lisa Frank stickers bring all the words to the yard...

IWSG: UNDER THE RAFT

 The first Wednesday of every month is Insecure Writers Support Group. A fabulous blog-hop. Head to the list and support some other writers today. 

You know that feeling where you're in the bottom of a swimming pool and you panic a little but you know it's okay because only have to swim to the surface? There is such sweet relief as you rise until you find yourself unable to go further because you are stuck underneath someone's stupid tire raft and for a brief moment, you think, I'm going to die while my cousin farts on my head.

No? Maybe that's just me. 

That is how I feel about this novel. I finished the manuscript and rewrote it twice. I started a third rewrite, thinking that I might be rising to the surface, only to realize I'd started the novel in the wrong place, the external conflict sucked and I'd used a character as a plot device instead of a person. 

So now I'm stuck under the raft.

I'm a pantser so I go into novels with no idea what's going to happen. I have detailed character sketches but no plot.  It's not an efficient system and I usually end up with a nonsensical first draft.  So I rewrite. Then I have a bad habit of writing again and again until I can't stand the story anymore. 

Art byFearEffectInferno

I do this because... well, I don't know how to edit. I can line edit but "big picture editing" as the kids call it, is beyond me. I feel overwhelmed and a bit thick because I can't figure it out. I need a system. My writing lobster Meika is having the same problem. Yesterday she sent me a blog post by writer Julie Dao, all about her editing process. She's a plotter but her hands-on approach to editing appeals to me so I'm giving it a shot.

I've started outlining scenes and I'm already finding it helpful. Sooooo.... I'm under the raft, fart bubbles are headed my way but I'm working up the strength to tip the damn tire, break the surface and breathe the fresh air.

I hope.

Maybe.
Or maybe I'll eat this chocolate strawberry pop tart and take a nap because my optimism is already waning. Sigh.

What is your "big picture" editing process?

IWSG: So many much things happening!

Click for the Blog Hop List

It's been a crazy couple of months. Deaths in the family, some life changes, writing career choices... being a grown-up is exhausting. Where to begin?

Let's start with some awesome news. I was asked to join the board of directors for the Capital City Writers Association! Squee! I feel honored and all that. Mostly I feel completely unprepared, overwhelmed and worried that I'm gonna screw up. That usually means I'm doing the right thing.

Beyond that, I'm in a full re-write and it's crazy. I'm struggling a bit with it because I feel like I'm carving the funny out of my novel. I'm replacing it with depth but I miss the funny and I'm worried that I'm writing something more dour than I wanted. We'll see.

Speaking of this damnable book, I made a dumb decision.My heroine is a rock singer/song writer and there is a bug-fuck crazy part of me that decided I need to have a line or two from each of her songs at the beginning of each chapter. A great idea, if I were in any way talented at poetry or song-writing. But alas, I'm too long-winded and literal. But what is life without completely stressful and unnecessary challenges? So I've been writing song lyrics and I can confidently call them, "Not completely awful." So yay?


Also I found out that someone I really respect as a writer (and general smart person) has decided to self-publish. This paused me for a bit. I have no problem with self-pubbing and it was always in the back of my mind as a possibility but now I'm seriously considering it. 

I absolutely believe I can get an agent and get my books published traditionally, but do I want to do that? I feel like my options are the prestige of being "chosen" or the checking account of someone actually selling books. If you have a solid business plan and do it right, you can make a living for yourself with self-publishing. Everything I've been reading and researching tells me that if you choose traditional, you'll be eatin' crackers, waiting years to see your book in print, still doing all the legwork of pimping your work and you'd be making next to nothing. But boy would people respect you more. Sadly, I cannot buy a house with the respect of my peers. I am an artist but I'm a practical one. 

 Anyhow there's more but this is long and rambling enough. Oh yeah, check out my pretty new blog logo and template design. I did everything, including all the coding myself. Take that web designer-who-must-not-be-named. It looks a million times better. I'm so happy with it. I still have some jiggering to do, especially with my footers and my sidebar but I'll get there. Now that I don't hate looking at it, I can take some time to do it right. 

How YOU doin'?

---

This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop. We are here, we are insecure, we are legion. Go check out some other blogs on the sign-up list and give a neurotic writers some love and support.

IWSG: Neurosis - Writer Edition

 I had to bow out of the A-Z challenge. I'm starting to get unstuck in my rewrite and I need to focus on that. Maybe next year. In other news, I'm unstuck in my rewrite! This has been a strange journey.

My first go-through, I connected strongly to my heroine but I didn't know my hero. Now I feel like I connect to my hero but I've lost my connection to the heroine.

Writing is hard, yo.

 I'm feeling all kinds of things these days about writing. Scared. Excited. Jealous and judgmental of people further along in their career path than I am. Worrying that my unpublished novel will get made into a crappy movie and I'll have to be embarrassed about it forever, like I bet Ann Rice is about Exit to Eden. That book was lovely and sexy and heartbreaking and that movie was... a buddy cop story with wacky S&M hijinks. WTF?

I digress.

Most of my process involves me worrying about stuff that I'm nowhere near ready to worry about and then those thoughts meandering into non-sequiturs. What if I don't find an agent? What if I never sell a book? What if I get in a tractor accident and lose my writin' hand? It happened to that girl in Drop Dead Gorgeous. What if Denise Richards rigs my tractor to blow up just so I can't win the Sarah Rose American Teen Princess Pageant?

What if I took a Xanax and watched Drop Dead Gorgeous and shut the hell up?

What does your neurosis look like?

IWSG: Reaching for Help and Appreciating Your Lobster

The first Wednesday of every month is Insecure Writers Support Group. A fabulous blog-hop. Head to the list and support some other writers today.

Outlining my novel has been a struggle. Because I'm a pantser and I suck at outlining and fall asleep when I try to type one up.

So after a month of spinning my wheels, my writing lobster** Meika showed up at my house with markers, index cards, poster boards and a give-em-hell attitude. She taught me a way to outline that didn't bore me until I passed out. Two hours later, I had my first completed outline in storyboard form. I'm so grateful and thrilled to have it done. Yet... some small, squeaky part of me wonders if I'm a hack because I couldn't do it on my own. Meika is a plotter. She  knows how to structure her novels and how to outline. Her process is fascinating, though incomprehensible to me. I started to wonder, what is wrong with me that I didn't come pre-programmed with those same abilities?

Right after this happened, I was struck by something I read in the Washington Post about Harper Lee. After writing To Kill a Mockingbird, she did a rewrite based off critique from her literary agent. Then it was shopped around and rejected by a publisher who kindly handed it to an editor and then sent it back with many notes and asked her to resubmit after more revisions. When the book was finally picked up, she was given that editor again, who worked closely with her for months to craft her lovely words into a story. “The manuscript we saw was more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel. The editorial call to duty was plain. She needed, at last, professional help in organizing her material and developing a sound plot structure.”

That's interesting and not the first time I've read of the amazing synergy that used to exist between writers and agents and editors. But nowadays most writers don't have an agent or publisher who will hone a rough story. You are expected to come at these busy professionals with a polished, well-structured manuscript. They aren't going to teach you how to write tension or how to break your novel into three acts. You'd better already know how to do that. To get published, it's not enough to have pretty words, or vague good ideas. You have to be a structural craftsman, building everything yourself and if it's only half built, ain't nobody gonna help finish it before they agree to move in.

Huh. So maybe I'm not a real writer because I can't outline and I don't know when to, use commas :) Maybe I'm a weak, pansy-ass hack who can't get by without a little help from her friends.

Or maybe not.

I've decided that I'm not a hack. Or if I am, it's not because of that.

Having someone, a partner or a group of partners who help make you a better writer is not a flaw or a weakness. Maybe all writers - even the great ones I'll never compete with- needed a community. Or at least, a writing lobster. Someone who tells the truth and holds your hand through the all the fast turns and sharp learning curves that come with navigating the waters of writing and publishing. 

Whoohoo, outline completed!

There is power in community. In writers banding together to create our own synergy and partnerships in a world where everyone is moving too fast to help and the hours of our lives are traded for cash. In such a world, the simple desire to have a space to learn and ask questions and grow cannot possibly be a weakness.

It's a necessity.

Do you have a lobster or a group of lobsters who lift you up and make you a better writer? Tell me about them.

**Losber? You keep using that word. I don't it means what you think it means.**

IWSG: Better Late Than Never

A quick and late IWSG.

I'm struggling with this story. I've taken to writing scenes rather than a complete story because these characters are further from who I am and that's a challenge. A single mom (when I don't have or want kids, what possessed me?) and a middle-aged businessman (of which I am neither).

I'm starting to get that fear. You know the one. Where you think, maybe that was it. Maybe I only had the one book in me and there won't be another good one. I'll be the Vanilla Ice/Blind Melon/Dee-Lite of the romance world and people will say, "What happened after that first crazy book?" and shake their heads.

As you do.

Also I wrote a scene. A great scene. I love it. But the more I'm staring at it, the more I'm wondering if I didn't steal part of it from some other book I read. But I can't put my finger on it. But it feels familiar... dammit writing is hard.

So yeah. That's it. But, I'm still kicking ass at NaNoWriMo, cuz when in doubt... I just write a sex scene. I've already written two. WORD COUNT ACCOMPLISHED, BITCHES.

This is why no one should ever take writing advice from me.



How YOU doin'?

IWSG: Of Workshops and Writing Careers

insecurewriterssupportgroup.com

I want to be a published author.

I am already a writer, but being published is the next step. As my manuscript is winding down (I'm in the third act), I'm realizing more and more, that I need to get out there and start my writing career.

So I joined a local writing association, which has been wonderful. I love the energy and the fantastic mix of people. I've gone to monthly writing workshops which have been fantastic. The last one was so good. It was all about figuring out how to get unstuck in your story. It was great and I had some epiphanies about my book that are going to make it much better. I also paid a wad of cash to attend a writing conference where I get two, count them two, workshops with Donald Maas. One is a two-hour generalized workshop about writing and the other is a four-hour advanced workshop where we'll be working on our manuscripts. My manuscript will be in the same room as Donald Maas!

If you read his name and got as excited as I did, you're a huge nerd. Its okay. Admitting it is the first step. 

In other news, I just finished chapter twenty-five and it took some turns I wasn't expecting but I like them. I'm elbow deep in angst and my characters are running from their feelings and its awesome. I wrote some scenes in the last five chapters that make me so proud to do what I'm doing.

I'm now no longer working with an outline, so I'm not sure where my story is going to go, now. But I suppose that's part of the fun.

That's all.

Oh wait. I started scenes for two different followup novels. Yep.  I killed it in September! Productivity rules!

And those are words you never think you'll grow up to say.

IWSG: Perfection Defection

 1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. It’s a blog hop where you post about the joys and difficulties of being a writer.

When I was a kid, I was forever writing stories, yet my table remained littered with empty notebooks. If I made a single mistake, I'd tear out the page, throw it away and start writing all over again. If halfway down the page I spelled a word wrong, I'd tear it out and rewrite it all again. And again.

Perfectionism. It's a heavy, ugly word that sits like a brick wall between creativity and achievement. I've been so afraid of mistakes that my work sucked for much longer than it needed to. It's supposed to be bad at first. You suck, you learn, you suck less. That's the natural order. But I rarely wrote anything new and kept turning in the same crap to teachers and writing contests, waiting for someone to recognize my genius.

A college prof called me on it, pointing out that I was lazily turning in old stories and even after feedback, I turned them in again, unedited. She said I would never be a great writer if I didn't give up my fear of  mistakes. She was right. When I wrote my first manuscript, it was dreadful. Then I wrote another and it sucked too. With each one I've gotten better. Then I formed a writing group, took a lot of painful crit and got MUCH better. 

 The other day, I re-read a blog post by Kristen Lamb entitled, Is Your Subconscious Mind Setting You Up for Failure? and found it resonated with exactly what I wanted to say today.

The reason perfectionism is particularly nefarious is perfection is an impossible goal. Thus, when we buy into perfectionism we’re automatically setting ourselves up for failure, disappointment, self-loathing and neuroses. Perfection can’t be attained so the goal can never be reached...  Striving for excellence? Totally different story. We can be excellent without being “perfect.” Excellence ships. Excellence has deadlines. I can finish and let go of an excellent book. A perfect book? Good way to still be editing the same book for a decade.

Perfectionism is qualitative, where as excellence is QUANTITATIVE. We can’t measure an imaginary ideal. We can, however measure PROGRESS.

That is it in a nutshell. Perfectionism will lead you nowhere.You'll always be competing with others and coming up short. Learn from my mistakes. Don't be a slave to the clean page, terrified that any mistake or criticism is a sign that you aren't good enough. You've got shit to say and it can't wait for perfection. So go out and write. Scribble in the margins, spell things horriafacallly wrong. Make beautiful mistakes and learn from them. Perfection is a path to nowhere. It's artistic stagnation. The path to excellence is paved with crappy first drafts. So write toward excellence, not perfection.

IWSG: When Critiques Attack

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. It’s a blog hop where you post about the joys and difficulties of being a writer.

I’ve been struggling with my story. So I went outside of my writing group, looking for new insight. Went to a meet up with several other writers. I received some good feedback but one person was less than constructive. They referred to my heroine as stupid. Over and over. Then a few more times for good measure. During another writer’s critique, the person said, "I really like your heroine. She's not stupid," while looking pointedly in my direction. Ouch. 

I like to think of myself as a decent writer. I'm no [insert name of a writer you think is awesome], but I’m okay. I can handle constructive criticism. But this wasn’t constructive, it was personal and mean. 

I walked out feeling like an idiot who writes idiots because I'm too idiotic to know I'm an idiot. I got in my car and burst into tears and cried the whole way home. No one has ever made me feel so shitty about my writing. My complicated knot of ego and drive came undone and I couldn't write for a week. 

This person said something else though. They said, “I don’t get it. Why is your heroine here at this moment, doing this thing? Why not ten years from now? Why not ten years ago?”

I had no answer. That question whirled around me for days. It wouldn't leave me alone. After wallowing and whining, I sat down and re-read my story and said, “Yeah. Why now?” 

So I answered that question. And now I have a fresh back-story, an external goal for my heroine and a much stronger novel. 

They were right.  No, not about my heroine. She's not stupid. That’s a shitty thing to say to a fellow writer. But I have been struggling with back story and external journey and they asked the question I needed to ask, but didn’t know how to articulate.

So the powerful lesson I learned, dear writer-friends, is that all criticism has value, whether it’s to thicken your hide or to force you to deal with your weaknesses. Don’t discount the bullies, the blunt speakers or the haters. Shove aside your ego (and tears) and ask yourself if you can use the experience to be a better writer. 

Then go be a better writer. 

IWSG: Blah Blah Blah

IWSG

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. It’s a blog hop where you post about the joys and difficulties of being a writer.

I've not made as much novel progress as I hoped this month. Partly because my job has become a bit busy and I've been exhausted. So I come home, putz around on Pinterest, staring at pictures of pretty people and then I watch three episodes of The Tudors on Netflix which I've finally gotten around to watching. I loathe it, but I cannot stop watching it (and complaining about it).

I really like to complain about it. My husband hasn't watched one minute but he could tell you everything about it. I haven't been this happy to be annoyed since I binge-watched Bridezillas. 

I digress. I had a fantastic ten page critique by professional editor Teresa Crumpton and she gave me wonderful advice. She taught me many things, all of which slowed my editing to a crawl. It turns out it was a lot easier just writing whatever dreck came to mind rather crafting sentences that pop and figuring out how to start paragraphs without -ing verbs.

So after editing my -ings and extra verbs today, I got bored. Then I spent the evening reading bad reviews of cheesy photo studios. I'm counting it as research into my hero's career and not at all the whim of an ADHD woman who loves reading horrible reviews.

That's it. No glaring successes. No true failures. My novel isn't progressing as fast as I need it to. I vowed to finish it by the end of summer but it's only half written. Ah well.

 

IWSG: Though My Characters Be Slutty, My novel Be Progressing

IWSG

The last month was a challenge for me. The good kind of challenge.

My new computer arrived and it's incredible. I've named it The Beast and I'm now in a polygamous relationship with my husband and my computer. I recieved a wonderful and helpful ten page manuscript review from a professional editor, Teresa Crumpton, and then I was randomly selected to receive a twenty page manuscript critique from Kristen Lamb. Squeeee!

About chapter nine, the chapter that wouldn't end... Ordinarily my chapters are pretty short(about 2800 words), but I wrote 5,600 words and the chapter wouldn't stop. Part of the problem was tension and pacing. I'm trying to draw out the reunion of two old friends, but they are being SLUTS. They want to kiss and bone and they want to do it now.

I've pretty much been fighting them since chapter eight on this. I made it through nine and I'm still fighting them. I've finally given them an almost kiss but they wanted to go all the way with it. I'm telling you, their loins are AFLAME.

With lust. Aflame with lust. Not with a sexually transmitted diseases. Just thought I'd clarify.

Also, HOLY HELL I'M ON CHAPTER TWELVE!

In other news, I purchased two writing book and I'm really enjoying them both. Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham and Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World by Kristen Lamb.

So yeah, I'm feeling really good about my writing life. Fingers crossed that I finish this novel by the end of July.

Sluts.

IWSG: Outline-Induced Narcolepsy



IWSG

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. It’s a blog hop where you post about the joys and difficulties of being a writer.

I’m struggling a bit with editing my WIP. I’m a pantser by nature. I wish that I weren’t. But I have a little-understood disease called Outline-Induced Narcolepsy. It’s quite serious. As soon as I set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard in an attempt to write an outline, interview characters or summarize my novel, my eyes glaze over and I pass right out, which has led to another serious condition; Qwertytis.

With my current WIP I’m using Microsoft OneNote (because I’m too cheap to buy Scrivener) to help me organize my work. I love it! Outlines bore me to tears, but I like making character profiles and town maps. I wrote out all the scene snippets that I want in the story; which is new to me. I’m usually a linear writer. I start at the beginning of the story and write in order with no idea what’s going to happen.

But oddly, being more organized hasn’t helped at all. With my last WIP I stalled out at chapter 9 because I kept re-editing the beginning and couldn’t move ahead. Guess where I’m stalled out with this one? Chapter 9. I’ve written bunches of scenes for later in the novel but nothing that will move this part of the story along. I finally had an idea, but it required a bit of re-writing to make it work. I had been trying to use MS Word’s track changes feature for anything that needed fixing so I can go back and work on it later, but this is major stuff and I sort of need to fill in the gaps to make sure it’s going to work. So now I’m writing ahead and I’m writing behind and I’m not getting any of the middle done and I’m somehow in the exact same place I was when I completely pantsed my previous WIP.

What the eff?

IWSG: The Pen Name Game

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. Wherein I post about the difficulties and joys of writing.

This might be shocking to my sixteen some-odd readers, but Mencara isn't my real name.Don't worry, I've put some smelling salts next to your chair. Thaaaat's it. Breathe deeply.

My name is actually Christina. After my grandmother died, I took her middle name (Mencara) as my pen name because I've always loved it. Matter of fact, when I got married and changed my name, I almost made my middle name Mencara but I chickened out at the last minute. If I had, I wouldn't be worrying about my pen name now.

In the last few months I've noticed what an enormous pain in the ass it is to have a pen name. I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I tried figuring out how to create a profile for Mencara. What a complete waste of time. You really can't do it, unless you buck FB rules and risk the possibility of being booted by creating a fake profile. You can create a page for your persona but you can't use it to join writer groups like Insecure Writers Support Group. Can't be done.

So I tried using Twitter because it would be much easier to use a pen name there, but frankly, I cannot figure out how to read Twitter conversations. They make no sense to me. Shut up, you damnable whippersnappers. I'm not old. Twitter is just... too young.

Then I began reading about all the nightmares that come along with using pen names. The difficulties getting paid and getting contracts from out of the country, etc. Now that my novel is finally getting somewhere, I'm thinking seriously about my name and my online presence. Based on info from writer blogs and publishers, I'm going to have to use some variation of my real name. It's a bummer but there you have it.

I have several writer friends who are all blessed with interesting, bam-pow names. This is not my reality. I write romantic comedy but I don't have a romantic comedy name. Think about how fitting names like Jenny Crusie and Jane Heller fit the genre of romantic comedy. But I'm Christina Mitchell. It's a name for historical romance writer. A stuffy one. I should write about masked balls and refer to man whores as "rakes". And I should develop a rather keen love of bustles. I mean, everyone likes a good bustle. But I'm not sure I can love them. Ya know?


My first and middle name are nice together. I wondered if they would work. So I Googled the combo and discovered an award winning romance writer, from my state no less, has that name already. I am filled with haterade. I'm not gonna curse her out because one day she might read this. But rest assured when I discovered her name, I lobbed some choice words at my computer screen. I'm sure she's a very nice lady, blah blah blah.

So, I let go of my pen name. I changed my blog address. I changed my header, my sidebar etc. My Google+ profile has been updated and I'm just hoping that I don't lose the few readers I have.

Oh and since it's IWSG, I suppose I should tell you that my book is coming along nicely, though I'm struggling a little with my current chapter. It refuses to be funny or interesting, no matter what I do. I rewrote it, I avoided it, I watched a marathon of Supernatural episodes followed by a marathon of Adventure Time... nothing helped.

Now I'm gonna try chocolate.

IWSG: Admitting Defeat

Insecure Writers Support Group Link Here.

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. Wherein I post about the difficulties and joys of writing. I'm running a bit late this month :)

I've been very unhappy with my manuscript for a long time. I have edited the first five chapters roughly ten times and I've finally made it chapter eleven and I have just been pulling the story out of my rear because I'm not loving it anymore. It could be because I've been editing it for nearly five years and that is four years too long to be yanking my eyelashes out over it and to still not know my heroine's motivation.

So for a few months now, I've been wanting to set the story aside but I was scared to do it. I worried that perhaps I'm just being a baby about editing and that I'll be doing the same thing with my next novel when the process gets difficult. But for the last month I've been on Pinterest figuring out what my next novel's characters look like, what kind of car my heroine drives, creating the name of the small town in which it's taking place. I have been setting up my next story and avoiding my current one like the Red Death.

Then my friend and fellow writer Meika, sent me a link to a hilarious and wonderful blog post called, "25 Steps to Being a Traditionally Published Author; Lazy Bastard Edition" by Delilah Dawson. Seriously if you are a writer, you need to read it. It's helpful and funny and full of cuss words (which I love). So I read it and realized how much work is involved once the manuscript is written. After you've poured your blood and sweat and tears onto the paper, edited them, revised them, eaten your self-congratulatory cupcakes, you still have sixteen more painstaking and exasperating steps to get the thing published. And once I read those steps, I realized that I didn't like this novel enough to take those steps. At least not right now.

So I have set it aside. And it sucks. I rely heavily on my writing group for support and I feel like I let them down. I know it's for the best, but this feels a lot like a failure.

On the upside, I started my next novel and it's coming along nicely. I love my setting, I love my hero and I think my heroine is awesome. So theres that.

Yay?

IWSG: Let Yourself Be Terrible

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. Wherein I post about the difficulties and joys of writing.


This is an embarrassing post.

I was a very smart kid. I had a high IQ and they put me in the gifted program in school. I never had to work hard to be smarter than other kids, so I didn't bother working hard. I was a mental sloth. But a time came when I wasn't precocious anymore and by then, most of my peers had bypassed me because they had been paying attention and working hard and I had been coasting along with a big vocabulary and a poor work ethic.

It turned out that you can absolutely get by in this world with very little knowledge of things like grammar, punctuation, science and algebra. I have been to plenty of job interviews and never once have I had to solve a quadratic equation to get hired.Take that, seventh grade math teacher!

What I lacked in knowledge, I made up for by trying to be charming. Charm does a pretty good job of masking ignorance at a job interview or a party, but on the written page, charm is useless. My ignorance gave me away every time.

When I wrote the first draft of my work-in-progress in 2009, it was awful. Despite being an avid reader, I knew next to nothing about writing dialogue. All my previous stories were first person and in the head of the main character with no dialogue at all. I didn't know when to use commas, what an adjective was or even basic things like when to make a paragraph break. I'm actually still not sure when to use a semi-colon. My manuscripts tenses shifted with the wind and my main character drifted from first person to third with startling frequency. It was largely unreadable.

But I was proud of my ugly baby and too ignorant to know how bad it was. I gave the first couple of chapters to my friend and fellow blogger Jeannie. A week later, she brought it back to me with a wild look in her eyes and said, "I can't read this, it's making me nuts. You have to put paragraph breaks in it."

I knew so little about the craft of writing that I couldn't figure out where the breaks should go, so I went into the file and chose random places to hit enter. Yup. I had always been a very good report writer but I couldn't put together the concept of paragraph breaks in a story being the same as it is in an essay. When I got back my next draft from Jeannie, she was as patient as one could be when dealing with someone with so little basic knowledge.

Four years, several grammar books and one awesome writing group later, I am a much better writer then I was. I still struggle with adverb-itis and misuse of semi-colons but I can write dialogue like it's no ones business and I'm learning to edit myself in a constructive way.

 Last week, I wrote a new chapter and I shared it with my hubs. After reading it, he told me that it was the by far, the best thing I've written and that it's amazing how much I've improved. It was the best compliment ever. I am still warm and glow-y from it.

Why did I tell you all this? To tell you that it's okay to be a dumb-ass artistically. It's okay to not know how to do it and to do it anyway. Because the thing that will make you less of a dumb-ass, is practice. It's persistence. And it's a good friend who will patiently explain what the difference between tense and perspective. Thanks for that Jeannie.

We all want to be perfect writers and we want to sell novels and be validated. But you won't get good if you wait until you know it all. You won't miraculously become a Hemingay or an Austen by sitting on your ass. You've got to work. You've got to let yourself suck. Make bad choices, poor plot structure, one dimensional characters, boring sex scenes. Do it all. Be brave and foolish. Name a character something ludicrous. Change your tense halfway through the story. Have muddy themes. Don't be afraid to be terrible, because if you let yourself be terrible, while striving to be better, someday someone will tell you how awesome you have become.

Go write the best shit you know how to write. And then learn to write better. Perfection is unattainable. Learning to be less terrible is a lot closer to your grasp. 

IWSG: The Indecision Tango



1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. Wherein I post about the difficulties and joys of writing. 

My writing is going fairly well. The rewrite is moving at a decent clip. Not as fast as it should be, but that's okay, I forgive me. However, I recently discovered two things about myself:

1. I can't make decisions

2. I'm terrible at naming things.

 

This is a bad combo. Whether it comes to character names, novel titles, or the simple name of a restaurant, I suck. I come up with long lists of terrible ideas and then I can't narrow them down. So I find myself reaching for a lot of outside help which in turn makes me feel like a talentless hack. Aren't writers supposed to be creative? You may be thinking, "Oh Mencara, you can't be that bad, can you?"

I named one of my characters Tiramisu. I'll let that sink in.... 

Obviously I woke from my fugue state and changed it. But it took weeks of deliberation, discussion on Facebook because wanted her name to be Anika but I was worried people wouldn't pronounce it right. They wouldn't pronounce her name right in their head while they read the book and this was unacceptable to me. Basically, I'm a wackjob.

Finally I settled on a name, but then I had to change her surname because it no longer worked.  That took a week of searching and pairing names together and requesting that my friends participate while I figured out the best one. Then I couldn't figure out what to name a restaurant in my novel, so I turned to my creative friend, Jeannie, who came up with one for me. Then this past week, I've struggled and failed to come up with a name for my character's bridal shop.

Then yesterday, it occurred to me that I wrote the rough draft of my W.I.P. back in 2009 and never titled it. Imagine having a four year old child that you never bothered naming. I'm becoming Holly Golightly now. So I tried to come up with a book title and each one has been worse than the last.  I'm back to taking suggestions for the name of a novel that no one has read fully but me. See what I mean? I'm a hack. I wondering if I have to give my Facebook friends credit when the book gets published, since they're making all my decisions asI run to them for input.

Also it took me an hour to choose the image on the right ---->

Am I just a needy writer? Indecisive? Perhaps it's a bad case of Atelophobia? You decide in the comments below!*

*See what I did there? I'm hilarious.

IWSG: Editing is for lesser beings, right?

1st Wednesday of the month is Insecure Writers Support Group. Wherein I post about the difficulties of writing. 

 I hate editing. There I said it.

Before I had an actually work-in-progress, I imagined that the editing process would involve meeting my editor in a sun soaked cafe in L.A. I'd slide my Michael Kors* sunglasses off my face and air kiss my obsequious editor who would slide the manuscript across the table and express her shock and joy that every manuscript has been so well written that she has not needed to edit a single one. Then she'd let me know that I was contacted by two more movie studios who are dying to make my novels into feature films. From there I wax on about my art and how I would never sell my artistic integrity to Hollywood.

Apparently when I imagine being a romance writer, I think I'm Mary Fisher, living in a pink palace by the sea. Except without the nervous break down over a broken fingernail.

As it turns out, editing is less glamorous than you'd imagine. When I signed on to be a writer, I had no idea that anyone would actually have anything negative to say about my work. I mean, how ridiculous. I'm clearly a frickin' savant of writing. My 7th grade writing teacher said so. My best friend nods when I say so. It must be true. So why, WHY do I need to take all the those glorious words, those fantastic characters and those genius love scenes and criticize them? Doesn't that seem a tad unreasonable? I mean, isn't revision for amateurs? Everyone knows that real writers complete perfect manuscripts...

Hush you.

I'm told by other writers that no one writes perfect manuscripts. They are, by nature, a bumpy, lumpy mess. Mine is worse than most because I wrote my novel during NaNoWriMo. If that combination of letters means nothing to you, it's National Novel Writing Month. Every November thousands of insane people from all over the world decide that it's a good idea to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. People often ask me, "Why would you do that?" The short answer? Well clearly I'm a masochist. The long answer? I'm SERIOUSLY a masochist.

NaNoWriMo is actually a lot of fun. You go to local meet ups with other writers and you do contests like fifteen minute timed "sprints" and the winners get stickers and emotional validation. The entire point is to prove that you are capable of writing a novel. You have to turn off the part of your brain that judges your work as good or bad. You learn to turn off your inner editor and just write. Just puke up whatever is in your soul and put it on the paper, no matter how silly or how poorly written it will be. The point is quantity. Quality is irrelevant.

The upside to this is that you end up writing a the bones of a novel. Also you prove to yourself that you are more than capable of doing it and finding time to do it, no matter how busy you are. Also, if you survive the thirty days and still want to write, then you are probably on the right path (or you are a bigger masochist than the guy from Fifty Shades of Grey).

So the great part is that I can say, whoo hoo, I wrote a novel! Sort of. The downside to that great expulsion of creativity is that I now now have a steaming pile of manure to edit. Because IT IS BAD. Make no mistake. Writing without any editing at all means you end up not with a novel but with the skeleton of the story and all the skeleton's bones are broken and need to be set before you add on the muscles and tendons and all the gross innard type stuff they talk about on Bones.


Basically I have a bunch of disconnected, hurriedly written scenes and I've been writing in circles trying to edit a story that is finished in only the most generous of definitions. I don't actually know what happens in the second act of the story because I never really wrote it. I was in a hurry to get to the end and just listed a bunch of stuff I thought should happen.

Wow this is getting long and wordy. As you can see, I'm really bad at editing my own work.

I've lived my life as a pantser, not a plotter, meaning I write intuitively (by the seat of my pants) and don't plan or plot my work ahead of time. But now that I'm editing I'm seeing the necessity and beauty of at least having a rudimentary outline of how I'd like the story to be structured. But every time I try to read about HOW to outline a novel, my eyes glaze over and I fill up with the fear that I'm going to destroy the art process by limiting my story.


So after much whining on my part, my lovely friend Meika sent me the Youtube link on the left here, to a video by writer, Katytastic. She breaks it down in a way that isn't overwhelming to me. She tells how she creates an outline by breaking her novels into three acts, nine blocks and 27 chapters. I took notes during the video and then went into my manuscript and noted where each chapter and block occurred so I can see where my novel is missing parts and what I need to do. It was very useful.  

Yeah, this post is meandering and I don't feel like editing it. Because editing sucks.

And yes, I pretty much plan to use every IWSG post to whine about editing. It is way harder than writing the damn book in thirty days.


*Also I'd like it known that I do indeed own a pair of Michael Kors sunglasses that I found at T.J.  Maxx for less than $20 and I have never worn them without namedropping the designer. Mostly because I used to watch Project Runway and I love MK with a fierce passion but also because I'm kind of a douche.