Fighting Writers Block

Today let's talk about writer's block.  First, what is writer's block?  We hear about it all the time, but everyone seems to have a different definition.  One writer friend says she becomes paralyzed with fear that her writing is so awful she shouldn't even be trying to write, and when that happens, she can't.  Others say that when they come up with an idea that they think could be turned into a story, once they sit down to start wrting, nothing comes.  Still others can get halfway through a project, and suddenly they've run out of ideas, inspiration or whatever you want to call it.  They are dead in the water.

I think we all can agree that nothing is more frustrating than having that idea in your head, sitting down to put it in paper or, more likely, into the computer, and then, WHAMO!  nothing comes!  Your mind is a pristine white, perfectly blank piece of paper.

Well, don't feel bad, it happens to all of us.  So what can we do about it?  Have you heard that old saying, "Put you butt into the chair and write?"  And have you replied, at least in your head, "That's what I'm trying to do"?  But how are you trying to do it?

If you have a schedule for writing, and you keep faithfully to that schedule, you can write.  Oh, maybe not get down that perfect idea you woke up with , but write something. A character sketch. A query letter.  A poem.  Try a bit of haiku, the Japanese poetry with three lines of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables.  Anything you write is going to keep your mind active, and the more you write, the more you CAN write.  Umm, yeah, a bit of a cliche' but I've heard it so often it must be true.

So, okay, you've got your schedule...and it doesn't matter if it's 15 minutes a day or 3 hours a day, as long as it is a set time that you stick to...you sit down and the ideas don't flow.  You sit and stare at the computer.  You check your email.  You go to your literary boards and see what's happening there.  You get a snack.  The computer screen is still blank.  What's wrong?

Maybe your ideas are not flowing because you've not done the planning and/or the research you need to do.  You've got the idea, maybe even the plot, but what else?  Do you know who your characters are?  Do you know them so well you know how they think, what they are going to say, and how they are going to carry this story to the end?  Do you even know how the story is going to end?  Do you know what subplots you should have, and how these will interrelate with the main plot?  Is the time frame the correct one for the story?  You don't want to have teens texting each other on cell phones if your story takes place in the 1960s.  What about dress, vocabulary, colloquialisms and so on?  Are they all appropriate for the time and setting?

If' you say 'no' to any of these questions, then your problem is probably not 'writers block', but instead, not having done the research and planning ahead of time so the story flows smoothly in your mind, and therefore out your fingers.
Check it out, and make sure you've done all the necessary "scut" work before you sit down to actually write it.

Another thing to try is to not let the page in front of you remain blank.  Even if it is a computer page. I remember one of the exercises I had in my first ICL course.  There was a list of words and I was supposed to use at least 3 of those words in my next assignment.  I was also supposed to take the words I chose and extend them out to add more words that each single word brought to mind.  Example:  take the word "whisper."  what words does that bring to mind?  For me, it was: breeze, girl talk, rumors, leaves on a tree, mystery.  Can you write a story around those words?  I tried, and did.  Keep that in mind when you face a blank page.  Write a word, any word, even a nonsensical one.  Then write all the words that one brings to mind.  Then write a short story, or even just a couple of paragraphs using those words.  That's a good way to get the mind back in gear, and the writing juices flowing.

Take a break.  Seriously.  Take a deep breath, and step away from whatever you're blocking on.  Go for a walk, take a nap, do some gardening, play with the dog, or bake some cookies.  Go to the gym or start taking a daily walk. Anything to get completely away from the project.  Sometimes it helps to work on another project, either something you've already started, or maybe something totally new, that has nothing to do with the story you've blocked on.  I did that once...started a non-fiction article that had a deadline for the query, and just before I finished the article, I had a break through and suddenly knew exactly what I should be doing with the plot that I had blocked on.  Incidentally, I never did get that query out in time.

Sometimes reading can help bring our creativity back into working order.  Read some of the classics, a good mystery or some of the children's books "just for fun."  Don't try to analyze them, or figure out what the writer meant by that last phrase.  Just read.  Lose yourself in the story.  Let yourself get carried away into another imaginary world that you had no part of creating.  By the time you've finished that book, I would bet that you're just itching to get to the computer and get all those fresh ideas down!

The main thing is, don't give up.  Don't let depression set in, or that mean ole' inner editor say, "See, I told you you couldn't write."  Of course you can write!
Not everyone can, but YOU CAN.  Sometimes it's necessary to let our muse go on vacation.  After all, even she can get tired.  But there are all kinds of ways to entice her out of hiding.  Stay healthy, keep to a schedule, keep mentally and emotionally strong, do some of the things you love that have nothing to do with writing, read some good books, listen to some beautiful music, and before you know it, that muse is going to be begging you to come back.

Try it.  It works.  I know from experience.  Let me know how you do.

A New Contest

Contests! We all love them, right?  Hmm, well, a lot of writers do.  I must admit I've never entered very many.  There is one I enter every year at the writers' conference I go to in October, but the most I've done there is to get an Honorable Mention.  I get excited about contests, then get wrapped up in my writing or ICL assignments, or life in general, and forget about them until the due day is past.

But there is a new contest that I am absolutely going to enter.  I don't care what comes up, I AM going to enter.  It's on http://www.kidlit.com/ which is a really neat blog by Mary Kole, associate agent at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Anyway, this contest doesn't have money as a prize or a promised contract with an editor or agent.  What it does have is exposure to an agent and to a professional critique of your work.  How cool is that?  It is a contest for MG and YA novels, and they HAVE TO BE FINISHED!

I"m not going to tell you all the rules or what the prizes are, you have to go to the site to find that out.  Again, the site is www.kidlit.com/kidlit-contest.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

About writing contests:  how many of you do actually enter them?  What do you think of them...are they helpful, do they make you think, do you gain anything from entering even if you don't win?  Since I haven't entered but just a few, I'm seriously wondering about them.  Oh, I know the main objective is to win, or at least place.  After all, that looks good on your bio when you send off a query.  But what else does entering a contest do?

If you don't win...or even place or get an Honorable Mention...do you come away feeling like you are a loser, that you'll never be published, that you should just stop writing now...or...do you come away feeling renewed, more determined than ever to continuing writing, to get that story down in such a way that the editor who reads it will wonder why it took you so long to get it into their hands?  The latter is the optimum feeling, but is it the most prevalent one?  I don't know, so this is not a rhetorical question...I really want to know how you feel.

Regardless...I AM going to enter the kidlit contest.  I may come away with bruised feelings, but at least I will be able to say I tried.

I have a friend who enters every writing contest she can find.  It doesn't matter if it is for a novel, a story, Non-fiction, crafts, puzzles, poetry or what.  It is a contest, she enters it.  Sometimes she wins, sometimes she places or gets an Honorable Mention, and sometimes it proves to be a waste of time.  But she is consistent in her trying.

I wish I could be like that.  How about you?

Truth in Imagination

It's been a week since I last posted.  With my husband still in a wheel chair, and another 3-4 weeks to go, I haven't had much time to even think about writing, much less do it.

Today, however, I started thinking about something one of my friends asked me.  She asked me if having been a teacher was what gave me the impetus to write.  I had to think about that for awhile.  I know a lot of writers who are or have been teachers.  So is there something about teaching that leads so many of us to write?

I'm not sure.  With the exception of a year and a half where I taught physically and sexually abused children, all my teaching experience has been with adults.  Hmm...well, chonologically adults, any way.  University students, juniors, seniors and graduate students.  I can see where teaching children from elementary to high school would be good experience, and offer good "fodder" for writing...but college kids?  I don't know about that.

When I started writing, I wanted to create a world of imagination for kids, but one in which they could each find some small measure of truth, something that would ring true just for them.  Truth in Imagination.  Okay, so that's a difficult concept to explain, probably because that's just my concept, or at least, what I call my feelings about writing.  I want to write a story that sparks the imagination of a child, and yet one in which that child can find a truth.  A truth about friendships or relationships, about nature and the environment, about most anything that is real.  Even a truth about her/himself.  Does that make sense to you?

Okay, let's try it a different way.  Do you remember when you were reading as a kid, and you got lost in the story?  Your imagination took off, and for a short, wondrous while, you were not you, but the heroine or hero in the story.  Think about it...did any of those stories you read make you realize something that was true in real life?  If so, isn't that kinda like "truth in imagination?"

One of the stories I had published was about a young boy who went to live with his father on a ranch.  The boy hated horses because he was afraid of them.  One night in a storm, his father had to leave to find a vet for a newborn foal, and he told the boy that he was relying on him to go out to the pasture and keep the foal alive until the vet could get there.  To the child reading this story, wouldn't he put himself into the story and imagine what he would do?  Would he refuse to go out in the  storm with an upset mare and a newborn foal?  If he did, how would or could he help keep the foal alive?  If he didn't, how would he feel about betraying the trust his father had put in him?  As he reads on, he finds out what the boy did, and he can ask himself "Is this what I would have done?"

The story sparks the imagination but leaves a measure of truth for the reader to figure out for himself.  Is the reader learning something about himself, or about what can happen in real life by this story?  I think so.  I hope so.  Not because I intended to "teach" anything, but because I hope I put a grain of truth into an imaginative story.

Truth in Imagination: think about it.  Isn't that something that all teachers try to do in the class room?  I did.  At the university, I taught mostly Statistics and Research Methodolgy.  I know, I know...UGH!  Most of my students thought the same way.  So I tried to make a very dry subject interesting and relevant to daily life.  Statistics don't lie...a very tired cliche' but its the truth, no matter what.  So where did 'imagination' come in?  I brought real life into the class, by asking the students to use their imaginations to come up with real life situations that could be resolved by using statistics.  The point was...you need logic to learn statistics, therefore you can apply the laws of statistics by using logic in real life situations even if they are imaginary ones.


When I started writing 'for real,' I tried to keep the concept of truth in imagination alive and well in my writing.  Hopefully, I have been able to do that.  The stories I've published, I think, have exemplified that concept.  I believe that I was able to do that in my last novel, as well.  We'll see about this next one...it's an historical novel, so I think it's going to be a little more difficult to use that concept.

Think about it: whether you've ever been a teacher or not, don't you try to put truth into the imaginative stories that you write?  I don't mean "truth' as in facts.  We'll leave those for non-fiction writers.  But unless you write only Science Fiction or Fantasy, I'll bet you've used the concept of Truth in Imagination again and again...but you've just never thought of it in those terms.

Think about it...Let me know...

Musings

Today has been a day for thoughts and musings about what has come to pass and what may come to be. Why today? I have no idea. It was a busy day, errands to run, helping my husband who is in a wheel chair for an indefinite period of time...just a usual day. But I've done a lot of thinking along the way.

My journey into the writing world has taken another turn. Not unexpectedly, but still not one I thought much about until recently. I have decided to enroll for yet another novel course with the Institute of Children's Literature, and in fact, just sent off the first assignment today.

If my last instructor knew of this, he would probably throw up his hands in disgust. In his last letter to me, he told me that I not only had written a very marketable book, but also that I had all the tools I needed to continue writing, without his or anyone else's help. So, why do I need another course?

Well, I'm not sure. I have begun an historical novel about the Civil War; I have done almost two years' worth of literary research; and I have visited Civil War campgrounds, forts, battle sites, and Underground Railroad "stations." Nevertheless, I feel that I need the expertise of someone who has already published historical novels to get me on the right path. On the other hand, my last instructor would say, "But you are on the right path...it can't get any more 'right' than what you have done to prepare." Still, I have enrolled in a second novel course.

Do you know what a comma is? Of course, you know what a comma is! But...have you ever thought that sometimes your life is made up of commas that come where they are not supposed to? I know, I know, now you are thinking... what exactly does this have to do with what you just wrote?

Well, think about commas for a moment. We use them to interpret the style, the voice and the flow of what we are writing. We are not supposed to overuse them, or use them incorrectly, such as separating a subject or an object from its verb. If we use commas correctly, we are helping to establish a kind of rhythm to our work. But if we use them incorrectly, our work can become disjointed, stiff and hard to follow.

Now, think about your life this past year. Your life, not your writing. Has it flowed smoothly all year? Have you set a rhythm for what you wanted to do, and has that rhythm remained constant? Or...have there been times when life has become disjointed, stiff, and hard to follow, or worse yet, to understand? Have there been commas which have interrupted your style of living, jolted the life voice that you try to maintain all the time?

What does a comma do when it's used incorrectly? It disrupts but it doesn't end what we are writing. IF we're good self-editors ( as we all try to be), when we go back and review, we see that the comma has been put in the wrong place or that it doesn't even need to be there at all.

It's the same with our daily lives, isn't it? When you go back over 2009 and see where the disruptions have come in, no matter what form they have taken, aren't they really the same as commas? For a while, brief or otherwise, our lives have taken a turn or a twist we didn't expect. A COMMA has come into our lives and disrupted it, but we've gone on, right? Maybe it was something that we could change or modify when it happened, or maybe it was just something we had to live with. But we got through it. We re-established the rhythm and flow of our lives, just as we re-establish the rhythm and flow of our writing when we modify or remove the wrongly placed comma.

The next time something comes along to disrupt the smoothness of your life, try to consider it a comma...something that is misplaced, or totally unnecessary, but something that we can modify, replace, or even live with until we can once more concentrate on the rhythm of our lives. Oh...I didn't say it would be easy. But what do you do when your story is just stuck...not going any place, much less where you want it to? Don't you put it away for a few days, and then when you come back to it, you suddenly have a brilliant flash of inspiration and realize exactly what you have to do to get past that point? Even if a misplaced comma is not to blame?

True...you can't walk away from life, and say, "Okay, I'll be gone a few days, and when I get back, you'd better be the way I want you to be." But maybe...just maybe...if you think of that twist or turn or disruption as a comma, something that is extraneous to the normal flow of your life but something that is not going to be a permanent fixture, it will make living with it a little easier.

Think about it. Try it. See what happens. And then let me know.

A New Contest

This is going to be a short blog! I just found out about a new contest for MG/YA writers. It has to be a completed novel, in case the agent who is putting the contest on wants to read the full manuscript.

Agent Mary Kole is hosting the contest for the first 500 ( or less) words of your novel. The maximum number of words is 500, so be sure not to go over that. The link is: http://kidlit.com/kidlit-contest.

There are first, second and third prizes, and I think an honorable mention, also. The prizes are critiques by Mary Kole, which I think would be very beneficial to those of us who have completed novels. It would give those who win the critiques some insight into what agents really look for when we send out queries and the first 10 pages or so of our novels.

I'm going to enter, how about you? Deadline to enter is January 31st, so don't fool around !

Speaking of contests: how many of you enter them, and which ones do you enter? I have only entered the contests put on each year by the writers' conference I attend here on the Central Coast. I'm not sure why I don't try for more. It seems like I'm always so busy when a new one comes along, that I don't take the time to investigate the submission guidelines and see if it is something I would be interested in. But...winning a contest, even coming in second or third if it is nationally known, looks good on your bio when you send in a query, and it just might pique the interest of the agent or editor enough for her/him to ask for your full manuscript. Maybe I should take my own advice, and try to enter some this year! Another goal I should add to my growing list for 2010.

Let me know if you enter, but most of all, let me know if you win a critique!

And A New Year Has Arrived!

2010! Can you believe 2009 has gone already? I made a remark today about how fast time flies when you're having fun, and the young lady at the cash register said, "Yeah, but what about when you're not having fun?" To which...I had no answer since it was obvious that she was very serious.

Does anyone make New Year's resolutions any more? I stopped years ago, because I never kept them, so why bother making them? Since I've been writing, however, I set goals for the year, so maybe that's as good as a resolution.

This year, my main goal is to get published. Ha Ha, you say. Isn't that every writer's goal? Well, yes, but in order to meet a goal, you have to set objectives which will lead you to that goal. Sometimes we fail to do that, and then when we don't reach our goal, we wonder why. Or...more likely...we scream and cry and throw things, gnash our teeth, snap at our spouses and yell at the kids. But we still don't know why we didn't meet the goal.

So, okay, what are my goals and objectives? First, I just enrolled in my second advanced novel course at the Institute of Children's Literature, so I have a major goal of completing the course, which will mean I have completed the historical novel I've been working on for three years. Each assignment will be one of the objectives I have to fulfill in order to meet that final goal.

A second goal is to find a home for The Year of the Scream or Why I Hate Cheerleading, Chocolate and Celine Carroll. My first choice ( actually, only choice so far ) editor rejected it about the first week of December ( sniff, sniff), so now AJ has been sitting around in a very dejected state, waiting for me to send her out again. In order to do that, I need to have some objectives. Number One will be to do some further intense research into publishers, and select several who would be open to this genre, and who would be willing to accept simultaneous submissions. Number Two will be to sharpen my query skills, and send out queries that will be specific to each editor/publisher.

Of course, this brings up another question: should I try to sell this story myself, or should I try to get an agent first? There's that vicious circle again...publishers who want only agented material, and agents who want only published writers. How do you obtain one ( either one) without the other?

Unfortunately, I really haven't decided which path to take, but I know that a journey down either will require the same amount of time, research and skilled query letters.

Another objective is to get out all of my past articles and even some of the assignments from the Beginning Course at ICL, brush the dust off, and then polish them to a brilliant ( ! ) sheen. Second objective along this line is to, again, do intense research into magazines which would be open to the kinds of articles and stories I have. Third objective: polish up those queries and send them out.

Now, will I have attained my goal of being published this year? I don't know. What I do know is that I will have fulfilled all of the objectives I've set for myself, and done so to the best of my ability. Then...as we all have experienced...it will be a "wait and see" game.

Goals and Objectives: you can't have one without the other. Just remember that no goal can be reached without meeting some objectives along the way. It's like a toddler learning to walk: he must first learn to crawl, then stand alone, then take a few steps, then walk unaided, and then run across the floor. His goal is to "walk like a big boy," and each small event along the way of his learning is an objective that he has to meet. So it is with us and our writing. No matter where we are in this journey we're on, we must set goals, and then we must analyze each goal and decide which baby steps...i.e. objectives...we must meet in order to obtain that goal. Will everything fall into place the way we plan? Will we constantly have to be reevaluating what, why, when, where and how we are doing what we are doing? Absolutely! But without those baby steps, without those objectives, no matter how many times we might have to revise them for one reason or another, we must have them...and meet them...in order to get where we want to be.

Think about it. Where are you? Where do you want to be? Have you set your goals for the year? Do you have your objectives in order, and know what you have to do to meet them?

Come on, get busy! You only have one year to do this !

Rejection and Perfection

I've not been a very good blogger the last week or so. Too many things to do for Christmas and too little time to do them. And then, something happened that threw me off course a bit. I received my first rejection for my novel.

Not my first rejection, just the first one for the novel manuscript. I was extremely disappointed, because I sent it as an exclusive submission, since I really wanted to work with that particular editor. But it was not to be.

What do you do when you get a rejection? Seriously. Do you scream, cry, cuss, throw things, slam doors, snarl at your spouse/significant other/parent/dog/cat? I'm truly interested in how other writers react or respond to rejections. My husband says I'm not in the norm. I'm not sure how he knows this, as he is not a writer, but he claims no one else would react the way I did. So...what did I do?

He handed me the envelope, with my address label on both the front and as the return. Of course I knew what that meant. A rejection. I looked at it for a moment, turned it over and over, until he said, "Aren't you going to open it?" Without responding, I opened it, and read the very nice, personally signed, rejection letter. I handed it to him, still without speaking. He read it, gave me a hug and said he was sorry. Then he stood there and stared at me...like, well, are you going to fall apart or what?

No, I didn't fall apart. I didn't cry, throw things or cuss the dog. I shrugged, and said, "I'm disappointed, but this probably won't be my last rejection." I took the letter into my study, made a file folder for it entitled "Novel rejection letters," and put it away.

Since I started writing seriously 3 1/2 years ago, I've had several things published and several rejected. I've learned that a rejection is not the end of the world. It is...or should be...the impetus to edit and revise more studiously, to write more, to learn more, and to continue to submit. I've also learned that a rejection is not a personal affront to me. It merely says that this editor did not like the story, my writing, or could not use it because she/he already had similar works on their desk or in various phases of editing or publishing.

There is a young man on one of my literary boards who strongly believes that he will never be published until his writing is PERFECT. Truly, he expects it to be PERFECT. I've tried to tell him that perfection is not a human trait in any endeavor, and that editors don't expect that, regardless of what we may think. But he doesn't believe me. Consequently, he seldom submits anything because he "knows" it will be rejected, because he doesn't believe it is "perfect." When he does submit, and is rejected, he simply cannot cope, and he goes into a meltdown.

So that brings me to the question, do you expect perfection in your writing? And, when does it become 'perfect' in your mind?

I write and revise, write and revise, go back, edit, revise some more, edit, write, and so on. The novel I just finished and submitted has been edited and revised more times than I can remember. I've rewritten totally the first three chapters at least three times. I completely deleted 4 chapters in the middle of the novel after rewriting them several times, because as I went on, I felt that those chapters contained a subplot that was better left out. So then I had to come up with another subplot and work it into both the chapters before and those after. It was a major undertaking, and I did it in the middle of my ICL novel course.

But...was it perfect when I submitted it? Absolutely not. It was polished as well as I could polish it. I expect to have revisions asked for by any editor who finally accepts it. I will be happy to do those revisions...I think...because I know that the eyes that see it are far more experienced than mine, and will be able to spot shortcomings that I haven't.

I think we do ourselves a disservice when we expect or want to see perfection in anything we do, especially our writing. If we do expect it, then the question becomes, when...in our minds...do we achieve it? And if we honestly believe that a certain work is perfect, how do we feel and react when it is rejected? Isn't that when the sky opens up and all the evils of the Writing Gods descend upon us? How can we be expected to deal with that? We immediately feel that we are the worst writers in the universe, and we'll never be published.

So...I accept rejection and reject perfection! I don't like to be rejected, any more than anyone does, but I'm realistic enough to know that it is a fact of a writer's life. I'm also realistic enough to know that perfection is a myth that can never be captured in real life. Perhaps I'm too much of a realist, and maybe that's why I can't write good fantasy. But for now, at least, I will accept these truths which I hold to be self-evident: this rejection won't be my last, and my writing will never be perfect.

As for you: How do you feel about rejections, and how do you react to them? And...do you strive for perfection in your work? If so, do you ever feel that you have attained it?

Think about it.