Summertime Guest Bloggin'

Giles Hash of High Aspirations is out of town this month, and he asked me to write a guest post for his blog to keep his readers entertained while he is away. You can check it out HERE.

And while you're over there, you should mosey through the rest of Giles' blog! It's full of good, writerly advice and camaraderie.

Happy Wednesday!

The Avoider

I'm an avoider. And really, I'm a pro at it.

Anyone who has known me longer than five minutes can tell you that I'm a hermit, but my closest friends will testify that my antisocial habits extend much further than that. While many people thrive on butterfly conversation--that is, the kind of talking that skims the surface and flits easily from one topic to another--and enjoy the act of "catching up," I would more willingly submit to unanesthetized dental surgery. My mother belongs to the social butterfly category, and cringes to see me duck my head and dash off to the restroom every time I catch sight of someone I wish to avoid. But I can't help it. Awkwardness is a form of unpleasantness my genetic chemistry has engineered me to dodge at all costs. My fight-or-flight impulse, while generally trained on Fight in the case of conflict or danger, switches instantly to Flight every time I find myself in a position that makes me uncomfortable.

But social discomfort is only one of the items included in the inventory of things I am inclined to avoid. Imagine my horror when I discovered that my own writing could make its way onto the list.

About two months ago I received a rejection from an agent I had pinned some serious hopes on. And before you go judging me for having unfounded and premature expectations, allow me to say that this agent had been extremely excited when she read my first twenty pages. So excited that she called me just to say that she was excited.

I need hardly say that I was excited, too, but I did my best to rain on my own parade. I'd had far too much experience with agents to delude myself into wild, soaring hopes now. And yet, for all of that, the eventual rejection crushed me. Not because it was unkind--far from it--but because my capacity for dealing with the word "No" had finally reached some kind of breaking point. What should have been a little speedbump in my path became a roadblock that loomed before me like Mount Doom.

Source

And suddenly I didn't want to have anything to do with the book that had just been rejected. The discomfort I associated with my failure began to leech into everything related to writing, and before long I was avoiding even the act of writing itself.

My morning writing time became morning Pinterest time. I directed my creative energies into loads of mug painting and Etsy posting. I satisfied my craving for stories with other peoples' books. I watched a lot of Doctor Who. And all the while I felt lopsided, aimless, anxious, and empty.

I'm writing in the past tense, but I haven't made it out of the dark yet. Like the wee nasty beasties Anxiety and Panic (which many writers fight regularly), creative self-doubt is a clever and cunning enemy. It can't be reasoned with, and it isn't easily pushed aside, and even now, it climbs up on my shoulder whenever I start to consider what I might attempt to work on next. You can't, it whispers nastily. You'll just make a mess of things again, and end up with more rejections for your collection. Wake up and smell the failure, why don't you? You can't write books.

And yet it occurs to me that the only way to shake free of it is to do the thing I have, in two short months, convinced myself I cannot do, and write. I have tentatively started on several projects, but I'm posting this here in order to confess my cowardice and say that I am determined to carry on. I will not be defeated, and for once in my life, I will face head-on the thing I want most to avoid.

Source

I hate ending blog posts without some kind of conclusive, tangible encouragement, but I suppose every once and a while you have to ask other people to encourage you. So if you have battled against self-doubt, weariness, and failure, and come out into hope and optimism once again, do share how you managed it! I'd love to hear all about it.

(And for Heaven's sake, stay tuned. I solemnly swear that my next post will be as lighthearted as they come.)

If You Are a Dreamer, Come In...

Dreams. 

They're feisty, elusive little things, aren't they? Anne Shirley once said, "It wouldn't do to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about." And yet, it can also be detrimental to our poor little souls to have our dreams constantly denied. The book of Proverbs says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and joy."

I don't know how you feel about the subject, but I tend to keep my dreams pretty close to the chest. For one thing, I know how vulnerable they are: some of the more fragile ones can be slayed by a single skeptical glance. For another thing, I tend to feel (erroneously, perhaps) that revealing them makes me seem weak, or even more seriously, that admitting I want them shows what a selfish prat I really am.

But I begin to wonder if I shouldn't hold them so close. I wonder if perhaps I ought to let them try their little wings from time to time. Because when it comes to other people, I find that I consider dreams to be among the most precious, sacred things the heart contains. Nothing connects me to another person faster than learning about their most cherished desire, even if that desire seems outwardly ridiculous. Almost always, I find myself saying, "Oh, you should!" Why? Because I believe it is important to dream. I believe it is imperative that we frail, ephemeral humans run headlong after the things tugging at our souls. How could we live full lives if we didn't?

So. Here are some of my dreams:

 

A wee cottage in the country...

 

with one of these,

 

and one of these,

 

and some of these,

 

where I could spend every morning doing this

 

and every afternoon doing this.

But of course, the dream that haunts me most looks like this:

Others I have cannot be captured so easily in images, but they linger just the same, whispering in my ear when I catch a glimpse of a sunrise, settling over my shoulders when I sit around a table with my family, brushing past my ear with the sudden strain of a violin.

Why do I bring all this up? Because I have begun to be convicted in the belief that it is of the utmost importance to encourage one another in our dreams. It's awful to see your dreams "deferred" (see this poem by Langston Hughes), but it is infinitely worse to have them scorned, discouraged, or even simply doubted. (Anyone who has ever had to explain their writing "habit" to a dubious acquaintance or extended family member understands the torment of that experience.) Conversely, the experience of being wholly and unflaggingly believed in is almost as wonderful as achieving the dream itself. When someone you love is willing to stand at your side in the face of grueling hard work and opposition, and say, "I know you can do this," you find, miraculously, that you can.

So I say to you now, do not be a doubter of dreams. Do not look into the soul of another human creature and say, "You can't." Because while it may only cause that dreamer to toughen her skin and overcome another battle against doubt, it might also break her. And this world is broken enough to be getting on with.

What say you? If you feel so inspired, share your own dreams on your blog and post a link here. I would love to come by and say, "You can."

A Revelation

Every once and a while I have one of those epiphanies that stops me dead in my tracks no matter where I am or what I'm doing, and makes me turn to whomever is closest (even if it's just my dog) and say, "OH MY GOSH. DO YOU KNOW WHAT I JUST REALIZED???"

Usually this turns out badly for me. Not only because you can never tell what poor, innocent bystander will fall victim to this verbal assault, but also because my revelations tend to be a little, er, shall we say, behind the times.

For example: When I was in college (college, mind you) I realized that the phrase "Take it with a grain of salt" was not in fact, as I had so long assumed, "Take it with the grand assault." This one rocked my world for at least a week.

A few years before this, I was made to understand that the large quantities of fizz produced in the quick pouring of a glass of soda did not result in the irrevocable loss of said soda, but merely indicated some kind of chemical transformation best known by mathematicians and NASA employees. (I had long been indignant at the idea that Coca Cola would sell a product which, if it were not poured slowly enough, would vanish in vast amounts and leave the purchaser with less than half of what they paid for.)

I recently had another revelation, and I hope this one is less embarrassing. It goes like this:

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

= 

SHOW INSTEAD OF TELL

If I were the sort of person who said OMG, I might say it now. For me, this is the best kind of epiphany. It takes something I've been hearing my whole life and links it with something I've been telling myself as long as I've been a writer. And the result is that both ideas are illuminated.

"Actions speak louder than words" is a phrase so overused by elementary school teachers that it draws eye-rolls from anyone over the age of fifteen any time someone so much as thinks it. But consider it in these terms: The reason we must SHOW our readers instead of TELLING them is that actions speak louder than words. Ha! Do you see it? New meaning altogether!

Writing a character's actions conveys your point so much better (so much LOUDER, you might say) than describing that character's feelings or mental progression, doesn't it? Ludwig's shoulders sagged and he dropped into the nearest armchair with a whimper is ever so much more effective than Ludwig was disappointed and tired and he didn't know what he was going to do, as we all know.

But holy mackerel! That's because actions speak louder than words! If I had really understood the depth of that phrase when my first grade teacher droned it to the class so many years ago, maybe I'd be a better writer today! (Are you sick of the exclamation points yet?)

Excuse me. I have to go gaze starry-eyed into space for a while. And then I have to go do some revising.

Thoughts?

Manuscripts Are Like Children

Happy Thursday to you!

I am pleased to say that last week's begging and pleading worked out very well. The readers who volunteered to take SUNCHILD to their bosoms and thump all the hiccups and burps from her tender little frame were more plentiful and talented than I could have ever hoped. It delights me to know that she is in such capable hands.

Of course, she is only in those hands because I have at long last relinquished her from my own. Which brings me to the point I'd like to discuss (on the metaphor I've already started, because it works pretty well): What do you do with yourself when your baby goes into the world for the first time?

Now, I've never given birth to a human child before. I haven't given birth to an animal child either, although I've found myself in the position of mothering two different baby-beasts in my adult life.  But I have now conceived, carried, birthed, and nursed five full novels into maturity, two of which (and now three) have left me to go striding out across the wide world to seek their fortunes.

I confess this loss to have a strange effect on me.

The first thing that happens once I tie up all the fragmented ends of a young manuscript--brush its hair, you know, and tidy its outfit and wash its face--and send it off into someone else's care is that I feel a miraculous sense of relief. The thing is done! I think to myself, breathing my first deep breath of freedom and standing up from my computer to see if my numb limbs still function properly. I can do anything I want! I can watch a movie! I can eat a sandwich! I can change out of my ratty t-shirt and go out on the town!

But the moment this sense of possibility breaks over me with all its brilliant rays, I remember the list that has been accumulating for months as I have inched, slothlike, toward this stage of manuscript near-completion. The list includes things like, "Pay rent" and "Buy dog food" and "Wash your hair," and it goes on for pages and pages--which are of course scattered over my entire apartment, on various scraps of trash or folded post-its, and which could not all be located even if I had the motivation to try. So my raptures are extinguished as quickly as they ignited, and I merely replace one ratty t-shirt with another and set to finding and carrying out the list.

By the time the list has been reasonably reduced, though, I find that something strange has happened to me. I no longer have the urge to watch a movie or make a sandwich. My desire to wear something socially acceptable and go out in public has vanished. I can think of only one thing I truly want to do: Write.

This stage of the process is called MANUSCRIPT WITHDRAWAL. During this stage, a writer experiences selective memory loss with regard to the manuscript they have released into the wild: they can no longer recall the feeling of murderous frustration they experienced when gazing upon that stubborn section that refused to comply to their wishes; they have no memory whatsoever of the grueling headache that plagued them during their last week of revisions; most remarkably of all, they cannot imagine what would have possessed them to daydream of time spent away from the project, when the only thing worth doing in the world was--and IS--spending time on that manuscript!

I have felt symptoms of this illness coming on in the last few days, usually manifested in periods spent staring listlessly at my desk, wondering if I should do something, but not knowing what that something might be. And I know how it goes. Before long, I'll delude myself into thinking I want that annoying, time-devouring child back.

Which of course I do. 

But I still had better not waste this precious time I have now. So. What do YOU do while you take breaks from manuscripts? Start another project? Take some intentional time away from writing? Fuel yourself into productivity by means of bribery, threats, or coercion?

And if you have no manuscript, but you have other kinds of babies (humans, animals, chia-pets, etc.), how do you get some healthy distance from them, and refresh yourself while you are apart?

I want to know.

On Typing THE END.

You might have noticed that I've been rather scarce around here for the last few months.  Here's one reason:

This means that I work at a plant nursery, and spring is our equivalent to the Christmas season. 

But here is the the main reason:

This is Siria Nightingale.  She's the protagonist in my WIP, and she's done a fairly good job of keeping me singularly occupied since December.  Turns out, her story was one of those utterly consuming ones that doesn't let you rest until you've sat your little self down and told it in full.  But here's the good news: Today I typed the words, THE END at the bottom of Siria's word document.  This means I can relax a little bit, because revisions are not quite as consuming as first drafts tend to be.

But that brings me to the main point of this post.  I have a few questions for you all.  

If you are a writer, here's your question:

When you type THE END, what does your next step tend to be?  How do you personally approach the massive undertaking of revising, editing, and polishing your manuscript?  Do you use beta readers?  And if so, how do you find them, and what do you ask them to do?

And if you are a reader, here's yours:

What do you expect out of the ends of books?  What has made you feel most satisfied when you close the back cover of a book, and what makes you want to open the front cover right away and read it all over again?  How do you feel about cliffhanger endings?  In a series, what kind of ending makes you ache with satisfaction, even knowing that you have more books to read before you know the whole story?

Please share!  I have loved hearing your responses to previous questions, and I find the variety of opinions fascinating.  Happy Monday to you all!

Comfort Books

There is something about the month of January that makes me want to curl up into a ball under my blankets and wait for spring.  If you're a warm weather person like me, you probably feel the same way.  Possibly you find yourself sighing more than usual this month, or feeling slightly desperate when you look out your window and see nothing but grey for the eighteenth morning in a row.  Or maybe you start to wonder whether green grass and blue sky ever actually existed at all.

It's times like these I start to crave my comfort books.

Some people solve the January blues with comfort foods, comfort sweat pants, comfort music, or comfort movies.  But personally, I find the best antidote to January to be a supply of well-loved books.  These are more like old friends than they are stacks of bound paper.  For example: 

Last week, I saw one of mine on a shelf at an antique mall (it was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and I had an actual moment of confusion in which I stopped with my mouth open, ready to smile and say hello, before I realized it was a book and not a person.  A second dilemma developed at this point, in which I had to fight the impulse to buy the book on the grounds of it being inhumane to leave my friend-book sitting beside a rusty kettle on the shelf like an ordinary item.  I wanted to march up to the shop owner in outrage, cradling Harry Potter to my bosom and shouting that this was not just any book she had sitting on her shelf like some kind of common antique!  This was my friend!  Thankfully, I recovered my common sense and walked on without causing a scene, but not without experiencing a pang of regret for Harry.

That is what I mean about comfort books.  When you run into them at book stores and thrift stores--and antique malls--you feel a stab of fierce ownership for them, and sometimes feel compelled to buy them even when you own at least one copy already.  This is because, like any dear friend, they loyally offer you comfort every single time you pick them up.  Here are some of mine; some of the books I reach for when the world turns into endless, iron winter and I just need a friend-book:

I suppose Harry Potter goes without saying.

Also, Ella Enchanted

Peter Pan

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Lord of the Rings

Pride & Prejudice

Anne of Green Gables

Heidi

The Princess Academy

Goodnight Moon (before bed, of course)

What about you?  Do you find yourself craving familiarity and comfort books during the long weeks of January?  What are some of yours?  

Sometimes Gypsies Wear Motley

VAGABOND SONG

by William Bliss Carman

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,

With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry 5
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her, 10
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Since it is October, I think it's high time for an ode to gypsies. In my life I have wanted to be a gypsy more than anything else, except possibly a writer--or a mermaid. Gypsies have all the fun, as you can see.

If you are a gypsy, you can do things that ordinary people only dream about. For example:

- You can keep a monkey as a pet.

- You can wear long, swirly skirts and lots of bangles.

- You can dance in public to a banjo and a fiddle and a tambourine.

- You can have your own horse.

- You can eat your meals around a campfire while laughing and singing with all your friends and family.

- Your clothes can clash horrifically, and no one will judge you.

- You can go barefoot all the time.

- Your hair can be in snarls, and people will think it's pretty.

- And best of all... you can live in one of these wagons, (also called Vardos):

(link)

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For more photos like these, you can visit this flickr link, and become drunk on love for gypsy life.

The more I think about this fascination, the more I see how it has trickled down from childhood and affected my life now. The way I dress, the way I write, the way I hope. My character is as influenced by the things I loved as a child as it is by the things I love today. Sometimes I think I haven't grown up much at all, I've only piled knowledge and experience onto my childhood self. That underneath this mask of twenty-something, ambitious, mature (ha!) young woman, I'm actually just a little girl who loves gypsies and mermaids and puppies.

Your turn! What has been alluring to you all your life? The adventurous gypsy life? The cutthroat high seas? The fairy tale world of castles and knights and princesses? Have those tastes carried over into your adult life and continued to shape the person you are today?

If you could spend a month living any other kind of life, what would it be?

You're Weird: Motley Monday

Once upon a time, I read an interview on Rachelle Gardner's blog with author Matt Mikalatos which was all about embracing your inner weird.  (You can read that full post here.  And I'd highly recommend it.  It's great.)  At the time, I was feeling ultra-serious about whatever it was I was writing, and thinking things like, Oh gosh this had better be so-so-so good or I'll never ever get published, and, I've got to buckle down and be serious and write in the way that people will want to read because I'll be doomed otherwise and no one will ever read my... blah blah blah.

And I remember this interview being a turning-point for me.  You see, it's always the exceedingly simple things that rattle my brains and club me upside the head with epiphanies.  I'm never boggled by the complex things; usually my little mind embraces those without flinching.  But the simple ones?  No, the simple ones tend to leave me dizzy for days.  And this was one such.

The essence of the interview was this: don't be afraid of the weird things that make you you.  And don't be afraid to saturate your writing with them.  Because it is that side of yourself, those oddities which truly make you unique, that will set your writing apart.

Now, some people are naturally more weird than others.  And that's just fine.  But whatever level of quirk you have inside you, don't be afraid to let it show.  Because, as it turns out, the world doesn't really want normal.  The world wants weird, and the world wants you. 

Take this quote (a new favorite of mine), and post it by your writing desk:

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness." -Allen Ginsberg

 

And then cross-stitch this one on a pillow, and sleep on it every night:

EMBRACE YOUR INNER WEIRD. 

You tell me: do you let yourself into the things you write naturally?  Or is it a struggle for you sometimes?  What methods do you use to turn off that critical inner editor and allow your true weird self to shine through in your writing?

Three Things Thursday: Whatcha Watch

This week's theme is:

Three Things About What You Watch.

Now, this theme is primarily about things you watch on the TV, but I'm afraid I am going to have to deviate from that just slightly.

Ahem.

1.) I don't really watch TV. Apart from the occasional event-oriented show where the watching is in conjunction with a regular get-together (a-la American Idol with my parents), I find I simply can't make time for it. BUT if I did have time, I would watch The Office and Arrested Development, because they are both hilarious. I can sometimes make room for shows on DVD, which was how I watched LOST in college, and also how I fell in love with Flight of the Conchords and, yes, Sex & the City.

(photo source)

2.) I do, however, try to make time for movies. Because I love them. I tend toward the epic ones (see Teenage Three Things Thursday for more embarrassing information), the fairy tales, the artful ones, and the book-to-movie translations. The ones I can watch over and over are: The Princess Bride, LOTR, Pride & Prejudice, Harry Potter, Stardust, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Pink Panther (Peter Sellers), O Brother, Where Art Thou?, You've Got Mail, Finding Neverland, and Peter Pan.

(I have also been known to publicly sacrifice my dignity in order to gaze at Robert Pattinson's face for two hour stints in movie theaters and at home.)

3.) One of the primary reasons I don't make time for TV is because I spend so much time watching live home entertainment. Ophelia (my Muse Dog) and Severus (her cat) were both deposited on this earth by aliens because they were too weird for Outer Space, and therefore they tend to do very entertaining things.

Here are some:

This was a failed attempt to take a picture with Ophelia about two years ago. Last year I made matters worse by adding Severus to the mix.

He likes to dance. We're thinking of trying out for Dancing With Cats:

(In case you can't tell, that's us on the right. We're almost as good as the professionals on the left, though. Never you mind that I'm actually holding a ribbon to get him to dance...)

Frequently, these two wackos combine their oddities and go rocketing around the apartment in a frenzy of madness. As you might expect, there is very little need for television in the face of such entertainment. And then, of course, there are books the TV would have to contend with...

Your turn! Share what you watch. Do you prefer movies or TV, or maybe just the birds out the window? Or is reading and writing your mental TV? Let us know in the comments.

Writing Soundtracks (Motley Monday)

Happy Monday, Dear Reader!

I hope your day is full of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.  Or at least a few cheerful smiles.

If you didn't catch it last week, Mondays are henceforth reserved on this blog for anything and everything--a blanket description which is conveniently (and intentionally) vague.  I'm calling this vagueness Motley Monday, which you can read more about here, if you feel so inclined.

Today I want to talk about music.  Specifically, music you listen to while writing.  (Or, if you happen to not be a writing type person, music you listen to while you're concentrating on something important.)

A few weeks ago, I participated in a #kidlitchat discussion on Twitter, which slowly evolved into a rabbit trail about writing with music.  Within this rabbit trail, an intriguing idea surfaced.  Several people voiced enthusiasm for tailor-made musical playlists for their projects.  Most of these writers listed bands and vocalists that particularly appealed to them depending on what they were writing, and the idea was that they created their own soundtracks for their books, assembling  a group of songs that enhanced the feeling of the story they were writing, while they were writing it.

Now, I personally cannot concentrate on my own words if someone else's are coming through my speakers, so I tend to avoid music with lyrics while I am writing.  I stick exclusively to classical music and orchestral movie scores.  But the concept remains the same, regardless of the type of music you are listening to. 

Create a soundtrack for your story to listen to while you write.

I've only done this once, while I was writing a short story set in Celtic Britain.  I pulled from the Tristan + Isolde soundtrack, the Braveheart score, and some Enya albums (who I do not find distracting), and thoroughly enjoyed the result.  But I haven't done it since, and now I begin to wonder why.  It's an enthralling idea.

So tell me: have you ever created a playlist for your WIP?  Have you found it to be a helpful excercise?

And if not, what do you listen to while you write?  Words or non-words? 

Here are a few of my favorites:

This is just one of the many mysteries of writerdom, and I think it's fascinating to hear what other people do.  Share yours! 

{happy weekend quote}

"Come on!  Open your mouth and sound off at the sky!

Shout loud at the top of your voice, 'I AM I!'

ME!  I am I!

And I may not know why

But I know that I like it.

Three cheers!  I AM I!"

- Theodore Seuss Geisel

(I don't think you have to be a kid to love this one.)