April Is National Poetry Month

Hey! Tomorrow is April. I'll be here all month with my half-hearted first drafts: a poem a day for NPM. Tell your friends and write with me. Are you in?

Bel. With a Chainsaw. On a Mission. Almost...

I have this little document, about 20,000 words or so, with a precocious protagonist (say that 3x fast) and a cute little plot. It is totally appropriate for an early elementary reader. Except for the 20,000 word part. That is about twice as many words as I need.

So picture me, in my lumberjack costume (I'm a lumberjack, and I'm OK!), with my chainsaw, getting ready to clear-cut the holysmokes out of this manuscript. Pretty imposing, right? Now picture Lumberjack Bel sitting at the computer, chainsaw sitting idly on the floor by my chair, harvesting virtual cabbage. Sigh...

I can't seem to get motivated! I think it's because the whole middle is actually part of a completely different cute little plot and needs to be rewritten. It's overwhelming. So I'm avoiding it. You know?

What would you do? What should I do? And don't say, "Just do it!" because I know that! But I'm stuck.

So?

1 Yr to a Writing Life - Chapter 2

Click here for Chapter 1.


When I was in the 4th grade, I spilled spaghetti off my lunch tray into the milk cooler at school. I remembered this while reading Bird by Bird and had already started to write about it when I read Chapter 2 of that book with the really long title that I'm not going to type because I don't feel like making sure I get it right (so click the link above). Turns out Chapter 2 (month 2) is all about the personal essay. Taking a memory and writing it down and then fleshing it out and then finding the poetry in it. Oh, there is so much poetry in a story about a 9 year-old girl who has just made what seems like the biggest dumb mistake of her whole life! At that moment, I truly believed that I couldn't possibly ever do anything more embarrassing than spill my lunch. To be 9 again...

Now it's March, and time for Chapter 3. Hopefully you won't have to wait until April to read about that!

Oh, speaking of April: April is National Poetry Month, remember? Who's posting a poem-a-day with me? They don't have to be good (mine rarely are!); it's just for fun. And to celebrate NPM! If you're joining me, we should do the whole linkylinktoeachothersblogs thing so let me know!

Have I Lost You?

I feel like I'm always apologizing for being MIA and making promises to do better. If we were dating, you should dump me. If I were your best friend and you were dating... um... me... Wait. This metaphor isn't working. So let me just say this:

I'm sorry, baby. I'm a jerk. I promise I'll be there for you from now on. Please don't leave me. I need you!

'Kay?

I've Been Thinking...

Sometimes you're reading a story or a novel or something, and the author has included detailed descriptions of the story's location, the room or landscape or climate. You think, "A Real Writer* gives you descriptions of places in their work." Then later, when you're writing and realize you've just gone 2 or 3 pages without even mentioning if there is a window in the room, you wonder if you're doing it wrong.

But maybe instead the location isn't crucial. If the wallpaper doesn't move your story forward or add to our insight about the characters, does it really matter if it's striped? I don't think so.

* a published writer

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Don't worry - I intend to post about chapter (month) 2 of One Year to a Writing Life: Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's Art and Craft by Susan M. Tiberghien. It is about personal essays and inspired me to write about the time in the 4th grade when I spilled spaghetti in the milk cooler. Probably Monday...

Notebook

I have this Super Cool notebook. It's green with little line drawings of trees. All different kinds of trees. And peeking out from behind one of the trees is Big Foot! You have to search for him because he's tiny. And hiding. I'd take a picture, but I can't find my camera so look here instead. Mine is green. I said that. It has the picture below stuck on it and several Chinese restaurant fortune cookie fortunes that struck me, like "The world will soon be ready to receive your talents" (you know that's true!) and "You will make a name for yourself in the field of medicine" (HG said, "Are they going to name a disease after you?") and "Don't underestimate yourself. Your social skills are needed by others at this time" (very desperate others, apparently!). Also, a fortune appropriate for the career I've chosen to wrestle with, "You will make many changes before settling satisfactorily" (ah... revisions...).















Before I started reading One Year to a Writers Life, this notebook was just randomness and Follies. I mean literally, Follies - it was the notebook I took to the writers meetings for Follies last year. I don't have a good post to refer you back to that isn't from 2009 so I'll just remind you that Follies is the little show a group of talented people puts on at my church every fall, and in 2009 I stole the show and then in 2010 I wrote it and Pete stole it! Anyway, after I started my reading, I decided to make this book my journal and to date the things I write in it and to make them go consecutively from one page to the next instead of just writing wherever the book opens to.

I love my little notebook. I loved it the first moment I saw it and just had to have it. Little did I realize then that this would be My Notebook, my journal, my First Official Journal. Full of images from the ice storm and the sensory garden at the girls' school. Full of whining and complaining about having noplace of my own (yes, I meant that to be one word - Firefox doesn't like it - I don't care). Full of character descriptions and short scenes and, believe it or not, a couple of feeble attempts at plotting (not my thing, not finding those helpful yet). Nope. When I grasped it and wrestled it from the weird basket shelf thing where they keep the notebooks at the store, I had no idea what I would do with it; I just knew it belonged to me and that I could do great things with it. I knew it so certainly that I bought the matching 2-pocket folder.

How sad will I be when it's filled. Well, sad and proud.

And inspired.

I just mean that I hope my next notebook is this cool.

What do you think? Should I buy another one just like it now in case I can't find them when I need my Second Official Journal? Or should I just trust that, when the time comes, I'll be able to find another, perhaps different, equally awesome volume?

(This post was inspired by Charmaine at Wagging Tales. I often find her inspiring...)

Legitimacy and Randomness

How does it happen? How do you get to that point where you don't feel like a kid or a wannabe when you say, "I'm a writer"?

How do you write a compelling bio or query/cover letter when you still feel like you should be saying, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a writer"?

How am I supposed to find time to clean the bathrooms and fold the laundry and cook dinner and take everyone to the dentist/doctor/groomer/vet/soccer and still read and write as much as I'd like to? Maybe if I leave 2 hours early for carpool...

I submitted a very short story (I know it's called flash fiction - I just like very short story better) to AROHO's Orlando contest because they didn't ask for a bio (and because I like the idea of AROHO). That makes 3 things on my submissions tracking spreadsheet.

It's raining, and I'm supposed to be baking.

Reviving Revising the Dead Bad

Last year, I spent a long time, months really, working on a story. I wrote it out in my notebook so I could squelch the urge to edit as I wrote. Then I finished it, and when I went to type it up, I discovered that the story was so bad that I couldn’t even stomach pressing the keys on the keyboard (you can read about that here). I did finally get it typed, and then I tried, I tried to breathe some life into it. I read and reread it. I thought about it in the shower, where I get some of my best ideas (why don't they make waterproof paper? - I'm sure I'm not the only one who needs to make notes underwater). I changed the secondary character to someone who would provide more conflict. I poked and prodded and pounded the story's chest. But it was stubbornly lifeless. BOOOORRING... So I abandoned it, left it to fester on my flash drive. Sad, I know, but it had to be done.

Best. Idea. Ever. Leaving it alone. Because, even though I was pretending it didn't exist, my miserable, timid, yawn-fest was always there in the back of my mind, with its glimmer of potential. Then I wrote another story with a similar main character. This new story spawned my Big Project Idea, a collection of short stories about the new character, and when I was thinking about possible stories I could write, I remembered that other poor, lifeless Blah, and I sought it out and pressed Ctrl+H and replaced the old MC with my new MC and it was way better. I had to change the style of the story and the MC's attitude about a couple of things, and I have to rewrite the whole middle. I can't wait!

And when it's finished, I'll have 3 stories in my collection. Maybe I'll throw together a tracker widget for the sidebar there --> so you can keep up with my progress...

Hurdles

←That’s me . What you can’t see (because I didn’t feel like editing clip art today) is that the hurdle is labeled “PERFECTION”. And in my imagination (because the picture of me leaping over the hurdle isn’t imaginary, right?), under the hurdle is a big puddle of failure.

And the thing about Perfection Hurdles is that they don’t seem to end. Have I lost you? This was my plan BWAH HA HA! I mean, sorry.

Each step in the writing process is a Perfection Hurdle for me. I had to leap the first one (and knock out my inner editor) to finish my manuscript. And now that it’s done and riddled with imperfections, I have to leap another one and accept the fact that the first revision will make my stack of papers better but won’t be anywhere near perfection.

I’m not a track star (or even the slow kid who everyone cheers for because they always finish, even though they’re always last, not yet anyway). And the path full of hurdles is turning out to be kind of daunting. Instead of hurdles, at the moment, I see walls.

So I’m going to do what I do when I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to put it off. Just not do it. Because I don’t know how.

The difference, though, between me putting off revising and me, say, putting off calling up to Investments to ask about dividends or some other investing word I’m not certain of the meaning, is that while I’m ignoring this task, I’ll be reading, searching, researching advice, tips, tools from other writers who’ve found themselves behind this particular hurdle.

So? Any advice for me? Got a good place for me to look or book for me to read? Any tricks you use when you’re revising?

In the meantime, I’ll be over here, at the side of the road, retying my shoes.

Pantsing from my Right Hemisphere

Recently I learned 2 things that I found interesting about me as a writer. Since this blog is about me, and recently frequently about me as a writer, you're going to learn them too.

Charmaine Clancy over at Wagging Tales posted about right-brain vs. left-brain the other day. She included this link, which I immediately clicked and was totally surprised to find that the figure is turning clockwise. For me.* Which way do you see her turning? I always thought I'm a left-brained person, but I suspect that many people would disagree. Including you, dear reader? I'm not good with the abstract stuff right-brained people are supposed to be good at. I like the concrete, the logical, the scheduled, the patterned, the safe. I wonder if she would have been turning the other direction 3 hours ago when I wasn't right in the middle of my creative time. Which is scheduled. And therefore left-brain. Right?

On the other hand, when I write, I find that I am most comfortable when I'm writing by the seat of my pants. I learned recently (after reading Shannon McMahon's interview with Elana Johnson) that this is called pantsing (right brain) and its opposite is plotting (left brain). You can click the word and learn more about it (I had to). Isn't it funny that there's a term for it? I rarely go into my writing with a plan or an outline of any sort. I usually have a vague idea of what I want to say or where I want to start or about what or whom I want to write. Then I just start and write until I'm done. Or dry. Whichever comes first. Even in my college writing classes, where I had to turn in my outline and rough draft with my final draft, I would write the paper first and go back and draw up an outline from it to hand in (sometimes I'd change the paper backwards a little and hand that in as my "rough draft"). I always did very well on my papers. This is why I chose to get a degree in philosophy, I think. All the writing made it easy for me. I didn't learn anything useful, but WOW! can I write!

So now you can say, when you're talking about something brilliant I've said or done (like you frequently do, I'm sure), "My Right-Brained, Pantsing Online Friend Bel said/did..." and no one but us will know what you mean!

*When I concentrated, I got her to switch directions.