Tag Archives: writing is hard

Four Thoughts on the Writing Life

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writinglifeIt’s so lonely.

Writing is quite solitary. Even though I am part of a writing community– and have so much support and collaboration with dear friends– in the end, I have to do the work alone. I can’t explain just how alone I have felt over the last month or so, especially being single. Theoretically, I understand that even if I were dating or married, I would still have to do the hard work of revisions on my own, but … I’ve felt a little untethered and singular. Very, very much solo in this treacherous territory.

It’s so hard.

Harder than I ever imagined. I’m not referring only to the actual act of writing here … but to the head game. I get to a point where I start to hate my manuscript … my beloved story that I’ve poured my soul, energy, and tears into. Do you know how crippling that is– how it folds your spirit into such ugly shapes that you worry you’ll never sort yourself out again? I’m back in therapy, folks.

But I still want it.

Things got pretty dark– to the point where I started questioning my identity as a writer, ultimately asking myself, Is this really what I want? There, in the darkness, I saw a pinprick of light: the certainty that my answer was yes.

And I’m not really alone.

My lovely new therapist asked me to picture the Holy Spirit sitting beside me, looking at our manuscript, saying, Look what we’ve made. It made me bawl. Of course. I so desperately want to honor God with my fiction. The thought of him looking on my manuscript with pride was such a reminder to me that no matter how lonely this road seems, I have a faithful companion.

Related posts:
Writing is Hard … but Worth It (I Think)
Writing and/or Life, Both Hard
The Good & Bad of Writing
Being Single and Writing a Book

Image credit: Unsplash, modified by me

Writing and/or Life, Both Hard

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rumiWriting.

Either I’m not doing it right and still need to learn the universe’s secrets, or else the truth is that writing is masochism.

No, stop. I shouldn’t say that. Believe me, I love to write. Sometimes.

But it is really, really hard.

Why does it so often seem like other writers have their acts together?  They feel confident in their abilities.  They are clever and funny and smart … gahhh, I know I can be those things too.  But mostly I just feel insufficient and terrified that I’ll be found out.

Not just writing either.  Life.  I’m 32, and I feel like I know so little about how to be successful at Life.  I retreat in fear to my favorite things night after night: my bed, my prayer journal, my Jesus.

A few lines from Truest (as it stands today):

And while I sit in the stand and pray, I have the same sensation—that I am being outlined, defined, and that the definition doesn’t come from me.

I am trying to hold so many things—and failing—but this one thing is holding me.

Please tell me, people: do any of you get so overwhelmed that you become paralyzed? Have you fallen in love with a vocation that gnaws on your heart? Have you figured out any ways to be still and yet productive?

All I know is Jesus, Jesus, Jesus— thankfully, he’s more than enough.

 

The Good & Bad of Writing

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writer__s_block_by_arzu88-d3hg9efAm I a whiner?  Sometimes I feel like it.

The truth of the matter is that writing is just plain hard.

When I am writing a first draft, I wish I was revising. I tell myself it’s so much harder to make something out of nothing than it is to make something better out of something okay.  In a first draft, I still don’t know my characters very well, so I’m not entirely sure of what they should do or how they should react to people or events. I typically have no idea how the story will actually end, so I’m writing blind and terrified that because I see no ending now I won’t see an ending ever. I have to cast deep into my well of creativity because everything– absolutely everything– is brand new. (It gives me so much appreciation for my God who created ex nihilo [Latin, “out of nothing”].) It’s physically exhausting and mentally draining, and (at least in me) it prompts deep, deep doubts about myself.  In the early days of a first draft, I desperately long for revisions– when I will know my characters well and will be perfecting the story and imagery.

When I am revising, I wish I was writing a first draft. Deep in revisions, I feel bored to death with the process. It feels so stagnant and dull compared to the excited fervor of creation. It feels nit-picky and brutal, a journey to endure as a longsuffering artist.  And everything needs to be moving forward, finding its place.  You have to “kill your darlings.” You can’t keep putting things on the backburner to deal with another day– “another day” has come and the time is here. It’s like finding yourself in the middle of a battle without armor.  I think longingly of the days of freewriting and drafting, how carefree they were, how it didn’t matter if things fit together, how fun it was to be coming up with new adventures for my characters, how exciting it was getting to know them.

I am finding that the old adage “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” is true in my writing life.  I don’t want that to be true, and I want to find ways to love and appreciate whatever stage I’m in.

How?

I don’t know the answer yet, but I suspect it might look something like this:

1) I need to reflect on what I love about writing in general, about words, ideas, stories.
2) I need to count my blessings. I honestly do feel terrifically grateful to be a writer– even with all its woes.
3) I need to remember that every stage has its own merits and to start focusing on those positive parts instead of the negative.
4) I need to respect the creative process.
5) I need to be healthier.

What other suggestions do you have for me?

 

Image credit: Arzu88 on deviantArt

Don’t Push the River [& other advice]

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Last month I was stressing out intensely over writing my next novel.  We’re talking panic, high stress, extreme anxiety, the whole shebang.  There’s a head game in writing, and I was losing it.  Badly.

I reached out to my undergraduate writing instructor, Judith Hougen.  She was a mentor to me in college, and in many ways, she still is today, even though I don’t get to see her nearly as often as I’d like.  I’ve written about Judy on my blog before: how she is laden with wisdom and creativity, how she loves truth and beauty.

We got coffee, and I shared how stressed I was, then I waited for her wisdom.  She said:

InWater1 by carpeemorteem via deviantART

InWater1 by carpeemorteem
via deviantART

Don’t push the river.

The full proverb is “Don’t push the river; it flows by itself.”

A river is going to go where it wants, carve out the path it chooses.  I’m a fool if I think that I can redirect it– or that I somehow keep it flowing.

It quite fascinated me because one of the things that my cognitive-behavioral therapist said to me (digitally recorded for all time in my ERP exposure recording) was this:

“I want you to close your eyes and imagine you’re standing in a river.  The current is strong, and the waters rush past you, pounding you, beating against your legs, hips, waist.  Eventually your whole body is fatigued; your legs are so tired you can barely stand.  Then you finally turn around and let yourself go with the current.”

His point was plainly and simply that he was offering me relief.

And that’s what Judy was offering too.

Judy said, “If you skip writing one night, you have to trust it’s not all going to leave you.”

Judy said, “Let the writing of this book be its own experience.  Don’t compare it to the last one.”

Judy said, “Respect the mystery of writing.”

It was like balm to my anxiety-riddled soul.  I am letting her words minister to my writer’s heart.  And letting my one word for 2014– grace— work its way into the cold and lonely places in me like an adhesive that holds me together.

Writing or Having Written?

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There’s a famous Dorothy Parker quote: “I hate writing; I love having written.”

Someone recently reminded me of this quote, and I argued back immediately, “No, I love writing itself!”

Here is where I will now contradict myself:

I love writing.  What can be more enjoyable than experiencing magic while it is happening?  To let the keystrokes happen almost of their own accord.  To encounter storylines that I could have never dreamed of on my own.  Or to press hard into a challenge and discover a solution.  This is the brilliance of writing, of being in the minute, of loving each moment as the words fly from you.

I love having written.  Lately, writing has been producing so much anxiety in me.  It’s different than my OCD anxiety though.  It’s more of a fear of the future and a fear of failure.  Part of it is that I’m writing on a deadline again for the first time since college.  Part of it is working on a first draft of a character-driven novel where I’m not certain the characters are strong enough to drive it.  Part of it is that it’s simply what writing is like.

I do know that I need to get my anxiety under control again.  I have a couple ideas:

* Post my First Draft Manifesto in places where I will see it often.
* Start using Valor, a blend of essential oils that’s been called both “a chiropractor in a bottle” and “courage in a bottle”
* Meet with writing mentor for some valuable wisdom on the writing life and how to win the head game [edit: did this and will post about it tomorrow!]
* Give myself grace
* Chat with my psychiatrist about this recent flare of anxiety

Any other suggestions?  My writing life as of late has been like a roller coaster of self-doubt, and I need to get this under control.  In other words, I need to not only love having written … I need to love writing itself.

My friend Anna posted about this on her blog today as well!  Check it out here!

anxiety_by_tamberella-d5seq3w

I repeat: writing a book is hard.

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I know I just recently blogged about this, but I just wanted to emphasize it again.  Not to toot my own horn (ummm, I don’t even have a book deal yet!), but to wave some sort of banner over those who are DOING IT.

Writing a book means this: days that turn into months that turn into years of writing and revising, hours upon hours invested into researching minute details, the sacrifice (and also joy) of building a platform from the ground up, giving up evenings with friends to stay home and research literary agents, headaches, crafting the perfect query or proposal, taking a permanent seat on an emotional rollercoaster.

Kristin Cashore is a YA author I admire.  She wrote Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue.  Click here to read about the journey it was to get Bitterblue to where it needed to be (hint: after three years on a first draft, her editor suggested she start over from scratch).  There are even pictures.  Read this, and you’ll better understand the agony of writing.

bukowski

 

Writing is HARD … but worth it. (I think.)

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nobody saidNo, no, I don’t think it– I know it.  I’m just coming off of a long weekend chock full of revisions.  The hardest revisions of my life.

I mean, I’ll be honest, I got down on my face before God about these revisions.

Here’s the thing.  One of my #1 goals in writing is to make people think.  I’m not setting out to write a little beach read about which boy is the cutest one on the island.  (No offense to anyone writing a book with that premise.)  I want to write about ideas and history, about philosophy and religion and paradigms for understanding the world.  For teens.

The thing with that kind of book is that it’s hard to write.  Your brain churns like a waterwheel, and you have to process these ideas that you’re setting forth.  My goodness, I’m writing for young adults, so I feel this responsibility to present them with valid questions (and sometimes answers, although the questions are often more interesting).  When I write a pivotal scene and send it off to beta-readers, the response isn’t just, “I like it” or “Use more imagery” or “Better word choices please.”  Sometimes the feedback launches me into a re-evaluation of my worldview and the framework through which I see the world.

Makes revisions go a lot slower.

The thing is, I love productivity, so I want to revise quickly and efficiently, but sometimes that’s just not possible.

I am so grateful for amazing friends who are also fascinated by ideas and willing to process them with me.  Right now I’m thinking especially of Kristin Luehr and Cindy Hunt.  Thanks, ladies, for loving the questions and, each in your own way, embracing the incredible gray areas while believing that black and white also exist.

I and my book are indebted to you.

How I Got an Agent: the (Really, Really) Long Story

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If you haven’t heard yet, I just signed with literary agent Steven Chudney of the Chudney Agency!

I know that some of you are curious about how this all came about, and for you, I’ve decided to write out a more detailed account here.  This might be boring to those of you who aren’t writers, but here goes!

LIGHTS ALL AROUND

My journey toward agent representation actually began about six years ago.  I spent four years working on a novel about OCD; I began that as a poet and somewhere along the way became a novelist.  I poured my heart and soul into that manuscript, and it was/is very near to my heart because it was my first novel and because it is a fictionalized version of my own battle against obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I actually started writing that story before I even started cognitive-behavioral therapy!  So writing some of those scenes were very difficult, visceral, heart-wrenching experiences.  When I felt the manuscript was ready (which makes me laugh now– it’s quite unpolished, and though that can be embarrassing, I wrote it for obsessive-compulsives so you can read it here), I started to research agents.

This can take a long time.  I started with The Guide to Literary Agents, making a note when an agency repped my kind of book, then going to each agency’s website to learn about each agent and then creating a spreadsheet of agents who might be a good fit.  Meanwhile, I was working on a query letter, which is very different writing from novel writing.

When I first queried agents back at the beginning of 2012, it took weeks before I heard back from anyone.  In the end, one agent requested my manuscript, read it and liked it and requested revisions before she’d look at it again.

But let’s be honest: I was completely burnt out on that story.  I’d spent four years writing it– and 20 years living it.  I told the agent that I needed to set it aside for a few months and work on something different.

I never went back to it.

TRUEST

Instead, I started writing another adult novel.  Right around this same time, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was first released.  I read it, fell in love with his characters (especially Augustus Waters), and when I finished it, I wept for two reasons: the story itself and the fact that I didn’t write it.

After that, I scrapped my adult manuscript (50 pages in) and started over.  It occurred to me that young adult fiction was my favorite, and yet I wasn’t writing it (what was up with that?) and that I wanted to start my story with a character I could love as much as I adored Augustus Waters.  So I created Silas Hart.

I gave myself six months to write the first draft and finished it right on schedule.  It was a really bad first draft by most standards– and yet, compared to the first draft of my earlier novel, it looked pristine.  (Ha!)  Through the advice of several friends– but especially Kristin Luehr— I was able to point the story in the right direction.  I worked hard on a new draft of it and determined that my new year’s resolution would be to put more money into my writing.  So I hired a local editor who helped me restructure the novel.  I did a complete frenetic revision in only six weeks so that I would be ready to take the manuscript to the Big Sur Writing Workshop in California in March.  While I was there, I met some amazing writers, agents, and editors– and made even more big changes to my manuscript.  After another post-California revision, I hired the local editor for line edits, after which, I pronounced the novel complete (for the time being).

I had in the meantime been compiling a whole new list of agents (as this manuscript was YA and the former one was adult, I needed to start over from scratch).  I made a three-tiered list of 100 agents to query, ready to attack this querying process again.  I also worked and re-worked my query letter, putting a lot of research into successful queries, changing my mind about various things, and then finally taking my friend Elyse‘s wise advice, which I believe was the lynchpin to a successful querying experience.  (Thanks Elyse!)

(And yes, in case you’re wondering, I pretty much worked like a draft horse this whole entire time– writing every single day, slaving away over the keyboard, discussing my manuscript concerns with my long-suffering friends [thanks, Cindy, et al!], thinking constantly about my characters, jotting notes about scenes and ideas, weeping when I got them into situations from which I couldn’t see the way out [again, Kristin Luehr to the rescue!], leaving no stone unturned in my search for literary agents.  I probably only took the tiniest handful of days off over those 19 months.)

QUERYING

I queried my top tier of agents on July 11th and was shocked when I heard back from over a dozen people requesting partials and fulls.  It was very evident that this time was a far cry from the querying I had done just a year and a half earlier.

My friend and fellow writing group member Addie (who has a book coming out in October and so is many, many steps ahead of me in the process) mentioned something to me about the emotional rollercoaster of querying, and I wasn’t sure quite what she meant.  That’s because I hadn’t started getting the rejections yet.

The most emotional moment for me came one weekend when an agent remarked, “I’m captivated by what I’ve read thus far and I’d love to see more! Could you please send the full manuscript in a Word document (.doc)? I can’t wait to keep reading your work.”  Somehow, I knew– just knew— that she was going to say no and that it was going to hurt worse because of how eager her email sounded.  I cried like a baby that weekend, prayed a TON, and eventually returned to the manuscript for more revisions (even before I got her rejection, which came the next week).

Some of the comments I got from agents who ultimately rejected the manuscript:

“I think you have a very interesting and unique writing style, which drew me to your work.”

“I think you’re a strong writer.”

“I do like your idea and writing.”

And from the agent I worked most closely with at the Big Sur workshop:

“I came away from Big Sur so impressed by you, certain that you have the authorial (and editorial) eye, the professionalism, and the charming/witty personality to be incredibly successful in this industry. And now that I’ve had a chance to read your work, I’m even more impressed and even more certain. You are a truly talented writer, with a masterful command of language and of your characters. You make it look effortless, like the best of the best do. All of your characters are fully round and compelling, and your depiction of small town teen life is vivid and fully engaging.

“I get lost in your writing in the best way, and I believe TRUEST is about something (which I mean as high praise).   I will be first in line to buy my copy of TRUEST.”

exhausted2

But Steven Chudney of the Chudney Agency loved it.

“I like smart kids,” he told me when I talked to him on the phone earlier this week.  “I’m not so interested in prom night as I am in teenagers exploring questions of spirituality and philosophy.”  (Okay, he said something close to that– I was a little nervous on the phone!)  I find it fascinating (and, I hope, indicative of the far-reaches of the story) that Steven himself is not religious and yet was drawn to these characters who are exploring spirituality.

The contract arrived in the mail yesterday.  I couldn’t be more excited to be represented by the Chudney Agency!

(So, there’s the long story.  I know … so long … but this is essentially the last six years of my life wrapped up into one blog post!)

Now … I just need a book deal!!!