To write, or...crochet?

By: Kristi Hartman

I started the beginning of the month with a goal to sort of do Nanowrimo.  I already had about 75 pages of my novel done, but was going to use November as a jump start to hopefully get the book complete.  For awhile, I was doing really well.  I was setting aside a specific time each night to write, and had a word count I was shooting for and meeting every day.
Then, I started to slip back into my old habits.  The writing was becoming more difficult as I progressed in my story, and I was starting to question my direction of the storyline.  I started asking myself questions like,
"Where is my character going in this scene?  What is she doing there?  Why?  What is the point?"
And mostly,

"What is the point at all?!"

I guess to distract myself from my lack of writing, or my weird little funk I was in, I decided to start working on a crochet project I had stashed away in the corner of my family room.  The yarn was new and ready to go, the crochet hook, unused and waiting.  I pulled out the stuff, shrugged my shoulders, and thought, "how hard could this be?"  I had crocheted in the past, but only doing edging patterns on baby blankets. Never a complete project with just some yarn and a hook.
I watched a YouTube video about getting started, and with mounds of confidence, got to work.
All seemed to be going well for awhile, until it was curling and was starting to resemble a fan more than a rectangle.  After some google searching, I realized I was crocheting too tight. Apparently there is this thing called tension.  ;)  I sighed, and started pulling, unraveling all those hours of work.
Then, I forced myself to stop doing it so tightly and started over again.  After awhile, I was feeling confidant, and the yarn was starting to resemble something other than a ball of yarn.  I worked on it for a couple of nights, while my computer still sat, unused.  I had started to get fairly far along when I looked into my bag and noticed my yarn supply was smaller than it should have been.  If I kept going at the rate I was, I was going to make a rather long and skinny dish towel instead of a throw blanket. I went back to the website I had originally seen the pattern from and did some research.  I was crocheting the wrong blanket.  I was mixing up two different patterns.  Fabulous.
At this point, I was so determined to get it right, I gritted my teeth, and started pulling my blanket apart again.  Which, unfortunately, was not going to be the last time.  After two more failed attempts at counting wrong and ending up with a crooked blanket again, I had now restarted this 'simple' little distraction project of mine FOUR times.

So why the story of my mediocre crocheting experience?  Well, it got me thinking.  Why was I so dedicated to getting that dang blanket right, when the second my writing started to get difficult, I bailed?
I asked myself what I could learn from this whole process, and it was of course obvious.
Don't give up on your writing when it gets difficult.  And it will.  Like anything that is of worth or value, it takes time to learn and perfect, and sometimes starting over 4 (or more) times is the only way to learn.
Sure, the blanket will be nice to cuddle with on chilly nights, or when my Mom friends come over and I can pretend I'm so domestic and craft blankets from almost nothing, but the satisfaction of having my dream of a finished novel in my hands is so much more worthwhile.

Who knows, maybe someday I can read my published YA fiction novel while cuddling with my finally finished crocheted blanket.

There's No Crying in Publishing

by Mare Ball 

I started a writing/marketing course last week called "Author Training 101."  It's not about how to write, but how to finish a writing project; how to write a book proposal; how to write a business plan; how to promote your work; and how to be a bulldog about getting published.

I need to know all these things because I've been dragging my feet on my WIP for three years.  I have no idea how to write a book proposal or a business plan.  I hate self-promotion.  And I've never been a bulldog about anything.

It's the most challenging course I've ever taken (excluding all college math courses.)   It's difficult because it's forcing me out of my comfort zone - which, of course, is always uncomfortable and scary.  Comfort zones are aptly named, aren't they?

I'm only in week two of this course, and I'm struggling with the homework.  I have to answer questions like:

Is my current project unique? 
If I were a publisher, would I invest money in my project?
Am I tenacious enough to do whatever it takes to get published?

I don't know.  I don't know.  And I don't know.  I never concretely thought about these things.  I ended up saying, yes, I think so, and what does whatever-it-takes mean?   Go into debt?  Change all the things I love about my project?  I still don't know.

This course is taught by Nina Amir, whom you can check out HERE.    She's direct and talented and I'm impressed with her knowledge.  I'm going to learn so much from this eight-week course.  I'm afraid I might learn I don't have what it takes to get published.

There, I said it.

That's my fear.  That I don't have the tenacity, the will, the never-give-up attitude that is necessary to get published.  Some things in life aren't worth killing yourself over.

Nina also asks her students these things:

How do you handle rejection?  (bums me out)
Are you generally optimistic?  (depends)
Are you objective about your work? (probably not)

I have a long way to go.

Nina then said something that really hit me.  "Getting your book published is not about you.  It's about your reader."  Hmmm.  The heart-and-soul work that is going into my book is probably not going to be recognized by the reader.  The reader is looking for connection to her heart and soul. 

This is a shift in thinking for me.  For readers to spend their hard-earned money on my book, they must be engaged and inspired within a minute of skimming its pages in Barnes and Noble (a girl can dream.)  My love for it doesn't necessarily transfer into sales.

This was hard to hear, although, upon further thought, I know it's true.  I don't buy a book if it doesn't speak to me on some level.  This course is helping me understand the realities of publishing and selling and convincing the world my work is a worthy investment.    

I told you this is a challenging course.

But, I'm sticking with it, and I'm going to ruminate on all the questions and dig deep and see what I'm made of, find the bulldog inside.  Because getting my book published is what I want to do.   With God's grace and direction, I will succeed.

It might be difficult, but things of value always are.  In the movie A League of Their Own Gina Davis tells Tom Hanks she's quitting baseball because it's too hard.

"Of course it's hard," he replies.  "If it was easy, everybody would do it."  

It Will Make More Sense

My husband and I were introduced to a new game at a friend's house Sunday night.  It's a card game called 'Killer Bunnies' that we'd seen before, and being avid 'board' gamers (or card games in this case), we had seen it in the store and wondered if it would be fun.

Our friends pulled out the important cards and took ten minutes to explain the somewhat straight forward/ somewhat complicated rules and card purposes.  Then the uttered the phrase that I think gets said just about every time you teach/learn/see a new game.

"It will make more sense as you play."

I've said it before, I've heard it before, and it's completely true.

Sometimes no matter how clear and thorough you try to be with an explanation, the best way to learn a new game is to play it.

I can't help but feel it's true to writing as well.  We can and should read and research and learn the somewhat straight forward/ somewhat complicated rules grammar and pathway to publication.  But it isn't until we actually sit down and right that all the pieces come together, skill and talent merging, to allow the task of writing to make sense.

And if you're looking for a fun new game, I recommend Killer Bunnies.

The More I Learn

The better I will be (hopefully). :)

My primary focus lately has been on editing. The learning curve got so steep I almost fell off. Seriously. I put what I thought I knew into The Tyrant King, had test readers and self edited it until I didn't think I could do any more to it. Then an actual editor got their hands on it, and it's a whole new ballgame.

First off, I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did. That one wasn't must of a surprise. It's kind of like all the rules I was following were for mainstream fiction and not so much for fantasy. You actually write fantasy a little different.

I also have a huge problem with repetitive words. Not the same word every time, but sections of the story where I use a word over and over. Not too easy to do a whole MS search for those when they vary with each section. (no lie, I also had a lot of repetitive words throughout the MS that I could search and replace) And the word "said." I was told it was pretty much an invisible word, but, apparently, you can use invisible words too many times.

I'm not saying any of this to freak you out. And you can't really use my editing experiences to take apart your MS. All writers are unique. I'm only using these examples to illustrate what I don't know.

Most of you are aware I have a traditionally published novel. The problem there is that I learned almost nothing through their editing process. (which is actually something else I suspected) I also think that contributed to the fact that they didn't accept the sequel. Looking at my MS from an outside POV I'd have to say I probably would have thought it had too many problems to publish.

Editing is golden. Even though the learning curve is steep, I'm really getting a lot out of it. Not that any of this is easy. It's hard to feel like you've got the best thing you can do only to have someone pick it apart and tell you everything that's wrong with it. What I am learning, though, is that what I thought was my best wasn't. Yet.

Now if only I could work out my comma handicap...

What Bad Hair Teaches You

by Cheri Chesley

(this is not a recent picture--her hair is much longer now)
Last weekend, I spent over $30 on hair repair items for my daughter. She spent an extra couple of weeks in OK with her Papa, and swam almost every day--and ran out of conditioner and didn't tell him she needed more. So she spent most of that time without conditioning her hair.

It came back the texture of straw. Seriously.

Because she's been working so hard to grow her hair out, I opted for helping her fix her hair rather than going and getting it cut short. Although, you have to admit, she looks pretty darn good in an A-line. See?

As I spend day after day obsessing over when to give her the next conditioning treatment, having her wash and condition her hair with products I don't usually buy for myself, I'm reminded of the editing process. I know--I'm such a WRITER! lol

See, many of us--and I'm one of them--want to go through our manuscript 2 or 3 times before pronouncing it perfect! Done! As good as we can make it! But, like these conditioning treatments my daughter and I are doing, it can take a dozen or more work-throughs before we're really done with a project.

I'm slowly learning this. I submitted my sequel to Cedar Fort, happy that it was as good as I can make it, until I heard back from them with suggestions that I make some changes and resubmit before they'll consider offering me a contract. See, they knew it wasn't up to par. And, looking back, I know it too--now. :) After letting the project sit for a month, I realized many holes I'd missed and lots of ways to make the story deeper, more compelling and overall more interesting. I'd gotten the bare bones of the story down, but I needed to embellish.

That has to wait until the summer is over. And, now, after we move.

I want to be a better writer than I am. This will take patience. Like my daughter's hair will also take patience, time and effort to get it back to a semblance of normal. I'm still learning; I'll probably always be learning. But that isn't really a bad thing.