Hiatus break for Insecure Writer's Support Group

It's that time again, time to send our fears and insecurities out into the internet and hope they help someone else. If you've never seen one of these, I recommend heading on over to the Ninja Captain, Alex, and jumping on the Linky. Also be sure to check out this week's co-hosts Sheena-kay Graham, Suzanne Furness, and Laura Eno.

This month, I'm offering advice (or more specifically, advice I'm trying to give to myself).

Whenever someone asks me about writing, my answer is always “Just write.”

“But Rena, my novel about space pirates who steal ice to survive in a post apocalyptic Earth is crazy. How can I put all my time and effort into something so crazy?” My advice is always the same: Just write it (and for that specific example, also go watch the movie Ice Pirates, it’s a hoot to watch corny movies from the 80s!).

For most writers, it’s the fear of failure that quells their writing, keeps their words hidden in drawers and collecting electrons on hard drives. But over the last few weeks, I felt another fear: success (I didn’t actually gain success mind you, I just got some positive feedback). Success is a strange creature. I’ve spent most of my life practicing how to handle defeat gracefully. I never won the contest (second, I come in second and third all the time), and I was never part of the group to win sweepstakes, or take it all the way to the top. So I’ve practiced lots of defeat, but I’ve never really had the opportunity to practice success. It's like that quote "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." (you can go see a lot more detail about that quote and who said it here).

Realizing that success is just as paralyzing as failure has been really helpful to me (let’s just say I’ve had fewer chocolate attacks recently), but I decided that acknowledging an issue wasn’t good enough. I sat down and wrote a list of what real success meant to me. I outlined it—hey, I’m a scientist, I do nerdy things like make lists of my lists; I’m a lot more like Twilight Sparkle than Rainbow Dash, if you get my drift—I made sure that I included everything that would mean success to me. Some of it was crazy optimistic, like earn enough money from my writing to take my family to Disneyland (CRAZY TALK RENA!). Then I took that outline and I listed everything that I could do to make that success happen. I cut out everything that relied on someone else (like get an agent, and sell my book to a publisher), and focused only on the things I had real control over.

Do you know what that list boiled down to?

Just write.

Write this book. Revise it. Rewrite it. Query it.

WRITE THE NEXT BOOK. Revise that book. Rewrite that book. Query it.

Write the book after that. Revise it. Rewrite it. Hopefully I won’t need to query it (but you always need a query letter).

That’s right, my 12 steps to ultimate success is the advice I send to my CPs, my friends, and my sweet but shy niece who wants to write:

JUST WRITE.

Write everything that strikes your fancy. Write the dark places of your soul. Write your guilt at not writing. Everything isn’t going to be published, but every word committed to paper is one word closer to THE END.

I’ve heard successful authors quote numbers of words, and I’ve never seen someone quote a number lower than half a million words (and frequently, they quote a number greater than a million). Usually it’s something like “The first half million words were crap, but things got better after that.” (this isn't necessarily true, your early words could be great, but for most of  us mere mortals, it's a big freaking number).

Be those writers. Don’t quit. Write. If it scares you, write that. If it makes you smile at inappropriate times, write that. It’s a simple plan to success (again, simple doesn’t mean easy). Write this book. Write the next book. Revise, rewrite, work on your grammar. Write a book. Write a poem. Write a blog post. Write another. Write. Write. Write.

Falling behind

Eeek, this is a pretty big week. I'm not going to list all of the mundane reasons for that here, but one of the somewhat less mundane reasons is that I'm in Query Kombat. It's the first round, so if you feel like a lark, you can go here and read the my entry (I'm Dr. Thermo). It's a head to head style contest (or is it Kontest), so one of us is going home. It's a brutal format because the judges literally have to pick one over the other, and that can't be easy. Anyone can comment, but no cheerleading is allowed in the early rounds (here's a post on how to comment in the Kontest). And I'm now completely off topic.

My point for this entry is that I've fallen behind on some big things. Big, BIG things, so I need to take a break from blogging. Every time I take a break, I've noticed that I really don't take much of a break, but I'm noticing that this is  a simple impossibility over the next few weeks. So for a couple weeks (hopefully two), I'm going on a blogger diet. I won't be commenting as much (but you can bet I'm still reading, cause I'm like that), and I certainly won't be posting as often. On the plus side, in a few weeks, I should be caught up enough to reveal new stuff on the ol'blog.... Right, who am I kidding. If I'm lucky, I'll be knee deep in Act III by the time I come back, and that never lends itself to pursuits other than Act III.






p.s. Me taking a break does not interrupt my insecure writer's post!

The secondary characters...

This is the Secondary Characters Bloghop to celebrate by Rachel Schieffelbien whose book Secondary Characters, releases on May 28th!
 
   

There's a ton of prizes, so be sure to stop by Rachel's blog and check out all the amazing entries!

Now onto the secondary characters!


I didn't have to think very hard before I pretty much knew exactly which secondary character I wanted to spotlight:

Kilawog.

That's right, I'm a big fan of the big guy. I know, it's a picture from the movie, but I watched the movie before I ever read the comic (and let's face it, I never would have read the comics if  I hadn't seen the movie, terrible as it was).

Kilawog is one of my favorite secondary characters because he's got it all: a down to earth sense of right and wrong; tragic backstory; he's loyal (to a fault); and he's a two ton dude with side note of awesome.

As for a movie secondary character: Toothless.

I know, he's just too cute. I think what I like the most about toothless is that he works really hard to make things work with hiccup. It could have all just fallen apart terribly, but they made it work. Love Toothless.

First drafts, you know what people say about them

Things aren't going as fast as I'd hoped with my current WIP. Ah yes, so this is where most of you say “Eat your words! It takes three months to finish your first drafts, I. Think. Not.”

Well, who knows, but for those of you keeping track, I am just past the half way mark for the time, and just under the halfway mark for the actual novel. This would seem to be a recipe for disaster, but writing is a funny business, and I suspect that I’ll catch my 18^th wind here any day now. Why do I sound so confident? Because I’ve been here before.

So that makes it easy, right?

Umm, no. Not at all. In fact, last week, I’d have told you that there was no way on God’s green Earth that I would finish this book this millennium let alone the next six to eight weeks. So what changed?

Are you ready for this? Whenever I write a rough draft there is this thing that happens: I want the novel to be awesome in the first draft. No really, I feel like the more I write, the more incredible my first draft should be. I feel like I've gotten better, and at some point in my life my first drafts will be ready for prime time. As in, I'll just slap them together and throw them back out into the world, because I'll be a great writer, so my first drafts will also be awesome. 

I’ll warn you now: this way lies madness.

Let me be frank: My first draft sucks. All first drafts suck. But it usually takes me about 35K words before I can go through the week of moaning before I suck it up and start to move on. This time it took a little longer (two weeks for those of you keeping count), but the end result is the same: I give myself permission to have a crummy, sucky, I’d-rather-lick-the-bottom-of-my-shoes-after-running-around-the-duck-pond first draft. That is to say, I follow Maureen Johnsons’ Permission to suck video. If you haven’t seen it, go HERE and watch it now. First drafts are terrible. As in they are so awful that there is nothing worse.

The hard part about this, is that we are writers and we want our writing to be awesome. When it isn’t we start to think that the reason is because we suck. Nope! That’s not the case. Every first draft is an opportunity to stink up the literary canals with hideousness. As a writer, your job isn’t just to write a first draft, it’s to turn the first draft into awesomeness. That means editing and revision. In the mean time, write something. It won’t be pretty, but a crap draft is a billion times better than no draft.

Say it with me people: First Drafts Suck.

And of course, the only way to write the stupid thing is to give myself permission for it to suck. Recognize that it’s going to be so bad I’ll probably have to rewrite the whole thing (and boy-howdy, this one is going to need more spit shine than all the shoes in the Navy!). Which is to say, it ain’t easy, so cut yourself some slack and write that hideous first draft.**

**I think it’s important to note that not everyone has the same process, and pretty much mine is to rewrite the whole effing book, so if that doesn’t work for you, find something else. This, however, is how I write. As in, the only books that have “worked” for me were written like this.

Oh look! SHINY!

I know I’ve talked about how I consider myself lucky that I have more ideas than I’m ever going to be able to write. I’ve also mentioned that I feel like the way I get my ideas is entirely unprofessional, like I should be able to totally train up that whole idea generating part of my brain.

Nope. 

Not a chance. 

See, when a shiny new idea strikes, it just plows me over. There I am driving down the road, and BAM! Shiny New Idea, one fully formed novel downloaded into my brain from the Zeitgeist. Seriously, I stopped to write the query letter synopsis for it. 

It really was that fast. One minute no idea. Next second, a fully formed novel complete with protag, antag, sidekicks, and minor villains. The WHOLE THING! Like seriously, how can I even think a whole novel in a second? It’s completely impossible. 

And yet, I’m now penciling in appointments with Alicia Rodriguez (my MC, who comes complete with a full background story including exs, college and an overbearing grandmother who just wants her to marry a nice Latino boy). 

Did I mention I’m currently in the process of writing about pirates! I don’t have time for a news reporter with a black belt in Judo! 

*sigh*

And then, my new MC has the gall to suggest she get upped in the queue. Umm, no, sweetie, I’m finishing with the pirates. Then you. I promise you’ll get your turn. 

So yeah, pluses: I never have to worry about where next idea comes from.

Draw backs: I might need a stick to beat my Shiny New Ideas into line.

How about you? Do you nurse your ideas along, or do the stalk you down dark alleys for inappropriate times (like just before job interviews)?

One of the Coolest Posts I've ever written: POP TRAVEL Cover Reveal!!!!

You know, I love to travel: I HATE the airport and the planes.

For a little while, I was flying so often that I was going through a suitcase every three months (no joke, I no longer qualified as a resident in the state I owned property in!). The whole time, I wished for a way to just teleport to my destination, and now Tara Tyler has written a story about just such a thing. But look out, Pop Travel isn't all that and bag of chips!

And today I get to show off Tara's AWESOME cover! I mean, how cool is that, one of my favorite peeps is about to have a book come out! I am SOOOO excited!

POP TRAVEL by Tara Tyler releases 7/7/2013!

You know you want to read it. Here's more:

Private Investigator J. L. Cooper always knew pop travel laser teleportation was too good to be true. Finding video proof of a disintegrating traveler is the stomach turning “I told you so.”

Not bothering to upload the video to the nosy, government monitored Qnet, Cooper digs around, bringing the death of his client and threats to his political little brother, who is in jeopardy of turning to dust anyway for disregarding Cooper’s warnings not to pop. Cooper has to do everything himself.

If he survives his first pop, Cooper won’t let anything distract him from getting the job done. Not the android security guards, the constant surveillance, or even Southern Comfort in a purple dress, Geri Harper. Nothing Coop can’t handle.

Ahh! I cannot wait, and it doesn't come out until JULY! It's like waiting for Christmas only way better. And that cover is *Perfect*! It's inviting and intriguing. It's like a noir mystery and you KNOW it's going to be awesome. OMG I cannot wait. July 7th, you are too far into the future for your own good. 

If you're absolutely excited like me, you can go check out Tara's blog. It's an absolute must follow as far as I'm concerned, but here's her bio if you can't wait for the web browser to load another page. 

Tara Tyler's book POP TRAVEL releases on July 7th!!!!!

 Math teacher by day, sports mom by night,
When does she have time to write?
Good question, but the Lazy Housewife makes time! Tara Tyler writes sci fi, thriller,
and fantasy, with dabs of romance and humor and tips for efficient living. Something for
everyone.

The second you can preorder this book, I'll have a link here. (Amazon! Why are you taking so long? It'll be June here in seconds!)

Congratulations, Tara! This is so exciting I'm bouncing in my chair as I type!

Cleaning up my act

So, things are starting to get busy in a very hopeful sort of way, but in my personal life. It's starting to leak into my writing life, as in, I haven't been writing because I've been doing all the little things that get delayed on a house. Like today I'm back to painting if the weather holds.

But I'm also doing some maintenance on the ole blog. As it turns out, a post for query contests that ended 8 months ago has been my top producing post. It's pretty crazy, but I think someone must have linked to it, or a bot got a hold of it, or something. So I'm going to pull it down.

I'm actually going to be pulling a lot of posts down. Mostly just the ones that are about current event stuff that's no longer current. I'll probably also put together some more professional looking pictures for the bio and what not. In short, I'm cleaning up my act.