New links

Today's Mood: Upbeat. Today's Music: Exile on Mainstreet--Matchbox 20. Today's Writing: Jane's Rant. Today's Quote:

Never show your writing to anybody who doesn't love you enough to tell you when it stinks. -The Writer's Little Helper.

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I'm in the mood for something exciting. I don't know what, just something. The sun shine gets my creative juices flowing, and I'm so ready for spring! I've got an art project calling out to me, and IFFY is going well; Jane is even speaking up enough to rant--which gives me an even better look at her personality. My child is no longer ill (of the yucky stomach variety) and the other one hasn't come down with it yet (knock on wood) so I am getting enough sleep. And that definitely releases more optimism in my brain. So, life is good.

I want you all to notice the additional links I've added. Post Secret is a great online community art project. People create a postcard and write a secret that has never been told to anyone on the card and then mail it to this site. I love the way the picture and words work together to communicate. And some of them are hilarious, some sad.

The Magnet poetry is a huge time waster--but a great one! My friend says she can sit and waste hours playing solitary on the computer. I could waste hours creating poems this way. Lots of fun.

Stephanie mentioned 101 Reasons to stop writing with its demotivators at Khardomah. Funny stuff. The interview with Lynn Viehl (author of Paperback Writer--also a link over there on the side) is sarcastic and enlightening at the same time.

What is happening with you all? Any exciting writing going on?

Rejection lessons

Today's Mood: Pensive (light blue) Today's Music: Sarah MacLachlan. Today's writing: IFFY. Today's Quote:

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. -Salman Rushdie

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All writers have to deal with rejection. The more I have read and learned about writing, the more I have learned that to be a writer means you will have to deal with rejection. What I am still struggling to figure out, is how to deal with it.

The first rejection I got after sending out Black Dragon was like a stone thrown directly at my head. My manuscript wasn't any good. In fact, it was pure shit. Why, I wasn't any good either. Not a good writer. Not an interesting enough person to write anything interesting. The loop in my head was entirely personal and negative. I didn't write for a week.

But after several more rejections (which goes to show you there is something to the exposure to violence/rejection leading to a certain numbness theory), I developed a tougher skin. The editor/agent didn't like my work, but he/she was only one opinion. My work could be tighter, more polished, but it wasn't total shit. Still a negative loop, but not quite so personal. I didn't write for a day.

After many more rejections (and this is including the "good" (now there is an oxymoron for you!) rejections), the loop in my head sounds more like: My manuscript hasn't reached the right person yet. Where should I send it next? I struggled to get up with my alarm this morning, but it might have been due to staying up too late reading last night.

But I can't stop the disappointment. I mean, I knew that worrying about 2 publishers both wanting the piece at once was a dim almost impossible thing. Yet my mind went there. And seeing in black and white that one of them doesn't want it, still fills my stomach with a heavy disappointment. It was only through talking with my wonderful writing friends that I can manage to avoid the "maybe I'm just not that good a writer," loop.

So should we manage to crush that voice that whispers the "maybes"? Should we just drop the dream of getting published and say, oh well, it doesn't matter if I ever get published?

I don't think so. If I didn't care whether I was published or not, I probably wouldn't spend the time or money trying to get published. So, I have to care, but not make publishing the cornerstone of my writing. I need to write because I love to write. I need to dream about publishing in order to get the guts to keep submitting.

And I really, really need to listen. To my heart. To my writing friends when they tell me my writing is working. To the publisher/agent when she/he says it is good, just not what they are looking for. And most of all, I need to keep writing.

Khardoma Rflections

I wrote more at Khardoma than I have at any other PW outing. I've already made revisions to The Flowing Well, put a short piece about my dogs in my computer, and revised a couple of other pieces.

Lee asked about place affecting our writing. I think from the standpoint of everyone else working so hard, I had to write too. But where I am doesn't change what I write or how I write. I may be inspired by an experience in a new location, but that's not the same.

What I need and get from the writing community at our gatherings is feedback, a chance to help and be helped, to understand I'm not the only one struggling to keep at it. I learn new ways to say things.

Sarah talked about seeing things differently. I hope by seeing wildflowers, geese, ducklings, etc. that I can help others appreciate the same things. When I revisit a bait shop or fish a creek as I remember it, I keep the everchanging unchangeable. Houses, paving and strip malls cover most of the places I explored as a kid and the people who taught me are gone. By writing about them they live on and help me deal with the real loss of place and childhood. It's more than fitting the forget-me-nots grew along my favorite creek.

Vincent Van Gogh and Georgia O'Keefe both painted flowers, but their visions and interpretations were very different.

Both Trish's and Sue's pieces, along with many others, touched me. I have a 19-year-old son in college and my grandpa had horses. There's so much passion in the writing we heard.

Thanks to everyone in my group for their kind and helpful comments and to everyone who shared their vulnerability with us. I think that's where we might be the most different with non-artists. We're not afraid to expose ourselves, to show our deepest emotions, fears, or sorrows.

I came home with a new invigoration to write.

Words

Today's Mood: Reflective. Today's Music: Sarah McLachlan. Today's Writing: Perspectives (a new piece-personal essay) Today's Quote:

As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless. -Rodney Yee

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I'm a writer. I'm supposed to have all these words at my disposal. I'm supposed to know how to communicate with finesse, subtlety, elegance. But I don't. I don't know what to say to make loss and hurting go away. I don't know what to say to bring healing, joy, and fullness. Sometimes the most expressive words I can come up with (and meager words they are) are "It sucks." Missing someone sucks. Hurting sucks. The hole torn in the fabric of life really sucks.

Maybe I hang around middle school students too much. Maybe some things just suck.

The visitation for Eric Neitzel is tomorrow. I want to let Shirley know how valuable it was for me to see the relationship between her and Eric. Loving, teasing in a gentle and tolerant way, supportive, nurturing, patient of each other's quirks, each able to laugh at him/herself. But there is a part of me that doesn't want to go. A part of me that doesn't want to SEE the rent in the cloth, the severed ties, the frayed ends of such a wonderful relationship. Because I don't know what to say. Because I'm afraid of seeing the loose ends of my own relationships with those who have died, moved, disappeared with time and busyness. Because in some small way I will have to face my own death, and I don't have the words to express all that.

Know when to walk away

Today's Mood: a fragile sense of calm. Today's Music: Loreena McKennitt--The Visit (just got it for my birthday!) Today's Writing: blog (and looking over what I've got so far in IFFY) Today's Quote:

In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back. -Charlie Brown

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How do you know when something isn't working? When something isn't worth pursuing more because it will never be publishable material?

I'm at a bit of a crossroads--in terms of my writing anyway. I spent a good amount of the fall revising Free Lunch. Then I stopped that to work on revising Black Dragon to meet contest requirements. After I sent off that manuscript, I worked on a Mary Monologue for a few weeks. Until my life became a whole lot busier because we started play practice. All of a sudden I was playing costume designer, set painter, and something like mom/director/teacher/big sister to about 30 middle school students. Not a whole lot of time left for writing, so it was mostly poetry and stuff for my writing class. Somewhere in there I spent a week working on a grant, and managed to squeak that in just under the wire. And last night we managed to pull the play off--with scarcely a hitch. The students did a marvelous job remembering lines and we even managed to have everyone dressed fairly appropriately for the late 1800's.

SOoooo, now I'm looking at how I want to spend my writing time in the next few months (or hopefully, until I hear an editor wants me to get Black Dragon ready for publication!). I could go back to Free Lunch, but I wonder if it is worth it. Don't get me wrong, I think it is an okay story--a YA love/growing up story--but I'm not sure if it has enough to distinguish it in an already swollen field. How do you know? My readers liked the plot well enough, although I did/do need to make some revisions. I guess a big part of my... dilemma is that I have IFFY sitting there patiently waiting to get written, and it seems I always need to put it off because I have revisions to do on the other two novels. Now if I was a full time writer.... but realistically, with only an hour a day, I can't be revising and writing a new novel at the same time. It just isn't feasible.

[time lapse of a few hours] Okay, so I've been thinking and decided to use March to pound out a shitty first draft of IFFY. Then I can put it away for some breathing room and finish revising Free Lunch. Hopefully I can finish those revisions and get back to IFFY in June at Glen Lake. I always like to give myself a deadline just to get myself motivated.

Hope your writing is inspired.

Endings

Today's Mood: An overlay of determination (to get through this long day) covering a wistful melancholy. Today's Music: Men Without Hats--Pop goes the world. Today's Writing: blog and email. Today's Quote:

"A good story never ends; it lives on in the hearts of those who heard it."
--I'm pretty sure someone, somewhere said this. I just don't remember who or where.

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I've been thinking about endings. So many books I've read lately end by wrapping things up--but not so tightly that there is no room for a sequel. Now, I have to admit that I'm not a leave it to the reader type. I want to know how the story ends: did the killer die or not? Did they fall in love or not? Did they ever make it back to earth?.... You get the picture.

But... maybe there is something to be said for leaving some strings left untied. Maybe it is okay for the wrapping to have a few rips and tears where the story could come falling out again. And maybe it is okay to even leave the box open.

I mean, look at real life, I never want the good things to end--completely. I have a terrible time with goodbyes. In fact, if I look back through my life (which is going to be a good 40 years as of this coming Monday!), I can see that I have tried to avoid goodbyes entirely if possible. I've even been know to say see you later to people I've just met, instead of the more likely goodbye. When it isn't possible, I have to write: letters, poems, stories--even novels in some cases!

The better I knew the person, house, pet.... or the longer I was around or in a particular place (college dorms...) the bigger the piece of me that got left behind when we separated and went our own ways. Although I suppose it works the other way as well, and the bigger the piece of that person, experience, or whateve I take with me when I go.

Maybe it is really more like knitting or weaving. The more we are knit together, the harder it is to rip out--and the more likely I am to have totally incorporated part of his/her/its pattern into my own.

Maybe there are no real endings, only new beginnings.

Limited Perspective

Today's Mood: Contemplative. Today's Music: The Muse -Black Holes and Revelations. Today's Writing: a poem about perspective. Today's Quote:

There can never be too many stories. -Gail Carson Levine in Writing Magic.

*******

Conference week is almost over. I think I am the only one in the building this morning. I was definitely the only one in the parking lot anyway. What a week! Snow, snow, snow. But oh so lovely! I've been shoveling every day, and it is so beautiful--quiet, white, full of mystery and otherworldliness.

I've also been spending a lot of time painting sets for the upcoming school play. It is a bit ironic because I had just started working on another graphic illustration for Black Dragon and was having a bitch of a time getting the perspective right. So then my co-director asked if I'd help on the sets. And what's the big problem? Perspective. My husband finally suggested that I order a few books (yes, HE suggested it! I must have seemed in a bad way because our house is overflowing with my books!) on drawing and perspective. They haven't come yet, but I've been pushing forward anyway with a book called Mastering Perspective for Beginners (from the library--what great places libraries are!).

It is exciting and eye-opening to me to learn all this stuff. Not that I'd take drawing or painting over writing, but it has changed the way I look at things. Yesterday (driving home very slowly in all this snow) I was musing on my life. I know, I think too much. But this was good--or at least, not bad. I was thinking about how, given my viewpoint, things like politics and the economy and the war in Iraq can seem so... overwhelming, huge, scary, horrible.... But if one were to change the viewpoint and stretch the vanishing lines (parallel lines that intersect at some point--sometimes outside the picture) to infinite, then the whole picture changes. My life, the majority of the picture according to my viewpoint, becomes nothing but a dab of paint in the whole of an incredible masterpiece. Only someone with a viewpoint of eternity could see what part it plays in the whole.

Okay, so I don't know if any of that made any sense, but maybe, just maybe it changed my perspective just a little. I'm crazy busy with this play and new writing class I'm co-teaching, but sometimes it's good to be stretched. (hurts a little though--although, come to think of it, that might be all the shoveling!)

Looking forward to Khardomah and a few large chunks of writing time!