New Year, Same Ole Me?

It’s a New Year, and I've brought the same ole me to the party. I, of course, can pretend that I am going to make and keep some New Year’s Resolutions. I can tell myself I am going to eat those grapefruits I bought for breakfast instead of a bagel and cream cheese. I am going to use that free gym membership I won. I am going to finish my novel and get it published. Polish and submit those short stories sitting on my hard drive. I am going to get right to work each morning instead of wasting time on the Internet waiting for my coffee to kick in. (Actually, I am going to drink a NutriBullet smoothie each morning instead of coffee.) But by mid-January the excuses already start to pile up and I am ready for Girl Scout cookie sales to begin…

New Year, same ole me? Or, maybe it’s time to let go of past failures and excuses, stop simply wanting things and start doing?

A recent blog on Writersdigest.com by author Kerrie Flanagan talks about moving beyond want and start doing… As she says, there are so many things we want – to make them possible we need to stop wanting and start doing.

What will you DO in 2015?

This is the year, I will finish the novel and find an agent. I will invest time in my writing, have confidence in my abilities, and push through to the finish line.

Boxes For Books

My last post for this blog was November 14th while I was happily up to my elbows in NaNoWriMo. One might think that I have been so busy writing and subsequently editing that I haven’t had a single excuse to share. I wish that were true. Unfortunately, the reverse is true: Excuses abound! My husband took a new job and I had to switch gears and focus on moving. In short, I had to exchange my book for boxes.

The New Year is in full swing and I have not focused on a single writing resolution instead I have focused on housing to-do lists. We have been very fortunate in this market, though, and we are almost at the end of our journey. In exactly three weeks’ time I will be watching the mover’s load our belongings on to a truck. I am sad to leave here only two short years after moving, but I am also excited by the new possibilities this move represents.

And I am excited to get back into a writing routine – to finish the work that I’ve started. Over the last couple of years, I have unleashed my wild writerly mind and it is not happy to be caged while I am busy with other things.

I have given my brain very little time to think creatively unless staging a home counts. I look forward to getting back to my novel, getting back to this blog – getting back to writing.

More to come in 2014! Until then, I’m going to work on my moving to-do lists!

Wow! Wow! What?

I love to learn about the authors of books I've read. I love to hear about their educational backgrounds, employment history, their age, the age of their children, and whether those children had colic (you know perfectly normal cyber-stalking stuff but nothing crazy like looking up addresses and driving by houses).

I slightly begrudge authors with MFAs from Harvard and debut novels before the age of 25. I love to hear about struggles with drafts. Conversely, I don’t like to hear about a novel taking 10 years to write. I do love to hear of rejections. Again, though, I like to hear about the author who made it despite the odds. I love when an author has a background I can identify with.

Sara Gruen, author of my beloved Water for Elephants, was a laid-off technical writer home with three children when she wrote her first novel.  Jodi Picoult also has three children although her oldest was a baby when she wrote her first novel so I do slightly begrudge that just as I slightly begrudge J.K. Rowling sitting in coffee shops with sleeping babies writing Harry Potter (my own babies barely slept long enough for me to throw in a load of laundry and take a shower let alone write a novel).

I just finished rereading Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins didn't write Hunger Games with beautiful flowery MFA-prose but with edge-of-your seat brilliance. She expertly described scenes, carefully crafted characters for us to love and hate, gave us perfectly placed and paced dialogue and wrapped it all up in an unbelievably believable plot.  

Before writing Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins was writing children’s television for Nickelodeon. She was a staff writer for Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. She also penned multiple stories for Little Bear and Oswald. She was the Head Writer for Clifford’s Puppy Days, and a freelancer on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!

Wow! Wow! WHAT? With the exception of Little Bear and maybe Clifford, I can’t stand those shows! But I loooovvveee that – I love that Suzanne Collins wrote something as brilliant as Hunger Games in the same lifetime as she wrote about some weird bouncing creature and his nerdy friend Widget. It humanizes her.

It makes me feel like my dreams are attainable. I might write a crappy blog today but maybe tomorrow I’ll write something that someone thinks is brilliant…

I Need To Put My Butt In A Chair

There is a lot of writing advice out there. Hordes. It’s an entire genre all to itself. It is daunting. But the one pervasive message is also the most intuitive: just write. Doh!

But how do I start? Sit down. Get a pen and a notepad or open up a Word document and begin to type. Should I write an outline? Just write what comes to your mind. But, what about grammar? Can’t edit what you don’t write. What if I don’t like what I wrote? Rewrite it. But how do I get it published? Can’t publish what you don’t write.

Everything else you can work out but nothing else matters if you don’t sit your butt down and write. Every. Single. Day. Whether you are inspired or not.

I know all this. I understand this. But I can’t always follow through.

One way I've tried to work this out is by going to the bookstore coffee shop the few hours a week all of my children are in school. Some days my little fingers type away effortlessly and I don’t want to stop. Some days I don’t know where to begin and I find myself staring at the screen, struggling to write a paragraph, watching the clock. But, in the end something is written which wouldn't have been if I didn't sit down and write.

Yesterday was one of those uninspired days. My head was foggy; my eyes were heavy. I was tired from a late night of reading. There was no inspiration coming out of my brain. I sputtered out my coffee order like a rookie – forgetting the difference between Tall and Grande, mispronouncing “macchiato” and quickly interjecting “Skinny. I want that skinny. You know, with Skim Milk.”

I sat down. My mind was blank. I opened up the latest chapter of my novel. I put my fingers on the keyboard. I typed. Words materialized out of the fog and appeared on my screen. New words. Words that never would have appeared there if I hadn't forced myself to sit down and write.  Yay, me. All I needed was a chair with my butt in it and just write. I feel a mantra coming on. After all, you are what you do not what you mean, right? If I want to be a writer, I must write.

And, if I must sit my butt in a chair and write this would be my preferred chair:

It's Almost Time to Register!

I am a few days late on writing my weekly blog post. Again. Story of my life. So I'm just writing this one on the fly. I'm not digging into my never-ending list of possible blog ideas. I'm not composing this in Word and analyzing it obsessively before I publish it. I am just sitting here writing what comes to mind. Sorry.

So, what comes to mind?

Right now I am thinking about my writing life and my perpetual see-saw between "I Rock" and "I Suck." Right now I am feeling like "I Suck" because I sat down to write on this beautiful day and got nowhere. I read some blogs. Googled a couple things. Sent a few emails. Went on Facebook. The usual wasting-time dance.

I got distracted by an email in my inbox reminding me to register for the Philadelphia Writers' Conference. I can't believe it's time to register already. I am psyched to attend this year's conference but also terrified. I know that I have come far in my writing life in the past year but I have so much farther to go. I still have nothing to pitch to agents and editors. I still have nothing to share to workshop leaders. I still have no idea what to say when networking. I still do not have business cards.

It's almost time to register yet I still have not clicked that Register Now button. I will. I know I will but I am procrastinating. For a change.

I know by the end of the conference weekend all this fear I have will be washed away and replaced by exhilaration  That's how it was last year.

Wanna read about my experience last year? I wrote a blog about it:

Read Us. Know Us.: The Philadelphia Writers' Conference.

I Am Inspired

There is nothing more exhilarating for a writer than felling inspired. When words and ideas flow from you. When you type away with energy for hours without wanting to stop. It is fun! It is exciting! THIS is why I feel like I can and will succeed in this thing I am trying to do!

To continue going, to plug along when not inspired, takes discipline. I am not the most disciplined of people out there. Not at all. But I am going to try. I really truly do not want to have over 365 excuses for why I failed at this. I want to see something I start to the end, a published piece.  

Back in 2010 I started a novel and got about 100 pages in then it just sat there. After attending the Philadelphia Writers' Conference last year, I committed to writing short stories. I've written almost 6 and have another half-dozen few line ideas to follow up on. But they too just sit there. I know why. I am not happy with the voice, with the way they sound. I am trying too hard to write in a style that isn't congruent with my own voice.

Over the last few weeks I had an idea of reworking my novel idea with a new voice -- one more like my own. And I am inspired! Yay! While working everything out -- my outlines, my characters, my timeline, a few scenes - I have been jumping up and down excited. Yesterday I was shaking as I typed. Now that feels good!

So, blog readers (you know who you are: my mom, my sisters, a few my friends), I am letting you know that I am working on a novel. I am excited. I know this won't last long. I know I will have bad days. I know I'll have tons of excuses. But maybe if YOU know I am working on it, if I don't do it in secret (like the last one) then I'll prevail...

So, what's my excuse today? I was inspired, my kitchen counter - not so much:

Will Write for Jeans

I’m on a quest to rid my drawer of any jeans that can be remotely construed as “Mom Jeans.” When you are a mom of a certain age this quest is increasingly more important and, unfortunately, increasingly more challenging.

The mom jean. How do we even end up with mom jeans? Sometimes we may be gifted a pair from, say, our moms. Maybe we try them on and find that they are comfortable so we wear them around the house but then we wear them for a quick trip to Target and it’s all downhill. Or maybe we buy ourselves a pair in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, that fits in that horrible postpartum stage of loose flappy belly fat. Maybe a well-meaning friend hands them down to us when we are pregnant with our first child and she’s lost all the baby weight from her last.

Sometimes mom jeans just evolve. Our drawers are filled with jeans bought at the right stores. Jeans that once were the exact right color and had the exact right fit but we moms are tough on our jeans. We crawl around the floor playing trains or Barbies. We finger paint in our jeans. We crisscross applesauce in our jeans through mommy-n-me classes. We clean up potty accidents in our jeans. Our children use our jeans as napkins, hand towels, and snot rags. Our jeans are washed and dried daily. They fade, they lose their shape, the knees wear thin. We eat one-too-many peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and BAM, mammas, we are wearing mom jeans! Yikes. I dread that I may be rapidly approaching this if I don’t intervene soon.

I want a really good pair of jeans – one that will stick with me during this messy stage of momhood without turning into mom jeans. I imagine these jeans will cost more than I feel comfortable paying as a stay-at-home mom. But… maybe if I edit, submit, and sell a story or two for just a little bit of money (I’m not greedy) then maybe I can purchase, without guilt, a cute (dare I say sexy) pair of jeans.

I WILL WRITE FOR JEANS (and maybe a cute pair of shoes to go with them)!