What I Learned in 2011 and My Goals for 2012

2011 was a pretty amazing year for me. I had some pretty low key goals set, the kind that would lead me closer to my big goals, and instead I ended up having some completely unexpected, life changing events.

Things I did in 2011:

EVENT: Got stranded in Branson, Missouri with a group of some of the most awesome, accomplished, and inspiring women I've been fortunate to meet.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE: I've said this before, but it really is an amazing experience to spend time with people who have persevered to make their dreams come true, and who truly understand what that process is like. Writing is a solitary thing. And when you're just starting out, it can feel like you're on some crazy wild goose chase all by yourself. Meeting people who have been there, and pushed through to the other side is sort of life-altering. Even though rationally, I know that obviously, people write and sell books; sitting around talking about how hard it is some days, or that yes, they hear their characters talking in their heads too, or just you know, dancing to 90s hip hop, makes a world of difference once you go back home and it's just you and that blinking cursor trying to make your dream come true. I think if there is one piece of non-writing, writing advice I could give, it would be to get together with other writers (somewhere private, where you can be your weird writer selves) it will help carry you through the dark times when the words don't come and you're wondering why you ever thought you could write a book.

EVENT: I wrote a letter to my teenage self.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE: This one was surprisingly cathartic. Really. It brought back a lot of painful memories and then forced me to look at them from the outside, and really think about what I've learned from them. It was an emotional experience I wasn't expecting, but talking to my thirteen year old self really helped me to heal some old wounds I didn't know I still had.

EVENT: I was offered the chance to be published in an anthology.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE: This one still blows my mind, and probably won't seem real until I have a hardcover (!) copy in my hands and can see that yes, they really did put me in it. This is by far the "biggest" thing that happened to me in 2011. And the experience was exciting, and challenging, and scary, and awesome. It's not often that an opportunity you hadn't even dared to dream of yet appears out of the blue. I will touch more on this in a separate post, but suffice it to say that, "Write a short story on anything you want!" is both a blessing and a curse. It took me a couple of months just to decide what I was going to write, and then a couple more to figure out how to do it. I think this event more than any other made my writing improve by leaps and bounds. I didn't want to let anybody down, and so I focused and thought about every single word I used. This story was like pulling teeth, but I love it. It taught me that even when writing feels impossible, it's not. Not at all.


EVENT:I spent six weeks in Europe. Four of them, by myself.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE: This affected me in so many ways. The first of which was reminding myself that I'm brave, something that can sometimes been forgotten when you spend most of your time on your butt in front of a computer. It also gave me some new perspectives on what it's like to be a stranger in a strange land. (Grocery shopping when EVERYTHING is in a foreign language is an adventure all on its own.) I also had a lot of time to just think, about my writing, my writing career, what I want out of life. I know that running off to Europe for a month isn't an option for most people, but I highly recommend taking just a weekend of alone time, somewhere other than your usual haunts. Even if it's just a hotel room in a different part of town, (hey, it worked for JK Rowling!) spending time with yourself in a new place where you can't easily fall into your usual routines is a great way to recharge your creative process and your life.

EVENT: All three of my crit partners signed with amazing agents.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE: I'm a firm believer in, "if you want to know if you're on the right path, look around you." The theory behind this is that if you're headed in the right direction, the people around you will be successful and meeting the goals that you're also striving to reach. I'm SO PROUD of my cps and the hard work they've put in 2011. I know this is going to be a year of big announcements for them, and I trust that with their guidance and support, a little of that success will rub off on me as well.

EVENT: I did NOT write a new book.

HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE: This year I managed to do a LOT of overthinking, and a LOT of second-guessing of myself. It was a total waste of time. TOTAL. WASTE. I can't stress that enough. I had the best of intentions. It was all about making the right choice and finding the right idea, and basically, that's a load of crap. I am happiest when I'm working on a story. Revising, surrounded by my characters and my world, totally focused on shaping it into the best story it can be. I am least happy when deciding what that story should be. I learned that what I need to do is just write it. So many of the best bits don't even show up until I've gotten a few thousand words in. They're never on the outline or the plan. They're the surprises that keep me going. Not the idea that this is exactly the story I should be writing for (insert reason here).

So that was my 2011. Here are my goals for 2012:

- Be a better blogger. As in blog more frequently, and more personally.

- Write a book that I love.

- Read more.

And that's it. I'm keeping it simple this year and going for the joy rather than the stress. What about you? What are your goals this year? What did you learn about yourself in 2011?

NaNoWriMo Incentive and Inspiration

As we move into the second week of NaNoWriMo I thought I'd share a couple of great posts I've read recently that talk about persevering far better than I can.

The first comes from Chuck Wendig and his Terrible Minds blog. I like to think of it as incentive. You know, yes I can so finish my book!(Please note there is a fair bit of swearing in the post, so if that's not your thing, you've been warned.)

25 Reasons You Won't Finish That Story

Number 18 is one that is usually true for me.
18. Haven’t Answered Any Of The Critical Questions

Ask yourself: what is this about? Why am I writing this? Why will anyone care? Asking yourself some fundamental questions before you write — plus several others while you write — can help keep your nose to the grindstone and allow you to feel settled in both direction and purpose.

Also check out his list of those questions. He's got some really great ones.

The second is totally inspirational. It's about sticking with it when you've got that horrible feeling that you have completely failed at writing the book you wanted to write. It's a great guest post by Sara Zarr on Nova Ren Suma's blog:

What Inspires Sara Zarr

I bet you can't guess what it is. Failure. Yep. Go read why. If you've been feeling stuck, you'll be inspired to keep going, I swear.

Staying Focused?

So I've been going through some house drama. My bathroom essentially fell apart while I was in Amsterdam and since then I've had it ripped apart, my house filled with potentially hazardous dust, and have not been able to stay there. FOR THE LAST MONTH. It is extremely frustrating. Especially since where I've been staying doesn't have wi-fi and my macbook won't connect to the modem using the wire. Which means I have to go to my house, and attempt to accomplish things online while workers are stomping through my house, making all kinds of noise and I'm choking on dust. It is... not fun.

Top it off with the fact that I had a pretty important deadline looming, and my nights were filled with anxiety dreams of floods and toxic mold. It's been difficult, and I know my writing has suffered from it. I've been trying all kinds of things to help me focus, such as focus brainwave audio, which is basically the sound of waves crashing on the shore while underneath it tones that stimulates gamma or alpha waves play. I have to say that I was surprised that they sort of seemed to work. I don't know if it was just the fact that it was white noise, or if the brainwave thing was actually happening, but I did find myself able to focus more despite what was going on around me.

What kinds of things do you do to stay focused? I am sort of desperate for more tips. I tried the library, but they don't really have any "quiet" spaces there (plus they're doing construction, hello!) and I'm not so good in coffee shops where there's so much going on. Is there anything special that works for you?

Fight Your Way Through

I love what Ira Glass has to say in this video about that feeling of disappointment we can sometimes get when the vision we have for our work is not what we manage to create, and how the only way to make it what we want is to fight our way through that disappointment, and keep on writing.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

This backs up something I truly believe, even as I struggle with it. And that's that if you can dream it, you can do it. If you can imagine a book, full of amazing plot twists, and gut-wrenching emotion, and all the things you love in a book, YOU CAN WRITE THAT BOOK. It might feel like you can't. It might feel scary, and hard, and impossible, but trust me. That book is already inside you. It's already written. You just have to sit down and spit it out.

Getting Defensive: A Cautionary Tale

If you have not yet seen This Astonishing Post you MUST go read it now. No time? Okay, I'll paraphrase it for you. The link takes you to BigAl's blog where he gave 2 stars to a self-published book he'd been asked to review, and then the author comments several times with angry diatribes, and comments that make it clear she has not understood what the reviewer was saying, before finally signing off with a pair of F*** Off!s. I encourage you to read BigAl's review when you have a chance because I think it's a fair and honest review of the book.

He called the story "compelling and interesting."

He also said "the spelling and grammar errors, which come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it’s difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant."

Ouch, right? But a fair warning. He makes it clear that if you can get past these, you will find a compelling story, and he did in fact read the whole book, however, the difficulty he had reading it was one of the factors that lead to his low rating.

The author (who I will not name, nor will I post any of her writing samples for ridicule) took offense to the review and apparently misunderstood, or refused to believe that the reviewer was not talking about mere formatting problems within the ebook.

She made repeated negative references to the reviewers character and integrity, as well as his and many other commenters' intelligence.

In response, many commenters apparently went to amazon and rated her book, which previously had 4 and 5 star ratings, with one star.

It was quite simply, mortifying.

And it made me think. My first reaction was one of how can she be so angry? He said her story was good, just the writing wasn't up to par. But then I tried to put myself in her shoes. This was a book she'd put up for sale, as an example of her talent. And I remembered how the first few times I got a critique from one of my crit partners, I could only see the negatives -- the things that didn't work, the should've-been-obvious mistakes, the seemingly insurmountable amount of revision I was going to have to do even though I'd already worked so hard on it.

And then I felt kind of bad for the author.

She had a fairly natural reaction to a negative review, but rather than taking the time to process it, find the good, find the things she didn't agree with and let them go, she took it straight to the internet and sabotaged her reputation, and potentially her book sales and career by lashing out.

So today, I just want to remind us all (including myself!) to STOP, and BREATHE, and THINK before lashing out at those we have asked to help us. Remember that any crit or review is just one person's opinion, but also that there is almost always something worthwhile in a negative critique or review. You can't please everyone at once, but you can always improve.

And those of you going the self-publishing route, I think this author's experience is proof that you must be extra vigilent since you won't automatically have the eyes of a professional editor or copyeditor before your book goes out into the world.

Don't let defensiveness, pride, or hurt feelings keep you from making your book the best it can be!

Starting From Scratch - Again

When I first decided to give writing a book a try, I was terrified. Not that my book would be bad - strangely, I never worried about that, don't know what that says about my ego. No, I was scared at the idea over a hundred pages full of words. As someone who had at most written a 100 page screenplay which has considerably less words on each page, and many short stories, the task seemed impossible. Where would all those words come from? What would they be? How could I possibly find a way to use so many of them to tell just one story??

I decided to make my goal simple. Just write a complete story, and make it to page 100. I thought if I could tell a whole story and reach three digit numbers I would know that I was capable of writing a book, which would be all the reassurance I would need. And so I did it, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Ah, whoever coined the phrase "ignorance is bliss" was SO right. I look back now and I can't believe that I thought just finishing a book would be enough to turn me from under-confident writer wannabe to seasoned writer extraordinaire. You know, the one that churns out fabulous books and never has trouble with plots or dialogue or motivation. Ha!

Just like I knew that winning the lottery, or becoming mega-famous, or getting plastic surgery won't actually change who you are, I should've known that neither does writing a book.

Sitting down to write the next book is still hard. It still feels daunting to know I have to come up with 200+ pages of words. In some ways it's more daunting because I know how to spot the bad stuff as it's happening. In other ways, it's exciting, because I know this one will be SO MUCH better. I just also know that it won't be any easier.

Maybe one day I will sit down at the keyboard and gorgeous prose will shoot out of my fingertips like a sprinkler, but for now it's just me, a little bit wiser, trying to make the magic happen on my own.

I have a feeling that each book I write will get a little bit easier and a little bit harder at the same time. But I think that's good, because if it doesn't seem hard, I'm not trying to make it the best it can be. And as long as I learn from each book and make the next one better, I can live with that.

What about you? Do you find each book you write is harder? Easier? The same? How do you deal with it?