Let's Try This Again
I am not a tortoise, I am a hare. I know this. You know this. Dear Readers, We All Know This. Well, I’ve been very thinky of late, and a bit depressed. I read over a number of old posts to this blog, and I realized several things:
1. The blog used to be funnier. With dialogue between murderous birds (that post is still sooo funny!), Genius Advice Columns, and NSFAQ, as well as True Conversations With My Family™. I also tried to be funnier, and I posted a lot more often.
2. When I started this blog, I had long finished The Splitting of the World, I had written a number of other things, I had taken the first 3rd or 5th of The 3-Volume Novel to a writers conference and gotten positive feedback from an agent. My life was falling apart, but work was good, and about to get a lot better. Before your eyes I wrote The Comedy, and It Was Good. The complete dearth of response to that book from agents was extremely dispiriting for me; I knew it was way better than TSOTW, and everyone (the few, the proud) who read it loved it. But no one professional would read it. But somehow, I dusted myself off and got up again and went once more into the breach, in large part because I so believed (and still do!) in L&W.
3. I wrote of finishing the first draft of Part One of L&W in the spring of 2010 (having hinted that I’d started it much earlier than I remembered, in the summer of 2009, just before sharing my elation (and pictures!) at having finished The Comedy. I wrote of finishing the first draft of Part Two of L&W in October of 2010 (and I know a precise date for that, since I went to another conference right after-though it wasn’t the sort of conference where I could show my work to anyone).
Where I’m going with this, of course, is that Part Two of L&W sits as it did nearly three and a half years ago, except with lots of notes in red pen, and while I have done very good work in revising Part One, Dear Readers, I wrote to you about that in 2011. As I paced the house the other night, much too late at night, moping and arguing with myself, I went through all my Excuses, and there were many, Dear Readers, oh so many. It’s not that they weren’t legitimate, or that they are worries I can magically wave away. Really, it’s because they are legitimate and can’t be simply waved away that I woke up this morning full of determination. Enough, I said to myself. Because here is the thing: I love writing, more than anything. There is nothing that makes me more deeply contented (apart from having fun with the people I love best) than playing with my creations, inventing worlds and characters, and exploring some small part of humanity and my understanding of it through my stories. My worlds consume me and fill up the largest part of my brain and no small part of my heart. I will always invent worlds and the people in them. BUT. I want them to be published. I am desperate to share my thoughts with strangers. These ideas are important to me. I write for myself, yes, but I also write for others-not directly as I do for myself, but with the idea that what I have to say is worth reading by someone, that someone somewhere will love it as I love the stories of my favorite authors.
I want the validation, the stamp of approval, the culturally sanctioned expertise that comes with professional publication. I know it’s artificial, I know it’s silly in many ways, and I know it’s in many ways out of my control, but I want it anyway, the way I want my clothes to be pretty and not just functional, the way I want the weather to be nice on my birthday-not because I need it, or deserve it, but because it would just make my life so much nicer, happier.
This year, I received my first royalty check from TSOTW, because a school class decided to read it. They interviewed me for about an hour, as part of a project they did in November to each write a short story, a NaNoWriMo for 5th and 6th Graders. Readers, I was terrified, and I was embarrassed. I looked at That Book for almost the first time since I published it and… Horribly, it wasn’t that bad. Yes, I was a bit embarrassed because I feel it’s really not of the same quality as what I’m doing now, and yet, the best part of the book, the part I always thought was best, the stories at the end… were not that far removed from what I’m writing now-they were good. And I was terrified of appearing (via Skype, thank goodness) in front of all these people, and saying the wrong thing, or worse saying nothing in my anxiety, but mostly I was embarrassed because I have nothing to show for the (oh lord) 8 years since. Not to readers. And yet… It was wonderful. The kids were so excited and kind, and they asked the most awesome questions, and somehow I managed to answer them, and they thought it was the coolest thing ever to talk to me. We’re weren’t talking about TSOTW, but more generally about writing, and I thought, I want to do this again, a lot, and talk about work I’m currently proud of. Because public speaking gets easier the more you do it, and the rewards of interacting in this way with strangers, of knowing you have something to offer them that they value, of knowing that something you’ve done has meaning that will last beyond your lifetime-because those 10- and 11-year-old kids will remember my visit for years to come, and some of them will remember it forever, and some of them, probably most of them, will certainly outlive me-that, Dear Readers, is why I want to do what I do.
But you can’t publish a thing that isn’t finished. (Well, you can, but… see above about wanting to be really proud of your work for a long time after it’s finished…) So, all my difficulties are not going to be magically swept away. I have to learn to work around them, all the time. I can’t be a fair-weather worker, because I have these other ideas clamoring in my brain, asking me over and over to write them, but I must do one thing at a time. I’m not worried I’ll forget them; the other two main bright shiny stories have been patiently waiting in line behind L&W for years too. But they can’t wait forever.
So, I Made A Plan. (Again)
The Preamble
[Picture description: planning supplies on a table]
On the right is the 2nd (partly the 3rd/4th ish-it’s complicated) Draft of Part One of L&W (it’s a big stinkin’ thing-281 pages are pictured; I’m afraid to do a word count) up to the first quarter-ish of Chapter 4*, with a red pen. I love my red pen. In the center is an engagement calendar, some blank sheets of legal-size paper, a ruler, and a black pen. On the left are multi-colored 3x5 index cards.
The What
[Picture description: stacks of index cards and notes]
I made a card for each kind of thing I want to include in my days, categorized by color. (Yes, everything must always be in rainbow order, thanks for asking.) For example, one card was for drafting new words on my Work In Progress (hereafter WIP), another was for typing in revisions done on paper-I made these very specific, so there were half a dozen cards in the “Working On Book” category. The large piece of paper in the background on the calendar is a list of goals. Primary on it is working on the WIP EVERY SINGLE DAY. I tried previously to have more of an office job kind of schedule, and while I got a lot done at first, it turned out not to be sustainable-it was too much work, and I got discouraged by frequently missing my goals. I still made progress goals-for example, I want to finish Draft 2 of Chapter 4 (and therefore Part One) by my birthday. I can do it! I think I can, I think I can… I also noted on each stack how often each category gets shuffled into my weekly schedule-I reduced the frequency of several items to monthly, so my weeks are less overloaded (another problem with the previous schedule)-working on the WIP is daily, as is time outside, decluttering a room in the house is monthly (since most of what’s left-the Kitchen, the Garage-will be huge undertakings)**. This is a concession to my actual lifestyle, as opposed to the more rigidly scheduled ideal of the last try (which vanished last August, alas), as is setting aside 3-hour binges twice a week of novel reading, instead of trying to read 30-60 minutes a night.
The Big Picture
[Picture description: a two-month calendar marked by multi-colored highlighters]
Each “page” of my calendar has two months, with space at the bottom to list my Big and Small Goals for those months. I focused on making goals for the first half of this year, through June. I ended up making other goals too… and concluded I may, if all goes well, be finished with this story by the end of 2017. *cough cough* And then I can work on the other two I’m super excited about! Sigh. ANYWAY. The most important part of these calendars is marking times when people visit me (yellow) and when I go out of town (in blue). I have A Plan for working during those periods, which will hopefully solve my biggest problem of losing momentum when I must leave my work and not getting it back for months-which is how months disappear without progress on the WIP, because I travelled every 4 or 5 weeks, and/or was gone for multiple weeks at a time. (Yes, the highlighters are also in rainbow-order, except they start and end on a different color than the notecards, for variety. I do this with my pens too. It’s highly aesthetically pleasing to me.***)
Putting It Together
[Picture description: all of the above, plus notecards arranged in a calendar shape]
Here’s the idea with the notecards: I can shuffle them around to get a visual picture of how much I can really do in a day, and in a week. I have set goals and time limits for each item, and nothing lasts more than 3 hours. I haven’t done it yet, but the idea is to rework my Sticky Note Calendar to reflect these changes (and put it up again, ahem), so I can shuffle around the index cards every, well, let’s make it every Sunday :) and then transfer it to the Sticky Note Calendar… unless I get a cork board, which I really wanted anyway, but I don’t have a good place to put it. Anyway.
So, how does this affect YOU, Dear Readers? Here’re my goals:
1. Through March 14 (or until I get it done), I’m reading through the WIP^ at a rate of 10 pages/day. (I’ve done half of that today, and found I can do about 5pg/hr. I may need to stay up a little late tonight to finish, but I’m determined to meet my goal every day. It’s extremely doable, and making up for missed time the next day is never a good plan. I can do MORE than my goal each day, but NEVER LESS. I’ve set more moderate goals on purpose, because this time I WILL NOT FAIL!)
2. Every Friday, I will report on my week’s progress LIVE ON THIS BLOG! \o/ And record my goals for the next week. This will keep me honest with myself. You all can ignore it, although I also intend to try to be funny on Fridays also, and put something fun in the post too, like I used to do. I miss the NSFAQ and the Genii, you guys, I really do!
3. I will also blog twice more (for now; it’s an experiment) in the week. I think I can do this. Wednesday will be for book-related posts-reviews, criticism, etc. And occasionally for essays on other topics. Mondays will be for “live blogging” difficult books, with an emphasis on how the writing itself works (or doesn’t work) to convey the author’s (presumed) intended meaning.^^ I’m starting with Tigana. If I do one chapter a week, I’ll be done by the first week in August, and then we can pick something else. I think it might be fun. And good practice for me. Not just in analysis (which is a skill I want to develop), but also in trying to be nice. I will criticize the book, Dear Readers, but I must practice remembering that Mr. Kay spent months or years on it and obviously thought it was pretty good and that it said something he thought was worth saying.
Is all this pointless? Maybe. I see some pitfalls:
1. I always amaze myself with how slow I really am. Blogging 3x/wk. is a huge commitment, especially given that I have little external motivation to keep it up. To that same end, my huge bugbear with L&W is I’m more than half convinced that even if I make it as perfect as I think it deserves, it’ll still be universally rejected. So, now I’m saying, “This is the future! I can self-publish if I want to!” I don’t want to. But it’s better than sticking in a drawer and feeling defeated. After all, I’ve just made less than $25 on TSOTW! And L&W is, well, it’s certainly much longer than that… Anyway! And blogging is publishing, so I have something to show for my thoughts. That means something to me.
2. There’s still the loss in momentum in leaving town. Perhaps I should buy a laptop?
3. Some not-insignificant part of me rebels at any hint of structure. I really want to build the habit of working on the WIP every day. That I’m determined to do. But the rest? I can definitely fit 2-3 hours of work I love somewhere in the day, no matter what. But blogging, reading, hell even eating may turn out to be a struggle. The idea of setting my alarm makes me anxious. Maybe this is too organized still? I will find the way, readers. And if it means never speaking to you again, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, especially as the format of LJ has gotten less and less user-friendly for me over the years. Maybe I should get my own website? It’s something I have been waiting to be “worthy” of by traditionally publishing a book, you know, that might get promoted by the publisher. Maybe I should start some daily affirmations telling myself my work has value?
Well, what d’ya think?
Love, Susie
*Which is the final chapter of the part-the structure of L&W is… original… and I think it really works with the story and is pretty cool, but it’s hard to talk about it in terms of chapters. I dearly hope, Dear Readers, that someday you will Understand What I Mean, uh, if you know what I mean. ;)
**Which reminds me! I didn’t put that in my calendars. Hmm…
***I just really love rainbows. The more bright colors I can wear at once each day, the happier I am. Oddly, most people don’t think this is very fashionable… “I’d love to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything’s OK…”
^A necessary thing, to make sure I know what I have and what I don’t have, so I can get everything I need in the rest of Chapter 4.
^^This week will be a little different, Readers, as I’m having this post on Monday (tomorrow) instead. We’ll see what I get done to appear on Wednesday. I’ll introduce each type of blog post to you when I post the first one of each.
1. The blog used to be funnier. With dialogue between murderous birds (that post is still sooo funny!), Genius Advice Columns, and NSFAQ, as well as True Conversations With My Family™. I also tried to be funnier, and I posted a lot more often.
2. When I started this blog, I had long finished The Splitting of the World, I had written a number of other things, I had taken the first 3rd or 5th of The 3-Volume Novel to a writers conference and gotten positive feedback from an agent. My life was falling apart, but work was good, and about to get a lot better. Before your eyes I wrote The Comedy, and It Was Good. The complete dearth of response to that book from agents was extremely dispiriting for me; I knew it was way better than TSOTW, and everyone (the few, the proud) who read it loved it. But no one professional would read it. But somehow, I dusted myself off and got up again and went once more into the breach, in large part because I so believed (and still do!) in L&W.
3. I wrote of finishing the first draft of Part One of L&W in the spring of 2010 (having hinted that I’d started it much earlier than I remembered, in the summer of 2009, just before sharing my elation (and pictures!) at having finished The Comedy. I wrote of finishing the first draft of Part Two of L&W in October of 2010 (and I know a precise date for that, since I went to another conference right after-though it wasn’t the sort of conference where I could show my work to anyone).
Where I’m going with this, of course, is that Part Two of L&W sits as it did nearly three and a half years ago, except with lots of notes in red pen, and while I have done very good work in revising Part One, Dear Readers, I wrote to you about that in 2011. As I paced the house the other night, much too late at night, moping and arguing with myself, I went through all my Excuses, and there were many, Dear Readers, oh so many. It’s not that they weren’t legitimate, or that they are worries I can magically wave away. Really, it’s because they are legitimate and can’t be simply waved away that I woke up this morning full of determination. Enough, I said to myself. Because here is the thing: I love writing, more than anything. There is nothing that makes me more deeply contented (apart from having fun with the people I love best) than playing with my creations, inventing worlds and characters, and exploring some small part of humanity and my understanding of it through my stories. My worlds consume me and fill up the largest part of my brain and no small part of my heart. I will always invent worlds and the people in them. BUT. I want them to be published. I am desperate to share my thoughts with strangers. These ideas are important to me. I write for myself, yes, but I also write for others-not directly as I do for myself, but with the idea that what I have to say is worth reading by someone, that someone somewhere will love it as I love the stories of my favorite authors.
I want the validation, the stamp of approval, the culturally sanctioned expertise that comes with professional publication. I know it’s artificial, I know it’s silly in many ways, and I know it’s in many ways out of my control, but I want it anyway, the way I want my clothes to be pretty and not just functional, the way I want the weather to be nice on my birthday-not because I need it, or deserve it, but because it would just make my life so much nicer, happier.
This year, I received my first royalty check from TSOTW, because a school class decided to read it. They interviewed me for about an hour, as part of a project they did in November to each write a short story, a NaNoWriMo for 5th and 6th Graders. Readers, I was terrified, and I was embarrassed. I looked at That Book for almost the first time since I published it and… Horribly, it wasn’t that bad. Yes, I was a bit embarrassed because I feel it’s really not of the same quality as what I’m doing now, and yet, the best part of the book, the part I always thought was best, the stories at the end… were not that far removed from what I’m writing now-they were good. And I was terrified of appearing (via Skype, thank goodness) in front of all these people, and saying the wrong thing, or worse saying nothing in my anxiety, but mostly I was embarrassed because I have nothing to show for the (oh lord) 8 years since. Not to readers. And yet… It was wonderful. The kids were so excited and kind, and they asked the most awesome questions, and somehow I managed to answer them, and they thought it was the coolest thing ever to talk to me. We’re weren’t talking about TSOTW, but more generally about writing, and I thought, I want to do this again, a lot, and talk about work I’m currently proud of. Because public speaking gets easier the more you do it, and the rewards of interacting in this way with strangers, of knowing you have something to offer them that they value, of knowing that something you’ve done has meaning that will last beyond your lifetime-because those 10- and 11-year-old kids will remember my visit for years to come, and some of them will remember it forever, and some of them, probably most of them, will certainly outlive me-that, Dear Readers, is why I want to do what I do.
But you can’t publish a thing that isn’t finished. (Well, you can, but… see above about wanting to be really proud of your work for a long time after it’s finished…) So, all my difficulties are not going to be magically swept away. I have to learn to work around them, all the time. I can’t be a fair-weather worker, because I have these other ideas clamoring in my brain, asking me over and over to write them, but I must do one thing at a time. I’m not worried I’ll forget them; the other two main bright shiny stories have been patiently waiting in line behind L&W for years too. But they can’t wait forever.
So, I Made A Plan. (Again)
The Preamble
[Picture description: planning supplies on a table]
On the right is the 2nd (partly the 3rd/4th ish-it’s complicated) Draft of Part One of L&W (it’s a big stinkin’ thing-281 pages are pictured; I’m afraid to do a word count) up to the first quarter-ish of Chapter 4*, with a red pen. I love my red pen. In the center is an engagement calendar, some blank sheets of legal-size paper, a ruler, and a black pen. On the left are multi-colored 3x5 index cards.
The What
[Picture description: stacks of index cards and notes]
I made a card for each kind of thing I want to include in my days, categorized by color. (Yes, everything must always be in rainbow order, thanks for asking.) For example, one card was for drafting new words on my Work In Progress (hereafter WIP), another was for typing in revisions done on paper-I made these very specific, so there were half a dozen cards in the “Working On Book” category. The large piece of paper in the background on the calendar is a list of goals. Primary on it is working on the WIP EVERY SINGLE DAY. I tried previously to have more of an office job kind of schedule, and while I got a lot done at first, it turned out not to be sustainable-it was too much work, and I got discouraged by frequently missing my goals. I still made progress goals-for example, I want to finish Draft 2 of Chapter 4 (and therefore Part One) by my birthday. I can do it! I think I can, I think I can… I also noted on each stack how often each category gets shuffled into my weekly schedule-I reduced the frequency of several items to monthly, so my weeks are less overloaded (another problem with the previous schedule)-working on the WIP is daily, as is time outside, decluttering a room in the house is monthly (since most of what’s left-the Kitchen, the Garage-will be huge undertakings)**. This is a concession to my actual lifestyle, as opposed to the more rigidly scheduled ideal of the last try (which vanished last August, alas), as is setting aside 3-hour binges twice a week of novel reading, instead of trying to read 30-60 minutes a night.
The Big Picture
[Picture description: a two-month calendar marked by multi-colored highlighters]
Each “page” of my calendar has two months, with space at the bottom to list my Big and Small Goals for those months. I focused on making goals for the first half of this year, through June. I ended up making other goals too… and concluded I may, if all goes well, be finished with this story by the end of 2017. *cough cough* And then I can work on the other two I’m super excited about! Sigh. ANYWAY. The most important part of these calendars is marking times when people visit me (yellow) and when I go out of town (in blue). I have A Plan for working during those periods, which will hopefully solve my biggest problem of losing momentum when I must leave my work and not getting it back for months-which is how months disappear without progress on the WIP, because I travelled every 4 or 5 weeks, and/or was gone for multiple weeks at a time. (Yes, the highlighters are also in rainbow-order, except they start and end on a different color than the notecards, for variety. I do this with my pens too. It’s highly aesthetically pleasing to me.***)
Putting It Together
[Picture description: all of the above, plus notecards arranged in a calendar shape]
Here’s the idea with the notecards: I can shuffle them around to get a visual picture of how much I can really do in a day, and in a week. I have set goals and time limits for each item, and nothing lasts more than 3 hours. I haven’t done it yet, but the idea is to rework my Sticky Note Calendar to reflect these changes (and put it up again, ahem), so I can shuffle around the index cards every, well, let’s make it every Sunday :) and then transfer it to the Sticky Note Calendar… unless I get a cork board, which I really wanted anyway, but I don’t have a good place to put it. Anyway.
So, how does this affect YOU, Dear Readers? Here’re my goals:
1. Through March 14 (or until I get it done), I’m reading through the WIP^ at a rate of 10 pages/day. (I’ve done half of that today, and found I can do about 5pg/hr. I may need to stay up a little late tonight to finish, but I’m determined to meet my goal every day. It’s extremely doable, and making up for missed time the next day is never a good plan. I can do MORE than my goal each day, but NEVER LESS. I’ve set more moderate goals on purpose, because this time I WILL NOT FAIL!)
2. Every Friday, I will report on my week’s progress LIVE ON THIS BLOG! \o/ And record my goals for the next week. This will keep me honest with myself. You all can ignore it, although I also intend to try to be funny on Fridays also, and put something fun in the post too, like I used to do. I miss the NSFAQ and the Genii, you guys, I really do!
3. I will also blog twice more (for now; it’s an experiment) in the week. I think I can do this. Wednesday will be for book-related posts-reviews, criticism, etc. And occasionally for essays on other topics. Mondays will be for “live blogging” difficult books, with an emphasis on how the writing itself works (or doesn’t work) to convey the author’s (presumed) intended meaning.^^ I’m starting with Tigana. If I do one chapter a week, I’ll be done by the first week in August, and then we can pick something else. I think it might be fun. And good practice for me. Not just in analysis (which is a skill I want to develop), but also in trying to be nice. I will criticize the book, Dear Readers, but I must practice remembering that Mr. Kay spent months or years on it and obviously thought it was pretty good and that it said something he thought was worth saying.
Is all this pointless? Maybe. I see some pitfalls:
1. I always amaze myself with how slow I really am. Blogging 3x/wk. is a huge commitment, especially given that I have little external motivation to keep it up. To that same end, my huge bugbear with L&W is I’m more than half convinced that even if I make it as perfect as I think it deserves, it’ll still be universally rejected. So, now I’m saying, “This is the future! I can self-publish if I want to!” I don’t want to. But it’s better than sticking in a drawer and feeling defeated. After all, I’ve just made less than $25 on TSOTW! And L&W is, well, it’s certainly much longer than that… Anyway! And blogging is publishing, so I have something to show for my thoughts. That means something to me.
2. There’s still the loss in momentum in leaving town. Perhaps I should buy a laptop?
3. Some not-insignificant part of me rebels at any hint of structure. I really want to build the habit of working on the WIP every day. That I’m determined to do. But the rest? I can definitely fit 2-3 hours of work I love somewhere in the day, no matter what. But blogging, reading, hell even eating may turn out to be a struggle. The idea of setting my alarm makes me anxious. Maybe this is too organized still? I will find the way, readers. And if it means never speaking to you again, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make, especially as the format of LJ has gotten less and less user-friendly for me over the years. Maybe I should get my own website? It’s something I have been waiting to be “worthy” of by traditionally publishing a book, you know, that might get promoted by the publisher. Maybe I should start some daily affirmations telling myself my work has value?
Well, what d’ya think?
Love, Susie
*Which is the final chapter of the part-the structure of L&W is… original… and I think it really works with the story and is pretty cool, but it’s hard to talk about it in terms of chapters. I dearly hope, Dear Readers, that someday you will Understand What I Mean, uh, if you know what I mean. ;)
**Which reminds me! I didn’t put that in my calendars. Hmm…
***I just really love rainbows. The more bright colors I can wear at once each day, the happier I am. Oddly, most people don’t think this is very fashionable… “I’d love to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything’s OK…”
^A necessary thing, to make sure I know what I have and what I don’t have, so I can get everything I need in the rest of Chapter 4.
^^This week will be a little different, Readers, as I’m having this post on Monday (tomorrow) instead. We’ll see what I get done to appear on Wednesday. I’ll introduce each type of blog post to you when I post the first one of each.