Category Archives: Writing

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A River of Words

One thing I often wish for writers in my tweets and comments is that they will be blessed with a river of words. That’s how it feels to me when the mental dam breaks and sets the story free.

Unfortunately, I seem to be an expert dam builder, though I can’t say I know how I do that. I can never see a specific pattern leading up to these obstructions. Once I build that dam, I’m just as much in the dark on how to tear it down.

I want to write. I need to write. I cannot write.

That frustration only reinforces the dam, which leads to more frustration, which reinforces—well, you get the picture. I lay blame on this and that and the other. I distract myself. I pretend patience. I use force, trickling out a few words at a time. Eventually, I decide I have no talent and should give up.

For a while now, I’ve pretended—if I positively affirm that I’m a writer, that work on my WIP is going just swell, thank you, it will be so. Ahem. I only know that about ten days ago, I faced up to a dam of terrifying proportions. I felt like a total fraud. I was convinced I was a one-book writer. The voice in my head was screaming, “Shut up. Shut up! JUST. SHUT. UP.”

So I did. I shut up. I gave up. And that seemed entirely logical. Gloriously freeing. Long overdue. I decided to give away one more copy of Brevity, and then quietly slink away.

I planned another blog, where I could post my thoughts under a fictitious name. I would write about anything EXCEPT writing. It would be like a virtual witness relocation plan. Maybe a few people would find that blog and I could start a new online life. Eventually, if I were lucky, I would look back at my experience as a novelist with amusement.

Only, that’s not what happened.

What I thought were just my usual allergy problems turned out to be a virus, and this one settled in my chest, which for me, means a deep, wrenching cough. Naturally, this frequently interrupted my sleep. I spent a few nights in a sort of half-dream state, in which, every time I woke a bit more with a coughing spell, I “heard” people talking to me.

Sometime during the third night, I realized the talkers were the characters in the WIP I had so recently shelved. The next day, I realized they were still talking and I sat down at the keyboard. See that photo at the top of this post? Yeah, that’s what it feels like. I have so many words rushing at me now that I have to force them to stop, so I can take a break, eat a meal, go to sleep.

I’m in writer heaven. My river of words is a roaring, rushing, riotous joy I seriously doubted I would ever experience again.

For every writer reading this, I wish you a river of your own.

Photo credit:http://www.dreamstime.com/rushing-river-imagefree193893

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A belated anniversary and a giveaway!

This time a year ago, I spent the days swinging from elation to terror. The Brevity of Roses had just been published, and my talent, or any lack of it, was on display to the whole world. One moment I felt proud of myself, and the next I was aghast at my audacity. To be honest, a year later, I still have my swinging days.

One difference is that, now, I’m better at separating the Author from myself, though maybe not in the way you might think. I’m the one that writes, but that person with her name on the front cover—the Author? Well, I try not to think about her much. She’s useless at the keyboard. I let her check the sales stats and reviews.

This separation has made me feel I’m waking from a long sleep. I’m excited about writing again. I have two books in the works—a short story collection and a novel. My Muse speaks to me regularly.

And to celebrate Brevity’s one year anniversary, I’m giving away a signed print copy!

To those of you who know nothing about The Brevity of Roses, you can click the cover photo to read more about it. Here’s the bit from the back cover:

Told in gorgeous, poetic tones, The Brevity of Roses will take you on a journey delving into three unique characters as delicate and beautiful as a rose itself. Lewis’ rich understanding of relationships is phenomenal.” – Michelle Davidson Argyle, author of Monarch

Grief, discovery, anguish, pleasure, rejection, acceptance, atonement, forgiveness—the rhythmic odes of marriage, friendship, family. A fine debut novel that reaches deep into a poet’s beating heart, lays it open, vulnerable to the bitter betrayals, and the joyful loyalties, of this thing we call Love.” – Kathryn Magendie, author of the Graces Sagas, Sweetie and Petey, publishing editor of Rose & Thorn.

Jalal Vaziri has looks, money, women—and a habit of running from reality. When he abandons New York and reinvents himself as a poet in a California beach house, he thinks he’s running from a father who hates him, a career mistake, and endless partying. A fresh start is all he needs. After an intriguing woman enters his life, he believes all his dreams are coming true, but too soon, that dream dissolves into nightmare. Jalal flees again. Only this time, a woman blocks his retreat and challenges him to finally face the truth about what he’s trying to outrun.

The usual rules apply.  You can have up to five chances to win! Leave a comment below to enter your name once in the drawing. If your email address is not linked in your avatar, be sure to add it in your comment. If you Tweet, Facebook, or Google+ a link to this post, your name will be entered again for each mention.  LIKE my Facebook page (click the link in the sidebar) and your name will be entered yet again. (You’ll have to let me know you’re eligible for these other entries.)

The contest will close at 8pm PST on Sunday, April 22nd. The winner will be chosen by Random.org and announced in Monday’s blog post. Sorry, but because of prohibitive shipping costs, this contest is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only.

Let the contest begin!

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In the grand scheme of writing

I can be ridiculously petty, envious, and jealous. That’s something I wish I hadn’t learned about myself in the four years since I started writing for publication. And there’s no logic to these feelings.

Why envy the sales of an author who has fifteen published novels and a well-funded marketing team? And writes in a different genre—a hot one?

Why resent an author for being the darling of certain groups when I don’t even want to join those groups?

What sense does it make to be jealous of a writer who’s had umpteen stories published in literary magazines when I never submit any of mine?

And on and on and on. A waste of energy. A pathetic self-indulgence. A comparison of apples to oranges.

In all of life, a personal sense of success depends on your perspective. Pettiness, envy, jealousy, any negative emotion, keeps you lying in the dirt looking up. All writers publish because they want to share their work with others, and we all hope many others. There’s a larger market for some genres and types of writing than for others—apples and oranges.

One problem today is that authors, even traditionally published ones, are required to be more involved in the marketing side. It’s too easy to start comparing when so many authors are online shouting out sales figures and rankings, and giving advice—You too could be a publishing phenomenon, if you follow these six easy steps! Comparison leads to dissatisfaction. We see ourselves as less successful.

Too often, I let envy and jealousy steal any sense of success from me. My perspective skews. I wrote a book that already hundreds of people have read! How can I keep forgetting that? And I’m not finished writing. Who knows what I might accomplish a year or twenty from now? In the grand scheme of my writing career, I’m just beginning.

How’s the view from your perspective?

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Writing Without Shame

Last week, a book I requested arrived at my library. I can’t remember who suggested the book, but I’m glad I paid attention. The book, Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing by Les Edgerton, has caused me to mentally shout YES! several times, and I’m only a third done reading it.

Because I haven’t read the whole book, I can’t say I’ll agree with all Edgerton has to say, but I want to share something that made me put the book down and start writing this post.

I used to rail against the writing rules a lot around here. As a newbie writer, I tried to obey most of them. With more experience, I learned to follow what worked for me and ignore what didn’t, but there was one rule I felt conflicted about every time I bucked it.

Ever since I decided to write seriously with the aim of publication, I’ve read one particular bit of writing advice consistently. Write fast. Get the story down. Don’t worry about it being a sh**ty first draft, you’ll fix it later.

That Fast First Draft advice has always horrified me. Truly. Horrified. It’s so at odds with my nature that I think I’d rather quit writing than write that way. So, I don’t write fast first drafts. That’s a Writing Rule I never obeyed, but the advice to do so is so prevalent, I questioned whether something was wrong with my brain.

Not so, says Edgerton. That advice doesn’t work for him either. He says:

All my instincts told me this was the wrong approach for my own prose. Rushing ahead, getting stuff down just felt wrong. What I wanted to do was find the perfect word for what I was trying to say before continuing. I had this uneasy feeling in my stomach that I’d forget to change it if I went on. Even if I marked it. I just wouldn’t be able to recapture what I was feeling or “seeing” then. I got a feeling I ignored, but one I should have paid attention to. I’ll bet you’ve experienced the same thing, at least occasionally. You know what you’re doing is “by the book”, but it just doesn’t feel right.

Trust those feelings! Your wonderful, smart, cool, learned mind is telling you something important. Pay attention to it.

EXACTLY! If I don’t get the sentence, the paragraph, the scene down at least 90% right the first time, it’s likely I’ll lose the “magic”. I know this because it happens nearly every time I leave myself a “fix this” note and push on.

The popularity of NaNoWriMo, in addition to most blogs and books for writers, tells me that Les Edgerton and I are in the minority on this, but that won’t nag me any longer. I’m relieved. There’s nothing wrong with my brain—at least, not in this instance. :-) I will hold my head up while I write in my slow and precise way. The only “wrong” way to write is the one that doesn’t work.

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The Stack

I’ll bet you have one. The size haunts you, and you yet you can’t resist growing it. At times, you may look at it with a logical eye and know you’ll never reach the bottom. You know what I’m talking about. I didn’t need to add a visual aid this time, right?

For those of you who’ve gone digital, you have an extension to that stack, hidden away, where you don’t have to think how high it would stand if it wasn’t virtual. You’ll never reach the bottom of that one either—even if you live to be 109—because it grows monthly. Weekly. Daily?

Yeah, we’re talking books. So many books and so little time. I’ve had a very small book buying budget for over a year, so my literal stack has remained static except for three books I won in giveaways. Then again, my to-be-read stack was already three feet high.

And on my Kindle? Classics and freebies galore. That doesn’t count the list I’ve been making of digital books to download from my local library system. Add to that my regular library book list. If you consider how slowly I’ve added to my total books read in the last four years, and you’ll have an idea how far my TBR stack towers above reasonable.

My lists are flexible. Some books have been on those lists for two years. They’re good books. I really want to read them someday, but bright and shiny new books lead me astray. I never force myself to read a book I’m not connecting with, but when I feel the disconnect is not the book’s fault, I shuffle that book lower in the stack. On another day it might be just the book I’m looking for.

How do you manage your TBR stack? Are you disciplined, setting a size limit, staying loyal to the order you added the books and reading the next one in the stack no matter what? Or do you add unlimited books, willy nilly, and choose which to read according to your mood? And do you feel guilty when you realize a book has been waiting its turn for ages?

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Two fences, three dogs, and one literary journal

It’s a holiday weekend, so I’ll keep this post light and breezy—like Spring. Speaking of breezy, it’s been more than breezy on this side of the valley lately. Unfortunately (for every reason except shade), we have two gargantuan sycamore trees in our back yard that love to drop sizeable limbs on our roof, so it’s been a boomrattleshake month.

Last month, we had a real guster that took down our ancient privacy fence. How weird to see our neighbors’ back yards. I grew up with back yards separated by waist-high wire fences. Neighbors had no outdoor privacy. They spoke to each other, which was good or bad depending on the neighbor. Anyway, we have a bright new six-foot high board fence now. Fort Lewis is secure once again.

The strong new fence comes at a good time because we are dog-sitting three dogs for the next week. Three. 3. The dogs are a family, so at least we don’t have to deal with canine territorial wars—though I suspect our cat is planning a bombing mission. When our Lizzie was still alive, we had two dogs in the house when we sat for our son’s dog, but three is a first. Let’s hope I survive this adventure.

If you were around here in January, you may remember that I announced Vine Leaves Literary Journal had published a vignette of mine—without the last line. The editors apologized, of course, and promised to reprint it in the next issue. Well, that issue is out now, and it’s a lovely mixture of vignettes, poetry, artwork, and photography, so check it out here:  Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Issue 2.

Happy Easter, however you celebrate it!

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My decision to quit writing

Last week, I had lunch with two other writers and came home totally depressed. I don’t blame them. They didn’t do or say anything directly to bottom me out. As I listened to them speak, I realized I felt disconnected from their world. That night I told my husband I’d decided to quit writing. He told me to sleep on it.

For four days I didn’t write a word, not even a blog post. Instead, I read. And I played a lot of games on Facebook. At first, that felt weird. I was anxious. By the end of the second day, I relaxed. It felt right not to be writing. I could just walk away. Let it go.

On the third day, I realized I’d returned to the way I’d told stories for most of my life— in my head. I continued with the story I’d been trying to force into a novel for months. It flowed without effort. I enjoyed it. But not until late on the fourth day did I actually “hear” the story, and when I did, I knew why I’d quit working on the version for publication.

Let’s back up a bit.

I’d been writing that novel in my head for months before I sat down to begin entering it into a Word file, so I wrote the first few chapters quickly. I opened with a short chapter in third person past tense  and then moved to first person present tense (FPPT) for the next chapters because that was the way I “heard” the main character’s voice. I would use three short third-past chapters spaced throughout the book, but the bulk would be in first-present.

Then I read that most current novels for the adult market are written in third-past, and a first person novel is hard to write well, and present tense is tiring or boring or some other negative for the reader. I questioned my wisdom. I revised. I changed all the chapters to the “best” person and tense. I pushed on.

I wrote a couple of chapters more, and then got distracted by other projects. I wrote another chapter of the novel, and then I worked on something more pressing. I wrote a paragraph or two for the novel, and then I got this great idea and worked it into a short story. I wrote a few words on the novel, and then … and then … and then I gave up on it.

I stopped writing the novel. I stopped writing. Period.

Why? Well, it seems if you stop listening to your character’s voice, eventually that character stops speaking to you. She says, “You don’t like the way I’m telling this story? Fine. Tell it without me.”

Silly me.

Do over. Stop being a sheep. Revise the revision. Start listening again. Write.