So check THIS out:  As you know, I’m taking a class at WritersStudio.com and I’m in the midst of my last assignment before leaving for vacation.  I noticed that there are some assignment where I really love the piece and some where I don’t.

But, even when I DON’T like the piece, I’m getting better at capturing the persona narrator, which is the aim of the course.  Which tells me that not only CAN I write well, I can write ANYTHING.  I’ve written pieces on a gay mafia daughter, cancer patient, a father, a teen with acne, a woman who was a girl scout as a kid, a girl growing up in a gang house, a creepy womanizer, and those are the first persons.  Third person, I did a group in a 1970s blackout, a severely injured hiker, an unhappy married couple.  Wow.  I don’t have ANYONE like these people in my stories.  In fact, I don’t even know where I came up with this stuff - some of it is very different than the assigned story.

Very cool.

Ok, this is last post before vacation, see y’all in a week or so…

Augh.  The voices in my head, they say, “you can’t do this.  you can’t make a living doing this.  you have too much on your plate, too much to do, there’s work, kids, you need to potty train and read this, read that, pray, what about church?, husband needs you, your BLEEP-BLEEP house is a BLEEPING mess, how can you raise kids like that?, worry about that low valued home, and all your debt, and school again? how’s that gonna work, and why bother, and you’re sick again, and isn’t web design more appealing, and you haven’t downloaded the kid’s photos, or made up with every one you’ve lost touch with, or emailed so and so, or saved your kids, your husband, THE WORLD….”

So, voices, stop it NOW.  What YOU don’t know is this:  My writing?  It’s not a hobby.  It’s not a phase.  It’s not a pleasure-moment, a task, a chore, a “thing”, a fling.

It’s my calling.  That means, it’s a God thing.  Way back when, when he knitted me together, he put this talent-gift-fever in my gut, and built my body around it.   I’m done burying it deep, because it’s only taken root like a seed within me.  It’s not WHO I am, it’s just my Purpose.

Which means it can’t fail, even if the mountain before me looks like Everest in the winter.  Even if time is fleeting and hard to catch, even if duty and charity and loved ones and devotion come first in moments, even if my sinuses ache, my strength is gone, and my heart is pounding, this is what I will be doing, permanently, at least in this life.  Every other work is mere distraction.

I’m turning my back on other stuff, at least for a little while each day, 15 minutes at least, more if I can manage it.  It FEELS good to work magic with my pen.  It LOOKS like diamonds glittering in the dark when I read back what I wrote.

I can regret my past, but maybe I needed to wait these 30 years to get to this place, to live through the stroke and Mom’s Alzheimer’s and my husband’s heart attack and my kid’s disabilities and the debt and 9/11 and Pres Bush.  To get through all that crap and still fill like I’ve touched base, like I’m “safe”, because it gives me a place to work and a deep well of tears and laughter to draw from.

Or maybe I’m just bored of the mundane life and being a writer is so much cooler…lol..

Ilana has tagged me, so here we go:

Here are the rules:
1. Pick up the nearest fiction book. (Following Ilana’s lead here.)
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to the person who tagged you once you’ve posted your three sentences.

My laptop is near my bookshelf, so this took some measuring. The nearest fiction book is Coraline by Neil Gaiman. (Yes it is a youth book, but I like Gaiman, Ok?)

Beside the decapitated rat, a smug expression on his face, was the black cat. It rested one paw on the gray glass marble.

‘I think I once mentioned,’ said the cat, ‘that I don’t like rats at the best of times.’

ROFL!! I love it.

OK, then, whom am I going to tag? gina b from mom-blog tags Katrina, WonderMom, Lynn, Jenny, and Feener.  (Not sure who knows about this blog, lol!!

I want to thank everyone who posted last time - Ilana, Katrina and Pam -you guys really helped me clear my head.  So I have decided to:

1. continue on with part 2 of my online course, which has so far generated about 6 or 7 pieces for short stories.  So in my daydreaming time I will build those ideas.

2. continue on my seed of an idea for a novel that has a long way to go, also for daydreaming time.  This is nice because I’ve had some WONDERFUL ideas, but it’s all under wraps for now. Shhhh!  Code  name is “Reprieve”, but I am notorious for picking titles that absolutely suck. Note: Last week I heard that it’s critical that you write a good title, which contradics what I heard earlier, that editors write the title.  AUGH!

3. since I’m not really WRITING, I can still work through the editing and worldbuilding process for my little sf novel.  I’ve already taught myself how to generate a decent outline, which already let me ditch some things.  I might as well see it through for the learning process.  Can’t hurt, as long as there’s time.

4. am zooming along in marketing my mom blog, which will generate an audience or, if not, at least some adsense revenue, right?  I mean, I hope…

And that’s it.  Life is EXCELLENT.  I love being a writer, don’t you?

Ladies, you will all get REAL links on my high ranking blog…this one is like rank 1  billion, lol, so it won’t help…

Ok, I must confess: I DO like SF/F, a little, but I’m not sure - even though that’s the genre of my novel that is completed - how much I should do on it.

Here’s why:

This is not really the genre I want to write.  I WANT to write literary fiction.

OK, now stop laughing.  I am 100% aware of the odds of making a living as a literary fiction author.

And my little story, which needs massive amounts of work, is good and deep and has lovely conflict, true growth and sacrifice in the protagonist, sequels which I like, and is possibly marketable.  It’s a story I like, and today a SF/F writer at a group I’m attending offered to help me with it.

Thanks to working full time and the commitment with my kids and also my own furthering of my education, the novel probably needs 10-12 months to get into shape, before I can start sending it out in this genre that I’m not too interested in.

This week, I subscribed to Holly Lisle’s newsletter, and her advice was  basically:
“Know thyself” (with regard to your genre)  Do the work of the genre you’re writing (world building), don’t skimp, don’t use stock medieval footage, and so on.  Write a genre you WANT to write.

A few paragraphs down she wrote:

Any book you write is going to be the first book of yours some reader picks up.

So what if I write a genre and then it’s the WRONG ONE?  What if I start publishing the short stories I’m considering writing (not even remotely fantastical) and then come out with fantasy novel and everyone’s like “huh?”.  Or will I be typecast and doomed to never publish in the genre I love?

FWIW, though my little novel in NO WAY resembles the greatness of these two books, two of my favorite SF/F books are by authors NOT in that genre:

“The Time Travellers Wife” and
“The Sparrow”

It’s a lot to think about, because THEN it means I don’t even have a novel together…well, ok, not completely true, I do have another thing I’ve been working on, but it’s no where NEAR complete, nor can it remotely compete with my latest ideas.

AUGH.   I guess no One ever said this would be easy…

I have more work to do on my story before I start kicking it out the door, of course, but I also thought that I might START to delve into something I haven’t played with since my Greenwich Village days, 20 years ago: the short story.  Most of what I had done was flash fiction (thought it wasn’t called that yet), but I’m getting some AWESOME feedback - better than expected - from my writing class, and these 2 pages vignettes I’m writing are good fodder for a short story.  I’ve taken what I know, too, and made it unique.  One short story was originally conceived as backstory for one of my very characters, the black out of 76 (77?) in New York, and it involved building tenants and a super… my dad was a super, but nothing like the character I created.  Nor is my character anywhere there, but I got a good feel for the scene from “writing what I know”.

Ditto a first person narrative about a husband finding out his newborn baby has Down syndrome.  Not that I lived it exactly the way in the story, and an older son in the plot helped, but the woodpecker I created to distract the husband and hone his anger and disappointment on, well, THAT creature really DID exist, and I swear it pecked at my house just like in my story.

Going to smooth the piece out and grow it, and post it…or perhaps just pitch it or put it out there.  Or maybe it belongs in The Writing Show’s 1st chaper of a novel contest?  Hmmm….

Good fiction, you know, CAN be television, and I believe that one of the best written TV series to air in my life is “Lost”, which I am OBSESSED with.  I listen to a number of podcasts about it, and I’ve realized that good storytelling lessons can be learned.  The writers of “Lost” have created a VERY detailed storyline.  There are past and future episodes but thus far, the central focus is the CURRENT action that takes place on the island. Thus far, the castaways have been on the island for 69 days.  When you plot something this tightly, continuity is crucial (storyline continuity, film continuity is  a separate issue).

The creators have very detailed storyboards, including a board specifically for characters who have died.  They have solidly planned out the complete story arc (before the show aired, I believe) and have sufficient backstory for each character that requires it.

They have also put a compelling amount of mystery AND suspense (I would argue) in the plotline, keeping viewers coming back for answers, which are doled out conservatively.  In addition, the characters have enough of a personal life to keep you interested in them, either as heroes or vilians or crossover characters, part villian, part hero (Ben, Sayid, Sawyer).

Ok, maybe my Lost obsession is just that, but I can pretend that it’s not just good fantasy but I’m also LEARNING. Can’t I??? 

1. Signed up for my first college writing course, Nonfiction Writing, at Cedar Crest, for the fall.

2. Big one: started re-editing “Shapeshifters”

3.   Learning to read like a writer.  I’m reading a poorly written book that I picked up in a chain store that I like. The plot is not bad, but the writing is anything but economical (I’m big on that).  I’m learning from it because I can see redundancy and it is pulling my interest out of the book.

Ok, since my last post, I have done A LOT.  Here’s  a list:

-listening to weekly podcasts of The Writing Show and Will Write for Wine.  Just discovered I Should be Writing so that’s on my list too.

-doing very well in my online writing course.

-went to first local writer’s luncheon with experienced & published writers who were very nice and really offbeat (my kinda crowd!)

-spoke with a coach (my client) about organizing my stuff to position myself, my mom blog, and start pursuing more journalistic types of writing in order to build an audience.  I have a long task list under this.

-wrote my daily schedule and fit in TWO sections of writing time for weekdays.  First would be the 1st half hour after work before picking up the kids - not always availabe.  The other is 10:30 at night, when I do work sometimes.  2 blocks allows me to get in at least  30 minutes of writing or editing.

-subscribed to Time to Write newsletter

-got first edition of P&W from my subscription

-

Still keeping up with this, I had a few more accomplishments:

1. On Thursday, I spent my lunch 1/2 hour doing a prompt from writing “Without the Muse”. VERY instructive.

2. This is major. On Wed., I compiled a list of goals required to get to where I want to be. It had topics such as “Financial”, “Business”, and “Creative”. Next task is to set a general timeline for these goals, then break them down into steps. Finally, I’ll need to pick up a planner and schedule them.

3. Scheduled an appointment with Dean of English at local college in 2 weeks.

4. Looked into more MFA programs - turns out there is one with low residency and a professional writing co-cirriculum. Hm…

All in all, not a bad week. Some other ideas I’m thinking of is looking for an accountability partner.