Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Nanowrimo 2017

Long time no write!

I have been consumed by work and school and not writing enough.  BUT I did have a story published in August called, "The Photo Essay On the Human Race" through thewifiles.com

This short story is the basis of the novel I'm working on for Nanowrimo. I started at midnight and wrote for half an hour - 296 words so far & I'm writing with my Writers' Word Feast group to keep this writing going.

Here is the title:


Title: On the Preservation and Development of Relations between Earthanoid Inhabitants and Incognito Visiting Intergalactic Students Living Amongst Them, an Academic Perspective

Subtitle: How We Never Arrived to Earth

Synopsis: After the disaster at the Intergalactic Photographers’ Convention, Henrietta, Ga, Peeve, and Ted travel to Earth in Ga's incredibly, and somewhat eerily, comfortable spaceship. They don't get there. But on the way, they find asteroids that eat stars, spaceships from a thousand years ago, and the happiest dragon in the universe. They also stumble into a war between robot guilds and inadvertently destroy a couple of planets. Plus, they go to Space Court.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

On Feeling Like an Impostor

I am not a well published writer. I've had one short story published recently, a few pieces published years back, & lots of lovely rejection letters to attest to my continuing to submit my writing. Outside of the possible publications, I have several short stories that just need a bit of polish before I send them out, other short stories that are bare bones, a novel that is "finished" but getting a massive overhaul, another "finished" novel that is set aside, three other novel starts, two barely formed novel ideas that I have jotted down notes and have done a bit of research on, a cluster of memoir vignettes, and article ideas (like this one) that I want to work on when I have time.

I feel like I have been a writer my whole life. I was “writing” stories before I could write. As soon as I could form sentences, my mom told me that I was making up stories. When I was a bit more cohesive with my ideas, I would dictate these stories to my mom and she would write them down for me.* (They were terrible, but she was very tolerant.) Even though I have dyslexia, writing was a huge goal of mine so, after a lot of struggle and with a mom who would not tolerate a teacher calling me slow and stupid and even though we moved to Venezuela in the middle of all that**, I learned to write.

All of this, despite my lack of published work, says in my mind that yes, I am a writer.

And yet…  And yet recently at my writers’ group I had someone say that I wasn’t a “real” writer; that I wasn’t serious about my writing. For a couple of days, I believed them. The evidence? I have goals other than writing, I don’t have a consistent writing schedule***, and I don’t support myself with my writing.

There was another writer there who writes every morning for 2 hours, supports themself with their writing, and their entire life is about their writing. They didn’t agree with the person who said I wasn’t a real writer, but they didn’t dispute them either. I, on the other hand, got very defensive.

After a couple of days of self doubt I thought, why do I care what this other person has to say? By their own admission, they have never been published and rarely write. Upon reflection, I believe that they were trying to find common ground with me and didn’t realize how hurtful their words were. But, let’s be honest, it’s not about them, it’s about me. I doubt myself as a writer. Therefore, if anyone says anything that reflects that doubt, no matter how deeply I’ve buried it, it comes rising to the surface like some monolith of my personal insecurity. I feel like an imposter.

I wish, at this point, I could say, “and this is how I destroyed my feelings of being an imposter.” But I can’t… because I still feel like an impostor… sort of. I write because I’m a writer, and it doesn’t matter if I’m published or not. Kafka was never published in his lifetime. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 44 (my current age) when she became a columnist and didn’t publish her first novel until she was 64, and the Marquis de Sade was 47 when he published his very controversial novel Justine. The list goes on and on… Here’s a article about 10 Great Literary Late Bloomers and here’s the website dedicated to Late Bloomers called Bloom. This should make me feel better, right?

But then my thoughts spiral into, maybe I’m just a really crappy writer. Who am I to be giving other writers advice? How do I dare to run a writing group and an open mic? I wonder why I even bother writing since all the great things have already

Self-doubt sucks. So, dear reader, I pose this question to you: What do you do when self-doubt comes creeping around?
  

*All of the stories that my mom transcribed for me, along with about two thirds of my earlier writing, was lost in the basement flood of 1995. That was a terrible year.
**I have started writing about that. So meta!

***I’ve never been good at the, “get up first thing and write every day”, philosophy since I am not at all a morning person.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Exciting Publishing News for "Lobster Girl"

My wee story "Lobster Girl" will be published in May in the second issue of Hair Trigger 2.0! They gave me some great edits that I'll be going through the next few days. I'm so delighted!

Here's a little peek:


Shrugging, Tony set the phone on the desk as he stood up. “So just black coffee, huh?”

Taking his seat, Michael nodded. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
Tony sighed. “I kinda liked the irony of it all.”

Michael cracked his left eye partially open. “What irony?”

Tony stared off into space, pulling at the thin goatee he had recently started sprouting. “I guess irony’s not the right word. Synchronicity? My boyfriend would know, he’s like an English major. But, you know, since this building is like the lobster building?”

Michael closed his eye again and settled back into his seat. “Yeah, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tony snorted. “Robusutā, it means lobster in Japanese. Huh, can’t believe you didn’t know that, dude! It’s like, in the brochure.” He laughed, shaking his head as he walked to the door.

It took a few minutes for Tony’s words to sink into his brain. Once they did, Michael sat up straight and stared at the phone. He’d never been one for signs or omens, but all these references to lobsters were just too weird.

Friday, March 31, 2017

Morning Musings #3: Writing Problem

My biggest problem when it comes to writing* is that I have TOO MANY things that I want to work on. 

Example: I NEED to finish editing The Peculiar Predicament of Poppets, but the story "Transmissions from Mars" keeps telling me things I don't want to forget and once I jot those ideas down, I want to work on that. Then there's the super political, very dark and highly satirical "Nobody's Property" story that I want to write about an extreme feminist group called Vagina Denta taking over the White House. On top of that, as I get stories ready to send off, I keep needing to edit those too... 

I've been told that it's a good problem to have and I agree. I'm glad that I never have to struggle for ideas. I am blessed, I am privileged, I am prolific. But sometimes, I'd really like to control the flow. (Did this suddenly become a feminine products commercial?)

*aside from that not getting published thing. But as long as I'm sending my writing out, that's not on me.

Friday, March 3, 2017