Writing–Rewarding Efforts

August 8, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Swimming medals (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve read in more than one place that writers should reward themselves for the little accomplishments they have along the way of bigger successes. They should do that because writing is a long slog from first draft to publication and while you’re doing it, it feels like you’re doing it for nothing. You put in all of this work and in the end, you might not see a dime for it. Rewarding yourself during the process helps alleviate that hopeless feeling that tends to creep up when you’re not looking.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Eating some ice cream at the end of a first draft, drinking some wine after slogging through revisions, playing a video game after meeting the day’s word count, or going out with some friends after submitting that short story is great. It’s a nice motivator to get through the hard parts and it’s a nice release once you do. Whatever reward you come up with, good on ya. Whatever flips your skirt and rocks your boat.

I’ll just be over here wishing I could do the same thing.

I don’t reward myself. At all. Ever. Even on the rare occasion that a short story gets accepted somewhere, the most I do is pause for a fist pump and then get back to work.

Why?

I guess it’s because of the way I was raised. Yes, of all the things to blame on my parents, I blame not eating pizza after finishing a first draft of a novel. But it’s true. My parents didn’t believe in rewarding us kids for things we were supposed to do. I didn’t get an allowance for cleaning my room. I was supposed to do that. I didn’t get a trip to Dairy Queen for making good grades. I was supposed to do that. I remember when I was a kid finding out that my friends got paid a dollar amount for A’s and B’s. I asked my parents why I didn’t get paid like that.

I was supposed to do that.

So here I am, 32 years old, been writing most of my life, and while I approve of the idea of getting a treat for finishing a first draft or revisions or submitting or accomplishing anything, big or small, related to a writing career, I can’t bring myself to participate because…I’m supposed to do that.

I’m supposed to finish that first draft and finish those revisions and submit that story and do that research and this, that, and the other. It’s part of my job. I don’t get rewarded for supposed to’s.

I would imagine that my attitude won’t change much when (not if!) I get my first novel published.

Because as a writer, that’s what I’m supposed to do. And as I writer, I’m supposed to write another.

So, I’d better get on it.

There’s no time for me to celebrate supposed to’s.

Writing–August Projects

August 1, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

My focus in August is going to be finishing the revisions/rewrites on The World (Saving) Series. I’ve got less than ten chapters to go and while the rewriting is going to be heavy, it shouldn’t take me the whole month to finish.

I started two short stories at the end of last month, “Just Visiting” and “Lady on the Stairs” which I’ll be finishing as well.

And then…?

I need to get back to working on the Ivy novel. Things got derailed when I did my writing protest for a week last month. I’m not sure how much I like the outline/write/revise method. I think that’s where part of my writing frustration came from. I may just finish the outline and then write the rest of the novel so I can call it done. As it stands, I’ve written/revised over half of it so I wouldn’t be in horrible shape if I did it that way.

I’ve got half a mind to start outlining another big project. It’d be a freebie for the blog. However, I make no guarantees that anything will ever come of it. It’s just something I’m thinking of doing.

And of course, I continue on with the 50 Rejections saga. It’s been rather disappointing lately. I don’t want to talk about it now.

I’ll wait until I can go on and on at length in a post of its own.

Writing–Negative Reviews

July 25, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s kind of blown up lately in the writing community concerning writers attacking readers because they leave less than favorable reviews on their books. If you Google “Goodreads negative reviews” you find all sorts of information and opinions on this business.

Now I’ve only had a few short stories published. I self-published a book of my short stories. I’ve posted some freebie short stories on my blog. Even with ALL of this material out there (I’m being facetious), I’ve never received a negative review.

I’ve never even been told that I suck, at least not in relation to my writing.

However, I have a feeling that I’ll be able to handle negative reviews. Why? Because I worked in retail.

Here are a few examples of how working in retail and receiving negative reviews are similar:

I can’t find anything in this store/Why did you move everything around = I didn’t care for the pacing/theme/characters/story. This is a constructive complaint. When people would complain about not being able to find things and moving things around, it didn’t bother me much. First of all, I heard it so much it no longer held any meaning. Secondly, I agreed with them. No one hated moving things around more than the employees because then we had to move it, had to remember where it was, and had to deal with the complaints.

Likewise, people that don’t like a character, pace, or theme of a story provide an alternative perspective from all of the people slobbering all over my work. “Like” is a subjective thing and I can’t please everyone. There might be something I can learn from the people I’m not pleasing, providing they can present their point intelligently. If they can’t, well then, it’s going to hold no meaning for me.

I’ll shop somewhere else = I don’t like anything you write. If you want to shop somewhere else, somewhere that pleases you, then by all means, go and do just that. Likewise, if you don’t like anything I write, then please stop wasting your time with me and go read something by an author that you’ll enjoy. I appreciate you giving me a try, but if things aren’t working out, then we need to go our separate ways.

The one big difference between these two scenarios is that if you don’t like anything I write, I admit I’m a little bummed that my writing to jive with you; if you want to shop somewhere else, please do, and take your attitude with you (though I know you and your attitude will be back next week).

You suck = You suck. Yeah, “you suck” and really any sort of name calling, trolling, or self-entitled whining are pretty much the same no matter what the circumstance. These negative reviews are as prevalent as the people that insulted me while I worked retail and for very similar reasons. On the Internet, a person can hid behind the mask of anonymity and be a raging jack ass without fear of consequences or punishment. Working retail, people think they can treat you like garbage because you work a crap job and the customer is always right.

Well, the customer isn’t always right (and no retail gig I’ve ever had has paid me enough to put up with personal abuse and I didn’t and when I didn’t, I was accused by said asshole customer of being rude, go figure) and neither is a reviewer.

Thankfully, through the virtue of slogging in retail for several years, that when my first negative review comes, I’ll be prepared and I’ll know exactly how to handle it.

I’ve got the coping skills already in place.

Writing–Moving On Up

July 18, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Okay, the title of this post is misleading because in truth I am not going anywhere. What has “moved on up” is a couple of items now gracing the link bar up top right underneath my lovely banner.

Notice the additions?

Here, I’ll help.

First of all, I’ve moved the links to the stories I’ve had published from the sidebar to the top. They were buried down there like I was ashamed of them and there’s no telling how many people missed them because there weren’t prominently displayed. So now if you click on the “Read me” link above, you’re taken right to the list. And the freebies are listed first, in case you’re not ready for a monetary commitment (hopefully reading the freebies will convince you to invest a little green in my work, you know what I’m saying?).

The second change is the addition of a new experiment under the heading “Chapter One”. This is a feedback experiment. All I’ve done is posted the first chapter of one of my novel manuscripts and asked a simple question: Would you read more of this book?

This accomplishes two things. One, it satisfies my need for feedback, positive or negative. Writing is lonely and a lot of it is done without any sort of encouragement or acknowledgement of any kind. When you get to a point in which you wonder whether or not you should be spending all of your time on this project, a little feedback helps, preferably honest feedback.

Yes, I realize that I’m setting myself up for serious disappointment if a bunch of people tell me that they wouldn’t read any more of the book. However, that’s not going to discourage me from finishing the rewrites and revisions. I want it to be done and it’s going to be done. It might, though, seriously discourage me from trying to get it published. But that’s a bridge that I’ll cross should I get there.

I think the bigger possibility is that no one will read the chapter at all. Or they might read it, but they won’t comment on it. And that’s a disappointment I’m used to and it’s not going to dissuade me much from going all the way with this book.

There’s something fun and risky about putting this first chapter out like this. It’s something I don’t normally do. My roommate reads a lot of my short stories when I’m in doubt, but my novel manuscripts are rarely seen by any other eyes. Letting it go like this is a step for me.

I’m pretty sure it’s a step in the right direction.

Writing–50 Rejections Update

June 27, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

We’re about half-way through the year and my goal of getting 50 rejections. I’d love to say that I’ve already made that goal. I’d love to say I’m even half-way there. Unfortunately, neither is the case.

In fact, I haven’t even broken double digits.

As of right now, I’ve gotten 8 rejections, 2 acceptances (“Soul Sister” which is up at Suburban Fool now and “Powerless” which should come out next year), and I’ve still got 6 short stories out that I’m waiting to hear back on.

I admit it. I haven’t been as productive as I hoped I’d be.

Well, that’s not exactly true. I HAVE been productive, just not so much on the short story front. But when it comes to the short stories, yeah, I haven’t been as much of a go-getter when it comes to sending them out. I’ve got 5 ready to go and a couple of them have been sitting there, waiting, for quite a while.

I’m back to that hang-up of struggling to find an appropriate place to send them. Obviously, I read guidelines and I try to adhere to them as closely as I can. I don’t like to waste people’s time. But I’m not the greatest judge of my own work and I’m sure that there are pieces I could submit to places, but I’m on the fence on whether or not they fit. They could, but then they couldn’t. That indecision is probably costing me in the rejection numbers (and possible acceptances).

It’s something I’ve got to work on, for sure.

I’m not giving up on my goal. Sitting here now, it looks like I don’t even have a shot at it. And that’s kind of a bummer. But I have trouble quitting on things, even if they are long shots. I’ve got to see them through until the end.

And this is one of those goals that even if I fail, I’m still going to be better off than if I’d never tried in the first place.

I’ve just got to keep going.

Writing–April Projects

April 4, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Last month my main goal was to get down a first draft of a personal essay that I want to submit to a contest. This month my main goal is to see if I can work that first draft into something I want to spend 25 dollars on in order to submit it to a contest. I believe the early bird deadline is May 1st. So, this will be fun. No pressure as I reserve the right not to submit an essay I don’t think is good enough to go since it will cost me 25 bucks to submit and right now money ain’t growing on trees.

Other April projects include revising “Gone Missing”, the not so short story. The first draft ended up being just about fifty pages, a little over 10,000 words. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with it. It’s hard enough for me to sell a story period. Trying to sell a longer story like this one ups the level of difficulty. I’m looking into the possibility of self-publishing it, say on Smashwords so it would be available strictly for e-readers, but my self-publishing success hasn’t been the greatest. But then, my publishing success in general is questionable, so really, I think I can hack it and break even either way.

I’ve also got a novel idea that has taken hold of my brain and won’t let go. I’ve got the basic plot, a subplot, the main characters (all except the bad guy…he doesn’t have a face or a name yet, but that will come, oh yes), and an idea of what I’m doing. I’ve already started working on an outline and jotted down a few scenes so I don’t forget them. Writing this a little a day will be a nice break from revising.

My quest to get 50 rejections this year continues. To check in, as of then end of March I have 3 rejections, 1 acceptance, 9 stories still out, and 2 ready to go. Obviously, more submitting will be done.

Let’s hope the next time I check in at the end of June, there’ll be more rejections (and acceptances!) counting towards my goal.

Writing–Short Story Long

March 21, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 3 Comments

I started writing a story at the beginning of the month tentatively titled “Gone Missing”. I’d had the idea for a long time for a story that centered around a town where missing people end up, but didn’t really have anything more than that. A few weeks ago the missing piece crashed down from idea-space, smacked in the brain, and I quickly jotted down the whole plot idea before I forgot it. I decided to start writing it as quickly as possible thinking it might be a good project to work on while struggling with my personal essay (that’s another post for another day).

Little did I know what my brain had wrought.

When I get an idea for a short story, it’s typically just that. Short. In fact, it’s been known to happen that what I think will be a decent sized short story turns out to be a piece of flash fiction. I have a tendency toward being short-winded (which sometimes causes me problems making word count during NaNoWriMo, but I digress). It’s been known that I’ve had to go back and add to my short story word count to make the minimum word count for a submission (“Land of the Voting Dead” is a published example of this).

So, I didn’t think anything of it when I started writing “Gone Missing”. I thought it might be on the longer side, like the first few drafts of “At 3:36” that hit between 14 and 20 pages. It was when I passed the 20 page point and realized that I wasn’t even half-way done yet that I knew I had something other than a short story on my hands.

Once it hit forty pages without hitting the climax, I figured that I had something close to a novella on my hands. It sure as heck wasn’t a short story anymore.

I’ve never written a novella before and really never had the urge to, so it seems fitting that I’d blunder into it on accident. When I begin the revisions of this short story gone long, I’m going to revise it with novella in mind. Just to see what a little intention can do for this long tale.

As it stands, I’m enjoying this pleasant surprise.

I love it when an idea that I think is good (and I think most of mine are) develops into something so much better.

Writing–Slowing Down

March 14, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

At the beginning of February I was all fired up to take on my short stories and get them all revised and polished up and sent out. About ten days in, the whole thing blew up in my face.

I didn’t want to look these stories anymore. I felt like even though I was spending a whole afternoon one one story, nothing was changing. The stories weren’t getting better and worse, they weren’t getting done. It was some weird limbo state in which I banged my head against the words and the words kept winning.

So I took a weekend off and didn’t look at the stories. When I came back to them on that Monday, I came back with a different approach. Instead of trying to sprint through the stories and rush to get them done, which did little in the way of progress, I slowed myself down. I only allowed myself to revise two pages of the story a day and worked on two or three stories at a time. The result? Progress.

By working on just those two pages of the story, I was able to focus my efforts. I blotted out the big picture and focused on just the details of those two pages. It worked. Oh, I still didn’t get as much done last month as I wanted to, but I did get things done, something that wouldn’t have happened if I had kept up with my frantic, flailing pace.

This is something I struggle with. I get in a hurry because I want to be done. Writing isn’t a sprint, but I sometimes treat it like one. I think I SHOULD be done by a certain time and then rush to make it happen. This sort of approach might work for NaNoWriMo or the first draft of a short story, when the brain just needs to dump the words on paper. But when it comes to revisions, that’s not something I should rush myself through. That’s when I need to take the time to focus and do it write. That’s when speed is my enemy, not my friend.

Right now I’m so desperate to get things going that trying to push myself along is really holding me back. I feel like I’m so far behind everyone else and can’t catch up, but I have to remember that this isn’t a race. This is just me. And I need to do my best.

Slowing down (and more importantly focusing) will help me do that.

Now I just have to remember that.

Writing–March Projects

March 7, 2012January 21, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

My dedication to short stories last month didn’t exactly work out as well as I’d hoped. I did manage to get four done, but only one submitted. Progress was made, but victory was not established.

Obviously, if I’m going to make my goal of getting 50 rejections this year, I’m going to continue to work on my short stories. But they won’t be the big project this month.

The focus this month will be on putting together the first draft of a personal essay I’m hoping to submit to a contest. I expect it to be difficult simply because I’m venturing into new territory (I’ve only written one other essay that I submitted to a different contest, and that was only done for the experience) and because I’m really going to be pushing myself to really put my emotions down on paper. But that’s another post for another day.

Last month, in taking a break from working on the short stories (I’ve got a post about the outcome of that, too, but for another day), I read the first few chapters of A Tale of Two Lady Killers. I was less than thrilled with the draft. But! I do have a couple of ideas that I might work on to give myself another project when the essay and short stories start to frustrate me.

March should prove to be an important month if only for the essay part. If I can put together a satisfactory first draft of it, I’m going to call that a big win.

Writing–When the Brain Has Other Plans

February 22, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

I have trouble with my brain sometimes.

Here’s an example:

Last month, I got pretty tired of rewriting Spirited In Spite. It turned into quite the slog that I couldn’t wait to get through. And while I was doing this slog, all I was thinking about was how much I wanted to work on my short stories. In fact, towards the end of the rewrite and the end of the month, I did start working on my short stories as a kind of reward for getting through the rewrites.

It was easy to come to the conclusion that I was going to spend February working on my short stories.

About a week and a half into the month, I was tired of looking at these short stories (to my credit, I had three of them ready to submit and one of those I DID submit) and wanted to work on something else.

For some reason, that happens. My brain acts like a spoiled child. It gets what it wants, plays with it a minute, and then immediately wants to play with something else. It’s ridiculous and frustrating and clashes with my stubborn self and need to adhere to the goals set for me.

This time, though, I decided to compromise. After submitting one of the short stories, I took a break from them. Instead, I took the weekend and read one of my novel manuscripts (A Tale of Two Lady Killers), making some notes on it. On Monday, I went back to the short stories. The break helped me avoid the feeling of slogging. It helped me to avoid resenting the goals I’d set for myself and in the long run, accomplish them.

I have to remember that my pig-headedness is an asset only when I use it correctly. I also have to remember to be flexible with my goals. Sometimes my spoiled brat brain has a good point and maybe a day or two spent indulging it is for the best.

It’s more cooperative when I compromise.