Tag: writer’s doubt

Writing–Conquering Chapter 11

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It is with great relief that I can announce that I finally finished the revisions on chapter 11 of The World (Saving) Series. This would hardly be worth note if I hadn’t been stuck on it for two months (or longer).

It’s a small (very small) victory of sorts. It’s progress where there hasn’t been any for a while. It’s a small step back on the right track.

It makes me feel like a writer again, something I haven’t been feeling very much like lately. With the stress of the day job eating up my energy, and my committment to blogging both here and at Two Foulweather Fans, it feels I don’t have enough brain cells and minutes left to be creative. The writer’s doubt really settled in.

Finally getting through chapter 11 (as rough as it still is, the necessary story changes have been made and that was my main goal) relieved a little of that doubt and reminded me that I am a writer and that I can do this. It reminded me that I WANT to do this. That I want to put myself in the position to write full-time again and the only way I can do that is by writing part-time now and getting this book done.

I’m not saying that this book will make me a millionaire (wouldn’t that be nice), but I do know that I can’t even begin to sell it if it isn’t finished.

And I’m determined to get it finished.

Chapter 11 done. Bring on chapter 12.

Writing–Rejection Persistence

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

As of last week, “Such a Pretty Face” has been rejected seven times since it placed 10th in the genre category of the Writer’s Digest Story Competition. Of all of the rejections I’ve received, the rejections for this story have been the most frustrating.

The little bit of success I got with this story, really the first bit of success I had as a writer, was enough to make me think that I had the talent and the skill to be a writer in terms of making a career of it. It gave me the confidence to keep sending out stories, to keep writing and revising, to keep accepting the challenges and rejections with the ultimate goal of acceptance. This story really started the ball rolling for me in terms of my writing career.

So it really knots my panties that I can’t seem to get it published. It was good enough to beat out 90 other people for a spot in the top ten, but not good enough to be seen in print.

The rational side of me knows that’s not necessarily the case and that rejection is subjective. It might not be the story the editor is looking for and that’s okay. It’s a difference of opinion, not a slight on the story.

But the irrational, emotional side of me wants to know what I’m doing wrong. Why is this story suddenly not good enough? Why doesn’t anyone like it? Why can’t I get this thing published? And then I start questioning whether or not I should keep sending it out.

Persistence is a big part of success in the writing business. I know that. Every writer and writing magazine says so and I believe it. It’s logic. But there comes a point when I start questioning the persistence and start to think that maybe the story isn’t meant to published.

I hit that point with “Such a Pretty Face” at about rejection number four. I started questioning the wisdom in sending the story out. I had my bit of success with it and maybe that’s all I was meant to have with this story. It’s kind of an odd, illogical thought, but one that I have when I get back that rejection. I’m prone to those odd thoughts.

I keep sending it out, though, because I keep coming across anthologies that I think might be a good fit for it. And I’m always disappointed more with those rejections than any other story.

I once again received a rejection for “Such a Pretty Face” and I’m once again debating the wisdom of sending it back out again. But, it’s in the ready pile, waiting. Because I know I’ll come across someplace irresistable and I’ll send it out.

And I’ll dread the rejection that may come back.

Stories By The Numbers

 -Submitted: 2
-Ready: 9
-Accepted/Rejected: o

Writing–June Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

May was terrible. I got nowhere fast and I feel like I’m just digging myself into a deeper hole that I won’t be able to get out of one day. My priorities are shot. I need a do over.

But enough writer’s doubt and whining. I’ve got June and if I can escape the computer problems that have plagued me the past two years, here is what I’d like to do:

-Keep revising The World (Saving) Series. I have got to gain some ground on it.

-Write/revise/post another Outskirts story.

That’s it. I’m pushing everything else off. Just those two things. I have got to find some focus and I’m taking this month to do it. I’ve either got to recommit myself or I’ve got to resign myself to the day job.

Choice needs to be made.

I’d better choose wisely.

Stories By The Numbers

-Submitted: 3 (Sent out “Customer Service”)
-Ready: 7
-Accepted/Rejected: 0

Writer’s Doubt

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

There are times when I don’t feel good enough. I look at what I’m working on and think it’s garbage and I don’t know how to fix it. I have no clue what I’m doing. Nobody is going to want to read this story. Everyone else is doing so much better than I am. Why do I keep bothering with this? I’m no good. I’m not a writer.

Ah, writer’s doubt. I know that feeling so well. It hits me at least once a month, sometimes just momentarily, sometimes it lingers for days. It could be a devestating, debilitating thing if I weren’t so stupidly stubborn and unable to leave things unfinished that I can’t walk away. Which works out in my favor, of course, as persistence is a big part of success as a writer.

But there are times when I’m not feeling very successful. I’m not feeling inspired. I’m not even feeling coherent. In those times of struggle, and like I said, they happen more often than I’d like, that doubt creeps up into the back of my mind like a spider looking for a soft spot to lay her eggs. Those are the times that I start comparing myself to other writers. I look at who’s getting published, what they’re getting published, and then I look at my little list of credits and wonder what the hell I’m doing.

Then I look at what I’m writing and wonder the same damn thing.

It’s a frustrating part of the writing game. I try not to let it get to me. I remind myself about the persistence factor. I remind myself to be patient. I remind myself that not every story I’ve ever written is crap and there is nothing wrong with the places that have published my work. They have good taste.

(Does anyone have that problem? Not only do you doubt yourself, but you doubt anyone on your side, too? I wouldn’t be surpised if I’m the only one and I hope I don’t offend anyone with my issues.)

I have no fool-proof method to combat it. I just keep plugging away and try to ignore that voice in my head that says I suck. I admit that some days the doubt manages to slow me down. It roughs me up. It makes me question my commitment to this writing life.

And that’s where the doubt stops. I don’t want to be doing anything else. I want to be writing something. Short stories, novels, blog posts, personal essays, non-fiction, articles, whatever. I want to be writing. I would be writing even if I wasn’t getting published.

Knowing that, recognizing it, really helps me get back on the mule and keep going.

And sometimes, if I’m lucky, the mule kicks the doubt for good measure.

Stories By The Numbers

Submitted: 1 (only “Such a Pretty Face” is still out)
Ready: 8
Accepted: 1! “Playing Chicken” will be published in the Library of Horror anthology Made You Flinch–Again!

Writing–Writing With a Day Job 2: The Revenge

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

My initial enthusiasm for the challenge of writing with a day job, essentially working two jobs, lasted all of a few days.  Everything went downhill pretty quickly after that.

In short, February was a disaster.

I didn’t edit one chapter of The World Saving Series. I had a list of short stories that needed work.  After struggling with rewrites on “The Guinea Pig” for a week in order to meet a deadline, I gave up when I finally realized that story just wasn’t going to do what I needed it to do. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t spent the week before that struggling with rewrites on another story that I ended up not rewriting.  Three short stories that I needed to review/revise got pushed into March, therefore really pushing the deadlines on those pieces.

February led me to question whether or not I really was committed to being a writer. With some of the urgency gone now that I have stable income, I was left to wonder if I was just writing for the money and now that I’m getting the money, would I eventually stop writing.

Maybe it’s just me wanting to believe the best in myself (which is pretty unlikely), but I don’t think that’s the case.

After all, I started this crusade in earnest when I was still working at my last job. I wrote for about six months while working part-time in retail with little trouble. The difference was the situation. Then I was working part-time and had only a few short stories that I was writing and revising. Now I’m working full time and I have probably a dozen short stories in the mix and at least three novels in various stages (that haven’t been lost to the two computer crashes that happened a year apart). The motive and goal is still the same: to establish a successful writing career. The situation is the only thing that’s changed.

I think it’s going to take some trial and error to find out what the right work load is now that I’m working full time. I’m also going to have to work smarter. I can’t spend so much time battling one story with no payoff. And I’m going to have to accept that I’m going to be tired sometimes after a long day in the cube and just get my writing done anyway. A little progress is better than no progress and I need all the progress I can get.

But the key is going to be the workload. I can’t keep scheduling my months like I’m not spending forty hours a week doing something else.

I need to meet myself half-way.

Stories By The Numbers

Submitted: 3 (just sent out “Another Deadly Weapon”; “Summer Rot” and “Such a Pretty Face” are still out)
Ready: 4 (“Husband and Wife”, “Elevator”, “Bigger Than a Squirrel”, and now “Erin Go Bragh”)
Rejected: 1 (“Spillway”)

Writing–Deadlines: Breaking Them

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I don’t like to break deadlines, but I will. In some cases, it’s extenuating circumstances. I’m sick or I have to take my roommate to the emergency room or I suddenly find myself in high demand because if people didn’t respect my writing career as my only job, they sure as hell don’t respect it as my second one.

And then sometimes, it’s just me.

It doesn’t happen much with the first drafts. With first drafts I can just throw crap on the page knowing that I can fix it during revisions.

It happens during revisions more than I’d like. Part of that is because I’d like it to never happen. The other part of that is because sometimes I just don’t like a story. It’s hard to motivate myself if there’s no love. I’m more likely to give up on it all together than try to push myself through it. I don’t intend to write stories that I hate, but sometimes it’s during the revision process that I realize that the original idea wasn’t so great and I’m not sure I want to even bother with it. The deadline comes and I’m not too heartbroken about missing it. It’s a good excuse to put the story away until one day, maybe, I can find my heart for it again.

Sometimes I’m just sick of a story. I’ve seen it so much, put it through so many revisions, that the idea of opening it up one more time makes me want to slam my head in a door. “At 3:36” is one of those stories for me. I’ve revised it and revised it to the point that if I put it on my to do list (it’s up for review in March) that I cringe and put it off until the last because I don’t want to deal with it. I’ve broken a deadline or two for that story.

And then there are stories that I’m just plain stuck on. I have no idea what needs to be done to it to improve it, or I do know what needs to be done, but I just don’t know how to do it. Those are the stories that I sit and stare at and go to bed with and watch helplessly as the deadline creeps up, then looms, then passes me by, grinning as it goes.

Those are the worst. Those are the ones that make me question myself as a writer, question my talent and my dedication.

And then I make my next deadline by three days and I’m really pleased with the result and it totally erases the bitter taste in my mouth.

Thankfully, I make more deadlines than I miss so this sort of internal, self-inflicted drama is minimal. Best to save it for the stories.

Writing–Social Anxiety Network

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A big part of a writing career these days is networking. Getting to know fellow writers, making connections with them that could lead to making connections with other people in the business, other writers, agents, publishers, editors.

Networking is also how writers today build a fanbase and attract attention. Through Twitter and Facebook and other fabulous internet socializing tools, writers can sell themselves and their work to the readers they’re hoping to attract.

This is all well and good. It’s a great way to connect with readers and it’s a great way to connect with others in the writing business. It brings down walls and makes the writing feel less lonely. Many writers, even the most shy ones, thrive doing this sort of thing.

However, I am not one of these people.

As ridiculous as it sounds (particularly if you follow me on Twitter), I have social anxiety on the Internet. For most people, the anonymity of the Internet allows them to be more outspoken, more bold. While that does apply to me in certain situations (again, Twitter), that anonymity doesn’t cover them all.

For example, other blogs. I read other blogs, but unless I know the person, I rarely comment. Even if I do know the person, that doesn’t mean I’ll comment. Sometimes I have nothing to say and I really don’t want to force something just for the sake of conversation. Most of the time, I don’t feel comfortable with commenting. I don’t feel smart enough, established enough, or legit enough to share my two cents. I feel awkward coming out of lurkerdom to comment as there is no established rapport. I’m just a stranger stopping by and saying a few words without introduction.

Which is just silly because I don’t feel that way about people who comment on my blog (or reply or retweet me on Twitter). Once I get over the shock that people are actually reading and not everything I babble just disappears into a void, I’m cool with it. I don’t know why I’d feel differently with the roles switched.

It takes me a while to warm up, I suppose.

I’m focusing on blogs because I’m a little more vocal on Twitter, but there’s still a certain amount of anxiety and awkwardness in following people and responding to certain people’s tweets. As much as I’d like to be one of the cool kids, I never have been, never will be, and I still get nervous, even on the Internet, when it comes to talking to them.

It’s a silly little thing, but it’s one that’s holding me back and is going to continue holding me back unless I overcome it. Naturally, that’s what I intend to do.

I prefer to have making an ass of myself on Twitter be my biggest social problem.

Stories By The Numbers

Stories Submitted: 3
Stories Ready: 3
Acceptances/Rejections: 0

Writing–First Draft Love/Hate

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I have such a love/hate relationship with writing a first draft.

The love comes from the excitement I get from finally getting this idea that’s been drifting around in my head for days/weeks/months down on paper. Breathing life into my characters, letting the story unfold, putting in that little twist or three, filling in the details, giving myself something substantial to work with in revisions that makes the first draft worthwhile for me and makes up for the hate part.

Oh, and there’s so much I hate about writing the first draft.

Rarely does it ever come out right the first time. It’s not supposed to, I know that. That’s the point of a first draft. But, it frustrates me to no end when I can’t get what’s in my head onto the page, when the words I put on the paper don’t do my idea justice. The characters are two-dimensional, the mood isn’t right, the beginning is flat, the ending is awkward, and in my longer works there’s ALWAYS too much telling and not enough showing. The perfectionist in me hates it when I can’t get it rigth the first time. Of course, I know that’s what revisions are for and I’m one hell of a revisor. I actually like revising my first draft more than writing it most of the time. I love making something great out of something lackluster, and in some cases absolutely craptacular.

(Wait, weren’t we talking about hate? Damn love sneaking in there.)

The flip-side of this particular hate is that on the rare occurances that my first draft does go well and does adhere to my vision pretty closely, it worries me. It makes me think that I’m missing something, that I’m overlooking some glaring flaw that won’t be found until the story is rejected three or four times and then I finally see it and end up absolutely ashamed that I sent it out looking like that. Let the agony of self-doubt begin as I stare at that first draft wondering why more doesn’t demand to be rewritten.

First drafts, at least for me, are truly writer’s hell. I’ve yet to find a way to skip over that part and get right down to the revising. And if it wasn’t for the little bits of writing a first draft that I love, I’d be really bitter about that.

Stories By the Numbers

Stories Out: 2
Stories Ready: 3

Writing–Rejection Subjective

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

One of my biggest obstacles to changing my writing from hobby to job was the fear of rejection. I don’t do well with failure. Even as a kid it gave me serious anxiety. I’d be so afraid of failing or making a mistake that I’d just freeze and wouldn’t do anything. Then once I was forced to actually do it and found out that even if I did make a mistake or fail, it wasn’t the end of the world and then I had no troubles.

Writing was no different. The idea of being rejected (and therefore, not good enough) stopped me cold in my tracks. It was the combination of entering contests (because in my head that’s not being rejected, it’s just not winning, and I can handle not winning) and reading Stephen King‘s On Writing that helped me get past my rejection fear.

The first story that ever brought me any kind of validation that I might be good writing was “Such a Pretty Face”. It won 10th place in the Genre category of a Writer’s Digest story contest. It got me 25 bucks, but didn’t get the story published (I did get to see my name in print in a magazine, though, and that was pretty cool). I was really proud of the acoomplishment and proud of the story. I then decided to try to get “Such a Pretty Face” published.

And that’s when I learned a valuable lesson in rejection. It’s a subjective thing.

Despite placing in the contest, “Such a Pretty Face” has been rejected six times since then. SIX! You’d think that 10th place showing would count for something. It’s a GOOD story. Someone told me so. I’ve got a certificate to show for it.

It was very frustrating to have one person say the story was worthy of a ribbon, but everyone else not think it was worthy of being read.

Of all the rejections I’ve received for “Such a Pretty Face”, only one suggested I make any changes to it. The changes he suggested made me realize that he totally missed the point of the story. And that made me realize that I was forgetting the human element of the submission process.

Not every rejection I get is because the story was bad. Sure, I’ve sent out stories I shouldn’t have and they were rejected for very good reasons. But some rejections left me scratching my head. Now I realize that maybe those form looking rejections might not have all been form rejections and maybe they meant it when they said these weren’t the stories that they were looking for.

It seems silly, but up until that point it didn’t occur to me that someone just might not like my story. I never thought that maybe it might not what they were looking for or they’d already seen too many similar stories lately or they didn’ t think the story fit with the publication as well as I did. Yes, until that point, I didn’t realize that rejection might not have anything to do with the quality of the story.

If you’ve read any of my other blog posts, it should be no suprise that I am this slow on the uptake.

So  my attitude towards rejection has changed a bit. It’s still disappointing, but now that I know that it doesn’t automatically mean that my story is shit, the sting doesn’t linger quite as long. Getting back on that horse is quicker and easier.

And if it’s the last thing I do, I will see “Such a Pretty Face” published.

Stories By the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3

Writing–A Change in Plans

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Submitting my short stories is always a stressful activity to me. Not so much the actual submitting, but the finding of ezines, magazines, and anthologies to submit to is stressful for me. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and I have concluded that I’m just terrible at it.

I don’t think I’m a very good judge of my own work in terms of establishing that it’s a good fit for a publication. I typically teeter on the fence of decision for a bit before finally falling to the side of NO. Rarely do I hit on a publication that just screams PERFECT at me so loudly that I cannot deny it (we’ll just never mind the inevitable rejection). It’s when I get to the end of my futile search empty-handed that I start to wonder if the story I’ve written is just impossible to publish because it doesn’t fit anywhere. And then I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere in my writing career. This torture has made researching publications my least favorite part of being a writer.

After my latest round of torture, I decided that I needed to change my plan.

My usual tactic was to hit up Duotrope as soon as I had a story (or two or three) ready to submit, paw through the listings looking for a fit, and get incredibly discouraged if I couldn’t find something so I could submit the story that day.

My revised plan will be a little less stressful, a little more laid back, but hopefully (in the long run, at least) be more productive. I’ll keep a list of stories that are ready to go. I’ll hit up Duotrope once a week. If I find something, great. If not, there’s always next week. Meanwhile, I can continue to add to my ready list and not feel entirely like I’m failing.

This less-pressure method might work for me. It might not. But I’ve got to try something new because the old method isn’t working for me. And I’ve got to be more willing to acccept that something isn’t working and come up with a new game plan.

I’m a bit of goat when it comes to insisting on doing things the hard way.

As NaNoWriMo is done for me for yet another year, I propose to introduce a new Writing Wednesday feature to help keep me publicly accountable for my short stories. It will account for the number of stories I have done, the stories I have out, and any acceptances or rejections I get for the week, on the occasion that I get them (those are few and far between most of the time, but rejections are more likely than acceptances).

Stories by the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3
Rejections: 3 (no response)