Tag: writing

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–Writing Around December

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Stephen King has said he writes every day, even on Christmas. I only wish I was as gifted. I don’t write every day. I tried, I failed, I found a schedule that works for me.

I’ve got a whiteboard in which I put a monthly schedule, four months at a stretch. For every month, I write down what I want to accomplish in that month. From there, I organize my projects further by writing in my day planner what I want to work on for a given day. Sometimes I can do this all at once at the beginning of the month; sometimes I go week by week. Either way, my projects get scheduled and I stick to that schedule (mostly). When it comes to short stories, I sometimes have a lot of things going on in one month. This helps keep me organized. I thrive on organization. It makes up for my declining memory.

The goal of this monthly system is to get things done and get a few days off. If I get everything done in a timely fashion, then I have a few days off at the end of the month to let my brain rest. The more efficiently I get my work done, the more time I have for resting and working on goof projects (projects that are purely for pleasure). The more I slack during the month, the less time off I have, if I get any at all.

For the most part, this scheduling system works out very well for me. December, however, is the notable exception. It’s the busiest leg of the Holiday Gauntlet and I always think I can manage my time better than I’m actually capable of and end up overscheduling myself, much to my disappointment. It’s no way to end a year.

This year I managed to wise up and gave myself a reduced schedule. So far, it’s working out very well. I’m accomplishing things without getting overwhelmed and stressed. Finally! The brains kick in and I do something smart!

With only one more item to go on my monthly writing to-do list, I’m taking this week off to enjoy the holiday and I’m doing it without guilt. Well, writing guilt, anyway.

Maybe one day I can work up to the writing stamina Stephen King has, but for now, I’m looking to end this year on a feel-good note and I’m good with that.

Stories By the Numbers

Ready: 3
Sent Out: 2
Rejected: 1 (“Erin Go Bragh”; the Universe wanted to prove the point I made in last weeks Writing Wednesday by sending me a “It’s not you, it’s me” rejection)

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–You Like Me! You Really Like Me!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Having a story accepted is as rare to me as being asked out on a date, but it’s pretty much a given that I’m more excited to have my story accepted than to be asked out, usually because the person asking me out isn’t someone that I want to date in the first place (but that’s another post for another day).

Toiling away, such that I do, pretty much in isolation because I’m terrible at networking and I’ve only got a few friends that are writers, selling a story becomes the bottom line for validation. Rejection is the rule of the day and I know I’ll see more of it than anything else. But, to open that email (or letter; I still do some snail mail subs that call for SASE) and read the words that I long to read, especially when I’m expecting rejection, is one of the most victorious moments in my short career. We’re talking fist pumping and saying, “Yes!” over and over like I just hit the walkoff home run to win the World Series. It’s the sign that I’m always looking for, the one that says that this isn’t just a hobby, that I’m good at this and I can make money doing this and most importantly, people want to read what I write. It’s that last one that boosts my ego the most.

The best part is that the feeling of jubilation and absolute victory hasn’t changed. Oh, maybe I’m a little more sophisticated in expressing those feelings (read: I don’t yell as loudly as I used to), but that warm, bubbly, my-day-has-been-made feeling is still the same. And I love it. And I can’t wait to put that feeling to the test with more acceptances to see if the feeling will ever fade or if it will only get better.

I look forward to doing this experiment.

Stories by the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3
Accepted: 1! “Sentries” will be published in the Library of Horror anthology Fearology 3: Planting the Seeds of Horror

Late Bloomer Blues II

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I wrote my first word at three and my first story at six, but I was twenty-eight before I fully committed myself to being a writer.

Oh, I’d thought about it over the years because I always wrote, stories, plays, and poems. But, I had a bit of ADD when it came to trying to figure out what I was going to spend the rest of my life doing because so many things have caught my interest over the years. Marine biology, meterology, acting, psychology, medicine, sociology. At one point, I considered them all. And I think the thing that frustrated my family the most was that I could have done all of them (though I don’t think I would have been the most successful actress because of my looks, or lack thereof) because I was smart enough to do any of it; I just didn’t have the attention span or the follow through.

My senior year of high school was the first time I actually made an attempt to be serious about my writing in the sense that I took a correspondence course on creative writing. It took a little over a year for me to complete and I got a nice shiny certificate in creative writing from it not long after I got my high school diploma, but I didn’t feel like I learned very much aside from the very important lesson that plot is a good thing and my stories could use it.

My first round of community college, I intended to major in English to work towards a degree in creative writing because that seemed logical. I’m a logical person and I think there must be logical steps to take to achieve goals and if I can find them, I’ll take them. Sometimes I’m terrible at finding them.

Majoring in English lasted one semester because instead of going back to school, I went to work. The next time I went to school, I was intending on majoring in sociology. The last time I went to school, I took every psyhcology course I could find.

It was the psychology courses that reawakened my desire to write (which had been squashed by a battle with depression and was slow to come back as I got my life back on track) because studying about these quirks of humanity made me want to write about them.

I started making time to write, started writing with the purpose to get published, started submitting my stories to contests and to publications. I got my first victory in 2008 when my story placed 10th in its category in a contest. That was the first time I really felt like maybe I had what it took to make a career out of writing.

And ever since then I’ve been kicking myself in the butt for not realizing it sooner. I feel like I’ve wasted time, especially when I see people much younger than I am land publishing deals or hear about some writers who’d been submitting their work since they were in their teens. I feel like starting my career at 28 puts me miles behind everyone else and miles behind where I should be.

Now every rejection feels like a setback that I should have suffered years ago and I’m too old to be dealing with it now. It’s like going through puberty years after all of my classmates. I feel so behind and I can’t catch up because in order for that to happen I’d need a DeLorien and a flux capacitor.

So until Santa brings me those things, I just keep plugging away, hoping to make up for lost time.

The late bloomer blues strike again.

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)

Suffering Seasons

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

The Cubs had a disappointing 2010 season and so did I. It has nothing to do with being a Cubs fan. It just so happens that we both had a similarly crappy year.

Like the Cubs going into Spring Training, I came into 30 so full of hope and ambition and promise. This was supposed to be my year, THE year, and I was going to make my waves and get things done and 30 was going to be a success. And like the Cubs getting hammered in their Opening Day game in Atlanta, it was very quickly apparent that was not going to be the case for me or them.

Very early on this year I realized that one of my worst fears had come true and that I had gained back most, if not all, of the weight I’d spent four years losing. I took a moment to berate myself and then I got myself a new exercise schedule, getting back into the moving groove that I had gotten out of the year before. It worked before; I was confident it would work again. Only it didn’t. Like Derrick Lee and Aramis Ramirez hitting 3rd and 4th in the line-up, my go to guys just weren’t producing. It wasn’t until August until I started seeing a change in my body and very tentitively thought that maybe I might have lost a few pounds, but because it took this long to lose so little, I’m not really encouraged about the long-term. I’d really rather not spend the next few years losing only ten pounds in 12 months. I need better production than that and it bugs me that I’m not getting it from my established methods.

The Cubs went into the season with four rookies, three of them in the bullpen and one of them on the bench. And they just kept adding them as the year dragged on.  I started off with a few rookies of my own; new short stories that I would send out. Success for all of us was pretty limited. “Land of the Voting Dead” was my Starlin Castro (it was the only story I sold); “Such a Pretty Face” is my Justin Berg (it had a little bit of success placing in a contest, but continues to struggle in getting properly published). But, I know that like rookies, you just keep sending them out there because they will benefit from the experience.  Meanwhile, I agonize for them and over them.

In July, Carlos Zambrano had a meltdown and ended up on the restricted list. My laptop beat him to the punch by a couple of weeks and my Internet beat him a few days. While Zambrano was off getting anger management therapy, I spent a month negotiating Christmas/birthday presents to get a new laptop, waiting on a hand-me-down desktop from my mother, and trying to wrangle an Internet service. After two false starts and nearly three weeks, we got it all straightened out. Unfortunately, as a result, I missed a couple of submission deadlines. The lack of computer also through a serious wrench in my writing mojo (though I did get caught up on my reading) that took me two months to reestablish. Zambrano made a much better comeback than I did.

Missing out on the deadlines hurt the worst because it meant I was missing out on potentially making some money. Like the Cubs with their expensive contracts, I got myself into my own monetary mess but not having a regular income since February of ’08. I know and accept that and I’m trying to work with what I have. The Cubs shed salary by trading Derrick Lee, Ryan Theriot, Mike Fontenot, and Ted Lilly (of all of these trades, losing Lilly broke my heart the most, even if we did get Blake DeWitt out of it). I ended up selling my action figures to make a buck, but still ended up borrowing money off of my dad more times than I’d like to make ends meet.

Without a doubt, the year has been rough and disappointing, but there were some bright spots. Where the Cubs had some promising rookies like Castro, Tyler Colvin, Andrew Cashner, Casey Coleman, and James Russell, surprisingly good returns from Carlos Silva and Marlon Byrd, and a strong finish to the season under Mike Quade, I got to meet up with family that I haven’t seen for a long time, spend lots of time with my young nieces, and cash in an early Christmas present from my mom: a trip to Wrigley to see the Cubs play.

Naturally, they lost 1-0 to the Giants.

But, that’s okay. It just further adds to my argument of how sympatico I was with my team. We suffered in different ways, but we suffered together. The 2010 Cubs will always have a special place in my heart because of that. Because of them, I didn’t have to suffer alone.

I appreciate that.

NaNoWriMo Update:

Total Word Count: 22,063

Chapter 1 Word Count: 2,239
Chapter 2 Word Count: 2,084
Chapter 3 Word Count: 2,163
Chapter 4 Word Count: 2,108
Chapter 5 Word Count: 2,100
Chapter 6 Word Count: 2,083
Chapter 7 Word Count: 2,032
Chapter 8 Word Count: 2,041
Chapter 9 Word Count: 2,342
Chapter 10 Word Count: 2,870