Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling

Do you remember the first book you read, the one that touched you so deeply, disturbed or excited you to the point where you found yourself unable to put it down? You picked it up again in every spare moment, you thought about it when you weren’t reading it. You fought against rushing to finish, devouring every phrase, every detail.

My son is reading a series of books about warrior cats. He’s a book lover like his parents. His love affair started when, at four, he and I read Junie B Jones together and now at 11, he’s already gone through the Harry Potter books, the Lemony Snicket series, the Titans and the cat warriors. He realizes the power of the written word. He understands how picking up a book can be transformative but also appreciates a good old fashioned bit of entertainment too.

He and I were talking about how some books are just better than others and about how that can be different depending on who you are. He asked me about those books that captured my imagination. I told him about the first time I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer. A slim book. Gibson is the kind of author who uses one word when another author would use twelve. I love that bare bones style and I think it’s why I’ll pick up Gibson instead of Stephenson every time (although I understand the appeal of Stephenson, I prefer Gibson’s style). I remember picking up Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon and reading it, stumbling upon a passage I had to re-read four times because it was so vivid.

Words are my drug, my lure. I love them. I love to read them and I love to write them. As we near the end of this challenge, I realize how distracted I’ve felt during these last 70+ days. But when I went through to get a wordcount early last week I realized I made my goal count as well as finishing multiple proposals, I completed several rounds of copy edits, final pass pages, AAs, edits, and I wrote and finished some novellas and a novel. It has been a particularly frenetic period for me complete with a few moments of authorial panic about numerous things.

But in the end, the words lured me back home. I trusted them to get me through and they continue to do so. Thank goodness.

Yikes, so writing can often be like the weather. You kow it’s all nice and calm and suddenly you’re hit with three storms in a row, two days of sun and so much rain the whole state floods. Or maybe you can tell I live in Western Washington, LOL.

Anyway, what I mean is sometimes you have heaps to do and you’re working and working and then you have quiet periods when it seems like all your ideas and work seem far far away and then right as you’re falling asleep you come up with a new idea.

Get up and write it down. Even if you can’t start on it now, get those keywords down, the feelings or atmosphere type stuff that gives a story its own unique feel and flavor. And then you can write it. This happened to me twice in the last few months and I’m actually finally able to get to them both now.

Sometimes you have to resist the shiny new idea but that doesn’t mean it should be repressed altogether, sometimes it just needs to be made ready for when you do have time.

We’re going into the last weeks of the challenge! Less than a month to go now and I hope this has been a positive experience for people, regardless of what’s on that number meter. I hope that this challenge has helped you all put your writing in a place of importance, that you’ve made it a regular part of your life and made it your work.

So far during the challenge I’ve done just about every step in the writing process. I’ve written proposals, synopses, I’ve finished books and done rounds of edits, I’ve had copy edits and final pass pages and now I am working on a co-written book and starting a new project.

During this challenge, I’ve not achieved as many words as I have before but I’ve made writing my business and my work every day and that’s what is important. Well, that and finishing what I’m supposed to when I’m supposed to, which I’ve done, thank goodness!

Writing is solitary in many ways but that doesn’t mean you don’t compare yourself to others. It’s inevitable in many ways and I try to make it as positive as I can when it comes up.

Instead of looking at someone else’s words and thinking “oh they have less kids or more time, they write faster, they have more supportive families” whatever - it’s totally necessary to live your own life and walk your own path because you will only have your circumstances.

So I leave you with this awesome quote from Steve Jobs:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

In truth, I’ve found that any day’s routine interruptions and distractions don’t much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.
Stephen King - On Writing

King’s On Writing is probably my favorite writing book ever. It’s not so much a technical how to but a successful writer talking about writing in a very personal sense. I highly recommend it! He’s got a very no nonsense approach, which I appreciate. Because really, it’s all about just doing it.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up
Anne Lamott

Lamott’s Bird By Bird is another book on writing I love. Also a very personal, non technical approach by a writer talking about writing.

In truth, there’s a lot of joy to the process if you realize it’s about effort and heart and realizing life is PART of the process, even when it’s an impediment.

Any favorites from your library?

Every writer I know has trouble writing. ~Joseph Heller

It’s hitting some of us right about now. The words become harder. The little voice in the back of your mind becomes more critical and the pace slows. Doubt might even be sneaking in - should I just pack it in now? Should I wait until the next challenge? Am I cut out to do this? Is this story even worth finishing?

Guess what? Every single writer I know has had doubts. Has looked up from the screen where they’ve stared at the nineteen words it’s taken her four hours to write, and delete, and write again.

Sometimes it is tough to keep going. Sometimes the words are like ticks and they do not want to be dug from your brain, from your fingers and put on the page.

Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head. ~From the movie Finding Forrester

And when that happens I just keep working. I make myself sit there and type those nineteen words and I make myself stop deleting them. I make myself write the book and eventually, after I did it a few times I realize that for me anyway, at least once a book, sometimes more, I hit a wall where the story eludes me, where it feels like I’m reciting a bunch of words that mean absolutely diddly poop. And I make myself keep going because when I finish the first draft I can go back and fix it.

You can’t fix it if you quit. You can’t fix it if you don’t finish so the only option is to forge through and remember editing and revision are your friends! Writing is a process. It’s more than just the fevered love affair you have when the story is working, it’s also the tough times, the moments of doubt, when you’re not so sure you love that darned book so much anymore and a new project seems so shiny and young. Writing is work. So keep at it and I’ll see you at the finish line.

(one of my friends sent me an email last week. In it, she told me how hard it was to write and how she felt like her muse was on vacation and maybe she’d do NaNo and Sven next year but just now she was tired and uninspired. This is what I sent her and she wrote me back and said I should post it at Sven as long as I didn’t use her name, LOL. BTW, she didn’t quit and she’s been managing 1K a day!)

It’s work, plain and simple. Yes, sometimes it feels magical, it feels effortless and the words just fall from your fingers, but most of the time, it takes dedication and ambition. Being an author isn’t just about writing, it’s about promoting and always thinking about the future. It’s about realities like rejection and sometimes it’s about envy and dejection.

When it’s perfect, those moments when you see a spine bearing your name on a shelf at borders, when you get a letter from a reader or a bookstore owner contacts you to say you’re a favorite at their store - those moments carry you through.

So please, don’t tell me writing is hard after a week of effort. I know it’s hard. I do it every day. Instead, suck it up and realize the end product makes it worth the effort. That nothing is better than “the end” Well nothing until you sell the thing! That’s pretty awesome too. But every author has trunk books - those books they love, books they think are awesome but simply don’t sell. In the end, every book you write makes you a better writer.

There are no sparkly muses. I know this is not a popular opinion but it’s my opinion nonetheless. There are no perfect moments, at least not in enough quanitity to finish a book! It’s about work. It’s about pushing yourself to get another hundred or five hundred words before you shut down for the day. It’s about not allowing yourself to watch that movie or check your email until you finish the chapter or the scene.

I’m a hardass about this, I know. Yes, I believe in mentoring and supporting but sometimes, people need a smack with the hard palm of reality. I’m f***ing so tired right now, my kids were a trial today and my husband has been working 16 hour days for the last month. But I got my words in anyway. That’s the only way I can finish this book. Bit by bit, word by word, paragraph by paragraph until I reach the end. And then I edit and revise and then it goes away to an editor.

And I start a new book, LOL.

Writing is an amazing thing. I am soooo blessed to be able to do it and to make a go of it. But it’s work. Nothing worth having is easy but if it’s worth having, you’ll work for it.

I know you’re worth it. I know you’re worth the effort and the sweat and the frustration. But YOU have to know it too. Because I don’t want to hear you whine! I want to hear you say, “Lawdy this chapter kicked my butt but I finished it!” or whatever. You can’t sell a book you don’t finish. You can’t be a writer if you don’t write.

So do it.

Welcome to day two - everyone still with us?

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie

I love this quote because I find it true on several levels. First of all, a writer, most of us anyway, doesn’t only write. Most of us have many other things in our day which demand our attention. In my case, I’ve got three young children from 5th grade to preschool so I have to run around a lot, deal with homework oversight, help with projects, deal with teacher conferences, laundry, cooking, shopping, all the basics of being mom as well as the work of being a writer who wants to sell more contracts.

So from the beginning, I’ve not counted on muses or perfect moments of silence because for me, it’s not possible. I simply write in the margins of my life and in doing so, I still manage to get my words in as long as I put writing where it needs to be in my life. Writing is my job as much as my kids are my job so when I sit down to write at night, that’s my big block of work and I’m very selfish with it. But I have a pad with me everywhere I go as well. Just yesterday while waiting for my sons to get out of school, I managed to sketch out a scene I’d been mulling over and I wrote it out last night.

I often mull over story problems while I do mundane things so my mind can wander. I plot while I do the dishes and most especially while ironing. There’s something about the rhythmic movement of ironing that helps me let go of the knot of the story and simply relax and get it untangled.

Essentially, I guess what I’m saying is, when when you can, where you can. We don’t all have a schedule that allows for six or seven hours of writing every day and even those authors who do now, didn’t a few years ago. We can only have the schedule, the life that we have so we’ve got to make the best of it.

So if you don’t have a lot of time at night, can you write on your lunch hour? You don’t need fancy equipment, just a pad of paper will do, even notecards if you’re plotting. If you have twenty minutes in the dentist’s office, that’s time you can write a few paragraphs.

Lots of people talk about writing, talk about being a writer, but a writer writes. Doesn’t matter if it’s ten minutes here and an hour there, get it down on paper and eventually, you’ll finish the book. BE a writer!

Anyone else have tips? Plotting while doing dishes or laundry? Notecards in your purse? Share!

Write from the soul, not from some notion what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal.
Jeffrey A. Carver

I just finished a book at the end of last week. I fought this book hard! I had ideas about where I wanted it to go and it had different plans. This book gave me no end of difficulty! I wanted something funny and light but in the end, after struggling with a few hundred words here and there, I just gave it the reins.

I let the story tell itself and in the end, that’s all I can do. It worries me sometimes because there are some stories that as you write them, you know they will push buttons. As an author you want the story to be easy to read, you want to write it in such a way that readers respond. But sometimes, the story will push buttons, it’ll be dark or emotional and it can only be what it is.

I know the popular refrain is to write to market. But in truth, the business moves slow but trends change fast so unless you’re right there when the trend hits, chances are by the time you finish and get the manuscript subbed, the trend will have moved on.

In the end, all you have is the story trying to get out. Tell that story and you will find readers. Trends are trends, but a well told story can have vampires or secret babies or greek millionaires or none of the above and move mountains.

Tell your story.

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Reggie Leach

I’m at the Romantic Times Convention right now but I wrote this last week. *Waving* Hi everyone, I hope your writing is setting your soul on fire this week. I hope to come back with wonderful ideas and not a cold like I did last year.

Success comes to a writer, as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.
P. G. Wodehouse

Last RT I had a moment. As I sat, packed into the plane, flying home, an intense swell of emotion came over me. I realized I’d made it farther than I’d ever imagined I would. I was an author. People came to have me sign their books. I had dinner with my editors and my agent. I talked writing with people I’ve admired for many years. It was real after so much hard work and it caught me by surprise that it would be so sweet.

I came home and worked more and I continue to work to this day. Because I never want to lose that sense of wonder at being set aflame with this dream.

Keep working and I’ll see you all next week!

I dream quite often, of a time, of a place in my life when everything around me will be still enough for me to sit and write, uninterrupted, for six daylight hours every day. This is a fantasy, a dream, a wisp of writersmoke that will of course, never happen in my life because I have three kids spaced apart in such a way that means I’ll pretty much always be running one of them around at any given time - because it’s my job.

Over the weekend I prepared to be gone for all of next week for RT. I’m the mom which means only I know the location of things important for day to day life. Only mom knows where that favorite shirt is, the names of not just teachers but other important adults, the times of various events, which things are verboten and which are mandatory. It takes longer for me to prepare to go away than to actuall be gone. So when I had envisioned the weekend to be one of oodles of writing, I knew I was fooling myself.

Still, I got my words by staying up late to finish them and doing extra on Friday because I knew this weekend would be insane.

Because no one but me knows where the right words are either. And so while I’m the mom in the family, the person who organizes and runs around, I’m the mom of my own writing too, and while my parents can help out around my husband’s schedule to make sure my kids get where they need to be, no one but me can finish my book on time.

So I’m doing it. I plan for it in the schedule just like anything else and while I love to think I’ll be uber productive, I know I probably won’t be at certain times so I just build all that into the schedule too. That way if I’m early, I can work on something else but if not, I have the time I need to get my work done.

Writing is a wonderful thing. I am fortunate to be able to make it a reality in my life. But it’s my job - like being a mom, like being someone’s partner, like the other things I have in my life - and so I plan for it accordingly. Yep, it’s totally anal retentive of me and other people certainly have different approaches that work for them.

Make it work folks, cause no one else can do it for you, but you.

Have a great writing week!!