The Hard Parts of Writing ... for Me (Penny Rader)

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This month we're talking about the hardest part of writing.  For me, it's:

Getting past the fears

• Fear I won't have anything to say. (Stop laughing.  Yes, I'm a charter member of the "Help! I'm talking and I can't shut up!" club.  Talking's not the same as writing.)
• Fear no one will want to read what I write.
• Fear someone will read what I write...and hate it...or think it's stupid.
• Fear I'll never finish another book.
• Fear everyone will discover I'm a fraud, that I don't know what the heck I'm doing, that sometimes the only way I get words on the page is by using writing prompts or exercises.

Getting words on the page

• Snippets of dialogue will filter through my mind...but don't always get onto the paper as powerfully as I heard them in my head.  
• I'll see something amazing or intriguing but can't figure out how to describe what I'm seeing, how it makes me feel.  It just seems so...flat.
• I'm sure this is quite politically incorrect, and please forgive me if I offend you, but here goes. Ever read Little Black Sambo?  Remember the scene where the tigers run around and around the tree till they turn to butter?  Well, that's my brain.  All sorts of stuff in there whirring around, churning into butter, leaving me unable to focus and pluck out what it is I want to get on the page.
• The cursor on the screen just blinks and taunts and does nothing to coax forth words.
• The blank page has so many lines to fill and nothing comes out of my pen or pencil.

Conflict

• I avoid conflict.  Actually, I pretty much hate it.  There.  I said it.  Conflict makes my stomach a jumbled mess, makes it hard for me to breathe, to think, let alone find the words to stand up for myself. 
• Even though I know stories must have conflict between the characters to make readers care about them, to keep turning page after page, to follow the tale all the way to the end, I struggle with torturing my characters, with finding true conflicts that will genuinely make it impossible for these two people to be together...at least till I figure out their happy ending. I want happy-happy joy-joy, peace and harmony. Being mean doesn't come easily to me.  Unless you mess with my kids.  

Plotting

• I'll get a snippet of an idea and get a couple pages down and then not know happens next.  I kid you not. I have at least 15 stories started -- most of them haven't made it past 5 pages.  
• Sometimes a scene bit will pop into my head and I'll know that if I don't get it on paper it will disappear.  That bit of writing magic does not happen often enough.
• I have learned that if I know where the scene or story is going, I can come up with the words.  It's the figuring out all the steps, or even the big moments, of the characters' journey, of their relationship that I struggle with.  

So, why do I keep torturing myself? I often think about just hanging up this writing thing, but I've never completely been able to do so, at least not since it first occurred to me back in 1986 that maybe, just maybe I could write books like those I love to read..  Mostly, I guess, because even if I'm not getting words on the page, characters and scene snippets continue to flit through my mind.  Perhaps getting out of my own way is hardest part of writing for me.

How about you?

We Are Women, See Us Write

Earlier this month, in answer to the topic, I wrote that I am a writer.  But that's only a part of me, as it is for every person on this blog and those who read it and those who comment on it.

While those of us who blog here are writers, that isn't all we are.  We are mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, grandmothers, daughters-in-law and wives.  We're single, divorced, widowed and married.  We work both outside the home and inside the home.  But the one thing we share is writing, and that's what's brought us together.

Take a picture of us all together, and you'll see the many differences.  Young, middle-aged, and older.  Blonde hair, brown hair, red hair and gray.  Tall, short, round and slim.  Yes, we're different, but we share one thing.  We are writers.

We're hard on ourselves.  Even after being published for 12 years, I still have difficulty telling strangers I'm a writer.  Forget about telling them I'm a published author.  Sure, in a group it's easy, even on the blog.  But on my own?  Live and in person?  Uh, no. ☺  Why?  Most people don't believe it.  Some people smirk in a "sure, you are" kind of way.  Others, like our own Penny Rader, encourage us to join WARA. (Thank you, Penny!)  And even others are excited and ask questions.  All of that has an affect on us, on our perceptions of ourselves.

We are who we are, each little part of us.

We look in a mirror and see what we believe is what others see, and even that is skewed by our own perceptions of ourselves.  Others see us in different ways.  There was a recent video posted to Facebook that was made in conjunction with Dove® soap/beauty products.  MSN carried it on their website.  Below is the introduction and a link to the video.  It's amazing!

Thanks, Dove, for this inspiring social experiment. In the video, various women show up separately to be drawn by a forensic artist who never sees them — the artist sketches them based on each woman's description of herself, then does another sketch based on how strangers describe each woman. Watching these ladies confront their less-attractive views of themselves before glimpsing the very different image of what a stranger sees is enough to bring on the tears. If you've never wished you had a different nose, brighter eyes or a better chin, you belong to an elite group of women who think they're beautiful — a measly 4 percent globally, according to Dove. So watch closely and stop giving yourself such a hard time.

 http://now.msn.com/dove-real-beauty-video-shows-women-they-are-beautiful

We see what we want to see: the blemishes, the dark circles, the wrinkles, the extra pounds.  We see our weaknesses, not only physical but internal, our fears.  What we don't see, and what others seem to glimpse, is our strength, humor, passion and love.  As writers, those are the things we convey in our words and stories.  We give our characters what we see in ourselves and our experiences in life and also the weaknesses we deal with or have dealt with in the past.  And then we strive to give our readers the happily-ever-afters that we all hope will be ours.

We are writers, and we've all come to it in different ways at different times for different reasons.

We are women.  We are strong, smart, funny and wise.

Why I Write by J Vincent

The topic for April is Why We Write. In the beginning wrote because I had to.  I was driven to by the characters in my mind who would not stop talking, by the stories that kept growing and blooming, prodding and pushing until they were on paper--in the good old days--and in the word processor now.  I can still recall how the first book I ever wrote took shape in my mind.  Once the concept occurred to me each day brought  a new scene to mind and more dialogue sprang to life.  Incidents caused chain reaction chapters. I had to start writing it down even though I thought I was an idiot to try and write a book.  After all how do you explain voices in your head to people who don’t have them in theirs?  The characters in my first book didn’t quiet down and go away until their story was done.  And so it was with the next story, my first regency.

That first regency which later was published as The Bond of Honour, got rejection after rejection.  Frustrated, I sat down and made a list of what the editors wanted in a regency.  This was the first time I wrote to SELL.  I finished the book. and sent it off.  The next day I looked at the first chapter and frantically wondered how I could get it back.  That it was drivel and poorly written were only some of the things I thought.  Two weeks later I got a call from Vivian Stephens at Dell Publishing in New York.  She loved it.  She bought it.  Thomasina. 

Three years later what was “in” changed.  My stories were out.Three growing children, orthodontia bills and all that sent me back to teaching.  When I retired from teaching I wanted to know if I could write an entire book again. So I wrote just to see if I could still do it.  I started with a plot that I had described to my daughters with such detail when they were small they still remembered the plot as adults.  I had only begun that book when my characters once again took charge.  They killed my villain way too early putting me in a dilemma as how to proceed.  From somewhere, I’m still not sure where, came what turned into the Honour Series. As I continued what became the first book, Honour’sDebt, six other stories  for the series came to me in full detail.  I wrote four of them.  The fourth was begun when I was having increasing trouble with health issues.  These issues became so serious I was unable to continue writing.  When I was well enough to return to that book, I read what I had written,  scrapped it, started over.  Shortly after I finished it I was again too ill to continue writing.

Somewhere along the line of unending medical bouts these past years the voices grew quieter. less insistent.  The stories are no longer prodding and pushing to be told.  These days I am the one who has to pull out the whip and get myself into writing.  BITHOK we say--Butt in chair, Hands on the keyboard.  It is very good advice.  Even when the characters were demanding, I found tenacity and perseverance to be a writer’s, at least this one’s, best friend. If the book doesn’t get written no one can read it.

Does it matter why I write?  Why anyone writes?  I don’t think so mainly because the “why” is a kaleidoscope of reasons determined by our environment, our mood, where we are at in our lives, and many other things.  Sometimes I write simply to prove I can.  At other times it is to experience the flow of words, the beauty of vocabulary.  Or I write simply because I made a commitment--as in this blog.  I write because others, my sister in particular, expect it.  Through all or despite all of the reasons I write, I learned that writing satisfies something in me.  Last week I started on the fifth book of the Honour series.  With a goal of only a page a day, it’s a pretty wimpy effort, but the voices are growing stronger, the story more demanding.  Sometimes BITHOK is the only way I write.  Whatever works as they say!

Success, praise, whatever you want to call it is another reason to write.  Who isn’t thrilled when someone tells them their book is terrific, or that it helped them through a rough time? I recently received a reminder of this from a compliment on Never to Part, my regency paranormal released last month. Also  Honour’s Choice Book 2 in the Honour Series which is now available was given 4 stars by Donna Brown in May’s RT Book Reviews.  There’s more suspense than romance in the second entry to Vincent’s Honour series, but both keep the reader on the edge as finely-wrought characters tell an exciting tale. Unresolved circumstances leave the reader eager for book three.  
These are some of the reasons I write.  Are some of them your reasons too?