Creative Writing, Or What Bike Are You Riding?

The issue with telling everyone that you're a writer is that suddenly everyone starts holding you accountable to your "writerly" claims, even if that isn't their intention.

This winter I've had countless conversations like this:

Other person: So how's your winter going?
Me: Good. Really busy, but good.
Other person: Doing lots of writing?
Me: Erm . . . yes. No. Kind of. Well . . . I've been busy.

Sure I've been writing this winter. Article assignments. Radio scripts. Naturalist guides. Marketing plans. Blog posts.

My everyday paying work has me writing a lot, but for whatever reason, when people ask if I've been writing, my initial gut reaction is "No." My freelance business revolves around writing and that little business has been doing quite well for itself this winter. The assignments get written, the invoices go out, the checks come in.

But when people ask if I've been writing, my mind always jumps to the creative realm  and if you're asking if I've been writing creatively, the answer is a resounding "No!" I've been furiously pedaling my business writing bike at what can sometimes feel like a scary speed, while my creative writing bike gathers dust out back.

In my mind, my business writing bike is a rather dull mountain bike that defies description. It's useful, it's hard working, and it ensures you keep making regular contributions to your IRA. My dusty creative writing bike on the other hand is painted shades of pink and purple, has a banana seat and a plastic basket in front studded with pink and purple plastic flowers. It's not exactly sexy, but it's a good mood elevator, if nothing else.

In the early days of this blog, I wrote a lot about the novel I was in the process of rewriting. In the end, the novel got edited, queried around to literary agents, received the teensiest of teeny weeny nibbles from a couple literary agents, and now lives, neglected, on my hard drive. In the end, I realized even if the novel's writing was decent enough, the plot needed a major overhaul before the manuscript should make any more rounds in the literary agent circle and that even then, I might not have a strong enough story for publication. That's okay. But just as the sun set on that literary goal, right when I should have been making some new creative writing goals, I started to get busy with article assignments and other work obligations.  

When I was down in the Cities last month, I discovered a couple copies of my college's annual literary and artistic journal from the years we attended college on her bookshelf. I leafed through pages, wondering what I'd submitted, and discovered the stuff I'd gotten published really wasn't half bad. Not award winning literature, for sure, but still, not too shabby. As I read through some of my old poems and essays, I found myself missing how my brain feels when it's working to find just the right word for a poem.

For a few years after graduation, I still had submissions for that literary and artistic journal (which accepts submissions from alums) each year. But this year will be the second year in a row where I have nothing to submit. Nada. Nary a poem or short story in sight.   

It's so easy to let our creative writing go as we move firmly into adulthood. Poems, short stories, and essays in general don't generate much income. They're also greedy little buggers, demanding so much of our time and brain power if they're going to be any good. And so instead we opt for the billable hours. We shove the novel drafts in the proverbial bottom drawer and tell ourselves that we'll work on it next. Next year. Next year. 

They say that getting back into writing is just like riding a bike. And every once in a while, we have to ask ourselves, which bike are we riding? Even if there's not time to ride my creative writing bike all day, every day, doesn't it deserve to be taken for a spin every once in a while? How will I write a published  novel if the bike's collecting dust in the corner month after month? How can Judd Apatow produce my screen play if I never write it?

 2013 has proven to be a year of resolve and determination this year thus far. Now, as I eye that forgotten, but still lovely bike, I wonder, is it worth it? What if it has a flat tire and doesn't work properly at first? Will it just be another thing to feel guilty about not doing if I make some bold resolution to write 500 words a day or for half an hour each morning?

I don't know the answers. I just know I miss it.
 

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Book Review: Born Wicked

As a teenager, even before the sweeping Harry Potter phenomenon, I always gravitated toward fantasy literature. As a result, the book shelf in my childhood bedroom is stuffed full of tomes by Tamara Pierce, Patricia Wrede, Jane Yolen, and, of course, J.K. Rowling. If it has witches, wizards, and dragons in it, I'm all over it.
   
So I was pretty excited when my copy of Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood, arrived.

This debut young adult novel follows the tumultuous journey of 16-year-old protagonist, Cate Cahill, to adulthood. Since her mother's death, Cate's taken on the responsibility of mothering her two younger sisters, a task that would be difficult even if the three weren't witches. The family lives in New England at the turn of the 20th century, but for some, yet to be explained reason, the Cahills' world is drastically different than the world historically was at that time. New England is ruled by a heavy-handed religious authority, the Brotherhood. When young women reach age 17, they must either marry or join the female religious order, the Sisterhood. Being a witch in this world means imprisonment . . . or worse.

This first book of the Cahill Witch Chronicles (a trilogy) holds all the elements you might expect in a YA fantasy novel. There's a prophecy, danger, a love triangle, and an overbearing governess. The dialogue moves along at a snappy pace and although I felt that Spotswood was guilty of holding back a little too much "illuminating" information in the book's beginning, despite the ambiguous start, I did come to like the main characters quite a bit.  

One of the most confusing things about the book to me was why the book is set in a drastically altered "real world." India and Dubai are mentioned in the book, but it's clear that New England is cut off from the rest of the United States, if there even is a United States in Cate's world. New London (Connecticut?) is the commerce hub in the books, rather than Boston, which seems like the obvious choice. I'm sure Spotswood has her reasons, but it's not explained at all in the first book and unless she plans to turn the books into a deep and remarkable commentary on world politics, I'd have preferred she'd set the story in a whole new made-up world. Some of the most compelling arguments I've heard again communism and racism were set in novels with completely imagined realities.

Born Wicked certainly doesn't have the depth of say, Philip Pullman's Golden Compass books and I'm not sure it will have the broad appeal of the Twilight series. (Although, having never read the Twilight books, I can say for sure.) But it's a rollicking quick read with loveable characters and I'll probably pick up the next books to see just how things end up for Cate and Co, especially since this first book ended on a cliffhanger.

And when I say cliffhanger, I mean cliffhanger. 

You can join in the conversation about Born Wicked over at the BlogHer Book Club.






Disclosure: I participated in this review for the BlogHer Book Club. I was compensated for my time and received a complimentary copy of the book. However, all opinions expressed in the review are my own.

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Take Me Away

No, not another post about how I'd rather be traveling, although I did discover that a decent compact washer/dryer combo for the cabin would cost less than a plane ticket to Australia, the next bullet point on my "to travel" list. (This puts me in a serious quandary about the future of my summer savings.)

And no, I'm not having washing machine amnesia. I'm still well aware of how awful compact washer/dryer combos can be. I've spent enough time in the British Isles to be well acquainted with the half-day long dry cycles with your clothes locked inside the washing drum that these little (lovely) machines can present you with. However, I have no issue with turning the cabin into a Chinese laundry if necessary. Maybe I should just get a washing machine . . .

But I digress.

What I meant to write about when I sat down this morning was the need to escape, even in the slightest, most figurative way. It's this time of year, when I get asked 30 times a day if I "ever see any wildlife around here," that I want to spend my evenings somewhere far, far away. Some place where I don't have to explain why you can't take pontoon boats into the Boundary Waters. Some place where moose spotting isn't some sort of competitive sport.

Not that the moose aren't impressive.

But I'd rather be bickering about whether or not you should let the hot water boil when brewing a pot of tea than reasons why the moose population is on decline. It's the time of year, where you'll find a Phillipa Gregory novel on the coffee table and plenty of British costume dramas clogging the Netflix queue. Forget hard hitting documentaries, fluffy puppy season is upon us. I just want a not-too complicated plot to transport me into a completely different world each evening.

I once talked to someone about my tendency to overlook nonfiction as "good reads." It's not that I never read nonfiction (although a memoir seems to exist in some funny half world between fiction and nonfiction) but in general, a biography or some other factual read aren't what I want to curl up with at the end of the day. "I think it's just not enough of an escape," the person I was talking with said of nonfiction, and it's true. Most of the time, I'd rather be in some made-up place, watching fictional characters deal with universal problems.

Downton Abbey arrived yesterday (albeit, a day late . . . ahem Netflix!) and I plan on immersing myself in upper crust British life circa early 20th century this evening. Something tells me I wouldn't have enjoyed this kind of life very much if I actually had to live it, but I sure don't mind visiting it nightly.

Happy Solstice all! Any big plans for celebrating the longest day of the year? How do you escape?

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I say: "NaNO(!!!)wrimo"

Shhh! Can you hear that? That faint clickety-clack you hear comes from a flurry of writes attacking their keyboards in the attempt to get a 50,000 novel out of their brains on into a Word file before the clock hits 00:00 on December 1st.

It’s November 1st, which means it’s the big kickoff day of National Novel Writing Month. Affectionately known as NaNoWriMo, this event has been going on since 1999. I first heard about it in 2001, when my literary ambitions began in earnest and with every passing year the event has picked up steam (and caused literary agents increasingly large amounts of hell in the first couple weeks of December.)

I thought about participating in 2001 when I first stumbled upon the phenomenon and in early 2002, I did participate in ivillage’s The Writing Life board equivalent of the event called WriLiMarCha (Writing Life Marathon Challenge). With WriLiMarCha, I got to about 11,000 words written in the course of 15 days. My sophomore year of college I had a crazy idea to do NaNoWriMo and my schoolwork and my extracurricular activities. That lasted about two evenings.

I have never completed a 50,000 word novel in 30 days and as time has gone on, I’ve come to believe I never will. I have my reasons for not participating in NaNoWriMo each year, not least of which is my belief that NaNoWriMo is crazy. And not in the normal, (healthy?) “writer slightly off their rocker” way but in “that’s truly insane” way. To completely NaNoWriMo on schedule, writers are signing themselves up for churning out an average 1666.66667 words a day, every day, for 30 days straight.

I’m not saying this is impossible. Obviously it’s not, because tons of people do complete (albeit it in a sleep deprived, coffee driven way) this seemingly impossible goal every year. My chief qualm with NaNoWriMo is not “how?” but “why?!”

Lots of people already have a novel (or two) tucked away in a drawer. When this month draws to a close, a lot more people will join the drawer-hiding-novel ranks. Although truthfully, successful NaNoWriMo participants won’t really have a novel to tuck in their drawer. Rather, they’ll have a 50,000 word fiction something in their drawer.

Opinions are mixed on what should be considered a novel’s average length, but it’s usually considered somewhere between 80,000 – 120,000 words. However there’s a pretty firm consensus that 50,000 words is not a novel. That’s a novella. (If you consider that 250 words is considered the standard page length, 50,000 words only gets you 200 pages.) Unless you're Steve Martin, most works of published longer fiction  are more than 200 pages. I have a hard time seeing the point in spending a month slaving over 50,000 words of rough, unedited prose which you’ll need to edit within an inch of its life, not to mention add 30,000 words of text to, before a literary agent will consider it a novel.

To me NaNoWriMo strikes a certain martyr-istic chord. And I’m just not going for St. Ada . (There already is one.) I like to incorporate my writing into a life. A life that involves eating, sleeping, blogging, exercising, and spending time with my family.

I’d rather work in a steady, slightly less manic way. And I’m not saying the five years it has taken me to get my current novel from idea to query-able piece of fiction was a great timeline to follow. I’ll probably try to expedite the writing process of my next novel a little bit in comparison. Still, I’m going to give myself a little more than a month to get that next rough draft done.

This November, I won’t be writing a novel. Instead, I’ll be writing a synopsis of my novel du jour and sending out queries. But good luck to all you crazy NaNo-ers out there. God love ya.

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Writing On Purpose

I spent all summer writing on purpose. I wrote articles when deadlines loomed. Radio commentaries got penned in a slightly panicked, bi-weekly frenzy. I chugged along on the radio documentary assignment and at work, I dutifully filled out grant applications because, well, it was my job.

Noticing a trend here?

Unless there was some form of compensation involved, I didn’t write it this summer. In fact, this spring, when things were getting kicked into high gear, I turned down a pro bono gig because I knew there just wouldn’t be time to squeeze it in with my other (paying) obligations.

Obviously, my goal as an aspiring freelance writer is to make money. The brilliant C. Hope Clark recently posted about not knocking the writer trying to make a living with their craft. As freelancers, our general goal is to write on purpose. And that purpose is often to write things we enjoy while making a buck. We’re told over and over again to set goals for our success. How often have you (regardless of your profession) heard: “you can’t get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going”?

This past week was meant to be my return to a more focused writing life. Yet an overnight trip to Duluth and one filthy cabin have kept me from spending too much time at the writing desk this week. Still, yesterday afternoon I found an hour to hunker down with the novel I revised last winter to begin writing a synopsis and working on proofreading and editing the text.  

As my red pen scurried busily across the novel’s printed pages, correcting comma splices, adding in forgotten words, crossing out sentences, I was struck by something: how much fun I was having. I realized how much I’ve grown to love all of my characters in the more than five years [gulp!] since I first I sat down in my room in the Irish cottage I lived in during spring 2005 and tapped out the short story that would grow into the 80,000 word novel it is today.

Let’s face it, taking the time to pen a novel is not exactly a great “get-rich” scheme. It’s kind of like pinning all your hopes on a single lottery ticket. Writing a novel with the purpose of fame and fortune is a largely delusional pursuit, especially since the bad economy seems to be prompting more and more people to focus on their literary skills. When it comes to writing a large work of fiction about the loftiest goal you can have for the experience is to have a good time.

Certainly there are hopes and dreams tied up in this little novel of mine. Still, as I read through the novel’s beginning yesterday, I realized all summer I’ve been missing out on writing just to see where the story goes. I’ve missed the writing that comes from not having a purpose or any guaranteed compensation.  

Maybe the novel will never find a snazzier binding than the three-hole binder it currently resides in. Maybe the novel will never make it to the bookstores’ shelves. But it’s sure been fun writing and reading it.  

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End of an Era, Ushered in by Marshmallow Fluff

Sunrise after a rainy day 

It’s official: I will go a-waitressing no more. Yesterday I worked my last lunch shift. This means a couple things. For one, today I plan to hand-wash all of the sweaters I wore this winter so I can pack them on the trip and not have them smell of French fries. For another, it means I can start making decent food choices again.

This goes without saying, but when you waitress, your shift always corresponds with mealtime. Although you could grab little snacks as you work, the days I worked, I inevitably didn’t eat lunch until after 3 and dinner often got dished up around 9:30, if not later. By that time, I was always starving and ate the first calorie laden food I spied in the Shack’s kitchen. As much as it pains me to say it, the regimented life of a temp in a cubicle where I was able to schedule each meal and snack was far better for my waistline.

At the Shack we tried to make decent food choices. We try to get around to eating all of the fresh produce before it turns.

 But sometimes, even when we know what’s the right eating decision, our desires get the better of us. There is no better case in point than the fact that we have teeny tin of organic, fair-trade cocoa sitting next to the super family size Swiss Miss.

(What is a super family size any way? 4? 6?) Guess which one gets dipped into more.

I have read The Botany of Desire and while in high school, I read a book called A Teenager’s Guide to Going Vegetarian. I want to be that person who subsists on organic fruits and nuts and who is unmoved by a plate of French fries. I pretend I’m the girl who orders salads when she goes out, but in actuality, I’ve been known to order things called “The Grizz Burger.” (Yup: ½ pound of burger with cheese, more cheese, bacon, mushrooms, tomato, lettuce . . . ) I use the term “loaded” when I talk about baked potatoes. Deep down, I am just American enough to create things in my kitchen that look like this:

 That’s right, marshmallow fluff. A couple neighbors moved out last week and one of them left a 16 oz. bag of marshmallows and a box of Rice Krispies among the groceries for the taking. On Thursday, I couldn’t resist the urge to make a batch of Rice Krispy bars or “crispy cake” as they call it in England. That’s all well and good, except I didn’t need the entire bag of marshmallows to make the bars and have now spent the last few days eating my way through the remaining marshmallows with a marshmallow here, five marshmallows there.

This morning, in a fit of disgust, I threw out the remaining bag of marshmallows. (I think there were about four left.) With the restaurant life behind me, I have much greater control over my schedule and with that comes tighter reigns on both exercise and diet. There’s tofu marinating in the fridge as I write.

Of course, I’m about to embark on a month long vacation. Might not be the best time for such resolutions.

In other news, I’ve found myself missing the novel. After so many months (years) spent with these characters, I feel a little lost without them.

Ah well, I’ll get over it. I have plenty of little tasks to keep me busy today and all week. Both Andy and I are anxious to be far away for a little while and the trick will be to get stuff done this week so there’s nothing to fret about while we’re away.

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Cookouts and Changing Seasons

In February 2005, I sat on the bus on my way back to my cottage after the first weekend trip of my semester abroad in County Mayo, Ireland. As I watched the stark winter landscape pass by, I started to wonder what it would be like to truly come home to this harshly beautiful place where trees only grow on the side of the hills safe from sea breeze. Those musings turned into a short story which turned into a rough draft of a novel and on Tuesday, turned into a completely revised (and hopefully logical and compelling) first draft. Now the printout sits in a three-ring binder: it’s a little bit like having an elephant in the room.

In a month of so, I will return to the three-ring binder. I will read the novel over in its entirety and make tweaks and edits. Then it’s time to research agents and write queries and synopses. Five years of work (there were some interruptions), and the hard part’s still in front of me!

Andy’s had the last couple days off so we’ve been out and about. The spring weather seems to have inspired something akin to “touring season.” We’ve spent a good portion of recent free time popping in to catch up with various family members.

Although the weather has turned colder this week and yesterday evening it decided to spit rain and snow, it still look a lot more like May than March outside. So on Tuesday we went for hike. We walked about a ½ mile down an old road bed and then we climbed to the top of a huge boulder.

It was quite the view.

Andy’s been waxing poetic about cookouts for a while now. The plan has been to have a cookout when the walleyes start to run in May. But since it was a sunny 55 degrees on Tuesday, it seemed silly to delay a cookout. We threw together some kebabs and beans in the Shack kitchen and headed over to our neighboring campground. Andy built up a fire with birch wood and we got the beans burbling happily and kebabs grilling.

When the sun went down, the temperatures dropped a bit, but that was okay: there was a fire to huddle around.

March 23rd is absurdly early for even the earliest season cookout. There’s still quite a few inches of ice covering the lake, but along the shore, it can be hard to tell where land, water, ice and sky separate. The ice is reaching a state of rot that inspires people to start making bets on when the ice will go out.

Worked my last night shift last night. I tucked the tip money away in the envelope of funds for the Pacific Northwest trip.

I have several articles to work on today as well as some other freelance work. After a couple days of play, it’s hard to get myself back on task. Without the focal point of the novel to lend structure to my writing days, I’m feeling a little adrift. But those are just excuses. The work won’t get done unless I do it.

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