While I’ve recently had more time on my hands, staying at home and practicing social distancing during this pandemic, I decided to tackle our spring pruning. With my brain relaxed and hands engaged with this down to earth task, I couldn’t help thinking about the similarities between editing and pruning trees.
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My head is a jumble. One would think threatening confinement to your home for an extended period of time in order to be socially responsible and slow the spread of COVID-19 would be a positive thing for a writer… but I’ll be sharing my confinement space with two directionless, out-of-school teenagers and an over achiever, restless husband. Read more
At this summer’s Muskoka Novel Marathon, I placed a bid (all proceeds supporting adult literacy) for a package of support with a professional writing coach. And I won!
I’m a motivated person. I’ve set goals in my life and achieved great things; becoming a veterinarian, surrounding myself with wonderful family and friends and writing a novel… but now the time has come to get published.
So, with this goal in mind, I started the coaching services.
Wow.
I can’t tell you how great it is to have a skilled and supportive person push you to set your goals, to schedule your time and then to cheer you on.
Initially, we started with a conversation, where it was clearly identified how my greatest enemy was time. Specifically, time management. I needed to give myself permission to set aside the time to write and then to follow through.
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Allow me to share a challenge almost as painful as writing the dreaded synopsis.
In the querying trenches, I’ve discovered agents expect a writer to have a logical and well researched answer to the question;
Who is your target audience?
Initially, I had naively answered—everyone! Of course, my book is for everyone; for all people, for all women, for all daughters, for all readers.
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What am I going to write about?
What, What, What?
Open Twitter. Find a thread where an unknowing and naïve person says to a writer,
Writing a book must be so easy!
Bark out loud in shock! Cover mouth because I will wake the kids and the husband who is working nights and then they will invade my space and I will get absolutely nothing done. Revel in liking every single response from all the writers who responded back with hilarious, shocked, pissed off gifs. I love twitter. And there goes another half hour.
Not only do I have a novel to complete drafting—I am currently taking a course through the Writer’s Digest University and my next assignment is due in less than 24 hours, my author website needs updating, the bookkeeper is waiting for our farm books, I still haven’t unpacked the kids back packs from summer camp, there are half completed renovations in the back yard, the barn chores need completing, fur balls, laundry heaps and dirty dishes are threatening to mutiny all over my house, bills need paying, I promised myself I was going to submit a blog to Andy Rourke’s website and next weekend is the Muskoka Novel Marathon wrap up and I still haven’t read the books I bought from the other authors this summer and THIS BLOG IS DUE.
How?
How do I waste so much time? I know it’s a talent, but why do I have to be so darn good at it?
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Writing can be a solitary place.
But it doesn’t have to be.
In pondering topics for this blog, the same thought kept floating to the surface.
I am so thankful for the writers in my life.
Yes, you!
(As I suspect, at this time in my writing career, most of my readers are writers.)
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To write is a craft.
Like any craft, there is a process or sequence of steps to create a consistently identifiable, bold and long lasting product.
The craft of making whiskey hasn’t changed much over hundreds of years and writing is the same.
To make whiskey, you need only three simple ingredients; water, barley and yeast. Yet, with so few components, there are thousands upon thousands of flavours, and just as many Coopers (those who make whiskey). Although all stories share in the same basic premise–having scenery, characters and a problem, there are innumerable genres, styles and adaptations of old story lines.
As a story writer, there are things we can learn from the process of making whiskey.
I have an amazing announcement.
This news is so exciting, it is hard to believe and if you write, you will understand the significance of this announcement.
My novels, all of them, are completed—fully edited and absolutely perfect.
That’s right.
There isn’t a single word, comma, piece of dialogue or description I can improve or change. Three months from now, five years down the road or in twenty five years, I will be able to read my novel and there will not be a single cringe worthy passage. I will never roll my eyes or possibly consider a forceful palm slap to my forehead… because my writing is perfect now and will be perfect then.
If you haven’t picked up on the theme of my blog, check the calendar.