A Confession: I Never Wanted to Be a Writer

I love reading other people's path to publication stories. I love seeing how there are so many different paths and so many different types of writers out there. But I have a confession: sometimes, these stories make me feel like an interloper. Sometimes they make me wonder what I'm doing.

You've probably all read them, the I've Always Known I've Wanted to Be a Writer Since FOR-EVER stories.

Mine isn't one of those.

The I've Always Been a Creative Type/Artist/Marcher to the Beat of My Own Drummer stories.

Mine isn't one of those either.

Here's the thing--I never thought about being a writer. Even back when people learned that I'd decided to drop the poli-sci/pre-law major and only go with English, I'd get the question, "Oh, so you want to be a writer?" My answer was the same. "No," I'd tell them. Just no.

Because I was reading writers and didn't have enough self-confidence or ego or Chutzpah to even think "Yes, maybe."

Maybe once, back in eighth grade when I learned that S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was a teenager, maybe then I thought about being a writer...for like five minutes.

I started writing fiction out of desperation. I'd spent 7 years getting a PhD that didn't net me a job. I'd spent 10 years reading literature and writing criticism. I'd always written. I loved the essay, never understood how someone could not finish a seminar paper in grad school. I was good at it. And never once did I think of myself as a writer. Not even knowing that to get tenure I'd eventually write a book.

But there I was, 7 years later, unemployed in a new city and I needed something to do with my brain, because singing to my 9 month old wasn't cutting it for me. So I tried writing. I'd been reading a lot of romance and YA and thought, I could do *that*. (Cue derisive laughter.) So I did it. I wrote a meh contemporary romance that got a couple of hits from publishers and then a YA that got me an agent.

And still, I didn't feel like a writer. Definitely not an author. I felt like an interloper. I felt like at any moment someone would discover that I had not slaved since I was 6 toward this one dream and call me out on it. Poser. Fake. Lucky Break.

I always thought once I've finished a manuscript. And then, once I have an agent. And then well, maybe if my agent can sell the stupid thing. And then...

Partially, this goes back to my own fear of owning up to what I can do well. I'm horrible at accepting a compliment. I'm horrible at admitting that I kick ass at something.

It is not false modesty. It is not fishing for compliments. It's fear.

Because it's beaten out of us, isn't it? You're not supposed to brag (especially if you're a girl). If you stand out in middle school and high school because you're smart, you get pushed down pretty quickly and often pretty ruthlessly. So little by little you learn not to have any ego about what you're doing. You fly under the radar. Do your work. Gather your successes like secrets. Keep going. Keep your head down.

Or maybe that's just me.

Because even two agents later and one sold book later, I still don't feel like I'm really there yet. Once I accept I'm a writer, I listen to these narratives of artistry. "We artists...."  "We creative types..."

That doesn't feel like me either.

I think of myself as a worker. A laborer. Writing is a joy, yes, but it is also labor. I work at it, I whittle it away, I craft it. I don't feel like an artist. I feel like a craftsman. Some days, I feel like we should all start a union.

Craftsman. Laborer. These are not labels that bother me. These are labels that feel more real, more true to what I do for myself, for the craft.

There are words, and I know how to shape them. There are stories and I struggle to tell them. And little by little, I'm learning how to own that. Little by little, I'm learning that maybe that's enough.

I'm happy for those writers and authors who have known since the beginning of time, who have dreamed of the moment when their name is on a book-shaped thing since they were babes. But I'm equally happy for those of us who work because we don't know how not to work, who write because we're compelled to--even when we didn't know what we were working toward. Even when we don't know where that work will lead.

And I'm learning that's okay, too.

Pushing Through Summer

Hi, everyone! My name's Lindsay, and I'm so excited to be joining the team here at Tangled Up in Words. This summer, I met Danielle and Patricia through a local writers' . . . group? Drinking club? Coping mechanism? here in Washington, DC, and instantly clicked with them. What a fabulous bunch!

In fact, I've been really pushing out of my comfort zone this summer to meet other writers and readers, instead of holing up in my dog hair-filled urban cabin, banging away on a manifesto without eating or bathing (and possibly wearing plaid). While I love living in the city, and I ADORE talking about reading and writing, I'm very shy by nature. I've found such great friends--and so many awesome books--through this experience, though, that I'm kind of embarrassed not to have done it sooner.

And it's a good thing I'm getting over my social anxiety, because my life is about to turn into a psychotic blitz and self-promotion and marketing, because . . .

This summer, I sold my first book!! SEKRET, a YA historical thriller, sold to Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan Children's, and is due out in early 2014. Enough time that I'm not yet hyperventilating, but I'm sure it'll be here all too soon.

Appropriately enough, then, that my summer has been one of keeping calm and carrying on despite the good--but scary!--but good! things happening. Happy hours, sure, I can lock my anxiety in the vault long enough to make some amazing friendships. I'm getting published, big deal, I'll just keep putting one word in front of the other in my new manuscript(s) . . . (s). (Wasn't kidding about the unhygienic manifesto factory I sometimes become.)

How are you pushing yourself this summer, in writing and in general life?

I Want To Hold Your Hand.....er, Maybe You Can Hold Mine??

I've been thinking about the writer I want to be someday--some distant and future version of "me." In doing that I have to think a lot about the writer I used to be. I used to be that writer who wrote just because I had stories to tell. It seems like forever ago, when I didn't have twitter or blogs or crit partners. It was me and a pen and a character. (Literally. I used to write by hand.) I wrote what needed to be written. I told the story. I didn't doubt, didn't worry, didn't question myself or my story. I was free. I looked forward to writing, to spending time doing what I loved so much. It was a lot like The Beatles song.

And when I touch you I feel happy inside. It's such a feeling that my love. I can't hide. I can't hide. I can't hide. 

Yeah, you've got that something, I think you'll understand; when I'll say that something. I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand.

That's what new ideas, new stories, new characters...that's what writing was like for me in the beginning. And then somewhere along the way, it changed. Every journey does that. It runs along smoothly and quiet and alone, then it shifts. Things get rocky or you get lost or you meet new people who are going the same way and you walk together. You learn from each other, challenge each other, keep each other moving forward. It's a good thing.

I am no longer the writer I used to be.  I've become better at a lot of things, but I've also become someone who wants. And it's not my story or my characters. I have become someone who, instead of hoping and living in the writing, wants other people in my writing bubble. I need to have my hand held.  I need people to tell me that I'm good, that this will happen, that I can figure out the story, that I can overcome this obstacle and the next. I'll be honest: I hate that about myself. 


And while I know there's nothing wrong with it, it bugs me so much. What happened to independent Danielle and when did she get replaced by this girl who needs people to tell her what she's doing matters? That it's good? That there is hope? When did I trade my pens for my Scrivenor and my time with my characters for twitter? 


I think there are few reasons. I think it's twitter (huge distraction). It's the YA community (hugely awesome). It's being so involved and embedded into this culture, seeing my friends and people I don't even know, succeed. It's the doubts that plague you along the way. It's the revising, revising, revising so many times your head will explode. It's the querying and the passes and the hoping and the failed hopes and the belief (which usually comes from everyone but me at this point.) It's watching others get their dream and wondering if I will ever get mine because I've worked harder and longer and am better--or whatever things we tell ourselves to justify these feelings. I'm not saying all these are bad things--they're not--but I do think that sometimes they can (subconsciously or not) alter the way we perceive ourselves.

I'm definitely in the middle of a perception problem. Maybe it's the re-writing. Maybe it's life. But I know that each step I take, I look over my shoulder (or click on my gchat screen) and hope there's someone around to talk me into writing or out of a corner or out of my own crazy head. I need someone to hold my hand, to lead me out safely, to keep me going. 


As I'm writing this post, I'm realizing I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say. All I know is somedays I strive hard for something. I want this more than I want air. I go foward, climb up, work harder. And I know no one will tell me I can't have it. And other days? Well, other days I'm climbing and then bam--the rock under my feet crumbles and I tumble toward the ground. I can't catch my breath. I get hurt. I need someone to help me up. To give me a hand. And, sometimes, I don't want to let go. Letting go is scary.


Is it wrong to hold someone's hand? No, I don't really think so. But sometimes I feel like I'm less of writer because I need to. Especially after days like yesterday, after I struggled through a MERG day of dreary grey and failed to really write anything fresh. I feel like I should be that girl I used to be--who wrote lines on the back of napkins and then frantically found ways to bring them into her stories. I am a different kind of writer now. I'm in a community, I have support, I have friends. They are not the weaknesses that my mind likes to tell me; they are attributes. They are the polish that makes me shine and the glue that keeps me together. 


So why am I ashamed of needing them so much? Sometimes I feel like a burden. That's the truth. I feel needy. The writer I used to be wasn't needy. But the writer I used to be (the one before I learned about agents and publishing and all that jazz) is still inside of me. And maybe, if I want her to become part of the writer I want to be someday, I need to let her reach out. 


When I fall,  I need to take the support. I need to not be afraid to let someone hold my hand.  I need to not be ashamed to want other people with me. I need to not worry so much about what other people think or do, or who I used to be. I need someone to hold my hand. 


And I want to hold your hand.

Please sir, may I have some more (confidence)?

This post is going to involve a lot of pictures and quotes… because I am CONFIDENT that other people have expressed things about confidence way better than I ever could. It also contains a ridiculous amount of ALL CAPS. ;)

I don’t know about you guys but I spend MANY a day doing the exact thing that Cindy talked about here last week. Making excuses that aren’t true (“I don’t really want this anyway”) to help myself feel better about the fact that I’m letting FEAR of the unknown block my path to SUCCESS.

And today I want to talk about two types of confidence: internal confidence and external confidence. Having a healthy dose of both will save not only your writing but pretty much everything you do. Please know that, for me, almost every part of this post falls into the “SO MUCH easier said than done” category. 

INTERNAL CONFIDENCE

Some days you just wake up feeling like it’s not going to be ok. Some days you start out feeling like it’s  all going to go your way, but then you start writing, and the words just aren’t coming and you dissolve into a puddle of “I SUCK AT THIS”.  The only way to battle both of these moods? Internal confidence; you must have confidence in you. 

Whether you believe it or not, THESE are the times you have to look at yourself in a mirror and tell yourself that YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR! That feeling like all the world is little black rainclouds? IT’S A RAINBOW WAITING TO HAPPEN! That feeling like you suck? IT DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT’S TALKING ABOUT. But…? NO BUTS, YOU. ARE. A. ROCKSTAR. 

EXTERNAL CONFIDENCE

Then there are the days when you take your writing out of the cave and into the world. And this type of confidence is a little bit trickier because you need to project that you believe in your ability to succeed without SHOVING your belief in other people’s faces.

Whether you are showing your work to critique partners, querying agents, or sending a new draft to your editor, it is important to make sure they know that you are proud of what you are sending out it into this world. Do you need people to believe you think it is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT? Of course not, and that’s ok because in all likelihood it’s not. But hopefully it is YOUR best and if it is you should be proud and own it! 

So let’s make a pact! To tell ourselves we are AWESOME, to remind each other we are AWESOME, and to show the world just how AWESOME we really are!

Now I want to hear from you! What is the most amazing thing you've done in your writing this week? this month? this year? What is the thing you are BEST at? What do you do to combat anti-confidence attacks?

Confidence: The Ultimate WIP Killer

You may not agree, but for me, the ultimate killer of a WIP is confidence. Lacking confidence can destroy a manuscript before it even gets written. Before I began writing my first official WIP, I had plenty of ideas, but lacked the confidence to write them.

Sure, I masked the lack of confidence with other excuses like, "I don't have enough time to write" and "I don't really want to be an author", but in the end it all comes back to confidence. I didn't have any. I didn't believe in myself or my ability to tell a story. I made up reasons for why I could never be a writer and almost believed it. It wasn't until my husband gave me a little nudge that I finally realized that I'd never know unless I tried.

Turns out I just needed confidence. Huh. Who knew?

So when you are writing and hit that brick wall and step away from your WIP for a day or two or even a month, don't let yourself believe the inner doubt. You can do it. It's not easy, but it'll be worth it.

And you know what they say, right? Fake it until you make it.

Happy Writing!

Fix It and Forget It: A Confidence Process

Fix-it and Forget-it does a lot of things right. Did you know the creator of the popular cooking series, according the website, is "especially concerned for those who don't have enough time to cook, as well as those who lack the confidence to cook."

I was thinking that we as writers fit this category. Subsititute "cooking" for "writing" and the sentence looks like this: "especially concerned for those who don't have enough time to write, as well as those who lack the confidence to write." Pretty fitting.

Fix-it and Forget-it prides itself on the concern it has for those who don't have enough time. Writer's never have enough time. There is always something that comes up to distract us--and we are easily distracted, even by our own thoughts. The other goal, the lacking confidence one, is so valid. We doubt many of the words we write--that's why we do so many revisions before we share it. Or we share it as we go so people can give us encouragement. I'm guilty of both areas, depending on the project.

Confidence to writers is a double-edged sword. If you have too much, you aren't as willing to listen to advice. If you don't have enough, you could find yourself face-down in a corner somewhere, your words in shreds on the floor.  Confidence is something every author needs to suceed (whether you are writing book #1 or #101) and it is the first thing to be lost at signs of trouble.

Fix-it and Forget-it is on to something. I'm sure that once Sally (our new pretend friend) cooks a few successful dishes, her confidence increases. Sally will branch out and try new things. If she ruins the dish, then she will probably feel like she will never be able to cook anything, ever. Sally has two choices: eat fast food until she dies OR figure out what she did wrong.  So, Sally will retrace her steps. Maybe she will re-read the ingredients. She can check the timer. She can even just try it all over again. There are many other options but the point is that Sally can figure out what happened--but she has to try to succeed first. And sometimes, she has to fail.

The same can be applied to writing. If you write a good scene then you are ready to write another one...and another. If you write a bad scene, it's so easy to go to Twitter instead. It's this time when you need to figure out the problem. Maybe your character is off or a motivation is missed. Maybe she the last sentence she said was completely wrong. Maybe he wants to go here instead of here. You can always figure out the problem--but you have to write something first. Life is a series of trial and error but eventually, Sally will cook something that tastes good and you will figure out where you need to go next.

What if you have tried--and failed? What then? Well,  Fix-it and Forget-it still applies.

I love my crockpot. I love finding recipes and adjusting them--or making up new ones with whatever I have on the shelf. When I use it, I gather all the ingredients and throw them in the pot. Let them simmer, cook all the way through and then go with it. There's no fear of messing it up, because you're just experiment. Maybe you should try this. Take your plot, characters, arcs, ideas--let them all simmer together. Play around with them. Toss in other things. Remove some things. See what happens. You can't mess it up, because you have the original recipe. The worst that happens? It doesn't work. The best? It does.

Is this post instilling confidence in you? It should. (At the very least you should be getting hungry!)

The whole purpose of this Fix-it and Forget-it franchise is to show people who don't know how to cook that they can, in fact, cook. The plan isn't that they will always use the crock-pot to cook every meal, but that they will have the confidence to grow and move beyond that and to something else.

When you have the confidence and drive to start writing, eventually you should have the confidence to continue writing. And to grow in your writing skills, pursuits and challenges. It's like learning to walk. It doesn't start there. We scoot, we crawl, we walk, we run. If we didn't have all the other steps before it, we'd never have the confidence to run. Confidence is slow building, but totally needed if you want to succeed. One great way I've found to build confidence is in other writers, through being challenged and encouraged.

Christina and I became CP's as I finished the first draft of my first-ever-official novel. She was so good at all the things I struggled with. She could pull a description out of something I wrote and ask me to go deeper and explain things I didn't even see as relevant. "It's so awesome!" I would say. But it wasn't. I could look at Christina's WIP and show her the things that weren't adding anything to the story. We both learned from each other and now I can (usually) write descriptively with more ease. (Note: Ease isn't always confidence. I tend to make Patricia read the really descriptive scenes as I write them. When you struggle with something, it's always worse in your head. I still think they suck and need the encouragement that they don't! Confidence is a slow process, just like with the crockpot!)

Chime in! 

• What are some areas in writing you need to build confidence? 
• What are some areas you are confident enough in? 
• Are their people around you struggling in some areas that you excel? 
• Can you help each other build confidence in these areas? 
• What are some things in your project that you can apply the "fix and forget" method to?

I wish I knew this before...

So I’m going to do a “I wish I knew that before I got Published” series. 

Edits/Revisions

Now, I knew there were still going to be edits and revisions once the ink dried on the publishing contract, but I don’t think I was prepared for the amount of edits and revisions.

So let’s rewind time. You submitted your perfect manuscript. It’s beautiful. Ready for publication, right? Because the publisher accepted your MS. They must love it the way it is. Just like your momma says she loves you just the way you are. Soon, your work of art is going to be on shelves. It’s going to hit the bestseller lists EVERYWHERE. You are a star, because you’re MS was just super-duper perfect.

Um, no.

Sometimes an editor or agent takes on your work because they like the voice, premise, plot, and characters but it needs major work. Which equals major revisions. There’s a phone call preparing you for the “editorial letter” that will be coming your way along with your edited up MS. I find that sometimes the call sort of under exaggerates the amount of edits. I don’t blame that tactic. No one wants you to actually freak on the phone with you. 

You get off the call, feeling good. Excited even. You get the “editorial letter” and…it’s 5 pages long. Single Spaced. Or 19 pages long, single spaced. Your breath gets stuck in your chest. Your heart stops. Your first thought is, “Oh, my God, I suck.”

Take a step back and breathe. An editorial letter is not telling you that you suck. It’s just telling you how they, as a team, are going to make your book better. I don’t really freak out with the editorial letters. I don’t personally get why people do, but I think it’s shocking to see how much has to change.

Then you open the MS…and you actually see what it looks like in track changes. And holy moley, your MS is full of red lines, text and comments on the side that say, “What the …?”

After downing a couple of glasses of wine, you do your edits. Sometimes this takes days, others it takes weeks. Depends on how fast you are and the extent of edits. Time to celebrate. You’re done your first round of edits. Wheee!

Guess what? You get to do that two or three more times. Sometimes even more than that. You read your MS so much that you probably end up hating it by the time it actually makes it to proof pages. One novel of mine was edited around six times before it hit copy edits. Six whole times. 

And then you get the final version of your book back. Sometimes it’s NOTHING like what you submitted. It’s a different book, with better character motivations, a tighter plot, and stronger writing.

So if I knew how much better the book would be after edits before I got pub’d, I probably wouldn’t have freaked so much when I saw my first edited MS.