My Enemy, My Chair

"The hardest thing you will encounter as a writer is your chair."

 

Discipline. Perseverance. Self-Motivation. Call it what you will, it all shakes out to be the same thing. No one ever got anything worthwhile without hard work - period.

 

I'm not belittling how almost insurmountably difficult the publishing industry is, because that is what most people would say is the hardest part of writing. But I'd counter with - if you haven't spent the time in the chair then you'll have nothing to try to publish, so really, its the dedication of sitting your backside in that chair and making yourself push ahead when you don't feel like it or when there are a million other burdens pressing down on you, that really is the clincher.

 

Mostly along the lines of my 'start now' post - but I guess that's because it really, really irks me when people dream without passion. If you say "I'd really like to run a marathon before I die" but you're 40 pounds overweight and you don't even go for walks - well, if that is what you really want than you best get out today and walk a mile, do that for a month, then add two more, than start jogging, build to running, and run your first 5K within three months of that time. I'm so sick of people who don't TAKE ACTION. Life is a bull, just pawing on the ground, waiting to be gripped by the horns. Don't just exist...live. That, or stop saying pretty words that you have no intention on following through with, because really then you're just speaking lies. Think I'm overstating it? I don't. Because telling yourself you're going to run a marathon before you die and then doing nothing to work toward that goal is the worst lie of all - you're lying to yourself. If you don't have that type of dedication to go through the training, then admit it and move on - it doesn't make you a bad person, just one whose honest with themselves.

 

Wow...holy raging tangent Batman.

 

Backtracking that bunny trail....if you have dreams of publishing at all, whether is be in a local newspaper, just a simple book for family and friends, or you want to be an international best seller, it'll never happen if you don't do the hard work of sitting and plucking away at that keyboard (AND spend your hours interviewing and at the desks in the library researching...write with authority folks, don't make stuff up, even in fiction).

 

Now, I do not write full-time (wouldn't that be nice...). I have a full time job and then I am an avid runner and reader. I'm a clean freak about my home and spend a lot of time taking care of that each week. I have a husband who I like to spend time with and I am one of those old fashion girls who makes dinner from scratch each night. I have an active social life and mentor high school students. Now add time for writing. Wait...there is none.

 

So I have to sacrifice not doing many of these things if my desire truly is to be a multi-published author. I made a goal for myself to spend 2-3 hours every single day either writing or researching, no exceptions. It's the only way I'll make it. And sometimes that means staying up until 2am and then yanking myself out of bed at 5am and going to work with only 3 hours of sleep under my belt. Sometimes that means holing myself up in my little dungeon office on a beautiful summer Saturday. Sometimes it means *gasp* not cleaning my house that week (really, that's a huge deal).

 

What are you dreams worth to you?

Drowning Your Kitten

I have recently learned the importance of drowning your kitten. 

No.  It’s not what you think.

My friends know I have two pet cats – Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent – who are basically like children to me so fear not for their safety…I’m speaking strictly of literary kittens.

I learned the term from Robin Jones Gunn.  Sidenote: she’s amazing.  I had the privilege of meeting her at the writer's conference I attended at the beginning of this month. 

The second day of the conference I was beyond discouraged and felt like I should just pack up and leave.  I was assailed by the constant thought…maybe writing is not for me.  I’d had a meeting with an agent that, while encouraging, they didn’t want my work.  They said in the future when I wasn’t as much of a greenhorn they’d love to see my stuff, but not what I had to offer them right now.

Downcast, I went to dinner and low and behold Robin sought me out.  She said she asked God who to sit with and my face showed up in her mind and came and found me.  With that declaration I felt like I owed her the truth about how I was feeling.  Then she taught me the importance of drowning my kittens.

She explained that sometimes we are so in love with something we write, whether it be a couple pages, a paragraph, or an entire manuscript, but it needs to be thrown out.  Chopped.  Cut.  Killed.

To a writer, once you’ve labored over something for months or years it becomes this cute, adorable, cuddly, fluff of a kitten to you.  Everything about it makes you sigh and you can’t understand why it makes everyone else sneeze.  Why don’t they see that this little cat is the most amazing thing ever?  When that happens…its burlap sack time.  You have to do the horrible deed that makes it feel like you’re ripping out your own heart.  You have to toss your sweet baby in the sack, tie it, and toss it into the raging river.  Gone.  Don’t jump in after it.  Let it die.

I’m at a point where I’m asking myself if I should kill my kitten.  See, before the conference I thought I was one type of writer.  But during the conference I came to the conclusion that what I was doing was not the direction I want to head down at all.  I clearly felt during the conference (and since) that I should be writing historically based fiction.  Not the current stuff I was trying for.  I love made up worlds…and with history, it kind of gets to be that.  I want to escape the humdrum of life in 2011, I love dreaming of the ‘old days’ for good and bad (because they weren’t as perfect as we all have been taught).  I love the stories of the past that shape what we are today.  

Anyway, back to my fuzzball.  I went to the writer’s conference with a completed contemporary manuscript that was meant to be the first in a series of four books.  I walked away from the conference with two publishers and an agent asking for copies of the manuscript to consider for publication – but I’ve sat on it since.  See, I don’t know if I want it published now.  Don’t get me wrong, any publishing would be amazing, but I don’t know if I want to spend my time branding myself along the lines of that series by writing the next three if I did get a contract. 

So now I sit.  Burlap sack in hand and unassuming kitty purring in sleep on my lap…do I drown him?  Do I send his cute pictures to the editors and see what happens?  Or do I set him aside and in a couple years go back?