No Yellow Brick Road in Writing

I love what Arthur Slade shared in his interview on Monday, especially his confusion about being a YA writer.  Discovering how prolific authors get headed in the right direction can help those who are just starting out or simply not making any headway.  YA, adult, genre, literary – how hard can it be to know what we write or which direction to go? As Arthur pointed out, it’s not always easy to tell.

Dorothy asked the scarecrow, "Which way do we take?"  His cryptic answers were  “Pardon me, this way is a very nice way,”  (points other way) “It’s pleasant down that way, too,”  and (points both ways) “Of course, some people do go both ways.” I’m surprised she didn’t leave him hanging in the cornfield.

We have to start somewhere, and there's no yellow brick road.  Some writers follow one road until it dead ends and their writing gets stalled.  Some branch off at the ‘Y’ in the road and add a few vampires or whatever is currently on the horizon.  Still others take the road less traveled and find success.

So, how far do you travel before you sit down in the dust and re-think your decision?  If you’re traveling alone, you may go far off course before taking stock and honestly considering your options.  It’s not smart to be a lone wolf in the writing community.  You can waste a lot of time trying to decide things on your own.  Writers are generally too close to their writing to see things clearly.  We all need honest feedback.

Sometimes we fall into a certain type of writing because we follow advice such as 'write what you know' or 'write what you read.'  The advice is neither good nor bad, just tricksy.  Sometimes the story gets a hold of us and we think it knows best.  Often a character will demand our full attention and we assume the story is theirs alone.  This happened to me when an insistent character, a 12-year-old girl, told me her side of the story and I bit.  Mean mommy + bad sisters X rotten luck = unjust circumstances.  I was sure I was a YA writer and that this was a YA story.  I read all the ‘how to’ books for YA fiction.  I read and dissected great YA fiction.  I was around kids every day and knew how they talked and what they cared about.  By gum, I knew what I was doing!

The story came together and stirred some interest at a conference, including an agent who went back and conferred with his colleagues about it.  His eventual response:  We don’t do YA.  If it had an adult perspective, we would be interested.

Great gnashing of teeth ensued on my part.  I railed to my family, "It’s perfect the way it is!" which translates to (a) I’m sick and tired of this story, and (b) I don’t want to rewrite it again and (c) how badly do I really want to be published?  I stamped and huffed and scowled, and when I was spent, my husband sagely said, “You know, it could really use the mom’s perspective.”

I stuffed it in a drawer for a week or more.  When I came to my senses, I realized he had something there.  The mom started talking to me.  And then the sisters.  And the grandparents.  Grief, like a spreading stain, had seeped into all their lives and done its damage.  How could I have missed it?  So, I picked it up again and told the whole story this time.

For my part, I had to set aside what I was so sure I knew and listen to what credible sources told me about the story and my writing.  It doesn’t mean I won’t write another story with a juvenile’s perspective.  Kids have such insight and tell it like it is.  But it will most likely be written from the standpoint of an adult reflecting on childhood experiences.

Some writers will insist that they have ALWAYS known what they were destined to write.  Oo-rah.  Good for them!  Even better if they have ever considered another way and had their original choice confirmed.

How did you come to realize what you were meant to write?  Was it a trial by fire or just the quiet affirmation of readers and colleagues?  Maybe you’re still in process.  We’d love to hear.

Being Enough

Lamott is fun to read because she is so very over-the-top nuerotic. There were parts of this chapter, the one called "Publication," however, that were downright irritating and others parts that rang with clarion-bell truth that engraved my bones. Glad you're along for our book club.

Many nonwriters assume that publication is a thunderously joyous event in the writer's life...They believe that if they themselves were to get something published, their lives would change instantly, dramatically, and for the better. Their self-esteem would flourish; all self-doubt would be erased like a typo. Entire paragraphs and manscripts of disappointment and rejection and lack of faith would be wiped out by one push of a psychic delete button and replaced by a quiet, tender sense of worth and belonging. Then they could wrap the world in flame.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

When people learn that I'm a published author of five novels, they assume I'm rich, as brash and adventuresome as Ernest Hemmingway, and famous. I am none of these things. I'm the manager of a household (including three toilets), the dog walker/poo poo picker-upper, the gardener, snow shoveler, and purveyor of sustenance (I shop at Wal-Mart). My self-esteem is not bulletproof, nor do I slough off rejection. I'm the same person I was before my first novel was published, only my expectations are more realistic, and I must deal regularly with issues of envy. (This may seem contradictory. Aren't we all?)

My life has been enriched by reaching a broader audience. Writing five novels has confirmed that I can accomplish big things. Composing a story weighing in at 100,000 words is like climbing Mt. Everest in the dark, without a camera or witnesses. It's big! Satisfying. Intoxicating. Privately, it's a golden handshake.

And people invite me to speak to groups large and small. Trust me, when I was changing diapers or teaching school, no one invited me anywhere to say anything. I thoroughly enjoy this perk because there are things I care about, and now people will listen to me--or pretend to listen while licking chocolate cake off the tines of their forks.

Over the last ten years, I've had amazing opportunities to share God's faithfulness, encourage artists and craftpeople to value their abilities as gifts, teach the craft of writing to aspiring writers, and convince rooms full of librarians that fiction is more truthful than nonfiction. I really, really like this part, but the invitations are dwindling since I haven't published anything in some time. Boo! Hiss!

All that I know about the relationship between publication and mental health was summed up in one line of the movie Cool Runnings..."If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough with it."

Being a published writer is humbling. One day you're a rock star--your publisher is buying full-page ads in magazines, telling the world you're the fresh voice in fiction, and PR people know your number by heart--and the next day, a review comes out in your local paper. It's the worst review ever written, and now your neighbors are blushing for you and avoiding eye contact at the grocery store. Your mother even writes a letter to the editor. You're wondering if it's too late to crawl back into obscurity. It is, sorry to say. But you are still standing, and you're discovering other reasons to put yourself out there.

All of this is to say that you need more than being published to "be enough" for yourself. While plotting and researching, spend time with people who love you and some that you choose to love. Nurture those relationships as fervantly as you nurture your craft, even moreso. This includes the One who loves you most, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's crazy about you! He cares little about what you do. (Publishing contracts are used in bird cages in Heaven.) Jesus revels in who you are--a lover of the unlovely, one who reaches out a hand to the hurting, someone who says yes, yes, yes to all that He is and loves Him for it. People like this are enough for themselves. This should be your goal before publication.

Has publication been all you dreamed? What "gifts" do you welcome most from publication? Which challenge you? How do you prepare yourself to face the ups and downs of publication?

We have one more chapter of Lamott's book Bird by Bird to discuss. Any other suggestions?

Spring Cleaning the Writing Life

Spring has finally arrived in Northern California. We think. We hope. After record rainfall and cold, a small rise in the mercury has everyone dressed in tanks, shorts and flip flops, which don't hide the goosebumps.

As a child, I remember my mother's spring cleaning every year, though our house was already spotless. The furniture was moved for a thorough dusting and vacuuming, the wooden floors were waxed and polished, the windows cleaned with vinegar and newspaper, the cobwebs removed from attic to basement. She washed every rug, blanket and quilt and draped them on the clothesline to dry in the mottled sunshine. Cabinets were cleaned out and the Contac paper replaced, even under the kitchen sink. The broken, useless and out-of-date were tossed. By the end of the week, the house had a great freshness and exuberance after the long winter.

I would love to continue her tradition (I see merit in it) but I'm lucky to accomplish the basic weekly cleaning that keeps our house livable. If I were to choose one area to freshen, it would be my writing space, and I'm not just talking about my desk. I'm thinking that a good spring cleaning could extend to my writing life, as well.

I'm thinking of the box beneath my desk with the dusty files of just-begun stories I toyed with when I was trying to find my writer voice, as Sharon mentioned in her last post. Or the numerous revisions of the manuscripts that quietly and naturally expired before publication. Copies of revisions for books already published. The resources - now out of date - that I'd gathered for a series I wanted to write, but now realize isn't the direction I want to go.

Copies of old writing magazines. Shelves of books on writing, the writer's life, writer's devotionals, essays on the writing, how to get published, how to market, market guides, dictionaries, thesauruses, pocket dictionaries and thesauruses, word finders, synonym finders, baby names, and even more baby names. An old computer that died in the middle of my last manuscript. Tapes & CDs of writers conference sessions. Binders with worksheets for the tapes & CDs from writers conference sessions.

Why would a person keep all of this stuff, aside from the too-busy life that doesn't allow for much deep cleaning? Does the clutter define me as a writer? I've begun the task of cleaning this out several times, but the job turned out to be overwhelming and I ended by packing it all back in the tubs. Keeping a few indicators of the writer's journey makes great sense. We need to see the progress we've made. But at some point, this clutter can hold a person back. It can whisper, "This is you, now and forever. No freshness can penetrate." It can speak of failures and misguided attempts to define ourselves when we were just wandering and trying to discover who we are.

So, aside from ridding ourselves of the obvious junk, how do we spring clean the writing life? It could begin with something as simple as changing up a subscription from a writing magazine we no longer read cover to cover with something new. Perhaps we begin our writing time composing or reading a poem. Maybe we try submitting an article or personal experience piece to a magazine or story collection, something that has a beginning and end so we can see the results immediately, even if it's never published. Or we begin our autobiographies, keeping the bigger picture of our lives in mind.

We rid ourselves of the negative self-talk that keeps us in doubt of our calling and makes us question the time we sacrifice for it. We treat our writing as a job and reestablish our boundaries. We consider our writing time an appointment we keep with ourselves. No one else needs to know the reason.

With the changes in publishing, we may need to forgo the vision we had of publication and be open to something new, or be willing to change our trajectory altogether. We need to ask for a new vision of our futures as writers from the One who knows the best desired outcomes for us.

Can you think of more ways to spring clean your writing life? I would love to hear!