Getting Out of the Zero-Word Zone

January is often a month when you vow to change your life or reach toward a new goal. How’s that going for you? I’m finding it hard to buckle down and get writing. I’ve just finished revisions on one book, and, while I’m collecting critiques on that one, I’m toying with moving on to another. But I haven’t. I even have a good plan in mind. So what’s stopping me?

I’m getting pretty good at thinking up excuses. First it was the report cards I had to write for my day job. Then there was the new blog feature I started (ABC’s of Writing for Middle Graders over at That's Another Story). And a family weekend we took. Catching up after the family weekend. Critiques I owe. And then…well, you know how it is. Excuses are easy to dream up. What’s not easy, it seems is getting back to a regular writing routine.

What’s your best excuse for not writing? 'Cause I’m getting tapped out. I guess tomorrow I’ll actually have to do it. Just pick a place and start. Even a few words is better than zero.

-- Andrea

Check out this funny video

Happy New Year!

All of us at MiG Writers have been very busy. We promise to get back to our regular blogging posts soon. In the mean time, check out this funny and very clever video children's author Dee Garretson made. Make sure you check out her awesome books too, Wildfire Run (available now) and Wolf Storm (due out this fall).


http://deegarretson.wordpress.com/a-writers-day-video/

~Carmella

Highlights Fiction Contest

Attention middle grade writers: it's time for the annual Highlights Fiction Contest! This year's theme is fiction involving an embarrassing moment. The deadline to submit is January 31.

If you don't write a lot of short stories, such as those of us always mired in novels, this is a great chance to practice story lines and emotional arcs in 750 words or less. You will learn to get to the point and stick to that emotional arc. Plus short stories take so much less time to write than novels that it will hardly bother you at all when your critiquers tell you to rewrite it.

Every year around this time, I write and submit a story. I've never made a sale or won an honorable mention, but I do get something out of the contest: finished, polished stories!

Here's the link: http://www.highlights.com/highlights-fiction-contest

-- Kate

Promise

I’ve always heard you’re supposed to tell everyone when you go on a diet because going public holds you more accountable.

Well, I’m not going on a diet but I am jumping into the deep end, and you’re the first to know.

After a couple of months struggling to find my footing with a middle grade project, I had a revelation: I didn’t like it. It wasn’t a book I’d pick up to read. The fact my wonderful critique group was also finding it hard to connect with the MC only validated my suspicions.  

So what’s a writer to do when things aren’t working? Throw it out and do something else. And that’s what I’ve been doing. I even went out and bought a new journal even though I’d only used a dozen or so pages of my last one. This one is a wonderful, soft leather and sometimes I pick up and smell it and then hug it to my chest. My kids think I’ve lost my marbles. But really I’ve just found them. 

This new project is a different genre (YA) and WAY too ambitious for someone who’s been writing fiction for a mere two years. But that’s what makes it exciting - there’s no way I can succeed so - on the flip side - there’s no way I can fail!  

I’m having fun writing again. I wake up and go to sleep thinking about my book, which at least in my head, is fully formed and just waiting for me to commit it to page. 

Promise.

Don’t you just love that feeling? 

Passion

My oldest is a senior this year, which means we are knee-deep in (dum dum dum!) college application season. Because my son is applying to some programs that require essays above and beyond the basic Common App essay, I’ve been getting loads of critique practice. I’ve also been getting loads of eye rolls and looks that scream, “Mom doesn’t know what she’s talking about even though she’s been a professional writer for 12 years,” too. But I digress.

One essay in particular was a challenge for him. It was for a college that has a unique degree that combines my son’s two passions: science and music.  He *really* wants to attend this college but his first draft was, frankly, dull. (And this is from his mother!) There was no sparkle, no life. No HIM. 

So I handed it back to him and told him to start over. 

I encouraged him to think about the moment when he really and truly realized he loved physics and wanted to spend his life learning about the universe and everything in it. And how he’d fallen in love with music the moment he laid his fingers on the keys of a piano and then later fell in love with the bassoon. I told him to write from the heart and not to put down what he thought the admission folks would want to hear. 

The result was the terrific essay that really shines, full of terrific metaphors and lively descriptions and deep insight. And, more importantly, it carries my son’s passionate voice. There’s no way the admissions committee will turn him down - of course, I’m a wee bit prejudiced! 

I think this is an important lesson for all of us. As writers, we sometimes write what we think publishers or readers want. That work may be okay but we’ll always fall flat if we don’t pour ourselves into our writing. Our work needs passion. Our passion. So we’d better pick ideas we genuinely love.  If we don’t love what we’re writing, the reader will know. 

And there’ll always be some editor or agent handing our work back and telling us, “Start over.” 

Puzzle Pieces

I tested for my 2nd degree black belt in taekwondo this past weekend. At the graduation, my instructor told the class that having a black belt was like having a 300 piece puzzle dumped out on a table. He said something like, “You have all these skills and now you have to figure out how they fit together.” 

I’ve been feeling this way about my current novel. (If you can call it that; I’m only five, lousy pages into it. Sigh.) I have all these ideas and scenes and bits of research and thoughts scattered on the figurative table in front of me. And the challenge is putting them all together when I’m not even sure how the final picture should look. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m terrible at jigsaw puzzles. I just don’t have the patience. But I guess I’ll just what I usually do - find those edge pieces first.  

Any other tips for putting those novel pieces together? 

~Carmella 

How to Handle Rejection

I try not to let it get me down, but sometimes it does. Even though I've been pretending ever since I sent out my query letters that it doesn't matter so much. I can always write another novel (yeah, in another four years). Here are some thoughts about how to ease the sting of a rejection:

1. Do something creative with the rejection letters, like give them to your new puppy and see what he thinks about it.

2. Read blogs about rejection written by other writers. It helps to know there are others out there feeling the same way.

3. Twizzlers. Chocolate. Whatever. Treat yourself to something delicious.

4. Send out more queries. One letter is just one person's opinion.

Actually, the thing that works best for me is to immerse myself in a new and even better writing project. I'll go back and fix up the rejected one someday, but the more writing I do, the more my writing will improve (especially with my awesome critique buddies to give me feedback). The next book I write could be The One.

What's your best tip for dealing with rejections?

-- Andrea