IWSG - January 2016

Click here to find out more and to see a list of other IWSG blogs.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Cohosts this month include L.G. Keltner, Denise Covey, Sheri Larsen, J.Q. Rose, Chemist Ken. and Michelle Wallace 

Okay, I kind of want to laugh at myself. A couple of months ago I posted here about how I attended a writing retreat where the prolific author Kevin J. Anderson was in attendance. He had great suggestions for increasing your productivity, etc. I was inspired. I wanted to emulate him. I wasn't dreaming of becoming as prolific as he is but simply increasing my output.

I had ten days off over the holidays. And I ran into creative roadblocks. It was time well used, but as I've been working through the story decisions, I realized something.

I'm never going to be a fast writer.

Oh, I can crank out a 50,000 word first draft in 17 days, but the finished product? Nothing fast about that process for me. When I try to force my brain to move faster, it resists. It's like that old mule the miner can't get to move for anything.

I'm relieved to admit this to myself. My creative brain is taking a little sigh as I write this. But I'm also disappointed. I keep asking, "When is this going to get easier?"

Do any of you have any secrets? Or do you struggle like I do?

Reflections on Being an Author

This is actually a post worthy of Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group. I've wondered a few times if I ought to join, and my recent experience kind of confirms that perhaps I should.

I caught myself (and it's not the first time) doing something I used to do a lot when I was a kid, especially a teen. You see, I never gave people a chance to say anything bad about me--because I made sure I beat them to it. There wasn't anything anyone could say bad about me that was worse than what I'd already said about myself.

The really sad thing is that, at my age, I dang well should be over that.

So what have I done? Lately, I've found myself warning my friends that they might not like my book. I keep imaging a friend or loved one picking it up, thinking they're going to love it . . . and finding that they hate it.

Awkward!

I know on an intellectual level there will be people who don't like my book. Author Beth Revis has a wonderful blog post on dealing with negative reviews here.

I guess my insecurities erupt full force in their adolescent power because some of the people who aren't going to like my book won't necessarily be strangers. Some of the people I care about may not like my baby.

My active imagination shows me in a social setting while I stare at their deer-in-the-headlights expressions as they scramble for tactful ways to give me a social white lie. Of course, I have to admit that I've got a couple of sons who would never give me a social white lie. They'd lay it out before me in untempered honesty:

"Your book sucked, Mom."

And, you know, that's okay. Really. Because I would be surprised if either of them liked my little adventure romance. Example--at least one of them thinks George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is the epitome of great literature.

Um, I hate that series.

I've tried reading the first book twice and quit both times--finally checking out Wikipedia to see where it was headed. I knew I didn't want to read any further. Just not my kind of story.

Marketing myself--and my intellectual property--will probably be one of the toughest things I've ever done. Maybe even harder than it was to hand over that manuscript to be read for the first time.

And I'm surely not alone in this. Obviously, I need to do better with the positive self-talk. What do you do to either deal with your own doubts or to prepare yourself to deal with criticism?