It's strange, on this crazy writing journey of mine. Sometimes I tell people I've been writing forever, sometimes I say I've just started, and honestly, it's both. It's all these contradictions, fact and and a contradicting fact that is also true, with clarification.
I have wanted to be a writer, a storyteller, a person who writes books, since I was about 6 or 7. I don't remember if there was a specific book that inspired me, I just knew I loved reading, and I loved words. In third grade my teacher first brought out the 'half pages'. The bottom half was lined, the top half was blank, so we wrote stories on the lines, and illustrated them in the top. I wrote stories about a lovable dog that got into trouble. (I don't think they made any sense. I was seven. I would have to edit them prior to publication.)
By the time I was ten I was dreaming up Star Trek NG fanfiction. I don't think I ever got it written down, but I'd act it out, inserting my original character into the Starship Enterprise D and rewriting my favorite episodes.
(It was at 12 that I was bullied relentlessly. I developed an ulcer, and had to leave school. 90% of this abuse centered around the fact that I used 'big words', and read 'big books'. I didn't know how to fit in.)
When I was fourteen, I got my first rejection letter. I had written a full fan fiction manuscript for the Animorphs Series, and sent a letter to K.A. Applegate offering her my concept. It was a very sweetly worded rejection, and it looked handwritten. Sadly I lost it, and to this day I wish I had it, to start my rejection pile off on a high note.
But see... Here's the important part.
That was when I Quit.
I quit writing fan fiction. Oh, I found other outlets and still wrote fan fiction every so often, but I never saw it through. I never forced myself to push through the hard parts, or to find a better way, I would just lose interest, walk away, and abandon those files. I still have them (On a FLOPPY DISK PEOPLE. Oh, how this dates me.) I wrote Harry Potter Fanfiction (along with half the world!) I wrote Fanfiction for the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters (knowing my name. I confess I was saddened to learn that was only her pen name), I wrote fan fiction for Anne Rice's Vampires. BUT I never finished, because I quit. I saw I would never BE PUBLISHED, if I wrote myself into someone ELSE'S world.
So I started writing original fiction. I'd get an idea, write half of it down, find myself flailing somewhere, and give up. I kept them, but never finished. A lot of it was vampires. I loved vampires and did a huge amount of creative writing through a chatroom, (A pure text HTML coded RPG. Actual WRITING with no animation, dice, or DM. For those who speak geek.) I had wild vampire adventures with seductions and intrigue and betrayal through my screen name. Surprisingly this really did improve my writing. There was an elite club of characters, they all had these amazingly well written posts, and I wanted to be like that. I whipped out my college vocabulary, I practiced making my words flow, while describing my actions. It was still, in terms of fiction, horribly done. I'd use the same word 50 times in a night, but it forced me to write the words.
Then years passed. Life happened. Instead of going on to go to school to be a writer, I discovered no one thought it was practical. I'd starve, they said, so I did a few years of college, life happened again. Relationships, jobs, many, many failures, and finally good stuff. Marriage, baby, and a nice place to live. In 2007 my friend approached me with this great idea... It'd be a graphic novel, no, a tarot deck, no and actual novel! And a movie! Each time we talked about it, the ideas got bigger, longer, more elaborate. We talked for hours about this amazing world we were going to have. I made a character that was my favorite, he made one that was his, then we fought over the timeline to make each have their shining moments. We took AMAZING photographs themed toward the WIP.
It was going to be a series. It was going to be epic. Someday we would be millionaires!
I finished one draft of one novel, he wrote his draft, but putting them together... didn't work. We fell into the pit of despair filled with wrath and hate and daggers (I mean that literally, we both own a shit-ton of knives, we just don't use them on PEOPLE duh.) It wasn't going to work. He said he was done.
I tried to keep going, then I faced the mountain, the mountain every writer must face. You reach a point where the glamorous money and fame and riches prove to be a mirage... Then you see what actually lies beyond the alluring deception. You see edits. Corrections. Rewrites. You see plot holes and misused metaphor, tropes and excess description. You see your first draft for what it is... crap on a page. Words... that only in the crudest form... reflect the story your trying to tell.
That was when I quit.
Oh, I could make excuses. That I was a new Mom, that I had a baby to raise, or that my depression was acting up, or that I was more concerned with buying a new house.(these are legitimate reasons, but they were not MY reason.)
The
truth is, I just wasn't ready.
I
looked at all the other writers and I thought, I'll NEVER be that good. I
thought about the work, and how trying to get published takes HOURS upon hours
of blood sweat and toil. Then you have Agents, agents and editors that are so
overrun with queries that no matter HOW brilliant you are it will never
actually grace their fingers.
And
guess what, if they sign you for a multiple book deal, you have to make MULTIPLE BOOKS!
On a deadline! Without them sucking! Or you'll FAIL and it will be such an EPIC
FAIL that the entire INDUSTRY will pause and laugh at you as you fall.
I wasn't afraid of failing. I was afraid of not failing quietly. I was afraid that yes, my work would finally pay off with a beautiful heartfelt AMAZING book I'd spend years crafting. It would do AMAZINGLY well! People would FLOCK to buy it. And then my second book would go HORRIBLY WRONG. It wouldn't get finished... ever... It would get written, but so badly that all my fans would set fire to it. I would be kicked out of the Authors club and told to NEVER darken their doors AGAIN.
That was my fear. And even as cartoonish and laughable as it sounds... It shut me down. It made me quit.
I quit, and I told myself. "I can still write, I just won't go through the pressure of getting published."
That was five years ago. Then in late February or early March of 2012. I realized something. My life, was not gong how I pictured it. A lot of things were there, but like many people, at some point I looked around and all I could see were the things I gave up. I kept getting bad news about family, bad news about my health, and I finally just said to hell with all of it. I was going to sit down, and write my novel til it was done. Then when it was done, I was going to make it better. Then when it was amazing, I'd sell it. Sink or swim, if all I managed to do in life was get my NAME on the cover of a book I wrote, then that was going to be my goal.
Profits? Eh, if I fail, I fail. If I make money... That'd be cool.
Fame? If I get INVITED to a Con because someone WANTS me there as an AUTHOR, that's fame enough for me. That's the dream. (I have a much more specific dream of walking up to Jim Butcher with my novel in hand, slapping it down and saying, "I BEAT the BEAR!" Go read Jim Butcher's bio at jim-butcher.com. I'll wait.)
I have nice, small, achievable expectations. I'm going to keep doing this. I’m not doing this for me. Not really. It's for the story that sits in my head. It's for the characters that live and fight and weep because of the life they live on the pages. It's for the world I created, because I love it.
If I abandon my story now... A whole fictional world dies. (Remember Alderaan.) That's a tragedy I won't be responsible for.
I sat down in March, seized by a fevered madness to WRITE my STORY. I got the first draft out in a month. It's actually turned into two books. It's... kind of a beast. BUT the words are there, the potential is ALL THERE.
This is the FIRST time I've decided to try for publication. This is the first time I've committed to going the distance. I've been writing forever, yet all of this is new.
I wasn't afraid of failing. I was afraid of not failing quietly. I was afraid that yes, my work would finally pay off with a beautiful heartfelt AMAZING book I'd spend years crafting. It would do AMAZINGLY well! People would FLOCK to buy it. And then my second book would go HORRIBLY WRONG. It wouldn't get finished... ever... It would get written, but so badly that all my fans would set fire to it. I would be kicked out of the Authors club and told to NEVER darken their doors AGAIN.
That was my fear. And even as cartoonish and laughable as it sounds... It shut me down. It made me quit.
I quit, and I told myself. "I can still write, I just won't go through the pressure of getting published."
That was five years ago. Then in late February or early March of 2012. I realized something. My life, was not gong how I pictured it. A lot of things were there, but like many people, at some point I looked around and all I could see were the things I gave up. I kept getting bad news about family, bad news about my health, and I finally just said to hell with all of it. I was going to sit down, and write my novel til it was done. Then when it was done, I was going to make it better. Then when it was amazing, I'd sell it. Sink or swim, if all I managed to do in life was get my NAME on the cover of a book I wrote, then that was going to be my goal.
Profits? Eh, if I fail, I fail. If I make money... That'd be cool.
Fame? If I get INVITED to a Con because someone WANTS me there as an AUTHOR, that's fame enough for me. That's the dream. (I have a much more specific dream of walking up to Jim Butcher with my novel in hand, slapping it down and saying, "I BEAT the BEAR!" Go read Jim Butcher's bio at jim-butcher.com. I'll wait.)
I have nice, small, achievable expectations. I'm going to keep doing this. I’m not doing this for me. Not really. It's for the story that sits in my head. It's for the characters that live and fight and weep because of the life they live on the pages. It's for the world I created, because I love it.
If I abandon my story now... A whole fictional world dies. (Remember Alderaan.) That's a tragedy I won't be responsible for.
I sat down in March, seized by a fevered madness to WRITE my STORY. I got the first draft out in a month. It's actually turned into two books. It's... kind of a beast. BUT the words are there, the potential is ALL THERE.
This is the FIRST time I've decided to try for publication. This is the first time I've committed to going the distance. I've been writing forever, yet all of this is new.
Since April I've been working on edits and rewrites. It's the second time I've written this story, and it's already at LEAST 80% better. I've set my BETA Piranha fish to
chomp-chomp-chomp on my story and spit out the nasty bits.
I am on my way.
And sometimes I still look at the mountain I still have to climb. I look at the deadly ledges labeled 'query' and 'publisher' and 'self pub' I look at the frightening crevasses labeled 'self-doubt' and 'failure'.
But this time I'm ready. I have made friends who share the journey, I have worked hard to research the science, the truth behind the fiction, and I keep honing my craft more and more each day. I've received encouraging words personally from REAL AUTHORS (I say with hushed awe), who tell me not to quit, to keep going and find my way.
Most of all, I know I'm ready because I've figure out who I am. I am a writer. I am the pen that springs forth worlds of my imagining. I am a mad genius of sadism to characters and masochism to edits. I am crazy, but I am sound. I like who I am.
And This, is where I harden my resolve, look at the mountain, and I WILL NOT quit.
I am on my way.
And sometimes I still look at the mountain I still have to climb. I look at the deadly ledges labeled 'query' and 'publisher' and 'self pub' I look at the frightening crevasses labeled 'self-doubt' and 'failure'.
But this time I'm ready. I have made friends who share the journey, I have worked hard to research the science, the truth behind the fiction, and I keep honing my craft more and more each day. I've received encouraging words personally from REAL AUTHORS (I say with hushed awe), who tell me not to quit, to keep going and find my way.
Most of all, I know I'm ready because I've figure out who I am. I am a writer. I am the pen that springs forth worlds of my imagining. I am a mad genius of sadism to characters and masochism to edits. I am crazy, but I am sound. I like who I am.
And This, is where I harden my resolve, look at the mountain, and I WILL NOT quit.
