Writing Your Way Out of Hibernation: Don't Quit!

 

Behold! I have emerged from the Writer’s Den refreshed and at long-last finished with phase 3-million of the major rewrite. I’ve sent it to beta readers, received their approval and now my baby lies in the more capable hands of my outstanding editor, Heather Webb (check her out, she’s fabulous!).

 

My apologies for being gone so long. I had to really commit myself to finishing this project. As I mentioned in Digging up The Dead: The Tale of The Manuscript That Wouldn’t Die, reviving the dead is no easy project and this manuscript was DEAD! It still looks something like this...

But that is what I’m writing this blog about…

As writers, we hear it all the time, “Just stick that horrible manuscript in a drawer and write something else.”

So I did that, right? And my ghostly characters called me back. They swore they weren’t dead and they wanted their story told. So I've slogged away for months and here’s what I’ve learned in the process.

• 1.      Writing improves with time.

• 2.      It’s extremely difficult to correct a billion mistakes in one manuscript.

• 3.      It’s hard letting go of writing that you once thought you loved.

• 4.      Remember to NOT make the same mistakes in the future.

• 5.      Every character has a mission (or should) and at least one that you love must be sacrificed.

• 6.      It’s worth the effort of rewriting a manuscript just to see how far you can go.

I know this manuscript is far from perfect (cough-cough UNDERSTATEMENT), really. I still see a lot more that needs to be addressed (enter the last round of edits) and I’m sure my editor is finding a gazillion more issues for me to fix (which is exactly why I so desperately need her expertise). Because when I’m done, though I still won’t have a perfect book – and when this old story finally sees the light of day I’m sure it will have its fair share of criticism – but the point of doing this is that I didn’t quit! 

 

It wasn’t easy to pick up that mess of an old manuscript and face my own poor writing demons, but I did (okay, there are a few still in there, but I’m really hoping Heather will exorcise them!) and I’m glad I did. It gave me a chance to look at my writing objectively, the same way I look at someone else’s work-in-progress and think wtf? What was I thinking? I was finally able to see what everyone else was trying to tell me (yes, Heather, I know. I hate chapter two also).

And that’s why I am so glad that I’ve committed to finishing this project, no matter how painful. This is the learning experience of a lifetime (one my degree could never teach) and even if this series won't be perfect, they’ll be something I can be proud of simply because I didn’t quit. Now, the next time I write from scratch I won’t make the same mistakes I made before (I’ll make new ones) and all of my future writing will be better because I suffered and slaved and patchwork quilted this thing back together. 

After ripping her apart and stitching her back together so many times this is pretty much how I see my beautiful heroine now.

My advice to you, if you’re just beginning this writing journey, is to really make sure the project is dead TO YOU, before locking it away forever. The manuscript might still never see the light of day, or maybe it will, but it doesn’t make the best-sellers-whatever, the point is…if that manuscript is still calling your name, then it has something more to teach you. 

 

Pick it up, dust it off, and give it another coat of elbow grease before you decide to let it die. You’re the only one who can truly know your manuscript and what you’re capable of accomplishing with it. If you don’t want to give up, yet, then don’t. That way if it still ends up without a pulse, at least you’ll know you did everything you could to save it and hopefully you learn some new CPR tricks. 

 

 

What's next for me? I’m tentatively planning to do a cover reveal for Search (SEEK Part 1) on April 1^st (depending on how bad my edit letter is) and a May 1^st release (of course, those dates might change! *bites nails*).   

You can find updates on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, right here at Addicted toWords, and candieleighcampbell.com

The Writer’s Maze: Hoedown with Words

I’ve always considered writing a dance between raw imagination and gained knowledge, but recently I’ve decided it’s a very specific type of dance. A hoedown.

Wait. Wait. Don’t go! This isn’t a sleazy post about women with loose morals or about rednecks partying down south. Here, listen to the most famous hoedown (so you’ll feel more comfortable with the subject) by Aaron Copland, it’s been completely commercialized.

Aaron Copland – Hoedown - Posted on YouTube by solutioncow

Now, you get it. You see where I’m going with this, right?

Writing is a journey (hence my URL) which takes the writer (unwillingly kicking and screaming sometimes) on the insane roundabout, duple time dance. The crazy, furious highs where the words flow so fast your fingers can hardly keep up…

…only to drop us off a cliffhanger and leave us dangling for hours, days, years (!) sometimes, just praying for the inspiration to return and spin us around the next corner.

 It’s maddening.

One moment we’re on this high, praising ourselves for our creative genius.

And the next we’re sniveling into our trough-sized wine glasses, convinced we’re phony, no-good writer hacks who will never again write anything worth reading.

Oh, but wait! Here comes the brilliance again, grabbing us by the hand and swinging our fingers around the keyboard in a firestorm of dosey-doe.  

 

Bugs Bunny's Square Dance 'Hillbilly Hare' - Posted on YouTube by Mickey Mouse

And round and round the rollercoaster takes us from high to low, again and again. But here’s the question, which is the truth? Are we a creative genius or a big fat phony? 

The answer is neither. As a writer YOU ARE, I’m sorry to say, like every one of us with our moments of incredible greatness and other times of brain-fart nothingness.

So, where do we go from here? How do we persevere during those dry spells when we can’t make even one word sound right in a simple sentence?

We write anyway.

That’s it. That’s the answer. Just write. It doesn’t matter that the words are prettier sometimes more than others. It doesn’t matter that on a good day we can write thousands of words and on others we can barely squeak out a couple hundred. The thing that makes us writers, is that it’s what we do…we write.

Let’s take at look at some people who’ve had moments in their lives, or careers, of truly amazing success.

Albert Einstein -

“Today the word "Einstein" is synonymous with genius, but young Albert didn't speak fluently until he was nine-years-old, causing teachers to think he was slow. He was expelled from school for his rebellious nature and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. He went on to revolutionize science's understanding of the world, taking physics beyond its Newtonian view by developing the theory of General Relativity. He won the Nobel Prize, with his research leading the U.S. to build an atomic bomb, and influenced all aspects of culture, from religion, to art, to late-night television.” ~ CBS News

There’s a whole list of people who might have ended up as nobodies if they would’ve surrendered to the hoedown: Riches to Rags

Once in a while there’s an author who hits it big with a book or two, maybe an entire successful series, only to follow it up with a flop, or maybe they never publish anything ever again. If this is you, don’t settle. Get back to it, remember the magic and make those pages sing. Whoever you are, if writing is what you love, get at it!

Most likely (if you’re reading this blog) you’re just an average Joe, like me, trying to chase a dream and worrying that you’re never gonna make it.

So, here’s the secret. Ready for it?

Learn to dance. 

Don’t tell me you can’t dance, what do you think you’ve been doing thus far? You’ve written down those spurts of masterful prose and you’ve experienced those heart-suffocating moments when the words play hide-and-seek and THAT is what makes you writer. 

So what are you waiting for? This is it. THIS is what being a writer is all about, surviving the slow beats and hanging on to your britches when the tempo kicks in. Ya ready? Let’s do it.

It’s time for a hoedown, y’all!

Miley Cyrus - Hoedown Throwdown (Movie Scene) - DVD RIP - Posted by phanquanghieu on YouTube

And if you’re still not convinced you can do it. Here’s a little more Miley Cyrus to push you to the top.

Hannah Montana The Movie - The Climb - Posted by Disney IT on YouTube

 Now, get climbing! <3

The Writer’s Maze: What a Zoo!

Hi Ho to all of you monkeys hangin' around this zoo!

If you’re here, you’re probably a writer and you know exactly what I’m talking about (or very lost and wondering what the hell is going on). 

Last week the family and I went to the zoo and it got me thinking that each of the beasts, those wild animals held captive in their domestic prisons, is like a writer. 

The writer longs to be free of the chains and enclosures caging us in (don’t miss The Writer’s Maze: WiPs and Chains). We want to be free, to run untamed through the jungle of publishing rules and laws, a.k.a. THE WRITER’S MAZE! But like the zoo, though it is beautiful and orderly to look at, the rules of writing try to control and tame the writer’s heart. 

Yes, there should be boundaries and standards of acceptable writing, but when and how can we writers escape the confines of these laws and get away with it? Let’s look at The Road a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy. 

McCarthy is a lion of the writing jungle. He dared to ignore almost every writing law in existence and he got away with it. For those of you who’ve read The Road you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s choppy, it’s grammatically incorrect to the extreme, heck he doesn’t even use punctuation. Many people have pondered why he wrote the novel this way, was it to add to the discomfort the characters were feeling? It certainly made me uncomfortable reading it.

Does that mean we, as writers, can follow in McCarthy’s footsteps and get published? Win a Pulitzer? Maybe. What I mean is, are we a lion like McCarthy? I know I’m not. I’m more like this guy…

 

...not the cutest bird in the world, but my song is sweet.

I’m exotic, yes. I’m different, I’ll give you that. But I only vaguely resemble the rest of my writer species. My writing is more like a bird on a wire than a lion on the prowl. If I tried to break all of the rules McCarthy did it wouldn’t work for me. I couldn’t even live in the same enclosure with a lion let alone try to be one.

That’s why we need the zoo and the zoo keepers. The zoo, rules of good writing, maintains the standard. However, what the zoo cannot do is determine how and why a certain literary work has the IT factor. Now, the zoo keepers, the editors, agents and publishers, remind us daily that even though we must conform to their rules and live with our own kind, they still want us to remember that we are wild.

Now, you might be the type of writer who thinks, eh, writing is easy. Any monkey can do it…if they follow the rules. And though that might be true, it doesn’t mean any monkey can climb to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. 

The zoo works because of the regulations and environments it provides for the wellbeing of the public, but if we animals (i.e. writers) were to become too complacent and docile no one would want to visit us. The zoo is the best of both worlds. It is a collaboration of dangerous predators and the sweet songs of the canaries presented together in a picturesque and stimulating setting (i.e. books). 

After all, that is the goal, yes? To see our writing tamed and corralled along the shelves of many, many bookstores? I know that’s my goal. Like my fat, long-beaked bird, I pick and gather the twigs and moss of literary dos and don’ts, trying to force my natural tendencies to conform. At times I do still feel as though my wings are clipped, but for the most part I’ve learned to fly up one branch at time.

Maybe one day, the monkeys will be trying to catch us birds.