Monthly Archives: August 2010

August 31, 2010

Goals… okay, fine!

By terraluft

Normally, I scoff at goal-setters.  (Sorry if you are one of them, don’t take it personally!)  I’m a live-in-the-moment kind of a girl – always have been and always will be.  It is way more fun that way and I tend to avoid all guilt by not thinking too hard about life and the choices I make day to day.  I never look back or over-analyze what I’ve done for the same reasons.  Except now I am conceding that sometimes goals and all that come with them might be necessary – at least in some aspects of life.

Why the change?  I wrote again last night… only 30 new words but they are 30 more than if I hadn’t told myself that – no matter what – I have to write something every day.  A daily writing goal, if you will.  I figured I would start out small – no word count I had to make, no looming milestone to intimidate.  Just write every day.  Every. Single. Day.

It felt so good writing again and, although I have come to terms that I must go back to the beginning of my manuscript and totally revise it before I can go on, at least I know what my plans are so I can get busy getting it done.  I WILL have the first draft of my first novel complete before November 1st.  (What’s this?  Another goal?)  In hindsight I am such a better writer than when I started last year so I would have to revise anyway – I’m merely saving myself some of the work for draft two by doing it now.  Kind of like ripping the bandaid off…  The best part is that my characters are whispering to me again – or rather I’m listening for them again – which I worried wouldn’t happen since I’d been ignoring them for so long.

In many ways, it is my running that taught me this lesson I can now apply to other areas of life…  I am following a training program designed for people who have never run a half marathon.  It tells me exactly what to do every day.  And even though I look at it on paper and think “What the Fuck have I gotten myself into?”, when the day comes and it says run 3.5 miles (like today) and I’m still sore from my 5-mile run on Sunday – like I can barely walk down the stairs to get to the gym at work – I still did it and felt great doing it.

If I didn’t have a goal to run a specific distance by a specific date, I wouldn’t push myself.  Having the steps laid out for me on how to get there allows it to happen gradually one step at a time.  Without it, I might still be struggling to run for more than 10 minutes at a time instead of being able to run for more than an hour.  That last sentence was purely for me – since I have to focus on how far I’ve come rather than how far I have to go.  Easier and more productive to think “wow, I ran 5 miles in an hour and 11 minutes which is an hour longer than I could run at all 3 months ago” than “OMG, it just took me over an hour to run 5 miles, how am I going to run 13.1 in 2 months?!?” which is how I really feel inside when I think about my half marathon.

What will get me to the finish is doing the small steps every day.

So, lesson learned is that sometimes goals are important – not in the Franklin-Covey-plan-every-single-minute-of-your-day-based-around-a-goal-in-every-aspect-of-your-life way but maybe just for the really important things.  And that, when measuring progress, sometimes it is better to look back and acknowledge how far you’ve come rather than fixating on how far you have left to go.

1 Comment | posted in Everyday Life, Healthy Lifestyle, Running, Writing

August 31, 2010

Book Club Retreat with special guest appearance

By terraluft

A couple of weekends ago was book club.  This was the killer month where we let loose and rent a condo for an overnight, old-fashioned slumber party where we allow ourselves to “semi-forget” (read escape from life where) we are moms, wives and girlfriends and shop and eat and stay up talking until all hours of the morning.  Of course we carve out an hour to discuss the book we all read the month before, too!  This was our second annual retreat and while we did not have a hot tub in our room this year we had something just as cool….

This year worked out that my month to host and pick the book to read fell the same month as the retreat.  Because I couldn’t find a better choice, I picked “I Am Not A Serial Killer” by Dan Wells which I have already reviewed here.  One night at a social gathering a couple of days into the allotted reading time, one of my friends asked if I was going to ask Dan Wells, the author, to come to our book club.  After all, he is a local writer so it could totally be possible.  I hadn’t thought about it although I did have the perfect ‘in’ having met him at the writers conference I attended in April.  A couple of weeks went by and I thought about it again and told myself to suck it up and just ask him – since I really had nothing to lose after all.  I mean, the worst he could do was say No, right?  Only he didn’t!

It was an amazing night on so many levels…  we always have fantastic discussions where we dissect the characters, who we all inevitably love or hate with little in between, and theorize on why the author wrote what he/she did, etc.  Imagine having the same discussion only the author is there in the room and can tell us definitively whether we are right or wrong and even tell us why he did the things he did and how he came up with all the elements of the story.  But that wasn’t all… after the discussion he stayed and signed every one’s books and sold us t-shirts if we wanted them, passed out a few ARC (advanced reader copies) of the sequel not out in stores until next month (for a price!) and took pictures with everyone – including a photo where we all lined up on the staircase leading to the second floor of the condo with kitchen knives poised at each others throats.  (Okay, it was after 10pm at this point so you can imagine how punchy we all were getting!) This alone would have put it on the all-time greatest list of book clubs.

But it got better!  At this point in the night several people had to head for home because life only worked for them to be there for the evening instead of staying the entire night.  And I thought Dan (yes, we’re on first name basis at this point) would make his way out through the kitchen answering a couple of questions the writers in the group (my writing group is a subset of my book club) would bombard him with.  And to be fair I warned him before he agreed to come that there were four aspiring writers among the attendees who would love to discuss writing after the book discussion was over if he was willing.  What I didn’t expect was him sitting down and getting comfortable and staying well past midnight until we had asked every single question we could think about writing and publishing and editing and being an author.  What a generous and inspiring man Dan Wells is!

I gleaned two nuggets of noteworthy advice from the evening:  1) if you put as much hard work and effort into being a writer as a doctor does at training to be a doctor you’ll have just as successful a career as the doctor and make just as much money.  The only difference is that there are no college programs designed specifically to train you like the doctor has.  2) if you read 2-3 books per month on average and expect to live say 30 more years, that’s 720 -1080 books you potentially have time to read in your lifetime.  So why on earth would you waste one of those slots on something that isn’t good?  (I’ll never finish another shitty book again – minus book club selections I’m committed to reading of course – and refuse to feel bad about it!)

The most inspiring statement for me was when we were talking about being an author and Dan made the point that there is not a lot of difference between being a published or unpublished author besides having convinced someone to buy your book and print and sell it to others.  The same manuscript you sell today could be rejected by someone else tomorrow and just because you sell one does not mean you are overnight a better or even different writer.  You are simply a writer because you write.

I think I’m still a little high from the evening… can you tell?

1 Comment | posted in Events, Writing

August 17, 2010

Writers block and fundamental questions

By terraluft

How the hell did it get to be mid-August and almost 2 months since I wrote anything substantial?  (Besides my blog of course!)  It isn’t like I don’t know where the story goes – I know exactly how it ends already.  It isn’t like I haven’t had time – I’ve sat down several times and re-read the amazing scene where I left off with almost all of my crucial characters finally all in the same room where they can now go on together to the climax.  And then an hour has gone by – or once it was almost three – and not a single new word written.  Not ONE! Very disheartening and after the third time I decided I should really figure out what is going on before I open that file on my computer again.  And here we are… August and neck-deep in self-doubt and self-loathing because I’m STILL STUCK HERE!

So, I’ve been doing some major soul searching – 3 and 4 mile runs give you plenty of time for it when you’re not wallowing in doubt and loathing!  And in the course of my busy life the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with two of my writing buddies from my critique group who helped put my finger on the real heart of the issue.

It all started when I went to the writer’s conference where I honed my skills by leaps and bounds and took my writing to the next level.  What I couldn’t see, but that has been lurking in my brain, is the fact that I must once again start over…  or at the very least revise entirely what I have written.  All 63,208 words of it.  Because my protagonist has been acting all wrong.  And I mean ALL wrong!

But, as devastating a realization as that is, it isn’t even the true issue yet!

The core issue is:  what kind of a writer am I?  Am I one that writes with a plot or am I a discovery writer who lets her characters decide what happens and where things go?  Am I a write-the-first-draft-before-I-read-a-single-word-for-revision writer or am I a revise-as-I-go-so-when-things-change-I-can-fix-them writer?  Because I don’t yet know the answers to these two fundamental questions, I cannot go on.  Because do I write the next part as if I’ve already gone back and fixed my main character’s flaws that I now know exist assuming I’ll fix everything in the 2nd draft revisions?  Or do I stop now and go back to the beginning and make things right before I go on?

If there is one thing I’ve learned in this almost two year journey of being a writer (albeit an unpublished one still) it is that, while every published author has an opinion of how writing should or does happen based on their own creative process, no one is exactly the same.  What motivates us and keeps us writing is as unique as the authors themselves.  And what works for my hero Stephen King (write to the end and don’t read a word until months later when it’s time to revise it and don’t even think of plotting!) is not what works for everyone else – possibly myself included.

So, like an alcoholic at her first meeting, here I sit acknowledging I have a problem to solve.  But, admitting the problem is the first step!  Now I just have to figure out where to go from here.  Stay tuned since even I don’t yet know where that is except back to consistent writing in some form.  After all, I’ve got to finish my first draft of the current project before October 31st since NaNoWriMo commences in November and I already have an idea for my next project…

1 Comment | posted in Writing

August 7, 2010

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

By terraluft

This was a book club pick – one which I toyed with choosing a year ago myself and put down after about 200 pages and the first graphic rape scene assuming the rest of the ladies in the group would find it too disturbing.  I’m so glad someone else had the courage to pick it and make everyone read to the end.  With its mammoth size at 973 pages it is very intimidating but, as our group proved, it can be done in a month and is so worth the read! 

The story and characters are so well developed and fascinating that even when I was under pressure to finish in time for the discussion (which I didn’t!) I couldn’t force myself to skip ahead or even skim quickly.  The story tells the struggle over the decades to design and build a cathedral in a small town in England.  It is told from the point of view of the builders as well as the monks who are financing and encompasses bishops, earls, lords, entrepreneurs and the struggles of a civil war to determine the new king. The information on architecture and medieval society were enthralling and the author weaved the fictional story beautifully into the history of the times so it was marginally educational as well as entertaining giving the reader a glimpse into what it might have been like living in the time period.  The overall story arch is a mystery that spans almost two generations before finally being solved and keeps you guessing until the very end.  The story was never predictable and is raw and authentic and emotional. 

I went back and forth on what to rate this book but in the end I chose 4 stars instead of 5 simply because it is not an easy read.  With so many characters and story lines it requires dedication to stick with it.  Unlike many, it is not a book you can easily carry around reading only here and there and thus not one I would read again – which is my own personal criteria of a 5-star tome.  Pick it up when you have time to dedicate because you won’t want to put it down once you start.

Leave a comment | posted in Book Reviews