Thinking About Writing Again

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Daily doodle, Inspirational, NaNoWriMo, Writing, writing a novel

About a year or so ago, I finished writing my first novel for kids, and it remains unpublished. I put it aside, because my last contact with an editor suggested rewriting it in first person.

After three years trying my best to make this novel publishable, I realized I’m not a novelist. Some people might say I should have known before I even started that I wasn’t a novelist, but I tend to be a little naive when it comes to my own limitations. I have always believed if you put your all into something, with enough practice, education, and dedication it’s possible to achieve anything. But sometimes there comes a point when you have to make a decision what is more important – achieving a certain goal at all costs, or staying true to yourself. With this novel, I had decided it was more important to stay true to myself. I have had the manuscript critiqued at several writing workshops, and there was actually some interest from an agent at a serious New York agency, and an editor at one of the major New York publishers. But the manuscript didn’t quite measure up to their standards in the long run. It has several strikes against it. It’s not fantasy, it’s set in the future, which technically makes it science fiction. It’s not typical science fiction. The editor described it as a quiet story, which places another mark against it. There are so many strikes against this novel that I don’t believe any publisher would want to take a chance on it. There just doesn’t seem to be any room for this type of book on the shelves of bookstores.

Now that NaNoWriMo has started, I find myself thinking about writing again. I’ve decided I’m not interested in completely rebuilding this novel to make it fit on bookstore shelves. But I would like to revisit the story. I have ideas on what I’d like to do with it, and I think I would enjoy spending a little time every day working on it. So, I’ve decided to dedicate 15 minutes a day to rewriting this novel. Thanks so much to all the NaNoWriMo participants for getting me motivated again!

On a separate note, a couple of days ago I received a message from Janece that she had left something for me on her blog. To my surprise it was the 7×7 Link award. I need to put some thought into this one. I’m really honored she decided to include me in her list of 7 blogs! I feel so fortunate to have found such a nice community here on WordPress.

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This One is for NaNoWriMo Inspiration

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Daily doodle, Digging Deep, NaNoWriMo, Writing, writing a novel

Today’s daily doodle is for everyone participating in NanoWriMo.

For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. I’ve never participated, and this year is no exception, because I always seem to be under too much work pressure when NaNoWriMo takes place. But I want to encourage everyone participating to dig deeper until you get to all the good stuff that’s buried deep inside of you.

Reaching for Dreams – an Inspirational Doodle

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Art, Dreams, Goals, Inspirational, Writing, writing a novel

I was thinking about reaching for dreams and goals, and it led to this inspirational doodle.

When I was younger, I used to think of reaching for a dream as reaching for a goal. The other day I mentioned that I went through a phase of trying to build a writing career. I knew it was going to be the most challenging thing I had ever done in my life. I’ve always had a great respect for people who make a career out of writing. Many professional writers dedicate their entire lives to their craft. I knew competition is incredibly fierce. I had experience building a career in art, which is probably just as fiercely competitive as the writing field, so I had a bit of an understanding of what I was up against.

There came a time when I decided that traditional publishing was probably not right for me. I believe it happened when I came to the realization that in order to continue to pursue traditional publishing, I would need to start writing in a different genre that I didn’t have a sincere interest in writing. I spent three years writing one novel, educating myself at writing workshops and conferences, manuscript critiques, and viewing free online classes available at i-Tunes. (For those of you who don’t know, entire courses from Yale University and other schools are available for free online at i-Tunes – it’s amazing! Everyone should check it out – many of them have full video, and it’s like sitting in on the class).

What I learned in the process of trying to reach my dream of a writing career was that I didn’t need to actually get a novel (or anything) published in order to reach that dream. I believe dreams should not be about reaching goals. If I have a dream of becoming a writer, it’s really all about writing, the joy and pain of writing on a daily basis. It’s not about all those other things that people might associate with writing, such as fame, fortune, and endless accolades. People might think that my failure to achieve those things is a failure in attaining a writing career, but I don’t see it that way. The dream is really about writing and creating art, and I don’t need anyone’s permission or approval to do that. Just by starting that novel, I had already reached my dream.

Blogging as a Reflection of Who I Am

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Art, Blogging, Writing, writing a novel

I suppose it would be possible for some people to invent believable artificial blogging identities for themselves. But for me to do that would require so much time and effort that it would probably take me about 40 hours a week to just come up with one post per week.

So, blogging, for me is all about being myself and becoming the person I want to be. I have no choice but to write about things that are a true reflection of my current creative struggles and triumphs. I’ve attended writing and art workshops in the past where it was recommended to start a blog for the purposes of marketing the work. But I have a very successful career as an artist/illustrator, and it provides me with the luxury of not needing to market myself at all (I have an agent who does all that stuff for me). I went through a phase where I thought I wanted to become a novelist, but in the process of writing my first novel, I’ve come to the realization that I don’t want to make a whole career out of writing novels. However, I did manage to finish a first draft of my first novel, and it was a rewarding creative experience.

At the writing conferences I’ve attended, many of the speakers recommended to writers “Be yourself.” They didn’t recommend writing to the market. However, when I had the first ten pages of my manuscript critiqued a few times, it seemed to be largely about if and where my novel would fit into the marketplace. One editor told me it would be an easy sell to libraries, but a very difficult sell to the big box book retailers. And the main reason it wouldn’t sell into a chain like Barnes and Noble was that it was not a fantasy genre book! Talk about confusing!

Now, the funny thing is that I find myself blogging (a thing I had vowed I would never do), and I’m finding it just as much of an enjoyable and satisfying experience as writing that first novel! I doubt my novel will ever find its way onto the shelves of the big box bookstores, but I’m OK with that, because I’m not willing to sacrifice who I am just to make that happen. Plus, my blog is already published on a daily basis without the approval, criticism or paycheck of an editor or publisher. I can’t get any more true to myself than that.

Writer’s Block – Fighting Through It

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Art, Daily doodle, Journal, mind stream, random words, stream of consciousness, Writing, writing a novel, writing exercise

Whether you are writing a novel, making a scrapbook or greeting card, or painting a piece of art to hang on a wall, I think everyone occasionally has the experience of wanting to create something, but not knowing what to create. In making one of these blog posts, I usually start out drawing, and the writing comes to me as I draw. Sometimes I don’t know what to draw, like today. I started in the center of the page and began to scribble, hoping an idea would come to me. However, well into a frenzied scribble, all that came into my mind was “Where am i going what am i doing?”

If this were purely a writing exercise, I could have written random words that entered my mind, stream of consciousness style. I think the results would be comparable. In this case, I wasn’t satisfied with what I had done. I had created the scribble so fast and without any effort at all, and I felt like I hadn’t learned anything. So I created another drawing. I returned to poppies as a subject matter, because I liked my results yesterday.

Then I went back to the original scribble, and I thought, what if I slow down a little and add some detail to make it more interesting? Maybe it was simply unfinished. Perhaps the frenzied scribble was just a starting point – an ice breaker. So, I slowed down and began to add detail to the shapes I had drawn.

It boils down to simply getting started in any random way, and continuing from there, wherever your imagination carries you. When the imagination is unlocked, no blocks have the power to contain it.