Motives for publication...validation:

If you're on the road to magical happy greatness, why are you on it? (Translation for magical happy greatness: publication and beyond.)

I think you can end up happily published with many different motivations, but at the same time I think motivation can be important. Is it for vanity or ego? Is it for validation? Is it to share?

I think for many writers there is a process you go through where your motives for the goal of publication slowly change. At first it's simply for vanity. So you can say: "Look bitches, I wrote this. They put it in a bright shiny book and it has my name on it...so there!" Although I'm sure you wouldn't say it quite like that.

Then a little bit of time passes and that becomes less important amd while there will always be that tiny bit of vanity there, it shifts to something else. External validation. I think a lot of writers get stuck here. We work hard, we develop our craft, we want publication.

Publication says that we weren't wasting our time. Although, on some level I have to wonder about the person who thinks writing is a waste of their time if they never get published. For me, writing is who I am. I learned a long time ago I can't NOT do it. I LIKE it. I like the process of creation and the process of molding that creation.

And yes I like for other people to read things I've written and to say it's good. Everybody does. But it's my personal opinion that external validation isn't the best motivation for seeking publication. For me, I want to be eventually happily published, because I want to share my words with a wider audience, and yes, get paid.

To me writing reaches it's highest expression when it reaches an audience. And while it's done it's job with even one reader, we writers are greedy and like to reach a lot more than one. I view publication as sharing.

You have to validate yourself. Don't look to someone else to do it for you. I think if your motive is for someone else to validate you then whether you get published or not you're always going to keep looking for that validation, because it comes down to self esteem and you not having it.

Self esteem isn't something someone else can give you, it's something you have to build within yourself. It's kind of a "Field of Dreams" thing. If you build it, they will come.

Am I saying there are "wrong" motives for seeking publication? No. This is a free country and anyone can seek publication (or any other goal) for whatever reason they choose. I'm just saying it won't validate you.

Postscript to the last post:

Ok, to go along with this, you HAVE to read THIS blog. This rocks my world:

Liz Maverick's Guest Blog on "Magical Musings"

Join me in making "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice your theme song. (come on, please be a dork with me. You have to read the blog to get the reference.)

This is totally my dorky theme song for the next 90 days!

Sometimes the universe is magic:

Ok, so this post is a bit more personal and zoe-centric than some of my others. I'm currently in the edit stage for the novel I wrote for nanowrimo last November. I had set a self-imposed deadline to getting query letters out the door (which means also getting the novel completely revised and polished and ready to go should someone want to see the completed manuscript) by April 5th. (a self-imposed and psychologically significant deadline for me to get moving on this.)

Today I found out that a new LJ comm was started today called novel in 90: Novel in 90 Community link

The goal is to finish a novel in 90 days. Now, I already finished a rough draft of a novel in 30 days (nanowrimo). And I did a clean up edit in December. But the novel isn't finished. It's not REALLY finished until it's ready to send out to someone is it? So this is the phase I'm at, to FINISH this novel.

That means editing/revising, researching (for characters, story etc. things that will help flesh the book out where it needs it.), writing new scenes in places, getting my query letter ready etc. etc.

The goal for the comm is 750 words a day. I don't know that I'll be writing that many a day. Some days it'll be more cause of new scenes. Some days, much less. But the point is, I need to really commit to getting this thing done. I'm making a personal to do list so I can pace myself properly but I'm thinking I need about 2 hours of actual work ON the novel (in some form) a day.

So what's the magic here? Well. Coincidentally...this comm was started today. And...counting today and April 5th (my deadline) it's EXACTLY 90 days. So yeah, I'm a complete goob, but I totally believe this is the universe going: "Zoe, get your ass in gear, I can't hand this to you any more plainly." So I intend to finish the novel in 90 days. My punishment for not completing will be total mocking. (no, really...that's the rules on the comm. they get to mock you for failing to work.) :)

If this is something you think you want to do, I encourage you to check out the comm and jump in!

Censorship

I'm not talking about book banning, I'm talking about self-censorship. A lot of writers have the image of some family member or beloved elderly person perched on their shoulder whispering in their ear "don't write that, that might upset someone." As a result they have flat characters, dry plots and stories that just don't have the truth and emotion that they need to fly. Writing is about making yourself vulnerable. It's a kind of nakedness on the page. I don't want to read some "polite" story that your grandmother Lulu approved of.

I want to read something gripping, a little bit bad, just a touch controversial. Not controversy for the sake of it to be a drama hound...but because somewhere deep down, it's true. The truth always pisses someone off.

Too many people write with Grandmother Lulu's voice of disapproval constantly in their ear. First of all, her biggest problem isn't if you write something dirty or offensive. Her FIRST problem is that her name is Grandmother Lulu...

You're always going to offend someone. If you come anywhere close to the truth of any real emotion or story worth telling or reading SOMEONE will be offended. Someone will whisper to their ladies league of decency about you. Some school board will have a hay day. Some minister's wife will turn her nose up when she passes you on the street.

I hate to say this, but SO WHAT? If writing is your passion and your calling you'll rise above it. You don't need to be faithful to Grandmother Lulu you need to be faithful to your characters and stories. If you must, write under a pen name, but be honest. Tell me what is deep inside you.

I don't want to hear your surface stories, I want the stuff buried underneath. If you can't share that, why should we care? There are a lot of books out there, and a lot of writers willing to give us that on the page. Be one of them.

100 words a day

Yes, that's right folks. That wasn't a typo, I'm advocating consistent mediocrity...betcha you can't do it. I will bet you that you can't write just 100 words. This could be a writing slogan to rival the “betcha bite a chip” Chips Ahoy cookie slogan.

On another blog I frequent and comment way too verbosely on, a fellow commenter mentioned that she writes 100 words a day. She got the '100 a day' concept from Jody Wallace, article here: article link

Now she doesn't stop at this point, but continues on usually, but the goal is 100 words and I thought it was a wonderful idea. (So far this blog post is 108 words.)


This same method is often used for exercisers. When I first started working out I was told to just plan on exercising for five minutes, then if I felt like stopping, I should go ahead. Of course the trick is...once you get to five minutes, you've gotten into the groove normally and you keep going.

So the same idea applies to writing. I would recommend the book Making a Literary Life by Caroline See, to anyone serious about creating a regular writing practice. She suggests writing a thousand words a day, every day.

When I set a goal normally I set a thousand words. For nanowrimo last year I set 3k a day because that was what I needed to reach my 90k goal that month. However...I can see the value in setting a ridiculously low goal. The higher the goal, the more daunting.

Some days a thousand words a day seems really hard, even though I can knock it out usually in an hour or less if I'm working on a rough draft of something. But there are days when that seems like a lot.

So then how about 100 words a day? Because really...once you sit down and write a hundred words (we're talking about approximately 2 good paragraphs here), you're probably in your groove.

If for some reason you get to a hundred and aren't feeling it that day, stop if you want. If a thousand sounds like too high to set the bar and 100 sounds like too low go for a different number. Maybe 250 is where you really start to hit your stride. Go for 250 and then see how you feel about it.

The point is...write something and do so regularly. Let's say you really did ONLY write 100 words a day, just for the sake of argument let's say you never hit a stride after that and always stopped right at 100. (We also have to assume you are completely insane.) Let's also assume you take off two days a week for the weekend, or whatever two days you choose if weekends are big writing days for you. (Not that you're really going to need a big break from writing just 100 words a day.)

So that's 261 days of writing. That's 26,100 words, a very short novella. But it's something. Or it could be about 2-6 short stories. Consistency is key and it adds up. No one will really write just a hundred words a day every day.

If you have that passion and drive to write you'll do it, unless you're a masochist or something. Then you'll hit your stride wherever you hit it, hopefully by 100 words in, and you'll keep churning the words out until you get to a number that's generally comfortable to you whether that's a thousand words or some other randomly chosen magical number.

So this blog is 600 words. I get 5 days off now, right? Just kidding. Jeez, take a pill or something.

Where do you get your Ideas?

This is "the" writer question. I mean it's not the only one, but almost always writers are asked this question and invariably they either say they don't know and lapse into some kind of quasi-mystical explanation about the magic of the universe and planets aligning or they say "everywhere" which is true, but pretty damn vague.

I haven't yet started networking to attract more readers to this blog, so it's a pretty small reading audience right now, but I'm going to ask "Where do you get your ideas?" And I'll also tell you where I get some of mine:

I think when people ask this question what they really want is a charming anecdote. How did YOU get THAT idea. I'm not sure it's meant to be as general a question as it comes out, but maybe it is. Anyway...I find that ideas come in all sorts of forms. I've had a few ideas come to me in dreams. Practically entire primary plot lines on a few occasions have arrived this way. Add a couple of subplots and voila. (It's not that simple, I have to take out the dancing monkeys of course...unless they add to the plot, but you get my point.)

This past year for nanowrimo (National novel writing month: http://www.nanowrimo.org ) I was going to try to bring back a dying corpse of a novel I wrote which was on the third draft and not getting any fresher. I was feeling pretty apathetic about it because let's face it, some novels are practice novels. Not everything can be fixed. Maybe I should say, not everything can be fixed at this time. There might come a day when I'll be able to fix that one. I like to remain adorably optimistic about it.

Anyway...I'm derailing here...So it was three days before nanowrimo and I was driving down the road and practically an entire plot fell into my head. I saw this beautiful old house I've loved since I was a kid and then this story started playing out in my head. And I had a basic idea. I fleshed the idea out into an outline and formed a mythology to get me through the first draft and away I went. It needs some work, but it's the cleanest rough draft I've written.

Some ideas come to me in pieces, and those can be fun. You get a tiny piece of the puzzle over here, then at another time and place you get a completely unrelated idea and then those two ideas get together and have coffee and decide they'd like to go steady. That's always fun. Today I had two different occurences, one involving a seemingly bland statement on a message board and another involving a cat, and from that two characters came up to me and were like "So yeah, we want to get together for coffee, do you think you could hook us up?"

I tend to write all my ideas out in a notebook, and date them and label them and do insane fussy things with them, because we all have our little quirks. And I like to make a note of how I got the idea because I'm quite sure that at some point when I have a published novel out, someone is going to ask me, "Where do you get your ideas?" And I'll have a charming little anecdote, at least for that story.

So that's me, or at least a couple of recent ones. What about you? Where do you get your ideas?

Happy New Year!

It's the first day of the new year, a day when most people are looking ahead with hope and big plans. This is the year they plan to lose 50 pounds, stop eating cheesecake, get happily published, and take over the world. And every year by February or March most people have forgotten their resolutions or considered themselves failures and have gone back to Ben and Jerry or watching reruns of "Three's Company."

Like me, many of your resolutions are probably writing related, whether it's to finish a novel or screenplay, get an agent, get published, or beat your previous sales record. I've successfully achieved and kept resolutions in the past because of a slight shift in mentality. So if you want to make your goals for this year read on:



Whether your resolutions are all writing related or whether you have other goals like losing weight or going to the gym more often, there are a few things that will make you more likely to reach your goals.

1. Be very specific. And then write it down. Don't just say: I want to write more often. How often? Set up a schedule, deadlines, a rewards system. Anything to make the goals clear. If you want to lose weight, how many pounds? In what time frame? If your resolutions are very vague you are less likely to achieve them, because how would you know that you did? You have an idea of what would mean success to you so be very specific and then write it down.

You haven't made a solid goal until you write it down somewhere. As long as it's just fuzzy in your head, it's not likely to go very far. Write it down in specifics and put some power behind it.


2. Ditch the "all or nothing" approach. Most people who consider themselves resolution failures have one thing in common, they are so strict that the second they falter it's all over with. Say your resolution is to write a thousand words every day. An "all or nothing" goal setter would fail one day and then just figure "well, I failed" and either quit working toward the goal or slacking off. If you fail one day...so what?

Look at the goal behind the goal. Is your goal REALLY ultimately to write 1,000 words a day? Or is that only a vessel to get you where you ultimately want to go? What possible purpose could 1,000 words a day just for the sake of it serve? If this is the point where you start arguing with me, I'd say you've found your root reason. Are you going for publication? Or improving your writing? Do you see how if you miss one day you haven't lost?

If you have a goal that is framed in this way, if you fail one day, forget it and pick back up the next day. Call it a vacation and aim to do better. You do bad one day, you haven't "lost." And you don't need to wait for Monday to start all over again. I have no idea why this is, but many people who make goals think if they mess up one day they have to wait for the start of the week to "start all over." You don't have to start all over, just keep going.

One of my resolutions last year was to lose weight and go to the gym more often (I was more specific of course at the time) Did I have days where I ate like a pig? Yes. Did I have days where I didn't go to the gym? Yes. I lost 27 pounds. Because all of your actions are cummulative.

In January of last year, the gym was jam packed with new year's resolution makers. By February only the strongest were left. By March I had the gym to myself again.

Get over your perfectionism and be more flexible with yourself. I highly doubt that your goal in life is to be perfect. You're looking for a compounded effect here. If you fall off the horse get back on.

3. INSTEAD of "all or nothing" resolutions, make deadline oriented goals: "By the end of this year I would like to..." This isn't to be confused with vagueness. This is giving yourself a reasonable time to accomplish something. Instead of focusing all your goals on being perfect Focus them on the end result and when you would like to have it by.

Also all of your goals and resolutions don't have to be in the framework of an entire year. If you have some big goals, you'll likely need some smaller goals and deadlines to get you there. Which brings me to point 4:

4. Make smaller goals to get you to the larger ones. Let's say your goal is to write and polish a novel in 2007. That's a noble goal and you should go for it. But without any firmer deadlines for smaller portions you are likely to flounder. Set a deadline for all aspects of the process. When do you want to finish research/outlining? This is assuming you do research at this stage. I do most of my research after the rough draft. I find that I know more the direction I need to research if I just wait and wing it with the rough draft. Yes, you're allowed to "make it up" with the rough draft and fix it later. I promise, no one will hunt you down.

When do you want the rough draft done? When do you want various revisions and critiques in? When do you want to get all your agent/editor research done? etc. Make firm smaller goals to get you to the larger ones.

5. Revise your goals as you go. I'm a big "outline reviser." I don't write well without an outline, I need to see where I'm going. But I don't slavishly follow it either. During the course of writing a novel I tend to revise my outline about five times. As the characters surprise me and go in new and better directions than I had originally planned, I redo the rest of my outline to see that I'm still heading ultimately where I want to go.

Resolutions and goals are like this too. If you make a goal, don't be afraid to change course a little bit. If something isn't working for you in the exact form you set it, don't feel compelled to keep going just so you won't be a failure. That's insane. Do what you have to do to make the goal workable. Maybe you set the bar too high and you're only frustrating yourself and you need to take smaller steps. Do that. As long as you are moving toward some goal you aren't a failure in any definition of the word. If you set the bar too low and you aren't challenging yourself, don't be afraid to make it a little more challenging.

Follow these steps and you are well on your way to meeting your goals in 2007. Have a great year!