Saturday LIFE Assessment

FLASH FICTION CHRONICLES

The new EDF Flash Fiction Chronicles has been launched with some excellent posts and I'm finally getting into a routine with getting it out there. Still open for submissions, of course, from writers of flash, published or not. The blog will hopefully be an archive of articles on writing from a variety of perspectives. When we have enough posts to warrant the set-up, I plan to add a page to the blog that will be organized by topic rather than by date only. This way if you are struggling to get writing on any particular day, you can click on that index page and go to a list of articles on motivation or process and hopefully, this will be the tilting point to get you typing away at a work-in-progress or a brand new story.

But we're not ready for that yet.

WHAT CAME BEFORE

What's that all about? Oh, yeah. The neglected novel. January saw me swearing to the keyboard that I would put in the hours to shape the 400 pages I've produced on that project, yet after I prepared the first fifty pages for a contest or two, I set it aside once again for the sweet pleasure of writing short.

What I have to do is decide, do I finish my opus or ignore it? Decide. Listening to Tony Robbins a few years ago, I was struck by the simplicity of one of his "tenets." Decide, he said and I'm paraphrasing here, is to choose one option and cut off all other possibilities. The root of the word "decide" is to "cut off." I liked that. Could life really be that simple?

Can we really just decide to follow a path and then do it thereby achieving a goal? This must be what determination is, to raise the priority of one activity over others in order to finish it to the best of our abilities. The question is, can I do it for the novel?

Why not? I've kept writing for years despite much floundering, shit product, and little confidence. If I can still be at the computer, writing and talking about writing, then I must have that determination. I just need to decide where my focus is and follow through.

So I'm going to decide. My focus needs to be the novel. I've gotten myself published in the short market which by the way I regard as a wonderful accomplishment. I've met the goal to submit to the new anthology at Sisters in Crime. I'm almost finished with a piece of flash I've promised to one more person. I must stop trolling for motivation to write something short and gear myself for the long journey to Novelland.

I'm going to do it. Starting? Today! And as Tony probably didn't say, no ands, ifs, or buts. Except maybe I should do that index page for the Chronicles because then I'd be searching out the motivation blogs and reading them I'd feel motivated...

"Stranger" at Every Day Fiction today!

"Stranger on the Porch" is now available at Every Day Fiction. If you have a few minutes, please read and leave a comment at the site. It's less than 1000 words so it goes fast! Thanks to all of you who are a constant support, no names lest I forget someone really important! You all know who you are!

All I want to do is complain about my lethargy but I'm sick of doing it. So I'm going to take a couple minutes to just riff and see what happens. Don't read if you can't stand getting inside someone else's frustrated mind.

First: The novel. Did a little yesterday but not enough. Felt lost and confused and wondered if I will ever finish this. Flashes of my first "revised" novel kept creeping up on me. Two in the drawer. No!!! But how do I actually make myself do it? I started a to-do list. I put on it Don't Get Organized because I seem to want to do the opposite of what I should do. Why is that?

I hate wait to hear from places. Haven't heard from Flash Fiction On-line regarding "Dani-Girl's Guide to Getting Everything Right." Reread it. Like it a lot but maybe I don't have enough distance yet, though I did send it to them 8-weeks ago today. In my world, usually the longer something is kept, the more likely they like it, but maybe not. There are no rules in writing...but lots of crying. I'm also waiting for "Monsoon" to come out in Quality Women's Fiction. Wrote to the editor there yesterday too and she said it was "in the mail." But I am confused about this publication. Their website never changes, never shows a magazine cover, and I don't understand what she means. My understand is that it would come out in PDF, but I guess I'll just wait and see. The editor is very encouraging and helpful. I like her, I'm just confused. So those two stories are distracting me when what I should be doing is moving on.

Listing Lisa and The Roughening are both sitting on the stove, simmering, with occasion bubbles. I keep thinking I have the answers to each stories problems but then I lose it. I have to go back today to my Ron Carlson write a story in a day today but call it FINISH a story in a day.

Maybe my problem is self-consciousness. As soon as a story begins to sound good before I finish it, I attach all kinds of extra baggage to it. Will this story be the one that really makes it? Can I ever write a really good story again? What if I can make myself do this any more? And then I kind of freeze up. Can someone be embarrassed in the privacy of her own home, at her own desk, with no one standing over her shoulder? Or is really fear? Fear of failure? Or fear of success?

I've had a few people ask me if I was afraid to succeed and I think the answer is yes. Growing up my comfort zone was keeping a low profile, not making any stir, either good or bad. I didn't like attention. Of course, secretly I WANTED attention, positive attention, but was scared to death of the negative kind. Is this what haunts me? Frankly I'm sick of thinking about it.

And I've been sick of thinking about it for a while, yet I keep coming back to it. I hate this tendency. Why can't I just put my butt in the chair and stay there until I'm done?

I know that part of what I have to do is not take myself so seriously. Stop thinking about how if I could only write one piece with real merit I could die happy. But that real merit for me is like something so far away, I can't even see it wink. I'm thinking To Kill a Mockingbird, Tess of the D'Urbevilles , Tale of Two Cities. Now you know why someone always dies in my stories!

Okay. Enough. I feel slightly better and now I'm going to open Listing Lisa and give her a run for her money. She and her husband have got to face-off. I can't skip over it. I have to do it. Go.

Do you know what time it is?

I can't believe it. It's August 25 and this is the year I promised myself I would finish my book. I know. If you read my blog, you must be sick of hearing about it, but I can't help myself. Public admonitions seem to be the only way I can shame myself into doing anything. And since it is that LAST week of August, and the fall will be--if history repeats itself--INSANE, I have to gather myself, think about goals, and how to keep them.

I taped a sign on my fridge about a month ago. It says, "Nothing is more important than the book," and yet today at 8:15 I'm heading out to South Pas to do my Monday morning exercise for two hours. That means by the time I get back it will be 10:30 and I will be whipped. But today, instead of making a face plant in the middle of the couch after I down three 8 ounce glasses of water, I will sit down at the computer.

However, what will grab my attention? Novel or short story? It is, after all, SUBMISSION SEASON! The recognition of submission season a couple of years ago is what finally got me published. I realized that I had to change my slovenly ways and begin to market in an organized way. The first thing I did was set a goal: 100 rejections. This is not an original idea. I'd read about it somewhere and liked the logic. Instead of worrying about how many acceptances I might get--a goal that feels self-defeating from the get-go--I decided to go for the 100 "your piece has no place in our immediate plans" target.

And it worked. Everything I had ready to go since then has found a home except for "Wanting Steven" and at least I got a personal letter from Ellery Queen saying they almost published it. It think Janet Hutchins was on vacation at the time, but I'm still taking it as a triumph!

So of course my consciousness is heightened toward short pieces this time of year, but unfortunately I have nothing really ready except for "Wanting Steven" which I probably need to look at again and figure out why it hasn't found its place before I submit again. So the dilemma: write short stories to submit or finish the book.

My good friend Kev says he spoke to a famous author recently and that author encouraged him to abandon the shorts for the novel and he had lots of legitimate reasons. The market for shorts is steeped in honor and tradition, but only a few of these journals actually reach many people and those people are more likely than not, college students, other writers, academics, and perhaps an small elite of avid readers. To be published in any of these can be good and if you get into say The Georgia Review you are golden, but since most pay in copies of their magazine, it isn't a good way to put a Lean Cuisine on the TV tray.

Kev's author suggested that the "where it's at" in writing is the novel. That's where the money is, where the mass audience is, that's where self-satisfaction can be gained.

This logic makes perfect sense to me, but the novel is sooooo long, soooo indefinite, that it's a struggle to actually dive in day after day with out being tempted to take a writing break with a 1000 word flash for Every Day Fiction, or maybe a 4000 word short. I've got enough starts and if they don't work, there's more cooking up in my brain pan than those.

I suppose I'm rambling this morning because I've just realized I have the months of September, October, November, and December to meet my goal: a little over 120 days. That means I'll have to edit around 3 pages a day to have a somewhat edited manuscript by the new year. It's certainly do-able, but can I do it?

Final note: I did hear from McSweeney's and yes they did reject "Monsoon," but some one jotted me a personal note and I have to say, that got me flying....

Secret: "Monsoon" will be published soon (I hope) by Quality Women's Fiction.

Submission Season

It's summer and toodling through various writing sites this week, I remembered that August kicks off "Submission Season," the time when college literary types head back to school and brace for the mudslide of submissions coming their way. This might be a literal description at the University of Iowa after the flooding this past year, but hopefully the Hawkeyes will return to freshly scrubbed floors, gleaming walls, and no dead fish hiding in the school server.

August means it's time for writers to polish their pieces one more time, buy 9X12 envelopes, and a slew of postage. I'm ready, but scared. I've got a lot to do, but I absolutely must send out. It's the only way to get oneself read. So I too must brace myself.

A writer friend reminded me last week that for her, July is the beginning of a new writing season. July because for Sharon and me, as well as Jim, Ellen, and the rest of my old Iowa Summer Writing Festival buds that's the month we used to meet in Iowa City to attend workshops, drink Blue Moon, and work up a sweat (literally) at keyboards only to have our butts frozen off at the EPB.

I hope it happened this year. I hope they all went. I did not. Haven't for the last two years and have to admit this year, I really missed it. Maybe it was the pictures of the campus underwater my sister sent me triggering my angst. Or maybe it was just realizing that I'm so out of touch now, me in California and my "Iowa" friends scattered over the country: Sharon in Galesburg, Jim in Chicago, Ellen in St. Louis. I also miss Elizabeth, Lisa, and Enza. We had good times. But that was then and this is now. And now means getting writing, get submitting!

This DRIVE to SUBMIT has paid off. I started two years ago with the goal of 100 rejections. Yes. I know. That's weird. But for me if my goal is called a DRIVE to PUBLISH, it's too easy to get disheartened, so I changed the language. What that did for me was gave me something I had power over. No one can stop me from writing something, sticking it in an envelope, and sending it out. That's in my power. Also in my power is the make that submission the best piece I can.

With those goals, I've had actual PUBLISHING success. Not big success. The editors from Tin House and McSweeneys (actually McSweeney's owes me a rejection, but since I can barely navigate their site, it's okay) are not pounding down my door yet, YET, but enough success to keep me striving and if there's one thing I've learned, it's the necessity for persistence. Persistence has over the last two years gotten me three pieces in print, three publications on line with two other pieces accepted, one coming out in August at Women's Quality Fiction and another in the fall at EDF. So now I'm into my third submission season and I've got to make the best of it. (Yes, Jane, I hear you. The novel. THE NOVEL!)

More EDF good news and a lesson learned from whittling

MY heart still hip-hops into my throat when I open my Yahoo account and see on the
"From" line of an email, the words "everyone@everydayfiction.com."

It's the line that appears when they are sending a rejection, an acceptance...or actually maybe a rewrite. Any which way, I always take a moment before I open it. If I prayed, I guess you'd say that's what I'm doing. Luckily for me, they like my "Stranger on the Porch" bit and are going to publish it sometime in the future. Hooray!

This is actually a piece I've adapted from my novel. As I've said before, I've been struggling to keep the seat of my pants in the chair. When I'm doing one thing, I'm often distracted by another. In this case, the idea of writing a 1000 words has so much more appeal than rewriting 80,000 words. But I have resisted the lure of flash so far this month even though titles and ideas on how to make those titles work assault me at the sink, in the shower, on my walks. Then one day--mid-anguish/temptation--I had a revelation.

Since I use a dramatic arc in each chapter by opening with conflict, torturing my character, and finally having her take some action--the same dramatic arc that I use for a story as a whole--I wondered if I could cadge something from the novel to satisfy my need to send off a submission to EDF and thereby not get totally out of the world of my novel characters. Write flash but have it benefit the novel too. Maybe chapter 1?

I took a look. Yep the arc was there, but I'd have to whittle it down to fit the 1000 word criterion. Wow. An amazing thing happened during this process.

Because I wanted to flash the chapter, I brought to it a much more critical eye, and suddenly realized how much better it was turning out. The whole experience reinforced my belief that parameters create in a writer the ability to dig deep and come up with something better than if there are no parameters.

What happens in this first chapter of my novel is not straight forward, and I've often changed it, edited it, played with it. But this time I knew I had to achieve more clarity for it to stand on its own as flash. The images became sharper, the character more interesting. Whittling worked again. What an incredible lesson I keep learning over and over.

Now my hope is that people like it. That it stands on its own. I hope it's as good for you guys as it was for me.

A.D.D.

I don't think I officially have A.D.D, but I often feel as if I do. I'm constantly wanting to start something new, to pull something surprising out of my brain, and see what it will develop into. And this is actually a good thing, especially when I'm beginning a new project, but unfortunately all those flashes of inspiration seem to strike me when I'm trying to settle down and do the drudge work of editing.

Did I say "drudge work." I can't believe I typed that. I love to edit and have professed for years that if I can only get past that initial draft, I know I can craft something that works. There is something magical about reading one's own words aloud and realizing, hmmm, that doesn't work quite right. What about this? What about that? A cliche? Let me see if I can just spin that a little to the left. So what is going on here?

It's the novel. That multi-drafted cyper-folder with its "fits and starts" (there you go: cliche. I'll catch it later. Hmm maybe not), calling and repelling me all at the same time.

I made a vow this year that this was going to be it. I would get that dang book into the kind of shape that would allow me to start my agent search. But with me, as soon as I vow, I procrastinate. It titillates me to make a commitment and then renege. I actually feel that titillation in my body. Ooh, make a promise and break it? Why? I think there's a tiny part of me that is ready for the looney bin. Or maybe its latent teen rebellion, the one I never had.

I do get things done. I did vow when I quit my job that I would build my writing portfolio and I've done that. And my skills have become sharper, my ability to see what works and doesn't work more accurate. So yes. I am making progress with the portfolio goal. But I did vow when I quit my job that I would also finish the novel and market it and that is still the flamingo around my neck.

I don't know what it is about writing a book that is so darn hard, but part of it for me is that it activates my interest in everything else. Since I committed to finishing the book, I have helped remodel the back of my house, taken up jewelry making, dabbled in polymer clay, and PMC, and painting, as well as supersized my exercise program. These "hobbies" have been so much fun and I'm eating up all the new awarenesses that these interests bring to me. But. I sit down at the keyboard and think...hmmm, just an hour with all that color behind me on the work table might give me just the bump I need.

But I know that I must do the book first. Before the bump. Because if I can just remember that the writing offers its own bump, I could make progress.

I need to stay focused. I need to stop farting around, but I don't know how many times I need to say this to actually DO it. Today. I will work on the book before I touch a pair of pliers or open a tube of paint. TWO HOURS MINIMUM. I need to borrow Marley's chains.

TAGGED

by Alan Beard

I've been 'tagged,' whatever that means, by Alan Beard, author of Taking Doreen Out of the Sky. The editor of the great 'Short Review' Tania Hershman tagged Alan to answer some questions and Alan, in turn, tagged me. Here I go with more info than you ever wanted!

1) What were you doing ten years ago?
1998? I was walking everywhere and very fit because I let my son use my car to get he and his sister to school. It was a good thing. What I remember about it is that being without a car, time slowed down. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. I remember I wrote every morning. I'd had no success in placing any piece anywhere, but I hosted a writing group every Thursday (maybe it was Wednesday) around my dining room table.

2) What 5 Things are on your to-do list today?
**Work on the novel. I've listed the chapter numbers on scratch paper and as I edit each one I cross it out. Just started this process for the millioneth time a couple days ago. I'm on Chapter 6 and determined to get to the end this time.
**Walk at 8:30, this weird cross-country ski thing (on the streets of SoPas) I do now every Monday and Friday with Estelle and her band of acolytes.
**Go to lunch with my mom-in-law and some far-flung cousins in from Oklahoma.
**Cook dinner.
**Welcome my husband back from London. I have missed him!

3) What would you do with a billion dollars?
Revamp the education system in the United States. Encourage the culture to elevate the position of "teacher" to the status of JDs, MBAs, and MDs. All those kids who go to law school because they have no idea what they want to do would go to hard to get into grad schools to learn how to really teach and to develop new and effective strategies. I know. The teaching to teach and the strategies happens, but if a country cannot lure its brightest citizens to the profession, then the profession needs to be put on a par with those that do lure. What is that lure? Money, yes, but also cache, status, and satisfaction in actually contributing to society.

5) List the places you have lived.
Louisiana, Iowa, California, in my head.

6) List the jobs you have had
Parks and rec, retail sales, counter person at Rusty's Roast Beef, as well as store manager, district manager, buyer, and teacher. Did I say wife and mom and mistress of Risuli and Cinder?

7) List the people you'd like to know more about.
Not so much "know about" but rather to go to lunch with: Joyce Carol Oates, Carol Shields (alas), Harper Lee, Margaret Atwood, W. Somerset Maugham, Pablo Picasso, Abigail Adams, Jane Addams, Helen Keller, and Joshua from "So you think you can dance."

BTW, the numbering isn't mine though I probably messed it up somewhere!

Not Knowing Shouldn't Keep Me from Not Doing

"The single largest advantage a veteran writer has over the beginner is this tolerance for not knowing." --Ron Carlson from Ron Carlson Writes a Story.

It's funny how I'll read a book about writing or even just a piece of literature and then I go on and on about it for days. This time it's Ron Carlson. Last week he helped me write a whole story which I've submitted to Flash Fiction On-line, a new venue for me. And this week he's helping me stay in the chair for my novel. I'm bolstering that with keeping track of the time in the chair and how much I accomplish. I started work at 9:13 this morning. BTW, I shouldn't be typing this right now. I've now been distracted for about 10 minutes! Dang, and it's 10:08 AM. That means I managed to work less than an hour before I figured out a way to goof off. Back to WCB. It's now 10:09.

It's 4:28 and I'm three chapters in having done more editing than I would have thought. But I've learned a lot writing my flashes this year about what I don't have to say so I think these chapters are tighter and therefore, better. As for my seat of the pants in the chair, I haven't been very good. I would be six chapters in if I'd just stayed the course. I tried to work outside away from the phone and internet but it's been hot here today and the garage isn't air conditioned so I gave up and came into the chill of the house where there is email and EDF forums to read, food, and HGTV. Yish.

But I am begun really this time. I have to keep up my momentum because I do not want to reread these chapters again until I'm finished. I taped a note on the fridge that says "Aren't you sick of the first 125 pages and aren't you curious to see what you wrote after that?" I'm gonna feed my dog now and maybe come back up for chapter 4. I'm going to hold myself accountable to YOU out there.

Okay. I did it. It's 8:30 and Chapter 4 is in the vault. I'm feeling as if I'm in a rhythm now so hopefully tomorrow with be more of the same.