Separation Anxiety and The Doubt Monster in Houston

Tags

mystery, mystery novel, Rachel, story, writer

Today I’m getting ready to go off to Story Masters, a workshop billed as “an unprecedented event for writers” (it’s the first time they are trying it out) “featuring THREE masters of writing instruction: James Scott Bell, Christopher Vogler, and Donald Maass! (Exclamation point, theirs).

I first heard of the event when it was announced back in February (February?? Where has the year gone?) I knew I just had to go. I watched the website every week until they finally posted the registration information. I knew I just had to be there.

And now? Now that I’m packing my bag and making last minute arrangements, I find myself freaking out. What the hell? I love all these guys, I have all of their books: “The Fire In Fiction,” “The Writers Journey,” “The Art of War For Writers.” I’ve met Chris (yeah, I call him Chris) Vogler at the Maui Writers Conference. I did agent speed-dating with Donald Maass and I’ve already been rejected by one of the agents at his agency. And James Scott Bell was kind enough to answer a tweet that I sent him.

Why am I so freaking nervous? Well, the other part of the deal is that I submitted the first 15 pages of my novel and a synopsis and have my work critiqued by a “real” industry person. Have I told you how much I hate, hate, hate writing synopses? It’s worse than having your toenails removed. But thanks to Kristen Lamb, social media and writer advisor extraordinaire, she turned me on to Chuck Wendig’s post “25 Things You Should Know About Queries, Synopses, Treatments” After years of hating to write the darn things,  I was able to hammer out a decent description of my mystery novel, “Deadly Hula Hands.” Which is good in that I wrote it, but it’s bad in that I’m opening myself up for more criticism and will end up re-writing the book…. Again. Sigh.

Don’t get me wrong, I know the workshops will be great; these are wonderful teachers with lots of valuable information. I’m guessing there will be in-class exercises where I will get the chance to test out all this new knowledge. But I know, in the back of my mind, the dark evil one will also rear its ugly head. His name is Doubt. The other day I wrote about trust. Trust is the slayer of Doubt. But Doubt doesn’t give up with out a fight.

I’ve had do deal with this at every writing conference I’ve ever attended. You meet the presenters, you listen and learn, but somewhere, usually toward the end of the third day, Doubt greets you with his toothless cheesy grin and says, “hey baby. Who the hell do you think you are, trying be all writerly and shit?”

I tell him to piss off. I am a writer, you cretin. See, I came up with that word, all on my own — cretin. But Doubt has been sneaky these days, he’s adding, “but baby, you’re going to leave your poor, sick, failing mother in the hands of caregivers for a whole week? What kind of feckless, self-centered daughter are you?”

That’s the barb that stings the most. Yes, I will be leaving my mother to be cared for by others. Yes, as much as I need a break from pushing her wheelchair, timing her medication schedule, taking her for walks and cooking her meals — I have this awful crappy feeling that I am abandoning her.

I don’t have children of my own, by choice. I always valued my own freedom. But these last couple years, as my mother’s health has declined, our roles have reversed and I am the “mom” caregiver and she is the “child” care receiver. It’s a really awful place, because my mother is/was a great mom. She had/has a wonderful sense of humor is vivacious and creative. She gave me a fun, laugh-filled, childhood.

I’m doing the best I can to make these last years as fun-filled as I can. But there are times when I need to get out, and be on my own and remember what it is like to be on my own. In order to be a good caregiver, you have to do it because it makes you feel good and that you are filled with more than enough love to give. But there are times when the well runs dry and you have to re-fill it. Any one else out there knows what this feels like? Mothers? Daughters? Caregivers? I’d love to hear from you. And don’t worry; mom is in good hands while I’m gone.

In the next few days I will be blogging about the highlights of Story Masters. Stay tuned. Be well, be happy, thanks for stopping by.

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Trust: the most important tool in the writer’s pencil case

Tags

Dramatica, novel, Rachel, storymind, trust, writing

Trust. Don’t trust me, trust yourself.

Many of my writer pals are gearing up for National Vomit on the Page Month. Sorry, that is my snarky way of describing NaNoWriMo – National Write a Novel Month. The goal is to write every day during the month of November and by the end of the month you will, hopefully, have written a 50,000 novel. Well, let’s be honest, you’ll have a first draft of a novel.

Everyone is using these last few days in October to create their plan of attack: writing outlines, planning plot structures, creating character sketches and back stories, lining up the ducks in nice rows, all the essential planning every writer must do. So, come November 1^st, Booyah, the blood letting begins.

I thought I’d put in my two cents (or about 600 words) on what I think is the writer’s most important tool in their pencil case. That tool is trust. Where am I going with this, you ask? Trust me. I’ll take you there.

It is my experience that every novel, story, stage play, or any work of art, has a mind of its own. In the Dramatica Theory of Storytelling, they literally describe it as the Storymind. Your story is a model of a human mind trying to solve a problem. I found this theory liberating in that, I didn’t have to do the heavy lifting any more. I don’t have to dream this up. Somewhere, out there in the imagination, or Image-Nation, my story already existed. All I had to do is be willing enough and diligent enough to take it all down. This is when trust becomes your best writing tool.

You have to trust that your story’s mind is as smart or even smarter than you are. You have to trust that it will reveal itself to you in the way it wants to. So, you dive in and you think the story you’re going to write is a touching, gentle romance between a trans-gendered vampire cowboy and a young rancher girl set in the sweeping Montana landscape. Great. You sit you butt in the chair on November 1st and say, “story, reveal yourself,” and you think about your dreamy cowboy vampire hero. You start to type, but you find yourself writing about some ugly trucker driving some loser bookie off the road in Florida. What? What? What? Where’s the tender romance? Where are the vistas of Montana? Who is this jerk character I don’t like?

 

This is the moment when you have to trust the process. Because by the time you get to the end of the first draft, you’ll know that trucker is the deadbeat father of the cowboy that your rancher girl falls in love with. It is precisely because his father was a loser, that our cowboy escaped a sordid life on the highways and chose to become a trans-gendered vampire cowboy.

Now, I know this all sounds a little naive. But trust me. I speak from experience. Writing is really re-writing. Once you have that first draft complete is when you really know what your story is and then you begin to work it, to use the rest of the tools in your pencil case: point-of-view, precise language, metaphor, pacing, voice. That’s when you craft out the story you want to tell. But when you trust that your story has a mind of it’s own, that the work becomes a collaboration between the two minds. That is something awesome to behold.

What do you think my lovelies? Do you trust me? Or do you think this is all crap and that you must outline your story within an inch of its margins? No matter what, best of luck to you all, I hope you meet your writing goals and kick some literary ass.

 

Some “Kids in the Hall” love

Hi everyone, I thought for fun, I’d post one of my favorite “Kids in the Hall” skits with Scott Thompson as Raj and Mark McKinney as Christine. I always thought Mark was the “prettiest” of all the kids. Enjoy!