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Textual nightmares: or, some ways you can not suck at editing by learning from my mistakes
Writing novels is not my problem. My output has only improved in the last few years, and I’ve finally moved beyond the whining about not having time, or making every excuse in the world not to write stage. Those were big hurdles for me, and I’m proud of the accomplishment. I generally make my 1K goal every day, with a few exceptions, and I love telling the stories. So what’s the problem, right? Unfortunately, what’s resulted is lots of first drafts, and not completed novels. As a writer who fumbles around in the dark putting pieces together, this is truly problematic as editing, the next step in the process, just…
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A note on giving up.
It’s okay. Really it is. Set it aside, take a walk. Go somewhere new; get a cup of coffee. Do some yoga, or scream a little. Writing can be such a pain in the ass, you deserve to take give up for a little while. Or a month. Or a year. Or a few years. Writing, if anything, is a roller-coaster. It’s moments of ebullient joy cut short by self-doubt and skepticism. It’s dark and light, brilliance and idiocy, utter bliss and deepest despair. And, it seems, such contradictions don’t go away, not with success or fame or age or time. Writers both in the glow of youth and the…
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Reading writers of influence: the importance of reading and writing
If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write. – Stephen King, On Writing I read Stephen King’s On Writing sometime around 2003 or so, before my husband and I were married. I was working at Starbucks, and getting ready to enter my MA program after having been wait listed for an MFA. At the time, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with my life; I had relocated 800 miles south, was living in an old, drafty, flea-infested one-bedroom apartment in a crumbling Victorian, and I was adrift on the sea, as it were. I had about five…
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You’re not special, you’re just stubborn.
I labored under a delusion for years that writing was precious, unique, and important. That my worlds were somehow glimpses into something Great and Beyond, and that my abilities as a writer would someday inspire awe and adoration. In those years, I didn’t write very well, and I didn’t write very much; I also never considered all that went in to actually getting a book published. I had a kind of distant understanding that eventually I’d have to actually share what I did, and that likely to get something to the masses, that would require, you know, time and publicity and all that (something I’m just starting to consider now).…
