Writers in the Storm

By Karen DeBonis

In the fall, I asked my husband to move a rhododendron shrub from a crowded spot between the house and the back steps. It was so tight, I knew he couldn’t get in there to dig without breaking and trampling branches. So, with a deep breath, I lopped off multiple stems with huge buds that would have produced glorious white blossoms next year.

As I mourned the branches lying on the ground, it occurred to me that I had killed my darlings.

But I knew my “Rhody” would thank me by being stronger and more beautiful next year. And I realized that the process of letting go of what we love is itself an act of love.

Isn’t that the perfect metaphor for our writing? Let go to love more.

Treasures I’ve found in letting go.

Later this week, as I do every January, I’ll take a ten-year old accordion file folder from the attic, dust it off, and empty it, piece by piece, into the recycling bin or the shredder. Last year, when I purged my 2010 folder, I came across a stack of my son’s paystubs that had landed in our folder.

My son, Matthew, had graduated from college two years earlier—in the midst of the great recession—and had found and lost multiple jobs in that time. His neuropsychologist told us it was to be expected when children with a brain tumor like Matthew’s grow up and join the workforce. College is structured, the doctor explained, but many worksites are not, presenting challenges for a compromised brain.

In 2010, my manuscript—a memoir about my compulsive people-pleasing and its impact on my son’s illness--had been languishing in the attic for over five years.

I didn’t consider myself a writer then because I hadn’t written anything more the occasional birthday card during those five years. I seldom thought about the book I had been so passionate about before. I didn’t recognize my son’s paystubs as the documentation gems they were. Six years later, I revived my manuscript, so I was ready when I found those paystubs last year.

Had I not intended to let go, I never would have found what was intended.

The Year of The Purge

Last year—2020—was my year of memoir purging.

I’d joined a Zoom critique group of memoirists and membership included submitting chapters for comment. My manuscript was done and, at first, I didn’t want to open it up for comment. But when I reread it for the first time in months, I found all the usual suspects that needed editing:

• inactive verbs
• unnecessary adverbs
• repetitive phrases
• boring extraneous telling
• clichés
• some beautifully written scenes that didn’t move the story forward

I practically wore my delete button bare.

In the process, I opened space for deeper, more introspective writing. I discovered I hadn’t said all that needed to be said. Incorporating some new material helped my memoir became more powerful, more universal, more authentic.

Letting go enabled me to grow.

Some reflections on 2020

My experience in 2020 helped me realize some truths about letting go in the writing process.

• Let go so you can love more.

The purpose in cutting unexciting or ill-fitting material from your manuscript is to shine a spotlight on the glittering gems that remain. You and your readers will love your book even more (if that’s possible).

• Let go with intention, and be open to what you may find.

Be purposeful and strategic in your cutting. Can you find ten words you won’t miss on every page? One hundred words per chapter? What hidden gems were left behind? (See number 1, above.)

Further Reading: See Barbara Probst’s post on scene coherence for some great editing insight.

• Let go so you can grow.

If you are undecided about cutting a passage or section, move it to a different document and live with it for a few days or weeks to see how you feel about its absence. Can you fill the space with better material? Is there something you want to say on the page that you haven’t? Use the opportunity to take your writing to the next level.

I don’t know what I’ll find in a few days when I start pulling papers from my folder. Every year, as more and more household transactions occur online, the attic folders get thinner and thinner. Matthew’s had the same job for two years, and does his own taxes now. I doubt I’ll find any of his paperwork.

And yet, I remind myself…my memoir is less about the growth in my son’s brain, and more about the personal growth of his mother. I’m eager to find more discoveries about that woman from ten years ago, because she certainly isn’t who I am now.

What about you? What will you purge and welcome in 2021?

* * * * * *

About Karen

Karen began writing twenty years ago after her eleven-year-old son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Those early pages are now a real-life medical mystery about a mother who must overcome her toxic agreeability if she's to save herself and her son. The manuscript is currently in submission for publication.

A happy empty-nester with her husband of thirty-seven years, Karen lives and writes in upstate New York. You can find out more about her journey at www.KarenDeBonis.com.

By Fae Rowen

I’m pretty certain 2020 didn’t turn out like you thought it would. I usually pick one word as a focus for the new year, but 2021 is going to require THREE -- Hope, Edit and Love.

I’ve always known that without hope there would be little reason to fight life’s challenges. Hope gives us the fortitude to last just a bit longer when hanging on in the face of miserable conditions. Hope that tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, the worst will be behind us and we’ll again be happier.

My 2020 Experience

I was on track to update my first release, P.R.I.S.M. Book One, by the end of September in anticipation of releasing its sequel, PRISM 2: Rebellion, before Halloween. By Thanksgiving, I’d planned to release Keeping Athena. All of these had been edited at least four times already. My only job was to go through the text, approving the final copy edits.

None of those releases happened, but a lot of other things did—to my friends and to me. As the days passed, I lost hope about meeting my self-appointed deadlines. When each one slipped by, I felt like a failure because I couldn’t work on the required edits. My head just wasn’t in the game. I struggled to maintain my exercise routine because I knew that after my injury, my physical health was important for success in all endeavors. Even though I couldn’t walk as far, I walked three days a week. I completed my Zoom workouts with my trainer, though my slower speed often allowed only 2 sets instead of my usual three in the hour.

Though they weren’t as good as before, my physical workouts gave me hope that one day I would fight my way back to where I used to be. I’ve parlayed that hope into beginning work on the final edits for those two new books. There’s an outside chance that one (or with a miracle, both) will be up on Amazon before the end of the year.

Imagine you’ve got two books totaling nine hundred pages of edits, and you’ve just finished an edit of another over four-hundred-page book. That fourth book that I hope to publish in April? It’s finished, just requires a couple more rounds of, you guessed it, edits. Makes you want to run right into your computer and plow through pages, right?

Luckily, my wonderful developmental editor, Tiffany Yates Martin, published a book titled Intuitive Editing. You can listen to a podcast with her here. Her book came out at just the right time to help me regain hope as I began what seemed like an eternal slog through over a thousand pages to edit. I’ve learned so much from working with Tiffany, but her book reminded me of points I haven’t yet mastered and encouraged me to stay in the game.

While in the middle of the edits I took a week-long virtual intensive class with a view toward the next book that I hope to publish in the late spring of 2021. Learning new information that could be immediately applied brought new meaning to hope and edit. The eight-hour-a-day virtual classes brought the love of writing back.

For why do we go through all we do to write our stories, if not for love? Love of writing. Love of story-telling. No matter what genre you write, you won’t write for long if you don’t love “the work.” It takes thousands of hours to learn to craft a saleable book, thousands more for a best-seller. That’s a lot of time after a day job and life’s requirements. Time that could have been spent (before Covid) with friends and family or recreation or a number of other enjoyable pursuits.

So there you have it. Hope. Edit. Love. Three four-letter words passed on to me for 2021 through the literal, and not so literal, fires of 2020. Perhaps they can help you re-focus your energy for the new year.

What word (or words) will help you thrive in 2021? Let's talk about them down in the comments!

About Fae

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a sci fi freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes that she can live anywhere but the present. 

Punished, oh-no, that’s published as a co-author of a math textbook, she yearns to hear personal stories about finding love from those who read her books, rather than horrors of arithmetic lessons gone wrong. 

A “hard” scientist who avoided writing classes like the plague, she now enjoys sharing her brain with characters who demand that their stories be told.  Amazing, gifted critique partners keep her on the straight and narrow.

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PRISM 2: Rebellion

She’s the best pilot on her prison world. He’s heir to Earth’s largest conglomerate. What could they possibly have in common? The engagement ring he gave her before he returned to Earth.

O’Neill isn’t sure if the Earther will return to her. She’s been a little busy defending herself against the First Law of Prism.

On Earth, Jericho Montgomery finds that Gatfield Montgomery, the man he’d thought was his father, has signed an engagement contract for Jericho to marry. He defies Gatfield and returns to Prism—to the only woman he’s ever loved.

If you like fiercely independent characters willing to fight for what they believe in, a world with a unique society, and surprises, you’ll love Fae Rowen’s latest science fiction romance.

by Tasha Seegmiller

Happy last Monday of 2020!

Most years, there are people who are offering suggestions on how to reflect on what was accomplished, how to plan for a “better” year ahead. I have been one of those people. Seriously, the resolutions I used to set were ri-dic-u-lous.

But I’ve been doing a lot of work this year, on myself, on my valued relationships, on identifying when someone is trying to get something from me versus working toward something with me. And while I am not the first person to talk about the necessity of keeping our eyes on our own path, I do want to have us take a minute, in this typically quieter time of the year, at the end of a tumultuous everything, and be honest.

Grab a notebook, open a new doc, and write your unfiltered, honest answers to the following:

1. Did you write as much this year as you thought you would?

(This one’s pretty much a yes or no…) (remember honest and unfiltered)

2. What allowed you to do so?

OR...What prevented you from doing so?

3. How did all that was 2020 help or hinder you?

• Did your mental capacity and/or health seem to be in the perpetual chute of Chutes and Ladders?
• Did you have people when previously you didn’t?
• Did your energy shift in regards to what was required for your job/day to day life/making ends meet/worrying about loved ones/____________, etc.?

4. Does writing nurture you?

I’m anticipating at least ten minutes to answer those questions, if you are giving yourself time and space to be honest with yourself.

And I’m going to be very honest here: the flipping of a calendar to 2021 isn’t going to magically create a shift to what was (sorry…). I don’t want to be the Debbie Downer of WITS, yet I find it is better for me to be very aware of reality and plan for the worst. In America, politics will shift and still be politics. We have a vaccine for COVID and it’s going to take a long time for everyone to get to the point where safety is the new norm. Economies are dodgy, schools won’t really be consistent for a bit, and while we’d all like to look to the sky for the superhero of our preference to come in and save the day, real life is nuanced and hard and complicated.

If you answered no to #1 above, if you look at all the reasons you didn’t, do you have the capability to change any of that moving forward? Do you maybe need to change what you are expecting of your writing, of yourself?

If you have traded writing for sewing, painting, reading, etc. are you at a point in your life when writing isn’t nourishing you like it used to? If you are not under contract/using writing as a form of income, why are you trying so hard to write right now (if you say, “Well Shakespeare wrote King Lear…” that’s the wrong answer).

Do you need to get real honest about how you are spending your time and WHY? If someone asks for shows to binge and you scroll through the comments having seen all of most of them, is that because you are rewarding yourself for a hard day, or are you numbing yourself to the world around you? What has happened to your phone usage? Do you feel more connected to the people around you?

Now stop.

Close your eyes and take a full, lung-satisfying breath.

What do you feel in your neck and shoulders? When you're thinking about how you’d like to progress through 2021 with all the things, but especially your writing, does what you want to accomplish feel honest and true, in the deepest part of your soul, heart, and gut? Does it feel like something you think you should want to do but don’t?

This isn’t fast work. Answering these questions won’t magically make you able to write better or rise earlier to get words in or provide more peace of mind and energy.

Answering these questions will give you a minute to reconnect with the truth within you. To remember what it means to sit with your authentic self. From there, start asking other questions:

• What is my favorite excuse (real or perceived) for not doing what I want?
• How do I really feel about how I’m spending my time?
• What are the things I cannot change/modify/reverse about my reality?
• Where do I have some choice?

Congratulations. You made it to the last Monday of 2020.

There has been a lot to process, and each of us had different things. Feel your feelings, have an honest conversation, get grounded today, this week, and revisit this again, as you feel yourself numbing or spinning. Just as no one had the answers for how to get through this year, no one has answers on how you need to proceed, except you.

And I believe in you.

Did any of the questions above particularly resonate? What are your favorite ways to reconnect with your authentic self?

About Tasha

Tasha Seegmiller believes in the magic of love and hope, which she weaves into every story she creates. She is an MFA candidate in the Writing Program at Pacific University and teaches composition courses at Southern Utah University. Tasha married a guy she’s known since she was seven, is the mom of three teens, and co-owner of a soda shack and cotton candy company. She is represented by Annelise Robey of Jane Rotrosen Agency.

Top Image by iXimus from Pixabay