Writers in the Storm

As we have all seen, the coronavirus has changed the rules for almost everything. Change is hard for almost everyone, and I know dozens of people who are reeling from the onslaught of unexpected challenges 2020 has brought. But for many, this year of change has opened doors to areas they might not have ever explored. New careers, new writing schedules, and new NaNoWriMo participants are popping up everywhere!

For those who don't know what I'm talking about...

What is NaNoWriMo?

This is for those who are new, those who haven't looked in a while, or for those who are looking for writing friends. Below is a quick primer on NaNoWriMo:

1. That funny word stands for National Novel Writing Month.
2. The website is www.nanowrimo.org
3. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days (November).
   (This averages out to 1,667 words per day.)
   (You don't HAVE to write all 50K. I usually do 20-30K.)
4. If November doesn't work, there is Camp NaNo in April and July.
5. NaNoWriMo is a website AND a community, with regional groups and activities.
6. Participants are addressed as Wrimos.
7. It is a fantastic place to find new writing friends who live near you.
8. There are Pep Talks by well-established writers.
9. There is a Young Writers Program (YWP) for kids.
10. Their NaNo Prep page contains a Master Class for writers.

I'm not kidding on that last point. Here are some examples from the NaNo Prep page:

The NaNo challenge is my birthday present to myself each year. Every year, I love it. And every year, I hate it. I rarely have time for the full 50K -- there's simply too much to do in the tiny little month of November -- but I always have a grand time.

I love the community, the late-night writing sprints, the before and after parties my local team throws. I love the write-ins, the pep talks, and the excitement of uploading my word count. I adore getting the chance to encourage my peeps and watch everyone chase their goals.

I tend to arrive at December 1st super invigorated and a little bit out of breath.

How has the COVID pandemic changed NaNoWriMo?

People are more tired than usual.

Writers are almost always stretched to the limit. Between family responsibilities and the day job, it's hard to squeeze that writing in. But you add in a pandemic that stretches on for months? US elections? Hurricanes? Homeschooling? Eddie Van Halen passing away this week?!! Fuggedaboutit.

People are "up to here" with this 2020 business.

I say f#@% it. Let's go play on the pages with our pals. NaNoWriMo gives you a chance to put yourself and your writing first for once, and encourage other writers to do the same.

Note: Last year there were more 455,000+ writers from all over the world participating in the challenge. (That's a lot of encouraging.)

Many people are still locked down.

In the big COVID states like California, where NaNoWriMo is headquartered, many people are still mostly staying home. Gatherings for any except immediate family are prohibited in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. The NaNo team has already asked for "no in-person write-ins."

But when has something like that ever stopped us enterprising writers? Each region has set up a group meeting area via a service called Discord, which went into use last year. I expect there will also be some Zoom and Google Meet write-ins.

As the mother of a school-aged child, I am insanely excited about this. Finally, I don't have to go anywhere to meet up! I don't have to wedge it in, or schedule childcare. In my opinion, this is the best thing to happen to NaNo since chocolate chip cookies.

I'll be able to tell you on the back end if the virtual write-ins equal more words on the page.

NaNo opened up the regions and made forums easier.

I don't know if the world being locked down motivated the NaNo team to open things up, but you are much less constrained this year.

Message from the NaNo team:

We’ve reorganized how the forum works. Most forums are muted by default. You can view ALL muted forums by scrolling to the bottom of the main forum page and clicking the + button by the Muted Categories section. There are two ways to unmute them! The first is to manually visit each forum you’re interested in, click the notification bell in the upper right corner, and choose your preferred notification settings. The easiest way is to go to your preferences and set the forums you want at the notification settings you prefer. “Regular” will unmute a forum without adding special alerts.

The NaNo team has also added private affinity groups for those who wish to join them. Their statement: "Joining these groups will grant access to special forums for BIPOC, people with chronic illness, neurodivergence and disabilities, 18+, teens, and LGBTQIA." Link to announcement thread.

Basically, in my "Regular" area (mentioned above), I chose the genres I cared about and THREE regions where I have friends I want to write with. This is a marvelous way to either meet new people, or write with both your team "back home" and your local team if you have moved.

What hasn't changed?

Well, I still want you to come buddy up with me at "jennyhansen" on the NaNo site! And you still need to get ready for the challenge - clear the decks, bribe your family, make some extra meals.

Here are some earlier posts about NaNo prep.

• 10 Tips to Rock NaNoWriMo
• A Tale of Two NaNoWriMos
• Why I Still Participate in NaNoWriMo (After 8 Years and a Book Contract)

And my most important bit of advice?

Run your own race.
Set your own goals.
Write your own story.

This writing life is a marathon, not a sprint. The moment you forget the joy of your writing is the day it becomes drudgery.

"Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion."

- Simon Sinek

One last note...the sponsor offers are amazing this year! A free upload from IngramSpark, a KDP how-to class, major deals off writing software. I love that they expanded this section for 2020.

Do you participate in writing challenges? Do you do NaNoWriMo? What do you do in advance of a writing immersion to get ready? Share with us down in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny provides corporate communications and LinkedIn advice for professional services firms. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 18 years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Facebook at JennyHansenAuthor or at Writers In The Storm.

by Karen Debonis

Last fall, after twenty years of effort, I finished my memoir. In recent years, that manuscript went through two rounds of beta reading, the scrutiny of a paid book editor, and another eleventy-nine revisions.

What began as a story about my young son’s life-or-death struggle with a brain tumor became an examination of how my people-pleasing had kept me from being the fierce mama-bear my son needed. The long road to “The End” of this book has been a battle between ego and humility.

Let me explain.

In the beginning…

Like every author, I wrote the manuscript to the best of my ability, which I thought was pretty darn good. The words “runaway best-seller” may even have skipped around in my head. I moved on to querying without so much as a peek at my manuscript, except to cut and paste pages into emails according to agents’ guidelines. I received a trickle of form-letter rejections and a flood of non-replies.

I still believed my writing was as good as I could make it, but those runaway best-sellerthoughts disappeared. Earlier this year I joined a memoir critique group. I decided not to submit chapters of my manuscript since it was “finished.” Instead, I submitted some creative nonfiction essays that had languished in submissions limbo. The groups’ comments gave me insight into why publication had eluded me. I heard the message loud and clear: My writing just wasn’t that good (my words, not theirs).

In other words, I wasn’t ready yet. I’d queried too soon.

In his book Your First Page: first pages and what they tell us about the pages that follow them, Peter Selgin writes: “Telling an author, ‘Check your ego at the door,’ is easy. Doing so— for the author—isn’t.”

Disheartened didn’t begin to describe my feelings. I began to doubt my ability to write at all.If I can’t even produce a decent essay, I thought, how could I possibly have written a decent book? Perhaps essay and book skills are different.

Still, something felt backward. Wasn’t my craft supposed to improve with time and practice?

Note: I had improved. But I couldn’t see it yet.

The Next Phase

My memoir beckoned me, but I resisted, fearful of what I’d find. Flannery O’Connor said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

So I swallowed my ego with a Tums and re-read Chapter One for the first time in months.

The prose was humbling in its mediocrity.

I’m not fishing for compliments or wallowing in self-doubt. I’m stating a fact.

• I relied on telling instead of showing.
• I gave unimportant details, and far too many of them.
• I didn’t vary sentence length and structure.
• It was boring.

My writer’s soul shook with horror that I had sent these pages to agents. I hoped my query letter had been so bad, they hit “Delete” before reading the manuscript. The next day I moped around the house, vowing to drop the project altogether.

My Epiphany

The fact that I was no longer satisfied with my previous writing was evidence of growth. Stepping away from a piece for a few days/weeks/months might give you a new perspective when you return, but the odds will increase if you’ve sharpened your skills in the meantime.

I did step away in the middle of my twenty-year memoir journey, worn down by the challenges of parenting a brain-injured child. With no time or energy to write about what I was living through, I stashed my box of memorabilia and the ancient computer holding my files in a corner of the attic. Years later, when my son was grown and recovered enough to be independent, I downloaded my old files and got back to work. Unsurprisingly, my writing had not improved. How could it when I hadn’t written?

My recent experience was completely different. Stepping away, then returning to my manuscript after vigorously practicing my craft gave me the clear perspective and tools to fix it. This time, my previous mistakes jumped out at me. I knew what to fix and how to go about it. The clear path forward energized me to tackle another round of revisions.

The Real Road to Publication.

With a deep breath and three Hail Mary’s, I submitted Chapter One for critique. I harbored fantasies of my critique partners saying, “It was perfect—I have no suggestions!” But humility slapped me back to reality with the groups’ tough and fair comments.

Back to the writing board I went.

(Are you seeing the pattern here?)

Ego feels great for the short term, but it can keep us stuck. Humility hurts, but it often leads to growth.

As writers, we strive to capture an element of the human experience and present a particular perspective on it. Humility is essential for that. Opening ourselves to understanding others’ unique take on the world, accepting that we are less than perfect (i.e., fully human), broadens our ability to convey the true depth of humanity.

Applying my critique group’s feedback with my improved skillset turned Chapter One into something I could be proud of today. If I have to repeat the process in six months, I’ll remind myself again that this process is worth it.

What I’ve Learned

Takeaways from my recent roller-coaster of ego, humility, and self-discovery:

1. At any point in time, your writing is as good as you can make it at that time. Be proud that you’ve done your best, but be prepared to view it less favorably in the future, because you will have grown. Let your discovery encourage, not discourage you.
2. Times heals no wounds and improves no skills unless you actively work at it. If you take a writing break for more than the length of a vacation, commit to working on other aspects of your profession or hobby: read, study, take classes, sign up for webinars. Further your craft, even if you aren’t creating new manuscripts.
3. Even if you believe your earlier writing sucked, study that growth. Ask yourself if it was better than it was the year before. In other words, turn your focus from where you’ve been to celebrate how far you’ve come. Believe that trend will continue.
4. Humility is the best teacher. Imperfection leaves room for growth. Embrace them both.

Final thought

I’m up to Chapter Four with my critique group. The original weighed in at a whopping 8000 words, but by the time I submitted it I’d trimmed it to under 4000. The critiques were fewer this time, the compliments kinder.

I had improved. So far, I’m counting it as a runaway success.

Have you had a similar experience? Do you ever go back to your previous work and celebrate your writing growth? What aspect of your Craft has improved the most? Please share your stories with us down in the comments!

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 Dr. Miffie Seideman, Pharm.D.
Part of the “Over My Dead Body” Series

Sights, sounds, and smells often evoke very powerful memories. Consider your own emotions or memories, when you imagine the smell of freshly cut grass? Or the scent of a charred marshmallow clinging to a stick over a campfire? What feelings surface while imagining the deep sound of rolling thunder or the sight of a lightning-streaked sky?

As writers, most of us use sensory descriptors to engage our readers more fully. It wouldn’t seem unusual to spend time deciding how to describe the eye color of a character or the smell of his after-dinner coffee, sipped on the veranda. We may add the aroma of his cherry pipe tobacco or the amber glow of the brandy swirling in his snifter. These descriptors add a more three-dimensional experience for our readers.  

But what if our brandy-sipping character leans down and snorts a line of cocaine from the crystal serving tray? Would you consider describing the pungently bitter taste of cocaine dripping down the back of his throat, before he chases it down with a bit more brandy? Describing drug-related sensory details can be very powerful for the reader and the story.

Some suggestions for incorporating drug sensory descriptions into your scenes:

Use scents to build tension.

Which is more powerful? Reading how a teen character gets grounded, when his parent catches him smoking pot? Or putting the reader in Mom’s point of view, as she first recognizes the distinct skunk-like odor coming from under her son’s bedroom door? And what an opportunity to hint at why Mom knows that smell so well!

Drug odors can be used to validate a character’s next action.

Maybe the sweet, nail-polish-like breath of an unconscious patient helps the emergency room doctor suspect isopropyl alcohol poisoning. Or the lingering odor of cat urine mixed with burnt marshmallows at a drug bust makes the officer search for a cache of meth.

Colors are another great way to add dimension to drug-related scenes.

Scene tension can change dramatically, when the reader realizes the sky-blue pills at the party are just like the lethal fentanyl-tainted pills from an earlier drug bust. Yellow nicotine-stained fingers can betray a character’s smoking habit. The blue-lips and almost imperceptible breathing of a teen found lying next to an empty syringe will cause the paramedic to grab the opioid antidote.

Don’t be afraid to use sound.

Consider how a character’s chattering teeth during meth withdrawal or the strenuous, whistling sound of him gasping for air from an opioid overdose can intensify a scene. Even small sounds, such as the repetitive sniffing from snorting cocaine or the bubbling sound of a marijuana bong being smoked, add depth to a reader’s experience.  

How to sound familiar with the unfamiliar, or illegal?

The problem with writing sensory description is that it often relies on past experiences- ours or those of people we know. Not knowing what a certain drug looks, smells, sounds, or feels like is a barrier I hear from authors. “If I haven’t seen or used crack, how could I know how to describe it?” I completely understand. I haven’t seen crack cocaine in person either (except for a baggie left in the hospital bathroom by a patient once). Just being a pharmacist doesn’t mean I automatically know what all drugs look or smell like.

Thankfully, the internet has a number of good places to research this information, especially parent and addiction support sites. In my work, I’ve had to use online resources to identify pills found near patients or partially eaten by a family dog. In my writing, I use them to garner description for scenes.

For prescription drugs: Free online pill identifiers, such as the one at Drugs.com can be searched by color, shape, or imprint number to find pictures of capsules or pills fitting the description. Searching by a drug name shows pictures of the actual medication, with links to information, such as usage and side effects.

For illegal drugs: Drugabuse.com offers a parent guide, listing some distinct sensory characteristics for a number of abused drugs. Getsmartaboutdrugs.gov/drugs contains a wealth of information regarding abused drugs.

Finally, poison control centers and first responders, including paramedics, medical personnel, and police can be invaluable in providing accurate information for many drug-related details.

Hopefully, these tips and resources will help make describing drug-related scenes a bit easier, offering yet one more way to add dimension to your writing.

Do you have examples of drug-related sensory descriptors you have used to enhance your writing? How have you used them to strengthen your readers’ experiences? I’d love to chat about it down in the comments!

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About Miffie

Miffie Seideman has been a pharmacist for over 30 years, with a passion for helping others. As a published non-fiction author, her articles have appeared in several professional pharmacy journals. An avid triathlete, she spends countless hours training in the deserts of Arizona, devising drug-related plot twists. She can be found hanging around onwemerrilystumble.com and on Twitter @MiffieSeideman.