Writers in the Storm

Heather Webb

Failure. Hmmmm. Well, I recently entered two contests and wasn’t selected. I’ve had agents who didn’t want me, editors who didn’t want my book(s), and enough negative reviews to be christened an author. I’ve also had the illustrious pleasure of receiving a small handful of emails from Wikipedia Historians telling me why I’m wrong about some research. Failure indeed. I’ve had lots of it, and suspect plenty more lies on the horizon.

For writers, failure is a four-letter word. We fear it, we dread it, and we try to avoid it at all costs. But perhaps we give it too much power. Maybe it’s best to run straight at it, helmet on. Learning how to cope with “failure” comes through loads of practice (sadly), but it also comes through two important skills a writer needs to survive:

ACCEPTING WHEN YOUR CRAFT NEEDS WORK  This is really difficult sometimes because it involves listening to others who criticize your work, as well as learning to listen to your intuition. Our ego likes to make us feel that critical feedback is wrong, and that we just haven’t found the right audience yet. But in time, we learn to discern the difference between our ego and what our gut tells us. We learn to digest the feedback, and work on our problem areas one at a time. Finally, we learn to make good friends with humility.

Humility serves us well, not only making us kinder, more open-minded people, but it enables us to filter out the helpful advice embedded within the harsh feedback, negative reviews, or the ever-present “something to improve upon in our pages”.

DEVELOP YOUR OWN PHILOSOPHY OF FAILURE  In spite of my many disappointments, rejections, and instances of failure, I’ve achieved some successes and happily work toward a growing portfolio. This came with a pound of flesh, but I don’t regret a single failure. They have forced me to dig deeply to remain connected with what drove me to write in the first place: a love of story. I’ve been forced to evolve to make my dreams happen. I’ve been forced to accept failure as a matter of course, not as an evaluation of who I am as a person, or as a measure of what I deserve. I have survived, in short, because I have developed my own philosophy of failure.

I must admit, my philosophy of failure changes the longer I write and the longer I work with publishers. To begin, I believe every attempt to achieve a writing goal that didn’t produce measurable positive results still gave me something that is more precious than anything tangible—it gave me experience. These experiences evolved into knowledge, and we all know knowledge is power.

But let’s be more concrete about this. Let’s look at “failure” from a numbers stand point. Writers are full of story ideas—loads of them. It’s impossible for publishers to buy everything we write, or to get on board with everything we love. There simply isn’t enough time or resources, or consumers for that matter. Therefore, everything we create won’t sell. This is why it’s imperative to WRITE ON, try new concepts, work on a new style or format. Challenge yourself. Keep going. Some ideas will strike a chord and some won’t.

Regardless of what happens with our books when they leave our desk, it’s our job as writers to keep developing stories that mean something to us on a deep, intangible level. It’s our job to explore and to push boundaries. We must weave our despair and angst and hope and joy into stories so others can relate to the characters that carry these messages. These are the stories that will succeed—and those that don’t succeed on a public level, feed our creative souls.

Writers write. It’s what we do. Failure is like death and taxes—all are a certainty. Failure wounds us, but that shouldn’t diminish our need to make sense of the world through words. Those wounds, instead, should make our need to create more powerful and urgent. So move failure off your hit list, and instead, consider it a measurement of your strength and skill.

What is your philosophy of failure?

About Heather:

Heather Webb is the international bestselling author of historical novels Becoming Josephine, Rodin’s Lover, Last Christmas in Paris, and The Phantom’s Apprentice, which have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly and more, as well as received national starred reviews. In 2015, Rodin’s Lover was selected as a Goodreads Top Pick, and in 2017, Last Christmas in Paris became a Globe and Mail bestseller. To date, Heather’s novels have sold in multiple countries worldwide. She is also a professional freelance editor, and teaches craft courses at a local college.

 

Writers in the Storm is having its annual “Writing Event” on Friday, April 13. 

Write Up A Storm is a one-day sprint-writing bash on Facebook, designed to motivate and sustain your writing throughout the day. Even if that day job impinges on your time, you can participate before work, during lunch and after hours. We’ll be here. Writing. Piling up word count. Supporting each other, from 6 a.m. EDT to 1 a.m. EDT. This is your chance to push toward completing your WIP for summer contests, pitches, and submissions.

The four of us will be monitoring and encouraging—and writing—throughout the day, although there will be some "unsupervised" blocks. Laura Drake will begin the day, followed by a three-hour non-assigned stint, then Julie Glover takes over and hands the reins to Jenny Hansen. After a three-hour non-assigned break, Fae Rowen will lead the final challenge into the night.

Beware those non-assigned time slots. Any or all of us may be checking in to see who's writing and comment or share what we're working on.

We’ll be writing all day and keeping track of word count totals from you, our fabulous readers. You can post your word count in a comment on Facebook during the day, and we’ll add it to the tally. You can post every hour if you want to and encourage others–or challenge them. Hmm, is this a WITS Throwdown in the making? We’re hoping that the combined word count will add up to a novella. Actually I’m hoping for a full-length book, but I'm a notorious optimist!

Here’s a short list of simple things you can do to prepare for Write Up A Storm:

1. If you’re a plotter, work on that outline for your new idea. You don’t have to finish the outline, but have enough to get you through three (or six) chapters.
2. If you’re a pantser, work your process so you’ve got the beginning of your story solidly ready to put words on the page.
3. Know your characters–their motivation, their character arcs, what they want more than anything else in the world.
4. Know what keeps your characters from getting what they want, whether it’s another person, lack of something, like education, or maybe something from their past.
5. Read. When writers stop reading, they stop writing. So read to fill your writer well. Read like a reader and enjoy yourself.
6. Mark the date on your calendar. Set an alarm on your phone.
7. Commit to a definite number of minutes–even if it’s only ten–of solid writing time. Or commit to a word count for the day.
8. Complete any research necessary to write the section you plan to work on.
9. Contact other writer friends to participate for support. They will thank you on Saturday, April 14, when they look at what they’ve accomplished.
10. Finish routine chores like the laundry and grocery shopping during the week.
11. Pre-cook meals for the day.

 

Are you willing to commit to writing on Friday, April 13? Are you willing to share your word count? How about sharing a tip to help all of us get ready?

 

ABOUT FAE

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes  that she can live anywhere but the present. As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules.

P.R.I.S.M., Fae’s debut book, a young adult science fiction romance story of survival, betrayal, resolve, deceit, and love is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

When she’s not hanging out at Writers in the Storm, you can visit Fae at http://faerowen.com  or www.facebook.com/fae.rowen.

James Preston

Once upon a time my wife and were doing our second-favorite thing, sitting up late at night reading. Suddenly she yelled something like ARRGH or UGH and threw the book across the room, where the poor thing bounced off the wall and landed on the floor. The cat wisely jumped up and took off for parts unknown, while I was thinking, “She’s between me and the kitchen where all the sharp objects are.”

“Uh, honey, is something wrong?”

“At the end, an atomic bomb went off and they all died.”

“Uh, why did the bomb go off?”

”No reason. Just because.”

She wasn’t kidding. The End. And they all died unhappily ever after.

And I know how she felt because when I was in Junior High I read a novel about hot rodders where, at the end, the hero drives off a bridge, his head collides with his girlfriend’s with a “bone-shattering crunch.” The End. I felt cheated. I went back and read the end again. Yep. Dead as can be. Let that be a lesson to you kids — no racing around in souped-up jalopies. 

Let’s talk about what most of us do, and that’s genre fiction. Let’s talk about “. . . and they all died.” Maybe indulge in a little compare and contrast between tales that do not end with everybody dying, that say, yes, Virginia, happiness is possible.

• Popular memes about genre fiction and how to fight them

Meme Number One — grim stories about the futility of modern life are more true-to-life and realistic because the world is going to Hell in a hand basket.

Meme Number Two — stories about miserable characters trapped in meaningless lives who stay miserable and do nothing about it are somehow more important than a series of paranormal romances.

At their dark, bleeding hearts these memes would have you believe that a happy ending is easier to write, and therefore less worthy. “He stood over the heroine’s body, holding the knife, laughed maniacally and went back to the castle.” That Stephanie Plum is less valuable to readers than the woman at the heart of Gone Girl. 

Don’t you believe it.

• The world is going to Hell In a hand basket 

If it is, people have been saying that for generations. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955) starring Kevin McCarthy, the hero talks to a psychiatrist about the people in Santa Mira who believe their friends or family members have been replaced by doubles. The shrink replies, “It’s mass hysteria. Worry about what’s going on in the world, probably.” That was 1955 and we’re still here. Remember the kids driving their hot rod off a bridge? First it was juvenile delinquents, then hot rodders, followed by surfers, then hippies and later, slackers, each iteration of youth marking the end of civilization as we know it. If anything, the Jayne Ann Krentz ending, with relatively happy protagonists, is more realistic because we’re still here; Charon is still waiting to take that hand basket across the River Styx.

• Dark and brooding is more important 

Oh, really? Okay, sales numbers do not always relate to quality — Valley of the Dolls was a huge seller — but you want meaningful numbers? Romance novels account for 29% of all titles sold.¹

That’s right, almost one in three books, including e-books, has a lady with cleavage, or a guy on the cover who makes me feel inadequate. Add in thrillers and mysteries and it’s over half of everything sold. That number has held steady for years, and to me that says something. It says that a good story can end happily, and that such stories fill an important need. Note that here I am including a typical Stephen King ending where victory is obtained, but at a cost. This attitude isn’t new, either. Barbara Tuchman’s brilliant The Guns of August was praised, sort of, by scholars as “popular history.”² It was an instant best seller and continues to sell to this day.

I believe in Story. I believe in laughter. For my money there’s not enough of either one in the world. 

First, Story, with a capital S.

The world around us is often chaotic, we humans have a hard time figuring out why things happen and often the answer is simply, “because.” The cliche of the woman holding the body of her husband and shrieking at the heavens, “Why? Why?” is constructed like a flawed pearl around a pebble of wisdom, because often the answer is — just because.

Art, Story, provides a respite from the unrelenting randomness of real life. “Just because” doesn’t work in a novel. How random is life? The chain of causality that led me to writing this essay goes like this: I was in high school, headed for UCLA with my best friend Mark. When he was killed I lost interest in UCLA, went to Cal State Long Beach instead, where I met my wife (the book-thrower) and through her the lady who invited me to contribute to WITS. But is that a story? Of course not. It’s "just because."

Our job is to layer on structure, to remove the extraneous. (And as a side note, wouldn’t that be a good topic for one of these essays? Do we as storytellers create the structure, or is it always there, waiting for us to reveal it? In a possibly apocryphal story Michelangelo once said the statue was always in the piece of marble; he just had to chip away the part that wasn’t David.) We either make or reveal the structure, and provide a tale to entertain.

Humor, happiness, is hard! You want tragedy? Just open your AP news feed.

Jerry Lewis said in the documentary “No Apologies,” “I see people all over the world desperate for laughter.”³ He was right, and I would add to that they are desperate for simple joy.

He described a plaque given to him by John F. Kennedy that reads:

There are three things which are real:
God, human folly and laughter.
The first two are beyond our comprehension
So we must do what we can with the third.

Here’s the point. It’s important how you feel about your work, and if you’re writing a series about a shape-shifting alien prince, or a detective who indulges in self-deprecating humor, you may feel a nagging sense that literary writers are somehow “better.” Fight it.

In the final analysis, what I’ve always wanted to do is what Don McLean says in, “Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie” — “maybe they’d be happy for a while.” What I’ve learned, no, what has been driven home to me recently, is just how important that is.

 

Do you write genre fiction? Do you feel that it gets the respect it deserves? Here’s to us ink-stained wretches. Type faster!

Sources

¹           Data as of 2013. Bustle.com
²           See the Introduction to the electronic edition. 
³           Available on the Blu-ray of The Nutty Professor. 

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About James

James R. Preston is the author of the award-winning Surf City Mysteries. Last year he branched out and launched two novellas, Crashpad and Buzzkill. These short thrillers are set on a college campus in the turbulent sixties. He can be reached at www.jamesrpreston.com, on Facebook, Twitter, and at james@jamesrpreston.com. His next release will be Remains To Be Seen, the sixth Surf City Mystery.