Writers in the Storm

Revisions have always been my favorite part of the writing process. That’s when my geek side takes over and I color code scenes and lay them out and analyze story threads and add the details that pull everything together. A control freak’s happy place.

When the editorial letter for book 2 came in I was giddy. I ordered new sticky notes in fun colors. I bought a batch of yellow note pads (I edit long hand) and a box of purple pens to go with the purple binders I’ve been using for this story. Then I printed out all 300 pages. I. Was. Ready!

I rocked chapter one and two. Blew through the first 100 pages even with quite a bit of rewriting. The story was coming together.

And then something wicked happened … I lost my confidence. For every change I made, I second guessed the entire manuscript. I worked on one page for an entire week. Five days on one stinking page. I wrote two paragraphs, deleted four. Wrote one paragraph, flipped through 60 pages to quiet a nag and ended up rewriting an entire chapter.

The voices in my head said I’d broken the book. Ruined the story. I was doomed.

So I did what I always do … I got feedback. And the feedback fed my crisis – loved it vs. nope, not working. We’ve all been there, right? But I’ve always been able to weed out the bits and pieces that felt right and move on.

Except this time. I was doo-doo-doomed!

In a fit of desperation, I whined to a writing friend that I was about to make s’mores on the manuscript bonfire. Her advice: “Trust your gut. You didn’t get where you are on accident. You know better than you think you do!” My response: *laugh-crying because scroll back through the previous two paragraphs*

My gut was as fickle as my creativity. And it wasn’t just with writing. I’ve been very busy triple guessing everything. And I do mean everything. Parenting decisions? Yup. Life choices? Of course. What to cook for dinner? Oh dear lord, I’ve got nothing!

Triple guessing is second nature to me. And I’ve had plenty of “this is crap” moments when it came to my writing. But I always managed to write myself back into a happy spot.  

Except this time. What was different? Pretty much everything, actually. That’s helpful, right? Revising on contract, major personal life upsets, a very unsettled political climate, to name a few. My gut was curled up in a corner hugging a stuffed animal, pretending to be in a sunny, remote vacation spot. And as much as I wanted to join my gut in that alternate reality, life and deadlines weren’t going away.

I reread my friend’s advice over and over – “You know better than you think you do!” Maybe she was just blowing hot air up my flannel pjs, but I needed to latch on to something positive so why not this?

First I had to quiet the doubts and there was only one way of doing that … unplug. An awesome writer’s retreat in a soul-refilling location – yeah that. Nope, not that. I unplugged from social media, logged out of email, turned off all news notifications, waved my family off for the day, and spent the next few hours going through my editor’s notes and the manuscript.

And there it was – the story I wanted to tell. Without the distractions of external and internal noise, the story found its way back to the surface.

This is where I give you the lessons-learned and lay out the handy-dandy take away. I wish I could. I wish I could say that I’ve learned what not to do or what to do better in the future. But the truth is, I’ll have another “this is crap, I’m doomed” crisis with the next manuscript or the one after that. Because we’re writers and we do these things to ourselves.

Doubts will always color our manuscripts. Feedback will always be mixed. Every story will have moments of brilliance and hours of despair. When those moments hit, I’ll be looking at this sign and listening to my gut …  

What gets you through those times?

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About Orly

Orly Konig is an escapee from the corporate world, where she spent roughly sixteen (cough) years working in the space industry. Now she spends her days chatting up imaginary friends, drinking entirely too much coffee, and negotiating writing space around two over-fed cats. She is a co-founder and past president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and a member of the Tall Poppy Writers. She is rep’d by Marlene Stringer, Stringer Literary Agency LLC.

Orly’s debut, The Distance Home, will be released by Forge on May 2, 2017.

You can find her on on Facebook, on Instagram, on Goodreads, or on her website, www.orlykonig.com.

 

Emily Cavanagh

For the past ten years, I have written steadily and quietly. While my friends, family, and colleagues all knew I wrote, only a few close writer friends knew the extent of my writing life. Only a handful of people knew that I had written four unpublished novels. When I would somehow let this slip in conversation, I would receive looks of marvel, looks that made me inwardly cringe. What others viewed as a major accomplishment, I viewed with embarrassment. After all, I’d been trying unsuccessfully to get an agent for years. Telling people that I kept writing despite anyone recognizing my work felt like admitting publicly to my failure as a writer. Without the external approval of an agent or publisher, I couldn’t take myself seriously as a writer, beyond a narrow circle of writing colleagues. (This need for approval speaks to many things in my life, but let’s just stick to writing, shall we?)

When I finally signed with my agent in November 2015, everything changed. Not just because I was suddenly on the path to publication after all this time, but because signing that contract allowed me to change the way I viewed myself. With my agent as my ally, I could finally take myself seriously as a writer. I sprang into action and in a matter of months set about creating the outward appearance of a writer. However, looking back, I realize that my own unwillingness to take myself seriously may have impacted my slow journey to publication. If I could go back and do it again, here are a few things I would do earlier:

Build a website

What on earth would I put on a website? That would have been my question two years ago. But I found the process surprisingly enjoyable. And while my website started small, it’s been easy to build on as I get ready for my first book to release. I took a free class at my local library on using Weebly (which is very user-friendly, and if you’re at all computer literate, you could probably figure it out yourself), and within two weekends had created a basic site. I included a synopsis for several of the other novels I’d written, and when my agent was shopping around my manuscript for THE BLOOM GIRLS, an editor at Lake Union checked out my website, requested to see one of the manuscripts I’d included, and I ended up signing a two-book deal. If I hadn’t built the website, that second book likely wouldn’t be coming out next spring.

Scrape together the money to go to a writing conference where you can pitch directly to agents.

This is how I ultimately got my agent. After pitching my manuscript at a Writer’s Digest conference, I was referred to my agent, Marlene Stringer. I’d put off going to one of these conferences for years, because they were too expensive, requiring travel and hotel accommodations. Yet I wonder if I would have sped the process along if I’d gone to a pitch conference earlier. Having the chance to pitch your book directly to an agent removes you from the slush pile and it also allows you to demonstrate yourself as a professional (articulate, serious about your craft, ready for all of the other challenges publication will bring). This is something you just can’t show in an email query. If you make it to one of these conferences, do your homework first. When I sat down to give my pitch, I knew it backward and forward. I’d practiced it a hundred times, by myself and for an audience. That came across when the time came to deliver it to an agent.

Get yourself some business cards, for goodness sakes! You never know when you’ll need one.

Again, this was something I was embarrassed to do before signing with an agent. A business card? What for? When I pitched at the above conference, another agent asked for my contact info, and specifically asked if I had a card. Uh, no. Instead I scrawled my name, number, and email on a piece of notebook paper which is a lot easier to lose track of.

Creating a business card is really simple and inexpensive. And it looks a lot more professional than a post-it note.

Try to get a few pieces published in smaller local outlets or start a blog.

But I don’t time for this, I’m busy writing my novel! And what the heck would I blog about? Yup, that’s what I was thinking. But how long would it have taken to write a short piece for the local paper? I would have made some contacts that could have helped me, and I’d also have a few more credits on my bio. Once I started my blog (which I admittedly only update on a monthly basis), I discovered I actually enjoyed this kind of writing. It was a nice break from fiction and allowed me the chance to write in a different voice. Plus, unlike novel writing, you can publish lots of blog pieces in a short amount of time, which means people are reading your work on a regular basis (even if it’s just ten people all related to you!).  Blogging was my first step out of the writing closet I’d been in for so long. People I’d known for years were reading my writing for the first time. While I felt like I was totally exposed and in one of those dreams where you enter gym class and realize you forget to get dressed (the first post was entitled “Playing Kickball Naked”), the more I wrote, the more comfortable I got. Now I find that I enjoy writing these pieces and love getting feedback from readers.

Network with other writers

I’m now a member of several different groups on Facebook where writers can pose questions, offer promotional support, share ideas, and network. Again, this fell into the “I don’t have time for this” category. While discovering some of these groups requires a little bit of legwork upfront, you then have easy access to a group of writers who are going through the same struggles and have experience they can share, which may even lead to potential opportunities. As someone who isn’t crazy about the idea of interacting with strangers online, I’ve found that having a virtual community of writers is invaluable. Writing is a naturally solitary and lonely experience. Having people to talk to (even people you’ll never meet in real life) offers a respite from wandering around in your own brain with imaginary characters.

The sooner you can take yourself seriously as a writer, the more likely others are to treat you the same way. As Richard Bach said, “A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.” The difference between a professional and an amateur, may start with the way we view ourselves as writers.

So, WITS readers, do you agree? Do you have any other tips for unpublished writers?

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About Emily:

When she's not working as a middle and high school English teacher, Emily Cavanagh writes contemporary women's fiction . She lives with her husband and two daughters on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Her first novel, THE BLOOM GIRLS, releases March 14. You can read more about her life and work at www.emilycavanaghauthor.com or follow her on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Descriptions are some of my favorite things to do. But they're not easy to write well.

Descriptions have changed over the years.  Stienbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939. Here's the beginning: 

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Steinbeck fan, but that was before TV, Netflix, apps, and Xbox. Back when readers had time to linger over prose - through long, quiet, boring winter nights. I don't care how great a word-smith you are, you're not likely to describe a sunrise better than the great authors in history. 

The good news is, you don't need to.

Because readers don't come to your novel looking for a new, fresh sunrise description. Promise. 

They come for engagement.

They come for a great character they can relate to (or totally not) in a situation that puts their beliefs, values, or lives in danger. In a word, conflict!

So what does description have to do with this? Tons. Descriptions nowadays have to do double, and sometimes, triple duty. Because through it, you can show: worldbuilding, tone, foreshadowing, and most important, emotion.

Let's look at each of those separately.

• Worldbuilding

Most of this type of description is (as it needs to be) at the beginning of a novel. Even there, though, your descriptions need to do double-duty.

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

Suzanne Collins', Hunger Games:

See what she did there, in two sentences? You know the world you've been thrust into is spare, poor, bleak . . . and scary. That's also a good example of foreshadowing.

World building is important in every novel, not just fantasy and Sci-Fi.

The realtor Mama recommended was a friend from her days on teh Appalachian craft fair circuit. Verna had a hairless Chihuahua named Mistake and a distended tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil running across her belly. I knew this second-hand, thank God. The point is, in my hour of need, this is who Mama turned to for sound advice.

Kimberly Brock's River Witch

What do you get of this character's world just from the first paragraph? You also see a lot of Kimberly's beautiful voice there, too.

• Tone

I want to tell you some important things before we start our journey.

I lived through it all. That's one problem about relating events in first person. The reader knows the narrator didn't get killed.

Robert McGammon's Boy's Life

You don't need to read the back blurb to know this is a scary book, right?

"Come on, baby," he murmured. "Give it up for me. You know you want to."

Jade Bennett did her best to ignore the way the low, sexy voice made her shiver. Besides, it wasn't aimed at her. Dr. Dell Connelly--dog whisperer, cat whisperer, horse whisperer, and known woman whisperer--was talking to a stray kitten.

Jill Shalvis' Animal Attraction

Lighthearted and fun, a rollicking romance. Right?

• Foreshadowing

Girls stretched and writhed under the hot water, squalling, flicking water, squirting white bars of soap from hand to hand. Carrie stood among them stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color. It rested against her face with dispirited sogginess and she simply stood, head slightly bent, letting the water splat against her flesh and roll off. She looked the part the the sacrificial goat, the constant butt, believer in left-handed monkey wrenches, perpetual foul-up, and she was. She wished forlonrnly and constantly that Ewen High had individual-and thus private-showers.

Stephen King's Carrie

Even if you'd never seen the infamous shower scene at the beginning of the movie, you'd know this isn't going to end well, just from the word usage, right?

• Emotion

To me, this is the most important. A description should convey an emotion to the reader. Like Hugo did here, in Les Miserables

Do you see that the one light detail he highlighted darkens the entire feel? Brilliant.

So how do you do that? That's where the details come in. 

Think about it; the view of the sun rising over the bay will look different to a woman whose child is missing than to a woman who’s just fallen in love. The way you’d describe that sunrise for each, shows your focus, and sets a tone.

The details you'd choose to show that will be different than mine - and that's why it doesn't matter if it's been written before, because it hasn't been written by YOU.

Take, for example, a description of a junior high school dance.

The faint whiff of sweat from the locker rooms, mingling with your date’s cheap perfume. Don’t just tell us the character is nervous. We can guess that. Tell us what we don’t know. You can show that Junior high school awkwardness in description as well: a glimpse of a white bra at the gap in a sleeveless dress, a wobbly ankle in heels, a tug at a too-tight waistline. I love in the movie Footloose – remember the how awkward the dance was at first?  The guy picking his nose? Great detail.

Here's how the master, Pat Conroy did it:

When I entered the dimly lit gymnasium, the awful reminder hit me like a well-aimed meteorite that I had never been to a high school dance before and had no idea how to conduct myself. Nor was I sure how to set my face – a confident smile, an easy nonchalance, a cocky watchfulness. I found myself simply defenseless as I felt my face congeal into a dewy lostness.

See what he did? He didn’t focus on sweat, discomfort, etc. That would be the norm. What lifts this above that is him focusing on one small part of it; how he holds his face. I’ve never seen it described that way, and yet I’ll bet everyone can relate to this feeling. Dewy lostness – Conroy slays me.

Whatever you do, be sure your description of a pretty sunrise is telling the reader about more than just the sunrise.

Do you have any other tips for us on writing descriptions? You you have a great one to share?

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About Laura

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women's Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central.  The Sweet Spot won the 2014 Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® award in the Best First Book category.

Her 'biker-chick' novel, Her Road Home, sold to Harlequin's Superomance line (August, 2013) and has expanded to three more stories set in the same small town.

In January, 2016, Laura released her first Women's Fiction, Days Made of Glass.

In 2014, Laura realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She's a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

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