Writers in the Storm

Tasha Seegmiller

Have you ever tried to quit writing? Promised everyone near and far that you were no longer going to keep being the schmuck who pounds the keyboard, willingly and knowingly sending out queries and synopses and manuscripts to those who will, for the most part, reject them?

How long did you last?

I’ve never been able to quit for more than six hours. This doesn’t mean that I’m writing every six hours – I don’t even know what that would look like. It does mean though, that my attempts to quit are usually stifled by that tickle of an idea in the back of my mind of how I can improve what I’ve written, of a character I could craft, of the way I’d describe a setting. And then – BAM! – I’m writing again, even if it isn’t producing words.

Why do I keep doing this to myself? (Not a rhetorical question)

It’s not because I’m crazy. (I mean, I AM, a little bit, but everyone is, right? RIGHT?!?)

It’s not because I don’t have anything else to do. (I work full-time, have a husband & three kids. I’m never bored)

It’s not because I’m such a success at everything in my life that I can’t help but stretch to find one little thing that will allow me to be humble. (Life has provided ample opportunities for humility, thank you very much)  

Turns out the reason I keep trying to do this is because it is what I LIKE to do. No, really.

In Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he states

“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

This means that we enjoy struggling, that we embrace complicated things, that our ability to negotiate difficult things FEELS GOOD.

Do you know what this means?

This means that if you ever do figure out how to write books like the wind, have characters that manifest themselves to you the first time you imagine them, have plots that have perfect pacing and everything else your critique partners, readers, agents and editors point out every single time you are writing, YOU’LL BE UNHAPPY.

What’s a writer to do?

Well, you have two choices. Write what will make you miserable or feel miserable (off and on) while writing.

Hopefully you didn’t just quit again. If so come back and read the rest in a few hours.

If you’re stubborn like me, here’s what you do.

You show up. EVERY. BLEEPIN’. DAY.

I don’t always like to show up. Sometimes I want to sit on my couch and binge watch New Girl or Madam Secretary and eat crap and pretend I’m happy. But I get restless, this urging to create great work, and the speed with which I can put away OREO Thins is not great work.

The last time I almost quit was a few weeks ago. I was rewriting a chapter and it was painful work that I trudged through and slogged through, slowly typing a measly article then a noun, and debating over entirely too many verbs. Netflix was looking really REALLY good.

But then I remembered my favorite TED talk. It is Elizabeth Gilbert sharing her thoughts and feelings on being the person who wrote Eat, Pray, Love and had it accidentally become an international bestseller. In Your Elusive Creative Genius, Liz shares the process of several people, the way they didn’t lose their mind in pursuit of creative greatness, and how we too can create work that is fulfilling and satisfying, despite the struggle.

I remembered that there were times in my process when I have laughed and cried and clapped and threw my arms in the air when I had completed a difficult scene, finally figured out the voice of the characters, finished whatever version of a manuscript I have been working on. I have reflected on the struggle, felt a little flicker of pride for what I’ve been able to get done. If you are reading this, chances are pretty high you’ve felt this too, even a little. Everything that you’ve trudged through, the times when you pull your hair, put it up, take it down, remove glasses, rub eyes finally comes together and you have a little victory dance.

And then, in that moment, you feel

HAPPY.

 

How do you work through the struggle of writing? What do you do to celebrate even the smallest of victories?

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About Tasha

Tasha Seegmiller is a mom to three kids and coordinator of the project-based learning center (EDGE) at Southern Utah University. She writes contemporary women’s fiction with a hint of magic, and thrives on Diet Coke, chocolate and cinnamon bears.

She is a co-founder and the managing editor for the Thinking Through Our Fingers blog as well as the Women's Fiction Writers Association quarterly magazine (Write On!), where she also serves as a board member. Tasha is represented by Annelise Robey of the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

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Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine Into Gold

Imagine looking in the mirror one morning and finding that you had shrunk to half of your height. Whoa. That would be jarring.

Frankly, all sudden change is jarring. This is why so many readers turn to story—to examine the way extreme pressures usher a fictional protagonist to the brink of change and then kick her right into its chasm. That protagonist is the avatar for us as readers, and we want to know what she does next—from the comfort of our armchairs, of course, because we’d much rather learn from her pain than endure more of our own.

But of course witnessing pain isn’t the entire point, is it. What truly inspires readers is witnessing that final climactic fight. It takes an entire book to set it up. By this point in the story we know why our protagonist’s struggle matters so much—to her, her family, her community, perhaps her world. We sat with her through each torturous decision as she struggled to achieve her desire. We stood by, helpless, as she suffered what seemed to be the opposite of success, and now understand full well the stakes should she not achieve the goal that unexpected change has pressed her into pursuing.

We are about to find out what our protagonist is truly made of. Who is she, and how will her story be important?

Now for the Real Story

Now imagine that you are a young person waking up in the United States of America the morning after the 2016 election. You look in the mirror glad to see you are still the same height, even though your country has gone mad due to an unforeseen plot twist. Your friends are fighting each other and some of them may suffer the loss of the rights you grew up thinking were inalienable. What stories will we writers leave behind for these young people?

No matter who you voted for, new pressures have been brought to bear on America’s belief systems—pressures that, ready or not, are rocking this country to the point of extreme change. We authors must ask ourselves anew:

Who am I now, and how will I function within my society?

Really? You might ask. I’m just writing stories. It’s entertainment.

If that’s the way you think, I urge you to think again.

As a writer, your response to change has been shaping you your whole life. Pick your era: Martin Luther King’s assassination. The Challenger disaster. The events of 9/11/2001. The death of someone you loved. A devastating diagnosis. If any of these events rocked your world, you no doubt went through a time of existential questioning that may have felt a lot like depression but was in effect your struggle to redefine who you were and how you would function within your world, post-personal apocalypse.

This is how we use our experiences to grow. Like it or not, the election has given us another opportunity to evolve. So writers, dust off those existential questions, because it’s time to revisit them.

I’m not suggesting we all need to go out and write political novels. I’m saying we can’t write inside a bubble. When the world changes, its literature must change. Whether you think it was for worse or for better, a tsunami of change has hit our country, and it will seep right into what readers hope to take away from your women’s fiction and your romance and your fantasy. If you want your story to matter, ignore this at your peril. Our stories carry forward the key to our emotional survival as both individuals and a nation, and readers will be looking for the inherent power of such stories now more than ever.

Writers have a special ability to allow our readers to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Whose shoes will you choose, and why? Your answer will affect you on every single level, from the stories you pursue to whether they will sell to how you will conduct yourself on the public platform your writing bestows.

I, for one, am re-evaluating my women’s fiction-in-progress. It no longer feels important enough. How can I sink the stakes for this family’s survival deeper into the community? How can I make the story feel more relevant? More necessary? You can bet that the agents and publishers who will ultimately decide our work’s salability will be asking these things. If you need ideas about how to start, check out Kate Moretti’s recent WITS post on that topic.

Politics aside (seriously—the endless ugliness of the campaign was bad enough, let’s not pull each other down any further!), I ask you as fellow humans and writers: do you give much thought as to how writing fiction can make a difference? Are you rethinking aspects of your current WIP, given your new awareness of our country’s deep divide?

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About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the award-winning author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy. Her chapter “A Drop of Imitation: Learn from the Masters” will appear in the forthcoming guide from Writers Digest Books, Author in Progress, available now for pre-order.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she leads workshops and speaks often about writing.

Twitter: @kcraftwriter
FB: KathrynCraftAuthor

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Okay, button up, because as they say in the vernacular of Texas, I'm fixin' to gush all over you.

One of the big surprises when I published was how many pirate sites there are out there, posting my work. My sweat. My property! I swear, the only Google alerts I get anymore are when Pirate sites post my books. Makes my blood boil, I tell you. 

Most publishers will allow you to report infringement sites to them, and they send out copyright infringement notices. At least they claim they do. I'm not questioning their veracity, but let's face it, they're focused on publishing the next book. And since their marketing ended about a week after they released my book, how much money are they going to put into backlist infringement? Call me a cynic, but I'll bet this gets under my skin a LOT more than it does theirs. 

Many authors just give up. They tell themselves that the people who download illegal works aren't people who would ever pay money for their books anyway. They wish those people a parting gift of nasty computer viruses, and move on.

I'm more stubborn (and more pissed). I want to feel the power of blasting those damned posts to the briny deep. 

Well, now you can. And while it's in Beta phase testing, you can do it FOR FREE.

I am a huge fan of Blasty 

I don't even remember where I heard of Blasy first, but I've been with them almost from the beginning, probably over two years ago. They've been in Beta all this time, because the more Beta testers join, the more feedback they receive. The more feedback they receive, the faster they'll build an outstanding tool against piracy. I've seen it improve in finding more content over the months.

How does it work? You go to a personal invitation link, HERE, and request Beta access. May take a day or two, but then you're in.

After filling out your profile, you add your books. Your dashboard will look something like this:

 

Then you tell it what to look for. You'll want to consider this carefully: look for too much, and you'll get a zillion items, much of which is legitimate. The search terms I decided on were:

• pdf
• free
• download
• torrent

Blasty will then go to work, scanning the internet for your books with those search terms. Here's what mine looked like this morning:

All you do is check to be sure it's not a legitimate posting, then hit the orange 'Blast' on the right. Blasty will send a copyright infringement notice, and you'll be informed when it's completed. BOOM. Done.

I've refined my terms, so most of my results are piracy. But for some reason, it always wants to pick up a review site (legit), that reviewed my books. All I do is add that URL to my 'Whitelist', and Blasty ignores it in the future.  

You can also, if you have time, search Google by book, for infringement yourself. Just go to your dashboard, choose that book,  and click on the 'check Google now' button on the right. You can scan for anything that your search words didn't pick up. This also helps you refine your search words.

I don't know what could be easier. And I get the satisfaction of making those little pirates walk the plank. Argh! 

Have I convinced you to try Blasty? Do you have a good pirate story for us?

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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 and expanded to three more stories set in the same small town.

Laura has 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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