Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

For the last few weeks, we've been talking about fear here at Writers In The Storm. It all started with a Thursday night chat at critique group where, "What are you afraid of?" turned into a really big deal.

Below are the posts we've done on the subject and I think we've covered the writers' fears REALLY well...

There was Laura Drake’s post – Fear of NOT Succeeding – that started the "Fear Throwdown." Laura worries constantly about running out of time.

Fae Rowen answered the challenge with a beautiful post called, “Fear of Success” where she shared that she fears not meeting expectations and submitting work that is less than perfect.

D.A. Watt balanced both sides last week with “Are You A Head Case? Fear No More!” Deb worries about dropping the ball in her personal list of responsibilities and spreading herself too thin trying to be "Super Me."

Jenny Hansen (that's me!) spoke on the Fear Factor of Dreams, summing up the other posts and discussing how our dreams can both help and hinder us.

But what about the things that scare everybody (including writers)? Below, are the top phobias in America. . .they might surprise you.

What is a phobia?

A phobia is a completely irrational fear. Sufferers know they are behaving oddly. But that doesn’t lessen the fear – in fact, it can make it worse.

Phobias are a subconscious reaction — logic and rationality don’t help. In short, it is a flaw in their perception of reality.

I looked up the 10 Most Common Phobias in America and was interested to note that the rest of the world fears different things than Americans. Some of the “World's Top 10″ — Fear of snakes, darkness, another person, dogs and the dentist – did not make the U.S. Top 10 Phobia list, which is shown below.

10 most common phobias reported by both men and women.

1. Arachnophobia – the fear of spiders. There is no escape from these eight-legged beasts. They live in our houses, gardens, and even our places of work. True arachnophobes are even scared of pictures of spiders.

2. Social phobia – the fear of social situations. More than simple shyness. This is an extreme fear of being scrutinised by others, or humiliated by one’s own actions. This is usually where the fear of public speaking falls.

3. Aerophobia – the fear of flying. In a plane, obviously. Often paired with claustrophobia.

4. Agoraphobia – the fear of inescapable situations. The result is anxiety and panic attacks, which can easily become self-perpetuating. Extreme agoraphobes are confined to their own home, which is the only place they consider to be safe.

5. Claustrophobia – the fear of confined spaces. Sufferers will stay well away from elevators, trains and tiny cupboards under the stairs. May cause panic attacks if escape is not possible.

6. Acrophobia – the fear of heights. Sufferers may have panic attacks and put themselves in genuine danger if they can’t get down. Often confused with vertigo – which is merely a dizzy or spinning sensation and not necessarily caused by heights.

7. Emetophobia – the fear of vomit. No one likes the sight or smell of vomit, but these sufferers will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the stuff.

8. Carcinophobia – the fear of cancer. Although it’s not contagious, a carcinophobe will believe he has cancer because he touched someone else with the disease.

9. Brontophobia – the fear of thunderstorms. Also known as astraphobia. Child and adult sufferers alike hide away from thunder and lightning, lest they suffer panic attacks and have difficulty breathing.

10. Necrophobia – the fear of death. Derived from the fear of being buried alive, after early excavations of coffins showed scratch marks made by trapped victims. Also relates to coffins and corpses.

Which one of the above surprised you the most? For me it was #7. Fear of vomit? Huh. I can only speculate on what parents do when they have that one. Excuse me, little three week old Johnny, but you need to clean that hurlage up yourself…

Confession Time: I have a phobia.

I’ve been deathly afraid of heights since college. (Yes, I have an inciting incident for my handy-dandy phobia.) I have a hard time going up and down escalators and stairs and my stomach pitches whenever I stand on a balcony. And ladders? Forget it. I don't even like to watch my hubby climb one.

I’m going to make y’all a deal, right here in the middle of this post here at WITS: If you give me the scoop on your phobias and irrational fears in today’s comments, I’ll tell you the whole story of why I’ve been afraid of heights since about 1989. It'll happen over at my place, More Cowbell, but I will tell all.

So, do you have any phobias (and what are they)? Have you always had it, or was there a starting point that you remember? Did we leave any "writer's fears" out?

About Jenny:
Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after the newly walking Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing. In addition to being a founding member here at WITS, Jenny also hangs out on Twitter at jhansenwrites and at her other blog, More Cowbell.

We had to break into your weekend with some amazing news. . .Laura Drake has placed second in the Orange Rose Contest!

We should have a less blurry picture of her to sub in soon, but my hands were shaking so bad, I'm lucky I didn't drop my phone taking the photo. Sharla, Laura and I (this is me, Jenny) were all a blubbering mess by the time all the names were announced.

As the names were being read from 10th place on up,  we started freaking out when we didn't hear Laura's. I started rocking in my chair at #5, crying at #3 and I almost passed out when her name was announced in 2nd place. I can't wait to hear her describe her own reaction in the comments.

Oh, and did you notice she's in a wheelchair? That crazy girl went fly fishing last weekend and came home with her ankle broken in two spots! I'm not surprised that she gets that exuberant, but while fishing? Hello... Next time, I'm sending her with a chaperone.

Anyway, the Orange County Chapter of RWA is the one most of us call "home" here at WITS. At yesterday's meeting, two of our long-time friends spoke: Mary-Theresa Hussey, senior editor at Harlequin/Silhouette, and Susan Mallery of New York Times fame. Both of them were AMAZING.

Note: I'll have a write-up on my thoughts about Susan's talk for Techie Tuesday over on More Cowbell this week. Susan is what you'd call a writer's writer.

For any of you that have never entered the Orange Rose, it is a unique contest in that the winners are judged overall, rather by category. If you haven't scored at least 136 points about of 165, you're not eligible to be in the finalist circle. As someone who coordinated the conference for two years, I can tell you that the 10 finalists typically score in the 150's and higher.

All Orange Rose judges are published authors and the final editor judges are hand-picked to match the finalists. The first year I gathered editors, I had Selina McLemore from Grand Central, Rose Hilliard from St. Martin's, Hillary Sares from Kensington, 3 Harlequin/Silhouette editors (Mary-Theresa, the MIRA editor at the time and an editor from Harlequin Historical) and an Avon editor. That's pretty typical of the editor line-up (read: stellar!).

If you're looking to enter a writing contest next year and you want great feedback, I highly recommend the Orange Rose. In the past, I've thrown a book in there just to see how I'm doing. A score in the 120's lets me know I'm on the right track. Anything above the high 140's means I'm getting really close to the last draft.

We love our local chapter and we always come away ready to write. But yesterday was a truly golden day and we wanted to share it with you.

Do you belong to a writing chapter? How has it changed your career? Are there things you wish your local chapter offered? Are there contests you recommend? What is your experience with contests?

Jenny

About Jenny:
Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after the newly walking Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing. In addition to being a founding member here at Writers In The Storm, Jenny also hangs out on Twitter at jhansenwrites and at her other blog, More Cowbell.

by Kitty Bucholtz

When I started writing, I published a few articles and devotionals, and then I tried to figure out what kind of novel I wanted to write. I discovered that romance novels accounted for about half of the paperback market and I thought: I like romance, I’m happily married, I’ll write one of those.

I wrote and wrote - Christian romances, category romances, stand-alone romances, first person, third person, contemporary, 1940s - whew! I tried everything looking for my voice. Then one day a friend asked me if I’d heard of chick lit. Suddenly, the light dawned and the heavens opened and I danced with angels for a while! I’d found myself!

I quickly signed with an agent who sent my book out to eight of the biggest New York publishers. Both of us had high hopes. But the best we received was two replies of “we almost bought it.” As it turned out, chick lit was dying.

A few more years went by, but no one was enamored with my new stories, including my agent. She’d found her niche and it was Romance with a capital “r”. But that wasn’t precisely what I was writing. After four and half years, we amicably parted company and I sat down to figure myself out once again.

Back in the 1990s, I heard a woman speak at our writers group about all her rejections and how she finally decided to self-publish her book. By the time she spoke to our group, she’d sold over 100,000 copies of her children’s picture book on her own. A couple publishers who had rejected it earlier called her up and offered her 12% royalties to take over. She said no.

So here I was, thinking about my career - or lack thereof - knowing I’d found my voice, and finding everywhere I researched that “everyone” was saying that a humorous voice in a “with romantic elements” story was hard to sell.

I went to grad school to get my MA in Creative Writing thinking I would simply become a better writer and then I’d start getting contracts. But I kept hearing that publishers were buying less than ever due to the economy, and I was getting tired of waiting.

During my final semester in early 2011, I decided to do some more research into digital self-publishing. Things had really started to take off in that arena, but I understood that the biggest obstacle would be finding my audience. What kind of person would like what I wrote enough to buy it, and how would I reach her?

I flew to New York for the Romance Writers of America conference and pitched my superhero book to editors and agents there. Regardless of where the industry was headed, most revenue in books was still being generated by print copies from big publishers and distributors. But I only heard more of the same - “It sounds fun, but I don’t know how to sell it,” and “I like your story idea, but romantic comedy doesn’t sell well. How much sex is in it?”

By the time my plane landed back home in Sydney, I’d decided to self-publish that already-completed book from 2004. It wasn’t doing anything sitting on my computer, and worst case scenario I’d be out about $600. I’d already made notes about some edits I wanted to make to my book and then I was going forward!

It’s true that your friends and family can only buy so many copies of your book, but I’d been hearing potential readers tell me for years, “I just love how you write! When can I buy your book?” If I could find my audience, I could at least make a living, even if it was only barely enough to get by.

I signed up for a 10-day online class about how to format your book for Kindle. Let me just say, this is not a process for the technologically challenged or the faint of heart! I worked *all* day, *every* day for those ten days and barely got my book up on the last day of class.

But it was up! My novel, Little Miss Lovesick, was available for sale on Amazon!

More confusing hard work got the book up on Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and Apple’s iTunes/iBookstore. In 2 ½ weeks, I’ve sold 58 copies and have three reviews posted (one, not even written by a friend!).

I have a three-page To Do list that is probably missing a lot of things I need to do that I don’t even know about yet. I had a couple days this week where I got very little done because I was so overwhelmed by both the amount of work and the newness of it all. *How* do I do this or that?

But I’ve never felt better about my career in my life! Even though I have to move to a different country next month, I don’t want to stop. I’m creating business strategies for pricing, for finding my audience, for the publishing order of future books. I’ve got our DBA name registered with the state of California, and I’m working on getting a separate checking account. I’m researching all the small business paperwork that needs to be done, and I’m preparing to write an ebook on that, too!

Self-publishing is a time-consuming and difficult job, and a lot of the work eats away at your writing time. But I talked to a friend who got her first publishing contract this year, and her publisher is asking her to do about 75% of the stuff I’m doing!

She doesn’t lounge on her deck writing her next book every day. She, too, is rushing to meet the next deadline while also creating a Facebook presence, a Twitter presence, building a better web site, brainstorming how to blog differently/better, etc., etc.

Neither of us thinks we have it easier than the other. Publishing your book - no matter how you do it - is more time-consuming in 2011 than it was when the authors we grew up with were doing it. I encourage you to do your research no matter which direction you go.

It’s a rewarding process either way. But it’s also a lot of work. So do the research, choose a path - or take both paths with two different books - and then remind yourself every day, I love my job!

What are your thoughts about self-publishing? Do you have any questions for me? If you've decided to go the e-pub route, what was it that prompted your decision?

Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher.

Her first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, was released in September 2011 as an ebook and will be available by December in print format. Kitty has also written magazine articles, devotionals, and worked as a magazine editor. She is the co-founder of Routines for Writers where she blogs every Wednesday. Her next novel, Love at the Fluff N Fold, will be released in Spring 2012. You can keep up with Kitty on Facebook, Twitter, or at her web site.