A Doubt Infection: An IWSG Post

I recently got over a doubt infection.  It wasn’t a particularly bad case, but it did lead to some serious thinking.  I considered posting this as a regular blog, but decided that an IWSG post was the way to go because I believe every writer has or will experience this little adventure.  To catch up on other IWSG posts, check out the master list here.

Like any infection, well-meaning people are carriers of the dreaded doubt.  They sidle up to us at the store, over lunch, or even digitally, carrying doubt that breeds in our soon-beleaguered bodies and minds.  Writers are dreamers at our cores, people who lose a lot of time in fictional landscapes while the real world carries on around us.  It takes a truckload of belief to smother the doubt that always resides in our bodies, even when dormant.  Doubt about our words.  Our purpose.  What all of this epic enterprise means and where it will lead.  Doubt is something that must be controlled, otherwise we never get past the first Once upon a time... that leads to stories and novels, and perhaps our dreams coming true.

From the first instant of accepting a goal like becoming a writer (or any big goal), the well-meaners line up to lower our expectations, to cushion the inevitable blow of failure.

“You know how many people are trying to be writers?  Better prepare yourself...”

“Most writers are never successful.  Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be a/an...?”

“You have to write every day to be a writer and I’m not sure you have that kind of ambition...”

Or the classic, upon hearing a person is a writer:

“Well, what have you published?”

(Pet peeve on this one:  As though a runner isn’t a runner if they haven’t run a marathon, or a singer isn’t a singer unless they have a Platinum album, or a climber isn’t a climber unless they have climbed K2—Writers are writers if they write.)

What makes the well-meaners’ arguments tough to fight is that they are not technically wrong.  More people write than are successful (if success is measured by a fixed definition, that is—I will get more into that later).

Writers and dreamers build our inner fortresses to combat the voices of others, the doubt infections waiting to be caught.  But even with that, they occasionally knock us down during weak moments along our paths.

Critiques.  Querying... a perfectly good excuse for doubt.  Rejections.  Any number of places along the publishing path can bring us doubt.  For me, publishing my first book without the validation of industry professionals inspired a great deal of doubt that was ultimately overcome by solid belief in my purpose.

My recent doubt infection was brought by a well-meaner’s statement made in the context of a wider view of my life and writing journey, in which the overall advice was that it would be better to give up dreaming of reaching any manner of goals and embrace that right now might be all there ever is and included this statement: "What I don't know is how successful you will be as an author..."

I went on quite a ride after this admittedly unsolicited opinion of my journey and it took a while to figure out what and why and how the concepts it contained affected me.  And why my reaction, other than the doubt infection, was so strong.

It took the greatest immunization and curative imaginable to make me see what I rebelled against in this missive—I picked up the phone and called my best friend.

My BFF reached the point in the letter mentioned above and said (roughly), “Huh?”

She then paused to collect her greatness and blathered, “You are a success because you show up and write.  You are a success because 400 rejections didn’t stop you.  You are a success because you are living your dream and publishing your books.  Besides, it’s too soon to tell whether you are a tremendous success yet—your books have been on the market less than a year.  And besides that, what does success mean anyway?”

And then came a sigh from me and a question for all of the writers out there: What does success mean anyway?  Because to assign success or failure means there is a fixed point out there somewhere in the distance.  I believe we all have a vision of what we want out of this goal, but at its heart, we have to know that just getting to the tell our tales is a success.  Money.  Fame.  Fortune.  Film deals.  Sure, they are the trimmings.  Not having to work a day job—yes, that would be nice.  For indies, having copy editors/graphic designers/and for some, a traditional publishing deal are signs of success.  For others, just being contacted by readers who enjoyed their work is a success.

Success isn’t a fixed point.  My favorite authors (some of whom had bestsellers) are the ones who kept writing after their books found tremendous success (even though their other works never reached the same level of success); they continued to tell stories because that is who they are.  My favorite book is out of print—does that make the author a failure that her work didn’t stay in print forever?  I think not.  And even if I did reach whatever elusive meaning success has, would I stop?  No.  I write because it is how I communicate with this world, how I take in and chew on meaning of life, how I breathe.  I would work just as hard if I reached the success I dream of.

I understand the concept of non-attachment to goals.  I get it.  And I get the visualize your success of the “laws of attraction” folks.  I get both (even though they directly contradict each other), but I think we all—we dreamers—have to find our own ways through the hurdles, the reasons to doubt.  For me, I want the people who care about me not to say they don’t know if I will be successful or to act as though success is a fixed point.  My best friend has been with me in this goal for thirty years and never once said she doubted my success—in fact, she’s been the chorus of the opposite (the You’ll Get There Brigade).  I don’t think there is any way to be supportive when feeding doubt and expecting the diminishment of goals or the acceptance of the status quo.  Another friend put it in a different way, saying (roughly), “That would be like you telling me I may never find love.  We both know that could be true, but hearing it from a friend just isn’t helpful."

Even though this doubt infection made for a bumpy couple weeks, I’m grateful for it because it challenged me to think about my life and what success really does mean to me now, after five years pursuing the goal I’ve held dear all my life.  And what I came up with about the meaning of success is the willingness to keeping trying no matter what happens, doubt infections, rejections, sales figures, whatever.  All I have to do in this is try.  That’s the difference between success and failure for me.  And as long as I continue to try and hold some happy thoughts about what future smiles will be built on, then I am doing my part.  And since the lion’s share of my life is spent with characters who only ever want me to shut up, sit down, and let them write their stories through my quickly-tapping fingers, I know they approve.

I hope you keep trying with whatever your goal.  I hope you have a best friend to pull doubt up short and shake it loose.  And I hope you have peace in your heart, knowing your only job is to serve your purpose.  If that is to write, then lucky you, because for all of the ups and downs, the heartbreaks and the times of smooth sailing, disappearing into fiction and coming out on the other side with a finished novel is the greatest adventure I can imagine.

To quote a favorite token that I have with me almost always:  Write hard; die free.

Carry on.

P.S. After my third book in the 7s series comes out May 17th, I will be blogging more often.

If you are interested in taking a look at my books or watching the trailers for the first two books, links are provided here.

The Wild Wood

The Downs

Overmining: An IWSG Post

I am a pretty driven person by nature and as soon as I accepted that the only way to be a happy, content person was to dedicate myself to my writing (five years ago), I went at it pretty hard core.  In five years, I’ve written quite a few books and now that I have embarked on the indie publishing adventure, I’m publishing my books at a pretty hard-core pace.  This scenario leads me to this post about overmining, because I have been feeling overmined lately—specifically, my creativity.  I am pushing so hard to get the next book ready and the next one after that.  I go from finishing one book to beginning the next in the series on the same day.  I sit down in front of the page every day and expect my creativity to show up, and honestly (and thankfully), it does.  But in pushing this hard, I’m finding craters in my creativity that used to be meadows.  The fun of story discovery begins to feel taxing.  The characters I love—and their expanding lists of issues—become toxic to the joy I usually find in the writing process.  I push for a reason, believing that if we don’t give ourselves deadlines, nothing much will get done.

I’ve even created a timeline of when I want to release my books through 2016.  I push to hopefully develop a readership that will follow me from book to book, series to series.  I have a plan and a vision.  I also have overmining as a chief worry.  

And I have my catch 22.  To be a happy person, I must write, but what happens when writing drains me?  How does balance exist for a person who cringes at the word moderation?  I admit to a somewhat Puritanical work ethic.  How do I let go of something so ingrained in the fabric of my person?

It is all about filling the well—that I know.  But everything gets more complicated after that, when the thing that most completes me depletes me.  And horror of horrors is the idea of taking time off when I have a publishing map driving me forward.

I know from reading other IWSG posts that many writers have procrastination worries with their writing.  I had to smile when I realized that last IWSG post day, I had procrastination envy.  This isn't to say that my focus is always rock solid (certainly not... I can get lost researching the history of kilts or fall into the parallel universe of online puppy pictures), but I will say that if I ever had a boss at a job who pushed me the way I push myself, I'd run for the hills and seek life elsewhere.

I’d love your thoughts on this because I get tight in the chest even considering backing away from the greatest part of my life.

To read other IWSG posts, check out the master list here.

"They Were Wrong"... and So Was I: An IWSG Post

Today (and on every first Wednesday of the month) I am participating in the Insecure Writer's Support Group.  Check out the list of participating blogs here.  The goal of the group is to provide a safe haven for sharing our writing/life-related struggles and fears in a supportive and understanding community of writers and readers.  So here goes...


In my typical way, I am going to go all in to this in a way that truly frightens me.  There are things I hide from my blog, from my friends, and many times myself.  But to be honest with myself, I have things to say.  Things inspired by this...

(If you have already seen the To This Day Project by Shane Koyczan, continue reading.  If not, it is well worth your time.  Teachers, parents, friends, teens, writers for teens... I simply can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be better for watching this and finding just a bit more empathy than they had before.)

I first watched this stunning video a few weeks ago and have wandered back since, gathering more, reliving more, falling more, remembering more.  To This Day is such a great title, because it is the proof that events we lived through in our pasts live again in our thoughts, are carried with us as baggage that we discard and pick up again throughout our lives.  A friend recently told me of the horrible names her sister called her when she was young, never calling her by her (lovely) given name (one of my favorite names).  As she said the words, they lived again for her.  No, she is not still traumatized by them, but when she remembers, she lives those moments again.  She will set down that baggage again and live her life as an amazing and active, decent and generous mother to a very lucky boy.

Like everyone else, I have my wounds of words and events that I pick up, carry a while, and then discard.  Most times, they are far away, but sometimes in winter, when blue skies are fairy tales, and everything becomes a swirl of cold and grey, when the life I dreamed of looks starkly different from the life I live, those events come to life again.  Baggage I must carry.  To This Day reminded me of the seeds of my sorrows and how long ago they were first planted, how thickly they grew, and how hard they are to eradicate.

I was the smallest student at my grade school and I remember the things I was called, but being a small girl wasn’t always bad.  The first real bullying I remember came from a teacher who falsely accused me of cheating and then lied to my mother and the administrators about it.  And while shocking to me at the time, there were enough wonderful teachers to buffer the one who wasn’t.  I remember middle school as nothing but awkward.  I was the target for some and a friend to others.  Once again, that was just something to survive, not something that left too many scars.  And maybe that was because I was in gymnastics.  I had other adventures that kept me busy enough to not wound too easily.

And then there was high school.  I’d quit gymnastics and maybe, looking back, that changed things for me, but high school was where patterns were formed, where self-doubt owned me, where I faked confidence to such a degree that perceptions of me grew more and more distant from the real me.  I didn’t fit in... and more than any real bullying or abuse from the outside, I suffered from something else.  I became the invisible girl.  I was the girl forgotten about.  The girl who was left behind.  In truth, this began earlier.  I remember being left behind on a field trip.  I remember the day my friends from church ditched me at the mall.  I remember being forgotten on the call back list for a play I auditioned for.  I remember never getting a part in any play in all my years of high school.  I remember all the dances I didn’t attend because I was invisible, and who would ask an invisible girl to a dance?  I attended just two dances, a Sadie Hawkins and my prom, both times asking my date to the dance and having a great time.

In my invisibility, I excelled at everything I did.  I worked behind the scenes in theatre, graduated with honors, traveled to Australia and Germany, earned a Bachelors and a Masters.  And I wrote... and wrote and lived in fiction.

The trouble is, once you are invisible, being seen is a thing beyond your reach.  I’ve spent almost my entire adult life alone, never picked for anything, making a wonderful life out of the scraps of fallen dreams.  And just like my friend who only wanders into her sister’s nasty words when they come up, I don’t dwell on this all the time.  I’m too busy with my adventures, but here is where this intersects with writing and publishing.  The process of querying was a test of whether I could survive the letdown.  I honestly think that challenge was what held me back for so many years, but when I felt ready, I launched myself at querying like it was my purpose.  Four years.  Four projects.  Close to four hundred rejections.  But an invisible girl’s legs are strong, and they didn’t buckle.

In To This Day, my favorite part is when Shane so beautifully and powerfully says, “They were wrong.”  I don’t know if agents will one day believe they were wrong about my work, because the truth is, now that I have found my way to indie publishing, which is a perfect fit for me, “they” aren’t what my journey is about.  It is about “me.”  Instead of “They were wrong,” I choose to think “I was right” about me and the stories that burn inside me until I free them.  I was right to work this hard to make a wonderful life.  When I think of my life as the invisible girl, I see that it is just one facet of a beautiful life, the saddest perhaps, but still just a part of a blessed whole.  The other sides of my life are the friendships I have made with generous, loving, supportive people who do see me.  Family who are inspirations.  My goals.  My gifts.  My plans.  I have more peace in my life than many visible people have, more to be grateful for, more good to focus on.  And then there is the future, where maybe an invisible girl might one day be seen.

I do see in myself the weakness that invited invisibility, a place where I felt safe from risk.  A place I don’t want to live in anymore, hence a blog post about things I never thought I would share in a forum like this.  I knew I was ready to be seen when I published my first book last year, followed by my second.  With two books coming out this year, I am staking my claim.  And every time a reader contacts me, moved by my books, it is a nail in the coffin of my former life of invisibility.  When a young reader told me she hated reading until she found my book—that was the proudest moment of my life.

I was right.  To write.  To share.  To dare.  To serve my purpose.

And as Shane said, 

“... If you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself, 
Get a better mirror.
Look a little closer.
Stare a little longer.
Because there is something inside you that made you keep trying,
Despite everyone who told you to quit.
You built a cast around your broken heart and signed it yourself—you signed it They Were Wrong.”

And so was I... about myself.  Now it is time to be right.

Choosing Darkness

I have been working like a mad writer lately, trying to get through the rough draft of the fourth book in my series before I put the finishing touches on the third.  I like to make sure that I know where this ship is going so that I can add a bit of foreshadowing here and a few hints there.  What I discovered as I blazed through the end yesterday was that I had no idea where this story was going, and I have to say I was shocked at the darkness that is coming for my characters.  At the end, I was sad, and in talking (ranting) to my mother, I realized that like a parent, I don’t want to see my characters go through rough times.  I want to make sure they have hope and remember that every day is beautiful and even grumpy times are reminders of the goodness of better days.

Today, I realized that my grieving for the bumpy seas ahead for my characters had more than a little to do with a good friend of mine in real life.  As I watch the train wreck coming in fiction, I have some power, my fingers can change everything (though not without consequences in terms of inspiration to write), but in real life with a friend going through equally rough seas, I can do almost nothing.

I’ve tried all the things that a person can do.  I’ve reached out.  I’ve shared my stories of darkness and how I worked through them.  I’ve done what I could.  But in real life, we simply don’t have that much power when people choose darkness.  My characters sometimes choose darkness and it hurts, but I can see when they will have that spark of awareness and lean back toward the light.  For my friend, I can’t see that.  I hope, but I have no special window that lets me see that my friend will go a different way, fight harder against the demons, and come out on the other side grateful and hopeful.  

Maybe one day, my friend will remember that his friends and family are out here too.  And while he’s focused on his own pain and his own worries, there are people he loves who could use his help and his attention.  Other people might need him, but right now his view is limited.

I’ve been there, in a different way, and I wonder why people and characters choose darkness.  Why is it so hard to see that we have a thousand choices every day to view the world and our particular challenges in a positive light?  Why is it so hard to remember to look beyond ourselves when the only thing we see inside is ugliness?  We’re not ugly, we’re beautiful, but the times when our souls feel like cesspools are the times to look somewhere else.  To stay busy.  To make this minute positive.  To not think about the end of the day or the week, the month or the year.  Just to make this one minute beautiful, and if not beautiful, then at least bearable.

Anything positive has to be better than giving in, running away, hiding from pain, or searching for permanent endings to temporary problems.

My characters will find their way.  They’ll find hope.  I hope my friend does too.

Memory

I had a funny morning the other day, a morning where memory took on the role of villain.  We like to think having a good memory is an asset, and certainly when it comes to people losing their memories, that is indeed a great tragedy.  But like everything in life, there is a price and a benefit to having a good memory.  Other than a few gaps when I was too busy to attend to much, I have a really good memory and on the morning in question, that memory delivered to me the rogue’s gallery of annoying people I’ve come across in my life.  Like I was flipping through a deck of cards, there they were, including (I hate to say), their names.  I couldn’t believe that I can remember the names (all of them) for these bit players in my life who carried a short-lived (thankfully) but irritating place in my history... some more than twenty years ago.  And I’m not talking about the annoying teachers who I saw everyday (their names are worthy), but the boss I had who told me I had to quit my job because I had to take a night off to sing in a wedding (that he knew about when he hired me)... yup, still know his name.  Bad one-time dates.  Co-workers from my teen years.  All still here.

It shouldn’t be a surprise really.  I still know all the words to songs I haven’t heard in years (REM, I’m looking at you right now... It’s the End of the World as We Know It).  And truly, it did make me laugh to remember them, but it also made me think.  One of the things I have struggled with is letting go of old hurt feelings, and it’s no wonder.  With a good memory, we can replay these incidents in our minds like our own version of Dysfunctional Youtube, and odds are (and if witness identification stats are correct) we aren’t replaying them exactly as they happened.  We color our memories.  That old boss could have seen things completely differently, and leaving that job gave me the opportunity for a different adventure.

I’ve worked to make peace with these memory monsters, and making peace means turning off the memories even though they still rumble around inside me on cold mornings in February.  It takes discipline to focus on the good, the place in my life where I’m happy, my goals, friends, and family.  And the incredible blessing for a memory-afflicted person is the future, open and wondrous.  Better to be happy in this moment and the one that’s coming than to worry at the past with no hope of changing anything but our own perspectives.

So, rogue’s gallery, I salute you and wish you well, and to all the rogue’s galleries in other people’s memories in which I am a member, I hope you forgive me and find your own peace with our shared pasts.  We do improve with time, and life really does get better.

Quote for the Day from L.M. Montgomery

"Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

A State of Flux

I talk a lot about change.  The willingness to change is something to aspire to, and the thing about change and growth is it is never finished.  I’ve had those epiphanies, the ones where you feel you’ve arrived, you’re complete.  What a joke.  Great growth yields more great growth, as long as we remain willing to assess, to look at our lives and see the places where we hide from change, places we refuse to allow to reach the light.  I have them; I like to think we all do (that makes me feel less odd, if we are all in this forever flux together).

The catalyst for change can be anything, can be a friend who inspires, a movie, a song, or other more tangible internal realities.  Nothing inspires change quite like misery.  I sometimes think that we run from misery too fiercely, instead of allowing it to be our cosmic compass pointing the way we don’t want to go.  If we faced that instead of hiding from it with whatever salve we can find (ice cream has worked for me in the past), maybe we would learn faster.  But in so many ways, I think we are all the petulant ne’er-do-wells in our own stories.  Instead of using unhappiness as a guide, I stared at sadness for such a long time, refusing to blink, refusing to see the beauty and wonder to my right or my left.  No, I had to see my life darkly, because that was where I felt more alive, more purposeful.  More tragically miserable.  I spent years trying to turn my life into a soap opera, when I should have been happy with the silly sitcom I was born to live.

I laugh more now—sometimes out loud... in public places.  And I talk to my dogs when we go for walks because I have a lot to say and they are a truly good audience for my musings (unless of course, they see a squirrel).  Lately though, a song has inspired me to assess the dark places within, perhaps leaning toward the unfaced demons waiting to be challenged.  Perhaps.  Because the thing about change is it is the constant, but timing is everything.  And knowing the right time is the real challenge.

Today, I give you the song that has me thinking of futures just beyond my grasp, the futures that can only be found by allowing ourselves to grow past the barriers that restrain our dreams.

I give you... Just Give Me a Reason by P!nk (featuring Nate Ruess).

“It's been written in the scars on our hearts

We’re not broken just bent

And we can learn to love again”

The Way Things Work

When I was a little girl (okay, I’m pretty short, so I will amend that to say, when I was a younger little girl), I had such expectations about the way life would be, the things that would come easily and the existence of the right path for every person.  While I do still believe in a right path for every person—and no two right paths are the same—I’ve seen the power and price of expectations (and have written several blog posts to prove it).  Today, and for the past few weeks, I have been thinking about expectations.  Dear friends have been struggling with loss lately, losses so massive as to be beyond any expectations anyone would have for life.  Loss of loved ones.  Loss of a child who was so vivid and alive and then suddenly gone.  For a person who doesn’t have children, I recognize the limitations in my understanding about what that kind of loss truly means, but I know it is huge, breath stealing, and horrible.  And yet, I am watching my friend celebrate her son, remind us of all of the joy he was capable of bringing, not just to family members but all who witnessed his verve, his delight in the wackiness of life—he left a mark on us all, a good one.

No one expects to lose like that—we wouldn’t be able to exist if we did.  We all know how incredibly fragile life is, but our losses must take us by surprise, even the ones we see coming.  Our lives are patterns, connections, some wonderful, some involving great effort, and some unhealthy.  One of the most beautiful aspects of my life is that I had the opportunity several years ago, to move away from everyone I know and love, and all of the patterns of my life.  This opportunity gave me the chance to examine my life on the dark nights when I struggled with being far away from family, friends, and old patterns.  On the other side of darkness, was the light of choices.  I changed.  I grew.  I wrote.

When all of my unhealthy patterns fell away, I found my voice to write and these fingers of mine have barely slowed as I near my fifth year of writing mostly full time.  I have written many books, many versions of many books, and have published two books with a third and fourth coming out this year.  I found my place in this world as a writer, a self-published one (which was never how I thought this journey would go).  A friend recently asked me if I would ever query again—ever pursue traditional publishing—and I said I don’t know because there is something amazing about creating a book that is entirely your own.  I don’t mean to diminish the valuable support provided by the big publishers (I wish I hadn’t had to learn to build an ebook... still my least favorite part of the publishing process), but what editors and designers give to authors, I have found through friends and critique partners, a slew of people who care about me and support my goals.  I have a team and feel that, rather than a self-published author, I am a community-published author.  My friends have purchased copies of my books to give to school libraries, a coworker’s daughter invited me to talk at the high school she teaches at (I will post more about that soon), and my critique partners have read my books, slashing them through to make them better.

My path doesn’t look at all like I thought it would, but had I had the ‘dream’ publishing experience, I never would have known this feeling I carry with me all the time now, the rightness of being an indie author, the gratitude for every person who reaches out to say that they are connecting with my books and excited for the series to continue.  Days ago, a woman I knew twenty years ago reached out to tell me she had devoured my books and is currently a principal at a middle school that will now have my books on its shelves.  Another reader wrote to me with a song suggestion that was so incredibly right for a character that I was choked up listening to it and have included it on the playlists for book 3 and book 4.  Being an indie makes each one of the connections more powerful.  There is no one between readers and the author in indie publishing and that suits me.  That is the path I was supposed to find while bumping my head against the traditional publishing model.  I don’t know if I will ever not be an indie at heart and as I put out the rest of this series and get ready to start another series next year, I will be on the lookout for where I belong at any given time.  Because that is the real lesson I have learned in all of this, to be grateful for every moment we have in this life, because life is short and nothing guaranteed.

Children sometimes die.  Illness and hardship find us.  But we are always better for the moments we have and those we share our moments with.  We are better for the love we gave even when those we love are gone.  Because the truth is, no one is ever really gone because the connections we make transcend time and space, life and death.  My grandfather lives every time I remember his kind eyes.  My uncle Jimmy lives every time I remember his wicked smile.  My friend’s son will live forever and will never stop making us laugh, because boy could that little man dance.  Best of all, I believe that heaven is a great adventure that never ends, a place where we will all be reunited.  I will meet Sully there someday, and I’ll be sure to be wearing Hulk-themed pajamas (with footies—and yes, I think footie pjs are  heaven-appropriate clothing).  And I will be ready to dance.

Thanks Sullivan “Sully” Mainor for shining so brightly, you left the world bathed in light.

Quote for the day from Patty Griffin

“We shall all be reunited,

in that land beyond the skies”