May I Have the Keys to the Literary Kingdom, Please?

I have been having an identity crisis and I have no one to blame but myself.

In April of 2008, I attended my first writing conference and the world shifted on its axis. Did you feel it? I don’t see how anyone could have missed it. There was this l-o-n-g moment when the world stopped turning, and when it started up again, everything looked different. Suddenly, I could visualize my dream of becoming a Real Writer. And then the conference I went to last month had the effect of dangling a key just out of a prisoner’s reach. I could see my greatest desire, but even while I was surrounded by scores of supportive writers, I knew the four walls of my self-imposed prison would hem me in once I stepped back into my own reality (self-fulfilling prophecies are remarkably dependable). With great fear and stubborn determination, I soaked up the conference atmosphere like a drunk on a three day bender. I pitched my novel to Kevan Lyon of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency and then, in a moment of reckless abandon, I accepted Cherry Adair’s “Write the Damn Book” challenge.

Please don’t misunderstand me: I am happy with who I am. I love my family and my life but I want – no, I need – to figure out how to make the transition from hobbyist to professional; to make writing an integral part of every day, not just something I do in my spare time; to stop treating writing like a dirty secret and bring it out into the open.

You know how much I love short stories. They are the perfect venue for the hobbyist writer. On a lazy Saturday afternoon, I can create a first draft and then spend the week toying with the story elements. For longer, meatier short stories, the semantics alone can consume months of Saturdays. All the while, new story ideas are brewing and the creative cycle repeats itself. Aside from NaNoWriMo month (November, for those of you non-WriMos), thus has been the extent of my writing for the past five years: a weekend here, an evening there, but otherwise, just a hobby. Oh, sure, I’d go through periods of binge-writing and have an occasional inspiration to enter a contest, but I always fell back into my usual routine of duty before hobby.

To be fair to myself, I have been a dedicated hobby novelist in the last year, with only a few brief diversions into short stories, but I tried to treat my novel writing like my short story writing and discovered that the two are very different from one another. Very different. My organic, spiral writing method isn't the most effective way to write a novel, but I have learned from successful writers that it can work and, as you may recall from paragraph two, I possess a stubborn determination.

So, while my fellow WriMos are dedicating this month, National Novel Writing Month, to the intoxicating infatuation of developing a new story, I am instead dedicating the month to developing a new writer: me.

Totally random thoughts

Sorry - I've sort of filled this in throughout the last two days as time permitted. I think I'll leave it as is, even though it's rough and raw. Enjoy!

There's a gremlin following me around. Everything electronic that I touch is doomed to failure and I blame MySpace.

I bet you think I'm kidding.

Ever since I first created a MySpace page, I've been plagued with computer troubles. I can't visit MyPage without having MyComputer lock up. I get viruses every time I try to update the page or reply to messages. Friends and relations have no troubles with their pages, but mine is evil. I'd blast the sinister thing into the MySpace graveyard if I thought I could do it without toasting another hard drive.

So my beautiful new computer - the one I bought after MySpace burned up my last laptop - is crippled. I love my HP Pavilion Notebook PC, but I'm thinking seriously about a Mac. I am so darn sick and tired of viruses. Every time I get hit with one, I lose at least a week of writing. I can't sync my Blackberry to my PC because the software won't load. I can't load my new Zep CD on my iPod. Outlook Express freezes up on me half the time, so I shut down and restart and get the same messages over and over. I can't run a virus scan without removing and reinstalling my virus software every time. And on and on and on. It never ends!

But on to other things :)

The Emerald City Writers Conference is less than a month away. I'm so excited to be attending this conference! Last weekend, I attended my first ever GSRWA meeting and all I can say is -WOW! What a great bunch of writers! I say that not just because they've all been fun to get to know, but because there are so many productive, successful writers in the group. I find it very motivating to hear what's working for other writers, how they've persevered through the submissions process and succeeded. One writer said, "Whew! And I thought writing was hard!"

Normally, fall is a productive time of year for me. I've been going through the motions, but not getting as much done as I'd like, probably because there are some days when I still feel like I'm on autopilot. On the way to the parent/child book club today (yes, I started that up again even though I'm loaded down pretty heavy as it is) my daughter Hannah started crying about missing Grampa and I joined in. And all day Monday, I had to field the question, "How was your summer?" I totally wasn't prepared to answer that yet.

I volunteered to be the team parent for my son Sean's football team. It's a small job, but to me it's huge. Taking on anything right now is huge to me, but I have to get out there and do it. Life goes on. I also attended a PTA meeting tonight. With both parents' illnesses last year, I could never fit a PTA meeting into my schedule. This year, I want to be involved. Sean is a great student and loves going to school. My goal with Hannah this year is to teach her the self-discipline a good student needs.

There is absolutely no closure for a random post like this! LOL if this were a draft of a story, I'd wad it up and toss it in the recycle bin!

Blog goals, life goals

Things I'd like to do with my blog:

1. Learn how to post book covers on my blog like I can on MySpace so I can have a stack of "tiles" that represents my reading pile or what I've read so far this year.
2. Learn how to make an active link with html. For instance, have a line that says, "If you want to buy my book, click here" and the words click here are the underlined link. That's cool.
3. Try having a guest blogger. Preferably one of my favorite authors.
4. Settle on a bio that reveals my goofy, obsessive, lovable self. I find bios as difficult to write as cover letters. Hopefully, I'll get over that someday soon.
5. Occasionally post a scene from one of my WIPs. I'm hesitant to do so because of publishing rights. Publishers want the work to be unpublished and to not have been read by more than X amount of people. If portions of it are on the Internet, any number of people could have read it already. I think excerpts must be okay, though, because I see a lot of them on writer blogs. But it feels odd to always talk about my writing on my blog and never share any of it.

This time of year, my thoughts gravitate toward orderliness and organization. Perhaps it's from spending so much time indoors? This year I've taken the orderliness and organization to heart and decided to eliminate activities that drain my energy or rob me of my writing time.

I'll let you know how that works.

First Blog, Stardate 1 March, 2007

Empowered by the transitive power of procrastination, I have embraced the dogma of author blogging. Thank you, Phantom Squirrel, for the weak push. I dare not resolve to update daily, weekly, monthly or otherwise as this blog is an experiential endeavor, but I will proclaim this space as an outlet for writerly frustrations and exultations.

On with the show!