Back into League

Along with the feeling of being just too overwhelmed to write much, I was also stricken with the absolute inability to stare at other's writing, as I do with League of Utah Writers.  I know I need to help others just as they help me.  I truly missed some of these stories and some of these writers.   But then there are those pieces that are just so painful that it's hard to push myself to read.  Even then, though, I know they need help.  They need outside eyes to help them see those issues they can't see when they're too close to their own writing.

Then again, I know my own writing has such issues.  Very few writers write so perfectly the first time that they don't need the help of fellow writers to see the weak characters, the slack narrative, the data dumps, and the poor dialogue snippets that sound great when they write them in the first place.  I know I need League as much as they need me.  I highly recommend other writers seek out a group like this.

Getting past the blocks

Part of my issue with continuing to work with my writing group was a simple case of writer's block.  I kept thinking about how I needed to amp up the action, make my middle-grade fiction more and more challenging.  I could not figure out how to get my characters out of their latest fix by having them climb a taller mountain because I'd built the mountain so high.

Then I started talking to my kids, who both fall into the target audience, about what to do next.  They didn't know exactly how to get my characters out of their fix, but they had a different perspective.  Maybe I didn't have to have the characters climb the mountain so much as to tickle it.  What if they didn't have to climb the mountain but to make it laugh?  What I needed to do was to think like my audience to get my characters past the latest problem.  I didn't need to make the characters harder, faster, meaner than they already are but remember that the story needs to remain fun for my audiences.  I don't have to break the rules I already set to have fun with the story.

I haven't quite gotten the characters out of their latest fix, but I'm getting closer.  And once I do, I can see momentum will start to build again.  If I have fun again with my writing, so will my audience.

Torn

I know what my story concept is and always has been for the beginning of "After the Dream."  A woman dreams of and acquires her perfect happily ever after only to find it's not what she bargained for.  Yet I keep running into people, most recently my paid local editor, who recommend I incorporate my character's past later and don't start with these events at all.  Granted, my editor just said this was a bit long for a prolog.  Now, I'm torn between staying true to my vision of the story, the original concept on which I based the entire story, and heeding the gatekeepers to publication.

It is frustrating that in the conceptualization stage, an author is led to believe the sky is the limit, that anything you can imagine can be written and shared.  Yet when it comes right down to it, those who don't bow to the conventions of the craft can't get a story out there to be read.  This makes self-publication tempting; however, how does one get one's name out there to begin with if it isn't attached to a known publisher?  I see all these people around me getting published.  It feels so effortless.  I'm sure all of this will ring a bell to many beginning authors.  I'm just looking forward to being one of the wise, published authors who can guide others through this dizzying gauntlet.