This little piggie (one day soon) will go to market

I've been working on finishing the switch from first- to third-person with my second manuscript, Pigs Fly.  I wanted to get that done, so I could send it out to my beta readers and start getting feedback.  I want to get a nice slew of first-round, nonwriter feedback from friends to apply before I start sending it to my League of Utah Writers group a chapter or two at a time.  I didn't do this with my first manuscript because it was a little too personal, a little too religious, for the people I tend to find in League.  Also, I didn't know this handy dandy online-only group existed when I was sending it out to readers.  Now, I have global feedback to apply from a professional editor.  However, manuscript two is more conventional, something with which this group will do well.



In the meantime, I'll be launching into a hardcore reboot based on two sets of global feedback, one from a stellar writer from League and one from that editor.  I know the story from After the Dream needs to get out there, but I also know it's not ready yet for another submission to a publisher.  I'm so close to sending it in for consideration for publication that it drives me nuts.  I just need to work through the feedback.  I can do this.  And I will.

Enjoyment

I haven't gotten to the meat of reviewing the manuscript I had the editor go over, After the Dream, though I've started it.  I'm right now focusing on finishing turning its sequel, Pigs Fly, into 3rd person since 1st person from two perspectives was not working for many people.  It's a long, tedious process.  However, I'm finding it enjoyable because I quite like the characters and the story.  Which tells me readers are more likely to enjoy it.  I've heard it said that if a scene from your story makes you laugh or cry--feel something--chances are good you'll get a similar reaction in your reader.

Here's one of my problems with the first manuscript, the one I've been procrastinating: I've gone over it so many times that it's hard to view it with new eyes.  It's difficult to feel all I'm supposed to feel with it anymore because it's hard to gain any distance.  One major reason I haven't tackled it yet is because I'm trying to achieve that emotional distance again, to be able to see it with eyes as fresh as possible.  But I haven't actually read the second one all the way through, yet.  It's still fresh to begin with.  It's much easier to enjoy because I've only ever read it once, maybe bits of it twice, including when I first wrote it.  I imagine I'll get tired of it, too, one day.  But the manuscripts need to be published in order for them to make sense.  Soon, I'll be done with the work on Pigs Fly and will get back to After the Dream.  In the meantime, I will keep enjoying that second manuscript as I ready it for my alpha and beta readers.

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.

Feeling the Inspiration Come Back

I've missed my desire to write.  I've wanted to want to write for a while.  But with my busy, crazy days, I've been so burnt out by the time I get to the end of the day.  So what is a writer who doesn't really write much?  A little lost, I'm afraid.  I've felt lost without the writer side of me but loathe to do something after hours since work hours meant staring at a computer.

Now, I'm looking at the light at the end of the tunnel [and it's not a train.]  One insanely time-consuming assignment wraps up this week, and I'm seeing my writing through the end of that tunnel.  It makes me feel light and happy.  I spent real time editing one of my drafts for the first time in weeks last night.   I feel my writing self beneath the surface, just waiting to come out, or rather, creeping back out, little by little.  Soon.

Smeared across the Wall

It's one thing to hit a wall or face the empty page.  I've dealt with writer's block before.  It's yet another to be so burned out from working so much that you can't even muster the desire to get past the blocks.  I have the editor's feedback to deal with.  I have some really great suggestions from my nephew and his wife to pursue.  I have a line by line edit from someone in my writers' group to evaluate and incorporate.  I have my middle-grade fiction to write.  I have blogging and my writers' group in which to involve myself.  I have the holiday season to acknowledge, Christmas spirit to muster.

But these last few weeks, I haven't even wanted to want to do any of it.  I spend so much time on obligations and have-to-dos that all of this looks like excess, like stuff I ought to do but can't face right now.  All of it.  I have been so driven for so long.  But now, the writing bus has four busted tires and is up on cinder blocks.  About all the energy and ambition I can muster is to do a little editing on one of my manuscripts.  I can't even summon the desire to read it to my husband.  I'm not even sure why this wall is even here.  I know it has something to do with all the teaching I've done this semester.  Probably a lot to do with it.  I'm just hoping this wall tumbles down as soon as  this semester is over, so I can enjoy the Christmas spirit and hop back on that writing bus.