Every point in life is important for different reasons. When it's your children you document everything. Baby's first tooth, baby's first step, walking, laughing, and words. Everything is written down and photographed so that you never forget, so that you'll always remember.
I have compared my books to children many times. They are important to me, I have poured my soul into them not unlike I poured my blood and nourishment into my children. It is the closest metaphor I have to compare. Writing a book will challenge you, drain you, and ultimately make you beg for mercy. Some days are better than others, but like those first few steps you document the big ones.
The first finished novel. The first book sold. The first good review, and the first bad one. Book blogs, and giveaways. I remember them all. The first is always more exciting than the second. You stumble you make mistakes. You try again. I am at a new point in my writing life. I am ready to take that next step.
I have been writing query letters, and let me just say for the record, that it is terrifying.
The idea of trying to sum up my story in a few paragraphs feels impossible. And like the book blurbs it feels fake, cheesy, and ridiculous. The point of a book is to tell a large story. Something that can't be explained in a few chapters or even pages. How do I sum it down to just a page?
I beat my head against the desk and hope that what Stephen King said about writing is true. Sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing to do is shovel shit from a sitting position.
I'll take his word for it. He should know after all. So I'll get back to my WIP's and my queries and hope the shoveling of shit finds some gold buried under all the manure.
Like an idiot I decided to open a sprite bottle with a knife. It doesn't take a genius to realize that this was a bad idea....at the moment I wasn't exactly thinking clearly. It was one of those times where you see yourself doing something utterly stupid and yet, you are incapable of stopping your ridiculous actions. You are on the outside looking in. Cringing as the knife slips off the plastic.
Needless to say I cut myself....badly. And as my blood flew across the room and onto my freshly made ham sandwich I knew, that I Ashley, am indeed a moron.
The sprite bottle won this round. I could blame it on the cold, and the ninja grip that my honey used to tighten the little fucker, but the truth is I was just stupid.
Note to readers: do not try to open a bottle with a knife, it will not work, and you will in fact cut yourself.
Yes, that is a word. Well in my dictionary anyways. Along with fugly, fubar, ri-donk-ulous, and many other ridiculous words. I use dork-tastic to describe myself. Recently, I have realized that I am terrible at first impressions, or adult conversations in general. I wonder how in the world I ever survived high-school. Back then I was a little bit better at faking it. It's not that I am shy or unconfident. I am just really bad at first impressions.
I don't know what to say, and what I do say comes out in a strange jumble of crazy. Afterwards, I run the words I've said through my mind and cringe. Why can't conversations be like writing. Where in the hell is the social backspace?
So this revelation makes me realize that things like book-signings, and tours in general are a very bad idea for me. I've had a couple local stores offer to carry my books or have a signing and I always decline. I want to be successful but the actual process of meeting my fans scares the ever living crap out of me.
I am a hermit.
I am way to okay with my hermitness. <---pretty sure that's another made up word.
So how does one survive this vial thing called being social? I wish I knew. When I was younger it was a whole lot easier. Now a majority of my days are filled with arguments with five year olds, reading, and falling into my writing. None of which are all that great for conversations with actual people.
In conclusion I just needed a little venting space. It's better to write it here than say it out loud anyways. At least here I have the backspace button.
I recently got married. Actually, today is my one month anniversary. Why am I writing yet another blog you might ask, instead of celebrating said anniversary with my new husband? We may have been married for only a month, but our six year anniversary is in February...i.e. what's the big deal about a month when we've been together for half a decade. So yea, I'm back from the dead (wedding) and blogging. The last blog, Writers Anti-block I wrote ages ago I just forgot to publish it.
I blame the wedding, everything in my brain that worked remotely well before the wedding shut down while I was planning it. For two months I felt comatose and taken hostage by a wedding date. I will add that the wedding itself was absolutely perfect. Not one thing went wrong. My uncle who did the ceremony was amazing, the cupcakes were great, the food hot and yummy, alcohol a-plenty, and all my family and friends showed up (minus two or three who were legitimately out of the country, sick, or just unable to attend). The wedding was perfect.
Now after the haze has passed and I feel rejuvenated and not dead from the neck up, I have returned from the dead (wedding) ready to write. The blog (the personal and not the book) has suffered. The book one is always suffering. I hardly ever write it. It's just a more professional blog than this one where I frequently whine, cuss, am brass, obnoxious and probably make countless grammatical errors. Hence the reason this one is more fun...I can say FUCK, and not feel guilty! BOOM! Yes that is two completely capitalized words in a row. I just did that. That is why I will always rant here and not on the boring, ho hum overly professional book blog.
I just fell asleep typing that. It's that boring. Ugh, I should just delete it but I feel that if a person (literary agent, publisher, editor, reader, or my mom) were to Google my book and find the blogs, that they would read that one first in the hopes that I appear to be an adult and not a fourteen year old brat girl trapped in a thirty-something body.
Also the jail reference is rather funny. Yesterday the honey (who is still breathing) stole my iPhone. I am pretty sure that in itself is reason enough for divorce, separation, and maybe even death or dismemberment. He stole said phone while I was asleep under the surmise that he had in fact told me while I was drooling on my pillow. Can anyone else spell Asshole, I can, and did upon finding my phone gone. I was in a murderous rage. See the worst part isn't that he took it, and didn't tell me. (To the Honey: telling an unconscious person is not a conversation, just so you know.) It's that I looked, and looked, and looked for my iPhone for hours before I figured out what had happened.
In a blur of cuss words and fantasies of dismemberment, I wrote a Facebook status that went something like:
Walter took my cellphone, I had no intention of going to jail today........sigh.
Simple short, and a little sarcastic like me. Hehe see what I did there. Anyways so my good friend, and best friend, having no idea I was joking, (and they say they know me), commented in worry that I was actually incarcerated and not being ridiculous. I would not actually kill Walter (this is for you future FBI profiler, if anything ever happens to Walter I did not do it. I only joked about it, yes I know that is stupid, and juvenile, see the line above about my being a fourteen year old brat girl trapped in a thirty-something body. end quote).
So to end my rant on all things death and jail, that was my month. A wedding that didn't kill me, a missing iPhone, and a sarcastic not perfectly clear status update that proved yet again that texting and the internet still don't have a sarcasm font. Damn them.
Writers block is an ugly thing. It can take all those wonderful words that have been running in your mind and make them disappear. A split second and months of carefully planned out dialogues and scenarios are gone.
I don't know if all writers do this, the planned scenarios bit, but from all the quotes I've seen on Pinterest about how writers never stop writing, I'd like to believe it's true. I'd like to think we are all these scary obsessive people that can't help but work constantly. It would make me feel a little better anyway. Especially when the honey, or the brats are trying to get my attention and I shush them because I'm busy thinking....thinking about writing...
The only things that I have found that can help with a block, other than a break from writing, is music and research.
Music can help get you in the mood, seriously, and not some cheesy, bow chica wow wow type of mood. But the mood you need to feel in order to get into that one characters head, or that one action sequence. Music helps.
Research, on the other hand, can inspire. Some of my best idea's and block wall climbers have come from research.
When I was working on the Wild Hunt, I went through ups and downs while writing it. I even took a six month long vacation 80,000 words into it. The one problem I kept coming across was the need for a myth. I wanted something substantial and real to back my characters. I knew I wanted Lorelei to see ghosts. I knew she'd experience a world of pain and loss that shaped the damaged individual she became. Knowing those things however, couldn't help me come up with a myth.
Sure, I could have just made something up, but how much cooler is it that I actually found one that fit the story I was trying to tell. Something that could explain her aversion for ties, labels, and restraints of any kind. An aversion that was actually something that gave her real power. A reason to explain her ability to see ghosts, and a tie to the supernatural world.
That's when I found the Cwn Annwn. They were a long awaited blessing in disguise. I had a friend ask me recently if what I wrote was all planned out. My answer, was ineloquent and choppy. Sometimes, but not really.
When I write I let myself imagine the characters in my head. I imagine them in certain scenarios and try to imagine again what they would do, and say while in those scenarios. I think about where I want the story to go and what could happen to get me there.
I swear a majority of what I do is all about the what could happen. The ability to imagine a thousand different scenarios. So when I say that I have anti writers block ideas, what I mean is I have ideas that will help you get writing.
These are not scientific fixes. These are just things that work for me. At the moment I jumped ahead while writing The Otherside, because I was having a hard time moving the story forward, that means I need to get back to the drawing board, and come up with ideas.
Move the story forward.
Sometimes you get lucky, and your characters surprise you. Sometimes you do a mountain of research while listening to Ben Howard's Black Files over, and over again, praying for that one great break, that moment of inspiration.
So turn on your Spotify, and fire up your Google search. Those are by far the two best helpers for writers block that I know.
Ben Howard-"Further Away"
"And nobody gives a fuck about you, tell you its a damn shame, prettiest eyes in the whole world, the same fool in the same game."
I've been trying to work on The Otherside, and as all fellow writers know, trying doesn't always work. I have a feeling this next novel is going to take a long time to finish. Even if it took half as long as The Wild Hunt to write, that's still two years. I hope my readers will understand. I don't think it will take two years, but, we are approaching the one year anniversary for The Wild Hunt. So that means I've been working (or not) on The Otherside for at least eight months.
I took a much needed break after publishing The Wild Hunt. My grandma had just passed away, and I was emotionally and intellectually drained. After that first three months I jumped into finishing Lilith, a month later it was done, and a few weeks later it was published.
After I finished Lilith I played with The Otherside. I say play instead of write because I didn't get very much down, maybe a few thousand words, not even enough for a chapter. I just couldn't seem to get into the groove. The Otherside was this towering intimidating book. It scared the hell out of me.
I was terrified I'd destroy the world I'd worked so hard to build. I didn't want to screw it up. So I turned to Scent Hound. Scent Hound was a nice short novella that could bridge out the world I'd started developing in The Wild Hunt. I wanted to write about a Cwn Annwn female. It was fun. More fun then I ever thought possible. I finished it in a matter of months and it was published in July.
This is where the waters get murky. With no other projects to distract me, it was time to really sit down and figure out what to do about The Otherside. It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted the story to be about. I had dozens of idea's and scenarios to move the story along. It was just that the careful balance of emotions in The Otherside were so much harder to portray.
The Otherside is about what happens after a revelation. After the world opens up and you realize that anything is possible. That huge massive world is intimidating. How do you describe it accurately? How do you show how small and frightened a character feels? How do you alienate them from everyone around them because of that fear?
The Otherside is all about transformations. Becoming who you are meant to be as opposed to who you want to be. Embracing your flaws, and finding that niche where you are your best self. The Otherside is full of the painful process of growing up, and finding that the people around you drift further away as you move closer towards yourself.
Currently, I am only about 25,000 words into the book. That's a fifth of the way done. Not bad, but not great either. I still think the hardest part is expressing that feeling of unknown. The Wild Hunt was all about self-loathing and loss. It was practically marinated in sorrow. The Otherside while hopeful is scattered and uneasy, like a new baby foal. I hope to God I get the feelings right, set the right tone. That's probably one of the hardest parts about writing.
How do you make people feel that scattered sense of confusion?
I'll keep working on it.
And hopefully in a year or less I'll have 125,000 words to share with you.
I wish that I could find a more profane word (ugly cuss word) to rhyme with wedding, but I've got nothing. Right now as the date draws near, I find myself, more and more annoyed with the details. It's a life sucking black hole. It is taking my time, and creativity, and all I want to do is write.
I want to write so badly its killing me, but until the swedding is over I'm stuck, waiting, counting down the days until its over. Don't get me wrong I love my honey, but, holy crap does wedding planning suck. It's like my crazy past Halloween parties on crack. It's way more complicated.
So I'll just feel sorry for myself, and work my poor little fingers to death, on annoying subjects like favor making, and bows, and pray this is all over soon.
Note to readers: Eloping, is a very nice idea, I highly suggest it.
