Monday Madness: Toning Your Core

I really like to exercise and I find it funny that a lot of exercise vernacular can be applied to editing a manuscript. I find it so amusing, in fact, that I thought about paralleling my exercise routine with my current editing process. However, if that were the case, I would have been toning my core for, like, three months straight.

That's right, I'm in the process of trying to get a sexier middle (in my manuscript rather than my actual abs). Thanks to some very helpful critiques, I realized that two of my middle chapters included a lot of summary rather than action (i.e. flab instead of muscle). So I went to work.

First there was the light stretching. I tried tweaking a word there, a sentence here.

Then the warmup: replacing telling with showing.

The actual exercise: scrapping entire paragraphs and scenes for others.

Then the cool down: fine tuning the scene.

Finally, the last stretching: tweaking of words and sentences.

By the time it was over with, I was mentally exhausted, but at least now I have a stronger core.

Drawing vs. Writing

It's been a horrid week and while I'll try not to bore you with the details, let's just say that it involved me threatening to kick a relative's rear end to next Tuesday and the newest addition to my furry family, Papi, a white chihuahua, being hit and killed by a car. So, yes. Awfulness abounds.

Some people might harvest this turmoil and use it to write something really dark and angry. Something that leaves tear stains on their keyboard. Not me. Despite my tendency to have a dark vibe in a lot of my writings, I'm usually NOT in that sort of mood when I write them. I'm usually in a pretty good mood, or at least a neutral mood. Writing in a bad mood leads to, well, a lot of unintelligible, melodramatic scribbling. Instead, I draw.

Drawing is therapeutic for me. My mind goes blank. The only thing that exists is the paper and whatever medium I'm working in (lately, it's been cheap ball point pen). My mind narrows in on the line, the expression, the shading. Nothing else matters.  And yet, it still becomes an outlet for my emotion. After I complete a drawing, I feel like some of the festering has gone away. I feel emptied. Scraped clean. Sometimes this feeling will last the rest of the day. Other times, it's only a moment. If it's the latter, I'll usually start working on another drawing.

I've been drawing a lot this week. It's probably a good thing. It's certainly allowed me to contribute once again to my Deviant Art page (which remained un-updated for, like, 6 months). I don't really draw to impress people and I'm certainly not the most talented artist out there, but I still like to share my works with others because every now and then, someone else will be like "I totally understand what this means" and it will make me feel not so alone.

This drawing is one that I finished this week. It's called "Sorrow" and I drew it the day Papi died, but before it actually happened. A premonition? I'm not sure.

Silencing the Superfluous Voices in My Head

But keeping the good ones.

Clicking on some of my previous blogs, I realized that I used to be helpful. I used to be "in the know" about writing and publishing and querying and all that inky stuff. So why did I stop?

Simple: Too many voices in my head.

I'm a people-pleaser. I also am an idea-monger. Those two traits do not help with writing. And I found myself, more often than not, struggling with conflicting advice rather than just trusting my gut.

I'll admit, I've also been going through enormous bouts of self-doubt again and moments of "why am I doing this again?" but I've really tried to keep them private. I got tired of having pity parties, for one, and then I just felt like a wimp. In fact, I went through moments where I thought, "Maybe I'm not ready for this whole writing career pursual." So, I took a step back.

It bothers me (quite a bit actually) that I'm no longer providing insightful, helpful information to the readers of my blog, but I'd rather be silent than sound like a phony. I have no authority in the matter, really. I'm just like (the majority of) you. A scribbler struggling to be a writer. But even as I read blog after blog (and still read a lot of blogs, mind), it took me a long while to realize that the most important thing to being a writer was something I was sacrificing so I could fit the mold of what everyone else wanted: my voice. I was so concerned about perfecting my technique, that I came to struggle with what is honestly the most important thing when it comes to writing: voice. Style. What makes your story different from the hundreds that came before it.

The sad thing is, before I had all these "expert" voices clamoring in my head for attention, I had a pretty good grasp on my voice. It's flowery and sometimes dark, sprinkled with humor and elaborate descriptions. It can be serious or light-hearted. It's almost always romantic. And of all the things that I know about writing (having a bachelor's degree in creative writing, I should know a little bit) it's that it doesn't really matter if your spelling is atrocious, your colons should be semi-colons, and you occasionally use one too many adverbs as long as you have an established and engaging VOICE.

Take my story The Dragon Queen for example. When I started it, I got a lot of flack for my main character, Jade, being "cliche". I worried and fretted about this for so long, that I couldn't even revise the story. I kept getting dragged down into the worry that she wasn't good enough. But then I realized there are reasons for cliches: because they're good. Yes, you see a lot of rebellious princesses, and, sure, if that's all there was to Jade, I could see it being a real issue. But it isn't. Why? Because of Jade's voice. Through her voice (or mine, whichever) the reader eventually reaches the conclusion that just because Jade is cast as a stereotypical, rebellious princess, doesn't mean that's all there is to her. And soon those same readers who had issues with her being a stereotype, ended up reneging their words soon after.

So, while I've learned to trust myself a bit more, I'm still refraining from dipping into the writer world of shoulds and shouldn'ts. Now, I'm trusting in my own abilities and the advice of a few helpful critters, and I'm a stronger writer because of it.

A Quarter of a Century

It's official. I am now a quarter of a century old.

Woohoo! Right?

Pffbt. I don't feel like 25. Most of the time, I still feel like I'm 19, struggling with "finding myself" and grasping at dreams. And that's okay. Especially if it means that I keep getting carded for things like buying knife sets (I am not joking).

I honestly thought that by 25 I would be set. I would be married (check), be paying on my own home (nope), have a kid or two (do dogs count?) and be well-established in my career (haha). Funny how life isn't predictable and doesn't follow a schedule. While there have been some things I've managed to keep to the plan (getting married AFTER college, having kids AFTER landing a career (so far at least)), mostly I've been all over the place.

First of all, whoever thought I would be going back to school to be a teacher? Not me. But here I am. Taking classes. Trying not to think about the enormous debts I'm going to accrue or how completely exhausted I am going to be. And once I get my schooling out of the way and start teaching, the husband is going to go to school for . . . something. He hasn't decided yet.

My husband is a little like me in that he wants to do EVERYTHING. He wants to learn about EVERYTHING. We're like kindergartners, changing our minds every three seconds about what we want to be when we grow up. But I've finally buckled down and decided to be a teacher. No worries, I'm still writing. In fact, I've been writing and revising like crazy. I just haven't been talking about it much. Not sure why.

So, the new goal is to be a secondary English teacher and writer. That's what I'm going to be when I grow up. Or get older I guess. I've heard it's all downhill from 25. (Lol.)

One thing is for certain: I AM slowly becoming my mother. I used to loathe gardening, taking care of animals (I liked animals, just didn't like cleaning up their poop), and Martha Stewart-esque household chores. Now, I have a garden that I spend a LOT of my time in (and enjoy it, which is the weird thing). I want to have livestock so badly, but can't. Grr. And this past weekend I made pickles. Yep, I canned. All by myself. (And they are delicious!)

I'm looking forward to the next 25 years. We'll see how the plans go for them.