One last note on Thankfulness

I had lofty goals when I started my 30 Days of Thankfulness in Writing Challenge. Sure I have more than thirty things to be thankful for, but not all of them ended up meriting me writing a full entry about them. Add to that the many topics I’ve covered in the past year and I found myself stumped as to what to do next.

Do I continue trying to write pieces about what I’m thankful about for the sake of fulfilling my conceived requirement? Or do I take this as a learning opportunity and see it not as a failure but a reminder that writing isn’t about filling quotas, it’s about conveying heartfelt messages designed to instruct, encourage, and edify others?

Like every writer, I set my notes aside for a few days to let my mind mull them over while I worked on something different. And as is usually the case for me, my answer came in the middle of the night.

So as I end the month of November there is one more thing I want to share about my writing life that I am thankful for, and that is I’ve learned something very important about my writing life: Chiefly that even with as hectic of a schedule as I have I can make time to write, and to write well when I put my mind to it. I’ve posted more to my blog in this past month than I have all year. I just submitted two new articles for publication and received payment for a piece that was already published. I also have two more articles in the works that I’m really excited about. I also finished writing a book this year and have an idea for another.

At this time last year I was questioning who I was as a writer. I had more rejections to my name than anything else. I was frustrated. I was floundering. And I was ready to quit.

Fortunately I have a best friend and a family who wouldn’t hear of it. They pushed me to keep trying new things.  They encouraged me to keep learning everything I could, and they continue to cheer me on even now.

I didn’t reach my 30 posts for the month, but this challenge caused me to look at my writing life through a lens of thankfulness. Instead of seeing failures, I see where I’ve succeeded. It has also served as a catalyst to reignite my desire to write for the sheer enjoyment of it.

Yes, writing is a job. It requires sacrifice, dedication, nerves of steel, and a little bit of insanity. I haven’t reached my full potential yet, but I know I’m on my way. But writing is also an incredible and rewarding pastime. It takes the imagination and makes it real. It’s active, never passive. And going into the new year that’s exactly what I intend to be.

When looking at my world through that perspective I would call this month’s experiment a true success.

30 Days of Thankfulness in Writing – Day 6: Rejection

It’s easy to focus on the negative in the world around us. In observation of a month many dedicate to counting their blessings, I’ve started a 30-day challenge in which I’ll focus on one aspect of my writing life for which I am thankful. I’d love to have you join by sharing about something that has blessed your own writing life in the comments section below. - Jen

I’ll never forget the day I finished the first draft of my first book. I was elated. I was inspired. I was ready to take on the world. I combed through my Writer’s Market searching for the ideal agent to represent me. I spent hours crafting my first query letters. I checked and rechecked names and addresses to make sure I had everything right. Then I dropped an entire stack into the mail and waited for one of them to ask to see more pages.

Every single one of the letters came back with the dreaded canned rejection. I’d never felt like more of a failure in my life.

Fast-forward seven years. Today I can honestly say I am truly thankful for those rejections. I learned more from that experience than I ever did in a classroom. Because of those rejections I learned that just because a particular project isn’t accepted doesn’t mean I am incapable of writing anything of value. Those impersonal notes showed me how much I still had to learn about the craft of writing. I discovered the wisdom of sitting at the feet of those who had already gone through the early learning stages and could offer advice in how to avoid making the same mistakes.

Most importantly, I found that I have the drive and the desire to continue moving forward. That even without a book deal I can write, and do enjoy even the most infuriating aspects of it.

I am so thankful that story never made it into print. It would have been a disaster. Now I have gained experience where before I had none. I have a better idea of what it is I hope to accomplish with my writing. And I’m using these skills to dust off and rewrite the story I started so many years ago.

I have no guarantee it will be picked up this time either, but I know now that I can handle the rejections. I can also look for new lessons to be learned from those short, cryptic responses.

The Honest Writer

“Hey, Jen! How are you doing?”

Would it be okay to say I’m overwhelmed, exhausted, lonely, and ready to cry?

“Pretty good. Just taking it a day at a time. You?”

It’s easy to fudge the truth when you know the person asking the question is doing so more out of courtesy than curiosity; in their mind they’ve already moved on to the next item on their to-do list. As writers, however, we don’t have that luxury. Our readers are investing one of their most precious commodities in us — time. When they read our words a kinship is formed that is like a real relationship, and when we take advantage of that we don’t just disappoint them, we break their trust in us. It’s no wonder there’s so much outrage when it’s revealed that a best-selling author has fabricated his memoir or lifted a large section of her book from another writer and claimed it as her own.

When I started this blog, the goal was to create a place to encourage other writers, and I’ve found it’s quite easy to put a big smile on a bad day and act as if all is well in my little world. Though there is nothing wrong with looking for the silver lining (in fact, I encourage it!), if I’m not honest with myself how can I be honest in my writing? Now I’m not advocating posting dark, depressing odes in a blog or moaning in status updates, some things are better left unsaid in public, but there is an ancient saying that has been one of my mottos since college: Homo sum. Humani ni a me allenum puto!

I am human. Nothing human can be alien to me. It was written by a slave centuries ago, but it’s as true today as it was then. We’re human. We experience the same emotions, we live through similar experiences.  Writers have good days and bad days the same as everyone else on this swirling dust mote. If I’m fake in my writing, it’s eventually going to catch up to me, and my readers being as smart as they are will call me (or in the case of my fiction, my character’s) bluff.

So, yes, lately it seems I have a little more on my plate than I can handle at times and there are moments I feel like I’m going to buckle under the pressure, but it’s teaching me to see things a bit differently. As I was driving home from work last night I started thinking about what is truly important to me; what it is I want to spend my time doing, and when it’s more than okay to say that dreaded little word “NO.”

I love writing. It’s something I want to spend the rest of my life doing in some form or another. I enjoy updating this blog as often as possible. I hope to have my book published someday soon, and after that, another. I love working in Youth Ministries. It’s something that fuels, challenges, and stretches me as an individual. But I don’t need to be a part of another committee or take on that extra editing project. The truth is, the more I weigh myself down with the “extra” stuff, the less time I have to enjoy the things that make me smile.

A wise friend recently told me that, while I’m doing better at it then days past, I need to stop trying to please everyone and start enjoying the life I want for myself. And that, friends, is exactly what I plan to do.

How about you? Do you ever feel like you take on too much and then feel guilty for putting your writing on the back burner (or worse, for making it your top priority)? What have you done, or are in the process of doing, to change that? I’d love to hear your thoughts. –Jen

The Writer’s emotional bond

As a writer I have a ton of books I’ve collected over the years on becoming a better writer (I’ve often joked that if you want to make money writing, all you need to do is write a book about writing). One of the books I turn to the most, and often lend out to other writers, is Stein on Writing. He reminds me of my favorite writing professor in that he doesn’t pull any punches.

In the chapter, “The Writer’s Job May Be Different Than You Think,” Stein discusses the importance of considering the reader’s needs, the necessity of capturing emotion, and the importance of practicing, developing a thick skin, and becoming an observer of the unspoken.

“It is our job,” Stein writes, “in nonfiction as well as fiction, to juxtapose words that reveal what previously may have been blinked, and prove insights obscured by convention and shame.”

In other words, we have to be willing to say what is otherwise left unsaid. We not only need to answer the question “What?” but “What if?” as well.

Throughout the chapter, Stein compares and contrasts nonfiction with fiction, but boils the differences with the following: Nonfiction conveys information. Fiction evokes emotion.

One of my favorite writing quotes by Dave Lambert says essentially the same thing: Nonfiction communicates truth to the intellect, through logical thought. Fiction communicates truth to the heart, through emotion.

As a writer, my job is not to focus on saying what happened, but to allow my readers to feel what is in progress.

It’s the age-old “show don’t tell,” yet before I was introduced to Stein, this concept had never been expressed in this manner to me. Stein points out that when we curl up with a good book we forget about the words on the page. We love a book not because of the writer, but because of how the writer makes us feel. We thrill and despair without leaving our chair. Each word is carefully crafted and chosen to excite us and break our hearts.

I’m currently reading a series of books that does just that. I’m invested in the lives of the characters because the author forges strong emotional ties between the reader and the characters. There are the wicked people I long to see brought to justice because of the pain they’ve caused without remorse, there are the “innocents” trapped in situations far beyond their control who I want to see brought out safely, and even when I’m not reading I’m thinking about them, wondering what hand fate will deal them.

It is that essence I long to capture in my own writing.

Like in the real world, so much of what happens in a story happens underneath the surface. 

For example, my sister can read my emotions by looking at my eyes. She knows when I’m thinking about a particular person because the corner of my mouth will twitch. It doesn’t matter which words I use, she knows via subtle clues if I’m being honest or not. It’s determining how to take those clues and commit them convincingly to the page that often becomes the challenge for me.

I once heard someone say, “Everything is easy once you know how to do it.”

So this evening after work I’m going home to practice conveying emotion through the written word a little more.

Reading or Writing: Which would you choose?

My Twitter feed is filled mostly with agents, writers, and publishing houses. It’s one of the easiest ways for me to keep up with book trends, what’s new in the publishing industry, and it’s a great way to find some new ideas for my own writing. I also love following the discussions of fellow word lovers about their writing habits and how often they fill their coffee cup throughout the day. On occasion someone will post a question that leads me to ponder an answer that is longer than the 140 characters I have to respond. I saw one such Tweet earlier this week.

The question presented was, if I had to give up either writing or reading, which would I choose. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one this question gave pause to. In fact, the responses she retweeted proved that. Rather than responding immediately, I decided to think about it a while.

I’ve taken breaks from both over the years, but after a short period I’ve always come running back. As I’ve said in previous posts, writing isn’t just a creative outlet for me. It’s how I process thoughts, work through struggles, and deal with conflicting emotions. It’s far easier for me to express myself with a pen than it is to speak the words. Writing is how I think.

Reading on the other hand is more than just a pastime. I use it to garner new information (or as a friend would say, add more useless trivia to my already endless recollection). Reading plays a pivotal role in how I understand the world in which I live. It also stretches me by presenting me with new ideas and concepts. Reading is how I learn.

Having to choose one over the other is like asking me which hand I would prefer to keep. I rely heavily on both.

Which would I pick: reading or writing?

When it comes down to it, I could find other ways to express myself if I needed to. I could learn to paint, dance, or polish the flute that’s been sitting unused in my closet since I graduated from college. It wouldn’t be the same, but I could learn to adapt given time. It might even be good for me.

Learning requires more than simply relying on hearsay. It demands diligence, study, and looking at actual sources. There are places I’ll never be able to visit, experiments I can never perform, but biographies and diaries can give me a glimpse at what others have spent lifetimes discovering. Coupled with that is the fact that I can re-read a book and still enjoy it more often than I can re-watch the same movie. Books leave more to the imagination.

While this isn’t a real decision I have to make, it did challenge me to take a good look at myself and I gained some interesting insights as a result. Anything I will write or say has been said before in some form or another — in pretty much every case, far more eloquently than I’d ever present it. It also reminded me I’d run out of things to say long before I could soak up a fraction of the knowledge of those who came before me. So when it comes down to it, I decided I prefer to learn as much as I can, and not just about writing. Perhaps if I’m lucky I’ll be able to pass on a nugget of knowledge succinctly enough that it will aid another seeker on her own journey.