Writer's Therapy

Imagine Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter all happening in the same month. Now make one of them a week long. (Are you panicked yet?)

That's been my life for the last month.

The cooking, the cleaning, the decorating, the prayer-services-going, the dressing up, the laundry, the managing children on vacation from school. It's all the same for Jewish holidays as for Christian ones, just in the early autumn when it's not, for the rest of American society, normal.

On top of the normal household holiday stress, it's my day job to plan and facilitate prayers services and events for all of it.

 I looked up in the sky last night and almost cried when I saw this:

The lunar month is nearly over. The holidays have died down until Chanukah, which is actually not that big of a deal. I finally took a deep breath.

So, at this point, you won't be surprised that the writing part of my life has fallen far short. It's no secret I've been ignoring my WiP, but I'm ashamed to say that I've ignored a lot of other stuff that writers need to do to succeed, too.  

I need some writer's therapy. So here's the plan.

Real, Solid Writing Time
I've been doing a couple hundred words in the 23 minutes it takes my challah to bake, another fifty while I wait for my kid to finish using the bathroom, a couple sentences waiting in line at the grocery store. There's a reason I've only done about 6K in 23 days, and even those words suck. I need some solid writing time, uninterrupted by beeping kitchen timers, laundry that needs to be turned over, temper tantrums or tussles over toys.

And no one's going to give it to me - I've got to claim it for myself.

Here's an inspirational photograph about how something can sprout, flourish and blossom

 when you LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE.

(Or: what happens when I don't clean out the potato bin for two months. Oops.)

Critiquing
I've had an absolutely amazing project in my inbox for a month, and another one just arrived. These writers are also part of the critiquing team for ONE, and of course I owe it to them to do my critiquing best on their work.

More than that, though, critiquing makes me a better writer. Not to mention that it's pure writer's therapy to weed passive voice out of a mostly gorgeous manuscript, or to get that "Aha!" moment when you figure out which two words to move around it a sentence to make it really sparkle.

Plus, you know, all the kissing scenes you get to read. Because you can only put so many of those in your own book. (I know. It's sad.)

I'm back to critiquing an hour every morning before the kids wake up, and maybe another hour after they go down to bed, and it feels SO. GOOD.

Reading
The last published book I read obsessively cover-to-cover was over a month ago. Not. Okay. Not at all. Especially when I have at least EIGHT on my Kindle I'm dying to read.

First of all, you can't write if you don't read, widely and raptly. I know this. But the fact that I haven't dropped everything to devour these books says a lot about how stressed I've been. Normally I'd be finished with them in less than a week. Yikes.

Here's just one of the many.

 Seriously, just looking at this COVER is making me want to call in sick to work.

Taking Care of Myself
I'm a working mother trying to write and publish a book, so I don't even spend TONS of time taking care of myself physically on a good day. But before the holidays, I was at least exercising regularly, taking care of hair cuts and colors, and painting my nails once in awhile.

Another biggie is sleeping enough. Because I don't. As it is, my only really productive writing time is morning through midday, because by 8 PM I am so exhausted I can't formulate original thoughts, let alone make them into coherent and beautiful sentences. When I don't get enough sleep, even the morning/afternoon hours are forfeit, because I'm dozing off or riding a caffeine buzz (also not great for the fetus, sorry baby) that only really makes me jittery, not productive.




So, that's my plan for getting back to healthy writer-dom! When you need writer's therapy, what works for you? I could always use more suggestions.

The Feeling

I started writing ONE on August 1st. It started with an idea, and very, very quickly picked up character to embody it. A girl and a boy - Merrin and Elias - who had grown up in the same tough situation, and handled it very differently.

I wrote a scene, a long one, two thousand words long, that first day.
This first scene-that's-now-a-whole-chapter was one of discovery, exhilaration, romance, and devastation all at once.

That night, after I finally closed my computer and sighed with the relief of this scene finally having WORDS, this idea finally having skin and bones to it, I went to bed and woke up with it.

 The Feeling.

Yep. Writing that scene gave me The Feeling, without a doubt. Then and there, I fell in love with the story. But more important than that, The Feeling allowed me to believe in Merrin and Elias, in how awesome they are, in what they can do. Enough to spend hundreds of hours writing the whole darn thing out, word for painstaking word, to give it form and shape, and way way way more soul than even that first scene has.

 It's not obsession, exactly - it's more like the story is bonded to my heart, that the characters have taken up residence inside my head, and both have made it very clear they're not going anywhere for a very long time.

Now, sixty-five thousand words later, two and a half months later, and in the homestretch of finishing the first messy, messy draft, that scene is almost exactly the same as it was the day I wrote it.

I love Nik and Davis from THE TRAVELERS - yes, absolutely. And maybe it's just because I've spent three times as long with them, revising them and their story, getting to know them, worming through their brains, watching them struggle and then struggle some more.  But my love for them is more...familiar? Fond? Motherly, even, maybe? Ardent, and deep, to be sure...but it's not the same as the way I feel about ONE.

Merrin and Elias - right now, my love for them, and their story, and the degree to which I'm rooting for them - it's FIERCE. And it's desperate, like I'll die if they don't make it. Whenever I think about them and their stories, both before and after they met each other, my heart twists.


It's The Feeling, multiplied a dozen times over. And it's truly incredible.

When did you get The Feeling about your story? Was it a slow burn, or hit-you-like-a-Mack-truck sensation? Do you still have it? 

How Critiquing Has Transformed Me as a Writer

Hi there! If you happen to be Mr. Michael Bourret, agent extraordinaire, please click over here to read all about how your incredible client, Brodi Ashton, gave the unflappable Gina (and me, too!) full-on permission to 'stalk' you. I promise, Gina and her manuscript are worth your while.


 When it was time for betas to look at my work, I have to admit, I felt a little stressed. See, betas, or critique partners, typically trade work. That means each of them spends and hours  (well, good ones, anyway)  reading and brainstorming and nitpicking and scrutinizing work that isn't theirs.

So, on top of the rearranging and compromising and ignoring the housework I ALREADY do in order to write my own darn book, I have to somehow squeeze out *more* time for critiquing someone else's book? In the case of Gina's book, it turned out to be a few hours a week, no small potatoes when you have a day job. Normal critiques - like the one she had to slog through with THE TRAVELERS - probably took much more time.

My husband asked me why me and critique partners were willing to put hours and hours worth of computer time, and agonizing, and franticallly emailing and rewriting and REreading (Gina has read so many versions of the same three things, it makes me crazy for her. In a few ways.) on a book that isn't ours.

I shrugged and said, "That's what we do."
An awesome critique pair is just two people who really understand that writing, and writing good stories well, is essential to the soul. Each wants their work to be torn apart by someone else so that we can build it up to be better.

It took me awhile, though, to realize that while Gina was definitely making me a better writer, but that critiquing Gina's stuff was also doing SO much for improving my subsequent revisions and, ultimately, my new WIP.

Critiquing someone else's work:

• Helped me learn how to plot and pace. With fresh eyes on a new story, one that didn't already exist, perfect, in my own head, I was really able to analyze what happened, when, and how quickly, and recognize when one of my own darlings was slowing down the plot in my own book too much, or just not serving a purpose.
• Got me to fall in love with characters in a different way.  Of course, I didn't write Gina's characters, but I was working so hard to make sure their story was told in the best way possible that I wanted their characterization to be solid. Everything from the way they moved and smiled to the words that came out of their mouths had to fit my ideal vision of them, and taught me to be mindful of whether my characters were doing the same.
• Taught me to look for things like rhythm, sound, feel, and VOICE . Again, since I didn't already have Gina's book in my head, I read a lot of stuff out loud to see how it sounded, how it flowed. Soon after, guess what? I started doing it on my own stuff, now even as I'm drafting.
• Gave me an absolutely ruthless eagle eye for: passive voice, repetitive sentence structure and word choice, purple prose, unclear phrasing, run-on sentences, etc. Not because Gina uses very much of that at ALL, but because it was partly my job to eradicate it, as she so kindly did so many dozens of times for me. Ahem. I mean, hundreds. (Oh, God, sorry Gina.) 
• Showed me that criticism does not equal doom, and in fact, if you have a good CP, it is a gateway to being held up and cheered on. For example: That time Gina made me rewrite and then re-rewrite that scene? Check out the email she sent me when I finally nailed it:

(Yeah, I framed that sucker in scrapbook paper and hung it above my desk)

Last, but most importantly, critiquing made me a cheerleader for another soul who's trying so, so hard to make it in a really tough industry. When you've been through so many ups and downs connected to something so close to your heart, and you know your crit partner truly loves your book (even if she doesn't love Davis) and believes it it almost as much as you do, there's a strange sort of friendship that forms. You know she'll read your query letter twenty times, or cheer you on in contests that she's entered too, or answer the same neurotic email, with slightly different wording, over and over again. It's a friendship that knows that the best gift ever is a book by a real live person who struggled as much as you are now, and a handwritten note of encouragement for your inspiration wall.

(Yes, Gina did write on the inside of the card, but I'm going to hold off on showing you that till we're both published. You're going to die. And then I'll auction it off for charity, because I'm awesome like that.)
(Hey, a girl can dream, right?)

And that? Is worth every. single. hour.

Photo Credit: Mike Stimpson 2010 via Creative Commons License. Thanks, Mike!