Waiting for Godot

Friday was April 12th, the day the list of semi-finalists for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award was supposed to be announced.

All day I was on tenterhooks. I had been named a quarter-finalist for Catch the Sun. Would I make it to the next round? Would I be a semi-finalist? I kept checking my email. I probably checked it every five or ten minutes all day long. By mid-afternoon I decided I probably hadn't gotten an email from the contest because I hadn't made it. Probably they just let the successful entrants know by email. The rest of us shlubs were expected to just check the list of semi-finalists on the website to discover we were not on it. Which didn't make much sense since the emails I had gotten after the first two rounds of the contest simply announced that the list was available on the website for us to peruse. And that meant those who were on the list as well as those who were not must have gotten the same email.

Finally, around ten o'clock that night, I went to the website only to discover that the list was not there yet.

What a relief! I wasn't a loser! At least not yet. 

And that got me thinking: just why should my peace of mind, my sense of myself, my confidence in my writing be dependent on awaiting the outcome of a contest? Why do I need to wait for the verdict of anonymous readers to know how to feel about my writing?

What would change if I became a semi-finalist? Or, more unbelievably, a winner?

The answer is NOTHING. I would write my novels and stories just the same, either way. Of course, being a contest winner helps a writer get noticed by agents and publishers. And that's no small thing. We all want to be read. To be read, we must be published. And we need people to find out about our books. But sometimes I think we writers are too focused on achieving recognition and not focused enough on getting better.

I've had many conversations with writers over the years about this. "When will I get noticed?" most of us ask. "How can I keep writing if no one thinks well enough of my writing to give me an award or a contract or an advance?"

We all need encouragement. And none of us can exist very long in a vacuum. But I've been at this long enough to know that I will write no matter what. It's what I do. It's how I express myself.

I've heard writers declare they will wait for only so long, and if nothing happens, they'll give up. They'll stop writing. They'll do something else that gives them a sense of accomplishment, achievement.

But what about writers like Emily Dickinson who never achieved success during their lifetime?

The truth is that the process of writing and the results of writing are two very different things.

The process is about being in the moment and existing in the world created by the imagination. It's about trying to achieve an effect, or a mood. It's about testing our skill against the intransigence of language, about expressing what is sometimes inexpressible, about bringing a whole world to life that has no real existence.

The results are about how others view what we have done. If they like it, we get paid for our efforts. Perhaps we even become well-known. Our readers may think of us as better or worse than we are because they judge us through our work. If we write about lovable people, our readers see us as lovable. If we write about scoundrels, they may think we are unpleasant people.

The point is that the results have no connection to the work as we experience it!

Waiting to be validated is exactly the wrong approach to take.

Still. I wonder if the Amazon Breakthrough Award semi-finalists will be announced tomorrow.

Liebster Award Continued: Thoughts on Blogging

Last week I wrote about how honored I was to receive the Liebster Award for worthwhile blogs with fewer than 200 followers.

This week I have chosen bloggers I am nominating for the Liebster Award. They are all blogs by writers. They all have interesting points-of-view and are well worth getting to know.

In no particular order, they are:

• Michelle Ziegler for Michelle Ziegler
• Karen Wojcik Berner for Bibliographic Blather
• Carol Hedges for I Write, I Sleep, I try to Resist Cake
• Julija Sukys for Writing. Life.
• Lisa R. for Poet Teacher Seeks World
• Deborah Swift for The Riddle of Writing
• Edith Lagraziana for Edith's Miscellany
• Suzy Henderson for  Suzy Henderson: Writer and Blogger at Lowfell Writer's Place
• Elisabeth Kinsey for Reading Like a Writer: On the Hunt for a Sublime Sentence

As I said last week, there are responsibilities attached to this award. Each honored blogger must:

• Thank the one who nominated him/her and leave a link to the nominator's blog.
• Display the Liebster Award button on their website.
• Answer 11 questions which I will pose.
• List 11 random facts about themselves.
• Nominate 11 deserving bloggers with fewer than 200 followers.
• Inform the winners on their blog without leaving a link to his/her own blog.

Here are the questions I want each winner to answer:

1. Why did you begin blogging?
2. How long have you been a writer?
3. What is your favorite blog besides your own?
4. Where do you do your best thinking?
5. Where do you do your best writing?
6. How do you handle writer's block?
7. Can people be taught to write?
8. How much outlining do you do before beginning to write?
9. Do you prefer reading fiction or nonfiction?
10. Who (or what) are your greatest influences?
11. If you could interview anyone, who would it be?

WHAT MAKES A GOOD BLOG?

• Interesting, informative content.
• Writing that is clear, precise and economical.
• Consciousness of what readers want/need to know.
• Thought-provoking questions.

I've noticed something as I've searched for blogs to honor. Many writers create blogs  that are so personal and idiosyncratic, they are more journal than blog. 

Do they really believe their personal thoughts and feelings are that interesting?

In general, our personal struggles are only interesting if  others see themselves in them. 

Struggling writers find the struggles of other writers interesting only when they are relevant to them!

Frankly, I don't care if you had a bad day and couldn't get anything done. Or if your dog ate your manuscript. Or if your kids missed the school bus. Those kinds of things happen to me too. To all of us, in fact.

You can make me care by making me laugh at your plight--and by extension my own--or if you tell me how you got out of your difficulties so I can apply the same wisdom to my own situation, or if you got up the next day and started all over again so I can see that perseverance  pays off.

But, in general bemoaning difficulties does not engender interesting blog posts.

Do you disagree? Have you found personal blogs that you love? What are they? What do you love about them?

The Liebster Award

I just received the Liebster Award from Ryshia Kennie who writes a blog about writing entitled Once Upon a Time.

The award is given to interesting and valuable blogs with under 200 followers. I am honored to be a recipient. So thanks Ryshia for thinking of me. You can find Ryshia's wonderful blog at http://ryshia.blogspot.ca. Check it out.

Check it out.

As a Liebster Award Winner, I get to display the Liebster Award button on my blog.

But that's not all. Being a Liebster Award winner also entails certain obligations. I have to answer eleven questions Ryshia sent me. I also have to list eleven random facts about myself. So here goes, starting with Ryshia's questions.

1)  If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?
      Right here in San Luis Obispo, CA, I think. Unimaginative, I know, but I really love it here.

2)  What are you reading right now?
      Adyashanti's Emptiness Dancing. I am also reading Small Kindnesses by Fiona Robyn.

3)  What do you love about blogging?
      I love the opportunity to explore my thoughts about the writing process. I love getting comments.

4)  What would you rather have, a dog or a cat?
      A dog. I have three!

5)  Have you ever been lost?
     When I was a child I got lost all the time. I have a fear of getting lost.

6)  What's your favourite colour?
      Aquamaraine blue

7)  Coke or pepsi?
     It used to be Pepsi. Now it's Coke. Don't know why my taste changed.

8)  How long have you been blogging?
      Since July, 2012.

9)  What's the worst thing a stylist has ever done to your hair?
     Cut it so short I had to cover my head with a scarf.

10) Would you ever jump from a plane?
       Absolutely not! Do I look insane?

11) There's a storm coming in - which would you prefer, rain or snow?
       Snow for the silence of it and because it transforms the world.



Now for eleven random facts about myself:

1. I exercise every day to stay in shape.
2. I meditate every day to improve my spiritual connection.
3. Fall is my favorite season.
4. I love shopping.
5. I worry too much.
6. I watch reality shows on TV.
7. If I could, I'd eat sweets all day long.
8. I read incessantly and have since I was a child.
9. I love Paris.
10. My favorite movie is Sunset Boulevard.
11. I had a crush on Frank Sinatra when I was a kid.

There is one other "catch" for recipients of the Liebster Award: we must find eleven deserving blogs to nominate. Since Ryshia has  provided only one criterion--that the blog must have fewer than 200 followers--I'm on my own to develop the criteria I will use to select great blogs. So here is the list I came up with. To be nominated for a Liebster, blogs must:

• Be well-written and entertaining.
• Discuss writing and the writing process.
• Offer a distinct point-of-view and have a distinct voice.
• Provide useful insights, information, tips or suggestions.
• Avoid too much self-promotion.

Here are some "nice-to-haves":

• Humor
• Personal anecdotes
• Plenty of "white space" making the blog easy to read.

If you think your blog meets these criteria or know of a blog that does, send me the link. I will be actively searching for blogs to nominates for at least the next week.

What Our Writing Says About Us

When we write we expose ourselves.

Writers who write "confessionals" or autobiographies already know this. They consciously choose to present themselves to the world. Of course, when they write directly about themselves, they get to pick and choose what they reveal. They get to manage the readers' impressions of them.

But even we fiction writers tell readers a lot  about ourselves whether we mean to or not. It's in

• What we choose to write about.
• How our characters think, feel, and behave.
• Whether the ending is happy, sad, horrifying or depressing.
• Whether the world we present is a good or a bad place to live in.

This is, perhaps, obvious when it comes to general or literary fiction. When we don't work within a genre we get to create a fictional world that operates however we want it to. Our characters can be good, evil, or a mixture of both. They can be motivated by fear, love, envy, hatred, lust, ambition or greed. The environment in which they move can be dangerous, threatening, boring, peaceful, competitive, energizing, joyful or stressful. The problems we give them to wrestle with can be easy to solve, challenging to deal with, or impossible to overcome. And, of course, our plot can take any form at all. We are limited only by the breadth of our imagination.

You might argue that novels by great writers achieve a universality that makes the personality, concerns, quirks and interests of the author irrelevant. This is true, of course. 

It really doesn't matter what Tolstoy cared about when we read War and Peace. What matters is that we are swept away, inspired. 

It is completely unimportant what personal demons Mark Twain may have had to wrestle with when we read Huckleberry Finn, What matters is the humanity of the characters and how we empathize with them.

Nevertheless, the novels tell us that Tolstoy was deeply concerned with philosophical and spiritual issues about how to live a good life and that Mark Twain was heavily invested in exposing the hypocrisies and social mores of his time.

The themes we choose and the way we handle them say a great deal about us.

But what about genre writers? Don't they follow a formula laid down for them long before they ever begin to write? And isn't that formula completely irrelevant to who they are as people?

Yes and no. I believe the very act of choosing the genre tells us a great deal about the writer. 

EVEN IF SHE THINKS SHE'S CHOOSING IT BECAUSE IT'S POPULAR WITH READERS!

A romance--and I would argue that Fifty Shades of Grey and it's sequels is a romance dressed up for modern readers--demands a feisty heroine, and a dangerous, dark stranger who both attracts and  scares the heroine with a love which she first resists but ultimately surrenders to, and, in so doing, finds lasting happiness. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: YOU CAN'T WRITE A SUCCESSFUL ROMANCE UNLESS YOU BELIEVE IN ITS PREMISES.

The so-called cozy mystery is another example.  These are mysteries, often English and often set in small villages, where the writer exposes the personality quirks of the characters in the process of solving a murder mystery. Although the murder is a horrifying event, the characters are understandable and mostly sympathetic. The world of the cozy mystery is benign, and the author's goal is to expose the variations and complexities of human nature. Evil may be present but it is overcome.  Louise Penny's novels are examples. I believe that writers of cozy mysteries believe in the benevolent universe of these novels. If they didn't, they would write something else.

So think about your own writing. What draws you? What kind of people populate your stories? Is the world of your story a good place or a bad place?

Who knows: maybe you can learn as much about yourself from looking at the stories you write as you could ever learn by keeping a journal!