Always Wanted to Write a Book? Do Tell!

So, you've always wanted to write a book? Isabel is at her leisure to listen.

Me? Well, that depends.

Don't get me wrong - I'm willing to help aspiring authors. I mentor through several organizations and do my best to be generous with helping people looking to build careers as writers.

The problem comes in when people are only talking and not wanting to do the work. That's why this week's topic is phrased the way it is: What do you want to tell someone who says 'I always wanted to write a book'?

There's this great story Ann Patchett tells in her memoir THE GETAWAY CAR: A PRACTICAL MEMOIR ABOUT WRITING AND LIFE. She's at a party with her husband and another guest discovers that Ann is a writer, and the woman says she believes everyone has at least one great novel in them.

Like most of us, Ann is very used to hearing this kind of thing. It's one of the five things likely to pop out of someone's mouth in a social setting when you say you're a writer, along with "Have I heard of you?" and other similarly predictable and difficult-to-answer sallies. Small talk is small, no matter your profession, and we all have our pet peeves. Most of the time we all can find ways to avoid rolling our eyes at the nonsense and provide reasonably polite replies.

On this particular occasion, Ann was tired and had heard that one too many times, and she asks, "Does everyone have one great floral arrangement in them? One great algebraic proof? One Hail Mary pass? One five-minute mile?"

I tell you, folks. This is always what I want to say.

But, when someone tells me "I always wanted to write a novel," I bite down on the urge to ask if they always wanted to play professional football or write a symphony, too, and instead I nod and ask for more information.

Because this is the key: most people who say this don't mean it. It's small talk at its smallest, party conversation that sounds good. I usually follow up with "And why haven't you?" which most often gets the standard "Oh, I just never found the time." That's actually a decent polite-conversation answer, because we can then segue into other socially acceptable topic like how they DO spend their time. One of the great conversational secrets - and often recommended - is to ask people about themselves. It has the added benefit of letting you off the conversational hook. All the better to swill wine while they talk.

Not that I've done that.

The few people who answer this question with something substantive? Those people I can offer advice to. Sometimes they have started and got bogged down. Sometimes they don't know how to start. If people really want help, it's pretty clear.

Otherwise, I can always ask if everyone has one great vintage and suggest we revisit the bar to find out.

Guest Linda Robertson ONCE UPON THE LONGEST NIGHT Kickstarter

Veronica: Such a pleasure to welcome SFF7 alumna Linda Robertson today!

Linda: HELLO! (waves maniacally) Linda Robertson here! If you’re a fan of the SFF7 blog, you may recall I used to occupy the Wednesday slot… and I am delighted to be visiting my old stomping ground – would that be stomping blog? Blogging ground? – either way, I’m happy to be here.

First, allow me to thank the SFF7 for allowing me to visit, and especially to Veronica for allowing me to take over her day. HUGS & CHOCOLATE!

I am just SOOO excited to tell you about this anthology of Paranormal Fantasy Romance. The gorgeous cover below was even a featured reveal in the USA Today Happily Ever After blog this past Thursday. I’ve provided story summaries at the bottom, so be sure to keep scrolling and check out that line up! WOW! I’m giddy to have a story among such talented authors! The kickstarter is going live soon – Monday Oct. 1^st – so please, help keep the buzz about this anthology going. On Monday, follow the link at the very bottom to the Once Upon website where links to the kickstarter should be live, and consider backing Once Upon the Longest Night. There are wonderful backer prizes and incentives, too, but first, here’s that gorgeous cover:

The longest night. A vampire’s delight.

The winter solstice, a time of birth and rebirth, life and death, waning light and rising darkness. A time when those who flee the sun and crave the taste of blood find their greatest solace.

But one never knows what the longest night might hold.

Once Upon the Longest Night, a collection of adult paranormal romances, features nine novelettes of lovers and their battles against one of the greatest legends of our time: the vampire. A 15^th-century seaman and the love of his life come face to face with a vengeful manjasang. In ancient Rome, a hunted priestess captured by a loyal centurion offers her aid to the enemy. With the help of a handsome Royal courier, a reluctant Romanian princess braves the curse flowing within her noble blood. Danger awaits when a vampire in the far reaches of North Dakota must endure the lethal cold to protect the woman she loves. And in a future New York, a broken general returns home for the Longest Night Ball where he meets a young male witch who might change his life forever.

This anthology combines vampire mythos and affairs of the heart with the sacred symbolism and magic of the winter season.

Sit back and let us tell you a tale. Welcome to the Longest Night.

Story Summaries:

Memories of Stone by Elizabeth Vaughan: Ercula is weary, tired of fleeing, considered a monster by the Romans. But the Solstice is sacred to her goddess and she will worship at the forgotten shrine, whatever the risk.

The centurion who captures her has other plans.

@eavwriter

The Lobster Trick by Dan Stout: Jacqueline doesn't mind her job as an overnight security guard. After all, what’s the worst that could happen at a blood bank? But when an armed group invades the building, Jacqueline is forced into action to save a handsome lab tech… and discovers that his shy smile might hide a shocking secret.

@DanStout

Blooded by Linda Robertson: Miriana Jorgeta rejoiced when her distant and cruel mother, the Queen, sent her away from Romania to attend a girl's school in England. For years, she lived a life so perfect she almost forgot about the duties of her heritage. But curses rarely remain hidden, and soon, with the help of her mother's royal courier, Miriana must face the truth about what really lurks in her blood.

@AuthorLinda

His Last Battle by Sara Dobie Bauer: Suffering from PTSD, vampire general Devlin Frost returns home from the war on Lycans and attends the historic Longest Night Ball. Here, royal witch Elijah Crow must choose three immortal suitors to compete for his love and power. When Devlin is shockingly chosen as one of the three, his immediate attraction to the young witch coaxes him into entering the fray, but this battle is for more than Elijah’s love. The broken general might also win back his ruined heart and bruised soul—if he survives the night.

@saradobie

Silver Heart by Charissa Weaks: 15th Century Italy. After a decade at sea and with an inheritance in hand, Cristiano Del Valle returns to his childhood home of Venezia in search of a new beginning. What he finds on the longest night is an ancient enemy who not only threatens the life he’s long desired but the love he thought he’d lost.

@CharissaWeaks

Her Blood to Bind by Alice Black: To escape the vampire who made her, a former dominatrix takes a job in Costa Rica as an English tutor to the children of a wealthy widower. What she discovers is that her new employer is just as dangerous as her pursuer...and twice as tempting. 

@AliceBlackBooks

Walk with Me by Jodi Henry: After a century of killing her own kind, Arianna Guerri retired to a place no other vampire dare go. In the deadly cold of North Dakota, she built a life for herself, and fell, secretly, in love with her best and only friend. When someone burns the small town,

Arianna must face the mistakes of her past—and her feelings—if she hopes to survive the

longest night.

@_JL_Henry

Love on the Longest Night by Sybil Ward: Neenah and Robert are searching for true love in the same place for drastically different reasons. Can they find love together on the longest night when they’re trapped by the century’s worst blizzard and one of them is a 300-year-old vampire?

@SybilWard

 One Night In December by Melinda S. Collins: NYC artist, Micah Price, never believed in vampires or immortality. But after a year of researching Daniel Savoy, her family’s enigmatic annual houseguest and the only man she's ever loved, the options surrounding the truth of his past are slim at best. When a bloody Daniel arrives on Micah's doorstep, she refuses to leave any stone of the mystery unturned. But accepting that vampires exist is the least of her worries. Because sometimes it's not the monsters we should fear. It's what hunts them.

@MelindaSCollins

Find more information at:

Once Upon Anthologies

What You Need

Into every life a little rain must fall. If you mean to stay afloat both as a person and as a writer, you need a few things.

• Know what you need and create it - some of us require the illusion of stability in order to create and that stability can be elusive when life is throwing constant BS at you. Look for places you can force stability - is it enough to declare a time at which you will show up to the page and to make that space of time your anchor?
• Operate at a remove - get out of your normal place. Extract yourself from the part of your life causing chaos. Find refuge - check out the quiet section of your library. Or find a local coffee or tea shop that will let you camp a table for an hour or two. The key is to find someplace that you can retreat to where you can be the truest, most stripped down version of you - leave all the masks (spouse, child, coworker, responsible adult, etc) behind. It's just you and the page and the story. Set a timer. You'll pick up your masks and your cares once the timer goes off.
• Turn off the distractors - this isn't just about the Freedom app, though certainly use that if it helps you focus. This is about your phone. And your email. Shut them down. There is no reason on this planet for you to be 100% available to anyone 100% of the time. If you cannot bear to shut down the phone, set the Do Not Disturb for the time you want to work. You can program in exceptions so your child can always ring straight through if need be. This is only for a short time and you don't need the phone chirping, ringing, buzzing or otherwise pulling you out of your story. Immersion is hard won. Don't squander it with a stupid cell phone or an idiotic email trying to tell you who to vote for.
• Vow to become a warrior. How? Pick up the sword (or in this case, the manuscript.) Every single day. You pick it up. Some days, you'll pick it up, swing it once and put it right back down. But the bulk of the days, you'll work with it longer, trying trickier moves, acknowledging that you're clumsy as hell with it right now. But the more you pick it up and swing with intention, the better you'll get. 
• Know when to quit. A friend and former crit partner tried desperately to write while she sat in a long series of hospital rooms watching her youngest son die. She finally shut the laptop and quit. For two years. She came back to writing after and is doing very, very well now. But for her, for that time, it was necessary to put that piece of herself away so she could be fully present for her son and for herself. She has no regrets over it. 
• Get crystal clear on your priorities AND on the priorities of those around you - What do you say are your priorities. What do your actions say are your priorities. No judgements here - it's an observation about where the gap lies and why there's a gap at all, if there is one. What are your loved ones' priorities? Do they conflict with or support yours? You do know it's legit to expect your priorities to be supported only because they are your priorities and matter to you as a human being? You afford support and respect to your loved ones' priorities (within reason) because you love them and want them happy. Require the same courtesy for yourself and allow yourself to demand AND accept it.

Only you know your capacity. Only you can know what makes you tick. If you don't know, find out. It's why the gods invented therapists. No one is bulletproof. Every person on the planet will get tripped up over something. There isn't any problem with falling down. The problem is in not getting up again. 

PS: The kittens are fine. I am covered in bloody, razor-thin scratches from kitten claws. By my scars you shall know me. 

The Downward Spiral Slingshot Maneuver

So, the question put forward this week: how do you keep writing when your life is in a downward spiral?

It's interesting, because for me, that downward spiral was exactly what got me on track with my writing.

So, in 2007 I was in a state.  I hated my job deeply, and it was negatively impacting literally everything else in my life: health, weight, marriage, you name it. 

At that time, I had that thing I had been talking about.  You all know "that thing"-- that book project that you've been talking about forever, and you've written up character descriptions and worldbuilding information and you maybe have even written a little bit of, but... it's not going anywhere.

Back then, I would go days in a row where I couldn't even muster up the energy to open up the file, let alone actually write.

Finally I said to myself, "You're 34 years old, and what are you doing with yourself?  Working this terrible job for terrible people, and hating everything.  You keep saying you want to write books but are you?  No, you aren't, and you need to."

So I did something possibly ill-advised, but what turned out to be for the best: I just plain quit.  My wife was, at first, livid, but after a while we talked it over and restructured our lives with the idea that I was really going to do this, no matter what.

A couple months later, I finished that thing.  Mind you, IT IS TERRIBLE, but it was done. 

A year after that, I wrote the first draft of what would be The Thorn of Dentonhill.  And then kept at it, more and more, to reach where we are now: with an eighth book coming out next week.

Sometimes, you've got to uses that downward spiral to figure out just what matters, and then use it to slingshot yourself back upwards.

When life drowns the writing

Hoh boy. This week on SFF Seven we're talking about how to stay motivated when life "spirals downward" (<-- poetic way of putting it, yes?).

If you have suggestions, please do feel free to pass them along.

Truth is, I'm a bit under water right now -- family health emergencies, pre-teen drama, pet emergencies, home repair problems, kind of you name it and I'm dealing with it. (You don't want to hear the litany of despair. You really don't.) It would be amazing if I could say the writing was keeping me going or even that I have been able to write whole stories despite.

But it's not and I haven't.

I wake up in the morning with stories in my brain. Sometimes I scribble in the notebook beside my bed. Sometimes I thumb-type dialogue on my phone while I'm waiting in a doctor's office or hospital room or vet clinic or school pick-up line. Back when the words were coming and life was being kind, I got used to assigning a multi-hour stack of time for writing, during which I could deep dive into the story, but nowadays I'm having to train myself to take stories piecemeal, scribbles here and emailed snippets there. It's like I'm rewiring the whole structure of how I work.

And honestly? If this goes well, if I manage to train myself to write books on the run like this, that will be a perfect kind of magic.

Because I don't want to make writing the center point of my universe. My family is already there, I love them, and I have made promises to them. Comparatively, I've promised writing very little -- I have no contracts or deadlines and very few expectant readers, and I can choose either to be depressed about that lack or to be grateful I don't have yet another competing commitment.

I choose to be grateful. Because managing the spiral is about understanding your priorities, and right now, writing is not my priority.

Authoring When Life Doth Sucketh

When life gets me down, how do I cope while still doing the work of an author? There are so many aspects of being a writer that don't involve word count or tapping wellsprings of empathy. Tasks that demand my analytical brain are great havens during emotional upheaval because I can shut down the drama-mind and just produce something with a tangible end result. I can ride out the storm pulling sales numbers, compiling ad data, updating P&Ls, revising marketing strategies, etc. If I need to lose myself in an obsession to hide from the real world but my written world is too fraught, then I tackle revamping my website or take an online class. All these things are necessary to the job, but they're also the things that get back-burnered while in the fevered throes of actually writing a book. Completing non-writing-specific tasks gives me a sense of accomplishment and control. When it feels like life is spiraling downward, small successes buoy the spirit and make tomorrow easier to tackle. Sometimes, the small win has the most impact.

Finding a way

Sometimes life gets dark and it's easy to fall into a pit and wallow in that darkness.

Getting out can be tougher. When my wife Bonnie passed away after a rather long run of medical complications I had no desire to write to do anything.
It took me 8 years to look back on the work I was writing when she passed. I have since finished it.
I have a novel I started working on after she passed and it's not finished yet.
But since then I have written a lot of novels.

I forgive myself for not finishing the stories with painful memories attached. I'll get to them eventually.

But otherwise I'm with Jeffe. Writing is my escape. It was what kept me sane when my wife died on me. Want to read more of what I write then here's the link. I wrote a LOT about how my life was changed without here. It's really the longest stretch of non-fiction I ever did.

Finding Motivation when Life Spirals Downward

The moon rises over the mesa at Ghost Ranch where Georgia O'Keeffe had her summer home. We went on a sunset horseback ride to see her house and the landscape she painted.

It was just extraordinary.

We also did a tour of her winter home and studio in Abiquiu. I've done this one before and love to do it every time I have an out-of-town visitor interested. Seeing where and how this prolific and fantastic artist lived and worked is an enormous education in examining life choices. She surrounded herself with beauty and - though she was a millionaire by that point in her life - Georgia lived a very minimalist and simple life.

All of her choices focused on making herself into a better artist.

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is "Finding motivation when life spirals downward."

What I've discovered - for myself and from examples like Georgia O'Keeffe - is that the spiral of my life depends on my art, not the other way around. Writing provides an anchor and a ley line* for my life. The creativity is the wellspring of energy, writing is how I channel it, and that channeling provides the buffer and balance for everything else.

Sure, being able to produce art depends on having a life set up to be peaceful enough to do that, but for me - as Georgia did - that means constructing my life to put my work at the center. If my writing is going well, everything else goes well.

*the concept of a "ley line" is found in fantasy a lot and is like a river of magical energy