This is the fifth post in my ABCs of Writing series: Post E
Happy December, everyone! Now that NaNoWriMo 2020 is over, I’m back to my regular blog posts. The format of this post is a bit different compared to my other ones, which contain a short list of writing tips and tricks. This post does have a list, but it’s very short and it shows up at the very end. You could go straight to it, but then you’d miss out on how I came to create that list. So if you don’t want to skip ahead, let me tell you a story of my writing journey, which actually begins with my reading journey.
I’ve always been a voracious reader. My parents quickly caught on, and my mom introduced me to my first true love: fantasy. She started me out on Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, and I was hooked. However, it took me a long time to come to terms with my love of fantasy and science fiction. I was always ashamed of my reading interests, mainly thanks to the old-school fantasy covers which usually show busty women, flaming dragons, and men with muscles bursting under their skin. I remember using book covers to hide the books I was reading. If I didn’t have a cover, I’d make sure to keep the book flat on the desk so no one could tell what I was reading.
Late in high school, I met my now-husband (yes, we’re high school sweethearts; barf all you want), and I discovered that he too liked reading, and not just reading but reading fantasy books. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so self-conscious about my horrible fantasy covers. This was my first step toward giving myself permission to read what I wanted to read. Writing was a different story.
This was my first step toward giving myself permission to read what I wanted to read.
Throughout college, I never told anyone that what I really wanted to do with my life was write something I would like to read, that is, fantasy novels. I was an English Literature student and would have died before telling my Lit Theory class, which was packed with pretentious hipsters, that what I really wanted to do was ignore all the intellectual themes of literary fiction, forget deconstructed analysis, and turn my back on carefully constructed satire to write books about magic, swords, and dragons.
I started to realize, yes, I can write whatever I want.
After I got my degree and was able to immerse myself in the writing of my first fantasy novel, I started to realize, yes, I can write whatever I want. More, I decided to tell people that I was a fantasy writer. To my amazement, they actually found it interesting. They thought I was creative and said they wished they could do the same. Maybe I was just talking to better people, but I think I had learned to be more comfortable in my own skin.
Fast-forward to several years ago when I discovered something really special: The Writing Community on Twitter. An online community of people whose sole purpose is to discuss their writing, revising, querying, and publishing journeys. It was a group of kindred spirits I hadn’t thought existed. I fell in love. In amazement, I scrolled through post after post of pictures of coffee cups next to laptop screens, debates about the best type of writing software, and silly but fun questions, like What’s your main character’s favorite beverage? This community was just what I needed. While my family and friends are incredibly supportive of my writing, they do start to give me a glassy-eyed stare if I go on for too long about how I’m attempting to fix my latest plot hole. I don’t blame them. I know it’s the same look on my face when my husband and brother wax poetic about how their fantasy football teams are doing.
As at every other point in my writing journey (and life in general) I moved from a high point to a valley. I triumphantly finished my book and found the confidence to begin my querying journey to find a literary agent willing to represent me and my work and convince a publisher to publish me.
Enter the valley. The constant query re-work, the countless revisions, the hundreds of articles about how to pitch your book and what the market is looking for began to take its toll. My fears of my childhood returned. I was still comfortable with the fact that I write fantasy, but what if I had written a fantasy no one wanted to read? What if I wrote the wrong kind of fantasy? What if my ideas are old and worn out? I loved my story and found it interesting, but what if no one else did?
These fears not only made my querying and first book revisions incredibly painful, but they also made it hard to face writing the second book of the series. If no one was interested in the first book, why would they ever want to read the second? Should I sink even more time into this story that, although I loved it, no one else seemed to? As these fears chased each other around in my brain, I realized that I had to determine why I was writing. Was I writing to get published? Or was I writing because I genuinely enjoyed the story? My answer: Both.
Was I writing to get published? Or was I writing because I genuinely enjoyed the story? My answer: Both.
I desperately want to be published, but I also care a lot about this story. How could I not after having created these characters and lived with them for nearly a decade? I realized I needed to know how their stories end. With that decision made, I wrote book two. I revised it, and I just sent it out to a group of beta readers. For NaNoWriMo this year, I embarked on book three. (For more about my NaNo history, check out this post!) If you’re curious about my story, you can check out the first chapter of the first book here.
NaNoWriMo embodies the latest lesson I’ve learned in my writing journey. Cultivating a regular writing habit is hard. Sometimes—oftentimes—writing sucks. For a long time, I tried to tamp down that voice, to tell it, No, you’re an author. You will enjoy this. Eventually, I realized it’s okay to not always enjoy your writing. Sometimes it will be a slog and you will want to throw the laptop across the room in frustration. And that’s okay. So, that said, here’s my PSA for the day: You have my permission (not that you ever needed it), to sometimes not enjoy your writing.
To sum up my ramblings above, I have three (basic and likely not-groundbreaking) pieces of advice:
Write something you would enjoy reading.
Understand why you’re writing.
Give yourself permission to not enjoy writing.
That’s all I’ve got for you on this subject. I hope you find my experiences encouraging and helpful in some small way. Stay tuned for my next ABC post, Fear: What If I Fail?.
THE QUILL & THE INKPOT 