Taking A Leap

Sometimes, you just have to jump. As cliché as it sounds, and as difficult as it might be, sometimes jumping is what it takes. So I did. I leapt off into the void.

I found out that I could be a successful freelance writer if that’s what I wanted to do with my life. However, ethical, physical, and personal reasons dictated that it really wasn’t what I wanted to do. I still plan to freelance, but I am, done with daunting useless web writing. The SEO world is filled with nonsense, and ethically challenging positions that I don’t want to be part of. I think that the internet is a wonderful place, for the world to share, communicate and open up new and interesting markets for businesses. But I no longer want to be a part of the group that floods the internet with SEO based content that is about as useful as a used tissue. I no longer want to promote things I don’t believe in, and I don’t want to try and sell something that I feel is wrong.

So I’m jumping ship, and swimming back to the land that I know.

I’ll blog, I’ll write articles, real ones, with purpose, and I’ll return to fiction. I’ll stop abusing my poor fingers before they decide to quit. After all, what good is a writer without her fingers? They really were on the verge of full scale mutiny. I’ll learn to enjoy mornings like this when it’s raining and I can sit on my porch with my laptop and ponder the world in ways that it could be, or might become. Imagine all green leaves suddenly turning to shades of purple and the ruckus it would cause the scientific community.

So now that I’ve jumped, I hope I can figure out how to swim.

Reaching Limits

WARNING: This is going to get a little bit rant-ish.

Every human on this planet has limits, some people reach them quickly, and aren’t quiet about it. Others, well, take me for example, we’re slow to find that breaking point, we’ll tolerate more than we should, and when it’s enough, it’s bloody-well enough.

That’s how I’m feeling, that it’s enough. That it’s actually gone past enough months and months ago. Now I know, I am doing what I said I would, and that means I’m getting paid to write. However, there are a few things that potential freelance writers out there should be aware of about this new world of freelance writing. First, it isn’t a blasted fairy tale. Nope, no fairy godmother to sprinkle dust over your fingers when they are so swollen you aren’t sure you can type anymore. No witch to cast a spell and make that pile of deadlines slow down. Sorry if I’m bursting your bubble here, but think more in terms of feeling like you’re chained to your desk, typing all the time, and if you’re lucky you’re getting paid third world wages.

Second, clients are harsh. I could go on forever about the social implications of the something for next to nothing generations, but suffice it to say it’s a big problem in the writing world. You know it’s bad when fiction magazines are paying more for short story content (yes it is a harder market to get into) than the business advertizing world.

When I start doing the math, I really want to act like a two year old, stomp my feet and throw a full-blown tantrum. For example, I just finished the second part of a large project. Overall, the project added up to being 25,000+ words. That’s almost half a novel. In all I made .007 cents per word.

So, why haven’t I quit. Well, there are a few reasons. I like money. We all like money right? I have a hard time saying no to money now, even though I think I’m actually losing the potential of money later on. I have two wonderful, but, basically special needs kids. They are fully functional, and smart, and funny, and sometimes great to be around. However, they have issues, and these are the kind of issues that a normal after school care facility, and traditional baby-sitters are prepared to deal with, so I have to be flexible. I have to be available. If these reasons weren’t enough, top that off with the fact that I’m suffer from a bit, well maybe more than a bit of social phobia, and I’m really not traditional work force material.

So I keep doing it, but I am frustrated, and angry, that the world of freelance writing can’t seem to understand that writers work hard, and that we deserve reasonable compensation.

End of rant!

On the positive side I’m about 75% done with the outline for my newest fiction project. A young adult series. Outlining is something I’ve spent years avoiding, feeling that it stifled my creativity, boy do I feel dumb now. Now that I’m outlining, it’s a thousand times easier to pick up and put down what I’m working on, without having to spend two hours trying to figure out where I was going with a conversation, or a scene.

Pressure, Pressure, Give Me More Pressure

What is it about deadlines and due dates that make the writerly part of my brain function like it’s supposed to? For example, when I was in school writing was always about seeing how far I could push the deadline.

I knew I had papers due weeks in advance sometimes, yet, I always worked better when I waited until the last moment. Yes, it meant staying up most of the night. Yes, it meant stress. Yes, it meant driving myself to the brink of sanity and clawing my way back over the edge. But, something about that worked for me.

So, as I sit here rotting on the east coast. (Sorry to any east coast readers, however, I’m just a west coast, coffee on every corner, rainy night’s kind of girl.) I find myself struggling. I think part of the struggle is an utter lack of deadlines.

I know, I can hear you now. “Make your own deadlines.” That sounds great, but it doesn’t work. Not even a little. It just makes me feel worse, because it doesn’t add the pressure, no one but me will know that I’ve missed it, and then I just get to feel guilty and wonder why it didn’t help.

I haven’t found a good solution to this problem; I don’t think there is one until real deadlines come into play. So instead, the goal is to, just do as much work, as possible each day. Write, write, and write some more.

However, this time, my writing for the week is focused on outlining. I’ve never fully outlined any project I’ve worked on. I’ve balked at the whole outlining process from the time I was old enough to learn about it, but for once I’m going to sit down and outline the whole project from start to finish. Chapter by chapter, then scene by scene. Perhaps knowing where I’m going will in fact help me get there.

Things I’ve learned While Writing Everything But Fiction

A touch of inspiration from this fall. Somehow, I think this tree might have a story to tell.

I may have, perhaps, plausibly even, been avoiding this blog for a while, because it makes me feel guilty about not producing fiction.

Well, I’m over that, and I’m starting to write what I love again. However, in ways and times that I didn’t know, I would.

I’ve not been avoiding my keyboard during the break from fiction writing, instead, I’ve probably written ten or fifteen books worth of content on this and that, for different projects. So yes, I’ve been writing for a living, just not the type of writing I want to do forever. I’m not quitting my freelancing gig, I mean come on, I am paid to write…and until the fun writing starts to pay, that’s what I plan to keep doing. That being said, I’m going to stop neglecting my poor blog. I’m also going to stop putting my fiction on the back burner and letting everything else take over. The theme for me for April is going to be finding balance. Ha, in a world that is so off kilter that should be fun right?

I’ve learned a lot, some good some bad, some things that make me question everything I read on the internet, but I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve learned that I can write over twenty thousand words in a day if I want.

At that rate, I could go above the Nanowrimo goal in three days. Yeah, I said three days. Insane. I know.

Now the test comes, can I apply everything I’ve learned, the rate at which I write, to fiction? No, probably not.

I wish. It would make life so much easier if I could just churn out content, turn off the inner editor, and accept that this is the story my characters are trying to tell. Naw, that’d be too darn easy.

So I’ve come to believe that as a writer, I’m destined to fight with myself on a constant basis. More importantly, I’ve come to realize that I’m okay with that, and that in some ways that’s probably what makes my fiction interesting. So for now, I’m getting started again, and accepting that it’s a frustrating, challenging process, and trying to force myself to just work through it.

Blank Page Monster

Some days I think I have the best job in the world. I mean how many people get to say, today, I stayed in my pajamas, I worked from my papasan chair curled up with the cat, and too many energy drinks.

Then there are the other days, the days I question what I'm doing. When the story won't move, no matter how hard I shove, and the ideas just aren't there. The days that make me want to hide under the blanket, away from the dreaded blank page monster.

For those of you that don't know, the blank page monster is my mortal enemy. I've never actually seen him, but I imagine he looks something like a cross between the boogieman and the monster under the bed, if you used a shrink ray on them. He's small because he has to be able to squeeze into the screen. From there he taunts you, torments you, and makes you wish you'd never seen a word processor, or thought about writing, EVER.

I'm also reasonably sure that he's behind the blinking curser—a constant reminder that you're not typing. Your fingers are just resting on the keys doing nothing, when they should, in fact, be doing something. This leads me to attempt to make them do anything just to make the curser move. Lines of chaos come next, in panic like outbursts.

By this point, I usually find myself so exhausted from just typing anything to rid myself of the blank page monster that I haven't written anything of value. I then end up highlighting the page of nonsense, and hitting delete.

The delete button is seriously lacking something in terms of frustration release; it has nothing on the traditional crumpling up of paper and throwing it in the trash. On days where the blank page monster and I go to war, I wish for a way to virtual smash the pages of gibberish, or light them on virtual fire, something more gratifying than delete.

For today, at least I've won my epic battle with the blank page monster. Perhaps, I'll win again tomorrow.

    

Dear Wicked Witch, I’m sorry. Please take back your flying monkeys.

Please?

Those blasted monkeys have come in and done irrevocable damage to my best plans.

Problem #1

I set out to teach myself to write anywhere. I wanted to cope with large amounts of stress and still force myself to keep going. Well, that plan was based on a two week moving schedule, upon which we had a house and belongings. No, no way, no how, no deal.

Thanks pompous housing office, this is more than a little inconvenience. Goodness, it is apparently unreasonable of me to expect to see my things by Christmas though we left before Halloween.

Once the shock wore off, I figured I'd be able to get over that. I had my laptop after all, I had a good percentage of my work on it—I could do this.

This is where the flying monkeys get bored.

Set back #2

Settled into temporary housing, I figured I could pull this off, I could still complete Nano, I've been working while on the road, I'm behind but it's not horrible. Then, I contracted something my body has apparently never encountered before. I have, kind of, a lazy immune system to begin with, but I caught some kind of mutated super bug. A week of sitting up to nap between coughing fits, more decongestants than are approved of, and I'm still more akin to one of those mangy cats on the 'help the pound' commercials. Alright, I'll kick myself into superwoman mode. If I'm going to be miserable, I might as well be miserable doing what I love, right? Do you hear the monkeys cackling in the background yet? I didn't.

#3 You're kidding, really?

Well if not having my desk, my creature comforts, hell, even a microwave, while hacking up a couple chunks of lung isn't enough, what the heck lets crash the computer.

I'm upset with my space bar; we are normally on great terms, now I'm skeptical of its intentions. While attempting to find something online that I have on my big computers, I make a wrong click, anyone can do it, and well that's what I have virus protection for. Great, except that I'd stopped clicking and was in the middle of working on a freelance site starting to place a bid on a job. Well while typing happily away little did I know my laptop had apparently felt left out of the whole being sick thing. Hello, pop-up-yellow-warning message, I know you.

There is a gap between brain recognition, and stopping fingers that move at nearly 100 wpm. Well before I knew it my computer went into a meltdown which made my six-year-olds fits look like rainbows and unicorns.

Well, that was the end of that; laptop went down, and out.

I gave up for almost a week. I had my netbook, I checked my email, ordered recovery disks, watched TV, and read my kindle. It didn't help.

#4 Argh, it's all gone.

Yep, everything I've written in the last month and a half, and I've actually taken it better than I thought I would. Now, this might not have been so annoying because my husband actually had a great deal of my major projects on his external hard drive, which we brought with us. Except, guess what? Yep, you got it, that died too.

Here I sit, thousands of miles later, empty laptop, a trial version of word, and a new wireless keyboard, starting over for the moment.

Lessons learned: I love my things, I'm a creature of habit, I write better at my desk, strange couches do not make good computer chairs, and moving sucks. So if you happen to see the witch, would you put in a word and ask her to call off the monkeys?

Fall, Addiction to Writing Single Paragraphs, and toe socks.

Fall

I'm going to miss the Pacific Northwest, more than I care to think about at the moment. Fall is starting to settle in, the first good rain after a long goodbye to summer; the smell of wet grass, and dripping pine trees, being able to buy pumpkin and apple-cinnamon bread mix again. Normally I'm overjoyed to see fall coming. Halloween is on the way, the kids are back in school and I can have a semi-normal writing schedule, these are all fantastic things. This year won't mean driving to my hometown for Halloween, where bobbing for apples still takes place at the fire department. It's going to mean moving. On top of that, it seems I'm usually moving during Nanowrimo. This usually means I don't manage my goal.

National Novel Writing Month is always inspiring, and daunting, and chaotic, and when you add trying to drive from one side of the US to the other, it becomes an almost impossible task, the last two years I didn't even try, but this year, I'm going to give it a shot regardless. This will hopefully succeed in teaching me to write anywhere, instead of the slightly obsessive-compulsive habit of needing my own writing space.

If I am completely incapable of doing, or at least making a dent in, the project it is bound to push me off the deep end, so come the end of November my posts may be those of a mad woman rather than the only slightly sane one I am now.

Single Paragraphs

So I seem to have a major problem with single paragraphs. I went through my writing files, something checked off on the to do list at least, and found that I have a massive quantity of files containing single paragraphs. Am I alone in being in love with the single paragraph? Are other writers just as addicted?

Case # 1

"Murder?" I looked through him, as if he were as transparent as the wings on the dragonfly bouncing against the window. It's funny the things you notice when something happens, those few seconds where time shifts. I walked around him looking out the window, at the small life that was haphazardly throwing its existence away trying futilely to enter a world that it couldn't have. I thought about it for what felt like hours, but passed in mere moments before I felt his hand come around my waist. We aren't really much different from that dragonfly are we, all reaching for what it isn't possible to have. I pushed open the rain spotted glass letting the incandescent insect in.

I have abandoned this paragraph for so long that I don't quite know what it was born to be. Yet I save it, because someday it might be something, at least that's what I keep telling myself. So is there an island for misfit introduction paragraphs, those miscellaneous hook devices toyed with then abandoned? Or do they belong in the graveyard of files kept for later?

Case #2

The palms of her hands were moist, dripping with deception. Calm down she coaxed herself. Her long auburn hair fell haphazardly into her face, she brushed it away. It wasn't really that bad. Her subconscious desperately wanted to get through to her, make her realize just how horrible she had become.

This poor lonesome paragraph has been left to gather dust for so long that I had to double check to make sure I wrote it.

If nothing else, at some point, I will gather all my little forgotten and mistreated paragraphs together and breathe an ink life into them and tape them inside some journal to be kept and loved.

Toe socks

There is something about toe socks that makes me smile like a child at the fair getting cotton candy for the first time. Each time I slip the banded outrageously colored creations on another fairy gets their wings.

They also make it easier to write.

I think I've already established that being a writer coincides with being slightly out of your mind, but if not I'm fairly sure that this will seal the deal.

There is something magical about toe socks that make it easier for me to write, they're like hot apple cider in the fresh fall morning, they're a comfort.

So for now I'm off, to slip my feet into toe socks and work on my newest project. I'm sticking fairly close to my newly produced goals, given there were a few days off for my sister to have her baby. :)