IWSG: Jealousy Among Writers

I’m posting a day early for Alex J. Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group held on the first Wednesday of every month.  I don’t personally have anything to complain about, but I have noticed something in the blogosphere lately and I was wondering what you all thought about it.

Last week, agent Rachelle Gardner wrote a post called Watch Out for the Green Eyed Monster where she discusses jealousy among writers.  She even expressed how she was envious when an agent friend of hers recently completed a great deal.  She was happy for her, of course, but she was also the tiniest bit jealous. 

I’ve met a great many writers here on Blogger, Wordpress, and other sources.  Most of them are like me.  They’ve written or are writing a novel and all that that encompasses, and they’re hoping and dreaming and even struggling to find and land that perfect agent, someone who believes in their writing, their project, and their beloved characters.  But there are quite a few who have recently bagged that elusive agent.  Even some who have secured a publishing contract or might be on their second or third book. 

Often, these writers make their incredible announcements via their blogs or Twitter, sharing their excitement at achieving their dream.  Most of their followers comment, expressing their joy and pride.  But as time wears on, some writers notice a lag in their comments.  Some writers have blogged about how they receive nasty emails from people, often other writers who are consumed with envy. 

NatalieWhipple at Between Fact and Fiction has struggled for many, many years, writing something like 9 or 10 novels.  A few years ago, Natalie managed to snag former agent-superstar Nathan Bransford only to lose him when he retired from agenting and the publishing business.  She landed on her feet though and acquired another agent.  After enduring something like 15 months on submission, Natalie and her agent finally gave up that particular book, but Natalie had another which was eventually scooped up by a publisher, and she was even given an option for a second book.  She is currently awaiting publication sometime in 2013.  Oh happy day, right?  Yeah, not so much.

Natalie has posted several times about how people were not always so happy for her success.  Apparently, there were quite a few who sent vicious emails, something I cannot understand myself because Natalie is just about the sweetest, kindest, most generous blogger out there, and she has shared every up and down along the way, of which there have been many.  I read a comment once that said writers who reach their dream no longer post about their struggles and therefore all the tension is removed from their blog.  I guess I can see his point, but this is not the case with Natalie.  She still posts about her struggles.  So what’s with all the jealousy?

It’s not like the other writers are taking a spot that we could have had for ourselves.  Each of our novels are so different, so unique.  I understand it’s hard not to want what they have, to achieve the same dream, but to be angry or jealous?  That I don’t get.  When I read about another writer landing an agent, sure, I say, “Boy, I wish that could be me,” but I also say, “See, there is hope.”  Because that is exactly what it gives me:  hope, that I might achieve the same thing someday. 

Of course, it all does depend on the attitude of the writer.  There is one particular writer whom many of us know.  We’ve seen her query up on QueryShark, her first page up on Suzie Townsend’s  First Page Shooter.  She had several offers and had her pick of agents, even got a book deal a few weeks later.  That’s every writer’s dream.  But this gal also has an abundance of self-worth, perhaps caused by all the attention.  But she hasn’t missed the opportunity to belittle other writers and their work on a certain popular blog, offering her opinion at their expense.  She still blogs from time to time, but she gets almost no comments any more.  She’s lost her following just when she needs it most.  I guess I can understand that a little, but still, writing is a relatively small community, and we are all greatly connected, so tearing someone down because of their success is like burning a bridge directly into the community in which you dream to be a part of.

So what do you think?  Is it difficult to see your friends and colleagues reach milestones before you do?  Or do you think of it as proof that all the hard work is worth it, that you can get there, too?  Does it give you hope or dash your dreams?                   

IWSG: Dreams vs. Expectations

Today is another entry in

Alex J. Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group

            I’ve been following a common thread lately in some of my favorite blogs.  It expands on an ideal most writers postulate:  Getting published will make me happy.  What’s not to believe about this statement?  This is our ultimate goal, is it not?  We write.  We edit.  We query.  We submit.  We get published…maybe.  We know the road is laced with potholes of disappointment, but we believe in ourselves and our stories, so we carry on. 

Keep the dream alive!  Yeah!!

            But what if the dream is not what we expect it to be?  I first pondered this a few weeks ago after having lunch with my friend, Jennifer Hillier, author of Creep.  Not only do I hold Jenny in high esteem for her talent and skill, she is someone I relate to on a personal level.  We’re both women writers who write similar stories in the same genre, and we live near each other, so we chat about writing and blogging and books and all that sort of thing. 

            At the time of our most recent lunch date, Jenny was in the final throes of her last edit before sending her latest manuscript, Freak, off to her agent and editor.  She expressed what a brutally difficult experience it was, nothing like the first time when she wrote Creep.  She lamented that it would never be as enjoyable as it was that first time around.  She was under contract now and had deadlines and expectations to meet.  As I listened to her, I couldn’t help but think of that old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it!”

            Then on October 17^th, Natalie Whipple wrote a blog post she called Smelling the Roses. Or Whatever wherein she bemoaned how obsessed she had been over the last five years with getting published.  More than merely driven, but rather “maybe more like desperate,” she wrote.  She said she had put all her “feelings of self-worth into publishing” and she “would never, ever be happy if I didn't sell a book.”  Then, almost immediately, Natalie said that selling her book, Transparent, didn’t make her happy after all.  It seems that publishing wasn’t all she had expected it to be, that in the end, it’s really all about the writing—the book itself—not the publishing of it. 

            On Tuesday (November 1^st), Rachelle Gardner wrote a post called Writing Ain’t Easy.  In it, she wrote about one of her less-experienced writer friends who wondered if her “lack of confidence would dissipate as she gets more experienced in writing,” to which another, more experienced writer friend replied, “The complete lack of confidence will likely persist and even become worse as you progress.”

So, in other words, unlike most jobs where people become better and more comfortable the longer they perform their tasks, writing will always be difficult.  It will always be rife with insecurities and self-doubt.  Even my blogger friend Joylene Nowell Butler commented on my Bad News Isn’t Always a Bad Thing post last week, saying, “One day there is that sale, and while you believe wholeheartedly that your life is about to change forever, it's not in the way you think.” 

I’m getting the message that having my book published might not live up to my lofty expectations.  It might not make me feel any better as a writer.  It might not make me feel successful.  And, in and of itself, it might not be what makes me happy.  Writers who have had the same dreams that I have, and who have achieved them, now tell me it only gets harder, and I might not ever feel what it is I want to feel when I’m done.

But I suppose writing is like anything else.  When we reach our goal, we bask in our success for a short time then move on to something else, a new thing that will challenge us, that we can enjoy for the sheer effort.  Being totally satisfied means not having the need to accomplish something else.  Well, that’s not me.  I am many things, but static is not one of them.  So maybe I’m a bit jaded now, but at least I know what to expect.  Or what not to expect anyway.          

We Interrupt This Program...

            Monday is my normal day to post here, but I’m holding out ‘til Wednesday so I can participate in Alex Cavanaugh’s.Insecure Writers Support Group.  Today I just wanted to go over a few brief items.

            First off, did anyone catch Rachelle Gardner’s post today About Author Platform?  If not, I suggest you go check it out.  Then take a gander at those benchmark statistics for Facebook and blog followers and visits.  Yikes!  Really?  We should shoot for 500 Facebook fans and 15,000 monthly pageviews to our blogs?  Well, that all sounds good, and I’d certainly love to have those stats, but they seem a tad unrealistic for the majority of writers who blog, most of whom are still unpublished.  I’m jumping for joy to have 700 pageviews a month.  And maybe someday, when I am agented and on the road to being published, I will have an author page on Facebook, but right now I’m keeping my friends limited to around 125 or so.  Personally, I can’t manage much more than that and I won’t simply collect friends for the benefit of …well, collecting friends.  That seems a bit insincere to me.  All right, you can clearly see the insecure writer in me, huh?     

            Anyway, moving on…Alex Cavanaugh, along with Matthew MacNish at QQQE, have a new blogfest called the Pay It Forward Blogfest scheduled for October 14^th.  This blogfest is designed to help introduce us to the many other bloggers out there.  Here’s how Alex and Matthew describe it:  

“We want this to be an easy post that allows you to meet and follow as many other bloggers as you can. In your post, we would like you to please list, describe, and link to three blogs that you enjoy reading, but that you suspect may fly under the radar of a lot of other bloggers. Or they can be famous blogs, as long as they're awesome.

But don't stop there! Certainly visit and follow all the blogs that are featured in people's posts the day of the blogfest, but those don't have to be the only blogs you visit. You can visit everyone who enters in on the fun, and signs up on the linky list. In the interest of time you don't even have to leave comment. You can just follow, and come back another time.”    

            So go to either Matthew or Alex’s blogs linked above and sign up on the Linky List to get your blog listed in the blogfest then participate on October 14th.  This should be another good one!

            Lastly, I would love to thank all of my followers who commented on my post last week about blogging vs. writing vs. life.  It seems I really struck a chord common among writers who blog.  I know it’s helped me just to know I am not alone and that others feel the exact same way.  Well, that’s it for today.  I’ll be back on Wednesday with a post for Alex Cavanaugh’s.Insecure Writers Support Group

To Prologue or Not

            Well, Monday was an interesting day in the blogosphere, what with everyone participating in writer Alex J. Cavanaugh’s It’s All Fun & Games Blogfest.  I thought about it and decided not to participate myself because, for one, I don’t like to post about anything that is not directly related to writing, and second, I really didn’t have a good answer.  I mean, I like Pictionary, Texas Hold ‘em and basketball, but besides Pictionary, they didn’t seem to fit into the genre everybody else was blogging about.  But I did find some really great blogs to follow and I even managed to snag a couple new followers myself, fellow writers Kittie Howard and M. Pax.  Thanks to both of you and welcome aboard!

Yeah, so I try to stick with only those topics related to writing, but I sometimes find it difficult to come up with new subject matter.  Such was the case this week.  Then I thought I’d write about what’s been consuming me lately in regards to my book.  For months now, I’ve been pretty content with my novel overall, except for the opening chapters.  First, I have a slight problem with the fact that agents and their assistants need immediate action within the first 250 words.  It seems to be a national thing that Americans need instant gratification.  No one seems to be able to wait in anticipation any more, even for just a page or two.  But that’s okay, I do have an opening chapter with tension, conflict and action. 

The thing is, I want to open up with something else.  Some might call it a prologue, and while it does read somewhat like a prologue, it’s actually a brief foreshadowing, only 261 words, where the protagonist ponders how he missed the moment he changed from the good man he once was into the villain he’s become.  I thought it appropriate since it bookends the overall theme running through my novel, complementing how he sees himself in the end.  But how do you query with submitted pages with this?  Agents don’t seem to want to see this sort of thing.

Well, I’ve waffled back and forth on this.  My heart tells me to keep it in, but something in my head is telling me to chuck it.  Nathan Bransford had a good post on this a couple of years ago which you can read here, but what he essentially says, or asks rather, is that if you were to take it out, could your book stand on its own?  My answer would be a resounding yes.  It’s not vital to the overall story, but it makes an impactful statement and I really like that. 

At first, I thought I could get around this by simply calling it chapter one, but it just doesn’t feel right.  And if I were to submit it as the first chapter with a query, the agent’s assistant would likely just toss it out, proclaiming it didn’t have enough action.  So last week, when writer Adam Heine wrote a post on When & When Not To Prologue, I commented, asking his advice.  He made a suggestion and I thought it a pretty good idea.  He said the chapter sounds like it's internal, as opposed to the protagonist being active, and while it totally might work, in general that's a red flag.  He suggested I remove the chapter heading, (which up to that point had been chapter one though it should have been a prologue,) because I probably wouldn’t want the first word the agent reads to be “prologue.”  He’s right.  I don’t.

So I have removed the chapter heading and I won’t be including it in pages submitted with my query.  I will start with the action, just like they want.  But now I’m worried about another item agents frequently complain about and want to know within the first 250 words:  What is the story about?  Well, you see, if I were to leave that darn prologue in, it would tell exactly what the story is about.  But I don’t seem to be able to have both. 

I kind of have a problem with the fact that agents want to know what the story is about in the first 250 words.  I mean, how do you even do that?  My friend, Lisa Regan, did this perfectly in her novel, Finding Claire Fletcher, a fantastic book being pitched to publishers as we speak, but then again, it was quite introspective, as well, yet it did not read as a prologue.  I still have a lot to learn from her.  She wants me to keep that foreshadowing chapter up front, but advises I do what makes me comfortable.  Having finally decided, I’m feeling more at peace. 

During the last week, I pumped up my new first chapter and, per Rachelle Gardner’s advice via her blog post What’s the Story on Backstory?, I’ve rewritten the backstory to be part of the action and dialogue.  I’m feeling pretty good about it all right now.  I think, after taking the last three months off, I am finally ready to start querying again. 

I’ve learned a lot since I first started querying and I won’t be going about it like I’ve done in the past.  I’ll be like the turtle, slow and steady.  I’m kind of used to the rejection by now, so I’m not too concerned with that.  I’m striving for more requests for partials and fulls.  And this time, with all the changes I’ve made, I hope someone sees something good in it, something worth offering representation. 

It’s been about ten months or so since I finished my first draft.  A lot of pain and heartache, joy and accomplishment, a lot of learning what the industry is all about and making of new friends within it.  I know I will never stop learning new things about writing and publishing, but I think I’ve finally reached that point where I’m comfortable with what I know, and even with what I don’t. 

            So, I’m curious, where do you stand on brief prologues or an opening chapter that doesn’t start out with a blockbuster explosion?  Is intrigue enough for you or do you want to be slapped in the face with action?  

My Thoughts on Writing vs. Publishing

            Last Friday in her blog, literary agent Rachelle Gardner pondered the link between the desire to write and that of being published commercially.  It was followed by an interesting question:  Are the two inseparably connected in the writer’s mind and if they are not, how do you know you should keep writing if you do not intend on seeking publication?  Like many of her awesome posts, it was followed by many comments, but in this case, nearly one hundred readers chimed in on exactly why they write. 

            Some of my readers may already have read my post from a month ago where I explained exactly why I write, but Ms. Gardner brought up a very interesting correlation and I wondered if other writers were as pulled toward publication as I was.  First of all, when I started writing my novel, The Mistaken, I never even considered the publishing end of it.  I just woke up with a story rattling around in my head.  It came to me after hearing a song.  The lyrics made me wonder what would drive a good man to do something really terrible, something completely out of character, and could he ever find his way back to the man he used to be. When I linked the possibilities to certain experiences in my own life, I tried to answer that question with a scenario and bam!—a novel was born. 

            Unlike many—or even most—writers, I suspect, I have not spent my life with the desire to write.  I don’t have drawers full of stories and characters and made-up worlds.  That is to say, while I do love to write, I was never compelled to write before I started all this.  And while I was writing my novel, my only goal was to get the story down and enjoy the creative process. 

You see, I’m a creative person.  My job—the one that helps pay the bills—is to create beautiful spaces for people to live or work in.  But when the economy took a big old dump on the building industry, my pipeline to creativity all but dried up.  It’s slowly coming back to life, but the last three plus years have been a drought with little opportunity for me to create though the need to do so remained firmly in place.  For the first two years, I used cooking and baking as an outlet, but that only took me so far.  With nowhere else to go, my creativity unleashed itself in my desire to tell a story.  And so I did exactly that. 

But normally, when I help create a beautiful, functional space for people to live or work in—or to help builders sell an idea of a lifestyle—the end product is used and enjoyed.  It serves a purpose.  And I know that someone is enjoying what I slaved over for days, weeks or months.  There is a great deal of satisfaction in the end use of my product.  But what about writing?  What is the end use of what I created, of what I’ve written?  Well, of course, the end use is reading it.  And while I do get some satisfaction reading my own words, I would garner much more if others were to read it, as well, hence my desire to be published.

            Now, that’s not to say that writing doesn’t serve a purpose if it is not read by someone else other than the author.  There were a plethora of valid reasons given by Ms. Gardner’s many commenters.  Some said writing made them a better person or that they just liked to do it, while others—many, in fact—refer to writing as a calling they cannot ignore, that it gives them a sense of fulfillment they cannot find in any other way.  For some it is simply a creation of art, an expressive outlet for their sole benefit.  Still others referred to it as a means of self-exploration and a few of those even used writing as a way to deal with their inner demons and release their frustrations while avoiding professional counseling.  I can relate to this last group.  My own demons figured substantially into my story. 

            But a great many writers expressed the sentiment that “words are worthless if not read.”  One even equated writing without ever being read to cooking a feast only to be thrown away before it was eaten.  Another said it was like creating a piece of art that no one will ever look at and what’s the point then if nobody else will ever see it?  He said he “could not separate the writing from the need to have it examined.”  I’m definitely with that guy.  I’m not saying I need people to gush over my work, though I do hope people enjoy it.  And while it would be great to actually make some money, I don’t even consider that element in my reasons for seeking publication.  Neither do I need to see my name in lights, so to speak, to have my nom de plume splashed across fancy cover art.  I just want an outlet for others to read my words.  I want others to get some enjoyment out of the story, to be thrilled for a few hours over a few days time.  I even think the theme of my book—forgiveness—might benefit some in a way. 

            I know there will be many people who do not like my story, who think it is too violent, or improbable, that a good man would never be compelled toward vengeance, to be so driven by personal demons as to commit a violent act, especially rape, if it was not in his character.  But I can tell you personally that is not true.  I even think it’s possible to find redemption afterwards.  My need to express these issues coerced me to write my story.  My desire to tell the story somehow makes sense of certain life experiences.  And while I have battled my own demons and won in the best way possible, the need to have others recognize the fight as worthy is undeniable. 

In my comment on Ms. Gardner’s post, I equated the experience of writing a book and wanting to see it published to pregnancy and childbirth. You spend months—maybe even years—growing this germ of an idea into something that has shape, something that has life, something that has a name, an identity.  Then you labor over bringing it into the world, crying over the pain it causes you.  The urge to bring it to publication is very much like that urge to push.  Undeniable.  Useless to fight against.  Because you want everyone to see just how beautiful your baby is, how much time and work and effort you’ve put into it.  You want to hold it in your hands and smile as you present it to the whole wide world.  This is my creation.  My baby.  It was hard.  But it was so worth every tear.  Every extra pound.  Every frustration.  So, please, come take a look!

To me, publication is more than just validation that a writer can actually write words that someone else wants to read.  It’s having a voice.  It’s a platform—widely accepted and utilized—where an author can say, “This is what’s important to me and this is what I have to say about it.”  It’s a documentation of our personal history, whether fiction or not, a way to process our life, our experiences, our world, and hopefully give others enjoyment or enlightenment at the same time.  It’s a way to share and bond and live again.  But you have to put it out there first, as scary as that may be. And it is really, really scary, especially when there is so much rejection along the way. 

           I may never be traditionally published.  In fact, chances are, I never will be with the way the publishing industry is changing.  But I also find value in the pursuit.  It’s a dream that pushes me out of bed every day.  It gives me purpose.  And I may be discouraged on my road to publication, but I will never, ever give up.