This morning my daughter woke up with a "scratchy throat".  Noting to myself that she (and my two boys) will be off for Christmas break in just four days--and that this isn't the first such occurrence on a Monday morning--I was less than sympathetic.

"Take something," I said.

She didn't want to.  She wanted to go back to bed.

"You were able to eat your breakfast okay," I offered.

"It comes and goes," she told me.

"Well maybe if  you take something, it'll go away again."

She trudged off in response, probably cursing her bad luck to have such a mean mother.  By the time she got ready to go (and yes, she took two ibuprofen and packed some lozenges), she was feeling much better.

So that gives me today to write.  And for a few more days, I get to live the dream, having the time and space and opportunity to write when I want to (well, mostly).

This morning, I had planned to write a blog about how I wished my writer self would go into hibernation during Christmas break, since I won't have the above mentioned freedom to write.  But you know what?  I think really, even when we writers aren't writing, we're thinking about writing, running our next rewrite through our heads, our characters are still talking to us, and we are ultimately recharging for our next writing session, no matter what the season.

I plan to have the best Christmas of all, knowing my words and all the possibilities they bring will be waiting for me in the New Year.

And I wish you all the merriest of Christmases too :)  Cheers!

The Challenge

Well, I made it to round three in the NYC Flash Fiction Challenge.  I was so thrilled, I could hardly believe my good luck.  And, to boot, I got assigned the horror genre which I'd hoped for.

Everything seemed to go tickedy-boo.  I woke up Saturday morning, wrote my entire story and felt pretty good.  As the day crept on, though, I had this terrible feeling that it had been too easy.  I didn't like the title. I didn't like the ending.  There was too much telling and not enough showing.  I wasn't satisfied with my references to the main character's screwed up childhood.

So I rewrote.  My hubby Chris said, "You know you're going to rewrite that about a hundred times, right?" Well, maybe not a hundred times, but many times.  Yes, that's true.  He called it.

When I finally submitted I felt...unsettled.  Had I made a grievous error by sacrificing some of the raw emotion for a more subtle approach?  Was it too subtle?  Did I remember all the submission instructions?  I did remember to fill in all relevant fields on that submission page, didn't I?  It was in the correct font, right?

After I pressed send, I felt shaky.  What if I made a terrible, avoidable mistake?

(Yes, of course I went back and reread it one last time!)

In the end, it's out of my hands.  I'm grateful for the chance to have taken the challenge.  Now it's over and, hey, what's the worst thing that could happen?  Someone has to place last.

Writer's block is a funny thing.  Well, actually no, it's very un-funny...sad, frustrating, aggravating in its own maddening way.  

Perhaps it's more accurate to label it a strange thing.  

I hope my writer friends chime in here.  Doesn't it seem that the more we (sometimes force ourselves to) write the less we are plagued by the writer's block gremlin?  And of course, the opposite is equally true.  The less we write, the more we are intimidated by all those nasty blank spaces.  The act of writing primes the pump.

When I'm stumped and the blank page is HUGE, and feel like the creative juices have evaporated, I find all sorts of reasons why I don't have the time to write.  I have three children, two of which have special needs.  Advocating for them, scouting out and implementing services and strategies, takes a lot of time.  But the truth is, everyone is busy.  There are always other things we could be doing.  They're just excuses.  They're just the voice we shouldn't ever listen to, telling us we have nothing original or worthwhile to say.  Keep writing, move beyond the wall you perceive.  It's an imaginary wall anyway.  And you can break through it.

I keep hearing over and over, and it's just as true every time, writers write.  Every day.  That's what we do.  

For all my writer friends, do you write every day?  Do you feel terribly guilty when you don't?  What are some of your strategies to make it part of your daily routine?

Read any good books lately?

Writers are also readers.  It makes sense.  We love words, and everything about them.  So when we find a book that speaks to us, we devour it.  Our favourite writer(s) just can't write fast enough.

But what if you pick up a book that you don't love, or even like?  Do you plough through it anyway, or do you drop it and move on?

I used to be one of those patient souls who would wait out the boring parts of a book that was "hard to get into".  Sometimes I never got into it, not even when I got to the very end.  Even when I was "supposed" to like the story, hailed by all as an amazing read, there were times I forced myself to continue.

I'm happy to say, I've changed my ways.  Stephen King said something that I think was very wise (and here I'm paraphrasing), about there being so many good books out there...why waste your time on something that doesn't grab you?  I couldn't agree more.

Life is short.  Give yourself permission to ditch a book that doesn't make you love it.  You don't owe it a thing.

"It's a kind of magic..."

I've had that Queen song running through my head for the last couple of days.

Maybe I've got magic on my mind.

The way I see it, both fiction and non fiction have their own kind of other-worldiness about them.  Like the song says, it's a kind of magic.

My typical pattern with non fiction is that I'll see a call for submission.  The posting speaks to me or not.  If it does, I pull open my mental filing cabinet to see what I have that might "fit" what the editor is looking for.  As I sort through the files, sometimes I notice things that might work for another story, some other time.  And that's okay too.  I'll access that file another day.  I choose my story, plucked right from the pages of my life. There's something very special about that.  Because it really happened.  Maybe my story will resonate with you, too.  So there's a universality of it even though this specific story is mine and is unique; the humanity of it connects us all.

Then there's fiction.  A whole different kind of magic...Usually the submission guidelines are looser than in non-fiction.  At least, that's been my experience.  So where does the story idea come from?  Who knows? One minute I'm walking my dog, the next moment I have a story idea.  As I write, it sometimes becomes an entirely different animal.  But really, when it comes to fiction, we all start with nothing.

And in case you haven't had enough ramblings about magic today, get this.  I was about half way through this blog when I noticed the time, 8 a.m., time to walk my dog.  Also time to take my pointsettia out of the closet (I've been trying to coax it to rebloom like I did last year, with no luck).

When I took my plant out, I spotted the tiniest new green "leaf" that has turned just started to turn the slightest bit red.  Now that's a kind of magic.  (Could this be fodder for a future Christmas story?)

The waiting is the hardest part...said every writer at some point.

Recently I was asked what's my least favourite thing about being a writer. I said what most of us in the literary biz would say.  It's the waiting.

Waiting for a response is agonizing.  Any reply--even a rejection--is better than nothing.

In the meantime, I stay busy.  I keep writing.  I keep submitting more stories.  Eventually I query the editor (sometimes that's a good thing).  I remember one time we writers were told we'd receive notification by a certain date if our stories were chosen.

The day after the deadline rolled around and still no word.

I was devastated.  I was so sure that this story would make it in the anthology.  I moped around for a day or two, feeling really sorry for myself.

Then I decided to send an email expressing my disappointment, but also thanking the editor for the opportunity to submit my story to her.  I ended with the hope that I would have the chance to work with her sometime in the future.

And you know what?  She replied that she definitely wanted my story; she was just behind in notifying everyone.  I'm so glad I sent that email.

So I pose this question for my lovely writer friends:  How long do you wait for a response before you either query...or send the story elsewhere?

A day in the life of a grammar fanatic...

The other day I saw a sign at my local grocery store.  It said, "Try Our New Sub's".  I cringed and wished I had some paper towel to wipe away the green dry erase marker's carnage.  Apostrophe!  "Subs", in this context, does not need an apostrophe!

I mentioned this faux pas to the girl behind the counter and she shrugged, as if this cataclysmic event wouldn't change the very fibre of our collective existence.  

We, the readers and writers of this world must embark on our daily quest to edit terrible grammar, wherever we find it.  And, oh, it's just everywhere, isn't it?

Please share some of your own horror stories...I'd love to shudder alongside of you all.