You can't fix a blank page

As the Surrey International Writers Conference approaches with the speed of light, I realize this year I don't have a goal. A plan. I have no agenda.

My first year, I went to learn about my craft to see where I was in my ability. Turned out I was doing pretty great.

The second year I pitched a book and spoke at the UnConference which was an amazing experience as the moderator Sean Cranbury is brilliant. And years I met really talented, wonderful people who I stay in touch with and trade stories and ideas with on a daily basis. It's a perk of the conference, for sure.

This year, though. This year seems different. I am not speaking. I don't feel like I have anything to pitch (although several people tell me different) and I don't really have a set agenda. I am taking my very first Masters Class and will probably drop the first page of my manuscript into the SiWC Idols box but that is about it. (Side note: The Idols session is the best thing I have ever seen but chances of having my page randomly pulled? Slim to none.)

So as I sit here almost literally pulling my hair out, sometimes writing, sometimes not, possibly shedding a few tears over this book and wondering if anyone will ever read it, ever, it dawns on me that every writer goes through this all. the. time. No matter how famous or published or unpublished or middle of the road. Every writer thinks their stuff is shit. Until one day...it just isn't. It might be the second draft or the tenth draft but at some point you love it and/or better yet someone else loves it and publishes it. Fact still remains, at some point in the process you were sitting on your couch, watching the blizzard outside, drinking cold coffee with lonely globs of whipped cream floating in it thinking "Wow. Does this ever suck. And if it wasn't for my husband, I would be living in a box on the street."

So this year, I will not have any sort of agenda for the conference. Perhaps I will run into Michael Slade at the coffee station again, that was fun. Or sit with someone fantastic at lunch like Robert Dugoni. So super interesting. And I am looking forward to finding my "Table 30" friends and fan girling all over Tom because I really did like his book, werewolves and all. He will sign my copy and it will be a highlight of my week.

But how about I just relax on the pressure and see where it goes? Because I can't force this book out of my head, it just doesn't work like that for me. But...because of the Greats like Stephen King, I won't stop. But I think I really am just shovelling shit from a sitting position right now.

Step away from the pickles

I have been overthinking a book I am writing. No, not just mulling it over...not just planning and carefully considering what I am writing...I have been agonizing and overthinking it to the point where I am not writing it at all.

How can you call yourself a writer when you aren't writing at all? Well, I suppose you can't. So I have been a miserable crabby pants, stalking around the house whining and complaining about things not related to writing because I am a miserable crabby pants over my lack of words on the page. Make sense? No. Not at all. It doesn't make a lick of sense and my husband doesn't know what to do with me.

My best author friend in Australia has been putting up with me for a while now, gently prodding me along with little pearls of wisdom. We often talk late at night (my time) because it is nap time for her crew. Last night I told Miriam I was in the fetal position, eating Polish pickles straight out of the jar and realizing I will never finish this book. Maybe I couldn't write books. Maybe I would never finish a single manuscript in my entire career. Whine, whine, whine. Complain, complain, complain.

The absolute worst part of all of this? I am in the perfect environment to write every single day. My boys are both in full time school now, my wonderful husband supports what I do and we have created this fairly quiet small town existence that is the holy trinity of writing. Quiet, financially supported solitude. I can name a dozen people who would give a lot for even an hour of uninterrupted writing time in a single week. I could pull off probably 5 hours every day and here I am whining like my diamond shoes are too tight. Last night, I disgusted even myself. It was bad. So as I am motoring my way through that jar of Polish pickles, Miriam says:

"Mate, you're not going to finish by eating pickles and wondering if you'll ever finish. You will finish by working on your book."

I paused with half a pickle in my mouth and the other half in mid air on the way to my mouth.

She asked me if I had ever heard of Raymond E Fiest's Magician? No, I hadn't. Tell me more. (I put the pickle down.)

Miriam tells it like it is without actually telling me I am being a ridiculous whiner. She really is quite brilliant at it and I should start paying her to drag me up from the wallowing gallows of writer self pity. She told me how famous Ray Fiest was and about his many (many) published works, huge following, etc, etc and how a couple of years ago he re-published his very first novel (released in 1982) in an "author's preferred edition." When she said that, it twigged my memory that Michael Slade also did this with his first novel Headhunter. So what she said next made me sit up and put the pickles away:

"I guess where I am going with this is right now we are nobody and nothings. And we need to make a name for ourselves. But one day if this still bothers you, you can publish a version you like better. In the mean time, just bloody get published eh?"

 

Um...yeah. (I raised my eyebrows) Right. Absolutely correct. There is nothing that says this is ever the final version of anything but to get it out there  right now, it has to be the version that will be the most interesting to the broadest range of people you can manage for the genre.

 

Suffice it to say, with that little nugget of truth hanging in the virtual world between us, I put my big girl panties back on, put an immediate halt to the pity party, put the damn pickles away (ok, who am I kidding here, the jar was empty) and went to bed thanking God that I have a friend like Miriam. She doesn't sugar coat it but kindly doesn't tell me outright I am being an ass. When I most certainly am.

 

The things that are bothering me about this book aren't really things at all. I am warring with the fact that I am a journalist writing a true story...with the fact that I want to be an author of wildly popular books. The two are different. They can certainly be melded together, but the world of fiction based on fact has a broader appeal than an article-type book with no dialogue. So suck it up, buttercup. You know what you have to do. Eating pickles won't finish that book.