As It Comes From the Mind of Sue Nelson Buckley

Ever notice that when you have a great story in your head – you don’t have time to write it? Then, when you manage to carve out time in your hectic schedule just to write, you spend these precious moments without a lucid thought in your brain or worse, you’ve convinced yourself that the awesome idea you had was really just crap and not worth exploring.

I do the same thing when I want to buy clothes. I see all kinds of great additions to my wardrobe when I have no money or lack the time to try them on and then when I go shopping I can’t find a dang thing that matches. (Alas I never have this problem when it comes to buying electronics… *sigh* – I have way too many geeky toys.)

Anyway, back to my story, or it would be back to my story except I don’t have time to write today. Which of course means the characters are doing amazing things in my head right now and tomorrow night, when I have a writing appointment with myself (don’t laugh, it’s a great strategy), once I’m able to document the exciting lives of my hero and heroine, they’ll all just sit there, like bumps on a log no matter how much I poke and prod then to move.

So what’s a writer to do?

The best advice ever given to me was “Write through the crap.”

Picture the writing part of your brain like a faucet that hasn’t been used in a while. Some days you have to let it run a few minutes before the water runs clear. Sediment settles in the pipes and if it’s been a really long time there might even be a few spiderwebs. The less it’s been used, the longer it needs to run, before anything usable comes out.

So open your blank page and give yourself permission to write crap. Use writing prompts if you find they help. Write about your day or the annoying little ache you feel because you’re not living up to the high standard you’ve set for yourself. It doesn’t matter what makes it to the page. The important thing is that you write. Write everyday, even if it’s just a paragraph or two, so the rust doesn’t have time to settle and that itsy-bitsy spider doesn’t have time to gain a foothold.

Take some pressure from your shoulders. Accept that you will never be able to sit down at a computer and spew out perfect prose, at least not consistently. We all have our moments of pure brilliance, but they are few and far between. If you join your characters on the log to sit and wait for the next burst of inspiration, you’ll be ill prepared, out of practice and will royally botch up any muse that comes your way.

Take a page from the athletes. They don’t just stand at the starting line hoping they’ll win. They’ve been practicing, learning theory, visualizing their victory… so why aren’t you?

I’m not alone in this opinion. I’ve attended several writing conferences and networking events and I’ll tell you, no matter what the genre, or how established the author, they all have horror stories about when they were ready to throw in the towel and give up. None of them talk about how easy it is to write well.

So why do we insist on assuming it is?

I’m a pantser. Someone who usually writes by the seat of her pants.

I need only a vague idea for a story before beginning. Some days it works better for me than others. Two of my collegues and I are currently developing a series of writing workshops and one of them discusses the merits of pantsing versus plotting.

It was discovered that most of us fall somewhere in between. While I’m not going to give away our entire session. It’s interesting to see how we vary back and forth between the two processes.

With Kiere, the manuscript I wrote last November, I tried to do my usual pantsing. It caused me several problems. As I moved forward theough the story, my background setting changed considerably from one section to the next. Now when I go back to edit, I’ll have to nail down the background description and make sure ever scene follows through so I don’t confuse my reader.

Now I’m writing a semi-autobiographical story based on when I was a teenager. Details are sketchy and my memory gaps are larger than I’d care to admit to. While talking to my boyfriend from back then, it turns out my memory is also very selective. Who knew?

What I am discovering is that I’ve got to plot out this story even though I know what happened. My background characters are a mix of the people who were there (to protect the innocent or is it the guilty). I have to keep my modifications straight and remember what personality facets I’ve attributed to who.

This is turning out to be a greater challenge than I’d originally thought, but I’m truly enjoying the process… even though I have to plot

It’s been a nutzoid few weeks and it promises only to get busier, I can’t keep the smile off of my face.

At Paperbox Books we’ve received several submissions and we’re going through them as quickly as we can. I have my SNB Consulting Services proposal almost done to teach a course on internet marketing and have been collaborating to create a series of writing workshops.

Throughout all the mayhem I’ve been able to get a great start on a new young adult novel. It’s semi-autobiographical. When I was in high school, I attended a summer French Immersion program at a university campus two hours away from home. It’s a great setting for a story – high school kids living on a university campus in a co-ed dorm, first boyfriends, kisses and some pretty major decisions. There was some serious teenage angst – trust me I was there

I’ve reconnected with my boyfriend from the French Immersion program. I’m thrilled he is letting me pick his brains for his memories and perspective. Although, I think he has an ulterior motive. I suspect he wants to see if he can finally figure out how my mind worked back then… yeah, good luck with that, I’m not even sure I know how my brain was working when I was fifteen. (and there is some debate whether it was working at all)

As if this isn’t enough, some of my writing friends and I are re-establishing our proofreading group. I have three more novels to edit before I can upload them for sale. Meeting with them every week will really light the fire under my butt to get me moving. Added bonus, I really like the novels they’re writing and their insight to mine, makes me a better editor.

After all, I have those New Year’s resolutions to keep.

I’m a wall flower. Unless I have a specific role, I’m horrible at mixing and mingling at networking events. Right now I have exciting news to spread – I have books for sale. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of and now it’s happening.

How do spread the word without sounding like an overblown buffoon tooting her own horn.

I shot out a similar question on Twitter yesterday and received some great advice. One was to add a button to my facebook fanpage to follow me on Twitter. I figure that will work for my blog and website too.

By TwitterButtons.com

I’ll add two important bits of advice here.

Don’t put the same message on all your updates and let your audience choose how to keep themselves informed.

I have several friends and associates who are following me on Twitter, read my blog, connect with me on LinkedIn and are fans on Facebook. My really good friends and keen supporters do all this for not only me as an author, but also me as a web designer and also a managing editor. The last thing I want is for them to get the same message multiple times. Eventually no matter how much they love me, they’re going to drop some of their support because I’m overwhelming them with detail.

To that end, NEVER auto-link your Faceook status with your Twitter updates.

Two different systems, two different audiences looking for two different types of information from you. Even though I’m pretty savvy and understand what’s happening, I still hide updates from people who Twitter on Facebook, it’s just annoying noise getting in the way when I’m trying to keep in touch with people. For people who don’t know about Twitter, they don’t understand and make some pretty harsh judgments about the person doing the updating.

Stepping off my soapbox now…

Other Good Advice:

Get out there and network both online as well as offline. There are so many networks and communities to connect with. Writers are a wonderful breed who love helping each other out. I’ve got a bunch of them listed at http://paperboxbooks.com/resources/communities.html, and have even more to upload when I’m done this blog.

Remember, it’s not the people you know who are your best customers – it’s the people who know them.

So even if your Mother is a technophobe, she’s bound to brag about your book to her friends. One of them could have an e-reader, or have a sister stuck in hospital who is looking for a new author. You just never know!

and I’m be remiss if I didn’t add,

The evolution of Jake.

Sometimes it takes more than just an idea.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell warns us that to be truly good at anything we have to invest at least 10,000 hours into the study and practice of it. I agree.

For example, even though I enjoyed going to the pool every weekend for swimming lessons, I didn’t really put my heart into it. I became ‘good-enough’ and earned my Bronze Cross instead of winning a gold medal. I taught others to swim across the finish line instead of doing it myself.

Writing is entirely different, if I have a passion, this is it.

I’ve put in 10,000 hours several times over. Am I any good yet? You’ll have to be the judge but writing has been my sanity saver.

So, you roll your eyes what has this got to do with Jake? Well, Jake has been my obsession for almost two decades. He’s been responsible for at least four re-writes and umpteen million attempts.

Jake started off as a short story back when I was in university. Originally, he was haunting an old cabin close to the wharf. I wrote that same story over and over again. Each time it grew longer and had a better ending. By the time I was in my late twenties, Jake’s story was almost thirty pages long.

Then a crisis struck.

The big boss was threatening to close down our department. My supervisor told my co-workers and I that he didn’t care what we did, just to look busy. Over the next two weeks Jake’s story blossomed into a 141 page hand-written novel. Back then, in 1995, I didn’t have a computer at home. After my night shift, I’d stay late at the business centre where I worked, typing in every page, tweaking it here and editing it there. A few months later, my manuscript was in a box and enroute to Harlequin.

As anyone who has ever submitted anything to a publisher knows the wait is excruciating. Jake was rejected, but with a lovely note from the editor with suggestions on how to fix it. Unfortunately, buy the time it came, my personal life was in an upheaval. Jake got shoved to the back of the shelf, relegated to ’someday’.

Someday took a few years, but when it came, it didn’t waste any time. Within months, there wasn’t just one version of Jake’s story, there were two. Jake’s story was re-written as a young adult novel. If I had to guess, I’ve spent over 10,000 hours on Jake alone. I’ve since written three more full length novels and several short stories.

To read the story I’ve made such a fuss is go to PaperBox Books click through to the version of Jake you’re interested in and download a sample. If you like what you read buy the book (or if you’re curious to see the difference, buy the dual version, both versions together, for a discount)