Life, Books, and a Corollary

I hate to admit it, especially since I love books, but I finally I had to put a book away unfinished. Here's another admission: this was my second time giving up on a book.

The first time this happened to me it was a college-bound reading list book. The story started with a group of old men talking about I can't even remember. What I do remember was the frustration at not knowing who was talking as there were no dialogue tags. None. There was no way the reader could've picked out who was saying based on character biases because we had only just been introduced to these gossiping gentlemen. I tried and tried to read that scene, but I just couldn't figure it out or get past it. (I realized long after I'd donated the book that it might not have been important to know who was saying what, but rather what they were saying. Despite that hindsight, I'm not going attempt to reread that book. Just the thought makes me cringe. Sorry Henry James.)

Just this week, I had to put another book in the donate pile. (The 2nd book in the series is in the pile too - because I'd do that, buy one book, see the next one, and assume that I'd want to read it.)  I'd actually gotten quite far into the story, about a third of the way through, by sheer willpower. The medieval England locations are a places I'd loved learning about (especially after spending two weeks in London this summer). Deceit and treachery laced themselves in and out of the story. It was the characters that just didn't grab me. I couldn't find anything likable about them, nothing to pull me into the story. The two things that kept me reading: the idea that I'd spent good money for the book and that it had to get better. It didn't.

I had to tell myself that life is too short. Life is too short to read books that don't grab me, that don't make me question, that don't make me feel.

That I spent that much time on the book is crazy. I have an entire bookshelf of unread books, I could've read at least two in the time I spent on the one I didn't like. However, I did learned a few things about another author's style, a way that story can be pieced together, and what doesn't work for me. But still.

As this is my place to muse about writing, I discovered a corollary about life and books: Life is too short to write books that don't grab me, that don't make me question, that don't make me feel.

If I'm not moved by the story I wrote, how can I expect my readers to be? I won't be able to touch every reader, but if I start with engaging me, then someone else is bound to be at least intrigued. While I've seen and heard the advice about writing a story that you want to read, I now have a deeper understanding of the tidbit.

Thanks NaNoWriMo 2010

NaNoWriMo 2010 has come and gone, and we are a household of winners. My two oldest kids won, and so did I. Yes, I wrote my 50,000 words during November. And I'm still writing.

Part of why I haven't blogged about my progress yet is I'd hoped to be done with my story by now. I foresee lots of rearranging and deleting coming to this story, but I'll keep writing to the end before even thinking too much about any of that stuff.

Instead, I thought I'd share a few things I learned this time around in NaNoWriMo.

• Setting a word count, then striving for it, helped keep me at the keyboard getting those words onto the screen. So, now I have a daily word count for first drafts. I'll figure something out for revisions and how to move through those later.
• Life intrudes. Or in my case, writing intrudes on life, when time allows. So, even if I don't meet my word count, thinking of my story counts, even it's just writing a quick something on sticky note to follow up on later. Something is better than nothing. That said ...
• I can schedule mini-vacations from writing. Taking a break from writing to read that juicy/thrilling/suspenseful/favorite-author novel, or doing some other creative endeavor, is ok, even needed. I write this here to remind myself to not feel guilty if I don't write everyday.
• It's time to reach out to other writers. Not just the little notes via Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, but getting in the trenches with folks about manuscripts, revision, setbacks, milestones and the business of writing. It's time to learn, commiserate, and celebrate with other writers.

I'm sure if I thought about it, I'd find other things that I learned or enjoyed, but that's enough for me to be working on at the moment. If you participated in NaNoWriMo, I hope you got something out of it, no matter what it was.

So, thanks for the memories, NaNoWriMo 2010, and for the lessons learned. Here's to meeting you, NaNoWriMo 2011, next November.

Leaves and Patience

This is our first Spring in this new house, and there are lots of things to notice ... rabbits hanging out in the yard, ground squirrels running away at our approach, birds building nests on the outdoor fans (leaving their messes on the patio), quail partners chasing each other across the streets and yards, wildflowers, and new pads and flowers on the succulents. Even our mandarin tree, which in two years hasn't yielded anything, has blossoms. Then, we get to our mesquite trees.

This neighborhood goes back a long time - some mesquite trees' main trunk are as tall as some of the the two-story houses. Nearly every house has at least one mesquite, even different kinds of mesquites. Some with thorns and yellow pollen puffs, some crooked and knarly, others straight and tall. But all of them have at least little green buds of leaves sprouting, if not full leaves. Even the "green space" trees between houses shows signs of green.

Our mesquite trees -- nothing.

I silently worried that ours were dead. They don't look diseased, there aren't ant or termite infestations (anymore). Everything seemed ok in the fall and winter when the leaves fell off the tree. I'd check up close, looking for the little buds that would give me a sign that everything was fine. I'd check every few days, only to find no leaves.

Until today.

Finally buds! The smaller trees even have leaves that seem to have sprouted overnight. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I'm taking this experience as a reminder to let things happen in their own good time. For those that know me and my incredible lack of patience, I hope you didn't laugh too hard when you read that last sentence.

And this reminder comes at just the right time. Lately, I've been frustrated because my writing progress has been slow, like slower than a snail's pace slow. On a great day, I can get two to three hours of writing activity, more often it's closer to an hour a day. There are little reminders at how much progress there is still to make: it is week 21 in my online writing course and I'm just starting week 11; my goal of having both stories ready for the query process by the end of the year. It often seems like I'll never finish my revisions until the kids get into college, which is about nine years away.

Things are going WAY too slow for me, but unless I completely ignore my primary motherly and household duties, this is the pace at which this writing gig is going to happen.

So, despite the agonizingly slow progress, I'll get my butt in my chair and write - even if it's only for 15 minutes. And try to remember that, one day, my own writing will bloom and take off too.