Writing

Hey folks,

I’m at Seekerville talking about how to juggle writing and parenthood! Stop on over and join the fun.

This is a blog post relay which the lovely and talented Dana Roae, who is a Stage 4 finalist in Harlequin Love Inspired’s Killer Voices, invited me to join. Way to go Dana!

Question #1: What am I working on now?

I am finishing up the first draft of another inspirational romance. I plan to have it completed by May 31st. Then I’ll spend spend the rest of my time revising, editing, and polishing.

Question #2: How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I write in two genres: inspirational romance and middle grade fiction. In both of those genres, my writing voice is fun and quirky. I also touch on spiritual themes without being preachy. So readers get an entertaining read which hopefully draws them into deeper introspection.

Questions #3: Why do I write what I do?

Both inspirational romance and middle grade fiction are reflective of who I am, a believer, a romantic, and a kid at heart 🙂

Question #4: How does my writing process work?

Process? Ha! When I wrote my first inspirational romance, I didn’t have a writing process. I didn’t know how to write a novel. When I wrote my first middle grade novel, I didn’t have a process either. This was great for the whole discovery part of writing but frustrating for the “what is this story about?” part of writing. Now, I have a process. I spend about a month planning the story. After planning, I spend 6-8 weeks pounding out a first draft. I’m pretty Type-A with editing and revising so I can spend about 5-8 months revising and polishing after that. It’s usually during that time I go deeper into the story and make it shine.

Be on the lookout on June 2nd and 3rd for the next folks in the “My Writing Process” blog hop:

… Spirited, gritty turn-of-the-century romance stained with suspense Professional coffee drinker, Jaime Wright, resides in the hills of Wisconsin writing historical romance with a distinct emphasis on suspense. Her day job finds Jaime directing an HR Office and developing her employees and their training programs. She’s wife to a rock climbing youth pastor, mom to a coffee-drinking little girl and a bottle-drinking baby boy, and completes her persona by being an admitted Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Blogspot junkie. Jaime is a member of ACFW, enjoys mentorship from a best-selling author, and has the best critique partners EVER! (yes, that’s an exclamation point) In her “down time”, Jaime reads voraciously, socializes incessantly, drinks coffee addictively, and overuses “-ly” words excessively.

Represented by: Mary Keeley of Books & Such Literary Agency

Visit Jaime’s web site: http://www.jaimewrightbooks.com

Email Jaime – jaimewrightbooks at gmail dot com

Like Jaime on Facebook http://wwww.facebook.com/jaimewrightbooks

Friend Jaime on Twitter jaimewright_01

Meet Jaime on Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/jaimewright01/

Jaime’s Mommy blog: http://thenaptimenovelists.blogspot.com

Laurie Tomlinson is a wife and mom from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who enjoys reading and writing stories that uncover God’s grace in the “wait-and-see” moments. She is a member of My Book Therapy and the American Christian Fiction Writers and received the 2013 Genesis Award for Contemporary fiction.

Caryl McAdoo and her husband Ron—high school sweethearts—live with two grandsons in the woods south of Clarksville, the county seat of Red River County in Northeast Texas. She enjoys four-wheeling over the 916-acre McAdoo Ranch, horseback riding, and singing the new songs God gives her. For every blessing in her life, including ten children (counting in-loves) and fourteen grandsugars, Caryl credits her relationship with the Lord, and her heart’s desire is to glorify Him.

Donn Taylor led an Infantry rifle platoon in the Korean War, served with Army aviation in Vietnam, and worked with air reconnaissance in Europe and Asia. Afterwards, he completed a PhD degree at The University of Texas and taught English literature at two liberal arts colleges. His mystery novel Rhapsody in Red and his suspense novels The Lazarus File and Deadly Additive received excellent reviews. The poems he published in various journals are collected in his book Dust and Diamond: Poems of Earth and Beyond. He is a frequent speaker for writers’ groups and has taught poetry writing at the Glorieta and Blue Ridge conferences. He lives near Houston, TX, where he continues to write fiction, poetry, and articles on current topics.

I’ve tried different blogging angles in the past, but I believe the best thing for me to do in this space is to be…me. (My blog header stated this from the start! Preslaysa, can you get a clue?)

From here on out, I’ll use this space as my personal journey into self-discovery. Yeah, I know that sounds heady and esoteric, but it’s not. What it really means is that, at 34 years old, I’m still learning to be comfortable with what I had decided to be when I grow up. I want to share that “learning to be comfortable-ness” with you.

So what did I decide to be when I grow up?

An artist.

In my younger days, my primary mode of artistic expression was acting. As an adult, my primary mode of artistic expression is writing. I’m learning to be comfortable with being a writer. I’ve tried to do everything but be an artist because, like most people, I was educated towards security. An artist’s life is anything but secure, but it’s the way God designed me.

A reader.

I remember the exact moment when I learned to read: I was four years old at a flea market in New Jersey. When I discovered that all those black lines and squigglies had a meaning and a purpose, my world radically changed. Reading was the place where I discovered new ideas. Reading was an escape from the hard times in my life. Looking back, I see how reading copious amounts of books as a child also paved the way for my future life as a writer.

A mom.

I’ve chosen to spend the majority of my days “at home” with my children. (In reality, I’m not home all the time. We have hit every park, play date and library story time in town.) It’s not a role I had envisioned for myself growing up, but it’s brought out the best in me. I don’t think I would have ventured into writing if not for motherhood. This quote from Toni Morrison on motherhood sums up my experience best:

“There was something so valuable when one became a mother. For me it was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me…Liberating because the demands that children make are not the demands of a normal ‘other.’ The children’s demands on me were things that nobody ever asked me to do. To be a good manager. To have a sense of humor. To deliver something that somebody could use. And they were not interested in all the things other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or if I was sensual…Somehow all the baggage I had accumulated as a person about what was valuable just fell away. I could not only be me-whatever that was-but somebody actually needed me to be that. If you listen (to your children), somehow you are able to free yourself from baggage and vanity and all sorts of things, and deliver a better self, one that you like. The person that was in me that I liked best was the one my children seemed to want.”

A wife.

Contrary to popular doctrines, I’m not very submissive. I’m not always helpful. And I’m not my husband’s equal. (Biology clearly ruled out the equality part.) We are different, and we are friends. (Side note: After my husband read this, he said: “I think you are submissive. I am submissive to you too.” Don’t know what to make of that…topic for another blog post.)

A follower of Jesus.

My faith is a very private yet public choice. It’s a private choice because my relationship with God can get personal. God gets in my business a lot. It’s also a public choice because my relationship with God naturally colors my perspective on life and (hopefully) positively impacts my roles as an artist, a mom and a wife.

So my major reason for blogging: to chronicle this journey into these areas of my life, and hopefully learn about your journey in the process.

I have come to peace with the fact that I am a panster when it comes to writing fiction. With non-fiction, I can do the whole organize and plan in advance thing. When putting together a story, I like to start writing with an idea in mind and go from there. It’s both refreshing and nerve wracking to write this way. A lot of times it feels like I’m trying to grasp a handful of air.

I tried to fight my seat of the pants tendencies, but I can’t. It’ll only continue to frustrate me and cause me angst if I try to put myself in the plotter-box.

Now, when I’ve come to the final stages of a story, I pull out the index cards and scene trackers to make sure that I’ve included all the elements: romance arc, scene and sequel elements, character development, spiritual threads, etc. But when I’m first writing a draft (or two, or three) I like to discover the story as I write it.

With this seat of the pants method, I have to do more rewrites so I give myself a lot of lead time before I’m ready to shop a story around.

How did I come to peace with my seat of the pants madness? I recently read a blog by Tess Gerritsen, one of my favorite thriller writers, where she writes that she’s a pantser. She writes four pages by hand each day in her first draft stage, and it takes her about five drafts before a story is done. But she only starts with a character in a predicament. And she’s written over twenty books that way. If she can do it, I can do it too 😉

For me it took a lot more than five drafts to get my first story where I wanted it, but I’ll chalk that up to my huge learning curve which I needed to overcome when I first started writing fiction in 2008. Hopefully, I won’t need to go through 30-plus drafts of a story in the future, or if I do go through 30-plus drafts (which is highly likely due to my Type-A tendencies), I’ll go through them quicker…I hope.

Right now, I’m in the middle of editing another story that I’ve written and I’ve starting my pantsing on a new story. So part of my day is spent editing one story and another part is spent writing new pages for another. Kind of schizophrenic because I’m shifting between two different story worlds, and so I have to put on two different hats.

However, once I reach the final stages for the story which I’m currently editing, it will demand my full energy which for me is similar to when a woman reaches the transition period of labor. I block out everything else and….push.

A crazy, but exhilarating way to live.

🙂

 “I believe that eventually quantity will make up for quality. How so? Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits, single landscapes of incredible control and beauty. Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can come quality.”

(Ray Bradbury)

I agree with this. When I first had the inkling to write, I was as far from an artistic bent as you can get. I worked  as a Defense Analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office. During that time, the real joy of my life came in the hour or so in the morning before I left for work when I would write my Morning Pages, a la Julia Cameron. Morning Pages are three pages of your brain spilled onto paper. I loved this, and I loved that I could do something for myself for three pages a day.

No one will ever read it. (I don’t even want to read it.) But it was a great exercise in learning how to sit down and produce something from my heart (or brain mush) each day, whether “good writing” or “bad writing”—mostly “bad”(if you’re the type that likes to qualify things.) If it weren’t for that daily exercise in producing mush, I wouldn’t have gotten over my grade school fear of just putting something down on the page.

My 18 month old is a writer. She loves to grab a crayon and scribble on a piece of construction paper…or the wall. My 3 year old is a writer too. He loves to grab the crayon from his sister’s hand, watch her scream bloody murder and write on paper napkins or notebooks or wherever.

I love watching them scribble. The scribbles are the thing.

What about you? Do you agree with this quote from Ray Bradbury?