Life's Too Short to Hold Yourself Back

Norman Rockwell's "Girl in the Mirror"

Stephanie, a former student of mine, recently commented in a Facebook post that life is too short.
Wow--needed to hear that.

I had been going through a low time, discouraged, wondering why I keep trying to achieve my writing goals--going two steps forward, three steps back, etc. Typical pity party. I've worked my way through it, but it will most likely happen again. :-)                  

A few days ago, I got in the car and plugged my iPod into the car's radio. It was set on "shuffle" so random songs played. I must add that my husband has loaded hundreds of songs onto both our iPods from many, many genres. We have very eclectic tastes in music. The first song began and it hit me between the eyes.

"Little voice in the back of my head keeps telling me that I'm not good enough, not strong enough. Little girl somewhere in my mind under the covers cause she's too scared of everything to try anything. She talks all that trash telling me I should just give up. I look in the mirror put on my mascara and tell her to just shut up. Cause life's too short to hate yourself to try to be someone else, so quit wasting your time. The days go by way too fast, to let anything hold you back. So don't cry anymore cause life's too short to hate yourself..."

Thanks, Kellie Pickler for getting inside my head with this song.

Distractions

As a teacher, I have always had a mile-long list of what I want to accomplish in the summer. Through the years, I've learned that most of that list needs to be checked off during the month of June or it will be very difficult to make it happen. Well--I am facing the last week of June and still have not accomplished my primary goals for the summer. Of course, everything I've done has been necessary, important. I couldn't nor wouldn't change a thing. I had three inspiring days of teacher training with Ken Stamatis of Harding University. I coordinated our annual June dinner meeting for SCBWI-Tulsa. My husband and I enjoyed an amazing trip to Oregon and Washington for a family reunion and viewing of breath-taking sights. I spent one weekend before the trip and one after, mentoring other writers, and throughly enjoyed an evening celebrating the sale of a friend's book. Every activity over the last month was significant and necessary, but I'm determined to spend the next month immersed in my novel--editing, polishing, making it shine. So, here I go. Updates to come.

Quote of the Day

"You can't stop a person if he gets it in his head he can write."
Will Rogers

Publishing Obsession

  I just watched one of my favorite movies for the third time. The movie is, Julie & Julia, with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. Julie & Julia is based on the real lives of two women from two different times, whose connection came through a love of cooking and Julia Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Sometimes, I feel guilty for taking time away from writing to sit in front of the TV and watch a movie. But I've recently realized that good movies often inspire me to be creative just as much as a good book.

On the surface, the movie seems to just be about food, but it is the underlying theme, of working to achieve your dreams, that draws me back to watch this film again and again. One of the scenes where I feel like the actress is speaking from my heart is where the character of Julie is in yet another funk about her lack of success.

Her husband says, "You wrote a novel."
Julie says, "Half a novel, and no one wanted to publish it. You're not a real writer unless someone wants to publish you."

It's true. It doesn't matter how many times I say, "I'm a writer". In my mind and heart, I won't be a real writer until someone wants to publish me.
So, just like Julie & Julia, I will keep trying. I will be thankful for those encouragers in my life who push me to keep plugging away. I will pick myself up when I get discouraged. And someday soon, one of my novels will be published in the children's book market. Then, I will call myself a real writer.

Fictional Research

  I love the freedom of writing contemporary fiction. I create character's lives, their locations, and their situations. They can be based on a totally made up person or a combination of several people I have known. I can make them as good as I want or truly bad to the bone. However, sometimes that freedom to dream up a situation or family can leave me with writer's block. It happened to me yesterday.

  I am in the middle of the first draft of my fourth children's novel--none published yet but still writing, submitting, writing, submitting... My fellow writers know the drill. 

  Over the last week, my typing fingers have been a blur. I was IN THE ZONE. It seemed the story had taken on a life of its own and I was just the vehicle. I even assured a writing friend of mine that I would absolutely have the number of pages to match the temperature by today. Our temps have been well over 100 degrees all week. 

  Then at page 86, it stopped.

  I've learned through my previous novels that a story has to be more than a character, more than a situation. You don't have to know everything before you start but you need to have a pretty good idea what the climax will be and how the main conflict will be resolved. I know those things. I used my plot mountain chart, I  used post-its to visually see the chapters and I've used sticky tags on the side of those notes to show where specific elements have appeared in the plot. HOWEVER, I seemed to ignore the fact that I have several short stories within my tale that have to be told. 

  I brought my protagonist through a tension filled scene, placed her in a frightening situation, then I sat with my hands poised on the home row of keys and...nothing.  

  After an hour or so of pretending I had an idea, erasing it, putting in laundry, checking my email, my answer was RESEARCH. 

  Don't you love how you can find the answer to just about any question by doing an Internet search? No, I didn't find several short stories that fit my plot but I did read about similar situations and those stories stimulated my creative juices enough to push me through. I didn't get as far as I hoped by today but I'm in the 90's--if only our temperatures would dip that low, I'd be really happy.

  Fictional research--give it a try the next time your story comes to a standstill. 

  

It's a busy time of year where we add to our work load with shopping, baking, decorating. Writing can sometimes be pushed to the back of our priority line even more than usual. Personally, I find December to be a time of reflection. The memories of past family celebrations and the wonder and hope of the season stir up my creative juices. Now, to find the time to make those computer keys start clicking with those sparks of a story is the hard part.

A great way to get my writing in motion was to attend our local SCBWI-Oklahoma Christmas party at our Regional Advisor's home. We celebrated, encouraged, dredged up memories of Christmas past, and committed to writing goals. There is no better place to find writing material than from our own experiences. The emotion can be applied to any genre.

Merry Christmas to all my writing friends and may 2011 be the year the doors open.

Celebration of Books-Tulsa, OK

If you have never attended the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers' Celebration of Books in Tulsa, let me encourage you to make plans to attend next year. I was privileged to attend the presentations last night with Sue Monk Kidd, author of THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES, and Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize winning author of THE HOURS. Even though these are adult writers, and I write for children, it was an inspiring evening.
Today, I heard Carlotta Walls Lanier, youngest member of the Little Rock 9, who has written a book about this amazing time in her life. One session included children's authors, Anna Myers, Kim Doner, Molly Griffis, George Edward Stanley, and Tim Tharp, who offered tremendous advice about writing for the children's market. Later in the day, the goose bumps piled high when Pulitzer winning poet, Rita Dove read several of her poems. Amazing. S.E. Hinton conversed with the audience in her presentation about her novel, THE OUTSIDERS, and several of her most recent works.
It is such a joy to spend any amount of time with the famous and not so famous who love books and writing them.

Carving Out Writing Time

School has started and I have more students than I have had in all my teaching career. It's always tough to carve out some writing time during the school year but my page count has been almost non-existent since the beginning of August. On Friday, three hours after the halls were empty, I finally packed my cart of more school work to do over the weekend and headed home--and then it hit me. I could spend all weekend grading and still not be finished or...I could commit to spend Saturday writing. I chose to write and it felt like a million bucks. My characters thought I had deserted them. It was good to reconnect and keep the plot fresh in my mind.
Sunday afternoon, I still had stacks of things to do but I accomplished a great deal more because I wasn't resenting time taken away from what I really wanted to do.
So, whatever is standing between us and writing, we do have a choice. We must MAKE the time to write. We will be better moms, dads, spouses, and employees for our efforts.

Derek Redmond 1992 mpeg4