The Journal

I remember as a high school student the concept of journaling became a huge part of classroom activities. The idea of sharing one’s thoughts and visions and whatever else you could come up with now applied to every topic in every class, English, History, Chemistry, Biology….Blah Blah Blah.  Some of those topics didn’t even need a journal, I mean seriously imagine journaling in a math class – “Dear Journal, today in math I learned that x + y = z. Oh and I hate math and it sucks and I don’t care about x or y or z or any other individual letter.”

I can still hear my evil witch of an English teacher saying, “Your homework is to journal about your feelings about Shakespeare’s Hamlet and be prepared to turn them in tomorrow.”  Really?  You want a me, a hormonal confused teenager, to share my feelings about Shakespeare, and you want me to turn in my private feelings for a grade.  Plus you might share them with the entire class…..You’ve got to be kidding!  Needless to say by the time I graduated I despised journaling. To me it was a fruitless activity I bullshitted my way through, and wrote the majority of entries the night before it was due.

As I matured, I found that I couldn’t commit to the idea of writing a journal every day.  When I did journal it was often at a point of great emotional crisis and then I didn’t touch it again. I had no consistency because I’d learned to think of it as a chore and not a pleasurable activity.  I remember once having a fight with my ex-husband and rushing into our bedroom and scribbling out ten mad pages of hateful words and depressing thoughts.  Then I left and he read every single word and admitted his sin of violating my privacy to me and most likely his family (He was weird like that). Then writing my feelings became a vulnerable extension of myself, one I didn’t want to share with him or the world.  So I stopped writing all together, no stories, no journals, no novels, just grocery lists and checks.

Now that I am divorced, I write more freely.  No one lives in my home and has access to my thoughts.  I share my work with a select few until I feel they are ready to see the light of day or a publisher/agent desk.  I still hold some animosity towards journaling.  Perhaps it’s because I view it as homework and therefore lacks the fun factor.  Maybe it’s because I feel obligated to do something, when quite often I have nothing to say to a piece of paper every day.   My life isn’t that interesting and I’d hate it even more if I found myself writing, “Soooo – I had oatmeal for breakfast.  Went to work.  Came home.  Played with dogs.  Read. Wrote. Went to bed.  Same shit – different day.” 

Then I’ve come to realize as a society we have moved to a journaling in a completely new way.  Blogging is a heightened form of journaling.  We share our thoughts, our feelings, our interests, and interpretations.  Blogging is an extension of ourselves.  It is a directed form of journaling and writing enjoyed by the masses.  I can share my writing in a different medium with others and the only feedback I get is comments and not grades.

Now that I’ve had my life turned upside down with my house I’m starting to take a good hard look at prior conceptions and reaching out to the future in a different way.  I’ve realized that I don’t need the rigidity of writing in a note pad, or sticking with a topic, or writing about my feelings.  I can type in a private document an only going list of thoughts and ideas in one place and I’m journaling.  I don’t need to focus on saying something profound or even that it makes sense to anyone but me.   I’m going to start journaling outside the classroom mindset and into a completely new mindset.

Here’s hoping to some sort of success!

What are your thoughts about journaling?  Do you have a place where you collect your thoughts and ideas?  How does your journaling affect your writing?

What have you got to lose?

“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”

― John D. Rockefeller

Sometimes I wonder if pursuing a writing career is a pipe dream or a lost cause.  It’s seems to me I’ve been working hard at this for a very long time.  Anybody else ever feel this way?

I’ll bet there’s more than one person in any crowd who knows what I mean.  You work hard, write every day, watch for opportunities and then get nothing returned but rejections and sometimes, they don’t even bother to let you know they’re rejecting you. . . they simply ignore you.

It’s a hard life, and a constant struggle, but since I’m going to write whether I get published or not, I grues what “they” think doesn’t really matter.

I’ve often asked myself why I do it, keep writing that is, why would I put myself through so much for so little.  It’s because I have nothing to lose, and everything to say.  I believe there’s magic in some of those stories, and someday you may want to read them.  It doesn’t have to be today, but someday is good enough.

Oh, and that is what writers do; they write, whether you’re reading or not.

So jump on in here and tell me, what do you have to lose?

Going the distance

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. Richard Bach

Who decides how much time and effort you’ll put into the pursuit of a career as a published author?  Is the decision driven by a timing element, some number of days, weeks, months or years to achieve the goal you set for yourself, like an expiration date?

When you hit the self-determined “expiration date” have you already decided in the absence of a book contract, you just weren’t talented enough to make it in this business?

When I hear aspiring authors make blanket statements about how long they’re willing to work towards the dream of being a published author I begin to doubt their sincerity in pursuit of publishing.  Many writers will tell you stories about how it took them a dozen manuscripts before they produced a salable idea.  Or even recount the years of work and study of craft that took them from a dreaded day job to a long-term publishing contract.

Writers, and there is a difference between authors and writers, make writing their priority.  They set realistic goals and work towards the end result by learning the craft, paying the dues, and earning the place in the industry.  When they arrive, they do not forget how difficult it was to achieve the dream and so they normally do two things:  they mentor others, and continue to keep the craft fine tuned.

Oh yes, i am aware anyone may self publish, but many who do shouldn’t, and some who can, won’t.  Either way, do not forgo professional editing.  It’s never a bad idea.

Writing Process

Today, I’m going to tell you a little bit about my writing process.  For me, it’s not so much a process as an emersion.  When I sit at the computer to write my story, I try to tune everything else out.  It’s usually quiet in my house, the kids at school or at friend’s houses.  The cats are curled up sleeping nearby.  I really try to focus on the characters and “see” the scene I’m working on.

Before I begin writing I have to know the character’s names, at least their first name.  That usually gives me a strong sense of who they are.  For instance, in Angel’s Assassin, I named the hero Damien.  You might laugh, but I’ve always connected that name with evil or darkness, probably from the movie The Omen.  Damien thinks of himself as evil, as tainted.  He is a killer, an assassin.

For the heroine, I named her Aurora, which means the dawn.  Light to Damien’s darkness.  You get the picture.

I have a very general description of the characters, what they look like, etc. and then I begin to write.  I let the characters lead.  I know approximately where the scene is headed, but other then that, I let them have full reign.  They come alive in my head.  Dialogue is easiest for me, so I write that first and go back and fill in description in a later rewrite.

For full length novels, like Angel’s Assassin, I rewrite at least five times.  Each time, honing in on something different.  The first pass I’ll concentrate on Damien’s point of view, the second time maybe Aurora’s point of view.  Then description and flow, etc.  It usually takes me about a year to write a novel.  But I will never release a novel until it feels complete with a satisfactory ending.  I want my readers to be swept away by the world and the characters and to fall in love with my story.