Posts for category ‘writing’

Though Story of a Girl sold in May 2005, it was around this time that year everything was being made official—contracts, payments, deadlines. I was also figuring out with my employer at the time when quitting day would be. Since my job was dead-end, part-time, with no benefits, for me the question wasn’t if I’d leave, but when. We settled on January 31, 2006. My biggest fear when I left was that I’d run out of money and having to go back to work. When that very thing happened in 2007, the perfect temporary job came to me right when I needed it.

As I wrote my second book, my biggest fear was that it would be a huge failure and disappointment, that the success of Story of a Girl was a fluke. Sweethearts ended up doing just fine. When I sold books three and four, I didn’t so much fear total failure as I feared that I lacked what it takes to sustain a writing career over the long term. How could I keep this up? I had a sense of urgency about getting irons in the fire and exploiting every opportunity.

Now that I’m taking the last lap in the editorial process with what will be my fourth book, there are remnants of the fear that I can’t sustain this, but mostly they have settled into questions. What do I want next? What are the prospects that excite me vs. the ones that just make me feel tired? What would I do with the next year if I didn’t have to think about money? I haven’t yet tried to sell a fifth book; that’s been an intentional decision. Do I need a break? Do I need to try something completely new? Would a total failure right about now be exactly what I need?

My time at the Glen Workshop this summer provided roomy space not only for pondering these questions in the quiet of my own head, but exploring them with friends and comrades. No one gasped in horror when I talked about directions I might like to go, no one clutched at me and said But what about your career? (You know who you are. Thank you.) Rather, in several conversations, this warning came up: don’t ever do anything for money. Of course, we don’t live in a fantasy world in which all our bills are paid by a patron, and we all sometimes need to do things for money. Yet it’s wise, when possible, to avoid making creative decisions based on financial need—those are the decisions that are mostly likely to wind up sapping you of your energy and making you resent and avoid your work. In other words: don’t let the fear get to you.

And there are a lot of fears churning around in every writer, maybe most of all in those of us who have had some success. There’s the fear of losing your place in the community or the industry and then not being able to get it back, fear of letting people down, fear of being the subject of one of those “whatever happened to…” conversations, fear of stepping out to try something new and getting shot down, judged, fear of the assumptions people might make if you fade away for awhile. Fear of being broke and forced into a job you hate.

I’m weighing all those fears these days as I think about what’s next, and they don’t seem to the power they once did. A lot has happened in the last five years. A lot a lot. I was 34 then, and now I’m about to turn 40. Many of the things I set out to prove to myself and others back then have been proved. Terrain I wanted to explore has been explored. Now the globe is spinning beneath my fingers; it’s up to me to apply pressure where I want to stop. It’s not up to me how it all might turn out.

From the outside in, maybe whatever I do next won’t look that different from what I’ve been doing. Maybe it will. All I know for sure is that in the midst of being smart about the practical needs and realities, I want to be a beginner again at something creative, to always be a learner, to be bold and risk failure. I want to have faith that when I step off the comfortable path, I’m not going to freefall forever. So far, none of my fears have come to fruition—or at least, when they have, they’ve led not to disaster but to growth. All I have to do is hang onto that when panic threatens and fears seem to regain power. Easy.

(I was inspired to organize these thoughts in part by this piece on vocation, by my friend Allison Backous.)

Hey, thanks so much for your responses to my last post. I actually almost got up in the middle of the night on Friday to delete it, because I started feeling freaked out and vulnerable. I’m grateful for your comments.

So, the upcoming weeks are pretty much the busiest and most stressful of the year so far for me. I’m hoping to finish a revision, prep for then teach my Writing & Illustrating for Young Readers class, host a houseguest, and pack up to leave home for a month. And of course do normal stuff like eat, sleep, and work out. There are not enough hours in the day for all that needs doing.

Therefore, obviously, all I want to do is  organize my closet, read cookbooks and create imaginary menus for dinner parties I’ll never have, spring clean, bake bread, nap, and plan vacations that will never happen. I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s the subconscious acting out denial, or some psychic blowout preventer trying to tell me it’s too much. I know it probably happens to you, too, sometimes. What kinds of tricks does your subconscious get up to when you have a hard task ahead?

I play tricks back: I tell myself I can do anything I want after I do the 37 things on my list for the day. That moment never comes, sucka! My subconscious usually falls for it anyway.

Where is Superman? I need him to fly around the world real fast to unwind time. (While he’s at it, he can go back to April 19th and unspill the oil.) It’s just complete insanity that today is June 1, right? I’ve got a lot to do, and the only way to do it is the way I ate my spinach when I was seven: one bite at a time.

The two primary tasks right now are revising Zarr Book 4 and prepping for my class at the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers workshop in a couple of weeks. (There are still some classes open in pictures books, chapter books, and beginning writing, by the way.) I’ve been reading student papers and am impressed. I’m also a little nervous. When I think back to my experiences taking workshops like this, I remember how scared I was, how eager, how many hopes and expectations I pinned on the leader, how I longed to learn The Secret. Of course we all know there isn’t a Secret, but on some level I think we still wish for one. I feel the pressure of delivering.

For me as a student, what made great workshop experiences came down to a combination of class chemistry, the general quality of the work, and a leader who was in control without appearing to be In Control. Less great experiences involved poor time management by leader, poor people management by leader (e.g. letting students dominate or go on tangents), or mean people.

Have you taken a writing workshop? If so, what are the kinds of things that have either made it a great or not-great experience? Tell me The Secret to leading a fantastic workshop.