The last two blog posts were all about what to do when you don’t feeeeeeel like writing (wah!)
This time I’m on a mission.
Post your biggest writing excuses below (‘not enough time’, ‘my inner editor won’t shut up’, ‘my ideas aren’t original’, ‘my kids are eating me alive!’) and I’ll let my inner drill sergeant loose on them.
Ready to have your go-to writing excuse busted? Post them now:
Here are your September 2012 Participant Badges!
Use them on your websites or where ever you like.
(Right-click to download whichever size you like)
500 x 230 pixels
300 x 138 pixels
250 x 115 pixels
200 x 92 pixels
150 x 59 pixels
This is for everyone – whether you wrote or you didn’t. If you wrote in a previous year; if you wanted to write but couldn’t make it; if you wrote one story; if you simply read and enjoyed someone else’s.
This is our chance to celebrate, and boost both the short story and our friends in StoryADay.
StoryFest is a weekend when the stories take over StoryADay.org.
On Jun 8, the front page of StoryADay.org will change to one dedicated to you and your stories. It will be full of links to your stories, online, until June 10.
It’s our end-of-year party, our recital, our chance to share our work with readers.
Simple.
Be ready to supply your storyaday username, your real name or psuedonym, a link to the story you’re nominating, its title and a summary, a link to a story by someone else (optional but karmically recommended).
Deadline: Tuesday, June 5.
This gives you a few days to pick your story and possibly polish it a bit. If you can get it to me before the deadline I’ll love you forever, though, as it’s going to take me a while to organize all the submissions.
Does my story have to be online?
Yes. We want to create a reader fanbase for you. Stories must be posted somewhere online, in full.
Is it OK if my story is on my personal blog (or other site).
Absolutely. Just supply the link.
Will it be considered published?
Your story is not being published by StoryADay, but you should be aware that some editors still consider a story that has been posted online, as having been previously published. If you think this is your last good story ever, by all means guard it with your life. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about this.
Does It Have To Be A Story I Wrote During StoryADay?
Yes. I’ll have to trust you on this. But it can be a story you wrote in a previous year.
Why Do I Have To Select A Genre Label?
Try not to agonize over this. I know most fiction is really cross-genre. It’s just short-hand for readers. I know I’m more likely to plump for a Speculative/Sci-Fi story or a mystery before I will read a fantasy story. As a reader, you don’t want to scroll through a long list of stories with no clues as to which you might prefer. Genre labels simply help readers make a quick decision, rather than being paralysed or overwhelmed and not clicking on anything. Just think like a reader, grit your teeth and pick a genre.
Can I Submit Erotica/Horror/TheWierdStuff?
Um, okay. But I’d appreciate it if you’d label it as such, so as not to scare the grownups.
Can I Revise My Story?
Absolutely. Polish it up, shine its little shoes, put a bow in its hair and send it into the world looking its best. But don’t take too long! And remember, you’re unlikely to ever be 100% satisfied. Polish it a bit, then let it go.
This light-hearted article has a serious point: you are a writer, and you should stop at nothing to trick yourself into believing it, even on your worst days. Here’s how I did just that.
Defining ourselves as writers when we’re working on speculative manuscripts, short stories, queries — anything we love to write — is difficult. Most of us are conditioned to think that unless someone has given us a contract to write something, it’s not ‘real’.
I’ve been out of the wage-slave business for a long time now. Since leaving corporate life, first I was a freelance business writer, then a stay-at-home mom and now I’m a mom/writer/part-time-lunch-lady-at-my-kids’-school.
Defining myself as a writer when I was doing freelance business & magazine writing was easy. I wrote something; someone paid me; I was “a writer”.
Defining myself as a mother is inescapable. I have two chatty reminders of it orbiting me at all times except during school hours. And it’s pretty hard to forget you’re a part-time-lunch-lady when hundreds of kids are streaming past, grabbing their yellow or red foodstuffs out of your hands and grunting monosyllabically as they go.
But our writing lives are real. We need to let ourselves take them seriously.
My writer’s group recently hosted Nicole Valentine of Figment.com. As well as running a writer’s site for teens, Nicole is a writer herself, pursuing an MFA. Yet she still has trouble with this question. She joked that she often wants to get a stamp with “writer” on it and stamp it on her forehead, just to remind herself that it’s OK to say it.
I was seriously thinking about how to fashion one of these stamps [1. Maybe with ink that only showed up under blacklight, so we could use it every day, in secret…] when an odd thing happened as I was running from the school to a store and trying to get home in time for the school bus.
In my rush I had forgotten to take off my ID badge. I feel kind of silly wearing it because I’m only a part-time lunch lady. That day I realised that, to anyone walking past, I could have been any working woman on a break from doing something high-powered and ‘important’ [2. I happen to think that being in the lunchroom and trying to slow the de-evolution of our children back to chimp-status is important, but not everyone sees it that way. Just as not everyone sees ‘making up stories with no promise of a paycheck’ as a worthwhile pursuit. Though, strangely, everyone is impressed by a ‘published’ author…]. Having been out of the corporate world for about a decade, I got a real kick out of having that ID card dangling from my pocket again. It was ridiculous.
Then I realized, beyond impressing grocery-store-bound strangers, that ID card had done something else for me: clipping that ridiculous card to my belt made me feel professional – even if I was just going in to sling pizza at pre-teens. If an ID card could make me feel professional about being a part-time lunch lady, then maybe I could go one better than Nicole’s forehead-rubber-stamp idea and issue my writer-self an ID card too.
I know, it’s goofy. It cost me $18 with shipping, and it doesn’t actually change anything. But when I swap out my lunch-lady ID for my Writer ID, it is a tangible reminder to myself to come home and put my writing first. I can be a mom, a wife, a cook, a friend, a slob later. Now is the time for writing. Because see? I’m a writer.
If you want your own Writer ID card, you can go here (not an affiliate link). Go on, treat yourself. It’s cheaper than a set of golf clubs, a fancy bike, or even the cost of a sweater and nobody laughs at golfers, cyclists or fashionistas for spending money on their avocation. [3. Well, ok. We do laugh at them. But that just proves that the potential mockery of others from outside your tribe is no reason to hold yourself back.]
So, what do you do to remind yourself it’s OK to say “I’m A Writer”?
[NOTES]
Here are your 2012 Participant Badges! Use them on your websites or where ever you like!
(Right-click to download whichever size you like)
500 x 230 pixels
300 x 138 pixels
200 x 92 pixels
150 x 69 pixels
100 x 46 pixels
OK, you’re thinking of embarking on a big creative challenge.
How’s that making you feel? Feeling some resistance? That’s normal. Feeling a cold rush of terror? Not unusual. But I’ll bet you’re feeling something else too: a little thrill at the idea. (C’mon, you’re a writer. Of course you’re tempted.)
And sometimes, taking that risk leads to something completely unexpected.
Let me tell you a story about what happened when I met Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writer’s Month, an insane creativity challenge I in-no-way-ripped-off when I started StoryADay.
In the late 1990s, when the Web was young, I had a writer friend who was a real sucker for collaborative creative challenges: Illustration Friday, Livejournal memes and, eventually, this crazy new thing called National Novel Writer’s Month.
It was the first time I had entertained the idea that writing might be anything but a solitary endeavour.
Over the years, I tried a few of these challenges (100Words.net, NaBloPoMo) and even came close to signing up for NaNoWriMo in 2009. I had read NaNoWriMo founder, Chris Baty’s book “No Plot, No Problem” and loved his ‘creativity for all’ outlook — but by this time I had I had two small kids and my creative life had contracted to the point where I was reduced to drafting critical analyses on Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends (I have a whole thesis on Gordon’s daddy issues, and Percy? Classic victim mentality.)
So I chickened out. Again.
The winter dragged on and I sank into a deep slump.
I was grumpy with everyone all the time. I needed a creative outlet but every time I started anything, even my beloved short stories, I failed to finish.
You know that feeling when you’re scared to start because you might let yourself down again?
One memorable day in March 2010 I hit bottom. Driving along a bleak country road in Pennsylvania – the bare tree-limbs reaching out to claw out the last shreds of my creative soul as we sang along to “Cranky, He’s The Dockyard Crane” – I snapped. That’s it, I thought. I have to do something really scary to jolt myself out of this. I’m going to write a story a day for a month. I can do a story a day, right? I’m going to finish each one, and I’m going to tell everyone about it, so they can shame me if I stop writing.
It was terrifying.
So I did it.
Fast forward to this January.
With two years of StADa under my belt I was ready to stretch my wings. My wonderful husband practically pushed me out the door to the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC (If you haven’t been to a conference, I can recommend it: being surrounded by professionals and passionate would-be-professionals has a powerful effect on your motivation and self-respect, never mind what the workshops do for your skills).
The keynote speaker was to be NaNoWriMo’s own Chris Baty, which was a bit thrilling, but I wasn’t actually going to, you know, meet him or anything. (Not if I could help it, anyway.)
The first evening was a whirl: so many ideas, so much inspiration, so many notes to take, so much preparation to do for the Agent Pitch Slam (like speed dating, with literary agents). I was up so late preparing my pitch than I hardly slept.
I stumbled into the wrong session. After ten minutes, I ducked out early to look for the right session. As I wandered past the author area, my heart gave a little lurch. There was a tall, bald man sitting behind a stack of Chris Baty’s books. And I’d just made eye contact with him. It couldn’t be, could it?
The long moment stretched. My internal thermostat went crazy. I think I did that darty-eyed thing small animals do when cornered.
What would I say? Would he be mad at me? And would he even understand me, now that my tongue had swollen up to three times its normal size and my mouth had turned to sandpaper?
The next thing I remember, I was standing in front of the great man (really. He’s very tall) handing him a card and confessing my sins.
He looked at the card.
He looked at me.
“Is it free?” He asked, somewhat unexpectedly.
“Um yes, yes!” I said. “I mean I have some courses and ebooks people can buy if they want, but the challenge? Oh yes, totally free. They don’t even have to sign up at the site. I just think its so important to encourage people to be creative and…”
I was babbling and breathless.
“Huh,” he said, looking up at me (he was sitting down). “This is so GREAT!”
He beamed.
I beamed.
We started ranting about creativity and the importance of people giving themselves the permission to write. We raved about community and the other creative challenges on the web (he gave me generous, concerned advice about running a challenge), and we shared typical-writer-insecurities. We talked about the thrill of writing and the joy of having a hand in other people’s growth as writers. We promised to stay in touch. I may have started to refer to him as “m’new-boyfriend-Chris-Baty” (it’s OK, the wonderful husband understands). I walked around on a cloud for the rest of the weekend.
The last person I saw, as I wheeled my suitcase out into the New York streets, was m’new-boyfriend-Chris-Baty, sitting in the lobby, tapping away on his laptop. He looked up and waved. I had a new ally and it felt wonderful.
Starting StoryADay was scary.
Walking up to Chris Baty was scary.
Sitting down to write every day is scary.
But pushing yourself to do the scary thing is almost never a bad idea. (Unless that scary thing involves heights. Or venemous snakes. Don’t do them.)
I cannot stress strongly enough the value of:
StoryADay May is one way you can do all those things. Sure, the aim is to write a story a day, but I’ve always maintained that you should set your own rules. Some people aimed for 3 stories a week and hit that challenge. Some people aimed for 31 but their lives got complicated and they came out of the month with ‘only’ 12 stories … and were still thrilled.
But you don’t have to wait for May and you don’t have to travel to New York to confront your fears.
Write a story today. Post it online, if you dare.
[UPDATED] See? I didn’t make this up!
The only qualification to be a ‘Superstar” is a desire to write and support your fellow writers.
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A 6-part journey through the short story.
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