Stop. Sit in your chair. Open a word doc (or pull out pen and paper) and Begin

We not only have holiday company for a few days at the little log house at Killian Knob, but I am up against a deadline, or two! The post below is a repeat post from 2009 but bears repeating. And it applies to more than just writing!

As for me, I am right now doing some last minute edits on the final Graces novel in the Graces Trilogy. The contract is signed. A date of March/April is planned for its release, and as well, Bellebooks/Bell Bridge Books is re-doing Secret Graces's cover so that all three Graces Sagas bookcovers are similar, so they look like a trilogy (I had a lot of mixed letters/comments on the original cover for SG-some hated/some loved). I can't wait to see what SG and the third Graces novel covers will look like - I still become excited; I still am giddy about it all.

And as well, Rose & Thorn will go live January 15 - we are busy preparing the winter issue. My New Years Holiday will be busy, but in a good kind of way.

So now -

What someone wrote in a comment one day: “You know all that is what kind of halts me in writing. It just overwhelms me and then I block. I like blogging because I have the feel of freely writing. I guess it is a bit of a quirk.”

Never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never NEVER NEVER NEVER let anything stop you from writing if this is what you want to do and you are ready to discipline yourself to it—no one else on this earth or beyond should stand in your way: no advice from well-meaning writers, no rules, no nuttin’.

 Trust me when I say that if you really want to write a novel, or stories, then you must practice your craft and the only way to practice is to just sit down and write. As you practice, you will figure out what works for you, what your “voice” is, what your “tics” are, what your weaknesses and strengths are, what delights you and urges you on and what frustrates you and makes you want to stop writing. You will find out your own personal style of writing in both how you write and what you write.

 But listen! If you are happy writing blog posts, what is wrong with that? If you write a successful blog and people come to your site and leave happy interested comments, are you not a success? Are you not writing for an audience who loves coming by and seeing what you have written?

 When I began writing Tender Graces, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing; I didn’t even know how to write dialogue! But I had desire. I had discipline. I had want. I just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and things began to come clear as to my own style and voice and what made me feel comfortable. I wrote 200,000 words and most of those had to be trashed or re-cast or fiddle-dee-deed, but, boy did I have fun, and boy did I learn much about what kind of writer I’d be. I was writing for an audience of one: Me. That is free-ing, let me tell you!

 Don’t let the “rules” or advice of others stop you or scare you or make you feel as if you are somehow lacking if you don’t write in a certain way—just write and in the writing find out who you are, what kind of writer you are, what you love to write, and how you will write. I can’t stress this enough. Find what makes you happy and do it.

 If the writing feels strained and you want to back away from it, then find out what is hindering you: Are you writing for someone else? Are you listening to too many writers (like me!) give advice and it confuses you? Are you straining towards something that isn’t meant for you?

 Stop. Sit in your chair. Open a word doc (or pull out pen and paper) and Begin. Just have some fun, see what comes out. Who cares if you have so-just-very-little; who cares if there are many adverbs and present participles and dangling participles and similes and blah blah blah blah—how will you know what you want, or where you want to go, or how far you will take things, until you sit down and begin? How will you know what makes you happy until you write it without restraint?

I had to get to a certain point in my writing before the advice I read made sense –Hear that: I had to know how to sit down and write and find out what kind of writer I’d be before all the “rules” began to make sense, and only then could I use them, manipulate them, have fun with them—and I’m still having fun, and I’m still learning my craft—there is always room for growth, never become complacent even if you are a best-seller.

You all would laugh your arses off if you could see some of my first attempts at writing stories. So what? I laugh too! Haw! But I also see how far I’ve come, how much I’ve learned and how much more I can learn.  Lawd, even some of the works I've had published I want to go in and change the heck out of them!

Sit. Breathe. Tune out the voices. Have fun. And, write how and what you want, and where and for whom you want. Be sincere.

Dig it out from the you that is uniquely you.

See y'all Friday for Links Day! Hope you are having a wonderful holiday.

Finding the Rest of Your (life) Story - Don't Give Up

As my brother and I left Blanchard Caverns on our Odyssey trip, one of the tour guides called out, “Watch out for deer. They come out this time of the evening.”

It wasn’t ten minutes later, as we carefully drove along an unfamiliar road in the soon-to-be-coming dusky dark, that I saw a deer by the side of the road and said, “There’s one; be careful.” We passed the deer without incident, both laughing at how we were just warned and then there a deer was.

 A few miles more, and I saw her. She darted out quickly and in the time it took me to open my mouth and yell, “Watch out!” she’d already ran right into Tommy’s truck. The sickening sound of WHAM! against metal, and our cries of “Oh no!”

Tommy said, “I can’t go back. I just can’t.” The stricken look that formed his features into grief must have mirrored my own.

 I said, “I know, Tommy. I understand.”

Yet, despite our words, he’d already slowed to pull to the side of the road. We both knew we couldn’t leave a suffering animal. We’d just lost our father and the thought of dealing with death of any kind caused our faces to fall into folds of worry and sick and sad. And if she was suffering, what could we do? How to help her? The Odyssey had barely begun and already we were ready to call it Done. It was all too much. Too much. Too much.

 Tommy looked into his rearview and said, “Hey wait! She’s up! She’s running into the woods.”

“That means she’s probably okay. Oh I hope so. And Tommy,” I said, “even if she’s not, we can’t go searching for her in unfamiliar woods, especially with dark coming soon.”

 “Yeah, I know,” he said. And we went on our way down that lonely darkening road. The night tainted, unfamiliar. Grieved. It felt as if Tommy and I were the only humans left in the world. Visions of the beautiful animal hurt in the woods pummeled my thoughts. I know Tommy was feeling that too.

We drove in a silent dark that became a deeper dark, nothing around except for a smattering of farm houses here and there far back from the road. Then, at last! There! Lights in the distance. We soon came to a gas-station and stopped to fill up. As Tommy went inside, I looked around, trying to gauge my bearings, feeling disoriented and exhausted. There were a few men standing around but they didn’t look approachable. Another woman filled her car, but she had an angry expression. I felt uncomfortable there, as if I were an interloper upon their space and place and time.

A young woman pulled up to fill her tank. Her friendly face calmed me, so I made my decision and walked up to her, “Excuse me,” I said, “But where are we?”

She laughed, and told me.

“Is there a hotel nearby?”

She laughed again, then said, “Not one you’d want to stay in, that’s for sure.”

 At my stricken look her face softened. “Hey, look. You can go to Hardy. It’s a little town but it has a couple of decent hotels. And!” She smiled and said with mock excitement, “it has a Wal-mart and a McDonalds!”

 “Sold!” I grinned at her, then said, “Thank you so very much.”

 “No problem. Drive safely. There’s some construction on the way.”

We followed the woman's directions and soon Tommy and I were checked-in to a hotel. We set out to the McDonalds for salads and to Wal-mart for a few supplies. Our moods were lighter, our faces lit in relief. I told Tommy I wished I'd have thought to ask her name, for she didn't know what her kindness meant to me, and to my brother.

The next morning was bright and beautiful. Tommy and I prepared again for our Odyssey, our faces as bright and beautiful as the morning. “Off we go!, I cried, “into the wild blue yonder!” We laughed, speeding off to the next adventure.

 I often think what if we’d have given up because of that evening we were so tired and sad and distraught? I think, what if we’d have consulted technology and sped our way to an interstate where everything is The Same, given up the discovery we had been so excited about—the old back roads using only our sense of direction and a paper map. I think what if we’d have said the trip was too hard, and we were too tired and disoriented and defeated. We’d have missed the Rest of the Story. We’d have never known the days ahead of that evening. We’d have slapped the face of the evenings before The Deer & Lost in the Dark incident, when everything was about that discovery.

 Everything doesn’t have to be easy. Everything doesn’t always go our way, or the right way. Everything we do has ups and downs, has disappointments and successes. It’s when we decide to keep going, to let the dark times teach us to reach out to someone, and to find The Rest of The Story, that we live the life we were meant to live—one well-lived.

 Will you give up? Or will you drive through the scary dark to a friendly face, right into the bright and beautiful to find The Rest of Your Story?