Are You Ashamed of Your Writing? by Karin Gillespie

 Shame is a trendy emotion right now. Brene Brown did a hugely popular TED talk on it. Oprah’s been bandying it about. People are buzzing about it on social media. Certainly I’ve had my share of shameful moments, mostly in my twenties, but until recently I hadn’t given shame much thought. 

A week ago I started re-reading the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and suddenly I realized that for years, shame and I have been constant companions; I wasn’t aware of it because I’d been numbing it.      

  

Cameron reminded me that writing (or any type of art) is often associated with heaps of shame. It begins when you’re taking the first baby steps to owning your identity as a writer. At first, you don’t want to say it out loud to anyone, because the next question is always, “Where have you been published?”

 And, of course, if you aren’t published, then time spent writing feels shameful. People feel free to interrupt you because it’s not like you’re doing anything important. They look upon writing as a luxury akin, to sitting around eating Cheeze whip and Ritz crackers and watching the Kardashsians.   

The shame doesn’t stop when you’re finally published. Some reviewers act personally affronted by your efforts and have no reservations about publically shaming you. “I’ll never get those six hours of my life back” they say, as if you’d been holding a gun to their heads while they read your work.

Shame can also come during royalty check time. Very few authors have not experienced the pain of selling below expectations.  Shame will also sweep in if you’re in a transitional period and haven’t sold anything lately.

And perhaps most painful of all, people will occasionally shame you for what you’re writing. If you’re a genre writer, you might be shamed for writing junk If you’re a literary writer, your navel-gazing is subject to attack. Even people close to you will sometimes shame you. A friend once said to me, “I’m waiting for you to write the serious book I know you’re capable of.”

Recently I got some insight into the reason for all this art-associated shame. I was talking to a friend named Billy  about a mutual acquaintance, who is a beginner painter.  Billy was complaining about our friend because she refused to help him move one Saturday. She told him Saturdays were her painting day.

“She’s just a dilettante, pretending to be Georgia O’Keefe,” Billy said. “Like it would kill her to take one day to help me out.”

   

And that’s when it hit me. Bully, I mean Billy, has always been a frustrated artist. Sadly for him, he’s never pursued his creative impulses because he claims he doesn’t have time. That’s a convenient and common excuse for blocked artists but the real reason Billy doesn’t paint is because he can't bear the idea of being a less than perfect painter and perhaps falling on his face a few times.  

The truth is, people who are happily creating art don’t have time or the inclination to shame other artists. They know that creating art is our birthright; it’s as a natural as breathing, sleeping and loving, and all efforts have validity.                 

  

It’s the creatively frustrated people who delight in the shame game. It’s as if they are saying, ‘How dare you make art when I’m going through so much artistic turmoil?” On some level they hope they can shame us enough so we quit creating, and then they won’t feel as uncomfortable.

 As long as there are blocked artists, shame isn’t going away. The only thing we can do is change our reactions to it. It seems so obvious but it took me years to learn that when someone shamed me, I didn’t have to internalize it. 

The Right Word At The Right Time

by Maggie Marr

The right word at the right time?  How about, yes.  As writers, yes seems to be the word we strive to hear.

Yes, that word is perfect.

Yes, that sentence is ideal.

Yes, the chapter has tension.

Yes, the characters are well-rounded.

Yes, I will represent your book.

Yes, we want to buy your book.

Yes, I loved your book.

Yes, you are a writer.

We spend most of our careers struggling to get to that magical YES!  But here is the thing, I learn more as an author, as a professional, as a person from hearing, no.

No.

No, the book was not a best-seller.

No, you can't make your mortgage only by writing.

No, your pilot didn't get picked up.

No, I couldn't sell this book.

No, while not a word I often want to hear, is the word that always gives me direction.  No, points me the way I need to go, because every time I hear the word no, I have two options:

1.  Give up.

2.  Try harder.

The hard no helps me make a decision.  With that no, I decide whether I need to pursue the story, the path in my life, the  relationship, that received the no.  I must decide if I want to dedicate the time and the energy--my precious resources--to turn that No into a Yes.

Many times--the most brilliant times--no knocks me on my ass.  No then becomes the catalyst for hard work, persistence, patience, craft, dedication....all those things that I utilize to get to yes.

While yes, is most always the right word at the right time, and often my favorite word, no, is a hard reality that often leads to my greatest successes.  I am thankful for both.

Maggie Marr is an author, an attorney, and an independent producer.  She is the author of Courting Trouble, Can't Buy Me Love, Hollywood Girls Club, Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club and the soon to be published Hollywood Hit.  She writes for film and television and is a member of The Vero Law Group.  Maggie lives and works in Los Angeles.   

A Simple Word by Melissa Clark

Sometimes the right words at the right time are as simple as, "Welcome". And that is what I heard Sunday upon arriving at the Obras Foundation in Evora Monte, Portugal. You see, sometimes when life is utterly distracting in your home town, you have to go far, far away to a different continent, a different country, a different culture to get the job done. And it is here, among the chickens, pigs, sheep, castles and a handful of other artists that I hope to do just that.

Tiled trolley in Lisbon

cute chickens

hiking, not writing (yet)

Melissa Clark is the author of "Swimming Upstream, Slowly," and "Imperfect." You can follow her adventures in Portugal at Connections Clark.

My Summer Reading List

by Maria Geraci

It's summer! Which means hot beach weather, vacations, barbeques, and reading.

When I was a kid, the first day of summer vacation was marked by a visit to the local library. Reading list, in hand. You remember those, don't you? The list the teacher gave you the last day of school with the books you were expected to read before classes resumed again in the fall (In my case, the list was tucked inside our report card envelope).

Along with the required books, we always picked out the books we wanted to read (Nancy Drew mysteries when I was younger, a bit more sophisticated stuff when I was older). Maybe it was the geek (or the future writer) in me, but I came to look forward to those " required books ". Without those lists, I'm not sure if my pre-teen self would have had the smarts to have picked up Anne of Green Gables (Oh, Gilbert!)  or Little Women (Oh, Laurie!) or later, read classics like The Count of Monte Cristo. I still remember the summer I was *forced* to read Pride and Prejudice. Talk about a life altering book.

Like most writers, I'm a voracious reader. I try to read within all genres: a) Because you never know what gems you are going to come across, and, b) if you only read within the genre you write in, then you're never going to be exposed to the richness of other worlds.

Lately, I've been reading a lot of YA. I recently finished What I Saw and How I Lied, a book I probably would have never have picked up on my own, except that the leader for my local writing group used excerpts from the novel to discuss writing dialogue. I guess you could say it was on my "adult reading list."  I began it at 10 pm one night and finished it by 4 in the morning. Who would have guessed I wouldn't be able to put it down once I started reading? Not me, that's for sure. But boy am I glad I did. The novel itself was a lesson in how to write tight.

A few summers ago, I decided to go back to my "reading list" roots and create my own list, of sorts. It had been years since I'd read The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye and I decided to reread them at the beach during vacation. Interestingly enough, my reaction to both novels as an adult was similar to my reaction as a teenager. Hated Gatsby, loved Catcher. But I did come to  appreciate the beauty of Fitzgerald's prose and understand the simplicity of how a sympathetic character (Holden Caulfield) can carry a novel.

Since then, I've done the same every summer. This year's list includes: To Kill A Mockingbird (shamefully, I've never read it) and Persuasion (yes, I've read it many times, but I'm convinced, you can never read Jane Austen often enough).

What's on your summer reading list?

(And if you want to put a smile on your face, click on the video below. I promise, if you love books, you won't be disappointed!)


 

Maria Geraci writes contemporary romance and women’s fiction with a happy ending. Her fourth novel,  A Girl Like You, was released last August by Berkley, Penguin, USA and is a 2013 RITA nominee. You can connect with Maria by visiting her website, www.mariageraci.com

 

If you didn't come to sweat--you need to leave right now!

by Michele Young-Stone

Roll!  Work!  Advice to all wannabe published novelists: SWEAT!  Don’t sell out!  SWEAT!  "Work!"  Don’t write something because you think it will make money.  This sounds like a no-brainer, right?  Not really.  Desperate times can call for desperate measures.  Be strong.   

After being rejected by every New York literary agent (accepting unsolicited queries) from A-W in The 2004 Writer’s Market, I tried to write a more “reader friendly novel.”  I tried to write linearly, which is all but impossible for me to manage because my brain simply does not work in a straight-line kind of way.  I can go back to a manuscript and move things around, but my mind translates to the page in images that connect, usually in subconscious ways.  The linear book SUCKED.  It is somewhere now, but I'm not sure where.  500 pages of "this is what I think people want to read..."  Not good.  

Whereas...

my latest novel, currently in the editorial process, the story of two women separated by oceans, generations and war, but connected by something much greater--the gift of wings, was not planned, not linear, not fathomed.  It is the tale of one woman born in 1925 in Lithuania, Europe, and the other woman born in 1973, northern Florida, in these United States.  This novel started with the image of a girl carrying handmade feather-pasted cardboard wings onto a bus, her boots on the black tread, the wings pressed against the metal bar, the bus driver telling her to hurry up, but she didn’t know where to sit. 

The question of where to sit and with whom is metaphorically at the core of this novel.

Excerpt:

My parents do not recall my birth as particularly pleasant.  As a matter of fact, I think that as a fetus and then a baby and then a human being, I came between them.  Before I emerged, they were in love, and they probably would’ve remained that way if it weren’t for me.  But it’s not my fault that they had unprotected sex.  It’s not my fault or my doing that they mixed this mad concoction that produced a Prudence Eleanor Vilkas.  That’s my name.  My father chose the first two and the last one is my surname, my Lithuanian birthright.  I am a Vilkas.

When I started, I imagined a sixteen year-old girl riding a bus.  Other factors at play, the death of two World War II survivors, one German and one Lithuanian, while I was pregnant with my son—factored into, and formed this novel.  Their voices spoke through me.  Strange coincidences kept happening.  For example, the German woman, Mac (Inge Rosemarie Kischel McGarrity) used to give me German marzipan every Christmas.  I was not particularly fond of marzipan, but she didn’t have to give me anything—so I bit my tongue.  Plus, my mother would’ve killed me if I was rude.  My mother and Mac were best friends. 

As an adult, I would give Mac jelly jars so that she would keep giving me some of her amazing blackberry preserves.  She was my surrogate grandmother, my oma.  Anyway, spinning round and round, while writing a scene in Germany for the novel, I wrote about a rose garden and marzipan.  I later found out that it is a custom to flavor marzipan/the almond paste with rose water.  Little things.  All the time.  Everywhere.  Things I couldn’t know about places I hadn’t been, but filled my head just the same.  And then, this year, just as I was finishing the novel, my pastry chef friend who made my son's birthday cake, made the decorations from marzipan.  I guess that when you are willing to see the incredible, it's there.  

I love this novel so much that even if no one buys it, I don’t care.  I am elated to have brought the characters and story into being.  It was a cathartic endeavor, a nearly three-year journey, excluding the life experiences that came to the forefront of the book.  I am grateful for the gift and pleasure of writing, and as one of my professors advised, “If you are writing to become rich or famous, stop now!"

As the rapper Lil' Jon would say (for all my Zumba buddies), “If you didn’t come to sweat, you need to leave right now!”  It’s true.  Like all great endeavors, writing is something that you have to do for the sheer joy of putting those words and ultimately that story on the page and into life.  If it’s good enough, someone will read it.  I promise you!

Michele Young-Stone is the author of the Target Book Club novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors.  Her next two novels are under contract with Simon and Schuster.  When Michele is not writing, she is volunteering in her community, Zumba-ing and paddling around in her pink kayak.  She likes to bird watch and color outside the lines.

www.micheleyoung-stone.com, www.micheleyoung-stone.blogspot.com www.obxbird.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/michele.youngstonefanpage https://www.twitter.com/micheleyosto

     

The Wanderlust of Summer

By Marilyn Brant



The Polish edition of A SUMMER IN EUROPE.

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” -- Freya Stark

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that the Polish language version of A Summer in Europe finally had a cover and was listed on the Prószyński i S-ka (publisher) website! For those writers who may already have multiple translated editions of their stories in print, maybe the thrill slowly starts to dim a little after a while...but for me? I'm not even close to being blasé, LOL. I was beyond excited to see it (embarrassingly so, in a dancing-around-the-living-room kind of way), and even more pleased to know that Polish speakers would soon have the option of reading it. It'll be released on June 18th, and I have my fingers and toes crossed that new readers will enjoy the novel.

So, even though this book originally came out from Kensington a year and a half ago, I've been thinking a lot about the story and the characters lately, wondering how they'll be received by a brand new audience. Also, since the timeline of the characters' actual journey takes place during June and July, I find myself imagining the European tour I'd created for my heroine Gwen and her fictional companions, and mentally traveling with them...especially to Venice, one of my favorite cities in the world.

There's something about summertime that always brings out my wanderlust anyway -- too many years as a student and then a teacher, I think. I equate summer vacations with backpacking and dusty road trips, sweating through t-shirts and wearing out the soles on my sneakers. I remember being a kid and riding in the car with my parents to see relatives out of state -- the windows rolled down, classic '70s or '80s songs on the radio (before they were considered "classic"), my mom's homemade sandwiches packed in the cooler and stashed in the backseat, along with chilled 7-Up and washed apples. I'm in the mood for a road trip like that right about now.

But what I remember most about those excursions were intangible things -- especially the intense longing to be further along on the journey than we were and that insatiable desire to see more and see it faster. To be able to gulp down the world around me so I'd understand it better, not feel so marginal to it. In many ways, it reminds me of the writing life. It feels like a similar kind of long and winding adventure. Lines from Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty" flow back to me whenever I think about those car rides: "Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels, looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields..." Memories of driving trips from decades' past meld together into a montage as my husband, my son and I zip down the open road in June. I don't even need to close my eyes to daydream -- my internal photo album flips ceaselessly from page to page as the landscape changes.

And, every once in a while, I remind myself that I need to slow down and savor these moments. Not to gulp. To let the experience seep in. Remembering that this day, too, will soon be a memory.

Do you have any favorite travel adventures from summers' past? Did you drive? Fly? Sail to get there? Any particular place you're longing to return to? I'd love to hear about it!

Now available: THE SWEET
TEMPTATIONS COLLECTION.

[FYI: If you're an armchair traveler and would like to take an excursion around Europe with me, I have photos and highlights from my blog/travel tour right here, featuring many of the great cities my characters visited in the book, from Rome to Vienna to Paris to London.]

--
Marilyn Brant is a national bestselling author of contemporary fiction. A Summer in Europe (Amazon, B&N and more) was featured by the Literary Guild, the BOMC and the Rhapsody Book Club, where it was a Top 20 bestselling title in Fiction & Lit. Her latest release -- just out last week! -- is The Sweet Temptations Collection (Amazon and B&N), which is a digital three-book boxed set of light romantic comedies. Her love of travel shows up in these stories, too, as does her ice cream addiction ;).

You Said The One Thing That Made All The Difference

by Samantha Wilde

I was on vacation in Provincetown, Massachusetts, many years ago, by myself, feeling depleted and disconnected when I walked into town and into one of the candy stores to buy a favorite comfort food: fudge. The man who served me seemed more like the owner than an employee. He was older, gray-haired, with an air of being in charge. He rang up my purchase. It came to about $2.84 (I did say this was a long time ago!). I gave him two dollars and rooted around for the change. It wasn't small change, either, adding up to the greater part of another dollar. "Don't worry about it," he said, passing me the bag. "Enjoy."

Now I'm sure I haven't blown your mind with this tiny, insignificant story. Maybe you barely even made it through that paragraph and are still waiting for something exciting to happen. With our wonderful addiction to drama, tiny stories don't often arouse big responses. But I had a big response that day. Since I was feeling so down, and since feeling down often makes us feel isolated, separated, uncared for or unloved, this man's small act of kindness and generosity, his few words of spaciousness and grace, well, they made all the difference in the world. He gave me much more than an eight four cent gift. I walked out of the store lighter, like a chosen, lucky person.

I know many people who have experienced similar tiny moments when the right words were spoken at just the right time. Has this happened to you? Sometimes, a few words change the course of a life or even many lives. Our words have such power and promise. And writers deal in words. Most writers hope very much that their words will effect the readers, touch them, change them, uplift them, inform them, connect them. It was E.M. Forester who said: "Only connect."

In one of the early of my mother, Nancy Thayer's, 23 novels, she wrote the line, "It's never to late, in fiction or life, to revise." This sentence has leaped so far off the page that she once opened a catalog and found it had been used on a plaque! It's in books and on calendars. There is something strong and true and resonant about the statement and that is why it's taken on a life of its own.

I love how language and ideas can become a force in the world--independent of the author. A friend told me this: "There was a part of I'll Take Where She Has that meant so much to me I folded over the corner." Could there be sweeter words to a writer's ears? I have always wanted to write words in a book worthy of the corner fold. What about having some of your sentences underlined? Used in casual conversation? Spoken aloud? Kept in someone's mind as a talisman that strengthens them?

I had the opportunity to speak aloud some of my words to a large audience in support of an amazing local organization MotherWoman. I worked with another spoken word artists, Alysia Cosby, and we performed my Motherhood Is Meaningful Manifesto live for 450 people. Many people told me that our words inspired them. One of the mothers present said to me many days later, "Your words did so much for me that I left that day thinking YAY! That was exactly what I needed to hear. I felt changed when I left."

I am always giving people words. Sometimes, it's all I have! One way I do this is to share books that have made a difference in my life. If I have a friend going through a trial, I try to put my hands on just the right book and pass it along or recommend it. The ideas I've discovered in reading have healed me many times over. And so have the few simple words from friends and strangers, many of whom will never know the effect of their right words at the right time.

Isn't it incredible to think we all have that power--to use for the good? Here are some of my favorite words: "Thank you." "I love you." "I'm so glad to see you." "You are beautiful." "You are a good mother." "You are doing a good job." "You can do it!" "I'm here if you need me."

When have the words of someone else made all the difference in your life--words you've either heard or read? And what tiny event, almost insignificant, has words spoken in it that made a difference you've never forgotten?

Samantha Wilde is the author of the recently released I'll Take What She Has and This Little Mommy Stayed Home. She is an ordained minister, a yoga teacher, and the full-time, at-home mother of three small children who often say just the thing she needs to hear. She really appreciates it when people like her on Facebook (and is happy to return the favor), follow her on twitter, check out her mothering blog, purchase vast quantities of her novel, or make a movie out of one of her novels that becomes a blockbuster. "Here's a million, honey!" Those are some right words at the right time!