I Really Should Be Writing

 

There's a meme most writers are probably familiar with - the "You Should be Writing" meme. There are a variety of them, with different characters and scenery - but the message is the same.

Yes, I should be writing. I've started a few new short stories for my next book, but my writing has just recently come to a screeching halt. I feel like my motivation is lacking. My stories need to be mapped out, but I haven't been working on them. I know I'm not stuck. I don't have writer's block. It's just plain old procrastination.

Procrastination, that tempting, time-wasting thief of productivity, is something we're all familiar with. I know I need to get the writing done, and I want to do it. I was excited to dive in and start working on these new stories. But when it comes to writing, I haven't procrastinated this much since I was in school and would put off writing term papers for as long as possible. So why am I procrastinating now? Why does any writer procrastinate?

Fear of failure. It's a pretty common reason for procrastination. I'm working on mystery stories - not an easy genre for me. What if I start writing and realize the story isn't working?  Maybe I'm worried I won't be able to fix it and I'll end up ditching the story completely.

Insecurity. We writers often struggle with it. I sometimes catch myself thinking, "Maybe I'm not a good writer. I don't have many people reading my stories or buying my books. Maybe I should stop." I am my own worst critic, and it's that inner critic that plagues me.

There's also the worry about what happens after the book is finished - the worry that no one will read what I've written, and the seemingly irrational opposite worry - that someone will! And what if they don't like it? Then there are the typos and punctuation errors I'll find after I publish. There's just always something that I have to go back and fix, which fortunately with print-on-demand, I can do.

And what about all the work of promoting the stories after I publish? How do I get through writing about what I've written  - book blurbs, social media posting, advertising? I've done it before, and it can be tedious work. And I'm not great at it.

Procrastination is a thief of time, and for me it's also a thief of joy. I find myself feeling depressed and down on myself for not writing. It may be that feeling depressed caused the procrastination in the first place and is now in a vicious cycle also the result of it. But in spite of all the anxiety, fear, and insecurity, it makes no sense to not be glued to a notebook or to my keyboard working on my stories, to be doing all kinds of mindless, boring little tasks just to avoid them.

Why do we tortured artists put ourselves through this? It's part of the creative process apparently. An impending deadline can spur us into action when we're putting off doing something, but I don't actually have one. As a self-published author, I am not under contract and have no obligation. Still, I do have a goal for publishing that starts out as a month and then gets whittled down to the day of that month that I want to publish by.

So as the days fly by and my stories are incomplete pages in a word document and my characters are as stationary as mannequins, all waiting for their scenes to make their way from my imagination to my fingers, the "You Should Be Writing" memes keep popping up in my mind.

Yes, I definitely should be writing. How to stop procrastinating? I don't think there's a specific strategy; I think you just bust out of it. I have a notebook and pen on my nightstand now to give me a push though, and all my books are on my Kindle app on my phone for extra encouragement.

In any event, new stories will be coming this summer!

The Long and Short of It

 

I started out publishing short stories a few years ago, but this year I published a novel and a novella! The novel is basically a ghost thriller with some family secrets and nineteenth-century romance, and the novella is a contemporary rom-com. 

You may be saying, "Wait, hold up! Why two such different books? Don't you always write one genre?"

No. I write short stories, and I like to play around with genres. And yes, I decided to try my hand at writing a novel.

The result was "The Bellwood Legacy." It's not terribly long - it's around 220 pages. But there's a lot packed into those pages as I was writing about different people and time periods within the same family. Not surprisingly, the book was originally supposed to be four short stories, but I ended up combining them into one long story with characters from the past now being ghosts in the present.

It was a daunting task finishing and editing the novel. There were several little last minute changes just trying to get a sentence right here and there. For my first attempt at a novel, I wanted to take my time, so it took over a year to complete.

The rom-com novella, "Getting Austin" was a short story idea that came to me, and rather than try to fit it into a new short story collection, I decided to do it as a stand-alone book. At first I wasn't sure I had enough there for a novella, but as it turned out, I did. The main character is a woman who has MS, as I do, so I was able to pull from my own experience with the condition (I hate the word disease) in writing the story.

I included a picture above of my most recent (and I think my most well written) book of short stories. "Shadow Stories" is both contemporary and period fiction, the common theme being they're all dark stories, some with supernatural, fantasy, or Gothic vibes.

My next project will likely be another book of short stories. I've been wanting to write a book of just mysteries, so that's what I'll be focusing on. I also want to write more about the Radcliffe family from "The Bellwood Legacy" because I feel they have more secrets to tell.

So, there you have it. Short stories, longer stories - supernatural thriller, contemporary fiction, suspense, romantic comedy. Who knows what's next? That's a mystery.

A Midsummer Night's Creative Crisis

 

Sitting at my keyboard burning the after midnight oil in late June/early July making last minute edits to my book, I could feel it creeping in again like the breeze through an open window. Despite the fact that the changes were small - a new phrase here, a deleted one there - somehow it made me feel I had done a horrible job. 

Self-doubt is like a little gremlin that enjoys popping up to try and sabotage you when it sees you writing. It especially loves to sit there watching you edit your story with a big "I told you so" grin on its face.

Each mistake I encountered in this final round of editing and perfecting my finished project had the self-doubt gremlin jumping around in glee. I beat myself up over the errors while breathing a sigh of relief that they had been caught. I couldn't believe I had missed that period that was supposed to be a comma, but it wasn't as cringey as an earlier catch, where I'd left my character outside and forgot to replace the deleted sentence that mentioned her coming back in. (It's a good argument for having an editor, a luxury not all of us indie authors can afford.)

Writer's block is nothing compared to crippling self-doubt that not only makes you second-guess your creative decisions on a project, but makes you question whether you should even be writing. 

As I rewrote a couple of sentences, I told myself that I was making the story read better, that I cared enough to do the best writing I could, so I must be doing a good job. And yet at the same time I wondered if this was all a sign that I should give up writing. The self-doubt gremlin whispered in my ear: Maybe you should quit. You're a crappy writer if you can't write the most amazing sentence on the first try. 

I just wrote and published my first novel, and there were times while I was writing it that I thought of abandoning the whole project. I was upset that I had to delay publishing because I was still fixing/changing things, and the gremlin kept trying to get me to give up. What kept me going? The same things that always do when I write:

My story. As a short story writer, a novel was new territory for me that I really wanted to explore. I wanted to write this story so much. I liked the way it came together, and the way the genres blended and complimented each other. And I really wanted to meet my goal of completing my first novel.

My characters. I love my characters. All of the ones I've created. I was with the people I created for my novel for a lot longer. Like the others, I gave them life; I couldn't abandon them. They helped me cross the finish line.

Remembering why I write. I love it. It makes me happy. It's so satisfying to take an idea and turn it into an actual story. I love getting it out of the warehouse of ideas in my head and seeing the words on the page.

I also find that a good way to fend off self-doubt is to not compare yourself to other authors. We all have our own style. It's really important to stay true to yourself and tell the story you want to tell, the way you want to tell it, and not think about what others are doing.

So now I am moving on to the next project, which will be another short story. And as for the self-doubt gremlin, I've breathed a sigh of relief that it's gone. For now.

When You're Trying to Hold On to Your Writing

 

I feel like things are trying to pull me away from writing lately! I'm trying to finish my first novel, and it's  been difficult due to having health issues and so many little things to do. It's really true - there just aren't enough hours in the day.

I've had to adjust my schedule for a medication I'm taking. I already have MS, which gives you a limited amount of energy to work with as it is. Then recently, I had a few attacks of trigeminal neuralgia, which causes brief but horrible bursts of pain that come on suddenly in the forehead or the side of the face (not to mention causing anxiety). And I have a tooth that got infected to boot.Thank goodness the pain medication is keeping the attacks away!

I'm trying to make writing the priority, especially when I'm so close to finishing. Then I'll have to go through the editing process. So I'm pretty much overwhelmed already. Meanwhile, I have doctor visits, physical therapy, and treatments scheduled.

Still, I can appreciate that I have more time to write now than I did when I was still working, and I know there are writers out there juggling a lot more commitments than I am.

The good thing is now we have phones we carry with us everywhere, which are great for making notes - not that I don't recall what it was like to just use pen and notepads for this. Since writing is always going on in your head, and you can get an idea at any time, it's good to have a way to record your thoughts anywhere. Even if it may take a while to work on getting them into your story.

Things can get pretty crazy sometimes. So even though I've felt a little scattered lately, I'm trying to hold on and keep working through it, because like I always say - it's about the writing.

Why Read Short Stories?

Have you ever looked at a painting, studied the details, and gotten lost in the beauty of it? Or listened to a song, fallen in love with the lyrics, and gotten goose bumps as the music reached a crescendo? 

A single work of art can make a lasting impression, and it doesn't always need a lot of time to do it. The same holds true for fiction. While there are great novels out there, there are also great short stories.

Short stories are an art form all their own. They have all the elements of a novel without as much backstory, or as many twists and turns in the plot. The writer gives you a full story in a smaller number of pages that can usually be read in an hour or less.

While a novel lets you stretch out the story and prolong the suspense, the short story uses the most important scenes, dialogue, and descriptions to move things along. Conflicts may get resolved sooner, but the plot can be just as intriguing and the ending, or the message within the story, can be just as powerful in a good short story as it is in a novel. 

I often think of a collection of short stories as being like a music album. As you  listen, you hear a variety of melodies and lyrics in one place. You may not like all the songs, but each one tells a different story. Some you'll want to hear again, and maybe one becomes your favorite.

In the time it takes to read a novel, you can enjoy a number of short stories and meet a lot of diverse characters. The variety makes them appealing to read, and it's what makes me like writing them too - that and it's easier to tame the influx of story ideas.

My Short Story Vibe/Idea Wars

I've now written and self-published three books of short stories. And I've written two e-books (one that's also in paperback) that have just two stories each, for a total of thirty short stories. One thing I've noticed is that my writing in each book seemed to have a different feeling to it for me. The first one was kind of a "testing the waters" vibe, the second felt like a confidence builder, and the third had an intense feeling to it that was perhaps intentional, since I wanted all the stories to be darker. 

That was the theme. My first book of short stories didn't really have a "theme" to it, I didn't feel like I needed one. For the second, I was working with the theme of stories about love, loss, and fate. Then I chose to focus on writing darker stories in the third one - giving it a little bit of a Gothic vibe. My two e-books have kind of a dark vibe also. 

With a dark story, I sometimes like to give it that happy ending that has just a little bit of a shadow hanging over it. I'm a sucker for a happy ending. I love it when the guy gets the girl. I like when the good guys win, but I think it strikes a chord of realism when they don't. So sometimes my dark stories don't even have that slightly happy ending.

I like the variety of writing different genres; I don't stick to one in particular.  I write whatever fanciful thing comes into my mind, and sometimes it matches my mood. I like to keep the reader in suspense, to keep them wondering, and to inject a little humor even in the saddest story.

I wrote the first version of my story "All The Things I Meant To Be" years ago at a time in my life when I'd lost a job and was feeling down and trying to get myself together. I just felt like writing a sad story, though even back then I put a little humor in it. I had two characters who were brothers, and I wanted to have a scene where they were laughing and having fun together after a recent reconciliation. I also knew right away I wanted this to be a contemporary fiction story.

Sometimes the genre I write and the era in which the story takes place are both determined by the characters I create. I have to be able to fit the character into that genre and time. I have to be able to envision them there. Sometimes there may even be a battle between the story details in my imagination.

For example, I created a character named Clotilde. I think it's such a beautiful name. I gave her the name before I even put together her story. I thought of her being in the past, and I knew I wanted her to be in a love story. Then I was struggling to decide how far back in the past to have her living in, and where to set the story. I kind of wanted her to be living a few hundred years ago in Europe, but she ended up being a divorced woman in the Deep South in 1950, and the story became a love story/mystery.

I would love to write a novel based on one of my short stories so I could delve more into the life of one of my characters. For now, my goal is to write a group of short mystery stories. I'm also planning a sequel/prequel to my story, "Skeletons of Bellwood". 

A little erratic. A little eccentric. Emotional ups and downs. That's my writing vibe.

Confessions of a (self-published) Short Story Writer

 

As a fairly new author, sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed. Formatting, editing, proofreading - as a self-published author, it's all on me.

The misplaced comma, the sentence I find that has a word missing, the word I'm still not sure is the one I want - these are among the ever-present terrors I face. Suddenly I'm seized by self-doubt; I may even start to wonder if the idea for the story is even any good. 

I started writing a long time ago, but wasn't really getting anything done, usually because of being distracted by other ideas, or just not having time to write. I finally chose to write and self-publish short stories because I worry that I don't have the commitment it takes to write a novel. To stick with the same story idea and get three or four hundred pages out of it. I already had a few different ideas, some from years earlier, so a couple of years ago, I began to work on turning them into actual, complete stories.

I love working with several different story lines and characters. Short stories are great because they give you the same drama or suspense as a novel, but with a quicker resolution to the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist. I pour myself into each and every story when I'm writing, but editing is sometimes a different - ahem - story.

It's usually pretty easy for me to stay focused on one story at a time, but when I'm editing a collection of short stories, I may go back to a story if something occurs to me about it while I'm working on editing another. I can't even imagine editing novels.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to write a novel. Even if the grind of sticking to one idea and drafting a much longer story takes the fun out of the writing. I think it would be awesome to accomplish the task of completing an entire novel. There are characters of mine that I'd like to write more about.

So. Self-publishing. It's a lot of work, but I'm no stranger to hard work. It has been a learning experience, and I continue to have to re-learn things like page numbering and making a table of contents. I've had to fix and upload PDF files of my manuscript more than once (my first upload was  accidentally a Word file). I've fumbled through designing my own book covers and spent hours staring at a computer screen or pouring over a proof copy of my book, looking for errors, only to miss something and see it later after I hit publish. Thank goodness for print-on-demand!

I confess I've added  minor details to a few of my stories later too. I guess sometimes I really don't feel like I'm done with a story if there is still some little thing bugging me. Shhh. 

Every story I write is like a living, breathing document to me - they are the offspring of my imagination. I can't help but watch over them even after they have been written.

I think, or at least I hope, I am getting better at the whole self-publishing thing. I'd like to think my writing is getting better too. With each story, I feel more confident, and I'm not second-guessing myself as much.

In the world of writing short stories, the imagination takes you lots of different places and into the lives of many characters in fairly quick succession. A sudden new story idea popping up is actually a benefit, not a hindrance. I love that I can create so many different works that it would take years to write if they were all novels. They may be smaller stories, but they can have just as big an impact on the reader as a novel. 

Final confession - I always like to leave a little something up to the reader's imagination when it works for the story. And I love that "keep them guessing" thing!