Dispatch from the wastelands
Anybody with two eyes and a decent web browser can see something is happening around here at Passionate Critters. Book release upon book release, promo tours followed by book trailer parties…the ladies are on fire! Words are flowing, contracts are getting inked. Things are happening!
In a perfect world, I’d announce my recent agent acquisition, or the foreign rights a film company snatched up last week.
Not so, dear readers. I am writing to you from a most discouraging, though very necessary place: the wastelands. This is the “neither here nor there” place we all need to travel on our road to publication. It’s where your best friends get a burst of energy and sprint into that glorious book deal while you curse like a sailor (or a Marine, in my case) at your blinking cursor. It’s the place where you follow your crit partners around the web and cheer them on through their cyber book tours, while you scribble and bleed red all over your pages, crossing out entire sections at a time and throwing objects at the wall while you try to untangle that unholy mess that is POV (and it’s demon sister, Deep POV). It’s the place where the critiques coming your way aren’t, well, the most encouraging. “Back to basics,” “strengthen the writing,” and “tighten the pages.” *sigh*
It’s where you cross out that “query Agent X” on your calendar, because you realize you, and your story, just aren’t ready yet. It’s where you put on them big girl panties and stop comparing yourself to others, wishing you told stories like they tell stories.
Sitting in the wastelands by choice is about giving yourself the right to suck at writing for a minute or two, the whole time knowing that you’re about to roll the sleeves up and get to work at fixing whatever it is that isn’t working in your writing career—books, workshops, online classes, endless rewrites, killing off characters you love, vent sessions over coffee, more time critiquing and helping others…whatever it takes.
If publication is like reaching the Emerald City, the wastelands is that creepy forest where the trees throw apples at you and your story, pointing out your weaknesses and forcing you to rethink, rebuild, and re-create. Return a stronger writer with clearer goals. Return to the yellow brick road with a purpose.
So to my PCers who’ve celebrated HUGE victories lately, I am so, so proud of you. And to my fellow (temporary) wasteland visitors, when the mean trees throw apples, make applesauce, girl. (Or make like the scarecrow and thumb your nose at the thought of stopping too long to wallow!)
On with the words…
)blog, and I’m a bit nervous. See my hands trembling? My name is Jennifer Bianco, please call me Jenn, and I’m an aspiring writer of light, humorous mysteries with romantic and sometimes paranormal elements. I’m currently working on a YA mystery–hopefully the first of a series.
Then a good 45 minutes in, I thought about how slow it seemed. Where were the good parts? Why was everyone just talking? I knew how it ended, and recalled some of the parts where I once oohed and ahhed, but they seemed sooo far away. It was during the middle of this movie that I realized how times have changed.
