Two Weeks In – Where Am I?

January 10, 2012Leave a comment

I can’t believe we’re already two weeks into the new year. I feel like the holidays flew by.

So what’s my status?

I’m about five pages (estimated) away from having one chapter left in my rewrite. BOOM! That feels good. At the same time it’s got me a little sad. As I’ve said before, this book, in one form or another, has been a huge part of my life for seventeen years. It’s odd to think I’ll be truly done with it soon. My hope is to have the last chapter done by this weekend, so I can use my day of on MLK Day to read through the manuscript from beginning to end. Out loud.

Why?

I had the opportunity to meet author E.M. Crane a couple years ago during an adolescent literature class I was taking (as part of my Master’s in Literacy program) and one of the pieces of advice she gave aspiring authors was to lock yourself in a room (figuratively or literally) and read your work out loud from start to finish. That way you hear the things that sound awkward and you catch your grammar and spelling mistakes.

The next step after that is to print a copy and entrust it to a couple of very exceedingly discreet and trustworthy individuals to do a beta read for me. And then it’s on to the chapter summary, a daunting task, but one that’s really necessary in case an agent and/or editor requests one.

Since I’m rather bogged down at work with our new reading series this year, I anticipate being ready to tackle the task of finding a literary agent by summertime. If I’m very lucky, I may have one acquired by summer’s end.

I other news, I weighed myself on January 1st and tipped the scales at my highest weight ever. I shall not post it here, because I don’t need it enshrined. And technically I’m still within a “healthy” weight range, but it’s not a cool number. So for the first time ever I’m tracking my calorie intake and really pushing myself to do my workouts for a better reason than looking good in a wedding dress (which was the catalyst for getting fit the first time around in 2009).

I’ve also been trying to keep myself positive. I’m really a very optimistic person in general, but the past year or so has just thrown so much crap at me, it’s been hard to stay positive. Right now I feel like focusing on my health and fitness, and on my writing, is important. It gives me something to dwell on other than what has been making me sad for so long. I anticipate still having sad days here and there, but hopefully they’ll be few and far between.

It’s also time to start thinking about vacations. 🙂

Wise Words

August 1, 2011Leave a comment

When I was in graduate school (earning my first Master’s degree in Elementary Education), I took an excellent class called “Literature, Art and Media” from an excellent professor during the spring semester of 2004. We had the opportunity to attend a poetry reading by the 2001-2003 Poet Laureate Billy Collins.

If you ever get a chance to attend a reading by Billy Collins, I highly recommend that you do so.

We prepared for this reading by studying a few of his poems and discussing his career. Hearing him read his poems aloud, however, was a vastly different experience than dissecting them in class. His delivery, his explanations for the genesis of each poem, brought a new dimension to his art.

It was my first time ever attending a poetry reading, and I was floored.

Now, in addition to reading several of his poems, Mr. Collins also provided some discussion of his writing process, how he views poetry and the art of writing, and, knowingly or not, gave some advice to the young (and old) writers in the auditorium.

One particular piece of advice has stuck with me for the past seven years.

“You can’t just get up in the morning and commit an act of literature. It requires some effort on your part.”

I’ve been writing since I was a very small child. I’ve always loved putting ideas and stories down on paper. I’ve dabbled in poetry. I’ve played in several different genres. I’ve lovingly put my heart and soul into my written words. But as an adult, as someone who really does want to see my work in print someday, not just someone who writes for pure pleasure (though I certainly derive plenty of pleasure from writing a particularly good scene or passage of dialog), I needed to change my focus.

That one bit of advice from Billy Collins totally changed my perception of what I was doing when I sat down to write. It’s not just about the love of the craft, though without that you’ll fail before you finish the first page. It’s about loving and developing the process, learning what works for you.

There will always be fits and starts, I think, when I write, just as there will always be bouts of writer’s block (and that’s where the effort comes into play!) – and of course, life does get in the way, especially when writing isn’t your full-time job. The effort is finding those few minutes every day to consider your work – to figure out what’s coming next, rereading that scene that just keeps nagging you, or just plunking down and kicking the internal editor off your shoulder and just writing.

Put in the effort, and the act of literature will come.