Protecting the dream, part 1: The Caveat

Before I even begin this post, I should tell you I am a recovering perfectionist. There's guilt in perfectionism. Your sense of worth is stored in whether you got it perfect or not. You always doubt other people's compliments. It's absolutely nutty, and you know it's nutty, but you just. can't. help it.

After a while I made a compromise with myself. I hoped I could learn to achieve the quality that perfectionism often brings, without the feelings of guilt for "failing" so often. I needed to learn perspective.

Keep this in mind when I tell you the following story from two weeks ago.

It's the end of my first semester at my new school, codename: College By the Sea, which means all the final projects are rolling in and being peer reviewed. I should explain this has been a strange semester for me. To quote Knotting Hill, "It was nice. Surreal, but nice." I have been extremely creative. People have been recognizing my creativity. In fact, they seem to think I know more than I actually do. Quite out of the niceness of their hearts, they've been getting me into situations I'm not sure I can handle--moments where I feel like I've run off the cliff and I'm trying to backpedal, wailing, "Wait! I'm really not sure I have the experience for this!"

I've been very insecure. Almost as if the more people compliment me and assure me I'm good, the less I believe them.

So you can imagine how I felt--all nervous and susceptible--when I chose to turn my Intro to Audio assignment into a book reading of MIRRORPASS. I almost didn't decide to do it. I waffled for days. And then, when I went ahead and did it, creating an audio production around the 10-minute reading--it was torture. The scene I had chosen was horrible. (The whole book felt horrible.) It needed severe editing. (Maybe I should just scrap the book?) It was too dramatic, had too many references, it was just--ugh!

But I slogged through the assignment and submitted it, hoping beyond hope that was the end of it.

It wasn't the end.

Our teacher wanted to play some of the assignments during class, before all our peers. For days I tortured myself. He won't play mine, I decided. I would love to know what my classmates think. But, shudder! I would die if they heard.

And in the middle of this, I was a little baffled at my lack of self control, my complete plunge into insecurity. Where was my perspective? Why couldn't I handle this like a professional? Someday, people were going to read this. (At least I hoped.) I needed to get used to the idea.

I raised my chin and went on with life.

Until class this morning. When my teacher pulled my CD out of the box and popped it into the computer, asking me to introduce it for the class.

Oh. Crap.

Let's stop here.

Remember when I talked about my compromise, my efforts to control my perfectionism? I developed some funny habits as a result of that compromise. I don't like to show people my work until it's finished--all edited and polished and shiny--and if I have to show them my work before it's ready, I like to give caveats. I give caveats like crazy. This isn't finished, I say. It has mistakes here and here and here, and I'm working on that. But now that you know about those mistakes, if you could just ignore them, I would love to know what you think of the story itself.

And I feel much better. Because by doing this, I have protected myself from the two most common reactions people have, both of which shatter my perspective and suck me back into the HIGH! low HIGH! low drama of perfectionism.

You see, first, I have successfully skirted around the issue wherein loyal friends and family start saying bogus things like, "It's amazing! You should be published! I loved it! Because it was perfect!" And you want to believe them, but there's a tiny suspicious part of yourself wonders why they didn't find something wrong. They are missing their grains of salt, and you cannot quite get your hopes up by believing them.

But with my caveats, ah! I have salted their feedback beforehand.

Secondly, I have protected myself from liabilities. Now they know I am a professional. I am not blind; I can clearly see some mistakes exists. In fact, look, I am already in the process of fixing them! How businesslike of me. Take notice, world, this writer is not suffering from any dreamlike delusions of publication. Other writers you have met may be frauds, but her dreams have credibility.

Because the world simply doesn't take much stock in writers who are unpublished. Tahereh Mafi just wrote a great post about this. It got me thinking about my little protective system. I am always prepared for, even expecting, the worst. I can easily handle criticism.

But praise is scary.

Praise means I might be making progress. When it comes to praise, I am most vulnerable, for there--in my little heart of hearts--I might start to believe that when people say I'm good, I'm actually good. That I'm Ready For More.

If they said that, and if I believed it, and if it turned out not to be true after all, well, it would be impossible to continue plodding along patiently as I had been before.

The hardest part of this all, you see, is patience. Learning how to keep the dream before achieving the dream. Learning how to protect it even from my own impatience.

I'll tell you the rest of the story in part 2 (next Wednesday), but for now, let me ask this: How do you guys protect the dream? Everyone in this long enough has to find a way to deal with the idea of "getting better" before "getting published." So how do all of you do it? Does community help? Or do you simply never intend to pace yourself, but anticipate that each new novel will be "the one" that makes it? I doubt any one answer will fix me, but I'd love if you all shared.


Truly and always,
-Creative A

Holiday Wiplash

Christmas comes but once a year
Now it's here, now it's here!
Christmas comes but once a year
Fa la la la la!

I was just watching a commercial for Target, where the instant a woman says goodbye to her family after Thanksgiving dinner and closes the door, her house explodes with all things Christmasy.

That has been me.

I expected to blog less during November (since I was supposed to be doing Mandywrimo--results to come) but somehow, without my informed consent, that turned into December blog break as well. And I thought to myself, How did this happen? Do I want this to happen? Should I maybe take the whole month off?


Cue the buzzer sound.

Throw in a demotivational poster about laziness in for good measure, and here I am! This is me vowing to get back on track. I had a whole backlog of post ideas, and I was getting pretty organized (maybe you remember?) so I intend to jump back in where I left off, and try and wrap up December with a bit of dignity.



Who else is suffering from holiday whiplash?

Truly and always,
-Creative A

Mandywrimo Update - Waffling, but not for the typical reason.

It's day 14 of Mandywrimo/Nanowrimo, and I am definitely avoiding my story. This is unusual for me. I tend to set challenges for myself, and push like crazy to get them done. Then if I stumble somewhere along the way, I step back and reevaluate--only to set brand new goals, and push like crazy to get those done. I tend to self-evaluate endlessly. So realizing that I've been avoiding this hasn't been an issue for me--it's wondering why I'm avoiding this.

I know I blabbed about my reasons for joining Nanowrimo in my last post, so forgive me, but I need to go over them again.

It's been a long time since I've written on a schedule and made that part of my daily life. I did the 6AM Editing Challenge, but that was a temporary thing. When I was writing Mirrorpass, I did it on the weekends, in these huge releases of creativity. That is not the same as sitting down every day with a requirement to write. Editing every day isn't even the same as writing every day.

It's been a long time, and I know I'm rusty. This is the first time in my college life that I've had a schedule where I could write every day, and keep it up for months, for years.

So that was one reason to take the plunge. This month is supposed to act as my test run. Also, I wanted to see how out of practice I really am. Will I have trouble getting started each day? Or will I struggle with finding inspiration? Will my real problem me coming up with scenes, or will me real problem be nailing the voice? I thought before diving into The Eternity Shift as my new WIP, I should figure out what areas I've gotten weak in.

And finally, I knew it was time to dedicate myself to something new. Mirrorpass still isn't finished (although, yippee, the end is in sight.) But writing a first draft has a driven sense of purpose that editing lacks. I know I need that forward motion. And although I've been writing bits and pieces of ETShift, I had so many possibly storylines in mind that I really needed to sit down with one direction in mind and just hash it out on paper. Nanowrimo sounded like a great way to do that.

Those are my reasons. And at first, everything went really well. Remember that my goal was to write between 800 and 1,000 words each day? Well, just look at my stats for the first week, starting Monday November 1st:

Day 1 -- 1,179
Day 2 -- 1,180
Day 3 -- 1,171
Day 4 -- 1,209
Day 5 -- didn't write
Day 6 -- didn't write

The days I was writing, I was consistently over my goals. I timed myself, too, and each day I spent (almost exactly) and hour and a half to get these words out.

Statistically, I was on fire. It was almost too easy. I had no excuse not to write each day. How pathetic would that be, refusing to write even though I knew I could churn out my wordcount in less than two hours?

By the weekend, I was pretty grumpy. I just didn't want to write. This was very lame and childish of me, which made me more grumpy. So I didn't write Saturday or Sunday. I didn't do homework, and I didn't do chores. I read books and moped and thought about how pathetic I was.

Monday, I took a deep breath and decided to start fresh. And boy, did I make up for things on Monday.

Day 7 -- 2,656

I wrote twice! It was awesome. I felt proud of myself. The next day went well, too:

Day 8 -- 1,641

But then the day after, I had some financial aid issues, and missed my short writing window between classes. That triggered something. It had been an accident, but I realized I didn't mind. It wasn't that I couldn't write, or that I was too lazy to write. It was that I simply wasn't interested enough. I had other important things going on. I had books to read, my apartment to clean, a job interview to prepare for, not to mention a ton of other exciting creative projects to work on.

Writing just wasn't that important at the moment.

Day 9 -- didn't write
Day 10 -- didn't write
Day 11 -- didn't write
Day 12 -- didn't write
Day 13 -- didn't write

Which brings me to now. Day 14. I've had my break and decided I needed to write again, but again, I'm just not that interested. More than that: I'm having my doubts.

Years ago, I realized that occasionally, I go through these periods where I'm not so sure if writing is my future for whatever reason or another. I've learned it's important to not freak out at this point, but to turn the doubt over, to consider it, and allow this to be a possibility. I don't want regrets, you know? I don't want to be so darn determined to be a writer that I block out whatever God is trying to do with me.

Right now, I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I have a novel that could go on submission if I ever finish editing it. I've worked in web design, and now I'm trying to get a job as a videographer. I have so many creative paths to choose from, so many things I want to do, and I'm realizing I might not be able to have them all--they compliment each other marvelously, but one is always a little more interesting than the others.

Now, if I'd been writing steadily, if I had the discipline of writing daily from the past few years, I bet this wouldn't be a problem right now. I know some of this is just because I've been out of it for so long. Part of what I'm realizing, though, is how out of it I truly am. And part of it is the apathy of ETShift--this novel doesn't have the "it factor" that hooks me on a story, and until I find it, I know it will be a struggle to write, anyway.

Lack of it factor + out of practice + wondering if I should focus on this now, anyway = the ultimate question: Am I really dedicated to writing at this point in my life?

Day 14 – open to the possibilities

This is a no-judge zone, so feel free to comment with how your Nanowrimo (or PerWriMo/Personal Writing Month – thanks Ryan!) goals are going. Are you flagging as we head into week three? Did you get back your wind after the awfulness of week two? Or like me, have you discovered a whole different kind of problem in your way?


Truly and always,

-Creative A

MandyWrimo - Taking the (Modified) Plunge

Ahh. NanoWrimo. Indecision. In my experience, they go together.

Me and NanoWrimo are a bit like Anne Lamott and gardening. In Bird By Bird Lamottt describes how terrible she is at gardening, how it doesn't work for her, how every plant she has dies. And yet she loves the idea of a garden and the metaphor of gardens.

I love the idea of Nano.

I love the concept of writing your butt off for a whole month, of pushing and pushing and never giving up, even if it kills you. I love the freedom Nano offers. Mistakes? Who cares. Dirty house? Who cares, it's Nano! I love the community Nano fosters. Also, I am a stubborn person by nature. I like making hard goals. I love the sensation of achieving something other people told you was impossible.

Here's the problem.

I think a lot when I write. I brainstorm. I process. I am a huge rewriter. If my first drafts are too crappy, they are not worth my time. This is mainly because I need to learn something in my early draft. In writing, I uncover the main forks in my story. And then I pick a fork. A few chapters later, I may need to go back and choose a different fork. Ever so slowly, this is how I uncover my novel.

The process of discovery takes time. It also requires being able to go back. But to quote Veronica Roth, Nano is a sprint. No looking back. No time to discover. Just go.

The very first time I participated in Nano, I learned that this just doesn't work for me. Ever since then--as in, every year since then--I toy with the idea of it. I tell myself, "You will get more work done if you skip Nano." I tell myself, "Just say no." But oh, Nano is so tempting and shiny. Skipping it is just as hard as completing it.

Last year I managed to skip. November was a horrible time for me. In fact, the whole Fall semester was horrible. Nano was out of the picture.

This year is different. Since moving to College By the Sea, I have realized it's time to get back on the ball. Time to blog more. Write every day. Finish Mirrorpass. Start something new. Get serious.

And then comes the tickling, whispery allure of Nano. I was doing a good job avoiding it. But I was frustrated with my new project, The Eternity Shift. I've been poking it. Toying with it. I feel like it needs a jumpstart. Nano would be perfect, except Nano would ruin it. Problem unsolved.

Three days ago, this occurred to me. I could Nano ETShift, and I could Nano it my way. I could choose a pace that balanced quantity with quality. And as soon as I thought it, I knew this was the thing to do--the solution I've been looking for.

So I'm taking the plunge. My goal? 25,000 - 30,000 words this month. 800 words a day. The first half of my novel by the end of the month.

It's perfect. 800 words is just enough for me to squeak out on the worst, busiest days, but it's also the point when, on better days, the story will hook me. Once I write 800 words, I can almost always keep going. And this has proved true so far. Two days in and my wordcount is 2,359.

In case you can't tell, I'm quite jazzed over this solution.

And if there's any of you guys teetering there on the edge, torn between the impracticalities of Nano as it applies to you, and the definite appeal of writing 50k in one month, then I invite you to join me. Personalize! I'll do MandyWrimo, you'll do YouWrimo, and at the end of the month...

Well. Maybe we'll have something shiny to show for it.

My MandyWrimo project:

The Eternity Shift: YA Dystopian

Robin is a girl with a deadly illness who wakes up in a future where everyone is immortal. As their souls and personality decay, their bodies live on. Immortality is a curse. Robin is the one anomaly: Robin is still mortal. The rulers of Paradigm City will do everything to keep control of this possible new cure. As for Robin, all she really wants is to find a way home--a journey through space and time that would leave her immortal if she succeeded, giving her a second chance at the life her illness stole away. But is there life--real life--to be had in Paradigm City? Or is Robin clinging to a past that was never hers to begin with?


Okay, guys. What are you doing for Nano? Are you going all out, or did you decide to modify Nano like I did? Feel free to linkback to your Nano project in the comments!


Truly and always,
-Creative A

Creativity: An Intentional, Unpredictable Process

Creativity is such a weird thing. It is looking at what already exists around us, seeing the patterns, the cliches, the original ideas, the core elements that comprise it, and then based on all these things, coming up with something new.

It is not a lightbulb moment in the middle of the night. It is more like spontaneous combustion, like a haystack sitting for months and months in a field, just stewing away, and nobody knows, nobody sees. All anyone sees is the moment when it bursts into flame. So you can be intentional about it--you can foster an environment that will allow things to stew--but, at the same time, if you have fifty creative haystacks in the same field, who's to say when each one will blow?

It makes us creative types look pretty nutty. We spend hours and hours of our time pouring into these creative stewpots, which looks more like taking long walks, visiting art galleries, drinking coffee, talking shop with other like-minds, staring at the empty easel or Word document or video camera, laughing a lot, quoting random artists, crying a lot, and drinking more coffee. It looks less like work and more like a kind of long-distance relationship that we are passionately obsessed about. In other words, self-imposed torture. 


You cannot force the process. You can work really hard at it, but you cannot force it.

Which brings us to the weirdest part of all, the caveat that blows people's brains and makes them doubt our authenticity. If a creative person sits down with a deadline intending to create something, and they do not leave until this occurs, something will be created. Any college student learns this lesson. We all forget it as soon as we can, but at one point, we did learn it.

If we want to, if we really, really bend ourselves to the task, creative people can create things.

I know that's shocking. Plus it somewhat contradicts what I said before about the process being impossible to force. But if you think about all the people who have jobs that involve being creative on a daily basis--TV writers, for instance, who have to write and revise scripts daily--you realize creativity must have an intentional element to it. They can create, because they put their minds to it, because they must. They work that muscle and something comes out.

You must also realize, however, there's no guarantee what the particular TV episode will be about, and early intentions may have to shift, and the quality may be awful, or the episode may be shockingly good. No matter how hard a creative person works their creative "muscles," they can't have everything they want.

It is this process, and it is also intentional, and it involves hardworking decisiveness, but also an ability to go with the flow.

Let me put it this way. One can't always meet their creative standard. But one can almost always, barring certain circumstances, end up creating something.

Don't you love this? I just love it. It means if I work hard, I can achieve something; yet there's an element of magic that I can't control, can't predict, can't get bored with. Have you ever considered for a moment what it would be like, if humans didn't have creativity? Have you ever noticed how much joy, and pain, and love is involved with creation?

I am really awed that God not only made the universe, but made me with the ability to be creative myself. It is a glimpse into His mind and Heart that no other creature on the planet has. Only artists can truly appreciate the work that goes into a piece of art; with my creativity, I honor the One who invented it all to start with. I think that's so beautiful.


Truly and always,

-Creative A

The Importance of Being Observant

(Okay, first, did anyone get my pun? It has to do with the movie. Of course if you never watched the movie, it might not make much sense...Um. Yeah. Nevermind.)


Moving is like cleaning. Except ten times worse. Recently I had to go through all my junk and figure out what I wanted to take with me, as a transfer student with a small apartment, to College By the Sea. Parts of it are fun, though. It’s like time traveling through your own past. This was when you collected china cows. This was when you considered becoming a freelance journalist. This is when you were depressed for a year and wrote all those awful poems.

I had an entire bin filled with writerly stuff, most of it scribbled on torn scraps of paper, or stuck in color-coded folders. (The more I liked the color of a folder, the better the material I put in there.) Most of it I threw away—half the point of moving—but some of it impressed me. Like this:

“It was spring, and if she stood still out on the lawn, she could hear it popping softly.”

I wrote that on a scrap of paper. Do lawns pop? Re-reading the note while packing, I couldn’t remember. It struck me as fascinating that past-me had been so observant as to capture something that future-me couldn’t remember, even when reminded.

After thinking about it, I did end up remembering what the note was about. One day I had gone outside to intentionally document the season I was in—spring—so I could write about it when it was, say, winter, and still get the details right. The lawn was wet and mushy. As it thawed, little air bubbles worked their way to the surface. If you stood quietly, you could hear them popping.

Wow, right? Those are the kind of details everyone says we need to put in your writing. You know, engaged the five senses, use setting as a character, keep it fresh.

I am pretty proud of past-me for noticing the lawn-bubble thing. I am a little shamed with future, current-me, because when I am wracking my brain for descriptive material, I tend to think of either A) Stuff I have seen in movies, B) Stuff I’ve read in other books, or C) Stuff I’ve already written. And then I try to make that fresh.

I do remember as a newish writer being very diligent about carrying a notebook with me, jotting down useless stuff I saw. But nowadays I rarely go out intending to research. If I’m writing a scene in a grocery store, I will write about it from memory. From whatever material I have in my creative well. You know what I mean? I’m not hopping in my car for the nearest grocery store unless it’s crucial that I know the exact way a checkout aisle works, or something. I’m guessing this is pretty much how we all handle it.

And I’ll be honest: I don’t advocate elitist kind of research. It’s great as an exercise, but it’s not something (most) people (ahem) can sustain long-term.

Bottom line: if we’re not intentionally going off to observe, then we need to be intentional about observing. Right? I mean, writers are different in that everything we do is research. If we want to make our writing convincing, those little details matter. But two people can go on the same walk, be in the same room, have the same experience, and not notice the same things. We need to make a point of noticing.

I say this partly to myself, out of conviction. I realized that I’m not as intentionally observant as I used to be, and that also, I often rely too heavily on movies and TV because I liked the way they interpreted things.

But secondly, I say this because it’s an easy thing to forget. That intentionality. Being a writer is great, and it comes with a lot of gorgeous communities—the blogosphere, the writing forums, retreats, conferences, tours, the coffeehouse and Panera breads, the writing groups and critique groups and programs—all these people. And we all share our inspiration, sparking someone else, who inspires someone after them. Ideas can get kind of over-processed as a result. The element of real goes missing.

So, sometimes it’s important to remember that our job isn’t just making stuff up, but capturing what’s real, and putting it in a way readers might never have themselves, but that rings true anyway.


Being “intentional” is such an individual thing, that I’m curious: how do you guys go about being intentional about observing? Do you carry notebooks? Or are you not that intentional, just generally try to be observant as you can? What do you think about the whole thing?

(And I’m really curious: has anyone else ever heard their lawns pop? Ever?)



Truly and always,
-Creative A