Those Writers On Fire

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I subscribe to several email blasts from writers, agents and publishers. I also belong to Romance Writers of America and the local Detroit chapter of RWA. I receive upwards of 100 different emails about writing each day.

What can I say? I need constant information.

What really bowls me over about the writers is that they can pump out pages and pages each and every day. Chapters and chapters every week!

Not using this as an excuse, but I have a challenging day job. If I get an hour to myself, it’s a rare thing. There are so many things I want to do in addition to the many things I have to do that I have to priortize.

For example, manicures are low, low, low on the list. My nails haven’t seen polish in over a year.

Shopping is low on the list, especially the kind of shopping that involves walking into a brick and mortar building. I’d shop for groceries online, but we don’t have that here.

TV is also low. My husband likes to have it on, mostly for background noise. He also loves golf and fancies himself a newshound, so the TV is on the Golf Channel or a news channel. I need one thing from the TV: I want to know if it’s going to snow (rain), how much and for how long.

On the other hand, food is a high priority. I’m a food snob. My one pleasure is a good meal accompanied by a nice wine. Mix in a few friends and you have a perfect setting. Since food preparation is a labor of love, it tends to take some time.

Laundry and housecleaning are necessities, not priorities. They fall mid-way on the scale.

I am trying to make writing more of a priority and less a diversionary game.

For those who don’t know me well, I’m a lazy person. Yes, and I used to be a world-class procrastinator too, until I rediscovered writing. I’m not young. That’s why my motto is “I’m writing as fast as I can!”

A person cannot write without time.

You need time to get into the mood, to get into the zone. Sometimes if I know I have a couple hours of free time, I’ll begin getting into the zone a half hour or so before. I slip into the character and begin to see the world through her eyes. It helps for when I’m confronted with the blank screen on my laptop.

I’m the type who needs quiet. If the dog wants to sleep on my feet, that’s okay, but other than that, I don’t want people around. It’s hardest to write on airplanes, easier in airports, and painless once you get away from home. I make the most progress in hotel rooms. I recently spent four days in California getting my daughter back into college. Even though I had a commute from LA to San Diego County each day, I managed to pump out ten pages. Ten whole pages!

*celebratory dance*

That’s a lot for me.

I thought I had become proficient in time management, but when I read about these work-aholic, prolific writers on fire (many of whom have small children), I feel inadequate.

Perhaps I shouldn’t measure myself against them.

Or maybe I should use them as a tool to get motivated.

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Writer Manufactured Time

Posted by Joanne Huspek

That sucking of air you just heard was the sound of relief now that summer is finally over.

The “day job” seasonal madness is pretty much behind us. I can’t imagine being as busy as we were this summer all year round. The thought of it is staggering, but it’s also something I’ll probably not have to worry about. The kids are going back to school next week and we can take a collective breath and use September to catch up.

This is not to say that my time-sucking day job eliminated any possibilities for writing. As a writer, I’m finding it necessary to carve out stretches of time for myself to devote to the craft.

In addition to the various articles written for Blog Critics and Associated Content, I have sped along on my chick-lit-y novel and then was waylaid by an idea tossed out by my friend and constant writer’s nag, the Fluffy Little Cat. Out of our conversation was born another novel on the same story, a YA tale as told by the daughter.

This one’s been fun, and I’ve already tested out Chapter One on my niece, who happens to be “that” age. She gave it a thumbs up and wants to read more. (Ah, the silent sound of applause… just enough encouragement to keep me going.)

And I am finding more and more that writing is a craft, not one to be taken lightly. I have many good ideas and can easily write on the fly, off the top of my head so it seems, but to hone those ideas and make them perfect? That’s what I need to achieve.

I recently read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He’s the one that examines the 10,000 hour rule. The 10,000 hour rule is the theory that in order to do anything well, one needs to devote that amount of time to the endeavor. It equals about 20 hours per week for ten years.

It makes sense for musicians, athletes, actors, journeymen carpenters, why not for writing?

Unfortunately for me, I started late and I have a lot of catching up to do. My problem is that there is no way on God’s green earth that I can find 20 unadulterated, quiet hours a week to write, not with my schedule. If I can find two hours a day, it’s a momentous occasion worthy of celebrating with pitchers of margaritas.

Back to the busy summer: despite the rigors of a new internet platform on the “day job,” the daughter home from college, and a shortage help, I make the time to write.

I leave for home early, I shop online so I don’t have to run to stores. I try to budget my play time and make use of what’s left over, extremely difficult for a world-class procrastinator like me.

It’s tough, it’s brutal, it’s not easy, but it’s the only way. It’s the Yellow Brick Road from wannabe to writer.

Posted in editing, music, violin, writing, women, life, people, womens literature, writing 4 Comments

Being Politically Incorrect

Posted by Joanne Huspek

This might have nothing to do with writing, or it might have everything to do with writing.

Through my travels in real life and online, I am finding that I am politically incorrect.

Now, I’ve always been politically incorrect. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.

It all started in high school, although things were bubbling around before that. I’ve always been opinionated, and my opinions are strong. It got me into major trouble in high school, where I wrote for the school newspaper. I tended to pick topics that didn’t sit well with many students and teachers. I once wrote a scathing editorial about the use of millage dollars to improve the athletic department, and hey, where were similar funds for the art department? (There weren’t any.)

The football team and the coach hated me. If looks could kill, I’d have been six feet under long ago. I believe that’s why I got a B in biology that semester. (The coach was also the science teacher.)

Old age has done nothing to temper my opinions or my loud mouth. Even when I wasn’t writing creatively, I was writing letters to the editor. Editors to papers, editors to Cosmopolitan, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone magazines. I was writing letters to companies that wronged me, to restaurants where the service was substandard, to utility companies and to elected officials. I still do all of that, and with the internet, now I do more.

Of course, I try to be respectful of the other side of  issues. My job on earth is to learn, and if I can’t see something the first time (like algebra or violin), I look at it again from another perspective. I care a lot about the city, state and country I live in. I care a lot about our culture. I can’t help not to care as it’s my responsibility as a citizen.

However, I won’t roll over and play dead if we disagree.

Within other realms of my writing, I am finding that perhaps to get published it might be nice if I toned down my opinions. You know, be extraordinarily politically correct.

I had an email exchange with an online editor I work with. He asked me to write an opinion piece on something that happened in the news based on a comment I made to another article. I wanted to, because I have strong opinions but found a part of me didn’t want to attract attention to myself that might be negative. Anything I say or write could be construed as something else entirely. Much as I’m bitchy, in actuality I’m really not negative. Just passionate.

In the end, I wrote the piece (or a variation on what he wanted) because of one rule I have. It is: I must be true to myself. Being true to myself is why I couldn’t continue with journalism for a major in college. To write journalistically would mean I would have to lay aside my feelings, and I can’t do that.

Perhaps if I got a thumbs up for my work despite my beliefs in other areas I could stop looking over my shoulder at the shadow of my personal beliefs.

For creative writing, it’s different. Perhaps when I finish writing the two novels I’m working on now, I’ll feel differently. Editing novels is one thing but editing my soul? It just won’t happen.

Maybe that’s why I might stay a published author wannabe.

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My Junk is Not That Interesting

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Something I wrote while procrastinating…

I’ve just had a revelation.

My junk is not that interesting.

Once a year, on a weekend in mid-July, my city hosts what is billed as the World’s Largest Indoor Garage Sale. Professional vendors and regular folks who want to cast their possessions out to the public come to a parking structure and take over three or four floors. Some come from out of state just for the opportunity.

I’ve made the trek almost every year, even when I didn’t live in Royal Oak. The first time out, my now-22-year-old was just a baby in a collapsible stroller. Back in the city’s heyday, when the economy was flush and downtown merchants didn’t have to be competitive, the Garage Sale was a big deal, drawing people from all over with its carnival atmosphere. It’s where I first saw Jack Kevorkian in one of his blue sweaters, but except for that stint in jail, he’s all over town all the time.

Parking is a pretty iffy proposition here, where the streets are mostly residential and narrow. I live four blocks away so I walked. Garage Sale traffic was light this year, even though most of the downtown merchants were holding a sidewalk sale in conjunction with the big event. There was no need for the funeral home next to the parking ramp to be offering premium spaces at $5 a pop. I doubt they made much this weekend.

Garage Sale weekend is normally one of the hottest of summer. Not so this year, 2009 – the year of the Bummer Summer. Global warming be damned, the skies have been gray, foggy, and cold as much as they have been warm, bright and sunny. I had to wear a hoodie and jeans.

I’m not a garage sale fanatic but I don’t mind hitting a few every once in a while. My mother-in-law was in antique sales and schooled me on the advanced science of looking for decent junk. We would delve into the trash cans first before approaching a real sale. Most people don’t know what they are doing and have no idea about value. She was once given a box full of “trash” and spent the next three months selling it in her store, netting over $90.

I despise hosting my own home garage sales. I’ve done it a couple of times with minimal success. It’s a lot of prep work, hard to do alone (what about potty and meal breaks?) and harder to do in the rain (it’s cold and no one comes). I hate to bargain so my prices are ridiculously low. I just want the junk out of my house. Once it makes it to the garage, anything left over can’t return home. It keeps on trucking until it hits the Goodwill.

I’ve often said I should gather up my junk and do the Royal Oak Garage Sale one of these years. After all, the Chamber of Commerce does all the advertising, cutting out one expense. For the price of a stall, I would have hundreds of people milling by, thus increasing foot traffic past my assortment of bric-a-brac.

Yesterday that dream came to a crashing stop.

As I strolled by the tables yesterday, I realized the items carried little appeal. There were some interesting pieces, but none with the panache of past years’ offerings. Vinyl albums? Meh. I get my record fix when I go out to California and hit up Amoeba Records. Antique musical instruments? Hardly any. Anything that looked like it might be old or unique was grossly overpriced. Everything else was new and ho-hum and grossly overpriced. What with TV, internet, and warehouse club shopping, one doesn’t need a personal demonstration of Sham-Wow.

Many onlookers were like me, not buying, just browsing. I spent less than $10 for a few pieces to use in my jewelry-making ventures. It was largely unsatisfying.

I came home and gave my closet and garage the once-over. I don’t have much stuff, and my junk is just not that interesting. In a recession, it’s even less so. The face value of my cast-offs has declined with the stock market, housing prices, and everything else.

Maybe I’ll save it for the grandkids.

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Tracking, Not Back Tracking

Posted by Joanne Huspek

The last several weeks have been busy with my Day Job. I don’t know about other writers, but I find I have to have at least three hours of uninterrupted time in order to complete a chapter of about 4,000.

Since I’m doing this part-time, it’s a balancing act.

There’s no way this time of year.

Instead of having good news to report about the progress I’ve made on Oaks and Acorns, I instead must hang my head in shame. 🙁

What I have been doing when I get a chance is going back over the first six chapters, getting rid of the excess (I am the Queen of Excess, no doubt), tightening up my sentences and streamlining my words.

I’ve also laid out the characters and plot, something I didn’t do the first time around. It’s going to make so much more sense.

This is my first venture into chick-lit, which is different from that dark and dreary book I first wrote. Finding Cadence is more a journey into the deep recesses of the soul, a trip that could just as easily end badly as it could have redemption. I’m trying to keep O&A light, fast, inventive.

This is hard to do when there are other things pressing on the back burner threatening to torch the rest of my life.

As with other areas of my existence, I find that self-imposed deadlines are the best bet. I want this baby put to bed by the end of September.

On another note, I joined the local group of Romance Writers. Unfortunately, the RWA national convention is this week and as a result there will be no meeting this month. I’ll have to wait until next month to gain some wisdom from this group of ladies.

It’s going to be hard, but I’ll try to keep tracking and not back tracking.

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Clubbing Agents Over the Head with a Kick Ass Elevator Pitch

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Before a writer can get her foot in the door, she has to find an agent. Finding an agent is not all that easy. There are thousands of them (check out QueryTracker) specializing in every genre known to mankind, and a few that I’d never heard of.

Don’t ask me how to land one, because I’m still in the Realm of the Lost and Looking for Representation.

Most writers send out query letters. I haven’t done this yet, because I’m not finished with Book Number Two and Book Number One has to be eviscerated and the first thirteen chapters rewritten. However, I have done the elevator pitch during a foray in speed dating at the recent San Francisco Writer’s Conference.

It was scary. It was enlightening. I realized my pitch was sorely lacking and my synopsis too wordy. Agents, it seems, are looking for a shred of creativity. They are looking to be amazed, dazed and literally clubbed over the head. The book I pitched that got the most response (well, okay, the only response) was for my Siouxy story, and I wasn’t even trying to sell that. I think it elicited response because 1. Siouxy is a teenager and there were lots of YA agents in the room and 2. Siouxy gets into a lot of trouble. Wacky, off the wall, incredibly stupid  trouble. The negative comments came when I mentioned that the tale was a coming of age from the late 1970s. “Can you re-write it to make it more current?” the agent asked.

Well, no. I think outside of the context of the times, the story would fall flat on its face. But at least I received positive feedback, something to go home on a cloud over.

For those of you who don’t know me, the Siouxy stories started out as a joke. Written in serial form, it was a tale that kept getting more and more out of control the more I wrote, and now I have 50K words worth of her story.

The entire speed dating episode made me look at my other novels with a discerning eye. Why weren’t those agents wowwed by Cadence? Could it be that the story is the “same old same old” and the agents were bored? Could it be that I was totally exhausted from typing those magic words “The End” just four days before and my enthusiasm for my work had waned? Or could it be my pitch was somehow lacking?

I have faith in my work, but sometimes that faith has to be motivated.

Then too, I wonder if my pitch was good enough to gain attention, what would happen if they got the manuscript and the book wasn’t as snappy or interesting? I can recall many times when movie trailers are the best thing about the movie. Of course, they put the good parts in the trailer to get you to buy a ticket, and it’s disheartening to leave the theater thinking you’ve been robbed.

Some of the attention getting pitches I read are fabulous! Writing a pitch is different from writing a book. It’s a skill that takes a high level of salesmanship as well as a decent grasp of the language.

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Writer’s Block and My Writer’s Bloc

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I have to admit this last month has been terribly unproductive. What with one kid graduating from college, another flying back into the nest for the summer, the “day” job launching full force into the busy season, and the gloriousness of springtime in the yard, it’s been tough to find a few peaceful hours to work on the book.

I’ve given myself a short-term goal, and that’s to enter the Esquire Magazine short story contest this year. As usual, I have too many words, and the first draft sounds a little girly. I need more punch and less emotion. I also need a friend to offer an ethnic take on it, since I’m writing as a black man (both things I’m not).  I can tell already the re-write’s going to be a bear.

As for the rest of it, I’ve been on a hiatus. Call it my siesta/fiesta, my vacation from my imaginary world. It could be, but I wouldn’t say that I’m suffering from writer’s block. Oh, I have plenty of ideas floating around. Too many, in fact. My brain is so full of stuff, I can barely keep it all organized.

As an example, I haven’t written a congressman an angry missive in months, and I’m plenty upset and dismayed over the world. What’s up with that? 🙂

When in doubt about your craft and writer’s block, it’s best to turn to your neighborhood writer’s B-L-O-C.

My bloc of online critics, helpers, friends and cheerleaders (with cattle prods) are my salvation. When I know I’ve been bad, a quick email or Twittery tweet and they get me going again.

If you don’t have a writer’s bloc, I suggest you begin to cultivate one. Go on any number of writing web sites and introduce yourself. Querytracker.net is a great resource. From there you can subscribe to the blogs of other would-be and established writers. Comment on their blogs, read their work. Twitter your favorite writers or your targeted publishing house to keep up with what’s current.

Most writers (and wannabes) are friendly, and they will offer constructive criticism as well as encouragement. If you’re like me and don’t belong to a tangible, in-person writing group because you don’t have time to commit or are isolated, an online writer’s bloc could be just the resource for when you have writer’s block.

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