Another San Francisco Writers Conference! And I’m Still Stoked!

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Yes, people, I’m in San Francisco yet again for another San Francisco Writers Conference. And yes, I’m STILL stoked!

You’d think that after so many years of attendance (going strong yearly since 2009), I might weary of traveling halfway across the country for this conference – after all, I haven’t hit the Big Agent from a Big Publishing House jackpot, yet – but as I’ve said in other posts on the subject, I’m not here for a lottery. I’m here to learn, and as a writer, you should be learning every day.

The Hyatt Embarcadero is of course lovely. This year I’m on the 14th floor overlooking Market Street. Market Street used to be all flavors of chaos, but now car traffic is verboten and all that’s left is buses and taxis, and of course, humans on foot. It’s a nice change of pace from the road motels, and the LaQuinta Inn in South San Francisco where I stayed before this. I’ve been taking copious notes for our own bed and breakfast venture; it’s amazing that what used to be largely ignored sticks out like a neon sign – towels, sheets, amenities. Since our place is proving to be a money pit of epic proportions, I’ve been told I should write about it. Maybe I will. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll know I brought my pup with me. He’s currently with a dog sitter, as I want to focus my attention to the task at hand. He’s an excellent travel companion. Doesn’t like big ocean waves or big dogs but he’s a trooper.

My recently finished work-in-progress An Education for Addie is still in the editing phase, and not yet ready to pitch. However, I’m most interested in those who are versed in historical fiction, to include writers as well as agents. That’s the true gem at this conference: finding other writers like me. And there may be a story brewing as a follow-up to the novel, perhaps set in a later date. I’m always thinking. 🙂

In a few moments, I’ll head downstairs and see what’s up, and I’ll be sure to report if I’ve learned anything new.

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New Year, New Decade, New Adventures…With Ghosts!

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Much has happened since my last post:

1. My Editor for Life is hard at work editing An Education for Addie. So far I think I’m in for a title change and a rearranging of the first few chapters. This is what happens when you send your work out for viewing by another set of eyes. Not that I’m not appreciative. Sometimes a writer’s attachment to this thing or that is self-serving and not in the best interest of the work. I’m good with critique. I just want my work to be the best it can be. I’m working very slowly these days, so I think our pace is in sync. 🙂

2. Happy New Year! And New Decade! Welcome to the Roaring 20’s (although I’m fairly certain 99% of the public has no idea what that refers to)! My husband had to work at his retirement job for New Year’s Eve (dealing blackjack, some people might not call that a job), so I ended up making dinner for my dad (lamb chops, roasted veggies) and calling it a night before 9 p.m. (And that was LATE for me.) So I slept through champagne, parties, fireworks, and anything else that can happen in the dead of night.

3. And here’s for the big news: My husband and I purchased a bed and breakfast in Cripple Creek, Colorado! Yes, we closed on the property on New Year’s Eve, meaning we have really set ourselves up for a challenging adventure this new decade.

Here’s where it felt like it had to be. I’d been coming up to this once boom town-then ghost town-now gambling town since I was little. My dad loved to drive up here on weekends, where we’d fish in streams or poke around in old gold mines or find interesting rocks like turquoise right at the side of the road. (No lie, the gold miners used to throw turquoise away, after all, they were looking for the good stuff.) After my husband decided on his part time retirement job in Cripple Creek (it’s a gaming town, and he’s a blackjack dealer), we started looking for a second home, a crash pad if you will, because he kept getting speeding tickets and there was that one crash with a deer. (He should not drive after 3 a.m.)

Last year, when I started my class with Michelle Richmond (Novel in Nine), I somehow came up with the story line for my 1898 heroine who comes to Colorado because her brother has died and left an estate. He was a miner in Cripple Creek – amazing, isn’t it? – which led me to a ton of research and a greater appreciation for the area. Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine that I would write a historical, and never ever would I imagine owning a piece of history such as the Hotel St. Nicholas.

The property used to be the St. Nicholas Hospital, run by nuns and with a full operating room (and also a morgue) and so with the quaintness and the cuteness, we have also inherited other things: like the ghosts that are said to roam the hallways. I personally haven’t seen any of them, but I do believe.

Obviously, it’s some work to run a place like this, especially with no previous experience in the hospitality business. The last two weeks have been full, with transferring accounts, getting a feel for the place, and prioritizing all the things we’d like to get done in order to make this place shine. But we ran a much larger business in Michigan, one that consumed a lot of energy. Still, I had enough time to write, which is what I hope to continue full bore once the dust has settled.

And where a year ago I would have pooh-poohed the idea of writing historical fiction, I now have ideas in my head for the next story, and the next.

No matter what the rest of the world is involved in, it’s possible to find something new – whether it’s in endeavors, love, life, stories – things don’t stop just because the decade or the year has ended. There’s always a fresh horizon.

Apologies: I had meant to include photographic evidence of our new venture but this web site keeps kicking them back, even though I made the pictures teeny-weenie.

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And Now, For a Little (or a Lot of) Editing

Posted by Joanne Huspek

The upside to never throwing any writing away? You will always have something to edit.

I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo this year, but I didn’t have to. I have at least four (FOUR!) novels on my external drive in various states of disrepair. Each is about 85% complete, because if you NaNo, you don’t really end up with a full first draft, although 50K words + is a good start. Each year I give myself a month break from writing before putting on my editing hat, I may start again, but then something (anything) will get in the way.

As a result, I feel like the hoarder queen of incomplete works.

My task until the next NaNoWriMo: Get some of these from the partial manuscript to at least a workable first draft. I have an Editor for Life that has barely seen two words come out of me in the last five years. (Update: I sent him An Education for Addie, so he’s working on that one as I type. My goal is to get something else to him as soon as I get my first edit of Addie back.)

For my editing project, I’ve decided on my NaNoWriMo project of 2017. I’m good at constructing story lines but horrible at writing a catchy title. It was tentatively titled The Loud Sisters, until I decided to throw a brother in. Oopsy. The now working title is Waking Art Loud. It’s about five siblings (adults) who return to Detroit after their father dies, for the funeral. There are secrets all around, and the sibs are not as close as they would like to believe they are. Blood is definitely not thicker with this bunch. Death usually brings out the worst in people, or at least in the people I know.

Drama, drama, drama, and it all takes place in the space of a week.

I enjoyed writing this tale, but now that I’m editing, I find that I’m enjoying this part even more. Shocker! Editing is NOT usually my favorite task in the whole wide world, right next to writing an outline and a summary. I’m finding this edit a vacation from my historical, which is still fraught with a few historically incorrect items within the pages that I’ll get to in the second draft. It’s so much easier to write about the present day! The Loud children were rather wooden the first time around, and now I’m adding texture to their personalities. As with a lot of my stories, I have in my head which famous actor/actress will play each character. (I should give them a Pinterest board.) In addition, I have a vague idea as to how this will end; rest assured, someone will be unhappy at the end.

My ultimate goal for this edit is to finish by the first of this year, but I’m a heavy procrastinator so who knows. There’s a lot going on in this house, and it’s not just Christmas. I’ve curtailed any other art projects until I’m finished, and I’m nearly halfway through at this point.

I’m trying to limit my social media, although that’s hard. Facebook, you are crack. Twitter I gave up on a while ago, because I don’t enjoy wading in the cesspool. TV, that’s easy. I only have Hulu and Amazon Prime, so it’s a major moment to find something to watch, much less sit there for a couple of hours twiddling my thumbs.

And so I will leave you now, because I have dinner to make and words to get back to. See you on the other side.

 

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Not NaNo-ing This Year

Posted by Joanne Huspek

The writer’s life is full of ups and downs.

After coming off my highly successful Novel in Nine class with Michelle Richmond, I had intended on hitting NaNoWriMo with another vengeance. (I’m getting really adept at starting stories – not so good at editing them, but that’s another story.)

Unfortunately, last week life dealt me another hand.

My cat of six years, Purrby, has been struggling with kidney disease since August. Back then, we admitted him to the vet hospital where he spent a couple of days on an IV. After his release, they gave us drugs to try and new food. Due to having previous cats with kidney issues, I’m really picky about food and read labels for the pets more than I do for myself, so I’m not exactly sure what happened.

Purrby perked up a bit after that, but he was never really the same. When we moved to Colorado, he was fat but not obese. (I kept him on a strict diet.) He spent some time outside, because my husband’s not so strict about keeping him in the house. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with his illness, just throwing it out there. Purrbs lost about 4 pounds during his illness, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Last week, Purrbs took a turn for the worse. Where he didn’t eat much since August, he stopped eating altogether. I think he was still drinking. He took to tipping over my watering cans and sat in the water. Or he’d sit in the kitchen sink. Or in the shower after I’d gotten out of it. I made an appointment to get him in, but then my car tires (yes two) went from slow leak to fast leak, so that day I spent too much time getting replacement tires. The next day (Saturday) I dropped Purrby off early in the morning, figuring an IV would get him almost as good as new.

The vet called about two hours later. Purrby was in the final stages of his kidney disease! I had two options: take him home and watch him suffer, or put an end to it.

I chose to end his suffering. And I was sad.

Oh, I know how I have spoken about and written about Purrby as being a “very bad kitty” – it’s in my brief bio. He was a handsome orange tabby with a personality and then some. When I adopted him, he was six months old – plus. He had the run of the shelter, and let everyone know he was the boss. I liked him; he came right up to me and meowed loudly. Followed me around. He also purred loudly. I spent a bit of time there, looking him and the other kitties over. (An aside: I’d lost the other cat to kidney disease about six months before and wasn’t in a big hurry to get another cat, but I visited shelters. I still visit shelters. You never know.) When I left, he was meowing at me like he was mad. I waited the weekend and came back. He was there on the counter, meowing at me, like he recognized me and was pissed. “Where the hell have you been, human?” And he was purring.

For the first couple of years, Purrby was crazy. N-U-T-S. He could jump six feet or more and knocked over everything in his path. He ate the bread on my counter, so I bought a breadbox. (Purrby was especially partial to croissants.) Do you know how hard it is to find a breadbox? He ate butter, so I started putting butter in the upper cabinet. (I like room temperature butter. Bite me.) Purrby figured out how to open the upper cabinet. I returned home from work one day and he was INSIDE the cabinet eating butter.

He leapt to the clothes rods in our closet and slept on top of them. You’d think that would be uncomfortable, but he liked balancing on the rod. If you left a drawer open, he’d get comfortable inside and you’d never know he was there, until you closed the drawer. THEN he would meow.

Purrby liked to climb inside the Christmas tree and hang out. When I stopped putting the Christmas tree up, he did the same with the evergreen trees outside. He also climbed the houseplants we had in the house. This was fine when he was a kitten, but when he weighed 14 lbs, it was a bit much.

Purrby thought it was great sport to run away from us. I’ve chased him through snow drifts. After a while, I gave up. I’m too old for this. When we first moved here, he went missing for an extended period of time. We went to the Humane Society in a panic and filled out a report. Turns out Purrbs was under a roll-away dumpster we had parked in the yard for our construction waste. He showed up later that night covered in dirt and pine needles.

He was still the same mischievous kitty even at the end. Still running away from us. Still batting Chuy around. Still jumping six feet or more over the neighbor’s wall. Still purring like his motor would never quit.

*sigh*

I took Chuy to the vet to say goodbye to Purrby. Purrbs was weak but still purring and meowing. I like to think he was happy to see us. I couldn’t stay to watch him cross the Rainbow Bridge. Some things are just too hard to do.

Purrby’s last vet visit

You know, you rescue pets, you love them, they get sick, you lose them. You think you’d get used to it but you never do.

So you can see why I’ve been a little deflated since November 1st.

After a week of regret and tears, I’m ready to start writing again, but I won’t be participating in the breakneck speed of NaNoWriMo.

No. I’m going to take it slow. And I’m going to think about things along the way.

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Success! All Around!

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I’d thought my road trip across two countries, ten states, and five Canadian provinces would spark my writing on the current work in progress and send the doldrums out the window (I seem to write far better and far more often when I’m on the road), but alas, that was not the case this trip. Oh, I tried – I guess I get an “A” for effort. If you want to catch a glimpse of my travels, feel free to click HERE.

I like driving, but it does have a downside. It takes up a lot of precious time. But as a writer, I look at the experience like this: I’m mining for new story lines and new inspiration. I’m meeting new personalities and reconnecting with old friends. I’m immersing myself in new settings.

Ah, but it would be really nice to travel in style. A self contained motor home like this one. Some of my hotel rooms were nice, but others were downright scary. They were all dog-friendly, but some charged extra for my pooch. In a couple of hotels, my pup ‘found’ things in our room – wrappers, candy, food, a condom. Dude, you should pay my dog for unearthing what housekeeping missed.

In the end, I came home after two and a half weeks, loaded up the classes I’d missed, and started to write with a vengeance. And I FINISHED! Yup, on September 30 with just hours to spare on my Novel in Nine class, when I finally typed The End at the end of 98K+ words.

There was the nearly teary goodbye to my Novel in Nine teacher, Michelle Richmond, and the rest of the class during the last video conference and subsequent group chats.

Now comes the harder part, and that’s editing. I’ve got a notebook full of the things I thought I’d missed, the things I wanted to include (I realized I had left out a key realization and now I’m wondering where the heck I should put it), and then the other things that popped up because some of my research sources steered me away from my wrong assumptions regarding late 19th Century Colorado. I’ll need to run the document in Smart Edit and fix all my overuses before I send it off for the next phase in my novel’s life.

I’d like to finish the first round edits before November, because…NaNoWriMo. I’m debating if I should start a new project or perhaps actually finish the last four or five of my November stories. I’m tired of leaving things half finished. They all need work, they all need those defining words The End. Still, even my hot messes of NaNoWriMo feels right somehow, even though the thought of tackling that chore feels daunting.

It’s all good.

It’s not just writing or the road trip or the unconditional love of my puppy. Life feels complete and even. There is a rhythm, in writing and in life (and even with the pup, who’s amazingly housebroken!) that is gentle. It all makes sense.

That’s where the success comes in. You don’t have to be a best selling author or rich or famous (although if the MegaMillions complies, I may get that motor home!) to feel contentment. Sure, you want all those things – everyone does.

The success doesn’t lie in the journey’s end – as much as I celebrated the completion of my novel with champagne and woohoos – no, the real success is in the journey.

Something to think about.

Safe travels.

 

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The Ups and Downs of the Write Life

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Namaste Mosaic Sign by Nutmeg Designs Image: Creative Commons

Well, it had to happen.

After a whirlwind of a July, where I wrote more than 20K words – they flowed like never-ending wine, the good stuff, mind you – August ground to a horrible crawl. It was the hangover of the summer. I’d wanted to crank out another 10K words, but barely managed half that much.

What happened? Real life, for one thing. After my epic month of writing, I decided to take a few days off, which inevitably ended up much longer. We went white water rafting. It was fun, made more fun in that I didn’t fall out of the boat. It was scenic, as we traveled through parts of Colorado you don’t see from the car window. Then there was also a lot more work than I’d anticipated (which isn’t much anyway, but a few more hours each day leaves me exhausted and unable to think creatively). I have since semi-retired from my retirement job, getting the house back into some semblance of normalcy. When you have pets, you really should vacuum more than once every two weeks. Plus the Pooch and I are taking a long mother-chihuahua road trip, and I have to make sure the Big Guy doesn’t starve to death while I’m gone.

It doesn’t end there. My puppy went to training class, then got sick, then got neutered. He’s nearing adolescent puppyhood, so he’s not sleeping as much and barking more and not listening at all. (He’s pulling on my sweater as I type this, like the Coppertone pup.) Then my cat became gravely ill. (That vet made bank off us, yes indeedy.) He’s okay for now, but he must have lost five pounds and still doesn’t eat as much as he used to. We looked for houses in the mountains (many houses – thanks Realtor Jeanne), put an offer on one, and it was declined. THEN I went to the doctor and found out I have sciatica. Hello, physical therapy and crappy health insurance. Oh, and I bought a couple of therapeutic pillows to sit on and those babies aren’t cheap.

I could go on, but I’d bore you.

The big thing is that I’m at the point of my novel where I’m filling in. “Doing the plumbing,” as Michelle Richmond says. The garden has been planted, but now comes the weeding. (YUCK.) The bones are there, the fun stuff is written, now it’s a matter of sitting down and finishing the darned thing. Where in July I thought I needed a couple of chapters and a few scenes, in August I realized I need at least three chapters and a couple dozen scenes. I started writing, and writing, and then not writing, because at 88K words I thought I should be closer to “The End” than I am. Feelings of frustration and inadequacy swelled up.

*sigh*

It’s a matter of getting butt in chair and opening the file (which is always open just in case I am hit by the lightning of inspiration, which happens, but not often enough for me).

The point is, writing is not a straight line up, or a straight line across. It’s ups and downs. It’s zig-zagging all over the map. It’s taking two steps forward and five steps back. It’s a quiet lull and a frenzy of activity. It’s a marathon and a leisurely stroll. It happens, and it doesn’t.

I keep telling myself to give myself a break, just as I unearth the cattle prod called internal nagging to goad myself into forward movement.

Small goals, then action.

Forgive your Real Life, and then carry on.

 

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Re-Reading For Pleasure and Education

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Well, I am coming into the final stretch of my current work in progress, An Education for Addie, which is why I’m not blogging or writing anything else lately. I’m on a tear, and I’m not going to abandon my tear until the well runs dry! Thanks to Michelle Richmond for offering the class, Novel in Nine – I’ve gotten so many good ideas from not only the lessons, but from the feedback and comments of the other participants. This is a prime example of a class that makes sense to take. I’m not only pleased at my progress, I’m full of passion to seeing this to completion. This is when writing in exciting! Not sure it’s anything of note; we’ll wait for my Editor for Life to give his yea or nay.

I took this photo last year while on a walk, before I’d even thought I’d be writing a novel set in 1898 Colorado Springs practically in this very spot.

I did decide to take some time to read, one of my favorite novels, In a Perfect World by Laura Kasischke. It’s short, it’s haunting, it’s poetic. Imagine my dismay when I went to retrieve it from my terribly pared-down library (due to retirement and moving across the country) that my copy wasn’t there! I was so excited about this book for many reasons, that I’d lent it out to several people, most of whom returned it  – obviously not the last person, who I can’t remember because it was probably years ago.

Thank goodness for Amazon. (Yes I know, AMAZON, but the local bookstores didn’t have it. The author is from Michigan which is the only place I’ve seen this novel on the shelves.) I received my replacement copy the next day. (And from now on, I won’t be lending my books out, not unless I know you and know where you live.)

Reading, especially good books, it not just entertainment for me, it’s education. I take the book apart; I see what works and what doesn’t, what hits it out of the park and what’s a little weak. Yes, even my favs aren’t perfect – and neither am I. Sometimes I look at sentence structure in what I’m reading and try to break it down.

My current work in progress is not in the same vein as In a Perfect World. There’s little poetry in my words, as it’s historical fiction – it’s what I call a basic story with a basic plot and running linearly. There’s good, there’s bad, there are challenges, challenges met and conquered, The End. I might change that in a future draft, though.

However, my last NaNoWriMo takes place in the same place(s) but 85 years later, and that story has some twists and turns and is dark. In a Perfect World is dark. It ends, but leaves you wondering just how it ends and what the characters’ future will be like, beyond the last page. This is why the novel struck me so, and after my recent reading, strikes me still.

‘They’ say you should read if you’re a writer, and I agree. Since what I’m working on is considered ‘sweet’ – no real sex – I read sweet romances. Since it’s historical, I not only read recently written novels set in a similar time frame, I also read novels written during that time frame, as well as letters written by people who lived then. (My novel isn’t full of the stilted vernacular of the time, but I wanted to include a flavor of it.) None of these genres is my preferred reading material, but sometimes you must step outside your comfort area and read something new and different.

My takeaway is that reading other work is just as important as the effort you put into your own.

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