IWSG: Keeping it clean for Mom

 

The IWSG is a fantastic group of writers and bloggers who share posts the first Wednesday of each  month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

The awesome co-hosts for the September 1 posting of the IWSG are:

 

Jemima Pett, J Lenni Dorner, Cathrina Constantine, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, and Mary Aalgaard!
 

Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. 

Remember, the question is optional! 

 

October 6 question - In your writing, where do you draw the line, with either topics or language?

 

I'm a lucky writer. As a shorthand answer to this question, I tell people that I write nothing I'd be embarrassed to have my mother read--because my mother reads all my books and stories, even the ones that aren't in her favorite genres! That's why I'm lucky--because my mom is that supportive! That's partly why my writing has no explicit sex, no serious cussing, and no explicit violence.

 

There's another reason for that as well: I don't like to read explicit sex and violence, and I'm even less comfortable writing them. I prefer sex scenes left to the reader's imagination, and as for violence, there's enough of it in the world without me adding to it. Granted, I write murder mysteries, but I leave the killing, and the gore, off stage. Again, I trust the reader to imagine whatever level of violence they feel is appropriate.

 

Language is a bit more challenging. In my genres (so far, cozy mysteries and children's books), the industry standard to not to have swearing. Since obviously people cuss--some of them cuss a lot--my choice has been to let the reader know that the person is, without writing out the exact words. If my sleuth is talking to a foul-mouthed jerk in a bar, for example, she might report something like, "Once I sorted substance from cussing, he told me that he'd never been anywhere near the victim since she took out the restraining order." Sometimes coming up with the work-arounds is great fun!

 

How about you? What's your measure for "forbidden" topics and/or language? 

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Watch this space for news about the great blog shift--coming soon, my new and improved author web site!

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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Writer's Wednesday: Struggles

Death By Donut has launched! The Pismawallops PTA series is, at least for the moment, at rest. I am free at last to follow up with the new sleuth who took up residence in my brain over a year ago.

Or am I? It feels like everywhere I turn with my new characters I come crashing up against something that feels too personal, or too disturbing. I could try to write a mystery without a murder, but it's not just the primary death--it's people's backstories with their losses and traumas, all sorts of things. I'm a little scared to move forward. Am I afraid of my own feelings, or of what others will think if I write something that few people will actually know resonates with my own experience? And isn't writing about our own pain part of what we do?

I could shift from mystery to other genres, but for one thing, mysteries are what I write, what I know how to write and what my readers are coming to expect. For another, I think the basic problem will always be there: I now know what a big life-changing, traumatic event feels like. I have to acknowledge that in my writing. Maybe it means I have to take my writing to another level, not away from the humorous, but maybe towards something with more substance?

This is hard.

But bit by bit I'm finding my way into the story, working through or around the things that are too difficult. One thing I've come out of this year knowing: I'm a writer.

 

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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IWSG: What Makes Me Stop Reading?

It's time for the monthly IWSG posting! 

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting!

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.   

January 6 question - Being a writer, when you're reading someone else's work, what stops you from finishing a book/throws you out of the story/frustrates you the most about other people's books? 

 

The awesome co-hosts for the January 6 posting of the IWSG are Ronel Janse van Vuuren , J Lenni Dorner, Gwen Gardner Sandra Cox, and Louise - Fundy Blue!

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This is a question I've actually addressed before, but it's one well worth revisiting, and I don't have much to say about my own writing, so...

Some books I quit in annoyance, and know I'm quitting--if the writing is just not good, or the story gets gruesome or the like. Other books I set aside and realize that I just somehow never got back to them. Those often require a second look (and often when I'm in a different mood, I'll finish them).  

Here's a list of things that can ruin a story for me:

• poor writing/editing (abuse of the English language)
• anachronisms. If you are writing medieval fantasy and people are looking at clocks and using centimeters, I'll get annoyed.
• wrong kind of story for me. Obviously this isn't something a writer needs to fix.
• breaking the "fourth wall" with history/geography/language lessons or backstory thinly disguised as dialog or--worse--musing by a character.
• lack of any likable/relatable characters. If everyone is too bad or too good, I'll probably quit.

Pretty sure I could go on, but that will do!

 December writing report:

We had a holiday, and I had company. Very very little writing, editing, or even blogging happened this month. That means that after getting my holiday story collection out at the beginning of the month, I ground to a halt with the other 3 collections that close to finished. I've also gotten feedback from several beta readers on my new Pismawallops PTA mystery, so that's waiting for my attention. I've only gotten back at it starting on New Year's Eve (because what else do you do with a holiday that's about parties, when you can't party, and about being with your loved ones, when they aren't around?), but I'm hitting the ground running! Well, okay, I'm continuing my hobble/crawl/ooze in the direction of productivity. The newest short-story collection goes live shortly, and I'm on to the next collection, Wizard Libraries and Dragon Archives.

 

This one is already live:

 

IWSG: The best month for writing?

 

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and that means time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post. The IWSG is the brainchild of the amazing Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh. Since we are all insecure and can use all the support we can get, huge thanks to Alex and this month's co-hosts,
Pat Garcia, Sylvia Ney, Liesbet @ Roaming About Cathrina Constantine, and Natalie Aguirre!

 

Each month we have an optional question to spark discussion. 

This month's Optional Question: are there months or times of the year when you are more productive than others, and why?

Let me know what you think!

I think this is the flip side of the question about when it is hard to write, or what makes it hard. I've commented in the past that travel/vacations mess with my ability to write regularly, since there tends not to be a lot of down time, and a lot of distractions. Aside from the obvious corollary that writing happens more when I'm at home, I'm not sure when I write best. The truth is that I don't really know what life looks like going forward, so I might not be able to give a reasonable answer to this question.

But: in the past, my most productive writing times have been ones without travel, and usually with the extra incentives that NaNo offers. By incentives, I mean both the gimmicky things like the histograms showing progress toward the utterly arbitrary 50,000 words, and the community of writers who are all doing the same thing, and offering support and encouragement to each other. So November, despite the holiday distractions, has been a productive month for me in many years. This year I'm hoping to be ready to start a new novel in January or February, and to dive in hard and fast, NaNo-style, once I'm set.

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The Writing Report: Unlike other Novembers when I've had a novel going, this year I was just editing and organizing old stories into collections, and when I took off to spend Thanksgiving with a small corner of my family, progress on that ground pretty much to a halt. The project just didn't have the sense of urgency drafting a novel does. Still, I need and want to finish the collections, so I'll be ready to get back to Death By Donut as soon as my beta readers are done with it. So I guess I'd best get cracking! 

 

IWSG: NaNo Time?

 

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and that means time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post. The IWSG is the brainchild of the amazing Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh. Since we are all insecure and can use all the support we can get, huge thanks to Alex and this month's co-hosts, Jemi Fraser, Kim Lajevardi, L.G Keltner, Tyrean Martinson, and Rachna Chhabria!

Every month there is an optional question to spark our posts and discussions. This month's question is (stripped of all the explanation you will find here):

Why do you write what you write?

Now for my post...

I'll get to the question in a minute. First, the big question: to NaNo, or not to NaNo? That's right--November is National Novel Writing Month, and many of us like to use the energy of the event to push our work along. So am I doing it this month? 

My answer to that appears to be a great big "sort of." When I first drafted this post on Oct. 30, I was still working on edits on last year's novel, something I'd hoped to have done by the end of May. As my regular readers know, life intervened, and writing, not to mention just getting up and going on each day, has been a challenge. As of November 1, the edits aren't quite done, and that's my first priority.

Still, I have a new story that's itching. 

Well, not so much a story as a character. I want to start a new mystery series with a new heroine. She's taking shape in my head pretty well, but the story has not, except in the broadest sense. And therein lies the rub: I could rush ahead and write a story all unplanned. That hasn't worked well for me in the past. Or I could spend however long it takes to plot the novel, then start. That might make it hard to reach 50K words, but frankly, who cares?

My third option is to spend the month working on short fiction, mostly editing flash fiction into a couple (or 3) anthologies. That is, once I finish the edits on Death By Donut. By the way, I'm still open to beta readers, and I haven't forgotten those who volunteered last month. I expect to finish my edits within the next two days.

Once the draft is off to the beta readers, I can either start plotting the next thing or (much more likely) start organizing my stories for the anthologies. I guess if I'm "doing NaNo," I'm doing it as a rebel. I did log my substantial word count for today, a mix of new text and edited material!

Okay, after all that, I'll skip the monthly question. Feel free to answer it in your comments, though! I'd love to hear why you write!

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Last-minute Tuesday night update: despite obsessing fruitlessly over the election returns, I managed to finish the edits, and the draft will go out to beta readers tomorrow (after I do a little formatting cleanup and write a note to guide readers in their feedback). I'm very relieved to let go of that one for a while!

IWSG: Year End Review

Yeah, okay, so maybe I should have done the review before the year ended, but here it is! It's also IWSG day, and I'll answer the IWSG question below.

Writing:
The first thing I have to say, because otherwise I'll feel a little discouraged about progress, is that we spent a little over half the year traveling. I don't get much writer-work done when traveling (despite the photo above, where I'm writing under non-optimal circs. That's my journal, which is usually as much as I manage). So some things changed: my blogging became less frequent and much more erratic, and I wrote very few pieces of flash fiction for the blog, but posted more photos.

On the other hand, I managed to write, submit, and get accepted (eventually), two short stories, one in the IWSG Anthology (take a look below at the lovely cover).

I'm rather proud that I was able to do major revisions of the Pismawallops PTA mystery I drafted in November and December 2018 during our quiet times in Christchurch in February and March, which allowed me to spend the summer dealing with editorial feedback and publish that book Dec. 6, 2019.

We also stayed home, mostly, in November (aside from a 5-day outing to San Francisco and Sacramento), so I managed to finish a very rough draft of the PPTA Mysteries #5.

And I shouldn't forget The Christmas Question, a novella that I conceived in late summer and managed to pull together in time to include it as a gift to my supporters with my December newsletter. Of course, I had hoped to also revise and include a second holiday-themed short story, but ran out of time. Maybe next year!

Looking at that list of accomplishments, I actually feel pretty good! I didn't meet my goals about writing and submitting short stories--but I exceeded expectations with writing longer works.

The business of writing:
This part is less encouraging. My sales most of the year were lack-luster, probably due to a lack of effort on my part in the marketing department. I ended the year strongly, with good (for me) advance and early sales of Death By Library, but I won't see that money until next year. This year, due to the expenses of bringing out a new book, I'm ending in the red.

 Beautiful covers, all!

Now for the IWSG...

The first Wednesday of every month is the Insecure Writer's Support Group posting day, where writers can express their doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It's a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Check it out here and join if you want support with your writing. 

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

 

The awesome co-hosts for the The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the IWSG are T. Powell Coltrin, Victoria Marie Lees, Stephen Tremp, Renee Scattergood, and J.H. Moncrieff!

 

Optional January 8 question - What started you on your writing journey? Was it a particular book, movie, story, or series? Was it a teacher/coach/spouse/friend/parent? Did you just "know" suddenly you wanted to write? 

I have always wanted to be a writer, and I have been writing stories since I first learned to write at all. But I did that for, erm, close to half a century before I published my first book, so what changed?

In some ways, nothing changed. I had been trying to complete, edit, and publish a novel since my grad school days (the one started then took something like 15 years from start to giving up). For two decades I wrote sporadically, working on several novels when I got the chance between school, work, and raising 2 kids. My first published book was written much the same way--one chapter/story at a time when I had a chance. It worked well for that book (unlike those first 2 mystery novels), because it was an episodic novel.

But why was that book published? Well, I'll admit it wasn't because I finally found a publisher. I didn't even try with The Ninja Librarian, because even I wasn't sure if it was juvvy or adult. What changed was that a friend I knew from another context told me about Createspace, and convinced me self-publishing was a legit means of sharing my work. After trying for so long to hatch a book without success, I liked the idea of just one out there, for my family to read if no one else. 

So I'll credit Dixie with helping me get published, but I'll credit a number of teachers along the way, from Mrs. Eggleston in the 2nd grade to Ms. Holmes and Mrs. Hollister in high school, for encouraging my writing--and a special shout-out to all the other teachers along the way who put up with me introducing stories into all sorts of homework where they didn't belong. 

How about you? Was there a special spark that got you going, or was it a natural bent from the beginning? 

IWSG: 2017 Year-End Round-Up

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to the IWSG page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! If it links to Google+, be sure your blog is listed there. Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG

The awesome co-hosts for the December 6 posting of the IWSG are Julie Flanders, Shannon Lawrence, Fundy Blue, and Heather Gardner! 

December 6  (optional) question - As you look back on 2017, with all its successes/failures, if you could backtrack, what would you do differently?
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I'm going to take this opportunity, as I do each year, to look back on my year as a writer and see what I have to celebrate, to regret, and to do better next year. 

The first and most obvious thing I see is that I'm not publishing anything in 2017. Book 3 of the Pismawallops PTA mystery series is nearly ready, but won't be out until early in the new year. I wanted it to be ready for the holiday season, but somehow, it just didn't happen. In part, that's because the revisions proved to be a great deal more challenging than I expected, requiring some re-jiggering of the plot, which means a big mess when you are writing a mystery. But I will also confess to some significant periods this year when I just didn't work on it, or anything else. Not sure why, for sure, though I may blame a lot of it on big changes in the family, as our youngest started college and my husband is preparing for retirement (and that will be another huge disruption to work, so I can expect my production of books to slow down even more for the next few years as we do long-awaited traveling).

On the up side, I'm doing great with the blog (too bad hardly anyone's reading it). I have written 64 book reviews for the blog so far (with several more to come), and somewhere around 30 flash fiction pieces, put together several photo-essay posts, and drafted 3 longer short stories, one of which I submitted to the IWSG anthology (no word yet, but I'm not holding my breath). That last bit fell short of my intentions of submitting at least one story a month (which I reduced to one/month over the summer, and didn't even manage that!). But I do have 2 stories that are a good polish away from submission, and plan to make that a priority after the book edits.

That raises a question for y'all: how do you manage books and shorter works at the same time? Or do you? Flash fiction is easy--by its nature, it's not as polished, and at 1000 words or less it's a matter of an hour or two. But a 3000-5000 word story for submission takes a lot more time and effort, and I can't seem to do that without destroying my focus on the book.

In a nutshell, 2017 has been a bit of a disappointing year for me. Sales are stagnant (maybe because I'm not doing any marketing? Ya' think?) and my writing editing pace is glacial, though committing to a set of editing steps each day during November (instead of drafting another mess) helped a lot.  I have a feeling my focus isn't going to get better any time soon, so maybe I need to think about a new normal.

So...to bring it back to the IWSG question, what would I do differently? Maybe work more diligently at getting the edits done? Maybe plan so that I could bring the book out more quickly when they are? Maybe backtrack all the way to 2015 when I drafted Death By Adverb during NaNo and take the time to make a more thorough outline so the final thing wouldn't have been such a mess?

There's one other thing I may want to change going forward: how I blog. I am getting burned out on all the book reviews, which have meant reviewing virtually everything I read. I'd like to keep blogging 3X/week, but I want to think of some different things to blog about, to keep myself and others reminded that this is primarily a writer's blog, not a review site. I think I let myself get swept into something didn't intend because it was an easy way to have content for the blog.

Oh, and one final plus: this fall, I took over managing the Fiction in 50 blog hop (#Fi50) from Bruce Gargoyle. It had lost pretty much all momentum, and is rather slow to get it back, but I'm trying. Check it out and feel free to join in during the last week of each month. Or even just leave me some ideas for prompts!

Okay--over to you! Let me know how your year went, and what you are proudest of.

IWSG: Fretting about book releases!

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! (Click on the badge above to see the whole story).

Our question for the month is "What is your favorite aspect of being a writer?" I'll get to that in a minute. First, I have to unload my neurotic insecurities, as well as a few that are all-too-reasonable.

I have a book coming out at the end of the month. That gives me lots of opportunities to freak out display insecurities: What if no one buys it? What if no one likes it? What if someone writes a really horrid review of it? What if I miss my deadlines and it doesn't come out?? What if I totally blow the publicity part and no one even knows? (A fairly reasonable fear, given my track record).

To add to the fun, I have a local live event scheduled for December 10, which gives me a whole other area to be insecure about: What if no one comes? (Alas, another not wholly groundless fear, given turnout at some other events). What if I say something stupid? What if I make a joke and no one laughs? Of course, this event is far enough in the future that I can *really* freak out about it at the December IWSG.

On the up side, I HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT AT THE END OF THE MONTH! Cue triumphant march music. Despite all my distractions and time spent not working, I managed to pull it together and spend the time necessary to do the revisions, the polishing, to assemble the cover (saving money on the pro...some assembly required). This not only feels like a huge accomplishment, but I'll be glad to get this book off my plate and move the next one into place.

Because, oh, yeah, I'm going to harness the NaNo momentum and try to get another draft together for the next book but one (always seem to have more lined up for revisions than I can get through).

So what's the best thing about being a writer? Aside from wearing sweatpants and a fuzzy sweatshirt to work, you mean? It's got to be getting recognized by little kids as the author of The Ninja Librarian. It only happens locally, where I visit the schools, but still--totally cool.

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And here it is: Book 3 of the Ninja Librarian series, due out Nov. 28! Preorders are now available from Amazon and Smashwords for the ebook. Preorder the paperback directly from this site and we'll pick up the shipping costs!