Today is IWSG day. Come join Alex J. Cavanaugh and all the other writers who support each other, make us all smile and think in this monthly hop. No one is mocked or sneered at. All are welcome. We have all been there.

This month’s hosts are Tamara Narayan, (have you read her new book???) Tonja Drecker, Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Lauren @ Pensuasion, Stephen Tremp, and Julie Flanders!

The twitter hashtag is #IWSG

Visit the website and look around: http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/

This month's question is:

What was your very first piece of writing as an aspiring writer? Where is it now? Collecting dust or has it been published? 

My very first piece of writing as an aspiring writer was a fantasy trilogy that I titled The Snowhawk.  I started it in grad school with an idea about a group of Healers, headquartered in The Temple of Healing in a world I created.  I also created the names.  I had a story line with them, specifically one of them.  All planned out.  And then a fellow stepped in and ran away with the plot.  And then the villain stepped in and really ran away with the plot.  I wrote, rewrote, fiddled – all this before I had a computer.   I researched agents and sent out queries and was amazingly arrogant when I received rejections. 

A woman for whom I babysat learned that I was a ‘writer’ and put me in touch with her cousin, who was an editor for one of the NY publishers.  She read my manuscript and told me it was too long.  She did not say it was bad.  But I had other interests in writing, and The Snowhawk in its final three volume typewritten and saved nowhere form was shelved.  I had better stories in the works. 

Interestingly, I still have that manuscript.  I can’t use it now.  I’d have to retype it, for one thing, since it was a few decades ago and I only became computerized in 1986.  Remember the big floppies?  And that universe had spiraled away from my original concept.  I was writing the stories of The Memphis Cycle and The Orphan’s Tale, and others.  It was passé. 

But The Snowhawk wasn’t finished with me.  I hit a huge dry spell due to a combination of things – crooked agent, job issues, family health, The Recession…  I stumbled across The Snowhawk, which I had completely forgotten, in a box on the top of some shelving in my garage.  I took the box inside, opened volume 2 of the manuscript and began to read.  I frowned at the passage, thought I could fix it – and the Monsoon hit, blasting through the inertia and dryness. 

And suddenly I was writing again.  I turned to my real Works In Progress and got cracking. 

You can read about it in this post.

I will never get rid of that manuscript.  It is the reason that I am still writing and publishing.  It may never be published, but it helped to save me.

So...  How about you?  Go visit the Blog Hop - and sign up!

Insecure Writers Support Group March 5, 2014

Today is the first  Wednesday of the month, which means it is IWSG day. The once-a-month blog hop started by Alec Cavanaugh . IWSG = Insecure Writers' Support Group (click the words to visit)

 We share our insecurities and support each other with empathy, sympathy or practical suggestions. 

One of the great joys of writing is the feeling of ideas flowing, thoughts coming together, racing through your fingertips onto the keyboard and into the manuscript, flooding the pages.  It's as exhilarating as careening down a snowy hill on a sled, or putting a horse at a jump, knowing - just knowing - that you can't miss.

Tetris

You are the ruler of the universe, the spinner of stories, the Tale-Teller, the Seannachie - you can hold people spellbound... Well, you can hold yourself spellbound at any rate...  Those are the moments, rather like Runner's Euphoria, that buoy us up and keep our fingers tapping on the keyboard.

...but then there are the moments, weeks, months, maybe years, where you squeeze out a chapter here and a chapter there, and it is like trying to squeeze the last bit out of a half-dry toothpaste tube.  And just about as enjoyable.  You know you want to write, but you find that you can't write.  Or else that the joys of Tetris far outweigh the joys of putting words together. 



...creeeeeaaakkkk...

You sit there about as useful as a rusty old water pump.  Lots of creaking and no juice.

What to do?  

I attended a small writer's conference years ago.  The first I ever attended.   I got a lot out of it, and I still have my notes.  Talks about characters, about where to get ideas, a funny chat on surreptitiously writing things down on napkins in restaurants.  Someone asked this particular speaker how he worked through writer’s block.  His answer, completely serious, was unexpected based on his talk up to then. 

He said,

 

“I can’t afford to have writer’s block.  If I don’t write, I don’t get paid.  So if I hit a stone wall, I write through it.  Anything.  If it’s a scene, I mock something up.  But I write and move on.  I don’t let myself get stalled.  Once I get my momentum up, I can always turn around and fix what I did.  But I don’t have the feeling that I am somehow stopped.” 

It’s a good thing to think about.  At the moment I’m a rusty pump.  Frankly, I think I have a slight case of burnout, since I am working on a story that had been fixed in my mind for a long time.  I was familiar with it, comfortable with it – but suddenly I was seeing ways that the plot could go, sidelights to the main character’s history and personality, new ways to deepen things – and I was simply tired.

I may take a day’s break.  Or not.  I may just plow through.  Write even if it’s just 700 words of my notes to myself about what I think might be happening.  Just write.

...Like I said before, without insecurities, would we be real writers?

Hm...

This is a blog hop with lots of good participation.  Go forth and read!