Why Do I Write?

I’ve never really thought about this question the way I’ve been thinking about it for the last few days.  Writing was just something I always did, from being five and trying to piece together words and pictures, to high school where I wrote what can only be called Sandman fan fiction, to university where I toiled away and produced two novels that were definitely among my more inexperienced attempts at storytelling.  I've come a long way from my first attempts like the picture I shared above and I've deeply enjoyed every second of the journey.

This said, the last few years have been definitely been my favourite times for writing.  I feel like I’ve learned and grown so much even in the past year by just writing a lot and reading a lot.  I’ve also moved away from the kind of career that consumes every last ounce of your soul and trounces creativity, in favour of work that is still really meaningful and important but allows a lot of time for creative writing in my personal time.  It’s a balance I’m grateful for because I want to help Indigenous Peoples and my community in whatever way I can.  And I also want to indulge my creativity and my writer self, because so much of my energy and passion comes from the fun I find in imagining things and writing them down.

As I’ve worked to decolonize my life and restore my relationship to the land and language, it occurred to me this week that I hadn’t done the same kind of transformative work in my relationship to writing and publishing.  I hadn’t really thought about the publishing side of it, but now that I’ve started to look into it more, I realized my knowledge of publishing is pretty old school.  I knew what most writers know – that there’s a traditional publishing industry, that you can try to break into it through the traditional avenues and that it’s very likely your story might end up in the slush piles where the only journey your manuscript ever takes is the return trip back to you inside a self addressed, stamped envelope.

This last week, there were a number of articles about traditional vs. self-publishing in the news, in part because of the AuthorEarnings report that Hugh Howey and his partner recently released.  A lot of discussion was generated and I’ve been gobbling up articles on the subject because I’m looking more closely at how to share my stories effectively.  I have to say, the self-publishing option is winning me over – but not because of money or earnings or royalties.  Not even because I’m anti-establishment or against traditional publishing houses.

I like it for all of the creative reasons I’ve read about – you can keep writing at the same time that you’re sharing and connecting with readers and you can work with talented local artists and editors.  I’ve yet to experience this personally, the sharing and connecting.  It sounds wonderful and it’s great that it's possible now through self-publishing.    I’m not sure why anyone would hesitate – I like how Hugh Howey puts it in this article called Why You Should Self Publish?  After reading this, I felt really excited to try – with no expectations of anything except sharing and trying to create the best book that I can.  But I also really like how Mark Coker puts it in this Publisher’s Weekly article about the furor that was caused by the AuthorEarnings report: “I think the world is better served with more publishing options. I want to see more publishers, more self-published authors, more books, more retailers, and more book-loving people earning a living contributing their talent to books and book culture”.

I agree with this on many levels.  I love books so much and I realize there are tons of talented, passionate people who help books and book culture thrive on both sides of this debate, and I’m thrilled that other options exist.  I’ve always known I wrote because I loved stories – loved reading them, writing them, editing them and drawing them.  It will be awesome to take the plunge and start sharing them.  In the traditions of my people this is exactly what happens - stories are shared, passed on and made richer through the experience.  I want to be apart of that and I’m fortunate to live in an era where doing so is easier than ever.

My story is now in the hands of my Ideal Reader and I’m focusing on other important elements of getting a book into shape, areas it sounds like a publisher might typically help with.   But I’m happy to take on these tasks.  It’s exciting and I’m learning so much as I go from the community of authors online who are both courageous and willing to share their stories to help new authors like me take these steps.

Happy writing everyone! #Makegoodart and make the choices that work for you and your art! S

Finish Lines and Feedback Time

One thing of the many things I love about writing is how the sun sets on one project and rises on a new one.   Even if it's just a new stage of the project you're working on. Yesterday I finished the second draft of the book that I started to rewrite at the beginning of 2014!  It feels incredibly good to finally let those characters that have been such a huge part of my waking, dreaming, and writing life for the last three years rest for a while.  I’m so much happier with the story than I was at the end of last year – what a transformation.  I’m also happy because now I can turn my attention more fully to the other projects that I’ve been thinking about while writing The Whirlwind’s Prophecy.  I’ve also started to look more in depth at the next part of the process, procuring a cleaner edit and critical read by outside eyes that aren’t as attached to the book as I am.

Ah feedback.  This is the scariest and most necessary part isn’t it? There are literally dozens of articles on the web about the merits/drawbacks of working with professional editors, writing groups, or beta readers.  And similar to the traditional/self-publishing debates, there doesn’t seem to be a right of wrong way to accomplish getting feedback to improve your story.  Writers have to do what’s best for them.

I’ve decided to go the route of asking help from what Stephen King’s refers to as the Ideal Reader – that person that you picture reading your book as you’re writing it, the person you most want to like it.   And after this, it would be awesome to have the experience of working with an editor.  I’ll be reading more about how to choose an editor in the next little while.

But even though I’m choosing this approach for The Whirlwind’s Prophecy, I’m also interested in trying to share my stories more spontaneously and minus the crazy fear that accompanies sending your writing out into the world.  I’m awestruck when I hear stories about people working with writing groups or beta reading drafts of other people’s manuscripts – hell, I still get nervous pressing ‘Publish’ on this blog.  But being a part of a more interactive storytelling community is appealing on so many levels and something I am going to try with my new projects.  I know it will help me grow as a writer and really, that’s all the reason I need to move past the fear.  That being said, I have absolutely no idea how to go about doing this.  Some authors have been wildly successful at engaging readers in early drafts of their work. Others talk about different writing sites that they’ve used to post stories, meet other authors and review one another’s work.  I haven’t looked into any of these yet, but over the next few weeks I will be.

Until then, for the last six months or more, I’ve wanted to write a story that my younger nieces and nephews could read.  I have an idea that I think might work, as both a project for them and a piece of work that I could start to share.  I hope to begin that today, which means next week, I’ll have an update on some completely new and unchartered (at least for me) writing territory.

Happy Writing!

S

The Curse of the Compulsive Edit

I started work on the second draft of my story this week and immediately fell victim to compulsive editing syndrome.  I had gotten all the way through Chapter Three by the time I realized what was happening.   I had done exactly what Stephen King’s On Writing and other articles that talk about the process of the second edit advise not to do.

Having started the edit, it was hard to pull myself away from the book.  I was excited after all, thrilled with the fact that I had managed to write the basic first draft in four weeks and certain that I could manage the second draft just as quickly.

Except that I had forgotten what had made the first draft flow so quickly – a clear plan for how the story unfolded.   The truth is, characters change in the telling of a story, at least mine did.  They grow and they become something more in your head and whatever they become can often get missed on the page in the mad rush to put down word after word.   When I was finally able to peel myself away, I was able to see that things were missing.

Funnily enough, I was only able to pull myself away out of sheer exhaustion. I was researching a lot of things this week and my brain was on hyper-drive.  I wanted to do everything all at once.  Read, write, draw, research, tweet, blog, work, sleep, you name it.   But no one can do everything at once.  Instead, I had to schedule time where I could sit down and read my book all in one piece and in a way that didn’t make me want to run to my computer and start to make edits.  I did this by saving a PDF of my book and reading it off of my ipad, sticky notes at the ready – a nice tip I got from Ksenia Anske, who’s sticky board is an organizational tool I adore.

After the read through, I went back to my trusted outline, scrolled to the bottom and started to make notes of what I had found overall in the story.  This included areas where things were moving too quickly, where characters seemed to not be pulling their weight, and a backstory that was motivating my protagonist in a huge way that wasn’t evident on the page.  I noticed a huge emotional driver for my character that hadn’t been given any attention at all in the text.

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything else, so I read a bunch of articles online about people’s experience with the second edit.  Reading through the ideas and questions other people ask their story during the second edit was extremely helpful to me.  My next step will be to take what I have found and consider where I can build/write those pieces into the overall foundation of the story.   As Stephen King puts it, I need to ask myself the Big Questions about what it all means, reinforce the themes and meanings I find and scrap the things that go in the opposite direction.

So that is how I am going to be spending the rest of my Saturday and the next few weeks.  I also decided to start a new short story this weekend, something that I’ve been thinking about for the last few days.  It’s inspired by a cool little Haudenosaunee legend and also some reading and thinking I’ve been doing about Treaties and Wampum Belts.  The last few mornings I found myself waking up thinking about it, and I can already tell that working on a new project will help me stay focussed on the editing work that needs to be done on The Whirlwind’s Prophecy – the working title of my book.

Happy editing everyone! Let’s make these stories sing!

S

Working Titles and Second Drafts

Today I am going to start on the second draft of my novel re-write.  As I mentioned here, last year I wrote a modestly sized manuscript that was flawed in various ways.  At the start of January I realized that the project needed to be rewritten completely.  I agonized over making the decision because it’s hard to walk away from months worth of work.  I wondered if I was dooming myself to another year, writing another draft of a story I had already been writing on and off for three years.  Then I realized it is never 'dooming' to get to write especially if it improves the reading experience.  This is why I can see people say it is a good thing to read a lot.  Last year, I read fifty books and this reading helped me to see that I had to follow my instincts.  And my instincts were telling me that my story was not ready for readers.

So on January 4, I committed to restarting the draft.  I actually almost started the year off with an entirely different project, one inspired by lacrosse.  I outlined the entire thing and wrote the first few chapters but the first story was eating away at me.  I wasn’t ready to let it go.  But making an outline for the lacrosse story had inspired me.   I made myself an outline for my story and set some basic goals for the first draft.  I would write as simply and cleanly as I could until I had a first draft.  I wouldn’t aim for writing an 80,000 word novel, I would just write a story with a clear beginning, middle and end. I set myself modest targets for the word count of each chapter.

By January 27, I had finished a first draft using the last two days of my winter holidays, snow days, weekends and evenings.   I wrote pretty much every day, but I took breaks in between.  My word count at the end of 23 days was 41,222.  Not an epic by any means, but most importantly, they were words I was proud of.   I was also proud because I told the story that I had imagined, I told it without getting too distracted or lost (although there’s always surprises) and I knew when I finished that there were elements of it that I wanted to flesh out that would round it out nicely.  One week in, I had adjusted the outline and I adjusted it again eleven days later.  Now this is the first time I've really used an outline.  A lot of writers I know and whose blogs I follow don’t use the outline.  I definitely agree with anyone out there who’s saying that you have to do whatever feels right for you.  But I have to say on my own behalf that having the outline was awesome because it totally helped me stay on track and organize the little inspirations/ideas that I was getting as I wrote.

Anyways.  I am happy to have given the first draft a tiny rest and I’m excited to start working on the second draft today.  I'll definitely be checking out some other blogs for tips etc, on how to move through the second draft effectively.

And finally, welcome to my new blog site - I am really excited about it!  The name of the blog has changed.  It is now my Indigenous name, written in the Cayuga language, which is Odadrihonyanisoh (Oh-da-dron-ya-nee-soh).  Some of the post formats look a bit wonky from the transition but I'll get a round to straightening them out as I go.

I made the decision to change blogs because I was finding that I was often posting about such different things (writing, education, treaty relationships, my community, itty bitty stories, journal type thoughts) with no easy way to organize the posts according to subjects.  I hope this will help anyone who happens along to explore the areas they are most interested in – even if it’s just the pictures.

Til next time, happy writing!

S

New Year ~ Old Paths

I love to write and have been writing on and off for a number of years.  The ‘off’ years have a lot of similar characteristics:  heavy workload, creatively unfulfilling, endless searching for direction and purpose, tiredness and sadness, little exposure to books, high exposure to television.

Last year, I finished writing a story of about 52,000 words or so. I had been working on the story for a number of years but by the time I got to the end of 2013, I realized that I just wasn’t happy with it.  I had originally wanted it to be a graphic novel that I worked on with my sister, then it turned into an illustrated novel and then just a novel - all of which made for a rocky narrative at best and by the time 2014 began, I knew I had to rewrite it. 

So this is the creative writing project that I am working on now and I’m really glad I made the decision to rewrite – letting last year’s work transform into something far more coherent and satisfying makes all previous efforts so much more meaningful.  It helps that it’s been a relatively painless process.  Certainly, a large chunk of the story was already in place but outlining and generating reasonable word count targets for each of the chapters has been my best ally thus far.  I’ve worked through five chapters relatively quickly and outlining has helped me make smoother revisions and adjustments as I go.

In the meantime, I realized I wanted to organize the blog a bit differently.  I started this blog because I wanted a place to record the positive, inspiring and exciting things that were happening in my community.  I wanted to record them because there is a lot of negative press about Indigenous Peoples and an enormous knowledge gap continues to persist in the mainstream education systems.  But I also got caught up in wanting to talk about my own creative efforts and struggles.  

I’ve read a lot of great blogs over the last year by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and they’ve inspired me to take a look at how I share what I’m learning in a way that really reflects who I am, what I care about and the things I like to do.  And who am I?  A writer? An educator? A participant?  A researcher?  A photographer? An activist? A schoolhacker?  

I realized that I’d like to find a way to include it all: a little fact, a little fiction, a little fantasizing about the totally sustainable future I hope we all have.   And this year, I’m going to try.  

Nu:yah Everyone!  (A Haudenosaunee way of saying Happy New Year)

S.