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Up (again) with the pen, down (again) with the pitchfork!
I’ve been feeling quiet the last few days.
There’s a lot behind most silences. In this case, my silence is inspired by a gathering resolve.
Yep, you read that right: “resolve.” I know this is traditionally the time of making, revising, breaking and occasionally keeping resolutions, but I tend not to be the resolution-making sort.*
Shiny blue light, inspire me!
It’s been months since I told myself I’d begin editing The Monster’s Daughter’s sequel in earnest. And yet, so far I’ve only mustered a few hours of editing here and there. I’ve persistently traded the deep, lasting gratification of moving closer to completing a dear project for the instant gratification of an online exchange or nineteen.
Those exchanges are meaningful to me, but the gratification I get from them shouldn’t be the one driving me. It should be a small, sweet reward for a small, sweet goal met.
The last few days, my mind has been drawn more and more toward the sequel. Toward imagining what it will be like to complete and release it, freeing me to edit the final book of the Glass Ball trilogy.**
Yes, it’s going to be a hell of a lot of work. I have a lot of rewriting to do to make this story one I’m comfortable releasing; as I wrote in the entry Pens & pitchforks, I don’t want to be an author that “wields her pen like a pitchfork, just because she can”:
As I wrote it, The Monster’s Daughter was a story about one girl having the courage to make hard choices in hard times, no matter how small and insignificant she might feel. In working toward that enhancement, it’s my hope I’ll be able to create the kind of fiction that got me through my own childhood: the kind that made me go, “Wow, that’s tough, but I bet I’d survive it!” Holding that hope as I read fiction helped me weather the struggles of my own childhood. If I could make it one more day, and another day after that, I figured I’d eventually reach the point where I’d be putting out little brush fires instead of trying to slay entire freakin’ families of dragons every day.
By postponing this work, I’m also postponing the enormous reward of seeing a beloved friend’s path illuminated.
Enough. Enough dawdling. Enough leaving Ginny trapped in limbo.
The work’s not doing itself, so I guess that means I have to do it!
I mean, I’m going to do it!
No, wait. I’m doing this.
Now.
* Please don’t ask me what exactly that “sort” is!
** And then the other book I wrote. Wait, no. One time, one thing, or I’ll get all scared and overwhelmed again!
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
“Author Deb,” interviewed
My first author interview goes live at Literary Escapism tomorrow.
I’m excited.
I’m terrified.
But I’m definitely excited.
As well as terrified.
I think you get the picture.
If you’re subscribed to my blog, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy the interview, which is about my past, writing and how those things are interwoven.
I’ll link up here tomorrow. For now, I leave you with an interview excerpt about my “Douglas Adams” approach to reaching your goals:
As Nike urges, just do it! If you wait for believing you can do it to come first, you might never know the joy of looking down and realizing you’ve somehow floated yourself straight up to the clouds.
–
(c) 2011 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
If editing were weight-lifting, I’d be benching 3 ounces.
For months, I told myself I’d start editing the second book in the Glass Ball trilogy (begun by The Monster’s Daughter) just as soon as I finished drafting Elelu. You know, that book I joyfully proclaimed drafted, oh, five weeks ago?
I figured I’d take a week or two to celebrate having hit a milestone. Except, whoops! “A week or two” turned into chillaxin’ until the end of September.
We’re now five days into October. I’ve diligently set aside a portion of each morning for editing.
So far, editing is going swimmingly! I’ve created some graphics reflective of my October morning editing so far to help you feel like you, too, are a part of my editing experience.
As you can see, I mean that in only the most literal of ways.
5:18 a.m.
5:24 a.m.
5:37 a.m.
Ba.D. is unceasingly impressed by my editing skills. I’ve created a graphic representation of this for you, too:
(c) 2011 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
“Almost there, 6287!”
“Only three miles left! How’s that feel?”
“Like hell,” I spat through gritted teeth.
Rightfully not taking my grumbled response personally, the lady laughed and offered up some orange slices. I offered the heartiest thanks I could muster as I nabbed these while cruising crawling up a molehill that felt like Everest.
I hadn’t planned to run that first marathon. In fact, I’d only started running because I figured I could complete an entire run in the amount of time it would take me just to travel between gym and home. Pacing wasn’t an important part of the running I’d been doing before I started the 2004 L.A. Marathon, which I did for no greater reason than that my roommate said a couple weeks beforehand, “You’re running so much, you should run the marathon!”
I started the marathon the way I started most my runs: with as much speed as I could muster. I raced through the first ten miles at a 6- and 7-minute per mile clip. I was on top of the world!
Around mile 17, I learned how running a marathon is not like going for a two-hour run around your neighborhood. You’re in it for the long haul, not just for as long as you feel like running.
Around mile 24, as I wrote in Running for Mom, I was barely moving. I was so lost in the effort of making it one more step (and praying I’d pass out so I could stop running), I didn’t have enough energy to believe in myself.
Weak middle? That's cool. It's the finishing you take with you.
Fortunately, others not only believed in me but vocally urged me onward. Someone would yell, “Almost there, 6287!” and I’d think, “You know, they’re right! I am almost there!” I’d push myself back up toward speeds almost qualifiable as running speeds, and keep them going for a full minute or two before I flagged again.
When downtown Los Angeles came into sight, my fists flew up in an unplanned demonstration of primal glee. Right after that, I thought, with a lot more swearing, “I don’t like the telescoping lens effect in horror movies and I like it less here. @#$)@#*%!”
I kept running.
By the time I rounded the last corner, a block seemed like an eternity. Keeping up a crawl was taking everything I had.
“6287,” someone shouted. “You’re looking tired!”
No sh!t, Sherlock, I thought graciously.
“You’re looking tired, but you’ve got this! Sprint it! I know you’ve got it in you!”
I couldn’t see the person who yelled this encouragement, but I believed him. I looked at the finish line looming and thought, “Hell, yeah, I can do this!”
I steeled myself and I ran. I didn’t crawl, I didn’t doubt, I didn’t do anything but run.
I crossed that finish line and I wept like a little girl who’s told she’s never going to have ice cream again. Ever. But my tears had a different source: I’d done it. And I’d done it, in part, due to orange slices, high fives, and people shouting me on when I didn’t have enough room in my heart to believe in myself.
It’s been ten months since I ran my half marathon in Portland. In those months, until this morning, I’ve run only twice. The first run was twelve minutes; the second, sixteen.
This morning I told myself I’d run fifteen minutes. Instead, I ran twenty. I doubtfully ran even one-tenth the distance I covered in either marathon I’ve run, but it was a challenge nevertheless. It’s always a challenge coming back to something after a long break. Am I still good for this?
I thought of all those folks who cheered me on when I so needed it. I thought, too, of all the kind words you have shared when I needed them here, and the way you did the same in response to Darla’s raw, personal, breathtaking reflections on gratitude.
Your words mean something. In the end, it’s the runner herself who will or will not find what it takes to finish that marathon, or to push the “Publish” button no matter her doubts. But I believe more and more each day races are finished with the support of the people whose faith in us helped us overcome our own doubts before and during, and whose Gatorade and movie marathons afterward remind us that we’ll make it through the challenges to come, too.
Thank you for that, dear readers.
Thank you, “Sherlock.”
Two vampires and a merman walk into a bar . . .
Reminder: Don’t forget to enter my two-book giveaway before Friday!
Once upon a time, which for the more literal-minded among you might look like March 7, 2011, yours truly reported she’d be releasing the second book in The Glass Ball trilogy (begun by The Monster’s Daughter) in September 2011. The third book in the trilogy would follow by roughly six months.
Oh, March 7 Deb, you’re so cute!
Hope and all things hope-like, I will make you suffer!
When I posted these deadlines, I encouraged y’all to “Remind me I am merely editing already written books, for which six months apiece was probably a lot on the excessive side.” I didn’t (a) bother mentioning that I’d begun writing another book or (b) anticipate I’d finish my first edit of TMD 2 and realize I really didn’t want to wield my pen like a pitchfork just because I could.
I took the month of June off writing. I was driving myself crazy with blogging-related endeavors, so that I felt I needed a total reset before diving into non-blogging projects with energy and a fresh perspective. I considered my works in progress occasionally during that month, deciding I’d nose-down and plow my way through:
- Editing TMD 2 and release it to beta readers, then editors
- Editing TMD 3 while waiting for feedback from 1 above
- Finishing the first draft of Elelu (which has massively benefited from my experiences editing TMD)*
I greeted July determined to follow this path. My intentions are always as good, after all, as they are misguided! The problem was that I set out to write a couple hundred words in Elelu one day, only to find a veritable flood of words pouring forth. Thus it is that one-third of the way through July I find myself going, “Welp, dammit, looks like #3 is becoming #1!”
Seriously, though. One deadline I’m absolutely going to meet? Finishing the first draft of Elelu within a month.
Really. It’s gonna happen. All my other deadlines? Those were different.
This one’s the real deal.
* As I described it in the entry Villains & pedicures, “Every several sentences, I ask myself, ‘Will editing the last few sentences make me want to jump off a roof?’ So far, I haven’t answered ‘yes’ even once, but it’s good to keep checking. This diligence now is an investment in a happier, saner future me.”
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