How Long Should You Hold Your Babies?

I sit down at my computer and say to my husband just now "I've just finished the dishes and I got inspired. I've come to write my blog."
He glances over from where he's sitting at his computer. "About the dishes?"
"No! About writing!"
He nods, and smiles benignly at his screen. "Sweet."

I love my husband : )

Anyway, that is NOT what this post is about. This post is about Something Else.

I've recently rediscovered a passion for short story writing. I used to write oodles of them, all terribly depressing, which is the main reason I gave them up - that and because I couldn't see much point. However, having wrestled with an unwieldy full-length manuscript for a few years now I've found there's something incredibly satisfying about writing something good that you can finish in an afternoon and resolves neatly within a few pages. Not only that there's a plethora of short story competitions out there on the internet, with basically any word count or theme you could imagine. How cool is that?

And that is STILL not what this post is about...I'm getting to it, okay?

The thing is, I wrote a short piece for a competition - it was due in today and I was only given a few day's notice, but it flowed really well, and when I finished it I was so proud of myself and proud of it. I emailed it off to a writer friend (thank you eternally Karen) who was so encouraging, and pulled me up on a few bits that weren't working, and having completed those changes I thought That's It. This Is Good.

Baby #1.

Finished that Baby on Saturday morning, and because I could, I started throwing some ideas round for another short story competition. That one felt really inspired, and I sat down and pecked out a short story in half an hour that I LOVED. Still love it...two days later.

Baby #2.

Today is Tuesday, the day I needed to pack up Baby #1 and send it lovingly off to the good judges of this competition. By now though I'm having serious second thoughts. It's a downer. I haven't given the reader any wider context. I should have explained that better. I should have filled in more detail about the other bit. The voice is dense and over-edited.

I still sent it, and I'm glad I did, because by next Thursday the story will probably be fresh and amazing once again. That's the nature of emotions, folks.

So tonight I'm doing the dishes and thinking about my babies, and wondering what changes I would have made to Baby #1 if I'd had the luxury of a few months in the bottom drawer, and whether I'd really have made the changes I'm thinking of tonight, or whether it'd stand up okay on its own after a few months mellowing and brewing in the dark of my forgettory.

And then BAM! I'm thinking about Baby #2 - my work of genius, my inspired masterpiece. The one that's not due until Thursday but I was so confident I sent it anyway...

If I'd added just one extra line just before the last one I'd have NAILED it.
But I didn't. Didn't hold that little one for long at all. And I know that it's strong, and that it'll swim, that it'll find its audience and give people a good laugh...but I could have nailed it.

Am I disappointed? Yeah...a bit. But the good thing about not holding your babies for too long is that you learn to love without such a desperate attachment. Probably makes rejection easier. Stephen King in On Writing (at least I think it was him...could have been Anne Rice in Conversations with Anne Rice...?) talks about writing The End on a novel, making a cup of coffee and then writing Chapter One on a fresh page of a new book. Mr King (or Ms Rice...) knew better than to send it out immediately - a lesson I hopefully have now learned, but the important lesson I gleaned from that quote on Saturday is this:

Immediately after giving birth is not the time to analyse your baby, because whatever you think now you will change your mind. Instead, start planning the next one.

How long should you hold your babies? Until someone asks for them...a deadline. Or, until the next one is pushing them out of the bottom-drawer cradle.

Now that sounds like a segue into a new post: Draft Two...The Toddler Years...hmmmmmmm
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Playing the Waiting Game

I'm sitting down with a cup of tea finally, the big kids are next door and the little one is watching the Wiggles (again). I'm exhausted, and by the look of the house I've done virtually nothing.

So much of my time is spent waiting. I wait for the kids to put their shoes on so we can go to the park. I wait for the washing machine to finish so I can put it on the line, during which I'm waiting for the boys to decide what they want for breakfast. Waiting for them to finally fall asleep at the end of the day. Waiting for an email reply.

The thing is, though, is that I need to be maximising my waiting time so I'm actually using it to do something productive. I spend half an hour throwing a frisbee in the yard, or pushing kids on the swing, and although these are important activities, they leave much of the grey matter free for other endeavours. The four-week period in which I tried desperately (and unsuccessfully) to get my synopsis written were a case in point. The story was at the forefront of my mind, and all my available brain-time was spent on it. I got heaps done! Not only that, it invigorated me, I had so much more energy for other things.

Today I'm exhausted because my mental activity has been taken up waiting for an email. None have come. Who cares! It's hardly the end of the universe. Shows me though, where the flabby bits of my mind are. I need to dust off some of the big questions from the top shelf of the cupboard: is my front story strong? Is my back story causal? If God's called me to write books, what kind of books does He want me to write? What does He think about my book reviews? What does He think about my stories? About where my mind is going?

The dishes are calling me. Tea's finished. So, mind, where are we going to go now?

Synopses-ing...synopsis-zing!

Harry Kemmelman, who  wrote an amazing book called The Nine Mile Walk and Other Stories, talks in his prologue (I'm a prologue reader) about the genesis for the story idea and how it refused to gel. He put it aside for some fourteen years while he did other things, until one day he pulled his notes out again and the story flowed really quickly. He makes the comment that in answer to the question "how long does a story take to write?" it takes either one day or 14 years, depending on how you look at it.

 I'm planning for my "one day".
I hope my book doesn't take fourteen years. So far it's taken five...and I'm only just beginning.

Yup, still working on the synopsis. Yup, the one I started about two months ago. Yup, the one I thought I'd just about finished except for a little bit of polishing and putting it into nice paragraphs.

 I sat down this time last week to start writing it up in the style shown me by so many great online synopsis guides, and suddenly thought (yup, at the first sentence), "who is this woman? Have I really got to the bottom of her character arc? Where does this "front story" start from really?"

Oh heck! I don't KNOW!

Seriously, I had no idea writing a synopsis could be this hard. Or this rewarding. A few hours later I'd asked myself a whole bunch more questions, and actually came up with a few answers too. The story, from what I can see, is so much stronger than it was. I found an old piece of paper buried in my notes with an original synopsis on it that looked so vague and blank in comparison. By the time this synopsis is finished and I sit down to do the actual writing I'll have a pretty detailed road map of where the story and the characters are going. So pleased. Thank you God!

Funnily enough, I'm looking forward to writing my NEXT book (yeah coz, you know, I'm just SO close to finishing this one...lol). Watching how the plotting process works has given me ideas on how I'll go about it from the beginning next time.

Back to work. I've got a "one day" to keep planning for!

This writing life

Well, I've started a blog about nothing, with no real point other than keeping up with those of my friends, but now I'm really excited about it!

I've decided to use it to document my writing journey. I'm working on a memoir at the moment, because...because I have a story I feel needs to be told. It's hard slog. I started it when I was pregnant with Nathan, who's now four!

It's hard slog.

There are three main rules of writing:
1. Know what you want to write.
2. Write it.
3. Stop.

Numbers 1 and 3 are the hard ones, especially with memoir. There's just so much! I spent quite a while on the theory of "write a little bit each day", and now I have so much crap to sort through it isn't funny. I don't have time for that now, with three kids and a house to organise. I'm writing when I have something to write about.

Last week I had SO much to write about, like it was flowing out of me, theme, structure, key plot points. It was emotionally draining, but the outflow was good. To write well you've got to inhabit the emotions again, and for me that can take a while. I'm not good at turning it on and off like a switch. Then the writing stopped, and the emotions were still there. It's Monday now, I'm feeling "nornal" again, but left with such a passion to write!

Tomorrow is the boys' day care day, so hopefully today I'll work on cleaning the floors and putting away all the socks and underpants in the laundry, then tomorrow the whole crazy process can start again!

Wow, I'm new here!

So, I've started a blog.
Really, for no other reason than to follow my friends who blog regularly. You never know, though, this can be addictive. Like journaling for strangers.
Hi, strangers.
I'll try to come visit regularly, but...well...you know how it is with kids and commitments and things. I'll see how we go, maybe we can be friends.
By for now,
Meg x