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Writing Life

When did you start to write?

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This entry is part 1 of 14 in the series My writing journey

I’m sharing my writing journey. Come share yours, too!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an author interview where the author talks about how they’ve written stories since they were six years old and they remember it so well and they’ve written ever since, etc. etc.

I’ve always thought I’m not like them, that I came to writing a bit later, that maybe I’m not a “real” writer because I didn’t know how to type straight from the womb *wail*…

Writers are really neurotic, huh?

But the truth is, I think I might have always written. I remember before I could actually form letters and words, I would fill pages with horizontal squiggles, then use them as my “notes” to deliver my “newscasts.” My four-year-old, who’s currently learning her letters, does the same thing now to record her stories.

DSC01308
(You should hear the one about how she was born into the wrong family, a family of ghosts, made her escape, wandered in the woods, and finally found our house.)

I do remember quite vividly a first-grade assignment to write a book. I wrote about the make-believe game my sisters and I had played the day before with our family of Pound Puppies. (I remember the illustrations being excellent, but since visual art isn’t one of my skills, I can’t really comment on that!)


Remember these guys?

From there, I branched into short fiction—and onto the macabre side of the storytelling tree. I once made a birthday gift of a short short story about a haunted penny that brought only bad luck (Lincoln had fangs). I have almost no recollection of this, but my uncle insists I wrote a story about a baby getting caught in the cord of Venetian blinds (!!!). I also remember a short story about an ambulance driver on his first call who accidentally hits and kills a child on a bicycle. The driver sank into catatonic shock and eventually died, as well.

Apparently I didn’t know any other way to end a story back then. (I don’t even read horror or similar fiction now.)

Not long after this phase (which probably lasted from the time I was about eight until twelve), however, I found a new inspiration to write, and left the gore and macabre behind for something a whole lot lighter.

More about that in the next installment!

When did you start “writing”? What was your early writing like? Have you ever left a genre or style behind? Come join the conversation!

Pound Puppies photo by Meagan

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Writing Life

Writing across the generations

This entry is part 2 of 14 in the series My writing journey

Like many writers, I first dabbled in fiction at a young age. But I also come by my literary aspiration honest(ly): my mom has a degree in English. When I was in . . . high school? college?, she became a seventh-grade English (Language Arts) teacher. Although his degree is miles from the humanities, when it came to writing and grammar, my father was a pedant.

I learned so much about proper speech, writing, and literature from them. We still discuss the finer points of usage and grammar (okay, sometimes), and our conversations are still peppered with literary quotations and allusions (sometimes).

My mother has also done some creative writing over the years. Of course, much of her work is too personal to share (like the fabulous poem she wrote ALL ABOUT ME 😉 ). However, she was published in her (our) alma mater’s literary journal—in fact, her poem concluded that year’s bound edition:

ChrisNickSchmidt

But the literary gene doesn’t stop there. My son (who just turned 7!) is already starting to pick up it up. I’ve mentioned a few tidbits about his fiction forays on Facebook and Twitter.

In December, he and his sisters were listening to a song about how you can be anything you want to be. Writer is one of the occupations they list in the song. My son, then 6, came up to me and said, “Mom, I’m glad you’re a writer. And I’ll never hate anything you write.”

This quickly transitioned into his own literary aspirations.

And here it is, in all its (unfinished) glory: the Book of RVs!

And then [Son] said “RVs are awesome!”
[Daughter], [Son]’s sister, said “RVs are as long as 60 feet they can go as fast as 60% of speed.”
The RV trucks can get to North Carolina in a few days. And as they drive, people drive RVs because they like RVs of certain kinds.
And as [Son] said that he can drive an RV, “as long as it doesn’t run out of gas I will drive safely to North Carolina.”
And then [Daughter] said “That RV that you have, brother [Son], I love that kind of RV. And all kinds of RVs.”
And [Son] said, “I love you [Daughter] and RVs are awesome with you and me.”
And as mom and dad
Said,” Good-bye” I drive
Away and The McCollum family waved good-bye, I waved out my window. And I Said, “good-bye” too.

Finally, last week, I finally gave in to his persistent request. He now has a sign proclaiming him “a famous writer of all!”

It would be cuter if I weren’t so jealous . . .

What do you think? Does a literary gene run in your family, or are you a lucky mutant 😉 ?

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Writing Life

Picking up fiction (my confession)

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This entry is part 3 of 14 in the series My writing journey

I’d dabbled in short fiction, and writing seems to run in the family, but I kind of trace my real start in writing to another source.

In the ’90s, Nick at Night began airing The Monkees. My sisters and I got hooked on the absurdity pretty quickly right before I started high school. (What can I say? We were the target audience, 30 years too late.) Over the next couple years, I met and saw two members of the Monkees in concerts (three different events)—Peter Tork and Davy Jones.

Almost year ago, I got text messages from two of my sisters within seconds, basically saying the same thing:

I’m so sorry about Davy Jones!

That was how I found out he’d died. He had a heart attack at 66. For some odd reason, the youngest of the Monkees was the first to go.

One of my favorite Monkees’ songs actually sung by Davy, plus a classic first season romp. Sigh. Second season hair was so much better 😉

It was a sad surprise, even if it’s not completely unheard of (I mean, Peter Tork, the oldest of the Monkees, hit 70 just two weeks before). It hit me that night as I saw a clip from the old TV show that he was really gone. But let’s be serious here: he wasn’t a close personal friend, and I’m not going to mourn him like one. His death didn’t make me face my own mortality, or give me a sobering wake up call, or anything else. It was a sad note.

But two weeks later, I remembered what I owe to Davy Jones.

When my sisters and I started watching The Monkees, I liked the show so much, I had to write about it. Yes, it’s true—I came to writing through fanfiction. Monkees fanfic. (Is this as shameful as I think it sounds?) And though Davy himself wasn’t the biggest reason for my doing that, he was part of the ensemble. He was part of the reason I started to write.

davy jones
Davy and me (holding records?), in 1998. And yes, that extra hand on my waist is Davy’s. I’m 15, he’s 52. Is that skeevy? Oh well.

So thank you, Davy Jones.

The fanfiction trend continued through high school, including both the Monkees and Star Wars. Fanfiction also helped me find some of my first writing friends and partners, Susan and Sarah. They didn’t know one another; I worked with both of them. We co-wrote some of our short stories, or just wrote in the same universes, swapped stories, and generally fed one another’s writing muses.

A few other friends from high school were also really supportive of my writing—Kim, who read my fanfic and still encouraged me to write ;), and Erin, who is now also a writer. Thank you all 🙂 .

What do you think? Is fanfiction (and Monkees fanfiction) a bad way to get into writing? How did you first find writing friends?

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Writing Life

Transitioning from fanfic to original work

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This entry is part 4 of 14 in the series My writing journey

Last week, I confessed that it was fanfiction that really brought me to writing fiction at all. And it was fanfiction that, somewhat paradoxically, brought me to my first original novel, too.

The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) 1My freshman year of college, my “honors” writing class final was to see Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on opening day. I’d never been interested in Tolkien (this is turning into a regular confessional column, isn’t it?), but who could say no to cheap tickets and an easy final?

So I saw it (and then saw it again. and again. and . . . yeah), and discovered a whole new fandom to write about. And yes, in keeping with our confessional theme, it was, of course, completely Mary Sue–based. Utterly shocking, I know.

It wasn’t very long, however, before I began to see the potential for my own story. I’d created my own culture and borrowed just one character (I’d tell you who, but . . . seriously, there are reasonable limits to everything!), and even then I was using my own characterization.

The San Diego California Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints served as the inspiration for the castle. Because of course there was a castle.

Aside from that character’s name and a few bits of Elvish, there wasn’t a whole lot of ethical debate about this fanfic. I finished the story out as perhaps a short novella length, probably, and knew what I had to do: I had to make this my own.

That entailed inventing different cultures for the characters, and, of course, constructing a language, which then bled into changing my major to Linguistics. It stuck, though I did end up adding another major and a couple minors. Writing was already changing my life.

While all that was going on, I also had to change up my class schedule for my second semester. I managed to sneak into two classes that were notoriously hard to pick up: flexibility (Stretching to fulfill my PE requirement? Yes.) and creative writing (which would eventually count toward an English minor. Double yes.).

I frequently forget this, but I did take a college-level creative writing course. Incidentally, my professor was Dene Low, now an Egdar-nominated author (and that book, Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone is so fun!). Also, I’d like to note that this makes me totally legit as a writer. Right?

Ha.

Another shot of the San Diego templeSo my erstwhile fanfic became the beginnings of my first original novel, epic fantasy as all first novels should be, even though I didn’t and still don’t read a whole lot of epic fantasy. Honestly, I don’t remember the details, but it involved a king’s youngest son (Haldan) who travels to a fabled land of superhuman/magical people with its queen (Avelath). They’re leaving their land because the planet says it’s afraid (keep in mind I had NOT yet read the rest of the Lord of the Rings trilogy). As a younger son, Haldan doesn’t have much of a future at home, so he joins Avelath on a quest to find a new home, unite three warring kingdoms and save the world.

Epic.

I brought the first bits of that novel, which still doesn’t have a title, to my first ever actual writing workshop in this creative writing class. The feedback wasn’t really that great (= useful), although even then, ten years ago, guess what? I should cut my prologue. (Totally true. Totally did it. Totally helped.)

My class schedule was very full that semester (18 credit hours), but also kind of odd in that I was done with class by noon every day, so I frequently spent afternoons working on expanding the story into a novel and IMing with my best friend, who happened to be a writing friend from high school, too.

Some things never change 😉 .

But, then, some things do. When that novel fell through, I went through a long writing drought. More about that next week!

How has your writing changed over time—genre, subject matter, fanfiction vs. wholly original? Come join in the confessions! 😉

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Writing Life

Droughts and making time for your writing

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This entry is part 5 of 14 in the series My writing journey

My first original novel was almost my last. Writing it had already changed the trajectory of my life (or at least my major!). But around 80 single spaced pages in (no idea on the word count; I didn’t measure that way back then!), my plot kind of fizzled and I wasn’t really sure what to do next.

Hm… Sounds a little too familiar.

After some struggling and some deleting, I eventually abandoned the novel—and, with it, my writing aspirations. That mostly had to do with 1.) aforementioned blocks, 2.) leaving my computer and the manuscript with friends while I went home (2000 mi away) for the summer and 3.) not having quite so much free time to write when I came back.

But when there was no other creative writing, no solutions for that novel, and no ideas for a new one, the doubts would creep into my mind: I’m a failure. I’m not a real writer. I’ll never finish a novel.

That writing drought lasted for over five years: through the rest of college, meeting my husband, and having our first child.

That didn’t mean I left writing entirely alone. Whenever I was really upset about something, I always needed a short story to work through my emotions. And of course, those short stories had to be highly “literary” because that’s what “real” writers wrote: literary short stories. I had no idea where they got them published, but that wasn’t my intent.

I still wanted to be an author, but somewhere in my mind I think I figured it’d be something I’d do later. After college. After my kids were in school.

Okay, I’m still not to the point where all my kids are in school, but I’ve learned something since then. You don’t have to wait to write. If you wait until the time is perfect, you’ll miss out on all the time you have now.

Making time for writing is all about making choices—sometimes hard choices, sometimes sacrifices. It’s about making writing a priority—not necessarily your top priority all the time, but putting it ahead of other things that you don’t really want as much.

In the end, however, my writing drought didn’t end because of this realization (that came later). It ended because of one particularly inspiring dream—and, I guess, another loose variation on the fanfic theme.

Have you ever quit writing for a while? Why? Come join the conversation!

Photo by Justin Cozart

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Writing Life

Where does your inspiration come from?

This entry is part 6 of 14 in the series My writing journey

After five years of not really writing, I kind of figured I’d come back to writing much later. It became one of those someday plans, that I half expected not to come true.

By this time I’d gone from a college student to a work-at-home mom of one, aged eighteen months. And despite taking care of my son and working in Internet marketing, I was pretty darn bored a lot of the time.

Until I had a dream.

The dream itself was pretty bizarre. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, but it seemed to be inspired by the ’70s version of The Great Gatsby. Only with horror, because the only actual event in the dream was blood dripping from the ceiling of an ornate, grandiose house.

As cool as that story element would be, it had nothing to do with the story I started the next day. It was more the characters and the Roaring Twenties setting that inspired me to start what would become my first completed novel* the next day.

I figured I spent enough time on the computer, and I needed to be there for my son, and maybe the charm of the setting also appealed to me—because I decided to write it longhand. After four feverish weeks of writing, I finished a short novel. As I typed it up, I restructured one of the chapters pretty majorly and thought I was pretty dang awesome 😉 . That was “editing” in those days.

I was proud of it at the time, but I think I showed it to two people, my sister-in-law and my best friend (one of my high school writing friends). Their encouragement—and another dream featuring one of them—was enough to push me on to my next project.

And a writer was born!

You know, sort of.

Where does your inspiration come from? What prompted your first novel? Come share!

*So technically, this novel is far short of the word count of a typical novel, but I count it anyway.

Photo credits: dreaming person & cat—MooBob42; dream bracelet—Jake Belluchi

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Writing Life

The Winchester Mystery Story (that lead somewhere!)

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This entry is part 7 of 14 in the series My writing journey

All stories, says Larry Brooks, have structure. And, to employ my own analogy, so do all buildings. But not all buildings are created equal:

Winchester Mystery House Scary Exterior Tower

You might recognize this place, or the legend behind it. The owner believed that her house must be under construction always, or she would die. But they couldn’t use a master building plan.

Considering that, the Winchester Mystery House is pretty well-built. Yeah, it has stairs that lead to nowhere and doors that open out from the second floor (no stairs on that one—maybe move those first stairs over there?). It’s fun—it’s a blast to explore, and I bet Sarah Winchester had an awesome time throwing in every element she could think of.

It has a decent foundation—instead of leveling it, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake only knocked off the top three stories. After the quake it stood four stories. The remaining structure is a rambling, 160-room, 4.5-acre mansion. It requires more than 20,000 gallons of paint to coat the whole thing once—and once you finish, it’s time to start painting again.

I think we’ve all gotten to the end of a story, looked back and seen our own Winchester Mystery Structure. The Winchester Mystery House has structure. In some sense, it has architecture—but not really. There is no plan, and the closest thing they had to a designer (architect) was a crazy woman.

Winchester Mystery House Stairs to the ceiling

And “rambling” is right. Dead ends, doors and promises that go nowhere, accidental MacGuffins. . . . My real “Winchester Mystery Story” was my second novel. I think I’ve blocked out most of the horrors by now, but I do remember rewriting the last third of the story some three times. Eventually, I got tired of writing stories that looked like they were designed by a crazy woman.

I wish I could say that was my last Winchester Mystery Story, but even in the last few years, with a novel I plotted (though waaay too loosely), I’ve found that same problem of dead ends and lost threads and a plot that meanders without any purpose, etc. While every first draft probably has some ideas that didn’t come to fruition by the end—and they all need editing!—a true “Winchester Mystery Story” might very well be unfixable.

When your first novel is . . . well, your first novel, and your second novel is unfixable, it’d be pretty easy to give up, right? Although I fell out of love with the story LONG before I found a solution to its plot problems, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t realize just how fatally flawed the story was.

winchester mystery house
The whole experience pointed me toward how valuable it could be to actually plan the story in advance. That plotting thing didn’t “kill” my “muse”—instead, plotting helped to strengthen my stories. It seems like a lot of writers experience a “conversion” to plotting once they get over the mystique of the “organic” story. Pantsing does work for some people, but for me, plotting is a much better (and more structurally sound, and less rambling!) way to build a story.

What do you think? Have you ever written a “Winchester Mystery Story”? Are you a converted plotter?

Photo credits: exterior shot and stairs to nowhere courtesy of the Winchester Mystery House; rooves—the_photographer; windows to windows—Emily Hoyer

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Writing Life

Parallels, plotting and publishing

This entry is part 8 of 14 in the series My writing journey

Trying to “fix” a Winchester Mystery Story to make a habitable home novel wasn’t the only reason I turned to plotting. My next project came about from off-the-wall speculation with Sarah, one of my writing friends from high school. (Off-the-wall speculation is our specialty.)

trust your crazy ideasOne day, our crazy speculation turned to international soaps we watched as teenagers—Abrázame muy fuerte (Mexican telenovela) and Ballykissangel (Irish soap opera). Although the soaps were really different from one another, they were both set in Roman Catholic cultures, and featured priests characters prominently. We felt really compelled to explore this fascination in fiction, and we wanted to write something together.

The day after this conversation, I sent her an email:

Okay, this idea is just crazy and a product of watching too many fabulous spy shows, BUT–what if he was joining the priesthood as a spy cover/to escape a horrible secret?

And she did me one better:

I LIKE IT! So now I have an even crazier idea.

I was thinking, maybe we could turn this story into that LDS themed book. Maybe we can have two couples? One LDS guy turns into a Catholic priest as a cover-up that he’s a spy. His friends and family won’t know and they’ll be totally shocked by it. What if he started flirting with this Catholic girl who really likes him but is disturbed by it (plagued with guilt) because she thinks he’s a real priest? So maybe guy A’s sister ends up moving to X-town where her brother lives and meets a real initiate (haha what do you call future priests?) and falls in love. [. . .]

Too crazy?
There are several seminaries in Chicago. Maybe “priest” A is posing as a Priest to get in with the mafia somehow?

You know, when you put it like that, it sounds absolutely insane . . .

My favorite kind of book!

So we set about our parallel novels, mine about the spy/priest and secretary/parishioner, and hers about the sister and the seminarian. To keep the projects straight, of course, we couldn’t both just pants our way through these novels. So I didn’t just dip my toes in the plotting pool. I jumped in the deep end:
I've never successfully plotted like this, but whoa.

  • I wrote out full plot treatment, about one page long, hitting the milestones of the Hero’s Journey.
  • I wrote a journal entry from the villain’s POV to understand his motivation behind the murder.
  • I made a day-by-day timeline in a spreadsheet, her events in one column, mine in another.

That might sound like a lot of work. The first two were done the day after our emails, and we traded first chapters in the first two days after that. Most of all, however, we had fun. We didn’t shy away from the absurd, we put our characters into horrible straights, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.

The best parts were the scenes with all our characters in them. We would schedule times to “get together” online and write the dialogue/blocking in a spreadsheet (often with our own running commentary in another column…). Once we had them roughed in, we’d convert those scenes to prose with our characters’ thoughts.

The whole time, I feared the project was too “controversial” for an actual publisher to be interested. My previous projects were not going to get into publishable shape any time soon (or, likely, ever). Could I afford a third “flop” if I really wanted to be a published author?

In the end, though, I loved the story too much to let my perception of the market stop us. So we wrote and enjoyed our story. Within three months, we had two finished first drafts.

But, as any one knows who’s written “The End” enough times, that’s only the beginning. And in this case, the journey was a lot longer than it probably should’ve been. I had a lot to learn.

What do you think? Have you ever tried parallel novels or another form of co-authoring? How would you handle it?

Photo credits: trust your crazy ideas—Leandro Agrò; planning—Jez Nicholson

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