Source: Beneath The Cover

Get Re-Excited about Being a Writer!

By Susan Goodsell – Dec 28 , 2009

New Year’s Resolutions—Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you simply cannot escape them!
Personally, January 1st has always given me a thrill. I get a sort of “back-to-school” feeling and enjoy the whole mentality that, “The holidays are over, so let’s crack open a new notebook, sharpen a new #2 pencil, and get to work!”

That said, after many years of disappointment over unrealized and unrealistic resolutions (you know the ones: This year I will go to the gym every day/never raise my voice/take a trip around the world/double my salary/touch nary a chocolate chip cookie/etc.) I’ve grown a bit older and wiser and have tempered my resolution enthusiasm with a bit of reality.

For 2010, my writer friends, I am NOT encouraging you to resolve to:

1. Write three novels (as yet unstarted).
2. Write six hours every single day (in addition to your full-time job).
3. Be a syndicated columnist by March (with a column that has not yet been printed anywhere).
Nor am I encouraging you to follow the path of several of my more cynical friends to, “Resolve not to make any resolutions.”

Rather, I’d like to suggest you get re-excited about being a writer!

Sit quietly for a moment and let that concept settle around you. Do you feel a little tingle inside?

“Getting re-excited” is my theme for 2010 in my BNI business, my writing career, and my personal life. What a great concept!

With the doom and gloom in the economy, real estate market, and in the small business community, I sometimes spend so much time putting out fires that I lose sight of why I do what I do. (And I do love what I do!)

So negative headlines be damned!

Let’s get re-excited and throw ourselves into work and life with a passion that may have been missing in 2009! To do so, let’s go back to Journalism 101 and ask the five Ws:

1. WHO – Who can you connect with to rekindle that spark that initially made you want to be a writer? A former teacher, perhaps, or a new mentor who can keep you accountable and excited.

2. WHAT – Go wild with this one – No boundaries! What do you want to learn more about or experience for yourself? Go after what excites you: fly-fishing, making stained-glass windows, Northern Italian cooking—all are the seeds of passionate writing, and there is a market for them all. Do more writing about what you want to do rather than what you feel you have to do!

3. WHEN – When do you feel the most excited about your writing? Re-create the circumstances and you re-create the excitement. I know I work best with a dedicated weekly writing day—no emails, web surfing, or even phone call interruptions. Comfy chair in the sunny corner of my bedroom and several cups of coffee (medium strong, mocha flavoring, and truvia sweetened, thank you). Maybe you don’t have Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own,” but you can dedicate a consistent time and comfortable space for you and your writing, and you’ll get excited just settling into it.

4. WHERE – Where do you wish to be with your writing career at the end of 2010? Break that goal into mini-goals. Write very specific steps you need to take to stay on track. For example, if you wish to complete your novel this year, plan how many pages you need to complete each week and put that on your calendar. You can’t get to a new destination without a map.

5. WHY – Think about what was it that made you wiggly with excitement about being a writer. Why did you first even consider being a writer? Tap into what motivated you then. Reasons writers have given me include, “to become a local expert in my field,” “to earn a little extra money,” and “just to see my name in print.”

It’s easy to fall into a rut or become accustomed to inertia.

Conversely, a body in motion stays in motion.
Positivity breeds positivity.
Don’t work on autopilot. Get excited!
Try, fail, laugh, stand up, brush yourself off, and try again – it’s all good.

Now that’s a resolution all writers should make!

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Carol Lynch Williams presents a heart pounding, engaging novel about a girl growing up in a Polygamist community, under the watchful eye and controlling thumb of a God-like figure, The Prophet. The Chosen One seems ripped from recent headlines about the infiltration of these communities and rescues of children ordered to marry men more than twice their ages, bear children, and become one of several wives.

Kyra is 13, impressionable and yet keenly aware that the way her family lives isn’t usual or normal or maybe not even right. She dares to do things she is not supposed to do– like read, speak to boys, sneak off and be alone with them under cover of darkness. The story begins with a visit from the most respected and revered man in the community– The Prophet.

The entire family is anticipating good news, especially Kyra’s father. It is not good news when it is decreed that 13 yr old Kyra will marry her 60 year old uncle, and become his seventh wife! Instantly Kyra is rebellious and obstinate. Not only does she not want to marry an old man, she doesn’t even like her uncle. The Prophet, however, has spoken. He says that God had decided who she will marry. She is to obey.

I’ve always been curious about polygamy– and not curious as in ‘I’d like to try it, just once’. Curious as in– what do these young girls tell themselves in order to make it okay for them to do what they’re told to do? To marry men too old for them, lay with them, bear their children, share their husbands with other women and not feel jealousy or anger or neglect? If this life is all you know, are you aware that it’s so very different?

Kyra is aware. And she can’t stand it. She wants no part of it. Added to this dilemma is her weekly sneak to the  bookmobile. Kyra devours the written word of the world outside the gates of the Compound. There is an entire Universe out there, one she knows nothing of, where the girls dress funny, and commit the sin of allowing their bras to show and talking to boys, where the modesty of long dresses and braided hair are frowned upon, even deemed ‘weird’. It becomes painfully obvious to Kyra that there is more to life than living in a trailer on a dirt road, with 19 siblings and three mothers and a father she loves dearly, but who wouldn’t stand up to the Prophet and his brother if his life depended on it. His life does, indeed depend on it. Refusal to marry her uncle Hiram could mean trouble for her entire family.

No, Kyra must fend for herself, and soon. The wedding date draws near.

The final chapter in this book makes it difficult to breathe. I found myself flipping pages as fast as they would go, trying to keep up with Kyra, Patrick (the driver of the bookmobile, who befriends Kyra and offers her a way out), Joshua (the boy she is not allowed to love), and the family.

I didn’t realize until I had finished reading this book that it was a young adult selection. I’m in my 30′s, so either this book was pretty darn good, or I am easily entertained. Or both.:)

The Chosen One is a fast read, but an exciting one, full of twists and ‘secrets’ of life in what is considered outside of the walls of the compound to be a cult– beatings, murders, ex-communications, fear, isolation. But there is also love, and family and hope and dreams– and the risk of losing all of them in search of freedom.

There is a section at the end, where I thought things could have been fleshed out more. It seems to end rather abruptly, with more than a few unanswered questions. Overall, I enjoyed it. Really quick read, great storyline.

View all my reviews.

My Goodreads review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Sometimes my method of picking books is really calculated. I see a book someone else liked, and I stalk Amazon and GoodReads and Barnes&Noble for reviews. I google it and read blog entries and see how people liked it, because if I’m going to spend time reading a book, I want to like it.

And then sometimes I just see something and think, ‘hmph. I’ll read that, I guess.’

Sharp Objects was chosen via the latter method. I saw it on a list of May 2009 something or other and added it to Kindle without even really thinking. I don’t even think I read the description. Suffice it to say,I think I started this book sometime last week, maybe over the weekend. It’s Tuesday and I just finished it. Literally a few minutes ago.. I’ve been buried in it all weekend.
(cont’d)

Chicago newspaper reporter Camile Preaker has been sent back to tiny, one-horse-town Wind Gap, where most of her high school friends stuck around and married the jocks, the head of the Science Club, the Yearbook Editor. Camille had left Wind Gap a long time ago, and wasn’t in a hurry to return, but her Editor is itching to break a story and Wind Gap’s recent child murders had ‘Breaking News’ all over it.

Despite her protests, Camille is back in Wind Gap, imposing on her mother and stepfather and half sister, and investigating the strange murders of two young girls in the small, close-knit town. Camille’s family defines dysfunctional. Wind Gap doesn’t want her there. Her cutting and her alcohol dependency thrown on top just mixes everything into a great big ball of drama.
I’m glad chose this book the way I did. I’m seeing a lot of reviews about how dark and macabre the story line is and how jilted the writing is and how awkward the story was told. I don’t think I’d have picked it, if I saw those reviews first. I really just didn’t get a sense of any of that. I was hooked from about paragraph two, fell asleep reading the first night, could NOT stop– the more that was brought to light about Camille, her mother, her sister, her whole history with tiny Wind Gap, the more I was intrigued.

Now let me be plain– I don’t really read fluff. I don’t do feel good. I don’t do chick lit and sarcastic little ditties about how funny kids are and I’m fat but I’m a spunky chick and that’s why you need to love me. I don’t do Non- Fiction, much. There’s a place for that, I’m sure. It’s just not on my bookshelf. I’m the type of person that watches Forensic Files and loves Shawshenk Redemption and will watch an entire day of A&E Crime programming and Law and Order Special Victims Unit– I love the stuff.

I loved this book. I didn’t find it particularly gory. Just strikingly, painfully, realistically… real. I hate reading glossed over horror or pain or despair. I don’t want flowery, purple prose– sometimes when it’s raw and disjoined and just ‘out there’ it pangs more. It makes you sit on the edge of your seat and go ‘oh, wow’.

Camille is that character that you kind of dislike at first– she seemed whiny and weak and I wasn’t sure what to make of her. Then as things began to come to light and unfold (her relationship with her mother, her ODD little sister), I started to gain a little respect for Camille. By the end I positively loved her, as a main character- an unlikely hero, a vulnerable creature.

NOW. Let’s talk about Adora and Amma, two of the weirdest, oddest, most inexplicable characters in the entire book. I spent all of the book going OMYGODWTF? I mean, one moment they were nice and sweet as punch, and the next, a giant pendulum swing in the other direction and OH. My. Lord. Adora got on my NERVES. Amma was just a brat. Wanted to slap them both and I willed Camille away from them SO many times.

Okay, the killer??? Can I just say I KNEW IT?!?!? I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT!

View all my reviews.

The first third is basically King’s autobiography– events in his life that have made him who he is. I enjoyed the first ten pages but I am a ‘get tot the point’ kind of girl, so I skipped to the second part, which was most enjoyable.

Part 2, On Writing, was basically King’s best advice to writers. In summation, here’s pretty much what I picked up:

1. Read a lot. Read, read, read, read. Turn off the TV, remove all distractions, read because you enjoy reading.
2. Write. Write because you want to write, because it’s crawling to get out of you. Write like it’s your job. Set a goal to write daily (1000 words at first, then 2000-3000) if you can do it. Don’t leave your ‘spot’ until you’re done writing.
3. Don’t do all the cliche things writers supposedly do, i.e. write for money, or ‘plot’ your story.
4. Don’t assume that you control the story– the story controls you. Let it tell itself, don’t try to push it in any direction.
5. Remove unnecessary words. Always, always, always, use fewer words whenever possible. In descriptions, in narration, in character, in dialogue– delete the uncessesary
6. On the other hand, don’t tell, show. Don’t tell me that someone is uneducated. Show me with crafty use of dialect in conversation. Don’t tell me someone is tired, overworked, frustrated– SHOW the reader.
7. Create an IR- an Ideal Reader. Decide what your Ideal Reader would want to see and write to them.
8. Never write because it seems like a job. The hardest part of life should be when you’re purposely not writing.
9. From time to time, read bad prose. It will teach you what not to do!
10. (I’ve heard this a lot and have only seen it done really well a few times) Don’t use flashbacks. Talk about what’s GOING to happen and not what already has.

The last third of the book is talking about his 1999 accident in which he nearly died. After which he decided to finish On Writing and get back to the business of writing great fiction. It ends with an example of a piece of a chapter that he had edited and polished and allowed readers to see the transformation from an ‘okay’ piece to something that he’d call ‘good’.

I liked it, what I read. As time allows I’ll go back and read the history– it just didn’t hold my attention, much.

View all my goodreads reviews.