I is for Inspiration #AtoZChallenge

Operation Awesome's #AtoZChallenge theme for 2018 is... 

OA to Z! We'll be correlating our usual posts with the challenge letters, plus, each weekend, you'll get a chance to get to know one of our bloggers better.

I is for inspiration! The very first "writing inspiration" quote that I ever wrote down is from Pearl S. Buck:

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."

At the time I discovered this quote, I was having a hard time finding the desire to write, and these words helped me move past that and make myself write even when I didn't want to. That's changed my life as a writer.

Operation Awesome has some inspiration resources under our Resources for Writers tab. Check them out here!

What are your favorite sources of writing inspiration? Share in the comments!

One Last Word of NaNo Encouragement

Today is Halloween, or as I like to call it, NaNoWriMo Eve. I hope you've read Jaime's NaNo Prep posts this month; they are full of great tips for getting ready for a month of writing until your brain oozes out your ears. Kidding! (The ooze comes out your nose.)

A question I've posed to the WriMos in my home region is, "What's going to stop you?" In other words, what do you think your biggest roadblock to finishing NaNoWriMo with 50K words will be? Name it, face it, and if you can, make a plan to overcome it.

I know you can do it. Write on, WriMos!

Rejection Recovery Playlist

I love putting together playlists for projects, but also for inspiration and encouragement. I've shared a few on my personal blog, but I thought it was time I shared some here. This is my Get Back Up playlist for use after rejections, bad reviews, harsh critiques, and anything else you need encouragement for. This is a varied mix of mellow sounds and dance music, including David Bowie, Imagine Dragons, and PSY. There are a couple geeky fanvids in there too (such as Farscape and Doctor Who). I hope you like it!

What are your favorite feel good songs?

How To Survive Being a Newb

Newb in the urban dictionary has two spellings and is divided into two classifications: Newb/newbie and noob/n00b. In the online gaming community, the former is a person who is new to the game and inexperienced, but willing to learn and improve. The latter is a person who is inexperienced, but doesn't try to improve, often saying and doing things to annoy and be a nuisance to other players. The term 'newb' can be applied to anyone new or inexperienced at a task or profession.

Being a newb in any profession is awkward and humbling. You're on a constant mission to collect information and experience so that you'll no longer be branded as the 'new guy'. Your best friend is anyone willing to share information and advice without teasing you for your ignorance. The only way to stop being branded a newb is to become competent and experienced in your profession...or to become more competent and experienced than the newest member of your team. (See how that works?)

Being a newb in the writing community shouldn't be as daunting as being a newb in the gaming community. This all depends on the people you surround yourself with. If you associate with people who tease you, berate you, or discourage you, your experience will be unpleasant and it may even turn you away from writing. You will encounter people like these, even if you're careful what blogs, forums, and websites you visit. The best thing to do when this happens is to ignore them and don't respond to their baiting. (If a person is consistently bothering you or others, chances are he's a troll and you don't want to 'feed' the trolls. Trolls don't respond to reason or logic, since their purpose is to see how angry they can make you.)

To survive being a newb in any community, writing included, you need to find a safe place to learn and mingle with like-minded people. Scout these out carefully through research, exploration, and recommendations from others. A good place (forum, website, coffeehouse, etc) will be where you spend most of your time interacting with the community, so you want to know your way around it, know the atmosphere and the people who frequent it. This will take time in itself, so the research beforehand is a good idea.

To start you out, here are a few recommendations from me. 

You can't go wrong with Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group. They have a monthly blog hop where you can meet and mingle with other writers going through the same hurdles you are. You can also find them on Facebook (groups) and Twitter.

There are many hashtag chats on twitter where you can make helpful connections. The two I've been a part of are #kidlitchat (Tuesdays at 9pm EST), and #storycrafter (Sundays at 3pm EST). Storycrafter is a light, fun chat with writerly themes in Q&A format. It's open to all genres.

Finally, there's the Writers Chatroom which has topic chat Sundays at 7pm EST and open chat Wednesdays 8pm EST. The room is only open during scheduled chat times, but the people there are helpful and good at answering writing questions.

Once you've found a place, be friendly, humble, and willing to learn. These are the best qualities a newb could have to propel her out of newb status to leet. Take part in things, reach out to others, don't be afraid to try. If you fail in front of helpful people, they'll support you and encourage you to try again. Seek out someone who could become a good friend, a guide to the profession and its community or even someone just starting out like you. If you're blessed enough to find a mentor who knows the whole thing inside-out, that's great. Never turn down advice from someone who knows more than you do. You might not be able to use it now, but it's good to know for later.

To recap, this is How to Survive Being a Newb:

1. Find a safe place to mingle and learn
2. Be friendly, humble, and willing
3. Make a friend
4. Listen to advice (and thank them for it)
5. Don't be afraid to try 

 If you have advice or recommendations for other newbs, please share it in the comments.

GUEST POST: Learning from Rejection by Holly M. Campbell

About three years ago, I began the submissions process for my novel Foreshadowed. I had a feeling about this one. Sure, I’d had that feeling before, but this time it was real. This time, I was going to get published. It was “the one.”

I used a spreadsheet to keep track of my submissions. If an agent sent a rejection, I would highlight his or her name in red. If an agent requested pages, I would highlight in green. And if I was still waiting for a response, yellow.

Most of the names ended up highlighted in red, but there were a few in green…at least for a little while. Eventually, I had an entire spreadsheet dedicated to my failure.

Except I didn’t fail. Foreshadowed was released by 48fourteen Publishing on December 31st.

Despite all the rejection I faced, it was still “the one.” In fact, as I look back on my personal road to publication, I’ve decided that it wasn’t “the one” despite all the rejection, but because of it. I learned a lot from all those rejection letters. And I’m not just talking about lessons of perseverance and believing in myself. I learned to view rejection letters as invaluable feedback from experts. If an agent said she just “couldn’t connect with the characters,” I believed her…and I tried to fix it. If agents said the pacing was too slow, the novel too long, or the ending too flat, I believed them…and I tried to fix it. And if all I got back was a form letter or no response at all, I asked myself “Why?” and—you guessed it—tried to fix it.

I added layer after layer to each character, trying to flesh them out, trying to make them relatable. I cut scenes, added new ones, and rewrote others. I changed the ending. I rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote until I finally got the answer I had been waiting for: an offer of publication.

Now, granted, writing is a subjective business. You can’t please everyone and you shouldn’t try.

But if you just keep getting, “Thanks, but no thanks,” over and over again, it may be time to take a hard look at, first, your query letter, and then your novel. Try to see rejection as a tool. Don’t look at it as failure, but as a free critique from a seasoned professional.

Keep writing. Keep rewriting. And eventually you’ll write “the one” too.

She can’t avoid the dark forever…

Hope Murdoch was born dead. She took a breath two minutes later , and now is an almost-normal sixteen-year-old. Normal: a hopeless crush on the boy next door, a negative body image, and a (mis)diagnosis of ADHD. Not-so-normal: an exhausting and distracting ability to read minds. And high school is hard enough without hearing what everyone really thinks of you.

Lance Hampton used to be normal until a car accident killed him and his parents. Paramedics brought him back to a life he doesn’t want: orphaned, uprooted, living with his uncle, and suddenly able to see how people die. At his new school, he tries to keep to himself. Seeing how complete strangers die is torture enough, let alone friends.

At first glance, Hope doesn’t think much of Lance (though a lot of the other girls do). He looks like the typical bad boy. No thank-you … but then she meets his eyes and everything goes dark. 

She hears labored breathing. Rapid footsteps. And then a thud as someone falls to the ground. 

Inside Lance’s head, Hope just witnessed a vision of murder … her own.

Together Hope and Lance try to catch a killer before he’s red-handed. A killer who could be anywhere. Anyone. Sure Hope can read minds and Lance can see death, but they still can’t see in the dark.

Foreshadowed can be purchased here:

Amazon (print & eBook): http://goo.gl/9dW6ok

B&N (print & ebook): http://goo.gl/PbX4ib

Kobo: http://goo.gl/lEQCFU

iTunes/iBooks: http://goo.gl/MVo7RC

48fourteen (print & ebook): http://goo.gl/Ta5fNy

----------------------

Holly M. Campbell started writing stories at an early age. In junior high, she completed her first“novel” and enjoyed sharing it with friends and family.

She earned a Bachelor’s degree in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing, and a Minor in Modern Dance from Brigham Young University-Idaho. As a member of Contemporary Dance Theatre, she performed and toured with the school’s Dance Alliance. She graduated in 2006.

In 2007, Holly met her husband-to-be, but didn’t pay much attention to him until he asked her to help him teach swing dancing at their church. After he flipped her around and hoisted her above his head with relative ease, she fell (not literally) head-over-heels. They married a few months later.

Holly lives in Washington State with her husband and two daughters. She blogs at http://hollymcampbell.com.

Edited prose falling flat? Check your inner critic

Ernest Hemingway said, "Write drunk, edit sober." The problem with editing sober, though, is if it goes too far unchecked, it can turn into "church lady" sober. The inner critic taunts your loopy, messy prose, making you feel stupid for writing it in the first place. Sort of like this:



The unfortunate result of this, at least for me, is prose with all the life sucked out of it, leading to flat characters and a weak plot. Yeah, the sentences go together, but if there's no life in them, they're not worth reading.
I ran into this with a recent short story I wrote for my MFA class. It explored what might happen if our bad ideas didn't come from us, but from external, invisible beings who planted them to ensure we learned from our mistakes. (Much like an inner critic, no?) My protagonist is one of these invisible beings, and the seed she plants backfires. Forced to confront her lizard boss Roebuck, she finds out the whole system is rigged. 
Here's the scene as I turned it in for class:

I can’t move. Can’t think. I stare, feeling like I’m seeing Roebuck for the first time. “Why control us this way? Make us do this if it doesn’t help the humans?”   

He flicks his tongue. Irritated. “Ignorance keeps the system healthy. Don’t question it.”

This isn’t right. My entire being buzzes with a new clarity. One that allows me, for the first time, to see into his brain. His memories.

There’s a silver medical table, with his former lizard self, much smaller, and squealing in pain. A human in a white lab coat injects him with a red fluid.

My mouth gapes, and I can’t speak. Zorg was right about pawns. I wonder how much he knows. How much he wanted to tell me, but was afraid of what Roebuck would do if he did.

I narrow my black eyes. “You don’t do this to help the humans. You do it because you want revenge on them.”

He growls, and pulls me toward another wall. An invisible door, one I didn’t know was there, opens. “They need to know the harm they cause others. Be accountable for it.”

The room seems to elongate. I stare at the empty elevator pod at the other side of the room, starting its countdown to leave.

I can’t let it. 

Here's the same scene with some deleted lines added back in, more showing instead of telling, and some sentences combined:

My joints stiffen. I can’t move. Can’t think. “Why control us? Make us do this if it doesn’t help the humans?”   

He flicks his tongue, irritated. “Because it works. Ignorance keeps the system healthy.”

I stare at his hooked face with its sinister scales and needle-sharp teeth. And for the first time, I don’t trust it. Fueled by anger, my mind buzzes, allowing me access into the deepest part of his brain, where his memories live.

On a silver medical table, his former lizard self, much smaller, squeals in pain. A human in a white lab coat injects him with a red fluid.

So that’s why. He doesn’t want to help the humans. He wants revenge on them.

Zorg was right about pawns. I wonder how much he wanted to tell me, but couldn’t, afraid of what Roebuck might do.

I narrow my black eyes, scathing. “You’re using us. All of us. To hurt them.”

"I don't have time for this." He growls, and pulls me toward another wall. An invisible door, one I didn’t know was there, opens. “They need to know the harm they cause others, and be accountable for it. Someday, you'll understand.”

The room elongates, and I stare at the empty elevator pod at the other side, starting its countdown to make someone else’s life unnecessarily miserable.

I can’t let it. 

  The scene still needs work, but at least I've gotten hold of the emotional heft needed to carry it forward. I took a overly telling sentence that involved "seeing Roebuck for the first time" and showed how she perceives him differently instead. I also inserted more of Roebuck's reactions to her. But most importantly, I allowed my sentences to be a bit messier, inserting more cadence and variety within the prose by default.
So what about you? What kills your prose, and what have you done to spruce it back up again?

Daoism and Inexact Comparisons

We all get down sometimes.  We start comparing ourselves to other people, or even to ourselves (the last novel / short story / whatever was so easy! we moan, eyes heavenward, forgetting that we felt this lost at least midway on *that* book's journey); we look at our work and think, why are my characters weak, why does my dialogue meander, why am I so *bad* right now?

At times like that I like to remember an early passage from the Daoist writer Zhuangzi.  Here's an excerpt from James Legge's translation:

"1. In the Northern Ocean there is a fish, the name of which is Khwan,-- I do not know how many lî in size. It changes into a bird with the name of Phang, the back of which is (also)-- I do not know how many lî in extent. When this bird rouses itself and flies, its wings are like clouds all round the sky. When the sea is moved (so as to bear it along), it prepares to remove to the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean is the Pool of Heaven.

There is the (book called) Khî Hsieh,-- a record of marvels. We have in it these words:-- 'When the phang is removing to the Southern Ocean it flaps (its wings) on the water for 3000 lî. Then it ascends on a whirlwind 90,000 lî, and it rests only at the end of six months.' (But similar to this is the movement of the breezes which we call) the horses of the fields, of the dust (which quivers in the sunbeams), and of living things as they are blown against one another by the air. Is its azure the proper colour of the sky? Or is it occasioned by its distance and illimitable extent? If one were looking down (from above), the very same appearance would just meet his view.

2. And moreover, (to speak of) the accumulation of water;-- if it be not great, it will not have strength to support a large boat. Upset a cup of water in a cavity, and a straw will float on it as if it were a boat. Place a cup in it, and it will stick fast;-- the water is shallow and the boat is large. (So it is with) the accumulation of wind; if it be not great, it will not have strength to support great wings. Therefore (the phang ascended to) the height of 90,000 lî, and there was such a mass of wind beneath it; thenceforth the accumulation of wind was sufficient. As it seemed to bear the blue sky on its back, and there was nothing to obstruct or arrest its course, it could pursue its way to the South.

A cicada and a little dove laughed at it, saying, 'We make an effort and fly towards an elm or sapanwood tree; and sometimes before we reach it, we can do no more but drop to the ground. Of what use is it for this (creature) to rise 90,000 lî, and make for the South?' He who goes to the grassy suburbs, returning to the third meal (of the day), will have his belly as full as when he set out; he who goes to a distance of 100 lî will have to pound his grain where he stops for the night; he who goes a thousand lî, will have to carry with him provisions for three months. What should these two small creatures know about the matter? The knowledge of that which is small does not reach to that which is great; (the experience of) a few years does not reach to that of many. How do we know that it is so? The mushroom of a morning does not know (what takes place between) the beginning and end of a month; the short-lived cicada does not know (what takes place between) the spring and autumn. These are instances of a short term of life. In the south of Khû there is the (tree) called Ming-ling, whose spring is 500 years, and its autumn the same; in high antiquity there was that called Tâ-khun, whose spring was 8000 years, and its autumn the same. And Phang Tsu is the one man renowned to the present day for his length of life:-- if all men were (to wish) to match him, would they not be miserable?"

There's a lot going on here, but the Peng (which Legge transliterated as Phang) is the gateway to the passage: a bird so big it needs more than a thousand miles of runway to take off.  And the little birds, which flit easily from tree to tree at a whim, wonder what use it is for the Peng to traverse the world from ocean to ocean in a single voyage.

The way I read Zhuangzi, he's saying the world is full of different kinds of perspectives that interact objectively but remain subjective--that we can claim the flight of the Peng is longer than that of the dove and cicada in terms of horizontal distance, but in terms of their own perspectives the two can't be compared.  They might as well be in different worlds.  The dove and cicada laugh because, to them, the Peng's journey is borderline incomprehensible, and thus hilarious; to the Peng, meanwhile, the dove and cicada don't even register, little mote-lives lost in the blue of distant earth.

Which is just to say: in writing, as in life, it helps to resist the urge to compare, even to yourself.  The Peng, after all, starts its life as a fish; before transformation, that fish would probably have laughed at the thought of growing wings and flying 90,000 miles south.  Each new project brings new challenges, dangers, opportunities.  Best to treat them with a spirit of laughter, and play.  Otherwise, it's all too easy to end up miserable.

Going Postal—Encouragement on the Writing Journey

It was February 2009 and pouring down rain. I’d spent the past three weeks feverishly working to revise a manuscript at an agent’s request. The agent wanted a hard copy of the whole revised book—and it was a hefty plus-one-hundred K.

I hurried through the downpour with my young children to a shipping store. I waited in line, then helped the employee wrap the manuscript, trying to keep all the pages in order, even though we had to split it in half to fit it in the box. And then I found out they wouldn’t send it without requiring a signature. Literary agencies do not like to have to sign for packages.

Frustrated, I turned to the dreaded post office, where I’d had lots of bad experiences with manuscripts, including raised eyebrows, pitying looks, and being told I had to send an entire manuscript at the letter rate.

This time, someone new was at the counter. Her smile was warm and genuine, her words quietly serious as she studied the bundle of papers and the address. “This is your book?”

I nodded.

“This is very important, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

I must’ve looked as anxious and deflated as I felt. The postal worker printed out a “Media mail” sticker, though others had told me I couldn’t use that rate for unbound paper. It wasn’t a book yet, they felt compelled to remind me.

This lady looked me right in the eye. “You must be very smart and talented.” She smiled at my kids. “You’re lucky to have such a Mom. She’s going to be very successful.”

Lady, if only you knew what the odds are against that, I started to think. But she was so sincere, and the kids nodded in agreement. The cynic in me melted, and I let her kind words do as they were intended—encourage, uplift.

Has a stranger ever encouraged you in your writing journey? How did you react?