Insecure Writer's Support Group: Failure is not what you think

Today is the first Wednesday of the month which means it’s time for another installment of Insecure Writer’s Support Group. If you haven’t seen one of these in action, then hop on over to the Ninja Captain and his Co-hosts Tyrean and Jamie then hop onto Mr. Linky and read up.

I know that it’s a brand new year and all, but I’m not going to talk about the normal beginning of the year thing. I’m going to talk about failure: it’s not what you think. It’s been one full year since I joined the ISWG bloghop. My first post was about putting myself out there and trying as hard as I could. I did. I followed through, and you know what? It wasn’t enough. Feel free to go read those posts so you know what I’m talking about, but sometimes even your A+ game doesn’t cut it, and something happens: you fail.

People don’t talk about failure the same way they talk about success. When you talk about success you’re either talking about it from the standpoint of one who has just succeeded or someone who hopes to succeed. When you talk about failure, you either talk about it as one who has failed or someone who’s afraid of it. Bitterness and fear overshadow the truth: failure can be a gift. No really, hear me out.

When I failed—and I mean grade A, standing on a pile of smoking ash that had once been my dreams failure—the world became clear. I don’t know if there’s something magical in the smoke of burning dreams, but it made me fearless. It’s hard to be scared of anything when the thing you feared the most has just happened. Then it felt like every door in the universe opened up. Without the fear, I could try anything, so everything suddenly became an option, every path. That's ridiculous; my failure didn’t create new opportunities, it only let me see the ones I’d already had. But I would have never even considered those other futures if I hadn’t failed. I’d focused so hard on that one thing that I couldn’t even see all the other possibilities of the world.

Sure, this is that strange afterglow of a break up, and maybe it’ll wear off after years and years of piled on failure, but I doubt it. It was like that dying dream was an anchor, and I was swimming across the ocean of my life. When that dream died, I was cut free. I’d always feared it, thought I’d drown without it. All that time I’d been clinging to the thing that was drowning me. Failure gave me freedom.

I was too scared to see past this one thing. And I think so many writers find themselves in this place. We fall in love with a manuscript. It becomes our dreams. We put these manuscripts out into the world, and then we find ourselves having to make a decision: to trunk or not to trunk.

There’s a lot of conflicting advice on this one. Accept the failure and move on to the next project, or fight for the novel in your hands. I have no answers to this conundrum, but Miss Snark had a great set of guidelines. She said to query 100 agents before giving up on a manuscript. Which is great, but I saw someone get an offer after 127 queries for a single manuscript. Yikes! How to decide?

When a book doesn’t get you an agent, or worse, gets you an agent but doesn’t get you published it is NOT the end of the world. There are other books. Other ideas. Some of those ideas are going to be better than the one you’ve just spent the last 18 months/18 years slaving over. So if you’re on the verge of trunking a novel, it is not the end. 

I know this sounds sappy, but it's 100% true: Failure is not the end. It is the beginning of a journey you couldn’t see. All you have to do is decide what to write next.

IWSG

I’m going to write about something that not many people talk about. We all know about the process of trunking a novel and how much it hurts.

I know, I trunked a novel.

I told the world that the novel and I weren’t right for each other. I said things like the novel didn’t really represent me well, and it would be a blunder to try to step out with that novel.

People said it was a wise decision. They said that trunking a novel can hurt, but it’s much better to set it aside than burn so much power trying to get it ready for the publishing world if I couldn’t put my all behind it. They were right. I was right. So imagine my surprise when six months later I’m falling in love with my silly broken novel.

And this is where I feel like that person who always breaks up with a particular significant other. They go around bad mouthing their ex, but then two weeks later they’re back together again. That’s what I feel like. I’ve bad mouthed my novel to all my friends, and they said I was right to leave that no good, passive voice bore in the dirt.

And now we’re a thing again.

Do all my writing friends think I’m a hypocrite? Do they think I was a fool to dump my novel in the first place? Should I just try dating my novel in secret for a little while to see if we’ve still got that spark?

I’m second guessing all of my decisions. If I can see that I gave up too easily on this novel, what about the one before? Did I really ride that horse to the end of the race, or did I just quit? Am I dedicated enough to see any of these novels through to the end? Is this why my writing doesn’t have agents salivating to sign me—okay, that’s unfair, I haven’t sent out a query letter since November, so they haven’t even been invited to salivate over signing me, my bad—and editors don’t want to publish my stories? Can they see that it’s my utter lack of discipline in my novels that has handicapped them?

So I picked up a trunked novel, and found that, much to my dismay, it solved nothing. I thought I’d be able to jump right back into this story and query it in a week or two. But as I’ve been going through it, all I see are the broken parts. Am I just delusional about my own work? Can I just not even see the beauty in it because I can’t freaking get my homonyms right?

And then I read something that makes me laugh. I wrote the damned thing, and it makes me laugh? I am delusional.

Was I right to trunk it? Was that the right decision? Am I, even as I type, flirting with heart-breaking disaster because I’ve picked something up that I’d already turned my nose up at? Or is this a case of bad timing. Did I put it down because I knew I couldn’t do with it what I can do now? Were both choices—putting it aside and picking it back up—the right choices, and the only difference between them perspective and time?

I had thought I’d crossed all the terrible self esteem eating sarlacks in the desert of Writing, but alas, I was mistaken. Sure, I’m pretty inexperienced and I haven’t dealt with any of the ones that come with actually publishing a book, but I was pretty sure I’d cleared all the evil hurdles associated with the process of getting up to agent signing.

Nope. This is a whole new breed of gut wrenching agony. Sorry, I wish it were different. I wish this wasn’t true, but picking up a previously dead novel, even one still very much in its youth, makes a writer crazy. The doubts are worse than ever before because at some point, somewhere in my heart I thought it was time to put this story away forever.

I guess six months is almost forever.

But how do I slay the tummy tying knots of doom?

I have these annoying things I say to my hockey team. When we were trailing by four goals, I pulled our goal tender. My team thought I was crazy. “It’s not like we’re gonna win,” someone complained. To which I responded, “Yeah, I know, but we’re gonna be behind again, and it’d be nice to have some practice in how to handle it.”

Practice. That’s what it all boils down to for me. I’m already lost to this novel. I’m in love again (stupid hot-cold relationships), and even if this isn’t THE ONE, I need the practice. I need the practice getting rejections (yes, this is a skill we must practice, lest it become emotionally devastating). I need to practice the editing. I need to practice the close calls, the almosts, and the contests. I need to give this novel the try, because in another six to eight months, I’ll have another novel, and it’d be nice to have some practice.

Insecure Writers: Fraudulant

It’s time to purge our hearts of all our worries and anxieties. Be sure to join Alex and hop around to other blogs.

So, I’ve pretty much stripped bare already, so it seems like there shouldn’t be anything left for me to worry about. 

Yeah, right. 

See, in my brain there is this little person. For the record, this little person isn’t small of stature, just small of everything else: honor, logic, wellbeing, pretty much everything. This little person sits around and dreams up more stuff for me to be worried about, and no matter how hard I try, I always manage to keep him in a job. *Shakes fist at little voice.*

It is ridiculous that I worry, but it is especially ridiculous that I worry that I might be a fraud. Yeah, I might be a complete faker who can barely keep my life together, how can I possibly be a writer? How can anything I say or write possible be of any use to anyone? I can’t get to the grocery store on a regular basis, how can my mere words be meaningful? I can’t manage to get my WIP off the ground, why should anyone care what I have to say?

And worse, right now, I don’t even have a functional manuscript. Want to feel like a real loser? Go check out a bunch of agent judged contests where the rules are “For a finished manuscript only” and not have a manuscript finished. It makes me feel like a fake, a fraud, a hanger on in an awesome community--undeserving--because I don’t have a manuscript. I haven't put the time into my writing. I've been doing all these other things, important sure, but still not writing. But I am a real writer! I know I’ve finished six novels and I have nothing to show for any of them, but really, really soon, I’ll have a seventh. And all those other novels were just crap anyway, this one is THE ONE, so hold on there contest, I’ll be a real writer with a real manuscript in just a few months.

Then the realization sinks in. No, I won’t have a real manuscript in just a couple months. I’ll have a first draft. I’m looking at half a year to a full year before I have a “finished” manuscript. That’s forever in writer years. I know what the problem is, it’s easy to spot if I could just step back and look.

That voice. That evil little voice in my head dreaming up things for me to worry about. Like will my book be relevant in a year? In three years? Even if it does get published (practically the lottery at this point), will anyone read it? Like it? Is all of this just a pipedream anyway? Have I spent months ruining my life in my—thus far failed!—attempt to become a ‘real writer’?

Somewhere that little voice is telling me that not having a “finished manuscript” makes me a second class citizen, and worse, I used to be a member of the elite, a querying goddess of awesome. And then it all went away. I decided to make a change, and I had to yank my manuscript from what can only be called a tepid reception.

I wrote another book, but that wasn’t the stuff either.

And now I have a monstrosity of a WIP. I love it. My alpha readers like it, but they don’t love it. Even my Mom doesn’t love it (though she is always truthful and wouldn’t just blow sunshine up my ego). I guess it means more to me than them. So here I am, all my hopes in this one MS, and I can already see that I probably love it too much to do the editing and revisions on it I’ll need to make it awesome. This is why I feel like a fraud. I’m such a fraud I can’t even see that my broken WIP is only ever going to be loved by me.

Stupid little voice, how do I get you to leave me alone?

I’m a real writer. The only person who can say if I’m a real writer is me, so go away stupid voice. You don’t know me. You don’t know the stuff I’m made of. All the other weaklings quit. All the fakes and the frauds have already quit, and I’m still here. I don’t need you, stupid little voice, now go away.

Insecure writers: Dreams

(If you haven't heard about the insecure writer's group, go here, jump on the linkidy do dad, and hop around to some other blogs. You are not alone.)

I don’t know how many people really know this, but dreams hurt. And I don’t mean a Charlie horse in the middle of the night, a scrapped knee on the sidewalk, or a little road rash. Dreams hurt like the moment when you’ve broken your ankle again (for the third time!) and you know exactly the road of pain and hardship, the hobbling around and not trusting your balance, and the year—the full effing year—of not being as good at a hundred little things--if you’re lucky and don’t need surgery this time. Dreams hurt and ache. Dreams are full of fear and anger and feeling inferior. Dreams are harder than anything else in the world. Dreams are love.

If I could have told myself this when I was sixteen, my sixteen year old self would have laughed in my face and called me an old sack of regrets, a bitter dried up hag who couldn’t hack it, so get the hell out of the way for those of us who can. I was a bit judgmental as a teenager.

But my sixteen-year-old self wasn’t strong enough for my dreams. Even the most minor threats to my dreams would send me off, crying in a corner like a foolish school girl (guess what? I *was* a foolish school girl). Even then I should have known how much power my dreams had if they could hurt me before I’d even started reaching for them.

And once I started trying (even in my usual half-assed way), oh man. Talk about the dumb I have done just for my dreams.

I spent three years in a major I hated with people who hated me (and frequently told me I was too dumb because I was a woman, but that's a story for another day).

I loaded all my belongings into a truck and drove across the nation to a place I’d never seen before and prayed I’d land on my feet. I had friends with me, but that was a leap of faith, a big scary leap of faith. And I would have done it all alone, but my friends are almost as crazy as me.

I worked hard. I moved again. I dragged my family across the country to the desert (leaping again). I’ve tortured myself through years of things I would have never considered doing except for these dreams. I’ve stayed up late nights; I’ve worked through every weekend for six years; I’ve gotten on dozens of planes, stood in front of hundreds of angry scientist, written hundreds of thousands of words in a format that hurts to put to paper.

All for a dream.

I have never been closer to my dreams. I’ve never been further from them. I fear them. When I get them, will I be disappointed? Broken? Crushed? Will I be able to get a job when I’m done, or am I really frantically working myself out of work? Will all my dreams take this much soul crushing work? Should I dream smaller dreams? Or is it worth it? Is all of this pain and suffering, the doubt and worries, the sacrifice (don’t ask me how many times I’ve had ramen for dinner), the anxiety, the fact that I haven’t had a night without nightmares for six years, is all of this worth making the dreams of one foolish school girl come true?

It’s a funny thing, dreams, you have to make that choice on your own. No one can ever tell you it was worth it but you.  And you’re not even in a place where you can judge. That’s hard, but here’s something even worse: that’s what it’s like to dream the dream. Losing the dream is much worse. Losing the dream is like having a piece of your soul torn out and thrown on a busy L.A. freeway.

And foolish school girls who dream dreams that burn in their hearts don’t know how to deal with their soul dying. They imagine they are invincible, and they believe somewhere that, despite the evidence of their own eyes, the world is fair. They don’t know if they’ll live through losing their dream (almost always, if you’re wondering), but it’s not easy. Losing dreams hurts more than cutting off your own hand. I think that sometimes giving up a dream to maintain some other part of our lives really is like the coyote chewing off their own leg so they can be free of the trap, because dreams are like that. We didn’t choose them. All of mine have sprung up out of the ground, cleverly disguised as my regular life. I never woke up and said “Wow, my life would be so much better if I just had a dream.”

Dreams are dangerous. Dreams are power. We have so little control of them, we don’t even get to pick them.

Dreams choose us.

I fear them because I’m rational, but I fear my cranky older self more. What would I be like in twenty years if I belly flopped at the finish line and didn’t get up to cross the line? What would I tell my children? That my dreams beat me down until I couldn’t get up again? Could I give up on that sixteen-year-old girl who didn’t know better, the one who didn’t know that a broke kid from the sticks barely had a chance and even our valedictorian dropped out so no one would blame her if she broke under the pressure of it all?

I wouldn’t be here (literally right here) if it weren’t for my dreams. If I didn’t have my dreams, I might be more content, I might have a whole soul—one unbroken by trials—but we are made bigger by our dreams, even the ones that hurt. Dreams force us to throw our hearts into the forge and see that our hearts can be made into swords.

Insecure writers, or where I talk too much

I’ve avoided joining in on these. I don’t know why… Yes, actually I do. And that’s why I’m joining in today.

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid that people will mock me, laugh at me (rather than with me), that they will call me a fake and a fraud and otherwise inform me that I am worth less than they are. I’ve been afraid for years. I’ve been so afraid that I haven’t been trying.

That’s right, I haven’t been trying. I could pour my heart out into the world, but I haven’t. I’ve turned in half-hearted work, taken the easy way out, and when it doesn’t rock the rest of the world, I shake it off. After all, I hadn’t really tried. I didn’t really do my best, so it doesn’t matter that no one’s foot wear was threatening escape, I hadn’t even tried.

Because what would happen if I did try and I still failed?

Would I shrivel up and die like the wicked witch of the west?

If I never put my best work out there, then no one is ever rejecting me. They’re always rejecting my C+ game. Competent, but not the A game I know is in there somewhere.

C+ is a lot easier than A, too. I mean, all I have to do is come up with something competent and I can ship it off into the world. The rejection doesn’t hurt (well, it hurts, but it’s bearable), and there’s the sort of self congratulatory feeling of “See how well that did, and I didn’t even try.”

But I’ve been called out. A dissertation can’t be your C+ game. It’s A time. So for the first time in my life I’m pulling out everything, and I’m scared. I’m pouring out my heart, and it’s not enough. I’m so frightened that my A game isn’t an A game at all. My hardest might not be good enough. I’m staring down the barrel of true and complete failure, and it makes my heart race just to think about it.

Shit, I try not to do this sort of thing on my blog. How do I come back from telling the world that I’ve been faking it? I’ve been the fraud I’ve always been afraid other people would see and uncover. And now that it counts, I’m so scared I’m petrified that my best will only be tiny bit better than my phoning it in. My Real Effort isn’t going to be any better than my faking it. My fraud to protect my heart has backfired. I’ve been caught out by my old habits, and now I don’t even know if I have an A game at all.

What if they still hate it?

All I can do is do. I'd love to try, but Yoda might be on to something. I've been trying. I've got to do.