Stephanie Gunn

Because I do still think about writing, even though I’m not actively putting pen to page much.

Paraphrased from an episode of Writing Excuses, where they sidelined into talking about writing to market:

“Make the art you want to make, just make it good enough that other people will want to read it.”

Why is it, as soon as I’ve made up my mind to work on Never, characters from The White Raven decide to invade my mind as well?  Sigh.

Not that I’ve exactly started work on Never yet.  I did make a start at putting together a playlist for it (which is part of my initial planning and helps me to discover the new world) and I started on some character sketches.  Then Liam had a bad day yesterday and all thought of everything but looking after him went out of the window.

Thankfully he’s been better today, though I haven’t managed to get any writing work done yet.  I have done some tangential writing though – catching up on emails and doing some awards work.  Now I’m going to work on my playlist a little more, brainstorm some characters.  Hopefully Liam will stay asleep for at least the next half hour.

Hopefully The White Raven will stay out of my mind as well.

The universe has been nudging me, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to get back to writing.

And so, instead of continuously posting here that I want to write and should be writing, I damn well will start doing some when I can.

I have several projects that I could work on, but the two that are clamouring for attention are the next draft of The White Raven and the first draft of Never .

Right now, I’m leaning towards starting work on Never, if only to start properly outlining and getting all of my character bios and the like written.  I can do these in dribs and drabs, which suits the lack-of-predictable schedule I have in my life right now.

Another thing that I came across today:  Mur Lafferty, of I Should Be Writing is co-ordinating a group workthrough of The Artist’s Way (here at facebook).  The Artist’s Way is a book that I’ve always meant to pick up and work through, but have never gotten around to.  I can take the hint, universe.  I ordered a copy and will start to work through it as much as I can.

I’ll try to keep blogging about how I’m incorporating work back into my life, because there must be someone out there interested in it.

Let the new cycle of work begin.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Stephanie Burgis, who mentioned recently on her blog that she was re-reading a book, Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck.  I was intrigued enough to hunt down a copy and started to read it in dribs and drabs over the last week or so.

I’m only a little way into it, and it’s really made me begin to think about myself and the way I’ve always approached my career.

I’ve read my share of self-help books.  Some are utterly useless, most I’ll take away a few useful nuggets of wisdom.  Usually I’ll forget about them pretty soon after finishing them.

This one is really different.  Like I said, I’m only a short way into it, and I’m reading in a slight haze, thanks to sleep deprivation.  But beneath that haze, things are clicking over.

Most of you know that I studied to be a scientist.  I always wanted to be a doctor, but didn’t get the grades to get into medicine at university.  Instead I went into a science degree, majoring in genetics.  I really liked learning, especially the genetics work and microbiology.  When I finished my degree, I went on to do honours, which I also enjoyed.  After that, I pretty much just followed on with the accepted career path and went into a PhD.

I was really lucky with my PhD.  The actual work I did wasn’t earth shattering – it was always going to be slightly risky, since I was working up techniques for the first time in the lab and there wasn’t a lot of other good research published using similar techniques.  I got to work with some fantastic people who I miss working with to this day.  I had two absolutely wonderful supervisors, both of whom are geniuses in their own right.

I worked hard at the PhD.  All the while, though, there was something not really clicking for me.  I loved doing the research, I loved writing in a scientific manner, I loved being part of something that was exploring and defining the world.  And yet there was always that seed of doubt beneath the surface – was this what I was really meant to be doing?

Then I went to a conference in New York.  Which was huge and amazing and should have been the perfect opportunity for me to network, to make connections that would lead me to a good postdoctoral position overseas.  There was a lab which would have been absolutely perfect for me to work in, and my supervisor was on good terms with them.  I presented a poster, I went to a lot of really interesting sessions.

And then.

I took some time off, spent a bit of time in New York, which was an amazing and inspiring place, even in the grip of post-911 sorrow (I was there for the six month anniversary).  I went to England and spent some time with a good friend who was absolutely amazing to me and took me to some of the places I’d always wanted to see (Stonehenge!).  I caught up with another friend who was traveling there at the time.  And I did a quick trip to Dublin, where I stayed with a friend who I used to work with (and miss dreadfully) and spent St Patrick’s Day in the pubs (and got pickpocketed, which is another story entirely).

It was an incredible experience.  Except for one thing – as soon as I set foot in the UK, I got sick.  I thought it was a bad flu or cold – the usual symptoms, plus I lost my voice.  I pushed on, determined to try to enjoy the holiday.  And I did, though I was utterly exhausted.

And when I came home, I never got better.

Fast forward through a couple of years of struggling through the PhD, going from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was wrong.  I got a few different diagnoses – chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and eventually, lupus.  I switched to part time study.  I finished my PhD, limping through every day.

I’ve always wondered on some level if I got so sick because science wasn’t the place for me.  I enjoy it, I learned a lot from my studies, the least of which is critical thinking and reading skills.

And reading North Star, it’s got me thinking about that again.  There are a couple of exercises that stick in my mind.  They are designed to help you to find your “North Star”, which is essentially the place which is the most fulfilling for you to work.

The first is to pinpoint memories of your childhood when you felt pure joy.  Immediately, I recalled two.  In both, I was living in my imagination.  I used to spent hours outside in our garden inventing stories.  I would literally sit in a patch of dirt, moving it around and building up small mountains on which I imagined villages, people, lives.  In the other memory I am with friends of the family, inventing a world in a sugar bowl.

The second exercise is to think of the people who energise you when you spend time with them.  Again, two people immediately sprang to mind.  Both of them I see all too rarely, and they are both amazing and wonderful women who inspire me more than they can ever know.  I won’t name them here, but suffice to say that there is one thing that they both have in common – their strong spirituality.  Both are pagan in their way, and both have this incredible light in them, though I think that neither can see that most of the time.

These things point me towards my North Star.  Imagination and spirituality.

And I think of another amazing woman I know, unfortunately only online.  She is a storyteller and pagan, a woman who lives and loves so vividly that it’s an honour to know her.

And I know where I need to be, what I need to move towards.  Writing that reflects some of that light that I see and admire in others, writing that will help people to find that light within themselves.  Writing that, to me, means something.

I want to show you my worlds.  Be they made of grains of sand or sugar.

So, I haven’t managed to start any kind of writing yet since giving birth to Liam.  Nor have I been doing much reading beyond that for the Australian Shadows Awards.

I’m finding myself itching to start doing both again.

And yet, I’m content for the time being to not go back to my crazy schedule of writing.  Liam’s only going to be this age once, and I don’t want to miss these years (or for him to miss out on his mother for these years) through forcing myself to try to go back to my old output.

So.  I want to get back to writing and reading.  And I want to be a present parent as much as I can be.

I need to resolve both of these things into one life.  I want to be there for Liam, to enjoy his first years and help him develop.  And at the same time, I need to write.

The logical way is to write when Liam is sleeping – either getting up early or staying up late and snatching some time, or working while he’s napping during the day.  The first options aren’t going to be doable for me, since I need to get as much sleep as possible or risk a flare, thus rendering me completely useless.  So I’m left with the second option.

Liam’s naps at the moment are usually between 40-60 minutes, with the occasional 2-3 hour nap.  Most of the time they’re fairly unpredictable, though he has fallen into a very rough routine.  I have absolutely no desire to force him to a strict routine, before anyone suggests that.

The problem here is that I’m using these snatches of time during the day for other things.  The house still needs to be tended to – I’ll admit that it’s not being tended to as well as I would like, though everything is always hygienic and mostly tidy.  I need to eat a good diet and I need to exercise.  The latter, I’ve been very lax about – my preferred exercise is walking, and most days have been too warm for me to be able to walk.  I’ve started going out for a walk on the cooler days, taking Liam in his pram (though I’ll likely switch to using a sling as the weather cools even more).

So.  There are things that cannot slide.

And then there are the other things.  Most of which reside on the internet.  I’ve been spending a lot of time wandering around various parenting forums.  Livejournal eats up a decent chunk of time, as does catching up with other blogs via rss.  I do read most of my rss feeds using Netnewswire on the iPhone, usually in the wee hours while I’m feeding Liam.  And to be honest, right now I mostly skim them.  I’m trying to keep up more with LJ, but I’m still skimming a lot.

I’m not going to push anything right now, but I do need to have a look at the time I have to use and figure out where I can scratch out some time for the word mines.  Never is beginning to eat my brain, and if I don’t give it form, my skull will be hollowed out.

Which means that I need to find a way to resolve them both.  The logical way is to start writing and reading while Liam’s sleeping.  At the moment, his daytime naps are all over the place – most of the time they’re only 40-60 minutes, and I

Life is slowly beginning to settle down into something vaguely resembling a routine. A very, very loose routine Liam is sleeping better in general, and some days even manages to nap for several hours at a time. Right now, most of that time is being spent dealing with house stuff or obsessively researching baby stuff. I really need to start getting some writing and reading of non-baby books back into my day.

So. I need to set myself some goals.

I’m not going to be able to write and read the way that I did before Liam was born, not for a while, anyway. But I can do something, at least. Which brings me to the question – what is a reasonable amount of work for me to cope with right now?

I’d like to start working on a first draft of Never, but I don’t think I know enough about that story yet. The logical thing is to begin working on the next draft of The White Raven. I think I’m going to approach this almost as though I was writing a complete new draft. Which isn’t the most productive way to go about it, but it’ll work.

First thing I need to do is get organised. Which means importing all of my drafts, outlines and character sketches into Scrivener. And going through all the feedback I have from beta readers to figure out what things I need to change. Hell, I might even write a proper outline before writing this draft.

Which boils down to this: you can expect something more than just photos of Liam on this blog now I probably won’t return to any kind of proper metrics until I start working on the draft (and then they’re likely to look pathetic for a while) but I will, if anyone is interested, go into details of how I’m trying to balance life with a new baby and writing.

Which leads me to my next question – where are all of the writermama blogs out there? Are there any that you read and find useful?

Chuck McKenzie gives Grant’s Pass a great review on Horrorscope.

Squee!

I am still so stoked to be in this anthology – hell, I’m sharing a table of contents with Cherie Priest and Jay Lake.    I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy so I can read the rest of the stories.

The Guide to Literary Agents is one of the most useful blogs I read.

Some wisdom from the last few posts:

The Top 10 reasons agents stop reading

10. Overdone description that doesn’t move the story forward
9. Spoon-feeding the reader what the character is thinking
8. Having the characters address each other repeatedly by name, as in, “John, let’s go!”
7. Introducing a character with first and last name, as in, “John Smith entered the room.”
6. Beginning a story with dialogue
5. Opening with a cliché
4. Yanking the reader out of the action with backstory
3. Not giving the reader a sense of place or where the story is going
2. Characters are MIA until bottom of page 2
1. Telling instead of showing

And a quote from an interview with Greg Daniel that all writers need to pay attention to:

“Read deeply and widely in the area you want to be a writer. It seems that so often I receive queries where not only are the authors not at a point where they should be approaching agents yet, but they also appear to not even be astute readers of the categories they’re writing in. In addition to writing, writing, and rewriting in order to be a better writer, I’m a firm believer that the more intelligently you read, the better writer you’ll become.”

From The Guide to Literary Agents interview with Jim McCarthy:

“If you think you can give up writing, then give it up. If you can’t … if you know that no matter how much stress or rejection or frustration you face, that you can never stop writing? In that case, never give up. Publishing is too hard to face if you aren’t in it for the right reasons. But it’s not too hard to break into if it’s what you need to do.”

Since I’m in a lull currently in actual writing, I figured it was as good a time as any to assess the software I’ve been using for writing.

Sure, I could just use Open Office, but I have to admit, I like having access to my character bios, outlines and the like.  If I had a Mac, I’d be using Scrivener (and I am hotly jealous of all of you who get to use it).  I’ve been using PageFour for a while, and have been generally happy with it.

But I am a geek, and as such, I am always convinced that there is something better on the horizon.  I’ve just been having a look at Liquid Story Binder, and am pretty impressed with it so far.  The main drawback is its complexity – I have a feeling that it could take a while to get used to.  Still, I’m going to keep on playing with it for the time being.

Anyone out there have any writing software that they particularly like?