I did it!

A paralyzing Writer Wednesday.

Most days I struggle to write.

Why?

Sometimes I've got writer's block.

I'm busy with church activities.

I'm busy cleaning. (ha!)

Because I'm simply feeling lazy and would rather spend all day watching House Hunters or Gilmore Girls.

Sometimes I actually manage to park myself in front of the laptop with the document open, my fingers assuming the position, and still I struggle.

Why?

No matter what amazingly brilliant excuse I've got going, at the root of it is fear. Despite people telling me that I'm a good writer or going out of their way to cheer me on, I struggle.

I'm sure it's typical writer behavior, but I'm often paralyzed by it.

I constantly joke about how lazy I am, but here's the thing. If I knew for sure that I'd finish one or both of these manuscripts, that I'd be published and successful, well, I'd probably have to be pried from that laptop every single night in order to get any sleep. I'd lose 20 pounds from not eating. The apartment would look like Katrina blew through. I'd forget what day it was.

I'm actually not lazy at all. I'm just paralyzed.

This post is going in an entirely different direction than I meant for it to go. Originally I was planning on posting some of my favorite quotes that help to motivate me as a writer, but I think I'll save those for another day and just end with this one, since it fits:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

~Marianne Williamson

Writer Wednesdays are sneaky like that.

I hate it when Wednesdays run past me so quickly I hardly get the chance to acknowledge them before they're nearly gone.  And I think Wednesdays have only gotten worse since they became Writer Wednesdays.  They're so much more demanding now.

I woke up this morning at 7 and haven't stopped since.  I think I lost five pounds simply on account of the fact that I haven't put butt to chair all day long.  Until now.  15 hours later.

Progress report:  About 10 days into Script Frenzy I started wondering if I was getting anything out of participating.  I wasn't having any trouble keeping up with the pace, unlike NaNoWriMo, which was a nice feeling, but I realized that I could skip through all of the possible problem areas in the fantasy book I'm adapting my script from and still easily make it to 100 pages.  And tackling those areas from another angle was kinda the point of doing the thing in the first place.

Then at around day 15 I recognized that I wasn't skipping those areas simply because I'd already labeled them potential problem areas, but because I instinctively knew that there wasn't enough action (read: plot) to translate to interesting scenes in a script.  Or if there was enough action, it was subplot action that slowed down the main plot.

The script version of my story shines a blinding spotlight on the notion that these truly are problem areas and not just yet another bout of self-defeating perfectionism.

I know that adapting a manuscript into a script in order to find weak spots won't always work.  I can think of a lot of great books that would be very boring movies.  But I think it works in the case of my fantasy book because I tend to focus much more on character than plot and there's a lot of plot in a fantasy book.  Or at least there should be.

With script writing I'm forced to get out of the characters' heads and pay more attention to the external than I would naturally.  I need that because I find internal characterization seductive.

Final writerly thought for the day:  I think I might actually finish my 100 pages a week early.

Don't tell my NaNo novel.  She sort of got the shaft.

Writer Wednesday goes to Salt Lake.

I'm a bit of a closet writer.

It's not so much that I'm keeping it secret as much as I tend to be a private person and most people don't have the first clue what I'm up to.  

Lately, I've been trying to be better about that when it comes to writing.  If my end goal is publication then I can't very well refuse to tell anyone about it.  Not if I plan on selling any books.  The people that I personally know are my best word-of-mouth support system when (I refuse to say if) I finally do get published.

So, in the spirit of trying to be less of a closet writer, I'm attending a writers conference in Salt Lake City next month.

Here are some of the classes offered:

How to Pace Your Novel
Conflict and Mechanism of Story
How to Become an Idea Factory
Using Dialogue to Reveal Character
How to Launch Your Book
How to Open Your Book with a Bang
Habits of Successful Writers
Worldbuilding
Using Resonance to Attract Readers
Writing a Killer Query.

That's only a small portion of the classes available.  About every hour, for two days, there is a new class to attend.  And for each hour there are between 7-10 to choose from.  Overwhelming, but fun!

No matter which classes I end up taking, I'm sure I'll learn a lot.  And hopefully do some networking.  I'm not very good at that meeting new people thing, but I'm going to do my best to attempt to put myself out there.  At some point I'm going to need to vacate the closet, as nice and warm and full of great shoes and handbags as it is.

Writer Wednesday linkage.

In order to get my Script Frenzy pages done I'm going to make Writer Wednesday short and sweet today.  I thought I'd post the links to some of my favorite writing blogs.  Enjoy!

Kristen Lamb's blog (my absolute favorite and a MUST read for any aspiring author!)

Rants and Ramblings:  My Life as a Literary Agent

Kid Lit

Writer Unboxed

Nathan Bransford's blog

Anne R. Allen's blog

Jody Hedlund's blog

Six LDS Writers and a Frog

Wordplay

A. Victoria Mixon's blog