#PitchWars : A War of Words and Gifs

When I finished my first novel, I told Facebook/Twitter because I didn’t know where else to go to tell the world I had finished something that had made me angry, delighted, sad, and anxious.  The response I got from both worlds was overwhelming and I felt like the world was cheering me on.  I dutifully basked in my light and then scrambled away back to Google Drive and started a new WIP.

I am now sitting here refreshing Twitter and looking at constant Tweets about #PitchWars. If you don’t know what #PitchWars is, run over to Brenda Drake’s website and check it out. (Seriously, she’s fabulous.  This is a HUGE contest and I am in awe of her.) Essentially it is a contest in which published/agented authors pick someone to mentor from a gigantic slush pile of query letters and first chapters.

My friend Catherine Scully (go follow her RIGHT now if you like all the things creepy, cute, and foodie) told me about it and said I should go for it now that I had a completed MS.  My reaction was regal and composed:

So, after dropping my Pumpkin Pasties and exiting the Great Hall, I steered right into my writing chair and started researching Pitch Wars.  What I found was a community of writers, both published and non, who only wanted to help one another out.  Their words are kind advice are solid.

Flash forward to yesterday– Blog Hop Day.  Blog Hop Day is where the mentors all update their blogs with their personal wishlists and what they’ll accept for the contest.  I scoured for my YA authors, but read every single blog post. I found that they are all nerds in some capacity, enjoy food as much as I do, and are just as witty as they are talented.

After finding the mentors accepting YA work, I dove back into my edits so that I could appease their wishes for strong voices, immersive worlds, and MCs that charge full steam ahead. Some of their requests are hilarious and exactly who I am.

(Click on each Tweet to visit them!)

Submission day is August 17th and I am locking myself away to finish my edits and stalk these writers some more.

Honestly, I just want them all to be my best friend.  I’d bake goodies and throw a huge house party just so we could sit around, talk pop culture, edit manuscripts, and eat cookies. That doesn’t come without trying my hardest at this contest so it’s time to buckle down and finish editing.

Good luck to all in Pitch Wars, mentors and writers alike!

The Oddities of Success

I haven’t written a blog post in a while because of two reasons. A) I was finishing writing my first novel and B) I wanted to gather my thoughts for this post.

You heard me right.  I finished writing my first ever novel.  I’ve attempted novels in the past, but I always stopped halfway through or even as little as a chapter into the idea.  In all the times I’ve written, I’ve never actually forced myself to finish most of the projects I started. “You gotta write when you’re feeling it,” I always told myself.

Now I know how much a load of crap that statement is.  If I would have waited for the ever elusive creative juices to flow, I’d still be sitting here without a first draft. That was one of the major lessons I learned in writing my MS (manuscript).  You have to write all the time. No… All the time. I now know the importance of Neil Gaiman’s quote:

“The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I’m in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That’s my method.”

He might be using a bit of hyperbole there, but what he has to say is true. Write. Write all the time.  When you’re happy, write. When you’re sad, write. When you’re bored, write. This goes for anything in the world, I think. If you dream of doing that one thing, STOP DREAMING. Do it.

Anyway, when I finished this MS, which was on Thursday July 16th, I felt like it should be a big day to remember, but I hardly recall it.  The moment I put the final word in the final chapter, I wasn’t sure how I should feel.  I should have been jumping for joy.  I should have felt like a lady and a scholar. I didn’t. I was exhausted, elated, scared, and sad all at the same time.

I had just spent the better part of the previous year writing this thing for NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) and suddenly it was finished.  Most of my MS was written quickly and in an attempt to fit 50,000 words in during a month, so I was disconnected from it.  The other half was a changed setting, choppy dialogue and enough description to rival G.R.R. Martin fanfiction writers.

But it was done.

It was rewarding and I still feel like I have a hundred thousand miles to go before I ever let anyone look at it, but that’s the scary and adventurous part, right?  That’s the part where I can take this thing apart and move the pieces and stretch them until they fit my vision. While I only completed part of the journey, I still have an exciting path ahead.

My Pinterest boards are now being filled with editing tips and character charts.  I’ve really started to visualize what I have in front of me and I’ve been stalking the Twitter scene for writers, publishers, and agents.  This feels like a big thing that I am just dipping my toes into and it is exciting.

I wasn’t excited on July 16th. I was scared and sad and breathless.  I did nothing with my computer that day except turn it off and collapse on the couch. Okay, okay… I did a load or five of laundry and a load or …seven of dishes.  I had a house I had neglected and domestic life started to matter again.

Two weeks later and I feel like I’m ready to go again. I’ve got another MS on the way and I’m starting my editing process by breaking down that novel. What I have now will be just a shadow of what I will have when I’m done, and that too is fulfilling.

Living an Intrinsically Motivated Life

I heard a story on the radio yesterday that I really liked and it got me thinking about a lot of different things– specifically motivation. Apparently, a study was done on smokers who wished to quit smoking.  They were placed in a group and given money at certain intervals of time as long as they were still smoke free. The catch was, if one person in the group cheated and had smoked, no one in the group earned money.  According to the radio jockey, people liked earning money but they were also more motivated to succeed with the group relying on them.

I’ve looked for this experiment a few times last night and this morning and the only thing I can find close to it is the CVS experiment. You can read all about it here, but the idea is very similar.

What I didn’t like from the radio story was that the radio jockey couldn’t figure out how to adapt the strategy in the real world.  As a teacher, I think I was a little more sensitive to the issue and a little more prepared with ideas on how to use this.  One of the things I learned this year about my students, and about myself, was to meet each individual on their own level.  I live in the south and I am smack dab in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains, rivers, and forests.  The only radio station that gets through clearly is a radio station that broadcasts nothing but country.  It wouldn’t be fair of someone to assume that my favorite music is country and that my favorite past time is sitting on the porch watching squirrels getting caught in the bug zapper.  Sorry, that’s just not me.

However, you can motivate me with something I do enjoy.  Ice cream.  Ice cream is a good motivator for me to do anything. However, that’s an extrinsic motivator.  I am doing something I probably should already be doing for myself because of an outside source. This beneficial thing you’re trying to get me to do should be something I want to do, not something I am coerced to do.  However, I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and decide “Yes, I should run five miles a day because it’s good for my long term health.”  I’ll need to motivate myself by offering myself a monetary reward, or even a reward of a nap when I get home.

My goal as a teacher is to start my students off by motivating them.  Period.  Most students I receive at the beginning of the year are motivated to check their Instagram hits and their Snap Chat level (Score? I don’t know).  I want to motivate them to be better writers, to be better readers, and ultimately the best version of themselves.  When they ask me why we are doing something, I can’t start out with “It’s the right thing to do”.  I can’t wake up at 5:00am and tell myself I am about to go exercise because “It’s the right thing to do”.  That won’t work.

However, I start with extrinsic motivators and work my way around.  Soon I learn that I actually like doing the thing I groan and complain about and soon my motivation becomes my own happiness.  It’s a slow process and it takes time.  That’s the point of building good habits.  You do something slow and steady and soon it becomes as natural as breathing… or napping… or eating ice cream. Whatever! What I’m saying is, motivation is a tricky tool and psychology is a rabbit hole of interesting information.  Find what works for you and work yourself towards the goal of doing something simply because you enjoy it.

You can still do that, ya know?  You can do something for no other reason than because it’s fun. Work yourself toward that way of life.

Self-Image and Self-Esteem

Throughout the greater part of the beginning of this year, I battled a hundred thousand different emotions that always seemed to overwhelm me.  At any given moment, I could switch from overjoyed to absolutely depressed.  I don’t use that word lightly as I often considered if that was truly my issue, or if there was some mental block that I hadn’t realized yet. Let’s just say that even I was getting whiplash from my emotional swings and I wanted to be rid of them ASAP.  I couldn’t imagine how my husband felt hearing me talk about my frustrations, my angers, and my joys all from the same hour in my day.

While I found a few different answers to my emotional roller coaster question, I didn’t figure one out until last night. I’ve been happy, truly happy, for about three months now.  Work doesn’t bother me near as much as it used to, I’ve thrown myself into writing, reading, and hiking, and I let a lot of things roll of my back just like I used to let them do prior to my rut. I felt like myself again, but better. Why?

I did a little digging today about confidence and insecurity.  According to Pathway to Happiness, self-confidence is all about emotion and not self-image.  We live in a world that is all about self-image and attaining this perfect sense of self.  At bus stops, in music videos, on television, and even in songs we are reminded of what the perfect version of what a person should be. We learn to think that if we attain that “perfect self”, we’ll be happy. So we work and we work hard for this image we’ve built. Progress is good, however, we lose track and base all our emotional energy on being this image that might, for a lot of us, be unattainable.

In short, we forget the journey and focus only on the destination.

That was my problem.

I was focused on getting my dream job, publishing a book, lamenting my lack of effort in photography, wanting to hike all the time, and somehow fit in cooking dinner every night.  I wanted all the end results and forgot to enjoy the pathway there. This resulted in me being down, angry, and, at times, very lonely.  Now, anyone who knows me might think that’s ridiculous considering the amount of people I have around me, but I felt like I didn’t fit. I always felt like I was lacking a part to make me like everyone else. A part that was making people “perfect”. I was too out of shape to hike with others, too fat to go shopping with some girls, too wishy-washy in my wants for the future for a job I had wanted a year ago, too inexperienced with the writing world, too this, too that, blah blah blah.

Are you exhausted and bored of that dribble? I was too.

Without ever reading the website, I did just as it suggested. I took apart the vision of who I wanted to be, and replaced the unattainable parts with good milestones. I will never be a tall leggy blonde, but I can lose a few pounds. I might never go spelunking, but I can climb a few trails around here. I might never publish a book, but I sure can finish one and feel good about it.

In these last few months, I started feeling happy because I was making progress. I lost twenty-five pounds and fit into some shorts from college. Who cares if I’m still overweight? I’ll get there. I hiked a trail yesterday that would make last year me gawk. I was the slowest turtle in the race, but I did it. I’m also almost finished writing my book. Will it get published? Who knows. The point is, I’m working and I’m trying and as long as I keep doing that, then that is the perfect sense of self for me.

Self-Worth And Happiness

On Friday, my husband, a few friends, and myself were all having a conversation on our porch.  In this conversation, it came to the topic of being an adult.  We are all in our mid to late twenties and some of us feel old before out time while others are still barely touching the mental age of fifteen.  We’re a nice mix of maturity and fun and it keeps things interesting and exciting.

While on the topic of being an adult, we all came to the conclusion that being an adult is much easier than what everyone said it was going to be.  Yeah, we are all still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.  Yes, we’re all still figuring out what the end game is for us. And, yes, we’re still trying to fight the fact that in a few years gray hairs might start appearing.

But that’s stuff we’ll never stop facing.  We’ll face those problems for the rest of our lives.

What we have all figured out is that life is so much easier when you realize that no one is honestly looking at you.  People are so absorbed in their own lives and their own problems that they are rarely every judging you.  If they are looking at you, they’re just looking and comparing you to their own life and their own problems.  If they’ve made a mental ranking of you, that’s their prerogative.  Their scale?  Doesn’t matter. And that’s the freeing part.

I tell my students that they shouldn’t worry about what people think of them.  They need to be their own person and strive for inner happiness.  I know they aren’t going to hear that because their hormones have given them selective hearing and the power to worry about every single aspect of their being, but I hope that it sits somewhere deep in their heart and resonates until they get older.

Life is easier when you just paddle your own boat or you find someone to paddle it with you.  Go about your day and do what makes you happy.  Forget the looks you get and forget the mental scales of measure.  Find the measure of self-worth.

Today is a good day to start that!