Encouraging Words

nikkarina said:

Things haven't been going so well as far as writing and publishing is concerned. So, I am starting this thread in the hopes of hearing a little encouragement, not just myself but for everyone. Everyone could use a few kind words every now and then, right? So, why keep writing? Why keep publishing? Maybe you can tell me what helps keeps your spirits up. And moments that you thought you'd never write again.

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Think you've just had a hard day. Happens. For my first book, it was blasted into little itty bitty pieces. My characters were flat, my action scenes were boring, everything was awful (save the plot...everyone loved the plot for some reason). Life keeps going. You get better as things go on but for the love of everything, LISTEN. These people know stuff. They've done it for years. Most of them have more experience with books than years I've been alive. Check your pride at the door when you come in here. They will rip you apart but it's only to build you up better. They have the technology. Well, we actually have the technology but you get what I'm saying.

Go look up some stock images of hot shirtless guys. You know - for potential covers for that erotica you said you'd write if things ever got bad enough but secretly you know you won't write it but it never hurts to dream. I have a few crushes that when things go bad, I go visit them.

I have, um, very strong opinions about writing, reading, literature, and how these things should be taught to students. I KNOW, YOU ARE SO SHOCKED. I managed to control my opinions (mostly) through Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter, but when we got to the Edgar Allan Poe segment of the American Lit curriculum, I was pissed as hell that we were destroying AMAZING stories like The Fall of the House of Usher and The Telltale Heart with stupid worksheets that had stupid questions. FUCKING WORKSHEETS! FOR EDGAR ALLAN POE!

By the end of the week, everyone in the class that had never been lucky enough to read his stuff before hated the author. It was a great injustice to my favorite writer. So I told the teacher that AP classes are moronic and he had no idea how to instill the proper sense of wonder into fantastic literature. Basically, I told a guy who loved literature that he sucked at it. He was so angry that he was shaking, and there were tears, and tl;dr I was a really big pain in the ass. I feel kinda shitty about it now. He probably didn't have any choice but to use those crappy worksheets. Even so...how do you ruin Edgar Allan Poe? (Quiet, John Cusack, I'm not talking to you.)

I transferred into a different English class for the second semester. I loved that teacher. We argued from the day I entered the class until the day I left, and we had so much fun with it. No tears were shed on either side.

I stopped writing any kind of fiction for nearly ten years after my first run in with traditional publishing. Life kinda took over and I didn't have time for it. Then things changed and I had some extra time on my hands. I wrote my first novel. That was two years ago this March. Since then, that book sold 25K copies. Did you all catch that? I published the first novel I ever wrote. *cringe* The stuff I submitted a decade ago was illustrated children's books. My 1st novel reads like a debut book, but that's okay. Everyone starts somewhere. It has a pretty purple cover.

Fast forward to Jan. I have an idea for a book. My editor raises his eyebrow (which is the skeptical face). I wanted to write a book about a call girl. It was supposed to be sad and funny and hot and not erotica. Basically, a hot mess like the main character. I made it a serial instead of a novel, b/c I didn't think anyone would read it based on the reaction I got. I stopped telling ppl about it b/c I got the oh, dear face one too many times. I wrote it anyway. Book 3 came out last week and jumped up into the top 100. Holy freaking crap!

Another book I wrote last summer hit the NYT and USA today bestseller lists in Jan after sleeping for 9 months. It was a weird book about a preacher and a painter. I vented a little bit in there. It was cathartic. I almost didnt publish it.

Write because you have to. Write because you love it. People sense that and latch onto it.

And write what you want. Even if you share your ideas, its hard for ppl to know what it'll look like in the end. I don't tell anyone what I'm doing anymore. I've been writing what I want to write and letting things fall where they may. I decided to stay away from things that bring me down. There are ppl who really get off on writing horrible reviews. They make me nuts. I'm not reading them anymore. I'm avoiding GR and anything else that brings me down.

BTW, I had a professor in college that called me into her office. She pushes my term paper back at me and says she can't grade it. I'm thinking that I turned an A paper, so it freaks me out. She said that my grammar is so atrocious, but it's not technically wrong. My sentence structures are unconventional in a bad way. Her eye was twitching by the time I left. She hated reading anything I wrote and wanted to fail me. She was an editor for some big names at the time. Meanwhile, another prof was gushing about my clever writing style and super excited for me, encouraging me to do post graduate work at an Ivy League University. I think they used to fight about me in the coffee room.

Never let one person shatter your dreams. It's just one person.

Nikki,
I posted something in the other thread for you as well, before I saw you weren't reading it anymore.  I'll summarize it here.

Sit back and know that what you wanted, to touch people, is happening. There are downtrodden teenage girls who will really love and relate with this story.  Let that be enough when the storm of criticism or praise rolls in. I write books hoping to help abused people feel less alone as well, and I find that remembering that keeps me going when the hate comes in.

I'm not saying we don't make the books the best we can, just that if our reason for publishing was helping people, rather than sales or acclaim, then helping people is what we should be happy with, even if people are slinging rocks (or bad reviews) at us because we aren't perfect in our attempts to do so.

The authors posting here were only trying to help as well.  

If you don't continue, then your book will become dead in the water... carrying on publishing in one way or another is beneficial to your original book and in some way - you're own sanity!

I simply carry on creating, different names, different directions - I've written 7000 words today (offline!) half of which will be absolute nonsense, the other half may be usable but I'll carry on anyway, that's what life is all about!

OP - I like your book and I love your cover - I get it! Reminds me of a little favorite film of mine called 'Heathers' with Christian Slater and Winona Ryder about people who simply did not fit in, this film was hard to categorize and sometimes hard to place - yet, it is fantastic and sometimes greatness comes from being originally misunderstood.

The only real motivation you can find has to come from yourself, that's what I've learned, that's how I teach myself.

Publishing and writing, as life before it, is all about learning and gaining knowledge that will one day raise you up to greater heights.

If I get down, depressed, unwilling to carry on with the writing business, I believe that it's because I don't know everything and sometimes don't understand everything...

I ask myself only one question - Do I think I would be wiser in one year's time than I am at this very moment?

The answer would be - of course - and that's how I keep motivated because there is so much to learn, so much to discover and in doing so, i discover that there is more to writing and more to life than I ever could have imagined a year earlier.

When I get depressed and insecure about my writing, I run around, looking for someone to tell me how good it is. There's never anyone there. So I get a chip on my shoulder and I try to write something better. But what gets me through it is the knowledge that there are all these other writers out there who share the experience. All these people who go sit in the darkness when everyone else is asleep, tapping away. One word at a time, lonely, dreaming of being recognized, dreaming of the day they'll finally find the words that make people happy or sad or give them a thrill. If this particular set of words doesn't do it, that means NOTHING. Because I've got more words where that came from, and maybe next time I'll string them together better. maybe I'll tighten up the prose to keep their interest. Maybe I'll capture that emotion I'd felt long ago but had forgotten about, and reveal it in such a way that it touches someone who's feeling the same thing, and they'll be grateful that someone out there knows what they're going through. It's for THAT person I write, not for the praise of other authors. All I can do for those other authors who are wallowing like me is to make it, just to show them that even a moron like me can rise out of the dust. We can't pull each other out of that place, all we can do is rise and once we've made it, explain to the best of our ability how we did it, so everyone who's still struggling has another template they might follow. But, while we're down here wallowing, I say we throw a party. I'll bring the beer. Who's game?