Just back from a week at the first Kindling Words West, where I spent my days walking and writing amid the Georgia O'Keefe cliffs of New Mexico's Ghost Ranch, and the nights talking with other writers who were doing the same. My first day or so there especially, I could barely stand to be indoors amid that landscape, so I would write outside, staring out at those cliffs, listening to the wind and the scuttle of lizards over paper-dry bark, until I hit a need-to-think point, then walk until I hit a need-to-write point, repeat as needed. Later, I also spent stretches writing in my room, or in the dusty old unused building I found with a view out onto an arroyo, windows open, singing along with my mp3 player as I wrote.

Most of all I reconnected with the fact that the act of writing, of striving to tell a story as well as I can, is sacred. The rest--the whole business of marketing and selling and building a career--are important, and I don't take them lightly. But in the end, the writing, the commitment to craft and story and getting better--that's what this is all about, and they matter deeply.

Being in the company of other writers who clearly felt the same way--and who gave each other the time and space to create, yet were there to talk to and support one another when we came up for air out of that creating space--made for a lovely retreat.

The writing blogosphere seems to be in a very pronouncement-prone place right now, filled with posts about how "real writers do this" and "you can't really write unless you do that." No doubt I've contributed without realizing it, at this time or another.

But I think I'd like a hiatus on any of us claiming to know anything about how anyone can or should or does write except ourselves. Or, failing that, I'd like for us to all assume there's an invisible disclaimer that goes with every post about writing--and anything else for that matter--even if we sometimes forget to include it explicitly:

This worked for me. I include it here only because I find it interesting that it worked for me, and also because there's always a chance it will work for you, too. But of course I can't tell whether it will; only you can tell that.

For every writing process out there, there will be people who have made a career of it, people who've made a rewarding hobby of it, and people who've done all sorts of in between things that defy easy labels. Writing is a chaotic, no-one-size-fits-all system. Life is a chaotic, no-one-size-fits-all system, if it comes down to that.

I also think I'd like a moratorium on online discussions what does or doesn't make someone a real writer. (Though anyone who considers themselves a real writer--by whatever criteria they personally use--is still welcome to download the certificate, of course.) Each of us is responsible for our own career, our own writing, our own lives. It's none of anyone's concern how anyone else chooses to define themselves.

As a writer I've often said that I can work anywhere, but too much of the time anywhere winds up being the same few places: my desk, the dining room table, a handful of local coffee shops.

Today, I loaded up my backpack with water, lunch, and laptop, and set out in search of a new workplace. We were heading for a blue-sky, 70 degree day. This is our summer, and it was way too nice to stay indoors. (Come calendar-summer, it will be way too hot to stay out past about 9 a.m.)

( I knew the right spot had to be out there somewhere )

Today's home office:



( You can't beat the views )

Headed home at the end of the day--well, the end of the two-and-a-half-hour laptop battery, anyway--sun-drenched and happy, with 2000 rough words written.

A good day, that.

Yesterday, unexpectedly at the end of my run, I had a burst of speed, just for a few minutes. I've been thinking about wanting to up my speed, but hadn't had really managed to do so much, or not in a way that felt right and smooth-ish, anyway.

If running is anything like writing, or signing, that speed will be gone the next time I run. But then, in small bits here and there, it will come back, until almost without noticing it the new pace will become the way I run much of the time.

That's the hope, anyway!

Slow run yesterday, but also a longer-than-usual one. Felt good.

I'm a slow runner in general, actually. Slow enough that if not for a bit of ego, I'd be calling myself a jogger instead. When I run in the neighborhood, I can forget how slow I am; when I run at the indoor track, it's pretty obvious. Though with the start of the new year, there are a few slower folks who are clearly just learning to run, as I was six months ago.

Anyway, everyone has their own pace, and I find myself respecting anyone who's even attempting to run, now that I know just how much work it is.

But there's one type of runner who does kind of amuse me. The runner who will burst past me at incredible speed--and then, a couple minutes later, I'll catch up with them, because after going all out, they were soon forced to slow to a walk. This is different than the controlled walk/run pattern of someone who's training themselves into running in the first place. This is a matter of folks not knowing how to do anything but throw everything they have into their running from the start--and then crashing--and then as soon as they get any energy at all back (or notice I've caught up with them, heh), throwing their everything into the running again--until they hit a wall again, and so on.

I did this too, just a little, when I first began trying to run, though even my everything wasn't exactly fast. But I only became able to sustain a run for more than a minute at a time when I figured out how to slow down. To pace myself.

I'm a slow walker, too, and so I've been on hikes when this happens as well: I'm trudging up some hill, slow and steady and panting a little, and a group goes bounding past me. But half an hour, an hour, two hours later, I'm still going, while I meet the bounders on their way back down, looking the worse for wear.

It may be that, if you sprint fast enough, you can get where you want to go, and get there faster. But more and more, I find myself convinced that this life thing doesn't work that way--that it's a paced game, after all.

I had two great runs right after new years, but then last Friday, when I went for a run-- nothing worked right. No energy, no forward push; my hips and arms couldn't seem to get in sync with each other; twice I had to stop briefly and walk, something I've not done in months; I ran slower than usual and barely managed to finish my half hour run. No endorphin rush afterwards, either. I just sort of hobbled home actually feeling the time it took to get there--even though normally I barely feel those 10 to 15 minutes of cooldown, and enjoy them quite a bit, as they make for great thinking time after the push of running.

( So, rational person that I am, did I just shrug this off as a bad day? No, of course not. )

I keep a card file filled with story ideas, and as I sort of year-end ritual, I go through the file and pull out the stories I'm unlikely to ever write. Not that, given how many cards are in the box, I'm ever going to write all the story ideas I'm keeping, either--I'm pretty conservative about hanging onto these things. There are some cards in that box that I've had a decade or more now.

But here are some stories I know I'm not going to write--tossed out here in case they spark something for someone else who might like to write them, instead. :-)

- The 500-year curse of Chief Manhattan (no wonder he sold that island to the Dutch so cheap)
- Night of the Living Boogers
- Yes, No, Maybe So
- Giraffe Journey: a picture book about the giraffe gifted from Egypt to France (who walked the whole way?)
- Sick Day: a quiet, comforting picture book
- A horse named Sabino
- Time travel reality TV: Take people from different eras, put them in one house
- A kid finds out her parents never married and so decides to plan their wedding

Of course, I'm also going through a notebook of assorted notes and adding new ideas to the box, and there are definitely more ideas coming in than going out.

I guess it's good to know I'll never run out of things to write about. :-)

May your new year be filled with many new ideas, as well!

So this post reminded me of how for years and years, it seemed like I was waiting for my real writer certificate to arrive in the mail--for some official sign that I was, indeed, truly a writer.

A while back I finally figured out that this was never going to happen, though, and so I took matters into my own hands.

So just in case you, too, are tired of waiting for your writerly validation to arrive in the mail ... I give to you your very own official Real Writer Certificate.

For all other sorts of validation, however, I'm afraid you're on your own. :-)

Over on fangs_fur_fey, folks have been sharing their "how I became a writer" stories. I found this kind of challenging, because there's really been no one moment when I "became" a writer (though perhaps the day I got my first rejection slip--months after I sold my first story--shrugged, and got back to writing comes closest), but ...

( ... this is what I posted there )

A week or so ago, John Scalzi posted about Dragon magazine's new all rights terms for fiction, and the problems with same. His post pretty much speaks for itself, and I agree with all he's saying there.

But I've been meaning to pull out one of the side discussions that came up in the comments as a post of its own. An anonymous commenter there said:

Writing as a hobby is like saying you write for yourself: a total lie. We write to be read.

Once, when I was just starting to write and was very intense about it, I would have agreed with this. But I don't anymore, and I find I disagree more strongly all the time. So I responded to the comment with:

Actually ... and it took me some years to fully understand this ... writing as a hobby is totally legitimate.

I've done things as hobbies that other people do to earn their livings: learn to sing, take horseback riding lessons, run camping trips, learn to run. I had every right to do those things as hobbies, and no, I had no real desire to be seen doing these things or to earn any money from them. They were hobbies, and the wonderful thing about them was that my professional life depended on them not at all. I wanted to do them well, but I had no desire to be paid for them.

Why shouldn't people have the right to let writing be their hobby, if they choose?

Which doesn't mean even a hobbyist should give away the rights to their work. But writing as a hobby is no more a lie than knitting as a hobby is.

The whole business of what winds up as a hobby and what winds up as a career fascinates me these days. Because I think there's a thin line between the two. I know there are some things I love that will always remain hobbies, while other things I love have this spark of being something that could become part of my professional life some day.

I don't know why writing was always something I wanted to build a career out of, while so many other things weren't. I don't know what makes something fall into one category or the other at all, for me or for anyone else. I just know that we all have the right to pursue our passions in whatever way works best for us.

(Found this in my file of things to post to livejournal one day; it's been there long enough I no longer remember what sparked it. But I reread it today, and found it still true, so am posting it.)

One thing about writing for kids and teens is, you don't get to forget what being in school--elementary school, middle school, high school--felt like. There were some good times, growing up, but there were also some hard times, and sometimes, when I'm digging deep, I wonder how I made it through. How anyone ever makes it through.

Lots of things help. I could write a whole post just about the importance of supportive adults in a kids' life, because while we adults have less power than we'd like, we do have more than we think.

( But another thing that helped me through was story )

I actually wrote this a few weeks ago, at the end of a rough day of writing, but wasn't quite ready to post it, then--so I'm posting it now, instead.

===============

( When I wrote this, I was having one of those grumpy writing days where nothing seemed to be working )

pbray on how to revise your novel. Clearly, my mistake has been leaving out the chocolate. (But I had a huge brownie at my favorite coffee shop today to celebrate finishing that 5K, so I expect things to pick up now.)

Susan Beth Pfeffer on writing Life As We Knew It on spec: "When I wrote LAWKI, I hardly told anyone, not even my mother, that I was writing it. I was doing it completely on spec, and I had no idea if I'd even finish the book, so I kept it to myself. Eventually I sent it off to my agent and she sold the book to Harcourt. Only then did I let people know I'd written another book."

Agent Marcia Wernick (as quoted by dotificus): "There’s no avoiding moments of doubt: when you doubt your writing, yourself, everything. But don’t get emotional, just get on with it."

Kathleen Duey on being named a National Book Award finalist: "And if I had had ANY idea this might happen, I would never have written about my septic tank on this blog a few days ago."

Remember that. Anything you post could be the thing the entire world sees when fame and fortune descend without warning. :-)

More seriously, though, I was thrilled to see kathleenduey's young adult fantasy on the list of finalists. Congratulations to her and to all of the nominees!

In the new fantasy writing/reading community fantastic_realm we've been sharing writing advice for beginners. I posted this in comments, and thought it worth reposting here:

You are not your writing. You are worthwhile whether or not you ever sell a thing, and your life has more to it than the words you write.

Don't hang your self-worth on the news you find in your mailbox or the quality of the words you write on a given day. That way lies madness, or at least depression.

Write as well as you can. Throw your whole soul into your writing. But build a life outside of your writing, too. Remember that you exist outside of it.

This is harder than it seems. You will forget regularly, and need to remind yourself.

Do it anyway.

I think this is true for any endeavor we care deeply about, actually, and not just for writing.

And I think it is hard. I think if we care about something we're doing, we throw everything we have into it, and need to. And yet in the end, we have to find ways to also remember our lives have meaning whether or not on a given day these things we care about so much are going well or poorly or somewhere in between.

tltrent: The answer is: Write. That's it. That's all. Write, just write, and eventually you will find keys, answers, opened doors, and a ferry across the river. Until the writing happens, nothing else can.

=-=-=-=-=

Junie B. Jones author Barbara Park: I’ve stopped reading about my books on the Internet because it’s too hurtful. People act as if I’m teaching children how to blow up cats.

Park's protagonist is guilty of horrible crimes like ... calling people stupid and using bad grammar.

Another one for the "sometimes kids are more sensible than grownups and sometimes grownups just need to chill out" file.

Kids have the same right adults do: to read books for fun.

=-=-=-=

matociquala demonstrates the difference between facile and deeper writing by contrasting clips from John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain."

My first reaction, as I saw the links, was "But I like 'Leaving on a Jet Plane.'"

But then I listened, and heard how the song reached for the predictable image, the facile cliche, the easy rhyme, the expected conclusion, every time--from being "so lonesome I could die" to the wedding ring showing up right on schedule.

While "Early Morning Rain" uses images specific to that one situation, chosen for it, all pointing toward the same tone and mood and story.

And so the latter sticks to the brain more.

I've been meaning for a while to say that I recently read Sarah Beth Durst's Into the Wild and very much enjoyed it.

( Into the Wild )

I'm currently partway through Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, and finding something I want to quote here pretty much every page. Here's one bit from today that struck something of a chord:

( Art & Fear )

bellatrys, lnhammer, and I think others have pointed me toward the TV Tropes article on Faux Action Girl. Very much the stuff of spirited trying to pass as strong.

Via filkferengi, this post from elisem about unfinished projects and creativity. Framed in terms of disability and its affects on finishing things, but I think it applies to all unfinished projects, really, and their importance in the larger creative scheme.

Alvina Ling asks authors how they really feel about revision letters.

Via Shaken and Stirred, Diana Wynne Jones' on the limitations of writing for adults, and the assumptions that accompany writing for kids and adults alike. This last I could quote from endlessly. Here's just one bit:

I found myself thinking as I wrote, "These poor adults are never going to understand this; I must explain it to them twice more and then remind them again later in different terms." Now this is something I never have to think when I write for younger readers. Children are used to making an effort to understand. They are asked for this effort every hour of every school day and, though they may not make the effort willingly, they at least expect it. In addition, nearly everyone between the ages of nine and fifteen is amazingly good at solving puzzles and following complicated plots - this being the happy result of many hours spent at computer games and watching television. I can rely on this. I can make my plots for them as complex as I please, and yet I know I never have to explain them more than once (or twice at the very most).

Yes. When I read adult books, I sometimes find myself wondering why the author is spending so much time explaining, when it would be so much more simpler to get on with the story and let the reader figure it out!