Procrastination At Its Finest

I REQUIRE ASSISTANCE.

Not really, but I do need to bust this bad habit I have developed with old age. I continued to put off everything I had set my mind to do for four solid months in a row. I have yet to touch my underdeveloped and mistreated novel in progress, started and never finished fifteen scholarship applications because I cannot face the fact that I graduate next year, and I have yet to open a non-school related book. A monster is the definition of what I have become, and I am wondering if there are any other beasts I can converse with over this matter. My dearest authors and beloved writers; how on earth do you stay motivated?

Well, a fire has officially been lit under my rear. I have recently been given an opportunity to possibly intern at a local newspaper, so I really need to kick it in gear. Plus, I have a darling mother who continually reminds me that "if you have a book published, I'm sure any college would love to pay for you to attend". Yes, I understand. Stop telling me. Please.

Is there a secret to this whole "being a successful writer" thing? As in I should start meditating and making sacrifices to the gods of literature; because I would totally slay a raven to honor Poe or fight to save John Coffey for the sake of Stephen King, maybe even create a man out of spare parts or take a journey to the center of the Earth. Is my lack of triumph in finishing something because my name is lame? That would make more sense than anything else honestly.

Or, I can blame school! Yes! That is the thing to do; blame the educational system for my troubles like a good student would do. I have been working awfully hard and all I have to show is a pathetic grade in Calculus and a thirty minute master piece in English. (What is that? Well, I'll have you know that I wrote a magnificent research paper in a little over half an hour. I received a perfect score on the AP grading scale. Horn tooting is over now...) Don't believe me? Check it out.

In all seriousness, I do not believe there is a secret. Immature and undisciplined, lacking the ability to create deadlines for myself. I do hope that trait begins to shine through in about a year or so... Either way, I have great respect for anyone how can finish writing anything at all. I barely finish my blog posts, and yet, I always manage to finish my pizza. In the near future, a way to combine writing and eating should be created. (No, restaurant reviewing is not what I am thinking of, but nice try.)

This is my year of finishing. This year I shall finish what I have started; including my brain-child "The Pond", at least a few scholarships, and even finish a work out because I know that is most definitely needed. Jordan should hold me to this, just like my mother; I want the book finished and ready to take to San Antonio this summer to pitch it. If it is not ready, I am not allowed to go. And I am not going to miss an opportunity to see the lovely Jordan Dane so expect great things come.

I hope everyone had a safe and pleasant holiday season, and if you did make a resolution or two, I hope you stick to 'em. (:

You Are a Writer

By Dan Haring

Raise your hand if you're an aspiring writer.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. You're not an aspiring writer. You are a writer.

What does aspire mean? "To seek to attain or accomplish a particular goal. From Latin aspirare, literally, to breathe upon."

I see you over there, in the corner, breathing onto your laptop.

"Shhh...I'm aspiring over here."

No you're not. You're writing. 

If you have, at one point, put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and written something - a poem, a short story, a screenplay, the first chapter to the next great American novel, you are, in fact, a writer.

Now, if you haven't, if you're still just breathing on the paper, but not putting anything on it, then, I guess, technically you're an aspiring writer. But that's okay. The great thing about writing is all you need is that pen and paper or that keyboard. There should be very little, if anything, physically holding you back.

Now, you might say that I'm stupid for that whole breathing thing. You might be thinking "I really AM an aspiring writer. I want to write the next Harry Potter or Twilight or On the Road or Catcher in the Rye."

And that's great. It's great to have those goals. But let's go back to the definition of aspire. To seek to accomplish a particular goal. You are an aspiring best-selling author, which is something altogether different.

It means you're serious about this whole writing thing. It means that you're not just going to mess around, but that you're going to take your craft and make it into something people will pay you money to read.

And that's awesome. You need to have goals, whatever they may be. But that's just it, The goals are the finish line, and you're never going to reach them if you don't pick up that pen.

So just write.

Some of you might be rolling your eyes and saying "Ok, we get it, can you move on to the next visual?"

The answer is yes.

This is me and my two sons at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con. The lady we're with is comic book writer Gail Simone, who has written tons of comics, including characters such as Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Deadpool, etc. (My kids are obviously impressed) And this is right before I turned to her and asked if she had any advice for an aspiring comic book writer.

I'm pretty sure I even used those exact words.

I'm not even going to make an excuse for myself. The point is, the second you make that effort and start writing, You've changed into a writer, so don't sell yourself short.

The reason I'm spending so much time on this is I've heard so many times from friends. "Oh, that's cool you wrote a book. I wish I could." Like it's some magical fairytale thing that I somehow managed to do and that they'd never be able to.

But it's not magic, it's just a matter of working hard.

So stop aspiring. Start writing. And if you've already started, keep writing.

I promise it's not as scary as it sounds. 

Writing Resolutions for 2013

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

It’s that time of year when everyone is suddenly losing interest in their New Year’s Resolutions and having that slice of pie. Take this time to steal yourself for the year ahead. Writing is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s supposed to be fun and something we do for our souls and for self-expression. Writing is also the one thing we can control. So let’s talk about a solid set of resolutions for your writing and launch 2013 in style.
 
My FIVE Writer’s Resolutions for 2013:
 
1.) Carve out writing time and stick to it. Set attainable goals and make them part of your day. It’s easy to let life get in the way. And certainly if you have a sick child or pressures at work, it’s easy to forget about the passion you feel for the one thing you do for yourself.
 
2.) Set daily word count goals & track it. I keep mine on a spreadsheet for each book, so I can evaluate my progress and stay focused on my project. Even if you can only do 500 words a day, make it happen. Motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, said he wrote his non-fiction book doing it a page a day. He set a fire under me when I heard that.
 
3.) Cut out online social media until you get your daily word quota in. Being on facebook and twitter and Pinterest might seem like promotion and business, but it’s not the core of your business if you’re a writer. Writing is the one thing you have to do.
 
4.) Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a daily word count. Make it up the next day. Experiencing life and being with the people you love should be a priority too. Don’t take on too much and make writing an unhealthy obsession. It should be fun.
 
5.) Stay positive. When you find negative words coming out of your mouth, or in your own head, stop it. We get enough abuse from others.
 
What about you? Did you make any resolutions that you’d care to share?

It Takes Work

By Dan Haring
 

Look at that picture again.

Good.

Why are you still here?

Well, since you are, I'll elaborate a little on what Batman is telling you.

In the last five years I've been able to accomplish some of my bigger personal goals. I worked on a comic book movie. I worked on a Disney animated film. I wrote a book that got published.

I'm not trying to brag, I'm trying to illustrate a point.

A few people have told me they wish they could do some of those things.

Guess what? They can. There's no secret to it, just like there's no secret to any success in life. You work hard, you hustle, and you try to be in the right place at the right time.

Sometimes you win.

Sometimes you lose.

It's hard.

It's supposed to be.

I'm not telling you I never procrastinate. I do. I've probably wasted hours looking at baby English bulldogs.

I mean seriously, how adorable are these little guys?

 But I've also been able to buckle down and get things done.

Because I had dreams and goals and didn't just sit there wishing they'd come true.

Because I wanted them, and I worked for them.

Comic book artist/writer Faith Erin Hicks tweeted something a while back that really stuck with me.

She said, "What did you do this weekend to get closer to your goal of working in comics?"

Substitute "working in comics" with "writing a book" or whatever your goal is, and then think about it.

What did you do?

And more importantly, what are you going to do now?

It's not going to fall in your lap.

You have to work for it.

But you can do it.

I believe in you.

And so does Batman.

ME, MY PAST SELF, AND I

by Wendy Corsi Staub

Have you read THE FUTURE OF US? My sixteen-year-old son got it for Christmas and finished it in a matter of hours, at which point I started reading it myself. The book has one of those brilliant why-didn’t-I-think-of-that? premises: a teenaged boy and girl in 1996 accidentally log onto Facebook, which hasn't even been invented yet, and find themselves reading about (and seeing photos of!) their future selves. The more they read, the more they adapt their behavior in their current lives to change what's going to happen to them in the future.

Future Self versus Past/Present Self is a theme I’ve playfully visited in my own work, writing as my lighter alter-ego Wendy Markham (versus the dark side—the suspense novels I write under my own name, Wendy Corsi Staub).

In MIKE, MIKE and ME, we flash back and forth between the 1980s, where our young, single heroine is dating two guys named Mike, and the present, where she’s married to one Mike—and about to have a close encounter with the long-lost other Mike—but we don’t know which (from her past) is which.

In my time travel-themed THE BEST GIFT, a pregnant woman goes to bed on Christmas Eve, then wakes up on Christmas Day a few years in the future—in her empty house, no sign of her husband or the child they’d have had by now.

Reading THE FUTURE OF US has left me thinking a lot about the girl I used to be—and how she’d have reacted back then if she could glimpse the adult she was to become.

My Past Self, a small town girl from a very large, close-knit, functional (as opposed to dys) family, decided when she was just in third grade that she wanted to grow up to become an author. (Read more about that pivotal moment on my October 29, 2010 blog entry here.)

Past Self told everyone she knew—including her trusty pink Holly Hobbie diary, on September 14, 1973—about her Big Dream for Future Self. Or perhaps Big Plan is more appropriate than Big Dream, because Past Self was--like Present and I imagine Future Selves--an ambitious, overly energetic, type A control freak.

In case you can’t read the entry, it says: Dear Diary, Someday I want to be a writer for childrens books. I want to be as famos as Alcott, Wiggins, Wilder and all of those ladys.

Past Self’s spelling left something to be desired, and her favorite authors at that point had been born at least a hundred years before she was, but hey, her heart--and ambitions--were in the right place.

Interesting to note that this trio of early literary idols--Louisa May Alcott, Kate Douglas Wiggin, and Laura Ingalls Wilder—wrote under three names, as did a fourth idol, Mary Higgins Clark, who would soon be discovered by Past Self—or would that be Future Past Self?--in Junior High circa 1976. Naturally, I intended to become a triple-name author just like my idols, so when I later sold my own first novel just a few months after my wedding, I opted for Wendy Corsi Staub--my first name, my maiden name, and my husband’s last name.

By the time Past Self got to high school, she was writing novels. Here’s the first page from an early one that—go figure--failed to set the publishing world on fire when Past Self sent it off, along with the required SASEs, to New York editors:

Past Self was shocked and disappointed, but utterly undaunted, when those SASEs boomeranged with the manuscripts inside, accompanied by form rejection slips.

By senior year of high school, Past Self had refined the Big Plan: she was going to move to Manhattan right after college because everyone knew that was where all the coolest authors lived. (By this time, Past Self’s literary idols included witty, provocative late twentieth century urbanites Judy Blume, Mary Rodgers, Norma Klein, and pre-Sweet-Valley Francine Pascal, whose books were invariably set in New York City or its suburbs and had Past Self longing to exchange small town life for city life).

Past Self had such a case of tunnel vision that it never occurred to her to have a Backup Plan in case the Big Plan didn’t work out. There was only one plan, ever. Not even a thought to other things that might be fulfilling, or to the twists and turns that tend to pop up in life's pathway.

Here she is among featured seniors in the 1982 high school yearbook. I'll allow you a moment or two to gape in mute horror at the unflattering hair-do (courtesy of a rough night spent sleeping on pink sponge rollers) and equally unflattering but favorite-outfit-that-year preppy cardigan (gray with navy ribbon trim imprinted with tiny whales), plaid skirt (also shades of navy and gray), knee socks, and white-soled docksiders.

Finished grimacing? Okay, now check out the last line of the biographical piece: “I’d like to be an author of children’s books,” she added.

See? Only one plan. Ever. So confident was Past Self in her choice to become an author that she hadn’t wavered in the decade since third grade; nor would she waver between senior year and the moment--exactly another decade later--when, now living in New York, she submitted a partial manuscript entitled SUMMER LIGHTNING to an editor acquiring young adult paranormals.

SUMMER LIGHTNING became Past Self’s first published book. Published by Harpercollins in 1993, it went on to win an RWA Rita Award for Best Young Adult Novel the following summer. The Big Plan had become reality, but an even Bigger, Non-Plan was about to change everything.

A day or two before the Rita Awards ceremony in Manhattan, a nauseated Past Self suspected, then confirmed, that she and her husband were—oops, surprise!—expecting their first child. Not part of the Big Plan--at this stage, anyway--but a welcome surprise nonetheless. Thoughts running through Past Self’s head during the acceptance speech in front of hundreds of people: Don’t Barf Don’t Barf Don’t Barf Don’t Barf... I know. Glamorous, right? Well, sometimes. Three days later, the newly minted award-winning author was flown First Class on the first of countless Book Tours (alas, not all of which would be First Class—or even footed by the publisher—but abysmal lows are a part of every career, and that’s another blog). When her head wasn't in the toilet during the course of that milestone trip--which was most of the time--it was in the clouds, musing about motherhood and what this deviation might mean to the Big Plan.

Flash forward about seventeen years, two sons, and more than seventy-five published novels in various genres, some for kids, some for adults. Past Self has become Present Self.

These days, the words “New York Times Bestselling Author” goes above the name Wendy Corsi Staub on book covers, which are published again by Harpercollins in one of life’s gratifying, full-circle turns. And these days, two of the most precious people in my world don't call me a bestseller and they don't call me by three names; they just call me Mom.

Life has become a balancing act I never perceived back when I was dreaming and planning. Making dinner for a couple of perpetually starved teenaged boys--and, often, their assorted friends--is as fulfilling as jetting off on a book tour. I have everything I ever wanted, but more importantly: I have everything I ever needed, but didn't know I wanted.

I shudder to think what might have happened if my Past Self had glimpsed Future Self during that Don't Barf Don't Barf Don't Barf moment at the podium and thought, Huh? Have kids? No way!!--and then, like the hero and heroine of THE FUTURE OF US, set out to change the course of her future, courtesy of the one-track mind she had back then. And hey, it was the '70s, and women's lib was in full swing. I was all about the career, and the one I'd chosen was such a longshot that I didn't think there'd be room for anything else. Guess what? There is.

Has it been an easy, straightforward path to get here, career-wise? No way. Have I ever considered giving it up? No way. The rewards may not always outnumber or outweigh the drawbacks, but they're ultimately so fulfilling that whenever I find myself in a slump, focusing on past successes and future plans gets me through.

In another great Full Circle twist: in 2011, I was a finalist for Mystery Writers of America's coveted “Mary Higgins Clark Award." At the Edgar Awards last April, I got to chat at length with my triple-named idol herself, who said she’d loved my book. I gushed that I’d read WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN when I was in sixth grade, then devoured everything she published from that time on, knowing I wanted to write the same kinds of books one day.

What would Past Self have thought if she could have peered into the future and glimpsed this moment—a one-on-one chat with the Queen of Suspense?!

Seriously? I bet she’d have thought it was pretty cool—yet I doubt she’d have been surprised. In fact, she’d probably have expected nothing less. That’s how certain Past Self was about what she wanted to do with her life--and how sure she was that the Dream that became a Plan would be carried out.

By high school, especially, it was all the other stuff in Past Self's world that was perpetually laced with uncertainty. The friendships, the romances, the appearance, the academics, the finances...

If, back in high school, Past Self could have lifted the veil for a moment, she’d probably have been much more concerned about the near future, and whether she’d get to go to the prom with the cute basketball player she liked.

Psst, Past Self—guess what? You will go to the prom with that cute basketball player; you'll even be crowned Prom Prince and Princess. And then he will will disappear into the mists of time, only to resurface on your Facebook Friends list in 2012.

But I imagine Past Self would have been thrilled to know that she’d meet the love of her life at the Office Christmas Party in Manhattan in 1988 (see December 12, 2011 blog entry), get engaged almost exactly two years later, and marry him in 1991.

And she'd have been devastated to know that her beautiful, supportive young mom—the mom who told her third grade daughter that she could become anything she wanted to be if she set her mind to it—would die of breast cancer just a few weeks after her 63^rd birthday.

Who wouldn't want to tamper with the present in order to change that future?

So. Maybe the future is best left to the imagination, to dreaming and planning, or--just to dreaming. Maybe we don't really want or need to know. Maybe all that matters is that in the end, that small town girl with a Big Plan did become a writer, and she also became a wife and mother who gave birth to a son—actually two sons—who also have Big Plans.

As soon as I finish writing this blog, I’m heading out the door to College Planning Night with my firstborn, the one who read The Future of Us on Christmas Day.

He also has Big Plans. He wants to become—guess what? A writer. He’s thinking Sports Journalist, but I’ve known from the time he was around four that his brain is wired like a novelist’s. Sometimes I wish—as, I’m sure, does he—that I could catch a glimpse of his Future Self. But then, all in good time…we will.

How about you? If you could catch a glimpse of yourself ten, twenty, thirty years from now…would you want to? And what would you hope/expect to see?