I Wrote Stuff! Now What?

Welp, here it is, the first day of December. Go on, you can freak out for a minute…it's okay.

Finished? Good. Moving on, then.

What today means (besides only having 30 days left in the whole of 2014) is that NaNoWriMo is over, and if you were participating, you should have a grand total of 50k+ shiny new words on a project. Now, what to do with those shiny new words?

Well, add more to them, first of all. 50k words really doth not a novel make, so you'll need to fix that. And speaking of fixing, after you get that count up to somewhere in the 80k range (for an adult novel – YA can be a bit less), now you LET IT SIT for a good long while. Six weeks, say. That's what Stephen King does when he finishes something – he puts it in a drawer for a month and a half.

I know, I know. I hear you now. It's your baby. You can't leave it. It's cruel to leave a newborn out to fend for itself! It can't-

Let me tell you something about that newborn manuscript. It's not an infant. It's a fucking egg. It needs time to develop before it hatches, so make like a birdie (or a platypus, if you want to be an egg-laying mammal) and sit on it for awhile. Magic things are happening while it's under your feathery ass. When it's time for it to hatch, that is when you bring it food and watch it grow and tend to it until it's ready to leave the nest.

Note that: tend to it until it's ready to leave the nest.

Translation: revise the ever-loving hell out of it before inflicting it on others.

Now, some eggs are bad. Some eggs don't hatch. And we all know the old saying about how "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." What does all this mean?

Well, just what it says. Some things you write aren't good and should be thrown at asshats who cruise through your neighborhood at 3AM with their bass up so loud it deregulates your heart rhythm. Some things you write just aren't quite there yet and need more help to grow, so put them in the incubator (called "trunking" – all writers have a trunk novel or ten) and maybe come back in a year and see if they're ready to hatch. And the other thing? Yeah. Sometimes in order to write something good, you have to write a bunch of crap that's not. In fact, that's how it usually works.

Writing is a ladder, and we all start at the bottom. No one – no, not even Big Name Writer of Brilliance – started out at the top. Some might have climbed a little faster than others, and some may be stuck at a particular spot, but the trick is to keep climbing. Even when it hurts. Even when you're so tired and it feels like you're not making progress. Even when you've slipped down a few rungs. Hell, a lot of writers slip all the way back to the bottom and have to start over, and the ones that do are the ones that make it. Why?

Because they don't give up. Perseverance is the key to success, but there's a line between perseverance and pesterage. There's determination and there's desperation.

Now, I'm not saying "know when to quit." I'm not the fucking Gambler over here (aaaaaand I just showed my age….). I never advocate quitting. What I do advocate is reevaluation. If something repeatedly isn't working, it might be time to ask why that is instead of trying to force it to. It doesn't do any good to smack a TV that isn't plugged in and expect it to work. What's that thing about the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? I've talked about that here before – if all your rejections say the same thing, it might be time to look to what they're addressing. If you're getting nothing but rejections, it might be time to take a look at your query letter.

And if you make changes and nothing happens, well…it might be time to set that one aside and move on to something else. Because you're a writer, and there is always another project. Yes, even if you feel like there isn't.

So, once you've finished that NaNo novel, put it away and look at it again next year. February will be here before you know it.

Cognitive Recalibration

AKA "I hit you really hard in the head."

So Dr. Dina has been very busy this year. The majority of my posts have been recycled material when I remember it's my day to post (I've been averaging one post a month, and that will not do), and that's not really fair to you, the readers.

It does, however, make for good material for this blog.

I'm going to rant a little on a subject that's been discussed on my own blog, our Bitchstress Dreamkiller's blog, this blog, and countless others. It's been discussed many times in many different ways, but I'm going to bring it up again because it's still an issue.

In case you're new around here, the Evil League of Evil Writers' form of motivational speaking/inspiration involves pointy or blunt objects, depending on the poster's preference. (I prefer pointy, but blunt has its uses.) Today I'm going to go with a baseball bat, because some of you writers out there need a good beating.

"What is it?!" you cry as you run clumsily away from the serial-killer-stalkery of Dina-with-a-clue-bat, looking over your shoulder to see if I'm getting closer despite your running and my walking. (Hint: I am, because that's how the Serial Killer Stalk works – you run, I walk, I get ahead of you and bludgeon the shit out of you. Seriously. Watch any of the Friday the 13th films.)

Today's "it" is having time to write.

I hear it all the time (and it sends me into orbit) –

"I'd love to write, but I don't have time!"

"I have so much to do, I can't waste time writing!"

"You're so lucky! You have so much time to write!"

"It must be so nice to have time to write!" (This one is my favorite because it's said passive-aggressively in a "Wow, you have so much free time to sit on your ass! Some of us have actual lives and can't devote time to cute leisure activities!" way.)

Excuse. The Fuck. Out of you. Asshole.

Listen to me very, very carefully:

NO ONE "HAS TIME" TO WRITE.

NO ONE.

NO, NOT EVEN THEM.

Everyone, from unpublished writers to bestselling authors, has lives. Laundry. Dishes. Kids. Health issues. Financial issues. Family issues. Issues in general.

"Yes, but Big Name Author has a housekeeper/assistant/ *insert excuse here* and I'm just little me! I can't-"

STOP.

Stop right there.

You see what you did there? See that? Look at that sentence again. What's the word at the end there? Come on…you're a writer! You know words!

"Can't."

See that? That word? There's your problem, right there.

It's not that you "can't." The problem is you "won't."

Think about that for a minute. Go on. I'll wait.

*knits a row on her latest project*

Finished?

Did you understand the sentence? Really understand it? Because that's really what this whole thing is about.

You can write. You probably have. I don't care if it's three words on a napkin at lunch, or fifteen pages at 3AM before you shower for your 5AM shift.

You "want to write?" Fuck you. You don't "want to" write. You either write or you don't. You make time, you don't find it. Time isn't hiding behind the couch, waiting for you to find it. And again-

NO ONE "HAS TIME" TO WRITE.

They write. Period. Whether that's before the kids get up from school or after they're in bed at night, between loads of laundry, on your lunch break, on your smoke break, ten minutes while dinner is cooking…they're writing.

I hear you over there. "Dina, that just doesn't work for me! If I can't have a chunk of quiet time in which to write, I'm just not able to do it!"

Well then, it sucks to be you. I refer you to the above statement about "can't" versus "won't." You can adapt. You can make it work. You can change your attitude and learn to work with what you've got, if you really want to. The problem is you. You're not willing to change your behavior, make the time, make the adjustments, then shut the fuck up about how you "want to write" because you clearly don't want it badly enough.

As I said, everyone has lives, and everyone has issues. The difference between "wanting to write" and being a writer is making with the words.

So go make them. You can. You just have to make it happen. Get up ten minutes earlier. Go to bed twenty minutes later. And this applies to everything in your life, from unfucking your habitat to starting that exercise thing you said you were going to do this year. You can do it. Whether you will do it is up to you, and that's really it.

It's all about what you want and how badly you want it.

More than that, it's about your attitude. That old 80s movie The Last Starfighter says it perfectly:

Main Character Alex: "Come on, Centauri, I'm just a kid from a trailer park-"

Centauri: *points at him, punctuating each word with a gesture* "If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be!"

And that's really it. If you think you don't have time for writing, then you don't, and you never will. It's total bullshit, but that's what it comes down to. There will never be time. It will never be "the right time." You'll never have time when you're inspired to write, and inspiration will never come to you when you finally decide you have the time.

You fucking write. That's it. That is it, and that is all.

Adjust your attitude. Change your perspective.

Run faster.

How's that for motivation?