Hello and welcome to the November issue of the Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG), a monthly meeting of writers to spill and share their tales of woe and ink. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs and find yourself an insecure, writing soul mate.
It’s November, which is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and writers everywhere have holed up in their favourite writing nooks with mugs of coffee and probably some chocolate. My bulletin board is crowded with plot points and sticky notes with reminders of tone, terrible sketches of the alien species featured in my story. I’m still in the early days of struggling, but I’ve been here before, so I know I’ve got to push through until I reach the elation of being fully immersed in my novel. Well, novella, as I’m something of a NaNoRebel this year (again). I write my zero drafts by hand, and then type them up, during which I completely rewrite because those zero drafts are awkward monsters just figuring themselves out. My goal this year is to complete the zero draft of my novella (25-35K) AND get that first draft rewrite complete.
Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? I’d love to hear about it.
This month, IWSG gave us the optional question “What is the strangest thing you’ve ever researched for a story?” When I was writing Toby’s Alicorn Adventure (Cricket, September 2018) I had to research if rhinoceroses had lips (they do). Never mind that my rhinoceros had wings, I felt the need to be biologically correct before I could make the beastie whistle. #facepalm BUT because some rhinos have differently shaped lips than others, the whole whistling thing turned into a ridiculous rabbit-hole of research that resulted in me cutting the whistle out in its entirety hours later which effected the story… not in the least. Ouch.
In writing news, my short story The Feline, the Witch, and the Universe has found a home in the upcoming issue of Space and Time Magazine.
Wishing every writer the grit to make it through NaNoWriMo, any other goals you have for the month, and beyond. Happy writing!
Hello and welcome to the monthly meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, where writers are insecure the confident ones… eavesdrop. If you’d like to visit the other members participating in the meeting (and please do!), click here to see the full list of lovely, lovely, writerlings.
A few of my writer friends have signed up for Inktober: Writer Edition and I have decided to join then and see how frazzled and creative I can get. I once wrote a microfiction per day for a year, resulting in some terrible stories, a handful of excellent ones, and a wild level of creativity, so I’m excited to see what comes from this.
If this is the first you’ve heard of Inktober: Writers Edition, here is what’s been circling and everything I know:
I plan to compile my entries into a weekly post for this website, and post them daily on social media. Here’s my entry for Day 1: Ring
Are you participating in Inktober, as either writer or artist? If so, feel welcome to drop your @’s in the comments so I can follow along with your Inktober adventures. Happy IWSG day everyone!
Hello and welcome to the September edition of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) a writer’s group where all are welcome and invited to share. If you’d like to peruse the other blogs participating, please click here.
This month’s optional theme is “if you could pick one place in the world to sit and write your next story, where would it be, and why?” I’ve got two projects on the go right now, a super hero novella and a “proper” fairy tale (as opposed to a fairy tale set in space). The fairy tale is giving me the most trouble, so I choose to write it in the ruins of a castle in Wales. I don’t know which castle, but a castle, and I choose Wales because I picked out a Welsh name for my protagonist and have recently gotten very interested in learning Welsh. I have ancestors from Wales, or so genealogical records tell me, and I’d like to explore those roots. Until the financing comes through for a trip across the pond, I’ll settle for exploring via my fairy tale I imagine myself writing from the ruins.
Yes, that will do just fine.
But…
I mean, this is a rare opportunity. Perhaps I shouldn’t squander it. Instead, I should probably pick out a science fiction story and get the IWSG group to send me to some far-flung nebula to explore its possibilities. IWSG can do that, right? Right? I could conceivably save up and go to Wales one day, but space travel, that’s got to be pricey. I’d probably have to work my way over on a mining ship or worse, and that does not seem like the kind of place to raise my girls. Or be female.
All right, IWSGers, I’m ready. I choose the nebula. I’ve got my space suit, trusty helmet, pencil, notebook, and a babysitter at the ready. You can send me into space to work on my story now.
Um, writers?
Hello? Did you forget about me? Is this just a ruse to make sure I stay insecure? Hello?
Hello?
Could someone call Ninja Captain Alex? I think I’m stuck.
Hello and welcome to the monthly meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. On the first Wednesday of every month we get together to write about writing and support each other. Not a member? Stick around, read some posts, see what you might have in common with a network of fellow writers – you can find them all by clicking here.
This month I wanted to repost a blog from 2017 that’s been resonating with me again. This time of year writing gets challenging for me and my confidence nosedives hard. Maybe I’m not alone, so without further ado, here’s Breakfast With Fear:
“Hello, Fear.”
“Hello, Paige.”
Paige strode across the sunny terrace to a bistro table set for two. Wisps of gauzy fabric whispered about her bare feet. She threw herself into a shaded chair with the petulance of a teenager whose been called a child. “What’s on the menu today? A cup of discouragement? A plate a self-loathing?”
Fear smiled, revealing his fangs. “Both, actually.” He served these dishes to her cold. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
She sipped at her cup in cheeky rebellion. It was all she had left and she refused to fight with him. “I must say, I couldn’t help but admire your work in the United States this week.”
Fear sat down in the chair opposite hers, crossing his legs and taking a nibble from her plate. “It’s almost too easy. The threat of nuclear war makes everything so deliciously tense.”
“Hmmm.”
Fear leaned forward, licking his lips. “What about you? How’s the writing going? Received any rejections of late?”
Paige shook her finger at him. “Naughty Fear. I haven’t even finished my breakfast yet.”
“Ah, then allow me to offer another dish: a bowl of ‘my accomplishments are all worthless’ stew. Full of all the things that eat you up on sleepless full moon nights.”
“How generous of you, darling Fear!” She watched him cringe at her ‘darling’.
“Now, Paige, be careful. You wouldn’t want to piss me off.” He snarled, his eyes flashing.
She leaned across the table, sweeping her cup of discouragement, her plate of self-loathing, and the stew to the hard-tiled terrace ground. They shattered with a satisfying smash. “Do your worst. You were always going to anyway.”
Drool began to ooze from his fangs. He always loved his victims best after they moved past the simpering, tearful stage. Paige held his gaze. She was growing stronger. He would make a writer of her yet.
Hello and welcome to the May Day edition of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG). On the first Wednesday of every month the IWSG meets to share their goals, insecurities, and writing challenges. If you’d like to join or lurk around to see what’s happening, you can link to the other members here.
This month’s optional question is “What was an early experience where you learned that writing had power?” For me it was reading Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl in grade school. I read this book four or five times between grade five and twelve. Here was a girl my age(s), who faced a tragic end in a concentration camp when the words ran out, mentioned only in the forward and the echo of the empty pages before I reached the back cover. When I read her words, I felt her essence flutter in the pages. This handful of stories written by an adolescent girl taught me more about empathy then I could have experienced in my privileged childhood. I spent hours staring at the ceiling, contemplating how many other Anne Franks died in those camps. She wasn’t just a character or a distant historical figure, she was my friend. That is a formidable power for a small book to have.
#
beaked hazel says “hooray for spring!”
April’s been good to me. The Frye (literary) Festival is in full swing in my hometown of Moncton, NB, I became a fox-winning poet, had a short story accepted for Kaleidotrope in 2021, and I received my contributor copies of Unlocking the Magic. Check out this gorgeous cover:
My favorite short story writer, A. Merc Rustad (now writing as Merc Fenn Wolfmoor), wrote the story directly before mine in the book, and that makes my imposter syndrome get up and start yelling louder than I’d like. But also… WHAT A THRILL OMG.
In a twist, my favorite novelist retweeted me a few days ago, which was… unexpected.
that explains all those notifications
See, Neil Gaiman answered a tweet I had tagged him in a few months back, which had a turtling effect on me as an introvert. I put the masterclass away for a few weeks until it felt safe to go back. In writing this new tweet, I didn’t tag him, and so felt comfortable tweeting about how the class was inspiring me. Not shown in the above screenshot is the entire thread, where I finish up by calling Neil a modern-day muse which I meant but probably would never have written had I known he would read it (blush, blush). My inner introvert felt safe with no tags and no hashtags, guessing this tweet would get my usual two or three likes. It was up to 551 this morning. Happily, this time around it didn’t have the same turtling effect on me, though I do think if Mr. Gaiman’s going to keep using my tweets to sell his masterclass he should come over and have spaghetti with my family or something *wink*
I hope April was good to you as well, and I have my fingers crossed that May is going to be gangbusters for all of us insecure writers.
Hello and welcome to the first Wednesday of the month, otherwise known as the official meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG). The IWSG is a super secret, crazy exclusive group of writers who band together to support each other. If you’d like to get to know the other members, read about their writing adventures, and perhaps sign up yourself, click here to discover everything you need to make that happen.
The optional theme for this month’s IWSG post is If you could use a wish to help you write just one scene/chapter of your book, which one would it be? When I first read the question, I shook my head. I wouldn’t wish for anything. It’s hard work and dedication that puts the words down. But then I thought of it. My wish.
I would wish for… a babysitter. First thing in the morning is my best time to write, but then I had kids and sabotaged myself. If I get up an hour earlier, so do they. There is no sneaking away to a quiet darkness to spin stories. There is breakfasts, fighting, and where-are-my-socks.
In my wish, this babysitter will arrive five seconds before my alarm goes off. They will look the other way at my messy hair and crumpled night clothes. They will not speak to me (this is paramount). I shall fill my french press with darkest coffee and steal away to a magical, locking room that I don’t actually have in my house with my pen and my wirebound notebook. This room I don’t have is soundproof, and it quickly fills with the scent of my brewing coffee and the ink spilling onto the page as I write without interruption or worries of school buses and misplaced backpacks and the baby who only had yogurt for breakfast. No. There’s just me and the notes I scribbled the night before to get my chapter going.
I will be agog at my own concentration in the absence of the usual distractions. It’s quite possible I will also become addicted to this sense of mental independence, this ability to focus. I’ll want it more and more. I’ll need it. Better send a book deal my way, quick, I don’t think 6 AM ‘sitters come cheap.
Hello and welcome to the first Wednesday of the month, otherwise known as the official meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG). The IWSG is a super secret, crazy exclusive group of writers who band together to support each other. If you’d like to get to know the other members, read about their writing adventures, and perhaps sign up yourself, click here to discover everything you need to make that happen.
Last week editor Vivian Caethe revealed the cover for the upcoming Unlocking the Magic anthology, designed by Owl Quest Creative. My short story, The Night Janitor, is included. Have a look:
cover designed by Owl Quest Creative
It’s a beauty and a thrill. I’m excited to be a part of this project for many reasons. One, because the way mental illness is portrayed in fantasy is problematic and this anthology has set out to upend those tropes. Poor mental health doesn’t make someone magical, it makes them suffer. My protagonist suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks. He doesn’t get over these afflictions in the story, but he does discover magic still exists in his world and finds new ways to cope and manage his anxiety.
Secondly, there are some amazing writers here and… me. How did that happen? Thirdly, and related to two, is because A. Merc Rustad (now writing as Merc Fenn Wolfmoor) is one of my favorite living writers and we have stories in the same book! I hope I never get over that thrill.
I never expected to turn my experiences with anxiety into a story, especially my most successful story to date. It wasn’t easy to see it there on the page, or to climb inside my anxiety to write about it, but it felt magical to tug and pull the words down around my protagonist, surrounding him with wonder.
*the Kickstarter for the Unlocking the Magic anthology is complete and pre-orders are now closed. I hope to have a link to the usual bookshops in the future for anyone interested.
Hello and welcome to the first Wednesday of the month, otherwise known as the official meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG). The IWSG is a super secret, crazy exclusive group of writers who band together to support each other. If you’d like to get to know the other members, read about their writing adventures, and perhaps sign up yourself, click here to discover everything you need to make that happen.
This week my mind is full of Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass. I plan to review the class here when I’ve completed it, but I’m taking my time to glean as much of Neil’s story sorcery as I can. I’m on Lesson 4 of 19, a week from beginning and I am buzzing with quiet inspiration and small thrills of discovery. This is a sensation I often get from taking writing classes, which I get to do every few years and not often enough. The alchemy of immersing myself in writing craft with a guide I admire is a delight.
There are such nuggets of Neil gold in there too. I’ve probably worn my readers’ ears off raving about Neil Gaiman. Fun fact: while he is my favorite writer, I do not love, or always like, everything he writes which somehow makes him stand out all the more.
Two quotes from the class have made it into my notebook, to be tattooed across my writing desk’s wooden flesh in some distant future. The first, has elicited a few gasps in conversation, and let me tell you, packs a wallop in the lecture, is about showing vs telling:
“I’m not going to tell you to feel sad. I’m going to kill a unicorn and break your heart.” – Neil Gaiman.
That line got to me. Wow.
From another lesson, this quote helped me pick myself up on a day with multiple rejection letters, which always gets to me. I can handle one per day. Two hurts.
“You learn more from finishing a failure than you do from writing a success.” – Neil Gaiman.
I have written multiple failures, and I’ll write many more. It’s good to be reminded that those stories do have a purpose.
(FYI that line does ring a bit familiar from an essay in The View from the Cheap Seats, but there is little regurgitated material thus far in the class).
In terms of output, I’ve outlined a new short story from the assignments in Lesson 3, and I will have to complete another before moving onto Lesson 5. This second one I’m expected to write in a single setting but as a toddler’s mother… I expect it will have to be flash fiction for me to pull it off. Unless you’re willing to babysit, hmm?
This is the most writing heavy course I’ve taken before, which is perfect for a hibernation-friendly month like February in Canada. It’s going to be an inspiring month.
Welcome writers and readers! This is the first Wednesday of the month, and that means its time for the monthly Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG) post. You can read the other authors’ IWSG posts here.
It’s November, and November is a magical month for writers. Its the month we all get together and stop talking about writing, complaining about writing, etc etc, and we write. The official goal of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is 50 000 words, or 1 667 written words per day. The point of the thing is taking up a challenge with a wealth of support around you, and that’s where the magic lies.
How it feels to hit your wordcount for NaNoWriMo, Photo by Sebastian Voortman on Pexels.com
This year, I have a list of some twenty-five orphaned story ideas I gleaned from my notebooks. As many words as it takes, I vowed to my would-be stories, I will write you this November.
Now, every past NaNoWriMo I’ve participated in, I wrote by hand and tallied up my words on the corner of every page at the end of the day. I prefer to write this way, and I’d won NaNoWriMo enough times to feel confident doing it this way (if you’re curious how to verify, check the rules for ‘the Luddite clause’ for instructions). However, with this year’s goal I need to hit some serious wordage so I decided to type it on the laptop instead.
This is probably the moment in the story where the universe laughs maniacally and the heroine’s fate is sealed. Or it would be, if I was a heroine or a goddess and not a scruffy looking story hunter fresh from the woods.
I started off, ploughing through the first short story a random number generator chose from list. Everything was wonderful and that glorious creative high I always get from a November writing spree was settling into my brain, turbocharging my creativity when a storm with 100km (that’s at least a million mph) winds loomed on the weather forecast.
I backed up my project and I warned my friends to do the same. I can only hope they listened and no stories were lost.
Rain splattered the house, winds ripped at the roof. The power went out. Trees crashed down in the enchanted forest surrounding the house.
The howling and crashing woke both of the kids, frightened by the fury outside their windows. We pulled a mattress into the living room, far from the windows facing the wind, and snuggled into a groggy, sleepless night.
The storm faded by morning but the power didn’t come back on. My laptop battery was strong enough I didn’t worry that first day. I kept writing, twitching now and again for the lost ability to google facts in a pinch, but happy to have a distraction from the outage. The girls played with Lego and roasted hotdogs in our fireplace and thought it all a grand adventure.
I found a branch flung from a tree and lodged a solid 30 cm into the lawn by the force of the last night’s wind. It stuck up into the air, a failed assassin. I left it there and wrote it into a story.
The second day my eldest left for school and the baby didn’t mind the lack of electricity once the sun came up. The freezer was failing. The fridge didn’t smell right. Despite only turning on my laptop for writing into a word document, the battery ran low. I missed that encouraging little bar graph on the NaNoWriMo stats page like an addict misses their fix.
We don’t have a generator, so I started our pick-up and ran an extension cord from the outlet in the box into the house, you know, just like grandpa used to do before electricity. I tell ya, we live in The Future, folks. I charged the laptop while I charged my phone in the cigarette lighter. The fridge and freezer got their turn and we weren’t any worse for the power outage. It was almost fun.
The third day school was cancelled, and the sun never made it through the clouds properly. The house was dim, the kids were bored and stuck indoors while a cool rain fell through thick fog outside. It stopped being fun. Tempers flared. The last hotdog was roasted in a hail of whining.
I kept writing. It seemed as though I wrote so much more with the power out, after all, there wasn’t much else to do besides read and after the sun set that was out (I wanted to conserve the flashlights for when the kids were up). A laptop, candlelight, and NaNoWriMo – is there a better date a writer could take themself on? I think not.
actual photo of NaNoWriMo 2018
In the end, I didn’t actually end up writing any more than I did with power, probably because there wasn’t any way to distract the girls and focus on my work.
We bathed in pond water I heated on the woodstove. That’s going in a story someday. It gave me the best hair day I’ve had since becoming a mom, which makes no sense, because that pond feeds our well which feeds our… shower. *Shrugs.*
Tuesday night, last night, the power came back on. After so long without the internet I admit I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by all that social media out there, distracting me from my writing, but again, I didn’t write any more on days without power than I did with. If you’re looking for an anti-social media message, this isn’t it. I like the sense of community I get from my writer’s groups.
I didn’t, however, like missing Doctor Who. Best get back to writing so I can hit my word count and stream it guilt-free later.
Today’s post is a part of a monthly blog hop called the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) where writers can share concerns and bolster each other. You can see the participating blogs here. This is my first IWSG post. Planet Pailly’s IWSG posts about his muse inspired me to sign up and join the conversation.
I’ve been wrestling with the concept of why some stories should be written rather than filmed. Why it is we often hear “the book is always better.” Its easy to say, ‘I prefer to read, it’s a different activity than watching, I get to use my imagination’ and dismiss the argument as irrelevant, but I think writers have a vested interested to understand what books can do that films cannot. We should take advantage of those aspects, shouldn’t we?
According to a 2015 article by Carol Test, the reason the written word is unique is because of the ‘interiority’ of the book or short story. When we’re reading, we are able to follow the story directly from the character’s, or narrator’s, mind. We open a book, put on their perspectives like a coat, and watch the world from their eyes.
But consider movies like 2011’s Limitless, where the character’s interiority anchors the story. My partner watched Limitless over the weekend, bringing it to mind quickly, but a slew of others follow. Fight Club. Six Feet Under. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Most film makers chose not to use interiority as a device, but the fact remains that they can, and they do.
Words can be chosen to manipulate a reader into a certain frame of mind or expectation, but a movie score can do the same.
Where is the space where books remain unique?
I’m pulled back into those earliest of writing lessons, teachers rapping on and on about using all five of the senses. Movies, I realize, can only use two senses: sight and sound. Touch, taste, and smell are a void. Movies smell like popcorn, the touch of buttery fingers, and the acrid taste of buttersalt. They can show you the incense burning in a medieval church, but it takes the written word to fill your senses with musky, perfumed smoke thick enough to hide the smell of the congregation’s unwashed bodies. To remind you of how its half-forgotten scent clings to your woolen tunic and your hair as you walk home.
Can it be as simple as these three missing senses? I don’t know. My gut says there’s more, much more, and to keep hunting. Books hold space in our lives. There’s poetry and rhythm and so many things to consider, to experiment with.
That said, I’ll be extra conscious of writing touch, taste, and smell into my work this week. What do you think? What else can books do that films cannot?
Jennifer Shelby 