So says the current announcement below the banner at the top of the Left Bank Writers Retreat website! The 2024 retreat is on! What better time to gift your creativity with a magical escape? Paris in the dying hours of summer when it’s at its richest and most vibrant. You should do it!
Let me begin by saying I am in no way affiliated with the LBWR. I am merely an alumni of this amazing experience. I went on a Left Bank Writers Retreat in June of 2014 and it was life-changing. As my first experience with Paris, the retreat cemented my lifelong desire for the City of Light and brought it to life for me in the most incredible literary way. My first experience with Paris was steeped in the literary traditions of Hemingway and the rest of the brood of Lost Generation denizens. It also sparked my creativity like never before.
This is a shot I took during a morning of writing in Luxembourg Gardens. LBWR founder and host, Darla Worden, instructor Travis Cebula, and LBWR alumnae Nina Welch.
This retreat promises the tracing of Hemingway’s steps throughout Paris, museums, a boat cruise on the Seine, daily writing exercises, readings, lunching where Fitzgerald lunched, and so much more! It’s definitely a not-to-be-missed event. And early September is still full-on summer and a beautiful time to visit Paris.
If you have questions about what to expect during the retreat, there’s a comprehensive list on the LBWR website’s FAQ page. To get an idea of the daily schedule you can expect, you can visit the Schedule page.
The faculty and attendees of the 2014 Left Bank Writers Retreat at our farewell dinner…
If you wish to register for this once-in-a-lifetime event, you can visit the REGISTRATION PAGE.
The faculty of the 2014 Left Bank Writers Retreat: Darla Worden, Sara Suzor, and Travis Cebula. They have since added Tyler Truman Julian to their roster.
Whether you’ve been to Paris a hundred times or only imagined yourself there…this fully immersive retreat will open up the city of light to you like never before. The knowledgeable faculty of the LBWR create an unforgettable itinerary that will give you a solid glimpse into the fabulous 1920s Lost Generation of Hemingway and his literary peers, as it also grants you access to the magic of the Paris of today.
Darla and Travis and Sara are wonderful hosts. They’re so knowledgeable and will offer advice for your downtime between retreat events. I’m certain their new addition will be just as amazing.
In the time since my own attendance in the LBWR, I’ve had several books published. Coincidentally, my last two (THE CAMINO CLUB and BOOK OF DREAMS) are with the same publisher (CHICAGO REVIEW PRESS) as Darla Worden’s Cockeyed Happy: Ernest Hemingway’s Wyoming Summers with Pauline.
Check out Darla Worden’s book on Hemingway…
Click on the image below to visit the LEFT BANK WRITERS RETREAT website:
Visit their website today and give yourself that creative gift you’re always too afraid to give yourself–time to write!
Come August, you could be sitting by the Left Bank, fully immersing yourself in creativity in one of the most beautiful cities on earth. Do it!
Hello readers! I’m here with a plea once again. The 2024 Muskoka Novel Marathon is on the horizon! I can almost see it! We’re in person this year again! Yay! The first time since 2019. That pandemic was something awful, wasn’t it! I’m so grateful to be heading up to Muskoka again for an in-person event. I miss my writing people. This is going to be a year of celebration. We get to get together! I had no idea this would mean so much…just the sheer joy of sitting in a room with my fellow marathoners and hearing all those keyboards pounding out all those words! I cannot wait. (You can click on the copy/paste photo below to be taken directly to my donation page! There’s also a link to the page at the bottom of this blog post.)
Here’s where you come in! I’m just a writer. I’ll be sitting there writing for 72 hours. You’re the one that makes all the difference in the world. As a writer, it’s easy for me to forget what this weekend is about. I’m all about the writing. But we do it as a fundraiser. Sometimes it’s easy for us writers to forget about that side of things. But that’s the reason for the season. We raise funds for the YMCA Simcoe/Muskoka literacy programs. I’ll cut and paste my message from my donation page below. It kind of explains the full thing and shows my level of passion for this event and what it brings about for people who need our help…
Hello and welcome back to another year of the Muskoka Novel Marathon! We’re WRITERS HELPING READERS READ! and so much more! The marathon writers each collect sponsors for our 72 hour novel writing marathon. Donations are 100% funnelled into the literacy programs of YMCA of SIMCOE/MUSKOKA. These funds help not only towards programs helping those with literacy challenges, but also new Canadians gaining a foothold in Canadian society through various programs from English as a second language and beyond. The programs also include computer literacy for the elderly. In short, YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka is enriching many many lives through their various literacy programs. Here’s where you come in! Us writers have raised well over $200,000.00 throughout the years that the Muskoka Novel Marathon has taken place. We did this through the generous donations of people like you. YOU…You’re the one who makes the difference. It doesn’t matter how much you give, the entire amount goes towards these programs. Please consider sponsoring me this year for the 2024 Muskoka Novel Marathon. I will be forever grateful. I know, I know…I have been doing this for several years now. This is my 16TH YEAR! You’re probably thinking, ‘enough is enough!’ But it is never enough. There are always new people entering these programs and having life-changing experiences through them. I want to be a part of that! And I’m sure you do too! Please consider a donation! The YMCA will be eternally grateful. AND SO WILL I! Thank you so much in advance!
A little background on the event and my experiences with it!
I started writing novels at the Muskoka Novel Marathon back in 2007. Seems like a lifetime ago now! That year, I wrote a novel called SEBASTIAN’S POET. It won Best Adult Novel for that year’s Best Novel Award. I was HOOKED! The next year, I wrote THE REASONS. Guess what! It ALSO won Best Adult Novel Award! You can see that this event, the way we write most or all of the novel in one sitting, works for me. I’m a flighty person with poor concentration skills. The MNM just WORKS for me. It’s the way I successfully get through the writing of a novel. I’ve been struggling these past year’s without the marathon. YES, I’m doing this for the fundraising side…but I won’t lie. This is my creative magic space. I NEED the marathon. I thrive at the marathon.
I have now won the BEST NOVEL AWARD 6 times. Most recently, I won it last year during the online marathon for my mid-grade novel TYLER FREEMONT WRITES A PLAY. It remains unfinished, so unpublished. Here’s hoping, though!
The camaraderie I feel with my fellow writers at the in-person marathon is something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced elsewhere, with the exception of the WCDR and the now defunct Ontario Writers Conference.
The fun barefoot walk we writers do with Sue Kenney every year!
It’s a new venue this year. I can’t wait to discover our new safespace together! I’m sure we will continue to thrive together. This photo is steps from our new venue:
How can we go wrong, with this view to look at!
We’ll be at the Port Sydney Community Hall this year. From Thursday, July 11 to Sunday, July 14!
Now, I really have to get down to figuring out what it is I’m going to write this year. Before I go, I just wanted to ask for your help. Please consider donating to the cause. We writers can’t do this without you! You’re the reason we have already raised those $230,000.00 plus funds. Thank you for your past contributions! Let’s help the new people entering the programs! Thank you so much in advance for your help!
(Sorry not sorry about the long title to this post)
I have been STRUGGLING creatively since the pandemic hit. It was a series of things, really, that knocked me off the edge. First, I had a book coming out which promised to be my biggest to date. It was the one I was most excited about, anyway. The book of my heart. THE CAMINO CLUB. My publisher was talking about book events, cons, etc…it felt like I would be making the rounds and things were about to open up for me. Super excited. The release date was scheduled for October 6th, 2020. There would be in-person events leading up to the release.
Then covid hit and everything in the book world changed.
That little pin in the balloon was enough to knock me sideways. It was still a great release and my publisher did everything in their power to get me Zoom and other online events. It was awesome, but stilted…because I knew what I was missing. The book did really well, don’t get me wrong. Sales were great, reviews were great, and it’s in well over a thousand libraries across North America. But still…the pandemic scraped away at the excitement and definitely changed things for the book.
Then I struggled to finish two contracted books and only managed to get one of them completed and failed to deliver on the second. Since then, I’ve been bouncing back and forth from one WIP (work in progress) to another and struggling to finish anything. I have a mid-grade on the go and two YAs. And the failed one I did not complete still haunts me, still calls my name. In the end it crashed and burned because I tried to make it something it wasn’t…the contract was contingent on me changing a big plot point of the story…which in the end I wasn’t able to do with any degree of satisfaction. The plot point was literally the reason I was writing the book in the first place. Never sell your soul for the contract.
Writers struggle. It’s not always wine and roses. It’s good to admit this sometimes so that others don’t think they’re the only ones having creative issues.
Anyway…this week I decided to put the WIPs down for a hot minute. I’ve been waiting almost a year for a couple of writing ebooks to land in my LIBBY library app. Hard to believe some books are on hold for that long, but I guess they’re both super popular. I took things into my own hands, finally, and ordered physical copies of the books. It’s time to get serious. I can feel the creative spark in me dying a slow death. I don’t want to lose that spark and I’m hoping these books help to re-ignite it.
As I began to read the first book, my excitement grew with every page. I love to see the scaffolding of story, and SAVE THE CAT! WRITES A YOUNG ADULT NOVEL is affording me that view in spades. It’s really triggering my desire to write. I get it. It’s all making sense and it’s something I feel I intrinsically understand about story, but also something I have lost along the way. spark ignited!
Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel
All this to say…if you’re a writer and you find yourself struggling to get back into the creative mindset, it always helps to go back to books on writing. They remind us of where we come from, why we began to write in the first place. It’s so much better to take a time out and reacquaint ourselves with process than to hammer away writing in circles and becoming more and more frustrated with the lack of progression. Even if it comes to nothing, it gives us a sorely needed breather.
I’m seeing the essence of what a story is as I read this book…and more importantly, how to best tell a story. It’s exciting me. In the end, that’s the most important thing for me. Creating should be exciting. I have always said I found writing through the contemplation of WHAT IF? Asking myself that question repeatedly after I have a kernel of an idea for a story is what ignites the creative spark in me. Reading books on how to cultivate that spark when I feel it receding is so important! They bring me back to the beginning and remind me why I love creativity so much.
If you’re a writer, what is the oldest outstanding submission in your submission pile? Be honest.
Why are we not exalted more? Do we not put ourselves through SO much pain and anguish when we ‘put ourselves out there’? Are we not golden for this reason alone?
I received an email last week that went something like “thank you for submitting to _________, and thank you for your patience. We are now considering your work __ _____ _____ ____ _____ and we will be back to you shortly with our decision.”
Dear Reader, this is a submission I submitted in July of 2022.
It’s a fun ride, this ‘putting yourself out there’ stuff. Because you never know what silence means. Does it mean NOPE? Does it mean, EVENTUALLY YOU’LL GET A REPLY? You never know because they frequently don’t tell you up front. We just submit and then we sit and wait for either something to happen or for nothing to happen.
That’s the excitement and the peril of ‘putting yourself out there’. It’s…a ride. It’s that roller-coaster ride from hell that you didn’t want to go on.
But in all honesty, I now know that the submission I made a year and a half ago and have since forgotten about is now being considered.
What other profession is this harrowing? Skydiving? Nope…at least in skydiving, you know the ground is coming. In submitting your writing…you could be held in limbo forever until one day this random email comes in and you ask yourself, “What are they even talking about?”
But, really…it’s fun. It’s exhilarating.
We tell ourselves that putting ourselves out there is the win. It means we’re trying. Submitting is half the battle, right? We try and we try and we try. We have wide shoulders. We can take rejection. We need to…because this is the calling we took up. Rejection is a large part of the writing world. Insert all the “it’s not you, it’s us” comments here. “It’ll be right for somewhere, just not for us.” “Keep submitting! You’ll find a home for this piece!” If you’re a writer, you’ve probably read the ten thousand and one ways there are to word a form rejection.
If you’re lucky, you get the odd success…
Submittable Status Column
If you’re on Submittable, you know the IN-PROGRESS BLUE is the most agonizing of statuses a submission can be in…this is a limbo that knows no bounds. Did I mention the publication that recently got back to me on my July, 2022 submission not to tell me it’s accepted or rejected, but to tell me it’s now being considered? Oh, I did. Okay. I’ll let that go, then.
This is not a bitter post. It may seem like one, but honestly…it’s not. It’s just a reminder. PERSEVERANCE. You can overcome the submission monster. You can. Just keep writing and keep submitting.
BUT…HOW LONG IS TOO LONG?
If the place you’re submitting to does not allow simultaneous submissions, that means you have to wait before you can submit the piece elsewhere. Consider ignoring that rule if a certain amount of time passes and you haven’t heard back from them. For me, that window is ONE YEAR. If a year has gone by since you sent out this exclusive submission (which I think is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a response) then you should feel free to submit your piece elsewhere. If the original place then gets back to you after that…oh well. You gave them a fair amount of time to respond. Writers are people too. Those who think we have two years to sit around waiting may actually deserve our eventual flaunting of their rules.
Enjoy the writing. Accept the limbo. Carry on smiling…
It’s not all a nightmare. Sometimes you open an email and it’s all sunshine and lollipops…
Dear Kevin,
We would be delighted to publish “___ _______ __ ___” if it is still available for publication.
That’s where the magic is! If it hasn’t happened yet for you, fear not. Keep writing! Keep trying!
If you’re a writer and you’re out on submission, I applaud you! You are a saint and I celebrate you!
I find myself in the Monday of another Muskoka Novel Marathon. Hopefully, this is the last one that will take place ONLINE. Who knew how dreaded the term ‘ONLINE ONLY’ would become over the course of the last four years. It’s practically a swear word now, to be honest.
Fortunately, this year’s MNM wasn’t totally online. M-E Girard and I got it into our heads that we would do a couple of meet-ups at an area Panera Bread (Whitby). We were able to get a few tributes to volunteer for our scheme! (Pilar, M-E, me, and Lisa at Panera Bread on Saturday!)
I’m so glad M-E and I decided to do a meet up. It was great to see Lisa and Pilar on Saturday. Great to meet Pilar in person. She’s new to the marathon these past couple of years and has never attended an in-person. For a few of us, we became more than Brady Bunch squares for a few hours!
For me, the energy of a group of writers gets me writing. What is the word for a plural of writers, anyway? We have a murder of crows, a drove of donkeys, a coven of witches, an aggregation of manatees. What the heck is a group of writers?
I propose a STORY OF WRITERS and a CHAPBOOK OF POETS. There you have it.
There’s something about the energy of a collective of writers together that feeds off itself. You write because you’re writing and they’re writing…in perpetuity. It’s self-sustaining. Sure, you also do a lot of talking. That’s part of it. Write, write, talk, talk, talk, write. We needed that! No one knows how to suffer more than a story of writers!
So now it’s 10:00am on the Monday of this year’s Muskoka Novel Marathon. That means the marathon is over in ten hours. I actually got some words down. And this is the first successful attempt at writing I’ve had for MONTHS. Sure, I’ve gone through the motions…but it’s been a drought. A long dry drought. The writerly winter of our discontent. A wordless disaster. However you want to say it.
I WROTE! So far I have an astounding 9,200 words and counting. I know that’s not much considering I used to consistently knock out 50,000 words every marathon weekend. But it’s a lot for not meeting in person and only setting aside a few periods of writing throughout the weekend instead of dedicating the entire 72 hours to nothing but writing. I’m happy with the output!
I won’t get into any of the details of the writing itself, as there might be MNM judges afoot. But I have 12 new chapters of a new story and, hey, that’s a good start!
With any luck, we’ll run with this getting together to write idea. It’s an idea whose time has come. I miss the WCDR community and all that it entailed. Being close to your writing community holds you to your writing. It’s a form of welcomed accountability. I’ve been sadly lacking in motivation when it comes to writing. I guess that only means that I’m happily going about my life. But I also miss writing.
Come 8:00pm tonight, I do believe I’m going to submit my unfinished manuscript to the MNM judging panel. Why not? It couldn’t hurt. It feels good to be (tentatively) back in the saddle again.
A reminder here that the Muskoka Novel Marathon is also a fundraiser for Muskoka YMCA literacy programs. We’ve raised over $220,000.00 to date since the marathon’s inception. My donation page is still live until the end of the marathon. CLICK HERE TO VISIT MY PAGE.
The in-person event location for the MNM. Hopefully, we manage to get back to the garden (I apologize for the Joni Mitchell Woodstock reference) next July!At the in-person event, writers hang a slip of paper with their name and page count on it every time they reach a new 10-page milestone.
Why a lion photo for a writing contest? I went to Kenya with the SLS in 2009 on a partial fellowship after entering ‘this’ contest…
The International Literary Seminars Fiction & Poetry Contest is now open for entries!
A little backstory…
Once upon a time there was an organization called Summer Literary Seminars (SLS)(1998-2019). There is now an organization called International Literary Seminars (ILS). They list SLS as their parent. From their ABOUT page:
“Our mission as a not-for-profit organization is to amplify the literary and cultural visibility of Nairobi and Lamu within an international context and with a particular focus on showcasing the vibrant and complex voices of emerging East African writers.”
I entered the SLS fiction contest and went to the Kenya seminar in 2009 after being awarded a partial fellowship to attend.
Me and my two 2009 SLS retreat besties, Jennifer and Manjula. Lamu, Kenya, December, 2009.
You can click the link below to go right to the contest page for entry and prize details:
The prizes are substantial. First place will win full scholarship, which includes tuition, accommodation, and an airfare stipend. You can see the other prizes by clicking the above link.
The program is an excellent experience. The itinerary will be different than the one I had when I went through SLS, but it’s also essentially the same. You will go to both Nairobi and Lamu, which were the settings I experienced through SLS. This was a life-changing retreat for me in more ways than one. They have an excellent writing program, and it is perfectly balanced with the cultural experience of place.
Nairobi, as seen from a hilltop looking into the city.
You should enter this contest!
Lamu was such a wonderful laid back experience after the whirlwind tour I had of Masai Mara and Nairobi. We had writing classes on an open rooftop with views of the Indian Ocean.
Here’s a link to a detailed rundown of this year’s ILS program, which begins in Nairobi. It runs from DECEMBER 5th – 20th, 2023>>> 2023 PROGRAM
It looks like the entry fee is $19.00USD. ILS is a not-for-profit organization.
Other things to know: Submissions are capped at 1,000. They had over 450 entries last year. Fiction can be a short story OR a novel excerpt—unpublished at 6,000 words or less. Poetry is up to 3 poems. Entries are accepted until AUGUST 25th, through Submittable.
Good luck! May you fall in love with Kenya as I did!
With participants of SLS 2009 with some of the Masai on Lamu, Island.
As July creeps closer to us (or us closer to it?!), this year’s Muskoka Novel Marathon prep is gearing up! That’s right, it’s now time for the writers to begin their fundraising efforts.
Writers at the 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon’s opening day!
This is always the hard part for me! It’s a big ask, and it’s become an even bigger one in these times. And there is the donor exhaustion thing, as well. People thinking, ‘just how many times is this idiot going to keep doing this thing and asking us for money?!’
The in-person event location for the MNM. This year is ONLINE again…
The answer is, I’ll probably keep doing it for as long as it exists. It’s an extremely beneficial event for me. I’ve probably written more words at the Muskoka Novel Marathon than I’ve written during any other time of the year ever. In fact, I know I have. It’s what gives me the right to continue to call myself a writer.
A snapshot of my desk at the MNM 2016.
AND…I’m also passionate about the fundraising side of this event. LITERACY! It’s what writers value most. 100% of the collected funds goes right into literacy programs. 100%!
Literacy is really an umbrella word here. The YMCA literacy programs do SO much!
Academic upgrading (non-credit)
Literacy and basic skills in reading, writing and math
Computer and life skills
GED and ACE preparation
E-learning
English as a Second Language (ESL)
Savvy Seniors
As well as helping students upgrade their basic literacy skills, they help new immigrants to Canada and seniors who are lost in today’s new tech savvy online world. Their programs are far reaching.
Fun Photo time! This is from the 2018 MNM! Every Sunday of the Marathon Sue Kenney takes the writers on a little walk in the woods!
Small donations go a LONG way, because they add up! We can do this together! Since the inception of the MNM, writers have collected roughly $215,000.00! That is no small feat, but I guarantee you that the total was built up one dollar at a time. Nothing you donate is too small.
This year’s marathon is: July 14 – 17, 2023
If you’re a writer, you can still register to participate in the Marathon. LEARN MORE HERE.
Well, here we are again. Registration has opened for the 2023 MUSKOKA NOVEL MARATHON. I’m excited to see this time of year coming round again, and disappointed that we are still only meeting online! This will be the 4th online version of the Muskoka Novel Marathon. As usual, it happens in July. As is the case for the past four years, it does NOT happen in Huntsville (Muskoka).
The 2023 Muskoka Novel Marathon is Open ! Save the Date: July 14 – 17, 2023
The best part of this is that anyone from anywhere around the world can take part in this 72-hour novel writing marathon.
The building (Active Living Centre in Huntsville, Ontario) where the in-person Muskoka Novel Marathon takes place. As seen from the dock just down the hill. Yes, you can go swimming during a break from your words!
“Due to the on-going situation with the pandemic, we will be holding our fourth (and hopefully last) all online Muskoka Novel Marathon. Join us for a ZOOM event. No seat limit! Tell all your friends!”
Do you have a novel idea bursting to get out? Do you have a place with internet access that you can run away to for a 3-day weekend in July? Do you want to chat online on Zoom with your fellow novel writing marathoners while you luxuriate in your own creative fictional world for 72 hours? If you said yes to any of these questions, you should register for this online event.
At the in-person event, writers hang a slip of paper with their name and page count on it every time they reach a new 10-page milestone.
At the end of the 72 hours, participants are encouraged to submit their manuscripts (finished or not) to contest judges. The judges then choose the manuscripts for the Best Novel Award (Usually awarded in Juvenile and Adult categories), and the winners move forward to publisher consideration (after they’re given an opportunity to complete and polish their manuscripts).
At the in-person event, you’re always close to hiking areas. This photo was taken about a 5 minute hike from the Active Living Centre, which you can see in the distance behind me.
There is a long history of this marathon which begun in July of 2002. I myself have taken part in 14 previous marathons. This will be #15!!! Holy hell, how did that even happen!? I have won the BEST NOVEL AWARD 5 times.
At the 2016 Awards Ceremony for the MNM. Lori Manson and I won the Best Novel awards. Mine was for Adult Manuscript and Lori’s was for Young Adult.
I usually mention this part first, but here we are…the MUSKOKA NOVEL MARATHON is a FUNDRAISER for LITERACY. Writers are expected/encouraged to fundraise in the form of sponsors, in much the same way as participants of the Terry Fox Run. Over the course of the history of the marathon, we have actually collected over $210,000.00 for the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka Learning Services in Huntsville, Ontario.
The fundraising tally for the 2016 marathon was no small feat, at an astounding $36,000.00!
A little more information from the MNM website:
“These funds are used to directly support literacy programs in our community. Two out of every five Canadians struggle with basic reading and writing. Literacy levels influence career opportunities, salaries, standard of living, housing, education and the ability to participate fully in our communities.”
The YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka is continuously adapting to the needs of the community. Programs funded by your donations include:
English as a Second Language classes
Digital Technology Training (computers, smart phones, tablets)
One-on-one training and support for low level learners
If you’re a writer with a free 3-day weekend July 14th-17th, you should ‘come’ to the marathon.
I wrote Pride Must Be A Place at the 2015 marathon. I brought copies with me to the 2018 marathon! It felt like bringing it home!
I am not affiliated with the marathon, just a longtime participant.
I promise you, the online event is NOTHING like the in-person event. There is such a remove. You have to rely on yourself to write during this 72 hour period. That’s hard to do when you’re firmly entrenched in your own everyday world. It’s so much easier to allow yourself to do nothing but writing when you’re stranded in a room in Northern Ontario with 39 other writers doing the same thing. The heartbeat of the keyboards clicking and writers sipping coffee and laughing and crying motivates your fingers to keep up with the beat. But doing the event online with all those other writers just a screen away? That’s the next best thing…I promise! Give it a go!
Hopefully this will be an in-person event in 2024 and we’ll be back to normal. There is nothing like the support and camaraderie of the actual MNM in-person event. 40 writers sit together in on big room, we take breaks together, we eat together, we help each other out of the thickets of plot holes and catastrophes. It’s a brilliant opportunity for writers on any stage in their writing careers. When this event becomes in person again, you really should find a way to attend! In the meantime, now would be a great time to figure it out from the outside on the inside through Zoom!
REGISTER NOW! The writing fun begins at 8pm on Friday July 14th!
On a personal note, many of my marathon novels are currently on sale for 99 cents at AMAZON. Best Novel Award titles are: Sebastian’s Poet, The Reasons, Half Dead & Fully Broken. Other titles on sale are Summer on Fire, Pride Must Be A Place, and Burn Baby Burn Baby.
I have never been a hope-springs-eternal kind of person. Never. If anything, I learned early on that failure and despair were so much easier to attain than success that they might as well just be sought out in its place. Why climb a ladder, when you can just as easily scuttle your way sideways to the non-triumphant ending. The journey’s shorter and your hopes don’t get dashed along the way.
And once you begin that journey of expected failure, a rut begins to form in the ground beneath you. It constantly leads you down that same path. Until you figure out a way to crawl up out of it. Until you give yourself permission to succeed, permission to aim for success. Until you give yourself grace. You can only break that pattern–that rut–once you begin to believe in yourself and in failure’s opposite and your right to it.
Anyway. I find myself at the end of a two-year battle with a novel I had to eventually chuck away. I swear, I will never look back on it again. My first missed deadline, my first broken contract.
And because I found a way to crawl out of that rut I dug out for myself early on, I’m going to give it another go. I’m now, once again, at the beginning of something. Starting fresh.
New words. New story. I’m trying to ease my way in… to have a soft landing into this new world I’m creating. In truth, my hopes for it are almost non-existent. I took such a beating with this failed novel, that it’s almost like I can’t imagine myself writing another word ever again.
But, hope really does spring eternal. That’s why I dove in to this new project. I need to break the cycle. I need to believe that just because I failed once, it doesn’t mean I’ll fail again. I don’t want to stop writing. I love writing. It was the story I grew to hate, not the process. I took a story and tried to bend it to the will of the publisher who didn’t want it in the form in which I created it. To be clear, this wasn’t the publisher’s fault. They’re a great publisher. It’s my fault for turning my back on the story in order to get the contract. I tried to reinvent a story that did not want to be reinvented.
There are never any guarantees that state just because you begin a novel that you will see it through to its ending. Many a novels have crashed and burned before completion. Lesson learned. The hard way.
I guess I learn all my lessons the hard way. Not that I’m a fan of that process, it’s just what happens. It’s frustrating, but it’s who I am.
I scrapped the novel. It’s gone. Without a trace. And now I write this blog post to hold myself accountable to what comes next. To remind myself to keep going.
As the song goes…
“Nothing’s impossible I have found, For when my chin is on the ground, I pick myself up, Dust myself off, Start all over again.”
I opened a new MSWord file and I stepped into a new idea. It’s all new and glowing and nice and pretty. My job now is simply to stick with it, to see if it has legs enough to get to the finish line. I owe it to myself to try. I’ve had 2 years of fruitless struggle with the old manuscript. I took something that had legs and I cut them out from under it. This time, I will write what I want to write and no one will see it until (if) I write those two magical words at the bottom of the last page. THE END. Until then, I carry on. What was it that F Scott Fitzgerald said? “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”I don’t know about the past, but I will beat on…and after the struggle I had, my boat is definitely against the current!
Wish me luck!
The books that DID make it to the finish line (proof, for myself, that not all of my projects fail). Click the image below to find out more about them:
I often wonder why writers write. What was it that brought you to the place of writing?
When I try to answer this question myself, so many moments in my early reading life come to mind. From Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women to Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids. But I always rush forward in my reading trajectory to a boy on the outstretched limb of a tree, being caught off guard when his friend gives the branch the slightest jostle, sending him crashing to the ground beneath.
Looking back, I now see that moment of I WANT TO BE A WRITER forever entwined–entangled?–with Gene’s jealousy of the almighty perfect-in-every-way Phineas.
Though some of the themes in John Knowles’s of A Separate Peace hold no interest to me whatsoever (I always shy away from any story centered around war and sports are, well impenetrable and uninteresting), it is the relationship between these two main characters that enthralled me so much. From the first pages of this story, I could see what the writer was doing. It was as though I was locked into the story while at the same time capable of bearing witness to the scaffolding behind the story. The scaffolding, in this case, was a simmering jealousy that was effortlessly displayed by the author through the narrator’s gaze. This jealousy boiled throughout the story more powerfully than a screaming tea kettle. I was fascinated by the way the author was manipulating the reader. I wanted to do that. Such duplicity, and such a way of making me, the reader, feel solidarity simultaneously with both characters.
The way Gene, right from the beginning of the story, prayed for his best friend’s failure and comeuppance. And assumed–wrongly, because he was incapable of thinking in any way other than his own–that Finny felt the same way about him.
That relationship and the way it thrilled me as a young reader, that right there was what I wanted to capture as a writer. I savored that moment Gene realized Finny had not a scrap of jealousy for him…that Finny actually wished nothing but the best for him and was, in fact incapable of thinking mean things about him! That was such a sharp slap, such a quick burn to Gene’s psyche. The way Gene tried to fit Finny’s thinking into the way he himself thought was so telling! And that moment it all came crashing down and Gene realized he was just a mean person whereas Finny was incapable of meanness? It was such a fascinating look into friendships and the duplicitous simmerings that sometimes boiled just beneath the surface of them. By making the narrator, Gene, a small, arrogant, mean, and jealous person, John Knowles started me off on my path to wanting to be a writer.
What’s your Writer Origin Story? I know it’s never as simple as one thing. There’s always this leads to this, leads to this, leads to this, leads to this. It’s kind of like in Stephen King’s book The Tommyknockers. Remember? When Bobbi Anderson was walking with her dog, Peter, in the woods and one of her elderly hiking boots fetched up against something…fetched up hard? She thought it was a tree root until she saw a gleam of metal. Roughly three inches…just enough to trip over. Then she thought it might be a tin can. As she began to dig it out, her thoughts went to bigger and bigger possibilities. A piece of logging equipment? A car? If you read The Tommyknockers, then you know what Bobbi found was much much bigger than a car. Like a sliver of the world’s biggest iceberg, that three inches she tripped over was just the beginning of the colossus she would uncover.
What made you trip over writing? It’s hard to pinpoint that magical moment, but if you think about it, you’ll find it. I might answer differently on another day. I may dig a little deeper to unearth more and realize that it was not Gene’s jealousy and smallmindedness that made that final click with me. But today, that’s what I’ve uncovered. My origin story. Jealousy is as good a reason as any, I suppose. All the emotions fascinate writers, don’t they?
KEVIN CRAIG 