A Case of the "Hads"

One of the best rules I have made for myself as a writer is to read my words aloud. It's the only way I catch errors in syntax and grammar. For some reason, my eyes go squirrely after looking at line upon line of TNR, and I just can't see my mistakes. But I can HEAR them, and they are LOUD.

I'm having one of those mornings where I feel like a terrible writer.

Last night, I wrote a scene that I was very happy with. And this morning, I am reading it, and discovering I had a case of the hads. There, I even wrote it in that sentence! My characters "had" done a lot of things. That word was unnecessary and distracting, most of the time.

The problem with writing Historical fiction, is that everything that happens in your book happened in the past. This novel is a polyphonic narrative, so there are a few voices telling the story. This can be a pitfall - and I am discovering that while it is an engaging way to tell a story, it is not the easiest path.

So today, I am enabling my software to highlight the word "had" whenever I use it.  Do you have words you stumble over in your revisions? Sometimes it takes another reader to see overuse of common words, like "she," "very," and the names of your characters on repeat - another reason to get feedback and critiques.

While I do believe that getting the first draft down and going back to edit later is the most effective way to finish a book, catching yourself making these kinds of mistakes early-on will save you time in your revisions later.

Shake It Out

"And every demon wants his pound of flesh. But I like to keep some things to myself. I like to keep my issues drawn. It's always darkest before the dawn." Florence Welch


Sometimes you hit the doldrums. Creative people face this a lot - we tend to be mercurial, running hot and cold with equal fervor. Some nights, I can pound out 5,000 words in what seems like an hour, only realizing that it is 4:00 AM when I finally hit "save" on my MS Word toolbar.  Other nights it's a struggle to get 500 words out.  I plod through, and usually end up deleting most of what I have written during my revisions.


It's during those times that you have to truly believe in what you're doing - whether you are a painter, a photographer, a dancer or a poet. It's easy enough to believe that you were meant to do this insane thing called "creation" when it is flowing like liquid silver from your veins onto the paper. It's so much harder when you are staring at a blank screen and chugging a Monster as you hope, with sleep-deprived eyes, that the muse will appear, just for a bit. You can't depend on the muse. She's half nuts and she doesn't like you - not really.


Because in the end, it comes down to work and passion - with anything in life worth doing. How badly you want to succeed is in direct proportion to how hard you work.  My favorite Florence + the Machine song, "Shake it Out" describes the creative process, and its inherent frustrations, so perfectly. This is what I listen to when I get a rejection letter, my inbox remains empty after sending out queries, and my phone doesn't ring:

"And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope. It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat. Cause looking for Heaven, found the devil in me. But what the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me."

Getting Serious About the Voices in my Head

This weekend, I will attend my first writers' conference. I am looking forward to learning more about the craft of writing, networking with other authors, and learning how to market my writing. The conference is the Ozarks Romance Authors' Conference, or ORA Con. The group meets on the first Saturday of each month at the Library Center.  The conference is in its 25th year, and at the encouragement of my friend Jill, I am attending. It is open to writers of all genres, and is a great way to meet and hobnob with both aspiring writers and industry professionals.

I am also very nervous.

For the first time, I will be pitching my work to a literary agent, in the flesh.  I have sent a few query letters and plenty of short-story and poetry submissions in the past. (I'm a terrible poet, by the way, and don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.) All of this motivation occurred during my youth, when my prose was horridly purple and self-important. I am hoping that I have lived enough, and learned enough that my voice has matured. At the very least, I hope that it won't shake.

I am looking at this as an opportunity to learn - nothing more. It may take me many, many years to get published, and I have no illusions. I appreciate the encouragement of my family and my friends, but I hope they also realize that this is a complicated process, and something which isn't as black and white as the letters on a page. It's a business, and I have a product to sell. There has to be a market for said product, and that is what it's all about, folks.

Writers can get very attached to their creations, just like any artist. It's your baby, and sometimes you've just gotta know when to let it go and look at it objectively. I love Elisabeth Turner, my protagonist in "Relative Truth." She has kept me up many nights, and she is pretty much writing herself at this point. Not everyone is going to love Elisabeth Turner. I have to be OK with that.

So, I bought myself a new green dress(my lucky color), and I'm talking to myself in the mirror to get the words right and not look like a dork.  If I'm going to do this writing thing, I might as well REALLY do it, right? At the very least, I'll meet some new friends, realize that agents and publishers aren't scary minotaurs in a maze, and have some fun with creative writing exercises. For a word nerd like me, this should feel like recess after a day of long division and multiplication tables - my personal purgatory.