Ghosts of writing past

A friend visited the other night and offer a big pitcher of my purple margaritas, we started talking about the benefits of a critique group and how writers learn from each other. We started talking about our own writing journeys, and how we have seen our styles change, and more importantly, we discussed how we see signs of that progressive journey in other writers.

Then we went into the discussion of how bad some of our drafts are.

And I bared my soul.

I went into my closet and grabbed the true second or third draft of the story that morphed into the Fashion and Fiends series. I wrote it in 1993. I used every cliché available and had the Anne Rice-style "misunderstood vampire" angst oozing from every other sentence. Now, my vampires are witches who practice blood magick.

I wasn't even 18 when I wrote this manuscript. It got shelved for several reasons.
1. It sucked.
2. It obsessed me and I could not move on with developing my real life.
3. I had no real life experience so the characters were cliché and two-dimensional.

When my friend, who is also a member of my critique group, saw this manuscript, we had a few chuckles. In the end, she recognized certain elements of my style and certain writing practices that I was good at then and how they're my strengths now.

It took me seventeen years to improve my writing, and those seventeen years brought a literature degree, foreign language study, raising a family, finding more of myself, and lots of reading and writing.

Writers who work together can achieve similar growth a lot faster, but we all travel the same road and have some point struggled with the same problems in writing growth.

The Power of Snow

I'm at the midpoint of the busiest two weeks of my spring. But the snowstorm allowed me an amazing opportunity to slow down... I just finished my homework (due Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon), read the submissions for my critique group (Wednesday night), and watched several episodes of LOST season five. My husband even did a good job finishing the house cleaning.

I'm going to Philadelphia tomorrow, so I feel like I can relax and enjoy myself.

But... it may actually look like I can write tonight, but I'm not sure I can. I have about three hours until bedtime. Can I conjure a writing mood after not writing creatively for a week? (And I wrote 5,000 words in the last 36 or so hours on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.)

Today was GLVWG. Our presenter couldn't get out of Manhattan, so we talked about cliché. So here's my thought for you:
If you write a cliché, that's fine, but before you leave it in your manuscript, really think about what you're trying to say and why the cliché fits. Then evaluate whether the cliché is really the best way to express it.