Post-conference GLVWG column

Welcome to the Middle

The close of March cleaves a sharp division in GLVWG, those who attended the conference and those who did not. If you’re following the messages on our general membership message board, you’ve read the kudos and inside jokes (“Jon, put that microphone down!”) and the reactions to tips from our presenters and our keynote, Donald Maass.
If you did not attend, you might feel a tad left out right now. If you did attend, you’re probably still super-motivated. If you volunteered at the conference, you might still be tired and suffering from caffeine withdrawal. (And with that, let me thank everyone who served. Tammy Burke and her troops did a fantastic job and from what I saw the board was also very willing to help in any capacity they could.)
I realized something at the conference after Lisa Rector-Maass’ workshop on “middles” and with some augmentation from Donald Maass’ presentations.
We have reached our middles. Not our manuscripts or our characters, but us. We have hopes, dreams, goals, and conflicts. No matter where we’ve come from, what we’ve achieved or what we really hope to do, we haven’t reached our final scene. We all have more to come. We all want more.
According to our presenters, the middle of our manuscripts can always have more. Our middles should have more, too. Not the kind of middle that requires a trip to the gym. Not the kind of middle riddled with strife and catastrophe, although some people certainly have that. Like our protagonists, we must face our middles with more effort, a never-give-up attitude and a new plan in the midst of mounting challenges.
My protagonist would never disappoint his friends or family. I need to give him that same advantage, not to give up on him and his story. By the time I see everyone in April, I think those who attended the conference will have tons of new pages and edits. Those people will be exhausted and smiling.
For those who did not attend, look at the middle of your manuscript. Do the characters experience tension on every page? Do even the secondary characters have small plot lines that weave them into the story? Do you take your characters to places of great loss or joy? You can’t take the comfortable road of storytelling. Not in the current marketplace.
Happy writing and may your revisions be fruitful.

The right place

I haven't had much to say in this blog lately because I've been thinking. I can't even say I haven't been writing, although I did take December off. Since that time, I've only written a chapter in my w-i-p. Yet, the entire time I entered this slow spell, my behavior was deliberate.

I wrote a poem summarizing about 500 years of world history for my history final. (Got a 98!) 

I wrote an extensive paper for my social research methods class titled, "Seducing the Masses: How Haute Couture sells Prestige for Fashion Houses." (Have no idea what the prof thought, other than the fact that my ideas were "highly original" and my final grade in the class was an A- and my exams in the B range.)

I have written some scenes out of order relating to my current fiction universe.

I have edited about 125 pages of a client's fantasy manuscript.

And, since I was not writing my w-i-p, I used the time to read (on paper) and edit (with a pen) the first 280 pages of that late stage draft. I'm so close to the end, but have worked on this project for so long, I wasn't sure how smoothly I had worked all those odds and ends toward resolution.

Certainly productive.

Plus, I read. Always good.

Now, the new semester starts in exactly one week and one hour. This leads to soul searching and plotting. I watch the dialogue between writer colleagues and it makes me ponder. For one, a friend of mine who's learning to fence (and using the experience to write better battle scenes) reminded another friend that you have to "want it" and "go get it." One of her friends reminded her that you also have to be in a ready mindset, because doubts will pull you down.

Am I ready? Are you ready?

Another colleague wrote another brilliant blog entry today about how publishing success relates to luck. There's humor and truth in what he's saying. If you want to read it, look for Jon Gibb's blog on live journal "An Englishman in New Jersey." 

For any success, in anything, there's a good deal of "being in the right time at the right place." As strangely lucky as these things may seem, you have to get to a place where you might be closer to the "right place." As for the right time, all you have is now. There's no other time. Unless you're some sort of physics phenom who can build a time machine.

So, where are you going? What are you doing to try and find that right place? Chances are, it's not inside your house. It's not on facebook. What haphazard stumbles we make through life create our luck, and maybe the right place.