Amanda Linehan's Blog, page 9

Am I Good Enough?

This is the question that every writer starts off asking themselves.

And it makes sense. When you’re first starting out you don’t have any feel for yourself as a writer. You’re wondering if people will like what you write. Will they find it engaging? Interesting? Valuable? Are you as good as some of the writers you admire? Are you horrible and just deluding yourself?

But the thing about this question that I have found is that it’s kind of like one of those zen koans. You know, like: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Or: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I may be a little rusty on my koans, but the idea is that the answer isn’t straightforward. It may be that there is no answer, it’s only for you to meditate upon and see where it takes you.

That’s kind of how I see the question “Am I good enough?” It’s the writer’s koan.

Because here’s the thing–good enough according to whom? Or to what standards? Good enough in terms of sales or awards or whether or not you have an agent and a publisher or have really good reviews from important sources? Good enough in terms of how much readers like your books? Whether or not people actually read to the end? Whether it gets turned into a movie?

I could go on with the questions, but the point is is that what constitutes good enough and who decides it is not easy to answer. Maybe it’s an answer that doesn’t really exist.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

Maybe it’s just a jumping off point for you to get to know yourself and your writing a little better. To consider why you do this and what you might be looking to get from it.

Maybe you’re already good enough or maybe you’ll never be good enough.

Maybe the answer is only in the mind of the questioner.

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

Amanda Linehan is the author of North , about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller , about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels . Get a free short story every month when you sign up for her newsletter .

The Emotional Stages Of Writing A Novel

Novels are big projects.

Even if you’re very fast and it doesn’t take you very long to write one, you’re still talking about a piece of fiction that’s at least 50,000 words.

All of my novels are between 53,000 and 86,000 words and took me between four months and a few years to write. I also call Uncover, my YA thriller and first published book, a novel, but at 40,000 words it’s really more of a novella. (FYI–ebook is 99c.) The ones that took over a year were because I was taking long breaks in the writing process for a variety of reasons. So in general it takes me a number of months to write a novel and in those months I go through a number of emotional ups and downs.

Here’s how I think of them:

The Energetic Beginning

I love to start things and novels are no exception. The idea is fresh, I’m getting acquainted with the characters and their world, and it’s fun and exciting. Because I write without an outline, everything I’m writing is new. The story is revealing itself to me and I get excited about the possibilities for where it’s going.

Also, there’s less to keep track of at this point in terms of details and plot. Things flow out of me quickly and I’m just capturing them onto the screen. It’s like the first stages of a relationship where there’s a lot of attraction and mystery and not a lot of baggage.

Winter Writing

I’ve been writing a lot recently.

I’m working on a new novel, the working title of which is The Shadow Catcher. It’s a YA Fantasy and January has been a productive month for it.

I’m really enjoying it! It’s been fun and the story has been flowing easily. (Knock on wood!) I’ve put other activities, like publishing and marketing, on the back burner. Mostly, I just feel like working on this first draft.

I was reminded of an article I wrote on creative rhythms while reading Writing Like It’s My (Second) Job by author D.M. Domosea. Domosea talks about her own writing process and creative rhythms in the article and mentions my article Seasons Of Writing, which I wrote back in August.

In that article, I talked about how I don’t write very much during the summer months, but I do work on other writing-related activities, and that’s pretty much been the case for years. For whatever reason, my motivation to write during the summer is very low, but my motivation to tackle other projects is high.

Now it’s the complete opposite. My motivation to write is very high and my motivation for other projects is low. And that’s fine. It seems a bit unbalanced on the surface, but over the course of a year, it’s perfectly balanced.

I always had the tendency to worry about whatever it was I wasn’t getting done. In the summer it was, “Uh Oh! What if I never go back to writing again!” And in the winter it was, “Uh Oh! These books aren’t going to publish and market themselves. What if I just want to write forever?”

I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with these ebbs and flows, because I know that they move. I’m not going to stay stuck in one place forever. I’m going to move out of it, just like I moved into it. It’ll be fine.

But that does require me to leave certain things in the “To Do” pile. I have a couple of finished short stories that I’d like to publish in various ways that I haven’t worked on. I’d like to re-title and do new covers for my novel, Dragon, which I haven’t been working on. (Despite the title, Dragon is a contemporary YA suspense story, not a fantasy. That was a learning experience and, hence, the re-titling!) There’s some other stuff like this too. I mean, there’s always plenty to do, right? Some things just can’t have my attention right now.

But they’ll all get done. Eventually. And I trust that things have a timing of their own that maybe doesn’t match my schedule.

Going With The Flow Of Your Energy

It’s happened to me so many times.

It’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m trying to work on something, but I’m not getting anywhere. I keep hitting dead ends of various sorts and I’m getting a little frustrated. Then I decide to put the work aside and come back to it the next morning, maybe.

And voila! Suddenly everything is falling into place. Things that confused me the day before are no longer confusing. Problems that seemed unsolvable are solving themselves. And it’s not the result of magic.

It’s the result of me working with my energy rather than against it.

I’m a morning person. I have the most energy before lunchtime. And I try to keep that in mind as I work on stuff–making sure my most energy-consuming activities happen in the morning.

But every once in a while, for whatever reason, I try to get something done in the middle of the afternoon that takes too much energy. At 3pm I’m a little sluggish. I can handle smaller tasks or things that don’t require a lot of brain power, but if I really need to be at peak creativity, I shouldn’t be working on it then if at all possible.

For instance, yesterday afternoon I was working on a book cover for a short story that I’m going to use as a welcome gift for my newsletter (a YA horror story called The Sommer House! Coming soon!) and as I played around with different elements nothing quite seemed to be coming together and I got a little frustrated. I didn’t go back to it this morning (I was working on my current novel–a YA fantasy

What I’m Reading, Watching and Listening To

Happy New Year.

The Importance Of Showing Up

I set a goal at the beginning of 2018 to write and publish a blog post every week.

My blog had been languishing in recent years, though I still enjoyed writing for it. I’d post…occasionally when I had the urge, but mostly I was focused on my fiction.

About this time last year, I became more interested in blogging again. I tried to get a post up every week, and then I publicly announced that I’d do it early in 2018.

I called it an unreachable goal because I didn’t really think I’d get a blog post up every week. But, I did think that it would get me to post more than I had, and I was right.

I posted 22 blog posts in 2018 (not counting announcement-type posts). Not even close to the 52 I had set the goal for, but more than in previous years. (In 2016, I posted on this blog precisely 5 times.

Eternity is a hell of a long time…

Have you ever wanted to live forever?

I think most of us, at first glance, would answer yes to this question, at least from a very deep part of ourselves that wants survival at all costs. Human beings don’t like death. And with good reason! For starters, we don’t know what happens after we die, and we’re not big fans of uncertainty either.

How To Never Get Writer’s Block

I’ve never had a significant episode of writer’s block. (Quick—get me a piece of wood.)

I’ve had little minor blocks here and there, but after several of these I noticed something important when I was in one.

When I would get blocked up one thing always occurred right beforehand—

I would resist writing something that was coming out of my imagination/inspiration.

For whatever reason, my inspiration would be giving me something to write and I would refuse to write it down. I didn’t like it in some way—it was gross or crude, I didn’t like the phrasing, I felt it wasn’t the “correct” way to say something, it might offend somebody or it might be a mistake in some way (like something that would prove to be inaccurate.)

Whatever the reason, I didn’t like what my inspiration was giving me and so my inspiration stopped giving.

It would stop right then and there as if to say, “You don’t like what I’m giving you? Fine. I won’t give you anything else.”

But if I would start to write those words I didn’t want to, the flow would start again. The block would resolve itself immediately. This got me in the practice of always writing what was in my imagination to write and not judging it (at least not too much for too long). Even if I had to pause for a few minutes, as soon as I wrote the words my inspiration was giving me I would get going again.

And upon further reflection, I noticed something else.

This practice required trust. Trust in my own inspiration.

Trust that what I was getting was the right thing for me to write down. It’s so easy to have doubts but ultimately I’ve come to believe that I can trust my imagination/inspiration. It’s not going to give me the wrong thing to say.

Photo by Christian Fregnan on Unsplash

Amanda Linehan is the author of North, about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller, about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels. Get a free short story every month when you sign up for her newsletter.

A Day So Horrible…

…it’s called Black Friday.

Funny little story about me—it was only seven or eight years ago that I learned that Black Friday is called Black Friday because stores become profitable or “go into the black.” Not because it’s an awful day.

I honestly thought that the “black” referred to the frenzied crowds willing to fight their way (sometimes quite literally) towards the best deals in retail stores across the country. A darkness that overtook the nation after our day of thanks. Maybe it was all that time we had to spend with our families.

Leaving Space In Your Day

Do you ever feel like life is yanking you around by the neck?

It’s pretty easy to feel like that. There are many demands on our time and people who need things from us. But feeling like you are on a treadmill that you can’t turn off and is only going faster and faster isn’t very pleasant.

One thing I’ve done over the years to combat this feeling is to leave some space between activities. To take a minute (like, actually sixty seconds) to sit quietly and breathe, maybe look out the window, and rest, without rushing off to the next activity.

One other benefit of doing this is that it helps with my work flow. Often times when I’m sitting there doing nothing, the next activity that I’d like to do pops into my mind and I get excited about working on it (or maybe not excited-excited, especially if it’s like, “go fold the laundry” but there’s at least the feeling of flow between activities). Whereas jumping from activity to activity can often make my work flow a little less deliberate because it’s more reactionary.

A Simple Process

So, here’s what this looks like. Let’s say I’m in the process of writing a story and there are plenty of other writing-related or publishing activities to do later. When I’m finished writing, instead of leaping right away into that next activity, I’ll close all the open windows on my computer. I don’t actually shut my laptop, but I close out all the browser tabs and open folders and whatever else I had open so I’m just looking at my background.

Next, I may stay seated, but turn away from my desk, put my feet up on the window sill and watch what’s going on outside the window. There’s a tree right there, so there are often birds around. There may be neighbors outside and I might watch them a moment (though I try not to go too Rear Window on anyone.) And maybe I focus in on my breathing, just noticing my inhales and exhales.

If I want to get really advanced, I may actually stand up, find my little basketball and shoot a few hoops at the toy hoop in my office. It gets me into my body and takes my mind off of whatever I was working on before or what I need to work on later.

At this point, a minute or two or three may have passed and I can get back to work, but I’m more refreshed than I would have been otherwise and ready to focus again.

Of course, the truth is, I don’t always do this.