Diana Pharaoh Francis's Blog, page 6

If You’re a Writer, You Need to Hear This

I once had an editor tell me a book hardly needed anything—all light revisions—and then when I went to implement something in the first chapter, that single pulled thread led me to throwing out about 60,000 words of a 90,000 word novel and rewriting all the rest.

Novels are HARD. Needing a lot or a little revision doesn’t really say much about you as a writer. What matters is what you finish with. Everything that happens behind the scenes is just your process and everybody’s process is different and they are often messy, appear deranged to an outsider, and are necessary to get where you want to be with a book.

What’s important is to not judge your process, but accept that it is a process and run with it. The end.

Getting it done is huge. I often say that writing is in the revision, because that’s when you can see the raw form of your work and set about carving and shaving and chiseling and polishing and making it art. And yes, it’s art. Don’t let anybody tell you different.

You’ve got this. All of you.

Print it out, hang it on the wall, remember it.

I’m a Fucking Good Writer

I rarely reread what I’ve written. After going through all the drafts and the revisions and publishing process, I will hate the book and I won’t want to see it again for awhile. Eventually I do reread, and this week I reread my Putting the Fun in Funeral. This was a gift book. That means that it came easily and fast and was like a gift from the universe. I loved writing it and I loved the book after. Rereading has not diminished my love of it.

What surprised me as I read it was me thinking, wow! This is really good. Wow! I’m a good writer. And eventually I got to “I’m a fucking good writer!”

As a writer, this is an unusual state of mind. Generally we feel like crap writer frauds who will be discovered at any moment. We are embarrassed to acknowledge our achievements because they aren’t that good or they are awful and what is wrong with you readers who like this drivel???

Recently I reread something else I wrote and felt absolutely awful. It was good and my reaction was that I couldn’t write like that. I couldn’t begin to hope to write as well as that. Apparently I figured I’d already written all my good words and now I was a hack. Now it’s not unusual for people to compare polished, published books by other people to their drafts and decide they are crap writers, even though, once again, they are comparing a POLISHED and FINISHED book to a ROUGH DRAFT. Yes I did feel the need for caps. Writers do this all the time. I felt really stupid doing that with my own finished and polished novel, yet that’s exactly what I did and I felt awful.

Claiming your talent, claiming your abilities and acknowledging you are a good writer is tough to do. It feels like bragging and it feels like arrogant asshole behavior. And yet–writers need to get the word out that their work is good and worth reading and that they are fabulous writers. We need to be proud of ourselves and we need to voice that pride.

So here’s your question: when have you encountered imposter syndrome? What did you do about it, if anything? And what can you do today, right here, right now, to beat down the imposter syndrome? What will you do going forward?

As for me, I’m just going to say this: I’m a fucking good writer.

Also, that’s my doodle of a corgi boy.

Puppy Jealousy

Crowley felt very left out of the last post and demanded his own.

Excuse for Laziness in Pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How heartless would it be to make him move when he’s so comfortable?

Tidbits from The Pixie Job

Writing The Elf Job

So you may have noticed The Elf Job is now out. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have it off my plate. It was a really difficult book to write for several reasons.

The first is that I switched it from first person to third and yet I left all kinds of first person pronouns littering the work and every time I combed through, I seemed to find dozens more. They were proliferating like cockroaches. I then hit a point in the book that I did not like and I had to backtrack by ten or twenty thousand words, dump them, and reconfigure, and start forward again.

All right! I was on a roll! Until I broke a metaphorical axle. I knew what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t working. I’d make a little headway, back up, try a new direction, back up, rinse and repeat. Part of the problem was my bad guy. Another problem was the Liluyo. I wasn’t finding an organic way to do what I wanted to do and I kept breaking things and not figuring out how to fix them. So while I was constantly building conflict, it seemed kind of pointless and unsolvable.

And then…singing angels and panoramic beams of light. I found the path and frankly, I really like the way the story ended. So much. I feel like it hits on all the emotional levels and sets up some things for me to deal with down the road. I can’t wait to come back to the Liluyo and Sil’noor. One day Mal’s going to meet the boss, and just what is LeeAnne anyway?

Part of what I enjoyed about writing the book is some of the whimsy. Like the pigfish and the topiary animals. All the little characters weaving in and out. I love the snarky back and forth dialog. I write to entertain myself and make myself giggle. And sometimes cry. And give myself feels. The business with Law and Mal gave me lots of feels. And of course her relationship with So’la is really fun to write.

As hard as this book was to finish, as frustrating as it sometimes was, I am so glad that Mal lets me hang out with her and her strange and lovely little family. And that’s a little bit on my process for writing The Elf Job.

By the way, that adorable car was in the parking lot of the auto parts store I went to the other day.

All About Dogs Except for Pokemon

The title says it all. This posts will be all about dogs, except for a slight deviation on Pokemon. Specifically, the picture of the googly eye sign  is one I ran across while catching Pokemon on the last event day. I kind of want to hang it on my wall.

Meanwhile, Merlin woke me up a couple of nights in a row this last week, shaking with fear. I am chalking it up to either ghosts or fireworks. (Incidentally, there’s a new show on the SyFy channel called Surreal Estate and it’s a whole lot of fun, so far. In a creepy and cool way. Remember I like blood in my humor).

Anyhow, Merlin both times crawled up on top of me and turned into a quaking leech. The first night I was up nearly two hours petting and holding him before he was ready to go back to sleep. Second night was a little better. Poor guy. However, now he has decided if he’s lonely or in need of a pet in the middle of the night, he can just clomp up on top of me and use his raccoon paws to grab whatever part of me he can find to wake me up so that I will pet him. Worst part is that he’s right.

So last night Merlin wanted some love and walked up my entire body (he weighs 36 pounds but somehow can magically double his weight and put all of it onto each foot at the same time. It’s kind of amazing). He then proceeded to grab my shoulder and drag on it. I obediently woke up and started petting him, and swiftly realized he wasn’t shaking with fear. He was lonely. Yanno, as you are when you are sleeping on the bed with two humans and another dog. It gets lonely, it does.

So I’m lying on my side. I scoot back a little from the edge of the bed and he slide/flomps down beside me and rolls onto his back, all four feet in the air. (He does not lie down gracefully. This is not in his skillset. It seems like he throws himself up in the air and collapses into a donut shape, or a sprawl shape. The force of it can break bones and rattle windows). I then proceed to lightly scratch his tummy, from between his front legs all the way down to the inside of his back legs. The insides of his back legs are his favorite place to be scratched. Except I must be careful not to use too much pressure or too much nail, or it hurts. He has very thin hair along there.

So I scratch for awhile. It’s only 2 or 3 in the morning. I’m not at all sleepy. Not even a little bit. Just resting my eyes is all. I feel he’s received enough attention and so take my hand away and snuggle down to go back to sleep. He pokes a cold, wet nose in my eye. Apparently he did not agree that he’d received enough. I petted again. I stopped again. Cold, wet nose again.

Finally he allowed that he was a little tired and napping would be fine and I could resume my ministrations in the morning. Which of course I did. Because I’m a sucker.

But! because Crowley decided he, too, was lonely, when I got up to go to the bathroom sometime after Merlin and before alarm clock, Crowley came and rolled over next to me and required the same treatment. Of course, when I stop and he wants more, he uses his nose like a battering ram. It’s hard not to get the message.

I eventually was able to satisfy him, or maybe lull him to sleep, after which I slept until a little before six when the alarm went off.

And now pictures. Please notice that the paw with his ball is hanging off the edge of Merlin’s ottoman (yes, he has his own, why?) and he’s holding it in place by pressing it against the side of the ottoman frame. Like I said: raccoon paws.

The Progress Progresses

It’s not news, but I’ve been lamentably not keeping up to date here.  I’ve been writing, but slowly. I AM getting ready to release The Elf Job. I’m making last passes through the manuscript as I am finding little bits that I’ve got to clean up from changes I made. I keep finding little things I overlooked. Specifically, pronoun stuff. It’s like combing for lice. It seems I keep missing one and it turns into a hundred. It’s obnoxious.

I’m also making a lot of progress on Shatter of Light, the last of the Diamond City Magic books. I’ll also be releasing The Pixie Job by itself soon. The anthology with RJ Blain, Devon Monk, me, and Faith Hunter has expired, as it were, and so it will be released on its own.

I’ve found myself buried under a teaching workload that turned into more than I expected, which has sucked up my time and also my brain. On top of that, I’ve been helping figure out a new apartment for my son, which has been more difficult than it should have been. I’ve done a little camping in the new trailer. We went up to Idaho and Washington and saw family and looked for rocks. It was fun and a much needed reprieve.

We were hit with the 117 degree weather. Unfortunately I had to be out in it, which was, um, unpleasant? Obnoxious? Awful? I was seriously glad to be out of it when it finally ended and was incredibly grateful to have AC.

The last few months have passed in a slow blur. Is that possible? I can hardly think about what I managed to get done. It’s almost surreal. I have rewatched Midsomer Murders, which apparently is very soothing. Apparently it’s my brain’s version of comfort food.

Has anybody been reading anything good lately? I’m in the mood for some romantic suspense.

They DO Exist

Went geocaching yesterday and discovered one of these. In working order, no less. So for those of you who thought of them in the category of the Easter Bunny and bras that fit and are comfortable, they really do exist. Course Clark Kent would be showing quite an eyeful if he tried changing here, but that would be alright by me. I like handsome naked men scenery. Given the rarity of payphones and booths, though, he should probably try spinning in place like Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman. I can’t remember: how does Gal Gadot change her clothes?

Ice, House, and Trailer

Not a particularly original title, is it? Ice, House, and Trailer. You’d think, as a writer, I could come up with something a little more original. Unfortunately, I’ve got nothing. Of course, titles for anything have never been my forte. I’ve been lucky a few times figuring out a really good title, but mostly, not so much.

We had an ice storm here and were among the lucky ones who got power back within about 12 hours. We have friends who were out for about five days, and another friend whose power is still out. She’s been coming here to warm up and shower a bit. She has cats, so she’s been staying at home at night despite the cold. It’s not as bad as Texas, but bad enough. As for Texas…. I’m so angry. I lived in Montana and the midwest where snow and ice and frigid temperatures happened a lot. People down in Texas don’t have to be in this situation. There’s been a huge failure of planning and I’m going to guess corruption and dismissal of the dangers. People shouldn’t be dying, shouldn’t be freezing and without power and water. I’m so pissed for them.

In Oregon, we lost a ton of trees. A lot of old, beautiful trees, and I’m sad. Especially for the oaks and the cherry trees. At our house we lost a bunch of branches off the birches and about half of our branches on a little maple tree. I don’t know if it’s going to survive and that’s making me really sad. I love that tree. We had to cut one of my favorites a few years ago. It was a giant white ash, but we cut it because they have a problem with having the massive limbs rotting at the groins between the trunk and the limb and the tree guy pointed out where we were in danger. Specifically because the tree was too close to the house. When we cut it down, we found out the rot was much greater than we expected. If we hadn’t lost the tree in a windstorm, this freeze would have done it. And the limbs were over the house. So we got lucky there.

Ice storms are gorgeous, but so deadly.

We’ve been in the process of refinancing the house and we finally got that signed off on and done. We’ve also been looking for a trailer for camping again. We sold ours awhile back for various reasons, but particularly because we weren’t going to be able to really use it. With the man’s new schedule, he has four days off a week and so we can start getting out. It was quite a saga for looking. We started out with one idea, but could’t find the trailer to even look at because it is out of stock everywhere and the factories can’t produce as fast as they want because Covid has slowed supply lines quite a bit.

We then decided on used, and started looking at used. But the next thing I know we start peeking into new trailers and revising our plans. Originally the idea was to buy something now, use it for awhile, and when we get closer to retiring, get a fifth wheel. (My husband really really wants a fifth wheel). We looked and looked and had a terrible experience at two different sellers, but finally came up with a floor plan we liked. But then we had to find a trailer with that floor plan. Now a lot of them have that floorplan in some fashion or another, so that wasn’t as hard as it sounds. Mostly it was narrowing down to one we liked.

Trouble was, the experience was worse than shopping for a new bra. And yeah, I know a bunch of you have no idea what that’s like, but it’s AWFUL. The longer we were at it, the more I was willing to consider just biting the bullet and getting the fifth wheel so we wouldn’t have to do this again. Ever. So we finally decided on a fifth wheel that’s far too expensive and yet has everything we imagined and more. It will last a long time and if we take it out like I hope and use it a lot, then we’ll do a lot more exploring and a lot more experiencing of things. For the last quite a few years, we’ve not really done much as a family or as a couple because we’ve been focused on work, on kids, on remodeling, landscaping, and so on. We still have more of that stuff, to do, but we want to start experiencing more. We haven’t even been to the coast for two years, and we live 45 minutes away.

So we have now signed on the trailer and will pick it up in a couple of weeks. We’ve got to get the hitch installed first. Our first trip will be during Spring Break. After that, we’ll play it by ear. Our daughter is old enough to stay home alone, but she’s also old enough that she’s going to be moving out within a couple of years (maybe) and we’d like to spend time together. My son will hopefully be able to join us now and again. He’s in college and obviously his days off don’t coincide with my husband’s.

In the meantime, I’m still struggling to write, but I’m working on overcoming the struggle. I’ve been getting out to walk the boys a bunch and am enjoying that. I am hoping they’ll take to trailer camping. When the power went out, Merlin (the heeler), freaked out. He was terrified and shaking. He woke us up around 1 a.m. We don’t know if he was hearing beeping from little alarms in the house, or if he was hearing trees breaking. They sounded a lot like gunshots or fireworks, and he hates those sounds. Anyhow, he shivered and shook all night. We’re hoping that camping (which is really glamping with this trailer), won’t freak him out.

And that’s the current update. I’m off to poke at some words.