writer, editor, maker of stuff
Eight days of work, 20,000 words. I make no claims about this being a work of literary genius, but I’m pleased with my productivity. So far it’s mostly fragmented scenes without much structure, but I’m guessing the first draft will clock in around 100,000 words (and it’ll definitely shrink during editing). I’m not setting a daily word count goal, but if I can keep up this pace (not too likely) then a (very) rough draft could exist by Halloween! How fitting.
Okay, back to work…
Today I begin my new job, and it’s the one I’ve wanted all my life. With both kids now in school full time and my copy editing gig only taking up morning hours, I’m finally going to officially make writing a job.
In the last eight years I’ve gotten by on late-night writing sessions hours after my sleep-deprived brain has stopped working and on half-hour scraps before school pick-ups. I’ve brainstormed while jogging between appointments, while cuddling kids who are refusing to sleep, while washing dishes. I’ve resorted to dictating verses of picture books into my phone at playgrounds and grocery stores lines, probably convincing passersby that I’m a lunatic with some sort of rhyme-related disorder.
That’s no way to actually produce creative work. It shows, too, in both my output and its quality. I end up feeling frustrated because I have stories to tell and no time to tell them, and I know I can do better than what I see on the page. I just need time when there’s peace and I’m wide awake and I know I don’t have to run out the door in 15 minutes. Now I have that.
But I have to make it official to justify it. This isn’t a hobby, it’s not some little project I’m working on or something fun to play with in my free time. This is what I want to be when I grow up. It’s ridiculous that I have to justify it to myself, but I feel a nagging sense of guilt at the prospect of spending time selfishly doing something I love when I could (should) be doing a “real” (paying) job. I’m not going to psychoanalyze myself here, but I know I’m not the only one with this complex. I’m fighting it as well as I can.
Today I have three hours before I need to pick up the kids. There’s laundry to do, but it can wait. I could attempt to wrestle the book/game/craft/storage room into some semblance of order, but I’m just going to close my eyes when I walk past it. I need to deal with filing and bills, but not right now. Today I am going to write.
It was one of those days where every minor thing is stressful and annoying. Nothing dramatic, just the little things that add up. Rude people on the street, inconsiderate drivers, litter everywhere. And then a bunch of obnoxious teenagers were jerks to my daughter and her friends at the pool (and in a totally legal but mean-spirited way, so I couldn’t even unleash my temper on them). I was done. We stopped on the walk home to order pizza because I just didn’t have the energy left to be a responsible dinner-making parent.
So we’re standing on the sidewalk and I’m ordering online with my phone (breaking at least three of my own personal rules for acceptable behavior) when out of the blue one of the teachers from the children’s lit class I took last year — the one that kind of killed my self-esteem for the better part of a year — approached me. She asked if I was still writing and what I was working on. I admitted that I’d taken a break because I lost confidence after the class. She apologized if she or the other teacher had made me feel that way — and obviously it wasn’t their fault, it was a combination of things aligning at a moment of insecurity and basically my own damn fault for being too sensitive — but it was really nice of her to say it, anyway. She encouraged me to keep working, especially on the middle-grade mystery I’d shown the class, and she was just generally really nice. Because of course she was — she’s a nice person and a good teacher and not some malicious confidence-devouring hellbeast.
I’d already been on an upswing, getting back into writing again and having a good long vent about the process of rebuilding self-esteem, but this random encounter gave me another boost. I’m happy to have reversed some lingering negative emotions from the class, and I’m really thankful for the reminder that even a rather solitary practice like writing needs communities. I’m going to try a little harder to be part of mine.
I woke up this morning an immigrant in a spectacularly diverse neighbourhood of immigrants in what might be the most beautiful melting pot of a city in the whole world, but surrounded by a country that has just made it clear that it doesn’t want us here… a country choosing economic suicide over cooperation, isolationism over shared responsibility, and the endorsement of hate groups over compassion.
For the first time, I don’t feel welcome in the country that I’ve made my home. Outside my London bubble there’s apparently a lot of space occupied by people I simply cannot comprehend right now. While my right to stay here with my family has not changed, my heart hurts for all the EU immigrants I’m proud to have as friends and neighbors, who are such an important part of what makes this country so vibrant and so connected to every corner of the planet. My heart hurts more for the refugees, who instead of finding much-needed mercy are being treated like pawns by politicians stirring up xenophobia. And it hurts too for the British people whose fears for their own security have been exploited and twisted into hatred.
I guess now we just have to hope that this isn’t as big a mess as it seems, and to never stop encouraging kindness and compassion. Maybe some day it’ll work.
I’ve always had a wordiness problem. When other high-schoolers were lamenting 500-word essays, I was thinking “500 words? That’s just my prologue!” My college thesis was roughly 40 pages longer than necessary (and surely even my advisors didn’t make it to the end because it was a massive heap of pretentious gibberish). I may also enjoy a liberal sprinkling of superfluous adjectives.
Yet somehow, hilariously, I’ve spent the last 22 months working as a copyeditor for a daily news briefing, a task which requires tightening up text from (already alarmingly short) paragraphs. And it’s fine — it’s not like I’m not able to be succinct. In fact, I was slightly surprised to discover I’m pretty good at that element of the job: Take a paragraph, somewhere in the ballpark of 106 words, telling the key facts of a story. Check for grammatical errors and style guide compliance. Fact check. Improve the flow. Prune unnecessary words. Revise to eliminate even more words to get it down to 95. Check it all again. Move on to the next. It’s fun … if you’re a big nerd like me.
The really surprising thing, though, is that this newfound succinctness is leaking into my other writing. (And if you’re thinking “Really?” based on this rambling, I can assure you that yes, two years ago this would have been even ramblier.) One example: The epic rhyming picture book that started at an utterly unpublishable 1,719 words — the one I congratulated myself on trimming down under 1,200 a few years ago? It’s now 757.
The only problem is that now when I return to a project I spend more time pruning than writing. So I’ve decided to use this newfound talent for dismantling my previous work to take another pass at my first novel, the “practice novel.” It’s got some plot problems I’ll also need to deal with along the way, but I’m curious how much I can tighten it up. I’ve just started, but I’ve already chopped the first chapter from 2,013 words to 1,864.
It’s strange to think of writing as a subtractive process.
I’m working on what I think is an important step in making stuff for other people: stopping when they’re happy, rather than giving in to my tendency to keep messing with (and sometimes messing up) something until I like it.
In this case, the third of the Seasons paintings for my kids. I’m not entirely happy with Summer (I like the top half, but I regret adding the wildflowers in the middle), but the kids said it’s done. So (deep breath) it’s done.
Here’s the (very badly hung) series so far in their room:
Next up, Spring. I’m slightly terrified of the sunrise-over-a-flowery-meadow palette…
I can’t believe it’s been a year since I posted here… only… well, no, that’s not really true. I’m not surprised, actually. In the last year, other than being busy with the usual things like family, work, and all of the standard daily-life stuff that always gets in the way of creativity, I’ve been facing a crisis of confidence.
I’ve been reluctant to talk about it. Who wants to admit defeat? Who wants to express wavering self-confidence, especially in an industry that values self-promotion, perseverance and flawless self-certainty above nearly everything else? I’ve almost written this post so many times, but held myself back. Am I dooming myself by admitting I’ve felt discouraged? Am I closing future doors by confessing to periods of low self-esteem? Perhaps.
But I don’t think I’m exactly alone. Creative work is an irrational manic roller coaster of I-will-conquer-the-world! enthusiasm and why-did-I-ever-think-I-could-do-this? doubts. You spend so much time and energy alone in your head, with only your characters and ideas for company. You’re hard on yourself, doubting and revising and improving and doubting again, until you finally whittle down the doubts enough that you can see past them. You psych yourself up, actually get excited because you’ve finally created something that you really genuinely like — and maybe someone else will like it, too. In a delirious rush you go for it. You hit Send. You let someone look over your shoulder at the screen. You hand the pages to test readers. Your creation is officially out of your head and into the world, even if only one other person sees it, because creative work only exists in the binary states of Your Head or The Whole World.
And that’s where it gets scary, because now someone else is looking at your baby, this weird and flawed beast that, unlike a real baby, you can’t even blame on previous generations’ bad genes. You can only blame the content of your own head and the abilities of your own hands. Now it’s out there and it’s too late to take it back and now you’re being judged — not just your creation, but your whole self being judged — on what you’ve willed into form.
Oh hell.
You wait. Holding your breath. Twitchy with adrenaline. And sometimes you get what you need: Approval, acceptance, the relief that you did actually make something worthwhile. Sometimes you get disappointing-but-useful constructive criticism, which might sting, but shows that someone cared enough to try to help, that they saw enough potential to be worth improving.
And sometimes… oh, this one’s the killer. Sometimes you get “Nice” or “Yeah, it’s pretty good,” and a quick change of subject. Ouch. So it’s not nice, not good, it’s unfixable or uninteresting or just so terribly, terribly useless that we can’t even talk about it. Let’s move on.
Only you can’t, of course, especially when the damning indifference comes from someone who cares about you or someone who’s usually supportive or someone who’s more experienced and knowledgeable than you are. Then you really can’t move on, because the only movement you can imagine is crawling into a cave, possibly carrying everything you’ve ever created to burn for warmth while you hibernate away from everyone you’ve just humiliated yourself in front of… which obviously is now The Whole World.
And of course it’s unfair — it’s unfair to that kind, supportive person who usually has time for constructive critique/ego-stroking, who may have just been busy or having a bad day or needed some time to get their thoughts together. It’s unfair to that critique partner or teacher or agent who is, in reality, considering a piece of creative work and not actually judging your value as a human being. None of those people are actually The Whole World and they never claimed to be. It’s unfair to hang the full weight of your creative self-worth on someone else.
But it’s also impossible to stop yourself feeling that blow that knocks your legs right out from under you.
So (obviously) I had one of those experiences last year. A small series of them: A curt reaction to a half-finished story that I thought was going well, a form-letter rejection of a picture book I actually believed was pretty good, and a short-but-not-sweet no-constructive-criticism judgment (of the same book) from the teachers of a class that I’d previously thought I was doing well in. Strike three. I was humiliated. I felt like I’d probably been embarrassing myself all along, every time I’d ever shared anything that I’d created. The Whole World knew it sucked, but I was only just figuring it out. Yikes.
The roller coaster careened downward. I tried to take a break from writing. It didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it just depressed me more. Finally I resumed writing, only because I wanted needed to, just for myself, and not with any idea of ever showing it to anyone ever again. Ever. Ever ever ever.
I wrote more. I felt better. I feel better. The train is click-click-clicking back up the hill.
I hope to post more soon. I will post more soon.
I love picture books. I love drawing with my kids. I want to illustrate the stories I write for them, and make kid-friendly art for their walls. But… well… I have a problem. I really struggle to make things that are kid-friendly.
First off, I don’t really do Cute. I’m just not a cute person. That’s not to say I don’t like cute things when they’re done well, but it’s just not my thing in general. Maybe it’s lack of practice, but my attempts at cute are embarrassing. Also, I personally tend to prefer darker, creepier things, and though I (usually) don’t aim to make art for kids that is dark and creepy, it kind of just comes out that way.
Case in point: When my daughter was learning to write, I decided on a whim one day to paint a letter chart on a big canvas and prop it up behind her desk. So far so good. I wanted it to dry quickly, so grabbed the acrylics and picked primary colors to make it simple and bold (also, I couldn’t find the green and the acrylics I have make a mucky green when mixed. Have I mentioned how much I hate acrylics?). I painted the letters, everything still going well enough (other than some spacing issues, but that’s what I get for free-handing) — but it was too boring. I know, I thought: I’ll add some texture, some designs.
And that’s where it started to go wrong. I decided to stick to one design per color. Twisting curly-swirlies vining out from the blues. Sketchy angular lines echoing out from the reds. Bubbling dots pulsing out of the yellows.
Only… um… not so much. The yellow dots look like pustules (O is for Oozing!). The slashes of red look like a mad scientist’s dissections (K is for Kill!). The blue squiggles look like unsavory body hair (P is for … er, never mind). So my cute little educational art project is diseased, violent, and anatomical. See for yourself:
I tried adding sparkles — glitter helps everything, right? Yeah, maybe not.
Perhaps I’ll stick to creepy stuff.
Seven years ago, while I was pregnant for the first time, I had this idea to paint a series of pictures for my daughter’s room: a landscape for each season with the horizon continuing from one 20×30″ canvas to the next (though the terrain and scale don’t match). Isn’t it funny how childless people think they’ll still have time for projects once they reproduce? I managed to finish Winter while she was still a baby.
I have just finished the second, Autumn.
I’ve done some underpainting on Summer. But Spring? I won’t even show you the disastrous acrylic nightmare of Spring. (They all started in acrylics, which I loathe, because I figured I shouldn’t inhale turpentine fumes too much while pregnant. Most of Autumn was later repainted in oils.)
At this rate, the final one will be a graduation present.
And then I can start on another series for my son, to commemorate his retirement.
Hmm… it’s been quiet around here. Don’t worry, I haven’t run off to join the circus or gone on a six-month bender. It’s worse than that: I’ve been employed. I hadn’t been quite ready to look for a job, but there it was: freelance, the right number of hours, working from home, getting paid to be pedantic as a copyeditor for a news startup that doesn’t suck. How could I say no? I would have preferred to spend those hours on creative work, but getting a paycheck is nice, and building a resume is, I suppose, necessary if I want to get more writing and editing jobs.
I’ve been slack about updating my blog, but I’m still working on various book projects. In fact, since my last update I’ve started a new middle-grade novel (about 20 pages done so far) and a new picture book (plotted, half-written, first few pages of storyboard sketched out). I posted my embarrassing old NaNoWriMo romance novel on Wattpad under a fake name. I’ve written a few more chapters of a mystery novel. I’ve finished a few more illustrations for Stealing the Show. And I baked a Harry Potter birthday cake that looked like spellbooks. (That counts, right?)
Anyway, this is me jumping back in. More posts and project updates soon.
michelle heimburger 