Tag: writing fiction

Fear

So why was I afraid to pick this project back up and write on it when I got the idea for linked stories several months ago?

Number one was fear of failure. Would I start it only to find that it was unworkable? That it wouldn’t turn out as I envisioned? That fear is largely gone. I have ten stories completed in the conversion–several of which had been published in stand-alone form over the past few years. I need to have faith in my ability to craft something new out of what was already strong material.

Number two was fear of the blank page. This one is harder to fight. Where I have had to create almost an entire narrative from near-scratch, I have had a ton of problems. In fact, I have two stories left half-done after I pulled source material out of the main manuscript that have been a challenge to work on.

Number three is imposter syndrome. Many of us writers, when faced with a challenging task, can draw on past success at our craft as a reason to believe that we can face this new challenge, too. So why don’t we? Often it’s because we live in a culture that says simple success in completing a project is not enough; more must be done to make it “successful” by someone else’s standards.

Number four is fear of wasting time. This belief whispers to me that my paid work is more valuable than my fun work because it pays off financially. When I have paid work pending, it’s really hard to give time to unpaid work. This fear tells me that I am only a valuable writer when I’m earning money. I still work to overcome this obstacle.

Number five is fear of losing my mind. Many writers write from a place of trauma. I do so in my memoir work. Well, the first writing on this story came out of the trauma of Hurricane Katrina, which ultimately consumed me and resulted in a psychotic break. Many writers report re-experiencing their trauma when they write about it. I don’t want to go back to that some place I was when first crafting this story.

How am I working to overcome these fears? I remind myself that I am successful by my own lights and that is all that matters. I remind myself that computers come with a delete key to erase a poorly written sentence or paragraph or whole scene. I remind myself of Anne Lamott’s advice that no one cares as much as we do, and others do not live to tear apart our work.

Concrete steps I have taken have been to sign up for an extended flash fiction writing workshop where I can learn more about my craft and get used to the flow of writing fiction again in a low-stakes environment, one where my work is supported, and I am not writing only for my own satisfaction but for others who want to see me succeed. It basically comes down to getting my own confidence back.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Where We Are

So I picked “Hurricane Baby” back up this year to try to make it work as a series of linked short stories. I took the most dramatic episodes in the novel manuscript and am rewriting them to show how the hurricane affected the lives of various characters.

Wendy and Ray Magnum have to deal with the fallout of Wendy’s encounter with Judd McKay. Mike and Holly Seabrook work to overcome the damage done to their home and lives with Mike undergoing a serious crisis of faith. And James and Lisa King suffer through a dissolution of their marriage after Lisa decides she is never returning to the Coast again.

Each of the three storylines is told in four installments, alternated throughout the manuscript. Each of the twelve stories is told from a slightly different point of view. Wendy and Ray each have their own story, Mike’s point of view is illustrated through three stories, with Holly closing their narrative with her own story, and James and Lisa’s stories alternate from one to the other.

Writing The Story

Long story short–these characters have been alive in my mind for quite some time. The story has undergone many, many permutations since I completed that first story draft. In 2010, in anticipation of the Hurricane Katrina fifth anniversary. I took the story and adapted it to a stage play, which is when the title went from “Still Waters” to “Hurricane Baby”. That stage play won third place in the Eudora Welty New Plays Festival at New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi, where a stage reading was performed on May 1, 2010.

I kept working at it and revising on it until I wondered if I had taken it as far as I could. I finally gave up on fiction almost entirely and started concentrating on blogging, setting up a blog about my life with bipolar disorder in 2014. In 2015, I enrolled in a low-residency MFA program at the Mississippi University for Women, concentrating on nonfiction. But even with that as my concentration, I kept flirting with fiction stories.

I took two semesters to write in fiction classes under Mary Miller, an up-and-coming short story and novel writer from Oxford, and Diana Spechler, a writer based in Mexico City. I wrote new fiction in their classes and experimented a great deal with flash fiction, discovering a had a knack for compressing a story down to its bare bones.

Hi There

So here’s the scoop. This page is where I will document my foray back into fiction. The working title of the short story collection I am writing is Hurricane Baby: Stories. Here I will talk about the progress of writing it, how the story came about, and who the characters are; in short, as a reader, you get a front-row seat to the act of creating that is writing fiction. Why am I offering this kind of look into the process, pitfalls, and perils of doing the hard work of writing fiction? I’m glad you asked. 😊

I’ve had a lot of fear about starting this project. I decided the best way to get past the fear is to face it head-on and acknowledge it. I will write about fear. About the hard stuff. About being scared I’m going to invest a lot of time into a project that may not ever see the light of day. About being scared of being judged for writing what I am writing. About being scared of what folks may say.

But it occurred to me that I can ensure that the labor is not in vain by offering to share the journey with readers. Craft, perseverance, encouragement are qualities many writers say they wish they had more of. So I am going to be showing those moments with you, the reader. I hope my vulnerability in this process is encouraging to other writers, who may see themselves in my struggles. So. Join me. I can’t wait to meet you all.