The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Writer’s Life

  • What If My Mom Reads This? (Week Ending Sept 8)

    As writers, our imaginations often run wild. We can imagine everything from a chaste kiss to passionate lovemaking. We can envision acts of terrorism as easily as we dream up acts of heroism. The only thing that limits an imagination is one’s own restraint.

    Writers often walk the edge of what’s socially acceptable. Sometimes we delve into the shadows and make readers uncomfortable. And when we dance with the darker side, we run the risk of letting those we love see a part of ourselves we don’t like to admit we have — like graphic sex scenes or descriptions of unspeakable horror.

    This week, we’re asking the writers in the Cafe for their advice. How do writers separate what they write from what people think about the writer?

    Some write whatever they want without fear of reprisals. Others adopt pseudonyms and hide behind anonymity. And still others resort to self-censorship to keep their friends and family from freaking out.

    How about you? When you’re writing, do you censor yourself to keep your parents from dropping your name from the family will? Or do you write anything you want and let the chips fall where they may?

    Until next week,

    The Cafe Management

  • Quitting Might Be a Symptom

    I’ve never actively quit writing on the whole, in the sense that I actively made the decision to stop writing. I have, however, let life overwhelm my desire to write and stop me from going on. I’ve also quit writing fanfiction, which I love, because I thought it was the ‘more mature’ choice. (I’ve since started again.)

    Both sucked.

    Good news: neither was permanent. If you read nothing else in the big anecdotal love-fest that’s about to go down here, then take this: Just because you’ve stopped, doesn’t mean that you can’t start again. If you’re suffering from the lack of creative output, then stop suffering and start writing again.

    (more…)

  • Willpower

    This isn’t the exact car (this photo is borrowed from Wikimedia Commons) but this is what I remember it looked like.

    When I was growing up, my dad had a great sportscar, a Triumph TR-4. It was white and a convertible and sat two, though my brother and I would shoehorn ourselves into the space behind the seats. This was a cool car, and it was only later that I discovered it was British and that made it even cooler.

    The car had a manual transmission and Dad would flip a switch and it would go into overdrive. (Don’t ask me to explain overdrive unless we’re talking about guitar sounds. I never understood it beyond “it’s extra gears”.) When I was old enough to learn how to drive, the family car was a Datsun B210 (a car I later killed by dozing off behind the wheel but that’s another story) which also had a manual transmission. It was the car I learned to drive on. My parents cringed as I learned how to shift gears.

    And who hasn’t gone through that? If you aren’t a parent, you won’t know how it feels on both sides, but that’s okay. Trust those of us that have that it can be the stuff of nightmares.

    That sound of grinding gears is something that’s instantly recognizable. In cartoons, films, and comedies we know that there will be stoppage, that some of the gears may crack or pop off their axles, that there may be smoke and heat. (more…)

  • Too Damn Stubborn to Quit.

    Do I ever think about quitting? Every week, particularly as I watch the deadline for these blog posts come roaring down on me like a runaway freight train [0].

    The Plan [1] was to write the first draft of today’s blog yesterday. After all, I was going to be sitting mostly quietly in a room full of voting equipment for twelve hours, it was a primary so we wouldn’t be terribly busy, and what else was I going to do with myself? Heck, I’d write three and get all caught up! [2] I forgot a vital part of my process, which is that I cannot possibly get into the Flow of writing if there is somebody sitting next to me talking. Not necessarily talking to me, not necessarily talking about anything I need to know are am interested about, just talking. Sometimes just breathing loudly is sufficient to throw me off my game.

    And yet I love Nanowrimo writeins. Probably because we spend good blocks of time where we Do Not Talk Just Write (called sprints). And as lovely as my co-election-ladies are, I could not possibly tell them, “OK, I’m going to do a writing sprint! You need to be quiet now!” [3]

    The writing I do for the Cafe is totally voluntary. I don’t have to do it. I have no goals, nothing to prove. I’m not trying to sell myself as an author. If I quit, I doubt I’d so much as lose a friend [4].

    But I would be very, very disappointed in myself.

    (more…)

  • Motivational Quitter

    I’ve never had a moment in my life where I stared down at the empty page, threw my hands up in disgust, and declared that I was done writing forever.

    Now, having said that, I have to be honest. Nearly every day or, at the very least, several times a week, I quit.

    Pressure tends to build up slowly with me. I take on too many projects, or several projects converge at once, unplanned, and I end up in the middle of it all overwhelmed. Up until that moment, I walk around telling myself “I’ve got this. No problem.” Until it all goes bad, and the number one priority in my life becomes whether or not it’s time to harvest my crops in a Facebook game. (more…)

  • Break-up/Make-up Cycle

    I’m not sure what it says about my dedication to writing, but I give up quite often. At least once a year. Usually after National Novel Writing Month in November.

    When I write really intensively for long periods of time, I tend to burn myself out. I need time to recuperate and recover afterward. Sometimes that time is longer than I think it should be, so I get frustrated, and begin to doubt myself and my ability so much that I feel like it’s the end of my writing career.

    But it’s not. I’ve found that I can’t force myself to write during one of my breaks. If I do, the break ends up being even longer. So I find it healthy for my writing to quit for awhile sometimes.

    Not all of being a writer is about writing. We have to absorb a lot of the world in order to write, so I go into Input mode where I read and watch shows and spend time with friends and family and go on adventures to recharge my batteries and compile material.

    Then there is the more analytical side of being a writer. The editing. The submission process. My creative side of the writer psyche is ill-equipped to deal with those things because they take a detachment and a rational mind. The creative side has to take a vacation when those things are going on.

    So even when I quit writing, I am still working on being a writer. And even when I think I might never write again, I always come back. It’s too much a part of me not to. It’s in me. The only time I really feel like myself is when I write regularly. I miss it when it’s gone.

    It’s like a bad relationship, I suppose. We’ve broken up and gotten back together so many times. My life is incomplete without it, but sometimes I just can’t live with it. Sometimes I need a break.

    But my writing group never lets me actually give up. Their support and encouragement always brings me back around. And the fact that I understand this cycle now helps, as well. I am slowly starting to accept that I am a writer, even if sometimes I’m not actually writing. I’m pretty sure writing is my soul-mate, so we will always get back together in the end.

  • Sad, Walking-Away Music

    I have never quit being a writer, but I have stopped writing now and then.

    Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk
    At the end of every episode of The Incredible Hulk, Dr. Banner walked away. Sad. So very sad. © 1978 Universal Television

    Back in the ’70s, there was a live-action television series based on the Marvel comic book The Incredible Hulk. For those who might be too young to remember, it featured Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner. (Yeah, it was “David.” Not Bruce. Don’t get me started.)

    Every week Dr. Banner would come to a new town where he tried to help out or find a cure for his problem. Then something — usually the bad guys causing the problem he was trying to resolve — would make him angry. Of course, Dr. Banner would Hulk-out and smash some things. After the bad guys were brought to justice or the family farm was saved, he would gather up his backpack and head off into the metaphorical sunset.

    Cue the sad, walking-away music.

    All this is preamble to explain why at certain times in my life I stopped writing. I never thought of it as quitting, really. I was just walking away — on my way to somewhere new. Trying to find the next chapter of my story.

    (more…)

  • I Can’t Quit You: Return of the Attention Whore

    I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I am an attention whore. As such, it is hard for me to quit something that might garner me praise. It’s shallow, I know, but it works for me.

    That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when I absolutely want to quit writing. I definitely have those moments of desperate frustration when, more than anything else, what I’m actually doing is running away from writing. I have a classic love/hate relationship with the creative process.

    The meditative high you get when you’re on a roll and the words are flowing is an addictive feeling. At the same time, the dread of a deadline when you don’t feel like you have anything worth saying is equally devastating. And those times when you lie in bed feeling guilty about the words you didn’t produce that day are just agony.

    I freaking hate the way writing, or perhaps I should say the way not writing, makes me feel. At the same time, I crave that attention you get when you actually manage to do a good job. If even one person comments that they enjoyed something I wrote, I’m on cloud nine for the rest of the day.

    Feed the monkey, people, and he will dance.

    (more…)

  • It’s the Hard Knock Life

    Being a writer is the hard knock life.

    There is this image that writers get out of bed at around noon, get to the computer by one, work a couple of hours, and then take a nap. There might be writers that do this, but I don’t know any.

    Being a writer involves long hours, even if you make your living doing it. It involves self-promotion, networking, reading, writing, research, re-reading, rewriting, correspondence, rewriting again, contractual obligations, and God knows what else.

    In addition, a lot of writers, even professionals have day jobs. If you are a writer with a day job, you don’t get a free pass on all that stuff. Instead, you do it when you get home. After forty-plus hours at work, in the time when other people are relaxing or playing with their children, you are expected to be a writer.

    All told, you can expect to spend around eight hours on a polished three thousand word short story. If you manage to sell it to a professional market, you will get five cents a word.  That is $150.00, or $18.75 an hour. That doesn’t sound bad. You’ll see that money in six months if you are lucky. That is the best-case scenario. (more…)

  • Quitters Anonymous (Week Ending August 11)

    Writing can be a frustrating profession. Whether doing it for love or money, whether trying to get published or not, sometimes writers get exasperated and wonder if it’s all worth it. Rejection letters don’t help. Neither do poor sales for those who get published.

    So this week, we asked the writers at the Confabulator Cafe whether or not they have ever thought of chucking it all. We’re not trying to be discouraging to the burgeoning writers who visit our site. We just think the question is a relative part of a writer’s life and needed to be discussed.

    What about you? Have you ever considered walking away from the writer’s life? What kept you from doing so? Have you quit? If so, what made you come back? Let us know in the comments below.

    Until next week,

    The Cafe Management