Guest Post: The Darker Side of Writing

Theresa Milstein writes about writing teaching and life at Theresa’s Tales

She’s visiting to get the word out about her short story “My Moment”, which is included in From Stage Door Shadows and looks at the darker side of show business. Today she tackles the darker side of writing.
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Thanks for having me on your blog, Lynda.


 Writing takes mental stamina.

I’m not saying it’s the hardest job. It's certainly not harder than working in the heat, lifting heavy objects, or dealing in customer service.

But we do a lot of upfront work with no feedback. So, some days we’re like, “That’s brilliant! Did that just come out of MY head?” We sit in our seats a little straighter, knowing that this is THE book.

Panster or plotter, when we’re done, there’s all this tidying up to do. Sure, there are some rough spots, but we’ve done it all with no help. We’re AWESOME! And when we tell our writer friends on Twitter and Facebook, they bask us in the glow of congratulations.

Yeah, that’s the best.

But, even with those nice virtual pats on the back, this part of the journey has mostly been walked alone. Now it’s time to pass our precious, perfect papers to persons with more distance to peruse our papers with a pen.

Gulp.

When we receive our feedback, we’re tempted to argue. But we don’t because someone has been nice enough to tear our works of art into tatters take their time to make us better writers. There might be rants, pints spoonfuls of ice cream consumed, and bottles glasses of red wine gulped.

We sit on the critique. While we do, some of those comments, though painful, make sense. Yeah, why did I think it was a good idea to kill off the only romantic interest in chapter one of my romance novel?

Other suggestions might not sit so well with us. No, I don’t think my YA protagonist should be seven years old because it would be cute if she had the IQ of 2500 and had to skip a bunch of grades to have all these teen experiences.

Then we hunker down and fix the worst piece of drivel since… there is no since. I’m a hack. Why am I wasting my time? Why did I waste anyone’s time in the hopes they could suggest a way out to fix this mess. I’m pathetic. the manuscript until it shines like my eyes filled with tears.

And we repeat this process until it sparkles.

Yeah, this could take a while.

Then it’s time to write the query a million few times, research agents, and hit send…

…only to receive rejections in return.

Ingrates.

But there’s always hope that one person reads our query and pages and requests the rest and loves the book and signs you on and shops your manuscript and gets a bunch of offers and there’s a bidding war and they give you cruise-ship-fulls of money and the book winds up on the NYT Bestseller List and sells more copies than that big hot mess novel everyone is raving about…

Whew.

It could happen.

Hope for more, prepare for less, and be happy with anything in between.

Good luck!


Writers, how do you maintain mental stamina?

Want to add From Stage Door Shadows to your list?
Goodreads

Purchase info:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
The Book Depository
eMergent Publishing

On the emergent site, the book is $19.99 and the ebook formats are $4.95.


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