Tag Archives: perseverance

Spin Like The Spider

Posted on by
18
Ideas can take you by surprise...

Ideas can take you by surprise…

This morning, as I wandered home from school drop-off, a scene came into my head. ‘A-ha!’ I thought. ‘Here we go.’

The scene is for book three of my Ambeth series, Hills and Valleys. It came to me complete, and was just the scene I was looking for. Hills and Valleys is already written, as I’ve mentioned, but I’m now starting on the structural edit. So that means the new threads I added into books one and two need to be drawn up and woven into this story.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’d dropped into a bit of a writing lull. This happens after I publish a book, all the editing and rewrites and formatting and fingernail-biting making a break from the keyboard necessary. Plus my brain sort of stops giving me ideas for a few days.

So it was nice to take a trip back into Ambeth this morning. I went home and typed up the scene and it reads well, so far. It will need some work, maybe expanding a little, but I’m happy with it and the direction it is taking my character.

IMG_2344Outside my kitchen window is a large rosemary bush. For some time now, an orb-weaver spider has made it his (or her) home, stringing a large web between the bush and the nearby wall. We’ve all grown quite fond of this spider, greeting it as we come into the kitchen, taking an interest in its doings. For it is a hard worker. Each day, it seems, the intricate web is dismantled, rolled into a ball and discarded. Then another web, just as large and intricate, is woven in its place. Yesterday, it hung heavy with raindrops, like a crystal garland. Today’s web is tight, fresh and new, ready to catch lunch, or dinner, after a hard morning’s work. It perseveres, this little spider, because there is no other way. If it wants to eat, it must spin.

And this is a little lesson for me. To persevere with this writing and publishing game, even though sometimes it can be daunting. For it is what I want to do. If I want to be read, I must write. And so like the spider I spin each day, writing stories and blogs, making connections, promoting my work in increments, a fresh start each morning. And I’ve had some wonderful surprises along the way, made new friends, had new opportunities. And I feel very lucky to be on this journey.

Well, from the looks of this post it seems my Pantser writer brain is back in action! Watch this space…

 

Live In Hope

Posted on by
7
Even on a rainy day you sometimes get a rainbow. Too cheesy? ;-)

Even on a rainy day you sometimes get a rainbow. Too cheesy? 😉

The other day I received a rejection letter. It was fine, as they go. It addressed me by name, offered the vague yet slightly hopeful response that my story ‘wasn’t what they were looking for at the moment,’ and reminded me to format future submissions in standard manuscript format (which, to be honest, seems to change from submission to submission). It was just for a short story I’d sent to a magazine, a long shot to be honest and I hadn’t really been expecting much from it. So again, fine.

And yet, not. It really hurt, in an ow-y punch to the gut kind of a way. And I couldn’t really figure out why. I mean, it’s not my first rejection letter. But it is the first one I’ve received in a while. And then I realised that it had brought it all back to me. How it felt last summer when I was riding the submission train, living in hope only to have another letter, another email, dash my expectations to the ground. I wasn’t such a nice person for a little while – at least I felt I wasn’t, though perhaps no-one noticed. I did have a couple of requests for the full manuscript and some lovely responses from other agents, but they led nowhere in the end.

It is part of being a writer, they say. And of course it is. Just like one star reviews and people who get cross and launches that fizzle to nothing. The key is to persevere, they say, and I get that too. But that little rejection threw me. I realise I’m a bit emotional at the moment. I’m having some health stuff sorted over the next few weeks (which may mean I won’t blog as often for a little while) and that’s freaking me out. So perhaps that added to the intensity of my response.

But I am getting ready to re-board the train. I have a book called A Thousand Rooms that is nearly finished and that I hope to start submitting soon. Another summer marred by rain and rejection? I hope not 🙂 I shall gather my British optimism with regards to the capricious nature of both agents and the weather, and I shall live in hope. Because that’s part of being a writer too.