sorry-not-sorry but kinda but not

My American friends laugh every time I say "sorry", but it's an ingrained habit. Besides, while I'm travelling abroad, I might as well keep up my image of the polite Canadian who stresses her vowels and can't help adding in the occasional "eh". I even had a shirt made up.

And the back says "Sorry". Even my clothing is apologetic!

So ... yeah. It's been awhile. I'm not sure if I want to apologize for my absence or not. Certainly I wasn't expecting to be away this long. However, multiple personal crises and family member health emergencies (on top of a few things that were good but added even more stress) hit me all at the same time, because when it rains, for me it freaking pours, and even this incurable optimist has been tested.

Yes, tested. Euphemisms and understatements are kinda my thing.

At any rate, one area of my life that also suffered in this clustercrush* of bad was my notes. Of which I have an embarrassment. So I'd like to try to get back to that, if for nothing else than the fact that I'm trying to build some good habits and patterns in my life.

I just thought y'all deserved an update, first.

* My word, but feel free to use. You get the satisfaction of "cluster", and the amusement of watching eyes widen in horror because of how people expect you to finish.

Failing Better, Celebrating Best: March Madness End-Of-Month Check-In #WIPmadness

Welcome to the final check-in for the 2014 March Madness Challenge! Before we get started on the celebrations, I've been informed by our fearless leader Denise that we still have a few prizes left.

The final winners for March Madness are...

Elderfox!
Akoss!

Jeanne Ryan!

Kristin Butcher!
Congratulations! Stop by our goal-setting post, and choose your prize from those still listed (first come, first serve). Email Denise at d(at)denisejaden(dot)com with your choice and we'll get it out to you as soon as possible.

If you’ve won a prize this month, I hope you enjoy it! If not, keep checking in throughout the year, as many of our weekly hosts offer up prizes from time to time.

* * *

So, here we are at the end of another month, another year, of absolute madness. Now it's time to weigh in about how the entire month went for you. Dearest Mad Marchers, how did you do?

Did you meet your goals? Congratulations!

Did you *exceed* them? Wow, go you!

Or did you maybe not quite make them? Could you be feeling a bit disheartened about that? Don't be. Because no matter how much you did manage to accomplish, even if it was only a fraction of what you intended, you're farther than you were when March began.

However your mad month turned out, it's all valid.

This is an important thing to remember. Life often throws challenges our way. And yes, the platitudes about how "it's not the destination, it's the journey" can feel a bit wearing when we don't get to where we want to be in the time we originally planned. But it's really true. Take, for example, how my month turned out.

Confession time: *I* didn't meet the goals I set back at the start of March. Me, one of the hosts, who should be leading the charge by setting a good example to everyone involved in March WIPmadness. And yet, if I wanted to be negative about it, I could say that I failed:

1. I completely ignored my goals this weekend while throwing my energy into an out of town convention.
    
2. I set aside the urban fantasy I was planning to work on in favour of outlining another YA project I'm not even going to *start* writing this month.
    
3. And then I failed at finishing *that* because I hit a major plot hole I couldn't seem to climb out of.

Yep, that's a total fail. Right?

Not the way I see it. And here's why:

1. I took the time this convention to explore some of the writing panels that were offered. (And wow, there were some great ones.) I didn't devote my entire convention time to this, especially because a lot of them conflicted with other events I really wanted to be at, but I did make it to four. And I came away with more notes to share with everyone, which I totally hadn't expected.
   
   
2. My goals change wasn't a cop-out. The project I'm now outlining was something I'd been avoiding because I hadn't felt ready to approach it, and didn't know how I could. Suddenly, that changed. So being able to actually finally sink my teeth into it was a relief, and for me, an even larger challenge. I'd been worried I wouldn't be able to.
   
   
3. Fixing that plot hole now, before I started writing the story, was also rewarding. Maybe it took longer to figure out than I'd intended, but the solution I came up with stays much more true to my character than what I originally came up with. It has ramifications throughout the entire story. Not only is this going to save me major headaches later, but the novel feels stronger for it. And I'm just getting started!

My point is this: maybe my month wasn't what I'd originally planned. Maybe I didn't get quite as much achieved in a quantitative sense. But the quality of my month was absolutely astounding, and I am really happy with how it all turned out. And no matter what you managed to achieve with your goals, you should feel the same.

Most importantly, this is just one month. The goals don't have to end here. Keep going! And you don't have to do it alone, either. Most months, we gather once a week on one of our members' blogs to check in officially. On top of that, the community meets year-round on Twitter, under the #WIPmadness hashtag.  Feel free to check in with the progress you're making on all of your creative goals. We'll all be there to support each other.


Edit: Charlie Holmberg has offered to host the Monday check-ins for April at her blog, http://myselfaswritten.blogspot.ca/. Come join us!

The madness never stops. Onward, Wipsters! Let's embrace this crazy together.

So, ready to weigh in on how your month went, Mad Marchers? Let's hear it!

I Hate Salads (or, Resistance ain't Fertile) - March Madness Check-In, Day 24 #WIPmadness

Happy Monday, Mad Marchers! Still hanging in there? I am ... but I'll admit it hasn't been easy. I've hit a few bumps in the road to outlining this new novel, but I think I'm back on track now. How about you?

Today I wanted to talk about something near and dear to me: food.

The past few years for me, it hasn't been super fun, because I was gluten intolerant. Spoiler: it went away a few months ago. Great for my sanity, not so much for my waistline. Sometimes, these things happen, which is awesome, but don't ask me to explain the whys behind it all. I'm not a doctor. But let me say one thing: trying to eat out when one has dietary restrictions can be very frustrating. Even more frustrating was the question I was asked, almost without fail:

"Can't you just have a salad?"

Within weeks I was ready to bite the head off of anyone who dared suggest such a thing. Maintaining my calm, my nostrils would flare, my expression would flatten and I would growl, in a voice two octaves lower than usual,

"NO."

(Forget that I sacrificed five years of my teens and very early twenties to a certain fast food chain and was even in charge of *making* the salads on some mornings, so I know how much is just bland iceberg lettuce with some flavourful toppings and a pack of salty-sugary-fatty dressing for extra disguise. So I wasn't exactly a cheerleader for the things. But I digress.)

After awhile, people stopped asking. And I went on my merry way, trying to figure out creative adaptations of fast food and restaurant menus without resorting to gluten, which at the time was giving me trouble.

But one thing I did start to like was spinach. That was healthy and I could take it in my lunch without dressing. And then after that, in 2012, I was in Vegas as a bridesmaid for my best friend's wedding, and we went out for dinner and the menu's pickings were slim, but they did have this really nice ... you guessed it ... salad. Except that it was "chicken, mandarins, walnuts and raspberries on a bed of spinach". No lettuce to speak of. And that got me to thinking, wait a minute. I could totally try it if there was spinach involved. Spinach, at least, was reasonably healthy.

So I tried it. And it was delicious.

And when I got home, I started re-thinking what the word "salad" meant to me. Yes, it was still something I'd only be interested in when the days are warm, but trying out *my* variation, using ingredients that *I* liked, changed everything.

And suddenly I was enjoying salads.

 
So, what does this have to do with writing?

More than you'd think. Because one thing I've learned about myself is that the things I resist the hardest are the things I should give some consideration. Especially when it applies to critical feedback and my work.

I've told the story before about how when I wrote the novel I'm currently shopping around, I used first person present tense, and thought that because that's how the novel first came to me that I should keep it that way. It's a great example. So many people tried to tell me to change the tense to past, but I was so stuck on the idea that this was how my main character had spoken to me, had told the story, that I refused to listen to reason.

Luckily I have an awesome CP who found a way to get through to me and make me re-think this resistance that was really holding me back. As a result, I was able to discover my voice and make the story, IMHO, sing.

Have you ever had such an experience? Where you keep saying "no" to an idea or change, or perhaps a manuscript revision, only to realize that, "Wow, that's so much better!"? It's happened to me more than once. (I'll save the story about why I had to cut the man-eating lizards chapter for another day.) Each time, I resist. But each time, after some grumbling, I notice an improvement.

Even if it's just in my lunch.

* * *

So, how are you faring with your goals, Mad Wipsters?

Newcomers: Don't know about March Madness for Writers? I know it's fairly late in the game, but if this is the first you've heard of this crazyfun approach to achieving goals, it's still not too late to get a full week's worth of work in! Just sign up here. We've got a great community that hangs out at #WIPmadness year-round, and we always have room for more. Check us out!

And of course, don't forget to check out Shari's blog tomorrow!

p.s. The recipe, as such:
- Baby spinach base
- 1/2 cup slivered almonds
- 1/2 cup grated cheddar
- frozen raspberries
- frozen strawberries
- mandarin wedges (from a Dole jar)
- Dressing: 2 tbsp FINI Modena Basalmic Reduction, mixed well with the juice of the thawed/jarred fruit on top  

When a Change Really Does You(r Story) Good (March Madness Check-In, Day 25) #WIPmadness

"Maybe you weren't ready for that ... but your kids are going to love it."

- Marty McFly, Back to the Future, Part I

I've been enjoying all of the Back to the Future references this month. Kudos to whoever came up with the idea first because it's been a lot of fun. Michael J. Fox has a special place in my heart because he's from my city, and there's even a few buildings around here with his name on it. Little known fact: did you know I have a poster of a young MJF circa 1987, urging kids to read? I think it was part of a series the American Library Association put out back then. The public library I was working at was throwing it out finally in 2007 because they had newer, shinier posters, so they let me take it. It now adorns one corner of my office, and it kind of broke my heart on Friday when two techs came by to install a new scanner and one of them said, "Who's Marty McFly?" Sigh.

So, before anything can happen to tinker with our timeline, I'd better announce another March Madness winner:

Carol Garvin!

Congratulations, Carol!

Now, back to the regularly scheduled madness. ^__^

One of the other awesome actors I had the fortune to see at Emerald City Comicon was none other than Christopher Lloyd, a.k.a. Doc Brown. He was fun to listen to. Before he began the Q&A, he mentioned something that neither me nor my husband knew: that before Michael J. Fox was chosen to play the role of Marty McFly, a significant chunk of the film was shot with a completely different actor.

Whoa. Really? That's a huge change to make for a major motion picture that far into production. But it looks like the decision paid off, because can you imagine the movies any other way?

Okay, so think about that. Have you ever made such a significant change to a writing project that you hadn't expected you'd ever make? Perhaps something that was there from the start that you'd started to ignore in revisions because it was so ingrained into the fibre of your work? Or have you began a project with one premise driving the story only to realize that no, the story needs to go somewhere else, and this thing you started with needs the boot?

One that really sticks out for me, one for the list of amusing tales later on in my writing career, is the fact that I started out writing the manuscript I'm sending to agents soon in an unsuitable POV: First-person present tense. To the point where writing in present tense came naturally to me, felt natural, and felt right. *shudders* I've learned my lesson now. This is not to say that it might work for others (case in point: Hunger Games) but it definitely wasn't meant to be for me. Turns out my characters function much better in the past tense. Realizing that mistake and fixing it was vital, because it helped me rediscover my real voice, not the voice I'd been adopting for all that time.

It was an eye-opener, but I feel so much better for it, and even more confident about my voice. Even though I basically did the equivalent with POV as was done with the actor for Marty McFly.

Marty: "Doc... what if we don't succeed?"
Doc Brown: "We must succeed."

And we will.

That's my two cents madness for the week. How about you? Thanks for checking in here, folks! Now don't forget to stop by Shari's blog tomorrow.

Embracing Change (March Madness Check-In, Day 5)

"Uncomfortable kitteh is ... apparently comfortable"

Welcome to March Madness Mondays! For those of you participating in the challenge, how's progress? For some, I know the weekend meant a break from the madness. For others, it was an opportunity. For me, it was a weird mix of both. I didn't manage quite what I'd intended to accomplish, but I made *some* progress. I'm up to Chapter 15 in my second pass read-through after making a major change. (More on that in a bit.)

Which brings me to my point.

Do you ever get attached to something? An element in your story. A certain creative habit. Even reading in a particular genre. Whatever it is, it's easy to fall into a comfort zone. We like it just the way it is and we don't want to let it go. So when someone tells us it doesn't belong or that we need to stretch ourselves or do things differently, then it rankles and if we're attached enough, the criticism falls on deaf ears.

But what if that means that we get so attached we refuse to make a change when we really need to? (Yoga pants, I am looking at you. Yes, you're comfortable. Fashionable everyday wear? I wish.)

So, what was it for me? Well, I always thought I was pretty flexible. Editorial suggestion? Sure! If something's not working, I can make changes. As long as the essence of the story remains, then if it makes things better, I can do both the story and myself justice by making those fixes. I'm not adverse to learning new things. If I have the opportunity to be a better writer, then I really ought to embrace it, right?

Yeah, but there was one little detail I'd decided was a non-negotiable.

Some of you already know the story, but I might as well explain it from scratch: My WIP, SIGN OF THE STAR, was written in first-person, present-tense. And even though some of my beta group told me that it didn't work for them, I chalked it up to a matter of opinion. The original was written that way. And that's how I wrote the revised version, too. But I clung to the idea that that was how the story was supposed to be. Even when one of the Magical Words folks made an excellent point that present tense comes at a heavy price. (Seriously, check the comments. See Moira Young's—my cursed pen name at the time—naive response.)

Then last month, I had tea with an awesome beta reader who doesn't pull punches, and she nailed the problem I'd been having with it when editing by telling me that "it was like watching through a veil". She had trouble connecting with the characters because the present tense created an artificial distance. Which was exacty not what I was going for.

So I caved. And before February was out, I'd changed the story over to past tense. (Really not hard, even though for awhile there I was mentally changing the tense of any text I encountered. Hooboy.) Now I'm making a second pass for clarity, voice and flow. And I love the story so much more. It feels more accessible. Janni's voice has never been more clear. Did I damage the story's integrity, or change my heartsong? Surprisingly, no.

Sometimes we have to make the change. Sometimes it can be scary. And sometimes it can be exactly what we need.

So, have you gotten stuck on or attached to something in your work? Have you asked yourself what the cost would be to you to try something different? What are the possible rewards? What's the worst that could happen if you gave it a chance? March Madness, #wipmadness, is about putting yourself out there, being daring. Let us embrace all that it can offer.

Update: Forgot to add, don't forget to check-in tomorrow (today actually) at Denise Jaden's blog.