How Do You Accept Compliments?

General, Writing

In and amongst the multitude of positive and negative/constructive comments I received in the feedback stage of “The Devil and Casari: Ad Hominem,” I was also blessed by several outstanding compliments that flat out made me blush.  While these were being delivered, I did my best to nod and smile (albeit verbally, since most everything was over the “phone”) and say thanks, but all the while on the inside I was churning with fear. Was this for real?  Would someone really want to see this book on their mantle, or was that something just nice to be said to someone who had done so much hard work on a project?  I know…and I mean I KNOW…that the compliments were/are sincere, but that massively insecure past of me continues to scream that it was all a lie, that someone was just being nice, that they didn’t really mean it, and on and on and on.

Giving sincere compliments is a joy, so why is it receiving them is so hard?  What’s wrong with me that my first response to a compliment its to self-deprecate?  Seriously?!

Example:
You: Nice haircut.
Me: Thanks, I got tired of spending money.

See, mocking myself already. As it should be.  Enough about me, though; I’d like to hear from you instead.  How do you take a compliment?  Do you say something nice in return, do you self-loathe and mock, do you smile and stay silent, what?  Comment below, leave something on my Facebook post, whatever, but I’d love to hear just how you react when someone says something nice about you or your work. 

If I like it, I might even compliment you just to see it in action. 

The 7th Inning of Writing

TDaC, Writing

And so it came to pass that the writer received (most of) his feedback and armed himself for the next great leg of the quest: the editing.

With most of the feedback in and ideas for fixes firmly growing in my mind, I find myself ready for the daunting task of editing. This is where I take my beloved book, stare it right in the face, and for the first time openly say, “Baby, you are UUUUUGLY!  I’ve seen some ugly books in my time – yeah, I’m looking at you [NAME REDACTED FOR FEAR OF DESCENDING HORDES OF FANS] – but you, little Mr. “TDaC: AH”, you take the ugly cake!” 

In terms of people, all babies are beautiful, especially yours.
In terms of writing, all books are flawed…none more so than yours.

Editing is tough. It means approaching your work with a fresh set of eyes, a task that is fundamentally impossible to do when you’re the one who actually wrote the thing. Yes, there are tricks, but in the end it’s still your baby, your work, your mental blood, sweat, and (sometimes physical) tears. Taking any type of instrument, be it blunt or sharp, surgical or broad, and applying it to your work can be painful. It can be a good type of pain, like that you feel after a serious workout, or a bad type, like when you stub your toe at one in the morning on your kid’s bouncy chair right outside his room and don’t want to scream for fear of waking him and subsequently his mother who would have to feed him to get him back to sleep so you have to hold it all in until it passes but that only makes it hurt worse so you sit down right on top of a naked Barbie doll from one of your other kids and…well…that kind of pain, yeah.  Regardless of the type, pain is pain, and no one likes to hurt. Except maybe editors. Or dentists. But let’s be honest; the giving side and receiving side of pain are two different kinds, so let’s move on.

On the positive side, being in edit mode is like being in the seventh inning of baseball. I’ve had my time away – my stretch, so to speak – and now I’m ready to get back in the game.  Gonna take this one all the way home, leave nothing on the field, swing for the fences, add in a few more spots metaphors…whatever it takes to get the job done.  Shouldn’t be too hard; most of the game has already been played. I once read that Joss Whedon said to do the fun stuff first and then do the dog’s work of connecting everything together, because that way you have something you already like when it is finished. For me, the editing is d the dog’s work. I already have something I like; now it’s time to polish it up and let it shine.

Important as it is to finish this game and log it in the play book, it’s even more important to remember there’s another one waiting in the wings to be played.

P.S./Note to self: writing a book on writing in the form of a tongue-in-cheek fantasy quest would be hilarious. Do this…next season.

Gotta Burn to Build

Religious, TDaC, Writing

An official half of all beta readers are finished with rough draft number one!  Huzzah huzzah!  With readings come critiques, and as requested, they are painful and unforgiving.  My stomach is in knots, my heart it is a’racing…yeah, the picture should be an easy one to draw. They burn, they burn! 

GOOD! 

These bodyblows help strengthen the writing, find flaws that I was blind to, and suggest trimming or plumping of certain areas or thoughts. Cool.  Of course, that means more work for me, but what’s the point asking for critiques if you don’t listen?  I’m not taking all suggestions to heart, mind you; after all, these are critics, not co-authors, so I’ll do as I please. It just so happens top please me to do most of what’s suggested. 

Among the best suggestions thus far are the addition of several chapters increasing the relationship between the three main characters, so that’s what I’ll be working on while the other half of my beta readers finish their copies.

In other pointless news, one of the exorcists whose book was influential to my writing “just” (May 2015) participated in the first ever recorded (so written) COUNTRY WIDE exorcism. Target: Mexico. Why?  In part, this heinous death cult of Sante Muerte, or “Saint Death”.  Evil, evil, evil!  People hesitate to turn to God but THIS gets their attention?  Tell me again how Satan isn’t real or isn’t operating in our world? 

Alright, end pointless rant and not coincidentally pointless news update. More as it comes!

Regarding Charleston

Uncategorized, ,

I find it difficult to address the racial terrorism that occurred in Charleston this week, so instead of focusing on the young man who committed the crime or the martyrs’ Earthly bodies that were shed, I want to focus on something the South Carolina governor said. To paraphrase, if we can’t feel safe in our churches, where can we feel safe? Respectfully, church is the last place I should feel safe, and here’s why: Christians are targets, period.

Those of us who are followers of Christ shouldn’t be comfortable because we know…or at least we SHOULD know…that we have a giant target on our chest. Satan isn’t gone; looking at Charleston, it’s clear it is still insidiously active.  The Pope recently said in a video message (again, paraphrasing) that Satan wants the ruin of all souls, but especially those who call themselves followers of Christ. We have spiritual targets on our chests, targets that Satan points out to the wicked and the weak.  Charleston is just a physical symptom of a spiritual disease. We, the Body of Christ, have the medicine for this illness at the tips of our fingers.  How many times have we been told to pray?  More importantly. How many times have we done it? 

Others will argue for greater gun control or checks on mental health or stricter rules on this or on that, but I will stand up and beg for more prayer…starting with me. I’m not the most prayerful person; I have my ups and downs like everyone else. One of the keys to spiritual defense (so I have read) is having a proper focus on right things. Praying for the bad to go away isn’t nearly as effective as praying for the good to sustain, so I will do my best to pray this week for the uplifting of those who have been affected and those who are suffering over this act of violence.  As Christians, let us also remember to pray not only for the families of the victims or those of the shooter, but also for the soul of the shooter himself. As one of God’s creations, we should pray for God to have pity on his soul and bring him home through conversion.

The attack in Charleston was a statement on race delivered at the point of a gun. Now it is time for Christians to rise and give our response at the joining of folded palms. May God bless and keep us, every one.

Persist, Persevere, and Push On!

Writing

Time to talk about taking time to write.

Now that beta readers are starting to send in their feedback for “The Devil and Casari: Ad Hominem”, I feel like it’s time to send a message to those who have always wanted to write a book but aren’t really sure how (because clearly I’m an expert now).  There are tons of great strategies out there involving character-first development, plot organization, visualization, chunking…if you can think of it, chances are someone’s used it as a writing method. As for me, whenever anyone asks, I try to always give the same advice. Ready?  Here it is:

Put pen to paper.

Conversely:

Put fingers on keys.

Got it?

Seriously, that’s about it.  I mean, that’s a start, and the journey of a thousand steps and all that, right?  I once read that the best way to succeed at something was to fail over and over again until you stopped failing, and so it is with writing.  You can have the best idea in the world, but until you put pen to paper or fingers to keys, you’ve got bupkis. Want to write a military thriller but don’t know how it’ll end?  It won’t if you don’t start. Have a great romance novel all bottled up inside looking for the perfect meet-cute?  Put fingers to keys and let the characters tell you how to get there.  Need a third example to really drive the point home?  Write it you’re darn self!

Here’s the thing: appreciate your failures, because every stop on that road is a milestone on your path to success. As to those milestones…they aren’t telling you how much further you have to go, they’re telling you how far you’ve already gone.  To quote Brandon Sanderson, “Journey before destination”.  It’s not where you’re going, it’s how you get there.

See, the place you think you’re going to doesn’t exist anymore…if it ever did. Success as a location simply doesn’t exist because, well, it’s always moving. If I could just get an agent, if I could just get on that top Amazon list, if I could just sell 1, 10, 100 books, then I’m a success. Problem is, success is always moving. To me, it is like light from a star born billions of years ago but just now getting to us; that star as we see it no longer exists and, in fact, is likely already dead and gone, exploded into something magnificent or collapsed into something dense and impenetrable. (Note to self: do post comparing success to stars like this.)  Either way, the point is simple: success isn’t where someone else tells you it should be, it’s wherever you are in your journey on the road.  Putting pen to paper or fingers to keys gets you on the road; the sheer act of writing makes you a successful writer.  So stop reading and start writing.

Seriously, stop.

Go away.

Write.

Roughly go the Drafts

TDaC, Writing

After weeks of primping and crimping and preparing and panicking and etc and so forth, the first official Rough Draft of “The Devil and Casari: Ad Hominem” is finally in my beta readers’ mailboxes.  May God have mercy on their souls.

Why Writers are Neurotic Poster Children: Neurosis 76

Neurosis, Writing, ,

Neurosis 76: Perfect Errors

Writers spend so much time perfecting things that we eventually become immune to our errors. Today’s case in point – three minutes after sending out my first rough draft to my first beta reader, I noticed three separate errors. Three in three; not liking the ratio here.

Yeah. I had it down too. It took me two days to get the formatting correct going from a Word .DOCX document to a Kindle-formatted .MOBI document, but I had it down. Perfect. Every chapter read by my alpha reader and gone over by me more than once. No worries. Sent off. Jubilation supreme. Glow basking. All that jazz. Perfect, I say again, perfect.

Then I found the first error – the formatted crosses I spent part of the two days fixing didn’t work after the first instance. Then I noticed a chapter heading didn’t populate correctly, so it wasn’t in the TOC. Then I noticed a tiny issue that two people had the same name…and confusing the two would make for major issues towards the end of the book. Yeah, no worries.

Now as I read further on my own kindle, errors pop out everywhere. I can imagine the sentences talking to each other inside my computer as they plan their hiding spaces.

“Okay sentence explaining exorcism, you’re going to hide a small ‘not’ there in the middle of you so that everything Colin just wrote is invalidated. You, you over there holding the important information on Patti’s backstory, drop that comma so you’ll look like you’re saying the opposite of what he wrote. Ah, good work boys, let’s see him get taken seriously after this.”

And that’s just after three minutes of reading on my own.  God only knows what my readers will find.

The only thing perfect in my writing is the errors.

Achievement unlocked: Neurosis 76 exhibited. Writer’s badge updated.

Blogging the First

Writing, ,

If the old saying about never having a second chance at a first impression is true, then I’m long, long, long past saving. I prefer instead to focus on my own saying: There may be a first time for everything, but it’s what you do afterward that counts. This blog is, to me, a significant part of that ‘afterward’. 

My desire for this blog is to discuss my writing in every aspect, from concept to publication, word choices, editing, concerns, etc.  For now, the need to conquer the fear of blank spaces is more important than the need to be funny or profound or witty. Just get it on paper, dummy; there’s always room for editing later.

Finally, I would be seriously remiss if I didn’t take a moment to wish my wonderful wife a Happy Anniversary. Fourteen years and she hasn’t gotten tied of me yet. Thank God. Love you Kimberly!