An Insecure Writer’s Support Group Post: Where is the Very First Piece of Writing I Wrote?

Okay, so I may not remember if this was the very first piece of creative writing I wrote as an adult, but it was toward the beginning of my “writing career,” if I can call it that. 

            At the time, I was taking a correspondence writing course with The Institute of Children’s Literature Group.  I’m sure I’m dating myself with the mention of “correspondence courses,” but I had five little kids and no time to go to the bathroom in those years.   I wrote several pieces during that course.  This particular story was my favorite.  Luckily, I never abandoned it.  I did constantly revise it, though.  One of my many insecurities—constantly revising!

            “The Unusual Tour Guides” became “Emerging from Darkness,” my first YA published short story in Cricket Magazine in 2012, the October issue.  Since then, I have published four stories with Cricket Magazine.  Yes, I’m still pinching myself to be sure I’m awake!  And, no, it didn’t happen overnight.  It took years.  And years.

            “Emerging from Darkness” went through various workshops and critique groups.  I made the mistake of taking too many people’s advice, another insecurity I have.  Everyone else can write better than I can. 

Even short stories need to have both the internal and the external struggle.  What I needed to filter out was any advice that was outside my story scope or not how Victoria Marie Lees wrote.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the difficult part when receiving critiques and advice.

 The editors at Cricket liked the premise: a young teen still grieving from the recent death of her mother and resisting the need to become the caretaker for her younger brother.  Of course, then I needed to add in a bit of adventure in a national park setting, it’s becoming my trademark.  My family and I have been blessed to go camping every summer and we usually choose National Parks.  I maintain a Camping with Five Kids blog of our many true adventures. 

It’s so easy to say, never give up on a story.  I have many stories living on my computer for which I am still trying to find homes.  Perhaps I need to try harder.  At least I should stop trying to incorporate everyone’s advice or revising the poor things to death, and just send the stories out to markets.   

Please feel free to offer some advice of your own on how you filter out which comments to incorporate from critique and which to disregard for your manuscript and how you let go of revisions to send it out.  It would be greatly appreciated.  All the best to you.  

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

An Academic Foundation Can Be Had

Remaining positive for the

  new draft of my college memoir

All I needed was time.  But that’s what I lacked.  Or so it seemed.  Many times, the older students have fulltime jobs and/or a family to care for.

            I fell under the “family” category—all five of them.  As I’ve said before, my oldest daughter is special needs.  She required more of my time for her education to be a success.  My children were my life.  Their future was in my hands.  I couldn’t mess it up.

            But so was mine.  I couldn’t mess up my future, my education either.

            So I started studying the college’s idea of basic math that summer before I began college.  I bought a used math textbook at the college’s book store and tried to figure out percentages and fractions and basic algebra.  I even took the text and a notebook on our family’s camping trip.    

            Somehow, the math didn’t seem so basic to me.

            I drove my poor husband nuts each night for two weeks.  After days of hiking the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia with young children, after trying to feed seven people with one old two-burner Coleman stove, after campfires, telling stories and putting them all to bed, he was not in the mood for math.  [Imagine that!]

I needed to wait for the basic skills math classes to begin at college.

Luckily, some of that basic math helped out in a funny little requirement called college-level science because there wasn't a basic skills class for science.  The only drawback with my college science course was that Chemistry was all new to me.  It’s true, ladies and gentlemen; I didn’t know what a periodic table was.  And don’t even ask me what all the little numbers meant!

            Then there was the literature.  No basic skills classes here either.  I mean I heard of Shakespeare.  Not Homer.  Never read either's work.  I hadn't even read Hemingway.  I didn’t have literature in high school.  I didn’t know people wrote books about journeying through Hell.  I read mysteries and adventure stories.  I needed to start collecting literature and begin reading before classes.

            The traditional college students, the ones entering college directly from high school, possessed all this foundation.  I couldn’t cope in college without it.  I needed to make the time to obtain it. 

Did you find your college preparatory classes in high school truly prepared you for college?

An Insecure Writer’s Support Group Post: Writers helping Writers

Hello and welcome everyone to my first Insecure Writer’s Support Group post.  The topic this month is: What's the best thing someone has ever said about your writing?

For me, it was: “Your story is interesting.”  I received this comment for my memoir about attending college with five children in tow from an experienced writer.  A good writer.  A writer I admire.  And my first thought was, whew!  Now I can sleep nights. 

Then I started thinking, but what do I do now?  “Interesting” is only part of the writing process. 

I’m still floundering in the dark about this. 

I am a concrete thinker and writer.  You see I overthink my writing.  Constantly.  Even my blog posts and facebook notes.  I fret, I fuss.  My college journey was quite difficult because of all this.  I thought for sure the family would disown me before I graduated. 

The only way I can think to move forward on my memoir is to apply some of the tactics I used to get through college.  

Lock Inferiority in a closet—preferably one far from where you write and create.  This way you won’t hear her rattling the doorknob.

Trick yourself.  Tell yourself that what you write is only for you.  No one else will see the poop you create.    

Go for a walk—just you, your thoughts, and your doubts.  Don’t be afraid to get inside yourself and listen to yourself.

Talk to yourself.  Go ahead.  I do this all the time.  [Since we’re not supposed to lie, I’m not going to say that I always get good answers.]

And reward yourself if you stay seated [or standing nowadays] writing at your computer or by hand for any length of time.  You deserve it.

Well, it’s time for me to use some of my advice and move forward on my memoir.  Please feel free to offer some advice of your own to move forward on any project you begin.  It would be greatly appreciated.  All the best to you.  

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Inferiority Comes to Live at My House

           

Looking across the chasm of

   confusion to a new version

      of my college memoir.

 And she was worse than a newborn baby, draining my concentration so.  Inferiority was in my face constantly.  Every time my younger classmates, like experts, maneuvered around the websites or programs in the new technology during class, there she was, laughing at me as I tried to jot down notes and perform the steps necessary to complete the task, desperately trying to keep up with the class. 

            Inferiority would hide inside my book bag and sneer at me as I racked my brain trying to come up with some concrete connection to the literature text at hand, or find some philosophical theory that could explain the actions of historical public figures at the moment of crisis or even explain the historical context of a poem.  Where did my younger counterparts come up with all these ideas?  Why were they so much braver than I?  

At home when I tried to write my critical papers, I had to shove Inferiority into a cupboard.  You could hear her scratching at the door and rattling the doorknob.  I’d post a note on the cupboard door: “Beware, Mom’s Inferiority is trapped inside!”  I didn’t want the kids opening the door to find out what all the noise was and then have Inferiority escape only to fly to my fingers at the keyboard and keep me from writing. 

No, I needed to get past this feeling of inferiority.  I needed to learn to speak up for myself during class if I had a question, ask why something was wrong if I didn’t understand, and challenge a grade to see how to improve for the next time.  This is something I had been teaching my children their whole lives.  Now it was time I did the same. 

Believe in myself.  I needed to believe in myself.  But that blasted inferiority.  I felt that everyone knew much more than I, had read all the appropriate texts prior to enrolling in the class, or at least had the foundational courses necessary to excel in the present class.  I was twice their age and never heard of half the technology used at college, never mind the pertinent movies or literature.    

To gain that belief in myself, I needed a solid college foundation.  But I wanted to attend college classes.  Now.  Playing catch-up becomes a reality.  Everyone knows foundations take time.  And time is another issue for the older student or parent attending college. 

As I begin a new revision of my memoir, please pose any questions you may have about my college journey as a mother of five or share some insight from your college journey.  It would be greatly appreciated.  

Finding Courage to Begin College

My treasure! They helped

me survive college.

Happy Mothers’ Day, everyone!  I wish you smiles and sunshine, love and laughter.

My memoir is a story about believing in oneself, of finding the courage to begin a dream and then discovering the strength needed to see it through to completion.   The perspective is an older student beginning college, one with no college preparatory foundation.  A person with children to raise, a home to maintain, and a college curriculum to understand.  It’s supposed to be a humorous journey of a mother of five through college: how I coped with both motherhood and college.

I don’t know if I was afraid of academia, afraid of going to college exactly.  I think it was more like I was nervous about embarrassing myself in front of other adults and people I didn’t know.  But aren’t most people worried about that?

            Compounding this was the fear of looking bad in the eyes of my children.  Let me explain.  I was the head of my household.  Okay, I shared the duties with my husband, but I was in charge of the home front.  I did the homework and projects with the children.  I retaught my learning disabled firstborn each day.  I was their entertainment more often than not.  We were a tight family unit.  [God blessed us for sure!]  If I did poorly at college, I thought, it would be like I failed my family.

            These are some mental issues I address in my memoir.  But I need to go deeper.  I need to explore this idea of finding courage.  And then maintain that courage to gain that degree.

            Now because I lacked the courage to begin college, I feigned bravery to be able to register, to take the basic skills test, and then the basic skills math courses.  Because I was afraid and dressed myself in a false front, I became edgy and started lacking in my attention to the children, their antics, their well-being, the home, meals.  These anecdotes fill the pages of the memoir.

            If I think about it, it was more a feeling of being unprepared for college.  Other college students, younger college students, had a preparatory foundation that I lacked. 

            Not having this college foundation tied into my next obstacle attending college:  a feeling of inferiority.  And it intensified once I gained entry to University of Pennsylvania.

Critiques: A Necessary Part of a Writer’s Life

Testing the waters of critique.
It’s deep and luminous in there.

Why is it easier for writers to see what’s not working in other writer’s work but not their own?

            *Sigh*

            This is why all writing needs to go through critique, because more often than not, writers may not be able to unlock the problems in their own writing.  It’s probably because as writers, we are so married to what we wrote, we can’t see past it.  Having someone who does not know our story look at it with fresh eyes is extremely necessary for all writing.   

Take my “collection of anecdotes,” ahem…I mean my memoir.  I know the memoir is mostly a collection of anecdotes, but they’re funny anecdotes.  However, I also know that anecdotes alone do not make a memoir.  At this point, I’m just not exactly sure how to fix it.

            Organization and pacing is what’s needed according to Kate, my super Author Accelerator editor. 

            People come to memoir looking for personal connection with the author, she reminded me.  Readers are looking for my progress as a human being and not just a progression of college courses.  Just as in story, the protagonist needs to grow and change.  I knew this, too, and in my memoir I certainly grew and changed.  But it seems that I didn’t put in enough whys and whats and hows and a consistent overarching theme that affects the plot arc.  

I have so much work to do.  

           

            But I need to help Kate understand that no one was abused or tragically died in the making of this memoir journey.  Well, except for that shy and unsure mother who was afraid of her own intellect in the beginning of the memoir.  The mother who emerged at the outset of this college journey is a more confident woman. 

Or at least she was…until the critique of the memoir came back.

            Does there need to be more substance in the memoir?  For sure.  How do I do it?  Um…that’s what this next leg of the journey will be about.   

This is when, my dear followers, I dry my tears, blow my nose, and consider and decide and revise.  I haven’t even gone through the entire manuscript critique yet.  I’ve only read the summary of the critique.  I need to remember this will take time and lots of intestinal fortitude. 

You have all been very helpful with your insight.  Do you have any advice to share regarding these points?

The Narrative Voice in Writing

The narrator guides readers through 

the story journey just as a trail guide 

leads hikers through the forest. 

The narrative voice is just as important in memoir as it is in fiction, for memoir is a true story. 

Writers need to think who is telling the story. 

What point of view should they use? 

First person; I, me, through the speaker’s mindset only. 

Third person; he, she, Victoria, through his or her mindset only. 

Omniscient; think God here, the narrator knows all and can think and see the action through the minds of more than one character. 

This is just a quick stroke from the point of view narrator palette.  The main point is for the writer to focus in and realize whose eyes the writer is looking through to make the story exciting for the reader. 

A good way to find the narrator of a story is to determine who changes the most in the story.

Most times, memoir is a first person account of a particular time in the writer’s life.  Remember that memoir is only a slice of life story and not the entire life of the writer.  Sometimes the writer can act as an observer of another in a third person account of the time being remembered.  For my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, I am the narrator who is experiencing each of the lessons in the story as they unfold.

Like any important character in the story, the narrator must be well-developed for readers to stay connected.  He or she needs to be the guide in the story, taking the reader along the journey of events.  The reader needs to be immersed in the scenes, feeling what happens.    

To do this, the writer must provide specific details to flesh out the scenes and make the world real to readers, details that encompass the senses—not forgetting taste and touch.  The narrator’s primary job, according to John Gardner in The Art of Fiction, is to convince the reader that the events she recounts really happened. 

                                                                                                       

Beth Kephart says, in her book Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, the narrator needs to remain vulnerable in order to learn, along with the reader, on the journey of the story.  The narrator must discover something new, something surprising—even to her.  This shows the growth and development of the narrator character throughout the manuscript.  The narrator can find the order in the disorder of story life.

This is how good authors write.  We want the readers experiencing the drama right along with the narrator. 

            Is it easy to do?  Hardly!  If it were, writers would have a seamless time of it.

            By the way…my “seams” are in tatters after all the comments made in my synopsis. 

However, instead of revising and getting yet another copy of the same manuscript with the same flaws, I decided to send my 73,099-word, 237-page memoir about attending college as a mother of five for a developmental critique by professionals.  The Author Accelerator group says it will take about a month to get back the critique.  I’ll let you know how it turns out. 

In the meantime, do you have any thoughts on the narrative voice that you’d like to share?  They would be greatly appreciated.