by Janice M. Allen Developmental and Copy/Content Editor, and author of King of Lawndale, Growth, and No Right Way to Do a Wrong Thing.
Path to publishing: Won a contest which resulted in an independent publishing house offering to pick up my Christian anthology upon its completion; current novel under consideration by a different independent publishing house.
One of my writer friends can sit for ten hours in a lounge filled with conversation, movement, and music and write 30,000 words for whichever novel she happens to be working on at the time. Another friend of mine can lock herself away in her writing cave when faced with a deadline and emerge six hours later, having pounded out just under 20,000 words to complete her novel.
On the other hand, I can sit in my special writing place for hours, only to come out with one hand holding several locks of hair that I pulled out in frustration and the other hand holding a sheet of paper containing one—maybe two—typed paragraphs.
I won’t even wince at your initial diagnosis because I always thought the same thing you’re thinking; you’re just not a writer. But one of these friends, editor and national bestselling author Naleighna Kai, has edited some of the work I finally got out of my brain and onto paper, and she’s told me that I actually have the makings of a good author. “But she’s your friend,” you say. “She has to pump you up and tell you you’re good.” Point taken. But publishing houses don’t do that kind of thing. If your writing stinks, they throw it out like yesterday’s garbage. Yet amazingly, in the fall of 2013, I won the grand prize in the Xulon Press Christian Choice Writing Contest. The grand prize was a publishing package for an anthology I am currently writing. And several months ago, a second publishing house offered me a conditional contract based on a sample from my novel submitted to them by my agent.
So apparently, I’ve got the “good author gene.” I just seem to be missing the “fast writer chromosome.” While other authors know how to let creative thoughts freefall through their minds and onto the page, you can’t imagine the mental calisthenics I’ve gone through to get something worth reading on paper. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that my creative thoughts don’t flow. But when they do begin to flow, they often get trapped in a sieve in my brain, where they must be shaken and sifted and examined ad nauseum while I agonize over whether they’re good enough to be put on the page.
Part of the problem was that I expected the story to unfold in my mind in the exact order that the events would occur in the finished book. After completing a spellbinding chapter, I would not be able to move forward with the plot for days as I obsessed over what should happen next. Mind you, my imagination was busy creating new scenes, but because they seemed so unrelated to what should logically follow the chapter I had just finished, I rejected them and toiled to come up with what I thought should happen next in the book.
But in creative writing, the plot doesn’t always come to you chronologically. The scene or chapter your mind visualizes today may seem like it has absolutely nothing to do with what you’ve written so far. But one of the many valuable lessons I learned from my friend and mentor, Naleighna Kai, is: Don’t overthink it. Just get it all on paper.
At first, that was as difficult to accomplish as her telling me (a right-handed person) to write the Pledge of Allegiance with my left hand. It wouldn't be an impossible task, but I wouldn't get satisfactory results until I succeeded in training my left hand to function instead of my dominant right hand. So it was with my thinking. I've always been more of an analytical thinker. My creative mind was sorely underdeveloped. It wasn't easy at first (still isn't at times) to get out of the mode of scrutinizing and editing every thought before I put it on paper. But I was amazed to find that when I put all my thoughts on paper as they came to me, those seemingly random and unrelated passages were puzzle pieces that I could fit together into a complete and cohesive novel.
Don’t despair if you’re a slow writer. Learning to stop overthinking the process and just write didn’t get me in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the fastest writer alive. But it did amp up my speed from 1 mph to … let’s say 20 mph. So how long did it take me to write this article?
Don’t ask!
Lessons Learned:
Difficult and Impossible are not the same thing. Just because something is challenging for you to do, doesn’t mean it isn’t meant for you to do.