Small Writing vs. Big Writing

Hi readers and writers,

I need to work on a biography that is almost finished and a novel that is about 1/3 done, the latter being a requirement for my MFA program, due by next May in its entirety.  So why is it that my mind skips away to rewriting a travel essay so I can submit it to a contest, polishing up a story about a CO who worked in an insane asylum during WW II to submit to another contest, reformatting a third story to submit for a June 1 deadline?  These contests are fine, but they're just putting off what I really need to do.

Write these books.  Concentrate.  I put my tailbone to the chair and I open the computer and then, my mind plays hooky.  I am getting tired of it, but still, day after day, I don't get down to the jobs I really need to do.

Anyone out there faced this problem and found some great solutions you'd like to share?  I bet I'm not the only one who procrastinates by "pretending" to write, working on the non-urgent jobs and avoiding the important ones.  How can I point my errant brain to what I need it to work on?  My problem is, any time I get too logical, I can no longer write (or I go into science-writing-style, using passive, chronological, logical, simplified, direct, no dialog, no "i").  But this situation is very stressful.  I'd love to get some good, constructive suggestions!

cheers,
Laura

The worst reason to write

Dear readers and writers,

Probably the best reason to write is that you can't help yourself, you must.  Another reason is that you have something you want to say to the world.  If you write fiction, maybe you have a character or several of them who have fascinating ideas and insights to offer the world.

The worst reason I can think of to write something is because "that's what they want."  My fiction writing seminar class last Wednesday met with an agent who confirmed something I suspected: the timing is all wrong for you if you sit down to write what's topical today.  You'll write it, say taking a year.  You'll take six months (if you're lucky) to find a agent to represent it.  They'll work with you for six months, submit to publishers.  Again, you'll work with an editor for six months if you're lucky enough to be signed.  Then, it will take about a year to publish the book.  So, with the utmost in benign timing at every step, it will be three and a half years before your book is in bookstores.  How many trends last three years?  Not many.

So, I take hope from the idea that only writing something moving, something deep, something I really care about and can't resist writing down is my best strategy for writing a novel.  I need not write about vampires or zombies or hungry competitors; these trends won't be around when and if my novel is published.  Instead, I need to write with my own unique voice, with the imagery of my own world, and trust that an audience will respond to the authenticity when I'm finished.  May it be so for me, may it be so for you.

best,
Laura
Image from Creative Commons, with thanks.

Novels vs Romances

One of my SDSU professors just told us tonight that novels will break your heart with the bitterness of the real, but might make you rich. He portrayed novels as embracing realism to unmask the ploys of the rich to keep the poor praying in the kitchen. We're reading DeFoe, Richardson, Austen, the Brontes, Virginia Woolf, and others. Nothing current, but he rasied the question, why is realism waning today, way beyond the slight shrinkage of a gibbous moon to a mere sliver of its former popularity? We've even started calling the precursor of the novel, the romance, by the same name: novel.

He talked passionately about the vampire novels/romances, wondering why readers have stopped wanting the secrets of how to escape the ploys of society and seek your own happiness. Instead they want to pursue dreams, and not their own dreams, the dreams that others foist onto them. It's as bad as craving a frog prince. No vampires out there, sorry. One student (male) suggested these novels are making young girls think stalking is romantic. Argh!

While I am not convinced that embracing rampant materialism would make people happy, or that realism is far more useful and powerful than romance, I do think this man cares deeply about his subject. I'm glad to be able to hear his thoughts for a semester.