Writing for Fun and Profit and Jalapeno Corn

It's only October and I'm already starting to formulate goals for the New Year.

This is probably due to the fact that I spent the morning Christmas shopping. Is this jumping the gun or getting a jump on the gun-to-your-head type season that is coming at me like an army with bayonets?

I'm not sure.

Anyhow, I'm thinking about what kind of things I can be doing next year for writing. I have love, love, loved my novel writing experiences. I think it's the most satifying writing I've ever done. However, novel writing is what I'd put in the trickle-down category of earning. It takes a while to earn anything from writing a novel, royalties only come in a lump sum every six months (at least that's how mine come), and it eventually trickles to a drip, which is fine unless you have something new written coming down the pipe and didn't take a couple of years off to be the mommy of the kids. 

That's fine. Most novelists don't quit their day jobs, and I never could (as a stay-at-home mom it would be a colossal mistake. Plus, I kinda like my job. My bosses are pretty hilarious. And good fodder for the novels.)

So, as for the new goals, I think I'm starting to want to try some new formats. I've been writing novels for about 15 years. Before that, I wrote essays and short stories--and a bunch of papers for college (not a format I'd like to revisit.) My good friend Donna Hatch told me recently she had written a couple of novellas she put up on Smashwords and made available for Kindle and Nook. She had a fun time writing them. That sounded fun to me, and like not as much pressure as a full-blown 85,000 word novel to calibrate. And if I get something cute done, nice and frothy, I might do what Donna did and make it available for sale as an e-book. Even if I only make a few bucks, that's a profit, right?

For the past several years I've been writing a book review column for our local newspaper. I love it. I get to inflict on the local populace my taste in books. Ha! Sometimes I go to a doctor's office or a city luncheon and people say, "I've heard your name. Where...?" I tell them I write the column, and that's usually how they knew me. I'm using up all 15 minutes of my fame this way. It's not a bad way, promoting other writers' books. Good times! I haven't written a column lately (too busy writing to read much I'd like to recommend), so I think in the new year my goal will be to step that up, funnel a few more columns their way.

Besides that, I got a new community-involvement-assignment to work on the county's state Centennial celebration and do the write-ups for that. It should be a good variety of challenges, from the news releases to a pamphlet here and there, to website content, to a history of a local landmark. That'll make me stretch.

A friend of mine, Valerie Steimle Bashein Foy, from ANWA (my writers group) keeps posting on our Facebook group whenever she gets a byline in a magazine, newspaper, or e-zine. She's raking in the clips! It's inspiring! I don't know how much she gets paid for each column, but even if it's just a few dollars here and there, it's cool that her writing is valuable enough that she is being paid for it. That makes her a professional writer. I love it. She's quite the inspiration.

I'm not going to quit working on my latest novel (it's going to be the cotton candy fun I love to spin), but I want to branch out and make myself stretch into new projects in the new year. If I can just get through the holidays!

I can't wait for the holidays. Seriously. When is food a bigger part of our lives than those diet-deadly and delicious six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day? Ah, I think I can taste the jalapeno corn already. Mmm!

Here's my recipe:

4 bags frozen white corn
1 8-oz cube cream cheese
1 cube butter
1/4 cup milk
3 jalapenos seeded and chopped
garlic salt
season salt

On stovetop in saucepan combine cheese, milk, butter, seasoning and peppers. Stir until creamy and bubbling. Pour over thawed corn. Cook on stovetop stirring occasionally until peppers are tender. Keep warm in crock pot until ready to serve. Makes enough for the whole Thanksgiving gang (but I have to double this because our gang is gigantic.)

Pink Floyd Song

Today I am trying to get myself past the wall.

Distance runners call a certain point in their marathons "hitting the wall." It's the point where they feel like they can't even put one foot in front of the other. A friend of mine ran her first marathon a year or so ago. She said when she got to that point she was on a slope, the hill seeming too steep to even consider continuing along. She was crying and shaking and convinced she needed to quit. A stronger runner (her husband's sister) slowed down and came up alongside her and helped her keep moving. The encouragement and the strength of her sister in law helped her push through the wall, and my friend continued and even finished the race.

For the past couple of years I have been immersed in family concerns. First and foremost in my life I'm a mother and a wife. I love to write, but I have to always keep in mind it's not my true legacy in life. When you write fluff like cotton candy, you have to be realistic and self-aware that way.

That has made seeing a novel through to completion ... let's say, difficult. Coming up with the concept, throwing down 175 pages or so, getting through to the beginning of the third act when all the forces of the plot need to converge on the main character, that's the fun part for me. But the beginning of the third act of any novel I write seems to be my "wall."

At the beginning of 2010 I set myself a New Year's Resolution. This year I would get past the wall. I would finish the novel I'm working on, I would go past the 3/4 mark and tie up the loose story lines, I'd let the hero and/or heroine get their just desserts, I'd give the villain what he or she had coming. I'd let my story people get their happily ever after.

It's just mean to them not to finish.

So today, I sent my kiddos in the other room and asked them to please play--because today I am finishing up the final chapter of this novel. I am. I WILL. Having this goal for myself and remembering it, referring to it, is kind of like the friend I needed along the way--to encourage me to keep plodding. That, and writers from my awesome writing group ANWA who give me feedback and encouragement along the way. My husband helps too. Bless him.

This novel may not be a masterpiece. I am writing it to teach myself several skills--what better place to practice them? However, finishing the story for me is going to be a big accomplishment and a great big feeling.

And then, I'm going to take myself down to the little grocery store and buy myself a bag of red licorice laces. Because a sweet feeling just gets sweeter with candy in hand.

Sweet Inspiration

I just returned home from the annual summer Retreat of the American Night Writers Association. I've been a member of this excellent writing group for about 3 years now, and joining has been the best decision of my writing career. My publisher, Chad Daybell suggested I join, and it took me a month or so to decide to do so.

He was so right.

The group is fantastic. I have learned more about writing from these women (and it is women only in the group) than I did in my entire college career, or in my years as a writer for the U.S. Congress, or in my years as an aspiring author. It's just a great, motivational, educational group.

During the Retreat in the high country of Arizona this year, I met several women who really helped me figure out how to make strides in my writing, and I appreciate them very much. For a long time I have resisted starting a writing blog, believing there are enough of them out there. (And there probably are.) I am quite averse to self-promotion, and I saw a presence on the web as annoying to myself and others. However, one of the women in my "suite" helped me see otherwise.

When I told her the catchphrase I've always used for my writing, "Cotton Candy for the Soul," she laughed and told me that needed to be my personal trademark, my logo. She said I should name my blog this. I laughed, thinking, no way. Then I came home, and it sank in. Voila, this blog. Then, as the "Crazy Coincidence" above states, the evening after I created the original page, a neighbor stopped by with six bags of cotton candy in hand. He'd just bought a machine and thought he would drop some by for us. I couldn't believe it.

It made me think, wow, the whole universe is reaffirming this decision.

I know. Now I'm sounding like candy corn for your soul.

But I believe there is a need for entertaining writing. We have a lot of people out there aspiring to write that "Great American Novel," one that will both wrench and open the eyes of each reader. There are others who are out to write something to educate the reader about a social issue, or to do all manner of shocking writing.

However, not I. For some of us, the great gift of reading is escape. I aspire not to write chicken soup or meat and potatoes or spicy salsa.

My stuff isn't deep. It's just light, sweet, gone.

And can't we just enjoy some cotton candy now and then?