Writing Communities: Everyone is out to destroy or steal my ideas

So... while I've never been on DeviantART... I'm a budding writer and I know I'm in desperate need of a community to read/edit/support me as I write. It takes a  village to publish a novel... maybe...

The thing is I am SOO suspicious of everyone... successful and not. They will steal my ideas (as if my ideas were intriguing and rare in the first place). They will mock me behind my back. They will rip my novel to pieces and then steal it in the manner of deception used in Bridesmaids.

I know that supportive and creative writing communities exist, but I think instead of trying to find one that suits me, I'm trying to build my own by finding friends who write and swap and critique and encourage.

While I tried to engage a bit with the nanowrimo forums... even they seemed terrifying to me. While I don't think I'm a terrible writer, I'm not actually sure how good/not good I am. I know grammar, I'm not sure about aesthetic. I know what I like, I know lit crit., but approaching things from a writerly perspective is something I'm not as experienced with (odd for someone who writes on a near daily basis).

Writing is new territory for me. I've been writing stories and poems since I was a little girl, but I've kept them mostly to myself. I don't know how good I am, so my hubris level is very low. I take it for what it is, and don't expose it to the world for ridicule. But the time is coming when I would like to put it out there, and I just can't seem to find the community I'm looking for where it seems friendly but not forced, business-like and helpful, and understanding.

Everything out there seems like a competition... sigh...

Advice? I'll take anything I can get my hands and eyes on ... 

Unfinished Business

So a month since I turned in my 90+ pages, 50,000+ word manuscript to nanowrimo... the rough and tumble, barely chaptered, barely sectioned manuscript lies in a word document on my desktop, mocking me, taunting me, daring me to open it. It dares me to print it off and attempt to read it. It knows how much I struggle with my own heart as a writer, my skill, my voice, my everything.

I am awesome at starting creative projects, whether it's an afghan, the new fingerless gloves I'm crocheting (finished 1!), or a long piece of writing. I have 3 novella's/novels which I am now working on, and a complete manuscript which needs loads of editing.

I have about 6 books which I began reading (some years ago) and have not finished. I am an expert at unfinished business... sigh.

I don't know if this implies failure, per se. It just means my distractibility level is quite high. As I begin chipping away at the dull hunk of wood that I now see my novel as, I will need encouragement to keep going with it. While writing the manuscript itself was a battle in perseverance, I actually think the editing process will be the real work. Plunking out 3,000 words in an evening, regardless of quality just seemed normal after a few weeks, but battling to find the perfect words, images, descriptions... I might die before I complete this piece of work. But I don't want to give up on it.

Listening to the freakonomics podcast, an episode talked about failing fast--knowing when a business (or other) venture wouldn't work and quitting quickly so as to use a little energy as possible before throwing in the towel.

While this attitude might work well in business, I'm not sure how well it applies to art. I'm not sure if the market demand for an anger bar  matches the struggle Van Gogh had with his artistic ventures in his life. I'm in no way comparing myself to Van Gogh or my despicable manuscript to Starry Night--I doubt my novels and stories and poems will ever be considered art.

I think the point is that these horrid thoughts that I will fail as an author keep me procrastinating from working on my texts when, I'm not sure I can fail or succeed (at writing them anyway). I may fail at selling or marketing my stories one day, but if I work desperately hard with them, how can I fail to write them?

In my mind, it isn't me who has written the story... no. The stories choose me, pick me out of the sky and  plop into my brain, fizzle around in there with the images and emotions, and then beg me to squeeze them out into the world in my notebooks and type them on my laptop. I feel as though my stories choose me... not the other way around. I should hope that I do not give up on them, leaving the characters and plots half-formed, afraid to do them justice. I hope I am brave enough to make them shine, even if the world spits them back out at me.

I hope I have the gumption to see them through to the end, for their own sake, not mine. 

Write or Die

So this month I'm participating in NaNoWriMo... I'm sure you're all wondering how I haven't developed carpal tunnel or can even find the will to look at a computer screen or write of my own volition, this menial blog.

So with 7 days to go and 15,000 words to be written, I'm actually feeling pretty good. My diet has consisted of coffee and McDonalds, I think I'm getting bed sores from writing in my bed so much, I'm going to need to do massive amounts of yoga and stretching once this month is over, but I'm also absolutely loving it.

Do I have the most intriguing plot in the world? Not even close...
Does my prose drip with eloquent turns of phrase? I'm venturing a big fat no...
Is the imagery so engaging that agents will be begging me to turn my novel into a script? hahahaha no...

So what am I getting out of this? Somehow, the sheer knowledge that writing 1,000 words an hour seems almost like a joke to me now is completely satisfying.

Knowing that my basic ideas for my story are still there, but just writing has made it so much more intricate and meaningful. It will be super rough when I'm done, but it will be a nice block of wood to be shaved down and polished into something fabulous!

Pushing myself to write everyday (or nearly) is absolutely brilliant. I haven't been to the gym, cooked a proper meal, spoken to my friends or done too much laundry, but I'm really progressing in my writing, so for one month, I think that's worth it. I'll catch up with everyone during the holidays.

So for the next 7 days, it will be Write or Die... I don't think I'll actually DIE if I don't finish, but maybe a small part of my soul will. Only time will tell (cue suspenseful music)...

Passion

"Passion rebuilds the world for the youth.

It makes all things alive and significant." 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I can't decide if I'm a person of passion or not... I know I have a lot of passion, but passion, implies, in my mind anyway, a near obsession with something. Consider Saint Paul (who, if you know him, you'd know he was a zealot... passionate, pretty much to a fault.) 

Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on...

A few years ago, being a person of passion was explained to me as being a person of one thing... striving forward towards a goal, which may have many facets, but one aim. I can't decide if I am passionate about anything without adding in my loves of other things into it.

For example, I love literature. I love reading and learning. So... could you say reading and learning is my passion... well... when a girl, I became obsessed with reading science books. I read every book in my library on the animal kingdoms, which lead to me thinking about animals which didn't exist anymore... so I switched to dinosaurs and paleontology, which lead to archaeology, which lead to Egyptology, which lead to Greek and Roman mythology, which lead to the classics... etc. etc. etc.

Most of you are probably just thinking me a total nerd at this point... totally justified, but stick with me.

So, some of you may know I became a teacher... and all throughout those uninspiring education classes, teachers are meant to say they are "teachers of children"... They are meant to love young people and want to change their lives. I admit, it was there a bit, but I really loved literature. I wanted to show everyone how much literature could change their lives... I had a soapbox, and a classroom could be my podium.

But the funny thing is about working with young people, working to help them become little adults... is, that when you are serving people, they change you.

I started becoming more interested in learning theory and adolescent psychology. I became interested in legals issues around parents and carers, the psychological and sociological effects of education on life's circumstances and vice versa... I became somewhat obsessed with finding ways to take the sometimes horrific contexts these young people find themselves in, and try to turn them into opportunities for them to not only better themselves, but change their communities for the better.

I'm still in love with literature, but I'm more in love with it because of it's ability to increase empathy, to inspire, instruct, and encourage through the words of authors, through poetry, through imagery, through struggling through rock bottom situations with characters.

But this desire to help students has also made me want to help their communities, to learn about their families, to want to know more about counselling and psychology, to want to know about how to set up and work with non-profit organisations and set up community organisations that work with the government and with NGOs...

In my heart, one passion leads to another which leads to another. Nothing seems focused. My brain, my heart are two giant title-waves swallowing everything... they're Scylla and Charybdis. My appetite for knowledge never stops...

But I think one thing has changed since I started teaching 5 years ago... my heart. I am now focused on loving other people with my job and fighting for them, serving them, cheering them on, mentoring them... I think about what I can give, how much I can offer, and not just what I'll get or how great I'll be considered when I do give.

I may get too distracted to ever become a teacher-author, or the Founder of an amazing Educational Charity, or run a grass-roots community project... but I think here and there will be kernels of my passion spread abroad and hopefully a few of them will take root and make a difference.

Here are some things Writer and Literature have taught me that I carry around with me in my back pocket... If I'm running around seeming scattered... you know why ;)

"What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?" ~ George Eliot

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S. Elliot

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." ~ from "Ulysses," A.L. Tennyson

Feedback

So I've been writing stories and poems and, yes, song lyrics, since I was a little girl. In the 7th grade, I was so entranced with mythology that I created my own cosmos and romances with all my gods and goddesses and lords and ladies.

What I wouldn't pay to somehow have those notebooks full of writing from 1996.

Even now, I'm writing in a genre I can't even describe properly to people, stories in a format I can't really explain, and the writing all is so clear in my head... but I can't tell if what is in my head is portraying itself accurately on the page.

Sometimes I wish I could just hook up a USB to my brain and into Word and have it all work out gorgeously with my writing style and the correct form and wording intact... but... writing is a process for a reason.

Sometimes I seem to get lost. Sub-plots crop up and turn into stories and new characters take over, and my characters seem to develop these desires I never thought they'd have...

It's a mess really... I wish it could be like when I was in school and someone could tell me if I was doing this right.

And really, I have let some people read excerpts... I've read aloud to people sometimes as well... but I don't feel like I'm getting feedback, but just general "Oh it's good. I like this part" comments...

I know I won't be the next J.K. Rowling... and honestly, I don't think I'd want to be. I don't think I'll ever be a famous writer. But I want these characters to have a life outside of my head. I want their stories to be told. I want them to be real to someone other than just me and for that to happen, I need to get them out of my head...

On top of all of it, I'm terrified of getting real "criticism" because I don't know what my reaction will be if it's bad...

I might just cry, or I might infuriatingly defend myself... who knows? Whatever I do, I don't want it to crush my passion for writing out of me. I want to move forward... I just need to find a way to get constructive feedback... 

From "The Grandmother's Tale"

Long ago when the world was almost new, when the forests were young and somewhat untraversed, when animal trails were fresh, and new brush hadn’t yet made way for ageless paths. Before the instincts of animals took them down the same paths year after year, a garden shut and its perimeter was hidden and guarded.

Telaranthion sighed as she stared at the trees around her. When she began her post a few years ago, she’d been so excited to see Erea. The new world. The physical world. She’d only seen the reflections of his glory. Now here, she stood in the forest, looking out, keeping them out. But they never tried to get in. They never wandered close, but stayed in their fields day in and day out. Oh how she’d wandered in her early days here. She took in every speck, every fibre. She saw the colors change around her, felt the light of the sun glow around her, the moonlight phase through her, the wind tousle her feathers. She’d guarded fiercely, building up the thorns outside of the forest she looked out of, focusing her powers out at the tiny lights she saw in the evenings, where the men built up their fires at night after days in the fields.

She could feel their souls from afar, the spirit part of them calling out of the darkness. She used this method to hone in their location in case they got too close. She could feel their emotions, their love and rage and jealousy. These creatures, these men, were so fickle, changing their feelings so often.

Still, she felt for them and their fickleness. She longed to show them constancy, discipline, order. She heard their celebrations in the nights, their singing throughout the day, and heard the cries of their despair. She felt the new ones burst into the world. She felt them fade away into the Erea and leave it. She felt the cloud of darkness in their hearts and the saw the fireworks of joy from across the fields, inside the briar barrier of the forest she guarded.

Though she guarded her forest unfailingly, she had trouble tending to it properly. Fascinated with every plant, every insect, every animal, she watched as they played their games with life and death. The predators hunted and let the numbers of prey bob up and down. She saw the animals learn to hide, learn to build lairs and shelters. She watched insects change form and flutter away. She watched critters nuzzle the ground seeking food beneath the surface. She saw the rain ravage the canopy and drip down into rivulets which formed and flooded the trails, forging ahead undisturbed, unguided by her hands or otherwise.