OK, Fine, Twist My Arm, I’ll Talk About Writing: The Writing Process Blog Tour

Posted on April 7, 2014 by gretchenwing

Even though I’m a writer–maybe BECAUSE I’m a writer–I don’t usually blog about writing. But when my friend and writing/publishing mentor Iris Graville invited me to take part in a Writing Processblog tour she joined through the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts MFA program, I was thrilled to say yes.

(Therefore you too WILL BE THRILLED to read the results–got that?)

What am I working on? Having just published my first YA/tweens novel, The Flying Burgowski, earlier this year, I am dividing my writing time now between promotion & distribution (not very fulfilling) and finishing the final draft of the sequel, The Flying Burgowski Disaster (extremely fulfilling).

Like thousands of other writers, I have learned in the past couple of years to quit whining about the challenges of independently publishing, a.k.a. taking responsibility for one’s own marketing and distribution. I’m still astounded at how a batch of phone calls and emails relating to author readings/book signings, or questions about consignment, can eat up an entire morning! But I try to stay grateful for the opportunity to do this at all.

In the Brave New World of publishing, the Big Scary Gatekeepers have lost their power. Or, looked at another way: I am now my own big scary gatekeeper. Let’s just say I have learned a great deal, but have a long way to go before achieving my Masters in Gate-ology.

How does my work differ from others in its genre? The Flying Burgowski is a coming-of-age story with a supernatural twist. Like Harry Potter, or like Stephen Messer’s Windblowne or Joni Sensel’s The Farwalker’s Quest, the heroine, Jocelyn Burgowski, discovers that she has special powers. Joss can fly! But unlike those novels–in fact, unlike nearly every other YA fantasy novel I have read, The Flying Burgowski is set very much in the real world.( I suppose I could draw a parallel with the Twilight series in that respect, but the similarity ends there. Oh, wait, no–my book is set in Washington State as well. But that’s IT. No vampires, sparkly or un-. And no sexy werewolves.)

I greatly admire authors who can build effective fantasy worlds. I lost myself in Tolkien’s and C.S. Lewis’s books at a young age, and I am a thoroughly unapologetic Potterhead. But I find more personal meaning and challenge in imagining how one might deal with magic in THIS world. Kids these days have some pretty awful issues to deal with, and so does my heroine. How does a superpower help or hinder the scaling of an obstacle like, for example, an alcoholic parent? That’s what I’m interested in.

I should add here that Victoria Forester’s middle-grades novel, The Girl Who Could Fly, is nominally set in the real world. But that world is drawn with such exaggerated characters as to be nearly fantasy, in this writer’s opinion. The Flying Burgowski’s darkness is a more recognizable, straight-from-the-news-headlines kind of darkness. That said–it’s not a sad book! I promise it will make you laugh, no matter how old you are.

Why do I write what I do? I did not set out to write for young adults. In fact, the first two novels I wrote–one which will remain forever in the bottom drawer where it belongs, the other which I hope to publish someday–are for adults. The Flying Burgowski story idea simply visited me one day and took me for a ride. I’m still riding. But I don’t assume I will necessarily stay in this age-group for future projects. I do love that readers are finally figuring out that YA writing can be right up there with the best, though. Harry Potter and The Hunger Games have helped expand the readership. There are some great YA books out there! (Check out this Goodreads YA group to see what I mean.)

How does my writing process work? First of all, I am extremely blessed in being able to write as my part-time “job,” (along with working part-time in a bakery), since walking away from my 20-year career as a high school teacher a few years ago. In those days I had to get up at five to write for 45 minutes before leaving for school. I hated that routine, but it did produce my first rough draft. Now my kids are grown and gone, and I am financially able to do what I want for the most part–a blessing for which I am unendingly grateful.

Secondly, I am married to the most wonderful man, who created a Writing Barn for me. Well, it’s the upstairs half of a barn; he gets the downstairs for his shop. But up there I have a large, mostly empty space with cedar walls, a little decorative pottery, a toilet, a hot-water kettle for tea, and a beautiful (but not too dominating) view. Best of all: no internet! Therefore, no distractions.

It is COLD up there, especially in the winter, and since I never write for longer than 4-5 hour chunks, it’s really not worth heating all that space with the wood stove, cozy as that sounds. So I have a space heater on a timer, to pre-heat my writing spot, and…don’t laugh…I write in a sleeping bag. I’ve always written from a semi-lounge position on a bed or sofa, so the sleeping bag fits right in.

I always start by reading aloud what I wrote the day before. Then I pick up from there. If I get stuck on an issue of plot or character development, I go back to my Outline page and just blah-blah-blah as though I were having a conversation with myself. Though it’s tempting to delete the blah-blah-blah from the outline after I’ve solved it, I leave it there as a reminder of my thinking process. It usually comes in handy thinking through the next snag.

Next week the Writing Process Blog Tour continues with another writer I admire. Shan Jeniah Burton lives a passionately playful life filled with lovely chaos, intertwined with her chef husband, two endlessly fascinating children who keep outgrowing their clothes, and a rotating cast of furry companions. She’s traveled the country, and counted among her backyards the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and the Everglades, only to settle on the same sleepy country road in upstate New York where she grew up. She is particularly fond of words and dreams, imagery and photography, nature, history, music, and fictional people with green blood and pointed ears. Please click here to go to Shan Jeniah’s blog, Lovely Chaos.

But, as always, I love hearing from my own dear readers. Can you relate to my writing process? How does it compare with yours, or the one you hope to have someday?

Happy Blogday To Me: Once-Reluctant Blogger Reaches 100 Posts

Posted on November 12, 2013 by gretchenwing

(orig. photo courtesy commons.wikimedia.org)

Happy Blog Day to Meeee….Wing’s World turns 100 posts today. I should buy myself a card.

Actually, I’m only half-joking. Given the number of people like me, mostly over-30s (OK, let’s be honest, even more of us are old enough to be the PARENTS of the over-30s), who have dived into blogging recently, Hallmark & their ilk could probably make a killing selling “Congrats! You’ve Reached Your 100th Post” cards. “From Your Sister-in-Law on Your 100th Post.” “To My Darling on the Anniversary of Her 100th Post.”

The cards could feature a long fence line, you know, made of…wooden…yeah, alright, you get it.

But none of us new bloggers would buy a paper card, would we? We’d be too busy showing off our mastery of the ecard. “Look at me, doing technology!”

Half the time, that really is what it feels like. When I was a little kid, my parents used to let me have a sip of their wine at dinner sometimes. I only took that sip after announcing, “Look at me! I’m drinking wine!” (Yeah, guess who’s the youngest in her family?)

Why this sudden upsurge? Because, like Mt. Everest, the internet is just…there? For some, I’m sure that’s true–reaching out with their thoughts is just a natural extension of, say, chatting to a stranger on a bus.

For people like me, though, starting to blog felt like signing up for a colonoscopy. “Do I really hafta? I know, I know, this is supposed to be good for me…How about if I wait a year and then do it?”

So fine: I started Wing’s World. But…starting to blog REGULARLY? “What does the world WANT from me?? Why can’t I just say my piece once a month and then retire with my dignity intact?”

I’ll tell you what got me going, and what probably motivated a whole bunch of my bloggin’ cohorts: FEAR.

What if I wrote a book…and nobody came?

A painter can at least put her masterpiece in a window for people to walk past and see, even if no one wants to buy. But an author? We have to PUBLISH. We have to get individual books before individual sets of eyes.

And that means we have to attract those eyes our way.

But eyes, it turns out, aren’t enough. In fact, if all your eyes saw were a stream of advertisements, “Buy my book! Buy my book! Buymybookbuymybookbuymybook…” stretching off into the sunshine like a line of fenceposts…you’d look away.

So my job is to get you to feel like you WANT to buy my book, because…drum roll!…you think I’m an interesting person, and you like the way I write.

And that, my friends, is why I blog. Or why I STARTED blogging. But an interesting thing happened on the way to the 100th post.

I began to enjoy myself. Turns out I really like talking with y’all.

So, here’s to Happy 100. Here’s to the next. Here’s to you, for reading, and to me, for writing, and…to whatever comes next as the line of posts marches into the distance.

How about you? Do you blog, happily or reluctantly? How many other blogs do you read? Do you sometimes suffer from “blog overload?” Do you wish the whole blogosphere had never been invented? Let me hear!

Sure, I Have a Website…Just a Sec…

Posted on August 26, 2013 by gretchenwing

Last week I launched my nation-wide radio career.

Well, that may be a TEENSY bit of overstatement. But I did do a radio interview with a lovely man named Mark Judkins Helpsmeet, who produces a show out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, called Song of the Soul. http://www.northernspiritradio.org/ He played a half-dozen of my songs, asking me about each one, and about my journey as a songwriter. A journey that is just beginning, I might add, as in–18 months, give or take. An unplanned, and so far, mostly unguided journey, with no particular destination in mind. Especially not national exposure.

Which may explain why, when Mark asked me if I had a website, I choked.

First I said, “No.” Then I quickly amended with, “I mean, yeah, I do…I mean it’s not a songwriting website or anything, but I do have a blog…I mean, I’m a writer, that’s my real career now, so, yeah…” Then I blurted out the URL.

Mark (kindly): Ah, are you sure that’s correct? URL’s don’t usually have @ in them.

Me (not at all flustered, on national radio): Oh. Yeah. Right. I mixed it up with my email. My website is…just a sec…

When I told this anecdote to a friend later, she asked me, “So if you’re starting to get attention as a songwriter, why DON’T you use that to promote your writing career?”

Ummm…because I’m ~~new to the whole idea of self-promotion and still finding my way in the dark~~ an idiot?

So now I’m thinking: Yeah, why DON’T I? The whole singing-songwriting thing is beginning to generate a life of its own. I’m putting myself out there on the stage, relying on a decent voice and a darn good writing style (I’m certainly not relying on my guitar skills!), so why NOT put myself out there in cyberspace as well? Let’s see what happens, shall we?

So, to begin: here are two clips from a recent community concert on Shaw Island, the next ferry stop over. I didn’t realize, when I accepted the invitation to participate, just how GOOD the other musicians were, and I had the interesting luck of following a FOURTEEN YEAR-OLD future phenom onstage–which explains the intro of this first song. My friend Bruce got totally jostled while trying to record me, so if you can’t handle the jumpy camera, just close your eyes and listen, ok? It’s a good song.

The second song’s intro got cut off, but I have to sneak it in here ’cause I’m proud of it. I said, “I wanted to write a good ol’-fashioned My-baby-left-me song, but my baby never has left me, so I had to use my imagination.” 🙂

So, hey. Whether you listened to the songs or not (how’m I gonna know? It’s not like I count YouTube hits or anything), I’d like to hear from you. Why is self-promotion so hard? Is it harder for women, do you think? Does it get easier? Or maybe it should never get too easy? Let me hear!