I’ve been home from work for five weeks now and I have nothing written on my next book. I feel terrible about it, but I’ve been stuck.
No story ideas? No, I have ideas for several stories waiting to spring from my finger tips.
#WritersBlock ? No, I know the story that I want to write and have most of the scenes already in my head.
Then what’s the problem? I’ve been stuck on structure. Someone told me that my structure is wrong and I need to learn more about setting up scenes or my books will never go anywhere. So I spent weeks reading blogs and watching videos about writing. I even purchased a couple well known books, one of them being “Save the Cat Writes a Novel” by Jessica Brody.
I began restructuring my outline of the next Madison Kleigh novel, making sure each scene has a goal, a conflict, a disaster, a reaction, a dilemma, and a decision in that order. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote. I even went through the first Madison Kleigh novel and tried restructuring the chapters to fit this model. It was terrible and I felt horrible. It took most of the enjoyment out of writing. I began to think that I don’t really know how to write and my books are not as good as people say they are. I began thinking that people only thought my work was good because they knew me.
Instead of giving up, I turned to logic. If people only like my work because they know me, then I need to have someone who doesn’t know me read my work. So I began searching the internet for people I don’t know. And let me tell you, the internet is full of them. Only, they all want something in return. They want me to critique their work first. I can’t do that. I can’t even critique my own. I’m not qualified to critique someone else’s.
I began sending samples of my work in to websites that charge for their services and they all told me the same thing. My work is very good. One of them even said they only accept 20% of the submissions they receive and mine had passed their review board. But then I had to wonder how much of that was promotional propaganda meant to seduce me into buying their services.
Where do I turn. Am I right? Am I wrong? I said this once before, every book has its own journey and none of them are wrong, just different. Every success story leads down a different path and you can’t follow with your own book. You have to make your own path. This is very difficult to accept. Or is it?
The first thing any #author has to accept is that they are an artist. Not just any artist, a good artist. A great artist. You have to like your own work. If you don’t like your own work, nobody else will like your work. You also have to like yourself. If you don’t like yourself, then how can you expect anybody else to like you. So get over it. Find a way to like yourself no matter how ugly, or fat, or whatever you are. And find a way to like your work. If you don’t like your own work, take that as a sign that it is not good enough to put in front of the public. Rewrite it until you can look at your own work and smile. If you don’t like your own work, nobody will like your work. So, write it until you like it.
Next, learn the rules of writing. Learn about Goal, conflict, disaster, reaction, dilemma, and decision and then break them. Yes, a good story needs conflict and characters need to struggle for what they want and then not get it, but end up with what they need. Yes, good stories need this, but YOU decide how that happens.
Many people have told me they like my voice. What does that mean? It means they like my style. MY style. Not the style all these self-help writing workshops teach you. Your style is what you do different than everybody else. If you use the same structure that everybody else uses, then you are just mimicking their style and you don’t have your own. Find your voice. Find you style. Break the rules. But not before you understand them.
Now that I know I don’t have to fit my square story into a round structure, I am ready to write again. So, here I go…
#JeffreyDMontanye #self-publishing
Story and photo by Jeffrey David Montanye
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