Wednesday, August 5, 2015

IWSG August 2015

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.

Alex Cavanaugh's awesome co-hosts for the the August 5 posting of the IWSG will be Nancy Gideon, Bob R Milne, Doreen McGettigan, Chrys Fey, Bish Denham, and Pat Garcia!
Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG
I'm currently #68

There are so many reasons I should feel insecure right now. However, for some odd (lucky?) reason I'm not feeling it at the moment. I should be working on 3 major writing projects right now, but life has put a kibosh on most things writing.

Here's the thing...the story with the closest deadline has grown by 5000 words in the last week. It's not great writing yet, but the story bones are getting on the page. This project is in a genre new to me. Straight up contemporary romance.

No aliens.
No magic.
No dragons.

(Okay, now I feel like hyperventilating!)

Instead, I'm doing lots of research. Not only on the town, but also a certain disease and how it affects people mentally, physically and emotionally in connection with forming and sustaining a new relationship. I find it fascinating and hope that means I won't completely suck at this.

It would be easy to see myself as the odd duck out in the group of fantastic writers on this project. VERY easy. But, I've decided to look at it more as a reason to dig deeper, work harder and surprise everyone.

Maybe that's been the answer to insecurity all along? We may never reach perfections, but if we are working hard we have nothing to be ashamed of.

What has you insecure right now and how are you dealing with it?

10 comments:

  1. Contemporary romance with a strange disease - sounds rather original to me!

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    1. :) It's probably not. I doubt you read a lot of romance, but I hope to really work through something deeper with this story.

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  2. I think writing a new genre is invigorating, and as long as you're willing to revise later, I say don't stress about the first draft. It takes me a good 30K before I feel like my stories are starting to fall into place.

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    1. Ha! and this one is supposed to fall between 20-30K finished. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

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  3. Yay contemporary romance! It's one of my faves. I really want to write a non-YA contemp romance but I don't want to freak out my agent just yet. I've been brainstorming. :) Sometimes writing something different really taps at your creativity. It just *can* become a challenge for branding, though clearly plenty of authors manage that well.

    Good luck with your deadlines!

    Here is my August IWSG post. It's the second post on my blog today because my Pitch Wars mentor bio needs to stay at the top. Thanks!

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    1. Thanks Stephanie! I do worry about the branding and figure if I decide to do other romance I'll have to come up with a pen name for it since my name is already attached to my science fantasy stuff. We'll deal with it when we see how it turns out. :)

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  4. Oh, Iove doing research! I find I end up using it at some point down the road even if not in the current WIP. You'll catch up with your projects. :)

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  5. Good luck with your research. It sounds like it will be a great and interesting story.

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  6. If not for my research, I would have placed Stonehenge north of London in Of Oak and Dragons

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  7. Sounds like you've got it all under control. That's good.

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