My Process, Continually Evolving

So, this past weekend I finished taking one of my creative nonfiction pieces from years ago and turning it into a fiction piece. The original piece was written in the first person, and so I am going to try this story two ways. I finished writing it as fiction, in the first person, and now I think I am going to set it aside for a day or two while I work on something else and then come back to it to edit and revise. That way, I can look at it with fresh eyes. Once I've done that, and I have the story just the way I like it and ready to be sent out, I am going to rewrite the story using the third person narrative. I am again going to set it aside for a day or two when I'm finished with it and then I will begin to work on editing and revising that version of it. Once I have a completed, ready-to-send-out version of first person and third person points of view, I am going to see which one I like better. Perhaps I'll let my husband read them, and one or two of my good friends read and have them let me know which version they like is better. After that I will make my final decision on which one is going to get sent out.

I've been writing stories for my own amusement since childhood, but it wasn't until my early 20's-and after learning about literary journals in my creative writing college courses- that I started to send my work out for consideration for publication. As one my expect, I was flooded with rejections. I was young and still trying to find my voice, but I think mostly, I was sending out pieces that were no where near ready for publication. I was so excited I would rush through a story, edit until it was just grammatically correct and then send it out to a bunch of journals; paying ones first-as I was working and going to school full time and trying to make rent. I would pretty much only work on one story at a time too. As soon as I was finished I would revise right away. I would even revise and edit as I went through writing the story. This might work for some writers, but for me it just spelled doom, leaving me with a piece that was just almost good enough.

I took a break from writing stories and sending out work for the last 4 or 5 years. I got married and immediately popped out 3 babies, but now that I am a little older and a little wiser, I've decided to start up writing again. When you have 3 kids rapid fire, life gets a little hectic. There were so many days where I just thought, why did I do this? But as my kids started to grow, things got easier and we settled into a routine. My oldest is in preschool, my middle child will hopefully be in preschool next year if he ever gets his stubborn ass on the potty (but those frustrations are for another post), and my youngest- my sweet baby girl- just turned one and a half.

So, there it is. I have two in diapers (hopefully my son will cooperate with potty training and be out of them soon) and one who is mature enough to entertain herself (girls mature so much faster than boys, I swear!). I have more time now to write and it's easier as well as they grow. Just yesterday while I was finishing my story, my oldest, Monkey (no that's not her real name!) was sitting with me at the table, practicing her upper and lowercase alphabet and her numbers (she is so proud she can count to 100), my son, Little Man, was sitting in the chair on the opposite side of me playing SuperMario on a handheld Nintendo, and my youngest, Sweet V, was sitting on the floor between her brother and I, playing with her baby Snow White doll.

It can be frustrating at times, and I'll be wishing it were quiet so I could focus harder on my writing, but it's time like that-when they are all gathered around me, smiling and laughing, talking with me, asking me questions about what I'm writing and them telling me what they are doing- that warms my heart and makes it all worth it.

I think these experiences-getting married, having children- has given me, not only so much more to write about, but a different perspective on life, and in turn has made my characters more realistic and relate-able. I also am forcing myself to slow down my process now. I realize that, while payment is nice, rushing to meet deadlines or writing stories for the sake of making a little extra cash for my family isn't going to cut it. I need to find a new approach. As I said earlier, I am going to take a break for a day or two and let my finished story sit, so that I can see it with fresh eyes. While I am waiting that day or two I am not going to sit back and do nothing, but rather go over a flash fiction story I wrote last week and do my revisions of that. After not seeing it for a week perhaps my editing and revision will be better. I can't worry about looming deadlines of literary journals right now, as I have done in the past. I need to work on my stories and really feel like they are ready to be published before I start checking deadlines and payments offered, because in the end, it's really all about having a story to tell.

Brainstorming

I am thinking about turning one of my Creative Nonfiction pieces I wrote many years ago into a fictional short story. I will keep the basic premise of what happened, just add some flare to it and stuff to make it fictional. Also changing the characters names as I was one of them. Also, for this writing assignment in which I was forced to write this Creative Nonfiction piece, it had to be in the 1st person. I HATE writing in the 1st person. Nothing seems right. It doesn't flow like it should. I believe I am going to take this story and tweak it, giving the characters new names and identities and switching to the 3rd person narrative. I believe it will be a much better story that way.

This Is Me

It has been far too long since I have had a blog, a diary, or some kind of outlet for the thoughts tumbling around inside my head. I had one many years ago and for about 3 years straight I wrote in it almost daily. I thought it was pretty good. So young, naive, superficial. Some things haven't really changed. I'm still relatively young, only just turning 30. I'm still naive in certain situations. I have had a lot happen to me though, much of which has made me stronger, wiser, and sometimes questioning the current state of humanity. I've gotten married. I had 3 children rapid fire. I got sucked into the social media scene. Facebook is fun to keep in touch with family and the few remaining friends I actually want to talk to, and Twitter is fun for dropping humorous little sentences here and there, but so much of what I really want to say is a hell of a lot more than 140 characters. I'm not even sure how I am going to lay out this blog. Probably some bitching-some of which concerns my family and hopefully they will never see it because I will feel absolutely horrible. I don't want or mean for them to feel bad and I have been pretty good at keeping my mouth shut concerning my real feelings just to keep the peace, but I cannot anymore. I guess I probably shouldn't link this to my social media or give my family the web address. I might write about some proud parenting moments. Though I really want to use this as a tool to help me with my creative writing and so I may be posting some short stories on here that I've written. Some character profiles. Creative writing prompts. I haven't really decided yet. I just know that when things get crazy and my life gets turned upside down, I feel so much better writing. I just let it flow from my brain through my body and onto the page, whether it's in a notebook or typed on the computer. As the words flow from me I can feel the stress leaving my body and I can relax.