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Step 3 Continued -The Fantasies of Writing Will Die, But the Dreams Will Live On!

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Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to a power greater than ourselves

Part of the third step is letting go of how I want things to look, how I want things to be. I have all these fantasies about what my writing life should look like, how much monetary success I should have, about how many supermodels should be fawning over me.

For example, I want to write four hours a day, no matter what, and if I don’t, I’m a loser. And I want a huge publishing house knocking on my door, no wait, three huge publishing houses, bidding over my latest project, trying to woo me to their side. And then the cash, the fame, an apartment in Paris, a villa in Italy, an igloo in Alaska. I want adoration, dammit.

I used to say after my first rejection that it was when the dream died. But that’s not the truth at all. So here’s the story. I went to my first writer’s workshop, Andrea Brown’s Big Sur Writers Workshop put on with the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. So I’m nervous. I’m hopeful. So hopeful in fact that I brought a printer and several reams of paper just knowing that a big time agent would ask for my complete manuscript, and I’d have to print them out a copy immediately.

I had submitted the first twenty pages of my novel and I had a literary agent going over it with me, and I thought it was genius. The agent didn’t agree. And slowly, she ripped through my pages, but of course, she was right. I was new. I didn’t know any better. I figured I could write a novel and get it published and then, bring on the supermodels, lots of ‘em. After she was done, I had been reduced to ashes. That’s when the fantasy died. Not the dream. The dream I get to live every time I write. But the fantasies of a Stephenie-Meyer-esque success right out of the gate. This was going to take work and struggle.

So part of the third step is surrendering to my writers’ fate. Accepting reality. But don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean I stop fighting, or struggling, or hoping. Every query letter is a success. Hell, every word I get out on the page is a success. It might not look like how I think it should, but that’s part of practicing the third step. Letting go of our old ideas and being open-minded.

I’ll end with this story. I was talking to my wife and one more time, I was going to give up and run away and never write again. She turns to me and says, “Aaron, you’ve lived more of your life in a fantasy world. You writing and trying to get published is one of the only real things you do. It’s gritty, it’s not perfect, but it’s real. Don’t give up.”

I ran away. I wept. I trembled before the terrible truth. But I didn’t give up. Eighteen months later I got my first book contract.

The fantasy is dead, mostly, but the dream, the very real dream of writing lives on. Maybe that’s why writers have a hard time with the publishing industry. It’s numbers. It’s sales. It’s real.

Ah, but the fantasy was so sweet while it lived. But fantasies won’t get me where I want to go. It takes work and sweat.

I love the Prefontaine quote, “To love winning is easy; to love the battle requires toughness.”

Bring on the battle.

Intro to the Third Step: The Writer in the Wilderness

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Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to a power greater than ourselves

So if the third step is about turning our will and our lives over to something greater than ourselves, oh, bubba, there are about a million and five things greater than us. For me, it was not only a higher power, divine, sort of presence–the Force, if you will–but it was also my critique group, writers’ conferences, the whole process of writing and getting published. I had to admit that I couldn’t do it, other people could, and I would have to take direction. I would accept help.

Oh, how I love the Clint Eastwood-man-in-the-wilderness-hardcore-stoic-poet-warrior ideal. The man with no name, facing the banditos alone, with nothing but his courage and his six-guns. Dagny Taggart single-handedly saving her railroad from the looters. Yeah, I could go on.

I’m not that. Most of the time I’m a frightened little man living a frightened little life, and yet, I overcome crippling fear every single day. Every single day I am given the gift to live courageously.

Because if I surrender to a power greater than myself, then I don’t have to be in charge. I can do the next, simple thing. Simple things I can do, generally, but if I have to run the universe, well, I get overwhelmed.

In some recovery circles, the third step is boiled down to committing to finish the rest of the steps. That makes sense to me. When I try and figure out what God wants me to be, what He wants me to do (capital H), what kind of cereal I should eat, I freeze up. Does God want me to eat Captain Crunch? What about the high fructose corn syrup? Are there trans fats? Okay, what about an egg for breakfast? Probably factory farmed. And the cholesterol. Yeah, there’s that to consider. Okay, what about toast? White or wheat? Rye? Okay, I’ll have an apple. Hurray, I have done God’s will for me. Nothing wrong with an apple. Is it organic?

So trying to figure out God’s will is a rough one. Some people keep it easy. Just do the next, right thing. Just the next one. Okay, breakfast. Just eat a breakfast. Better to eat than not eat. It is the most important meal of the day, doncha’ know. Okay, breakfast. Should I go smoke crack now? Prolly not. How about taking a shower and going to work? Yeah, probably. Let’s do that.

With my writing life, that can be a powerful tool to use. I’m generally working on about a thousand projects on any given day. That can freeze me. And I have the marketing to do. And my social media. And decisions about how to present myself. And there’s that short story that’s been nagging at me. And I have to write my million-word epic literary fantasy about the penguin army fighting through a mongoose colony. Yeah, that. I should work on that today. But what about my current project? What about my edits to the novel with my publisher? Ugh. Don’t want to do that.

So half of the things I’m terrified to do. The other half I don’t want to do. And the other half…oops, ran out of halfs. Drat. Well, the other non-existent half is the stuff I love to do. So I have to take it easy, one step at a time, the next right thing. My Watership Down with mongooses and penguins is important, but first, my current work in progress that needs to be finished. And next, the little marketing I do everyday. And slowly, I work through my writing day.

How horrible it is to have too much to do and to freeze. It doesn’t help. Some would say breaks are important. I can’t. Every day I don’t write or work on my writing is a day I’m not living the dream. I don’t want to miss out. Better to do anything with my writing than to miss a day. It’s the life of a monk, of an aesthete, or a madman.

But it’s the dream. Gotta live the dream today.

I Talk Heart of Darkness and Fledgling Shapeshifters With YA Author Natasha Brown

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Writers can pop up literally anywhere. In your shower, late at night. Hotel rooms in bad parts of town. Kathmandu, Nepal. We are an elusive breed, shadowy, here one minute, gone the next. So was I surprised to find that a writer was haunting the halls of the Montessori school where my children go? Not in a horribly-scarred-phantom-of-the-opera type of way. Natasha Brown was just a parent, but so much more. I wasn’t surprised that Natasha had written a book, but I was impressed by her really good Amazon ranking. And the fact she finaled in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Gold contest. And that she had gone rogue, e-pubbed, and was doing well.

A little about her book, Fledgling (The Shapeshifter Chronicles):

Set apart from other eighteen-year-olds, Ana Hughes knows she is different. A life-threatening heart condition smothers her future and she yearns to feel normal. Her hopes are pinned on a fresh start in a remote town far from her native Colorado. Among the locker-filled hallways in Clark Bend High, Ana keeps to the shadows, not wanting to draw attention to her violet-tinged lips and wilted silhouette. And she almost succeeds, until she meets Chance Morgan.
Struggling to keep up appearances, she soon suspects Chance is hiding something as well. His animal-like senses, miraculous healing ability and peculiar reaction to her Thunderbird necklace compel Ana to question if there’s more to the stories about his Navajo ancestry. Without any other explanation, she fears he is playing tricks on her. But the truth may prove too much for Ana’s delicate heart…

We talked, and this is a little of what we talked about.

AARON: Okay, Natasha, at what point in your life did you want to write a novel? Where were you, what were you drinking, and were olives involved?

Natasha: It was the perfect storm – inspiration, courage and my family left me alone for a whole glorious weekend. I do love olives, but alas, they weren’t involved.

AARON: When we talked, you said you were inspired by J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. What about them inspired you? Haircuts? Choice of shoes? Mormonism? Britishism?

Natasha: They inspired me because they, like me, were mothers with an idea. An idea that they wrote down and had the tenacity to persist with. I thought if they could do it, then I would try as well.

AARON: Let me talk about myself for a minute, because, well, I am so very fascinating. I’m a big fan of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which inspired the movie Apocalypse Now. Kurtz, in the jungle, going mad, worshiped by the natives. He went rogue, just like you. What made you throw off the shackles of traditional publishing to set yourself up in your jungle paradise on Amazon?

Natasha: Let me smear some war paint on my face first before I answer…
Like you mentioned earlier I finaled in the RMFW contest, which was fantastic. It gave me the confidence to start querying agents. I had a few nibbles, but ultimately it led to a dead-end. And then life happened. When you are busy with kids and work, those other things fall away, and that is what happened to FLEDGLING. Until an acquaintance found out I had a finished novel collecting dust. He had self-published and found great success. I decided, what with the state of the evolving book world, I would go ahead and give it a try myself. I am a web developer and designer so I designed my own cover. I set the hook and waited for a nibble.

AARON: Kurtz summarized his experience in the jungle with four words, well, two words repeated twice: the horror, the horror. What two words, repeated twice, summarize your experience as an independent publisher?

Natasha: Two words is all? Yeesh. Take courage, take courage.

AARON: Why do you think your Amazon ranking is so good? My ranking is like three million and fluctuates as low as eight billion, but you, you have a ranking, a steady ranking, in the thousands, which is awesome. Did I just use way too many commas? Maybe. I’m a little nervous asking this question. I’m pausing a lot.

Natasha: I stole some fairy dust and sprinkled my computer with it. Does wonders, although whenever I click my mouse, it giggles. No, seriously. I am lucky. There are SO many elements that contribute to a book doing well. Past the obvious, that the book has to be somewhat interesting and in a genre that sells, there is a lot to marketing a book. A good cover and book blurb are very important – they are the first impression. You need to be present in social media like, facebook, twitter and your own author blog. I am part of a great author group named the World Literary Café (WLC- www.worldliterarycafe.com) which provides many resources to indie and traditional authors. I couldn’t have made it this far without my new group of friends.

AARON: One of your inspirations for Fledgling was your daughter’s heart condition. What kind of heart condition does she have, and how does that play into the novel?

Natasha: The heart issues are a huge issue in the story and everything revolves around it, much like in real life. My daughter was born with multiple heart defects. She had transposition of the great arteries, hypoplastic-left heart syndrome, and a large ventricular septal defect. That might sound like a lot of gibberish to most people, but all of those conditions caused enough trouble for my daughter to have two open-heart surgeries. Heart defects make up about a third of all children born with birth defects. My daughter is not alone. The personality and specific circumstances of my daughter are not the same as the lead character in my book, but they do share many of the same experiences. I wanted to create a female lead who could be a heroine for my daughter to look up to. For anyone who was born with heart defects.

AARON: We talked about how hard the writer’s journey is. What themes in Fledgling could inspire a struggling writer to keep on keeping on?

Natasha: A writer’s journey can be tortured to be sure, but it is so much broader than that. Being a teenager has its challenges as well, and I think they are much the same. Will they like me? Will I fit in? Stand out? I’m not good enough.

Self-doubt and insecurities plague everyone. Especially writers. FLEDGLING, I hope, will leave the reader uplifted and hopeful. My own story, and even my daughter’s story, I hope, will inspire as well. You CAN do it if you persevere.

AARON: Natasha, if you had to exchange your writer’s life for another artistic passion, what would you choose? For example, if I had to give up writing for some other type of creative art, I wouldn’t choose rockstar or famous Parisian painter, I’d choose quilting. Dudes who quilt are dead sexy. What about you?

Natasha: Dead sexy to be sure…I think you even have another book idea in there.
My father is a fine art photographer (and in another life, a graphic artist) and my mother does poetry. Artistry is in my blood. I have dabbled with quilting, stained glass, painting, photography, jewelry making and graphic design. I’m not sure what else I could try, but I’m only happy when I am creating something. I wouldn’t mind hanging in Italy, the country where I got engaged, and just ‘go with the flow’.

AARON: Thanks Natasha!

Natasha: And thank you, Aaron!

Website for the book
Natasha on twitter
Fledgling on Amazon