Overwhelmed

Being all the things I need to be in one day can be exhausting. Some things I dare to say can get neglected. I have a tendency to get a little emotional if I don’t get any sleep the night before. But having no sleep for the last four weeks has totally drained me. Things are breaking down. GPS systems not working when I have two away soccer games I have to get to. Files lost. Blog posts actually. Poof! Gone. Dishwasher’s playing up and somehow that’s my fault. My children have been sick. I’ve been sick. The list goes on … and on … I’m so over it.

So the floors weren’t done today. But at least I managed three months of paperwork for the tax time dreaded BAS tax and GST statements. They’re done!

I washed the dishes and left them on the sink. What’s the big deal? They’ll be put away the next morning.

Then there’s the work side of things. The phone ringing. Always interrupting.

Life can be overwhelming. Some people deal with it better than I do, but today I just found it hard to do any writing. (Until now)

But in order to keep my writing mind ticking over and my sanity from leaping into insanity mode I made a decision. No writing for me. (Except this blog.) Instead, I workshopped three stories for another writer. It calmed me in a way that I hadn’t expected. I went into writer and reader mode. Slipped in so stealthily that I hadn’t realised my blood pressure had gone down.

I knew there was another reason why I love being a writer.

Because I’m in workshopping mode, I’m going to write the next post about workshopping.

Catch you next week; that’s if I haven’t gone to jail for killing my dishwasher.

EJ

Crazy Time

It’s the school holidays so needless to say … AARRGGHH!!

My time is no longer my own; neither is my mind.

A nightmare to be sure, to be sure. It’s bad enough working from home but having to deal with the chicklin’s as well—makes me downright borderline crazy. Writing doesn’t happen very often during the two weeks the kids have off. So this year, instead of stressing out because I can’t write, I’ve downgraded my anxiety to a more manageable level. By manageable I mean I’m not pulling out my hair.

No longer will I feel frustrated by not being able to focus on one story. Little ideas can be dot pointed. A line here or there will (after the I’m always hungry and I’m always bored go back to school) be fleshed out when time permits.

My sanity might return a week after they go back. Oh God! I hope it returns.

There has been one interesting development. I used one of my writing tools, my trusty whiteboard as a means of getting my message across. If we tidy the house up as a family, including a list and sub list of all the chores that need to be done by lunchtime, they can have the rest of the day to themselves. It has saved me a lot of yelling and I’m kicking myself because it’s actually working and I should have tried that years ago. There is a reward of course. We get to go to the movies. But in order to make sure there are no arguments over which movie, they both get to pick one, so I guess I have to save up and go twice. What a shame?

Until then my fellow stressed out writers,

EJ

Confessions of a Horror Writing Mummy

#1

I’m not saying that I’m wrapped up in various strips of material. It has been said, numerous times, that I should be wrapped up in cotton wool. Yes. Those people may be right. After all I’m accident prone. This post isn’t about me falling over, having a roasting chicken spit at me or just walking into furniture. This post is long overdue. It’s about juggling motherhood, work and my aspiring career as a writer.

A fellow writer asked me, where do you find the time to write?

I didn’t mean to make them screw up their faces like they had just eaten the world’s largest sour warhead candy when I said: I just do.

And while I’ve been blunt with those who tell me they didn’t have the time to write, but they’ve just told me the story outline and plot of all the soapies (is that what you call them?) they’ve been watching the entire week, month, year. I believe that one can make time if one is truly passionate about writing.

So how do I find the time?

To me time isn’t an issue. I would like more of it. I squeeze my writing in wherever I can. Between phone calls and housework, (I work as a receptionist and book keeper from home) and I have to admit it’s a pain in the tanooki. Whenever the phone rings I lose my train of thought. I may not be able to focus on novel length manuscripts at the moment but I’m getting a few more short stories written. Some days I’m lucky and the phone stays quiet for a couple of hours, but those days don’t happen very often. And although I work from home, the television is always switched off. The only time it comes on is if I’m having a day off writing, but then it’s only on while I eat lunch. Instead of flicking the picture box on, sit down and write something to help you unwind.

My time is taken up with all the other aspects of life, like my kid’s soccer practice. I’m sitting in my car, writing, (this post actually.) I have an hour of quiet time. Something I’m finding rarer every day. Maybe I should get someone to wrap me up in cotton wool. I’ve even been known to dabble with ideas or reading my work aloud while waiting in the school car park. I think that’s why some parents avoid me at times. What’s that crazy woman doing talking to nobody!

Like I care what they think.

There is one drawback to finding ideas in the school car park. I’m always interrupted by the bell—especially in the middle of a juicy part. Although I sometimes dabble if the children permit me, three thirty to six thirty is their time: to annoy me, love me, ask for help with their homework, hate me because they need to clean their rooms. I’m such a terrible mother—not. There are times, on the weekend, when I think they have super hearing and for some reason as soon as they hear me typing they equate that with their stomachs and become a ravenous hoard of (two) zombies that are just doing my head in because they are old enough to make their own sandwiches. I still love them unconditionally.

As a writer you must read and here’s the embarrassing aspect of my writing life. The only chance I get to read is on the toilet. Why? Because no one is game enough to interrupt me. My reading time can last a couple of minutes to sometimes ten. At least it’s uninterrupted time until the husband asks me if I’ve drowned in there. Sometimes I get innovative and read when my children need to read for homework. It may only last for ten or twenty minutes but it’s a good quiet time to catch up or try and finish that long chapter.

If I want to work on my novel I have to wait until the kids and husband go to bed. Sometimes I get lucky and the husband goes to bed early. Let me guess, you were thinking of something else when I said I sometimes get lucky. Weren’t you? Come on admit it. If he doesn’t go to bed early that’s fine because I’ve trained myself to work with noise. You know, the television, the husband yelling at it if his football team isn’t winning or he’s flicking through three of my favourite TV shows. I actually love sports. It gives me more time to delve into my passion. I may stay up a little longer, but usually my eyeballs are hanging out of my head by ten thirty. Writing drafts are done at night but editing can be done between phone calls, even if it is one page at a time.

My head isn’t clear or able to function first thing in the morning, so there isn’t a need (for now) to get up earlier. I’ve thought about it. But you have to know your limits. No point writing if your brain is too tired. There are days when I don’t write. It doesn’t mean that I’m not working. In my head that is. And there are times when I do sometimes take a little ten minute nanny nap (one of the few benefits of working from home) between phone calls and/or after finishing a draft of a story.

So finding time, like in the good old days when I used to work for someone else, I used to sit outside in the warmer months and write for twenty minutes. I truly believe in the cliché of I wish I knew then what I now know. I would’ve written more, but then again I wouldn’t have the experience of being who I am right now.

Finding time can be tricky, but even if you only find ten minutes, make it count. It’s what you do with those ten minutes that really matters. Ten minutes of focused writing time will let me do a plot outline, a brief character study, one that I can expand on later, I can write 100-200 words and it can allow me to do research.

Some of my fellow workshoppers hate me for being productive and bringing in work every meeting. I do it because I don’t want to be answering phones all my life until I retire. I started writing in my thirties. In the time between realising my dream and now being in a position of knowing exactly what I want, I’ve had a lot of emotional ups and downs. I will be confessing about those too! They are important. Each knockback has made me stronger. Each of them has given me inspirational thoughts and epiphanies.

So use your time wisely.

And of course come back to the Writing Confessions of a Horror Writing Mummy where I will be confessing on how I find inspiration for killing off my characters.

Confess you later,

EJ

The Rejection Connection

A writer’s life is full of rejections unless of course you are a rare individual who has every manuscript published the first time, every time. I’ve had a number of rejections, some not as good as others. I prefer the formal rejection. There’s nothing personal, they just didn’t want the story. But I recently received a rejection that, dare I say, made me happy.

I know that you’re probably thinking that I have finally lost my mind. Not yet I haven’t. I think I might be close though.

You see, the rejection letter not only told me why they didn’t want it, but they liked the story. It was a personal reply from the editor. The words she used where encouraging. So I couldn’t help but share the news with my fellow writers and workshoppers.

Here’s the great bit. I couldn’t stop smiling after I heard the news.
A fellow workshopper has sent stories to the same magazine and has never received a personal reply from the editor, just the standard form rejection email. The editor took time out of their busy work schedule to personally let me know that my story idea was “plucky”, but a little too “macho” for their magazine.

The whole attitude of the email was pleasant.

It was my first positive rejection and I hope that it won’t be my last.
Although my story was not accepted by this publisher, I know that it will be accepted by another. No disillusionment here. No more believing I’m not good enough. It’s funny how rejection can actually lift one’s confidence.

Until the next rejection,

EJ

Off Line

I once read a blog post where an intelligent writer said that you have to be consistent when blogging. Oh. Right, that was me. And here I am writing the first blog in months. I should take my own advice. But trying to stop myself falling into a state of depression meant that some aspects of my life had to be put on hold. I’m being honest here. This post is a little longer than my others.

So bear with me.

There are so many of us out there who have full time jobs, study, children, husbands, wives who demand not only our time but also a lot of emotional real estate. When it comes to my family I wouldn’t have it any other way. And there was my problem. Every day I struggled with finding a way to remain clear-headed and rational. I had somehow lured myself into thinking that I was never going to amount to anything. My dreams, it seemed, were floating away and I had no idea how to catch up with them.

Eight months of constant negative attitude directed at me from people who just didn’t get the fact that I’m was only there to help them was making me miserable. It wasn’t my fault that they let their sick refrigerator or washing machine break down over a period of weeks, before calling us to come fix it. The feeling that I wasn’t able to satisfy them seriously started making me feel like everything was my fault. I now know better. Thank goodness.

The feeling that I was useless crossed over into motherhood. I felt like I was letting my son down. I couldn’t protect him. Bullying just shouldn’t happen. We eventually sorted it out, but it took an emotional toll on both of us. What I didn’t realise is that in all of the bullying, my son was comfortable enough to tell me what was going on and how he was feeling. What I didn’t see is that I had shown him that I had his back; that I would support and defend his actions, even if he ever thought (as a last resort) that he needed to defend himself physically. When things like that happen and you’ve experienced it yourself as a child—well the flood gates do open. I realised that I had not had the same support. Sticks and stones and deal with it. I don’t ever remember my parents going to the school. They were still good parents who did their best.

Letting go of the past has been hard. But I’ve had to move forward. I once believed that doing my best was never good enough. Where does it get you? I had to hit a personal low to find out that I had a great support network with family and friends who believe in me. Now I had to believe in myself. That’s hard to do when you’re a mum. Everyone, no matter how many times you hear you have to look out for yourself, knows what it’s like to have others dependant on you, relying on you. You always forget about yourself because somehow you believe that they are more important. They are important.

But so am I.

So taking that step to making my family and myself a little more independent from each other (in a healthy way) was hard. Why? Because I had been taught from a very early age that mothers and fathers sacrifice their dreams and hopes so that their children can follow theirs. It’s a vicious cycle. One that I am conscientiously trying to break. It’s hard work trying to separate and dissolve something that’s been ingrained in your head for the last thirty odd years.

When it came to my writing, I had become my own worst enemy. It was funny. I respected the fact that I would be receiving rejections. I’ve had them before. I have my five minutes of response and it’s over with. But I suddenly realised that you can’t get a rejection or an acceptance when you haven’t sent anything out there. I would nearly finish a project, convince myself that it wasn’t any good and start something new.

I even convinced myself at one stage that the mentorship with the Australian Horror Writers Association was a fluke.

I am so glad that I found the courage to sit down, discuss how I was feeling with fellow writers who are also good friends. It was nice to know that I wasn’t the only one feeling that way and it lifted the burden. Changing the way you see yourself is hard but when you recognise the positives and the steps forward, boy is it satisfying. The road ahead is scary but I’m sure not going to stop in the middle. I will still be a target of some poor unfortunate soul who thinks we should fix their appliances for free, but now it’s as simple as “Sorry I can’t help you.”

There have been break throughs. The first time I ever attempted a story under three hundred words won me a runner’s up prize of an all weekend pass to the Oz Horror Con 13. How cool was that! I’ve met some great writers who are supportive and encouraging. Their wealth of knowledge has been priceless. Yes I make mistakes. Everyone does. As long as you keep moving forward and doing the hard work, it will eventually pay off.

Now, I know I won that mentorship because of talent and lots of hard work. Just because one publication doesn’t want your novel, short story, poem, doesn’t mean that there’s no one else. It’s the waiting that tends to do my head in. Life will get in the way. I’m grateful that I did have that moment of weakness. It proved I wasn’t Wonder Woman. I had to stop being something that was beyond my reach, besides I only have two hands and one mind.

I’m back! Bwah ha ha ha ha.

I will keep you up to date more often on how I’m doing on current projects, recap and finish my little Workshopping posts, give you followers some new material and I’m learning to add photos and links.

I want all those fellow writers who are out there to know that I understand the frustrations of life. Share them with me, because until you get them out, you can’t move forward.

Blog you later,

EJ

Where Art Thou Creation?

I hadn’t written a single word of fiction for two weeks. It was killing me inside. I write fiction not just because I love it but because it’s an excellent stress relief tool. I reached out to the tarot for guidance, to help me find a way out of a desperate and tense state of mind. Every time I dealt out a spread, the creativity card kept coming out. I know I’m creative, that’s the problem! Face your fears was another. But how do you face the fear of not being able to create when you can’t write a single word? A lot of card shuffling happened and a card flipped out and landed face down. The universe was trying to tell me something. I took a deep breath. Somehow, I knew what card that was.

Creation imposed itself in my brain. I put the cards away, and began to write. Of all the things to write …

Waiting for the immovable chance of moment

seeded in conception

spreading through amniotic protection

laying bare the foundations of soul and secretion

hounded by limitations

spearheading contradiction with useless darkness

spurring meaningless incantations of cynicism with lashings of boiled light

engorging

knitting ideals one solitude at a time

burning images to the blind

purge and the words will come

streaming, steaming, writhing, slithering,

naked and …

Unwritten

I am creation

What’s your excuse …

Normally I leave poetry to those who have the gift. I struggled learning it while doing the Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. But sometimes, poetry pops into my already crowded brain and drops a line or two. I wrote this at a time that was dark, scary because I couldn’t even tap on the keyboard or hand write a single word. It wasn’t writer’s block because I could still work on my assignments. It was the issue of doing too much all at once.

No sooner had this poem popped out, I decided to take a deep breath, answer the question it asked of me. Doing too much wasn’t my fault. Life piles things up on you. My excuse was I was letting it get in the way of what I truly wanted to be. A writer. So I decided I needed to take a break from homework and rest up.

I now love this poem because it made me answerable to the predicament I was in. Writing it out somehow ex-or-cised the deeemons. The homework will soon end.

Poetry is like a blade on a knife. It can graze the surface, dig in an inch or plunge right into the heart of the matter. You take out whatever you need and as long as you write poetry that comes from the heart, soul and mind it will always help you to express yourself. I’ll take creativity anyway I can.

And yes I know it doesn’t have a title. Does it really need to have one?

The Muse was proud of this one,

EJ McLaughlin

Black Serenade Update:

The air in the room is Vulcan hot. The heat hits me like a solar flare that’s been trapped in my living room and is dying to be released and the only way out is through me. I can’t breathe damn it! The sweat stings my eyes and a single word is swirling inside my brain and it’s ready to erupt … Doom, Doom, DOOOOMMM … I tell ya.

Oh EJ, get a grip.

It’s not the end of the world.

Just because I received the first draft of my screenplay Black Serenade back from the harbingers of doom—I mean workshoppers—isn’t a reason to disintegrate to ash. No I am not a vampire. I am a writer who is worrying over nothing.

So what was the verdict?

Cut a couple of scenes.

Yeah, I knew that all ready.

The three main characters need their relationships developed.

I knew that too! But the good news is, talking and workshopping has helped me combat the problem.

Sentence structure.

That was a given. It’s a first draft.

The good news:

Don’t change the sequence, story isn’t a problem. Beginning, middle and end flow.

I got the three Gs. Gross, Gruesome and Gorgeous. I love those three Gs. I shall strive harder to get more of them.

See, workshopping isn’t so bad. All that gloom and doom for nothing—the panic. What panic? I was just working the tension. Alright. I know you know. Even though I have great workshoppers I still get the jitters. Sometimes I feel nauseous and other times I find myself holding my breath. But no matter how much constructive criticism I get, I move forward. I get over the nerves and decide which advice to follow, which advice to think about and which advice to ignore.

I’ve applied for a Mentorship program. Now that’s a reason to feel nervous. Wish me luck.

Signing out,

EJ McLaughlin.

The Apologetic Writer

It’s a sad day when a writer has to apologise because she hasn’t had the time or the emotional capacity to write a blog post other than this one. I humbly apologise. I know that as a writer you have to build up your platform by being consistent. Although I do understand the significance of such actions (after all I’m a professional writer) sometimes life gets in the way.

Please let me explain.

Every time I see sadness in my little boy’s deep brown eyes, my heart feels as if it’s ready to lurch out of my chest. A seven year old shouldn’t be subjected to bullying, not by his team mates (who believe it only takes one person to lose a soccer match) and not by students who are nearly four years older than him. He has been humiliated for no other reason than to make others feel good about themselves. No child should have to deal with bullying on their own. When I was bullied for preferring books and getting good grades, I was told to deal with it: sticks and stones, etc. I unfortunately had to deal with it on a violent physical level and eventually had to resort to fighting back. I know how I felt about it then and I know how I feel about it now. My son has my support, is now enrolled in a sport that will build up his confidence, which has hit an all-time low. So that’s where my heart is at the moment.

My patience has been worn as thin as a stretched out strand of cotton candy. My ten year old going on sixteen daughter has decided that now would be a great time to test out a new attitude. The devil is definitely laughing at me now, especially since my daughter’s hormones have started kicking in. I know I was like that, but I was a late bloomer. I’m trying to remember what it was like but I was never a ten year old girl who was beginning to develop. I was ten once but I remained flat chested until I was seventeen.

Have I mentioned that I’ve gone back to being a student, so I can teach at an adult level? As though I didn’t have enough to deal with such as family, working fulltime, trying to write, I’ve gone and added learning to my list. We all know that when you are learning there’s usually a lot of homework. I have ten activities due in three weeks. THREE WEEKS! There’s work, school holidays, (kids fulltime at the same time. ARGHH!) and in the middle of that my husband makes the lovely gesture of deciding that we needed a holiday to relax. I’m all for it which now means I have TWO weeks to finish my homework.

So there you have it. I suppose it could be seen as a weak excuse, but there’s something in all this mountain of stress and heartache that every writer should be using. The emotions, the reactions are all real. Use them when you put your characters through similar circumstances.

Trying to find the positive in all this negative is the only reason I haven’t given up yet. And other writers out there facing the same or worse problems need to remember that this is life teaching you a valuable lesson, not just about yourself but for your writing too! The bad things in our lives will eventually go away, and what you write on the page whether you like it or not has a little you in it, so use the experience and the trauma to enhance every sentence.

The apologetic writer,

EJ McLaughlin

Delidio’s Cadence

Delidio’s Cadence is one of those stories that started as a short story then progressed into a novel. We’ve all had those. However, this story soon developed into a nightmare that rivaled Freddy Kruger. Forget being slashed while you slept, Delidio was killing me with incisions of indecision. Something just wasn’t right. I experimented with voice, style, narrators and different points of view, but nothing was working. Then I had (as if I didn’t have enough challenges in my life) a revelation to split the book into character sections and have the main character doing a first person point of view but, because she is a soldier, I wrote her passages in first person with one small difference. There weren’t any I’s, me’s or my’s. It was hard, challenging, and I have to admit a little fun, but something was still not right. Aaaaarrrrgghh! It was like Freddy showing up in one of my nightmares with butter knives and spoons for fingers. It just isn’t right. A little hilarious but still not right.

No matter what I tried, it wasn’t working. Then came the wave of getting back into my screenplays and like a small meteor landing inside my bubbling pot of bolognaise sauce and making a mess, Delidio’s Cadence slapped me to attention and forced me to surrender all other stories. My orders, whether I wanted to follow them or not, are to adapt my novel into a screenplay. I’m only a civilian damn it!

Where do I begin?

I had been drafted.

I was being punished. The hardcore formatting issues, the translating prose into descriptions, the deleting of obsolete scenes and characters, not only hurt my brain, my eyes and my poor fingers, but the theme of the story changed too! I was amazed that my laptop hadn’t conked out due to being abused and continually poked at.

Eight days into my conscripted service and I had finished the first draft. Say that again because I don’t believe it myself. The story and the characters all fell into place.

I once had a tutor and manuscript assessor tell me that it read like a movie. Am I feeling like an idiot? Of course I am. I still have a few issues of world building and some other tiny issues with some character relationships, but it’s a first draft and a first draft is better than no draft at all.

Not everyone’s heart is in tune with humanity’s; that’s the tag line for the moment. For the first time I’m writing a uniquely Dark Urban Australian Fantasy and I’m feeding on the fear and uncertainty; why? because that’s what life’s like for my characters living in a world that doesn’t care about doing what’s right.

I’ll keep you posted.

The screenplay soldier,

E. J. McLaughlin

Black Serenade

This post came about because I have a screenplay that’s been begging me to work on it, but I let it down, failed it miserably because this was one of the stories that got hacked to death by bad workshopping. Let’s get one thing clear. I wasn’t being a precious princess who was afraid of killing her darlings. I love killing my darlings because at the end of the journey a better story unfolds. Every week I was told by the same group of people, day in and week out, (because we all took the same classes) that I shouldn’t bother with horror, it’s not something we should read or watch, why does there have to be blood, there’s something wrong with people who like or write horror.

Hello. Is anybody home?

My tag line is: Love; devour it before it devours you. There’s some degree of expectation of seeing blood in a horror romance and not a romance horror. Not forgetting that they would scribble out entire scenes without a word as to why. Some of the advice was good, but too much of it was bad, including the personal jabs. I put away my screenplay Black Serenade for all the wrong reasons. Unintentionally I let these bad workshoppers get to me, make myself doubt who I was as a writer and scariest of all, I let them.

That’s what bad workshopping does. It erodes your confidence bit by bit until you become afraid of something that you’ve created. I even have a novel that has been sitting dormant on my bookshelf for four years waiting to be reworked. (Guess what?)

Sure I kept writing. I even managed to finish my novel, Never Bargain With God and have sent out query letters to agents. I have other projects waiting. So why did I feel inclined to ignore Black Serenade? Because, it brought back the fear associated with losing confidence. It made me feel inadequate, frustrated and not worth the ink needed to have it printed out. I can’t believe how hard this is for me to write. Just because some unprofessional workshoppers dug their claws in, I was ready to sacrifice what I had worked so hard on.

While doing these posts on workshopping, I had a revelation. I not like that now. I have professional workshoppers who scare me for a whole different reason. They slash their way through my work and it’s all constructive criticism. I love it. I’m not dwelling in the past anymore. Bad workshopping is a thing of the past.

After rereading my screenplay, I decided to rewrite it as I wanted it to be from the beginning. It only took four days. I was happy. I was an ogre if I wasn’t writing it. So, Black Serenade has made it as my first post in Screenplay Scrapbook.

It’s currently out of my hands and into the dependable and reliable story deconstructionists I know. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

The reinvigorated,

E. J. McLaughlin