Daily Archives: January 2, 2013

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2013 Is Our Year!

January 2, 2013 by in category Archives

by Barb DeLong and Jann Audiss

 
Barb:  Do you believe it’s 2013, Jann? Wow! Another year over and I didn’t get my WIP completed. 2013 will be my year, though. I joined OCC’s BIAY and I have a goal of entering the Orange Rose Contest. What held me back in 2012, besides “not having enough time?”
Sometimes anxiety sets in when I think about writing a whole book. Richard Russo, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls, said, “The task is so enormous that if we really thought about what we were letting ourselves in for, we’d never begin. Early on we learn to worry only about what we do today. If I get my two or three pages written on Monday my day’s work is done. It’s useless to worry about Friday or four years from Friday. Pages need our attention; books take care of themselves.”
I’m going to remember that.

But (isn’t there always a big but somewhere?), those three or four pages are like pulling teeth. I can’t turn off my inner editor and just throw words on a page.  Even so, my once grand idea begins to sound like crap. Here’s another quote by another award-winning author Ann Patchett that sums up my feelings exactly. She said, “The way I write, I have a novel in my head for a long time that I think about, and in those months it is so beautiful, so incredibly profound . . . The novel in my imagination travels with me like a small lavender moth making loopy circles around my head.”  She said, “As soon as I start to put it on the page I kill it. It always breaks my heart. For me, the greatest challenge is to stick with the book I’m writing when what I want to do is hit the delete button.”

I will strive to have her determination.

Jann: I totally understand what Ann said. I’ve been killing off story ideas left and right. I’m going with the concept of one hundred words (or more) a day. Author Janie Emaus who writes a weekly column on In the Powder Room ended her recent column saying, “If you’re going to follow something, follow your own heart.” http://www.inthepowderroom.com/read/home-time/2012-12-that-time-of-year-again.html
I’m going to follow my heart by completing my pledge to BIAY and longtime goal of entering the Orange Rose Contest as well.

Here’s to us and fulfilling our dreams for 2013!!
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