Please Like Me & My Work - A Post For Insecure Writers Support Group For March 2017

Today I met with a potential client.The project sounded like something I'd love to do; something that is interesting and has a meaningful impact on society. I liked the people. The interview and writing test went well, I think, and now it's now up to the company to decide if I'm their writer of choice, but I'm very hopeful.

This job-hunting process should be familiar territory to me, but it left me emotionally spent. I think one of the major reasons for this is because I Iiked what I heard and saw too much and so, became too invested in landing the job. I think deep down the crazy part of me was mumbling, "please like me and my work." Very disconcerting for me, because usually I just present myself and my portfolio and let the chips fall where they may.

I was very surprised that an old feature article that I wrote years ago, on an industry I never revisited since then, became relevant for the job.  I loved that piece and was quite proud of how it came out, considering my inexperience and lack contacts to interview. I had to go out to find the sources, convince them to talk to me and read up on the subject matter so I could ask pertinent questions and not sound like an idiot.

Speaking of revisiting old stories,  the prompt for this month's series of Insecure Writer's Support Group posts is: "Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?

My response to that is, sure, I do that quite a lot as part of my writing process. I usually put away stories in my notebooks and computers for months and years on end, and then when I want to write something for publication, I look through my cache of stories, rewrite  and edit them and then submit them.

Most recently, I reworked a children's story that I wrote in early 2000s, that was later published by Macmillan India as part of their school programme. I reworked it and submitted it to Roundafire publishers and it's now due for publication through them.

When I reworked the story, I found it to be a bit weak. But then, I was still young and inexperienced when I wrote it and hope that I have improved since then. The story is also going to be heavily illustrated by Roundafire, so it's somewhat different from the original version, as the illustrations also tell the story, reducing the need for some of the descriptive narrative.

I'm always pleased with a reworked a story. I feel that the elapsed time gives me distance from the original text and the writing that I do in the meantime helps improve my craft, which in turn impacts on the final process.

Many thanks to Alex Cavanaugh, the founder of the Insecure Writers Support Group and his co-hosts for the March posting Tamara Narayan, Patsy Collins, M.J. Fifield, and Nicohle Christopherson!

Sometimes The Writing Process Involves Getting Things Wrong & What I Do About It

I'd forgotten that sometimes, writing work means getting things wrong.

Your editor, client or whoever has final approval on the piece may have so many queries the hurt from looking at the red-inked tracked changes is almost physical. That was how I felt yesterday.

The PR company I write for sent back an article I wrote for them, and they had at least 10 queries, and when  I read what they said, I realised that I started the writing process with too many built-in assumptions. Even  though the subject was technical (IT, Virtualisation), it's always, always about telling a story and instead of explaining things clearly and concisely, I threw in a lot of "facts" and big words. The resulting input involved  "what do you mean?" "this does not make sense and "give examples please?" Urgh! My poor client, having to read that mess and wondering if I've lost my mind.

And no, I didn't just do a quick and shoddy job on the fly. That kind of problem is whole different kettle of fish.  My great excuse is that the article scope was shorter than I liked for what I wanted to cover (600-800 words) and there was plenty to explain, so I didn't feel like I had room to say too much. Also, I had an underlying attitude of, "This is for tech professionals. I'm sure the readers know the basics of this." Big mistake. Never assume. And I'm not implying that they wouldn't know, but my job is to tell them a story that also imparts information that they can use for their business.

So what did I do?

1. Get over your ego, shaken confidence and hurt feelings - I did mention that I became a blubbering mess inside, right? So I had to calm down, stop the self-blame, which is self-indulgent.I walked the garden, then played an hour of Criminal Case before I was ready to face the page again. Please don't judge me on Criminal Case. I know it's mindless, but sometimes that's exactly what the brain needs.

2. Inform the client that you're on the case - If the problem was a small one or I knew a fix would take less than an hour, I would have simply rewritten it and sent it back. But while the queries were clear, I could see a bigger underlying problem and a complete rewrite was needed.

3. Reread the manuscript and the consider the client input -I printed the article out, as sometimes it's easy for me to miss things on a screen. Then armed with a red pen and my original source documents, I went through the article.

4. Consider the story that you initially wanted to tell - If the article had a few minor queries, I would just have typed in new changes answering the queries and left it at that. But I felt like, while that could pass muster for having answered the queries, this was not the best version of the story I could tell. So I read up on the subject matter all over again, went to bed and slept on it, letting the information marinate in my brain.

5. Focus on what is important- There was pressure from wanting to get it right this time; pressure from wanting to do the writing as quickly as possible, because yes, there is always a deadline. And I had other work planned and the scope of the changes I wanted to make would have an impact on my schedule. I had to remind myself to focus on what I needed to and could do, reschedule and manage everything else.

6. The final fix - It's been raining since last night. Slowly. Quietly. Rain soothes me and makes me happy because I know my garden is being fed. This is especially important to me after a devastating drought this past Summer. So this morning I cocooned in my home office, just me and my computer and lots of herbal tea, and wrote.

6. Once it's gone, it's out of your hands - Once I sent the new version out, I had to mentally let it go. I can't control how this new version will be received and honestly, once it's accepted, it's no longer my baby. A thorough copy-editor will go through it and likely find one or two things I missed. That's what they are there for ... to make a writer's work shine.

Right now blogging about the process is helping me let go. I got it wrong. I learnt from it, and now it's time to open a new manuscript and start another writing process.
 

The Minutiae Of A Writing Life In Phokeng

I wish I had a good quality camera to capture the charm of this room

The words came today. Lots and lots of words. It wasn't the story that I had been working on, that I wanted to write.

It wasn't part of a client project either. Still, when the words are begging me to write them, I'm not going to argue :)

There is a lot stuff happening in my home office- there's a PC, a laptop, printer, notebooks and pads and pens to write with, a fan to combat the extreme heat and various hand creams to make me comfortable, speakers for when I play music or my favourite radio station, books, seeds, my sun hat... The green kist is packed full of fabrics that I also plan to use for me or the house. It has also been known to serve as a visitor chair:)

On Editorial Guidelines, Implementation Plans, Spreadsheets & The Craft Of Writing For Children

One of the toughest things I've tried to articulate to my non-writer friends about the writing process is the craft required to ensure that a children's story meets editorial guidelines.

Or maybe they just don't get it because it doesn't sound very creative.. it sounds like a trade... maybe like laying the story out brick by brick, or panelbeating what's already there? LOL!

I think the "romantic" view we have of the writing process is that the writer creates character profiles, researches the topic, plots the story and writes. Some writers plan their characters in great detail, others fly by the seat of their pants, but that's a post for another day.

Fitting It All Into A Day: My Writing Process

It's been a while since I posted here and I hope that this post you will give you insight into what I've been up to in terms of writing, the factors that affect my writing day and how I try to fit it all into my day, with varying degrees of success.


What am I working on/ writing

One of my biggest challenges is that my head is never quiet, even when I’m not writing or blogging. There is always a story or character trying to say something to me and I’d probably go crazy if I didn’t regularly do a brain dump.  So while I haven’t been blogging for long while, I’ve been doing a lot of writing this year. The material I've been working on includes:

Client work: This ranged from web content to brochures to articles published in magazines and blogs under a client’s name. I’ve scaled this down drastically though, so I can write more books.

Children’s stories: Two stories are done and proof-read and have covers. I just need to get off my tushie to work on publishing them on Amazon as planned. Another story has been critiqued by trusted readers and edited but doesn’t have a cover.   There’s also a series of 10 children’s stories based on a single character, started in March 2014. I should start researching the themes in the stories to ensure accuracy of fictional events. I also have a number of folktales retold for children in second draft.

A novella (romance)  and a short story submitted to a publisher under a pen name. Waiting to hear from them.

An ebook on growing your own food in South Africa (proposed as ebook series of 3). Manuscript due to publisher in September as per publisher request.



Blog posts – Blogging was the orphan child who suffered while I lived and worked, though I did manage to write quite a lot for my gardening blog, come up with the ebook idea, pitch it to a publisher and write up more than half the manuscript.

Poetry for personal use. This is a new development startedin the past couple of months. In May I wrote a poem for Baby’s 16th birthday, another for Mother’s Day and third for a close friend commemorating Macaroon Day.  My friend didn’t know it was Macaroon Day until I said so and she’s still not sure why she should care about the day. Tomorrow is Old Maid's Day and I suppose I am one and I have friends who are, though obviously I wouldn't have used that phrase. So there could be a poem in me to commemorate the day:)

How does my work/writing differ from others in its genre?

I try to make my readers feel that one of my characters is sitting next to them, telling them about even their lives or in the case of non-fiction I’m explaining how the stuff works. The flow of words, the cadence of it should reflect this.


When I write for clients though, I strive to make sure my “voice” is completely absent. I listen to hours of audio interviews when I first land a client I’m writing for, so that I can get a feel of them not just in the content I’m communicating but also in the turn of phrases they are prone to use.  It’s hard in the beginning and I usually prefer to interview them by email too so their personality comes through their written words unfiltered by me.

Why do I write what I do?

I write children’s stories and folktales because I want to share stories that had an impact on me as a child and to write stories children I love can identify with;  IT business because there’s a big geek in me who loves thinking about cables and widgets and the business of selling them and using them to create interesting things and the laws that govern that whole process; marketing, promotion and publicity because I’ve worked in those fields and many people want to know how it works and I love sharing what I know; gardening because I’m passionate about growing our food and love sharing what I’m learning;  poetry because sometimes I have something to say to a specific person. Sometimes though, I write because the client asked and it’s money in the bank for me.

How does my writing process work?

My writing has to fit in with whatever home-related tasks I have to do throughout the day. For example, yesterday’s priorities involved caring for Mma who has health issues, updating my cozi app to plan for winter, June and the coming week (writing goals for the month, projects that need to be done around the house this June, life admin, ordering our monthly meds, making a monthly grocery list and ordering meat animals from local farmers – a lamb at R500/$47 and pig at R600/$57 to last us through Spring).

I also had to pick the day’s harvest, water the garden, prepare our lunch and dinner and deal with three different guests who came to come visit Mma.

My writing priorities for the day were writing this blog, finding three poems to send to an organisation that asked me, sending my ebook “How to get quoted in the media” to a friend for a thesis research, updating a client’s social media, taking photos of the garden and writing  about one vegetable for the ebook manuscript and transcribing and translating a short client audio.

As to the nitty-gritty of my writing process, client work is easy: I get a brief outlining a topic, slant and word count, potential sources and the publication the client is placing it with. I then draft interview questions and send them to the sources also asking for interview date and time and to find out if they prefer email or telephonic  interviews.  After the interview I write the piece, rewrite it until I’m happy with it, send it to the client for approval, edit again and polish until it’s ready for publication.

For my personal projects, whether fiction or non-fiction, I evaluate the ideas dumped onto my board to see if they have merit and free- write those that look “shiny” to me. That gives me the bare bones of my stories.  From there I do online research, which may also include cutting photos of people, places and buildings to support various themes in the work,  then look for interview sources to get more information to shape my stories, settings or characters.

I then rewrite the piece, this time the writing rooted in information and referring to my notes, photos/clips and articles quite a bit. This is where I consciously choose a method to communicate information in the piece (to narrate or quote, for example) and verify whether what the character says or does is plausible.

This process is repeated over and over until the draft manuscript is done.  Sometimes I put the story away for hours/days/weeks, even months, before I start cutting it to meet word count requirements and rewriting until the piece feels polished.

Afterwards, I send it to trusted readers for their input. For longer non-fiction works, I’ve been known call friends saying “I hate it. It sucks. I’m a horrible writer!” Then sanity prevails and I use readers’ input to polish it, edit and proof-read the piece again before sending it where it’s supposed to go for publication.
So. That’s the overall process, though it’s truncated for shorter or more predictable pieces.

This post is part of the My Writing Process blog hop. I was tagged by Corinne Rodrigues, a Mumbai-based blogger, writer, motivator who says she is journeying happily through midlife. Corinne blogs here and on Write Tribe and From 7Eight.

For this hop, I'm tagging three people and their posts will go live on Monday 9th June. Please visit them next week, get to know them and you'll see why I like them so much:)

Sandile Nene, a young writer and blogger who has taught me a thing or two without realising it:

Sandile Nene, better known as Sandy is a 21 year old South African based freelance writer and blogger.

He is the founder of SA's first and biggest blogging community Web For Love (currently being renovated). Sandy blogs at On Point With Sandy and works as a social media manager and content creator.













Pamela Moeng, one of my closest friends and a writer. 

Pamela Moeng has worked as a feature writer for a small weekly newspaper, a Public Relations Manager in a cultural centre, an editor for two educational publishers and she currently works in communications.

Her published works include a romance novella entitled The Business of Love published by Nollybooks, educational books including English in Our Lives teachers guides grades 7, 8 and 9 and Let’s Use English teachers guide grade 8 for Heinemann, and Learning Arts and Culture Can Be Fun learners and teachers guides grade 5 for Nasou via Afrika.

She published six supplementary readers through Cambridge University Press, including both fiction and non-fiction.

She has edited the Oxford University Press publication Starting Your Own Business in South Africa 11th Edition, contributing the chapter on women in business. She contributed poems to Wo(ban).
Pamela blogs about writing here.


Ann, a new friend and blogger who has an interesting story to tell:

Ann is a mom of three, a wife, a nurse, a blogger; freelance writer, a tea lover, and she loves her Mac computer! Since 2008, she has learned that coupons can help her and her family through tough economic times.

By having a well-stocked and organized stockpile, she was able to continue to further her career. She worked full-time and attended college part-time, then times got tough so she had to give up her job to continue through school.

She then continued through college all while living off the stockpile that she had from coupons, and had help from others. Even since then she has come to believe that old saying: "the early bird gets the worm".

Ann says she believes there is truth in that statement, especially when it comes to hunting down the deals before the supplies run out. And being an avid couponer, she's always looking for that next "best" deal!

Her goal is to help others do the same. She want to pass along the deals not only to Kentuckians, but to everyone and she shares her insight on her blog Passing Deals in Kentucky

H Is For Home Office

My new home office (Black blob on the floor is my bag:-)

One of the most difficult lessons I've had to learn since I moved to Phokeng is that the space where you work matters and it's difficult to focus on the work at hand when your work station is unsettled.

Initially I worked where I could, when I could. I had a big table with my computers, printer and laptop in  my bedroom, but it didn't feel like a proper place to work. So I roamed about in the house, telling myself it was nice to be so mobile. And it sounds very nicely creative. However, the situation was not working as it should.

Here are some of the benefits of having a home office, whether it's an outside cottage, a room separate from the rest of your house or a corner in one of the family rooms:

Books I'm Reading & The Writing Life In General

This post is going to be an update of what I've been up to lately, so I'll do a list so it's all put in some order:

1. Book Issues

I bought two books by Alice Fowler- The Edible Garden - How To Grow Your Garden and Eat It and The Thrifty Gardener. 

I bought both in ebook/Kindle format, because the shipping costs from Amazon were considerably more than the cost of the two books put together.

I'd rather use the shipping money to buy more books, thanks. Go ebooks!

I'm also reading J.L Campbell's action/adventure/romance, Contraband.

Joy is a fellow writer/blogger and I met her while doing a blog challenge and to be honest, if I hadn't "met" her, I would never have thought of reading her books because they were outside my comfort zone.

I have mentioned before that I'm predictable when it comes to my reading selections, right? I even "stalk" an author online for months, read as many freebies I can get, before I decide  to spend my hard-earned cash.

Money is tight around here, and I prefer to use what cents I have to support whose  works I like, whether they are famous or not.

As a writer, I know each sale makes a difference. But there are also some badly written/edited books out there, so I have to be very careful that I get good value for my money or soon, I'll be so disillusioned I'll end up what's easier/tried/tested. But I digress.. I'm still reading Contraband, and so far, it's going very well. The review will follow soon.

D is For Drafts

Yesterday was a very good writing day. One of those days writers dream about where you have an idea, and you sit down to write it down, and the ideas and words just keep coming.  By the time I finished, I had 4000 words of an outline for a series of children's stories.

The idea came from this guy.

Fluffy on a rug in our sittingroom

 We call him Fluffy. I know, I know. Not very original, is it?

11 Things That Inspire Me To Write

As a working writer, I don't have the luxury of waiting for inspiration to strike before I start writing.

Each day, I need to sit down for a designated time and write. Some days the words come easier than others though.

Here are some of the things that help bring the words more easily:

9 Things I Did When I Should Have Been Writing

Today I should be working on some client projects, but unfortunately, I'm at that difficult  frustrating stage of the writing process where you have all the tools you  need to start writing, but somehow, it's difficult to write the first paragraph.

All I've managed to do is:

1. Email a couple of friends, though I have nothing important to say.
2. Bake two loaves of brown bread we didn't need.
3. Wash and cut up a 10 litre bucketful of parsley to dry and store for future use. I really didn't need to do that today.
4. Make lunch for 7 people. Someone else could have done it easily.
5. Watch an interesting resignation video. I think the woman will probably land another job through that video, if it hasn't happened already.
6. Read a couple of children's stories that a writer I don't know personally submitted to Damaria Senne Media for publication. I've never made a call for submission, and I'm not even sure that Damaria Senne Media is in a position to consider publishing other people's work, but people do send their work and I'd feel bad  if I didn't even read the material. Did some quality control, including a plagiarism check. I use Grammarly's plagiarism checker  because I don't want to bother reading the stuff if it's not even original. This article is another reason I always check when reading material of people not known to me, whether it is to judge a competition or to act as freelance publisher for a client. Though this was kinda work, it was still not the writing I should have been doing.
7. Wallow in guilt because I was not writing when I should be
8. Write this blog post to try to assuage the guilt that I was not writing. It didn't work.
9. Read an article on procrastination  Decided to get over myself and make like Nike.

So now I'm going to print out all the material I have on the client project I should be working on, re-read it and see if taking notes by hand won't kick-start something.

Grrrrrr!

And no, this is not writer's block. This is the part every writer has to go through with each new project: BEGIN! Some days, getting started is easier than others.

Writing Resources I Use

By Pamela Moeng

I receive numerous emails from various writing related sites. You may or not be familiar with the ones I use, and you may have your own. A list of my favourite ones follow, and I'd appreciate a heads up on any site not mentioned that Storypot readers have found useful. Of course, feel free to warn us about any sites that aren't particularly useful for writing purposes as well.
• Daily Writing Tips
• The Urban Muse
• The Renegade Writer
• Author Magazine
• Wordsmith's A Word A Day
• Advanced Fiction Writing Blog
• The Tequila Thursday Writer's Club
• Katalina's Playroom

The above are a few I regularly look to for writing tips, and inspiration.

Keeping abreast of all the email information I receive from these sites is a challenge, but I never fail to learn something new each day, or to find a better way to do something. A believer in lifelong learning, I don't think any person ever learns everything they need to know to be perfect at their craft. I aim to keep honing my craft til they pry my keyboard out of my cold, dead hands.

This weekend the Professional Editor's Group (PEG) is hosting a copyright workshop on Saturday morning, at the very low investment of R200 for non-members. I urge those of you who are here in Jozi and not busy this weekend to take advantage of the opportunity. Damaria has already provided the information previously.

Please let me know of any websites, free email newsletter, or other material that you find helps you in your writing. I'd appreciate it.

Q & A with Rachel Pearce about my writing process and stuff I like

Check out this interview I did with Rachel Pearce. where you'll definitely learn new things about me. You'll find out what my favourite mythological creature is ( not werewolves or vampires:-), and why I prefer ninjas over pirates. Enjoy!

Guest post: Researching, writing, editing, publishing and promoting books at the same time

Check out this post on Rebecca Emerich's blog, where I chat about researching, writing, editing, publishing and promoting books at the same time.

Thank you Rebecca for hosting me.

Book 1 typeset pages look lovely!

I had a lovely day yesterday, albeit a busy one. And the reason is that I can finally see the results of the hard work I've put in  in the latter part of 2011, reviewing manuscripts, preparing artwork briefs etc. 

I spent most of the morning and afternoon reviewing Book 1 typeset pages, and  it looks lovely, even if I do say so myself.  It's this stage of the process that makes the long, demanding publishing process just worth it. Author also seems very happy with the results so far and I hope client will also be happy.

Today I'm going through Book 3 typeset pages. It  still has a ways to go to reach the beauty that is Book 1, but it will get there.

I also finalised my company (Damaria Senne Media) brochure and I'll print it and send out to potential clients soon. Hopefully it will generate plenty of business for me in 2012. 

Hectic but very little writing getting done

It's been a hectic morning: hired a domestic to help Mma and a part time gardener to mow the lawn and keep yard clean. Making preparations to cook and pre-package meals for her. Spending the rest of the day reviewing manuscripts and artwork.

It's a wonder we made it to adulthood

Happy Monday to you all. Things are looking up in my corner of the world: Mma looks and sounds better, though she's still in the hospital.

Spent a lot of time with my siblings and we had a good time, despite the circumstances of our getting together. We were roudy, updating each other on our lives, debating politics, religion and everything we could think of (that's normal when we meet), looking through childhood photos(we all looked so young!) and reminisced about some of our memorable escapades. Younger brother owned a plethora of weapons including a set of nunchaku ( I tried to learn to use them but hit self on the head), a knobkierie (big stick), catapults, a bow and arrows.

He and younger sister had silly grins on their faces when they recounted using the bows and arrows to hunt people..   ahem...sorry, meant to say hunt wildlife. I mostly trapped big-sized birds or hit them with a stone from a small catapult, then cooked them over an open fire. And no, I didn't set anything of fire that I didn't intend to. That accomplishment was left to both my brothers, who at different times set Aunt M's house on fire.

Looking back at our play from a modern perspective, it's a wonder someone didn't murder us just so they could feel safer.

I'm now back to almost normal work routine starting today. I'm spending most of the week reviewing manuscripts at various stages of production and doing some creative writing.

How are you? How was your weekend?

My writing process

Kelly Mathee, a South African writer, interviewed me about my writing process for "How to get quoted in the media" and other issues. Check out the post.

How to get quoted in the media - the cover

So what do you think of the draft cover of our ebook? Do you like it? co-author Christelle du Toit took photographs of old newspapers. Cover design was done by Ofentse Mokgethi, a multi-disciplinary artist friend whose bag of skills include graphic design. 

And yes, he does take on freelance graphic design and typesetting assignments. Feel free to email him if you need his services.

Sticking to the facts

For the past couple of months I've been struggling with a project. I was editing something and the content and structure of the document were not compatible with what it was supposed to be. 

The problem was, I started out from the viewpoint that the writer was right (because he's very experienced) and since I was the newbie on the block, I was the one who was making some kind of mistake. I felt like I was in that nightmare class where my lecturer tell the class 2 + 2 = 6 and all the students in class agree with him. And instead of challenging the lecturer's premise, I battled with my math problem trying to find out why my answer did not fit.

Anyhoo, today I decided to start working on the project from scratch and examining the facts only. It was such a relief to see everything fall into place! I should have done this much earlier instead of trying to make something that was broken look okay.

Question: How do you deal with situations where someone whose opinion you respect is wrong? Are you quick to examine the facts and let them speak for themselves, or are you like me, sometimes stuck on the fact that the source is credible and therefore, you must be the one making the mistake somewhere?

Creating characters

By Pamela Moeng

Which comes first - the chicken or the egg? And which comes first in a story - the story idea or the character?

Robert Sawyer, in his online article "Constructing Characters," says it's easier to start with a premise and build the perfect character - like a purpose-built robot - for that premise.

Sayer, winner of 25 awards for fiction and teacher at several universities, says that unlike real people who are a jumbled collection of random characteristcs, characters in a story are "made to order to do a specific job".

A write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants author, his notion seemed at odds with my own characters who seem to arrive fully developed, but I see the advantage of asking myself what kind of character would bring the biggest drama to a story.

He says that this works well for the original premise but may not work if you try using the same character for another premise, i.e. a sequel if the character is not a good fit for the sequel's premise.

Of course, showing the characteristics of your ficitonal character can be done in numerous ways. Dialogue, including not only what your character says but how too. What vocabulary does he or she use, how does he or she use grammar? Behaviour also shows rather than tells what kind of person the character is. Interaction and response to other characters and situations can also build your charcter(s) in your readers' minds.

To read more about characterisation go to Robert J sawyer's website: http://www.sfwriter.com.

Share with us: how do you create your characters?