Is Perfectionism Holding You Back?

perfectionism

Recently I’ve come to realise that my perfectionism is holding me back when it comes to delivering complete manuscripts.

I’m afraid that once I finish it, that’s it. And it’s true, that is it. Except for editing.

But you know, it’s always better in my head. So I don’t want to finish. And my excuse for not publishing anything is that it’s not finished.

It’s a no-win situation.

I don’t know why I feel like this. I’ve published two books and two short story collections. I know how to do this. I’ve had good reviews and bad reviews. I’ve had campaigns organised designed to drive me off the internet. I’ve retreated from any author communities and basically just stay by myself.

My plan this year was to write three complete novels using the Camp NaNoWriMo and November NaNoWriMo to give me the encouragement I needed, but that plan’s gone out the window.

Since I haven’t written anything in over a year now, I’m afraid I simply won’t have the juice to get going. Like an abandoned car whose engine won’t tick over.

So I’m going to tackle this perfectionism/procrastination issue by finishing my 2014 NaNo novel and another novella I’ve had sitting around waiting for me to just finish it.

I know how both of them end, so it should be easy, but a part of me doesn’t want to finish either project. I’m dreading locking myself away for hours on end in my office to write.

This is probably why I could never write anything to deadline. Or maybe a deadline would help. Who knows?

So it boils down to:

Can I still write?
Can I face hours of loneliness writing by myself?
Can I finish those manuscripts?

Ah, the life of a full-time employed self-published author. We’re good at beating ourselves up.

New Year, New Ambition

new year

I didn’t make a single blog post in 2015.

That’s because due to personal reasons I decided to take the entire year off from writing.

It was awesome. Instead of feeling guilty for not writing, I simply said, “I’m not writing this year.”

It was liberating. I spent lots of time on my other hobbies.

It was scary. I felt the itch return a few times.

But I didn’t write anything.

I always get burned out after NaNoWriMo, and 2014 was no different. I didn’t even finish writing the book, although I did ‘win’ Nano. So I was OK at taking six months off. My computer barely turned on during that time. I didn’t miss it at all.

After about six months, I started to get the urge to write again.

Contrary to what people believe about writers, I didn’t succumb to the temptation.

I wanted to complete my ‘no writing in 2015’ goal because writing is what I’ve always done, even if I don’t have a lot of quality finished work to show for it.

‘Writer’ is part of my identity, like being tall and blonde.

And I needed to be able to devote more time to the other important things in my life, because writing takes up A LOT of time, and I got married in 2014, and I’d felt like I wasn’t spending enough time with my husband.

My plan for 2016

is to find a better balance between ‘no writing’ and ‘writing every day’.

Because writing takes discipline, but I don’t want to burn out.

However, some of you may have noticed the rebranding I started in early 2015 just before I decided to take my sabbatical.

It says ‘Lissa Writes sci-fi, paranormal, fantasy, contemporary romance.’

I’ve published the sci-fi and the paranormal. I’m sitting on the contemporary romance because they’re novellas and I need to make the decision on whether to publish them myself or not.

My 2014 novel was the fantasy, the first part of a trilogy I am determined to complete.

To do that, I’ve formulated a basic, flexible plan.

I’m going to attempt all three NaNoWriMo events this year.

That’s the two Camp NaNoWriMos, held in April and July, and the regular November NaNoWriMo.

After completing the Camp/NaNos, during the ‘off season’, I’m not going to write anything else other than working on the previous NaNo novels.

(Unless I feel like it, of course.)

I’m going to dream, plan, and let my imagination flow with creativity.

I’m going to fill the pages of my colouring books, read books from my ‘to-read’ shelf, play with my three adorable cats, and spend time with my husband.

I’m going to find the balance.

NaNoWriMo Prep in October – The Writing Playlist

Every year I prepare a writing playlist specifically for NaNoWriMo. Sometimes I need absolute silence to write, other times I can do with some tunes to get me in the right frame of mind.

I find that film soundtracks work best of all.

This year I discovered Spotify. It’s a free web player with a massive library of albums. The only downside is that sometimes they put in ads, but that’s OK because they tend to only last for about 30 seconds. It can be frustrating interrupting your music flow, but for a free web player i won’t be complaining.

NOTE – I tried using the Spotify app on my phone, but it’s not the same. Selecting a playlist led to other random songs being played as well. Only on the web player and on tablets does it actually do what you want it to do.

Here is this year’s playlist, thanks to Spotify:

Spotify says it’s about 6 hours worth of music. It’s remarkably different to my 2011 NaNo soundtrack which eventually consisted of one song played on repeat.

NaNoWriMo Prep in October – Planning

I’ve been super busy this year producing work under a couple of different pen names, but I always find November’s NaNoWriMo to be a good writing exercise and time to produce something under my real name.

I’ve done NaNoWriMo every year since 2010. Two of the books I completed and self-published under NaNoWriMo were highly praised. The third is currently being looked at by a publisher. We’ll ignore the year my cat and computer both died and I lost half the novel I was writing. I still haven’t quite recovered from that and can’t bring myself to re-write the lost novel.

My advice? BACK IT UP.

But anyhow, it’s October again and time to start my NaNo prep.

A few months ago I won a pre-made book cover in a giveaway, and I decided to build a story around the cover.

I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do for NaNo 2014, but I pretty soon managed to settle on a character, figure out her goal, throw some obstacles in the way and develop a plot.

I’m a planner. If I don’t know what’s going to happen in the novel I sit there staring at the screen.

Conversely, if I know how the story’s going to end, I normally don’t feel the urge to complete it.

(Which is probably why I have so many unfinished novels.)

I’m planning my new novel using the three act plot structure.

Act 1 ‘Exposition’:

Setup
Inciting incident
First turning point – where the hero accepts their new calling

Act 2 ‘Rising Action’:

Obstacles and progress
Mid-way point – a major setback
More obstacles and higher stakes.
Second turning point – what I call ‘the point of no return’.

Act 3 ‘Resolution’:

Stand up and fight – the final push.
Climax
Resolution

This is the structure I’ll be following in writing my novel. Let’s hope I can stick to it!

Diversity in Books: Why It’s Important and Why I Write It

#weneeddiversebooks

I’ve published two full-length novels and both of them contain people of colour as either the main character or the love interest(s).

In The Edge of Darkness, my protagonist Max(ine) is Filipino.

I consciously made the decision to write her as non-white building on my father’s experience of being the son of immigrants to Australia, and because Australia’s always had a high level of Asian immigrants.

Why the Phillipines? The answer can be as shallow as ‘I once knew a beautiful man from there’. Despite my family’s strong connection to Japan, I wanted Max to represent a less popular section of Asia, one you don’t see very often in popular literature..

Max is also named after the main character from Dark Angel, played by Jessica Alba, who’s mixed race.

In Storm of Blood, my protagonist Tina is white (as are the majority of Australians, where the book is set), but her boyfriend Tengu is Chinese (from Hong Kong) and the other boy who plays a role in her love life, Lachlan, is descended from Pacific Islanders.

Tengu appeared in the last short story from the Storm Front collection. I was looking for a lesser-known demon for Tina to turn to for help when I stumbled upon the tengu Chinese shapeshifting demon in my research. I took a lot of creative licensing in Tengu’s kind of shapeshifting and it’s really got nothing to do with the original Chinese demon I first discovered. Buddhism says that the tengu demon were originally disruptive and dangerous, but over time their image changed to one of protection, which is how book Tengu is with Tina.

And the reason I made Lachlan a Pacific Islander is because the inspiration for his looks is an actor called Michaal Copon who’s just really good-looking. He was in the cheerleading movie Bring it On: In It to Win It along with Cassandra Scerbo (of Sharknado fame), who inspired my look for Chelsea. One look at that pair in that film and I knew that was what I wanted in my book.

As a side note – I did consider making the villain character gay, but I couldn’t bring myself to possible represent that community in a bad light. Some of the characters in my novels are gay, but if there’s no way for me to make that explicit, you’ll never know who. My philosophy is that that’s pretty much how it works in the real world, too.

I feel that all-white casts in books can be generic and boring, and I always get excited when I read books by Malinda Lo who always includes diversity not only in race but in sexuality, too. But I figure, Malinda (who’s an excellent writer) includes diversity because she’s hyper-aware of it, being a minority herself. I’m not a minority, but it sure is nice when a straight, white, cis female can include diversity in her books as well.

My biggest reason for writing diversity in my books is very simple: why shouldn’t I?

The book I’m working on at the moment is a young adult bisexual love story about a mixed-race girl.