IWSG For March – Time For Spring Cleaning

Hidey-ho all my blogger buddies! Guess what. It is the first Wednesday of the month and we know what that means! It’s time for my posting for The Insecure Writer’s Support Group #IWSG which was founded by the incredible Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh, our resident Sci-fi master, author extraordinaire, and all around in-house celebrity nice guy. The purpose of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group is give all writers a safe haven where they can express their doubts, concerns and insecurities without fear of appearing weak or foolish. We can even celebrate our triumphs and successes!

Posting is the first Wednesday of every month and you post your thoughts on your own blog. It is an awesome group to be a part of and I have been a proud member since I started blogging last year. If you are interested in becoming a member of our élite group of insecure writers, please click on the image and you will be transported to the #IWSG site where you can add your name to the list. This is a blog hop, so whenever you post, make sure you visit other insecure writers and offer them support as well.

This month’s  #IWSG co-hosts are: 

• Elsie, over at http://www.elsieiswriting.com,
• Tina Downey, over at http://kmdlifeisgood.blogspot.com,
• Elizabeth Seckman, over at http://www.eseckman.blogspot.com and
• Julie Flanders over at http://www.julieflanders.blogspot.com.

I’d like to thank our co-hosts for doing an amazing job this month!

I’ve been very busy these past few weeks. I was extremely proud to share my NaNoWriMo win on my December post for the IWSG. Um, yeah. Out of those 50,091 words or so, I’ve probably chucked about a quarter so far and will probably dump more before I’m done. Kind of like the Spring cleaning I’m going to be doing shortly; packing away the winter stuff and bringing out the warm weather wear… Hey, I can dream!!

Mind you, the work is nowhere near complete, but I guess Ernest Hemingway was right, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Aside from the fact that I had a bunch of useless junk in it, I also noticed that while I was reading it, my POV has a tendency to shift every so often, which is frustrating as hell. It’s bad enough that I have to really focus on what I’m doing so I don’t wander, but every so often I go from third person to first and don’t even realize it until I’m in the middle of reading the story; makes me want to pull my hair out. I’ve really got to get a grip on POV. Sometimes I feel like a toddler trying to swim in the big kids pool.

I’ll admit that while I haven’t been able to write or blog most of December through the better part of February, I was able to get in a lot of reading; not only novels that I’d like to review, but books on the craft of writing as well. I bought another copy of Stephen King’s On Writing, the original I misplaced long ago, and The Elements of Style, which is turning out to be a priceless tool for me. I’ve also been doing some research and looking at various writers resources because I know that I have weaknesses now that were not present before my hemorrhage, mainly focus, attention and memory.

My one promise to myself this New Years was that I would self-publish something and it would be good. It may not be a novel, but I will be happy with a short story or a novella. I think I’ve put so much pressure on myself to be the person I was before, and truth be told, I will never be the person I was before. I’m not going to look at it as a bad thing though. The things I used to take for granted before, I don’t anymore. So it’ll take me longer to finish my works and that’s OK. I’ll make sure I have good people behind me reviewing and editing them so when I do finally put out my project, it will be something I can be proud of.

I’m just curious, does anyone else have a lot of trouble with POV? A little is understandable, but I seem to be all over the place at times. I do know that first drafts of anything are always bad, but if almost half your manuscript is unusable, isn’t that worse than bad? I’d appreciate the truth on this, gently, of course.  🙂

That being said, that’s all I have for this month’s post for The Insecure Writer’s Support Group. Please feel free to comment and if you are interested in being a part of this phenomenal group, as I stated earlier, just click on the image above to join.

Until next post, Ciao!