encouragement Archives - Caroline Starr Rose

The best book you can write in the time you’ve been given.

Nine and a half weeks, almost 235 hours of work, and first-round edits are done!

During the last few months overhauling my book (I think 60% or so of the story is new), I had fabulous days, I had terrible days, and I had plenty of days with nose-to-the-grindstone satisfaction. It is so good to return to a book world I love. No part of the writing process is better than revision!

I try to be real here about the writing life, and with that in mind, I wanted to share an email I sent to my dear friend, Valerie Geary, after a very hard day.* Val’s response was incredibly encouraging and got me moving again. I read it over and over during my last weeks of revision. It left me believing I could keep on with the hard, steady, wonderful, mysterious work that is turning a vague collection of ideas into a bonafide book. If you ever feel creatively stuck or overwhelmed, I hope it might encourage you, too.

First, here’s my email:

I debated sending this because I’m feeling like a whiner. But I want to kind of put out there where I am. OH, man. Today was hard. And I thought I’d really get in there and have fun! I thought with some tweaks I could knock out two chapters. Nope. I ended up with a really, really shaky placeholder sort of thing for one of them. It’s probably not even taking the story in the right direction. It will probably need to stand for now, too, because when will I have time to fix it? I have a feeling the rest of this time will probably look more like today than earlier days as I push through the fog. I feel shy and vulnerable and all my shame bells are ringing. I’m a fraud with a deadline. AHHH!

I think one of the hardest parts of writing for me is not to get my worth wrapped up in it. Because it gets pretty demoralizing when the stakes increase (deadline) and I flail around and panic and draw a blankity blankity blank.

But I’ll show up tomorrow and try again. I know this isn’t my only shot (thank goodness). I can’t have the same approach as I’ve had today, though. It’s not sustainable. It’s not enjoyable. It doesn’t support creativity! I took breaks. I exercised. I got outside. I even parked in the library parking lot to work for a few hours (a favorite getaway of mine and somewhere I haven’t gone for months). The stress stayed pretty high, though. It’s the deadline! I hear the clock ticking. It’s hard to relax into the work when I feel like time is slipping away and I’m producing stilted stuff that doesn’t quite fit the story and has no heart. It’s kind of terrifying.

I’m trying to see these struggles as curious. But honestly, I’m approaching overwhelmed.

Thanks for listening. Onward. Bird by bird. Fresh fresh fresh start tomorrow.

Here’s Val’s response:

You are not a whiner. And I’m glad you sent it because the last thing you need to feel right now as you work so hard on this book you love is alone. You are a hardworking writer writing on a deadline [during a really challenging year]. That is a lot to handle on its own, yet here you are, coming to the page every day anyway and getting to work. Because this work matters to you.

I hear grit and determination in your words here. I hear strength and courage. Not panic, not failure. A struggle, perhaps, but one you are capable of overcoming. I hear you digging in your heels, ready to do what you need to do to make this book the best you can make it in the time you’ve been given. Because that’s all you can do. You will get through this and it might not be fun and probably you’ll cry more than you want to, but in the end, you will have nothing at all to be ashamed of. You will have a book you can be proud of because you gave it everything you had to give. You are a warrior with a deadline. And your vulnerabilities are what make you the perfect writer for this book (and ALL your books). Fresh start tomorrow. You’ve got this!!

*During edits, I sent almost-daily reports to Val as a way to keep track of my progress (and so I could get some writerly cheerleading).

Plowing, Planting, Hoping, Dreaming

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I ran an earlier version of this post right after selling my first book. Because it’s one of my favorites, and because I so often need to hear these words myself, and because May B. has been read and treasured for over eight years (what a gift!), I’m sharing them again today.

It was 2004. While driving to meet my writing group, I happened to catch an interview on NPR with Adrienne Young, a folksinger who was just starting out. She talked about her first album, inspired by some advice she’d gotten while struggling to make it as a musician:

If you want to do this with your life, stay focused and see this through. You’ve got to plow to the end of the row, girl.

That simple phrase – plow to the end of the row – was enough to push Adrienne to continue. It became the title of both her album and lead song. I can’t quite explain what that interview meant to me, hearing an artist choose to create despite the struggle, to push against fear and sensibility and make it “to the end of the row.”

I’ve carried this image with me for years, the plant metaphor standing in for artistic endeavor, the plow the unglamorous slog needed to dig deep and make it to the end. Sometimes I find it funny I’d choose a profession so bent on forcing me to wait, so full of uncertainty and disappointment. An almost foolish optimism has kept me working, trusting that the next editor or the next agent or the next story would be the one to launch my career. I’ve haunted mailboxes and inboxes, waiting for something positive to come through. I’ve ceremoniously sent off manuscripts, chanting, “Don’t come back!” (entertaining postal workers, for sure).* I’ve journaled again and again “this next editor is a perfect match!”, managing somehow to keep on plowing in the midst of little validation.

After twelve years of writing and hundreds of rejections, I sold my first book, May B., a historical verse novel about a girl with her own challenging row to hoe. May’s determination carried me through a rocky publication experience: losing my first editor; the closing of my Random House imprint, Tricycle Press; the weeks when my book was orphaned, with no publishing house to claim it and its future uncertain; the swooping in of Random House imprint, Schwartz and Wade; edit rounds seven, eight, and nine with editor number two; and finally, May B.’s birth into the world only three months behind its original release date.

I made it to the end of a very long, mostly lonely row, one that wasn’t very straight and was loaded with stones. But the soil got better as I worked it, and each little sprout was stronger than the last. The beauty of the writing life is I got to transplant the hardiest seedling and start again, this time working alongside others who nurtured it into something better than I could have ever created alone.

What is the dream of the artist-gardener? That our art will sprout and grow and one day stand apart from us, strong enough to thrive on its own.

*Anyone else remember the days of mailing manuscripts?