unpublished writers

I’m A Hummingbird with Pantser Tendencies


When I was a teacher we were continually being led to believe that everyone was a type.  Students had learning styles.  Teachers were concrete or random thinkers and that this influenced their methods. And that we had strong and weak intellectual areas. Anything and everything could be divined through questionnaires and personality testing.

The same holds true for writers, I have discovered.  We are owls or hummingbirds.  Pantsers or Planners.

I am a hummingbird with pantser tendencies. I flit and float and twitter (not literally, I really don’t like Twitter.  It’s writing for the ADHD set),  and though I have a general idea of where a piece of writing is going,  I don’t have a written plan.

I have tried to outline.  God knows that my 11th grade composition teacher, Sr. Mary Catherine, god bless her in whatever corner of hell she is standing in right now, tried to tie me to outlining. I learned how to create one, grudgingly, but never did learn how to stick to it. What happened more often than not was that I would get a better idea and then have to go back and change the outline to fit the paper I was writing for her. This soured me to the usefulness of outlines because they seemed to me to stifle any thought of creative spark and spontaneity and made more detail work for me in the bargain.

Now that I am writing novel length pieces, however, I am beginning to see the point of the owls and the planners. It’s far too easy to get lost in a long story than a short one when you are not a map person. I am actually a “landmark” navigator which amuses my husband to no end.

There is a term for what I do as a writer. It’s called “organic” writing.  Another way of saying that one has no real clue of what one is doing.

But writing is proceeding, people, and decisions about where effort and time are best spent loom large.

Silent Poetry is the Monday Meme


If you don’t know why I am doing this see Sunday’s blog post and then join me.

Forgotten

There are no answers

Except the ones already here

Rain drapes them like a haphazard cloak

Packed away with the winter woolens and forgotten like Mama’s ring and the China doll from before the war

Somewhere between the peonies and the irises, they bloom unseen

Lost like tomorrow’s yesterday

Dots in my history where stories should have taken root and grown.

Upcoming Events at anniegirl1138


I am still in the thick of plotting my first quarter but so far the following are on the books:

January 16 is y review of Kirk Curnutt’s Breathing the Ghost Out. I am about a quarter of the way through and have to say that this is an author who knows how to breath life into his characters. They are very real though uncomfortable.

On January 21st I will be guesting blogging here, and writing about my favorite bookstore in my old West Des Moines stomping grounds.

Another TLC book tour review of Ingrid Cummings The Vigorous Mind is scheduled here on January 27th. This book hasn’t arrived yet, so I can’t tell you much about it first hand, but I am excited. Essentially she writes about cross training the mind to health and happiness through diversity of activities.

Finally, another book giveaway! On Monday, January 12 I will host a week long chance for my dear readers to win a copy of Wendy Tokunaga‘s Midori By Moonlight. I haven’t yet gotten my copy, but I was intrigued by the synopsis. Young Japanese woman with a dream and a pending wedding to an American arrives in San Francisco, but things don’t work out the way she’s envisioned them. I don’t read this type of book a lot, rom-com-ish women’s lit, but I like the genre and wish I had a talent for it. Very excited to have the opportunity for another giveaway. I love giving books away. Come February I hope to have a few more giveaways in the works.

I am still weaving my quarterly web of writing tasks. I am finding that breaking my time into 90ish day increments to be most helpful, but I have still not discovered my John Deere tractor in terms of a project. One that will grab hold and not let go. And no, the memoir is not in that category. The memoir is an Ahab thing. What I am talking about is that one idea that fires the creative neurons and swamps you with the need to write. And yes, I know too well a writer cannot live off divine inspiration alone. The grind of writing is the norm. But I know the lightening strikes are out there. The readiness is all.

Stay tuned.