Risking Emotional Suicide

Still on my 'write with emotion' kick, I followed Shirley Jump's advice from her article (see yesterday's post) and checked out Melissa James' Emotional Depth Workshop, which she handily keeps on her website for clueless folks like me. It was great, not sure I can tackle deep POV in the way she suggests, but we both write tons of drafts and grudgingly worship Lori Foster's one draft abilities. It's a great workshop. Check it out.

But better than the workshop is a single article, Risking Emotional Suicide. She opens up about selling...and then not. About getting rejected over and over and not realizing why. Sound like anyone you know? (Shush. I'm talking.) What she discovered is that she poured herself into the books that sold and held back from the ones that didn't. The published stories were part of her, and the others, just stories. Like me, she had a lovely editor (heck it could be the same one) who encouraged her to do what she did best. But it was up to her to figure out what that was.

In analyzing the books that sold versus the ones that didn't she saw a pattern. Some were deeply personal, and others, while technically great, she held back from. Wow. No writer wants to look themselves in the mirror that closely.

Just One Spark was extremely liberating because I wrote it for no one else. Sure, I hoped it would be published, but I wasn't writing to market. I was writing to expunge retail angst, to deal with people who want the best for you and go about it the wrong way, about being terrified of saying what you mean and commiting emotional suicide.

Cooking Up A Storm was fueled by my passion for cooking, and for finding that one person you can be yourself with. I hid behind that food, and the quippy language for all I was worth, but the fear of rejection was too harsh not to be tempered by something.

While the others? I talked here about being openly scared of elements of losing control in Par For the Course, and in dealing with eating disorders because I think they've been done poorly in other places...but I went there. Still, no sale. Stripped dealt with verbal abuse and neglect, and the repercussions in adulthood. The funny bits were justto get me through, I can't write a weepy. I don't like to read them. And you have to read a book a dozen or so times befor eyour editor ever gets it. So...I only moderatly want to go there. I only want to write something Iw would be willing to read. I know that more emotion doesn't have to mean more tears...but I don't know how to do it any other way yet. I've liked very book I've written so far.

Too honest? Maybe I should look at that for my next book. I'm honest to a fault, sometimes called an amazing lack of tact. Which hurts me terribly at times. But do I really want to go there?

Do I really want to sell another book? I might have to go there in order to make that happen.

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