The J word

  There are many J words: feeling jealous (of friends’ success), being   jaded (of the publishing industry), constant jeering (of others). The J word that’s been on my mind has been judgment.  

 It usually begins with others’ judgments of you. Who you are, what you write, what you do. Then there are those moments of judgment – “Why do you laugh so much? It’s like you are trying to attract attention.” or “Why do you waste your evenings writing when you could be spending time with your mother? It’s not like you are published or anything.”

Judgment, when it comes from a trusted source, begins a chain reaction like no other. There’ the initial surprise: What! Really, do you mean that!? Followed by outright denial: No, I don’t do that. I don’t waste my time. And then anger: How dare she think of me like that? How dare she judge me? That leads to hurt: Does she not understand me? Is she right? Am I a horrible person who hides behind my writing? The most important effect of others’ judgment of you is how you start to see yourself. How it shapes your view of yourself. You begin to wonder who you really are and whether you’ve been deluding yourself all this time. Maybe you aren’t cut out to be a writer. Maybe the evenings you sit in front of your laptop are just an excuse to escape from the world and your real responsibilities.

But then you remember that you love those hours where it’s just you and your characters. That you’ve grown so much as a writer these past few years. That once you finish a couple more drafts you’ll be ready to query your polished manuscript.

Self-judgment is that hill we’ve got to climb over before we can accept someone else’s judgment. Judgment of who we are. What we write. What we wrote a few years ago. What we’ve not yet written. And this acceptance can take various forms. Acceptance can mean that we agree that we aren’t cut out to be writers. We accept we love to read but haven’t become better at our craft. That it will remain a hobby. Or acceptance can mean that we speak out that we’re not hiding behind our writing. That our friend was simply wrong. That writing is vital to who we are. It makes us who we are. Our acceptance can help us deal with the judgment and move on.  It can help us heal the dents to our self-esteem; move beyond self-judgment and continue to write, work on our craft and strive to become who we want to be.

When I remember (and nine out of ten times I don’t) I tell myself that judgment is an opinion. One person’s opinion. It can bring you down or you can use it propel yourself forward on that journey to become a better you and a better writer.

Raising The Stakes

Raise your hand if you have read Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. *Raising my own hand* I may be alone here, but I am going to go out on a limb and be honest. As I read this book I asked myself how I could apply his teachings to my own WIPs as well as other books I've read.

Fast forward a few weeks and the reading of Insurgent (Divergent #2) by Veronica Roth and that Ah-ha moment slapped me in the face, hard. I'm not positive and haven't found anything yet stating that Roth specifically used Writing the Breakout Novel, but I have my strong suspicions she did. 

<p>Image courtesy of <a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net">FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

Which brings us face to face with today's post - Raising the Stakes. Maass gives two questions in his book which I have affixed to my editing folder. (Yes, I have a manila folder with editing notes scribbled all over it.) As I have been recently editing an older WIP I've been reminded to ask these questions with each chapter/scene.

1. "How could things get worse?" 
2. "When would be the worst moment for them to get worse?" 

At each and every turn of Insurgent something was happening, causing Tris to continually change her course of action. The stakes weren't always life threatening, but they all added emotional danger to Tris. That's why as readers we keep turning the pages. Just when you think things can't get worse, they do. We keep moving forward to make sure Tris is making the right choices. I will be honest, again, I had my doubts about Tris's choices a few times, but in the end I finally understood why she made the choices she did.

In addition to those two big questions are the type of stakes. You NEED both!

1. Personal Stakes
2. Public Stakes

And, no, the stakes don't all need to be huge. But, they do need to create emotional danger. They need to cause the main character to make choices which lead to their own suffering and sacrifice. There were so many points during Insurgent that my heart was breaking for Tris and what she was going through. Roth hit home with the emotional suffering and sacrifice she put Tris through.

So, now that we are armed with two very big questions and two types of stakes to raise, let's all take a little time to reassess our WIPs.

Good luck!