Proposal insecurities

Captain’s Log, Stardate 02.27.2005

Still working on the proposal, but getting help from my wonderful online writer friends on the first chapter and the synopsis. The hardest part has been doing the 2-paragraph plot summaries for the other two books in the series. I have to think up basic plotlines and motivations and all that important stuff.

I went to John Olson’s writing critique group in San Leandro on Friday night and met some really nice people. I brought my synopsis to get critiqued. But after reading it, people were just kind of silent for a minute. That scared me. They eventually made good points on the synopsis, but I got the feeling they didn’t care for the storyline very much.

The other pieces read that night were fantasy, literary fiction, historical fiction, and John’s latest suspense. My piece is Alias-kick-butt-action-adventure-sort-of-romance. My husband said that the age group I’m writing for might be too young for the people who were there, or that they just didn’t care for those action/adventure storylines. If that’s the case, that could go good or bad for me: good if they’ll be brutal on my piece since they don’t care for it too much, or bad if they don’t care for the genre and won’t have much to say.

I did enjoy the evening, which lasted several hours. I don’t think I said anything too stupid.

I felt rather insecure--I still do, in fact--after the critique group. If they didn’t care for my storyline, would anyone else? I worry that my friends like the story because they love me. If strangers don’t care for it, will an editor?

My husband reminded me again that publishing success is entirely in God’s hands. If He wants me to be published, I will be. If He doesn’t, I won’t. It’s that simple.

I’m to write what I feel He wants me to say. I know I’m meant to write for the post-modern generation, which has a very different mindset even from my own Gen-Xers. I write for a subset of people who are used to being ultra-stimulated by the modern world and technology. I write for entertainment and escape, not spiritual challenge although I do try to incorporate something of that into my storyline. And I trust that if God wants that type of writing, He’ll make sure it gets into the right hands.

I’ve been walking during lunchtime at work. Partly to get my metabolism up--it’s dropped so much since the surgery, I can really tell--and partly to have some free-flow right-brain time to come up with story ideas. It’s been great, but it’s hard to write my ideas as I’m writing. I’m considering getting a digital recorder, although I found out today that my PDA has a digital record function. I’m just not sure how much memory my note recordings will take, and what the quality is when I’m outside, plus it’s a bit big.

Went to Goodwill and Salvation Army on Wednesday and got a bunch of books. I found several secular Chicklits that will hopefully help me keep up to date with what’s being published. Amazon.com is also great for seeing what storylines are out there, what seems overdone, etc.

My husband’s new job:

My husband starts his new job tomorrow morning. We’re both very excited. It will hopefully be less hours than he was working before.

Diet: Ate like a pig yesterday (free food!), but otherwise I’ve been doing okay. I need to keep up walking at work, and to control my meal portions better.