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Ambition is a strong desire for achievement, rank, success or power, according to several dictionaries.
According to writers? The strong desire is to be published. Early on, it’s to sell a first book, to be validated as a writer or some more personal goal.
As time moves on ambitions change or maybe ambition changes us. I’m not entirely sure what happens first. I just know my goals have changed. What seemed totally unattainable a few short years ago, have now happened.
Recently I went to dinner with a group of writers. We represented erotic romance, romantic suspense, category romance, historical and Regency romance. We’ve written novellas, single titles, trade paper, even a couple of non-fiction books. We’ve all published multiple books with multiple houses. (Wow, don’t we sound like an impressive lot – before writing this I’d have said a bunch of buddies got together at a local restaurant to eat, drink and be merry, but suddenly it sounds like some lit’ray function.)
As we took our seats and ordered drinks, we cheered and called ourselves “survivors” for having been in publishing for a number of years. The talk turned to careers, the business, the changes in the business (the only constant in publishing is change itself).
In the midst of our rambling convoluted conversation I said, “Ambition’s the bitch. No matter that 2 years ago I sold 3 books in a matter of days, I want more and I want it now.”
Yes! Ambition’s what drives us all. We’ve had our thrills, our successes and for a time we were happy with deadlines and plots and characters. But then, ambition worms its way into our thoughts, and we want the next sale, the next hurdle in our personal journey.
For women to be described as ambitious isn’t always flattering. In fact, sometimes it’s read to mean something rather less than feminine. Ambitious women are often shown as, well, um, bitchy, power mad, and manipulative.
But for writers those things can’t help. Bitchiness gets you nothing but disliked. There’s no such thing as real power in publishing for writers because writers have no control over changes in the marketplace. As for being manipulative? You get to manipulate your characters/story/pacing/plotlines all you want so that’s out of your system by the end of every day anyway.
But without ambition, the writers at that table wouldn’t sit down and do the work every day. We wouldn’t dream our dreams, write the stories, do the work that ambition demands.
Ambition’s the bitch that bites us, that rides us, that we feed, that we harbor.
Personally, I love my inner bitch. She takes me places I’d never have been without her.
Well, I’m kicking off the Holiday Season with a couple of contests. First off, visit my blog and help me choose which photo to use for the new site — and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a red hot iPod.
Secondly, it’s time for the third “Chase the Dream” contest for writers, which I co-sponsor with author Leigh Michaels.
So, enter the first 1,000 words of your unpublished manuscript, and you could land a contract with an editor or agent. We’ve got some great editors on board — and this year, you can listen to audio clips from editors and agents telling you what they look for in a submission!
Okay, it’s my first time to write a blog on our new Writerspace site, and I’m late, but if I write real fast I’ll get it done before midnight and still be officially on my day…First of all, I really want to add my new video trailer for Wolf Tales VI…
Cool, isn’t it? It’s a mini trailer using nothing more than the graphics from my cover. And this leads me to my topic…friends. As writers, we don’t get out much. We stay in our rooms, glued to our computers and write. Our friends are the ones we know online, the other authors who support us and who understand our weird lives and crazy thought processes, the readers who keep us going with their wonderful letters and the pressure to write MORE, MORE, MORE… (and yeah, we DO love it!) They’re the loyal followers who show up at our chats, the ones who go online and talk about our books. Often our friends are our agents and our editors–and whoever told me it’s a bad idea to be friends with your agent doesn’t know mine! They’re also the people we interact with who help us in our business–publicists, website owners, list owners, and, to come full circle in my case, the one who does my video trailers.
I remember when Sheila Clover didn’t even have English attached to her name (before Ed!), back when she started with book trailers years ago–I think the first ones she did were for Christine Feehan–at least those were the first ones I remember. I wasn’t even published yet, but damn was I impressed! I though how cool it would be to have a book advertised that way…of course, at that point I was still thinking how cool it would be to have a book at all! Now, though, not only does Sheila’s company, COS Productions, do my trailers, I consider Sheila and her husband my friends…business is cool that way.
Anyway, when I was at the RWA conference in San Francisco, hanging out at the Kensington cocktail party and then the PASIC party, I looked around and saw so many terrific people I’ve known mostly online, people who have become my friends. They probably know more about me than the people I see face to face, and they’ve probably heard more of my personal woes and complaints, celebrated my victories and teased me out of my doldrums more often than any of the people I may have known far longer. It’s a special community we have, where we know one another without actually making contact for most of the year, but thank goodness for the occasional conference where we can finally put a face to a name, get a hug and look someone in the eye–after we check out the spot between their boobs where the name tag is hanging–and say hello to a friend.
I want to know about your friends…do you have people in the real world you actually see on a regular basis, people who understand who you are, or do you actually feel closer to the ones you’ve met online in any one of the many communities out there? I just about have to opt for the online friends I’ve made…they “see” me a lot more than the others do, and for some reason, they still manage to put up with me!
Writers are neurotic. Don’t you think? I am, and it seems to me every other writer I’ve met – in person or by email – is as well. Often, we get swamped by self-doubt.
We ignore twenty great reviews and agonize over one bad one.
We check Amazon numbers even though everyone tells us they’re not a good indicator of anything at all. And when our ranking drops, we’re shattered.
With each book we write, we hit a point where we think our characters are stupid, our story is stupid and, most of all, we’re stupid and will never be able to turn this pile of c**p into a book.
How do we survive without slitting our wrists? [g]
That’s my question for today? What gets us through the bad times? (And hey, I won’t restrict the question to writers. If there’s anyone else out there who’s just as neurotic as we are, please feel free to answer.) Let’s share our tips, tell what keeps us motivated. Maybe we can learn something from each other.
Speaking for myself, there are a couple of things I try to remember when I’m wallowing in self-doubt:
1. I actually do know how to do what I do, and I can do it again [g].
2. I have good reasons for writing. I do it to bring the characters in my head to life, and to give readers something that entertains them, moves them, and maybe even makes them think.
I have a number of techniques that help me remember these things. One is to frame my book covers and hang them in my office, along with the awards my books have won. On my bookcase sits the vase of silk roses that my local RWA Chapters award for book sales. And something I plan to do is set up a scrapbook where I save little motivational items, so I can turn to them when I’m feeling down. Like, the contest judge who said, “Susan Lyons is one of my favorite writers.” Wow! The sailor who told me one of my characters reminded me of his wife, then shared the terrific story of how the two of them met. The readers who tell me that I gave them hope when I wrote about a plus-size woman finding a man who believes she’s truly beautiful. All these are reminders of why I do what I do – and that I do a halfway decent job of it too!
How about you? How do you keep yourself motivated, especially when you’re going through a period of self-doubt?
The Muse has a tough job inspiring writers. She can’t just come up with any old idea; she has to give us one that makes us run straight to our keyboards and want to stay there so we can tap out the best story that makes readers wants to keep reading.
If writers are inspired by “Muses,” where do Muses get their inspiration?
Well, if it’s my Muse you were asking she’d reply in large part Disney. This is especially true since I treated her to a week long vacation in Walt Disney World. For my Muse there’s no better place and nowhere else that thinks like she does.
Talking mice, why not? Happily ever after, of course! Travel from Italy to Japan in under five minutes, no problem! Disney is a place that thinks like a Muse, asking What if……….
What if……we dropped an elevator 13 stories?
What if…….a giant Yeti really does live in the mountains?
My Muse works hard trying to develop story worlds & characters that pull readers into a detailed place that’s real. So, she appreciates getting to visit a place that works as hard, or even harder than she does creating a story world down to finite details (try changes in paving to signifiy progression from east to west of the Mississippi River.)
For writer’s What inspires you?
And as a reader what are the little details that make a story real for you?
We write fiction. Yet we all know about the readers who insist that details be accurate and who’ll ream out an author if she gets something wrong – like the year a certain item of clothing became fashionable, or the calibre of a gun. This makes me wonder about a few things:
• If you’re a writer, when do you choose to bend the truth for the sake of the story?
• What details do readers want to be accurate? Vampires don’t exist (probably), but readers seem quite willing to accept them in fiction – and yet they’ll fuss over the accuracy of period clothing. How come?
• Do readers hold all fiction writers to the same standards of accuracy? Are they more lenient with paranormal, fantasy or futuristic? Less lenient with contemporary or historical?
• Do people nit-pick with TV shows and movies as well as books? For example, when CSI shows crime scene investigators trampling all over a crime scene in street clothing, shedding hair, fibres and who knows what all else, do a bunch of viewers write to tell them they’ve got it all wrong? Or when cases on Boston Legal go to court in a period of days, do viewers write to say that in real life the same process would take a year or more? (I don’t mean to pick on these shows – they happen to be two of my favorites! – and I’m quite prepared to accept the inaccuracies for the sake of great characters and an interesting story.)
