I Am Still Looking For You

For years I have been trying to write a novel. I have only high school level knowledge in writing, so I am constantly doubting myself. I get up to 100s of pages only to scrap most of it and start over again. It was becoming habitual to the point I realized I needed to change if I was ever going to finish at least one novel. My constant obstacle is myself. I worry my story lines make no sense, I wonder if I am lacking in details or over explains and I know for sure my grammar is atrocious, so I am constantly beating myself up, but what is the point of that if I don't know what to beat myself up about. My fiancé, who is an artist in a different pursuit (comedy), suggested that I join a writing community. He explained how networking and immersing himself with like-minded individuals helped him to hone his skills and pave his steps forward. I thought I too could benefit from artistic camaraderie. It was a brilliant idea and I still think he is write. I don't believe anyone is truly self made. Everyone needs help along the way at one point or another. However, there were issues to overcome and my journey is not over yet.

First and foremost, I started in pandemic times. I think I don’t need paragraphs to explain this. It was and still is hard to meet up with anyone or convene in groups. Sure, there were online classes. I took a few. I took courses from, “how to publish your first novel" at Second City and “the art of storytelling,” on CreativeLive, to masterclasses but they were not personable, and the feedback was minimal if it was available at all. I found it was easy to get lost in the conversations and lose connection with the writers’ works. I had someone give me feedback on someone else’s work thinking that I was the author. I quickly realized this would be no help to me. I felt like I was wasting money and time, so when I saw an add for Vocal on Facebook my palms sweated with anticipation and excitement.

Here is where my next challenge lay. I am a technological disaster. I like flesh and blood interactions and find social media tedious at times. I am overwhelmed by the shear amount of monitoring it takes to stay on top of things. I also have a harder time gauging peoples’ responses. I can’t tell if people are being sarcastic or if they are being mean or if they genuinely care, which is something I need as a guide. I am also slow to the pick up on new technological things. It took me some time to navigate the Vocal scene. I started first with just submitting to the challenges and posting them on Facebook. My first two were met with a lot of feedback, but they were mostly just polite pleasantries. This is where I started to read up more on the resource's pages. There was a wealth of information and suggestions for promotion, which is wonderful. It will help me with book promotions latter. Still, it did not give me the ripostes I craved. I needed real interactions.

I stumbled on my next possibility when I was reading one of the top articles of the day on Vocal. It mentioned Vocal communities on Facebook, and I did a face palm. I don’t know why it had never dawned on me to look these up, but I was excited to dive in. I felt like things were starting to add up. I had a platform where I could post writing samples and practice the art. Now I had real live people, who could give me the constructive criticism I so direly need. There are some challenges with the Facebook forums, though. The most obvious is I am not the only one who needs/wants these critiques and so you have to vie for that help. You also have people flat soliciting for clicks, which is overwhelming when under a cry for help your comments are flooded with “read this” and it in no way relates to what I had inquired about. This is where social media skills are most helpful. I have discovered you need flashy, catchy titles and diplomatic writing skills to gain peoples' attention and earn their help. This is where I slump inwardly, because again I am terrible at this stuff, that's the whole reason I am reaching out. Although it is great practice for honing marketing skills it still does not tell me if my writing is even worth putting out there.

Facebook was seeming like a dead end too. Still, I tried to preserver on. To my joy I was gifted with personal messages of encouragement and invites to other social connecting sites I had never heard of. Discord was one of them and while the invite was gracious and wonderful, I was still lost as I scrolled through the warring conversations. It was all one thread, but people were carrying on their own conversations and some of them had back stories that I was not privy to. It was like going to someone else's family dinner while they talked over each other. It's hard to find your voice in that kind of atmosphere let alone enact your own agenda.

There was also an element to the private messages that I hadn’t expected. I should have a work at a car dealership, but there I was dumbfounded by some of these people. I have had men privately message me on Facebook saying that they would give me help/pointers/correction in exchange for me reading their material. Innocent enough and more than fair for the work. Things got weird quickly, though, in a few of those cases. One man must have looked through my profile after initially messaging me because he asked, “your profile says you are engaged is that true?” When I replied yes, he asked me if I was happy in my relationship. Obviously, I am going to marry the guy! At my reply he revoked his help and blocked/ignored me on messenger. I have had men avoid critiquing my writing to tell me I will make a great wife or to tell me that I am pretty, or to tell me it is attractive how passionate I am and how that passion can translate to other things. This has happened more than once making me leery to answer any unsolicited DMs. It is infuriating and insulting. I want to be writer not a whore. I wanted help with writing I did not once mention needing plowed!

Needless to say, I am losing interest in the social media groups. I don’t know how to go about finding flesh and blood writers groups, though. I have googled writing events and looked for in person Work shoppes. They too have moved majoritively online, so I am getting to the point I might stalk likely candidates from the library. I will peak like a creeper from around the stacks to say, “I see you are into fantasy would you mind reading this?” No, I am am kidding. I not that desperate yet, but I was desperate enough to write this, so if you are reading this, please be my writing buddy. Or at the very least when you see someone reaching out for help and you know you have the ability to help, Help. We are here to hone are skills, but I have learned success is not contingent on talent alone. It helps to have a friends or mentor to lift you up.