Imposter syndrome

A while ago, I was listening to Adrienne Bell and Eliza Peake chatting on the Misfit’s guide to writing Indie romance podcast. %%

Honestly, podcasts are my new drug. So many to listen to, so little time…

But at any rate, Adrienne was talking about how she had set herself a large goal for 2020. She aimed to write half a million words, and she was really nervous about hitting that target. And she thought some other people might have the same issue.

In the spirit of supporting each other, and accountability and all those kind of phrases, she set up a group for it. Pick your own target. Pick your own method: plot/pantser, daily writing/weekends only … whatever works for you.

The symbol is a cute tortoise – slow and steady – and you join by invitation only.

It’s called Write Hella Words^^ and is a slack channel. [Not Facebook – thank GOD. I hate FB with the passion of a thousand suns.]

Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I sent her an email and asked to join.

And she said ‘yes’.

What on earth was wrong with me? I’m in a writing group with people and I buy their books! Rachael Herron, Sophie Littlefield and Adrienne Bell… and my brain keeps shouting at me:

YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.

So I’ve got a massive dose of imposter syndrome.

[ Imposter is one of those words that confuses me: is it impostor OR imposter? I get it wrong, every time. Wait… is it both?]

But I digress… now the thing with half a million words is that it’s not only a lot of words; it is a lot of books. A romance novel is anything from 40k – 100k according to all the definitions. A thriller about 55-80k. So – if you do the math – 500k is 10-12 small books or five biggish ones.

It’s a LOT, okay? Like a whole series of books.

So I spent some time working out which stories to write and setting up a system which hopefully works to write them all.

I’m shooting for six books, so I guess that gives me two months to complete each one.

And it’s already February.

Wails: “I’m a fake; I shouldn’t be in this group.”

Excellent, thanks brain. Good to know its situation normal.

Links:

%% http://themisfitsguidepodcast.com/

^^ https://www.writehellawords.com/blog

Crimson Peak is Bluebeard

I’ve been trying to rewrite Bluebeard for years. I tentatively titled my work in progress ‘Bluebeard’s last wife’. It was my Nanowrimo project back in 2013.

I have read every version of the fairy tale I could find: the original, the Anatole France one, Caroline Wesson’s play, Henry Curwen’s Lady Bluebeard, and Bluebeard’s Keys by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, and more. I was annoyed by the moral of the story; a wife’s curiosity is enough to cause her death. It grated at my feminist principles.

I recently read Angela Carter’s two versions and that nearly derailed me but I wanted the last wife to save herself, and in no version I found does she do that. In most she hides on the roof and screams for help. Her brothers kill him, or her mother does, or he lets her off and goes into a monastery.

I wanted her to realise she loved him but know that he was still a monster and if she didn’t kill him first, she would be the next victim.

I saw Crimson Peak in 2015 and loved it. I bought a Funko Edith. She is my desk figurine as she was the only Funko writer I could find. [Fix that, Funko. Also spoilers for the movie, obviously.]

This morning I was doing some Bluebeard freewrites. I was riffing on moving it to a different time period. Carters’ is 20th century Paris, Ritchie’s 19th century Rome, mine was medieval. Could I move it to a Gothic house and meld it with my love of Gothic Romances? I thought about getting him to beg her for forgiveness. I thought about him realising what he has become and asking her to end his life.

Wait… this seems familiar.

Del Toro’s Crimson Peak is Bluebeard.

Sir Thomas Sharpe has multiple wives. He married them for their money and doesn’t love them. He ignored them and did not have sex with them. It is his sister who kills them but he is aware of their fate. Their bodies are buried in or near the scary house. [So maybe it’s Bluebeard plus Flowers in the Attic?]

But his last wife is different. He genuinely falls in love with Edith. He loves her and she saves herself, killing him AND his sister in the process, and bringing peace and eternal rest to the ghosts of the dead wives. The ghosts she sees weren’t haunting her, they were trying to warn her. The ghosts were not the real monsters. This is a common Del Toro theme.

She stabs him with a pen which is the most awesome weapon of choice for a writer and it’s a gift from her father so that ticks the retribution box.

She loves him and she kills him, anyway.

Crimson is even red; the opposite of blue. HOW did I miss it? *face palms*

And it’s so well done. I can’t compete with that.

I have to trunk another project.

Sighs heavily.

*thinks for a day or so while the internet is dead*

Or maybe, I can just leave it medieval and hope nobody notices? Yeah, that might work.

To nano or not to nano

yournoveliscalling5

Last year (2016) I did national novel writing month. The aim is to write 50,000 words in one month; November, a busy social month for most Americans.

I missed the cut by 421 words, officially. I wasn’t so much angry as disappointed in myself. As I said in a blog post, all I needed to do was write 14 more words every day.

Since then, I’ve written two (maybe three) more novels and failed to publish them. I am honestly getting very annoyed with myself, which of course cycles back into putting more pressure on myself.

I don’t know what it is about Nanowrimo that works for me but I can usually do it and win. I’ve even done the camps and set my own word count of higher than 50k.

So I guess I may as well do it.

And I literally just made up my mind right then as I typed that out.

What’ll I write? I dunno. I’d better think of something fast. It starts tomorrow.

links:

my 2016 blog post

My nanowrimo page