Author: Katie L. Carroll (Page 120 of 142)

The Insanity of Being a Writer

June 5, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

I come across a lot of quotes in my day job as puzzle master (i.e. puzzle magazine editor). After a while, it seems I’ve seen them all. One in particular, though, always makes me think of my pursuit to be a published author.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

I’ve seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein, Rita Mae Brown, and an Alcoholics Anonymous publication. Where ever it came from, I think it’s interesting that this definition of insanity could actually apply to many writers.

As writers, we are constantly sending out work and getting rejections. Then we turn right back around and send that work out again and hope for a different response. Does that make us optimistic? Persistent? Confident in our work? Well, according to the above quote, it could actually make us insane.

True, because we don’t keep sending our work to the same person over and over again that might not make us insane. Yet I still can’t help but feel like the whole submission process, even when there is hope of an agent or editor who has never seen your work connecting with it, is insane (and masochistic!).

It’s like saying, “Here is my manuscript, a snapshot of my heart and soul in words. I’ve been working on it for months, years, maybe even decades. Please take a look at it. I know you’ll probably say it isn’t ‘right’ for you. Maybe you’ll even hate it. Maybe you won’t even read it before rejecting it. No matter, when you reject me, I’ll take it personally, even though I know I shouldn’t, and I’ll feel like my work isn’t good enough…that I’m not good enough.”

And we do this over and over again. INSANE!!!

Then again, anyone who has a big dream probably has to be a little insane. When it comes to big dreams, success is almost always a long shot. And where would the world be without big dreamers? So maybe a little insanity in the right places is a good thing. I’ll just keep telling myself that anyway!

LHC’s Primordial Matter

May 31, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

I have good news (unfortunately not related to my attempts at being a published novelist…all in due time, my precious)! The Large Hadron Collider is back from hiatus and has created primordial matter. Seriously, this is very exciting news!

Just a little over a month ago, the LHC set a record when it started smashing tiny particles together at 10 million collisions per second. Well, it has now smashed its own smashing record and is now running at 100 million collisions per second (muuhaaahaaa…that’s evil scientist laugh…duh!).

This super smashing power is what has led to the creation of primordial matter, a super dense form of matter called a quark-gluon plasma. In fact, the only thing believed to be denser than this primordial matter is a black hole (and we sure don’t want the LHC to create that). Scientists also believe that this substance is what the universe was made of right after the big bang.

As for the elusive (and still theoretical) Higgs boson (a.k.a. the god Particle), which is thought to be the most fundamental of all particles and the clue to the mysteries of the universe, that hasn’t been discovered yet. If it does exist, it may be discovered as early as some time this summer. If it doesn’t exist, it will take until the end of 2012 to confirm that.

Hopefully, we will know all this before the world ends on December 21, 2012. That is unless it ends on October 21, 2011. Then I hope we find the Higgs boson before then. It would be such a shame for the world to end before we discover the secrets of the universe (and before I get a book deal!).

Finding My Lost Can Opener

May 19, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

Help! I seem to have broken my can opener. Or maybe the can opener is working, but there’s nothing inside the can. Can anyone help me? Does anyone even know what I’m talking about?

While I figure out how to get the can opener fixed (or how to fill the can back up), I’ve been pursuing other creative avenues.

I’ve been working on a counted cross stitching project (no, I’m not an 80-year-old grandmother) that I started years ago and totally forgot about. It’s of a green dragon on top of a cliff with a castle and a giant moon in the background. If I ever finish it, I think I’ll hang it in The Boy’s room, which we’ve decided to paint a light green.

I’ve also been reading…a lot. In my literary adventures, I was chased by zombies; I was a super-smokin’ rock star who reconnected with an old girlfriend; I tripped in my designer shoes, went back in time, and fell in love; I was an Irish princess who was kidnapped and forced into slavery; and I was two different boys with the same name, both of whom fell in love.

I’ve even been thinking about dusting off my guitar case and plucking out a few tunes. At least I’m keeping busy, even if my muse is on an extended hiatus. What do you do when the mojo isn’t flowing?

Magnetic Poetry: Mother’s Day

May 9, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

The ladies and I had a lovely brunch yesterday to celebrate Mother’s Day. The weather was gorgeous and several of us kept the festivities going when we walked around the green and checked out a craft fair.

With my status as mother-to-be I got my first ever Mother’s Day presents in the form of cards, flowers, and delicious homemade banana bread (thanks goes out to The Boy…yup, it’s a boy!). The hubby decorated the refrigerator with ultrasound pictures of the little guy, but that wasn’t the only thing that ended up on the refrigerator.

That’s right! As with all the gatherings at my house, the guests were encouraged to express themselves with poetry. There was a whole new crop of words that had been added to the magnetic poetry kit since the last installment and the phrases were flowing. Here’s what the guests had to say:

spring morning garden leave s little want ing (there’s nothing I can really add to this beautiful sentiment…but notice I still added something by pointing that out)

imagine sweet dream s (if only it were as simply as imagining them and they came true)

a spark ly puddle is an inspiration for play time (probably true for most children, not so much for most adults)

easy trick bake good rain love (ummm…that’s what she said? maybe not, but I couldn’t go without saying it)

always taste summer and fear not to drink the gentle breeze (I think the awesome weather really inspired the guests to new levels of poetic beauty)

do squirrel s experience emotion (it’s a burning question that I know so many of us have been wondering and I’m glad someone finally asked it)

As always, thanks to those who contributed. What kind of poetic inspiration have you been experiencing lately?

Images as Stimulus

May 1, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

At the 2011 SCBWI Poconos conference, the session called “Writing Not Waiting” was taught by editor Robert Agis. He started us with some writing exercises, which I actually participated in whole-heartedly (sometimes I don’t connect with the writing exercises in these types of workshops and can’t really get into them). He gave us a line that we were to use as a catalyst to write. It didn’t matter what we wrote, just that we wrote something.

It was surprisingly freeing. I haven’t just sat and written without a defined purpose for a long time. I always feel guitly about doing that because I think I should be spending time on my current project or my blog or revising or creating freelance puzzles. These exercises reminded me that sometimes you need to sit and write freely and that it is not a waste. It will actually allow you to work on your own writing without the pressure of making things perfect (which is impossible anyway…perfection, that is).

That’s one of the things I’ve been struggling with lately and relates to the whole getting-back-to-my-true-self goal. I haven’t felt free while writing. I keep getting caught up in all the things I don’t know about my characters and the setting or all the things I haven’t researched yet. And my obsessive need to explore all these aspects of the story ad infinitum is holding me back from discovering the very things I’ve been obsessing over (and sucks all of the fun out of writing). Writing without judgement or too much thought may be just what I need to discover more about my story.

So in my ever-growing effort to be a better person/writer, I took some advice from Robert. He talked about using images as a stimulus for writing. He recommended taking stock images from websites and doing Internet searches to find photographs that represent characters or settings in your story. They can be there to act as “can openers” for your writing. Here’s the can opener I created for my mermaid story.

Some of these are from my own photos from Tahiti (where the story takes place), others are Internet images and ones from magazines. The ones with writing on the bottom are English/French/Tahitian translations of popular words and phrases. The other writings are about black-pearl farming (which is the future trade of one of the main characters).