by Nita Sweeney | Nov 3, 2018 | Blog
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” – Henry David Thoreau in a letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
In elementary and high school, I belonged to a 4-H club to train dogs for obedience. My rat terrier, Tony, and I won first place at the Ohio State Fair two years in a row. We had a great trainer, a retired factory superintendent, Louie Levengood who had raised and trained award-winning golden retrievers for decades.
As a big show approached, Louie would run a hand through his white hair and remind us it was time to “turn down the screws.” We were to become precise, tightening our training the way a woodworker might give a screw a few final turns so the head is flush with the wood. Minor imperfections we’d let slide earlier in the season took on new importance.
If Tony did not sit close enough to my heel or was not looking straight ahead as he sat next to me, I gently corrected him. If he did not come quickly enough, I corrected him. Every detail was important. This paid off. Both years, the state fair judges explained, these details were what led each judge to place Tony and I a few points ahead of the nearly perfect Doberman, Precious, and his young woman owner.
It’s time once again to turn down the screws – this time with my memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target.
My deadline, December 1st, approaches like an oncoming train. While I trim, trim, trim, I’m also fixing lingering problems: info dumps, too much telling, and dialogue that doesn’t carry its weight. These tasks require focus reminiscent of those days I spent in the large yard near our barn, walking Tony around and around. Stopping and starting again and again. Correcting. Praising. Perfecting. Over and over and over.
I’m under no illusions that the book will be perfect. This isn’t the state fair. But I know I have the skill and patience to improve it. With Louie’s voice in my ear, I will do my best.
by Nita Sweeney | Oct 4, 2018 | Blog
“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?” ~ T. S. Eliot
It’s official!
This morning I signed a contract with Mango Publishing to publish my re-titled memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought me Back from the Brink.
Yes, I’m over the moon!
But it’s not time to party. Now the real work begins.
The editor made suggestions and I have my own ideas of what still needs work. I have until December 1st to submit a “final” draft. (Is any writing project ever final in the writer’s mind even after it’s published?) That will be edited and returned to me. I’ll make those additional revisions and then it will be submitted to the copy editor.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The published book is expected in Spring of 2019.
In the meantime, if it seems I’ve disappeared, my apologies. I’m head down, working, blinders on.
Don’t worry. I’ll keep you posted as developments occur.
We party in the Spring!!
by Nita Sweeney | Feb 2, 2017 | Blog
“The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” – Henry Ford
Some days if I watch the news (which I rarely do) or read the paper (which I also rarely do) or hear from friends on either end of the political spectrum and all points in between, about the things happening in the world, I sink into depression about my own writing. As you know, I write mostly memoir. Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two, the memoir I’m currently shopping to independent publishers, recounts my journey from mentally unstable couch potato to somewhat less mentally unstable marathoner.
Before that book, I spent a decade writing a memoir (still unpublished) about the last year of my father’s life. I’ve also written about my relationship with my mother and about an unusual situation in which a man lived on our sofa for two years when I was a child. My drawer of unpublished manuscripts also includes three novels, all romance-ish, but none involving topics of great importance. So when I learn of things happening in the “real” world, I sit at my desk and wonder why I bother. With chronic depression and extreme anxiety, becoming too involved does not suit my mental health. I’m not going to take up political writing or letters to the editor. Is my writing a waste of time?
But it dawned on me that, if nothing else, writing helps me heal my own world. I’m transformed when I connect with another person through words on a page. In writing all those books, the reading I’ve done and the writing itself, has made me a better person. It has given me a sense of purpose when I felt I had none. It’s given me a voice, forced me to think carefully about how I feel about certain subjects, and introduced me to worlds I would otherwise not know.
Hopefully, when the running book comes to fruition, it will also help others. As my friend, author Pat Snyder put it when I asked her why a publisher might want to publish my book, “You so believe in the healing power of running that you will bring to book promotion the same perseverance you showed in running those marathons.” That’s my intention.
But more importantly, this same theme is true of writing. I so believe in the healing power of writing that I will bring to my teaching and my publishing the same perseverance I have showed in continuing to write for twenty years with only limited success. It’s not always about the product.
So if you’re out there wondering if anything you are doing on the page will make a difference, ask yourself if it makes a difference to you. Yes, perhaps, like me, you hope to influence some people or to make a change in the world or at least entertain people and distract them for a bit. But more importantly, is writing saving your life the way it has saved mine? I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
by Nita Sweeney | Dec 4, 2016 | Blog
“Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don’t happen at all.” – Thomas Carlyle
What if agents don’t want my book? What if small publishers don’t want it either? And if I self-publish, what if no one wants to read it?
If I had worried about these things before I began writing Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two, my memoir about running and mental illness, I would not have started writing at all. And now, even after I’m far into the process, I still can’t think too far ahead. Rather, I must focus on the small tasks that make up each activity. Write the email. Double check the requirements on the agent or publisher’s website. Check the email again. And again. Hit send. Then wait. Small steps. None of them overwhelming. None of them all that complex.
Depression and bipolar disorder render me easily overwhelmed. I have to chunk things down and keep it very simple. Perhaps other writers are more skilled at doing these things naturally. Perhaps their minds don’t spin negative scenarios the way mine does. Perhaps. Or maybe we all struggle with this in our own ways. I’m thankful I have meditation to help me stay centered. I find my breath. I feel my feet. I look around and ground myself in my surroundings. I think of one small task I can do right now. And then I do that. And then I think of the next small task I can do. And I do that. These small tasks make up my days as a writer. It’s not the big stretches of time. It’s the minute by minute things.
In November, I took a break from submitting and picked up a project I’d set aside many years ago, a book tentatively titled, Eat Your Toast. Ironically, it’s a book of daily practices geared toward helping people, myself included, live in the moment. I struggle with this more than anyone I know. I needed the reminders. I needed to read quotes about it. I needed to research teachers who focus on this. And I needed to write out exercises I could do all month while I was writing the book. I wrote 50,860 additional words on that book as a rebel project for National Novel Writing Month.
And now, in December, I’ll pick up Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two again and continue my journey toward publication. I still don’t know how this will play out. But if my project in November taught me anything, it’s that I don’t need to know the outcome. All I need to know is the next step.
by Nita Sweeney | Nov 3, 2015 | Blog
“Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or that – but you are the only you.” – Neil Gaiman
When I was a little girl, I wrote about horses. As I got older, I wrote about the people I loved. Older still, I wrote about myself. My writing professors said, “Write what you know.” I tried to oblige them.
I think Gaiman explains this concept more accurately. It’s not that I have to write about horses, the people I love, or even myself, but I have to tell whatever story I’m telling from my perspective. I see the world through a particular lens. Any story I tell will have that frame of reference. Even in fiction, my personality will come through.
Let’s say I choose an unreliable narrator. Even then, the story is mine because I choose how the narrator will hoodwink the reader. I select every detail. And my unconscious will have a lot to say about what decisions I make.
This, I believe, is a gift. If each of us is unique as a snowflake, then no two stories told by two different authors will be alike. There may be similarities, common themes, and familiar characters, but underneath, if we are true to ourselves, a special something will lie. The foundation will be our personality. And this is what makes our story marketable.
At least I hope this is true. I’ve written what I believe is my unique experience running a marathon. I’m a middle aged woman who was overweight when I began running. That’s not unique by any means. I also suffer from several mental health challenges. That doesn’t separate my story from those of others either. I run with my dog. I know plenty of folks who do that as well. But no one else has had the specific experience of living with my brain and body during this experience. No one else has had my precise thoughts and feelings as I walked (or ran) through this adventure. And that, I hope, is what will sell the book.
We’ll see. I’ve done my final edits . . . for now. My next step is to begin querying agents. I’ll keep you posted.
