Tag: writing life

“I could never explain how a story could be worth more than a dance with a prince”

On By Janni Posted in writingTagged , 4 Comments

My short story “Heart’s Desire” is now online at Read Me A Story, Ink., a reading resource site for kids, parents, and teachers. Take a look–or a listen!

“PERFUME SCENTED the air as my stepsisters left the house, trading names of princes they longed to dance with at the ball. My stepmother, Vivienne, crossed the room behind them, taking Papa’s hand with a small, elegant smile. ‘There’s still time, Cinderella,’ she told me. ‘We’ll hold the coach while you dress.’

“I shook my head, and Vivienne frowned. I knew what she was thinking. Ungrateful child—after all I do for you. She often spoke such words aloud, when my father couldn’t hear.

“I frowned back while Papa glanced between us, looking trapped. But he said only, ‘Be good, Cinderella,’ before following my stepmother outside. Papa spoke little, so I sometimes wondered how he’d found enough words to ask for Vivienne’s hand.

“I closed the door behind them, listening as the carriage bells faded into the night.

“Alone at last! I reached beneath the sofa, grabbing the book I’d hidden there, and settled down to read in one of my mother’s patched old dresses. I thought of Charlotte and Jeannette, squeezing tighter and tighter into their bodices. What was the point of clothes if you couldn’t do anything in them?

“I sighed. Six hours until they returned, assuming they left the ball at midnight as planned — six hours during which Vivienne couldn’t snatch the book away, hand me a mop or dust rag, and tell me to make myself useful …”

Read more

All Those Defiant Sparks

On By Janni Posted in generalTagged , 3 Comments

All my life, I’ve believed that no matter how dark this world gets, there’s light behind that darkness, light that always shines through in the end.

This belief has been fundamental to my writing, to the sometimes-dark stories I tell and to all the stories I tell. Terrible things happen. But light—something within humanity that generates light—finds ways to fight that darkness.

This belief has been fundamental to my life, too, helping me see my way through the challenges of childhood—bullying by my peers, growing up in a home with a share of love but also a share of chaos and yelling and strife.

Things might look dark, but no darkness is absolute. Light finds a way through, one way or another. For so many years, I believed that. I was never sure where my belief came from: The stories I raised myself on? God? Some mix of these things or some other thing entirely? Whatever the source, I’d always been grateful for this conviction, always known it for the gift it was. 

Until the pandemic—and the years leading up to the pandemic, too—challenged all that.

Not because of the virus itself. Because of the many people—not just outwardly problematic people, not just actively hateful people, but more people than not out of all people—who’ve decided that in the face of the virus, they’re just not up for caring about each other anymore. At least not when it comes to slowing the spread of a contagious disease that even now kills thousands of people a day and disables a great many more.

Not if they have to do it for more than a handful of months. Not if they have to be inconvenienced or change habits or rethink how they live and socialize over the long term.

Not if they have to make real sacrifices.

Some people are out and out vicious about their lack of care for one another, bursting into hateful screaming and abuse and occasionally even violence when asked to do something as simple as put on a mask. A great many more people are merely indifferent, though, and in many ways I think this is worse. These are the people who shrug and say if mitigation measures like masking and testing and contact tracing are no longer required, they just won’t go to the trouble. The people who go with the flow and wear masks and get vaccinated and avoid indoor dining when other people are doing it, but when other people stop, they stop too. The people who say they care, but also that they miss concerts and conferences and indoor sporting events too much to do without them.

The people who instinctively reach for the “normal” they know and miss, and don’t think twice about the cost.

And then there’s the most indifferent, most immoral, and most common reason for pursuing that normalcy of all: 

I’ve evaluated my personal risk and decided it’s low.

My risk. Not the risk posed to others, even though during a pandemic no risk is truly “personal.” Our actions affect other people; that’s how contagious diseases work. We’re all more vulnerable than we think, but beyond that, the infection that’s mild for one person becomes part of a chain of transmission that could kill a vulnerable stranger they’ll never meet.

Yet more and more people are saying, with disconcerting directness, not just, “I’m taking care of myself (a good and necessary thing),” but “I’m only taking care of myself.” Everyone else is on their own.

Everyone is on their own. That’s the part of the pandemic that has broken me. We’re denying our connection to one another, denying it so deeply that we’d rather see strangers die than admit the world has changed without warning and might never change fully back.

Everyone is on their own. Where did all that light I saw shining through the darkness even come from, if it wasn’t from people finding ways to connect with one another, to care about one another, to in some small way redeem one another, even in dark times?

These are dark times, not because of the virus, but because of what we as humans have let the virus turn us into. (And because of other things too. If I’m honest I have to admit all of this began long before Covid, and that I bear a fair amount of privilege and responsibility for the fact that I’ve been able to avoid fully feeling and facing it until the past few years.)

But how do we come back from this? How do I come back from this?

How do I find my way back to believing in a world where light can be hidden, sometimes for a long time, but is still always out there, waiting to be found, waiting to shine through once more?

How do I find my way back when all around me are people so scared of the dark that instead of trying to light one another’s way they’ve turning their own small lights off entirely, because their personal risk is low and they no longer know how to think beyond that?

The fact that I want to believe such a world still exists is a start, I suppose.

Now I just have to figure out whether I really do still believe in it—and where to go from there.

I was ready to end this essay here. Yet even as I wrote the lines above, something inside me spoke up and said:

Start by focusing on your light—the light you yourself have to offer, the light you’ve defiantly refused to let gutter out, even now. Focus on that light and what you can still do with it, rather than on the light others have forgotten they even possess.

That sounds hard, honestly. It sounds lonely. 

But light sparks light, after all. Somewhere deep down I still know that. And shining our own light can make us more aware of all those other defiant lights out there sparking, too. 

Maybe, just maybe, that can be a start, too.

Decades Come and Decades Go

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Or what I’ve been doing the past ten years

Recently, when I told an extended family member I had work to do, he snapped back at me, “What work? When was the last time you wrote a book — ten years ago?”

His response says more about him than me, of course. I’ve gotten “come on, you’re not really working reactions” from the occasional person near to me at every stage of my career—though less and less frequently over time—and I’ve come to know this response as a sort of leveling, a way of saying, “Don’t think too well of yourself.”

I’ve also come to understand that most people don’t bother saying “Don’t think too well of yourself” unless they’re feeling badly about their own selves, and are looking for some way to soothe that insecurity.

And yet. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an inner voice in my own head, too, after so many years, that also sometimes chimes in to say, “Come on, really, who do you think you are? What do you think you’re doing?”

When that voice speaks up, the answer can seem like, “Not much.”

So I’m writing a post to push back against that inner voice. I’m writing a post to list out something of what I actually have been doing this past decade. Because from the outside, these might look like quiet years, but from the inside, they look really rich and full and challenging and significant and wonderful, and I need to remind myself of that.

Along the way, maybe this post will help some of you reading it to push back against your inner voices, too. Because whatever you’ve been doing the past ten years, it matters, and it’s enough, and you have every right to be proud of it.

And in the end, really, whatever we do or fail to do, whatever we achieve or fail to achieve, isn’t the entirety of who we are anyway. Every single one of us is bigger and more wondrous and more wonderful than that.

What I’ve Been Doing, 2012-2022 Edition 
(An Incomplete List)

  • Finished three novels, including Faerie After, the final book of my Bones of Faerie Trilogy
  • Published two of them, one under my own name and one under a pseudonym
  • Wrote a guest episode for the Zombies, Run! App
  • Wrote the video game script for The Huntsman: Winter’s Curse
  • Sold a new short story to Stars of Darkover (and then donated the proceeds when I learned some hard truths about Darkover’s creator)
  • Volunteered at a wildlife center
  • Volunteered with an expressive arts group for local refugee families
  • Camped and traveled and hiked and explored
  • Mourned several friends
  • Became a parent
  • Finished rough drafts of four novels-still-in-progress
  • Curated a Writing for the Long Haul blog series
  • Served as the inaugural Writer-in-Residence for the Pima County Public Library
  • Served as Guest of Honor at TusCon Science Fiction Convention
  • Spoke at countless other book festivals, conventions, comicons, and writing conferences
  • Practiced multiple styles of bookbinding
  • Created designs for t-shirts, journals, stickers, mugs, and more at my Redbubble store
  • Mourned my father
  • Settled my father’s estate 
  • Did I mention becoming a parent?
  • Became politically active and took part in dozens of pro-democracy actions
  • Battled depression
  • Wrote more than 400 blog posts
  • Redesigned and reorganized my blog and website
  • Launched and published two chapbooks in my new Writing Life series
  • Redesigned and re-released new editions of three short stories
  • Designed and published Unicorn Seasons, a new short story collection
  • Re-designed and re-released a new edition of Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer
  • Taught myself some basic Mandarin
  • Had open heart surgery
  • Recovered from open heart surgery and went through rehab
  • No, really, parenting needs more than a line or two on this list
  • Homeschooled my kid during a pandemic
  • Lived during a pandemic, one that is still ongoing
  • Volunteered at a vaccine clinic
  • Published a humor piece with the Weekly Humorist and three humor pieces with Frazzled.
  • Published a non-fiction piece with Modern Parent and two pieces with Blank Page
  • Mourned my mother
  • Redesigned and re-released a new edition of Thief Eyes
  • Redesigned and re-released new editions of Bones of Faerie Trilogy
  • Marketed the new Bones of Faerie editions well enough to have the best year, from a business perspective, of my entire career
  • Did I mention parenting? Because parenting could easily fill ten years all by itself 

So yeah, it’s been a decade. Love and loss. Lots of ups and downs. Lots of living. Lots to be proud of, some of it writing and career related, a whole lot of it not.

I’ll take it all. And I’ll look forward, with whatever cautious optimism as I can muster, to the next ten years.

[Arms outstretched in front of an image of a turkey vulture]
We all have larger wingspans than we realize.

Doing the “you” things—honoring our (highly individual) writing processes

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I’m a messy writer. I jump in, with little more than a character or an idea, a few sentences or a scrap of voice, and I just start writing.

I don’t know where the story is going. I don’t know where it will end. Or maybe I think I know these things now, but I’ll find out later that I’m wrong. Either way I dive in, doing the story equivalent of throwing word-clay on the wheel and letting that clay splatter all over my hands and clothes, creating a rough draft that will ultimately bear only a ghost of a resemblance to my final one. I keep writing and rewriting over the course of five or more drafts, shaping the story, layering things in.

I love my writing process. There’s energy and joy in it, and in the end, I wind up with stories I’m proud of. If there’s angst along the way, a fear that this time, unlike all the other times, the story won’t happen, well, some part of me knows that’s part of my process, too.

My process.

For some reason we seat-of-the-pants, outline-eschewing writers are an insecure bunch. I hear new — and not-so-new — writers stressing about how they “need” to learn to outline, because not outlining is too slow or too inefficient or too … something.

Meanwhile, the Internet is filled with posts about how to map out our stories ahead of time. In one-on-one conversations with planning writers, I hear things like, “I don’t have the time not to outline” and “It’d be lovely to jump in, but I don’t have that luxury.”

As if it’s a luxury to write in the way that gives you the absolute best story possible.

I’m all for experimenting, for testing new processes, for trying new things. None of us should be hobbled by assuming that the way we do things now is the only way we can do things, ever. But there also comes a point when, no matter what our best process and best writing practices, we really do know what works for us.

When that point comes, I believe in accepting it — not with anxiety or fear, but with joy.

How much word clay you get on your skin and clothes doesn’t matter. Only the story you come away with in the end matters.

As for time, that thing none of us has enough us — well, nothing wastes time like fighting the way your story wants to be written, and along the way, the writing itself is usually much less fun.

Two stories:

One. A writer friend called me one day, wanting to know how I “organized” the work for my research-intensive novel Thief Eyes, because she was working on a research-intensive project of her own. After some hollow laughter at that word, organized, I allowed as how I didn’t write Thief Eyes with an up-front organized plan. Instead, I jumped in, and wrote, and let the story tell me what I needed to know. Only once I had words on the wheel did I begin researching and revising in earnest.

There was a moment’s silence, and then my friend asked, “So what did you do, then? Use notecards?”

Fortunately this was a voice call. When I banged my head against the wall, there was no one there to see.

When I say I don’t plan or outline, I mean I don’t plan or outline, not that I plan and outline differently. I think this process is sometimes alien to those who do follow a more outwardly organized process that they can’t imagine it working at all.

But it does.

Two. A while back, I had a book I wanted to write whose shape was already clear in my head, much more so than most of my books are. I could have honored that gift and made use of it by taking it with me into a messy first draft, but instead I thought, “Oh! Maybe this book is one that I actually can outline. Maybe I can finally speed everything up after all!”

That should have been my warning right there, that voice in my head looking, not for a new technique that would make my story better, but for a shortcut instead.

I now have that book outlined in a file, and no desire to work on it, because the story feels dead to me.

I put all the bright shining first-draft energy of discovery into an outline that in the end was nothing like a first draft for me, and now instead of joyous momentum and something I can revise into a second draft, I have lifeless words on the page.

Fortunately, this was a spec project, so I set my outline aside in the hopes that, with enough time and forgetfulness, that outline will fade from memory and the first draft energy will return. Which is fine, but also pretty much the opposite of saving time.

For another writer it might have been different, which is actually the point. We all have our own glorious processes, messy or otherwise. We need to honor them, not fight them.

Some years ago, writer Leah Bobet was talking about honoring her processes, and also about, just once, trying to fight them for a difficult project. “Everything just worked again when I just did Me Things,” Bobet said.

That strikes me as excellent of summarizing the most important thing I’ve learned in a decades-long career.

Learn your processes, challenge them even, and push yourself as hard as you can to write better. But in the end?

Just do the you things. It’s the best writing advice I know.

A version of this post originally appeared on my blog here, because some things really don’t change. Except that now, of course, I’d have to make sure I didn’t have video turned on when I banged my head against that wall.

Life isn’t a story. That’s probably a good thing.

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Life isn’t a story.

This is, for the most part, a good thing. Stories need conflict. Stories need drama. Stories need, more often than not, for the worst possible thing to happen at the worst possible time.

No one wants to live in a well-written story.

The pandemic isn’t a story. But if it were, I think we’d be at the part where it looks like everything is about to wrap up and wind down at last — but it isn’t, quite.

Vaccines are here and widely available, even if not as many people as hoped for are taking them. Covid case numbers are down, at least in our country and at least in certain communities within our country. Some of the time, for some of the people, things are beginning to feel almost … normal.

Which is why this would be the part of the story where readers begin flipping through the pages (physical books) or checking out the status bar (ebooks) to see if we’re really as close to the ending as we think.

It would be the part of the story where we realize that there are so many more pages left to go than we expected — too many for the story to really be winding down, too many for the resolution to be as simple as it seemed.

It would be the part where at least one more unexpected-yet-somehow-inevitable thing needed to happen. One more threat, one more unexpected twist, one more call for our weary characters to find their strength and rise above their weaknesses, to endure the unendurable and overcome one last overwhelming obstacle.

It would be where we realize the pandemic and its consequences aren’t over yet, that we were in too much of a hurry to think they were, that we need to keep reading for a while yet before we reach the satisfying conclusion and cathartic sigh of relief we’re longing for.

I’m glad the pandemic isn’t a story.

I’m glad those of us who hear those pages flipping have as much chance as being wrong as of being right. Maybe the pandemic still is building up to a dramatically satisfying ending. There are certainly enough unresolved plot threads left for one. But maybe, if we’re lucky, it’s instead just staggering to an undramatic, unsatisfying, mostly meaningless, utterly weary end.

Stories need meaning. Life, thankfully, does not.

But life also doesn’t let us skip ahead, doesn’t let us read the ending ahead of time for reassurance before returning to our carefully bookmarked place.

I hope the pandemic isn’t a story.

But if it is a story, I hope it’s a standalone story.

Because as readers know, if the pandemic isn’t a standalone story, then the end of book one is just a lull. A chance for readers to catch their breath — right before all those unresolved plot threads come crashing down, with all the force of a world that extends far beyond our own borders and a tale that was always, always more complicated than it seemed.

Love and Perfection

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“We love the things we love for what they are.”

That’s from Robert Frost’s “Hyla Brook.”

Variations on the line had been bouncing around in my head for a while before my husband and fellow writer, Larry Hammer, reminded me where it came from.

I’d been thinking about Frost (without knowing it was Frost I was thinking about) because I’d been thinking about how once we reach a certain basic level of craft, writing is no longer about avoiding mistakes or carefully not doing anything wrong.

It’s about the things we do right.

No one ever loved a book, after all, simply for not making any mistakes, for all that there are (varied, individual) things that can throw each of us out of a story. But we don’t love a story just because we aren’t thrown out of it, either.

We love books for what they do, not for what they manage not to do. We love them for the thing or things that hit each of our particular story buttons, that reach out to bridge the gap between story and reader, that pull on us and make us want to or need to read on. A flawed book that does the things it does very right is far more powerful than an unflawed book that doesn’t.

None of my favorite books—the books I imprinted on as a child and teen, the books that have remained touchstones for me throughout my life—is perfect. I can see that clearly enough when I look at those books as a writer focused on craft—and that has never once stopped me from returning to those books, from treasuring them. 

We don’t love books for the things they aren’t, but for the things they are.

My bookshelves—filled with imperfect books that I adore.

But there’s more to it than that. A while back, in a stray moment when I thought I was thinking about a manuscript-in-progress, I found myself thinking instead: And the same thing is true for people.

On one level, I’d always known this. On another I hadn’t, or had forgotten, or needed to relearn it on that particular day in that particular way. People no more need to be perfect than stories do.

As writers who spend much of our time looking inward that we can become as critical of ourselves as of our stories, this is worth remembering, too. I doubt many people hold their friends and loved ones dear simply because they never make mistakes. Lack of mistakes is not the place love comes from.

We love one another for the same reason we love stories: not for what we aren’t, but for what we are.

As I dig deep to put words on the page, I find that a comforting thought.

Love and Perfection first appeared as a guest post on Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Cynsations. I find I return to it every year or two as a reminder to myself.

Happy writerversary to me

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Oh, right. It’s 2020.

Okay, you don’t need me to tell you that. What with the election and the pandemic and the wildfires and a thousand thousand other things, 2020 has seen to it that it won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

But February 2020 was also, as this ten-year-old post just reminded me, my writingversary. As I explained then:

Back in February 1990, just a few months out of school, I spent the last of my student loan money on a computer with two 5 1/4″ floppy drives, promised myself I would write at least something every single day when I got home from my new day job, and decided to see if I could make a go of this writing thing. I knew enough to know it would take time, so I gave myself ten years before I would step back, evaluate, and decide whether to keep going.

In February 2000, I’d sold the three middle grade Phantom Rider books and a couple dozen short stories, though the Phantom Rider books were by then out of print and I was feeling more than a little anxious about not having sold any more novels. But I stepped back, looked around, and decided I was in for a second ten years.

I completely missed February 2010, because I was frantically finishing a draft of a sequel the YA fantasy I’d started on that first student-loan funded computer but not finished and sold until late 2006. That was the third YA fantasy I’d sold in the second half of that decade; along the way I’d also sold another middle grade novel. Being too busy to step back and decide whether to keep writing is, of course, an answer of its own. Still, it’s good to actually state these things, so: I’m in for a third decade. I’m in, as I pretty much knew before the end of that first decade, for the long haul.

[Author at keyboard]
One of a great many devices I’ve written on through the years.

I completely missed February 2020 because, well, it was part of 2020. Writing has brought its challenges over the past decade, as it does; parenting has brought its own challenges to the second half of that decade, as it also does. But I’m still here and I’m still writing and it feels good to say it aloud:

I’m in for a fourth decade. I’m in for another ten years.

Doing What You Love: Practical inspiration for writers

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doingwhatyoulovecover-medium Doing What You Love: Practical Strategies for Living a Creative Life is now out in paperback! This chapbook draws on my quarter-century of writing experience to share insights and inspiration previously only available by attending one of my talks or, more recently, downloading an ebook.

It makes a great gift for any writer in your life who could use a bit of a pep talk. (Including you!)

['Taking risks, rather than being an impractical and foolhardy act, might be one of the most practical and business-savvy things we can do.']

Available wherever books are sold:
– Amazon (bundle with the ebook for 99 cents more)
– IndieBound
– Barnes & Noble
Or visit your favorite local bookstore and ask them to order you a copy!

Doing What You Love: An Ebook

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I’m thrilled to announce the release of the second book in my Writing Life series, Doing What You Love. Based on one of my most popular talks, this inspiring ebook takes a look at the things I’ve learned through the years about living a creative life. While the focus is writing, it also applies to other creative fields. Here are the details!

Write More and Worry Less

Write more and worry less! Move your writing and your passion from the edges to the center of your life as you discover:

• Why writing isn’t all about “talent”

• The value of taking creative risks

• How to embrace imperfection

• Ways to manage doubts and put setbacks in perspective

• Reasons to let your fear—and your joy—take the lead

• The myth of that one big break

• How to choose which advice to listen to—and which to discard

• The power of writing without apologies

• Why following your creative passion may be the most practical thing you can do

Acclaimed author Janni Lee Simner has spent the past quarter century writing books, short stories, interactive fiction, and nonfiction for teens, children, and adults. In Doing What You Love she shares down-to-earth strategies for how to get started—and how to keep going—living a creative life.

Doing What You Love is available wherever ebooks are sold! Order your copy now from:

– Kobo and their independent bookstore partners
– Barnes and Noble
– Amazon
– Apple
– Smashwords

New to the Writing Life Series? Order Doing What You Love and Finding Your Sense of Place together and I’ll send you a free e-copy of my creepy short story “Drawing the Moon!” Just forward a screenshot or copy of your receipt to janni@simner.com before the end of July.