First of all, a quick note: my website is up and running. I'm still finishing up a few final tweaks (and haven't added any discussion questions to the discussion board yet), but, regardless, it's all ready for you. Check it out!

Now onto a less happy topic: writer's block. Yes, I’ve written about writer’s block before, and so has pretty much every other writer with a blog, but the sad truth is, the problems that writers face tend to arise again and again. It seems the best you can ever hope for is a temporary solution, a short term cessation, before the problem pops up again. And so. Another post about writer’s block. Although, to be fair, this is the first time I’ve written about writer’s block in this blog. Now bear with me here, because I have a lot to say. This is going to be a long one, maybe even a  two parter, as perhaps I’ll follow my writer’s block confessional with some concrete things I did to eradicate it.

So here’s the thing: I’ve been pretty well blocked up for the past four months now. Ever since I found out that my first book was going to be published, I’ve had a hard time really feeling any particular piece of writing. Before the book contract, I was flying through a new draft of a new novel. I was about 50,000 words in, about the halfway point, and well on track to have the draft finished by the end of the summer when, BAM! Everything screeched to a halt. I had to put the new novel aside to edit the book that would actually be published soon, and on top of that I became almost paralyzed with the fear that this book—my first book . . . so much rides on that first book—wouldn’t be very good, and my career as a writer would die at a tragically young age.

While I was working with my editor to get the book in by the deadline—and working on other small tasks such as building a writer’s website, hunting down blurbs, writing my bio, etc. etc.—I became so caught up in the career side of writing, that the writing side of it seemed to get left behind altogether. When I finished the edits and sent the final manuscript in, I foolishly told myself that the block would surely end soon. I hadn’t been too worried about it before because I had sort of been writing during that time—revising still counts, after all—and because it was a happy predicament to be in, anyway: having no stories to submit because all of my ready stories were going to be published together as a book.

But once I had the final manuscript turned in, I felt that I needed to pump out some new stories, and fast. Ever since I got my first publication, I’ve published a minimum of two stories per year. I didn’t want that to taper off, book pub or no book pub. So, if I wanted to get two stories published in 2011, I needed to get some serious work done in the remaining months of 2010.

It seemed like an attainable goal, but every time I sat down to write, it felt like, I don’t know, doing math homework or something. Working on something that you don’t really feel like doing, and having a difficult time of it, besides. I kept telling myself if I just kept forcing it, it would come. I just needed to get my momentum back up. That’s pretty much always been true of my writer’s block in the past, but this time, it just wasn’t coming.

I finally decided that, rather than trying to steamroll over the problem, I should actually sit down and analyze what is happening to me and see if I could pinpoint the reason why. That way perhaps I could come up with a more effective solution than just keep writing, keep writing; ignore the block and maybe it will go away.

The nice part about this particular case is that, since the beginning of the block coincided exactly with a key event in my life—landing my first book contract—I was given a strong hint as to the root of the problem. In fact, the problem seemed pretty obvious as soon as I started really looking for it.

I think I have two desires which are, though it might seem strange, very disparate. I want to be a writer, as in make money off of writing, publish . . . a lot, build up a readership, be, in other words, a success. But that is a very different thing altogether from the desire to write. The verb. To get lost in the words, to become so removed from the physical world around me that the story feels like reality, reality like a story. To think only about the language, the characters, the plot, and not which journal I will submit to, what sort of audience the piece might reach, and how I can use the final product to take another step forward in my career.

Don’t get me wrong, you do have to think about those careery things sometimes if you actually want to get your stuff out there. You can be writing the most beautiful, moving, creative stuff ever, but if you’re not submitting it, no one will ever get to read it. And once you start getting published, it’s natural to want to move forward. Of course I want an agent. Of course I want to reach the widest possible readership.

But none of that really matters if I’m not enjoying the verb side of writing.

I haven’t been able to get sucked into my own stories, and in addition to the fact that it’s quite uncomfortable—I’ve spent too much of my life in a state of blissful distance from reality, thinking through some story or other, that to have that other world closed off to me leaves me in a hazy sort of mental discomfort—it also renders the career side of writing pointless. Yes, I want to be a writer, but then, only because I like to write. If the latter ceases to be true, the former should, too.

No, no, I’m not saying I’m giving up (although the other day, I was wondering, what if I did? What would my life be like if I just decided, eh, I got one book out there. That’s enough. How empty would it be, I wonder? Or would it actually be a strange sort of relief?). What I am going to do, though, is stop worrying so much about publishing. My friend (and writer extraordinaire—she writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction, screenplays . . . is there anything this woman can’t do?) Jayme Russell suggested to me, oh about a month ago, that maybe writing things just to write them and not for the sake of publishing would help break through my writer’s block. I listened to her advice, knew it was good, and yet continued to obsess over getting some new stories out there for the sake of submitting them. 

But now I’m finally seeing the wisdom of Jayme’s words, and I’m going to stop worrying about whether 2011 will be a dry year for me, journal pub-wise. I’m not going to rush to get back into setting goals for submissions, and the goals I did set to get me through the end of this year, well, I’m not going to break my back trying to keep them. I don’t know that I’ll have anything to submit to the Narrative contest by the end of this month, and that’s okay, because it’s worth it if it means stopping forcing the story I was trying to write for that contest and instead working on whatever story successfully carries me away. Regardless of publishability.

I think what I need right now is not motivation through deadlines and that carrot of furthering my career as a writer. What I need right now is to unlock the door to that mental chamber deep inside me, which is growing dusty, I’m afraid, from disuse. I’m going to air it out, clean out the cobwebs, and close my eyes and let it take me wherever it takes me, just like the old days when I wrote because my head was bursting with words and I would go crazy if I didn’t pour them out, and not because I was worried about pub credits and marketability and Ashley Cowger the writer rather than the daydreamer.

Of course, that’s all easy enough to say. What did I do though, to unlock the block? Stay tuned, my friends, and next week, I’ll tell you.

Well, hello there; fancy seeing you at a blog like this. Which is to say, welcome to my new and improved, three-in-one blog! This new blog will combine and replace my two previous blogs (The MFA/MFYou Newletter and The Process IS the Product), while also being a general writer’s blog as I enter into a new stage of my writerly life: book publication!

First of all, the website: I’ve been working for the past few weeks on building my very own writer’s website, which I expect to have up and running in another week or two. I’m pretty excited about the way it’s coming together.

I’m making the website interactive by creating a virtual book club discussion forum. This is not really anything new (I noticed, for example, that Stephen King has one on his website), but I’m hoping that having an online place where readers can discuss the stories in my book will encourage people to visit the website regularly and—dare I say it?—motivate teachers to adopt the book in their classes (although, to be honest, I’m torn on whether I think that would be a good thing, since, as a teacher myself, I’m well aware that most students tend to hate anything they’re required to read for school).

Now, on the writing front: Ever since I signed the book contract, I’ve been busy (and sometimes mildly stressed) with getting the book ready for publication. I haven’t, in other words, been doing much writing. Revising, some, but mostly proofreading, along with other, essentially non-writing tasks, such as seeking out blurbs, writing a description of the book for promotional use, putting together my website, etc.

Once I sent in the final draft of my manuscript, though, and completed the other tasks I had been assigned to do, I did start working on some new stories. For the month of September, I made the tentative goal of getting back on track by spending an average of an hour a day writing. I didn’t quite make it, but I only fell short by a few hours, and I did finish out the month with a handful of working drafts of new stories that I can revise and, hopefully, begin submitting soon.

My goals for the next month are fairly straightforward: I’d like to make another go at getting back in the habit of writing for an average of at least an hour a day (I average, by the way, the time over the course of the entire month, so if I miss one day, I can make it up on another). I think I can do it. I think I can; I think I can. I also am using some contest and submission deadlines as motivators to get some things ready to submit. I’m going to submit to places with deadlines falling on or around the end of the month, for the next three months (to finish out the year).

For October, I’ll use the Narrative 30 Below Contest as a deadline (since this is, after all, the last year I’ll be eligible . . . wow, am I really almost 30?). At the end of November, I’d like to have a solid second draft of my new novel together, or at least a really solid beginning, to submit to the McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award (another contest that I’ll only be eligible to enter for a short while—until I’m 32). And by the end of December, I want to have a submission to send out to Fast Forward, a journal that only accepts submissions until the end of the year, and one that I really, really like and would love to appear in again (I had a story in their Summer 2010 issue).

I have to admit, there’s something kind of frightening about openly admitting that I’m submitting to these contests/places. I usually keep these sorts of specifics to myself, so as not to feel any embarrassment when I don’t win/get accepted. But screw it! This is a new blog, for a new era in my writing life. Why should I be ashamed of not winning contests, when it happens to the best of us, when winning really requires as much luck as it does talent? Why should I only talk about my successes, when my failures have played as much or even more of a role in my writing life?

Nope, from this point forward, I’m going to hold my head up high and admit it: I get rejected. A lot. Way more than I ever get accepted. The only writing contest I’ve ever won (and mind you, I’ve submitted to plenty) is the one that is resulting in my book publication. The only reason I have the number of publication credits that I do is because I submit so much—if you could see the actual ratio, you’d see that for every one acceptance, I get something like 50 rejections. And you know what? There’s no shame in that. No shame at all.