Betsy Horvath

Category: Writing

  • Finding the Beginning

    When we last left Betsy, she was actually doing pretty okay.  Well, she was doing something anyway and that alone is a step in the right direction.  There was much rejoicing in the land.

    But Betsy would like this streak to continue, which means she not only has to finish what she’s currently working on, she has to figure out what to do next. She has to figure out where it starts and where it ends.  And once that gets going, she has to do it all over again for the next thing.  And the next.  And so forth.  And so on.

    This is not as easy as it sounds.

    Which is probably why we now find Betsy sitting amidst the long grass of the verdant meadow that lies on the shore of the lake in the center of her mind.  She is thinking deep thoughts as she figures out where she’s heading and how to get there and what to work on next and how to do it and where in the world she’s supposed to start.  She might, just possibly, maybe, feel like she’s flailing around a bit.

    Oh no!  This is never good!  What will Betsy do now?  Will she give up? Again?  Will she cut and run?  Again?  Will she rewrite the same project over and over and over instead of being brave enough to press into the uncomfortableness of something new?

    Let’s see…

     

    Betsy is sitting in the tall grass on the shore of the deep lake in the center of her mind.  After a moment of what passes for thought for Betsy, she stands and wades into the lake’s cool, still water.  She splashes around a bit.  Cups the water in her hands.  It dribbles through her fingers.  She splashes some more, which does nothing but make a few ripples.  She sighs.  Comes back onto the shore and settles down into the grass.

    What are you doing?

    Turning, Betsy sees the Muse has appeared to sit next to her in the grass.  The Muse draws her legs up under her long skirt and wraps her arms around her knees.

    “Well, I kind of need to write new things.”  Betsy gestures to the lake.  “I thought maybe if I went into the water, something would come up.  Or maybe I could catch something.  Or maybe I’d at least grab a clue.”

    “Ah.”  Muse nods. “Good idea.  The lake of inspiration is deep and there’s a lot of junk in there.  Especially since this is your mind we’re talking about.”

    Betsy frowns.  “Hey.”

    “Why don’t you let me see what I can find?”

    Muse gets up and strolls to the lake.  She walks into the water.  She keeps walking…and walking…and walking…. Soon she is under the water.  There are no ripples on the surface.  No air bubbles.  No disturbance at all.

    One minute passes.  Another.  Then, as Betsy watches, the Muse starts to emerge.  First, the top of her head comes into view, then her soft, round shoulders, then finally all of her as she walks back up on the shore.  She is holding something that looks very much like a tangled ball of yarn between her hands.  The Muse is wet, dripping, and the drops of water sparkle like a million fairy lights in the glow of the meadow.

    “Oh, geez!  You got all wet!”  Betsy cries when the Muse sits down beside her.  “That must be really uncomfortable.”

    “Are you kidding?  I love being soaked in inspiration.”  The Muse holds out the tangled, messy ball.  “Here you go.”

    Frowning, Betsy takes the mess from her and looks at it.  “Uh, thanks?”

    “I believe this is what you were looking for.”

    “Really?  It looks like it’s just a jumble of wet string.”

    “Take another look.  Don’t see what you expect to see.  See what’s actually there.”

    Obediently,  Betsy studies the tangle.  “Well, maybe…” She turns it around.  Examines it from every angle.  “I mean, I think I see what it’s supposed to be, but nothing is clear.”

    “Of course not.  It won’t be clear until you unravel it.”

    “Unravel it?  How am I supposed to do that?  All of these threads are tangled together and they’re wet and knotted.  I mean, I’ve already decided where I want to try to end up.”  She points towards a mountain in the distance.  “But I don’t know if unrolling this ball will lead me there.  Heck, I don’t even know if the string is long enough to GET there.”

    “If it’s not, then maybe that mountain’s not where you should go,” the Muse says.  She lounges back on her elbows in the grass, tossing back her soaked hair with a sigh.  “You might not take quite as long a trip as you think you will this time, or maybe you’ll go in a completely different direction.  You just have to unravel the string and find out.”

    “Oh, just that simple, huh?  Sheesh.”  Betsy frowns.  “Besides, it’s all tangled up.”

    “Then, I guess you’ll have to find the beginning of the mess and start pulling.  That’s the only way to get things moving.”

    “The beginning?”  Betsy chews her lip.  Examines the tangle.  “I guess…is this it?  Is it there..no.  How about…no.”  Rolls the mess around in her hands.  Looks at it from every angle.  “Where is the start?  Where did it go?  Why can’t I see it?”

    “Sometimes the beginning is more hidden than the end is,” the Muse says.  “After all, you often know where you want to end up, but you can’t always see the place where you’re starting from.  Just pick at the closest string and pull.  You don’t have to find the perfect starting point, not yet.  It’s more important that you start SOMEWHERE.”

    “Are you sure?”

    “Am I the Muse or not?”

    “Okay.”  Betsy chooses a thread and picks at it with her fingernail.  The yarn is very wet with inspiration, so it’s hard to get it loose.  But finally she manages to wiggle the thread free and the soggy mess unrolls for a bit before it stops.

    “There you go,” the Muse smiles.  “You’ve started.  And we’re off on an adventure again.”

     

    To be continued…

     

     

  • Find Your Own Way

    In today’s information age, there is advice every freaking where.  Heck, sometimes it seems like you can’t walk across a room without tripping over advice.  Bullet points of the “correct” way to do things.  Top 10 lists.  YouTubers and bloggers and Instagrammers.

    There are times when advice isn’t such a bad thing.  When you’re starting out, it helps to see the signposts others have followed.  Watching what other people are doing can help when you need some kind of direction.  Or if you’re tackling a new task you haven’t encountered before, it can be great to get a little insight or guidance.

    But it seems to me that all too often the overwhelming volume of advice and techniques and tips and tricks and lists and whatever available now can become an obstacle.  Yes, it might help to get you started, but you also have to learn to make the path your own.  Yes, you might need guidance to learn how to handle a new task, but not all guidance is correct in your particular situation. And quite a bit of the advice or guidance out there is contradictory.  It’s easy to waste most of your time being confused.

    In the end, you have to find your own way.  You have to use the advice but not be restricted by it.  If you don’t, you could find yourself walking down a path that’s not actually yours.  You might insist something has to be done in a certain way when it simply won’t work for you.

    No matter what it is we’re trying to do, we all, ultimately, have to figure out what fits us.  We are unique and so are our dreams and abilities.  There’s nobody else exactly like us.  Nobody else has our quirks and foibles and history and darkness and experiences and goals and dreams and objectives.  Nobody else needs to take exactly the same steps to reach our destination.  You, my friend, are a unique combination of cells and experiences.  That means that what works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you.

    It’s hard.  It’s a lot easier to follow a step by step blueprint than it is to actually look at what you’re doing and decide whether or not it’s working.  It’s a lot easier to follow everyone else than it is to strike out on your own.  And it’s hard to remember that just because a certain technique or approach seems to have worked for everyone else in the world, it might not work for you.  And that’s okay.

    I see this a lot when it comes to writing.  There is no other group of people on the planet who can give advice like writers.  In many ways, that’s fine.  You need to know stuff.  You need to know the craft.  You need to be able to navigate the ever-changing publishing landscape, especially these days—just ask some of the big legacy publishers.  You have to keep training and learning and growing.

    But the risk is that you—the writer YOU are—the PERSON you are—can get buried under it all.

    From what I can see, this is true in all different kinds of pursuits, from how to use social media to find a job, to the best way to lose weight, to the way you should run a business.  From every direction, on every platform, in every breath.  Advice, advice, advice.

    I get caught in this cycle sometimes.  Whether it’s my writing or my eating or my exercising or my decisions regarding…well, anything.  I can get pulled down the rabbit hole of advice because I assume that the people giving it know more than I do.  And a lot of times they do.  But it’s also true that they are not me.  And sometimes I get so caught up in what I’m told I SHOULD do that I don’t focus on what’s best for me in my situation with my goals and my challenges.

    So what’s my advice?  Well, I think we DO need to keep learning.  We need to improve our grasp of our craft, our business, our life.  We can’t stop and be complacent, and that means we do sometimes need advice and guidance and whatever.  But, on the other hand, we can’t let it trap us.

    I guess the only thing we can do is keep testing our processes and our decisions and our joy in our lives.  And if things don’t seem to be heading where we want to go, or if we have a gut-deep dissatisfaction with the process, then no matter how valid the path seems to be we must be brave enough to acknowledge it’s not for us.  We have to be brave enough to follow our own drummer.  Then we have to be wise enough to listen to advice if our drummer is taking us off a cliff.

    It might not be easy, but I hope you go forth and conquer!

    “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

    ― Pablo Picasso

  • Practice and Confidence

    It’s come to my attention over the past few weeks that having confidence in what you think you know or have learned requires practicing those things.  Otherwise, you forget that you know or have learned them.

    Practice means moving, walking through the doorways you’ve opened, and doing it over and over and over again.  If you stand still, you forget what it’s like to walk through those doorways.  Then you lose the confidence that you CAN walk through them.

    Barriers to your progress, barriers that you’ve already fought, will regrow unless you keep them down.  Think of them as a lawn that needs mowing once a week.  If you don’t mow for a while, then the yard looks like an overgrown jungle and walking through it is hard.

    I really didn’t know I’d been standing still until I started moving again.  I was writing, so I thought I WAS moving.  And I was—but only in one area.  I was surprised when I took steps in other directions only to realize how still I’d become.  Lots of barriers I’d pushed over—or at least dented—had regrown.  Lots of grass needed to be mowed.  Doors needed to be knocked open again.

    For example, I found myself facing the barrier of being afraid to show someone else what I’d written.  That’s not unusual—lots of people have trouble showing another person something they’ve been laboring over because then they’re vulnerable to opinion and criticism.  That fear stops many writers and other creative people in their tracks.  If you don’t do it regularly, it’s a lot harder to take the step.  The practice you get by letting the work go over and over again is what makes it easier to handle.  Since I hadn’t taken the step for a long time, I had to force my way through the barrier of fear again.

    Then I had to order a cover for the new book and faced the barrier of doubt.  Doubt in myself, in my work, in my ability to communicate.  Doubt that I really should take the step of turning a potentiality into a reality.

    In the editing process, the book is speaking for itself (for good or ill).  But with a cover brief, you are trying to communicate an entire project in a few words to people who have not read your book and probably never will.  If I don’t communicate effectively, the cover won’t be what’s needed.  I can have them make revisions, of course, but the fact is there’s the chance of I’ll waste a boatload of money if the cover is not successful and I don’t realize it.  Going through the process and not doubting yourself and what you’ve done requires practice.

    The sales blurb is the same.  If you don’t write them often, you don’t practice.  You don’t have the confidence that you CAN do it.  Pushing through the barrier of insecurity.

    This does not just apply to writing, but to life.  Everything we do is easier with practice, with movement, because practice and movement are where confidence grows.  You know you’ve done the thing before, over and over.  You know you can do it again.  You have recently DONE it.  But when we stop, we forget and the doors we’ve pushed open slam shut.  Fear. Doubt. Insecurity.

    We are sharks.  We have to keep moving to live.  We have to keep practicing, keep shoving our way forward through the barriers again and again until the lawn is like a golf course and all of the doors are open.  That’s where the confidence comes from.  We won’t find it by sitting still.

    Be the shark.

     

     

     

  • A Quick Status Update

    Hello everyone!  It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post that you might not even remember who I am!! (Although if you don’t, I’m not quite sure why you’re taking the time to read this.  But thanks!)

    Anyway, as a way of getting back into the groove of blogging more regularly, I thought I’d share a brief status update on what’s been happening around here for the last couple of weeks…er…months.

    First…yes, I AM still here, thank you very much!  Even better, the next Hardy Falls book, Choosing Love, (Welcome to Hardy Falls Book 3), is finally with my esteemed copy editor now for brushing up, polishing, and general housecleaning.  I’ll be sharing the synopsis here soon, but synopsizes are pesky little buggers so I want to live with it a bit before unleashing it out into the world.

    This story revolves around Jenny Kline–artist, housecleaner, and waitress–and Police Officer Harry Newman, III–er, police officer.  Since Jenny’s mother is the chief of police in Hardy Falls, things get a little interesting when Jenny and Harry make contact!  Well, that’s the plan anyway.  Jenny and Harry turned out to be stubborn people who took charge of their own destinies despite my determination to keep them on track.  The story went its own way, as often happens.  But I like it! Which I suppose is a good thing.

    I’m hoping to have Choosing Love out in a couple of months.  More on the exact timing once I figure out the depth and breadth of whatever problems it has.  I’m just going out on a limb here and say there will be SOMETHING that needs to be fixed!  🙂

    Oh, yeah.  And it needs a cover.

    I’ve started the next book, which will be one of the shorter ones–Hardy Falls Book 3.5.  Things are moving right along there, so more news on that soon once I get a little further and have an idea about timing.

    In personal news, I’ve been taking steps to improve both my productivity and my health and I think the sails are getting trimmed, as it were.  There’s definitely been improvement on the health and energy front, and that flows into all aspects of my life–especially the writing!  Better, stronger, faster, baybee!!

    So, anyway.  Just a quick-like-a-bunny post this week to let you know that I’m still here, I’m writing, I’m alive and everything is marching right along!  Booyah!

     

  • A New Hardy Falls Story is Available!

    A New Hardy Falls Story is Available!

    As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the novella I wrote last year and talked about frequently–nay, incessantly–here on the blog has FINALLY come out! My little boulder is all grown up and flying free in the world.  Er, rolling free!  Roll, little boulder!  Roll!

    Starting Something is a Hardy Falls story FREE for all newsletter subscribers and not available anywhere else.  It features Sophie Barton, who has appeared with her two sons in previous newsletter articles, and Noah Chertok, one of June’s old boyfriends who appeared in Believing Love. This novella will be the first of three stories about Sophie and Noah and their journey into love and relationship.

    And here’s the information –

    Sophie Barton moved to the little town of Hardy Falls, Pennsylvania after her marriage imploded, searching for peace for herself and her two young sons.  With so many problems and responsibilities on her plate, getting involved with her sexy next-door-neighbor isn’t even a blip on her radar. Then a torrential spring rainstorm, a leaking bathroom roof, and a series of poor choices leave her stranded without a ladder and looking to him for rescue.

    Noah Chertok is too busy keeping his family’s contracting business alive to pay much attention to his pretty new neighbor and her ridiculously cute kids.  But neighbors help neighbors, and when he finds out she’s got a problem, of course he’ll try to do what he can.  Little does he know that taking that one step forward will find him firmly entangled with the little family next door.

    Once the ice is broken, Sophie and Noah realize they are sliding into something neither of them expected. Then Sophie’s past comes roaring into town, and her whole life is shaken. Can she take a chance again with Noah?  Or is it simply too much of a risk?

    Welcome to Hardy Falls, Pennsylvania, where sometimes things start before you even realize what the heck is going on.

    You can get this novella for free when you click HERE and subscribe to the newsletter. There are also a number of articles from The Hardy Falls Gazette already posted, and I have plans for more special things in the future!

    I hope you join us!

     

     

     

     

  • My Current State

    My Current State

    Hello, friends!  This is just a quick blog post to let you know what’s been going on around here at the Palatial Horvath Estate over the past few months, lest you think the answer to that is “nothing,” which has sometimes been the case in the past.

    As I hinted in last week’s post, I might not have been blogging much, but I have actually been working!  Shocking but true!  I don’t even KNOW me anymore!

    Throughout January and February, I was able to write 90,000 words of the next Hardy Falls novel.  For a reference point, that is a longish, full-length book.  But at the beginning of March, I realized there was one teensy, tiny, wee bit of a little problem with all of that.

    Those 90,000 words, although swell words in themselves, and just peachy keen to read, were not a book.  They were a collection of scenes randomly racing about in a lot of different directions.  Some of the scenes went out together and danced the macarena, and some were living in isolated huts deep in the rainforest and hunting poisonous frogs.  And none of them added up to a novel.

    *Sigh*

    How did this state of affairs develop?  Especially since I thought I had a plan at the beginning of the year?

    The first reason is, I was flailing around and trying to find my footing in a lot of different areas of my life. Since a creative pursuit like writing comes from the inside, as I was flailing around, so thus was what came out of me. The words I wrote did not line up like little soldiers following the commands of the outline.  No.  They were children at a candy store, skipping from scene to scene to scene to scene to scene.

    Still, that’s not too unusual for a first draft—at least not for one of my first drafts. But it did make me a little sad because I had hoped for a better result since I really did have an outline this time.

    And therein lies the second reason the scenes I had written did not come together.  I was determined to use my outline, even when it became somewhat obvious that I needed to regroup.

    Once I got further into things and got to know the characters and the circumstances better, it became clear that the underlying story structure of the outline just didn’t work.  But I tried to make it work.  I had made up my mind that it would work.  I was COMMITTED that it would work.  I jammed square pegs into round holes over and over again, because damn it—this was going to WORK!  It WAS!  There was an OUTLINE, by gum!  And that outline would be followed!

    But, in the end, it did not work.

    It did not work to the extent that even *I* had to admit it did not work.

    Obviously, I need more practice with outlining.  Or MAYBE, just maybe, using an outline in the way I was trying to use it is not something that works for me and I need to embrace my inner Betsy and find my own processes (more on that in another post).

    Anyway, the story didn’t work.

    *Sigh*

    So, I bit the bullet, contacted my long-suffering editor to let her know I was going to screw with her schedule and dove into the mess.  Hence, last week’s blog post.

    I’m calling the draft I’m working on now the “Avengers Assembly” draft because I’m taking what’s been written and trying to piece it all together.

    Maybe the “Frankenstein” draft would be a more accurate name.

    The good news is, the Frankenstein draft is almost halfway finished and I have 40,000 words or so that are proud to stand up and be counted.  They are words I can look at with pride and pet and love.  Of course, the part of the story that’s left to pull together is the most problematic because it’s the part where the scenes already written really went off to party like it was 1999.  It will take the longest to fix, if it can be fixed at all.  What else is new?

    Wait?  What’s that sound?  *cocks head* Is that a gentle breeze rustling through the trees?  No.  No, it’s the heartfelt sigh of a long-suffering editor.

    But at least, as of the moment that I am writing this blog post, things seem to be sliding into place on the home front and the book front, so I’m hoping to have the next Hardy Falls book finished soon.

    The usual disclaimers apply.

    Oh!  You might also be interested to know that, thanks to Kobo promotions for their romance free book page and Google Play being big internationally, as of today my books have been downloaded / purchased in at least 91 countries.  I think that’s pretty cool.  When I see countries listed that I didn’t even know WERE countries, and I realize someone there (or maybe even a few someones) is reading about Hardy Falls, or at the very least has the book on their e-reader…well.  It’s something special.

    So anyway, for those who care, that’s what’s been going on in my life at the moment.  It’s really quite boring since I basically just sit at my desk and stare at a computer or out the window, but never fear!  There’s always something right around the corner.

    Just FYI – I’ll be sending out a special little story to the newsletter subscribers this Wednesday.  I’ll let you guys know about it later, but if you want to join the newsletter and see for yourself, you can click HERE.

    And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all of your support.  You guys are the best!!