Hi folks,
I
rarely do this, but I’ve asked a student of mine to provide a guest blog today.
Please welcome Meagan Beaumont! Her story is truly inspirational as you’ll see.
Maegan
first entered my life when she enrolled in a class I was teaching for Phoenix
College a couple of years ago. That class has since morphed into an ongoing
class with some of those Phoenix College students, some of the folks I taught
for Writer’s Digest classes, some from the Skype class I co-teach with Jenny
Milchman for the New York Writer’s Workshop, some from the ranks of the private
clients I coach on their novels, and some from other contacts who asked if I
had a class. We keep it to about a dozen writers (and unlimited auditors) and
the majority of them continue on into each succeeding class. Classes run
various lengths—from eight weeks to twelve—to give us a bit of variety. (And a
rest! We usually take a week or two off between classes.)
In
all my classes, no matter what the venue, I require two things to begin with.
We begin with each class member’s novel and at the beginning and work through
from that point. I ask each to submit a 15-20 word outline for the entire novel
and I ask each to submit five pages for the first week which should include the
inciting incident.
The
thing is, if a writer doesn’t begin where their outline indicates it
should—with the inciting incident—that writer continues to submit that
beginning scene until they’ve created a bona fide inciting incident. Over time,
class members have adopted the phrase “inciting incident hell” to describe this
experience. It’s very rare for a new writer to deliver the proper inciting
incident in the first week. And, they’re not allowed to proceed beyond that
five-page limit until they do.
My
feeling is that if the novel doesn’t begin properly, the writer is headed for
the shoals of an unfinished novel, or, if finished, an unpublishable novel.
It’s imperative that they begin in the right place.
Most
spend from an average of 2-4 weeks before they nail the opening and get past
that first five pages.
Maegan
holds the all-time record.
Maegan
spent NINE WEEKS IN INCITING INCIDENT
HELL.
Nine
weeks…
Out
of a 12-week course. For nine weeks of the total of 12 weeks in the class, she
never got past the inciting incident. At the end of nine weeks, she had a grand
total of five pages of her novel written.
Did
she quit? Well, you already know the answer to that. Did she get mad at me? Call me a no-heart bastard? Get frustrated? Of course. But, the important thing is, she didn’t quit. She hung
on like a bulldog. That’s when I knew she was going to be successful at this
writing thing.
Maegan
had talent. That was obvious from the very beginning. However, there are a ton
of people who have talent who will never get published. Talent is rarely the
deciding factor in who finds their books on the shelves of Barnes & Noble.
Hard
work and perseverance are what separates the author from the typist. Paying
one’s dues through old-fashioned blood, sweat and tears is the determining
factor, almost always.
And,
Maegan had both of those traits in abundance.
She
also had a 700-page completed novel in her possession when she began.
Long
gone.
In
its place, she has a top agent and a two-book deal with an option for a third.
I recommended her and her work to my agent, Chip Macgregor, and Chip just
placed her novels with Llewelleyn/Midnight Ink with a separate advance for each
novel. Be on the lookout for the first novel, Maegan’s riveting thriller titled
THE FIRST. You can be sure I’ll announce the release date here!
Kind
of cool, isn’t it? Her journey as a writer is much the same as the journey of
the protagonist in a good novel. As it should be.
Here’s
Maegan, with her story in her own words.
From the pen of Maegan Beaumont:
My journey started as they all do—I took
one foot and placed it in front of the other, foolishly believing that I had it
all under control. I had a finished manuscript—a 750 page tome that I knew
needed work. A lot of work. The problem was—I had absolutely no idea what I was
doing. I mean, really, I had no idea
what I was doing. I knew enough to be certain that 250,000 words was a bit
heavy for a thriller, but beyond that—color me clueless. I’d never taken any
type of writing class. I’d never had any type of instruction… did I mention how
utterly and ridiculously ignorant I was?
I enrolled in an online college class,
and this is where I think fate (or whatever you want to call it) intervened. I
read the course description for a class called Planning and Structuring the
Novel and noted that I needed pre-recs I didn’t have. I contacted the
instructor (Les Edgerton—sounds like
a nice guy—I imagined sweater vests and Hush Puppies…) and asked for an
exemption, and guess what? He gave it to me. I was in.
The first week was brutal—Mr. Sweater
Vest ripped me a new one. Week two had him shoving his Hush Puppy-clad foot up
my… well, let’s just say it was a tad uncomfortable. Weeks three through eight
were similar. I cried. I bled. I fantasied about strangling Mr. Sweater Vest
with my laptop cord.
Things were not going as I had planned.
See, he wanted me to write this thing
called an “Inciting Incident”. I mean, what the hell is that? Turns out, if I’d
have just stopped crying so freakin’ loud, I would’ve heard him explain it to
me. An Inc Inc (as we call it in the Land of Les) is your protagonist’s
catalyst. It’s the first sign of trouble—and we all know that novels are about
trouble… But I digress.
Week nine was my week—the week it finally sank in. I nailed my Inc Inc. I
delivered a believable scene that wasn’t overwrought with melodramatic
bullshit. I created believable characters and figured out that I have a way
with dialogue. All the while Les guided me, gave me kudos when I earned them
and smacked me silly when I lost my way. It sounds brutal—and it was. But I needed
it and looking back, I’m damn glad I was fortunate enough to find him, smart
enough to realize that this is a man that knows what he’s talking about, and
too stubborn to quit when things got tough.
It took me a year to re-write my novel.
Three months to place it with an agent and another four to find it a home.
That’s right, folks—I landed a book deal. A two book deal with an option for
the third. My hard work isn’t over, as a matter of fact I have a feeling it’s
just begun—knowing that makes me feel like it’s week one all over again and
I’ve got Mr. Sweater Vest doing the Hush Puppy wind-up.
But I can handle it. I know I can,
because Les didn’t just teach me about proper story structure and character
arc. He taught me how to survive.
His methods aren’t for everyone. He can
be brutal. And he’ll tell you flat-out that just wanting it badly enough—isn’t
enough. It takes hard work and a willingness to check your ego at the door. A
desire to learn and an understanding that the learning never stops. In short:
you have to become a writer.
A real writer—and that’s what I am. I am
a writer.
Because Les Edgerton made me into one.
Be that as it may, my life isn’t
actually conducive to the craft. Two of my four kids are adopted. Both have
ADHD and were born exposed to meth. My oldest—my only daughter—is a grade-A
drama queen who will burst into tears if I so much as offer her a piece of gum
(true story) and my middle son believes wholeheartedly that it is his destiny
to invent time travel... so every day is a goat rodeo. I don't think of it as a
struggle. That's just my life. People always ask me "How do you do
it?" I think the question is a silly one. I just do it. What's my
alternative? Running away to join the circus? Thanks, but I've already got one,
and besides, I think clowns are creepy.
Amidst the chaos I make the time to
write. I don’t find it. I make
it—there’s a difference. I don't sleep. Sometimes my kids eat PB&J for
dinner. Most times there are dishes in my sink. I'm late picking my kids up
from school at least one day a week. Because writing is more important to me
than getting a full 8 hours (or even 5, for that matter...) of sleep, or combing
the tassels on my area rugs. Writing keeps me sane and my sanity is important.
My saving grace is and always will be my
husband. He can be a colossal pain in my ass and is never home (he's a truck
driver—home 3 days out of 7) but when I got my book deal, I could practically
see the pride oozing from his pores. When I’m on a roll and he’s just come home
from a 36-hour run, he slams a Monster and takes the kids to the park so I can
write it out in peace. When I say “I’m almost finished with this scene,” he
understands that that means he won’t see me for another six hours. He doesn’t
like it. But he gets it. We’re teammates—sometimes he’s playing football while
I’m playing water polo, but we make it work, because failure has never been an
option for either of us and because I choose my teammates very wisely.
I’ve lost a few along the way. People I
loved. People who didn’t understand or appreciate the journey I was on. People
who didn’t like the fact that I was changing. Who seemed to take my growth and
happiness as some sort of personal insult. Like I was doing it to them on
purpose. I wasted time and energy trying to make them happy. I fought against
the loss of them, because that’s what I do, but in the end, I let them go. I
came to understand that what was wrong with them, had nothing to do with me,
and nothing I do will ever change the way they feel about themselves.
But for every person I lost, I found
someone that loved me more than their idea of who they wanted me to be. They
understood if I didn’t call them for a week and a half. They’d offer to pick my
kids up from school because I was knee-deep in it and knew that even though I could put a pin in it, I didn’t necessarily
want to. They read my crappy first-drafts and didn’t panic when I bought books
on how to poison people and spent weeks at a time researching nanotechnology.
If they found my obsession with serial killers alarming, they kept it to
themselves. These are the people I share my success and failure with. The ones
that stuck it out. The ones that matter.
So, my advice:
Write. Don’t worry about the number of
dishes in your sink or the fact that your kids might eat more peanut butter
than the kid next door. Buy paper plates and put Pizza Hut on speed dial. Kids
love pizza and guess what—they’re resilient.
Write. If you have a support system—use
it. Your spouse. Your friends. Your family. If they love you, they want you to
be happy and will be willing to go the extra mile to see you that way.
Write. Don’t be afraid to let go of the
person people think you are. You are
so much more than the expectations of others. Dive in, head-first. The ones
still waiting for you when you come up for air are the ones that matter.
Write. Find a mentor—someone willing to
offer guidance and support in things your friends and family might not
understand. Join a writing group—a good one, not a cheerleading squad. A group
of writers, willing to leave your blood on the page for the betterment of your
craft. Every writer needs one, and I thank God everyday for mine—a group of
writers that I never want to be without. They don’t always say what I want to
hear, but they always say what I need
to hear.
Write. You are a writer. Say it. The
next time someone says, “So, what do you do?” Look them dead in the eye and
say, “I’m a writer.”Because that’s what you are. You’re a writer.
Maegan Beaumont, author of the
forthcoming novel THE FIRST from Llewelleyn/Midnight Ink Publishing.
…and,
in closing…
And, forget all that nonsense about
“sweater vests” and Hush Puppies! Never owned either in my entire life. You can
write that down…
Thanks, Maegan, for sharing your story.
And thank you for providing a shining example of what a writer really looks
like.
Blue skies,
Les
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