Victoria’s Secret: Why I Have to Say Goodbye

Please try to understand, Vicky “It’s not you, it’s me.”

                Let me make one thing clear.  I love Victoria Secrets’ bras.  Despite the price, they are of excellent construction, they last forever, they make the girls look great, and they are sexy.  The last two items on that list are the problem.

                I have been married for twelve years.  In theory, I would want to keep the romance alive with sexy lingerie.  And I do.  But in the past ten years, every time I shop at Vicky’s I end up pregnant.  I’m not kidding.

The first time, it was intentional.  I was ready to start a family but my husband wanted to wait.  When I asked him how long he thought that wait should be, he shrugged and said.  “I don’t know.  Maybe a year or two or five, we’ll see.”  I frowned.  A week later, I ended up trolling the Victoria Secrets’ store looking for a sexy ensemble to kick start baby making.  Nine months and two weeks later, Madelyn was born.  She was a week late.

The thing that women don’t know about having a baby, or at least I didn’t, was that it completely wrecks your body.  So after a year when I finally had my body back, I made a second trip to Vicky’s to celebrate.  No sexy lingerie this time, just some nice matching sets of bras and underwear.

Ten months later, Kathryn was born.  Coincidence, I said to myself.  But the seeds of superstition were planted.  I stayed away from Victoria Secrets for a long time. 

Finally our second child potty trained, we declared ourselves done having children.  “No more diapers for us.”  We said.  In our minds, we had closed that chapter of our lives.  I thought I was safe.  I made a third trip to Victoria’s Secrets.  No matching sets this time.  Just some bras and underwear from the super sale bins.

Six weeks later, we are on vacation.  The best vacation in five years, because we didn’t have a little one in diapers.  The children could play while we relaxed for a few minutes.  While sitting on the deck, looking over the lake, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t started my period.  I said to my husband.  “I think I’m late.”

He responds.  “But we’re done having kids.”

One pregnancy test later, it was confirmed.  My third trip to Victoria’s secrets has resulted in a third pregnancy. 

           For this reason, Vicky, we can’t see each other anymore.  I have three kids.  I am trying to launch a writing career.  I can’t have another baby and so I can’t step foot into your store.  Please try to understand.  “It’s not you, it’s me.”

How Many Times Have you Given Up?

Above any endeavor in my life, writing is the one that has been plagued with the most self-doubt.  Except for maybe parenthood.  But once you have a child there is no going back so that makes your choice simple.  That is not the case with a writing career.  You are free to quit as many times as you want. 

As a result, I have given up being a writer more times than I care to admit.  Four at least.  I have stopped in the middle of both books I have written.  I gave up for almost a year after Lily in Bloom went out of print.

A bad edit made the roll out of Lily in Bloom a disaster.  Fraught with typos I wanted to hide under a rock.  All of my mistakes were out there for the word to see.

After I got over the initial shock, I stopped writing for a while.  It was too risky and just too painful.

That is the difficult part of being a writer.  With any other job, I can go to a party and announce that I am doing really well at work and people will believe me.  With writing your work is out there for everyone to judge.  It is difficult but, I have to admit, motivating.

With the reprint of Lily in Bloom, I could have republished it as it is, minis the typos.  I didn’t do that.  I signed on an editor, Maggie Dallen.  She has been pushing me, challenging me to make it the best book it can be. We have never even met but I love her for it.

And maybe that is the key.  The things that are the hardest in life can be the most rewarding.  That has certainly been true for parenthood.  I won’t know for sure until Lily in Bloom hits the shelves again if I am to succeed or fail.

The book may still be no good, but it is the best I can do and I am going to try and be satisfied with that.  With a major re-edit I can honestly say that I came at my first book and gave it everything I had.

Wish me luck.  I feel like I am going to need it!

Editing, Oh SHit!

Let's play a game… It'll be fun for you and mildly humiliating for me.  How many errors can you find in this blog?

It's not that I mean to.  It's just that I forget a word here or there.  My brain moves faster than my fingers.  A homonym sneaks in.  And I know the rule.  I've used it right a thousand times but I am in the middle of this scene and I am so in to what I am writing that the rules fall out of my head.

I write it's when it should have just been its.  You know the mistakes.  You might have made them.

Here is my second problem.  I go to edit my writing.  It's easier with short pieces for my freelance work.  I employ the trick where I read the piece back words.   I find the mistakes.  But when I wrote a novel, I couldn't read all 84,000 words back words.  I'd be 80 before I finished.

So I read the novel through three times.  An editor read it through once.  Then my mother-in-law picked it up.  We were sitting across the table from each other when she dropped the bomb.

"Loved your book but did you notice the errors?  I thought you had a professional editor?"  I tried to keep the smile pasted to my face.

I knew the problem.  I start reading to edit and I get distracted by the dialogue.  Does it further the characters?  The story, is it coming together?  My eyes skipped right over the word heat that was supposed to be heart. 

What happened next was two weeks of intense editing.  My book was pulled off the shelf.  My mother-in-law and I went through it page by page and got, what I hoped, was all of the errors.  Turns out, it wasn't.

The book is back on the shelf and my pride is still smarting.  I wish I had done things differently.  I didn't have another set of eyes read the book because I didn't want to put people out.  I was still having trouble sharing with my inner network.  What if they didn't like it? 

Big mistake.  If you have written or in the process of writing a book, ask a friend to edit.  It has to be someone you trust.  I don't want help with the story, just the grammar.  That is hard for some people to do, keep their opinions to themselves.

You can ask for as much or as little help as you want but you should ask.  It helps, really.  Better to be slightly embarrassed in front of your friend than every person who buys your book.

 Good luck with your writing.  Better luck, than me, with your editing.

If you are at all interested in playing this game on a grander scale, my book "Lily in Bloom will hit Amazon and Barnes and Noble this summer.  Happy reading!