the writing life

Writer’s Lament: “O’, Writing!”

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This post by Chris Jane originally appeared on chrisjane on 3/17/15.

It’s not hard to imagine a young Dorothy Parker sitting at her Catholic school desk, an arm curled around her paper so the teacher and the girls sitting nearby can’t see what she’s writing (definitely not the assignment).

Or Hunter S. Thompson at his school desk, but without an arm covering his work. Just writing whatever the hell he wants to write.

When I started writing at around twelve years old, it was on my bedroom floor after having read a certain number of magazines with single-page stories on the final page. I decided, “I bet I can do that.” A few hours, three cursive pages, and one or two strikethroughs later, I found the submission address on the back of the magazine and sent in my (absolutely terrible) story.

I don’t remember waiting for a reply, nor being disappointed when nothing came in the mail. What I do remember thinking is, “Woah. I want to do that again.”

Twenty-eight years later (or, about two weeks ago), I’d be sitting behind a laptop in a Barnes and Noble Starbucks and working on book number three when I’d look up and notice the shelves and shelves (and shelves) of books — none of them either of my first two — on the other side of the cafe railing.

How many books, 99% I’d never heard of, were on those shelves?

 

Read the full post on chrisjane.

 

Authors: Give Success A Try, But Don’t Let It Spoil You

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This post by Robert Chazz Chute originally appeared on his site on 2/28/15.

I love talking to people on the way up. Striving for excellence, many authors manage to stay humble and helpful and fun to be around. Nobody knows everything yet and, contrary to what you’ve been told, not walking around in God’s presence is easy on the nerves. Then there are those who think they are gods on Earth.

1. My son was sick on the day a popular author came to his school. The kid was disappointed that he was too ill to attend so, while on a Kleenex box run, I went to the school in search of an autograph for him. The author’s mood could best be described as pissy. He’d visited too many elementary schools and he obviously felt the event was beneath him. He had forgotten what it was like to aspire to his position.

Suggestion: Remember when you imagined one of the perks of authorship was signing a book and inspiring a young reader? If you’re not happy to be where you are, do what everyone in retail does: fake it and smile or don’t do it.

 

Read the full post on Robert Chazz Chute’s site.

 

Stacey Jay, Crowdfunding, and the Business of Publishing

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This post by Livia Blackburne originally appeared on her site on 1/7/15.

So I usually don’t jump in on internet kerfuffles, but  the recent blowup over Stacey Jay’s kick starter really caught my attention.  The short version is that author Stacey Jay started a kickstarter for her next YA novel after her publisher declined to buy it.  She factored in living expenses as part of the money to be raised, and got a lot of blowback for that choice, so much, in fact, that she ended up canceling the Kickstarter and apologizing.

I’m not the only person to weigh in.  There’s a Roundup at Bookshelves of Doom. And I particularly liked the response written by Chuck Wendig and Laura Lam. So I’ll just share a few thoughts.

 

1. What is the biggest cost of writing a book?

My dad, a lifelong businessman, once asked me what my biggest cost was for a self publishing project I was planning. I started quoting a rundown of editing costs, cover artist quotes, etc, but he stopped me halfway and said, “No Livia, your biggest cost is your time.” And of course, he’s right. This is business 101, but somehow for writers, the idea of time being a valuable thing is counterintuitive.

 

Read the full post on Livia Blackburne’s site.

 

How I Became An Indie Author: Helen Harper

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This article by Helen Harper originally appeared on the ALLi self-publishing advice blog on 3/4/15.

It Shouldn’t Happen to an English Teacher

Everyone makes mistakes. Career-wise, one of my biggest was to step into a temporary Deputy Head position at the international school where I was teaching English. Five years ago it was a small start-up, and I took the job knowing that I’d have to retain all my responsibilities as head of department, as well as teaching, and the new requirements of senior management. The upshot was that for eight months, I didn’t have a day off. I worked weekends, holidays, evenings … all I did was work. And by the time May rolled around, I was burnt out and had nothing left to give. I needed something else.

 

Bored? Then Write a Novel…

There was nothing I wanted to watch on television. I’d been working so hard that I had few friends. And I couldn’t find any books I wanted to read – so instead I wrote my own.

Every evening I’d come home, grab a bite and write. I didn’t tell a soul about it. I was lost in the fantasy world of Mack Smith, a young woman living with a pack of shapeshifters in rural Cornwall. It was a little bit like being a superhero. By day I taught English, and by night I transformed into a crime-fighting, ass-kicking heroine! Sort of, anyway.

 

Read the full article on the ALLi self-publishing advice blog.

 

The Utility (and Trappings) of the Novel Outline

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This post by Jamie Kornegay originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 2/12/15.

I’ve been selling books for more than fifteen years and learning to write novels even longer. Of all the author readings and Q&A sessions I’ve hosted (and attended), one of the most common questions among beginning writers, even curious readers, is this: Do you start with an outline?

You’ve heard the pros and cons. An outline helps organize your thoughts and prevents you from spinning your wheels and traveling down dead-end storylines. The flipside, of course, is that constructing an outline boxes you in and limits the possibility of discovery, which is the most creative and rewarding part of writing.

First, it’s important to note that there are no ironclad rules to novel writing. Every writer works differently and stumbles upon his or her preferred method through trial and error. The novel, rather than writing advisers, should tell you what it needs.

The traditional term paper outline, with its Roman numerals and letters, is helpful to organize a finite amount of information, but a novel is more amorphous. I couldn’t begin to collect a novel’s potential in an outline, though I certainly understand the impulse. There’s something terrifying about the blank page and its stark white emptiness. What could you put there that anyone would want to read?

 

Read the full post on Writer’s Digest.

 

The Weird Agonies And Little-Known Science Of Wordnesia

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This article by Matthew J.X. Malady originally appeared on Slate on 3/4/15.

One hour and seven minutes into the decidedly hit-or-miss 1996 comedy Black Sheep, the wiseass sidekick character played by David Spade finds himself at an unusually pronounced loss for words. While riding in a car driven by Chris Farley’s character, he glances at a fold-up map and realizes he somehow has become unfamiliar with the name for paved driving surfaces. “Robes? Rouges? Rudes?” Nothing seems right. Even when informed by Farley that the word he’s looking for is roads, Spade’s character continues to struggle: “Rowds. Row-ads.” By this point, he’s become transfixed. “That’s a total weird word,” he says, “isn’t it?”

Now, it’s perhaps necessary to mention that, in the context of the film, Spade’s character is high off nitrous oxide that has leaked from the car’s engine boosters. But never mind that. Row-ad-type word wig outs similar to the one portrayed in that movie are things that actually happen, in real life, to people with full and total control over their mental capacities. These wordnesias sneak up on us at odd times when we’re writing or reading text.

Here’s how they work: Every now and again, for no good or apparent reason, you peer at a standard, uncomplicated word in a section of text and, well, go all row-ads on it. If you’re typing, that means inexplicably blanking on how to spell something easy like cake or design. The reading version of wordnesia occurs when a common, correctly spelled word either seems as though it can’t possibly be spelled correctly, or like it’s some bizarre combination of letters you’ve never before seen—a grouping that, in some cases, you can’t even imagine being the proper way to compose the relevant term.

 

Read the full article on Slate.

 

Do Awards Boost Anything Except Egos?

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This post by Tracy Weber originally appeared on InkSpot on 2/23/15.

My editor, the fabulous Terri Bischoff here at Midnight Ink, recently published a blog article in which she wondered out loud if winning an award—be it the Agatha, Lefty, or Edgar—meant anything to readers or to the future sales of an author.

It’s a valid question. We all bemoan poorly written manuscripts that manage to become New York Times bestsellers. I’ve yet to see a positive correlation between number of awards won and number of copies sold. So, other than hoping for an ego boost, why even bother?

The answer, for me, became clear last Sunday night when my first book, Murder Strikes a Pose, won the Maxwell Award for Fiction. Most of you have probably never heard of the Maxwell awards. In the mystery world, they are barely a blip on the radar. But in another writing community—people who write about dogs—the Maxwell Awards are important. They are the Academy Awards, if you will, of the dog writing community.

If you’ve read my work, you know that I’m dog crazy, and that a 100-pound German shepherd plays a prominent role in my series. Still, I’m a crime writer and my primary goal is to entertain readers.

But that’s not my only goal. My second goal is to save lives.

 

Read the full post on InkSpot.

 

My Book Is Not My Baby, Though Sometimes It Does Reek of Poo.

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This post by Heidi Cullinan originally appeared on her The Amazon Iowan blog on 1/15/15.

“My book is my baby.” You hear that a lot from authors, especially of novels, and as one of that number, I get it. Most of us don’t mean it more than a very loose metaphor, an image-intense description of what it’s like to create something out of almost nothing and have it become something much more. We imprint hopes and dreams on this creation, and we feel great affection for it. Ergo, baby.

While I won’t try to stop anyone else who insists on calling their books their babies, because it’s still a free country, etc, I am not one of those people. And because I just read something about books being babies that kind of made my eye twitch, I feel like clarifying why I am, in this particular instance, anti-baby.

When I write a story, there’s definitely a big stage where the thing is unformed, but it’s not an infant I’m teaching to walk or hold its head upright. I’m trying to find eyeballs and get rid of that weird third ear on top of its head. It’s clay, not flesh. Absolutely I talk to it and nurture it, but I also rip it apart, and kick it, and yell at it—if my books were my babies, they’d all be taken away by child protective services.

But even if I were to pretend that was all somehow okay baby-tending behavior, what I do next is even worse. I guess I could go with the editing and proofing and beta-reading as sending the kid to school, but…holy hell, I’m not letting it learn. I’m forcing it into a mold, making it acceptable to society in a way which, again, would probably get me arrested if I tried it with my actual flesh and blood child.

 

Read the full post on The Amazon Iowan.

 

15 Terrifying Things That Will Make You A Better Writer

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This post by Chris Brecheen originally appeared on Writing About Writing on 9/6/12.

Ready to do some things for your craft that will terrify you even more than a sewer-dwelling clown?

Tired of the same ten articles online giving you the same twenty bits of advice about writing punchy verbs or sitting down at the same time each day? Are the thousands of clones of “How to be a Better Writer” articles getting you down? Do you think, “Okay, already! I’m already carrying the damned notebook everywhere I go. What’s next?” Ready for some new advice?

Then this list is for you!

But be warned. This is not a happy list, an easy list, or a list filled with fluffy easily-implementable things you can do in an afternoon to make yourself feel incredibly productive. It’s not a list for those who want to think themselves writers without doing the work. I have a list like that over here. This is a list for people ready to take their writing, and possibly their craft to the next level but aren’t sure how. Maybe they’ve run into a wall or two or maybe they just feel like there’s something they could be doing to write better. Many of these things will not be fun or enjoyable or may even add an “unpleasant” dynamic to your writing.

But they will make you a better writer without ever using a word like “punchy.”

There are hundreds of craft books that will help you dissect every word choice of your prose, and there are millions of articles with those same 20 bits of advice. But somewhere between those two is this list: things you can do that are less well known, but that writers swear by.

1- Write When You Don’t Want To/Keep Going When It Hurts

This is the flip side to “write every day.” This is the side no one talks about. This is the shitty reality of that plucky wisdom.

Eventually even the best writer doesn’t feel in the mood. No matter how much joy and pleasure the simple act of writing brings you, one day, you will face the fact that you won’t want to. And you won’t want to a lot. Some days it’s like your desire to just take a day off is Aragorn wielding Narsil and your motivation is one of those comic relief orcs. But these are the days when it’s most important to do push through and do something. Even if you just write a couple of pages. Even if it’s just a freewrite.

 

Read the full post on Writing About Writing.

 

An Open Letter To That Ex-MFA Creative Writing Teacher Dude

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 3/1/15. Note that the full post contains strong language.

(Alternate title: Things I Can Say About That Article Written By That Creative Writing Ex-MFA Teacher Guy Now That I’ve Read It And Gotten So Angry It’s Like My Urethra Is Filled With Bees.)

Okay, fine, go read the article.

I’ll wait here.

*checks watch*

Ah, there you are.

I see you’re trembling with barely-concealed rage. Good on you.

I will now whittle down this very bad, very poisonous article — I say “poisonous” because it does a very good job of spreading a lot of mostly bad and provably false information.

Let us begin.

“Writers are born with talent.”

Yep. There I am. Already angry. I’m so angry, I’m actually just peeing bees. If you’re wondering where all these bees came from? I have peed them into the world.

This is one of the worst, most toxic memes that exists when it comes to writers. That somehow, we slide out of the womb with a fountain pen in our mucus-slick hands, a bestseller gleam in our rheumy eyes. We like to believe in talent, as if it’s a definable thing — as if, like with the retconned Jedi, we can just take a blood test and look for literary Midichlorians to chart your authorial potential. Is talent real? Some genetic quirk that makes us good at one thing, bad at another? Don’t know, don’t care.

What I know is this: your desire matters. If you desire something bad enough, if you really want it, you will be driven to reach for it. No promises you’ll find success, but a persistent, almost psychopathic urge forward will allow you to clamber up over those muddy humps of failure and into the eventual fresh green grass of actual accomplishment.

 

Read the full post on terribleminds.

 

“Sponsored” By My Husband: Why It’s A Problem That Writers Never Talk About Where Their Money Comes From

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This essay by Ann Bauer originally appeared on Salon on 1/25/15.

The truth is, my husband’s hefty salary makes my life as a writer easy. Pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone.

Here’s my life. My husband and I get up each morning at 7 o’clock and he showers while I make coffee. By the time he’s dressed I’m already sitting at my desk writing. He kisses me goodbye then leaves for the job where he makes good money, draws excellent benefits and gets many perks, such as travel, catered lunches and full reimbursement for the gym where I attend yoga midday. His career has allowed me to work only sporadically, as a consultant, in a field I enjoy.

All that disclosure is crass, I know. I’m sorry. Because in this world where women will sit around discussing the various topiary shapes of their bikini waxes, the conversation about money (or privilege) is the one we never have. Why? I think it’s the Marie Antoinette syndrome: Those with privilege and luck don’t want the riffraff knowing the details. After all, if “those people” understood the differences in our lives, they might revolt. Or, God forbid, not see us as somehow more special, talented and/or deserving than them.

There’s a special version of this masquerade that we writers put on. Two examples:

 

Read the full essay on Salon.

 

How a Writer Weighs an Idea. Six Questions.

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This post by Alton Gansky originally appeared on Novel Rocket on 2/24/15.

Benjamin Franklin used a simple technique to judge the value of an idea. When considering a decision, the founding father would draw a single line down the middle of a piece of paper. On the left side he’d mark a +; on the right side he put a – (minus sign). He would then make a list of the good points, and one for the negatives.

If the pluses outweighed the negatives, then he felt the idea was a good one. Too many negatives and he moved on to another idea.

I’ve always thought it was a great technique but it failed to weigh the pluses and minuses. For example a minus might be minor taking three or four to have more value than a single plus. Of course the same can be said in reverse. So my Ben Franklin lists included a value with each plus or minus. Maybe I really love the idea. I’m enthusiastic and have been for some time. That plus will out weigh several minuses.

Over the years I developed a different approach to evaluate an idea: a series of 6 questions. Not every idea that comes to mind is worthy of our time, efforts, and money. Some concepts arrive dressed in fancy clothes and blowing party whistles. We court them, chat them up, and then, over time, notice that the idea is hollow and only pretended to have value. I needed a way to apply a little logic to what is often an emotional process.

 

Read the full post on Novel Rocket.

 

Writing the Book You Want to Read (Even When You’re Not an Expert in the Field)

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This post by Sally Hepworth originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 2/14/15.

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison

I’ve always loved Morrison’s saying. The idea that everyone has the potential to write his or her own favorite book is an appealing one, and it’s natural that writers will want to write the kind of books they like to read. But it’s not always as simple as that. What if you enjoy reading about courtroom dramas, and you’re not a lawyer or a judge? What if you love the idea of creating layers to your novel by using architecture, but you’re not an architect?

How do you write the book you want to read if you’re not an expert in the field? Here are a few tricks I learned while writing my debut novel, THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES:

 

1) Start by making a list of ALL the elements in the book you want to read

The book you want to read is more than just ‘courtroom drama’ or ‘architecture’ or ‘midwives’. While planning your novel, think about all the things that excite you when you read. Do you like a bit of romance? Some mystery? An unforeseen plot twist? (Remember: It’s okay to have more than one of these in your novel, in fact, it’s a good idea). Look at your favorite books and see what they have in common. Ask yourself: what drives the plot in the books I like to read?

Once you have your answers, make a list.

It will look something like this:
– Mystery
– Menace
– High stakes – death?
– Romance

This list will become your roadmap to writing the book you want to read. And once you have your roadmap…

 

Read the full post, which includes details of four additional steps, on Writer’s Digest.

 

Writing When the Well Runs Dry

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This post by Mary O’Gara, Ph.D., CVACC originally appeared on Savvy Authors on 2/21/15.

Even prolific writers talk about those moments, after the completion of a book or screenplay, when they wonder whether they’ll ever write again, ever have anything more to say. If the writer is lucky, the thought is fleeting and the next new project is already bubbling up in the writer’s mind, begging to be written.

But, honestly, the well does sometimes dry up. And a dry creative well isn’t the same as writer’s block. The dry well is more like a void–nothing to say, no words, no images. It’s a drought, a dark night of the writer’s soul. And it feels, in the moment, as if it will last forever.

It won’t last forever. But every moment it does last feels like an eternity.

Occasionally, a writer has just pushed the muse too hard, and the muse is taking a vacation. Writers who take part in Book in a Month programs know they’ll need time off at the end of the month’s writing push–and they know their jobs, friends and families will reclaim them and give them that much-needed change of pace.

For writers who are undergoing transformations in their personal lives–deaths, divorces, or the birth of a child, even a spiritual awakening–the well may run dry because the water’s being changed. If dams are opened to drain a reservoir, the reservoir looks like a wasteland until it refills with water. If a writer drains herself emotionally or creatively, the wasteland only lasts until the inner reservoir is refilled.
 

Read the full post, which includes five specific inspiration strategies, on Savvy Authors.

 

Let Us Now Praise Authors, Artists, Dilettantes, and Drunks

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This essay by John Yargo originally appeared on The Millions on 2/10/15.

1.
During summer break, sophomore year, my father and I took a short trip from our house on Sugarbush Drive (memorable streetname, unmemorable neighborhood) to visit the Jack Kerouac House. It was a 20 minute drive down I-4 to the small quaint house that is now situated a few blocks from a sprawling commercial development. Orlando was an agreeable town when Kerouac’s mother moved there, and while Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums there. A few years later, the arrival of the Walt Disney Corporation would radically alter the landscape, physically and culturally.

We walked around the House and knocked on the door. Answering the door was an early-career MFA graduate, the House’s resident writing fellow. The three-month fellowship ostensibly afforded him the time to work on a play about a New Orleans jazz musician. A pair of sunglasses slid down his nose, exposing his puffy eyes: he was just then emerging from a hangover. Work, he explained, was going slowly.

When we asked for details about the House and Kerouac, the playwright politely pointed us to a neighbor, a retiree who was walking across the street. The pensioner claimed to have known Kerouac’s mother, who had actually owned the house, as well as Kerouac. She kept “a nice lawn” and “was a sweet woman,” but he was “a drunk” and a “druggy.” Whether or not it was true was beside the point. My father and I agreed the Orlando Tourism Board couldn’t have dreamed up a better touch of embellished authenticity than a curmudgeonly, fist-waving, stay-off-my-lawn Floridian to America’s Own Free-Love Dionysus. Granted, a residence of a 20th-century American novelist probably never earned much notice in the Tragic Kingdom.

 

Read the full essay on The Millions.