the writing life

Writing: "How Do You Do It?"

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 6/10/14.

I go to conventions and conferences, that’s the question I get asked.

Either:

“How do you write?”

Or –

“How do I write?”

The question can mean all kinds of things. How does one write day to day? Or how does one become — and remain, and simply be — a writer? What’s it like? How to start? How to keep it going? WILL THERE BE BOURBON AND SHAME? (Yes to at least one of those.)

It’s sometimes accompanied by the look of a truck-struck possum.

It may come with an exhortation of bewilderment and exasperation.

A sound not unlike, whuhhh, or pffffffh. Cheeks puffed out. Lips working soundlessly.

This is a difficult question. It’s difficult because you’re you and I’m me. Each writer isn’t a snowflake until they are, and this is one of the ways that they are — we are cartographers of our own journeys, charting the map as we go and then burning it soon after. The way I did it isn’t the way that Joe Hill did it, or Kameron Hurley, or Delilah S. Dawson, or Kevin Hearne, or Heinlein or Dante or that one weird dude who wrote the Bible (his name was “The Prophet Scott” and he had one eye and a romantic eye for tired sheep).

Just the same, I feel like I should draw you a map.

 

Click here to read the full post on terribleminds.

 

Research Unleashed! And Leashed.

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This post by Rebecca Meacham originally appeared on Ploughshares on 6/16/14.

I knew I had a problem when I started envying my dog’s cone collar.

Now, my dog’s problem was a hot spot. Allergic, itchy, hot, and double-coated, my German Shepherd had chewed her hind leg raw over the course of a single evening.

My problem was research. Engrossing, surprising, discomfiting and endless, my novel-in-progress was generating fact after fact, but very little story.

Neither of us could resist the itch of our obsessions, which were self-ruinous and spreading. For my dog, the vet imposed a “cone of shame”—a demoralizing, and mostly effective, plastic barrier denying her access. This is what sparked my envy, for what kind of restraint could I impose on myself, a writer whose project requires research—research that also derails the project at every turn?

 

Latest Findings: Novel Research Leads to Pornography

How does research become a problem? Well, for one, it’s larky. You wonder if your character’s pants would have buttoned or zipped, which means you need to know about the invention of zippers, and then, hours later, you’re pouring over sketches of Victorian pornography.

A surprising number of research inquiries lead to vintage porn.

 

Click here to read the full post on Ploughshares.

 

What I’m Remembering about Writing Fast

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This post by Becky Levine originally appeared on her site on 5/20/14.

Okay, yes, if you’re going to get picky, right now I’m just plotting fast. The three-day weekend is coming up, and my goal–barring any rising creeks –is to take those three days and finish all my scene cards for the MG novel. I’ve been putting in a little time on this for the past couple of evenings, after I get home from work, and I think this is doable. And when done, I’ll be set up to fast-write the first draft over the summer. I wrote here about why I’ve decided to try this process again.

So, anyway, right now I’m fast-plotting. And I’m remembering all the delights and joys that come with fast-plotting (and, if I remember correctly, also with fast-writing.) There are many of them, and I’ll mention some below, but the underlying awesome feeling of them all is this: It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter if

– You plot your hero behaving in a way that may, once you write it all out, turn him into a whiny brat in Scene 4, Scene 19, and Scene 23.

– You forget the best-friend-soon-to-be-former-best-friend’s irritating new girlfriend’s name and “must” refer to her scathingly as whatshername every time you stick her into a scene.

 

Click here to read the full post on Becky Levine’s site.

 

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

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This post by Maegan Beaumont originally appeared on Inkspot on 5/26/14.

We all have them: brilliant story ideas.

Sometimes, they come to us fully formed. You see every facet clearly—who your protagonist is, the trouble he or she faces. What they will do to dig themselves out of it… the trouble they meet along the way. Sometimes, it’s just a flash. Something you see or hear triggers a thought. That thought leads to another… and another… until the idea takes shape and you’re left with no choice but to write it out.

And other times that something you see or hear burrows into your brain. It niggles and nags. It refused to be pushed aside—demands to be written.

So, if these ideas take all the time and trouble to bring themselves to our attention, to demand that we listen, why is it that sometimes they have the audacity to be unable to support the story we so desperately want to write? Why is it that they fall apart half way through the novel?

I hate to say it, but… it’s not the idea you should be blaming. It’s you. You’re probably the reason things aren’t working out the way you’d planned them to. The idea didn’t fall apart. You probably broke it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Inkspot.

 

Try Harder or Walk Away: The Decision.

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This post by Rebecca Lammersen originally appeared on elephant on 6/23/12. While it has a spiritual (though non-religious) bent, those who are struggling with the decision between continuing on their current path toward success in authorship and changing course may find it offers some helpful food for thought.

“One of the hardest decisions you will ever face in life, is choosing whether to try harder or walk away.”
~ Anonymous

Try harder or walk away—this is the only choice we make in every moment of life. We either try harder or we walk away from being present, loving ourselves, loving another, pursuing our passions or completing a task. We choose to continue doing, thinking, saying, listening, eating and being what we are, or we break up with it.

There is only one way to do everything, completely or not at all. If we half-ass life, we cheat our truth, stop growing, we suffer.

Imagine if an architect half-assed plans for a building, or an aerospace engineer half-assed the construction of an airplane. The building couldn’t stand on its own and the plane couldn’t fly. We are the architects of our lives. We have to devote entirely to our project or walk away from the drawing pad until we are willing to do the work.

The choice to stay or leave, determines whether we free ourselves or we suffer. How do we make the “right” decision?

We learn how to discern between the doubt of the mind and the surety of the spirit.

The discernment is in the volume. The mind is loud and the spirit is quiet.

 

Click here to read the full post on elephant.

 

10 Things You Should Never Say to a Novelist

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This post by Josie Brown originally appeared on her Author Provocateur site on 6/9/14.

I’m being serious.

Okay, here goes:

 

1. “I’d write, too, but I can’t stand the thought of all the trees I’d be killing.” 

Yes, I’ve heard this one. My response back then was, “Don’t worry. You won’t sell enough books to raze a sapling, because your pub house won’t push you that hard to begin with.”

Today, I’d add, “And besides, most books are digital, so you can’t use the tree-killer bullshit as an excuse not to write anymore.”

 

2. “I’d write, too, but I just can’t make the time.”

Good. Stay busy. The world doesn’t need anothor author. Here’s a hint: It’s not a hobby. It’s a profession.

 

3. “Why don’t you kill off your series’ villian?” Because then I wouldn’t have a series. And if I don’t have a series, I don’t have the rent money. I’ll make you a promise: when and if he quits paying the rent, I’ll quit writing about him.

 

Click here to read the full post on Author Provocateur.

 

Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Reading Fiction

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This post originally appeared on Slate on 11/30/12.

Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.

This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield, out now from Delacorte Press.

FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

November 30, 1965

Beloved:

This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all …”

 

Click here to read the full excerpt on Slate.

 

How to Write

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This post by Heather Havrilesky originally appeared on The Awl on 5/5/14.

I teach a Popular Criticism class to MFA students. I don’t actually have an MFA, but I am a professional, full-time writer who has been in this business for almost two decades, and I’ve written for a wide range of impressive print and online publications, the names of which you will hear and think, “Oh fuck, she’s the real deal.” Because I am the real deal. I tell my students that a lot, like when they interrupt me or roll their eyes at something I say because they’re young and only listen when old hippies are digressing about Gilles Deleuze’s notions of high capitalism’s infantilizing commodifications or some such horse shit.

Anyway, since Friday is our last class, and since I’m one of the only writers my students know who earns actual legal tender from her writing—instead of say, free copies of Ploughshares—they’re all dying to know how I do it. In fact, one of my students just sent me an email to that effect: “For the last class, I was wondering if you could give us a breakdown of your day-to-day schedule. How do you juggle all of your contracted assignments with your freelance stuff and everything else you do?”

Now, I’m not going to lie. It’s annoying, to have to take time out of my incredibly busy writing schedule in order to spell it all out for young people, just because they spend most of their daylight hours being urged by hoary old theorists in threadbare sweaters to write experimental fiction that will never sell. But I care deeply about the young—all of them, the world’s young—so of course I am humbled and honored to share the trade secrets embedded in my rigorous daily work schedule. Here we go:

 

Click here to read the full post on The Awl.