On November 29, 2010 Bluekiwii wrote, ...I always have the problem of actually starting to write. The story I want to write blanks from my mind, and I freeze before I’ve even begun to write a word. Or I'll write something--realize it's rubbish--and cross it out and begin again, and I'll continue on this way through the story until I give it up halfway. Or I sit in front of the page thinking of ideas/possibilities and reject each one. Have you ever felt this way and what have you done to get rid of this feeling in order to write? How do you start the process of writing a story? Do you outline what you are doing first, a simple two-liner that will guide the plot? Do you plan each chapter? How do you visualize what you’re trying to write before you do it? Do you make a rough sketch of what your characters are like before fleshing them out in the story?
I love this quote by Gene Fowler: "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
Years ago, before I became a writer, I painted, and my favorite medium was watercolor, which is not forgiving, because you can’t cover your mistakes. Some watercolorists outline in pencil so they know what they’re doing. Some paint so loosely that a mistake just becomes part of the artistry, which I admire the most. I did neither. I just expected myself to get it right, and I disappointed myself again and again. As soon as I started a new painting I’d be all over myself about how I was going to louse it up.
The quality of my painting became a measurement of my worth, not of my financial worth of course, but of whether I was worthy of respect, of being considered an artist, almost of living. There was much too much riding on the outcome every time I picked up a paintbrush. Eventually I stopped painting and started writing.
I didn’t come to writing with the same negativity, and I was lucky in the teachers and the books I found to help me learn. I talk about this in Writing Magic, and I’ve written about it on the blog now and then. The most helpful book I read back then, the most helpful in exactly this regard, which I’ve also mentioned before, is Writing on Both Sides of the Brain (middle school and up) by Henriette Anne Klauser. Even today, when I’m particularly stuck, that’s the book I go to.
If I remember right, there’s an approach in another writing book, Bird by Bird (also middle school and up, I’d guess) by Anne Lamott, that might be helpful. It’s called “Short Assignments.” In short assignments the writer has to write, but for a limited time. Building on Lamott’s idea, Bluekiwii and anyone who feels like Bluekiwii, I’d recommend that you write for fifteen minutes and stop for a while. Don’t evaluate what you’ve written. Just leave it. Then write for another fifteen minutes, without evaluating your new work or what went before. Your job for now is to write without judgment.
I love the computer, because it’s the opposite of watercolor; it’s infinitely forgiving. You can make a million mistakes and a million fixes. Here’s something else to try: Write without crossing out. When you don’t like what went before, just hit Enter twice and write the sentences better or differently or even worse and keep going.
Or try this: When you think you wrote something awful, write the judgment and keep going, as in, Maxine and her brother Isaac left the apartment to buy a carton of milk. What tripe. Who cares? The elevator didn’t come for a full five minutes, so they took the stairs. What difference does that make? I should just cut it all. Maxine told her mother she didn’t want to go to the store. The store was boring. This is boring. I should shoot Maxine.
Keep going. Maybe it will turn out that the elevator was delayed because Maxine’s upstairs neighbor, the one who gives her piano lessons, had a heart attack, and he was being carried into the elevator on a stretcher. Or maybe there will be a unicorn in the store when Maxine and Isaac finally get there. Or you’ll find other characters that interest you more than the two of them.
At the end of every post I write, “Have fun, and save what you write!” I don’t mean you should save only the pieces you approve of. I mean, save it all. You may never look at your old efforts again, but someday you may want to. You may be curious about your progress or about what you were thinking in 2011. Your biographer may be interested in every word you ever wrote.
Recently I bought a book on writing mysteries because I’ve been having so much trouble with my second mystery novel. I hoped that book would give me a formula that I could follow, that I could dress up and disguise, which I would really be happy to do if it made writing easier. I gave up on the book, although some of it was interesting, but it didn’t give me the formula. Probably because there is none for me. My writing process is messy. I muddle along, and some books are harder than others, but eventually I find my way, or so far I have.
I don’t have much trouble starting a story. I spend a few weeks thinking about what I may want to do and writing notes, and then I’m off. No outline, but a rough idea of where I’m going, which may be entirely not where I go. I don’t plan each chapter, but I do have an idea of a scene before I write it, and I have an internal alarm that shrills when things are getting dull and I need to shake them up or throw in a surprise. As for my characters, I discover them as I write. When they feel blank I use the character questionnaire you can find in Writing Magic. The one thing I do do is visualize. I need to see my characters moving through a scene, to know where they are and what they’re seeing, hearing, touching, smelling.
This second mystery, which may or may not be called Beloved Elodie - I’ve now started it four times. The first time I wrote about 140 pages, but I forgot to put in any suspects. (!!!) So I started over with suspects but the same core mystery, which was too complicated and impossible to solve. I told my husband the story, and his eyes rolled back in his head, and I knew it wasn’t working, but I’d written about 260 pages and I’m not getting any younger. Then I made the mystery something that can be solved, but I was taking too long to get the problem going. Remember I mentioned that I was meeting with my new critique buddy? I’d given her the first thirty pages and she picked up on what was wrong immediately. This time, happily, I’d written only about 45 pages. Now I think I’m on track until I get into trouble again.
I am not a role model, but I could be someone to wallow with in the writing mud.
Here are some prompts:
• If you’re too self-critical, try the suggestions above. Write in fifteen-minute stretches. Write without crossing anything out. Include your self put-downs in your writing. Read the chapter in Writing Magic called “Shut Up!” and read Writing on Both Sides of the Brain and Bird by Bird.
• Write a list of ten story ideas. Pick the worst, stupidest one and write twenty minutes worth of notes on where you could go with it. If you get inspired, write the story.
• Write about Maxine and Isaac and their trip to the store or about their refusal to go to the store. Make something unexpected happen. Then create another surprise. And another.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Chop chop choppy
Here are two related questions from late last November:
Jenna Royal wrote, ...my current story has a few gaps in the writing, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as how to fix that? There isn't a lot filling in the space between the events in the story, and that leaves it feeling a little forced and just dull. What do I need to fill the spaces with?
Later she added, ...my MC has a mystery to solve, and she has three sources, two of them people and the third an old journal. So all the important events are either dialogue or reading, which gets kind of dull with nothing in between. And the gaps in between are just . . . gaps. The problem is that there is nothing there. My story jumps from one important scene to another, and I'm not sure what to put in between to lead from one event to another to interest my reader. I don't want a lot of extra stuff, but do I need it to keep my story interesting?
And Marissa wrote, When I read my stories I feel like they flow well in some places, but then other spots are choppy and they just skip around.
Jenna Royal, I don’t know if, when the journal appears, you simply show it, and everything is journal for that section, or if you’re including action. For example, your main character Nathaniel can try to turn a page but his hands are trembling. The reader feels for him. He can put the book aside briefly to think about it, and you show his thoughts. He can reread an important sentence or copy it into his own journal. It’s okay to just place the journal parts in by themselves. That can certainly work, and many books take that approach, but including context can heighten reader engagement. Nathaniel’s attention to some passages more than others will direct or misdirect the reader’s attention. I love to fool the reader. If Nathaniel thinks a certain passage is important, she will too and will give less heed to other, really vital information. When the truth comes out, the reader may thumb back to the relevant lines and grin in admiration at your cleverness.
And the dialogue parts shouldn’t be just dialogue, as you may know. I talk about this in Writing Magic and here and there on the blog. Dialogue needs to be supported by gesture, thoughts, setting. The scaffolding around the speech add interest and liveliness and let the reader see and hear. Yes, hear. Just words on the page don’t convey sound. We don’t know that a character is mumbling, for example, unless we’re told. Then the mumbling heightens our curiosity. Why is this character mumbling? Shyness, fear, an attempt at concealment?
Jenna Royal and Marissa and everyone else, these suggestions will slow your story down, which in this instance is good, because the dullness and choppiness may come from rushing it. Expanding will actually make your plot fly for the reader.
Silver the Wanderer made some suggestions. She (I’m guessing you’re a she) wrote, @Jenna, about your gap problem - maybe you should consider adding in little events that help the reader get to know your characters better? Maybe two of them could play a game, or go for a walk? Maybe the walk could be on the way to one of the people who are the sources? And they have to eat, after all. Some of these little things might turn out to be just filler, but you'll learn more about your characters by the way they act. And who knows? Maybe one of the events might turn out to be important? It's happened to me before, and it's always interesting to see how these things seem to tie into the rest of the story without really meaning to.
(Have I mentioned lately that I love the sharing and support and advice that happen on the blog?)
I agree. Writing is magical. Something we throw in, thinking we may get rid of it later, turns out to be the key to an entire story. As Silver the Wanderer suggested, the two characters walk together to a source, and the secondary character mentions that he collects nineteenth century monocles, and they stop to look in the window of a hardware store, and Nathaniel thinks about the tiny tools needed to repair monocles or about glass grinding, and click! he has solved the mystery.
When we give a few characters an activity, they can’t just do it and nothing else or we might as well be writing an instructional manual. We need to enrich the action with setting, dialogue, body language, thoughts. We think we’re picking at random, but our minds in their sneaky depths know what the story may eventually need, and so, miraculously, we insert just the details that will later prove crucial.
For example, in Ever, Olus, the main male character and the god of the wind, thinks of himself also as the god of loneliness. His mother is the goddess of the earth and of pottery. I wasn’t think of the future when I wrote them that way, but their dual god roles help my main female character enormously - I won’t say how.
Not that this always works for me. Sometimes I just sow confusion. Or I write an interesting scene that enhances character but doesn’t do much for future plot, which is okay too.
More than okay. These in-between periods create texture and fill out the world of the story. We shouldn’t let them go on too long, and we want to remind the reader of the ongoing tension, but short interims of down time are often exactly what a story needs.
Having said all that - the subconscious and softer story interludes - it’s a good idea to keep the story problem in mind even as you’re writing transitions. While the two characters are walking together, Nathaniel can be chewing over the mystery. He can ask the secondary for advice and then maybe worry that he’s asked an indiscreet question or given something away or that his companion won’t keep a secret or that she isn’t trustworthy. She may say something that sets off alarm bells.
Mysteries are a special case, because there may be two problems, the mystery that needs solving and the main character’s difficulty, whatever that is. Nathaniel needs to find his missing sister. The mystery and his problem are the same. Or he’s been hired to look for the missing uncle of a classmate he doesn’t even know very well. In the second case, what’s at stake for Nathaniel?
If the answer is nothing, then the reader is unlikely to care about any of it. No matter how baffling the mystery is or how cleverly Nathaniel goes about solving it, it will still be an intellectual exercise. What’s at stake can be anything, can be directly related to the mystery or not. Nathaniel may be proving to a potential girlfriend that he’s really a detective. We want him to get the girl, so we want him to solve the mystery. Or he can fall for the classmate with the missing uncle. Or he can uncover a connection between the uncle and himself.
Focusing on Nathaniel’s problem may smooth out choppiness. His thoughts may also. However, sometimes all that’s needed is an introductory word or clause, like Meanwhile or After Nathaniel finished at the dentist; then continue the story.
Here are some prompts that draw from this post:
∙ Your main character Helena goes into a store, can be a hardware store or any other sort, but be sure you know enough about the merchandise to find a mystery there. Whatever it is, the mystery is in the goods the store sells. Find a way to tie it to Helena’s life.
∙ Helena finds a journal in her father’s bathrobe pocket after he’s gone to the hospital for emergency surgery. The journal entries are written in a secret language he taught her when she was eight years old, but the journal is older than that.
∙ Nathaniel goes home with Helena to see her collection of antique monocles. He picks one up and raises it to his eyes. Helena shrieks and pushes his arm away but too late, because he’s already seen...
∙ Nathaniel and Helena have left the house of one of the sources after breaking into her greenhouse in search of a clue. The source came home, but they managed to escape without being caught. The tension has been very high for the last twenty pages and you want to give the two and the reader a break. Helena and Nathaniel go to a local park and collapse on the grass. Write this scene and in dialogue, action (small actions, gestures, body language), and thoughts, shift their relationship.
∙ Perry and Nathaniel go to high school together, but they hardly know each other. Perry asks Nathaniel for help with a mystery in his life because Nathaniel has a skill Perry needs, whatever it is. Nathaniel asks why he should care, and Perry tells him. You write Perry’s answer and take it from there.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Jenna Royal wrote, ...my current story has a few gaps in the writing, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as how to fix that? There isn't a lot filling in the space between the events in the story, and that leaves it feeling a little forced and just dull. What do I need to fill the spaces with?
Later she added, ...my MC has a mystery to solve, and she has three sources, two of them people and the third an old journal. So all the important events are either dialogue or reading, which gets kind of dull with nothing in between. And the gaps in between are just . . . gaps. The problem is that there is nothing there. My story jumps from one important scene to another, and I'm not sure what to put in between to lead from one event to another to interest my reader. I don't want a lot of extra stuff, but do I need it to keep my story interesting?
And Marissa wrote, When I read my stories I feel like they flow well in some places, but then other spots are choppy and they just skip around.
Jenna Royal, I don’t know if, when the journal appears, you simply show it, and everything is journal for that section, or if you’re including action. For example, your main character Nathaniel can try to turn a page but his hands are trembling. The reader feels for him. He can put the book aside briefly to think about it, and you show his thoughts. He can reread an important sentence or copy it into his own journal. It’s okay to just place the journal parts in by themselves. That can certainly work, and many books take that approach, but including context can heighten reader engagement. Nathaniel’s attention to some passages more than others will direct or misdirect the reader’s attention. I love to fool the reader. If Nathaniel thinks a certain passage is important, she will too and will give less heed to other, really vital information. When the truth comes out, the reader may thumb back to the relevant lines and grin in admiration at your cleverness.
And the dialogue parts shouldn’t be just dialogue, as you may know. I talk about this in Writing Magic and here and there on the blog. Dialogue needs to be supported by gesture, thoughts, setting. The scaffolding around the speech add interest and liveliness and let the reader see and hear. Yes, hear. Just words on the page don’t convey sound. We don’t know that a character is mumbling, for example, unless we’re told. Then the mumbling heightens our curiosity. Why is this character mumbling? Shyness, fear, an attempt at concealment?
Jenna Royal and Marissa and everyone else, these suggestions will slow your story down, which in this instance is good, because the dullness and choppiness may come from rushing it. Expanding will actually make your plot fly for the reader.
Silver the Wanderer made some suggestions. She (I’m guessing you’re a she) wrote, @Jenna, about your gap problem - maybe you should consider adding in little events that help the reader get to know your characters better? Maybe two of them could play a game, or go for a walk? Maybe the walk could be on the way to one of the people who are the sources? And they have to eat, after all. Some of these little things might turn out to be just filler, but you'll learn more about your characters by the way they act. And who knows? Maybe one of the events might turn out to be important? It's happened to me before, and it's always interesting to see how these things seem to tie into the rest of the story without really meaning to.
(Have I mentioned lately that I love the sharing and support and advice that happen on the blog?)
I agree. Writing is magical. Something we throw in, thinking we may get rid of it later, turns out to be the key to an entire story. As Silver the Wanderer suggested, the two characters walk together to a source, and the secondary character mentions that he collects nineteenth century monocles, and they stop to look in the window of a hardware store, and Nathaniel thinks about the tiny tools needed to repair monocles or about glass grinding, and click! he has solved the mystery.
When we give a few characters an activity, they can’t just do it and nothing else or we might as well be writing an instructional manual. We need to enrich the action with setting, dialogue, body language, thoughts. We think we’re picking at random, but our minds in their sneaky depths know what the story may eventually need, and so, miraculously, we insert just the details that will later prove crucial.
For example, in Ever, Olus, the main male character and the god of the wind, thinks of himself also as the god of loneliness. His mother is the goddess of the earth and of pottery. I wasn’t think of the future when I wrote them that way, but their dual god roles help my main female character enormously - I won’t say how.
Not that this always works for me. Sometimes I just sow confusion. Or I write an interesting scene that enhances character but doesn’t do much for future plot, which is okay too.
More than okay. These in-between periods create texture and fill out the world of the story. We shouldn’t let them go on too long, and we want to remind the reader of the ongoing tension, but short interims of down time are often exactly what a story needs.
Having said all that - the subconscious and softer story interludes - it’s a good idea to keep the story problem in mind even as you’re writing transitions. While the two characters are walking together, Nathaniel can be chewing over the mystery. He can ask the secondary for advice and then maybe worry that he’s asked an indiscreet question or given something away or that his companion won’t keep a secret or that she isn’t trustworthy. She may say something that sets off alarm bells.
Mysteries are a special case, because there may be two problems, the mystery that needs solving and the main character’s difficulty, whatever that is. Nathaniel needs to find his missing sister. The mystery and his problem are the same. Or he’s been hired to look for the missing uncle of a classmate he doesn’t even know very well. In the second case, what’s at stake for Nathaniel?
If the answer is nothing, then the reader is unlikely to care about any of it. No matter how baffling the mystery is or how cleverly Nathaniel goes about solving it, it will still be an intellectual exercise. What’s at stake can be anything, can be directly related to the mystery or not. Nathaniel may be proving to a potential girlfriend that he’s really a detective. We want him to get the girl, so we want him to solve the mystery. Or he can fall for the classmate with the missing uncle. Or he can uncover a connection between the uncle and himself.
Focusing on Nathaniel’s problem may smooth out choppiness. His thoughts may also. However, sometimes all that’s needed is an introductory word or clause, like Meanwhile or After Nathaniel finished at the dentist; then continue the story.
Here are some prompts that draw from this post:
∙ Your main character Helena goes into a store, can be a hardware store or any other sort, but be sure you know enough about the merchandise to find a mystery there. Whatever it is, the mystery is in the goods the store sells. Find a way to tie it to Helena’s life.
∙ Helena finds a journal in her father’s bathrobe pocket after he’s gone to the hospital for emergency surgery. The journal entries are written in a secret language he taught her when she was eight years old, but the journal is older than that.
∙ Nathaniel goes home with Helena to see her collection of antique monocles. He picks one up and raises it to his eyes. Helena shrieks and pushes his arm away but too late, because he’s already seen...
∙ Nathaniel and Helena have left the house of one of the sources after breaking into her greenhouse in search of a clue. The source came home, but they managed to escape without being caught. The tension has been very high for the last twenty pages and you want to give the two and the reader a break. Helena and Nathaniel go to a local park and collapse on the grass. Write this scene and in dialogue, action (small actions, gestures, body language), and thoughts, shift their relationship.
∙ Perry and Nathaniel go to high school together, but they hardly know each other. Perry asks Nathaniel for help with a mystery in his life because Nathaniel has a skill Perry needs, whatever it is. Nathaniel asks why he should care, and Perry tells him. You write Perry’s answer and take it from there.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Time to write
Before I start I want to mention the book I just finished, Telling Time: Angels, Ancestors, and Stories by Nancy Willard, a wonderful collection of essays about writing. It’s not so much a how-to as reflections. I recommend it to anyone high school and above. You can certainly try it if you’re younger, but I think it will have more meaning later on.
On November 23, 2010, Mya wrote, Homework load seems to increase every year through high school, and though I badly want to write, sometimes I can't seem to find the time. So I was wondering, how do you organize your writing time? And there is also the fact real life can drain so much energy that makes you too tired to type a single word. How do you get inspired once more, and relax into the mood?
I don’t have the tiredness problem. I have lots of energy. For that, my suggestions are mostly general health ones, like getting enough sleep (not always possible), eating sensibly, etc., etc. The only other thought is to journal. If real life is getting in the way, it may be helpful to write about what’s going on. Vent. Scream and rant on the page. Then you may find you’ve cleared space for your creative work.
A few years ago my long-time critique buddy got very sick. She’s better now, but she had a brain injury and isn’t writing the way she used to and can’t evaluate my work anymore either. Aside from the sadness of this, her absence has slowed me down. She and I used to meet weekly, and I always wanted to have work to show her, which was a goad to keep me going. I’ve written several books since she and I stopped sharing, but it’s been harder.
Next week I’m starting with a new critique pal, which I hope will help me the way my friend used to.
So that’s one strategy, to hook up with another writer or join a writing group, which I’ve written about in earlier posts. In order for this to work, your writing partner needs to be someone encouraging, someone who likes your work. There’s no better incentive than thinking, I can’t wait for him to see this. He’s going to love it. But if your critique-mate is hyper-critical and seems not to admire your work, you may actually write less, and you may regard your sessions together as the equivalent of oral surgery.
When I was starting to write, one of the most helpful books I discovered was Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. It was written almost a century ago, and the language is dated, but the ideas aren’t. At one point the author instructs the reader to set aside a particular fifteen minutes a day for writing. No matter what may come for a week, a month - I don’t remember which - you have to write during that time. Then she tells you to write for fifteen minutes at different times, random times. The idea is to accustom yourself to writing whenever possible in any circumstance and not to depend on a muse or a mood. If you can write only in your office or only when there’s absolute silence, your opportunities narrow. I write in airports, on planes and trains, in hotel rooms. Sometimes it’s hard, like if someone nearby is talking on a cell phone, but usually I can block out the noise.
Dorothea Brande has another suggestion, which I haven’t followed, but which I offer because it’s probably worthwhile, and that is to write right after waking up, before you’ve had your coffee or changed out of your jammies, and especially before you read anything, preferably before you speak to anyone. The idea here is that your mind will be empty of your conventional way of thinking and surprising ideas will pop up.
Mya, I am not good at organizing my writing time. I write while I eat breakfast and while I eat lunch and at night when I have my snack. That’s an hour or so. And then I write in between, but I’m very distractible. If an email comes in, I look at it. People rarely have to wait long for an answer from me. Phone rings, I pick it up. Right now, in addition to working on my next book, I’m preparing two speeches, and tomorrow I’ll spend most of the day on them. I'm not a role model. Better to follow authors who set a page goal for themselves and stick to it. These admirable folk turn out their quota even if they have to stay up till three in the morning to do it, or if they have a fever of 104, or if their furnace dies. Or follow the authors who write for four hours a day, every day.
A book that’s wonderful on the subject of discipline is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (middle school and above). Lamott is eloquent and funny about staying focused and how hard that is. Besides, her writing is a pleasure to read.
Still, whenever there's nothing that seems more pressing, which is often, I write. I take my laptop with me when I think I may have down time, like when I have a doctor's appointment. And in my slow, erratic way I complete books. My publishers and my readers might be happier if I wrote more, and maybe someday I’ll figure out how to do that. Until then, I’m plodding along.
I’m much better at revising. When I’m revising I don’t get up to look out the window every half hour. I stick with it, because I love revising more than I love grinding out a first draft. Revising never lasts long enough; I enjoy it so much I finish it quicker. We’re all different, of course. You may hate revising.
Anyway, the point is to keep writing. If you continue to write, you’ll finish one story and then another and then another, and you’ll build up a body of work, something to be mighty proud of.
Here are some prompts:
∙ Try these exercises based on Dorothea Brande’s book. For the next week, write for fifteen minutes as soon as you wake up. For the week after that, write for fifteen minutes when you get home at the end of your day. And for the following week, write at a variety of times and places for fifteen minutes every day.
∙ There are a zillion books and movies about blocked writers, probably because the authors and screenwriters are writing what they know. It’s your turn. Aster, your main character, is taking a creative writing class and has to write something and can think of nothing. Her failure spills over into other parts of her life: friends, family, pet frog, after-school job, whatever. Write her misery and then decide whether or not to rescue her. Of course you can move this into fantasy, so long as writing is involved. Aster can be a gnome who has to write a book about mining.
Have fun, and save what you write!
On November 23, 2010, Mya wrote, Homework load seems to increase every year through high school, and though I badly want to write, sometimes I can't seem to find the time. So I was wondering, how do you organize your writing time? And there is also the fact real life can drain so much energy that makes you too tired to type a single word. How do you get inspired once more, and relax into the mood?
I don’t have the tiredness problem. I have lots of energy. For that, my suggestions are mostly general health ones, like getting enough sleep (not always possible), eating sensibly, etc., etc. The only other thought is to journal. If real life is getting in the way, it may be helpful to write about what’s going on. Vent. Scream and rant on the page. Then you may find you’ve cleared space for your creative work.
A few years ago my long-time critique buddy got very sick. She’s better now, but she had a brain injury and isn’t writing the way she used to and can’t evaluate my work anymore either. Aside from the sadness of this, her absence has slowed me down. She and I used to meet weekly, and I always wanted to have work to show her, which was a goad to keep me going. I’ve written several books since she and I stopped sharing, but it’s been harder.
Next week I’m starting with a new critique pal, which I hope will help me the way my friend used to.
So that’s one strategy, to hook up with another writer or join a writing group, which I’ve written about in earlier posts. In order for this to work, your writing partner needs to be someone encouraging, someone who likes your work. There’s no better incentive than thinking, I can’t wait for him to see this. He’s going to love it. But if your critique-mate is hyper-critical and seems not to admire your work, you may actually write less, and you may regard your sessions together as the equivalent of oral surgery.
When I was starting to write, one of the most helpful books I discovered was Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. It was written almost a century ago, and the language is dated, but the ideas aren’t. At one point the author instructs the reader to set aside a particular fifteen minutes a day for writing. No matter what may come for a week, a month - I don’t remember which - you have to write during that time. Then she tells you to write for fifteen minutes at different times, random times. The idea is to accustom yourself to writing whenever possible in any circumstance and not to depend on a muse or a mood. If you can write only in your office or only when there’s absolute silence, your opportunities narrow. I write in airports, on planes and trains, in hotel rooms. Sometimes it’s hard, like if someone nearby is talking on a cell phone, but usually I can block out the noise.
Dorothea Brande has another suggestion, which I haven’t followed, but which I offer because it’s probably worthwhile, and that is to write right after waking up, before you’ve had your coffee or changed out of your jammies, and especially before you read anything, preferably before you speak to anyone. The idea here is that your mind will be empty of your conventional way of thinking and surprising ideas will pop up.
Mya, I am not good at organizing my writing time. I write while I eat breakfast and while I eat lunch and at night when I have my snack. That’s an hour or so. And then I write in between, but I’m very distractible. If an email comes in, I look at it. People rarely have to wait long for an answer from me. Phone rings, I pick it up. Right now, in addition to working on my next book, I’m preparing two speeches, and tomorrow I’ll spend most of the day on them. I'm not a role model. Better to follow authors who set a page goal for themselves and stick to it. These admirable folk turn out their quota even if they have to stay up till three in the morning to do it, or if they have a fever of 104, or if their furnace dies. Or follow the authors who write for four hours a day, every day.
A book that’s wonderful on the subject of discipline is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (middle school and above). Lamott is eloquent and funny about staying focused and how hard that is. Besides, her writing is a pleasure to read.
Still, whenever there's nothing that seems more pressing, which is often, I write. I take my laptop with me when I think I may have down time, like when I have a doctor's appointment. And in my slow, erratic way I complete books. My publishers and my readers might be happier if I wrote more, and maybe someday I’ll figure out how to do that. Until then, I’m plodding along.
I’m much better at revising. When I’m revising I don’t get up to look out the window every half hour. I stick with it, because I love revising more than I love grinding out a first draft. Revising never lasts long enough; I enjoy it so much I finish it quicker. We’re all different, of course. You may hate revising.
Anyway, the point is to keep writing. If you continue to write, you’ll finish one story and then another and then another, and you’ll build up a body of work, something to be mighty proud of.
Here are some prompts:
∙ Try these exercises based on Dorothea Brande’s book. For the next week, write for fifteen minutes as soon as you wake up. For the week after that, write for fifteen minutes when you get home at the end of your day. And for the following week, write at a variety of times and places for fifteen minutes every day.
∙ There are a zillion books and movies about blocked writers, probably because the authors and screenwriters are writing what they know. It’s your turn. Aster, your main character, is taking a creative writing class and has to write something and can think of nothing. Her failure spills over into other parts of her life: friends, family, pet frog, after-school job, whatever. Write her misery and then decide whether or not to rescue her. Of course you can move this into fantasy, so long as writing is involved. Aster can be a gnome who has to write a book about mining.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Just words
This post is going to be about words, starting with Maddie’s question on November 11, 2010: I have a little spell-checker on my computer. It also tells me the average reading level of the stuff that I'm writing, and it's not huge. Is it always necessary to add in bigger words, or is it ok to not use huge words as long as your plot is suitably twisted? (i.e., I don't want to be the next Dr. Seuss, although I do love his stuff... :D)
My advice is to ignore the reading level on your spell checker, because it doesn’t tell you much that’s meaningful. Word length and reading level based on word length and average number of words in each sentence may determine the age of the child who can read a particular book, but they have nothing to do with the age of the child who should read it. Animal Farm (middle school and up) by George Orwell is a perfect example. I read it when I was in third or fourth grade and thought it an interesting story about animals. The allegory flew over my head until my older sister let me in on the secret.
In the case of Animal Farm, it’s not a matter of plot twists either. The story is straightforward, no subplots that I remember; the book is only 128 pages long. What’s sophisticated is the meaning.
Another example is What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Coman, which is a miracle of a book. It’s told from the POV of a nine-year-old boy. Very simple story, also no plot complications that I recall, only 126 pages long, yet it’s a young adult book, definitely not for actual nine-year-olds. In this case, the reason is the subject, which is child abuse.
I like short words (and long and medium-size ones). Short words have power. And so do short sentences. They’re punchy. Sometimes we can get a good rhythm going with short sentences - and sometimes with long.
POV is another determinant of the sort of vocabulary that best suits a story. In What Jamie Saw, the author was limited to words that Jamie would know, and he wasn’t a child vocabulary prodigy. If you’re telling your story from the POV of a child or someone without much education, you’re stuck with a limited vocabulary. But even if your POV character is erudite, she may prefer not to show off her erudition. She may like to be simple and clear, even when she’s in a complicated situation or dealing with a difficult subject, like chaos theory. The sesquipedalian word may come to her only when it’s the sole way to express an idea.
When you’re using a third-person narrator, it’s up to you and whatever serves your story.
When I’m reading I like to come upon a few words to look up, but I don’t want to need my dictionary three times in every paragraph. When I write I don’t dumb down my vocabulary for kids. If they need to go to the dictionary more often than I enjoy as a reader, that’s okay. They’re kids, and their vocabularies need building. On the other hand, I don’t want to write an impenetrable book. Sometimes I help by making a meaning clear through context.
A convoluted plot is unconnected to word choice. You can tell a complex story using simple language or six-syllable vocabulary. I don’t think most third graders will be able to follow a tale that weaves together six subplots, for example. Adults will get lost too in a Byzantine plot. I will, and I’ll give up unless I’m completely in love with some element of the story.
Moving along to a related topic, Mysterygirl, Alexandra, April, and Marissa, all posted comments about words that were banned in school. Some teachers called these “jail” words, mostly simple words. Mysterygirl gave examples: good, bad, said, sad, mad, happy, grumpy, big, small, medium, love, calm. One of April’s teachers hated nice.
I sympathize with these teachers, who want to develop their students’ vocabularies. If this is what your teacher is demanding, I suggest going along in your school work. I’d say go your teachers one better. Wow them. For example, instead of grumpy, give them irascible, peevish, querulous, vinegarish. Use your thesaurus. It will help all your writing. For the heck of it, try for words your teachers will have to look up - unless they have no sense of humor.
After you blow your teacher away with your fab vocab, you might ask for an exemption from her rule just for you, unless everyone in your class will hate you. But if you don’t get the exemption, tough it out.
And in the stories you’re not writing for school, forget about jail words and words that are allowed to run free. The dictionary is your pasture. Graze at will on the weeds along with the grass and the flowers. Be a free-range writer.
Out of curiosity I just did a word search on the word nice in one of my Princess Tales, Cinderellis and the Glass Hill. In that book I used nice eleven times, which I was aware of and did deliberately. The main characters in this book are simple people, even though one of them is a princess. Nice appears in the thoughts of the two mains. It’s what they’re both looking for. I used pleasant once, amiable not at all. Amiable wouldn’t have fit the tone I'd set.
Having said that, I am alert to word repetition when I write and when I edit. If I think I’m overusing a word, I write it in a list above my story, and when I’m done, I search for the word. If it is showing up too much, I hunt for synonyms to substitute. My editor is amazing at picking up word repetition too. She catches the ones I miss.
Obviously there are words we have to use again and again. Prepositions are unavoidable, for example, and we can’t do without the appearing a million times.
Marissa’s teacher didn’t let her students use the word said. Again, if you have to listen to your teacher, you have to. But said is a special case, and it should be used repeatedly. I devote an entire chapter to said in Writing Magic. In brief, said (and ask, too) disappear. We see who’s speaking and move on. Substitute words, like exclaim, question, state, just draw attention to themselves and away from the action and what’s being said. What’s more, exclaim and question and query are unnecessary because the punctuation tells us everything. Words like vocalize and express are simply awful, in my opinion.
Sometimes repetition sets up a rhythm that’s pleasing, and sometimes you want to break the rhythm. Sometimes you’re not sure and just have to pick, and sometimes both choices are equal. Aaa! Writing is hard!
Here’s a prompt:
I learned to read on the Dick and Jane books, which were heavy on repetition and low on excitement, but they did the job for me. Below are four sentences from one of the books. I don’t know why each sentence gets its own line within a single quotation:
Father said, “Down, Spot.
Run away, Spot.
You can not go.
You can not go in the car.”
There’s drama here. I wouldn’t want anybody’s father to tell the family dog to run away. Your challenge is to rewrite the dialogue at least three ways, fooling around with vocabulary. Father’s speech can go on for four pages. He can be a vampire if you like or whatever else. Spot can be a talking dog or a werewolf.
If you want to, turn the situation into a story, a novel, a seven-book series.
Have fun, and save what you write!
My advice is to ignore the reading level on your spell checker, because it doesn’t tell you much that’s meaningful. Word length and reading level based on word length and average number of words in each sentence may determine the age of the child who can read a particular book, but they have nothing to do with the age of the child who should read it. Animal Farm (middle school and up) by George Orwell is a perfect example. I read it when I was in third or fourth grade and thought it an interesting story about animals. The allegory flew over my head until my older sister let me in on the secret.
In the case of Animal Farm, it’s not a matter of plot twists either. The story is straightforward, no subplots that I remember; the book is only 128 pages long. What’s sophisticated is the meaning.
Another example is What Jamie Saw by Carolyn Coman, which is a miracle of a book. It’s told from the POV of a nine-year-old boy. Very simple story, also no plot complications that I recall, only 126 pages long, yet it’s a young adult book, definitely not for actual nine-year-olds. In this case, the reason is the subject, which is child abuse.
I like short words (and long and medium-size ones). Short words have power. And so do short sentences. They’re punchy. Sometimes we can get a good rhythm going with short sentences - and sometimes with long.
POV is another determinant of the sort of vocabulary that best suits a story. In What Jamie Saw, the author was limited to words that Jamie would know, and he wasn’t a child vocabulary prodigy. If you’re telling your story from the POV of a child or someone without much education, you’re stuck with a limited vocabulary. But even if your POV character is erudite, she may prefer not to show off her erudition. She may like to be simple and clear, even when she’s in a complicated situation or dealing with a difficult subject, like chaos theory. The sesquipedalian word may come to her only when it’s the sole way to express an idea.
When you’re using a third-person narrator, it’s up to you and whatever serves your story.
When I’m reading I like to come upon a few words to look up, but I don’t want to need my dictionary three times in every paragraph. When I write I don’t dumb down my vocabulary for kids. If they need to go to the dictionary more often than I enjoy as a reader, that’s okay. They’re kids, and their vocabularies need building. On the other hand, I don’t want to write an impenetrable book. Sometimes I help by making a meaning clear through context.
A convoluted plot is unconnected to word choice. You can tell a complex story using simple language or six-syllable vocabulary. I don’t think most third graders will be able to follow a tale that weaves together six subplots, for example. Adults will get lost too in a Byzantine plot. I will, and I’ll give up unless I’m completely in love with some element of the story.
Moving along to a related topic, Mysterygirl, Alexandra, April, and Marissa, all posted comments about words that were banned in school. Some teachers called these “jail” words, mostly simple words. Mysterygirl gave examples: good, bad, said, sad, mad, happy, grumpy, big, small, medium, love, calm. One of April’s teachers hated nice.
I sympathize with these teachers, who want to develop their students’ vocabularies. If this is what your teacher is demanding, I suggest going along in your school work. I’d say go your teachers one better. Wow them. For example, instead of grumpy, give them irascible, peevish, querulous, vinegarish. Use your thesaurus. It will help all your writing. For the heck of it, try for words your teachers will have to look up - unless they have no sense of humor.
After you blow your teacher away with your fab vocab, you might ask for an exemption from her rule just for you, unless everyone in your class will hate you. But if you don’t get the exemption, tough it out.
And in the stories you’re not writing for school, forget about jail words and words that are allowed to run free. The dictionary is your pasture. Graze at will on the weeds along with the grass and the flowers. Be a free-range writer.
Out of curiosity I just did a word search on the word nice in one of my Princess Tales, Cinderellis and the Glass Hill. In that book I used nice eleven times, which I was aware of and did deliberately. The main characters in this book are simple people, even though one of them is a princess. Nice appears in the thoughts of the two mains. It’s what they’re both looking for. I used pleasant once, amiable not at all. Amiable wouldn’t have fit the tone I'd set.
Having said that, I am alert to word repetition when I write and when I edit. If I think I’m overusing a word, I write it in a list above my story, and when I’m done, I search for the word. If it is showing up too much, I hunt for synonyms to substitute. My editor is amazing at picking up word repetition too. She catches the ones I miss.
Obviously there are words we have to use again and again. Prepositions are unavoidable, for example, and we can’t do without the appearing a million times.
Marissa’s teacher didn’t let her students use the word said. Again, if you have to listen to your teacher, you have to. But said is a special case, and it should be used repeatedly. I devote an entire chapter to said in Writing Magic. In brief, said (and ask, too) disappear. We see who’s speaking and move on. Substitute words, like exclaim, question, state, just draw attention to themselves and away from the action and what’s being said. What’s more, exclaim and question and query are unnecessary because the punctuation tells us everything. Words like vocalize and express are simply awful, in my opinion.
Sometimes repetition sets up a rhythm that’s pleasing, and sometimes you want to break the rhythm. Sometimes you’re not sure and just have to pick, and sometimes both choices are equal. Aaa! Writing is hard!
Here’s a prompt:
I learned to read on the Dick and Jane books, which were heavy on repetition and low on excitement, but they did the job for me. Below are four sentences from one of the books. I don’t know why each sentence gets its own line within a single quotation:
Father said, “Down, Spot.
Run away, Spot.
You can not go.
You can not go in the car.”
There’s drama here. I wouldn’t want anybody’s father to tell the family dog to run away. Your challenge is to rewrite the dialogue at least three ways, fooling around with vocabulary. Father’s speech can go on for four pages. He can be a vampire if you like or whatever else. Spot can be a talking dog or a werewolf.
If you want to, turn the situation into a story, a novel, a seven-book series.
Have fun, and save what you write!
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