Revising has gotten easier over the years, but there’s always a part of me that resists changing what I’ve written. I’m not talking about fixing grammatical errors or cutting extraneous words. I mean major reworking: yanking out scenes, removing a plot strand, deleting the first ten chapters. Yes. I have done that before. It’s painful. And it seems wasteful too. Why did I bother with all of that? What was the point?
The point, apparently, was for me to find a way into that particular story. Once I did, I no longer needed those chapters. The story I’m telling no longer requires them. So, out they go. Ha ha. I've made it sound so easy. But anyone who's dealt with extensive revision knows how difficult it can be.
The best explanation I’ve heard about how to work through this potentially painful process came from Linda Su Park, Newbery author of the novel A Single Shard. Park spoke at a conference I went to a few years ago and perfectly captured the angst we writers go through when we approach a revision.
She started by describing the sick feeling you get when you first hear criticism of your manuscript. You think it’s finished, brilliant, moving, but your first reader will say something like: the beginning doesn’t work. Or: you don’t need that character. Just hearing her say this was revelatory to me. An award-winning author produces messed up first drafts too? Wow. She said she had an all-purpose response to this kind of criticism and I perked right up in my seat.
Okay. That’s her response. She says that inside she’s dying, nauseated, ready to kill the critic, imagining all of the work she’s going to have to do, but outside, she keeps a placid smile on her face and says: Okay. She listens to what the person has to say. And she gives herself some time to process the suggestions.
After a few days of stewing, she’s ready to prove the critic wrong. Okay, she tells herself, this person thinks that one of my main characters serves no purpose. Well, I’ll show her. And then she goes back to her manuscript and “plays.” It’s not rocket science, she says. I’m just playing around. She takes one chapter where that character features prominently, and pulls him out. She gives that character’s lines to someone else. She rewrites the whole scene to prove to her critic what a giant hole is left when that character is no longer present.
Next, to further illustrate her point about how wrong her critic is, she takes the same scene and continues to play, beefing up the role of that supposedly unnecessary character. See, she wants to point out, look how essential this character is to my story. Except nine times out of ten, she realizes that the critic is right. Once she’s played around with a scene or two, she can see it clearly. That character doesn’t need to be there after all. Darn it. And she never would’ve believed it if she hadn’t tried it. Thinking about it, arguing in your head about the merits of the criticism is not enough. You have to write it. Then she stressed once more that this process isn’t rocket science. We’re just playing.
Revision has a bad reputation. It’s hard! It means work, time, heavy thinking. All those years of hearing our English teachers telling us to revise have taken a toll.
Let that crippling mentality go. Next time you're faced with a daunting revision, take Linda Su Park’s advice and say: Okay, I’ll play.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
To Outline or Not to Outline
The real question should be: when do you outline? Ask the average person, anyone who’s sat through a 7th grade Language Arts class, and the answer will likely be before writing. We’re taught to choose the main idea. Break it down into sub topics. Add details. The point is to organize your thoughts. Plan. See where your writing is going before you start. It makes sense. And if you’re writing an essay, it’s definitely a good idea.
If you’re writing a book, you’ll want to organize your ideas by chapters and/or scenes. A few weeks ago I heard a writer speaking at a conference about how he creates a detailed outline. He charts out his scenes in advance, logically arranging the sequence of events—introductions of characters, plot twists, action, etc. It takes him two or three months to do, but when he starts writing the book, it comes fairly easy. Each day he refers to his outline and sees what scene he needs to write. He stressed that his outlines are not written in stone. He even showed us a sample that included cross-outs and rearranged elements. But overall, he sticks to it. He’s written all of his books this way, and he’s been very successful using this method.
I’m sorry I can’t go into more detail about how to outline a book, because it’s not the way I write. I must confess that I was one of those students who wrote the outline after writing the paper. (Let me say here that I don’t believe that any particular method for writing is better than any other. Interview ten writers about their process and you’ll get ten different answers.) My suggestion is to experiment with a variety of ways, cobble together bits of what works for others until you find what works for you.
So how do I write a book if I don’t outline first? I begin with a vague idea of where the story is going. I know the end, or at least what seems like the logical end. And I simply write toward it. Maybe “simply” isn’t the right word. There are painful days when I feel like I’m slogging through each sentence. But there are also days when everything flows out. (Here’s something interesting: when I read back over what I’ve written, I can never tell which parts were hard to write and which parts were easy. It all blends together. Which is just weird, but I digress.)
If you've read my other posts, you know that I set a word count goal each day, usually 1500 words. I think in terms of scenes and I concentrate only on the scene I’m working on that day. Occasionally I worry about where it’s all going. Especially when something pops up unexpectedly. Why did my main character do that? for example. Or where the heck did that person come from? But I just keep going, having faith that when I’m ready to start the next scene I’ll know what to do. E.L Doctorow said once that writing a novel is "like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
Writing like this is a little scary. But I just keep plugging away at my 1500 words. Usually around day twenty (I have no idea why this is) something happens. I know what’s going on and it all starts to come together. Suddenly the words are spilling out. The tension is building and I can see the final scenes rising up out of the foggy ether. Now I’m eager to start each day because I want to see how it’s all going to play out and the only way to know for sure is to write it.
So where does the outline come in? Here’s the strange part: it comes when I’m “finished.” I write the last word. Print out the big mess of the first draft. Then I put it away in a drawer to marinate. (That’s how Stephen King describes it in his book On Writing.) I don’t look at it for at least six weeks. Later, when I pick it up, I read it like a reader. No red pencil in hand. I just want to see what I have. Yes, it’s a mess. But there is a real book buried in there and now that I see it, I can begin my outlining process.
I write out my big questions—what are the main ideas driving my story? Who are the main characters? What are the internal and external conflicts? I have a general sense of this while I’m writing, but you’d be surprised how things change over the course of writing a book. Sometimes what you’re really writing about doesn’t hit you until page 100. I list out the scenes I have on index cards and I literally spread them out on the floor. Every scene must contribute to the overall story; otherwise it needs to go. Or maybe I need to add a scene (or fifteen) where essential elements are missing. Once I’ve done that, I make my outline.
Now I can start my revision.
Seems like a lot of work, I know. When I spoke to the writer at the conference who outlines first, he looked at me like I was crazy. But after talking we realized that he does his logical work on the front end and I do that work on the back end. We both have to revise. Both methods take roughly the same amount of time.
Whichever method you choose, here’s a final word from the inspirational folks on the NaNoWriMo site:
“All the books we've loved started out in a similarly imperfect form. They're called rough drafts for a reason. No one gets a novel totally right on the first pass. This is true whether you give yourself a month or a lifetime to write the first draft. There's an adage in noveling that you can revise a bad first draft into a great book. But you can't revise a blank page into anything but a blank page.”
If you’re writing a book, you’ll want to organize your ideas by chapters and/or scenes. A few weeks ago I heard a writer speaking at a conference about how he creates a detailed outline. He charts out his scenes in advance, logically arranging the sequence of events—introductions of characters, plot twists, action, etc. It takes him two or three months to do, but when he starts writing the book, it comes fairly easy. Each day he refers to his outline and sees what scene he needs to write. He stressed that his outlines are not written in stone. He even showed us a sample that included cross-outs and rearranged elements. But overall, he sticks to it. He’s written all of his books this way, and he’s been very successful using this method.
I’m sorry I can’t go into more detail about how to outline a book, because it’s not the way I write. I must confess that I was one of those students who wrote the outline after writing the paper. (Let me say here that I don’t believe that any particular method for writing is better than any other. Interview ten writers about their process and you’ll get ten different answers.) My suggestion is to experiment with a variety of ways, cobble together bits of what works for others until you find what works for you.
So how do I write a book if I don’t outline first? I begin with a vague idea of where the story is going. I know the end, or at least what seems like the logical end. And I simply write toward it. Maybe “simply” isn’t the right word. There are painful days when I feel like I’m slogging through each sentence. But there are also days when everything flows out. (Here’s something interesting: when I read back over what I’ve written, I can never tell which parts were hard to write and which parts were easy. It all blends together. Which is just weird, but I digress.)
If you've read my other posts, you know that I set a word count goal each day, usually 1500 words. I think in terms of scenes and I concentrate only on the scene I’m working on that day. Occasionally I worry about where it’s all going. Especially when something pops up unexpectedly. Why did my main character do that? for example. Or where the heck did that person come from? But I just keep going, having faith that when I’m ready to start the next scene I’ll know what to do. E.L Doctorow said once that writing a novel is "like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
Writing like this is a little scary. But I just keep plugging away at my 1500 words. Usually around day twenty (I have no idea why this is) something happens. I know what’s going on and it all starts to come together. Suddenly the words are spilling out. The tension is building and I can see the final scenes rising up out of the foggy ether. Now I’m eager to start each day because I want to see how it’s all going to play out and the only way to know for sure is to write it.
So where does the outline come in? Here’s the strange part: it comes when I’m “finished.” I write the last word. Print out the big mess of the first draft. Then I put it away in a drawer to marinate. (That’s how Stephen King describes it in his book On Writing.) I don’t look at it for at least six weeks. Later, when I pick it up, I read it like a reader. No red pencil in hand. I just want to see what I have. Yes, it’s a mess. But there is a real book buried in there and now that I see it, I can begin my outlining process.
I write out my big questions—what are the main ideas driving my story? Who are the main characters? What are the internal and external conflicts? I have a general sense of this while I’m writing, but you’d be surprised how things change over the course of writing a book. Sometimes what you’re really writing about doesn’t hit you until page 100. I list out the scenes I have on index cards and I literally spread them out on the floor. Every scene must contribute to the overall story; otherwise it needs to go. Or maybe I need to add a scene (or fifteen) where essential elements are missing. Once I’ve done that, I make my outline.
Now I can start my revision.
Seems like a lot of work, I know. When I spoke to the writer at the conference who outlines first, he looked at me like I was crazy. But after talking we realized that he does his logical work on the front end and I do that work on the back end. We both have to revise. Both methods take roughly the same amount of time.
Whichever method you choose, here’s a final word from the inspirational folks on the NaNoWriMo site:
“All the books we've loved started out in a similarly imperfect form. They're called rough drafts for a reason. No one gets a novel totally right on the first pass. This is true whether you give yourself a month or a lifetime to write the first draft. There's an adage in noveling that you can revise a bad first draft into a great book. But you can't revise a blank page into anything but a blank page.”
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Gearing up for NaNoWriMo
Three years ago at the end of October my family moved to a new state. It was a big change for our all of us. New schools for the kids and new careers for my husband and me. It was the year I quit teaching and decided once and for all to focus on my writing. Only a few days after moving into our new home, before the pictures were even up on the walls, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. It changed my writing life.
For the uninitiated NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Participants pledge to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month of November. Sign up and you get helpful writing advice from published authors, a cool-looking page where you can chart your progress, daily inspirational emails, and the instant support and encouragement of a community of writers on the same journey.
That’s what I knew going into it. But here’s why it changed my writing life. My previous method for writing a book was this: I would come up with what I thought was an interesting idea or two, create a few characters, and begin writing. And revising. And reworking. And editing. And revising some more. I literally could not move onto the next sentence until I felt that the one before it was perfect. It took me two years to write a book this way and by the time I was finished, I hated the thing’s guts and couldn’t bear to look at it again. I also patted myself on the back for having what I believed was not a first draft. After all I had revised it to “perfection” as I wrote it. I submitted it to publishers. It got rejected.
But the moment I began a book NaNoWriMo-style, I realized my revise as I go method was not going to work. Take 50,000 words and divide by 30 days and you get 1666 words per day. Subtract out weekends (not going to happen. I had a family. We were adjusting to a new town) and Thanksgiving (jeez, why’d the Nano people pick November? Don’t they have to cook 20-pound turkeys for visiting relatives?) and I was left with more than 2500 words per day. Let me tell you something. You try writing 2500 words in a day and see how quickly you move past the revise as you go method. Perfect sentences—ha ha. Forget it.
So this is what happened. I did it. I wrote a big 50,000-word mess of a book. And I couldn’t kid myself—it was truly a first draft. It had digressions and a string of loosely strewn-together scenes. Strands that went nowhere. Characters that disappeared and characters that popped up in the final chapters. But it was a thing of beauty anyway. It was funny. It was heartbreaking. Yes, there were long passages of bad writing, but there were also nuggets of the best writing I’d ever produced. It was not perfect. But it was finished. And here’s a saying from one of those inspirational Nano emails and something I’ve clung to ever since: a first draft IS perfect simply because it is finished.
Now I don’t recommend this type of writing for everyone. There are many successful writers who swear by the revise as you go method. But I found that Nano-writing forced me to let go of my crippling perfectionism and silenced the negative editor in my head. Nano helped me embrace the free-spirited creative voice and follow it wherever it wanted to go. Usually to a place I hadn't planned. Writing a book this way is exhilarating.
When I read that first Nano draft in January, I found the bones of a pretty decent book. This time when I revised, I had the whole thing in front of me to work with. I could do real revision and not what I had been doing before, which I realized was actually line editing.
This November if you want to kick-start your writing career, join me on NaNoWriMo.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
If you stick with it, in 30 days you’ll be toasting your own beautiful mess of a first draft.
(Tips for revising Coming Soon)
For the uninitiated NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Participants pledge to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month of November. Sign up and you get helpful writing advice from published authors, a cool-looking page where you can chart your progress, daily inspirational emails, and the instant support and encouragement of a community of writers on the same journey.
That’s what I knew going into it. But here’s why it changed my writing life. My previous method for writing a book was this: I would come up with what I thought was an interesting idea or two, create a few characters, and begin writing. And revising. And reworking. And editing. And revising some more. I literally could not move onto the next sentence until I felt that the one before it was perfect. It took me two years to write a book this way and by the time I was finished, I hated the thing’s guts and couldn’t bear to look at it again. I also patted myself on the back for having what I believed was not a first draft. After all I had revised it to “perfection” as I wrote it. I submitted it to publishers. It got rejected.
But the moment I began a book NaNoWriMo-style, I realized my revise as I go method was not going to work. Take 50,000 words and divide by 30 days and you get 1666 words per day. Subtract out weekends (not going to happen. I had a family. We were adjusting to a new town) and Thanksgiving (jeez, why’d the Nano people pick November? Don’t they have to cook 20-pound turkeys for visiting relatives?) and I was left with more than 2500 words per day. Let me tell you something. You try writing 2500 words in a day and see how quickly you move past the revise as you go method. Perfect sentences—ha ha. Forget it.
So this is what happened. I did it. I wrote a big 50,000-word mess of a book. And I couldn’t kid myself—it was truly a first draft. It had digressions and a string of loosely strewn-together scenes. Strands that went nowhere. Characters that disappeared and characters that popped up in the final chapters. But it was a thing of beauty anyway. It was funny. It was heartbreaking. Yes, there were long passages of bad writing, but there were also nuggets of the best writing I’d ever produced. It was not perfect. But it was finished. And here’s a saying from one of those inspirational Nano emails and something I’ve clung to ever since: a first draft IS perfect simply because it is finished.
Now I don’t recommend this type of writing for everyone. There are many successful writers who swear by the revise as you go method. But I found that Nano-writing forced me to let go of my crippling perfectionism and silenced the negative editor in my head. Nano helped me embrace the free-spirited creative voice and follow it wherever it wanted to go. Usually to a place I hadn't planned. Writing a book this way is exhilarating.
When I read that first Nano draft in January, I found the bones of a pretty decent book. This time when I revised, I had the whole thing in front of me to work with. I could do real revision and not what I had been doing before, which I realized was actually line editing.
This November if you want to kick-start your writing career, join me on NaNoWriMo.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
If you stick with it, in 30 days you’ll be toasting your own beautiful mess of a first draft.
(Tips for revising Coming Soon)
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Read
I have always loved to read. From the moment I learned how, I was the dazed kid stumbling around with a book in my hands. Most writers will tell you the same. We’re readers. Which is probably why we’re drawn to creating our own books. It’s Writing 101 that you must love to read if you’d like to write. Even the Me of fifteen years ago knew that. But here’s what I didn’t know: you need to read the kinds of books you want to write. (in addition to everything else!)
Like many children’s writers I was drawn to the field because books meant so much to me as a child. When I first started writing, I went back to the books of my childhood for inspiration. A Wrinkle in Time. A little known, but excellent book called Charlotte Sometimes. The mystery series Trixie Belden. This was a start in the right direction, but it took me a while to catch on that I needed to read the latest children’s books too. This means reading beautifully written, critically acclaimed books as well as fluffy page-turners. Yes, I know you love Charlotte’s Web and Anne of Green Gables (and these are must-reads without a doubt) but if you’re a YA writer, you should also know who John Green and Sara Zarr are. You should know what Katniss is up to in the latest installment of Hunger Games and that the newest teen trend is fallen angels. And for some odd reason (or maybe it’s not odd, now that I think about it,) two gorgeous boys vying for the attention of the same girl is the In thing at the moment.
Writers must know what their contemporaries are writing and what kid readers of this generation are yanking off the shelves and passing around in school. Not so we can copy another writer or jump onto a trend—(Good luck, anyway, with that. Write a book starring a schoolboy wizard or a brooding vampire and see how fast the rejections roll in.)—but so we can find our own voice in today’s world of books.
True story: a beginning writer wrote a darling picture book about a child resisting bedtime. The kindly editor critiquing her mentioned that there are a ton of bedtime books already out there. To which the woman responded, “Really?”
Another true story: a YA adult writer tells me she would never read Twilight because she doesn’t like vampire books. Well, okay. Say what you want about this series—mediocre writing, stereotypical romance-novel characters—but it IS a page-turner and millions of girls and women have snapped it up. Like it or not, the phenomenon (along with Harry Potter) may have single handedly propped up the children’s book industry so that publishers can afford to publish quiet, lyrical, award-winning books too. Read it and get a taste of what all the fuss is about. It’s your job, for crying out loud. And really, as far as jobs go, I’d say it’s a pretty good one.
Here’s a plug for a brand-newish YA book that may restore your faith in the written word after you’ve read all of those vampire/fallen angel books I was just urging you to read:
Lips Touch by Laini Taylor. It’s actually three stories, all built around the premise of a kiss. The first story, which I read last night, is a take on an old poem by Christina Rossetti called “Goblin’s Market.” Yes, I am a former English major and high school English teacher, so I can appreciate a story inspired by a poem. Beyond that very cool idea, though, is Taylor’s amazing writing. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s a voice I’ve never heard before. Part old-fashioned, descriptive and sensory. And part contemporary and slang-y. The story perfectly captures the longing and desire of teenage girls who want want want what is just out of reach and who simmer with impatient frustration as they wait for their real lives to begin. (prediction: you will root for the goblin.) This is one of those books that inspires both despair and joy in me. Despair—that I will never ever be able to write this well. And joy that someone can.
Read it.
Like many children’s writers I was drawn to the field because books meant so much to me as a child. When I first started writing, I went back to the books of my childhood for inspiration. A Wrinkle in Time. A little known, but excellent book called Charlotte Sometimes. The mystery series Trixie Belden. This was a start in the right direction, but it took me a while to catch on that I needed to read the latest children’s books too. This means reading beautifully written, critically acclaimed books as well as fluffy page-turners. Yes, I know you love Charlotte’s Web and Anne of Green Gables (and these are must-reads without a doubt) but if you’re a YA writer, you should also know who John Green and Sara Zarr are. You should know what Katniss is up to in the latest installment of Hunger Games and that the newest teen trend is fallen angels. And for some odd reason (or maybe it’s not odd, now that I think about it,) two gorgeous boys vying for the attention of the same girl is the In thing at the moment.
Writers must know what their contemporaries are writing and what kid readers of this generation are yanking off the shelves and passing around in school. Not so we can copy another writer or jump onto a trend—(Good luck, anyway, with that. Write a book starring a schoolboy wizard or a brooding vampire and see how fast the rejections roll in.)—but so we can find our own voice in today’s world of books.
True story: a beginning writer wrote a darling picture book about a child resisting bedtime. The kindly editor critiquing her mentioned that there are a ton of bedtime books already out there. To which the woman responded, “Really?”
Another true story: a YA adult writer tells me she would never read Twilight because she doesn’t like vampire books. Well, okay. Say what you want about this series—mediocre writing, stereotypical romance-novel characters—but it IS a page-turner and millions of girls and women have snapped it up. Like it or not, the phenomenon (along with Harry Potter) may have single handedly propped up the children’s book industry so that publishers can afford to publish quiet, lyrical, award-winning books too. Read it and get a taste of what all the fuss is about. It’s your job, for crying out loud. And really, as far as jobs go, I’d say it’s a pretty good one.
Here’s a plug for a brand-newish YA book that may restore your faith in the written word after you’ve read all of those vampire/fallen angel books I was just urging you to read:
Lips Touch by Laini Taylor. It’s actually three stories, all built around the premise of a kiss. The first story, which I read last night, is a take on an old poem by Christina Rossetti called “Goblin’s Market.” Yes, I am a former English major and high school English teacher, so I can appreciate a story inspired by a poem. Beyond that very cool idea, though, is Taylor’s amazing writing. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s a voice I’ve never heard before. Part old-fashioned, descriptive and sensory. And part contemporary and slang-y. The story perfectly captures the longing and desire of teenage girls who want want want what is just out of reach and who simmer with impatient frustration as they wait for their real lives to begin. (prediction: you will root for the goblin.) This is one of those books that inspires both despair and joy in me. Despair—that I will never ever be able to write this well. And joy that someone can.
Read it.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Procrastination
Every day I have the best of intentions. I’m going to sit right down at my computer, fortifying cup of coffee beside me, and begin. Open up my file (whatever project I happen to be working on) and GO. But first, I really should clean up the breakfast dishes. I can’t have them sitting out all over the counter. And I need to check my emails. That laundry piling up in the hallway—I should make a dent in it. Just throw in one load. Oh. And what are we having for dinner tonight? I should put something in the crockpot. Get THAT out of the way. Who’s on Facebook? Ha ha. That’s funny. Someone posted a clip of a guy singing about his sister getting attacked. Wait. That’s not funny. Is this a sign of the decline of Western Civilization? Jeez. Now the laundry’s finished. I need to throw it in the dryer.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. Next thing I know it’s nearly lunchtime, I’m still in my pajamas and I haven’t written a single word.
Ah, procrastination. It’s a pitfall most writers continually battle. How do I know? Because I have read dozens of books by writers about writing, and every single one says something about the challenge of motivating yourself to write. I used to wonder about all of this working-yourself-up-to-write business. What’s so hard about writing? It’s not like you’re painting houses, or grilling steaks at Ponderosa, or washing two hundred pizza pans at Papa Ginos (all jobs I’ve actually had, by the way). I don’t know why I put off writing. And I don’t know why there are days when I slog through each painful word. All I do know is that when I don’t write, I feel really horrible. Which is usually enough motivation to get myself going.
Here are a few other tricks of the trade (gleaned from all those writer books on writing) that I wish I had known 15 years ago:
1. BIC—Butt in Chair. As in, put your butt in the chair and write. Some people think you need to be inspired before you can start writing. I’ve learned that if you sit and write, the inspiration will come. It always does. I have no idea how this works. It’s magic.
2. Set a word count. Stephen King says he writes eight pages a day every day. I believe him. But (and correct me if I’m wrong here, Stephen,) I don’t think he has to make dinners or take forgotten lunches to school or clean toilets. Eight is too much for me. I write six. And I take one day off a week.
3. Find an accountability partner. I email my word count goal to my best writer friend every day. At the end of the day I check in with her and tell her if I’ve done it. It’s amazing how this simple thing keeps me on task. When I first started doing it I realized that it didn’t even matter if she read my emails. Just telling her what I was going to do, made a difference. I guess I’m one of those need-a-deadline people.
4. Finish each writing session in the middle of a thought/sentence. It’s cool how easy it is to get going when all you have to do is complete the last sentence from the day before. And you’re off!
5. Don’t blog. Ha ha. (Just realized blogging is THE perfect vehicle for further procrastination.)
Must sign off now. It is noon. I have not started on my writing goal for the day. But my laundry is finished. My counters are cleared off. I am out of the old pajamas and ready to put my BIC.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. Next thing I know it’s nearly lunchtime, I’m still in my pajamas and I haven’t written a single word.
Ah, procrastination. It’s a pitfall most writers continually battle. How do I know? Because I have read dozens of books by writers about writing, and every single one says something about the challenge of motivating yourself to write. I used to wonder about all of this working-yourself-up-to-write business. What’s so hard about writing? It’s not like you’re painting houses, or grilling steaks at Ponderosa, or washing two hundred pizza pans at Papa Ginos (all jobs I’ve actually had, by the way). I don’t know why I put off writing. And I don’t know why there are days when I slog through each painful word. All I do know is that when I don’t write, I feel really horrible. Which is usually enough motivation to get myself going.
Here are a few other tricks of the trade (gleaned from all those writer books on writing) that I wish I had known 15 years ago:
1. BIC—Butt in Chair. As in, put your butt in the chair and write. Some people think you need to be inspired before you can start writing. I’ve learned that if you sit and write, the inspiration will come. It always does. I have no idea how this works. It’s magic.
2. Set a word count. Stephen King says he writes eight pages a day every day. I believe him. But (and correct me if I’m wrong here, Stephen,) I don’t think he has to make dinners or take forgotten lunches to school or clean toilets. Eight is too much for me. I write six. And I take one day off a week.
3. Find an accountability partner. I email my word count goal to my best writer friend every day. At the end of the day I check in with her and tell her if I’ve done it. It’s amazing how this simple thing keeps me on task. When I first started doing it I realized that it didn’t even matter if she read my emails. Just telling her what I was going to do, made a difference. I guess I’m one of those need-a-deadline people.
4. Finish each writing session in the middle of a thought/sentence. It’s cool how easy it is to get going when all you have to do is complete the last sentence from the day before. And you’re off!
5. Don’t blog. Ha ha. (Just realized blogging is THE perfect vehicle for further procrastination.)
Must sign off now. It is noon. I have not started on my writing goal for the day. But my laundry is finished. My counters are cleared off. I am out of the old pajamas and ready to put my BIC.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Rejections
The other day a beginning writer on my writers’ list serve wrote that he’d just received two rejections. He explained that one agent and one editor had rejected his query for a middle grade novel. WHY!? he wondered. What was the problem? Was it the quality of the query? The idea of the novel? The sample pages he’d sent? Jeez, was this a sign that he should quit writing? The kind, generous, sensitive souls on the list serve chimed in. Rejections happen to the best of us, they said. Even the most successful writers have gotten rejections. Look at JK Rowling, they pointed out. Didn’t she get like 25 rejections before someone snapped up Harry Potter? The beginning writer was cheered up and presumably will continue to send his work out, and, (I sure hope he realizes this) get more rejections.
Rejections. There is nothing that bums a writer out more. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this. You get that “unfortunately this story does not fit our editorial needs at this time…” letter and sometimes even the best of us can’t help spiraling into an existential pit of despair.
I got my first rejection over ten years ago. It was from Seventeen magazine when they were still publishing YA fiction. It was a form note, but scrawled on the bottom of it were two words: nice story. My first reaction was shock. They rejected ME? What were they thinking? Was it a mistake? I analyzed those two words “nice story” to the point of absurdity. If they thought it was a nice story, why didn’t they want it? What did they mean by “nice”? I cried. I questioned my decision to write. I questioned my reasons for existence. I had no list serve to buck me up. I knew no other writers. I suffered alone.
Then I sent the story out again. It was rejected once more (by Teen. Is that magazine even around anymore?) Then it was accepted by Cicada. Woo hoo. My first published story! After only TWO rejections. I was on my way, happy that the days of rejections were behind me. Ah. I was so deluded and naïve.
Looking back now, I realize this experience was the most gentle of introductions to the submission world. Because over the years I have amassed quite a collection of rejections. (I’m not one of those writers who papers the walls with them, so I can’t tell you how many). The very kindest rejections have those handwritten words on the bottom—nice story, or keep sending. (God, be thankful for those. They're truly little gifts to keep you going.) The worst rejections are not even the form notes, but the no notes. Lately, the policy of many editorial houses is to contact a writer only if they are interested, which means that most writers will receive nothing. No response. Your work simply disappears into a black hole—which I picture as some NYC editor’s desk and later her recycling bin.
Okay, this is starting to depress me. And my intent was to be uplifting to a suffering, frustrated writer soul like the Me of fifteen years ago. So here’s my advice: quit now if all you’re dreaming about is publication and awards and monetary success and movie deals and sitting on a set with Robert Pattinson who is playing your main character. BUT, if you truly love to write, keep writing. You don’t need me to tell you this or some editor either, by the way. If you’re looking for a sign from above, here it is: if after you receive your first rejection (or your 100th) you continue to write, then cheers! Writing is what you are meant to do.
Rejections. There is nothing that bums a writer out more. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this. You get that “unfortunately this story does not fit our editorial needs at this time…” letter and sometimes even the best of us can’t help spiraling into an existential pit of despair.
I got my first rejection over ten years ago. It was from Seventeen magazine when they were still publishing YA fiction. It was a form note, but scrawled on the bottom of it were two words: nice story. My first reaction was shock. They rejected ME? What were they thinking? Was it a mistake? I analyzed those two words “nice story” to the point of absurdity. If they thought it was a nice story, why didn’t they want it? What did they mean by “nice”? I cried. I questioned my decision to write. I questioned my reasons for existence. I had no list serve to buck me up. I knew no other writers. I suffered alone.
Then I sent the story out again. It was rejected once more (by Teen. Is that magazine even around anymore?) Then it was accepted by Cicada. Woo hoo. My first published story! After only TWO rejections. I was on my way, happy that the days of rejections were behind me. Ah. I was so deluded and naïve.
Looking back now, I realize this experience was the most gentle of introductions to the submission world. Because over the years I have amassed quite a collection of rejections. (I’m not one of those writers who papers the walls with them, so I can’t tell you how many). The very kindest rejections have those handwritten words on the bottom—nice story, or keep sending. (God, be thankful for those. They're truly little gifts to keep you going.) The worst rejections are not even the form notes, but the no notes. Lately, the policy of many editorial houses is to contact a writer only if they are interested, which means that most writers will receive nothing. No response. Your work simply disappears into a black hole—which I picture as some NYC editor’s desk and later her recycling bin.
Okay, this is starting to depress me. And my intent was to be uplifting to a suffering, frustrated writer soul like the Me of fifteen years ago. So here’s my advice: quit now if all you’re dreaming about is publication and awards and monetary success and movie deals and sitting on a set with Robert Pattinson who is playing your main character. BUT, if you truly love to write, keep writing. You don’t need me to tell you this or some editor either, by the way. If you’re looking for a sign from above, here it is: if after you receive your first rejection (or your 100th) you continue to write, then cheers! Writing is what you are meant to do.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Searching for a Mentor
Here's something I wish I knew fifteen years ago: how helpful it would be to have a mentor--a kindly, wizened writer to take me under her wing and guide my career. Okay. I never found that person, exactly. But in some ways, over the years, I have. My first few years, unfortunately, were spent floundering alone. I was the perfect mix of arrogance and ignorance. I thought I knew everything about writing (I had majored in it, after all! I had won awards! What could someone teach ME?)
A lot, as it turned out.
My first glimpse of a mentor came in the form of meeting other writers at conferences. No, none of these people ever took me on as a project, but just seeing real people, real women like me, living a writer's life, was important. They showed me that being a writer wasn't some unattainable, magical, crazy dream. These women were like me--they had husbands and children and went grocery shopping and ran errands. They weren't strange characters living in turrets ala Emily Dickinson.
I asked these writers how they worked--nuts and bolts about inspiration and revision and craft. They had different methods but I found that there were things that I could apply to myself and my own work.
Which led me to reading about writers. There are tons of books out there on writing, some more helpful than others. My favorites are: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, (hilarious and God, I wish I had read this book 15 years ago); On Writing by Stephen King (even if you don't like his books, you will find helpful advice on the craft of writing); anything by Natalie Goldberg (very New-Agey but so inspirational); and The Artist's Way by Cameron (also New-Agey, but this book literally changed my life with its ideas about creativity and inspiration).
So I never found my in-the-flesh guru. But over the years I have learned so much from a community of other writers--those I know personally and those I know only through their books. And now I am extremely grateful to have found a writing partner--a woman who is roughly at the same stage I am who reads my drafts and give me much-needed advice. I met her in line at a Port-a-potty at a writers' conference. Which just goes to show--I don't know what. Be open to meeting writers. Be receptive to learning new things.
Writing is such a solitary activity. Never close yourself off from reaching out. You might find a mentor. Or maybe you'll just make a new friend.
A lot, as it turned out.
My first glimpse of a mentor came in the form of meeting other writers at conferences. No, none of these people ever took me on as a project, but just seeing real people, real women like me, living a writer's life, was important. They showed me that being a writer wasn't some unattainable, magical, crazy dream. These women were like me--they had husbands and children and went grocery shopping and ran errands. They weren't strange characters living in turrets ala Emily Dickinson.
I asked these writers how they worked--nuts and bolts about inspiration and revision and craft. They had different methods but I found that there were things that I could apply to myself and my own work.
Which led me to reading about writers. There are tons of books out there on writing, some more helpful than others. My favorites are: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, (hilarious and God, I wish I had read this book 15 years ago); On Writing by Stephen King (even if you don't like his books, you will find helpful advice on the craft of writing); anything by Natalie Goldberg (very New-Agey but so inspirational); and The Artist's Way by Cameron (also New-Agey, but this book literally changed my life with its ideas about creativity and inspiration).
So I never found my in-the-flesh guru. But over the years I have learned so much from a community of other writers--those I know personally and those I know only through their books. And now I am extremely grateful to have found a writing partner--a woman who is roughly at the same stage I am who reads my drafts and give me much-needed advice. I met her in line at a Port-a-potty at a writers' conference. Which just goes to show--I don't know what. Be open to meeting writers. Be receptive to learning new things.
Writing is such a solitary activity. Never close yourself off from reaching out. You might find a mentor. Or maybe you'll just make a new friend.
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