The Soul of the Person

Basic Translation to the e card pictured above:

I listen,

Not to the words;

I listen,

To the glances, the gestures;

I listen,

To the soul of the person.

I ran across that picture on Facebook – sometimes curated content is fairly awesome.  The translation might not be exact (my Italian is very limited) but that’s the gist of it. 

As much as it is an amazing instruction for living your life – it also struck me as dead on when it comes to fiction writing.  I struggled for a long time with the “Show, don’t tell” thing.  When you take yourself out of the work enough, you can see it… you can certainly read it in other people’s work.  When you spoon feed too much information on what your reader is supposed to think/feel/understand, the characters ring empty.  You’re telling me who they are, but I don’t really believe you.

I’ve read a lot of writers (published and non) who use the dialog to “show” you who their characters are.  Technically, it’s not telling if you have one character explaining himself to another… except it is. 

I listen, not to the words…

Well, that sounds a little counterproductive to us writers, doesn't it?  They’re all words. 

Except what you really want is for the words to disappear.  You don’t want to be so overly enamored with the way you sling a phrase that your characters have no soul.  That’s what you need to capture – their soul.

How do you determine the soul of a person in your real life?  Is it what they say to you?  If you have a person who tells you how smart they are, do you believe them?  My general rule is that when a person has to tell me they are smart, they’re not.  Either they’re not confident in their mental prowess and are attempting to overcome that by becoming the persona they’re putting out there.  Or they’re just wrong.  And quite frankly, an idiot doesn’t tend to know they’re an idiot.  Often when someone hands you boastful characteristics that they’re attributing to themselves, they’re lying. 

While we can tell the reader certain things, the character can’t be real unless your reader can listen to their soul.  You have to show this.  In real life.  In fiction. 

A lover might say, “I love you” often.  But, if that same lover cheats, forgets your birthday, puts his own needs and wants above any thought of you, do you believe him? 

Love is an action.  The words don’t matter; it’s the act, the movement, what’s shown.  Character is not the words.  You can speak words of great character, but unless you’re walking the walk – just like life, they’re just words.

The tricky part is aspiring to make your writing more than just words.  So how do you listen to the soul of the person?

The Naming of a Thing

If you look at my updated profile, you’ll see that I’ve had a change of career.  After handing in my resignation last month, I am now a full-time writer.  It’s funny, because I think I always was a full time writer… I was just dabbling at 40 hour a week career doing something else.  As much as I liked what I did for a living (my clients were amazingly awesome and the work with web configurations was way more fun than I would have thought going in), I came home itching to write.  The itch was strong enough that I still took on freelance assignments, even though it meant I was essentially working 7 days a week.

I was skyping with one of my longtime writing buddies right before I made the big jump.  The funny thing – he’s known me, in all of my online venues as well as through private conversations, for years.  He never knew I’d been ghost writing.  I’d never mentioned it.  Weird, right?  Why wouldn’t I talk about my writing with another writer?

In my head, I’ve always kept ghost writing and writing web content separate from fiction.  This blog and most of my online writing (with my name on it, that is) has centered on fiction.  It didn’t occur to me that anyone would ever be interested in the fact that I’ve been making money as a writer for quite a long time – since 2006.

It’s the naming of the thing.  I can call myself a writer, because I am.  Before I ever got paid a dime for my writing I would have categorized myself as an aspiring writer, but a writer, nonetheless.  I’ve never called myself an author.  Technically, maybe I could.  I have one short story published… doesn’t quite count for me – I’ll consider myself an author the day I sign my first deal for novel length fiction.  It’s my own barometer.  I don’t think anyone else has to subscribe to my labeling system.  But that little internal thing is likely the reason I haven’t much mentioned my freelance writing on this blog.  This blog has always been my venue to discuss fiction.

These first few weeks of business have been largely set up.  I completed a few assignments last week and am working my way through my business plan now - along with deciding on a new name - the naming of the thing.  I know a lot of freelancers just use their own name – Suzy Freelancer, professional writer.  I kind of toyed with that, but I’m not sure how to answer the phone.  I almost feel like an idiot, answering with my name.  Plus, it still keeps the whole thing somewhat separate.  This is my writing business – the bottom line is that it is a business.  This is my fiction writing – the bottom line being that it’s mine. 

The business writing is very much NOT mine.  You can market yourself any way you want but, if you’re writing for businesses or other entities, you’re speaking for them, your words are theirs, and they need to be carefully constructed to portray their specific message.   

This blog has been largely inactive for more than a year now… and the postings were scattered before that.  I thought about what I wanted to do here because, logically, this blog will not be an asset to the business.  On the other hand, it’s my fiction writing home.  So it stays.  Because it’s been an asset to me.

I’m working out a schedule for blogging time.  I know I’ll also have to clean out the links on the sidebar.  I just hate doing that.  Every link represents a person who was at some point very connected to the blog, my writing, and my journey.  I’m going to build a different blog for the business, attached to the website I’m working on.  Not sure if I want to cross link or not – I guess it depends on whether the readership I build back up here would be interested in the type of writing posts I’d be creating there.

For now, this stays my fiction writing home… along with weird little anecdotes about my kids, who you all know are far more amusing than me. 

So, I've Been Away For A While...

And what did I learn in my year of bloggy abstinence?  A little of this and a little of that.  One of the things about blogging that bothered me a bit was that I felt like it was a hindrance to the actual writing.  I put time and energy into posts that could well have been paid articles or essays, and I knew it.  You can feel the difference between good writing and “meh” and I was putting a lot of good writing into my posts, and not a heck of a lot of “meh”…

One of my favorite blogging writer friends, the awesome Erica Orloff, used to refer to blogging as priming the pump.  It was part of her routine to get the juices flowing.  Of course, she’s also one of the most prolific writers you’ll ever meet.  But I think there was a point to that.  Not that the writing of the posts got my juices flowing so much as the interaction with other writers. 

In one of the Rocky movies (yes, I’m just greaseball enough to quote this), Rocky was not having any luck finding a job and wanted to go back to fighting.  So he went and talked to Mickey (for those of you who never saw the movies because a rock fell on you or something – Mickey was his trainer), who told him there was no way he should go back to boxing.  His eyes were too bad from getting hit.  So Rocky asked for a job sweeping up around the gym, and the old trainer looked at him with his eyes full of pity and tried to talk him out of it.  Saying, “You’re like royalty around there…” and asking how he could walk around with spit buckets for guys who looked up to him like that.  And Rocky said, “I just have to be around it.”

And I think, in a way, that’s what blogging does for me.  It keeps me connected with other writers, which keeps me excited about writing… or at least eases a bit of the black hole you get when no one around you really gets what you’re doing.

So I think it’s time to begin again.  The blog is going through some transformations… because I’ve been through a few and I guess it’s reflective of where my head’s at.  What I’ve been doing is a little different than where I was back when I started this.  The kids are older.  I work full time and still write freelance on the side.  Am I still writing fiction?  I haven’t been as prolific as I want to be.  And that’s one of the things I’m aiming to change.  The difference between now and a year ago is that I realize that blogging was never one of the things holding me back.

We’ll see where it goes from here.  Hopefully, I’ll find some of my blogging circle still active – I know many have found other venues for their online time.  And maybe I’ll meet a few new writers to capture my attention and get me thinking.

If you’re new to these parts, pull up a chair…and a martini… and a sense of humor, because you’ll need one to peruse any of my meanderings.  If you’ve been here before, welcome back.  Happy to take the next leg of the journey with you.

Guest Post - Mark Terry (bet you wished he was at YOUR blog...)

Today, as a special treat, Mark Terry is guest posting at the blog. I have an awesome photo in which he looks quite handsome and writerly and such, but blogger's being a bitch, so you guys miss out...sorry.... I did, however, get it to post the cover for his latest release, THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS. I'm not going to take up much of your time with a long and winding introduction about how unbelievably brilliant he is - his writing more than speaks for itself... so go ahead, read the blog...

Snakes on Brokeback Mountain

Mark Terry

I have on more than one occasion thought back to an interview given by Samuel L. Jackson when he was promoting, "Snakes On A Plane." The interviewers kept sort of prodding him about the seriousness of the role, and at some point, partly in frustration, he said, "Look, we're not talking 'Snakes On Brokeback Mountain.' We're talking 'Snakes On A Plane.'"

This resonated strongly with me, especially after I stopped laughing. Because what Samuel L. Jackson was saying was, "We're not talking about a movie likely to win the Academy Awards or go down in film history as a great work of art. It's a horror movie!"

I recently read a Vanity Fair (or perhaps it was Esquire) piece on Jake Gyllenhaal promoting “Source Code.” Someone in the article noted that Jake was a really, really serious actor with a lot of very serious ambitions, but at some point during the filming of “The Day After Tomorrow” somebody took him aside and said, “Jake, take off the tuxedo and stop practicing your acceptance speech. We’re making a disaster film here.”

And one of the reasons it resonates with me is that sometimes critics don't get it. One of my key criteria when I reviewed books was: "Did the author accomplish what they were trying to accomplish?"

So if you're writing an adventure novel and it's not exciting, but it sure has plenty of imagery and symbolism and seems "literary," I can't help but feel the author may have missed the point. Example: "The Crown of Columbus," by Louise Erdich and Michael Dorris. This story is about a historian (I think) who may have clues to where a "crown" of some sort is hidden that Christopher Columbus brought with him while exploring the New World. In point of fact, the crown is the crown of thorns that Christ wore when he was crucified. This novel had all the makings of "The Da Vinci Code" only it was written about 15 years earlier, and although the writing was without a doubt better than Dan Brown's, it was not, to my mind, a better book. Why? Because the authors had a different agenda than writing an adventure novel. They were writing a mainstream "literary" novel and as a result, the novel seemed schizophrenic and didn't - to my mind - succeed as either thing. It sure as hell wasn't "thrilling" or "exciting" or an "adventure." But critics liked it and so did plenty of readers who knew what they were getting.

I don't want to get too much into the art versus commerce argument here, although I actually have pretty strong opinions on the subject. But I do want to make a point. The process is almost entirely identifical.

Let me say that again: The process of creating art and creating a commercial book (movie, etc) is almost completely identical.

The process that Samuel L. Jackson and the director and the writer and all the other actors in "Snakes On A Plane" took is almost entirely identical to the process they would take if they had been making "Ghandi" or "Brokeback Mountain" or "Casablanca."

Yes, it's possible people will walk their way through their work. Yes, it's possible they'll do it entirely for money.

My point here is when Samuel L. and company decided to make "Snakes On A Plane" they decided they wanted a film that was scary and fun and thrilling and suspenseful and funny and designed to give laughs and shivers and screams, etc.

When everybody concerned went about making "Brokeback Mountain," they weren't looking to make scary and fun and thrilling and suspenseful; they were intent on raising another set of emotions and moving people to think and to feel a certain thing.

The PROCESS is essentially the same. The INTENTION is different.

And for the record, I've never seen "Brokeback Mountain," because it's not my type of movie, ie., a romance (the gay theme doesn't bother me). I love romantic comedies, but straight romances, like "The Horse Whisperer" leave me cold. For that matter, I’ve never seen "Snakes On A Plane." Although I love thrillers, I hate snakes. Yeah, me and Indiana Jones. Although the snakes in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" don't bother me that much, I can guarantee you that I would have a hard time with "Snakes On A Plane" and all its POV shots of slithering snakes. It's a family joke: "Let's drag Dad into the reptile house at the Detroit Zoo."

Pssssst - Thank you, Mark, for taking the time to write such an awesome article for my little blog...

I'm sure Mark will be by in comments, so please feel free to extend the conversation - I loves that...

How Do You Know When You've Found Your Voice?

There’s a lot about writing that seems almost mystical – to people who don’t write, and even to those of us breathing in this damn, frustrating, lovely, mind-sucking, hole of death what we call writing.

One of the things you hear most often is VOICE. Big sparkly letters here, because that’s the onus us writing folk put on voice. It’s kind of like literary fiction – no one can tell you how to do it, but we sure the fuck know it when we see it. And then we get even more confusing about it – insisting that an author not only capture his or her own distinctive voice, but also capture each character’s voice. And the character’s voice has to be separate from the writer’s voice… and each character has to have their own voice so that you don’t have cardboard bullshit characters… oh, and don’t use any petty trickery or overused catch-phrases so that your reader literally rolls their eyes and tosses your book in a moldy laundry pile rather than finish it. We talk non-stop about craft and technique and grammar. We beat other works about the head and ears for feats of stupidity or, worse, purple prose.

Can you hear my voice? I bet you can. I can. I know it’s there and I know what it sounds like and guess what – it’s grammatically flawed as all hell. It doesn’t follow any of the rules. Okay, it follows some of the rules, but mostly by accident. You get to a point where you know them backwards and forwards and have to toss them out the window to get comfortable in your skin and say what you have to say. Because the bottom line in voice is communication. That’s it – plain and simple.

That’s all this really is – saying something. Saying something important, life changing, immortal, embarrassing, consuming, eloquent, clever, or blatant… I like blatant, myself. It often has a dry wit all its own. That’s all we’re trying to do here, whether it’s through articles or blog posts or works of fiction. We’re saying something – and in order to communicate, if you’re really good at it, you need to make sure your audience gets it. If your audience is full of high brow fancy schmancy types… go get a thesaurus so they don’t feel slighted by your mundane language – and leave your fucking profanity at the door. If your audience is full of deep thinkers, be more concerned with the ideas than the way they’re couched – deep thinkers don’t care what it looks like to the outside world. They’re not in it to impress anyone else. They want the essence of a story or idea that will make their mind take off… say it in pig latin, if it’s brilliant, they’ll still go with you.

But what you’re saying seems beside the point when you’re talking about voice, right? It’s part of it, but I’ll get back to that. Voice is most often categorized as the flavor of the way you say things, kind of like an accent on the page. And yeah, I can hear New York or Southern Charm, or an Irish Brogue. But it’s not just that.

Remember when you were in high school? Remember when you wanted all the cool kids to like you, or when you started digging combat boots and dyed your hair and spoke in Violent Femmes lyrics? Remember when you stole little phrases from rock stars or friends that were just too fucking cool? Remember that kid, teetering on the curb, trying to get his bearings and up his courage to walk in the middle of the road, pretty as you fucking please? That kid. The one who wanted to be someone special, but didn’t know quite how to get there so he borrowed bits from here and there and adapted other bits that might have been his or maybe they were scrapped up from somewhere else… and he wore them like a mantle of independent thinking – just like everybody else.

Yeah, well if your voice is that – you’re doing it wrong.

The problem with that kid is he was playing at being someone other people might admire. He wasn’t there yet. His confidence was low and his braggadocio was borrowed. That’s not where your voice comes from. You can’t borrow someone else’s… scratch that, you can, actually… if you’ve got a really good ear for language (and if you’re a writer, we’ll assume that you do), you can, in fact, mimic another writer… another person… adopt it and wear it and put it out there… but you won’t have developed YOUR voice.

And they’ll tell you that no one can help you find your voice. There are no instructions to get there or develop it or bring it out. Which is probably true – every journey seems to be as different as every writer. A writer friend recently told me that he could tell that I turned a corner. That my writing voice was the strongest he’d ever seen it. That I was ready. And I think I am. I am more confident in my writing and my voice than I ever was before. So how did I get there? I stopped giving a shit about any of the people who were not going to “get” me. That was it. That simple. I stopped tempering my language because people who don’t know me might mistake my profanity for ignorance. I stopped rethinking overlarge words that fit or mundane words that weren’t impressive enough, and I said what I had to say… and then I edited the hell out of it. (Anyone who tells you voice is natural and comes with no editing is a moron… writing is more editing than writing… when I find a writer who doesn’t follow that, I don’t want to read them.)

Oh, and what you have to say… remember? I said we’d get back to that. Voice and theme go hand in hand as far as I can tell. And some writers have more than one theme that they work with, some may not pay any attention to it at all… they’re just telling a story and don’t notice that their stories all have the same finite number of themes. YOU have something to say. You wouldn’t be writing if you didn’t have anything to say. There is something deeper to this profession than sheer love of words… and yeah, that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole. If I only loved the words, I’d be perfectly content to devour great works by other authors. But it’s not only that with us, we have something to say, and that something, whether deep or frivolous, something to move us or move mountains, something just to make us laugh, that’s as imperative to our voice as the way we turn a phrase. You just can’t have a voice with nothing to vocalize… it would just be a hum, or a moan, or a whimper.

So how did you find your voice? And what have you got to say? Figured out your themes yet?

Manufacturing Time

Some time ago, the awesomeness that is Stephen Parrish, posted a personal story and asked for his readers’ stories in return. I read his post and it moved me, and instead of posting, I sent him an email… the funny thing was, as I was sending him an essay length personal story for no reason other than it struck me, Stephen was sending me a simple, “Doing okay over there?” out of the blue.

Because he’s one of the good ones. One of those writer friends who knows when the rest of the world is beating your ass and takes the time to tell you to get over it and write already.

He wrote me back to tell me to publish that essay. To put it out there. I don’t take things Stephen says about writing lightly. I’ve never seen him compliment anything that didn’t have extreme merit, so on that note it did what Stephen always does – made me feel like writing.

My status update today on facebook was, “wishes I could figure out how to manufacture more time in a day”. And lately I’ve been downright whiney about my lack of time which has culminated in an absence of writing which sometimes feels like a lack of air. The stories are still there, the characters still knock on my eyeballs and kick around the cobwebbed corridors in my noggin… but they’re getting softer, harder to hear, farther away from lack of listening. Pretty soon they’ll find windows to break in someone else’s head… okay, maybe not, but I think it’s like a muscle. Writing isn’t all muse and fluff and magical inspiration. It’s sit in the fucking chair, get your shit together, and do the work. When you can’t find the time to do that, you have to make it.

Yes, I can manufacture time. Twenty minutes later to bed, a half an hour earlier in the morning… less facebook, more Microsoft word. I’ve done this before. Gone without sleep to write. Gone without tv or social time or whatever… And I logged back into facebook today, and saw that quote up on my page and thought, “Well, hell, you whiney bitch, what’s wrong with right now?”

So it starts with a blog post. While dinner’s on the stove… I’m not allowing myself sleep until I hit a decent word count. Time to stop lamenting the woes of my little corner of the world and get on with it… that’s the one thing about being creative by nature... you have to find the wherewithal to push yourself. No one else will do it; no one else cares if you make it. It’s up to you to manufacture your time.

Where do you find the time? Is it a routine or whenever the fancy strikes? And do you wait for the elusive muse, or hog tie her ass and make her stick around til the word count is in?

Laugh and the World Laughs With You. Cry and You Cry Alone

That’s one of those little ditties we all heard growing up… and it’s kind of true. There are those friends who, when you’ve hit that rough patch, will move hell and high water to make you smile. Who can find joy, even in the worst of times and somehow let it rub off on you. We loves them. We aspire to be one of them. But you’ll notice that those friends are far and few between. Most people will scatter to the wind, and let you deal with your stuff on your own and come back around when your mood is better and the world is righted. Because no one really wants to stand ringside for the bloody massacre – and in their cowardly defense, when you wallow in it and can’t find your joy, you become a psychic vampire who drags everyone around you down to your dark place. And most people can’t function and find joy with all of that.

On the surface, fiction seems like it works differently. (Doesn’t it always?) We look for high emotion, we strive to infuse every page with conflict and, of course, conflict suggests more pain than joy. But dig beneath the surface. Yeah, man, put your character through the paces, make his world crumble and make a good portion of it through his own faulty choices. Make him squirm. BUT – don’t let him whine about it. See, there’s the balance. It’s not the fact that the world is crumbling that makes us read, root, breathe it in – it’s the fact that this character is so extraordinary that he never lets it beat him.

There were a bunch of people who complained about the fifth Harry Potter book. The character went in a new and darker direction. Some of the battles he had already faced started wearing on him, compounded by the fact that he was a moody teenager. I think it was well done, because really, there’s no way that character got where he was and didn’t show signs of wear – it wouldn’t have felt right, and I think it was a good choice for the author altogether. BUT – she’d earned our attention through four previous novels of building this world and our relationship with these people. THAT wouldn’t have worked in a first novel. We wouldn’t have known him well enough. We would’ve thrown our hands up and said, “Get over it already!”

When someone tells me that something I wrote made them cry, I have to admit I get a little jolt of happy. Not because I made them sad, but because my words moved them. It’s not easy to move people armed with little more than your warped thoughts and manner of painting in language. And that’s the whole goal for me in writing, to bring the reader in and make them feel something; to know they walk away with a new perspective, a poetic phrase, a blooming thought to be dissected at their leisure. I want to do for them what a million writers before have done for me. It’s a lofty goal when you think about it.

Where life and fiction intersect is the place I think you have to keep your eyes on to do this. Fiction is high conflict. You’re barreling into all of the things you’d avoid in your real life. But fiction doesn’t whine (which you’d likely do if faced with some of the paces your characters go through). You can’t root for a character who takes to their bed and sobs. For the same reason many a fair weather friend will take a powder when you hit that patch in your real life – I told you it intersected. We follow characters who are in some way extraordinary. They don’t get through it unscathed, but they get through it without losing their spirit. They do things that we would never have the courage to do in our regular lives. But sometimes I think pulling a little bit of that chutzpah from your fiction and adopting it for yourself wouldn’t be such a bad idea, either.

Thoughts? Where does fiction and life intersect for you? What rules don’t apply to fiction but apply to life… and vice versa?

Give That Drummer Something to Do

Driving in my (Awesome) Jeep yesterday, my daughter got all disgruntled with the song on the radio.

Gracie: This song is terrible. The drummer has to be bored to death.

Me: What are you talking about?

Gracie: The drummer. (Looking at me like I have two heads and one of them’s picking its nose) The drum beat, can’t you hear that?

Me: No. I hear the music and the lyrics.

Exasperated by my obvious musical stupidity, Gracie grabs two straws and starts playing air drums in the car, tapping out the beat (she was right, it was ridiculously slow) on the dash.

Gracie: (still playing, and rolling her eyes) See, that’s what the drummer is doing. That’s ALL the drummer is doing. B-o-o-o-r-i-i-n-g… I mean the words are okay. Eh, but man, you’ve gotta give that drummer something to do. When I have my rock band, we’re never going to play anything that the drummer doesn’t have fun with.

She switched the radio, screamed “This is better” and started rocking out on air drums the rest of the way home… driving with the kids is getting to be more fun as they get older, I have to say… but that’s beside the point.

With music, I don’t hear that stuff. I actually focus on the lyrics (gee, ya think?) and I can hear the beat, but I don’t break it down to different instruments. I hear music like a listener, not like a musician. But the thing is, if it’s off to the musician, it’s going to be off to the listener, we just won’t know exactly why we don’t like it. Same thing, I think, with writing.

A reader will know they don’t like something. An astute reader might even break it down into why, but they generally won’t know the fix – just the problem. And when she said this, said it was the drummer, I broke that down into characters.

For me, good fiction is character driven. That’s a lot of hoo ha, everyone says that. But the truth is, the characters can’t be different extensions of one writer. They have to be individuals that come together with their own complexity to bring you the full arc of an overall story. If any of them are “off” it compromises the whole. There are a lot of balls to juggle, or beats to hit if we’re staying with the drum analogy.

With the novel I’m currently working on, the one affectionately known as The WIP What Killed Me, I have a character I didn’t know was going to be as important, or as ass kickingly cool as she is, when I started… I knew she was there. She was in the original outline. But man, it wasn’t until I met her that I totally got her. The thing I’m struggling with in writing her wasn’t obvious to me. It just read wrong, rang wrong, didn’t quite hit that honest note I wanted it to. It was good. It lacked great. And she was great, I was just missing the mark with it.

And then I got it. With an offhanded music tutorial from the daughter type person. I’m not giving the drummer something to do.

Annabelle is blending in to the speech patterns and mannerisms of my main character. And in life, that happens. You adopt things from the people around you and they slightly change how you come across – your people leave their mark on you, the same way you’ll leave a mark on them. But in fiction, you can’t do that. Your reader won’t get that she’s adapting to her environment, they’ll read everyone as one voice. I had to give her back her own pattern and keep it separate from my mc.

So re-work, again… just slightly. As soon as it hit, I could see it everywhere I’d done it… everywhere her dialogue came out a little too neighborhood… everywhere she was more lax than she is… I love those dawning light moments, though. Because in all honesty, I knew there was something. But until you figure out what it is, the best you can hope for is that it’s good enough. And I don’t want good enough.

How about you guys? Have you given your drummer something to do? And what have you learned in life that translated to an aha moment in your writing?

Talk is Cheap

Most of the time, telling someone what you’re going to do doesn’t go over so well.

“I’m going to write the great American novel.”

If they’re polite, they’ll murmur words of encouragement. If you watch really close, they’re trying not to laugh in your face. This is mostly your fault. You’ve dumped this lofty goal on their head with nothing to back it up.

Of course, creative people know that non-creative people don’t always understand our goals. They use words like pipe-dream and delusions of grandeur. Most people stop being so cynical your creative ambitions once you’ve reached this level or that level, though not always. Creative people aren’t the only people these rules apply to, though, they apply to everyone.

The guy who talks endlessly about gardening, telling you where each vegetable and flower should be planted, but he doesn’t have a garden. The guy who can tell you brick by brick how he’s going to build a fabulous new addition, but five years later there’s not a lick of work done... he’s still talking about it, though.

With big dreams and goals, it does help to plan out how you’re going to get there. It does help to have people to bounce your progress off of and who support you. But it’s a fine line – are you talking about it, or are you working toward it? If the act of discussing it diminishes the drive to do it in any way, go out and buy some duct tape and apply it to your mouth. You’ll thank me later.

Talk is cheap in life – telling someone what you’re going to do has little impact. Showing them what you’ve done speaks volumes. The same rule applies to fiction. This, of course, directly correlates to the oft-repeated Show, Don’t Tell thing. But I’m finding that, show, don’t tell, is more nuanced than I realized at first.

I’ll use first person as an example. First person can be comfortable and awesome to read. You sink into it and it almost feels like this great friend is leading you through the story, when the author is very capable. And because it’s comfortable and easy to read, it looks a lot easier to write than it is. There are limitations with first person that can be hard to get around and I notice that some authors take short cuts to get over this. They tell.

You’re in the main character’s head already, so instead of writing out scenes of importance, the character tells you what happened. Or worse, they tell you what they feel, and if the character has a good enough voice, it can keep the reader in it for a while, but it diminishes the impact of the story. It’s just not believable. Most people don’t talk to themselves in such detail that another person (if they could listen in to your head) would know what the hell you’re talking about). So using internal thoughts to drop backstory, or give foreshadowing, or tell us what the character’s real motives, etc. etc... it doesn’t ring true. First of all, we don’t explain what we already know to ourselves. Second, and probably more important, most people aren’t that honest with themselves – we don’t always understand our own real motives. When we do understand our own motives, we don’t always admit to them.

But from the story standpoint, the most important thing is the effect this has on the reader. Showing them the reactions, scenes, little hints of what your character is about is how your reader engages in your story. If you tell them everything, they don’t get the fun of figuring it out, of playing along, of getting to know your character. Whether intentional or not, it reads as a lack of confidence in your readers’ ability to understand the story. And there’s nothing quite worse than getting the feeling the author thinks you’re stupid.

I haven’t yet mastered first person writing – not sure if it’s just not my speed as a writer or if I just haven’t worked on a story it’s a good fit for yet. I tend to be more comfortable with close third person, but the same foibles apply here. If you go on long winding internal dialogue in close third, it’ll take the same things away from the story.

How about you? Do you notice some of these ‘tells’ in your favorite books or in your own work? And do you find talking about your work in progress is a good way to work out the kinks or does it just diminish your urge to write it?

Let Me Pick Your Brains... but, you know, not in the Zombie way...

Okay, normally I don’t do this, but I want to talk a bit about my current WIP. Mostly because I want some opinions, discussions, verbal lashings if needed – and who better to get them from than the peoples who people my blog? So, if you’re a writer, editor, reader, or just unbelievably opinionated, I’d love to hear what you think:

So, here’s the dealie – I’m currently breaking a cardinal rule. Okay, it might not be a cardinal rule but it’s definitely something YA writers are admonished NOT to do. I’ve set my wip in the early 90’s... yes, yes, that also happens to be the same time period that I was the age of my characters... go ahead, make fun.

Here’s the thing, it’s actually harder for me to write it in that time period than it would be to make it current. The admonishment is generally directed at writers who set YA during their own childhood to make it easier for them, so they don’t have to immerse themselves in current trends, languages, etc. I’m actually better immersed in today’s YA world than I am in the one I grew up in. For the time period I’m writing in, I’ve had to do a lot of research, because, honestly, I didn’t remember when what fad took over. Speech is another thing that’s hard to master, because in your memory, all of those catchy little teenage phrases blend together.

I’ve been batting this back and forth since starting this wip. My feeling is that it needs to be set in that time period. That’s where these characters and their neighborhood’s story take place. The other thing is that we need to see where these characters end up, as adults. We need to see the impact of these events on their whole life – what paths did they choose, and how did the choices they made during the heart of the story impact them? That’s the whole scope of the story, to me, the larger repercussions and the impact on the whole. Without knowing the entire plot and characters, this might sound kind of convoluted. But that’s another reason I want it set back aways – the meat of the story takes place in the past, but the end of the novel is current day.

I suppose I could write the meat of the novel current day and still end it that way, staying away from too much heavy description of the time period for their future selves. And I’ve had that in mind ever since starting, that I might have to go back and rewrite, pulling them out of that time-period and into the current one.

But I’m kind of leaning toward breaking the rules. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard great agents and editors say not to set your YA in the 80’s (close enough). So that I know, when it comes time to query, I may already have a mark against me.

So, what do you guys think? Is it ever okay to break that type of a rule? Am I just giving myself excuses to keep it in the timeframe I want it in? Or does it all hinge on the execution? I know there are examples of this working – Stephen King’s The Body, which became Stand By Me was set in the 60’s but written in the 80’s. BUT he was already Stephen KING!!! I don’t want to set up even more roadblocks for myself. At the same time, I really love this story and I don’t want to dilute it for the sake of a sale, either.

So what’s your take? Have you ever broken a rule that improved your work? Have you ever broken a rule out of sheer stubbornness that on retrospect hurt your work? Am I just obsessing over silliness when I should be pushing out pages? (Yeah, yeah, I’m getting back to work right now.)

Today’s a great day to do an uplifting post. The last one I wrote was a rant, which actually felt really good and cathartic. But I thought it might be a good idea to remind myself why we would crawl through glass rather than give up this very hard profession.

So, for your reading amusement:

My Top Ten Reasons Why Writing Fiction Rocks

10. The only numbers you have to worry about are page numbers and word count – and MS Word takes care of that for you.

9. When one of your characters pisses you off, you can get even with him in all sorts of diabolical ways – try that with your coworkers.

8. Seriously, when else will you get to plot a bank heist and not wind up arrested?

7. In normal society, when you sit around talking to yourself, they call you crazy. When you tell them you’re a writer, you become, ‘creative’.

6. You can strike fear in the hearts of friends and acquaintances by hinting that they’ll be included in your novel. (They all think they’ll be included either way, of course).

5. A writer’s daily adventure is only limited by his or her imagination. Pirate play, anyone?

4. You can wade waist deep in books and information on any topic that catches your passion – and it’s called research!!! Come on, how much cooler does it get?

3. You can populate your story with the most colorful, loyal, witty, amazing people you’ll ever meet – and then you get to hang out with them and call it work!

2. There is no dress code for writing fiction.

1. Writing gives you a chance to make sense of the story. It doesn’t replace life, but it makes the experience of living more powerful.

What reasons make your list? And have you done any writing today?

Why is the Song, Loser , Running Through My Mind?

Soy un perdedor.... I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me.... Well, you all get the idea....

So, missed my out date on Raskin’s Wings and the first word I could think of starts with a big fat F....

Not that one... well, okay, that one, too.

Failure: Breakfast of Champions

January was like a friggin’ brick wall for me... I swear it was. Every time I thought I was making progress some other stupid thing took my attention away from where it needed to be...

In the last few weeks I’ve run across posts by other writers, such as Tena’s fond farewell at In Her Write Mind, telling us that blogging was getting in the way of her work and so, she’ll be back but not until the work is done...

Josephine has been covering her meeting with uber agent, Donald Maass (cue choirs of angels singing), and her first post made me giddy... for a second, and then I realized, yes, this blogging thing really does scratch my itch... worse still, I’m not even under the delusion that this blog will be adequate platform to attract readers – if I thought that, I’d watch my mouth a lot more.

I could give you a list of reasons why the novel is not complete... I have them, believe me, and yet, I fit in time to puts around on the computer... so obviously, I was not so busy that I couldn’t have done it, or at least done more. And yeah, I did a few productive writing things this month. I submitted my pitch, jacket copy, etc for Moonrat’s awesome contest, which brings me one step closer to query ready.... I sent out two things on submission.... I put myself out there a bit more than I was... but the novel is not done and that was the priority...

(Pssst.... are any of you worried that I’m calling it quits?) I’m not. Can’t do it – I’ve gained far more from blogging than any other avenue of writing improvement, so no, I’m not calling it quits. I’m not even calling it hiatus, though I probably should. I stayed largely away from blogland this week and did a bit more writing and a lot of soul searching.... I abstained from Nathan’s Attempt To Bring Down Blogger, for God’s sake, I must have been serious... By the way, I missed most of the whole anonymice sniping about critique over there, but I still think Josie, JJdebenedictis, and a few other selfless writers from that thread should get standing ovations and bloggy kudos just for the effort. I know Josie was a bit miffed by the results there – but, for what’s it’s worth, most of the commentary I read was posted by people who wanted and appreciated the effort.... (okay, caught me... I read it, but I didn’t comment and return a million times)

The other thing I did this week was run across an old friend at myspace. How that happened I have no idea, but he was about my favorite person in the world back when I was twenty... we exchanged a few emails and the like and all of that’s nice, but what it really did was remind me of me at twenty... (gee, a little narcissistic, am I?) I should re-phrase this in case he’s reading, a side effect of talking to him again was being reminded of myself at twenty – I’m very happy we touched base in the here and now. Anyhoo....

At twenty, I thought I knew everything... now I realize that I know very little in the grand scheme of things.

At twenty, I used to say, ‘I just want to be worshipped, is that too much to ask?’ – I was only half kidding... now I think that would just be creepy... *shivers*

At twenty, I wanted to be a writer... never with grand plans of million dollar advances and legions of fans, I just saw this great future where my days were spent at my word processor (see how friggin’ long ago that was?) and afternoons or evenings out with friends... I’d have time in the day to drink coffee and read at my favorite place (I had one of those in my head, too) and I’d make up for it with long sessions of writing through the night......

I still have that last one – that’s why it sprang so readily to mind... at twenty I knew I wanted a family, but it was an abstract thought and not a reality in my little ‘I’m going to write for a living even if I have to live on saltines’ fantasy... they are obviously a part of the equation now and don’t really allow time for afternoon coffees, or writing through nights without payback the next day... but still, it’s largely the same in my little noggin and I think I owe it to myself, nearly fifteen years later than I thought, to really aim, really give it a shot.

Failure is not a problem. Failure does one of two things – it either makes you stronger or it defeats you... I’m not the second one. I know I’m not, I just don’t have it in me to lie down. I’ve made a lot of great progress over the last fifteen years, in my life and in my writing... if I hadn’t started my family over ten years ago, well, I wouldn’t be here – in any sense, I wouldn’t be able to write with the depth I’ve attained through my own experiences... it’s not the only way to achieve depth, but it’s not a part of the journey I’d give up... it’s also a path that makes the writing harder.... for a bevy of reasons that any working mother can explain.... add to it the fact that there’s no guaranteed paycheck and you have a job no one else takes seriously on top of everything else... Will that make me quit? No. I told you earlier, I’m not a quitter... this year is starting really rocky for me, it’s been a rough few, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to give this my full effort without going back into the workforce for the paycheck... because that’s a consideration, too...

But whatever else happens, I’ll finish this one and I’ll start on the next... now’s the time to do it in earnest... so I just wanted to let you guys know, I haven’t abandoned blogland... I will be around, if less frequently... I will post, when I can get to it.... I’m still here – just a bit quieter.

Okie-dokie.... if you made it all the way to the end of this long and rambling little purging of mine, thanks for the ear... keep up the hard work, and I’ll stop in to visit when I can.... Take care guys.......

Not My Baby!!!!

I’ve seen whole series of blog posts and articles lately that discuss writing as an author’s baby... This is not a new analogy and it’s not an altogether bad one, either... the creation of a novel is a very long and difficult journey and I can see how an author will come to love their work and words in an overpowering way...

When your love for your words, though, gets in the way of the story it’s time to decide what exactly it is that you’re doing... I’ve seen editors discuss how an author, whose word count is double what is reasonably feasible, refuses to cut even one single syllable from his monstrosity... yes, they’re his babies, but we’ve all met kids that were monsters... (Liar! You have too!)

So here, for your pleasure, amusement, and perhaps legitimate ponderings, are the top ten reasons ...

Why My Novel Is Not My Baby

10. I can’t edit my children. I’ve tried and they’ll have none of it. Besides, if I chopped off aspects and pieces of my real children, people would frown on it... if I didn’t do it with my fiction, editors would run screaming in the night... or send ‘Dear Writer’ rejections...

9. I have never felt the need to make my children more active.

8. If we could ‘plot’ our children, no one would ever become a bum or miscreant, and then what the hell would we write about?

7. I have never yet felt the need to raise the conflict on my children... parenting is conflicting enough – I would prefer it in passive voice if I could pick it (see reason number 9)...

6. No matter how wildly successful any of my novels become, they will never love me back.

5. I’ll tell you right now, there will never come a day when I think a sex scene might spice up my kids’ lives, not when they’re forty, not when I’m dead... I shall refuse to admit I even read such stuff so they can walk through their ultra cool lives without the need for a shrink.

4. I will never stay up nights worrying about when my novel will get her ass home.

3. My novel may someday spawn sequels, but it will never give me grandchildren... okay, that’s not a guarantee with kids either, but I’ve got a better shot there.

2. There is no trauma in my novel that I can’t fix myself... it is completely up to my writing, craft and work ethic to turn my fiction into the best story I can tell – if only that were true with children... what wouldn’t I give to be in full control over their health and well being.

1. I might joke, but I would never sell my kids... No one on the planet has that kind of money...

WRITE NOW!!!!!!

So, I’ve been kicking myself in the head the past few months over my lack of productivity in the writing arena, read as, lack of actually getting paid for my glorious prose... lack of definitive motion in my seemingly stalled career... and lack of time, not that I’m in charge of the world clock or anything but I figure I should be able to finagle extra hours into a day, ala (insert favorite mystical magical creature here).

On the valid excuse end of things – those excuses, they do tend to look valid when you say them often enough – summer was rough on me time wise as the kids were home, all three of them, which not only meant constant work for me, it also meant baseball, softball, swim lessons daily, going to the pool, park, zoo, and playdates.... see, I’m good at this excuse thing. Did I write at all this summer? Yes, actually. In my journal while waiting for their swim lessons to end, in the car while they were running amok at baseball, softball, etc... and in the wee hours of the morning or night when I could fit it in.... but not steady, not real hours, not eight hour stints that I so god awful long for.... urghhh....

Christina Katz gave a reading at Columbia College here in Chicago over the weekend and, lack of childcare and too many things to accomplish before school on Monday made me forego the event. Could I have gotten a sitter if I tried hard enough? Yes, actually I probably could have gotten either my mom or my mom in law. Why didn’t I? I wasn’t bloody ready. That’s what I’ve come up with. I wanted to be there, around other writers, especially Ms. Katz as I love her book and want to take one of her upcoming classes...

It’s not procrastination exactly, because I’ve been writing. Really, I have. What I haven’t been doing is taking the step that brings that hard earned work out into the market place, and really what good is it to write what no one else will ever read? So, I’ve thought about this really hard over the past day or so and decided that I have to set concrete goals and push forward. Whether it’s fear, or procrastination, or lack of time, the time for excuses is over. It’s time. Write Now.

I’ve set a schedule for myself that allows time to research markets, time to work on a current short, essay, or article, and time to barrel through the damn revisions (hold me to this – badger me in blog land, when you see me leaving a comment, ask me if I’ve put in an hour on my wip today, ask me if I’m ready for query, tell me to sit my ass down and write!!!!)

Just as a sort of pat on the back, I took my own motivational rant to heart – I re-read and edited the story I wrote a few weeks ago (thank you, Ello and Shelly, for being my very valued beta readers) and submitted it today, to Glimmer Train, no less... I know, the odds there are astronomical, but it’s out on submission, the worst they can say is no... Tomorrow I’m spending a half an hour researching other markets for that piece to stick in the file with it, then it’s on to the next thing... I’ve picked the next short to re-write, and I’m working my way through Mama Writer each night, too... Most important, though, at least one hour – more when I can get them – on my novel...

To hell with whatever’s been holding me back. Writing’s not enough if it never leaves my own little desk... I’ve promised myself one hour on the novel a day, minimum, and one short or article submission a week (or four a month, however it works out that gives me enough time to let it breathe and edit... but a minimum of four a month) I’ve also promised myself that each submission will entail a list of possible publications so that I can send the next submission the minute a rejection comes in... How about you guys? Are you writing? Are you submitting? Do you need a kick in the pants or a few kind words? And what’s your stumbling block, is it in the writing, or editing, or submission process? Thanks for reading my little rant... good luck with your writing, and your submissions.... Get it out there, people.

Writing in School

Jessica at BookEnds posted a great article on Editors and what it is exactly they do. Part of the conversation wound around to the argument that they spend too much time in school teaching grammar and sentence diagramming but fail to teach students how to write – to a rousing bit of agreement by the readers. While I see the point, I have to respectfully disagree.

They do teach writing skills in grade school and high school. What they teach is academic writing, and while discussing the failings of the public school system in preparing young minds is too lengthy a subject for this particular post – I’d just like to diverge for one minute to say, the information is there, the responsibility falls on the parent to make certain their children take advantage of the education... sorry folks, I know it’s easy to blame a failing system. The truth of the matter is, without parental involvement all but the heartiest students will fall short of their potential... this is true whether you want to believe it or not. Some schools are better equipped with better curriculum, but the key factor in success is a parent who not only shows their child that they feel education is important but takes any steps necessary to make certain their child stays challenged, involved, and stimulated... and, no, I’m not a teacher.

Okay, enough of the side rants. The question is whether high school teaches writing... yes, it does. They teach academic writing, which is imperative for anyone who wants to write a concise essay, business letter, or any type of correspondence with any sort of intelligence. Essentially, the high school focuses on writing skills that everyone needs to excel in their future – not fiction writing, which only a small population needs to excel. What’s the difference between academic writing and fiction writing? Ask any editor and they can tell you rather quickly.

Academic writing is largely passive. It’s useful in every area, from higher academic course work to business affairs and, by the way, is also imperative for the fiction writers among us who do need professional business skills in order to sell their creative prose in the publishing market place. Fiction writing, on the other hand, is largely active. Fiction writing’s focus is on telling the story, evoking the scene and emotions in a realistic way, and compelling your reader to experience both the characters and the action. It is a special writing skill and it is not taught in normal coursework largely because it is not needed for the majority of the students – though it would make a fabulous elective... My high school had creative writing, which was similar to fiction writing in that the grammar rules weren’t the focus. It was a wonderful class, but it wasn’t so much a teaching of fiction writing but the teacher did encourage my reading and use of dialect in stories, which, of course, is frowned on in academic writing.

Here’s my take on what’s being taught in high school. Academic writing is necessary for anyone who wishes to pursue higher education or a professional life. Fiction writing is not. If taught, it should be taught as an elective, and I think that would be a fabulous outlet that I would definitely have taken advantage of... but artwork, fiction writing, music, while valuable and worthwhile classes for the future artists who will take them will not serve to help the students who don’t want to learn them... Remember high school? How many kids took your art class as a blow off? About half of my art classes, and it was annoying to those of us who really took it seriously.

Okay, so that’s my take. No, most students don’t learn fiction writing in high school, unless they are learning it outside of school. But fiction writing is both a craft and an art form and, if you study artists you’ll find that most of them enhance their craft in a multitude of places, but never exclusively from any class or school.

Lightning or Lightning Bugs?

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” -- Mark Twain

Mark Twain said it best, doesn’t he usually? While the budding author often finds words falling unbidden and beautifully at first stroke, it takes editing, more editing and pounding of the head off unassuming objects to clean up that first stroke of genius. But then, there are those scenes which simply will not conform to the vision in your head.

Have you done this? Have you ever had the most gorgeous scenario flowing through your brain only to sit down at the keyboard and release complete and utter drivel? I have. I hate that. And this phrase of Twain’s encompasses it so completely. I know what the mood is, the setting, the character’s disposition, but try as I might the words fall short. The more I try to describe the scene accurately, the more it loses the luster of first inception...

With my own writing, I find the problem is often one of overwriting. Too much petty detail where one or two strong, evocative words would have accomplished the feat much more accurately and given the reader something more to ponder, or sink their teeth into. This all was brought to mind very vividly last week, when Nathan Bransford held a first line challenge which captivated a large portion of the online writing community.

I noticed a number of writers who simply could not keep their entries to one line. In a few instances, I think the second lines made the prose more effective. For the most part, though, whole paragraphs weren’t necessary for this particular writing contest. As I read through them, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the authors were suffering from the same lack of confidence which I find myself constantly fighting in my own writing.

Hello. My name is Merry, and I’m a spoon feeder.

I’ve learned enough about my process, my writing, and where I’d like my writing to evolve to know the reason that I spoon feed. It’s not because I underestimate the reader – though I think over explanation can come across as a lack of respect for the reader’s intelligence. Whenever I am over explaining in my writing, it’s a sure sign that I’m underestimating my own ability to accurately depict the story. Spoon feeding, for me, has little to do with anything but my own need to relay all of the information that I know, so I won’t be leaving my reader in the dark. In reality, I know the subtlety of the story is what makes it fun, it’s what makes it possible for the readers to experience the story and own my characters. And that, for me, is the point of good writing.

So back to Mr. Twain’s eloquent quote – a string of mediocre descriptions can never deliver what the perfect words can do. This phrase is going next to my monitor, right underneath my handwritten admonishment, “No Spoon Feeding”... I look at it often, I’m not sure it’s helping, but I’m still trying.

How about you? What’s your greatest writing challenge at this stage? Which ones have you gotten past, and what have you become great at?

A Case for Writing from the Heart

Today’s Chicago Tribune held an interesting article about a fellow blogger – imagine that! Dawn Meehan is a mother of six and the proud author of Because I Said So. According to the article, Ms. Meehan started her blog two years ago after her mother gave her a list of ideas for making extra money – one of them being blogging. It started innocently enough, posting fun and humorous stories to go along with items she was selling on eBay and flourished into a well loved blog which shows the humor in a profession that largely gets overlooked; motherhood.

Today Ms. Meehan is being sought by numerous literary agents in hopes of a book and a major network wants her to pen a series based on her posts. How’s that for an amazing turn in career? All of this from a woman who had a natural talent for writing and was looking for a little extra income to help raise her family but, what I noticed more than anything in this story is that the blog itself is fun and humorous and it was that voice and love of subject matter that captured an audience’s attention.

Over my two years dabbling with blogs and meeting people online I’ve run into quite a few useful ideas on how to build a writing career. Often the goal is less lofty than the one I’d envisioned when I set about learning the craft of writing. For a while there I got caught up on the idea of making a full time income freelancing, and I did make a good deal of headway; going from nothing to $1,000.00 a month in a matter of weeks really. When I stopped actively pursuing clients it was largely because I hated the writing. Yes, you can find clients online. Yes, you can build clips and go from there... but I hated the SEO articles and copy that was largely spam. I hated the fact that there was more emphasis on keywords than content and I hated the fact that many clients expected to pay a pittance for my time and talent.... More than that, though, it bothered me that so many of these clients were assigning articles and e-books that are surely marketed as reliable expert sources to people whose credentials for the information are no where near reliable.

In my time freelancing I both wrote and edited a number of things that I had no previous expertise in and I was never given any research or information on those things. I would do the research myself and, while I feel that my abilities to write accurately on most subjects is far above par, I had a problem with the fact that I was handing over this copy to someone who would market it as expert advice on medical conditions – after all, I had no control over whether or not it was checked by a doctor or even if it was edited well.

I know a number of freelance writers who make a bulk of their living from this work and are very happy with it – and I think that’s wonderful for them. For me, though, that kind of writing became a drudgery that was worse than working at some counter or office might be. My down time wasn’t spent working on my fiction because the freelancing took the urgency from my writing. And seeing a story like that of Dawn Meehan reinforces my reasoning for retiring from the web content race.... while I can make a living from freelancing anonymously, I’ll never meet with the success I aspire to by my words. There is a need to pay the bills, don’t get me wrong, but I’ll take the delayed payment because I would rather give my best shot to the fiction than short change myself by making the one thing I love to do best become a chore.

Do I think this path of writing what I love will lead to the physical success of Ms. Meehan? I’m not counting on it, though I think it’s fantastic for her. But success for me isn’t nearly so hard to reach – a novel I’m proud of that really speaks to the reader and a career writing what I love, even if it means a real job to pay the bills while I do it... For me, success isn’t in the paycheck (though I wouldn’t turn one down). Success can’t be measured by my bank balance... and, frankly, the kind of writing that pays today wouldn’t make me well paid because I’m just not that kind of a writer.

There are a lot of writers that make a good living off of fast writing and multiple articles who can tell you that they’ll finish ungodly amounts in word count a day. I can’t do it, my writing suffers under those conditions and it makes me unhappy.

How about you guys? Do you write from the heart or strictly for a check? Do you like what you do or has it become just a job? Did the dream of being a writer equal the reality of writing? No judgment here – there’s room for every type of writer and my hat’s off to anyone whose found their niche in the writing world when it makes them happy.

Talent, Tenacity, and the Achievement of Dreams

Elizabeth Joy Arnold gave some sage advice for writers on perseverance and talent over at BookEnds Blog recently. Ms. Arnold's first novel, which looks fantastic by the way, was released in July. I highly recommend checking out the blog and this author's perspective because it's well worth the time and a great little infusion of morale boosting to boot.

Which brings me to the topic of today's blog:

Talent vs. Perseverance

I think a lot of writers like to believe that it is a God given talent that makes them writers. Do I believe in talent? Abso-friggin-lutely. I do. I think every person has their own set of strengths and obstacles - we all get gifts through no effort of our own. I'll tell you what I tell my daughter - Being very smart isn't an accomplishment, it's whether or not you use that to your best ability. Having things come easily to you in any area of life is not a point of pride. You get no credit for being talented as far as I'm concerned - hard work and determination are more important... If you've put in the blood, sweat, and tears to become a better person and positively impact those around you or in the world at large, then you've earned my respect.

This doesn't mean you have to be a smashing success or best selling author - personal success, the way you impact those you touch, is more to me... but this particular blog takes the topic and puts it into writing as a field specifically.

I think talent is important in writing. I think some people are born with a better ear or more innate talent for writing. But they don't become brilliant without effort. The reason, I think, that it looks easy for them is because putting your heart and soul into an endeavor that you truly love is not a hardship. Success may not come quickly or easily, but the road there is enjoyable when you love it.

Perseverance, to me, is more important. Anyone can learn to write. Shall I say that again? (Check your ego's at the door, fellow fiction writers) ANYONE CAN LEARN TO WRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have to say, I don't know why someone without a talent or love for writing would pick such a rough field.... but yes, they can learn to write. Can you tell the difference between brilliant writing and a writer who's become good at the mechanics? I think most of us would agree that you can tell the difference.... We've all read books with that tell tale lack... which means, what? I'd say it means that author's perseverance put them ahead of all of the talented writers out there who have a million excuses for why they're not published but, if they were honest, would admit that they haven't tried as hard. I'm not saying every non-published writer isn't trying. I'm saying anyone who keeps trying and learning and writing will eventually meet with success.

Do you feel that talent is all important? Or do you feel that perseverance and luck have more to do with success?

Too Close To Tell - Oy, I hate edits today

A few weeks ago I ran my first two chapters past my writers group. We meet up for a chat about twice a month and each of us takes turns submitting our work for critique. The group found some problems that I hadn't been aware of in the first two chapters, though I'm still not convinced that I agree with the assessment...

Being that I want the novel to become as good as humanly possible, I decided to edit with the notes from that chat in mind - adding a new scene and revising some rough patches - the new scene also meant a deletion of some segments in chapter two... This has taken me the bulk of the last two weeks and it's finally done. It was the longest two weeks I have spent on this novel - possibly the hardest bit of writing I've ever done, and I can't decide if it was so hard because I was fighting the critique or if it really doesn't work.

Does it read better? Does it pull the reader in and keep them there? The truth is, I don't know. I'm too close and I can't read the damn thing one more time without bouncing my head of the desk to stop the blinding pain that infiltrates my eyes at the sight of it... okay, a little over dramatic, but barely.

I know, at this moment I'm too close to assess these revisions in any honest manner so I'm leaving off on them and going back to where I was in revisions prior to that critique. If any of you have noticed my lack of posts and visits around the blog universe as of late, now you know where I was... I should be making visits in the coming days, and hopefully posting a bit more...

How about you guys? How is your writing coming? Have you hit rough patches of revision recently or are you basking in flowing prose at the moment?

Fleshing Out Characters Through Blogging; The Mollycoddle Experiment

I posted about this at my old blog on writingup, and it sparked quite a debate... I'd like to see where the conversation goes here. There is a link to the character's blog at the end of this post and I'd love any feedback, if anyone has the time or inclination to follow all of the threads. Writingup is back at this time, though I don't know how long that will last. As I state below, the character really plays in comments... if you sign in to an account there, you can go to Mollycoddle's page and go to the tracking tab - that will show you all of the posts she commented on, and you can follow her discussions. This was originally posted in the fall of '06 - but for fiction writers it's a very good experiment, so I thought I'd post it here for a wider audience.

The Experiment

Having finished the first draft of my novel and wanting to leave it simmer for a while, I decided to pull up an old character and flesh her out. The idea was simple; start a blog from the character’s perspective and see where she goes. The novel I started for this character was in third person, and obviously the blog would have to be first person, but I thought that writing from her eyes might give me a better handle on how she thinks and who she is. I saw this challenge as something akin to method acting, becoming the character in blog the way an actor might live as their character while shooting a movie.

Mollycoddle

The character I decided to use was something of a puzzle for me. I like her, she has a lot of heart but, as a marketer might say, no hook. She’s not a writer, dancer, or impressive professional. She has no outstanding talent. She is the everyman. While I decided that a story about your average person, without the sensationalism that accompanies some of our famous literary figures, could be fantastic. The problem in the writing was that her surrounding characters became overpowering. They all had hook, they couldn’t help it really, they just were that way, but poor mollycoddle got lost in the shuffle.

Surprise, Surprise

When starting this experiment, I fully expected to flesh our little Molly out by blogging from her perspective. I half-heartedly thought that no one would notice her, lost among all the many other blogs of writingup. What I found was astounding; my character fleshed herself out; not during the course of my writing her little blogs in her first person perspective, but from chatting with all of the other bloggers here! The comments section was where she really played, suddenly she just blossomed and chatted and showed me more of her world as if it was the most natural thing.

It was fun, because there were blogs that Molly was reading that I had a reaction to, but couldn’t comment that way in her persona. Why? Because she disagreed with me. (No, I’m not schizophrenic) There were bloggers that Molly met who I had never read before, what fun it was to find some of those.

Did it work?

Did it work? Was my experiment a success? I can say it was. I know the character better, but more than that, I think she was relatively convincing as a whole person. I noticed that many of the bloggers who I had interacted with as myself, responded to Mollycoddle in a completely different way. Some took her under their wings, and were mothering and nurturing to her – which I thought was wonderful, because Molly as a person is really very lost at this juncture in her life.

That was not the intent of the experiment; to see how other bloggers reacted to her. Though that became the most profound tool in judging her success as a formed character. The difference in this type of immersion writing comes from the fact that you have to write on your feet - the character has to react, in her own mind, rather than in the writer's vantage point.

I invite all of you interested in the process of it to take a look at Mollycoddle’s Blog most especially her character in comments. I’d love to hear any feedback on how well fleshed out she is, or where I’ve fallen short (I noticed more than a few discrepancies myself), or just a discussion about the process itself.

I am ending the experiment, not because there wasn’t more to learn but because my schedule has become too hectic and I’d like to get back to my revisions, which leaves no time for Molly right now. I will, I believe, pull that character back out at another juncture, and will, of course, let you all know if she goes anywhere. Thanks for reading and I’d love to hear what you think.