On a Thursday! Those of you who have known me for a while will understand that I live in a sort of bubble that moves back and forth irregularly through the timestream. Sometimes Wednesdays happen on Thursdays. Sometimes Thursdays happen on Fridays. Very occasionally, Tuesdays happen on Mondays, but I do my best to avoid that whenever possible.
Anyway. Writing Wednesday! And confidence!
As I sit on the cozy side of the submissions desk again, one of the things that grabs my eye more often than not is confidence. Meaning, more than anything else, a willingness to be intentionally different. The Internet, the shelves of your local bookstore, and the mouths of your fellow writers are all full of advice on how to write an opening. In medias res! Start with action! Do this! Pull that! Twist here! Add a drop of lemon juice, set to 450, and cook for 25 minutes!
When you see the same elements in an opening over and over again, they get stale. I imagine that most writers-as-readers would agree. The kind of confidence I'm talking about it is a combination of the daring and the skill to say, "There's a lot of good advice out there suggesting I should jump left here. I'm going to try a misty flip instead." When I write, I try to think of it as approaching a scene from an unusual camera angle.
That's not to say that you should ignore the advice out there. It's like grammar. Learn it, then decide when and where to deviate from it for a particular purpose. But do, please, deviate from it. Imagination and beauty live in the spaces outside the normal, and experimentation is what will make you great.
Not every author who attempts a misty flip lands it. Most of them don't. Even writers who can string two or three together often don't make it to the end of a book without falling on their head a few times. But that's okay. The only way to learn how is to try, over and over again, until you get it right.
And as an editor: I notice. Even if I reject a book because the author's attempt at a double-cork 1080 takes him or her flying wildly off a cliff from which there can be no recovery, I respect the effort. It's the bold and the brash who will write the next great story.
Showing posts with label writing wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing wednesday. Show all posts
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Writing Wednesday: Writer's Block
Lately, I've been suffering from a bit of writer's block. I've been lucky enough through my writing career not to have this problem often, but it does raise its ugly head from time to time, usually when I'm stressed out about other things in my life and just can't break away mentally and focus on the story at hand.
Writer's block has about as many cures as hiccups do, and in general I've found they're about as effective. Every writer has to find his or her own way of soldiering through and getting something done in spite of it. That said, I'll share a few of the tricks up my sleeve today.
1.) Go for a walk. Most useful for temporary writer's block, of the "I really have no idea where this chapter should go next" variety. Something about the change of scenery helps get things clicking in my head and I usually come back with a solution of some kind.
2.) Listen to music. Not while writing (I gave that up long ago. I would write these great scenes to exciting music only to find that once the music was removed they weren't nearly as good), but while taking a break. A good song can calm the nerves and remind me of all the places I've been in my life that were better, worse, or just different than where I am now. Sometimes that's all I need.
3.) Read. Usually other people's work, the kind I aspire to create. It helps me figure out which direction those tracks in the sand I thought I was following were headed. I also read my own work from time to time, when I'm suffering from crises of confidence. I usually discover at least one chapter, one scene, one paragraph, that makes me think "Okay, I do have some talent. I just need to figure out how to do more of this."
In other news, as a birthday present to my father I converted the Soulwoven manuscript to MOBI last night, and I'll be uploading it onto my parents' Kindle this weekend so they can read it. I test drove it on the Kindle reading app on my girlfriend's iPad, and I have to say I was pretty excited about how professional it looked after only an hour of playing with formatting (thanks Matt Koerber, for helping me out with how to do that earlier this summer). If push comes to shove and I decide to self-publish, I'm reasonably certain that I'll be able to get it looking pretty snappy.
Writer's block has about as many cures as hiccups do, and in general I've found they're about as effective. Every writer has to find his or her own way of soldiering through and getting something done in spite of it. That said, I'll share a few of the tricks up my sleeve today.
1.) Go for a walk. Most useful for temporary writer's block, of the "I really have no idea where this chapter should go next" variety. Something about the change of scenery helps get things clicking in my head and I usually come back with a solution of some kind.
2.) Listen to music. Not while writing (I gave that up long ago. I would write these great scenes to exciting music only to find that once the music was removed they weren't nearly as good), but while taking a break. A good song can calm the nerves and remind me of all the places I've been in my life that were better, worse, or just different than where I am now. Sometimes that's all I need.
3.) Read. Usually other people's work, the kind I aspire to create. It helps me figure out which direction those tracks in the sand I thought I was following were headed. I also read my own work from time to time, when I'm suffering from crises of confidence. I usually discover at least one chapter, one scene, one paragraph, that makes me think "Okay, I do have some talent. I just need to figure out how to do more of this."
In other news, as a birthday present to my father I converted the Soulwoven manuscript to MOBI last night, and I'll be uploading it onto my parents' Kindle this weekend so they can read it. I test drove it on the Kindle reading app on my girlfriend's iPad, and I have to say I was pretty excited about how professional it looked after only an hour of playing with formatting (thanks Matt Koerber, for helping me out with how to do that earlier this summer). If push comes to shove and I decide to self-publish, I'm reasonably certain that I'll be able to get it looking pretty snappy.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Writing Wednesday: Writers, Readers, and Editors
I was originally going to write something about manuscripts again this week, and going back over them to in print versus on the screen, but I think I'll save that for another time. I went to a critique group last night, and as I was falling asleep after getting home I had a bit of an epiphany. Anyone who has had their work critiqued by more than one person will tell you that you can get vastly different feedback about the same piece by different people. Part of learning to write is learning what to do with the feedback you receive.
I'm big on feedback. I like to get as much of it as possible, and as a result I like to have all kinds of different people go over my work. And I think that I can put all of them into the broad, venn-diagramy circles of reader, editor, or writer.
This is useful because each type of person tends to give a specific kind of feedback, and knowing what to expect from a person helps you figure out to whom you should give your work depending on what you need.
Writers, I have found, tend to try to guide you towards one particular style of writing. They are people who have spent a greater-than-average amount of time thinking about writing. They will often describe it as a "craft" and have probably read at least one how-to-write book. They have found a number of things that work for them and tend to press you to adopt those same ideas. They may occasionally treat stylistic rules (active verbs are better than passive verbs) with more reverence than grammatical rules (you cannot join two independent clauses with a comma). Some of them take great joy in formulas and jargon.
Editors try to guide you towards the style they think you're shooting for or that best suits a work. They can see both sides of most stylistic issues, and their job is not to tell you which is best but to help you optimize your prose for whatever you're going for. They know the formulas and the jargon, but they have also seen their limitations and tend to be ambivalent about them. They read more amateur writing than any other group of people in the world and as such are particularly averse to certain things that are common in said writing.
Readers just read. They have never picked up a how-to-write book. They may have read a few stories for their brother or sister or friend who wanted feedback, but on the whole most writing they encounter has already been published. Some of them read a lot. Some of them read a little. They are a very diverse group of people, but they will tend to tell you things like, "This doesn't make sense," "I thought this character was a dick," or "I had no idea what was happening when the fish-monster and the shapeshifting wolphin were fighting the giant octopus on Mars." They will point out problems. They will usually refrain from trying to solve them for you.
Editors and writers often overlap. Some writers are excellent editors. Some editors fixate on one style like writers do. Regardless, there are useful things to be had from all three. Writers can help shake you out of your own dogmatic ideas about writing. At the very least, they expose you to different ways of thinking about putting words together, and every once in a while something will click and you'll get something you can use from them. Editors are extremely useful, but will probably have little time for you if your mechanics aren't sound to begin with, because they get tired of saying the same things over and over again. Readers are perhaps the most useful of all, except when you have a problem that you don't know how to solve.
In other news, its dashed cold outside and the holidays are over. I am almost finished with my final edits on Soulwoven, and it should be out the door next week. How's that for meeting a New Year's resolution?
I'm big on feedback. I like to get as much of it as possible, and as a result I like to have all kinds of different people go over my work. And I think that I can put all of them into the broad, venn-diagramy circles of reader, editor, or writer.
This is useful because each type of person tends to give a specific kind of feedback, and knowing what to expect from a person helps you figure out to whom you should give your work depending on what you need.
Writers, I have found, tend to try to guide you towards one particular style of writing. They are people who have spent a greater-than-average amount of time thinking about writing. They will often describe it as a "craft" and have probably read at least one how-to-write book. They have found a number of things that work for them and tend to press you to adopt those same ideas. They may occasionally treat stylistic rules (active verbs are better than passive verbs) with more reverence than grammatical rules (you cannot join two independent clauses with a comma). Some of them take great joy in formulas and jargon.
Editors try to guide you towards the style they think you're shooting for or that best suits a work. They can see both sides of most stylistic issues, and their job is not to tell you which is best but to help you optimize your prose for whatever you're going for. They know the formulas and the jargon, but they have also seen their limitations and tend to be ambivalent about them. They read more amateur writing than any other group of people in the world and as such are particularly averse to certain things that are common in said writing.
Readers just read. They have never picked up a how-to-write book. They may have read a few stories for their brother or sister or friend who wanted feedback, but on the whole most writing they encounter has already been published. Some of them read a lot. Some of them read a little. They are a very diverse group of people, but they will tend to tell you things like, "This doesn't make sense," "I thought this character was a dick," or "I had no idea what was happening when the fish-monster and the shapeshifting wolphin were fighting the giant octopus on Mars." They will point out problems. They will usually refrain from trying to solve them for you.
Editors and writers often overlap. Some writers are excellent editors. Some editors fixate on one style like writers do. Regardless, there are useful things to be had from all three. Writers can help shake you out of your own dogmatic ideas about writing. At the very least, they expose you to different ways of thinking about putting words together, and every once in a while something will click and you'll get something you can use from them. Editors are extremely useful, but will probably have little time for you if your mechanics aren't sound to begin with, because they get tired of saying the same things over and over again. Readers are perhaps the most useful of all, except when you have a problem that you don't know how to solve.
In other news, its dashed cold outside and the holidays are over. I am almost finished with my final edits on Soulwoven, and it should be out the door next week. How's that for meeting a New Year's resolution?
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