Coup de Plume

How I’m Doing--Not a Good Work Environment

2009-08-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

(Sorry this is a day late (and a dollar short). It's been a long week.)

Have y’all read Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem!? It’s the official handbook for NaNoWriMo. Anyway, there is a section in the book about writing at work. At my job, I have a lot of empty time, and I’ve been trying to use it for writing, because, you know, what the hell? But it turns out? Not a very good place to get down to business with writing.

In the aforementioned book, one of the things they mention is that you shouldn’t get too involved into your story. Luckily for you, the work environment doesn’t allow for you to get any deeper into your work than they suggest. The phone will ring, your e-mail will ding, and your co-workers will be jawing. At the very least, though, typing away at a word document looks a hell of a lot more productive than surfing the internets.

It’s not that I don’t have the time to write here, or even that I can’t come up with ideas (though that is a distinct problem). It’s that I can’t really get my good words and turn of phrases out while I’m here, it seems. It may be okay writing, but it stinks to high heaven to me, which is less than encouraging while I’m working.

However, it has resulted in a higher rate of blog postings, since I can write them here and post them when I go home. :)

Empathy--How to Generate it for Your Characters

2009-08-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

While it is a topic for another day, there is nothing worse than I hate in a story than an antagonist that is The Bad Guy. He’s so incorrigible, unlovable, and wholly Evil that you can’t help but hate his guts. Therefore, because you hate him for eating babies or whatever, you sympathize and root for the main characters that are going up against him in the name of all that is Good and Holy.

Blech.

I’m not going to go into why I dislike this so much today; instead, I would like to focus on the technique used here to make the reader side with The Good Guys. Here, the Bad Guy is used as a repulsion. Since you see the Bad Guy being Bad, you dislike him, which makes you side with the Good Guys. It’s like magnets. If one side pushes you away, the other will pull you closer. It’s a cheap and easy way to generate empathy in the reader for the main characters. Cheap, easy, and wholly unfulfilling.

The concept of the reader having to side with someone is born from the whole idea of having a protagonist and an antagonist. By definition, these characters are supposed to oppose each other in the main story conflict. Because of this, the reader feels pressured to side with one or the other.

There are always exceptions, of course. There are times when the two main characters have some conflict with each other and make themselves equally unsavory through their actions. An example is a recent movie I’ve seen, Bride Wars. The two main characters are best friends, but a mix-up at the wedding planner leads to them having to decide which of the two is going to relent and give up their wedding dream. At first, empathy is generated for both characters: one lost her parents in an accident, the other is a harassed teacher. But when the conflict begins between them, you are made to feel more empathetic to the character Emma, who is characterized as a pushover and even expected by the character Liv to give up her dream. Liv expects her to give up so much that she breaks their agreement to make wedding plans before one or the other gives up and begins designing her Save-the-Dates. Here, empathy is generated for Emma while empathy is lost for Liv, making Liv to seem to be the Bad Guy.

But this switches later in the film as they keep taking hits at each other until Liv’s bachelorette party at a strip club. Emma crashes it when attention is brought to Liv for being a bride, and effectively ruins it for Liv by winning the impromptu dance contest. Liv then drinks to make herself feel better, to the point where she wakes up late the next day for an important meeting at work. She even forgot that she, a lawyer, still had blue hair from her salon mix-up (caused by Emma) as she went into her meeting. Upon attention being called to it by a client, she breaks down, freaking out about everything going on with her wedding planning, her lost best friend, and the new fact that some of her blue-dyed hair is falling out. This results in her being dropped from the case, which would have been great for her career. This generates a lot of empathy for Liv and loses a large amount for Emma.

But, this is balanced out by the fact that Emma and her fiancé are having problems. He doesn’t care for her newfound confidence and even tells her to “knock it off”. This generates empathy for Emma and vilifies her fiancé, which gives Emma license at the end of the movie to call the wedding off in the middle of the ceremony (such as it can be called).

This method here of mixed empathy for two opposing characters is an exception to the protag-antag rule, and one that is used commonly: it often starts with the characters being close, having something come between them, and the two learning from the conflict and becoming even closer. But it is effective in creating empathy for both characters so that the reader (or, in this case, the watcher) does not feel like they have to take a side.

If you want your reader to side with a certain character, however, here are some techniques and examples:

Introduce your protagonist before your antagonist. A technique that spawned the writing of this post, this is especially effective if you have two opposing characters that are well-developed enough to take the side they have. This will not work if you’re going with the old model of Bad Guys and Good Guys and Good versus Evil. Instead, imagine a couple where the wife would like to have a baby, but the husband is dead set against. The wife is ready to start a family and become a mother, but the husband is afraid that a child will complicate the relationship and tie him inevitably to the woman he married. Empathy can be generated for either character, though they are in opposition, and one will have to give in and “lose”. Here, empathy is better generated for the person introduced first. If it is the wife, the husband will likely be vilified, and vice versa, though the conflict is the same. This is shown in the second part of The Gods Themselves: one character is introduced first, then another, then a third. The first and third are in opposition about having their third child. The first fears that it will mean they will pass on soon. The third wants to feel fulfillment from having all three children. But because the first character was introduced first, you side with them, and can’t help but see the third as a selfish controller.
Make the protagonist normal. This is useful if your story is a showcase of a different world or society, like in Brave New World or Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold! If the main character is more like you or me, we can’t help but empathize with him. In Brave New World, where people are born on an assembly into permanent classes and take various pleasure-pills, we have John the Savage, who is from an outsider to this society like we are as readers, and thus can show how alien he feels it is. Similarly, in Terry Brooks’s Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold!, the main character Ben Holiday purchases a kingship in a magic kingdom. He is directly from our society, rather than something similar, and thus gives us an even more descriptive account using our own concepts and understanding.
DON’T make them a victim. This is number one the worst thing you can do. Instead of creating empathy for a character, you instead make the character seem wishy-washy, and then the reader will find them frustrating. They won’t want to continue on with the story. This often shows up in amateur fiction, or even in some YA, because the age-group can sometimes feel like they are out of control of their lives and thus can relate to the main character. If your plot calls for something bad to happen to a main character, focus more on how they will try to overcome, rather than how everyone feels sorry for them.

Of course, you have to make sure that it fits into your story. Don’t just make your main character a regular schmoe just because you want the reader to empathize with him. Don’t introduce your main character first if something is supposed to happen first. But keep in mind that for your protagonist to be the one your reader empathizes, you will have to make the reader care. They won’t just care out of kindness. Make them not want to put that book down.

BookRecSunday--The Gods Themselves

2009-08-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

This week's book is The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. I picked it up at the request of the husband that I read it when I was book shopping for myself around my birthday. I have read some other Asimov books (I, Robot, Foundation, and Asimov's Mysteries) with varying degrees of love, but love it was. There is something about Asimov's writing where he knows that not everyone reading his books is a brilliant scientist, which must have come from writing books in almost every category in the Dewey decimal system!

The Gods Themselves is definitely no exception to the understandable science either; I'm only about halfway through, and the first part (Asimov's books usually have parts like that) is alost exclusive getting to know some science with a touch of interindustry discontent. The first part makes you think a lot of his Robot stories or the stories in Asimov's Mysteries, where the science is explained in a dynamic way, but allows for a little speculation on the reader's part as to how it will be solved, using the previously explained science.

I'm in the middle of the second part, which is amazing. It's all about these three aliens, and the whole thing just hits you in the face that it's different. It doesn't make any allowances for humans that find the things they do strange. Their activities are described in ways that they would understand them, and you can't help but feel immersed in the whole thing. It's like as if you left the perfectly manicured sidewalks for tourists in another location and find a little Mom-and-Pop that only locals go to, and only they know the slang. It's much more immersive than, say, if the narration took a moment every few sentences to describe what's going on. This section has faith that you'll figure it out as you go along, and because of that, you do.

Like I said, I'm only halfway through. But I would recommend this or any other Asimov story to anyone who has considered themselves a fan of science fiction.

How I'm Doing--Avoiding Work with Other Work

2009-08-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

As an extra attempt to keep up on this blog (and my own writing!), every Friday I’ll be posting how I myself am doing at my own writing. We could all talk genre and plot and structure and grammar until we’re blue in the face, but nothing really gets down to the business of writing that actually doing it.

As the title says, I have been avoiding my main writing project with another. That is not this blog, though others may argue otherwise. I have a main writing project that I had been working on in various incarnations for a long while. The current one was developed for NaNoWriMo ’06, and was an easy win. But after that, it fell by the wayside. The sense of urgency that NaNo brought that was translated into the flow of the story was inevitably lost. The story still progressed, but slowly, both in tale-time and real-time. A struggle with a single character acting outside what I thought she would do caused a several month halt. An initial ending was cast aside for a more climactic one, but the new one would require more development of a certain character and a relationship, and an upgrade from minor to major during the course of the story.

Needless to say, the story got all kinds of fucked up.

So, instead, I picked up another, more experimental story, in order to feel like I was actually working rather than avoiding the issue. This story is somewhat backwards and was born out of a conversation I had with an aunt by marriage (also a writer) about the way the popular culture’s veracity for franchises has led to the growth of the Deconstruction literary movement. Stories in books, movies, and even video games are no longer even concluded and given closure, because there is that possibility that it may prove successful and the creative power behind it pressured to release sequel after sequel in order to keep up the cashflow their distributer would like.

Fiction that falls victim to this Deconstruction starts out having a complete, final-feeling ending, but, because of success, destroys this feeling with more story. This can lead to the reader having a sense of betrayal: they feel duped into thinking that the story was over, but instead has only just started. It can also lead to plotholes, which in the Deconstruction literary movement become the goal, since they can be filled up with more story, which leads to more success.

The project I’ve been working on takes this unfortunate tendency and turns it on its head. Instead of going through the detail of how the world was saved, and then go into how it really wasn’t, I start out with the characters having already completed their first task of saving the world. So, instead of starting with a successful story and having to patch together a mediocre sequel for the fans, I’m making the “mediocre sequel” a hopefully good story on its own without any need for a prequel or sequel. In this way, the acts that took place before the story are instead backstory and are referred to in flashbacks, thoughts, and dialogue, but are not actually truly written out as its own story.

I did say it was an experiment, right?

Anyway, this experiment has been going for a while. For about 127,000 words so far. I know, I know. It’s a lot. I did say that this was work to avoid work, right?

So, that’s all about what I’ve been working on. Next week, I’ll likely go into deeper detail about what I’m working on.

Characters—A Cooking Comparison

2009-08-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

Characters are the integral part of any story; they drive the fiction with their choices, interactions, and reactions. Most trouble that people have when writing, where they say they can’t quite get something right, is usually a conflict between what the characters want and what the writer wants to happen in the course of the plot. This is a good thing: if your characters are coming alive and refusing to fit in the cubbyholes born of your plot, then you know that they are becoming authentic people.

Unfortunately, for the ease of writing, some authors will use what are called “stock characters”. Stock characters are usually based on classical literature and stereotypes. However, using characters in this way does not fool a reader. He can see through these people as if they were made of glass, because they are simple, rather than complex. These simple characters undermine a writer’s authority; once lost, the reader cannot trust the writer to continue the story truthfully. Even if you are writing fiction—especially if you are writing fiction—the reader expects the writer to convince the reader that what takes place in the story is important. This is what we call a page-turner.

Consider a soup from a can. You can easily mix this with a can of water or milk, and have a passable soup. This is fair enough for your extremely minor characters, the ones that have a line or two, or are in only one scene, and are not prominent in the story. But even this soup sometimes needs seasoning: a dash of salt, or pepper, or even some sugar or a can of mushrooms. That innkeeper that your adventuring characters encounter when they stop for the night doesn’t have to have only generic speech or appearance. He can have an accent, or you could spend some time describing how his filthy apron does not quite match the meticulous décor of the barroom. Note that this is brief and should not become something to spend a paragraph or two on; instead, this adds a little something more that colors the world you created just a little more vividly.

For major characters, or even recurring minor characters, this is no good. No one wants to serve canned soup to a food critic (your reader) as a main course. In this case, you would want to make something from scratch, right? But you have no idea how to build up a character from scratch. This is where stock characters can be put to use.

Just for a moment, I would like to mention that you don’t have to reach into stereotype or mythology to find a foundation to build a character from. You can also look to the people you know, or even people from the books you like, or from TV. If you want to base your character on these, though, make sure to change many of the details. Make your father the uncle. Make that female cop a male cook. Make that dark wizard a grocery cashier. Taking here and there from established fiction is not plagiarism, provided that you don’t take the character’s every mannerism, word, appearance, and name. Basing a character on an unsavory relative is also not libel, granting that you change enough so they are unrecognizable. When in doubt, mix and match.

Stock characters should be approached from the same angle as chicken stock. You don’t just drink it straight from the box/can. You add some heat to it, thereby already changing it. And even this isn’t the most common way to use chicken stock. Spices are added, or meat and vegetables, or even noodles. You can even mix it with other types of stock, like beef, vegetable, or seafood. This seasoned, heated stock can also be used in the preparation of other dishes than just soup, like a base for a sauce, stuffing, or even a seasoning in its own right for meats, potatoes, and rice.

Use stock characters in this way. Take the stereotype of a Damsel in Distress and some heat: she’s in distress because she’s the general of a losing army. Or add some spice: she’s not in distress, but instead saves someone else from distress. Mix it with some other stock: she’s the personification of some human concept, like Time, and has the powers thereof. Mix in some other ingredients: make your Damsel a mother, an executive, or a student. Use this stock as a base for an idea: it’s a Damsel in Distress, but she is a he.

All in all, this is a good way to start off a character that you don’t know well. Spend some time considering who he or she really is: trying speaking in his voice, or freewriting about her. You could also consider their role in your story, and use that to develop them from their humble origins.

Remember, it is fine to use stock characters as a foundation, but you should always make some attempt to change it and make it your own.

BookRecSunday--First King of Shannara by Terry Brooks

2009-08-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm reading First King of Shannara by Terry Brooks. I'm almost done with it; I imagine I'll finish it tonight before bed. For Christmas last year, I got a lot of Brooks's Shannara series, but investigation showed me that there was a book that took place before his The Sword of Shannara. That prequel is this novel. I kept all those books in my book-waiting box until I could get that prequel novel, which I didn't until I went book-shopping after my birthday. There are two prequel series before this particular novel, I understand now: The Word and Void trilogy, and the Genesis of Shannara trilogy.

To be honest, it starts too slow for me. I'm really not a fan of "fighting orcs in the woods" fantasy, and this started off, and still seems to be, rife with it. Due to a new job, an engagement, and a vacation, I was not able to keep on reading it, because I didn't feel like I had the energy to plow through it.

Now, I still don't really like it. It is very Tolkienesque in that there is a distinct good and a distinct evil, without exploring why those who are considered "evil" are in opposition to the main characters. And the main characters are considered "good" simply because they want to stop the "evil" ones. This may work out in older fiction (and I'm well aware of the fact that the Shannara series is from 1977), but I would hope that we are smarter readers with higher expectations. I want the antagonists to have their own agendas that they think are for good reasons. I want the protagonists to not be in opposition to them just because it is the right thing to do.

With this being a prequel novel, it assumes a great deal that you've read that which it is prequel to. It depends on reader loyalty to push you through the high mountains of info-dump, and lends a great deal of importance to the appearance of certain characters in the story. Having not yet read The Sword of Shannara, I just find it irritating. Could he not just write it as a story in its own right, standing on its own two legs? Did it have to depend so much on the popularity of the novel he wrote before?

All in all, I'm not impressed. It's not really a page-turner for a newcomer to the Shannara series.

Books--Making a "To Read" List

2009-08-15T01:52:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, it’s been a while. I’ve had a mostly busy summer and a lazy spring. That, and I have been in kind of a slump since April. Don’t really know why.

But that’s not what this particular post is about. In Tough Reads--Getting Through Books You Hate, I mentioned that a writer will read a book even if they hate it, in order to study why they hate it and avoid those reasons in their own writing. I forgot to mention the most important relation of reading and writing: Writers read. They write too, but if a writer doesn’t read, he/she can’t improve.

What? You consider yourself a writer but you aren’t in the middle of a book? You don’t have anything waiting to be read? Worse yet, you don’t know what books you should pick up and devour? THAT’S what this particular post is about: the best ways to accumulate a running “To Read” list.

Authors you already love. If you don’t have a list of authors who you wish you could meet, even if they are dead, I wonder why you wanted to write in the first place. Most writers start off as people who love books. Find out who wrote the ones you like, then look up any other works by them. I’m not saying you’ll love those other works. I loved Jacqueline Carey’s Kusheline Legacy, but I’m lukewarm about her The Sundering duology. But it’s a good way to start that only requires a glance over your current book-stocks.
Random Picks. Don’t be afraid to purchase/check-out that book you just picked up at the store/library! You may have only been attracted to the cover, the title, or even the author’s name, but the fact of the matter is that it’s in your hand. Read it. This is an especially good tactic if you’re visiting a used bookstore. Don’t have enough money to buy it from the store? Write down the name and author, so you can come back and buy it some other time. It may not be at the used bookstore later, but you could always go to a regular store and buy it, or turn to the Internet. If you’re looking for a specific genre or subject, go to that section first, then open your eyes to any book that stands out to you. Buy it. Check it out. Read it.
Friends and Family. Sure, you could always ask them what they’re currently reading, what their favorite books/authors are. Those are both great ways to add titles and writers to your list. Another good tactic though? Actually borrow their books. (With permission of course!) This is a great way to save money and still get the reading in that you want. Of course, you’ll probably be stuck only borrowing one or two at a time, just to keep track of whose is whose and to give them back in a timely manner, and you won’t be able to display those particular “reading kills” n your own bookshelves (though, you wouldn’t be able to do that with library books either). This is an especially good tactic if you have a significant other. Have you read his/her books yet?
Book Clubs/Writing Groups. A variation of the above. Ask the people in your writing group what they’re reading, and make note of the answers you get. If you’re in a book club, then ask what the next few books you all will read; there’s nothing wrong with getting ahead. As an aside, if your book club is a group of bored people that don’t really talk about the books you read, then it’s not a book club.
Internet Book Recommendation Sites. Sites like What Should I Read Next and Good Reads can take the books you already have and love and match you with books that are similar. Good Reads in particular has lists of different genres of books compiled by registered users. The webcomic Unshelved, about workers in a fictional library, has book recommendation strips on Sundays. You can also traverse the Internet for book recommendation blogs, which may include reviews, such as Books on the Nightstand and Wedellsblog: Books.
Amazon. Similar to above. Amazon uses cookies to look at your browsing history and recommend related products. You can also browse for books you already have or have read and see what was “Frequently Bought” with your book, or what “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. If you are browsing for nonfiction in particular, you may want to go to the bottom of the page, where it will display “Books on Related Topics”. This website is also a good place to make you “To Read” list with their wishlist system. Or you can use wishlists to search for more recommendations, since every addition brings you to a page with similar products to the addition!
This Blog! In an attempt to update this thing more than once a season, I’ll be posting short, spoiler-free reviews of the book I’m currently reading every week on Sunday. I may like what I’m reading, I may not, and I may be reading the same thing two weeks in a row, but I’ll let you all know what I think at that moment as far as I am. I’ll let you know about the author and any previous books in the series as well. So check back this Sunday!

It’s easy to say that you don’t have time to read, and even easier to say you don’t have time to write. But if you can’t make time to read, you won’t be able to find the time to write. And you may consider yourself a writer, even if you don’t read or you put down books you hate. But your writing may not improve very fast, or it may become stagnant. Reading is how writers try on new styles or techniques. Try to always have a book in progress—both writing and reading.

Voice--getting your characters to speak

2009-03-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

Looking at the title of this post, you may think this is about style or dialogue, but instead this is about a problem I'm having in my own writing. I am about to have a scene where a main character is about to confront a supporting character about an insult given by the supporting character that resulted in an incident that was potentially fatal for more than one person. That's just a vague description, I know, but the plot behind the confrontation is not what my problem is. I have a problem with the supporting character's (let's call him L) voice.

With L being a character that doesn't show up all the time, I've lost exactly how his voice sounds. I can describe it, but the way that the words come out of his mouth, the way his lips work them has escaped me. The main character (let's call her R) has been in quite a few scenes since the last time we heard from L (being a main character, of course) and while I could superficially describe R's voice, I have a decent grip on how words come out of her own accent and slang without too much trouble.

This is a problem that I know a lot of writers struggle with. I've named more than one famous author that didn't even attempt to differentiate his characters' speech patterns. So here are a few ideas to deal with the problem of a character without a voice, or a lost voice for a character.

Tell a mundane story in their voice. Write out a paragraph of something that happened to you, or even something that happened to the character in a neutral voice. Then rewrite it in the voice of your character. Use phrases, words, and slang that your character would. Include accent markings with apostrophes.
Listen to TV. Normally, TV would be the bane of any productive writing regimen, but TV gives you a place to listen to a variety of speech patterns all in your living room. The key here is to listen. Turn on the stereo put leave the picture off. Turn the TV on and type the words you hear. Eventually, you may get an idea of how you wish a character to speak.
Base a character's speech patterns on someone you know. It's always tricky to base a character on someone you know, but in this case it may be harder for them to recognize themselves in the final product and thus reduce their anger. Or it may do this exact opposite. Either way, this is the easiest way to develop a character's voice, since you could always call the friend and ask them to tell you about their day to get the subtleties of they way they speak.
Reread old dialogue featuring the character. This is best for when you've lost the way a character speaks. To compound this technique, read it aloud, in their voice. You may want to do this alone to avoid ridicule. :)

Tough Reads--getting through books you hate

2009-01-26T21:39:00.000-08:00

Let's say you're a regular Joe. Joe the Plumber, if you don't mind old political jokes. And you've got this book you received as a gift, or picked up for a long plane ride, or whatever. You sit down to read this tome you have recently acquired...

And discover that you hate it.

Maybe it's the predictable story. Maybe it rips off a well-known myth verbatim. Maybe the characters are ninnies, or the writing is flat, or you just find yourself looking to see what page you're on and how much time has passed. Everyone has come across a book or two that they can't stand in their lifetime.

The difference between casual readers and writers, however, is what is done once this realization has come to pass. A casual reader will simply put down the book and not pick it up again. They may sell it at a garage sale, donate it to a library, take it to a used bookstore, or even recycle it. Either way, they feel no real need to finish the book anyway.

A writer is different. A writer is a little more sensitive to what stories bother them the most and why. They are the ones most likely to be ranting about how they like or dislike a book they are consuming. But the real difference between a casual reader and the writer is that the writer will finish reading the book anyway, no matter how long it takes for them to read it. Or, at least, they should.

A casual reader is the main audience of any author's work, and fights to keep their interest. The writer who reads the book is not likely to put it down because, if it is nonfiction, they plow through to get to the juicy info, even if the author has dried it out to its base components. If it is fiction, the writer will still read it, if only to pick out the reasons why they do not like the story.

It is common advice for a writer to read wildly and from many different genres. This is to make themselves aware of the cliches, mix genres, use ideas from many different places, and to inspire themselves. The main reason, though, is this: a writer has to know what they like and don't like to read. If you don't like to read it, chances are that you will hate to write it, and that will come out to the reader. Even if there are thousands of readers who enjoy, say, religious romance in their fiction, if you hate it and try to tap it anyway, for those thousands, they will know how you feel about it, and dislike your work.

Besides, it is good practice to analyze the books you read to get to the very core of what you like and don't like. That, more than a wide vocabulary or good grammar, will get you farther in your writing career.

Reading books you hate, however, is not easy. I've done it, and am stuck doing it right now. Here are some ways to get yourself through a tough book to read.

Take breaks. (Hey! I'm doing this one right now!) If you sit and try to plow through a book you despise in a day or two, you'll just find yourself to be miserable. Life's too short for that. Instead, take a break every hour, twenty pages, or chapter, whichever works for you.
Reward yourself. During your break, take a moment to please yourself. Maybe watch a little TV, surf the Internet, get a snack, or call a friend. Renew your spirit before you head back to that book that's driving you mad.
Isolate yourself with it. That casual reader on the plane with the bad book will likely put it down every once in a while to stare out the window, but without any other entertainment, the book will probably get read anyway. Take the book with you when you pick up your take-out, when you have to go to the DMV, or any other time you feel like you'll have to wait a long enough time to get bored enough to read even if the writing is bad.
Read it on the toilet. You'll visit the toilet at least a few times a day. Take these times to read a chapter or two. I'm not kidding. Just make sure not to touch the book in the time between wiping and washing your hands.
Take notes. During your little break, take notes on what you hate and why you hate it. These notes will prove valuable when you sit down to write your own material. You'll know exactly what not to do. At the very least, you'll remember why you hate it when you complain to your loved ones about that author.

Still think it would just be easier to put the book down and forget about it? Sure. Okay. Fine. But first, write down why you hate it, please. This will be the most important information you can take from however little of the book you ingested. Then, read the rest of it, just to see if there are any other reasons why you hate it. Read sections that make you sick out loud to your loved ones. Then, remember: this guy got published, and you know you can write twenty times better than him.

Cafes--distraction or diligence?

2009-01-14T18:53:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday was the day my local writing group (notably made up almost entirely of NaNoWriMo participants) was supposed to meet up. The planning was a little sketchy, the time based entirely on an online poll, and the place really only determined by one person's needs. So, I should not have been surprised to arrive at my nearby Barnes and Noble cafe only to discover no familiar faces amongst the study groups, newspaper-purveyors, and late-lunchers. No matter, I thought. I ordered my iced tea and found myself a tiny table in the same general area we usually met up in in the bastardized Starbucks. I decided to not waste the time by just sitting and watching the door for anyone I might know and instead elected to dig out my laptop and get started writing.

It took me about an hour and a half to finish my iced tea and about a thousand words of work on my current writing project, but with my headphones on, the time passed as if I wasn't even in the same flow. I felt accomplished, isolated in my privacy like I never would be at home.

In today's shitty economy, this may not be considered the most conservative way to get the peace and quiet (quiet, here, meaning lack of interruption, not silence) one needs to really buckle down and lose themselves in their work. Why go to a coffee shop, where to take up a table you have to order something, when you could easily just sit at your desk at home? For those that live alone, this may seem absurd, since they can get all the peace they need at home. But for those that live with their family, their spouse, or even just a couple of roommates, peace and quiet may instead seem like a luxury other writers can have but they are not blessed with.

Or maybe the opposite is true. Maybe you live with your family but are able to produce well because they know when not to bother you. Maybe you live alone, but the distractions of laundry, dishes, and other tidying keep you from just sitting down at the desk. Maybe your problem is a mix of the two, and you felt a touch of envy when I described sitting at a table in a cafe working for an hour and a half straight without so much as a nagging need to clean the toilet or a nagging mother or wife telling you to do the same.

In both Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg champions the cafe as her favorite place to write. She even relates an anecdote about her time spent near Walden Pond, like Thoreau before her, pacing before her previous seat under a tree, claiming that writing here was not going to work, that she needed a cafe. As often as she meets with writing friends for what we WriMos would call "word wars" or just to discuss stories at her cafes, as often as she goes there to sit and write in her notebooks, Goldberg had established her cafes as her writing space.

Without going into the aspects of writing spaces (That would be a whole different post altogether!), there is nothing wrong with getting out of the house once in a while to write elsewhere. Write in a library. Write in a park. Or do as Goldberg, I, and so many writers before us all have in every town imaginable, and write in a cafe.

Is it just a pointless distraction? It can be, for some. If you're at a bookstore, and are an avid reader like I suspect you are, the temptation to go out into the shelves and pick out a few new title to add to your reading pile at home may be too much. If you're there with a group, it may be easier to suppress this temptation, since you are all there to write, not to browse.

Or maybe you're there with a group, and the temptation to talk amongst each other seems to be eating not just you, but several other members as well. You can avoid this by going to the chosen public spot alone a few times and writing there. This can help you establish the place as a writing haven for you, and you'll be thinking literarily before you even sit at a table. For now, you can challenge yourself and the group to write for fifteen minutes and then, when the time is up, spend fine minutes talking about what just happened in each story and how excited you are. Then write for fifteen minutes again. You'll make bonds with your fellow writers and feel like you're really accomplishing something in that time.

If you plan to write in a coffee shop or Internet cafe:

Buy something. Whether it be food or drink, contribute some money to the establishment that you are going to camp in, especially if it will be for several hours.

Tip and tip generously. You are going to be taking up space that other people may have used, and you may not buy much else since you'll be more occupied with your plots than that slice of chocolate cheesecake you bought. It may be their job to just serve you your coffee or sandwich, but you are also paying for the use of their tables. Don't know how much to tip? Leave your coin change. You don't want it anyway.
Clean up after yourself. It may be the baristas' jobs to mix you a decent espresso, but it doesn't make them happy to have to pick up your trash. Put all litter in the proper receptacles. Also, if you are in a group and change the configuration of their tables and chairs, be sure to put them back.
Be friendly to the staff. This pays out twofold. First, you get better service, in the long run, if the baristas or wait staff enjoy their time. Second, you will develop a better relationship with them and, in turn, the place. This pays out if you plan on staking a table claim on a regular basis here. They will be more receptive to your arrival and maybe even allow you to stay longer than usual, especially if you are (see above) a good tipper. You may even hear a few stories of their own about family or guests that will make for interesting plotlines or characters in your projects.
Seat yourself pointed at the door, or the counter. This is particularly helpful if you have writer's block. You can begin by writing descriptions of the people you see and how you imagine they live. On another note, if you are waiting for your group to arrive, you'l be much more recognizable than the back of your head.
Don't pay for Wi-Fi. The point is to get work done. Even if you're at an Internet cafe, forgo the ability to check your e-mail, webcomics, blogs, and news sites. Even if you tell yourself that you're doing research, you are just allowing yourself the same distractions as at home. Really need that online thesaurus or dictionary? Color the word you want to replace or fact you want to confirm in a noticeable hue, and look it up when you get home. Even better? Ask your writing group for another word for such-and-such, or who they think shot first in the Revolutionary War. You may be pleasantly surprised with their answers.

If your coffee shop or Internet cafe has something that is tempting you, like a bookstore or sugary snacks, feel free to buy yourself something before you leave. But after you've accomplished your goal. Don't distract yourself during writing time.

Resolve--don't set yourself up for failure this year

2009-01-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

A new year is upon us and with it comes the commercials for weight-loss products, the rolling of our loved ones' eyes, and the feeling of starting fresh. If you're a writer, it will be tempting to squeeze "Write Every Day" between "Get Organized" and "Quit Smoking". And this is all right. Every writer looks to a new year with the intention of writing more, especially if they feel they haven't been writing enough.

But it's important not to get carried away.

The main reason New Year's resolutions fail is because people resolve to do too much too quickly, and then abandon the attempt entirely after about a week or so. How many times have you resolved to get into shape and eat healthily, but give up the first time you go to the store and have those snack cakes crying lustily out to you from the shelf? How often have you decided to get organized, head to the closet, and realize that you have way too much junk to handle alone, and then just sit and watch TV instead? It is important that, if you want to make a difference in your writing life for the new year, to not try to write a poem a day or a novel every month, especially if you haven't been writing much recently anyway.

So what should you do instead?

Make sensible resolutions. It may seem sensible on New Year's Eve to resolve to write a thousand words a day, but when New Year's Day rolls around and you aren't feeling it, you may come to resent coming to the desk. That isn't the point of writer's resolutions. Instead, you could resolve to do something small and writerly, like write in your journal every day, write at least one sentence a day, try to finish a small project by the end of the month.
Don't be so hard on yourself. So you spend New Year's Day avoiding the desk by taking down holiday decorations, or by playing with all that new stuff you got last week, or even hide from it in bed claiming to have a headache. When the day is over and no writing has been done, you throw the blanket off your head and think, "Well, I've missed the first day of the year. The first day and my resolution is gone! I must not be cut out for this." Then you decide to give up on writing every day completely. I have only one thing to say to these people: NO! Just because you slip up does not mean that you have failed. It only means that you missed an opportunity; an opportunity that will be there tomorrow just as much as today. One skipped day does not mean the rest of the year is ruined. You just try again the next day.
A year is a long time; think instead in months, or even weeks. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the length of time when it comes to writing. Write every day? For a whole year? What if you have something come up? Instead of thinking is such broad terms, think smaller. This week, write every day. Next week, maybe you'll do something else. Take your resolution one step at a time.
Start today. You'll notice that today is not January First. But what is January First if not just a day? You could start again on that failed resolution that you've already abandoned today. New Year's Day is not a magical day, and neither is the first of any month, or any Sunday, or Monday. Every day is just a day, and a day with an opportunity. Want to write every day this year? Write today. Something. Anything. Put pen to paper. Open a word processor. Write about how writing is hard. Write about how not starting on the first day of the year is stupid. Write about how your family is irritating and your middle wide and your sleeping patterns wonky. Write about whatever is on your mind, but write.

Outlining--should you or shouldn't you?

2008-10-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

To outline or not to outline. That is the source of a lot of tension amongst authors planning their novels or short stories. For every writer that swears by their outline, there is another saying that the surprise of what might happen keeps him or her writing.

Just like early birds and night owls, they will proclaim the usefulness of their particular method in their writing: the outline keeps the pace and allows for the author to plan scenes in advance, a lack of outline allows for the author to try out new ideas without worrying about breaking their system. And just like a preference for early morning or late night, the choice to outline or not is a personal one.

Which one am I?
There is no hard and fast science to determining what will get you writing more. It is generally determined by how you prefer your own life: rigidly scheduled, or more spontaneous? But even this determination is unclear. I myself tend to work on firm plans and become flustered when my plans have to make drastic changes on short notice, but yet when I write, I prefer very little outlining. You may be prepared to cancel all weekend plans for an impromptu road-trip, but when you come to the desk, you may want to not deviate from what you originally intended.

The best way to determine if you're an outliner or not is to try it out. Try writing a chapter without an outline. Try writing another with one. Which one produces the most output in the fastest amount of time?

Even more confusing is that your opinion on the use of outlines or not could change between projects. You may want to outline a short story, but leave open the realm of possibility for a novel.

Why you should use an outline
Outlines can be incredibly detailed or very vague, based on your own preference. From one end of the spectrum, you can make a list of important scenes you want to make sure make it into your story. On the other, you would create an outline for the whole story as well as outlines for each chapter, and then mini-outlines for each scene.

You can make the vague outline in order to make sure you do not miss anything important, and still leave out holes for outside-the-outline inspiration to fill. This is a little more middle-of-the-road in the debate, and is a good point to start outlining from. If you are new to outlining, or are trying it out from a perspective that usually spurns outlines, this is also an ideal beginning.

More detailed outlines can be useful to authors that want to make sure that nothing is lost in the writing. For instance, without an outline, a character may be ignored, even if they are a main character, for long periods of time. With an outline, especially a flexible one, an author can move scenes around to create a perfect flow of attention, so that the story does not weigh heavily on one party or another.

The most detailed outlines are useful mostly to get the idea across while you feel creative enough to see a story, chapter, or scene, so that later on you can still write and get the message across even if you do not feel as up to writing as before. Say you have the flu. You could either write off a day of writing, or simply write out the outlined scene into your document and still call it a day early. The writing may not be the most florid, but it is better than not written at all.

Why you should forget about outlining
For some writers, outline are as constricting as too-small wool sweaters. Their stories are able to proceed in the originally intended direction, but if any interesting, less-traveled path is spotted on the trail, the writer is disappointed that the hiking plans do not allow for such deviation. For some writer's the detailed outline is too much, but the more general outline is flexible enough. For other, even this outline is too safe.

As I said before, if you are a traditional outliner wanting to try out writing without such plans, it would be best to try only outlining a few general ideas, but allowing for blank space to fill up the majority of the outline. This blank space will be filled upon writing, but not with material the author may have originally intended. This deviation is okay! Like people and plants, plots grow and curl in unexpected ways. This can often make for a richer tale.

If even this minimal outlining is too much, you may not need an outline. If you plan to have a wife become the president of the PTA, but she cries to go on a sudden roadtrip to Canada, don't feel as if you have to force her into your originally intended role. Let her go. Follow that thread. If it doesn't work out, you can always delete or cross out.

Why you should consider both
I used to write with detailed outlines. It let me get all of my thinking done ahead of time. But the writing that fleshed out the scenes was anorexic. It was really just my original ideas in full length sentences. Something was not right. So I tried not using outlines. I didn't know what to write. My palms were sweaty.

Finally, I determined what I needed: a planned beginning, a planned end, a few sparse ideas for the middle, and no written outline. My plans were kept in my head where I could cultivate them; if I wrote them down, they would be permanent. I knew they weren't, but it felt that way.

Try outlining your story. Try deviating from your outline. Try not having an outline at all. Find one that works for you and for your project. If that method stops working, try another. Don't feel trapped using a method that doesn't work for you. The only one trapping you is you.

Relationships--mastering the art of the friendship

2008-09-29T00:08:00.000-07:00

Let's say you have a story in mind: you've outlined the whole plot, have characters with backstories and premade relationships. Susie is Billy's girlfriend, but also the sister of the band leader Martin, who is Adriana's little-something-on-the-side. Many of these characters probably have intricate webs of acquaintances, best-friendships, loves, enemies, and even more minute deviations in knowing and liking.

After all this planning, you start to write a scene where two long-time friends interact, perhaps at a meal or some such. Let's look at an example.

"Good morning, Susie."

"Morning, Billy. That the newspaper?"

"Yep. Want a section?"

"Comics, please."

... By now I'm sure you see the problem. Let's make Susie and Billy acquaintances, perhaps people who work for the same company but have never really interacted closely before. The same exchange could take place, easily. Because of this, the dialogue doesn't seem to ring true. They're supposed to be friends, right? Boyfriend and girlfriend? So why is their interaction so... bland?

This is the real question for any writer. Why is it that, seemingly simple exchanges that could very well take place in real life fall flat in fiction? Let's say that you're up in an airplane, snacking on the pretzels you receive for free. They taste plain, even with the salt that is so visible on them. Your Coke tastes more like the plastic cup it is served in than the delicious high fructose corn syrup you were expecting. What happened? The truth of the matter is, depending on air pressure, the same thing that makes your ears pop and ache, your tastebuds require extra stimulation. This is apparent in the expensive meals onboard: they seem to have a flavor. The reasoning for that is because it is overseasoned to make up for this taste-sensitivity loss.

This relates in fiction more than most people know. The emotions and expressions of the characters must be a little more exaggerated to effectively communicate. Take, for example, the exchange above. The dialogue could be that of boyfriend-and-girlfriend in real life, or of co-workers, or acquainted customers of a coffee shop. The trouble is, for all of its realism, it lacks the history and emotion related to the relationship.

Most writers end up writing exchanges like the one above, and, upon realizing that the history and the feelings are absent, superimpose these in the narration. An example:

"Good morning, Susie." Billy was always so chipper in the morning, Susie thought with a grumble. Susie needed more coffee and sugared cereal to even come close to his demeanor. Which, of course, bothered her. Which, of course, he knew.

"Morning, Billy. That the newspaper?" Of course it was; what did she expect it to be, shredded magazine clippings? Her brain was not running on all cylinders. She couldn't even get out as many syllables.

"Yep. Want a section?" As if she was prepared to read about economic growth percentages and make sense of them.

"Comics, please." Billy smiled an knowing smile and handed her the top-most bundle; the only bundle to have been completely removed from the newspaper before her arrival to the kitchen. Susie narrowed her eyes. Was she as predictable as he, with his smug cheer? God, it irritated her.

... This is a perfectly all right writing sample for a beginner. This is a piece of writing that is written in pieces, and clearly so. The dialogue obviously was written first, mostly to be page-filler, squinted at by the author as not-quite-right, and then having narration come up from behind to add something extra to the dialogue that it didn't have before.

What the dialogue, narration, and scene should do is define the relationship. Even if you've written the characters over other scenes where they simply interact, you must still define the relationship. Relationships change on a daily basis. Not so drastically from enemy to lover, but one day two people may be more cautious with each other because of mood. The next, they may have a bit more simplicity to their exchanges. This is particularly true for characters who are supposed to be long-time friends. Two characters who have known each other for a long time have feelings that have been cultivated for longer than the writer probably can understand, having just met them himself. There is an easiness to their exchanges, messages in their silences, and a cruelty to their drama that is not as well play between acquaintances.

Let's try that exchange once more, with narration and description.

Susie blinked as she shuffled into the kitchen. Practically gleaming in the new sun, it pained her to even look around for any unlikely obstacles between her and the table. Even if her eyes weren't squinted, they would have been upon seeing Billy in his crisply ironed shirt and perfect tie, glancing over the stock page of their local newspaper. Susie growled under her breath: a quiet sound to her, but one that drew her boyfriend's attention away from the endless lists of numbers and arrows. With a shake of his head and a smile, he handed her a Garfield mug, filled with steaming bitterness offset by milk and sugar.

Susie took it from him and sipped greedily as she slipped into the opposite dining chair. After gasping for breath, she eyed the perfectly folded newspaper sections on the table. She frowned. Had he really gotten a paper from the grocery store, or was the paper-boy really so awful as to steal sections?

Billy crinkled the paper in his hands to lift up her precious comics section. He shook it a tad to get her attention. Her blue eyes widened and a smile tugged at her mouth. Susie held out her hands, as if begging for food or spare change, her brows straining to touch her hairline. With a sigh and another shake of his head, Billy folded the section and scooted it across the table to her. "You know," he stated, breaking their silence, "there are other sections of the paper you might be interested in. Classifieds, for example."

"Piss off. I don't need this now."

"Oh? When do you plan on--"

"Billy, please." Susie set the mug down, and covered her face with her hands.

When she said nothing more, Billy stood, scratching his chair in towards the table. Muttering under his breath, his heeled shoes clomped out of the kitchen, out of the apartment, perhaps even out of her life. Susie sighed and let her hands drop, crossing her arms. No. She wouldn't be so lucky.

...Here, the narration dominates, but only because the tension of the silence is laid over the scene, rather than depending on mundane dialogue to move a scene along. At the same time, you get that, while Susie and Billy are not exactly on good terms, they know how to push each other's buttons. Considering that I wrote that just now, it's not a perfect example of relationship interaction, but that's what the greats are for.

How do you develop a sense of relationship in characters? Glad you asked!

Look to your own relationships. The best research is your own life. You have your circles of friends and acquaintances. Even people you see often but don't consider friends are good fodder for this. Anyone with whom you have inside jokes with, know how to irritate, stories about, or more than the most minimal interaction with is perfect. Analyze how you interact with them, how they interact with others in this environment.
Freewrite with your characters. This could mean you interviewing them about themselves, or their relationships, or more detailed exercises. If the way you imagine your characters interacting is more on a level of acquaintance than the friendship you expected, it may be you. Imagine being with a friend and with a stranger at the same time. You're not going to act quite as you would if it was just the friend. Convince the character that you are a friend as well. Also, if you just superimpose a friendship between two characters, the relationship may need work on its own. Write the two characters interacting with something mundane, like grocery shopping or cleaning. Make them talk. Write out their inside jokes and little stories to tell about each other.
Study camaraderie in fiction. With many stories focusing mostly on developing the ubiquitous romantic relationship, this could prove more difficult than it should. Some examples in fantasy of these relationships can be found in the works of Tamora Pierce, Anne Bishop, and Elizabeth Haydon, to name a few. Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series takes nine books to develop the friendships of four young mages who start off as abrasive acquaintances but grow to become like family. Anne Bishop's Black Jewels "Trilogy" includes friendships that seem unsteady with the level of threats exchanged between close friends, but examine how Andulvar and Saetan, Lucivar and Jaenelle, and Daemon and Surreal interact. It isn't about love there; it's about the history of it all. Finally, Elizabeth Haydon creates a perfect relationship between Rhapsody, Achmed, and Grunthor in her Symphony of the Ages. "Siblings" by mutual adoption, the exchanges between them start rocky, but grow to be more like best friends with a closeness that makes them each easy targets for any of the other's insults.

In the end, what you're trying to accomplish is a realistic friendship like the ones you yourself have. Like Anne Bishop put, "Demanding and yielding, stubborn and considerate, arguing with one of them and defending that person in the next breath." Sound familiar?

Jordan--pissing on the man's grave

2008-09-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

In September of last year, the speculative fiction world was shocked with the loss of one of its greats: Robert Jordan. Fans wept, authors made tributes, and the rest of the world said, "Who?" I'm sure most of you remember the backlash of emotion and anger. Mostly, this shock was due to the fact that his magnum opus, the Wheel of Time series, was still incomplete. Now, unless someone finds the technology to reanimate the dead a la Herbert West, that means that someone else will have to finish the series.

This post is not about that.

See, upon Jordan's death, I looked at my booklist and decided that I may as well read some of the poor bastard's work. I received the first book, The Eye of the World for Christmas, but did not get to reading it until just this past week. I started it on Tuesday, and finished it on Friday. "Great!" you think. "That must mean it was good!"

Au contraire.

I'm a big fan of George R.R. Martin. His thousand-plus page novels take me only a couple of days to read. This book came close in length, but my quick reading of it was not due to my enjoyment. Just the opposite. I couldn't stand it, and so I tried to get it over with quickly.

This novel starts off like a verbatim copy of Lord of the Rings, including the wise helpers that disappear for at least a portion of the novel, the hapless farm-dwellers upon whom the fate of the world depends, and distinctly evil creatures and persons involved to try to stop the illustrious band of do-gooders.

Gag.

I understand that a lot of authors want to rip Tolkien off. If you can say that your book series is still wildly popular fifty years later, you must be doing something right. And how better to do that "something" than to steal it. How did this shit fly in the early nineties? I understand ripping off another novel and being hailed as original in maybe the seventies or eighties, but the nineties, people. Robert Jordan thought that maybe no one would see through his "originality" as recent as that.

Upon finished this book, I discovered that it was actually a stepping stone of a pathway of ripping-each-other-offedness. Tolkien came up with some shit in desperate need of editing. Jordan took Tolkien's shit, tried to make a log exactly like it, and then populate it with stock characters and called it original. Now it gets interesting. I'm sure that Jordan's last page revelations were a big deal when the book came out. But I've read Terry Goodkind before this dead guy, so not only did I see it coming, it really only made me more upset. Granted, Goodkind came after Jordan, with Wizard's First Rule being released in 1994. So this really only meant that Goodkind ripped Jordan off.

And all three of these badly written series are psychotically popular.

I suppose some discussion about archetypes and classical stories talking to something primal inside of us would really just whisk this whole problem away and make me seem like a spoiled brat, but let's look at it from an objective eye.

Fantasy is genre work. That means that the people who write it are also those that read it. And those that read it are going to read other works in the same genre. At what point is being unoriginal considered a good thing when your target audience has read the exact same novel that you are ripping off?

I know I'm in the minority. How can someone call someone a bad writer when they are barely cold in the coffin? I try to separate the artist from the work, but I'm not always successful. I hate Metallica because their music sucks and they are assholes. Anne McCaffrey is off her rocker, but she can still spin a readable tale. Goodkind is a bad writer, and an asshole at that. I never looked into Jordan's handling of fans, or attitude toward life. But I can tell you right now that I think his writing sucks.

Go ahead and try to make me change my opinion. I spent four days this week glancing at the clock at the end of every page. In what universe is this considered the aim for the writer and the reader?

Writing Friends--overcoming shyness and reaping the rewards

2008-09-08T02:47:00.000-07:00

My first writing friend was my best friend at the time. We spent one sleepover playing out a story on the fly with my dolls and assorted playsets. We were both so impressed with ourselves that we then spent a good month or two writing it out in prose, alternating at every chapter. It was cheesy and probably offense to more than one professional author and religious group, but we were barely into adolescence. We finished that story (with accompanying illustrations) rather quickly, and then began another with the same level of offensiveness, but without the structure of our previous playing to guide us. That one went unfinished and worked on for at least two years.

In NaNoWriMo 2006, I met a silly, fun group of writers whose imagery was outstanding to say the least. I only met up with them a few more times after that, and we all were so in love with our own stories. It was inspiring to listen to their choice sentences, to help them work out their own issues, to look over their notes with curious cooing. It was like a Lamaze class, where everyone got together to talk about the good and the bad of growing a baby, and the teacher was out to lunch.

This April, I gained a writing friend in my husband's aunt by "marriage", an English teacher at an area high school. I knew I had to go to her for my own writer's block, but that started a long conversation and countless e-mails about theory and philosophy and support.

I think about trying to write my stories and projects without these support groups, however diminished their influence now, and I feel totally isolated.

Writers are word factories, churning out sentences and paragraphs out of raw materials. These materials could be anything: the look of a shuddering tree upon first acquiring vision aids, a conversation overheard on the bus, a vivid dream. Commonly, though, they come from others. We meet an interesting person. We discuss our writing with others. We help other writers out with their own hurdles. We read starvingly.

It is all well and good to generate ideas from the material rather than the social. But there will come a time when you have to reach out from the usual and find gold in the unfamiliar.

Here's some ideas for meeting other writers, or at least allowing them to influence you in good ways:

Don't be ashamed to admit that you like to write. You may occasionally get an asshole that will ask if you've written anything he might have read, but you will never find any other secret writers unless you let your own secret slip first. Think of it this way: Superman and Batman are both formidable people, but yet, they never would have become such a powerful team if they didn't know about the existence of the other.
Read. Read inside your favorite genre, and outside it. Browse a new section of the bookstore or library each time you visit. Visit used bookstores to pick up handled treasures, and don't be afraid to converse with the shopkeeper; chances are, he or she will be just as interested in reading as you.
Join a book club. I'm not talking those groups of middle-class women who skim through the Cliffs Notes of a novel in order to make slight commentary before gossiping about who is marrying who over bagels and cream cheese. Get your friends together, acquire a copy of a novel for each person (especially if they are cheap-wads), and give them an appropriate amount of time to read it. Then get together to actually discuss it. It may indeed open you up to analyzing your entertaining books a little more closely, which will allow you to keep a finer eye on your own writing.
Take a writing class, or join a writer's group. I say either or because if you take a class, you will likely get the same benefits if you join a writer's group in that you will have a deadline to write some material, have to share it, and then absorb criticism. Make sure that the group is not just out to be mean, but take their words seriously.
If you write poetry, attend live readings. This will open you up to the poetry community of your region as well as expose you to styles that may differ wildly from your own, or draw your ear to the subtle nuances of more similar works.
Write a letter to your favorite author. This could be intimidating, but keep in mind that they may not even read it. Keeping this in mind may indeed make it easier to communicate your excitement about their work, an excitement they are likely to appreciate. Don't exhibit stalker behavior, however; I live maybe an hour or two's drive from that asshole Terry Goodkind, but I'm not exactly going to go and appear on his doorstep with a collage of his half-eaten food and toenail clippings. Be friendly, but calm.
Barring all of this, join NaNoWriMo. Not only will you get a lot of writing done, but most regions have a ready-made group of interesting and excited participants. If you are wary of meeting people in real-life that you meet online, no worries; just communicate on the forums. If you do decide to go to a meetup or write-in, be cautious; take a friend and make sure the meeting is in a public place you can easily leave in an emergency.

It's very easy to just say that you prefer to keep your writing private. I understand; the actual act of writing should be relatively private. However, when you get writer's block, and want to rebound ideas off a friend, you may want that friend to also be a writer, or you may just be met with a lot of blank expressions.

Time--how to find it, how to make it

2008-06-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

The biggest enemy of the writing process is time, but not by choice. If we were to stand out of the way, time would allow us to see that issue with that paragraph, or that scene. Time would allow us to shift gears from own story, article, or project to the next. Instead, since it seems like we lack so much of it, we make it our enemy. I don't have the time to write because I've children. I don't have time to write because I'm a student. I don't have time to write because I have to work to pay my two mortgages.

In real life, there is always time to write. Instead of reading this blog, for instance, you could be writing. Instead of checking your e-mail for the fiftieth time today, you could be writing. Have an appointment to meet? You'll inevitably have to sit and wait; in that time you could be writing.

It's often said that published authors write for hours and hours. This is true. It's also said that published authors write everyday. This is also true. The trouble here is that many fledgling writer's tend to think that the two go hand-in-hand, which is not necessarily the case. It does take hours and hours total to write a book, for instance. Those hours and hours do not have to happen all in one day. A book will get written just as well in five minute increments as well as it will in several hours of straight writing.

Here are a few ideas to get yourself writing, even if you have a busy schedule:

Wake an hour earlier. This instantly gives you an extra hour of time that could be used for writing. This could take some discipline, especially if you're not bestowed with Early Bird powers. First, practice with getting up earlier. For tips, see both this and this. Get up, perform the morning rituals, and then sit down and write. You don't even have to write for your current project: do a writing prompt, freewrite, or write about your dream.
Write a page when you first get up. Nothing major, again. Just write some before you go to the bathroom in the morning. You may not produce the finest writing, but you'll likely pound out that page quickly!
Determine your most productive time, and schedule to write in that time frame. This is the part that most fledgling writer's aim for, and fail at. This is not just because of distraction or procrastination; instead, it could also be because that productive time is already allotted to some other activity, such as taking care of children or working. My personal productive time is somewhere in the late afternoon and early evening. Unfortunately, this fits perfectly in my commute time for my college classes. Instead, I had to schedule to write earlier in the afternoon. While this is not my most productive time, it is close enough that I at least get something of quality down. Also, scheduling creative time will condition your brain to begin thinking about writing at that time.
Write just before bed. It could be a journal entry about what you accomplished, a new story idea you came up with that day, or just working on your usual project. This allows your brain to use all that it has seen during the day in your writing.
Stay up an hour later. Not recommended to be used in tandem with wake an hour later, this is a better option for those that find themselves more inclined to stay up into the night rather than wake up and get straight to work.
Don't panic if you get the urge to write outside your scheduled time. Think of writing as less like an obligation and more like... using the toilet. If you feel the urge, you go and do it. Don't worry about it not being the right time. Your brain is trying to tell you that it is ready. Deny it, and you'll later be wishing you hadn't when it is time to write.

Writer's Block--laziness, or legitimate?

2008-06-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't written a post in this blog since... Christ, November. Upon the start of the new year, I began on a grandiose and doomed resolution to write everyday on my novel. I quickly became stuck due to wild characters (a subject for another day) and decided to give it a rest. Months later, I stumbled upon the solution, but lacked confidence about my ability to string the right words together to communicate the idea. I felt like I couldn't keep up the same sort of language I was using previously.

Does any of this sound familiar? As a reader of this blog, you may indeed think so. Writer's block is often claimed to just be laziness regarding the actual work of writing: sitting down and putting words down. But the very real truth is that, sometimes, the words just don't come out, and if they do, they don't seem to come out right, further dragging our confidence in our writing skills down. Many professional authors have turned to drink or drugs for "creative stimulation", but I don't find this to be helpful, or healthy.

I did, however, break through this block, at least I hope I did. This act of taking hammer to brick is one of the hardest parts of being a writer, and often leaves many "failed" writers in its wake ("failed" here meaning "those that have given up"). They want to write, but the words, the scenes, the very images don't come. Why, and how to fix it?

My problem was that, upon writing a scheduled scene, a character acted in a way I didn't expect or plan for. It was perplexing why she would do this, and I tried to write the scene without the action taking place. In the end, it was the latter that seemed false, and the former that rang true. But it did not seem to be in the right place. What had happened?

It took me time to think and contemplate, all the while working on other projects and, to be honest, partaking in leisurely activities. In the end, it was talking with another writer that made me realize what had happened. My characters had taken the story and changed it to their will, something that should make every writer shout victory to the heavens. This is what we want. We want the characters to guide the story and, in the event that they act out of place, we should be thankful. Unfortunately, we are usually confused. For me, the situation was that this scene, however welcome, seemed unprovoked. In the end, I decided that I needed to move scenes around, and eventually add something knew between established instances.

But it took a lot more to regain my writer's voice. A lot of reading, a lot of writing experiments, and even the purchase of a book with writing advice. My problem was no longer writer's block. I could write just fine. My problem was that, not only was I not satisfied with the words I put down, I felt afraid that I wouldn't be able to do the scene justice.

During the aforementioned NaNoWriMo, there is a saying that comes and goes as people begin to doubt their ability. It is: "Don't get it right; get it written." You can always change it. Just try to write it at first. Get down the skeleton of what you want to write. If that's too daunting, just work on the marrow. Just the underlying structure of the underlying structure.

If you find yourself plagued with writer's block, I do have some avenues for you to take, if you really feel like you're stuck. Take some time. Think about something else. Give it a week, and if it doesn't work yet, give it another. If it still doesn't work, don't immediately return to it. Work on another project. Another story, another avenue of writing. Talk with some writing friends (I can guarantee that I'll write about that later.). Read. Write journal entries, freewrite, experiment. Read a book of writing advice to make you feel like you should be writing. Write somewhere new, like a coffee shop or cafe. If you normally type, write in longhand, and vice versa.

In the end, for me, it was writing out the scene in question by hand that really stabbed through that now gelatinous barrier. Try it out. You might just find that, a change in... something will result in a change for the better.

NaNoWriMo--not hurting "real" literature

2007-11-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

It being the first of November, it would be not only a huge travesty to you, the reader-writer, but an insult to my past four Novembers, my participating online friends, and those who I colloquially call the "Vegas WriMos" to not mention the fact that National Novel Writing Month has begun and is in full swing in a coffee shop near you. To participate, you sign up at the website, pick a novel-sized story you haven't started yet, and begin writing today with the goal of writing 50,000 words by midnight, November 30th. The goal is to not obsess about quality, but instead about reaching the number 50,000.

I have participated every year since 2003, losing only once (I didn't like the genre of story and I met the love of my life), and only meeting up with local participants last year. Every year has been an amazing experience for me, and I always look forward to it. This year, however, I am not participating for a variety of reasons, so instead I wondered: "It's a bad idea for me to do NaNoWriMo this year; is it for anyone else?"

What Google quickly informed me was that not only was it not a bad idea to take a year off, but also that, out there in the world, there are people that think that NaNoWriMo is an affront to their livelihood or drowns their babies or kicks their puppies or something like that. Whatever it is that Chris Baty and the crew at the Office of Letters and Light did, it must have been pretty bad to warrant this kind of opposition. Alma Hromic (Don't worry; I have no idea who she is either.) wrote an article by the name of NaNoWriMo: Now You Too Can Be A Writer! back in 2002, which basically accuses the masterminds behind NaNoWriMo of kicking her and her profession in the shin for coming up with such a program. Don't take my word for it; read the article. If you took the time to investigate the NaNoWriMo website beforehand, you may be scratching your head. Mocking real novelists? Hurting future authors' chances at publication? Participating is like performing brain surgery without training, or playing in traffic?

Forgive me if you agree with her, but I find her arguments to be unresearched (she clearly only delved as far as she "needed" to form an "educated" opinion without looking for evidence to the contrary), her arrogance to be overwhelming, and her comparisons to be unfounded and exaggerated. If someone wants to write a silly story about penguin serial killers and pirate emus in the comfort of their own home in order to practice writing for fun and not worrying about the quality of their work, it's hardly going to hurt "real" literature. If someone wants to use NaNoWriMo as a reason to stop procrastinating and write that story they've always wanted to write, a new author isn't going to be rejected by a publishing house because it might be one of "those" novels.

What NaNoWriMo does is make writing fun for those that would otherwise never get around to it for fear of their own inadequacy. It's people like Hromic on their high-horses that make writers like these paranoid that they won't be able to measure up. Writing is not something restricted only to the published, career authors. It can be for the casual writer to. It's not black and white.

And for God's sakes, writing badly is hardly going to kill anyone or make their house fall down. Stop saying that it will.

Tolkien--outdated and overrated

2007-10-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

The other day I finally finished reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy by way of reading The Return of the King. I haven't read The Hobbit or The Silmarillion, and I really hope that I don't have to, in the future. The only reason I read LotR in the first place is because every fantasy writer has to read it; it's some sort of unspoken rule. LotR was one of the first, and "has to be studied" by fans of fantasy.

If you would allow me to be vulgar for a moment, I fucking rejoiced when I finished that story, and didn't even bother reading the miles of appendices. The movies were great, the accompanying soundtracks sound awesome, but those books? Utter dreck.

Now that I have a myriad of swear-by-Tolkieners coming to leave decapitated horses in my bed, hear me out: LotR is among the oldest of speculative fiction I have on my shelves, beaten only by Lovecraft (who is a whole new can of worms altogether) and Orwell (whom I don't really count as speculative fiction, anyway). After LotR, the next oldest is Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight, published in 1968. Between those two series, there is a distinct change in focus, dialogue, and worldbuilding.

LotR was not about a short hairy person throwing jewelry into a volcano. It was a podium from which Tolkien could showcase many of his skills, particularly those of description and linguistics. I would be the first on the block to admit that the guy is good at what he does: creating believable languages and describing down the the inch the detail of vast mountain cities, stinky swamps, and how many strands erupted out of the flesh of Frodo's foot. The problem is too much of a focus on these things. A story, whether it be a trilogy, a novel, or just a short story, has many parts, and description is only one of them. I will admit that the man had a rich and detailed world to set his tale in. But we do not all care about the mating habits of elderly orcs, the names elves have for basic things, or how much pot those hobbits smoke in an average-sized birthday party. All of these things are what writer's call notes. This information is used to help in description, not to be the description. The need for a manual in order to digest the story is unnecessary and, in this day and age of casual readers, a distinct manuscript-killer.

Anne McCaffrey (whom I don't enjoy much either) at least understands this. Rather than tell us that a certain region doesn't get much rainfall, she'll have a character be surprised when it does rain. This is what is acceptable now. Showing, not telling. Information should not be the bulk of any story. It's like having thick lasagna for dinner, and then following up directly with cheesecake. It's too filling, it's too much, and it makes the reader feel like they are working through a book rather than enjoying it.

And "thee", "thou", and "thither"? I'm shocked that stuff flew back in the fifties. No one talks like a real human being, not even the human beings! I am reminded much of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Remember how everyone, from the jilted husband, the adulterous wife, the preacher-dude, and the five-year-old girl all had the exact same speech patterns? Uneducated and silly hobbits should not speak the same way as old wizards or royalty. Mark Twain had it right; people don't all talk the same way, whether it be in dialect or just simply word choice. It's a lesson that Tolkien should have known himself. And to have just one person speak normally may have made the whole tale easier to digest, because then we would have someone to relate to, even in the slightest bit. McCaffrey seems to understand that.

In conclusion, just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's good. Just because something is a pioneer of it's time, does not mean that it's good. Just because something has had several movies made of it, doesn't mean that it's good. I mean, it helps. After all, there are all of those people who would have my head for holding this opinion, and their love had to come from somewhere.

Probably the same crack that gave Tolkien the bright idea to write a fantasy story that modern readers wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole without smoking some of that same shit.

Journalling--just for whiny teenagers?

2007-09-19T01:50:00.000-07:00

Considering that this is the first post onto a writing blog (which, I would like to make plain, is not a blog about writing a blog; I've very little experience with that), it would make sense that we would begin by discussing the concept of journalling.

First off, I would like to make it clear that I have nothing against journalling. I do it on a semiregular basis myself, whether it be to get some weight off my chest, to explore a new writing technique or genre, or just to make note of a new idea I've gotten while showering. In fact, I've been journalling for six years now. I've chronicled my life from the retarded age of fifteen to the somewhat-less-retarded age of twenty-one. I journalled my feelings on the September eleventh attacks, my first serious forays into writing, my college experience, and my enjoyment or lack-thereof of various literature.

Just about every writing advice manual out there will tell you three specific things: Don't wait for inspiration, kill your darlings, and journal-journal-journal. Journalling is supposed to force you to write every day, preparing a dark, damp, and (if you're anything like me) a ginormous compost heap of garbage and cow feces that you hope and pray that something beautiful and fresh-smelling will grow in. Journalling is supposed to make you aware of the process required to compose prose, or to at least allow yourself a forum where you can blather on about your sad relationships and shitty job and how much your family pisses you off without writing a novel about the same and facing some serious libel lawsuit. Journalling is, according to writers such as Natalie Goldberg, supposed to be the key to becoming a great writer.

Does it really? I mean, if some random author that I'm sure you probably saw the name of and went "huh?" is guaranteeing you the ability to become the best writer you can be, as long as you work your buns off create a bunch of writing that you wouldn't reread if someone paid you, I certainly would like to know if it works. And trust me, journalling is hard work, particularly if you plan on rereading some of it to see if there is any sort of good writing hidden in the muck. If it isn't particularly good, or makes you cringe in embarrassment, does it really help?

On the surface, I have to say no, and not just because I want to retroactively strangle my whiny teenage self. My entries all seem to talk about what I did, what I need to do, what I'm angry about, or how abysmal my love-life was. For six years, there does not seem to be too much deviation from these themes, and when there is, I hastily wish I could kick the shit out of myself for being so incredibly immature. In fact, the number one thing I've learned from my journalling escapades? I overuse the word "anyway". It's true.

On the other hand, there is something that happens deeper within the journaller that wants to grow up to be a writer, even if they are just those that chronicle what they did that day. The journaller begins to look at his or her world differently. The world around them is not just something to merely experience, like everyone else, but something that they can use as material for their next journal entry. They could describe the park as they walked the dog. They could record a conversation they had at their local grocery store. They could think about how they plan on detailing the adventures of their weekend to inspire the same fun-feeling they experienced while living it.

Anyway--told you--journalling, by itself, does not make you a better writer. It may help you string words together, even if they are crappy words, but it does not make you a better writer. It may bring to light words you use too much and force you to look for other options, but it does not make you a better writer. What journalling does is make you think like a writer, who looks at life around them and experiences it, but then takes those experiences with them to the writing desk when it comes time to get down to the deed. And honestly, that is a gift much better earned that a secret writer's key to success.