The Craft, She is Huge!

I sent out four new submissions recently, and I'm looking at sending out my very first non-fiction proposals.  I also went to the Lucky Labs meeting yesterday (it seems like forever since I've been!) and had a pint.

I felt like the meeting went well, but then I didn't get my story piled on.  It can get tough when there's a consensus, and the consensus is, 'this didn't work for me,' followed by an explanation of everything that went wrong.

Which brings me to abandonment.  The thing about writing is, like every other skill, it requires practice.  That includes practice of every aspect of writing.  I'm sure I'll miss some, but these are basic areas of writing that need lots of practice:

* Spelling and grammar

* Starting a project effectively

* Finishing a first draft

* Managing a first edit

* Receiving/understanding feedback

* Employing feedback

* Deep revision (where no element is held sacred)

* Polishing (also known as line editing)

* Tightening, or loosening (most people need to tighten)

* Establishing voice for a piece

* Establishing authorial style

* Character development

* Enrichment of setting

* Developing a satisfactory middle (muddle)

* Creating a satisfying ending

* Creating scenes with character and plot archs

* Transitioning

* Research/life experience development

* Learning about tropes, cliche's, and norms for a given genre

* Developing a narrative flow or rhythm

* Nurturing a critical eye for your own prose

* Nurturing an analytical eye when reading in your genre

* Nurturing and honoring the creation process

These are all difficult skills.  None of them are straightforward.  For example, spelling and grammar.  You'd think that would be straightforward, but it's not.  The rules are made to be broken, but they have to be broken in a way that makes reading more, not less, of a pleasure.  What about nurturing and honoring the creation process?   That's just care and feeding of the muse, right?  Not really.  Honoring includes respecting your own writing time--daily writing.  Nurturing means you have to learn how to create, and then practice creating.  Learn about outlines, try different brainstorming techniques, take lots of baths or showers (there's something about hot water and creativity--I'm not the only one who's noticed this!)

Lots of people come out of high school thinking they can write.  On the one hand, yes they can.  On another ... there's a whole lot more to learn out there, way more than even four years of dedicated college can teach you.  The good news is that you can sell your experiments when you reach a certain stage of writing, and that certain stage might be right out of high school.  The other good news is, writing never gets boring if you're a writer at heart.  There's always something more to learn.  There's always another hill to climb.

Which wraps back around to abandonment.  You might think that a story that was (almost) universally tromped ought to just be put out of its misery.  That depends.  Has the author learned everything s/he can from the work?  In this case I think the answer is clearly no.  I felt that this author hadn't learned how to fix problem manuscripts yet.  He hadn't learned how to take and consolidate the feedback, use that to re-examine the manuscript with his own critical eye (the feedback is, after all, a set of observations and suggestions, not a job order) and, if he couldn't figure out how to fix it on his own, start reading and researching like crazy in an effort to find out how other authors have solved those problems.  

Think about it.  If a story doesn't work and you abandon it every time, yes, you might eventually learn what does work when you line up all the stories you've written that receive positive feedback and write stories just like that every time.  But there's a danger of pigeonholing yourself.  Maybe all your successful stories are about a young female abuse victim who gets the upper hand over her former abuser and is instrumental in sending him to jail forever.  Some writers make a good wage repeating the same sort of story over and over again.  I'm not going to denigrate that.  But if you can't find that niche and make a career out of that, you'll be a one hit wonder.  If that's your goal, great.  But if you really want to learn the craft, you have to learn as many items on this list as you can, and some things that are not on this list.

I invite INKers and Friends of INK to think, and even blog about, some of these elements of writing.  Each one deserves a post all by its lonely.  Or, just file it away, and get to writing.  We're wasting daylight, people!

[This article is also posted on the INK faq]

Professional Editing

This seems obvious to me, but I haven't heard anyone talking about it at conventions or read it online from someone who is an authority until now at the Query Shark blog.  There are all manners of writers, agents and editors in the world, so the usual caveats apply, but this makes sense to me:

I really don't like to hear that your book has been professionally edited.  For me, it's not the persuasive piece of information you think it is.  You think it says "my book is polished and ready to go."

What I infer is "your book was polished by someone else and god help us when we get to the edit letter from the editor, and you don't know how to do this stuff"

Freelance editors tell you a book needs to be edited before agents will look at it.  What they are doing is selling their services.  Only one of my clients employed an editor and that was for non-fiction.

All my novelists write, revise, and edit their own books.

I've seen professional editing work out for people.  The way I've seen it work is via a teacher-student relationship with easy access to those services (aka not so many clients that the freelance editor doesn't have time for your project) and with money available to go over the work again if necessary.  

Ideally the freelance editor should include notes on (generally) what was done and why.  Even better is if there's an ongoing discussion so that the writer learns how to do the editing themselves.  Then, if there's a sale and a call for further editing (and I can almost guarantee there will be a call for more editing in the case of a novel!) the writer has access to this same freelance editor (for stylistic continuity since that style in part is what sold the book--see how this becomes really important to have and be able to afford an ongoing relationship?) and they can work together (the freelance editor continuing to teach as they go) to get those changes sent back promptly to the purchasing editor.  

Being on deadline in this situation would be incredibly stressful for me.  I would be at the mercy of the freelance editor's schedule.  Ack, I say, ack!

But wait, there's more.  This freelance editor/writer relationship isn't a trivial thing.  The freelance editor needs to have some sort of motivation to teach the writer to not need them anymore.  So in comes the deeper reason for why I feel it's ideal to hire a writing teacher who does editing on the side--because the reputation for the teaching services will help bring new clients in the form of students, counter-balancing the fact that eventually the freelance editor's services won't be needed anymore if s/he is doing their teaching job right.  If there's no motivation to teach clients to fly, there's every reason for a freelance editor to keep clients dependent.

I don't think it's wise to become dependent on a freelance editor unless you're the sort of person who relies on a kind of ghost-writer relationship in the first place: basically your primary marketing angle is that you're a celebrity or expert and the writing is just a means of delivering something of interest to an existing audience.  That's why the mention of the non-fiction sale makes so much sense to me.  If you're a novelist, it really is best to learn the craft.  If you have the money, get lots of quality instruction and make that the priority over freelance editing.  With high-quality instruction you can accelerate the learning process all writers go through, and maybe even avoid some classic writing errors in the process.  

Don't expect that if you get a freelance editor to do a once-over that suddenly your manuscript will be sellable, and even if it is, that the sale is followed by a happily ever after.  It can turn out to be just the opposite.  If you get a multi-book deal, only of which the first book has been written, and you leaned heavily on professional editing, you can expect that part of your advance will be spent on purchasing ongoing services.  Considering the cost per page of editing and the state of advances, this may eat your entire advance.

Not the way I would hope to spend an advance, should I be offered one.  But that just may be me.

Fighting Crime with Radioactive, Magical Mosquitos

At the Fireside today I plan on hand writing again.  I still haven't had any valuable insights about the process.  The thing that I keep coming back to is that it's slow.  Is slow more careful, deeper writing?  So far, not to my experience.  Is transcribing cool?  Does it add a special layer that I can't get through normal editing?  Not that I've seen, yet.  I'll hang onto that yet for a bit longer under the assumption that I'll still be learning more about the process over the next four weeks. 

 I don't have much choice as far as handwriting or not at this point because my options for Fireside writing are, well, let's see, hand write or pout, and I'm not big on pouting.

We do have a laptop in the house, my son's, an old powerbook he inherited from me.  Recently, somehow Snape ended up with a problem--the OS went bye bye for reasons unknown.  So, my original reasoning of "I'm not going to abscond with my son's computer every Tuesday for my own stuff" has become "and even if I wanted to, I couldn't use it."  So as a gift I'm going to take the poor Mac to the mighty techs and see what they can do with it.  

Tech voice in Kami's head:  Did you try starting it with a bootable CD?

Little kid sulky voice:  Yes

T:  Did you remember to hold down the c key?

L:  Tried that.

T:  What about the CD reader, does it sound like it's spinning?

L:  Yes!  I'm going to pout now.  See my lip?

I'm sure the boy would loan it to me if I asked, especially if I showed my lip, but this is good for me.  At least, I think it's good for me.  Is this just a case of me being stubborn?  Why do I want hand writing to be different, better, or at least teaching?

I guess because I haven't published yet and I want a magic radioactive writing mosquito to come along, annoy me by whining near my ear, land a couple times so I swat at it but it escapes with blinding mosquito speed, and then zap!  It bites me where I can't get to it and infuses my blood with that special something that turns me into The Belly Avenger!

Hey wait, I wanted a writing--

The Belly Avenger, mild-mannered housewife and goat wrestler by day,

Stop, no, I wanted--

Superhero by night, she fights crime with her hypnotic belly dancing, helping the helpless, saving the savingsless, and bringing jerks to justice.

Oh I give up!

Time to head to the place of all things good techie, Power Mac Pac.  See ya at the Fireside with my pen, paper, and apparently my hidden powers of belly dance.

When Opportunity Knocks, Answer the Door

For those of you with novel or short story openings that you're pretty settled on, there's a fine opportunity on Flogging the Quill right now.  He's whittled his openings down to a spare few and is requesting more submissions.  In a writing world where there are long queues and daunting slush piles, this is a great time to hop in before everyone else notices there's a call.

Even if you don't submit an opening remember to check in and please comment on those openings.  Writers need all the reader feedback they can get.  Besides, as always, by dissecting and commenting on someone else's opening, the flaws in your own become more clear.  Yay learning, yay comments, yay to everyone growing and improving!

Daily Writing Course available, free!

Ever have trouble with plots and subplots? Characterization keeping you up at night? Having issues with suspense and tension?

You can read a ton of books, take writing courses, get critiques like you always have, or you can spend a couple of hours a day for a few days or even a week watching the work of writers who have mastered all these skills.  Infamous for their ability to suck in a new viewer, sneered upon even more than romance writers, you gotta hand it to them.  Soap opera script writers know what they're doing.

Their plots and subplots are written very well and are extremely well-balanced.  They have to be.  Remember, they have to keep an audience interested enough that they'll wait through some of the most obnoxious commercials aired on tv, second only to late night infomercials, to continue watching.  During the dread commercial break a viewer can easily switch to a different soap or plug in a non-commercial-laden DVD. 

 

Their characterization is strong.  The viewers may know who the bad guys are, but not all the characters do know who the bad guys are and that makes for a lot of fun.  (Take a lesson from that right there.)  They write bitches like no one else and put honey in their mouths when those bitches are a wooing.  If you have trouble writing good guys that aren't boring, look no farther.  Each character has a distinct voice, goals, agenda--they're well-rounded and unique.

Suspense and tension?  They've taken it to extremes that have become laughable in the tv screenwriting industry, turning the cliff-hanger into a cliche' and drama into new heights (or lows, if you prefer) of melodrama.  What's beautiful about it as far as learning how to do it from a writing perspective is that the snippets of plot are broken down into very short frames and you can examine the tension arch in bold relief.  

The writing has to be good or there would be no audience.  In matter of fact they have a huge audience, one any writer would envy.  They have to be able to pull in a new viewer in just a few seconds in the middle of the story, with no recap because they never know when a new viewer will come in.  That alone I find fascinating, that the writing can bring in a viewer into the story even though that viewer has no idea (initially) what's going on.

I bet you think I'm joking but I'm not.  Give it a try.  Just remember, they are addicting.  Whole magazines and forums are devoted to them.  There was even a paranormal one I came very close to becoming addicted to when I last had the flu.  It's worth the risk for a quick, dirty and efficient lesson in effective writing techniques.  

Book in a Week?

Who needs a kick start to get themselves writing again?

I was reading about writing a book in a week on Broad Universe and something clicked.  No, absolutely I'm not going to write a book in a week.  I've got too many books I've written in a month that need my tender loving editing care to write yet another, especially since I'll probably do Nanowrimo again.  But when I got to the part about heroines of straw I thought aha!  That's something valuable to observe.  The author focused on lack of preparation leading to her failures but I thought her mention of her characterization was a bigger clue to her underlying issues.  Or not.  She was writing about her process, not mine.  

I wondered, can you prepare a character?  Technically, I guess.  You can decide their hair color and eye color, if they were molested as a child and how that makes them act out, if they drive a Cadillac or take the bus, and so on.  You can even 'motivate' them.  "My character wants, more than anything in the world, to travel to outer space."  Is that going to be your climax, then?  She finally gets to go to outer space?  Or is that just the beginning?  With the first choice, you've got a whole lot of empty to get her there.  With the second, you've got the deadly 'now what?'

So I thought about characters and what happens when I've got a good one.  And I realized that my favorite characters are strangers that I connect with and learn about as they grow in the story.  They're people when, as our eyes meet for the first time, I get this tingle.  I want to get to know them.  Maybe it's a shallow impression.  Man, is he hunky, and yet he's so shy!  Or maybe it's that moment of we're all in deep doo doo and she looks like she knows what she's doing.  I may be wrong, but my instincts say she's going to get me out of this mess alive where no one else can.  

Hopefully you're getting that idea.  I think this is yet another situation where 'write what you know' gets a lot of writers, including myself, into a little trouble.  I can think of a novel in particular where I put so many of my own insecurities and philosophies and everything else into the character that she didn't have much going for her.  Well, she had about as much going for her as I do.  I can be pretty entertaining and I have a lot of friends, but for a character to carry a novel I think she needs to be surprising, uncomfortable, edgy--something (even if it's just one thing but hopefully several things) that's not me.  I don't want her to be predictable and always react the same way I'd react if I were in the same situation.  

I'm not saying characters have to be larger than life--not at all.  But think about the first time you met your best friend, the love of your life, the teacher that changed your life, someone who impressed you even when you didn't know that much about them.  I propose that a character needs to pop for you the same as real people pop out of society's swarm and instantly become individuals.  Great actors can make even the most mundane secondary character interesting.  You want to get to know them, even if they're bad guys (or maybe especially, if you think that way.)  

The strongest short story I've recently written had this fun voice.  I didn't know much about that character's history, but I immediately wanted to get to know her.  She was a pistol.  I think I'm going to try to write something like that again, about someone I'd want to really get to know.  I think she's going to make a fabulous first impression on me.  I'll combine it with the garden challenge, I think.  Doesn't really matter, as long as I get to write about her.  I can't wait!

Another Writering Group

Call me a glutton. Today I attended the Washougal library's writers group. Carole joined me there, and we made up half the group of four. It was fun to talk with other writers and to do something a little different as a group. I was in no way tempted to steer the group towards the INK way of things, because part of my reason for going to was to try something new. Or at least different.

We talked writing for a bit, then each of us read from something we brought, if we brought something. I read from the first draft of my urban fantasy piece, "Telling It True." Everyone had helpful suggestions and comments and I came up with a few for my own piece from the reading. Carole read from "Ash" and it was well received, too, with a few more helpful comments for her to assimilate. Sean read the first chapter of a piece he wrote a few days before and it was very inspiring. I won't say anything about it here, except to say that I'm very interested to see where it goes.

We set up the meeting for next month and put together what we'd be doing. Some actual writing time and then more reading and commenting.

I liked having a more informal setting to just kick back. It was rather ORCish in a way, and it will be fun to have the writing time, too.

But even moreso, I am very much wanting to make it a weekly habit of getting out of the house at least once for a few hours of writing time. I'll have to look at each week as it comes and see where I can squirrel away the time. And in case anyone wants to join me, I'll keep you posted here.

Speaking of keeping things posted, I have only three more months of toolbox retrofitting to do, and then I'll just be keeping it current. I'm also going to start a sidebar on the INK FAQ page that lists what groups are meeting in the area for the week/month in case folks are looking for some place to join in. INK is invitation only, but there are a couple of open group, like the Washougal library, and I thought it was be fun to keep a list going for both prose and poetry and also readings that I here about in the Vancouver area. I get a lot of the emails anyway. Time to spread the news!

Trusting the Story

We had a stellar INK meeting last night.  I got home a little after one a.m. and had a long work day today, so if I'm less than coherent, blame the woodstove.

One of the many things that came up at the meeting was trusting the story.  This has been discussed everywhere and in-depth, but it bears repeating and repeating and repeating.

There's a common syndrome that bugs the bejeezus out of everyone so much that they tend to focus on it to the exclusion of other writing issues.  It's the writer who won't listen, won't take critiques, who will tell readers and editors and agents and book critics that they're wrong, and won't change a single word of their precious baby to suit anyone.  Some of them are brilliant writers and can get away with it, but most don't learn how to write well in the first place (since they're convinced that they're perfect and don't need to, you know, learn and change) and simply exist to annoy editors and agents with hate mail telling them how stupid they are and how sorry they'll be when this, the next great American novel, will sell billions of copies and become an intergalactic best seller.

There's another, more quiet syndrome that plagues writers and that's the one I want to focus on.  This quiet syndrome befalls the writer who tries to edit and adapt their story to please others.  Some will even go further and listen to the vicious voices in their heads that tell them their story is crud and only changes will make it barely serviceable.   Sometimes the changes suggested are valid, but they don't always work together.  Unfortunately it seems that the people who suffer from the first writing syndrome I mentioned above use this syndrome as an unshakeable reason to never listen to reader response.

This is where a wise author will become as Buddha.  No, not with the big belly thing and the creepy smile.  The middle road thing is overused and cheapens the concept in some ways because it's so familiar it can be dismissed.  Pair it with 'the truth lies somewhere between' and the concept of story integrity and hopefully the story won't fall victim as easily to either problem.  

Both syndromes have similar medications that help relieve the discomfort and sometimes even inspire a partial cure.  None of us are free from disease, though, not when it comes to writing.  I'm afraid we all have to live with being riddled with chronic writerly illnesses.  

Ask yourself why you're writing the story.  What is the inspiration, the thing you're trying to express?  It could revolve around a theme, a character, an event, or something as abstract as a sensation you felt when you saw a dog sharing an ice cream cone with a three year old.

Break it down to the scene.  Why this scene, this way?  Does each element serve a purpose?

Look at the characters.  If you were in their shoes, would you respond in a similar way?  Or do you know someone who responds that way?  Can you get inside the character's head and understand why?  

Are there ins and outs?  Can you see yourself or someone else getting into this situation and finding the events you pen out inevitable even if they're surprising?  On the other hand, is there a way out?  It doesn't have to be a pleasant way out, but there are always, always options.  If there aren't other options, it's not going to read in a realistic fashion.  And if there are better options that the character doesn't follow, the reader will wonder why this poor, helpless puppet is being forced to do something stupid/illogical/pointless instead of doing this other thing that fixes the problem.

Finally, is there reason?  Almighty Reason is our guide and light, and it has many colors.  Characters need reasons to do things, and they need to be strong motivational reasons if things get tough, or a real person would give up.  There should be a reason why you're describing this time and place, and no other.  There should be a reason why the readers ought to bother reading your story, and you should give them that reason.  "Because I love this idea and it won't let me go," is a start.  The first syndrome writer has no issue with this, but the quiet syndrome writer may in fact be missing this.  The quiet, insecure writer may find that their personal enjoyment (*cough* obsession) of the story is insufficient reason to write it, so they must alter it in the hopes that the changes will make it matter to others, or worse, alter it so that it will reflect a literary ideal rather than their own hearts and minds or hopes of reaching a real, flesh and blood reader.    

What's the harm in trying to adopt most or even all the changes that readers suggest?

Well, aside from the fact that readers can be wrong (no! really?) and could contradict each other (you mean people might like or hate things that other people hate or like? Dang!) making changes in line editing, working in partial conceptual revisions, altering character motivations and other such rewriting always runs the risk of inserting discontinuities and tone changes, as well as outright contradictions.  Artifacts appear in the writing from previous versions that didn't get eliminated.  This happens all the time in revisions.  It's part of the process.  But the more changes an author makes the more opportunities there are for continuity, logic and voice/style issues to arise.  Too much line editing, like overworking a painting, will turn the words to gray, lifeless mud.  Working in conceptual revisions is like overworking a collage--you'll end up with a gaudy thing that makes no sense.  Altering too many character motivations is like changing all the expressions in a family portrait--suddenly they don't look like family anymore because they aren't natural and themselves around each other.  They become artificial and disconnected.

What's a poor writer to do?

Outline writers will disagree with chronological/character-driven writers, but both styles of writer will agree that the truth will come out when you return to the heart of the story.  You can start writing from scratch--blue screen writing.  Write it like you remember it.  Anything you leave out probably wasn't that important, and new things might come in that bring the story back to life.  You can return to the outline, a homecoming of sorts.  You can never go back home again, they always say, but returning to an outline after wandering the wilderness can help ground you for a beginning-to-end rewrite.  You can Snowflake the work and see if you can find missing elements and build character motivations.  You might even find a subplot or two.  You can edit one aspect at a time from beginning to end.  It's tiring, but worth it to go through and look only at one character's part in the story, then start again from the beginning looking at passive voice, and then again looking at setting and sensory detail, and so on.  Lastly, you can go to the masters for advice.  Revising Fiction by David Madden.  Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.  Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee.  Read writers who write better than you.  Rudyard Kipling.  Mark Twain.  Miyamoto Musashi.  William Shakespeare.  Ernest Hemmingway.  Homer.  James Herriot.  Khalil Gibran.  They've lasted and their names are known throughout the world for a reason.  Read them for pleasure, or if you can't enjoy their work, try to figure out what it is that's made them last.  Was it a message?  The flow of their words?  An amazing idea?  Characterization?  Sensory detail?  Listen to their voices.  What are they talking about?

Then think hard about what you're talking about.  If you had only one story you could tell the world before you died, what story would you choose?  Would it be a fantasy, or a story from your childhood?  Would it be long?  Or would it be short and punchy, something you could tell aloud by a campfire before wandering off into the darkness?  Do yourself a favor and tell that story when you sit down and write next time.  If you're still having trouble figuring out what it means when people say trust the story (what is it that you're trusting really if everything is so malleable?) think about the crucial images and scenes that you want to transmit and the feelings you want to inspire in the telling.  If you find a special reader or three that you trust, listen to what they have to say.  Let their impressions guide you deeper, kind of like therapy with a really good counselor, but own your story like you own your life.  The story is part of your life, even if it's fiction.  Once you've found the critical elements that must be there, they become like history, and then it's your job to make history come to life for the reader.

When you're done, if you survive, there's always the next great story waiting to be written inside you.  If you're like me, there's a whole lot of them excited and ready to be told. 

Start Now!

A long while back I mentioned that writing a synopsis will help focus a novel.  It will do nothing but good, even if you abandon said synopsis in the course of revising the novel.  

Another good reason to write a synopsis early on in your project is that writing a synopsis is hard.  A good synopsis will take a long time to write unless you get lucky or you think in terms of synopses and can write a 'take me, take me now, take me hard!' synopsis in an hour or less, in which case I hate you and you don't need to come back here ever again.    The synopsis has to go through the same review process as any other writing you plan to submit, so waiting until you're all done with writing your work will only delay your submission.  You have to write it, get it critiqued, rewrite it, get it past your best readers, give it a final polish, and don't forget to kiss it goodbye when you send it off, or at least give it a good spank on its tight little butt on its way out.

Here's some help I found recently thanks to a link of a link of a link.

Openers

I've spent a huge number of hours reading openings, and critiquing some of them, at the now infamous Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge.  (The contest is closed to submissions and they're sorting through the entries now.)  I've read various rules and suggestions for how to open a novel, but I have to say at this point that reading about it and/or thinking about it is no substitute for reading about a gizillion openings and picking apart as many as you can stand to critique.  

Go forth and read the entries.  Find the flaws in the best ones.  May your eyes be opened.  And then read Shock and Awe.   Although we always hear that a novel should open with a hook, in the middle of it all, preferably with action, that doesn't mean that the action has to be physical.  Suddenly I'm okay with how Masks opens again.  Yay!

At the risk of repeating myself, I wanted to write about critiques in general and specifically what a wonderful group INK is and how privileged I feel to be a part of them.  

Steve is a picky reader, especially when it comes to internal consistency.  When he has trouble with the logic of a particular scene, I listen very carefully.  I don't want to become that author who writes about characters that do stupid things because it serves the plot.  I especially don't want to become that author with implausible happenings, ridiculous solutions and character motivations that make absolutely no sense.  He is also our only man.  I hope he doesn't start to suffer from estrogen poisoning at our meetings, because I really need that testosterone perspective, particularly since lately I've been writing male pov characters.

Carole is my eye-roller reader.  She doesn't technically 'do' fantasy, or to look at it another way, she prefers dark fantasy and magic realism.  She's my oh puke reader, and if I'm not making her puke there's a very good chance my writing could reach mainstream readers.  She's also a detail reader.  She's done so many jobs and been enough different places that she has tons of facts packed into her head, while having the valuable skill of being able to discriminate between what I mean versus what a reader who is unfamiliar with said item will hear.  For example, it never occurred to me that a reader would think that even the leaves on a bougainvillea vine would be red when I'm talking about papery carmine bougainvillea vines.  Not only did I assume everyone had seen them but I also looked like an idiot if someone had seen them (like CS) and thought I hadn't and had mis-described them from ignorance.  BTW, Carole, I have a baker character in the next book.  I'm looking forward to your impression of him and his workspace.

Carissa is my form and function reader.  If it has no function, she suggests eliminating it.  If the form is flawed, she catches it.  She also helps with things like details and character motivations, but where she really shines as a reader is as a surrogate editor.  She has read so much fantasy (and continues to read fantasy regularly) that she'll catch it if I'm falling into cliche'.  She also gets impatient with my writing in many of the same ways that editors get impatient with writing.  Their time is valuable.  As a rule they don't like excess wordage, extraneous scenes, scenes that go on too long, characters that have no purpose, expository lumps, etc.  No matter how carefully I disguise them (even from myself) Carissa catches them.  If a description passes muster with her, I'm confident that it'll pass muster with darned near anyone.

I had a really good critique, as always, on Masks with INK this last meeting.  I learned that I'd butchered what probably had been a perfectly fine fight scene before I 'streamlined' (read, took out too much for anyone to follow the action) it, that I'd turned my intelligent character into an unsympathetic hormonal mess, that I'd removed too much calculation in a character's reasoning and turned a dark scene into a mini-buddy movie that lacked chemistry, and many other things.  I also got some great brain-storming ideas that will have repercussions across two, maybe all three of the trilogy that Masks begins.

I sometimes worry that you think you're playing second hat to the Lucky Labs (who I'm also very, very grateful to,) so here's my note of appreciation and reassurance.  You're great readers, and you are all so definitely going to be in the acknowledgements.  Without my readers, I'd be a much less effective writer, no doubt about it.  You also have the horrible job of checking every blessed little tiny scrap of crap I write.  From my bios and cover letters to synopses and outlines, nothing goes out without an INK okay.  You also listen to my endless yammering on WIPs and bleeding characters and plotlines.  We've become more than a critique group.  We're a team, a business venture, and I'm very glad to be a part of you.  Thanks, INK!  You're the best.

Yet Another FAQ

Everyone has pet peeves. Everyone gloms onto certain issues that they simply can't overlook in writing. I have this thing about first sentences in passive voice. I'm not against passive voice altogether--it has its place--but the first sentence? We haven't even gotten started and we're already distancing the action.

The thing about pet peeves is this--they're irrational and cruel. But they need their due. They're irrational and cruel because no matter how much we hate them, we're guilty of them. Passive voice in the first sentence? Oh yeah, I've written that, and stuck to it too. They need their due, though, because pet peeves arise from seeing the same problems over and over again until you start looking for inventive things to do to yourself so that you don't have to say it again.

I couldn't tell so and so that I didn't like that passive voice in the first sentence because we were out of bread in the house and I had to go shopping and then I forgot to write it down and during the critique I decided that if I hadn't written it down in the first place it must not have been that important.

My (actually Ris' proposal, I was going to do this by myself because you know I can't shut up once I've gotten an idea) is for INK (and associates, if you would like to contribute!) to submit your pet peeves for a FAQ. We can organize it by person, or, if you think this would be a better idea, we can hide in pseudo-anonymity, pretend we don't know who wrote what pet peeve, and just glom them all together into one list.

For the record, I refuse to take the blame for first sentence in passive voice. That doesn't bother me in the least.

Hard Reality? More Like Hard Realities

I've read a lot of submission guidelines lately. They contradict each other, of course. The default is always to follow the preferences and guidelines of the exact publisher or agent you submit to. Deviate at your peril. Second default position is to follow the guidelines for the genre for which you specifically write, especially if they're guidelines posted on a major organization for that genre such as RRA or SFWA. Seeing the variations can be instructive. Or it may send you screaming to the bedroom to hide under the covers where you can sob over the hopelessness of it all in that black space where the boogeyman editor can't get to you. Here are some gems:

Brutal but true: Kent Brewster confirms our worst nightmares. You're wonderful Kent please don't hurt my ms! Sweeping Back the Slushpile by Kent Brewster

I love you, Murderati. In my fantasy life, INK becomes similar to Murderati. Anyway, this is both a demonstration of individual genres having their own set of 'absolute' or macro-rules that you can generally follow and be safe and also that no matter what you do, you'll be hitting someone's pet peeve so just try not to make yourself too crazy and make your ms as professional as you can before you send it out. I think it also helps to be cool, like the murderati:
Things Your Creative Writing Instructor Never Told You by Gordon Aalborg

For our entertainment: Because we need a break from the insanity to laugh at the stupidity of others. Please, muse, don't let me get this messed up about my rejections. Let me continue celebrating their collection and to view a hand-written note as a priceless artifact painstakingly dug out from the ruins of my manuscript! Slushkiller by Teresa Nielson Hayden

Not only do we have to worry about how to publish, but of course where. Sad to say, I would be enthused to get a short published on toilet paper as long as it counted as a real publication. I hope that someday toilet paper won't seem nearly as appealing. Trying to Get Published on Toilet Paper by the Fine Folks at Slushpile.net

The last word, though, is always this. The story has to be good, or the formatting doesn't matter. Reversely, if the story is really good, the small details (what font, how many spaces after a period) won't matter. Rachel Funari in her article Escaping the Slushpile put it well:

The stories that were sent to my office were mainly about the same one-dimensional characters: the abused wife obsessed with cleaning, the husband who kills his wife because she’s gone to fat, the stereotypical mobster, and let’s not forget the drunk, fat, ex-policeman, snidely-comic private detective who has to figure out the illegal mess the husband of a beautiful, blond, buxom woman has gotten into. All of these characters are boring because they aren’t real people. Successful stories are about the same types of characters, but they are people with compulsions and neuroses and subtleties and contradictions. They are caught in worlds they don’t understand, forced into situations they have no answers for, made desperate by people they love, made obsessive by people that have no room for them. No matter whether your story is about an ordinary person or an extraordinary one, your voice needs to be unique, your character whole and full, your storytelling revelatory and involved, your reason for telling this story clear and revealed. Otherwise, why should I read it? When you sit down to write, you should ask yourself, Why must I tell this story? Why must my character be the hero or anti-hero of this story? What do I have to say about this story, or this life, or this world that needs me to write it? What is my point? If you can’t answer these questions, then you shouldn’t be writing the story. And if this is the case, then all above advice is moot.

Using INK

Since one of my unwritten goals is to submit for INK Critiques every meeting, I'm using INK submission Fridays as a deadline to meet. It's nice, having an outside deadline. It keeps me working when I might slack off.

And since I have more and more projects needing revision, I'm alternating between each meeting on what will be submitted. So for the next two weeks, I'll be revising one of my new short stories. After it is submitted, I switch right into revising a novel. Then back to short story, and so on.

I even know what novel I'll work on next. The Trinket Box, which has already had some transcription time. The group has seen The Inkwell Cult recently, so I'm going to hold back on it a little while (I think the six month time limit for review will be up after February). Work on plotting it out a little stronger before diving in to the edit. Fix the major plot flaws and character gaffs and try to work a way of not getting stuck in the bloody hotel again.

During it all, I have my 3 pages a day, which are going well, my poem a week, which is more difficult than I expected, but I managed to churn out a decent poem yesterday after staring at a blank page for far longer than I thought I could. There's the Reven read, which I'm looking forward to, but must be paced so I can take decent enough notes not to have to read back through it again when we start on that edit (huh, nother revision to add into the mix). But it is all doable if I planned what needs to be done when and make a list!

But a close second to list-making is the INK deadline. I love that we've established a deadline for submission. It's going to be just the push I need to keep me honest.

I'm going to learn a lot this year, thanks to INK. Deadlines, five minute critiques, bio writing . . .

Emotional 180

Inquiring minds want to know what an emotional 180 is.  I think we've mentioned this before, and Mark may remember as soon as I mention scene arch, but it bears repeating.

There are lots of ways to approach story writing.  Although I'm one of those touchy-feelie 'let the story unfold as it will' types that shrinks away from outlining, I do prefer to use technical devices as much as possible, especially when I'm doing something that's not my favorite thing, like editing.  One of my faves, and I do it mostly when editing although like Ris when I'm stuck I try to do it while writing too, is to make a 180 degree change in the scene.  

An emotional 180, therefore, would be with the pov character or the emotional tone of the scene starting out, say, sad, but by the end of the scene (or story) the character or tone is happy.  Other 180's:  You can also begin with action, and end with reflection (or sleep,) start with dreary rain and end with sunshine, start with broad narration and end with tight, focused pov or dialogue, or all visa versa.

When push comes to shove, though, even if you're playing with setting or plot when you're turning these 180's, you're making emotional impact on the characters and therefore (hopefully) with the audience.  Without changing the emotions in scenes and stories, the work ends up reading like a monotone.  

The stronger the emotional changes, the more vibrant the work is, so it's worth your while to seek the opposite whenever you can.  

If you only make it partway toward a major change, that'll do.  It never works to force something.  But often that 180 comes about naturally because of the climactic cycle.  The climax in a scene or a story is also called the turning point, and that turning point has to have major emotional impact to be effective.

I'm Loving It

I have my typewriter and it is such a huge improvement! I couldn't wait to get to it this morning. I got out almost four pages without pause (well, there was the pause for coffee, and then the one to set Kate up with a show, and then she wanted juice . . .). I love how it feels and I'm so glad I followed my gut with it.

The best part is having a stack of written pages at my elbow. It's so much more visceral (to borrow Kami's awesome word from last night) to have the pages right there. It is much easier to feel like a writer when I have a solid representation of my labors laid out before me. It makes me want to scoop up the pages and start editing!

But that must wait a while longer. I may, however, be forced to share excerpts at our get togethers, though. Which might be fun to do.

Speaking of which, it was great to see everyone again last night! I come away inspired, as always, even when my writing isn't on the group chopping block. It is good to hear other interpretations of critiques and to have them not always agree, because it gets me to thinking in a new perspective and that is always a bonus.

And while I'm eager to lay my own sacrifice upon the chopping block, I know I'm not there yet. I need to reach that point when I can do my own private evisceration first.

But the script, when I've finished it, will be fair game, because it will be such a new lifeform for us to examine. I'll happily offer it to the altar of inspiration to be pecked at by the crows of curiosity. In July, when it is done.

Only five more days before it is time to write it. I hope I'll be ready. Oh, who am I fooling? I won't be ready, but I'll write it anyway.

Low-teching It

This weekend I'll be purchasing a typewriter. I've been wanting one again for years, actually, not much longer than I sold my old one to the English Department for use by the teaching assistants. Computers were the Big New Thing with the internet exploding all over the place and I just lost my head, I think. Plus I was trying to be helpful to the other T.A. who didn't want to use the ancient machine we'd been given. And I needed the money.

No more! I want a typewriter! I have a dream, and it's a good dream, of sitting at my kitchen table in the morning, a cup of coffee at hand, two stacks of paper to the side, one stack blank, the other my continuing rough draft, and my typewriter humming along with the birdsong until my clack clack clackety clack drives all the birds away from the back porch. No internet. No word program crashing half way through writing up my script synopsis (grrrrr), no sitting where I'm the first thing everybody in the house sees, where the TV can grab for my eyeballs and the clutter in the living room stabs at my sense of cleanliness.

Just me, my coffee (which I now have the ability to make!), my stacks of papers and my typewriter. And maybe a plate of madeleines. And my dictionary. And music on the cd player.

Ooo, I'm so looking forward to this weekend!

Gender Genie.

Recently I discovered a great, fun little tool online called the Gender Genie. It guesses the gender of the author who has typed or pasted in some of their text. 500 words is better than just a sentence or two and it only takes a minute or less for results (depending on your connection). Plus it shows the keywords more often than not used by female and male authors.

Periodically, I enter some of my "Enthusiast" text and only once have I come up with "female." As you know, I want that body of work to sound as if written by a male and had previously asked a published author at the San Diego Writer's Conference for his thoughts (he said definitely male-written).

I hope you have fun with Gender Genie!

(For fun, I submitted this blog entry into Gender Genie and it said it was written by a female.)