Writing Goals for 2017

Here are my writing goals for 2017:

1) Finish revisions to my short story, La Jolla Ballroom, and submit for writers' group anthology. This one is done, I did the final revisions this morning.

2) Finish current novel, The Love Machine, by June. I think I'm over halfway done at this point. I've been doing editing and revision of each chapter after reading it aloud at my writers' group, so it (hopefully) will need little revision once I get to the end. June's pretty ambitious, but I should be able to manage it.

3) In January, complete beta reads for manuscripts. I'm beta reading two novels for fellow authors in my writers' group.

4) Revise third novel (probably starting in June). Also, come up with a good title for it. My third novel, finished a couple years ago, languishes in limbo. It's done but needs a a major re-write.

5) Continue work on short stories, including Steader, and others as time permits. I have a short story I started a few months ago titled Steader that I think could be really good. Just need to finish it! Plenty of other ideas for stories floating around too, nothing too well-formed, but lots of things with potential.

5A) But only write short stories if it is something new. I feel like I've gotten in a little bit of a rut with my short stories--some of my recent ones have seemed too similar in tone, and too easy for me to write. So I've determined only to write short stories that will stretch my writing muscles in some way. For La Jolla Ballroom, it's using period dialect from the 1930s. For Steader, it's writing a tense thriller.

Writing Goals for 2015

Here are my writing goals for 2015:

1. Work on super-secret project (more details to come in 2015, I hope!)
1a. Polish short story for super-secret project. Already written, but for some reason I just cannot get this thing edited! I really need to work on it.

2. Finish edit of novel manuscript. This is my third novel (current working title: Out of Place), which is in draft form but needs some editing and polishing. I don't think it actually requires that much work--but I do need to sit down with it for a couple months and get it into shape.
2a. Send third novel out to agents.

3. Edit Writers of Chantilly anthology in a more timely fashion than I did with last year's!

EITHER 4a. Edit second novel, and try sending it out to agents again;
OR 4b. Research, begin writing fourth novel. I'm fairly certain what I'm going to write about, just need to get some stuff figured out before I can start.

To Be Creative, Don't Hoard Ideas

Sometimes I meet or hear about a writer who thinks ideas are a rare, precious resource. These writers hoard ideas like a squirrel hoards nuts, locking them away no one can ever see them. They're frightened to share their ideas with others lest they should be stolen. They spend useless time studying copyright law to keep others from copying them. They work for months or years on a story way past the point where more polishing is necessary, because they think they're only going to get one shot at a good idea.

This is all nonsense. Talking about your ideas with others begets more ideas. I say, if someone else steals your idea, good for them! If they're a good writer, what they do with it won't look anything like your story anyway. And if they're not a good writer, why do you care what they do with your idea? And forget copyright--leave all that up to your agent and publisher, although my guess is the hoarders rarely get to the point of having an agent or publisher.

I'm something of a perfectionist, but once you've gotten your story to a point where more work on your story doesn't change the story's quality, move on to something else. There's usually a natural point where if you're paying attention, you realize you've pretty much reached the limit with the story you're working on. If you spend longer than that on it, you're just gumming up the creative part of your mind that needs new things to work on.

You should have so many ideas that if one doesn't work out, you have a hundred more to pick from. The thing to do about ideas is not to protect them, it's to stoke the furnace in your mind that produces them. And just as you don't gain strength by resting your muscles all the time, but by using them vigorously and often, so it is with your creativity. Write lots of stories, poems, letters! (Blog posts!) Keep a notebook with you to write down story ideas whenever they occur to you. If you have a funny or frightening dream, consider how you might adapt it to written form. (Lots of my best ideas come from dreams.) And join a writers' group, where you can discuss all sorts of ideas with other writers!

Cross-posted at The Writers of Chantilly Blog

The Importance of Writing Groups Redux

I've written in the past about the importance for a writer of being in a writers group.  In those posts, I mentioned four reasons to join a writers group:

1) Reading out loud in front of a group makes you try harder when you're polishing your work.

2) The support of other writers boosts you and supercharges your desire to write.

3) The critique provided by the other writers is an important tool in improving your work.

4) A regular meeting helps you get back on track when you've lost your way.

I'd like to mention a fifth that's occurred to me lately.  At the last few meetings, some of the other writers have read some really great pieces.  A couple writers in particular read chapters from their books that impressed me--and maybe made me a little envious.  Hey, I can write as well as that!

So why haven't I?

Obviously, I've really got to up my game if I'm going to keep up with these guys.  And so we come to the fifth reason: competition.  When other writers are hot, when they bring in something that makes you say "Damn!"  When they're providing the group with a master class in how it's done, you know it's time to get to work on your own story or manuscript.

What I'm Reading: How to Write a Damn Good Novel

Like most of these how-to books, James N. Frey's How to Write a Damn Good Novel has some good advice and some truly god-awful advice.  The thing is, I bet a lot of writers who read this book say the same thing, only we're talking about different parts of the book.  Writing, and especially writing at novel-length, is all so individualized that what's fertilizer for one writer may be manure to another.

The advice Frey gives that I'll take away and put to use immediately is his idea to give the overall thrust of the book, as well as each main character, a premise describing their plot or character development arc.  For instance, the premise for Michael in the Godfather is that family loyalty leads to a life of crime, or for Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, forced self-examination leads to generosity.

I'm sure I've heard advice along these lines given before, probably in the form of "give each character a motivation," but that never seemed to work for me.  People's motivations change moment to moment based on the situation.  But phrased as Frey put it makes the idea a little more abstract, and its utility was immediately apparent to me: you can instantly tell whether a scene you're writing is relevant or not.  Does the scene advance the overall premise of the book, or of the character(s) in the scene?  If not, then it doesn't need to be in there.  I do this already, of course, but the premise concept provides a way to screen each scene more quickly.

The worst advice I found was Frey's admonition to put together something called a "step-sheet" before you ever start writing.  As he describes it, this is basically a detailed outline showing the dramatic rise and fall in tension throughout the book, and apparently it should take about a month to finish.  For some writers that might be great, but I'm never going to do it.  In my mind, anything more than a one or two page sketch at the beginning is a straitjacket.  Start off with great characters and let them figure out how to navigate the plot.

Another thing Frey mentioned that I doubt I'll ever do, although it sounds intriguing, is to interview your characters before starting the book.  This actually sounds like it might be a good way to establish their voice.  Of course, my preferred way to establish a character's voice is to write the book and let it come out naturally.  But who knows?  Maybe if I'm having trouble with a character some time I'll give it a try and see if it helps.

One thing I appreciated about Damn Good is that it's more on the practical end than the cheerleading end of writing how-to books.  Even if you don't agree with a suggestion, at least he makes one on nearly every page and you can take it or leave it.  I've had it with the cheerleaders.  I've written enough and gotten good enough I don't need the encouragement, and I'd rather read something with a high density of advice.  For those who are looking for encouragement, turn to Bird by Bird, which is clearly the best in that category.

So as a writer, should you read this?  Of course.  If you want to write a novel, you should probably read a dozen of these.  Half of what's in any of them you'll already know, and another third will be absolutely wrong for you, but that remaining fifteen percent is what you're after.  I found my fifteen percent in this book and my guess is you will too.

What I'm Reading: A Journey to Self-Publishing

A Journey to Self-Publishing is another one by a member of the Writers of Chantilly.  The author here is Kalyani Kurup, who gives us a brief (five chapters) but charming memoir of her experiences as a writer and her misadventures in the publishing world in India and the United States.

I can definitely recommend this book to other authors, especially those considering the alternative world of self-publishing.  Writers will find a lot of useful lessons on dealing with publishers and free-lance employers, as well as the occasional pointer on improving one's writing style. Some non-writers may find it to be a lot of shoptalk, but I think others will appreciate how well she laces her story with self-deprecating humor and careful observations of the people she meets.  I especially love her story of a lengthy search for a certain address in Bangalore, accompanied by the world's worst-oriented auto-rickshaw driver.

I might also add that despite her frequent protestations in the text to the contrary, Ms. Kurup's English is impeccable! Her prose style is elegant and tasteful, a little like one of those Bangalore gardens she must have seen that day--perhaps more flowers and ornamentation than are strictly necessary, but all directed towards the end of creating a beautiful, well-tended place for relaxation and edification.

What Is Lost

And Jesus was a sailor 

When he walked upon the water 

And he spent a long time watching 

From his lonely wooden tower

And when he knew for certain

Only drowning men could see him

He said "All men will be sailors then 

Until the sea shall free them" 

-- from Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen

***

Man, do writers have it easy.  Set your own hours.  Doodle away on the keyboard for half a day, waiting for the mailman to arrive with your big check from the publisher.  Don't forget to set aside some time for all the magazine interviews.  Oh, and you have that cushy book tour coming up, too, with all those reservations for five-star hotels and fine restaurants in glamorous cities.

Okay, maybe you don't think of the writing life that way.  You're realistic.  You know it's hard work.  But you're ready for it.  After all, nobody ever achieved success without putting the old nose to the grindstone, right?

But I bet you still haven't thought of everything.  You haven't considered what you have to lose.

Lose?  What's to lose?  Sure, you'll have to sacrifice some evenings to get the manuscript done, but who cares about missing a little TV?  What else is there to lose?

Your career, for one.  After all, you just have your day job to pay the bills until you finish your novel.  So when your boss asks if you can work late, you turn him down.  Who has time for that?  You have something more important waiting for you at home--your writing.  Your colleagues think you're unambitious.  But who cares what they think?  They'll realize why you were so uninvolved with your work when they see your name on the New York Times bestseller list.

Except that first novel doesn't sell.  Nor does the second.  And now five years have passed, and you're working on that third novel, and the boss has passed you over for promotion, and your colleagues whisper behind your back.  Hey, if things aren't working out here, maybe you could move to a different job.  Except, who's going to write the recommendation for the distant employee who was never really interested in being in the office?

But not everyone is cut out for a career, right?  You still have your family.  Sure, you spend a lot of time locked away in the computer room, night after night, pecking away at those keys, and when the kids interrupt your writing time, you get so grumpy.  Not that they bother, after awhile.  They find somebody else to read them their bedtime story.  It's okay, though, once the money starts coming in, you'll make it up to them.  And after writing for six months, that might be possible.  But after writing for years?  When you've been holed away long enough, they forget all about you, the family troll in its cave.  Don't disturb it, it's been known to bite.  And the odor!  When was the last time that thing bathed?

You know, never mind the kids, your spouse will always have faith in you.  Your spouse, who was so loving, so supportive when you started this project.  Except, by the third novel, the fourth, the fifth--well, that's a lot of lonely nights.  And if your spouse finally has enough and walks out the door, who's really to blame?  The wedding vows speak of sticking together through sickness and health, good times and bad, but they don't have anything to say about disappearing from the real people in your family so you can spend time with the fictional ones on the page.

OK, sad to say, relationships aren't you're strong suit.  No matter.  You're an idea person, a word person.  That's why you got into writing in the first place, isn't it?  Because you love to read.  Books were always there for you when people weren't, and nothing is better than curling up with a good one.  Are you a mystery fan?  Or do you prefer science fiction?  Maybe you like to read the great novels, really getting into the deep questions about life and love and the beautiful language.  What could be a better complement to your reading than writing?  Yeah, you'll get to that stack of books later tonight.  Right after you get this paragraph perfect.  Shouldn't take too long....  Okay, it took two hours, and now it's late.  Well, there's always tomorrow.  Or maybe the next day.  Or perhaps next week....

So you've lost your job, your family, your personal time.  You still have one, very important thing: your self-confidence.  Nothing's going to stop you from achieving your goal.  Except those pesky agents and publishers, that is.  Rejection after rejection.  They do pile up, don't they?  And your optimism drains away with each plot hole you can't fill.  Why is it no matter how long and hard you work, how many metaphors you formulate, how many scenes you nail, your writing never seems to achieve its potential?  You know it can be better, but you can just never reach it.  Stupid!  How much of an idiot do you have to be not to get it right after three novels?

Eventually your dreams die.  A tree that's never watered doesn't bear fruit.  You didn't ask for much, really.  At first, fame and fortune seemed within reach, but later, all you wanted was to see one of your books on the shelf.  But that victory never comes and never comes and never comes, and the dream withers, and finally you reach a point where even if the success did come, it wouldn't mean anything after all the failures.

***

We know from the Bible Jesus was a carpenter.  He found men rough, unfinished, and sanded and sawed and fitted them together, until he built chairs and tables.  And with those chairs and tables, he had a supper, and though it was his last one, the things he had built lasted.

But Jesus must have been something of a fisherman too.  He certainly knew quite a few, to whom he said, "Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men."  And with him they went.  He pulled men in by the thousands and landed them on his craft, the Good Ship Salvation.

As for me, I believe God is a writer.  After all, when he saw how his first draft turned out, he tore it up, sending a great flood to destroy it.  I know the urge.

He certainly has a way with his characters.  He creates them, breathes life into them, sends them forth onto the paths he has planned for him.  As characters tend to do, they don't always go the way he intended.  My characters surprise me all the time.  How is that possible, if they're only fiction?  Sometimes I gnash my teeth at how my characters refuse to behave.  Of course, you have the power to make them do as you wish, but a good writer honors their integrity.  And you know, in the end, sometimes their unexpected choices have made the story stronger.

We were made in God's image, and when we write, we're coming as close to God as we'll ever get.  He's the author of all Creation, and we're the author of our creations.  We establish our little world, populate it, people it, allow our creations the freedom to bite the apple, if they dare.  We provide the challenges that will let our heroes shine, and throw in a little romance, villains, and adventure.  We work in some themes and pack the pages with imagery.  And when we get to the end, we provide justice: in a satisfying story, the good are rewarded, the evil punished, and all have a chance to redeem themselves.

And so it is with the book God is writing, the story of Everything.  After all, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  Amen.

Cross-posted on the Writers of Chantilly blog.

Again With the Importance of Writing Groups

So I was on vacation last week, and the week before that was just crazy, and maybe the week before that I'd been kind of lazy.  But for whatever reason, I hadn't written in my WiP for three weeks.  I was really dreading getting back to it, too.  After you haven't worked on your project for a while, it's hard to get back into the groove.

But on Monday I went to my Writers of Chantilly meeting, and I came away charged.  Ready to return to my work.  Maybe it was the positive comments I received on my latest chapter.  Maybe it was being around other writers excited about their work.  Maybe it was simply thinking about the writing process.  Whatever the reason, last night I sat down at the computer and made a number of changes to my novel I've been meaning to for a while, and got in some actual writing as well.  All in all, a solid night, and I'm still ready to write again tonight.

So here's another reason we could add to the list of why you, a writer, should definitely be in a writer's group: getting back on track when you've lost your way.

How Often Should You Write?

So after a week-long vacation, and several extremely busy days after getting back, I've finally returned to writing on a daily basis this week.  The first couple days were tough, but now the words are flowing.  I'm struck again, as I have been in the past, how important it is to write every day.

For the novelist, it's critical.  You simply can't get any momentum going if you take days off between writing sessions.  When you take a couple days off, you have to read over what you've previously written, re-calibrate, take a few paragraphs to warm up, and only then does real writing come out, maybe.  You'll never finish that way.  But write daily, and each new session flows beautifully.  Your mind has been working on the problems of the previous session and you start exactly where you left off previously, with new ideas and energy.

I'm not the only one who thinks this.  Stephen King's a big believer in writing every day. Raymond Chandler prescribed four hours a day for writing, and even if he couldn't think of anything, he forced himself to sit in the chair and look out the window.

That's novelists.  Surely other types of writers are different?  Well, maybe, but I'm not so sure.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe started writing a poem every day when he was a teen-ager, and continued the habit throughout his life.  It worked out pretty well for him.  I bet most successful writers make it to the writing desk daily, or nearly so.

If you miss a day here and there, it's probably unavoidable.  Don't sweat it.  But try to write at least six days every week.  Avoid missing more than one day in a row.  That's how you keep your brain bubbling.  Here's a secret: Writing is not the product of inspiration; inspiration is the product of writing.

Words to leave out

Keeping to the theme of the last post, today I'm going to list some words you should leave out of your writing.  After you finish a piece, go through with the word search function and see how many of the following you can remove.

Note: I will revisit this post from time to time as I think of new ones (i.e., come across them in my own writing).

very--A strange word in that it does the opposite of what you think it does.  You think it amplifies or emphasizes, but it actually diminishes.
Dr. Brown's new car was very shiny, very sleek, and very fast.
Dr. Brown's new car was shiny, sleek, and fast.
See?  All those verys slow the reader down.  Take the advice of Depeche Mode: Very is very unnecessary; it can only do harm.

begin to, start to--Normally, people don't begin to do something, they just do it.
The wolf approached me, drooling and snarling.  I turned and started to run ran.

just--This is a problematic one for me.  Nothing wrong with the word, I just seem to use it once or twice a page when I write.  I think I just don't realize I'm putting it in.  I just have to use the word search when I'm done and I can eliminate three-quarters of the justs.

saw, look--Nothing wrong with these words.  They're good, solid words that will appear many times in your writing.  However, they can be a little boring.  See if you can't replace a few of them with eye, focus, gape, gaze, glance, observe, ogle, regard, scan, spy, view, watch, etc.  Don't take this too far though--the goal isn't to bedeck your manuscript like a royal crown!  A little goes a long way.

actually--Thanks to Dana for a link to a similar post!  From that I got the idea for actually.  I checked my own WiP with this and found 8 actuallys.  Four could be crossed out without changing or harming the sentences; actually, improving them.  Two were in dialogue and could stay; two more were truly transitions between sentences.  Whether because she hadn’t heard or was ignoring him, Sully wasn’t sure.  Actually, it was all as new to him as to her.

What to Leave Out and What to Put In

Now that I'm working on my third novel, I find that I'm willing to leave out a lot more stuff.

How did a character get from one place to another?  Who cares?  We know they have legs, they probably walked.

How did a character learn a piece of information?  Unless it's a secret, it's probably general knowledge in their locale, or maybe they heard it through the rumor mill.

How did two characters become romantically involved?  Sometimes it's important to show this, other times it's enough to show they're interested in each other.  Then, when we rejoin them at a later time, it's natrual they should be a couple.

A lot of this boils down to this: Don't belabor the obvious.  Don't bore the reader with details she can easily assume.

On the other hand, I've read books where some important piece of business takes place off stage while the narrative follows some character at a dinner party or driving a car or something.  (This especially seems to afflict the soap opera strips on the newspaper comics page, where Judge Parker or Mary Worth are always arriving on the scene right after something interesting happened.)

Here are some general rules on when to leave it out or include a scene:

Leave in
- Important character development
- Fights, arguments, conflict
- Action that moves the story along
- Unusual, weird, don't see that every day

Leave out
- Spatial movement.  Just go to the scene where something is happening, and we'll assume the characters know how to get there.  The exception, of course, is where the travel itself is important to the plot.
- Logically necessary but obvious developments.  It may be important that a character, say, has a fully-stocked refrigerator, but you don't need to show us the shopping trip.
- Sex.  For some reason sex is usually pretty boring to read in books.  Maybe because it interrupts the plot action?  Just give us a hint that it's about to happen, and then move on.
- Boring things.  Even if they're necessary for the plot, try to find a way to cut a scene that feels boring.  Maybe have the next scene start right after the necessary but boring scene took place, and have characters mention that it happened.

Here's a rule of thumb: If it bores you when you're writing it, it will bore the reader when she reads it.

The Importance of Not Flinching

Now we come to what I think is the most important rule of all for a writer: Don't flinch.

Everything you see and experience can be used in your writing, but you must have your eyes open to see it.  Be aware of your surroundings.  Listen to what others say, and how they say it.  Don't talk much yourself, but draw others out on what they think and believe.  Be open to new experiences, different ways of doing things.  Travel.  Become friends with different types of people.  Even if it's hard, even if you're shy, do it for your writing.  Don't flinch.

Sometimes you'll see something happening that's wrong.  If you can alter it, by all means intervene.  But maybe you can't really do anything about it, or your interference would only make things worse.  If you're a writer, your job isn't over in that case.  Keep looking.  You can use it later.  When others learn of it, they may have the means to act.  Whatever you do, don't flinch.

When you start writing, and you're putting your thoughts and ideas on paper, you may come to a part that's emotionally difficult.  Maybe your characters will say ugly things, or uncomfortable events may transpire.  Let them.  This is the part that others need to read.  They need to know others have thought those thoughts, or felt those feelings, or had those things happen to them.  The ugliness and discomfort need to be out in the open.  If it's ugly and needs to be killed, how can you do that if you can't even see it?  But sometimes, something you thought was ugly turns out to be beautiful once you really look at it.  You have to see it to know.  Don't flinch.

Perhaps you're writing escapist fiction.  Shouldn't you leave the ugly and uncomfortable out?  After all, people sometimes just want to read something for fun without all that real world stuff in there.  You'll have to use your judgment, but I would point out that some of the world's great escapist literature had a lot of uncomfortable truth.  Think of Huckleberry Finn, on one level a boys' adventure story, on another a penetrating look at attitutes towards race.  And even in escapist fiction, characters still have to follow their own nature.  Plots still have to unwind plausibly.  Sometimes that means they don't quite go where you want them to.  Don't flinch.

Maybe you're writing a book for children.  Of course there is material that's inappropriate for kids.  That's why fairy tales disguise uncomfortable truths in magic.  Once you break it down, is there any story, anywhere, harder and more clear-eyed than Hansel and Gretel?  Perhaps Lolita, but not much else.  And it's a fairy tale!  Even when writing for children, don't flinch.

Once kids are older, they can handle a lot, probably more than you think.  I well remember the smart kids in the seventh grade passing around Flowers in the Attic.  That book was truly lurid, with themes of bondage and incest, but we ate it up.  Probably not the healthiest thing for us to read, but we weren't corrupted.  If anything, it provided us a few pieces in putting together the puzzle that was sex.  It doesn't matter that it was trashy, we knew that, and knew it wasn't something emulate.  We were wide-eyed, and willing to consume anything that might help us understand.  Better were the YA novels of, say, Judy Blume.  Heavy, sexual subject matter, but treated with sensitivity.  That's how you should do it.  But whatever you do, don't leave it out.  Don't flinch.

In the post on writing breakout novels, I think I mentioned how that book describes debut novels, and novels by authors who haven't broken out, as feeling small.  I believe one key to overcoming the smallness is being willing to turn the light of fiction on those dark corners that many are afraid to peer into.  Even if monsters lurk there, even if ghosts pop out, whatever you do, don't flinch.

How to write about object location

One mistake I often used to make was over-precision in writing about the physical location of objects in a scene.

Robert put his keys on the end of the countertop.  He dropped his pen.  It fell to the floor and rolled three feet from his shoe.

The living room contained a love seat, two chairs, a shelf with books, and a side table with a lamp.  The two chairs were placed to either side of the side table.  The door was at the far end of the room and opened outward.

The first time a reader comes across something like this he may read it carefully in the expectation that for some reason it will prove important in a page or two.  When it doesn't he will skip any similar over-description the next time it occurs.

Far better to use vague terms for location and put in only a few important details.  Precise physical relationships are unnecessary.  The reader's imagination will fill in the rest.

The punch landed right in Edward's gut.  The gun flew out of his hand and landed on the ground, just out of reach.

Jane's bedroom was almost completely pink: curtains, carpet, even furniture.  Stuffed animals covered every surface.  On the pink bedspread was a single book: How to Commit a Murder.

For some reason the telephone tends to attract too much attention from writers.  Everybody knows how a telephone works, there's no need to attach elaborate description.

Don't do this:  The phone rang.  John crossed the room and picked it up on the third ring.  "Hello," he said, cradling the receiver between his head and shoulder.

Better:  The phone rang.  "Hello?" John said.

How does writing a novel improve your writing?

Well, obviously, if you commit to write a novel, you write nearly every day for weeks or months on end.  That much practice can't hurt!  As Malcolm Gladwell writes in Outliers, it takes 10,000-hours of practice to gain mastery of a skill.*   Writing a novel certainly burns through those hours.

It also keeps your creative pot in a constant ferment.  The creative side of your mind is always working to come up with solutions to problems in your novel: ways to deepen characters, close plot holes, intensify action.  And when you need to apply creativity to other endeavors, especially other writing projects, you're already spewing ideas.  I think this may be what rock musicians refer to as "road chops," the idea that the best time to record an album is when you come back from a tour.

Finally, I think writing a novel forces you to write scenes and situations you wouldn't normally.  When you write a short story, the scope is so limited you can really choose the scenes you feel most interested in or comfortable writing.  But in a novel, you're always coming to places where you have to write beyond your comfort zone, simply because the plot is so involved and the characters so numerous.  That, even more than the first two points, is what really stretches your writing skills.


* This may not be a rule Gladwell actually came up with him himself; apologies to whomever he cribbed it from if that's the case.

What I'm Reading: Writing the Breakout Novel

Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass may be just what I needed at this point in my writing development.  Strunk and White's book was immensely useful long ago, but I'm long past the basic grammar and style advice they provide.  Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamont's Bird by Bird were both good books, but were more morale-building than craft-oriented.  Walter Dean Myers's writing book had a lot of good information, but I think his description of his writing methods are too particular to his own preferred way of working to be generally applicable.

Maass, who runs a pretty successful agency in New York (I think it's successful--I've certainly heard of many of the authors he represents), presents his views of the difference between novels that never make it out of manuscript, or are published but don't sell well, and the novel that earns its author higher sales, critical accolades, and a career boost.  In his opinion it's not a matter of some authors getting a bigger advertising push from the publisher, or adhering to a certain formula, or even sheer luck.  Maass believes the difference between a run-of-the-mill novel and a "breakout novel" is largely a matter of scale.

He makes a fairly convincing presentation, and while I don't want to give it all away, there are a couple of his points I'd like to mention.  One is about character--the characters in a breakout novel are self-aware, and larger-than-life.  They are self-aware in that they review their own moods, motivations, etc., in their mind, wondering if they're making the right choices.  In other words, they're complicated.  Nevertheless, they are also larger-than-life in that they do things a regular person wouldn't.  They say things out loud most real people would keep inside, they make tough moral choices most wouldn't have the guts to, they plunge headlong into danger.  Strangely, it's these qualities that make readers identify with them, for they crystallize attributes we all have, if not to the same degree.

He also talks about stakes, and how breakout novels have high stakes.  That doesn't necessarily mean that the world is always about to be destroyed--it means that whatever has personal value to the characters is threatened.  For instance, if a character might lose his job--so what?   People lose their jobs all the time.  But a character who might lose the business empire he's built up from nothing--those are high stakes.

Maass describes unpublished manuscripts and early-career novels as "feeling small."  Parts of his book tells an author how to complicate things with sub-plots, deepen setting, heighten conflict, etc.  But I think his larger message is not just that things should be complicated not for their own sake, but because it better illuminates the themes of the book.

I'm not sure Writing the Breakout Novel would be as useful to a first-time novelist, although it certainly couldn't hurt!  But any writer who has one or more novel manuscripts under the belt already would find this book to be thought-provoking, even eye-opening.  I'm definitely going to recommend this at the next meeting of my writers' group.

Background research required?

So I've been having a fairly unproductive past week or ten days in writing my current WiP.  Partially due to a great number of financial and automotive problems that have required my attention, but mostly, I think, because I really wasn't sure where the story was going.

Oh, I have an ending in mind, although fairly vague.  And the 10,000 words I've written so far are a good start.  But I wasn't quite sure how I was going to reach the end from where I am now.

The root problem, I think, was that I didn't quite have a handle on all the characters' motivations.  So today I sat down and worked out what each character is up to.  Just three or four lines (one or two for minor characters).  I also wrote up a page with details on the setting that I didn't have straight in my mind.

I believe this will break the logjam.  Already I know what I need to write tomorrow night.  And even beyond that, I have a much better conception of where the story is going.

As a story with a lot of fantasy elements, I assemed my WiP wouldn't need research because it's all in my imagination.  Wrong!  It does need research--only the source is my own mind.

What I'm Reading: Just Write Here's How

Children's author Walter Dean Myers has had over 100 books published.  He grew up in Harlem and his writing tends to take an inner city perspective, although he's also written fantasy, non-fiction, and other types of books.  This book is basically a description of his methods--how we writes and why.

This writing book is more practical than a lot I've come across--it's low on morale boosting, rather getting into Myers's daily schedule and his process from beginning to end of book.  And Myers does have a process.  He has a particular outlining method, a certain way to build characters and settings, a highly specific plotting technique, and so on.

I'm more of a seat-of-the-pants writer myself.  Myers knows writers like me, and has an opinion on them: "They take a lot longer to write their books than I do."  I found it notable that he says his characters never surprise him.  To me, one of the pleasures of writing is that sometimes my characters do things I don't expect.  A more rigorous method seems to take that away.

And yet, I'm glad I read this.  In fact, I may very well end up using some of his methods.   I have an idea for a somewhat more complicated novel than I've written so far, and after my current WiP, I will likely take it up ("Perhaps sometime in mid-2013," I think to myself with wild optimism.).  This more complicated book will benefit from having a structure I've worked out ahead of time, I think.

And who knows, maybe like Mr. Myers, I'll find that the more I plan my book, the easier it will be to sell.

The Importance of the Next Project

Sometimes I hear about writers who've been working on the same novel for years.  To me, that seems counterproductive.  No doubt you should polish your book to as high a sheen as you can, but after you've done that, tinkering with it for years only means you're not getting started on your next book.

I'm on my third.  The first was terrible, the second I'm shopping around, the third is my WiP and going really well.  I've learned much from the first two, but I've already explored those waters.  Why would I want to anchor myself there?  I want to sail on and explore new seas.

I don't think endless rewrites actually make the book better.  A thorough sanding smooths the grain, but after that you're cutting into the wood.  If you're worried about getting it published, just send it out, even if it's not perfect.  No actually published novel is perfect either, and not every novel is meant to make it to print.

And doesn't sticking to one project for so long kill your imagination?  As a writer, a novelist, I feel you should have the feeling of ideas bubbling over.  You should have so many you can't get to them all.  Periods between novels are for short stories or essays or poetry or what have you.  If you never let your novel achieve it's natural end, you never get to that in-between point.  Your imagination languishes.  Let it go, and move on.  To a writer in it for the long-term, perhaps the most important concept is that of The Next Project.

What I'm Reading: Steven King's On Writing

This should maybe be titled What I've Read, since I finished it a couple days ago: Steven King's On Writing.  It came to me highly recommended by more than one person, and I found it well-written and entertaining.  Part auto-biography and part how-to guide, and all readable.  Alas, like pretty much every writing book I've ever read (Strunk & White being the one exception) there wasn't a whole lot of advice I found useful.

Read a lot.  Write a lot.  Know your grammar.  Have a place set aside.  All good recommendations, all familiar to any writer whose read more than one of these books.

There were two things in the book I did find helpful, one a piece of advice, one a bit from his biography.  The advice bit was that you should write your rough draft all the way through before going back to edit.  He's not the first person I've heard this from, but I've decided to follow this with my current WiP.  It's always tempting to go back and edit before you're really done with the first draft, but it's probably faster his way.  Might help make some of the middle part of the book (always my least favorite part) less of a slog if I'm not writing and editing at the same time.

The biography bit was finding out the he'd written three books before his first, Carrie, was published.  Stephen King himself, the man with seeming 1000 books on the shelves, didn't get a bite from a publisher until book #4!  And once he was well-known, he was able to go back and sell two of the earlier ones, which actually weren't that bad.  It's just that selling anything as a first-time author is tough to do.

Gives me hope--just keep on writing, and if the current book I'm shopping around doesn't attract an agent, it may still end up published later on.  Perhaps as part of a package deal?  Actually, if it keeps me writing and upbeat, I suppose On Writing did exactly what is was supposed to.

The Importance of Writing Groups

I've been a member of the Writers of Chantilly for about 18 months, and it's made a tremendous difference to my writing.  Before I joined, I thought the most important thing about being in a writers' group was the group's critique of the story.  But now that I've been a member, I've come to realize the critiques aren't the most important thing, or even second.  No, the critique is third on the list.

Second on the list is the moral support.  Now, I've been writing since I was a little kid.  Short stories, poems, screenplays, essays for school or even for myself.  I guess I'm pretty well internally motivated.  Even if I wasn't in a group, I'd still be writing.  But I'm not sure I would have finished my most recent novel, or maybe it would have taken me much longer.  The twice-monthly meetings of my writers' group energize me, supercharge me, make me eager to come back and write for the rest of the week.

But even that is subsidiary to what I've discovered is the primary advantage: being in a group makes me try harder.  Where formerly I might have glossed over an awkward passage or half-assed a difficult scene, or skipped it entirely, I know now I'm going to end up reading that in front of other people, so I really have to polish my work.  Make sure everything is exactly how it should be.  Even if it's good, it gets an extra re-reading, and if it's bad, I keep going at it until I know it's something worth reading to the other members.

That's why for writers, I've come to believe being in a writers group is essential.  It's something I would recommend to any writer.  I'm not sure there's really another way, at least for me, and I suspect for others, to get out the best writing we're capable of.