Worderella Wonders Does Bad Mood = Bad Writing?

Dear Reader,

Well. I’ve been in something of a mood lately, which probably isn’t the best time to release a YouTube video inviting people to join me on this journey of self-publishing. Ah me. Oh well. It’s out there now, for people to judge, and so I say, “Have at thee!”

Without really knowing what that means.

I’ve been pondering my bad mood lately, trying to decipher my frowns and snarls as I stomp around the house, and the following comment by Libba Bray, author of A Great and Terrible Beauty, came to mind…

I’m one of those people who has to write. If I don’t write, I feel itchy and depressed and cranky. So everybody’s glad when I write and stop complaining already.

And so I must admit something that rather embarrasses me: I haven’t written a word for Haunting Miss Trentwood in over a week.

I know not to do this. I know my pattern. The longer I don’t write, the moodier and… well… bitchier I tend to become. I don’t know why I do this. I know I ought to be writing, but I wanted to get my micropress set up, and really ramp up my involvement in the writing community. In the meantime, I’ve let my writing slip, and therefore my optimism and overall good mood.

But now I’m afraid that I’ve lost my steam. I’ve felt guilty about neglecting 750words.com because I know the system will say it hasn’t seen me in a while, and it would be right. I’m most afraid that because I haven’t been writing (creatively), and my mood has suffered for it, that said bad mood will seep into my writing and make it worse for the wear.

I don’t want to be a bad writer.

I gotta get through this. Cue David Beddingfield, if you please.

I need to stop whining, get my hands a-writing, and blast out this shitty first draft.

On writing exhausted

This is my first time venturing into the corporate world full-time, and let me tell you, it is a different sort of exhaustion than I was expecting. In order to fulfill my duties in my position at a large corporation I had to work a ten hour day yesterday and will do so again today. Add commuting time and I’m working two twelve hour days in a row.

Wait, I thought I wasn’t supposed to do that anymore now that I’ve left school? So far the only difference between school and work is that I have to make sure I shower everyday.

I’m not entirely serious about that.

Or am I?

Anyway, I’ve been determined to keep up with my writing, even with these long days. Living at home has been amazing, if only for that reason. I come home, exhausted, and rather than having to worry about what I’m going to eat for dinner, oh hey, Mom made spaghetti, sweet. I’ll eat, do the dishes, and then log into http://750words.com to get my quota in for the day.

It’s like NaNoWriMo, but without the stress. I just have to make sure I write 750 words. And that’s a far more manageable number than the 1,266 you need to do every day to win NaNoWriMo.

When you’re exhausted at the end of the day, what do you do to accomplish your writing quota? If you don’t have a quota, how do you make sure you keep writing even when it’s difficult?

Details, Details, Details

Hi all, sorry for missing last week. It was a rough week all around; this semester, graduate school is kicking my patookie. In fact, I’ll probably have to go on a hiatus for a while.

In class, we’ve been talking about details: relevant vs irrelevant, and how they can alter the power of your story. I tend to rely on details. I over-write during my first draft and then filter out what isn’t needed in later drafts. As long as the details are important both to the character and the plot, they stay in… otherwise, it just has to “feel right.” There’s no other way for me to explain it.

Other students in my class feel it’s a bit arbitrary, how they decide whether ideas are relevant or not. How do you determine that your details are relevant?

Ruminations

This week we don’t have class due to my professor having a conference, which is nice. I’ve been reading through the class critiques of my most recent story, which is always interesting. Sometimes people get what you were trying to do, and sometimes, they don’t, they really don’t.

I’ve been trying some really different things with my writing these last couple of weeks. I’ve written about a woman who missed the funeral of her boyfriend due to his mother lying to her… and so dug up his ashes and took them with her. I wrote a fable about a woman who begins to hug people and the consequences of that. My most recent story begins with a man who wakes up realizing that his mustache has disappeared.

Definitely different for me. The teaching assistant has noticed that I weave in fable/fairy-tale like elements to my stories, which I hadn’t really noticed before. But it makes sense, as I grew up on fairy tales and tend to see magic in the mundane.

This class is very interesting. It’s pushing me in new directions and I’m really interested to see how this will affect my longer works.

Have you ever taken a fiction course? How do you feel it changed you?

Next week, I’ll write about some resources that I’ve found recently about self-publishing.

Find a Friend Dialogue Exercise

Today in class we talked about the mechanics of dialogue, and how it’s a weakness for some writers and a strength for others. We read Robert Bausch’s short story, “Aren’t You Happy For Me?”, which I suggest you all read as an excellent example of external conflict (the dialogue) and internal conflict (the exposition).

You should also read David Foster Wallace’s “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” for another type of story where the dialogue is the entire story. Not only that, but he only provides half of the conversation, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps. Disturbing and brilliant.

Besides talking about the pitfalls of dialogue, which can include talking heads and over-philosophizing, we talked about exercises that we each use as a way to strengthen our dialogue-writing skills.

I admitted to being a closet eavesdropper. One of the guys in the class pulled out a tiny composition book and admitted to taking it with him to the bar, which inspired another guy to pull out his own tiny notebook meant for the same purpose.

For our class exercise, we had to pair up and write a conversation together. This was a lot of fun. My partner and I began giggling because we were writing an argument that started over the lack of peanut butter… it was, as Dane Cook describes, a “nothing” fight. Yet, under the surface, there was real conflict. Amazing what can come out of five minutes of passing a journal back and forth.

Try this exercise with a friend of yours, whether they’re a “writer” or not. It’s a lot of fun, and inspires new story ideas, guaranteed.

1. The first writer pulls out a piece of paper and begins their dialogue with the words “I’m sorry, but…”. They complete the sentence and pass the journal to their partner.
2. The partner, after reading the sentence,writes a line (or paragraph) of dialogue which heightens the tension.
3. Keep passing the journal back and forth, trying to throw curve balls at one another without delving into the absurd.
4. Try not to rely on dialogue tags to reveal how the character is speaking.
5. In fact, don’t use dialogue tags at all. Rely on your word choice and punctuation.

Do you have a favorite dialogue exercise? Let us know in the comments.

Stop Beating

“Could it think, the heart would stop beating.” – Fernando Pessoa

Today in my English class we talked about the implicit promises writers make to their readers… these promises act as hooks, or mini-crises that build up the tension to the climax or sub-climax of the plot.

In romance, we begin our stories with a promise. At the beginning, we have two people who may or may not know one another. One thing we do know is that whether they know it or not, they will grow to care for one another, and we get to watch that process. It’s the fun part of love.

If this promise isn’t fulfilled, whether with a twist, or unexpectedly, we are left with a sense of disappointment and often anger. We discount the entire work as a waste of time.

As writers, sometimes we forget the promises we’ve made to our readers. We ignore the initial hook of the story, or never complete that subhook which made them turn the page to the next chapter.

Draw your readers in. Speak to their hearts rather than making them think through your plot. Once you drop a promise and confuse the reader, you’re destroyed the suspension of disblief and made them think again. As Pessoa claims, if the heart is made to think, it might stop beating.

Big Day

Well, with a day full of classes and the inauguration, I managed to forget to post. Bad Belinda! I don’t really have a lot to say, other than the fact that I submitted my first short short story (five pages), and I’m terrified to hear the critique. I’m also looking forward to it. But still terrified.

Anyway, as a historical fiction writer, a part of me has to wonder… what will future historical writers say about this day? Any speculations? Try to put yourself in the shoes of a historical fiction writer, trying to capture this day. If you had one paragraph, what would you write?

And please, no flame wars. If you don’t agree with what is written in the comments, please just ignore it.

A Tap on the Wing

“A book is like a man – clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.”
- John Steinbeck

There comes a time when you realize that there will be weak points in your work, and there isn’t much you can do about it on your own. What do you do when this happens? Some writers turn to trusted friends, family members, former English teachers. Some writers turn to other writers to act as beta readers. Some writers join local writing groups.

As a graduate student, I have the rare opportunity to work with a published author this semester for graduate credit. I’m incredibly lucky, excited, and terrified about this opportunity to take an “advanced creative fiction” course.

And there’s a catch: I’m not allowed to write historical or romantic fiction. I’m also not allowed to work on a novel-length work, which was kind of my plan… to work on the sequel of Trentwood’s Orphan, Trentwood’s Heir. I can have a romantic theme, perhaps, but I’m expected to write literary short fiction.

So for the next couple of months, I’ll be writing about my experiences. Any advice that I learn from my professor, I’ll send it on to you. I will suggest that you all go and buy Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway. It’s as good as Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, though it does take a little dig at genre writing now and then.

So I modify my suggestion. If you’re open to learning about writing creative fiction, and enduring a dig now and then at genre fiction, pick up this book. You won’t regret it.

Surface Edits

I’m plugging away at the final surface edits for Trentwood’s Orphan during my winter break from graduate school. It’s fast-going, and I’m surprisingly pleased with how the story is coming together. There are, of course, some chapters that got a little jumbled, but I assume that’s because not only was I retyping the entire book after hand-editing it, but I was converting from present-to-past tense at the same time. As such, some of my tenses got a little weird.

But other than that, I’m kind of excited. One of my friends pressured me into letting him read it, despite the fact that I’m not done with the surface edits, so he’s getting it in pieces.

Shocking though it is, not only does he like it so far, he converted the first chapter into a podcast. And it sounds super professional! If I self-publish, it will definitely go on the website as a sample of the book.

Which reveals my next thought: I’m wondering whether I’d like to self-publish this book, as I did my first, or if I’d like to try to go through a small publisher, like Five Star Publishing. I read one of their books in my genre and I know I could have written it, so there’s always that.

Anyway, things are coming along nicely. I hope to have these surface edits done by January 10 so I can send out the manuscript to those of you who offered to read it. As I mentioned before, I wouldn’t expect it back until May, so you have plenty of time to read and make comments.

Tell me, how are your projects going?

Second Draft Complete

As of Sunday at four in the afternoon, I finished writing the second draft of First Draft B. These are the specs…

The goal was to write 85,000 words, thus cutting out what I suspected was 10k words of fluff from First Draft B. It came out to 85 182, and that wasn’t planned. Very pleased.

I wanted to complete this draft by December 19, 2008. I finished five days ahead of schedule, even though I’m in graduate school.

I wanted a tighter, cleaner draft. I’m feeling pretty good about this.

I need to put this draft away for a couple of months and work on a new project. Thank goodness I’m taking an advanced fiction writing course next semester.

I’m looking for beta readers who are willing to comment on the entire work. I use Microsoft Word 2007, so I can read the commenting feature from 2003/2007. Let me know if you’re interested, and we’ll work out the details. If you don’t read historical fiction or historical romance, please don’t contact me. You won’t know the genre cliches to help me make sure I don’t commit them.

How are your projects going?