Guest Post: Stay the Course

A guest post from my friend, Graham Carter, a reporter and editor from across the pond. He writes to answer the cries of us writers who have let our doubts get the better of us, and not a moment too soon. So read on, and feel inspired! Next week, a Worderella review of another Gaiman work.

Let’s talk drumming.

Yes, I know this is supposed to be all about writing, but there is an analogy here that I think all writers should be aware of, so stick with it (pun intended).

I am not a great drummer. I only took it up about six years ago, when I was 40, because I ran out of excuses for my lack of musical know-how. There I was, with my sticks in hand, eager to learn – and not a little excited. But the first thing that has to be said about drumming is it’s harder than it looks. Much harder. Much, much harder. Give it a try and you’ll find that trying to co-ordinate two arms, two feet and your brain, all in perfect harmony, often feels like some kind of witchcraft.

So I got myself a good teacher, watched recordings of Buddy Rich and other superhuman drummers in action, always kept my eyes fixed on the drummer whenever I went to a concert, and even went along to several drum ‘clinics’ where seriously good players would play, talk about drumming and show other
drummers some tricks of the trade. And I wasn’t afraid to work hard and practise.

Well, it didn’t work. Rather than be inspired to better things by all that excellence, I always ended up with the same thought at the back of my mind: “I’ll never be able to do that.” The better those other drummers got, the more I realised that – regardless of how keen I was and no matter how hard I tried – I simply did not have a talent for it in anything like the measure that those guys do. I was keen, but I was no natural.

So what has this to do with writing? Well, unlike drumming, writing does come easily to me. It comes so easily, in fact, that I hardly have to think about it to be able to produce something that has more cohesion, more fluency and more interest than the vast majority of the rest of the population of the planet will ever be capable of. It’s what I do, and as a professional journalist and editor of 20 years’ standing, I’ve also become
accustomed to working quickly and efficiently. Words are my friends, and I still love the fact that people will actually pay me to put them in the right order for them.

Fiction isn’t my thing, but I know how to string sentences together to get information across and make a point. And the point I need to make here is that most people – at least 99 per cent of the people you will ever meet, in fact – cannot write.

Never underestimate that fact.

Sure, they’re literate, but task them with writing anything remotely creative or vaguely complex, and they’ll flounder like a fish out of water. Words worry them. Sentences scare them. Paragraphs petrify them. Think about that for a moment while we go back to the drumming…

It was some time before I finally realised what I was doing wrong, and the solution was so simple that I am tempted to call it a revelation. It suddenly stuck me that my whole drumming education was built on how much better some drummers were than me, and it hadn’t really dawned on me that those staggeringly talented drummers I had been watching were only a tiny minority of all the drummers in the world. As far as my actual capabilities were concerned, I was reaching for pie in the sky, and I was so focused on how far there was to go, that I didn’t notice how far I’d come. It was time to switch to watching average drummers instead.

And it worked. Rather than telling myself: “I’ll never be able to do that,” now I come away from watching other, less esteemed, drummers with exactly the opposite viewpoint. “I can do that,” I tell myself – and I can. I will never be a great drummer, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a good one. I’ve found my level, and I found it by looking downwards. In hindsight, it was always a mistake to look upwards all the time, and it’s perfectly clear to me now that I was never going to emulate my betters when they had truckloads of talent and I was a mere mortal.

So, should you start comparing yourself with lesser writers instead of the literary giants you’re trying to emulate? Is it time for you to aim lower?

Don¹t you dare!

Why not? Because you’re not just an average writer, like I’m an average drummer. You’re a natural.

I am certain of this, dear reader, even though I’ve never met you and may not have read a single word you’ve ever written. I don’t need to. I know it simply because you¹re reading this. You’ve come to this website, looking to hone your craft through contact and interaction with other writers. Like I did with my drumming, you’re hanging out with, and seeking inspiration from, people who find this kind of thing easy. But with you there’s one important difference: you stayed.

If you’re comfortable around here, with all this talk of great writing and great writers, then that means you’re still looking upwards. And if you’re looking upwards, it follows that you must be a natural. Only when somebody is a natural do they continue looking upwards for inspiration, rather than downwards, and only when they are a true natural are they able to do this without feeling intimidated.

What’s more, they do it involuntarily. Most of the time, you don’t even know you’re doing it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you weren’t one of those hordes of kids who loathed Shakespeare at school, were you? You sensed the greatness of it, didn’t you, long before you could understand what was great about it or even what greatness was? Somehow, you knew.

And now, when you read Shakespeare or Tolkien or Austen or whoever your hero is, you’re not thinking: “I’ll never be able to do that.” You¹re thinking: “I can do that.” And there will be times – there probably already have been – when you will.

So never doubt it. When you’re having a bad day, just remind yourself of the fact that when it comes to writing, you’re not like all the rest. You’re different because you are stretching for things that most people have given up trying to reach – and they may already be within your grasp.

Graham Carter is a freelance journalist and editor who lives in Swindon, England, with his wife, Julie, and their two teenage children. He currently writes a weekly column for the Swindon Advertiser about the trials and tribulations of being over 40, and his blog (www.grahamcarter.net) is a more random collection of thoughts arising from everyday life.

Writing for the Love of it

The real secret is to do it because you love writing
rather than because you love the idea of being a Writer.
- Iain Banks

I once got into an odd conversation with someone about writing… let’s call this person Frank the Writer. So Frank saw my pile of writing magazines, and I could tell by his expression upon opening one of the issues that he was surprised I highlighted certain sentences which I found insightful or helpful to me as a writer. Watching him read my notes in my old Writer’s Digest, Poets & Writers, and The Writer issues was, for some reason, like watching a child realize there is no Santa.

Frank asked why I think I’m a writer, and I responded, “Because I have to write, or face the possibility of insanity.” I added something about how I’m drawn to writing, that I get personal satisfaction from it. I asked him if he didn’t feel the same.

“No,” he said. I’ve never heard anyone sound so mournful. “I don’t. I read these books that tell me I should feel something that tells me I’m a writer, just like how you just told me, but I don’t. I never feel anything when I write.”

This was puzzling to me. How can you write something and not feel anything while writing it? I asked Frank a series of questions which led me nowhere until, frustrated, I asked, “Do you want to write, or be considered a writer?”

“I want to be a writer.” No wonder he never felt anything when writing. His motivation was all wrong. He wanted the fame without the work. He wasn’t writing because he felt any special need to, or because he wanted to send a message of sorts out into the world, or even because he thought he had a story to tell, but because he wanted the recognition for being brilliant. No wonder his writing felt cold, empty.

Writing takes guts, patience, and stamina to do what it takes to be “considered a writer.” It takes years to be “discovered,” and by that point you will have numerous drafts hidden beneath your bed, stuffed in a back cupboard, shoved between cracks in the wall. Even if you go the self-publishing route, you have to be a savvy business-minded writer to make the publishing process worth it.

What do you think? I know some of you have multiple drafts lurking in the dark corners, and others of you with agents. What do you have to say to Frank and his misplaced motivation? Can I help him learn to love the process that is writing rather than love the idea of being a Writer?

Guest Post: An Introduction to Fantasy Novels

Another guest post this week, this time by my friend Word Nerd. She’s going to introduce us to science fiction and fantasy, genres I do read, but not as much as historical fiction. For my fellow historical fiction readers, this should help you dip into a new genre. Enjoy! Next week, my post on helping a fellow writer love writing itself, rather than the idea of being a Writer.

When Word Nerd was younger, there was really only one section of the library she frequented: Fantasy. And sci-fi as an after thought.

Then, with the coming of oodles of college reading, her interest in massive fantasy series started to wane some. It was too hard to remember all the rules of magic for every last world and the Elven dialects and gosh, weren’t mysteries fun to read too?

Since then, Word Nerd still likes to hit the fantasy section of libraries and bookstores, but she’s developed tough standards for what to pick up from those shelves. Here are some tested tips.

First, the conventions and the masters. No, not the conventions like Gencon where people dress up like wookies. The conventions of the genres.

The world of fantasy fiction is full of conventions. Take for example the following: Elves are not short, in fact they are tall and lithe and graceful; the use of apostrophes in names is considered acceptable; the book will likely contain a 1) map, 2) glossary and 3) cast of characters; the protagonist is often the recipient or subject of a prophecy, or an orphan, or a misplaced member of the royal family and if they are really lucky, all three.

The only way to really learn the conventions is to read the books and just begin to accept them. The way to learn the conventions is to start with the masters. Tolkien. Donaldson. McCaffery. Brooks. Weis and Hickman. Zelazny. Why these folks? Well, guys like Tolkien pioneered the genre, guys like Brooks borrowed from it, Donaldson gave it a new spin and McCaffery and Weis/Hickman made an empire of it. Also, many of these books have survived from the explosion of fantasy books in the 1970s and early 1980s (and earlier for some of them.) Many of these are the authors Word Nerd cut her bibliophile teeth on during her middle and high school years.

Second, find the books that break the conventions.

The “rules” get old. Every fantasy world does not need humans, elves, dwarves and dragons. Or glossaries.

Word Nerd hit this realization some time likely in college, getting fed up with how many fantasy books all seemed the same. After this, she became a much more selective reader. If a book starts with a character on a journey at the beginning, that’s a good caution sign. So is the glossary in the back, because it tends to mean that the world in the book/series is complicated and very different from earth as we know it.

Good fantasy is often like good, classic sci-fi. It doesn’t have to be a huge stretch to get from what we know of earth to get to the society in the fantasy world. Maybe it’s just a take on feudalism. Maybe it’s only a step further to believe that some people can telepathically communicate with animals; just look at the Dog Whisperer and go from there.

Third, be ready to commit for the long haul.

Much fantasy is written as a series. Rule of thumb, three to six books is an excellent number for a series. Some people (Steven Brust, Jim Butcher and Terry Pratchett for example) can keep a series going longer than that. At some point, most long series suffer a severe drop in quality. Nevertheless, be ready for the long haul because the books are often 600+ pages for just one book in a series. With this commitment, Word Nerd has also developed a strategy of waiting until all books in a series have been released before starting to read it. This way, once invested in the world, she doesn’t have to wait for years before the next one comes out, forgetting in the mean time, all the set-up for that land.

Many fantasy books have good emotional pay-offs in the end, with just as much impact as any “literary” fiction novel.

Read any that are sure-fire winners? Want to know some worthwhile titles? Post a comment.

Guest Post: Writing on the Go

A guest post by Blair Hurley from www.blairhurley.com listing some hints on how to make sure you’re writing on the go.

Writing on the Go by Blair Hurley

Writers use their own environment constantly to enrich their stories. We draw upon our settings and the people around us to create worlds. So when we travel, it’s crucial to take advantage of the new environment and use it to improve our fiction. But when you’re on the go in a new place, how’s a writer supposed to get down information? Read on!

Get a notebook! It’s hardly rocket science to decide to have a notebook handy, but when you’re traveling it’s especially important. Find a small, easy-to-handle notebook (I suggest a Moleskine, which are very popular right now and are affordable and tough) and slip it in your purse or back pocket. While on your trip or just during your usual daily travels, you should get used to being attached at the hip to that notebook (and a pen, too). Whenever you leave the house, take the notebook with you. Eventually it will become a habit and then you’ll never be without writing material when an idea or an interesting observation strikes.

Write down even the obvious. Our brains are pretty extraordinary and we’re all used to storing a tremendous amount of varied information without writing it down. But once you start writing down your observations, you’ll realize how much you actually lost before. Whenever you see an interesting-looking stranger, a beautiful building, a food you’ve never seen before, or an unusual event, jot down some notes. Later, when you’re wondering what to write or how to make it seem genuine, you’ll have these interesting details to call upon.

Use all your senses, and participate in your world. When we travel around, too much these days we shut ourselves out from all external stimulation by putting on headphones. Listening to music is great, but it closes us off from the world, as evidenced by the number of traffic accidents that are iPod-related. The more you engage with your surroundings, the more you’ll notice and the more material you’ll get. So if you’re going to a new place, turn off that Mp3 player and look, listen, smell and touch. Remember not just how a place looked, but how it smelled and felt as well. These sensory details are invaluable material for your fiction.

So in conclusion, whenever you’re on the go, you don’t have to wait until you get back to write about it. Take down notes on all aspects of the experience — while you’re on a subway, while walking down a street, even on a plane. Use your small moments to pull out that notebook and record the details of your environment, and it will prove a gold mine of resources for your next stories.

Blair Hurley is a creative writing student at Princeton University. She writes the blog Creative Writing Corner at blairhurley.com, which offers daily writing exercises, how-to’s, and thoughts on the writing life.

Next week, a guest post from Bethany (Word Nerd). She’s going to give us a guide to reading science fiction/fantasy!

Mark Twain’s Tips on Writing Well

We all know Mark Twain for Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, etc. In literary circles he is known for his lambasting essay, The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper, where he writes his Nineteen Most Important Rules of Literature. The essay claims that James Fenimore Cooper, another well-known American author, broke eighteen of them. How do you make out?

1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

3. The people in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

4. The people in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

5. When the people of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

6. When the author describes the character of a person in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.

7. When a person talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a [slave] minstrel in the end of it.

8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale.

9. People of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.

10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.

11. Characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

Whoosh. Twain really didn’t like Cooper’s writing! And he isn’t done yet. Additional requirements for authors include…

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

For the life of me, I can’t find the 19th rule, the one Cooper didn’t break. If you want to read Twain’s complete essay, check it out here. You have to admit, though, Twain is onto something here. Especially #5, where characters should only talk when they have something interesting to say that also has to to with the plot. So come on, fess up: How many rules have you broken?

Beta Males Revisted

Just a quick entry to let you know about an interesting discussion that’s happening at Redlines and Deadlines about beta males in fiction/romance.

In case you don’t remember, I wrote a similar entry two years ago, Mr Beta Male, and Romancing the Blog has written about the beta hero as well as his counterpart, the beta heroine. For you writers who are interested in using the underdog in the romance world as the love interest in your WIP, I suggest taking a look at all these articles to make up your mind.

Article: Hold On to Your Plot Part 1

When we begin writing, we have this core idea, this main plot that keeps the story together. But as we get deeper into subplots and secondary/tertiary characters, sometimes we lose our main idea. We obsess over the little things. We forget the forest for the trees. We see the colors but not the rainbow. I could go on, but I won’t, for your sake. The following series of three entries will focus on Mike Phillips’s essay showing how he keeps his plot in line, with his hints on how to help you stay focused.

Article found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/module27p

Losing the Plot?
by Mike Phillips

New Ideas from Old
Plots are always based on a story of some kind, and there are only a limited number of basic stories in any culture. Boy meets girl, for instance, or the eternal love triangle. Look hard enough at any story and you will always find the fingerprints of an earlier one.

My own first novel, Blood Rights, was based on a reworking of the story of Oedipus – boy meets dad, kills him and marries mum. This is a fairly unusual family crisis but, in principle, most plots draw on stories which have universal and familiar themes, both within history and for our own times. Exploring and developing stories of this kind is a reliable and interesting way of starting to construct a plot.

Exactly how you go about doing this is a matter of individual temperament. I have sometimes found that it requires nothing more than the impulse to get something down on paper, rather than having planned it out meticulously before I pick up a pen.

The Importance of Theme for Organization

I often read that the biggest things a writer should worry about are theme and organization. Theme, because that is the heart of your work; organization because that’s the skeleton to help you write about the theme.

For the longest time I wondered, How does one find a theme in the first place? Maybe something happened in your life that you want to write about. Let’s face it, wanting to write about that topic isn’t enough. You need a focus, something that connects you to the topic and distances you from it at the same time, so that you can communicate clearly with your reader.

I began with “I want to write a romance, but I don’t want the heroine to be the typical spunky girl. I want her flawed, and with heavy concerns.” So, I worked from there, writing character descriptions and first drafts; I wrote an entire 94k first draft just throwing whatever came to me onto the page. I celebrated, because we all should celebrate the completion of a draft, especially when it takes three years to do it (full-time student, remember). Then, I stuffed it under my bed (or maybe in the back of my closet, I’m always re-organizing so I never completely know where some things are) and started over.

Step One: Write a shitty first draft and be done with it.

After that, I walked away from the work for a month. Namely, NaNoWriMo month. The crazy speed of that writing month invigorated me, and in December I said hello to the original work with a new focus. I started over with this new focus, with a new understanding of the characters, and with a pretty solid understanding of their initial back stories.

Side Note: a back story, if you don’t recognize the term, is a short story and/or history about a character, location, or object that happened before your current time line.

Step Two: Use the extraneous parts of your shitty first draft as a collection of back stories to your characters.

Now I’m halfway through First Draft B, as I like to call it (props to Redshoeson for the naming idea). I know where I would like the story to go. But my initial back stories aren’t full enough. I have to go back. Give each main, secondary, and even tertiary character additional back stories about their history with the other characters. These back stories lead to motivation, motivation to decision, and decision to action. But my back stories all need a theme. There must be something connecting these characters. But… how to write the theme?

The theme is a single sentence that succinctly describes what your work is about. Also known as a thesis, blurb or hook: the main idea that keeps you writing, and grabs the reader’s interest. Still, it’s hard to know how to write this magical sentence. So, look at examples. The first sentence on the back cover of a paperback is usually the hook, which the copywriter expands into paragraphs about the main characters and why we should read about them. I also found reading the New York Times bestseller list really helpful, because the top ten have one-sentence summaries.

Step Three: Read the New York Times bestseller list.

Try to keep your theme/hook/blurb/thesis at fifteen words or less. You want this to be focused but universal, so don’t use the main character’s name unless it is a sequel or part of a series. Don’t use passive voice! Choose your words carefully; every word in your theme should be there because there is no better word for it.

Here are some examples from the bestseller list in July:

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen: A young man — and an elephant — save a Depression-era circus.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards: A doctor’s decision to secretly send his newborn daughter to an institution haunts everyone involved.

Peony in Love by Lisa See: Love, death and ghosts in 17th-century China.

The Quickie by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge: A police officer’s attempt to get back at her husband, whom she suspects of cheating on her, goes dangerously awry.

After you have the main theme, things will fall into place, slowly at first. Your theme is your thesis, so tie everything back to it and you’ll have a tight, organized work.

Eight Writing Tips by Vonnegut

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut

Playing with Structure

Here is a great article on the structure of your work, stressing the importance of making the structure as important as the plot.

What is Structure?
by David Mitchell

To begin with, structure need not just be a frame on which you hang narrative, but a kind of plot in its own right, running parallel to the narrative-plot. Twists in this ‘structure-plot’ occur as and when its nature and workings are revealed to the reader.

What follows are observations and suggestions about constructing, handling and using a complex structure. Structure can be to fiction what the work done in an editing suite is to a film, which is why I’ve chosen examples from films as well as books. Structure dictates how your reader will experience your writing, and the importance of that ‘how’ cannot be overstated.

A traditional narrative-plot is a sort of question-engine (“Who killed Professor Plum?”) whose leading answers give the text momentum (“Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick… but why?”). Characterization also has a propulsive quality (“Why was Old Plum such a swine anyway?”, “Ah, that’s because of the War – sit down and let me fill you in…”). Less obviously, structure, too, can be made to ask questions: often a variation on “What’s happening here, in what order, perceived by whom?” A complex structure has the potential to surprise, connect with and intrigue the reader in innovative ways.

But how complex is complex? “Complex enough to generate unusual effects, unusual problems with unusual solutions” is an answer only slightly less arbitrary than the question, but it’s the one I’d like to run with. Thus a narrative-alternating structure (A1, B1, A2, B2, A3, B3…) where narratives A and B share a world and are ‘aware’ of each other (as in, say, the second book of The Lord of the Rings) won’t be counted as complex because it’s old as the hills, but a structure such as that of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (A1-20, A1, B1, A2, B2…) will.