Write What you Won't Say

Gabriel Matula--Unsplash

Never since Guttenberg dreamed of mass producing the bible has it been so easy for us to be writers. We no longer need reams of typewriter paper or magic white-out strips to build a manuscript. Gone are literary agents and writing clubs. We have Grammarly, Pro Writing Aide, and Hemingway to help us produce syntactically correct writing. Facebook puts us in close contact with other writers. So, answer me this. With all the help we can access;  with the world at our fingertips why do we produce so much shit? Why are so many published writers illiterate?  During a recent college symposium dealing with two English Authors, George Orwell, and D. H. Lawrence, no one knew when Orwell wrote and published 1984. 15 people in a graduate writing class could not answer the question which tells you that Orwell's life was an unknown to these creative writing students. Orwell transposed the year he wrote 1984 to create the title. The book was written in 1948, published in 1949 and he died in 1950. When asked which was written first, 1984 or Animal Farm, there was no real discussion, only guessing. 


In discussing Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence most students felt it was of little consequence and rather boring.  This book changed sexual morality in both England and the Americas. It was the first book to map sex with love, and to treat fucking as both serious emotion and even more serious descriptive writing. What makes both writers stand as towering examples of our art?  What skill did these two titans of literature have that we so lack?

Neither author was a rebel or anarchist. Neither attempted to burn Parliament nor did they curse the Royal family. They each burned with ideas not shared nor commonly held. Like us, they did not get on a soapbox or climb the roof of a building to proclaim their beliefs. 

In 1952  Ralph Ellison wrote The Invisible Man.  Only a black man could write that book. Whites could neither understand nor embrace it; not then, and not today. Ellison, Orwell, and Lawrence all had emotions that burned their souls.

What they accomplished was not realized until the middle 1960s when Harlan Ellison wrote: “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”. This story is one of the first dystopian nightmares to hit the written page, and we as writers need to embrace the scream within us. 

As writers, we seem to be bent on pursuing the ever elusive muse and once found we still often fight writer's block. The muse is a bitch, a wolf wanting only to gnaw at our creativity.  Kick her/him/it to the curb.

Feel this:

''I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix''

If it moves you and you’ve never heard it before, it is the opening lines of HOWL by Allen Ginsberg. If you’ve heard of neither, you have a moral obligation to change the education system so your children will feel what real creativity can do to you and for you.  Even if you’ve read it before, read it again. Read it now. It's free, and it’s right here: 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl.

We need to scream. We have ideas and we feel emotions that others think exist but do not pursue. Stop running. If you have nothing of value to scream, if you enjoy living in ennui, stop writing. If, in your soul is a message you need to get out; something you must share then write.  As you write you have the God-given right to throw back your head and scream whatever burns in you.

Doomed Hero, Damned Writer

Photo by Chen Hu on Unsplash

Amazon sells several new books at the very reasonable price of $0.99 to $2.99.  Some of these books are real gems and provide a terrific read for pennies. Others are poorly written and should never have seen the light of day. 

Occasionally a title or a synopsis will get my attention. I can often tell if the book is worth reading by paying attention to the reviews of other readers. Out of the twenty reviews I read, nineteen were very much equivalent. The book was categorized as Young Adult fantasy adventure. Both writing and character development was excellent until the last twenty-five pages when it all turned to crap. That consistency amongst reviewers fascinates me so I spent the $1.99 and finished the book in a day of reading. I’m not quoting author or title but those reviews were both accurate and justified. Picture this (my creation….not from the book). Our hero is hanging from a loose root over a deep drop from which there are neither ledges nor cracks to hold fingers. He can’t call for help, he can’t help himself.  When suddenly, seeming to fly from a cloud, is a beautiful woman with golden wings and hair as red as fire. She rescues our hero who is now nestled in the arms of true love. 

While the true ending of the book was not quite that bad it was not too much of an improvement. I will not degrade or belittle the concept of “saving the day by an act of God”. It is piss poor writing that does not deserve to be in your lexicon. It leads to two noteworthy conclusions.

 This Situation should never have happened.

Today it is common to publish your own book. This puts the onus for editing on your shoulders. Several years ago the writer would find a literary agent who would work with the writer to ensure such things as plot integrity and strong character development. They would also serve as the last bastion against bad grammar. A good agent would work with the author to ensure a logical and coherent book.

Some bad endings are salvageable.

The flying angel may be the perfect escape for our hero. She’s beautiful, she’s strong, and she is eminently qualified to save the hero. What is missing and what kills the book is how she was first introduced to the reader.

The writer should have shown the female character as a warrior from another race or time.  The hero might have first seen her jogging, seeming to be running with such grace and agility that her feet barely touched the ground. Her long bright red hair flowed behind her as if balanced on powerful wings.

With every interaction occurring between hero and female love interest we build her as not only an equal but a superior individual whose powers and skills become clear as the plot unfolds.

 With a little work bad endings can be reworked into plausible endings. Don't let your rush to publish kill your story.

You Put Your Ideas Where?

As a  creative writer, you get ideas you want to pursue. They may be ideas for a basic plot, a character quirk, some perspective which makes the surrounding unique. Now you have this unique lightning bolt of creative energy,  what do you do with it? Where do you put it?

If you’re in front of your computer or laptop, you write and develop the idea. But what if you are at your favorite club or restaurant?  You could jot it on a napkin.  For a long time, writers carried small notepads or pieces of paper in their pockets just to keep tabs on the ideas which came to them when they could not be writing. 

Creative exercise for the day. Write a short story about a writer who jots an idea for a great novel on a napkin. By the end of the evening, he wipes his mouth on the napkin and discards it. 

Now we understand the value of keeping a writer’s notebook.  Do we carry scraps of paper and ball-point pens wherever we go?  If that is your preference, by all means, continue that tradition.  There are many creative people today who go nowhere without their pocket notebook.

Early on I learned the value of not saying “All” or “Always”.  If I say “All creative people carry a pen.”,  my argument falls apart by finding one creative person who does not carry a pen. I can say with some certainty that most writers carry an iPhone, an Android, or some electronic device that 1) acts as a telephone, and 2) has available software for working with information.

I am an Apple fanatic so my software of choice is always Mac based. I know there are almost always equivalent applications for other hardware and operating systems.  The one requirement I must have is the ability to pass recorded information from the phone to both iPad or tablet and to MacBook or PC. If that can’t happen, the application is not worth its cost. 

As an important point of information, I have no monetary based relationship with Apple or any of the other products I mention in this article. I get nothing, not even a thank you, for my words of praise. 

The most basic note taking application I have and use is Notes on my iPhone. It is quick to activate, easy to get an idea into, and once done, it is available to all my other Mac devices. In a restaurant, or just walking around it is invaluable when recording a quick idea or thought.  Its greatest value is the automatic syncing. I can review and enhance my ideas on any device and know it is available anytime on my other devices.  I do not use my thumbs well on the iPhone, so my primary use of Notes is to get the minimal idea out of my head and on the Cloud.

I have also used Evernote but their developers seem to force a move from the free account to the pay for service model. Not enough bang for the buck.

While Notes meets the need for a Writers Notebook, I wish to introduce an application which you can use as a Notebook and also allows you to build on your ideas. If you wish you could use it to write your entire story. It is not a cheap application and I have a version for OSX (my MacBook) and for IOS (iPad and iPhone). Again,  I like and use it. Your mileage may vary.

The application is Devonthink Pro. I used it to build a database called IDEAS. Within that Database, I have three groups; Short Story Ideas, Blog post Ideas, and Novel Ideas. Again, you can use it on the iPhone, to the iPad, to the MacBook and syncing is immediate and painless. What I like most about this application is I can develop and enhance my ideas to whatever level I wish.  It allows me to write the entire story if I wish. For example, this is an entry I made Thanksgiving before the meal hit the table. As you can see, I set the mood in the first sentence. I could have continued and written the entire story if I was a good thumb typist and it was not a festive meal. 

=======

Title: The house with four steps.

Location:  A suburb of Houston near the Gulf.

My most recent experiences in Texas happened in the house with four steps and a vindictive ghost.

=====

I thumbed this into my iPhone and then corrected my thumb failures using my iPad later in the evening. Whether you use a simple text editor, or a Databae system to record and develop your ideas, the goal is the quick and easy recall of your thoughts. It should not matter if they are yesterday's ideas or those of last year. Your notebook is a friend you need to hold close.

NANOWRIMO? DO IT, FINISH IT, IGNORE IT, SCRAP IT

 

 

If you are listening very carefully, you will feel rather than hear the subtle pressure of thousands of fingers gently tapping against the membrane slightly below plastic keys. The sound of NaNoWriMo is incessant, and a dedicated group of writers and writer wannabes are gently bringing their dreams to life. It is a day past the midway point, and they have been writing one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven words a day. 

My personal feelings about this challenge are at the end of this article.  Those of you participating are not reading this today. You are writing your novel, and you don’t have the time to read this. I write this for those who do not, have not, or just wonder about the value of NaNoWriMo.

 

The Pros of NaNoWriMo

 

NaNoWriMo is a powerful incentive to write.  

 

If you take the effort to sign up and publicly commit to writing the first draft of your novel in thirty days you have more than 400,000 other writers making the same promise. The critical point is you share a universal promise as well as a commitment to a goal. When you get tired and frustrated, there are forums and groups to support and to cheer you on. The encouragement available to you and from you is a powerful force that can drive you and others to successfully reach the goal of finishing.

 

NaNoWriMo is writing only.

 

By taking part in this challenge, you have promised to write almost 1,700 words a day. That’s a goodly amount of work to produce every day for thirty days. Given any day how much time will you have to edit what you have written today or to date?  Zero time. That’s good. Keep this thought in the forefront of your mind as you work. For thirty days you write, and for thirty days you will not edit. This is your first draft. You do not worry about grammar, tense, adverbs, and adjectives. What incredible freedom to have as you write.

 

You've Done It

 

    At the end of 30 days, assuming you have complied with your goal of 50,000 words, you have actually written the first draft of your novel. You have accomplished a tremendous, compelling goal. That which has been a romanticized dream is now an accomplished work.  You still have a ton of editing to do, but what an excellent reason to take on NaNoWriMo. In your possession is the real, physical body of your dream.

 

The Cons of NaNoWriMo

 

Does not build Good Habits

 

Many advocates of NaNoWriMo tout its power to put you in the habit of writing at least a thousand words a day. I don’t think so. Contrary to popular belief writing thousands of words each day may not be suitable for you or your manuscript. Binge writing is not an indicator of quality writing. If you can produce 500 words of good prose a day, you have decent output.  Remember that NaNoWriMo stresses editing free writing. If you plan your work, you should be editing to at least ensure your writing follows your plot structure.

 

The End Result may be flawed.

 

This situation often develops with new writers or writers who are first contemplating NaNoWriMo around November 1st.  Your dream book may be genuine in your mind, but in writing, there are glaring holes in the plot, so everything falls apart. It is a fair assessment of time to give yourself three months to write down the details of your plot. Remember every novel or poem or short story is populated with people and places. You need to spend time and effort detailing both before you begin writing.

 

My Personal Feelings about NaNoWriMo

 

I have always had mixed feelings when discussing NaNoWriMo.  When it first started, I thought how unique for beginners and in the early years there was nothing I could see to change my opinion until  I looked at the quality of some of the results. From such a month of frenzied, frenetic scribbling came both  Wool by Hugh Howey and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I can never trivialize the competition again and I will not. There you have my serious accolade.

NaNoWriMo is not my writing tool of choice. Writing for me is a solitary activity. Whether a blog post, short story, or notes for a novella, I do not want the encouragement or the companionship of a group of other writers. Recognition by other writers and readers is another thread altogether. That is why I have a blog and why I submit my stories and articles for publication. But the development of the plot and the agony of creation is, in my opinion, a solitary endeavor.

I believe in a structured environment for writing. You must take the time and expand the effort to build your plot line. You must make an effort to craft a strong cast of characters. This is not a requirement for NaNoWriMo. 

 

And finally, editing is an integral part of the writing process.  My two favorite writing tools are Scrivener and Ulysses. I divide my work into sections or sheets, and when I complete a section, I edit it in a simple manner. I correct errors of spelling and grammar. That’s enough for a first run. Final editing is much more extensive and done as the final writing step. Something I should have to give up during NanoWriMo. 

Rejection by Cover Letter

The cover letter is one of the least understood and least appreciated tools in the writer’s toolbox. It introduces your work to the editor. 

Think of your work as the introduction of humanity to a powerful alien race. If it is done well, humanity lives. Done poorly, bye bye your mother et all. Smile if you will, but understand both your ego and your wallet will thank you for doing this.

A Cover Letter should include (in this order):

1) Proper Genre

Devote a paragraph or two showing how your manuscript fits the genre of the publication. If you have written a romance gently elaborate on the love between the main characters. You need to show how your work is in every way a well-crafted love story. Do not get carried away with this step. You do not need a novel to introduce a novel nor a poem to preface a poem.

2) A Short Philosophy of Your Writing Style

This is a challenge to do well. It has nothing to do with the work you are trying to promote and everything to do with you as a writer. What is the theme you are promoting? For example, the theme I send as part of my cover letters is the theme I express on my blog page: “I enjoy writing stories that bend your mind. I think most people have a deviant bent and that personality quirk needs to be stimulated and encouraged.  I like dragons who devour both the knight and his horse.” It takes time and some effort to find your theme but it is an exercise every writer should do.

3) A Short (Really Short) Autobiography of you as a writer.

This is a short paragraph or two about what you have accomplished as a writer. What and where you have published. Why you started writing. You can also, with a degree of humor, state you have more than fifty rejection slips. Even the bumps you encounter in your career can be discussed in a positive and humorous style. This is the least important part of your letter and unless it is asked for don’t include it.

A Guarantee of Rejection

1) I am a great writer.

We know we are good writers. Even though we get rejected that knowledge spurs us on to continue writing. It is difficult to understand why certain editors and publishers cannot see our greatness. As great authors, we have a moral obligation to show them the errors they are festering under. What better way to tell them than within the cover letter.  DON’T! If you are truly great, or even ready to be published, you will be noticed. It takes time, effort, and talent. Always remember the mantra of most successful writers: Self Praise Stinks. 

 2) Editors and editing, both are without value.

It is the bane of most writers to blame the editor when their manuscript is culled. You, as the writer, has every right, nay obligation, to bring the crassness and worthlessness of what they do to their attention. Like it or not, the value of the red pen is beyond dispute. The problem is you will attempt to pass off these errors as literary license.  Absolutely not true. It is
sloppy work on your part. Just because the editor doesn’t discuss your failings with you does not mean he is wrong. You should know enough to do your own editing. Some of you will hire another to do the onerous task for you. Sorry, you get what you pay for, and most “editors” who will soak you for a few hundred bucks probably have your skill level or less. They merely have tools you are too lazy to find yourself. Remember, your work is yours alone. It is not the spawn of some hack. So, do your own editing and do it well, including the cover letter.  

Why Was Your Manuscript Rejected -- Part II

The final significant reasons for rejected manuscripts are not readily discussed by writers since most writers don’t like talking about them or accepting responsibility for correcting them.

Ignoring rules of Craft

Writing has rules. If your partner, your muse, or even your pet turtle tell you differently, show them the hand; even the finger. The hardest set of rules in writing you must abide by are the rules of Grammar.

For some reason, grammar has fallen out of favor with teachers who claim your parents should have taught you and by parents who claim it is your teachers’ duty to teach you grammar. Let me remove all doubt as to who is responsible for how you write; you are. Not your parents and not your teachers. The rejection slip does not go to them. It goes to you. Luckily for us, Grammar, like Mathematics, is based on a set of rules. All you need do is work within the rules, and you have resolved the problem. But where are these rules and how do we use them?

Take a deep breath and try to relax. This post is not mutating into a ten thousand word essay on the use of the collective noun. I don’t even intend to tell you the rules. I am going to tell you where to find them and how to apply them. Think of your first visit to an attorney’s office. You probably were impressed with the volumes of law books on display. As a writer, you only need one (honestly just one) rule book. It isn’t even as thick as the St. James Bible. But, to keep this in perspective, you do want the physical book. You do not want the ebook version even though it is available. Since this book is for reference, it requires physical interaction. The book, preferably hardbound, is The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. You will use it only when whichever of the next two tools I offer you give you just a vague answer, and you need to hear from the expert. The expert and your faithful friend for questions of style is William Strunk.

Electronic tools for style and spelling

The problem and the greatness of tools found in books are they are tactile and time-dependent. I present you with a choice of two tools which help you comply with the rules of grammar, style, and some of the laws of spelling. Both tools offer a free trial period, and I strongly suggest you read all the available information on both before making your decision. The two tools packing the most bang are Grammarly and ProWritingAid.I have used them both and the one I think is the better product is Grammarly. It is leaner and sparser than ProWrtitingAid. Grammarly offers a desktop application into which you can copy or load your manuscript. You can specify information about the manuscript and its projected audience. Grammarly, with tremendous accuracy, will point to almost all the flaws in grammar, style, and spelling. Its advantage is that it tells you what it thinks is the correction which you can accept or reject. It also gives you an overall score of your writing and how you rank amongst other equivalent Grammarly users. Its most robust value, in my opinion, is its leanness. You don’t get flooded with information about the error. Nor does it give you all the possible corrections. It provides what it computes to be the best answer for your writing audience. To me that is invaluable. The cost of Grammarly after the trial period is $70.00/year. It can be paid by the year or by the month.

ProWritingAid is an excellent product. If you choose, it will provide you with almost too much information. It interacts with most browsers and most word processors. It even works well with Scrivener. I would have paid more attention to it if it had worked well with Ulysses. When I was using it, I could find no flaws in either its performance or the information provided. Again, for me, it was giving far more than I needed and much more than I wanted. For people beginning to write and for people who know they are not very good with style and structure, ProWritingAid is an excellent application. After the trial period, ProWritingAid will cost you $50.00 for the first year. For three year it is $100.00. For a permanent license, it is only $175.00. Either product is invaluable for the price. While deciding on my choice, I subscribed to them both for a year and used them both for everything I wrote. Grammarly gave slighter better results when confronted with more obtuse grammatical errors. My suggestion is to pick the product that best serves your needs.

The final reason why many editors reject a manuscript is by what is in, or what is not in the cover letter. That will be the discussion for part three of this series.

Why was Your Manuscript Rejected?

As writers, we all want to see our works published. We want to prove that we have something important to say and some readers enjoy reading our words. It is our readers who make breathing worthwhile. Most importantly they make the pain of rejection bearable. Most of us go unpublished and unrecognized from fear of trying to publish or from an overabundance of rejection slips.

Most published writers know rejection letters are impersonal and trivial. They are merely messages to move on. Find someplace else for your work. For the beginning author or the author whose heart is exposed to the world 24/7, a rejection is a rapier cut across the heart. It is highly personal and brutal. It is psychological rape, and its damage is forever.
While there are numerous types of rejection letters, almost all of them fall under four categories. The first category is broad, encompassing nearly half of all rejections, and is entirely due to the carelessness of the writer.

 Rejection by Incorrect Genre 

Imagine you write as well as Dean Koontz. Your grasp of plot and character development are impeccable. Your story will scare your reader into a tizzy of fear and breathlessness as they turn every page. There is no doubt both Netflix and Amazon Prime will be calling you to arrange serialization rights. This literary gem will not only ensure your acceptance into the hall of Successful Writers, but it will make you rich. You submit this well-written scary tale to the editorial staff of Modern Romance, and it is immediately rejected.   Impossible though it might seem, your rejection email is cold and heartless, making no reference to its quality or value. You got what you deserved. Why did you submit a well-crafted, scary tale to a romance publication? There is a rule to be found here. No matter how well written the work, if it is outside the genre of the publication, it is not wanted and utterly worthless to that publication. 

Take the time to determine your manuscripts’ genre. Use tools such as Writer’s Digest and Google to find those publishing houses and publications that handle that genre. Remember, Dean Koontz and Steven King probably never sell to the Romance Industry.

Rejection Because Your Work is   Implausible or Patently Absurd

These are three far too common errors that seem to accrue to writers who write by the seat of their pants. To whit, they have an idea, and they just start writing, and no matter what, they keep on writing. The resulting rejection usually can be attributed to the following reasons.

Fallacies of Plot

What is happening is not plausible. 

Writing by the seat of your pants, while creative and enjoyable, often fosters errors that even minimal organization will eliminate. In the first third of your book, your main character has blond hair and green eyes. In the second third of your book, that character has blond eyes and black hair. Even worse, your hero who grew up in the corn belt now sports a scar gotten while attending the Heidelberg school of dueling.

All these errors are easily seen and easily corrected. Be sure you read your manuscript at least twice with a critical eye.

Using Deus ex Machina

In the year 384 BCE, Aristotle used what became known as Deus ex Machina. No one else has done it as well, and you shouldn’t even try. If you box your hero inside of an impossible situation, do not rely on some god or another to get him out. You put him there, you write a plausible escape. If you can’t do that, rewrite the trap or kill him.

Lack of Character Development and Story Movement is Too Slow.

These two fallacies go hand in hand. Remember you will usually have two or three main characters. The hero, the villain, and perhaps the hero’s sidekick, either a girlfriend, good buddy or someone more than just a peripheral personage but not overly critical to the storyline. You have to build the first two carefully spending the time to make them very real for the reader. Usually, each carries sub stories and incidents which help make them real and fixate them in the reader's mind. Building characters by sub-stories, and simultaneous plotting is fun. Some excellent writers a century or two ago made some really great novels like this. Dickens, Tolstoy, and Conrad come to mind. Keep in mind you are competing with movies, computers, and television. Until your reputation as a writer is secure, you do not want to develop a twelve hundred page novel. Most people no longer have the patience to read such a work.

Remember to build your characters in segments. As you create them, interweave their stories with the lives of your other primary characters, especially the antagonist. Above all, keep your plot moving to points of conflict and dramatic change.

The two remaining serious reasons for rejection are Rejection by Ignoring Rules of Craft and Rejection from Cover Letter Errors.* Both will be covered in my next post.

Journaling for the Writer

If you write, if you read about writing,  or if writing is only a dream not yet realized, you have heard about keeping a journal. Some writers swear by it and other writers swear at it. Just a few months ago I was entrenched in the camp of the naysayers. Keeping a journal demanded my time,  pulled me from my current writing project, and it threatened to take on a life of its own. But, I kept reading excerpts from journals and diaries of writers I like, and I decided to try to understand journaling in terms of value. The apparent deterrents I have already mentioned. 

 The most rewarding Benefit of Journaling

One of the most powerful and compelling reasons to keep a journal is that it allows you to explore your own emotions, mainly how they apply to what you are engaged in doing and thinking. As a very concrete example, I am writing a short story whose main character is a witch who has been caught, tried, and convicted. She is wearing only a jute sack soaked in coal oil, and the smell has invaded not only her body but her hair, and it is all she can feel, smell, and taste. She is tied to a stake, and her feet are on the top of what is obviously a pyre. She is being taunted by her one guard who enjoys telling her death is quickly approaching. I was able to write how I felt waiting to be burned to bone long after the fat melted past the tallow. How I would smell like burnt mutton. Writing and feeling from different points of view hidden from your audience is a benefit both exhilarating and satisfying.

 Two Secondary Benefits of Journaling

1) Journaling allows you to write anything and know that unless you permit, nothing in that journal will ever be read by anyone else. This gives you a blank slate to examine your deepest fears, desires and wants. Before you scoff and accuse me of crossing the bounds into madness, it is ok to write thoughts of madness, twisted things and poisoned lollipops. Everyone nurtures a secret side, and that is how we develop really deep and sometimes even hilarious storylines.
Consider for a moment Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Both plays are deeply twisted tales of deviant behavior ringing true in the human comedy. Neither writer could have pulled these ideas from reading Harry Potter. You have to write and feel from something that burns and pains your very soul. If you wish, think of journaling as the poor man's psychoanalysis. Go for it. Plum your depths.

2) Journaling will vanquish writer’s block forever. If you have explored the emotions and the feelings of your plots and your dreams you have a wealth of ideas to pick from. You will never stare at your keyboard cursing your failed muse. You don’t need a muse. You have a journal. Take one of your thoughts, your feelings from your journal, and start writing.

The Habit and Ritual of Writing (Part 2)

Part Two: Making Writing a Ritual

We can expect to write easier, and perhaps even better, as we write by habit rather than by inspiration. What role does ritual play in the development of good writing habits and how do we use ritual to drive our writing forward?
Writing rituals serve as safe havens against the goblins that plague us as we strive to share our thoughts. Boundaries of place and time are very comfortable security blankets. One person has converted what was a closet for winter coats into a writers studio. Into the closet, she has wedged a computer desk.  A small bar stool serves as her chair. One might think that would be a claustrophobic nightmare, but, think a bit more. It is almost like a thunder blanket. It acts as a surrounding for your ideas. You are in extreme proximity to your thoughts and the tools you use to transfer your thoughts from mind to page. There is both comfort and desire to accomplish a goal working like this. Obviously, this approach is not for everyone. What is important is the realization that as writers we need a familiar and comfortable place to write.
Inherent to our rituals is the time component. It is much easier to drive the writing habit if it is under the control of time. We can ritualize three hours a day, or fifteen hundred words a day; whatever you decide, it is the ritual of limits that makes our productivity much more comfortable to accept and comply with. 
Writers need the irrational magic of control as the final and most encouraging ritual to support their habit of writing. There is magic looking forward to the suspension of reality inherent in the act of writing. It is almost hypnotic in effect. This is something you share with a group of extraordinary people. In your range of acquaintances how many of you write?  You may be one of two. How powerful you are to step into a separate divergent reality. You create. You build edifices in your mind and transport them, stone by stone, into the real world. You have a talent possessed by very few. You control how you write through the process of habit and ritual.

The Habit and the Ritual of Writing

This is the first of two posts dealing with the not so obvious persona of being a writer. These internal characteristics are habit and ritual. Standing in front of the mirror and saying “I am a writer” makes you neither a writer nor a stand-up comedian. One becomes a writer by studying the writing of recognized good writers and by developing the habits conducive to writing. Not only must you develop good writing habits, but you must also approach your craft using rituals designed to foster the skills and the habits you need to consistently write well. You cannot separate the two nor can you assign more value to one than the other.

Part One: Writing by habit

Before you can truly begin to channel your wish to write into a reality, you need to find the motivation driving you to write. Is it the desire for money, for fame, for great recognition, or is it a still small voice urging you to write. You cannot ignore this step. You can and should ignore what others might think of your motivation. What is important is that you see it as being truly unique and very important to you. 
Take a moment for some introspection. More than one person has tried to trivialize the requirement of motivation. What is critical, they say, is that I want to write. If you really want to write you need to strive for a reward, and that is your motivation. Find out what that is, write it down and memorize it. Every time you think of writing think of your motive for writing. 
My motive for writing is I want to be read. That is why I write a blog. I  know a little about writing so I write posts about the craft and intricacies of writing. Since “blogger” supports pages I post my fiction under pages. I enjoy reading comments and try to answer all of them even if it is only to thank the reader for having commented. I also pay attention to my blog statistics and the analysis offered by Pinterest. I know what post is being read and which posts are being ignored. 
Everything you write will play to the fulfillment of your motivation. Now that your motive is in clear view, and your subject is known, how are you going to write today? Establish a clear, attainable goal for your writing session. If you are starting a novel, your goal is not to finish it today. Think in terms of how many words can you write for as long as you are going to write today. Steven King writes about 2,000 words a day. If you can do that every time you sit down to write I am happy for you and honestly, I am envious of you. I have learned over some years that I am most comfortable with from 350 words on a not so good day to one thousand words on a really good day. If I get between 500 to 750 words a day, I am a happy writer. Note, I said writing daily. Looking in the mirror, I realize I am a fallible person. I don’t write every day all the time. I am a voracious reader and if I want to take a day to read that is my right, and I will do so as I see the need. But I do know that for most of the week I will spend whatever time is necessary to meet my word goal.  
If you can achieve your daily writing goal, you are well on the way to forming a lifelong, writing habit. If you can only write once or twice a week, remember that you are writing from habit while you write. Encourage yourself to write every day, but do not belittle yourself if you are not 100% successful. For every goal you achieve I applaud your effort and encourage you to continually strive toward achieving your motivation.
**The Ritual of writing** will appear by Wednesday, October 3rd.

Titles that Lie

Let us discuss blog post titles and the headlines of contemporary publications. Fictional titles are blurbs about lies, and that is perfectly acceptable. If Stephen King had called his master horror tale It,  Clarence the Clown or Melvin The Spider the content would still scare you out of your recliner. 

Bloggers are sellers of ideas and products. Most good posts range between 350 and 750 words. That’s not much time or content to make a point.  The writer must be both concise and compelling with his arguments. The title should be both captivating and enticing. Lying, while it might suck you in one time, won’t work the next time.

The two most often used lies on writing blogs are

1) “I am a Writer, and I will make you a Writer too.”

This person could sell snake oil at a  rattlesnake convention. The first scent of mendacity is when you look at the bio and see the author expounds he is, in fact, a successful writer. He is the writer of at least five well received and sought after books on writing and personal development. What you don’t see is all the books are self-published, poorly written, and are freely given away to help convince you to follow his unusual and unique “Develop as a Writer” class. The class which usually sell for $1500 is now available for just $900. If you act within the next 24 hours, you will get the early bird 33% discount on top of that. A lot of people will pay to be told they are a writer especially when it is a "successful writer" doing the telling. Let me be really obvious about this one point. If you have to tell people you are a writer, you probably are not. 

There is an excellent variation of this lie in extensive use today.  This is the lie of “Write 500 words a day and you…”. I’m still not sure what you get from writing 500 words a day, but I do give a certain validity to the argument because it has one important outcome for some of the people who practice it. It imparts a degree of discipline. If you can write 500 words a day of good prose, you are doing something right. If you write 500 “WTF’s” daily, you gain nothing. If your writing is incoherent, you learn nothing. The discipline is an excellent goal to realize, so I applaud those who follow this regimen. By itself, discipline does not and will not make you a writer.

2)  “I have published 5 posts a day for the last 526 days, and this is what I have Learned.” 

I have altered this headline with the number of posts and the length of time stated. The inherent lie is the statement that something of value has been learned and will be shared. This lie suckered me in just last week as I really wanted to understand what he had learned and how it had affected him. 

This was a six-page post. Page one thru five were pictures; one per page. Each picture was of a yellow writing pad with much of the writing crossed out, and a pen laying across each page. The finale of this work was an acknowledgment that he had learned little. If the e-zine publishing this work had an editor with the slightest understanding of content the article would never have seen the light of day. 

When you publish, you have an obligation to the reader to produce a coherent and convincing body of thought. Your title should be written with the same commitments in mind.

Comments are welcome and appreciated.

Writer as Scientist as Writer

A shortcut through time

Years ago, before The Martian Chronicles were written and when Wool was sheared from sheep, there was a distinct dichotomy between science and the arts. This dichotomy has been with us for years and has influenced not only education but even child rearing. Drake loves numbers and Arielle studies ballet. That concept has been with us long before Descartes thought about the value of logic.

When we talk about art and science, we are also talking about measuring time. Think of the time between the cave drawings of prehistoric man and the creation of the abacus in China. That’s a lot of time. Now consider the length of time between the abacus and the building that housed Eniac; 1,800 square feet to hold 18,000 glowing vacuum tubes surrounded by as many relay switches. The device you are reading this article with has 100,000 times the memory of the Eniac and is a million times faster in its response. Yet the time from the abacus to Eniac is far less than prehistoric man took to reach the abacus. 

Crunching the time span once again, consider the length of time from the Eniac to the Internet. Eniac was developed in 1946. The Internet was developed under the acronym ARPANET in 1969. In twenty-three years, the foundation for the web was already in place. The Cloud was released to the world in 2006 by Google. All of this in less than a human lifespan. The distance from the cave painting to the cloud approaches an almost immeasurable span, but with each development, time compresses itself, and we leap into yet further understanding of our universe.

A scientist and a writer were sitting in a bar.

Probably not true since both are more introverted than extroverted, but the driving forces behind both are remarkably similar. The distinction is in how the problem is perceived. To the scientist, most issues are seen as a collection of events described numerically. The solution depends on finding a precise manipulation of the inputs, like an algorithm, to derive an expectable and repeatable set of outcomes called a solution.

The writer sets down a series of occurrences to be developed. This is the plot of his work or the problem environment. The problem environment like the scientific environment does not change. It is constant. To the static environment, the writer introduces characters. The writer develops these characters with specific attributes and traits. Like the input variables of the scientist, the characters are going to act and react to the environment in such a way that is consistent and repeatable. As the scientist can change the input variables to influence the experiment, so the writer changes the actions and the reactions of his characters to change the plot in a consistent and repeatable manner.

Both scientists and writers look at problems (ideas) openly and uniquely. Instead of constraining their universe they expand it.

Both numeric methods and artistic methods attempt to see the environment in new and unique ways always pushing boundaries to increase our knowledge and our understanding. 

Leonardo da Vinci expressed it best.  “Art is the queen of all sciences, communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.”

We writers see the world as uniquely and as brilliantly as Einstein saw it.  Use your words as well and as creatively.

Comments are welcome and appreciated.

Lightning Across The Page

    Flash fiction demands you impose the limitation of length on your writing. As novelists, bloggers, memoirists, and essayists we have a general idea how many words or chapters will be involved in our opus. Usually, the word count is always in flux. It is something we consider as our work comes closer to its end. 

Word Limitations

Flash fiction gives you the word count before you put word one on paper or on display. It is usually agreed that flash fiction is less than one thousand words. A short story is from one to seven thousand words, and a novella is from thirty to sixty thousand words. 

Within flash fiction competition, word lengths are usually given as 300 words or 500 words, and rarely 1000 words. Flash fiction aficionados sometimes impose a maximum length of 100 words, but that is not only very rare it is difficult to do well.

Character limitations

When you build your characters in a novel or short story, you have the time to craft them carefully with an emphasis on traits and emotions. If you are working in a three hundred word environment, you don’t have that luxury. In this genre, you usually restrict yourself to two characters, the protagonist and the antagonist. You build their character through plot development and dialog. You can have more than two characters, but usually the third or thirtieth plays off of one of the leading players.

Plot Limitations

Building the plot is where you get to excel. From the plot, you develop your stories tension and drive it to its conclusion. 

Spend some time determining how your plot will interact with the characters to drive the story. Take a moment and read A Country Ghost in the pages section. There are a few things I hope you pick up on. First, the primary characters, the ghost, and Melisa are introduced in the first two paragraphs.

The story deals with bullying, budding sexuality, and friendship in less than 300 words. 

The value of writing flash fiction

There is great satisfaction in working with flash fiction especially since it can teach you to build a real story in the most minimalist of environments.

Beyond the satisfaction of working in a difficult genre, let me propose a simple exercise which might be of serious help with your writing. Write a piece of flash fiction with a maximum length of 500 words. The topic is “A jungle.” When your story is complete, use it as the seed for a novel, or a long short story, or even a novella. Great art comes from such small ideas.

Comments are welcome and appreciated.

Some Characteristics shared by Writers

I read a blog post last night detailing the seven personality traits all writers should have. What I found fascinating was the implication that people lacking these qualities were not writers and could not become writers. 
After reading this post, it became apparent these characteristics were true not only for writers but for policemen, fire rescue personnel, bartenders, middle-level managers, even for CEOs and CFO’s. At some level, these characteristics could be applied to professional assassins and Mafia Dons as well. The stated personality traits had very little to do with defining the class of people known as writers.
Four traits are crucial for writers. Can you write without them? Yes, but probably not very well.
1) If you want to write well, you must be an avid reader.
I think it is the norm to read more than to write. I don’t write for relaxation or pleasure. I write because I want to be read. I see writing as a vocation, reading as an avocation. I read for pleasure. I enjoy well-written novels and stories. I enjoy seeing some really well-done movies and intuitively knowing what if any book drove the film. I devour classics. My favorite books are War and Peace by Tolstoy, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, and Heart of Darkness by Conrad.
2) Writers must love to manipulate words. You should want to take a paragraph you’ve written and make it stand out. You want to grab your readers attention. You want to rivet the reader to your words. For a perfect example of grabbing your reader, read the opening paragraph of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. This short story is recognized as perhaps the best written short story in American Literature.
3) Writers must be able to view their first draft through jaundiced eyes.
You may be most accepting when you review the works of a fellow writer, but you cannot be so accepting of your own work. Your first draft gets something on paper. Even if you have Steinbeck's soul, your first draft stinks. You have spelling errors, errors in grammar and tense abound. Consider yourself a great surgeon and the life of your manuscript is in your hands. Make it whole, and when you have done that, do what not even a surgeon can do. Make it better. When you have accomplished that, your work is ready to be seen.
4) Writers must write.
Now that’s an obvious characteristic, right? No, it’s not. The number of writers who are working on chapter two of their first novel, which will be a fifty-three chapter work of absolute brilliance abound. They’ve been writing it for seventy-three months, but they are experiencing a slight block in creativity. They don't write. They brag about their work in progress and do nothing else. We know writing is hard work. We know we stumble. We suffer from self-doubt. We are plagued by insecurity. If you don’t make the time to write and you don’t use that time to write you will never be a writer. Bragging rights are free, writing is hard.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated.

The Myth of Writing Every Day

The Internet is the reference point of choice for mathematicians, scientists, teachers, and most certainly for writers. It has become a fact of writing apprenticeship that to write decently one should produce five hundred words each day. For day after day, week after week we grind out 500 words. I have written about my dogs from three different perspectives; as their owner, their friend, and as a fellow walker. Five hundred words about two dogs and after rereading the essay, it was not all that well written. But I did do the 500-word daily gig. The questions needing answers are: 1) Did it make me a better writer? 2) Did it teach me to write well? 3) Was the process of cranking out words worth a damned thing?
Did it make me a better writer? No, how could it? How does writing 500 words on Wednesday make them better than the 500 words written two weeks prior? It doesn’t. It can’t.
Did producing 500 words daily teach me anything about writing well? No. All it accomplished was to let me write on Facebook, “Another 500 words written!!” This generated many kudos from other aspiring writers trapped within the same vortex I was being sucked into.
And finally was any of this process worth a damned thing? Yes, for me it had value. Its value had nothing to do with writing per se, but I could not write at all well without having learned this one lesson. I learned to make writing a habit. I have learned to sit down with my open MacBook on my lap, knowing what I want to write about, and just write. I could not have learned to do this without the ordeal of writing 500 words every day.
When I first began this process, I wrote my short stories in segments of 500 words. There were days the words would not come. Even when I knew how I wanted the story to progress over that 500-word segment, the words would not flow. Writer's block is very specific. I put aside the story and began working an idea about a blog post I wanted to write. I also learned to keep a journal and write in 500-word segments. I wrote about friends, animals, my life partner my wife, even about going to a natural foods grocery store. All those subjects are excellent grist for a journal.
Your goal is to teach yourself that you can control how you write, what you write, and most importantly when you write.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated.