Putting the work away for a while

I was cleaning up an older short I had written for submission, and much of my original perception of it had changed.

The dialog was far stronger than I remembered (go me!) and flowed believably and beautifully - what a thrill!

On the other hand, the descriptive and action passages clunked harder than an engine with no oil - right before it throws a rod, leaving you stranded on the side of the interstate at three a.m.

When I originally wrote this piece, I was under the mistaken impression that both aspects were decent, if not glowing. Surprise...

It's always a good idea to put that piece away for a little while after you write it. The good bits are never quite as good, and the bad never quite so horrid, as they first appear.

North Americans Don't Read?

That was an 'arguement' in one of the writing forums I frequent, as an explanation of why some poorly written books do well.

Non Sequiter much? Besides being not true?

Were that actually the case, there would be few bookstores, and certainly no large chains. The other 'basis' for this arguement were that people only read bestsellers, and they only read those to appear informed on whatever is popular at the time.

Purple monkey dishwasher??? (Simpsons reference)

Did it not occur to this person that the 'bestseller' label comes AFTER selling oodles of copies? So who were the tens of thousands who bought the book before it became popular? Couldn't have been all those non readers following trends.

Yes, some poorly written books have flash in the pan wild success. Some wonderful books languish in obscurity - but most often, those truly good books have something the others don't:

Staying power. They sit patiently on the shelves, in print year after year, growing followers and appreciation.

Which would I rather have?

I can't deny the attraction of insta-fame and money. Ideally, both. But what I'd honestly rather have, is a growing career. Well written books that trickle through society, staying in print for decades due to regular demand. Fans that will buy the next book, and the next one.

But that doesn't happen, because Americans don't read. Hear that, Umberto Eco? How about Peter S. Beagle? You guys CAN'T exist, those sturdy, eternally popular writers - because no one reads what they don't hear about on tv.

Sheesh.

Publishing takes FOREVER, don't panic.

I didn't exactly panic, but I'd given up on a submission - one of Shroud magazine's Arkham Tales anthologies - horror poetry in a Lovecraftian vein.

Since I wasn't too invested in the piece (I shot together the poem in fifteen minutes, specifically for that submission - thanks again to the kind person who made me aware of it in the first place) it was a bit easier not to obsessively check my email for updates.

I completely understand the compulsion - try not to do it. Forget about the submission, work on something else.

After not hearing for a month, I was a little disappointed. Shrug, and move on. About a week later, I got an email asking if I was willing to edit the poem structurally - the editor didn't seem to care for the quatrains, and wanted to break them into random pieces.

Personally, I felt that it weakened the piece - but at my stage in the game, I felt that being easy to work with and willing to compromise is important. You may feel differently, and that's fine. Artistic integrity is a funny thing, and the line for each person is different.

What I did, was break the poem up three or four different ways, mentioned how it seemed to weaken the rhyming and the rhythm, and said I'd love to see how he (the editor) saw it being broken up, because I couldn't see how it would work.

Then I spent a few days worrying about being presumptuous, obsessively refreshing my email, and hoping that I hadn't inadvertently pissed someone off.

Two more months go by. I figure I must have annoyed someone, get a little down, and forget about it for a while. (Where else would I be able to submit a poem so specific?)

Then, I get an email informing me that I've made the first round of cuts, the editor is going on vacation, and will be in touch in September.

WOOHOOO!!!!! (For those who don't know, Shroud is a pro-rate paying publication, and counts toward membership in the Horror Writers of America.)

And more waiting, but I feel better about it now.

Look at it this way - four or five months of waiting, just to this point. Publishing takes an eternity, so don't sweat it, and keep working on something else, or you'll drive yourself nuts with the wait.

How I started my own writing group

There are great online forums all over the web, where you can chat with fellow writers, get feedback, and meet people with shared interests.

My personal favorite is www.absolutewrite.com

I've gotten a lot out of them, and they're great, but sometimes it's nice to commiserate in person, see the physical responses of people reading your work, and of course, get the $&%^ out of the house once in a while.

To that end, I figured I try and start a lil writing group in my area. There are already existing ones, but the happy, fluffy clouds and bunnies 'all writing is good and we welcome everything' love fest isn't all that useful to me.

Rather than trying to call everyone I thought might be interested, I put out an update on facebook, to see who might be interested. (Pre figuring that a third of those who expressed interest would actually show up).

Then, I picked a time and place. I asked about people's schedules, made an educated guess about who would actually show, and picked the location and hour based on that.

Three people showed up, which worked fairly well. I hope to expand the group, but for a first meeting, having more than one person appear was more than I honestly expected. And the enthusiasm more than made up for it - people appeared with shiny new notebooks and pens!

I asked about peoples' goals (after sending an email informing them to think about it). No one seems particularly sure, beyond 'I want to write'. That's okay.

It was very relaxed and silly, and I've given my first assignment. We'll see how that progresses next week.

The McBook

The ever incredible Paperback Writer's list of McBooks, and how to tell if you're writing one.

Hilarious!

Science Fiction Writer's of America - goldmine of information

Besides being an incredible organization of talented writers, the SFWA website hosts a TON of great articles about writing - from the absolute basics, workshop talks, getting an agent, marketing, productivity - you name it.

Read them.  It'll be the best couple of hours of valuable information that you never paid for.

One of the secrets to writing...

...is learning.

Read more than you write.  Read outside of your chosen genre.  Read how-to books.  Try everything.  Absorb what works, discard the rest.

And always take advantage of the information available to you.  The internet is an amazing tool, and experts are always happy to share what they've learned.

In the video linked above, three successful horror screenwriters talk shop and answer questions.  You can view the whole session for free.

How come THEY got published??

Everybody(well, every writing body) goes through that moment:

You pick up a copy of the thing everyone is raving about. A few pages in, you want to hurl the book against the wall in sheer frustration - it's bad. REALLY bad. Head crushing, vomit inducing, mind numbingly BAD. Not long after that, you want to cry, because this thing got published. Then you go through the emotional steps...you get depressed, get mad, incredulous...finally accepting that bad books can, and do, get published.

Below are just my own thoughts - to my knowledge, no in depth study has ever been done about any of these.

There seem to be basically three things that will have a less than stellar book on the market.  

The first is a writer with a huge following, that's now pumping out books that aren't as great. It happens, but that first couple of manuscripts still had to be great.

The second, is that there's some aspect of the work that's so strong, it overshadows a lot of the problems. I'd put Dan Brown in this camp. Hated his sentence structure, oversimplifications, weak characterizations, and flagrant disregard for facts and history. But damn - I had to know what was going to happen next. That's what I'd call a weak writer and a great storyteller. And the simplicity of the prose helped keep the pace fast, though I still wish he'd thought a little more highly of his audience.  

The third, is filling an empty niche. I'd put twilight here. Every eight to ten years, there's a new, hot vampire hero for the latest group of teen girls to swoon over (am I the only one who noticed that?).

Maybe even less time.  

When I was a small bit, there was a tv show called Forever Knight. Horribly cheesy. Had the fan base from Beauty and the Beast (another tragic male lead). Though Lestat was around before then, he caught on big in the early 90's, replacing Mr. Knight. After Lestat, came Angel, and then Spike. 

Now those two are still running around, but the bloom is quite off the rose, particularly for girls who don't want to like what their older siblings did - and want something new. 

Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton have been about for a while, but those (especially Hamilton) are not written for a teen audience - unlike Buffy, where teens were the primary target, or Knight, who had more of a Barnabas thing going on, and sex was implied rather than implicit. 

I noticed one other vamp series aimed at kids, but it glosses over the romance aspect.

So there's this fresh generation of newly hormonal tweens, starving for their slightly dangerous, oh so sexy, bad boy with a heart of gold. Enter the ultimate wish fulfillment character, with the ultimate self insert blank slate. Had another teeny bopper bloodsucking hunk hit paper first, that would have been the hot thing instead.

What does all this mean to you? Besides that some luck can be quantified when analyzed far enough, not much. Keep working to write the best book you can, because it's better to rely on strong writing than good timing.

The Queen of Swords

Some of the most amusing, in depth reviews of REALLY BAD books.

Link in the title.

Beatrix Potter? What are you smokin' - self publishing Myth #4

bOne of the things that drives me completely batty about these...

Have you noticed that most of these stories, even while untrue, are from OVER A HUNDRED years ago, when the publishing industry was very different?

There are a couple of reasons for this, not the least of which was the Victorian sensibility.  People were much more easily shocked and offended.  Take that into consideration, and it's not quite so hard to figure out why Delta of Venus had trouble finding a home.

Now, stop to consider what distribution channels must have been like.  There were very few (relatively) national presses, and most companies focused on a local market.  If a writer lived in your home town, it wouldn't be odd to see them hawking their own book.

Different times, different standards.

On to the creator of another beloved children's series:  Peter Rabbit.

Wanna know why publishers originally turned the series down?

Color pictures, particularly in children's books, were very popular at the time, and Peter Rabbit's drawings were in black and white.  Not the writing, not the stories themselves - a hot marketing feature was missing.  Potter re-created her drawings as color plates, produced 250 copies, and distributed those amongst her loved ones.

After seeing the new images, Frederick and Wayne Company signed the first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor's Garden, in 1902.  By the end of the year, 28,000 copies were in print.  Not too shabby, eh?

Beatrix went on to become a full time writer and illustrator of children's books.

This tale is more telling in terms of 'give the publisher what they want' than any self pub stardom - notice there was no wide release until AFTER she signed.  And had the illustrations been in color in the first place...

Potter didn't become a household name by self publishing; she did it by both having the talent, and giving the publisher what they wanted in the first place.

Busted.

’But my character is so COOL...’

...and your writing still sucks. One of the things that I've started noticing in aspiring fantasy writers is that, rather than working on the craft of writing, they're convinced that if the idea is cool enough, the story will be cool. Not so much. Please, please, no more vampires, werewolves, vampire/werewolf/elf/ninja/pirates(yep, I actually saw one of those).  Tortured souls in the rain seems to be popular as well - except these 'dark silouhettes' always seem to be 'bourne upon the wind'  on high 'spires' while 'lurking in drenched pain heart-rivers'(if you can find a more obtuse and poorly worded way of saying 'standing outside like a dumbass on the highest point in a thunderstorm', let me know). I have a thought for you: Stephen King. While the most successful horror writer of our time has touched upon all sorts of otherworldly beasties, his main characters tend to be very everyday folks. Yet somehow, these 12 year old kids, small town cops, struggling writers, etc, are some of the strongest characters in modern literature(yes, I consider King to be literature). Because? They're real.  They are fully formed, well rounded people, with strengths, weaknesses, fears, joys, histories, and above all: WRITTEN WELL.  Some of his bit players, I wouldn't be suprised to see pop up on a small town street to say 'Ayuh'. If all it took were 'cool' characters, every piece of eye bleeding, giggle inducing, or just plain painful fanfiction based on a masterpiece would be on the bestseller list.  Yet every bit of it I've suffered through has been unreadable. Because these people never bothered learning how to write - so the characters they love so much have been rendered flat and dull, lacking even the vibrancy of a child's crayon drawing. Please, please, stop.  I beg you.  Stop slaughtering the characters you love, stop making a mockery of those supernatural creatures you adore so much. Unless its for spoof purposes. I think I'm going to write about a vampire elf pirate ninja werewolf just for silliness factor.  Heh.

Thoughts on ’Write what you know’

I haven't hit many of these 'how to' bits since summer, being swept up in this project, work stuff, and recent tragedies, so I think it's time. This phrase is shot out at baby writers as often as 'show, don't tell'; and probably receives the same number of sage nods combined with vapid expressions. What the hell does it mean? It's one that baby writers like to argue about - how can you write about goblins and dragons and such, if you CAN'T know them - they're imaginary.  It's about writing things that you've experienced and understand, certainly. By the time a person is 15, they understand longing, social gaffs, the pain of failure, etc. It would be a bit more difficult for someone of this age to write about the inner workings of a long term marriage from the inside, or convincingly represent an industrial engineer from a mathematical basis. Writing isn't about facts, it's about personalities and emotions. As you grow older, you meet more personalities, and relationships become more complex. The core of this theory is that a beginning writer will have greater difficulty writing something they are entirely unfamiliar with, both from a technical and emotional standpoint. I've never been a police officer. Could I write one? Sure. I would need to do enough research to make it buyable, though. How long is training? (Depends upon what type of officer). How does the ranking work, what are the basic skills, social atmosphere, acceptable/typical behavior, etc. The character would know this stuff. For someone just starting out, all that research might prove daunting, and hold up the progression of actual practice. If someone has never been in love, experienced major losses, they are more of a challenge to evoke. That's what it really means - taking small bites. Starting with the familiar territory as a jumping off point. And it can be far more pleasurable for the writer to begin somewhere that is interesting to them. Love dragons and pixies? Then I bet you've read enough folklore to know the difference between a pixie and a skeltie. Love firearms? Then you've got a base for the difference between a Firestar and a musket - and enough knowledge to rough out what kind of character would use each, and how. Or the world of competitive bodybuilding, gambling, art galleries...the list could go on forever! As you gain experiences, your knowledge base and interests will broaden, and you'll be able to write more off-the-cuff on a variety of situations, objects, time periods, etc., and make it real. What will always feel the most legitimate, are the things you know best. So write what you know. And you know a lot.

Myrtle the Manuscript

Myrtle the Manuscript A brilliant rundown of the life of a fictional manuscript, and life in the periodical office. A must read for aspiring writers. As always, link on the title of this post.

Mary Sue me, I didn't like Twilight

Sue me, I didn't like Twilight. Apparently, this teen sensation of a novel has met with many mixed reviews, primarily of the love it/hate it category.

Were I a lonely 14 year old girl, I can see the allure. Since the main characters are quite one dimensional, it would be easy to insert oneself into the leading role as the object of many affections, and finally catching the cutest guy at school.

But I'm not. 

The first five or more chapters of this book are complete backstory, lists of facts about imaginary people that I was never compelled to care about.

Ella, the leading lady, was too annoying for words. She's completely boring and flat. We know her physical description, that she's just the smartest, prettiest, etc, that ever lived - and that's about it. Oh, and a play by play of every day, including her class schedule and what she eats. Without a clue as to her feelings, unless she flat out says 'I felt -'. It is mentioned ad nauseum that she's clumsy, but it feels like a last ditch attempt to insert a flaw, as this clumsiness never actually seems to manifest itself.

Then we have Edward. The angst ridden, perfect, 200 year old virgin, torn by his own nobility. Zzzzzzzzzz. Aside from tiresome 'he's so perfect' vomited all over the page, he has no personality. At all. His origins are mentioned, and I don't care.

The biggest issue for me, was that for over half the book (I checked while somewhere past the mid point) nothing happens. I don't care about any of the characters, situations, etc.

As much as I don't care for Dan Brown's childish prose, the man weaves a rollicking action - even as I yelled at each page: 'he's an assassin! I get it! Who doesn't know what a Moebius strip is, you pretentious wad!' I had to know what was going to happen next.

The reason I compare the two, is that I think they're both lousy writers who had rocketing success. But Brown can craft an adventure. While I didn't give a damn about his 'brilliant' scientists who were dumb as mud, I did want to see where they ended up, and the end of each chapter was a cliffhanger.

With Twilight, I finished it just because it was an easy read, and I was looking for the hook. Three hours later, I couldn't find it. At no point did I ever care what was going to happen next. And for most of the book, nothing happened.


Conclusion: If you can deal with an author talking to you like you have brains of cabbage, Brown is worth the ride - once. Twilight isn't worth bothering with, unless you happen to be a young teenage girl with a vampire fetish(don't they all)?

I did have an interesting conversation with two peers regarding the book.  One loves them. One hadn't read them all.

The reader had some VERY strange defensive arguments: 'Well, you can say Shakespeare is bad writing."

Ummm, no.  You can say that you don't care for the Bard, but it would be nigh impossible through any accepted writing standard to say that his work is bad.  That would be akin to claiming that Chaucer had no intention to write sexual exploits in The Canterbury Tales, and they just sort of turned out that way.

That was the strongest point she had - the others were less logical - and I finally realized she was personally offended by my distaste.

Reading trash doesn't mean you're stupid.  Enjoying bodice rippers doesn't make you a sex fiend.  Unless you're whispering sweet nothings to a copy of Mein Kampf, it doesn't matter to me.  Really.

And liking a book will never make the words inside good or bad.  That's what the writer does.

A clinical discussion of fiction vs. non fiction writing.

A clinical discussion of fiction vs. non fiction writing.


You don’t have to forget everything you know - capital letters start a sentence. Periods end one.


It’s a matter of rethinking your presentation. Writing for fiction is different than writing for journalism, or business.


Here’s why.


For fact based writing, the primary goal is to effectively communicate information. The tools developed are to that end.


For fiction, it’s about communication of emotion. Different tool set.


Keep in mind what you’re trying to communicate to the reader, and it’ll be clearer.


For instance:


She felt sad.


While the sentence is about an emotion, it’s a presentation of a fact-communication of that information. It doesn’t invoke an empathy with the reader to share the emotion. And that’s what communicating an emotion is about - making the reader feel what you want them to feel, to embroil them in the story.



Think about WHY you read particular things. Newspapers are read for information(facts) about current events. Business writing is for information regarding something business related. Manuals are read to learn about something. The reason all of these are read is less than purely personal - most often, it’s because the reader needs the information within for some reason. I don’t know anyone who reads business documents for pleasure.



Reading for pleasure is different. Whether the readers tastes run toward SFF, romance, or literary, people read fiction because they WANT to, not because they have to. (Barring some literary bestseller that’s marketed as ’brilliant’, and some people read merely to be seen as highly literate.)


It’s the difference between watching a movie and watching an instructional video.


I’m sure this is all stuff that the back of your head knows, and the front hasn’t really thought about in clear terms yet.


So, back to that sad person.


How do we make the reader empathize with her? Saying ’she felt sad’ effectively communicates the fact of her state, but doesn’t really make the reader feel anything at all. This is where showing comes in. By showing the physical responses of the person, it connects the reader with those responses in themselves - triggering a mild to powerful memory of what it’s like to feel those responses, and bringing forth the emotional empathy.


(That’s a really clinical way of looking at it, but I’m trying for clarity here.)


So, what happens when you feel sad? Depending upon the depth of the sadness, and the surrounding emotions, the body does different things - but I’m sure you’ve experienced a wealth of emotions over the course of your life, and remember what they felt like. Some clinical detachment can be useful, too.


Ok, here we go.



Her stomach felt like it was sinking to her knees. Her face was hot, throat tight, and she felt the sharp, salty prick of tears at the corners of her eyes.



That’s not elegant writing, but an example. Using the physical feelings of ’sad’, we more effectively invoke the image of ’sadness’ to the reader. The elegance of a turn of phrase comes with time and practice of the technique.


I hope this makes the idea clearer, though.