Don’t Indulge Neurotic Writing Rituals

Every time you put a provision on the conditions under which you can work – I have to write in the morning; I can write only when alone; I need a composition notebook of lined paper exactly like those I used when I studied in France; I can’t possibly write if I have a girlfriend/boyfriend; or I can write only if I’m going out with someone – you fail to grasp the essential truth of all great writing: it brooks no provisions . . . Yet when the writing demon seizes a person who can’t actually commit anything to paper, he will look to almost any voodoo to find the words. Writers everywhere have purchased expensive technology, rented rooms, left loved ones, exiled themselves to grass huts, or worse without bringing a single project to fruition. The problem is, none of this is writing. It’s stalling. And the more you indulge any neurotic notions about a set of necessary conditions that will enable you to write, the colder the trail will get.

– Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees

*Photo by Donnie Nunley @ 500px / CC BY

These 8 Questions Will Get You Published Faster

I recently finished reading Write Is a Verb by Bill O’Hanlon. O’Hanlon talks about how writers need to emotionally distance themselves from their work and view it through a stranger’s eyes (particularly the eyes of someone who can accept or reject it, like an agent or editor).

Here are eight of O’Hanlon’s hard-nosed questions:

How is my approach in this work different from anything else I have seen or heard?
My book reaches a narrowly targeted audience because _______.
My writing or content is unique because _______.
I know there are no books out there like mine because _______.
What will surprise people about my book or my approach is _______.
The shortest description I can give of my book is ______.
If I could make a visual image of my book, it would look like _______.
My book is like [a soothing balm on a painful sunburn; a map to a lost traveler, etc.] _______.

How to Appropriately Express Your Theme

I’ve read a lot of books on writing and all of them have reiterated more or less the same advice on theme: Define your theme, whether it be a sentence, phrase or word, and then work it into your manuscript. Easy-peasy, right? Of course then they go on to say that your theme should be subtle – more like a soft breeze tickling the reader’s subconscious than a giant fan blowing in her face. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a difficult time melding those two pieces of advice. How can I work in the words of my theme without it being in-your-face? It wasn’t until I read this advice from Susan Bell that it started making more sense:

A theme is not a message. It is an idea written in invisible ink on the backside of your text. Choose a theme you want to emphasize. Then think of what image could represent it. Make it nonliteral – do not dumb down your theme with a cliche . . . Metaphorical symbols, such as color, texture, fragrance, or sound, may work better . . . A piece of discordant music or a grating noise might signal abrasive communication; velvety-surfaces – marshmallows, pussy willows, a stuffed animal, a velvet coat – could signal love’s comfort. Bamboo might symbolize flexibility; metal, modernity; the smell of burning, infidelity. . . Maybe a girl who is gaining enlightenment keeps walking across things, getting from one place to another – a bridge, a ladder, a plank set over a puddle. But if she performs the same action too many times, your subtle hint will slap too hard on the reader’s head.

– Susan Bell, The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself

*Photo by Bells Design @ Gratisography / CC0

Is Fear Keeping You from a Writing Career?

On Writing by Stephen King

You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

—Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

The definition of cowardice is “lack of courage to face danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.”

Ask yourself for one moment what your feelings have been on the eve of some act involving courage, whether it be physical courage, or moral or intellectual . . . what has happened to you? If it has really called forth courage, has it not felt something like this: I cannot do this. This is too much for me. I shall ruin myself if I take this risk. I cannot take the leap, it’s impossible. All of me will be gone if I do this, and I cling to myself.

And then supposing the Spirit has conquered and you have done this impossible thing, do you find afterwards that you possess yourself in a sense that you never had before. That there is more of you? . . . So it is throughout life . . . you know “nothing ventured nothing won” is true in every hour, it is the fibre of every experience that signs itself into the memory.

—John Neville Figgis

The One Thing That Will Kill Your Manuscript

The Artful Edit by Susal Bell

We all have writing or writers we admire and aspire to. It is not easy to abandon your ideal in order to accept what you perceive, at first, as your own meager self. It can take time to hear the power of your own voice, and until you do, you may keep hoping that you sound like George Eliot or Djuna Barnes, Stephen King or David Halberstam. Trying to sound like so-and-so is a fine exercise when you’re building your chops, but once you start your work in earnest as a relatively mature writer, it is literary suicide. To write falsely is not to write at all.

—Susan Bell, The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself

Your Audience Should Not Be “Everyone”

I have spent a good many years since – too many, I think – being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.

– Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Even 200 years ago authors knew that a book cannot – and should not – please everybody. Here’s Jane Austen (in her usual tongue-in-cheek style) writing a letter to her sister the year that Pride and Prejudice was published:

I had had some fits of disgust [with Pride and Prejudice] . . . The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade, it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte or anything that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style. I doubt you’re quite agreeing with me here. I know your starched notions.

Ironically, it’s when a writer writes with a narrow scope and only a small target audience in mind that her work has the greatest chance of pleasing the masses. So hunker down in your literary niche and let the world find you.

*Photo by Richard Kardhordo @ 500px / CC BY

You’ve Got to Read If You Want to Write

Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

– Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Last year I returned to my book roots. I did read a couple of new ones, but I mostly went through my stack of old favorites – because, as King also said: “Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.” The verdict? I like wizards and witty (if not slightly disturbed) damsels:

Harry Potter 1-7 by J. K. Rowling
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Whenever I’m apathetic about my writing, I find that it’s usually because I’m trying to be someone I’m not – trying to impress a potential agent, editor or reader. Reading books that I admire, written by authors who have stuck to their literary guns come rain, snow or evil review, inspires me to stay true to myself.

*Photo by Zoran Mesarovic @ 500px / CC BY

The Writing Life Is Much Less Exciting Than You Think

To be a writer, one must be willing to put up with the psychic demands of actually writing. Authors on talk shows emphasize their thrilling moments of triumph, not the months and years of monotony and malaise that preceded those moments. Movies about writers seldom succeed because their actual life is so much less interesting than fictionalized versions. As Virginia Woolf observed, the sense of creativity that “bubbles so pleasantly in the beginning of a new book” always subsides. Then a new, steadier type of energy is called for. Toward the end, she concluded, “determination not to give in . . . keeps one at it more than anything.”

– Ralph Keyes, The Writer’s Book of Hope

Top 5 Best Books on Writing in 2012

I keep a running list of all the writing books I’ve read. Here are the ones I got through last year, along with my five recommended favorites:

The 90-Day Novel: Unlock the Story Within by Alan Watt

How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II by James N. Frey

Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K.M. Weiland

You Can Write a Novel by James V. Smith, Jr.

Rivet Your Readers with Deep Point of View by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

Creating Strong Protagonists by William C. Martell

Writing for Emotional Impact by Karl Iglesias

Your Screenplay Sucks!: 100 Ways to Make It Great by William M. Akers

Wired for Story by Lisa Cron

The Essential Guide to Writing a Novel by James Thayer

And the books that won a spot in my Top Five are . . .

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors (and Screenwriters!) by Alexandra Sokoloff: I took away some great ideas from this book written by a screenwriter turned author. We’re living in a digital age and the gap is narrower than ever between the pace a reader expects in a movie and what she expects in a book. (Reread Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. You’ll be surprised how much slower it is than you remember.)

Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish with Confidence by Roz Morris: I’m not a big fan of those ra-ra-listen-to-your-inner-spirit books (no offense, Natalie Goldberg). By the end of them I’m thinking, Great, so I’m in touch with my inner writer, now what? I prefer books that give you a little ra-ra, but then go on to tell you how to get your writing butt in gear. This is one of those books.

Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy: My expectations were low for this book (who could blame me with the title?). But this book covers a lot of important ground. My two biggest takeaways were 1) their reassurance that every writer usually serves a long and frustrating apprenticeship; and 2) their explanation of both what a pitch is and what it is not.

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks: This book has gotten a few lengthy negative reviews (like this one) because the author can come off as repetitive and defensive. I’ll admit that I did have to slog through chunks of it, but Brooks won me over when he opened my eyes to the bare bones of plot structure presented in a way I had never considered before. I wrote an in-depth analysis of how Brooks’ story structure applies to the Harry Potter series.

On Writing by Stephen King: I’ve never read a single Stephen King book (I stay a good aisle or two away from the horror section of the bookstore), but I loved King’s book on writing. It’s interesting, funny, and inspiring (and not nearly as long as his novels!).

Writers Write (Most of the Time)

Humans are driven by emotion (as much as we may not want to admit it). We go through cycles of motivation, of laziness, of optimism, of cynicism, of happiness, of sadness.

Just because we haven’t been consistently doing something our entire lives doesn’t mean it isn’t a part of who we are.

Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird when she was in her twenties. It won the Pulitzer Prize and she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. She’s now eighty-six and has yet to publish another book. Is she a “real writer”?

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte was published over one hundred fifty years ago; it’s required reading in most college literature courses. Emily never published another book. Was she a real writer?

Margaret Mitchell only published one book too: Gone with the Wind. Same with J.D. Salinger and Catcher in the Rye.

My point is that—yes—writers write, obviously. But not all of the time, sometimes not even most of the time. There is no threshold a writer has to cross in order to be considered a “real writer.”

You are a writer if you say you are.