An Irregular Blog

Thoughts on Writing

At the last meeting of my critique group, the topic of metaphors came up. Personally, I like metaphors, and so spent way too long talking about them to my long-suffering companions. But it got me thinking and reading, and I thought I'd share some of what I've learned.

As writers, we should already know what a metaphor is and how to create one. So the question then becomes, "How do you create a strong metaphor?" The best way is to appeal to the senses, as Aristotle suggests in his "Rhetoric." For example -- "He bit into the pizza. Steaming-hot lava oozed out, searing the roof of his mouth." The senses make for immediate, strong impressions, so use them whenever possible in creating a metaphor.

The hardest part of creating a good metaphor is finding a proper object to substitute for the original one. "He leapt, a falling sack of flour, onto Wiggson's back," doesn't convey the same image as well as "He leapt, a snarling tiger, onto Wiggson's back." Aristotle suggests three methods for coming up with a proper metaphor--go from genus to species, species to genus, or by using analogy.

To call a battle "a duel of swords" is to go from genus to species--you're using a subset to represent a larger whole. The opposite is to say that Cupid's arrows are "love's armaments"--species to genus. Analogies are more difficult, since you have to define the original object--what it is and what it does--before you can go seeking something to replace it. Aristotle uses the example of Dionysus' cup and Ares' shield. They are both symbols, so if you call a cup the "shield of Dionysus," you've made a metaphor by analogy.

Aristotle admits that as prose writers, we have fewer resources to fall back on compared to poets, and therefore must pay careful attention to our metaphors. I agree. Metaphors are the gunpowder of writing--dangerous and destructive if roughly handled; potent and powerful if properly directed.

Last month I mentioned that I'd been studying books on style and composition. This has led me into an interesting byway in the study of English style--the Elizabethans. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Spenser, Bacon, Lyly--great men who shaped the English language ever after. I've found studying the Elizabethans not just historically interesting, but a valuable vein of ore worth mining for the improvement of my writing. Here are a few nuggets.

The Elizabethan writers were communicators, men who had something they wanted to say, whether it was a theme expressed through a play or a letter designed to persuade the Privy Council. There was very little, if any, fiction for fiction's sake. While the world of the English language has changed, understanding the overall intent of your work, be it theme or purpose, still gives power and direction to your writing. Knowing what to say helps you know how to say it.

The Elizabethans revered the Greeks and Romans, and debated which Classical writing style to imitate. Some advocated the Ciceronian style, while others wanted to copy the style of Seneca. The Cicero/Seneca split was their version of our Faulkner/Hemingway argument. Cicero's style, full of convoluted and balanced clauses, and which gave great scope to fine turns of phrase, was the favorite of men such as Lyly. Men such as Bacon favored Seneca's clean, spare prose, which relied more on exact word choices and imagry for its effect. (Personally, I prefer the Senecan/Baconian/Hemingway style of writing, which is much harder to do well than it first appears.) Today's writers--especially fiction writers--need powerful images and exact word choices no less than their Elizabethan predecessors. So work to make your style spare, your imagry rich.

Theme and imagry gave direction and power to Elizabethan writing. They can do the same for you, if you're willing to practice. Good luck and good writing.

May 6, 2008

Has it really been that long that I've neglected this page? I've been busy with other things, honest.

I had a period where my muse suddenly decided to go off on a tangent. She started throwing out poetry, and of all things, essays. Some of which will never see the light of day; some of which I had to research new markets, and will hopefully be collecting rejection slips soon. Or if I'm real lucky, get published. Essentially, my muse dragged me into a completely new sphere, one where I've had to start over from square one when it comes to customs, proceedures, and markets.

She seems to have settled down some in the past week or so, and the fiction in me is returning. Though it's certainly not bad to learn an entirely new skill. Dean Koontz said that you should be a "writer" who writes anything, rather than being pigeonholed into one genre. I agree. Even if nothing comes from writing poetry, or essays, or recipe books, you've learned something that can't help but make you a better writer.

Over the past few weeks, while the muse was busy puking up essays, I spent a lot of time reading and studying books about style and composition. If nothing else, I feel it's made my prose writing simpler. I fall into the "subject, verb, object" style more than I used to. And because of the simplicity of this sentence style, I've had to make sure that the nouns and verbs have the impact that I'm after. I find myself choosing my words more carefully, and--hopefully for the reader--to better effect.

Several times in this blog, I've encouraged you to go out stretch yourself in new writing directions, always bringing home what you learn to your preferred style of writing. I've been taking some of my own medicine lately, and though it's been frustrating at times, it's also been beneficial.

February 20, 2008

It's well-known that a writer, if he wants to be a good one, needs to read outside his genre. Not only to gather background material from history or science books, but to see how other writers construct their stories and learn techniques that we can carry back to our own writing.

As valuable as reading outside your genre is writing outside it. Just as different exercises strengthen different muscles, writing different in genres strengthens different creative and writing abilities. Poetry teaches imagery, concise writing, and exacting word choice, Essays teach plotting, logical progression, and expression of thought. Every single one of the many mansions of writing has something to teach us if we're willing to experiment.

In addition to teaching us things specific to itself, writing in another genre helps keep the generic writing muscles exercised, and gives us something else to work on when the muse has abandoned us in other projects. Pieces in other genres can also be sold for additional writing income. While it's possible to have too many irons in the fire, you really should have more than one piece working at one time if you want to be prolific.

So pick a genre you've never written in before and give it a try. Write a sonnet, or a speech, or a short mystery. Stretch yourself, learn, and enjoy.

January 8, 2008

"Some things are up to us and others are not. Up to us are opinion, impulse, desire...not up to us are...property, reputation, office..."

--Epictetus

Writers write for many reasons. Some write only for themselves, others for family or friends. A certain percentage of writers write for publication. Those that do cast their bread upon the waters in the hopes that some editor will pay to show their darlings to the entire world.

But the fact of the matter is that if you submit stories for publication, there's no guarantee it will ever see the light of day. An editor may like your piece, but she's already bought a Martian zombie story for the next issue. Or you've sent a good, well-written story, but it just doesn't catch the editor's fancy. There are a myriad of reasons why a perfectly good story can collect rejection after rejection. To be brutally honest, getting published is outside the control of a writer. The same goes for becoming a rich and famous. These are driven by the whims of fashion and fate. Nevertheless, some writers spend a lot of their energy here--in rejectomancy and attempts to button-hole agents at conventions.

As writers, what then is within our control, and what should we focus on? First and foremost, our craft. With each and every piece, we should give our best effort, stretching ourselves as writers. Like an athlete, we should push ourselves as hard as we can and then some. This is the only way to grow, and this should be our real focus. We may not be able to control whether we'll become a published writer, but we can control whether we become a better writer.

So when you catch yourself becoming worried about making a sale or if you'll become the next Issac Asimov, focus instead on the piece you're currently writing. Hone your craft, and let the rest fall as it may.

December 27, 2007

New Year's is rapidly approaching, making this a good time to think about resolutions for the coming twelve months. As writers we often say, "I'll write more this year," or "I'm going to get that novel done." And just like resolutions to exercise more or eat less, they get followed for a couple of weeks, then peter out.

So how do we make sure that we keep our writing resolutions? First, we have to set a measurable goal. "Finishing that novel" is like "loose some weight," in that it's nebulous, and there's no way to measure success. Your goal must be exact. If you need five chapters to complete the first draft of your novel, and you want each chapter to be ten pages long, then you have fifty pages to write to achieve your goal. Once you have this measurable information, all you have to do is decide when you want to be finished, and divide by the number of days until then. This gives you a daily writing goal.

Once you have your daily goal, all you have to do is make sure you write--day in and day out. This is the hardest part, to be sure. Just like exercising, there's effort and pain, and sometimes even grunting and sweating, involved. You just have to screw up your courage to the sticking point, and write. There's simply no other way to get the job done.

Procrastination is great killer of goals, and something I personally struggle with. It's easy to keep yourself busy with other writing-related things while waiting for the "right" time to write. In fact, you can do it all day. The only solution I've found that works is to say "Hoc Age" and write, whether I want to or not. You have to be a master to your muse, not its slave. You have to write when you want to. Your muse will learn to listen to your call, even if you can only write in fifteen-minute blocks during the day.

So for 2008, set yourself a measurable writing goal, then sit down and write, and keep writing, until you meet it. Best wishes for the New Year.

November 29, 2007

It's been too long since I've written anything for this daybook/blog. Life intervenes sometimes. And some of the intervention was a contract job that had me working 11-hour days at times. After the commute home, I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I didn't write a word for almost a month.

But now that I've finished, and life is returning to its previous patterns, I find myself filled up again with words. The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung wrote in that artistic creativity could be considered as an autonomous neurotic complex. Artists are compelled to create, and have no choice in the matter.

Jung described two different flavors of artistic creativity. In one, the artist identifies himself with the creative process, and the work is intentionally crafted to produce the effects that the artist intended. I think of these types of artists as "craftsmen," who give in to the urge to create as soon as they feel it, and use conscious processes to guide it. (However, Jung warns that such an artist might just be deceiving himself that he has control over his "creative complex.")

The other kind of artist Jung mentions is one who does not identify with his urge to create--it is something external to him. His art "takes him over," and possesses him. Instead of creating a work, the work creates itself through him. This kind of artist tends to work in "bursts," exhausting themselves in an all-encompassing flood of creation. This Byronic-type individual seems to be what most people think about when they think "artist."

While Jung does say that no artist is wholy one type or the other, and that the same man may produce different works in different ways, in talking to other writers at conventions, it seems to me that the full-time, professional writers tend to be the craftsman type. They're plodders who deal with their creative urge on a day-to-day basis, rather than in periodic, exhausting bursts.

Many of these same writers insist that day-to-day writing is the key to success, and that this skill can be learned. But I wonder if they are they just naturally craftsman-types, or if they have learned to better control and direct their "creative complex." I hope it's the latter.

September 24, 2007

I've been reading a lot of Aristotle lately, and it got me thinking about his "unities" and how they apply to short stories. Tradition lists three--unity of action, place, and time. That is, the story should have only one main action, and few (if any) subplots; there should be only one location where the story happens; and that it should happen within a 24-hour period.

Now Aristotle was writing about Greek plays, rather than short stories, but let's see how well the unities fit. Unity of action is a central pillar of short stories. They tend to focus on one person/being, and with a 5000-word limit, there's no room, really, for sub-plots or lots of shifts in point of view. Short stories are supposed to be about "one person, one event, and it should be the most important thing in their life."

Unity of place is a bit harder fit. A very improtant part of Sci Fi and Fantasy are the sense of wonder in experiencing new worlds. However, Aristotle was concerned with actors on a stage, rather than words on the page. Sci-fi stories especially, often move from place to place, but in keeping with the idea of unity of action, we're always "in the presence" of the main character. In the same vein, exposition/background takes the reader away from the "presence" of the main character, and too much throws the reader out of the story entirely. Use the minimum exposition/background necessary to get the story across.

Unity of time, to me, is similar to unity of action. A short story should focus on one, and only one, event. Unless it impacts the critical event in the story, there's no need to even mention something that happened prior to the opening of the story. Flashbacks also break the unity of time in a story, and it's better to avoid them if you can. Far better to scatter the same information throughout the story via dialogue or the character's internal thoughts.

A perfect example of a Sci-Fi story that follows the three unities is Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations." The story is told within the confines of one, small spaceship; the story begins and ends within a single day; and there are only three characters--the pilot, the young girl, and the laws of Nature.

If you're interested in reading more about Aristotle's unities, you can download his Poetics here.

September 12, 2007

We all know the romantic image--the young man bent over a table in a Parisian garret, churning out pages of Olympian prose while wasting away on Abisinthe and Consumption. The image is as wrong as it's romantic. The truth is that writers should get exercise--both physical and mental--every chance they get.

Writing is a sedentary activity, and it's easy to spend hours in front of the computer, not moving more than just your fingers. The body has a profound influence on the mind, however, and if you want to be at the top of your writing game, you need to be healthy in body. You don't have to be a marathoner to write, but make sure you get regular exercise. Some writers do yoga, some jog, others play tennis. (I take long walks, and recently started Tai Chi lessons.) Do something to get your blood flowing. Another thing that might help you stay in shape is to use an exercise ball instead of a chair when you write. The ball is unstable, and works your back and abdominal muscles while you're in front of the keyboard. I haven't had a backache since I switched.

Watch your weight and what you eat, too. Especially people who are "snackers," like me. It's easy to get just "a little bite to eat" when you get stuck in the middle of a page. But while that handful of peanuts might give you a moment to think about the next scene, if you're not exercising, it adds up to extra pounds right quick. Try not to snack while writing or if you can't help it, switch to something healthier like celery or carrot sticks.

Be careful about your drinking. Writing has its wrenching, soul-baring, depressing moments, and when they come, it's tempting to turn to the bottle for comfort. Don't. Alcohol has claimed many a writer. Don't be the next. Same goes for drugs.

It's just as important to get mental exercise as it is to be physically fit. Get up from your desk now and again, and go out into the world. People watch, take in a movie, go for a glider plane ride. Fill your mind with new things and new experiences. It's all raw material for your writing. Books are another source of mental exercise. Not only should you read fiction outside your genre, but cross the fiction/non-fiction line from time to time. The purpose of non-fiction is to convey information, and so requires a precise, clear writing style. Fiction plays upon the emotions, and so requires different writing tools. Learn how "the other half" writes--the more you know about writing in general, the better your own writing will be.

Mens sana in corpore sano, "a sound mind in a sound body," is not just a motto for schoolboys, but a good one for writers too.

August 20, 2007

Part of being a writer is failing. You try to create a story that pushes the envelope of what you can do as writer, and it doesn't work. Or you send your favorite, most polished piece to a magazine that you know will beg to publish it, and instead, it gets rejected.

Having a story not work out, or getting rejected, are all part of the dues you pay to write and be a writer. We all know somebody who is going to write "someday," usually when they can "find the time." It's a very good method to avoid failure--if you don't write it, no one will ever tell you it's bad. But by the same token, if you never write it, you'll never get any better, either. With the exception of a handful of natural talents, most writers come to their skills the old fashioned way; practice. And that means falling face-first in the mud, then getting back up and trying again. And again. And again, until you get it right.

Same too, with the person who endlessly "polishes their work before it goes out." If you write, but never submit, you never have to face the envelope in the mailbox, telling you that "it's not quite for us." All rejections sting, even if you eventually get used to it, but without rejections, you never get the envelope with a contract and a check inside.

Seems to me that throwing out success in order to avoid failure is no way to become a writer. Or anything else, for that matter. So get out there, get in the mud. Fall down, fail, get back up again, all the while learning. Write a story that's ambitious; send it out to the biggest market you can think of. Maybe you will fail. Maybe you won't. But you'll never know until you try.

July 23, 2007

One of the nice parts of the writing life is that speculative fiction writers, as a group, are quite willing to give advice and opinions to less experienced writers--a tradition known as "Paying it forward."

This past weekend, I got my first chance to pay it forward, at a bookstore called the York Emporium in York, PA. I agreed to give a talk about the writing life, and so I got to lay out my emerging philosophy of success in the writing life, which can be summed up as, "Write, submit, repeat as necessary." I tried to explain how each writer has to work out their own writers path, and that there's no one-size-fits-all answer on how to write, be a writer, or how to succeed. I hope I not only gave useful advice, but inspired at least some of the people in the audience to commit to the writing life.

The high point, however, was meeting a young lady, an aspiring writer who is still in grade-school. I wish I had had her inborn drive and desire when I was her age. Already, she feels the need to write daily, and even has a few rejection letters under her belt--which she claimed were simply part of the dues of being a writer. I was floored, and as long as she keeps her passion for writing, I suspect I'll be standing in line someday, her novel in hand, hoping that she'll sign it for me. Best of luck to you in your future writing career.

June 22, 2007

My New Year's resolution for 2007 was to create at least one new, 500-word page of writing per day. Now that we're getting close to the mid-point of the year, I thought I'd look back and see how I've been doing. Since January 1, 2007, I've written over 78,600 words: half of a novel, a slew of short stories, as well as parts of a cookbook and numerous blogposts. I should have hit 83,000 words as of today; however, I think a lot of that 5000-word difference is tied up in the scattered paragraphs of stories I've revised. So all-in-all, I'm really happy with my output so far in 2007.

However, if you take the number of days so far this year (173) and multiply it by 500, you'll discover that my target should be 86,500 words. There's a reason for the difference. Like someone who speaks too fast and stumbles over their tongue, I recently discovered that I'd over-written my muse. I'd reached to the point where I was putting words on paper simply for the sake of writing 500 words, without trying for any sort of quality. The final straw was last Sunday, when I caught myself adding a new page to a pulp-style story that was already 15 pages long--and which was (and still is) without an ending. That's when I realized my muse had become exhausted. So I gave her the week off.

As much as it pained me, for seven straight days I didn't write a word. I took care of household chores, caught up on reading, got some projects done that I'd been meaning to do, but hadn't. Interestingly enough, the whole week the urge to write grew and grew. Today I sat back down, put my fingers on the keyboard--and cranked out double my resolution quota in about 45 minutes. Now I'm working on this blog post and later today, I'll get back to editing one of the stories I'd been working on earlier this month. It feels good to be writing again.

I still believe that steady, daily writing is the key to success in this field. I fully intend to "keep on keeping on" with my New Year's resolution. I've sworn not to make a habit of "muse holidays" either, as I can see where they'd become very convenient excuses for not getting anything done. Writing should be treated like a profession and worked at constantly. It's my business, after all. However, even businessmen take vacations, and I guess my muse needed some R and R. Hopefully, she's tanned, rested, and ready to go, because we've got a lot of work to do in the second half of the year.

June 05, 2007

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I went to BALTICON, the Baltimore Science Fiction convention. I've been going to cons now for around 5 years; but BALTICON was my first ever con, and I live in the area, so I always go. This year, my time there was spent in ways that were totally unlike previous years. That made me want to look back at what I did at conventions, how that's changed over the years, and what that means as a working-on-it writer.

My first-ever time at BALTICON, I attended every panel on writing--"How to get an agent," "Creating believable characters," and any panel that had a magazine editor on it (so that I could go up and say "hi" afterwards.) Looking back, I was looking for ways to improve my writing, as well as ways to politely get my name and face associated in the minds of editors. Much of my interest, and almost all the panels I attended, focused around the mechanics of writing and getting published.

As I kept writing, I got better at mechanics, and so over the next couple of years, I started spending more time at the science panels. (BALTICON is a great convention for learning about cutting-edge science, since NASA Goddard is in the area, as well as a number of big universities and government labs.) I must have felt I was beginning to get a handle on how to write, because I was looking more at ideas for stories, and neat little tidbits of information I could drop into stories.

This most recent BALTICON, I barely attended any panels at all; I don't think I went to more than four or five the whole weekend. If I went, it was because I knew somebody on the panel and wanted to say hi. I spent a lot more time in the hallways and at meals, talking and networking with other writers, as well as editors and agents. I went to only one science panel this year, in part because I now get a daily dose of cutting-edge science press releases from EurekAlert!. However, I still got a lot out of the convention. I found that talking to other writers about writing, as well as about markets, gave me just as much, but different types of information than what I'd been seeking when I used to go to the "How to break into writing" panels years ago. I seemed to be more engaged with the "field" and business of writing, rather than writing itself.

Hopefully, the changes in what I do at conventions are indicators that I'm growing (and still growing) as a writer. Though now I'm curious. What do the full-time pro writers do at conventions? I can't wait to find out...

May 11, 2007

My recent dinner with a friend, whose writing career is well ahead of mine, coupled with a discussion of books about writing in another venue, made me think about the some of the other ways you can learn about the craft and business writing. The best way to learn, in my opinion, is experience. Nothing beats daily butt-in-chair-fingers-on-keyboard to improve your writing. And if you keep submitting, you'll soon get an education about the business end of being an author. As far as I'm concerned, those two things are the essential steps to becoming a writer--"Write, submit, repeat as necessary." Then again, I'm stubborn; too stubborn to quit trying, and hopefully, just stubborn enough to eventually succeed.

However, there are other ways to gain understanding of the craft and business of writing. One is a mentor: another writer whose career is further along than yours. Someone who is where you want to be. It can be a real help to be able to e-mail or talk to someone and ask them questions like, "How do I find an agent?" or "How do I beat writer's block?" or even "Can you give me a blurb for my novel cover?" A mentor is first of all a friend, and I leave it up to you how to make your own friends. In the absence of a friend, going to workshops and conventions and talking with other writers can also serve as a form of mentorship. If you're professional and polite when you come up and talk to them, most authors don't mind you asking them a question or two about writing (as long as it's not "Would you read my manuscript right now and tell me what you think?").

As for books about writing, I'm a bit more ambivalent. I've read maybe a dozen or so over the past five or six years. Some were outstanding, while others I couldn't even finish. The book I got the most out of, I read after I had been writing for a couple of years; and I think because of the writing experience I already had under the belt, I better understood what the author was trying to convey. The danger, I feel, is that for some people, books about writing become an excuse not to write. It's easy to lose yourself in the notion of 'This next book will explain everything, and the light bulb will go on, and then I'll be a writer.' Instead of endlessly searching for that next pearl of wisdom, you should be writing; playing with words, falling down and getting back up like a child in a sandbox. Books can show you things that will help you become a better writer. But in and of themselves, they won't make you a better writer.

So while mentors and books can certainly be helpful, don't forget that "Write, submit, repeat as necessary" is the best help of all.

April 23, 2007

Last week, I had dinner with a friend of mine, who is an author in another genre. We talked a bit about writing perseverance, both in terms of productivity, and in terms of a writing career. There's a writing truism that it takes ten years to become an overnight success. In the past year or two, my friend's career has really taken off. While I forgot to ask him exactly when he started writing for publication, from things said in passing, it seemed to be around 1997--almost exactly ten years ago. Perhaps there's some truth, after all, in the truism.

That gives me hope for my writing--that as long as I keep at it, I may actually succeed. Last year, when we had dinner, my friend mentioned that he writes several pages a day, every day--which inspired me to do the best I could to do the same. I was a very slow writer, but I committed to at least a page a day, and have been able to maintain it since the beginning of the year. I'm even finding that now I'm improving enough that I may be able to up that to two pages a day in the not-too-distant future. Perseverance has paid off in terms of productivity.

And like last year, I look to my friend for what I hope will be the future shape of my writing career if I stick to it. He started writing for publication roughly five years ahead of me. I'm hoping that by 2012-ish, if I'm lucky, I may begin to see half the success he's had.

There's two ways to look at that the fact that it's been about ten years for him, and not even that for me. I could despair and say, "Five years! No way. I've wasted enough as it is," and throw in the towel; or I could nod my head with grim determination and say, "Half-way there, and every day I'm getting a little closer." Call me an optimist (or just plain stubborn, as my wife does), but the second way of looking at the next five years appeals to me more.

Wherever you are in your writing life, keep at it until you reach where you want to be. From what I've learned and seen from my friend's career, perseverance does, in fact, pay off.

April 9, 2007

Sometimes writing is about just grinding it out. For my New Year's resolution this past January, I said I was going to write, at a minimum, one entirely new, 500-word page of fiction every day. That's not a lot, I know. Some full-time writers do two a day. Stephen King and Fredrick Pohl do four pages a day, day in day out. The idea, though, is to keep those writing muscles exercised by constant practice.

So far, I've managed to keep my resolution--Sundays, holidays, traveling, busy with other non-fiction deadlines. Tomorrow will make 100 days--fifty-thousand words. I've got just under 30,000 words of a novel, and several short stories to be edited before they go out. If I can keep this up (and I intend to), that will be 180,000 words--two novels' worth--by the end of the year.

But it hasn't just been about the quantity of words. The fact of constant repetition and practice has made the writing flow much more smoothly than before. Sure, there are days I fight the muse, and it takes me what feels like forever to get to 501 words. But more and more, I'm finding that I can sit down, begin typing, and have the page filled in under an hour. That was something that seemed impossible before. Better yet, it's forcing my internal editor to take a back-seat in order for me to get the page done, and several times, I've been surprised at how good the writing was when I read it the next day, despite the little voice in the back of my head the night before saying "just get it done, and we can go to bed."

So it seems that in my effort to try different ways of writing in order to find what works for me, I've found a gem. With the writing becoming easier, for my "mid-year's" resolution, I may increase the amount to two pages a day...

March 23, 2007

I've been going through a 'minimalist' phase the past few months. I've been looking at various aspects of my life for clues on where and how I can simplify them. Some things--like the junk around the house--are easier to deal with than others--like ways to get more work done in the same amount of time.

I've tried many things in my quest to be simple--gone to paper to-do lists and a simple reminder program, instead of GTD and calendars. I've traded my big fat Microsoft Word files for slim little RTF ones that I can open with a half-dozen different programs. I've even simplified this web site. But I hadn't worked on simplifying my writing.

One thing I'd meant to do for a long time was to sit down with Strunk and White and refresh my mind on the basics of writing. So today I took the bull by the horns and did it. The book was a lot of fun, and I feel like I'd re-discovered the simple truths of writing. I thought I'd pass some of my favorite Strunk and White quotes along:

• When it comes to writing, all forms of composition "have skeletons to which the writer will bring the flesh and the blood. The more clearly he perceives the shape, the better are his chances of success."
• "The habitual use of the active voice...makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative concerned primarily with action but in writing of any kind. Note...that when a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor."
• "If your every sentence admits a doubt, your writing will lack authority. Save the auxiliaries would, should, could, may, might and can for situations involving real uncertainty."
• "If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any on point, it is this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete."
• "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell...A positive statement is more concise than a negative one, and the active voice more concise than the passive..."
• "The position of words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship. Confusion and ambiguity result when words are badly placed. The writer must, therefore, bring together the words and groups of words that are related in thought and keep apart those that are not so related."
• "The proper place in the sentence for the word or group of words that the writer desires to make most prominent is usually at the end...The other prominent position in the sentence is the beginning. Any element in the sentence other than the subject becomes emphatic when placed first...The principle that the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences in a paragraph, and to the paragraphs in a composition."

2 July 2006

So, you've written your latest story or novel, and taken it to the post office (or pressed the 'send' button on your e-mail) and your bit of literature is on its way to an editor--hopefully to be picked up and published. So what do you do while you wait for a reply? It can be a long, disheartening wait, full of mail (and e-mail) box checks, before you'll hear back from an editor, and it seems that the closer you get to being publishable, the longer it takes to hear from them. How do you keep the ticking of the clock at bay?

The BEST thing you can do is keep writing. Crank out another short story, or start on the next novel. I feel that writing is kind of like being a shark--you keep moving forward or you die. Continue writing, and you keep improving; or at least help get Bradbury's 500,000 words of bad writing out of your system. If you don't already have a story or a novel idea in hand, try something experimental, like writing a short story where you never use the word 'the,' or make the main character an alien melon. If your fiction muscles are cramped, and your muse is silent, try using some of your previous research to write a non-fiction piece. The idea is to keep your writing muscles in shape by any means necessary.

Another thing to do is to edit/rewrite existing material. They say that re-writing is writing (and I agree), so if you have nothing better to write, go over a story that you've already finished and see where it can be improved. Think up a new ending or a better twist, or a neat way to foreshadow the climax, and see if you can work that into the words already on the page. Look for mistakes you may have made (and that you can now see as a better writer), and correct them. And when the piece is ready, send it out. Keeping several works all circulating at the same time is one way to beat the psychic drag of waiting.

Research can be a slippery slope, especially for writers who are in the midst of writer's block, or trying to put off the act of writing (been there, done that), but if you positively, absolutely have no writing or editing to be done, then pick a topic based off of a planned work, and research it. As you find neat, tangentally related bits of information, write them down, but save researching them for another time. The idea is to keep your research on a pre-determined, single, focused topic so that you don't end up link-surfing four hours away (been there, too...)

You can also try critical reading to improve your technique. Pick a story that you know and like, and read it, going through and looking at how it's put together. Pull it apart, and see what shape the plot takes, how the author develops the character. Make a conscious study of the mechanics of the story, look at how the words fit or form a mood.

In the end, it doesn't matter much what you do to keep yourself involved in writing, as long as you do SOMETHING positive while you wait. Make good use of the time spent waiting. As a writer, there'll be a lot of it.

29 April 2006

One of the things I'm finding out about being a writer, is that you have to keep experimenting to find out what works for you in terms of improving your writing and keeping yourself putting words on paper. Some people love face-to-face critique groups. Others would prefer the relative anonymity of on-line or e-mail critique groups. Some people write best from 0400 to 0600 in the morning; others are night owls. You've got to play around and find out what works. Sometimes you even have to come back and try a new tack on something you tried before and that didn't work.

For example, when I first started writing, I kept track of the number of words I wrote every day. It didn't help. In fact, it made matters worse. I'd have a particularly bad day, look at the pitiful number of words I'd written and get discouraged. Then I'd look at all the previous bad days I had and get REALLY discouraged. Within a couple of months, I'd stopped keeping track altogether.

As a consequence, the amount of words I wrote per day plummeted. I found all kinds of things that just "had to be done" other than writing. There were times I'd barely write at all, or worse yet, a day would end without a single word on the page.

I eventually got better, but I never quite got up to the amount of writing I felt I needed in order to have some sort of writing career. Being a published finalist for Writers of the Future was a serious kick in the pants, as I heard over and over again that the single biggest determinant of writing success was not talent, but how hard you worked at writing. I came back from WOTF wanting to put in even more time writing and submitting. But I needed to find a method to do that that worked for me.

One of my dirty secrets (just one) is that I love old self-help books like "Think and Grow Rich" and "Message to Garcia." While they often have the same advice as modern-day self-help books, they somehow speak to me more than the latest offerings on the shelf at Borders. A couple of months back, I read a book called "The Success System that Never Fails" by W. Clement Stone. In it he tells of an insurance salesman who became the top seller in his office by keeping a log of how much time he actually spent selling each day. At first the salesman was horrified at how little time he spent doing what would bring him money, and how much he wasted in social and non-business "stuff." But seeing it in black and white caused him to work harder at his sales, and he became a top seller.

I thought the card idea was good, especially because I was starting to slide again in my writing. So I created a similar card to keep track of how many hours a day I spent actually writing. At first I was worried that the card would have the same effect as the word-count log and I'd have to go in search of some other way to motivate myself. However, I've been amazed at how well this system works and how much more time I now spend writing. I gave myself both daily and weekly writing targets, and while I've only been using the system for a couple of months, I've managed to reach my target all but one week, and that when I was traveling

So experiment with different times, techniques, methods of motivation in your writing. Modify the things that didn't work and see if that makes a difference. Or find something new altogether. Just keep at it.

11 February 2006

Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, describes the system he used to improve the quality of his writing--

"About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent & wished if possible to imitate it. With that view, I took some of the Papers, & making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by for a few days, and then without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length & as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. I then compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults & corrected them...By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious."

I need to try this myself, but I think the method would also work to improve fiction writing. Take a short story by your favorite SF or Fantasy author, outline the story, set the outline aside for a week, then re-write the story in your own words. Afterwards, you can compare the two stories and see where yours falls short of (or is better than) the original. It would allow you to see how the original writer put the story together--character, plot, environment, pacing, set-up, resolution--and learn a new trick or two.

You can always learn one more thing than you thought you knew about writing. That is half the fun of it...