My Weekly Writing Wish for You

Image: http://www.tmcnet.com

Slowly but surely, as the tortoise would say; that has been my approach this week. And I have been astonished by how much work I’ve actually completed just by organising my tasks into bite-sized pieces. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the kind of girl who can (proven) demolish a whole cake without hesitating, fork optional. But this week has been a gentle week – and I feel like I’ve achieved more because of it.

I’m accustomed to ploughing on, marching forward at a brisk pace with my line of sight distracted only by quick glances to check for snipers (when I remember). I just move, move, move because if I stop moving … how am I going to get anywhere?

This week I didn’t stop, but I did slow down. I was kind to myself, an art I’m still mastering, and I set myself a simple task to complete each day. Most days I completed two or more, because the feeling of triumph when I completed the first motivated me to keep going.

Some days I forget there is a middle ground. Some days I’m marching on at such a speed that the snipers do sneak up on me – and then I am forced to stop. And I don’t go anywhere.

Going slow this week has calmed me. My writing continues – slowly. My work continues – slowly. And I’m feeling better about my approach to my writing because I now have the time to recognise what is working and what is not. Slowly but surely.

My writing wish for you this week is for you to review the pace at which you write. Are you going too fast or too slow? Have you stopped altogether? What pace will work best for you? Pace yourself – and pay attention to what’s going on around you.

Relationships with Bastards

A friend of mine has been reading the first two books in The Kingkiller Chronicle and absolutely raving about them. They’ve been on my “to read” list for a while and after hearing him carry on about how amazing the books are and how addicted he is, they’ve been sped up to the “must read” list. Now I am waiting eagerly for their delivery so I can see what all this fuss is about … well, I was eager until a recent exchange with my friend.

So excited about the story, the characters, and the books overall, he has been procrastinating about actually finishing the second book. With 22 pages to go, he is dreading the end. Likening the experience to a breakup, he has been lamenting the pending end to the reading experience.

“But,” I said kindly, “there’s a third book coming!”

“When?”

“Umm … “

And that was when all hope was lost.

As far as I can tell, there is no set release date for book three, The Doors of Stone, and breaking the news to my poor friend eventually led to all kinds of analogies about breakups with books and the aftermath, which includes hanging out in libraries and picking up books, and my promise that there’ll be an intervention when we find him in a dark room sniffing stolen chapters.

The thing is, that’s exactly how it is with books. Like a relationship, you become so involved with the protagonist that you cannot help but feel a sense of loss when that relationship comes to an end, when you turn the final page and realise you’re not going to see this person again – all those memories you have, those experiences you shared, are going to end. Finished. Gone.

No one likes admitting a relationship has to end. So we draw it out. We get to the last 22 pages and maybe we read a page a day, hoping to make it last. The problem is, no matter how much you drag it out, the end is nigh.

Books – like men – mess me up. I do stupid things for the sake of books and men, and that’s probably why I’ve resigned myself to an eternity with the former over the latter. Unlike men, I find books to be much easier to understand. I don’t have to decipher the labyrinth of hints and innuendo, to work out what is casual flirting and what is genuine interest. Books give me everything I want without me having to dance around and figure out what all that winking and nudging is about. And I never have to deal with their mothers.

But maybe that’s the problem … Books get around. They make us beg for them and we love it. Books certainly aren’t interested in my opinion, my wants and needs. My poor friend is being abandoned by the very books he has spent weeks avidly reading, no matter the consequence to his social life or business. Now he has been left in limbo regardless of how he feels about the protagonist, how much he wants to continue being part of the story.

Books don’t care about us.

When I close a book, I’m not the only one who’s been privy to the protagonist’s inner hopes and fears, who has listened to him lament his losses and cheer with him as he celebrates his gains. There are others who have taken him to bed, others who have witnessed him at his worst, others who have seen him at his best … Oh, no.

Books have been cheating on me this whole time. Bastards!

Inspire Me

Need some motivation to write?

 

My Weekly Writing Wish for You

I’ve had about a month of simply not writing – barely even writing for the blog, too. As the end of term two approached I was more interested in keeping my head above the water, and then a trip home to Australia ensured my time was occupied with family and friends and food (not necessarily in that order). The days rushed past and I paddled, paddled, paddled to stay moderately afloat.

It was hard work.

It is hard work, because I am still paddling, but things have changed and the paddling is getting a little easier.

On Wednesday something funny happened. A friend said he was writing and I thought why not, so I opened a little novella I’ve been working on and examined the 12,000 words I had compiled.

It was slow-moving. Boring. Ack.

But there was something there.

I stripped it back. I added more. I stripped it again. I repeated this process and now have about 4,000 words of the original content and 6,000 words of new content which, let’s face it, will likely be stripped down again.

Sometimes I feel like there’s a great concern among writers – especially we of the NaNoWriMo ilk – to produce content. We have to hit 50,000 words to have a novel. So we write and write and push and push and when we have the 50,000 words we say: “Yes, I have written a novel.”

We are discouraged from editing during that process, discouraged from not counting every word we produce regardless of how ridiculous a scene might be or how mundane the dialogue exchange. “Keep everything because every word counts!” we chant. I certainly believe that NaNoWriMo and its techniques have a role for writers who simply need to produce and get their ideas out, but what about the stripping down and revising? Have we forgotten that part? The thing is, every word does matter – each word matters in either its presence or absence. Some words need to be absent from the page to best serve your writing.

I’ve been editing, revising, and streamlining my story. Most importantly, after a month of thinking I might drown, I am starting to feel buoyant again. My words have been drowning me, and now I’m choosing which are the bricks of my writing and which are the life jackets.

My writing wish for you this week is for you to choose a story you’ve written or are writing and strip it down. If you’re scared to lose all those words you spilt on the page, don’t be. We need to strip the excess away so we may appreciate quality, not quantity. If you love your words, you’ll know which ones you need to set free and which ones you need to keep so your story can stay afloat.

Read to Write

Read, read, read.

– William Faulkner

I love reading books and I love writing books (of dubious sizes and completion rates). I’m going to be honest right now: I think reading is integral to writing. I’ve heard writers say they don’t have time to read, or that they don’t “need” to read, and while I like to think that I’m open to new things and willing to debate and discuss and listen to the opinions of others, I have a deep-rooted belief that writers need to read, and it’s a belief that has been challenged many times yet has not wavered. Here’s why I think all writers need to read …

Read to understand

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

– Stephen King

I don’t always like to read books that are similar to what I write because sometimes I discover my ideas already there on the page (dammit, must write faster), or my ideas pale in comparison (pass the wine, I’m not writing tonight or EVER AGAIN). On the odd occasion, however, I read something and think This? THIS?!

When we read to understand we are reading to understand the books we want to write. Reading books helps us understand:

1. What is currently working in the market – what is popular and what is going on the discount pile, and what is (and isn’t) working for different audiences.
2. Changes that are taking place in what is being published and by who – you’re not doing to send a picture book to a cookbook publisher, are you?
3. How writers are using and manipulating traditional genres and styles of writing, and what it means for your writing (what was obscure ten years ago might be flourishing now).

Even better than reading in the style and genre that matches your own is reading in a style and genre that sit beyond your “comfort zone”. If you’ve got a passion for Fantasy and have never read anything else, how will you come up with a unique voice if your brain is completely awash with the intimidating voices of Tolkien and Eddings and Feist?

We can analyse what we’re reading on a deeper level. Why am I interested in this and will readers, in turn, be interested in my book? What did I hate about this character that made me want to stop reading halfway and how do I prevent these flaws in my characters? Who is this book suitable for and how will that change my target audience?

We can generate great ideas if we challenge the boundaries of tropes and “writing rules”. Read to understand what works and what doesn’t work. It’s really quite simple.

image from: blackeiffel.blogspot.com

Read to research

If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.

– Wilson Mizner

In 2002 I finished high school. It was pretty cool, especially as I had to write a short story as a major work for one of my English subjects. It was a year-long writing extravaganza during which I had to produce a short story of 6-8000 words. I mucked around with mindless Googling of fantasy tropes (yes, we had the internet back then – it was slow and I had to use the school computers because we didn’t have it at home) and then I finally sat down and wrote a 7000 word draft.

“It’s a good story,” my teacher shrugged and I breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s a good, standard fantasy story.”

Uh-oh. It’s not good in the way I want it to be good.

“Now go and make it yours. Make it unique.”

I researched the bejeesus out of that story. Every aspect I had mentioned in the draft of the story was subjected to brutal revision. Hey, I mentioned a mountain, let’s research mountains. And, oh look! A generalisation: “Every mountain has a dragon.” That’d be cool – I want a dragon in my story. Oh, according to Christopher Vogler I should have a gatekeeper. Bingo.

See the connections that took place? Whether you need to check the historical accuracy of the Civil War (whichever one that may be) or remind yourself exactly what a troll typically looks like, we need to read to research. Research gives our writing backing and makes it more than a flippant remark – what was a simple mountain in my story became a core part of the narrative because the research I did led me to transform elements of the story. I’m still very proud of that piece because it represents a significant lesson in my writing life – research, revise, and write it again.

And I got a damn good mark, by the way.

Read to enjoy

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

 – Oscar Wilde

In 2009 I put down yet another book I was reading for university and sighed. Then I realised I was sighing because it was yet another YA book and I was kind of over the angst and anguish of the teenage experience – I’d been through it myself and was at a point where yelling at the characters to get over themselves and grow up was more indicative of my age than my love of YA fiction. It was also indicative of the fact that all I had done was read a very narrow selection of books from the massive assortment that exists in the literary world … I had stopped reading for my own enjoyment and hadn’t done so in years.

Fortunately, I’ve overcome that dry spell. I still read a lot of YA fiction yet now it is interspersed with “grown up” books and books that I wouldn’t normally read but have seen a review for or had it recommended by a friend. Reading for enjoyment also means that where I once persevered and slogged through books just to finish them, I now read a book and persue enjoyment and entertainment rather than knowledge and enlightenment (or decent quotes for my essay due in two hours).

There is excitement that happens when you open the first page, delight when something lovely happens to your favourite character, sorrow when things don’t go the way you want them to, and an ardent wish to jump into the pages and sort everything out with the arrogance that can only be had by a reader who has watched everyone stuff everything up through miscommunication and inaction.

As a writer, I want my readers to read my work and enjoy it. Some might take away profound lessons or new understanding, others might float around on a cloud before coming back to earth … ultimately, my test of a good book is enjoyment. Enjoy reading – it’s not a chore, it’s a thrill.