Learning the Craft of Writing

I've met some people who want to write fiction but don't want to spend time learning how to do it. Or more precisely, they think they already know how -- they usually graduated from high school, at least, and many have gone to college, perhaps on to advanced degrees.

We learn to read the written word early, maybe even at age 4 or 5. Reading is magical in a way that no other activity is, opening the door to worlds not even imagined. And then we're taught the physical mechanics of writing, penmanship. I don't know how old I was when I first learned to spell my name. Or how to put letters together to represent the concept of my cat, or hat, dog or log, or boat or coat or any other simple words. But most of us learn to read, and write, well before we hit double digits in age.

And then we use those skills the rest of our lives, every day probably, in small and large ways. We write out numbers on a check, we make out a grocery list, we read the newspaper or a magazine or the instructions on a new gadget or even just the television programming notes.

So when a person is told if she wants to be a fiction writer, she needs to learn how to write, it may not register at first. "I know how to write! I just need to come up with an idea and then get it down on paper." And she may, indeed, get it written down and expect everyone to be impressed.

I don't think that's true of most of other artistic pursuits. No one expects to just sit down and be able to play the piano without lessons, or paint a canvas without knowing how to use the tools, or dance in the local ballet without undergoing years of rigorous training.

So why do we think we can just sit down and write a good story? A story that resonates with others, entertains, is put together in such a way that the reader gets caught up with the characters and wants to keep reading, keep reading, keep reading - and then hopes the writer has written another story to read. Especially with the novel format, the long form of fiction writing.

Perhaps some novelists are inherently good - their first offering out of the gate is a smash with both readers and critics and they go on to have a long, successful career. I imagine the truth is that 99% of professional novelists work hard on their craft, learning from their own efforts and the efforts of others, getting instruction from books and workshops and online groups and always reading, reading, reading to see what works for them.

Yesterday I went to a one-day writers' event, Terroir Creative Writing Festival,  about an hour away. I attended three classes by local novelists and two talks by other local writers, one of them Jean Auel, who just released her sixth, and final, book in the Earth's Children series.

She spoke about her writing, how she just wrote it all down in one big manuscript and then had to go back and make sense of it all. It was her first novel, and she sold it, and that set the stage for the next 30 years. Everyone would call her a successful author. But she took the time to learn to write. She had a story, and then she set out to learn how to write it. She took classes, she read books on writing, she knew she had a lot to learn.

My next couple of posts will, I think, be about the classes I took and what I gathered from them. I hope to put down some actual information rather than rambling thoughts like today.

And other resources I like are posted under the tab above labeled "links for writers." I've started amassing them as an easy reference spot for myself, but maybe you'll find something helpful there, too.

Why Blog?

Why do people blog? All kinds of people blog these days - geeks, stay-at-home-moms, artists, critics, agents, writers, especially writers - and why?

Is it mostly for themselves? A way to kill time? A way to work out their emotional baggage? To put into words the ideas jumbling up their brains? To promote those ideas?

I've been thinking about this lately. I have several blogs, most of them abandoned along the way, on a variety of topics under a variety of names. I've tried different host companies: started with LiveJournal (quit them when the ads appeared), went to WordPress, which I still use for a couple, and now on Blogspot.

Why so many blogs? Why some that started strong and then faded? Why some that started out with an idea and a name but never evolved from there? Am I such a complex person? Or just too scattered? Trying to do too many things in my limited time?

Why this new writing blog? What do I hope to accomplish here? So far I've just been working out some of my questions and concerns about my own writing. Nothing important, really, to anyone else. Maybe tangentially helpful to those few who've stumbled upon me here.

Why the recent push for writers to have blogs? This article in Salon was rather depressing for someone who'd rather be home in sweatpants, reading, than going on the road, or the Internet, to self promote. But it's the way of the New World of Publishing.

I try to keep up with blogs I like, but it's time consuming. Amanda Hocking wrote how "... the hours spent in self-promotion are hours spent not writing." On the flip side of that, the hours spent reading other people's self-promotion are hours spent not writing, too. 


I'm sorry if I'm not the best at following all the blogs on my "to read" list and making comments and playing along with blogging games. Sometimes I read blog postings I like but just have nothing to add, so I don't comment. Do I wish people would comment on mine? Well, yeah, so I have to make the effort too. 


Do I feel as if I'm just talking to myself here? Most of the time. Do page views matter? I'm not sure. Do page views, the stats that show how many people have clicked on my blog,  translate into anything useful or important? Perhaps it will when I have books or stories I want people to buy. When I have something to promote. 


For now, I'm just writing out my thoughts. And that's ok with me. 

On Pruning, and Editing

A few days ago I spent a couple of hours pruning the deadwood out of a Japanese laceleaf maple tree. It's a beautiful tree, but hasn't been well groomed for at least the four years we've lived here. Not sure about its previous history.

I wasn't familiar with these trees until I moved to the Pacific Northwest a few years ago. They're quite marvelous, little fantasy trees with soft, fine foliage that turns a brilliant dark red in the fall before they drop their leaves for the winter. And twisting, winding, gnarly branches that define their shape.

When not pruned, they have a tendency to look like Cousin It from the Addams Family. (If that's before your time, sorry!) The beauty of their structure is lost behind all of the fluff. Here's what it's looked like in a previous summer, the mauve one behind the lime green:

And here's what it looks like almost naked, in the late fall:

When trimmed, you can see the architecture, the truth of the tree itself. The tree reveals itself to you, becomes accessible, understandable, the character of the tree ...

Oops - what did I just say there? Character. That brings me back into the realm of writing.

While I was pruning this tree, I thought about how I also needed to prune my work in progress, my mystery  novel that has just gotten way too bushy. It started out as just a seed of my imagination, a tiny little kernel that had promise but no substance. I watered it with my daydreaming, and gave it sunshine when I pondered it walking to work, and gradually it began to sprout. The leaves appeared, and then more, and some branches started poking out to the sides at odd angles, and twisting back on themselves, and now I need to do some good editing on it.

And as with pruning my maple, different parts need different levels of edit. In some areas, there's just some deadwood that can be trimmed away easily, without much thought at all. Clip it off and toss aside. And some small branches that haven't gotten too out of sync can be gently trimmed, guiding them back into the structure. But some places, well, they're bigger and need more consideration in the pruning. It's tempting to just cut them way back, to the trunk even, to the place where they started to have a life of their own. But maybe that's not the best way. After all, those big branches, or subplots, have a lot of little twigs, or character or action sequences, of their own. Just hacking them off will destroy all of those twigs as well. 

In some ways it's easier to prune a tree than to edit a novel. It's visible, right there in front of me. I can see the shape, the twisting branches are clearly visible, and it's easy to tell how the twigs are attached to the branches. I can physically touch them, my fingers following them from tip to trunk, feeling how any pruning would affect the whole tree.

On the other hand, editing a novel is easier, because the whole structure can be saved as a "first draft" file and reinstated if I decide the edits were too extensive. Just copy/paste and bingo! Those clipped twigs and sawn off branches are magically restored.

But then the issue becomes when to stop. When to stop second-guessing the edits and just let the novel be itself. With pruning, you get one chance. You make a decision, lop off the chosen piece and it's done. Over. No waffling. No super-glueing it back together.

Thinking, and pruning, and editing.

Jump Right In or Tiptoe Into the Water?

I'm writing a mystery novel and have read so much advice along the lines of, "Get to the action right away! The body needs to be there asap, maybe even on the first page! Don't waste time 'setting the scene' - we want blood now!"

Sigh. That's not how my novel starts. And I know it's the first draft and all, and I might trash the first several thousand words, in second draft, but still ... setting is important to me. I like to know where the characters are in the world, Earth or whatever world they're inhabiting. I can't help it -- I like geography. I think where people live affects their lives.

And I like knowing about the characters. I want to know a bit about their psychology, what their unique thought patterns are.

So my WIP starts with a bit of characterization and a bit of place setting. Yes, I talk about the trees, and the ocean, and some quirks of the local people, as seen through the eyes of my main character, who is new to the area. I show it as she experiences it. Maybe too much, but as I said, it's first draft and can be edited down later.

Anyway -- I was glad to read the opposite viewpoint from another mystery writer, on the blog The Kill Zone . Here's a couple of paragraphs from writer John Gilstrap:

The point of all this is for the author 
to take her time developing the characters. 
Make me care for them before you put them in harm’s way. 
If we know what the normal normal is, we can start the 
scene where the author originally started it, and from 
Amy’s point of view, the change to the new normal 
will be genuinely frightening.

I fear sometimes that we here in The Killzone 
violate my overarching rule for creative writing: 
there are no rules. We tell people to get right 
to the action. Sometimes, that’s not what the 
story really needs. Maybe we should tell people 
to get right to the interesting stuff.

I guess then the question becomes what he considers "the interesting stuff" because that's subjective. I think the stuff about the setting interesting while others may not care at all. So then it's a matter of moderation, perhaps. Put in enough to keep me happy, but not enough to bore the pants off someone else. 

Really, it's so hard to know which pieces of advice to take under consideration and which to just disregard with "Pffffttt!" I'm hoping, that when I get the first draft done and am rewriting for second draft, that I'll have a clear mind and a good red pencil, and use it as necessary. And then I hope for good beta readers who will be equally strong in helping to shape the manuscript into the best it can be. 

And then I hope to find an agent who likes a bit of setting and a bit of characterization. 

Location, Location, Location

New blog location! I've moved to a different area of the blogspot universe with a "new and improved" url.

Thanks to a friendly online writer who explained how to do it without losing any of the content or followers, so I think things are ok here now.

Oh Dear, How Embarrassing!

Today I accidentally stumbled upon another blog with a similar URL to this one [the previous url, which has now been changed] - except it's on Wordpress, not Blogspot. And it contains book reviews, which is close enough in subject to make me uncomfortable. And it was established several months before mine, and is active.

Ooops.

So now, what to do? I don't want to crowd the other blogger's space, or cause confusion. Yes, I know, all's fair in love and blogging, but that's not my style.

So, I think I'm going to have to change the URL of this blog and hope, hope, hope that my followers will follow me over there. Not sure how to accomplish that. How to let them all know about the change, I mean.

Especially since many of them came from the Crusade and may not notice the change anytime soon.

Well, I've got a new blogger URL and will be transferring the pages from here to there. Hope to see you there. And I've reserved the same name at wordpress and livejournal, so maybe I won't have this happen again.

So sorry. What a cyber mess I've made. Grrrr.

Is Writing a Priority?

What are the priorities in your life? Is it a job, your family, friends, hobbies, watching television - what? Where does writing fall into that list?

For many writers, writing is secondary to something else. For me, I have a job, with unusual hours, that helps pay the bills. I also have a family which includes humans and animals, and they all need attention. And a house which also needs attention from time to time, although housework isn't high on my list. And we have a yard which, though pretty low maintenance, could be better groomed and designed.

I've made it a priority to attend a weekly writing critique group. It keeps me somewhat accountable with my WIP, wanting to have pages to bring in to read. Plus critiquing others' writing helps improve my own. And it gives me a much-needed social experience with people who understand the writing process.

But I still haven't gotten into the "write every day" mindset that a lot of others have. It seems as if that's a mantra of many successful writers. Come hell or high water, they're writing.

I traveled to the other side of the country recently for an unexpected family event and took my laptop, but didn't get much, if any, writing done. Too many distractions. Sorrow. Planning. Family to take care of and spend time with. Or those were my excuses, anyway. Valid, I think. But maybe someone else would have found time to scratch out some lines on paper, or write some at night at the hotel, while spouse was watching tv.

Some days I have bits of downtime at my job when I could be outlining, or editing, or trying to solve plot problems. I carry a folder around with me that has my basic WIP info in, with characterizations, plot bullet points and the last few pages. I could progress, move ahead ... but I usually don't.

Why? What will it take for me to push my writing ahead, make it a priority?

I'm working through the mushy middle now of a cozy mystery. I've finally figured out Who Dun It but that's caused more problems. :-) So now I need to address those, make it all fit together.

I have a deadline in mind. I want to be finished with the first draft by mid June, so I'll have it ready to query in early August. There's a writer's conference with Open Pitch nights, with agents that listen to three-minute pitches and give suggestions on querying. Last year I went just to watch. This year I want to pitch.

I'd better get my game on.

Commitment ...

I'm debating on whether to become a Crusader.

Oh, I'm several centuries too late, you say? And of the wrong religious persuasion? Different Crusade. This one found here: Writers' Platform-Building Crusade 

I'd like to be connected to others writing about their writing. Musing about their Muses. Facing their Furies.

But - I'm a commitment-phobe. I'm afraid of letting down the rest of the pack, if I don't blog consistently. Would that keep me going? Would it keep me writing more consistently, as well, or would I blog instead of write?

I have 30 minutes to decide. Be right back.

~~~ elevator music ~~~

And ... I'm in! Sent off the form. It's official, I guess, or will be when I get accepted.