imaginarycircus

You can't fail at this point. I've seen several posts around LJ written by people claiming they're behind, they've failed--and I know from experience that that kind of self-criticism kills motivation dead. So just take those phrases out of your vocabulary if you want to develop good writing habits. I'm going to end up repeating myself on some of this, but I honestly feel like I can never say these things enough.

Forming good writing habits is simple. You have to do exactly what you think you need to do:

1. Make a writing schedule: set time aside on a daily or weekly basis to write. Do not schedule anything else in that time if you can help it.

2. Put your butt in the chair, tie yourself to the chair if you have to. I'm dead serious. If you wander around your house and keep thinking you'll get to it, you probably won't. Sit down. Seriously that is sometimes the hardest part. Do not feel lame about this. If you sit down give yourself a cookie or a little cheer or a dinosaur sticker or a shot of bourbon, etc. If you can take yourself to a cafe or library and work there that may help too.

3. Write. Have a minimum daily word goal THAT YOU KNOW YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH. If you have set yourself the goal of writing 30,000 words in November and you do the math and say you're going to write 1,000 words a day that is cool on paper. But what if you can only write 400 words a day? You're going to end up frustrated. So set your goal at 400 and if you surpass it? YAY! you can feel good about it. Some people can write 2,000 words a day and some can only produce 100. Every writer works differently and at her own pace.

Once you see your overall word count growing slowly over time it will give you a boost and I can pretty much guarantee you won't feel so overwhelmed by finishing such a large project.

4. I missed a day or two or I haven't written at all yet so I might as well give up. NO! NONONONONONO! I mean if you want an out, then fine. But if you want to do this? See above points. If you set aside 30 minutes a day and write 400 words in that time every day? You'll have at least 10k words by the end of the month and probably considerably more because the more often you write the more you can write. Once you've formed the habit you can keep writing after November if you want to.

I don't think NaNo is about writing every day in a way. I think it is about trying to form good writing habits, because even if you write your novel in a month? That is only the first draft.

5. Do not edit. Keep writing forward. You won't know the whole story until the end of the first draft. You can't edit effectively until you know what you're editing for.

In an effort to encourage everyone doing NaNoWriMo or any other kind of large scale writing project I thought I would post some tips. These are just tips. I don't have any magic, but you do every time you sit down and write a bit more.

1. Put your butt in the chair. If possible write at the same time everyday. Sit in front of your computer or your notebook or your papyrus or your semaphore or with whatever you plan to record your words and stay there for at least forty five minutes. Turn off the internet if you have to.

If you find yourself staring at a blank word doc in agony--pick up a pen and paper and write that way. Start writing words and do not stop for ten minutes. If you have to write "I know I have a story to tell and I am going to start telling it now" DO THAT until the words just start to pour out and you are so busy explaining how Eric ended up eating an entire armadillo at gunpoint that you've totally forgotten to stare at the blank paper/screen in fear.

2. Your first draft is a first draft. It is more important to get the whole of it down in words than it is to make it perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect first draft. Do not go back and rewrite. Keep a separate word doc or notebook for notes about changes you may want to make in the next draft. Keep moving forwards. Jane Austen didn't produce Pride and Prejudice on her first try and that novel required many rewrites as they all do. So let the flaws sit in your first draft. When you have the whole story written out some of them might turn out not to be flaws after all.

3. Make it fun. Write what captures your mind and heart. What makes you laugh. And don't take it too seriously. If you need to wear a costume, full makeup, nothing at all, make a chart that you can put dinosaur stickers on every time you write more--do it.

Article in the Hartford Courant. Fascinating. Although I found it weird that the journalist has never used any dirty words. But of course she did say her ideal man would be described as "breathing" so perhaps she hasn't...

( stories about sex )

I submitted my assisted suicide story to be work shopped in Adam Haslett's master class next week. The story is also out being neglected by various important editors. But I was disappointed when I learned that SLC is putting our names in a hat and selecting manuscripts for the master class that way. No merit involved. If I had known that I would not have speed revised the ms yesterday before dropping it off. But of course those last few changes needed to get done and now they are. This little 18 page story took me three years to write, stew, rewrite, revise, start from scratch and write again. I probably wrote twenty versions of it. It is the best thing I have ever written. I'm really proud of it. And I hope to hell someone publishes it this year. Go little story. Get published. Find readers. Amen.


Two new tips for writers and really writers in work shops:

1. Short stories should be restricted in one or more ways -- time, tone, plot, physically, etc. For instance Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" can physically go into all those men's packs and pockets and lives because it is restricted in its structure. The narrator only tells us what the men carried and from that we are able to fill in the whole world of soldier's trudging through mud during the Vietnam war. Short stories work best when they do a lot with a little.

Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," for example is my favorite short story right now. The entire story happens while a bullet is ripping through a man's brain. We see him in line at the bank and in a few lines we know him. A jaded critic who can't open his mouth except to critique. He is so bitter he critiques the bank robbers who pop up, somehow not realizing they are not part of a play or a book or a film. One of the robbers shoots him and as the bullet is killing him the critic's last thoughts are unexpected and beautiful. Short stories need to be compact, and fast, like greyhounds.

Yes, there are exceptions. But I largely think there are more failures than exceptions for short short pieces. Obviously Alice Munro can come in and write a 15,000 word short that dazzles me. But that is not the sort of short work I am talking about. Chekhov's "Oysters" is what I am talking about. Sublime. I consider that one of the most perfect short pieces ever written.


2. Specifically for critiquing fiction. An early draft of a story is like a baby in utero. You wouldn't take a fetus out of its mother's womb and dress it up, name it, or dandle it on your knee. You would let it stay inside, feed it, and let it continue to grow. You have to do the same thing with fiction that is still gestating. Half grown babies look sort of grotesque to me, like aliens. And sonogram images look like pen and ink, with way too much ink. I can't see anything in them. But I can imagine the baby that will eventually be born. I can imagine it in cute green overalls. I can imagine it as sweet smelling and cuddly. I can also imagine it as colicky, squalling, and heartbreaking. But in order to get that baby we have to let is pass through enormous head, creepy see through eye lid, alien fetus stage.

It really isn't fair to hold up someone's fetus and say, ew, this isn't a baby. I don't want to cuddle it, or soothe it when it cries, or help it when it rages with pain. I just want to turn away disgusted and kind of insulted thinking, "What do you want me to do with that thing?!" Two years of grad school and I finally get it now. The baby has to develop to term, and be born. I'm so slow. I wish I had understood this years ago.

When you send your manuscript off to a publisher/editor/agent it (after they have replied to your query letter and asked to see the work) realize that they will not read beyond the first few pages if it is riddled with errors, seems amateurish, or is boring. You can't pick up the pace on page five. You have to nail it on page one and all the other pages.

Do not send your first draft. I see so many half baked stories, with no sense of craft. Write your novel and then rewrite it from scratch, using your first draft as a guide, at least once. Really more like two or three or more times. Do not just edit it in the existing files.

Realize that it is incredibly hard to get literary fiction published. There are thousands of new manuscripts every year and only a tiny percentage will see a bookstore shelf. Think that is unfair? Change it. Buy more books.

Write in scene. Novels that wander around and are highly expository to start are usually unreadable. (There are always exceptions. I know that.)

Novelists have usually been studying and practicing their craft for years, just like classically trained dancers and musicians. When you pick up an Alice Munro novel or a Tobias Wolff story you get a virtuouso preformance. But there are people who have written from the time they were children who still can't write at a virtuouso level, and there will be the odd person who sits down to write and just happens to be the next Chekhov. Of couse Chekhovs are exceedingly rare and mediocre is very common.

Keep your query letter professional. It is a business transaction.

I'm going to start logging these as I think of these things, especially as I see them crop up in the manuscripts at the lit agency. My apologies if these are obvious to everyone, but I think they can never be said often enough. And I need reminders as often as anyone else.

1. By withholding information from your reader you do not create mystery and suspense. i.e. by saying that your character is hiding a heavy object in her skirt and then revealing it is a gun later--you probably are just annoying your reader. If you had simply said she had a gun in her skirt and was following a man that would create tension and pique curiosity. Vague is not interesting. Concrete details are. (There are always exceptions to these rules, I know.)

2. Adverbs stand out and look amateurish. Think long and hard about using an adverb, and use them with a light hand--if you must. Sparingly indeed.

3. Dialog is the most valuable real estate in fiction. Use it wisely. Do not put anything in dialog that can be said in the narrative. Attribute dialog, because long pages of unattributed dialog are annoying and hard to read. When you attribute dialog refrain from things like: he yelled, he laughed maniacally, he said with a grimace, he yodeled, etc. Those sorts of attributes come off as cliche, and also remind the reader that they are reading. Either a simple "he said." or "name said" works, but you can also add a beat to show what is going on, where the character is, or what he is doing and leave out the "said" all together.

"I hate you." He started to peel paint flakes from the window sill and eat them.

But you have to be careful with that sort of beat in a dialog. It would be easy to make your characters hyperactive. Beats should be used sparingly to break up dialog and really to illuminate it subtly.

4. Vary the rhythm and structure of your sentences, especially when you want to stress something. This has been a problem of mine. I am not a poet, but I seem to be able to write metered phrases easily. Prose with a consistent meter gets monotonous to read. And you want your story to have ENERGY.