Just Write The Next Word Down

I was going to do a sort of follow up to my poll from last week about protagonists, and tie that in with Davin's recent discussion of sincerity and Lady Glamis' discussion of honesty, but I've been sick this week and I'm still not feeling quite right in the head, so I'm going to just fall back upon some practical advice for first drafts.

I'm reaching a stage in my own first draft where I've essentially already discovered the main things about the characters and the story and I'm sort of doing mechanics, by which I mean that I'm writing scenes that set up the inciting incident at the end of Act One. It remains interesting reading, I think, but on the writing end it can be more like playing a game of chess (strategizing and suchlike) than, say, falling in love. If you know what I mean. If you don't, bear with me and take my word for it that the similes above are fantastically accurate but I'm still too dragged down by illness to explain why.

Where was I? Oh, yes: I am at a place in my first draft where writing is now a lot like work and not a lot like artistic visionary trance, and I'm really laboring to start each scene. In fact, I find myself thinking about avoiding the draft because right now the work is hard work and I'm essentially a lazy old man. I sit down to my notebook, pen in hand, and don't know what to write because I think the next scene is going to be a real bitch, so I go off and make myself a cuppa or throw in some laundry and in the end I don't write anything at all.

The best way I have found to combat this is to simply write the next word down, even if it's the wrong word. In fact, the less likely the word is to be the right word, the better. For example, I'm writing a story about two men in Colonial America, so if I need a scene about these two going to a tavern to meet a third person but I have no point of entry into the scene, I'll write down something like "peacocks" because that's so obviously not the right word. But then I make myself finish the sentence that begins with "peacocks" because nature abhors a vacuum and I abhor an unfinished sentence in a manuscript.

Why does this help me? Because it usually forces me to come up with the right words. Sometimes it takes a paragraph or a page of rubbish about peacocks, but writing about the wrong stuff for a few minutes reminds me of what the right things are for that particular passage, and I'm able to bring the writing back into focus and get on with the scene.

Sometimes, the clearly wrong idea will spark something cool, too, and suddenly I'll have a brilliant passage about peacocks that I'd never have put in originally. The argument could be made that I chose "peacocks" or whatever because, subconsciously, this is really what I wanted to put into the book at this point, but I don't care about that because the trick is to get writing again and if I've tricked myself into writing something I subconsciously thought should go into the book, then well done me, right?

The larger point, of course, is that books are written one word at a time, and there is nobody but you to add those next words, so you have to do it all by yourself. I believe Neil Gaiman had some inspiring thoughts about just this very thing, and possibly later I'll find a link to them. No matter.

If you are stuck, then just write the next word down, even if it's wrong. Even if it's "the next word." Simply having something there on the page forces you to think about the story, and the more wrong what you've got is, the better your chances of correcting it with something that's right.

Anyone have any other simple but effective tricks for getting past those momentary "I have no idea what comes next" pauses in our writing, especially during first drafts?

That Song Was Dinner

photo by D. [SansPretentionAucune] on flicker

I wasn't going to post today. I'm signing off The Literary Lab for a few weeks until January due to some personal stuff, but last week I said I'd do this post, so here it goes.

I brought up the issue of honesty in writing in my "They've Adapted" post. Honesty is a touchy subject. There were some great comments and ideas that got me thinking what makes writing honest, and how I can identify it in my own writing and others.

I'll begin with mirrors.

Do you ever feel like you're looking in the mirror and you can't even see yourself? I've done that a few times. It's as if you're dressed up for a show, decked out from head to foot, your makeup caked on, your lips bright red, your eyes popping like a peacock's plumage. In fact, you might even feel like a peacock. It might feel splendid. It might feel ridiculous. It depends on you.

I think our stories are mirrors. I've always felt this way. After I read something I've written it's as if I am looking into a mirror at myself. Sometimes it's a fun-house mirror all warped and frightening. Sometimes it's a lake with ripples. Sometimes it's a perfectly oval piece of glass showing me exactly what I am - and that's the scariest mirror of all.

Now I'll move on to music.

One of my favorite movies is Music & Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. I know it's a chick flick, but the show is brilliant on many levels (and you'll see this if you grew up in the 80's), but one of the things I love most about it is how much it gets to the root of what remains honest in our work, our writing, and what we choose to share with others.

One of my favorite quotes from the movie is this conversation:

Alex: It doesn't have to be perfect. Just spit it out. They're just lyrics.

Sophie: "Just lyrics"?

Alex: Lyrics are important. They're just not as important as melody.

Sophie: I really don't think you get it.

Alex: Oh. You look angry. Click your pen.

Sophie: A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction. Sex.

Alex: I so get that.

Sophie: But then, as you get to know the person, that's the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It's the combination of the two that makes it magic.

Magic. That's what seems to happen when I manage to get honesty into my writing. It's like a memorable, catchy song where everything comes together and it makes me feel a mixture of emotions that reach more deeply than I thought was possible. I look into the mirror and I see me, but I don't see me. It has become a creation that took on a life of its own. My honesty gave it that life.

Throughout Music & Lyrics Sophie fights for honesty in her work. Several of the characters seem to be taking it away from her - vying to please the audience instead. Alex, the other main character, learns a valuable lesson in teaching himself how to say what he really wants to say. In the end, he writes a song that Sophie calls "Dinner" - her version of what rings honest and true.

Now I'll bring up your comments.

Amy Tate said:

But you are so right -writing is a performance, but it has to be our own. The only sort of writer that I know how to be is myself. And I've finally reached the point where I'm o.k. with that - published or not.


Lost Wanderer said:

Honesty comes from writing what you want without worrying about impressing anyone, or without worrying about how it will stand out. If it's well-written and if you have written in your unique way, it will be different than others.

That's a key point, I think - being okay with ourselves. It's a tough place to get to. It can be an uncomfortable journey - one that I'm still taking, actually.

Angel Zapata had an interesting thought:

Don't ever write from the heart. The heart will mislead you, have you question the emotions. Write from the ear. Listen to what your characters have to say and put it to paper. Don't put words in their mouths either or try to jazz up their speech. Write it how you hear it, not how you'd like to see it. Honestly, that's how I write.

This is true. I recently received some critiques from a good friend of mine on a chapter of my book, Monarch. She was shocked at a character's choices, feelings, and reactions to another character's confession. And after she pointed it out I was shocked too! I realized that for the entire year I've been writing this book I've been ignoring my character's pleas to be heard. Sucks for my poor character, Lilian, and for me. I'm going to start listening now.

Letting our characters speak for themselves is honesty, but I also feel that, like a song, there's another aspect that makes it magic - YOU.

Nobody can tell a story like you do. Nobody.

If you try and take things from other writings you've read and studied (and most of us do this subconsciously), if you try to be clever, to impress, to be anything other than what you are, most of your readers will sense it. Davin says:

I think that some stories can succeed without relying on honesty. Many books are written as an escape. But, I think readers can tell when something is written honestly.

It's true. I've set aside books many times because they didn't feel honest to me. I didn't think of it that way: "I can't read this. The writer isn't being honest with me, his writing, or his characters. I will put this away now." No. It usually just doesn't capture my interest and I can't read any further. However, I do think Davin has a point about some stories succeeding without relying on honesty. They can. I've read many of them, and it works. I love to listen to some songs that aren't necessarily teeming with emotional honesty. They're entertaining. Something about them pulls me in.

But I must argue that it is the honest movies, honest songs, honest writing that separate themselves from everything else. As I judge entries for our Genre Wars contest it seems like I'm drawn to the stories that feel the most honest.

In the end, there's two aspects of writing that I find the most difficult, the most important to creating that MAGIC. First there's this, as Scott kindly explained in his comments:

The most honest I am is when I'm most invisible in the writing, when I'm not editorializing but simply presenting my characters as truthfully and as sincerely as I can.

Like the lyrics, I'd say - letting our characters speak for themselves (this is sooo much easier said than done). That's the first kind of honesty I can sense in writing. The other is the actual writing, the melody - what carries the lyrics. How is the story presented? Does it feel like the author is uncomfortable with presentation, with using flashbacks, dumping back story, using elaborate descriptions? Or does all that work seamlessly with everything else? If so, that's when it feels honest to me - when the writer is so comfortable with himself and the story he needs to tell that all that's left is . . . the story.

When I write something like that I look into the mirror and see me, but transformed. I think that's what the slippery term "voice" might be. The writer is recognizable, but they've created something honestly outside of themselves.

This has turned into a very long post. Hmmm. Many thoughts to share. I think I'll go eat some dinner now. Start cooking! I'll see you all in a few weeks.


~MDA (aka Glam)

Cuts and Continuity

A book is long. (Okay, I guess that isn't quite so profound.) But, while a book is long, it can also be short. Or, at least the parts of the book can be short: short scenes, short chapters, short thoughts.

Sometimes, short is good. A story that cuts from scene to scene, character to character, can be fast-paced and exciting. One of the things I love about Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is that, even though the book is a gazillion pages long, each chapter is probably about three pages long. Tolstoy takes us into one character's mind ever so briefly before whisking us away into another character. As a whole, this technique works to present the grandeur of the story. We feel like we are reading about a society rather than a small cast of characters. When I open up that book, I actually feel like I'm in outer space looking down at wee specks of people vibrating about. (It's just my preference that I like books like this. Everything Is Illuminated and Joy Luck Club are a couple of other nice examples.)

Of course, sometimes, long is nice too. I always admire a writer who can keep one character's story exciting over several hundred pages. Catcher in the Rye comes to mind, but I'm sure there are other examples. It takes restraint and focus to be able to do this well. And, when it works, the story never feels small. A different sort of richness emerges as the rest of the world is implied.

As structure and story are intertwined, the decision between breaking up a novel into shorter pieces or keeping the narrative long will have large effects on what you end up with. The trick, at least for me, is to not fall back on one of these choices by default. With my early drafts of Rooster, for example, I often switched points of view simply because because I was stuck. Jumping into another character's head allowed me to restart. As a result, I had a lot of unfinished scenes I needed to go back to.

So, how does one keep it long? For me, the answer is sensitivity. When I'm writing, if I want to stay with a particular story line and I suddenly feel stuck, I go back and try to clue in on avenues I have yet to explore. I try to be sensitive to questions left unanswered, details that could be expanded to reveal more about the character. If I'm going to stick to one narrative line, I want to explore it thoroughly. (Incidentally, I even think the different parts of the three-act structure are organized in such a way as to thoroughly explore you particular subject.)

To keep it short, for me, the answer is grace. A book made up of several short segments has to gracefully transition from one part to the next. If you're going into different characters' thoughts, one technique to transition gracefully is to pan out and then pan in. You start with one character's thoughts, you pan out to describe some external detail that leads to another character, and then you pan in on the other character's thoughts.

Both of these strategies can result in a great story, and it's simply a matter of choosing how you want to tell it. But, with each strategy comes a new set of tools you must rely on.

What about you? Do you prefer long narratives or short pieces? What are some techniques you use to carry out your strategy?

Thanks to Matthew Delman for getting me to write this post.

Where Are The Men?

So one story (or group of stories) going around the writing blogs in the last week is that most of the mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by men (lists such as these from publishers weekly, amazon, and then there was the whole snafu about Tor--I think--putting together a "best short fiction" collection that excluded women writers earlier this year). I've been reading up on some things that might be peripherally related to this phenomenon, and I seem to have come up with these facts:

1. The abovementioned assertion that most mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by male authors.

2. Most fiction is written by/read by women.

3. Both the Nobel and Booker prizes this year were won by women.

4. The Pulitzer Prize has, in the last decade, been about evenly split between male and female writers.

5. Most men don't read books.

6. Most men who do read books tend to read either non-fiction or male-oriented genre fiction.

7. Mainstream "best of" book lists are loaded with titles written by males...oh, I said that one already, didn't I?

8. I have no evidence to back this up except what I experienced in college and what I've seen around the internets, but most "serious" and "scholarly" literary criticism/writing seems to be done by men.

9. Female writers do not "write like girls." Flannery O'Connor could have kicked anyone's ass.

So I take all of that and I ask a couple of questions: how many of the writers who read this blog (and there are hundreds of you) are men? How many of those men read commercial/literary fiction? How many of you (all of you, I mean) know men who read commercial/literary fiction? How many of you know men who read fiction at all?

I had lunch last week with one of my best friends, and he assured me that he's going to go all out and make himself read One Whole Novel Each Year. Wow, I said. Okay, really I just gave a world-weary sigh and said nothing.

So I'm looking for not only thoughts about why males keep topping "best of" lists in mainstream press (because we live in a patriarchal society, duh), but anecdotal evidence regarding male readers. What's going on in the world? How often do any of you give a book to a man as a present (and then the man actually reads it)? Et cetera.

Also (I'm throwing out a lot of questions today, I know), if it's true that males read less than females, what do you think is the cause, and how can this be corrected?

Edit to add: Here's a cool site.

WriteGirl!

Happy Monday, everyone! There are only a few days left before December 1st if anyone is still thinking of entering our Genre Wars contest. We hope you do!

Another writing program we're considering donating our anthology proceeds to is WriteGirl. I had the honor of interviewing Keren Taylor, the Executive Director and a Mentor for the program:

LL: Can you tell us about WriteGirl? What is your mission, and how did you get started?

KT: As a songwriter, poet, and freelance writer, I appreciate the power and versatility of the craft of language. While living in New York City, I helped establish a creative writing and mentoring organization for girls, and I saw first-hand what a tremendous impact it had on both the girls and the women involved – giving them self-confidence, new skills, new friends, and expanding their dreams and goals. When I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, I wanted to continue to combine my love of writing with my community work. I put a notice out by email to various writers groups, gathered an initial leadership group of about 10 women, and launched WriteGirl in December 2001. It helped that I had just been made a casualty of the dot-com crash – suddenly I had time and peace to think about going in a whole new direction. Starting a nonprofit was not only appealing in terms of making a contribution to the community, but it challenged me to apply all my business and creative skills. I’m always up for a good challenge.

WriteGirl is designed to encourage self-expression and communication in several ways: weekly one-on-one sessions with a mentor, monthly writing workshops for all members (more than 100 women and girls in one room!), and the sharing of work at public readings and in our annual publication. We’ve created a safe, supportive environment that cultivates strong communication skills. We work hard to keep the program lively, engaging, and relevant to the lives of our members, as well as aligned with academic standards and goals. Over a nine-month period, roughly corresponding to the school year, I see girls and women really come out of themselves, take chances, try new things, and explore their ideas to the max.

LL: You mention the word "empowerment" in the introduction of your group website. What, for you, is the power of creative writing?

KT: We see a direct link between empowering a girl to develop her own voice and her confidence in herself. The more we encourage and support a girl's written ideas and perspectives, the more confident she becomes in herself, her choices, and her future. It’s amazing to see a girl enter WriteGirl as shy and withdrawn, or perhaps outgoing but a bit awkward, and see her in only a few months make an amazing transformation into a self-assured, well-spoken young woman.

LL: Can you tell us about some of your success stories?

KT: We have maintained a 100% success rate in not only helping girls in our Core Mentoring Program to graduate, but also ensure that they enroll in college, many as the first members of their family to do so. I have an email folder where I keep letters from mentees – unsolicited letters where they spontaneously share things they’ve learned or gained from WriteGirl. They’re like an espresso shot for me – I check them out when I need a lift.

We have WriteGirl alums at Dartmouth, San Francisco State, UCLA, Berkeley, Reed and many other colleges. It's exciting to know that we helped them get there, and even more exciting to hear about them graduating from college and wanting to pursue careers where they themselves could give back to their communities.

We are very grateful to our 140 women writers who volunteer their time to mentor our girls. We have a significant screening and training program to help find and prepare women writers to be effective mentors. In addition to our Core one-on-one Mentoring Program, we conduct weekly writing workshops in six schools in LA in critically at-risk neighborhoods such as Compton, Pico Rivera and South Los Angeles. These students are all either pregnant or parenting teens, and face all kinds of challenges personally, at home and in their neighborhoods. Some are on probation or have other significant behavioral issues. We have seen a direct impact on these students' academic standings through participation in WriteGirl creative writing workshops, and the resulting anthologies from these schools are very powerful and often surprising. They have many stories to tell, and we help them get them on paper and share them with each other and their families/communities through our books and public readings. We are very proud of the accomplishments of our In-Schools program.

LL: Is there anything else you'd like our readers to know about your group?

KT: We know that anywhere there are women writers, there are girls who need them. We look forward to expanding WriteGirl into other neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and eventually other cities. And as our alumni membership grows, we can’t wait to hear (and share) all their stories of achievement and success.

LL: Keren, thank you very much for taking the time to tell us more about your wonderful organization!

It's Not You, It's Me

In a sort of continuation of Davin's post about sincerity and Michelle's post about honesty, I wanted to do a poll today.

(Poll closed, results below:)

Q: In your current novel, is the protagonist:

1. Someone unlike you or anyone you know? 41.5%

2. A stand-in for you, or an idealized version of you? 36.6%

3. A stand-in for someone you know, or an idealized version of them? 19.5%

4. A version of someone else's protagonist because you could write that story better than they did? 2.4%

In my last book, my protagonist was a minor character from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that I expanded and fleshed out a lot and he's nothing like me except, of course, that he reads a lot and is obsessed by fine food. Otherwise he's a complete stranger. In my current book (titled "Cocke & Bull"), the protagonist is a gay Irish highwayman in colonial Maryland. Again, not so much me though we share Irish Catholicism but I've never killed anyone, at least.

If your protagonist is essentially you, why is that? If not, why is that? Discuss.

"They've Adapted"

Even if you're not a Star Trek fan, you've probably heard of the Borg, a collective-conscious race of half human, half cybernetics drones in the Star Trek universe. And they're incredible at adapting to any weapon fired at them. I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately. Shhh, I'll blame it on my husband.

One of my favorite lines in all the Borg episodes is: "They've Adapted!", meaning "Oh, crap, we have no defenses against them now that they've adapted to our weapons. We'd better come up with something truly creative and unique to defeat them. Again."

As I write and read more and more, I've done something similar against a race my brain unfortunately likes to think of as the Borg: the collective mass of readers who may one day read my work in published form. I've seen readers follow trends, creative marketing and popular groups, oftentimes seeming as if they have no say in what they choose to read. Probably because if it's not marketed well - if it's not easily accessible or seen - they don't bother finding what else is out there to read.

So what do I do?

I panic, of course. I think I'll never get an agent's attention, a large audience, or any attention at all if my work doesn't stand out over everything else.

And what do I do to fix that?

I think, "Oh, crap, I'd better come up with something truly creative and unique to stand out."

Many times this mean upping the shock factor. Or sometimes it means an idea that's not only creative, but really stupid and makes no sense. Do you see where I'm going with this? I'm not really writing what I want to write; I'm writing what I feel will set me apart. That's not a bad thing altogether. In fact, it often drives me to more creative places than I would go otherwise. But, I have to be careful because more often than not that creative place is nothing more than a ploy.

I was the editor of my university's literary magazine over six years ago. I sat on the reading board many times. What did I see the most in all those entries? Obvious attempts to wow the judges, to come up with something so new and off the wall that we'd be blown away and impressed! I think it worked twice. And guess what? Over the years I've done the same thing with my own work to try and stand out against my peers in the classroom, or in a contest or call for submissions. Hmmm, even blogging.

I think what really sets any writer apart is honesty. I can spot an honest story five hundred miles away. Combined with a fine handle on writing, execution, and character development, honesty goes farther than any other writing device I've encountered. An honest writer can take the most boring, mundane subject in the world and make it exciting. An honest writer can blow the Borg out of the galaxy with one careful aim and fire.

Against honesty, resistance is futile.

Couldn't resist, sorry.

Scott wrote an excellent post awhile ago about honesty. A quick excerpt from his thoughts:

I have long thought that in order for a story to be a good story it must say something true, reveal something about us as a species or our times as they are, or some other truth. There had to be a revelation of some kind. This is of course one of the tropes of the modern short story: the epiphanic moment. I still think that a story has to tell a truth of some kind, but I no longer believe that what I write has to be Big and Important. I am beginning to think that I can approach my stories, my themes, my characters and more importantly my audience, with some humility and address them more quietly. I begin to think that it's possibly just as good to say, "This is interesting" as it is to say, "This is important."

Well said, Scott.


Question For The Day: Come back here next Thursday for my thoughts on what makes writing honest. First I'd like to hear what you think! What makes your writing honest? Don't tell me you "write from the heart." Think more deeply than that if you can. What blows your Borg out of the galaxy?


~MDA (aka Glam)