Category: Writing

A Question of When

When do you do your writing? Priorities scream at everyone, and we choose what we’ll do every day. And we put in as much as we can…

So there’s a job. And a family. And all that other stuff we think has to be done, whether we get paid for it or not. At the end, we’re exhausted. Yet we still find time to write.

Sure, some don’t. What’s a writer who doesn’t write? Just an r?

I’m just curious when the rest of you find time. We do. There are 24 hours in a day, and the most important things get done. At least, until there are too many top-list priorities. But that’s another problem to be tackled separately.

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Is Blogging Writing?

On one hand, of course it is. A blogger strings words together just like a fiction writer does. The words add up if you’re writing in a blog or a story or a novel.

But if you’re counting words toward a goal, I always wonder if I should have blogging in a different category as those other projects. One thousand words toward my blog, especially like I’ve been posting lately, could give me over a week’s worth of small blurbs. Usually it’s only two if I write them ahead, but it gets away from me.

So if it doesn’t count, how do we keep track of it? One of my friends is really good at quantifying goals: she’s always commenting about how you should make a goal and know how you’ll attain it with specifics. IT’s not enough to lose weight as a goal; there should be a target weight, a date when you think you’ll get to that target, and some sort of tracking so you can see your progress.

Seems a little hard core, right? Except that when I try her methods, I get things done. The mental list in my head that nags me about the dishes and stops when they’re clean isn’t as satisfying as crossing that item off my written (on paper) list. It’s a similar feeling with a digital list, but I haven’t found the handy device to cart with me around the house in orer to house this list. Sure, I have a laptop and a netbook and my husband’s iPod Touch is hanging around, but I generally eschew those distractions when I get to my house cleaning.

I find it best especially because a blank piece of paper is inviting enough to put notes for a story on, or even little snippets. An entire digital device? Too tempting to quit my thoughts of tidying the house and get lost in a book.

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Protagonists

Do you ever wonder why so many main characters we see on TV and read about in books seem to be writers or artists or something people-related?

If you’re waiting for that engineer to become the star of the show, you’d probably better stick to Dilbert. Though Big Bang Theory might make it seem dorky in a good way. Both of those are outside the norm, and both of them poke fun at the profession.

It’s hard to imagine pages of someone working by himself in an office with a computer all day, who prefers not to converse or interact with others most of the time. Isn’t it? Yet that’s the stereotype. As a writer, we dramatize it as much as possible and try to connect with the emotions. The reader has to related to the character or she’ll stop reading.

Maybe the problem is so many people don’t connect to math. Logic and emotion don’t mix well.  You can call our society math-phobic, so it’d likely be a bad idea to write random equations in a fiction book.

That might be an idea for a short story. The target audience would be fairly small, but it might work. Coming soon for engineers, scientists, and math geeks only!

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Careers

See my interview with Mike Manno today!

What do you say when someone asks what you do? I’m sure for some people it’s easy. Some people go to work and go home and stop working.

They’re not writers.

Not many of us can stay at home full time and crank out the stories, even if we’d prefer to do just that. So we work more, during the day at our regular jobs and during the evenings typing by the light of silver screens.

Sometimes we’re lucky and get in print. Then the marketing fun begins. It’s interesting that so many writers are introverts, but the few who aren’t seem to be the ones who are successful at  marketing.

And still, they all have their day jobs. At least, the ones at the Book Event did. We all mention our other activities, like we’re finding things in common. We write books on so many subjects we have something for everyone who reads.

It’s hard to write a book for people who don’t read.

So sometimes I mention the stay-at-home mother thing. Other times I don’t know what to say. I tutor and teach. And all the time, I write. It’s a career if that’s what I put my time and passion into, no matter how much money it makes. Right?

Artists work not for fame or fortune.

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The Great Iowa Book Event

Yesterday I spent the day at Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines. There were definitely over 20 authors with their books. I’m not sure if we had the full 42 expected, but wow, what a crowd!

Many of the authors present were at their first signing type event with their books. I’m hardly a veteran, but there were a few who could be called that.

One of the neat things is to connect with others and trade tips. One of the hard things is that a lot of the mall-goers weren’t looking for or expecting us. I think most of them were just headed about their shopping business, though a few decided to buy books. Yay!

Now if only some more of them would buy my book when I’m there today…

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Writing…

In my critique group, one of my fellow writers talked about a workshop he attended. He said the proper way to write was in composition notebooks. Or, so he learned in his workshop.

That tidbit sparked a small debate about whether it was a different experience to write by hand versus by computer. Something about people who type directly into the computer are wordier than those who don’t.

I never like broad generalizations, but it’s an interesting theory.

I still don’t understand why the composition notebook. What’s wrong with looseleaf paper in a binder or blank books or spiral notebooks? Isn’t paper, well, paper?

In the interest of the experiment, I bought a couple composition notebooks. Luckily, they’re for sale for a quarter at Target. I love back-to-school sales! Yesterday I wrote in one for awhile while my daughter slept.

Okay, I’ll admit at this moment I’m just happy to be writing. So in the purposes of science, how long would I have to write to make a good determination? What variables should I keep track of?

You might be able to tell I’m a recovering engineer. Recovering because I no longer go to meetings.

That statement might not be totally true, since those critique groups run at specific times and places. Ah well, it’s very difficult to get away from all meetings. I should just be happy I’ve cut down.

A writing experiment on paper versus computer makes me wonder what things to track. What do writers look for in their sessions? Well, words for one thing. Good words are a bonus. The only problem is, whether the words are good or not is extremely difficult to tell.

I mean, if it were easy to know what the best part of the story was, we wouldn’t have pieces of advice like ‘kill your darlings,’ would we?

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What makes a cliche?

Today’s witticisms can be tomorrow’s cliches.

The definition of a cliche is “a saying, expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect.”

But does that mean it shouldn’t be used in writing? Much of the current wisdom says you can use a cliche in dialogue, but not narrative. The reasoning behind this is that people speak in cliches all the time. We squeal like stuck pigs and go green with envy. We see red when we’re mad and we always get our man.

The words have a lot of power. It’s all about what you choose and what you want to say. What can the writer say instead?

Well, anything we please.

A writer can show you the difference between red and dark pink and vermilion, cranberry, burgundy, maroon… or anywhere else on the endless red color palette. Don’t get me started on the greens. My mother taught me chartreuse before I went to first grade.

So why the ban on cliches in narrative? Writers can do better. What can you say that makes people stand up and pay attention because they’ve never seen/heard/read something like that before?

Let’s look at it a different way, what did you read that made you laugh out loud? Cry for the character’s pain? Repeat the line at a later date? I’m betting it wasn’t when the writer exclaimed the main character hit the ball out of the park.

In dialogue, they allow it because so often we do throw out those tired old phrases. It makes it realistic. That’s not to say you have to use cliches in dialogue. You can make them say, well, not what the writers wants them to say, but what the character really wants to say.

I’m enough of a writer to admit I’m not always in control of what my characters say or do. They pretty much steer their own lives into print.

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A Way to Beat Writer’s Block

Ever heard of plinky.com?

Every day plinky sends out a prompt or challenge. Today’s is “What’s guaranteed to make your roll your eyes?”

It’s an interesting idea. Some of them are more writerly compared to the personal one above. “Fictionalize a real argument you’ve had. Write only in dialogue.”

Some verge on the silly: “Write a haiku about the last meal you ate.”

For someone struggling with ideas to write about, it might help. (I know someone’s going to point me in that direction for my lack of entries this month, but I’ve been busy.)

What do all these prompts give you? If someone answers them all, it’s going to give a lot of information about that person. I’m not sure I agree with their use of the word memoir, simply because a memoir is about a specific time in a person’s life. An autobiography tells all, while the memoir is focused around a specific event. Example: A memoir could cover lessons learned during the college years or a difficult pregnancy or surviving a specific round of office politics.

But a prompt by itself isn’t going to get you too far. You can write a one-sentence answer if you choose, like for today’s: “Bad jokes are guaranteed to make me roll my eyes.” It takes a little effort to make it work for an entire blog post. A fictionalized story, a chapter of a memoir (or an autobiography), a detailed description – any of these will take more than a sentence to do well.

And there’s nothing to say you can’t pick and choose, and blog about other things in the middle. It all depends on the purpose of the blog. Don’t have a purpose to the blog? Now that’s trouble!

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Character Interview

An interview is sometimes a good way to get involved with a new character. It might not start ideas for new characters (at least, I don’t use it that way), but it can really solidify an idea of the person in your head and on paper.

There are sheets out there to use to generate ideas for characters; some of them include everything under the sun from where she was born to why she went to eighth grade wearing pink shoes. While it’s awesome to know all this information, not all of it should be included in the story.

Another useful part about an interview versus character sheets that become one long list, is you can hear the character’s voice. Is he someone who stutters when he’s put on the spot? Are answers avoided? Does your character lie?

Or, even worse, does she sound exactly like the last protagonist from the novel in the drawer? Are only the physical qualities different? Is his vocabulary off from his supposed education and upbringing?

One of my writer friends from my critique group caught a little disparity in the voice of a minor character when he used a little higher word than expected for the ‘child’ that I portrayed him as. Whoops – I’ll be fixing that this week, and I’m hoping with this interview I’ll be able to keep a few more of those errors out of my story.

And I will admit taking time to interview my characters is fun. I have an annoying newscaster who always plays the part of interviewer. Luckily for me, it’s Inter-Dimensional News and she has some sort of truth-box she sets her victims in to get the real dirt on them.

Now if I could just get this current victim character to sign the waiver so she can appear on the show…

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A Guide to Life

Sometimes I pick up books with titles spouting wisdom, like “everything a girl needs to know in her 20s” or “how to run a modern household.” Some of the information is always new, and some of it I know. I just find it interesting to read.

I suppose part of the reason why is to gain perspective into what others might want, to use as a character (possibly) or to use the information in a story. Of course, that would mean restricting it to the real world, but all sorts of items can be adapted to other locations.

It occurs to me that I read Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy and the follow-up Extras and not one of his female protagonists ever talked about her shoes. Okay, so there are only two protagonists through those four books, but don’t you think shoes would come up at some point? Especially in the Prettytime, when everything was about the aesthetic value and their brains had been altered to think that way (about aesthetics, not about forgetting shoes).

Since most of the guides I’ve read are about women’s lives, I think next time I hit the library I’ll look for a male counterpart. Is there a male counterpart to those guides on how to live as a girl? That would definitely make interesting reading, even though most men don’t dote on shoes like women.

I bet they’d be missing the section on manicures and pedicures…

Other than that, I am sure there should be something to apply to men. It’s not like men get a free ride on stuff women somehow don’t learn growing up.  [And to be fair, it’s not like our mothers didn’t try to teach us to check the labels on clothing for care like dry cleaning or  machine wash warm-tumble dry low. I was listening. Very few clothes are cute enough to have to dry clean all the time.]

The answers are out there. Sometimes you just have to find the right question. And don’t spout 42 at me. If you don’t know what the question was, you can’t necessarily say it’s the answer to everything.

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