I'm pretty mild-mannered when it comes to advice, even when delivering "the bad news." One of my students called me "An iron fist in a velvet glove," which I found first startling, then complimentary, then -- pretty much true. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter, of which I am highly fond, affirms that my strongest category of intelligence is the diplomatic variety. I find myself paying a lot of attention to exactly how to word things to gain a certain impact on a particular listener or reader.
Diplomatic Disclaimer: Writing goals come in all types and stripes, and all of them are valid. You may have taken up writing because you've always wanted to give it a shot, because you just want to learn more about effective writing, because it's an outlet for expressing your feelings and/or creativity, because you want to write stories for the grandkids, because your family is bugging you to record their history and you want to do it as skillfully and entertainingly as possible, or for other reasons that are all your own. Any reason to want to write is legitimate (assuming you're not aiming to destroy the world), and I say dive in and have fun!
But, you say, you want to be a professional, publishing writer. (There's a deliberate order to that. Professionalism almost always precedes publication, unless you are paying a company to print anything you produce, in which case it may or may not.) Since you want to be a pro, and you want to get commercially published, let me offer my three-point overview to Get Your (Ca)Reer in Gear.
1. Get your writing into the middle of your life instead of on the fringe. Let's say your life is a city. Your job, family, home, church, and places you do business, pursue recreation, or serve your community are the downtown and residential areas of that city. Where's writing? On the outskirts? In a suburb? Scrabbling on the edge of a cliff hanging on by three fingernails? Leave it there for much longer, and it just might ker-splat into the gorge, glut itself on brats and beer and take a much-too-long nap, or stick out its thumb and hitch a ride on the Road to Elsewhere. Rescue the poor thing. Give it a home, a job, a time and place to function. You've got to. Even if something else (starting with the TV set) has to get run out of town on a rail to make room.
2. Read in the genre(s) in which you are writing. Yes, begin by reading, period. But move quickly to the specific types of material you want to write. Read them without ceasing. Know that field. You've got to. Even if something else (starting with the TV set) has to be ignored to make room.
3. Do the research. Study successful published books that are a lot like yours and notice everything: overall length; number of chapters; chapter lengths; how many main characters; frequently used ideas; cliches; how many different ways there are to start a story; how the beginning hooks the reader (or does it?); types of conflict (e.g., more outward conflicts for mid-grade, more inward conflicts for young adult); number of subplots; boy vs. girl characters; first-person, third-person, present tense, past tense; and on and on. The idea isn't to find the formula; it's to show you what's been done (and overdone), what's possible to do, what hasn't been tried yet, and what's truly different. Get up-to-date "how to write for kids" books from your library or bookstore. Study the writers' boards on the web. Go to a conference. Take a class. Visit publisher websites. Read their catalogs and guidelines. Do the research on today's school curriculum, sports, hobbies, geographical locations, how stuff works, and anything else you need to authenticate the background, details and action in your story. Don't assume fiction doesn't need research, and don't assume you can fudge because the story "is made up anyway." You can't. Do the research. You've got to.
Do these three things for a week, and you'll already notice a difference. Do them for a month, and your writing will be a vital component of your life. Let them be the iron foot in a velvet boot that gives you a welcome kick in the (ca)reer.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
A Blast From the Past
Don't we look like college girls?
That's me on the left, and the lady on the right is Anne, the girl I shared various dorm rooms with for three years. When she emailed me to say she'd be in Wisconsin and wanted to stop by, I jumped at the chance.
How long had it been? Well, suffice it to say we hadn't seen each other in XY years, where XY is a two-digit number, X is a positive integer, and Y a nonnegative integer. Didn't I tell you there'd be math in this blog sooner or later? What's more, XY+4=XZ, where XZ represents the number of years we've actually been out of college.
Relax, you don't have to solve the equation. In fact, you can't. You finally get to fill in the little circle next to "not enough information" and get the problem right! Nor is the answer in the back of the book. Sorry. :)
Did we talk about college? Only a little. Mostly, we talked about now. About our families, about writing, about her job which I will describe in layman's terms as "keeping tabs" on fires in the Sierra Nevadas near King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. "I don't even remember that much about college," she said. So much life has happened since then, we don't understand the first thing about each other's jobs, we live half a continent apart, and we've never inhabited the present together, yet we talked about it easily. I learned that friendships picked up from a long-ago season of life aren't necessarily frozen in time.
She says we should come visit her in California, on her eight acres of land where she gardens, turns wood, and renovates her house. "It'll be really cheap once you get here," she told me. "And you can even get into the park free if you take me with you!" Maybe we will get to go. Hopefully it won't take XY years to get there.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
The Perennial Question
What question do people curious about writing ask more than any other? Well, besides, "Where do you get your ideas?" (And besides, "How much money do you make?") I'd say that the #1 biggie question is: How do you find the time?
By now, I've juggled writing time every way there is to juggle it. When my kids were little, I wrote nightly from 9 to midnight. At times I tried writing before they got up in the morning. Glad to finally become a daytime writer when the youngest started school, I may have had the best of all worlds when I was "home with the kids" yet had most daytime hours to myself.
But then I began teaching, by correspondence. Still at home and able to devise my own schedule, I tried writing mornings and teaching afternoons; teaching mornings and writing afternoons; teaching three days and writing two, the particular days of the week shifting now and then; teaching during the week and writing weekends; writing evenings -- and sometimes just plain all of the above.
Writing is funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. People often expect their writing to live on the edges of their lives, yet it requires a fair amount of immersion. Regular writing, reading, and market study are the three basics, but most publishing writers also take classes, study writing books, attend conferences, join professional organizations, do considerable topic research, network, read and comment on blogs and message boards, maintain a website and blog, and continue to read, read, read. And when you finally publish, promotion and speaking engagements enter the picture, as does producing approximately a book a year. Few career writers put anything other than God, family and day job ahead of writing. Hobbies or an active social life, if there's room for them, come after.
So, you're saying, "Okay, I get that I have to make time, not find time. How?" Try thinking in terms of a balance between regularity and flexibility. Can't write on a regular schedule? What if, each weekend, you schedule the upcoming week's writing? JUST the coming week. Block out those times on your calendar. When the time slots arrive, WRITE. When the next weekend comes, again block out your writing times for the coming week. It doesn't matter if they bear any resemblance to last week's writing times. It only matters that they mesh with what's on your plate for the week in question. Regularity feeds your momentum, and though we may seem to be crawling forward at times, books get written.
By now, I've juggled writing time every way there is to juggle it. When my kids were little, I wrote nightly from 9 to midnight. At times I tried writing before they got up in the morning. Glad to finally become a daytime writer when the youngest started school, I may have had the best of all worlds when I was "home with the kids" yet had most daytime hours to myself.
But then I began teaching, by correspondence. Still at home and able to devise my own schedule, I tried writing mornings and teaching afternoons; teaching mornings and writing afternoons; teaching three days and writing two, the particular days of the week shifting now and then; teaching during the week and writing weekends; writing evenings -- and sometimes just plain all of the above.
Writing is funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. People often expect their writing to live on the edges of their lives, yet it requires a fair amount of immersion. Regular writing, reading, and market study are the three basics, but most publishing writers also take classes, study writing books, attend conferences, join professional organizations, do considerable topic research, network, read and comment on blogs and message boards, maintain a website and blog, and continue to read, read, read. And when you finally publish, promotion and speaking engagements enter the picture, as does producing approximately a book a year. Few career writers put anything other than God, family and day job ahead of writing. Hobbies or an active social life, if there's room for them, come after.
So, you're saying, "Okay, I get that I have to make time, not find time. How?" Try thinking in terms of a balance between regularity and flexibility. Can't write on a regular schedule? What if, each weekend, you schedule the upcoming week's writing? JUST the coming week. Block out those times on your calendar. When the time slots arrive, WRITE. When the next weekend comes, again block out your writing times for the coming week. It doesn't matter if they bear any resemblance to last week's writing times. It only matters that they mesh with what's on your plate for the week in question. Regularity feeds your momentum, and though we may seem to be crawling forward at times, books get written.
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