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Enough
My hair is mostly gray. I’m not young enough to engage in Twitter conversations with YA authors. But not totally gray. I’m not old enough to be revered by them. I write by the seat of my pants. I’m not degreed enough to talk shop with the MFA crowd. I was raised in the church. But I’m no longer Christian enough for that culture, or the subculture of writers who are fighting to find their place in it. I was married for a quarter century. I’ve been alone for nearly a decade. I’m not married enough to join you and your husband for dinner. I’m not single enough to find…
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Exercising the Why
Let’s say you’re in a coffee shop. I think we can all agree that’s a reasonable assumption. A four-year-old girl walks up to you. She’s a precocious curly-headed moppet with curious blue eyes and a surprisingly accurate sixth sense about strangers. She knows you’re the non-dangerous type, despite the army of wrinkle-lines marching across your face while you sort through a particularly tricky plot point. “What are you doing?” she asks. Because that’s what a precocious curly-headed moppet with curious blue eyes does. She asks questions. She hasn’t learned filters yet. Thank God. Because you need her to ask these questions. “Writing,” you answer. “What are you writing?” “A novel.” She…
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In the Company of Strangers
If you want to be a successful (i.e.: published, well-read, income-producing) writer, you’re going to have to get comfortable in the company of strangers. I’m not talking about the strange fictional people who inhabit your novel, I’m talking about the In Real Life kind. You know, those ugly bags of mostly water* you bump into while standing in line for your half-caff-soy-latte-with-a-double-shot-of-arsenic. If you’re anything like me (and I pray you’re not, because this could lead to a sudden loss of cabin pressure), approaching strangers, let alone asking them for something, ranks right up there with public speaking, pregnant spiders, and admitting to an un-ironic love for Coldplay on a…
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The Weight of Your Words
I love my computer*. Let me say that up front, in case it thinks otherwise and decides to unflash its memory. But I have fond (if only for the purpose of this post) memories of a time when writing hurt more than it does today. Oh sure, we have carpal tunnel syndrome and baked sperm syndrome (well, some of us, anyway), but those are fancy aches. Yesterday, a writer’s pain was blue-collar. It was immediate and visceral. Remember writer’s cramp? Now that was a pain you could feel. It started somewhere between thumb and forefinger, then exploded up the arm like lightning. And who can forget the grating, yet sublimely…
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Quit This, Not That (For Writers)
Writing is hard. So quit. Give up your dream of being a novelist/short story author/screenwriter/memoirist. Delete all those half-finished manuscripts and do something else with all that “free time” that was never really free. Or… You could continue writing and quit other things instead. For example: Quit believing you will never finish writing your novel. Writers who aren’t nearly as smart/talented/dedicated/beautiful/lost/uncertain/crazy as you completed their novels. Of course you can finish yours. Stop being so dramatic. Quit telling yourself you suck as a writer. This is counterproductive. And redundant. All writers suck at some point in their career. Some suck at many points in their career. But stop telling yourself…
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So What?
Right now, you’re thinking one of these things: “My novel sucks.” “What if no one buys my book?” “I got a one-star review!” “I got a hundred five-star reviews!” “I don’t know if I have what it takes to be a writer.” And right now, I’m thinking this: So what? Does your novel suck? Maybe. Maybe not. Some of the best books I’ve edited arrived from the author with a side of Severe Doubt. “It might make you ill.” It didn’t. Conversely, some of the worst books I’ve edited arrived from the author with a side of Unwarranted Confidence. “I think it’s really good.” It wasn’t. Most authors struggle to…
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Make Something Happen
“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” – Elmore Leonard I love this quote. Not just because it indirectly gives purpose to the existence of content editors. (Mostly because of that.) But also because it’s impossibly clever and initially appears to be cleverly impossible. I mean, how do you do that? Some readers tend to skip long descriptive sections. So you should leave those out, right? Not necessarily. There’s nothing wrong with good descriptive writing. If your voice happens to be descriptive, some readers are going to go skipping. You can’t stop them. Other readers become impatient with anything that reminds them even remotely of a…