Help Keep Stephen Off Prozac Writing Contest Extravaganza
UPDATE: A big ‘thank you’ to all who have already entered the contest. Each one of you is brilliant and beautiful (and/or handsome) and deserves to win for your writing skill, apparent compassion and Santa-Yoda covetousness. Now, tell all your friends, okay? (Don’t worry, they’re not quite as talented as you are. No way they can win that Santa-Yoda. But by asking, you’ll make them feel special. And that’s a good thing.) I tend to get a little bit depressed sitting alone in my tiny garden-level apartment writing these blog posts, wondering if anyone out there in the Interworld cares about the blood, sweat and tears that I pretend to spill out over each word. I started thinking, “How can I be less depressed?” My...
Confidence (and Lack)
I‘m just going to come right out and say it: sometimes I feel completely incapable as an editor. When these times come, I stare at the author’s words and they swirl together like some cheap TV special effect to spell out “You are a fraud!” I worry every time the phone rings that one of my publisher friends will be on the other end of the line. “Hey, Stephen?” “Yes…?” “We’ve been looking at the book you just edited. You know the one we’re talking about?” Gulp. “Yes?” “…and we were wondering…did you send us the wrong file?” This experience is sort of like a waking version of that dream where you show up to school and realize you’re naked and then...
7 Fiber-Rich Ideas for Solving Writer’s Block
Close your laptop. Wait…not yet, read this first. After you close your laptop, pick up a pen and a little notebook – the tiny kind you always got in your Christmas stocking because they were four for a dollar and came in different colors and your mom thought they were “so cute.” (You should be able to find one in that box under your bed where you threw all the gifts from your Christmas stocking that weren’t edible.) Head out to a place you’ve never been – a new coffee shop, a park bench, a bus station – anywhere you might find at least one other person. Now, make up a story about someone and write it down in your cute little notebook. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling or any of those details, just write...
When You Care, Send the Very Best
This is going to be a short post. Because, quite frankly, the topic only needs a few words. Here they are: Never* send an editor or agent a first draft. I could end the post right there. But just in case there’s a lingering “huh?” out there somewhere, I’ll elaborate with three reasons for this common-sense advice. First drafts, even really good ones, typically still suffer from fixable plot and character problems. It doesn’t matter that your writing is excellent, such problems signal impatience to editors and agents. It’s good be be known for your passion and your dedication to excellence…but not for your impatience. When you start working on a second draft, you have the opportunity to see with an editor’s eyes....
Breaking the Rules
Just yesterday, an Internet friend asked me to read his short story and offer him a little editorial advice. Sometimes I get nervous when friends ask me to read their writing, but I’d shared enough of a conversation with him to expect he’d know his way around words. I was right. Even though it was a first draft, the observational story (non-fiction, but with the textures of a great fiction piece) had plenty of bite and surprising depth. One of the things that struck me about his story was the manner in which he introduced dialogue for the various characters. He didn’t separate it from the rest of the first-person narrative with expected paragraphs and punctuation. Writing rules would tell you this was a mistake, something to fix in the second...
