What I Need From an Editor (and why)

As I go through my daily routine of examining writer pages and writing community chats, I often come across a discussion about whether it's really important to have an editor. I have heard people claim they're good enough to be their own editor, that editors are too expensive for what they do, and that editors are just writers who never got published. Now I shouldn't be surprised that somewhere on the internet, people have strong opinions. However, it seems like a lot of these people are launching their tirade from a position of either a big ego, a bad experience, or general frustration. Therefore, I thought I would offer a little input into the editor discussion. Most importantly, I want to offer up what your expectations should be.

Let's start with what kind of editor you should look into. The main categories are: development, content, and line editing. A development editor works from the broadest view, helping with story arc, character presentation, dramatic build, etc. A content editor narrows this perspective, looking at the presentation of the material, making sure it flows okay, and offering advice from an objective reader point of view. And of course, the line editor (copy editor) gets your spelling and grammar polished, undangles your participles, puts your split infinitives back together, and is consistent with the Oxford comma. Development and content editing sometimes overlap, and line editing can overlap with content. However, know which one you want or need before you go editor shopping - this will come in handy later.

If you want to work with a development editor, then have a completed draft and be prepared to hear about how your world sounds to the outsider. Your storyland might seem great to you, but that development editor is seeing it with fresh eyes, and the two of you should have some long talks on how the world reads. It is not the job of the development editor to tell you where your world is wrong (because it's not wrong - it's yours), but if they do not understand what you are saying in your story and you need to explain a lot of things, it's a sure sign that your manuscript is not communicating what you thought you created. A development editor should be able to tell you about how they see the characters, setting, themes that resonated, and plot progression. If they can't tell you these things, or what they say doesn't match what you intended, you need to engage in a dialogue that sounds something like, "Well, I was trying to make the character more sympathetic - how would I remedy this?" The development editor should be able to help you bring out the story elements you are looking to showcase, but it can be taxing and at times discouraging. However, it is worth it.

A content editor's job is a little more clean and straightforward - narrowing their observations to make sure it reads cleanly, to offer some consistency, and communicate how well it flows in general. If your content editor suggests how you could make it better through changing the plot or characters, smile and tell them to write their own damn book (but politely). Their job is to take the content as presented and streamline it. Any observations they have should be framed as personal observations, not editorial truths.

And then comes the poor line editor. This editor is actually the most important yet the most overlooked. Everyone who has written a major product often thinks they know it well enough to have caught all the spelling errors and fixed all the stupid things. For the most part, they are wrong. And the critical part of this process is that spelling errors (which are often not caught by a spellchecker) make you look bad as an author. Your story is your brainchild, but a spelling error or bad grammar in the first few pages will turn off a reader faster than any other error and nobody will read your story. Line editors might cost a bit (a 100,000-word manuscript should run about $500 for line editing), but they are the protector of your brand. Choose them wisely.

Lastly, one thing all editors should all have is references. Ask for references from anyone you are considering hiring, and follow up on those to find out how things worked out. Plenty of people say they can edit things, but the proof is looking over their work, or as a proxy, finding out from others what the experience was like working with them. And if there are no references available, well, step forward at your own risk.

If you want to march forth without an editor, well, that's your call. However, take this word from an insider. When I talk with my writer friends about publishing and so forth, a part of the conversation always involves sharing the horror stories we have encountered from people selling their product and proudly boasting, "I edited it myself." Most of the time, these are nothing to boast about. 

           

Origin Stories

Did you ever sit back and think about how much can be explained by an engaging origin story? Even though it covers the events of a distant and heretofore unknown past, the origin story seems to have the ability to define the present in sharp, vivid contrast. A set of events happen a number of years ago, and they seem to change the entire story. Sometimes, the most important part of any story is to first have a good, deep understanding of the origin story, and let that be a guiding light for the continuing process.

Actually, I should acknowledge this - I mean the origin story of the author.

Yes, the author. No matter how much you might have been thinking about Peter Parker becoming Spiderman or the mysterious origin of the Man in Black in... well, a lot of stories, though I was thinking of The Stand, there is something very important about the author knowing a few secrets about their own background, and what driving forces brought them to create their story.

Now, I am sure there are writers out there who feel very good about knowing their personal background and what makes them comfortable about their past. To them I would say, "But... do you?" I had a very enjoyable conversation with a bunch of others the other day, and we discussed story, character - the usual author stuff - and it eventually led to what drove us to write our first novels (or the first major work of our writing era). To nobody's surprise, the thing that usually kicked in with the author is when they had some sort of personal awakening or catharsis, and realized something about themselves that had been holding them back. Whether it was childhood trauma, some random event in college, or finally accepting some larger truth about themselves, they all had a moment where they came face-to-face with the part of their origin story that was important.

Here's an experiment: Let's look at our aforementioned Peter Parker, aka Spiderman. We know the part of his origin story - bitten by a radioactive spider - that made him Spiderman, but we learn other truths about how he came to realize that with power came responsibility. We learn his origin story, and see how it shaped him.

Now here's the other part of the experiment. Imagine you know Peter in high school, but not all the spider crap. You might actually think about him more along the lines of, "Hey, didn't his parents both die? Why are his aunt and uncle so very, very old?" Those might seen like the factors most likely to be the plot-shapers for the teenage Peter Parker, and you would interpret him that way - and it wouldn't entirely add up. Peter would seem like a very confusing kid to you, and you might not get to know or understand him very well. If you learn the whole origin story, however, like MJ did, then he magically makes sense.

Your job as an author is, first and foremost, to write. However, now and then take a little time to ask yourself what is inspiring these stories you want to create. Look inside yourself and search for those weird little things that might trigger such inspiration. If you find those things, inspect them - they are, in the long run, your friends because they are the things that inspire your writing. And, in the end, you might have a better origin story than being bitten by a radioactive spider (even though I would take Spiderman's powers any day).     

Writing - Goals, Dreams, Fantasies

When I started off on my writing journey, I did not have goals or dreams, and I hadn't fantasized about where this might take me. All it amounted to was me committing some stories to paper and seeing how I felt about it. I merely had a mission: to write. Once a few people looked at my writing (and after they pointed out the wealth of mistakes), a few acknowledged that it was "better than half the crap out there." That is what it ultimately took for me to take things a step further and designate myself as a "writer." And by doing that, I started having fantasies, building dreams, and setting goals. It took me a lot longer to realize which of my thoughts went into which category. So, on that note, let's discuss.

Goals: A goal is any part of the writing process you target, anything you hope to do. The important part in discerning what a good goal is usually falls under the concept of control. "Getting published" is a lousy goal because you don't have any control over what the publishers produce. You can write the best novel in the world, but without a good agent it won't go far, and that's not your fault. Keep your goals fully under your control. "I will write a short story this month," "I shall finish the first draft of my novel in a year," "I shall search for a development editor to help me better craft a story." These are all goals that a writer can achieve, and as we accomplish them, we entrench ourselves within the idea that we are writers.

Dreams: Before I get into this, something can be a dream yet be very achievable. As opposed to my late-night dreams where I am flying through my old high school, which now has ten stories for some reason and is continuously on fire, a writer's dreams should be aspirational in nature, and focus on those targets that require something more than just doing it. Getting your story in print or winning a writing contest qualify as dreams - you have a degree of control over them, but some external force will validate your writing as well. Dreams only have to be possible to qualify, but keep a realistic framework around them. Not every local anthology will accept your story for publication, you can't win every contest. Furthermore, in the beginning, you will get a lot of rejections and not win contests - that's fine, as long as you recognize you are pursuing your dreams. After that, it's all about finding ways to further yourself toward achieving that dream.

Fantasies: These are the things that likely won't happen because they rarely happen to anyone (though are very possible). Becoming the next Stephen King or Anne Rice is highly unlikely. Signing a two-book deal with a major publishing house after your first book becomes a bestseller - very doubtful. Netflix picking up the option on the screen rights to your work - probably not going to happen. However, it has happened, and in theory could happen again. These fantasies are important because they serve one pretty cool purpose: As long as you write, they are possible. As long as you diligently type, there is a chance of that multi-book contract. Once you stop - fantasies vanish, and nobody wants that.

Keep a list of your set of goals somewhere by your writing area, and look at it every day to remind yourself you are a writer. Give yourself a minute to think about what it will be like if one of your dreams comes true (except for that burning high school thing), and let that feeling move you. And as you progress, always tap yourself on the shoulder as a reminder that fantasies do come true.     

Stories Need Their Obstacles

After a quiet, snow-filled Thanksgiving weekend, I reentered the world a little worn down and more than likely with some kind of bug. This is not how I wanted to start off my December, but let's be honest: what we want and what we get are rarely the same thing. However, when life gives you lemons... fall on a cliché. So I am going to offer a few notes on why we need our stories to have obstacles.

If I read a biography of, say, President Lincoln, and it covers the Civil War era, I know how it's going to end. If I watch a movie about someone famous, I kind of know they are going to succeed. This is an inherent problem with a lot of stories - there is a baked-in knowledge that the person makes it through. And if the main character is guaranteed to survive and make it to the end, what's the point? Well, that part is where the author has to really work their craft. In a well-written book about, say, Lincoln and the Civil War, the problems and setbacks should be showcased in a way that actually makes me think, "Oh no! They might lose the Battle of Gettysburg! How will the Union survive?" The adversity should become as real to the reader as it was to the Union Army. 

In case you are thinking, "Well, the story I am writing is good on its own; it doesn't need me to showcase the problems," you might want to reconsider. One thing about a character facing problems is that the reader gets to see how that character thinks, feels, and operates when confronting adversity. It is a great chance to invite the reader into the character's head and know them very intimately from their worst possible position. If I read about a character pursuing a goal and the obstacles just seem to rise then fall, why am I concerned about this character? Where is my investment in them? If I feel like everything is a foregone conclusion, then why am I reading this story?

The other part to remember is that obstacles and setbacks shape who the character will be when they reach the end of the story (I won't use the Lincoln metaphor this time for obvious reasons). If my goal is to write about a character's rise to power, and in the end they achieve power, that's great. However, the unknowns the reader will discover are things like how the journey changed the character, what they gained and what they lost, and who they ultimately became. If our character reaches the pinnacle of power but loses their attachment to people, or the journey corrupted them, or they are awash in regret, well, that's a big reveal for the reader to discover. 

Don't be afraid to put your character through trials and tribulations - they help the story and you can make sure the character makes it through. And, if your story is based on real-life events, dig into those events to turn them into things the reader experiences in their own way. Because even if the reader knows the story will end with a bad night at the theater, they will feel like they participated in the story.       

Our Writing Legacy

Recently, my brother brought over a box of miscellaneous family stuff that had once been in my father's possession. This meant that it could've been anything from either my father's or mother's side of the family, from any one of many generations. The only qualifiers were that it was something my father physically encountered, and it was something he decided to keep. Needless to say, there was a wide and varied amount of stuff in this box - even some things that were technically mine in the first place. However, few things were more interesting than two things he kept that my uncle sent to him maybe thirty years ago.

Uncle Charles, writer

These two things sent by my oldest uncle (now deceased) were manuscripts he wrote in the 1960s. My uncle sent them to my father - with edits - under the idea that maybe they could be published in one form or the other. One was a sixty-page treatise on pacifism during the Viet Nam War, with a lot of my uncle's beliefs poured into it. The other was a full manuscript telling the story (through thinly fictionalized narrative) of my uncle's time with the Flying Tigers during World War 2. These were amazing discoveries, though unfortunate in the timing since the author died almost twenty years ago and my father passed about 17 years ago, leaving no frame of reference for these writings. I couldn't ask them for explanations or clarity without a Ouija board, and even then the answers might be a little vague. All I have is the physical manuscripts, the edits written on the pages, and educated guesses as to what the final product should be.

Along with all this writing comes a significant dilemma - what to do about publishing these, even if just for the rest of the family. I genuinely do not know if his children knew about these works (they were just kids according to my calculations), or ever had a chance to read them. (That's the thing about writing something in the 1960s - you didn't just make a Word doc and send to everyone, you typed up a physical copy and that was pretty much it.) More to the point, I don't know if my uncle would want these stories to be produced for the family, if he was comfortable admitting to certain youthful transgressions, or if there was any disrespect publishing these posthumously - and therefore without his permission. Definitely a lot to think about.

My brother (who brought these things into my life) gave me some clarity in this concept. He reminded me that my uncle sent these stories for review by eyes other than his own, so they were no longer really secrets. "Once you tell someone something, you tell everyone that thing," is how my brother put it. And he reminded me that my uncle wrote all these stories down, for better or worse, with a thought about publishing them, so he must've been ready to spread the word. Might it be embarrassing for him to admit to that one time in the Regent Hotel? Maybe, but he wrote it out. Might everyone see through the fictionalizing narrative and know just who his different characters represented? Always a chance. But apparently he was ready, so I am taking them to press... soon enough.

The big takeaway from this is if you are writing some personal stories down, make a simple decision: Do you want these to go public, or are you writing them for your own catharsis? Either reason is perfectly viable, but remember that once you start sharing them, you open them and yourself to the world. This can be a freeing, liberating experience, and possibly very terrifying, so make your intentions very much known. And if you don't want them going around, remember that eventually, your nephew might just end up publishing them.  

Characters and Branding

In this space I've done plenty of discussion about character creation, and hopefully it's beneficial. However, aside from their many traits and quirks, characters need a few other things. A moral or ethical code is always important, a general worldview helps, and some kind of personal focal point of their interests/obsessions can always help shape them. However, one thing that every character needs is a brand, and it's one of those things that is not immediately obvious but makes the character stick.

Now when people think about brands they go to items - Coca-Cola or Green Giant frozen vegetables. Good brands indeed, but that's not exactly the point. The point is more that when we think about those items, something comes to mind immediately. Coca-Cola might evoke those somewhat-creepy CG polar bears, or perhaps people singing on a hilltop if you are of a slightly older generation. Green Giant has, of course, the Jolly Green Giant come to mind. Each brand gains a boost when they have something very identifiable about it, and when that goes both ways. If I hear the word, "gecko" I think of GEICO insurance, and if I hear GEICO, I think about their gecko mascot. It's more than brand recognition - it's like that connection is branded into my brain.

Relating this to your characters is a similar process, but their identifiable trait should be something used enough or mentioned to the point where readers hear it and think of the character, or when they think of the character, that trait comes to mind. It could be a catchphrase (think about how those show up throughout TV shows), a physical quirk like an eyepatch or an excessively loud necklace, or a habit they do much to everyone's irritation - cracking their knuckles comes to mind immediately (mostly because I do that to the chagrin of my friends). These become points of detail and association, and the reader slowly buys in.

The one catch about this branding trick is to not use it to excess, but rather using it strategically. After the brand is introduced, don't throw it around all the time. Constantly having the character cracking their knuckles might break from the story's flow. Rather, give it a purpose and meaning, and connect it to a specific condition. Does the character do this when they are concentrating? Nervous? Indecisive? Angry? Once they have that association, you train the reader to feel the connection - they read that the character is cracking their knuckles again, say at a poker table, and realize they are actually very nervous even if nobody else notices. The brand is established, and the reader now makes associations between character, action, and mood.

When you make up a character, step back and think for a moment about how you want that character to be remembered. Not the tragic hero or whatever, but what little thing would you love to connect to that character that triggers people like that damn gecko or those creepy polar bears? That should become your brand for them, and the rest should flow around it.

And yes, those bears always creep me out.      

It's All About the Final Product

When I worked in downtown Chicago, practically every day I had the privilege of passing by some part of Grant Park, just east of Michigan Avenue. Now, for those of you who don't know, Grant Park is this large stretch of property by Lake Michigan (technically by Monroe Harbor), stretching almost two miles north to south, replete with a bandshell, the Art Institute of Chicago, Buckingham Fountain, several monuments, and the Cloudgate sculpture, locally known as, "The Bean." Grant Park dates back to the 19th century (technically it got its name in 1901, but the park was there beforehand)  and has been as much a part of Chicago's identity as anything else. Underneath it is also one of the hubs of Chicago's commuter system, the trains a quiet little secret rumbling through the city. 

And this beautiful park is built atop a pile of trash.

Well, trash might be a rough word, but it's not wrong. Before 1871, Michigan Avenue ran right next to train lines then a lagoon that came in from Lake Michigan, so that was the boundary of the city. Then the Great Chicago Fire came along and changed everything. The area now known as the Loop was burned to the ground, and that entire stretch of the city had to be rebuilt. As a matter of convenience, all the wreckage from the city was just pushed across Michigan Avenue and into the lagoon, making it basically a huge gravesite for the former Chicago. This didn't help the lagoon much, so the rest was filled in as well, making it a lovely location for what became Grant Park. Under the surface - the wreckage from a terrible  tragedy. On top - a place for a picnic.

Now that I've offered this lengthy history lesson, let me follow up with this - I wasn't writing this to elaborate about Chicago's history. This is in fact about writing, and all the dirt and carnage lying beneath the polished text of the final product. Read your favorite book and you will be dragged in by the characters, the plot, the intrigue and tension - all the good stuff we enjoy with a good story. And chances are, you will not see any traces of the first draft anywhere. All those early ideas - the characters that got edited out later, the plot arcs that went nowhere, the distracting descriptions and wild plot tangents - get buried under like so much trash in the landfill. We, as writers, are allowed to do that; it's mandatory. It allows us to be imperfect, knowing that those past disasters can just be buried under, never to be seen again.

To go back to the Chicago metaphor, give yourself the option of burning a work to the very foundation and dumping the remnants into the lagoon - so to speak. Save the things that work - like the Chicago Water Tower, which survived being right in the middle of the Great Chicago Fire - and cover the rest with new words and ideas. You will know the dark little secret of all the wreckage lying beneath your final product, but nobody has to see it as long as you cover it up. Atop piles and piles of grammatical rubble, you will have your Grant Park.        

"I Write To ______"

I attended an authors' conference last week, with about a dozen panelists (myself included) talking about the various facets of being a writer - everything from writing to producing to marketing to promotion. It covered a lot of real estate, and could've easily been a much longer event. However, one part that was touched upon was the discussion about what gets you writing, and ways you can motivate yourself to get into that writing space. That alone could've covered an hour, but the agenda had to be kept so some discussion points were not covered in full. Therefore, I wanted to discuss one in particular that I think needs elaboration.

The main point I want is for people to think how they would finish the title of this piece. I deliberately said, "I write to ____" and not "I write because ____" for the simple reason that the second one is what led you to write, the first one is what you hope your writing process creates. So, without getting too wordy, what do you hope to accomplish through writing? When you create, what is the mission of that process? It can differ from project to project, and you might feel differently depending on a lot of factors, so let me share a few things about how different answers can be approached:

"I write to heal." I heard this one a lot at the conference, and it seems to work for those people. This, in a nutshell, is the process of writing through your trauma, your worst place in life, your darkest hour, in order to process it and better live with it. It can also be used as a way to help others by letting them know they are not alone, and what they feel you felt as well. It's very powerful when done right, but it can be tricky if not managed well because it brings the writer back into a very uncomfortable space. Veterans with PTSD often use this as a method of dealing with their experiences, and along with a lot of personal benefit from these soldiers, some brilliant books also came into being. 

"I write to learn." This is a weird one, as we always hear that we should write what we know. However, sometimes, when we write about things where our feelings are mixed, it becomes a path to discovering something about ourselves - how we really feel, what our other thoughts are, hidden meanings in things we didn't understand. When we write - and I recommend writing by hand because it engages the brain differently - we are processing every word, every point of structure, trying to assemble some logical order to things. As we do this, we get a new vision of how things fit together.

"I write to teach." This is similar to the one about healing, but can come from a safer place. This is where someone writes from a position of subject expert, letting their authority carry the message, along with any experiences. Not as exciting but very challenging because it requires a very persuasive voice and structure to carry the message. Ever have a really smart but really bad teacher in school? They knew everything but couldn't get it through to most of the students? Yeah - they're stuck in that pit of knowledge without voice. If you want to teach with your words, work on a very specific, identifiable voice.

"I write to relax." People who have this answer are pretty great because they are a ronin - a warrior without a master. Their writing brings them peace, and that's what counts. Bound by no rules, they write and are at peace. Good for them. Ultimately, though, I don't think I've ever met this person.

There are plenty of other answers, but like most important questions, the purpose of it isn't to get an answer but to think long and hard about what you want to achieve. Whatever you want your writing to accomplish is fine, but once you make a conscious choice to pursue it, it gets even better.

So, what do you want your writing to do?     

The Writing "Noodle"

If there's one thing in writing that I both enjoy and need, it's the exercise of the writing noodle. Yes, it sounds weird and possibly very silly, but once I discovered it and how to play with it, I set aside all the pasta jokes and instead figured out when the best times would be for me to get out the noodle, if you will. This doesn't necessarily apply to any one writing genre, any particular kind of writing (though it helps with poetry in particular), or developing a personal style. It does, however, help one strengthen both their creative process and their capacity to go beyond what the rules normally allow for.

Now, surprisingly, this has no connection to "using the old noodle," referring to putting the brain to work. In some ways it's quite the opposite. This actually hearkens back to the musician practice of "noodling around" - just finding a chord and playing around with it, trying different tempos, transitions, and whatever the musician feels like, usually all done while playing non-stop, not breaking for a retry or stopping because something is "wrong." At times this will create a chaotic scramble of notes, sometimes it's just another refrain that sounds like any other. However, such noodling taps into the musician's creativity, and the experimentation lets the mind explore the world outside of what they know. Some famous noodling creations have been the famous keyboard riff on The Doors' "Light my Fire" and the lead guitar piece on The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang." That's just a modest sampling of the many songs where the artist says, "Well, I was just noodling around, and suddenly..." The rest is history.

With writing, it's fairly simple. You pick a word, preferably one that has some flex to it, such as "Chance." Chance can be a verb, a noun, a descriptor - at this point it's your choice. You then just start writing things about the word, the different meanings, the interpretations, even simple arguments against things being "chance" events will suffice. Start writing the lyrics to Johnny Mathis's "Chances Are" and rework them into your own song about chance. Offer a simple, playful riff on ABBA's "Take A Chance on Me," or talk about former Chicago Cubs player-manager Frank Chance. Find all the words you can that rhyme with chance, then write about how those words might be connected. The mission is to explore the word, massage it like bread dough, look at it from all directions, and engage with its many purposes and meanings. 

Again (and I cannot state this enough), you will likely end up with a lot of gibberish, and a bunch of sentences that mean very little or carry no real value. That's fine - that's actually the purpose here; to create as much as possible without worrying about the way it should be done. You could spend all your time noodling around and end up with tired fingers, or you might just hatch a little gem like:

Chance is knowing the
rarity of true beauty
is still possible

Was that a great haiku? Meh - to each their own. Whether you come up with something as good or better doesn't matter. What matters is exercising your creativity, and knowing you will not find those things when you don't try. Happy noodling.  

It's That Time of Year!

Some people consider the first day of autumn to be the beginning of the holiday season, while others wait until after Halloween. Everyone has their own special way to commemorate the coming of the holiday season, and writers are no exception. However, the landmark event that kicks off the holiday season for most writers is November 1st - the official beginning of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This event starts off November with little fanfare, similar to the All Saints Day that is also recognized by many as November 1st, and they share similar qualities: Not many people know they exist, and even fewer people participate, but for some people it's a very sacred day.

Now, the importance of this special occasion (NaNoWriMo, not All Saints Day) is to motivate writers to write the first draft of a novel in a month - specifically, November. It doesn't have to be perfect, or even publishable at this point, it just has the be written from beginning to end. It might sound daunting, and it is, but that's the whole point - the mission of typing 2,000 words onto a page every day (even on Thanksgiving), and realizing just what can be created with such concerted effort. (Side note: For those who think it's impossible, Stephen King wrote The Running Man in a week and on a typewriter, so it can be done) Incidentally, the NaNoWriMo run will also push you into certain habits I often refer to, and make them a part of your process, but that's another story. 

This year I am not participating in the NaNoWriMo marathon - I have a few manuscripts that need my attention already. However, I am offering all my readers an opportunity to take on a similar challenge, but nothing so harsh as creating a novel. Rather, my challenge is this. Write something every day. Something narrative, something creative, something more than just a shopping list. It can be a haiku, a paragraph about your feelings, a description of your cat as he throws up in the hall - anything that forces you to create through words. It's not the daunting task of making a 60,000-word manuscript, but it does get the habits going. Something as simple as that, when done for 30 days, can have a profound effect on your writing process.

So now I wish you all good luck on your NaNoWriMo writing adventure, whichever it may be. I look forward to plenty of interesting reactions to this ongoing exercise, and possibly some personal revelations about your writing, your process, or some ideas that wandered into your mind and allowed you to think about something in a new way. Just remember that it's very possible to accomplish this task; the important part is trying to do it.

And even though Stephen King wrote The Running Man in a week, take that with a grain of salt. He was not exactly clean or sober at the time, so he had a little extra energy.   

Which Way to Go?

I have mentioned this before and thought I would give it another spin. (And no, this is not a Halloween-themed post) I have engaged a few up-and-coming writers about their next project, and they are not sure what to write. Upon diving deeper into their quandary, they are not sure if they want to write a life story - a non-fiction event - or an interesting story that would be based on their actual existence but more interesting, more exciting. This would seem to present a binary choice - truth or fiction - but actually suggests something which should move writers even more - what do they want to say?

The act of saying something in your story is simple if you want it to be, but it doesn't have to be. For example: I was in a bad car accident when I was 18. Now, if I want to tell people just what happened that night on Hamilton Road, then my task is fairly easy. I discuss the events, offer what I experienced, and how it concluded. It's clearly non-fiction, and tells everyone about that terrible experience. Now, that is writing (although it's more like reporting). Now here is where the road diverges.

In that example, such a story would say, "I was in a car accident when I was 18. Here is what happened." However, I happen to know there's a lot more to that moment than how a 1976 Pacer can end up on its roof along a country road. That story has more to say, if I let it. If what I want to say before I start writing is how I realized how freaking fragile life and the human body can be, well, I can tell the same story but make it more about feelings. Do I need to describe the spilled gasoline and coolant spilled across the street? It did happen, but it doesn't speak to what I really want to say. I can ignore that and talk about my own blood splashed about, the broken glass embedded in my skin, and the lingering shock of coming so close to being a roadside casualty. Still non-fiction, but exploring the emotions.

Now we bend into the fiction neighborhood. Let's pretend that what I want to say is the fear of walking through the night, injured, bleeding, and seeking refuge. Sure, I could stick with the car accident story and talk about walking to the nearest house not even a quarter-mile away. There's scary feelings with that...for the most part. But what if I fictionalize things a little, and that country road is longer and emptier than ever? What if my injuries are worse - a broken bone or two, an injury that won't stop bleeding? Now we really explore the fear of the moment, but at the expense of the facts. 

Now let's make the story suspenseful and put some skin in the game - like a passenger in the car too injured to move. The main character has to head out into the night, holding tight to their own injuries, desperately searching for help while not knowing if their passenger is alive or dead. We have diverged from the real story altogether, but we retain the elements that make it interesting. This becomes the story someone writes if they want to say something about being hurt, scared, and worried for someone else but pressing on in the face of adversity. And yes, it's total fiction, but the writer incorporates their experiences into the main character's feelings.

Now, this might seem like the point being made is that to make a story interesting, it has to be fictionalized. Here's the hook that ties all this together - any true-story can be made more interesting by incorporating all the feelings of what the author wants to say. Readers understand events, but connect with feelings, so by writing the story as it happened but focusing on the feelings, fears, and the nitty-gritty of the experience, true stories can still communicate what a writer wants to say. It's just a matter of knowing what you want to say and how you want to say it.           

When Did It All Begin?

Don't be alarmed - I'm not getting all philosophical. I was thinking the other day about my ongoing journey into writing and a thought bounced into my head: When did all of this start? When did I find myself drawn toward stories and storytelling, particularly of the kind we write about? It turns out, the answer to this is not as easy as one might think - at least as far as I am concerned. The more I got thinking about this, the more I realized it's a pretty deep rabbit hole to dive into. And yes, I felt I was up to the challenge.

Now, regular readers of this blog (or literally anyone who went back to read my first post, "Starting off as a writer,") know my foray into the actual art of writing started off as a severe liver infection that prompted me to start writing down all the stories bouncing around in my head. Simple, yes, but all the storytelling stuff and the writing stuff goes back well before that. I actually took a writing workshop course when I was fourteen as part of my high-school curriculum but it didn't go well, mostly because I was a very distracted fourteen and wasn't willing to dedicate the time and energy required for the study of writing. Furthermore, I definitely wasn't ready for the poetry part that would come the following semester - that would only come much later. This tells me that the interest was there even in my early teens, just not the focus.

Now, I did love to tell a good story back when I was six - at least according to my parents, who serve as biased source material. Apparently, someone asking me how my day was could trigger a long, winding yarn about everything that happened and drift into some things that clearly did not happen, but I was just loving the chance to be in that storytelling space. Looking back at some very early writing projects (like kindergarten), however, makes it readily apparent that I did not have the grammatical skills nor the patience to write all these wonderful tales down. After all, at that age I was still mastering things like not getting the letter 'e' backward and staying on the lines. Writing a sentence was challenging (and kind of boring considering how I preferred to just blurt things out), so the stories were there, just not the writing.

Why am I saying all this? I think it all gets down to the fact that we all have stories flowing through us, and for some of us, those stories are load-bearing entities holding us together. The writing of them, however, requires a few magical ingredients to get thrown into the pot before it all reaches critical mass and we begin our little journey. Now, these ingredients aren't going to mix themselves, and sometimes we have to add the last few touches to kick things off - inspiration, time, sentiment, something - because they need that little push.

So if you are feeling the urge to be a writer but there's something not quite there yet, start looking around for what inspired you in the past, for what moves you, for what gets you inspired, then ask yourself what's missing. Sometimes all it takes is just sitting down and typing, but other times it takes a larger step. And unless you are fortunate enough to get a severe liver infection, you will have to find that one yourself.    

The Tough Question

"So, how's your writing going?"

Every time I get asked that, I think, "Oh, kill me now." Not that I have a death wish, but open-ended questions like that hit me in two places at once. First and foremost, it reminds me that for the very moment I am being asked that question, I am not writing. I'm talking with people, at a party, or usually doing something social and the subject comes up. At that point, I've pretty much checkmated myself because I invite that very question to occur as a part of the ongoing small-talk - yet another reason I hate that question. However, I still feel this passive sense of guilt because I had a choice to either write or socialize, and I chose the latter. Now I would pay for it. However, that's not the worst part.

The real irksome part of getting hit with that question is it usually gets me to ask myself how my writing is going. I start a self-inventory process of the things I have written lately, anything I have running around my brain that I really want to write, what I am avoiding writing, and all these other writing questions. (Yes, I clearly overthink certain things.) But while I overthink everything, the question invariably comes up - how am I progressing as a writer? Am I progressing as a writer? What can I do to make more progress as a writer? (Wow, do I overthink things.)

The questions I end up asking myself may sound borne out of insecurity, but they do serve a purpose. Whenever we question ourselves as writers, the best thing to do is have a handy go-to move to put us back on track. One of my favorites is to look at old writing, just to see how far I actually have progressed. I can open up a ten-year-old document and do a quick word check on how many times I used, "that," "was," or "were," just to see where I wrote in a sloppy, passive manner. While I can't do that during whatever social event I attended that  led to getting asked that question, but it's still a good way to remedy doubts.

Of course, one of the sure-fire ways is always to just talk about the last thing you wrote, and let yourself get pulled back into your writing process. If your recent work was something as simple as a story of the last moments of a ham sandwich, remind yourself about whatever flared up in your mind and inspired you to write that story, to commit it to words instead of it just taking up a few neurons. Recreate whatever drove you to write, and express it in full. After all, you are a writer, so talk about writing.

However, the one thing that you should always keep in your back pocket is a little reminder. Even if you don't feel like much of a writer because you are going through writer's block, or caught in a plot contradiction, or getting those Act Two Blues, these are what writers go through. These happen, and will happen again as long as you continue to write. They are the unspoken moments writers go through, just like the war stories that never get told because they don't carry the drama of the exciting stories. So as long as you are writing, as long as you are living the life and working the processes you have developed and are developing, it's a pretty simple question to answer.

"It's going great, thank you."     

"When You Get Lost, You Learn"

The title of today's piece comes from an African proverb that basically says the same thing but with a few extra words. The reason I decided to lead with this is that for the past couple of weeks, I have been quite lost as a writer. It is difficult to explain, but my creative guide has been very much asleep, and I have been adrift in the sense that I haven't been able to find the route to creating anything. You know how I say it's important to have a bunch of routines to foster a creative environment? Well, those haven't been working. I have been very much in the midst of a strange land, and I didn't know the route to get me back to that place.

I have seen this with plenty of other writers, and indeed it is different than writer's block. When we are blocked, we know what we want to create but we can't grasp whatever it might take to get us from where we stand to where we want to be. This kind of lost feeling is like waking up and not having access to all those tools that allow us to create the bizarre monsters known as out writing. Nothing seems possible at that point, not as if we are back at square one, but as if we were in a maze where we no longer knew our objective. This can hit in the middle of writing an epic novel, or a poem, or anything really. But when we are stuck in this space, what do we do? How do we escape the maze when we don't even know how we got there?

This is where the proverb comes in. We learn the most when we are not surrounded by the familiar, by the known. When we are in unfamiliar territory, everything might be scary and different, but it is in fact, new. It can be taken as a terrifying situation, or it can be taken as a chance to discover a new world full of strange, fascinating things. Indeed, when we are lost, we are away from the familiar, but if we let it, that can be a liberating experience. Without presumptions and rules set for us to follow, we are free to do whatever we want. We can learn all about how this new world of the lost works, and see what it has to offer.

I read somewhere that one of the secrets to keeping an active mind was trying new things periodically, and doing this in many different ways. Break routines now and then, even if it's as simple as trying a new restaurant on occasion, taking a different route home once a month, seeing a movie that you would normally have no interest in. Do these things with no guarantee that they will be new and fascinating experiences - just accept that they will be different, and opportunities for fresh, new experiences. That's all they have to be, so try them out for size.

And when it comes to writing, I learned that once I got past the feeling that I was stuck in a new, weird, maze and changed that to the opportunity to explore an entirely new, different kind of world that happened to be maze-shaped, my writing issues crumbled. I adventured, I explored, and I didn't get lost because I didn't think I had to be anywhere but in that space in that moment. Once I appreciated that space, I started writing again. And I am glad to be back.    

What's In An Albatross?

A few disclaimers about this post: First, this is not an anatomy lesson, and no harm has or will come to any birds whatsoever in the making of this piece. Secondly, this is not intended to be used in any way that would harm an albatross or any other of our fine avian friends. Lastly, just go with the whole albatross discussion, and see what it's actually about.

Sometimes, when a fellow writer feels bogged down in their writing and can't get themselves into a good space to be creative, I offer them the albatross challenge. In short, start writing about an albatross. Start describing it through the senses, but really don't be afraid to investigate and go deep into its particular smell or the feeling of its coarse, thick feathers. (Describing how it tastes is up to your imagination - please do not eat an albatross just to help your descriptive process). 

Now, this might seem like a simple task, but the challenge is to take it further. What does the voice of the albatross sound like? Not its call across the waters, but if it could talk, what would it sound like? Would it have a British accent? Would it use a lot of slang? What would it think about how people sounded with their smaller throats and beaks? Start challenging yourself to think of it as a unique entity, and how that might stand apart from what we typically think about these birds. Since there's no right or wrong to this exercise, you have the right to play around with it. Have fun with the exercise. Give your albatross a name - it should probably be Steve but that's your call. Then get to know Steve.

At this point, your mind should be travelling away from what we think about the typical albatross, which in fairness, is probably not very well known anyway. At this point, you can write down the secret world of these birds, their culture and habits, the immense efforts they take to make sure nobody ever finds out how they can speak English (and probably many other languages), and the heavy burden they carry in concealing everything about their special ways. God forbid if any human accidentally stumbled upon the secret kingdom of the albatross homeland. Would the birds rise up? Finally let the truth be told? Come out and demand a place amongst civilized society?

As you can tell, this exercise has very little to do with the fine albatross. This is merely a deep dive into committing yourself to writing about whatever circulates through your brain, and exploring it without the confines of annoying things like reality. Whenever we are hung up with our writing, it's usually because we have hit some kind of perceived boundary and do not have a good way to get through it. Usually the boundary is nothing more than some annoying obstacle that has no power over us, but we focus on it rather than the project of writing. So when these obstacles appear, your only responsibility is to find a way to break yourself from known concepts and explore the unknown spaces. And a good way to do that is with an albatross.

BTW - I chose an albatross for this example because it was alphabetically the first one I could think of. Your bird may vary.    

Screwing Up vs. Failing Up

Writing is a parade of mistakes and rewrites, and even that doesn't cover all the things that can go wrong. A three-hundred-page manuscript can fall apart with just a few bad pages at the end. Many well-intended essays can go completely sideways with a few poorly-placed words. And yes, even when all the words are the right ones, sometimes a piece can completely miss its target. This is a terrible fate for a piece of writing, but it's not a judgment of our work as much as it is an opportunity for us to do better.

Some of the more famous screw-ups have been very well-intentioned and purposeful, but they just ended up going in the wrong direction because the weight of the words were taken the wrong way. There was a very famous book written at the turn of the last century (yes, over 100 years ago) that was a scathing indictment of all the failings of capitalism while also backing the virtues of socialism. Surprisingly, this book is still standard reading in many schools, and was responsible for a lot of legislation getting passed that would change our way of living forever. Can you name it?

Well, chances are, you can't name the book by the way I described it - a pro-socialism book - but that's what the author intended it to be. It showed through a narrative tale about how a family was destroyed by an industry that exploited both its workers and customers, and our main character eventually supports a socialist cause that sympathizes with his cause. However, its writing about commercial exploitation was quite vivid and disturbingly drawn out, while the political side was actually quite boring. See the problem? The boring part was supposed to be the big hit of the book, but it didn't get the readers' attention. What drew all the views was the graphic descriptions of the meat-processing industry in the early 1900s. Yes, the book I refer to is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It inspired the famous Meat Safety Act of 1906, and did very little to rally the socialist cause. As Sinclair said later on, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Oops.

Sinclair's folly, however, should not be a sign that he screwed up. As a staunch socialists, his motives were obvious, but his writing persuaded a different demographic to take action. The laws that followed did put controls on wildly out-of-control exploitation by businesses in the industry, but it was a far cry from what he hoped. In this regard he didn't screw up - he failed up. He didn't achieve his goal but he still wrote something that changed the world a little bit.

When we write, we need to give ourselves the liberty to fail up - to miss our target but still produce something impressive and thought-provoking. Not everyone who reads your work - be it a book like The Jungle or an essay or poem - is going to walk away with the same impression. Hopefully, you will get your message to the intended audience, but even if you miss, you still reach people. As long as you write with conviction, your words will be persuasive. Just give yourself a gut-check now and then to make sure the words you write match the statement you want to make. Be honest and observant of how you convey your message, and you won't screw up.       

And A Time to Scribble...

Maybe some people are picking this up as a trend, so I will just go with it. I have been talking about a lot of things in my past few posts that diverge from an actual writing process. They've been more like advice on how the written world is different than the real world, and how handwriting some things can affect the creative centers of the brain. So, in keeping with the spirit of things, here's another thing for you as a writer to try, just to see what it does for your process: scribbling.

Now, scribbling has many definitions, including but not limited to just wildly marking up a page with ink or with whatever you choose to write with. When a writer scribbles, it should be very similar but with words. What kind of words? Any words - anything remotely like words. Just applying ink to page, and letting the flow happen. It sounds weird, but I will explain its purpose.

First, it helps to know the rules, which are: no rules. If you get out a legal pad and just start jotting down things that pop into your head, you do not need to start at the top of the page. You do not need to obey the margins, write things left to right, top to bottom, or even in order. the blue-ruled lines across the page are irrelevant and should be ignored. Write words large, small, in cursive or print, whatever comes to mind. The magic of this is that it pushes you to see what is possible outside of all the grammatical, stylistic rules you've taught yourself. Instead of driving within the lines, you are free-wheeling across the Nevada Salt Plains, no boundaries, no restrictions, finding out what you want to do. It's actually exciting once you open yourself up to possibilities.

What should be the final outcome of this? Well, nothing amazing, and likely nothing worth keeping - that's fine. The idea is try to do this freestyle form of writing/play for ten minutes, or fifteen if you are enjoying it. Nobody has to see it, no other eyes but yours ever need explore what you write. It's strictly open season on words for words' sake and nothing else. But after that ten-to-fifteen minute period, end the session with one sentence, written at the bottom of the page, describing in whatever way you wish the experience of free-wheeling across the page and writing things without restriction. This sentence will be the takeaway from all this - the moment that you can look back upon and realize how after you broke all the rules, scribbled random nonsense all over the page or pages, and just poured things onto the page, everything afterward was fine. You created nonsense, broke the rules, and nothing bad happened. You escaped your boundaries, did something weird, wild, and new, and it all worked out. It's a feeling that's hard to describe until you try it and feel the results.

So often we do confine our creativity because something can't/shouldn't/won't be possible in our mind. This is usually because we create our own little boundaries that, if reinforced too much, trap in our creative urges. We lose the urge to explore because practicality overwhelms us. So, now and then we offer ourselves the chance to live free from the rules, throw around our words, and let the creativity flex its muscles. This is what being a creative is all about, and sometimes, it takes a little practice.

Incidentally, this is entirely different from free-verse poetry, although not at much as one might think. However, that's an article for another time.   

And So It Is Written...

Maybe it's a quick tell about my age, but I can read and write in cursive. I have been able to read cursive since I was about four, thanks to my mother diligently teaching me to understand her very elegant handwriting, and at about eight I could write it, although with far less elegance. I eventually developed my own style of semi-legible handwriting, and so started my practice of writing my homework, my journal entries, my everything. Then, one fateful day, my father picked up a used Smith-Corona typewriter to inspire me to do more homework, and that changed everything. Out with the script, in with the 12-point Courier Elite (that's the font old typewriters use). From there, I evolved to keyboards, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, why did I give everyone this useless history lesson on how I learned cursive? Well, as it turns out, in my various readings I have noticed more and more discussion about the benefits of... not cursive, but writing things by hand instead of typing them. Now, what kind of heresy is this, you might ask. Are these studies done by Luddites? Is it all research funded by Big Pencil and its many industries? How can there be benefits? Computers are far faster, they have built-in spellcheckers and grammar-proofing, they know the margins and even typeset the letters. It does not go unnoticed, btw, that I am in fact creating this post on a computer. So what's the benefit?

Tell me this - have you ever had an idea for writing that just can't wait to pour right out of you? When you start writing, you just can't type fast enough because the creativity is just overpowering? If so, good for you. The pro-handwriting argument, however, suggests that unless we are just overflowing with words, it serves us better to exist within our writing, appreciating and savoring the process of creating as much as the creativity itself. Typing is a blur of activity, often working in fits and starts. Writing something by hand, however, takes an entirely different route through the brain, and that's worth exploring.

When we type, we hit a variety of keys and the corresponding letters appear as designated. At least in word processing, no matter how hard or soft I press the key, the letter is basically the same. Each key feels the same, each letter just a square on the keyboard. The process works, but it uses a part of our operational brain that reproduces activities such as pulling a lever to get a treat. The lever isn't the treat itself, it's a cause-effect process. When we write, however, different parts of the brain kick in because there is a direct connection between our pen or pencil and whatever we are writing on. If we write fast, slow, with anger, intensely, whatever, it shows in our handwriting. Activating different brain functions brings different results, and some of them actually feed into our creativity.

Lastly, and this may sound like a weird thing to boast about, but writing by hand - either cursive or print - slows down our mind and we focus more on the words than the paragraphs. The experience becomes more intimate, our thoughts more concentrated on the details rather than the broad brush of filling the page. And as we create things through this deliberate process, we think about what we are doing and we have the opportunity to consider whether it should be a little better. Our mind is still very fertile and creative, but it is now paying attention to the little things, and those make up the real grit and substance of most works.

Try writing a descriptive paragraph by hand, just to feel the experience. Describe some motionless, unimportant thing in the house - a refrigerator, a couch, a cat - and write seven sentences about it by hand (I apologize in advance for the hand cramps). Feel yourself in that moment, creating something on a simple sheet of paper with a basic pen, and see how it feels to engage in this process in a different way. You don't have to change, you don't have to delete Microsoft Word, just give a try and see how it feels. Try it a few times and you will realize it can be an excellent tool for writing first drafts, or sketching out things when you just need to formulate ideas. Then go ahead and type away if you wish. Just enjoy the process for what it offers.

And don't let my cat see that thing about being unimportant. 

Reading is a Different World

I performed a quiet little experiment during one writing workshop (that none of the participants were ever aware of as far as I know). I set my phone to record the meeting - just the voices - then let it get transcribed, word-for-word, to a document. Now - keeping in mind that I was there and speaking as well - when I read the discussions in written form, they were barely decipherable. I mean, I knew the content and context, but reading it off the page was absolutely brutal. Why? Well, they were talking, not writing, but their spoken voice was on the page.

You might be asking yourself whether it really makes that much of a difference between something someone said and writing something that was said. The difference is amazing, though probably not all that surprising. The difference, surprisingly, has very little to do with what they say as much as how they say it. More to the point, it has to do with the fact that "natural" speaking might sound fine but it reads very unnaturally. 

Think of it this way. I am a fan of the Law & Order franchise and its billion spin-offs. Every week, I get to see a nice legal procedural, watch the prosecution and defense have their back and forth, and usually a dramatic twist is thrown in as well. It's entertaining television. However, if you have ever seen a real trial, or compromised and seen a real crime documentary, you realize nothing is really that clean-cut. The legal counsels is full of average people, as are the defendant, the prosecution witnesses, the judge, the jury - every single person is just... a person. They do not have polished appearances, well-scripted dialogue, or magnetic presences. Basically, they are just like you and me - real people - and not the well-lit, properly made-up people on television.

Now, I am not downplaying real people or saying that television performances are better than reality television or documentaries - they just have their place. In my little workshop experiment, I noted how about one-half of everyone's sentences were run-ons, fragmented, used bad grammar, and/or were stuffed with "uh," "well," and "like" (including my own sentences). I understood every one of these lines as spoken at the time because they were filled with facial gestures, tonal inflections, and so on that filled in the cracks and made it a complete experience. In the written world, we lose that advantage and have to depend on clean dialogue so people don't get lost by reading all the "...well, um, it's like, y'know..." and trying to parse out the meaning.

This doesn't mean we can't give speeches a little variability - throw in some "ain't" or "y'all" to mix it up a little - but we should recognize that the written conversation should not sound similar to how we really speak. In a perfect piece of writing, a conversation should sound like how we think we heard everything afterward, with our brain editing out the stuttering, stammering, excessive words, and so on. Let it be clean in that regard, and save "real dialogue" for the documentaries.

And yes, it's okay to use the passive voice within dialogue. Just keep it inside the quotes.   

Rough Drafts and Tough Drafts

Writing can be many things for creatives, and is often more than one thing at any given time. Writing, for me, can be an exercise, a challenge, a puzzle to be solved, and often provides some form of catharsis. If I accomplish more than one of these feats during a writing session, I feel like I've won the game of writing. However, to win, I also need to know what my goal is - sometimes it's a victory just to put words on a page, other times it's all about finishing a particular piece. My current project has a goal in mind - finishing a first draft. However, this rough draft isn't the win, because it's also a tough draft.

Allow me to explain. Today, September 5th, is my mother's birthday. She was born 87 years ago today. However, this is the first birthday since her death, so instead of it being a time to celebrate with some cake and stuff, it's a much more somber day, and I don't like somber. Therefore, my goal was to try to seek some form of catharsis by writing about her and our complex relationship in one form or another as a way of remembering her. This is a case where one can claim victory merely by creating something. However, writing about my mother after her passing is not easy - therefore, this becomes a tough draft to write.

The tough drafts are far more difficult to create than just a rough draft, because the real challenge is digging deep enough within yourself to find that something worth pouring out your heart for. For first-time writers, sometimes it's a win just to write a simple confession of some thing never before spoken, or acknowledge something that is difficult to say out loud. "Growing up in a broken home really sucked," would make for a great reveal for first-time writers, especially if they had never admitted such a thing in the first place. However, future projects would require deeper revelations, more intense feelings, and an increasing reluctance to face up to the difficult truths (the drafts aren't called "tough" for now reason). 

The first tough draft I wrote about my mother's passing was simply saying that she died. Not "passed away" or "drew her last breath" but died, D-I-E-D. Using such a cold, absolute term was difficult to commit to words, and even more so to read to myself afterward, but it forced me to confront, head-on, a truth I did not want to face. The simple phrase, "My mother died last week" became my own tough draft, and that was all that needed to be said. It was, in that regard, a final draft as well.

Now, the one last thing about writing the tough draft - it's yours to do with as you wish. Nobody has to edit it, read it, see it, or even know it exists. Its purpose is merely the challenge of you writing it, then seeing this cold-hearted truth for what it is. Anything after that is up to you, because once you create the tough draft, you've already won.

Happy birthday, Mom!     

It Doesn't Mean A License to Rhyme

I made a promise to my loyal readers (and all the other ones) that I would cool down on the posts about the virtues of writing poetry as a way of enhancing your overall writing skills. And, even though I still firmly believe that the art of conveying your thoughts and feelings through specific structure, meter, and rhyming patterns is a great way to sharpen your literary skills, I am keeping to my word and not writing a poetry piece this time. Mostly. I am, however, going to discuss a subject that hits close to the target: poetic license.

Now, here we have an odd contradiction. The classical forms of poetry had a meter you needed to follow, rules that had to be obeyed, and a structure that turned a particular poem into a sonnet, a limerick, or what have you. Conversely, poetic license is one of the ways we, as writers, are allowed to deviate from our pre-defined structure in order to make an artistic point. Since the "poetic" part of license can also be replaced with "dramatic," "artistic," "creative," and a series of other expressive words, it doesn't have to push all the responsibility into poetry. However, since poetry has so many rules, breaking them for effect is a good way to show how this function works.

An example of using this license in a non-poetry form would be, for example, to write a particular character's perspective in the passive voice to emphasize how truly boring this character is. No editor would recommend this, but if an author found a way to sneak it into the narrative, it could be effective and therefore, violate the rules against passive voice for dramatic effect. I have read a work (that unfortunately I cannot remember) which involved a very superficial salesman, and every description from his view was a hackneyed cliché. Everything came off as a bad sales pitch - but only in his narrative voice. He spoke like any other character, but the use of tired, worn-out descriptions spoke volumes about who the character was and how he thought. Would an editor like that in a first novel? Doubtful. Would it be ingenious? Definitely.

Over the past few decades since the advent of desktop publishing becoming so mainstream, another form of poetic license has been with choices of fonts and even point sizes as forms of expression. Depending on how these things are done, they can be clever, like using a strikethrough to represent someone's self-editing, or they can be silly, like someone's quotes always being in Comic Sans. Try it if you dare, but make sure it has purpose and meaning, and isn't just something you do just because you have a bunch of fonts.

Poetic license is an opportunity to make a statement by breaking the rules. This has been done across the spectrum, from Robert Frost to Lenny Bruce, and when it's done with purpose and intention, it gets noticed. When done improperly... well, it just looks like you don't know what you are doing. 

I will be taking Monday off to do Labor Day things. My next post will be on September 5th.    

Writing and Common Excuses Not To

If you qualify the term, "writer," as someone who has written and published some literature, then I can proudly say I know dozens of writers. If, however, you open up the definition of writer to include those people who have a great idea for a book, play, poem, etc., but just haven't gotten around to actually creating it, that tally rockets into the thousands. Now, I actually consider a writer someone who writes as a preferred form of communication for thoughts and ideas, which is an entirely different discussion. So, for now, let's look at the difference between those first two categories, and why people don't graduate from the big group to the narrower one.

"I really don't have the skills to say what I want to say." That's a fair assessment for an initial diagnosis, but it doesn't hold water in the long run. I played Little League baseball in my youth, and maybe two kids who I saw play really had what it took to go pro. (One went pro, but in basketball, the other died before graduating high school). The rest of those kids - myself included - had minimal talent but played in an attempt to get better. They found their strengths, worked on their weaknesses, and built up their game. Even I did, until I realized the weakness in my game was all the kids started hitting puberty and growing above five feet tall while I stayed a little pipsqueak. However, the point is, nobody has the skills straight out of the chute, which is why we write plenty of other things, working our way to where we can tell the tale we want to.

"I just don't have the time." I wrote my first novel, The Book of Cain, in 40-minute intervals on the train to and from work, assuming my joker friends didn't join me for the trip. I wanted to tell the story, so I made a little regular time to create. It took a while but it was worth it. And in case my case doesn't quite tip the scales, New York Times Bestseller Mary Kubica wrote her first book shortly after having her first child. Imagine having a child - knowing full well that those little darlings feed on your spare time - and still arranging a little time in the morning to write before the morning crying starts. Mary Kubica did that because she wanted to tell that story. She's told many more since that.

"I'll get around to it at some point." This one I hear a lot, and it really grates my nerves, today in particular. One of my longstanding friends - a journalist by trade and very deep into news and industry writing - always had a penchant for the theater. He performed in at least five different Shakespeare plays, and probably more stuff as well. However, he wanted to create something. He wanted to be the playwright, not the performer, if only once. Plenty of times over drinks, I would tell him to get started on it - it wasn't going to write itself. With gin-induced confidence I would get on his case to get started, to write an outline, a character sketch, a something that would get him moving. "I'll get around to it," he would answer.

My friend died this week, entirely unexpectedly. He never got around to writing his play, though I am sure he thought he had the time. But none of us have a guarantee on that.

"Everyone has a reason to not do something" as the saying goes. However, it just takes that first step forward to change the entire trajectory toward being productive and heading toward making that thing in your head come to life. At that point, you have done something that few have accomplished, many have wanted to do, and some never had the chance to complete.     

Details vs. Uncertainty

I don't think I've ever mentioned in this space how I know a famous actress. It's a funny story (not funny-haha but funny-unusual). We met back in 2008 on a commuter plane flight to a regional airport. The plane was a 19-seat Beech 1900, and we sat across the aisle from each other. As the plane flew over the Rockies, we both discovered that this would be a very turbulent flight, as was often the case in smaller planes, though this one was particularly bad. We made small-talk across the narrow aisle just to take our mind off of the bumping and bouncing, and discovered we were both flying into town for the same reason - a wedding (I was with the groom's family, she was a friend of them both). That was a great ice-breaker, and made for an easier flight. During the days running up to the wedding we talked quite a bit, and stayed in touch after everyone got married and flew back to civilization.

Now, the real question is, did you believe me, and what tipped the scales? After all, you as the reader have to draw a line somewhere, but what determines that? After all, I didn't give the actress's name, nor the name of where we flew from or to, other than us flying over the Rockies. However, the tiny little plane we were on can be verified, and anyone who has flown in smaller planes knows those flights can get rough. The scenario is plausible, and nothing happened that was over-the-top. What makes us choose truth versus fiction?

Often, that's what a good story toys with, regardless of whether it was actually truth or fiction. If the reader knows for certain that a story either happened or didn't, they settle into one camp or the other - acceptance or just enjoying a good yarn. However, if the reader does not know for certain whether this story is factual, they pay more attention. Maybe they want to look for plot points that would discredit the story or things that validate other facts they are aware of. In short, they are engaged with the story.

The secret (or at least one of them) regarding keeping the reader suspended over the chasm between truth and fiction lies in the details. For whatever relevance they might carry, details lean the needle toward truth, but they don't confirm anything. Yes, the Beech 1900 is an actual plane that was in service in 2008, but that doesn't prove anything. Turbulent flights over the Rockies are also a thing, and anyone who knows my family history knows my brother got married in Telluride, Colorado, in 2008. These details start taking the story into the solid story camp, and make up for the big question of whether or not I really met and talked with a famous actress.

The other thing that makes stories convincing are believable interactions. Striking up a conversation to get through a rough plane ride is a simple, unpresuming event that, when mentioned, gives the story a tinge of relatability. People often talk in planes - trust me, those conversations can get loud when I'm trying to sleep. The familiar anecdote is always important because the reader can associate with it.

Now, for those people who are still not convinced about this story being true, I offer you this: It's kind of true, kind of false. Yes, I did fly into Telluride in a Beech 1900, and it was a bumpy flight. I did meet a famous actress while there that week, and yes, we talked. We did take the same flight back to Denver, but I have not talked to her since. The point is, I extracted details of the factual part of the story, mixed them with just enough comfortable, familiar interactions, and came up with a story that kept the reader guessing until the end (or perhaps afterward). Most good suspense stories incorporate this blend of facts and subtle omissions to make an interesting tale because the reader becomes a participant in determining the story's believability. Whether it actually happened becomes academic.

Incidentally, did I mention that my stepmother is actually still in touch with that actress? Funny story...    

Talking to the Reader

On August 30th, I will be speaking at the Park Forest Library at the Local Authors' Fair. I love getting a chance to talk with people who have read my works, but I really love getting a chance to talk with potential writers. My talk, "So You Want To Be A Writer...," will be all about the journey to being a writer, but deep inside, I will be quietly thrilled that I am also talking to my readers. And that got me thinking - what are the best ways for a writer to talk to the reader in their stories?

I am sure that more than a few of you are familiar with the Marvel character Deadpool of comic and movie fame. With no offense intended to Ryan Reynolds, for this particular piece I will mostly focus on the Deadpool of the comics, even though the movie version has the same mannerisms. The point is, Deadpool has this habit of talking directly to the reader, either with comments about our world, some reminder that he exists within a graphic novel, etc. This is called, "breaking the fourth wall," and it is what the character is known for - along with abundant gratuitous violence. Deadpool's habit of breaking the fourth wall was pretty unique when he was first introduced, but this quirk is far from new.

While I don't know the origin, breaking the fourth wall goes way back before my time - even Shakespeare used it with a device known as an aside. This is when a character on the stage would turn to the audience and make a deliberate, informative quip about the scene that was unspoken but brought something new for the audience to appreciate. Sometimes it was the character's insight, sometimes a statement about the hidden implications of an action. In any case, this device gives additional detail to the audience, be they reading the play or watching it performed on stage.

Now, for us writers, how can we talk directly to the reader? Well, we can write a story in the second-person, which is written like the main character is telling the story to the reader - a one-sided discussion of a series of events, perhaps even with the reader assumed to be part of the story. The Edgar Allen Poe classic, The Tell-Tale Heart, is also a way to do this, where the narrator is telling the story directly to the reader, trying to convince the reader of his own sanity. These stories speak directly to the reader, but are difficult to fit into a longer-form story.

Probably the most common, and the simplest way to talk to the reader is to get the reader involved with a character, then explore the character's thoughts, motivations, and most importantly, their doubts. This can create a form of engagement that lets a story remain in the first- or third-person, but quietly prompt the reader to think about a particular situation and consider their feelings about it.

Consider this piece of writing about a person trying to consider someone else's motives:

"I thought about the way Steve acted at the bar last night and different thoughts went through my mind. Perhaps Steve had too much to drink last night and let things get carried away. Maybe Steve just needed to blow off some steam and took it too far. I thought Steve had his act together, but now I  more to consider."

This gives us the inside view of our character's thought process, and informs us about the issues at hand, but does it really talk to the reader? It discusses issues but the reader remains emotionally at arm's-length. Now consider this rewrite:

"I thought about the way Steve acted at the bar last night and different thoughts went through my mind. Did Steve let things get carried away because he was drunk? Was Steve blowing off some steam and let it go too far? I thought Steve was cool - have I been wrong about Steve all this time?"

When these observations and considerations get turned into questions, the reader gets challenged as well. The reader now feels prompted to find an answer for themselves, even as the story goes on. In the reader's mind, they are thinking about just how they feel about Steve, and they allow this to affect their feelings as they read on.

Setting Steve aside, this is how we can talk to the reader without actually breaking the fourth wall. Questions that interrogate the character from inside also target the reader, and bring them closer to the story. The reader and the character might not even come up with the same answers, but now the reader has an opinion about the whole Steve situation, and they are further invested in the story. At that point, the writer has accomplished a big part of their mission - engaging the reader on another level. So, if there's a need to get the audience closer, tricks like that are subtle ways of deepening the engagement.

And so you know, Steve was clearly being a dick that night. No doubt about it.