Saying No to No

I have to admit, I enjoy a challenge.  After all, what's the fun in something if you don't have to sweat a little?  Especially with your writing.  If others say no to your work or to parts of your story, treat it as a personal challenge.  I mean do make it personal.  Don't ignore the "no"; pay close attention to it. 

Dig deep.  Fight for your story.  Really look at the comments you are getting from the literary world, including your critique partners.  Ask yourself, Is there a general thread or commonality there?  If so, try incorporating those comments and suggestions into your work.  Then sit back and ask yourself, Is my story now stronger and/or better? 

Making a story work takes work.  Which means that you have to be prepared to say no yourself.  You have to say no to the outside distractions that are fighting to get in . . . like that Netflix series that is beckoning to you to binge watch.  Or that closet that suddenly has to be organized.  But once you have your story all clean, shiny and new,  it will all be worth it.

What Was That Noise??

My mom couldn't stand the suspense of an unopened gift or an unknown resolution in a novel.  She'd try very hard to resist the impulse, but she'd almost always give in and read the end of that book.

My aunt made the most delicious fudge from a secret recipe that she refused to divulge, and she'd only make it at Christmas.  My mom knew that fudge was arriving at our house around December 20, or so, and she adored and craved that fudge like the rest of us.  We were all shocked one year when the box still lay unopened under the tree on December 25 . . . until my brother opened it and found an entire corner of fudge cut out and missing.

Annie Dillard once said, "Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now."  It's one of my favorite writing quotes.  My mom would have loved that quote, but I'm quite sure Ms. Dillard wasn't referring to suspense.


Suspense has to be stretched out until the rubber band is just about to snap.

What's inside the box?

What's behind the door?

What's around the corner?

Didn't you hear that?

You wake up in the darkness of your room . . . Did you just dream that voice? . . . Or did it come from downstairs?


We have to give it away a trickle at a time, but do give a glimpse to keep the reader wondering and turning those pages.  Give a quick flash of what is around that corner.  Make them want to sneak into that box of fudge.

I leave you with another quote and a challenge from the incomparable Stephen King:

Going Over to the Dark Side . . . Sort Of

Character flaws.  We all have them.  And so should your characters.

Like our children, we want our characters to be perfect, so we naturally want to give them streamlined, worry-free lives where they do no wrong.  But really, where’s the fun in that?  We have to have growth and change in our characters, otherwise, there is no story.  It’s a great big yawner from the first page.

A long time ago I got a handwritten note on my returned manuscript from an editor.  I can still remember it, word for word:  “Your character has no redeeming qualities.”  

Wow.  I guess I went completely to the dark side.  Basically this editor was saying she hated my main character, and not necessarily in a Voldemort Darth Vader love-to-hate sort of way.  

So . . . we need to be somewhere in the middle.  The only way we can do that is to really know our characters.  I used to think I could get to know my character as I schlepped through my story.  But that can get me in a whole world of trouble, sending my character every which way in a confusing story world.  

I will now defer to the late great Ray Bradbury who once said, “Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.” –THEN start your story.  Some of that information about your character will never make its way into your book.  It will stay inside your head, simmering there as you write.  It will, in fact, affect all of your writing, because what you know about your character will come out in bits and pieces with their dialogue, with the way they walk across the room, the way they interact with the other characters, etc.

I am going to leave you with a writing prompt to get you started:  Darth Vader and Pollyanna had a baby . . . Go!

The Summer I Tempted Fate

It was forbidden, which meant it beckoned to us all the more that summer between fourth and fifth grade.

So far, we'd made it to the very edge a few times, but none of that counted.

Sure, there were stories of kids who had made it, unscathed, but then there were the stories that might be considered in the urban legend category . . . kids from some other neighborhood who had been swallowed up by the mere dirt of the embankment, or who had fallen all the way to the berry fields at the bottom, torn apart by sticker bushes, both arms and legs broken.

But this was our summer.  We were prepared to be a little battered and bruised, but we were going to make it.  We rode our ten-speeds and Stingrays over the fir needled streets of Forest Knoll and past the ranch houses of Forest Villa, with confidence that can only be possessed by a pack of unencumbered ten and eleven-year-olds in the heat of summer.

We stashed  our bikes in the safety of some thick rhododendron bushes and headed to where the grass stopped and the cliff began.

From our points of view, the cliff looked like this:

 Or actually like this:

With Pixie Stix as our own form of Clif bar energy, we edged our way down sideways at times, and sometimes backwards.  But we made it.  We made it all the way down to the valley at the bottom and back up again, neighborhood victors.

We told our story to all who would listen, pausing dramatically as we described the rusty car without wheels and doors (quite possibly haunted) that had somehow made it halfway down.  We described the treacherous sinkholes toward the bottom (most definitely filled with quicksand) that we had all somehow managed to avoid.  And we made the solemn vow to never go back down again -- at least not without each other.  Fate couldn't be tempted twice, could it?


Only later on in my life did I see the cliff and the valley in a different way:

  But no picture or adult point of view can do anything to change or spoil that victorious summer of my eleventh year.

" . . . Are You Telling Me You Built a Time Machine . . . Out of a DeLorean?. . ."

Many of my writer and creative-type friends have just drifted into their REM states when I get up in the morning.  The sun hasn’t even opened one eye, but I stumble down the stairs to feed my cats and open my laptop.

It’s for a pretty simple reason, really.  Time.  

I’ve been doing this for several years now.  I guess I’m trying to stomp on the popular refrain of busy people:  There are only 24 hours in each day.  Here’s my trick.  Getting up before everyone except my cats adds minutes and hours to my day.  No, I don’t have a plutonium-filled DeLorean in my garage (unfortunately!), but I am adding minutes and hours to my writing day.  

It’s the way I have to do it.  I teach first grade, and there’s something  I learned forever ago from my mom who taught six and seven-year-olds before me:  they take more energy than you thought existed in your mind and body.  It’s a wonderful, satisfying type of exhaustion, but it leaves very little for the end of my day.

But if I didn’t carve out that writing time, I’d be a different kind of exhausted – the cranky, shuffle-around-mumbling kind.  

And it’s true, unless you are meeting Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty McFly in the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall, you’re going to have to give up something to create your own writing minutes and hours.  It might be sleep or a kind-of-favorite TV show.  It could be your surfing time (and I don’t mean on the beaches of sunny California).  

It might be a little uncomfortable at first, like a little pinch or a scrape-your-knee-and-need-your-mother-to-blow-on-it way, but you can push through it.  You should push through it.  

Because when you do, you are left with a book . . . or a poem . . .  or a song.  And that’s worth every bit of it.   

Are You Listening?

“Oh, it is interesting, the creative process.  Where was this story before I wrote it down?  I don’t know.  It certainly wasn’t in my head.”  --Gore Vidal

I think the idea process is the part of writing that I love most.  

I like to go to a worn, well-traveled area and sit still with my notebook.  Train stations can be perfect for this kind of brainstorming and idea-mining, because of the combinations and variety of people.  There will be those who are actually going somewhere, and those who are biding their time, wishing for a destination.  

Then I listen -- I mean really listen – to voice inflections and accents, to tones and volume.  What is that woman in the corner  worried about?  What is that young man on the steps so excited about? What is making that couple on the bench so angry?  And that woman with the cell phone imbedded in her cheek . . . what is the person on the other end saying?  

I’ll try to notice quirks and facial expressions, body language and eye rolling.  Then I’ll ask myself, How can I use this?  

 

How do I know if that person or that line is worthy of a story?  It hangs around in my head for a good while….it’s that phrase I can’t stop thinking about.  It makes me wonder, or smile, or cringe, and I have to write it down. 

  

One thing that is important for me is to keep myself open to new ideas –not just at the brewing, beginning stages of a story or book, but throughout my writing.  This is what starts to round out my characters as I go, and what fills up my story, as a whole.  Even after I have that initial motivating idea, I try to keep the brainstorming going. 

We take notes on what we see and hear and audition them on the page.  Trying out new ideas takes risk and guts, because you can’t leave them floating around in your head. You have to be willing to take it one step further and put them down on the page.

Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride

I know next to nothing about basketball, but when March Madness hits, I see people scrambling to predict who will win.  They even put down money to back their frenzied calculations. 

It can be like that with that first idea when you are writing.  It explodes in a mad frenzy of possibilities.  All we want is that big win at the end.  And we want to get to the end.  As soon as possible.  Now.  Do not pass Go.  Do not pause to collect the two hundred dollars.

When we are first getting our story down on paper, it may be fragmented.  As my writer friends know, I am a fan of working in coffee shops, and I use coffee shop analogies freely and often.  So . . . imagine a  busy coffee shop—in a big city.  You have just moved to the neighborhood and you are visiting it for the first time. 

There is a lot going on, but a great deal of it is just a thin surface layer.  You go into the coffee shop and the customers are all your characters, major and minor.  You see them—you might see what they are wearing, but you really don’t know anything about them yet. 

You hear bits and pieces of conversations, but you aren’t interacting with anyone but the barista or the guy at the counter. 

You are seated in a corner by yourself, trying to make sense of all that is going on around you.   People are on their laptops, not paying any attention to you.  People are in pairs and groups, having their own conversations.  You are excited about being in this new place, but you really aren’t comfortable yet.

The next day, things get a little more familiar.  You notice some people from the day before.  Someone gives you a recognizing nod.  You start to notice how the customers are interacting with each other.  You sense the tension between the couple by the window.  You notice the woman off to the side appears to have slept in her clothes.  You start to wonder about their stories.

Each day, each revision, you add another layer. 

You may think you have your story down pat—especially if you are an extensive note taker or an outliner.  I heard about a writer, who wrote her entire novel in her head while she was gardening.  Finished the entire thing.  Then she went home and put the words down on paper. 
We all want to be done.  It’s human nature to want to see a job through to the end.  It is the best feeling in the world to type THE END.  But for a writer, the first time you type those words, it usually just means the beginning.  It’s the beginning of your layering process.  The beginning of your revision. 

I used to hate it.  But I look forward to it now.  It means my words are turning into a real story.  So don’t get sucked in by the March Madness.  Slow down and enjoy the ride.

The Post Where I Shamelessly Use Field of Dream Quotes

In February we are given a day of possibilities at the beginning, with an extra day at the end during a leap year.  My challenge for everyone this month is to combine Groundhog’s Day where anything can happen, with that gift of an extra day, and write without caring what anyone else thinks.  Write with abandon.  Write as if you have all the time in the world, because you sort of do.  You have that extra day, that anything-can-happen day.

 

But here’s the only rule:   

Write What Only You Know. 

Annie Dillard said,  “A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.  Strange seizures beset us.  Frank Conroy loves his yo-yo tricks, Emily Dickinson her slant of light….”  

She also asks the thought-provoking question, “Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you avert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands?  Because it is up to you.  There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain.  It is hard to explain, because you have never read it on any page; there you begin.”

You can make something interesting to your readers because of your own fascination with it. 

What are the everyday things that intrigue you?

Think about sitting in a restaurant or in a train station, or on the subway.  What makes you give a person a longer-than-usual look?  Why are you drawn to that person?  Is it their distinct, unusual beauty?  Maybe.  But more likely it’s something else—because you are a writer.  Maybe they have a bald spot on the side of their head that they are trying to cover.  But it’s not a man’s comb-over.  It’s a woman’s.  You take it one step further, because you are a writer.

What foods are you drawn to?

What places fascinate you so much, you want to stop your car—even though it might not be a convenient or a safe place to stop it?

You take the everyday--something you encounter or pass each day, and point it out in your writing.  

Chances are, you have no idea why you are drawn to certain foods or people or places or events.  You just are.  But that draw is your key.  You write about it, and you make these fascinations your readers’, as well.  

(Remember, you’ve got that extra day here.  You can take your time.)  Dare to take the mundane and sneak it to the forefront.  But do it as only you can do.  Forgive me for massacring a line from “Field of Dreams”, but … If you write it, they will read.