Taking the writing seriously

I made a commitment to myself not all that long ago to finally take my writing seriously, to finally do what it takes to get published. To this end, I joined an online writing critique group, started my own in-person critique group, and began writing consistently on a bit of a schedule. I am finding that keeping to my schedule is harder than I would like it to be. Distractions are not helping me produce!

However, the mental shift that taking one's writing seriously produces is interesting. For years I was content to read, do research, and try to publish in a half-hearted way. I got a lot of rejections. I am determined now not to let that happen anymore, which means I have to be willing to do some things I resisted doing before, mostly out of fear of success more than fear of failure. One of those things is listen to others who are already published. Let them guide my direction more than I did in the past. For example, with my first novel, which was never published, I had two agents. The first agent heard the pitch and then received my written proposal. She said the disparity between the pitch and the proposal was remarkable, and that she loved the pitch, but the proposal did not impress her. Instead of revising my proposal, though, I found a new agent in the hopes I'd like what she said. 

Unfortunately, she told me the manuscript needed a lot of work, and that I should send it to a professional editor. So, confronted with those responses plus a number of slush pile rejections, I gave up. Looking back on that now, I'm glad I did, since I was only 22 years old, and pursuing publication at that age for an historical novel that was being compared to Pearl Buck's writing just seems silly to me now. The novel had been extremely well-received at conferences and by editors, but the editors wanted me to have an agent, and the agents didn't want to handle someone so young without my being willing to pay my dues, take the business seriously, and do the work. All of this makes sense to me now of course, after many years of owning businesses, and this next time around, I intend to do the work. 

The writer's notebook: computer or laptop?

A notebook these days might more easily refer to one's laptop than to a literal piece of paper. However, for a very long time, writers kept a notebook with them to make notations about the world around them, phrases, things they observed, their ideas and random thoughts. The writer's notebook can be the writer's most important and useful resource. You have to have a place to put your thoughts, your observations, and most importantly, concepts you're working out. 

It's always best to write these down in a place where you can keep them for as long as you need them, but it's best if it seems like a transient place, on paper you don't feel compelled to keep. So the writer's notebook must do two things at once: be impermanent enough so that you don't take it so seriously that you feel you need to preserve it (like I do with something I write on good paper) and yet be something that you care enough about to keep long enough to get what you need out of it. 

I have found that ever since the inception of the laptop in my life, however, the word "notebook" has come to mean computer, not paper, and I write directly onto my computer. Now, this disappoints the part of me that enjoys the visceral experience of writing with pen, ink, and paper. Where did my enjoyment of those materials go, I wonder? Lately I've thought more and more about the intricacies of hand-made book bindings, with hand-typeset printing, and varied colored inks. I used to spend hours at a time in stationery stores, poring over different colored inks for the many styles of fountain pens I owned. 

I have a dream of one day owning a bookstore where I would employ someone who would run a letterpress for me. I don't think I would ever operate it myself, because I'm not terribly handy with things like that, but a very long time ago, in a library at one of my alma maters, was a hand-made book on display, Moby Dick, which had been created with pale blue paper, navy blue ink, and dark blue leather binding; the illustrations were all hand-crafted etchings. The book was created in a very small run and was sold as a rare book. I will always remember it, for it was one of the most beautiful books I ever saw, and I remember thinking that someday, I would like to produce individually-made rare gems, produced for a discerning client with an artistic eye. 

There is something in us that rebels against the norm, and if the norm is the computer, there will be a part of us that needs to return to the past, when writing and publishing had rituals that were more intricate and beautiful than they are now, it seems. There are schools that teach the fine art of traditional bookbindery, and there are antiquarian booksellers on the net and not just in obscure corners of big cities. The computer will never take over completely, I hope. We need to be able to touch books, don't you think, not just read them online? 

 

Serendipitous writing

Have you learned the fine art of patience when it comes to work you're developing? I know I haven't. I seem to veer from procrastination to urgency, from avoidance to wanting it to be finished. I know, intellectually, to let the writing ripen in its own time, but the emotional part of me wants to know where it's going, wants to "push the river," as they say in Zen Buddhism. It's a useless effort, because it takes the time it takes, and one must be patient to let the work develop.

Patience means that I have faith and trust in where the writing is going, so perhaps if I am impatient, it is an expression of loss of faith. If I must know now, this second, how each chapter is integrated, how the whole looks, and have all the plot figured out and answered, and have no more questions to ask myself as I go, what will there be left to discover as I write? 

E. M. Forster was one of many writers who claimed to discover what the writing was about as he wrote, and I think that serendipitous writing is probably what keeps me interested in the project. If I had the entire thing plotted ahead of time it would no doubt bore me to death. On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for bringing a map with you on your journey so you don't get completely lost. 

That's where it's helpful to have written the structure ahead of time so that I can go back and review what my initial plan was. What I had in mind for this story when I got started helps remind me of where I want to be in the writing process, and I refer back to it often. But just now I'm trying to figure out what the next chapter should be about, although it's probably best if I go back instead of going forward, and finish off one of the earlier chapters I've left unfinished for the moment. Recursive writing; it's how I write--go forward, go back, polish, pick up a new idea in a chapter farther on down the line, go back and polish something from early days. It's terribly non-linear, I'm afraid. 

Internet research versus the good old book

I have mixed feelings about using internet research and by doing so, replacing what I consider to be "proper" book research. Perhaps I am mired in the past to some extent, but it still doesn't feel like I've done very much work if all I have to do is a perfunctory Google search to pull up the information I need. I have the same attitude with my students, sadly for them. "Proper" research involves going to libraries and looking things up, even if you do need a computer to look most things up even in a library these days.

I don't want to lose the desire or ability to crack open a book and do research. To me, that's at least half the joy of reading, is being able to read a book. Books are extraordinary, and their magic is lost by doing work online. That doesn't mean that there isn't the same level of wisdom to be found online, because entire books exist in online resources such as the Archimedes Palimpsest, Encyclopedia Mythica, and Perseus Digital Library, as well as many, many others, which have been carefully and diligently composed by librarians and researchers across the world. 

Yet the desire I have to hold a book in my hands and know, kinesthetically, that I am touching knowledge, is important to me.  My online Oxford American dictionary tells me 'kinesthetically' is not a word. It took me a few seconds to look that up, and it saved me getting up off my couch to find my real dictionary. Soon we will have a lexicon to differentiate between books you can hold and books you can't, but for now, one just feels more real. 

Audience awareness

"Audience awareness" is a buzzword we use in rhetoric and composition studies (what used to be called "English"), but it has particular relevance for all writers, especially writers of fiction, who, it seems to me, often think about plot, character, style, and voice long before they ever consider who they're writing for. However, your editor and publisher think pretty much solely about audience, and they are correct to do so.

Your audience determines not only how you should write, but what you should write as well. To assess what your audience is looking for, the best place to start is with the genre you want to write in. For example, my favorite genre is historical mystery fiction, which, thankfully, has quite a few predecessors, such as Ellis Peters. Now, I have read all but a few of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael series; I saved a few to read in my dotage. There are other writers, such as Agatha Christie, who wrote some historical mysteries, and it's important for me to know as much as I can about that market if I wish to succeed in it. That means, in one word: research.

I have to read as many historical mysteries as I can get my hands on, not only to see what doesn't work, but also to read what does. Recently, this particular market has started to heat up, so there are more new entries to read. You should be doing the same with your market of choice; read everything you can get your hands on, so that you understand what your audience is buying and what they want to see. This audience awareness will help you sell your book to your agent, and it will help hone your focus as you write. 

Procrastination

I suspect procrastination lies at the heart of most writer's block. The real question is, why do I put off doing the work I know I need to do to get my project done? I have no good excuse, and I want to get the writing done; I enjoy it. So, why do I procrastinate? Recently, I came to one conclusion, when I felt depressed after having finished a book I really enjoyed reading: I procrastinate because I'm afraid of what it will feel like when I'm done. Empty. Nothing left to do. No plan for the future. Nothing beyond the moment. 

This is a solvable problem, it seems to me. Rather than being afraid of being done, I can have many (or more than one) project going at once, that way they overlap and not only can I switch back and forth from one to the next, I can also be sure that the other one waits for me when the first one is, or seems, done. I know this is a trick of the mind other writers have been relying on for a very long time, but we all seem to recreate our own version of the wheel. 

It's odd, isn't it, that one procrastinates on things one actually enjoys? I can find eight different things to do that aren't what I should be doing. I have become a consummate artist at puttering and doing nothing. Procrastination also ties into the lack of discipline that has been plaguing me for years now. I have to keep pushing myself, and going back to my research to inspire my writing. I read books on the Ancient Greeks, and all of a sudden, I get ideas for my characters. 

To help avoid avoidance, I leave my laptop on all the time, with my current chapter open where I can see it. This seems to remind me the writing is still there, waiting for me to work on it.

Do you know who your characters are?

Once upon a time, I had an editor who had edited Pearl Buck, amongst other famous writers, and he told me, use no more than six main characters in a novel. If you have more than that, you have too many overlapping stories, story arcs, plots, etc., and you lose your reader. The reader can only pay attention to so many main characters, and the reader can only care about so many plot lines. And the other thing he told me was: know your characters. This is something they teach (I assume; I hope) in every novel-writing workshop, but when you're actually in the middle of writing a piece of fiction, you become so aware of how very true it is: you must know your characters.

The best suggestion I ever got was to write down everything about your (main) characters that you could think of; their likes, dislikes, hair color, eye color, where they went to school, everything you can come up with. Then forget you wrote it. Don't worry about the details of their lives once you're doing the writing. What matters is that you know, deep down inside, in your subconscious, wherever, that these things are true about your character. You now have what is called a "deep knowing" about your character, and that "deep knowing" infuses every sentence you write about him or her. 

Deep knowing gives your reader confidence that they're in good hands. It implies that there is a backstory to these people that, if you chose to, you could go on and on about, but you know the important points to bring into your piece of fiction, and will not tire your reader with the superfluous stuff. That gives a character richness and depth that is not obtainable any other way. To get to this kind of deep knowing about people, it helps to observe them, and ask a lot of questions... yes, writers are annoying, but it pays off in the long run. 

The other very important thing I once learned about making your reader want to come back for more, is that you must show your characters compassion. If you don't care about them, the reader won't either. You see this lack of compassion all the time in stories that gloss over the details of someone's life, and just throw a character out at you that you're then supposed to care about. It doesn't work that way in real life; it cannot work that way in fiction. If you care about what happens to your characters, if you are fundamentally concerned for them, that comes through in the writing, and we, your readers, will care too, even if your character is really evil. 

Even really evil people have some interior landscape that makes them interesting, makes them human. Not that we have to forgive them--that's not necessary. But we do have to understand them, if we're going to be able to follow along behind them, and the only way we can do that is if you understand them, and show us why we should care one way or the other what they do. The only way you're going to understand them, it seems to me, is if you walk a mile in their moccasins, or try to, and that requires empathy and compassion, the ability to perceive what another's life must be like. This is the core of all effective writing, to be able to explain and illuminate the human condition.