by Jennie Bentley
So we’re talking about writing advice, and about what keeps us motivated to write, this month.
To be honest, motivation’s no problem for me. I have contracts and deadlines, and if I don’t deliver manuscripts on time, I get in trouble. Writing’s my job, and I treat it as such. I try to write every day. Some days I can’t, for whatever reason, but other than that, I go to work. If I don’t write – i.e. actually add words to whatever WIP I’m on – I revise, or research, or proofread, or do something else related.
Of course I didn’t always have contracts and deadlines, and back then, I had to self-motivate. Basically, I wanted to get published bad enough that I found the time and incentive somewhere. Sometimes I got discouraged and didn’t write for a few days, until I got so bottled up that it was down to a choice between going back to writing or suffering spontaneous combustion.
Which brings me to writing advice #1: If you can not write, don’t write.
Note, I didn’t say, ‘can’t.’ If you can’t write, you’re welcome to keep doing it. Unless you improve, you probably won’t get published, but I’m not going to tell you that you can’t keep writing. What I mean is, if you can stop writing, you should consider not writing, because if you don’t love it enough, if you don’t have an absolute need to do it, if you don’t feel like you’re going to explode from the voices talking in your head if you don’t put things down on paper or screen, you may not have what it takes to make it through the process.
Moving past the fact of whether you should be writing or not, let’s just assume you’ve decided you are going to write. Here’s writing advice #2: Write every day.
OR write as often as you can. Like I said, I’m not a stickler. There are times when I can’t write. Stuff interferes: kids and pets get sick, cars crash, snow falls so school gets cancelled, a book is released and I get busy promoting... it’s all part of life. Bottom line, though: if you want to get published, you have to have written a book (or something else, but we’re all book writers here, so let’s just go with that), and the only way to do that, is to keep adding words to the WIP.
1,000 words a day = a manuscript in three months.
500 words a day = a manuscript in six months.
1 page a day = a manuscript in under a year.
I try for 1,000 words a day. Usually I get there, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I write 5,000 or 6,000 words in a day. It all depends.
Moving on to writing advice #3: AIC = ass in chair.
When you’ve decided you’re writing, during the thirty minutes or hour or half a day you’ve set aside for yourself, don’t get distracted from writing. If someone’s bleeding or the house is on fire, obviously you’ll have to stop. But if the words aren’t flowing the way you’d like, stay there in the chair and keep plugging. Write something. Even if you end up revising it later, you’ll feel better if you move forward and meet your goal.
(Side note: I don’t believe in writer’s block. If you’re stuck, it’s my belief you’ve gone off on a tangent where you don’t need to be, and you’ve written yourself into a corner. Cut back to where you know where you’re going again, and you’ll be fine.)
Writing advice #4: Finish something. The only way you’ll get published – with exceptions, because there are always exceptions – is by having a finished manuscript. Even if you’re an exception, and someone agrees to sign a book by you based on an idea or a proposal, you’ll have to finish the manuscript sooner or later. Of all the people out there who say they want to write a book, the ones who actually finish the manuscript are few and far between. If you finish, you’re already ahead of all the people who didn’t.
As for the best writing advice I personally ever got... well, it wasn’t really a nice and neat piece of advice. The best thing that ever happened to me as a budding writer was meeting the wonderful Tasha Alexander, who’s one of the nicest people in the world, and a brilliant writer to boot. And what she did for me wasn’t give me one facile piece of advice that helped me get through; instead, she talked to me about the publishing industry, and explained how it all works. She listened to my ideas and brainstormed plots with me, she critiqued my manuscript, she read my query letter, she helped me make lists of agents to send it to... she was my mentor, and my inspiration, and my sounding board, as well as my friend.
Writing advice #5: Find yourself a Tasha. Someone who knows more than you do, who can help you navigate the morass.
And while you’re at it, Writing advice #6: Find some friends who are in the same boat you are, so you can encourage one another. Writing is a lonely business, and we can all use all the encouragement we can get.
If you don’t have a mentor, someone who already knows the ropes, you’re gonna have to figure it out on your own. Writing advice #7: Do your homework. There are so many writers and agent blogs out there, so many websites with info on how the publishing industry works, so many organizations you can join, that there’s no excuse for not knowing everything you can possibly know about the business you’re looking to enter. Like the TV commercials say, “The more you know...”
So there you have it. More writing advice than you ever wanted to hear. And now you'll have to excuse me, as I have to get back to work. It's an AIC day for me.
Till next time!
Showing posts with label creative writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creative writing. Show all posts
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Life vs. Fiction
By Pat Remick
“Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.”
So reads one of the writing-related sayings scattered around my office and today, the anniversary of my brother’s birth, it seems more relevant than usual.
Writers know well how real life can be stranger than fiction. All around us we see and experience things that, with just the right twist, could become kernels of great novels, plots for intriguing mysteries or the seeds of unforgettable short stories.
But the realities we observe do not always make sense. An editor might say they need a better beginning or a stronger finish. Or we may never understand the true motivation of the “characters” involved. In fiction, we can correct such things. Unfortunately, we cannot always do the same in life.
For example, someone would have to create the opening chapter of my brother’s story. The first time I saw him was the day my parents traveled to a meeting at Catholic Charities to discuss adoption and unexpectedly returned with a baby son.
Today he is a father, grandfather, successful businessman and respected member of his community. But for much of his life, his origins have been mostly a mystery that only recently he has wanted to solve. What little he’s learned is so compelling that the writer part of me could easily turn it into the plot of a novel.
As a fiction writer, it’s also easy to play the “what if” game. What if his birth mother had not given him up for adoption in what we now know was a supreme act of love? What if she had come looking for him? What if his birth parents had learned what a fine man he has become? What if he had not been so strong in his belief that his true parents are the people who loved and raised him, not those who created him? Each of our stories would have changed and every answer to a "what if" would have propelled our lives in different directions.
Even today, many of the circumstances surrounding his birth remain unknown. His birth certificate was recently unsealed, but it does not list his birth father’s name. He has been told his birth mother’s immediate family is dead. So it’s unlikely there ever will be a denouement, or unraveling of the complexities of his beginnings.
The “fixer” part of me aches to help make sense of this. Unfortunately, it is a gift I cannot offer. It is, however, a reminder that life’s chapters are often not as complete or as detailed as we’d like. Maybe that’s one reason why writing fiction can be so satisfying. It allows us to choose the beginning and the ending, and try to create a world that makes sense in between.
“Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.”
So reads one of the writing-related sayings scattered around my office and today, the anniversary of my brother’s birth, it seems more relevant than usual.
Writers know well how real life can be stranger than fiction. All around us we see and experience things that, with just the right twist, could become kernels of great novels, plots for intriguing mysteries or the seeds of unforgettable short stories.
But the realities we observe do not always make sense. An editor might say they need a better beginning or a stronger finish. Or we may never understand the true motivation of the “characters” involved. In fiction, we can correct such things. Unfortunately, we cannot always do the same in life.
For example, someone would have to create the opening chapter of my brother’s story. The first time I saw him was the day my parents traveled to a meeting at Catholic Charities to discuss adoption and unexpectedly returned with a baby son.
Today he is a father, grandfather, successful businessman and respected member of his community. But for much of his life, his origins have been mostly a mystery that only recently he has wanted to solve. What little he’s learned is so compelling that the writer part of me could easily turn it into the plot of a novel.
As a fiction writer, it’s also easy to play the “what if” game. What if his birth mother had not given him up for adoption in what we now know was a supreme act of love? What if she had come looking for him? What if his birth parents had learned what a fine man he has become? What if he had not been so strong in his belief that his true parents are the people who loved and raised him, not those who created him? Each of our stories would have changed and every answer to a "what if" would have propelled our lives in different directions.
Even today, many of the circumstances surrounding his birth remain unknown. His birth certificate was recently unsealed, but it does not list his birth father’s name. He has been told his birth mother’s immediate family is dead. So it’s unlikely there ever will be a denouement, or unraveling of the complexities of his beginnings.
The “fixer” part of me aches to help make sense of this. Unfortunately, it is a gift I cannot offer. It is, however, a reminder that life’s chapters are often not as complete or as detailed as we’d like. Maybe that’s one reason why writing fiction can be so satisfying. It allows us to choose the beginning and the ending, and try to create a world that makes sense in between.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Medical excuses for not writing
By Pat Remick
I can come with a host of legitimate excuses to explain why I’m not writing as much as I’d like. But I never thought my annual physical would be one of them.
Nothing major is wrong with me, thank goodness. But all the minor things I recently discussed with my doctor have developed into cure strategies that are now eating up big chunks of my limited writing opportunities. I can’t imagine how time-consuming it is to be really sick.
My primary care physician sent me home from my checkup with directions to take Vitamin D twice a day, instructions to increase my thyroid medicine that requires carefully cutting half of my pills in quarters until my new mail-order prescription arrives, a sheet of daily exercises designed to relieve foot pain, and a recommendation for a skin cream to be applied twice daily. She also handed me referrals to two specialists.
The ear, nose and throat doctor said there was nothing seriously wrong that a nose spray and a saline solution kit, both to be used twice a day, couldn’t fix. The orthopedic guy ordered me to put ice on my impinged shoulder for 20 minutes, three times a day; take a pain reliever twice daily; and to try his list of exercises until the start of my physical therapy appointments, which will take one hour each, two times a week (and lead to more time-consuming exercises, no doubt).
I'm sorry to bore you with my maladies, but don’t you agree this list of minor cures is mind-boggling? It makes me sick just to think about it. All these courses of treatment have gotten so complicated that I need a daily calendar just to keep up.
A doctor friend tells me the compliance rate for physicians’ orders is generally low. I understand why. If you add up all these medical directives, I’d spend the equivalent of one day a week dealing just with them – and there’s hardly anything wrong with me.
But then I thought: maybe it’s about time management. What if I could find a way to put the ice on my shoulder at the same time I take all the pills, use the nose stuff, apply the cream and then twist myself around to do the foot exercises, too? That might get me down to one hour of medical mania a day.
On the other hand, there’s the risk of something going wrong or developing a new injury from trying to do too much at once. Then I’d be sucked further into the medical black hole. So I've decided to pace myself and hope all these cures don’t kill my writing career.
Nonetheless, the next time someone asks me how the novel is going, I’m just going to say, “Ask my doctor.”
I can come with a host of legitimate excuses to explain why I’m not writing as much as I’d like. But I never thought my annual physical would be one of them.
Nothing major is wrong with me, thank goodness. But all the minor things I recently discussed with my doctor have developed into cure strategies that are now eating up big chunks of my limited writing opportunities. I can’t imagine how time-consuming it is to be really sick.
My primary care physician sent me home from my checkup with directions to take Vitamin D twice a day, instructions to increase my thyroid medicine that requires carefully cutting half of my pills in quarters until my new mail-order prescription arrives, a sheet of daily exercises designed to relieve foot pain, and a recommendation for a skin cream to be applied twice daily. She also handed me referrals to two specialists.
The ear, nose and throat doctor said there was nothing seriously wrong that a nose spray and a saline solution kit, both to be used twice a day, couldn’t fix. The orthopedic guy ordered me to put ice on my impinged shoulder for 20 minutes, three times a day; take a pain reliever twice daily; and to try his list of exercises until the start of my physical therapy appointments, which will take one hour each, two times a week (and lead to more time-consuming exercises, no doubt).
I'm sorry to bore you with my maladies, but don’t you agree this list of minor cures is mind-boggling? It makes me sick just to think about it. All these courses of treatment have gotten so complicated that I need a daily calendar just to keep up.
A doctor friend tells me the compliance rate for physicians’ orders is generally low. I understand why. If you add up all these medical directives, I’d spend the equivalent of one day a week dealing just with them – and there’s hardly anything wrong with me.
But then I thought: maybe it’s about time management. What if I could find a way to put the ice on my shoulder at the same time I take all the pills, use the nose stuff, apply the cream and then twist myself around to do the foot exercises, too? That might get me down to one hour of medical mania a day.
On the other hand, there’s the risk of something going wrong or developing a new injury from trying to do too much at once. Then I’d be sucked further into the medical black hole. So I've decided to pace myself and hope all these cures don’t kill my writing career.
Nonetheless, the next time someone asks me how the novel is going, I’m just going to say, “Ask my doctor.”
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Comfort Killing
by Wilfred Bereswill
I’ve been in a sour mood lately. Beside the cold that suddenly crashed down on me last night, there’s the drama of my day job that has been going on for over six months now. Some or all of you know I work as an Environmental Engineer for Anheuser-Busch. Opps, I mean A-B Inbev. The deal is done. I now work for the biggest brewer and the 3rd largest consumer products group in the world. Problem is, I don’t know how long I’ll be working for them. The axe is poised and ready to lop off a large number of employees. The have to eliminate 1 ½ Billion dollars in operating cost over the next three years to pay back some of their debt. YES, that’s BILLION with a “B.” So it may not be a very happy holiday season. Not only that, but every day we hear another rumor and a different date for D-Day. In fact, as I write this, my wife returned from her bible study and informed me that she heard that 800 people will be laid off tomorrow.
I’ll survive. I’m not writing this in a plea for sympathy. The bigger problem is that this six month drama has pretty much sucked the creativity right out of me. I sit in front of the keyboard trying to finish a story I started over a year ago and my mind wanders to how I’m going to make a living and keep my family going. As much as I’d like to dream about it, making a living off my writing is not realistic right now. It won’t pay the mortgage, the car payments, college tuition, the utilities... Well, you get the picture.
So, two nights ago I decided to kill a bunch of people.
Relax. I finally finished a scene I’ve been trying to write for a while. I told myself to just do it. In two nights I wrote 5,000 words. I would have continued tonight, but I had a talk to give to the St. Louis Writers Guild.
The body count isn’t in just yet, but a number of FBI agents and a bunch of bad guys are now statistics. The scene starts with my antagonist trying to sell a deadly virus to a terrorist cell. Bad guys doing business with bad guys. I figured not a lot of trusting goes on there. Would you trust a bunch of terrorists to hand over 5 million dollars for a package that could easily be faked with no real way of verifying the authenticity? I wouldn’t. So it took a lot of thought to figure out how to make this work.
Throwing in the FBI complicates matters even more. You’ll all have to wait to read the finished product, but I’m pretty darned happy with the way this is working out. The next scene will find my Protagonist, FBI Agent Laura Daniels captured by my antagonist and her savior turns out to be a person she’d never expect. Plus a main character may be taking his last breath.
So, I found that killing people can bring me out of a funk. What do you do when you find yourself mired in depressing thoughts?
I’ve been in a sour mood lately. Beside the cold that suddenly crashed down on me last night, there’s the drama of my day job that has been going on for over six months now. Some or all of you know I work as an Environmental Engineer for Anheuser-Busch. Opps, I mean A-B Inbev. The deal is done. I now work for the biggest brewer and the 3rd largest consumer products group in the world. Problem is, I don’t know how long I’ll be working for them. The axe is poised and ready to lop off a large number of employees. The have to eliminate 1 ½ Billion dollars in operating cost over the next three years to pay back some of their debt. YES, that’s BILLION with a “B.” So it may not be a very happy holiday season. Not only that, but every day we hear another rumor and a different date for D-Day. In fact, as I write this, my wife returned from her bible study and informed me that she heard that 800 people will be laid off tomorrow.
I’ll survive. I’m not writing this in a plea for sympathy. The bigger problem is that this six month drama has pretty much sucked the creativity right out of me. I sit in front of the keyboard trying to finish a story I started over a year ago and my mind wanders to how I’m going to make a living and keep my family going. As much as I’d like to dream about it, making a living off my writing is not realistic right now. It won’t pay the mortgage, the car payments, college tuition, the utilities... Well, you get the picture.
So, two nights ago I decided to kill a bunch of people.
Relax. I finally finished a scene I’ve been trying to write for a while. I told myself to just do it. In two nights I wrote 5,000 words. I would have continued tonight, but I had a talk to give to the St. Louis Writers Guild.
The body count isn’t in just yet, but a number of FBI agents and a bunch of bad guys are now statistics. The scene starts with my antagonist trying to sell a deadly virus to a terrorist cell. Bad guys doing business with bad guys. I figured not a lot of trusting goes on there. Would you trust a bunch of terrorists to hand over 5 million dollars for a package that could easily be faked with no real way of verifying the authenticity? I wouldn’t. So it took a lot of thought to figure out how to make this work.
Throwing in the FBI complicates matters even more. You’ll all have to wait to read the finished product, but I’m pretty darned happy with the way this is working out. The next scene will find my Protagonist, FBI Agent Laura Daniels captured by my antagonist and her savior turns out to be a person she’d never expect. Plus a main character may be taking his last breath.
So, I found that killing people can bring me out of a funk. What do you do when you find yourself mired in depressing thoughts?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Harvest Time
By Martha Reed
I love Fall because it’s time for the harvest. It’s a great time of year to take stock of what got accomplished over the last year, what did or didn’t happen, and then set up a plan for the coming year to either move myself in the right direction or to take a look at what didn’t get accomplished and figure out a new approach to get it done.
Fall helps me reset my priorities. For instance, I’m only half way through my manuscript, so I’m moving it to the top of the priority list for 2009, letting nothing else get in the way of accomplishing that task. Of course, unforeseen things will happen, but I’ve learned that if I keep a constant steady pressure on the top item, moving it back up to the top whenever it gets bumped off, by the end of the year it’s been accomplished.
I had three priorities for 2008: 1) organize a family reunion; 2) master the officer requirements for the local Sisters in Crime chapter and 3) help orchestrate the sale of a house. I took a look at each item last Fall, gave each item a sufficient amount of thought and planning and applied the pressure. A year later, all three items are done.
The ‘lose twenty pounds’ issue does keep falling off the list but I am still working on it. Dieting didn’t work completely but ‘eating with nutrition in mind’ has helped a bit plus I’ve added yoga and chiropractic maintenance to the mix. We’ll see if that helps; it certainly can’t hurt and I will keep the steady pressure on and craft a different combination until I find the one that works.
Last Fall I also decided to prioritize finding a new position at my day job. Truth be told I needed to earn more money – I need to start funding a Roth IRA and my health insurance premium doubled – and I couldn’t accomplish either of those at my current level. Using the same step-by-step process, I identified a new target job, formulated an approach, took extra training, volunteered for standing committees, even wrote business articles for the quarterly newsletter – anything to help raise my corporate profile. The good news is HR called me a week ago and made an offer and I start my new position on Monday.
In writing about this topic I’m not trying to show what I’ve accomplished; I’m trying to show how accomplishments can be acquired. Some folks I know blithely go through life waiting for their next lucky break. Luck is all well and good but I save it for the lottery and the casinos. I’ve learned that focused direct intent and lots of hard work will get you where you want to go plus the end results are more consistent. Maybe this is because I’m a bull-headed Taurus but all I know is, it works!
I invite you to try this approach for 2009. Make a list and identify two or three items you want to harvest next year. Post the list in a prominent place like over your coffeemaker. Each day, reconsider your items and think of what you can do that day to move them forward. If that item just won’t happen, it won’t happen, so move to the next item on your list and keep the pressure on. A year from now, take stock of your results. I think you’ll be amazed at what you can do when you put your mind to it.
I love Fall because it’s time for the harvest. It’s a great time of year to take stock of what got accomplished over the last year, what did or didn’t happen, and then set up a plan for the coming year to either move myself in the right direction or to take a look at what didn’t get accomplished and figure out a new approach to get it done.
Fall helps me reset my priorities. For instance, I’m only half way through my manuscript, so I’m moving it to the top of the priority list for 2009, letting nothing else get in the way of accomplishing that task. Of course, unforeseen things will happen, but I’ve learned that if I keep a constant steady pressure on the top item, moving it back up to the top whenever it gets bumped off, by the end of the year it’s been accomplished.
I had three priorities for 2008: 1) organize a family reunion; 2) master the officer requirements for the local Sisters in Crime chapter and 3) help orchestrate the sale of a house. I took a look at each item last Fall, gave each item a sufficient amount of thought and planning and applied the pressure. A year later, all three items are done.
The ‘lose twenty pounds’ issue does keep falling off the list but I am still working on it. Dieting didn’t work completely but ‘eating with nutrition in mind’ has helped a bit plus I’ve added yoga and chiropractic maintenance to the mix. We’ll see if that helps; it certainly can’t hurt and I will keep the steady pressure on and craft a different combination until I find the one that works.
Last Fall I also decided to prioritize finding a new position at my day job. Truth be told I needed to earn more money – I need to start funding a Roth IRA and my health insurance premium doubled – and I couldn’t accomplish either of those at my current level. Using the same step-by-step process, I identified a new target job, formulated an approach, took extra training, volunteered for standing committees, even wrote business articles for the quarterly newsletter – anything to help raise my corporate profile. The good news is HR called me a week ago and made an offer and I start my new position on Monday.
In writing about this topic I’m not trying to show what I’ve accomplished; I’m trying to show how accomplishments can be acquired. Some folks I know blithely go through life waiting for their next lucky break. Luck is all well and good but I save it for the lottery and the casinos. I’ve learned that focused direct intent and lots of hard work will get you where you want to go plus the end results are more consistent. Maybe this is because I’m a bull-headed Taurus but all I know is, it works!
I invite you to try this approach for 2009. Make a list and identify two or three items you want to harvest next year. Post the list in a prominent place like over your coffeemaker. Each day, reconsider your items and think of what you can do that day to move them forward. If that item just won’t happen, it won’t happen, so move to the next item on your list and keep the pressure on. A year from now, take stock of your results. I think you’ll be amazed at what you can do when you put your mind to it.
Friday, August 01, 2008
I'd like to thank the Academy...
by Jennie Bentley
As you’re reading this, a really big machine somewhere is spitting out pages of my first book, Fatal Fixer-Upper, scheduled for release on November 4th, 2008 (and available right now for preorder).
Yep, that’s right: we’ve gone to press. I breezed through copyedits sometime in May, doing only what was necessary to get the pages back to my editor before boarding a plane to Europe. I paid for that when the final page proofs arrived in July, and I discovered mistakes I should have caught earlier. So I had to grovel and apologize and ask if I could please change this and that, because it really wouldn’t be a good idea to print the book with mistakes in it.
Anyway, in the middle of all this, I had to write a page of acknowledgements. You know what I’m talking about: that page at the beginning or end of the book giving thanks to all the people who have helped me along the way and made me the brilliant and successful creature that I am. My parents, who gave birth to me. My first-grade teacher, who recognized my amazing talent at the tender age of seven. My husband, who puts up with my monumental ego... My agent, my editor, my family and friends, the guys at the post office, who accepted the package with my submission in it and got it delivered where it was supposed to go. Fellow writers, fellow readers, my publicists, anyone who has ever – or will ever – review the book. God. The whole damn machine that’s New York Publishing. Everyone I’ve ever met, because as surely as death and taxes, they’ve had a finger in making me who I am today.
Writing isn’t a solitary endeavor at all, contrary to popular opinion. Everyone we interact with shapes us in some way. Our values, our outlook, our thought processes (or lack thereof) are all courtesy of someone we’ve run across at some point, whether the experience was a good or a bad one. And on a purely pedestrian basis, the people we live with play a huge role in how easy or hard it is for us to plant our butts in the chair and actually write every day. I have a household full of people and pets, all of whom have needs, and I owe them humongous thanks for putting up with me and letting me do what I love, even if that means that my wonderful husband is the sole breadwinner in the family, and the boys get hot dogs and frozen chicken nuggets all too often, and have to share their bedrooms with dust bunnies the size of water buffalo.
Ultimately, though, there is only one person who gets the credit for my being the very small fry that I am today, as far as publishing goes. I’ve always been a writer, as far back as I can remember, but she helped me become a published writer, and for that, I owe her a debt of gratitude the size of Mt. Everest. When I told her I’d always wanted to write books, she said I could. She listened patiently as I talked her ear off about plot and character. She read and critiqued my manuscript. She sat down with me and made lists of agents I should query. She read and critiqued my query letter. When I got responses telling me I needed to tighten the book – i.e. cut the fat – she sat down with me again, and helped me revise. She made more lists of agents when I’d gone through the first ones. The agent who ended up wanting to represent me was someone she had met, and although I didn’t name-drop up front, I don’t doubt the mention of her name later made my agent think more highly of me. That's the kind of person she is.
I could go on, making lists of all the things Tasha Alexander has done for me, and the stellar advice she’s given and continues to give, but the bottom line is, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without her generosity and unselfishness. She’s been my friend and my mentor, my sounding-board and my inspiration. She’s the best role model a girl wanting to write a book could have, and when I grow up, I want to be just like her.
So what about you? Do you have someone in your life who reached out to you and made you believe you could do the impossible? Someone who walked the walk with you, to make sure you got to the finish line? Who cheered you on and convinced you to keep going when you got tired and wanted to give up? You're one of the lucky ones. Make your own acknowledgement, and tell us about them!
As you’re reading this, a really big machine somewhere is spitting out pages of my first book, Fatal Fixer-Upper, scheduled for release on November 4th, 2008 (and available right now for preorder).
Yep, that’s right: we’ve gone to press. I breezed through copyedits sometime in May, doing only what was necessary to get the pages back to my editor before boarding a plane to Europe. I paid for that when the final page proofs arrived in July, and I discovered mistakes I should have caught earlier. So I had to grovel and apologize and ask if I could please change this and that, because it really wouldn’t be a good idea to print the book with mistakes in it.
Anyway, in the middle of all this, I had to write a page of acknowledgements. You know what I’m talking about: that page at the beginning or end of the book giving thanks to all the people who have helped me along the way and made me the brilliant and successful creature that I am. My parents, who gave birth to me. My first-grade teacher, who recognized my amazing talent at the tender age of seven. My husband, who puts up with my monumental ego... My agent, my editor, my family and friends, the guys at the post office, who accepted the package with my submission in it and got it delivered where it was supposed to go. Fellow writers, fellow readers, my publicists, anyone who has ever – or will ever – review the book. God. The whole damn machine that’s New York Publishing. Everyone I’ve ever met, because as surely as death and taxes, they’ve had a finger in making me who I am today.
Writing isn’t a solitary endeavor at all, contrary to popular opinion. Everyone we interact with shapes us in some way. Our values, our outlook, our thought processes (or lack thereof) are all courtesy of someone we’ve run across at some point, whether the experience was a good or a bad one. And on a purely pedestrian basis, the people we live with play a huge role in how easy or hard it is for us to plant our butts in the chair and actually write every day. I have a household full of people and pets, all of whom have needs, and I owe them humongous thanks for putting up with me and letting me do what I love, even if that means that my wonderful husband is the sole breadwinner in the family, and the boys get hot dogs and frozen chicken nuggets all too often, and have to share their bedrooms with dust bunnies the size of water buffalo.
Ultimately, though, there is only one person who gets the credit for my being the very small fry that I am today, as far as publishing goes. I’ve always been a writer, as far back as I can remember, but she helped me become a published writer, and for that, I owe her a debt of gratitude the size of Mt. Everest. When I told her I’d always wanted to write books, she said I could. She listened patiently as I talked her ear off about plot and character. She read and critiqued my manuscript. She sat down with me and made lists of agents I should query. She read and critiqued my query letter. When I got responses telling me I needed to tighten the book – i.e. cut the fat – she sat down with me again, and helped me revise. She made more lists of agents when I’d gone through the first ones. The agent who ended up wanting to represent me was someone she had met, and although I didn’t name-drop up front, I don’t doubt the mention of her name later made my agent think more highly of me. That's the kind of person she is.
I could go on, making lists of all the things Tasha Alexander has done for me, and the stellar advice she’s given and continues to give, but the bottom line is, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without her generosity and unselfishness. She’s been my friend and my mentor, my sounding-board and my inspiration. She’s the best role model a girl wanting to write a book could have, and when I grow up, I want to be just like her.
So what about you? Do you have someone in your life who reached out to you and made you believe you could do the impossible? Someone who walked the walk with you, to make sure you got to the finish line? Who cheered you on and convinced you to keep going when you got tired and wanted to give up? You're one of the lucky ones. Make your own acknowledgement, and tell us about them!
Monday, January 21, 2008
WRITERS AND OTHER PEOPLE
by Gina Sestak
[Another digression from my posts about prior jobs.]
There is a fundamental difference between writers and other people, I've been told. That difference is that writers write. By "write," I don't just mean the act of putting pen to paper or fingertip to key. I mean the magical alchemy by which we transmute human experience and ideas into words.
For me, this usually involves translating whatever I'm experiencing into nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives while it's still in progress. No matter what is happening around me, be it flower petals wafting on a zephyr or a distracted driver trying to merge into my car, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm crafting sentences to describe what's going on.
This isn't always a good thing. When I stood beside my aunt's deathbed putting words to family tragedy I felt like a ghoul. But those sentences formed the core of my essay "Breathe Out" that won second place for non-fiction in Pennwriters' 2004 contest.
I was thinking about this last week when I had the flu. You have to understand, I had it bad. Vomiting, diarrhea, chills. Three days without eating. Too little energy to feed the cats. [Don't worry. They had dry food available.] Part of me was thinking, "Am I going to die?" while another part, the writer part, was putting the sensations into words.
I'm not going to record that graphic description of my symptoms here, but I suspect I'll use it somewhere. I've often wondered whether Anne Rice was sick while she was writing "The Tale of the Body Thief." [!!SPOILER ALERT!!] In that book, Anne Rice's protagonist Lestat (a vampire) is tricked into trading bodies temporarily with a human, only to discover that the human body is infected with a disease meant to kill it, thereby allowing the human trader to retain Lestat's vampire body. Anne Rice gives us detailed descriptions of being ill from the perspective of someone who hasn't had so much as a cold in centuries. Another part of the same book made me wonder whether or not Anne Rice had recently acquired a dog.
Does everybody else do this, too? Do you find yourself in traffic, in nature, or in bed(!) putting everything you experience into words? Please let me know.
[Another digression from my posts about prior jobs.]
There is a fundamental difference between writers and other people, I've been told. That difference is that writers write. By "write," I don't just mean the act of putting pen to paper or fingertip to key. I mean the magical alchemy by which we transmute human experience and ideas into words.
For me, this usually involves translating whatever I'm experiencing into nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives while it's still in progress. No matter what is happening around me, be it flower petals wafting on a zephyr or a distracted driver trying to merge into my car, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm crafting sentences to describe what's going on.
This isn't always a good thing. When I stood beside my aunt's deathbed putting words to family tragedy I felt like a ghoul. But those sentences formed the core of my essay "Breathe Out" that won second place for non-fiction in Pennwriters' 2004 contest.
I was thinking about this last week when I had the flu. You have to understand, I had it bad. Vomiting, diarrhea, chills. Three days without eating. Too little energy to feed the cats. [Don't worry. They had dry food available.] Part of me was thinking, "Am I going to die?" while another part, the writer part, was putting the sensations into words.
I'm not going to record that graphic description of my symptoms here, but I suspect I'll use it somewhere. I've often wondered whether Anne Rice was sick while she was writing "The Tale of the Body Thief." [!!SPOILER ALERT!!] In that book, Anne Rice's protagonist Lestat (a vampire) is tricked into trading bodies temporarily with a human, only to discover that the human body is infected with a disease meant to kill it, thereby allowing the human trader to retain Lestat's vampire body. Anne Rice gives us detailed descriptions of being ill from the perspective of someone who hasn't had so much as a cold in centuries. Another part of the same book made me wonder whether or not Anne Rice had recently acquired a dog.
Does everybody else do this, too? Do you find yourself in traffic, in nature, or in bed(!) putting everything you experience into words? Please let me know.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Living in the Parallel World
By Martha Reed
“I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.” - Carson McCullers
Four times a year, my day job gets red hot, and I have to focus all my energy into getting the job done over the course of about ten business days. It’s stressful, complicated work, with late hours and a tight deadline, but I’ve learned to put in a supply of frozen dinners and my family has been trained not to expect too much participation out of me during our quarterly print run.
I used to worry about what I was going to do when and if I got to old for this financial publishing gig, but it seems like I’ve managed to keep up with the technology and I can always find someone who will sign a paycheck with my name on it, so I must be doing something right.
Lately, though, I find myself increasing stingy when it comes to giving up my writing time each quarter, even though I know the pause is only temporary. Is it because I’m currently tapping into a really great storyline, with characters I can’t wait to learn more about? Or is it because I’ve reached a point in my life when I want to say, enough is enough, I’ve been working for Corporate America for 30 years, it’s time, I’d like to do what I want to do now.
I can remember talking this over with my friend Celeste, another writer, and asking her, ‘Weren’t we sort of promised, back in school, that if we did everything we were supposed to, if we were good girls, we would eventually get to do what we wanted to do?” Once Celeste stopped laughing, she replied: “I know. I fell for that one, too.”
“Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.” - Gore Vidal
When it’s full on, I find it very hard to break away from the creative process. It’s all so vivid, so cool, like watching a movie only I’m the director, and although I haven’t read the completed script yet and we're shooting, that’s okay; I still get to guide the action as best I can.
My process takes me to a very quiet interior place. It’s a parallel world, a strangely exotic land, and I love being there. At first, I had to learn not to be afraid of it, because I seemed to be intuiting things I didn’t know from my real world experience and it scared me a little. I’m not afraid anymore.
I’ve learned to set aside the same amount of time each weekend, and to go to that quiet place and relax, and let the storyline pick itself back up from the threads I left behind the last time I visited. It’s no surprise to pick up my mug and find my tea has grown cold, or that it’s dark outside and the day has passed. My sister, the mother of two, was sharing her experience of childbirth with me, explaining that during the contractions she would go to ‘her quiet safe place’. Trying to connect, I jumped in with an: “Oh, I know that place, and sometimes when I come out it’s two or three hours later!”
“Marth," she replied, gently. "I don’t go in that far."
“I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.” - Carson McCullers
Four times a year, my day job gets red hot, and I have to focus all my energy into getting the job done over the course of about ten business days. It’s stressful, complicated work, with late hours and a tight deadline, but I’ve learned to put in a supply of frozen dinners and my family has been trained not to expect too much participation out of me during our quarterly print run.
I used to worry about what I was going to do when and if I got to old for this financial publishing gig, but it seems like I’ve managed to keep up with the technology and I can always find someone who will sign a paycheck with my name on it, so I must be doing something right.
Lately, though, I find myself increasing stingy when it comes to giving up my writing time each quarter, even though I know the pause is only temporary. Is it because I’m currently tapping into a really great storyline, with characters I can’t wait to learn more about? Or is it because I’ve reached a point in my life when I want to say, enough is enough, I’ve been working for Corporate America for 30 years, it’s time, I’d like to do what I want to do now.
I can remember talking this over with my friend Celeste, another writer, and asking her, ‘Weren’t we sort of promised, back in school, that if we did everything we were supposed to, if we were good girls, we would eventually get to do what we wanted to do?” Once Celeste stopped laughing, she replied: “I know. I fell for that one, too.”
“Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.” - Gore Vidal
When it’s full on, I find it very hard to break away from the creative process. It’s all so vivid, so cool, like watching a movie only I’m the director, and although I haven’t read the completed script yet and we're shooting, that’s okay; I still get to guide the action as best I can.
My process takes me to a very quiet interior place. It’s a parallel world, a strangely exotic land, and I love being there. At first, I had to learn not to be afraid of it, because I seemed to be intuiting things I didn’t know from my real world experience and it scared me a little. I’m not afraid anymore.
I’ve learned to set aside the same amount of time each weekend, and to go to that quiet place and relax, and let the storyline pick itself back up from the threads I left behind the last time I visited. It’s no surprise to pick up my mug and find my tea has grown cold, or that it’s dark outside and the day has passed. My sister, the mother of two, was sharing her experience of childbirth with me, explaining that during the contractions she would go to ‘her quiet safe place’. Trying to connect, I jumped in with an: “Oh, I know that place, and sometimes when I come out it’s two or three hours later!”
“Marth," she replied, gently. "I don’t go in that far."
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