Month: March 2011

Five lame excuses not to write

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How do you know you’re a writer? Simple. Writers write. They don’t spit out Chapter One on an ambitious weekend and then tell everyone they are writing a book even though they never pick it up again. Writing is all about BIC: butt in chair. Without regular, healthy doses of BIC, you’re not a writer.

Let’s discuss the unacceptable excuses not to write.

I don’t have time.

There are evenings, weekends, and lunch breaks. There’s riding the subway to work. Spend Sundays with family and friends, but make sure your loved ones know Saturdays are off-limits; writing days. Make sacrifices. If you don’t, you’re not a writer.

I don’t have a good writing environment.

You need silence. You need noise. You need a laptop. You need several hours to really get into it. Fill in the blank for whatever you “need” in order to write, but it’s all baloney sandwiches. All you need is pen and paper. Actually, if you were locked in a South American prison without pen and paper, you could probably still find something with which to prick your finger, and you’d have lots of blank wall space to fill up with blood letters. Bottom line, if you’re not writing before you buy an iPad, you’re not going to write after you buy one, either.

I’m not in the right mood.

I’ve got news for you: real writers are almost never in the mood to write. When sitting down to write, I’m accosted with a sudden desire to read a blog post, click on a YouTube video, or watch paint dry, but I must strive past this. It’s like the first swim of the summer. You don’t want to get in the pool – you know it’s going to be too cold; you’d rather just lie out in the sun. But once you swallow your inhibitions and lower yourself in completely, it feels amazing.

I have writer’s block.

Be honest – you sat in front of the computer for fifteen minutes, nothing came out, and now you think you have license to watch the Iron Chef marathon. If you really tried for a couple of hours and still can’t get anything out, try writing something else for a while. Write a scene from later on in the book, work on plot, or consider alternate first sentences. Just get something on paper. More on writer’s block in a later post.

I’m too tired.

Next to not having time, this is my biggest bane. I write 40-50 hours a week at my paying job, maintain this blog in the evenings, and read whenever I can. You probably have a similar schedule – or worse. It takes a lot of energy. But writing or not writing is a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils, because no matter how tired I am, if I don’t write, I will snap at people all weekend and shrivel up like a raisin until the following Saturday.

How to trick your readers into paying attention

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The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, is one of the greatest books I have ever read. This was a big surprise, because it was published in 2005 by a thirty-something author, and I’m not often impressed by modern literature. But this book belongs among the classics.

What drives me nuts is that even though most people who read it love it, few seem to have a clue why – and thus cannot fully appreciate its awesomeness. Basically, it is a perfect example of one of the finer aspects of Show, Don’t Tell: trick your readers into paying attention.

The classic authors, the ones who evolved storytelling from folk art into fine art, found new ways to describe everyday things. They looked at the world with poet’s eyes and then wrote it in a way that hit their readers in the gut. New authors, however, generally just copy the old ones, and what was once creative has now become cliché.

Here’s an example:

Snow blanketed the ground like a great white sheet. Next to the train line, there was a trail of deep footprints. Trees were coated in ice.

There is nothing wrong with this. The imagery is really good – at least, it was the first time some writer looked at snow and said “hmm, that looks like a blanket.” But how many times have you seen “snow blanketed the ground/mountains/landscape” in a book? Chances are, you’ve seen it so many times, that you glaze over it. Consider instead Zusak’s version:

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.

Notice he uses the same concept as in the first excerpt – he even uses the word “blanket” – but he does it in a new way. He personalizes the simile (“the way you would pull on a sweater”), and compares snow with clothing in an active way that gives inanimate objects a human quality. The globe pulled on a sweater. Footprints sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets.

The plane was still spewing smoke. A black haze poured from the engines. When it crashed, it had made three deep gashes in the earth, and its wings had been ripped from its body.

Again, not bad. Terms like spewing, poured, gashes, and ripped from its body make it interesting. But all that has been done before. Let’s try Zusak:

The plane was still coughing. Smoke was leaking from both its lungs. When it crashed, three deep gashes were made in the earth. Its wings were now sawn-off arms. No more flapping. Not for this metallic little bird.

Notice again the human qualities he gives the plane, even though he goes on to compare it with a bird. Coughing. Lungs. Arms. It’s so strange, you have to slow down to decipher it; you have to pay attention. Which, in turn, makes you feel every word.

Writing this way is hard. You can’t just pour it out – you have to think about it. But it can mean the difference between great writing, and okay writing. I read somewhere that Zusak tried to put one great thing on every page. My advice is to do the same. Also, read The Book Thief.

Inspiration Monday III

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Inspiration Monday has turned out to be even more fun than I thought; the participants have done an incredible job. I am consistently surprised and impressed by their unique interpretations. You should definitely go check them out:

Jinx Writings

Screen Scribbla

Find an Outlet

Did I miss any participants? Let me know in the comments!

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The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

OR

No really; I need rules!

Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before 6 pm CST on the Monday following this post.

 

The Prompts:

The last book in the universe*

The stranger on the subway

Worse than death

Why children fear the dark

I’m not crazy

 

If you want to share your Inspiration Monday piece, post it on your blog and link back to today’s post; I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post.

Happy writing!

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*Today’s first prompt brought to you by The Last Book in the Universe, by Rodman Philbrick.

The Piece for March

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Let's hope I practice what I preach.

Debra challenged me to write from one of my own prompts. The result is heinously longer than I intended. Perhaps it will make up for the lack of a February excerpt.

 

Everyday villain

The worst part is sleeping alone. The bed is too big, and there are one too many pillows. It’s not that I forget she’s gone, but every morning I’m blindsided by the thickness of the empty space. The loudness of it.

I try to ignore it. But even before I open my eyes I can feel the hollow in my gut. I roll until my feet hit the floor, and it feels harder than it used to. The solidness of it seems to make my bones shake and knock against each other as I stumble to the closet. I’m looking for a clean shirt, but all I can see are the empty shoes. She always had too many shoes. New ones littered the floor every season like multicolored dandylions. I used to curse every morning when I tripped on a pair of flip flops or a lonely stiletto on my way to the bathroom, swearing I was going to toss them all to the curb with the junk mail and the coffee grinds. Never did. Never will.

But it’s the empty shoes that wake up the monster, and before I finish getting dressed, my hands are twitching. I find it difficult to button the top button. I’m trembling, like the hollow in my gut is swallowing the rest of me.

I find myself in the kitchen, without remembering having walked there. The monster shoves me along, screaming in my ear. I fight it in the feel of the glass in my fist. I fight it in the moment between reaching into the refrigerator, and touching the orange juice, when my arm rebels and tries to reach for something else. I shake it off, but I’m fighting it again in the sound of pouring. And I fight it in the taste when I swallow, and I feel like I’m losing when there is nothing in my chest but coolness. Above my shoulders, there is not skin and skull and eyes and brain, only swarming, churning, throbbing.

Everything is sharper, harder, colder than it used to be. I remember it soft, and dim, and weightless, when the monster was young and just beginning to grow. Before I decided to fight it. Why did I decide to fight it? Suddenly, I can’t remember. Why should I? It’s never going to give up. It’s never going to get any easier. The shoes will never be filled and there will always be too many pillows. We used to be friends, the monster and I. The keys are in my hand, and I realize that, in a matter of minutes, in a matter of miles, I could exchange those keys for a bottle, for some relief.

But there are footsteps on the linoleum, and I am startled by a figure in pink pajamas. She smiles – she has her mother’s smile. I unconsciously hide the keys in my fist. She shuffles past me to pour herself a bowl of Cheerios, but pauses to kiss me on the cheek.

“It’s a year today,” she says. Nothing else. No I love you or I’m proud of you, but I can see it in her face, that she feels safe. Her old man fights a war for her every day. And every day, she’s the one who wins it. I slip my keys back into my pocket.

How to write plot

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“I have a great book idea, but I have no plot.”

I hear this pretty frequently. Most new writers seem to think that plot lines are supposed to spring into their heads fully formed. Then they feel deficient when they come up dry. But plotlines rarely appear out of the blue – and never fully formed. More often an idea is nothing but a world, a character, a single scene, or a mere image. We must take these fragments and grow them into stories.

But how? Yes, some of it still has to be inspiration, and I can’t teach you how to be inspired, but here are some methods that will help:

Image – have nothing but a picture in your head? Don’t fret. C.S. Lewis started out with nothing but a mental picture of a faun carrying an umbrella, and got the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia out of it. Let yourself daydream about the image for a while. Once it has grown into a scene, read below.

Scene – Markus Zusak got the idea for I Am the Messenger when he noticed a 15-minute parking zone outside a bank and wondered what it would be like to be stuck lying on the floor of the bank during a robbery, worrying about a parking fine. So start by writing down everything you know about that scene. Is it a beginning scene, a middle scene, or the climax? Who is there? How did they get there? What will be the result of their actions ?

World – maybe your idea centers on a world that has some interesting little difference from ours (like it’s full of mutant humans with magical powers). How did the world get that way? (Are they mutating due to a nuclear explosion, or are they doing it to themselves intentionally?) What are the social, political, religious ramifications? (Are they suing a power plant? Are they fighting laws against genetic manipulation?) What are the real-life ramifications for an individual person? (Is the psychic teenager ostracized by his parents? Is the housewife fighting crime at night?)

Character – maybe you’ve invented Sherlock Holmes, Sydney Carton, or Margo Roth Spiegelman and this person is begging to have a story written about them. Again, write down everything you know. Pretty, plain, strong, smart, cowardly, kind, mean, funny? What is the most important thing in the world to this character? Maybe it’s his wife, maybe her son, maybe it’s getting into Harvard or on Broadway, or escaping prison. Then, threaten this thing. Take it away and make them rescue it. Endanger it and make them protect it. Entice them to pursue it, and throw obstacles in their path.

Moral – Stop. Rewind. I forbid you from writing a book based on a moral alone. It will come off as salesy, preachy or both. Come up with some other idea, follow the directions above, and if a moral happens to grow naturally out of the story you are already writing, more power to you.