Category Archives: The Fictorians

Building My Tribe

Craft & Skills Guest Posts Motivation 1 Comment

TribeA guest post by Michelle B. Cori.

My dreams of becoming a writer came late to me. I was inspired during one of the most challenging times of my life. Just before my 28th birthday I found myself pregnant, laid-off, on the other side of the country from my family and about to be newly single. Needless to say it wasn’t one of the more cheerful times in my life. But I was inspired by an interview I saw with J.K. Rowling and an author who happen to live down the street from me. It was Jim Butcher, and the fourth book of the Dresden Files had just come out. Hearing about their successes gave me an idea.

Many years later I’m sitting in Starbucks writing this blog after a week crammed with excitement and inspiration found at Salt Lake’s first ComicCon. My story takes place over ten years; at the beginning of 2003 I started writing with the intent to become an author. In those early years I wrote, many times in my local coffee shop. I was too afraid to show my writing and had no idea what steps to take to become an author. Things continued on like that for years, and probably would have had I not seen a post in December 2009 on the website of Sherrilyn Kenyon. She was coming to Salt Lake. I assumed it was for a signing, but it wasn’t. She was apart of a writing workshop called Super Star’s Writing Seminars.

As a single mother two weeks before Christmas it was a scary idea to take my last $500 to attend the seminar. After several hours of thinking about it and pulling my hair I took the plunge, more worried about paying bills because by some miracle I had finished Christmas shopping. That decision was as important and life changing as the decision for a used up Art Director to attempt to become a writer. In February of 2010 I met many people who would come to change the course of my life and work.

I was bombarded with information about the writing industry in my first couple seminars. Thing were changing so fast, Borders shut down three weeks after that seminar and I was headed to my second seminar Life the Universe and Everything. Those two seminars were the start of what I know now would be life long friendships, knowledge, work and partnerships. The interesting thing about the seminars and Cons is often for me it wasn’t the information, but about the connections. More than ten conventions later I can say the moments that stick out are having a beer the last night of my first Super Star’s with Kevin J. Anderson or having dinner with James A. Owens or Sherrilyn Kenyon. It is the connections, which have made the difference and keep me inspired. I have a tribe, as James A. Owens would say. The tribe is increasing all the time and the bonds growing stronger. With the tribe I am apart of something and not alone anymore.

My inspiration comes from seeing a author my age who I met more three years ago, go from winning Writers of the Future to being nominated for a Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell in the same year, to now being a many times published author and a new author at Baen.

My advice to anyone wanting to be an author is to find a community or tribe. This is accomplished thru going to workshops, writing groups, conventions, web seminars or classes, seminars or getting to know people at your locally owned book store or comic store. You need a support system and network. This is what helps to keep you going through rejections or dry spells. Ideas, inspiration and friendship come from joining with other who are doing what you are or what you hope to.

The funny thing is I wouldn’t be writing this blog had it not been for a dinner one night earlier this year in Colorado Springs. I sat next to a new member to the Super Star’s tribe and offered him advice about developing a self-brand and helping him find cover artists. He contacted me and asked if I would be interested in doing a blog. While at Salt Lake ComicCon I connected with authors I know and have walked away with some interesting possibilities for future work.

The web is also a get place to find communities and workshops that are free or very affordable. Places like Fictorians, the Eric Flint’s Grantville Gazette blog, Scribe’s Forge (web classes and seminars), Writer’s of the Future blog. All of these places are a great place to begin. Remember to always be courteous on the web or in person. You never know whom you are talking to. My favorite example of this is I once was at a World Horror convention after party talking to a man. I made a funny and G rated joke about clowns. He handed me a card and said, “I’m editing a analogy of clown horror stories. Would you be interested in submitting?” Or being at World Sci-Fi in the dealers room looking at a signed copy of one of my favorite books. As I proceeded to get excited it turned out the author was standing next to me. You never know whom you will meet and were things can lead.

So here is my point, if you want to take the next step in your writing start with writing a lot. Be prolific. Next plan and set aside time and money for workshops or conventions so you can begin to network and grow your tribe. But remember your tribe is a support system met to lift you up and inspire you. You still have to keep drumming away on the keyboard too and it shouldn’t distract from your writing but add to it. So go forth and find your people.

 

Guest Writer Bio:
MBCoriM.B. Cori is plugging away on her first paranormal romance, with hopes of finishing and publishing early next year. Followed close by with a middle grade book. She spent many years as an Art Director in corporate and publishing doing design and illustration. Currently crashes in Salt Lake City, Utah where she can be found behind a keyboard or bar serving drinks. A girl has to making a living while she pursues her dreams.

From Crap to Craft

Craft & Skills Guest Posts 1 Comment

A guest post by S. James Nelson.

It’s very likely that the first bit of fiction that anyone writes is crap. There are three potential responses to this:

1. Give up because doing this fiction thing right is going to be hard

2. Remain oblivious to it, and continue writing crap

3. Improve

Don’t give up

If you’re honestly interested in becoming an excellent writer, I’d recommend not choosing the first response. Don’t get all offended at yourself or others who discover that what you wrote is no good. It’s only natural. It’s just a fact of life that the first time you do something you’re not going at be good at it–because, you know, real life isn’t like a video game: designed to be easy at first.

Don’t be oblivious

I’d also recommend avoiding option two–if you want to get good at writing, at least. Oh, maybe you don’t have to be so brutal as to call what you wrote crap, but you should probably at least realize that whatever it was you gave birth to wasn’t perfect. That’s a starting spot: admitting there’s a problem is the first step in correcting it. And writing an imperfect story is a problem, wouldn’t you say?

Improve

So how do you not remain oblivious to the flaws in your writing? It’s nothing new.

Finish something. A story. A book. Something. Anything. Do not revise endlessly, trying to perfect. There is a point where each revision provides less return. As you write more, you’ll learn where this point is. For now, on your first project, assume that after 3 passes it’s as good as it’s going to get. For now. We’ll call it Project 1.
Put Project 1 aside and write Project 2. Immerse yourself in Project 2, to the point that you’ve completely forgotten Project 1 exists (a slight exaggeration). Finish Project 2.
Put Project 2 aside.

Do the pre-writing for Project 3. Depending on the scope, this could take days or weeks or months. I’ll get to the point of having done several revisions on a plot outline, because I’m an outline writer. If you don’t use outlines, hopefully you’ve at least got everything done that you need to do before you start writing. If your first draft is always a piece of junk and you completely re-write draft two, you can treat your first draft as your pre-writing. Just be sure you’re fully immersed in it, and you now spend your mental CPU cycles on Project 3, not Projects 1 or 2.
Once your pre-writing on Project 3 is done, return to Project 1. Read it as if you were your target audience. As you do, take note of things that worked and things that didn’t work. Be brutally honest. This is where you will learn about what works and what didn’t work. You may even notice typos you never saw before. And of course you will–you’re two projects down the road, by now. Naturally you’ve improved. Naturally you’re much smarter and more skilled at this point.

Re-immerse yourself in Project 1, and revise based on the observations you made. Make one pass. Maybe two. Right about now, Project 1 is basically done. It’s probably overkill to set it aside and then return to it a third time.

At this point what’s nice is that the lessons you learned from reviewing Project 1 will stick with you. You’ll be able to apply them in all succeeding projects. And now you’re going to start having at least 3 projects going at once. To keep things simple, there are basically three phases:

Pre-writing
Writing
Fixing and polishing

You want to get to the point where you have a project in each phase. Never complete two phases for a single project at once. Instead, move the other projects on to different phases. Each time you fix and polish, you must learn something. Maybe something about how to tell stories. Maybe something about how to write good prose. Maybe something about world building. But you must always complete step 3 with the following philosophy: steps 1 and 2 did not make this as good as it can be.

The point is that you distance yourself from a project before really finishing it. Then you can return to it with fresh eyes. This is nothing new, and it’s very difficult to do when you’re a new writer because, you know, you feel urgency to finish. But be patient. Set it aside. You’ve got way more time than you know. Work on some other things, then come back to it with fresh eyes. You’ll be amazed.

Be patient

The good news is that “things can only get better” from where you started. The question is, how do you improve? As far as I’m concerned, there is really only one answer to that question, and it’s probably the same answer that a million others have articulated before.

You must practice. You must practice a lot.

It’s the same as with anything. To get good at something, you must do that thing over and over and over, never accepting that what you’ve done was good enough.

A friend and I are learning to golf. We thought we’d like to be as good as Tiger Woods–until we thought about how many golf balls Tiger Woods has hit in his lifetime. A scanning of the Internet indicates that when he was younger, he hit as many as 1,000 balls a day. Some quick math puts his number of balls hit over 20 years at 7.3 million.

That’s a crapload of balls.

If you’re going to be a pro at golf, you’d better plan on hitting millions of golf balls just to get in the game.

Likewise, if you’re going to be a pro writer, plan on writing millions of words. There is no substitute for practice. Nothing can replace the experience of having stories written, completed, and analyzed. You’re going to be competing with people who have millions of words under their belts. You should expect that it’s going to take you millions of words to be able to compete with them.

A few other notes

Read books about writing. Attend seminars. Not everything you read or hear is going to be true or applicable to you. It’s not all going to be useful. But hopefully some of it will be. Personally, I’ve really benefitted from a handful of books, such as Orson Scott Card’s “Character and Viewpoint,” “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” by Browne and King, and “Writing the Break-out Novel,” by Donal Maass. There are others I’ve read that I haven’t taken much from, or only a thing or two. But in the end, they were probably all worth it.
Spend your time writing, not talking about writing. It’s probably not a bad idea to find one writing group and use it as a tool to improve your writing. But don’t let the writing group detract from your time spent practicing. For each amount of content you want critiqued, read the same amount from others in the group. This is scary, because if you want a book critiqued, and there are five others in the group, that means you’ve got to read five books. that will drain your time. Manage your participation in the group, and be protective of your time. Oh, and only submit something to the group once.

Lose your fear of killing your babies. Yes, this is trite. But it’s true. I’d heard the maxim a thousand times before I really internalized it. Heck, I may not have completely accomplished this yet–I may never. But it’s huge, and fortunately it gets easier with time. You see, when all you’ve written is 100,000 words, it’s hard to admit that you don’t need 10,000 of those. But when you’ve written 2,000,000, it’s much easier to admit you don’t need 10,000 of those. Regardless, it’s very difficult thing to learn to throw away entire chapters or scenes. But it’s true that you must be willing to do this, or your writing will not improve. You must learn to accept the fact that the time you spent writing this or that thing is a sunk cost. You cannot regain it. But your work can get better if you re-write it or delete it or whatever the case is. You cannot hold on to what you’ve written. Once you’re willing to accept that, your writing will get much better. Don’t worry, the more you revise and write, the easier this will become, to the point that you may eventually throw away entire projects because while the idea seemed good at the time, it actually just wasn’t.
Love what you write. Love every character. Love every plot point. Every world you build. Write the story that, when you read it a few years down the road–just for fun–you absolutely adore even despite its imperfections.

I reckon that’s enough advice from a writer still trying to find his way to success–but hopefully one that has at least taken his writing to the “a step above amateurish” level. You should read one of my books and decide for yourself if I’ve succeeded. 😉

And as with those books I said you should read . . . take from this article only what is useful to you. Throw everything else away.

Guest sjamesnelsonWriter Bio:
S. James Nelson recently won first place in David Farland’s Nightingalewriting contest. If you enjoy action-oriented, deep-thinking fantasy, take a look at his book, The Demigod Proving. If you like strong characters, real-world fantasy, and hiking in national parks, take a look at his book Keep Mama Dead

Listening to the Right Voices

Colette Black Craft & Skills 1 Comment

Brandon Sanderson MTGAs I walked in the room Brandon Sanderson said, “Have her sit by me. I’m going to help her a little bit.”

He spent approximately fifteen minutes with me, and he helped me a lot. Fourteen minutes of that was reminding me how to play Magic the Gathering and whipping me in a match. The other minute stretched me to my next writing plateau.

I knew I needed to improve my writing, but I also knew that the resources available to me weren’t going to cut it anymore. I needed something to yank me upwards or my pace would be so slow that I wouldn’t see anything published for years to come. I knew this, but I didn’t know where to turn next. I’d been listening to Writing Excuses (a podcast for writers done by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Howard Taylor–Mary Robinette Kowal came later) for quite a while, so when they talked about Conduit, I decided to make the trip, stay with family nearby so I could afford it, and see what I could learn. I didn’t expect to end up in a MTG game (Magic the Gathering) with Brandon Sanderson, but when my son pointed out the sign-up to me, I blew the dust off my cards and showed up.  In my efforts to observe a game between Brandon and his fans, he noticed me enough and talked with me enough to recognize my nervousness about the upcoming tournament.

So, he sat by me, coached me in what types of cards to pick and how to put my deck together. When my turn to play against him came, I worked up my courage to talk about writing.

“I’ve been listening to Writing Excuses,” I said. “And it has helped me a lot.”

As his creatures attacked mine and I tried to block, I told him a short version of the story about how I started writing. (If you haven’t read the story, you can go to my webpage, www.coletteblack.net, and visit the About Me page.)

Then I asked. “I’ve been writing for a while, I’m getting better, but I can tell I still need to improve a lot, but I don’t know what else to do. Can you give me any suggestions?”

He looked at me a moment, perhaps gauging my sincerity, and then said. “David Farland still does workshops. He’s a good writing teacher and I suggest you attend one.”

And then he killed me, or my cards I should say, and I went to the next match and got royally scobbed again. I should point out, if it hadn’t been for his help I would have never lasted three rounds in any of the matches that night. I didn’t do great, but I held my own.

I signed up for the next David Farland workshop I could fit into my schedule–the Professional Writers Workshop.  I thought it would be beyond my amateur skills, but he made the class work for everyone, regardless of our skill level. And my writing ability jumped dramatically. It wasn’t only the teaching. It was also having a group of serious writers, the kind who are willing to spend money to get better, surrounding me and giving me critiques. Between David’s well-done workshop, and my fellow writers amazing skills, each time I’ve attended a workshop my writing ability has improved not by the gradual climb of Butt in Chair Fingers on Keyboard–though that is important–but by a step or two upward.

So, in my opinion, if you find yourself on a writing plateau, then find yourself a good workshop with personal instruction and serious writers who will take the time to critique 10-20 pages of your work and really give it a serious once-over. If you’re willing to learn, you’ll jump to the next level. Eventually you’ll reach a point where you might need something more, but so far, it’s worked well for me. I’ve attended three workshops so far, and if I could scrape together the money right now, I’d be attending his next one. I’ll probably try Dean Wesley Smith’s online workshop next. When will I be so good I won’t need them? Probably never. I can’t imagine ever reaching a plateau that is so high that I can’t stretch and reach another one.

I also recommend conventions, conferences, good critique groups,  seminars, and books, but nothing beats the type of instruction you can get in a workshop. Butt in chair is vital, but listening to the men and women who already know what they’re doing can make the time in the chair really count.

Taking Back What Was Stolen

Motivation Quincy Allen The Writing Life 1 Comment

Today is an important day.

Politics and economies and foreign policies aside, September 11th is a day to remind us of standing up after something is destroyed. It’s a day to rise above adversity, to strive to rebuild and rework and hunker down and not let others take away what lies within ourselves, no matter what.

I’m old enough now that I don’t remember how old I was in the 5th grade. I actually had to think about it. That’s another epiphany regarding time in a growing list of them as I get gray at the temples.

I guess I was nine when I discovered a love of writing because of what it could evoke in readers. What started it all off was a story about an alien world and lava pools and molten spiders. The teacher loved it. My classmates loved it. It was the first time I ever heard someone read out loud what I had written. And in that moment a fire was kindled—a dream born.

So I kept writing—here and there—because it was a way to explore new places, even play god by creating them and setting lost souls adrift within them. But, while all this was going on, reality struck hard and took hold.

My father was born in 1929—in Brooklyn, New York. While you probably didn’t hear about the birth of my father till just now, you may have heard of something else that took place in the same city and the same year. It was called Black Tuesday, and in its wake lay the Great Depression. These were the formative years of the man who would eventually raise me. He had very specific ideas on career choices and artists and stability and retirement. Being an author wasn’t in that mix.

Like it says on the bio I have on my website, I was “…waylaid by bandits armed with the age-old adage, ‘So you wanna be a starving artist the rest of your life?’” Those words came from my father. More than once. And they killed the dream I had… or, it seems, pushed it into a deep coma. I don’t blame him for what he tried to do. There’s no doubt that my father cared deeply for all three of his children, and he did have the very best of intentions. He thought he was helping.

So, one day, after having spent seventeen years in IT and pursuing a career that wasn’t mine for reasons that belonged to someone else, I found myself staring down the barrel of a layoff. A few mornings after, I woke up wondering what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life. I was forty-three, a bit long in the tooth to start a new career, but totally disinterested in going back to IT.

And then the writer within me, the one that had slept soundly for over two decades, woke up. You know what he told me? He said that he’d rather die a starving artist than live another day as a slave to the corporate grind. And then he became me.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have a day-job, and it’s still somewhat in IT. I write technical documents for a software company. It’s enough to pay what few bills I have while I whole-heartedly pursue the dream. And that’s the lesson here.

I’m reminded of the Will Smith movie “The Pursuit of Happyness.” If there is one quote to take away from that film, it’s when he’s talking to his son. They’re living on the street and his boy talks about becoming a superstar basketball player. Will’s first response is to shoot down the dream because it’s risky and many don’t make it, and he’s raising his son on the street. Then he stops. And ponders. And then fixes what he broke with his words by saying, “Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right? You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.”

I still get teary-eyed when I think of that. I was that little boy, but I never got the fix. My own father didn’t figure it out till after I started having successes in the writing game, and that was twenty-five years later… after I did it myself.

But I’m telling you now: if you have a dream, don’t let anyone take it away from you. Ever. You may fail over and over again, but that’s what dreams are for, to give us a moon to shoot for. And if there is a better definition of what this life is about, I don’t know it.

So go get it.

 

Q.