Category Archives: The Writing Life

WtFS

Craft & Skills Kim May The Writing Life 1 Comment

I don’t recommend taking bets on what questions will be asked at a book signing. Not only is it frowned upon in respectable establishments like bookstores, if I’m in the pool I’d win nine times out of ten. Why? Though the voices and faces may change, the questions are often the same. The one I hear the most is “what is the most important advice you were ever given?” The most common answer? “Write the story.”

Now, I’ve asked my fair share of questions. Surprisingly this hasn’t been one of them. I have a good work ethic so sitting down to write has never been a problem. The part that gave me trouble was in the doing. I would stare at the screen for hours thinking about how I wanted to phrase a particular sentence or searching for the perfect adjective. I still finished the story. I just took forever doing it. My output made George R. R. Martin look like Brandon Sanderson.

For years I was convinced that it wouldn’t matter what trick I tried. I was a slow writer, end of discussion. It wasn’t until a dear friend sat me down and said four words that I realized how wrong I was.

What were those words?

Well, I can’t repeat the exact words in polite society but the nice version would be “write the freaking sentence.” I’ve abbreviated it to WtFS.

While the concept is very similar to “write the story”, the primary focus of WtFS is to stop dithering over vocabulary, sweating over punctuation, and even (Gasp!) leave the incomplete sentence alone. The sentence doesn’t have to be perfect, and likewise the story as a whole doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be on the page. When it’s complete there will be plenty of time to dither, sweat, and correct.

I applied this concept to my writing in January of 2013. Within a week my wordcount increased by a third. By the end of March my count had doubled. It was incredible and liberating and if it hadn’t happened before my eyes I never would have believed it. If I had received this wisdom in high school I could have finished that YA paranormal I started Junior year. (Don’t laugh. I was ahead of the curve. No one was writing that in 1996.) If someone told me to WtFS in grade school I could have finished that Rose Petal Place fanfic. (Seriously, don’t laugh. That show was awesome!)

Okay, so both of those would probably still would have been cast into the proverbial trunk — buried at the bottom, in shame — and that’s okay. They would have been finished and I wouldn’t have spent half my life with that ridiculous limitation in my head. Because you know what? The words I’ve put down since starting WtFS haven’t sucked. I made my first three sales this year on stories that had little or no revisions. Good things can happen when you trust your instincts and simply write the freaking sentence.

Investments of Time, Capital and Ego

Branding Business Goals Nathan Barra Starting a Career The Writing Life 2 Comments

The hobbyist writer creates for their own enjoyment and satisfaction. They write the story they feel driven to tell and will sometimes share it with a few close friends and family. Most professional writers start at this point. However, if you want to make a living from your writing, you must take the commitment a step further and start a small business. This means dealing with contracts and finance, being involved in all stages of the production process and comporting oneself in a professional manner whenever in public. I know, I just sucked all the romance from being a professional writer. Honestly, I wish that someone had taken off my rose colored glasses and forced me to don the business hat long before I did. You see, only the writer-as-businessman point of view provides the tools and perspective to create a meaningful career.

Creating stories is both a profession and a trade; writers generate and exploit intellectual property. Therefore, starting a writing business must be approached with the same thoughtfulness regarding initial investment and training as one would give to starting any other commercial enterprise. Would you ever consider opening a bakery without first buying ovens and ingredients? No. Could an aspiring doctor be successful without any sort of medical training? Of course not. Why then, do people expect writing to be different? Typically, the first batch of money goes into whatever is going to generate revenue; it is why many small businesses start in someone’s garage or kitchen. In the case of writing, the money maker is the writer’s skills and public image.

First, the writer must have some physical means of recording their thoughts in a way that can be transmitted to others. The specifics vary for each individual, based on their own experience and preferences. Some prefer direct entry into a laptop, while others prefer to write in a notebook, and yet others, like myself, prefer to dictate. I’d recommend experimenting with a few methods and then using what works for you. For many years, I only typed my stories out manually, but eventually bought Dragon Naturally Speaking. The text-to-speech feature helped a great deal with my editing, but dictating in front of my computer resulted in only a slight improvement in my rate of text generation. The problem was that I still spent too much time editing to realize the true benefits of dictation. I later took the advice of a writer I greatly respect and purchased a digital recorder to do my initial drafting. After training Dragon to do the transcription, my initial productivity has jumped significantly. By experimenting with my methodology, I was able to see significant gains.

The second thing the writer must invest in is their skills and craft. Sure, there are countless seminars, craft books, and online tutorials that promise to make you an international best seller, for a price. There are also excellent degree programs and teachers willing to pass on knowledge. They all help, but no amount of studying will allow a writer to entirely bypass years of practice. Investing in one’s craft means being brutally honest with yourself or having people who are willing to dispel your delusions for you. It means being able to think and consume critically about every piece of media you interact with on a daily basis. It means forcing yourself to write new material and edit old manuscripts until they are the best they can be, and then having the courage to let go of a piece and show your work to others. At some point, you will be disillusioned and despairing; internal and external voices will insist that you are wasting your time. That is the moment that you should know that what you are doing is meaningful. A writer’s craft can only be improved by investing and risking their time, pride, and effort. Without struggle and pain, there is no improvement, only stagnation.

The final element a writer must be willing to invest in is their persona. Readers will often become a fan of an author rather than a specific property, allowing the creative professional to maintain an audience from project to project. This realization has caused many contemporary authors to spend as much time on their own personal branding and networking as they do on an individual story. As an example, soon after donning my business hat, I hired someone to do both my graphics and web design for NathanBarra.com. I realized that I had no talent there and so hired out. I have invested time in maintaining my presence on NathanBarra.com, here on the Fictorians and on my Facebook page. All these things take time away from writing my stories, but the investments have paid off through the networks of professionals and support structures I have built. Likewise, I have spent thousands of dollars on conventions, and have even gone so far as purchasing a specific set of clothes that I wear when making professional appearances. By creating a “look,” I have made myself clearly identifiable and memorable in a way that fits with my other branding efforts. It is time and money up front, but I’m gambling that the investments will pay off later.

I have many things demanding my physical, mental, and temporal resources. Whenever I make an investment as the writer, it is with a clear goal in mind. Though I am still in the investment stage, I always am looking forward. I will be a professional writer some day, making my sole living through my art. It took a series of small hints from a number of different sources to guide me onto the path of professionalism. In order to build a successful business, I must invest wisely and with purpose.

Fandom is not your career

The Writing Life No Comments

I am an unapologetic nerd and I love my fandoms.

124 of my original, 1980s vintage My Little Ponies that I owned from childhood on, an encyclopedic knowledge of Transformers, an appearance on the Gargoyles Season One DVD and a dedication in a Halo novel all indicate just how much I love my fandoms.

dfillyethic_zpsafc8c71bIn undergraduate university I discovered the Internet was filled with creative fans just like me.  Fans who took part in fandom and made it their own through fan fiction, fan art, fan comics, roleplaying, handicrafts, cosplay, conventions…the list goes on.

So, having an affinity for writing, I tried my hand at some fan fiction.  I’d mostly quit doing creative writing in the last few years of high school (spending most of my free time on getting my glider and private pilot licenses) and fan fiction brought back to me just how much I loved storytelling.  I met people online who read my stuff and gave me feedback:  what worked, what didn’t, what they’d like to see next.  I had a critique group, an audience, and a fan club all in one.

In my first year at Royal Military College I realized I wanted to be a professional writer.  Somewhere down the line, I wanted to tell stories for a career.  I wanted to write at a pro level, to create worlds and share my vision and earn at least part of my living doing it–to be able to focus on creating and support myself while doing so.

…but I was still writing fan fiction.

I was getting better, I told myself, and I was.  Every writer has to write their million words of crap before they learn to shine, I said, and I did.  I’m honing my skills at character development, outlining, foreshadowing, strong beginnings, rewarding endings, I argued, and it was true.

But I couldn’t sell any of it.

I had nothing to submit to paying markets.   I had nothing to bring to a writer’s group of people polishing their work for publication.  I wasn’t getting any experience at creating worlds from scratch, or working out internal logic for those worlds.  I wasn’t learning how to write cover letters, network with industry professionals, or sort out good opportunities from mediocre opportunities from outright predators.

I spent hours roleplaying, convincing myself I was “improving my character building skills.”  I was hooked on the kudos I received for the next posted chapter of my fanfic saga, thrilled to hear that people loved my writing.  I drew my characters over and over to have models when it came time to describe them in words.  I told myself I’d be hot out of the gate when my professional writing career began.  But at this point, I was marking time.

Superstars Writing Seminar was a watershed for me.  Investing in the seminar meant it was time to start looking at my writing as a career, not a hobby; as a job, not a celebration of my fandom.  I quit fanfic writing and roleplaying and fan art and relegated myself to the occasional TV show, comic book and hour of video games.

…I went too far the other way, and was dissatisfied.  I missed the social aspect of fandom, I missed playing with my beloved characters, and I felt like a huge component of my life had been cut away.

So I’ve returned to role-playing and fan fiction, but strictly as entertainment.  It comes after, not before, my professional writing goals for the day have been met.  It comes instead of, not in addition to, other things I might choose to do for fun, like play video games or make crafts.  It might support my professional writing by introducing me to more people, picking up my mood when I feel frustrated and battered, and encouraging me to play with words, but it does not take the place of writing original stories, editing them, submitting them, and beginning research on the next.

I don’t do cosplay or make fan comics or draw art challenges any more.  With limited time for relaxation, I chose fan fic and roleplaying as my favourite parts of fandom, and let the others go.

If I had it to do over, I’m tempted to say that I’d push myself to start submitting my work sooner.  I’m not sure, though, how to pinpoint the time in my life where I was mature enough to not interpret a rejection as a portent of doom, personal insult, or sign of my complete and incurable ineptitude.  I’m also grateful for the epic saga I wrote that taught me yes, I do have the ability to write a book’s worth of material.

So instead, I’d tell myself  to keep in mind that fandom is not a career.

If you love to write fan fiction, roleplay, cosplay, draw, do voiceovers, whatever…do it!  But don’t fool yourself into thinking that your marathon roleplay sessions or your fanfiction epic or your costume of your character are critical building blocks to professionally publishing your first story.  Writing that story is a critical building block to publishing that story.  So is editing, submitting, learning lessons, networking, and starting a second story in case the first one doesn’t pan out.  By all means keep doing what you love, but know that if you want to make writing your career, you need to focus on writing sellable stories, and save your fan activities for your relaxation time.

(And if you’d like to write for licensed IPs – intellectual properties, like Halo and Transformers and My Little Pony – those writers aren’t chosen from the best fanfiction on the internet.  Invitations to write for licensed IPs go to people who’ve already proven they have the professionalism to write, edit and sell original fiction.  Publishing your original novel will get you there a lot faster than writing your 100th fanfic–or your 1000th.)

Even if you’re not a fan – I’ve seen aspiring writers do a similar thing with writing “prep”.  They attend tons of seminars, go to cons, faithfully update their social media, and spend hours on story research and how-to-improve-your-writing books….but rarely write anything.  All those things are great, but they don’t replace the fundamental act of writing.  You can’t supplement what you’re not actually doing.

If you want to be a writer….write!

 

The Patience of Writing an Onion

Ace Jordyn Character Craft & Skills Editing First Drafts Rewriting Self-Awareness The Writing Process 2 Comments

Writing a good onion, I mean story, takes time and I don’t just mean the time to think and type the first draft. Becoming and being a writer is an evolution, a process, and we need to be patient with ourselves as we learn the craft and apply it. But what does being patient mean and how can we apply it in a meaningful way? Here are three areas where I’ve learned to apply patience:

Creating the story
One day, I heard one writer critique a story. “Sheila is a patient writer,” he said. I was dumbfounded. What did he mean? I read Sheila’s piece and then looked more carefully at the author’s I liked. Slowly, I figure it out and my writing improved immensely.

Patience in your writing means taking your time to explain things where and when they need to be explained. For example, a story which starts with a lot of back story tells of an impatient writer. Knowing when to sprinkle in the details and saving some of them for later takes patience. It also means taking the time to explain things clearly when the opportunity presents. That can be with setting, character description, with action or dialogue. If you are clearly grounded, then the reader will be as well. Take time developing that scene. Show the situation, the feelings, and focus on the important points and explain them as clearly as needed. Don’t rush it unless there’s a good reason for doing so. If you over-write, you can edit it down later. If you are patient with characters you will make them memorable. If you are patient with your story, you will ground your readers and hold their interest.

Learning new skills
You can’t learn everything from a book, a workshop, a conference or a course. The secret, I’ve learned, is to take one thing that stuck with you and apply it to your story, scene or character. That one thing is usually an aha! moment and because of that it means you’ve become aware of something you never realized before. It’s another layer in writing the perfect onion. Apply that new understanding to your work and suddenly it’s transformed in ways you couldn’t have imagined. The truth is that how-to books are long and cumbersome and workshops are intensive because they try to cover enough points so that everyone will get something from it. So, take one thing and apply it.

Deciding which hat not to wear
The first draft can never be perfect – you’ve heard this before but what does it really mean? If you strive for a perfect first draft, your story will never be written and it’s an impossible feat. It’s impossible to wear both the creative hat and the editor’s hats. Yes, plural hat for the editors.

There are three editorial hats: conceptual where the larger elements of the story such as plot and structure are examined; line by line where every sentence and word are examined for clarity, word choice and content; and copy editing for grammar, spelling and punctuation. Then there’s the creative hat. Wearing four hats? Suddenly that sounds silly, doesn’t it?

Your first draft can be augmented by some planning (outlining) and your current writing skills. As you’ll write, you’ll learn more up skills along the way which makes new works cleaner and more cohesive. But that first draft will never be a perfect finished work. Every successful writer knows that. Don’t believe me? Check out their acknowledgements pages. First readers, proof readers, editors – they’re all thanked because they’re all there for a reason. Creativity needs its own hat to weave unexpected twists and unfetter your imagination. The weight of four hats will give you a headache and ultimately, writer’s block. So be patient. Wear your creative hat and come up with an exciting, moving story. The wear each editorial hat in turn. As you wear each one, that’s a good time to apply new skills or insights about the craft. A trick is to have cheat sheets with points or questions for each of the editors.

Patience can best be described as creating an onion rather than peeling it back. Layer upon layer must be built before the story is completed to our satisfaction. So perhaps the hat analogy doesn’t really work. The creative and editing processes are about layering the story to add density to the concept, the plot, to character, to our voice and mastery of the craft. An onion grows from a small seed and layer by layer with watering and patience, it forms a solid bulb and so too grows a story.