Perseverance
Do It Again In 2010
January 1, 2010When I started blogging almost 4 years ago, I was very organized. I set benchmarks by fiscal quarter and tallied results. Staying organized is still critical for me lest I start slacking off (it happens). But spreadsheets and SMART goals do not guarantee success as a writer.
Last year I focused on one task. I finished a book I was sure was great. However, no agent I've contacted has been interested in representing the project. Hard work and a desire to succeed is not enough.
I've written every day for a month. I've written in 15-minute sprints and 5-hour slogs. I've written alone and with others, given feedback and been critiqued, had some acceptances and plenty of rejections, had lucky breaks and near misses, been happy as a clam and bitter as day-old coffee, written flash and short and long formats, made great friends and been to wonderful places, all of which has made me a better writer.
It has not brought what I or (let's be honest) most writers would consider professional success.
Writing fiction is a tough, hard profession and it's in a time of unprecedented uncertainty in most every aspect of the business. One can be organized and committed, networking and connected, and writing and writing and writing. And still fail.
So why do it? I could fulfill my creative side in other ways. I certainly earn a lot more money at other professions. I did once quit writing.
In the late 1990's I was convinced I didn't have the motivation, patience, or talent to be a writer. I had a career and a family and a life path to middle class that was straight as a railroad track. That could be enough. I quit writing for years.
Until one day I scribbled down an idea. The idea became a scene. A plot developed and I thought "Oh crap, who the hell am I kidding. I'm a writer." It was a welcome derailment.
I write because I can't not and yes, I confess, I want others to read what I've imagined and be entertained by it. Even so, it is difficult to keep at it when the obstacles to success seem so great.
For Christmas I received Born Standing Up, an autobiography by Steve Martin. It covers his path to and career in stand-up comedy, a two decades long journey from selling programs in Disneyland to that jumped-the-shark King Tut song. There's a line in the book that seems appropriate to me right now:
Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.
NaNoWriMo Ends
December 1, 2009Another NaNoWriMo has been completed. Congratulations go to Rick O. for completing more than 50,000 words in the month of November. Nice work, Sir!
That is what I love about this crazy event. It inspires people to write, to tackle an objective they've always wanted to do but never got around to trying.
My own attempt did not get to 50k, though I did get north of 35k. I still like the idea for the book as well as the characters who have developed in interesting ways over the past 30 days. Just remains to keep plugging away.
Many thanks to everyone who stopped by here to offer encouragement. It helped more than you could know.
Clear The Decks
October 26, 2009Congrats to my good friend Rick O.! His review of a poetry reading was published by the Bakersfield Express. The review can be read here.
Starting next Sunday, I will have a chance to match her speed as I dive in headfirst once again into National Novel Writing Month. Contrary to earlier plans, I will have an outline for this next novel. Too many scenes have suggested themselves to just wing it.
I've also got some writing buddies to cheer on, both real space and virtual. It is going to be a busy month; I hope to surface for air and coffee once in a while.
Payment Due
September 10, 2009Still here? I wouldn't be surprised if you wandered away as I obviously did. I owe a visit to many of your own blogs.
At the transition from "I want to be a writer" to "I am a writer", I felt I was taking on a certain obligation. It would no longer be good enough to talk about it. Writers write, and submit, and interact with their peers. Sometimes they even get published. They definitely give back.
I've done the above but sometimes feel like I've taken more than I've given. I certainly owe those listed above. If nothing else, I feel I have to at least follow through.
This week I sent out my first agent query.
I had planned to finish this post in a different fashion. But I have to share this instead. I received my first agent rejection 17 hours and 41 minutes later. And you know, it's true. It hurts less when you rip the band-aid off quickly.
Next step: send out another agent query. Because that's what writers do.
Back To School
May 15, 2009I volunteer once a month in my daughter's 2nd grade classroom. My responsibilities tend to be cutting, stapling, and collating, though once I got to use a hot glue gun. That was cool.
The teacher got wind of me being a writer and she asked if I'd talk with the class about my writing process. The kids do a lot of writing, stories and essays, but are rather reluctant editors. I feel their pain. The teacher asked if I could focus a bit on that and maybe bring in some edited pages.
I was humbled to be asked to do that. And a little nervous. Kids ask the darndest questions, you know.
During my talk, I discovered they do many of the methods I mentioned: checking spelling (of course), reading out loud, and even cutting up a story and rearranging the pieces. Impressive.
I received some good tips. Like not making a title of a story until you're done, that way you know what the story is about. I usually get the title fixed in my brain at the beginning (after all, I need to save the document file as something). Good advice.
And then the questions. They were mostly softballs. For example: What is my favorite story that I wrote? But then came the tough question, the kind I knew would come up.
"Are you a professional?"
D'oh! Wow. Imagine the things going through my head, the subjective nature of the meaning professional writer, or even just writer! But I couldn't waffle. They'd see through that. I had to be honest.
I said that writing was a tough job. That most writers don't make a lot of money doing it and, like me, have another job to earn money. Writing takes a lot of patience and practice but if you love doing it, then it's worth all the work.
So it all went well. The teacher was pleased. My daughter was proud of me, and happy I didn't say anything to embarrass her.
Folly of Youth
December 5, 2008I've been caught in a lie. In the Fiction section of this site, I make claims about my first published work. Recently, someone reminded me these claims are false.
I went digging in the archives and found the clippings, faded to a nice beige. My work was derivative (in one story I even state 'This is based on the work of Kurt Vonnegut') and attempts to shock the reader without being particularly shocking. There's thinly veiled animosity toward authority (e.g. the Principal and Vice Principals). And it is clear the editor was giving a pass to his friend by not editing. I was also surprised.
The stories have a wry tone. There is a subtle dry humor. The themes are shot through with the absurd.
I recognize this writer from so long ago. It's strange. I like that aspects of my style, I might even say writing voice, haven't changed much. But it does make me wonder ...
I'm not going to over analyze it. And I'm going to reprint one article I wrote, mostly to thank that person of reminding me when I really first got published. It's below the break (it's rather long) and the subject is appropriate to the season. Hope you enjoy reading it.
We Have Second Draft
November 1, 2008My novel Garbageland has graduated from shitty first draft to crappy second draft.
One problem was the method. I read in another writer's blog how they printed out the first draft, made corrections on paper, and then re-typed the whole thing for the second draft. I decided to do the same.
There was some benefit. It certainly slowed me down, making me think more about the words I didn't touch. I've found it works well on short stories. Novel length works: not so much. I'd get bogged down frequently, looking at how few pages I'd gotten through in a day.
I must have a stubborn streak because I didn't give up on that method until September. Returning to live editing, for lack of a better term, the pages flew by. Perhaps that will require more changes in the third draft, but at least that draft will go quickly.
Work on the third draft starts Wednesday, or as soon as I've recovered from election night.
Writing By The Numbers
October 10, 2008I've been working on a short story for about 18 months. It's been submitted and rejected several times. I put it aside, worked on it, put it aside again, worked on it. I've been procrastinating on sending it out for a few reasons.
At that point I seek out critiques. I've done that already. I think the story is ready to go, but still I hesitate. So I wondered if there were some other means to evaluate the text.
For novels, I use software called yWriter. It has a tool that counts words, total and unique, and number of times each word is used. If I plugged my story in, would I see anything useful? Then again, I've got a blind spot. What I need to do is compare numbers on my story to another, say by a pro writer. So I found a great story by another author and typed it in.
Let's start with the big numbers.
| Pro Story | My Story | |
| Total Words | 5,862 | 6,153 |
| Unique Words | 1,447 | 1,794 |
| % of Total | 25% | 29% |
Lesson #1: Use interesting words.
Besides the unique words, the rest have been used at least twice in the stories. The usual suspects have been used hundreds of times in both: the, and, of, to. I notice that my story uses "was" 59 times while the slightly shorter pro story has 89 instances. So much for active voice.
Lesson #2: Know how to break the rules.
Going down the list, it's hard to make much comparison. The words, cut out of their context, seem so ordinary. They are the lunch-pail words, working hard at their job without expectation of big rewards. I'm not seeing any pattern or useful information.
How about the bottom, the words that are used twice to ten times? Maybe I'll see something there. Maybe I'm overusing a lot of filler words. Below shows the number of words used for each number of times. For example, if the word "what" and "should" are both used five times then the total is two for five uses. I know, this is getting abstract, bear with me.
| # of uses | Pro Story | My Story |
| Ten Times | 10 | 7 |
| Nine Times | 7 | 12 |
| Eight Times | 15 | 9 |
| Seven Times | 20 | 14 |
| Six Times | 21 | 38 |
| Five Times | 36 | 39 |
| Four Times | 54 | 72 |
| Three Times | 91 | 124 |
| Two Times | 217 | 258 |
Lesson #3: Writing is about words, not numbers.
Perhaps this was a futile exercise. I thought as an experiment it was interesting. I think the final lesson for me is:
Send the damn story out already!
New Story Published
September 5, 2008The publishing business can be very slow. My latest story to be published was written a long, long time ago in a mindset far, far away.
