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Posts tagged ‘writing’

Apr 23

How I Found My Literary Voice Part 2

After I graduated from undergrad with my BA in English, I had a plan. I wanted to find a job that paid me enough to live and still left me with free time to write. I got my wish with an electronic publishing company in Northern Virginia. The job was interesting and the people were great. I didn’t make huge amounts of money, but it was enough to pay the bills.

I had been so inspired by Raymund Chandler, I thought I would write mystery novels. Through out my teen years, I read Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan Kellerman, and the Nancy Drew stories. So after settling into my new adult life complete with my own apartment and new job, in a new city, I started to write my mystery story. It was slow going. I liked the idea, but it just didn’t feel right. After a few months, I put it aside.

I had a dilemma now. This was my best idea. If I wasn’t going to work on it, what would I do? My typical writing schedule was to work on my lunch hour and a couple of hours when I got home. In March 2000, I started a short story on my lunch hour. I was just playing around, trying to think of something to write, when an idea came over me. The story would be about a girl who was scared to grow up, so much so that her fear came to life. It was a strange, weird idea that I found compelling, so I followed the thread.

A couple of weeks later, I had to put the story aside. I was being laid off and job hunting became a priority at lunch time, instead of writing. Plus my apartment turned out to have so many problems that my roommate and I needed to start looking for a new place to live. My strange story would have to wait. I packed it away in a box.

Months later I had a new job and a new place. The apartment was good, but the job was taxing. I had a long commute and had zero energy to write when I got home. I also made the mistake of moving myself and instead of doing it in one or two days, I moved little by little over the course of a month. (Pro tip: Never move yourself. Pay people to do it. Trust me.) I didn’t really relax until the holidays.

I opened my writing box and there, on top of a stack of papers, was my story. Funny thing, I didn’t remember writing it. I read it with fresh eyes and realized: 1)I didn’t write an ending and 2) the story was good. I wrote the ending right there on my bed. Also, I realized I needed to quit my job. Writing was my calling and this demanding job that drained me, added thirty pounds of stress on my body, and left me unhappy had to go.

By the end of January 2001, I had a new job (back to electronic publishing) with a sensible commute and plenty of time to write. I enrolled in a community writing class and work-shopped my story. I had no idea how people would react, but I was damn proud of the story. It was the first thing I wrote out of school that I felt was in my true voice.

The class was good and most people reacted to it just as I hoped. But there was this one woman (I can’t even remember her name.) who hated it. She said to me, “I don’t understand anything that is going on here. Why don’t you just get rid of all this supernatural stuff and write a real story.” I was utterly confused by that and, at twenty-three, had never met people who were so hostile to genre stories. I have since met plenty of others who were just at snotty and I steer clear of them. My stuff is not for them, plain and simple.

Anyway, after this lady said her piece, an older woman named Carol took one look at her and shook her head. She leaned closer to me and said, “Ignore her. You write magical realism. That’s who you are.” I had never heard the term, but you’d better believe I went home and googled it. I took a look at my bookshelf and sure enough next to the Chandlers and the Dashell Hametts were Anne Rice, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and quite a few of those teen horror/fantasy books from Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. (Remember those?) Turns out I had a strong streak of the supernatural in me.

And to even solidify this realization, I found a note written on a realistic story that I had written while at UNM in Advanced Creative Writing. My professor wrote in the margin — This is good, but it is all a bit magical. My true voice had been inching out years earlier and just didn’t see it. After that class, I knew who I was as a writer.

I knew my voice.

Apr 19

Be that Quirky Writer

We writers are an odd lot. I started reading this book, It Takes a Certain Type of to be a Writer by Erin Barrett and Jack Mingo. It’s full of quirky anecdotes about writers and their behavior. My take away is that every writer has a certain set of rituals, behaviors, and tics that makes them create that magic that ends up in their writing.

So I started thinking about some of my own quirky habits.

First, I write 90% of my stuff long hand first. After a long day of working at my computer for my day job, sometimes I just can’t look at another screen. Hand writing my stories ensures that the writing gets done for the day. One exception is the blogging. I always compose these posts on the computer.

Second, I need a good dose of caffeine just before I start. In the winter, it’s black or green tea. In the summer, it’s ice tea. Back in the day, it was a Cherry Coke or Coke Zero, but, ya know, we’re trying to clean up our diet, so that don’t fly no more. The drink not only perks me up, but also is a break between what I was doing before and the writing time. My brain switches over and once I finish, I’m ready to work.

Third, I  don’t like to talk about works in progress. In the past, I’ve opened up about stories I’m working on, detailing plot and character, but I always regret it. So my new rule is, no details until I’m good and ready.

Fourth, I like black ink. I’ll tolerate blue (or other colors), but I prefer black.

Fifth, I used to write my first drafts to music. That habit has changed over the years. Now I prefer silence. Occasionally I will turn the tv for the white noise, but it has to be something that I can tune out like white noise in the background.

Those are all the quirks I can think of now. I’m not too exciting with my writing rituals. I don’t like writing in bed, nor do I pace around like others. My little habits get the work done and I’ll keep doing them as long as they keep working.

Apr 15

Adding the Funny

Look At This!
photo from: Department of the Interior

I’m adding the funny back into my writing. My last few stories that I’ve finished have had some real spots of humor. I’m not quite sure why this is happening, but I’m here for it. While serious fiction has its place and I am certainly not going to abandon it, I also find myself leaning more on the strange, humorous moments in life too.

Maybe this decade got a bit too serious for me.

Or maybe I am changing as a writer. (I don’t think so. If you read my story Where’s Rocky? you know how funny I can be.)

I guess it all comes back to my ideas about writing different kinds of stories. I not one of those writers that tells the same story over and over again. My imagination is sparked by so many different things, I want to explore them all. Imagination really is boundless.

And I want to laugh at it. Enjoy it. Delight in it.

Hmmm. Spring has made me more playful and fun.

Bye winter.

Apr 14

How to Write an Amazing Story

I wish I had an answer. I wish I knew the formula that would write world-changing stories. If I did, this would be a different blog.

I heard once that all an artist can do is put work out there they believe in and hope that the right people find it. Trying to make history will not make it so. History is made only after time has gone by, not in the moment. Who knows what will really be remembered a hundred years?

I create stories that I love. I believe in them. I trust that the people who find and read them are those that are meant to. This doesn’t mean I am against marketing or promotion. How else are people going to know what you are creating unless you tell them? I’m mean people who write stories they don’t believe in thinking that is the way to get published. That is a bad road to go down. Putting your name on work you don’t believe in will only lead to trouble later.

Write something you believe in.

And do your best to let people know about it.

Apr 13

#1 Trick for Writing Everyday

You can do everything right. You’re in the right head space. You sit down to write and then –BOOM! – you find yourself drifting off on some day-dream that has nothing to do with the story your writing. What happened? You did so well yesterday and thought you would be ready for the next, but nothing seems to be happening. You stare at the words you wrote yesterday, but nothing else is flowing.

I used to waste a lot of time trying to get back into the flow of the story. Try as I could, sometimes I couldn’t get back the magic that I had the previous day. Sometimes I could push through and get some good work in. Other times, I stayed lost and I resigned myself to getting something written, even something bad.

But a while ago (like 15 years or so), I learned a trick to keep the bad days of writing at bay. (Most of them. I still have a few.) I’ve used this idea consistently and it never lets me down.

I always end my writing day in the middle of a sentence.

If I do this, I always have an easier time finding my way back into the head space of a story. It’s like a pause in the middle of a thought, a metaphorical breadcrumb to the story, that I can restart again by reading back the words I wrote the day before.

I’m not one of those marathon writers that sits for 12-18 hours hammering out story. My brain shuts down around 8 pm. I have a day job. I need to work out and eat food and sleep. Life stuff. So I pause my thoughts a lot when I write. It’s so much easier the next day when I pick up the story. I finish the sentence and then, I usually write another one.

And another. And another…

The only time this fails is when I complete the story. No more sentences to finish. My work around now is to have multiple projects going. If I finish one, I have something else that can be finished. If I get a new idea, I can start that. I always get a new idea. Ideas, as you may have heard, are cheap and plentiful. Completed stories are much more rare.

I find this trick gets me writing every time. Gets me to the finish line. Gets me to my goals.

Good luck and happy writing.

Apr 11

Finding the Time

Cherry trees have blossomed.

One thing posting everyday has taught me — I have time to write. Sometimes it feels like I have zero time. My day job has drained me, or I have plans that take me away from my desk all day. Most days, however, I have a few minutes to write.

Went to the doctor this week and she encouraged me to get back into regular exercise. I thought, When is that going to happen? After work, no that is writing time. It’s going to be first thing in the morning for now. Maybe later I’ll change them. I used to be a “write first thing in the morning and workout in the evening” person. We’ll see. I can always change if I think the routine isn’t working.

In the past, people have always said, “When I have time, I’ll write.”

I always respond with, “You’ll never have time to write. You have to make time.”

But you knew that didn’t you (if you are a fellow writer)? Now I’m learning that I have to make time for everything else. Heck, even my grand plan to watch all of the GOT episodes before the season premiere on Sunday went awry. Last Sunday, as I started, I didn’t realize that Killing Eve was having a marathon. So GOT went on the back burner, Sandra Oh needed me now. And that day I still had to fit in a blog post, writing, reading more my friend’s novel, and grocery shopping. And some folks have way, way more responsibilities than me (like kids or aging parents). We do the best we can by making time for the important stuff.

And this month long challenge reminded me that I do consider my writing important. That I can carve out time to write (even a few paragraphs a day) among the craziness of life. This is important to me and I can make time for it. Everyday.

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