What summer?

Where has the summer gone? As a teacher, I have always approached August with little less than a panic attack. There’s so much to do. Lesson plans, opening your classroom, in-service days, professional training, slideshows to make, teacher pages and blackboard classes to update, direction sheets and work sheets to be created and copied. The list is never-ending. And teachers operate on a different calendar than others. This is the beginning of our year, and so much rides on it. If I’ve prepped and worked all summer, I can start the year more easily, and it unfolds much less stressfully. If I haven’t had the time or the chance to do all that prep, the year gets off to a rocky start and goes downhill quickly from there. I’m hoping to get it all together during August, so we’ll see.

Is writing for you the same? Tons of prep and then a fairly easy delivery of your writing? Or do you do it the other way? Less prep, more pantsing? I’ve been working on transitioning to some hybrid approach that I’m still not sure is a good thing. How about you?

TGIF!

TGIF! Sorry to be so late, but it’s been a long, difficult week. All told, it’s been a brutal few months, and I’m feeling more than a bit distracted. But I did find this really interesting post over at Plot Whisperer in celebration of pantsers. Click here to check out the role of cause and effect as a really great strategy for writers of all kinds and tell me: Do you write this way?

Decisions, decisions

If you’re like me, you periodically undergo a conscience of crisis. Well, at least one at a time, if they’re well-behaved. The one I’m talking about is the question of writing the story that is in you burning bright and wanting to get out, and writing the story for the market, the one you know will find an agent, audience, and sell. I have two novel WIPs stalled in progress because I can’t even figure out what genre they would fit into and I’m convinced no one will want to read them. On the other hand, I know I could write something in a genre I have no real interest in and have that move.

Elizabeth Spann Craig from Mystery Writing is Murder has a guest post about this very thing over at Alan Orloff’s A Million Blogging Monkeys. Check it out here and tell me: Do you write for the market or yourself?

I Write Like

I’ve seen this site I Write Like several places around the blogosphere and thought I’d give it a try. Click on the link, copy and paste a section of your writing into the special box and some techno-magic analyzes your words and tells you who you write like. I copied and pasted three different samples of stuff I’ve written and came up with the following responses: I write like James Joyce in one of them, like Chuck Palahniuk in another one, and Margaret Atwood in the last one. I think that’s pretty interesting company.

Go ahead and give it a try. Who do you write like?

Road Map

James Scott Bell over at The Kill Zone has a great post here on what you need to do with your manuscript to make it the best it can be before you submit. They’re good, straightforward suggestions from somebody who knows what he’s talking about, and I was pretty pleased to see that most of the suggestions are ones I follow. You’d think I’d be a whole lot happier with my work.

Anyway, check it out and tell me: What do you think of the suggestions? Which ones do you regularly follow? Do you have any other suggestions?

Do you recycle?

Writers write. A lot. And a lot of those words don’t end up getting used in final scenes. They’re locked up in stories and scenes and first drafts that never see the light of day. They’re cut or put away and forgotten. And a while ago Copyblogger had an interesting post on recycling creative content that made me think.

Over the period of about the last ten years, I’ve written a lot of stories set in the same universe about the same characters. Short things, middle length things, long things. And I never noticed that with some connective tissue put in between them and some minor changes in POV and such, a lot of those things could be reworked into a larger piece like maybe a novella/novel.

Have you ever done that? Reworked your own work into something else?

Short v. Long

As I wrestle with the novella/maybe/wannabe novel, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing style. I’ve said before how long and how hard I’ve worked to cut down on my verbiage, to pare down my writing to the essential words and to make those words work in a very spare writing garden. But I also find that I like reading lush description when that’s done right and well and isn’t simply the result of spraying words for filler.

That carries over to first drafts as well. Write It Sideways has an interesting post on the pros and cons of writing short v. long first drafts here. Check it out and tell me: How do you write your first drafts? Short or long? And is that style reflected in your final draft? Or are you a universe away from where you started after rounds of revisions?

A word of caution

If you’re a writer and you want to be published and pay any attention at all to the state of publishing today, you’ve heard all about the pros and the cons, the benefits and the dangers of self-publishing and e-publishing. For those of you interested, James Scott Bell over at The Kill Zone has a word of caution for you. Check it out.

Are any of you thinking of self-publishing? E-publishing? Got any words of wisdom or warning?

The really big question

Sometimes they come to me in a dream. Sometimes I wonder what if? Sometimes I see something on TV, or at the movies, or online, or on the street. The voices in my head tell me. If you’re a writer, these are all perfectly acceptable answers to the BIG question: Where do you get your ideas?

Roz over at Nail Your Novel has a great post here about getting story ideas for free. Check it out and tell me: Where do you get your ideas?

Rewind

Summer presents unique opportunities and stresses for me. Every summer I tell myself I’ll take the time to write. And I do. I write curriculum. I design online courses. I attend seminars, take courses, create documents I’ll need for classes along with all the normal running around with loved ones that is normal for this time of year. We all have these kinds of obligations that take precious time. And we all make decisions about how to parcel our time out. I’m in the process of trying to figure out how I’ll find the time and the energy and the brain power to finish my WIP this summer.

And if you look around the blogosphere you’ll see a whole host of others who are trying to deal with the whole time management strain balancing blogging, writing, real life, and the very real issue that the more followers one has the less time one has to comment and maintain the online relationships one had when starting to blog in the first place. Faced with all that and burnout, bloggers are starting to unplug more regularly, for longer periods of time, or in some cases closing their blogs all together. I’m thinking myself of how I’m going to schedule my blogging this summer as well.

Write It Sideways has an interesting post here about the reasons writers should blog. Check it out and then tell me: What are your blogging plans for this summer? In general? What stressors help you decide? Does where you are in your writing journey play a role in your decision? Or are other considerations more important?

Soul searching

Poet and critic Rainer Maria Rilke once said: “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself: ‘Must I write?’”

This is one of my favorite quotes about writing. What great quotes about writing (or just great quotes in general) stick with/inspire you?

Is it hot in here?

I have to admit that when I looked at this post/title I thought to myself how could you not love this? I mean, writing like sex? How cool is that? And then I read it and realized I really did love it. What a great way of looking at writing and the process and there are how-to tips included. What could be better than that?

So tell me: Is this what writing feels like for you? Have you tried any of the how-to tips? Do they work for you or do you have better suggestions you’d like to share?

TGIF!

Happy Friday. My brain is fried and I don’t think I’ve had a coherent thought in days. That’s a bad thing for anyone, but for a writer it’s catastrophic. Writers are story tellers and story tellers are creative. What happens when the creativity dries up and there’s no inspiration to be found?

Write to Done has a great post on how to have ideas. Check out their seven steps to creativity and tell me: How do you inspire creativity?

Decisions, decisions, decisions

We all know the pain, frustration, and fear of failure from our own particular writing sins. I can freely admit that I think my biggest writing weakness is plot and story structure. I’ve struggled and worked on these and still am not happy with myself. And in my current WIP, I’m beyond worried that the choices I’ve made doom the novel and like a beached whale, the cumulative effect of those choices and my weaknesses as a writer will crush the story under its own weight.

Write It Sideways has an interesting post on six fiction writing weaknesses and their quick fixes.

Does anyone else feel like this? What do you consider to be your own writing weaknesses? What do you do/have you done to help fix them?

What were you thinking?

Rejection is a part of life, possibly more for writers than some others. It's part and parcel of the process. But for everyone currently being overwhelmed by revisions and queries and critiques and anything else that carries the sting/possible sting of rejection, Jill Corcoran has an interesting post on famous authors and their famous/rude rejections.

How do you handle rejection/the fear of rejection?

Oy.

I’ve done a fair number of blogfests lately, and I have to admit that I’m beginning to wonder. I thought for sure after this last one I was pretty much blogfested out. But, no. I found not one, not two, but three other upcoming blogfests I’ll probably enter. Seriously, I might be addicted. And that’s not counting the short story contest I still plan on entering if I can get myself together.

Now I like blogfests and contests because they force me to write. Maybe not write in my WIP, but write something. And that’s taking more than a little bit of effort lately. Plot Whisperer has a great post here about your relationship with your writing.

Do you participate in blogfests? Think they are good for you and your skills? Or not? And how’s your relationship with your writing?

Standing on formality

I have a confession to make. I have no real, formal training in writing aside from high school English classes and the required Comp class in college. I’m not an English or Creative Writing major and my degrees are not in the Humanities.

I’ve always written on and off, but didn’t begin to write fiction regularly until about ten years ago. And my friends, both of whom have English degrees, did beta and critique. And I’ve been wondering off and on if/how that affects me as a writer. I mean, I'm not always very technical in my analysis and craft. Does that make me a fraud?

So, I’m thinking of taking a writing class. And I wanted to know: How did you come to writing? Through a program, degree, or classes? Some other way? If you took them, in college or on your own, did you find classes on writing helpful? Or did you find books on writing equally or more helpful?

In the beginning

Among the myriad other issues and problems I’m currently wrestling with, I’m having serious problems with deciding where and when to start my WIP. I’ve got a number or possible starting points, but I cannot for the life of me make any of them work for me in the long run. Anyway, Pub Rants had a really great post about this here that you should check out.

How do you know you’ve got the right beginning? Do you use back story? Think it’s a good thing? How much description is too much? How do you know?

How do you read?

Like most of you, I like to read. A lot. And I have very fond memories of doing just that as a child and growing up. Reading all kinds of things in all kinds of places from curled up in bed or on a couch to reading in diners and coffee shops.

I read all kinds of things now. Newspaper and professional articles, student work, lesson plans, blogs of all kinds, and tons and tons of online articles in the name of research for either my writer or teacher personas.

I’m currently reading historical fiction about Germany and Russia’s invasion of Poland that kick starts WWII. I like the book a lot, but it points up to me again how very little reading I do anymore for pleasure. And how much being a writer influences the way I read.

Criminal Minds has two really interesting posts here (don’t read the second half of the post about Goldman-Sachs if that’s not your thing) and here.

So tell me. What are you reading now? More or less than before? Does being a writer influence how/what you read? Your enjoyment of it?

A very fine line

I’ve been thinking about how much of myself as a writer finds its way into my words. We’re told write with courage, write with respect for our readers, ourselves, our words, and our story. We’re told to write what we know and to write with and from our passions. We’re told to write (and do) from our lived biographical experiences.

Larry Brooks at storyfix has a great cautionary post here about the awareness that writer’s must have regarding the unavoidable bleed-through between who and what they are and what their MC/hero/protagonist is on the page. Check it out.

How much of you is in your stories? How/where do you draw the line? Are you worried about possible consequences and/or repercussions?