WritR.
Time for the monthly writer's meeting tonight. In honor, I present Ten Things About Writing. Random thoughts and tidbits, culled from several comments and threads I've been pursuing lately.
I wax snarky toward the end, but it's nothing personal to you lot.
1) I didn't just wake up and decide to do this. I've been doing it all my life. One of my earliest memories is of dictating stories to my mother, who would type them out on her typewriter for me to illustrate. Since I've had them, words have been my tool of choice for self-expression.
2) I love peer criticism but I can't stand workshops because they're too much like classes, and I hated school; I find the atmosphere both insulting and stifling. If I ever have to go to the Writers of the Future Workshop because I won their contest, I hope they're ready for me to do things my own damn way. I don't play well with others. No, please, don't try to say that Whatever Workshop isn't like that, or what have you. I mean it. That sort of thing is not for me.
3) I've never fully collaborated with anyone. That said, Sargon deserves at least 25% credit on everything I write. He's the other half of my creative brain, and there is no plot problem in the world that 15 minutes with him won't tie up in a neat little bow. I'd be open to collaboration with the right person in the farflung future, but I honestly have no understanding of the logistics of how collaborations get done.
4) I can't stand books on writing. I've read a handful and even when they're helpful, they inevitably make me feel stupid and inferior because my methods are so different. The only book on writing I would wholeheartedly recommend is Art and Fear, which is not about how to write. It's about the creative process itself, and how and why artists do what they do. It's a very short book, the only one written by artists for artists, and it's well worth the price if you have ever struggled with writer's block or a sense of nagging doubt.
The late John Gardner's On Becoming A Novelist is an excellent how-to book, but it's a little inaccessible to the beginner, and shares the same lack of insight into genre fiction as almost every other book on writing ever published.
5) I don't understand writers of fiction who don't read fiction. And yet, I am married to one. If any of you could explain this to me, I'd be grateful.
6) I had a really great creative writing teacher when I was in grade school. Her name was Susan Barnes, and I have always desperately wanted to thank her for her encouragement and understanding.
On the other hand, I'm put in mind of the Gardner quote that goes something like "Every teacher of writing has had the experience of producing, by accident, a pornographer."
Hi, Ms. Barnes. I'm your pornographer.
7) I write porn best when I'm tired, humor best when I'm angry, and drama best when I'm paralyzed with either terror or depression. I can't write anything if I'm hungry or cold. Or if I have a cat in my lap.
But seriously, I do my best work when my defenses are low. And the lower they are, the more scary-good the results are. I don't recommend cultivating panic attacks and crushing depression as methods for writing, but I will say that the month I spent near-suicidal and so agoraphobic I could not leave the house some five years ago produced a work that I have yet to outdo.
Conversely, I can't write when I'm taking antidepressants. They make my dreams really cool, but completely destroy my ability to create. By preventing me from hitting emotional lows (and highs), they prevent me from being able to reach into myself to find what I need to write.
You don't have to be injured to write, but it helps. Pain deepens you. And a lot of the time, that's about the only consolation you get. Might as well use it.
8) "Write what you know" is a horrid cop-out, not advice. If it were good advice, don't you think we'd all be famous and well-paid for keeping our fussy little online journals?
What is really meant by this is "Write what you like to read." Work in a genre that you like and understand. Because otherwise you're going to waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel. If all you read is romance, and you have a sci-fi idea that strikes you as revelatory, odds are it's been done before and isn't as fascinating as you think it is. In fact, it's probably done to death.
A deep understanding of the genre you're working in allows you to nudge your ideas in unique directions instead of coming up with one of the Same Damn Genre Plots.
9) When people learn that you are a writer, they say silly things.
It's flattering, but I'm always a little confused by people who say things like "You're hilarious, you should be published!" or "Why don't you submit your bleeding vagina piece to The New Yorker?" Better yet, "Why don't you write a funny article about divining with wombat gizzards and submit it to Augury Magazine?"
The only answers I've come up with are "Why, yes, I should be published," "Well, because nothing I've already put here, like the bleeding vagina piece, could be published in a major magazine due to copyright issues, and it's not like The New Yorker and I are interested in seeing one another anyway, so no, I don't see that happening," or "Because I write what I like, and I bleeding well don't want to write about wombat gizzards, that's why."
The ones who express disbelief that I'm not world-famous already remind me of my grandmother who, until her dying day, was convinced that just because I have a pretty smile I could be a movie star. Yeah. Okay. Flattering, but it's really more about wishful thinking on the part of the person speaking than anything to do with practical things on my end. By that logic, if all of you wish really hard I'll wake up looking like Thomas Jane from The Punisher, and I'll never have to hear that kind of shit again because everyone will be too scared to speak to me.
There are also folks who say things like "You're hilarious! Are you trying to get published?" There's a significant amount of overlap here between people who say this and people who don't read my userinfo or skim my journal before commenting.
It's not active stupidity by any means, but I honestly wonder what sort of response they're expecting to get: "No, I'm not trying to get published. In fact, I think I'm going to burn all my manuscripts tomorrow and then wall myself up in a cave so that I can be truly kvlt and obscure. I'm stocking up on corpse paint and dead crows even as we speak."
Or do they expect a full account of my publishing activities in bullet-point form?
I don't know.
People who say things like "Why aren't you writing X thing for us to read?" or "Hey! Write this!" or, god save us all, "I have this idea for a self-insertion Harry Potter/Final Fantasy XXI crossover fic featuring the guys from HIM and a cameo by Boromir and his vamPomeranian familiar! And YOU WOULD BE PERFECT TO WRITE IT! When can you start?!" have crossed some sort of invisible line from being flattering and adorkably fannish to being actively pushy. That? That annoys the Lucian in me. Hold still and I'll show you self-insertion, fanbrat.
Oh, and if you've ever done one of the preceding, you're forgiven (except for the crossover fic thing; that I will not forgive). It's likely that I don't remember it was you. Don't remind me of it and we're good. And above all, don't panic and think that I hate you. I don't. You can tell. People who truly piss me off tend to not be able to miss it when it happens.
10) I write. I'm not heavily published. Please, please take this into account when asking me things like "How do I get published?" For the love of all that's scaly, if I knew that I'd be more than happy to tell you, but I don't, so I can't.
As near as I can tell, it has something to do with writing a lot, and making sure that what you're submitting is just as polished as you can make it without killing it. There's luck involved, and sometimes black magic. That is as much as I know.
So from here on out, my boilerplate advice about getting published is:
Sacrifice a black cockerel over your manuscript at midnight on the dark of the moon. Bury that copy of the manuscript under a dead man's tree. Print a clean copy and let the envelope sit under the cockerel's dried foot overnight on a full moon. Send that clean copy to the editor.
Do not include the foot, because you can use it again for all subsequent copies of that manuscript.
Here endeth the lesson.
I wax snarky toward the end, but it's nothing personal to you lot.
1) I didn't just wake up and decide to do this. I've been doing it all my life. One of my earliest memories is of dictating stories to my mother, who would type them out on her typewriter for me to illustrate. Since I've had them, words have been my tool of choice for self-expression.
2) I love peer criticism but I can't stand workshops because they're too much like classes, and I hated school; I find the atmosphere both insulting and stifling. If I ever have to go to the Writers of the Future Workshop because I won their contest, I hope they're ready for me to do things my own damn way. I don't play well with others. No, please, don't try to say that Whatever Workshop isn't like that, or what have you. I mean it. That sort of thing is not for me.
3) I've never fully collaborated with anyone. That said, Sargon deserves at least 25% credit on everything I write. He's the other half of my creative brain, and there is no plot problem in the world that 15 minutes with him won't tie up in a neat little bow. I'd be open to collaboration with the right person in the farflung future, but I honestly have no understanding of the logistics of how collaborations get done.
4) I can't stand books on writing. I've read a handful and even when they're helpful, they inevitably make me feel stupid and inferior because my methods are so different. The only book on writing I would wholeheartedly recommend is Art and Fear, which is not about how to write. It's about the creative process itself, and how and why artists do what they do. It's a very short book, the only one written by artists for artists, and it's well worth the price if you have ever struggled with writer's block or a sense of nagging doubt.
The late John Gardner's On Becoming A Novelist is an excellent how-to book, but it's a little inaccessible to the beginner, and shares the same lack of insight into genre fiction as almost every other book on writing ever published.
5) I don't understand writers of fiction who don't read fiction. And yet, I am married to one. If any of you could explain this to me, I'd be grateful.
6) I had a really great creative writing teacher when I was in grade school. Her name was Susan Barnes, and I have always desperately wanted to thank her for her encouragement and understanding.
On the other hand, I'm put in mind of the Gardner quote that goes something like "Every teacher of writing has had the experience of producing, by accident, a pornographer."
Hi, Ms. Barnes. I'm your pornographer.
7) I write porn best when I'm tired, humor best when I'm angry, and drama best when I'm paralyzed with either terror or depression. I can't write anything if I'm hungry or cold. Or if I have a cat in my lap.
But seriously, I do my best work when my defenses are low. And the lower they are, the more scary-good the results are. I don't recommend cultivating panic attacks and crushing depression as methods for writing, but I will say that the month I spent near-suicidal and so agoraphobic I could not leave the house some five years ago produced a work that I have yet to outdo.
Conversely, I can't write when I'm taking antidepressants. They make my dreams really cool, but completely destroy my ability to create. By preventing me from hitting emotional lows (and highs), they prevent me from being able to reach into myself to find what I need to write.
You don't have to be injured to write, but it helps. Pain deepens you. And a lot of the time, that's about the only consolation you get. Might as well use it.
8) "Write what you know" is a horrid cop-out, not advice. If it were good advice, don't you think we'd all be famous and well-paid for keeping our fussy little online journals?
What is really meant by this is "Write what you like to read." Work in a genre that you like and understand. Because otherwise you're going to waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel. If all you read is romance, and you have a sci-fi idea that strikes you as revelatory, odds are it's been done before and isn't as fascinating as you think it is. In fact, it's probably done to death.
A deep understanding of the genre you're working in allows you to nudge your ideas in unique directions instead of coming up with one of the Same Damn Genre Plots.
9) When people learn that you are a writer, they say silly things.
It's flattering, but I'm always a little confused by people who say things like "You're hilarious, you should be published!" or "Why don't you submit your bleeding vagina piece to The New Yorker?" Better yet, "Why don't you write a funny article about divining with wombat gizzards and submit it to Augury Magazine?"
The only answers I've come up with are "Why, yes, I should be published," "Well, because nothing I've already put here, like the bleeding vagina piece, could be published in a major magazine due to copyright issues, and it's not like The New Yorker and I are interested in seeing one another anyway, so no, I don't see that happening," or "Because I write what I like, and I bleeding well don't want to write about wombat gizzards, that's why."
The ones who express disbelief that I'm not world-famous already remind me of my grandmother who, until her dying day, was convinced that just because I have a pretty smile I could be a movie star. Yeah. Okay. Flattering, but it's really more about wishful thinking on the part of the person speaking than anything to do with practical things on my end. By that logic, if all of you wish really hard I'll wake up looking like Thomas Jane from The Punisher, and I'll never have to hear that kind of shit again because everyone will be too scared to speak to me.
There are also folks who say things like "You're hilarious! Are you trying to get published?" There's a significant amount of overlap here between people who say this and people who don't read my userinfo or skim my journal before commenting.
It's not active stupidity by any means, but I honestly wonder what sort of response they're expecting to get: "No, I'm not trying to get published. In fact, I think I'm going to burn all my manuscripts tomorrow and then wall myself up in a cave so that I can be truly kvlt and obscure. I'm stocking up on corpse paint and dead crows even as we speak."
Or do they expect a full account of my publishing activities in bullet-point form?
I don't know.
People who say things like "Why aren't you writing X thing for us to read?" or "Hey! Write this!" or, god save us all, "I have this idea for a self-insertion Harry Potter/Final Fantasy XXI crossover fic featuring the guys from HIM and a cameo by Boromir and his vamPomeranian familiar! And YOU WOULD BE PERFECT TO WRITE IT! When can you start?!" have crossed some sort of invisible line from being flattering and adorkably fannish to being actively pushy. That? That annoys the Lucian in me. Hold still and I'll show you self-insertion, fanbrat.
Oh, and if you've ever done one of the preceding, you're forgiven (except for the crossover fic thing; that I will not forgive). It's likely that I don't remember it was you. Don't remind me of it and we're good. And above all, don't panic and think that I hate you. I don't. You can tell. People who truly piss me off tend to not be able to miss it when it happens.
10) I write. I'm not heavily published. Please, please take this into account when asking me things like "How do I get published?" For the love of all that's scaly, if I knew that I'd be more than happy to tell you, but I don't, so I can't.
As near as I can tell, it has something to do with writing a lot, and making sure that what you're submitting is just as polished as you can make it without killing it. There's luck involved, and sometimes black magic. That is as much as I know.
So from here on out, my boilerplate advice about getting published is:
Sacrifice a black cockerel over your manuscript at midnight on the dark of the moon. Bury that copy of the manuscript under a dead man's tree. Print a clean copy and let the envelope sit under the cockerel's dried foot overnight on a full moon. Send that clean copy to the editor.
Do not include the foot, because you can use it again for all subsequent copies of that manuscript.
Here endeth the lesson.