Tag Archives: #writerlife

December 22, 2021 · 6:00 am

The Author’s Toolbox #amwriting

Passive writing occurs when, as storytellers, we are separated from the moment by words that block our intimacy with the action. Beginning writers often choose stative verbs, the passive voice, and heavily depend on weak verb forms in their writing.

toolsOne step on the slippery slope of passive prose is the overuse of stative verbs. Stative verbs express a state rather than an action. 

They are “telling” words.

A few Stative Verbs as listed by Ginger Software:

adore

agree

appear (seem)

appreciate

be (exist)

believe

belong to

For a more comprehensive list of stative verbs, go to this article: Stative Verbs – List of Stative Verbs & Exercises | Ginger (gingersoftware.com). [1]

Let’s get real—at times, stative verbs are necessary to a balanced prose. We want a narrative that expresses the human condition, and how we feel at a given moment is often part of that story. But we must balance a little telling with far more showing.

When we are first starting in the craft, we lean heavily on subjunctives and the irrealis forms of mood words. Subjunctive verbs and all forms of the verb be are hard to spot in our own work.

Be_Eight_Forms_LIRF05122019I think the habit of using one of the eight forms of the word be is more one of nurture, not nature. When we first start out in this craft, we tend to write weak sentences. This is because we are trained as children to tell what happened.

Writers often find the words and rules we use to describe existence convoluted and hard to understand.

The subjunctive (in the English language) is used to form sentences that do not describe known objective facts. These are words noting or pertaining to a mood or mode of a verb.

In grammar, mood and mode refer to verb forms. That mood or mode depends on how the clause the verbs are contained in relates to the speaker’s or writer’s wishes, intention, or claims about reality.

These verbs may be used for subjective, doubtful, hypothetical, or grammatically subordinate statements or questions. An example is the mood of the verb ‘be’ in ‘if this be treason.’

In other words, subjunctives describe unknown intangible possibilities.

chicago guide to grammarThe whole thing looks quite complicated on the surface, but it doesn’t have to be. We must begin assembling our writers’ toolbox. One important tool is Bryan Garner’s The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing).

This is the book that will show you how to write a properly punctuated and formed sentence. It explains what a paragraph is and shows how to connect those sentences into understandable chunks of prose. The book also shows how to write and punctuate dialogue so that our work looks professional.

Soon, we have written a story and other people enjoy reading it.

In our first draft, we tell the story as if it were an event that we witnessed only a few moments before. Everything in our mind occurs in real-time, but once visualized, it becomes a memory. We tend to express our scenes and events as having a state of being, but we are looking back at them from a few moments in the future. So, the narrative is rife with they were, or it was.

We all start out writing that way, but with practice and self-education, we learn to write active prose. We begin by paying attention to our verb forms in the revision process.

I don’t have an education in journalism, yet I choose to write. Most of my friends who are authors don’t have degrees in either journalism or literature. So, if we wish to gain strength as authors, we must educate ourselves.

Learning the craft of writing is like learning the craft of carpentry. If you want to craft beautiful work, you must own the proper tools for the job and learn how to use them. My toolbox contains:

  • MS Word as my word-processing program. You may prefer a different program.
  • The Chicago Manual of Style (for editing work in American English).
  • The Oxford A-Z of Grammar & Punctuation (for editing work in UK English).
  • Trusted, knowledgeable beta-readers for my own work.
  • Books on how to craft a story/novel.
  • Having my work edited by good, well-recommended editors.
  • Taking free online writing classes.
  • Regularly attending seminars (not free, but worth the money).
  • Meeting with my weekly writing group (virtual meetings).
  • Daily reading in ALL genres.
  • Attending NaNoWriMo Write-Ins (virtual meetings).

What is in your toolbox? It takes a little effort, but you can educate yourself for free if you have the internet. You can learn how to express your ideas so that other people will enjoy them.

One step is to identify the habitual overuse of the Subjunctive Mood in your writing. Cut back on subjunctives and see how your prose improves.

blphoto-Orange-ScissorsI say cut back, not eliminate. Despite the misguided efforts of many gurus and Microsoft Word to erase all forms of ‘to be’ from the English language and replace it with ‘is,’ there are times when only a subjunctive will do the job.

One of the best ways to grow in the craft is to write short stories and send them off. Sometimes they are rejected, and sometimes not. Some stories aren’t really novel material, but maybe they are novellas. Send them to publications and expect rejection because that is how it often is. I can’t tell you how many rejections I have received over the years.

The truth is, we learn more from the rejections than we do the acceptances.

Rejection happens because at first, we write with WAY too many words. But a good writing group will both teach and support you through kind but honest critiques. I find it comforting to know my fellow authors will not tell me my work is awesome if it stinks like Bubba’s socks.

WritersjourneysmallA critique group may tear your work apart, which stings a wounded ego. But we grow from this experience. We learn that opinions are subjective, and writers are thin-skinned creatures. We develop a thicker skin and muck on.

In the revision process, we write mindfully, intentionally crafting lean, powerful prose.

It takes a lot of work to rise from apprentice to journeyman to master in any craft. I don’t know if I will ever achieve that status as an author, but I will keep working and learning. And above all, I will keep reading and will never stop writing.

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Quote from Stative Verbs – List of Stative Verbs & Exercises | Ginger (gingersoftware.com) Copyright 2021 Ginger Software.

10 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 15, 2021 · 6:37 am

Transitioning from scene to scene #amwriting

In my previous post, I showed how each scene is a small area of focus within a larger story and has an arc of its own. Small arcs hold up a larger arc. These arcs are created by events, and all the arcs form a cathedral-like structure that we call the story arc, which is the outer shell or the novel’s framework.

transitionsBy creating small arcs in the form of scenes, we offer the reader the chance to experience the rise and fall of tension, the life-breath of the novel.

Pacing is created by the way an author links actions and events, stitching them together with quieter scenes: transitions.

Transitions can be fraught with danger for me as a writer because this is where the necessary information, the exposition, is offered to the reader. This is the “how much is too much” moment.

In my first draft, the narrative is sometimes almost entirely exposition. This happens because I am telling myself the story, trying to get the events down before I forget them.

Every narrative has a kind of rhythm. While the characters might be in the midst of chaos, we must ensure there is order in the layout of the narrative.

  • action,
  • processing the action,
  • action again,
  • another connecting/regrouping scene

These “processing” scenes are transitions, moving the plot forward while allowing the reader to make sense of what just happened.

One word that slips into my first draft prose is the word “got.” It is a mental code word that I subconsciously used when laying down the story. This word signifies a small incident to revise in the second draft.

“Got” is on my global search list of “telling words.” The words in the list are signals to me, indications that a scene needs to be reworded to make it a “showing” scene.

“Got:” He got the message = he understood.

Code_word_FeltCode words are the author’s first draft multi-tool—a compact tool that combines several individual functions in a single unit. One word, one packet of letters serves many purposes and conveys multiple mental images to the author.

In fact, all passive phrasing is a code. The author’s “subconscious writer” embeds signals in the first draft. It tells the author that the characters are transitioning from one scene to the next. They, or their circumstances, are undergoing a change. Is this change something the reader must know?

Each lull in the action should lead us into a new scene. When transitions are done right, readers won’t notice the narrative moving from one event to the next, as the progression feels natural.

Let’s look at two more code words for transitions:

  • Went
  • Thought

When I see the word “went,” I immediately know someone is going somewhere. It is a transition scene taking the characters to the next event.

I ask myself, “How did they go?” Went can be changed to any number of verbs:

  • walked
  • drove
  • rode
  • took
  • teleported
  • And so on and so on

You get the idea.

We can’t have non-stop action, as that is exhausting to write and more exhausting to read. The characters and the reader both need to process information, so the character arc should be at the forefront during these transitional scenes. That period of relative calm is when you allow your characters’ internal growth to emerge.

We allow the characters to justify the decisions that led to that point and plan their next move, making it believable.

The transition is also where you ratchet up the emotional tension.

We have more options than simply moving the characters from point A to point B, several paths to choose from.

strange thoughtsThought (Introspection):

  • Introspection offers an opportunity for new information to emerge.
  • It opens a window for the reader to see who the characters are and how they react and illuminate their fears and strengths. It shows that they are sentient beings, self-aware.

Keep the moments of mind wandering brief. Go easy if you use italics to set thoughts off. A wall of italics is hard to read, so don’t have your characters “think” too much if you use those.

  • Characters’ thoughts must serve to illuminate their motives at a particular moment in time.
  • In a conversation between two characters, introspection must offer information not previously discussed.
  • Internal monologues should not make our characters all-knowing. It should humanize them and show them as clueless about their flaws and strengths. It should even show they are ignorant of their deepest fears and don’t know how to achieve their goals.

Sometimes we have more than one character with information the reader needs to make sense of the next event.

The key is to avoid “head-hopping.” The best way to avoid confusion is to give a new chapter to each point-of-view character. Head-hopping occurs when an author describes the thoughts of two point-of-view characters within a single scene.

Visual Cues: In my own work, when I come across the word “smile” or other words conveying a facial expression or character’s mood, it sometimes requires a complete re-visualization of the scene. I look for a different way to express my intention, which is a necessary but frustrating aspect of the craft.

Fade-to-black is a time-honored way of moving from one event to the next. However, I don’t like using fade-to-black scene breaks as transitions within a chapter. Why not just start a new chapter once the scene has faded to black?

One of my favorite authors sometimes has chapters of only five or six hundred words, which keeps each character thread truly separate and flowing well. A hard scene break with a new chapter is my preferred way to end a fade-to-black.

Chapter breaks are transitions. As we write, chapter breaks fall naturally at certain places.

Conversations can serve as good transitions that propel the story forward to the next scene. However, they can easily become info dumps. In literary terms, a good conversation is about something we didn’t know and builds toward something we are only beginning to understand.

DangerThat is true of every aspect of a scene—it must reveal something we didn’t know and push the story forward toward something we can’t quite see.

The transition is the most challenging part of the narrative for me to formulate in the first draft. I get stuck, trying to decide what information needs to come out and what should be held back.

The struggle to connect my action scenes into a seamless arc is why writing isn’t the easiest occupation I could have chosen.

But when everything comes together, writing is the most satisfying job I have ever had.

4 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 8, 2021 · 6:00 am

The Story Arc: delivering backstory #amwriting

Many writers who managed to write the entire story arc of their novel during November are now going back and looking at what they have written. This can be a dangerous moment in the life of your book.

Info DumpIn my last post, I talked about the good and bad aspects of two editing programs that I am familiar with, the things they do and don’t help us identify in our work. One more thing these wonderful programs can’t help us with is identifying bloated backstory.

Walls of fictional history muck up the transitions and flatten the story arc. They block the doors from one scene to the next.

Every story has a past, a present, and hopefully, a future. We write the story of our characters’ present moments, no matter what narrative tense we are using. Each character emerges from our minds with a personality. That personality was formed in some way by an unwritten past.

That history shaped the characters even though it isn’t written, and at first, we don’t consciously think about it. We open a document and start writing—we envision our characters with unique personalities the moment they step onto the first page.

At some point, we realize that a bit of backstory is needed. But how much, and how should we dole it out?

This is where it gets dicey. In the revision process, it’s tempting to inform the reader of this history by placing blocks of information in the first pages. It seems logical: before a reader can understand this thing, they need to know this other thing.

We can provide the reader with the backstory in several ways:

  • In conversation.
  • Memory/flashbacks
  • A brief recap of events

Each of these methods is both good and bad. While a certain amount of backstory is necessary for character and plot building, too much outright telling halts the momentum, freezes the real-time story in its tracks.

The opening paragraphs must be active. The first lines must step onto the stage in a way that feels original, informative, and engaging. The passages that follow must reflect and build upon the tone and cadence of the opening lines.

Before we dump information, we should consider what must be accomplished in each scene and allow the backstory to inform the reader only when it’s necessary to advance the plot.

CAUTION INFO DUMP ZONE AHEADLook at the first scene of your manuscript. Ask yourself three questions.

  1. Who needs to know what?
  2. Why must they know it?
  3. How many words do you intend to devote to it?

Dialogue is the easiest way to dole out information.

It is also a great way to fall into an info dump.

Don’t allow conversations to deteriorate into bloated exposition detailing unimportant fluff just to fill up space.

“Jack, remember when you nearly blew up the ship? Remember how you spent two weeks in the brig?”

“Yes, Jill. That meant you were one gun short to save the day. I almost lost the war for you, but you prevailed. I’m lucky to be your sidekick.”

“Well, Jack, what we’re dealing with this time has nothing to do with that. I’m just pointing out the obvious.”

We’re all familiar with the term ‘flatlined’ as a medical expression indicating the patient has died. A story arc can flatline in two ways:

  • The pauses become halts, long passages of haphazard info dumps that have little to do with the action.
  • The action becomes random, an onslaught of meaningless events that make no sense.

One way to avoid a flatlined story arc is through character interaction. Your characters briefly discuss what happened and how to prevent it from happening again. Then, they bravely muck on to the next event.

Another way is to insert short moments of introspection between the action. Our character’s thoughts offer opportunities for doling out new information essential to the story.

Don’t ramble on, either in conversation or introspection. If you go on for too long, your reader will either skip forward or close the book.

When they are brief but informational, these moments open a window for the reader to see who the characters think they are. Their introspection illuminates their fears and strengths.

It shows that our characters have a sense of self.

The problem with conveying the backstory is that timing and pacing are essential. The moment to mention it in passing is when the character needs that information to make decisions as they go forward. If the character doesn’t need to know it, neither does the reader.

That way, you avoid the dreaded info dump, but the reader can extrapolate the needed backstory.

In the most gripping narratives I have read, character introspection is brief but delivers crucial information. Internal monologues are featured but are kept minimal, only addressing what is essential. They serve to illuminate a character’s motives at a particular moment in time.

So, conversation and introspection are where we only deliver information not previously discussed and that the reader needs to know at that moment. Repetition is monotonous and pads the word count with fluff.

I suggest you don’t stop the action with a prolonged recap of previous adventures. It’s all right to work in a brief mention. However, if the events were detailed in a previous book in that series, the reader will probably be aware of the history. As a reader, I can say that a longwinded rant about things I already know does not keep my interest.

No matter the genre, in all stories, complications create tension, and information is a reward.

A trick I have found for whittling down info dumps is this: look at the word count.

to dole out phrasal verbI look at each conversation and assess how many words are devoted to each character’s statement and response. Then, when I come to a passage that is inching toward a monologue, I ask myself, “what can be cut that won’t affect the flow of the story or gut the logic of the plot?”

Even with all the effort I apply to it, my editor will find places to shave off the unnecessary length.

Sometimes we write brilliantly, and those moments give us hope when we churn out less than stellar prose. Weeding that garden of words is not easy, but readers will be glad you tried.

2 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 6, 2021 · 6:00 am

Editing Programs – the pros and cons #amwriting

With NaNoWriMo 2021 behind us, it’s time to talk about editing programs again. Several writers in our region have asked me if I use one in my own work.

MyWritingLife2021I do use Grammarly—but also, I don’t.

I rely on my knowledge of grammar and what I intend to convey more than I do an editing program. While they are good at alerting you to some errors, these helpful programs are not as useful as we wish they were.

No software can replace knowledge of grammar. An author must have confidence in what they intend to convey and how they wish to say it.

For this reason, editing software may not be a good tool for every author.

A person with no knowledge of grammar will not benefit from relying on an editing program for advice. There is no way to bypass learning the craft of writing.

You may have found that your word processing program has spellcheck and some minor editing assists. Spellcheck is notorious for both helping and hindering you.

they're their there cupSpellcheck doesn’t understand context, so if a word is misused but spelled correctly, it may not alert you to an obvious error.

  • There, their, they’re.
  • To, too, two.
  • Its, it’s

Grammarly is an editing program I use for checking my own work, in tandem with Pro Writing Aid. I pay a monthly fee for the professional versions of these two programs. Each one has strengths and weaknesses.

For me, especially in my first draft, some words are like tics—they fall out of my fingers and into my keyboard randomly and out of my voluntary control. I don’t self-edit as I go because, at that point, I’m just trying to get the story down. The second and third drafts are where I shape my grammar and phrasing.

I want to write active prose, so I don’t want to use words with no power behind them.

Often removing an adjective or adverb strengthens the prose. Descriptors are easy to find because these words frequently end with the letters ‘ly.’

You could do a global search for the letters ‘ly,’ and a list will pop up in the left margin of your manuscript.

However, the most ludicrous advice I’ve ever heard at a critique group came from an author who was about to publish his first book. He had a great deal of enthusiasm for the craft but was armed with too little knowledge: he told a new writer to remove all adverbs from her narrative.

Unfortunately, he forgot that words like “later,” or “everywhere,” or “never” or “alone” are also adverbs.

That sort of wrong-headed advice survives because it is based on a writing truth: unnecessary adverbs and adjectives inflate the word count but add no value. Worse, they sometimes fail to tell us something that we need to know.

In other words, use adverbs and adjectives when they are necessary and cut them when they aren’t.

In my own work, I seek out adverbs, descriptors, qualifiers, and “weed words.” I look at how they are placed in the context of the sentence and decide if they will stay or go. Many will go, but some must stay.

The BIG problem for those who don’t understand the basics of grammar is this: editing programs cannot see the context of the work they are analyzing.

In one of my older manuscripts, this sentence triggered the algorithm:

“The tea was cool and sweet, quenching her thirst.”

Grammarly suggested replacing quenching with quenched and then suggested a comma at the end instead of a period.

Pro Writing Aid made the same suggestion but didn’t tell me to add a comma.

These programs operate on algorithms defined by finite rules. They will often strongly suggest you insert an unneeded article or change a word to one that is clearly not the right one for that situation. That is where your eye and understanding of context and grammar must prevail.

chicago guide to grammarNew writers should invest in the Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation and learn how grammar works. For people new to the craft and who don’t understand grammar or how to construct a sentence or a paragraph, or how to write dialogue, editing programs will confuse and mislead them.

To get the best out of editing software, you must know the basics of how to write.

At this stage in our technology, understanding context is solely a human function. Context is defined as the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect.

A person with no knowledge of grammar will not benefit from relying on Grammarly or any other editing program for advice. There is no way to bypass learning the craft of writing.

Because context is so important, I am wary of relying on these editing programs for anything other than alerting you to possible comma and spelling malfunctions.

You might disagree with the program’s suggestions. You, the author, have control and can disregard suggested changes if, as illustrated above, they make no sense. I regularly reject weird suggestions.

However, when the editing program highlights something, I examine the problem sentence. Just knowing that the way I phrased a sentence tripped the program’s algorithms encourages me to look at that passage with a critical eye.

I may not use the program’s suggestion, but something triggered the algorithm. That means my phrasing might need work. I may need to find a better way to get my idea across.

Timid WordsEven editors must have their work seen by other eyes. My blog posts are proof of this as I am the only one who sees them before they are posted. Even though I write them in advance, go over them with two editing programs, and then look at them again before each post goes live, I still find silly errors two or three days later.

Certain words and phrases don’t add to the narrative and only increase the wordiness. Used too freely, they separate the reader from the experience.

In my first draft, these words are like tics. They fall out of my fingers and into my keyboard randomly and out of my voluntary control. I never self-edit as I write the first draft because I am just trying to get the story down. The second and third drafts are where you deal with grammar and phrasing.

When I begin revisions, I will seek out adverbs, descriptors, qualifiers, and other “weed words,” look at how they are placed in the context of the sentence, and decide if they will stay or go

You can’t take shortcuts. If you are too impatient and choose to “Replace All” without carefully thinking things through, you run the risk of making a gigantic mess of your work. Some weed words are parts of other words, for example:

  • very—every
  • has—hasten, chasten

powerwordsWordCloudLIRF06192021If you have decided something is a “crutch word,” examine the context. Inadvertent repetitions of certain words are easy to eliminate once we see them with a fresh eye.

Context is everything.

I can’t stress this enough: take the time to look at each example of the offending words individually.

It’s unfortunate, but there is no speedy way to do this. You will be rewarded, though, when your book is finished to the best of your ability.

 

17 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 1, 2021 · 6:00 am

My Writing Life #amwriting

Someone recently suggested I write a post on the evolution of me as an author, so here it is.

MyWritingLife2021BFrom my earliest childhood, I always thought of myself as a writer. I just didn’t know how to write anything longer than a poem or a song in such a way that it was readable.

Most evenings, I listened to music on the stereo, writing my thoughts and ideas in a notebook while my kids did their homework.

My pen and ink ramblings weren’t “writing” as I see it now. They were more like frameworks to hold ideas that later became full-fledged stories.

Then, in 1987, my father bought me a secondhand IBM Selectric Typewriter, and my writing addiction took off.

For most of my writing life, I was like a five-year-old with a new set of paints. My enthusiasm for my stories was far greater than my ability to tell them.

I didn’t have the information I needed to make my work readable and didn’t know how to get it.

I felt embarrassed for even thinking that I could be an author.

orson_scott_card_write_scifi_fantasyOne day in 1990, I stumbled upon a book offered in the Science Fiction Book Club catalog: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. The day that book arrived in my mailbox changed my life.

I could become an author, and one of my favorite writers was going to tell me how to do it.

In the years since that book, I have amassed a library of books on the craft. Some are brilliant, some not so much, but I always learn something from them.

However, personal experience is a great teacher, and I’ve learned many things by trial and error.

So here in no particular order are six things I would like to pass on to you:

One: Make a style sheet as you go.

Build a glossary of words and spellings unique to your story and especially be sure to list names. I use an Excel spreadsheet, but you can use anything you like to help you stay consistent in your spelling.

And even though I think I am developing a thorough glossary, my editor will find many words to add to it.

Two: Develop a logical, consistent system for naming your files and save regularly.

Save each version of your manuscript with a different name so you can go back and retrieve bits you may need later. I use a system like this:

Heavens_Altar_V5.docx

That stands for Heaven’s Altar version five, and I work out of Word, so the extension is automatically a docx.

chicago guide to grammarThree: Find a local group of writers to meet with and talk about the craft.

Critique groups are great, but they are only one small part of the picture. Authors need to network with other authors because we need to discuss the craft with someone who doesn’t look at you with glazed eyes.

I gained a wonderful local group through attending write-ins for NaNoWriMo before the pandemic. While we haven’t been able to have in person meetings for a while, we meet weekly via zoom. They are a never-ending source of support and information about both the craft and the industry. We are a group of authors writing in a wide diversity of genres. We gladly help each other bring new books into the world, but more than that, we are good, close friends.

Four: Never stop educating yourself.

Learn how to say what you mean with your unique voice and your personal style. A college education is an expense we might not be able to wrangle. But you can buy books on grammar, books on style and substance, and books on writing craft.

Learn about structure and pacing from successful authors. Every coin you invest in your education will be returned to you with interest when your story makes a reader say they wished it hadn’t ended.

Self-education requires perseverance and a small investment of money, but you can do it.

storybyrobertmckeeSpend the money to go to conventions and attend seminars. You will learn so much about the craft of writing, the genre you write in, and the publishing industry as a whole—things you can only learn from other authors. I gained an extended professional network by joining The Pacific Northwest Writers Association and going to their conferences.

Five: Don’t even consider signing with the slick-talking publisher that contacts you out of the blue.

How can a publisher possibly want work they haven’t seen?

Make use of SFWA’s Writer Beware site. These predators want your work all right—and want to sell you publishing services you can do for yourself. You won’t benefit from the predator publisher’s “services,” but they will profit from your desperation to be published. They will publish your work in its raw unedited form, and you will never see a dime.

300px-Astound5006Six: My final suggestion is this: even though you are writing that novel, keep writing short stories too.

Short stories are a training ground, a way to hone your developing skills. They’re also the best way to get your name out there. My advice is to build a backlog of work from 2000 to 5000 words in length and keep them ready to submit to magazines, anthologies, and contests.

All those fabulous scenes and vignettes that roll through your head can be made into short pieces.

Get the Submittable App and see who is asking for the kind of stories you write. Start submitting your work, and don’t let rejections stop you. Just keep sending that work out to new places because someone will want it.

These are a few things that I wish I had known when I first started writing professionally but didn’t.

3 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , ,

May 5, 2021 · 6:00 am

To schedule writing time or not? #amwriting

In a writers’ forum, I was recently asked how a person can go full-time as a writer. I don’t have a good answer for that as you must be able to pay your bills, or no books will ever be written.

MyWritingLife2021Most writers are hobbyists. This is because if one intends to be a full-time writer, one must have an income.

I am a full-time writer. I have regular office hours for writing, and I’m retired from my career in Corporate America.

For many years I was a hobbyist, writing when I had a chance and devoting my life to my job and raising a family.

Some people manage to fit short bursts of writing into their daily schedule, writing at work while on break or at lunch. Others must schedule a dedicated block of time for writing by either rising two hours before they must depart for work or by skipping TV in the evening.

When I was working, I fell into both categories. A happy life is all about balance. My family always came first, so I arranged my writing time around their schedules.

When I am in the planning stage of a novel or story, I find myself stopping whatever I’m doing and making notes, quickly getting down any thoughts that occur. This is a habit I developed when I was employed outside my home.

Until 2012, I was like everyone else, with a job and commitments that took precedence over any writing I might have wanted to do.

I saw very little television in those days. Evenings and weekends were my only time for writing, making art, or reading.

Now that I’m retired from working outside my home, six in the morning until noon is my best time to write. However, being retired means you are always available when a crisis occurs.

blogging memeEvents occur, disturbing my writing schedule, but I usually forgive the perpetrators and allow them to live. At that point, I revert to writing whenever I have a free moment.

I’m a less than enthusiastic housekeeper even when not writing, but I keep things sort of under control. These are the tasks everyone does, chores that keep our homes livable.

I squeeze housekeeping chores into my writing time the way I used to fit writing into my working life.

Dinner at the table was the one meeting place for my family during the blender years of child-rearing.

I tend to do the cooking, and dinner hits the table at 5:00 pm. If you aren’t there on time, I will give you the evil eye for the rest of your life or the evening, whichever ends first.

Balance is the key to a happy life. We want to feel productive and creative, and we want to share our lives and interests with others.

Creativity applies to everything from making a meal, to painting, to generating a business plan—your spouse or child’s creative bent may be wildly different from yours, but you must be supportive.

Therefore, we who write must make time to write. This allows us to be creative and still support our families, who all have activities and interests of their own.

ICountMyself-FriendsAs I have said many times before, being a writer is to be supremely selfish about every aspect of life, including family time.

It also requires discipline and the ability to set aside an hour or so just for that pursuit, a little time where no one is allowed to disturb you.

A good way to make sure you have that time is to encourage your family members to use that time to indulge in their interests and artistic endeavors.

That way, everyone has the chance to be creative in their own way, and they will understand why you value your writing time so much.

11 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , ,

March 22, 2021 · 6:00 am

Writing Around the Distractions #amwriting #writerlife

Life has hit one of those inevitable snags, where writing has become more of a refuge than ever. My amateur nursing skills have been called into battle once again, as hubby has undergone a total hip replacement.

Four hours after the surgery, he was in the car, and we were going home. The minute the anesthesia wears off, they check the patient to make sure they’re alive and able to urinate, then send them home.

To be cared for by enthusiastic, panicking amateurs.

Two days in the hospital would have been better for him, but this is life in the USA. Even before COVID19, they sent patients home before they were able to care for themselves.

Thanks to having two children with seizure disorders and other family members with debilitating illnesses, I have acquired some of the skills necessary to handle this. My only problem is that he is 6’ 3” tall, and suffers from severe arthritis, so he has limited strength. I am just glad my brother is here to help when I need it.

We are 3 days into it, and hopefully, things will become easier as this next week progresses.

Everyone has family, jobs, external demands that limit the amount of time you can devote to writing. For me, the most important thing is to care for my family first. That means I do whatever housework is on for that day, make sure everyone is clean and fed, and if one of them is ill, I make sure they are comfortable and can rest.

I’m not a superwoman, so I do what I can around the house and don’t worry about what I didn’t get done. Some days that means just keeping a path cleared to the front door. Other days, the place is “fit for company,” as my grandma would say.

After surgery, blood clots can be a problem, so modern technology has devised an $80.00 solution, the PlasmaFlow Sequential Compression System. They are prescribed by a physician for use in the home to help prevent the onset of DVT (deep vein thrombosis) in post-surgical patients by stimulating blood flow in the extremities. They do this by stimulating muscle contractions. These are battery-operated, rechargeable cuffs that go around the patient’s calves.

The surgery was on Friday, so of course, they failed at about noon Saturday. This didn’t seem to surprise the on-call physician at the other end of the telephone. They quit charging, and we can’t get replacements until Monday. So, I am making sure he does some extra exercises and helping him do the ones he can’t yet do independently. Regular massage and exercise should do the trick.

Sleep the first night was like the first night you bring the newborn baby home. Sleep for an hour, get up to resolve something, sleep for an hour, get up to resolve something—not a lot of rest. But the second night, he was able to sleep straight through, so that was good.

I have plenty of downtime between things, though. That is when I write or work on whatever revisions are needed. You would be amazed at what you can get done in ten-minute bursts.

The fact is, I rarely watch television. While I do play a little Stardew Valley (see my game review here), my real interests are reading and attempting to write the stories I wish I could read.

This week I have been trying to think up decent titles for two of my works in progress. So far, nothing has risen to the top. “Accidental Novel” is a fair enough working title but probably won’t sell the book.

Before hubby went in for surgery, I sent my Accidental Novel to my structural editor for a beta read. I have a gut feeling that the ending is weak, so I asked her to give me any thoughts on reworking it. All the rough spots will be resolved once I get Irene’s revision notes back. The external eye is crucial at this stage. Having a trusted reader who is also an excellent editor is a gift from heaven.

So, all in all, life is good. Once we get through this week, my husband should be on the road to better health, and we will be able to settle into a routine.

Life can be a bumpy road. The key is to focus on the good things and laugh at the annoyances. Make a little time to do what you love, and always make time for the people you love.

Credits and Attributions:

We Can Do It, by J. Howard Miller, Restored by Adam Cuerden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

4 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,

March 17, 2021 · 6:00 am

Choosing a publishing path: Traditional vs. Indie #amwriting

The publishing industry is in a state of flux, as is the rest of the world.

According to the December 2020 Statshot of participating publishers, the Association of American Publishers, published February 25, 2021, total revenues across all categories for December 2020 were down 8.5% compared to December 2019, coming in at $1.1 billion.

In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of December, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were up 14.2%, coming in at $312.5 million; Paperbacks were up 2.4%, with $248.1 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 1.6% to $25.9 million; and Board Books were up 6.2%, with $16.7 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were up 18.4% for the month as compared to December of 2019 for a total of $89.7 million.  The Downloaded Audio format jumped 30.0% for December, coming in at $66.0 million in revenue. Physical Audio declined 6.7% coming in at $1.9 million. [1]

In this publishing world, what share of the market is claimed by Indie book sales? For Indie books, those published without ISBNs, the Amazon market share accounts for roughly 83% of US purchases.

What do these numbers mean when trying to decide whether to self-publish or attempt to go the traditional route?

In recent months, the traditional publishing industry has undergone a shrinkage. Where they once were the Big Five, they are now the Big Four: HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Penguin Random House.

Literative.Com says: Authors who publish with them may still not have boatloads of money (depending on how many books they publish in a year), but they certainly have prestige. [2]

The fact is authors, either Indie or traditionally published, rarely earn enough in royalties to support their families. This is because publishers, large and small, don’t waste budgets promoting work by unknown authors. They spend their money on the few who have risen to the ranks of their guaranteed bestseller lists.

So, why should an author consider going traditional? Why go to the trouble of wooing an agent and trying to court a publisher?

The fact is, the traditional publishing industry offers many legitimate perks to those who get their foot in the door.

  1. Once you are signed with a reputable publisher, you have an editor who works with you personally. Most of the time, you can forge a good working relationship with this editor. If you go Indie, you must hire a copy editor, which is not cheap. (And should not be.)
  2. While they may not treat a new author the way they do Stephen King, traditional publishers will dedicate a small budget to marketing your work for its launch. It will be more money than you might be able to pony up as an Indie.
  3. Once you have proven yourself, traditional publishers can get your work into markets like Target, Walmart, Costco, airports, and grocery stores.

That is a huge thing, assuming your publisher considers your work worthy of such a commitment on their part. Their confidence will have to be earned. You must expect to find your work on the slow track for a while as the publisher tests the water and sees how well your work is received at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

  1. Once you have proven yourself, you will have a wider distribution, make far more sales. With those sales, your work will meet the criteria to be considered for industry honors and awards, which will help sell your books.
  2. There is an air of respectability, the cachet of being able to claim you’re traditionally published.

These are valid reasons for attempting to sell your work to the traditional publishing industry.

However, if you seek a legacy book contract, you must go through a gauntlet of gatekeepers. You must pass the assessments of literary agents, acquisition editors, editorial committees, and publishing-house CEOs.

These people all must answer to the international conglomerates that actually own the majority of American publishing companies.

This is why you are most likely to be stopped by a rejection letter. It’s not the quality of your work; it’s the publisher’s perception of what the reading market will purchase and what it means to the accountants, who in turn must answer to their shareholders.

As an Indie, you may not become a bestseller, but you’ll make more money on what you do sell. In most standard book contracts, royalty terms for authors are terrible, especially for eBook sales. Most eBooks are sold through online retailers like Amazon.

For the traditionally published author, if a publisher prices their eBook at $9.99, this is how the Amazon numbers break out (and remember, Amazon is still the Big Fish in the Publishing and Bookselling Pond):

  • Amazon takes 30% of the list price, leaving about $7.00 for the publisher, agent, and you to split.
  • The publisher will keep 75% of that $7.00, or $5.25.
  • The publisher will pay you 25% of that $7.00—just $1.75.
  • The author then must pay their agent a 15% commission—or 26 cents.
  • The author nets just $1.49 on each $9.99 eBook sale.

This is assuming the publisher honestly reports your sales and royalties. In my personal experience, while most small presses are honest, some small presses fail to pay royalties and can have an author’s work tied up in legal limbo for years. Investigate small presses before you sign with them. This is where knowing your legal rights and having a lawyer read your contract before you sign is a good idea.

If you self-publish your eBook at $4.99 or even $2.99, you stand to sell books and make a decent profit.

If you self-publish, you’ll get paid quickly. When a publisher accepts your book, he offers you an advance against sales. Advancements are often paid in installments stretched out over long periods and are tied directly to how well or how poorly your book is doing in real market time. Publishers report sales and pay royalties slowly, as royalty statements are usually issued semiannually. Your royalty checks arrive later, so you can’t rely on this income until you have become an established author in their world.

Conversely, most eBook distributors like Kindle Direct Publishing and Draft2Digital report your sales virtually in real-time. Best of all, they pay your royalties monthly, with just a sixty-day lag from the time sales began.

Finally, and from my point of view, most importantly, you retain all rights to your work. Legacy book contracts are a terrible danger zone for the author.

Most of us are not lawyers. The complexity of negotiating a contract can be confusing and intimidating.

You must hire a lawyer specializing in literary contracts or risk unwittingly signing away secondary and subsidiary rights to your own work forever.

Quote from the Authors Guild post of July 28, 2015:

Diamonds may be forever, but book contracts should not be. There’s no good reason why a book should be held hostage by a publisher for the lifetime of the copyright, the life of the author plus seventy years—essentially forever. Yet that’s precisely what happens today. A publisher may go bankrupt or be bought by a conglomerate, the editors who championed the author may go on to other companies, the sales force may fail to establish the title in the marketplace and ignore it thereafter, but no matter how badly the publisher mishandles the book, the author’s agreement with the original publisher is likely to remain in effect for many decades. [3]

Regardless of whether you choose the traditional route or not, you must do the work and absorb the initial costs of getting your name out there. You must find bookstores willing to host you for a signing, and you must get yourself to conventions and conferences.

You must still work your day job to feed your family either way.

Both paths are valid, and both have positive reasons for choosing that direction, as well as negatives.

How you go forward in publishing your first book is a serious decision. Choosing your publishing path deserves deep consideration of all the many pros and cons.

CREDITS & ATTRIBUTIONS:

[1] AAP December 2020 Statshot Report © 2021Association of American Publishers https://publishers.org/news/aap-december-2020-statshot-report-publishing-industry-down-8-5-for-month-up-0-1-for-calendar-2020/  (Accessed March 16,2021)

[2] Literative.com Popular Books Published by the Big Four, by Jennifer Mendez © https://literative.com/writers-resources/popular-books-published-big-four/#:~:text=HarperCollins,%20Simon%20&%20Schuster,%20Hachette%20and%20Penguin%20Random,in%20a%20year),%20but%20they%20certainly%20have%20prestige. (Accessed March 16, 2021)

[3] A Publishing Contract Should Not Be Forever, The Authors Guild, © 2021 https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/a-publishing-contract-should-not-be-forever/, (Accessed March 16, 2021)

Image: Quill Pen, PD|by author, BWCNY at English Wikipedia.

13 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , ,

February 10, 2021 · 6:00 am

What I #amreading, and #amwriting

Hello from a dark and rainy town somewhere near Olympia, Washington, USA. The time of year that I like to think of as “baking weather” has arrived. It’s cold and rainy, with the promise of snow in the next few days.

Let’s face it: when the house feels cold, Grandma gets cooking.

Bread, cookies, lentil loaf—in my family, food is love. My house is full of good smells and tasty treats, and my clothes are shrinking.

Hunkering down with a cup of hot tea and a good book is another enjoyable activity for this time of year.

I’m currently reading a book by Dr. Michio Kaku, The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth.  This book was published by Random House in February of 2018. The way I learn requires a more in-depth approach to reading it, as I need to read slowly and take notes, so it’s been several weeks and I’m only halfway through it. This book is a journey, not a speed-read.

I’m drawn to a wide variety of books on philosophy and natural history and have them on my reading list because they offer new ways of looking at the world. I love learning but don’t have the patience to take college courses anymore.

I just finished reading “Murder in an Irish Village,” a cozy mystery by American author Carlene O’Connor. Published by Kensington Books in 2016, it’s the first book in a series of seven so far. It was a fun little mystery, well-plotted. Siobhán O’Sullivan is an enjoyable protagonist, and the cast of characters and suspects were believable. It kept me guessing to the end. I had one dislike, which is the abundance of relatively obscure Irishisms—at some points it’s rough going. I suspect even native Irish speakers have to look some words up. I understood all the dialogue only because I was reading on a Kindle and could easily search for the meanings of words I didn’t know. Despite that minor flaw I give the book four stars, because it’s a good novel.

So, what am I writing? I finished the first draft of Gates of Eternity, my accidental novel. That’s the working title, but I have no idea what the final title will be. I have a lot of work ahead of me before it’s ready for my editor, but I’m satisfied with how the storyline has fallen into place.

I am setting that book aside now to finish working on Bleakbourne on Heath. This Alternate Arthurian novel grew out of a serial I began writing in 2016. The ending has been written, but a certain amount of work remains, as the plot is a little thin in some places.

Committing to write that serial back then was how I discovered that writing and publishing a chapter a week is NOT my strong suit!

This last week, I entertained myself by creating a digital map for a friend’s next novel, a mystery set in the general area my husband grew up in. She gave me a hand-drawn basic layout, and I took it from there. I love drawing maps for my own work and have often thought I missed my calling as a cartographer.

Jasperson Back Yard, May 2020

On the homefront, we’ve been getting the yard tidied, small preparations for spring whenever the weather allows. The tree man was here to prune the apple tree and cut back the maple that loves to block my front window. He also trimmed up the cedar hedge which had gotten out of control, suffocating our rhododendrons, so we’re good to go for another year.

As always, writing for this blog requires a small commitment of time and creativity, but it is one of my great joys, a diversion when things get a little hectic.

All in all, it has been a busy month, with plenty of books to read, lots to write, and new recipes to try out. I hope you’re enjoying life as much as is possible during this pandemic and the lockdown, and staying safe.

Comments Off on What I #amreading, and #amwriting

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 6, 2021 · 6:00 am

Do the research before you do the murder #amwriting

I recently began reading a murder mystery where the author used a mushroom to kill the first victim. That’s where this book fell apart—the idea was good, but the facts and execution weren’t.

Using a mushroom stroganoff to poison him was a poor choice because fungi is an undependable weapon unless you are an expert. Also, individually, one mushroom may be more or less poisonous than another of the same kind, rather like people are. Judging how many one would need to kill a three-hundred-pound man takes more thought than I am capable of plotting out.

Also, it was stroganoff, which is basically beef and mushrooms in a sour cream sauce. This author danced over the fact that serving the food at this dinner party would have been a tactical nightmare. It would have been nearly impossible to ensure the intended victim got the poison mushrooms and no one else did, which is how this murder was written.

Agatha Christie knew that and regularly poisoned entire dinner parties, literarily speaking. Her murderers made everyone at the table sick but only the intended victim actually died.

This particular mystery was set in Scotland, and I don’t know how poisonous their mushrooms are, but I think that logic would hold true there as well as it does here in the Pacific Northwest.

If I hadn’t been on several nature walks with Ellen King Rice, a wildlife biologist and amateur mycologist who writes well-plotted mushroom thrillers, I would have accepted the slightly contrived fatal dinner as written and focused on the other failings of this novel.

This experience reinforced my belief that readers are often more knowledgeable than we authors are. E-readers can do the research just by highlighting the word and hitting search.

For this reason, having a solid base of information to back up what we are writing is critical.

My disappointment as a reader could have been avoided if the author had gone out to several mushroom hunter websites or even if she had found a local person to talk with. With only a small amount of effort, she could have made her plot a little less flimsy.

Targeted research is essential if you want your fiction to convey a feeling of truth. Identify what you want to know, use the internet, ask an expert, and create a searchable file or database of information that backs up your assertions.

Once you establish the technological era you are writing in, you know what you need to research and how theoretical you may have to get.

Here are some of my go-to sources of information:

If you seek information about low-tech societies (the past) :

My best source of information on low-tech agrarian (farm) life and culture comes from a book I found at a second-hand book store in Olympia in the mid-to-late-1980s. Lost Country Life by Dorothy Hartley is still available as a second-hand book and can be found on Amazon. This textbook was meticulously researched and illustrated by a historian who personally knew the people she wrote about.

I also find a lot of information on how people lived from Wikimedia Commons.  Under the heading  Category: Painters from the Northern Netherlands (before 1830), you will find the brilliant works of the Dutch Masters, artists living in what is now The Netherlands.

These painters created accurate records of ordinary people going about everyday life. Their genre art depicts how they dressed, and what was important to them.

Talk to police, talk to doctors, talk to lawyers–many are willing to help you with your quest for accuracy about their professions. Also, you can Google just about anything. Fads, fashion, phone tech, current robotics tech, automobile tech—it’s all out there.

Looking things up on the internet can suck up an enormous amount of your writing time. Do yourself a favor and bookmark your resources so all you have to do is click on a link to get the information you want. Then you can quickly get back to writing.

Resources to bookmark in general:

www.Thesaurus.Com (What’s another word that means the same as this but isn’t repetitive?)

Oxford Dictionary (What does this word mean? Am I using it correctly?)

Wikipedia (The font of all knowledge. I did not know that.)

TED Talks are a fantastic resource for information on current and cutting edge technology.

ZDNet Innovation is an excellent source of current tech and future tech that may become current in 25 years.

Tech Times is also a great source of ideas.

Nerds on Earth has useful information about swords and how they were used historically.

If you want to know what interests the people in the many different layers of our society, go to the magazine rack at your grocery store or the local Big Name Bookstore, and look at the many publications available to the reading public. You can find everything from mushroom hunting, to culinary, to survivalist, to organic gardening. If people are interested in it, there is a magazine for it.

We can only extrapolate how societies will look in the future by taking what we know is possible today and mixing it with a heavy dose of what we wish were possible.

SpaceX

NASA

Digital Trends

If you write sci-fi, you must read sci-fi as that is where the ideas are. Much of what was considered highly futuristic in the era of classic science fiction is today’s current tech.

Ion drive, space stations—these are our reality but were only a dream when science fiction was in its infancy.

Think about it: your Star Trek communicator is never far from your side, and your teenagers won’t put theirs down long enough to eat dinner.

MAPS: If you are writing a story set in our real world and your characters will be traveling, walking a particular city, or visiting landmarks, bookmark google maps for that area and refer back to it regularly to make sure you are writing it correctly.

USE GOOGLE EARTH!

If you are writing about a fantasy world and your characters will be traveling, quickly sketch a rough map. Refer back to it to ensure the town names and places remain the same from the first page to the last. Update it as new locations are added.

Do the right research, target it to your needs, and don’t allow yourself to be sidetracked by the many bunny trails that lead you away from actually writing. And for the love of Agatha Christie, make sure your literary murders are done in a way that doesn’t fly in the face of logic.

Credits and Attributions:

Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Jan Steen, Dutch (active Leiden, Haarlem, and The Hague) – Rhetoricians at a Window – Google Art Project.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Jan_Steen,_Dutch_(active_Leiden,_Haarlem,_and_The_Hague)_-_Rhetoricians_at_a_Window_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&oldid=355150081 (accessed September 10, 2020).

13 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , ,