I'm writing a New Story

Day #10 of the return to the writing habit, and a byproduct of getting back to work and writing all those blogposts is that the fiction side of my brain has turned back on. During the three-plus months of my writing drought, this was the most frustrating and unfamiliar aspect. Typically, when I've gone through a spell of no writing, my mind was still working on story ideas. But nothing like that occurred. Now that I'm making the time to write again, though, it seems The Muse TM has returned. Which isn't that surprising. I already wrote about that, here. 

So, to offer something other than self-congratulations, here's the opening sentence for the new story (I hope it does the job I stated it should in this recent piece):

Andre Johnson was seven years old when he stepped into another world.   

Thanks for indulging me. I mean, it is my blog, so I suppose I'm entitled. 

__wink_emoji__ 

-chris

ON WRITING: Why the Habit?

 

Day 5 of getting back into the writing habit (looking at the title, seems like I'm taking the "write what you know" saw a bit too seriously; ah, well):

The most obvious benefit from making your writing a habit is the fact that you actually get some writing done. Working every day, the words build up until you have pages of your work, which becomes dozens of pages, and, eventually, hundreds of pages. From that, one ends up with stories and articles and analytical essays, for submission. After that, it's just a matter of aiming well and firing off your shot (in this metaphor, the aiming represents...oh, forget it; moving on).

All through school, I excelled at my studies. Writing was no different -- straight A student, all the way down the line. I was the cream of the crop, baby. 

And I had no effing idea what the hell I was doing.

This is the biggest frustration, I've discovered, since I set on this journey of actually writing fiction for possible publication. My teachers didn't give me the tools that I needed, in order to do this work with the facility necessary to get published. I've had to learn a lot -- often aspects of writing of which I was aware but had no idea how to recognize them, or fix them if I found them in my work -- as I've written stories and articles and blog posts over the course of these 15 - 20 years. These are issues I know were a part of my writing in high school and college, when I was getting excellent grades. I don't want to dwell on this, or take the time to try and investigate why this occurred (that would be one helluva research hole to fall into), but I do want to make it clear:  even though I did extremely well in my written pieces for academic classes, all of that writing was sloppy and unprofessional and in need of some serious revising. 

And that's the other -- and I'd say, far more important -- thing that will come from a writing habit that has you in the chair, tapping the keys on a daily basis. You actually do get better at your writing (people like to make the comparison of writing daily with a physical workout at the gym, and I never bought into that, but it's true, writing daily strengthens the "muscles" necessary for making good work). I found it easier to get the word I was looking for, found it easier to craft metaphors and comparisons, found descriptions to come more easily (all things being relative; this is a weakness in my writing, I think). Maybe it's a better focus, or just years of checking the online thesaurus and working to come up with a pithy description, I don't know, but there are definite benefits. 

Also, and more to the point in my mind, is the fact that, having written, examined, considered, and revised, thousands and thousands of pages of my own fiction, I've come to discover what people meant by keeping your tenses consistent and not writing in a passive voice, among other literary offenses. I know, for a fact, that I committed both of these stated errors, on a regular basis. 

In the first case, I think that's just how I tell a story, aloud, and I don't believe I'm alone in that regard (maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to think I'm not a complete dimwit). When speaking off the cuff, it's easy to switch from present to past tense and back. And it wouldn't be uncommon in a first draft of a story, especially from an inexperienced writer, as I was. But, at some point along the way, I became aware of what I was doing, how I was flip-flopping around in those drafts, and I worked to fix that. Soon after I first started to notice it, it became a glaring red light, whenever I would read through some bit where I'd fallen back into that hole. It was a matter of living with this writing every day that had allowed that major lesson to seep into my brain. 

It's a similar thing with the second idea -- not writing passively -- that I mention above. Stephen King, in his great memoir ON WRITING, states that passive writing is a sign of a lack of confidence. Check! This is completely spot-on. Being definitive in your writing, especially when you're just starting out or haven't had all that much success, feels wrong somehow. There's a built-in guilt complex because you're completely making up a story and then expecting others to find it worthy enough of publication, of being read, and of being enjoyed and appreciated. That's pretty heavy. So, it's natural to fall into a passive voice; it's not as obtrusive, not as in-your-face, not as demanding of notice. The word 'seem' is a common culprit. Instead of writing that something happened, you will write that it seemed to happen. There's a bit of romanticization in the use of the word seem; it sounds like something from a very proper fairy tale, like the ones we were fed as children, but it's wishy-washy and it doesn't engender confidence from an audience. This was something I wasn't overly conscious of in my writing, and I can't say when it finally clicked (I do know it was many years after I read On Writing), but when it hit, it hit like a hammer. And now, I excise it whenever I find it. Strut like a peacock, I say, because anything less isn't your best.

[and keep that habit going, because good things will come of it.]

-chris

ON WRITING: The Habit's the Thing

Day 3 of working to get back into the habit of writing. Here we go:

I've written about this before, but you can't allow yourself, if you want to write, to fall into the trap of waiting for the muse. That's a mug's game, a romantic notion that sounds lofty and artistic but will only hamper you, if you truly want to be a writer. [And note, being a writer is many things, but at its core, as Harlan Ellison stated and I will paraphrase: if you write, then you're a writer, full stop. Other good advice, from Neil Gaiman:  finish what you begin.]

But it's an easy trap to fall into. I did, when I first had the idea of writing. Of course, I have a tendency to romanticize things, which is probably why my reading and entertainment choices have leaned toward fantasy and the fantastical -- Star Wars being the prime example of this, with comic books a close second. So, when I first considered writing as something I could do, I though it was necessary to just wait for the ideas to come, to allow the muse to fill me up with creativity and direct me on the proper path. I had this one story idea that I believe was a good one. I would work on that, whenever I felt like it, with days and weeks and months passing in between writing spurts, those gaps expanding once I got into the revising phase. And here, as well, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought you needed to revise the fuck [sorry, Mom] out of a story before submitting it. I was into my 13th or 14th revision, at which point I am certain I was just changing words back to ones I'd had in previous drafts, when I finally stopped, put it aside, and tried to figure out what I was doing, and, more importantly, what I was doing wrong. 

Writing is work. Harlan Ellison, my favorite author, famously would write stories in bookstore windows, from ideas offered by friends or attendees, without any foreknowledge of the subject. He wanted to prove that writing was just like plumbing or teaching or any other job. You worked at it, you became better, it was something you were able to do with some facility, But, like any job, you had to work at it, otherwise, what was the point? 

If you want to be a writer, you need to write. That's advice #1 from any author. You have to write. Every day. It's not easy, because there are plenty of distractions calling out for our attention. You have to sit down, in the chair, spark up the computer, and begin smacking those keys. You have to do it regularly, every single day (though I like to take weekends off to be with my family), and, most importantly, you need to have a goal in mind toward which you're working. This goal will keep you honest, and it will allow you to forge ahead and finish those stories you start. Your goal can be a timed one, or a quantity one, whatever works for you -- write for an hour, write until you've gotten 500 words down, write until you have a full scene completed. Anything that gives you something to shoot for and keeps you moving forward. Consider:  if you write 1,000 words a day, after three months you will have written 90,000 words, roughly, which equates to a standard sized novel. Of course, there would still be revising to finish, but once you have a rough draft to work from, the writing is a bit easier. 

The most important thing about making your writing a habit -- and this is probably obvious, but bear with me -- is to make it a regular thing, within your personal schedule. Set a time, the same time, every day, for when you're going to write. Set up a writing space, dedicated to just that, and it can be at the dining room table, in a home office, on your porch, wherever, but utilize the same space very day. Your mind, and your body, will come to recognize this as the writing space, and when you sit down to the keyboard you will know, subconsciously, that it is your writing time. Patterns can be important, especially when beginning a habit. Choose some music, something that will relax you and focus you, that won't be distracting. I prefer to use soundtracks or classical music or jazz, something without lyrics. Currently I'm listening to the John Wick soundtracks. The music energizes me, and it drowns out distractions (I used to do this in high school, when I did my homework); it keeps me focused on the task at hand and allows me to work toward my goal, which has changed over time. Used to be I would try to write for 2 hours a day, then I worked to a 1000 words a day goal, now I've taken on something Joe Hill does, which is to work on a single scene and finish that scene, during my writing time. It's not always doable, but it does give me something to aspire to. 

In the end, the only person who can make you write is you, and whatever means you utilize to get to that place, I applaud you. Just remember, you need to write on a daily (regular) basis, and you need to finish what you begin. Other than that, everything else is fair game. 

-chris

Succeeding (or Failing) in public

So, this is the week where I am working to get back into the habit of writing. And my plan is to do it in public (at least, as public as this blog may be . . . not overly public, though technically it's totally public, but one must take into account one). 

It's not enough just to spit out something onto a screen, as it were, though that's apparently where I'm heading with this. I had a few ideas of what I could do:  write about something I'd recently read or maybe craft a scene or a setting just as an exercise; of course, I could be doing THE WORK -- revising one of my stories, or going through that novel manuscript on a final pass, or working on the synopsis I need for that (87,000 summed up in less than 200, please). Any of these would be good. 

But I also considered writing extemporaneously . . . like I'm doing right (write?) now. Annnnnnnnnd, I'm not feeling it (most especially because it just feels like an exercise in futility with nothing to gain, either for you the reader [singular for multiple reasons, hahaha!] or for me.  So, a scene or a setting. Let's see if I can do that. 

Cue music: 

And, let's begin.

Antoine opened his eyes. Darkness. 

He could feel a chill on the back of his neck, a soft breeze licking the skin just below his hairline, coming from . . . somewhere. Sitting in a wooden chair, his arms were pulled back; he tried to move his hands, found they were bound. Rope or wire or plastic cut into his wrists, he couldn't help but let out a tiny scream. Eyes pinched closed with the pain, Antoine took a breath, tried to fill his lungs with air, but found it impossible. 

On his left, a sound, something moving. He turned, looked. 

The darkness looked back. 

"Who's there?" Antoine's voice cracked, was weak. Questions tumbled through his mind, refused to congeal into anything coherent. He opened his mouth again:  "What do you want?" 

Nothing. 

Antoine sucked at the air again, tried to regain some control of the situation. His breaths were quick, shallow, unfulfilled. He could feel himself panicking, worked to push that thought down, continued to grasp for oxygen and finally managed to calm down his lungs. He took three long, slow breaths, then opened his eyes wide. 

A slight glimmer on his right. An outline -- tall, square, a window(?), maybe. 

A thicker shadow to his left. Heavy. Solid. A piece of furniture -- a bookcase or a dresser. 

The chair he was in. Wood, with delicately carved decorations on its back (he could feel the empty spaces scattered across his shoulder blades, down the rest of his back; he could almost picture a similar chair from his childhood, in his grandmother's apartment). The legs were narrow, the seat solid. Antoine felt like he should be able to break it if he could get the right leverage to lift it from the floor and topple it over. Of course, this thought led to the discovery that his legs were bound as well, at the ankles and the knees. 

FUCK!

"What are doing?" 

A soft laugh, so low Antoine thought it might be his imagination. 

The female voice following it told him it was genuine. "Isn't it obvious?" the voice said. "We want to kill you. But first, we want to play." 

So, roughly 350 words. Not bad for a first draft. At least, I hope it's not too bad. I only had an image, of someone locked in a room, when I started. I didn't know it was pitch black until I began writing. In my mind, I wanted to write something that might elicit the anxiety one would experience if in this situation. I don't know that I succeeded in that regard. I would need to know what I'm doing in order to achieve that with a quick first draft. I'm not even sure if could achieve it on a third pass. But I feel like I may have crafted something that is, at the very least, interesting. And, given the opportunity to revise it and flesh out a larger narrative around it, I believe I could come up with something worthwhile. Maybe I'll try that someday. But, for now, I got a chance to flex the "fictive" muscles for the first time in a long time. 

I'll be back tomorrow with something else. Not sure what it'll be, but hopefully it will be engaging. 

-chris

You're either in the game . . .

On May 22, 2020, I completed the first draft of a new short story (looking in my files it might be "Life Giver," though I'm not one hundred percent certain). The next day, I started a string of 108 consecutive days of no writing. I haven't had a drought like that for at least a decade and a half. And that might be the problem. 

Sure, we are all dealing with the COVID pandemic, and it has turned everything inside out. Maybe that contributed to this dry spell. But I think, more likely, it's the fact that I've been writing on a fairly regular basis for at least 15 years now, and it's tiring pushing against that tide and finding that the weight of water can be overwhelming (if I may be allowed to extend that metaphor). 

Always before, when I would put off writing for a short while -- a few days up to a week -- there would be an anxiety that would churn in my gut, telling me to get back to the keyboard, urging me not to waste all the time I've put into this by just giving up. I would become irritable, though at a low level, because of this urge to write. And eventually, I would sit back down and start that habit all over again. Because that's the key:  you have to make it a habit, and you can only do that by sitting down to do the work. That's how the muse comes to you, how the words get written, how inspiration sparks in your brain -- not through divine intervention but through sitting in your chair banging away at the keys. I know this; I've experienced it, and I know how simple it can be to get back into that habit (for me, the threshold tends to be 3 days; once I've "done the work" for three days straight, then it becomes easier and the sitting down isn't such a chore, BUT the ugly flipside is:  it only takes one days to break that habit, and easing into that as a new habit is way too easy). 

I'm a full-time dad, full-time husband, full-time employee, which means carving out time to write is a challenge. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. I just need to take time from other aspects of my life, aspects revolving around my free time (put that in scare quotes, because free time is at a premium in this game of life), and during these past few months, I've really enjoyed reading some old comics, reading Alan Moore's JERUSALEM (what a beast, and brilliant!), watching baseball on TV now that it's back, and generally just appreciating my free time. It's been good, especially since I haven't experienced any of that anxiety I would, when I stopped writing before. 

But now, I am hoping to get back on that horse. It won't be easy (I know that) because I've really enjoyed grabbing comics from my longboxes and creating stacks of books to cycle through. But I have a novel just about ready for querying, and I'm halfway through the first draft of another novel (I'm looking at you, Dan; we're gonna finish this, and maybe I'll take on the balance of this initial draft, once I set up my synopsis and stuff for contacting agents), and there are any number of short stories I want to write or revise or just submit. There's plenty on my plate. I just need to get cracking. 

Like I've noted many times before in my writing posts, if you want to write you need to write. 

Just. 

Do. 

It.

-chris

ON WRITING: Luring the Muse (hint--make it a habit)

Luck.  Inspiration.  The Muse.

When discussing writing . . . it's all drivel.  An anthropomorphizing of human ideas that romanticizes writing to an almost divine plane, while also diminishing it by ignoring the amount of work that goes into the act of writing.  You can wait until inspiration strikes.  Wait for the muse to land on your shoulder.  Hope for a lucky break.  But if you're focusing on this, you're probably not writing, and that's the key to it all.

The biggest problem with this romanticization is the fact that it takes a writer's success out of their hands, relegating it to some outside force.  Now, this may be well and good if the writer in question wants to deflect the harsh feeling of rejection away from themselves--it can be a coping mechanism, sure.  But it also means they needn't take any responsibility for their shortcomings (and all of us who write have those; it's just a matter of being self-reflective enough to recognize them).  You have to be proactive if you want to write and be successful.  You need to put in the work.  You need to read.  You need to analyze.  You need to write.  And you need to submit.  Do the damn work, if you want to be a writer.

And even then, there's no guarantee you will find success.

If you want The Muse (TM) to visit, to inspire you, to make the words flow from your fingers like golden skeins of thread being woven by the ancient Gods, there is something you can do.  Make your writing a habit.



It's not an easy thing to sit down with a blank page and start to write.  It takes a bit of ego, a bit of talent, a bit of delusion.  Most importantly, though, it takes persistence.  So, make writing a habit, and make it as regular a thing as you can.  When you sit to write (especially if you're starting out), do it at the same time of day, in the same spot, with (as near as possible) the same circumstances, every single day.  Writing is like working out, except it's using different muscles--if we want to think of the brain as a muscle, especially.  And, like working out or practicing with your teammates, you can develop a muscle memory with writing, as well.  Writing at the same time of day in the same place allows it to become familiar, taking away some of the anxiety that can cause writer's block.  Eventually, it just becomes part of your routine.  It will feel natural to sit down and write, something as familiar as brushing your teeth when you wake in the morning or slipping on your silk pajamas before watching "This Is Us" (because we all have silk PJs, right?).

Once you're comfortably in the habit, you'll be less anxious about it, just a natural part of your day.  And, you'll find that the words come to you more easily, that inspiration arrives more often and without as much struggle, that your fingers just seem to get away from you, racing to keep up with your imagination.  Keep in mind, also, that it behooves you to set a daily goal for your writing, so that you're always moving forward.  This can be whatever works best for you--a timed goal like an hour of writing, or a quantifiable word count: 500, 1000, 3000.  We're all different, so we have to find what's most comfortable for us.  But having that daily goal allows you to achieve one of the most important rules of writing I can think of, as stated by Neil Gaiman, "finish what you're writing."

And if you finish what you write, then you can begin to make your own luck, which, as with The Muse (TM), comes with making your writing a habit.