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2 Questions That Will Stunt a Writer’s Progress

ConfusedWriters are inquisitive people. We’re always asking questions, about our characters, our story, plot points and structure. About the spelling of that word we read every day but that looks all wrong as soon as we type it on the screen. There are two questions, though, that writers should be wary of asking too often:

  1. Am I a writer?
  2. Am I any good?

Spend more than two minutes obsessing on those two questions, and you’ll find yourself shutting your laptop and watching Netflix movies that you’ve seen a hundred times already. Or knitting dishrags. Not that I’ve done either one of those things.

Am I a writer?

This question kick starts a writer’s insatiable search for the perfect qualifier: a blog that people read, a published piece, then two. Maybe an award. Yes, that’s it. When I win an award, then I’ll be a writer.

I’ve been calling myself a writer for a few years now. I even have a t-shirt blazoned with Mother Writer on the front, and I wear it. On occasion. When I’m feeling extra brave. You see, even with my work published and an Honorable Mention on my resume, I still let that question sink its teeth into my confidence. I don’t get paid to write, and, as Carolyn Roy-Bornstein says in this post on Beyond the Margins, “Here in America, [doesn’t] that still disqualify me from calling myself a writer in public?” Sometimes I let it.

Am I any good?

This one gets me even more. Just when I stake my claim as a writer (which should have been self-evident already by all the books, pens, and paper I carry in my purse), “Am I any good” creeps on up to the surface of my conscious and brings with it a nasty little lackey: “You’re probably just wasting your time.” On a bad day, I check my email with the sole aim of finding a message in my inbox from the universe (or some editor of this or that) that will confirm my late-night efforts at this writing business, give me a boost of confidence, and keep me going for another year. Because, as long as I dwell on these kinds of questions, I can’t find that confidence in myself.

What helps is to read what others are saying….

Jody Hedlund, on the brinks of publishing her third novel, addresses negative self-talk in her post, “Is All the Hard Work Really Worth It?”:

[I]f we ever want to ‘make it’ we have to practice the power of positive thinking. . . . when we fill our minds with ‘is this really worth it?’ we’re essentially talking negatively to ourselves. While we’re wise to evaluate our situations from time to time, we can’t let those negative thoughts cloud our view—at least for long. We can’t walk around threatening to quit every time something discourages us. . . . the writing journey is a marathon not a sprint.

…and to listen to sage advice from those who’ve gone before us.

This month, The Sun reprinted excerpts from Citizens of the Dream, Cary Tennis’ book of advice on writing and the creative life, and that very question – “How can you tell if you have talent?” – is answered with these wise words:

[Writing] is an important act regardless of whether it garners fame or praise. So your question about talent is moot. It is more a question about how to persist in writing through the fear, discouragement, and disappointment that are endemic to the activity. . . . All the practice you get makes you better. Whatever stops you from practicing makes you worse. One thing that may stop you from practicing is the belief that you are no good. So the belief that you are no good may prevent you from becoming good — unless you persist in writing despite it.

Then, and most importantly, he says:

For reasons psychological, spiritual, and philosophical, one must learn, through practice, to regard one’s creative work with some compassionate detachment and not to equate it with one’s worth as a person.

Negative mind-chatter will kill my creative energy and ruin my day. I can choose to listen to it, or I can recognize it for what it is: fear, and a bit of a bruised ego at times.

One final note from Carolyn Roy-Bornstein’s post:

Attitude is important. We may be what we do for a living, but we’re so much more than that. We are our goals.

How do you turn off that negative self-talk?

*photo credit: Guudmorning! on flickr.com

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Bringing an old manuscript back to life, and to print.

Please welcome guest blogger, Pete Abela, author of WINGS, as he talks about unfinished drafts, the gift of time, and the importance of quality feedback.

The publication of Wings has been an exciting and proud event for me. I’d nearly go so far as to say it rates in the top handful of achievements in my life so far.  However, Wings almost didn’t get published. It spent close to a year in my drawer as a half-written manuscript: unloved, ignored and forgotten. Today I’ll talk about how it got to that point and the sequence of events that enabled me to turn an incomplete and fault-ridden document into a published novel.

Although Wings is a work of fiction, it is heavily based on the story of two men I admire: my grandfather who was a WWII fighter pilot and my brother who is now a commercial pilot. I thought they had both led amazing lives and so I started writing Wings using the bones of their stories as the basis for the plot. I did not plan the entire book. Wings is the first novel I have attempted so I did not know how to go about it. I simply sat down and started writing.

I continued this process for many months, writing almost every day. I enjoyed the process of writing and seeing the story come to life. I enjoyed it, that is, until I came to a grinding halt. I woke up one day fed up and discouraged. I resented the process of writing and the time it consumed, particularly given I was unsure whether what I had written was any good. I wondered if I was wasting my time. Worst of all, I had no idea of the ending and did not know what to write next.

I decided to take a short break from writing. During my break, I read a book about stock market investing using the Value Investment approach. It got me hooked and I began spending significant amounts of time researching stocks and tracking my shares. Whatever time had been spent writing was taken up with my new interest. Wings faded from my consciousness and was soon forgotten.

It was almost a year later that I chanced upon Wings as I hunted for an elusive file on my PC. Out of curiosity,  I opened it and began reading. I was surprised at the quality of the writing and read the entire manuscript in a day. Wings was much better than I remembered and I was immediately struck by its potential. Even better, an ending popped straight into my mind.

I was seized by a new burst of enthusiasm and finished the first draft of Wings within a month. I spent another month polishing it, then sent it to a publisher and prepared to wait.

I didn’t have to wait long.

“We like it,” replied the publisher within a week. “But it’s not of publishable standard yet. You can pitch it to other publishers if you like, but our recommendation would be to obtain a reader’s report.”

I took their advice and requested a reader’s report, which is a manuscript assessment by an accomplished editor. While I waited, I began writing a second novel. After six weeks, the report came back. It contained general comments about areas of weakness, as well as a specific example of where the weakness could be found in my manuscript. It was up to me to understand the comment and example and work out how to apply the feedback to the remainder of the manuscript.

The two major weaknesses were a lack of revelation of the character’s emotional response to major events and a scarcity of description about setting. They did observe that my natural writing style was lean and uncluttered, so they cautioned me against going too far with my descriptions and emotional responses. There were also some mechanical issues such as an over-reliance on “ly” adverbs and a passive writing style through the use of words such as “had”, “was” and “am”.

The reader’s report was an excellent initiative and assisted me to make the leap from “gifted amateur” to “polished professional.” The suggestions rang true and the fact that they used examples of my own writing to point out the areas for improvement helped me to grasp their suggestion and apply it to the rest of the novel. The fact that a publisher expressed interest in my work provided more than enough incentive for me to continue the process of refinement.

It took me a couple of months to rework the manuscript in accordance with the feedback. Within ten days of submitting Wings to Really Blue Books, I had an offer to publish. I’ve been floating ever since, although working very hard on further edits, establishing a social media platform and planning publicity.

On May 21st, the big day finally arrived. Wings became a published novel and I can now call myself an author.

It’s a great feeling.

Wings can be purchased as an eBook from the publisher,
Really Blue Books
or
on Amazon.

~

Pete is an author from the city of Wollongong, just south of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, Australia. For most of his adult life, Pete has been a left-brained computer scientist whose love of reading eventually led him to take up writing. Having surprised himself and those around him by getting Wings published, he’s now having fun dreaming up marketing strategies and publicity stunts – tasks he never could have envisaged doing ten years ago. He continues to stretch the boundaries of his right hemisphere and is now working to complete a second novel.
His left brain hasn’t been totally neglected through this process. Pete works as an IT Manager in order to help keep his wife and four kids fed and clothed. When he’s not working, reading, writing or enjoying the company of his family, Pete likes to sneak away for a bit of exercise – either tennis, soccer or a laborious run.
You can find more about Pete at his website and blog (http://peteabela.com). The blog contains a number of really bad jokes. You have been warned.
Like Pete on Facebook; follow him on Twitter.
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You Talk Too Much: Balancing Dialogue and Narrative

I’ve just returned from a trip home to Texas. I took with me plenty of pens and paper, books and ideas; once I touched down and hooked up with family I hadn’t seen in years, though, everything but the loving fell to the wayside.

So this Wednesday, I give you a re-post of an old post on a topic that never gets dull: dialogue versus narrative.

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I pride myself on being a quiet observer: in a church pew, during a staff meeting, behind a muffin and a steaming cup of coffee in a cafe. Most days, it takes me a long time to warm up to any conversation. But, stick me in front of my laptop (and smack-dab in the middle of rewriting a story) and suddenly I’m all talk.

At least, that’s what I’ve noticed lately with my work-in-progress. The early drafts of my novel were heavy in exposition and light in conversation. Now, I have a clearer vision of the plot, and I know my characters better. And, dialogue comes easy for me. The problem is that once the characters start talking, I let them go on and on. In rewriting another section last week, I noticed a whole page of chit chat. All that character banter started to tug at my writer’s gut, which suggested I should rethink my use of dialogue.

Beware: dialogue abuse.

g_fullxfull.36171Nathan Bransford posted on the Seven Keys to Writing Good Dialogue, in which he pin points one area of concern:

A good conversation is an escalation…Characters in a novel never just talk. There’s always more to it.

In all writing, each character, scene, and piece of dialogue must move the story forward. I practice that in my short stories and flash fiction. But, in this novel rewrite, much of the dialogue I’ve written just fills up space. Though realistic, it reads flat and doesn’t necessarily propel the story.

Janet Fitch (author of White Oleander) has her own post, entitled “A Few Thoughts About Dialogue,” where she carries this idea of flat conversation even further. She says, “Dialogue is only for conflict…You can’t heap all your expository business on it, the meet and greet, and all that yack…If someone’s just buying a donut, nobody needs to say anything.” Then, she throws in a quick example of unnecessary talk: in response to a character asking, Want a cup of coffee? she writes, “No. I don’t. Ever.”I’m guilty of that kind of dialogue: in the span of one chapter, my characters have discussed getting a cup of coffee or tea twice. That’s a lot of “coffee talk.”

But, careful with the exposition.

Sam McGarver, in his article, “10 Fiction Pitfalls,” (which appears in the May 2010 issue of The Writer) talks about too much weight on the other end of the writing scale: :

Entertainment today is visual—movies, television, the Internet, cell phones. To compete, fiction must also be visual, using scenes, action, description and dialogue to show a story, rather than narration to tell it. A story should consist of one scene following another, connected by narration.

I don’t want to nix half of the conversations in my novel just because I want to avoid too much talking, but I don’t want to go on and on with narrative and put readers to sleep.

So, what to do?

After reading Bransford, Fitch, and McCarver, I found three different techniques for balancing dialogue and narrative:

  • From McCarver’s article: Find a particularly long narrative section and see how it might be broken up into more of a scene with dialogue.
  • After reading Fitch’s post: Find a section in the story where the characters have a whole conversation, and then cross out the dialogue that is commonplace. Because, as Fitch says, “A line anybody could say is a line nobody should say.”
  • From Bransford’s post: If the dialogue does carry the story forward but still feels “thin,” look for places to add gestures, facial expressions, and/or any details from the scene that enhance that section. Bransford says, “gesture and action [are] not [used] to simply break up the dialogue for pacing purposes, but to actually make it meaningful….”

How do you balance your story with narrative and dialogue? Do you talk too much?

Photo credits: lovelornpoets on Flickr.com