Posted on

Writing Past the Pain of Critique

It’s funny how fate plays a role in your writing sometimes.

Today,I woke up exhausted, my head thick with a fog that settled in after lack of sleep and a hangover.

Sleep deprivation was a result from spending two days home with a sick child. Prescribed certain medications, she becomes a toddler-on-the-move who’s stuck on fast forward and can’t even pause for bedtime. At 10:30 last night, her feet kicked up and out and down on the bed and her hands clapped and she whispered stories non stop.

The hangover came after a night of novel workshop with me and mine in the hot seat. Though the critique process worked well – the author sits quiet and listens while the readers discuss – the feedback weighed heavy against my chest when I finally fell asleep.

I’m a newbie, and I imagine first critiques always cut deep. So, I’m following Becky Levine’s advice, from her book, The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide:

Most of our bad feelings don’t come from the words written on our manuscripts…or from the person who writes them. Instead they come from within ourselves. They reflect our own doubts about ourselves as writers – as skilled, creative craftspeople.

Be ready for [those feelings] to come, and, when they do, recognize and acknowledge them. Then, get to work (p. 242).

I decided to pushthose critiques to the side for the day and to tackle Wednesday’s Word.

And, funny enough, the word that rolled out from Wordsmith.org this morning was bayonet — a call to arms, an insistence to fight, a subtle reminder that this is where the rubber meets the road, missy.

Critique or no critique, get writing.

So, here goes. Read at your own risk. And, if you’re feeling feisty, put a link to your version of how the word-of-the-day’s call to action translates into your writing. Camaraderie is always a good thing.

*****

They were back, the whole lot of them.

Phi Delts, from the frat house down the block, stormed into the bar as soon as she unlocked the door that morning. They slurred on and on about another 24 hour party, chanting rugby cheers and demanding multiple rounds of Bloody Marys.

She stood behind the counter and emptied bottles into glasses like she worked on an assembly line.

They harassed her and called her a hard ass when she tried to measure the vodka and told her to “lighten up.”

The one with the U of M baseball cap and stubble leaned over the bar, grabbed her hand, kissed it, and then begged for “three more of those plump…green…olives.” She jerked her hand away.

She picked up a cocktail sword and stabbed three times into the dish with the habanero stuffed olives. She held them up close to his face and smiled.

“Here you go, Mr. Rugby.” Then, she excused herself and walked calmly to the restroom.

She barely heard him over the noise of the hand dryer as he coughed and sneezed and pleaded for water.

[tweetmeme]

Posted on

Becky Levine, Voice and Dialogue

My last post was about balance, and all weekend long I fought to maintain it. Despite the swings back and forth between sane and not, I completed several writerly tasks without driving my family away.

I rewrote a few more chapters in my WIP, I punched out drafts for two posts, and I read more of Becky Levine’s book, The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide.

Becky Levine wrote her book with two goals in mind: to share tips and strategies for critiquing the work of other writers and to help the reader apply those techniques to his or her own writing.

I love Becky Levine’s down-to-earth writing style.

Unlike the evil antagonist in my mind, she doesn’t judge her readers when she discusses the elements of storytelling that a writer should know – but might not know – well enough.

Take, for instance, point of view. I know it, for the most part. But when I got to the chapter on point of view and read “close third” versus “distant third,” my personal antagonist pounced on my moment of insecurity.

“You should get this part, easy,” she hissed. “If you don’t you should go back to writing 101.” Then, she skipped off into darkness and left me with my head hanging.

Levine is much more gentle. She doesn’t assume the reader’s knowledge, one way or the other. She simply drops in a reminder about the differences between each point of view and moves on.

She goes on to explain that while point of view helps us determine who narrates the story, voice brings the narrator to life:

When I read a book where [voice and point of view] are strong, I come away certain that, if I met the story narrator on the street, I would recognized him or her. And it wouldn’t be the color of her hair and eyes that would look familiar, it would be her personality. If I stood and talked to her for a few minutes, I would be able to state the book where I’d “met” her before. When I experience this feeling, I know that the author has created a truly distinctive voice (p. 82).

Browse through a host of writer’s blogs, and you’ll find plenty of posts on voice and attempts to uncover the mystery behind creating that strong voice in writing. After reading through more of Levine’s book, I honed in on one way I can strengthen my narrator’s voice in my WIP: dialogue.

Dialogue moves the story along, breaks up long narratives, and aids in character development. Levine calls dialogue “the multitool of fiction.”

When you look closely at [it], you’ll find tools for character, plot, setting, voice, you name it (p. 91).

Voice, there it is. But, Levine doesn’t mean just words bubbling from a character’s mouth. Dialogue beats (as she calls them) reveal meaning behind those words, insights into a character’s personality, or the tone of a conversation.

Dialogue beats are the words and phrases surrounding a character’s spoken words (p. 95).

For example, here’s a piece of dialogue from one of my past Wednesday’s Word posts with, what I think, is a dialogue beat tacked on the end:

“Carry Millie for 50 yards as fast as you can. Whoever crosses the finish line in the least amount of time wins the grill!” Her mother clapped to get the crowd going.

What strikes me about the importance of dialogue beats is not so much how they enhance a narrator’s voice. Misuse of dialogue beats can skew the point of view or clutter the scene with too much information.

My WIP is written in close third person point of view (pow – take that, evil antagonist. Get thee back to thy dark corner). Dialogue and dialogue beats are crucial in creating that strong narrative voice for my story. Which means, as I finish rewriting this draft (and then return to the beginning again), I must keep an eagle eye on every aspect of the dialogue I write.

Looking back, today, through a few old posts of my own to find an example of dialogue and dialogue beat, I couldn’t keep my mind off of voice and whether or not it clearly showed through in each post. As painful as it is to read back through old pieces sometimes, I love seeing the work through a wiser eye. I gain that wisdom through reading the works of authors like Becky Levine.

On a side note, we writers woke up on the same plane of thought this morning, with dialogue on the mind. I saw a few other links to posts on dialogue come across Twitter.  Here’s one on “dialog tags” (Behler Blog’s term for dialogue beats).

[tweetmeme]

Posted on

Back in the Game

I’m not a quitter.

Okay, ignore that telemarketing job I walked out on after less than a day. I couldn’t take the rejection.

Don’t consider my brief one-week stint flipping burgers at a bowling alley. I didn’t much care for the mess.

Fine. The one time I flat-out quit something, I was in the fourth grade.

An asthmatic kid who barely weighed 50 pounds, I walked out onto a soccer field not knowing the difference between a forward and a fullback. Like a deer caught on the city streets, I scrambled back and forth. I turned towards my coach on the sidelines in a desperate plea for help. The soccer ball came out of nowhere – at great speed and force – and hit me flat on the side of my face.

It stung.
My nose bled.
The whistle blew.

Oddly enough, my recent novel-writing experiences mirrored my fear of rejection, my discomfort with a mess, and my day on the field.

I jumped back and forth between the first five chapters. I tried desperately to find my footing in the story and plow through to the end. At work, the story unfolded clearly in my mind. When I got home and opened the file, the plot faded, the chapters looked disjointed. I considered my options: walk away and let the novel gather dust on my hard drive, or suck it up and trust that the struggle yields a lesson.

One place I found solace was on The Sharp Angle, in Lydia’s recent post, The Benefits of Writing Short Fiction:

A good way to improve your skills as a novelist is to write short fiction.

Most of my writing experience is rooted in short fiction; I can write a lucid beginning, middle and end for a concentrated word count. So, I wondered how to translate those skills (in which I feel more confident) to novel writing (in which I fall back into the nightmare of a fourth grade misfit in the middle of a soccer field). Lydia responded to my question in her comments and helped me figure out the crux of my problem:  the “ominous middle” of the novel, as she called it.

The middle of my novel resembled a custard pie that didn’t quite gel. Some semblance of structure existed, but most of the story oozed all over the place. No wonder I never ventured past chapter five. And, because of my fear, chapter five almost ate me alive.

But Lydia’s post, her comments, and her suggestion reinvigorated me.

I am armed and ready.

Nothing’s coming between me and my laptop, at least not during the hours of 1 and 3pm (aka. nap time for child #2). I’m balancing some novel work with short story edits and trusting that, with persistence, the pieces will fall together.

If’ you’re fighting with your novel and are dizzy from the glare of too much red ink on that rewrite draft, here are some links to re-energizing tips:

And, of course The Sharp Angle, where the conversations on short fiction continue.

What resources do you rely on to to carry you through the muddy rewrites of a novel?

[tweetmeme]