Writers in the Storm

 

Over the last few months, I've shared "Top 10" lists from several authors on the topics of writing and success. This month I chose Cheryl Strayed, author of WILD (one of my favorite books),  because she has so much practical wisdom to share about life. For years before WILD gained popularity, Strayed moonlighted as Rumpus advice columnist, Dear Sugar, answering questions about life and love, sex and marriage, about dysfunctional families and the importance of healthy boundaries.

Here are ten of my favorites gems from Cheryl Strayed on success, in life and in art:

1. Every book is inherently full of possibilities.

In WILD, Strayed recounts her 94 day journey on the Pacific Crest Trail where she pushed her body in an effort to heal her spirit. The trail was the thread that ran through the book and she built off that. Your book could be about war or mermaids or housewives but you will decide what goes in it, based on the lesson you want to impart or the "why" of your particular story. Be open to the possibilities.

2. "Success" is a subjective term.

As Sugar, she wrote, "You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you’ve got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.”

3. The world owes you nothing.

One of Cheryl's most famous quotes is, "You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding. There is no why for which cards you get. They just are. Earning a living, even in ways you find unpleasant, will give you faith in your own abilities." [Amen, sister!]

4. You can find peace in the "obliterated place."

In her Rumpus column, Dear Sugar spoke with a father who had lost his son to an impaired driver.  She called that deep well of grief "the obliterated place."

"The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna...The real work of deep grief is making a home there. That’s now your world, where everything you used to be is simultaneously erased and omnipresent." She said, "You go on by doing the best you can, you go on by being generous, you go on by being true, you go on by offering comfort to others who can’t go on, you go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and allowing the pleasure in other days, you go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage."

5. Self-pity is a dead end road.

"Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you. Self-pity is a dead end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out."

6. How to get unstuck.

So many people, writers or not, feel stuck. Like they couldn't possibly move from the place they are now to where they want to be.

Strayed says, “This is how you get unstuck... You reach. Not so you can walk away from [what or who] you loved, but so you can live the life that is yours — the one that includes the loss...but is not arrested by it. The one that eventually leads you to a place in which you not only grieve, but also feel lucky to have had the privilege of loving. That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really effing hard to get there, but you can do it.”

The person she gave that advice to had lost a child. Most losses are less than that - loss of hope, identity, dreams. We can move beyond them to the place where we don't feel stuck.

7. Be gentle with yourself.

Strayed believes, "You will not write well from a position of shame. You are creating something out of nothing. Be gentle with yourself while you create. Only when I'm gentle with myself can I actually let go and do the work." She must forgive herself for any lapses so she can get back to doing the work.

8. Write.

The only way to be a writer is simply to write, then write some more. Keep the faith that your work is meaningful and just WRITE. If you can only write one day a week, write your heart out that one day. Write as often as you can and never give up.

9. Writing teaches you resilience.

"You can only take each day as it comes," says Strayed. "Sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed, and every day is different. Resilience means you come back to the page to chase the dream for one more day."

10. Embrace "Motherfuckitude."

In this interview, Strayed mentions "the Art of Motherfuckitude," and explains what that sentiment means to a writer. It all began with a Dear Sugar column, where so much of her wisdom first came to light.

She told a young twenty-six year old writer, "I thought a lot of the same things about myself that you do...That I was lazy and lame. That even though I had the story in me, I didn’t have it in me to see it to fruition, to actually get it out of my body and onto the page, to write, as you say, with 'intelligence and heart and lengthiness.' But I’d finally reached a point where the prospect of not writing a book was more awful than the one of writing a book that sucked."

Strayed sees the unifying theme of any writer's life is an intersection between resilience and faith.

"The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig. So write... Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker."

Bonus Ten: 10 Pieces Of Timeless Advice On Love And Life From Cheryl Strayed That Can Ail Almost Any Situation

 

Strayed's Dear Sugar advice column was both painful and uplifting in its naked honesty. How do you bring that naked honesty to your writing? Which of these ten bits of wisdom resonates the most for you? Which ones do you struggle with?

About Jenny Hansen

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18+ years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, or here at Writers In The Storm.

Tracy Brody

 

I was a contest addict. Or, if you’d prefer, a contest whore. Either way, I’ve had a lot of experience with writing contests. I’m not entirely reformed, but I’m going to share a little about my feelings on the pros, some cons, and why I think you should consider using contests to become a better writer and advance your career.

I’m going to start this post in a way I didn’t originally anticipate and talk about why YOU should judge in writing contests. There are several reasons I recommend writers judge their peers work.

• First, you can learn from the score sheets and seeing what they want you to look at in the body of work. It’s always easier to see the “errors” in others’ work than our own, so judging can teach you a lot.
• Secondly, it’s about giving back. Don’t you appreciate those who didn’t say they were too busy, had too many kids, or not enough experience and helped you? That giving back is part of what makes the romance writing community unique and special. Besides, if everyone entered but didn’t volunteer to judge, then contests would have to shut down. Spreading the workload ensures contests continue and improves the quality of the feedback.
• Lastly, by judging in contests—especially if you judge in your genre in contests you don’t enter—you can get a glimpse of what others in your genre are writing and see how they’re doing to compare your own writing with other unpublished writers.

Next, I want to debunk the idea that contests are too expensive.

There are lots of contests out there. You can search the web, but as a romance writer, I’ve mostly entered RWA® chapter contests and the RWA Golden Heart®. The fees can be as low as $15 or up to around $35 for RWA members.

I have judged in a lot of contests and typically spend no less than four hours per entry. Contests have a minimum of two first round judges, most have three, some even have four. I’ll do the math (since most writers don’t like to) and say that if you have three judges spending only three hours each on your submission, that’s nine hours. Divide that into the average of $25 for a contest $25/9=$2.78 per hour—for three pairs of new eyes and input on your writing. Considering that I paid over $100 to take a continuing ed college class and the instructor gave me feedback consisting of about four words per assignment (“great hook!” or “interesting characters”) the feedback I’ve gotten from volunteer contest judges is worth every penny of the contest fee.

If you’ve entered a contest or two (or more) or even talked to some contest veterans, you’ll hear they are a crapshoot. Writing is subjective. Sometimes the judges know less about writing than you, but you can still learn what resonates with them as readers. Others simply may not like your story or style. That’s okay. No one bats 1000 or hits 100% of their free throws.

I can attest to the frustration of contradictory feedback or the judge who says you got something wrong even though you’ve done your research (or lived the life). However, even those judges may have valuable nuggets, so don’t discard their comments without considering them after giving them a few days to settle and read them again.

The key to growing as a writer is learning AND application. Just as watching baseball doesn’t mean you’re a skilled player and listening to music doesn’t make you a singer, reading books doesn’t make you a writer. But those things can help you recognize talent and what works. We don’t know how much we don’t know or what we don’t know when we start writing. As a beginner (who thought I was pretty darned good because people would listen to my stories,) I had a lot to learn about writing: point of view, active versus passive writing, character goals, motivations and Conflict (with a capital C.)

You can hear speakers, read craft books, listen to podcasts. Still, judges can take you to the next level with a targeted comment and an example in your work about not needing dialog tags with action tags or reducing gerunds (since I was not an English major, I had to look up that word), prefacing which kills tension, amplifying dialog, or putting stimuli before response. Are you going to learn all that from a contest or two? Not likely. Most writers need to evolve and that comes in stages. However, each comment can get make you a better writer and improve your chances of getting published or building a loyal fan base and that is well worth the price of a dinner out.

Contests can still benefit those who’ve mastered craft and story structure. One of the perks of contests are prizes. Sometimes it’s only a certificate or plaque. It might be a little cash or a free class or chapter membership. Some contests offer published author critiques or mentorships. Another perk is that most contests have agents and/or editors as final round judges giving you a chance to skip their query slush pile if you final. It’s still a long shot to get a request—like finding that perfect match on EHarmony or Match.com—but it does happen and if you aim to publish traditionally, you want to open as many doors as possible.

I know that contests have helped me improve my craft and storytelling skills. The affirmation of being a finalist helped carry me through the realizations I still had a lot to learn and the query rejections. My Golden Heart final caught agent’s attention and helped me sign with a top selling agent.

What about you? Hopefully, I’ve got you considering the benefits of contests. I’ll be sharing a follow-up post on how to pick the right contests to get the most out of them based on the stage you’re at in your writing.

Have you entered any contest? If not, why? If you have, what was the best or worst thing about your experience. If you’ve finaled in one, how did that feel?

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About Tracy

 

Tracy Brody started her writing career with screenplays, then switched to novels. She's written a military themed romantic suspense series focusing on the Army Bad Karma Special Ops team—who's love lives are as dangerous as their missions. Her three completed manuscripts have all finaled in the Golden Heart and she won for Romantic Suspense in 2015 & 2016. She's a member of RWA, Carolina Romance Writers, the Kiss of Death, and the Golden Network.

 She is represented by Helen Breitwieser of Cornerstone Literary.

Lori Freeland

There are lots of different ways to start sketching in the empty page of a new scene. Dialogue. Setting. Action. Internal thought. But for me, the easiest way to get words on the page is to use dialogue—what I want my characters to say to each other—as the blueprint of my scene.  

What Dialog is Not

It’s important to note that dialogue is not a conversation your character is having with himself inside his head. That’s called internal thought. True dialogue is spoken out loud and must be set off inside quotation marks.

People can and do talk to themselves. But remember, if they’re not speaking out loud to themselves, their words should not be set off in quotes. It seems obvious, but I see this mistake a lot, especially with new writers.

They usually preface the internal thought like this—She thought to herself, “Lordy, the heat was gonna melt her arches right down to nothing.” But that’s really unspoken thought.

Not Dialogue (internal thought): Gilda made a run for it across the steamy asphalt paving the parking lot, glancing at her bare feet. Lordy, the heat was gonna melt her arches right down to nothing. 

Dialogue (spoken out loud to herself): Gilda made a run for it across the steamy asphalt paving the parking lot, glancing at her bare feet. “Lordy, the heat’s gonna melt my arches right down to nothing.” 

Check Your Work: Go back and mark places where you’ve used quotation marks where the words weren’t actually spoken out loud.

What Dialog Is

Dialogue is conversations between your characters that move the story along. If the words spoken between characters add nothing to the plot or the relationships or the character arcs, you don’t need them. Don’t write dialogue just to have dialogue.

Dialogue is real—minus the boring parts. If you’re stumbling with the way your characters talk to each other, put yourself in their place. What would you say to me if we were having a cup of coffee?

What Ruins Dialogue

Improper Punctuation

Let’s clarify an area of confusion over dialogue.

Use a comma (or a question mark if you use asked) and a lowercase letter with a dialogue tag. A dialogue tag is the word “said” or anything you use in place of “said.” We’ll come back to that later.

“You’re awesome,” she said.

“Are you awesome?” she asked.

Use a period and an uppercase letter with a beat. A beat can be an action or the way someone says something.

“You’re awesome.” She smiled and leaned closer. (action)

“You’re awesome.” Her voice rose a note too high. (how someone said something)

Side Note: Punctuation always goes INSIDE the quotation marks. This is true not only when you’re using quotes in dialogue, but when you’re using quotes to set off the importance of a word. The book was “awesome.”  

Check Your Work: Look at a few pages of your scene. Are you punctuating correctly?

Name Calling

Think back to the last few interactions you’ve had with others. Unless you were trying to get someone’s attention, how many times did you say a person’s name in the middle of a conversation?

I’m going to guess none.

So why do we write conversations where our characters do? Constant name calling doesn’t add anything to our dialogue, and it tends to annoy your reader. Read this out loud. See what I mean?

“Lucy, what are you doing tonight?”

“I don’t know, Bob, how about you?”

“Well, Lucy, I was thinking about getting a drink.”

“Take me with you, Bob?”

“Sure thing, Lucy. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

Check Your Work: Find a conversation in your scene and count how many times characters use each other’s names. Then cut them. Unless there’s a group of people talking, and you need clarity.

Avoiding Contractions

Listen to people speak. We almost always use contractions. When we don’t, it feels weird. This is true in narrative as well.

Dialogue: “I do not know.”/ “I don’t know.”

Narrative: I do not know why she ran off crying. / I don’t know why she ran off crying.

There are a few exceptions. One is when you’re trying to make a point. Imagine a father standing over his daughter after he’s picked her up from the police station at three am. “You won’t sneak out again or else . . .” carries less power than “You will not sneak out again or else . . .”

Another exception is when one of your characters is using English as a second language. People who are not native English speakers use more textbook grammar.  

Check Your Work: Look for missing contractions. Search words like “will not, would not, cannot, did not, I am, you (or they) are” and then change them. Also, read a few pages out loud. You’ll hear when you’ve forgotten to use contractions.  

Unnatural Language

Dialogue should sound natural, like the way we speak in real life. Don’t have your character speak like a scholar unless she is a scholar.

     Jean leaned across the kitchen table and studied me. “Might you be repressing your emotions when it comes to your marriage breaking down?”

     I turned away and set my coffee cup into the sink. “That is a possibility.”

     Jean leaned across the kitchen table and studied me. “So, denial’s your best option?”

     I turned away and tossed my coffee cup into the sink, not even cringing when it shattered. “Yep.”

Be real. Honor your character’s emotions and uniqueness in the way they speak to each other. Make their reactions authentic. Ask yourself if you would use the words your characters use—if not, try again.

Unclear Paragraphing

Our goal as writers is to paint a clear picture for our readers so they never have to guess or look back to know what’s going on. Or in this case, who’s speaking.

You’ve probably heard the guideline—New Speaker = New Paragraph. It’s a good guideline.  

Jerry slammed his hands on the table. “That girl just stole your Jag.”

“What?” Paul whirled around.

But let’s take that idea farther. What if we changed the guideline to—Change of focus = Change of Paragraph.

Try to keep a single character’s actions, thoughts, and words together unless they run too long, and you need to break them up for white space.

Side Note: White space is the part of the page not taken up by words. You could have the same number of words in one whole paragraph or broken into a few paragraphs and readers won’t read the first because they perceive it as “hard.” Have you noticed how much I’m paragraphing in this blog? Check your scenes and make sure lack of paragraphing doesn’t become a reason your reader puts down your book.

Going back to Paul and Jerry, our new guideline—Change of Focus = Change of Paragraph—says even if Paul doesn’t speak and only reacts, we still change the paragraph to show we’ve switched characters.

Jerry slammed his hands on the table. “That girl just stole your Jag.”

Paul whirled around.

This holds true for physical focus as well.

Jerry slammed his hands on the table. (focus is on Jerry)

Someone screamed outside the window. (focus is on what’s outside the window)

Note both Jerry and the reader are turning toward the window at this point.

Check Your Work: Read through your scene for change-of-focus paragraphing and mark places

that aren’t paragraphed for clarity. 

Not Knowing Who's Speaking

Here’s where we get back to “tags” and “beats.” If more than two people are engaged in conversation, we need to be able to easily follow who’s speaking.

You can:

• Add Simple Tags (said)
• Add Beats (what people do or how they speak)
• Add Internal Thought (but just for what the POV character is thinking)

TAGS: Tags have one purpose—to let the reader know who’s talking. Said and asked are somewhat invisible. Readers skip right over them, and they don’t interrupt the pace of the story.

We only need them if we have no other identifier.

“I love your Jag,” Jerry said.

“Birthday present,” Paul said.

Limit or cut tags that aren’t said or asked. Read the examples below out loud, and you’ll hear why. 

“I really wanted those earrings,” I whined.

“I know,” Ella cried.

 “Maybe I’ll just steal them!” I exclaimed.

A little annoying, huh? Adding adverbs to tags is worse. Read these out loud too.  

“I have to have that candy bar,” I whined loudly.

 “Fine,” Ella angrily cried.

 “Share with your sister,” I grunted meanly.

Check Your Work: Skim your pages for tags other than “said” or “asked.” Do a search for “ly” and find your adverbs. Take them out where you can. 

BEATS: Instead of using tags, use what a person’s doing or how they’re speaking to identify who they are. Using beats gives you a chance to build your characters, your story, and your setting. Use it to your advantage.

“Do you want to say goodbye to Claire,” Dad asked. (tag)

“Do you want to say goodbye to Claire?” Dad stared at the casket and then looked away. (beat)

 If you have a beat, you most likely will not need a tag. It’s liking hiring two people to do one job and can water down your dialogue.

“Kate?” Dad said, touching my shoulder, like maybe he’d called to me once or twice already, and I’d missed it. (tag and beat)

“Kate?” Dad touched my shoulder, like maybe he’d called to me once or twice already, and I’d missed it. (beat only is stronger)

Sometimes you need both for flow, but it should be the exception rather than the rule.

INTERNAL THOUGHT: What the POV character—the character telling the story in that scene if you have more than one—is thinking.

     “Top one’s veggie for Claire.” Alek slid the first pizza box off the second. (beat)

     “She went AWOL with Josh after sixth period.” After she promised she’d hang with me tonight. (POV’s internal thought)

Do you see that we don’t need the tag too?

    “She went AWOL with Josh after sixth period,” I said. After she promised she’d hang with me tonight.

Side Note on POV: The reader can only experience the world through one person at a time. As the reader, we jump into and live the story through that POV character’s head. We can only see what he sees, hear what he hears, feel what he feels, know what he knows, and think the way he would think.    

Just like there are many ways to start a scene, there are many ways to play with and strengthen dialogue. Once you dive in and nail the foundation and clarity, you’re ready to go deeper. But that’s another blog.

I hope this helps get you started. If you’re still stumbling, here’s what steers me in the right direction.   

Ask yourself, am I being authentic? If the conversation between my characters were happening in real life, what would it actually sound like? This will usually help highlight whatever’s going wrong. 

 

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About Lori

 

Lori Freeland, author, editor, and writing coach holds a BA in psychology from the University of Wisconsin and currently lives in the Dallas area. She's written numerous blogs for writers and presented at multiple writing workshops. When she's not snuggled up with her husband or worrying about her kids, she spends her days dreaming up romance and messing with the lives of imaginary people. You can find her Young Adult and Contemporary Romance at lorifreeland.com and her inspirational blog at lafreeland.com.