Writers in the Storm

 

 

Last month, I shared J.K. Rowlings top tips on writing and success, and it was a tough choice between her and Stephen King. Those two write such wonderful books because they understand love and fear. Have you read Stephen King's On Writing? Seen The Shawshank Redemption (my favorite movie ever)  or The Green Mile? King is a writer who sees the visceral underbelly of courage and the tenacity of the human spirit.

Here is his "Top Ten" list for writers:

1. Love what you do.

Really, y'all. Why would you do this writing thing if you didn't love it? Most people don't line up for the chance to rip their hearts out and show it to friends and strangers. But we do. We not only rip our hearts onto the page, we fight to make that painful process sound like something others may actually want to read. Why would any sane person do this kind of work unless they loved it?

King's take: "For me, not working is the real work. When I’m writing, it’s all the playground…"

2. Be yourself.

Many years ago I heard literary agent, Natasha Kern, speak about writing. She said, "Every time you put words on the page, you are shouting out, 'this is who I am.'" Terrifying thought, isn't it? It's enough to put you off writing if you let it.

Be who you are and write your truth and your voice will come through. Jill Marie Landis described "voice" to me like this: "Imagine you are sitting in a coffee shop, telling your best pal a story. Your story, your hand gestures, your expressions - they all have rhythms that are uniquely you. That's voice." Your voice will permeate everything you write. 

3. Explore new ideas.

Don't worry that it's all be done before. Your story hasn't been done before because only YOU can tell it. It's that voice thing again. The imaginative one-of-a-kind lens you see the world through filters your words into your own one-of-a-kind story. Even if you're exploring what King calls "the three stories shared by all horror writers," your take on it will be different from anyone else's.

4. The good idea stays with you.

Are you one of those writers who always wants to chase the shiny new idea "before it flies away?" One of the most amazing things about creativity is that the stories you are meant to write stick around. They kick at your brain and your heart until you let them out into the world.

This is why we are writers...we're the designated vaults that hold the stories. We are the ones who care enough to put those stories into words for others.

Note: I'm not talking about those times when you are wading through the pit of despair in your current WIP, wondering when you will get back to "the good stuff." Everyone goes through that phase, when the shiny new idea seems like a cup of cool water in the middle of a sweltering desert.

5. Love the process.

This bit of advice cracks me up. I don't know any writers who love the whole process. Maybe they love the beginning and end, but they detest the middle. Maybe they love to plot, but hate to finish. Or they love to write but would rather go to the dentist than revise. 

Whether or not I "love the process" pretty much depends on which day you ask me about it. But I always love the words. I always love the process of finding the best words, of teasing out the theme to a story and discovering what I really want to say.

It's okay if you don't love the entire process, as long as you love some piece of it so much that it becomes the carrot that draws you through the crappy parts. If you can't find that carrot for yourself, talk to a writing friend and have them help you find it. It's there, I promise you.

6. Learn from rejections.

Rejection is something all writers must deal with. Our own Laura Drake went through 417 rejections before she sold. Four. Hundred. Seventeen. That takes stamina and some pretty thick skin. I love her post, Don't Give Away Your Power, where she discusses how to manage rejection.

7. Look for ideas you enjoy.

King says he never wrote a book where he wanted to say goodbye to the characters. You will be spending quite a bit of time with these people and if you aren't having a ball, it's unlikely the reader will either. Your goal is to create worlds and characters that nobody wants to leave, including you.

8. Find your creative process.

The biggest step, at least for me, is putting the booty into the writing chair. Not the social media/blogging/day job chair, the story chair. Stephen King likens the first ten minutes of writing time to "smelling a dead fish or walking through a monkey house." If you stick with it, he insists that "something will click and lead to something else that sucks you down into the story."

So, my take on his advice: Butt in the story chair. Stick with it for at least 15 minutes.

A bit of advice from Laura Drake: She has a saying: Nobody gets it all. Stop being greedy, thinking you need that elusive more to be a writer. You were given everything you need to tell your stories. Dig deep and find a process that helps you get the story out. 

9. Pass something on.

Frankly, this is the essence of WITS to all of us here behind the scenes. We pass on knowledge because we think it's important. Whether it's knowledge, time, or simply a post, it's important to share your abundance with others. Teach a class. Volunteer. Sponsor NaNoWriMo. Or, like Harley Christensen and Elizabeth Craig, curate knowledge for other writers and share the best damn tweets in the Twitterverse.

King makes an excellent point: it's not like you can take it with you when you go.

10. Tell great stories.

Read a lot, write a lot and learn. Those are the activities you must engage in if you want to tell great stories. Stephen King writes to entertain himself, but he also never forgets the reader. His take on opening lines: "An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”

 

https://youtu.be/f_Bh-yNpUpI

 

Sources:

• Being Successful: 17 Proven Lessons from Stephen King - Life Optimizer
• King's Top 20 Rules for Writers - Open Culture
• 10 Things I Learned About Writing from Stephen King - The Guardian
• 5 Non-TED Talks From Five Amazing Writers - TurnDog

 

Stephen King struggled with depression, poverty, addiction and self-doubt, but he kept writing. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to getting words on the page? Which of these ten bits of wisdom do you struggle with the most?

We are happy to announce the winner of Laurie Schnebly's online class. Congratulations, Cate Francis! Please contact Laurie at Laurie Schnebly@gmail.com. 

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.

Kathryn Craft

 

A developmental edit can feel a lot like sending your child to school for the first time. You’ve had several years to exert your influence on his upbringing and must now allow others into his journey. You may be ready to push the little bugger through the school door! Or you may be standing outside, your arms wrapped tightly around this child of your heart, wanting to run home for a few more years of one-on-one.

You may worry: What if my child performs poorly? What if my parenting inadequacies are discovered—or worse, what if the teacher doesn’t think I’m any good at parenting?

These relatable concerns can be countered with more exciting questions: What if he matures while we’re parted? What if his performance issues result in new parenting tools? What if new aspects of his personality are stimulated? What if it really does take a village to raise a child?

A story you submit for publication will be seen, much like the child going to school, as a freestanding work—and as such may be lauded, bullied, quoted, misinterpreted, picked apart, and psychoanalyzed by a public who will bring to it their own sensibilities, prejudices, insights, ideas, and experiences. You will no longer be able to come to your story’s defense. Whether or not you can handle that will be foreshadowed by how you handle a developmental edit.

Are you ready?

Signs of readiness for a developmental edit

1. You are asking the right question.

You don’t send your child to school expecting a grade on your parenting, do you? No—you want the teacher to appreciate your child for his special qualities and help him acquire the skills necessary to maximize his potential in the world. Instead of, Am I any good? ask, How can I maximize my story’s potential?

2. You are ready to let the manuscript speak for itself.

Your story will be entering a conversation, and it has one chance to speak: through the words you’ve put on the page. Rest assured that you have submitted your best possible work and sit quietly while the editor reflects upon what she heard. If it seems she didn’t “get it,” use her guidance to identify the disconnect between what you intended and what she heard.

3. You are willing to allow—and then dismiss—your emotional reaction.

If hiring an editor, you must have thought your manuscript could be improved, or at the very least, you realized you were no longer the best judge of this. Still, it can sting when you hear you aren’t as far along on the novel’s journey as you thought. Allow this disappointment to remind you of how much you want to reach readers. Let it wash through and revivify you—then roll up your sleeves to make it happen.

4. 4.  You trust that the editor has your best interests at heart.

Both writer and editor want to play on a winning team. Trust that by capitalizing on your story’s strengths and bolstering your weaknesses, your editor is trying to help you bring your project to its fullest fruition.

5. You are open to receiving frank reader feedback.

Try to open yourself to your reader’s perspective—she may provide you with feedback that is not at all what you expected. If she doesn’t seem to “get” it, you may have led her astray through unintentionally accumulating detail. Allow that even misinterpretation is useful feedback.

6. You own the decisions you’ve already made but are ready to revisit them.

Someday, this conversation about your work may happen in a reader’s living room with her book club, and those readers might not agree with every choice you made. You need the quiet, non-combative confidence that comes from having a reason for what you’ve done—and allowing for difference of opinion anyway. At this point, you need to see it from the editor’s perspective, too, and make your best decision as to how to move forward.

7. You are in this for the long haul and want to build your skill set.

Like schooling, publishing success demands diligence applied over the long haul. You may need another round of edits, since once you’ve made changes, you may have unwittingly introduced new issues. This is the nature of education.

8. You are clear about your goal.

Publication is not your end goal—it is simply a means to an end. The goal is to connect with readers—whether that be an agent, an acquisition editor, or a bookstore browser—in a way that results in repeat sales. That's how any entrepreneur stays in business.

Even with this emotional intelligence profile, it still may not feel good to read your developmental editor’s evaluation. But you’ll be better able to negotiate the collaboration, and the work it inspires will enhance your story’s meaning. You’ll feel that rush that always comes when your writing grows in both confidence and nuance. Your love for your characters will grow as their characterization deepens.

In my experience, it is those who treasure these benefits from a developmental edit who have what it takes to go the distance throughout the publishing process.

 

Have you hired an independent developmental editor? Did any aspect of the process hijack you, emotionally? Do you have anything to add to this checklist?

About Kathryn:

Kathryn Craft  is the award-winning author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy, and a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft. Her chapter “A Drop of Imitation: Learn from the Masters” was included in the writing guide Author in Progress, from Writers Digest Books. Janice Gable Bashman’s interview with her, “How Structure Supports Meaning,” originally published in the 2017 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, has been reprinted in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, both from Writer’s Digest Books.

Laurie Schnebly Campbell

You’ve heard of the Myers-Briggs test, right? Maybe even taken it for school or work? Maybe even had one or two or 28 of your characters take it?

No worries if you haven’t done any of that -- it’s a pretty simple concept, which goes all the way back to Aristotle. (Actually even before him, but he’s the first famous person who believed in these four core personality types.)

Characters who drive each other crazy fit those types.

Of course each character is more, a LOT more, than just a personality core. But noticing what’s way deep down at their most fundamental layers is a handy way to know not only what’s making them tick...but also what’s creating problems for them in their relationships with other characters.

It’s what gets them sparking conflict with one another -- and sometimes even within themselves.

Why does driving each other crazy matter?

Because problems like North vs. South, or Dog vs. Cat, or Traditional vs. Modern, don’t always provide the kind of conflict you need to keep readers glued to the story. 

For that, you need conflict that might not be evident from the first paragraph a character appears on the scene. That’s the kind of problem which goes beyond just Dog Versus Cat.

 

So let’s say you (or your characters) have already determined -- or will determine during the class in May -- whether each person is:

* More energized by being in a group or more energized by being on their own

* More inclined to notice what’s worked in the past, or to come up with ideas out of the blue  

* More apt to base their actions on how they feel or on what they think

 * More excited about embarking on the new quest or about successfully completing it

 

For each of those four choices, neither side is better. The greatest heroes and the worst villains are pretty evenly scattered among every possibility on the list.

Depending on what kind of story you’re writing, you could choose characters based on all 16 potential combinations -- and feel confident that they’re going to run into SOME kind of conflict along the way.

But what if you want to improve the chances for something important? Like:

A really compelling conflict

That’s where you get into the personality types which combine different aspects of those choices. And what’s amazing is that even though these four types are the same ones observed by Aristotle, they’re equally valid today.

When it comes to driving each other (not to mention themselves) crazy, people haven’t really changed that much in the last 2,400 years.

Sure, someone who’s a corporate raider today might have been a Viking raider in the eighth century. And someone who took bread to the leper colony a thousand years ago...

 ...might send checks to a charity today. But the deep-down personality which makes them behave that way? It’s still the same thing.

So, since people throughout the millennia have clung to the essentials of what makes them who they are, it’s no surprise that the types which combine various aspects of each core value are naturally gonna have some problems with one another.

Even more convenient, they’re ALSO going to have something else:

Problems with their own type

Take the Viking raider and corporate raider, for instance. Let’s say the Viking time-traveled to present-day Manhattan and is working with the executive who wants to use him in her new ad campaign. (Can you tell my day job is in advertising?)

Each one is going to have traits they admire in themselves and in the other person: strength of character, the ability to move quickly, skill at spotting potential problems, and so on.

But of course, they’ll also have traits they might like just fine in themselves and object to in the other person...like the assumption that “I’m going to be in charge.”

They might even have traits they dislike in themselves AND in each other, like the inability to stop planning for half a moment to appreciate the beauty of the sunset. And while all of those are very surface-level examples, you can see the opportunities for trouble between (and within) these characters who share the same type.

So, given that these reasonably similar people already have their share of problems, you can easily imagine the potential for...

 

Trouble between different types

We’ll talk more about that in next month’s class on Relationships by Aristotle, to which some commenter will win free registration (or a refund if you’ve already signed up for the class), but meanwhile here’s a question for you:

In a book you’ve written or read recently, what personality trait created the most trouble WITHIN one character or BETWEEN two characters?

If you’re pressed for time, it’s fine to say something as simple as “pride.” It’s also fine to go into more detail, which’ll give everyone else a reason to read that same book.

And while I’m taking off around 7pm Eastern time today for a workshop in New Orleans tomorrow, I can’t wait to check back before & after the flight to see what you have to say!

 

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About Laurie

After winning Romantic Times‘ “Best Special Edition of the Year” over Nora Roberts, Laurie Schnebly Campbell discovered she loved teaching every bit as much as writing...if not more. Since then she’s taught online and live workshops for so many writers that she keeps a special section of her bookshelves for people who’ve developed that particular novel (a total of 43 so far) in her classes – like the upcoming one on using Myers-Briggs for conflict.

Steps of the hero's journey: https://writersinthestormblog.com/2017/08/no-road-she-cant-travel/

(Note from Fae Rowen: If you've never seen the questions, six years ago I wrote a post that you might find interesting, with links to an online version of the Myers-Briggs test for you to take.)

 

Photo credits:  

1. http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/5335
2. http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/10629
3. http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/10590
4. http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/14027
5. http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/17295
6. http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/10117
7. http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/2250