Writers in the Storm

Kathryn Craft
Turning Whine into Gold

In our ongoing look at what wisdom Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements can offer writers, we come to agreement number three.

[Click here for Agreement 1 and Agreement 2.]

Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

“Communicate with others as clearly as you can”—as writers, you’d think we have this one in the bag. We are all about communication! Yet as fiction writers we do so indirectly, while balancing character development, plot advancement, setting, word craft, metaphor, and more. And that’s just the fiction, let alone the clarity of the emails you’re trying to answer and the tweets you’re trying to push out and blog posts that need tending and the gigs you’re trying to line up.

Is it any wonder we sometimes fail to contextualize our comments, or express our needs, or ask all the right questions?

Yet a career is built of relationships that require clear communication. Let me count the whines that the simple act of asking questions could resolve:

Rather than whine: My critique partner gives me all the wrong feedback.

Ask: Don’t worry about correcting my grammar, could you just give me notes on how the story is adding up in your mind?

Rather than whine: My career has stalled for eight months. I don’t know what’s going on with my submission.

Ask: Hi [agent], sorry to be out of touch so long. Could you give me an update on my submission status?

Rather than whine: I don’t understand my contract but I don’t want to look dumb.

Ask: I don’t understand this rights clause. You’re the expert—could you explain it to me before I sign?

Rather than whine: My book isn’t ready but I’m afraid to tell my editor because I might never get another contract.

Ask: I am so closed to finished and want to give you the very best possible product. Is there any wiggle room in my deadline?

Rather than whine: This is my first speaking engagement and I’m not sure what they want me to talk about.

Ask: Could you tell me more about your group and its recent talks so I can give them something they’ll really like?

Rather than whine: I need more support at home but my husband simply refuses to read my mind.

Ask: I’m writing on deadline and really feeling the pinch. Could you cover dinners this week?

Pretty sure you see where I’m going with this:

JUST ASK.

An overstressed writer can, amazingly, sometimes be a poor communicator. It happens.

But here is something else a writer always is, no matter how stressed: an inquisitive being who is not only capable of learning, she feeds on it. Honor that instinct, and ask for what you need. You might be surprised at how well it works.

What assumptions have you made in your writing life that did not necessarily serve you well?

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy, due May 2015.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she now serves as book club liaison for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.

Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA. Although a member of The Liars Club, she swears that everything in this bio is true.

Website: http://www.kathryncraft.com/

What's the time management secret that's sure to help us all get TONS more writing done? "Yes makes less." It's my new favorite motto.

If you've never heard of Steven Pressfield or Shawn Coyne, you're missing out on some amazing lessons. Pressfield wrote The War of Art (edited by Coyne) and they often blog about creativity.

In Why and How Creative People Say No, they referenced a post by Kevin Ashton.

Fascinating stuff!

The part that resonated with me the most:

Time is the raw material of creation.

Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to problems and problems with those solutions, the work of trial and error, the work of thinking and perfecting, the work of creating.

Creating consumes. It is all day, every day. It knows neither weekends nor vacations. It is not when we feel like it. It is habit, compulsion, obsession, vocation.

The common thread that links creators is how they spend their time. No matter what you read, no matter what they claim, nearly all creators spend nearly all their time on the work of creation. There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.

Saying “no” has more creative power than ideas, insights and talent combined. No guards time, the thread from which we weave our creations. The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know.

We are not taught to say “no.” We are taught not to say “no.” “No” is rude. “No” is a rebuff, a rebuttal, a minor act of verbal violence. “No” is for drugs and strangers with candy.

Creators do not ask how much time something takes but how much creation it costs. This interview, this letter, this trip to the movies, this dinner with friends, this party, this last day of summer. How much less will I create unless I say “no?” A sketch? A stanza? A paragraph? An experiment? Twenty lines of code?

The answer is always the same: “yes” makes less.

We do not have enough time as it is. There are groceries to buy, gas tanks to fill, families to love and day jobs to do.

~~~~~

Amen to that! I've put my "new favorite motto" on a big pink index card next to my computer, and taped another one to my bathroom mirror. (I'd love to hear where you put up your motivational quotes.)

Are you a "YES" person, a "NO" person, or somewhere in between? What helps you guard your creative time? Do you have any time management secrets to share??

 

Bonus: Laura Drake wrote a doozy of a post called Can’t We All Just Get Along? over at More Cowbell about some of the wild behavior happening online lately. I guarantee you, it’s worth your time. :-)

About Jenny

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 15 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 at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.

James Preston

So, What's In It For You? Or, How To Not Quit

I  know what you are thinking, if you have read some of my earlier contributions to this award-winning blog. "Oh, no, he's going to make me get out a calculator and see if the midpoint of my novel is really a watershed, or make a big nasty chart that shows where all of my characters are in every chapter."

Nope. Last time I promised the end of deconstructionism and I will hold to that.

As I write this I'm surrounded by smoke and the sounds of slot machines. I'm in a Vegas casino, writing while my friend and my wife gamble. And I am asking a question that we all have asked at one time or another -- why am I doing this? Why am I here when I could be playing Texas Hold 'Em? I love the game and learned poker literally at my father's knee.

We all face those moments, where the story falls on its face and even you don't care what happens to the characters. You think, "I have to finish Chapter X tomorrow when I could be at the beach, or I could be watching House Hunters International or reading the new James Lee Burke or Eloisa James." (And I want to know why those times are so often at 2:00 am when the house is cold and dark and your characters have suddenly quit talking to you.)

I think the hardest thing about writing is . . . writing. Putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It's more fun to read blogs, go to conventions, and think about good stories. Way more fun.

However, that road does not lead to The End.

For more than half my life I made my living writing training and documentation. I specialized in large systems, neat stuff like the Army's Tactical Computer System and the Navy's ASROC Loader Crane. I could tell you all about them except a) you would fall asleep and b) if you didn't fall asleep I'd have to kill you.

But I can tell you the single most important thing about training adults. It's the WIIFM -- what's in it for me? To learn something, adults have to see the value in the learning.

So, let's talk about what's in it for you. First, a basic assumption: there is value in writing, in telling a story. With that as a given, all we need to do is shine a light on that value.

To keep writing, you have to see the value of what you are doing. Try these rules, guides, or mantras; use them as stepping stones to identify why you write when the path gets muddy.

1. I write because I have things to say. I think about the world around me and relationships and want to speak out.

In my case, if I am pressed, I will admit that I write to talk about violence in society and a moral individual's response to it and, even more, the difficulty of finding, establishing, and maintaining a loving relationship with another individual. (Yikes! Did I say that? I write thrillers with girls and guns and fast cars.)

2. I want to entertain. Too much of life is unpleasant, or boring and I want to take my readers' minds off that, if even for a little while. 

See parenthetical comment above.

3. I write because I started the novel, story, poem, whatever and I will finish it, come what may.

In poker, if you don't bet, you can't win. In writing, you can't sell/publish/attract an audience if you don't finish your manuscript.

4. I write because I have fallen in love with my characters and their stories demand to be told. 

This one's tricky. I truly care about Heather Rubinsky and Katerina Kohl, two Las Vegas showgirls who showed up in one of my books. I probably hurt their feelings when I had to cut much of their backstory. (And you are the one audience to whom I can say that and who will understand that I think of them as real. When I say things like that on panel discussions, people tend to smile nervously and move away. On the other hand, you get it.)

5. I write because I like it. I like telling stories.

Works for me. I like storytelling.

Did I warn you there would be a quiz? No? Bummer! There's a quiz. Here it is:

6. I write because... (insert YOUR thoughts here, or down in comments.)

The hardest thing about writing is . . . writing.

As Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, “It’s all personal.” You have your own reasons for writing, and your own benefits from doing so.

I believe giving some thought to articulating what you are getting out of all this work, and time spent staring off into space thinking, "What happens next?", will help keep you going. And after you think about it -- or maybe you already have -- share your thoughts and help another writer. Please! Fill in Number Six and tell us about it. We're all in this together.

Think about WIIFM -- What's In It For Me. Articulate that benefit and remember it for those times when your heroine has fallen in love with the hero's wastrel brother and stamps her pretty little foot when you try to tell her otherwise. "I am doing this because . . . Her story deserves to be told, even if she is a foot-stamping little fllibertigibet. And I am the one to tell it."

My father taught me many important things. Once when we were in Vegas I complained (I really wasn't whining, at least not much and anyway he was my Dad and required to listen) that I had lost at blackjack. He said, "James, you're really not here to win. You're here to play!"

Let's be honest -- the vast majority of us will not show up in the New York Times Bestseller List. So what? Not all of the books on the list are good, and not all good books are on the list. Figuring out what's in it for you will help at those times when you wonder what on earth possessed you to think you could write. You can do it.

Trust me.

 

About James

 James R. Preston is the author of the award-winning Surf City Mysteries. There are four books in the series so far: Leave a Good-Looking Corpse, Read 'Em And Weep, The Road to Hell, and Pennies For Her Eyes. The new Surf City Mystery is called Correction and will be launched later this year. James' next appearance will be November in Long Beach at Bouchercon, the national mystery convention. His work has been selected for inclusion in UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library Special Collection, California Detective Fiction. In Vegas during the completion of this blog he made the final table in one tournament and took first place in another. His father taught him well.