I adore Mark Twain. Everyone needs humor in their lives and I find his writing refreshing. I’ve never read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I have, however, read several of his other works: “Advice to Little Girls”, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, The Prince and the Pauper, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and more. My favorite is A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Time travel, the Knights of the Round Table, and satire that pokes at the romanticized image of the Middle Ages? What’s not to love?
Today I’m going to discuss one of Twain’s quotes on writing that has been very encouraging for me during the editing process:
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.
~Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook
It sounds paradoxical but also makes sense. The meatiest, most taxing part of writing is not the writing itself but the rewriting. We don’t know what we’re trying to say until after that first draft.
I know what a lot of you might say: I meticulously plan my (novel, short story, poem, whatever) before I pick up the pen; I know exactly what I want to say before the first draft.
Let me ask you this: how often is the first draft also your final draft? How many revisions do you go through before you and your beta readers decide that the work is finished (well, publishable)? How drastically does the piece change before you’re done?
We know generally what we want to say in the first draft but specifics are blurry. Sometimes even that “big picture” takes a turn in later drafts. It’s the nature of writing. We spew everything in our heads onto the page during the first draft and then we figure out the direction in which we really want to go.
The good news? This process means that it doesn’t matter if the first draft is crud. It’s supposed to be. All that matters is that you revise the work until you realize what you want to say and accomplish that message, even if you have to write it all over again. I’m learning this lesson slowly but surely as I edit stories for my end-of-year portfolio.
This photograph of an older Mark Twain was taken by A.F. Bradley for the purpose of helping poet laureate Ina Coolbrith, who lost her home in the San Francisco Earthquake.
The other good news? Mark Twain, the writer of the “Great American Novel”, didn’t always know what he wanted to write until after he started writing. He knew not to stop if the first batch was rotten. And you shouldn’t give up during or after finishing your first draft. You’re just getting started.
Do you have any thoughts on Twain’s advice? Do you have a writer whom you want me to write about in a future “Writers on Writing”? Drop a line in the comments or contact me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com.
And watch for the next “Writers on Writing” in which I’ll turn to Latin American writer Sandra Cisneros.
Writing is a balancing act between the new and the conventional. We want to branch out but we’re afraid that it won’t settle well with our readers. We often wonder, should we experiment in our writing or should we stick with the tried and true? The question seems simple but the answer is not.
This is me when I think about including my flash fiction experiments in my end-of-year portfolio.
I often struggle with this matter. Most recently I’ve decided to try my hand at flash fiction. Honestly, I’m still baffled by it. The genre is powerful and complete in a way that’s inexplicable. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I have written anything salvageable.
The uncertainty makes me dread experimentation. I may want to try something but I’m so petrified by the thought of failing that I question myself constantly. Is there a plot beneath the new form? Are the characters well-developed? Am I conveying my thoughts well enough? The most persistent and dreaded question: am I “doing” this right?
I know that there is no “right” way to write. Some forms, such as flash fiction, are so different from the others that I keep wondering what makes some stories work and others not. The best solution, of course, is to ask other writers to review the stories and give feedback. Should be no different than any other story.
This conversation is always going on in a writer’s head, just more loudly when they’re experimenting with a new form.
The problem: I am still petrified by the thought of failure. In this case, the failure would manifest as embarrassment in the company of my peers. I can’t get myself to ask for feedback because I’m too worried that they will think less of me if the work is a mess.
You see the conundrum? I’m going to get nowhere if I continue like this. I could decide to avoid experimentation period. At least I’ll know that I will please some readers, right?
There’s a problem with that approach, too.
Beyond the external factor of people criticizing writers for repeating themselves, there’s always a reason why they want to experiment. Often, as in my case, it’s because they aren’t inspired. They’re having a problem with the same-old, same-old. They have writer’s block and have to shake off the cobwebs. If they don’t break from the rut, all of their future work will be stale–if they produce more work at all.
What’s a writer to do?
Simply put: JUST DO IT.
We never know if something will succeed if we don’t try. Yes, we might fail. We’ll more than likely fail over and over. Will we embarrass ourselves? Possibly. It depends on how we react and the thickness of our skin. Without failure and possible embarrassment, we’ll never reach our full potential. We’ll never learn if we don’t make mistakes and we’ll never stumble across our greatest works if we don’t cast our nets wide.
I know, easier said than done. I definitely know that. I’m partly using this post to convince myself that it’s OK for me to experiment and that I won’t humiliate myself if I ask someone to look these pieces over. Sometimes you have to fight back the inhibitions and do something without knowing how it will turn out.
Besides, you may find your next favorite way to write when you experiment. Isn’t that worth the risk?
I’m not going to lie, I’m bad at receiving feedback. I have a knee-jerk reaction of taking personal offense. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad that my Master’s program is online. I can give myself some space and work through my emotional muck enough to see the value of the feedback. It’s painful but if we want our work to meet its full potential, we have to be open to critique. As Harper Lee said, you need a thick hide to be a writer.
The pain may never fully disappear. I’ve been in and out of workshops since high school and I still take it personally. That’s especially true when a piece needs a lot of work. I’m not willing to admit it at first. If I give myself a day or two away from it, I can swallow my pride and admit that the reader might have a point. From there I can separate the useful feedback from the not-so-useful. I still choose which points to follow but I’m open to the possibilities.
It’s even worse for me when I receive critiques from my personal tutor. She’s very nice and the vast majority of what she says is constructive. Nevertheless, she’s a published writer. My aim with this program is to improve my writing but, not-so-deep down, I want to impress her, too. When her comments involve fully rewriting most (if not all) of the story, it’s hard to read. It’s especially painful since she’s often right.
Image retrieved from “Be a Better Writer: 4 Simple Steps to Take Today”The important thing is that I consider the advice. That’s all that matters when writers interact with critique. You can cry it out all you need to, so long as you look at it again and think it over before rejecting suggestions outright.
With the format of my program’s feedback sessions, it’s easy to give into defensive impulses. You post the story, someone responds, and you immediately want to reply with some explanation of your work or justification for your choices. I’m guilty of this. I understand the reason for it. You invested a lot of time and heart into your story, you know what you envision for it, but somehow your diamond did not shine so brightly for the reader.
My advice: DO NOT REPLY THE FIRST DAY. Let it sit for at least twenty-four hours. Then reexamine the critique, maybe reread your story, and decide if you really need to defend your writing. This time will also allow you to gather any questions you have and articulate them properly.
This tactic isn’t possible with live/synchronous workshops for obvious reasons. However, I highly recommend it with asynchronous feedback and when you’re getting feedback from friends. You probably have a limited amount of time to do so with any formal feedback sessions, so don’t spend too much time on it. Even a little time will give you enough perspective to respond appropriately. And when you’re exchanging stories with friends, well, they can carry on their merry way until you’re ready to shoot them an email nitpicking their nitpicks.
In addition to stepping back, remember that you have the final say pre-publication. You decide which changes to make and which to ignore. Do what you think is best for your work. If you give all feedback fair consideration, you’ll know what to do.
Do you have any special techniques or advice for handling critique? Drop a line in the comments.
Quote retrieved from Bloomsbury Literary StudiesIn this post I’m going to switch gears from Ernest Hemingway, the “man’s man,” to renowned author and feminist Virginia Woolf. Admittedly I’ve only read one of Woolf’s works, To the Lighthouse. I believe I’ve read “The Evening Party” as well but it was in a collection with several other writers that I read for an undergraduate short story class, so I’m not certain that’s the right story. Nevertheless, I find her very intriguing, both as a writer and as a human being. (We don’t always treat the former as the latter, so I feel it’s necessary to make that clarification.)
The quote I want to focus on is the title quote from her book-length essay A Room of One’s Own:
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Things have changed since Woolf’s time, in the writing world and society overall. We allow women more independence and more financial success in their own right. Does that make Woolf’s words any less true? Not necessarily.
Society still pressures women to be “good” wives and mothers. To add to the stress, everyone’s definition of a “good” wife and mother differs and some include the need to earn money. Kids, a significant other, a job–it’s no wonder many female writers have to put off writing until the kids have gone to bed. More women have their own money, but a “room of [their] own” can still be hard to come by.
What if you’re a single woman? A childless female writer? A male writer? Do Woolf’s words still apply? I would argue yes.
Whether we’re in a relationship or single, a parent or childless, man or woman or gender-less, we all have responsibilities bearing down on us. Household chores, self-care, paying jobs–writers have to eat, too–and much more can slow our writing progress. That’s before we add in our social lives (those of us who still have one), our immediate family outside of children and significant others, and our pets.
The best solutions to these obstacles? Money and a room of our own.
We may not be dependent on someone else’s money but we still need more money in order to free up time for writing. More money means fewer work hours needed, and fewer work hours are more hours for writing.
But do we really need a room of our own? It can mean seclusion and privacy, which begot focus and freedom. No distractions, no judgment. Just us, our ideas, and our writing. It’s why many writers withdraw into bedrooms or home offices, especially when their household is buzzing. Some even go to the extreme of renting offices outside of the home. Now that is the epitome of needing money and a room of one’s own to write fiction.
Portrait of Virginia Woolf
Photograph by George Charles Beresford, retrieved from the Virginia Woolf Wikipedia entryI know Virginia Woolf’s original statement wasn’t supposed to have this exact meaning. From my brief stint into her essay–please forgive me for using SparkNotes to research this post, I was pressed for time–I have come to understand that Woolf was trying to explain that women’s heralding duties and financial/legal ties to their husbands can affect their writing. As I said before, this interpretation of the quote maintains resonance to this day. Women may be more independent but society still pressures them in ways that men don’t always realize. However, the broader interpretation can aid all writers, no matter their gender.
You may not be able to resolve the money aspect of this issue, at least not for some time. It happens and we all have to face it at one point or another. You can only trudge through the daily work muck and hope for the best.
If you find yourself distracted by duties and losing time, you may be able to do something about it. Find a time and a place where you can set everything else aside and write. Set it in stone. Tell everyone–friends, family, your significant other–that that time and place are for writing and only writing. Some people may be mad but really, you have to write. A writer who doesn’t write is just a dreamer. Also, they can’t pester you about when your next story or poem will be published if they won’t let you write.
I digress. By carving out the time and place for writing, you are giving yourself a private writing nook that no one can take from you. You are creating a “room of [your] own”.
That’s it for this “Writers on Writing”. Keep an eye out for the next installation. I’ll be covering a personal favorite, satirist Mark Twain.
Until then, do you have anything to add to this post, either about the quote or Virginia Woolf? Do you have any writers/quotes on writing that you think I should discuss? Leave your suggestions in the comments or email me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com.
Magic Beyond Words, TV movie about J.K. Rowling’s earlier life and the creation of Harry Potter up to the film release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Originally released by Lifetime, image retrieved from IMDb
Nothing is more mystifying than inspiration. Inspiration for all art–paintings, sculpture, film, writing–seems to come from nowhere. We’ve all read books, stories, and poems which make us wonder how the writer could have possibly thought to write them in the first place. The origins of our favorite books captivate us. I can’t tell you how often I watch Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story. We want to learn more about our favorite writers’ inspiration in the hopes that they could help us find our own.
I won’t pretend to speak for all writers. We may claim to know where other writers get their ideas but we don’t. Honestly, we don’t always know the source of our ideas.
There’s only one thing I can say with any confidence: if they can find inspiration, so can you. As proof, let me tell you about my own experience with finding inspiration.
I seem to get my ideas from the most random places. As an undergrad, my mind drifted during class much more often than I am willing to admit. I doodled in the margins of my notebook, worked on essays from other classes, and listened to my professors just enough to know when I needed to jot something down. As I zoned, I would retreat into my imagination, allowing myself to become submersed in elaborate worlds. Sometimes I would leave class with a plot, other times with new character histories, and others with an entire scene written.
Sitting through lectures, at the movies, taking walks, I find inspiration whenever I can let my mind drift from the present.
Find isn’t the right word. I don’t actively look for inspiration. In fact, writing inspiration alludes me when I attempt to chase it down. The ideas must come to me. They find me, not the other way around.
External conditions aside, inspiration finds me most when I’m reading or watching TV and movies. I’m not talking solely about fiction. Academic articles, news reports, documentaries, fiction and nonfiction alike inspire me when I’m reading/watching it. Why? It’s all thanks to the “what if” impulse.
What if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?
What if the Four Horsemen became American politicians?
What if the Roswell UFO and Kelly’s “Little Green Men” were connected by more than the “supposed alien sighting” factor?
This impulse isn’t limited to “what if” questions or to what I watch and read. Why, who, and how, what I hear and what I live, they all spark my imagination.
Why might aliens have such large eyes?
How did so many branches of my family end up in California?
What if the legend about Lemurians in Mount Shasta isn’t a legend? (Check out this link if you haven’t heard this story. It’s humorous, ridiculous, and intriguing all at once.)
It’s hard not to be inspired by beauty like this, and I can see why people think there’s something mythical happening in that mountain.
Inspiration comes from everything and nothing. What inspires a writer once may not inspire him/her again. That which annoyed a writer once may become the catalyst for his/her next novel. You never know what could spark your imagination. All you can do is read, watch, and experience everything to the fullest in the hopes that something, no matter how obscure, will catch your attention and send inspiration your way.
I’ll write more on what inspires me in future posts. In the meantime, where does your writing inspiration originate? Discuss it in the comments or email me and you might be featured in an installment of “Writing Inspiration”.
For the past two weeks I’ve been participating in my program’s second writing forum. Here, in a nutshell, are what these writing forums consist of: students are divided into groups in which they stay for the entire year, they post stories for feedback, and the students and supervising tutor give feedback on all the stories. The second week, as people are wrapping up their initial feedback, students ask/answer questions about the feedback and the tutor posts topics for general discussion. If they have finished their initial feedback, students can post general discussion topics as well.
This time I posed a question for my fellow writers: how do you change aspects of a story without ruining the parts that readers liked?
I have wrestled with this issue most of the academic year. The pressure has only gotten worse as the May 31st deadline for our portfolio inches closer. Well, “inches” takes the urgency from it. It’s more like how objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
Since the deadline has gotten so close, I’ve begun to edit and rewrite the stories that I plan to include in my portfolio. The most prominent problem at the moment is that two of my stories have a very distinct feel that the readers enjoy. In attempting to address the weaker points of the story, I’m afraid that I will shatter that which makes the readers enjoy the stories already. I liken this conundrum to playing Jenga: if you remove or alter one piece, the whole structure may come tumbling down.
I know I’m not the only writer struggling with this issue. That’s why I want to discuss the answers I received on the forum.
Their advice boils down to four simple points: trust your intuition, do what’s best for the story, step away, and save your revisions.
Trust Your Intuition: If something in the story doesn’t feel right to you, there’s a reason. You know what you want for your work. External feedback points you to weak spots and helps put you on the right path but at the end of the day, it’s still your story. Did your readers suggest alterations to the dialogue that felt artificial when you put the advice into practice? Step away to give yourself some space and then take another look at it. Did your readers really like a scene in your story but you don’t feel that it fits with the newer version? You’ll have to decide which is better for the story, that scene or the entirety of the revision. Deep inside you sits your inner writer, the one that is connected with the essence of all your writing, and if he/she starts telling you that something isn’t right, you need to listen. It may conflict with feedback but it’ll be worth the risk. You can always start over again.
Do What’s Best for the Story: This idea seems obvious but, in fact, it’s often forgotten. We end up worrying more about what the readers want than what will help our stories become what they should be. Readers and their opinions are important but, as I said in #1, you have to trust your intuition. You can’t make your gay character straight just because your target audience wants. You have to ask yourself, will it make the story better? Or worse? If a reader suggests adding exposition to the dialogue, you have to decide if it will weaken the integrity of the narrative. You won’t be able to please everybody. Your only real obligation is to the story and your inner writer.
Step Away: I’m going to give you this advice a lot. Might as well get used to that right now. In this case, I was given this advice by the published writer supervising my program’s forum. We read our own pieces to death. Our objectivity all but disappears and we risk missing weak points that objective readers see instantly. We skim over spelling errors, holes in continuity, and flat out bad writing. Almost more importantly, we become bored by our own work and so we don’t know when we’re bored with ourselves and when something will genuinely lose the reader. Robert Frost once said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
Save Your Revisions: I made this point bold and red because I cannot stress it enough. Keep copies of all working drafts. Our tutor also recommended labeling them clearly and/or using track changes. Every time I make a change that isn’t very small or I make several small changes that add up to a significant change, I save it as a new file. I have five to seven copies of one story on my computer at any given time. Trust me, when you suddenly decide that you’re writing from the wrong character’s perspective and attempt to rewrite nine-tenths of the story, you’ll be happy to have those earlier drafts. Don’t think that it’s only with major changes like that for which you’ll need copies. You may decide that you liked how a sentence was worded the first time but you don’t remember it exactly. Maybe there’s a small gesture by a character that you removed, thinking it insignificant, only to realize that it was much more important than you first thought. You’ll hate yourself if you have that sort of epiphany but not the earlier draft to refer to.
Revisions and implementing feedback are rarely easy. (I’ll go more into revisions and feedback in future posts.) Despite what common sense may dictate, fewer or smaller edits do not necessarily mean the process is easier. Instead, you find yourself in the limbo of “I need to change this but changing this may ruin that.” There’s no clear-cut answer. However, the four points above are a good place to start.
If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this: SAVE YOUR REVISIONS.
Have any ideas for making small edits without destroying your stories big time? As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Many, if not most, writers love to talk about writing. Their writing process, what they think about today’s literature, their thoughts on the literary world, odds are you can get a writer to discuss at least one of these. Thanks to the Internet we now have virtually unlimited access to their words of wisdom. In my “Writers on Writing” series, I will give my thoughts on one of these writers and one or more of their quotes on writing. Today I’ll be looking at one of the most praised American writers: Ernest Hemingway.
Hemingway famously (maybe infamously) gave the advice to “write drunk, edit sober.” There’s no secret or debate behind Hemingway’s status as a heavy-weight drinker. A champion, really. But are we to take his advice literally? Should we get drunk–or just drink–to write and wait until we sober up to edit?
General consensus points to the literal. Even the article in The Guardian from which I got this quote takes it at face value. If that’s how you choose to take it, you’ll find that people are somewhat divided on the accuracy of the quote. The common thread among most of the analysis is that drinking may help relinquish inhibitions to a point, which can help writers to not censor themselves and be more creative. However, there is a point when drunk is too drunk and your writing will turn out like horse manure. I think the most intriguing take on this angle comes from this study, if you wish to look into it further.
My take on Hemingway’s advice is quite different. For personal but non-religious reasons, I don’t drink. It’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility but I don’t see myself drinking in the near future. What, then, do I get from Hemingway’s advice?
Let’s look at the first half, “write drunk.” As I stated before, the benefits of writing drunk seem to be a lack of inhibition and enhanced creativity. In that case, I equate “write drunk” to “write semiconscious” or, from my own experience, “write half-asleep.”
I don’t have any studies or scientific evidence to support this interpretation. I can’t even speak for other writers. However, my writing seems to come most freely when I’m not entirely conscious. I have discovered that my writing is most productive when I first wake up (even if I sleep in) and around 10:00-11:30 p.m, not long before I go to bed.
I’m normally too tired to read or focus on much of anything but I can write with minimal distractions at those times. Some people might argue that there’s not much going on that can take away my attention and that’s why I’m more productive. They may be right. Still, I don’t have as consistent of luck when I just isolate myself from all external stimuli. I also have to admit that there are noises echoing throughout my neighborhood at any time of day, which detracts from this theory. (By “noises” I mean a motorcycle speeding by the house at 1:00 a.m., someone’s dying car starting up around 2:00 a.m., and dogs and birds sounding off at all hours.)
One of my biggest problems with writing is my inhibition stunting my creativity. I have voices in my head that cause me to doubt myself and my work constantly. The more awake I am, the louder those voices become. My sleepy state silences these inhibitions enough that I can get about a solid hour of writing in before I start wondering if it’s utter garbage. In that way, “semiconscious/half-asleep writing” is my form of “drunk writing” without as strong a possibility of memory loss.
The second half of the quote is rather self-explanatory when examined from this perspective. If “write drunk” is “write semiconscious,” “edit sober” must be “edit conscious.” Of course, it’s probably best to be sober when you edit as well. You’ll have your full faculties at your disposal. You’ll also look at your work with a more objective eye. You won’t have to (entirely) shut up your inner critic at this point and it will finally have its say. You’ll remember the rules of grammar–or be able to research anything you’ve forgotten–well enough to know when you should and should not break them. The more sober and conscious you are, the better you will edit without totally destroying your work.
Ernest Hemingway dust jacket photo for first edition of For Whom the Bell Tolls, picture by Lloyd Arnold, retrieved from Ernest Hemingway Wikipedia Entry
Hemingway was a great writer but relied too heavily on alcohol. Let’s face it, he was an alcoholic. It doesn’t take away from his work but he may more have written well despite being drunk rather than because of it.
We don’t all have to get drunk in order to write well. Any writers who do drink shouldn’t get too drunk if they plan on writing. People end up regretting drunk texting. Can you imagine drunk writing? Instead, find under what conditions your inhibitions are lowered. Is it when you’re a little tipsy? Tired? Comfortable? So stressed and crunched for time that you simply can’t stop and give heed to your inner critic? Once you figure that out, use it. You may be surprised at how much your productivity and the quality of your writing increases. Just remember to listen to constructive feedback once you start editing.
Update 11/25/2022: This article and other pieces of my writing, from The Writer’s Scrap Bin articles to original stories and poetry can be found on Vocal.
(left: cover of Dragonflight, art by Michael Whelan and published by Del Rey; right: cover of Black Horses for the King, art by David Shannon and published by Del Rey)
Anne McCaffrey, best-selling author of the Dragonriders of Pern series, wandered outside of the science fiction genre to write her historical fantasy/Arthurian fiction novel Black Horses for the King.
Whether it specifies the length (novel versus short story), the kind of writing (prose versus poetry), or the content (romance versus fantasy), I’m not a fan of the “genre” concept. I find genres unnecessarily divisive. Nothing is ever that black-and-white. Nevertheless, genres are a prominent concept in writing and I must address the matter if I wish to discuss writing. I have too many thoughts on this subject to cover everything in one post, so I will present them in a new series of posts that I call the “Genres” series.
While genres can be used to organize literature, they also lead to heated debate among readers and writers. Every genre comes with its elitists, people who think the genre is superior to all others and, conversely, people who think the genre shouldn’t be considered literature. Some fans refuse to try other genres or refuse to admit that they read more than one genre. The results of this divisive attitude? Literary cliques and anxiety for writers.
This divide most clearly affects writers. If a writer mostly works in one genre, deviations risk drawing criticism and disapproval from fans. Beginning writers must be careful as to which genre they practice. Pedestrian and literary fiction, for example, are typically considered more worthy of pursuit than speculative fiction. Some writers can’t decide where to submit their work because it does not clearly fit into one genre alone.
But is any genre really superior to the others? Should writers stick with one genre and avoid cross-genre (hybrid) work? Should aspiring writers pursue literary fiction for the sake of building their reputation?
The short answer: no.
(left: cover of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, art by Mary GrandPré and published by Scholastic; right: cover of The Cuckoo’s Calling, artist unknown but published by Sphere)
Despite achieving fame in fantasy, J.K. Rowling has stepped outside the genre multiple times. Her crime fiction novel The Cuckoo’s Calling is notable because she published it under a pseudonym.
I’ve already covered passion driving work in my “Writing for Yourself” post. Now I want to revisit the necessity of variety. As readers and writers, we need to dip into several genres to broaden our horizons. Different genres teach us different things. The more diversely we read, the more we can grow as writers, intellectuals, and people.
I focus on speculative fiction, particularly fantasy, in what I write and what I read. However, it’s not the only genre into which I’ve delved. I adore books like Black Horses for the King by Anne McCaffrey, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This year, as part of my Master’s program, I’ve read a spectrum of literary fiction from Gogol and Chekhov to O’Connor and Boyle.
All that I’ve read has shaped me as a person. I owe my tolerance and sense of social justice to books like Harry Potter; my political stance can be traced back to Dr. Seuss; and my ever-expanding understanding of other cultures comes from writers likes Jhumpa Lahiri.
Just as importantly, reading and writing across genres have strengthened my skills as a writer. Dabbling into realistic fiction has proven especially fruitful, and crossing between realistic fiction and fantasy has added depth to my writing in both genres. Realistic fiction helps me with the technical side of writing fantasy. In return, fantasy gives me practice in world building.
The most notable change is in my dialogue. As recently as this academic year, my dialogue was one of my weakest points. It sounded unnatural and dragged the story down. (I can only think of one fantasy story I wrote last summer that does not fit this bill.) Then I read Flannery O’Connor for my Master’s program. O’Connor is well-known as a master of dialogue. She even inspired me to write realistic stories. My first try still requires a complete rewrite. Nevertheless, my dialogue improved tremendously. It was arguably the most salvageable aspect of that piece. The next story I wrote was also realistic fiction. Feedback on that work suggests that my dialogue continued to get better. As long as I don’t limit myself to one genre, I know my writing will remain on this upward trajectory.
Dividing literature is akin to dividing people; too much division and all you’ll have are narrow minds in a flat world. Sometimes you have to force yourself outside of your comfort zone in order to grow. So go ahead, read a genre you don’t like. Write in an unfamiliar genre. After all, what do you have to lose?
Writer’s block: it’s the monster under your bed, the little devil on your shoulder, and the cat stretched across your laptop, blocking the keyboard. Some people call it a myth, claim that it’s all in the writer’s head, or accuse the writer of using it as an excuse to be lazy. Is that all that writer’s block is? An illusion or a figment of our imaginations? An excuse?
General opinion is divided on this matter. Some people, such as the late Terry Pratchett (quoted above), very firmly believe that it does not exist. I vehemently disagree with them, both as a writer and a born-and-raised Californian. I know from personal experience that it’s not that simple. Yes, sometimes writers are looking for something to blame for their lack of productivity. That is often not the case. I’ve spent many days wanting to write, playing the scenes out in my head, but everything disappears as soon as I get to paper or a computer. Paralyzed.
Writer’s block comes in different forms for different writers. I’ve found that, overall, the blocks fall under three broad categories: external distraction, internal discouragement, and excuses. Every writer experiences each category at some point in their careers, usually multiple times.
No matter where your block originates, it can be conquered. There’s no way to eliminate it entirely–it’ll always creep back at the most inconvenient times–but writer’s block can be overcome. All you have to do is find the method that works for you, which will take time and experimentation. For now, here are some approaches for each category that you can wield against writer’s block:
External Distraction
I’ve heard writers say that they don’t need any special conditions to write. Noisy café, quiet park, secluded bedroom, it doesn’t matter. They will write when they want to write despite what’s around them. Many other writers say that the stars must align precisely or else they can’t get a word out. You may be somewhere between these two extremes.
No matter under what conditions you can normally write, at one point or another external stimuli will get the better of you and tear you from your craft. Maybe people are talking louder than normal or the show your partner’s turned the TV to is particularly intriguing. Maybe the neighbor dog (or, in my case, rooster) won’t shut up, hasn’t shut up for hours, and doesn’t seem likely to shut up in the near future. Perhaps the drip drip drip of that leaky faucet in the kitchen has gotten on your last nerves.
Whatever the reason, your environment is distracting you. Sometimes there’s a simple fix. You can leave the room or put on headphones. You can even politely (and I can’t emphasize that word enough) ask others in the room or your house to be quiet or spend the day elsewhere. They may not like it but if you explain the situation to them nicely, they’ll probably understand. You could also find somewhere else to write, if needed.
You can’t control everything around you. It’s possible that people won’t leave you alone or that your brain is conditioned to not work wherever you’re trying to write. Desperate times call for desperate measures. You may have to spend money to temporarily lease a small office. It’s a big step and something I would only suggest if nothing else works for you. At least at a private office you’re less likely to be distracted by a barking dog or the latest episode of How to Get Away with Murder.
Internal Discouragement
We’re our own worst critics. While our inner critics may work to our advantage when editing, they are our worst enemies when writing. My writing freezes constantly because I start thinking that it’s not good enough, that no one will ever like it, that I’m a horrible writer, the list goes on and on. This train of thought leads to what I call “internal discouragement.” Unless you have an incredibly thick hide or an ego the size of a zeppelin, you’re going to experience such discouragement many times throughout your career.
This form of writer’s block is not so easy to resolve. We have to retrain our brains, silence the inner critic until we finish writing. I haven’t discovered a foolproof solution yet. If I had, I would probably be a successfully-published author by now.
I digress. The most effective coping mechanism I’ve come across thus far is to simply step away for a bit. I find that doing something to expend excess energy–taking a walk, yoga, playing with the dog–helps best. Much of my internal discouragement comes from misdirected energy. If I dispose of the extra energy, I am less critical of myself and can write with a sharper focus.
Taking a break from writing can do internal discouragement a load of good. You can do something fun to put yourself in a better mood. You can complete the chores you’ve let pile up. Pay the bills, cook dinner. Anything to get your mind off of the discouragement. When you get back to writing, the inner critic will be quiet enough to get some work done.
Excuses
No one wants to admit that they’re making excuses. We often fool ourselves into believing our lies and talk ourselves into a writer’s block. There’s no reason to be ashamed. We all do it, even if we don’t realize it. In order to manage this form of writer’s block, we have to own up to the excuse and then we can address the source of the block.
After admitting that the writer’s block is an excuse, we have to ask what caused us to create this excuse in the first place. Are we doubting our abilities? The story? Are we being lazy? Are we tired? Have we become stale, bored by our surroundings and our inner worlds? Do we not want to continue with this story anymore? Once we discover the reason behind making the excuse, we can find a solution to the block.
Many of the reasons for the excuse point to the first and second categories of writer’s block. In that case, we can try the same solutions for the excuse writer’s block as we do for the others.
But what if we don’t want to write that story anymore? What if we’ve lost the thread that led us to it in the first place? Well then, it may be time to take a break from the project. Read. Watch TV. Knit. Go to the movies, spend time with your family, do the cleaning you’ve been putting off for the past few months. You can even start another story, essay, or poem, if you feel the inspiration for that. Just shelve this project for now. You can always dig it out again later, and maybe you’ll be ready to write it next time. Until then, walk away.
These are just a few approaches to conquering writer’s block. The more you explore the concept, the more solutions you’re going to find. The March/April issue of Writer’s Digest offers seven pages of suggestions. Finding prompts and tips for solving this problem is not the issue. Discovering why the block happened in the first place is the hard part. In order to find the method or methods that work for you, you have to identify the source of your block. Only then can you overcome it and return to the page.
What are your methods for dealing with writer’s block? Feel free to tell us all about them in the comments.
You can’t please everybody. It’s a fact of life and a fact of writing. You’re in love with epic fantasy, but your best friend prefers Shakespeare. Neither your tastes nor your friend’s are wrong (although your debates on what’s “literary” could get pretty heated). We need differing preferences in order to sustain the large pantheon of books, short stories, and poetry that we enjoy today. The problem for writers is that we can’t figure out whom we should aim to please with our work. Should we go with short stories or novels? Do we write for commercial appeal or worry about being “literary”? The biggest, and perhaps most common, question of all: should we write for ourselves or for an audience?
It can all be immobilizing. I know that too well. Often–much more often than I would like to admit–it has disheartened me and very nearly derailed my writing ambitions. A lot of my projects have stalled because I worry too much about how my writing and reading preferences conflict with the readers’.
So, with all the different tastes and so much at stake, for whom should we write? I can’t give an answer that will work for every writer in existence. There are pros and cons to each, a plethora of situations appropriate for each approach. Just do a quick Google search and you’ll find that each side has been debated thoroughly, and so has every approach in between (just check out this article from The Writer’s Dig column). My ultimate approach–and one of the themes driving this blog–is for the writer to write for him/herself first.
How can I say that when I am so jarred by the idea that my writing might conflict with readers’ desires? It all boils down to one thing: passion. Passion, I’ve learned, strengthens writing, sometimes to the point that readers don’t care that they don’t like the style, genre, whatever. Passion got me into all the writing programs I was in as an undergrad and into the Master’s program at the University of Edinburgh.
I wouldn’t have had this passion if I hadn’t written for myself first. The first graduate program I applied to rejected me because I prefer the Gothic horror and supernatural genres. If I had taken their preferences into account and assumed, based on their response, that all of these programs would want more “literary” genres, I would not have been accepted into the University of Edinburgh. I would have avoided those genres, including fantasy and science fiction, which I am also the most passionate about. I would have stuck with “literary” fiction for which, although I do often enjoy, I usually lack the passion. My passion would not have shown to the directors. My work wouldn’t have shined as well and I wouldn’t have been accepted. I may not have even bothered to apply again out of fear that my work would never be good enough.
In a nutshell, passion drives writing. If you don’t write what you want to write, you will have no interest in or passion for the work. That is what I mean when I say that a writer should write for him/herself first. You don’t always have to write what you like to read instead of what you think an audience would like. Instead, write what you want to write, what you feel is best for that piece or collection of works without worrying about what others will think. Everything will fall into place, and you can worry about balancing your desires with what the critics say later. Put yourself first.
