I Wish I Was A Princess

Well, I've discovered something. It took me two outlines and one nearly 20,000 word novella to figure it out, but I did.

The problem with writing political thrillers -- political thrillers of any kind, including fantasy or historical or modern day or science fiction futuristic -- is that you have to write about the political factions. Their motivations, their goals, the obstacles to said goals, their members and how split or unified they are, you have to write about all of it. And, generally speaking, you have to make it believable. You can't just have them not able to achieve their goals because it would get in the way of writing your story. And depending on the story and how much time you have to devote to this, you may have to do this for several angles and factions.

It's a pain in the ass.

Recently, I've found myself writing a number of these stories. I may have to go back to them to remind myself why I find them such a pain in the ass. After the second try on an outline and scrambling to pull the story together in time to make the deadline I realized what I was doing wrong. I was writing the plot with no conception of the motivations of the movers and shakers behind it.

This leads to not necessarily knowing where the story is going, or having plot collisions at random points. Or having characters repeating the same scene over and over again because you don't know what the people around them are doing, even if said people never actually make it into the text itself. This leads to plot stagnation and tangled knots and a lot of frustration as you try and try to rewrite it to make sense, but it isn't.

Factions before actions. It's my new watchword whenever I realize I'm actually writing some kind of political thriller. It keeps things organized, it keeps everyone from running into each other, and it can even drive new plot you didn't realize you had until you put everything up on a white board and saw where everyone was going.

For example, in any kind of plot involving nobility there's usually the King who wants to remain in power. There's the nobles who are ossified into their ways and are rooting for the status quo. There are the ones who think they're progressive and fair and advocating for change. There are the ones who want nothing but power for themselves and will backstab anyone else to get it. That's four factions right there for you to play with; depending on where you've set your court there could be twice as many, at least. If not more so, depending on how many you want to juggle and how much time you have to work on it.

In a plot involving science fiction, the modern world, or any more capitalist based setting, there will be corporations. And with corporations comes corporate espionage, research and development, playing both sides against the middle, stealing trade secrets, insider trading if you have a stock market, etcetera. All of these generally fall under the heading of 'every man out for himself,' but you can also have factions. The pyramid scheme, everyone at the top dependant on each other to sucker the people below them to succeed. The morally upright corporate executive comes in two variations, the kind who slowly sinks to everyone else's level even as she tries to maintain her ethical position and the kind that manages somehow to rise above it all as he keeps himself and his employees to a rigorous standard. The player who's come to believe he deserves it all and the cold fish who knows nothing but the wheel and deal and who thinks she is entitled to devour anyone in her way.

Politics, well, there's endless potential factions in politics. Find a cause, and then split your assembled politicians into for or against. Repeat as necessary for as many causes as you have, and then make a nice little chart and see who overlaps where. Then divide down party lines for extra configuration confusion. In that case, you might do better to see what plots you need to have thickened where before you go adding to the soup.

The short of it is, it's a lot easier to plot out who's doing what if you have the whys and wherefores of it first. If you have the motivations, the party lines, and where who falls in with whom, if you can figure out where your people are coming from it's a hell of a lot easier to see where they're going. And this is a manifestation of that that may not be readily apparent.

But now I know. Factions before actions. And now, you know it too.

I asked a question on the Nanowrimo LiveJournal community that got a myriad of interesting answers. It got me thinking a lot about the way we write, in some little things that maybe we don't think about very often.

Actually, as I write this, I'm not actually typing. I'm dictating. Most of you who read this journal also read my personal journal, and therefore you know that I've been having problems with my hands hurting. In order not to kill off my writing career before its time with a sudden attack of carpal tunnel, I started writing with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I've actually had this program for a while, and used it from time to time, but I've never used it quite as extensively as I am now. So, there's a little something about the way I write, and something I don't think about very often.

But, that's a different essay. This one is about all the little things that are essential to our writing life, even though we might not think about them very often.

The question I posed was this: what must you have around you or with you, eat or drink, wear or listen to or cuddle while you write?

( Read more... )

So, here's something interesting I noticed about myself.

This week is Blog Against Racism week. I found myself with nothing much to say. Racism bad. Yes. I can get behind that, but I can't muster up the energy to say much more than that about it. And then I opened up this journal and thought, I'm feeling better, I should post something in Excellent Words. And then I thought, hmm. I wonder if I could tie this into Blog Against Racism week somehow.

And then I thought, hey, here's something that occasionally occurs to me and I never do anything about. Even though I should.

It occurred to me last night because I was writing a piece of fanfic. And in this piece of fanfic I had hit chapter two and was thinking somewhat about the work of origin, and thinking that every time the character is introduced, he's described. And how he's described. Also about the fact that he's apparently white and Germanic in the book and black African American of generic American origin in the movie, but that's neither here nor there. Yet. And I was thinking that I hadn't included a single physical description of the man in the entire first chapter of the fic. I should rectify that.

This is, and if you've read my fiction you may have noticed, a habit of mine. I once wrote an entire novel and didn't realize the only physical description I'd included of the characters was one mention of someone's hair being black. I didn't notice it until someone pointed it out to me. I just don't think about the physical traits of my characters very often. I'm more preoccupied with noting what they do with their hands, how they tilt their heads, the cadence and rhythm of their voices and speech, etcetera. I think I've recently managed to write another entire novel without describing the protagonist, or any of the side characters even, and I need to rectify that too. Especially since I'm trying to sell it. Ahem.

But I was thinking all this and then it went back to Blog Against Racism week, all of these preceeding thoughts having happened in the space of a few seconds of course. It takes much longer to type it all out. And then I realized something. I took an internal census of all the characters I'd created in the last several months, all the characters I'd written about. And I came up to one, somewhat disturbing conclusion. I'm sure you can guess by the subject of this post what it is.

It's odd. I wouldn't think that this would happen, not in my head anyway. My mother, my father, and my biological father are all three different races. My best friend growing up was of a different race, I lived in one of the most racially and culturally diverse big cities in the United States. Not New York. My personal opinion is that that takes the diversity cake and runs with it. But I digress.

Realizing this made me think of other instances of passive, quiet, or simply subconscious racial commonalities in fiction. I remembered saying to my friend as we came out of the theatre from watching Strange Days that we had just seen an interracial couple on screen, and how remarkable that was. I'm trying to think of others and I can actually think of a few, now. Mystery Men. Doctor Who (if that counts), Firefly. Pulp Fiction. But I also realize that when I think of interracial couples I automatically go to white/black, and maybe that's because it's the most visibly opposite? Certainly white/latino could be difficult to ascertain, unless the race is played up as a significant factor in the movie, and sometimes it is. But what about asian/black? Or latino/asian? Or any of those other couples?

Let's go down the list of movies I've seen lately. Mystery Men, yes. Doctor Who I saw last night. Kingdom Hospital? No interracial couples that I could tell there, but I also didn't see many couples in that show, so we'll leave that out. Firefly we mentioned. Before that I watched a great deal of Enterprise, and on Star Trek we have a number of interspecies relationships but do we... oh, yes, we do. O'Brien and Keiko. All right then. So perhaps things aren't as bad as I think they are, but the fact remains that my cast of characters is decidedly monochrome. And for someone who writes, or at least concieves of enough things to write, as I do, that's certainly a sign of something. I'm not sure what, but something. Subconscious notions? I'd sleep with Tony Todd or Sam Jackson (who wouldn't?) as soon as I'd sleep with Jet Li as soon as I'd sleep with David Tennant or Christian Bale... maybe not as soon as I'd sleep with Christian Bale. I'd share a meal with any of them, or a ride, or an afternoon at the movies. I don't share an apartment with anyone until I know them better. Sorry, Christian.

But what is this? Why are all my characters so monochrome? Is it because a great deal of my fiction takes place in the United States in neighborhoods that are predominantly white, because that's where I live now? That shouldn't fly when I write fantasy and science fiction as often as I write mainstream fiction. And predominantly white doesn't mean as great a divide now as it used to. There should be characters of other races in there, other skin tones, other backgrounds.

Maybe it's just my own inexperience with other cultures? Really, Jag, given your background that's not an excuse. You know how to research and ask questions. Maybe it's because I'm more interested in writing about the emotions and interactions of characters than in their cultures and physical features? That's a valid point, as far as that goes, and it goes a lot farther than I thought at first. But eventually a person's culture does inform their actions and reactions. If they are being discriminated against because of their background, cultural or physiological, they would feel and act accordingly. If they are discriminating against someone else, they should have those thoughts.

There's no real point to this, I suppose. It's only something that I became aware of while I thought about Blog Against Racism week, and in the end all I've achieved is a lot of rambling and nothing terribly against anything. But it is something to be aware of. It is something I ought to take down, mentally, take a memo and post an internal yellow Post-It note on my forehead. Be More Diverse.

Where appropriate, of course. If you're writing a story about a white supremacist cult and someone trying to escape from it, chances are they're not going to be running into very many people of other races in the middle of a white supremacist's compound.

But people, in real life, come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. And my writing, being true, should reflect that.

This post has been brought to you by Blog Against Racism week.

This actually started out as a post about sewing, but the principle remains the same. I'm facing a task that I don't know how to do, despite my extensive experience with the general field in which that task falls. I don't want to do it because I don't want to fail to do it correctly and feel like a complete idiot, as though I've just been screwing around for the last X number of years.

This isn't true, of course. Sewing or writing, and I've been writing a hell of a lot longer than I've been sewing, but it still applies. It's not true. In the last X years I've accumulated a body of experience that will help me figure out the problem I'm facing. And if I stopped to look at it at some remove from my own insecurities I'd see that that body of experience is useful. Is not the trivial thing I make it out to be. And maybe this problem isn't as big as I think it is either.

I write more often in this journal (when I write at all, heh) about insecurities and things than I do positive things. I think that's because when it comes to writing, when it comes to a lot of creative pursuits that are mostly worked alone, there are a lot of insecurities that pile up. Maybe more so than enthusiastic revelations or certainties. Definitely more so than certainties, there aren't many certainties in this business. Which sharpens the fear of failure.

I don't have a solution for this, and I want one. I really want one, because I'm sitting here writing an essay when I should be working on something else I love, and something that gives me tangible, cuddle-able results, which is fulfilling in a way that writing is not. Much as I love it. So, let's find a solution.

And maybe, now that I think about it, the solution is the old and cliche one. The Thomas Edison one. I didn't fail 10,000 times, I discovered 10,000 ways not to make a lightbulb. Or a short story. Or a neckline. Or a sculpture, or a painting of a tree, or whatever. I didn't get 20 rejection letters, I found 20 agents who weren't a good fit. And that'll get you so far. But it won't get you to the end, I think. Or is that just defeatism again.

Maybe the solution is to keep changing tactics. I have Enterprise on in the background and I keep thinking about phase-shifting shields and how you have to find just the right modulation at just the right time to penetrate them, etcetera. So maybe today it's the Thomas Edison solution, and maybe tomorrow it's something else, maybe reminding myself that agents and editors rejected JK Rowling and, more recently, Jane Austen*. Maybe it's a daily struggle, which I know it is, but maybe there's no one reminder. Maybe it's like a vaccine that only works so many times before the disease becomes immune. The disease of insecurity. Ooh, I like that.

Maybe I shoudl stop beginning every paragraph with maybe.

I don't know. I don't have any solutions, as I don't with most of these rambling essays. I do know that fear of failure, and fear of wasted effort and meaningless time spent is keeping me from doing what I want to do right now. And I think the solution today is to get irritated at myself. Get angry. The little demons grumbling in the back of my head are not worth the time I'm wasting on them. They should be slapped, put back in the box, and ignored. And that's what I'm going to do.

I promised myself I would write in this more often, and then promptly forgot. Maybe I need to put a reminder to myself on my computer. On the other hand, if I put too many reminders on my computers, they blur together like the rest of the stuff I try to push out of my mind. Useless and unwanted.

I have a web page that's just on my computer that's just a list of tables. All the tables I've gotten myself into that I haven't written much on yet. I think the most I've ever gotten is 25% done. And that's on the first one I started. I really should do some more on the one community I ever joined and signed up for, staked a claim on something. I feel a little guilty for that.

The point of today's ramble isn't so much that I feel guilty, it's my tendency to take on more than I can do in terms of writing. My mind is so scattered, I have half a dozen projects going at any one time, and all of them long, complicated and involving far too much work for any one person to do. The smart thing, instead of taking on a short story series with a protagonist I haven't named, an enemy I haven't created, and crap all for detail except a god with no believers and a college student… and run-on sentences. Instead of taking that on, the smart thing would be to start working on all the back projects I have yet to do. Including the one that's supposed to make me money. I'm a few days late on the query letters.

I don't know why I keep piling up on things. Writing things, these days. I think or suspect that a part of it has to do with my mind not quite being able to stop coming up with new things. If I work on the old things the new ones just keep building up behind my eyes until they have to spill over somewhere. Or maybe it's because whatever I'm writing at the time hasn't brought me whatever it is I was looking for, so I have to start over again and it's easier to start over with something new than to keep persisting with what I have. God, I know that's probably it with the novel. That thing is going to kill me.

I put them into tables and lists and weekly word counts because there's an organization to the chaos. It gives me the illusion that I'm doing something productive, working towards a goal that I don't really have (I do have goals but they're not bound up so much in tables and lists) or maybe just that this is under my control.

I don't know that it is. Maybe it is. Maybe it's not. Maybe the thing to do is to bring it under my control, make the tables a real guideline instead of a psychological sop to my something or other. Ego? Sense of self-confidence? Guilt? I have no idea.

The decision to be made, then, following not so logically from that progression, is to work on each table. To get one story done from each of them at least, and once a week. Maybe that's something to put in my weekly word count, which actually doesn't work. But it does let me see what I've done over the week, and what I need to update or back up on my flash drive. Better than nothing.

Making the decision is easy. Following through is the hard part. They say it's some small percent inspiration (the actual percent varies with the they) and some large percent perspiration. I suspect it's more like inspiration, perspiration, and sheer kicking your own ass. And you have to be significantly, impressively flexible to kick your own ass. Fortunately for me I've been working on that.

That last post got a little more attention than I'd expected. Huh.

But a very good point was brought up, which is to say that there's a difference between being mean and offering constructive criticism. Just off the top of my head, here are a few things that constructive criticism is.

• Constructive criticism is helpful. Which that statement wasn't necessarily, deliberately, by way of example. Some things are helpful just on the blunt face of it. If someone tells me to tame my semi-colons, I generally have an idea of what they mean. Or if I tell someone he's overusing his exclamation points again, it's because I have reason to believe he would understand. However, saying that "you haven't developed the theme enough" and leaving it at that... maybe you didn't intend a theme? Or if you did, how do you know the reader's idea of what the theme is and yours are meshing? Giving examples of what seems to be wrong, and advice on how it can be corrected. Generally, that's helpful criticism.
  
• Constructive criticism is gentle. It does not involve statements that imply the writer (or artist, or poet, or what have you) would be better off putting down all implements of creativity and taking up accounting or car maintenance. It points out what the writer (or artist, or poet, or what have you) has done right and that more should be done along those lines as well as pointing out what is wrong. After all, if you don't know what you did right, how will you know to keep doing it?
  
• Constructive criticism is patient. If the person constructing the criticism has been reviewing the person's works for some time, maybe now would be a good time to point out how they've grown, and what areas maybe haven't grown so much. Something that has been much improved, and now maybe another area that attention could be turned to. Like passive voice (yick! previous sentence! Yick!) or excessive parantheticals (who, me?).
  
• Constructive criticism is fair and balanced, and knows where its own weaknesses lie as well as its strengths. I know very little about writing poetry, and while I can say that something evoked emotions in me or that words rhyme, my advice if someone is looking for more depth and technicality than that is going to be useless. Likewise for art. I can, however, dissect your piece of fiction (or even non-fiction!) to a fair-thee-well. Your skills might lie elsewhere.
  
• Constructive criticism is, as well, constructive. Look at that word again, very closely. Con-struc-tive. You are looking to build something, not tear it down. If what you have to say, be it criticism or praise, is not helping to build the person's skills, talent, enthusiasm, best two out of three... maybe it's best you just don't say it.
  Which is, really, not to say that the occasional "I really really liked this!" is out of place. Honestly. As for the "You suck, and your writing sucks, and your doggy sucks too!"... I think you'd better leave that one at home.
  

It's not that I don't write well in groups, it's that once I make friends and they start having critical and amazing success, I feel like I've failed. Two stand out in this, in particular. Both of them are literary writers, or at the very least writers with a literary bent. Me, I'm a mainstream writer. I want to be the next Stephen King, the next Laurell K (in her early years at least), the next Jane Yolen. Anne McCaffery. Anne Perry. Something commercial, ongoing, that pays the bills, that I enjoy. I have very few pretensions about my work.

The problem is that a lot of writers do. They seem to feel that writing, no, good writing is some sort of an elite club, that you can only join if you have done X, Y, and Z, if you write something that they understand as having taken effort and pain. If your dactyls are sinful and you reference Humperdink's Treatise on Archetype and Plot and you use ten different kinds of imagery to represent womanhood, then you must be a good writer. If you churn out 14 romance novels a year (a woman I met at a convention actually does), you're a hack.

This is the kind of sentiment that sends me crying back to my room.

I once applied for a writing community here on Livejournal (that is now defunct due to lack of effort and participation, heh) with an audition piece that we were all required to do. It had received good reviews when it was previously published; later it was requested for reprinting in an online magazine. I thought it was pretty good. The idea might not be all that original, but it was nifty, with a twist, and it was the kind of thing that people will go "huh, I never thought of that" over, despite the fact that the idea itself actually has been repeated many times in popular fiction. Maybe a little less blatantly described.

The writing community heads shredded it. I'm not talking about constructive criticism, I'm talking about pointing out my lack of symbolism, my poor inflection and characterisation, my inability to write something with depth. They grudgingly allowed me entrance into their club because I showed promise, but I would have to do better next time and "not submit something so unpolished."

You'd think I'd be prepared for this. I watched A Chorus Line a hundred and twelve times, I swear on the grave of my mother. I heard that song about acting class, and the Broadway jaded-yet-hopeful young woman relating how she'd been told she would never be an actress, only to realize that the teacher was spouting bullshit. You'd think I'd remember.

Nooo, of course not. I was crushed, and hurt, and sullen, and angry. How dare they deride something I'd worked hard on, was proud of, that people seemed to like? How dare they call me a hack?

I'd like to say that they're just envious, but one of those judges is now a successful writer in her own right, with several books under her belt. I don't think I've seen a one of them in my local supermarket and I haven't gone looking for her in the bookstore but I haven't seen her on an endcap yet. To me, that would be the pinnacle of success. That would mean that I've written something that people, in general, like. For her, maybe it's different. Maybe she's living her dream right now. It still hurts, of course. That she's successful and I'm not. That she called me a hack, and now that I'm still sitting here struggling I wonder if maybe it's not true.

It doesn't matter. Or, it does, but it shouldn't. Whether you're writing for a hobby or you're writing for a career or you're just writing and you have no idea what you want to do with it, no one else has the right to tell you that you're a hack. That you're a bad writer. That you're not serious about it, that you're just anything. Writers, actually most people who are in the creative pursuits, will tell you that you're not serious. They do this for any number of reasons, from trying to put you down because they're afraid and have low self-esteem to, well, they actually believe it. I suspect they can get away with it because, in a lot of the creative fields, quality is about 30% mastering the basics and 70% personal taste. It's not all personal taste because, let's face it. There are badly spelled and proofed books, cacophonous songs, and I could vomit on a canvas and call it art but only the strangest galleries would probably take it. If any.

Writing isn't anything that's going to make you money. It's not essential for survival. Therefore, you should be writing becase you want to be. Because you want to be published, or because you want to tell your stories, or because you want to get better at it, or because you want to become a Big Name Fan, or because... Because. If you are not happy when you write, if you are not fulfilled or pleased or somehow gratified by it, stop. And no, I don't mean you have to be happy and pleased all the time. God, if you're happy all the time when you write, share your secret because I don't know anyone who's always happy with what they write, when they write, as they're writing. But it should be your choice, something that you want to do.

And if you like to write in groups, if support of people who know what it feels like is something you need, for goodness sake. Find people who will support you. Not people who will call you a hack, a hobby writer, a dabbler, a bad writer. It's all words for the same thing, "not one of us." But if that's the way they're going to 'support' you, then their 'us' isn't where you want to be. It'll turn writing into a burden and a source of pain rather than pleasure. And you don't want that. No one wants that.

Write because you want to. Because you'd rather be happy than not. To my mind, there's really no other way to be. Writing, or living.

ETA: Uh. Holyshit. People are reading this. And posting it on communities with over a thousand members. Huh.

Well, since that's... not something I ever thought would happen, and therefore this came out as a ramble and a rough cut, here's a bit of context? This whole big two-part rant was actually provoked by a post someone made about being told that there are two kinds of writers, those who write for publication and those who write as a hobby, where 'hobby' is a lesser form of writing, a well-meaning denigration. She's on vacation now but when she gets back I'll ask if she wants to explain/restate/copy over.

Later in the week, hopefully, I'll put up an edited version? Or something addressing the problem most people seem to have with this... wordspew. I hesitate even to call it an essay, as rough as it was. I just. Didn't expect nearly all the people to be commenting on this to be people I didn't know.

"Writers form themselves into the pyramid we see in all areas of human talent and human creativity. At the bottom are the bad ones. Above them is a group which is slightly smaller but still large and welcoming; these are the competent writers. They may also be found on the staff of your local newspaer, on the racks at your local bookstore, and at poetry readings on Open Mike Night. These are folks who somehow understand that although a lesbian may be angry, her breasts will remain breasts.*

The next level is much smaller. These are the really good writers. Above them -- above almost all of us -- are the Shakespeares, the Faulkners, the Yeatses, Shaws, and Eudora Weltys. They are geniuses, divine accidents, gifted in a way which is beyond our ability to understand, let alone attain. Shit, most geniuses aren't able to understand themselves, and many of them lead miserable lives, realizing (at least on some level) that they are nothing but fortunate freaks, the intelectual version of runway models who just happen to be born with the right cheekbones and with breasts which fit the image of an age.

I am approaching the heart of this book with two theses, both simple. The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

I'm afraid this idea is rejected by lots of critics and plenty of writing teachers, as well. Many of these are liberals in their politics but crustaceans in their chosen fields. Men and women who would take to the streets to protest the exclusion of African-Americans or Native Americans (I can imagine what Mr. Strunk would have thought of these politically correct but clunky terms) from the local country club are often the same men and women who tell their classes that writing ability is fixed and immutable; once a hack, always a hack. Even if a writer rises in the estimation of an influential critic or two, he/she always carries his/her early reputation along, like a respectable married woman who was a wild child as a teenager. Some people never forget, that's all, and a good deal of literary criticism serves only to reinforce a caste system which is as old as the intellectual snobbery which nurtured it. Raymond Chandler may be recognized now as an important figure in twentieth-century American literature, an early voice describing the anomie of urban life in the years after World War II, but there are plenty of critics who will reject such a judgment out of hand. He's a hack! they cry indignantly. A hack with pretensions! The worst kind! The kind who thinks he can pass for one of us!

Critics who try to rise above this intellectual hardening of the arteries usually meet with limited success. Their colleagues may accept Chandler into the company of teh great, but are apt to seat him at the foot of the table. And there are always those whispers: Came out of the pulp tradition, you know ...carries himself well for one of those, doesn't he? ...did you know he wrote for Black Mask in the thirties ... yes, regrettable...</i>.

Even Charles Dickens, the Shakespeare of the novel, has faced a constant critical attack as a result of his often constant critical attack as a result of his often sensational subject matter, his cheerful fecundity (when he wasn't creating novels, he and his wife were creating children), and, of course, his success with the book-reading groundlings of his time and ours. Critics and scholars have always been suspicious of popular success. Often their suspicions are justified. In other cases, these suspicions are used as an excuse not to think. No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person; give smart people half a chance and they will ship their oars and drift ... dozing to Byzantium, you might say."



* This references an earlier part in the book.

Two rejection letters in one day. I'm not sure if that's a personal best, a personal worst, or just a swift kick to the ego. I'm going to go with swift kick to the ego because I spent the entire evening trying to convince myself that I could, in fact, get published and it was just a matter of time. That rejection letters are usual. That I have at least twenty to go before I get to the low average.

Early success, I have decided, sucks. My first short story I submitted was published. My fourth short story was published. Then I was tapped for an anthology. Then I was rejected twenty times and gave up.

My first reply on the Maui Manuscript Marketplace was an interested. My second was a personal uninterested with encouraging words. My third, fourth, fifth, tenth, were uninterested. My first editor interview was a success. Then the publishing company rejected the manuscript. My first agent interview was interested. I still haven't heard back from her.

I've had such success in the beginning that I half expect it to be easy, I think, and it's not. I know this. Every damn book I've read on the subject, everyone I've talked to, every seminar I've attended, every friend or family member I've spoken to who knows anything about the subject and even some who are only guessing all tell me that I'm going to get rejected before I get picked up. I know this. And yet somehow it's still so hard to keep trying, to push past all those little impersonal notes that say 'thanks but no thanks' and remember that yes, I still do have a chance. That one or two or ten rejections is not the end of the world.

The first rejection letter I got from an agent was actually quite personal, which helps. It was typed out in such a way that I could see it had been personally typed by someone. Probably his secretary. It had been signed in what I believe is real ink and it was addressed to me. He cited his busy schedule and being behind in his reading as the reason he wasn't taking me up. Alas. But there is that, at least? And he's the agent I most desperately wanted to impress. The agency what sold a Mickey Spillane title. I got a personal note, and some personal consideration. Perhaps I don't suck as badly as I imagine I do.

I have a book, I believe it's called Making a Literary Life. The author is Carolyn See. In it, she talks about the importance of sending out kind little notes. I haven't read it in a while so I couldn't quote any of the motivation or purpose behind it, but it's something I've been trying to keep up with. Thank you notes for people who were interested in my work or rejected it with personal notes. Little letters to friends. Christmas cards, this year.

I was thinking about that last night, debating whether or not to send Thank you notes to the two bigger houses that rejected me. In the end I think I decided to, if only to make myself heard. I suppose that's what these notes mean to me, a reaching out blindly in the mass of people that squirm and writhe on this planet. Speaking, saying something to make my voice heard. People don't handwrite much anymore, certainly they don't send thank you cards. Even for rejection letters. Especially for rejection letters. It's a point of contact. A point of connection, it's a last ditch hope for something. Maybe just to make my presence a little wider in the universe. Maybe to reach out and make a friend. Two thank you cards, then, and add to that two letters to two writers whose contact addresses I know I can find and who have been a constant source of comfort and inspiration. Something in addition to the thank you letters. In her book she suggests one a day, I would suggest one a week. That gives you time to find people's addresses and maybe make an address book or a rolodex. Just a little letter. A little note. To an author, to a friend. A thank you card for a rejection slip. A bunch of balloons to a friend in pain. Something. Reach out, make your presence known.

When readers read my novels I want them to feel transported. That's because to me, novels are a form of distraction, escape, or entertainment.

When I was a little girl I remember kicking my feet up onto the wall till I was bent in an L shape and reading about seven novels in a series (two series, actually) back to back. I had a box of wheat thins and the only time I'd get up would be to refill my water glass. And I just read. The sun rose to noon and slowly set outside my window and I don't even think I remembered to turn the light on until it got really hard to read. I was so into the book.

To me, novels are a means to get away from something in your life, or to be something you're not. There's always something in your life you want to get away from, even if it's just the deadline or paying taxes or picking your kids up from school. And there's always something you want to try to do, even if it's something ordinary like baking a cake that doesn't burn all over the bottom. Novels give you a way to be that super-spy, that homemaker who can balance funds and cooking and cleaning and taking care of kids and everything with a smile on his or her face, the seductive person, the wily person, the person with the easy retort on his or her lips. They're entertaining, and they're safe, because when you finish you can put the book down and be yourself again. You can stop doing or being what it is you're doing or being by living through the book.

Novels are also relevant to life. They have to be, or it would be so alien that we'd be left sitting there going "Huh?" and we wouldn't be able to empathize with it, wouldn't be able to get into it at all. And maybe if we read a novel that hits close to home we're able to see our lives in a different way. Or maybe we're able to see the people around us in a different way. And if that bothers us, we can go "It was just a novel. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a story."

The wonderful things about novels that way is that they mean as little or as much as you want them to. I like that.

I want people to be able to empathize with my characters, get caught up in the plot, be transported into a place or a person that they've never been before. I want to be able to weave a story around them and when I'm done, have them come up for air blinking. I want people to cry when horrible things happen, or be outraged. I want them to root for at least some main character in the book, even if it's the villain. I want them to have someone they can walk along with. I want them to come away going, wow, that was intense.

I want people to be able to do what I did, sit down and read a book and not notice the sun rising or setting outside, how hungry they are, how tired or thirsty or whether or not someone's been trying to get their attention for the last five minutes. I don't want them to do what I did and read books as they walk around in the city, because that could get you run over. ;) But I want them to want to. I want them to feel sexy, or powerful, or tragic, or witty. I want to be their ticket to whole other worlds.

At some point in the course of any long work of fiction, you should be writing an outline. Yes, even you, I'm looking at you. Unless you possess an encyclopedic memory or have more patience and time than I'm willing to give almost anyone credit for, you will need an outline for your novel either before or after the fact, if only to keep track of what goes where. That is, contrary to apparently popular belief, important.

So. Outlining.

The advantage to outlining before the fact is that it gives you a framework on which to hang the detailed and drawn-out scenes of your novel. You can outline scene by scene, chapter by chapter, or even act by act, the specifics don't necessarily matter. If you're writing a mystery novel in which it's important that the clues follow in the correct order, you might find it better to get specific and go scene by scene. If you're doing a broad sweeping fantasy epic, you might find it easier to go act by act at first, and keep track of the specifics of where in the quest your characters are later.

An outline at the outset has the beneficial aspect of being "only" an outline. I'm sure there are those who will disagree with me; an outline is a guide, it's a tool to figure out what you're putting where, and when, and once you start writing the novel out things will undoubtedly change. It won't look as good on paper in the order that you intended, certain scenes will spin out longer and have unforeseen consequences. Like flesh and blood people, novel characters have a tendency to do what they want. They develop a sort of inertia of personality and it becomes hard to make them conform to a rigid structure; later outlines, if you write sequels, will have to anticipate their moves rather than give them moves to make.

There will be pitfalls. You will come across things in the fleshing out of your novel that you hadn't anticipated, things that become highlighted as the structure becomes larger and the flaws become more evident. Problems of pacing, too much emotion in one place versus the action flowing too fast in another. For these and many other reasons, an outline is and should only be a guide. Also for these reasons, if you do outline, the resultant novel should be only a first draft.

Outlining after the fact has little to do with what you learned in writing class at school. If you write cold, as it were, and start from the beginning to push on to the end, it will be little more than a catalogue of scenes. Sometimes this helps even if you've outlined beforehand, if only to sort out how far your novel has deviated from the original course.

Once you have your catalog of scenes you can start to figure out what plotholes you've inadvertently created, what plotlines you've brought up in the middle of the story or let drop three quarters of the way through, what you've left unresolved. It allows you to step back and review the novel as a whole without re-reading the entire thing.

For me, it's a process. Lather, rinse, repeat. Outline, write, reconcile. Outline again. For you, it may be different. You might only write one outline at the beginning, one at the end, or bookend your process with an outline and never touch the thing in between.

The biggest disadvantage I've found to outlining is the tendency to get fed up with a novel and stop halfway through. There's a certain keen surprise to writing a novel cold, to never knowing what's around the next page even while you're writing the thing and surely, as you're writing, you must have some idea of what's going on. And yet you don't. Not really. Outlining takes away a great deal of the mystique of that process, reduces writing from an obscure art that gives you the power of spontaneity and free form to a process with rules and methods and lines in which you have to color.

The advantage to outlining is also knowing what's coming around each corner. If you have the persistence to push forward and lay one word down in front of the other, you really have no excuse for writer's block with a complete outline. You know what your scenes are going to be, and all you have to do is get your characters from point A to point B and from point B to point C and so on. An outline gives you the stepping stone to move through the terrain that bogs you down. It gives you the reassurance of being able to go, five hundred words and I'm at the next scene. Only fifteen hundred words in this scene. I can make it. I can do it. I can pad this out to stretch to the next scene and surely the next one is a lot more interesting, isn't it? You can start fresh with each bit of your outline, hoping that this will be the one where the words flow freely and beautiful like they're supposed to when you write.

I can tell you about my process. Some of the books I write have a very specific formula, and I'm looking at you, mystery novels. There is a rhythm to the way these things are laid out, a rise and flow to the action. Other books, less so, but in all my books I outline chapter by chapter at the very least, sometimes scene by scene if the chapters encompass more than one. Then I write my first draft, sticking as close to the script as I can. Once done, I write a second outline of what actually happened, and look through to make sure everything's consistent. A description of the scene comes first, and then a list of plot points, locations, people we've met who will show up again and things I need to remember for the rest of the novel, perhaps even into future novels if I'm writing one of a series.

Then I go back and tidy up the thing. The second outline gives me a good idea of what I've dropped, whether or not my plot makes sense, where the holes are. I go in and fill those holes, drop whatever excessive plotlines I have going, maybe erase some extraneous characters if I have too many extras or merge similar ones into one person. I clean up the novel and then I write a third and, hopefully, final outline. By now I'm writing in more of a paragraph format, three to five sentences per chapter, because some publishing houses and agencies want an outline, and now I'll have one in case they need it. That's a thing that's geared towards publishing, though, and not strictly necessary.

Lather, rinse, repeat until I have a finished product.

I cannot recommend outlines highly enough, but as always with any bit of writing advice, it's highly subjective. I've given some instructions as to how, some recommendations, and the biggest detraction that the outline can have for the writing process, at least the biggest that I can think of. It's up to you whether or not you want to use one. I will say that, for me at least, it makes things a hell of a lot easier. But then, as the wise man said, you don't have to take my word for it.

I'm awake. Eating oreos and water for breakfast. I should be writing, and instead I'm going to hold forth on the sheer cliff face of a mountain of work I have to do.

I just told a friend of mine that my list of things to do today was staring at the back of my neck with a troll-sized glare and a nailbat. And if my list of things to do today is a troll with a nailbat, the list of things I have to do before Maui is a giant with a Tommy gun. Or maybe a carrock. Those big dragonny things.

Ah, I hear you say! But why aren't you doing it then?

'cause I'm a coward with no willpower whatsoever.

That's not really true. I've been writing more the past two weeks than I ever have, doing more productive stuff. But the coward part? That's so true. The closer I get to a completed novel, the more reasons I find not to finish it. I need X's permission. I need book Y. I don't have enough information on subject Z.

Apparently the theory on Maui is that, since I write ten times as fast or as much as any sane person, I have to present ten times as much work. And now I'm thinking, how the hell does that work? Shouldn't I just present a novel that's ten times as good as anyone else's?

The problem with that is, with writing, as with any other form of art, 'good' is highly subjective. The DaVinci Code that everyone's ranting about? 90% of my friends say it's crap. I haven't read it yet. The Black Jewels Trilogy, much as I love it, inspired a number of "I can do better than this." The Harry Potter books are crack, but I've read some of the other Harry Potter alikes, and they're not that bad either. So why the Harry Potter ones and not these others?

So, writing ten times as much, when I'm hitting so many different genres, something should come of it, right? Yes, but only if I put as much effort and time and care and attention into it as everyone else will be. I have no idea how much that is, either. Well, I know how much effort one person's putting into hers. One out of Goddess knows how many people who will be there. I can't predict what the others will write.

I'm not eloquent. Or at least, not in the sense that I can use the complex, multi-syllabic words you find on SAT and word of the day tests with accuracy and precision. I walk right past Derrida. I write stories. I write the dreams that come into my head, I think of a name and am blinded by the prospect that it would be the perfect name for a pulp detective, and that's it. I'm a simple person. I don't write tales of multi-layered wonder and I don't create works of art with my words. The feelings of inadequacy could power a small city.

But for what I'm trying to do, this doesn't matter. And I have to keep reminding myself of this.

It's not that I'm not smart enough to get it, or to write like I do. I suppose I could if I took the time and the creative writing courses, and bothered to study or read up on it. But I don't want to. I find that boring and pretentious. This is not what I want to do, and feeling inadequate because I can't do what a little time and practice would enable me to do, because I don't want to do it, that's along the lines of being jealous of birds because I can't fly and won't take the time to learn to hanglide.

(Decline hanglide!)

I tell stories. I write stories, and that's what I do. I give people the escape from banality they so desperately want. I write the romance that they dream of, that they imagine themselves in, themselves and the object of their most secret affections. I write the pulp novels that make them dream of being the gritty hero with the cigarette between his teeth and the blood on his knuckles. I write the fantasy novels that little girls read and pretend to be queens. Or witches and wizards. That's what I do.

And I'm damn good at it, too.

So. Ten of these for Maui. There's a lot of work involved. Synopses, cover letters, making outlines, making sure the first three chapters are at least up to snuff, and that I've got a full draft to present two weeks later if they need it. Making sure that each of the ten novels is publishable quality, even if it's "only" pulp noir, or "only" fantasy. "Only" genre. That's a phrase I hear a lot. From people who, even if I like them? There's a small part of me that looks, shakes my head, and whispers 'pretentious.'

I write for the common denominator people. Because the common people need stories too, as much as the person who gets the multi-layered folk-tale rewrite in the style of some dead philosopher. Or the gay romance with the love triangle that represents the socio-political aspects of three prominent countries. Or. Sometimes a cigar really just needs to be a cigar. And sometimes people just need stories. I'm not trying to be the Ayn Rand. I'm trying to be the Stephen King. I need to remember that. And people need stories.

Only genre. Is that really the derision of a person who, at the heart of it, just can't write genre? Should I even be caring about this? No. I should be writing.

So I'm going to go do what I do best. Write. Tell stories. At the end of it, hopefully I'll have ten good stories to show for it. Five, at least.

Who knows. Maybe someone will like them.

One of the hardest parts about writing for publication has little to do with writing and more to do with selling it.

If you want to become a published writer, you have to learn to summarize your novel in a sentence. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. No protestation, just do it. Once you've gotten a couple books out there ad they know you as a seller you may have people who will do it for you, but right now, you have to be selling yourself.

Not only do you have to condense it into a sentence, you have to condense it several times over. Most publishing companies ask for 1-5 pages of summary, either a synopsis (1-3 pages) or an outline (3-5 pages, usually). In the query letter itself you have to summarize again, in two paragraphs. Two short paragraphs. If you're selling the book in person you have to summarize it in a sentence or two, because you can't stand there and talk at them for five minutes. Well, you could, but you run the serious risk that they'd get annoyed and walk off. And you have to summarize it in five or six different sentences or two, because people get tired of hearing about the same thing over and over and you'll get tired of saying this.

Why do I ramble, you ask? Someone recently asked on their journal, how do I summarize my novel and do it justice?

The brutal answer is, you don't. It's probably impossible. But the equally brutal part of that is you have to, and you have to do it justice or at the very least you have to make it sound appealing. It's one of the bitch parts of writing, that when you're starting out you also have to sell your writing. It's not something I'm looking forward to dealing with on a more regular basis. Hopefully it's something I've developed some skill in.

Someone recently pointed out to me a tirade that an LJer (who goes by the name Dr. Joseph Mengele, and what does that say about a person?) wrote about the evils of NaNoWriMo. He compared novel writing to the scientific fields, asked what would happen if we allowed this kind of amateurish behavior in biology or chemistry, and said it was a ridiculous enterprise for a bunch of self-deluded idiots and had no redeeming value. I believe he also implied that it was detrimental to society as a whole and brought down the general intelligence of society.

I’ve never quite understood that point of view. Not in the sense of understanding that is empathic and visceral. It doesn’t ring any bells with me, nor push any buttons, nor create any type of feeling whatsoever. In fact, I’m only writing this essay because I need to get off my lazy butt and start writing today.

The point of NaNoWriMo has never been to turn out 50,000 quality words in a month. The odds of that happening are right up there with the monkeys and the Bard, it’s not going to happen to me in my lifetime, and probably not to you in yours. Whether or not you turn out 50,000 good words that can be polished and shaped into something of quality, that’s another matter entirely. But that’s not what NaNo’s for, is it? It’s to write. To sit down and just write, to say what you have to say as fast as you can say it and get a beginning, middle, and end in thirty days. That’s really it.

And there’s something admirable about that kind of dedication. No matter what field it’s in, there’s something very admirable about the ability to say, I’m going to do this difficult task in this limited amount of time and I am going to finish it.

Novel writing is hard. It’s hard to reach inside your mind and pull out all those thoughts, put them into something coherent on paper that runs in sequence and makes even an iota of sense. It’s even harder to do it for 50,000 words. Which isn’t even a novel by today’s publishing standards, it’s about half a novel. And even so, it’s an impressive accomplishment to be able to tell a story that long. And to do it that quickly.

And it doesn’t cost anyone anything. Really? It doesn’t 99.9% of these novels will never be published. 90% of these novels will never even be submitted. We do it because we want to. Because we can. Because we have a story inside us that wants to get out, and this is as good a way of any as letting it. Because we want to be novelists, and we’ve chosen this way to achieve our dream, even if you won’t see our books on the shelves at the local stores. It doesn’t matter. We’re doing this in the privacy of our own homes, on the privacy of our own computers. And if you care about that, you’ve probably got way too much time on your hands.

Why do these people put down NaNoWriMo? Ultimately, although it’s an old argument, I do think they’re jealous of the people who participate and win. I think they’re jealous that we can achieve satisfaction so easily. That we have stripped the act of writing a novel to its bare bones so that we can get it done, and flesh it out later. That we have said we are going to do this thing and figured out how we can actually do it. They’re jealous, I think, and upset and cranky and sententious because their brains are fossilized, old, used. They have narrowed their world to the acceptable and everything else, and now that I think about it I do find myself pitying them. It’s a wonderful thing, to be so easily pleased. It means you will spend a much smaller portion of your life unhappy.

I was re-reading Stephen King's On Writing the other day -- which is actually a very good book. Whether or not horror is your thing, it's worth picking up his book On Writing simply because he does tell it like it is, the way he's lived it and with some considerable success for so many years. Now, if Stephen King's writing style isn't your thing, you probably won't get much out of it.

But I digress.

I was reading the book the other day and in it he talks about losing his virginity. Not that one. The other one. The one where you're reading a book and you're struck by the revelation that, in fact, this book is crap. It's so crap that it isn't worth its weight in toilet paper. And it's so crap that you could probably better write a book, half-assed, with your eyes closed. And then it occurs to you, wait a minute. Why haven't I already done so?

I don't remember when that moment was. Not the first time, anyway. I remember the most recent time it occurred to me. I was reading [Title Deleted To Protect The Innocent] which, while a compelling story, was not written terribly well. Does that make sense? The story was nice, it was beautiful, I could picture it in my head, but something about the way it was written gave me hives. There were fragments of description that looked like they belonged in a romance novel. The paragraphs were four or five sentence long, seven at most; I'm not a big fan of the Dickens-Hugo-Fenimore Cooper endless paragraphs of doom, but a little depth might not go amiss. The characters, by and large, the ones who weren't main characters were fairly two dimensional. Even the main characters conformed to archetype without venturing far from the path. I'd swear the main character was a Mary Sue.

I was reading it and thinking, this person got published. Not only did this person got published, they got reprinted. These books are now being reprinted in omnibus edition. And she's putting more books out. Chances are she hasn't learned any sort of editing lessons; authors rarely get better so quickly, and most of the time authors in the fantasy and sci-fi genre seem to either stay at good or get worse. Much worse.

Dammit, I can do this. I am a better writer than a lot of these people I read. I do have style, even though my brain at five in the morning after my third cup of hot chocolate might not think so. I write, and even if I write several hundred thousand words of crap, even if only one word in every ten is successful, that's several tens of thousands of words that are good. And that's what editing's for, innit?

It's an almost cleansing, heady, a good feeling to realize that you can do it. It's the revelation, perhaps, not that other people are so bad you can do better, but that you're not as bad as you thought. I know I can use more of that kind of thinking.

There's always a point, and usually there's several points, where things have gone about as far as they could possibly go and gotten about as good as they can possibly get. It's at this point when I start manufacturing excuses not to submit works of writing to magazines, anthologies, or book publishers. It's also at this point when a bottle of whiskey starts to look pretty damn good.

I understand now, now that I'm trying to write for more than just my own gratification or release, now that I'm trying to get published, I think I understand why some people take to drinking. I've had more panic attacks over the novel I'm trying to submit than I want to think about. Certainly enough that if I were getting paid for my trouble alone, I'd be set for the rest of this year and all of the next. I've burst into tears so many times over the last week alone, and I'm only a fifth of the way into it at most. Final edits, working my way towards submission. The anxiety gets worse in direct proportion to the size/fame of the publishing company to which I intend to submit.

Considering I'm re-tailoring it for one of the big three or four, that should give you some idea of the size of the panic bubble.

I want a drink. I want a drink and/or I want some kind of mood altering drug that will leave me in a pleasant yet disconnected stupor from which there is no sight of agony or self-doubt. I want a new drug, as the man said, one that won't go away. One that won't keep me up all night. One that won't make me sleep all day. I want to have the confidence in myself that everyone seems to have in me. That'd be nice. Everyone seems to have so much confidence in me.

Which, really, is probably part of the problem. I have it built up in my mind so much that I should be a success, or that I am a good writer, or some other mountain of towering arrogance that I'm terrified to even try anymore. And when you think about my record for what I have submitted so far, I've actually enjoyed far better than usual success. I should be successful with my novels, equally successful. More so, since I have it on good authority that it's easier to sell a novel in at least the science fiction/fantasy market these days than a short story.

And that's not going to help when it comes time to submit the damn novel. Especially not when the rejection letter comes that I'm already working myself up to accept. It's going to make me feel as though I've done something so wrong that the success for which I should have been a shoe-in passed me by like a five dollar hooker.

Hence, wanting the drugs.

I'm stronger than this. But there are times when I just feel small.

You can avoid these rules by being one of my special people. The special people know who they are. They are also the people I regularly edit/read over for, if you were wondering if you are special.

---

1. COMPLETE YOUR WORK. I cannot stress this enough. In fact, I refuse to read it unless it is done, or you have a draft of it done. I will accept drafts. If you’ve written half of a novel, but it has a beginning middle and end, it’s a draft. I’ll look over it. But if you’re going to come to me with two scenes out of fifty for a something, I’m going to smile and tell you that finishing is the first key to good writing. By now I may have lost track of the people who have asked me if I can look over something and they haven’t even written anything yet! So sick of this. So very, very sick of this. DIE NOW.
   
   
2. BUY A GRAMMAR BOOK. This is also essential. While you’re at it, buy Strunk and White. The latter is no less important for the fact that I currently don’t own one. Actually, only buy Strunk and White if you’re one of those people who habitually marks up their books with little notes. I do that sometimes, depends on the book. Strunk and White is available online, so if you have money for either an internet connection or a cheap book at a used bookstore, there’s no excuse for the Strunk and White. The title, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, is Elements of Style. The grammar book is a point on which I will not compromise. Know the rules before breaking them.
   
   
3. WRITE LEGIBLY. There should really be no excuse for this considering I think everyone I know who would throw something at me for editing has a computer, and most of those are online anyway. If you’re typing something up, please double space it because I tend to like to edit manually. With red pen. There’s really no explanation for that, but I do. Possibly because it allows me to shake something at the people I rant at. I accept .doc and .txt files, and Word Perfect. Don’t know what that file extension is. If you write in Photoshop I will kill you. Don’t laugh, because I know someone who did that. And proof. Please oh please. Spellcheck is still not as effective as good proofing.
   
   
4. WANT WHAT YOU WRITE. I’m not kidding about this either, even if it is hard to explain. Don’t come to me asking to proofread a story that doesn’t mean anything to you. It’s a waste of your time and a waste of mine, and I’ll probably be more cranky about it than you. I don’t care if you’re not going to submit it or publish it or enter it into a contest. But if your writing isn’t worth something to you, if it isn’t written because you really want to write it, go do something else. Build a computer. Clean the house. Race stock cars. I am a writer, you are asking for my expertise. If you didn’t want it, you shouldn’t have asked me.
   
   
5. MEAN WHAT YOU WRITE. That gets a lot of the editing done right there. Stephen King said it well: if the first word that comes to your mind is accurate, it’s probably the right one. Leave it at that, please. Fancy words and concepts are all well and good for some, and if that’s what springs to your mind then so be it. But plain words are all right too. There’s no shame in small and short, and there is no lowest common denominator. You’re writing for an audience, even if you don’t know who, yet. In fact, if you’re thinking about writing for the lowest common denominator, you’re patronizing your readers. Don’t do that. Just write what comes to mind. The rest will follow.
   
   
6. KNOW WHAT I WRITE. I don’t mean that you should familiarize yourself with the complete works of me. But if you’re looking for someone to proof-read your DaDaistic future-set retelling of a fairy tale, I’m not your girl. I write plain and I write simple. I write the stories that are in my head and I have never taken a creative writing class in my life. I’ve only taken one or two philosophy courses. I don’t make a habit of familiarizing myself with creative, intellectual, or philosophical theory. And if you want me to pick up each and every reference to some dialectic you learned in university, I’m going to chuck it at your head. I want to read your story, not proof your paper.
   
   
7. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. If you hand me a story or a novel and then halfway through it you tell me that you’ve changed your mind, you don’t want to do anything with it and I don’t need to edit it, I will be very cross. I don’t care if you want to do anything with it beyond edit and polish it, I’ll read it over. But if you decide halfway through that you don’t want it read, then what was the point of the last half hour I just spent looking at it? Don’t waste my time. Don’t waste your time, either. Think carefully before you hand me something to read over and edit, and think twice before you do. Just to make sure.
   
   
8. BE PREPARED FOR BRUTALITY. When it comes to writing I do not spare your delicate sensibilities. If what you have written is crap, I will tell you so. I will, however, also tell you the best way I see to fix it. I generally don’t give praise in an edit or a critique unless I see something exceptional. Your work will likely be covered in more red marks than smiley faces, more “fix this!” than “good!” and it will be demoralizing. I don’t mean to be, but I don’t want you to turn out crap, either. If you want a yes-man, find a friend. If you want an edit, I can try to help. And don't ask me after "what makes you the expert?" Ever.
   
   

---

Most of this won't apply to people. These are, for the most part, only serious rules. But I have had a lot of people come to me lately asking me to read over something or another. No idea why. I can explain my qualifications for editor if you want me to, most likely if you've asked me it means you think I'm a good writer. Which is flattering. But I also take writing very seriously, so it behooves you to tell me if you're doing this as a casual thing or if you want me to take a good hard look at it.

And the special people can still disregard the tirade.

I'm running into problems with inspiration again. Fucking hell.

It doesn't help that I have other things I need to do, and I'm not doing those either. No, that's not true. I'm not doing some of them, the ones I need to get done in two days. I am doing other things which, while equally constructive, are not geared towards getting me to finish on schedule. But at least I'm being productive.

It's not helping the inspiration problem. My laptop is hot, my face is flushed, and my emotions are driving me crazy. I'm going to wind up with a long string of stories that read like Jagged Little Pill, and that's not good. Well, it could be good if some of them turn out to be decent pieces, but it's not good for my mental state and it's not good for my sense of dependancy. I need to be able to write whenever, whereever, however, no matter who in my life is doing what. Emotions are the bane and blessing of my existance as a writer. I require my emotions to inform the flow of my writing and the intensity with which it takes the reader. I require them to be far, far away from me when I need to concentrate.

There is no happy medium for this. Not that I've found, and not that I'm likely to find in the next few months. I will consume more chocolate in the coming six weeks than I have all year. Most of it in hot, liquid form, adulterated by water and milk and the occasional spurt of whipped cream. I will go up, I will go down, I will in fact turn into a barrel of monkeys.

None of this is helping with my writer's block.

There are all sorts of tricks I've taught myself over the years for how to deal with it. Pick a scene in my mind. Pick an emotion or a person, although I'm very wary of doing that one right now and if I do it's likely that none of them will ever be shown on LiveJournal. Pick a song lyric and write about the images it conjures. Some artists are great for that. Some are a little less great but there are gems of lyrics in there.

I could take characters from novels I've worked on and write short stories about them. I might do, about some of them, because while I never developed them fully into novel-length characters, I do know a little bit about them. I could take scenes from my dreams (or, more probable, from my nightmares since I have more of those) and turn them into scenes. I may do that for one dream I meant to turn into a novel, and couldn't. I've tried twice. Come to think of it, I think I will, since it was only the one scene.

I'm tired. Not sleepy, as I was yesterday, just emotionally exhausted. I probably should even take a nap but I have too much to do today, tomorrow, and Sunday. Too much to do in general before I go to Thingie, and then even after. Although after is less of too much to do than before. I'm thinking of all the things I have to do and I cannot concern myself with such mundane matters when I have to write. I need to remember how to just sit down at the keyboard and type words, no matter what they mean or turn into, no matter what else I have to do.

Inspiration. It occurs to me that maybe all I need to do is take some drugs and watch Yellow Submarine. The problem with that idea is that I have neither drugs nor Yellow Submarine, not even a bootleg copy of The Wall. I could put on a film, a TV episode, but all that would happen would be a surge of fanfic. Which isn't productive unless it's short, and I take out all the pronouns, in which case I can use it as a masquerade. A piece of original fiction. I should cave in and add these words to my word count, but I won't. There's a difference between writing fiction and babbling in your journal.

Inspiration. I had wise words about this a few days ago, and they're gone now. Inspiration's a fucker.

In the end, all I'm really doing here is whining. And there's a certain kind of relaxation in that, a catharsis. Clearing out all the self-important, self-deprecating junk so that one can get back down to work as one should be doing. I floss my mind with a bit of whine and some cheese and then I'm done. Boom. Time to put on some music or a good background video and sit down to do what has to be done. I'm relaxed and I'm ready to get back to work and carve out a chunk of the mountain I've ordered myself to reduce to sand. What I wish doesn't matter so much as what will be.

I will be an author. I am. I will be.

I will take the world around me and spin it into new forms that no one has ever seen before or will see again. I will amaze, I will anger, I will enrapture and I will destroy with what I create. I will take the world around me and every little part of it is fair game for what I do in my life. It's all a part of itself. The small reflected in the large and all of us little folk in the whole. It is, as a wise man once said, my job to tell the truth. To see what happens and write it down so that people pay attention. To see what happens and write it down just so that it's not lost. Nothing is new, but nothing is old and used, either. Inspiration is the art of knowing how things are and changing your point of view, then seeing the pattern clearly for the first time.

Perspiration is what happens when you drop the pretension and glue your ass to the chair and force yourself to start typing it all out. Annoying, but necessary.

In his book On Writing Stephen King talks about his Ideal Reader.

Actually in the part I'm reading now he's talking about his car accident, but never mind. I just read a graphic description of his injuries. Eew.

I knew what he was talking about but it never hit me until now that I had one of them there things. It's a romantic notion, like a soul-mate or a unicorn. Ideal Readers don't exist, except when they do. Eight months in a little under a week. I see you doing the math, you know.

Ideal Reader doesn't hold back. Ideal Reader doesn't snap or deride, either. Ideal Reader is the person who knows what you're trying to say, sometimes better than you do, just from reading a few paragraphs. Ideal Reader could pick out your writing style from a hundred anonymous posts at thirty paces.

There are other feelings here, but they're not relevant. This isn't about me.

This is about him.

Everyone should have an Ideal Reader, and I should have said, him or her. We'll call it him because for inexplicability most of my writing has been written for, by, inspired by men. I don't pretend to understand it, but it's quite entertaining considering how very female I am, and I say that to mean when I look down I can see the tips of my toes. Most of my writing has been written for men. My chief muse is very, and perhaps annoyingly male. In fact, he and Stephen King's muse, if he referred to who I think, would probably get together well as drinking buddies. I digress again, I do that often. You shouldn't let me get away with it.

Ideal Reader is the person for whom you write. Is the reason you picked one word over another. Ideal Reader sits in your head in the opposite side of the brain as your muse and waits, patiently (or sometimes not so patiently) for you to finish your story. And when you're done, Ideal Reader picks it up and you won't get word one out of him till you've finished it. Sometimes even when you've finished it. But you can take every word he tells you to the bank.

Ideal Reader believes in you. In your ability, in your stories, and in your heart. He is persistent in believing in you, even when you don't believe in yourself, so much so that it becomes obnoxious at times. You'll want to just hurl your notebook or laptop or typewriter if you're feeling athletic across the room and he'll be sitting on your chest telling you to stop that and get back to work. Telling you not to be silly. It'll be fine, just keep writing, you're a good writer. I say so, and you'd better believe me.

I hadn't noticed, or realized, or understood what an Ideal Reader was until I discovered that yes, I did have one. Now I think I understand. But I'm still not sure.

I have decided that these words will not count towards the end goal of achieving 1 million words by the end of the year.

Which is sad, 'cause I'm so far behind.

---

I hate writing in the first person. HATE. My hate for the act knows no bounds.

This is not to say that I hate everything written in the first person. Mike Hammer continues to thrill me in that secret girlish way I try not to acknowledge, Anita Blake was good until she began the Campaign of Suck (also known as the Campaign of Suck Every Cock that Comes My Way), and I can't imagine any other way to read certain Neil stories.

But I hate writing that way. Even when it seems to be the best way to do a piece or a project, I hate it. Part of me says it's the most pretentious thing in the world to do. Your main character has to be able to see everything of importance in order that your audience see it as well. Has to be able to bear up a sufficiently interesting wit and semblance of an interior monologue since it's the backbone of the background. Has to, in other words, not be dull as toast or stereotypical as an Italian mobster.

This makes it a pain in the ass.

I wrote a bit of Pen Bryton's story before I decided to scrap it and start it for NaNo. You may remember this because I complained my hard-boiled detective wasn't boiled enough. It's the first rant in this journal, too, for those of you who forgot or weren't paying attention or have no idea what I'm talking about. In retrospect, it's not that she wasn't boiled enough, it's that she was distilled down to her essential cliches. The hard-talking, tough-as-nails detective. Shyah, right.

In retrospect, too, this could be my fault. I thought I had a complete character; what I really had were a few scenes strung together by formulae and haphazardly infected by the germs of ideas. She wasn't a real character. And from what I am learning, you need to have a real character in order to be able to write in the first person. Unless, of course, you like dialogue that sounds as though it was made up from the top 500 most famous lines in [insert genre here] films.

No, I didn't think you wanted to read that. I don't want to write it. I write it, I read it over, I cringe and scream and throw my laptop across the room. Not really.

And now that I'm thinking about the previous attempt that was cut short, I'm starting to get nervous. That little demon fear is tapdancing up and down my spine worse than Michael Flatley at his most egotestical. Which is stupid. I shouldn't be getting this worked up about something I haven't even written yet, and certainly not something I'm trying to write and finish at a certain word count just to have it done. That's what editing is for. And I should remember this.

God, I hate writing in the first person. Hell. I swear.