Writing Advice
Writing Moments and Pauses
Do you share the same road bumps?
Is writing supposed to be completely hit or miss? Some, of course, will answer why yes, it is.
Every day when I sit to write, it’s the same old struggle. Oh, I absolutely love it. Daily I’m pulled to my desk to enter that promise filled temple to paint pictures with words.
The best writers are varied in the way they go about writing the next great piece. In other words, there does not seem to be an ironclad mold the writer needs to fit into. There are those that sit, write as it flows, like a creative exercise, the other extreme are those who have outlines pinned to the bulletin board, their dedication is serious about planning ahead, ideas on Post-It notes here and there for the story, etc. They all work. Which is your style?
About all that these different writers have in common is coffee!
Me? I’m more of a slogger. Well, not exactly. I’d put myself in the lower half of the middle-of-the-pack in production. This speaks nothing of quality. Referring here purely to quantity. Still obscure, the more I submit, the more it affects my quality and my score. Is this the right motivation? Probably not.
My score, or maybe simply having my story accepted by the publisher. Not far from there, are of course the claps and responses. Lo and behold the day your story gets Boosted or more! The road we’re all on. Just in case, allow me to say clearly it isn’t about ‘score’. It’s deeply about accomplishing something today, something I can feel pleased about.
Not too surprisingly, I think every writer has to air it out. You know, hang it out to dry. Has to put down in words where they stand at this moment. A sort of coming clean with the writing things that are on the mind. The gold vein that we all pick at. Some of us are so far better than others in the execution.
Thus, the reason there are the Top people and then there are the countless faces, masses, like me that are not near the ‘Top’.
For the record, I am way the hell down there. But hold on, this doesn't mean I’m not a writer! It’s refreshing in a way to know where I stand. It can be funny too. Like after reading King's wonderful book on writing a couple of years ago, or Cameron's’ The Artist’s Way, I came away feeling as if the next great American novel was just going to flow out of me that day. Nothing can be crueler than to realize that somehow reading King doesn’t translate into writing Hemingway like prose.
Not even close.
It’s just not set up that way. I’m reminded of my forty-year fishing phase. I read everything on the planet on fishing.
Oh, of course it helped, but not that much. Sure, great for carrying on a semi-informed conversation on the topic with strangers in the bait shop. The catch in how-to articles on fishing is that part that’s never overstated. If it were, no one would read them.
In other words, if you put me in a body of water identical to the ones these guys are catching those monster fish in Florida or Texas, guess who can catch them too? That’s right! Me. Oh sure, you have to have the basics.
I’m not saying practice doesn’t make perfect. It might. In writing, I’m one of those who bets that going into the craft, you better have something to offer, an opening, a glimpse, a light! And with each activity, be it writing, fishing, weight training, it is going to vary from person to person, naturally so.
We shouldn’t write as if it were a race, should we? I’m not asking an abstract question here. It’s sincere. It’s like that book contest every November, NaNoWriMo, you’d think it was the Indy, fking 500! Common sense says this will simply water down any chance at writing a ‘viral’, quality story. Right?
In fairness, it is worth mentioning that this contest has resulted in at least eight bestsellers.
In a way I feel for, and admire writers forced to buckle under a deadline. Every Medium writer’s dream, write a ‘viral’ baby! Even if it only pays twenty cents. This is when we must act ourselves, why we write? Do we write for the money? Do we write for the sheer joy of the act? How about we crave people’s reactions, claps, and responses, some other? Well, it could be a little of all those things.
It is quite a buffet that awaits us! Sure, it’s okay.
Lately, there are some things that come up more frequently than others. Sure, the type of things I just mentioned, but in a little more technical sense, there are some other ‘catches’ that you may identify with. Things like writing shorter sentences, like small, machine gun staccato blasts. These definitely freshen up the long paragraph: He smelled awful. She was wondrous. Sweet perfume. On and on. Goes forever. The only obstacle is me.
Another that is knocking on my door is keeping to shorter paragraphs. This still holds despite some publishers choosing to minimize short paragraphs unless they are a strong addition to the text. This one almost explains itself. There is something quite discouraging and challenging about huge paragraphs. Seems like a relatively simple lesson and yet there can be the tendency to ramble on and on. It’s taken me forever, but I think I have a handle on this.
Trying to use a different descriptive word of the same nature from paragraph to paragraph. A common enough pitfall. Repeating words to describe such as, oversized, oversized, oversized… (Not in the same sentence, hopefully!). Needs to go more like oversized, larger than life, ginormous…breaks it up a bit.
Another thing I’ve been doing too much, or that I’ve become more and more aware of, is starting paragraphs with I, or even sentences within paras, I, I, I… Trying to clean those up. There are a million times when I is called for when the overused appears to lack creativity. This is besides the most common complaint, as it makes readers feel the writer just might be full of herself.
Of course, as a tool to get an impression on, I feel that these repetitive things can help. It may be pretty basic but you’d be surprised how often I come across this writing. So, I need to pick carefully when not to do so. There it goes: I, I, and I.
It’s not just me. I read tons of stuff from Medium. It’s one of my daily preparations before I dive in with pen in hand. It’s surprising how many of us seem to disregard these classic goofs.
Another thing that crops up every time I review my story in Prowrite or Grammarly, WORD, others are corrections not always agreed on! More in reference here to word choice rather than a misspelling. It’s safe to say these apps correct to a point where they will mindlessly erase the creative juice of an artfully constructed line. Be on the lookout for that. Especially in dialogue.
A person from southern Louisiana would say the same thing completely differently if she were from the Bronx.
Stand firm with your chosen line of words. Especially the ones you or I might consider artsy, unique, a good contribution to what’s written. Some writing aids will rub these out in a blink.
As happening often, yesterday when I was going over points for this post, I read an excellent piece by Kelly Eden in Publicious: The lowercase trend annoys us, but it might be for the best. Her commentary on yet another modification in how we write. This one is simply the tendency to forget caps.
I’ve done this myself, and it has a strangely liberating effect! Is it wrong? Forbidden? Here’s the tickler: do the grammarians really have the last word here? Things are changing…
Finally, how about the total disregard for indenting paragraphs? Yep. So many of us do it. Instead of indenting, we do the visually satisfying added space. Another forbidden?
Who can say?
The next and final thing is a huge conundrum for me. I wonder how many of you might share my grief. Why don’t I, (can’t I) just launch into dialogue? Why this hesitancy? It’s so clear, I could write twice as many stories were I to ignore my dialogue resistance. I’ll tell you why. It’s difficult.
When I dive into dialogue, I feel as if I’m going under the surface instantly. It immediately becomes a thing of sink or swim. I throw myself into dialogue, then I must complete it. I can’t just start a conversation, say one between a bohemian dressed girl and a stranger in Central Park, then the next line mentions an unrelated bit about the war in the Ukraine.
I know, sounds ridiculous. My point is that I need to develop the will, the skill, and the dedication to follow through!
Once I begin down that road, I’m hog-tied to stick with the dialogue. In a blink, the test becomes whether the dialogue is any good. How it will read is a huge question. There’s a fear that it will lead to nowhere and I find it buries me in a sinking, almost hopeless feeling.
Other writers don’t all share this blockage. They tell me that once into dialogue they feel freedom and total control of the conversation. I get that, but for me, it’s about doing dialogue that is convincing and as real as possible. Uncomfortable is the word that comes when doing dialogue. When you stop to think about it, there are so many writers who simply avoid dialogue; have you noticed? But do you never want to deal with dialogue? Think of how much doing that cuts you out of.
It’s easier, after all, to stick with the surface stuff. The solution to writing good dialogue is like learning to ride a bike, stick with it come hell or high water and the flow and balance will come. Make the effort. Dialogue adds another feature, a powerful one, to your bag of weapons.
If you’re still here, I thank you. It also must mean that some of it resonates with you. Here’s a call to stay enthusiastic, dedicated and to keep on loving the craft as it takes us down that wild and winding road.
