I’ve had a secret WIP in progress for several months, and now she’s ready to share:
5 June
6 lbs 9 oz
Blogging may be spotty for the next little while, but we’re all doing well. (And no, you didn’t miss anything—I was saving this as a surprise for the Internetz. Oh, and as a reminder: this is #3 for us.)
To round up our week of inspiration, I thought it’d be nice to have the chance to share what you’re good at. Come on, you 
know there’s some aspect of writing that you’re pretty good at. You can claim that your critique partners say it’s good, or you can say that you’re pretty good at it on the second draft (first drafts don’t count here anyway), if you feel like it’s boasting, or you can qualify it with what you’re not so good at yet.
Personally, I’m pretty good at dialogue—or so I’m told. (I know a couple things I can work on in that area, of course, but “good” doesn’t mean “perfect on the first draft.”)
So what are you good at?
Photo by Joel Telling
I love writing. I have loved writing for most of my life. But when it comes to pursuing publication, love is not enough.
Love can help you to write every day (if that’s how you work). Love can help you to learn more. Love can make the world a happy, rosy place—remember when you were in love the first time, or when you first fell for the person you’re with now? Everything feels happy and skippy and you just know you’ll be together forever because you’ve got the right one (baby. Uh huh.).
You can love writing, and write every day—and if that’s what you want to do, great! If that makes you happy, you are a lucky, lucky person. Go forth, write and be happy (and never, never submit for publication. The rejection would make you sad, and if writing for yourself is enough, don’t taint that.).
But it takes more than love to do the work that’s required to reach publication (and beyond—it soooo doesn’t end there!). As the very-soon-to-be-published Kiersten White puts it:
This is where you switch from having a hobby to being a writer. The mind-numbing, hour-after-hour, please-I-don’t-want-to-do-this-anymore-let’s-just-watch-Arrested-Development-on-DVD-instead, how-on-earth-is-writing-this-much-work stage. Anyone can write a book. Everyone who wants to should. But it’s only when you put in the work (and make the sacrifices, and give up your social life and your sanity and occasionally lower your personal grooming standard) to take something that was fun and make it into something that is good that I think you cross from being a hobbyist to being a writer.
Writing is WORK. The best work, sure, but work nonetheless.
To use our love analogy again, let’s say you get married—and then comes reality. Suddenly, the pure euphoria of being together everysecondofeveryday isn’t there. You have an argument. You yell at each other. You don’t feel that overpowering high in his/her presence.
Suddenly, it takes more than love to keep going. It takes commitment. And it takes work. You keep going because you know the love is there, because you know this person/book is worth it—but love isn’t enough to get you there by itself.
How do you stay committed to your work? How do you cope when your love of writing isn’t enough to keep going?
Inspired in part by The Fantasy of Passion by Travis Robertson; photo by Victoria
I’m in an inspirational mood this week. (Or maybe I’m just procrastinating working on my latest round of revisions. I don’t know.)
Sometimes, we all get the “Am-I-crazies?”, as Nathan Bransford calls them. Publishing is a long slog, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s worth it to keep pounding away at that novel that no one might read.
Today we get a story, and it’s not about a writer. Once upon a time, there was a man who decided to become an actor. He did all the requisite things at the time: signed a contract with a studio for bit parts on television, pulled in a regular salary as an extra in mostly non-credited and non-speaking roles. After five years without any real progress, he learned a trade to support his family. But he wasn’t ready to give up on his dream.
His trade brought him into contact with up-and-coming directors—directors who gave him small,but good parts in their films. Each contact, and each role, probably felt like a big break, but after another five years, he was still mostly playing one-off characters who didn’t even warrant a last name on television shows. Still, he wasn’t ready to give up:
I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn’t give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you.
After a decade of trying to make it, one of those up-and-coming directors hired him to read lines with other actors auditioning for parts in his next movie. Eventually, that director came to really like the way our hero interpreted one character in particular, and cast him in the role.
Yeah, the crew thought the film was a B-movie joke at best, some of the cast believed the film would fail, and even our hero thought the film was “weird.” The dialogue sucked (our hero helped improve it). The director didn’t like the style of the cinematographer—or, it seemed, the actors. Production and post-production problems pushed back the release by months. By all accounts, it looked like the movie wouldn’t do much for our hero’s career before it was finally released, 33 years ago yesterday.
You might have heard of the film. Our hero played a guy called Han Solo.
What do you think? What are you favorite inspirational stories or quotations?
quotation via The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood
Photo by Joe Flood
Sometimes it just seems like it’ll never happen. The black marks on the page are going to beat you again, and this work will never be publishable. Or even readable. Or you’ve queried and rewritten and queried and rewritten until you don’t even recognize your story anymore, and still no bites. Or you’ve snagged a killer agent and whipped that MS into shape, but no news really isn’t good news.
We all get discouraged sometimes. I was feeling discouraged a few weeks ago, right before I attended a writing conference last month. It was so good to be reminded that perseverance pays off in publishing, as in just about everything else. And here’s the visual reminder they shared at the conference:
Remember: don’t give up! Surrendering to discouragement is the surest way to fail.
What do you think? How do you recharge when you feel discouraged?
A while ago, I posted about watching the making of Finding Nemo. I really enjoy Pixar’s storytelling skills, so to learn how that story was developed was really interesting.
I was amazed to learn how much work it takes (although I’ve certainly put a lot of work into my own stories)—but not just from one person. Movie studios use entire story departments to help identify weaknesses, brainstorm new ideas, make the jokes better, get the story structure right and more (certainly makes a regular critique group pale in comparison!).
I heard that and thought, “I want that. And I’ll bet I’m not the only one.”
And I thought this would be a great place to do it.
The lucky volunteer submits whatever s/he wants help with: this could be the seed of an idea if you’re in the brainstorming phase, a query-length blurb if you’re looking for more specific brainstorming help or stuck in between plot points, a synopsis if you want structural advice, or even a scene or passage if you can’t quite put your finger on what’s not working. For maximum effectiveness, a short list of what you’re looking for is helpful.
I post the material on the appointed day. Then we, the kind, thoughtful and helpful readers and writers around here, put our minds to work. Think about it all day and come back with an insightful idea, or post the first thing that pops into your head.
Of course, the volunteer author doesn’t have to use anything we toss out—but now s/he isn’t the only one having to think of ideas. And even if we don’t come up with something specific to help the volunteer, maybe something one of us says will spark another idea and the story will take off again, magically healed 😉 . (The volunteer is more than welcome to engage in a discussion, of course, but we probably don’t need a full explanation of just why our ideas won’t work.)
Our first volunteer is . . . me, of course! (How would you volunteer if you didn’t know about this? Silly.)
Title: (Uhhh…. I don’t do good titles until I finish first drafts)
Genre: YA paranormal
Sixteen-year-old Lacey Pratt already knew she wasn’t the kind of girl who got a lot of attention—a fact that’s driven home she starts hearing others’ thoughts. Her new telepathic abilities are overwhelming at first, but Lacey soon realizes how she can best use her abilities: to finally make James, her long-time crush, notice her.And it actually works. But soon after they start dating, James is murdered—and someone is thinking Lacey’s next. Now she must discover others like her and learn how to really use her powers for good if she’s going to stay alive.
Note: this is the same idea that generated the scene for the KissingDayBlogFest, but my latest iteration of the idea makes that scene not work.
Want to participate? Jump in the comments! Want to volunteer? Send your material—including what you’re looking for—to storydept at JordanMcCollum.com. I’ll contact you to work out a date.
Don’t forget to share your best writing lesson for a chance to win fabulous prizes!
Obviously, nobody else knows our story and our characters like we, the authors, do. While critique partners are absolutely invaluable in telling whether a scene or even the whole plot works, they don’t have to be the be-all and end-all when it comes to determining what, exactly, goes into your story. As I said yesterday, immediately changing your work based on one person’s opinion is a knee-jerk reaction means you’re writing to an audience of one.
This is exactly why we need more than one critique partner. In fact, it’s why we need even that first critique partner. When one person has read your story (i.e. you), you have the feedback from one person. When you get feedback from one other person (who, let’s face it, may be just as blind as we are when it comes to storytelling, craft, publishing or what have you), now you have two people’s opinions. What if there’s a tie? What if one of you is dead wrong and cannot see it? What if you both missed something?
We need several pairs of eyes to look over our work, to catch our mistakes, to offer different points of view, to get as broad a range of opinions before we start trying to get our books out there and published. (Oy—do you know what it feels like to get feedback in a rejection that you’ve already gotten from a critique partner?)
Take your time in getting critiques (the hard part for me!) and in applying them. Let the feedback set in for a few days, and see if your critique partners all or mostly agree on those points.
Several of Rick Daley’s rules for taking critiques hearken back to this principle:
Rule # 3: Seriously contemplate your changes. Take time. Work through it. You never microwave a roast. Slow cooking always turns out better. (NOTE: what’s with all the food references?)
Rule # 4: Look for common threads in the feedback and start there. The advice of the many outweighs the advice of the few. . .
Rule #7: Be ready to disregard any feedback that doesn’t make sense. Sometimes people will tell you to say something different, but that does not always equate to better. Some people may give ill-advised feedback. If it doesn’t make sense and if clarification [rule #6] seems unnecessary, just disregard it.
The majority doesn’t have to rule, of course—it’s still your story. You can do what you want, what you feel is right. But if some advice is truly wrong for your story (because, say, your CP hasn’t read the whole thing yet and couldn’t possibly know that person is the murderer), still look to see if there’s an underlying issue prompting this advice that needs to be resolved. Maybe that character’s behavior in this scene is too strange or leaves too big a clue.
And what if they tell you to cut your favorite part of the story?
The fact that it’s your favorite may be a bad sign in and of itself. We all have our “darlings,” and yes, some of them must be killed. Give the advice some time. Weigh it out. Contemplate how cutting or changing that element would change your story. Could you take it in new directions? Would it deepen the characters? Make the plot stronger? Or just plain be more interesting?
I’ve mentioned this before, but even if we’re initially opposed to some advice, sometimes thinking it through makes a huge difference:
I should add here that fortunately I’ve been a victim of this one, too. My favorite example here is when a critique partner suggested I add a scene near the beginning of the book. I hemmed and hawed over this privately—until the scene started playing out in my mind. It was so entertaining—and just like she said, solved so many problems—that I just had to write it, just to see what it’d look like. (And when I still liked the finished product, I stuck it in there.)
And, as always, remember to thank your critique partners!
What do you think? How do you know when (and when not to) take advice from critiques?
Photo by Casey Smith
We’ve talked about receiving bad advice before. And sometimes, recognizing bad advice is as easy as reading it, like when I received a suggestion that would kill all the tension in a story—or kill the murderer in the opening scene.
But not all advice we have an adverse reaction to is bad. Sometimes it just hurts us on an emotional level, and we react from that place instead of really listening to the ideas in the critique.
Rick Daley, who runs the Public Query Slushpile, offered this advice on receiving critiques:
Rule # 1: Don’t pout if you hear something negative. Remember that you asked for the feedback in the first place. Don’t get defensive and don’t argue.
What’s the best thing to do if the advice hurts? Do. Not. Engage. If you respond emotionally to something a critique partner said analytically, first of all, the CP’s entire frame of reference is off. This can escalate very quickly into emotional and even personal attacks—when really, your CP (probably) wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. (This assumes your CP wasn’t unnecessarily harsh or otherwise insane critique partner.)
If you find the critique painful, simply thank your critique partner and put the critique away for a while—however long it takes to take the edge off, and then some. (It might also be a good idea to take a step back from your work for a while, too, if you’re still that emotionally invested. Critique partners are only the first of many people who will respond to your work!)
Critiques can be a good way to work on developing that “thick skin” that you’ll need when you face rejection after rejection, endless rounds of editorial revisions, or harsh reviews.
Of course, just because some feedback hurts doesn’t automatically mean you should follow it. Immediately changing your work based on one person’s opinion is another knee-jerk reaction that may not be helpful either. We’ll look at how to determine whether to follow hard advice tomorrow.
What do you think? What do you do when a critique hurts?
Photo by Paul Iddon
