Category Archives: Creative Process/Craft

For Beginning Writers – Should I Show Anyone My Writing?

22 Wednesday Apr 2020

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The answer is yes, absolutely. In order to progress in your craft you will have to ask others for feedback. But be picky. (Of course you can show your writing to your mom and your spouse but these aren’t likely your sources of expert constructive feedback.)

There are two types of people you’ll want to share your writing with: readers and writers. 

Select three people who are readers, people who read A LOT, preferably in your genre. Now find three writers. Ideally, you’re already part of a writers’ group. If so, focus on them. If not, look for local authors with a few publishing credits. Take their classes at the local writers’ center. Read their books, reach out to them. Most of them would be happy to take a look at a reader’s work and provide some hard-earned advice.

Share your work with folks from these two groups, a few at a time. Ask them for specifics on your work. What you’ll have in the end is expert reader and experienced writer advice on your work, constructive criticism you can use to continue to propel your drafts forward.

For Beginning Writers – My Writing is Awful!

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Of course it is. So is mine. This might be a great time to purchase a copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird and read her third chapter about terrible first drafts. And then read the rest of the book.

All writing starts with junk, stuff no one will ever see. No matter how accomplished a writer is, their early drafts are awful. We have to write the junk to get to the good stuff. This is the only way good writing occurs. Quality comes of quantity. 

Learning to write is just like learning to play the piano or learning French. You don’t play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 23 in your first six months of lessons. And you don’t read Les Miserables in the original language in the first few weeks. What you’re perceiving as failure is actually great news. You have a bunch of bad writing! This is iron-clad evidence of progress!

Solely for the Writer’s Use

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer

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Earlier this week I was working on the second draft of a chapter of a manuscript. As I wrote I inserted bits right into the text [THAT LOOKED LIKE THIS. NOTES ABOUT THE DRAFT FOR RESEARCH OR FOR THE NEXT DRAFT].

This has been a long-standing habit for me in early drafts, but this time, as I did it, I had a realization. An aspect of the writing process crystalized for me, as it occasionally does.

Our tendency is to think early and often of the reader and to try to make a piece take shape as soon as possible, to take a form that will entice a reader. While noble, I think this is an error and a risk to the process.

The first three drafts of any piece of writing are strictly for the writer. Solely for the writer’s use. These early drafts teach the writer what the piece needs, what form it is to become, what elements need to be included––and what elements need to be excluded.

It is not until the fourth or fifth draft that the writer should begin to consider the contract with a reader. Not until this point, as these later drafts are created, is the piece starting to stand on its own. Only then is it capable of withstanding the scrutiny necessary to bring it before a reader. Only then does the writer understand it well enough to invite the reader to collaborate.

Writing in the Storm

15 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Writing Discipline, Writing Life

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Writing is very difficult for me right now. More difficult than normal. It’s hard to focus, to give writing the priority, the time, the energy. It feels impossible to push the uncertainty of the future out far enough to create room, build a scaffold, and hold it at bey.

You’re not my therapist and this isn’t a bad Facebook post, so I won’t go into all that’s happening. Suffice it to say that times are tough for me and those I hold dear and writing seems like the smallest, most insignificant preoccupation in the world.

But is it?

Maybe now is the best time to write, to create, to make. Perhaps now, when life seems to be sprouting only weeds and no grain, is the time to allow creative work its space. After all, writing is a constant. Circumstances change, difficulties rise and successes fall, the stew of hope, fear, want, and wish simmers and steams, yet writing has been at my elbow for half my life, and welcomes me back each day.

So, here’s not to better days. Instead, here’s to staying the course and learning along the way.

To What Might We Compare the Writing of a First Draft?

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

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Verily, Verily, I say unto you, the writing of a first draft is like hacking a path through a previously undiscovered forest. One observes and responds to the rise and fall of the ground at his feet, while at the same time devising a plan for how the path might one day be converted into a super highway with restaurants lining the exits.

Again, the making of a first draft is like picking a splinter from one’s palm. The pain and frustration of the effort far outweigh the progress and it seems gaining leverage on the source of the concern inches further away with each attempt.

Or put another way, the making of a first draft is akin to a starving man who feeds himself, not by stealing bread, but by planting a field of wheat. His patience and focus must displace his hunger.

Once more, the making of a first draft may be compared to a man who, upon digging in a place that has captured his wonder, finds much rock and dirt. Yet upon breaking the clods and splitting the boulders he discovers traces of precious metal. At this he gains a vision for the smelting of goblets and platters––an entire table-setting gleaming—and as he digs he imagines those who might dine, their conversation, laughter, the ruffle of their collars and cuffs.

Mood Work

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Reading as a Writer, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

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In 1998, not long after my father died, I read 1984 by George Orwell. A great novel, far from great timing. When we read a dramatic story, watch a film, listen to music, our brain releases the same chemical responses as when we experience ‘real’ emotion. Our brains don’t process fictional stimuli differently. The recovery is certainly different, but in the moment we’re there, we’re all-in. Between my father’s death and the murk of 1984 I found myself in such a funk it took some months to find balance again. Of course having a son under six months old, no doubt added to the brew of emotions.

As a writer I have found the same potential pitfall. 

I don’t know if my current project is darker than The Confessions of Adam, but it has fewer highs and less humor. Writing drama or tragedy is not immediately different than reading it. Writers are the first readers of their work. We immerse ourselves in it––is there any other way?––in order to create it. For this reason we are the first to traverse (and re-traverse over and over) the emotional terrain of the narrative. Only later does the craft of making story begin to take hold. There is an early, necessary, and significant emotional investment on the part of the writer. And this is an investment on which we’d do well to keep tabs.

First Readers

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Creative Process/Craft, Debut Novel, Writing Life

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As advance copies of The Confessions of Adam go out and are read, I’ve entered this strange new land. I’ve ceased to interact with the words on the page and am now listening to readers’ perspectives of the novel. Listening to the first members of my audience—my first readers—as they make the book their own.

This is a new skill. 

Like learning to talk about any major event in your life, it isn’t simply the vocabulary and the formation of concepts and constructs for thinking about it, but also learning what to say and what not to say and—in this case—slowly forming the language needed to comment while doing all I can to support the reader as they have their experience. 

I am humbled and amazed that a story I have written is functioning at a level that causes readers to think about relationships, motivations, and choices. I am learning, not what I have written, but all that what I have written can potentially mean. 

It is a strange new land. But like every stage of this adventure, it is proving to be a gift.

The Last Read

31 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Debut Novel, Role of the Writer, Writing Life

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This week I finished reading, for the fourth time in six months, my debut novel The Confessions of Adam. This was my last reading. With an advance reader copy in hand, it was the last opportunity to edit the text. I finished the novel.

Three thoughts come to mind at this milestone:

  1. It is strange to be so familiar with a text. A sort of blindness sets in, an inability to process any further what text is doing. Instead of learning more about the intent of the story with each pass or draft, I now learn what the story is about from readers, from engaging with readers in conversation about the novel. 
  2. I’ll not do it again. The temptation is to say to oneself, ‘I must do this again. I must write another novel like this one.’ But the fact is I won’t. I won’t do this again. The next novel will be different in more ways than it is similar. The next novel will have its own challenges and personality. Each book is a unique, a custom effort.
  3. You never finish a book, you just stop. Leading up to this reading, there had been dozens of beta readers and editors, including Cyndi and I. Yet we still identified around 35 edits. I am convinced that I could read this novel every month for the next year and find changes I want to make. It is time to stop, to go to press. I’ve done all I can.

So long, Adam of Eden and Oren of Susa. It has been a pleasure working with you.

That

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

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As I complete the final edits of the manuscript which will be my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam, I thought that I’d share with you the other item that my editor so kindly identified.*

What we’re dealing with here is called a “weasel word.” You can Google this. Better yet, look it up in Merriam-Webster. It’s there. I knew nothing about it until my editor pointed it out. 

As it turns out, my weasel word is that.

Here are two examples from The Confessions of Adam:

Incorrect: The telling of it feels like a tale. It could be an elaborate dream that he’s had and that he has now come to claim as personal history.

Correct: The telling of it feels like a tale. It could be an elaborate dream he’s had and has now come to claim as personal history.

Incorrect: ”No, the Maker isn’t visible, but he says he can see Him. Adam says that he can see the Maker just as a blind man can see his lover enter the room.”

Correct: ”No, the Maker isn’t visible, but he says he can see Him. Adam says he can see the Maker just as a blind man can see his lover enter the room.”

Clearly, those sentences didn’t need that. In fact once I removed that, the sentence shone brighter.

Shoot. Hang on. Let me fix that opening sentence.

As I complete the final edits of the manuscript which will be my debut novel, The Confessions of Adam, I thought that I’d share with you the other item that my editor so kindly identified.*

Forgive me.

*See the previous blogpost for my other editorial gotcha.

Beginning

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Writing Discipline

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The work of writing looks exactly the same today as it did ten years ago. I go sit in a chair at a table and open my laptop or notebook, and form and order words. It’s no easier or harder than it was yesterday and it’ll be no easier or harder to do tomorrow. 

Picasso said, to know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing. Any understanding that I gain of the product I’m seeking to produce comes when I’m in the throes of writing. 

Thus, each day I begin again. 

The planning is very thin. I plan to sit down at a specific time with a specific starting place. That starting place may be where I left off yesterday, or a character that needs further development, or a snippet of dialogue that needs reworked. But very quickly after taking my seat any notion of where I thought I might be going that day is dispelled. The work tells you what it needs.

Beginning isn’t something you do once, or at the top of each story. 

Beginning is what you do every day.