Category Archives: Writing Discipline

There Are Parts of It That Are Weak

23 Wednesday Sep 2015

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I’ve seen it dozens of times, in my own work and that of my peers. After finishing three drafts of a story there are parts of it that are weak, sections that aren’t carrying their weight. They are easily identified by how they interrupt the narrative pace of the piece, how they pull the reader out of the story.
I tend to fixate on them. They are like splinters in the bottoms of my feet until I get past the following decision:

1. Cut the weak sections and flesh out what is left in order to fill the gap(s) they’ve left behind (if necessary^).
2. Go on to create draft number four and focus on those sections, trying to bring them up to snuff.

Option one is difficult. I like this harder path because that is where the risk and reward are greatest*, however, it is good to pause and give option two some serious thought. I’ve taken option two more often lately and it has worked out well. Why? At this point (draft three complete) those sections that are weak are not far enough developed to make the call that they should be cut** .
What I’ve seen over and over again is the weak sections (after another several drafts) become strong, even rivaling the strong sections. The result is a multifaceted story, one that has depth thanks to those passages that were “weak” and that I nearly laid out on the chopping block. I look back now and see that I was once willing to give up on what would become a significant layer of the story.

*See my post from June 6, 2012 or March 12, 2014. You need to be comfortable cutting material. Very comfortable.
^You would be surprised at how little deleting material from a piece hurts what is left.
**I heard recently on a NYT Book Review podcast that Jennifer Egan drafted parts of “A Visit from the Goon Squad” eighty times! That is mind boggling; however, it is much closer to the reality of crafting fiction than most writers can imagine. In any case, three drafts is only a start.

Another Mystical Consideration

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

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Following my last post, I’ve got one other mystical consideration for you as you work to live as a writer*.

There needs to be attention given to the pace at which one lives in order to consistently produce creative work.
When professional or family life gets hectic, taxing my emotions and energy, I tend to slough off on my spiritual disciplines of prayer and reading scripture. I let time get the upper hand. This equation of being busy and non-meditative represents a great downward slide that is terrible for creative work.
I’ve had highly productive spurts in the throes of depression or when in a position of being victimized by the demands of my outer-life. Usually these spurts have come in the form of poetry or flash fiction. But they’ve been short and hot, like magician’s flash paper.
Circling back to the last post, a hectic pace does not allow for consideration and attention to whatever it is you’re handling. Nuance and focus are replaced by high volume (multi-tasking^) and spotty quality.
Long-term deep thought requires physiological space. That space will not come naturally or as a result of simply sitting down to write. You’ve got to plan for it. You’ve got to live your life in a way that will allow contemplation. Writing requires it.

*So that is two posts in a row where I’ve, as I put it last time, waxed mystical. Some of you are going to appreciate this sort of material, many of you won’t. That doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll tell you what I think you need to hear, dear reader. But since I tend to focus on the practical, craft-oriented, tangibles of getting the work done, you’ll likely find little of this in the future.
A little of this goes a very, very long way.

^Multi-tasking is for computers, not people.

A Mystical Consideration

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

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It is uncommon for me to do this – forgive and bear with me as I wax mystical.

It is critical to your creative work to be attuned to ideas* that come into your mind, to be aware enough to notice them when they arrive and snag them when they do.
Such ideas slide in from the wings and are on stage very briefly. They appear during meetings at work or while you’re standing in line at Meijer. They show up while you’re brushing your teeth or sweeping your garage.
You don’t summons these ideas. You don’t conjure them. They come when they please. They come to you with the mundane, in the daily routine. You may not be sure you detected anything at all, but when you go to capture them, to write, it turns out that there was a wonder that shimmered in your periphery.
Your brain has energy to spare. It is always working, all of it. The skill a writer needs to learn is to notice what it offers and to harness it. This is the creative dance between the conscious and the subconscious. This awareness is another of the creative muscles you must build.

*I’m talking only about creative ideas here. They could be ideas on characters or ideas on how to structure a piece (“maybe that poem should really be a flash fiction”).
Ideas about your next career move or what to get your spouse for his/her birthday do not require this sort of awareness. The practical matters flop down right in front of our faces. That calculus is all done in the logical, conscious part of our minds. The brain’s creative processes are factors more subtle than this.

A Round-up…of Facts about the Daily Effort of Writing Fiction

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Qualities of Good Fiction, Writing Discipline

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If after a few attempts a particular sentence or section is not working, delete it. Following this maxim has never let me down. The remaining text has never suffered in the absence of the troubling material.

Good writing only comes of bad writing. There is no shortcut to successful prose. Thinking, outlining, discussing, researching, scheduling, obtaining instruction – these are all necessary, but they don’t result in functional paragraphs on a page. Only through writing do we arrive at a draft manuscript. Bad writing is not something to be avoided. It is something to be accomplished with the knowledge that it is the gateway to good writing.

Try writing from a challenging POV*. I recently wrote a short short story (flash fiction) from the perspective of a character that dies half-way through the narrative. And then I maintained that POV for the rest of the story. No POV should be considered off-limits. Such decisions often lead to more imaginative story because they cause the writer to think differently.
Especially try this if a story is coming off flat.

Action is the result of character A trying to get something from character B that character B doesn’t want to give up. It doesn’t have to be a big thing; it just has to be some thing. In order for there to be action there must be reaction. Agreement between characters is not action and won’t result in story – no matter how interesting the agreement might be.

*Point of View – the perspective from which the story is being revealed. Might be a character or a narrator. Might be 1st or 3rd person, close or omniscient, etc.

You Are In No Position

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

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“You are your own worst critic.”
This is assumed to mean that you are harder on yourself and on what you produce than anyone else. This is probably true. You know more than anyone else. You see mistakes or hear a missed note. You know your vision for what you’ve created and this vision is your measure of success.
You probably do have some degree of understanding if something is working or not, but that is where it ends. You are entirely too familiar with and invested in your work to know how good or bad it is. Your understanding is subject to all sorts of tampering. You’ll find your own criticism of your work is usually more about meeting some ideal you’ve imagined than a fair evaluation of the work you’ve actually done.

While I can still stand behind this definition and agree that it has some value, I think there is a more helpful meaning. There is one that can do more to guide us and provide a bit more nuance, one that puts our focus where it should be.
I think the phrase means that you are in no position to evaluate your own work. Criticism of your own work is not good criticism. It is flawed. Your criticism is not balanced. It can’t be. It is not objective.

It is surprising how often my peers walk into the graduate writing workshop and make small talk before class starts about the work we’re about to workshop – their work. They say it is awful, just not good at all. Sometimes this depreciation of their work devolves into apologies and discussion of the next draft, as if this draft – the one we’re about to look at – is a loss.
This is not only bad form, but it is also making a terrible assumption. While it assumes that you can objectively evaluate your own work, it also assumes that the discussion we’re about to have in workshop is academic, that the outcome is set.
I’ve gone into a workshop submission very unsure of the quality of my writing and found my readers appreciated it more than I did. I’ve also gone into workshop with a piece that I thought was working quite well, only to received feedback that it wasn’t – feedback I could objectively only agree with.

You are your own worst critic, so find someone else to review your work. Put your energy into finding your own best critic, and then trust them to do their job. Make them your reader.
Your job is producing work. Focus there.

Like a Monk Going to Mass

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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You may think you can just do it in front of the TV in the living room or at the dining room table in the morning where you can be with the kids while they have breakfast and still get your writing done.
You may think you can just do it at work over lunch. Ignoring that call from your boss even though everyone knows you are in your cubicle and you look like you’re working.
You may think you can just do it in bed, keep your tablet on your nightstand, think about your characters all day and then slip your writing time in before you go to sleep.
You may think that there already exists a crack in your routine which you can fill with writing like you would caulk or putty.

No.
Trust me.
I’ve tried all of these. Let me save you the energy. None of them worked. None of them worked predictably, every day, day after day. None of them led to sure productivity. You’ve got to be more intentional.

There is one thing you really need. A place to write. Seriously. You do.
Your place may be that table at Starbucks right next to the newspaper stand that everyone else seems to overlook. Your place may be a table in a spare bedroom under a window, where you have room for a couple of bookshelves and some lamps (this is mine). Your place may be in your car, after work, a quick 30 minutes before the commute, before you get home and all the stuff you need to do that evening turns against you.
These places all have one thing in common. They are sacred. You don’t do anything in those places at those times other than write. You are alone, anonymous, you are the only one keeping you company.
Feel free to try a few spots. Try a few different times, too. But do it. Find a place and a time.
And treat it like a monk going to mass.

30 Minutes With 20 Students

07 Wednesday May 2014

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I had 30 minutes with about 20 students. Dr. Paulette Sauders, a former professor of mine, simply said to me in her email, “I would love for you to share with the class whatever you think would be helpful for them to know about creative writing”. And so I was very excited to give my first guest lecture on May 1st at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. Grace has a Creative Writing minor that is only a few years old, but growing.

So what did I think would be helpful for them to know about creative writing?
I could have spoken to them about paragraph structure and ending with the penultimate sentence. I could have spoken to them about the power of dialogue to develop character and drive action. I could have talked about the lessons for the writer found in the creative processes of drawing, photography, and sculpture. But I didn’t talk about any of these things. Instead, I told these 20 students the most important thing I could possibly think of to tell them. I told them the one thing that I’d have been negligent not to have said. I gave them the foundational message, the only thing they couldn’t live without.

I told them why they must write every day*.

I told them that writing is what makes them a writer, nothing else. I told them that they can write a novel in 30 minutes a day, but not in 3 hours on Saturday. I told them that their brain doesn’t work that way.
I told them that discussions of talent are a waste of time, that the only thing worth discussing, and the only thing they have any control over is the work.
I told them that they can’t trust what is in their brain. I told them that the process of translating an idea to language will prove or disprove its potential.
I told them to get a pen or a pencil, a piece of paper and a timer and write for 30 minutes, not more and not less. I told them longer sessions and “big” ideas will come later, after they’ve established the discipline. I told them it doesn’t matter what they write. No one will see it. I told them to do it on paper and not on their computer so that they can see and hold their work, delight in their accomplishment, and so they don’t end up spending 30 minutes on Pinterest.
I told them that if they miss a day to write the next day.
I told them to read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

I walked out of room 106 in McClain with no regrets. I wish I’d had more time with the students. I love talking about the process. I could do it all day. But I walked away at ease.
I’d given them the goods. I had accomplished exactly what Dr. Sauders had requested.

*See also post from 23 May 2012.

Quantity Leads to Quality

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

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There is something else you need to know about how writing works. Quantity leads to quality. In fact, there is no other route to quality writing. Believe me. I’ve tried.
There is a myth among non-writers that we imagine a great idea and then, full to the brim, we sit down and spill it onto the page in a flurry of creative energy. This is indeed a myth. What actually happens is more like making a film.
I don’t remember the numbers and I’m not going to bother stepping over to my browser and Googling them, but I think that it is something like an hour of film is shot for every minute that appears in the movie. Writing a novel works the same way. Of course the numbers will vary, but suffice it to say that for every page in a novel, there are at least 10 pages in the scrap heap. There are pages and pages of outline, character sketches, plot summary, drafts upon drafts upon drafts of the story, editor’s notes, re-writes, and copy. None of which the reader will ever see. Again, quantity is the necessary cost of quality.
Why? Because as a writer you simply have no way of knowing if a plot turn, setting, or character development is going to work until you take it through a few drafts*. We discover how the story is going to work by writing it. The result of all of this prototyping is quantity.
So what is the take away? If you are trying to create a bit of writing, write as much as you can. The more you write the more you’ll understand what it is you are trying to create. Get after it. Know that a crazy amount of writing is what the process will demand of you.
There, now you know.

* See my posting from August 29, 2012, “The Thoughts We Have”

That Top Thing

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

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Don’t have time to write? I think I can help with that:

1. Take a small notebook or piece of scrap paper and carry it around with you for a week. Record how you spend your time, making a simple log of the activities you do throughout each day.

2. On the following Sunday afternoon, review where you spent your most time. Tally up each activity type (work, family time, TV, exercise, etc.).

The item with the biggest number is your top priority. You have made it so by spending most of your time on it. That was your decision, for better or worse.
Now that you know this, you can own it. You can decide, you can choose that some of the time you spent doing that top thing can now be spent writing.
Do I oversimplify? No. It really is that simple. You don’t have a time management problem. You have a lack of priority clarification. Sure, there are discussions to be had about time well-spent, avoiding distractions, focus, etc.*, but finding the time to write is simple. Keeping this time sacred and empty of all else but writing will take practice and discipline.

*e.g. make a place for your writing, make a weekly writing schedule – things like this.

My Love Affair With the Deadline

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

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My love affair with the deadline has been a long, rich romance.

My first exposure to the deadline was as a young project manager. In that first project management scheduling class I saw her beauty, her sensual curves on the calendar and before long my crush turned to addiction. I went looking for her, from early morning and into the evening. Even through lunch I searched for her. I didn’t hide it, I couldn’t. I told everyone who would listen about what deadline meant to me. And for the last 20 years I have used and flaunted my love for deadline in corporate offices and meeting rooms, for-profit and non-, all across central Indiana.

Now as a writer, my respect and commitment to deadline has only deepened. I depend on her to see me through, day to day and week to week, in good times and in bad, deadline is my mistress, my lover, and my lifelong partner. Without her I would be a drunk, a loser, hopeless, full of passion and without direction. From short story to novel chapter to prose poem and back again, I hold deadline close and together we make work happen.

For behind every great (or even good) writer there is a deadline, a deadline that has kept vigil and made the writer who he is, a deadline that deserves all the credit.