Slash and Burn Baby! IWSG September 2017

 It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. The brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader.  To read posts from other members, click here.

My lesson for this month? Not to let words get in the way of the story. Just when I think I’m there, really there, I see my exquisite stunning, clever, creative too many words slo-o-o-o-w the narrative. Cut, cut, cut.

 

It really is true. When you take a breather from your manuscript you find all sorts of issues. Honest to God, I thought this one was done. But now I see. As lovely as the metaphors are, I have to backspace over them if they aren’t doing anything. If a sentence isn’t adding to a scene, I need to acknowledge it and delete it. Tough love, baby. Killing my darlings? Oh yes. I've become a slasher. If the paragraph doesn’t propel the reader to ask, “Golly, gosh, what’s going to happen next?" I'm taking a razor to it. I’ve found scenes I’ve agonized over that, after multiple edits, have become superfluous. I can’t pretend I don’t twitch before I do it, but finally I get there. Sayonara baby. Adios. Bye, bye.

A confession? The poet in me loves descriptive language. But the same way a poem needs to be pared down to its essence, I have to shave extraneous words from my novels. I’m learning the hard way (as in, agent rejections) that if there is one scintilla of something in there that might lead to a yawn, it’s time to kick that flowery padding to the curb. 

Sigh.

It’s been a lot of work lately and my toes are getting sore.

Listening to our Voices - IWSG August 2017

 It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. The brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader.  To read posts from other members, click here.

One night about seven years ago, I lay in bed in that twilight zone between waking and sleeping.  A sentence came into my mind and I liked it enough to force myself to get up and write it down. A few months later I used it as the first line in what I now call one of my practice novels. I had no idea of the story behind the sentence, but once those few words came to me, I was off and running, figuring out who said that line and to whom it referred. Before long, I had a cast of characters around which to build a tale.

A personal essay I read in Yankee Magazine triggered my next novel (I’m still praying this one isn’t just practice.) An artist’s rendering on the page featured a damaged tree branch held up by a home-made crutch. I summoned up an image of a kid sitting on the branch swinging his legs, and that’s where my next story began, with that boy in the tree.

For the next novel, I was ready to begin a new story, but I didn’t have a plot, until I asked myself the following question. “What is the worst thing that could happen to a person like me?” Before long I’d conjured up a recent widow who discovers her late husband had a previous wife she hadn’t known about, and who, as a result of his oversight, inherits the bulk of his estate while his widow remains broke. There’s some truth behind this premise. Many moons ago, I worked with a long-time second wife who was left with nothing when her husband died because he neglected to update his life insurance paperwork. 

I’m editing that story now but lately, I’ve been wondering what I’ll write the next time. So, imagine how pleased I was the other night, when again in the wee hours, an opening scene came to me:

At first Lucia thought the ringing was a part of her dream. By the time she realized it wasn’t, James had picked up his cell.  He spoke into it, his voice hoarse with sleep. 

Truth be told, I have no idea who Lucia or James are but you betcha, sometime soon I’ll figure it out.

My point in all this? Inspiration is everywhere. We have to listen to the voices that speak to us at night. Remember the thoughts that hit us in the shower. Think about what we read. Concentrate on the conversations taking place around us. We have to watch people at the store, on trains, on planes. Anything may trigger an idea for a story.

Listen to this. The other day at work a friend told me how her father had purchased an old New York taxi cab when she was a child. As a little girl she'd climb out of her swimming pool and wrap herself up in a towel. The taxi would be warmed by the sun and she climb into it to dry off while snacking on potato chips she dipped into catsup. Isn’t that a neat scene? I can’t wait to see how it plays out in a future project.

IWSG July, Lessons Learned

It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. The brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader.  To read posts from other members, click here.

 

This month’s optional IWSG question: What is one valuable lesson you've learned since you started writing?

Hmmm, since I’m feeling generous today, how about four?

You don’t get to call yourself a writer if you don’t write. Write, regularly and often. Even if it is only for fifteen minutes a day, find a way. Five days a week I get up an hour earlier than I need to and write or edit. I write on weekends, too. It has become such a habit that when I can’t do it for some reason, I get twitchy. As with everything in life, improvement comes with practice. Comparing what I wrote eight years ago when I started my morning habit and what I produce now, there are measurable gains.

Read with a writer’s eye. Take the time to discover through other writers what works, what doesn’t, and what resonates with you. There is so much beautiful writing out there. The more we expose ourselves to it, the stronger we become at our craft. 

We are on our own timelines. Since I’ve started writing seriously, I’ve seen other writers publish book after book. Of course, I wanted my earlier projects published. I even queried agents, rushing it because I didn’t want to be left behind. But the truth was, I needed more practice, to expose myself to things that helped me learn, to challenge myself to dig deep. In other words, I had to do the hard stuff. 

And this leads to my next point, in which I quote from one of my recent blog posts:

It takes as long as it takes. Do you want to be known for being published, or for publishing something good? If you have one iota of thought that something isn’t right with your essay, article, novel, what have you, then, it’s not. Take the time to fix it. The internet is a scary place. Unforgivable really. Whether you publish traditionally or online, your work is going to be OUT THERE.  How will you feel five, ten, twenty years from now, if a poorly written piece with your name on it continues to surface?

And there you have it. Writing truths that work for me. Hope you are enjoying all that’s magnificent about summer.