Category Archives: The Writing Life

black-32834_640[1] February. The month that Greeting Card companies and Flower Stores wait for each year. The month where love and passion rule, and all things are possible. Where your true love holds you close and rips your heart out of your chest, still beating, to show you before you die. And why not? Every good novel needs some tension to balance the mushy love parts, right?

This month we will look at this balance and focus on the craft of writing a great love scene or a terrifying horror novel. We’ll seek out the secrets that have fueled stories told around camp fires for centuries. And we will look at why, when we are out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by whatever horrors our imaginations could dream up, the thing we inevitably do is create stories even more fearsome.

Both horror and romance work on playing with the readers emotions. They focus on the emotional response, a sense of longing or a chill of fright. They both focus on the passion that make us who we are. Even if you don’t write in the genre, we all want to elicit an emotional response in our readers.

So welcome to the Fictorians take on Love and Murder. Come in close where we can give you a kiss while we slide the blade home between your ribs.

Fearing to Attempt

January 31, 2014

fictorians

Goals Guest Posts The Writing Life No Comments

A guest post by Matt Peterson.

There’s a quote by Shakespeare that I really like to use. I like to use it for a few reasons. Mostly, it makes me sound smart, quoting Shakespeare and all. But it also encapsulates my life’s learning down into one sentence.

Here it is, from Measure for Measure:

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

I kinda have a history with “fearing to attempt.” At least I used to.

I wrote a blog post awhile back about getting cut from the junior high basketball team. At the time, I didn’t want to attempt anything else, ever. That was enough failure to last several lifetimes.

But then I did something crazy—I went out for the wrestling team. It actually turned out to be a decent success. Not the letter-jacket-and-tons-of-dates-and-a-college-scholarship type success, but something…similar. Ish.

The point is, until I attempted something new, I would have stewed in the same cauldron of mediocrity that got me cut from the basketball team in the first place. And I wouldn’t have gone anywhere. It set me up for success later in life, and I’m forever grateful.

Now, you’d expect fear to dwell with a 12-year-old. “Fearing to attempt” is as rampant in the halls of middle school as too much perfume (girls) or too little deodorant (boys). It’s universal. And that’s normal.

But eventually, we have to move past that mentality (and start taking more showers).

Are we attempting new things often, now that we’re all grown up? And I’m not talking about trying new things. Everyone can plug their nose and try some new piece of sushi, or listen to a new radio station on the drive home, or even read a new book someone recommended. But that’s not really attempting anything.

Attempting something has to include the threat of some good ol’ fashioned fear. And that might keep some of us outside the gate looking in.

But the fear doesn’t have anything to do with the outcome. The beauty of attempting is that it’s always wide-open as far as outcome. Fear won’t change the outcome, just the probability of starting. Anything can happen once the attempt is made.

In fact, all successes at one point were mere attempts, and success can’t come until after an attempt. Hmmm.

Oh yeah, and with attempts, the crazier the better.

Here are some of the things I’ve attempted in my life:

Run a marathon. Publish a book. Marry the girl of my dreams. Start my own business. Replace the alternator in a 98 Nissan Sentra.

Each of these things was scary, crazy, and against my better judgment. There was a decent amount of fear involved before the attempt. But the payoff, or as Shakespeare put it, the “good [I] might win” was worth an attempt. So worth it.

Now is the time to set some goals and make some attempts. Real, honest-to-goodness attempts at something worthwhile. Something crazy. Something big. Something small. Something important. Whatever.

But let’s make 2014 about the things we’ve never done, never thought of doing, or never imagined ourselves doing.

Think of the big attempt you’d like to tackle, then break it down into manageable chunks. If you want to finish a novel as your big attempt, great! How many pages are you going to write each week? When are you going to have an outline done? Are you going to attend any workshops or conferences? What books are you going to read? And so on.

Start big. Dream big.

But plan small. Execute small.

And your attempt will be a success.

Just think of all the good waiting for you in the world. There is so much we can do if we simply attempt something. And there is so much we will miss if we are afraid to try.

Our doubts are traitors, indeed. Sentence them to exile. Never let them back.

And unless you’re attempting to ask Jenny Anderson to the 7^th grade dance right after P.E. class, you have nothing to fear.

Guest Writer Bio:

Matt Peterson is the author of The Epic Tales of a Misfit Hero (Bonneville, 2012). His day job is running the copy and video department for Infusionsoft’s in-house creative agency. He lives in Mesa, AZ with his wife and 5 kids. He loves the outdoors, sports, movies, books, traveling, and hanging out with his family. He doesn’t like onions, nor make any apologies for disliking them. In his spare time he runs a free neighborhood sports league for kids.

Never Stop Learning

January 30, 2014

Leigh Galbreath

Classes & Seminars Conventions Craft & Skills Goals Leigh Galbreath Life Philosophies Making Progress as a Writer Motivation Teaching The Writing Life Writing Tools No Comments

I don’t think I can count the number of times I’ve heard people say that some aspect of writing couldn’t be taught. My personal favorite is that you can learn all the technique you want, but you’re either born with the ability to tell a good story, or you’re not. That you can’t learn how to tell a good story.

I personally think that the people who espouse these ideas have either spent entirely too much time dealing with writers who aren’t willing to put the work in, or we’re all a little confused on what, if any, difference there is between technique and telling a good story.

Writing is a craft, after all, and no one’s born a master of any craft.

Of course, we will probably never be utterly fantastic at every aspect of the writing craft. Some have fantastic world-building but a slow plot. Others great characters but not enough setting. Stephanie Meyer, for instance, has long been derided on her writing style, and has even admitted herself that she’s not the best writer, but she’s does a hell of a job weaving emotion into every scene and tugging the heart strings of her readers—which is exactly what her readers want.

The point being, just because you’re not the greatest at something doesn’t mean you’re not a good enough writer to be published. At the same time, ignoring your weaknesses because “it can’t be taught” is a total cop-out, in my opinion.

Like most everyone here, I dream for that day when I’m going about my usual day, doing something boring and what-not, only to happen upon someone reading a book with my name on it. I feel the despair that I’m not quite there yet and hear the clock ticking away the time that means there’s one more day I haven’t achieved my dream. And yes, I’m a realist. I know a good portion of that is fear of putting my work out there, but I also know I’ve still got some serious weaknesses that I need to address.

When I was a teenager, I had a choir instructor who explained that he taught people who were tone-deaf how to sing. It’s in understanding the real root of the problem that allows something like that to happen. With the tone-deaf people, they had to learn how the notes related to each other to be able to figure out how to go from one correct note to another correct note without wandering off, so to speak.

With writing, I think, it’s much the same. If you understand what the real problem is, you can fix it. You just might have to look a bit harder and be a little more creative to get the results you’re looking for.

My personal demon at the moment is plot structure. Something’s always escaped me about how to put one event before another and have it work to engage the reader, move the story forward, and still service the characters.

As a discovery writer, I lean toward minimal effort spent on deep planning before writing. Unfortunately, I’ve been struggling with a few stories that I have come to realize really need to be plotted before I start writing in earnest. So, recently I decided to dedicate a good portion of this year in workshops and classes specifically geared toward pre-writing. Currently, I’m doing David Farland’s online prewriting class at mystorydoctor.com, and while it has done a fantastic job in helping me learn how to plan a novel before I write it, it incidentally opened my eyes as why plot structure has always eluded me.

For me, there was one exercise in particular that helped me figure out what the real problem was. The idea was to establish circularity between characters in opposition to each other, by writing out how each character reacts to the actions of the other. This forced me to find the cause and effect of the conflict…and suddenly I know how my plot is supposed to work and how the sub-plots interact with it. Suddenly, I get it.

So, that’s my goal for this year, to focus on becoming a better writer by taking my weakness and working to learn how to get better at it.

I refuse to believe that there are things I can’t learn. The only thing I was born with was a love of stories. The writing portion is a work in progress.

Writing and Health Balance

January 28, 2014

mary

The Writing Life 2 Comments

Write. Write every day. Write to meet your goals.

These are good rules. In 99% of cases I fully endorse these rules. But like most rules, there is an exception, and here it is:

Do not sacrifice your health to write.

I learned this the hard way. I set a writing goal and was hell-bent on making that word count. My real life was very busy, so I cut some corners to meet my goals: I stayed up late. Woke up early. Quit hiking and biking and all those non-writing activities. Ate a lot of prepackaged, instant food to avoid wasting time cooking. I got 2/3 of the way to my goal.

Then I got catastrophically sick.

About five weeks later, I was able to get back on the computer again.

Looking back, it really wasn’t a surprise. I was eating garbage, much of which contained foods I know make me sick. I wasn’t exercising, because even going for a walk was “a waste of time when you could be writing.” In order to meet my goals, I was cutting down on my sleep and substituting coffee. The end result? I ruined my health, leaving my body with no reserves to protect it against illness. Over the long term, I was less productive.

Take a good hard look and be honest with yourself. A lot of us have bad habits where we skimp on writing time to watch TV or play video games or otherwise goof off. Some of us, though, never watch TV or video games, because we’re too busy pushing ourselves towards our goal at every waking moment. If you never have downtime to relax and recharge, you’ll end up in trouble. You’ll probably be more successful in the short term than the person who does little–and then you’ll burn out, and fade away.

Make sure your desk chair and keyboard are set up in a way that won’t cause long term muscle strain. Look away from the screen every ten minutes to prevent eye strain. Most writers log a lot of hours at their computers, and repetitive stress injuries can leave you out of action for a long time. One of my resolutions this year is to visit my massage therapist on a more regular basis, not wait until I have pain keeping me up all night. If you do get an injury, give yourself the time to rest and recover, rather than compounding the damage by writing through the pain.

Similarly, if you’re too sick to read or watch TV, you’re probably too sick to write. Don’t drag your laptop into bed to try to meet that quota; you’ll only prolong your illness if you don’t take proper care of yourself. Don’t lace yourself up with painkillers to do something your body is trying to warn you will damage it further. Rest, recover, and pick up where you left off once you’re feeling healthy. If you don’t take care of the body which you inhabit, you won’t be able to write for as long as you probably want to.

If you feel that you spend too much time cooking, there are other solutions than eating instant meals each night. Make double portions in your crock-pot, casserole, or wok; then you will have leftovers that you can keep in the fridge for later in the week, or freeze for a fast meal down the road. Pre-bagged coleslaw is usually more expensive than a head of cabbage but for me it’s worth it for the time I save shredding that cabbage by hand. The time I spent online looking for healthy recipes that I can prepare in half an hour or less has been more than worth it, knowing that I no longer have to calculate 60 minutes or more to make a nutritious dinner.

Sleep and exercise are not optional activities. If you aren’t properly rested, you won’t be functioning at your best. If you don’t exercise, your endurance will go into the toilet, and you’ll wear yourself out just getting around your apartment. Your body is a critical part of your writing toolbox; you need to maintain it.

We’ve all stayed up late to meet a deadline or finish a project, but living in a permanent high-stress environment will ruin your health long-term. When you’re calculating your goals, make sure you’re allowing yourself enough time to sleep adequately, eat healthily, exercise regularly, relax occasionally, and recover from unexpected illnesses or injuries. Taking proper care of yourself will help ensure that your writing career will span decades, not just years.