Writing, Rewriting, Discipline And Other Loathsome Necessities This Blog Post Endeavors to Cover

A smaller-yet-(even-more)-passionate-(as-proven-by-the-fact-that-they-showed-up) group of Schmoozers gathered for the November 12^th Schmooze to discuss the next step on the Journey of Your Book: getting the thing out of your head, onto the page, and into a readable form.

After the usual announcements of all the conferences and contests and contemplative confabs one can partake of in this crazy, mixed up SCBWI world we inhabit, Charlie started off with his standard exhausting research.  Sorry, we meant exhaustive. 

This time he focused on how folks get themselves to write, despite the terror, and where that terror comes from.  Here’s a smattering:

MG fantasy author Julie Berry had a great list of fears and advice on how to get over them: 

1               You lack motivation and often fail to choose writing over other temptations. Solution: “Blow up your TV, Twitter and Facebook.”

2               You find no writing time is left after day’s obligations are met. Solution: Recognize that writing will cost you something.”

3               You fear that you’re not good enough. Solution: Don’t confuse a draft with a finished work.”

4               You feel overwhelmed by all the plot decisions you have to make. Solution: “Dance between writing in the dark and making a plan. Use both the ‘outline’ and the ‘just write’ approaches in tandem.”

5               You feel like you don’t care about your book anymore. “Your characters haven’t hooked you yet,” diagnosed Berry, “because somewhere you took a shortcut and held back from  making them real and true.”

Some other tips:

1. Create a feeling of urgency to write.

2. Commit to finishing your draft by a certain date.

3. Hunker down when it gets hard.

 “You can get a lot of writing done if you just write,” she said. “The rest of the time, don’t write and don’t fret about writing.”
      

Joanna Penn had some good tips about getting the material onto the page. Charlie’s favorite: Get up really early and work while your brain is still half asleep.

Karol's philosophy in life

Not being a morning person, Karol found that tip completely unfathomable.

And here's another one that sent shivers down Karol's spine:

Trust the process of emergence. You won’t know what is coming until the words appear on the
page. Something happens when you commit to the page, to the word count goal and you write through the frustration and the annoyance and the self-criticism. Creativity emerges. Ideas emerge. Original thought emerges. Something happens – but only if you trust emergence.

Karol’s favorite tidbit of the night came from Schmoozer and The Pen And Ink blogger, Sue Burger, who said you should print out your manuscript, make a title page, and bind that sucker.  Heck, Karol thought – why not write a dedication and acknowledgements while you’re at it?  (Christmas/Hanukkah gift list – handled!)

Charlie went on and on (as he is wont to do) listing tops, including Simon Clark’s wise advice to get up and LEAVE the writing table when your first draft is done so that you can return to it some days or weeks later with a fresh perspective.

He finally finished with this sweet little bon mot from the comments section of the Ask the Writer blogpost :

Lastly, be generous with self-forgiveness. Writing is a process.

--Brandi Reissenweber.

Thanks Brandi, wherever you are.

At this point Karol wrested control back from Charlie and turned it over to the estimable Laurie Young.  She shared about a 7 HOUR REVISION CLASS she’d just taken the previous weekend taught by Liza Palmer at Writing Pad. We thought she was gangbusters, but Laurie felt that what she’d said was a tad muddled (and seriously, who could blame her after a 7 hour revision class??), so she us sent the following:

There was some real insight in Liza Palmer's class that I failed to communicate to the group. So here are a few points from the class that could be helpful:

    * Revision is about percolating. Take time to breathe.

    * Ask yourself why you are writing this story, now.

    * Break it down into acts. Make sure your tentpoles are strong. Plug holes.

    * Outline to the point of ridiculousness, then rewrite. Repeat as needed.

    * What does your character know? When do they know it? When does the reader know it? Map it out.

    * Passes: Look for word repetition. Check swear words to make sure they have impact and are not used carelessly. Make sure you have not pulled punches, and up the stakes wherever you can. Dialogue tags.

    * "When we have trouble revising, we are too close to the painting—obsessing about the small details when we need to focus on the big picture."

* And lastly, make peace with the fact that it will never be finished.

After that everyone got involved, sharing tips, once in a lifetime insights and the warm, supportive words of brilliance you’d wait a lifetime to hear. We’d recount it all here, but, sadly, we’ve run out of space.  Also, if we told you everything, why would you come to the next schmooze?

And speaking of the next Schmooze…we’ll be meeting again December 10^th and welcoming special guest Jen Rofé of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.  How cool is that?!  Answer: VERY.

So be sure to join us and, until then, keep passing the open windows,

Charlie & Karol

Links to articles referenced in this post:

http://metro.nyscbwi.org/news/stop-fiddling-start-finishing-julie-berry-on-getting-through-your-first-draft/
   

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2012/11/04/writing-first-draft/

      

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/427/a-writers-toolkit/revision/

      

http://www.writingclasses.com/WritersResources/AskTheWriterDetail.php?ID=10

The Westside Writers Schmooze Returns!

“BLOG” MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY

*** or ***

HOW WE LEARNED TO STOP FRETTING ABOUT THESE BLOG POSTS 

BEING LATE (IN THIS CASE, RIDICULOUSLY SO) AND JUST GET ON WITH IT!

Ah, Schmoozers – how we’ve missed you!  But fret not – the Westside Writers Schmooze resumes in just a few short weeks. 

Since summer’s really, really fun, we never got around to recapping the June Schmooze on revision (okay, we are sorry), so we thought we’d take this opportunity to, briefly, do that (briefly?...you’ll believe that when you see it, right?) and provide a sneak peek at the very exciting upcoming Schmooze year, which runs from September 2012 through June 2013.

After the usual announcements, intros, and some tales from the Critiquenic which had happened a few weeks earlier, Charlie kicked off the revision discussion with a moving metaphor.  And by “moving” we don’t mean emotion-eliciting (which, let’s face it, is not exactly Charlie’s bailiwick) we mean literally moving, like as in “change of address.”

You see, Charlie and his family had recently moved, and it got him to thinking about how moving and revision are the same (it’s a good thing Mr. Self-Involved didn’t recently have a stomach flu or the opening metaphor would have been very unpleasant indeed). 

Here’s a little of what he said:

      Why is moving so painful?  Cause you’re taking apart a life you’ve built for yourself over the years.  It wasn’t perfect; in fact there were many things you found obnoxious: the overstuffed garage, the lack of things on the wall you really like, maybe even the setup of the house itself.  But still, it was your home and, as such, it served you fairly well.  And now you’re ripping it apart, ripping its guts out, going through all the crap, and deciding… ENDLESS DECIDING… what crap you need and what crap is crap and what crap is crap but with enough emotional heft that you want to keep it with you and lug it to the new place and try to find somewhere to fit it in. 

      It’s the same with your book.  You take something that kind of holds together, you pull it into its separate parts, and then you appraise the parts.  And, like moving, once you’ve ripped everything apart and it’s lying in pieces all around you, it’s overwhelming.  How could there possibly be so many interlocking pieces to your life/book?  And now that they’re not interlocking, what, exactly, was the point of saving that walking matzo ball that’s been gathering dust on your desk for 20 years?

      After you get rid of the obvious garbage, you‘re left with daunting questions:  what do you do with the rest?  How do you decide what to keep and, if you do keep it, where you’ll put it in the new place?  Will the new place even work with your old junk?  It’s so scary that, if you hadn’t already signed the lease, you might well not move at all.  But you did, so you gotta.

      And this is where the metaphor is valuable:  once you decide your project needs work, sign the lease on the new draft.  Don’t listen to folks telling you it’s good enough if you know in your heart that it isn’t.  Sign the lease so that you know that by the end of the month you have to move your shit out of the old draft and start placing it in the new version.  You’ll be glad you did.

This launched us into a discussion of why rewrites are so scary.  Why are we so often faced with such angst? 

This novel is terrible. I can never fix this. If I try to do anything like X suggested, I will fail; maybe she can do it, but I can't. Was all my effort wasted? Will I freeze up and be unable to write anything else, ever?

The answer to why we have so much angst is something like – because we’re human, and worse creative humans.  We’re going to have our doubts, our anxieties, but we must push through the angst and get on with the business of improving our work and making it the absolute best it can be.

So just how do we do that?  How do we internalize feedback, determine what’s valuable, and apply it to our work in ways that feel organic and germane to the stories we’re trying to tell?  We dunno.  Thankfully, you Schmoozers were full of incredible suggestions:

• Look at your emotional beats.  Are they all the same?
• Work backwards, scene by scene, thinking in terms of cause and effect: does each scene propel the story into the one that follows?
• Think like illustrators, who often start with gesture lines, and build from there; don’t get bogged down in the details.  (Charlie loves this one!)
• Don’t attempt to write “the perfect draft” – they always stink.
• You don’t need to cover everything in one rewrite.  Try tackling one set of problems (i.e. character development, plotting issues, etc.) to start.

Longtime Schmoozer and Cricket contributor Joseph Taylor wasn’t able to attend, but was kind enough to contribute (via an e-mail to Karol) some valuable words of warning about taking advice too literally.  Here's an excerpt:

A helpful critique is one in which the person offering it understands what it is the writer is trying to do, points out the good points as well as the bad, and offers suggestions for improvement where possible. 

Seeking sound feedback is not a luxury for the writer; it’s a necessity.  Still, securing feedback does not absolve the writer of revising his or her own work.  The writer who simply does what someone else suggests and doesn’t find places to improve her own work isn’t doing her job.  The writer is Reviser-in-Chief.

As important as getting feedback is, suggestions for improvement are not always on target.  While those who critique usually have good intentions, they can be hasty, not fully grasp a point of reference, or try to remake a piece the way they would do it.  It’s the writer’s job to smoke these out, and set aside such comments when necessary.  I would go so far as to say that if the writer is not rejecting some feedback, she is not engaged enough in her own revision process.

The best providers of feedback are like the best editors; they help you improve your work—sometimes noticeably so—yet they always manage to allow you to retain ownership of it.  That’s as it should be.  Those who give feedback do not have ownership of your piece; you do.

The great Ray Bradbury once offered a withering assessment of those who suggested he redo some of his work.  It can be found here: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/censoring-ray-bradbury/

Hence, Karol’s tip from Don Roos that she always seems to come back to:

• Only take feedback from people who love and “get” your work.  They’re the ones who are best suited to help you improve your story.

Karol also loves these great (previously shared at a Schmooze) tips from an interview with YA writer Allen Zadoff and his publisher, Elizabeth Law, on dealing with feedback (or, as former screenwriter Zadoff calls them, “notes”). 

Allen at the Schmooze, December 2011
Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang, Copyright ©2012

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

“…the ego is always hurt when first receiving notes. I think it’s natural because the author really only wants to hear one thing: “It’s genius. Don’t change a word.”

But that’s not the real world, and it’s not what makes you a better author. The most important thing I’ve learned is that the hurt reaction is just the first impulse. I don’t have to do anything about it. I let it pass like a summer storm.

Once it’s blown itself out, I move to the more interesting place of sorting out the feedback. They generally fall into four categories.

·       1. Notes I agree with.

·       2. Notes I disagree with.

·       3. Notes I intuitively feel are wrong, but I’m not sure.

·       4. Notes I intuitively feel are right, but I’m not sure.

·       As I think about it, there is a fifth category: Notes I don’t understand and I need more clarification.”

Read the whole interview here:  http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2011/05/interview-publisher-elizabeth-law.html

And there were LOTS of tips from other online articles and interviews as well.  Here are some links to explore:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11/how-to-respond-to-manuscript.html

http://sophiepembroke.com/2011/03/05/learning-to-love-the-edit/

http://voices.yahoo.com/how-revise-fiction-going-through-editing-process-506498.html?cat=4

Eventually, it was time to wrap up and say our goodbyes for the summer hiatus (though many of us knew we’d be seeing each other at the National Conference in August). 

We, your humble co-coordinators, would be remiss not to mention that we felt a great deal of love coming back at us at this Schmooze – and throughout our first full year of duty.  You’ve made our job easy and fun with your participation and general awesomeness – so we thank you!  With your continued assistance, we’re set to have another year of amazing Schmoozes.

The details are now posted on the SCBWI So-Cal Calendar (http://www.scbwisocal.org/calendar.htm), but here are a few highlights:

• Two (2!) Guest Speaker nights.
• Two critiques nights – but a little later this year, since the LA County Writer’s Days are much earlier.  Both critique nights will be in time for the National Conference manuscript consultation deadline.
• A couple nights where we take on ethics issues – sex, violence, hate speech and more.  These Schmoozes will explore the idea of how far is too far?  If we are completely authentic in our depictions of kids, teens and the sometimes shady people around them, are we somehow endorsing bad behavior?
• Explorations of niche markets, reality-busting stories and books we just plain LOVE.

We’ll also be co-sponsoring a screening of Library Of The Early Mind with the Santa Monica Public Library.  More info on the film, described as “an exploration of the art and impact of children’s literature on our kids, our culture, and ourselves” can be found here http://www.libraryoftheearlymind.com/.

The screening’s set for Saturday, December 1^st at 2 PM at the SMPL Main Branch (we may plan an informal Kid Lit Happy Hour event afterward as well) so SAVE THE DATE!

But, first things first.  The Schmooze resumes Wednesday, September 12^th with a Conference Recap/Query How-To night, where you’ll be able to relive all the glory of the conference – or live vicariously though those lucky stiffs who got to attend – and get your questions about writing great query letters answered.  We’ll even spend some time critiquing Schmoozers’ own query letters, so it’s an evening you definitely DON’T want to miss!

We really can’t wait to see everyone again!

Until then, keep passing the open windows,

Charlie & Karol

As an added treat, here are a few Schmoozetastic photos from the conference! 

(Check out many more on Rita's blog:  http://rhcrayon.livejournal.com/92699.html)

Charlie & Rita hanging at the Hippie Hop.
Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang, Copyright ©2012

Jeff enjoyed the Hippie Hop, too!
Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang, Copyright ©2012

Rita, Lee and Sara at the Hippie Hop.
Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang, Copyright ©2012

Wait, who let these zombie into the Hippie Hop?!
Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang, Copyright ©2012

Karol, Rita, Mara and Jen enjoying the Crystal Kite Luncheon
Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang, Copyright ©2012

The Schmooze's own Sara Wilson Etienne at her breakout session!
Photo credit: Rita Crayon Huang, Copyright ©2012

Revision Roundup - Westside Schmooze Edition!

Howdy, pardners!

Upwards of 35 cowpokes and writer folks gathered to ride herd on some ornery manuscript revisin’ on Wednesday night, May 13.

Some of the cowpokes and writer folks!

The night was jam-packed with ideas for revising our manuscripts, and was organized to move from BIG Picture tips (on plot, character, structure), to MEDIUM Shot issues (research, setting, drawing maps), to CLOSE-UP line-editing and wordsmithing. (In this we were inspired by a great article, "Revising a Novel: The Importance of Structure" by Jennifer Jensen, which you can read here.)

Here are some highlights and links:

BIG PICTURE TECHNIQUES

We talked about “The 9 essential drafts of your novel“ John Ritter spoke of at Writer’s Day 2005. He gave his process of 9 drafts as:

1. Dream Draft
2. Back and forth Draft
3. Dare to share
4. Surprises
5. Dialog
6. Problem solve and intensify
7. Fine tune
8. Polish
9. Send it off to Editor


Inspired by Linda Sue Park's discussion of Novel Structure at her web site --and in particular how she broke her main character's quest into Internal and External Quest, we did our first writing exercise of the night. Go ahead and lasso it for your story, too!

WRITING EXERCISE #1

Write down in a simple sentence your main character’s external arc and internal arc. Do they intersect at your story’s climax?

Example: The Picture Book “Knuffle Bunny,” by Mo Willems
External arc: Knuffle Bunny lost to Knuffle Bunny found
Internal arc: Trixie can’t communicate to Trixie says her first words
Yes, both arcs resolve at the story’s climax.

“Airborn” by Kenneth Oppel was our Middle Grade example.
“Fat Kid Rules The World” by K L Going was our Young Adult example.

Another way of thinking of this is The external arc is what happens. The internal arc is why you should care.


Lee shared a SHRUNKEN MANUSCRIPT of one of his picture book drafts.




Glitter, colors, stickers... It helped him look at pacing, consistency, internal and external arcs... and from this Lee figured out he was telling the wrong character’s story!

Here are some links to bloggers and authors talking about the shrunken manuscript process:

Darcy Patterson on Shrunken Manuscripts

and

Cheryl Rainfield sharing Sarah Miller's video on Sarah's Shrunken Manuscript


Rita talked about an alternate tool to view your novel in miniature: doing an OUTLINE of what happens, chapter by chapter--or scene by scene--in a table or spreadsheet. One of the writers in Rita’s groups did this with just three columns: the first column contained the chapter number or title, the second described What Happens, and the third was blank, for making notes or comments—either for herself or for the people she was getting feedback from.

You can expand this table by adding columns, perhaps for external plot and internal plot, or for your themes. Nancy Lamb gives her own version of this in The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories For Children.


Karol shared Jeffrey Kitchen's technique of writing backwards--as a way to check whether each event in your story is truly caused by what came before. (We found a link about this here)

Lee compared this idea to a fun picture book by David LaRochelle called The End!


We talked about why one might choose 3rd- or 1st-person--or even 2nd-person--to tell their story, and attendees volunteered insights on what their own manuscripts gained when they changed from one to the other. (For a basic rundown of what the differences are, this Wikipedia article is useful. It lists some examples of books written in each narrative mode.)

Rita also gave examples of books that use first person AND third person in the same novel:
The Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud (middle grade fantasy)
Skin Hunger, by Kathleen Duey (YA fantasy)

Linda Sue Park's advice on this and other dilemmas is to write scenes BOTH ways, if you can't figure out which way to go. Her point is that, “The price of good writing is time.”

We also shared a few highlights from a talk given by Firebrand Literary agent Michael Stearns at SCBWI-LA Writer’s Day, this past April 18th, titled "The Plot Thickens: 13 Questions to Ask of a Way Too Wimpy Storyline."

1.) Do you have a clock in your story?
2.) Have you buried the ends of your chapters? (End chapters on cliffhangers!)
3.) Have you structured your story to create suspense?
Is the straightforward telling the BEST way for your story?
(Check out Michael's blog entry on ABDCE: Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending.
5.) Have you taken full advantage of using subplots?
Subplots provide camouflage for your main plotline, to distract the readers from what you’re really up to.

Rita expanded on this, sharing the Using “B” Plots and “C” Plots concept Kathleen Duey spoke about at the summer conference years ago, on how to use subplots to solve pacing issues and deal with “the sagging middle.”

10.) Have you taken advantage of how everybody but everybody lies?
12.) Have you followed through on every consequence of your characters' acts?
13.) Have you been as mean as possible to you characters?
Michael quoted another author's idea of always asking, while writing, “Does it hurt yet?”

(For a full summary of Michael Stearns's talk from Writer's Day, check his blog, where he promises to post the material soon

More than half-way through the rodeo...
And look, people were still smiling!

When we got to the CLOSE-UP, Line-Editing portion of the night, still more great suggestions abounded, including:

Another great article by Jennifer Jensen, titled Structural Support and Line Editing for Novels (© Jennifer Jensen Oct 8, 2008), which you can read here

LEE mentioned the idea (from many authors) of recording yourself reading your manuscript aloud

And Lisa Yee's revision advice to change the font and margins, to make the story Look new to you, so you can see it fresh.


Finally, Rita also shared the idea of the One-Pass Revision, from an article by Holly Lisle. This author suggests you can make all levels of changes at the same time--from big-picture themes and characters to line-edits and word choices.

Holly Lisle also wrote a helpful article on scenes, titled “Scene-Creation Workshop—Writing Scenes That Move Your Story Forward," which you can read here.


Specifically, she defines a scene as containing these basic elements:

a place,
a time frame,
and a change that moves the story forward.


Robert McKee’s book on Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting--which you can also get as audio CDs--also talks about how to analyze scenes. (This book targets screenwriters but is a great resource of all of us.)

In this, he brings up how every scene should be able to be defined as bringing out a change in some Value. For example: a character goes from happy to sad, or from no knowledge to knowledge, or from being an outsider to an insider, etc. (Other examples, as provided by Holly Lisle, included hate-->love, fear-->trust, etc.)

This led us to our

WRITING EXERCISE #2 - and go ahead, you can grab this one by the horns now!

Write a scene in 5 sentences or less where some value changes. Where something unexpected happens. (After all, if what you expect to have happen does happen, you don’t have much of a story, right?)

As adapted from “Scene-Creation Workshop”


Thanks for riding into the sunset with us on this review of our night talkin’ ‘bout revision!


Oh, we started the night with a *disclaimer*, which we'll end with here:

Just as there are lots of ways of writing a first draft, so there are infinite ways to tackle revision. Everyone works differently, and not EVERYTHING is going to work for everyone — but we hope the ideas discussed inspire and help everyone on their revisions!


We hope to see you next month, on Wednesday June 10, 2009, when our Schmooze topic is... How to get the most out of the SCBWI Summer Conference – including tips for doing your homework, networking, and having a blast!

Namaste,

Lee and Rita

All photos by Rita Crayon Huang

p.s. - While we didn't put up a separate post for our April Middle Grade and Young Adult Critique Night, as you can see below a good and productive time was had by all!