Metaphors for writing

When I first started writing, I remember remarking to someone that it felt like what I've assumed learning to juggle would feel like. There were all these things to keep track of at once: plot, subplot, character, dialogue, description, showing vs. telling, active voice vs. passive...

As a metaphor, I think that's still pretty accurate (even if I've since realized that you can focus on one of those aspects at a time -- that's part of the point of revisions) but I realized this week that I have another one as well: writing is like assembling a puzzle.

My current project is Karen Miller's fault. I'd written a fanfic, a short story I'd done to satisfy a question I'd long had about a particular situation a man and woman might find themselves in. (In this case, the fandom was secondary to the question of the story.) And after reading it, Karen told me she thought I could/should turn it into a novel.

I'd been assuming I'd write a contemporary novel (the 'write what you read' isn't very helpful for me, since the only genre I don't read is horror) and this would have to be fantasy or historical. I chose fantasy because it was a better fit.

With a fantasy story, which comes first -- the world or the characters? I decided first to focus on the worldbuilding, convinced that whoever the characters turned out to be, they would be heavily influenced by the world they inhabited. (We're heavily influenced by our backgrounds -- why wouldn't fictional characters be?) Building a world that was sufficiently different from the fandom I started out in then took a while.

The heroine fell into place pretty easily, given the overall story idea and the worldbuilding. But the hero has been more of a question. On the plotter/pantzer scale, I'm somewhat of a 'plotzer' -- I start out knowing the characters, how the story begins and ends...and nothing at all of the middle. So I find myself thinking about the hero and realizing that he could go this way, or he could go that way, (in terms of his goals and motivations, and the conflicts that grow out of them) or, possibly, even a third way. And whichever one I choose will drastically affect the story. It will still start the same and end the same, but...different story.

And that's what I was thinking when I realized I was approaching the whole thing as a puzzle. If the hero is like this, it will fit with this piece of the plot in that way; if he's more this other way, it will cause the subplot to go in this direction...

Nothing really earthshaking in any of that from a thoughts-on-writing perspective, though it illustrates, I think, how very different one writer's approach can be to things like plot and characters.

Oh, and I'm getting closer to figuring out who the hero is. I like puzzles -- did I mention that?

Still here, getting back on track

My apologies for appearing to have abandoned this blog. I didn't, and it certainly wasn't my intention to go so long without updating it. (In particular, I didn't want to foist yet another blog on the world that would be started, then dropped, the author never being heard from again.)

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had to move in June -- from the place I'd lived for eight years to a smaller place. There are a lot of advantages to where I'm living, but much of May and June were taken up by sorting, tossing, packing, moving, and unpacking. With a couple of out-of-town family events (a graduation and a wedding) thrown in for good measure. Erg.

But things are starting to calm down now. I'm mostly unpacked, if not yet feeling completely 'together.' I've started writing again, and am working on a post or two for this blog, my goal being to post at least several times a week. Expect the first 'real' post by this weekend.

Thank you for your patience...

Writers who don't read

Another blog I've been following is fantasy author Glenda Larke's:

http://glendalarke.blogspot.com/

In today's post, she addresses a (presumably fairly recent) phenomenon of people who want to be writers, but who don't read. Glenda says many wise things in response, but the one thing I'd like to add is that I don't think people who don't read can be good writers.

Maybe these people love stories (presumably visual ones from TV and the film industry, since TV is such a fixture in so many lives) and assume writing a novel is somehow easier than writing a screenplay. Or perhaps they're part of that percentage of people who think authors are all automatically rich, and how hard can it be to write a novel, after all?

This theme even came up this week in a library based comic strip I read, Unshelved:

http://www.unshelved.com/

In the past week's strips, a mother drags her teen son to the library, because he doesn't like to read. The librarian tries mightily to interest him in one genre or the other, and fails. When he finally asks, 'but why don't you like to read?" the teen reveals he doesn't have the time -- he's too busy editing his manuscript. (Which, according to the librarian, is 'really good.')

I don't buy it. I don't think you can develop the necessary facility with words that writing requires if you're not actually reading them. It's that simple.

But perhaps a caveat is in order: one NYT bestselling author I know of is dyslexic. She types her stories, but has an assistant check for misspellings and typos, and while I think she does read, most of her story intake comes via audio books. But I'm certain she considers herself a reader.

So...thoughts? Comments? Can you write a novel without being a reader and loving books?

Playing catch-up

Well. I've had A Week. Insert just about any adjective before 'week' and it would probably work ('busy,' 'insane,' 'good,' 'exhausting'...)

But I've got a new place to live, the lease is signed, and I have six weeks or so before I actually have to move. This means, among other things, a chance to sort through clutter, catch up on various tasks, and maybe even get some writing done.

One of the catch-up tasks is some follow-up posts on this blog. I realized just this week that several people replied to one of my early posts on characters. I didn't respond because I didn't know the comments were there -- I thought I'd set things so I'd get email updates when people responded, and apparently hadn't. (I believe I've done so, now, but have been checking for myself rather than trusting Blogger to do it for me.) Anyway, sg1jb, Lex, and Marina all said interesting things I want to follow up on, and I'll do so once I've finished posting about the writer's conference.

It's the writing, stupid

I'm working on posts about a couple of the workshops I attended, but in the meantime, here are some rather rambling thoughts on what felt like the theme of the weekend. It seems strange to me that reminding writers to focus on the writing is necessary, but such seems to be the case.

When I first began to consider writing for publication, I joined an email loop dedicated to a particular publishing house that was targeted by new writers, mostly because they accept unagented work. I lurked on that list for several years, and learned a great deal about both writing and the publishing industry. (Published authors frequented the list, so it wasn't just a group of unpublished writers confusing one another.)

One thing I learned is that unpublished writers look for magic bullets. For some, it’s rules – not of grammar, but of writing: "no headhopping! no more than one POV per scene! It's a RULE. You can't *ever* be published if you break this rule!" -- ignoring that there are very successful authors who do just that. There are other such 'rules,' and from what I can see, they give writers a false sense of confidence: "if I follow all the rules, I'll be published.'

The reality is that most of those ‘rules’ are good things to follow, particularly for new writers. It’s not that a skilled writer can’t change POV in the middle of a scene if the story calls for it, it’s that such switches are difficult to pull off and someone still struggling with the basic mechanics of writing is better off not attempting it.

There are many such 'rules', including genre conventions, (i.e., in a romance, the hero and heroine *must* meet in the first few pages of the novel) that take on a life of their own among writing loops, as authors grab hold of them the way a drowning man might grab hold of a life preserver. I’ve seen flame wars break out over some of this stuff. Seriously. "But it's a RULE," they howl.

Something similar is the way in which writers (and not always new ones) see signing with an agent as the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail: "I can't sell my book, but if I can only find an agent, they'll be able to do so."

Well, maybe. There are publishing houses that only accept agented work. But there are many ways of getting your work in front of an editor, even of a house that doesn't take unagented work. Conferences and contests are two of the best.

This attitude of, ‘if I do X, I’ll get published.” was everywhere I turned this weekend. On Friday night, there was a Q&A with the three headlining authors at the conference (all three New York Times bestselling authors) and inevitably what I think of as The Agent Question came up: “How did you get your agent?”

The authors exchanged baffled looks (though why, I can’t imagine, when I know they’ve heard the question before) and two of them then offered their stories of how they met their agents. (One sent query letters to agents picked randomly out of a guide because she didn’t know any better; the other got her agent after she’d sold her first manuscript.)

The third didn’t answer the question as asked. Instead, she said that the desperate hunt that a lot of new writers go on for an agent is misguided, in her opinion, and is really about finding validation for their work. It’s not that agents are bad, or can’t help you – they can. But agents don’t sell books. Good writing sells books.

Let’s repeat that: Agents don’t sell books. Good writing sells books.

In other words, take much of the energy you’re putting on finding an agent and put it into becoming a better writer, whether through starting a new manuscript, or finding a critique group, or taking a class. Don’t stop hunting for an agent completely, but don’t let it be your focus.

This came across again and again all through the conference. At the editor’s Q&A, all three editors repeatedly said that they’re looking for good writing. Even the two that don’t accept unagented work said that if they see good writing (through a contest, for example) they get excited. They want to find something they think will sell, just as much as we want to sell it.

Another way of getting your work in front of an editor (or an agent, for that matter) is charity auctions, where a critique or reading of a partial manuscript by a professional is auctioned off, either through a conference or through eBay. This is NOT the same thing as paying an agent to look at your work, which is generally regarded as a scam being perpetuated on desperate writers by unethical individuals. Rather, these are bona fide, respected editors and agents offering their time (and your money) to charity in hopes that they might find that next author/novel they’re looking for.

Why do I mention that in a post about not looking for a magic bullet of publishing? Because it illustrates, I think, that editors and agents do want to find good novels. It's their fondest dream. If you have a quality, well-written manuscript, they want to find you as much as you want to find them.

But don't get hooked into the temptation of thinking, 'if I can only find an agent, I'll sell,' because there are no magic bullets in selling a book. Good writing sells books.

The business of writing

I attended the Chicago North RWA Spring Fling Conference this weekend, and over the next day or two will post other bits and pieces of what I learned, particularly from a couple of seminars I went to. But first, I want to make a couple of general comments.

(It was an awesome conference, by the way. I really have no idea how they managed to do everything they did on what was really a fairly low amount of money.)



I actually had an appointment to pitch to an agent at this conference, but changed my mind, and here's why:

I follow a number of professional blogs, one of which is literary agent Kristin Nelson's:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/

Kristin was going to be at the conference so I was particularly interested in her recent post about writing conferences. One of the things she said she dislikes the most is appointments with writers who are pitching an unfinished manuscript.

At one point, I'd hoped to have a first draft of my novel completed before the conference, but it hasn't quite worked out that way. I'm still in the process of figuring out what I'm doing, and when I hit a blank wall (or three) in March, at the same time my other life got busy, I wilted. I continued working on the novel in various ways, but it became clearer and clearer that it wasn't going to be finished in any sense by the conference.

So Kristin's post concerned me. Essentially, it came down to this: she gets lots of queries for finished manuscripts. Finished, supposedly polished manuscripts. Manuscripts that are theoretically ready to sell. Lots and lots of those kinds of queries. Sorting through those, responding, asking for (then reading and evaluating partials and fulls) takes more time than she has. So a query (whether emailed or pitched at a conference) for something which might or might not ever materialize into a salable novel is, from her perspective, a waste of time. It's particularly bad at conferences, when she sits there wondering if there are other people at the conference with finished manuscripts she's missing out on the opportunity to talk to.

She's not rude about it, but her standard response to such pitches is always, always, 'once you finish it, send me a query letter.'

I did some research, and discovered other agents saying similar things on their blogs. I posted a question to the conference email loop asking how many others were planning on pitching an incomplete manuscript, and started an intense discussion between published authors who quietly reported that their agents, too, prefer to not have unfinished work pitched to them, and a few unpublished writers who insisted it's their right to pitch and the agents should be willing to help them learn by letting them 'practice' pitching on them. Er...

In the end, I canceled my pitch appointment. Writing is a business, and I think a very good question to be asking is, 'what's the most professional way of approaching this?' In most other businesses, you wouldn't regularly try to sell an unfinished product. It's that simple.

The general consensus on the list is that if you're going to have a novel finished and completely polished within six weeks of the conference, it's fine to pitch it. But any longer than that, most agents aren't going to ask to see even a partial, and you're better off waiting and sending a query letter.

There are stories of agents being so impressed by an idea, or an outline of a novel, that they take it on immediately, even when it's not written. But I suspect those stories are few and far between, and I'd rather wait until I have a finished product than risk someone associating my name with 'wasted my time.'

In the meanwhile, I got to meet an editor and the agent I would have been pitching for. Neither asked for the particulars of my novel, but it's still a contact, and one I'm quite willing to follow up on when the book is finished.

I also attended Kristin's workshop on query letters, and now feel fairly confident that when the time comes, I can write a query letter which will get the right kind of attention from her and her staff. Plus, I can say not only that I follow her blog, but that I've attended her workshop -- both ways of personalizing the letter and demonstrating that I've taken the time to study her company and what she represents.

And I won't have to worry that she associates my name -- with its unusual spelling -- with someone who wasted her time.

Non-fiction (academic) vs. fiction writing

I've always accepted that there are differences between fiction and non-fiction writing (beyond topic) but it only recently occurred to me how important being aware of those distinctions is.

A few weeks ago, someone recommended the book, Getting the words right: 39 ways to improve your writing, by Theodore A. Rees Cheney. It's apparently been in print for decades, but I found a recent (2005) edition at the library.

It has three sections: Reduce, Rearrange, and Reword. I've been working my way through the first section, thinking about all the ways there are of using concision to make sentences more powerful.

But this, on reducing with metaphors and analogies, caught me:

One thing our education has taught us well -- perhaps too well -- is that, when writing nonfiction, we must qualify statements of fact. You must, in the name of truth (accuracy), make it clear that what you've written is not always true under all situations or for all time. You must qualify the statement, then and there, by telling the reader what all the limitations are. This makes for good research, because anyone who reads your work later will know precisely what you meant. The trouble with such qualification-laden writing is that it makes for slow reading -- it requires the long attention span of a highly motivated, dedicated reader. When the habit of qualifying is carried over into other kinds of writing, such as fiction, it doesn't work. (p. 17-18, 2005 ed.)

He then gives some examples such as writing 'the plane was like a bird of prey' rather than the stronger 'the plane was a bird of prey,' as well as listing some common words or phrases that frequently accompany over-qualification in fiction: seem to, apparently, looks as thought, looks like, it would appear that.

This is probably making me sound dreadfully thick that this was such a revelation. As I said at the beginning, it's not that I didn't know there were differences between the two styles of writing, but I don't think it would have occurred to me that over-qualifying was one of them, nor the degree to which I do it.

But I do. Even when I'm solidly in a character's head, I'm more likely to have her think, "It seemed as if the world was ending'' rather than, "the world was ending." I don't even think about it. Deep inside me is the Rigid Rule that 'all things must be crystal clear at all times.' Not for a moment should I risk the reader wondering whether the world is really ending, or if the character only thinks it is.

I remember being confused by a line in one of my favorite childhood novels, where the author used the phrase 'he was a blind and deaf man' to describe a character that was shocked, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out when he'd gone blind and deaf and why none of the other characters seemed to care before I finally realized it was a figure of speech.

Another thing which plays into this is personality. I'm a very precise person, at least in my speech. When I'm describing something at work, I'm more likely to say, 'it appears that...' rather than just stating what's going on. It's always important to me that people know I'm stating my opinion rather than a general truth. But it should be my characters' voices on the page, not mine.

After reading some of Cheney's examples, though, it's easy to see how much better fiction flows without the over-qualifying. So now I'm on the hunt for all the 'it seems to' and 'it looked like' phrases in my writing, as well as any other ways a lifetime of academic writing is messing up my fiction.

Uneasy with Amazon

And on a different topic, Amazon is in the news this week, and not in a good way. They've recently told authors and small publishers that if they don't use Amazon's POD (print-on-demand) service, Amazon won't sell their books.

POD is much more than vanity press books, and this doesn't benefit anyone but Amazon. The fact that a number of small publishers have (if rumors be believed) already caved and signed with Amazon (despite the terrible reputation Amazon's service has for producing shoddy books) illustrates the power Amazon has come to have in the publishing world.

(The details of this situation have been reported in a number of places, but see:

http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html)

Too much power is never a good thing. Most authors know that for them, Amazon is a mixed bag at best -- how could it be otherwise, when Amazon makes it just as easy for a customer to buy a used copy of your book as a new one that you get paid for?

Even as a reader, it occurred to me a few weeks ago to question how dependent I'd become on them. I started to order a few books I've not found in any local brick-and-mortar store, and then got to the shipping options. Free shipping on already low prices -- what's not to love?

Hmm. For starters, I realized that two of the books I was buying didn't have a discount on them at all. They were paperbacks, and Amazon's price was $7.99 -- no discount whatsoever. And I wondered if in the past I've clicked the 'buy' button without really thinking about whether I was getting a good deal or not, particularly in comparison to the discounts I can get at Borders or Barnes and Noble.

And if I opted for free shipping, they were telling me to expect the books in 14-21 days. That's up to three weeks. Is it worth it? Sure it is -- sometimes. But sometimes I want the books sooner than that. So then I looked at my options for standard shipping (3-7 days). The price for waiting for a week for my three books? Thirteen dollars. And if I wanted the books this week? Eighteen dollars -- for books I was already paying full price for.

You know, I ship things quite often, and $13 is a bit steep for three paperback books (one a very thin one.) I know part of the money is a 'handling' fee, but still...is it worth it? Is free shipping worth waiting so long? Is paying the handling charge worth getting the book sooner? (In reality, I'm sure it pays for the people who opt for free shipping, since that cost has to be covered somewhere. One wonders what Amazon would do for profit if everyone opted for free shipping.)

This post probably sounds like I've developed a hate-on for Amazon, and that's not true. I think they provide a wonderful service when it comes to researching hard-to-find items. But I've realized that I've been making certain assumptions about them that aren't necessarily true, such as everything they sell being discounted (not true, particularly for paperbacks that aren't new releases), that they're the only way of getting certain things (also not true, as most bookstores will special order stuff), and that their 'free shipping' is a good deal. (It is, but only if it's something you really don't mind waiting for.)

In short, I think they've become such a fixture that it's given them an unhealthy amount of power, something which will only grow in light of the POD thing. (Have older paperbacks always been full price, and I just didn't notice? Or is that something they changed at some point, once they thought people were safely assuming they'd always get the best price at Amazon?)

Will I continue to shop Amazon? Certainly. But I don't think it's going to be such a given anymore that my purchases will come from there. Competition is good for the consumer and there are other options -- including free shipping from Barnes and Noble.

Making characters real

(For the record, I've still been thinking about the nature of this blog. What I'd like for it to be is a series of dialogues about writing and publishing, where I'll toss out a topic that I've been thinking about in hopes of learning from others' comments. I'm not making any assumption about the value of my own opinion. I'm not an expert, nor do I play one on TV.)


I've been working on characterization the last week or two, specifically how you make a character seem completely real. A real person, if you will, rather than a cliché. One thing I've discovered is that it's not a process I've given a lot of thought to. Most of my characters have seemed to grow almost organically out of the story. (Which is a good thing, I think, but that doesn't mean the process couldn't be improved upon.)

When I wrote the fanfic novel, I decided early on that the main character would be a woman who was doing the best she could in some rather horrific situations all the while doubting herself. Everything she became and did later in the story flowed from that one decision.

But last week, I saw a question or comment somewhere to the effect of, 'how do you turn a character into more than a list of traits?' and I realized I didn't know. If you begin building a character by thinking, 'let's see...he's smart, a bit of a geek, compassionate, always learning new things' -- what's involved with fleshing that out so you get Tim McGee from NCIS rather than Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1?

It's not really fair to start with that kind of example, because in so many ways writing a character for a television series is very different from writing a novel. (Not the least due to the number of people from director to actor that can influence character development.) So perhaps a better example of what I mean would be if I said, 'he's a sexy man of mystery, wealthy and dangerous' ...am I thinking of Evanovich's Ranger, or Roberts' Roarke? On the surface, that statement applies to both, and yet they're very different characters, right from the first book in their respective series.

So what do you add? Or more importantly, how do you add it?

One obvious answer is background, though given the writers that create a background for a character and then divorce the two, you have to wonder how obvious it really is. If you give a character a nightmarish childhood, you either need to show that it's still affecting him, or you need to explain how he overcame it, and I don't always see that happen.

Ah, but that leads to a separate issue, doesn't it? You can't spend a lot of time in the character's background, particularly in the first part of the book. But even if you never tell the reader what the character's childhood was like, you need to know how it affected her. And you have to be consistent with it.

Another possibility, based on things I've read/heard other writers say, are goals and motives. What does the character want, and why? This one strikes me as more critical than background, actually. Two characters similar on the surface, even with similar backgrounds, are going to behave very differently if they've got different goals.

(And as I'm thinking about it, it occurs to me that if there's a link between character motivation and background, that's even better.)

The last thing I've been considering is mannerisms and habits. I admit that this is one I've not worried about in the past, but I'm rethinking that. We all have mannerisms -- things we do that aren't terribly significant in themselves but which set us apart from other people -- so why shouldn't our characters? I think this is tricky, though, because it can so easily become annoying if overused. A character playing with her hair when she's nervous can get old fast.

So...when you think of your favorite characters, what is it that sets them apart from other characters that might be similar to them on the surface? What makes them 'real'?

Scifi vs. fantasy

The new Wired magazine has a letter to the editor which summarizes the differences between scifi and fantasy (as a way of explaining why scifi doesn't get the respect it deserves.) In referencing a comment made in issue 16.02, Andrew Hageman of Davis, California, says this:

Perhaps one reason science fiction as a genre has been largely dismissed is that it has been conflated too readily with its rose-tinted twin: fantasy. They share shelf space in bookshops and tags online. But science fiction, particularly at its best (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or William Gibson's novels), tends toward ethical complexities, sophisticated worldviews, and urban and transnational/trans-planetary environments. Fantasy, meanwhile, tends toward ethical simplicity with more overtly delineated heroes and villains, as well as celebrations of nostalgic rural settings.

And so, yet another example of it-makes-me-feel-superior-if-I-bash-you, thinly disguised as a simple observation of the differences between two genres.

I thought for a moment about whether I should call them two genres or two sub-genres in that last sentence. I understand why they're lumped together, since at a basic level they both deal with non-existent worlds, be they the world of our future (non-existent yet), a different world altogether (but one which could exist 'out there' somewhere), or a world which exists only in the mind of its author.

But on a different level, I think you can make an argument they're unalike enough to be considered different genres, though not in any of the ways Mr. Superior sees. I'm quite aware that while many people who like fantasy also like scifi (I certainly do) that many others will only read one or the other. And I like to think that many of the people I know personally who only like one or the other at least made an honest attempt to read in the other one before calling it quits, something I can only assume Hageman didn't.

"Tends toward ethical complexities"? "Sophisticated worldviews"? I'm not sure I even know what he means by the latter (anyone who does know, feel free to enlighten me) but I've seen plenty of books firmly in the scifi camp that weren't particularly ethically complex. (Does every story have to be, to be worth being told? Is it possible, even, that what is complex to one person isn't to someone else?)

And I can think of several fantasy authors he's clearly never considered in order to make the statement that the entire genre 'tends toward ethical simplicity.' And his last phrase, 'celebrations of nostalgic rural settings' indicates he's completely unfamiliar with the subgenre of urban fantasy.

His accusation about fantasy being 'rose-tinted' also suggests to me that there's a whole subgenre of science fiction that he doesn't like, either, since not everything that's clearly in that camp assumes a dark future for the human race. But perhaps rather than criticizing such books as being too similar to fantasy, he simply ignores them in his assessments of the genres.

I will never understand why some individuals find it necessary to build themselves up by bashing someone else -- and make no mistake, what he's really saying here is "I and others like me who read only science fiction are superior to those who read and like fantasy.'

But I wonder, if fantasy were given its own shelves (perhaps in the back of the store would suit him) what excuse then would he give for why scifi isn't being given the respect he thinks it's due?

Karen in a blog

Since figuring out how to use LJ as an RSS reader, I've been able to keep up with a great many blogs that I used to remember to check only occasionally, including a number by writers and agents. (Skimming the posts in LJ is a good way of keeping up with what's going on in the publishing world, I think.)

Anyway, one that I follow is Glenda Larke's blog, and this morning I was excited to see that her most recent post is about Karen Miller, writer and friend extraordinare:

http://glendalarke.blogspot.com/2008/03/here-at-swancon.html

The first novel in Karen's Godspeaker trilogy finally releases in the U.S. on April 1st (though Amazon already has it as available) -- BookClub magazine gave it another four star review. Go, Karen!

To blog or not to blog...

A friend who knew I was considering creating a writing blog sent me the following link today, to Robin Hobb's blog:

http://robinhobb.com/rant.html

It's a wonderful post, and she makes a lot of good points. It is easy to let a blog distract you from writing. But that's true of many other things, as well. At least for me.

There are days when I want to write, when the words and ideas flow, and I enjoy the whole process.

And then there are the days when nothing works, and I try one thing after another, writing and rewriting a single scene or sentence, hoping I'll stumble onto something that pleases me, something that feels right. On those days, I can be distracted by flossing my teeth, let alone blogging.

I've heard writers say you have to write whether you feel like it or not, that discipline is necessary whether it's going well and you feel inspired, or not. And I think there's some truth to that. Certainly, published authors writing to deadline have to be disciplined regardless of how things are going.

But on the other hand, sometimes I fight and fight and finally give up, bloodied and bowed by the process...only to have the answer come when I've gone away to do something else. How does that work? What's the relationship between discipline on the one hand and giving yourself mental space enough for ah-ha moments to break through on the other?

I don't know. But I do know that sometimes blogging about writing can soothe that panic that I'm never going to have another ah-ha moment, that the story is stupid, or lost, or whatever the fear of the day is. It's not a substitute for actually writing the story. But I think it can be part of the process.

Chasing the Muse

And here we are. It's worth noting that I don't have any grandiose plans for this blog. I hope to post something here once or twice a week; I hope people occasionally read and respond to such.

Mostly, it occurred to me a few days ago that I've been posting thoughts on writing on my livejournal, and that while I enjoyed the discussions (indeed, getting feedback from others about the things I was pondering was the entire point of making the posts) I wanted that blog to remain more personal.

So consider this more an experiment than anything else.