Listening To Books On Audio Makes Me A Better Writer

It’s Wednesday again? How does this keep happening? Seems like every time I write a Wednesday post, I scarcely leave the computer before it’s time to write another one. My Wednesday posts are slowly turning into Thursday posts. Fortunately, it’s not quite midnight yet, at least on this side of the pond, so this is still officially a Wednesday post. :)

Over the past several months, I’ve noticed it’s much easier for me to write if I’ve spent the prior fifteen to thirty minutes reading a chapter from someone else’s book. I’m not sure why, but reading someone else’s words seems to kick my muse into high gear and I find myself thinking more like a writer. I don’t always have the luxury to do this, but when I do, the difference is obvious.

Three weeks ago, I attended a writing workshop in Indianapolis hosted by David Wolverton. The site was five hours away by car, and since long car rides drive me bonkers, I stopped by the library to pick up a couple of books on CD (Dan Brown’s Inferno, and Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals). The ten hour round trip wasn’t sufficient to finish one book, much less two, so I’ve been listening to them the past several weeks during my one hour drive to and from work. And what I’ve discovered is that when I listen to a book, my creative juices flow even faster. My descriptions are better. My sentences seem more professional. I don’t know why, but my brain seems far more receptive to picking up the nuances and rhythm of sentences when it processes the sound of the words.

Of course, this doesn’t help much when I arrive for work, but when I return home in the evening, I’m all fired up and ready to write. Maybe I’ll have to download the Audible app for my phone and start listening to all my books. It suspect it'll make me a better writer in the long run.

Like that’s not going to drive my wife crazy…


Do you prefer reading books or listening to them?

How Do We Know When Our Stories Are Finished?

Every day I receive a “Kick in the Pants” email from David Farland’s blog. They’re filled with valuable tips about writing and I always look forward to them. Last week, he posted a link to a Q & A video about writing, and one of the participants asked the following question: “I still wake up at night with new ideas and revised dialogue for my story. How will I know when my story is finished?”

David’s response was that as long as his brain was still sending him new ideas then his story wasn’t finished. In other words, this was his brain’s way of telling him the story wasn’t ready for prime time. While I see his point, I’m not entirely sure I agree with it. At some point, I think you have to put an end to the tinkering and say “enough is enough,” even when your brain is still churning out ideas.

Although I’m writing my own stories these days, I still occasionally work on the fanfic story I began writing over five years ago. I learned a lot about writing during that time, and my fanfic has gone through countless revisions as I applied everything I’ve learned. Yet despite the fact that some of the earlier chapters have probably been edited and revised umpteen million times, I still occasionally dream up new ways of tweaking them. (Usually during a shower or while I’m driving to work.)

The question is: Do these changes really make the story better after all this time? Sometimes yes, but usually not by much. I suspect these new ideas are more like shiny new toys, perhaps some new technique I just discovered in a writing book. Fun to think about and experiment with, but not really improving the story. Different perhaps, but not better.

So I’ve come to understand that I’ll never stopping thinking of new ways to write a chapter, even long after the chapter has been finished. At some point, I’ll just have to force myself to write “The End” and move on. Because if I wait for the ideas to stop rolling in, I’ll never publish a story.


When do you stop making changes to your stories?

Fridays Links

Last year, at least for a while, I used Fridays to post interesting links I'd come across during the week. Occasionally they dealt with writing, but usually they had more to do with science and entertainment--anything I thought you guys might enjoy.. After a couple of months, I decided I spent too much time searching for suitable links, so I stopped.  

Today, I've revived the tradition of Friday Links.  Let's see if it works out any better this time.

Here are this week's links -- all of them dedicated to writing.  Enjoy.

Making The Leap

Seven Question to Ask Before Self-Publishing

TheBookDesigner: Why Your Blog’s About Page Is Completely Wrong

Magical Words: On the relationship between plot and character

Pub Life: Authors' Advice on Self-Publishing

The Insecure Writer and Not Being Insecure

Today is December's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.




Whew! I almost missed writing this month’s Insecure Writer post.

I suppose I could blame NaNo and the holidays for this lapse, but I think the real reason is that I don’t feel all that insecure this December. This might sound a bit surprising considering I only managed 25K words during NaNo, but I learned a lot about my writing methods in the last month and I’m feeling much better about this whole writing thing.

Of course, next month I’ll probably be insecure again, but that’s the life of a writer, isn’t it?

Here’s what I learned from NaNo.

1. I’m a slow writer. (LOL, I’ve known that for years) But I also learned I can write quickly as long as I have a good grasp of what a scene is about and where it’s headed. The scene will need massive revisions before anyone can see it, but my scenes always need massive revisions -- even when I write slowly.

2. I discovered I’m a plotser. No matter how much I plot beforehand, until I start putting the words down on paper I have no idea what the real plot will be until I finish the first draft. Angela Quarles apparently has the same problem.

3. As a result of all this re-plotting, my NaNo story is now far stronger than it was before. Yay!

4. Staying away from my original WIP for the last month has made me even more eager to get it finished.

That's all for now.  I promise to be more insecure next month – assuming we all survive the 21st of December, that is.

What Kind of Reader Are You?

It was relatively quiet on the writing front this week. My family and I took a trip down to southwest Missouri to attend my niece’s wedding. The wedding was fine, but the heat was brutal. Mind you, this is coming from someone who think Michigan is too hot, but a few records were set during our stay.

With little reason to leave our air conditioned rooms during the daylight hours, you’d think it would have been a perfect time ti stay inside and write, but we managed to keep ourselves busy enough that my writing time was limited. What little time I had was spent doing a complete rewrite of my third chapter (thanks to my critique partner), so no new forward progress.
----------------------------------------------------------

I came across a post over at Patricia Wrede’s blog a few weeks ago that I found very interesting.  Apparently, not everyone reads the same way. According to Patricia:

“Nevertheless, there seem to be at least two common types of readers: those who “see” the story as a movie in their heads, and those who “hear” the story in their heads as if someone were reading it. There are also the rare types who “feel” the story as they read it – who lean forward and tense up when the protagonist is running or jumping, and sometimes even fall off the chair if they’ve become too involved in the action.”

I’m not sure which type of reader I am. I usually enjoy stories the most when I feel as if someone is reading/telling it to me, which is probably why I enjoy omniscient POV, but which is also probably one of the reasons why I have such trouble with telling versus showing. At the same time, I know I read like I’m watching a movie too, which is why I enjoy third person POV much more than first person.

Check out the post and let me know what kind of reader (and writer) you think you are.

The Value of Not Leaving Your Character Alone

My CP dinged me the other day as being too stingy with my MC’s thoughts. And she’s right. It’s one of the (many) areas of writing I need to work on. Interior monologue is a necessary part of fiction, the time when the character ponders what has happened or what is happening or what might be about to happen. It can be used to deliver necessary information and to keep the reader firmly in the mind of the character. After all, stories can’t always be about non-stop action. Sometime the MC just needs to stop and think about things.

This problem often manifests itself when I write a scene with lots of dialogue. I forget to add the character’s thoughts because I assume the reader can figure out what the MC is thinking by his words and actions. This may be true in some cases, but without those bits of interior thought, my characters can seem emotionless and distant.

My biggest challenge occurs when my character is alone and he’s feeling some sort of emotion (nervousness, fear, confusion). Other writers seem to be able to write pages and pages of interior monologue without sounding either overdramatic or heavy handed. Not me. My attempts to write emotionally charged interior thoughts tend to devolve into a morass of cringe-worthy prose within two or three sentences.

The solution? My CP suggested I bring in a throwaway character to solve the problem. Instead of my MC waiting at a train station by himself, thinking about how nervous he is, I'll have a chatterbox show up. That way my MC’s nervousness can be shown by how he responds to the incessant chatter. I'm looking forward to see how well that works.

Question: Do you consider yourself good or bad at adding interior thoughts?

When Do You Do Your Best Creative Thinking?

I am not a morning person.

This simple fact wasn’t a problem back when I was a graduate student. I could get up as late as I wanted – unless I was teaching a class – and work as late as I needed to. Sometimes past midnight. No matter. I’d just get up late the next day anyway. Ah, those were heady days. Then I got a real job and an alarm clock. Shudders. At least I’ve trained myself to only hit the snooze button four or five times before I get out of bed. (My wife swears it’s more like six or seven.)

My problem isn’t just the difficulty in dragging myself out of bed. I learned a long time ago that I’m not a good decision maker early in the morning. My thoughts tend toward the pessimistic, and ideas which sounded great the night before somehow seem hopelessly pathetic when I’m first getting out of bed. For this reason, I never allow myself to think about my WIP when I wake up. I’d have given up writing years ago if I based my decisions on my early morning opinions of my manuscript.

So I’ve been surprised to find that I do some of my best creative thinking about 15 minutes after I get up. Whether I’m in the shower or eating breakfast or driving the 50 minutes to work every day – this is when I get my best ideas. Of course this often means I spend ten minutes sitting in the parking lot at work, jotting down all these ideas, but it’s better than losing them to the ether. I should probably invest in one of those portable voice recorders.

When do you do your best writing?

Should Scenes Always End in Disasters?

Some time back, I ran across a blog post describing the author's routine for developing scenes. She would work out the scene goal, the conflict, the setting, the character’s motivation, the dialogue beats she would use to set the tone, and the end of scene disaster. And it’s that last item I want to discuss.

One of the unwritten rules I've found for writing fiction is that every scene has to end on a disaster. The MC goes into a scene with a goal and the scene ends when the MC fails to meet that goal. Alternatively, the MC might attain the goal, but then discovers the resulting consequences have pushed their ultimate story ending goal even farther away. In other words, the MC has taken a step back.

I don’t always agree with this rule.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't have end of scene disasters. They're a useful technique for keeping the tension and stakes high enough to make the reader turn pages. My beef is with the idea that “every” scene has to end in a disaster. In my opinion, unless you’re writing some sort of non-stop action thriller, you'll wear out your reader if you do this every time. Occasional successes by the MC, without the subsequent “oops, I guess this wasn't the best thing after all” moment, in my opinion, are good for the reader. It allows them to catch their breath.

Consider the first Harry Potter book, “The Sorceror's Stone.” In chapter eleven, we find Harry approaching his first Quidditch match, and his goal is to not embarrass himself or cause his team to lose. His team wins the match, of course, due to Harry's successful snagging of the Snitch, and the chapter ends with no ill effects. In fact, on the very last page, Hagrid accidentally reveals a clue that’s been eluding Harry for the last several chapters. A win-win all around, with no hint of a disaster. (Although Hagrid might have disagreed.)

The scene works because it ends on a promise. A promise that the stalled investigation is about to make some headway. And that's the most important thing when ending a scene. Leaving a new question in the reader's mind. What’s going to happen next? It doesn’t have to be a disaster to keep the reader interested.

To be honest, many authors get around this problem by defining “disaster” rather loosely -- considering anything that adds tension at the end of a scene to be a disaster, even if it’s good for the MC. Fine. I can live with that.  My problem is with those authors who insist that the MC should always be worse off when the scene ends.

What's your opinion on end of scene disasters?

Rowling's Way or the Publisher's Way?

I’ve been in a bit of a quandary lately. I might even go so far as to call it a crisis of sorts. As many of you who follow this blog are aware, I’m writing a story based around Hogwarts, the school of magic invented by J.K.K. Rowling. Although this all started out as an exercise to discover how Rowling might go about writing another series based on her wizardring world, I’m now using this story to teach myself the art of writing fiction. And believe me; the amount of information I’ve learned so far is staggering.

The thing is, my goal is to write the story as close to Rowling’s style as possible – partly because I feel my style is naturally similar to hers (although still pretty raw) and partly because I have a pet peeve against fan fiction that doesn’t sound as though it was written by the original author.

And therein lies the problem.

I want to use this story as a learning tool, but Rowling’s style breaks a good many of the so-called rules. She often wrote in a distant third person, occasionally drifting into omniscient POV, which American agents and publishers don’t care for as much as their British counterparts (or so I’ve been told). She mixed in a lot of telling along with her showing, her pages were filled with adverbs, and she used a ton of dialogue tags other than “he said.”

Now when I read the HP books, I didn’t notice any of these “rule-breakages” until I began learning the “rules.” Rowling’s style has been described as feeling as though you are being told a story rather than experiencing it, which is supposed to be a bad thing, but personally I often enjoy that style – as did, apparently, legions of her fans. It has to be done well, of course, and the narrator has to have an attitude of some kind (funny, sarcastic, etc.) or it won’t work. But I feel it is a valid style.

The upshot of all this is that I’m always running into situations where my CP reminds me I’m not following the rules I’m supposed to be learning, which can be maddening when I can find Rowling doing the exact same thing in her books. So should I stay with the way Rowling does it or should I follow all the rules?

So what do you think?  I would very much like to hear your opinions.

Thanks for listening.

Mental Blocks and the Insecure Writer

Today is April's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.






What makes me most insecure as a writer this month? Getting stuck in a scene or chapter and not having a clue how to get past the problem. In fact, it happened to me two weeks ago. I needed to rewrite a chapter using a different POV and the difficulties in delivering all the necessary information to the reader in this new format were kicking my butt. I sat and thought about it for a long while and piddled around with the words on the page, but nothing happened.

Eventually I did what I always do in these situations. I just sat down and started banging away at the keyboard. I don’t bother trying to reason my way out of the mess. I just try things. Randomly, if need be. Moving sections around, adding stuff here, taking stuff out there. Rewriting sentences over and over again until I’m sure I’ve tried all possible permutations. A brute force approach. Just hammering away at the WIP for days (or weeks) until I finally hit upon the right answer (usually by accident) and then everything falls into place and the world is right once again.

So far this technique has never failed me – assuming I don’t stop until I’ve solved the problem. But hammering away at your WIP based on a blind faith that there must be a solution and that you will find it is a surefire way to feed your insecurities. Especially after a week or two.

Just so you know. I solved my problem about three days ago, so my sleep patterns are back to normal.

The Best Time to Write?

It’s weekends like this that make me happy when Monday rolls around. After two birthday parties for my son, attending a two hour Tae Kwon Do class to watch my daughter test for her green belt, and running the local Robofest computer club meeting (the big competition is next week!), going to work today seems like a breeze. And this doesn’t include the two chapters I critiqued for my CPs or the many hours I spent attempting to solve a major problem with my own manuscript. Not bad for a weekend.

I learned one thing this weekend. The part of my brain I depend on for writing works best during the morning and early afternoon. After staying up till 1:30 on Friday trying to fix my second chapter – with little success – I woke up the next morning and promptly solved the problem in less than thirty minutes while vacuuming the house in preparation for the first of the birthday parties. I suppose it could have been the act of pushing the vacuum around that set my creative juices flowing, but I doubt it. I always do my best writing during the early part of the day.

Too bad that all my free time comes at night.

So when do you guys do your best work?

Writing is a lot like Gardening

I’m not sure if it’s the aftereffects of the time change or not, but it’s not even eight in the morning and I’m already drinking Mountain Dew. Not a good sign.

Speaking of signs, it’s spring in Michigan. Okay, maybe that’s a bit optimistic, but the recent warm spell sure makes it feel as though winter is gone. I even spent a few hours this weekend cleaning up our garden. Here’s what it looked like afterwards.

It may appear to be a mess now, but just wait until summer!

While I was removing the two barrels worth of leaves that had buried most of the patch, it occurred to me that gardening is much like writing a book. There are certain steps you have to go through if you want your book or garden to be great.

First you have to lay the groundwork. Decide where the boundaries will be, purge the area of rocks and weeds, and decide upon your overall theme. Cottage garden? Shade garden? Fantasy? Romance? You have to know this before you begin.

Next you consider the perennials – think of them as the basic structure of your story. They will form the backbone of the garden. Around them you will add annuals – think of them as the smaller story details (characters, setting, sub-plots). They have to fit amongst the perennials in a manner that enhances them. Is there too much of one color in one spot? Will the annuals overshadow the perennials? Are you putting shade-loving plants in full sun?

It’s easy to stick words flowers together. It’s blending them together in just the right way that makes a great book garden.

Of course, once everything is planted, your work isn’t over, unless you’re one of those people who write perfect first drafts. No, you have to keep your words watered and fed, you have to deadhead the parts of sentences that no longer add value, and you have to keep pulling out all the unnecessary words (that, was, really, etc.) that keep popping up like weeds everywhere. If not, your CPs wife and neighbors will complain. A lot. You may even find that some of the flowers need to be moved to other sections of the garden in order for them to shine.

I think that’s about it for the garden analogies today. I’ll keep you updated on the status of the garden over the year. I should warn you, however, that I’m not what you might call a true gardener. True gardeners think of bright colors in the same way many writers feel about adverbs. Too much marks the gardener as an amateur.

But I can’t help it. I love adverbs bright colors!

The Insecure Writer and Critiques

Today is March's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.






What makes me most insecure as a writer this month? Something which I’m sure you all can relate to. Critiques of my first chapter just arrived in my Inbox.

My very first critiques.

Ever.

It’s not the first time someone has read this chapter. I let both my wife and daughter read them before I sent them out to my shiny new CPs, but neither my wife nor daughter have any experience with writing and I knew they’d say nice things no matter what I wrote. But taking the words you’ve sweated over for months and sending them to complete strangers, people who actually know something about writing fiction, can be a wee bit intimidating.

Fortunately, both CPs had some good things to say about my chapter. They also pointed out plenty of errors as well, which are fixable, along with suggestions which I think will make it a better chapter. However – and you knew there had to be a however, right? – one of them mentioned something that took me by surprise.

You see, in this opening chapter, I tried to show that the MC is a nice guy who is disorganized and easily walked over by others. (I did all this by showing instead of telling by the way, a fact of which I’m proud.) Unfortunately, one of the CPs came away with the impression that my MC was lazy, messy, mean, and a liar. Someone she found unsympathetic.

Whoa!

Worried, I read back through the chapter and, sure enough, I saw her point. Without knowing his backstory the way I did, it was easy to construe his actions in a way I hadn’t intended. Since I knew his backstory, his actions made sense to me, but the reader wouldn’t understand any of this until they had gotten deeper into the story. Definitely time for some editing!

I’ve scarcely begun the journey to being a writer and I already know the importance of critique partners.

Does any remember their first critiques?

What Program Do You Trust Your Manuscript With?

Now that I have critique partners, I’ve discovered the importance of document format. I don’t mean the formatting of the manuscript into standard critique style (double spaced lines, left justified, etc.). I mean the format in which the document was saved.

I use Word for most of my editing needs. I’ve heard some people like Scrivener, but Word suits me fine and I have the added advantage of being able to edit my WIP pretty much anywhere I have access to a computer. And my CPs use Word too, which makes things convenient. But we don’t all use the same version of Word. I know this because one of my CPs sent a chapter in docx format, which Office 2000 -- the version on my wife’s computer -- does not recognize. I have access to other computers which can handle that format, so it's no problem, but it made me think about this whole concept of compatibility.

You see, my manuscript has been edited by more programs and on more computers than I have characters. I believe my very first chapters were conceived on an old laptop which ran Word 97 (or some suitably old version). Since then, my poor manuscript as been edited on Word 95, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, Word 2007, and Word 2010 -- all depending upon which computer I'm sitting next to at the time. I’ve edited it on a Linux-based computer using Open Office in Word compatible mode. I’ve even started editing chapters on my Kindle using QuickOffice, which can be a bit problematic as older versions of Word often crash when presented with QuickOffice edited documents, unless I run them through newer versions of Word first. In short, I find it amazing that I haven’t had more compatibility problems.

Needless to say, I constantly make incremental backups of all my chapters, just in case.

So which programs do you use to write your novels?

I'm a Real Writer! I Have Critique Partners!

Thanks to Rachael Harrie's Beta-Match, I now have my first two CPs! Thank you Rachael. This isn't the first time Rachael has performed this wonderful service, but the last time she offered it, I didn't feel like I was ready to submit my name. After all, my first WIP, the one I'm using to develop my writing skills, is fan-fiction and I wasn't sure how people might respond to that. They might wonder just how serious I am about this business of writing.

But my biggest reason for not signing up before was that my chapters were nowhere close to being something I would show to another human being. Even my cat hacked up a hairball on one of my early chapters. I'm not saying my chapters are finished now or anything, but they're close enough that I won't have to tell prospective CPs that it'll be six months before I send them anything.

So I'm devoting the next couple of weeks to cleaning up my first five or six chapters. Because I don't want to make my new CP's eyes bleed -- as that would seem rather rude.

The two items I need to concentrate on most are:

1. Choosing which of the two (or more) versions of the same sentence (or paragraph) I'm going to keep. The fact that I have so much trouble choosing between them probably means none of them are any good.

2. Giving some of my characters names instead of calling them something like "Potions Master" all the time. (But that's a topic for another post)


P.S. If anyone else is looking for another CP and you're into fantasy, be sure to send me a line.

The Insecure Writer and the Revision Process

Today is February's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.




I’ll be honest with you. If my monthly post for the Insecure Writers Support Group wasn’t due today, I probably wouldn’t have posted. Embarrassment can do that to you.

Last week I promised I would finish the initial revision of my first chapter by the end of the weekend -- no matter what. Well, it’s Wednesday, and I still haven’t finished. It’s almost there, probably about 99% complete, but it’s not finished. (Hangs head in shame)

I wish I could say it was because I didn’t spend enough time with my manuscript or that I didn’t stay up late enough or that drinking was involved – but that wasn’t the problem. I just couldn’t come up with any good ways to fix a few problem areas. I find it maddening (and slightly ridiculous) that I’ve been screwing around with these same fourteen pages for over three weeks now -- with most of that time spent on the first two paragraphs. At this rate, my kids will be published authors before I finish this story.

The funny part about all this is that the idea of revising and polishing and tightening my manuscript sounds kind of sexy to me – at least in theory. I occasionally have to write computer programs, and like a lot of programmers, once the program is behaving properly I have an almost irresistible urge to go in and tighten up the code. Removing useless bits of code, converting ten lines of code into two, improving the user interface. Stuff like that. It just gives me a warm cozy feeling.

But that’s because I know what I’m doing when I program. But until my writing skills improve, it’s always going to be a struggle when it’s time to revise my manuscript. I can tell (usually) when something needs to be fixed, I’m just bad at coming up with ways to actually fix the problem.

Does anyone else have these kind of problems during the revision process?

Better Late Than Never

Okay, I know it’s been a while since I last posted, but I have an excuse.

Really. A bunch of them.

A couple of weeks ago I promised myself that I wouldn’t post again until I had finished revising my first chapter to the point where I could feel good about showing it to my wife and kids. Not completely finished, mind you. Just good enough to give them a feel for how the chapter would eventually sound.

Needless to say, it's not finished. (Though I decided to post anyway!)

My list of lame excuses excellent reasons for why I haven't finished:

1. The nasty cold (flu?) which knocked me out for about a week.

2. I'm a slow writer who only gets to write late at night.

3. Openings give me more trouble than anything. You need a fair amount of description to get your reader grounded, and I'm awful at descriptions. Seriously, I must have rewritten the first paragraph fifty times already and it's still not there. I wish this writing stuff would come more easily.

Anyway, I plan on staying awake this weekend until that chapter is ready. No more excuses.

The Insecure Writer - Part III

Today is January's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.




The fact that I find it so easy to come up with reasons why I’m insecure as a writer makes me feel insecure as a writer.

That’s my happy thought for the New Year.
----------------------------------

I spent much of Christmas vacation working on my book. I’m pleased to say I accomplished quite a lot – tightening up early chapters, fleshing out some of the middle ones, and outlining the last third of the book. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I can now visualize the book as a finished product sometime in the (distant?) future.

Then why am I insecure? Because I’m gaining a better understanding of everything that is necessary to finish a book. Despite my recent progress, I’m a bit worried that I may be even farther away from finishing than I first thought. It seems the more I learn about writing, the more I realize how much more needs to be done before I can consider the book finished. I’ve spent two and a half years on this story so far and I despair that it might take another two and a half before it’s done. I just don’t know right now.

Nevertheless, my New Year’s resolution is to have it completely finished by next Christmas. Is this a realistic goal? I’ll let you know in June.

Even My Twelve Year Old Daughter Knows About Showing vs. Telling

All I can say is OMG!

Today I let my twelve-year-old daughter read the first chapter of my story to get her opinion on its current state. Since she loves anything having to do with Harry Potter, I wasn't expecting much in the way of criticism. (She thinks any YouTube video set to the music of the Benny Hill theme song is awesome, so her bar of excellence isn't set too high).

So I asked her about the very first paragraph, and she told me that it would be better if I showed more instead of telling. I kid you not! Once I picked myself off the floor, I asked where she had heard the terms "Showing" and "Telling", and she replied, "her sixth grade English class."

I'd only heard about Showing and Telling two years ago. Man, they're teaching kids a lot faster these days.

The Insecure Writer - Part II

Today is my December's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.






What makes me an insecure writer this month?

Reading.

Yes. Reading.

We’re all told that to be good writers, we need to be good readers. Read as many books as you can, they say. It’s good for you. See how published writers write. It will make you a better writer.

Perhaps. But it also makes me a depressed writer.

I read books on story structure and discover how poorly my story is structured.

I read books on the do’s and don’ts of fiction writing and find my story is chock full of don’ts.

I read fiction and discover how much more fluid everyone else’s writing is compared to mine.

The first two problems I can handle. It may take lots of practice, and oodles of time revising, but for the most part, everything I’ve read on how fiction works makes sense to me. I believe I can put together an interesting plot. I believe I can arrange my story so that I hit all the proper beats at the appropriate times. I’m confident I have an active enough imagination so that I’ll never run out of ideas about which to write.

It’s the last problem that keeps me up at night. Almost every time I read fiction, I’m reminded of how much better everyone else is at wielding words. Even in books that I find flawed (poor structure, too many dialogue tags, large wads of backstory, etc.), the authors still have a way with words that makes me envious. And I have no reason to assume that I’ll ever be able to do anything about it – no matter how much I practice.

So please forgive me if I don’t read any other fiction this month. I'll be much happier for it in 2012.

P.S. But I'll still keeping reading the writing how-to books.