writers

You Are Not a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake

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Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. – Tyler Durden in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club

Writer’s are a fragile bunch.  We are primarily solitary creatures, except when we are gathering with other writers to talk about writing.  We spend most of our lives dancing to music that exists only in our heads, talking to characters no one else can hear, and trying to effectively communicate what they say to everyone else.

That can be a lot of pressure.  Sometimes it can be overwhelming.  In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes about the delicate psyche of the writer and the oppressive gravity a blank page can place upon them.  I think sometimes we let ourselves get frightened by the gravity and scope of what we are trying to do.  There are so many things to worry about.  There is plot, characters, theme, setting, dialogue, grammar, spelling.  We may invest hundreds of hours in a work of fiction that sucks and no one will ever read.  We want to write something special, something that means something.  We want to write the great American novel.

Anne Lamott deals with this by telling herself she only has to write what she can see through a one inch window.  What I do is far less romantic, and likely the by-product of a blue-collar upbringing.  I remind myself that I am not special.  I cannot sit and watch a beautiful masterpiece flow from my fingertips.  I am working.  That requires practice, attention to detail, stubbornness, and the little bit of skill I possess.

I am not special.  Thousands of writers are facing that same blank page at this moment.   Hundreds of thousands of writers have faced millions of blank pages, and amazingly they have managed to be filled.  The Library of Congress has 33 million books, not even a small percentage of all the writing done when you include magazines, screenwriting, playwriting, etc.

I am facing the same problem as everyone else.  My answer will be the only thing different.  When I stopped writing for awhile, a lot of it was about pressure.  Some people around me who had read my stuff said I had talent.  I felt pressure to perform and to do so immediately.  Write a best-seller, my ex-wife used to say, so we can live on the money.  She was trying to be supportive and encouraging, but a few rejection letters later, I stopped submitting.  It was one thing for Ray Bradbury and Stephen King to say to persevere through rejections, they could literally crap on a sheet of paper and a publisher would buy it.  But I am not either one of them.

Lately, I’ve been going to writer’s groups, and that has made the difference.  I realized that I am not special.  I am not the only writer struggling to start a literary career.  I’m not even the only writer in my sub-genre in this city.  Hell, for all I know, I’m not the only writer on my block.  Somehow, that all makes me feel better.  It calms my agoraphobic social phobia enough to get to work.

You don’t worry about mowing your lawn correctly because everyone does it.  You don’t worry about shoveling snow the right way.  You just shovel it.  If you are working on a car, you know other people have done the same repair before and you just go do it.

When I approached writing this way, suddenly the blank page wasn’t near as offensive.  Writing is just another thing I do.  I love doing it, but in the end, it’s just another project.  A blank page is nothing.  I’ve filled them before.  My colleagues are out there filling them right now.  My fellow writers of the Dead Horse Society, the Writers of the Weird, and the Lawrence Writer’s Group are out there punching keys along with me.  Some of our stuff will be good, some of it great, some of it God awful, but it will be there.

I’m not a beautiful and unique snowflake, and that is fine by me.

Truths of the Group Mind

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I recently went to a couple of writer’s groups.  I have not had my work actively critiqued by another writer since college, unless you count a couple rejection letters.

Writing groups are a very interesting place, and I had almost forgotten what they are like.  There are several truths about writing groups.  I am posting these in hopes of helping new writers to not be overwhelmed, and reminding established writers what it was like to be that newbie in the corner, wondering what to say.  These are the truths, as I see them:

1.  Nearly every group you go to will say they aren’t there to be nice and will be brutal to your work.  You, of course, being a writer, expect and demand this.  Publishers and editors aren’t always nice, either.  However, being brutal is easier and harder than you would expect.  It is easier, because criticism naturally comes easier than praise.  It is also harder, because you aren’t used to being critical of people in the first place.  Writer’s groups can be like bad marriages.  When you do something good, no one notices, and when you do something bad, it’s all they will talk about.

2.  There will never be enough time.  If you started a writing group session at 6 am and had the room till midnight, you would still start late and get kicked out by the janitor before you got a chance to tell Tammy exactly why you feel she has an unlikeable protagonist with a plot that lags towards the middle.  You’ll look at a clock and find out that even though you just got there, two hours have passed.  Maybe it is magic.

3.  There will always be several strong personalities in the group.  They will speak loudly and confidently.  They talk about semi-colons, themes that you didn’t know you ever wrote, and plot devices they just don’t understand.  They dominate the conversation, contradict what others say if they don’t agree, and always seem to know something.  Eventually, if you have enough writers together, this will breakdown into an all out argument.  Knives may be involved, possibly pistols at dawn.

4.  There will always be newer writers in the group who have never dealt with these sorts of personalities, and aren’t exactly sure how to handle them.   They will sit in their corner, nursing their coffee, beer, tea, or whatever.  They will cautiously speak when it is their turn, until someday they become one of the strong personalities named in truth 3.  They will sometimes let themselves get intimidated.  They shouldn’t.  Everyone else started out in the same place as they are in, and most of  the group aren’t any better, or more qualified, than they are.  Unless you are in one hell of a writer’s group, or live on a coast, most probably don’t make a living on their writing.  Take their criticism, try out some of the stuff they recommend, but don’t take it as gospel.  Unless you are a horror writer and your writing group consists of Stephen King, Clive Barker, John Saul, and Anne Rice.  You might listen to them.  They have been published.

5.  Your writing group can be the best thing for your writing.  Part of writing is reading critically.  Critiquing the work of others helps you learn to be a better writer.  You see what worked for them and what didn’t.  You see what others seem to like, and what they don’t.  Writing groups hold you accountable and give you a reason to write, if only so you have something for them to read.  Just don’t spend so much time in groups that you never actually get around to writing.  That is an unofficial truth.  Some members of writing groups are really more interested in the writer lifestyle.  You’ll recognize them.  They’ll talk a lot and you’ll never see them finish anything.

There you have it, my top five truths about writing groups.  In practice, writing groups can be awesome.  However, it is easy for a bully to poison the group.  For those of you who have been around, try to remember to point out what you like about someone’s work, and not just what you hate.  For newer writers, remember that you have spent your entire life reading.  You may not know the technical vocabulary, but you know when something works.  Don’t be afraid to express your opinions.

There are many types of writing groups that meet in many different formats.  These days, you could be a part of a writing group that is entirely online, but I like the face-to-face method.  It’s nice to know other writers exist in your area.  It also makes it easier to take the rapiers out to the parking lot, if needed.

Have fun and keep writing.

What are some other truths about writing groups?

Opening a Vein

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“There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.” – Red Smith

Writing can be difficult, especially knowing what to write.  I’ve been reading several blogs lately about ideas and the constant influx of them when you don’t need them, their apparent extinction when you do, and writing prompts to get them going.  After all, to steal a concept from Red Smith, we are going to be spilling our life out onto the blank page for all to see.

Everyone has seen the daily writing prompts that give you a vague scenario with which to run.  I’ve never been a fan of those.  To me, it feels like I am writing a story for someone else, rather than for me.  I’ll use one in a pinch, but I don’t feel those stories have been as successful for me.

I prefer using words to spark my writing, single words or phrases taken out of context.  My method is a variation of Ray Bradbury’s technique.  My understanding is that Ray Bradbury would sometimes have nothing but a title.  He would then sit down and write about that title as fast as he could, after all, he was writing on a coin-operated typewriter.  One of my favorite Ray Bradbury stories “There Will Come Soft Rains” actually comes from a poem by Sara Teasdale of the same title.  The poem itself was a definite inspiration for Bradbury, as both deal with a post-apocalyptic setting.

What I normally do is pick up a book of poetry and flip to a random page.  My favorites for this are Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, and others of that sort.  Pick someone who has a similar feeling of story to the ones you want to write.  I use these because my work tends to be a little bit dark sometimes, as was theirs.  From that random page, I pick a word or phrase that strikes me.  I’ll know when I see it.

As I wrote this, I found a random Plath poem.  “On Looking into the Eyes of a Demon Lover.”  Sounds promising.

Here are two pupils
whose moons of black
transform to cripples
all who look:

Right away, “moons of black” strikes me.  There has been a lot of mythology based on lunar cycles.  There are definite possibilities there.  Werewolf stories are a bit cliche, so you might think past that first thought, but ancient cultures hold a lot of rich information, as well as man’s inherent fear of the dark.  The appearance of stars moons and planets has been an obsession of mankind’s throughout history.

each lovely lady
who peers inside
take on the body
of a toad.

Within these mirrors
the world inverts:
the fond admirer’s
burning darts

“Within these mirrors” sounds great  Mirrors are a mysterious thing.  You look at them, and they look right back at you.  Mirrors could be used literally, or as a metaphor.  It opens a lot of possibilities about other realms, other words, what a person sees about themselves when they look into a mirror, and who knows what your reflection is doing when you are AREN’T looking at it.  Haven’t you ever felt that if you could just look quickly enough, you would catch that person in the mirror NOT mimicking your every move?

turn back to injure
the thrusting hand
and inflame to danger
the scarlet wound.

I sought my image
in the scorching glass,
for what fire could damage
a witch’s face?

So I stared in that furnace
where beauties char
but found radiant Venus
reflected there.

 Three strike me out of this last grouping.  “the scarlet wound,” “what fire could damage,” and “where beauties char.”  The scarlet wound brings up images of Hawthorne, but if  you look past it, out of context and think of what the color scarlet makes you feel, and how many different types of wounds there really are, you can probably get a nice short story out of it.

The other two deal with another inherent fear of humanity.  We rely on fire for our survival, but we have never learned to control it.  It’s like a wandering spirit.  We can try to contain it, but we still end up burning our houses down.  It goes where it is going to go, despite our persistent urgings to the contrary.  There are several metaphorical meanings of fire, as well as Hell itself.  There are bound to be ideas in there.

My next step would be to type those words at the top of the page.  I’ll develop a small, vague premise.  For example: A person at the end of their life reflects on their past sins and the unknown fate of their soul.  I am getting that from “What Fire Could Damage” and “Where Beauties Char.”

If you are saying that isn’t a very complex idea, you are right.  I’m a seat of the pants writer.  I have no idea what this story will be about, who will be in it, or how it will end.  That is the beauty of it.

I won’t know till I ask the character.  Is the person is young, old, male, female…alien?  What has this person done?  There are lots of levels of sin.  What is this person dying of?  Is the person ultimately saved, or condemned to the fires they feared?  Do they die, or do they live?  It will depend on who I find.

I could write that story four or five times and have them be totally different.You could get four or five premises out of the same quote by making different interpretations, and I latched on to five phrases in the poem.  This one poem could provide me with a dozen possible stories.  The key for me is looking at the phrases out of context and determining what they mean to me.

Best of all, these are my veins, not another person’s.  I am just using Plath’s words to help me find them.  (My suicide analogy paired with a poem from Plath, who committed suicide, was not intentional and not meant to offend anyone.)

Go get a book off your shelf and find yourself a story.  Poems are best for me because poets have to carefully choose every word.  If you don’t have poetry books, you can find entire poems online.

If it works for you, you’ll have another tool in your writer’s toolbox to fight writer’s block.  Good luck and keep writing.