Home of the Brave

We live in an age of heroism. It’s in our films (seen a comic book based film lately?) and our novels and our news reports. Unlike the sixties, we have revered our troops for their bravery in the field. We take these boys (for the most part) from their video games and attempts to nail pretty girls and place them in the worst that hell here on earth has to offer. From deep within the human psyche, they find the courage to do things most of us could not even conceive. When we think of bravery, there’s a common list: police officers, firemen, soldiers,  people who risk the ultimate daily for the rest of us.

When we think of bravery, it’s easy to think of the obvious. I don’t want to diminish that, but it’s not the type I want to talk about here. If you look at those comic heroes, Peter Parker?  A nobody until a lab accident makes him Spiderman. Bruce Wayne? A rich orphan whose psychopathy turns him into the elusive crime fighter in an attempt to right the type of wrong that robbed him of his parents. What’s the point? Bravery is a trait inherent in all of us. It is circumstances that awaken it.

When I place my character in the right set of circumstances, it doesn’t matter who he was before. It doesn’t matter what traits he exhibited or how he manifested himself in life. In the right set of circumstances, he can find that gut entrenched trait that will cause him to rise against the largest of foes. David didn’t take on Goliath because of who he was, but because of what he had within him.

When you place your protagonist in the right circumstances, he or she will display the type of heroic behavior one would expect. We see it everyday. I have a friend battling breast cancer. Her courage amazes me. I know single mothers struggling to raise families with no help. I couldn’t do that, I say. In the right circumstances, maybe I could. Until the circumstances are right, we don’t know. Until you give your character the opportunity, you won’t know either.

Brace yourself though. Once you give them the chance to shine, the book is all theirs. You’ve lost control to a certain degree. Feel good about it.

What circumstances do you provide for your characters that require the inner reserve and strength we call bravery?

Merry Christmas, Best Wishes for a Writing Productive New Year

I hope this holiday finds your family closing out the year with family and friends and the best the season has to offer.

As the new year begins, I hope for you a year that is productive and full of growth. I look forward to seeing all of you in that new year!

To you and your’s…

All my best.

NaNoWriMo No More

    It’s officially over, and I’ve never been more grateful to stop writing. I’m glad that I participated and really glad I finished. You’re sensing a but aren’t you? Here it is: I won’t be repeating NaNo again. It’s obviously wildly successful and works for a lot of people, but I’m not one of them.

    First off, November has to be the second worst month to do this (December being the first). More than enough stress and anxiety to go around without adding the insanity of NaNo. I neglected things I had no business neglecting. My father – who has been ill – needed my butt with him not pouring insane hours into the crazy pursuit of 50,000 words in 30 days.

     Secondly, I have worked hard on my craft and found myself throwing everything I’ve learned out the window just to get something, anything on the page. For someone who writes tightly plotted books, the hurry up format was a complete disaster. (As is the resulting manuscript) I broke rules and NOT in a good way and worried about the bad habits I might be developing during that month. The anxiety and stress of that alone made it not worth it.

     I still believe in this concept. A lot of people benefit from it and that’s a great thing. My writer’s group has done our own version of this before. We set our own parameters (and never do it in the fall around holidays) so that it works best for us. We are planning our own version of it in the spring not to write a novel in a month but to edit one. For those who do this faithfully every year, you have my profound respect. It is definitely a formidable undertaking. I’m proud of the accomplishment, but I can live with having only officially participated once.

What about you? Do you NaNo every year?

Passive Voice

Passive voice bedevils writers. It’s an equal opportunity villain, striking the pens of novice and professional writers alike. First, there are real misconceptions about what it is and isn’t. Even Strunk and White famously got it wrong three out of four times in their widely accepted tome, The Elements of Style. The real problem for writers is if you don’t understand what it is and isn’t, you’ll never recognize it in your own writing.

First misconception: if you see a “to be” verb then you have passive structure. In grad school, a student writer mistook every instance of was in another student’s work as an example of passive voice. The use of weaker to be verbs is certainly not preferable, and it weakens your prose, but it does not make your sentence by definition passive.

To be passive the object of an action must become the subject of the sentence.

Suppose Stephen King is having a book signing. Which of these is active and which is passive?

Stephen King is signing books at 5:00 today.

Books are being signed by Stephen King at 5:00 today.

Silly and an easy example to pick out. The first is active. Stephen King is the subject. The books are the object. Note that an active sentence is nearly always shorter. This allows for cleaner and much clearer prose.

Passive voice isn’t a grammar issue. It’s a sylistic choice. There are instances (rare in today’s writing) where it has its place. However, if you’re writing a thriller, a mystery, a paranormal, and the list goes on, how long will a reader hold on sludging through passive voice? Not long.

Given this knowledge, when you are rewriting (I consider this a revision item for new writers, veterans are more likely to do it without thinking during the drafting process) one of the first choices you need to look at is passive structure and passive voice. Is your prose as active as it can be?

An interesting note, my writing buddies have all noted the difficulty of not correcting things like passive structure as we write for NaNo this month. But on a deadline, we just plug away worrying about word count not the usual things. Of course, we’re also counting the days till we can go back to these manuscripts and “fix” all those things.

What are your feelings about passive voice?

Big Rigs, Batman, and Thunderstorms

It’s been rainy and dreary here. Probably not much different for most of us experiencing the fall of the year. I remember learning to drive, and my dad made me drive in every possible “element” before I could drive on my own. Being your usual angsty teenager, I thought it was ridiculous. When I got in the car for a lesson, these things had to happen: lock the door, fasten the seatbelt, start the car. In that order. If I didn’t do it, the lesson ended there. My dad wanted me safe in all regards. Locked doors (before electronic locks of course), seat belts fastened were imperative. Being from the Midwest, I also had to drive on wet, snowy, and (because it’s Kansas) icy streets. We practiced every possible scenario and what the possible “outs” might be. You can imagine my appreciation for this – at that time.

Fast forward to today, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thanked him in my head for his obsession. From my first tire blow out to driving in my first ice storm to my first experience with hydroplaning. It was worse because my writer’s group was in the car, and we were on the way to a writer’s conference. The only thing worse than experiencing these things is dealing with them when the lives of people you care about are at stake.

Then today, I’m headed home from an appointment on the highway and that amalgamation of events and timing and my dad came together and saved my skin. A small white car in the left lane stopped dead in front of a large rig. No idea why as there was nothing in front of it. The rig couldn’t stop on the rain slick roads, and I was in the right lane, possibly in his blind spot. If he hit that little white car, whoever was in it was gone. He made the choice to come into my lane. I saw the brake lights on the white car; I saw the front end of the rig skew my direction. With dad’s voice in my head, I let off on the gas, took to the shoulder, and with the blessing of an exit ramp a mere fifty feet away, slipped safely off the highway. What did I hear Dad say? “Always have an out. Plan it. Look for it. Be prepared.”

It’s good advice for novelists. Even if you outline (which I don’t), our characters can take us places and do things that catch us by surprise. And eventually, we can find ourselves in blind alleys or up against brick walls, or forced to make difficult choices. The thing is no matter whether you outline or not, as you write, you should always be thinking about what your out is of any given situation. What is your character’s out in any given circumstance? Don’t let the character be boxed in so badly it requires the miracle of a man in a cape to save the day (unless you’re writing about Batman). You must have an out, look for it, be aware of the potential for it, plan for it.

How do you prepare for unexpected turns in your writing?

NaNoWriMo

I’ll make this quick. I’m already behind because Thursday I was dead in the water. My son had surgery this week and because of an expected storm front (which never materialized) I couldn’t drive down to OKC. He’s grown (24), but it drove me nuts that I couldn’t be there. We’re talking cried. And even though I kept telling myself to get over it and sit down and write, I couldn’t. So, last night my writer’s group was over, and we NaNo’d into the night. I even added another chapter after they left. Still, I’m not caught up with myself yet. I’ll get there…right?

Argh! Good news is my son came through surgery and immediately thought of food. Since he hasn’t wanted much for months, we’re excited that maybe the surgery has taken care of the problem that has plagued him. Now, he needs to gain back his weight.

And Mom needs to get back on the NaNo train….

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Participant

My critique group has not been able to participate as a whole in this for a host of reasons. A couple of us were full-time educators and the fall of the year was the worst possible time for us to devote any time outside our classrooms to anything other than work. One year we decided we would hold our own version of it in January when things were less crazy for us. It went well. Several of us are shopping the results of that now. So, it’s exciting to participate for real this year.

Exciting. And terrifying. Now, there is real pressure. It is stunningly real to me that beginning tomorrow, I am offline for 30 days. Nothing else will get the work done. So long, Facebook. Sayonara Twitter. Arrivederci WordPress Blog. OMG! Adios to email…well, I might need to check that, at least every other day. Man.

Buon giorno to my butt in the chair, my fingers on the keyboard. A greeting to my new friends in the novel about be created. Wow! The terror isn’t abating. Deep breaths. I can do this. I can do this.

Fellow participants, what do you do when panic knocks on the door?

Writer’s Block?

The members of my critique group are well versed in “writer’s block” as the writing community knows it. We’ve read articles and books about it. We’ve all experienced “it”on a scale of some kind. One of the great things about a critique group is that we help each other through those times. I don’t believe in “writer’s block” as a phenomenon. I have never been blocked from writing in the true sense. No one has held a gun to my head and prevented me from writing. They didn’t padlock my computer in a drawer or lock away all the paper and pens. My microcassette and iPhone didn’t disappear. Much as I’d like to have those excuses for my blockages the reality is that “no one” blocks me. So, what is it?

Writing is a profession, a job. Like all jobs it will vary with the peaks and valleys of life. When life is in the peaks, your job will be good. When life is in the valleys, your job will usually follow suit. This is the harsh reality. Our writing is usually not blocked by a person but by life. Common culprits?

Economics: The list here is endless. I have to work 40-60 hours a week or I work several jobs. When I’m done, I crash and burn or I’m doing laundry or chauffering the kids. If I could just write full-time, it would work. I can’t afford to write. If you’re a writer, you can’t afford not to write. At midnight, at 4 a.m., with a baby in one arm and a pad and pen in the other. The stories are out there of writers who got up at 4 a.m. every morning for a year to write that first novel. Flannery O’Conner (I believe) used to walk to the post office with kids in tow to post submissions. It can be done.

Sadness: Probably a more appropriate word is depression, but not all people fall into the depressed category. This is when life hands us times where perhaps we are caring for an aging parent, or a child or spouse who is ill. We may be dealiing with physical illness ourselves. Life may have simply handed us too many things to handle at one time. We are so heavy with the weight of it all that writing becomes one more weight we cannot bear. The best thing for these times is to ride it out. Life hands us these times, and we must cope. I’ve never been a big person for journals, but they are excellent during these times. The wide range of emotions you experience will be something you can mine for your writing when you come out the other side. Also, stay in touch with writing friends. If there is one thing we all understand, it is these times.

Frustration: After years of pursuing the craft, we become mired in the belief we aren’t cut out for it. Perhaps we don’t have the talent we thought we had. Obviously, we have wasted our time. This defeatist thinking is coming from a point of frustration. You haven’t made forward momentum, maybe it’s time to…give up. Don’t! The worst thing to do at a low in your writing is to quit. Change up what you’re doing. Take a class. Read a craft book or a good novel. Go to a conference. Have a writer’s retreat with a friend or alone. Give yourself the encouragement you need. A good book to read during this period is Nancy Pickard’s Seven Steps in the Writer’s Path.

Writing, not living: Probably a more appropriate title would be compulsive factor. This is one I am guilty of but probably all writers can be, especially when we’re in the zone. We compulsively write, abandoning everything else, including family and friends. In order to write well, you need to live. Stop writing and get out and take time to enjoy each day. Honestly, you’ll be glad. The writing will be the better for it.

Chair Butt: This is deadly for a writer. We have a sedentary life, but endorphins spur creativity and those come from exercise. Get up and get moving. Every day. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing but get the blood flowing, the heart pumping.

If you do reach that dream of writing full time, remember to still get out in the world. You don’t want your writing to stagnate because you haven’t left your four walls in eleven months. Remember to support each other. This is a job rampant with rejection so we need each other. Be the validation for another writer and you know they’ll be there for you.

How do you handle times when the writing “won’t come”?

Contest Bound – Four Important Things to Remember

How many of you enter contests? My critique group challenges each other to enter. In fact, we often enter the same ones, pitting us against each other. It’s fun when we win together as we did last year at OWFI.

POLISH, POLISH, POLISH: Contests are about more than winning. It’s about focusing on your craft. We polish our stories to the point where we couldn’t possibly look at them again, then we submit.

SUPPORT SYSTEM: It’s hard work and because of that it’s important to do it together or to at least have a support system in place. No writing takes place in a vacuum. We may create alone, but we never publish alone. Bring the whole team together before you submit your writing.

GUIDELINES: Never take any guideline for granted. Whatever is listed, follow it to the letter. The last thing you want is to have your story rejected for something as silly (to our way of thinking) as formatting when you could have done it right and WON. The people running the contest have good reasons for those guidelines and as professional writers we have to adhere to them.

SHARE: Writing is enough work, but add social networking, marketing, etc. and when does a writer have time for anything else? When you hear about a contest, share it with other writers. We’re all in this together, an ever-growing community of artists. Help each other out. None of us have time to find them all, and beginning writers may not even know where to look.

In that vein, here are some I know about (and do feel free to share these with others):

Dead of Winter: Winter-themed contest

http://tclj.toasted-cheese.com/contest.htm#dow

Literal Latte Fiction Award

http://www.literal-latte.com/contests/

National Writers Association Novel Writing Contest

www.nationalwriters.com

On the Premises (These are fun)

http://www.onthepremises.com/current_contest.html

What are some of your favorite contests?

Versatile Blogger Award

From Linda

I returned from my trip to find a lovely Versatile Blogger Award from Linda Gray at Critique Sisters Corner. (They are: Linda Gray, Heather McCorkle, and Karlene Petitt) If you have never checked out this blog, you need to. A critique group blog with something for everyone who writes or wants to.

Thank you, Linda! Click on the green Versatile Blogger Award box for instant transmission to their blog, where you can read about the craft, the art, and the interaction of writers.

The rules of the Versatile Blogger Award are:

Thank the person who gave it to you and link back to them.
Share seven things about yourself.
Pass the award along to other, recently discovered blogs and let them know about it.

Now about the Versatile Blogger Award and me! (Cause it’s all about me, don’t you know? JK) I actually find myself quite boring which is what led me to writing fiction, I suppose. But at the risk of sending all of you into a stupor, here are seven things about me:

~ I recently left full time teaching after seventeen years to pursue writing full time.
~ I teach college classes part time and love it.
~ When I first began, I couldn’t find a small writer’s group of beginners so I started my own. We’re on year 11…
~ This last year we lost our beloved cat and dog, but we still have our horses.
~ Our boys live in Oklahoma now, and I’m hoping we’ll move closer to them soon.
~ I have published short stories on line, in print journals and anthologies but haven’t fulfilled my dream of publishing a novel yet.
~ Writing has never been something I wanted to do. It’s something I have to do.

And now, some wonderful bloggers I’ve recently discovered:

Brenda Sills @ http://brendasills.blogspot.com/

LB Diamond @ http://lbdiamond.wordpress.com/

Kathryn Vercillo @ http://kathrynvercillo.com/blog/about/

Journeys in Ink @ http://journeysinink.wordpress.com/

Stephanie Pearl @ http://www.yoursinsomanywords.com/

Congratulations to everyone. I’m grateful for your words and the fact that you share them willingly with the rest of us.

Thank you again to Linda and the ladies at Critique Sisters Corner.

Check these bloggers out!