Maine Crime Writers

Set up for the Book and Print Fair

Kate Flora: I just spent two days in a park in Waterville, sitting in a hot tent, trying to sell books. The big plus of this endeavor was that I spent it with my friend Maureen Milliken, which meant we did some talking about writing. I told her that earlier this summer, I’d done an event at the Bailey Library in Saco, and one of the attendees was Chris Roerden’s son. Chris Roerden was a mentor of a sort, the author of a fabulous book about revision called Don’t Murder Your Mystery that I’ve used often over the years. When I mentioned that to Maureen, it turned out that she also uses the book as reference.

So today, as I’m recovering from a week of loading and unloading the car, and talking to readers, I’m thinking about Chris, and about some of the great advice I’ve gotten over the years, or learned on my own and shared with my students.

Mid-August feels like the right time for some writing advice. Something happens to a lot of

At Freya’s in Rockport for a book talk

us as September approaches. Conditioned by anywhere from 12 – 19 years of going back to class each fall, we start thinking about getting serious about our work. Knuckling down to postponed projects. Finally writing that story or novel or facing the challenge of revision. Below are some thoughts from a handout I gave my students at the end of a six-week writing class:

Write something you would like to read

Always remember that the enemy is not the badly written page—that can be fixed—but the empty page.

Think Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, and the shitty first draft.

Those Pesky Editing Heads

 You know the ones, they keep giving advice, and criticism, and fuss and fidget about every sentence you write until your head spins and you can’t write a word? Think about turning off the editing heads long enough to let you get something down on the page that you can work with. Remind yourself that getting it down is more important than getting it right. You can use rewrite to make corrections and improvements.

Remember that perfection is not possible.

Show, don’t tell and other things we’re told that are true

Or, as one of my students once said to another: “I now know how I’m supposed to feel, what I want you to do is make me feel it.”

Specific is better than general. Details make a scene feel authentic. Remember that as long as you avoid the dreaded “data dump,” readers love lore.

Be true to your ideas and your characters, not your story. Don’t bend your characters to fit the story, bend the story to fit who your characters are. Let the actions and the conflicts arise from who they are.

Treat your reader honestly. Don’t hold back a lot of secrets. You can mislead, using the shell game of clues and action, or an unreliable narrator, but don’t lie.

Remember, when you’re in a snarling, sweaty lather, that this is supposed to be fun. It’s only a book.

The way may not be straight but you will get there

Where Do You Write?

Are you honoring your passion for writing by creating a good place to work? Remember that no one will make your writing time for you, and others won’t respect your desire to write if you don’t.

Dedicated place – remember that sometimes having a particular place where you write can become a part of the writing process.

Rituals: Going there, sitting down, opening a notebook or a file, all of these ordinary actions can become a form of ritual which may help you get back into what you are writing. Many writers also have the practice of rereading and editing what they wrote in the last session to start the writing flow and pick up the thread of the story.

What’s around you: Consider whether there are things you can do to make it more appealing or inspiring—a bulletin board with notes to yourself, or pictures which relate to what you are writing or something you want to write. A quote that raises a question. A quote that uses the language you would like to use. Something someone has written or said that inspires you or challenges you. Conversely, you might post a picture of Kanye West, who brags that he doesn’t read. Sometimes an “I’ll show you” attitude can also help to get going.

Dedicated time: My writing teacher used to say that any writing session should be at least two hours—the first hour to shed the world and focus the mind and the second hour to really get down to the writing. Only you will know what works best for you, but trying to build in a few sessions of dedicated time is important. Don’t have two hours? Don’t worry. A regular practice is what is most important. Check out Stephen P. Kelner’s book, Motivate Your Writing and Kenneth Atchity’s book, A Writer’s Time.

Work with a set of realistic goals. Do set deadlines but be sure that they fit with what you  know about yourself, your time, your writing style. Writing 500 words each session may not sound like much, but it adds up.

Save Everything – even when it feels like you’re writing gravel or the story takes an unplanned turn. Another time, you may want to recycle what you wrote there. Or you may reread the pages at a future date and decide, with a bit of editing, that they aren’t so bad. Or, once you get over your fear of your characters taking over, you may find yourself going in a great new direction.

Write You Are Meant to Write: Be sure that your material is something you care about. You need to:

Care about the personality of your characters;

Care about the themes of your story;

Care about what’s at stake

Because if it doesn’t matter to you, it won’t matter to your reader.

Some thoughts about breaking the log jam:

Sometimes we just get stuck and can’t figure out where the story goes next. Take a break. Make a calendar/spreadsheet/whatever and chart each scene: time of day, characters, what happens. Try to plot out the next five to ten scenes. Sometimes working scene by scene can be less overwhelming than chapter by chapter or than trying to envision the whole story.

Consider learning about how to use a storyboard with yellow stickies you can move around to rearrange scenes and chapters

Some writers use Scrivener to organize their writing.

Print out and read the book or story straight through until the place you got stuck. Reading hard copy can give it a different feel.

To get a sense of the rhythm of your writing, read it into a recorder or your phone and then play it back. Read it to someone else. Have someone read it to you. Get your computer to read it to you.

Still stuck and thinking you’re unable to go forward? Write a scene you know you will use later on. Your story doesn’t have to be crafted in a linear fashion.

Teeing off the above, if you don’t know how to get from Chapter One or Page One to The End, write the scenes you do know and then think about what you’ll need to write to connect them. Then start writing those connections. There is no one “right” way to write your story. There is only your way.

Write the ending, then go back to where you got stuck and write toward it.

Apply butt to chair. Remain until 500 words are down. Repeat at your next writing session. Even if it’s crap, a synergistic “something” will often happen that will show you the path. Remember those first painful trips to the gym when you’ve been delinquent? Your writing muscles will get stronger.

Go back to the first chapter and read through what you’ve already written, editing as you go. It helps to find the momentum again, and to continue on. Pay attention to your character. Did you get off track? Is your character not acting like him or herself? Is anything happening that matters? Have you gotten stuck because your own story is boring you? Shake things up. Let your character do something unexpected.

Sometimes pulling something out and wrestling with it can make it start to work. Practice the type of “riff writing” Elizabeth Lyon describes in her excellent book on revision, Manuscript Makeover.

If your character is still misbehaving, take him or her for that ride in the car and ask why the character is behaving in that way. Seriously. The first time I heard writers say this, I thought it was crazy, but you need to be writing characters you want to spend time with. Characters, just like employees, can be fired if they’re not doing their job.

Still stuck?

Remind yourself that brain surgeons don’t often complain about surgeon’s block, and pilots have to keep flying the planes. Remember that just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you give up. Most things that are worth doing are hard. So if you’ve written your 500 words for days and are still getting gravel, take out your trusty copy of Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter’s What If? and do some exercises.

Take yourself on an artist’s date and see if refilling the well might help. The world is full of fascinating things that may get you writing again.

…An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers. You do not take anyone on this artist date but you and your inner artist, a.k.a your creative child…

Excerpt from The Artist’s Way, page 18 Julia Cameron

When all else fails, try ironing. Smoothing things out and creating order may either inspire you or the repetitive tedium may send you gratefully back to the keyboard.