3 Things Writers Should Never Do

Don't you like declarative, forceful blog post titles like that? They're so confident and bossy. It's like my inner eight-year-old gets to come out and tell everybody what to do.

BUT. On with the DECLARATIVE DIRECTIVES!

These are all things you should never do in your writing, not in general. Man, that would be a long list, wouldn't it? They are also things that are huge pet peeves for me, and I do quite a bit of editing and proofreading, both for my betas, CPs, writing group, and friends, and also as freelance work on the side. Which means I have rather a large amount of experience, and am not completely unqualified to write this. It also means that this is not the only list of things you should never do, but is instead a small sampling of Stuff That Pisses Me Off, Which You Should Avoid Doing Because It Also Pisses Most People - Including Editors, Agents, and Other Important Industry Types - Off.

1. Ignore Grammar Rules

This one could be broken down into about 4,573 (as a rough count) separate common grammar issues, but instead of boring you all to tears, I decided to lump them all together. I am not referring to the poetic license type of ignoring grammar, but the much more common, and MUCH more annoying ignorance/laziness that leads people to eschew all basic grammar rules. I see everything from missing quotation marks to bad or missing paragraph breaks to sentence fragments to tense changes to inappropriate apostrophes and more.

Here's the bottom line: it makes me focus on your grammar (or lack thereof) instead of your content, and that is a very bad thing. There's no way I'll be engaged by your story if I'm not focused on the content. Please, use all the resources the electronic world provides, from style guides to grammar sites to the grammar check in Microsoft Word. If you need help, ask for it. Even when you're sending things to betas or CPs, save them some time and do your basic proofreading first, so that they can focus on the meat of your work, and on catching the little typos that slip past even the most strict grammarians.

2. Go For Melodrama Instead of Drama

(Small caveat: unless you're writing Gothic Romance or absurd comedy, in which case, go for it.)

For the rest of us, this is to be avoided at all costs. I define melodrama, personally (and for the purposes of this post) as unearned emotion. In other words, a scene that comes three-quarters of the way through a long story, in which Joe is screaming at Betty because Betty has been deliberately pushing his buttons and provoking him and trying to get him to explode is probably earned (probably. But still should be watched.) However, a scene that comes in the second chapter, after we've just met the characters, in which Joe is screaming at Betty because Betty just doesn't understand him and oh god the pain is probably melodrama.

I'm saying the emotions have to match the stakes, and have to follow an arc of rising tension that leads us to the big emotional moment. That arc can take place on a small scale in one scene, but the emotion should be subsequently smaller, too. The bigger the rising arc, the bigger the emotion. Earn that drama. Earn that weeping or the screaming or the throwing things (unless it's comedy, of course.)

Why? Because you need to take your readers with you, and let their emotions and investment rise, too, so that when the big moment happens, they're just as devastated as your characters. Don't rush it. Build it.

3. Favor Facts Over Emotion

This is the 180 degree opposite of #2, in which you throw all drama out the window and tell your story in a dry, yet thorough and detailed, way.

Your plot points are stellar. Your story lines are masterfully woven together. Your writing craft is exquisite and careful and exacting. And yet people read your work and yawn, because they have no investment in your characters.

We need emotion - we are (most of us) emotional beings. The why of an action is just as important as the how. So Joe can throw a plate at Betty, but if we don't know how he's feeling when he does it, or understand his motivation, it will just be one more dry fact.

Color things up. Shake 'em up. Just not too much (see #2 above.)

That's a small sample of MY pet peeves. What are yours? What else drives you crazy when you read/edit/offer critiques?

The Rush of Rushing

Hey, did you know I'm writing a novel??

You didn't? Well, I can't blame you. You wouldn't know it from my recent blog posts. What can I say? I've been caught up in the alluring world of creative non-fiction, where almost no research is required. What a beautiful place...

I know, it's been a while since I posted anything about my WIP. In my defense, I'm still working my way through this monster, which doesn't so much involve reading as it does navigating the research rabbit holes. You know, those places you stumble into when you're researching something, and quickly get lost in. The places that take you from the world of South American archaeology into the strange, sealed world of cliff tombs. For example.

I'm not disparaging these rabbit holes - they can provide surprising plot twists, fascinating tidbits of information, and lovely hours of procrastination - but I can't help but feel like a horse delicately picking its way through a field riddled with little rodent burrows. One wrong step...

I won't go into excruciating detail, because, well, it's excruciatingly dull, but I will explain the basics: I am attempting to place my South American lifetime in a specific set of locations and a specific time period, so that I can then attempt to figure out how the people of those locations and periods lived and interacted, so that I can then figure out who the hell my characters are and what the hell they're doing.

This process is of course not linear. I start with a vague set of parameters: one character probably lived in the dry Andean highlands, and the other in the semi-temperate edges of the Amazon basin. So I look in my giant archaeology book for articles about peoples who lived in the altiplano, or the high Andean plateau. That leads me to a variety of dense, academic treatises on the Early, Middle, and Late Periods of Pre-Incan civilization, so then I have to go look up when each of these periods occurred and what occurred in them.

The problem, though, is that it's very hard to find general information on early South American peoples, which is fair, because there were many of them living all over the continent in vastly different climates.

So then I start researching actual tribes who lived in the altiplano, which leads me to that BBC show on the Chachapoya people and their cliff tombs, which, although fascinating, is not what I need to know, because the Chachapoya lived in the Peruvian cloud forest, which is not at all arid and therefore not at all what I'm looking for.

I dig myself out of that particular rabbit hole, and dive into another.

I know it sounds a lot like I'm complaining. I'm not. The research is difficult, sometimes boring, but generally fascinating and rich with gorgeous ideas and images, and I need to know all of this. I just...well, to be honest, I just want to be getting this done faster. I'm constantly fighting that urge to rush, to finish my book as fast as possible and get it out there in the world. It's a totally self-manufactured rush - I have no deadline - and it's making me feel like I'm never getting enough done. Which means, really, that it's not helping me at all.

I know I'm not alone in this - Anne Allen had a great post about it a couple of weeks ago - but that doesn't make it easier to handle. It's so hard to fight that inner voice that screams for more, faster, now - and to not feel defeated when you know that less, slower, later, is better.

Send along some good vibes, and let me know how you fight the voices that tell you to rush.

Why New York Doesn't Like You, and Never Write Alone

This post really is going to be about the process of writing a novel. I promise. It's just going to take a wee tangent to get there. "Trust me, I'm telling you stories."

Real stories make their way into fiction in strange ways sometimes.

So, I used to live in New York City. Brooklyn, to be precise, and Windsor Terrace to be really precise. I visit NYC a few times a year, most recently this past weekend. Now that I'm a visitor and not a resident, I periodically forget the Truth - yes, capital T - about New York. You see, when I visit, it's a whirlwind of nostalgia and friendship and art and food and wine (a lot of wine). The city lulls me into a false sense of security, and I start feeling pretty great, looking at the concrete jungle all lit up and vibrant, like the city itself is celebrating my return.

I was striding along Greenwich Avenue in the West Village on Monday, delighting in the crisp autumn air, the streaming bright sunshine, the hustle and noise and life of the city, when I failed to notice the neon orange construction cone standing in front of me on the sidewalk. I was too busy being confident, you see, to notice petty things like physical obstacles. So naturally, I stepped on the cone, whacked my arms against the nearest telephone pole to try to get my balance back, failed, and took a lovely swan dive across the concrete and landed flat on my face.

At least four people were standing within two feet of me when this happened. I imagine a couple of them probably had to jump out of the way to allow enough room for the full length of my swan dive, for which I am very grateful (it was an impressive dive). When I scraped my face off of the sidewalk, muttering something wise and witty, like "unngghhhh... my head....", I saw that every single one of these people was studiously watching the traffic light, and ignoring me. No one turned around. No one said a thing.

And then I remembered: oh right, this is New York City. It doesn't give a crap. New York won't celebrate my return. What it will do is stick a foot in front of me and trip me, then look at its nails and pretend it didn't see me go flying, just to remind me that it's way, way cooler than I am.

Well, truthfully, it is way cooler than I am, so that's OK.

I picked myself up, brushed myself off (uninjured, thankfully), had a good laugh at my own expense, and went back to Boston a humbler if slightly more irritated woman.

This is not to say that I didn't have a great weekend. I did. I was visiting one of my best friends, a fierce and fabulous force of nature who I'll call The New Messiah (and no harm or offense intended to anyone of any religion. It's just an old nickname). The New Messiah is one of my best critics. She gets the dubious honor of reading the first drafts of my writing, the ones that really should be chucked into a dark corner and hidden from all eyes except my own. She reads through the dreck, anyway, putting up with my worst habits, and gives me honest and constructive feedback.

She didn't read anything this weekend - I have no first drafts right now - but she did listen patiently as I fumbled through an explanation of my newest idea. We were standing on a subway platform in Brooklyn - the G train platform, which, for those of you uninitiated into the joys of the G, means that we had a nice, long, extended time to wait, and talk.

When I finished talking, she looked right at me, and said, "That sounds like a great idea. I'd read that book."

Now, whether or not this is true (and it is; the New Messiah is many things, but she is not a liar. If she hated the idea, she would tell me. This is another reason why she gets to read my first drafts), this a great thing to say to an insecure writer.

And then, she did the next great thing you can do for a writer: she talked through my idea with me, ad nauseum. She asked excellent questions, gave thought-provoking suggestions, and by the time the G showed up (only 17 hours later, no biggie), I felt like it might actually be possible to pull this damn idea off.

I know it seems roundabout, but this whole story really is central to the process of writing a novel.

You see, there's a great myth that writers are solitary creatures. We are, to some extent; we do work alone. But very few of us write alone. For me, my friends are essential and much-valued parts of my process. They act as sounding-boards and collaborators; they edit and proofread and cheerlead and tell me the awful truth when no one else will. And I love them for it, and I never get through the outlining process without them.

Oh, yeah - the part about face-planting on the sidewalk? Yeah, that's not about my friends or my process. Sorry. BUT, I will almost definitely be putting a scene like that - with that feeling, equal parts irritation and humor, and that memory of being ignored by the giant, ever-turning city - into a book. So you see, it really all is related.

Insecure Writers: And Now We Edit

NOTE: I'm joining a new group: The Insecure Writers. It's an online group, meaning that no one ever really meets face-to-face, which is so perfectly appropriate for writers (to make a grand over-generalization about us, of course) that I had to join. We 'meet' the first Wednesday of every month, so there will be a nice neurotic post about writing - so different from my other posts, I know - once a month.

I'm going to make an attempt to be brief today. Not one of my strengths, but I'm this close (holds up thumb and forefinger with itty bitty space in between) to finishing the first-pass edit of Cloudland, and I am jonesing to get back to it. Like, leg-shaking hand-tremors gimme-my-fix-NOW jonesing.

And oh yes, I do mean first-pass (or really third-pass), because there's a whole long chain of editing that happens to a novel after a first draft is finished:

1. The writer reads the first draft and alternates between perfect joy and horrified disbelief. She tries to remove the bits that cause the disbelief and does great celebratory dances around the awesome bits.
2. Second draft. The writer enlists one or two very kind, wise close friends with some expertise in writing/reading/editing to read the draft and point out the places where the writer has gone a wee bit overboard, which should really be cut before anyone else is allowed to read it.
3. Third draft. The writer takes a few deep breaths and engages the help of a professional editor. With the help of this editor, she murders paragraphs and slashes and burns all of the "long's" and "slow's" and other problematic and generally over-written sections.
4. Fourth draft. The writer and the editor go through the novel again (with a lighter touch, one would hope) to make sure that now that it's nice and lean, it all still flows and makes sense and that there's story continuity and all of that important stuff. 
5. Fifth (or more) draft. The writer finds an agent (Snap. Just like that! Soooo easy!) That agent likely has one or two or seventy ideas for improving the manuscript.
6. Many more drafts. The agent finds a publisher (also super-duper quick and easy, of course) and the publisher has a just a few tiny little suggestions before agreeing to take a major risk and spend money on this unknown author and her precious manuscript. Just a couple of very small edits. 

Of course, this is my version of the editing process. Some writers probably have very different processes (and if any writers are reading this and do have better processes, please for the love of God share them with me. Kay, thanks.)

All of this, of course, can lead to just the teeniest tiniest sense of insecurity. Y'know, no biggie. Just something along the lines of "OH DEAR GOD WILL ANYTHING BE LEFT OF MY BELOVED MANUSCRIPT WHEN EVERYONE IS DONE KILLING IT???"

Which is ridiculous and dramatic and mildly insane, and also probably entirely normal for anyone who has ever had anything edited. Emails, reports, novels, scripts, letters, grocery lists, whatever. There's always this moment where you think, "Wait, why are you getting rid of that? That was a genius idea! Don't we need seventy-five different adjectives/kinds of spinach/statistics/ways to say "dear"/etc?"

Anyway. I'm almost there on step #3 (does this feel like a 12-step program to anyone else??) Before I sign off for today, I'll share one more tidbit from the annals of editing:

This one is one of the worst offenses of my bad habit #4, pairing actions and body parts. I actually, with no sense of humor or irony at all, wrote the following sentence: "Then she [Sara] has no choice but to squeeze his hand, and nod her own head." 

Yes, folks, that's right, I am now pointing out that my characters only nod their own heads, not anyone else's! Because if I didn't - CHAOS!! WHOSE HEAD IS SARA NODDING?? WHAT ON EARTH IS HAPPENING IN THIS NOVEL??

Needless to say, the image this conjures is priceless: Sara putting her hand on her head, and pushing it up and down in an unmistakable nod.

Too bad I'm not writing farce, or satire, because that's a gem, there.