9 posts tagged “the workings of writing”
The past few days have been spent revising for my upcoming exams and thinking critically about my own writing. I've been critting works in a writing group, and I've been working on my submission for the PP Robots Beyond anthology.
I have to admit, I struggled to come up with something for that particular antho. I generally steer well clear of sci-fi, because I don't feel at home in that genre. Not only because I haven't read a lot of traditional / hard sci-fi, but because I know bugger all about science, really.
Well, that's a lie. But I don't feel sufficiently at home with the ins and outs of physics, chemestriy etc to come up with plausible premises.
As I was trying to come up with a plot, I started thinking about the characters in my fiction. Most of my protagonists are female, because I don't know if I'd be able to write a convincing guy. I try not to make these protagonists too much like me, though. It's fine to incorporate things I know, or things that I might do, but I do not want to write what is, essentially, me with a different name.
This isn't just because I want to avoid Mary Sues. Mary Sues aren't even the worst kind of author self-insertion, if you ask me.
The things I find most trying to read are the bits of fiction that are essentially nothing more than the author working out their problems on page.
Now, conflicts from your own life can be wonderful inspiration for fiction. You can use your experience to create realistic, moving characters.
There is, however, a difference between using your knowledge to give your characters depth, and creating a version of yourself that can deal with whatever issues you happen to be struggling with.
What irks me so much about that particular kind of self-insertion, is that author's attitude. Mary Sues are generally only found in fan fiction. The author realises that they are producing a derivative work for the entertainment of their audience and, to a certain extent, themselves. People who come up with an entirely original scenario to put their little mini-me tend to have a different view on what they're creating.
It is to be viewed outside the context of a certain fandom. Focus shifts from the familiar elements of the piece (setting and characters from an established canon) and settles on what the author has created: an alter-ego that represents everything they wish they could be.
When I read fiction, or watch it for that matter, I want to be entertained. I want to be moved, informed, terrified, upset, angered, comforted. What I don't want is to play shrink to an author who doesn't want to deal with their problems in a more conventional way.
As I said, it's perfecty acceptable - good, even - to incorporate personal experiences, if it will add to the work. Give the protagonist your sense of humour, make them as deathly afraid of spiders. Has something really awful happened to you? Use that knowledge to make a believeable character.
Don't use your fiction as a medium to work out your anger, frustration and confusion and then present it as anything other than what it really is. If you are a particularly talented writer, you might produce something amazing, despite your motivations for writing it. Maybe you can use the bare bones of what you wrote to create something that others would like to read.
I'm not saying you shouldn't use writing fiction as a way to deal with issues. On the contrary: it can be very cathartic, it can help you realise things that you otherwise would have missed. I just don't need to read your personal written therapy sessions.
This also extends to people with confidence issues. Yes, you most likely are a wonderful person. There are very few true bastards in the world, after all. But I don't want to read fiction from someone who is constantly praising characters who happen to share certain traits with the author.
What I'm essentially trying to say is that, in fiction, you shouldn't let your own personality or whatever is going on in your life become more important than the fiction itself. Actually, I'm not saying you shouldn't. In fact, go for it! Go crazy. Just don't expect me to read it.
So, recently I have been doing exactly jack shit when it comes to fiction. Well, I've been thinking about plots and wondering about things; I've been reading a lot. But the thing is, I haven't been actively creative in the typey-typey-new-words kind of way.
One reason for this is the huge amounts of stress I've been under recently. I can't be actively creative when I feel down or stressed - I need passive entertainment.
Another reason is that I've just been very busy - uni is starting and guess what, I have to have two novels read for Tuesday and my very first Old English translation done by Monday. I'm also currently active in the English department's periodical.
Yet another reason is that, for the first time in years, I have a very close friendship with one person, without there being any romantic connotations. We see each other quite a lot, which is wonderful. However, it still leaves me with less 'I'm bored so I'm going to write a story'-time. Once again, I have to say I really don't mind. It's great having such a close friend once again.
But, I think the biggest reason I can't write is because I'm due to hear back on a fiction submission any day now. I can't deal with uncertainty, it drives me up the wall. It's the uncertainty about various things that has had me so stressed out recently. I'm a bit of a control freak, in that way - I need to know what's going to happen. If things could go either way, I tend to start worrying about the matter. It plays on my mind and renders me incapable of doing anything useful.
I'll sit down with a vague idea in my head and after about five minutes, I'll think, damn I'm due to hear about that story soon. Then, just to be sure, I'll check that it actually is September, and that it is 2007. (I'm ridiculously forgetful when it comes to dates. At some point this year I somehow managed to get it into my head that it was in fact 2006.)
I start wondering and hoping and despairing, and I eventually end up going 'oh bugger it' and I'll go read a book. Not that bad, considering the amount of stuff I have to read for my two Lit classes. Remind me never to chose another Lit class as my minor EVER AGAIN. I've got to have Caleb Williams and My Ántonia read by Tuesday. I'm determined to read EVERYTHING for my Lit classes this year - no more slacking off like the last two semesters - but my resolution is being put to the test already. I hope the pace in My Ántonia is a bit higher than in Caleb Williams because it's getting pretty damn tedious.
Recently I've been worrying about my gums. They were irritated and just didn't feel right. I am, however, perfectly capable of convincing myself that there's something wrong when all is fine, so I went down to the doctor's for him to have a look before I went and bothered the dentist.
Now, my GP is a bit shit, to be honest. He doesn't take people seriously and he's never even lived in the same country as 'tact'. So, he took one glance at my gums and said that I would start losing teeth soon if I didn't get something done.
I immediately called the dentist. A week and one appointment later, he tells me there's nothing wrong with my gums - they're just a bit sore. He gave me a special tooth paste and told me to come back in six months. Apparently my wisdom teeth are about to come through and they could give me some bother.
This just reinforced my violent dislike for my GP. I spent a week wondering if I would need false teeth at the age of 20 because he's such a callous bastard, even though my teeth are in good condition, even if they're not glaringly white.
And so I'm now currently writing a story about teeth. It's almost disgustingly optimistic, as my work tends to be. I'm not cut out to be a horror writer - my work is too damn happy.
I've also been busy sorting my books out for the coming semester. I ordered through my student association, but something's gone wrong and now I don't have books for half my subjects. Oh, I have a lot of books - but they're all for my two Lit subjects. I have no books for Philology or Linguistics.
Also, I heard that I am one of only two people in the whole of Leiden taking American Lit as an extra subject. This is a subject that is available to all of the thousands of students... and there's a grand total of two taking it.
I'm only taking it because I like Lit and I don't want to do the teacher training course till next year, but STILL. Damn.
Still, this means that there will be more third year students in the work group for me to meet, which I consider a good thing.
Mlijnski might not read much fiction, but he's a smart little bastard. Since I first let him read some of my written stuff (almost two years ago now) he's developed into a decent (albeit somewhat lazy) proofreader.
He might not know a lot about 'literature', but he does pick up on small references. Once I threw in a casual reference to the Libris Paginarum Fulvarum, and he accused me of ripping of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This was before he fully grasped the concept of referencing other works as an in-joke.
He picks up on the small references to other things I've written, and sometimes he even picks up on things I didn't notice myself. When proofreading one of my latest short stories, once again featuring Susan and Mitchell, he asked my why 'mysteriously enough, the cows were nowhere to be seen'. "Is that a reference to an upcoming story?"
I hadn't really given the matter much thought'it was based off of me seeing only sheep and no cows when I was travelling through parts of Devon a few years back. But then I started wondering, why were there no cows? What are the cows off doing?
I've yet to come up with an answer, but I feel there may well be a short story in there somewhere.
I've also been working on a longer piece about Susan and Mitchell, which should also introduce Mr Vandermeer, who I personally think is kickass. It's set before all the short stories I've written about them, so there may well have to be some retconning if I ever get this thing done. Either way, it's fun to explore Susan and Mitchell's friendship and individual personalities.
I've been drowning myself in Chaucer, Everyman, The Second Shephard's Play (if that's even what it's called) and English Phonetics over the past two and a half weeks. I've arrived at that 'I feel that I sort of know it' point again, where I'm torn between feeling utterly fed up with the stuff and feeling not entirely confident enough to stop revising. I didn't do that much yesterday, so I really should do some revision today, but I just cannot be bothered. I seriously can't be arsed. I'm writing this relatively long blog entry as a defiant act of procrastination.
And in case you were wondering, it's my inner bookworm and streber I'm attempting to defy. I know it won't work though - at some point this evening, I will be reading the bloody Canterbury Tales yet again. I hate Middle English.
Because I've not done anything social over the past week - self-imposed ban on fun huma interaction stuff to help me revise - and I need a break, I'm going to go have lunch with Leonore tomorrow. No idea where, but so long as I have a real-life person to talk to I'll be happy. And this real-life version is of the female persuasion, as well! Right now, this is a big plus.
Time to get back to Chaucer. Blargh.
So, first of all, the Question of the Day. I don't resemble any celebrity, so far as I know. I actually had a conversation about how unique-looking my face is the other day, and we came to the conclusion that it was indeed unique-looking. It was quite a short conversation.
The fun part of having my face is that I'm easy to remember. The bad part is that I look bad in 2-D, making photo's generally cringeworthy.
Lots of stuff has been going on recently. I tried to include writing, but it didn't work. More on why later.
Now, I've been playing a hell of a lot of Pokémon (I'm so uncool that I'm just really, really uncool), so most of my time went into that. I've also been hanging out with people and talking on the phone a lot. One phone conversation was with my cousin James, who is apparently going to be in Amsterdam next week. Luckily I haven't got much going on right now, so I'm going to hop on the train and go see him. Christ, it's been four years since I visited him over in England. Time sure does fly.
One other particularly memorable phone conversation was with Leontine last night. Most of it was about Lesbian Boot Camp.
I'm not going to say anything else about that, because frankly, any details could only detract from that statement.
I spent a fair amount of time at my parents' place back in the south. Now, my dad's computer is awful, so I only get on there to check my email and some blogs. I suppose I could have done some writing while there, but my dad is practically addicted to the internet, so he'd probably want to get back on the computer while I'm in the middle of some awesome scene or the other. I've tried using the old-fashioned pen and paper, but it just doesn't work for me. It reminds me of the dreadful thing I wrote when I was eleven - over four hundred pages of drivel about werewolves. The only good thing about that thing was the ending: And then she got shot and she died, the end.
That's paraphrased, because the original was in Dutch. But you get the idea.
Last night I got home and I sat behind my computer, and after having caught up with teh_mlijn and the adventures he had in Brittanny, I thought, fuck it, I'm going to work on that novel I tried to do for NaNo last year.
Is that the first time I've used an expletive on this blog? Who cares. It's what I thought. I swear way too much in my head anyway.
And I got about a page done, and then it got way too personal and I exited without saving. It's so frustrating - I love the premise. It mixes the Shaver mystery (deros and teros and underground D-beams making people depraved) with Alice in Wonderland and would probably make me feel a hell of a lot better about the thing that almost killed my mum eight years back. It's still awkward, though. Especially what has to be the opening scene.
No, I'm going to be sticking with short stories till November. I like them a hell of a lot more than I like novels, and not just because you can get them done in a day. Although it's great to get drawn in to the world the writer creates and then to live there for a week, short stories just come in, kick you in the arse and then leave without even saying goodbye. It's quick and sweet, short and dirty, lots of other set phrases to do with being not very long. Right now, short is what I'm in to. Being in something long can be good, but when you've had that for a long time, you want a change of pace, right?
Also, I'm really bloody impatient. I'm currently reading Black House, by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Now, I like the story a hell of a lot so far, but I want something big to happen. Okay, so something big did just happen, technically speaking, but I want something else! I want to know more about that and that person - the one whose exposition wasn't long enough.
I just finished reading The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. Novella. Shorter and to the point, and infinitely more satisfying, if you look at the average amount of satisfaction per page. And this for a novella that asks a lot of questions and gives hardly any answers.
Right, this entry has gone to celebrities I look like, to the relative merits of novels, novellas and short stories. And I think the progression sort of made sense. It's best to stop when you're ahead.
Just wrote a short story that had been floating round my head for the past week. It ended up being completely void of supernatural elements, which is unusual for me, and I'm not sure if I like it, to be quite honest. It's not something typical of me. Someone else could have written this, looking at the subject matter and the themes.
Still, it clocks in at just under 1700 words, yet it has a beginning, middle and end. It may feature someone who kills people, but it also has a blind woman and a dog named Gremlin, so that's okay.
Now I have a grand total of 16 short stories, which is either 15 or 16 more than I had this time last year. I need to up my productivity. I can write a short story in one or two days. Well, scrap that, I can write a short story in one. Subscription, one of my longer pieces at 7000-8000 words, was written in a matter of hours. I need to spend more time thinking about short storie premises, then I should be able to at least double my current productivity.
So, I just finished listening to On Writing, by Stephen King.
For a while I've avoided this particular book, because I prefer fiction over books about writing fiction. I used to love them - I bought a relatively expensive guide to writing fiction when I was fourteen or fifteen. That, however didn't really do me any good. I've learned a lot more about writing by actually writing, rather than just reading about it.
I really enjoyed this book, however. A large part of that is probably because Stephen King himself read the audiobook version I listened to, and he really brought it to life. Another considerable factor is the fact that he also tells you about how he came to be a writer - not just the writing process, but the events in his life that influenced him. It's a lot of fun to hear about something small, and then recognise that event in a novel or short story - his brother Dave saying that he's going to make a glider was incorporated into 'The End of the Whole Mess', for instance.
Another thing are the amusing anecdotes. According to King, when he was six he thought that a bitch was an exceptionally tall women, and that sons of bitches were likely to be basketball players.
Of course, there is also a lot on actual writing - technical stuff. I'm glad I waited till after my first year of uni to actually get to this book, as I actually knew what he was on about when he started talking about adverb phrases (I know my grammar, but up until this year it was all very abstract and I couldn't think of English grammatical terms to save my life).
This is a very varied book, and I definitely recommend it to people who have an interest in how writing works, and who particularly like King's work.
One thing I really do not understand is how some writers can get so upset over a rejection.
I've heard stories of people literally crying after receiving a rejection from one of the pro markets. People also get 'depressed' over it, as they say, and they get angry and sad and all sorts of other things.
Now, I thought it was a pretty well-known fact that a big part of being a writer is getting rejected a lot. Even the good writers are rejected hundreds of times before they finally get published. I can't help but think that a writer is deluded (either thinking that their writing is that awesome or that they've grown up in some kind of perfect little world where getting rejected by a fiction magazine is the worst thing that's ever happened to them) if they get that worked up over a single rejection.
Now, I'm talking about short story rejections here. I can imagine someone getting emotional if they've just gotten the umpteenth rejection for a huge novel that they spent ten years working on. It'd get to me if people kept thinking that something I put so much time and effort into simply isn't worth their time.
But getting teary over 4500 words that aren't going to be published in one of the larger fiction magazines or on one of the more well known fiction podcasts? Give me a break.
I was fucking ecstatic when I got my first rejection. I thought it was awesome, it was proof that I'd actually felt confident enough about my work to go and show it to someone other than Marijn. So they didn't want to spend money on it? Fine by me! I'd had someone read my work, I had actually sent my stuff out there. I felt like I was on my way to getting published.
I'm not trying to come off as a hard-ass, but this is simply how I see it. If I'm going to get upset over something (that doesn't happen too often nowadays, thank goodness) I want to go through that emotional turmoil for a good reason. A health scare, a death, the loss of a meaningful relationship, something that will actually affect the rest of my life in a significant and meaningful way.
When I hear back from Escape Pod and they tell me, hey sorry but your story isn't what we're looking for right now, I'm going to just think, well that's okay. I'll send it off to another market that will hopefully be more suitable. If I get some constructive criticism in the rejection, I'll carefully reread my story and improve it where I think it's necessary and then send it off to another market and hope that it fares better there.
By doing that, I'm accomplishing something and I'll feel like I'm making progress. Sitting behind my computer getting weepy because oh noes some short fiction market doesn't want my piece is only going to make me feel like a self-important prick.
I'm not saying that everyone who does that should feel like a self-important prick, but they should realise that they're accomplishing exactly jack shit by wasting time crying over spilt milk when they could be doing something to get that story published.
Syntax, although it is very interesting and helpful, is driving me crazy. I wish I found it ridiculously difficult, then I would be motivated to spend hours revising every day. That, or finding it incredibly easy. Instead, I just feel vaguely confident that I know it, which is infuriating because it drains my motivation but doesn't set me at ease.
Still, gives me time to write. I've had multiple ideas for short stories, and I'm still working at the SIB story. I really need to expand my number of short stories - I haven't had a rejection in what feels like forever. If I'm able to get more stuff out, I'll get more stuff back. Stands to reason, right?
Also, if I work on these various ideas, I should get used to getting my increasing my output, which will help with the script I'm working on with Len.
Anyway, I've also decided to no longer depend on Marijnski to beta for me. I'll just let the finished works fester for a week or two and then look at it myself. Right now it's taking him a lot longer to get around to doing what I can do myself. It'll be nice if he'll read them at some point, because it is nice to be read and to get some feedback, especially from someone who has been able to see my writing develop, but I'm going to make this a nice extra that I get about a month or so after I finish a piece, rather than something that I need to have within two weeks. Having less time between finishing the first and final drafts will help me get more stories done, which means I'll have more works to submit.
In non-writing related news, I'm on a diet. This is quite interesting. I've been on diets before, because I do care quite a lot about my appearance. If you compare what some people eat, with what their bodies actually need, it's quite disturbing.
This diet is also making me feel quite accomplished, because it motivated me to cook a bolognese sauce today and it was almost as good as my dad's, which is saying something. If my writing improves as much as my cooking - when I first moved out, I had an extremely limited oeuvre when it came to meals - I should be published within the six year average.
