To all my loyal subscribers who may somehow be subscribed to a blog that hasn’t had new content in over a year … you’ll be glad to know I’ve moved to a new blog. Or relieved. Or frightened? I don’t own your emotions, you do you. Just keep up with my many new wordings done over at my new site, Write-Minded.
Thank you, readers! Keep reading!
Some people miss the sunshine because they’re too busy covering their eyes up with sunglasses, don’t you think?
I like to pay attention. I like to notice everything I can. A writer should – everything you see might be material for your next book. Even if it’s not . . . it’s material for the soul.
Do me a favor. Take your hand off the mouse, close your eyes, and breathe in and out. Relax yourself. The internet’s probably got you a little worked up at the moment. It does that to us. That’s how it works. So calm down. Deep breaths. Now take the time to read and appreciate this message. You may not agree with me – so examine why, and share your opinion with me. Your opinion is valuable*.
To people, this is destructive. You should never compare yourself to another person. You can’t weigh yourself against others, because their scales are different; they’ve had different experiences and opportunities and there’s no fair way to compare two people, so don’t do it. (And as a Christian, to me, this means not to weigh myself by the scales of man, by any of man’s grounds for judgment, and to weigh myself by God’s scales alone.)
And yet, my first instruction is to compare yourself to other writers?”So,” you’re wondering, “has this guy lost his mind?” I will neither confirm nor deny that allegation. I object on the grounds of relevancy.
Yes. I want you to compare yourself to other artists. This is something I do regularly. You get ideas this way. You learn this way. You get challenged this way. You improve this way. It is fair to compare yourself to another artist as long as you’re objective and use a sense of proportion.
If you’re anything like me, you’re so insecure that sometimes, a little complacency is welcome. But that’s no healthier than insecurity. Instead of trying to be satisfied with yourself the way you are, be confident in your way forward. Admit that you’re not perfect, confidently, and see how others are better and how they can teach you and how you can improve. Learn confidently.
Just try it and see for yourself.
Writing takes time. All things in life that are worth having are worth waiting for. Nowadays, we forget that. Everything’s a rush. We lose our patience waiting for music to download, if kids even have to wait at all anymore. Who remembers the days when we had to wait half-an-hour at least for one song to download, or for a computer program to install?
Try your patience. Go to the busiest restaurant you know with the slowest service you know, order their most complicated dish, and wait. Go alone. Don’t bring your phone or a book or anything or anyone. Put away your attention deficit disorder. Sit tight and enjoy the wait. Let the world go faster than you, it’s all right, it won’t hurt you. Just reflect.
This is just as hard and just as important as waiting for something, but here’s the catch: you don’t have a goal, you don’t have something to look forward to. There is no purpose, no objective, no reason. Life doesn’t need a purpose. Stop acting like a hyperactive child.
I know it can be hard, so very hard, to let yourself do nothing. It’s why when you lie down you’re so tired and yet have trouble sleeping. It’s why you live on coffee. Internet, television, the rat race – our brains are so overstimulated they just–won’t–turn–off. Well, turn it off, all of it, the computer, the TV, the phone. Free yourself from the shackles of the establishment, man. Forget you live in the 21st century. Enjoy some leisure that isn’t prescribed for you.
Go for a walk or a hike, or lie down in the grass (not on a blanket on the grass, but on the grass) and watch the clouds pass, or sit under a tree, or heck, climb a tree! Wherever you go, stay there, for an hour or two or three, and just do nothing, and enjoy it.
Put everything on hold, and do all of those thongs you’ve been putting on hold for way too long. This isn’t the day to mow the lawn, this is the day to fix those leaky faucets, paint that room, build that shed, and anything else that you’ve been “meaning to get around to.” No napping, no internet or television (those keep coming up!), no shirking. Get to it!
Be a kid again, play with your imagination, play with kids; surely you must have a child or sibling or cousin or niece or nephew or grandchild or a friend’s kid under twelve you could babysit for a while. Let them teach you how to recapture the bold, carefree spirit of youth.
Don’t hold it back. Open your wounds. Feel the pain. Love the pain. Access, identify and understand your emotions.
To people you haven’t spoken to in a long time. Don’t message them on Facebook or send them an e-mail. Write to them, you sissy. Write them a letter. Write your sweetheart a love letter. Write your parents a thank-you note. Write to your grandmother, a soldier overseas, a retired friend in a rest home who probably doesn’t get much mail. It’s okay that your letter won’t get to them the instant you’re done writing. It’s okay that you won’t get a letter back for a week or more, or ever.
A scene, in your current project, or an abandoned project, or something old and done with and maybe even published. Explore the possibilities. What else could have happened? How else could it have happened? Who else could have been there? What other viewpoints could you use? How could you reframe the exact same events and dialogue to make it read differently? Experiment with plot and prose and form. Just have fun.
Put your thinking cap on and run a marathon, go spelunking, or go hiking, or maybe mountain biking, bee-hive hiving, deepsea diving, tractor-trailer driving, see the world or see an opera, attend a signing and meet Oprah,
The footnote is the tenth step. Sharing your opinion with me (or anyone, here or anywhere else), opening a debate with friends and discussing views, will make you a better writer. If you can be calm and objective, express yourself clearly and efficiently, and overcome the fear of speaking up, you’ve contributed in three ways to your development as a writer.
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I’ve worked with a lot of young writers. I’ve been one myself for a long time. And the big question people ask me all the time–or at least, they probably would if anybody actually asked me questions about writing, instead of acting all awkward as if I’m going to put everything they say into a book–is this: What’s the most common mistake you see young writers make?
It’s a mistake that comes from fear. I’ve talked a little before about how harmful fear is to a writer. Maybe not enough, but a little. It can lead to big mistakes. Exhibit A?
This is a mistake I’ve seen young writers make time and time again. It’s something I’ve made many times, and sometimes, continue to make myself. It’s a mistake I see everybody, not just artists, make. It’s the fear of being brutally honest.
Let’s be specific. What I’m talking about is writers who write about a world that’s so pristine and perfect that it can’t be the imperfect world we actually live in. I’m also talking about the writers who write about a world that’s way too dark to be the world we actually live in.
There’s certainly a market for both. One the one side we have cozies and romances, and on the other we have thrillers and horror. These are all genres that thrive on a lopsided perspective of the world spun for effect, not honesty.
If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll have heard me say this many times: it’s about balance. Like everything else in writing and in life there’s a balance to be found here.
Let’s get into this.
Life isn’t all sunshine and daisies. Even if you’ve lived a privileged, sheltered life (which I’m blessed enough to say I have), you know the world is still a hard and terrible place.
Bad things happen. People do bad things and bad things happen to people. People lie and steal and rape and kill. People are selfish, arrogant, prejudiced, greedy, promiscuous; they want what they want and they’ll do a lot to get it. The world is full of pain and hate.
People do unspeakable things, and depending on your belief system, there are certain taboos you think should be left unspoken. But most of the above things aren’t among them. You’ll make more people queasy with profanity and sex than with violence. I like the way George R.R. Martin puts it:
“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a [let’s just say a sexual act; honesty has its place, and we’re getting to that. – Caleb], and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness.” – George R.R. Martin
Cut off heads, limbs, kill and kill and kill, fill your pages with all the blood and gore you want, but sex, that’s a no-no. Why is this? Similarly, why is a man in his underwear funny, but a woman showing too much skin has everybody up in arms? (I’m not touching these, not with a fifty foot pole; I’ll leave them to you. These are some heady questions and I hope you find some good answers.)
People want to avoid the uncomfortable and the controversial. As a writer sometimes it’s natural to want to do the same. Plenty of writers try too hard to sugarcoat the world.
That’s because we want a perfect world; reading about a perfect world makes reading an escape. Readers want to be transported to somewhere happier than the life they’re stuck with. But it’s just a lie.
On the other hand, some writers fill every page with gory violence, explicit sex, and profanity after profanity. And you know why? It sells–movies, television, and books of course, it’s everywhere now. Because it sells. This is the stuff we were told was wrong when we were young. We were forbidden to see it. It’s what our culture tried to sweep under the rug, and that feeling of getting what we shouldn’t have is a wonderful feeling. “Guilty pleasures” are all pleasure; there’s no guilt, that’s just excitement.
It’s sensational. Because these things are taboo, we feel like we’re doing something wrong when nobody’s looking. That’s thrilling.
On the one hand, it’s still a form of escapism; it’s not painting a perfect world, it’s painting a world that indulges all our darkest and most chaotic impulses.
On the other hand, you get the world that’s so dark and twisted and disgustingly wrong that it makes readers feel better about their own world. Readers like to be transported somewhere more miserable than the world they live in so they can feel better about it. “Maybe I hate my job or I’m lonely, but at least I didn’t lose my arm and my city didn’t blow up and my family didn’t die and I didn’t find the charred remains of my wife’s–oh holy **** that’s just wrong. I feel so good now.”
It’s like masochism I guess. And once again, it’s a lie.
So here I think we’ve divined the secret: The best writers are the ones who aren’t afraid to get dirty in the process of doing their job properly, but they’re just as relieved as their readers when they can get home and take a nice clean shower. That’s the balance.
The best writers are honest. That has to be the one thing a writer is most concerned with. They have to deal with themselves, their characters, and their world honestly. They owe it to the reader to tell the truth–well, sort of. It’s still fiction, a made-up story; but the best made-up worlds connect to the real world in an honest way that reveals some kind of truth.
“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.” That was Shakespeare who said that. Because life isn’t heaven and it’s not hell. It’s a balance. The good. The bad. The best. The worst. Readers want perfect worlds and messed up worlds alternatively, because that’s what life is like. Sometimes it’s perfect and sometimes it’s messed up.
I said already: Some people can be entirely successful writing about a lopsided world. Middle Earth sure didn’t look much like home. You can bet Lewis Caroll never used profanity. And Stephen King didn’t achieve success by writing about sunshine and daisies. And you don’t win a Pulitzer unless you write a pretty lifelike story that takes the bad with the good to make something great.
Point is, every writer is different. We all have certain strengths and certain weaknesses. Some writers are better at writing something more sugarcoated while some are better at cursing. Writers like me might do an especially good job writing cozies and children’s fantasy, but for heaven’s sake pray we never try to try our hands at horror.
However, I will also say this: I think any writer can be brutally honest if they train themselves to overcome the fear of telling it straight. We all have something to hide. And we can all learn to let it out frankly; that’s when we’ll have something great on our hands, friends.
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What about you? What do you struggle to write about honestly? Open up!
We’ve all heard it a hundred times: “Show, don’t tell.” I don’t like most rules – I’m a rebel – but I actually buy into this one. There are exceptions, and as with any rule a good writer can defy it, but it generally holds true that in many ways large and small a writer should not be telling a story as much as showing one. You are your reader’s guide in another world, showing them the way. You don’t leave your readers here and tell them about it after you get back.
But let’s look a little deeper at one of the meanings behind this “rule.” It goes deeper to the very heart of the art. The principle is the same, its importance is the same if not greater, but have you thought of it, and how many times have you forgotten it? I know I, personally, don’t always remember it. And yet it’s so simple; how do we forget it?
It’s really not complicated, mysterious, or surprising. The simple fact is that we, as writers, are observers, explorers, students of beauty and wonder; we take pictures of our findings, pictures made up of words, pictures of things nobody else has ever seen. But sometimes we forget that we’re students, not teachers–don’t we?
What I mean, in plain language, is this: It’s our job to show our readers what we see and what we think, but not to tell them what to think.
We’re fiction writers. We write about feelings, not facts: not tangible things that you can see and touch, but higher things, things that can’t necessarily be proven to exist but we know exist nonetheless. Sometimes these things are clearly visible in the everyday, if you look. But sometimes, we become so enthusiastic about what we’re seeing and what we’re showing our readers and what our story means to us, that we forget ourselves and start to tell our readers what to expect and what to think as we’re writing.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. What our readers see might not always be what we meant them to see; and that’s okay. That’s what art is all about. That’s the beautiful thing about it. If anything we should be trying to make the pictures we present clearer, if we want to guide interpretation by the strength of an artist’s sutlety; but we should not be telling people what to see in our art.
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I was lying on the floor, thinking about death. I was gazing vaguely out the window and all I could see was the sky, full of clouds, just fat with big puffy fluffy clouds, and I wondered if death was more like a cloud or more like lying on a floor that was a little dusty and apparently needed vacuuming. I sneezed.
Out another window there was nothing to see but trees. A leaf fell, and that was like death. You appear suddenly out of nowhere on the tree of life, pushed out to the outermost edge, and dangle, flimsy and helpless, and the wind blows you around and it’s all you can do to hold on to the branch until, someday, you fall.
I looked at the ray of light pouring through the window and a fleck of dust that blew up into the middle of it, passing in and out of sight in the shadows between the panes and then finally blowing out of the light into the darkness of the room, and that was like death.
There was a table beside me and there was a book on the table, and that was like death. Once it had been a part of something full of life and energy, a tree, a great whole. Then one day death had come to the whole and torn it apart; and some parts had gone on to become this book, something else entirely, something perhaps better.
I looked at the floor beside me and saw a spider and screamed. I jumped up, ran out of the room, and grabbed a tissue. I came back, kneeled beside the spider, looked away, and jammed the soft tissue down on the spider. I crumpled it up, squeezed it tight, and held it for a minute, looking at it between my fingers. That was like death. That was how life ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Strangely the whimper was mine and I wasn’t dying.
After a long time kneeling there I got up and went outside, I dug a little hole, I put the spider in the hole, and I buried it. Then I sat for another long while staring at the little freshly-pressed mound of earth.
“Goodbye,” I said softly.
The End
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I have my hands full trying to control myself, much less other people. I just want to master myself and leave everybody else to God – the only One who can deal with them.
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Okay, I have a confession to make: Aristotle never compiled a list of rules for creative writing. If you didn’t realize it by now, Aristotle lived in the 4th century BC, which was a significantly long, long time before “first novels” like The Tale of Genji (1010) or Don Quixote (1605) – and I don’t think there’s any debating that it’s impossible for anyone to foretell the rules of the literary art by 1300 years, even a man as brilliant as Aristotle.
. . . Or is it? Is it, really?
In reality, these are Aristotle’s “Seven Golden Rules of Storytelling.” They’re meant to apply to the visual arts of storytelling; in particular, Greek theatre. But as a writer, I’m always translating advice on any art into a context that fits my own; and I discovered that Aristotle’s rules actually translate into surprisingly accurate and well-rounded elements of writing.
Plot means different things depending on who you ask. We could have interesting discussions just looking for the nature of plot. Some say a story is nothing without it. Some (take Stephen King) “distrust” it. But we’re all agreed that it’s a thing, and that all proper fiction has some form of it – and typically, it’s your first step to a story.
The plot is the “what” of a story. If you’re writing, you’re bound to write about something happening; that’s your plot.
Now that you have a plot, you need characters to populate it. No writer will tell you different. Characters are people, and there’s no story without a) a person to tell it (you), and b) people to live in it. There’s simply no getting around this one. And I don’t know about you, but I like it that way.
Why are you writing your story? Why is the story happening? Why are the characters doing what they’re doing? That’s your theme, honey.
This is another place where writers don’t always agree. Some say Yes, every story has a theme, if you don’t have one you’re missing something; some say No, don’t do the thing, that’s gimmick not story. Most writers (and I can include myself here) will tell you something in between: every story has a theme, yes, but every theme doesn’t have a story. If you start with a theme, it will become your gimmick. If you tack on a theme, it will become your gimmick. If you let the theme grow organically in your story in whatever nooks and crannies it chooses, you’re doing something right.
Talk is cheap . . . except when it’s not, because it’s one of your most valuable tools as a writer. Verbal communication is thousands of years in the making, please of all the mistakes you may make do not butcher it by making your characters talk like rocks. They can talk like rockers – or aristocrats or scientists or cockneys or rednecks – but please please please remember they have to talk like human beings.
So far so good. Everything obviously applies to writing. We have four elements no story can go without. Now let’s see what else Aristotle has to share . . .
In the Greek theatre, the chorus was the part where the actors came out to sing and dance, and to perorate on the nature of the play’s moral. It was a kind of commentary, description, or exposition; and I don’t know what kind of grades you got in your elementary school spelling tests, but to me that clearly spells P-R-O-S-E. This is the only place where writing itself intersects with Greek theatre.
Good plot, bad plot, no plot, you can still have a story; good prose, bad prose, but there has to be prose to be a story. (Unless you’re Paul Fournel. But have you ever heard of him? There might be a reason for that. It’s this: You’re not French and you’ll never be as cool as the French.)
So don’t stint here. You have a compelling plot, complex characters, theme, strong dialogue; it all falls apart if you can’t write it down and do a good job of it. You have to write words good.
You’ve seen a stage: it’s a big platform, usually made of wood, with great big curtains and arcane mysteries behind them. But when you watch a performance, you don’t see the stage; you see the library in a British country villa, or the streets of New York, or the Opera Populaire. Thanks to the decor, you don’t see a stage: you see a setting.
Your story needs to happen somewhere. It could be on Main Street in a rural Minnesooota town, or it could be on Mars. It just needs to be somewhere you can get excited about traveling to, so you can be the tour guide to make your reader excited about being there.
I’ll tell you what. I’ve given this one some thought, and I’ve interpreted it in my own way; but I’m not entirely sure about this one. What I’d like you to do is learn a little about the spectacle, the opsis in Greek theatre, for yourself. Make your own interpretations, figure out what you think it means for literature, and then come back for my opinion. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
. . . Ready? You want to know how I interpret the opsis? I think it’s just this:
Action!
I hope you don’t feel cheated. But I’m serious; just hear me out. I really think this is the most pivotal of all the seven rules.
The action is what the reader really wants. Whether they’re reading James Patterson or Charles Dickens, readers crave action. It’s the difference between fiction and nonfiction: nonfiction tells about something that happened; fiction shows something happen. Characters have to do something. Plot is what happens; action is the happening. I think Chekhov says it best:
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” -Anton Chekhov*
Nonfiction will tell you the moon is shining, and when the moon shines and why. Good fiction will tell you what the moonlight revealed, what the moon meant to the person seeing it shine, what the lovers did in the moonlight, and what they learned in the moonlight.
* Supposedly, Chekhov never actually said this. You probably noticed the similarity to a quote credited to Mark Twain. It seems that somebody took Chekhov’s words and rearranged them to sound like Twain’s (supposed) words.
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What do you think? Do Aristotle’s commandments apply to writing? What was your interpretation of the seventh rule?
Dear readers,
I’m back . . . again! I’ve been accidentally on hiatus, trying to avoid the internet, and keeping myself busy with other pursuits (and procrastinating, maybe there was some procrastinating involved). But today I decided it was time to get my rear in gear and get back into blogging (again!).
And in celebration of my return – and I know that you’re celebrating, of course you missed me more than you can say – I’m going to share some of what I did while I was absent, and tell you what a few of the things I did taught me about writing:
1. Write a Novel. If you haven’t already, you should. And with NaNoWriMo coming up again next month, there’s no better time to get that great idea down on paper.
That’s what I’ve been working on lately; my fourth novel, and a little on my fifth, and a lot on my sixth, and here and there on my ninth and seventeenth and thirty-eighth. (No, if you’re wondering, I don’t have them planned out quite that accurately. My methods are a little more on-the-fly.) My next novel won’t be about Leo Westmacott and the gang, but they will be back, don’t worry. As for what it is about . . . I’ll keep you posted, but I’m not going to talk about it too much just now, as it’s still got a long way to go before being published. But I’ll tell you this: It’s about a golem, there are a few Judaists involved, and it’s set in Spain.
2. Write with a workshop. It shouldn’t be hard to find one in your area, whether you live in New York City or some podunk town nobody’s ever heard of. (Even if you live in Monowi, Nebraska – which of course you don’t, unless I’m talking to Elsie, in which case I would be honored – or somewhere similar.) And if you can’t find one, you could always start one yourself.
Or, for the antisocial types who want to write from the comfort of their own homes, I would recommend either A, you get some guts because it’s important to be fearless in writing and ready to go out and show the world what you’ve got, or B, find a group online. There are plenty of online writing communites you can get in on, sometimes in the most unexpected places, so don’t be afraid to look around.
Personally, I don’t trust those online workshops that ask for a few hundred dollars in return for a chance to listen to some “author” who’s never even polished a bestseller’s shoes talk about what he thinks makes a good story, so I’d avoid those if I were you. But if you feel differently, there are plenty of those around.
And if nothing else, you could always start up an online community yourself. (Which, I confess, is what happened to me a couple years ago, although it was only part choice and mostly chance.)
For the past few months I’ve been writing another anthology with the Ambage, my informal online writer’s workshop. This anthology our theme is crime fiction, and we’re a couple weeks, maybe another month from publishing. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s available.
(By the way, if you think you’re up for an improfessional workshop full of close-knit writers who get together to produce short story anthologies once or twice a year, you’re welcome to join us! We’re always eager for fresh meat – uh, blood – uh, talent.)
3. Try out other forms of storytelling. Poetry, songwriting, screenwriting, playwriting, comic writing – they’re essentially similar to the prose we’re used to, and yet very different in execution, and they all have important lessons to teach us about writing and telling stories. Even entirely different forms of art, like music or painting, are worth exploring.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with a little poetry, playwriting, and songwriting – even some comic strip writing.
4. Read. This is a given. Read, read, read. Always read. Read with every spare moment you have to yourself. It’s relaxing, it’ll make you a smarter, nice, more attractive, generally better person, and it’ll teach you all the essential things you need to know about writing and then some and then some on top of the then-some.
One of the things I finally got around to reading over the winter was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Masterpieces, don’t you think? I can’t believe I waited this long – these books were written for me. (You know what I mean, right? When a book touches you deeply, which is what any good book is written to do, then logically, it was written for you.) I’ve been inspired, so much so that I’ve started turning some old ideas for surrealist, literary nonsense stories into words.
That’s one of the best things about reading. It’ll give you ideas – plenty of ideas.
5. Take up new interests. I can’t emphasize this enough: artists are just people who know how to live and how to express life, and insatiable curiosity and a sense of discovery are essential to living. You never know what you could do that might be fodder for your next story. Skydiving? Bear wrestling? Extreme ironing? Or maybe keep it local – go out to the theatre or take up running or go birdwatching. You never know if you might like something until you’ve tried.
And if you’re the extreme introvert who doesn’t even want to step outside, I have an idea for you, too: STEP OUTSIDE AND SEE WHAT YOU’RE MISSING. But a more sensitive suggestion would be – go researching! Just find a topic you’d like to learn more about and start reading everything you can find on the subject: blogs, wikipedia articles, any material you might happen to have on your bookshelf, and anything you can find at your library (or on your Kindle).
Bonus. Blog! Personally, I sometimes see blogging as a distraction. But let’s face facts: if you’re a writer, what you do is write, and blogging is writing. Maybe it’s not the same kind of writing you’re used to – and that’s why it’s important! It’s just another form of storytelling, and I’ve already told you what I think about challenging yourself to experiment with different forms of storytelling. Blogging also gives you the unique opportunity to have direct communication with your readers, and there’s a lot to learn from that.
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So what have you been up to lately? Do you have any habits that help you keep your writerly mojo fuelled?
A Musing Author 