Yes: If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you chart a course to get there?

A whole lot can happen in the middle, some of which might take you by surprise and affect the ending, but when you pull out your star charts, and man the ship’s wheel all [...]]]>

This is a “yes, but” situation.

Yes: If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you chart a course to get there?

A whole lot can happen in the middle, some of which might take you by surprise and affect the ending, but when you pull out your star charts, and man the ship’s wheel all night, closing the distance between you and your destination is the point. No destination, and you might just sail around in circles.

Think through your story, to know where it begins and how it will proceed to a satisfying and believable conclusion.

If you discover that the story doesn’t hold up, or a character isn’t working, or that the ending is all wrong, you will have to step back, throw out what isn’t working, and plan your story anew.

This sense of change, of flux, of being available to your talents and instincts even when they require that you set a new  course, has sometimes been described as the story writing itself.

So yes, you absolutely need to know your ending and aim for it if you expect to get there . . .

But: a secure writer, trusting in his process, will move with his story, instead of against it.

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo credits: ship’s wheel by Stephen Glenn; stars by howardedin.com

1. Your brain has turned to gelatin. Your muscles are mush. Fatigue sets in. No energy, no writing.

2. Anything is easier than writing. The ironing. The kids. The vacuum. The correspondence.

3. Email and social media: the [...]]]>

Spoken from my been-there, done-that, know-it-well life, here is what can complicate a nice, clean run to the finish:

1. Your brain has turned to gelatin. Your muscles are mush. Fatigue sets in. No energy, no writing.

2. Anything is easier than writing. The ironing. The kids. The vacuum. The correspondence.

3. Email and social media: the Bermuda triangle of time. But there’s the actual social world, too, like coffee shops and lunch dates.

4. Errands. The rain. The rake. The dog. Not now. Later . . .

5. It’s not work. More than a hobby, maybe, but work means you earn a buck, doesn’t it?

6. Besides, you don’t know how. You can’t. You’re afraid. You won’t.

7. No place to write. No quiet. The guy next door plays drums. Can’t think.

8. Real life intrudes. Illness. Disaster. Ambush. A barbarian is at the gate.

9. Also, you’re not in the mood. You need inspiration. You’re waiting for the muse to call.

10. You have unrealistic goals. A mere paragraph at the end of the week and you’re disappointed.

11. There’s more to learn. A changing world, changing industry. Never enough time to absorb, strategize, adapt.

12. You haven’t planned your story, and so, when you’re lost, there you are, going around in circles.

13. The story is too big. You don’t understand it yet. Every time you look, it deepens. It’s a shape shifter. It’s an onion peeling. It’s the goddamn mirror.

14. The story bores you to tears. In fact, you’re crying.

15. Or busy pandering to what the market wants. You make a study of it. You are very good at research.

16. You write the easy stuff, or the thing on a deadline, and never get to the other work.

17. You have writer’s block, or more precisely: you aren’t writing, and haven’t yet gone for the cure (read).  Or you’ve hit delete so many times, nothing’s left.

18. Or, you don’t really want to finish. You hate to give it up, close the door to the idea of fixing something however tiny but that will bother you pretty much forever.

19. Besides, if you finished, you would miss it.

Did I forget anything? Readers?

But let’s remember: with the exception of number 8—real life throwing you a doozy—there are choices here, or mostly. When are you done?

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo of cat by The Scream; blond aka blondalicious by blog-blond.blogspot.com

For me, here are 7 [...]]]>

I had a professor in law school, a terrifying guy who nonetheless managed to leave me with one key teaching: the business of the law is to draw lines. That certainly turned out to be the case and I figure it’s the same for writers. Where do you draw your line?

For me, here are 7 stories I won’t tell:

1.  Anything where, if the tables were turned, I’d cringe to be on the receiving end of the writer’s treatment. This includes secrets or other private matters that have no public value in being “outed,” especially if the information was entrusted to me, but even if I just happened to know it.

2.  Anything where permission is required, and I don’t have it. People who are underage or cognitively disabled cannot give consent on their own.

3.  Anything that is motivated by revenge, even if just an ounce, because if you’re still measuring, the work is likely to be tainted with ill feeling.  I don’t mind taking on a charged subject, but I won’t do it until I think I can manage it at an arm’s length distance.

4.  Anything that I will have to defend, unless that’s my objective, as it might be, for example, if I seek to make a point. Otherwise, I don’t want to invite this kind of distraction into my writing life. My writing life comes from observation, and if I’m running my own mouth, I can’t observe.

5.  Boring things. If it doesn’t interest me, it probably won’t interest anyone else.

6.  Things I don’t understand. If I expect to convey anything useful to a reader, I have to understand it first, live with it, think about it, and then bring it to the page.

7. Things that belong to other people—their lives, and for them to tell—no matter how juicy, or wonderful, or sad.

So, did I miss anything? Any stories you won’t tell that we should add to this list?

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo of sealed lips by artefotografia.com.ar.; poster art widely duplicated; this copy from wstera2.

25 years – Steven Spielberg, on his latest film “Red Tails.”

30 years – Frank McCourt on Angela’s Ashes.

2 months – Richard Paul Evans, author of eleven New York Times best-sellers, including Finding Noel and The Christmas [...]]]>

Many, many decades – The esteemed Elizabeth Bishop, on one line of poetry, the comma moved back and forth.

25 years – Steven Spielberg, on his latest film “Red Tails.”

30 years – Frank McCourt on Angela’s Ashes.

2 months – Richard Paul Evans, author of eleven New York Times best-sellers, including Finding Noel and The Christmas Box.  Average number of revisions once the first draft was done: 800 per book.

6 weeks, or 4 years, depending upon the source – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.

10 days – George Simenon, lunch delivered on a tray to his closed office door, no interruptions tolerated. Creator of Inspector Maigret. Author of 200 novels, 210 novellas, several autobiographical works, dozens of articles, and scores of pulp fiction written under twelve pseudonyms.

5 days – Dame Barbara Cartland, resulting in some 623 best-sellers in her lifetime.

4 days – Samuel Johnson, Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia

A single 12-hour transatlantic flight – Dr. Richard Carlson’s wildly popular Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

Are you glacial? Or do you like your latté hot, so make it quick!

Make peace with yourself. That’s how the best work happens.

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo by K’vitsh.

1. With few exceptions, stay in the moment. Use your chronology and don’t get ahead of it.

2. Don’t save anything for later. Bring whatever you have right here, right now.

3. Each time a character appears on-stage, some aspect must deepen. Characters [...]]]>

Want to improve your writing?  Try these suggestions culled from my decades at the craft:

1. With few exceptions, stay in the moment. Use your chronology and don’t get ahead of it.

2. Don’t save anything for later. Bring whatever you have right here, right now.

3. Each time a character appears on-stage, some aspect must deepen. Characters develop vertically.

4. Every chapter, every paragraph must relate to the theme. The theme is what the story is about: love, war, jealousy, revenge . . .

5. Every chapter, every paragraph must move the action forward.  You need a firm command of where the story is going so you can arrange the pieces in a way that allows the reader to discover things for himself.  Don’t tell the reader anything. Just set him on your shoulder and off you go, the story unfolding before you.

6. All meaning must be imbedded in action. Don’t deliver any lectures or philosophy lessons telling the reader what you want him to know. He has to discover this through the action. Similarly, don’t weight the story down with description.

7. Use all your senses. Taste it. Smell it. Hear it. See it. Touch it.

8. Tell it straight, as if talking to a five-year-old.

9. Finally, if something is really not going well, walk away. And don’t come back until you’re ready to see the thing with new eyes: reset, reinvent, reappraise.

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo credit: bighappyfunhouse.com.

Do you start fitfully like Michael Lewis?

Do you stay in bed for a while and have your papers brought to you on a silver tray like Lady Antonia Fraser?

Though you may not see another soul all day, do you need [...]]]>

Almost everyone has his or her own version of what it takes to get to work.

Do you start fitfully like Michael Lewis?

Do you stay in bed for a while and have your papers brought to you on a silver tray like Lady Antonia Fraser?

Though you may not see another soul all day, do you need to wear a coat and tie to remind yourself that you are going to work as did Robert Caro?

Do you need amphetamines (W.H. Auden), prefer to write all night (Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith), rely on a weak whiskey and soda to get going (Churchill), or prefer to be horizontal (Truman Capote)?

No matter the quirky specifics, the common denominator is this: most serious writers need a routine to get the writing done.

And if perhaps this seems paradoxical—the idea that the most amazing, creative things can emerge from people working in accordance with predictable daily routines—just the opposite is true.

A routine should be predictable and ordinary if it’s going to work. Even better, it should be soothing. A writer surely will experience struggles, but getting to work should not be one of them.

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo credits: the Sunday breakfast routine and open magazine is by joeywan; the police eating ice cream routine is by filmbuffhowsy at The Sensimovielert.com.

Is there an antidote to its crippling effects?

Some writers talk about the need to muster one’s courage, [...]]]>

We all know the feeling, and we know too that our fears can compromise if not shut down an otherwise perfectly good writing day. Fear may not just precipitate the failure; it may be the primary reason for it.

Is there an antidote to its crippling effects?

Some writers talk about the need to muster one’s courage, or dig deep for a sense of dignity, or consider your lost opportunities if you never take a risk, or buck up and write through and past the fear. These are all reasonable strategies . . .

And then there’s the artist Maurizio Cattelan, who favors a more extreme response.

The Italian-born artist has a massive piece right now, which fills the central atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, and yet we learn from the curator notes that the fear of failure is a central issue in the artist’s life. So, how can be he plagued in this way and still produce so much?

The artist made his fear work for him:

“Since his first solo show in 1989, in which he hung a sign saying ‘Be right back’ on a locked gallery door, Cattelan’s preoccupation of failure has led him to concoct a series of ingenious ways to complicate access to his creative output. Subsequent strategies of evasion have included presenting an authentic police report documenting the fictional theft of an invisible artwork; creating an exact replica of another artist’s show at a nearby gallery; and dressing his gallerists in absurd costumes that transformed them into living artworks.”

Want to manage your demon Fear?

If more typical strategies seem toothless, why not take a tip from Cattelan and use the fear, exploit it even, and make it a central element of the work.

Yo—fear! In your face!

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. The photo, by zio Paolino, is of another of Maurizio Cattelan’s works, his extended finger, positioned outside the Italian stock exchange, in Milan. Don’t neglect to click on the “central atrium” link above to see a cool video of the installation going up–an engineering marvel.

These words of a poet, published in a French literary journal more than a century ago, still seem exactly right, especially tomorrow night, New [...]]]>

“We are living in a storm where a hundred contradictory elements collide; debris from the past, scraps of the present, seeds of the future, swirling, combining, separating under the imperious wind of destiny.”

These words of a poet, published in a French literary journal more than a century ago, still seem exactly right, especially tomorrow night, New Year’s Eve.

Lift a glass. Celebrate. Bathe in the air of possibilities. Where will the imperious wind take you this year?

Wishing you all good things in 2012.

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo credit: vitaminsea.com. Quote by Adolphe Retté, La Plume, March 1, 1898

1.  TIME

On a good day, I can look up and be amazed that five hours have [...]]]>

What went well these past twelve months, and what could have gone better? I’m supposed to ask myself this every quarter—it’s in the plan!—but that part of the plan, two years running now, has fizzled. Still, it’s not too late:

1.  TIME

On a good day, I can look up and be amazed that five hours have slipped by. But  I may not have produced much, as it can take me multiple iterations to figure something out. I hate this about my writing. And yes, I do know people who get it right the very first time. (Okay, only two people. And yes, they are MacArthur prize winners.)

2.  VOICE

But hey, not for nothing, all those hours this work-a-day writer has put in, for at least I have established a voice for this blog. That’s one part of the plan that went well. If you say soulofaword, you mean me.

3.  THE VISUAL

Every post, including this one, comes with photographs (part of the plan). And, as was true from the very beginning, trawling the photo sites and picking the pictures continues to be a pleasure.  It’s like accessorizing. The hard part—the writing—is done, and now we get to pick the shoes.

4.  COMPLEXITY

My sense is that these posts are growing in complexity, both in content and in language. This was not in the plan. Is this a good thing? A bad thing?  I’m not sure yet, but I will say that complexity doesn’t add to the ease or speed of the undertaking. And it takes up time that should be spent on other things, like the business of blogging.

5.  THE LISTS

The stories are one thing, and people have their favorites, but many of the most popular posts here deliver information in neat, tidy lists and/or have titles that begin “How to . . . ” What to make of this?  Are my readers pressed for time? Are they looking for instruction? Do they prefer to graze, not read?  And from a writer’s point of view, is it easier or more difficult to use this form?

These are some of the questions I’ll be answering as I make my year-end plan. For now, though, I’m off to gather the hard data, another something I’ve left for the very last moment, but oh well, it’s not too late.

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo credit – Giacomo Lorenzo.

At the heart of it were ornaments labeled specifically for each person, but by description, [...]]]>

We who write the words can entertain, confound, confirm—anything can be concluded from what we say, intended or not. Sometimes I forget this. Recently, however, I got a reminder, courtesy of a party game devised for the amusement of our guests.

At the heart of it were ornaments labeled specifically for each person, but by description, not name. The glittering and tasseled things were scattered throughout the house, and in between eating, drinking, and talking, the idea was for each guest to find his or her own and claim it.

Future poet laureate. Fresh from the hell, and better than ever. Most gracious woman in the room.

There were 120 in all, an array of miniature pickles, handbags, shoes, polka dots, petit fours, orbs, olives . . . It was remarkable to see who took what, spirits rising, and before long baubles hung from buttonholes and strands of pearls.

“Is this mine? Is this it?” What was not said, the implied question “How is it that you think this of me?”. 

Most beautiful woman in the world was coveted. So was the mock: Our boys, your girls, finished.

No one claimed Wicked gossip, reliably dispensed, but a few people wanted to meet that person.

And the competition was positively fierce for Get naked and light up a joint. (The ultimate taker proved his chops with the observation that I had the order wrong: first the joint, then the naked.)

Future mayor. The one I call when I’m in trouble. If only my hips could move like yours.

I was surprised at how much explaining I had to do. I thought people would recognize themselves. Some tags had direct quotes, no less. And though I knew there might be multiple contenders for things, to me, there was only one best answer.

Who’s a queen? Who’s a visionary? Wasn’t it obvious? And how about married to a peach? Apparently there was room enough on that one to drive a convertible straight through.

It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that my guests wouldn’t necessarily see themselves as I saw them. But it was also a reminder to me: readers don’t always read things the way we intend them.  Five words—or even fifty thousand—and a reader will conclude as he chooses.

Partial to our own point of view, is there anything we can do to secure its adoption?

A few things, maybe. We can sharpen our words, of course, and think for a minute as well about how to build confidence in the reader that we have it right. And when we think we’ve finally got it, we can step away from the page, pretend we are strangers, and consider how we might be heard.

Comments welcome and edited to include first names only, and website, if provided; never your email. Photo credit: moonstarsandpaper.