I have no idea how important this post will be later…

Let’s face it, I don’t have the worst commute in the world. Four miles across town isn’t anything to complain about. And yet, with each passing day, traffic around here seems more and more like it has been specifically choreographed to annoy me in the most precise manner possible, like a laser-guided headache narrowing in on the very behavior that drives me up the wall.

So to distract myself from being annoyed on the road, I recently found myself thinking about things that annoy me about reading books. (No, there’s no reason you should expect to understand the jump. Welcome to my brain.) I’d wager that anybody who has written a fair amount, and probably lots of people who haven’t, start picking up on certain things that authors do that, for no obvious reason, grate at them every time. I’m not talking about occasionally mixing up “its” and “it’s” or “your” and “you’re” or something. That doesn’t happen very often in published books anyway, being more of an online or magazine/newspaper problem. Grating and annoying, of course, but I’m talking more about things people do with their actual writing.

In the book I’m currently reading, the author plays the same general trick on a couple of different occasions. (I won’t name names; it’s not important, and there’s no reason to dis on what might be someone else’s favorite book.) You can generalize all of them as the “they had no idea yet but…” line.

I’m sure you’ve seen it before. Things are okay, there have been a few pages of exposition or maybe the team has just pulled off their mission and are heading out, hanging up the phone, walking out the door, or otherwise doing something perfectly normal and uneventful. And that step forward probably saved his life. Cue the explosion, gunshot, car crash, or blast of magic. (Followed, at least half the time, by the end of the chapter.)

Not a big deal, right? Actually, no, in this example it really isn’t a big deal. It may be even less of a deal when you consider this particular book is written in the first person. I’ve only done shorter bits of first-person writing, and so I don’t have enough experience to say, but it seems reasonable to think of such things as being a natural part of the narrative style.

But where it starts bugging me is when it happens over and over again. I don’t impose any hard and fast rules as to how many times any given writing trick or plot accelerator can be used, beyond which they’re all bad. Instead I have a simple “noticification threshold” which says, basically, that if I start to notice it, it’s too much. As soon as I think to myself, “oh, he/she did it again,” then that becomes one time too many. It knocks me right out of the story.

Now, for the record, I like this book. Clearly, occasional random things like this don’t permanently ruin the story for me. It’s more like a record skipping (everybody knows what that is, right?) during a good piece of music; it jars you out of the experience for a second, but then you’re back in to it again and all is well.

Maybe that means that whatever these things are (Writing tricks? Shortcuts? Normal things no one else ever notices but I do because I’m a fiendishly hyperobservant read-o-tron?) they don’t detract from a well written, enjoyable story. I can believe that. For example, compare this book series to another popular (I assume?) fantasy series from a few years back, in which the author repeatedly used the same kind of things (“She had no idea how important that would come to be later on.”) over and over and over and over again. (It seemed.) I didn’t much care for that story at all, and as it went on I groaned every time I kept seeing the same basic phrases. (“If he had only known how much he’d pay for that later, he would have never agreed.” Stuff like that. Over. And over. And over again.) In that case, it was a story I had long since stopped being crazy about in the first place, and so each and every instance of that stuck out like a sore thumb. Now it’s one of the key things I remember about those books. Not, I think, something that an author sets out to be remembered for.

My single strongest memory of another book is of its hilarious inaccuracies. In this case, the book claimed to be in the hard SF genre, which I had been trying to venture in to for the first time by choosing a few well reviewed samples of then-recent novels. Maybe most of the biotech topics it covered were portrayed accurately; I don’t have the knowledge to judge. But when the author (through one character’s dialogue) gives such laughingly wrong descriptions of how computers store numbers, well, I really can’t summon up a lot of faith in the more complicated science they discuss afterward. Again, I seriously doubt the author would enjoy knowing that I remember that particular dialogue more prominently than anything else in his story, but there it is. As before, I ended up not being a big fan of this particular book, so the faults stand out.

Does every writer do something like this? Or, perhaps more importantly, does every reader have something that bothers them? Maybe someone reading this is, at this very moment, pounding their fists against the desk because it drives them bonkers when people use a ton of parenthetical comments in they’re writing. (Just be thankful I don’t know how to put footnotes in the blog!) At least I’ve gone an entire post—so far—without using em dashes. I usually use those a lot. Oh wait, there I went and ruined it.

Did you see what else I did there? Does it bother you?

With NaNo coming up insanely soon now, I’m going to have to dust off all the writing tricks I’ve picked up over the years, because every single one of them will probably be essential if I want to reach 50,000 words on time. It’s also nearly certain that some of them are on someone else’s list of things that annoy the heck out of them when they read. We know it isn’t always a dealbreaker, though. If a story keeps you glued to it from cover to cover and you can’t wait to read it again, who cares if there are one or two spots that make you cringe when you get to them? If the story sucks, and it’s a slog just to finish it, would fixing those occasional spots have made any difference?

Maybe I’m more persnickety when I read than most people. Everybody has their quirky pet peeves, things that just drive them nuts, and they don’t have to have a reason. But if the story is good then that probably won’t matter, and that’s why I probably won’t be drastically changing my writing style any time soon. If my writing sucks, then at least it’ll suck the way I meant it to.

On the other hand, if I do catch myself writing “reaching down to pick up that penny probably saved his life” then I really should try to come up with another way of putting it.

—Jason

You want lack of focus, I'll give you lack of focus.

I honestly can't remember the last time I wrote anything recreational.  It's been months, and, frankly, I'm not sure I've done anything substantial since editing my NaNovel from last season.  I'm really in a slump.  The worst part about it is that I have plenty of ideas; it feels like I just don't remember how to start a writing project.  I feel like someone cut off my arms at my elbows or plugged my ears with wool…like a seriously necessary part of me is simply not functioning correctly.

So I've got a sort of prompt for all of us (those interested) to look into trying: Get Out.  Get out of the house, out of the office, out of the yard, whatever it is you're in right now, get out of it. 

A couple weeks ago, I was stuck in my house.  The heat was excruciating, I was helping my brother plan his wedding, and 100% of my days was spent either in my house, my car, or some store somewhere.  But then, the week after that, my family went to Colorado for a camping trip with my aunts and uncles and cousins, and we spent the week out in the cool, dry, mountain air, sleeping on mats, waking up to campfires, toasting bagels on the grill.  Throughout that week, I got about three ideas for stories and one idea for NaNoWriMo this fall, and I even started expanding on them a bit.  It was really helpful to change my routine a bit, just to clear my mind.  It gave me a chance to refocus my creative energies and actually get something on paper.

Currently, I'm in vacation-mode: it's summer break, albeit the end, and the only functioning motivational programming is my motivation to do nothing.  At every avenue I meet resistance.  Pointless resistance.  "Why don't I use this opportunity to pick up all the clothes off my floor so I can find my computer charger when I need it?" "Nah.  I'm about to press 'Next Episode' on Star Trek: Voyager and once I've done that, there's no reason for me to get up"; "Gee, I think I should brush my teeth." "No, I'd really rather just sit here in my filth, thank"; "I should feed my dog." "She ate yesterday, the greedy git."

But starting yesterday, I hoisted myself out of that mode.  I got more organized than I probably needed to, made a calendar of daily to-do lists, and started making concerted efforts to get stuff done.  Lo and behold, today, I was working with my dad on making a stand for our television, and whole paragraphs of stories just came floating into my head.

Now, none of this is in and of itself a solution to my overall focus problem.  And I still haven't written anything I'm proud of, and I still feel awkward and clumsy in my writing.  But this is the closest I've come to getting past the weird and perpetual writer's block that I've been in lately.  If you're having the same struggles as me, then I suggest you get out.  It really worked as a first step for me.

Mary

The genre of horror

Do any of us know how we came to the decision that we like one style or one genre over another?  Is there a defining point in your life that you can discuss that indicates why you became a big fan of *blank*?  Not for me.  I’m a strange horror fan.

When I grew up, I read a lot of horror.  One of the many things that make me proud to have the parents I have is the fact that my mother stated that I can learn whatever I learn, as long as it came from a book.  When I was younger, I didn’t watch horror movies.  I was strangely scared of them or not allowed to watch them in fear of what they would do to me.  To this day, I’m not much in them, at least not the typical blood and gore movies, but I read horror.  From simple scary stories I would get from the bookmobile geared towards children, to things way to adult for a preteen to be reading, I read my share of horror as a kid.  Oddly, I wasn’t affected too much.  Never woke from nightmares or had to sleep with the light on.  When I did watch horror, I wasn’t fond of it.  It just seemed like an excuse to splatter blood and show me the no longer inner workings of a body.  That wasn’t really horror to me.  The more eerie, the more mysterious does it for me.

I suppose I like the suspense, the shock, and the willies up my spine when I read horror.  The safety of the fear in my book, a place I can crawl into but quickly run back out and know I’m in no danger.  It was a delight to me, and possibly made me feel a little more grown up for reading what I shouldn’t be reading as a kid.  As an adult (or a grown up kid as I truly am), I’ve stepped away from the horror to read other genres, write other genres, but horror on paper still has a place in my heart.

As a writer, I’ve rarely tried to write horror.  Like they say about comedy, it’s hard to make someone laugh; it’s also hard to make someone scared.  We are cynical people, and when you know it’s a horror story, you are anticipating the surprise which makes it harder to enjoy the surprise.  Horror is part irony/twist and I’m a lover of irony, but nowadays you have to twist the twist because people are expecting a twist.  I intentionally made that sentence seem confusing. =)  Horror is hard to write if you’re trying to step away from just being gory and really want to shock people.  Yes, the more guts and blood, possibly the more you’ll receive shock, but will you always get fear from your reader?

I am of the opinion that horror should only be for short stories.  This might seem surprising to many people, but I think the short form helps to keep the suspense high and the nerves on end.  When you stretch it out in a novel, you either have to many lows, relaxed moments that the reader loses the anxiety or you over saturate the story with horror that they can be desensitized and no longer fear what they should fear.  This is my personal opinion, of course.  When I read horror as a child, it was short stories.  It actually took awhile for me to get into novels, and I’m still kind of partial to short stories over novels in all genres, but that’s for another post. 

Everyone knows the usual famous horror writers.  No need to mention them so I will mention some of my favorite semi-unknowns to unknowns.  Because I haven’t been reading horror lately, I’m afraid I’ll have to direct you to some podcasts authors.

If you don’t know, podcasts are simple audio programs that anyone can create.  They range from discussion groups, audio dramas, information pieces, to people just reading their stories.  The following links are to sites with horror writers that I enjoy.

Russell Burt is like the rest of us.  He has a love of writing and specifically for horror.  For a couple years he was recording and posting his short stories on his blog.  He also included his horror novel and later opened the doors to other writers to submit their stories (Yes, one of mine is on there.  He asked for it, and I was honored, and he did a fantastic job reading it.).  Sadly, he ended his blog back in 2008, but it’s still up to enjoy his past accomplishments.  His final post has comprehensive links to the different areas of his stories, novel, and listener contributions.  I miss Russell’s writing, but am glad I got to talk with him, and enjoy what he had to offer.  I think I’ll go email him a “Hey how ya doing note.”

 http://rlburt.blogspot.com/2008/01/end.html

Pseudopod is part of a large podcasting organization that brings the stories of writers to the online audio world.  There is Pseudopod for horror, Podcastle for fantasy, and Escapepod for science fiction.  Stephen Eley started the whole thing but Podcastle and Pseudopod have their own teams.  You will get a wide variety of horror stories here.  I’m afraid I’m way, way, way behind in listening.

http://pseudopod.org/

Though I’m behind in my listening, I would like to point out my favorite so far of their stories. This one just blew my mind and burned images into my head that pop up every now and again.

http://pseudopod.org/2009/02/13/pseudopod-129-bottle-babies/

Last but not least is Phil Rossi who is probably considered one of the big wigs in the podcast world of writing.  I’m behind on everything but this writer/musician has cranked out some nice horror material.  Most of his recent books are free on audio if you want to take a listen.  

http://www.thephilrossiexperience.com/philrossinet/?page_id=13

That’s all I have for now.  Nanowrimo is around the corner, and though I’m not writing horror, there should be some horrific aspects to my 2011 WIP so I will keep these writers, and my memories of horror in mind as I click away.

Jennifer

Camp Write On! and Camp Nanowrimo

Our blog has had a serious lack of focus the last month.  I forgot to give the proper reminders and blame myself as…err…I guess kind of the leader.  But it’s a new month and we’re going to start fresh.

Our usual group meeting did not take place on a Friday evening.  Instead, we had a BBQ at another member’s home and it was fabulous.  This was a family and friends event, opening the party to those close to us, including dogs.  My dogs had a great time as did my hubby.  We tend to be terrible about actual writing when we get together as a writing group.  We know that’s the point of this group, to write, but there is something that clicks and works with us and we like it!  So we do other fun stuff and make up reasons it relates to writing so we feel less guilty about having fun. Ha!

Moving on...  Nanowrimo, the thing that brought this group together, is presenting, for the first time ever, Camp Nanowrimo.  Popped up just when Write On was going to do their own writing month so we’re scrapping our own idea for the summer and working on the big company’s plan instead.  The same rules apply: 50K in 30/31 days.  You can do July or August or aggressively write in both.  We had members iffy on this camp project but already a few are up over 2K in words with one over 10K.  Where am I?  Umm…my character has a name!

What am I doing for Camp Nanowrimo?  I thought I was going to be a rebel-light.  Rebels don’t follow all the rules obviously and due short stories or continue on some project instead of starting new.  I thought that was going to be me.  I’m going to work on my fairy tales which of course is a collection of short stories, but because they are related in theme and I would like to present them as one book, it fit the rules. I have one started, and I was going to continue on in it, but decided to not break that rule either and start on a new fairy tale.  All this means I may not be a rebel after all.  I have a hard time breaking rules.  I blame my parents!

My problem with this right now is the same that I always have…my lack of focus.  Here it is the start of the third day of Camp Nanowrimo, and I wrote nothing for day one or two.  I still need to plot out the details of my current fairytale cause I work better with a good plan of action.  It’s not a good start but I’m trying not to be discouraged.  Now that I know more members of our group are doing this, I feel a little competition going ,and I have some serious catching up to do.  And with that, I shall go write!

Good luck writing this month!!!

Jennifer

Do it for the Memes.

A previous post mentioned the lack of writing motivation. I read the post and found myself nodding in agreement. The last couple months have been kind of crazy for me. Moving out of the old ass apartment and into a permanent home, our new house. My husband and I were busy for weeks with packing, painting, re-flooring, etc. I found it hard (and truthfully, agonizing) to sit down and write. I did 30k in March and after that it was like another end-of-NaNo crash. I did not really want to write.

Now that about two months have gone by I've been getting these nagging thoughts of "you really should sit down and write". "I know, I know!" I'd cry back, but then do absolutely nothing about it. Writing is hard, I'd tell myself, I just don't feel it tonight. Well, I finally started easing back into it. I started browsing the NaNo forums, this always helped me during my first NaNo. There was something about seeing other people being excited about their own plot and characters that gave me a spark. Then I searched for some writing exercises. I found a brilliant Live Journal page full of writing memes! (Which I immediately posted to the group's discussion page.) I did a meme. Then another, and another. After that I sat there smiling because I didn't feel so stupid for sitting down and doing something creative with my characters. Then, while lying in bed, my mind was going on about my story and my characters. I couldn't wait to get up and do more memes! After I finish this I plan to actually do some writing tonight. It's been far too long. And my characters are pretty pissed at me right now...

I think my biggest hurdle was that I fell back into the mindset of "your writing sucks Tabby" after taking such a long break. This was my biggest foe for years until I found NaNo back in '09. I just want to say, to those who fall into the same pit now and then, just ease back into it. You won't be excited right away, after a long absence, to start writing again. The exercises I did slowly helped to push away my inner-writing-demon. 

That's all.

Tabby

<3

Atmosphere...

Today I've been thinking about atmosphere and how that impacts the way we think, work, and create.  Where is it that you write?  Do you prefer the quaint corner of a bistro while you sip on a latte and people watch between paragraphs?  Maybe a home office with a desk and straight back chair?  Or do you write better outside, sitting on the porch, or in bed at night in a journal?  For me, it really depends.  I can curl up with my laptop for a bit but I am usually more disciplined at my desk with my focus on the work and no distractions.  If I have a paper and pen I love to go journaling outside, taking in the trees, air, and birds while I discover where my characters are headed next.  Then again there is something fun about taking my laptop to Starbucks and getting distracted by cute guys, people chatting, and the social feeling I get being away from my house.

There is something to be said for having the right atmosphere when you write.  Do you need distractions to get ideas or are you like me and the first shiny thing that comes around causes you to lose your place in your story?  This week I am working on rearranging my home office, so I've been thinking a lot about how our surroundings affect how we work.  My behemoth corner desk came with my house and while I appreciate all the nooks and crannies of its shelves I also realized it caused me to hoard random shit that I just don't need to have around.  I have a big Herman Miller desk top that goes on top of two file cabinets which I am eager to get in my office to replace the monster desk, but I wonder if it will be a positive or negative change for my writing.  Sometimes a new change is a jump start to something good happening.  Other times it causes us to fall back into bad habits.  I want to have a healthy atmosphere that encourages creativity but I also want a desk that is functional and spacious.

Along with that is the concept of surroundings.  Paintings, calendars, Dwight Schrute bobblehead, plants- what do you need nearby to keep your creativity going?  I just went into my living room and stared at my Thomas Kinkade picture, realizing that I love it because its like the chalk drawings on Mary Poppins that they jump into.  I want paintings that give me something to yearn for.  I want artwork that makes me say "I wonder what the artist was thinking when they made this."  I need quotations and pictures that inspire me and catch a place in my heart.  My writing is best when I am surrounded by those influences, so my hope is that redecorating will get me out of my slump and cause me to jump at the chance to start some personal projects.  I'd love to write some stories about things I know, analyzing situations I've been a part of and even journalling to pour out everything in my heart.

So, is there anything in your surroundings that can change to make you a more productive writer?   A talisman like more plot bunnies, a certain playlist of music, or a new painting?  Think about when you are most in the zone and figure out ways to enable yourself to get to that place more often.  You never know- just changing the orientation of your desk or getting a new plant could cause you to finish your undone novel!!

-Liz

Climb Ev'ry Mountain...?

Personally, I'm in a bit of a writing slump right now.  There's a lot going on in my life—between my transition back to the United States after four months in the UK and all of the emotions that entails, my lack of a summer job, and the impending doom of my senior year of college—and the writer in me who has always turned emotions and experiences into stories and characters has been replaced by a creature that is lucky if she's able to keep a journal.  It's like my own brain has gone into lock-down, overwhelmed by the excess creative stimuli, and is blocking out the inspiration.

Now, I've been told, and I've believed in the past that "inspiration" is helpful to writing but not necessary.  I mean, that's basically the driving force between NaNoWriMo: none of us would have gotten to the 50K mark if we had waited for inspiration to strike.

However, I've never hit a block as solid as this one.  I've had times when I was procrastinating, but once I knuckled down and started writing, things eventually came more smoothly.  I've had times when I didn't know what was going to happen next in a piece, but I would move on or start over in order to get any further.

But this is something different.  I can feel it.  I don't feel like I have anything to write.  I have a lot of things I could write, but it's almost painful to try.  The other night, I just sat down and forced myself to write a page of non-academic writing, and though I was able to do it, I'm not sure how, or whether it was worth it.  It didn't give me any more confidence, it didn't make my inner writer feel any less trapped…in fact, it made me feel like I'm doomed never to write again.

I look at my notebooks, and they actually fill me with a sort of fear.  Not just a procrastinator's dread, but a fear as if there's something bad waiting for me inside them.  I still cary them around, and periodically, I write down quotes I want to remember, ideas for characters, dialogue, settings, etc. in them, but that feels more like flexing a vestigial muscle, now.  There's no connective tissue piecing things together.  

I guess I just wanted to share that with you folks.  I wondered if any of you had ever experienced something like that, and whether you pulled out of it eventually or not.  I'm hoping that it will all pass after I've been home for a little bit, or once I start up my summer rec. reading.  But right now, it feels seriously impassible, and every word I type in fiction gives me a toothache.

Mary