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Posts Tagged ‘writing tips’

In Brief

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , on 20 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiI’ve never considered short stories to be a money-making proposition. The days of ten-penny-a-word venues for genre fiction are gone; you’re lucky to find even a penny-per-word, these days. But short stories are still a really good way to explore a new technique or try out an idea. Some of my novels were born directly from a short story, and many ideas I’ve used in novels I played with and refined in short stories.

But if I were to add up all the money I made from published short stories, I might have enough to buy a couple weeks’ worth of groceries. If you subtract all the money I spent on postage, paper, and ink, in trying to get them published, we’re talking about a fancy dinner out for four. That’s a lot of work for very little coin.

So, I’m bringing them online, where they can hopefully be read by more people than ever saw them in print.

Check out the Short Subjects page in the Writing section. I’ll be bringing more online as time permits.

k

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The Good, the Bad, the Idiotic

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on 20 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »

There’s a lot of chatter on the blogs about bad reviews and what to do about them (like The Misfortune of Wondering). Bad reviews are a fact of writing life; they cannot be avoided. You’ll get them from critics, from readers, from family and friends, and at times, from fellow writers (those are the worst). But no matter the source, there is only one acceptable response.

What is that acceptable response? Well, it isn’t is to fire off a flaming bitch-fest where you call the reviewer an illiterate berk and question his paternity. Despite the immediate satisfaction this activity provides, it is definitely not the way to go. If you must, write it and then delete it.

However, neither is it acceptable to write a reasonable, point-by-point rebuttal to the critique, noting how this scene is obviously an allusion to Homer’s “The Odyssey,” depicting the character’s inner journey, and how your hero’s deformed limb is a device to mirror Richard III, which should be clear to anyone with an education. These refutations always come across as whiny and insecure (yes, pompous can and often does come across as insecurity).

In short, a response is never acceptable, because (a) you never convince the reviewer you’re right, and (b) because you (the writer) never appear in a good light. A response always makes the writer look silly, pedantic, immature, petulant, patronizing, or just plain stupid. There are as many reasons for a bad review as there are bad reviews. Some people just don’t like the sort of stuff you write. Some may like the genre, but just didn’t like the book. Some nitpickingly comb through any book and tag the writer for any flaw, real or imagined. Some reviewers, including a few professional ones, are bitter, small-minded people for whom tearing down someone else’s work is a way to make them feel better about themselves. And then there are some reviewers who have read the book, considered it with a well-educated mind, and simply found it to be flawed.

No book is perfect. No book will please every reader. No book is immune from the bad review. Just go out on Amazon; even the critically-acclaimed and best-selling titles have bad reviews. I’ve had bad reviews a-plenty. One reviewer panned my entire novel because of one perceived factual error (it wasn’t an error). Another reviewer panned me because he didn’t like the historical Custer, and didn’t want to read a novel with him as a character (this is substantive?) I’ve had bad reviews of every stripe, and responding to these bad reviews is futile, useless, and possibly career-damaging.

The only acceptable response is to read them and consider them. Just like you would consider the feedback from a fellow writer or a writers’ workshop, consider the feedback from a bad review. In both cases, the feedback may be meaningful; the reviewer may have touched upon a flaw you hadn’t seen before. If the feedback is valuable, use it; if not, dump it.

Here’s the crux: if someone doesn’t “get” something you wrote, if someone doesn’t understand that character’s motivation or what that scene really meant, then you screwed up, not the reader. The book is perfect in your head, but it’s never perfect on the page.

k

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Grammar Guardian Lite

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 18 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiI’ve been known to be…overenthusiastic…about proper grammar. However, I have been loosening the laces on my jackboots, of late, as my definition of “proper” English usage evolves. A recent opinion piece in the NY Times, however, has shifted my perspective even more.

The example in that piece that really spoke to me was the 19th century difference between “first two” and “two first,” when speaking of people in a queue. Today, we wouldn’t blink twice at anyone who used either one or the other to signify the two people at the front of the line. Back in Edith Wharton’s day, though, the “two first” people meant the two people at the front of a line, while the “first two” people meant the first couple in a line of couples.

What started this evolution of attitude? Without a doubt, it was Shakespeare. For years I struggled with the “rule” to never end a sentence with a preposition, and so my was peppered with convoluted sentence syntax where the “which” in the center got me out of a prepositional-ending jam. Necessarily, I sometimes came out with sentences almost as bad as the anecdotal Churchill line: “That, madam, is something up with which I shall not put!”

But if Shakespeare–my all-time favorite writer–if Shakespeare didn’t have a qualm about ending a clause with a preposition (“..the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…”), who the hell am I to quibble? And while Edith Wharton–whose work I truly admire–did quibble over “first two” and “two first,” what about Austen, Thackeray, and a host of others I also adore who used language that today would be considered downright wrong?

Language evolves. We’ve been “verbing nouns” and changing the meaning of words ever since we learned to speak. Do you know the difference between a present and a gift? There is a difference, and I know what that difference is, but in this day of the “free gift” (a redundancy if ever there was one), should I ding someone if they use the wrong one?

I will hold tight to certain tenets of my Grammarian Faith–the simple truth of correct spelling and apostrophe use; my adherence to the Oxford comma; my belief that almost any sentence ending in “at” doesn’t need that word; and the simple, common-sense rule that if your writing is unclear or can be misconstrued, it’s improper–but I really need to chill when it comes to a lot of other cringe-worthy uses.

The language is changing around us. No stopping it.

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Going Old School

Posted in Fallen Cloud Saga, Low Tech, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 12 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »

1972 Sheaffer Stylist White Dot Fountain PenI used to be much more disciplined about “writing time.” I also used to have crushing deadlines, which were a great motivator. Now, I have less time, my monkey-boy-day-job is more demanding, and it’s just damned hard to find time to shut myself in the back room, sit down at the computer, alone, without distractions, and pump a couple thousand words past the CPU.

To counter this, I’ve tried many tactics. First, I bought a netbook, thinking it would allow me to work anywhere; it turned out to be too slow and underpowered to provide any real convenience. Then, I bought a keyboard for my iPad, but while faster, it proved to be too clumsy to balance on the bus and still required a larger chunk of time in order to be productive.

So, I went Old School, returning to my writerly roots, as it were. As some of you know, my first books were written longhand, with pen on paper. Yes, kids, I actually wrote four whole novels without the aid of a computer. I swear it’s true; FC:I-II and PC:I-II were all written with a Uni-Ball pen on Cambridge steno pads.

This new/old method has increased my productivity for several reasons. Primarily, it is more suited to my Basher style; cudgeling out a few dozen or maybe a hundred words at a time is much easier than trying to force out a couple thousand words. It is also perfectly suited to my catch-as-catch-can writing schedule, allowing me to squeeze out a couple of lines at the bus stop, en route to the transit station, while waiting for a program to compile, or as I’m cooling down after my workout.

There’s also another, less obvious benefit: because writing with pen and paper is slower than typing, the resulting prose is the product of a more thoughtful and deliberate process. Writing with pen on paper increases the lyricism of my prose, and what ends up on the page is tighter, less cluttered by unnecessary wiggle-words, and is closer to what I really wanted to say. Yes, there are lots of cross-outs and insertions (see picture), which yes, looks as if I editing as I go along (Bad writer! No biscuit!), but this isn’t really editing; this is searching for the narrative path.

Moreover, writing with pen and paper just makes me feel like a writer. It is how almost all of my favorite authors composed. It’s an organic, completely natural way to create, completely divested of the trappings and necessities of computers and cables and cords. It’s immediate, it’s personal, and to me, it’s more than processing words; it’s writing.

k

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Swoopers and Bashers

Posted in Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing, tagged , , on 29 Jun 2012| 8 Comments »

It wouldn’t be right to finish out the first week of what is in essence an author’s blog without a post about writing.

If you’re not familiar with me or my writing, I have eight novels and dozen or so short stories and articles that have seen print. Publishers of my novels run the gamut, from Big House publishers to Small Press publishers to Just Me publishers. Likewise, my short stories have been in magazines, newspapers, anthologies, and small ‘zines. So, them’s my creds.

And so, as a writer with some accomplishments, I’ve learned a thing or two about writing. One thing I’ve learned is about discipline.

Writers’ working styles generally fall into two categories; I call them Swoopers and Bashers.

A Swooper is someone who can sit down on a Friday evening and churn out 30,000 words by the time “Meet the Press” airs on Sunday morning. A Swooper generally embodies that old advice, “Write first, Edit later,” and when “in the zone” is a formidable opponent in any writers’ workshop challenge. The Swooper style goes well with the organic technique for plotting and outlining (more on this next week), as the Swooper can readily rework or completely rewrite any problems that arise. If Swoopers have a weak link, it is that it is easier to slacken one’s discipline. After all, if you know you can write 30k words in a weekend, you can let that deadline cruise on toward you at full speed without worry. If you’ve just put 30k words to paper, that feeling of accomplishment can last for weeks or (as I’ve sometimes seen) months. Yes, Swoopers are the “hares” of the writing world.

Which obviously leaves Bashers as the “tortoises.” I can say this with impunity because I am a Basher.

A Basher works hard to get 1,000 words a day, 5k words in a week. Some of us are Bashers because we just can’t find a chunk of time large enough to put down more than that, but for the most part, we Bashers are as we are simply because, well, we just don’t write fast. The plot is continually percolating in our heads, twisting and permutating, and we just can’t see that far ahead. Whereas a Swooper can careen down the storyline, comfortably blindfolded, seeing the twists and turns as they appear, we Bashers want to see the road, judge it, and evaluate its worth before committing to it. We are also notorious self-editors, and if you saw some of my long-hand composition, with criss-crosses and arrows and circles and strike-outs paragraphs, you’d understand. We often plot and outline a book to death before writing “Chapter One,” and we are the ones who lose faith in our own creation, thinking it stupid and moronic, repeatedly during the creative process.

Importantly, we Bashers cannot fool ourselves into false confidence. We know we’re slow, and we know we’ll have to struggle to meet our deadlines.

But both styles require discipline, resolution, and repeatedly renewed commitment to put that pen onto that paper and scribble out a story.

Which now I seriouslymustdo.  FC:Book V won’t write itself.

Have a good weekend.

k

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