January 2011 Archives - Write to Done

Blood, Sweat and Words: How Badly Do You Want This?

A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com

One of the Oscar nominated films this year is The Fighter, conceived by and starring Mark Wahlberg. See it – even if you’re not into boxing – it is a triumph of writing and acting based on a true story known by few outside of the boxing world.

You probably know a thing or two about Wahlberg, that he used to sling his pants just above his butt crack as a lil’ white boy rapper named Marky Mark, and that he went on to become a bonafide Movie Star and become richer than God as the producer of cable hits like Entourage, which is loosely based on his acting career.

Here’s what you may not know about Mark Wahlberg. It took him five years to get The Fighter made, all of them at the height of his career. It was his baby, and in the face of continued rejection he continued to prepare for the day when someone said yes.

And when I say prepare, I’m not talking about taking meetings. I’m talking about blood and sweat… literally.

There are two lessons here for us writers.

First, when someone says no to you (as in, a rejection slip), feel sorry for them. Their loss, they may have just missed out on something wonderful. Then move on with hope, revising and growing as necessary, because each no is an obligatory stone in the path that leads you to a yes.

Everybody gets rejected. Everybody.

Secondly, Wahlberg went into training to become world champion welterweight Mickey Ward, upon whom this true story is based. He trained over the entire five year stretch between the idea and the green light. Even when he was making other films, he would get up two hours early to hit the gym and put in the sweat equity required to be ready when that yes moment arrived.

That’s how badly he wanted this.

Critics and viewers are swooning over the way Christian Bale morphed into Ward’s crack-addicted brother (it earned him a Supporting Actor nomination, while Wahlberg was shut out of the nominations), and certainly it was a stellar display of acting chops. But it was Wahlberg’s film, because it is drenched in the sweat and blood, any way you want to define those terms, that it took to get this project made.

The idea for this post hit me today when I was at the gym, sweating profusely.

There’s something about taking yourself to the wall, to the point of the sweet pain that signals you’ve given it everything.

Kinesiologists will tell you that’s an endorphin high. Nothing but bio-chemicals kicking in. Funny thing about bio-chemicals, though: they can take you to places you wouldn’t go otherwise.

I realized that I have, on occasion, experienced that same exhilarating high about my writing. And then, between sets on a machine inspired by something out of a medieval dungeon, it hit me: I don’t do that enough.

I couldn’t wait to get home and start writing this post.

I slept until 9:00 am today. Even in the face of no less than 11 blog posts due now, two overdue freelance projects and three career-defining letters to a prospective new agent and two publishers I want to get into bed with

There was a gap between how badly I want success as a writer, and the degree to which I will push myself to get there.

And now here I am, writing this post instead.

And sweating profusely, I might add. Because this is an important message for anyone with a writing dream.

Consider it Day One in my new training regimen. Throw it out there to the world – and what better way to do that than to say it here – and you can’t look back. Not if you have an ounce of pride and self-worth in you.

I don’t know a lot of writers who are also athletes. I’m sort of an odd duck in that regard. I’ve often used analogies from my own athletic past in the writing workshops I teach, and they are sometimes greeted by blank stairs and the fidgety body language of folks jonesing to get outside for their next smoke.

Not judging. But it’s not an athlete’s mindset.

But that doesn’t dull the shine on this particular truth: success in writing is really no different than success in sports. Or in any endeavor in which only the manically dedicated and self-made world-class achievers see their dream come to fruition.

Behind closed doors, you have to pay a steep price to make it happen.

We don’t hear much about that private agony at awards banquets and profiles in major magazines, but this backstory is almost always there.

Which makes me ask myself, and you, this question: how much blood, sweat and tears are you putting into your writing? Are you casual about this, thinking that if you tinker enough you’ll get there? Or are your words drenched with pain and desire? Have you felt the endorphin high of writing something brilliant in the middle of the night, and the fear of suspecting you’ve not done enough in the face of opportunity?

A Case Study In Discipline

You’ve heard of James Patterson, he of the 68 books written (eight in 2010 alone) and 40-some-odd bestsellers and more shelf space in the bookstore than, well, anybody on the planet. But you may not know this guy’s backstory, and it’s soaked to the bone with blood, sweat and endorphins, all of which were in his life long before those big writing bucks showed up.

Prior to being James Patterson the immortal writing demigod, James Patterson the wannabe novelist held a pretty cool day job. He was the CEO of the largest advertising agency on the planet, J. Walter Thompson. In fact, he was the youngest CEO of a major ad agency, ever.

Patterson’s train to get to his Manhattan high rise office every morning left at 6:30 am. He rarely got home before 8:00 pm, and traveled frequently.

How do you manage the dream of writing novels – indeed, how does the dream even endure when you are pulling down seven figures in your day job? – with a schedule like that?

Answer: you get up at 4:00 am and pound the keyboard for two hours. Every day, no matter where you wake up or how bad your head hurts.

He wanted it that badly.

How badly do you want your writing dream to come true?

You may not know many athletes, you may not particularly like the ones you do know. But take a closer look at the intangibles of making it big in sports in today’s competitive environment, an era in which current high school jocks can out-run, out-strength and out-play professionals of as little as two decades ago.

Now put that into context to today’s publishing market, which is tighter and in a greater state of flux and metamorphosis than at any time in history.

You have to want it badly enough to pay the price required. To humble yourself before the high bar you seek to clear. To compete with others who hold their dream just as dearly as you cling to yours, when there are only so many open slots in the chaos of today’s collective publishing landscape.

Are you writing hard, or are you writing smart? And do you realize you have to do both to make it?

You have to go back to the drawing board frequently to review the basics and test your abilities. Just like athletes go to training camp each and every year to brush up on fundamentals. You need to keep learning, practicing and experimenting. To keep pushing yourself. You need to read everything and everybody in your target niche, and you need to have an insider’s take on the industry you are trying to break into.

You need to sweat blood. You need to bleed tears. You need to seek the high that only endorphins deliver after you’ve taken yourself to the wall.

You need to back your belief with sacrifice and solitary, intense effort. Casual practicioners of the writing craft need not apply.

Never settle. Never quit.

Never forget that mediocrity is everywhere, but also there is an abundance of quality writers with killer manuscripts out there, too.

You have to be better than they are.

You may not be the fastest, strongest, most naturally gifted writer in the game. Dare I say, James Patterson wasn’t, and isn’t. But he is a role model we can learn from. (I met him at a book signing once. There were about 300 people waiting for his appearance, and when I got there late I was at the back of the room. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and when I turned, there he was, beginning to thread himself toward the podium. When he saw the recognition in my eyes – the dropping jaw helped, too – he extended his hand and said, “Hi, I’m John Grisham, thanks for coming.”)

Like I said, and like his work or not, the guy’s a role model.

Maybe you’re not going to win the Pulitzer, but you can be the most disciplined and focused of writers. Determination isn’t something you claim, it is something you earn through demonstration and performance.

Ask any professional athlete, they’ll tell you.

Because more than ever before, in sports and in writing, this is something that is required to elevate a dream to a career reality.

I feel better now. High on endorphins from writing this.

Let the bloodletting and the sweating begin.

Larry Brooks is a former professional baseball player, and the creator of Storyfix.com, recently named to the #1 position on Writetodone.com’s recent “Top Ten Blogs for Writers” competition. He is also the author of five critically-acclaimed popular thrillers. His new book, Story Engineering, comes out in February from Writers Digest Books.
Photo image by Jessica M. Cross

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Categories: Craft, Habits

Can You Become a Genius?

By Mary Jaksch

As a writer, is your talent limited? Or can you develop beyond your wildest dreams? Watch the amazing video below in which Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. (If you can’t see the video below, click here to watch it.)

Please join in the conversation in the comments.

What thoughts did this trigger in you? Please share in the comments.

Mary Jaksch is the Chief Editor of Write to Done and blogs at Goodlife ZEN She runs the A-List Blogger Club together with Leo Babauta.

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Categories: Creativity

The 3 Traits of a Writer—and Why You Can’t Succeed Without Them

A guest post by K.M. Weiland of Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors.

Writers come in all shapes and sizes, from all personal backgrounds, all walks of life, and all cultures and countries. We’re a varied bunch, but we all have something in common: in order for any of us to make it past first base in this business, we have to possess three traits. These traits are non-negotiable. If we don’t possess all three of them, we’ll never be writers, and we’ll certainly never find marketable success.

What are these traits, and how do we solidify them in our lives?

Trait #1: Talent

In some ways, talent is the easiest of the three, since it’s something over which we have no control. We’re either talented, or we’re not. Generally speaking, talent incorporates one or all of the following:

An aptitude for words, which can include (but isn’t necessarily limited to) an understanding of language and a perceptive ear for powerful and rhythmic phrasings.
An instinctual understanding, however raw in the beginning, of story structure.
An insatiable curiosity, a desire to discover truth, and a willingness to be audaciously honest about the human experience and the world in which it takes place.

I consider talent the least important, simply because it’s the only one of the three traits that is useless without the other two. Still, it’s important to recognize that without that original kernel of talent, all the watering and weeding in the world won’t cause the growth of a burgeoning tree.

Trait #2: Learning

I use the word “learning” instead of “knowledge” because “learning” indicates more than a static pile of facts stored in our brains. Learning encompasses the following ideas:

An ongoing process that suggests a mindset in search of enlightenment more than a simple checklist of facts to be mastered.
A hunger for knowledge that is further stimulated, instead of sated, by the actual discovery of knowledge.
A willingness to devote an endless amount of time and energy to studying the craft.

Even the largest measure of talent can only carry an author so far. We must study to show ourselves approved by reading widely and voraciously, researching the tenets of the craft as seen by other authors who have proven themselves through their own devotion, and seeking and accepting the wise criticism of readers, editors, and other writers. Writing is a skill that can be learned by almost anyone, and it is in the learning that we raise ourselves above raw potential to refinement and eventual mastery.

Trait #3: Diligence

Finally, we come to the most important of the three traits, the bottom of the pyramid, the foundation for the previous two. Without diligence, we will inevitably lack the ability to grit our teeth and put our innate talent or our sought-after knowledge to practical use. Writers who possess diligence are able to bring the following to their writing desks:

A commitment to writing, even in the face of its difficulties.
A certain amount of hardheaded tenacity that allows them to keeping marching right past the inevitable discouragements.
A consistency is showing up for work every day, no matter what else has to be sacrificed.

The writing life is filled with setbacks and even outright failures. Without the determination to persevere, no writer will make it past the starting gates. We have to be willing to devote our time and energy to pursuing our craft, polishing it, and loving it even when it isn’t lovable.

In order to call ourselves writers, we have to act like writers. We must recognize our responsibility to our talent. We must open our minds to studying and perfecting the art of writing. And we must be willing to do these things day in and day out. Writing isn’t always a hobby; it isn’t always a career; but it is a lifestyle. If we can devote ourselves to pursuing these three traits, we can wake up every morning with assurance that we are writers.

K.M. Weiland writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in the sandhills of western Nebraska. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, editing services, and her recently released instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

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Categories: Craft, Fiction, Habits, Productivity, Reading

Why You’re Only 1/4 of A Writer And How to Make You Whole Again

A guest post by Ollin Morales of Courage 2 Create

About a year ago, when I decided to sit down and write my first novel, my biggest problem with the writing process wasn’t that I was a bad “proofreader,” or a bad “goal-setter,” or a bad “blog monetizer.” No, my biggest problem with the writing process was… my life.

About a year ago, I had already come out of the long and arduous process of trying to get into a Graduate School for Creative Writing. After giving my graduate application my all, and after turning it in, a few months later, I received a response in the mail. I unfolded the letter and then folded it back up again as soon as I saw the word: “Unfortunately” in the second sentence.

About a year ago, I had been let go from my job as an English Tutor because the company I was working for had gone bankrupt after the recession hit. The company loved me, but they could no longer pay me. My mind sort of checked out as soon as my boss shifted the conversation and started with the word: “Unfortunately…”

About a year ago, I had come out of my fourth failed relationship, and for anyone who has ever had a heart-broken more than once, you’ll agree that a consistently broken heart is a vastly underrated phenomenon. It can get the best of you, if you let it. I think I went into shock when my ex-boyfriend pulled over his car and began to say: “You’re a really great guy, but unfortunately…”

Finally, a year ago, someone close to me, who I love very dearly, and who I had been taking care of for two years, fell into another bout of her Depression. For those of you who don’t know, Depression takes over the body of the person you love until you find yourself living with the disease itself. Living with Depression is like coming home and discovering a black hole of grief and sorrow greeting you at the door. The best–and only thing–you can do in that situation is to orbit the edge of this black hole, spin frantically like a lesser version of Mars, and try not to be torn out of orbit and swung into the dark abyss.

That was it. That was the last straw for me. I was no longer in an “unfortunate” situation. I was in a crisis.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had to become wise, and I had to become wise fast.

Why? Because I knew that if I didn’t gain the wisdom I needed to survive in that moment, I would end up drowning in my own ignorance.

Now, the only way I was going to gain that wisdom was to take the steps necessary to vastly transform the way I approached my life.

These were the necessary steps I took in order to go from being 1/4 of a writer to becoming whole again:

I began meeting regularly with a therapist to learn how to deal with my emotions
I trained for a 5K to learn how to deal with my body
I kept a daily journal to learn how to sort through my heavy thoughts and clear the way for the lightness of my truth
I developed a daily meditation routine, hiked in the mountains, and began to pray so that I could learn how to reconnect with the universal, sky-bound spirit that unites us all.
Most importantly, I reached out to friends and family, wrapped my arms around them, and allowed myself to burst open with the greasy showers of pain, letting all that was broken slice through me, until the release of life’s vicious shrapnel lubricated my blackened, rusted heart. It was this “reaching-out” that taught me how important it was to be part of a larger community.

It was all of this work, and this work only, that allowed me to continue my writing, and helped me survive a very challenging year.

So, Then What Happened?

Don’t worry. You’ll be happy to know that at the end of that tumultuous year, not only did I finish the first draft of my novel, despite everything that stood in my way, but I wrote a blog chronicling this journey that went on to become one of The Top Ten Blogs for Writers.

Oh, um—what’s the word for when something good happens, unexpectedly?

Ah, that’s right. Fortunate. Haven’t heard that word in a while. Nice to hear it again.

What does this have to do with my writing?

“I’m really happy for you Ollin, but, what’s the point? I mean, what does this story have to do with me being a writer?”

Fair enough. Here’s the point:

After everything I went through, the most surprising thing I learned was that being a writer requires MORE than just your mind.

Why? Because you don’t write with only your mind. You write with your heart. You write with your spirit. You write with your body. You write as a member of a community.

Now, you can ignore all these aspects of your being, sure, but then you would only be about 1/4th of a writer.

On the other hand, if, every now and then, you listen to the intelligence of your heart, or to the intelligence of your spirit, or to the intelligence of your body, you might find the solutions to about 75% of your writing problems—problems that your mind told you were impossible to solve.

This “well-rounded” approach to writing isn’t always easy. I still struggle to master the skill myself

Take this year for instance. Although the challenges I faced last year are all resolved, this year I am faced with a whole new set of challenges.

Once again, I am being forced to become wise—fast—or risk drowning in my own ignorance.

But this is the journey of life and the writing process, isn’t it? Both require that you have infinite patience. Both require that you fall in love with the painfully slow progression of things. Both require that you face a set of problems one year, master them, then face a whole new set of problems the next year, master those, and keep this going until you’re forced to accept the humble truth: that no matter how much you learn, you will, forever and always, be a novice.

If you want to BE a great writer you need to LIVE a great life

Let me conclude with this thought:

You, as a writer, are FAR more complex than your ability to write flawless grammar.

You, as a writer, have a life to live, and you need to live it well.

Because when you ignore your life, you become like a concert pianist who has been given the best training in the world, the best piano to play, the best musical score to follow, the best audience to bear witness, but who does not show up to his own concert.

On the other hand, when you do pay attention to your life, you not only become the artist who shows up, but the human being who relishes his moment in the spotlight.

much love,

Ollin

Ollin Morales’s blog, {Courage 2 Create}, chronicles the author’s journey as he writes his very first novel. His blog offers writing tips as well as strategies to deal with life’s toughest challenges. After all, as Ollin’s story unfolds, it becomes more and more clear to him that in order to write a great novel, he must first learn how to live a great life. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.
Note: Ollin’s blog, Courage 2 Create is a winner of the Top Ten Blogs for Writers 2011 Contest.

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Categories: Craft, Fiction

The 7 Secrets of an Indie Editor

A guest post by Victoria Mixon of A. Victoria Mixon, Editor.

Many years ago, when I was a starving writer wrestling day and night with the phenomenal angel of the fiction craft, I got thrown on my back a lot. I’d lie there wheezing until I could breathe again, then I’d gamely hop back up and go at it again.

Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. Up. Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. This went on for a really long time.

So now that I’m a professional indie editor, I know what’s going on at your house. And there are things I’ve learned about this craft that could make this wrestling match a whole lot easier on you. These are my secrets, the things you should know:

1. You need far more discipline and profound human compassion than you think.

You guys. You bring me your precious manuscripts, written in ink from the opening of your own veins, these symbolic versions of the very real and tragic heartbreaks you yourself have survived, and you tell me, “Don’t be gentle. Lay it on me. I can take it.”

Fortunately for you, I’m the wimpiest writer ever in history, so I just ignore you. I know that every mild criticism is a slam to the writer’s solar plexus and every compliment is a faint voice mumbling unintelligibly in the distance.

Only when you’ve gotten a hefty dose of compassion for you, the writer, can you hoist up your suspenders and set about the Herculean task of applying the discipline and ruthlessness your manuscript needs. There are always piles, mountains, avalanches of it. If I simply laid the discipline on you first, you’d be humiliated—silenced.

This is why I’m not just an editor. I’m a writing therapist. Half my job is being really good at handling manuscripts, and the other half is being really good at handling writers.

Writing fiction isn’t expressing yourself, it’s creating an experience for your reader.

And yet we all write because we love it. Right? I’m not sitting here at my desk thinking about you. I’m actually sitting here thinking about me, about the fact that I know something important and I want you to get a kick out of learning it from me.

Which leads me inevitably to admit that the reader is the only one in this relationship who counts. I might very well have something you need, but if you don’t want it I’ve done all this work for nothing. Not only that, but you’re not here just for what I know, you’re here for the experience of learning it, and even more than that you’re here for the indescribable magic that happens when you find yourself sandwiched between what you’re learning and how you feel about learning it.

That’s the magic that changes a reader’s life. And the writer’s job is working that magic.

No one can properly line edit their own writing.

This point sucks, but it’s a simple fact, so we might as well all get used to it, the same way we’re used to dentists, freeways, and working for a living. I would far rather be independently wealthy on a chateau patio overlooking the 1920s Mediterranean coast, words like pearls falling in perfect order from my quill, bouncing over my feet and across the worn flagstones.

But that’s simply not going to happen.

Instead, I’m going to write as clearly and succinctly and vividly as I know how, and then I’m going to hand it off to someone else—my writer husband, my writer friend, or the editor of whatever publication or blog I’m writing for—to be line edited. They’ll catch the awkward phrasing and constructs that make a reader stumble over my words. They’ll smooth the rhythm I’ve worked so hard to achieve (and, hopefully, catch most of my typos.)

They’ll see my words the way a reader sees them. And that’s professional polish.

The publishing industry is not Cinderella, and neither are you.

Or, to paraphrase Dylan: they ain’t a-going nowhere.

I know everyone’s breathing down your neck, exhorting you with the authority of wild-eyed fanatics to hustle your fanny out there and get your novel published. I know this is why you ask for blunt criticism and hope to skimp on the line editing, why it’s so daunting to be told this work is, more than anything, about magic.

But honestly. . .what’s going to happen if you don’t get published PDQ? Are the publishers all going to turn into pumpkins at midnight?

No. And neither are you. Novels have been written and published for over four hundred years. They will continue being published a good four hundred years from now. I spent thirty years delving into this craft in the privacy of one cozy little workspace after another, across three states and half a dozen countries, one desk in a closet and another on a minuscule Hawaiian lanai overlooking the endless ocean. You have time to immerse yourself in this craft for a very, very long time indeed before you need to start looking over your shoulder to see if the end is gaining on you.

Seriously.

Your manuscript is in much worse shape than you believe it is, but you have vastly more potential as a brilliant writer than you can imagine.

Now, you may have seen my recent moment of online glory in which I was immortalized in the Huffington Post for being dissed by my agent. That story was absolutely true. Every single manuscript that comes to me is the best, brightest, most word-perfect work of which its author feels capable, and every single one of them has aspects for which an agent with a caustic tongue could get them into the Post.

But that’s okay. I learned how to fix all that stuff.

Even more importantly, every single manuscript that comes to me has its moments of ineffable glory: a facility with words, specific telling details that snap scenes into three dimensions, plot twists and developments that carry me right out of myself, laser-like snippets of dialog and amazing character insights, things that make me sit up, make me laugh, torque my heart exactly the way a reader’s heart needs to be torqued.

These moments are the stuff of which brilliant fiction is made.

Your job is to go beyond the limits of possibility.

Of course, the biggest thing I know that you don’t is that writing fiction is an impossible labor. Great art is never as transcendental as its creator has in mind.

Readers might be happy enough with less than transcendental (but not much). Publishers and agents might be as happy as they’re ever going to get. (It’s hard to tell.) But once you’ve seen your vision and known what it’s like to capture even a fragment of that iridescent substance for your own in words, you will never again be satisfied.

So you keep at it—the impossible. Even though you know it’s impossible. That’s what you, great writers, and immortal protagonists all have in common.

Fiction isn’t really about reading or writing, it’s about living.

Finally, not the biggest thing I know that you don’t, but the most important: there’s no such thing as either “escapist” or “literary” fiction. There is only storytelling to which all of us, readers and writers alike, go over and over again, to find out what life is, learn the basic skills we need to survive it, and discover the unspeakable beauty and subtlety and significance that makes it worth living.

You don’t have to be a writer. You simply do this work because we human beings need it done.

Victoria Mixon spends her time blogging for the vast tribe of aspiring great writers in the blogosphere and editing their work with her suspenders hoisted up. She is the co-author of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators and author of the recently-released The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual.

Categories: Business, Craft, Fiction, Freelancing