Mastering Words: Transform Your Writing Weakness into Strength

A guest post by Angela Ackerman of The Bookshelf Muse

Each day, we seek to put our best foot forward. We shower, dress for the day’s activities, style our hair. We plan, organize, gather our things, and check the mirror before leaving to pluck stray fluff off our sweaters and straighten sleeves.

Why?

  • To enhance our strengths.
  • To appear confident.
  • To show the people who interact with us that we are collected and ready for whatever comes our way.

It’s human nature to minimize our weaknesses. We hide zits, disguise thinning hair and avoid talking about our embarrassing mistakes. But in writing, covering up flaws can keep us from success.

Attitude

All writers shares a common epiphany on the writing path. I call it Staring Into The Abyss. This experience happens when our writing has strengthened to the point where blissful ignorance rubs away and we begin to realize just how much we don’t know.

It’s a dark moment, a bleak moment. We feel shock. Frustration. Despair. Some stop right there on the path, their writing spirits broken. Others take a micro-step forward, progressing toward the most important stages leading to growth: acceptance and determination.

Once we come to terms with what we don’t know, we can set out to learn. Taking on the attitude of a Learner is what separates an amateur from a PRO.

Asking for help

Writers can strengthen their skills on their own, but it’s a lot of hard work. Reaching out to other writers will shorten the learning curve considerably. Critique partners can help identify your weak areas and offer strategies to improve. They also will know of resources which might help.

There are many great sites for writers to find a critique partner or two. I recommend The Critique Circle (free & safe to post work). There are also sites like Absolute Write, Critters Workshop and Agent Query’s Critique Partner Wanted board. Or let someone play matchmaker for you: Ladies Who Critique & Rach Writes.

Read

No matter what areas need to be worked on, books can help. Find inspiration through your favorite fiction authors and in ‘how to’ books (here’s a good list to start on). Pick up a few and take notes. If you can, pair up with another writer to read the same book and then discuss it. Learning together gives you a better chance to fully understand any topic.

Resources, resources, resources

There are thousands of articles on writing that can teach strong writing technique. Plotting, Story Structure, Voice, Description, Showing vs Telling, Style, Dialogue, Characters…whatever areas you want to develop, there is content out there to help you.

The trick is finding the best nuggets of information without losing your whole day online. Try this Search Engine for Writers for starters. Then, bookmark The Writers Resource which is a must-have for any writer. And saving the best for last, turn your gaze to the sidebar! Write to Done is a treasure trove of fantastic material for writers.

Think outside the monitor

Many of us are introverts, and it’s easy to get caught up on the keyboard and screen. There’s nothing wrong with this, unless your rectangular life preserver is holding you back. Writing Groups, Conferences, Work Shops and Retreats are all excellent opportunities to hone writing skills and meet mentors. Writing events need not be expensive–get involved in a local writing group and see what events have a low or no cost for members.

When you’re looking for opportunities to learn, don’t forget the movies. So much can be gleaned by watching films to see what makes them work. In fact, some of our biggest epiphanies as writers will come from studying screenwriting. I highly recommend reading Save the Cat & Writing Screenplays that Sell. These books are pure gold. Trust me, your writing will thank you!

Write and rewrite

Transforming writing weaknesses into strengths takes time. Choose learning strategies that work best for you and never stop writing. Each step of the way, apply new-found knowledge to the page. We learn most of all by doing, so always make time to write.

Angela Ackerman writes on the darker side of MG & YA. She blogs at The Bookshelf Muse, a description resource hub for writers. Her book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression is scheduled for release in April 2012.
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Categories: Art of Writing, Creativity, Fiction - Tags: , , , ,

Know Thyself. 7 Truths About Writers

A guest post by Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn, one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers

Claiming the word ‘writer’ for yourself can be a big step. You may have been writing all your life but do you actually call yourself a writer?

Know Thyself was inscribed on the ancient Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi. People would go there to seek knowledge of the future or to find revelation about themselves. The words were a reminder that the first step to truth is to look inside.

Fundamentally, writers write, they put words onto a page or screen. But there are other aspects to writers. Do you recognize yourself in these traits?

1 We are loners

Writing is a solitary art. Even writers who collaborate create their pieces separately and knit them together later. We are not naturally team players. To be a happy writer is to enjoy solitude for creation. Writers are often introverts in the sense that they are energized by time alone with their minds. They may love being with people but it tires and drains them. I spent many years thinking I needed to be a team player, that it was essential to being a rounded person. Then I did the Myers Briggs test and found that introversion is just a natural state for some of us and certainly more dominant in writers.

2 We want recognition

Writers have egos and our desire to see our words in print or type stems from this need to be recognized. We want the six figure book deal. We want to be on Oprah or the New York Times bestseller list. We want to write words that change people’s lives. We want to be read. For all that to happen, our writing needs to be out there in the world.

3 We are scared and doubt ourselves

We want people to read our words but at the same time, we fear criticism and negative reaction. We compare ourselves to others and we often come up short. We doubt that we are original or that people will even want to read our words. We worry that we have opened ourselves up too much to the world, and then we fret because we haven’t been truthful enough.

4 We are deeply creative but sometimes forget this

When I was working as a corporate IT consultant, I found my creative side withering and dying from lack of exercise. I wanted to write a novel but I couldn’t imagine even starting one. I didn’t believe I could find that creativity in myself. So I started saying an affirmation on the daily commute. ‘I am creative, I am an author’. I said that over and over, and gradually I began to explore ideas and start to write. Four years later, I have two novels available on the biggest bookstore in the world. Although we may spend years in the wilderness, we can resurrect that creativity.

5 We know execution matters

Ideas are abundant. They swirl in the air about us and we pluck them down. We form them into finished works. People talk to us about the ideas they have, for this book or that story, but they don’t execute on the idea. We write, and we finish what we started.

6 We are always improving

Writers are readers. We learn from others by their words and we constantly try to improve our own ways of expression. We take courses on how to improve our writing. Sometimes we spend more time on reading books about writing than we spend actually getting white on black. We are obsessed with understanding why this works and why that is successful and we put what we learn into practice.

7 We know there are dark places within

Inside us are memories, emotions and an imagination that runs deep. We go there to tap into the experiences that make our writing resonate. Sometimes what emerges may be violent or horrific, resonant in truth and raw in emotion. We write with the knowledge that most people feel these things but they don’t admit to themselves that they exist. We have the ability and the strength to write those words without apology.

Do you agree that these are truths about writers? Are there any more?

Joanna Penn is the author of thriller novels Pentecost and Prophecy. Her site TheCreativePenn.com helps people write, publish and market their books and has been voted one of the Top 10 Blogs for writers 2 years running. Follow Joanna on Twitter @thecreativepenn

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The Pros and Cons of Comparing Yourself to Other Writers

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

With the advent of writing communities on such networking sites as Twitter and Facebook and half a thousand forums and Nings, writers are perhaps more social and less solitary than at any time in our history.

This brings its fair share of both benefits and drawbacks, since our easy access to other writers—both those who are striving to be published and those who have a dozen bestsellers under their belts—causes inevitable comparisons.

Are we as good as they are?

Are they as good as we are?

Let’s explore what we can gain from answering these questions, as well as the pitfalls to avoid.

Cons

Jealousy: Easily, the most destructive con of comparison is that of jealousy. Sometimes this jealousy is the simple result of having read a book that spun its tale with such gossamer characters and seamless themes that we were left astonished.

We look at this brilliant author’s perfect prose, and we hate them just because they’re so much better than us. Or perhaps a writing buddy has just nailed a plum contract with the Agent of the Year. What did she do to deserve that honor, especially when—let’s be honest here—her writing leaves a lot to be desired compared to ours?

Jealousy is a flaw common to the vast majority of writers (due largely to the next con on our list), but it’s one that gets us exactly nowhere. The sooner we can stand up to our feelings of jealousy, put them behind us, and work toward being genuinely happy for our fellow writers, the more content and the more productive we’ll be.

Because, let’s face it, there’s always someone who’s better, richer, or luckier than we are. Jealousy is a never-ending melodrama of pain and pettiness.

Inferiority: Perhaps the reason jealousy is so prevalent among authors is that it almost always follows on the heels of its kissing cousin: inferiority. Very few writers are able to maintain perfect confidence in their skill.

When we run across a writer whose prose is more effortless than ours, whose characters are more realistic, whose paychecks are larger, and whose accolades are louder, we can’t help but compare. And when we find ourselves wanting, we either want to plot laborious and exhaustive murder for the object of our comparison, or we want to crumple in a corner and bawl at our general wretchedness. Sometimes both.

In one sense, this chronic inferiority complex is actually a positive thing, since it keeps us honest. As Orson Scott Card put it in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, “Writers have to simultaneously believe the following two things: The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written in English. The story I am now working on is worthless drivel.”

Maintaining humility in our work is crucial to our genuineness as artists. But we can’t take this too far. We have to be able to reach a place of objectivity from which we can honestly compare our work to other writers, glean what we can from that comparison, or, if there’s simply nothing to be gained (as would be the case if we, say, compared the latest advance on our books to Stephen King’s), shrug it off as the inconsequentiality it is.

Pros

Inspiration: Comparing ourselves to other writers isn’t all bad. So long as we keep the downfalls in mind and are prepared to avoid them, we can actually gain a number of benefits from considering our fellow writers and how we measure up against them.

Honestly, can you imagine living entirely segregated from writerkind?

That would mean no books to read.
No fellow crazies to understand our quirks and obsessions.
No writerly energy to feed off.

We gain our inspiration from the art of others, from hearing about our writing buddies’ struggles, and from bouncing ideas back and forth.

If I were to write a thank you note to every author I’ve read, loved, and inevitably compared myself too, I probably wouldn’t have time to finish my next novel. Because most of us write the kind of books we enjoy reading, we are constantly reading books that are similar to our own. We recognize similar elements, compare them, and learn how to improve our own characters, plot, and prose as a result.

It’s a win-win situation, because who’s to say our mentors may not someday read one of our stories and find some similarity that brings that next epiphany to their writing?

Motivation: Once we get over the crumpling and crying brought on by our sense of inferiority in comparing ourselves to great writers, our next step is to rise from the ashes, pen in hand, motivated to blot out the very reason for our inferiority. The brilliance of this other author isn’t a boulder to crush us; it’s a mountain to scale.

Perhaps today we’re not good enough to be mentioned in the same breath with our heroes, but, you know what? If they can do it, so can we!

Reading great writers and comparing their brilliant stories to my own has been one of the single greatest factors in motivating me to keep writing, keep learning, keep trying. Nothing is more exciting to the dedicated writer than reading good fiction. Good stories excite us and drive us forward. We close the covers on a good book, and the first thing we want to do (after buying the sequel) is run to our keyboards and funnel all that inspiration and motivation into our own writing.

As with so many things in the writing life, successfully comparing ourselves to other writers is all about balance. If we can tamp a lid on the cons and embrace the pros, we can use the success of our fellows to launch ourselves to even greater heights.

It should be the goal of every writer to be comparison worthy. Hearing someone say, “I wish I could write as well you,” isn’t only the highest of compliments, it’s also a sign you’re giving back to the writing community the benefits you drew from it yourself.

About the Author: K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.
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I Paid For This?! Surviving the Editorial Letter

A guest post by Lisa Kilian of What Not To Do as a Writer

There comes a time in every writer’s life when the plot is adequately twisted, the characters are adequately developed, and all the typos have been eliminated with a laser gun. You think.

Actually, you’re not sure if any of that is true because you’ve been staring at the same document on your computer for so long you’re kind of wondering if maybe you didn’t go blind last week. You think you’re reading words. You think those words are good. The dreams about your story have stopped and now all you dream about is book parties and signings and big wigs and wine.

You think you’re ready to submit. To publish. To throw caution to the wind and send that manuscript off for some close reading. Except you haven’t been able to read your own manuscript closely for months now and you’re honestly not sure what it says anymore. Your characters could be marrying dogs or lost somewhere else in the muddle, you have no idea.

That’s why you need an editor.

Someone who doesn’t know you or love you but knows writing and loves reading freshly pressed work. Someone who will look at your characters and say, “Hey, cool story, but did you notice Sally marries a dog on page 23?”

When I receive a manuscript to read, I welcome it with open arms. And the brave writers who have sent their words to me wait patiently in the background brimming with nervous energy. It’s a great relationship. We email back and forth about little things. We laugh. I read and make notes.

And then I send the editorial letter. And that’s when the fun stops.

Right there, in one convenient document, is an overview of all the concerns I have regarding their manuscript. Plot holes, flat characters, lagging prose, over-telling, over-explaining, back story — all of it. Their manuscript is suddenly less pristine and more of a mess and I know I’m not gonna be the one to clean it up.

Receiving an editorial letter after you’ve paid to have your novel edited sucks. It just — sucks. That’s pretty much the only thing I can say. But! That same editorial letter that sucks so much to read is also the heart and soul of what you paid for. You asked someone professional with an objective eye to read your manuscript and deconstruct it — and that’s exactly what they did. And they even went one step further and gave you suggestions on how to clean up your mess.

Still, I can hear it through the email; the writer’s happiness just deflates. I receive an answer just dripping with defeat. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Steel your skin and prepare your mind before you open that letter. And remember these things:

 

1. What is a Finished Piece to You is a Rough Draft to Me

 

You may believe your manuscript to be finished and polished — but if you’re sending it to an editor, it’s not. Why else would it end up on an editor’s desk? There are things going on in your manuscript that you are simply blind to because you no longer have the distance and objectivity to see it. Why would you? You’ve spent months with your nose to the screen trying to figure out how to finish this thing.

 

2. Just Because You Receive In-Depth Edits Doesn’t Mean You Suck

 

Everyone receives in-depth edits. Everyone receives suggestions for change. Everyone has to get edited. I, too, am a writer. And my critique group always makes suggestions for changes. They even tell me ::gasp:: that something is not working. And I get sad. I go home. I take a nap. And then I rewrite.

 

3. By All Means, Get Angry — Just Don’t Call Me

 

When you receive edits and they seem overwhelming, you’re going to get angry. And you’re probably going to be angry at me. That’s the nature of the beast. So get angry. But remember that it’s not me you’re angry with. Frankly, you’re upset with yourself because you sent something that you thought was ready to go and it turned out to not be so ready after all. And that’s okay, really. It’s human nature to get upset when things are hard and writing is just that. So read your letter, take a few deep breaths, hit a punching bag, and take a nap. Seriously. Naps fix everything. When your emotions are defused and you’re ready to get back to work, then you can email me.

 

4. I’m Not Here to Make You Feel Bad

 

My job is to make your writing better, and by default, make you a stronger person. My job is not to take your money and rip your work to shreds. It is not in my interest to be snarky and make you feel like shit. I don’t want to make you give up.

I want to make your writing better. I want to make your writing better. I want to make your writing better.

That’s the first and last concern on any editor’s mind when we read your work.

Lisa Kilian is the author of the blog, What Not To Do as a Writer. She has had essays published at Beyond the Margins, Best Damn Creative Writing Blog, and Write It Sideways to name a few. Follow her @LisaKilian or email her at lr.kilian@gmail.com She would love to read your work.

 

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Categories: Fiction - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

4 Reasons to Appreciate Your Self-Doubts

A guest post by Joan Dempsey of Literary Living

Let’s face it – every one of us experiences self-doubt, even the most well-established writers. Dean Koontz, for instance, an author who has sold more than 400 million books and is one of the most highly paid writers in the world, says “I have more self-doubt than any writer I know.”

And Alice Munro, the celebrated Canadian writer who’s been called our Chekhov, worries every time she finishes writing a book that she’ll never write again.

Let’s agree, then, that self-doubt is an ordinary part of every writer’s experience, even yours. You’ll never be without it. The question is, what can you learn from it?

Here are four reasons to appreciate your self-doubt.

1. Self-Doubt is a Protective Instinct

Self-doubt arises out of your own instinctive desire to protect yourself, which is actually a nice impulse that you probably don’t often acknowledge. We usually bemoan or bludgeon our self-doubt; we believe what writer Sylvia Plath famously claimed, that “the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

I beg to differ!

You can be more creative if you welcome and examine your self-doubts.

It’s true, though, that we writers allow our doubts to keep us away from our work. Why? To protect ourselves from pain. Author James Baldwin says we’re good at fooling ourselves because we don’t want to get hurt. “We don’t want to have our certainty disturbed,” he said.

Psychologists call this self-handicapping . If you stay away from your work you’ll never have to face the pain of writing poorly, or you can fool yourself into thinking you’ll be a great writer if you do get down to work.

The problem with that, though, is that you’ll never really be a writer. Baldwin believed that the trick is to know when you’re fooling yourself.

The best writers live an examined and therefore honest life, and that includes scrutinizing your self-doubt.

2. Self-Doubt Sounds an Alarm

Not unlike a smoke detector, self-doubt alerts us to the presence of fear, the typical cause of our doubts.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a well-known Buddhist teacher, advises us that because fear is a natural and constant presence in our lives, we’d do well to welcome it rather than fight it:

It is best not to say, “Go away, Fear. I don’t like you. You are not me.” It is much more effective to say, “Hello Fear. How are you today?”

The next time you feel self-doubt, don’t despair or fight – look around to see what might be smoldering; be grateful for the alarm.

3. Self-Doubt is a Call to Action

Dean Koontz is notorious for obsessively polishing his paragraphs. “I began this ceaseless polishing out of self-doubt,” says Koontz, “as a way of preventing self-doubt from turning into writer’s block: by doing something with the unsatisfactory page, I wasn’t just sitting there brooding about it.”

In Koontz’s case, feeling uncertain about his abilities actually motivated him to take an action he might otherwise not have pursued.

Similarly, Write-to-Done Chief Editor, Mary Jaksch, believes that a “healthy dose of self-doubt, of not knowing” can lead writers to the “edge of creativity” by not allowing us to stay complacent.

I learned this first-hand through kayaking. After more than twenty years of paddling, I finally took a safety class. I realized I’d avoided such a class because I was afraid I wouldn’t have the strength to learn the appropriate skills. But the longer I kayaked, the more my fears began to be about saving someone’s life. I knew I didn’t have the right skills to be safe and those doubts about my ability became my call to action. I took a safety course and before long I was happily flipping over in my boat, certain I had the skills to save myself from drowning.

4. Self-Doubt Provides Fresh Perspective

If you keep your doubts to yourself you’re missing a valuable opportunity. By sharing your doubts with friends and writing colleagues you’re bound to get a fresh perspective. Others often don’t see your failings or uncertainties in the same way you do.

By sharing your doubts you’ll likely learn something new about yourself, feel companioned, hear a helpful cheer, or receive a much-needed boost to your self-esteem.

James Baldwin, in discussing why he writes, says he does so to describe. What he means is that by describing something in detail you come to understand it intimately. Describe your doubts in writing, or through dialogue – either way, your new understanding can help disarm your doubts.

The next time self-doubt keeps you away from your writing, try this:

  • Review these four reasons to appreciate your doubts;
  • Say “Hello, self-doubt, how are you today”; and
  • Get to work.

What have you learned from your self-doubts?

Joan Dempsey is a writer and the founder of Literary Living, an online program for serious, aspiring writers who want to overcome resistance and self-doubt to create a unique writing life. Sign-up for more information, a free audio interview with Leo Babauta, and a free e-book, The Power of Deliberate Thinking: 5 Strategies for Staying at the Writing Desk (Despite Your Self-Doubts)

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