Category Archives: Blog

Single ladies, this is what we hold out for. Whoa! And sigh.

I love me some teachers. The positive ones. I am here because of them. Hells yeah!

Writing is a labor of love. It really is. Writers toil and labor and think and read. It’s what we do on our path to become master storytellers.

But sometimes we don’t know what the story is. Seriously. When we start telling our stories we may know a couple of scenes, maybe we know the ending, but that’s it. Some of us (points to self) work it out on the page. That’s why it’s important to do one REALLY important thing…

DO NOT SHOW YOUR STORY TO ANYONE BEFORE YOU’VE WORKED IT OUT.

I’m not kidding. I workshopped something that wasn’t ready and it was not good times. The day I violated this rule, I was blocked for like a week and it took lots of coming to Jesus talks to get out of it. Then I had to change the direction of my story because what I thought would be the story had been tainted.

But I do enjoy workshopping. I think it’s important. So often writers are so in their heads that they need a second or third pair of eyes on something.

So how do you know its time to workshop something? When you know the characters and the story enough to take the heat from it. People’s opinions are wrong about 90 percent of the time. So if during a workshopping of a piece a jealous fellow writer gives you “suggestions” about where the story should go or what you should do, you need to know your character well enough to say, “they wouldn’t do that” or “that’s not what the story is about.”

That leads me to my next point. Don’t workshop, EVER, NEVER, with people you don’t trust. Good workshop participants know how to give criticism.  It’s an art form really because its about building a relationship of trust. They’ll need to start off by giving the criticism with gentle suggestions (real ones) asking questions, and listening.  Eventually, a good group will be able to give you comments directly in one sentence and you’ll know what you need to work on.  They’ll know your patterns and would have known how the story evolved. Your critique/workshop group will know the story as good as you and will see sentences and words that don’t go with it.

So, that’s my two cents on it. I’m coming back from the brink myself from a non-productive workshopping experience. If I can save you from the grief I went through, than this post has done its job.

Write on!

So not a writing post but I can’t stop listening and watching this video. Hilarious.

I’ve been reading a lot of mysteries lately because of school. I’ve had this character I’ve been tinkering around with, Jennie Manning, that I thought needed a new adventure. 

Walter Mosley’s Devil In a Blue Dress was my first book this semester and I’m so thankful for that.  He’s the perfect mix of literary and genre.  He believes in the heat of writing. Write what is passionate and true but he’s also about the production side and advises to write an hour and a half every day.

I don’t know about an hour and a half every day but I do believe in the daily practice of writing but that’s not what this post is about. I’ll write about daily writing habits later.

This post is about fear. Writing is a scary business and Mosley addresses that in an interview with NPR in 2007. Stop Reading and Start Writing : NPR He was promoting his book “This Year You Write Your Novel.”  In the interview he says that writers are afraid of writing. The more and more you write the more real material starts to bubble up. By real he means from the unconscious, the stuff you push down to function (yes, the correct word here is function). When that starts to bubble up, it’s frightening. 

Writers also write what they know. It’s an old adage, I know but if what they know is tied to the people around them–mothers, fathers, friends, co-workers, bosses, cat, etc–that also tends to come out in the writing.

Walter Mosley

He’s smart that Mosley fellow.

I had a friend of mine tell me I needed to leave a city because it upset me so and that it would come out in my writing.  However, that is one of the most productive periods of my life. What came out on the page was experimental dribble that to this day I love because it wasn’t what I expected.

Those surprises for a writer makes for some interesting self awareness and fuel for self discovery. Who are we really? Not even our mothers know us and we hardly know ourselves. The way to find it is through art. For some, it’s on the page after daily reflection and work. Some it’s in a song. Others it’s through painting or sculpture.

So being a writer is more than just sitting down and putting pretty words on the screen. It’s about exorcising demons you didn’t know were there and finding the truth of their existence. Why are you writing about your mother? Why does that character ironically look a lot like your boss? And why is your favorite paragraph about  planting flowers? Who are you? Find out. Pick up the pen. Keep writing until it hurts. For Mosley it takes an hour and a half a day to figure it out. For me…well I don’t know yet. I haven’t hit the truth but I know it’s on its way.

Write on!

I can write a book about criticism.

I won’t but after seven years reporting and living in Houston for most of my life I think I’m a bit of an expert in this area.

When hearing/taking criticism it’s important to know one important thing…

Only 10 percent of what they’re saying is true. The other 90 percent needs to be filtered to make the other 10 percent make sense.

It’s important for a writer to have a group of folks they can trust to tell the truth about their writing in a way that doesn’t wound the writer and at the same time makes sense. It needs to be a safe space. Sometimes though that safe space is infiltrated by folks who are about as suave as a brick.  Personally, if a person critiquing my work can’t give me specific examples of what doesn’t work and then verbalize it effectively, I ignore it.

So here’s how to deal with criticism:

* Listen, nod, smile, ask questions. Although this person who is telling you that what you’ve just written sucks probably has one solid point. But it doesn’t suck. They suck. They don’t know enough to not use the word suck in a critique. They probably write bad angsty poetry they thought was REALLY deep but is just desperate.

*Be polite. Just because that person is, at this point, the most horrible human being on the planet doesn’t mean that you need to stoop down to their level. Actually, you should really feel sorry for them because they’re so jealous of your prose.

* When they something interesting and probably true get them to give you ideas on how they would fix it. If their fix ideas are good they probably know what they are talking about. You should listen to them. Buy them coffee. Offer to fix it and then send them to revision.  If they don’t offer any good ideas on how to fix it, they don’t know a pen from a pencil.

* When they’re done, smile and thank them.  Then, in your head or on a voodoo doll, cuss them out, rip out their eyes, whatever. You are suppose to feel angry and rejected. They are natural feelings so don’t suppress them. Give them space to be.  After its all done, walk away from the project for a bit. Then with a clear head and heart look at it and re-evaluate. Some of what they said is true. That’s the ten percent.

*Criticisms are suggestions. This is how other people saw your work. But realize, however, at the end of the day YOU are the creator of the art. YOU make it do want it wants to do. Not other folks. So take the suggestions that will make it better and everything else throw it away. Who cares? It’s your piece, right?  Unless they’re an editor, don’t worry about it.

Hope this helps! Happy writing!