Lee Rene's Blog, page 13
January 31, 2015
Five things I Learned about Writing in 2014
I wanted to share this blog post from Kamy Wicoff
1) Revision! Revision! (Sing to the tune of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof.) In December of 2013, my dear friend and editor of many years Amy Fox gave me notes on a manuscript I thought only needed polishing. As it turns out, it needed to be cut by 25,000 words. I cried, I denied, and then, over the first two months of 2014, I got it done. The lesson? Revision is not something you do when you are done writing. It IS writing, at its core.
2) Copyeditors are King. (If they are any good.) I have a confession to make. Until this spring, I didn't really understand the difference between an editor and a copyeditor. Now I do. Karen Sherman, who is the most thorough, smart, writerly-dignity-saving copyeditor ever (I shudder to think what she'd do to this sentence), showed me exactly what copyeditors do at their best. In a nutshell, they save authors from looking like morons. In a full-length novel, it is so easy to miss the one place you forgot to excise mention of a character who didn't make the final cut, or say Monday when you meant Wednesday, or underestimate the time it would take for somebody to get from one part of Manhattan to another when traveling by cab. Karen saved me from errors like these and many more, bringing a careful eye, grammatical rigor, and good old common sense to bear upon every sentence in my book. (In a book about time travel, like mine, this was particularly indispensable.) The lesson? Every author needs a copyeditor, but make sure you get a good one. SWP has a stall of excellent copyeditors, including the aforementioned Karen Sherman.
3) Writing may seem like a solo job, but it takes a village. Because 2014 was, for me, a year focused on finishing a book rather than starting a new one, the number of people--all with distinct expertise and unique perspectives--I needed to get it done was made especially evident to me this year. If you think you can write a book without help, just read (or write) an acknowledgements section. I wrote mine earlier this year, and it was humbling, but also moving, to chronicle just how many talented and generous people I relied on in the process of writing it.
4) What goes around comes around. When it comes blurb-time, the best possible thing you could have done to prepare is to have been generous with other writers yourself. It is much easier to ask someone to read your manuscript (which, make no mistake, is a LOT to ask of anybody) when you've read something of that writer's in the past, or written a review, or even a fan letter. Not when you needed something from that writer, but when that writer needed you.
5) Writers are like sharks. If they stop writing, they die. Or at least they get really crabby. As I complained in my last post, which I realize was on the whiny side, I am in promotion mode, and when you are promotion mode, it is very hard to find the time you need to write. But find it I must. I am not someone who writes every day, but I am someone who writes most days, and when I'm not writing, I am thinking about it. Not having a quiet, creative world I can dip into when this world gets too chaotic, or too stressful, or just too loud, makes me brittle and restless. It's time to start the next book.
1) Revision! Revision! (Sing to the tune of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof.) In December of 2013, my dear friend and editor of many years Amy Fox gave me notes on a manuscript I thought only needed polishing. As it turns out, it needed to be cut by 25,000 words. I cried, I denied, and then, over the first two months of 2014, I got it done. The lesson? Revision is not something you do when you are done writing. It IS writing, at its core.
2) Copyeditors are King. (If they are any good.) I have a confession to make. Until this spring, I didn't really understand the difference between an editor and a copyeditor. Now I do. Karen Sherman, who is the most thorough, smart, writerly-dignity-saving copyeditor ever (I shudder to think what she'd do to this sentence), showed me exactly what copyeditors do at their best. In a nutshell, they save authors from looking like morons. In a full-length novel, it is so easy to miss the one place you forgot to excise mention of a character who didn't make the final cut, or say Monday when you meant Wednesday, or underestimate the time it would take for somebody to get from one part of Manhattan to another when traveling by cab. Karen saved me from errors like these and many more, bringing a careful eye, grammatical rigor, and good old common sense to bear upon every sentence in my book. (In a book about time travel, like mine, this was particularly indispensable.) The lesson? Every author needs a copyeditor, but make sure you get a good one. SWP has a stall of excellent copyeditors, including the aforementioned Karen Sherman.
3) Writing may seem like a solo job, but it takes a village. Because 2014 was, for me, a year focused on finishing a book rather than starting a new one, the number of people--all with distinct expertise and unique perspectives--I needed to get it done was made especially evident to me this year. If you think you can write a book without help, just read (or write) an acknowledgements section. I wrote mine earlier this year, and it was humbling, but also moving, to chronicle just how many talented and generous people I relied on in the process of writing it.
4) What goes around comes around. When it comes blurb-time, the best possible thing you could have done to prepare is to have been generous with other writers yourself. It is much easier to ask someone to read your manuscript (which, make no mistake, is a LOT to ask of anybody) when you've read something of that writer's in the past, or written a review, or even a fan letter. Not when you needed something from that writer, but when that writer needed you.
5) Writers are like sharks. If they stop writing, they die. Or at least they get really crabby. As I complained in my last post, which I realize was on the whiny side, I am in promotion mode, and when you are promotion mode, it is very hard to find the time you need to write. But find it I must. I am not someone who writes every day, but I am someone who writes most days, and when I'm not writing, I am thinking about it. Not having a quiet, creative world I can dip into when this world gets too chaotic, or too stressful, or just too loud, makes me brittle and restless. It's time to start the next book.
January 30, 2015
A post from Ernest Hemingway
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
- Ernest Hemingway
- Ernest Hemingway
January 29, 2015
Colleen McCullough, 06/01/1937 - 01/29/2015
Internationally acclaimed Australian author Colleen McCullough has died in hospital on Norfolk Island, aged 77.
The popular writer was most well known for her sweeping family drama, The Thorn Birds, set on a remote sheep station in outback Australia.
The book, which sold 30 million copies worldwide, was sold for a then-record $1.9 million and a miniseries, starring Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward and Barbara Stanwyck became one of the most watched of all time.
But The Thorn Birds was just one of the many books McCullough wrote in a career spanning four decades.
Her first novel, Tim, written in 1974, tells the story of the relationship between an older woman and a younger, developmentally impaired man.
It too was dramatized and became one of actor Mel Gibson's first films.
McCullough continued to write in several genres, producing books including An Indecent Obsession, Morgan's Run and The Ladies of Missalonghi.
But it was her seven-book, intensely researched, historical series Masters of Rome that won her much acclaim, including plaudits from politicians including Bob Carr, Henry Kissinger and Newt Gingrich.
Her final book Bittersweet was published in 2013 and she had been working on a sequel when she died.
The popular writer was most well known for her sweeping family drama, The Thorn Birds, set on a remote sheep station in outback Australia.
The book, which sold 30 million copies worldwide, was sold for a then-record $1.9 million and a miniseries, starring Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward and Barbara Stanwyck became one of the most watched of all time.
But The Thorn Birds was just one of the many books McCullough wrote in a career spanning four decades.
Her first novel, Tim, written in 1974, tells the story of the relationship between an older woman and a younger, developmentally impaired man.
It too was dramatized and became one of actor Mel Gibson's first films.
McCullough continued to write in several genres, producing books including An Indecent Obsession, Morgan's Run and The Ladies of Missalonghi.
But it was her seven-book, intensely researched, historical series Masters of Rome that won her much acclaim, including plaudits from politicians including Bob Carr, Henry Kissinger and Newt Gingrich.
Her final book Bittersweet was published in 2013 and she had been working on a sequel when she died.
Empathize vs. Sympathize
I liked this post from Daily Writing Tips
A reader says, I’ve always been confused on how to use the words empathize and sympathize in proper context.
For about 300 years, English speakers didn’t have to choose between sympathize and empathize to express the idea of sharing another’s feelings. Empathize hadn’t been invented yet.
The first OED example of sympathize in the sense of “to share the feelings of another” is dated 1607; the first use of empathize with this meaning dates from 1916.
However, the noun empathy was introduced in 1895 by a psychologist to describe “a physical property of the nervous system analogous to electrical capacitance, believed to be correlated with feeling.”
This definition of empathy did not survive, but the word has found a lasting place in the vocabulary of psychology as the English equivalent of German Einfühlung: “sympathetic understanding.” This kind of empathy is “the ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings and experience.”
Before the psychological term empathize entered the general vocabulary, speakers did just fine with sympathize when they wished to speak of feeling the joy or pain of others.
Now that we have a second word for the same concept, empathize has come to denote a stronger, more personal sense of fellow feeling than sympathize. For example, I may sympathize with the fire victim who has lost her home and all of her possessions, but I cannot empathize with her because, mercifully, I have not experienced that trauma in my own life.
On the other hand, because I had to spend a day and a night in a Red Cross emergency shelter during an ice storm, I can empathize with people who must live in shelters for extended periods. The great gift of literature is that it enables readers to empathize with a wide variety of fellow creatures. They don’t even have to be human. When I read Black Beauty, I empathized with a horse.
Sympathy and empathy are equally beautiful human characteristics. Sympathize is appropriate in most contexts. Empathizeis best suited to situations that you have experienced yourself, either in the real world or through the power of literature.
A reader says, I’ve always been confused on how to use the words empathize and sympathize in proper context.
For about 300 years, English speakers didn’t have to choose between sympathize and empathize to express the idea of sharing another’s feelings. Empathize hadn’t been invented yet.
The first OED example of sympathize in the sense of “to share the feelings of another” is dated 1607; the first use of empathize with this meaning dates from 1916.
However, the noun empathy was introduced in 1895 by a psychologist to describe “a physical property of the nervous system analogous to electrical capacitance, believed to be correlated with feeling.”
This definition of empathy did not survive, but the word has found a lasting place in the vocabulary of psychology as the English equivalent of German Einfühlung: “sympathetic understanding.” This kind of empathy is “the ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings and experience.”
Before the psychological term empathize entered the general vocabulary, speakers did just fine with sympathize when they wished to speak of feeling the joy or pain of others.
Now that we have a second word for the same concept, empathize has come to denote a stronger, more personal sense of fellow feeling than sympathize. For example, I may sympathize with the fire victim who has lost her home and all of her possessions, but I cannot empathize with her because, mercifully, I have not experienced that trauma in my own life.
On the other hand, because I had to spend a day and a night in a Red Cross emergency shelter during an ice storm, I can empathize with people who must live in shelters for extended periods. The great gift of literature is that it enables readers to empathize with a wide variety of fellow creatures. They don’t even have to be human. When I read Black Beauty, I empathized with a horse.
Sympathy and empathy are equally beautiful human characteristics. Sympathize is appropriate in most contexts. Empathizeis best suited to situations that you have experienced yourself, either in the real world or through the power of literature.
January 27, 2015
11 Secrets to Writing Effective Character Description
Word Painting Revised Edition: The Fine Art of Writing DescriptivelyThe following is an excerpt from Word Painting Revised Edition by Rebecca McClanahan.The characters in our stories, songs, poems, and essays embody our writing. They are our words made flesh. Sometimes they even speak for us, carrying much of the burden of plot, theme, mood, idea, and emotion. But they do not exist until we describe them on the page. Until we anchor them with words, they drift, bodiless and ethereal. They weigh nothing; they have no voice. Once we’ve written the first words—“Belinda Beatrice,” perhaps, or “the dark-eyed salesman in the back of the room,” or simply “the girl”—our characters begin to take form. Soon they’ll be more than mere names. They’ll put on jeans or rubber hip boots, light thin cigarettes or thick cigars; they’ll stutter or shout, buy a townhouse on the Upper East Side or a studio in the Village; they’ll marry for life or survive a series of happy affairs; they’ll beat their children or embrace them. What they become, on the page, is up to us.
Here are 11 secrets to keep in mind as you breathe life into your characters through description.
1. Description that relies solely on physical attributes too often turns into what Janet Burroway calls the “all-points bulletin.”
It reads something like this: “My father is a tall, middle-aged man of average build. He has green eyes and brown hair and usually wears khakis and oxford shirts.”
This description is so mundane, it barely qualifies as an “all-points bulletin.” Can you imagine the police searching for this suspect? No identifying marks, no scars or tattoos, nothing to distinguish him. He appears as a cardboard cutout rather than as a living, breathing character. Yes, the details are accurate, but they don’t call forth vivid images. We can barely make out this character’s form; how can we be expected to remember him?
When we describe a character, factual information alone is not sufficient, no matter how accurate it might be. The details must appeal to our senses. Phrases that merely label (like tall, middle-aged, and average) bring no clear image to our minds. Since most people form their first impression of someone through visual clues, it makes sense to describe our characters using visual images. Green eyes is a beginning, but it doesn’t go far enough. Are they pale green or dark green? Even a simple adjective can strengthen a detail. If the adjective also suggests a metaphor—forest green, pea green, or emerald green—the reader not only begins to make associations (positive or negative) but also visualizes in her mind’s eye the vehicle of the metaphor—forest trees, peas, or glittering gems.
2. The problem with intensifying an image only by adjectives is that adjectives encourage cliché. It’s hard to think of adjective descriptors that haven’t been overused: bulging or ropy muscles, clean-cut good looks, frizzy hair. If you use an adjective to describe a physical attribute, make sure that the phrase is not only accurate and sensory but also fresh. In her short story “Flowering Judas,” Katherine Anne Porter describes Braggioni’s singing voice as a “furry, mournful voice” that takes the high notes “in a prolonged painful squeal.” Often the easiest way to avoid an adjective-based cliché is to free the phrase entirely from its adjective modifier. For example, rather than describing her eyes merely as “hazel,” Emily Dickinson remarked that they were “the color of the sherry the guests leave in the glasses.”
3. Strengthen physical descriptions by making details more specific.
In my earlier “all-points bulletin” example, the description of the father’s hair might be improved with a detail such as “a military buzz-cut, prickly to the touch” or “the aging hippie’s last chance—a long ponytail striated with gray.” Either of these descriptions would paint a stronger picture than the bland phrase brown hair. In the same way, his oxford shirt could become “a white oxford button-down that he’d steam-pleated just minutes before” or “the same style of baby blue oxford he’d worn since prep school, rolled carelessly at the elbows.” These descriptions not only bring forth images, they also suggest the background and the personality of the father.
4. Select physical details carefully, choosing only those that create the strongest, most revealing impression.
One well-chosen physical trait, item of clothing, or idiosyncratic mannerism can reveal character more effectively than a dozen random images. This applies to characters in nonfiction as well as fiction. When I write about my grandmother, I usually focus on her strong, jutting chin—not only because it was her most dominant feature but also because it suggests her stubbornness and determination. When I write about Uncle Leland, I describe the wandering eye that gave him a perpetually distracted look, as if only his body was present. His spirit, it seemed, had already left on some journey he’d glimpsed peripherally, a place the rest of us were unable to see. As you describe real-life characters, zero in on distinguishing characteristics that reveal personality: gnarled, arthritic hands always busy at some task; a habit of covering her mouth each time a giggle rises up; a lopsided swagger as he makes his way to the horse barn; the scent of coconut suntan oil, cigarettes, and leather each time she sashays past your chair.
5. A character’s immediate surroundings can provide the backdrop for the sensory and significant details that shape the description of the character himself.
If your character doesn’t yet have a job, a hobby, a place to live, or a place to wander, you might need to supply these things. Once your character is situated comfortably, he may relax enough to reveal his secrets. On the other hand, you might purposely make your character uncomfortable—that is, put him in an environment where he definitely doesn’t fit, just to see how he’ll respond. Let’s say you’ve written several descriptions of an elderly woman working in the kitchen, yet she hasn’t begun to ripen into the three-dimensional character you know she could become. Try putting her at a gay bar on a Saturday night, or in a tattoo parlor, or (if you’re up for a little time travel) at Appomattox, serving her famous buttermilk biscuits to Grant and Lee.
6. In describing a character’s surroundings, you don’t have to limit yourself to a character’s present life.
Early environments shape fictional characters as well as flesh-and-blood people. In Flaubert’s description of Emma Bovary’s adolescent years in the convent, he foreshadows the woman she will become, a woman who moves through life in a romantic malaise, dreaming of faraway lands and loves. We learn about Madame Bovary through concrete, sensory descriptions of the place that formed her. In addition, Flaubert describes the book that held her attention during mass and the images that she particularly loved—a sick lamb, a pierced heart.
Living among those white-faced women with their rosaries and copper crosses, never getting away from the stuffy schoolroom atmosphere, she gradually succumbed to the mystic languor exhaled by the perfumes of the altar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers. Instead of following the Mass, she used to gaze at the azure-bordered religious drawings in her book. She loved the sick lamb, the Sacred Heart pierced with sharp arrows, and poor Jesus falling beneath His cross.
7. Characters reveal their inner lives—their preoccupations, values, lifestyles, likes and dislikes, fears and aspirations—by the objects that fill their hands, houses, offices, cars, suitcases, grocery carts, and dreams.
In the opening scenes of the film The Big Chill, we’re introduced to the main characters by watching them unpack the bags they’ve brought for a weekend trip to a mutual friend’s funeral. One character has packed enough pills to stock a drugstore; another has packed a calculator; still another, several packages of condoms. Before a word is spoken—even before we know anyone’s name—we catch glimpses of the characters’ lives through the objects that define them.
What items would your character pack for a weekend away? What would she use for luggage? A leather valise with a gold monogram on the handle? An old accordion case with decals from every theme park she’s visited? A duffel bag? Make a list of everything your character would pack: a “Save the Whales” T-shirt; a white cotton nursing bra, size 36D; a breast pump; a Mickey Mouse alarm clock; a photograph of her husband rocking a child to sleep; a can of Mace; three Hershey bars.
8. Description doesn’t have to be direct to be effective.Techniques abound for describing a character indirectly, for instance, through the objects that fill her world. Create a grocery list for your character—or two or three, depending on who’s coming for dinner. Show us the character’s credit card bill or the itemized deductions on her income tax forms. Let your character host a garage sale and watch her squirm while neighbors and strangers rifle through her stuff. Which items is she practically giving away? What has she overpriced, secretly hoping no one will buy it? Write your character’s Last Will and Testament. Which niece gets the Steinway? Who gets the lake cottage—the stepson or the daughter? If your main characters are divorcing, how will they divide their assets? Which one will fight hardest to keep the dog?
9. To make characters believable to readers, set them in motion.
The earlier “all-points bulletin” description of the father failed not only because the details were mundane and the prose stilted; it also suffered from lack of movement. To enlarge the description, imagine that same father in a particular setting—not just in the house but also sitting in the brown recliner. Then, because setting implies time as well as place, choose a particular time in which to place him. The time may be bound by the clock (six o’clock, sunrise, early afternoon) or bound only by the father’s personal history (after the divorce, the day he lost his job, two weeks before his sixtieth birthday).
Then set the father in motion. Again, be as specific as possible. “Reading the newspaper” is a start, but it does little more than label a generic activity. In order for readers to enter the fictional dream, the activity must be shown. Often this means breaking a large, generic activity into smaller, more particular parts: “scowling at the Dow Jones averages,” perhaps, or “skimming the used-car ads” or “wiping his ink-stained fingers on the monogrammed handkerchief.” Besides providing visual images for the reader, specific and representative actions also suggest the personality of the character, his habits and desires, and even the emotional life hidden beneath the physical details.
10. Verbs are the foot soldiers of action-based description. However, we don’t need to confine our use of verbs to the actions a character performs. Well-placed verbs can sharpen almost any physical description of a character. In the following passage from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, verbs enliven the description even when the grandmother isn’t in motion.
… in the last years she continued to settle and began to shrink. Her mouth bowed forward and her brow sloped back, and her skull shone pink and speckled within a mere haze of hair, which hovered about her head like the remembered shape of an altered thing. She looked as if the nimbus of humanity were fading away and she were turning monkey. Tendrils grew from her eyebrows and coarse white hairs sprouted on her lip and chin. When she put on an old dress the bosom hung empty and the hem swept the floor. Old hats fell down over her eyes. Sometimes she put her hand over her mouth and laughed, her eyes closed and her shoulder shaking.
Notice the strong verbs Robinson uses throughout the description. The mouth “bowed” forward; the brow “sloped” back; the hair “hovered,” then “sprouted”; the hem “swept” the floor; hats “fell” down over her eyes. Even when the grandmother’s body is at rest, the description pulses with activity. And when the grandmother finally does move—putting a hand over her mouth, closing her eyes, laughing until her shoulders shake—we visualize her in our mind’s eye because the actions are concrete and specific. They are what the playwright David Mamet calls “actable actions.” Opening a window is an actable action, as is slamming a door. “Coming to terms with himself” or “understanding that he’s been wrong all along” are not actable actions. This distinction between nonactable and actable actions echoes our earlier distinction between showing and telling. For the most part, a character’s movements must be rendered concretely—that is, shown—before the reader can participate in the fictional dream.
Actable actions are important elements in many fiction and nonfiction scenes that include dialogue. In some cases, actions, along with environmental clues, are even more important to character development than the words the characters speak. Writers of effective dialogue include pauses, voice inflections, repetitions, gestures, and other details to suggest the psychological and emotional subtext of a scene. Journalists and other nonfiction writers do the same. Let’s say you’ve just interviewed your cousin about his military service during the Vietnam War. You have a transcript of the interview, based on audio or video recordings, but you also took notes about what else was going on in that room. As you write, include nonverbal clues as well as your cousin’s actual words. When you asked him about his tour of duty, did he look out the window, light another cigarette, and change the subject? Was it a stormy afternoon? What song was playing on the radio? If his ancient dog was asleep on your cousin’s lap, did he stroke the dog as he spoke? When the phone rang, did your cousin ignore it or jump up to answer it, looking relieved for the interruption? Including details such as these will deepen your character description.
11. We don’t always have to use concrete, sensory details to describe our characters, and we aren’t limited to describing actable actions.
The novels of Milan Kundera use little outward description of characters or their actions. Kundera is more concerned with a character’s interior landscape, with what he calls a character’s “existential problem,” than with sensory description of person or action. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tomas’s body is not described at all, since the idea of body does not constitute Tomas’s internal dilemma. Teresa’s body is described in physical, concrete terms (though not with the degree of detail most novelists would employ) only because her body represents one of her existential preoccupations. For Kundera, a novel is more a meditation on ideas and the private world of the mind than a realistic depiction of characters. Reading Kundera, I always feel that I’m living inside the characters rather than watching them move, bodily, through the world.
With writers like Kundera, we learn about characters through the themes and obsessions of their inner lives, their “existential problems” as depicted primarily through dreams, visions, memories, and thoughts. Other writers probe characters’ inner lives through what characters see through their eyes. A writer who describes what a character sees also reveals, in part, a character’s inner drama. In The Madness of a Seduced Woman, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer describes a farm through the eyes of the novel’s main character, Agnes, who has just fallen in love and is anticipating her first sexual encounter, which she simultaneously longs for and fears.
… and I saw how the smooth, white curve of the snow as it lay on the ground was like the curve of a woman’s body, and I saw how the farm was like the body of a woman which lay down under the sun and under the freezing snow and perpetually and relentlessly produced uncountable swarms of living things, all born with mouths open and cries rising from them into the air, long-boned muzzles opening … as if they would swallow the world whole …
Later in the book, when Agnes’s sexual relationship has led to pregnancy, then to a life-threatening abortion, she describes the farm in quite different terms.
It was August, high summer, but there was something definite and curiously insubstantial in the air. … In the fields near me, the cattle were untroubled, their jaws grinding the last of the grass, their large, fat tongues drinking the clear brook water. But there was something in the air, a sad note the weather played upon the instrument of the bone-stretched skin. … In October, the leaves would be off the trees; the fallen leaves would be beaten flat by heavy rains and the first fall of snow. The bony ledges of the earth would begin to show, the earth’s skeleton shedding its unnecessary flesh.
By describing the farm through Agnes’s eyes, Schaeffer not only shows us Agnes’s inner landscape—her ongoing obsession with sex and pregnancy—but also demonstrates a turning point in Agnes’s view of sexuality. In the first passage, which depicts a farm in winter, Agnes sees images of beginnings and births. The earth is curved and full like a woman’s fleshy body. In the second scene, described as occurring in “high summer,” images of death prevail. Agnes’s mind jumps ahead to autumn, to dying leaves and heavy rains, a time when the earth, no longer curved in a womanly shape, is little more than a skeleton, having shed the flesh it no longer needs.
January 23, 2015
New Adult
I liked this article from 2013 about the New Adult sub-genre - Although it's an older article and other titles have been added, I found the piece illuminating.
What’s New About New Adult?
By Sophie Brookover, Liz Burns, and Kelly Jensen
Coming of age. Sexuality. Relationships. All are part of the teen experience, and all are part of literature for and about teens. Recently, though, there’s been an uptick in books published for the eighteen-and-up readership — labeled “New Adult” (NA) — that traverse these issues with more drama and explicit sexuality than even the most daring YA. Featuring protagonists who are in their late teens or early twenties, these titles nevertheless have strong appeal for teen readers. The lines between intended and actual audience are growing more blurred, which is vexing for some and exciting for others.
Let’s discuss what we mean when we compare YA and NA.
First there’s what we’ll call Traditional YA, published by children’s and young adult publishers, featuring teenaged protagonists, and aimed at middle school and high school students. In the past few years, Upper YA has emerged as a subset of Traditional YA, with protagonists who are just out of high school or even in college. Sarah Dessen’s and Lauren Myracle’s most recent novels (The Moon and More [Viking, 2013] and The Infinite Moment of Us [Amulet/Abrams, 2013],
respectively), for example, take place during the summer after senior year. As fans of these popular authors have grown up, the writers have kept pace by nudging their protagonists closer to adulthood.
New Adult — aimed at an adult audience but with strong appeal for teen readers — has recently garnered much buzz. Story lines tend to follow the contours of contemporary genre romance novels, but starring younger characters. NA initially took hold in the self-publishing world (the quality of writing varying wildly), and these books found an audience of dedicated, loyal, even ravenous readers.
Authors could write stories that satisfied their fans and publish them quickly. With such a proven fan base, it didn’t take long for traditional publishing houses to take notice, seeking out and acquiring some of these high-performing books and trying their own hands at New Adult. The actual term “New Adult” sprang from a contest held by primarily adult publisher St. Martin’s Press in 2009, seeking manuscripts featuring eighteen-and-older characters that read like YA but would be published and marketed for adults.
Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Penguin Random House are now printing originally self-published e-book titles by popular NA authors including Abbi Glines, Colleen Hoover, and Jessica Sorenson under both YA and adult imprints. In some cases, this has led to slightly different content for different audiences. For example, Glines’s Vincent Boys series, originally self-published, was acquired by the YA imprint Simon Pulse in 2012. Simon first published it as an e-book, with hardcover and paperback editions to follow. Soon after, the publisher released what might be best termed “The Full Vincent”: The Vincent Boys Extended and Uncut in e-book formats, available only from online retailers. The publisher has labeled the Extended and Uncut editions as appropriate for readers “over seventeen.”
The rapid growth of NA, its surge in popularity, and the willingness publishers have shown to edit and format material differently to capture different audiences make us wonder about the implications for Traditional YA literature. What makes a YA book truly a YA book and not something else? Is it — as the Vincent Boys publishing history may indicate — that NA simply includes more explicit sex scenes than what is found in YA?
Some New Adult authors and fans argue that “coming of age,” which has long been considered the province of YA, is properly a twenty-something experience. They argue for two phases of coming of age: the emotional preparation for the journey being represented in YA, then the journey itself showcased in NA. NA writer Sommer Leigh suggests that “the heart of YA is the coming-of-age story about a teen’s first step towards deciding who they are and what they want to become. The coming-of-age story in New Adult is about actually becoming that person. Or not, as the case may be.” In short, coming of age is a process that takes place over many years, so it makes sense to stretch it out across both YA and NA.
To illustrate Leigh’s point, let’s look at three books: Sarah Dessen’s Lock and Key (Viking, 2008), Lauren Myracle’s The Infinite Moment of Us, and Abbi Glines’s Fallen Too Far (self-published, 2012), as representative examples of Traditional YA, Upper YA, and NA, respectively.
In Lock and Key, high school senior Ruby goes to live with her older sister and brother-in-law after her neglectful alcoholic mother abandons her. Living with Cora and Jamie, Ruby learns some hard truths about her family. She also makes new friends and begins a prickly-but-swoony romance with the cute boy next door. This book fits squarely within Traditional YA, with the lead character facing her own challenges and finding and letting go of an ephemeral romance. The issues here feel age-appropriately internal and self-contained: Ruby’s main concerns pertain to high school and her immediate family.
The Infinite Moment of Us takes place during the summer between the end of high school and the beginning of the grand adventure of grown-up life. High-achieving good girl Wren is drawn into a sweet and intense romance with quiet loner Charlie. Conversations, dreams, and anxieties relating to life beyond senior year are the main focus here, and they unfold alongside Wren and Charlie’s frank sexual awakening.
Fallen Too Far follows nineteen-year-old Blaire, who skipped dating during her earlier teen years to nurse her mother through a terminal illness. She makes up for lost time by embarking on a journey of desire with Rush, her tortured, far-more-experienced twenty-four-year-old stepbrother, whom she recently met for the first time. Although Myracle’s The Infinite Moment of Us does feature a steamy romance, it’s not strictly a romance novel. It is also concerned with friendship, the choice of attending or not attending college, and more, and Wren’s story ends at the end of this book. By contrast, Fallen Too Far, the first book in a series, focuses squarely on romance and sexuality as Blaire’s primary route toward adulthood. Rather than resolving neatly at the end, the plot grows more tangled with revelations of family secrets, and concludes with a tantalizing cliffhanger leading straight into a sequel, Never Too Far. Unlike Dessen’s and Myracle’s novels, Blaire’s story continues into her adulthood.
What do these subtle nuances in the definitions of and themes explored in books for three distinct (but often overlapping) audiences mean? It depends who you ask. YA sections differ from library to library; some contain books for readers twelve and older, others books for fourteen and up. In some libraries, the YA section is read primarily by middle schoolers, with high schoolers borrowing from the adult section instead. Abrams has published The Infinite Moment of Us as YA; therefore it is YA, according to the publishing industry. But perhaps a particular librarian buys it for her collection and decides it fits in better with her adult books because of the not-super-explicit but still frank depictions of sex. Is it now NA for that community? Who gets to make the determination of what a YA book truly is? And what about the definitions of individual readers, who may not be aware of or care about this brouhaha in publishing and librarianship?
If you’re left with more questions than answers, you’re not alone. Some see NA as a fad that will disappear by next year. Others see it as an example of increased niche stratification of books based on age that may well lead to “Middle Age Lit” and “Empty Nester Lit.” Others think that it will stick around; that, like its protagonists, it’s still coming of age. Will it remain primarily contemporary romance? Will it cross over more vigorously into genres like fantasy, horror, mystery, and literary fiction?
There aren’t definitive answers to be had as New Adult continues the process of becoming whatever it’s going to be. The discussion should and will continue.
New Adult Resources
ReadAdv (The Reader’s Advisory Twitter Chat):http://readadv.wordpress.com/new-adul...
Dear Author: http://dearauthor.com/tag/new-adult/
Heroes and Heartbreakers:http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com...
NA Alley: http://www.naalley.com/
Facebook’s New Adult Book Club:https://www.facebook.com/NewAdultBook...
More Upper YA Titles
Scowler (Delacorte, 2013) by Daniel Kraus
The Disenchantments (Dutton, 2012) by Nina LaCour
The Piper’s Son (Candlewick, 2011) by Melina Marchetta
Fangirl (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013) by Rainbow Rowell
Something like Normal (Bloomsbury, 2012) by Trish Doller
Uses for Boys (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013) by Erica Lorraine Scheidt
Roomies (Little, Brown, 2013) by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando
From the January/February 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
What’s New About New Adult?
By Sophie Brookover, Liz Burns, and Kelly Jensen
Coming of age. Sexuality. Relationships. All are part of the teen experience, and all are part of literature for and about teens. Recently, though, there’s been an uptick in books published for the eighteen-and-up readership — labeled “New Adult” (NA) — that traverse these issues with more drama and explicit sexuality than even the most daring YA. Featuring protagonists who are in their late teens or early twenties, these titles nevertheless have strong appeal for teen readers. The lines between intended and actual audience are growing more blurred, which is vexing for some and exciting for others.
Let’s discuss what we mean when we compare YA and NA.
First there’s what we’ll call Traditional YA, published by children’s and young adult publishers, featuring teenaged protagonists, and aimed at middle school and high school students. In the past few years, Upper YA has emerged as a subset of Traditional YA, with protagonists who are just out of high school or even in college. Sarah Dessen’s and Lauren Myracle’s most recent novels (The Moon and More [Viking, 2013] and The Infinite Moment of Us [Amulet/Abrams, 2013],
respectively), for example, take place during the summer after senior year. As fans of these popular authors have grown up, the writers have kept pace by nudging their protagonists closer to adulthood.New Adult — aimed at an adult audience but with strong appeal for teen readers — has recently garnered much buzz. Story lines tend to follow the contours of contemporary genre romance novels, but starring younger characters. NA initially took hold in the self-publishing world (the quality of writing varying wildly), and these books found an audience of dedicated, loyal, even ravenous readers.
Authors could write stories that satisfied their fans and publish them quickly. With such a proven fan base, it didn’t take long for traditional publishing houses to take notice, seeking out and acquiring some of these high-performing books and trying their own hands at New Adult. The actual term “New Adult” sprang from a contest held by primarily adult publisher St. Martin’s Press in 2009, seeking manuscripts featuring eighteen-and-older characters that read like YA but would be published and marketed for adults.
Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Penguin Random House are now printing originally self-published e-book titles by popular NA authors including Abbi Glines, Colleen Hoover, and Jessica Sorenson under both YA and adult imprints. In some cases, this has led to slightly different content for different audiences. For example, Glines’s Vincent Boys series, originally self-published, was acquired by the YA imprint Simon Pulse in 2012. Simon first published it as an e-book, with hardcover and paperback editions to follow. Soon after, the publisher released what might be best termed “The Full Vincent”: The Vincent Boys Extended and Uncut in e-book formats, available only from online retailers. The publisher has labeled the Extended and Uncut editions as appropriate for readers “over seventeen.”
The rapid growth of NA, its surge in popularity, and the willingness publishers have shown to edit and format material differently to capture different audiences make us wonder about the implications for Traditional YA literature. What makes a YA book truly a YA book and not something else? Is it — as the Vincent Boys publishing history may indicate — that NA simply includes more explicit sex scenes than what is found in YA?
Some New Adult authors and fans argue that “coming of age,” which has long been considered the province of YA, is properly a twenty-something experience. They argue for two phases of coming of age: the emotional preparation for the journey being represented in YA, then the journey itself showcased in NA. NA writer Sommer Leigh suggests that “the heart of YA is the coming-of-age story about a teen’s first step towards deciding who they are and what they want to become. The coming-of-age story in New Adult is about actually becoming that person. Or not, as the case may be.” In short, coming of age is a process that takes place over many years, so it makes sense to stretch it out across both YA and NA.
To illustrate Leigh’s point, let’s look at three books: Sarah Dessen’s Lock and Key (Viking, 2008), Lauren Myracle’s The Infinite Moment of Us, and Abbi Glines’s Fallen Too Far (self-published, 2012), as representative examples of Traditional YA, Upper YA, and NA, respectively.
In Lock and Key, high school senior Ruby goes to live with her older sister and brother-in-law after her neglectful alcoholic mother abandons her. Living with Cora and Jamie, Ruby learns some hard truths about her family. She also makes new friends and begins a prickly-but-swoony romance with the cute boy next door. This book fits squarely within Traditional YA, with the lead character facing her own challenges and finding and letting go of an ephemeral romance. The issues here feel age-appropriately internal and self-contained: Ruby’s main concerns pertain to high school and her immediate family.
The Infinite Moment of Us takes place during the summer between the end of high school and the beginning of the grand adventure of grown-up life. High-achieving good girl Wren is drawn into a sweet and intense romance with quiet loner Charlie. Conversations, dreams, and anxieties relating to life beyond senior year are the main focus here, and they unfold alongside Wren and Charlie’s frank sexual awakening.
Fallen Too Far follows nineteen-year-old Blaire, who skipped dating during her earlier teen years to nurse her mother through a terminal illness. She makes up for lost time by embarking on a journey of desire with Rush, her tortured, far-more-experienced twenty-four-year-old stepbrother, whom she recently met for the first time. Although Myracle’s The Infinite Moment of Us does feature a steamy romance, it’s not strictly a romance novel. It is also concerned with friendship, the choice of attending or not attending college, and more, and Wren’s story ends at the end of this book. By contrast, Fallen Too Far, the first book in a series, focuses squarely on romance and sexuality as Blaire’s primary route toward adulthood. Rather than resolving neatly at the end, the plot grows more tangled with revelations of family secrets, and concludes with a tantalizing cliffhanger leading straight into a sequel, Never Too Far. Unlike Dessen’s and Myracle’s novels, Blaire’s story continues into her adulthood.
What do these subtle nuances in the definitions of and themes explored in books for three distinct (but often overlapping) audiences mean? It depends who you ask. YA sections differ from library to library; some contain books for readers twelve and older, others books for fourteen and up. In some libraries, the YA section is read primarily by middle schoolers, with high schoolers borrowing from the adult section instead. Abrams has published The Infinite Moment of Us as YA; therefore it is YA, according to the publishing industry. But perhaps a particular librarian buys it for her collection and decides it fits in better with her adult books because of the not-super-explicit but still frank depictions of sex. Is it now NA for that community? Who gets to make the determination of what a YA book truly is? And what about the definitions of individual readers, who may not be aware of or care about this brouhaha in publishing and librarianship?
If you’re left with more questions than answers, you’re not alone. Some see NA as a fad that will disappear by next year. Others see it as an example of increased niche stratification of books based on age that may well lead to “Middle Age Lit” and “Empty Nester Lit.” Others think that it will stick around; that, like its protagonists, it’s still coming of age. Will it remain primarily contemporary romance? Will it cross over more vigorously into genres like fantasy, horror, mystery, and literary fiction?
There aren’t definitive answers to be had as New Adult continues the process of becoming whatever it’s going to be. The discussion should and will continue.
New Adult Resources
ReadAdv (The Reader’s Advisory Twitter Chat):http://readadv.wordpress.com/new-adul...
Dear Author: http://dearauthor.com/tag/new-adult/
Heroes and Heartbreakers:http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com...
NA Alley: http://www.naalley.com/
Facebook’s New Adult Book Club:https://www.facebook.com/NewAdultBook...
More Upper YA Titles
Scowler (Delacorte, 2013) by Daniel Kraus
The Disenchantments (Dutton, 2012) by Nina LaCour
The Piper’s Son (Candlewick, 2011) by Melina Marchetta
Fangirl (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013) by Rainbow Rowell
Something like Normal (Bloomsbury, 2012) by Trish Doller
Uses for Boys (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013) by Erica Lorraine Scheidt
Roomies (Little, Brown, 2013) by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando
From the January/February 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
January 19, 2015
"LAY" VS. "LIE" – LET'S PUT THIS ISSUE TO BED!
GRAMMERGENCY #1:
BY ANNIE TUCKER
As a book editor, I frequently come across misuse of the verbs “lay” and “lie” in the manuscripts I work on. But authors aren’t the only ones who are fuzzy on this subject; in fact, just about everyone seems to wrestle with it sometimes. Because part of my job is to help people understand how to write and speak properly, every time a yoga teacher instructs me to “lay back” on my mat, or a friend tells me, “I need some sun; I’m going to lay out,” or I hear a pet owner telling his dog to “lay down,” my first thought is, I really need to write a blog post about this.
Quick Fix
In all of the examples above, the correct verb is “lie”—not occasionally, not depending on whom you’re talking to, but always. Why? Because “lay” is a transitive verb, meaning it must take a direct object, whereas “lie” is intransitive, meaning it doesn’t need an object. An easy way to tell whether you’re using “lay” correctly is to ask yourself, Is there a noun after “lay” in the sentence I’m about to utter? If the answer is no, and you’re speaking in the present tense, then it’s time to rethink your statement.
In each of the examples above, you have two options: 1) simply substitute “lie” for “lay,” or 2) add a noun or noun phrase to justify the presence of “lay.” In the first and second instances, the former approach makes more sense, since it would be pretty silly for that yoga teacher to say, “Lay your back gently on your mat,” or for that vitamin D–deprived friend to announce, “I’m going to lay my pale skin on the sand and catch some rays.” In the third sentence, you could go either way; in fact, maybe hearing, “Lay your butt down, Rex!” is just what your canine companion needs to know you mean business.
The New Normal
Once you become used to saying something the wrong way for years, the correct version may sound awkward, especially when you hear most people around you making the same mistake. But that’s why it’s so important not to assume that the majority always rules, because every time you say, “I need to lay down,” you’re just giving the general public permission to remain ignorant.
Fake It Till You Make It
I’ll save trickier conjugations—like “I have lain” and past-tense “lay”—for another post. For now, my advice to you, if you want to be a friend to editors everywhere—and help save the world from grammatical errors, one verb at a time—is to practice, practice, practice. First, memorize the guidelines I’ve described above, and then use these tricky verbs correctly when you speak, until they stop sounding weird to you and become second nature. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to lay down the laws of grammar on your own—and that’s no lie.
BY ANNIE TUCKER
As a book editor, I frequently come across misuse of the verbs “lay” and “lie” in the manuscripts I work on. But authors aren’t the only ones who are fuzzy on this subject; in fact, just about everyone seems to wrestle with it sometimes. Because part of my job is to help people understand how to write and speak properly, every time a yoga teacher instructs me to “lay back” on my mat, or a friend tells me, “I need some sun; I’m going to lay out,” or I hear a pet owner telling his dog to “lay down,” my first thought is, I really need to write a blog post about this.
Quick Fix
In all of the examples above, the correct verb is “lie”—not occasionally, not depending on whom you’re talking to, but always. Why? Because “lay” is a transitive verb, meaning it must take a direct object, whereas “lie” is intransitive, meaning it doesn’t need an object. An easy way to tell whether you’re using “lay” correctly is to ask yourself, Is there a noun after “lay” in the sentence I’m about to utter? If the answer is no, and you’re speaking in the present tense, then it’s time to rethink your statement.
In each of the examples above, you have two options: 1) simply substitute “lie” for “lay,” or 2) add a noun or noun phrase to justify the presence of “lay.” In the first and second instances, the former approach makes more sense, since it would be pretty silly for that yoga teacher to say, “Lay your back gently on your mat,” or for that vitamin D–deprived friend to announce, “I’m going to lay my pale skin on the sand and catch some rays.” In the third sentence, you could go either way; in fact, maybe hearing, “Lay your butt down, Rex!” is just what your canine companion needs to know you mean business.
The New Normal
Once you become used to saying something the wrong way for years, the correct version may sound awkward, especially when you hear most people around you making the same mistake. But that’s why it’s so important not to assume that the majority always rules, because every time you say, “I need to lay down,” you’re just giving the general public permission to remain ignorant.
Fake It Till You Make It
I’ll save trickier conjugations—like “I have lain” and past-tense “lay”—for another post. For now, my advice to you, if you want to be a friend to editors everywhere—and help save the world from grammatical errors, one verb at a time—is to practice, practice, practice. First, memorize the guidelines I’ve described above, and then use these tricky verbs correctly when you speak, until they stop sounding weird to you and become second nature. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to lay down the laws of grammar on your own—and that’s no lie.
January 18, 2015
5 Books Every Writer Should Read
5 Books Every Writer Should Read
by Emily Harstone
There are a lot of books on writing out there. In fact it can seem overwhelming at times. However, whether you are a poet, a fiction writer, or a non-fiction writer, there are four books that I think everyone should read.
I did not enjoy reading all of these books, but they all impacted my writing in some way. In addition, many compelling, helpful, and funny conversations have come out of reading these books.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White with illustrations by Maira Kalman
Most individuals encounter The Elements Of Style in school. The book is flawed but it is always worth a re-visit because of how concrete it is.
Most books on writing lack the direction and focus that The Elements of Style has in spades. It is great for your writing to get re-rooted in the basics. I highly recommend the version with illustrations by Maira Kalman, as they add levity to the book, and make it much more engaging.
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
This is my personal favorite. It is insightful, funny, academic, and accessible. As someone that started to write after being an avid reader, I was really surprised by how much I learned from this book. The depth and breadth of it is impressive. The examples that Prose gives are concrete and excellent. I re-read this book once every year or two and each year I take different things out of it. If you are just starting out as a writer this is not the book to start with, the advice in here can be a little overwhelming.
If you are just starting out, the next two books are for you.
On Writing by Stephen King
I am not a fan of Stephen King’s fiction. I think that his books tend to be far longer than necessary. However, I think that On Writing has a lot of good, specific advice. A lot of writers waver in their advice, but King’s is concise, thoughtful, and easy to implement.
Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
I am one of the few people who is not a huge fan of Bird By Bird, however I think most writers find it helpful. It is very motivating. Anne makes it clear right from the start that everyone has “shitty first drafts”.
Her language is clear, her stories are fun, and the whole thing is an easy read. I do wish that she could focus more on the details of craft, but for a general book it is very helpful, particularly if you have struggled sustaining a regular writing practice.
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work By Mason Currey
This is not a book to read from front to back. Daily Rituals is an extensive list of the daily habits of writers and artists. The description of most writers habits are between a page and three long, but Currey manages to cover a lot of territory on those pages.
Some authors have great practices that can teach you a lot about what it means to be a writer, others are clearly included to be cautionary tales.
by Emily Harstone
There are a lot of books on writing out there. In fact it can seem overwhelming at times. However, whether you are a poet, a fiction writer, or a non-fiction writer, there are four books that I think everyone should read.
I did not enjoy reading all of these books, but they all impacted my writing in some way. In addition, many compelling, helpful, and funny conversations have come out of reading these books.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White with illustrations by Maira Kalman
Most individuals encounter The Elements Of Style in school. The book is flawed but it is always worth a re-visit because of how concrete it is.
Most books on writing lack the direction and focus that The Elements of Style has in spades. It is great for your writing to get re-rooted in the basics. I highly recommend the version with illustrations by Maira Kalman, as they add levity to the book, and make it much more engaging.
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
This is my personal favorite. It is insightful, funny, academic, and accessible. As someone that started to write after being an avid reader, I was really surprised by how much I learned from this book. The depth and breadth of it is impressive. The examples that Prose gives are concrete and excellent. I re-read this book once every year or two and each year I take different things out of it. If you are just starting out as a writer this is not the book to start with, the advice in here can be a little overwhelming.
If you are just starting out, the next two books are for you.
On Writing by Stephen King
I am not a fan of Stephen King’s fiction. I think that his books tend to be far longer than necessary. However, I think that On Writing has a lot of good, specific advice. A lot of writers waver in their advice, but King’s is concise, thoughtful, and easy to implement.
Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
I am one of the few people who is not a huge fan of Bird By Bird, however I think most writers find it helpful. It is very motivating. Anne makes it clear right from the start that everyone has “shitty first drafts”.
Her language is clear, her stories are fun, and the whole thing is an easy read. I do wish that she could focus more on the details of craft, but for a general book it is very helpful, particularly if you have struggled sustaining a regular writing practice.
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work By Mason Currey
This is not a book to read from front to back. Daily Rituals is an extensive list of the daily habits of writers and artists. The description of most writers habits are between a page and three long, but Currey manages to cover a lot of territory on those pages.
Some authors have great practices that can teach you a lot about what it means to be a writer, others are clearly included to be cautionary tales.
Writing as a habit
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and BusinessI found this post by Emily Harstone helpful and I hope you do too
How to Develop a Good Writing Habit
by Emily Harstone.
Habits make up almost half the actions we do every day. They are certain things that we do so often that we feel the reward of completing them even before we do so. Charles Duhigg, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote a great book about habits called The Power of Habit. That book helped inform this article, but it contains a lot more excellent information. There is a good summery of his research here.
If one is to be a writer, one has to write. In the age of the internet and busy schedules this can be a hard thing to do. A lot of people say they want to be a writer, but only after their children are in school, they retire, the summer comes, etc. . . .
This is not how writing works. You have to make time for writing, if you are going to become a writer. By creating a good, structured habit, it becomes easy to write every day and actually be rewarded by the process. So creating a good habit of daily writing is the best way to get a lot of writing done, even if you have a busy life.
A daily habit can take up to a month to establish, and sometimes more. It is best if you don’t take any days off during the early days of your new writing habit. It is also good if you keep track of everything on a calendar.
The way a habit works is very simple. MIT researchers have boiled down the habit loop to three components. The first is the cue, the second is the routine, and the third is the reward.
If something you do is a habit, the moment you encounter the cue, the routine starts and you experience the reward without even completing the task. You experience it right away.
For example, I have a faulty internet connection. Whenever it stops working I have trained myself to start writing a poem. It is my cue. The minute I start to write the poem, which is the routine I experience the reward: a satisfied and accomplished feeling. Instead of being frustrated by the weak internet connection, I use it as a way to maintain a writing habit.
The most important thing to do when establishing a habit is to pick a cue. A good way to do this is to pick something that happens every day. For example if you eat lunch every day and generally have ten minutes to spare afterwards, the end of lunch is a good cue to start writing.
It’s not ideal if your cue is something that happens most days but not all days. Pick a cue and stick to it for thirty days. The cue can be simpler and less fixed than a time of day. For my friend her cue is making a cup of tea, which she then drinks while writing.
Turning writing into a habit, and not just something you squeeze in when you have time, is one of the most important steps you can take towards becoming a professional writer. Even if you only have ten minutes a day.
Remember what Ray Bradbury says “You only fail if you stop writing.”
How to Develop a Good Writing Habit
by Emily Harstone.
Habits make up almost half the actions we do every day. They are certain things that we do so often that we feel the reward of completing them even before we do so. Charles Duhigg, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote a great book about habits called The Power of Habit. That book helped inform this article, but it contains a lot more excellent information. There is a good summery of his research here.
If one is to be a writer, one has to write. In the age of the internet and busy schedules this can be a hard thing to do. A lot of people say they want to be a writer, but only after their children are in school, they retire, the summer comes, etc. . . .
This is not how writing works. You have to make time for writing, if you are going to become a writer. By creating a good, structured habit, it becomes easy to write every day and actually be rewarded by the process. So creating a good habit of daily writing is the best way to get a lot of writing done, even if you have a busy life.
A daily habit can take up to a month to establish, and sometimes more. It is best if you don’t take any days off during the early days of your new writing habit. It is also good if you keep track of everything on a calendar.
The way a habit works is very simple. MIT researchers have boiled down the habit loop to three components. The first is the cue, the second is the routine, and the third is the reward.
If something you do is a habit, the moment you encounter the cue, the routine starts and you experience the reward without even completing the task. You experience it right away.
For example, I have a faulty internet connection. Whenever it stops working I have trained myself to start writing a poem. It is my cue. The minute I start to write the poem, which is the routine I experience the reward: a satisfied and accomplished feeling. Instead of being frustrated by the weak internet connection, I use it as a way to maintain a writing habit.
The most important thing to do when establishing a habit is to pick a cue. A good way to do this is to pick something that happens every day. For example if you eat lunch every day and generally have ten minutes to spare afterwards, the end of lunch is a good cue to start writing.
It’s not ideal if your cue is something that happens most days but not all days. Pick a cue and stick to it for thirty days. The cue can be simpler and less fixed than a time of day. For my friend her cue is making a cup of tea, which she then drinks while writing.
Turning writing into a habit, and not just something you squeeze in when you have time, is one of the most important steps you can take towards becoming a professional writer. Even if you only have ten minutes a day.
Remember what Ray Bradbury says “You only fail if you stop writing.”
January 17, 2015
Writing Characters of Color
I love this blog post by Mod Collette and think it would be useful for anyone creating a character of color.
Writing “Authentic” Characters of Color in First Person POV
deaththesnow asked: Okay, so I’ve been thinking up a story idea with a black protagonist named Joan. She’s reserved, introverted, and witty when need be. I’ve gone over her character and story with my mother, but she doubts I’ll be able to make Joan’s story possible due to my being white. I believe she has a point when she says that I do not at all understand what it is like to be black, so facing all of this in the first-person narrative of Joan would prove fearless. What should I do?
lizellor asked: Thank you guys so much for all the work you do here! It’s really awesome! There’s two issues in my own writing I’ve been struggling with. I’m a white writer wrote a book last year about a young black woman who becomes a superhero. A white publisher told me I should put the first-person narrative in third-person, because people might be offended if I wrote from inside the head of a POC. Should I change the viewpoint?
There is no one way to write a Black woman. We’re all different. Of course you won't understand fully what it’s like to be Black if you’re not so, which in itself is a diverse experience depending on the person, influenced by many factors such as socioeconomic status, region, individuality and so on.
Not being x and x has hardly stopped authors from writing about people and places unlike them since forever; most folks probably don’t understand from personal experience how it is to be a young teen who leads a revolution, or what it’s like to wield magical powers, or be a different gender, etc. but somehow people write about these characters, in first person nonetheless.
I’m not sure what’s gained by writing a Character of Color in third-person because one doesn’t feel they’re able to be authentic enough. When your character experiences something, will the narrator then speculate as to how they feel without giving definites? There’s an othering quality to this sort of decision-making that shows a lack of empathy. Don’t be afraid to step in our shoes; we’re not foreign creatures impossible to decipher.
We feel love. We feel pain. We have voices; we’ve written about ourselves, our issues, our joys, our interests, our fears. There’s nothing stopping you from helping yourself understand the Black experience(s) more. Not with the internet and all the meta and resources available to you. The best one can do is try to understand the diverse experiences of a person through consuming works of them and by them. So do that. Getting feedback from the people you’re representing is always key too.
You can learn about the racism and micro-aggressions and other daily struggles we face. You can stuff all that knowledge in your brain but in the end you’re writing an individual with her own life experiences.
There’s no singular Black story and if you can place your feet in your character’s shoes and write their story, what is true to her, it will be just that; her authentic story.
Your character doesn’t need to conform to what one thinks is the Black Experience. third person or no; just write your character and don’t allow outside opinions to mar your efforts (lest the feedback is from Black women themselves; then do listen to them).
Honestly; Black women, other Women of Color, and People of Color as a whole are not foreign creatures impossible to understand. We’re people who may face some things differently than you; but people.
Write accordingly.
Writing “Authentic” Characters of Color in First Person POV
deaththesnow asked: Okay, so I’ve been thinking up a story idea with a black protagonist named Joan. She’s reserved, introverted, and witty when need be. I’ve gone over her character and story with my mother, but she doubts I’ll be able to make Joan’s story possible due to my being white. I believe she has a point when she says that I do not at all understand what it is like to be black, so facing all of this in the first-person narrative of Joan would prove fearless. What should I do?
lizellor asked: Thank you guys so much for all the work you do here! It’s really awesome! There’s two issues in my own writing I’ve been struggling with. I’m a white writer wrote a book last year about a young black woman who becomes a superhero. A white publisher told me I should put the first-person narrative in third-person, because people might be offended if I wrote from inside the head of a POC. Should I change the viewpoint?
There is no one way to write a Black woman. We’re all different. Of course you won't understand fully what it’s like to be Black if you’re not so, which in itself is a diverse experience depending on the person, influenced by many factors such as socioeconomic status, region, individuality and so on.
Not being x and x has hardly stopped authors from writing about people and places unlike them since forever; most folks probably don’t understand from personal experience how it is to be a young teen who leads a revolution, or what it’s like to wield magical powers, or be a different gender, etc. but somehow people write about these characters, in first person nonetheless.
I’m not sure what’s gained by writing a Character of Color in third-person because one doesn’t feel they’re able to be authentic enough. When your character experiences something, will the narrator then speculate as to how they feel without giving definites? There’s an othering quality to this sort of decision-making that shows a lack of empathy. Don’t be afraid to step in our shoes; we’re not foreign creatures impossible to decipher.
We feel love. We feel pain. We have voices; we’ve written about ourselves, our issues, our joys, our interests, our fears. There’s nothing stopping you from helping yourself understand the Black experience(s) more. Not with the internet and all the meta and resources available to you. The best one can do is try to understand the diverse experiences of a person through consuming works of them and by them. So do that. Getting feedback from the people you’re representing is always key too.
You can learn about the racism and micro-aggressions and other daily struggles we face. You can stuff all that knowledge in your brain but in the end you’re writing an individual with her own life experiences.
There’s no singular Black story and if you can place your feet in your character’s shoes and write their story, what is true to her, it will be just that; her authentic story.
Your character doesn’t need to conform to what one thinks is the Black Experience. third person or no; just write your character and don’t allow outside opinions to mar your efforts (lest the feedback is from Black women themselves; then do listen to them).
Honestly; Black women, other Women of Color, and People of Color as a whole are not foreign creatures impossible to understand. We’re people who may face some things differently than you; but people.
Write accordingly.
