Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 24
April 4, 2014
Plot is . . .
False starts and stops and twists and turns.
The protagonist wanting something and not getting it—over and over.
Plot is the boring part of life made less boring.
Plot is process.
Plot is all the mistakes you make while you're trying to get better at something, and then afterward you pretend that you didn't make them.
Plot is revelation of all the flaws in the protagonist.
Plot is not a direct line. It's crooked and goes backward and loops around and may end up at the same place it started at.
Plot is getting somewhere the least straight way.
Plot is the montage part of the movie actually shown in more detail.
Plot is everyone who says no to the protagonist—and why and how and the pain that comes afterward.
Plot is what makes the protagonist change and become the kind of person that would be able to get what the protagonist wanted in the first place.
Or sometimes plot is what makes the protagonist change into the kind of person who doesn't want what the protagonist wanted in the first place anymore, but something a lot better, or bigger, or maybe even smaller.
Plot isn't explosions, battle scenes, or cool magic demonstrations. That's candy. Plot is behind the scenes, plodding, and planning.
April 2, 2014
Be Kindly Honest, But Be Honest
In the writing world, it’s no real help if as a critic, you tell someone a manuscript is great and then they send it off and no agent or editor is interested.
If you don’t have an agent and editor who tell you the absolute truth (again, kindly, with optimism if it is warranted), then how are you going to sell books to readers? Readers are not kind. Go to goodreads if you have any doubts there.
If you have friends who don’t tell you the truth about mistakes you are making in your life, you are going to just keep making those mistakes. Wouldn’t you rather live through a momentary sting and figure out how to do what you need to do? Isn’t that what a real friend does?
Love, encouragement, and hope can all coexist with honesty. I think they coexist best with honesty, in fact. So go be honest. Kindly honest, but honest nonetheless.
From: The 27 Hour Day: How to Make Your 24 Hours More Productive and More Creative
April 1, 2014
Saying Yes
Say yes to artistic challenges.
Say yes to genre bending, stealing ideas from other art forms, and collaborations.
Say yes to taking care of yourself.
Say yes to old friends who come back into your life.
Say yes to experimentation.
Say yes to the ideas that keep you up at night.
Say yes to April Fool's jokes, embarrassing your kids, and dancing in your undies.
Say yes to getting out of debt and staying out of debt. Even if you have to work more hours. Your creative mind will still work more effectively without the weight of this burden on it.
Say yes to new opportunities and new people.
Say yes to the book you can't forget and that everyone tells you to give up on.
Say yes to writing fanfic or whatever tickles your fancy.
Say yes to reading, always.
Say yes to writing in your pajamas, or at midnight, or whenever and however it works for you.
Say yes to interrupting conversations with an urgent need to write something down for your book.
Say yes to laughing too loudly, especially at yourself.
Say yes to turning everything upside down and seeing it new.
Say yes to writing your book the way it wants to be written, back to front, in long stretches or tiny pieces, or all the best stuff first.
Say yes to eating dessert first sometimes.
Say yes to taking a nap in the middle of the day.
From Believe: Inspirational Essays For Writers Who Have Lost Their Way
www.amazon.com/Believe-Inspirational-...
March 31, 2014
Saying No
You need to say “no” to people who want to come into your office space while you are working.
Say no to projects that other people suggest will give you great exposure, but pay nothing.
Say “no” to people who want you to do something for them that you don’t really want to do.
Say “no” to other artists who want you to get together constantly to chat. It can be great to have a social life with other creative types, but realize it is social, and should probably be done during off hours at night or on weekends. Or it should be done fairly rarely.
Say “no” to the temptation to go shopping or to the movies when it isn’t busy because everyone else is working.
Say “no” to the demon in your head who tells you that taking this one day off won’t matter.
Say “no” to the Internet. I mean, really. If you are working, you are not on youtube, facebook, or twitter. You just aren’t.
Say “no” to the dishes, the laundry, and the dirty floors. They aren’t paying you to clean them during your prime work hours.
Say “no” to friends who stop by in the middle of your work day.
Say “no” to kids or a spouse who think you should run all the errands because you’re at home.
Say “no” to the desire to read or experience other art (watch TV or movies, visit a musem) during the time you should be working. Those are great activities to rebuild your creative spirit. They just aren’t work.
Say “no” to the idea of writer’s block. It’s mostly just a little kid complaining he doesn’t want to do his homework. If you are having life block, that is another problem and needs serious treatment. But there’s no special thing about being a writer that means that you need to just wait for the words to come because they are better that way. They aren’t, trust me. The words you make come are just as likely to be good or bad as any of the other ones.
Say “no” to people who tell you that you aren’t good enough and you should give up on your dream.
Say “no” to a day job that drains all your creativity out of you.
Say “no” to perfectionism. It will kill you and all your productivity. Good enough is good enough for now.
Say “no” to keeping up with all the news, all the TV shows, or all the gossip in the neighborhood. Whatever your obsessions used to be before you became an artist, guess what? You don’t get to have them anymore. You have only one obsession now. It’s your art.
Say “no” to people who tell you that they have an idea they want to share with you, fifty-fifty split on the profits. They are just a waste of time.
Say “no” to anger. It will suck up all your time, and it will give you nothing in return.
Say “no” to fear of rejection. Of course you are going to hate rejection. Of course it will hurt. And then you will get over it and get better or find the right person to appreciate your work. Rejection is a massive time-saver because it helps you know where not to go again.
From: The 27 Hour Day: How to Make Your 24 Hours More Productive and Creative
On Being Old and Being a Woman
My sister was visiting me the other weekend, and she came to church with me. One of the female church leaders came over and happily asked, “is this your mother?” When I said, “No, this is my older sister,” the female leader was visibly embarrassed, and apologized several times for the mistake. My sister was thrilled. She said, “that's the first time I've been mistaken for an adult my entire life. It's a lot better than people thinking you're a teenager.”
I have been thinking about this for a while. I know that it's not typical for women to enjoy being mistaken for being older than they are. I know that culturally, women are expected to stay youthful or they end up being dismissed as having no value. But it's such a Catch 22, this idea that you either have to be seen as a teenager or you're over the hill and completely useless as a woman. You have sex appeal or you're invisible. I like the idea of ignoring the rule and just doing your own things in the corner, invisible or not, accepted or not.
Embrace being older. Embrace being considered useless. Because when you give up the idea of being accepted by the patriarchy as valuable as a woman, you can start to make some real changes in the world.
March 28, 2014
Plot is Passing the Butter
At our house, we have a little game at dinner. When someone asks for something to be passed (like the butter), the person next to her says, “Of course,” and then passes it on the most circuitous route possible, to the person on the other side, all around the table, back and forth, and only finally does the butter arrive at last to the person who asked for it.
Then everyone at the table laughs because we have all stopped eating to watch this little game of misdirection. We watch the butter as it goes from wrong person to wrong person. We are fascinated by the twists and turns, by the wild throw over the head of the waiting butter-lover, by the dance on top of chairs, and the grins on the faces of all the conspirators who are doing this completely spontaneously and for no other reason than because this is the way that butter was created to be passed.
The taste of butter is never sweeter or smoother than when you have waited for it as you watch others tease you with it, and when you spend five minutes wondering if you will ever get it, if your food will be cold by the time it reaches you.
This, my friend, this is plot. You think that plot is the arrival of the butter on your plate. It isn’t. Plot is the play of those around you as they tease you with the glimpse of the butter, with the smell of it as it almost reaches you, with the hope that the butter will soon be yours, as you leap for it, almost touch it, perhaps get a smear of it on your elbow. This is plot. Not the end of the journey, but the hijinks and play of the journey itself.
March 27, 2014
Letter to My Unpublished Self
Dear Unpublished Me,
I want to warn you that it takes a lot longer to get published than you think it will. When you are getting all those nice rejections, asking you to send something else, that it’s “really close,” you’re still only about halfway there. And that’s OK, because fifteen years after your first book comes out, you will still be really proud of it. You won’t have any regrets about the books that you put away and moved on to something else that was better. You will never wish that you had spent more time working on one of those ideas that turned out to be unpublishable.
You tell people now that it’s not about having the right connections, that it’s about writing a book that is so good, editors can’t turn it down, and that’s such a good attitude. It may be naive, but it has a certain charm and it works. It keeps you going, keeps you learning and trying crazy stuff, and you really do end up writing incredible books because of that. Connections are actually great things to have, but not necessarily in the way that people think. They don’t get you published, but they can be excellent help in understanding how publishing works, which is useful, but not absolutely necessary.
You think right now that writing is going to save you from financial ruin, though, and I have to tell you, that just doesn’t happen. You need to figure out how to deal with your financial crap the old-fashioned way, by making sacrifices and not spending money on stupid stuff you don’t really care about anyway. I’m telling you now, you will eventually get this figured out, but there’s no reason not to start a little earlier.
I know you are desperate to move from being an unpublished “wannabe” to being a “real” author, but I have to tell you, it doesn’t work like that. You don’t wake up one day with a contract and suddenly feel confident in yourself. That will be a process of many years. And that’s OK. There’s really no way to jump start this. You grow into this slowly, and you end up not being a jerk, which is better than you’ll say of other people.
Also, you should know that once you get your first book published, it isn’t all easy after that. Your second book is nearly as hard to sell as your first one, and there are a bunch of close calls in there, books that you still wonder if maybe one day you will sell. The third book is the same thing all over again. And while four, five, six, seven, and eight seem easy and like you have it all figured out, it’s a mirage. Book nine is harder than giving birth, and you have plenty of experience with that.
You are imagining right now that all the people who dismissed you as unimportant through your life will suddenly see how great you are as a writer. High school friends and enemies, grad school people, teachers, colleagues, and so on. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the truth is, none of them care about you being published in the least. And that is one of the best things in your life, in a way. It gives you a freedom that you really need to value. Those people have no investment in your career, and that means that you don’t have to spend time thinking about if what you are working on next will keep on impressing them. It won’t.
Life is complicated. People are, too. There will be times when you are tempted to dump people who seem to be sabotaging your career. I have to tell you that these people have their own issues. They are human beings with flaws, and they hurt you, but they also show you the real world. You can choose to move on without them or you can choose to try to work things out. It is entirely up to you, but from my perspective, I will say that some compassion and understanding isn’t out of place. And it doesn’t hurt for you to see what you’re doing in these relationships, either.
The big things that you think are coming for you may or may not materialize, and I know you have a lot of fun now imagining how it will all feel. Big reviews, NYT Best seller status, the big contracts, hobnobbing with other big name authors—some of that really can be fun. But a lot of it is bunk. That is, a lot of the best things about being a writer are small moments. Getting the book absolutely right, writing a book that no one else could even conceive of, the turn of a sentence, readers asking when you are going to write a sequel to a book because the characters are so alive for them—these are the things that really matter to you.
You say no to a lot of events because you are shy in the first few years after you are published. You are never going to be an extrovert, and I know you are focused on your daily word count a bit obsessively. But if you’re willing to listen to a little advice—get over yourself. Go out and meet people. Let yourself experience the real world. Real readers sometimes aren’t knowledgeable about books or theory. They just like to read, and even if they haven’t read your books, they may teach you something.
There are a lot of mistakes I wish I could save you from making, but I don’t really see how. You have a good heart, and you want to believe the best of people. It’s true more often than it’s not, and it probably helps you more than it hinders you. But there are people to watch out for. There are times when believing the best ends up making you twist yourself into an uncomfortable and untenable shape. But you will survive. You are a survivor, and that is really something that I’m proud of in you. You never gave up. You kept throwing yourself out there. You kept taking risks on doing things that no one else would have dared to do. And you made it.
You will make it. Good luck!
Signed,
Me
March 26, 2014
Breaking Trust with Your Artistic Soul
I think there are things that many creative types do that either consciously or unconsciously teach their deep, vulnerable artistic soul that the world is not a safe place, that the artistic soul must hide away. Here are some of them:
Writing books that you think will sell because they are “trendy.”
Thinking about advances, the best seller list, what it will be like to be famous, and so on.
Focusing on page counts, deadlines, and taxes.
Worrying about what your parents, friends, or neighbors will think of you as a writer.
Imagining what you will buy with all the money your next book will make you.
Outlining your book to death.
Watching movies and analyzing story formula from Hollywood.
Working on a book to contract.
Trying to please an editor, agent, or anyone who tells you exactly the way you need to write.
Writing to make money while you are in debt. Debt is the great destroyer of creativity and happiness.
Changing your book in a way you don't believe in, just because someone else told you to.
Working with a collaborator who cuts you down.
Putting away a book you love because the market isn't ready for it.
Listening to sales and marketing tell you how to make the book “better” (read: more commerical).
Writing someone else's book to pay the bills.
Sometimes we do these things because we have to live in the real world. But if you do them too often, I fear that you will end up pushing your artistic soul aside, and that it will not readily come out again to play.
March 25, 2014
Keep Trust with Your Artistic Soul
An artistic soul is a delicate thing and it needs to be protected and nurtured. If you don't do this, it will remain small and rather stunted in growth, afraid and trembling and unable to step into the full sun and spread out its branches. What can you do to make sure your artistic soul feels safe inside of you?
Take chances. Tell your artistic soul that anything goes, that you aren't afraid of failure.
Make a safe, sacred space for your artistic soul to dwell that is away from the world of commerce.
Try other arts. If you're a writer, try dance. If you're a visual artist, write a song. If you're a theater geek, try painting.
Surround yourself with people who love art and who specifically love your art.
Make boundaries between the world and your art.
Write down your dreams, both literally and figuratively.
Give yourself permission to have a messy house.
Stop answering the questions of people who ask if they have heard of your book, if you've made lots of money on your book, or if you think you'd like to collaborate with them.
Create anywhere.
Steal from anyone at any time. Wherever you are, whatever you see, it belongs to you.
Tell yourself you are good enough. Print out a “Real Writer's certificate,” if necessary.
Play. Read. Go out to movies. Watch television. Find joy in life.
Fail. And fail big. Hate failing. Cry about failing.
Never develop a thick skin about rejection. Every rejection should hurt.
Read about other artists.
Fall in love with the wrong person. Then fall in love with the right person.
Find the kind of security that matters to you. Creativity is blessed by a deep security.
See people around you. Fall into their skins. Live their lives.
Daydream. Noodle around. Forget about time.
Do your work, even when you are afraid of it and afraid of your own deficiencies.
March 24, 2014
That Indefinable Something
What makes an editor pick up a book, read it, and want to buy it? Almost always, it’s the thing that makes your book different from everyone else’s. Sometimes you are unaware of the fact that you are doing it. Sometimes you started out afraid to do that very thing, and you pushed yourself (or someone else pushed you) until you did it more and more.
You could call this thing “voice,” but it doesn’t matter what the name is. It’s what makes this book yours. It’s what makes people remember your book and how they felt while reading it, even if they forget the title or your name or the color of your book cover. It’s the thing that makes someone read a sentence of it and know that it’s not going to be like anyone else’s book.
When you ask questions about what books are selling, what the trends are, what editors want to buy, what an agent’s wishlist is, you are often asking the wrong question. I think instead you should ask yourself—what book can I write that no one else can write? Or perhaps—what do I have to say that no one else is willing to say?
When I read a manuscript and I think immediately—this will sell—it is almost always because the writer isn’t following a trend. The writer may be riding a vibe from some trend in the past, or stealing a feeling from a particular time period or even from another writer, but it always feels unique. Now, a unique thing may not appeal to every editor who is buying or every agent who is signing, but they will be able to see that this is different.
Be different. Be that indefinable something. Write a book that feels like it just made up new rules for everything.
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