Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 33

Your Writing Super Power

At my most recent writing group meeting this week, we sat around talking about our writing super powers, the thing that we do “naturally” well. One of the group had sparkling, witty dialog in even the first draft. Another one of us was all about description and world-building visually and sensually. I, according to my fellow writers, was good at introspection. One of us is great at scope and a sense of inexorable plot movement. The fifth of our team is great at family connections.

We talked about the process of writing, and realized that for each of us, the foundation we begin from is completely different. The thing we call a super power is really just where we start. It’s how we flesh out the broad strokes of the story we’re telling. But it’s not where we end. Ultimately, I think that good writers are good at many different things, not just one. But if you are watching the process, it can seem like writers only do this one thing well.

It’s a misperception, I think. It would be like watching someone learn to swim and imagining that they are really good at pretending to be drowning. Technique is often layer upon layer, and the way it looks from the outside is not necessarily the way that it feels from within the process.

If you feel like you are only good at one thing as a writer, just give yourself some time. Focus on someone else’s writing super power and examine it from all angles. Think about how you could add some of that to your work. And then do it. Just add that one piece and see what happens. I think you may be surprised to discover that you don’t have to be born to super powers for them to work for you.

Of course, some people don’t do layers at all. They do it all in their heads and the work comes out fully finished (or nearly so) in one draft. That’s fine, too. I find it fascinating to talk about the process, mostly because everyone does it completely differently. In some ways, the process always remains the same for us. In other ways, it changes for every book. You may start one book with an idea, another with a line, and a third with the idea for a great character.

So whatever you think your writing super power is, remember that it can change. Rely on it as it is useful. Jettison when it isn’t. Re-examine your process regularly and see what is working. If something isn’t, find someone who has a different super power and learn from them, either in the real world or by analyzing the inner workings of a beloved book.

I’m not much of a believer in natural talents. You don’t have to be the writer you were. You can be a new writer for a new book.

Celebrate Your Lost Toenails

Runners lose toenails fairly often.The longer race you run, the more likely it is that you will lose a toenail. Also, downhill running tends to cause more toenail loss because you’re pushing your feet forward into the front of your shoe, which is the impact that tends to cause problems. Running in summer also causes more toenail loss because swollen feet take up more space in your shoes and that means you end up with less margin for error, so to speak.

The first Ironman I did, I lost a couple of toenails and was a bit freaked out by it. Recently I lost six toenails at a 50 mile run. Sometimes they fall off. Sometimes they go black and hang on for a few weeks until a bit of a new toenail starts coming in. I’m going to avoid photos for this, because some people are squeamish, but it really isn’t a big deal for me anymore. The pain happens when I don’t notice it because I’m focused on running. Afterward, it’s just annoying.

Now you’ll wonder how in the world this related to writing, but it does! When you are writing a book, a lot of other things in your life are going to be forgotten. You may spend a month wearing dirty clothes while you get your novel finished. You may end up eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches and raisins because you don’t have time to make a proper dinner. You’ll let email pile up. You’ll stop watching your favorite TV shows. Friends will wonder what has happened to you. You stop answering the phone, reading the newspaper, or doing anything except work on the book.

It’s only when you’re finished that you blink and stand around, staring at all the things that you’ve got to get back to in order to have a real life. It may take you weeks to recover from your little race to the finish on your book. And that is as it should be. Let me just say that before you throw yourself forward into the cleanup phase of your writing, take a moment to celebrate all your lost toenails. This is what a writer’s life is. It’s feast and famine. It’s letting yourself become so wrapped up in an imaginary world with people who have never lived that you forget about the real world. This is your grand talent. Yes, the garbage all over your front room, the dust everywhere, the stench. This is being a writer in its true form.

You give yourself over to your work and the more you do that, the more you will succeed in writing true stories that are a gift from your soul to the world. It can’t be done without the messy side. People who are squeamish, they want to believe that writing can be done in bits and pieces, ten minutes here and there, with a lot of cleanup in between. They want to believe that the novels they love are written by sane people who take showers everyday. They don’t want to see your ruined toenails. And I suppose that’s fine for a reader.

But as a writer, don’t fool yourself. Those ruined toenails are your real trophies. You most likely will never get any others. So celebrate them while you have the chance. No one writes without giving up something else that matters.

Keep Focused on Your Own Goals

One of the things I have learned from triathlon is that you have to stay focused on your own goals. It can be so tempting when you get into the water and the gun goes off for the swim start to think that if you don’t keep up with the crowd, you’re going to lose the race. It can be easy when you go out on a training ride with friends to think that if you get dropped and don’t kill yourself to keep up, you’re a loser.

In fact, exactly the opposite is true. I am a strong swimmer. I have been swimming for over thirty years. I still get nervous in the water, mostly because other people who are swimming around me are CRAZY. Seriously, they have no idea what they are doing. They think that going all out for the first 200 meters of the race means something. It doesn’t. A triathlon, even a sprint, is a long race. Olympic distance, Half Ironman, and Ironman are a lot longer than that. Using up all your energy in the first two minutes of a race is just stupid. It means you have no sense of discipline and that you don’t understand the distance you are in.

I have started to hang back in swim starts, not because I have no confidence, but because I want to let all the crazy people go ahead of me and get their craziness out before I come along on the second lap and pass every single one of them gasping out their last breaths as they struggle with the last 500 meters of the race. I am in it for the long haul. I am racing through every minute of the race. I race smart and I race steady. If I have a bunch of gas left, I can use it in the last mile or two of the run, when all those crazy people are walking. Or haven’t gotten off their bikes yet.

The same thing is true about writing, and particularly around this time of year with NaNoWriMo. Look, NaNo is a great way to get excited about a project you’ve had on hold for a while. Just remember, don’t start comparing the word counts that other people are handing in on the first week of the month with your word counts. You’re in it for the long haul, right? You don’t want to get some prize for speed and then realize that you’ve gone off the wrong way somewhere and you give up because you can’t figure out how to fix it.

Go at the pace that feels right to you. Sure, push yourself. But don’t push so hard that you end up hating the book. And don’t push so hard that you realize that you have no idea what to write the next day. Keep something in the tank. And if you don’t finish the book by the end of November, no big deal. You’re not in a competition to write the most words. Anyone could do that by typing a dictionary.

The real competition here is to write words that matter. Write a whole book the way it deserves to be written. Write your book your way. And however those other people are writing their books, good for them. Maybe they’ll get through it and maybe they won’t. Use the competition if it helps you, but don’t be distracted by it. Maybe getting dropped by everyone else is exactly what you need for this book. Maybe spending a few weeks just thinking and not writing words is what you need. It’s all right. You’re doing fine.

Letting Your Characters Fail

I think sometimes as writers we become so invested in our characters that we don’t want them to really fail. We want them to be good and nice, to be sympathetic to the reader, and we want them to get what they want at the end of the story. That’s what good fiction is about, isn’t it?

Well, maybe partly. But good fiction is also about readers going on a journey and learning about themselves. And I believe that all of us, even those who are the most deeply good, have moments where we fail. And when I say fail, I don’t mean that you don’t get what you want. I don’t mean that someone says no to you. And I don’t mean that you realize that you aren’t good enough yet.

Real failure is when we fail ourselves, and I think that is part of every story. When you realize that it was because you were stupid or mean or scared and you sabotaged yourself. Watching your dream fly away, or your beloved walk off with someone else, because you did the wrong thing—that is real failure.

I think of the fairy tale about the two sisters who see the fairy in disguise as an old woman. The one sister helps her and she ends up with diamonds coming out of her mouth. The other sister doesn’t help her and ends up with toads coming out of her mouth. Well, frankly, I think the story of the sister with the toads is the more compelling one. I think that’s the universal story of life. We make a stupid mistake and we pay for it. Sometimes forever.

It doesn’t mean that the story has to end badly. You can still have a character who triumphs at the end. But if you don’t have a moment in your story where your protagonist truly fails, because of some character flaw, I think you’ve got to rewrite your story. The flaws of your character are the texture of your whole book. And without those flaws, the triumph at the end is much less powerful. My shorthand for this when I do critiques is calling it a “Disney ending.”

Don’t write a story with a cheap ending. Make your readers and your protagonists work for that ending. Make everyone (including yourself, most likely) believe that the happy ending isn’t possible. Because when things are darkest, that’s when the small light glows brightest.

What Drives Extreme Athletes

When people ask me why I run at such an extreme level, I have to take a deep breath and decide if I am going to tell them the truth or lie about it. For a long time, I was incapable of lying, and that made life more difficult. Now I can decide whether or not I can deal with the naked feeling that comes with telling the truth about what seems like a fairly innocuous question.

I run with extreme focus because I need to. Most of the people I know who run ultra marathons, Ironman competitions, and do extreme feats do it for the same reason that I do. They are driven to it. They are trying to hold tight to sanity and this seems one of the few ways that is socially acceptable for us to deal with the pain of living life daily. People who are incredible athletes are usually hiding something in their lives that makes them different from other people.

Some of the ways I think extreme athletes are different:

1.Extreme athletes are people who have already suffered deeply in life.

2. We know what pain is, and we’ve gotten used to it. It becomes a kind of familiar friend.

3. We court physical pain because at least this kind of pain we can control.

4. Often we are people who seek out others who have had the same experience. We often find them in sport.

5. We sometimes choose a physical pain over the psychic pain that threatens to overwhelm us.

6. We like the isolation and the intensity of extreme sport because it seems to offer a clarity that can feel absent in a normal life. Just get to the next signpost. That’s all you have to do. Just that.

7. We have a dark sense of humor and tend to laugh about ourselves and how messed up we are.

8. We find it difficult to stop pushing ourselves further and further, even if we know it’s time to take a break and recover.

9. We see certain vivid similarities between ourselves and drug users. We are using our own drugs in our own bodies, but the high is the same, and so is the craving for more and more.

10. We seek meaning in life. We need meaning. More than other people, I think we try to make meaning, even if it’s carved into our own muscles.

A Journey is For Every Day

Some books take years to write.

Some, surprisingly, only weeks.

Some books go through dozens of revisions, require pulling out entire plot lines, attempting complete revision, feel like resurrecting a corpse, and then you go back to an earlier version, lost two years of work, and finally figure it out.

Other books you write and do very little editing, and sell them.

It can be easy as a reader to imagine that you can tell the difference between a book that took years to write and one that took weeks.

Look at the beautiful prose, you may say.

Feel the deep themes resonating through every scene.

Look at how the patterns are mirrored here and there.

Notice the careful pacing.

Get into this character’s deepest thoughts.

The truth about writing is that authors don’t know anything about what we are doing. We don’t know if a book will touch readers. We don’t know if it will be a hit or a failure. We don’t know if all the work we did today will end up being trashed in the next month’s revision process, or if the book we are writing now is nearly perfect.

We don’t know and we shouldn’t try to discern it. I really believe that writing is a process that makes us who we are as much as it makes a book. Who we are as writers determines what books we will be able to write in the future. It has to be as much about the process as it is about the product.

To try to figure out if you’re doing anything good right now is like trying to decide if your newborn is going to end up at the Olympics. If there were a system for figuring it out, would you really want to know? Would you really want to tell your child in first grade that there was no point in joining the local city swim club because she wasn’t going to end up in the Olympics?

I hope not. I hope that for writers, and for readers, a book is a journey that we allow ourselves to go on, wherever it takes us. Yes, you can end the journey. No one forces you to either finish writing or reading a book. You may choose a different journey. But don’t confuse the journey with the destination. Destinations only happen now and again. A journey is for every day.

A Wound and A Shame

I think it is useful when writing a character’s backstory to think of both a wound and a shame in the past that have brought this character to the present day of the story.

A wound is something that the characters has had inflicted.

A shame is something that the character has inflicted on someone else.

Think while you are building this backstory about what this character would be wounded by. It could be a physical wound, but far more often, it is a psychic wound. In fact, physical wounds that persist are never only physical. Physical wounds heal and may or may not leave scars. But it is the psychic scars that really linger.

What words would wound your character? What insults flung would stick? What words of disappointment would never be gotten over? What wounds does this character fear are still weaknesses?

On to shame, what is this character ashamed of? It will tell you a lot about where a character is headed if you know what he still carries around. A character who is ashamed of the words he flung at someone else, knowing that they really applied to him, is interesting. A character who hurt someone smaller and vulnerable and knows it, and vows never to do it again—this character is heroic. A character who stood by and did nothing while someone else was hurt—this character, too, may turn out to be a defender of the weak later in life.

My sister told me a story about my older autistic brother standing up for her and my younger brother when they were being brutalized. She felt guilty that she had allowed this situation to happen because as a normal person, she thought she ought to have been able to protect my autistic brother and my younger brother. I listened to the story and was filled with pride with all the characters in it. My older autistic brother got to be the hero for once, after so many times of being the victim. And my sister, who never had anyone in the family stand up for her, finally got to be the one who was protected.

Think about stories like this, and the different points of view of the people in it. Stories of our past and the ways in which we tell them say so much about us. And it can be really useful in telling a story to let the reader know how other people who experienced the same thing see it completely differently.

Wants and Needs

What we want and what we need are so often very different. I’m reminded of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, often quoted at our house, in which Calvin laments that no one will pay for what they need, only what they want (what people need is often a good kick in the pants).

As I was playing with some characters in a romance novel in which a love triangle (yes, I know—I hate love triangles!), I realized that the key to figuring out who was the right guy was in the difference between the main character’s want and her need. She might want one guy, but she needed the other one. My job as a writer was to make sure that the plot demonstrates this clearly to her, and that she become a strong enough person that she doesn’t reach for what she wants, but comes to accept that what she needs matters more.

And it made me reflect on my own life. What I want is often the same, the familiar. I want ease. I want people to like me. I want good stuff to rain down on me. Because I work hard. I work really hard. So don’t I deserve some compensation.

Thinking about what I need instead makes me really uncomfortable. I don’t know what I need because I don’t know what I am going to be in the end. I am not sure I want to know. And I am intensely upset by people who go around saying that everything bad that happens to you is really what you “need” to have happen to you. I don’t believe that.

And yet, if I were to just keep doing what I want to do, I would never update any software on my computer. My kids would never do things that are unexpected and make me grow. I would never meet people who challenge my assumptions and make me realize that I have made mistakes that hurt others. I would never write stories that make me cry because I can’t write them the way that I want. I would never have conversations with the people I love in which they point out the ways in which I have failed them and am continuing to fail them by not stepping up.

What is it that Wesley says to Buttercup? Life is pain. We know we are alive because we are in pain. We know that we are alive because we are always growing and changing. We might not want that, but it is what we need. When we make our characters face what they need instead of what we want, we are affirming for our readers this truth of life. Life is pain, until we stretch and grow into the new thing that life has become. We don’t have to believe that this is what had to be, that it was destiny or that some greater being declared it thus (although we can). But life is change, and change is pain. What we need is what makes us face that change and grow to meet it. Even if we don’t want to.

The Courage of Depression

We think sometimes of how sad people are who have depression. Or sometimes they seem numb, distant, or stiff. Their brains don’t function properly, so they don’t get or don’t remember the good moments of life. They tend to dwell on the worst things that others have done or that they have done themselves. They are overly critical and have a skewed perspective on life.

But there is a daily courage in depression that I have observed recently. Those who are able to wake up every day and do something. Anything, really. Even if they don’t feel any hope that doing something will matter or will give them satisfaction. They do it anyway.

I suppose you could argue that they do this out of habit or simply because they don’t have anything else better to do. But I think there is a tremendous courage in getting up and trying. We think of courage as something that looks extraordinary. People running into burning buildings IS courageous. People facing their fears and jumping from an airplane to live out a life dream IS also courageous.

But don’t forget the courage that looks ordinary. Someone crippled with self-doubt, burdened with the heaviness that comes with depression, or sapped by a continual unhappiness, is deeply courageous. Getting out of bed is an incredibly brave thing to do. What hope does a depressed person have that today will be better than the gray curtain of nothingness that was yesterday? What thrill are they expecting when they face a list of tasks that seems to go on forever?

If you know someone who is depressed, spend a moment now thinking of their courage in trying to remember who they were, what life once was. When you or anyone else tells them that the future will look better, remember that they can not feel hope in the way that you can. For them to reach for something better is truly extraordinary. Applaud for them. Cheer for them. Because they cannot cheer for themselves.

Six Rules of Publishing

The First Rule of Publishing:

The Money Flows To The Author. If you’re signing something that doesn’t bring money to you either immediately or at least eventually, you are doing it wrong. You don’t pay to get published.

The Second Rule of Publishing:

Never sign a contract without having someone who knows the business look at it. Any publisher who pressures you to sign a contract now, who doesn't want you to have an agent or a lawyer look things over—they are people you want to stay far away from.

The Third Rule of Publishing:

Do your research. If the publisher or agent you are considering working with is legitimate, they should be able to give you a list of people they have worked with before, or a website with a list of clients/projects.

The Fourth Rule of Publishing:

Make Friends. Other authors are not your competition. They are your friends. If they forget it, stay clear. But don't make enemies of the other soldiers in the trenches so long as they don't have a weapon pointed at you.

The Fifth Rule of Publishing:

Write. Make your excuses as loudly as you want. Moan. Complain. And then sit down and get it done.

The Sixth Rule of Publishing:

Write what only you can write. Don't try to imitate. Don't follow trends. No one knows who is going to find that inexplicable success. You can't force it. You can only take satisfaction in doing what you do and knowing it is your best. So write your best.