Patricia C. Wrede's Blog, page 33

Resistance and Catastrophes

Thank you all for your input; I’ll try to get around to everyone’s suggestions in the relatively near future. I’m going to start with a post about getting stuck, because the first two suggestions were both aspects of that and I haven’t written about it for a while.

First off, getting stuck is a continuum that runs from the several-second pause while one is trying to think of the exact right word (it’s sort of like flurry but not that weak, or maybe frenzy, but that’s too strong…tizzy?) all the way to full-blown writer’s block of the sort that requires medical intervention at the other end. Most of what people refer to as “writer’s block” is actually somewhere in the middle to upper middle part of the range, and is more an extreme level of resistance to writing than actually being stuck.

A writer who is well and truly stuck usually has a problem with not knowing something. They don’t know what happens next, or they know what happens but not how to present it…and they have no idea how to find out the thing they don’t know. Or something just feels wrong, which usually means there’s a flaw in the part that’s already been written and the writer won’t be able to make progress until they’ve found and fixed it. In these cases, the writer generally needs to poke and prod the story and/or the writer’s hindbrain until they figure out the thing they don’t know.

Resistance is different. Resistance happens when the writer is getting in his/her own way, for whatever reason: they’re waiting for sunshine or inspiration, for more time, for certainty. They’re waiting to feel like writing something. Or the next scene is one that has to be there, but that they don’t want to write – they’re going to have to kill off a favorite character, or write a war or a sex scene (whichever they’re most uncomfortable doing), or deal with a topic that, in their family of origin, was never, ever discussed.

Usually, resistance is a minor problem, but if one doesn’t pay attention, it can easily become a habit. If it gets really bad, one often has little recourse other than to slog through on sheer stubbornness.

Sometimes, outside circumstances create resistance. When my mother died, I didn’t feel like writing for nearly a year. I wrote anyway, because I had a deadline, but it wasn’t easy (and I missed the deadline…but not by as much as I would have if I hadn’t even tried).

What I learned from that experience were some tricks for dealing with that kind of stuck-ness. I think they have more universal application. There are three parts, all of which need an individual solution. I can tell you what they are and what worked for me, but you’re almost certainly going to have to come up with your own variant in order to find what works for you.

The first part is to get out of your own way. Stop waiting for things to get better, for there to be more time, for inspiration to strike, for the Fiction Fairy to put some words on your computer while you’re sleeping. I stuck little notes on the edge of my computer that said “Pretty good and done is better than perfect but still in your head” and “Touch base. It isn’t all or nothing.”

The second part is sheer discipline. You can’t write if you have no tools at hand. You have to sit down at a keyboard or pick up a pen. It doesn’t matter whether you set a time and religiously sit down and open the file at 9:03 every morning or 12:56 at night, or whether you simple refuse to go to bed unless you’ve sat down and opened the working file sometime during the day. The point is simply to sit down and get started, not to actually get a lot accomplished. Some days, all I did was correct a couple of typos, or even just look at the file for fifteen minutes. This is where sheer stubbornness and determination are enormous assets.

The third part is making it as easy as possible to get something written. That means making it easy FOR YOU. It took me a while to figure this part out, because it requires thinking about what works and then setting it up, and that looks a lot like the kind of fiddling-around anti-writing activities that writers are discouraged from pursuing. Things like creating a play list for one’s plot or characters, or collecting pictures on the Internet that evoke different scenes, or drawing a stick-figure storyboard of the next chapter.

For me, what made writing easier was two things: first, splitting the writing part away from the making-things-up part, and second, constantly changing the mechanics of how I was getting things written. I did the splitting by expanding the two-page plot outline I’d used when I submitted the book into a great sprawling file that contained all sorts of notes and scraps…and that had a long, coherent description of the plot from the beginning of the story through one chapter beyond whatever scene I was writing. This meant that I always knew what came next, not in a general “George confronts Jennifer” sense, but in a very specific “George goes to the warehouse. After stumbling around in the dark, he finds the lightswitch and discovers Jennifer bending over a box in the corner. He does not want to believe it is a bomb, but it is. Jennifer is sarcastic at him. George stammers. Jennifer is about to blow them both up when Carol arrives, holding a gun” sense.

Changing the mechanics of how I was getting things written means that some days, I’d go to the office and open the file and let it sit there accusingly while I did other things, until I couldn’t stand it any more and wrote a couple of sentences. Other days, I took the laptop to a coffee shop and promised myself one of their sinful pastries if I got some words done. Still other times, I’d sit in the living room with a notepad and pen and a cat on my lap. I even bought a little hand-held recorder-cum-dictaphone to use in the car. I didn’t quite get to the point of standing on my head in the shower, but I considered it; the sticking points were that a) I didn’t have waterproof writing materials and b) I can’t stand on my head.

Alternatively, when life hands one something that puts one in an emotional tailspin, one can simply accept that one is not going to get any writing done for a good long while, and stop trying to do it. If one has no deadline and is not relying on one’s writing to pay for rent and food, this can be a viable alternative. If the very idea gives you chills and makes you hideously unhappy, then you don’t have to do it…but you do have to accept that getting stuff written is not going to work quite the way it used to, and you will have to find new and different working methods, and perhaps adopt an entirely new process. It will require some experimentation and patience, but it will be good practice for the next time your working methods change without warning. (And they will, sooner or later.)

Writing is like Weather…

For those who don’t know, I live in Minnesota. The weather here is a perennial topic; the news reports the temperature every hour on the hour, and every fifteen minutes (it seems like) when it’s particularly unusual. People talk about the weather constantly. Yesterday, I overheard at least five sets of people have the exact same conversation: “Boy, it’s cold.” “The weather report says it’s supposed to be warmer tomorrow.” I had that conversation myself at least twice (it would have been four times, but once was with three people listening in).

The thing is, what do you really need to know about the weather and why? You need to know what it is doing out there when you are getting ready to go out, which you can find out by looking out the window (“Yup, there’s three feet of snow out there.” “Hey, it’s raining, better take an umbrella.”) If you are trying to plan ahead, you might need to know what it is likely to be doing in a day or two (but if you are planning farther out than that, forget it. The Weather Service does its best, but its best is seldom reliable enough that one can confidently leave the umbrella at home when preparing for something five days out, much less weeks or months. Though if all you need to know is “Will I need snow boots or sunscreen?” there are at least six to eight months out of the year where that’s an easy question to answer, as long as you know what latitude you’re going to be at.)

Writing can be a lot like weather. Writers can get so bogged down in the minutia of phrases and sentences and micro effects that they lose track of the overall impact they’re trying to achieve. When the temperature is 7 degrees Fahrenheit, a couple of degrees up or down doesn’t make much difference except in conversation – the really important thing is that you need a coat and gloves if you’re going out.

With writing, though, the overall impact is composed of hundreds and hundreds of things happening on the micro level – the cumulative effect of three hundred or more pages of words and phrases and sentences. Every writer I know is all too aware that an infelicitous phrase in the wrong spot can spoil an emotional impact that’s been carefully built up over many chapters. But is it really necessary to spend hours agonizing over whether to call one’s villain a megalomaniacal idiotic psychopath, an idiotic psychopathic megalomaniac, or a psychopathic, megalomaniacal idiot?

Well, sometimes, maybe. The trouble is that writers seldom face a situation in which every single word, phrase, and sentence in a 100,000-word novel is worth that kind of conscious attention. Convincing writers of this is difficult, though, especially when the majority of critique groups are set up to focus on micro-level writing problems…and when a lot of writers have so many micro-level problems that fixing even a quarter of them often makes a perceptible difference in the quality of the finished product.

Yet I’ve also seen writers who are trying to make certain that each phrase is so polished and perfect that they neglect the macro level completely. They’re like someone trying to make a mosaic out of precious stones, who polishes each individual stone to perfection but forgets to place them in an order that actually creates a picture, or even a pleasing design. And then they wonder why Mary B. Author not only outsells them, but produces four or five novels in the time it takes them to finish one first draft. They fail to notice that Mary’s characters are engaging and her plots intriguing in spite of her slightly clunky prose.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Mary’s books would be improved – perhaps even significantly improved – by a bit of attention to word choice and phrasing. What the folks who sneer at Mary’s work nearly always fail to recognize, though, is that their work could be significantly improved by more attention to the macro level stuff, like structure, pacing, overall plot and character development…which are Mary’s strengths.

Which is not to say the writers should ignore the micro level in favor of the macro level, or vice versa. Every writer has personal preferences, both in terms of what they like to do and in terms of which aspect they think is most important or deserves the most attention. A writer who is unhappy with his or her work is unlikely to get much done, which makes it difficult to practice or improve. The trick is in persuading oneself to work on both aspects – the one one likes and thinks important, and the one that’s no fun and minor.

That said – I’m currently soliciting blog topics for future posts. So if you have particular questions, ideas, things you’d like to see me ramble on about, please mention them in the comments. Or if you want me to revisit or expand on something I’ve said before. I don’t promise to get to everything soon, but I’ll try to get to everything eventually. And if you’re too shy to comment, email me, pcwrede@pcwrede.com.

Uncertainty

Listening to NPR the day after Thanksgiving, I heard a story about an archive of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s manuscripts. “They are covered with handwritten corrections!” the archivist enthused, to which the interviewer responded, “The idea that he corrected himself just blows me away.”

Which response rather blew me away. Did he think all those great books just happened without being worked on? What does he think writers do? You write a bit, and it’s not quite right, so you fiddle with it and change a word here and a phrase there and relocate a paragraph or a scene and put it back and fiddle with things some more. Sometimes you cut a bit; sometimes you add a bit. And then you come back next day and do it all again. Oscar Wilde was only partly joking when he claimed to have spent the entire morning inserting a comma, and the entire afternoon taking it out. It’s not as if we’re all taking dictation from some supernatural entity that’s just making use of our typing skills.

Writing is made up of an immense number of critical decisions that are never…quite…decided for sure. Some are huge – which of the three possible romantic partners does the main character choose? Will the protagonist accept the throne or the offered promotion, or go off in search of a more fulfilling personal life? Others appear smaller – should that minor character be Andrew, Andres, or Anthony? Is “barricade” or “barrier” the right word in this sentence? Should the scene with the goldfish happen before the one with the seagull attack, or after?

One has to decide these things, or one cannot make much forward progress. One can only get so far by peppering a manuscript with square brackets and question marks to check or change later: “[UnnamedVillain [loomed/leaned threateningly over Anthony? as the [barricade/barrier/thingie began [continued? Check continuity] to collapse” is more notes than draft.

On the other hand, quite often “Geoffrey loomed threateningly over Andres as the seagulls stormed the barricade behind them” only looks as if it is more certain than the first version. Even before word processors, every writer knew perfectly well that it would only take a few minutes to retype the page and make it “Jennifer snuck up behind Anthony as the walrus knocked over the police cordon in front of them.”

Very, very occasionally, there is an obviously “right” thing to do: using “to whom” instead of “to who,” for instance. Far more often, it is entirely non-obvious whether the villain should be a Geoffrey or a Jennifer, whether the threatened character is better Andres than Anthony or Andrew (or maybe Amy), whether the seagulls or the walrus would come to the rescue first. There is no universally “right” answer most of the time; which version works better is a matter of personal taste and preference, authorial style, and the needs of the story the author is telling. (OK, the one with all the square brackets is pretty obviously not-right for pretty much any story, until somebody makes some of those decisions and removes all the brackets, but either of the other two would be fine in the right sort of story.)

Because there is no universally right answer, the author is left with the nagging feeling that whatever choices he or she made, they may very possibly be wrong…or at least, that there was a better or more effective way of handling the sentence, scene, plot twist, or bit of character development. Some writers react to this uncertainty by constantly changing their work, right up to the minute it gets sent off to an editor (and I am given to understand that there are now self-published e-books that the author continues to update and “improve” for months or years after their official publication).

Other writers react by making a decision early on and treating it as unchangeable. These folks are the bane of critique groups; you point out that seagulls can fly, so they wouldn’t need to storm the barricade, and the writer just stares and says, “This is how it happened. I can’t change it now.” Sometimes, they’re just being stubborn; frequently, though, they’ve convinced themselves that whatever they’ve written “feels right” and they’re genuinely uncomfortable with any change, necessary or not.

All this is complicated by the fact that either kind of writer can be quite correct in their judgments…or totally wrongheaded. Sometimes both in the same book. Plus there’s the process factor: some writers do lots of small rewrites as a normal part of their process; some prefer to mull things over for days or weeks before committing a chapter to pixels or paper, so that it’s close to being right the first time.

The main thing for writers to keep in mind is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. There also isn’t a perfect solution. No manuscript is ever perfect – not the first draft, and not the final draft. Writers need both flexibility and steadfastness: a willingness to change course when the story demands it and the firmness of purpose to resist the temptation to wander off course when the story doesn’t demand it. And, of course, the intuition and intelligence to tell the difference.

Happy Thanksgiving

Posting returns Sunday.

Landscape

I drove down to Chicago yesterday with my father, and I let him pick the route. Instead of taking the freeway through Wisconsin, which I have done many times and which takes about 7 hours plus meal and gas stops, we drove down the west bank of the Mississippi. The first part, St. Paul to La Crescent via Highway 61, I’ve done many times; it’s a slower drive than the freeway, but prettier, and at La Crescent you can cross the river and pick up the freeway or continue down the east bank.

This time, we continued down the west bank. By that point, the river is wide and cluttered with islands and swampy areas, large parts of which were iced over. We passed several tugboats pushing barges downstream through sections of chopped-up ice, trying to beat winter and the river freezing over. In that section of the Mississippi, both banks are lined with river bluffs – steep, rocky, tree-covered hills that are the nearest thing to mountains that you can find in the Midwest for several hundred miles in any direction.

We’d had a serious cold snap this past week, so parts of the bluffs were covered with thick clumps of icicles where the water from the last rain had soaked into the top and poured out through cracks in the rock. Lots of that area is wildlife refuges, and we saw at least ten bald eagles – four in trees, two that practically buzzed the car, and a number of others at varying heights and distances.

After a couple of hours, we started passing through little river towns. Some of them had the slightly grimy look of a working port; some had clearly cleaned everything up for the tourists, and some were a kind of weird hybrid, with large car dealers who seemed to have nothing on the lot but shiny new pickup trucks, shiny new RVs, and ancient trade-in pickups and RVs, right next to a McDonalds, a quaint old storefront building in a style that was clearly from the 1800s but with suspiciously clean brickwork, and a church with an unreadable seal above the door in faded blue and peeling gold paint.

In one of those towns, I made…not so much a wrong turn as an unintended one, and ended up heading out of town on a county road instead of continuing down the Great River Road as intended. It was like unexpectedly ending up on another planet. The road had wound upward through town without being particularly noticeable, and we emerged on the sort of flattish rolling farmland that is familiar to anyone living in the Midwest, where you can see a thunderstorm coming two hours away. There was no sign of the river or the river bluffs, and I don’t think we’d gone even five miles. If we’d headed west, we’d have been in for several hundred miles of the same, the main difference being that the rolling would grow less and the flatness more through Nebraska until suddenly the Rocky Mountains show up on the western horizon (I’ve driven it; it is very, very long and very, very flat). But heading east, within five miles, we’d have been in the river bluffs and the partly-frozen river and the islands and marshes and the determined tugboats.

Landscape can change rapidly, or it can stay the same for a really long way. A lot of writers assume landscape of the type and scale they’re accustomed to: if they live where you can walk five miles and go from cliffs and rivers to empty farmland, that’s what they write; if they live where you have to go three hundred miles in any direction to see any change at all, that’s what their characters encounter.

And it is very difficult to give the feeling of the space and size of countryside, which affects how you get across whether it is changing rapidly or with excruciating slowness. If the characters have to travel a long distance with nothing happening, the pacing of the plot usually demands skipping lightly over many days, which means the reader can go from mountains to plains to coastal city in two pages, even if the text clearly says it took the characters a month or more. By the same token, characters who are only traveling for a day or two, but who have a very plot-dense and incident-heavy two days, can make the reader feel as if they must have covered hundreds of miles instead of five or ten. It’s a problem of style as well as pacing, and therefore something that each writer has to work out for him or herself…but first, as always, one must be aware that the problem exists.

The Question of Closure

“If you’re having trouble with your ending, look at your beginning.” – Anonymous

One of the most important elements of a story is a satisfying ending, and a satisfying ending almost always involves closure. You see it in the terminology we use to talk about the structure of endings: you have the climax, the wrap-up, the denouement, the validation. And of course, the term closure itself.

“Closure” is defined as a firm, unambiguous answer to a question…but you don’t get a satisfying story by answering any old question that happens to have cropped up in the last two pages. What the reader wants is the answer to the central story question, which generally has something to do with the characters and the situation they’ve gotten themselves into.

And while the full depth and breadth of the problem may have unfolded over the course of the entire novel, the seeds of the problem are there in the first chapter. If they aren’t – if the first two or three chapters present one problem, and the entire rest of the story deals with a completely different one, then either the story ran off the rail somewhere around Chapter Four, or else the author started it in the wrong spot and needs to ditch the first three chapters and just tell the main story.

Quite often, the fundamental problem with a story’s ending is that it provides an answer…but not to any of the questions the reader thought were the important ones. We’ve spend the whole story wondering whether George will marry Jane or run away with Jennifer, and then suddenly the last three chapters are about keeping the ninjas from assassinating the Emperor. The big confrontation with the ninjas is splendidly dramatic and George getting a medal for saving the Emperor makes for a nice validation…but it all comes out of nowhere and doesn’t address the romantic triangle that the reader thought was the center of the story. Even if George proposes to Jane on the last page, it feels unsatisfying, because not enough attention is being paid to what the reader thought was the center of the story.

Sometimes, the problem is that the writer didn’t get their real question down on the page. This is especially easy to do when it is so obvious to the writer that the protagonist has issues with her parents that none of the issues ever get into the story, so when the climax turns into a big family reconciliation scene, the reader is left going “Huh?” Other times, the author doesn’t realize that they’ve presented a question to the reader – it’s self-evident to the author that George is in love with Jane, so Jennifer isn’t even a minor distraction.

Still other times, the author doesn’t find a particular aspect of the story interesting (perhaps because it’s too familiar, or because it’s not the part of the story that gave them the idea), and therefore ignore any and all story questions related to that part of the story. I’ve seen several novels in which the author gave the protagonist a small-town background similar to the one the author was desperate to escape, and never noticed (until the crit group or the reviewers pointed it out) that the main character had a choice to make, between their home town and the fantasy world where they were a hero, and that that choice was not an obvious or easy one.

And sometimes, the author has taken the advice to “know where you are going before you start” a little too much to heart. They began with a plan to work toward a particular ending, and they stick to that plan, and never notice that other aspects of the story have become more important. It’s as if Tolkien had decided to write a sequel to The Hobbit focusing on Bilbo, and managed to get halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring still thinking that he was telling the story of Bilbo’s adjustment to his retirement. So they’re all in Rivendell, and the big climax of the story is when Bilbo offers to take the Ring to Mount Doom, but they turn him down so he can stay happily retired. The End….What?

The story question is unfolded and developed in the plot, but the seeds of it need to be there from very early in the story. You don’t get satisfying closure by answering a question that has never been asked. The writer doesn’t have to know what the question is, right from the start – many don’t, especially seat-of-the-pants writers – but by the time the writer gets to the end, they need to be able to look back and see that they’re answering the right question, the one the readers have cared about since the opening. (And if the writer knows it’s the right question, but there’s no trace of it in the opening chapters…well, sometimes the way you fix the ending is by rewriting the beginning.)

The way in which the ending provides closure – the answer to the story question – depends on exactly what kind of question it is. Sometimes, the question is an achievement: Will the hero slay the dragon? Will the detective catch the murderer? Other times, the question is a choice: Will George choose Jane or Jennifer? Will Kimberly choose a career in music, or become a lawyer the way her family wants? Still other times, the answer has to be found: Will they discover a cure for the plague in time? And sometimes, the answer is an internal epiphany (or lack of one): Will Jack realize that his workaholic behavior is driving his family away before it is too late?

Often, there are several possible levels to the central question, as well as a host of minor questions (subplots, some of which can be large and important-looking). Subplots don’t need to be tied up quite as neatly to get to a satisfying ending – in other words, they don’t all need complete closure. When in doubt, one can use this as a test: if the writer left this particular issue open, would the story still come to a satisfying conclusion? If the answer is yes, it’s probably a subplot; if no, it’s probably either the main story question or else closely enough related that you can’t realistically finish up one without the other.

Getting Them Across

Characters are fundamental to nearly all stories. Whatever happens, happens to somebody or is made to happen by somebody, or both. Even when the characters in a story are not human, as in Watership Down, they tend to be anthropomophized. Most readers remember appealing and interesting characters more often than fascinating plot twists, and the people who populate stories are often identified with them to such an extent that they’re the first thing people mention when they start to talk about a book.

It should therefore be obvious to anyone who wants to write that portraying fascinating and appealing characters is a skill that is vital for any author to develop.

There is, however, a difference between thinking up an interesting and appealing character, and capturing that interest and appeal on the page in a way that will get it across to readers. A large part of the difficulty in doing this comes from the fact that practically everyone trusts their own judgment more than they trust anyone else’s – and that means that nearly all readers will trust their own assessment of a character more than the writer’s.

This is the reason behind the oft-quoted advice to “show, don’t tell.” If you assure the reader that George is trustworthy and loyal, but the first thing readers see him doing is discussing the size of the bribe he’s going to get for voting the way Sue wants him to vote in the board meeting, the readers are highly unlikely to believe that the writer is telling the truth. They base their assessment of the character on what they see him doing and saying, and they trust that assessment more than the writer’s repeated assurances that no, George really is loyal and trustworthy. And readers are going to have plenty of things to judge the characters on, because I don’t think it is possible to get through an entire novel without “showing” the characters doing or saying something.

Authors show off their characters’ personalities and affect the way readers judge them in different ways:

Through what the characters say and how they say it
By what they do and how they do it
In their feelings, reactions, and motivation
Through what characters say about each other
Through the way the characters react to each other
Through the context in which the characters are saying and doing things

What the characters say and how covers everything from the topics the character chooses to comment on to his/her tone of voice, attitude, and body language. If, for instance, George says “So, how much are you offering for me to vote your way in the board meeting?” in a sarcastic tone, or one that’s obviously joking or otherwise indicates that he’s not seriously considering taking a bribe, the readers will probably withhold judgment for a while until they find out what he really does.

What they do and how they do it means the kinds of actions they take. If George’s conversation with Sue ends in him picking up a suitcase full of money and walking off with it, it doesn’t matter how sarcastic or jokey he sounded in the conversation: he’s just taken a bribe, and readers are not going to see him as trustworthy and loyal.

Feelings, reactions, and motivations are the reasons why someone does things. If George is the viewpoint character, so that the writer can provide his thoughts and feelings, the reader can be made aware that George is actually an undercover agent attempting to ferret out corruption, and that even so he finds “taking a bribe” distasteful. If George is not the viewpoint character, the writer has to work with the viewpoint character’s interpretation of George’s expression, tone of voice, body language, and whatever the POV already knows of George’s character and motivations. This makes it really hard to get across the fact that George is actually a good guy, even though he appears to be taking a bribe; it usually can’t be done clearly and with certainty, but the writer can often get in enough hints that it will be obvious on a second reading when the reader has more context and background.

What characters say about each other covers everything from flat-out gossip to earnest discussion about someone’s character. The things characters say about each other are a little more complicated. If Jane is a likeable good guy character, and Jane says “I don’t believe George would ever take a bribe,” then the readers are somewhat inclined to think there might be something else going on and maybe George really is a good guy, even if they just read about him taking a bribe, but they’re also somewhat inclined to think that Jane sees the world through rose-colored glasses. On the other hand, if we dislike Sue and she finishes her conversation with George by telling him admiringly, “And I always thought you were such a goody-two-shoes,” we’re actually more inclined to think that maybe there’s something odd going on, because we want her to be wrong about her change in her judgment of George. If George turns out to be dishonest after all, it’s going to affect the reader’s opinion of Jane and Sue and their judgment.

The way characters react to each other means everything from physical reactions to emotional ones. Again, this reflects on both of the characters involved. If we like Jane, and Jane smiles and hugs George in greeting, we’re inclined to think either better of him or worse of Jane’s judgment. If George’s response to the hug is a little strained, we’re again inclined to think there’s more going on than meets the eye; if he brushes her off and ignores her hurt expression, we’re back to thinking he’s really a bad guy.

The context in which the characters operate has to do with background and backstory that the reader may or may not know…yet. If the chapter opens with a scene in which George gets his undercover assignment, and then we see him taking Sue’s bribe, the context is different because we know the background. Writers can get a lot of mileage out of “deep background” – an ambiguous character’s mysterious, angsty past – but only if they let the reader know via some of the other avenues that there is an unknown context still to be revealed.

All of these things feed into the reader’s judgment of each and every character, whether the writer is paying close attention to them or not. Writers who pay close attention, however, have the chance of aiming the reader’s judgment in the direction they want…which can and usually does completely eliminate the need to tell the reader “George was honest, trustworthy, and loyal.”

Cross-training creativity

If you or anyone you know is at all serious about a sport, running, or exercise, you’re probably familiar with the concept of cross-training. The idea is that you improve faster and are more likely to avoid injury if you do more than one type of exercise or sport – strength training as well as aerobics, for instance. Cross-training is useful for avoiding repetitive stress injuries, but it also ups performance and speed of improvement generally by working out a wider variety of muscles and joints.

Yesterday, I was watching a video on very successful people that brought up this concept. The speaker claims that the most successful people “cross train” their skills by doing things that work the same mental muscles, but from different perspectives – successful managers who coach Little League teams, for instance, or a Human Resources executive who spends weekends helping a local soup kitchen schedule their other volunteers.

This got me thinking. Nearly every other writer I know has some creative outlet besides writing – they compose music, sing, and play in bands; they knit or crochet or weave; they paint, throw pots, or make jewelry; they design everything from computer software to clothing. They’re amateur (and sometimes professional or semi-professional) actors, dancers, cooks, gardners, woodworkers, bloggers, and photographers.

Each writer’s activities inevitably inform their writing, but I’ve never heard anyone describe what they do as “research” or even “material.” We don’t think of hobbies or creative activities that way. If you are doing something creative and you’re not making money at it, it’s generally considered a hobby whose only benefit is providing relaxation and “down time” and maybe a bit of fun. Consequently, you occasionally hear people who have multiple creative outlets declare that they are giving up one or another of their pursuits in order to “focus on building a business” in the one that remains.

I think that, as phrased, this is a mistake. Oh, deciding that your true love is music or jewelry-making or photography is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and it’s equally reasonable to put some extra energy into that pursuit once you’ve decided that it’s your main interest. But too often, it isn’t the love of photography or writing fiction or music that is the deciding factor; it’s that the person thinks it is impossible to make a living writing poetry or knitting or gardening.

The real trouble, though, is the giving up of all other creative pursuits in order to follow just one. Because the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the most talented and successful creative people I know do work in multiple fields, even if they’ve chosen to concentrate on one in particular as their main production or income source. And I think that one reason this is true is that these people are unconsciously doing the kind of mental cross-training that the speaker in that video was talking about. At the very least, being interested in two or more creative arts provides a person with the opportunity to exercise their creativity in different ways, which can’t hurt as far as I can see.

Yet I’ve seen a lot of people complain that their favorite writer is “wasting writing time” by doing some other creative activity. I’ve seen the same thing happen in reverse to musicians and artists who also want to write. It doesn’t seem to occur to these people that a) creative people need hobbies and down time just as much as everyone else, and have just as much right to have it, or that b) there may be non-obvious benefits to having multiple creative outlets. It really doesn’t occur to them that they have no business trying to limit the ways someone else chooses to exercise their creativity.

Nobody currently pretends to know how creativity works, but there are some techniques that seem to help trigger it. One of them is changing things up – moving into a different medium, working with different materials, changing one’s process, finding a way to incorporate some random object in a way that makes sense. Most of those suggestions come out of drawing and art, or from “creative problem solving” research, but based on my own experience, they apply a lot more broadly. Indeed, a lot of them map directly onto the writing experience: moving into a different medium or materials (like switching from short stories to novels, or changing genres); changing one’s process (doing an outline or winging it, working back-to-front or skipping around); incorporating a random object (“If you’re stuck, have some ninjas jump in through the window”).

Furthermore, almost all of these creativity techniques are things that I and the writers I know have been doing more or less unconsciously for years. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to speculate that they may apply more broadly and in more areas than the researchers and teachers have gotten around to noticing.

I’m not saying that every writer should go out and immediately adopt a second creative pursuit. For one thing, people have time constraints; for another, some people prefer a single focus. I do think that experimenting with other areas is worth doing, and I most definitely think that someone who loves and enjoys music or woodworking or knitting should not feel guilty about doing it and need not be too strict in limiting the time they spend on it. It’s cross-training for the brain, I say, and as long as one meets one’s personal commitment to one’s primary love (writing, in my case…), having multiple interests is a Good Thing.

Creative publicity (Book promotion part 4)

The simplest and easiest way to publicize your novel, whether self-published or traditional, is on the Internet. Everybody knows that, and everybody is doing it. When I said I was posting a series on publicity, I got specific recommendations from every single person I mentioned it to, from my trainer to the checkout person at the grocery. And a lot of them were good suggestions.

The thing is, there are a zillion web sites out there that will tell you how to arrange blog tours, create mailing lists, and generally get readers to give a second look to your adds. A lot of them have great ideas – and at least 90% of the other people who are serious about doing book promotion are out there doing them. Consequently, they don’t have nearly as much impact as they did two to five years ago when hardly anyone was doing Internet marketing. Setting up a mailing list was a great idea five or six years ago when I got maybe on a month. Now I get at least three or four a day, and my in box is so clogged with mailing lists that I have filters set to automatically send them to a special folder, which I look at maybe once every three months…and then decide that I don’t actually need to read all the promos that expired weeks before, so I just delete the whole thing. It’s easier than trying to unsubscribe, especially when half of them are from places I shop regularly which will just put me right back on the list next time I buy something.

Creative publicity has more impact because it is, by definition, not something that everybody else is already doing. The idea is still the same: to create word-of-mouth “buzz” about the book and/or get readers interested in it who would otherwise not know about it. There are three basic approaches I’ve seen people take:

1. They come up with a marketing approach that nobody else in their field is doing, which will reach readers of their type of book who might not run across it otherwise. The first person to make advertising bookmarks did this; likewise the first person who came up with the give-away-contest-on-the-blog. This generally relies on knowing your field and your readership really really well and taking advantage of that inside knowledge that others might not have.

2. They come up with a single event that is tied to the book that is splashy and outrageous and that can be done on a shoestring, and that is a) large and splashy enough to attract a lot of people and b) outrageous and splashy enough that people who hear about it will go “She’s doing WHAT?!?” and talk about it even if they aren’t actually going to be there. The idea is that at least some of the people will remember the author’s name and the title and check out the book, instead of only remembering that some author parachuted out of a hot air balloon into Lake Michigan to dramatize the chase at the end of some crime book they wrote.

3. They find a way of getting in front of a whole lot of people who are not all the usual readers of their genre, in hopes that a) a few of the large group will be genre fans and b) at least a few of the non-genre people will be intrigued enough to pick up the book anyway. This usually draws on the writer’s interests and connections outside of books and writing. A writer who runs marathons, for instance, might do an article for a runner’s newsletter or blog on balancing training for a marathon with getting a manuscript written by deadline, in hopes that a few percent of the newsletter’s subscription base or the blog’s regular readers will decide to check out the writer’s book.

Creative publicity is not something you can get a list of suggestions for from a blog or a publicity website. If it’s on a list somewhere, it was a #1 type of thing that somebody else already did, and even if you are the second or third person to do it, it’s going to be rapidly taken over by all the thousands of other authors who are doing mailing lists and writing blogs and twitter feeds for their main characters. This is not a reason to not do whatever-it-is; it is simply pointing out that the thing has moved into the realm of “regular publicity” rather than creative publicity.

The closest you can come to a what-to-do list is a list of examples of creative #2 and #3-type things other writers have done, none of which will do you any good to copy, because even if Hotshot Writer sold 20,000 copies in one day by dressing up as a clown and passing out leaflets for “My Clown Summer,” your book has nothing to do with clowns. You have to come up with your own gimmicks and tie-ins.

The other difficulty with doing creative publicity is that the #2 and #3 approaches almost always involve the writer “putting him/herself out there” in some way. This goes back to the 80-20 rule I mentioned last post (80% of publicity is useless, but we don’t know which 80%), plus the fact that very few writers have lots of cash to throw around on expensive events. So doing something outrageous and splashy generally means the writer jumps out of a home-made hot-air balloon trailing an advertising banner, not hiring somebody else to do it. And that means that the writer had better already know how to parachute (or be able to learn how in a hurry).

Writers as a group tend to fall into two categories: the total introverts and the periodic extroverts. All of the writers I know who’ve been really successful with creative publicity have fallen into the latter category – they’re as introverted as the rest of us most of the time, especially when they’re writing, but between books they can give regular everyday extroverts a run for their money and then some. They’re good at this kind of publicity because they don’t mind dressing up like clowns or jumping out of balloons or writing articles about their personal struggles in hopes that some tiny percent of the half-million subscribers to The Depressed Gardner’s Weight Loss and Marathon Training Newsletter-Blog will remember their name and buy their book.

Basically, my take on all of this is: if any of the publicity stuff sounds like fun, whether that’s designing your own book plates or dressing up like a clown, go for it. If the idea repels you, either hand the job off to someone (a talented spouse or other relative to begin with, maybe a hired publicist once you have enough stuff in print to make that worth the money), or else make some decisions about how much you are willing to do yourself even though you hate it versus how willing you are to accept whatever sales you will get if you don’t do publicity. If you are self-publishing, that means really minimal readership; if you have a traditional publisher, it means that you’re relying on your publisher to do whatever minimal publicity they do for a first or second (or fourth or fourteenth) novel. It is OK to not do publicity. It is, however, a bit like voting: if you don’t do it, you don’t get to complain about the lack of results. Really, it’s your choice.

Book publicity, Part 3

The second part of publicity, after generating reviews, is trying to get visibility, attention, and awareness for your book in other ways. The most accessible way for people to do this, these days, is on the Internet, and there are bunches of web sites full of suggestions ranging from the general (start a blog, set up a newsletter, join Twitter groups) to specific things like price-pulsing and freebie teasers that are really ways of trying to game various systems and algorithms like the ones Amazon uses to determine “hot sellers” and placement in “people who bought this also bought…”

There are three things to remember about all these recommendations: first, that timing is important. Getting a lot of high-visibility exposure in blogs and forums won’t do you much good if it happens a month before the book is out, or even a week before. Internet publicity is all about instant gratification; if most people see something interesting and can’t click through to buy it right then, very few of them will remember to check back a day or two later to see if it’s available now, especially since there are always new books coming along that are available right now. Timing is especially important if you have a publisher, because publishers pay a lot of attention to early sales numbers. If you are self-publishing, it is up to you whether you’re going with a “big initial push” strategy or a lot of smaller, more spread-out pushes to maintain your visibility over time.

Second, doing Internet publicity takes planning, effort, and set-up. If you have a publisher, see if they have a list of blogs and Internet sites they recommend you appear on. If they do, you probably want to invest at least a little time and energy in showing up on them, if only to make your efforts visible to the publisher. If you’re self-publishing or don’t have a helpful publisher, spend some time making your own lists of places that you think you can get a mention in, or be part of a blog tour or get a guest post, and then start setting them up. The good news is that all the blogging and interviews and podcasts and so on is stuff that you can continue doing long after the book is out. It will probably have more initial impact if you bunch it around the book launch, but again, that’s a matter of strategy that is most important if you are not self-publishing. The bad news is that it is easy to let your publicity efforts eat your life.

Third, all this stuff – blogging, hanging out in “reader communities,” compiling mailing lists and Twitter followers, blog tours, guest posts, giveaway contests, interviews – all of it is stuff that nearly every writer who is trying to do Internet publicity is also doing, whether they’re pushing a hardcopy book or an ebook. This means that a) if you’re doing Internet publicity, this is the sort of stuff that you’re expected to do as a minimum, and b) doing it isn’t terribly effective in most cases because there’s already so much of it out there. How much do you pay attention to blog posts and tweets and so on when you’re looking for something new to read? The same logic applies to a lot of the older non-Internet publicity gimmicks: cheap giveaways like bookmarks and postcards, more expensive giveaways like mugs and T-shirts. If you really want effective publicity, you need to find things that everybody else is not doing that will get your name and your book in front of people’s eyes in a positive way.

That last – the positive bit – is really important. It is annoying when someone on a panel begins every remark with “In my latest book, I Wanna Be a Bestseller, I…” It is equally annoying when someone has five or ten tweets a day announcing the same thing. Annoyed people are not potential readers.

So what should the writer who feels a need to do publicity do? Darned if I know. In business school, they always said that 80% of all publicity was useless, but since nobody knows which 80%, everybody has to do all of it in order to be safe. That’s still true, especially for writers, but there are a few recommendations I can make.

I’ve said this a couple of times, but it’s worth repeating: if you have an actual publisher (ebook or traditional hardcopy), check and see if they have a publicist you can talk to. This costs you nothing but time, and you can pick up recommendations for what your publisher hopes/expects from you, at the very least. Unless your book is a really major lead title, you aren’t likely to persuade them to invest in anything major (like a book tour), but you can often get a surprising amount of assistance with lesser things, like extra Advance Reading Copies or support for a bookstore autographing you’ve arranged yourself, or even a few bucks to buy chips for your book launch party.

Tell the publicist (or your editor) in advance if you’re going to conventions or book fairs or if you’ve arranged an appearance somewhere. Even if they don’t help directly in any way, they will put it on their official list of “publicity for this title,” which is one of the things bookstores use to decide how many copies to order.

Among other things you want to consider: bookmarks are relatively cheap to make, and you can take them to book signings and conventions (many SF conventions have a “freebie giveaway table” where they will put out a handful of your bookmarks even if you aren’t attending). This gives people an actual physical reminder with your name and your book’s name. Book plates are also cheap to print up, and they’re handy to give out when you are doing a signing and people haven’t got copies of your books.

It is well worth making friends with your local booksellers, independent or chain, and to stop in periodically and offer to sign stock. Ditto local librarians – friendly booksellers and librarians can “hand sell” your book in surprisingly large numbers. If you are going on a road trip for fun or for your day job, try to allocate at least a few hours to stop in at bookstores in whatever cities or towns you’re in and offer to sign stock. If you have enough advance warning, call ahead and see if they’re interested in doing a signing (or see if the publisher’s publicist will make the call – they’re a lot more open to this sort of thing when they’re not the ones paying for your travel expenses, and they might even be able to arrange for you to do a presentation at the local library).

This kind of thing is less important if you’re self-publishing in ebook, but even ebooks sometimes get print-on-demand orders. I wouldn’t make this a major publicity focus, but if you have time and opportunity, it’s worth at least considering. For ebooks, though, your primary focus should probably be on Internet publicity, because that’s where the vast majority of your readers are.

All this is basic grunt-work publicity. As I said, lots of other writers are doing it, too. The real bang in publicity comes with being creative…and that’s difficult, because the whole point is to be unexpected and not do stuff that other writers are doing. Next post will be on that.