Sarah Allen's Blog, page 34

W is for Waiting

W is most definitely for waiting.

That is one thing I think a person just doesn't get until they start pursuing this crazy glorious chimera called a writing career. There is so much waiting involved. So much waiting.

You just can't move forward, in many ways, without the support and say-so of someone else, or many someone else's. You are waiting to hear back from that agent or the agent is waiting back to hear from that editor. You're waiting to hear back from the cover designer or the publicist or one of the other many people involved. Even if you self-publish, you're still waiting to hear back from that book reviewer or that journalist or that critique partner or, of course, basically like everyone on the planet to BUY YOUR BOOK.

The thing is, it doesn't ever go away. At least I don't think. And that's frustrating, because as much as you try and speed up the waiting time or find things to do in the meantime sometimes you're just past the point of patience and you just want it taken care of NOW.

That's sort of where I'm at. Almost. I have been querying agents for a while now, and I just want to get my yes. I've been submitting short stories to magazines since high-school and you never stop waiting for yesses on that one. I'm just at that point where I can't really do anything more in terms of moving forward in a writing career without partnering with some industry professionals. And I want that to happen yesterday.

All this, though, brings me to the most important W word. Pretty much, to move forward in your career, you must wait. For other people. Pretty much there is just nothing you can do about it. There is one thing, though, that you never have to wait for. The most important part of your career is the thing you have complete control over, the thing that is totally up to you that you can work on and do anytime you want. Writing. The waiting will always suck, but you can always write. While one project is in the wait for everyone phase, write another one and another one. That is how we succeed.

Sarah Allen

V is for Volume and Variety

I've heard it said in many places, and in several different ways, that the key to a successful career as a writer (or any type of artist) is two-fold: volume, and variety.

Basically this means to write lots of different things and put them lots of different places. Here are ten different ways we can try and incorporate that advice.

1. Publish novels in different venues: The options for writers are only expanding. It is no longer necessary to be in one "camp," or one side of the publishing fence. Rather, you can focus on traditional publishing while also working on self-publishing projects and submitting to small publishers. Or any combination you choose. All within contract boundaries, of course, but the point is that we can put even our big projects in lots of places.

2. Submit short pieces to magazines: There are so, so many magazines out there. Whether personal essay, short story, flash fiction, poetry, whatever--leave a little portion of your time and energy to these smaller projects and finding them homes in the many fabulous literary magazines available.

3. Submit to contests: There are contests going on all the time for books, short story collections, poetry chapbooks, individual pieces, everything. The Poets and Writers website has a fantastic list. I like the idea of continually working on those shorter pieces until you have something ready to submit to one of these awesome competitions. And then keep submitting.

4. Query articles: Even for us fiction writers, occasionally branching out into non-fiction and article writing could be a good idea. It expands our writing, our readership, and our credentials. Find something you're passionate about, an idea you want to explore, and then magazines that feature that subject. Query, and keep querying. You never know what cool experiences and networking opportunities you will find.

5. Try script: Screen and playwriting come with their own set of rules and guidelines. However, after some research and practice, they could also present some great opportunities. There are also competitions going on all the time for plays, and why not submit a movie script to Hollywood and see what happens?

6. Experiment with genre: This is where I think self-publishing could be fun. I think we all have a genre we like best, that we normally work in. But sometimes you want to try something new. If you write contemporary, try science fiction or a picture book. If you write science fiction, try historical or romance. Often your editor at a traditional publishing house won't want you going too far outside your genre, but within contractual bounds, writing something in a new genre perhaps under a new name and self-publishing could potentially get you a whole new readership. Or if you self-publish anyway, then its just a matter of expanding your circle.

7. Collaborate: I don't think there is any better way of introducing yourself to a new group of people. The group is already there, listening to someone they trust, who is now working with you. This can work for anything from books to YouTube videos. This also includes submitting pieces for consideration in anthologies. Collaboration is a great way to add volume and variety to your work.

8. Experiment in unusual venues: With shorter pieces, (and again, within contractual bounds of course) this could be fun. There are so many cool ways to do this. Make a video poem and put it on YouTube. Make a Tumblr blog or Pinterest board dedicated to your photo-poems. Produce your own mini-script and put it online. Tweet flash-fiction. Anything you can think of, why not try it out?

9. Say it out-loud: Speaking engagements have become, in a way, the modern day writer's bread and butter. This is particularly true for non-fiction. But I think any writer can only benefit from looking in to this side of things. Contact everyone: libraries, schools, book fairs, local colleges, book clubs, conferences, etc. Not every contact is going to pan out, and in fact most of them won't. But in this case I think its best to be like a dandelion, spreading your seeds as far and wide as possible until a few of them stick.

10. Write every day: This is obviously the key point. Whatever you end up doing with your writing, whatever the piece turns out to be, you can't do anything with it if you don't have it. So get those words down. Work on those big projects, the novels and screenplays, and on days when you're not feeling those, work on a short story or poetry chap book. A little bit every day goes a long, long way.

Anyway, hopefully this can get us all started on keeping volume and variety a part of our writing career. Do you think these ideas are worth the effort? What other opportunities would you add to this list?

Sarah Allen

U is for Unarmed

[image error] An unarmed writer does not intimately know her characters.

An unarmed writer does not know her target reader.

An unarmed writer has not researched agents before she submits.

An unarmed writer does not read craft books such as Stephen King's On Writing to try and improve herself.

An unarmed writer does not have a library card.

An unarmed writer does not have another project in the works.

An unarmed writer does not carry a notebook and pen with her ALWAYS.

An unarmed writer believes she doesn't have to do any marketing.

An unarmed writer thinks her writing needs no help.

An unarmed writer does not study the career paths of other writers or seek out advice from industry professionals.

An unarmed writer does not consider as many publication opportunities as are available to her.

An unarmed writer only ever reads one genre.

Such a huge arsenal of heavy artillery at our disposal. Let's just make sure we're as armed as possible.

Sarah Allen

T is for Three

Three has become my magic number.

There are all sorts of artistic studies that show how groupings of three are the most aesthetically appealing and I believe it. Not just in art, but in literature. Think how many stories involve the number three. The Three Little Pigs, Golidlocks and the Three Bears, The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

I don't know why, but structurally, three is a good number. If your protagonist succeeds on her second try then it may seem too easy, but if it takes four, you may have lost us. For some reason, three is the sweet spot.

The number three has helped me in a lot of my plotting troubles. Although the normal story structure is to have one climax that you're building to, I have found it helpful in this novel to think of it more as the third step in a series of events. Still building up to that big scene, but providing stepping stones along the way.

It has also helped with some of my own problem areas. In my first novel a common bit of critique was about wanting more explicit emotion. I tend towards the sparse side of that spectrum. I don't like it when people spend paragraphs using cliche to describe their characters emotion. So, I developed for myself the rule of three for emotion. When there is something my character is feeling that the reader needs to understand, I try and express it three different ways. For example, a metaphor, a physical thing, and maybe something more explicit. That sounds very formulaic and obviously its not like I take a ruler for all my characters emotional reactions. However, it does help when I feel stuck, wondering how to get something across.

Thoughts? Do you agree that three is a magic number that can help you out of stuck places?

Sarah

S is for Stranger than Fiction

The thing about growing up, you realize how many crazy things you think happen mostly just in stories have actually happened very close to home. Or maybe other people are less oblivious than I am? It's happened more and more often since I graduated from college, and the last few months have been biggies.

It's...some of it's stuff you can't really talk about except with the people involved. Partly just because its private, but also because anybody outside wouldn't nearly understand why it's so big of a deal. Sometimes they would, but sometimes it's just little things that put a crack in the way you've been seeing the world up till now, like hearing a story about how your look-up-placid-in-the-dictionary grandpa beat up and nearly broke the back of the vicious dog who jumped into the car with his daughters. Even just watching your siblings go through emotional stuff you never thought they would have to go through is like an Oxford English Dictionary size lesson in new feelings. Stuff like that.

Then sometimes it really is big deal stuff happening to your family or friends and you just think, how is this happening in real life? I am so used to giving people the benefit of the doubt, trusting that they mean well, and then every once in a while something happens that makes you think how could a human being do this to someone? And not just in the what's on the news sense, but like, to your brother sense. On the bright side happy things happen too, and all of it is a learning experience.

Then there are times when the situation is just so ridiculously chaotic or so unbelievably coincidental or weird that it does seem something straight out of fiction. There is a special brand of this kind of experience that comes when you are raising 8 kids, and I think part of the reason that I feel this way about getting older is that I am privy to more and more of these stories, increasingly in depth conversations with my mom about the past covering all these types of stranger than fiction moments, from the weird to the hurt. It is a little bit paradigm shattering, but the more it happens, and the further I get from when it first started happening, the more I realize how much I've learned because of it and how different of a person I was and would be without it.

I do warn people that telling me stories is dangerous and comes with a I'm-a-novelist caveat, but even if we don't use experiences like this directly in our fiction, I think our writing absolutely is informed by what we learn. To me writing is all about working through those emotional lessons and trying to figure them out and seeing if anybody out there feels the same way you do. Because there are a lot of them out there who also think that they're alone. Life really is stranger than fiction, but I think fiction is what helps us make sense of it all with a friend by our side.

Do you feel the same way? What stranger than fiction things have happened in your life that you're open to sharing with us?

Sarah Allen

R is for The Road

First of all, The Road by Cormac McCarthy is an excellent book and you should all read it.

Second, here is a little poem video I made called The Road. I had fun with it, and I'm still trying to figure out how me and YouTube are going to play together. We'll see. But anyway, hope you enjoy this little thing I've made so far:

Have a great Sunday!

Sarah Allen

Q is for Queen

Not that this song is new to any of you. Or anyone in the English speaking world and beyond. But ya know what? This is one of those things that deserves it. Not only one of the greatest rock songs ever written, but perhaps greatest song OF ALL.
So enjoy :)
Have a good weekend all!
Sarah Allen

P is for Pettigrew

So I'm sitting at work reading Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and I'm pretty sure I looked ridiculous because I'm sitting there grinning like a maniac trying to keep from laughing in pure giddiness as people walk past the front office.

"Toothbrush," he said with difficulty. He held it out by the very tip of the handle because he knew it was important, if he was to keep his composure, that her fingertips not touch his.

 I have not felt this giddy about a book since Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne at the end of Persuasion.

My friends know me so well. If the book they're recommending is not one in my typical genre it expands my horizons and becomes one I love anyway. Or like with this, they recommend it to me because they were thinking how much I'd love it the whole time they were reading and then I read it and I'm like YES YOU WIN OH MY WORD YES.

The characters are so real, a few so despicable. But the Major (as he prefers to be called) is completely wonderful. Conservative old curmudgeon. I will always adore those characters, because of both their conservatism and their curmudgeonliness. And their age. All the things. He is fabulous and hilarious and sweet and you are totally rooting for him the whole time.

I admit it did start off rather slow. But I loved the two main characters from the very beginning and that's what kept me interested and then about half way through things started picking up and then at the scene I quoted from I was just like THIS IS THE BEST THING.

So yes. Read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. I highly recommend it.

Sarah Allen

O is for Outlining

I used an outline for my novel, and I am using one again. As an outliner, I have learned a few things.

1. Follow the characters first, then the outline. An outline is important. But I have found that the best way to keep the story flowing naturally and organically is to look at it as little as possible. I know roughly where I'm going, and I know my characters, so when I get to the end of one scene and am ready to start another, I listen to my characters first. What is the next natural point in this story? What is her natural reaction to what just happened? Usually that works just fine, and in fact, its usually the next point I have on my outline anyway. If for whatever reason I get stuck and can't figure out organically what happens next, thats when I go to my outline.

2. An outline is moving pieces. Following the strategy above, this means I do sometimes end up going from point A to point D or bringing point E and putting it in between B and C. This is allowed. In fact, sometimes I will be stuck between scenes, and I've checked my outline but it still seems like there is a gap between the scene I finished and the next scene in my outline. When this happens and brainstorming a new scene doesn't seem to be working, sometimes I'll look down my outline and find a scene to bring up, and it turns out to be exactly what was missing.

3. An outline is a hand on all threads. This is sort of the other side of the first point. Its good to keep your plot flowing naturally and organically, but its also nearly impossible to keep track of all the things that need to happen and have happened and all the plot threads you've got going on without writing them down. At least it is for me. Before I even start writing I like to make sure I have in my outline everything filled in as far as I can tell for each plot line. This always ends up being total bologna and there are always major holes you don't see until you've started writing, which is why you follow your characters and not the outline. But its nice to be able to keep track of all the balls you've got thrown in the air.

This all sounds a lot more intensive and structured than it really is. I mean, my current outline is basically a bullet point list of about 25 plot points sorted into the seven days in which my story takes place. The outline for the other novel was pretty similar. And they're pretty quick, one sentence points. Obviously every writer has their own way of doing things, and for some, an outline stifles them from the very beginning. So yeah, this is just how I do it, and maybe it will help a few of you.

Other outliners out there? Do these ideas help, does this process sound similar to your process?

Sarah Allen

N is for Nighttime

Night is what has taught me the meaning of a love-hate relationship.
I love the moon and the stars more than the glare of the sun. I love black and blue yellow-flecked skylines of big cities. I love being the only one awake. Breezes feel so new in the dark. And nothing beats reading in bed with a quilt and a bed-lamp. 
I am terrified of the dark. I am terrified of being alone. I hate being the only one on the road between my parents house and mine. I hate the blackness of my room before I turn on my too-dim lamp and above all, hate the quietness that leaves me with nothing but empty space in my skull for panic to bounce around in.
That is when I want the sun back. That is when I miss any music or the voices in the show I was just watching and I crave someone with whom I can pillow-talk and decide for the umpteenth time I need a dog.
Nighttime is how I imagine Alaska--the best place to be hunkered down with your soul mate and the very worst place to be alone. Even when you can mask the dark and the quiet with lamps and reruns of Frasier there is still the necessary moment of turning it off. At that moment the TV power button is a hard one to press.
And while you're terrified and driving home alone there is Jim Dale reading you Harry Potter from your car speakers and the green light from the stoplight streaked across the asphalt when it rains. And you're still terrified and alone and it is still too dark and quiet but the moon is often full and that is enough to pull you forward. 
Then when you've made it past the drive home and the walking into a dark apartment and the brushing your teeth in silence and clutched your teddy bear to you and clicked off the last lamp then your heart rate finally begins to calm down and you are grateful for thick quilts that signal safety in darkness. One night feels like every night and perhaps that is what is the most terrifying, but as imminent as that fear is, you can relegate it to a realm outside your quilt, which is what quilts are made for. Quilts are boundaries between nations.
Eventually all nights merge in to one and a dream runs through it--maybe it's the nightmare about a swollen and scarred clan of face-eaters, maybe the fragmented image of a piglet pulling the wagon of Yosemite Sam, maybe it's your constant fantasizing about whether the next scene in your novel will or will not take place at a baseball game.
At night, it's hard to tell the difference.