Taven Moore's Blog, page 55

On Short Stories – Part 2

Part 2 of 3

So I had Steven test-drive my intended post, as I almost always do. He said, “I love you. Break this into smaller posts so your readers don’t go insane.”

I cannot argue with his logic, so this is part two of three.

Part one includes the background, the disclaimer, and why I think this is worth reading.
Part two includes what I could find on official short story definitions
Part three includes what I like to see in MY short stories, and some pointed questions to try and fuel further discussion.

Popular Definition of Short Story

So, what is this popular definition that I’ve been building up to?

There kind of isn’t one. It’s one of those frustrating things where you’ll find a definition that seems to jive with your own, then read a half dozen more who lay down the law and then throw it out the window, just telling you “if it works, it’s good”.

Frustrating much?

Length

Take something simple, like story length. That one should be easy to pin down, right?

Not even remotely.

Some places say no more than 10,ooo words. Some say no more than 5,000 words. Some say anything up to 17,500 words (after which point it is defined as a novella).

Some places say that the lower bound should be 2,000, because anything less than that is flash fiction. Some say no, flash fiction is only up to 500 words, and anything between 500 and 2,000 is a “short short”.

Honestly, it’s dizzying, and more than a little confusing.

The only true, solid advice I can find on length is to determine which publication you plan on submitting to and follow their guidelines.

Guidelines which do have some overlap with other publications, but which could very well leave you with a rejected story that you can’t even submit somewhere else.

Content

Moving on. How about content?

Surely there are some broad, general content requirements? I’m not talking genre differentiation here, I mean the sort of meat and bones kind of thing that would be used to structure a proper short story.

I found a ton of sites willing to help with this, many of them giving the same five “vital” components to a short story.

Theme
Character
Plot
Conflict
Setting

Which is lovely, and I do like that list … except pretty much all the sites go on to say that you don’t have to follow those as a rule, or even really as a guideline. The reason for the immediate retraction is clear … there are a ton of very well-received and critically-acclaimed short stories which don’t have all or most of these components.

Negative

Right, okay, so if we cannot define a short story by saying what it ought to be, maybe we should look at what it ought NOT to be. I found a great blog post from the Willesden Herald (which is quite old, so if you disagree with what you read, please don’t bash on them). The post is so wonderful because it was written by someone who helped judge that year’s short story contest (of some sort) telling people the sorts of things that caused the short stories to be rejected, disliked, or definitely not make it to the winner’s circle.

I found that useful, but saying things like “don’t be boring” is necessarily helping me with that concrete definition that I’m searching for. One man’s garbage, as they say, is often another man’s treasure. “Boring” is too subjective.

Icky

Then, of course, you read articles like this New York Times piece which bemoans the number of short story readers who are actually just writers, trying to figure out how to sell a story to a magazine, rather than reading because they love the format.

The actual quote (copied here for clarity)

In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and The New Yorker, of course, the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there. And this kind of reading isn’t real reading, the kind where you just can’t wait to find out what happens next (think “Youth,” by Joseph Conrad, or “Big Blonde,” by Dorothy Parker). It’s more like copping-a-feel reading. There’s something yucky about it.

And then, of course, I feel yucky, because he’s kind of talking about me there. I don’t seek out short stories.

But on the other hand, I don’t seek out short stories because so often, I don’t enjoy them. In my mind, they have a reputation for being shocking-for-the-sake-of-shock (grotesque, horror, violence, sex), or to leave the reader feeling uncomfortable.

I don’t want my fiction to make me feel uncomfortable.

I don’t want to feel uneasy or sad or … icky.

I’m not looking for something that will shock or surprise or awe me. I’m not specifically looking for something that changes my perspective on the world or challenges my morals.

I’m looking to be entertained.

And no, I don’t care if that labels me as an escapist reader.

Related posts:

On Short Stories – Part 1
Fire and Storm – New Short Story Up
New Short Story – Murder

On Short Stories – Part 1

Alternatively titled : In Which Internet Research into Short Stories Makes me Despair, Just a Little

Part 1 of 3

So I had Steven test-drive my intended post, as I almost always do. He said, “I love you. Break this into smaller posts so your readers don’t go insane.”

I cannot argue with his logic, so this is part one of three.

Part one includes the background, the disclaimer, and why I think this is worth reading.
Part two includes what I could find on official short story definitions
Part three includes what I like to see in MY short stories, and some pointed questions to try and fuel further discussion.

Short Stories

So there I was, on the internet, looking up information about short stories.

See, our writing group – Saucy Ink — just published our first book of short stories, and we’re working on developing the stories for the second. You’d think that would mean I’d already done a lot of research into “what a short story is”, but in truth, I mostly looked up some very factual rules, cross-referenced in a few places to check for validity, and made up the rest.

Turns out, my definition isn’t precisely accurate according to the rest of the internet.

As a matter of fact, the term “Short Story” is so sacrosanct that I felt the need to include this next section, just in case this post somehow makes it out into the general internet audience and into the hands of a true short story aficionado.

The Disclaimers

I don’t usually add a disclaimer to my posts. In general, I think folks pretty much understand that my blog posts contain my opinions. However, I’m going to be doing some defining and poking at things that folks don’t often like poked at, so I’m going to go ahead and include some disclaimers here, so nobody thinks I’m getting too big for my britches.

As of this writing, I have never sold a scene, short story, novella, or novel. Feel free to disregard my opinion as unfounded or worthless if you’d like.

I read, write, and love fantasy fiction above all other kinds of writing.  My opinions are going to be based heavily on that preference, and if you happen to think that speculative fiction is inherently stupid or that the only true short fiction is literary fiction then I can guarantee we’re not going to see eye to eye on this one. That’s fine.

Further damning my credibility here, I strongly prefer the novel format in my reading. This will become obvious through the post, but it’s worth noting that I am not a primary consumer of short fiction and I rarely seek it out when looking for reading material. I know that there is a following of short story aficionados who love and treasure the traditional or modern short story format just as much as I love my talking unicorn stories, and we’d find each other’s favorite stories just as repellent as one might expect. That’s perfectly normal (and wonderful. How boring a world we’d have, if everyone liked only the same things?)

I reserve the right to change my opinion at any point in time.

The below “definitions” are based on what kinds of stories I like to read, and which appeal to me. My opinion on this is no more valuable than yours, or the guy next to you, or the girl next to him.

So! If your objections to what I write below fall into any of the above categories, feel free to still comment about how wrong I am, but know that I’m already admitting all these things, and yet I still think these blog posts are worth writing.

Why Bother Writing These Posts?

So that was a pretty massive disclaimer. I’ve just spent over 300 words convincing you that I can’t possibly be trusted in what I’m about to say, which is admittedly ridiculous.

Despite all that, and despite the fact that I know I’ll probably offend a ton of very educated and intelligent people with my opinions on short stories, I still want to write this post.

I want to write this post because I love reading, and always have. While other girls my age were decorating their walls with Backstreet Boys posters  and going on clothing shopping sprees, I begged my mom to take me to Half Price Books, where I’d spend a few hours carefully adding up every penny and applying them to the largest number of the most interesting fantasy books I could afford.

I love reading, guys.

I really, really do.

There are books I’ve read that have touched my heart and left behind a better person than was there before. I sometimes joke that I was raised by a pack of wild books, and it’s only half-kidding.

I read because I love stories, and I write for the very same reason.

So yes, my little backwater understanding of “what stories work for me” may not be in the same universe as the folks who judge short story competitions or even the guy sitting in the cubicle next to me … but maybe it is.

Maybe there are more people like me out there, just as hungry for the same kinds of stories that I love to write and read.

I’m writing this for them … and I’m writing this for me, too.

Because even with that wall of disclaimer text above, I think my opinion is still pretty valid. If you write something and call it a short story, and it doesn’t fit my definition, I’m not going to deny it or tell you how wrong you are.

I just probably don’t want to read it, and I think that’s a perfectly okay stance to have.

 

Related posts:

Fire and Storm – New Short Story Up
New Short Story – Murder
New Short Story : Theodore’s Adventure

Vegetable Season!

June is here, bringing with it a colorful and dizzying array of vegetables.

Gardens are filled to bursting with ripe and glorious healthy foods, and it’s the perfect time of year to visit your local farmer’s market and pick up some treats for your table.

Farmer’s markets are a great way to pick up fresh, local, seasonal goodies. When you buy your fruits and vegetables from these sellers, you can be certain your dollars are going to help people who are passionate about what they grow and what you’re eating. Your dollars support local farmers and stay in the community … and you also get some of the best-tasting, freshest produce money can buy. Many times, the food is picked just that morning rather than weeks ago, only to be planed, boated, or trucked in from distant locations.

Overwhelmed by the variety? Be brave and try something new. The internet is brimming with recipes for all sorts of alien-seeming veggies, from celeriac and patty-pan squash to kholrabi and beauty-heart radishes. You never know when your taste buds will fall in love with one of these ugly-but-charming fellows.

Many smaller communities have their own farmer’s markets in addition to the larger ones often found in major city areas. Visit http://www.localharvest.org/ to find a farmer’s market near you!

In addition, you can often sign up for a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) share and have a brimming box of veggies waiting for you at the pick-up site. This is a great way to force yourself to try new veggies, as you don’t have control over what goes in the box.

Do yourself a favor and try a new vegetable this year. Grill some asparagus this spring, or smile over a steaming cup of spicy celeriac and parsnip soup in the fall. Try your hand at a colorful stir fry and drizzle some maple syrup over a baked acorn squash.

Be courageous, be bold, be creative. It’s vegetable season!

No related posts.

My Rewards Program

Why Rewards?

Because sometimes that warm fuzzy feeling of having done the right thing just isn’t enough on its own.

When you’re looking at behavior modification, people really aren’t that much different from animals. Repetition and motivation are the keys to success.

I’m a fan of positive reinforcement in pet training, so I’m going to opt for that route with my own self-training as well.

Reward Rules

Any reward system should:

encourage good behavior
discourage bad behavior (without punishing it)
be flexible
encourage long-term repetition

If a system doesn’t do all of these things, then it probably won’t work as well. After all, I fancy myself smarter than a dog, so I probably need a tighter training program.

Behavior

Step one of any program is to decide what behaviors you want to modify and why.

For myself, I’m building the rewards program to encourage myself to work out and keep working out.

I know I feel better when I’m exercising, I know I want to have a tighter, healthier body, and I know how important it is to get started on this NOW.

Knowing hasn’t exactly translated into instant success, though.

In addition to knowing which behavior I want to encourage (could be working out, could be writing, could be anything, really) … I’m taking this opportunity to discourage some negative behaviors that I want to curtail AND to encourage some other behaviors as well.

I NEED to work out consistently.
I want to cut back on drinking. I know, I know, it’s fashionable for writers to drink–I like to buck the trends here.
I want to cut back on eating out. Granted, it’s not like we go crazy with this, but even one eat out a week is a significant cash drain, and we were getting pretty close to two per week.
I want to encourage myself to read more, without feeling like I’m being frivolous with spending money on non-essential items.

Rewards

The solution is to turn it into a game. Games work because they offer rewards. Even an intangible achievement is something to aim at.

One dollar is awarded for every day that I work out. Working out is at least 15 minutes of exercise. Usually, this should be a P90X dvd, but it can be things like bike rides if I need a break from the tv. Also, it’s incredibly beautiful outside right now.
For every seven consecutive days, a medium additional reward is given. This could be eating out once, or a video game if Steven and I pool our reward.
For every month with no missing days, a very large reward will be given, to be determined at the time of achievement.
Every missed day is a missing dollar and a break of any pre-existing streak.
There will be no streak-breaking penalty if a day is missed for valid reasons, but no dollar will be awarded for that day.

This pool of reward money can be spent on anything I want, but most specifically, I cannot have alcohol I do not “pay” for from my pool. My average drink would be a $2 drink, so if I want a glass of wine after dinner, I’d better make sure I have the cash for it.

Also, my cash pool can be used to buy books for my kindle. =]

Right now, the “cash pool” is figurative. I keep score on paper rather than dealing with actual dollars.

Success

So far, it’s working out pretty well. I’ve already hit my first streak reward (Final Fantasy XIII-2, here we come!) and I’m finding that the desire to keep my streak going is enough to at least get me out on my bike when normally I would have convinced myself that I could take a day off without hurting anything.

You

Any of you ever tried anything like this? Did it work for you?

Related posts:

Wellness Program Research
Elsewhere : The Science of Motivation

So I Have A Diabetic Cat … Now What?

Neens

So I have a diabetic cat.

I didn’t learn this until it was almost too late.

Two weeks, a lot of vet bills, a lot of panic and tears and terror later, he’s doing pretty well. We’re working on stabilizing his blood sugar and finding the right dose of insulin for him … but it was very touch and go there for a little while, and there were multiple times I checked on him, afraid that I’d find him dead.

This isn’t about him, really. This is about me wanting other cat owners to know the things I needed to know before all this happened.

The Symptoms We Missed

More hunger than usual. I completely missed this one because he wasn’t free fed and we didn’t allow him extra snacking.
Drinking far more than usual. I noticed this, but didn’t think it was a problem.
Urinating more than usual. This was masked by a VERY bad batch of kitty litter that happened to coincide with this problem – the litter was too dusty and caked up instead of clumping.

Shortly after that, we moved into our new home. Our cat doesn’t do well with stress. At all. We attributed the following missed symptoms to extra stress from the new house, when in reality, the stress of moving simply accelerated the existing problem.

Loss of appetite. We attributed this to not only the move, but also the fact that I was trying to switch him from his dry food to a wet food diet.
Lethargy. We thought he was just hiding from all the new sounds in the new house.

After a few weeks of this, we made the decision to take him to the vet. Even the few wet foods I had been able to coax him into eating in the past were no longer tempting him, including Tiki Cat Ahi Tuna blend, which is what feral cats are fed when they stop eating.

The Next Few Days In Hell

We took him to our vet (which is amazing and awesome and if you need a veterinary service for your pet in Madison Wisconsin, I cannot recommend Companion Animal Hospital more highly). They sprayed a towel with some feliway for us because we told them he was a stressed traveler. He was examined, given a kitty tree to play on (well, he mostly hid on it and looked miserable), and we talked with the vet about his symptoms and behavior.

They took enough blood to do two tests – one for FIV first, which was thankfully negative – and then one for a send-off full blood panel. They gave him Sub-Q (under the skin) fluids because he was dehydrated, and sent us home with some max-cal food (so that if he ate anything, it would pack a big punch) and an appetite stimulant.

The next day, he seemed fine. Better, actually. Pretty sure those Sub-Q fluids did him good. He ate on his own some.

Thursday, we get the call. His blood panel was back, and it was not happy news. His liver values were through the roof. We needed to take him to the Emergency Care clinic for an ultrasound asap. His blood sugar was also elevated higher than they liked to see, but the liver was the real worry for now.

We took him in and got an ultrasound, which showed enlarged liver, but nothing really terrifying. They sent us home after taking some more blood for a fructosamine panel to check his blood sugar over time, and some liver pills.

Saturday, we could barely coax him to stand up. We took him in because of the lethargy, and they decided to hold him overnight.

Overnight, he went from a lethargic cat who wasn’t eating much to a glassy-eyed wreck who didn’t move at all. He had a feeding tube and an IV, and a bunch of other unpleasant tests and things.

We took him home the next day, along with a prescription for insulin.

I won’t say much about his time at that Emergency Clinic, but I will say that they did not match up to Companion.

We kept up with all of his prescriptions and force-fed him wet food mixed with water using a baby food syringe. On Monday, he didn’t move much.

Tuesday, he purred for Steven, but his skin turned yellow and he didn’t have very good control over his back legs.

Wednesday, he purred for me, and we sent pictures of his skin in to the Companion Hospital, who agreed that bringing him in would do more harm than good. The doctor examined the photos, said it was definitely jaundice, and that it was Not A Good Sign.

We didn’t give up.

By Friday, his skin was back to normal color, he was eating on his own, able to jump up on the bed, complaining at me if I took too long refilling his food dish, and curling up in the crook of my arm to fall asleep with me.

The vet’s office gave us a donated glucose monitor to use. His blood sugar is still all over the place (and he doesn’t much like having his ears pricked twice a day) but things are better. Much, much better.

I really, really wish we’d noticed those symptoms ahead of time, though. The drinking and urinating alone (which was MONTHS ago) would have been enough to spark a diabetes blood check.

On the upside, he kind of looks like a zombie cat because of all the shaved bits on his belly, leg, and neck. The leg ring in particular strikes me as funny, because it looks like he needs to pull up his mitten.

Moving Forward

So, now we have a diabetic cat. There are some rules for living with a diabetic cat that are quite interesting, and good to know even if you’re old hat at human or canine diabetes.

Blood and Insulin

First off, the obvious one. Blood testing and insulin.

Test your cat’s blood sugar.

Humans test their glucose levels before giving themselves a shot, and they KNOW what’s happening. If they start to feel wonky, they know it means hypoglycemia, and grab a bag of M&Ms or something.

Your cat cannot do this.

Furthermore, your cat is in danger if the blood sugar gets to high (please refer to The Next Few Days In Hell above if you’re not sure why) but your cat is actually in MORE danger if it goes too low. Like, coma and death danger. If you give insulin to a cat whose blood sugar is already low, you could spark an attack. If you don’t notice the danger signs (because you’re at work, not just because you’re not paying attention) and get some honey rubbed on your cat’s gums, you WILL lose your darling pet. Up is bad. Low is BADBAD.

So what are the key numbers?

For humans, you want in the “under 100″ range. Ish. This is pretty much the same for normal, non-diabetic cats, though they can go higher without harm.
Neens cat shouldn’t be given insulin if his blood sugar is below 200.
For diabetic cats, between 200 and 300 is pretty gosh-darned good.
For reference, Neens tested above 600 before we found out he had diabetes.

I’m working closely with my vet to report his numbers to her. Together, we’re working on slowly increasing his dosage to find the sweet spot. I would never increase his dosage just because I thought it might help. I always, always, always talk to his doctor.

The actual insulin shot isn’t very traumatic. We tried the whole “neck ruff” thing, but we’re new at this and he’s got a shaved spot on his neck, so we’ve been using that. We can see the needle go in and make sure it’s seated properly under the skin.

The insulin, by the way, is expensive. Human medical insurance doesn’t cover the prescription like it would if it was for me, so I get the full brunt of the unbuffered cost of medicine. A little over $200 for a bottle that’s supposed to last 30 days. The vet said it could last 3 months, though we’ll still be throwing out the majority of the medicine in the bottle.

Also, an empty pickle jar works fine as a sharps container. It smells a little funky, but as long as you don’t have little kids with curious fingers, it’s safe.

Human glucose monitors are perfectly acceptable, but given how hard it is to get a good blood sample from Neens, it’s worth a few extra dollars to get one that requires a smaller blood dot. Walmart’s ReliOn monitors are not only some of the cheapest to purchase, their test strips (where the real cost comes in over time) are definitely the most affordable.

Diet

Diet has a HUGE (huge huge huge) impact on cat diabetes.

Cats, unlike both dogs and humans, do not process carbs. Humans and dogs actually do pretty well on a diet with rice and grains and whatnot in it.

Cats are straight-up carnivores. That “lamb and rice” cat food? The “and rice” is for YOUR human benefit (so it sounds tastier), not the cat’s. Some cat food companies actually list rice/blueberry/corn/whatever ingredients just so you will buy it, while still providing a good catfood because the ingredient is only there in very small doses.

All cats do better on a high protein/moderate fat/low carb diet, but for diabetic cats, it’s extra important. Every carb is like throwing gasoline on a raging diabetic fire.

You can actually manage a LOT of a cat’s diabetes through diet alone, for less than the cost of the insulin.

And by “manage” I mean that cats (again, unlike both humans and dogs) can actually heal themselves of diabetes.

That’s um. That’s huge. They will actually begin producing insulin again. Remember how I said above that you should keep testing your cat’s blood? Too many beloved pets are lost because the owner doesn’t realize the cat is making its own insulin, and they continue the previous dose of insulin without knowing any better.

So! First and absolutely most important thing about a cat’s diet?

No more dry food.

For a normal cat, it’s actually quite good to get them off dry food (though be aware that you may have to check for teeth problems, without the cleaning crunchiness from the kibble) but diabetic cats shouldn’t be fed dry food, period. The vet mentioned a single diabetic-prescription dry food, but said it wasn’t even as good as giving your cat a steady diet of fancy feast and cost a heckuva lot more.

Dry food doesn’t contain the moisture content a cat needs, and CANNOT contain the protein. It is also pretty much universally carby.

There are other arguments about dry food, including bacteria and fungus and chemical stuff that I won’t go into because I don’t think it’s pertinent here, but you’re free to look the stuff up yourself and make your own judgement call. There’s enough back and forthing on the dry food vs wet food debate to give political parties a run for their money. Any mommies out there who have done research on the whole “breast-feeding” vs “bottle-feeding” have an idea of what I’m talking about here.

For a diabetic cat, though, there’s no argument at all. No more dry food.

So what kind of wet food, then?

Low carb is king.

Thing is, protein is expensive. GOOD protein (muscle protein instead of “by-product” protein) is even more expensive.

To make a food cheap, the first thing a cat food company will do is add carbs and grains.

The next choice is to amp the fat content and lower the quality of the protein.

Finding a good quality wet food that has low carbs, high muscle meat protein, and moderate fat is like trying to ask a politician for money. Most cat food companies are very tight-lipped about their actual content percentages, measuring different things and not providing enough information to do comparisons. Can labels only specify the “minimum” which doesn’t do much when the “maximum” isn’t also stated.

All of that is farther than you really need to go, though.

If you go wet food, you’re like 75% of the way there.
If you go low carb wet food, you’re at 90%.

And for the record, there are a TON of low-carb fancy feasts – they’re just made from by-products instead of muscle meat to cut the costs so low. You don’t have to buy the fancypantsy expensive cat food in order to feel like you’re doing well by your diabetic cat. The insulin is expensive enough without making you spend a ton on food.

I’m feeding my cat Wellness brand cat food, and eyeballing a few others as possibilities, like Evo. DO stay away from anything Hill’s brand (sorry, vet offices, I know you sell them). Hill’s is very carby.

How Do I Know All This?

Research. Some was told to me by my vet, but in the darkest days, there were exactly two things I could do that made me feel like I had any power at all. I could keep forcing more food down his throat and I could research.

The best link I have was actually sent to me by a friend. It’s from CatInfo.org and is worth linking here.

http://www.catinfo.org/?link=felinediabetes < Basic Diabetes Stuff
http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods < Where Most of My Wet Food Info Came From
http://binkyspage.tripod.com/CanFoodNew.html < Binky’s list of cat food composition

Everything else I learned by doing random google searches and reading a lot of forum posts. There’s a strong feline diabetes community out there, and I can’t be more grateful that we live in the internet age.

Hope

My hope is that someone might do a google search that will land them on this page and give them enough information to know what to do. I hope they find out what’s going on a lot sooner than we did.

No related posts.

Dragon Unicorn Dinosaur Kangaroo … Thing.

With a balloon. And a cupcake.

A gift for my favorite Elizabear.

Related posts:

Art Synch May 2010
Art: Dinosaur Book Plate
Quick Fix or Right Thing?

Spindrift – A Fantasy Webcomic

So there’s this fantasy webcomic called Spindrift.

It’s pretty amazing.

The story progresses slowly*, but the art? The art is out of this world.

I thought some of you might want to follow it.

So here’s a link.

* what great serialized fiction doesn’t progress too slowly?

Related posts:

Fantasy Garden
Romance and Sex in Urban Fantasy
Serial Fiction

On Learning To See Flaws In Your Writing

The Stages Of Writing

Phase 1  is to think everything you write is amazing.
Phase 2 is the growing realization that everything you write isn’t actually as amazing as you thought. This is more than just getting a critique from someone –often, it’s actually understanding the thing being pointed out by the critiquer. This feels a bit like learning Santa Claus isn’t real. Your world view becomes a little shaken.
Phase 3 is the mounting horror as you come to believe that everything you write is so terrible that it should be burned in a fire. (This one isn’t as much fun as Phase 1)
Phase 4 is the calm, stubborn understanding that nothing you write will ever be perfect, but it’s never as bad as Phase 3 thinks it is and that it’s WORTH the pain of imperfection for the privilege of writing and being read.

Worst of all? You don’t stay in a single phase. You bounce around a lot. Heck, in Unicorns, I ran through the whole gamut, from 1 to 4 at least twice, if not three times.

Just because you’ve pushed through the pain of advancing to Phase 4, that doesn’t mean you get to rest on your laurels. It DOES mean that getting past Phase 3 is easier next time. And easier still the time after that.

How To Get Past Phase 1

Sometimes, you’re sitting on Phase 1. You can see Phase 2 from here — other people see your work and point out flaws. The frustrating thing isn’t that you don’t believe them, it’s that you DO believe them, and can’t see the flaws yourself.

The work reads fine to you.

First off? Big hugs.

Secondly? Realize that we ALL begin this way.

That being said, you can’t just sit there if you intend people to keep reading the stuff you write.

Reading Aloud

The first recommendation (and possibly, the most important) is to READ YOUR STORY ALOUD.

Record yourself doing it.

Replay the recording after a little bit of time has passed. A couple days, at least.

Ideally, you’ll catch a lot of stuff when reading, but if you don’t, hopefully you’ll start to hear some of the flaws when listening to it.

Critique Group

This one’s hard, because no matter how good or bad a writer you are, it’s difficult to have something you love poked, prodded, and picked to shreds.

But if you can’t see the problems, one of the very best ways to learn how is to have other people highlight them for you.

Pay attention. Understand as much as you can about what wasn’t working so that maybe you can see it when you write it again. Over time, maybe you’ll stop writing it, but in the short term, you just want to be able to recognize it when you see it.

Let Your Favorite Author Teach You

Another way to improve is to take a book/scene that you feel did a GREAT job of … whatever it is that your critiquers are telling you is missing from your stories. Characters, pacing, romance, action, dialogue … whatever it is. For the sake of argument here, let’s say that you are Rhonda, and you want to write Romance, but your readers keep telling you that your characters are cardboard-thin and your romantic scenes are awkward.

Rhonda loves Diana Gabaldon, so I want you to grab your favorite novel. Outlander.

Pick two scenes from Outlander. First, the opening scene – where the writer introduces the main character. Second, a very emotionally-charged romance scene. There are … ah…multiples to choose from. *cough, blush*

You should:

Read each scene once.
Type/copy the scenes into your own document. (not plagarism unless you pretend you wrote it). This is your fingers feeling out the words other people use. It sounds dumb, I know. Do it anyway.
Print out your typed copy (assuming that’s okay with you. You can do this digitally if you want, I just like to take notes)
You are going to destroy your printed copy. Sorry if that disappoints you. Grab multicolored highlighters. Dissect that copy. What worked? Highlight in yellow. What didn’t? Highlight in blue. What precise words were used to heighten the tension and make you feel like part of that character’s life? Highlight in pink. How long were the passages? Write that out to the side. What were the most powerful words? Pink again. Do things like highlight a phrase or dialogue and make a note : “because of this, I know the character has a good sense of humor” or “because of this, I know how strongly the character wants to kiss the hero.”
IMMEDIATELY AFTER DOING 4, go back to your story. Read the character introduction from a recent thing you wrote AND a love scene you recently wrote.

Now STOP, because you’ve just convinced yourself you suck. Deep breath.

You don’t suck. You CARE and you’re new at this and there’s NOTHING wrong with that. The only wrong thing here is to give up.

One more deep breath.

You just compared one of your first pieces of writing to someone you consider to be a VERY GOOD published author. If you came out of that comparison smelling of roses, I’d doubt your sanity. Nobody ever thinks they do well when compared to their heroes, no matter how good a writer they are.

What you need is to develop the kind of eye that can see the flaws in your own writing. Until you do that, you’ll keep writing them. (Heck, even after that, you’ll keep writing them .. but you’ll see them in revision and recognize them).

Now. Another deep breath. (don’t those feel good?)

Back to your writing.

Repeat number 4 above, but with your pieces.

This will hurt. Do it anyway. You’ll have more pink than yellow for now. That’s totally fine. Expected.

Draw lines to text and write notes in the margins “this didn’t work” or “bad sentence structure” or “need to do more X” (where X is something your favorite author did).

And when that’s all done?

Revise your original scenes. You’ll be tempted to just throw them out and completely rewrite them — I urge against this, because you’ll learn more from this revising than you will from a rewrite.

Don’t spend ages on this, especially if you’ve decided you won’t use it for anything. DO spend enough time to learn what it feels like to heavily edit your own writing at this level. It’s just two scenes — one for each big flaw you’ve got in your own writing. If you can’t revise two scenes to learn to be a better writer, then you’re really going to freak out the first time you submit an entire NOVEL filled with these errors and your agent/editor sends you a bunch of revisions.

This is the hardest way to learn, but you’re getting lessons from a successful, published author whose work you admire AND all your suggestions came from yourself. YOU saw them. YOU noticed them.

You did this.

And that is an amazing thing. =]

Don’t Give Up

Whatever you do, don’t give up on yourself OR your writing. So many times, I’ve heard people say that the most important writer trait is persistence and I believe them.

Related posts:

The Internet Is For … Learning?
Writing Space
Habits – Writing Space

Upcoming Game Of Awesome

The Unfinished Swan

Apparently, you throw paint to reveal hidden environmental bits.

Sound simple and maybe a little funky?

Check out this trailer.

Admit it, you kinda want to play it now, right?

PS3 Exclusive.

More details in this MTV post (really intriguing!)

Related posts:

Wii Game Reviews
Rift Game Basics
Sounds Gross, Is Awesome – Kefir

NaNoWriMo Musings

April, Not November!

It’s a bit early to be deciding/not deciding on whether or not to do a NaNoWriMo novel this year … but it’s a GREAT time to look back on previous NaNos, particularly if you participated last year, and evaluate.

What Worked?

I can write 50,000 words of the same characters/story.
I can write almost every day and find time for it.
It’s easier for me to focus if I change my environment, move somewhere with fewer personal distractions.
I like wordcount goals, because they give me a baseline to aim for.
I will hate every project I work on, at least once. If I push through that feeling, I always love it again on the other side.
I need to plan ahead. Without a plan, my stories veer off into strange and mostly useless territory as I try and figure out what my story wants to do. This is a great way to beef up my wordcount, but leaves me a right mess when it comes to fixing problems later.
Never, ever, under any circumstances, go backwards and edit. Ever. Always forward. Most valuable lesson ever, because without this, I would never reach the end of a story.
Finishing a story, even one I am not proud of, is its own strange and bizarre sort of beastie. If I’d kept abandoning drafts without finishing them, I might never have realized just how important the feeling of wrapping up a story IS.
Writing WITH another person, at the same time, made the entire experience more fun.

What Didn’t?

I learned :

I can write over 1k words in a fifteen minute writing sprint without too much strain … but the words I write rarely make me happy when I go back to them.
I hate time deadlines, they make me feel stressed and actually destroy my productivity as they approach.
I like the environment of a coffee shop … usually. I don’t like buying drinks every day (I am too frugal for this) and sometimes it’s so noisy and crowded that I write WORSE than I would have at home. Libraries are almost always too noisy. (When did THAT happen?). I need to learn how to get that focus at home, because there is no good, quiet, study place nearby that I can visit for free. (My current solution is to write in a closet, with a puffy headset that blocks out most outside noise. Not recommended for people suffering from claustrophobia.)
The pace of NaNo drains my energy and produces writing I am not proud of. It forces me to zoom past elements that I know I can solve if I stop and think about them, and praises wasted wordcount over elegant simplicity. I CAN write 50k words in one month, but I cannot write a novel that I am proud of in that same time frame. (However, NaNo taught me that I am CAPABLE of this thing, and that sure and certain knowledge gives me the confidence to write at the pace I am more comfortable with.

Your Turn!

What worked for you? What lessons did you learn that made you a better writer?

What didn’t work? What lessons did you learn that taught you unexpected things about yourself?

Related posts:

NaNoWriMo Fever
NaNoWriMo is Upon us!
NaNoWriMo is Uponxt Us