Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 53

Committing to Writing

I’m in an odd position. I’m between projects. I’ve deliberately put one aside, am in the planning stages of three more, and getting accosted by random ideas in the night. Spiralling plots and character arcs are keeping me from falling asleep.

I should write them down. I should. After all, I went over my regret about not keeping up with all my ideas here.

But to write them down, be it pen and paper or typing the flurry of ideas up….it feels like a commitment. Committing to writing that I will see that one project through to the end before the others. And the plots are still amorphous, the characters still in development. Everything is so variable that I can’t hold myself up to that commitment because I’m not sure what ideas tomorrow will bring when it comes to taming the plot or orchestrating character arcs.

Torn between that fear of commitment and my desperation to not lose the developments I’ve dreamt up, I’m hesitant to write things down wiht paper and pen. As a result, a compromise, I am sending myself emails that I can file away and sort.

But I have a feeling that I won’t be able to flood my email like this for long–I’m nearing certain space constraints despite deleting large files in my inbox and file folders. *pouts*

Perhaps I just need to get over my schooldays associations with binders and make friends with looseleaf and dividers. My brain has a lot of hangups.

What about you? Do you ever get hesitant about writing ideas down in notebooks or word files and want something more…shuffleable? Where you can adapt to how you would organize things?

 

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Further Notes On This Whole Scriptwriting Workshop Thing

So that workshop I’m teaching is coming up this weekend. I have it pretty well planned out (I hope). By the end, I’m planning that the kids will have each written a full scene. Not that I’ll tell them that. At least, not until we get to the end.

Writing can be scary enough. No sense letting them know that they should have a completed thing in less than hour.

I’m pretty sure I know what I want to say and how I want to say it, but just to be sure, I’m trying out my main point on all of you.

You are now my guinea pigs. Feel honored.

We build characters through the choices they make. If you’re writing something like a script for stage, you don’t have pages and pages to get into the heads of these characters. In fact, your characters become pretty dependent on whatever the director and actors envision for them, which can be nothing at all like what you intended.

But speech is an amazing power. Do you people-watch? Do you listen to conversations around you? Language – dialect, cadence, word choice – can tell you so much about a person. There is power in that to guide what a director or an actor imagines your characters to be.

Characters need to make choices, and to make an audience care about those choices, there needs to be some sort of conflict – something, whether internal or external, stands in the way of the characters achieving what they want. Not like a kid whose parents won’t let him eat ice cream before dinner. You need stakes. (Mm . . . dinner . . . steaks . . .)

Say you character learns of some illegal deal. She knows she should go to the cops, but then she may end up dead. Raise the stakes further: maybe a family member, someone she loves, is involved. Now there is internal conflict as well as external, and no option looks good.

Now you’ve made your audience care.

So, character, conflict, stakes. Add in a dash of goals, knowing what your characters want and where you intend the story to go, and writing a scene shouldn’t be so difficult.

But we’ll see. Anything can happen.

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Plot: My Writer Weakness

The fact that I actually had to stand still and think about what “plot” means and then go grab one of my writing books to confirm my theory pretty much says it all. Plot is my number one weakness as a writer. No question.

I remember every year in English class we’d come to the point in the semester when we’d be asked as a group to define plot. It may have been the only time during the year that I would avoid eye contact with my teacher because I wasn’t 100% sure of my answer. Then of course this baby would be broken out:

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I’d shake my head at myself and scowl because I felt I should have known intrinsically.

Then university came along. When studying English lit the plot of a novel is not even worth talking about. Hell, I didn’t even read a whole heck of a lot of novels –as they would be considered today. Thus, the diagram was only ever brought up in the first or second lecture in whichever creative writing class I was taking. Once. It was never deemed all important or truly relevant.

My creative writing classes were never labelled as such, but literary fiction really was expected. Plotless literary fiction. You could push the envelope with magical realism –hell, since Alberta is the Canadian centre of magical realism the genre was embraced– but anything else wasn’t really encouraged. Not discouraged, but not encouraged. I stuck to standard literary fiction and added historical fiction when I wanted to climb outside the box.

On top of that, I’ve worked far more with short stories than I have with novels. Short stories allow for a weaker plot than full novels because they’re a different art-form. Ambiguity is encouraged, only a couple of characters are permissible, the ending can be left hanging, and subplots can’t really exist within the constraints.

Are you starting to see my problem?

Without a great intrinsic grasp of plot, a lack of reinforcement, and a lack of practice, my plot skills are rudimentary at best. I know a story needs a beginning, a middle, an end. I know how to get from point A to B to C. I know that there needs to be a buildup to the final end, especially if there are lots of little ends throughout. Gluing all the pieces together, though, is where I falter.

When I’m forcing it I tend to sound like an instruction manual and move my characters around like robots because they need to be doing [THIS] [HERE] for my story to make sense overall. They become lifeless. Which makes my story lifeless.

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I’ve had discussions with people about plays/musicals/movies adapted from books where they say the other medium handled the plot better than the author of the book. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the plot if I liked the story. I read for characters, relationships, and culture. What happens to them matters but if I care about them that can be pushed to the wayside for me.

However, I completely understand that the world is not full of readers who agree with me. Plot matters to a lot of people. A LOT.

So I have to learn how to do it properly. And it can be frustrating. Writing instruction books help, so do other writers, and I can’t forget editors. Practice is probably the most important and significant aid. Knowing your weaknesses and your areas of struggle are the first step to overcoming them. And when you get to editing time you’ll know where to pay extra attention.

What about you? Do you have an area of writing that you struggle with? What have you done to overcome it?

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Don’t Buy the Problem: Writing Excuses”

When I finished at Samhain, I realized I had spent a decade working on and toward my writing career, taking jobs to support myself financially that dovetailed with my skill set while I focused on writing. Ten years on, I know I can and will be able to write no matter what else I’m doing, and I’d like to invert that scenario. My writing career has been built and is, at this point, going to be rather self-sustaining. I have an agent I adore and the ability to write good novels through adversity. There isn’t much more to be gained right now from continuing to focus on it principally. In other words, I’d like to settle down in a career. The writing will be there.

But given that background, it’s not easy for me to just apply to jobs and expect to land one, especially in the current market here. So I got some career and job hunt books out of the library (of course), and began reading. I hit on one called You Majored in What? by Katharine Brooks, and while it is aimed at college students and new grads, it helped me reframe the way I was thinking about careers and jobs and the finding thereof. The title, and the point of this post, are borrowed from it.

The book was helpful and I encourage anyone in college to read it, as well as anyone who has trouble identifying their own strengths. Two sentences leapt out at me; the first was this one, the second will be next week’s post. The first is: “Don’t buy the problem.”

In a section on motivation and positive mindsets and whatnot, Brooks writes that too often we buy into a problem we don’t need to. “I can’t job hunt while I’m in school, I’m too busy.” Substitute “write” for “job hunt” and you begin to see why I sat up and took notice.

Often, people really do want to write. But they throw up these reasons they aren’t because their fear is greater, and those excuses are just enough to tip them from wanting to write and doing so to wanting to write and not doing so. An easy way to reset that scale is to get rid of the excuses. Then the scale can tip back in favour of your want rather than your fear. So let’s look at some common problems we buy into that we don’t really have to. These are the writing excuses you’ve probably told yourself from time to time.

“I don’t have time.”

How often do you check Facebook on your phone? Or email your friends? If you add up the minutes spent on mundane activities (or, go head, put housework in there. Priorities, right?), you’ll invariably find that you DO have time; you’re just spending it on other things. Time management can be learned, but it starts with acknowledging that you really do have more time than you think. Maybe instead of going out to eat on your lunch break, you pack a lunch and spend half an hour writing at your desk while you eat. Or instead of emailing your friends, you write a page first. Little habits like these add up to entire books.

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” (aka, “I’m not good enough.”)

This one’s kind of my favourite. If you don’t write, then you’ll never figure out what you’re doing. You’ll never get good enough. The answer to this problem is what you’re using it to avoid. And everyone has to start somewhere. Nobody’s born writing publishable novels. So start somewhere, anywhere. Start daydreaming about that recurring dream you always thought would make a good story. Make a list of fun character names. Heck, open Word and just start typing. You WILL learn. But only if you start.

“I’m too tired.”

Unless you have an illness, the only time this one’s acceptable is if instead of writing you go to bed following the thought. In that case, you really were too tired. But if you don’t go to bed, what do you do instead? Veg out and watch TV? Futz on the computer? Read? Are those actually helping you rest and become less tired? No? Then you may as well write. Reading often stimulates the brain. Using screens stimulates the brain (it’s called blue screen, and it’s why you shouldn’t even look at your phone within an hour of bedtime). If you’re doing those when you’re tired, you can write.

Think of your own usual excuses and apply the same logic: don’t buy the problem. “I wrote yesterday” -> I didn’t write today, and my book won’t write itself. “Reading this book on writing is *like* writing.” -> my page count isn’t getting any longer this way.

In a lot of cases, excuses happen because we think of writing as a monolithic activity: that person who can spend hours in front of their computer and finish a book in a few months. Most of us are not that writer. Even those of us who have the time to be that writer aren’t that writer. Writing is a lot of mental energy. Break your goals down into manageable bites (post in two weeks!) and most of these excuses simply lose sway.

There ARE times we can’t write and need to take that break. Coming off the end of a draft. During times of extreme personal duress. When we’re completely stuck and may need to rethink half our plot. But when those legitimate reasons come up, we’ll know it. The garden variety ones aren’t the same thing. Don’t buy the problem.

What are your common excuses and how can you not buy their problems?

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Mobbing Midnight – Approaching Short Stories Differently

When April Steenburgh approached me to contribute a story to Mobbing Midnight, An Anthology of Crows, I said yes right away. Why? Well, I’ve worked with April before for Fight Like a Girl and What Follows. But also–birds.

I’ve always had a fondness for birds. My last name, Larking, means to pull tricks on people. Lark within it, has made me interested in birds for as long as I remember.

After I agreed to do the anthology, I remembered my first real encounter with crows on a symbolic level. And it was inextricably tied to my writing.

My first rejection of a manuscript, I was perhaps 14 years old? I didn’t keep track that well. I sent my very very first horrible novel off to a major publisher because I totally thought it was magnificent. The day I got the rejection, two massive crows had landed in the park space in front of my childhood home, croaking away in the bare branches, stark against the dismal grey of the winter February sky. I wondered if it was an omen. I wondered if omens existed or whether I was imposing meaning upon those crows as I looked over my form rejection.

I’ve seen many crows since then. They haven’t all carried the meaning with them. But if there is no other living thing in sight except for those crows…I wonder what is going to happen next. Sometimes, it seems to be nothing. Sometimes, it’s a massive change or disruption of my family dynamics.

So I wondered, thinking back, if I could make fiction with the crows looking over my shoulder.

I have the idea. It’s different from my previous stories–a focus on science fiction. A focus on the goal of a quiet life. I’m excited to write the story, despite my history with crows often coming with bad news.

I have a feeling that a lot of people are tied to some animals in similar ways. It might be crows for you, as well, that makes you think of the hard times in your life. It might connote the opposite, symbolizing the happier times and victorious emotional events. I think I might be able to work through it if I write this story.

Click here to support the Mobbing Midnight Kickstarter happen! Both E. V. O’Day and I are involved and are looking forward to sharing our stories with you. You can make that happen for us. For as little as $12 USD, you can get the anthology and see how both of us are pushing forward, improving, and conquering our writing anxieties. There are so many great authors involved and we are all looking forward to seeing what we are all writing. So pitch in here!

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A Familiar Setting

I am embarking on the reread of one of my favorite series. Usually, I’m not a patient reader. I don’t want to wait six years for the next book! But with this series, I will and I do.

The series is Green Rider by Kristen Britain.

One thing I’ve been noticing a lot this time through that I didn’t in past readings is her setting. It’s a familiar one to me, because it is very much Maine in many ways.

The author worked as a Park Ranger at Acadia National Park (probably still does, though I haven’t seen her at the grocery store for a while), and Acadia has been an ever-present neighbor most of my life. So when she describes the trees and the blueberry barrens and the pink granite, I know exactly what it all looks like.

I never thought about it much as a kid. My local geography was what I knew, so that was what my mind supplied when I read, unless told otherwise. I certainly didn’t appreciate the familiarity of the world through which this series moves.

But I wonder how approachable the more technical descriptions are for someone without that knowledge – someone who never imagined that granite could be pink, or that squirrels have suspect aim with pinecones, or that wild, low-growing blueberry bushes turn a brilliant red in the fall.

Sometimes I catch myself skimming the technical parts with the names of trees and quartz composition of stone, then I make myself slow down and savor the familiarity of the fantastical setting. The physical grounding it gives me within the story – a thing I certainly didn’t notice when I discovered the first book back in middle school – is something I want to accomplish in my own stories.

For now, I’m observing how it’s done in this series and working to expand my concepts of place and setting.

If you’ve read any books that feel viscerally familiar in a geographical sense, I’d love to hear about them!

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Random Inspiration: Listen to Your Gut

For those who actively follow me or Anxiety, you’ll have noticed talk of a fun little project in the works called Mobbing Midnight. It’s not my day to chat it up, so I’ll stop there, but as I was working on my contribution, I thought of a blog post.

I was also reading this great article by Jeff VanderMeer that’s going to show up on the Facebook and Twitter feeds in the next week or so that sparked some ideas.

Anyway, back to my story. I was going over my story notes because I’ve had the flu since writing them all down (lucky me!) and was in desperate need of a refresher. I’d come up with my fastest character-name list ever because I had a feeling one or some or all of the names might change in the future, so I didn’t want to devote too much time to it.

But of course, one of the names didn’t work. I couldn’t write my story with the name in it. In the interest of saving time and getting to the actual writing deed –it was my first day feeling almost like myself and I knew I needed to get some words down while the good wave lasted– I turned to the internet.

I didn’t go to my regular name source, , as I have a slight tendency to get a little carried away in the etymology. In the interest of containing spoilers, I won’t share what I typed into my search engine that led me to this amusing doodad: .

My second random search on the generator I chose gave me a name that had a lovely, eerie ring to it. Did I mention mine is a horror story? I’d never heard the name before so I popped it into Google, as one does with everything these days. The plethora of historical and cultural details connected to this name so perfectly matched my story that it defies logic. Good thing that I don’t rely on logic in my process.

Silly things like this that seem guided by fate make my day as a writer. That and actually getting some good words down on the page. Both made Sunday a double whammy of delight for me –one I really needed.

The moral of my story is basically go with your gut. Does that name feel wrong? Look for another. Does that name seem great? Look into it. Does that name so perfectly fit that you’re waiting for lightning to strike you at your desk? Bingo.

The creative process is a dark beast of mystery who occasionally sheds bits of inspiration but usually leads most of us blindly by the fingertips. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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Ask an Editor: What is the writer’s responsibility?

This is a topic dear to me that has been making the rounds of discussion recently due to a certain movie based on a certain book releasing in theatres. Especially as someone who has worked in the romance industry, I get asked for my opinion on this one regularly.

What responsibility does a writer have to their audience? Is it okay to tell problematic stories?

 

My answer has been developed exactly because of working in the romance industry. A lot of people will say the only thing you owe a reader is a good story. I say bullshit to that. A lot of people will say that readers will know a story is fiction. Again, bullshit.

As a professional editor who has worked with an erotica publisher,  I think that nonconsent fantasy, for example, needs to presented *as a fantasy*, through the marketing material, an author’s note, what have you. Writing is communication, even fiction, and as such acts as social commentary. Presenting nonconsent fantasy straightforwardly without any context saying anything to the contrary is thus as endorsement of the material. Readers knowing something is fiction is, honestly, that’s a cop-out. The repeated presentation of nonconsent as acceptable only reinforces it in the societal narrative, and people contributing to the societal narrative via authoring books need to be responsible for what that output condones.

There are ways for an author to present a problematic viewpoint without endorsing it. If you don’t do this, you as the author are essentially supporting whatever content you are providing, because you wrote it. (Yes, I took poetry: don’t assume the I is the writer; however, the viewpoint has to come from somewhere.) Here’s the thing. I had an author once who wanted her hero to chase her heroine around the house and all the way into her car to prevent her from leaving during a difficult conversation the heroine wasn’t ready to have. The author couldn’t understand why I pared the scene down to remove that aspect. She repeatedly would defend her heroes’ bad actions by claiming they were an alpha hero and the heroine wouldn’t know she actually wanted whatever was happening. If the author doesn’t even recognize how her fiction is problematic, how is the reader supposed to?

Writing–particularly stories!–is meant to convey values from generation to generation, group to group, at its heart. Storytelling was an oral tradition designed to do this. Just because we’re all fancy with our Interwebs and our entire industry around it, that hasn’t changed. If you contribute a problematic story to the cultural narrative, you are responsible for it. So a story that features unchecked racism, abuse, misogyny, ableism? You may think it’s not your problem, but if you’re a writer, there is no way for it not to be. You are contributing to the narrative that shapes our society. And you can’t claim it doesn’t. Stories and society go hand in hand. The more open our society becomes toward LGBT people, the more we hear their stories. The same is true in inverse! The more stories we hear about LGBT people, the more open we become to them. The LESS we hear about them, the less we care.

This doesn’t mean you have to become a social justice warrior. But you do need to be aware of what’s in your story and what your story says, and take steps to mitigate problematic elements. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone gets things wrong. But you have to at least try. If your story features someone of a different race, make sure to find someone of that race who can read and make sure you’re not stereotyping or culturally appropriating. If you write something seemingly “easy” like romance, hire a freelance editor before you self-publish who should be able to point out problematic dynamics. Even if the editor thinks it’s fine for you to have them, a good editor will make you aware they’re there so you can decide if you want your story to convey what it does.

(If anyone is interested in such services, I do freelance. Email corra.jessica@gmail.com for details.)

So of course authors have the responsibility to tell a good story. But a good author has the responsibility to be aware of what they’re contributing to the social narrative.

I would ask you, if you are someone who thinks an author only owes you a good story, to keep you entertained–if you don’t think the author needs to worry about problematic material, what does that say about your stance on problematic material in our cultural narrative? The thing is, I’m not advocating censorship. I AM advocating awareness of what you’re saying and why you’re saying it, and being clear when something in your story is problematic if you do not condone such things. (If you do condone them, that’s your right too but you need to be aware either way.)

 

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Writers Dealing with Rejection

Okay, so you’ve seen me cram in a revision for a deadline.

And you’ve seen me hold my breath.

So now you get to see my rejection.

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I got a cold rejection, no letter, no words of encouragement. I’m guessing my story did not fit their vision for the theme. I get that–I was hoping that by addressing a tangent, I could make a less-rivalled space in the anthology. It wasn’t to be.

So I posted on facebook that I had the rejection and was quickly joined by several other friends who had also been rejected by the same anthology. It was lovely to have a community around me of people in the same boat. However, one unexpected thing came out of the thread.

Rivalries in quality of rejection letter.

Almost accidentally, it became a #MyRejectionIsWorseThanYourRejection. Some of the authors recieved a note that the story was enjoyable but not the right fit. I found out by Submittable update. Others didn’t even find out by email–they happened upon their rejection that hadn’t pinged them.

In the end, it came down to one thing: we all submitted. We all didn’t get through the long run. And that’s okay.

I got my file back, took a look at the story, and started to think about how I could strengthen it. Short story writing does frustrate me because it is often something that needs to be rewritten a lot. It’s not about an outline like a novel. It’s about writing, exploring, returning, and refining.

I’m ready to submit again.

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Mobbing Midnight with April Steenburgh

April Steenburgh is an author, freelance editor and eBook formatter. Her short story ‘How Much Salt’ can be found in ‘The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity’, published by DAW, and she has edited two previous anthologies- ‘Fight Like a Girl’ and ‘What Follows’. She is also the electronic resources and online instruction librarian at a community college in NY. When not engaging in writerly pursuits, she can be found up to her elbows in dirt in her extensive gardens, geocaching, or firespinning. You can find her at http://aprilsteenburgh.com/.

April’s Post

For about nine years I worked in a Borders/Waldenbooks, for a good piece of that time as a store manager. I was lucky in that the company encouraged in store signings- and not just with the big names or NYT Bestsellers. I had the freedom to hold events with local or less known authors that would benefit from the exposure. It was, honestly, my favorite part of the job (closely followed by the book discount). Some people have their rock or movie stars to idolize and get all tongue tied at the thought of being near. Me? Authors.

But, wow did I learn I loved working with authors.

My first sale as an author was to DAW, an anthology called “The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity”. I would never had been brave enough to submit to the anthology had I not been encouraged, had not spent so much time around people devoting so much of their time and energy to the craft. My editors were amazing- tough where they needed to be and encouraging in all the best ways.

I wanted to make anthologies. I wanted to work with authors, other writers who might not think they have what it takes to get published, who might not have an idea of how to get into publishing. So when my long-time, long-distance friend Christy (half jesting, I assume) dropped the idea for the Fight Like a Girl anthology, I ran with it. The support we received was incredible. The book we put together was filled with beautiful pieces by new or not very well known authors. I was able to pay new authors a professional rate for their work. I loved it.

This was going to be a Thing. I could tell.

The second anthology, What Follows , did not do as well via crowdfunding. It did not have the culturally relevant pull that Fight Like a Girl had had, but again- I had some talented authors and some excellent stories. So we put the book together anyway, working on the knowledge the authors would get royalties even if we couldn’t pay them outright for their stories.

That brings us to now. Refusing to get discouraged by the fact What Follows did not fund, I have gathered some familiar faces as well as some new authors for another anthology. Mobbing Midnight is different in that it is multi-genre. I have fantasy stories; I have historical fiction and horror. I have two authors with backgrounds in the biological sciences contributing. The glue holding it all together is crows. And some really talented authors excited to write about crows.

This did become a Thing. I enjoy nothing more than working with authors to put these books together. It is an incredible experience, for everyone involved. It is a lot of hard work as well as a lot of fun, and is 100% worth it. Being able to write checks to the authors when we fund…that moment where I get to send them the final compiled eBook, physical book…I don’t think I can adequately translate the grin that stretches across my face.

I am not a big publishing house. I am not independently wealthy. I am an editor, I am very good with the software needed to create an eBook, and I have an excellent friend who does a phenomenal job creating print layouts and cover designs. These are projects that need the support of the reading community to thrive. We appreciate every backer we get, and love putting together interesting and unique anthologies for them.

The Kickstarter

E.V. O’Day and Kate Larking are both in the line-up for Mobbing Midnight. You want to read their stories, right? Click here and help make the book happen with Kickstarter! Tight budget? That’s okay; we still love you! Spread the word about the anthology!

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