Megan Morgan's Blog, page 26

T Is For Transitions

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]TRANSITIONS

So you’re writing a book, and it starts off in the rural countryside in the mid-1700’s, then it jumps to the year 2065 in a colony on Mars. Sure, why not? Things change, characters grow. But how do you get from pre-industrial revolution to Mars? It’s very messy and sticky and complicated, so it’s best just to write A FEW YEARS LATER at the start of the next chapter and begin on Mars.

No? One of the worst things about writing is creating adequate transitions, that don’t jump too far ahead without providing the necessary information to make the transition smooth. It can jar the reader to do otherwise, even if the description of your book says, “From his humble beginnings as a farmhand in 1700’s rural America to his journey into space centuries later…” I mean that’s cool and all, but how did it happen? Here’s why transitions are hard and suck:

– Important details need to be addressed. You can’t always gloss over chunks of time. It’s important to know your space-cadet farmer also became a vampire at some point, that’s why he lived so long.

– There’s lots of ways to create transitions: chapter breaks, time jumps, outright statements like “a few hours later,” or by making the transition obvious by showing your character has aged or changed their underwear. It takes creativity and just a smidge of frustration.

– If your transitions are too difficult to create, maybe you started the story in the wrong place. Maybe it’s not important that your Mars vampire used to work on a farm in the 1700’s. Just tell us about that in a dream sequence, because everybody loves a dream sequence.

Smooth transitions move the story along at an interesting and satisfying pace. They help jump over unimportant details that would bog the story down. They make reading a delight, because we all wish we could skip the boring parts of life like showering and work and go right to the bar to play pinball.

A FEW MINUTES LATER…

I still hate writing.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

S Is For Self-Publishing

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]SELF-PUBLISHING

This post is for the people who have tried, or are thinking about trying, self-publishing. As if being a writer isn’t crazy enough, you are, or want to be, the publisher as well. For the rest of you big-time traditionally published authors rolling in your bestseller money, get the heck out of here so we can talk in private. Go on, get! We don’t want your kind around here.

All right, now that they’re gone…

Self-publishing has numerous benefits. You get to retain creative control, and the money, and if you’re already traditionally published you know not all publishers are created equal. Some of them, you might as well have self-published in the first place for all they help you. Dirty Dick’s House of Writers based in Vermont isn’t going to get you on the NYT bestseller list, probably, even if they’re technically a ‘publisher.’ But self-publishing is a lot of work, as well, and you should remember:

– You have to do everything, and pay for everything: editing, cover art, formatting, getting the book up on sales channels. But as most movies about writers tell us, all of us have a trust fund or a great aunt who died and left us a fortune, and we spend our days in front of an ancient typewriter smoking a pipe and gazing out the window at green meadows, so you shouldn’t have to worry about this.

– You also have to do your own promoting, and if you think most people don’t care what you have to say now, wait until you tell them you wrote a book. You have to do targeted promoting, which means finding the audience that loves stories about child serial killers with talking pet goldfish. The BookBub listing for this category is $3000.

– You will find you’re not nearly as artistic at creating covers or adept with publishing software as you dreamed yourself to be. Just have your five year-old nephew create some ‘abstract art’ in Paint that really speaks to the theme of the story.

Self-publishing can be very rewarding. In some aspects, it’s like buying yourself a trophy for a job well done, but hey, you got a trophy and most people won’t even have any idea you bought it yourself, they’ll just congratulate you. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see your accomplishments flourish out there in the world. Self-publishing can also be the worst thing ever, because it’s expensive, difficult, and it’s easy to drown in a sea of other books. Don’t worry about that. Smoke your pipe and get back to writing, you’ve got to finish the sequel to your child serial killer goldfish book: Killer Tots 2: Things Get Fishier.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

R Is For Readers

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]READERS

I talked about how authors are the worst, now let’s discuss the other side of that terrible equation: readers. It turns out they aren’t going to just let you cram whatever inane disjointed idea you come up with down their throats and swallow it happily. They want things like substance, plot, sympathetic characters, and interesting storylines. Back in my day, we walked ten miles, both ways, uphill, in a blizzard, just to read self-important, boring, structureless drivel. And we were grateful! Kids these days.

If you’re going to write, you’re going to want someone to read it, and then you’re going to have to put up with people’s opinions. You can’t please everyone all the time, but you probably want to please a few people for at least a couple hours on Friday. Before you try jumping through those flaming hoops, consider this:

– Some people will just never like the stuff you write. You can try showing up at their house and smacking them, but I’ve been told it doesn’t work and ends in restraining orders. However, some authors wrote their best stuff in prison!

– Once you create beloved characters, they belong to more than just you, they also belong to your audience. You have to be true to the story, or you’re doing your readership a disservice. Let Misery be a cautionary tale in killing off characters you’re just tired of.

– Inevitably, some people who read your stuff will want to review it. Everyone has an opinion, but not everyone has to go on a reviewer’s website and write a long diatribe about how the reviewer is a flaming bag of dog feces. I mean, unless you’re tired of your career and want to end it right there.

Readers, of course, are why we write. You can keep your diary private (and please do) but most writers want their work to be read. There’s nothing like having a devoted readership, to have people give you their honest, heartfelt opinions of your work, and to know you’re not screaming into the void. I mean, except NOT writing, which gives you altogether less anxiety and desire for the approval of others. Try something less stressful and public, like being a politician.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

Q Is For Quantity

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]QUANTITY

Any old person can call themselves a writer, if you want to be pedantic about it. If you write a classified ad, or a letter to your Mom, technically you’re a writer. Just being literate makes you a writer. If you write nonsensical phrases on index cards and sell them to your confused friends for a quarter, you’re a paid writer. But at this point, people who write actual stories and books are going to write you into their next book as a character who gets torn asunder by wolves. Wolves who are drawn to the sweet taste of index cards.

Writers, or authors, if you want to get snooty about it, are defined by three things: how much caffeine and/or liquor they consume in any given twenty-four hour period, how wild the look in their eyes is, and the quantity of stuff they write. Also, by the number of cats they own, sometimes. The quantity of stuff you write is what puts you over the line from literate person to person who took that innocuous skill and did unspeakable things with it. However:

– Not everything you write is gold, or silver, or even lead. Practice makes perfect. There’s always going to be a small pile of perfect next to your huge mountain of…well, you know.

– The more you write, the better you get at it. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? I don’t know, use Google Maps.

– You write tons of stuff just because it feels good to write, and hope something usable comes out of that. Writing will also make you feel really bad at times, no matter how much you churn out. It’s like the stomach flu in that way.

One of the worst things about writing is…writing. Sure, it’s great to have a huge body of work to look back on, learn from, and take pride in. It feels good to create, to produce words, and you’ll eventually discover you’ve written more than you ever expected to. But consider this: every one of those bits of writing was a TV show you could have binge-watched instead of crying because you can’t make the plot work; some spackling you could have scraped off with a putty knife instead of a character that wouldn’t cooperate; a jet engine you could have built from scratch instead of pounding your head against the wall trying to make a story work. Stop writing and go invade a country instead, it’s easier.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

P Is For Plot

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]PLOT

As if writing isn’t frustrating and complicated enough, you can’t just make up some characters and have them do nothing, even if they’re super interesting like being aliens or living underneath Antarctica, or both. You need a story, a plot, something for them to fight against and for. I mean, that’s why people read, so I’m told. If scrubbing the floor and doing laundry to a pointless conclusion of eventual death with no heart-stopping adventure turns your crank, that’s just what we call real life. Heaven knows we’ve had enough of that. Even Cinderella got to have a fairy godmother and go to a ball.

You also need a satisfying conclusion. Cinderella got her prince, but if her wicked stepmother had just beat her and put her back to work scrubbing pots at the end that would be a valuable lesson to our children about not wearing impractical glass shoes. However, plots are better, but here’s how they make you feel like you’re trying to stuff your fat foot in a shoe that is somehow bizarrely sized for only one person on earth:

– Sometimes you create a plot that’s too complicated and convoluted to unravel. Sure, you can just drop a fairy godmother in to sort things, but you and I both know that’s a cop-out. Make Cinderella slay her evil family with a magical sword, instead.

– Oftentimes you can’t see how a plot resolves itself until you get near the end. This both makes you feel creative and terrified you might have just wasted hours of your life writing this book and now you can’t end it. You’re trapped. Forever.

– Your plot may seem to be healthy at first and then drop dead somewhere along the road. Should have sprung for those glass horseshoes.

One of the worst things about writing is creating a smooth, plausible, interlinking plot that carries the story from beginning to end and wraps everything up in a satisfying conclusion. Even worse, you need to have subplots that interconnect and wrap up adequately as well. When this is done with skill, it is indeed like you have a fairy godmother fixing your rotten problems for you. When you can’t make that magic happen, you’re going to bibbidi bobbidi boo-hoo all day.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

O Is For Originality

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]ORIGINALITY

When I was 14 I started writing, and I wanted to write just like Stephen King, whom I adored. It turns out I couldn’t write like Stephen King, because he has magical powers that I didn’t possess at the time: mainly, the ability to create coherent plots, believable characters, and a firm grasp of grammar and story structure. All THAT minor stuff aside, I was just like him because I wrote about murder and vampires.

A lot of us start out imitating our favorite authors and stories, because we need a starting point and it’s easier to rip off someone’s face and wear it like a mask instead of learning how to do our own makeup. (See, I write just like Stephen King!) But originality comes with practice, and these are the worst things about it:

– Your original ideas may not seem very clever or interesting to you. Clearly, you should cut out your favorite author’s brain and stuff it in your own head.

– You may still find yourself imitating others and even plots of other stories. Just change the prom queen’s name from ‘Carrie’ to ‘Kerri’ and the dog’s name from ‘Cujo’ to ‘Blujo,’ and you’ve got your own story. What the hell does ‘copyright’ mean?

– Finding your voice takes time. You might do a lot of crying and screaming, in the meantime. Maybe your own voice is just screaming.

Being your own special brand of writer, with your own unique things to say, and your own style and flair, is not something you innately begin with, unless of course you do, and then you’re probably a demon and should be exorcised from this earth. While having a strong, singular voice and story ideas so original people know who wrote it without even looking at your name is awful special, you could also just go cut your favorite author’s hands off and use them instead (STEPHEN KING! I am your literary nemesis! Take that. I mean, you’ve never written a story about someone torturing and maiming their favorite author…).

Anyway, guys. Walk your own path.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

N Is For Notes

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]NOTES

Ignoring all logic and common sense, I continue to write stories. Sometimes I write big stories, that span multiple books, because apparently I don’t care to minimize any disaster I create. Despite all the advice I’ve tried to give you up until this point, you’re probably going to keep writing stories too, aren’t you? You absolute masochist.

Well, if you’re going to write stories, and if you’re going to write stories that turn into a series, and even if it’s just contained to one book, you’re probably going to need notes. One of the worst things about writing is trying to keep things organized and not forget an important plot point like the magical cat that showed up in chapter three and then disappeared. You also can’t go about all willy-nilly changing people’s names and appearance. But, here’s the problem with notes:

– They will remind you how dumb you are. How did you start off writing sci-fi and turned it into a western halfway through? Wait, why did I add hockey players?

– If, like me, you write things down on paper, you’re probably at some point going to write something down that later makes no sense and wonder what’s wrong with your brain. The phrase “hot buttered lobsters as hockey pucks” really doesn’t help me out, self.

– You might lose your notes, like you’ve already lost your mind.

Notes just remind you what a strange, forgetful person you are. The kind of person who writes about cowboy hockey players in space. Never mind that notes help you organize your thoughts, keep plot points in order, and eliminate lost story threads, making for a tighter, cleaner manuscript. Who needs notes? Not you. Not me! Just throw anything in there and stir it all together, like the world’s worst vat of jambalaya. Someone will eat it. Just tell them it’s ‘art.’

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

Happy Easter!

Have a hoppy day, peeps!

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Filed under: Holidays

M Is For Message

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]MESSAGE

As if writing isn’t hard enough, I found out you can’t just write stuff and not have it make any sense or be connected to anything in reality at all. It turns out most stories need to have a message, or a theme, which conveys something to your readership. Whether it’s an allegory about treating each other with kindness or a message as simple as “don’t drink six bottles of Pepsi in a row,” stories are richer and more compelling if they have a message. Well, I’m soooo sorry literary world, that every single one of my stories is really just about how evil spiders are. Is that not deep enough for you? I can add cockroaches in there, too.

It turns out that most stories have a message built in, which comes from constructing your plot. Yet, still:

– You may struggle to figure out what your overreaching message is, and not be able to clearly define it at first. Pro tip: it’s probably about the evil, crafty sneakiness of spiders.

– You may find spots in your story that don’t support your message and are out of place. Whatever. We all have that one friend who says they like every living creature but still step on spiders.

– If your message is too heavy-handed, it’s going to feel like a sermon. Tell a story, don’t preach. Unless, of course, it’s about you know what and how they just roll up in your house like they pay rent and chill on your pillow.

One of the worst things about writing is trying to artfully and subtly weave a message into your story. It’s often called the theme, and it’s important, and it’s how you connect to your readers and it says a lot about what you care about and wish to convey to the world. Stories are almost always a message. A message you should stock up on Raid and be ever-vigilant, for they are silent and insidious, and they think it’s really funny when you scream and run like that.

Here’s a fun exercise to help you out: re-read this post and tell me what the main theme is. That’s right, it’s how much I hate writing.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing

L Is For Language

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

Check out each letter’s post here.
[image error]LANGUAGE

It turns out if you’re writing a book about outlaws in the Old West, the tone and language of the story is different than say, writing a space opera or a romance novel set in the bleak landscape of the Arctic. As if it isn’t hard enough to use words in the first place, now we’re expected to use appropriate ones in the right context to convey mood and setting. This is why I tried to warn all of you about writing. They keep changing it up on us!

Unless you’re really good and clever and people put up with you because of that, you have to be careful not to get anachronistic. Still, when you go back through your book told from the point of view of African tigers in the Victorian age of exploration, you find things like this:

– Passages that completely fall out of tone with the rest of the story and seem crammed in there. You have to rewrite these, or take them out altogether.

– Words and ideas that wouldn’t be appropriate to your theme and setting. You can’t have your Mongol princess saying “gnarly, dude!” (Though on a sidenote, I love the show Vikings and they’re constantly doing this. Ragnar told Floki to “shut your face” at one point.)

– You later find out a device your character is using wasn’t invented until twenty years later. Sometimes you can play this off as suspension of disbelief, or hope no one knows, as every historical TV drama in existence does. If all else fails, call it Steampunk.

One of the worst things about writing is getting your language right, and consistent, and appropriate to the setting, through the entirety of a book or several books. Sure, it helps immerse the reader in your reality, it makes the story seem genuine, and it helps the prose flow. It also fits the book neatly with others of its genre. But think about this: someone has to be the first person to write about space colonists. By that I mean, 1600’s Pilgrims who go into space, and maybe they have cell phones, and maybe a couple iPads, you know, to take some selfies with the aliens. I sure as hell am not gonna write it, but someone should.

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Filed under: A to Z Challenge, A to Z Challenge 2017 Tagged: blog hop, funny, writing