How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book

Pros and Cons of First and Third Person Point of View

2012-01-22T11:07:00.000-05:00

One of my online students recently emailed me with a very good question. Many book writers struggle with this during revision: which to use, first person or third person.

Which has the most impact on the story? What are the pros and cons of each voice?

Sometimes the writer will create "islands" or scenes or snippets of writing in different points of view, as she moves through making the manuscript. This is absolutely fine--it gives our random creative selves freedom to test out many options. But when you've finally assembled your first draft, you need to settle it down. You need to choose a point of view that tells the story best.

A wonderful writer, much published, once told me this secret: for newer writers (new to book-length works), it's easier to get to know the characters in first person voice. "The first book is often first person," she said, "the next ones are in third person."

I found this true. My first novel was attempted in third person but I had a terrible time bringing the main character to light on the page. She seemed so distant. On the advice of a writing teacher, I converted her scenes to first person.

Suddenly she was visible, audible, clear to me.

But when I began work on my second novel, the me-me-me of first person was a bit hard to take. First person can come across very self-absorbed. Which is beautiful in short pieces, tiresome in longer ones, like listening to a rant. To make first person palatable, much has to be worked in the environment of the story--letting the setting (container) reflect the emotions of the first-person narrator, rather than the narrator always delivering them.

In crafting my first book in first person, I learned this the hard way. My teachers red-penciled out long and, to me, lyrical passages of self-reflection. I remember one x-ed out an entire page, writing "Enough!" in the margin. And it was. I'd learned one of the downsides of first person voice--it can be way too much.

My current novel, written in third person, is difficult in its own way. Third is more distant, so I have to work harder to bring out the emotions of each character. I usually write "islands" in first person, in their voices, to get to know them. Then switch over to third for the actual scenes and chapters

Memoir--Its Particular Challenges
Memoirists have a tricky task here--memoir is always written in first person (except for very experimental memoir) because it's all about me, the narrator, anyway. It's my story, and no one else can tell it. So the memoir runs the risk of being very blah blah blah about their own precious thoughts and feelings, which the reader may not care about.

I've been enjoying two memoirs this week that do very well with the first-person challenge: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller, and Let's Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell.

Fuller makes use of setting brilliantly--we completely get her personality in the story, but we see it against the very large backdrop of the Rhodesian civil war, and that puts her personal angst in perspective beautifully.

Caldwell falters occasionally in her memoir. A long chapter about her alcoholism left me slightly bored with her; I found myself skipping ahead to where the story reunites with her friend's story, the meat of this book (about her friend's death). I found it hard to just have Caldwell's musings without the stronger backdrop of something of bigger importance than a single life.

As my student wrote, "First person gives more immediacy and emotional punch," and it certainly does. But one human life, with its singular thoughts and feelings, needs always to be balanced in literature with a broader landscape. Otherwise, the self-absorption will deafen the larger voice and theme of the book.

She also wrote, "Third person allows for more backstory, summary, and the internals of more than one character at a time. It allows for more emotional coloring." This is true. The range of colors is wider, too. Which makes for a potentially more profound story.

She was kind enough to send two examples from her book, which she gave me permission to share here. One is written in third person, the second in first person, with the same narrator. Which appeals more to you, as the reader?

Third person
Jenna is always touched with a wisp of melancholy when she sees him and she chides herself for thinking of him other than the way he is now. She knows that, his tall figure is slumped in his wheelchair, his stringy muscles gone flaccid and shrunken; his forehead is a map of wrinkles and brown spots below a no longer existent hairline. Still, he holds her fast to this earth though he is disappearing before her eyes and it matters, more than anything, and not of knee-jerk reaction either, to please him.

First person
When Dad isn't in front of me, I forget; I think of him as he was when he was younger. Now, every time I see him, I'm overcome with melancholy. I stand a moment at the door to the sun room and the surprise sweeps me again. His tall frame is slumped in his wheelchair, all his stringy muscles gone flaccid and shrunken; his forehead is a map of winkles and brown spots just below where his hairline used to be. Still, I think, he holds me fast to this earth and being his stand-up girl matters as much as it did when I was a kid.

Very different effects, yes?

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

1. Take a passage from your own writing, about the length of the one above. Write it in the opposite voice as you've chosen. If it's third, make it first. if it's first, make it third.

2. Read each aloud. Which feels more layered, more interesting to you?

3. Even if you are writing memoir, try this. It's very revealing--you can see immediately where you've neglected the larger landscape of your story.

From Event to Emotion--How Do You Bridge the Gap in Your Writing?

2012-01-14T16:38:00.000-05:00

E.M Forester said that human beings lead two lives, "the life in time and the life by values." In Aspects of the Novel, he writes:

"A story is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence — it simply tells us what happened and in what order. It is the time sequence which turns a random collection of episodes into a story. But chronological sequence is a very primitive feature and it can have only one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. The only skill of a storyteller is their ability to wield the weapon of suspense, making the audience eager to discover the next event in the sequence.

"This emphasis on chronological sequence is a difference from real life. Our real lives also unfold through time but have the added feature that some experiences have greater value and meaning than others. Value has no role in a story, which is concerned with the life in time rather than the life by values."

She waited for him for thirty minutes, but it felt like forever is a good example of this dual experience that we go through in real life, but makes for dull reading if placed in a book as it really happened (thirty minutes of not much).

But our books are enriched, our characters more vivid, if we can show both of these lives, the one driven by events and the one driven by the inner journey, or what writer Vivian Gornick calls the situation and the story behind it. Obviously, readers crave meaning. And they are best carried along by both the tension of the event and its emotional undercurrent.

This week's exercise asks you to look at a peak moment in your book and analyze it based on this duality. How much of each kind of time have you dedicated to this moment? Most writers put 80-90 percent of their storytime into the "time value" that Forster speaks of, since this provides tension and momentum. But a small percentage of every scene must also be revealed as "value time," revealing the meaning of that event.

Skilled writers do this through showing, versus telling. What a character notices in her environment during a particularly tense moment, for instance, shows us the value of that event to her. Smells, sounds, visual details, weather--all of these are used by writers to help show value and meaning.

Rest Breaks for Writers--Feeding the Creative Artist

2011-12-18T06:50:00.000-05:00

I'm rerunning this blog from last December, since it is timely at this season. To honor my artist and focus on my writing, the blog will be taking a break until the first week of January. Feel free to browse the archives back to 2008 for inspiration--and consider taking a rest break and feed your own creative artist this month!

There are some important signs of burn-out that writers need to attend to. An overactive Inner Critic. A feeling of the blues about one's work. A sense of deep depletion, despite enough sleep and exercise.

December often rolls around with all of these symptoms, for me. I'm finishing up my fall semester of teaching my online and in-person classes. I adored them--the students were amazing, wonderful, and inspiring-- but I give so much to each group, holding the creative space for them when they can't see the pathway, it takes a lot of energy and time. This week, as the classes complete and the last posts are made, I find myself sitting on the couch, staring at the mountains outside my living room window, wondering where I am. More important, who I am. I can't tell anymore.

Crying jags often accompany this, for me. Wails of "I'll never write again" sometimes come too. It's normal to dive even deeper as the tension releases and the stress lessens, as both body and emotions come forward with long-ignored needs.

Don't get me wrong: I eat healthily, I exercise regularly, I sleep reasonable hours, and I have good family and friends support. I'm living a good life. But in the realm of manifestation and creativity, which is what my work is all about, I had been stretched to the max these past months. I didn't know any other gear to drive than Intense. I didn't know how to get back to the "necessary boredom" that Dorothy Allison talks about, the place where my own creativity bubbles up.

Somehow, though, I'd managed to carve out three weeks in my calendar. My spouse started a new job about that time, my son was visiting friends for the holidays, so I was alone.

Blissfully, frightfully alone, with nothing to do. Or, let me rephrase, nothing anyone else was asking me to do.

So what next? How do I make use of this nothing, and let it heal me, fill me up again? I hadn't a clue how to begin.

Taking a Creative Retreat for the Inner Artist
I have a wonderful book for these occasions: The Woman's Retreat Book by Jennifer Louden. It's packed with ways to disengage and reacquaint yourself with yourself. I found it on a back shelf, went back to my spot on the couch near the mountain view. I closed my eyes and opened the book at random. Of course, it opened to this section "Feeding the Artist." I read the first line: "If there is one cosmic law I know the consequences of ignoring, it is this one: you cannot create from an empty well."

Duh. Why didn't I see this before I had my meltdown? Well, obviously, when one is empty, it's hard to see that. Many of us keep running anyway, fueled by adrenaline, and the joy of life gets dimmer and dimmer. We lose track of where we are, who we are. We get swept up with other people's lives (and creative needs--if you're a teacher). It's all good, it's all important. I love my work. But there's a moment to say, "Stop!" Let yourself go back to yourself.

I decided I would ignore both calendar and lists for these three weeks, as much as I could. Even my visioning lists went into a nice blue folder and into my desk drawer. I began to putter, to play.

The first day I cooked two soups. I love to cook, and two soups in one day seemed lovely and extravagant. Besides, the vegetable drawer was foreign territory and I could use up a dangerous-looking butternut squash (fine with the dangerous part cut off). I took a walk and went to bed by 9. The next day I listened to Christmas carols and wrapped a few gifts then read a lovely novel (Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann) and let myself nap. Day three I got out the card table and started a jigsaw puzzle. I cleaned out my clothes closet. I took myself to lunch.

You get the idea.

One of Jennifer Louden's most important directives in this chapter on "Feeding the Artist" is not to create while you're filling the well. Stop working on your project, stop trying to manifest anything. Ugh, that was hard. I hadn't had enough time to work on my novel-in-progress, so these three weeks were planned as full immersion. But when I took out the manuscript and my editing pen, I froze up. It all looked terrible--a sure sign of the Inner Critic's negative notions surfacing--and I couldn't bring myself to do anything. Reading Louden's advice felt like a reprieve.

Funny thing. As I began to fill up again, new ideas started coming. I would be watching a movie or marveling at McCann's amazing prose, and I would find myself thinking very lightly about my own creative projects. Images would come. An idea of how to solve a sticky plot problem in the novel. A place to get information I needed. I didn't pursue these, just took notes.

I'm letting the creative tension build for another week. It's getting fun. I look forward to my empty days, I no long dread the thought of moving so slowly.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Take stock. Do you need to feed the artist? Is she or he starving from too much output and not enough input these past busy months?

2. If the answer is yes, can you carve out time for a rest break? Even five hours in a day when nothing is needed of you is amazing and precious.

Can Self-Publishing Land You on the Best-Seller List?

2011-12-11T05:32:00.002-05:00

My indie-released songwriter friends never understood why writers are so hung up about self-publishing. Musicians have long separated from the labels and ventured out on their own, releasing their own CDs and working with indie distributors like cdbaby.

But we writers have been told that unless we get an agent and go the traditional route, we'll never be taken seriously in our writing careers.

I went the traditional route for years--agent, large publisher, small press. Each experience had its ups and downs and I worked with some wonderful editors and publishers and some not so. I stayed away from the stigma of "vanity press," or self-publishing, because I believed it was a fast route to career suicide.

Besides, I wanted the marketing and distribution help a publisher could give.

Times have changed. Advances are few and small now, most publishers don't have the same careful editorial procedures I benefited from as a writer starting out in the 1980s. Manuscripts must arrive in pristine condition--the writer's responsibility. Agents and publishers demand a platform, a solid marketing plan and media presence, from most authors they sign nowadays. The writer must become more than just a wordsmith with a good story. She has to learn to sell her book as well as write it.

For this, writers get 7-1/2 percent of sales, which for a $14.00 trade size paperback amounts to about $1.13 per copy. We do the marketing work, we hire editors before submitting it. The publisher prints the book as orders come in (print on demand) in most cases, not wanting to carry inventory, or does a short run of less than 500 copies to see whether the book will sell. Agents take 15 percent of everything.

Some writers are thinking seriously about their options now. Many are choosing self-publishing.

They're figuring out the system themselves, they're crafting e-books and selling them for 99 cents a copy to drive up sales. They're making money. Even if they self-publish a printed book, through Create Space or Lightning Source, they can make up to $10.00 a copy after expenses are paid back (for typesetter, proofer, cover designer, and editor).

Self-publishing requires money up front, for a printed book. Less or none for an electronic book. But if you're going to have to market it yourself anyway, why not make $10.00 a copy instead of $1.13?

What's your experience with self-publishing? What are your thoughts?

Find out the potential, explore your options. Don't be swayed by the traditional route when there are more opportunities for writers than ever.

Your writing exercise this week is to read all about writer Darcie Chan. She was rejected by over 100 literary agents and dozens of publishers, then went on to self-publish her debut novel and sell over 400,000 copies on Kindle. Think this kind of story is a fairytale? It's happening more and more.

The link to Darcie's story is here.

Self-publishing is still a controversial topic. But as the industry takes one hit after another, it's an option many writers are considering--and succeeding with.

For more success stories about self-publishing also check out chapter 25 of my book, Your Book Starts Here.

Five Major Turning Points on the Road to Finishing a Book

2011-12-04T08:24:00.003-05:00

Travelers in foreign territory often need good maps. But book writers rarely have them. We often don't know about the major stops--what I call "turning points"--in the book-writing journey. It's hard to tell when we've arrived, when we're ready to move on, when the writing is finally enough.

These five turning points are often where we get stuck and frustrated. Moving to the next level requires skills and a new approach,
and for a while we might flounder, thinking our project has gone south, when it's just a matter of re-orienting ourselves to a new task, a new stage of the journey.

So if you feel like you're stalling out, you may just be approaching the threshold of another turning point. If you're frustrated with foggy, confused, unsettled, panicked, or bored feelings about your book, maybe knowing these five turning points will help you figure out why.

These five are "make or break" moments, in my experience. Not knowing about them, not preparing for them, can derail your journey, and shelve your book project, faster than you can say "writer's block."

That's why I'm grateful to have completed so many books myself, and helped so many others write and finish theirs. Because I know now about these five turning points, I can recognize the signs when I'm approaching another one. I know it's normal to have upsets or disorientation about my book then. I remember that I'm just being asked to re-vision it on another level, to learn new skills.

When You Reach a Turning Point
Reaching a turning point is kind of like coming of age. It's a time to put away childish things. This might mean letting go of what's no longer serving the project--or us as writers. You may have heard the phrase in writing classes: "Kill your precious darlings?" This refers to writers reaching a turning point, where the favorite words or phrases or even chapters have to be looked at again, and possibly replaced.

Not an easy task. Ever. But much easier if you know where you are in the journey, if you know you're being asked to step up to a new level.

So I find it very helpful to highlight these turning points in my book-writing classes.

Do they apply to all genres? Yes. I've seen writers of every genre pass through them. Like universal gateways, we must pass through them to get our books published. It doesn't matter if we're writing a novel, a children's book, a poetry collection, a memoir, or a nonfiction book. We're facing these five turning points at some time during the journey from idea to publication.

So it helps to recognize these five turning points. Give them respect: you've passed a big test and it's now time reassess your project and revisit why you're this book.
Not stop, though.

Even if you're tempted, all that's usually required at one of these turning points is new skills, support, and a good map for the next stage.

Five major turning points on a book journey
1. Taking an idea into regular production of pages
2. Structuring the flow of the book
3. First draft completion
4. Revision completion
5. Final editing (often with professional feedback)

Stage One: Ideas into Pages
The first stage is where you are full of ideas. It's so exciting. The book has been bubbling inside for a while and you're finally getting the ideas down on paper. The energy of this stage makes the writing feel easy for a period of time, and sheer enthusiasm carries you forward. You may take classes, begin a writers group, share your writing with others. It's a joyful, and somewhat innocent, stage and very important.

What keeps you going through this first stage?

When the enthusiasm begins to wane--you maybe realize how much work a book is! you may become terrified that your mother will read it! you may get sick or overwhelmed or tired and bored!--your writing practice keeps you going through this stage.

Writing regularly is the key to getting enough material to begin to structure it wisely and begin a real book. If someone writes regularly--each day, each week, each weekend for a certain number of hours--the pages will accumulate. Writing practice is just that: it's not writing perfect, it's writing practice. You turn out terrible stuff, good stuff, great stuff. Everyone does. You just write, because that's what writers do.

These segments of writing, freewrites, or "islands" that will someday become continents (chapters), are the work of writing. The only goal now is to accumulate them.

When you've accumulated about 90,000 words, or three hundred double-spaced pages, you've reached the next turning point.

Stage Two: Structuring the Book
The next turning point is all about structure, so we move from the random, exploring part of ourselves to the linear, organized part. Some writers love this stage. Some hate letting go of the free flow. But it's an essential step in making a book.

Your goal now is to create a working structure of the book, via a structuring tool like storyboarding.

I really dislike storyboards. They tell me what I don't want to know--where I have too much or too little, where I've written on track or on a tangent. Where my book isn't yet working well.
But I know that books love storyboards. They allow a book to find its correct placement in time and space--where each of the "islands" will be located, where they will merge with other "islands" to become continents. In this second stage we learn it's not just enough to flow out the words. We need to have a sequence that readers can follow. Storyboards provide this. They are used a lot in publishing and the film industry. Imagine a giant blank cartoon--a row of empty boxes lined up on a page or wall or posterboard. You insert ideas, then you move the boxes around until the sequence of ideas equals a reasonable flow for your book.

What you learn: All the things I grumbled about above. What is working, yes. Also what is not working. It's not uncommon to emerge from a storyboarding session with many blank boxes. Stuff you know you need to write, transition chapters or sections. Research still to do. It's also not uncommon to feel discouraged. All that writing done, but it's not yet a book.

Why even bother? Storyboards are the absolute best way I've found to see if I have a working book, to force myself to structure the flow of ideas, to see what's left. I usually get kind of squirrely (imagine a squirrel twitching in agitation) when I have written too much to really see my book anymore. When I get squirrely, I know it's time to storyboard.

After the storyboard is intact, we need to go back to stage one for a while, fill the holes that the storyboard has revealed.

Stage Three: Completing Your First Draft
Once we have a good structure and plenty of workable "islands" written, we are ready to build the first draft. If you have an electronic tool like Scrivener, it's a simple matter of clicking a few keys. Otherwise, you cut and paste, using the map of the storyboard and the hundreds of pieces of writing you've completed. This is rough! Irreverent writer Anne Lamott (author of Bird by Bird) calls it "a shitty first draft"--aka SFD. And it is that.

But it's a huge step in the writing journey, and it tells us we've passed through another turning point. Depending on the genre, most books are about 300 double-spaced pages or more at this stage.

Stage Four: Revising Your Manuscript
Revising the draft is next. As a professional editor, this is my favorite time but also the hardest. It requires staring down all my mistakes and figuring out what path my reader needs to take through my book, then weeding anything that doesn't serve the story.

Revision reveals many things, including where we've gone to sleep.

Stage Five: Editing and Professional Feedback
At final editing, after revision, I always recommend getting feedback at a higher skill and experience level than your own. Find a professional editor or a published writer (in your genre) to do a read-through and evaluation. Get a sense of where you need to focus for the final edit (line editing, substantive editing if needed).

This is where you clean everything up--make it sing.

Does it help to understand these turning points, look at them one by one, and hear about the roadblocks that often come up just before a writer reaches them? Maybe our discussion has helped you realize why you're stuck right now (often right before a turning point!) or why you're racing ahead (finally made the turn and see the open road).

Maybe this little map will help you see what is ahead on your journey.

I go into each of these stages in my book Your Book Starts Here. You can use it as a guide for whichever stage you're traveling right now.

To recap, here are the five turning points and what will keep you going through them:

The Idea Stage
        How to keep going? Build a writing practice
The Structuring Stage
        How to keep going? Work with a visual map, such as a storyboard, to keep oriented
The First Draft Stage
       How to keep going? Focus on simply getting the manuscript completed--no editing
The Revision Stage
       How to keep going? Let go of what's not serving the book
The Feedback/Editing Stage
       How to keep going?   Accept help and advice

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Consider your book, where you're feeling frustrated, where you're excited. What stage does this indicate?
2. What needs to be strengthened to help you get through this stage to the next turning point?

Embracing the Scary Project--Why Bravery on Demand Can Help Your Writing

2011-11-27T16:51:00.002-05:00

Simone de Beauvoir once wrote, "Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment . . .when it has become impossible not to finish it."

This comes from her1965 book Force of Circumstance, which is one of many published works during her long literary career. New book writers might read this in astonishment. How come such a prolific and experienced writer had such beginner's emotions?

Does it never get easier? Do we ever feel like we know what we're doing?

We're at the end of the annual extravaganza of National Novel Writers' Month. The whole point of nanowrimo is to allow writers a window to try something they wouldn't ordinarily attempt. Sheer volume of words each day keep the perfectionism at bay. The point is to explore new ideas, without worrying about knowing what we're doing.

I love nanowrimo for this absolute freedom. But once it ends, what's going to keep you exploring? Keep you on the edge of learning?

This need for bravery in our art is not limited to writers, of course. I once asked a professional speaker about this. I wanted to know if he ever got stage fright, felt that beginner's nervousness. This man has delivered hundreds of talks to audiences of thousands. He said he always feels jittery before he goes on stage. Every time. He has come to expect tense shoulders, butterfly stomach. He likes the opportunity to be brave on demand.

I asked why he still gave speeches if he didn't feel he'd conquered fear in his art. "I'm glad for the fear," he told me. "It keeps me from falling asleep creatively." If he starts taking his creative expertise for granted, he loses any freshness and edge--the elements that makes his performances memorable.

Nanowrimo works because it promotes beginner's mind and heart. It is all about embracing new things in our writing.

So this week, as my daily nano word count wraps up, I thought about what next step in my writing life would require bravery. I thought about a new software program I've been stalled out on but longing to try. Learning new software demands time and brain power, two things I haven't had much of this fall. But I took a step: I called a writing buddy who loves this software and she talked me through first baby steps to try it.

Not only did I feel instant glee at my own bravery--the simple act of trying something new--but as I practiced the new software, new ideas came through for my book.

So many writers, even published writers, hold themselves back. They stick with what they know, be it a favorite template for stories, a certain plot idea, or even similar characters, because it is safer. They don't want to be a beginner again. It could be quite humiliating! Especially if The Book has become a huge haunting presence, with so much still unknown--like how to finally finish it!

One reason Nanowrimo works for so many writers is that it is all about courage and not knowing. For an entire month, hundreds of thousands of us have been daily explorers. It's intense, scary, and a great way to avoid writer's block and ongoing discouragement about a writing project.

What's a scary project you might embrace this week? Or, if not embrace, just consider? I will be neck-deep in learning my new software program, Scrivener. It promises to let me see my book draft in a completely new way via its electronic storyboarding system, and already I'm both excited and cranky about the bravery it is demanding of me.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
1. List three scary and exciting new things you could try that would take you new places in your writing.

2. Pick one. Take a small first step toward trying it.

3. Post your results here!

PS If your exploration into bravery includes getting an overview of your memoir, novel, or nonfiction book-in-progress--and trying storyboarding yourself--join me for my popular two-day workshop "How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book." Offered this month in two locations: The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, December 2-3, or Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, December 10-11. I'd love to see you there!

Saying thanks . . .

2011-11-21T12:50:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to say thanks for writing books that share your passion with the world. Seems appropriate on this Thanksgiving week to post this wonderful article by Derek Sivers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Building a Questions List to Keep Writing Fresh

2011-11-11T04:09:00.001-05:00

This month I've taken on an insane project--which I try to do each November. I've signed up for National Novel Writers Month, or nanowrimo as it's affectionately called by those who know and love it. Each year, hundreds of thousands of writers from around the world log on to the www.nanowrimo.org site and commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That's about 1667 words a day, give or take a few.

Nanowrimo boasts
that many note-worthy books have gotten their start during November insanity, Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants perhaps being the most famous.

I use nanowrimo for revision each year. This year, my sequel to Qualities of Light is my nano focus. Before November 1, I started a list of questions to fuel my daily writing. These questions would help fill holes in the draft I am working on for this new novel.

Whether you're involved with nanowrimo this year or not, the questions list is an excellent tool to get you going each day, or each writing session, with fresh material.

The Power of Unanswered Questions
As someone who loves it when the ducks are lined up, as an editor with many years answering whatever was unsolved in a writer's manuscript, I used to dread questions in my own work. They were problems I hadn't yet solved, dilemmas yet unresolved. They drove me nuts. I worked hard to stay ahead of any potential questions, applying solutions to every problem that might come up.

Staying on top of all the problems of plot, character, method, and pacing felt like I was really in control of my manuscripts. When unexpected questions came up, I got answers as fast as I could. They may not have been the best, or deepest answer, but they kept the fear of the unknown and out-of-control at bay.

But the more books I wrote and published, the more I learned that books are large, unweildy events, worse than organizing a family wedding. Hard to predict what will happen. Hard to plan entirely. Full of unresolved problems and big questions that may not get solved until the final draft.

My first books were nightmares, partly because of my need to solve every problem right away. Luckily, back in the olden days when I began publishing, I worked with patient editors who helped me with my unanswered questions. When the editors left, I was on my own with the questions. I had to begin loving them or learning to work with them.

Love the Questions Themselves
Rainier Maria Rilke, the German writer responsible for the beautiful volume Letters To A Young Poet, said, "Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them."

Rilke's point was that hanging around with questions leads to the best answers. You need time to live your way to the answers. There's real gold in the questions themselves because they open up the creative self.

So I began to train myself to be OK with things I didn't know yet about my manuscript. It wasn't easy. It made me tense and anxious at first, but then I saw how often the truer, better answer came if I let things sit a bit. So I started loving the unanswered question in my work.

I began working with the questions list.

Now I ask my book-writing classes, especially those in revision, to create a list of questions about their books-in-progress. Add to the list, one question daily, and let yourself muse and wonder about what the answer could possibly be. Once I became patient enough to try this myself, I saw great improvement in my writing. It was as if a creative faucet got turned on.

I wasn't just working my problems to find solutions; I was creating something new. My random, creative, wondering and wandering writer inside was excited.

Does Unanswered Equal More Creative?
Why are unanswered questions so helpful for book writers? Why do we need NOT to know everything before we begin our writing process?

Theme, subtext, and inner story all emerge from the random, creative side, not the linear left brain of the writer. You can't get good theme by going after it directly. It bubbles up. It surprises you. A writing mentor once told me: "If it doesn't surprise you, it won't surprise the reader." You'll have a too-predictable plan, leading to an unoriginal and uninspired book.

This week, make a list of unanswered questions. Things that are worrying you about your outline or theory, plot or characters, theme or beginning or ending. Let the list simmer. Let the questions become part of your breathing and living each day. When you get the bubbling up of a possible creative idea that addresses your question, listen and take notes.

Your muse is talking.

PS This exercise isn't just limited to writing. I've used it to create answers to tangles with family and friends, health issues, everything under the sun. It's fun, creative, and it works.

Crafting an Agent-Catching Chapter One

2011-11-03T08:40:00.001-04:00

I was given the news by the editor at my publishing company. It was a shock, even in these shocking times in publishing. "We only read the first two pages of chapter one," she said. "If it doesn't grab me, it doesn't get further."

What intense pressure for writers these days! To craft a chapter one that
sings loudly and uniquely enough to catch an editor's (or an agent's) eye. To keep them reading past the first two pages. To make them fall in love with your story, be it nonfiction, fiction, or memoir.

Chapter one is perhaps the hardest chapter to write. It has to establish three essential elements that pull the reader into your story. These elements are key to successfully placing your manuscript with an agent. If you don't have them securely in place, you won't get a contract. They exist in any genre of book, if you know how to find them.

Dilemma is the conflict, the question, the quest.

Players are characters, or the narrator, or anyone on stage, whom should we care about.

Container is where everything happens, both outwardly as setting and inwardly as emotional or cultural environment.

These elements create a kind of tension cord. It pulls the reader through your book to the last page. If they are not all in place, the cord is slack and your manuscript doesn't make it past the round file.

Be Aware of Your Natural Strength

Every writer gravitates toward one of these three elements. It is her or his natural, almost unconscious, strength. I've worked with many mystery writers, for example, who dream up plots--dilemma--without any effort. One writer I worked with came to class each week with a new plot twist that had the rest of us envious. She would enter her story from the question What happens? And that question always led toward new ideas.

Another writer might dream of characters. A psychologist in one of my weekly groups loved to analyze how people ticked (no surprise, given his profession) and was adept at writing them on the page.

Then there's the writer who loves setting. Who goes deep into the details of a culture, defining the marketplace or the mountain range or the English garden without any effort. We salivate at her descriptions of weather and sounds and smells and the lattice work on a wall, details that bring the environment of her story alive.

So we first need to recognize what we do best, and keep doing that. And at the same time, bring the other two elements into our awareness too.

Otherwise, the mystery writer might have a fantastic plot that comes across completely ungrounded: she has overlooked the place it happens, and the characters who are complicating things and getting deeper into trouble. So her story is interesting but the agent or editor might say, "Your prose needs tightening." Read: "Two elements are missing here; plug them in." Or, most important: "Make us care!"

A medical memoirist might also think of dilemma first--the accident that left him in a wheelchair, for instance. Event is what matters most to him, but the reader engages through first caring about his dilemma--or character. So the memoirist must begin to reveal himself on the page, more and more. Not always comfortable, but essential.

The psychologist writing a book on mental illness might think first of players--the people she counsels at the clinic or hospital, their personalities. She presents their background, their case histories (disguised or with permission), but she can't figure out how to place them in a setting that's believable. She begins to write the setting--a hospital--and suddenly we see the frailty of these people because we smell the antiseptic or hear the intercom paging doctors.

Your job is to think of all three, no matter which strength you build from. And they all must appear in chapter one.

How Does Chapter One Reveal Dilemma, Players, and Container?

In my weekly classes, we use published books as examples of how to craft chapter one. One of the favorites is the opening chapter--only three pages long--of Judy Blundell's What I Saw and How I Lied. Blundell won the National Book Award for this novel. Her first chapter made me want to buy the book, and I'm not surprised that both an agent and editor felt the same way.

Because that first chapter covers all three elements beautifully.

The chapter opens with the main players, in their unique "container"--a mother still dressed from her evening out, as daybreak slides into a room. The mother, who smells of cigarette smoke and My Sin perfume,is lying in bed next to the young daughter who pretends to be sleeping beside her. There's huge tension between them, even though nothing is said. On the next page, the dilemma is heightened: a man, Peter, has died tragically, the father who left, the mysterious friend. We learn of the dilemma--a small reference to the beach town and his body pulled in from the sea by fishermen. We don't know how it happened, but there's enough hint to present the mystery this book will solve. We also learn (still in the first two pages) how everyone at this Florida resort hotel knows the family's faces because they've been in the news recently.

So players and dilemma are solidly presented. How is the container in these two pages? Expert. Blundell creates an amazingly engaging container, both physically and emotionally, with lines like "The match snapped, then sizzled, and I woke up fast" or "I heard the seagulls crying, sadder than a funeral, and I knew it was almost morning."

Studying the first two pages of your favorite published book might teach you how writers manage this. Blundell's book is usually a revelation to its readers, compact and elegant and effective. It grabs you immediately.

That's what you want your first chapter to do, as well.

This Week's Writing Exercise

Want to join my writing class--at least virtually--this week? Try focusing on chapter one in one of your favorite published books. Pick one that's been published within the last 5 years, a book in your book's genre, one you admire a lot.

Photocopy the first two pages and see if you can find the three elements: dilemma, players, container.

Then, once you've seen how it works, try it with your own first chapter. Can you draft it--or look it over if it's already written--and check it for these three elements? What's missing? What's already present?

To read more about Judy Blundell's book, click .http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6624886.html

Using the Short Form to Get to the Long Form--Two Fun Excercises for Your Book This Week

2011-10-24T08:58:00.002-04:00

A good writing friend once shared this piece of wisdom: Sometimes we have to get small to get big, with our books. Books span large areas of time and space, and it's easy to get lost in the expanse of them, overwhelmed with all the details.

In my writing classes, I use two fun exercises to help writers manage the immensity. One exercise is a poem, the other is an exploration of one of your main characters, your narrator, or your potential reader, by putting them in a five-page short story.

These two exercises are such fun, they can feel like a sidetrack away from the "real" writing.

One writer in my book-writing workshop (see more about the upcoming workshops at the Loft in November and December) wondered about this. In the middle of working on an epic novel, she was suddenly finding herself drawn back to some short stories she'd started years ago. Was this a valuable detour or a derailment by her Inner Critic?

She had a deadline for her rough draft and needed every week between now and January to make it. Working with a goal-setting plan each writer sets up for herself in my workshop, she was excited about finally have a good solid draft of her novel. She even had a "nag buddy" (her words), to keep her going forward with check-ins each week. Her buddy was doubtful that the pull towards short stories made sense, given her goals.

I know this writer pretty well, since she's taken many workshops with me, and I could see the stress in her face every time she discussed her book. It was beginning to weigh her down. The light was going out of it for her, and she needed a fresh look, a way to get over the overwhelm. She's also quite dedicated to her writing and I had no fear that she'd stop the novel.

So I agreed; she needed to take a break. I gave her two possible exercises: Veer off into one of the short stories that was attracting her, only play with adding one of the characters from her novel. She loved this idea--because the character she had in mind was perfect for complicating the story's plot.

"See if the short story might actually end up as part of the book," I said. "Don't write it toward that goal; let your creative self just explore the possibility."

Short pieces of writing, taken as breaks from my books, have taught me so much--about pacing, dialogue, the tension arc, the beginnings and endings. I remember writing, then publishing short essays, as a vacation while I was struggling with writing a memoir. These ended up enlightening me as to why I was so stuck with the larger piece of writing. When I was deep into my novel Qualities of Light, I explored a series of short stories about the same group of characters, working from small to large, finding out that the most compelling of the stories was the pivot for the novel.

In the long months and years of writing a book, we all need breaks of brief intensity. Experienced writers often conscious divert to the short form, then come back from their "vacations" refreshed and ready for the long haul.

This Week's Writing Exercises

1. Create a haiku or short poem about your book, as it is now. Try to have the beginning, the ending, and the main conflict included in a few brief words. Then add a line about the main setting. And a line about the emotional focus of the book. (Thanks to Stuart Dybek--Coast of Chicago--for this inspiration.)

2. Write a five-page short story about one of your main characters, your narrator, or your potential reader. Put this person into an event or challenge that brings out something unexpected in them--a strength you didn't know about, a weakness that they've hidden, a secret previously unrevealed.

3. See if either of these "sidetracks" actually takes you deeper into your book.

How to Educate Yourself about Publishing in Today's Changing Industry

2011-10-17T05:10:00.002-04:00

Publishing is changing so fast, it's hard for writers to keep up with the shifts. A friend sent me this wonderful article from author Steve Pressfield's site, "What It Takes," featuring publishing-savvy Shawn Coyne talking about the profit and loss analysis that publishers make before accepting a manuscript. Fascinating to hear the inside scoop.

If you're game, educate yourself this week. Scroll down to his article, "A Matter of Infinite Hope."

Feel free post your comments and questions.

Click here.

And for an even more eye-opening article, about how Amazon.com has just started signing up writers, click here for this week's New York Times article.

Finding the Perfect Writing Notebook--and How to Use It to Finish Your Book

2011-09-30T11:15:00.001-04:00

A good friend just recommended, and another just purchased, the most beautiful writer's notebook, so I am posting this article from two years ago about how to use them to the fullest as you create and craft your book. If you'd like to salivate along with me, check out the Leuchtturm writing notebooks. I'm off to order mine right now.

Writers produce writing. And if you're a writing geek like me, you love to write longhand in notebooks, not just on the super-fast computer.

Writing notebooks let the right brain ramble slowly, and the writing I do longhand is often pensive, full of imagery. I notice things I'd breeze over. It has a certain
quality that I often can't capture via a machine.

Most of my books started with writing notebooks. I created my entire novel in tiny scenes scribbled while vacationing at a lake cabin in the Adirondacks. It was too hot to think most days, so I filled my notebooks with random images that later became an "image list" for the inner story of my novel: the weedy smells from the lake, the lapping of water on rocks, sounds of loons yodeling across the expanse, the fast-moving clouds, a single girl in a bright-red tank suit racing across the lake on water-skis. The writing notebook gave me the chance to cook these images slowly. Let them linger as I traced them on the page with my pen.

This slow cooking was a powerful start. Soon I moved to scenes where the girl falls in love, her six-year-old brother almost drowns, her artist father betrays her, her entire family tries to orient itself after the near-tragedy.

Begun with images, scribbled in a notebook, I soon had real chapters. The process wasn't magical, it was plenty of hard work as all writing is, but I believe sincerely that those images fired me in a way words don't. So I kept that writing notebook after the novel was published, and I began another one for my next book.

Finding a Great Notebook

I won't presume to tell you how to choose the best notebook. But I do have some strong opinions, based on years of testing.

I vacillate between lined and unlined. I even tried grid lined notebooks, made by a French company called Claire-Fontaine. For years, their notebooks are one favorite of mine--they are used by schoolkids there, easily available in the supermarkets, and easy to get online at Claire-Fontaine. They are not fancy but they're cool, and I can mess them up without concern. I fill one up every two months if I'm cooking on a new book. That's because the images accumulate fast if I'm paying attention and being a good scribe to my muse.

I also love moleskin notebooks, which come with unlined pages. The unlined paper lets me go "right brain" as often as I wish, moving from words to sketches pretty easily. When I'm stumped for a scene, I draw it.

But notebooks become unusable if you let them languish on a shelf. Right?

So I set up a system. On a writing day soon after I complete a notebook, I set aside two hours for reading and marking. I try to take myself out to lunch or dinner or to a museum or public garden, make this a little artist's date, a la Julia Cameron, have some fun. I bring along a yellow highlighting pen and a stack of Post-Its in different colors, snacks and tea, my iPod with no-lyrics music, and headphones. I plug into my wordless music (lyrics are too distracting when I'm reading). I plug into my word-filled writing.

Mark Anything You Can Use

Reading through the freewrites, ideas, notes to self, and character sketches, I first mark the ones that seem possible for my current book. These get a yellow highlighter stripe down the margin. Even if I don't know how I'll use the material, I mark it as possible.

Post-Its are for ideas to follow up on. In my writing notebooks, I gather lists: books to read, topics to research, people to contact, websites to visit. The Post-Its become the logging system. Different colors for different tasks.

The key here is to be as nonjudgmental as possible about your work and ideas. Treat anything as possible--and view your raw writing as if you've never seen it before. Like a reader would. Look for sparks that could possibly ignite something bigger.

Back at the Desk

When I get back to my writing desk, I begin the hard work: transferring the highlighted sections into a computer file called "extras." This is tedious work (for me). But so necessary. Otherwise, I'll never, ever use the writing I've just delighted in.

I also make a list on a legal pad of my to-do's. Sometimes, if I'm feeling particularly organized, I'll keep separate lists of tasks by type. This actually helps the tasks get done. And before I'm finished for the day, I select three tasks and put them into my calendar with dates to tackle them.

Then What? What to Do with the Pile of Past Notebooks

I never throw out my writing notebooks. Yes, this means dedicating an entire file drawer or shelf for them. But too many times I've been stuck for an idea and when I browse one of the old notebooks, I find it.

Then there are the stacks of past notebooks that, once filled, haven't yet been opened. Milking them requires a steel will and a full day or more. When I was working on my last nonfiction book, How to Master Change in Your Life, I forced myself to go through old journals. Too many words to read carefully and still be home for dinner, so I just skimmed and place a Post-It on pages that seemed promising. I visited a photocopy store and Xeroxed the pages. Then put them into a folder. Planned an artist's date. Read through them and did the highlighting work.

These became the backbone of my nonfiction book--believe it or not. All my best stories came from these notebooks. Even though they were old and reading through them was nothing short of embarrassing, I tried to keep that nonjudgmental attitude and be open to what might work. A lot did.

Your Exercise This Week

1. Find a great notebook. Dedicate it to your writing life.

2. If you already use writing notebooks, find one of your past notebooks, even one you haven't finished, and try the highlighting and Post-It exercise above.

3. Take an hour and transfer the most promising into your computer file. Name it "extras" and save it where you can find it again.

Change of Seasons--Visioning Time for Your Book?

2011-09-24T05:21:00.005-04:00

Today it is wet outside, the start of our fall rains. Everything looks saturated with September sun and now the moisture of this gentle rain, and it's a good day for sitting still. Something I don't do very often, but which my books crave at this time of year, as the heat of summer downshifts into colder weather.

Today I'm giving myself the gift of visioning. Simply listening, and waiting. Visioning brings
the overview that all books need from time to time. It's the difference between fixing my eyes on the road and how fast I'm traveling, and looking more wholistically at a map of the country.

Visioning is slow sport, the opposite of fast-paced summer and its nonstop activity. Even though fall has its own frenetic pace--in our household, a back-to-school flurry, a usual upsurge in work, and new classes to teach--it has a sense of settling in, as we prepare for the change that winter brings. I find it a natural cycle to re-evaluate my book project, bring more consciousness to my daily writing. I may bring out my storyboard again, take time to organize files and piles, or freewrite about why I'm writing this book in the first place.

Visioning, to me, means letting go that pushing energy, and allowing bigger views to filter in. They often bring new ideas and insights, a welcome creativity and renewal.

The See-Saw Balance of Visioning and Will
I need willpower, as many of us do, to actually write. Especially when I'm working on a book, will helps me get myself in the chair each day, open files on my computer, pick up my pen and writer's notebook. Will allows me to produce the pages. Even when my heart isn't really in it, I use my will to sit and write. Because, as we all know, writing isn't always a blissful journey; there's hard work involved and often discomfort as we face ourselves or our skill limitations. And there's the constant companionship of our personal Inner Critic, nagging that we're not doing something perfectly. So will serves us well, to keep the writing practice alive.

Visioning rides at the other end of the see-saw of a writer's good habits. It has a different type of energy, but it's equally valuable. Visioning gives us the ongoing "big picture" when we get too focused on the tiny veins on the leaves of the trees (those who love editing more than writing will identify with this!). Visioning demands dreaminess, opening up the part of us that doesn't know the answers. It's an activity of quiet listening versus busy production.

When I think of how I learned the value of visioning, I recall a book called The Artist's Way. It was very popular years ago, still is. The author, Julia Cameron, really hit a nerve with us creative folks. Her premise was that we could get unstuck via two simple activities: morning pages, or three pages of longhand writing to unload thoughts and concerns and make way for creative insights, and the Artist's Date.

Artist's Dates were much, much harder for me. They required that we go somewhere new, solo, and experience the unexpected. I loved morning pages, and I have shelves of journals to prove it. But I failed miserably on Artist's Dates.

I'm quite disciplined and get a lot of good feelings out of producing, but back then I could never justify the non-goal of hours extracted from a busy life--especially alone! If I invited a friend, it would at least fill up my derelict social life. But Cameron specified that we were supposed to do Artist's Dates by ourselves, because social chatter would dilute the ideas and insights that could come to us during the experience.

Once I began to try Artist's Dates, I learned she was right. Although I always had difficulty justifying the time, I always loved the experiences. They relaxed me, slowed me down, made me stop and listen. It was an early form of visioning, and when I began to study book-writing, I learned it had trained me for the visioning activities that book writers required.

Why Vision?
Some book writers start with an initial vision for their books. They see the book as a whole, the story intact and vibrant. The mission of the book realized. Most of us don't. Most of us see pieces and produce the book that way, either via an outline or via my preferred method, "islands" of writing that come out randomly and are sequenced later.

Either way, the vision has to be revisited frequently during the book's development. Are you still writing the book you started out with? Has your nonfiction story suddenly become a memoir, or vice versa? How has the vision changed?

Visions always change, I find. As we grow, they must. We really don't create something that goes deep enough to touch readers, make them tell their friends and family and writing group, even change lives if we're really lucky, without growth during the process.

So visions change as the book evolves. For my novel Qualities of Light, I started with a vision of unexpected romance between two friends during a traumatic summer. As the book evolved, as more characters got developed, the book's vision changed into the deeper healing of a whole family. Both stories made it into the final book. I like to think the pauses I took, the visioning I did, helped them weave together into a whole.

When You Know You Need Visioning Time
When do you take time for visioning? I usually need a vision session whenever I lose my sense of the book as a whole. It requires a large exhale, to let the pushing mind empty. Then the writer's deeper attention is freed up.

I usually don't accept the need for visioning time until I'm maxed. Yesterday it hit me as a wave of sheer exhaustion: I needed visioning time like oxygen. I'm very happy about all that's happened in my current draft, but the pushing it's required has stressed me way beyond my comfort zone.

Sometimes I need to get so stressed with my project that I have to let go. I'm stuck, there's no more I can do myself. I make time to listen, then it comes. I suddenly get a picture, a new idea, a wholeness. As my pushing self lets go of all the efforts, creative ideas come fast. Ideas to solve the dilemmas I've been struggling with.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise: Planning for Visioning
Take advantage of the change of seasons to set up a visioning time for your writing project this week. Maybe you've noticed the difficulty in talking yourself into this need--and the effect of dried up writing that comes when you don't have an overview of your project? And maybe you've noticed the serendipity that comes through, the originality, when you let yourself stop pushing and start visioning?

1. Take your solo self and your writing notebook someplace for an hour, an afternoon, a morning or a day.

2. Let yourself look at changing leaves or mountains or the ocean. Sketch, doodle, or write what comes. Take notes. Maybe you'll get the overview of vision, worth gold to the book writer.

3. Then write down what you'd really like from the project you're working on. What vision do you have for it? Why are you doing it, really?

What Makes a Chapter? What Makes a Scene?

2011-09-17T14:25:00.002-04:00

A common question in my book-writing classes is the difference between chapters and scenes. Both are pathways, bridges between one moment and the next. But what makes a chapter work? What makes a collection of scenes warrant it
s own chapter?

In my teaching, I've learned these are essential signposts for each, which help the writer know how to section her manuscript--and if more or less is needed.

What's a Scene?

One great definition of a scene is a moment when an emotion is articulated in some way, usually via action. In fiction and memoir this might be a run-in between two characters, a memory of a past event that still brings a surge of shame or delight, a conversation where someone doesn't get their hopes realized--or does. Scenes are small time capsules, potent because they contain more than is openly revealed. In nonfiction, a scene might be considered an anecdote that demonstrates the book's theory or a step of that theory. For instance, a weight loss book might contain a scene where a man stands in front of a pastry counter at the local grocery store, calculating his chances of getting a doughnut and getting outside before his wife, shopping in another aisle, notices. A nonfiction book on how to play the piano might contain "scenes" (or "islands," as I like to call them) that explain the keyboard.

Scenes are not necessarily complete with beginning, middle, and end. They might leave us hanging, which tells us there will be another scene later to finish the story. We'll read on to find out where the thread continues.

What's a Chapter?
A chapter is often a sequence of scenes, or "islands," that carry the reader through to some new level of understanding about the story or the book's topic. This week I read a great quote from William Goldman and David Morrell about chapters: "Jump in late, leave early." That really describes the page-turner in the fiction and memoir worlds.

In nonfiction, a chapter concludes more overtly. There's a hook to future material, certainly; otherwise, why would we read on? But nonfiction chapters deliver information and there's a sense at chapter's end that we've received enough to ponder and absorb. Nonfiction chapters often end with completion of thought, while fiction and memoir leave something deliberately unfinished.

Creating Transitions between Scenes and Chapters
If you write in "islands," or non-sequenced moments, as I do, you'll need to look carefully at the transitions between your scenes within a chapter and your chapters within the book. This is where the arc" comes in.
What's an arc? Well, books have them and chapters have them too. The arc is like a bridge that connects the beginning to the end. The reader, ideally, travels smoothly across this bridge from moment to moment.

Transitions are sentences, phrases, images, and other elements in your writing that allow the reader to move smoothly between the emotions/meaning of one scene or chapter into the next one. Transitions, hopefully, allow the reader to get excited about what's to come, as well as let her absorb the importance of what's just happened.

I admire good transitions. One of my favorite transition tools are images. Sometimes a writer will plant a repeating image as a way to link different parts of a book.

Example: Oranges are peeled at the end of chapter 12 and an orange glow is in the sky at sunrise in the beginning of chapter 13. These chapters might be in different points of view, or take place in different eras, but the reader will be able to transition because of the repeating image.

Images can be smells, sounds, heat or cold, light or dark, a piece of furniture or a room or an object--whatever has meaning and can be repeated without too much fanfare.

The idea is to plant the image then return to it, creating a good transition as you do.

What About First Chapters?
My writing classes spend a lot of time on their first chapters. First chapters are hard! I often write them last, after the rest of the book is in good shape.

First chapters are often all that an agent or publisher reads, and they must be intensely engaging.

Here's a quick checklist for first chapters, my "must have" list:

1. Introduce the main players (narrator, main character, or someone the reader can relate to) via anecdote or action scene
2. Introduce the main dilemma or conflict (fiction and memoir) or main questions or need (nonfiction) that the book will answer
3. Place us in an engaging and relevant physical, emotional, and cultural setting that will echo throughout the book

Lots to live up to, eh? That's why first chapters are the make or break chapter of most books. If they don't engage, the book gets set aside.

The goal of the first chapter is just to create a tension cord, tight enough to pull the reader into the second, third, fourth chapters, and so on to the end. You don't give everything away yet. But you create a triggering event that triggers the reason for the rest of the book. You create an engaging place and time for the story you're going to tell--even nonfiction books must do this via their opening anecdotes.

What about the Last Chapter?
Ending chapters are not where everything gets wrapped up neatly. In fact, you must leave the reader with some hunger, some unresolved emotion, some longing to go back and read your book again. That way they will think about the story for days, talk about it with their friends. Lining up all the ducks is satisfying for you, boring for the reader.

This isn't to say that you can leave large sections or questions unanswered. If you're writing a mystery, you need to solve it. But perhaps your memoir isn't going to reveal a happily-ever-after. That's just fine. Leave with a call to action or a relevance to the reader's life. Make them think and feel a lot, and you have a good last chapter.

What else makes a good last chapter? Not introducing new dilemmas, or main conflicts. It's too late. The reader will go, "Where'd that come from?" You can hint at one, if you're writing a sequel. But main dilemma is rarely wrapped in the ending chapter. More often you need to finish tying dilemma threads in the next-to-last (penultimate) chapter.

What really needs attention in the last chapter are the main relationships. How did the narrator change? How did the method you're teaching shift your way of approaching life? How did the character realize something? Show us how the primary players changed, how something new was realized or achieved or lost. Demonstrate a new state of being and you'll have the reader hooked, hungry, and happy.

This Week's ExerciseFind a scene or chapter that doesn't quite work for you. Spend time with it--brainstorm possible beginnings, possible endings. Use the first-last chapter notes above as a checklist, and analyze your drafts for what's missing and what's too much.

My Love (Hate) Affair with Storyboards

2011-09-10T07:10:00.003-04:00

Storyboards, the visual map that filmmakers use, save my books. They are my primary pathway through my piles of material. They are my best tool for organizing and structuring my novels, nonfiction books, and memoirs so that a reader can make sense of the story.

I love them. I couldn't make publishable books without them.

I also hate storyboards. They are like bossy mother-in-laws, telling me what I'm doing wrong. They point out exactly what I don't want to look at about my book-in-progress: where I have too much blah-blah-blah, where I've skipped a juicy opportunity for conflict, where I've stayed on track or gone on a tangent.

Essentially, it becomes clear as day where my book isn't yet working.

I teach storyboards, I have several hanging on my office walls, and I barely tolerate their linear know-it-all attitude. But I think they're gold.

The Golden Opportunity of Storyboards
A big question as you begin your book is this: How are you going to know if your story flows when it's outside of your own inner worlds?

You can craft a draft, of course. Get it typed out and printed, read through it. But it's still hard to see if the idea you presented on page 31 will thread through to page 231 in a way your reader will track.

Some writers make long lists. I do this too. Facts to check, threads to follow. The lists on my desk are as numerous as my printed drafts, after a while, and I start to go crazy under all that paper. Here's where storyboards present a golden opportunity, like a good map out of a swamp.

A writer needs to know the structure of her story flow, the placement in time and space of each idea or plot point. It's not just enough to churn out the words. The sequence matters, a sequence that readers can follow, and you need some method to clearly see sequence. Filmmakers use storyboards to provide this.

What's a storyboard look like? Check out this video where I demonstrate a storyboard.

I use a giant W to structure my storyboards or a row of empty boxes lined up on my posterboard. I place Post-it notes along the W that represents scenes or ideas or chapters, then I move them around until the sequence of ideas equals a reasonable flow for my book.

What Do You Learn from Storyboarding?
You learn all the things I grumbled about above: What is working, what is not working in your manuscript.

It's not uncommon to emerge from a storyboarding session with an awareness of what still needs to be written. I usually find missing sections or even chapters, places where a character or location has dropped out of sight, transitions that need to be made. Research still to do.

It's also not uncommon to feel discouraged. All that writing done, but it's not yet a book. Sigh.

Why even bother? Well, you could continue on with your story and not know what's wrong with it until you begin getting the rejection letters. Or you could save yourself a ton of time and find out now, when it's fixing (and less embarrassing to your writing career).

Storyboards are the absolute best way I've found to see if I have a working book, to force myself to structure the flow of ideas, to see what's left.

How do you know when it's time to storyboard? Most of my writing students tell me they begin to restless and overwhelmed with the amount of words they've collected. Others like storyboarding when they're just starting out with a new book, as a brainstorming exercise to plan the structure. Either way, it's a good time to storyboard when you want a clear direction and review of your original idea.

When your new or revised storyboard is complete, you'll have a working map for your book. That's truly something to love.

This Week's Writing Exercise
This week, watch the video above. Then get yourself to an office supply store.

Buy a posterboard and some Post-It notes. Go home, take a deep breath, and try creating your W storyboard. Start with just two moments: the opening and ending of your book, by asking yourself the questions below.

1. Where might you begin? What moment do you see launching your reader into your topic or story? Write a note about this on a Post-It and place it on the storyboard.

2. What moment might end your book? Where would you like the reader to be at the last page--with what new understanding, hunger, idea or feeling? Write a note about this too.

If you get brave, if you get enthused--as I did--see how many of the other Post-its you can place on the W.

Making Time for Your Writing--How Many Plates Are You Spinning?

2011-09-03T12:45:00.002-04:00

Each choice we make, each change we bring into our lives, requires a certain level of attention. Normal activities that are in a groove require a different kind of attention, because they are on a maintenance level.

But if we're tackling something new, like health or family changes, a shift in job responsibilities, a new exercise plan, new financial goals, it becomes like
a plate spinning in the air above our heads.

We have to keep the plate going so it doesn't fall. And our attention gets used up.

Often, writers who want desperately to write but can't seem to, have more plates in the air than they can comfortably manage. So the writing plate falls with a crash and the writer might not even have time to pick up the pieces.

So, first, it's a matter of knowing what you are handling that's out of the ordinary. Beyond what you need to need to keep body and soul together in your every day, you need to look at what's pulling your attention.

That's why this week's exercise can be transformational. You begin by listing what's unusual in your life, your current "spinning plates in the air." Then you do the same in your writing life. Finally, you assess the quantity, need, and any intersection between the two--is there room for your writing?

Assessing Your Spinning Plates
I began developing this exercise after I read Jennifer Louden's wonderful book, The Life Organizer. Louden believes that a person can only comfortably juggle four to six major focuses at any one moment. As I began assessing my spinning plates, I realized how true it was for me. More plates than five or six, I feel ovewhelmed; and conversely, if there are fewer new things in my life, I feel bored and uncreative, like I'm staying too safe and not risking enough.

So the goal is to keep an eye on how many plates you have going at any one time--and if your writing can comfortably become one of them. Because if you're working on a book, especially, it takes a certain level of attention that is not within the norm.

When I began working with this idea three years ago, I took a large sheet of paper (or used a two page spread in my journal) and drew six circles. In each circle was one main focus of my life just then. I only wrote down the focuses that needed constant attention, like they were really plates I was spinning above my head. So "food choices" became a circle only if I was trying to eat healthier or change my diet in some way; if I was feeling the food arena of my life was already humming along, it didn't go in a circle. If my relationship with my teenage son or spouse was doing well, that didn't need a circle. But if I was aware of change or growth that needed my attention now, or we were having conflicts, this went in a circle.

Trying anything new meant adding a dedicated circle for that area. Reinventing a system or fixing a troubled aspect of my life also meant adding a dedicated circle.

In other words, if an out-of-the-ordinary event was taking my attention in a more-than-maintenance way, it became a plate in the air.

Daily life: categories
* physical body needs (improvements in health, sleep, exercise, diet)
* emotional needs (changing or improving relationships with family and friends, improving self-care, addiing more private time, starting therapy, beginning a journal or any self-reflective path)
* intellectual needs (starting a class, going back to school, learning and growing in any arena)
* family needs (challenges or changes on the home front)
* home and possessions (buying a new/used car, moving, weeding out clutter, organizing new systems)
* financial needs (saving more, paying off debts, increasing income, starting a business, promotion and marketing)
* spiritual changes (finding a new church or religion, starting volunteer service, self-inquiry on a new level, new prayer or meditation practice)

Scan these categories and ask yourself, What am I trying in a new way right now? What improvements are required in my life to feel in control, balanced, and healthy?

Draw your circles of any area that feels like it needs extra attention right now, which could be a plate spinning in the air.

The next step in this assessment exercise is looking at what you need to have in place to allow writing to be part of your life--and to get your book written and published.

Creative life: categories
* privacy needs (enough private space and security of writing area--including computer security)
* time needs (having a dedicated writing practice and permission from family and work and self to write)
* feedback and support needs (being part of a writer's group, online or other writing class, or other exchange where you can get encouragement, support, and appropriate feedback to keep you going)
* adequate supplies (do your computer and printer work well or do you have enough paper and pens?)
* skill building needs (are you needing the next step in skills as a writer, maybe via a class, one-to-one instruction, or good books?)

If you have any of these areas that need attention, draw an additional circle on your page. Inside, write your writing life, and include whatever might be missing right now.

The final step with this exercise to to look at the different circles. See if there's overlap. Is there a need for more alone time in your daily life, which might correspond with a need for privacy in your writing life? If so, what small change can you make? Perhaps you just need to have a family meeting and ask your beloveds to give you time and space to be a creative person. Or perhaps you need to dedicate a private space to yourself within your home. Or maybe you need to finally get that computer of your own so you don't have to share with your daughter.

It's back-to-school time, so the energy is perfect for making such changes right now. Catch the spirit and reinvent both your writing and your life!

PS If your circles included a nudge to learn more writing skills, there are still a few openings in my fall online writing class, Your Book Starts Here, sponsored by the Loft Literary Center. You'll have 24/7 access to the classroom site, be part of a wonderful community of fellow book writers-to-be, and receive personal instruction from me online. Click here to find out more or register. Cost is $510 ($459 for Loft members) for the twelve classes. Or join me at my one-day workshop at Grub Street writing school in Boston on Sunday, September 18, to get a solid overview of the book-structuring process and how to create and maintain a writing practice to sustain you through the book-writing journey. Click here to find out more or register. Cost is $115 ($95 for Grub members).

Vote for My New Book--NH Literary Award Finalist!

2011-09-01T21:08:00.000-04:00

My new book, Your Book Starts Here, is now a finalist for the New Hampshire Literary Awards in the nonfiction category. Pretty thrilling!
It's also up for a People's Choice award. If you'd like to help me out by voting for Your Book Starts Here, please feel free to click here.

Why Bad Decisions Make Good Stories--A Cure for Writer's Block

2011-08-27T11:14:00.002-04:00

I'm on a writing sabbatical this week so I'm rerunning a favorite post from December 2009--hope you enjoy it!

Still life--may be nice to look at but not the stuff good stories are made of.

Bad decisions? Ah, there you have my interest. Friction and fracas--they are the real meat of the plotting craft. Is enough happening in your book? Are you stuck in a "still life" that's beautiful but not going anywhere?

An editor from a well-known literary journal once told me 90 percent of the stories he reads are rejected, and most for the same reason: nothing happens.

Don't let that happen to your book!

Why Bad Decisions Make Good Stories
A friend from Florida just emailed me a list of random thoughts, truisms to laugh at or shake your head over. Here's the one that grabbed me for this week's writing exercise: "Bad decisions make good stories." Funny, but really accurate. A good motto for writers.

Bad decisions are one of the only ways plot is furthered in memoir and fiction. If you're stuck in a rut, chances are your writing is staying too safe.

This week's discussion and exercise looks at a simple question. Why are you keeping bad decisions out of your book?

The Downside of Staying Safe
A student in my classes complained about her writer's block. She wrote several chapters that just flowed out. Then, about chapter 5, she got stuck. Nothing happened--either on the page or with the pen. I suggested she look at the bad decisions in her chapters. Try to find something that made everyone uneasy or got them into trouble.

What you're after here are the qualities of risk. What does the edge feel like? What does it feel like to "up the stakes" in your writing?

This writer was working on her book's storyboard (a visual map we create in my workshops and classes) so I suggested she review the main plot points. As she scanned them, she realized nothing big had happened after the opening event, which triggered her story. Everyone was skating along, keeping the status quo. This writer realized she had been saving the "good stuff" for later in the book, because she wasn't sure she could conjur up enough of it to spread around. Thus, there were no bad decisions resulting from the triggering (opening) event. And very little momentum, very little energy to propel the plot. This was a book that would probably get shelved after chapter 3, unfortunately.

I asked her why she was holding off on getting her characters in trouble via bad decisions. She explained at length, and I realized that this writer is a very nice person in her real life, someone everyone liked and someone who prized harmony at all costs. She also believes in a world where most people are good at heart, so she just couldn't see how to embarrass her characters with any faux pas. She liked them all (they were modeled after her!) and she couldn't see a way to paint them as bad people.

I like this writer--who wouldn't? And I also believe in that kind of goodness. But not on paper. Not in fiction or memoir, especially if you want to publish today.

I'm not suggesting you have to make murder and mayhem. Bad decisions can just be telling a white lie, and watching the consequences unfold. I asked this writer if she'd ever told a white lie, and she said, "Of course, who hasn't?"

"Find your bad decisions," I suggested. "List them, then transport one into your story."

Finding Bad Decisions--This Week's Writing Exercise
We've all made bad decisions. We've been on the receiving end of other people's, too. They are hard to forget, no matter how hard we try. Think of what your "story" was after the decision. It probably had drama, movement, energy, and consequences. That's what you're after in your writing.

This week write about one really bad decision you made in your life. Write about it in all its glory. I like to set a kitchen timer for 15 minutes, to limit the agony. Maybe you're far enough away to not feel the pain of it again, but if you do feel some embarrassment or unease as you write, good thing--because it'll make the writing that much more emotionally grabbing for a reader.

Now look at your book draft. Where are the bad decisions? If you don't have many, make a list of 10 things your character would never do. (Use this equally for memoir or fiction.) Now write one scene, one moment, using one item on the list--imagining it happening.

See if this provides momentum. Gets you unstuck. Out of that "still life."

The Image List : A Great Way to Get Your Creativity Juiced

2011-08-13T04:49:00.001-04:00

In mid-summer, my writing often takes a dive. I feel the laziness of summertime and don't really want to work on anything, much less do the hard work it takes to be a dedicated book author.

I set myself a schedule, I set a timer, and still the stuff doesn't come out on the page. Maybe
the garden is calling (boy, is it ever right now--anyone need some cucumbers?). Or I've just gotten that cool memoir by Patti Smith (Just Kids--great book!) from the library and the book, my screened porch, its comfy camp bed, and a glass of iced tea sounds pretty wonderful.

Basically, I'm too hot to write, too cold to write, too tired to write. So little writing gets done. This process doesn't make me feel better, surprisingly. Because I really love to write, and I love my book.

During doldrums like this, I usually let myself take a break, because I work hard most of the time. But if that break goes on into guilt about not writing, or if the ache to get back to my book started growing, I have a couple of effective helpers to get my creativity juiced.

A favorite for the sensory-rich days of summer is the image list.

Using an Image List
In my writing notebook, I have a list of images. These images are connected to my book. They include objects, weather, vehicles like a certain car or truck, parts of a landscape like a river or a field of rocks, the way light comes into one of the rooms, a taste, a certain sound like bells, or anything that evokes sensation in me when I imagine it. I add to this list of images whenever I can, so it's always fresh and interesting.

I encourage all my book-writing students to keep such a list, and draw from it for freewrites. Here's how it works:

Last week, I was finally in front of the chapter I was editing for my next book. But I was stumped. So I turned to my image list. I picked an image that somehow spoke to me, that might be part of the life of one of my characters. I began freewriting about my own associations with that image.

The image was holly wreaths.

I have some history with holly wreaths. When I was a teenager, I was in charge of making huge holiday wreaths each winter from the holly my dad grew in our yard. Not a fun project--holly has wicked thorns--but I loved the meditative time weaving the strands into a circle of heavy wire, trying to keep the berries intact, and I loved the months the holly wreaths hung on our windows and front door, bright against the snow. It felt artistic, interesting, and certain different from my normal teenager life. The making of this strange kind of art soothed me as a kid, and I still enjoy doing it.

One of my characters also has history with holly wreaths (surprise!) because she lives on a flower farm. So I wasn't too shocked, as I wrote my memories of wreaths, that a clue came from my freewrite for my book.

It solved a dilemma I've been struggling with: how could I get this character to meet up with a former love who's back in town and causing trouble? She would avoid this person at all costs. But, believe it or not, the freewrite on holly wreaths got me thinking about a place, a time, and a situation neither could get out of.

Another flaccid chapter gets unexpected life breathed into it. Thanks to the image list.

Writing Exercise #1: Using the Image List to Locate a Character's Primary Image
John Gardner, author of The Art of Fiction, wrote, "We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images."

Ask yourself, what's the primary image that relates to one of your main characters? It may be an object (a favorite pen, jackknife, vase, wooden toy), part of the landscape (a river, cliff, apple orchard, path through the forest, side of a graffitied building), something worn by the person (sunglasses, black leather jacket, tattoo).

Spend 20 minutes writing everything you know about this image.

Writing Exercise #2: Using the Image List to Develop Sensory Details in Your Book
Another favorite writing teacher, E.L. Doctorow, said, "Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."

Set a kitchen timer for 10 minutes and write about this image from one of the five senses: smell, taste, touch (texture and temperature), sound, sight. Underline your favorite sentence from what you wrote, one that "evokes sensation." Can you add it to a page in your book draft? Could it rescue one of your chapters?

Book writers (and all writers!) need to be able to hear both the random, illogical side of their creative selves, as well as the structuring, logical part. Images come from this random side, and they are just waiting to be grabbed. Clues about how to improve our writing come from images, in my experience. If the dog days of summer are leaving you feeling a bit distant from your creative self, begin making a list of images. Then pick a time, set a timer, and go to it.

Write everything you can about that image. It may lead you to a completely new view of your book.

PS Next week I'll be on vacation. I'm taking my book along and plan to plant myself with a ton of images (by a lake in the mountains) to inspire me. Hope you do the same! The blog posts will resume the following week.

Transitioning to the Image Brain: Write a Poem about Your Book

2011-08-08T05:13:00.007-04:00

Novelist and short-story writer Stuart Dybek (Coast of Chicago) was interviewed in Novel Voices about unique approaches to writing a book.

A most intriguing idea he presented was this
: Write a poem about your manuscript.

I was very inspired by this exercise. I don't consider myself a poet, but I wanted to try it. Maybe it would give me some new insights on my book?

My current novel is in revision stage; it's a struggle and a joy, as all books are, so I grabbed a handful of magnetic poetry words from a bowl in my office. I spread them out on the table and started arranging the words into three stanzas, each representing one of the Acts of my book-in-progress.

I've been stumbling around Act 3 for weeks, and doing this poem-writing exercise gave my insights into why. Words came together easily in the stanzas for Acts 1 and 2 of my book, but Act 3 was still full of mystery. Mostly, my poem shared questions. What's going to happen in Act 3, to pull all the threads together? Why does Kate stay, why does Zoe commit, why does Mel come back?

I realized I was telling myself I needed to know these answers, but my book wasn't ready to give them yet.

The poem let us come into some agreement about things unanswered, and we both felt better. I stopped pushing. I decided to be content with not knowing answers, because I wasn't ready to implement them. Yes, I had a plot ending to the story, which seemed to work, but the inner story, the characters' motivations, were still mysterious to me. Letting the question just be in front of me, as I continue to revise, felt right.

Since then, I've been mulling over the poetry exercise. I've tried it in my classes, and I've seen it give writers a lot of peace about their books, where they are right now, as well as unexpectedly good ideas about next steps.

Poetry is image-based, so it clicks the writer into the right brain rather than the more linear left side of the brain. This exercise takes about 20 minutes, but it can bring breakthroughs.

This past week on Madeline Island, I asked my workshop class to end our five day session with this poetry-making exercise. I reassured them that they didn't have to be poets to do it, they just needed to be willing to play and explore what they knew about their books. I passed out small handfuls of magnetic poetry words and let everyone get to it. Some people are reluctant, of course, because this activity is all about process, not product. It doesn't seem efficient or logical. I encourage and cajole, and everyone eventually makes a poem.

We share the rough poems, and many this year were very moving. Some of them eloquently described the journey of the past five days of the retreat, where writers learned unexpected new avenues into their books. Some poems talked about the struggle to find a story, and how it had come to resolution (or not). Other poems showed a character's journey, and how the writer's own journey mirrored that.

I've expanded the exercise to include the steps below. Try it this week, just for fun. It'll sink you back into that wonderful sense of creative play, which is so appropriate for summertime.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Create one sentence for each of three acts in your book (their peak moments, their external movement, the changes that you're going for).

2. Create one sentence for each of your main character’s shifts during the story, or your reader's shifts and journey as she reads your material. These can be internal changes in the character, such as a big realization moment, or an external decision the person makes to do something differently.

3. Create one sentence for each of three different setting details (with something from the five senses associated with each). For instance, think about a setting you've chosen for Act 1 and a sentence that describes that setting.

4. Create one sentence for each of three objects or memories associated with the book. These can be something a character really loves or remembers.

5. Find one musical detail in the book (sound or rhythm).

6. Take all the above musings and write a three-stanza poem about your book, one stanza for each Act. Use one plot point, one character shift, one object or memory in each stanza. Then try to get something rhythmic or musical in each stanza.

Have fun with this! Don't approach it too seriously; let the book guide you into new insights.

That Tricky Balance of Show and Tell in Your Writing--How Do You Work with It?

2011-07-31T05:09:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite quotes about showing versus telling comes from Anton Chekhov, who wrote, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” This seems to sum it up. Readers get emotionally engaged in writing that demonstrates rather than delivers.

Not sure you agree? Think of a book you may have read recently. Did you skim any of it, skip some sections? Go back and look at those pages, and perhaps you'll notice that the author went into her head a bit, perhaps. Maybe she decided it was a good time to get on a small soapbox and explain something. You lost interest, as a reader. That's because telling contains less emotional charge, so we're less involved in the images of the story.

Showing brings image to the page. It's a demonstration of scene through specific details. Most books need to have more showing than telling nowadays, partly because of our fast-moving culture. We have a shorter attention span. Even movies are changing to adapt to the new ways our brains work.

That's not to say that telling isn't important too. Once something is framed on the page by shown details, a small bit of telling can deepen the meaning, the understanding a reader gets from the scene.

This week I've been teaching a retreat with 11 writers from all over the world. We're at Madeline Island School of the Arts, a beautiful art school located on restored farm on one of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior near Bayfield, Wisconsin. During class this week we were reading an excerpt from William Trevor's Cheating at Canasta, a short story about a woman who has Alzheimer's. In this scene, the woman is playing cards with her husband, and although she can't really play cards anymore, he loves her so much that he helps her win. After a page of showing this sad and beautiful relationship they have, Trevor ends with a line of "telling" that always knocks my socks off: "I cheated at Canasta, and she won." Because the telling is framed by earlier shown detail, we totally get it.

So while telling at its worst brings an almost intellectual assessment of what happened, and showing at its best relies instead on sensory detail (smells, sights, sounds), telling is important. Telling lets us back away from the moment, giving us brief perspective on what's been shown. While showing places the reader squarely in the moment, telling gives distance.

The key to showing is to demonstrate. This means not interpreting the things you are placing in front of us.

Robert Olen Butler, author of many wonderful stories and novels and instructor at this writing at Florida State University’s MFA program, talks about this in his book From Where You Dream. To learn how to show better, I like to pass along these tips from Butler's book. They help me deliver emotion in its purest form.

Most important: don’t dilute your moment with interpretation.

Butler observed that emotion can be delivered to a reader (shown, versus told) generally in five ways. Here is my translation of his terms:

• what I am feeling inside my body (goosebumps on my arm, itchy foot, tight throat)

• what I am observing in your gestures and movements (tearing a small paper napkin into bits, jiggling foot)

• specific memory

• fear, anticipation, desire (projections into future)

• sense selectivity (during moments of extreme emotion, all but one sense goes away)

During the developing stage of book writing, whenever I need to change a scene to more “showing,” I will go through Butler’s list and ask myself how I can bring in one of these.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
This week, translate a passage that "tells" into one that "shows," using one of the above techniques. What happened?

Creating the Most Engaging Environment--Working the "Container" of Your Story

2011-07-24T11:32:00.002-04:00

Writing teachers often cite the trio of event, character, and setting: major elements to keep track of in your manuscript. This trio is key to any genre, memoir, fiction, or nonfiction.

All books have something happening, illustrated by scene or anecdote. That's event.

There's always someone this event happens to, be it fictional character, real-life narrator, or reader.

And there's always
a place where it occurs, the setting. Together, the trio create an alchemy. This alchemy engages your reader and brings meaning to your writing.

I always understood event. I wrote things happening and I enjoyed looking for the drama in my nonfiction anecdotes, my memoir memories, my fictional scenes. I love studying people and the way they tick, so I always understood the character element too.

But setting was perplexing. It was easy to write descriptions of physical setting--trees, fields, mountains; the dirty dishes in the sink, the towels on the bathroom floor; the dusty streets of a summer town. But physical setting never seemed to cover all the aspects I loved in a good book.

What about the culture of the town?
Or the church everyone (who wanted to belong) attended?
What about the political beliefs of a family as a group?
Or the morals and ethics?

These didn't necessarily apply to an individual, but more to the group consciousness as a whole. Their history as a cultural unit. Didn't this affect the story and have to do with a kind of setting? The more I thought about it, the less adequate the word setting felt. It seemed way too narrow a term to encompass so many vessels that could contain a story.

So I began to imagine this composite of physical, emotional, political, religious, and cultural setting of a story as a container, like a large beaker in a lab. It held the experiment of the story, as it bubbled away. Container became for me a limited but vivid vessel that held my story together--restricting characters until one of them breaks free. I liked thinking of my setting in this expanded way because it let me really explore the environment that would create the best story.

Container Is Fully Developed Yet Limited
Many writers duly write setting because they're told it's important. They put in a couple of trees, some rooftops, a few sounds if they're lucky. But container is much more than this. It requires the writer to research the background of the story's environment, what made the place what it is at the time the story begins.

Container must be fully developed by the writer, and some of us don't want to do this work. But a reader really appreciates it. I remember one of my favorite scenes in Andre Dubus's House of Sand and Fog, where Kathy and Les are in a rooftop restaurant in San Francisco. As Les reveals something very secret to Kathy, the restaurant is revolving and showing her a different view every few minutes, truly an experience of disorientation. Here's an example of container really showing us this important moment--and not just physical setting but the drug background of Kathy (a revolving scene indeed) is echoed beautifully in this location.

Your container means everything to the emotional effect of your writing and whether the story engages the reader. You must know and use the culture and background of your players: Imagine a young woman of Cuban ancestry placed in a small town in Norway. Because of her background, her cultural container, she'll act differently than she would in Miami, yes? Container is what makes that difference.

Container influences event as well. On a very sultry day, different things happen than on a winter's night. Or a nuclear waste plant versus a family farm--events will be quite changed by these two containers.

This week's exercise lets you consider how your container could be more fully developed setting, how it can more effectively serve as a frame for how people and events move in your story.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Make a list of three important physical settings in your book.
2. Now assign a primary image to each of these settings. What does the character notice, hear, smell, taste, feel (as in air temperature or texture, not internal feelings of mood)?
3. How does this image reflect something about the character's container, or cultural past?
4. How could you align the image more closely?

Taking Along Your Writing: How to Keep Your Creativity Alive during Your Summer Vacation

2011-07-17T04:42:00.002-04:00

I am packing my suitcases this week, wondering about where to fit my writing. Clothes, check. Great book, check. Camera, check. Teaching materials, check. The pile is big, the suitcase is small. Can I take my printout for the novel that's haunting my days and nights right now? Will these characters, who are living with me every moment, fit in a side
pocket?

As a traveling instructor, I'm used to summer teaching. I like the chance to get away and see new places, meet new writers, help them take their books to the next step. It's work for me, but quite enjoyable as jobs go. But it's all too easy to forget my own creativity when I'm busy with everyone else's. Even though I have the time, it's much easier to "vacate" and do nothing while I'm away. After all, there's no writing desk to remind me to sit down and face the empty page. I'm away from my normal reminders and routine. Forgetting is simple.

I do find that being away from home gives me some of that "necessary boredom" that writer Dorothy Allison talks about, that magical element that lets the over-busy self slow down and relax, lets us take in new images and ideas. The well begins to fill again as I leave behind regular-life responsibilities, as I rest in the rhythm of lake, mountains, and passing clouds.

But these characters, this book! Do they need to be left behind too? Will they still be waiting for me when I show up again? Probably not, at least not in the same way as when I left. Long ago, a writing colleague clued me into why: After three days, writing threads fade. They are filtered out by other things, not even noticed. The characters' voices start to get fainter and the writer begins to be quite disconnected from the the flow of these voices. She can even lose track of the bigger structure of her project, especially if it's a book. She can forget the key questions that keep her creativity alive and cranking out new scenes.

I don't want this. I've worked hard all winter and spring to get my momentum moving.

Travel Systems to Keep the Creativity Alive
It makes sense that when we leave our supportive routines, we have to set up systems that let us "hold" our books-in-progress in our hearts and heads, keeping it cooking, even if the desk, chair, computer, and regular writing time isn't in front of us as reminders.
How do we do this?

Once when I was studying painting intensively, my teacher said to get an artist's notebook, a small sketchbook, and carry it everywhere. Make it fun. Each day, sketch a few ideas, nothing serious, just play. If I'm reading a magazine and see a juicy color that inspires me, tear a piece and paste it into my notebook. Collect postcards from art museums, add them too. Make lists of wishes that have to do with art. Draw a series of empty frames and slowly fill them in with composition ideas.

It worked. I came home from that two-week trip more inspired than when I left, aching to get back to my studio and start painting. (I actually couldn't wait; I bought a travel kit of watercolors and began using them midway through the vacation.)

So I got the idea to do this with my writing. Forget the computer, but don't forget a writer's notebook. I got myself a cool one, and a great pen. I began doodling, just as a warm up, just to keep in the spirit of vacation. Then I started making lists of images that appealed to me, often things I was seeing on the trip. Cloud shapes, the particularly purple dusky color of a distant hill at sunset, the smell of lemonade with lavender. New impressions to my senses, like how the dusty southern French road felt under my thin American sandals. I let myself play, but I let myself stay connected to my writing.

Then one day I began writing questions about my story-in-progress. This was fun too. Letting myself dream into the book I had left behind on my desk at home, remembering what confused me about it, imagining ways out of that maze. You can guess where this step led: freewriting. I began writing each morning, when no one else was up yet, over my tea and croissants. Short, fun freewrites, exploring the questions and images I'd listed.

Travel became an open door. Like with my artist's notebook, my traveling writer's notebook captured moments I never would've experienced at home. They made their way into my book, plus several short stories that came to life when I returned home.

Don't feel you have to abandon your writing when you "vacate" this summer. It can travel with you, in a new form that fits the holiday atmosphere. Creativity is never something you have to leave behind.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Before you travel this summer, or while you're on the road (if you already are), get a writer's notebook and a pen you love.

2. Spend time each day with it, 5-10 minutes, doodling. Mindless stuff, no purpose, no productivity.

3. Graduate to images. What's in front of you? The ocean, the rolling hills, the desert, the prairie? A small seaside town? The cafe on the busy boulevard? Write down two or three things you notice, as if you were writing a postcard home.

4. Next, try lists. Begin to list questions, things you're still wondering about your book.

5. Finally, get some private time and write the possible answer to one of these questions or freewrite from one of the images, for 10-30 minutes. Nothing in mind but words on the page.

You may be surprised at where you travel!

Lessons from the Movies--Planting and Returning Images to Create a Satisfying Ending

2011-07-03T21:00:00.004-04:00

There's a place in every book where all the assembled objects begin to balance. They have slowly come together through many pages and form a cohesive whole.

Of course, this is the end of the story. It's supposed to be satisfying, even if it leaves us with questions and aches to know more. It should never leave us confused, however. All the elements brought into play during the book must be accounted for.

I find that ending a story, especially a book's story, is hard. Every book I finish offers its own particular agony in its ending. Endings leave me really concerned--what sleight of hand to perform that will bring delighted gasps from
my reading crowd. How to make a cohesive whole that works! I hate leaving holes, where the reader is left thinking back over the story and wondering where this or that object or person has disappeared to, because it annoys me as a reader.

I just finished a nonfiction book that was published this year, Your Book Starts Here, and I ran into the same dilemma with it as I did with my novel or memoir manuscripts. There was so much more to say! But I had to say goodbye sometime, so when was the best moment? And how did I know that I'd successfully wrapped up all the important points I'd launched in the early pages?

Last night I watched a movie that showed me exactly how good endings are born--from the end backwards, a pathway laid carefully through the story via a technique that writing teacher Rebecca McClanahan calls "plant and return."

The movie wasn't all that recent (2007), but a friend had recommended it. It's a bit violent, in the way of bank robbing, con men, films, but it's so well crafted from a story point of view, I thought about it long after the final credits. It's called The Lookout, and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Chris, a young man who is living with the sad effects of a car accident that left his brain askew (TBI) when he meets up with a con man who muscles him into helping with a bank robbery. Jeff Daniels plays Chris's roommate Lewis, a blind man who has a talent for R&B guitar playing. Chris makes huge breakthroughs in his stalled-out guilt over the car accident (two friends died) and saves Lewis in the end, but only because he heeds Lewis's advice to "tell the story from the end." When Chris is in dire straights, he begins imagining what he'd like the ending of the story to be. Then he works backwards, taking notes to remind himself of each step. Then he carries those steps out.

To me as a viewer, this was brilliant--a concept of a higher order placed in the midst of a shoot-em-up film. Then I read the screenwriter was the same who'd written Out of Sight and Get Shorty. Out of Sight, with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, featured the same intricate weaving as The Lookout. The ending is written first, it seems, in the screenwriter's mind--where would we like to be at the finish line? Then the writer carefully tracks each element backwards through the previous scenes.

Chris uses a notepad and pen to keep track of all that his brain no longer remembers. These are featured as crime solving tools later, introduced as basic life tools earlier. A great plant and return. He often locks his car keys in the car, but he keeps a spare in his boot. We see him open the car with the boot-hidden spare several times early in the movie; then, when he's being chased by the bank robbers near the end, he again locks himself out of the car and uses it in the nick of time. Again, a plant and return--an image used earlier, quite innocently, ends up being pivotal to the ending.

I love to trace this technique back through my own books. Begin at the end, find an important image, and read backwards to see where it is planted and where it returns and why.

I've found that unless I make all the important images repeat, culminating at the ending, it's frustrating for the reader. Remember Anton Chekhov's admonition: if you put a gun on the mantelpiece in Act 1, it must be fired by Act 3. Very true.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Make a list of all the important images in your story. Begin with the objects--the easiest to identify. You can also include thematic images, such as clouds, a river, arranging flowers, etc. Or certain pieces of clothing, music, and food that are important to your book.

2. Find out where these land in Act 3. How are they used in the culminating sections of your story?

3. Then trace each back through the chapters, seeing where they are planted and returned to. If you find huge sections where an important image drops out of sight, ask yourself why--is it intentional or is it something that needs fixing?

4. Get a copy of The Lookout and enjoy watching a master screenwriter use this technique (warning: it's moderately violent and may offend some).

Four Levels of Learning--From Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence

2011-06-26T20:36:00.001-04:00

I am sharing a post I wrote last summer, because my Madeline Island retreat is coming up again in July, and I remembered this wonderful experience we had there. If you're interested in learning more about the retreat, click here. One spot just opened up for the July 18-22 retreat and four spots are still open for the July 25-29 retreat this year. Writers who went there last summer still write me about how their books suddenly came together, just from the supportive community and great atmosphere of the retreat. It's hosted by Madeline Island School of the Arts, which provides lodging and most of the meals. Our classroom is large and airy, there's plenty of writing time, and you get feedback for your work. Feel free to join me--it's truly an amazing week.

At my book-writing retreat on Madeline Island (Lake Superior) last July, we were joined by a man who summered on the island. He was retired from a very successful sales career and as he was a last-minute addition to the group and hadn't taken my book-writing workshops before, I wondered how he would do.

One sunny morning midweek, the class was struggling with the learning curve of three-act structure. Suddenly Pete raised his hand with something
to share.

There are four levels of learning, he told us, and they are used in sales training. Salespeople have to face a lot of learning curve, plenty of rejection, and still have enough detachment and confidence to make the next day's calls. Pete told us about these four stages and how we were struggling because we were moving from one to the next.

These stages are the brainchild of Abraham Maslow, the renowned American psychologist who was the first to study human potential. I'd studied the stages before but never applied them to the book-writing journey, but they describe it perfectly. They help me every day: recognizing where I am in my learning stage lets me feel less of a failure, less at the mercy of my Inner Critic.

The four stages are: (1) unconscious incompetence, (2) conscious incompetence, (3) conscious competence, and (4) unconscious competence.

Unconscious Incompetence
In the first, unconscious incompetence, the writer doesn't really know how she's doing. Often she's at the very beginning stages of writing and may experience a huge flow of words. To her, they may feel amazing as they emerge, but really she's writing them down to hear herself, to begin to recognize her own creative voice. They are not yet a conversation with a reader, but more the writer talking with herself. This is an oh-so-important stage, because unless we can communicate with our own inner worlds and our own thoughts, we can never communicate with others effectively--our writing will never be authentic.

When I first began writing fiction, for example, the ideas just flowed out. I had plenty, they were easy to access, I wrote like a mad person. This is the realm of the freewrite, the wild writing that is also called stream of consciousness. We have no idea if the writing is good or bad. It doesn't actually enter this stage's equation.

We don't really care; we're just creating and it's beautiful to us.

As I said, unconscious incompetence is a very worthwhile and necessary stage of learning to write. But some never progress beyond it. The key is whether the writer has a nudge inside to begin to include the reader in the conversation. Maybe there's a sense that the writing could serve another, interest or educate or inspire. That's the first step on the bridge to stage two. But it often requires asking for feedback.

Conscious Incompetence
As we ask for feedback on our writing, we enter the second stage of learning, Feedback tells us what's working, yes, but it also shows us what's not quite as wonderful as we imagined.

There's a sinking feeling: We are now conscious of our incompetence.

A writer's ability to cope with this stage, her ability to not get down on herself because she's in it, determine whether she'll go on to the third stage. The trick is in how she deals with the Inner Critic.

In this second stage, the Inner Critic reigns. Oh, does it have a field day. We know we are terrible writers, we know we don't have what it takes to get published, and on and on. Are you listening to this maladjusted voice, this proponent of self-criticism? If you can acknowledge its purpose--it's only trying to make sure you don't get fatally embarrassed, shamed, or hurt for your efforts--and go forward anyway, you begin to learn.

This is often when book writers sign up for classes. How often have I heard "I have all these pages and I have no idea what to do with them"? That's conscious incompetence--the writer is saying, "I know that I don't know, but I want to know." Good. That's a very teachable place to be.

The learning is steep between stages two and three, I find. There's so much that we don't know, so much to absorb about writing. It doesn't seem fair--we speak the language, we majored in English, why can't we manifest a publishable book? Conscious incompetence says, It's OK, I can learn, I'm willing to learn, I'm willing to be a beginner again.

Conscious Competence
It's exciting to reach the third stage. You know what to do to make that chapter sing. You have your checklist and you work it: checking the storyboard, three-act structure, the characters and dialogue, the plot, the main points. It's hard work, all this checking and rechecking, and the checklist is so long! The writing is harder now, because it feels like real work. You long for that first stage, perhaps, when you could freewrite all the time and not worry about whether it was good or not. Now you know it wasn't that great, and your awareness is the burden you carry.

This isn't a fun stage, even though it turns out better writing than any of the other stages so far. It's what my MFA teachers used to call the "slog." We slog through the writing now, not really lifted up by it, not really energized. But, at the end, we have something pretty darn good.

And if we do it enough, it begins to get slightly easier. Maybe the second rewrite goes a bit more smoothly than the first. Maybe, if we're lucky, there's a sense of flow again. That's the sign that we've moved into the fourth stage, unconscious competence.

Unconscious Competence
I love this stage. I crave it, it's what makes me slog through stage three, it's the light at the end of the tunnel, the dessert at the end of the meal. Writing is truly fun again.

Usually, in my book-writing journeys, I reach this stage in final revision. Theme begins to appear organically, I begin to notice the book is speaking with its own voice which is not exactly mine (a thrilling moment), and I find I've added some beauty in places I didn't even remember working on. This is where you put your manuscript down for a few days and when you come back, it's as if someone else wrote it--someone who writes really well!

But it was you. A glorious feeling. Why we writers write.

Where are you, in these four stages? Can you recognize yourself in the stories above? You may be perfectly content with where you are in your writing journey. Some writers enjoy all four stages. But most of us suffer, thinking we're not quite where we should be. It's only when we realize that everyone is on the learning journey that we can relax and accept our place, move forward from it.

In the Madeline Island workshop, Pete helped us all move forward. His simple reminder that they are stages of learning, that they are necessary pathways in the journey toward success--in any arena, not just book-writing--made me grateful for Pete's presence in the class. His lift of hand to share his wisdom that day, gave all of us the lift to a higher perspective.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Think about where you are, right now, with your book project. Which stage are you in?

2. Take 20 minutes this week to write about what you need to do to move to the next stage. Maybe it's an internal step--of accepting the stage you're currently in, letting it reside in you and teach you. Maybe it's an external step, an outer action, such as finding a mentor to help you move ahead with a stalled project.

3. Plan one action step--internal or external--and try it.

Mixing Things Up--Another Look at How to Break out of Writer's Block

2011-06-19T13:48:00.001-04:00

Alison McGhee, writing instructor and author of many wonderful novels including Shadow Baby and Rainlight, once taught a very effective exercise in a writing class I attended.

Lists were written on the whiteboard: people of different ages and different objects. She asked us to choose one specific from each list and
write a short scene.

This exercise was pivotal for me, opening up the theme for my novel, Qualities of Light, and giving me the primary dilemma for the story. So amazing, that one writing exercise can do this. I've also found it a great way to break free of writer's block, if that particular illness is hampering you this month.

Below is my adaptation of Alison's idea, adding place to the other items. Try it this week, if you want. It's very effective for getting out of a writing rut.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Set a timer for 20 minutes.

2. Write a scene that takes place in one of these places:

downtown bus station
O'Hare's airport security
streetside cafe in France
laundromat in Gillette, Wyoming
riverside picnic area

Where there's an argument about one of these objects:

penknife
silver coin
piece of sea glass
diaper
cell phone that doesn't work

Between two people who are:

a woman of 85
a young boy of 13
a girl of 24
a man of 49

Mix them up--one from each list--and see what happens!

PS Be sure to check out Alison's books, especially Shadow Baby. A wonderful story for a summer read.

Forest and Trees--Balancing the Long View and Short View as a Book Writer

2011-06-11T20:51:00.004-04:00

When you’re writing a book, you have to simultaneously hover over the forest, while you're noticing the tiny leaves of each tree. Being in two places at once, you must keep in mind your overall book’s focus and structure, how you want it to come together--at the same time as you work on a tiny detail of one scene or chapter.

It’s often hard to balance these two viewpoints well. Most new book writers
can’t.

When I began writing and publishing books, I was able to easily see the chapter I was working on, down to the fine-tuning of one step of one theory or the tiny gesture a character makes in one particular scene. It was much harder for me to move to the long view: see how this particular particle of writing fit in the book as a whole. Where would it best be placed to engage a reader? Back then, my balancing handicap didn't matter. I was lucky enough to begin publishing back in the days when there were editors at the publishing houses who assumed this job. They helped a writer monitor the long view by keeping in mind the reader, the reader's experience of the book as a whole, and how all the parts made up that whole.

As the writer, I was the "talent" (they actually used to call it that!). I was responsible for creating good writing in each section of each book. My editor, in his lofty treehouse, would take care of the bigger picture.

Things have changed radically in publishing. Not only has this kind of editor mostly disappeared from the major houses, books need to be in good shape before they are submitted anywhere--to agent, to small press, to contest, to publisher. So we writers are faced with a task we didn't have to learn back then: we must be masters at what CD Baby creator Derek Sivers called "future-focus" and "present-focus."

We must balance the long view and the short view in our manuscripts.

Useful Writing Tools for Long View/Short View Balancing
My favorite tool for refining the skill of long view, or future-focus, is the storyboard.

My favorite tool for developing present-focus is the brainstorming list of topics, which generate ideas for freewrites or "islands" if you maintain a solid writing habit.

Storyboards are not foreign to those in publishing. They are used by many publishers to design sequence in a book that will be created in house. I learned about storyboards two decades ago and use them in my workshops, classes, and all the books I write. I've never grown to love them, as some do, but I depend on their power to pull me into future focus, that long view of my manuscript. They let me see the forest above the trees.

My storyboards are vital maps of each book I write. Without a working map, a writer is severely limited. She is stuck in present focus, the short view. This is truly a fun place to reside, but it also can capture you unconsciously in an endless loop. You produce many small bits but they never become a whole, a real book.

Some writers love playing with dramatic scenes or “islands,” but balk at systems. This kind of writer is stuck in the short view. They aren't able to gain the overview of how these “islands” line up into chapters,and eventually the entire mess gets overwhelming. Either the book will be abandoned, the writer will decide they are more cut out for easier-to-manage short stories or essays, or the writer will finally force herself into a long view--learn to map her manuscript.

What about the opposite tendency? This exists too. A writer can equally get stuck in future-focus. Do you love, love, love storyboarding, make countless outlines and charts, line up ideas on index cards, but don't do much actual writing?

When I talk with writers who adore storyboarding and admit that the actual writing time feels, well, messy, my inner alarm bells go off. This writer has been hovering far above the trees way too long. Yes, writing process is certainly not as tidy and controlled as the beautiful diagrams that line the walls of your writing room, but writing is organic. And it's important to allow equal space for the organic as well as the planned when you're writing a book.

So be wary of getting so hooked into the big picture of what your book could become, that you aren’t willing to do the work that will let it grow into that picture.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
This week's exercise allows you to explore the two views, and see what you might need to balance in yourself.

1. Read the article on future-focus and present-focus by Derek Sivers, which is here. See if it changes your point of view about where you come from, with your book.

2. Set a timer for 10 minutes and write about your like or dislike of these two aspects of book-writing: the big picture (i.e., organizing your writing into a storyboard, outline, or other future-focused system) and the short view (i,e., writing "islands" or freewrites, creating your book loosely).

3. What did you learn? This week, ask yourself how you could begin to adjust any imbalance.

Hands-on storyboarding workshop--get feedback on your book idea

2011-06-04T19:26:00.002-04:00

Weekend book workshop, August 6-7, Manchester, NH. For more information click here.

Reading from the End--An Effective Way to Troubleshoot Your Writing

2011-06-04T07:23:00.001-04:00

A student in my current online class had written a wonderful chapter for her book. It was working almost perfectly: the tension was high, the characters were strong, I could see the setting and it enhanced the emotion of the moment very effectively. But there was something not quite there.

The writing needed some help, and at first I
was at a loss to see what kind.

Then I remembered a technique my painting teacher used to use when a painting wasn't working but it wasn't obvious why. She'd stand with her back to the painting and look at it in a mirror--reversed. Often, the elements that were out of balance showed up clearly in this reverse image. Another time, she turned the painting upside down on the easel, and again, it showed the proportional flaws immediately.

A lightbulb went off. I had used the "reverse approach" with my own writing, years ago, when I was in final revision for my novel Qualities of Light. I read each chapter in reverse order, beginning with the final one. I also read the chapters in reverse order, from the last paragraph to the first.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but it worked. I could suddenly see the structure and pacing without any distraction from the story itself.

When I tried it with this student's work, the few places that needed fixing were incredibly obvious to me. Just a few spots where the writer needed to tighten up the prose. The rest worked wonderfully.

A very simple exercise. It helps with so many problems. I think it works because it makes us not read the story. We don't get engaged. We're just able to view the writing mechanically, without the romance of the words.

I use it to check transitions between the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another. Or between paragraphs. I use it to catch bumps in the pacing. It shows me where a section isn't really needed or where something is missing. Try it this week, if you want, to troubleshoot a stuck section in your story. Let me know how you like it!

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Pick a section of your writing that feels a bit off, not quite as smooth as you'd like it.

2. Begin with the last paragraph. Read it. Then move to the one above it.

3. Note any spots that need fixing.

A Way to Study Outer and Inner Story in Your Favorite Books

2011-05-30T20:15:00.001-04:00

Weaving the pathway of outer and inner story (what happens and what's the meaning of it) through a book requires knowing the different effect of each on the reader. The best way to train yourself is to study outer and inner story in published books.

If you study books in different genres, you discover that each kind of book leans toward a different ratio of outer to inner story. You can learn a lot about how to balance the two in your particular book.

For instance, nonfiction writers use a lot of outer story; but their anecdotes (inner story for nonfiction is usually illustrative anecdotes) bring the potentially dry material alive. Anecdotes humanize information. They show how a theory or a method can be applied in real life, which brings interest to the facts. Nonfiction writing grabs a reader via these inner story anecdotes.

Two excellent writers of nonfiction who use inner story this way are Atul Gawande and Malcolm Gladwell.
They work with about a 70/30 ratio; maybe 70 percent of their manuscripts delivers facts, information, theory, or method (outer story), and 30 percent is illustrative anecdotes (inner story). But that inner story is what makes the information engaging.

Another ratio is found in the genre called "creative nonfiction." Creative nonfiction, such as essay collections or memoir, needs more illustrative material (inner story), about 40 percent. That makes sense—creative nonfiction includes slightly more human stories. Essayists use anecdote and personal reflection on a topic to bring in the inner story and balance the facts with emotional truth.

What about entertainment fiction, those wonderful plot-driven novels, such as mysteries or romance? These have a slightly different ratio, about a 50/50 balance of outer story and inner story. Plot is the outer story in fiction, which inner story is the meaning, conveyed via setting, shown emotions, and some internal thoughts or feelings.

In some literary fiction, such inner story comprises much of the book--think of those novels that have a lot of lyrical details of setting, sensory images, inner landscape of characters. This level of meaning is hard to manage but it when done well it creates characters we think about for weeks. It’s only effective if it’s woven seamlessly into every outer action, or if events happen naturally and we naturally derive meaning from them.

How do you find these balances and translate them into your own work? It's hard to count the pages or words and determine an average. The best way I've found is by studying a published book in your genre, highlighting what is external and internal, or onstage and invisible to us, and comparing what you get with what you are writing. This teaches the general rules of outer and inner story balance.

As you begin to recognize the ratios in other writers’ work, you’ll see them more clearly in your own.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Get two highlighting markers, one yellow, one blue.
2. Choose a chapter of a published book you’ve read in your genre. Photocopy two pages.
3. Highlight any outer story on these pages in yellow. This would be anything that could be seen, heard, or witnessed if the pages were being acted in front of you onstage.
4. Highlight any inner story in blue. This would be anything that would be invisible to you if acted onstage, such as thoughts or feelings that are not based in images, sounds, or other external senses.
5. See what you get. What's the ratio this writer is working with?
6. Now do the same with two pages of your own writing. How close are you to the ratio in published work in your genre?

Balancing Outer and Inner Story in Your Book

2011-05-21T19:52:00.001-04:00

Outer story is the foundation for all good books. Outer story grounds the reader in your material, whether you are writing about people, politics, or potatoes. It creates structure, a logical sequence of information or events, a believable time and place. It lets the story track for a reader like a
train smoothly traveling from one city to another.

How does a writer find the outer story? With outer specifics: where the story is happening, what is occurring, who is doing what, what theories and techniques are most important, what obstacles or conflicts are encountered, how an idea is tested or used.

Outer story explores the questions: Who? What? When? Where? How?

Outer Story in the Different Genres
In nonfiction, outer story is information, facts, opinions, and ideas. What your book is about, what information it will pass along to the reader, what method you are teaching.

In memoir and fiction, outer story is presented via plot: the outer events or action. These events must always be externally realized. It doesn’t count as outer story when a person thinks or dreams or writes or emails about an event, since these actions are internally based. Outer story is always external, outside of a narrator’s head or emotions.

Why? Because we believe first what’s shown, or demonstrated, before we believe what a narrator is trying to tell us. Compare “My brother was a loser” to “My brother came home with a ripped shirt, muddy sneakers, and a black eye.” Which version lets you into the story faster?

Externally realized, dramatic events speak louder than words. Outer story is truth revealed in action.

Learning to Write Inner Story
The inner story answers the question Why? Inner story contributes discovery to your book. You’re taking the reader along on your journey. Good inner story surprises the writer as well as the reader when it emerges on the page. Telling too much defeats the delicate nature of inner story because writing effective inner story means not knowing everything. So how do you write the meaning of your book in a natural way?

By discovering as you go.

When I began learning to write inner story, it was a huge mystery. Then I read Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story, which details how nonfiction writers build meaning seamlessly into outer events. More than just pairing anecdotes with information, Gornick showed how skilled writers used theme, repetition, pacing, and setting to provide inner meaning to external event. It required craft and risk, vulnerability and awareness.

No longer just reporting facts or opinions, such writing was truly creative.
Reading Gornick, I began asking deeper questions of myself and my material. I began writing not just the situation but also the story behind it.

I really learned to tackle inner story in my book How to Master Change in Your Life. This was my first non-cookbook. In it I wanted to explore why change, for some, is an impossible feat. Why do some people bloom from life’s upsets, happier and healthier than before, and others lose their way?

Answering these questions taught me a lot about the balance of outer and inner story because I realized I needed to explore how I handled change. And I had endured a lot of external changes: divorce, business failure, cancer diagnosis. As dramatic as these changes were, I needed to reveal the inner impact of each.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
1. Make a list of ten words that interest you. They can be favorite foods, colors, a city with a strange name that intrigues you.

2. Spend a few minutes quickly jotting down what comes to mind for each word.

3. Do any connect with your book in some unexpected way? Choose one and follow it in a twenty-minute freewriting (no editing) session.

Look for sidetracks that surprise you. This may reveal inner story.

Excerpted from Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, Copyright 2011 by Mary Carroll Moore.

Gardening and Writing--Filling the Well by Following the Love

2011-05-15T10:01:00.001-04:00

Last night, just as the moon was coming up (almost full!), I was out in the garden planting lettuce seedlings.

I started them from seed indoors in February: three kinds of leaf lettuce--romaine, Tango, a French summer crisp. I also started raddiccio seedlings, arugula, and spinach. Today I will add
more seedlings to the waiting garden beds: leeks, onions, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, celery.

This week, the garden is calling me very loudly. So what's a committed writer to do? Ignore one art for the other? Or find a way to balance writing with other loves?

If I am listening carefully to my own self, to what I am pulled to not out of avoidance but out of love, I know I can't ignore either. The garden is in prime planting time right now, and the weather has been seductive. But even more, I know the balance of nature will benefit my writing. It will "fill the well" by replenishing my creativity. The images received from gardening tonight will be sources for inspiration for my writing tomorrow.

Most writers need to be refilled by other loves. All art forms count: painting, music, dance, cooking, gardening, any self-expression. This need to be refilled is not procrastination if you're following the love.

A reader from New York wrote me last week about how to choose between all the art forms that call her.

"Today is set aside to work on a book that I'm making on the computer," she writes. "I really want to get this finished as soon as I can because it's a book about a [favorite place] that is being forced out by re-development, and I want to give it as a gift to the owner with the secret hope that he will love it and will show it around and maybe other people will want one too. So I want to get this done SOON. HOWEVER, it's time to START WRITING. So, I'm feeling that I must, after today, and maybe half of another day this week, push this project aside, and focus on writing (since I'm scheduled for a total of six writing classes this month). Meanwhile, I want to get out and do some exercise before I sit in front of a computer all day, and then there's the matter of supper . . . I spend HOURS AND HOURS just cogitating upon how to juggle everything. But I can't seem to fit them all in without making myself crazy."

If you're on deadline, if you feel you should be doing something, you're in a different arena than following the love, of course. It's duty, and it takes choice. Two deadlined activities can't occupy the same time and space. If I have a commitment to a project, I use my calendar and schedule it regularly in small bites until it is done. This is the reality of working when you're not called to it, or when too many other things call that sound like more fun.

But when I have a real choice, when I am not under deadline, I follow the love. What do I feel love for, in this moment? If I bring that love to the page, for example, my writing is not an hour or two spent in irritation and longing to be doing something else. Here's how I do it:

1. Because my life is often very full, I commit to regular times for my creativity. I use my calendar to set aside a particular time to write each day. It is sacred time, as important as anything else I schedule. I know that I write best in the early morning, before anyone else is up. I write on a laptop which can be moved around to the quietest place. Or in a notebook.

2. I set out my writing materials the night before, so they greet me first thing and remind me of my commitment. I often open the chapter I'm going to work on and write a half-sentence, leaving it unfinished as an entry into the writing the next morning. This technique is called "Linkage" and it's used by many published writers who know the difficulties of getting started each day.

3. When the unfinished sentence doesn't work, I know to warm up by freewriting for 20 minutes in my journal, picking a topic that's not my chapter but something that's been on my mind (similar to Julia Cameron's "morning pages" from her book The Artist's Way). Or perhaps I'll freewrite about how I hate my book and hate writing in general and would much rather NOT be doing it at this very minute. When I can't even budge my creativity from these tricks, I reread a chapter in Mark Levy's new book, Accidental Genius, on the benefits of freewriting, or I revisit chapter 4 on "Filling the Well" in my own book, Your Book Starts Here.

4. Before I schedule the week's writing time, I sit down with family and work commitments to make sure my need to "follow the love" is not going to interfere with childcare, making supper, or other promises I've made. I don't leave it to chance, because in the heat of responsibilities, I will usually give up my writing time in favor of family harmony. It always feels burdensome to schedule creativity but I've learned the hard way.

5. When the writing flow begins, I always make sure my email program and Internet browser are shut down (or better yet not available on the computer I'm on), because if I stall out I know I'll check email (or even Facebook if I get really stuck)--and that's the end of the precious writing time.

6. Finally, I allow myself to fill up on unexpected images. Gardening by late evening light, when the sun is slipping over the mountains, gifts me with heart-piercing images. These images will stay with me until the next morning when I sit at my computer and begin a scene about my characters talking on the lakside dock in late spring as the moon is coming up. I trust that each art form feeds another.

This week's writing exercise might seem counterintuitive, especially for anyone who believes all they really need is more discipline to get the writing done. Actually, to paraphrase John Lennon, all you need is more love. If you follow the love, your writing might just respond. So it is for me.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

1. Write a list of 25 things you really love in your life. Circle the top three.

2. Find your calendar. Are these part of your week? Even your month? If not, why not?

3. How can you follow the love and bring one of these into your life right now?

4. Use this well-filling activity to replenish your creativity, and see how it affects your writing.

Using the Storyboard W to Structure a Self-Help Book

2011-05-10T08:13:00.002-04:00

One of my readers from New York asked if the storyboard W, which gives an easy way to enhance momentum in your story, could be used for nonfiction as well as fiction and memoir. Specifically, could it be used for a self-help book?

I've written and published many self-help books, as well as how-to books, so I could easily answer
yes. But I wanted to give her an example, so I told her the story of my student Carol who is writing a self-help book for women who do too much for others.

Carol’s ideal reader is a generous soul, a people pleaser who spends her days doing for others. Carol was like this too, and that’s why she is motivated to write this book.

Carol’s book contains some great anecdotes, as most modern self-help books do. For Carol’s triggering event, she chose an embarrassing and true story of one of her clients who got “caught” tending to herself instead of a sick friend. The shame that resulted caused the woman to completely turn her back on her own needs for many weeks, until she got sick herself.

Act 1 contained a series of stories like this, as well as good information about the mindset of people pleasers. The purpose of Act 1 in any genre of book is to engage the reader, establish the basic question or quest of the book, and get the momentum started. Unless you do this, your reader will not read on into Act 2, the meat of your story.

Carol set up Act 1 pretty well. She had good questions, such as this one: how can a person still be kind, compassionate, and responsive to others, but not give herself away? Something many readers would want to know. But in Act 2, Carol’s book slumped. She only had low-key scenes with little external action. It was pretty easy to build the hopeful stuff, called the rising action—stories about women who would simply sneak away by themselves to get some peace and privacy, hiding with a good book and glass of lemonade on their porches. But the falling action, which deepens the problem and brings us to a bigger turning point the book addresses--how to really make lasting changes inside yourself--was more difficult.

I suggested Carol look for stories that showed a woman about to burst from being too contained for too long. Yes, the first story showed someone getting sick. Did Carol know of anything worse that had happened when needs were repressed too long?

Carol thought of a story of her own: a serious confrontation with a neighbor, who called Carol for a committee favor on a morning when Carol’s son was suspended from school. She remembered how she blew up at the woman—and although it was embarrassing, it beautifully demonstrated what happens when two desires clash—the desire to maintain the aura of being everyone’s helper with the extreme need for privacy. When desires clash, there is surprise, drama, action.

Carol’s willingness to include this “island” in her book made a big difference in the overall dilemma of her self-help book. She realized she couldn't just present an opening dilemma/question. She had to keep deepening the self-inquiry as the book progressed.

When I asked her to study her favorite self-help books to see how published writers did this, she saw that all her best-loved authors always gave more in Act 2. There was also a surprise element, something the reader didn't expect, maybe a movement of the initial dilemma to a more universal level.

If you’re writing a self-help book, you can easily use the W and three-act structure to check whether your dilemma/conflict is strong enough in the middle of your book. This helps avoid that slumping (boring) section that many books have--the reason we might read to chapter 5 then close the book. Take a clue from Carol’s story.

And don’t feel your Act 2 conflict has to be highly shocking to be effective. It just has to deepen the self-inquiry that a self-help book addresses. I look for what's unexpected, a place I can take the reader that is unique and interesting. “The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish,” says writer Terry Southern, a screenwriter who worked on films such as Easy Rider and Dr. Strangelove. Shock is “a worn-out word,” wrote Southern, but astonishment always makes for good literature.

This Week's Writing Exercise

1. In the search box at the top of this blog, type in "three-act structure." You can read several posts about the W and how it works in different genres. There's also plenty of information on this in chapter 14 of my new book, Your Book Starts Here. Click here to read reviews and check it out.

2. Read the table of contents of several self-help books on your shelves. How do the authors deepen the initial question of the book, take the reader to a new level of self-inquiry?

3. Write down three ways you might take your topic to a deeper level. Spend 30 minutes writing about one of these ways, and see if it can be inserted into Act 2 of your manuscript to prevent the slump.

How Are You Spending Your Summer? The Value of Writer's Retreats

2011-04-29T18:35:00.003-04:00

Like many creative artists who have jobs and families that demand attention, I sometimes dream of everything being quiet. Of finally having time and privacy to get deep into my writing--without phone calls or texts or emails; with nobody to think about but my characters and the words they give me for the page.

Especially as we're coming out of a long hard winter here in New England, with the weariness that brings, I find myself dreaming of
a retreat.

A student from my weekend workshop in New Hampshire sent me a link in January that may have started this dreaming. Julia Shipley runs a writer's retreat center on her farm in Vermont. Photographs and description sound idyllic. I spent some hours when her email arrived, imagining myself in the little cottage with its beautiful front porch, smelling meadow grasses and admiring green hills around me, writing as much as I wanted.

A colleague recently came back from an extended residency at the Vermont Studio Centers, renewed and enthusiastic about all she'd accomplished while on retreat. I felt that familiar envy, viewing the circus of my life with its gifts and challenges of work, childcare, and other beloved responsibilities.

Was it time for me to plan a retreat?

Creative Adventures for Writers
Retreats are creative adventures, and if the muse smiles, I get one each summer. I find them as necessary as vitamins and pure water. Retreats open doors for me. I can get enough space to study my writing process--how I write--as well as think about whether my current book is going in the direction I want. I can produce pages, revamp my storyboard, revise and buff chapters. I can make my writing my sole priority.

What unheard-of luxury!

And while I love both the idea and practice of creative retreats, while I make a point to schedule one every summer, retreats terrify me. It's just me and that blank page, after all, without any excuses.

So over the years of retreating, I've learned ways to balance the excitement and the terror, so that I get the most of my time away. I've learned how to know what I need from a retreat. I've begun to approach retreating with guidelines for myself.

It's paid off. Retreats have given me more energy in my creative life the rest of the year, new depths accessed in my writing, several published books I'm quite happy with.

Facing the Blank Page: What Writing Retreats Offer
Writing retreats give you a welcome break. If you are able to do the impossible of negotiating time away from your responsibilities, a writing retreat can give you permission to be response-able only to the creative flame within you.

This freedom is priceless, especially in our overly stimulated world. You may take along your iPhone but you can choose to disengage and remember yourself. Nobody is making you check email. Everything around you is asking you to go deeper. Which is where the writing comes from anyway, right? From yourself.

I use a family cabin in the Adirondacks for my retreats most summers. August finds me spending a few days or a week up there in the woods by a lake, and two of my novels (one published, one in progress) are based there. I go off to retreat with great enthusiasm and come home much renewed. So retreats work. I just have to work them, to offset the challenges of being alone with my work.

Since I also lead writing retreats each July, on Madeline Island in Lake Superior, I can witness this process in others. The group comes in full of enthusiasm, and often a bit exhausted. It can be hard to separate from regular life, even if that life is slowly sapping your creative energy. Some writers come with a list of goals and others come with just their questions. Slowly, over the course of the week, they learn from me and from each other. Last summer, I saw such deepening of their work, such growth in awareness of what it takes to write a book, I was newly convinced at the value of retreats.

I've mentioned this wonderful book before: The Woman's Retreat Book by Jennifer Loudon. Loudon believes in the value of retreats, but she also clearly acknowledged their scariness. They cause a creative person to face herself or himself.

Facing the Terror of Yourself
But the reality is, many of us can't disengage. It's way too scary. While facing the blank page for a week or a weekend with absolutely no distractions sounds glorious, it's not that easy to actually do it.

Over the years of retreating, I've learned it's important to have someone to call, see, talk with when the retreat experience gets edgier than I want. Either I plan my retreat with others who want more than a social gathering, or I set up check-ins during the retreat with supportive others. It makes the retreat process much easier. You can still go deep, but when you fall, someone is there to pick you up.

The first summer I did a solo writing retreat, I didn't know this. After day three, I was regularly calling home to cry and shake. My writing was taking me places I didn't know how to navigate, and being alone in a remote cabin made me feel slightly insane with the process. I couldn't move between the inner and outer reality with any ease. Now I plan retreats when I know friends will be in the neighboring camps. In the evenings or midday if the writing gets tough, I can go out and find them, be with other human beings, and reorient to my regular life. I'm still on retreat but I'm able to find balance again.

Solo Writer's Retreat, Guided Writer's Retreat, or Writer's Conference?
When I first got the nudge to retreat, I signed up for a week-long writer's conference, thinking it would let me really dive into my writing. But I learned fast that diving deep was not easy among hundreds of people workshopping their manuscripts, skill building, socializing and networking.

Over the years, I learned that writer's conferences are great places to network with other writers and meet famous folks (who hopefully will remember you when you send them a request for a blurb or your manuscript). They are most often places to learn new skills and find out how your writing stands up in critique and workshopping (round-robin peer review). Some writers do accomplish writing during a writer's conference. At one writer's conference I attended, my writing did get fired up and I spent hours on a short story, actually skipping many of the conference sessions. I came home very satisfied--and with the realization that I had missed much of the conference by choice. I realized I had really needed a retreat just then, not a conference.

So, conferences are intensely useful whenever you're aware of needing new writing skills or when you are ready to market a new manuscript. Retreats don't offer skill building, unless they are guided retreats with classroom time built in.

Guided retreats are my favorite because they combine limited classroom instruction with one-to-one work with an instructor and plenty of solo writing time. They also give you support--especially if the retreat group is limited to fewer than 20 writers. If this sounds like a good option for you, be sure to check carefully into the retreat venue. How is the lodging--will it offer you enough privacy if you need writing time? Are there communal gathering areas where you can go to relax and share your process if things get edgy? Is there a way for you to share your work-in-process and maybe get encouragement or feedback, but just enough to keep you moving forward?

It takes some work to find a writer's retreat or writer's conference that is perfect for your writing, just where it is now. How can you locate the best option for you, if you are longing to get away with your creativity this summer?

Scan the top writing magazines, such as Writer's Digest, Poets & Writers, and AWP Chronicle. Writers Digest and AWP both feature their own excellent writer's conferences in January and February, but they also list conferences elsewhere. If you click on Poets & Writers (above) you'll see their online and very comprehensive directory of writing retreats and residencies.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Spend 20 minutes on paper, asking yourself and your writing what would best suit you right now, if you were to get away for a week or weekend this summer. Where is your book project in its journey? Do you need skills, feedback, or networking just now?

2. Check out some of the retreat options and conference listings below, to see what might work best for you.

3. Find a copy of The Woman's Retreat Book by Jennifer Loudon to read about the different kinds of retreats you can structure for yourself.

A Few Summer Retreats and Conferences to Consider: I've heard good things about many of them, or I've attended or taught at them myself. Click on the name to be directed to their website. Please post your favorites (click on Comment, below)--I'd love to add your suggestions to this list I'm compiling!

Iowa Summer Writer's Conference
New England Retreat Centers (click on Vermont to see Julia Shipley's retreat)
Vermont Studios (residency for established writers--you must apply)
International Women's Writers Guild annual conference at Yale University
Madeline Island School of the Arts (week-long retreats in all the arts, including writing)
The Loft Literary Center (week-long conferences on different writing topics)

Five Fundamental Practices That Keep You Away from Writer's Block While You're Writing a Book

2011-04-22T08:43:00.001-04:00

It isn’t talent that makes an artist succeed. Talented people fail all the time. Success comes from belief in yourself, persistence with your craft, and a good routine—setting aside regular, sacred time to make art. To dedicate time, you must believe in your worth.

As the painter and author Frederick Franck wrote, “You shall not wait for
inspiration, for it comes not while you wait, but while you work.”

You must believe your art is important and deserves your attention. So must your family and friends. I’ve found five ingredients that make a book writer’s practice successful. If all five are in place, they will support and sustain the long journey.

Five Fundamental Practices
1. Find and honor your best time to write.
2. Keep writing equipment private, secure, and in good working order.
3. Have a dedicated writing space.
4. Have a set time to write.
5. Close the door to the world when you are writing.

Some writers try these five, start a writing practice, have good success for a while, then suddenly give up. Life intervenes. But a close examination of what “life intervening” means, comes down to choice. There are always ten minutes to write, but when stress is high, it’s easier to face the evening news than face ourselves.
Writing takes us to scary places sometimes. Our interior lives are often more frightening than anything television can offer. We get overwhelmed with our books, the enormity of the project we’ve taken on. We begin to resent the routine, the demands of the book. We want to rebel, say, “Forget this!”

I watch for three signs of this: increasing self-critique, getting sick, and other people who “suddenly” need me.

Self-critique comes via that small voice that whispers, “Why bother? This is all terrible anyway.” It fuels self-doubt—Who are we to think we’re writers? Sometimes it also fuels anger, nudges us to prove we’re the boss and show it by breaking the writing rhythm.

If derailment doesn’t come via doubt or anger, it shows up with getting sick. I’ve come down with an unexplainable headache or cold in the middle of an important writing project, and I’ve begun to see this as a sign of self-sabotaging.

A third derailment comes via people who suddenly need rescuing. I believe in my own perverse ability to “manifest” this: I think it’s a law of attraction in the universe that when I need to rebel, someone needs me urgently. A dear friend will get sick and I’ll just have to stop writing to make chicken soup.

When my practice gets derailed by these kinds of fears and frustrations, I go back to my original vision for my book. I revisit my original motivation for writing this book.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise: Facing Common Saboteurs
This week, try this simple but effective exercise in self-inquiry. It may tell you exactly where you're sabotaging your book.

Answer the questions below, then take action on one of the solutions.

1. Do you try to fit writing in between everything else?

Solution: Make a daily date for your writing and mark it into your calendar each week.

2. Do your family, spouse, partner, pets, children, or roommates hijack your writing time?

Solution: Have a family meeting to discuss why it’s important to you to write regularly. Ask for their help.

3. Do you lack the equipment you need to write well?

Solution: Get a laptop or desktop computer and printer. Organize computer files to keep research manageable. If you prefer to write longhand, get a really great pen and stacks of legal pads.

4. Does someone else commandeer your writing equipment?

Solution: Talk with them about the need to keep your writing private. This is basic. If you have to share a computer, get a password to protect your privacy. If it’s a desk you must share—then create a portable one. Put pen and paper in a briefcase, lock it, and leave it by your writing chair. You don’t want to feel restricted about which topics you can safely explore.

Excerpted from Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, by Mary Carroll Moore. To order a copy today, click here.

Letting Myself Exhale--Celebrating the "Empty Nest" of a New Book

2011-04-16T14:25:00.004-04:00

I've just finished a book. No, I mean, really finished it. The last change is proofed, the last word typeset. It's on amazon.com. It's being ordered by bookstores. It's published.

It's completely out of my hands.

That's a relief, and it's also a worry. No longer is
the book mine alone. It belongs to my readers, who can treat it well or hate it, who can love it and recommend it to their friends or never open its shiny covers to see what's inside. This is the double edge of creating art. What will others do with what you pour your heart into?

Your Book Starts Here is a guidebook to crafting a book in any genre. I've been working on it for a long time. It covers what I do in my classes and workshops--where I teach others how to plan, write, and develop a book--and I finally wrote it because there's nothing out there I could recommend to my students who ask me questions, desperately wanting a guide as they work their manuscripts into being. Thanks to these students, I've gathered good tips and techniques over the last ten years, learning all about the walls writers run into as they face the empty page. This book is large, 400 pages, and if I look back at my notes, it took active gathering for three years, writing and organizing for five. Then testing for one more year, revising for two. A lot of time and a lot of work! It brought me unexpected passion for the craft, though, and it caused me to fall in love with book writing again. I had to learn a lot, in order to teach it to you.

At first, I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. That's normal when you begin a book. Especially if your subject is vast. Writing books are everywhere, but how many actually teach you how to improve your craft, as well as inspire and guide? In the early days of putting this book together, I almost gave up. It seemed impossible. Many writing teachers believe you can't actually teach anyone to write. You're either born with writing talent or you're not. But I've seen this disproven time and again in my classes. Plenty of writers succeed through sheer determination, by doggedly applying themselves until they learn the ins and outs of their craft.

Their stories fill Your Book Starts Here. I admire their stubborness and skill, their originality of thought, their willingness to self-examine, their perseverance.

Finding the Real Subject of a Book
Before I wrote Your Book Starts Here, I had published twelve books myself, worked with about 2000 writers in all genres, helping them with their books. I thought it would be easy to distill my work into a guide for writers. But it was a tough subject. I struggled over which topics were the most essential, which were the ones that writers in my classes obsessed over and asked the most questions about.

One topic that always came up was: How do I keep writing regularly? I know a writer needs a solid writing habit to complete a book. So I devoted two chapters to answering that question. Another topic was that stall-out that comes from self-doubt. So I put together a chapter on the Inner Critic, and its gate-keeping function to keep us safe (and away from our creativity). Writers struggle over genre and ideal reader. So stories and information about that got added.

Most important were the major gateways that a writer has to pass through, to complete and publish. One was the inner/outer story--the meaning as well as the subject of the book--and how it gets brought to the page. Another was the organization or flow of material, and using a storyboard. Then comes the first draft, and its read-through and careful analysis. Finally, a clean revision that transfers ownership of the book to the reader instead of the writer. All these were necessary to get to publication. I listened to hundreds of writers in my classes, I asked them about their book journeys, I captured the stories they were willing to share.

Your Book-Journey Team
My students were the most valuable resource, and I wrote this book for them. Such generosity in sharing their stories and questions!

But there were others too. When you're writing a book, you need lots of help. You can't birth anything in a vacuum. My testers, who were students in my classes in New York and Minneapolis, tried out the exercises and tested the theories in my early drafts. One of my advanced classes read through my chapters and gave me very detailed feedback on what was useful, what wasn't. I sucked it up, put my ego aside, and really listened to their right-on feedback. It told me I had a ways to go.

Then I got the gift of an angel editor when I really needed it--a top-notch professional who came to one of my classes and gave my material a keen eye and a kind editing hand. Then a proofreader appeared out of the blue (a student in my online class) when she was most needed. Then there was the amazing cover designer and a typesetter who was patient beyond belief with my million changes.

But in the end, I was alone with my manuscript. Book writing is still a solo journey. It is filled with 4:00 a.m. wakings to wonder if you've done the very best you could. I worried over how best to describe storyboards. Whatever could I say about voice and theme? Should I even tackle the topic of pacing--a very tough element to describe, but oh so crucial to make a book sing?

In the end, I did. I did everything I could think of and now I just hope I loved the book enough.

Saying Goodbye to Your Creation
Ending a book is an amazing experience. When you've done all you can to bring your idea to the page, it feels wonderful. But it's also sad because there's always so much more to say, and you may have forgotten something important, and what if that explanation on page 155 isn't clear? Isn't there something more you can do?

There's always more to say. But it's time to say goodbye for now.

When I was a new artist, I got a commission for a painting. I spent months working on it, finally finished it, and shipped it to the buyer who lived about 2000 miles away. About a year later I visited this woman's city and went to say hello (and see the painting, of course).

It looked good, but wait . . . what was that? My skills as a painter had grown so I saw mistakes on her piece. I left her house as quickly as I could because I knew if I lingered, I would beg her to let me take it home and fix it.

Your book will capture who you are right now. If you pour your heart into it, it'll be the very best you know to write right now. It's good to celebrate, even if you feel like a parent who just shipped their kid off to college. In that spirit, this week's writing exercise asks you to imagine traveling the journey to publication of your book. To consider the passage from inside yourself.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Imagine your book published.

2. Spend some time in your writer's notebook listing the names of the team who helped you get there. Who would they be?

3. Then write a bit about how it feels to have your book no longer your own--now the reader you are writing for owns it too. They are beginning a one-to-one relationship with the book that excludes you, the author. How does this sit with you?

4. If you've been having trouble finishing your book, ask yourself if you're ready for the transition described in #3 of this exercise. Why or why not?

PS I would love to share my creative efforts with you who are writing a book. To order a copy of Your Book Starts Here, click here.

Online Class--Your Book Starts Here--Begins May 16

2011-04-10T07:08:00.000-04:00

If you're interested in studying book-writing with Mary, there are a few spots left in the Your Book Starts Here online class, beginning May 16. Sponsored by the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, this 12-week course is entirely virtual, so you can access the weekly lessons, writing exercises, videos and articles on writing, and more 24/7 from anywhere. Limited to 20 writers. Includes weekly feedback from Mary on your writing and a wonderful online community of fellow book writers at all levels. For more information visit the Loft at www.loft.org and click on Online Classes or call the Loft at 612-379-8999. Register soon if you're interested!

Researching Your Book--How to Do It, When to Stop and Get Writing

2011-04-10T07:03:00.001-04:00

A children's book writer sent me the following question: "I am interested in writing a non fiction book for 11-18 year olds and wanted to know how to go about preparing myself to do the research for the book effeciently?" This writer had a timeline for her book and wanted to complete it by the beginning of December.

Research is both a blessing and
a bane for the book writer. It's very easy to research now that the world is at our fingertips via the Internet.

But this wealth of resources also poses a serious sidetracking problem: How can you really tell when you're researching and when you're just avoiding writing?

I love to research. I worked as an editor for a small press for 18 years and was constantly being asked to research this or that fact from different authors' books. I knew how to get online and sail through the mediocre listings into the really meaty facts. I became good friends (via phone) with several reference librarians at my local library--always a good call to make when stumped by the various options on the Internet. Librarians (mostly) love research and they are there to help.

But often I found myself cruising from one article to the next, opening more layers of links, and finding it hard to actually come back to the writing I was supposed to be working on.

Since someone was paying me to get the editing done, and I was under a deadline, I always forced myself away from the research eventually. But when you're writing your book, you may not have this outer-imposed structure. You may be your only boss, creating your own timeline, as my reader above is. How do you stay efficient with research and still get your book done?

Researching Your Readership
I have dozens of stories from students in my classes who discovered they were writing to the wrong readership--after they did some bookstore research. One woman thought her novel was geared toward adults but after she spent an hour browsing the YA bookstore shelves, she realized her language, tone, and subject matter was really meant for younger reader, in their late teens, as she had been when she experienced the specific changes she was writing about. Another student was preparing to finish his memoir when he did some belated bookstore research and realized he didn't want his story on the memoir shelf--it was way too raw and dangerous emotionally for him to imagine his family members picking up a copy of a "true story" that contained their histories. So he switched horses in midstream and became a novelist.

This sounds basic, but many writers forget that bookstores (and online bookstores) hold a wealth of information to help us orient our book projects. So researching your readership is first on the list.

For the reader who wrote me the question for this post, as someone writing a book for a certain age group, you really need to know your audience well. What language do these readers prefer? They may be much more sophisticated readers than you were at that age, or they may not be. What do they learn in school--and is your topic too sophisticated or way to basic for them?

And if you're delivering a certain topic and need scientific, cultural, political, or historical data, you need to translate what you research into wording that kids would understand, crafting your writing to lead them point by point through the material.

Research Information
After you've researched your reader and gone through the steps to explore your book's topic, you may have the urge to spend time on the Internet, in the library, or in your own book collection, making sure your facts are in order. This is really important, and it used to be the provenance of fact checkers at a publishers. No more. It's now up to the writer, and publishing contracts have long clauses to make sure the writer holds all responsibility for errors of fact in their manuscript.

I love to research place, and I do that early on in the research process for my books. I physically visit the location of my book as many times as I can, read other books set in that location, and take lots of notes--especially sensory details like the way things sound, smell, and look in that setting. It's important to convey accuracy of place to allow the emotion within the place to touch your reader. And, believe me, readers who are familiar with the place will let you know if you've made mistakes in reporting the details of their favorite locations.

Historical facts are also important to get right. Watch out for the Internet on this one. When I was a professional editor at the small press in the Midwest, we rarely accepted the first or even fifth Internet mention of a fact as truth. It took lots of browsing and comparing notes from different sites. If a fact was repeated frequently, then it was more likely true. But I collected a list of my favorite fact-checking sites that seemed reliable, and they were the ones I visited most often. University research sites, library databases, and reputable publications online were the ones I leaned on most--and I strictly avoided the chats, blogs, and personal opinion posts that could be just that.

Putting Research in Its Proper Place
Make sure, though, that research doesn't take over your writing time. It's a great time waster for us creative types, especially with the Internet making the world of research so very accessible. Hours (days!) can go by while you happily browse, and not one word of your book actually gets written.

When I am deep in research, I set a kitchen timer. When the timer rings, I stop--no matter how exciting that next link looks. I go back to the writing, to the blank page, and do what I came here for. It takes discipline to leave the candy store of research and actually write. But it's the only way to make a book.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Make a list of topics you'd like to research for your book project. They could be more information on the setting you're writing about, historical facts, readership research, or anything you are interested in that might enhance your story.

2. Practice disciplined research: get a kitchen timer or set your cell phone alarm for 30 minutes. Begin your research. See if you can stop when the alarm goes off. Make sure you make notes or print interesting pages.

3. Make notes to remind you where you were, so you can return easily.

4. Look over the research notes you've made. Take a highlighter and underline sections that might be useful to inform a chapter, character, or focus of your book.

Preparing for Publication--Writing Your Book's Premise and Synopsis

2011-04-02T11:20:00.002-04:00

A reader from Minnesota has gotten interest from a publisher, but the publisher has asked for a written statement of her book--often called a premise statement--and a longer synopsis with market analysis. Hers is a nonfiction book that straddles memoir and investigative nonfiction, and she wondered about how to put these two items together. Her publisher was specific:

1. Descriptive statement. Please provide a 250-300 word description of your book that includes
a summary of its main points, what sets your work apart from other titles on the same subject, and any other important points that should be emphasized in promotion. Please also indicate the main audience for your work. This description will be used to generate jacket and catalog copy.

2. Short descriptive statement. Please describe your book's scope and theme in one or two sentences. Also, please list three features that make your book unique.

What needs to go into these two statements? How carefully do you craft them?

They are quite important, and they can be used to sell your book to a publisher or agent in the early stages of submission as well as present your published book to bookstores, libraries, and online booksellers. Spending some time crafting them is a good idea.

I'll give an overview here, but more can be found in my new book, Your Book Starts Here, where I go into the making of a good proposal packet and how to craft the material you need to sell (and publish) your book.

Premise Statement
The short descriptive statement is also called a premise statement, and a good one combines the outer story and inner story of your book into an intriguing soup.

Two of my favorite premise statements come from a book called Making the Perfect Pitch, edited by Katherine Sands. These premises resulted in publication, capturing the attention of agents and eventually a publisher.

“I am a Vietnamese American man, a witness to the fall of Saigon, a prisoner of war, an escapee, a first-generation immigrant, and an eternal refugee.”--from a memoir, Catfish and Mandala, by Andrew X. Pham

“When all the kids around him were coming of age, Robin MacKenzie was coming undone.”
--from a novel, The World of Normal Boys, by K.M. Soehnlein

To craft a premise statement, I recommend brainstorming a list of elements of your book, five from the outer story (what happens) and five from the inner story (the meaning). Notice how Pham's book reveals enough of the outer story elements to get us interested (the first part of the premise statement), then he delivers the inner story with the words an eternal refugee. Soehnlein does the same thing, saying that his hero "was coming undone," a clear inner story hook. Both of these also contain a little intrigue, which is common with well-crafted premise statements. There is often a little twist, a play on words, perhaps, or a surprising direction.

Descriptive Statements
Descriptive statements, which often become back-cover copy for books, are longer and more involved. They present the book's story but also its potential uniqueness in the marketplace, giving just enough to let a reader in on what the book might offer, why they would want to pick it up.

Here's the descriptive statement for my novel, Qualities of Light:

On the morning of her brother’s seventh birthday, talented pastel painter Molly Fisher agrees to take him for an illicit boat ride, just the two of them, across Cloud Lake near their Adirondack cabin. Fifteen-year-old Molly risks her father’s anger over use of the boat, but she doesn’t realize Sammy has also stolen their father’s war-era jackknife, promised to him as a birthday gift.

On the lake, as the sun is rising over the mountains, Sammy drops the knife in the water and reaches for it, falling and hitting his head. Suddenly her brother is near death, and Molly faces the hardest summer of her life.

She feels unable to appeal to her parents—anguished airplane-pilot mother Kate and stoic, self-enclosed artist father Mel. As Sammy lingers in a coma, Molly tries to get out of the way of her parents’ misery and accommodate herself to the guilt and sadness she believes she deserves.

Then she meets Zoe, a daring young waterskier also vacationing at Cloud Lake. Zoe gets her to dance to jazz in the privacy of a secluded cabin, even though Molly says she’s given up dancing, and the two girls become best friends and unexpectedly fall in love. Molly struggles to reconcile the happiness and terror of her first love affair with the family tension and anxiety surrounding Sammy’s illness, and Cloud Lake itself begins to play almost as integral a role in Molly’s emotional rehabilitation as it did in the trauma of Sammy’s injury.

Qualities of Light explores the budding of forbidden romance in the face of family tragedy, the forging of a new relationship between a daughter and her difficult father/artistic mentor, and the inevitable changes that come as an adolescent girl is thrust into acceptance of her own qualities of light and darkness.

The descriptive statement will get tweaked by the publisher's editing staff, ideally. Or you can work with an editor you hire to help you craft it. Since it's the marketing vehicle for your book to bookstores, libraries, and online sellers, it needs to be clear, interesting, and present the uniqueness of your story.

As you craft it, ask yourself: What's different about my book? How deep does the story's message go?

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Craft a premise statement for your book. First list five elements of the outer story that are the most important to you. Brainstorm wording for these on paper. Then list the elements of the inner story, your book's meaning. Take the two lists and create a short phrase or sentence that could engage a reader. Finally, add a twist, if you can, using the two premise statements above as models.

2. Craft a descriptive statement for your book. Brainstorm on paper about the unique aspects of your story. Start by noting the details of the plot (if memoir or fiction) and what's at stake. Give the overview of your method or theory (if nonfiction) and what benefit it will deliver to a reader. For more examples, read the jacket (inside flap) or back-cover copy of your favorite books in the same genre as your book. Notice how the wording demonstrates uniqueness, gives just enough of the plot or focus of the book to intrigue, and leaves us wanting more.

Writing More Vivid Characters--Borrow a Technique from Alec Guiness

2011-03-24T18:00:00.004-04:00

This week, I'm going to share a technique I teach in my workshops on writing vivid characters. If you're interested in learning more, you're welcome to join me on Monday, March 28, 1:30-4:30 p.m., at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center in Sleepy Hollow, NY (Westchester county near NYC), for an afternoon workshop on writing strong characters. The cost is $60 and you can register by calling the Writers' Center at 914-332-5953.

I was struggling with dilemma in my second novel when
I came upon a great technique for raising the stakes. I often make collages of difficult characters, because my right brain can help me get to know them if I use images.

One of the images in my collage for my rather bland character, Kate, was a photo a woman wearing a wedding dress and running alone through a mock doorway in an empty field. The image was a strange choice but it grabbed me. I didn’t know what it was telling me about Kate, but it did show she was indeed in conflict. I studied the collage for a few days, trying to figure out Kate’s big problem.

Then I came across an article written by legendary New York acting teacher, Uta Hagen. Hagen is a proponent of the Stanislavsky method and coach to generations of successful actors such as Geraldine Page, Jason Robards, Jr., and Matthew Broderick. Actors under her tutelage get into a character’s longings and desires via two different doorways. First they consider the external person; they search out a character’s motives by looking at the external aspects of that character’s life. The actor might pay attention to the character’s shoes, as does Alec Guinness. Second, they study the internal thoughts and feelings of the person they’ll be playing. They might take the character to a therapist (as Sir Laurence Olivier liked to do).

So I made a list of possible questions I could ask Kate, using this two-part approach. As I imagined Kate answering my therapist questions, I learned she was on the run (the running woman) from her marriage (the wedding dress). This led to good questions: What was keeping Kate bound to her current life? Why did she want to run away from her husband?

I looked at the actions Kate takes throughout the book, and I saw a problem immediately. Kate only thought about how unhappy she was. I didn’t have her do anything about it. This made her character flat. I brainstormed ways to increase Kate’s external dilemma. A good idea came: What if she wasn’t able to escape? What if she had an illness that kept her bound to her unhappy marriage?

As I added these “islands” to Acts 1 and 2, Kate became a much stronger character. Moreover, the book deepened as her dilemmas deepened. As if floodgates had opened, I suddenly had enough material to write many more scenes.

The image of the running woman became my compass to keep conflict in Kate’s story, and I used the external/internal dilemma questions each time she seemed to get too safe. Most of us know that when a person faces danger or conflict, we see what that person is made of. High stakes bring out hidden needs, as well as hidden strengths.

As I said before, dilemma reveals if a person will fight or run or freeze.

Even if you’re writing nonfiction, you will need to consider dilemma. Every genre of book delivers a question to be answered, a quest to be followed, a wish to be fulfilled. Growth comes whenever we face the unknown and take a risk, even if it’s not the life-threatening risk of hunting down clues in a mystery. Your book must present the challenge of change, the fulfillment of new opinions, new skills, new understandings.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
1. Choose a character in your book who feels distant, too safe, even bland. Take a look at these two lists of questions.
External Research Questions
What do you like or dislike about your looks?
How do you feel about your age?
What five things are in your refrigerator?
What are your favorite shoes? Why?
What is your least favorite article of clothing?
What sort of work do you do? How do you feel about it?
What’s a favorite possession that you’d never let go of?
What’s your favorite music? When do you listen to it?

Internal Research Questions
Who or what in your life first broke your heart?
What do people who know you think of you?
What or whom would you eliminate from your life?
What do you wish never happened to you?
What’s a secret you hide?
What is so painful you can’t let it go?
What makes you so happy you can hardly bear it?

2. Pick three questions from each list. Write down how the character might answer these questions. If you are writing about someone real, research the answers so they are accurate and true to life.

3. Do any of the answers give you a new insight on possible (and as yet unrevealed) conflict? Maybe you are suddenly aware of a desire or longing that person hasn’t mentioned before.

4. Freewrite for twenty minutes about how this new understanding could increase the conflict in that person’s story.

Look for answers that contradict each other: this is gold for writing dilemma. For instance, if one of your characters says he has no pain in his life, no one who ever broke his heart, but in the same breath talks about a woman who once told him he wasn’t very smart, go deeper. Two answers that challenge each other hint at something unresolved.

Excerpted from Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, available now on amazon.com.

Wisdom from a Writing Master--Barbara Kingsolver on Her Writing Practice

2011-03-19T12:25:00.001-04:00

A student in my online class shared this wonderful interview with Barbara Kingsolver from Kingsolver's website, and it has helped me through a tough writing week. I admire Kingsolver's no-nonsense approach to the artistic life, and she has great tips on how to keep writing.

This week's writing exercise is to enjoy the article, and post your comments and insights. Click on the link below (Interview with Barbara . . . )

Interview with Barbara Kingsolver on Writing

Good Books for Learning Different Writing Skills

2011-03-12T15:50:00.001-05:00

For several years I worked via email with a small group of new book writers. I'd just graduated from my M.F.A. program and I wanted to see if others would learn as much as I did from reading certain books.

One of the writers, working on his first novel, emailed me after our first year. He had compiled my list of recommended books by what he'd specifically learned from each--about aspects of
writing.

I loved this idea. It made sense that different books would teach a writer different skills. So I began teaching this way, recommending specific books for specific lessons that a writer wanted to practice.

My list grew and grew as I discovered new books to read, enjoy, and learn from.

After my post last week, a blog reader asked me to please share my list, so here it is. I've culled it down to titles that have proven the most useful to writers I've worked with in classes and workshops and privately over the year. This list is very subjective; you may notice there aren't that many "classics" on it, the titles that would appear in Freshman comp classes in college. They also aren't all books I would recommend as good beach reads or books to help you zone out pleasurably. Many of them take work to absorb and savor, but all will educate you and help you become a better writer if you read carefully.

To learn about organizing multiple-layered plots:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Homestead by Rosina Lippi
Medicine Love by Louise Erdrich

To learn about pacing:
Shadow Baby by Alison McGhee
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Catfish and Mandala by Andrew Pham
Back in the World by Tobias Wolff (short stories)
Cheating at Canasta by Trevor Williams (short stories)
The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper (young adult)
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Interpeter of Maladies by Jhampa Lahiri (short stories)
Girl by Jamaica Kinkaid (short story)
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston (short stories)

To learn about characters:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor (short stories)
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
How to Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore (short stories)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Stop Kiss by Diana Son (playscript)
Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg
Name All the Animals by Allison Smith
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddom
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro (short stories)

To learn about weaving in backstory:
The Color of Water by James McBride
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
No More Words by Reeve Lindbergh
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Almost There by Nuala O'Faolain
The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
Peace Like a River by Lief Enger

To learn about complex plots--having enough happen:
The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
The Passion by Jeannette Winterson
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Liars Club by Mary Karr
Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre (fantasy/sci-fi)

To learn about container (environment of story/culture/beliefs):
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
Away by Amy Bloom
Thinking about Magritte by Kate Stearns
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Of course, with many of these titles, you can learn much more than the category I've given them. But that's my primary learning tool from that book.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Imagine you are in a classroom to learn about becoming a better writer. What do you need to focus on next, in your writing?

2. Pick a book from one of the lists. Buy or borrow or download it. Read it as a writer would.

3. Think about your favorite books, the ones you've learned the most from. Post your list here as a comment.

Reading to Become a Better Writer

2011-03-06T09:50:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I was reminded of the joy of reading good books. This reminder came unexpectedly, via a small New England writing conference called Writer's Day, hosted by New Hampshire Writer's Project.

I've attended Writer's Day for two years. Two hundred writers from all over New England gather each spring for really good workshops, intense networking, pitch sessions with agents and publishers, and a stellar keynote speaker. Each time I go, I am impressed with
the quality, and how much inspiration can be packed into just one day.

My inspiration this year came from the keynote speaker, Paul Harding, author of the recent Pulitzer-winning novel, Tinkers.

Harding read the opening of Tinkers, "George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died," telling us a bit about the story, which is loosely based on his grandfather's life. Then he spoke about his effort, as a writer, to align his life and his writing as much as possible.

It's an old myth that creative artists must be divorced from real life, that good art is only created in a reclusive environment. I crave solitude to do my writing, solitude with no interruptions, no responsibilities, just as you might. But as a committed writer, someone who is serious about her work, I also know I get much juice from my everyday life. From my every day come observations on how people talk and interact, which I use to create believable characters. From my every day, I can understand dilemma and conflict, so it can appear on my pages. Here was a writer who has won the top prize for fiction, telling us this. I felt quite relieved to know we were all on the same page.

But it was during the questions session after his talk that Harding gave the most useful reminder. He spoke about the need to grow as a creative artist, become a consistently better writer. This comes from the intersection of everyday life and our writing life, but it also comes from our immersion into good literature on a regular basis.

Become a better writer by reading the best writing you can find, he said. That's the way to continually grow.

When I got home, I looked at the pile of books on my bedside table. There are always more books than I can manage. I wanted to see if the books I'm currently choosing to read are helping my writing life--or are just ways to zone out. I actually love "zoning out" with books--reading those books that are like mind candy and don't inspire me one whit. But I also am deep in the middle of revising my next novel, so I can't feed my creative self a junk food diet.

I had three books on my table and one in my car:
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Edinburgh by Alex Chee
The Color of Water by James McBride

These are not lightweight reads. But they are rich like good art should be. They each teach me, educate me, to new ideas. They are examples of the kind of writing I need to learn from.

When I began my M.F.A. program, my teachers asked me to make up a reading list for each semester. I was supposed to select classics and modern books I hadn't read, that I wanted to give myself permission to read--finally. I was supposed to learn. I remember how my adviser that first semester crossed out 20 of the titles and replaced them with better choices. I didn't know, at the time, what I needed to aspire to--in my choices of books. She made me read authors I would never have chosen: Banana Yoshimoto, Anne Carson, Jose Saramago. And acquainted me with books that changed both my view of literature and my writing. These authors made me a better writer. Beautiful language is inspiring to the creative self. It generates in us an enthusiasm to write, just as seeing great art gifts us with a sense of inspiration and joy at our own creative possibilities.

Some of my students and clients over the years have told me they actually avoid reading good writing while they are working on a book. I used to do this too. The reasons were two-fold: (1) I was afraid I would somehow uptake the language or ideas and unconsciously place them in my own work, or (2) I was so defeated as a writer that reading beautiful books made me feel worse about my own lack of effort/creativity/possibilities.

The cure for this is writing practice.

If you are writing regularly, you are producing original ideas (whether you believe it or not, this eventually begins to happen). You won't steal other people's writing or ideas because you are generating so many of your own. There is a sense of abundance, rather than lack. Words are plentiful; there's no need to feel you won't have enough good ones.

If you are writing regularly, you are also buoyed up by this practice. It becomes like breathing, like sitting down to eat, like brushing your teeth. You put words on paper and you're doing your creative work, so your sense of jealousy or envy of "successful" writers gradually goes away. You realize they too are practicing their craft. They too are working hard at what they desire to bring out into the world. We're all in the same boat.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Make a list of books you are currently reading. What's hanging around on your bedside table, your desk, your living room? If you're not reading, think about why. (We all have no time these days--that's a real reason but not a good one if you want to be a better writer. Is it easier to watch the evening news than inspire your creative self? Maybe reading needs to sneak back into your life, bringing its amazing benefits?)

2. Add two books to the list that might bring you more inspiration as a writer--upgrading your creative inspiration. Maybe you're studying how to write better dialogue. Find a book that does this well.

3. Spend 20 minutes today or sometime this week writing a letter to one of these writers you admire. Tell her or him why you love their work, why you are grateful they took the time to create it. Admit to your envy and sour grapes, but also admit to your gratitude. This person is showing you the way to become a better writer.

4. Finally, read. Make time this week for reading.

Wise Words about Passion in Writing

2011-02-27T16:56:00.005-05:00

One of my students alerted me to this excellent NPR review of Stanley Fish's new book, How to Write a Sentence. But even more fun is the excerpt from the book, which is below the review.

I'm posting the link here (click on the words "NPR review" above), to share with you one writer's passion for writing. It inspired me to read it, and I hope it'll ignite your own passion for your words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages. So for this week's exercise, enjoy this excerpt from How to Write a Sentence. Maybe go out and buy or borrow the book.

Then spend some time reflecting on your passion for words.

Do you swim in the joy of them, as this writer does?
Why or why not?

Writing Dialogue: How People Really Talk on the Page

2011-02-20T01:49:00.002-05:00

A friend recently sent me this wonderful article, published in the Wall Street Journal's Wordcraft column, about how people really talk on the page. I like this column, I'm more impressed with the WSJ since it began including it to its usual lineup. The article is short, like all of the Wordcraft essays, but gives good food for thought.

So many writers in my classes have questions about how to write dialogue. It truly takes
skill, and in my experience it also takes years of practice. But the most important technique I've learned for writing good dialogue is an ability to listen between the lines.

In the WSJ article, the writer makes some good points about how written dialogue differs from spoken dialogue, how people on the page are more revealed by what's not said than what is. The writer referred to a Hemingway short story to illustrate exactly how this is done. The story is called "Hills Like White Elephants."

I perked up, reading this, because "Hills Like White Elephants" happens to be one of my favorite Hemingway stories. I like Hemingway's writing; I've read almost everything he wrote. I admire his sparseness even though it's far from my own style. But this story is really brilliant in how it reveals, through what's not being said, the intense undercurrents that pass between people in struggle

A man and a woman are sitting in a cafe in a train station somewhere in Spain. They are having drinks and waiting. The woman remarks that the distant hills look like white elephants. The dialogue is somewhat inane, if you just look at it line by line, but taken as a whole it reveals this huge subject that's not being discussed, a subject that's quite profound. The man wants the woman to have an abortion. She is resisting, and in that resistance is the whole of their relationship. It's actually not about anything they're discussing. It's about what can't be discussed--whether she is truly loved and whether he is seeing her beneath everything that is happening in their lives. It's a situation that speaks of profound despair, in my mind.

But the dialogue. That's the cool thing about studying this story. You start to see the layers peel off as the dialogue moves along. First layer is the obvious--they are ordering drinks, the drink tastes like anise, the hills are like elephants seen faintly through the trees. Then there's the main topic--the abortion that the man is advocating. But it's Hemingway's brilliance that brings in the third layer, which is the real meat of this tiny story. What's not fixable about us humans, about people's twists and turns and their basic unhappiness with what they end up with.

We won't ever get the brilliance of Hemingway in our books, perhaps. But we can learn a lot from studying his dialogue.

So this week, if you're wanting to build your dialogue skills, try the exercise below. Do it more than once, if you can. It takes lots of practice to develop the listening ear, then the writing of dialogue. Try to first hear, then scribe, the undercurrents. Your dialogue will begin to explore what's not being said--and that's where the true literary conversations take place.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Find a busy place to sit for a while with your writer's notebook and take notes. Cafes are good. Or bus stations or doctor's offices or airports.

2. Eavesdrop. Take notes on how people talk. Write down all the jigs and jags of human speech.

3. Pay attention to the rhythms you're hearing, how many times people interrupt or talk around the topic or use partial sentences.

4. After an hour or so, or however much time you can spend, take what you've written and read it over. Underline the best three lines, the ones that speak about something that not's being said.

5. Using one of these, begin a freewrite for 20 minutes (no editing) for a scene from your book. Write the overheard line of dialogue at the top of your page and start adding responses until you've crafted a conversation.

6. Look it over. Decide what's not being said (the subtext). Is it a strong current under your characters' words?

Weeding through the Mess: How to Make Sense of Your First Draft

2011-02-14T13:14:00.010-05:00

A reader from New York has been working hard on her first draft of a novel for over a year. First drafts aren't easy. Initially they require sitting down and writing a lot. Not necessarily from chapter 1 to The End, but a lot of scenes need to accumulate. This is the benefit of writing classes, writing marathons, and writing practice. This is why Nanowrimo is so popular. You can accumulate pages toward this first draft.

But after all the pages are written, you don't really have a book yet. To take the mess to first draft, you have to find a pathway through it. Something a reader can make sense of. This is where the writer from New York was stuck.

"I'm on the edge," she told me. "There is almost a ream of paper with different chapters. There are different beginnings. There are different endings. How do I weed through all this?"

How to Create a Map of Your Book

In my online classes, we're learning to create maps of our books. We divide our weekly time between writing (accumulating those pages) and assessing where the pages might fit within a first draft. To help this map-making process, I created a video of something called storyboarding. Storyboarding is the easiest way I know to figure out the map through the mess.

Some writers don't like maps. When I was younger and newer to book writing, I didn't either. I didn't use maps for my travel, so why did I need them for my writing? Wasn't it better just to let it flow?

When I was exploring Europe one summer at nineteen, I only took along a good train schedule and my Eurail pass, a little bit of money, and my love of adventure. Lucky I didn't know I was ignorantly hitchhiking in Greece during the anti-American protests. Luckily, a German woman helped me out when I was trying to pass through East Germany without having the right stamp on my passport. I was too innocent to know the danger I was narrowly avoiding, because my ideal was travel from a casual, unplanned perspective.

I went to France a few summers ago and much of the adventure came in planning where to visit. I found good maps. I used them. I had just as much--probably more--fun.

My early books were mapless too. But when I began publishing back in the 1980s, my publisher assigned me an in-house editor. He had a map, a good one.

I use the W storyboard as my initial map when I am trying to make sense of reams of writing. In a W there are five points, one for the beginning and ending and three at the end of the W's legs. You first need to find these five points. Once you discover them, you can build your map. This week's exercise takes you through the steps.

Weeding your way to a good first draft takes time. Set aside a storyboard retreat weekend, if you can. You may come away with a map that will serve you well the rest of your book journey.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise: Map-Making

1. Watch the video from last week (scroll just below this post to see the link).

2. Get a posterboard or large sheet of paper. Draw a big W on it.

3. On a separate page, list all the key dramatic points in your story so far. What has a real dramatic effect, with something happening outwardly? What have you written about?

4. Read through these and see if you can choose the 5 most dramatic moments. Place them on the 5 points of the W in logical order. Review the video for the triggering event and ending event's requirements.

5. To see if you've chosen well, ask yourself if they follow the rising and falling action of their position on the W. (See the video for more information on this.) Begin to flow the other scenes you've written.

6. Place them between the 5 points on the W, using Post-It notes.

Storyboarding--Using the W Storyboard Structure to Chart Stronger Conflict in Your Book

2011-02-04T18:57:00.003-05:00

With the help of one of my students and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, I created the video below. Watch it to learn how to use the W storyboard structure to create a strong emotional arc in your book, via stronger conflict.

Enjoy!

Interested in learning more? I'll be teaching storyboarding in two-day workshops this spring:

Saturday/Sunday, April 9-10, at Southern New Hampshire University, sponsored by NH Writers' Project. For more details visit www.nhwritersproject.org.

Friday/Saturday, May 6-7, at the Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis, www.loft.org or call 612-379-8999 for details.

How to Work with the Four Levels of Transition in a Book: Smoothing the Reader's Ride

2011-01-29T11:20:00.001-05:00

Successful transitions allow a reader to move through your book, from beginning to end, without getting frustrated or bored. Or taking two steps back to reread something that wasn't clear. But transitions are the last thing we think about when we're creating our books. It's only when we read the manuscript at draft that we discover awkwardness, sections that jump around, or are too fast or slow.

How does a writer craft good transitions?
How do we bridge from then and elsewhere, to here and now, manipulating the move from past to present?

Because these little bridges connect one idea and the next in a way that a reader can follow without any stumbles, I wanted to spend this week's discussion on the four levels of transitions. The goal is to make it easy on the reader, always. It's a horrible thought that a reader would grow bored and frustrated with your writing, enough to put it down.

Carefully considered transitions avoid any confusion.

The Four Levels of Transitions
In most books, transitions exist on four levels. We need to honor the sequence of how we approach them, as we're planning, writing, and developing our books.

The first and most important level of transitions is addressed during the planning stage of a book--when you are writing the "islands" or scenes, then storyboarding them into a logical sequence for a reader. If you don't create strong transitions between the large elements in your story, such as how someone gets from here to there, the reader will probably put down the book. People like being intrigued. But they hate being confused.

So how are you structuring your overall movement of your book's plot/theory/idea/journey? How will your journey move from the opening chapter's quest or question to the ending chapter's resolution or next step?

If you're at this stage, pre-first draft, and you'd like more information on how to manage it, go to the Search box at the top right corner of this page and type in "storyboard." You'll get a lot of past posts where I discuss the structuring process, the big picture, and its necessary transitions.

Level Two: Chapters
The second level of transitions in a book is the smaller movement that takes place between one chapter's ending and the next chapter's beginning. I loved the insights I gained on this during my M.F.A. program. One of my advisers asked me if I wanted to finish each chapter with a sense of closure or did I want the reader to keep reading into the next chapter, unable to put my book down. Well, that was a no brainer. Of course I wanted a page turner. She suggested, then, that I break my habit of closure. Don't wind up everything at the end of a chapter. Leave a hook, an unfinished situation, a new dilemma.

Being a 12-year veteran of writing weekly newspaper columns, this was kinda hard for me. So I did it very slowly, like untangling a skein of yarn. I worked through my manuscript and untied the beautiful knots I'd created. And, lo and behold, it made a huge difference.

I still have the emails and letters from readers: "I stayed up all night reading your book."

Level Three: Paragraphs
So you've got your chapters flowing pretty nicely. The overall book is working. Then comes the moment when you get a nudge to look at the smaller parts within each chapter. Are they even connected? As one reader from Minnesota wrote me recently: "I have been making a steady progress with my memoir, and realizing now that I am in desperate need of good paragraph transitions."

Well-crafted paragraph transitions create a seamless ride. Simply, you look at the last sentence of the paragraph and the first sentence of the following one and ask yourself, What image carries? If there is no strong transition, create a carrying-through of image. As easy as inserting one or two words to make it smooth, as in the example below ("But summer passed" and "still" make the transition):

End of paragraph 1: "John knew he'd have to make some changes by the end of the summer."
Beginning of paragraph 2: "But summer passed, and he was still standing behind the cash register at the hardware store."

This transition works on a fairly obvious, outer level--marking time passing. Not only that but this transition repeats the word summer. So it creates a bridge for the reader on two levels, both very accessible. I like making these kinds of edits in my writing when I am first working on the paragraph transitions. I look at each paragraph in a chapter, especially one where a lot happens or we move around in time and space, and I insert this kind of obvious transition. Then, after I feel the movement is quite easy to follow, I'll go back and remove some. Make things more subtext, less obvious.

Level Four: Language
The final arena of transitions in a book relies on image, or language. This is the most subtle work a writer does, but often the most fun too.

Your images create a immense undercurrent in your book. They aren't something to play with too much early on, but later, at revision, you can develop them to weave more closely with your book's "inner story," or meaning. They are subtext, the undercurrent that we sense rather than the outer river we see.

I revel in these when I read literature where the writer has paid close attention to language transitions. Recently I finished Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, and the image of the tightrope-walker threads through all the lives of the characters, but not just outwardly as they marvel at his feat. Also, inwardly, because each of these people is walking an intense tightrope in their own lives.

Study this in your favorite books. Note how the writer weaves a recurring image, or how the language feels like a unified painting no matter where we are in the story. Because this level of transition work only happens when there is coherence in the type of language, or voice, or style of writing chosen for the book as a whole. You must be using a similar voice (type of words--academic, playful, lyrical?) throughout to be able to use this subtler level of transitions and be successful. The reader can follow you if the language carries it.

How does a writer work with this in her own book? First, locate one strong image that could recur in many forms. A bowl of oranges in the center of a kitchen table on the day of a funeral, for instance. Maybe time passes, and the image repeats as the orange of a sari at a secret meeting. What images repeat in your writing, that you could play with?

This Week's Writing Exercise1. Print out a chapter or a section and read it out loud, loud enough to be able to hear your own voice reading the words. This is key; it brings a level of detachment that moves you from the writer's to the reader's viewpoint.

2. With a yellow highlighter, mark any place where the transitions feel awkward.

3. Ask yourself at what level the transition needs work: on the larger structuring level? on the chapter to chapter transition? on the paragraph or word level?

4. See what you can do to smooth out the bumpy ride.

Finding Creative Balance: Making Room for Your Writing in Your Life

2011-01-22T09:17:00.001-05:00

Years ago, I gave up on New Year's resolutions. Lots of people promised themselves the moon, but everything fell back into stasis by February. Me too, back then. I couldn't ever figure out how to make real, lasting transitions from what I was to what I wanted to become.

But I am still attracted to the possibility of change, especially in my creative life. So I love
this time of year because it feels like I am giving myself permission to ask the big questions: What do I want for my life and my writing in 2011? How am I going to realistically transition between where I was last year and where I want to be? Do I really, deep down, want to make changes--because I know that changes will require giving up something I have now.

I am teaching a wonderful group of book writers each week at Southern NH University during January and February. Last class I posed this question: What are you willing to let go of, in order to make room for your book?

The writers are at different stages in the book-writing journey. Some are working on gathering material, still crafting "islands" of writing and not yet composing any continents out of them. Others have a manuscript draft, or part of one, maybe 40,000 words or even 80,000. But in the discussion last week, I learned that they've come to my class to get more than skills. They want to make changes in how they approach their writing life, because they realize that's the only way to manifest a book.

A book is a marriage, as opposed to a one-night stand. You're in it for a longer haul. You need to make it something that has real room in your life. You need to consider adjustments in your schedule when you take on a book, think about what you want to change in your writing rhythm based on what you want to produce on the page.

Last week I posted a chart I use in my workshops and online book classes, which helps a writer consider how to make these changes. (Scroll down to last week's post to see more.) When looking at the process of writing a book, some big resolutions emerge. Here are a few from my students in past classes:

I want to go from stuck to unstuck, have less fear and Inner Critic talk
I want to begin making writing a priority in my life
I am emptied out; I need to somehow fill up the well of creativity in myself

Letting Go of the Old to Make Room for the New
Two weeks ago, I talked about rhythm and community as two essentials in a writer's life. Both are needed to make this kind of transition--a new way of approaching your writing life now that you've got a book cooking. The rhythm is the first thing to consider. It requires knowing when and where you write most easily. But it also requires letting go of something you're doing now, that doesn't pay off as much as your book will.

Maybe you're like me--you've begun countless exercise programs that didn't stick. I've joined gyms. I've bought rebounders. I've spent a lot of money on great equipment. The only consistency I've gotten is to first figure out what I could give up to make time for exercising. Whenever I did that, made sacred time and space in my schedule and allowed something else to fall away, I am able to stick to--and enjoy--daily exercise.

Same with writing rhythm. It doesn't work, in my experience, to expect ourselves to make some magic leap to a new rhythm without first letting go of something that no longer serves our creativity. So this week's exercise asks you to look at this question.

So you can promise yourself the moon, but also set up a plan to get there.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Imagine your ideal writing time. Would it be early morning or late at night? Where would you write? At home, in a cafe, at the library?

2. Now look at an average day. Where is there something you could give up to make time for this writing session? You only have to find one this week.

3. Finally do a 20-minute freewrite, and make notes about the benefits of what you're giving up. What does it contribute to your life right now that you'd lose? What would your writing contribute to your life that you're not getting at the moment?

How Tall Do You Want to Grow? Taking Risks toward Reaching Your Goals

2011-01-17T06:59:00.001-05:00

I subscribe to an e-newsletter from life coach Cheryl Richardson, author of many books including one of my favorites, Stand Up for Your Life! Cheryl sends out a weekly inspirational essay with an exercise. This week was about the choice to take risks--or not.

She shared a story of a woman who took a relationship risk. After two decades of being reluctant to step forward and start dating, this woman finally approached a man who lived in her building and suggested they go out for coffee. It turned out well, and now
they are having regular dates. She feels liberated. You can read the whole story here.

It got me thinking. There's always a choice in our creative lives, too. This week I begin two online classes, "Your Book Starts Here," with forty-one writers from around the world who are making the choice to write their books. They've taken the risk to move away from what's safe and known, the areas where they feel competent, and test their creative edges by learning something new. I am watching them face the excitement and the fear of this. Some of them are new to online classes so there's that overwhelm of how to navigate the classroom, post a profile photo, make the tiny font sizes bigger. It's very easy to give up and go back to what is familiar.

And I find that usually life conspires to increase the edge when we try something new. Maybe we've signed up for a new writing class or decided that 2011 is the year we're finally going to get this book done. Of course, there's a sudden influx of other changes--maybe challenges with job, kids, family, money, health make it seem impossible to have the energy to leave the familiar. I know. I've been there. When outer changes accelerate, it seems insane to envision adding something new.

Here's my two cents, born of many decades of experiencing this. Sometimes that's just the right moment to take back control, creatively. To do something you want, rather than react to everyone else's needs. Move from reactor to creator.

It'll take your life in a new direction. If you put your creativity first, the joy it brings you can even reduce the other stuff to a manageable size.

This Week's Writing Exercise

1. If you'd like to move from mediocre to reaching a dream, you can follow along with my online class, if you want, by using the Reverse Goal-Setting Worksheet below. It'll help you envision a little of what you'd like to bring into your life in the next three months.

2. First, list your Product Goals for the next three months (any tangible goals you have for your writing, such as number of pages or chapters written):

3. Then, write down your Process Goals (any goals that pertain to your growth as a writer, which you’d like to realize in the next three months):

4. Using the boxes below, follow these steps: In Week 12’s box, write the goals you noted above under Product and Process. Then move down to Week 11’s box. Ask yourself: What needs to happen in Week 11 for Week 12’s goals to come true? Consider what smaller steps you might need to have accomplished by Week 11. Note those goals, both Product and Process, in Week 11’s box. Continue in your reverse goal-setting for each box until you get to Week 1. Adjust as needed so your goals are realistic yet exciting to you.

Week 12—by April 10

Week 11—by April 3

Week 10—by March 27

Week 9—by March 20

Week 8—by March 13

Week 7—by March 6

Week 6—by February 27

Week 5—by February 20

Week 4—by February 13

Week 3—by February 6

Week 2—by January 30

Week 1—by January 23

Community and Rhythm--Two Keys to Producing a Book

2011-01-08T13:08:00.001-05:00

It's deep winter here in northern New England, and I'm thinking about summer--quelle surprise! As the furnace tries to warm my cold toes in their sheepskin slippers, I'm remembering a beautiful lake that stretched to the horizon, blue sky and warmth, and sitting in an Adirondack chair on farmhouse porch. This wasn't just any farmhouse porch; it was on Madeline Island in Lake Superior, far from my normal life. I had my laptop on my knees and I was shaping a scene from my next novel.

Even today, when snow is blanketing the fields outside my home, I can remember how beautiful it was to be on retreat. How the sun warmed my shoulders, how the breeze felt on my face. I was far away from my normal routine, but I was in familiar territory with my fictional world. I remember we were on our afternoon break from the class I was teaching, twelve marvelous writers with whom I was privileged to spend the week on this little island. I imagined them at the beach down the road, watching the shimmering expanse of Lake Superior. Or maybe they were in our classroom in the Milk House across from my farmhouse porch, working on their storyboards for their books. Or maybe they were taking a well-deserved nap in their cottage, after having written late into the night!

After the Madeline Island retreat was over--our week together that July--the twelve writers went back to their normal lives as I did. But miracle of miracles, they stayed in touch with each other. Nine formed groups of three for support. This week I received packages in the mail from two of them: complete drafts of their books! Because of the encouragement and support from their retreat buddies, they'd actually put together complete manuscripts. Yes, there was much work still to do, but the evidence was there. I was so pleased. I am sure they will publish.

Others contacted me after the retreat too. Some came to my classes at the Loft or Hudson Valley Writers' Center and showed me their progress on their manuscripts. This is no small achievement, writing a book, and the determination that was ignited on that little island fueled them during the fall and winter months. Some emailed me that they were writing every day; others got stuck and came for help. But few stayed out of touch.

We'd formed a community, and I knew how important that was.

The Tangible Benefits of Community and Rhythm
I've published twelve books, with my thirteenth coming out this year. Each book has taken determination, it's meant conquering big learning curves in my own skills, it's asked my faith and belief when I had little to give. Over the decades I've spent as a professional writer and writing teacher, I've come to recognize two elements that are "make or break" for us book writers. If we have them in place, we have a good chance of writing and finishing our books. If we don't, the climb will be mostly uphill.

Community is first. Book writers need each other. We're a very particular breed of writer, in it for the very long haul. When I wrote short stories, I could spend a year on one, but it was short. It didn't boggle the mind like a three-hundred-page book. Teaching book writers and writing this blog have been my effort to create community among our special breed. Ironically, book writers tend to isolate themselves--which is just what we don't need to do.

Where is your community? Do you have regular support, regular check-ins with others working on books? It can be online, it can be in person or by phone or email. You need this. We all need this. Otherwise, it's a short drive to feeling rather crazed by all those words.

I'm impressed at how often, after one of my classes and especially after the retreats or online classes, the groups stay in touch. Not everyone, of course, but many people. They recognize the need for support and reality checks.

The other aspect of writing a book that needs to be in place is a writing rhythm. This comes from having a good writing practice, a regular time you touch in with your creativity. Preferably every day, but if not every day, then at least three times a week. That seems to be the minimum.

Why? What happens when you stop working on your book, stop entering the "dreamspace" of your writing and the week goes by, then more weeks? Well, if you're me, you have a lot of rumbling bad feelings about yourself as a writer, like you've broken some important promise to yourself and your creativity. My Inner Critic gets very excited, starts telling me how little I'll amount to. And my list of excuses gets pretty long.

It's a real balancing act, isn't it. To have enough time and space to fill the creative well, so we have something to write about in the first place. And to have a strong enough rhythm so we're putting what we get, onto the page regularly.

So my second question this week is this: How's your writing practice? Does it support a regular creative rhythm in your life? Do you have a way to keep your attention on your story?

One of my students from that Madeline Island retreat recently sent me this quote from a favorite writing book, From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler. Butler speaks to fiction writers primarily, but I find his ideas are true no matter which genre I'm working in. He puts into words the sobering facts about writing rhythm, and (despite my irritation--who is he kidding!!), I know from experience it's quite true.

Butler writes, "Once you are engaged in writing a piece of fiction from your unconscious, it is crucial that you write every day, because the nature of this place where you go is such that it's very difficult to find your way in. It's pure torture. But even though it's terrible getting in, once you're in, if you keep going back every day, though it's still always daunting and difficult and scary, it's not nearly so much so. You may find--this is dangerous, but you may find--that you can take a day off every six or seven days. When you do this, you'll be grumpy and out of sorts and things will be uncomfortable, but after a day you can get back in. But you take two days off and you're on very thin ice. If you let three or four days go by it's as if you've never written a word your entire life. That doorway closes and seals itself up; you don't even know what part of the wall that door's in anymore. I don't care how much you've written in your life; those defenses are strong and they won't let you go there."

How does this play out in my life? I have a family, a teenager (enough said!), a full-time teaching job, and I still need to figure out how to write? Butler is talking about the dreamspace of a writing project, how elusive it is, and that the easiest way to keep it vital inside is to write every day. But in reality? Sometimes I can do this; and I prefer to do this. But sometimes everything hits the wall, and I can't. So my writing rhythm certainly suffers. I know enough now to sure I get back to my book within a day or two. And he's right, it's torture to try and regain the lost ground, but I do it.

That's where the community comes in. My cheerleaders. I reach out and talk about what's happening and they remind me: Just sit down and write two sentences, you have time for two sentences. Oh, how hard that is, the sitting down, the opening of the computer file, the terrible writing I produce in those two sentences.

And the next thing I know, I'm being called to dinner and I've written four pages without realizing it. That's the magic.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. In your writer's notebook, write, as honestly as you can, about your current community as a book writer. Who is out there supporting you? If you don't have a community, what inside you is holding back from getting one? Don't want to appear needy? Afraid of rejection and ridicule? Weigh what you've heard above with these feelings. What new year's resolution could you make to get yourself what you may really need, to finish your book?

2. Again, in your writer's notebook, freewrite about your current writing rhythm. How strong is it? How clearly does your book thrum through your every day? If the beat isn't loud enough, what do you need to do to change that--one small step you can take in 2011?

These questions are not about beating yourself up for what you haven't done well/perfectly/like so-and-so who just published her book. Now's a new year, let the old one die in the dust behind you and face yourself and your creativity as a new person with new possibilities.

What would you like to do differently?

Maybe you'd like to join me on Madeline Island this summer? I'll be teaching two retreats this year. So many from last summer are returning, one retreat week is almost filled. But there's still room in the retreat that runs July 18-22. If you'd like to learn more, please visit Madeline Island School for the Arts. I'd love to meet you on that farmhouse porch.

Are You a Memoirist or a Novelist? More Ruminations on Proust, Memory, and Writing the Truth

2011-01-03T08:01:00.003-05:00

I received an eloquent email from a reader in New York, who had some thoughts on my recent post on memory and truth. I am sharing it in its entirety below, hopefully to stimulate some discussion among readers and at least get you thinking (and possibly researching on your own) the ever-changing and fascinating field of brain science and how it applies to us who are writing books.

I get this question so often in my classes: How can I accurately write memories that happened when I was very young? What do I do to keep myself honest? And the most important one: Am I really writing a novel, not a memoir?

In my earlier post (search "Memory" in the Search box above right to read more), I talked about the difference between factual truth and emotional truth. This reader takes it one step further, into how our brains actually recall memories. And how accurate that recall really is.

When I asked her permission to share her email, my reader added this cavaet: "Please reiterate that this is just one of the many theories going around. The whole field of neurology is just exploding with ideas and conjectures. Really creative stuff going on."

Enjoy!

* * *
According to one of the latest neurological theories, there is no such thing as a "pure" memory. Each time you remember something your brain changes from the sheer act of recall.

The theory is that your neurons make new synaptic connections with each recall. To my thinking that means you could get a strange regression of any remembered event, e.g., first the memory of the event, then the recall of it which changes the brain and thus the memory, then the recall of the recall which changes things even more, ad infinitum.

So the more you "work" on writing about a memory, the more it will change.

That said, what remains puzzling (and what I am working on) is why certain memories feel as if they are "fixed." Why those particular memories and not others? And what is going on with this strange feeling of "fixed?" Why don’t they “change” even though we recall them often? My thinking so far is that it’s not the memory that is fixed so much as the meaning behind it, e.g. this is the memory that formed my thinking about being x,y,z, or this is the memory that changed my mind about x,y,z. The fixed memory acts as a kind of place holder for the feeling of the self as it forms. It’s not the memory that is important so much as the feeling/meaning behind it. Most folks just keep retelling those “fixed” memory/stories over and over again because they are so compelling (no matter how dull they are to our listeners) but they rarely dig behind them to learn why.

Case in point is Proust. A lot of hapless memoirists (myself included) think all we have to do is find the right cookie to dunk in the lime tea and our childhood memories will come back perfect and whole. Not true. What came back for Proust was an involuntary memory that created an almost existential feeling of nostalgia for a childhood place that he had not consciously thought about in years. But when he took that first bite of the cookie, his memory of the place came back on its own complete with exact details.

However, when he started to write about it, things got slippery. He would write and rewrite and edit and purge, and write again. I think what intrigued him was how memory "grew" once he started writing. Consequently, he would change something in volume 2 based on what he was writing in volume 6. Does that make what he wrote in volume 2 was a lie? No. It makes him a novelist.

The reason he is a novelist and not a memoirist is that he was after much more than the actual factual/historical events. He was after memory itself and how we write about it. Thus he was rewriting right up until he died.

The moral of the story.... no work on memoir is ever truly "done," it can only be abandoned.

This Week's Writing Exercise
Consider the ideas that this reader shares. How do they pertain to your writing, your beliefs about memory and truth in books? Share your thoughts and comments, if you like.

New Year's Collage Party

2010-12-31T07:30:00.002-05:00

Create yourself a collage party tonight or tomorrow--and envision your 2011 creatively! Go to the search box on this blog and type in "creative collages" to find out more and see samples. Happy new year!

Rest Breaks for Book Writers--Feeding the Artist

2010-12-26T12:46:00.001-05:00

There are some important signs of burn-out that writers need to attend to. An overactive Inner Critic. A feeling of the blues about one's work. A sense of deep depletion, despite enough sleep and exercise.

December rolled around with all of these symptoms, for me. I'd just finished up a four-month teaching marathon at three different writing schools plus a new online class. All were amazing, wonderful, and inspiring, but I gave
so much to each group, holding the creative space for them and their books when they couldn't see it. At the same time, I was finishing the final editing of my forthcoming book on book-writing, Your Book Starts Here, working with wonderful editor and typesetter and publishing house. Plus some creative opportunities came my way that I just couldn't pass up, including making a video to help book writers storyboard their manuscripts. One day when the manuscript was finally out of my hands, the students signed off from the class, the video in the hands of the editor, I sat on the couch and stared at the mountains outside my living room window, wondering where I was.

More important, who I was. I couldn't tell anymore.

Crying jags often accompany this, for me. Wails of "Who am I?" or "I'll never write again" sometimes come too. It's normal to dive even deeper as the tension releases and the stress lessens, as both body and emotions come forward with long-ignored needs. Don't get me wrong: I eat healthily, I exercise regularly, I sleep reasonable hours, and I have good family and friends support. I'm living a good life. But in the realm of manifestation and creativity, which is what my work is all about, I had been stretched to the max these past months. I didn't know any other gear to drive than Intense. I didn't know how to get back to the "necessary boredom" that Dorothy Allison talks about, the place where my own creativity bubbles up.

Somehow, though, I'd managed to carve out three weeks in my calendar. My spouse started a new job about that time, my son was visiting friends for the holidays, so I was alone.

Blissfully, frightfully alone, with nothing to do. Or, let me rephrase, nothing anyone else was asking me to do.

So what next? How do I make use of this nothing, and let it heal me, fill me up again? I hadn't a clue how to begin.

Taking a Creative Retreat for the Inner Artist
I have a wonderful book for these occasions: The Woman's Retreat Book by Jennifer Louden. It's packed with ways to disengage and reacquaint yourself with yourself. I found it on a back shelf, went back to my spot on the couch near the mountain view. I closed my eyes and opened the book at random. Of course, it opened to this section "Feeding the Artist." I read the first line: "If there is one cosmic law I know the consequences of ignoring, it is this one: you cannot create from an empty well."

Duh. Why didn't I see this before I had my meltdown? Well, obviously, when one is empty, it's hard to see that. Many of us keep running anyway, fueled by adrenaline, and the joy of life gets dimmer and dimmer. We lose track of where we are, who we are. We get swept up with other people's lives (and creative needs--if you're a teacher). It's all good, it's all important. I love my work. But there's a moment to say, "Stop!" Let yourself go back to yourself.

I decided I would ignore both calendar and lists for these three weeks, as much as I could. Even my visioning lists went into a nice blue folder and into my desk drawer. I began to putter, to play.

The first day I cooked two soups. I love to cook, and two soups in one day seemed lovely and extravagant. Besides, the vegetable drawer was foreign territory and I could use up a dangerous-looking butternut squash (fine with the dangerous part cut off). I took a walk and went to bed by 9. The next day I listened to Christmas carols and wrapped a few gifts then read a lovely novel (Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann) and let myself nap. Day three I got out the card table and started a jigsaw puzzle. I cleaned out my clothes closet. I took myself to lunch.

You get the idea.

One of Jennifer Louden's most important directives in this chapter on "Feeding the Artist" is not to create while you're filling the well. Stop working on your project, stop trying to manifest anything. Ugh, that was hard. I hadn't had enough time to work on my novel-in-progress, so these three weeks were planned as full immersion. But when I took out the manuscript and my editing pen, I froze up. It all looked terrible--a sure sign of the Inner Critic's negative notions surfacing--and I couldn't bring myself to do anything. Reading Louden's advice felt like a reprieve.

Funny thing. As I began to fill up again, new ideas started coming. I would be watching a movie or marveling at McCann's amazing prose, and I would find myself thinking very lightly about my own creative projects. Images would come. An idea of how to solve a sticky plot problem in the novel. A place to get information I needed. I didn't pursue these, just took notes.

I'm letting the creative tension build for another week. It's getting fun. I look forward to my empty days, I no long dread the thought of moving so slowly.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Take stock. Do you need to feed the artist? Is she or he starving from too much output and not enough input these past busy months?

2. If the answer is yes, can you carve out time for a rest break? Even five hours in a day when nothing is needed of you is amazing and precious.

Last-Minute Gift Ideas for Book Writers

2010-12-18T19:21:00.004-05:00

This week's exercise is to do something wonderful for a beloved writer in your life. Maybe yourself! Here's a short list of my favorite last-minute gift ideas for writers trying to get a book written.

Online subscription to the Wall Street Journal. WSJ has some of the best articles on writing I've recently seen in mainstream media. Cost $2.29 a week. More information at https://www.wallstreetjournal.com/Gryphon/jsp/retentionController.jsp?page=548

Scrivener. A software program that's available now for Mac users, in 2011 for PC
users (out now in Beta version for PC), this is one of the coolest ways to do a storyboard online. Cost $45. More information at http://download.cnet.com/Scrivener/3000-2079_4-139287.html

Membership in International Women's Writers Guild. Comes with information about Kitchen Table gatherings near your loved one's home for monthly writing groups. Cost $55. More information at http://www.iwwg.org/

Subscription to AWP's Writer's Chronicle, the magazine for serious writers. Cost $20. More information at http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/

Claire-Fontaine writing notebooks. I came across these when I lived in France. They are gridded pages and nicely bound, but not too nice--so the writer can go wild with scribblings. I fill about three of them for every book I write--notes, ideas, inspiring pictures. Cost $10-12. More information http://www.amazon.com/Clairefontaine-Classic-Staple-Bound-Notebook/dp/B003BCZSQK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1292597125&sr=8-2

From Where You Dream. One of the most effective writing books for anyone wanting to learn how to show versus tell. By Robert Olen Butler. Cost about $11. More information http://www.amazon.com/Where-You-Dream-Process-Writing/dp/0802142575/ref=sr_1_cc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292597178&sr=1-1-catcorr

Collage kit. Make your own collage kit for a writing friend or family member who needs a creative burst. You'll need a nice piece of foamcore or posterboard ( 11 x 17 inches is a good size), scissors, a glue stick, and a pile of cut-out photos and inspiring words from magazines. Include a time to do your collages together (this way, you'll get to do one too). Cost: under $10.

Mantra Mug (cool coffee or tea mug) from the inspiring Empoword. Cost $12. They also have Window Clings and other inspirational items to keep writers feeling creative. http://www.thinkempoword.com/

Gift certificate to Papyrus writing-supply store. Some great journals and writing implements, as well as beautiful stationery for the long-lost art of letter writing. Cost $10 and up. More information http://www.papyrusonline.com/gifts/journals.html

Gift of your time to give her/him some time to write. Offer to take the kids for two hours, run errands, or otherwise free up your friend's time so she can write--alone! Cost: Free.

E-book reader. Kindle is pretty darn popular, so if you want to splurge . . . Cost $139-189 and up. More information http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reader-Wifi-Graphite/dp/B002Y27P3M/ref=amb_link_354440742_2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0FSRB3F68YEK0C273EAM&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1282782162&pf_rd_i=507846

Writing class. Check out www.loft.org (The Loft Literary Center) if you live near the Twin Cities. Or www.grubstreet.org (Grub Street School) if you're near Boston. Or Hudson Valley Writers' Center near NYC (www.writerscenter.org). All are amazing independent writing schools that feature so many great classes, your mind will spin. In New Hampshire, there's also the wonderful NH Writers Project (www.nhwritersproject.org) at Southern NH University. And Madeline Island School of the Arts in Wisconsin (www.madelineartschool.org). I love them all!

Paid manuscript consultation or editing. The Loft's website www.loft.org has a good listing of editors and professional writers who read and evaluate manuscripts.

Subscription to this blog. Weekly writing inspiration and exercises. If you sign up someone, be sure to let them know they can unsubscribe anytime. Where to get it: www.marycarrollmoore.com/signup. Cost: Free.

Whatever winter celebration you're enjoying this month, I wish you the very best in family, friends, and creativity.

The Road to Remembering: How Do You Recall Accurate Memories for Your Memoir?

2010-12-12T05:22:00.001-05:00

Judy, a reader from Minnesota, sent me a very good question about her manuscript:

"I took your class this summer on 'how to write a book' at the Loft Literary Center. I am working on the second revision of my story and remember so little about the time when I was at the home for unwed mothers. I didn’t think about it much after I left, so the memory kind of withered. Much has come back to life with recall and thinking and writing but my question is like this: I have used dialogue and setting to recreate the feelings I had at the home. This part of my story feels like fiction although it all could very well have been said or seen. For instance, I don’t know if it was a sunny or rainy day… so how do I create story when I don’t have the solid memory details but want to stay genuine and true? Could you offer some help on this topic?"

Writers of memoir need to be factually accurate. Aside from your personal ethics as a writer, this has been made abundantly clear by agents and publishers in the past few years, as nightmares such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces and Herman Rosenblat's Angel at the Fence, which made it to Oprah before it was pulled from production, have embarrassed the industry. Publishers have gotten savvy, and I hear more stories now about background-checkers at major houses who make sure the facts are true before accepting a memoir. If you fake an urban ghetto childhood or a romance across concentration camp wire, you're bound to be found out.

But what about emotional truth? What about the small details of how an operating room smelled forty years ago or whether it was raining when your son left for college? A question that is debating frequently among memoir writers, this line is the sand is yours to draw.

I respect the writing of memoirist and essayist Patricia Hampl. Her collection, I Could Tell You Stories, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. She writes that memory is " ‘an attempt.’ It is a try at the truth. The truth of a self in the world."

Each memoirist will decide for herself where that line sits in the sand. I have published two memoirs and wrote about childhood experiences as well as ones from my adult years. When I was unsure of a setting detail, I did my best to revisit the location and take notes to remind myself. Often this is enough to trigger the past memory and bring in a rush of information. Another writer suggested, when I was struggling with accurate recall, to focus in my memory on one small detail of the setting, such as the floor of a room. I found this worked very well. I thought about the floor in my grandmother's kitchen and could immediately see the speckled colors of its ancient linoleum.

I had my basic facts of each story, each scene. Things that weren't in question. I had to grow to trust my emotional memory as well. What did I feel that day, what did my senses take in, and can I paint a broader view with some contemplation, some traveling back to that past, some research, and above all, some renewed trust in my ability to remember?

Trust Your Ability to Remember
Not trusting their memories causes big problems with memoirists.

A student was writing the story of her grandmother's untimely death, which caused an upheaval in the family. This happened when she was nine, and it was very hard to say which details she really remembered and which she believed she was inventing out of desperation to have something on the page.

This writer wanted to be honest in her writing. She thought long and hard about the day of the funeral and finally a detail emerged: the thick and cloying smell of bright pink roses set in huge vases near the casket. So she wrote a draft of a scene for her memoir, focusing on the moment when she tried approaching the casket that held her beloved grandmother, but the noxious smell of those roses caused her to gag and run to the bathroom.

She liked the scene but as she thought more about those roses, she wondered if the fleeting memory was really true. After all, she was nine. Maybe she gagged because she'd never seen a dead body before. So my student decided to run it by her sister, an older and wiser (although opinionated) member of the family.

"They weren't roses, Grandma hated roses," the sister proclaimed. "Lilies is what Mom ordered."

What did this writer do? Believe her own faint recall, so thin it felt quite unsubstantial against her sister's certainty?

She caved. Not only that, but it created a dilemma that stalled her writing. Suddenly, the memories that were quietly flowing into her mind and onto the page every day ceased. The Inner Critic began to create such havoc that she couldn't write a word. Not about the funeral scene, not about anything. The possible inaccuracy of flowers caused her to even doubt her integrity as a person.

It sounds ridiculous, but it wasn't at all. You laugh, because no one would ever do this. Actually many writers have. The story above is not unique. In my memoir-writing classes, I hear this question of memory more often than any other. And I hear about the resulting stall-outs when the trust in oneself dies.

My belief is that you need to keep writing through these small details. Trust what comes to you as you write, even if it's the fleeting memory of roses at a funeral. As you begin to listen inside to such details, you'll begin to remember more of them. Memory is an awakening of inner perception, in my experience. It takes practice to build the trust but once you do, you don't care if your sister remembers lilies. For you, the truth was roses.

Abigail Thomas, author of the memoir Three Dog Life, wrote a handy little writing book called Thinking About Memoir. In it, she talks about memoir as a journey of discovery from where you were then to where you are now.

The journey is the thing that is the most important. Put down the details you remember, as best you can. Research what you can't remember. And begin to cultivate your own trust in your memory of the roadsigns along the way.

Judy might want to start with what she can't quite recall. Put in a sunny day, even if you don't really remember that. Then keep writing the scene. Test the faint memory of sunshine against the emerging event. See if glimpses come through to verify it. Maybe you suddenly remember light striping across a person's sleeping face from the sun coming through slanted blinds. You've now proven your initial memory of sunshine.

It's a technique you train into yourself: the ability to recall, to bring back images. These images are the basis for your emotional truth, which is the foundation of the discovery in your story. And it's the discovery, the revelation of you as a person who learned something about yourself and the world around you, that the reader will follow.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Go into quiet inside yourself and put attention on a scene from childhood. Begin to construct the setting details that you remember.

2. Write them down. Trust them as they come forward, even if you're not entirely sure of their accuracy.

3. Say to yourself, "If I could remember, what would I see?" Write down one or two visual details that come to mind.

4. Then ask yourself, "What am I not remembering hearing?" Write whatever comes.

5. Finally ask, "What is the smell I don't want to remember about that day?" Write.

Hybrids: When You're Writing a Book That Straddles Two Genres

2010-12-04T16:48:00.004-05:00

A reader from Virginia wrote me: "I’m either writing a very boring memoir which is filled with the ME in memoir, or I’m writing some sort of self-help book which has stories filling in to illustrate my points.

"I’m still writing 'islands' so I don’t have a clear structure yet. I just know there is a book in me so I write these islands each day which are sometimes short stories and other times observations of certain goals or principles I’m working on and how to overcome obstacles to get there." She wanted advice on what she was writing--and how to go forward.

It's a good question, one I get often in my classes. Many writers, myself included, are stretching the limits of genre. We may have more to say than just meets one type of audience. We want to touch more people, explore more forms, than just one.

I learned this when one of my books, How to Master Change in Your Life, ended up being what's called a "hybrid," straddling the genres of self-help and memoir. I didn't start out with the intention of writing one or the other, but as the story evolved, I realized I didn't just wanted to share my own experiences. I wanted to give information about change and I wanted to give people ways to handle the onslaught of change that is occurring in most of our lives.

When I began writing my scenes, or "islands," they mostly came out as memoir at first. But then I'd read a fascinating article or talk with someone who'd handled big changes like a job ending or a relationship beginning or the loss of a loved one. Since I am always trying to improve my own skills at living in flexibility and openness to change, I naturally wanted to share these ideas I was coming across.

How did I go from the mishmash of this accumulation of ideas and stories, to a completed, published book? It took two steps: deciding what was most important of the two genres, and choosing a structure that allowed them to co-exist happily.

What's Most Important for Your Book?
There are many kinds of hybrids out in bookstores now, crossing many different genres. For simplicity's sake, let's look at a hybrid memoir/self-help book.

When you're working with a such a manuscript, you'll first need to decide what is going to take up the most real estate in terms of pages. Are you going to spend 200 of the 350 pages in tips, techniques, information? That means the book will lean more toward the self-help genre than the memoir genre. Or are you having the entire manuscript pivot around a life-altering event, such as a death or illness? Then perhaps the memoir part is the most important.

Why is it essential to figure this out? Because your book's structure will need to follow one or the other.

You may not know what is more important until you have enough "islands" written; I usually start to get clues at about 40,000 words (the average completed book might be as few as 60,000-75,000 words, so this is a bit past the midway mark). I look at what pulls me, what I am writing about most of the time. Where is my heart? This is the path the book is naturally taking.

A dear friend who is also a hair stylist told me that hair has a natural part, where the hair divides. You can tease it and mousse it in any number of directions, but left to its own devices, it will most easily fall into its natural part. This is what you're trying to discover about your manuscript. Where is it most naturally moving?

Determining the Structure
When you decide to write a book, especially if you haven't published one before, you need to get smart about what's out there, what structures are being used in publishing, what readers are reading. Although there are many experimental forms and structures in modern literature, they are hard to carry off. First find out what your two genres do, normally. Here are some questions to ask as you do this research (often best conducted at a bookstore):

How many pages are books in these genres, on average?
How do they begin?
Is there a triggering event--a moment that starts the story--and how far into the first chapter does it appear?
Is there a resolution?
How are the illustrating anecdotes combined with information?
Are there sidebars or boxes? Exercises?
Anything else you notice that tells you about this genre?

As you look into these questions, make notes. Think about what you're writing, and how it might fit the format you're seeing in these genres.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Try one of the two research steps above: look at the real estate of your book so far--which genre predominates--or visit a bookstore to research recent published books in each genre you're straddling.

What did you learn?

Enough, Already! Is It Time to Start Revising Your Manuscript?

2010-11-27T18:27:00.002-05:00

The relationship of writer with book-in-progress can be likened to a marriage as opposed to a date. Poems, articles, columns, and short stories are all creative commitments, to be sure, but even if they linger unfinished for a while, they are short relationships compared to 350 pages of manuscript. With a book, you regularly re-evaluate your progress, your purpose, and your plans. You recommit again and again.

But is it ever done? When is enough, enough? These questions come up at two particular stages,
I've found. One marker is when the writer is ready for revision. The other is when revision is finished and the book is ready for final editing.

A writer from New York, who has been working on his nonfiction book for several years, sent a very good question about this: "At what point does one realize what they are trying to write is the final 'version'?" he emailed me. "My subject/point of view has changed several times. When do I stop? I know the book evolves but it seems like I'm always evolving. I struggle with having new ideas that change my point of view."

As You Evolve, So Does the Book
Unfortunately, there's no predicting exactly how long it will take to really "get" your book. And then, after you do "get" what you're really writing about, how long it'll take to manifest that on paper. Most first-time book writers (as well as veterans) can relate to the question When will it ever end? There are certain ways of telling where you are in the continuum.

How much time have you really put in on the book? Two hours a week? Less? After two years at two faithful hours a week, it would be possible to have a good rough draft. But unless you have a lot of writing experience already, you may only have that--a rough draft. Why? A writing colleague put it this way: "After three days of not writing, it takes a while to get back into my story." The book disappears from your consciousness after three days, so you may not be able to spend the next writing session actually moving forward. Rather, you may be spending half or more of it reacquainting yourself with the book. That's OK--as long as you're aware of it and don't expect miracles.

When I began writing books in the 1980s, I expected miracles. But I was lucky back then--I worked with editors at the publisher's office. They helped me evaluate where I was in the journey. I learned from them, wise souls that they were, about the re-acquainting time that's required after not writing. I learned that more time goes in to building the first draft than new writers prepare for. They told me not to be surprised if my books, all nonfiction back then, took two to three years before a solid draft was formed, one that could stand up to revision. I learned with each book I published that most need at least a year or two of attentive planning and writing, discovery and exploration of both voice and topic, before a writer has enough of a manuscript to begin revision.

Obviously, if two years goes by, you won't stay the same. Why expect your book to? If you're prepared for that too--and I wasn't, for my first books, but editors wised me up--you won't be frustrated with the changes that naturally occur. Because during this planning and writing stage, books are supposed to change. They evolve as we get to know them better, as our skills grow, as we get clearer about what is the book and what is not.

Each time I felt my book was ready, each time I got to that point when I thought to myself, Enough! Get the thing out the door, I had an editor to check in with. Most of the time, he or she pointed out the blind spots that I'd overlooked in my inexperience. Slowly I let go of my cherished idea: that a book took just months from inception to publication. When I cited writers who churned out two volumes a year, my editor said I could probably do that after I had four or five books under my belt. And that became true.

So how do you find out, without a publisher's editor, whether your planning and writing stage is indeed over and you're ready to move on to revision?

Revision Is Not Just Editing
First you need to understand just what revision actually is.

This is another lesson I learned the hard way, working with a publisher's editor: Revision is not simply substantive or copy editing: cleaning up sentences, fixing typos, and massaging the passages a little. My editors taught me that copy editing is like the final touch. It comes just before publishing, only after a manuscript is strong and complete in its content, structure, and language.

Before the editing, comes the revision. Although it's very important to create clean copy, if a writer tackles technical work before the book is solid, it's like embroidering curtains on a barely framed house. Not at all a useful exercise.

I learned that revision literally means "re-seeing," and this all-important stage is about taking what you've created and seeing it anew, from a new viewpoint. Whose viewpoint? The reader's. Revision is where writer invites reader into the room where the book lives. Then, once the book and the reader get acquainted, the writer leaves.

Robert Olen Butler, who wrote the well-loved writing book From Where You Dream, talks about how hard it is for most writers to actually leave the reader alone with their stories. Most writers feel the strong need to interpret and tour guide their work to the reader. You can just feel the presence of a hovering person, wanting to make sure you really understand what this or that passage means. In revision, this has to go. You as the writer must let your work live and breathe on its own.

It's very hard for most writers to tell when they are hovering, interpreting, and otherwise annoying their potential readers. For this, most of us need feedback. When I am questioning if my manuscript is ready for revision, I will find three kind readers and formulate three questions for each reader to answer. I don't need to know if the writing is good or bad--that's irrelevant at this point. I need to know where the reader stumbles, senses too much of a hovering presence of the writer, loses interest. These passages exist in all early drafts and readers, if asked, will help you find them.

Then you look at these passages and try to "re-see" them. What were you intending just there, in the manuscript? Why didn't your intention reach the reader? Did you get scared, omit something important, bluster your way through to try to hide it? This is very common. Finding these unconscious places is the first step to revision.

These places are where you lost heart. You need to go back and put it in, before you go any further.

Early Drafts Come from the Heart, Revision Comes from the Head
One of my favorite scenes of writing instruction comes from the movie, Finding Forrester. Forrester, the famous recluse writer, played by Sean Connery, puts a typewriter in front of the young writer Jamal. Forrester begins to type. The young writer doesn't. So Forrester asks, "What are you waiting for?"

"I'm thinking," says the young writer.

Forrester shakes his head. "No, no. No thinking. That comes later."

As they start to type in unison, Forrester slips in these simple instructions. They explain so clearly the difference between drafting and revision:

"You write your first draft with your heart," Forrester says. "You revise with your head."

So many of us get this backwards. We think so much about our early drafts that the pages don't actually contain any heart. We get down plenty of words, often good words, but unless the writing has meaning, unless it reveals the heart of the writer, we're not going to reach our readers.

Feedback prior to revision lets me know if there is more heart needed, more revealing that can be done. It's only after I have given everything I have to the manuscript, that it's ready for the head part, the thinking.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Rent the movie, Finding Forrester. Watch it again, from a writer's point of view. What can you learn from this fictional character about the process of writing?

2. If you have a completed draft and you wonder if you're ready for revision, take a deep breath and find three readers to help you. Avoid choosing immediate family and close friends, especially those who know your book pretty well. Look for people who can give you an overview. You're going to ask them to read the manuscript and mark in the margins any place where they (1) stumble or (2) want more. Tell them you aren't looking for fixes, you just want to see where you've lost heart, lost the reader's perspective. You're asking them just to respond as readers.

3. From this review, you'll learn a lot about your book and where it is in the continuum.

Three Writers on Writing and Creativity

2010-11-22T15:15:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate this week. In honor of the holiday, when maybe we all can get a tiny bit more leisure time (ROFL), I'm sharing three videos and articles on writing. So look, listen, and read . . .and enjoy!

I'll be back next week with a new discussion on revision--how to know when you're ready for it.

A video presentation by writer Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA&feature=related.

Vivian Gornick, author of The Situation and The Story, on the writing life: http://therumpus.net/2010/08/conversations-with-writers-braver-than-me-1-vivian-gornick/

Jill Bolte Taylor on the brain and creativity:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
PS Do you have favorite videos, podcasts, or online articles on writing that you'd like to share with me? Send them along.

Preparing for Hibernation--Building a Winter Writing Rhythm

2010-11-14T03:31:00.002-05:00

Where I live in northern New England, it's getting toward winter. The trees have lost most of their leaves, and it got so chilly last night, we almost didn't open the window in the bedroom. The change of weather is bringing to mind vast snowy landscapes, the uncluttered look of deep winter. My best writing time of the year.

As a painter and a writer, I've
learned to juggle the seasons according to what's most natural for each. I'm grateful to live in a land of four seasons, which forces me to change tasks at least twice a year.   I like to paint outdoors, so the garden's full bloom is when I get easy inspiration. Getting on winter? Nothing happening outside? It's time to write.

Step One: Clear the Decks
Like an animal preparing for hibernation, I have ways to get ready for the creative possibilities of winter. I clean up the garden, getting the summer bounty harvested, everything but the last kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage, which sweeten with frost. Or, on a beautiful October afternoon, I might start washing windows--I truly appreciate the clear views all winter when I sit at my writing desk. I may sort through errant paper piles in my office, filing away the summer's teaching notes. I start collecting books to stack by the bed for winter reading. If I'm really ambitious, I attack the clothes closets and toss stuff I haven't worn in a year.

Mindless activities, to get my creative brain in gear, to get me thinking about what I want to explore on paper. Metaphorically clearing the decks. Step one of building my winter writing rhythm.

Step Two: Wish Lists
Once the cleaning-up cycle is completed as best I have time for, I begin my wish lists. I dream on paper about the writing ahead. This winter I am in final revision for my next novel, so I'm sketching out deeper questions about the characters, the theme, the pacing--all revision activities.

Lists help me focus the interior of my winter writing life, remind me about the benefits of writing regularly, with purpose and rhythm. When I don't like linear lists, I draw big circles and make a cluster of my ideas.

Step Three: Building a Writing Rhythm
A few weeks ago, I learned about a glorious little book on writing rhythm. It's called One Continuous Mistake by the Buddhist writer Gail Sher. Sher simplifies her writing life down to regular practice; what you write is not as vital as the fact that you do write. Regularly. Sher offers great steps to building a writing rhythm. As I read her short chapters, I feel my anxiety decreasing. The distractions of a full and rich life won't ever go away, but I'll be able to write anyway.

I've learned the anticipation and anxiety about writing is much harder than the writing itself. Sher reminds us to just sit and pick up the pen. Just begin. Again and again, it's that simple. Despite the house, my teaching job, wonderful clients and students who need manuscript help, my beloved spouse and teenager, the dust on the stair corners, only two onions left in the bowl, snow tires, that unexpected dentist appointment, a call from a teacher about late homework. Despite it all, I write.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Take some time to design your writing this winter. What would you like to focus on?
2. See where you might be able to clear some distractions. Anything you can clean up, put away, throw out to give yourself more inner and outer space? Clear one unnecessary thing from your life this week.
3. Take out your calendar and make a date for yourself this week. You and your writing are going to take an hour away, just the two of you.
4. When the time comes, just begin. Take up the pen and start.

National Novel Writers' Month--A Crazy but Effective Approach to Making a Book

2010-11-05T11:33:00.002-04:00

Right now, as you read this, hundreds of thousands of writers from around the world are focused on one thing, a crazy but effective approach to making a book. It's a kind of competition without prizes called National Novel Writers' Month, or "nanowrimo."

Starting November 1 each year, these writers pledge to write 50,000 words in thirty days. The goal is
a "shitty first draft," to paraphrase irreverent writer Anne Lamott; quality is not the object of nano writers.

It sounded like a practical joke the first time I heard about it. But I spoke with several friends who'd done it and they loved the accountability of a daily word count, the unseen comraderie of all those writers around the world being manic together.

I'm slow to try new things, but after hearing enough of these success stories (Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants was supposed to have come from a nanowrimo month), I decided to take on the challenge. After all, I could quit if I didn't like it, right? No cost, nobody really knowing if I kept to my word count.

I wrote 51,000 words that November. It formed the basis for my second novel. I wrote a lot of really bad pages but there were also some wonderful sections that astonished me. I tried it the following year too. This time, I got a writing friend to do it with me and we checked in with each other every few days, comparing progress. It was fun, it made November special, it produced books.

Wanna Try It? It's Not Too Late
You can begin nanowrimo anytime in November. It costs nothing to participate although the nonprofit that runs the challenge welcomes donations. Just log on to the website, www.nanowrimo.org, and sign up. You can join groups if you want or fly solo.

Although nobody monitors you to find out if you're making your 1667 words-a-day goal, if your writing longs for accountability, this is a way to get some fast.

Some days I wrote more, some days I slacked off, but I always found the commitment to write a wonderful motivator. I set up my laptop first thing each morning before work and pounded out the words. Many mornings I had no idea where I would go in my story, but the regular writing was like turning on a faucet. I always found stuff to write about.

The founders send a pep-talk email each week, sharing tips on how to keep going. They offer ways to network with other nanowrimo writers; sometimes groups form to encourage each other along.

I've talked with some writers who customize nanowrimo to their needs. I tried this the second year; I didn't want to take on a new novel draft when I had two manuscripts awaiting revision, so I outlined my revision ideas in a 30-day calendar and rewrote 1667 words each day. This brilliant strategy got me so far ahead on my revision, I am close to finishing my novel now.

This Week's Writing Exercise
If a little kickstart of accountability interests you this month, visit www.nanowrimo.org and consider signing up for National Novel Writers' Month. Try it for a week, see if daily word counts inspire you to really get into your writing.

Maybe, like it did for me, it'll help your writing soar ahead.

And just for fun, check out these funny (and insightful) questions to see if your novel is going nowhere fast. http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

How High Are the Stakes? Building Better Conflict and Dilemma into Your Book

2010-10-30T16:44:00.001-04:00

Dilemma is the problem your book solves, whether it is how to plant a bonsai garden or who killed the victim in a murder mystery. Dilemma, also known as the dramatic arc, forms the path of your reader’s journey through your book. Without strong dilemma, there’s no story.

One of my students, Chris, was writing the story of her grandmother’s life, but she wasn’t happy
with the slow pace of her book. When we studied Chris’s storyboard, there were many lovely moments; however, few of them showed conflict. Her grandmother lived an interesting life, which she had written about in family letters, but something was missing—the dilemma that drives a story. It all seemed too perfect, Chris told me.

I suggested she make a collage of her grandmother’s life, from what she knew about her. Her grandmother died when Chris was nine, but she’d been Chris’s primary caretaker until then. Chris went through the letters again and old family photos. Then she put these documents aside and turned to her intuition.

She gathered a stack of magazines and spent an hour tearing out any images that spoke to her of her grandmother’s life. Then she arranged them on a large sheet of paper. This is when the central dilemma began to reveal itself.

For some reason Chris pasted a beautiful garden next to a car accident, then a fallen bird near a sunny kitchen. Why the opposing images? She tried to recall conversations about her grandmother’s past, before her marriage. Were there secrets she didn’t know about?

Chris decided to call up an elderly aunt and interview her. Chris learned that her grandmother had an illegitimate child when she was very young, and that child was given up for adoption. This explained the persistent sadness Chris always felt from her grandmother, and the disjointed collage images suddenly made sense. Chris now knew the central dilemma of her grandmother’s story and how she could write her book around it.

External and Internal Dilemma
Most dilemmas arise from external circumstances thrust upon a person. An external dilemma nearly always lead to an internal dilemma, and if you have both, it strengthens the book even more. Chris’s grandmother was forced to give up her baby—an external dilemma. Her life-long feelings of guilt were her internal dilemma. Together, they created a life of unresolved conflict always festering beneath all the gardening, cooking, and bird-watching.

Where does dilemma in books come from? External dilemma comes from circumstance forced upon someone or a choice that person makes that affects her life. External dilemma comes from outer change, not outer stasis. To write your book’s external dilemma demands that you, the writer, look at what might be missing. What’s happened to your narrator or characters, either beyond their control or because of a choice they made in the past? Chris’s grandmother’s external dilemma was giving up her child. It led to an internal dilemma—the secrets she carried caused her life to always feel off kilter, and this is what Chris discovered as she made her collage.

Internal dilemma can also be the instigating force in a book’s action. For instance, say a character desires something he can’t have without breaking the law or hurting someone else. This is an internal dilemma. He can try to live with this unmet desire but it messes up his life. In literature, the internal power of an unmet desire usually forces action, which creates external dilemma so the plot moves forward.

Each player on the stage of your book must have something they desire. The greater the desire or goal, the more momentum it creates and the more likely it will drive the person to do something risky. This leads to a dilemma, and on it goes in good stories.

Holding your characters or narrator in stasis does not a story make. But writing dilemma can sometimes be downright uncomfortable to write. It requires us to tolerate risk, deal with conflict—even if it’s only on the page.

It requires us to face our own fears.

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Make a list of potential conflicts that could be brought out in your book. What kinds of trouble could people get themselves into? If you’re writing fiction or memoir, list desires and difficulties for each of your main characters. For nonfiction, make a list of possible problems that readers might encounter and how your book solves or addresses them.

2. Pick one problem and write about it. See if you can create a scene where the person faces this problem.

3. Now spend a few minutes with your writing notebook. Ask yourself how the conflict writing felt—did you notice anything in your own body as you wrote? Tense shoulders? Headache? Put those sensations into your characters.