Proper Etiquette When Filing Your Work

This perplexing and daring piece of photography is courtesy of Dutch photographer, Erwin Olaf.

This post is inspired by my miniature heart-attack, when I remembered incorrectly where I have stashed one of my earlier projects and couldn't find it. I understand why everyone prefers digital filing systems, at the very least you are confined to one box. When you have torn off pages stashed "somewhere", there's a goose chase, if I have ever seen one. 

Writers, learn this lesson and learn it well. 

DO: Make a note of the place, where you store any physical writing you make. It would be best to have one central stash for these miscellaneous pages. PRO TIP: If your memory is unreliable and it has gotten you in all sorts of trouble before, home-made library card, darling! 

DON'T: Promise yourself you will surely remember in a year's time the exact location you slipped five torn-off pages. Memory don't work that way, sweety. PRO TIP: Don't think of thinking "I will type it up later", you hear me. Your scumbag brain will trick you into losing the pages! 

  

E.B. White on Writing

Who: E.B. White

Written: "Stuart Little", "Charlotte's Web" and co-wrote "The Elements of Style" with Strunk

What did he say: I'm actually featuring a letter in its entirety he wrote a young girl with the aspirations to become a writer. I won't comment on it, because I completely agree.

"At seventeen, the future is apt to seem formidable, even depressing. You should see the pages of my journal circa 1916.

 You asked me about writing--how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed. I must have written half a million words (mostly in my journal) before I had anything published, save for a couple of short items in St. Nicholas. If you want to write about feelings, about the end of summer, about growing, write about it. A great deal of writing is not "plotted"--most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask, "Who cares?" Everybody cares. You say, "It's been written before." Everything has been written before. 

I went to college but not direct from high school; there was an interval of six or eight months. Sometimes it works out well to take a short vacation from the academic world--I have a grandson who took a year off and got a job in Aspen, Colorado. After a year of skiing and working, he is now settled into Colby College as a freshman. But I can't advise you, or won't advise you, on any such decision. If you have a counselor at school, I'd seek the counselor's advice. In college (Cornell), I got on the daily newspaper and ended up as editor of it. It enabled me to do a lot of writing and gave me a good journalistic experience. You are right that a person's real duty in life is to save his dream, but don't worry about it and don't let them scare you. Henry Thoreau, who wrote Walden, said, "I learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." The sentence, after more than a hundred years, is still alive. So, advance confidently. And when you write something, send it (neatly typed) to a magazine or a publishing house. Not all magazines read unsolicited contributions, but some do. The New Yorker is always looking for new talent. Write a short piece for them, send it to The Editor. That's what I did forty-some years ago.
Good luck. Sincerely, E. B. White"

What's your story about advice early on in your career?

Anton Chekhov on Writing

Who: Anton Chekhov

Written: "A Marriage Proposal" (play), "The Cherry Orchard" (play) and "The Lady with the Dog" (short story) among many others.

What did he say: He has said a lot about the process of writing. Chekhov had been very vocal and seemingly adored to theorize about writing. There are quotes on writing that exceed the length of a paragraph. I've taken it as my mission to show the shorter, but still impact-full snippets.

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." 

"My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying."  

"When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder — that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make."

What do I think: 'Show don't tell' is as old as the game itself, but the quote shows the advice in practice. The use of so few words also encourages that the number of words is of little consequence. Rather pay attention to how you use them. 

I can't say whether we really lie in those two parts, but it stroke me as pretty interesting, because in my own experience, writers tend to rework the beginning and the end multiple times and with enviable intensity. 

'Colder' will also provoke you to worldbuild better. I have noticed that secondary worlds fall flat, because only the minimal has been done to elicit an emotion. This is where 'show don't tell' works on a macro level as well. If you will have a segment of a society suffer in your secondary world, you better strive to compete with real life as far as cruelty is considered. 

Is crying enough to convey tragedy? What sells misery?  

Oscar Wilde on Writing

Who: Oscar Wilde

Written: "The Picture of Dorian Grey", "House of Pomegranates" and "The Importance of Being Earnest" among others

What did he say: He's the minimalist so far. His quotes are snappy, witty and easy to commit to memory, for when you want to come across intelligent.

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

What do I think: All three create a narrative about the dangers of mediocrity and the virtue of writing with an edge. Making impressions demands grabbing the attention and 'excess' here comes quite handy. These quotes actually tie with a quote of Twain about the regret of not doing things. Write dangerously is a concept I have yet to explore in its entirety, but I agree in testing ones limit. 

How far can you go? How far have you gone?     

Mark Twain on Writing

Who: Mark Twain

Written: "The Prince and the Pauper", "The Adventure of Tom Sawyer", "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "A Double Barreled Detective Story" among others

What did he say: He said a lot, but most of his quotes have been written in the context of his letters to various people. The only straightforward advice given on writing is this:

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” 

This second one that I enjoyed very much comes from his letter to W. D. Howells. 

"Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell." 

What do I think: 'Very' is not my crutch word per se. I think that 'very' has been clubbed to death so that no one uses it as much. I could be wrong. Do editors edit 'damn' out these days? I think we have well passed the point of desensitizing here. I'd say that the principal 'avoid crutch word X' is full on force, though I think that it's way better to be proactive with weeding these out rather than troll your editor. Of course, Twain seems like a joker. 

I love the second quote because it paints such an apocalyptic picture. Beauty. That is how I feel, when I finish a project and I believe that this is the prime reason, why so many people get caught in the revisions game or why series have proven to be so enjoyable. 

What do you think about Twain's quotes?

  

Ernest Hemingway on Writing

Expect a lot more radio silence, until the end of June. Though I will try to add at least some posts. I have been thinking a lot about writing, since my creative energies have been redirected to other projects in my line of work and social life rather than fiction writing. A lot of writers have also been thinking about the craft of writing.

Who: Ernest Hemingway

Written: "A Moveable Feast", "For Whom the Bells Toll" and the classic "The Old Man and the Sea" 

What did he say: Hemingway has said a lot about writing and what I've come to recognize as a powerful way to communicate urgency is the use of short sentences to the point I sneak in some sentence fragments. Here are two official quotes from his book on writing.

“Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.” 

“I think you should learn about writing from everybody who has ever written that has anything to teach you.”

What do I think: I agree with both quotes. Writing is an art form based on continuous improvement as all art should be in the first place. Given the writers' predisposition to ferocious self-criticism, it's no surprise that the act of writing remains challenging. I think the second quote has more relevance now more than ever, because as readers and writers we are in the position to choose among a multitude of writers to learn about the craft. What I'm not entirely sure how to interpret the quote. I strive to learn from those, who through their words have provoked a change within my micro-cosmos. 

Do you share Ernest's opinion?    

 

[December 15th] Shoot Your Writer's Ego, Wallow in Self-Pity

I feel as if I'm wearing my insides out in such situations.

 I’ve had some time to think this through. For the reason that I can adorn any situation with far too much drama than it’s needed, I choose to stay away from personal topics on this blog, but I’m beginning to grow confident that I can present some ‘real life’ experience in my posts. It’s a good time as any to dispel some of the mysteries that surround my person [believe it or not I’m a prime suspect of being a sentient cat with the ability to type in QWERTY].

Since this story is more of a moral, which has a lot to do with writing, I think it’s best shared here out in the open. As you can see by all the ‘I think’, ‘I this’ and ‘I that’ sentences I’m all self-conscious about what happened at my day job, so here’s hoping that you don’t think ill of me [and you can definitely recognize how too many episodes of Downton Abbey have left a mark on my turn of phrase].

My office job for the past three months [I switched departments before attending Fantasy Con this year] has me writing eight hours per day. It’s simple writing with a simple purpose and a low level of importance. This means that as long as I manage a lot of it everyone is happy, but here comes the ‘but’ thing. Being a writer among non-writers can be deceptive of how good you really are and because my writing [influenced by my fiction-writing style] used English a bit more imaginatively my mistakes either have not been mentioned to me or could not have been pointed out to me by non-native speakers, which my day-to-day superiors are. What we have is a recipe for a big ego [being constantly asked to translate words and how to best write a certain phrase] with no safety net [so far there is no challenger on the front].

Since I pride myself in being this good in English [though I’m sure this blog post is filled with God knows how many imperfections, which I’m not picking up no matter how hard I try], it’s fairly easy for me to get my head stuck in the clouds. I love receiving the praise, not for the sake of attention whoring, but because I associate my childhood with weekends spent inside the house scribbling words ad infinitum. I think I had to write Thursday more than a hundred times to get it right and remember it. I still hate this day, when I mention it in English, mainly because of my ordeal learning it. My friends used to play outside. I had a dictionary and one hell of a mother, who fits the profile of the constantly ridiculed cliché of an Asian parent. I’m not regretful. I didn’t think much of being in the same private classes with students two-three years older than me. I just love English and when I’m praised, I feel validated to the point I may develop a bit of an ego.

Thankfully, that ego got shot down Tuesday, when the editor in charge of the sales copy team I’m working under [new set of duties for me] had me brought over to discuss changes to the first website copy I had written. Oh boy was it a humiliating. I can’t understand how a person [my editor is from Texas, so I’ll call him Editor Tex] can say that he likes what my material and at the same time chop down every sentence I have written and rephrase until you can’t tell it has been written by me.

Editor Tex is an awesome person, by the way. I can see that he is indeed trying to help me and where he was able to explain why the changes in some expressions was needed [words with negative connotations of any variety should be replaced with words that on a subconscious level are all about sunshine and smiles] I immediately wrote those down. However, there were changes, which I didn’t understand. Editor Tex couldn’t provide an exact answer as to why he made them and went on to explain how there are subtleties to language use [the purpose of the editing session was to teach me those], but without really presenting an argument for the changes in sentence structure.

My initial reaction to all of this was: Holy flying cow from Jupiter, can I string one sentence together correctly? It was as if I had never studied the language, as if the sacrificed hours had amounted to nothing. I fully realized that this is needless dramatic gut response, but at the time I couldn't help it. Thankfully, I kept repeating myself that this is not about me, but about the writing. At the same time, how I can separate myself from the writing, when my English is my work. It's my grand work, which has lead to this individual ones. All so complex on an emotional level. 

I don’t know what to make of this situation. To the people I have confided the situation, I’m to ignore some of the more perplexing changes Editor Tex makes as to a matter of taste and to take away what I do find useful. Another individual told me that to her Editor Tex abused his power as an editor, providing destructive-rather-than-constructive critique. It’s tricky territory to be in as I greatly respect editors and I’ve grown comfortable receiving bathed in red works I have given to readers with far superior understanding of the English language. It’s just proof that a language is so rich that it always gives you more to learn and I’m happy to learn. But I can’t deny that sitting there for closely 45 minutes [all spent on a page and a half] humiliated me in ways I can’t even begin to comprehend. I don’t hold anything against Editor Tex and I certainly can’t imagine having anything else than a verbal discussion. Yet, having to sit there and hear the editor wonder how he can make sense of my sentences, because my phrasing was so off and in real time… Far from pleasant. If there ever was a version of the SAW franchise to do with writing, then my experience would qualify.

In short, I’m grateful that I work in an office, whose superiors are invested in helping their employees work to developing their skill sets. I’m big enough a boy to understand that there is no chance I will nail this sort of writing from the first time around. I’m also grown up enough to admit to myself that I’m far from being the best, never will be and that the best I can hope for is constant improvement [but given that I shut up, shoot down my ego and get cracking]. I will have to grow thicker skin, because fine tuning how a non-speaker uses English so that it convincingly mimics a native speaker [while living in a non-English-speaking environment] is going to be tough, humiliating and humbling. No other way around it.

I’ll leave the floor for you guys. Do you think I’m a whiner? What are your nightmare stories connecting with editing sessions?

In Which I dissect my Brain

~

Novel writing is mysticism. A process, where everybody speculates and offers wisdom, but it is up to the individual to discover what works best. February evaporated from the calendar at a frightening speed. From that month and this week I’m left with circa 17 000 words [16, 658 to be exact, but who is counting] and although I’m not happy with the pace, I am comfortable with the quality of the works. These are 17 000 words I am quite confident of letting anyone read them. I admit that this is a pre-final draft, but my work process distilled to a very peculiar ritual.

I start with an outline. Write what the scene will hold. Then jot down ideas for how to write the ‘in-between-the-lines’ material aka meaning to what I am doing. After that I sit in front of the journal [yes, I hand write] and write the first draft. When I am done with the chapter, I sit down and type it up, which ties everything I have written over the days into one whole [yes, I possess an extremely short term memory]. After that I edit, which consists of adding weight to the rough draft and tinker the narrative to pass the character. This is what I learned that I have to do in order to not get distracted by a different novel project.

Because, this more or less deviates from how novelists do this these days and I have a weird psychoanalytical streak in me, I’ll try to generalize my behavior and list its elements. For fun and possibly educational purposes, but I don’t plan it to be too long to bother with. Short, to the point and sweet.

~ In which I grow impatient. Fact is, I am one of the very few underwriters in existence. The normal people overwrite and then edit out, while I always need to edit in. I explain this with my natural urge to complete and dash madly to the finale without hitting several checkpoints. I am a dirty cheater, but I also think quite fast and my hand usually cannot compete.

~ In which I get distracted. Fact is, the fastest way to write these days is to type, but modern technology is evil. It distracts me. When I grab my PC’s keyboard, my mind thinks what else could be done with the keyboard and the mouse as a dastardly duo. A quick reference Google session ends with mail checking and Twitter. While at the same time I cannot establish any connection with the Word File. I am paper bound, when writing, I am afraid.

~ In which I experience fear. Novels are long. Their length is scary. Outlining a whole book, world-building, check-finding, writing a first draft and then revising a whole book is massive and just screams long work. With a short term memory such as mine, this is an even greater task to accomplish, so I deconstructed the truck load work to a chapter by chapter module. I do because I am a dynamic thinker and the smallest detail can offset my general outline.

The moral of this story, apart from me justifying not confining to general rules and doctrines, is that a writer should be able to find his center [speaking Zen of course] and complete his or her novel in his/hers own fashion.

That and DO not pursue word count, less good will come out of it, if you are not comfortable with the quality and with a first novel, the journey matters.

What is a Writer: Part 2

~

It’s Wednesday and as promised I have returned with the further instalment of the signs to be looking for if you doubt you are a writer or suspect someone close to you being one as well. I have four shorter points to discuss, which are certainly more obvious than not, but then again we are all prone to ignore or forget the obvious, even when it is staring at our faces and bitch slapping greasy cheeks with the force of a volleyball player’s service.

4. Hazed Look

Writers don’t usually enjoy the Real World experience with unpleasant things that have to be done in order to not starve and have Internet access and the logic that drives reality’s as Greek to us as creativity is to the movie industry. Concepts like personal finances confuse the major number in our ranks. Just read what Scalzi had to say about it. Frankly, it’s way more fun in Writer-land, where responsibilities don’t follow and you can be your own deity in a realm that exists to satisfy your whims. Telltale sign that a writer is in that happy place is the hazed look that resembles a zombie’s slack expression, but not quite there yet. Usually there is intensity in the eyes directed to a faraway point not unlike dramatic flashbacks in Latin American soap operas. You spot that strange look; you are dealing with a writer. If you realize time’s skipped and you have been daydreaming, then you are potentially a writer at heart. If this zoning out persists and you do enjoy involving yourself into the fates of nonexistent people, then chances grow for you to be a writer at heart.

5. Vocalized Creative Prowess

The VCP is the most elusive and sliest signs to spot a writer. All VCP practitioners reveal a negative and often malicious reaction to the latest movie/book/song that is milking the better part of consumers [New Moon, Twilight saga, all under drinking age pop singers are my sole targets for outrage] and publicly declare that they can write better scripts, novels and lyrics with their hands tied, one eye pierced and half the brain lost to a lobotomy gone wrong. Now I can imagine that with the low quality high gloss garbage the entertainment industry has and is spawning a lot of people will get these ideas, but among the majority are the writers at heart, who feel outraged that their field is molested by stupidity. Quite frankly VCP drives writers to sit down and prove that there is quality still to be found, even if it nears extinction.

6. “Love to Hate” Syndrome

Real writers [aka the devoted ones, writers at heart] cannot experience a novel in the manner a regular non-writing person would. More often than not they snicker at poorly written works, learn from the classics and modern titles, but I think it’s in our genome to never love a novel without some allergic reaction that tips our fragile mental welfare. Most common is crippling frustration that you could never ever in a million years write anything as brilliant. Then there is the rage, which manifests in those cases, where the said writer sees his idea written not only better written, but also filling a niche in the market, which would have made said writer rich to a degree and unique. Last but not least the professional envy, which turns a writer’s face greener than grass and the selfish wish to one day be at that caliber. Naturally I am not saying that all writers feel all these things all the time. We muster true happiness that someone else we know is doing great or that a concept is being well received or that an idea we are toying with has an analogue in the market, but these negative reactions to outstanding books have their way of creeping in the dark and striking, when we least suspect it. Sadly, this is one of the kryptonite sides of being a writer.

7. Scribble Typist Addiction

It would have been pointless to add this tid bit in the beginning as it would make all the other fun facts about writer’s behavior irrelevant, but if you suffer from the STA, which means the inability to not write, then you are a writer. You may not have all the awards, movies deals, fans and royalties from foreign translations, but if sanity is threatened by the overpopulation building inside your cranium and you need to materialize the stories on paper, then you can sleep soundly, because you are a writer. To further illustrate my point I will direct you to the army, where you see all these ranks and medals, but at the end of the day, when the general takes off his stripes he is the same as the regular soldier, a man or woman brave enough to risk their life for the country. Writers don’t sacrifice their lives literally, but when vocation calls you respond.

What is a Writer: Part 1

~

Inspiration for this post comes from Karen Mahoney, who bravely declared what a writer is and who should dare to call themselves writers and that there are no such things as writers with the capital W and that publication doesn’t matter so much. I chime in to further break down this misconception. When you strip the awards, the contracts and the popularity from all the iconic names in literatures you get the same core that every other writer has and that is the devotion to the craft. This unity in concept prevails in my language for the native word in my language for writer and author is one and the same, although we did steal ‘author’ and added a Slavic spin on it.

So there we have it - “publication a writer does not make” would say Yoda. But what are the behavioral criteria to categorize a person as a writer. I have a list compiled with the symptoms and signs that will tell you whether you are a writer or know a writer personally. I am starting with the first three things and will continue on Wednesday.

1. Accessories.

This is the most obvious and slightly misleading criteria. The proverbial writer does not leave his/her house without the essential notebook/journal, which guarded with the writer’s life and is more valued than the wallet filled with IDs, important documents and money. Said journal is handled with utmost care and if lost can cause a writer heart failure. On second spot there is the novel, which is kept in case circumstances do not allow writing in the journal. This applies to book-a-holics in general, but valid for authors as well. To a writer pens are as important as lighters to a heavy smoker and yet the writer fails to keep track of where all his/hers pens go and usually goes around in search for a pen. Writers also have affinity towards scattered pieces of paper and other writing materials such as colored markets, tape, sticky notes and staplers. Then again scrapbookers are also fond of these, so context matters.

2. Skewed perception of time.

Time is not exactly the same in Writer-world. Real world operates with seconds, minutes and hours and in Writer-land it’s all words, pages, chapters and drafts. If you really think about it, I think you have been in a situation, when you replied to another person that you will go to sleep after 500 more words or that you will go grocery shopping after this one chapter or that you will go out after 35 more pages in this book. Word counts and writing goals in general is how writers operate and that’s how a writer sees the week as some deadline that stretches on and on and on. Otherwise writers are not that good with calendar dates and real-world time is so fleeting and confusing, when a writer is in the zone.

3. Uncomfortable curiosity.

Writers exhibit great interest in life, when a certain aspect of life corresponds directly to their newest work in progress, even when the aspect of life is gruesome and questions regarding the socially taboo topic raise eyebrows. To a writer no experience is wasted, especially, when the writer is writing about it. Having high fever and induced heavy palpitation, which brings an ambulance to your heart. Super exciting, because the writer gets to know how it would feel to have an ambulance come, neighbors pry and paramedics act. A field trip. Been there and done that. Broken heart, winning a free prize, falling in love, finding two bucks on the side walk, participating in a fight, being in an accident, watching somebody be a jack ass, being the laughing stock of the school, being an athlete, training a sport, being sick or handicapped. All these things build the material a writer needs to breathe life in his story and much like an actor would do, a writer would immerse himself in his subject matter, experience the things he writes about or ask both polite and uncomfortable questions.

PS: If anywhere I am incorrect please do tell, but I am speaking of personal experience with myself, observation and interaction with other writers, so I think I am objective and accurate.