Category: Writing

Quick, Quick, Slow, Speed and the Writer.

I was asked a question on facebook about getting writers to write faster. Since my response grew into two posts plus a bunch of commentary, I’m going to pull it out, clean it up, and put it over here as well.

Part the first: Was just asked how to get a writer to write faster (not me, mostly no one worries about my speed.) My response is that it’s a bit like dealing with a weeping angel. They only move when you’re not staring at them. In my experience many, if not most, writers who are working slowly do so at least in part because they are feeling self-conscious/perfectionist about the work. Poking them about it is like looking over their shoulder, which only results in deeper levels of self-consciousness/perfectionism and even slower writing. Do not nudge the slow writer. It is not helpful.

I will also note that pushing a writer does not result in good art. Neil Gaiman, who sometimes writes slower than people might like him to had something much harsher to say on the topic a few years ago which is also germaine.

Part the Second: Further to the subject of fast and slow writing. I am a fast writer, probably somewhere around the tenth percentile—people like Kris Rusch or Kevin Anderson or Jay Lake write much faster but the vast majority work more slowly. This is useful for me in that it makes it much easier for me to fulfill my commitments and take on more work. But there’s no special virtue in it, or vice in writing slowly. It’s simply the way I’m wired. Different writers have different gifts and skills. Some of us find it easy to create interesting characters. Some build worlds without breaking a sweat. Some can weave intricate plots the same way that they breathe. Some write five times as fast as others without stretching. We all strive to get better in the places we are weak, but there’s only so much you can move the needle on some of these things.

Part the Third (in response to comment from Eleanor Sayre about my language when speaking of writing speed and the implication that it’s more an inherent trait than a skill):  To some extent that’s exactly how I think of it. I’m going to steal some terminology here from writer friends* and talk about what we sometimes refer to as the “box it came in” or “the hand you were dealt” theory of writing skills/talents. Say there are 50 things that make a professional writer. Every one of us starts out with different levels of ability in those fifty things. That’s your opening skill/talent set. Some of them can be moved a lot relatively easily, like the ability to construct a competent sentence. Some of them are very hard to move, like speed of writing.

I tend to think of any given ability as sitting on a sliding scale between talent/gift (which is hard to move) and pure skill, which is easier.

Speed seems to be very hard to move. Some people can do it, but not many and generally not without a lot of effort. I have always written fast if I can simply make the time to sit down and do it, and I can force myself significantly faster if I need to. That’s a fairly rare ability but it’s not a function of effort or practice on my part, it’s just one of the cards I drew.

*Not sure who coined each of those but I associate them with Elizabeth Bear and Jay lake.

 

Drafts and Revisions, Fixed or Mutable?

A conversation that went on in the comments to this post seemed interesting enough at the time to move out to a front page post. It’s about drafts and revisions among other things.

I know a number of writers who work like Erik, who said of first drafts, unless I make a major discovery along the way or I screw something up massively I try to leave my work alone as much as possible. That number includes (I think) Wyrdsmiths’ own Doug Hulick. I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong. This produces a pretty distinct first draft.

Another school is one in which the writer is constantly making changes that ripple up and down the line. Lyda and I both do this. So I don’t really have a first draft, because I’m constantly making changes that then necessitate further changes throughout everything written so far, and because I do those changes at the time they occur to me. One part of the rough draft might have gone through ten revisions while another came straight off the keyboard and has never been touched.

I was talking about that with Sean on Thursday night and about how it affected and informed character. He was saying that one of the reasons that some writers might not want to force a character into doing something necessary for the plot but unnatural to their internal makeup is that they feel it might make the character flatter and more limited. That idea struck me as very odd, and I realized something about my process. I trust the plot (the story) more than I trust the character.

So, if I get to a critical point and I’ve built a character who, for lack of a better term, doesn’t want to do something it means (to me) that I made a mistake in crafting the character, so I go back and change the character’s past to make their actions in the present make sense. I don’t try to force the character to do something unnatural, I revise the character to make it natural. And one of the reasons it’s easy for me to do this mentally is that my first draft is very mutable.

So, anyway, here are the stages I go through:

1. Drafting stage, in which nothing is terribly fixed, though I do outline and follow that outline fairly closely. This is a very mutable draft and informed by critique from my writers group(s).

2. Clean up and beta draft. The end result of this is supposed to be a pretty clear and polished version for first readers.

3. Submission draft, i.e. going out to my agent and editor after I’ve made the changes I find useful from first readers.

4. Final draft, the submission draft with whatever changes my agent, editor and I agree on.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 30th 2006. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

The original post also included these questions, but, as I’ve elected not to enable comments at kellymccullough.com, I’m separating them out below and people’s answers can be found at the Wyrdsmiths version:

So, what’s your drafting and revision process. Do you first draft? And, more importantly, why do you do it the way you do?

Character Traits

This post was originally written in response to one of Lyda’s writing students asking: “How do you keep track of your character’s various personality tics and traits?” Her answer is here. What follows is my take:

Short answer, I don’t keep track of any of those things unless they’re directly germane to the plot.

Longer answer, I deal with characters in much the way a director deals with actors. There’s a script. They follow along. If someone wants to know what their motivation is, I make something up and then go back and layer it into the early parts of the story. Say that on page 138 it becomes important that Johnny is fanatically attached to the color blue and that impacts the plot in a way I hadn’t thought about in the original outline. I write the scene on 138, note the new twist down in my constantly updated plot outline, then go back and look for places earlier in the story that I can introduce the idea of color attachment, both personally for Johnny and thematically for the story.

Now, say that the character of Johnny wasn’t actually fond of the color blue. I’ve rewritten his history at this point, so now he is. Simple as that. I hired these people to play certain parts. If that doesn’t happen, they’re out looking for a new job while a new actor comes in, identical in every respect but the fact that this one will do the job.

Does that mean that nothing off script happens? Of course not. If an actor improvises something that’s cool and that moves the main story forward (the story I wanted to tell from that get-go, since that’s how I write) I use it. Whole chapters have been born this way, and huge important new sections.

Of course, all my characters are really sort of like little split-off bits of myself since I don’t actually believe in their independent realities. It’s all a matter of “if I were this person in this situation…”

So, if it’s critical to the story it goes in the plot outline. If it’s merely a telling detail, I just store it in memory as it comes up, I can always do a word search if I lose it. If it’s not that important, I don’t generally know or care. It’s all about what move the story forward.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 27th 2006. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

The original post also included these questions, but, as I’ve elected not to enable comments at kellymccullough.com, I’m separating them out below and people’s answers can be found at the Wyrdsmiths version:

I’d love to hear what other writers have to say on the subject since Tate and I, so far apart in conception, are so close in practical execution.

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Write the Next Story

Whenever anyone asks me what’s the single most important thing they can do to sell their book, I always tell them to write the next book.

This is one of the fundamental rules to follow in the quest for publication. Every time you add a story or novel to your inventory you increase your odds of selling and you get vital practice that will make you a better writer. The vast majority of writers don’t make the break on their first story or novel. The first novel I sold was my 4th, but I didn’t sell it until I’d already completed 7 and having my editor read and really like #6 had a lot to do with selling #4. I’m at 9 now with only 1 in print and 1 forthcoming, though it’s likely I’ll sell at least 6 of the remaining 7. My short story career is similar, though I’ve been publishing longer in shorts and have now sold something in the neighborhood of 30 of 50.

It’s easier to sell if you have more stuff out, because you have more stuff, because it familiarizes editors with your name, because it demonstrates that you’re not a one story writer, and because with every story you get better.

So, practice. Write the next story. And remember one of the best things about being a writer as opposed to many other kinds of artist is that you occasionally get to sell even your practice work.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 26th 2006. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

Writers Need Practice Too

Speaking of passion and persistence, as the last few posts have, leads pretty naturally into something I want to talk about that doesn’t get stressed often enough.

My former sister-in-law is a symphony orchestra cellist. My step-brother is a world-class, make-a-living-at-it target shooter. Both of these professions have several things in common with what I do as a writer. First, the success rate is very low. Second, they require extreme passion. You can’t get there without really wanting it. Third, talent. There’s seems to be a minimum level of talent without which there wouldn’t be much point in starting down the road. Fourth, lots of hard work. And that’s what I want to talk about here.

Hard work. Kari and Matt both dedicate thousands of hours a year to practice. So do I. For some reason this idea often surprises people. There is a not uncommon belief, fostered perhaps by the fact that most people learn to write as a matter of course, that writing is something one can just do. People who would never expect a professional cellist to be able to play without rehersal, or a target shooter to be able to hit the mark without practice, seem shocked by the idea that you have to write a lot to master the craft. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked about short cuts or the aghast looks I’ve gotten when I say that there aren’t any.

Which brings me to my next point and the subject of tomorrow’s post:

Practice—Write the next story.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 24th 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

Nota Bene: minor changes have been introduced in the opening paragraphs of this post to make it make more sense out the context of the Wyrdsmiths blog where we were having a more general discussing of passion and persistence. The relevant thread takes place here.

Talent vs. Craft vs. Persistence

Note, this was originally a response to my colleague Lyda Morehouse in response to her contention there’s there’s no such thin as talent.

Interesting question, Lyda. I don’t think I agree with you on the basic point, but I’m pretty close to you on the end conclusion.

I’d say that talent definitely exists, but that it’s a minimum condition. There seem to be, at least in my experience, some people who simply don’t have the right wiring for writing fiction. But they’re a minority. There are also a tiny minority of people who seem to be able to write wonderful stuff from the first word they put on the page.

But for the vast majority of folks it’s about craft and persistence, and I’d argue that persistence is the more important virtue for a writer.

I have a formula for writing success that I give my students and anyone who wants to know: Publishing is about 15 percent talent, 15 percent luck, 20 percent craft, and 50 percent banging your head against the wall until you knock it over. Your forehead heals, the wall doesn’t.

In other words, talent helps, but no more than luck, and a lot less than craft and persistence.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 22nd 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

Send It Out

Again, this seems simple, but a lot of folks don’t do this consistently. You can’t sell a story that’s sitting on your desk. Won’t happen. Every time you send something out, you increase its odds of selling by an infinite amount, from zero, to some unknown number greater than zero. Instant infinite improvement. What more could you ask for?

So, do you have anything sitting on your desk that could be in the mail? Come on, you know you do. Put it in the mail. Let it be someone else’s problem for a while. Worst that happens is you get a reject, which means you’re in the game, which means you rock.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 21st 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

Every Rejection Letter is an Achievement

This is one of those concepts that seems counterintuitive but is in fact one of the most empowering ideas a writer can have, and I know whereof I speak on the rejections front.

I’ve had something like 410 rejection letters over the course of my career to date. I sold my first short after 96 rejections for various shorts and novels and my first book after about 360.

Rejection happens. It hurts. It’s also a point of pride, not something to be bummed about. Here’s why:

Finishing and submitting a story means you’re in the game and you should be proud of that. Rejections are a measure of finishing and submitting a story—you can’t get one without the others. So, getting a rejection means you’re in the game. Be proud of that. How many people do you know who say they want to write but don’t? How many who start things and never finish them? How many who finish, but won’t send something out?

So when you’re feeling down because you’ve gotten a rejection, remember you’re in the game, pat yourself on the back, and write another story.

And so on. That’s how you win.

Of course, licking your wounds has its points, especially on the rejects that really hurt. But it’s better if you do it as a celebration. So, do what I do when I get one that hurts and treat yourself to a night out and a really silly movie, something guaranteed to make you laugh. The dinner out is the celebration of the lumps and bumps on the road to becoming a professional writer. The movie thing seems to take the worst of the sting away, at least for me. It’s hard to laugh and feel punched in the gut at the same time. Not impossible, but hard.

Rejection = you’re in the game = you rock!

Update Jan 2013: Total Rejections to date hovers around 500, though it’s harder to keep track now that most of my novel rejects come via phone to my agent.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 20th 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)

Meditations on the Shiny

Shiny is one of the great drivers of story. It’s the thing that makes you go “Ooh, I want to tell that story!” Shiny is also the thing that makes you say “Ooh, I want to tell that other story!” when you have not yet finished the last one. Shiny is the yin and yang of writing.

Shiny is to writers as balrog is to elves.

I must not shiny. Shiny is the story-killer. Shiny is the little-death that brings total distraction. I will face my shiny. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when the shiny has gone past I will turn the inner eye away from its path and finish the damn story. Where the shiny has gone there will be nothing. Only the current story will remain.

Shiny makes the world go…ooh, is that my tail? *bats at tail*

Don’t go to the shiny!
But it’s sooo beautiful!

Shiny is the butterfly effect of literature.

Shiny is the butterfly of conflict floating above a milling maelstrom of cats.

I can see clearly now the shine is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way.

Is this a shiny I see before me, its sparlky toward my hand?

Alas poor shiny, I knew…is that my tail? *bats at tail*

Hark what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and shiny is the sun…

What’s shiny, my precious? Is it juicy? Gooey? Yucky? Is it….scrumptious?

Never Reject Your Own Story

I was having an online conversation today that made me reiterate one of the fundamental rules of selling your fiction—Never reject your own story. That’s the editor’s job. Too many times a writer will look at a story and decide one of three things:

A, this is a disaster and I can’t send it out.

B, this story isn’t the right sort of story for ________ (fill in the high end market of your choice).

C, this story is perfect for __________ (fill in the low end market of your choice).

In all three cases, the story never makes it to whatever is the writer’s dream market, thus guaranteeing that it will never be published there. But, for the cost of postage and a little time the writer could give the editor the chance to do the job of rejecting the story if it doesn’t work for them, or maybe, just maybe, buying that story.

Look at it this way:

When a writer pre-jects a story for an editor:
—The worst case scenario is that they don’t sell to dream market x.
—The best case scenario is also that they don’t sell to dream market x.

When a writer lets the editor make the decision:
—The worst case scenario is that they don’t sell to dream market x.
—The best case scenario is that they do sell to dream market x.

Never reject your own story.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Sept 18th 2006—original comments may be found there. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)