This month we have something a little different. This story was designed to be told aloud, not read on the page. As a result, it will seem to read in a stilted and simplified fashion, if you’re used to reading novels and short stories. However, when performed, the characterization and sweep of it come back in. It’s an interesting project.
I hope you like it!
…and the money. Would you expect to learn to be a plumber, an accountant, a doctor, without scads of training and education? No.
Out of all the legal professions, only parenting and writing are considered to be very difficult crafts requiring a great deal of work and expertise, yet nobody feels the need to make parents or writers undergo training or practice.
Just my luck I’m doing both.
So: anybody with no cash can make a baby and have a bash at parenting, and anybody with no cash can get a pen and paper and have a bash at writing. I won’t speak to the former at the moment. Where can you get writing training?
The good news is that it’s all around you. Read. That’s the basic high school course, and the career college course, and the continuing education as well. Read. Never stop.
Beyond that, there are writing classes you can take (watch out for scams!) and conventions and meetups and critique groups and how-to books and other writers and a thousand, thousand websites. Much of this is free or low cost, so we do have it over many other professions. On the other hand, the competition is, if not stiff, at least an overwhelming flood.
Luck, yes. Talent, yes. But practice, persistence, hard work, and never giving up will trump them all.
As you folks probably know, I go to Panera a really lot, almost every day. When you do that, you get to know the other people who go there frequently–or at least recognize them. In my neighborhood, there are a couple of older guys who bring their dogs and leash them to the railing outside, to wait while the men get their coffee and so forth. These are big fluffy dogs, blue-eyed friendly patient mush-dogs, huskies. They have the typical look of huskies: stand at about my ribcage, curly tails, icy blue eyes, wolflike structure.
One of these dogs is black and white, with a white face and front. The other looks like the washed out version of him, being gray and white, with pretty much the same markings. They have immense dignity and are politely willing to accept petting, without ever taking their attention off the building that has temporarily swallowed their real gods, the men who brought them. When these men come back out, they stand up, wag their tails, and prepare to insert nose.
Today, when I arrived, there were two dogs leashed outside the Panera, on the railing, in the same spot. However, these were weiner dogs. They had the typical look of weiner dogs: stand at about my ankle, elongated bodies, big sad eyes, pointed ears they might step on at any moment. One was dark brown, and the other looked like his faded shadow: light brown, slightly fuzzier, with pretty much the same markings.
I think I startled some people, laughing out loud at these dogs. Now, weiner dogs are inherently funny, it’s true. But not THAT funny. It just occurred to me to wonder what magic transmuted the two huskies into two weiner dogs.
I wonder if you brought your two majestic huskies to lie about in well-trained patience while you got your coffee, and then came out and they were two weiner dogs with disturbing similarities… would you think someone came and switched them? Or would you think some magic had made them shrink?
Becka, in Tales of the Shadows from Lyrical Press, got a great review today in Bitten By Books! I thought the reviewer did a good job of understanding what each of the three scary stories in this book was about, too. Thanks, Bitten By Books!
This month we have the final part of Fear and Desire. I fear, gentle reader, that I must disappoint you in the matter of explicit sex scenes. To respect WordPress rules, I’ve cut this one. However, fear not! If you like the story and want to read the full version, just email me or leave a comment with your email and a statement that you’re of legal age (18 ) and I’ll send you the full story.
I was thinking about my history as a writer, and as a person, this morning in the shower. I was remembering the time I first learned I was a writer. It was when I was sixteen or seventeen, I’m not sure which, and wrote a story for my friends (the full tale of that is somewhere in the archives of this blog). Their reaction taught me what I was.
But then, I thought, that wasn’t the last time I learned I was a writer. When I first finished a novel length piece. When my readership expanded past my parents and close circle of friends. When it was the one craft I kept returning to, over and over, more than an interest, something that could not fully fade away although I gave it every chance. When I finally got serious about getting something published and began sending stuff out regularly. When I got the acceptance letter from Lyrical. When I learned what it meant to have a writing career, this last August and decided to go ahead anyway. Over and over, a learning that spans thirty years.
Maybe the truest things in your life are the ones you have to learn over and over.
It took me a lot of learning to accept that I’m really diabetic, too. I resisted going on insulin for a long time, refused to change my diet much. I had to nearly die to learn those lessons. And who knows, maybe I have more to learn about that. I almost certainly do.
Life is still trying to teach me I’m not really meant to have true love. The evidence is clear, the teaching is going on and on. I’m still trying not to learn that one. About some things, I’m stubborn.
Which is which? I have gotten a few storylines written down, or perhaps they’re synopses. They certainly aren’t outlines. They’re not the terrain, but they aren’t the map. Nevertheless, they guide me as I write–otherwise my book gets threequarteritis.
What’s that, you say? Something no book doctor can fix. (See what I did there?) Threequarteritis seems to strike my work a lot. It’s that point, almost always about three quarters of the way to the end, where I get stuck. REALLY stuck.
Having a storyline already written down to turn to, at that point, allows me to force myself through the yucky part. The part where I know the work is awful and the writing is ghastly.
If I successfully force my way through it, I can get the story to turn into a book.
When you begin to exercise and lose weight, you have to make a commitment. I am GOING to do this, and no amount of distraction or naysaying or cinnamon crunch bagels can stop me. But the size of the committment does not equal the ongoing daily drain of doing the work. Your initial firm decision will not hold up. Only forcing yourself to do it daily will help. But then it gets easier, with time and practice and above all, with habit.
Writing is the same. Discipline is more about habit than willpower. That’s a good thing. If it were about willpower, you’d have to make that same forceful determined commitment every day. But like any muscle, discipline is easier and easier the more work it does. It’s a steep hill at first, but you can climb it, and it’s flatter at the top.
Not that it is always easy after that. It’s not downhill. But it’s flat, and you can keep going without having to shove so hard.
Set aside a time every day to write. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted, or to have anything else available to do during that time. You don’t have to actually write, and at first you might not. Also, it doesn’t matter WHAT you write: complaints about how you can’t write are fine. But think of it as your writing time, and you don’t get to do anything ELSE.
After a while, days or weeks, if you are a writer at all… you will write. Then, if you keep exercising that discipline muscle, you will keep writing.
Write. Finish things. THEN worry about making them good.
The site has a new look. I hope you like it! In addition, I’ve rearranged some things and put the previous free reads here on this site instead of hosting them at Deviant. My photos and prints are still at Deviant if you’re interested in them.
What do you think of the look?
Also, I would like to exchange links with other authors for mutual blogrolling. Let me know if you’d like to join in!
