Category Archives: Writing

So You Want To Write Full-Time?

People often talk bad about teaching, saying that it zaps a person’s creativity. And I will admit that there are challenges. But taking that job at ETSU let me take a breath. I returned to the manuscripts and made the changes that I wanted to make for my own artistic reasons. My choices were motivated by my goals for the story, not the fact that I needed to eat. That I would lose my little condo. Or that I might have to nove in with my parents. (Horror of horrors!).

So this is why I urge writers to think long and hard before making their writing their primary source of income.

To memoir or not to memoir, that is the question

Don’t you just love it when someone else articulates something you’ve been thinking about / trying to say? Tayari Jones again, on whether writing a memoir is the right thing to do:


And it made more wonder if having the RIGHT to hurt someone makes it okay to do so.
…
In this piece I talk quite a bit anout my dad. Was it really okay for me to talk about him? Of course I have the right and desire to tell my own story, but I can’t really tell it without him.

She concludes:

I don’t know. I think I prefer the safe realm of fiction.

!!! I’ve thought a great deal about writing a memoir. This is always where I end up. Fiction does feel safe to me. I can write about more significant, weightier subjects in fiction than I can in memoir. The distance of fiction allows me to get nearer to the truth, if that makes any sense.

Writing a memoir would mean writing about my family, my childhood. That’s the key to the whole thing. Without that, there’s no point. But when I write personal non-fiction, even if I’m just testing it out, in a Word doc, I find myself hedging when it comes to my family. Who they are is crucial to who I am, hence I must write about them, if I am to write my story.

But the good daughter in me balks at hurting anyone. No one in my story is evil. There is no big bad.

It would be much easier if there was.

Revisions

Writer Cody talks about changes to his novel ‘Ricochet River’

[T]his new version of the coming-of-age novel is missing certain sexual references and profanity that Cody thinks caused some high schools to ban it from their classrooms.

…

In one, the book’s main characters — all teens — spend the night in a hotel room in The Dalles. It’s a comic scene that has been one of Cody’s favorites for out-loud readings. But it involves alcohol and sex, and Cody understood parents’ and teachers’ discomfort with the messages the scene might send to high schoolers.

Cody removed this scene and toned down another that occurs in the woods near some mating salmon. He also replaced a few expletives.

Caveat: I don’t know this book.

That said, hmm. He says he did it because he understands teachers feeling uncomfortable with those bits in the classroom, not because of right-wing pressure / book banning.

Yeah, I dunno. Isn’t it the stuff that’s uncomfortable that’s most important to deal with–not avoid?

Alcohol and sex is the reality of high school for a lot of people. Aren’t we better off acknowledging and dealing with it directly that than pretending it doesn’t happen?

And seriously, profanity? Profanity is the reality for everyone.

A lot of people seem to want childhood/adolescence to be something that simply doesn’t exist. That never did exist. I think it must be true that when most people grow up, they forget what it was like to be 7, 10, 15.

In one of Madeleine L’Engle’s books (I think it’s Circle of Quiet) she talks about how when she’s writing about being 15 (or a character who’s 15), at that moment, she is 15. When I first read that, it was an “aha” moment for me. I realized that when I was telling a story of something that happened when I was 13, I’d go back there, I’d be 13 again, if only for a moment (people would sometimes comment on how worked up I could get about things that happened years ago, and I guess I wondered if I was weird for still being able to feel my 13yo pain). I think that ability is essential for a writer, but I guess not everyone has it.

I don’t want to associate my writing with guilt.

This resonated with me:


I think they key is this: I know that it takes a long time to write a good novel. It will take me at least two years, but probably three. I can’t beat myself up for missing these days. All I can do is promise myself that I will do better. …… Whatever happens, I don’t want to associate my writing with guilt. I have enough stuff to feel guilty about. …

Everyone has their issues. Guilt is mine. Should I ever write that memoir I’ve mentioned, it will be a major theme.

Marketing

Here, Tayari Jones writes about her publicity tour for her second book. What I found interesting was what a difference the marketing slant can have on a book’s success.

Anyhow, she writes:

My publisher, Warner Books, sponsored the dinner where they would be featuring one of their new writers: the author of a magnificent work of art called Redneck Nation.

What I found so… deflating, I guess would be the closest word, about this, is that I think when we (writers) imagine a publisher finally saying “Yes, we want to publish you!” we also imagine that this “yes” means they “get” you. They think your writing is cool, they’re on the same wavelength, etc. etc.

Which… really that’s silly, of course. They’re not picking your book because they think it’s the most brilliant piece of prose ever written, they’re picking it because they think it will sell. Which means their catalog will contain works of varying degrees of quality and competing philosophies. I’m a pragmatist. But still, it must be bizarre for a publicist to be promoting one book with the message “X” and then turn around the next day and promote a book with the message “not-X”. I guess this is why I’m not in marketing.

*

Anyhow, I liked Tayari’s writing there so, as you do, I clicked on the link to her own website, saw “blog” at the top there, and started reading.

I haven’t been doing much gushing or eking lately. *sigh* Well, I did write an AB article, but that’s not what I mean. I can’t say that I haven’t had time to write creatively this past month; I just haven’t been able to
focus. At least part of the problem is that writing query/cover letters is sucking my brain dry. Bleh.

Sluggish

This week has been a let-down after last week’s excitement. Making progress on several things, but slowly, ever so slowly. Or so it seems. Feeling sluggish. Must snap out of it.

Sent this month’s preliminary notifications yesterday. Drafted my AB article that’s due next week. It’s way too long, of course. And probably super-boring. But at least I have something to work with.

Ran for an hour last night.

Realized I can make PDFs (with OpenOffice). Um… cool! How did I not know this before? Good to know.