Graphic by Peg Ihinger
I’m posting this on New Year’s Eve, when everybody celebrates having made it through the last year and looks with hope toward the blank slate that arrives tomorrow.
Of course, for most of us, it isn’t really a totally blank slate. I have several projects in various preliminary stages, plus I’m expecting editorial revisions for “Dark Lady” some time in January. It isn’t reasonable to come up with anything totally new to work on, just because a new year is starting. If something compelling does occur to me, I’ll add it to my list of things to consider once something else gets finished or drops off the active-projects list.
On the other hand, January always feels a bit like a blank slate because the holiday turmoil is over. The only major thing that always happens over the first three months of the year is tax preparation, and the main variable thing is whether I’m expecting something from my editor or publisher (revision requests, copy-edit review, page proofs, etc.). Consequently, the first three months of the year represent an annual opportunity to go head-down into writing projects.
“Writing projects” for me covers more than just the current work-in-process. I am the sort of writer who can normally work on one WIP at a time; if I try to write two books at once, my backbrain freezes up after a couple of chapters, and I don’t get anything more written until I commit to a single book to drive forward. However, I have discovered that I can work on two projects that are at different stages in the production cycle.
That means that I can spend the morning working on editorial revisions and the afternoon doing first-draft on the next book, or background and plot-development prewriting on something I haven’t started drafting yet, or reading how-to-write books, or testing writing prompts/exercises to see if I can get anything out of them.
Managed correctly, the first three months of the year can be one of my most productive writing times. The catch is in that “managed correctly” bit. What frequently (if not quite always) gets in the way is that January-is-a-blank-slate feeling, because it leads directly to me overcommiting to all sorts of nonwriting things that I want to do, think I should do, or suddenly have to do.
I can’t do anything about the suddenly-have-to-do things, like my furnace getting red-tagged on Christmas Eve Day due to a smoke alarm malfunction, leading to a frantic afternoon of calling repair people (because in Minnesota, a house with no heat at this time of year is considered a major emergency). This has led directly to a non-negotiable January project: getting the fancy wired-in smoke alarm system fixed (which will take an electrician).
The other two categories—nonwriting projects that I want to do (like knitting that sweater pattern) or think I should do (like clean out that overstuffed closet that should have a giant “MISCELLANEOUS JUNK” sign on the door)—are the things I have control over. The problem is that, like most people, I overestimate what I can get done in a given month. And I especially overestimate what I can get done in a month that’s six months away, with the result that by the time January rolls around I frequently have a long, long list of commitments that I made three or six or eight months ago, which all get in each others’ way. I simply have to remember to put these things on a “nice to do one of these days” list instead of on a “projects to get done ASAP” list.
Essentially, I am choosing to use my valuable first-three months of “good working time” to get writing things done first. (Or at least, I’m trying to do that. I don’t always succeed.) One of the things I want to do this year is a deeper dive into basic writing skills.
Basic writing skills come in two parts: the technical or craft side, which includes everything from grammar and syntax to the uses of alliteration, simile, meter and rhythm; and the storytelling side, which includes things like characterization, viewpoint, dialog, and so on.
The technical or craft side of writing is usually easier to explain than the storytelling side. There are specific details on what to do or not do, even if some of them involve judgment calls rather than actual grammar (how many exclamation points are “too many”?). These details can fall naturally into a checklist, and checking off all those dos and don’ts around adverbs, exclamation points, grammar, sentence length, and so on can be very reassuring.
Unfortunately, the technical craft of writing is not enough. A piece of writing that is technically perfect can still fall perfectly flat when it comes to storytelling.
Which brings us to the storytelling side of writing. It’s harder to talk about than the technical side because, first, the technical, craft part is how one gets a lot of the storytelling effects, and second, a big part of what is and isn’t “good storytelling” is subjective. It varies with culture, background, and personal taste.
To put it another way, the art of writing is what you want to do, and the craft is how you do it.
I’ve long since sworn off making resolutions, in favor of setting goals. This year, I don’t even have goals, just the to-do list. January’s to-dos are getting the micro-renovation in the kitchen that’s been dragging on for months somewhere close to done, and prepping for the big conference I’m going to in February. (The leaking roof will just have to wait on the weather; one does not simply walk onto a roof in Michigan in winter.) There’s also some Narrativity stuff, and I should probably write something, so as not to lose all those writing muscles I built up in November. But having just finished the mammoth WIP, I don’t want to dive into anything major for a while.
“…a big part of what is and isn’t “good storytelling” is subjective. It varies with culture, background, and personal taste.”
Ms. Wrede, could you elaborate on this sometime? I’m pretty sure the teacher of my one creative writing class would have disagreed. Isn’t good craftsmanship in writing a matter of following guidelines that make the work more likely to win readers’ approval? (Or maybe less likely of drawing disapproval?)
(I openly admit that that teacher absolutely had *some* subjectivity in his grading.)
I fully intend to do a post or three on this eventually, but it will be a bit before I get to it. In the meantime, I strongly suggest reading “Craft in the Real World” by Matthew Salesses, and possibly “Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird by Henry Lien. The first is about the effect that neglecting the subjective cultural nature of storytelling has on workshopping and teaching creative writing, and probably addresses your question more directly. The second examines some of the cultural differences between storytelling in the Eastern and Western hemispheres.
Dear Wrede, Could you explain, what Made you write prequals for Talking to dragons and begin The Dark Lords daughter?:)
The short answer to both questions is: because my editors asked me to.
The longer answer is that when my friend Jane Yolen got hired as an editor, she asked me to write a book for her new children’s line “like Talking to Dragons” (which, at that point, was the only thing I’d written that was published as a YA. Jane is very convincing, so I wrote Dealing with Dragons, and then she asked me to “write the middle book.” Jane is very convincing. And then I told her there was too much story for one middle book, and she said “fine, we’ll make it four, then.”
The Dark Lord’s Daughter is an idea I’d been thinking about off and on for at least twenty years, but didn’t think I was ready to write yet. I was on the phone with an editor regarding a different project, and I mentioned it as an example of what I wanted to do. The editor got very quiet for a minute, and then said, “Send me a proposal for that one, please.” So I wrote a proposal and sent it in, and she bought it. (And the next one, tentatively titled “Dark Lady.)
Of course, that’s the summarized version. There is a lot of negotiating and back-and-forth involved in the “…and then they bought it” parts.
I am looking in abject dismay at the cover letter for resubmitting the WIS. Apparently I have enough emotional energy to write a novel, but not to write a cover letter. (I have some job issues on top of the general malaise of being an American right now.) Doing this is a resolution of sorts, and I tried to make an early start of it last night but failed utterly.
Cover letters are ghastly. I generally find it easier to write the book than the query. Which is no particular help, but at least you know it’s not just you.
Hooray for editorial revisions! Assuming that all goes according to schedule (it won’t), what’s the soonest we can read Dark Lady?
@Kevin. “ Isn’t good craftsmanship in writing a matter of following guidelines that make the work more likely to win readers’ approval? (Or maybe less likely of drawing disapproval?)”
I tend to disagree that following guidelines is more likely to win readers’ approval.
I wrote a non-fiction book a while back that had three quite different storylines (for lack of a better term) that were tied together by location; they all happened in the same place. I told the reader up front that they were completely different. Then I submitted the book to a contest.
The judge was displeased because one storyline was obviously the main plot and the two subplots did not support it adequately.
Multiple readers had enjoyed the book and a couple had picked it up to flip through and couldn’t put it down. They let the book stand on its own merits and didn’t try to make it fit some guidelines.
The guidelines I was thinking of were along the lines of “Don’t write an entire novel in passive voice” or “Don’t open with a ten-page infodump.”
A story can succeed anyway, but the things that writers have found over the centuries to be most likely to work…might be the most likely to work? Mostly? Sometimes?
But “don’t write an entire novel in passive voice” is not a relevant guideline for anyone who is writing in a language that doesn’t have a passive voice. And “don’t open with a ten-page infodump” is likewise irrelevant when writing for an audience whose culture expects such things. It’s why I recommended those particular books–they both talk about cultural expectations of story and structure, which turn out not to be nearly as universal as many people think.
I just finished re-reading _Spindle’s End_ by Robin McKinley. The *entire first chapter* is an infodump. She talks about what magic is like in this kingdom–there’s a lot of stuff about teapots, which develop scales due to too much magic and have to be de-scaled. There are no characters; there is no plot, other than a little bit of foreshadowing.
I think it works. It’s engaging and fun to read and transmits an enormous amount of background painlessly. This reminds me of doing a high wire act with no net, but you *can*, and for this story it seems to have been a correct decision. (I certainly couldn’t say if it was *the* correct decision–you could try to work all that stuff into the current chapter 2 instead and I am far from having the skills to know if that would work.)