What is "Good"?

In yesterday's post, I threw around the term "good" a lot. The definition of "good" literature is one of the most subjective things imaginable, and I'd like to spend some time trying to draw out what, if anything, is objective about writing.

Here are the assumptions that I'm making.

1. Good stories are about people.
   
   I'm extending the definition of people to include aliens, talking animals, gods, dwarves and elves and orcs and anything with sentience enough to be able to participate in a story. Hell, if you want to anthropomorphize nature, go right on ahead. Write a story about the East Wind and the West Wind getting into a fight.
   
   The thing is, there has to be some element of intensionality in a story. If you remove the intention, then all you have left is a bare description of natural phenomena. There's nothing wrong with that if it's what you're after--but it's not a story.
   
   
2. Good stories are about change.
   
   They're about starting in one state and ending in another state--that's what change is. Perhaps the characters learn something. Maybe they don't, but the reader does. The important thing is that the action or inaction of the characters brings about a change or lack of change.
   
   Sure, that's impossibly broad and general. So? You can write an interesting story about someone trying to keep things the same just like you can about things changing. But since without that struggle, things would have changed, there is a net difference between the potential and the actual. The story doesn't like on those endpoints, but in the difference between them.
   
   
3. Good stories are about struggle.
   
   "John went out to get his mail." Where's the story in that? It's just right outside. If there's no struggle, there's no story.
   
   Ah, but what if John is agoraphobic, terrified to go outside. Then you've got a story. Or what if there's a letter he's dreading, so every day he finds it harder and harder to go to the mailbox. Or perhaps there's a flood or a snowstorm, and John desperately wants to go get his mail, but nature is keeping him from doing so.
   
   See, anything can be a story as long as there is inherent struggle. Assumption 2 was about change. But that change is worthless if it is easy to achieve. Where there are obstacles, and therefore something to struggle against, there is a tension between the potential and the actual.

These seem all pretty self explanatory. So how is it possible for stories not to have these? Here are some examples.

Stories without people

Well, technically there are people. But instead of real people, they're cardboard cutouts. They're one dimensional, single note players who are manipulated like puppets to serve the whims of the author. They can usually be described in a single word, and cater to stereotypes.

The rich guy. The blonde bimbo. The scientist. The jock. The accountant. Each of these conjure up an image of a character. You know what they're wearing, what they'll do in a given situation, the way they talk. And they're not real. You'll never meet someone whose life and personality is encapsulated in a single personality trait. But stories are full of these.

Stories without change

Look no further than network television for this. Don't you ever get pissed off by TV shows that seem to hit a reset button between every episode? You can watch the episodes in any order because there is never any character development. Maybe the guest stars reach a new point, but the main characters, the one that you watch the show for, they are constant. It's clumsy and frustrating.

Stories without struggle

Genre stories are really bad about this, as are action hero movies. When the purpose of the story is wish fulfillment, everything just comes too easily for the main character. It's like the entire plot serves to illustrated how ABSOLUTELY AWESOME they are. It's unrealistic, the hallmark of infantile Mary Sue fan fiction. You can write a character that anyone can relate to without making them Superman.

--

So, when I talk about good stories, I'm talking about stories that meet these minimum qualifications. I'd love to hear some counterexamples!

In Defense of *gasp* Genre

In the scale of guilty pleasures, genre literature ranks somewhere in the second quintile. It's more embarrassing than, say, gourmet coffee, but less embarrassing than boy band fandom. And that's a shame, because unlike boy bands, there's nothing wrong with liking genre literature.

Good genre literature, that is. It would be disingenuous of me to say that all sci-fi, horror, romance, action, or fantasy stories are good. In fact, I would say that there is probably more bad writing in genre that there is in literary fiction. That bad writing wouldn't exist (at least not for sale) if people weren't willing to buy it. So why does bad genre writing sell?

You see, although the writing is bad, there must be something that those authors are doing well. For each genre that's different. In fantasy and sci-fi, it's creating a world. Booksellers are used to the fact that these worlds are pretty similar in a lot of ways--that's why they're shelved together. The biggest difference tends to be the values that are perpetuated by these worlds--whether the things that are worthwhile in society come from what we build or what we are.

In romance writing, the relationships between characters are brought to the fore, often at the expense of plot. In action thrillers, the opposite happens--intricate plots are woven, but the characters can be nothing more than shadow puppets.

I think of these kind of novels as single-flavor stories. Let's say you have a taste for chocolate. Bad genre stories are kind of like the Hershey bar of literature--inexpensive, mass produced, readily available, pretty much forgettable.

There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.

But after you've had your fifth or sixth Hershey bar, maybe you're looking for something more. Something with some subtlety, something that hits more than one note. You can get more expensive chocolate, or chocolate blended with other flavors. There are cakes and cookies and all sorts of exotic and complex combinations. Here, chocolate is the theme of the dessert, but there's a lot more to it than that.

That's how I would describe good genre literature. Yet the denigrators of genre seem to think that anything that uses chocolate is nothing more than mass produced garbage. They neglect to notice the wide variety and quality that is available, even if it's harder to come by.

What is Pride and Prejudice if not a romance novel? What is 1984 if not sci fi? Hell, Shakespeare's The Tempest is fantasy, complete with a wizard and its very own Gollum. Somehow, somewhere along the line, certain works get a free pass. They're promoted from genre into the ranks of Literature--note the capital. But to try to divorce them from their genre underpinnings is to excise an element that made them popular from the beginning.

The genre of a story is only one flavor. It's probably the dominant flavor, but it's still only one among many, at least if the story is done well. And it's a shame that stigma would be attached to a novel just because it's genre. That sort of literary racism has no place in our culture.

Dialogue vs. Description

As I've mentioned in the past, my stories tend to be pretty heavy in dialogue. To me, there's nothing more frustrating than encountering a giant, unbroken, rectangular block of text on a page. I don't care how vivid the description is--if nothing's happening, I'm not interested.

However--I feel the same way about long expository sections. It's the same feeling I get when someone describes a movie to me in excessive detail. Why isn't that the same as seeing it myself? Because we don't see a movie to learn about a specific plot. We go to see that plot unfolded before us through the actors' portrayal.

In that case, what do I like? For me, that's character. A story is only as interesting as the people who are participating in it. If you don't believe me, consider this.

Did you hear that Ellen just started going out with Jim? What do you think Larry will do when he finds out?

Ah, gossip. There's nothing more interesting... if you know the people being gossiped about. Otherwise, you might as well listening to static and watching a television test pattern. It would take an unusual event to get you to start listening to gossip about people you don't know, and even more to keep you listening.

But really, that's what storytelling is. It's gossip about people you don't know. Over the course of the story, you may come to know them, which is called becoming invested in the characters. If you don't get to know them like that, one of the biggest motivations to keep reading is gone.

Now, the point of all of this was dialogue, as opposed to description and exposition. The function of dialogue is character interaction, which is the heart of what drives plot forward. Just try to find a story with only two characters in which those characters don't interact. (Yes, they can interact without speaking. I'm saying that dialogue is a kind of interaction, not the only kind.)

But dialogue has other effects too. When a person speaks, he's not just getting across his message--he's also revealing things about himself. Through dialogue, you can move the plot forward in a way that doesn't rely on huge paragraphs of exposition, and you can shine a light on character in a way that engages the reader.

Dialogue has one other side effect that's all thanks to the way English grammar works. The typical rule is one speaker per paragraph. So when there's dialogue, those huge blocks of text get broken up into smaller pieces, and the eye can fly down the page. You want to write a page turner? Then stop spending six pages describing the sunset. If it's important, get a couple of characters talking about the sunset. Then we learn about those characters based on the way they describe the sunset, their reaction to it and each other.

The Lifestyle

There are a lot of reasons why I want to be a professional writer. The most important reasons include my love of reading and storytelling, the need I feel sometimes to get ideas on paper, the sheer audacity of creating something that didn't exist before. These are the things that drive me forward into this career. But there are other aspects of a writing life that I enjoy, the icing on the cake.

One of these is the writing lifestyle. If you ask ten different authors how they write, you're likely to get eleven different answers. Some adhere to a strict 9 to 5 schedule; some write only in the mornings, in the afternoons, at night, weekdays only, every day. The point is, this is a career that does not require a set schedule. In some ways, it doesn't even require a set amount of progress, although there are Deadlines. The work is entirely up to the individual, and the results are what matters.

There was a time in my life that I had all the free time I could have wished for. But I accomplished very little writing. I think the reason is because at that time, I had never really worked a standard 9 to 5 job. I didn't have the discipline that comes from needing to meet deadlines, from being responsible for a certain amount of work, and not getting time off just whenever I felt like it.

Now, I'm balancing my writing with a day job--one that I very much like, and one that I devote a lot of time and energy to. Yet I'm getting more writing done than ever. I get up at 4:30 every morning and get to Panera at 6am for ninety minutes of writing, every weekday. That's not a lot of time every day, but it's more than I was doing when I had no responsibilities.

I always regret having to leave the restaurant and return to normal life. I can't help but wonder what it would be like to be responsible only to myself and my writing on a daily basis. I picture myself in Manhattan, maybe, showing up at the door of an East Village coffeeshop the minute it opens and writing until noon. Then I take a walk, do some reading or some revising, get caught up on the clerical side of writing by doing submissions, blogging, and (dare I dream?) maybe answering fan mail. The evenings would be my own.

But I see myself spending a little time in the evenings too, and I see the writing encroaching into my weekends. Or maybe I'll have a hard time filling the days. What I've done over this past year is to build up the pressure to write, and then stuff it into a 90 minute container. The question is, what will happen if it's let out of that container? Will it expand to fill all available space? Or will the pressure die off?

Either way, that time is far in the future, and by then, I'll have probably built up even more pressure. Years ago, I had a little taste of what the lifestyle could be like, but I didn't have the discipline to make use of it. Now, if I want it back, I'm going to have to earn it.

Editing: Black Pudding

In approaching this story, I go back to one of the times that I workshopped it, and people mentioned how many exclamation points there were. Okay. Fair enough. Most of my stories use virtually none, but this one used them all over the place.

I think the reason goes back to Covey's personality. For her, everything is worthy of the exclamation point. At least, that's how she would be saying it if she were actually narrating. One thing that I've noticed about my writing is that my punctuation adheres more to the way something is read aloud rather than to the precepts of grammar. In a way, I'm actually sticking to the original purpose of punctuation, and that's fine for a first draft. But I know the rules of punctuation, and that means that on a revision, I need to fix them.

So in other words, to reserve the power of the punctuation, I need to use fewer exclamation marks. I can handle that.

I also got a lot of comments about the ending of the story. Some people liked it the way it was, others wanted to make it more overt. Honestly, I think it would eviscerate the story to change the ending. Everything that needs to be implied is there.

The final comment was my description of the food being "safe." Although most people figured it out right away, there was some vagueness at the beginning that could make it tough to interpret. It shouldn't take much of a change to fix that up.

I picked this story to start my revisions because I think it's pretty closed to a finished version. Some stories take a lot of polishing, and others just come out polished. I like the way this one turned out.

The Omniscient POV

I hate it. I hate the omniscient POV. There, I've said it.

It just... feels like sloppy writing to me. I know that's not true. You can offer counterexamples all day long. But I really just can't make myself do it.

Now the first person I like. There is so much you can do with it! I mean, you've got a built-in way to disguise the identity of the narrator, since they only have to refer to themselves as "I" and "me." If you want to, things like age, race, even gender can be left vague or revealed as necessary. Plus, you've got this window into their mind that is just so intriguing to me. Not to mention, you can start to play around with the conventions of grammar, even turning the exposition and other functional grammar into the character's own voice.

Sometimes that puts you too deep into a character, or you want to be able to more easily switch POVs. For that, I like the 3rd person limited. You get a lot of the same attributes of the first person, although you do have to give the character a name. But when written well, you can get into a character's head and see everyone through their eyes. Both of these are great for the unreliable narrator, which is one of my favorite tools.

But the omniscient POV, well, it strikes me as lazy. It's just not something I can relate to, dipping into one person's head, then another, describing their emotions in objective terms. Because the omniscient narrator is always right. That POV is the God of the story, and He knows all.

Maybe it's just that I'm not so sure of my characters to be able to state in absolute, objective terms what they must be feeling. I'd much rather hear their own thoughts through the filter of their subjective perceptions, or maybe just watch how they react. It seems purer somehow.

If I have to keep myself out of a character's head, give me the third person objective. It's like the omniscient, only without the omniscience. That is, the narrator can go anywhere and see anything that would be available to an observer, but no thoughts and feelings. It's kind of the voyeur perspective.

I don't know what it says about me that in the worlds I create, I'd rather be a voyeur than God. But I do know what is says about me that even more than that, I'd like to be inside the story.

Character Moments

Sometimes as I'm editing, I see a scene that I've written, but doesn't seem to have a place in the plot. Yet I have a hard time cutting it, and I wind up leaving it in, saying that it's a "character moment."

What does that even mean? I think what I'm trying to get at is that sometimes, a scene doesn't advance the story, but does deepen the reader's appreciation for or connection to a certain character. When it comes to our friends, we can always come up with examples of, "Oh, that's exactly something she would do." Character moments in writing are how the reader learns about those very traits.

So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is this: is it sloppy writing? Ideally, those character moments would be included in a scene that also advances the plot. It's a two-for-one deal. Other times, learning that character trait is so vital to the later events that it cannot be cut--it sets up the plot, even if it doesn't advance it.

In any other case, though, I should think about the length of the story before I decide whether to leave it in. For a short story, everything has to serve a purpose, maybe six or seven purposes. If it doesn't, then the length of the story outstrips its worth, and that kills it. For a novel, you can get away with more digression.

Think, for example, about Harry Potter. There are lots of scenes that serve no purpose other than to show off the world in which the stories are set. Gnome hunting in the Weasley garden, for instance. That scene did not communicate anything that could not have been added into another scene, but it gives us a connection to that magical world. Plus, it contributes to Harry's character, because we see the delight he takes in something that others around him consider a thankless chore. The series is richer because of it, even if it had nothing to do with defeating Voldemort.

(I just accidentally spelled that Voldemart. Like he's a convenience store. Heh.)

My general rule of thumb should be the longer the story, the more pure character moments I can get away with. But genre comes into play as well. Emotional stories can get more character moments, whereas more action-oriented stories need less to keep up the pace. Fantasy stories should get world-defining moments--what's the point of a fantastic setting if you never get to see it?

That being said, clever writing should do as much as possible to layer in extra in these scenes. A character moment can occur just before a plot point, or during a world-building scene. It can change drab exposition into something vivid and interesting.

Chronology

During yesterday's post,I started thinking about the different orders in which a story can be told. Chronological is the first and easiest choice, and often the best. The reader is experiencing the events in the same way that the characters are. I think a chronological method of storytelling is preferable when you want to really draw in the reader and make him relate to the character. "That could be me," the reader thinks.

The trick here is that in a lot of ways, the character treated in that way needs to be a vessel that the reader pours himself into. In other words, it's hard to really relate to a character who is hugely different from yourself. That's not to say that such a character isn't attractive to read about--they can be--but in terms of really getting inside someone's head, the more different that head is, the poorer fit it will be.

That all seems pretty self-evident, but what does it have to do with chronology? I personally think that readers are very clever about filling in the gaps in a character's history. The author does not have to specify that the character grew up in a small surburban town, had a sister, was on the swim team, liked the Orioles, etc., unless those elements are vital to the story. The reader has the remarkable ability to fill in those details with details from his own life. In other words, the reader assumes unless told otherwise that the character had experiences different in particular but identical in form to his own.

When I, as an author, want to override those assumptions, I've got to do it by supplying the details. To some extent, I can do this through exposition, but isn't the first rule of writing "Show, Don't tell"? If a major event happened in a character's past, I may need to go back and show that to the reader. Hence the flashback.

Of course, nothing says I have to tell the story out of order. I could make all of the events chronological, even if there are big skips of time. The danger here becomes getting the reader interested in the story in the first place. I personally think that the reader should have an idea what kind of story he's reading within a page or two of starting a short story, and within a chapter or two of starting a novel. If every story starts with the childhood escapades of the hero, what kind of story am I reading?

It's much better to engage the reader on the right level to begin with. Once we care about a character and the situation he's currently in, then we can go back and figure out what motivates him. At that point, we'll want to know about his childhood because we like him.

Anything more complicated than the simple flashback is done to construct a puzzle of some sort. The character in the present day knows something the reader does not, and we gradually uncover the larger picture as we gain more information. That kind of story can be very, very satisfying--but it makes it difficult to get inside the character's head. After all, the more the character knows that we do not, and are not allowed to supply from our imaginations, the less we can relate to him.

I'm not saying that one type of story is better than any other. I think that most stories are on a continuum between the direct, straightforward, relatable character and the mysterious, complex character-with-a-past. The attempt to blend both of these together is why so many stories have a young, naive, relatable character (e.g., Luke Skywalker) who is brought by a mysterious old mentor (e.g., Obi-Wan Kenobi) into the larger world of the story.

The Way I Write

Story ideas tend to come on me all at once, not necessarily fully formed, but at least in their broad strokes. In fact, I tend to have more ideas than I write down, and of those I write down, only a few get a full prose treatment. That doesn't mean that the other ideas are any worse than the ones that I write, only that some strange confluence of the stars arrived so that I actually bothered to write it.

The obvious question is this: why don't I just write them all? The answer lies in the stage in between an idea and a finished draft, when the story idea is changed into a story plan But to get there, I'm going to take a step back and look at an idea that I got yesterday and the development I've done up until now.

1. The Spark
   
   I'm sure there's dozens of words for this part of story generation, but I always think of it as the spark. It's the one question, concept, person, setting, or whatever that starts the process of brainstorming. Think of it as the grain of sand in the pearl--the pearl is built up around it so that the grain of sand disappears. I like to distinguish the spark from the thesis of the story. Sometimes the spark is the thesis; more often it's not. Sometimes, the spark disappears altogether and the story goes into a completely different direction. Either way, the spark is the starting place.
   
   
2. The Thesis
   
   The spark usually launches me down one direction or another, and I start to understand the structure of the story--again, in broad strokes. Is it a love story? Does it have a sad or happy ending? How many characters? What POV do I use? Reliable or unreliable narrator? Not all of these questions get answered at this point, or even asked, but they're there in the back of my mind.
   
   As these elements come together, I start to pick up on what I'm trying to get across with the story. I call this the thesis. A love story might be about acceptance, or it might be about loneliness. A story might be about trust, or fear, or self-realization, or courage, or cruelty, on the permanent or transitory nature of relationships.
   
   I try not to write stories that really whack you in the face with the thesis. I don't like reading stories like that, and I think that for adults, they're an insult to the intelligence of the reader. (For kids too, really.) But here's the thing--the exact same plot might be written in wildly different ways with two different theses behind it. I want to show precisely those scenes that advance the thesis, and to write them in a way that compliments it.
   
   
3. The Threads
   
   When I say "thread," I'm talking about two different things. One is the chain of events that take place in the world of the story, chronologically as the characters themselves experience them. The other is the chain of revelations that are revealed to the reader, chronologically as the story is read.
   
   You might think these are the same thing, but they can be vastly different. Any time there is a flashback, for instance, the reader is experiencing something in a different order than the character does. But you don't need a complicated time structure for the character-thread and the reader-thread to be different. Any time the significance of an event is inherent to a character but not to the reader, or vice versa, the threads are different.
   
   Why do we even want them to be different? We do this because there are certain elements of narrative structure that readers expect from their stories. You remember the whole introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement setup you learned in school, right? That's not a prescriptive requirement in a story--in other words, no one says you have to--but it describes a very definite way that the reader can experience a story in a satisfying way.
   
   Remember, you have to get the ideas of your story across to a reader who may not remember or even pick up on every detail. It's important, then, to make the vital details jump out at the right time in the reading of the story. And that may not be the time when the detail first appears chronologically.
   
   As I'm writing, then, I need to figure out how the characters view their own lives at that moment, and then translate that into a thread that works for the reader.
   
   
4. The Beats
   
   If the thread is a continuous line, then the beats are the points on that line. A story that described every moment of every day would be hideously boring, or would describe someone with an unrealistically interesting life (see television's Jack Bauer on 24 for an example).
   
   A beat is the smallest unit of story, the point at which something is revealed. That revelation could be about character or it could be an event that drives the plot along. Really, when you get down to it, that's what most stories are--how events affect people, and how people affect events.
   
   Typically there is a strong correspondence between beats and scenes. A given scene can have a single beat, or it can have many beats. And since all good scenes should have a climax, we often find the most important beat at the climax of a scene. But not always! In fact, one clever thing to do is to misdirect the reader by putting the beat that's really important to the story earlier in a scene, where the reader will process it without understanding the true importance. That way, when the importance is revealed later on, it won't seem like a deus ex machina.
   
   Can there be a scene without a beat? Well, yeah, but why would you? If a scene doesn't advance the plot or contribute to character, why is it in your story in the first place?
   
   
5. The Outline
   
   There don't have to be Roman numerals for it to be an outline. Let's get that out of the way.
   
   My outlines are usually either a terse listing of beats, broken up by scene, or else a bulleted list. The point of an outline is to put each element of the story structure in the right order and the right place, as a guide to later writing. For example, the following is an outline to a story I'm working on right now.
   
   

   Goes off to college. Gets a girlfriend—the same girl he went to camp with that time. Asks about his sister. He lies to her, and she starts to figure it out. He confesses, but she is repelled by it and runs away. Later on, refuses to talk to him, and when he insists, refuses to admit that anything happened. When he tries to force her, she threatens to report him, so he backs off.

   Here we have both background and story beats. I don't need to show the main character arriving at his first day of college or meeting the girlfriend for the first time. A lot of that I can handle through reflection or exposition. The important conflict here come from certain words, which I've gone back and bolded.
   
   This hasn't been fully developed yet, but I think I would write this as two scenes. In the first scene, the main character and the girlfriend would be in a non-confrontational, comfortable situation that illustrates how things had been going. Then the conversation changes, and suddenly the comfort flees. The main character manages to patch things up, but the reader is aware of the lie, even if the girlfriend isn't. The scene ends with the confrontation delayed, but the comfort and good feelings gone.
   
   In the next scene, we see the main character's inner turmoil, and join him as he makes the decision to confess. Lots of good conflict here in the lead up to the confession, plus the discomfort as he does. We get a strong reaction from the girlfriend with no immediate resolution. The main character is left hanging, and so is the reader.
   
   The last scene of this section would pick up in the middle of a string of unanswered phone calls. The main character is at the breaking point, so he does something exceptional to finally get in contact with the now ex-girlfriend. He succeeds, but nothing goes as he plans. He faces her to confront his confession, but finally understands that there can be no going back to the way things were before. Finally there is resolution, if of a tragic sort.
   
   Each scene offers several story beats, a climax that elevates one of those beats to the foreground, and a hook that leads into the next scene. By the end of this set of scenes, we have learned about our main character, what he's prepared to do and where he's prepared to go. And we now know that in the future, he will be less likely to confess--we expect him to be a less open person.
   
   
6. The Draft
   
   All that's left is to write the story. At this point, I just have to construct the scenes, use brilliant description, realistic dialogue, beautiful metaphor, and sparse but detailed prose. Easy, right? Of course not. That's what multiple drafts are for. But at least I have the feeling that the story that I'm writing and revising is worth the time I'm putting into it, because at this point I should have the confidence that the story makes sense and gets across my thesis.

My original question was this: why don't all my story ideas get turned into stories? That's because the story idea might just be the spark, or perhaps a spark that has burned into a thesis. To do that idea justice, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make it into a story, and if the thesis doesn't inspire or motivate me, maybe I should invest that energy into something else.

The Three Month Plan

I've decided I need a bit more regularity in my writing life (no fiber jokes, please). So yesterday, I came up with a three-month plan, intended to be repeated over and over. The details are intended to be mutable so I can form into to what actually works for me, but here's the idea:

Week 1: Revision of Old Stories
Week 2: Revision of Old Stories - Submit to magazines by end of this week
Week 3: Refresher on long project / plotting and outlining
Week 4: Refresher on long project / plotting and outlining
Week 5: Write long project
Week 6: Write long project
Week 7: Write long project
Week 8: Write long project
Week 9: Write long project
Week 10: Write long project
Week 11: Brainstorm new short story ideas
Week 12: Write new short stories
Week 13: Write new short stories

And... that's it. Rinse and repeat. Note that these tasks take into account weekdays only. Weekends are left free to work on whatever writing projects I feel like. That includes the audiobook versions that I had been talking about before, editing and commenting on other people's stuff, working on the anthology, etc.

I think six weeks at a time is just about right for working on a novel, at least at this point in my writing career. Any longer, and the ideas get stale. Plus, when I'm working on something long term, I get lots of little ideas that crowd up at the back of my mind, and have no outlet. If I know that after a six week period I can develop them, I'll be a lot happier.

This slots into my current plans pretty organically. By the way, writing the long project can turn into revising that same project if I wind up finishing. Still, I want to get the first draft completely done before I start on revisions--at least as long as I feel that I'm going in a good direction. If at any point I feel like I've completely fallen off track, that's the time to regroup, get the target in my sights again, and start over.

Anthology Timeline

In yesterday's post, I described the justification for a self-published anthology of the stories of my writing group. Today, I'm going to talk about how all of that will come together.

Let's work backwards. We want this thing ready in time for Christmas. In fact, we'd like it to be able to ship by Thanksgiving, just so there won't be any time problems. Given the 6-8 week lead time for getting everything listed in the appropriate distribution databases, that means we would want to have the finished product uploaded by October 1st. Let's say it takes a month to do all the editing, so that puts us at September 1st to have all the finished and approved content. Which means that authors need to have the two months before that for revisions, so any requested revisions go out by July 1st. Based on that, I think a June 1st submission date is warranted.

So, here's the proposed timeline:

• June 1st: Deadline for submissions
• June: Editors read stories, send them back to authors for revisions
• July 1st: All revision requests back to authors
• July - August: Authors and editors work on revising stories
• September 1st: All revisions due
• September: Layout
• October 1st: Layout completed, submitted to publisher. Order galley copy for final revisions

The book would be available for purchase from the Lulu website pretty much as soon as it is uploaded, but we'll have to wait 6-8 weeks for the full listing on Amazon and the like.

The Anthology Project

One thing that my enforced hiatus has given me is a chance to think of new projects. One of these is related to a new writing group that I've joined. We've decided to put together an anthology of our writing and self publish it using Lulu.

There has been a lot said about self-publishing, both good and bad. Check out the latest issue of Writer's Digest for a far more astute discussion than I can give. There are certain ways, though, that this project sidesteps the bad parts of self-publishing and seizes on the good parts.

The question is, what would we want to get out of an anthology? The most tangible element is the thrill of seeing our work in print, even if it did not go through a traditional publishing house. That thrill is more acute for the various parents, relatives, and friends who have supported us, and have been waiting a long time to hold that volume in their hands. We're anticipating twenty entries; if each one distributes a book to five friends, that's 100 copies. Is it worldwide distribution? Of course not. But it's a start.

Doing an anthology results in cross-pollination as well. Sure, moms are gonna buy this thing to see their own darling's stuff, but they might just read some of the other stories too. In other words, the audience for 95% of the book is going to be an audience that could not have been reached if the book was sent only to friends and relatives. This cross-pollination extends to another field--promotion. Any time one of these volumes is distributed to a potential agent, it serves to promote the entire group.

The least important aspect is fundraising. I don't anticipate sales to be very high, but whatever money is made would go to the group. These funds could be used for group events, meeting space... or to fund the next year's anthology.

One of the greatest things about Lulu is how you can use your own publishing imprint. Essentially, our group becomes the publishing house. In later years, we accept outside submissions, accept and reject manuscripts, publish and promote the finished product--in effect, we become the publishing house. Recognition takes time, but if we consistently put out a quality product, then the name of our group becomes associated with quality.

Tomorrow, I delve into exactly how this will all come together... hopefully.

Audiobook Project (200th Post!)

Huh. 200 posts. Shouldn't I get a sticker or a free bottle of wine or something?

There's something I've intended to do for a while, and I think it's about time I followed through. I want to record audiobook versions of my completed stories.

I've already done two, and although the audio quality isn't super high (hell, it's a $15 microphone, what do you expect?), I think I did a halfway decent job at the performance. Out of the two that I've recorded, I've edited one together, but the other is still in the rough.

You see, I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to recordings like this. I'll sometimes read the same line or paragraph a dozen different ways until I get a version that I like. It improves the finished product, but makes editing a lot more difficult.

If I'm going to pursue this, I need a plan. And here it is: first, finish revising the stories. My post from two days ago mentioned how I wanted to clean up what I've already done before moving forward. Once I've edited a story, I should sit down and do a read through aloud. Twice in the past (here and here), I've posted about the merits of doing a verbal read through, so I won't go through them again. During this step, I'll quickly note where things sound odd, or where I stumble, then consider revising there.

Next, I'll record each one. I'm not going to post them here, since posting them in a public forum would count as first audiobook publication, and I'd like to be able to sell that later. But if you know me well enough to have my email address, then I probably wouldn't have any problem sending them to you once they're edited.

What's the point of this? I've always enjoyed the medium of unabridged audiobook. In fact, certain stories simply lend themselves to that kind of format. I think Dickens is best read aloud, for example, and P.G. Wodehouse, well performed, simply comes alive. If I can hear what my stories sound like in that same medium, maybe I can brush up the quality of my prose accordingly.

Recharge

One thing that I noticed about my enforced hiatus was how very much I read. While I was writing full time, I continued to buy books at about the same rate that I had before, but I hadn't really been reading them consistently. Or at all. As a matter of fact, I had an entire stack of books, many by some of my favorite authors, that were pretty much untouched.

About a week after Thanksgiving, I picked one up, and by Christmas break was through the stack and looking for more. On my recent trip to Dubai, I brought two along, and finished both before I got home. (I would have bought another book in the Amsterdam airport, but I don't know Dutch.)

Why the change? I've always been a quick and avid reader, but this rate of consumption was high even for me. And I think it's because I needed to recharge.

I've never been a director, but I have to wonder--does a director go see other movies while he's filming his own? I would very much doubt it. Part of it is because he simply doesn't have time, and part because he doesn't want to compromise his own movie with the way another director would do the same thing. Those are both valid, and they both apply to me as well. But I also noticed one other thing about reading in the midst of writing.

When I'm composing fiction, I'm not just thinking like a reader. I'm thinking like a writer. Imagine the face of a clock. It's simple: just twelve marks and two hands, at its simplest. Someone who is trying to tell time doesn't need to know how the clock works to get what they need out of the clock.

But the person who made the clock, or who is fixing the clock, needs to open it up. Then you can see inside at all the complex gadgets and gizmos that make the clock work. Because even the simplest device can have complex underpinnings.

So when I'm in a writing mode, I can't help but think about the clockwork behind a story. In writing about Bryony, I'm not engaged in the same way that a reader is (hopefully) engaged. I know which of her friends will survive and which won't, and I know the big revelations about her past that are coming down the line. My attention is engaged by how I'm going to tell that story, by dribbling out bits and pieces of information while keeping my character arcs going and doing the whole juggling act of writing.

To use another metaphor, I'm cooking, not eating. Cooking can be fun and rewarding, but it uses different sensabilities and different skills than eating and appreciating the food.

I say all of that to say this: if I try to read a novel while I'm in writing mode, I'm going to be so concerned about how and why the writer did what he did, that I will stop paying attention to the story. That's doing a disservice to the story. That doesn't mean that I can see some of the seams where exposition has been added, or predict what is going to happen in the story based on a bit of foreshadowing that was layered in, but I can fool myself into ignoring them so I can just appreciate the story.

Reading during this hiatus has shown me the two different mindsets I need to be able to have. I think it's a good thing that I took some time off from writing, recharged my fiction batteries, and enjoyed some excellent fiction. Right now, I'm in transition between mindsets, and I'll be interested to see how that affects both my reading and my writing.

Back in the saddle

As you can tell from the time of this post, I'm finally back to my morning writing schedule. It was a long time coming--almost three months--and in that time, I learned a lot about writing momentum.

The loss of my computer, and the resultant destruction of my schedule, totally killed my rate of production. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, but the change was so sudden and so drastic, and I wasn't prepared for it. Then, once I did have computer access again, I just couldn't summon up the gumption to get started immediately.

Partly that's because I knew that I had a major trip coming up at the end of January, which would destroy any schedule I managed to get established before then. But it was also, in part, because of what I came to discover about my own momentum.

Keeping up a constant writing schedule is a lot like driving on the highway. You get up to a high speed and maintain it for long periods of time. Losing my computer was kind of like the engine giving out at 75 mph and wiping out in a ditch. Even after getting a new car, it still might take a little while before you feel comfortable getting back out on the highway.

So I've been metaphorically tooling around the city for about a month, and now I finally feel confident that it's time to get back up to speed. But I'm not going to do it all at once. For a few weeks, I'm going to be accelerating up the on-ramp of writing.

To leave metaphor behind for a moment, I need to get my body used to the early schedule again. There are a few short stories I want to write, and others that I want to revise and submit. Then, once all of those small tasks are out of the way, I need to refamiliarize myself with Bryony and her story so that when I start writing again, I can pick up fairly seamlessly from where I left off.

One major questions remains--do I revise any part of Bryony before pushing forward? I'm not going to give a definitive answer on that right now, but the guiding principle in my review will be to worry about the big strokes and not the fine detail. In other words, I'm not going to go around changing a word here or there, but I might decide I need to rewrite an entire scene or chapter.

There's going to be one other change. I'm taking weekends off. That's not to say that I won't ever be doing any writing on the weekends, but I'm no longer going to include them in my schedule and calculations. There are other hobbies that I want to continue with or start, and I need some down time in between writing sessions. I didn't realize how much I missed actually reading, and activity I did very little of during my last writing binge, but which I have rediscovered over the last few months.

So that's the plan. See you tomorrow.