A lovely meditation on dictionaries and how they help us write.
Category: Writing about writing
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A lovely meditation on dictionaries and how they help us write.
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The road trip is over. I’m home and, although exhausted from all the driving, was willing to suffer more fanny fatigue for the sake of Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve now completed 6,080 words, almost 3,000 more since my last post. At this rate, I will make my 50k mark by May 28. However, if I write 1,830 words a day, I’ll finish end of this month.
Some might say that should be easy. Just write, even if it’s garbage, it’s the number of words that count. We write during NaNoWriMo; we edit later. But I’m thinking (and not terribly clearly at the moment), that the more my novel makes sense now, the less editing (or interpreting) I’ll need to do later. Of course, I have yet to edit the novel I wrote in November. Truth be told, I didn’t even finish it. I wrote over 50,000 words, and then abruptly stopped. What I thought was a few days’ break has now been a few months’ break.
But, gee, I’ve never had two novels in the cooker before. I’ve always been a short-story writer. While I love to read novels, I’ve always distrusted my ability to sustain an interest in writing novel-length stories. I find that very interesting: I love the slower pace of novels (at least the ones I read) where settings and characters come alive, where the novelist takes the time to describe the smell of snow or the main character’s fondness for cream sherry. But when I try to write like that, the voice at the back of head is practically screaming “Boring!” But that’s the beauty of NaNoWriMo (Camp or otherwise): The deadline helps me ignore that annoying voice.
So, I’ll try to persevere. Maybe I’ll even finish this novel.
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I’ve learned today that while it is possible to type on my iPad while a passenger in a speeding Infinity, it is not necessarily productive or advisable. It took a few minutes before my desire to hurl finally abated, and I think my husband was disappointed that I would be unavailable to carry on a conversation with him, or at least verbally sympathized while he negotiated rush-hour traffic.
Also, while I appreciate the ability of the iPad’s keyboard to anticipate and correct my typos, it isn’t perfect. To make any sense of what I was trying to write, I had to keep backspacing and correcting the garbage provided by Apple’s brain. Yes, I have a portable keyboard but my lap isn’t big enough to support both the iPad and the keyboard (thankfully).
So to date, my word count for Camp NaNoWriMo is abysmal: 3,267 out of 50,000. At this rate, I will finish in mid-June.
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I’m procrastinating at the moment. Past time to go to bed but just a few more minutes on the computer … so I go ahead and check my stats on my blog and I have 12 spam messages. Usually I just delete them, but some of them are quite funny so I decided to share the content of the messages. For obvious reasons, I won’t share the links.
Spam #1: “This original content is out of the ordinary. I appreciate that you’ve gone off the beaten path with your points and I agree with most.”
I wish I could say my content was out of the ordinary, but I believe I’m beating the same path that many of my fellow bloggers are.
Spam #2: “Can I just say what a relief to find an individual who actually knows what theyre talking about online. You certainly know the right way to bring an problem to light and make it valuable. Extra people must read this and fully grasp this side of the story. I cant think youre not more well-known considering that you certainly have the gift.”
Now, why couldn’t a real person leave such a comment on my blog! I definitely need “extra” readers who also believe I “have the gift.”
Spam #3: “Terrific work! This is the type of info that are meant to be shared across the net. Shame on Google for no longer positioning this submit higher! Come on over and seek advice from my site . Thanks =)”
Yes, shame on Google, but thanks but no thanks on advice from this site.
Spam #4, 5, & 6: “You need targeted traffic to your website so why not try some for free? There is a VERY POWERFUL and POPULAR company out there who now lets you try their traffic for 7 days free of charge. I am so glad they opened their traffic system back up to the public! Check it out here [spam link]”
Three spams all saying the same thing. How boring. Do people really fall for this?
Spam #7: “Performing Respiration ExercisesWhen you actual observation force, your material substance reacts physically. Some nation actual observation an increased organ of circulation fixed measure, sweat, headaches, or shallow, quickened breathing. Respiration exercises can take the severity out of a stressful location to help you think more calmly and clearly. A simple breathing use includes inhaling slowly for five seconds through the nose and exhaling slowly for five seconds through the chaps. Point of concentration your breathing on seeing your packing-box rise and drop down versus seeing your stomach go in and out. It should not be used as a exchange for professional of medicine recommendation, diagnosis or usage. LIVESTRONG is a registered trademark of the LIVESTRONG Base. Moreover, we do not prefer every advertiser or information|proclamation|trumpeting|advertisement} that appears on the web website-many of the advertisements are served by third coterie advertising companies.”
Spam #7 is my favorite because it is so lengthy. I’m sure it’s just an algorithm (I have not studied spam so I don’t know how it’s developed and spewed across the interest universe), but it’s a long one … and almost coherent.
Enough procrastination. I’m participating in Camp NaNoWriMo and way behind in my word count. My goal is 50,000 words and at the rate I’m going, I’ll be done in June :( Still, it’s late, my cats are demanding to be fed, and I still have to take my clothes out of the dryer.
Pleasant dreams my fellow bloggers.
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A brief exchange between me and another blogger about the need for solitude in which to write led me to thinking about what would be the perfect writing space. Writers have lives that include families, friends, coworkers, and pets. Those who have children (especially young children) can find it very hard to secure a quiet spot for writing, if that is what they need. I like reading about other writers’ work spaces and see the variety from an ascetic outbuilding to a corner room overflowing with books and papers ( http://www.pw.org/content/writing_spaces; http://www.themillions.com/2012/02/where-we-write.html). I know perhaps one or two people who have the ability to tune out everything around them and be perfectly focused on their writing in the midst of total noisy chaos. I am definitely not one of those people.
I need complete quiet, which shouldn’t be too hard since it’s just me and my husband and three cats. However, the oldest cat, Luisa, can be very vocal, especially when you put a closed door between you and her. I have a room of my own where I do most of my writing, but Luisa “shares” the room with me. When I’m in there, she has to be in there too. If I’m lucky, she’ll eventually curl up on the guest bed and fall asleep. Usually, though, she has to “Meow” and Me-OOOW” and paw at my chair several times before she settles down.
As I face opening day of Camp NaNoWriMo, I wish I could spirit myself to the St. James Hotel in New Orleans where, during NaNoWriMo 2012, just me, my iPad and a keyboard huddled together and wrote for hours while my husband was at a conference in another hotel. My first day I wrote over 4,000 words. What a joy it was!
Of course, most of those words were crap, but to have unbroken concentration was liberating. And right now I can only fantasize about an ideal writing space. More than likely I’ll be folded into a corner of our couch (which also serves as my reading and knitting corner) with my iPad on a TV tray and the keyboard on my lap. If I’m lucky, I can sneak some time at work, although I can’t prevent surprise visits from colleagues and I’d probably get written up if I put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door. Actually, such a sign would attract attention, not deflect it.
And there is that room of my own (except when I share it with Luisa). My 20-inch Mac desktop has a lot more flexibility than my iPad; much easier to hop between Pages and Evernote and FireFox, multitasking my way through a novel. No surprise that I write less when I’m on my desktop than with my iPad ;) Even now, as I try to write this post, I spend most of my writing time jumping back and forth between Evernote, Pinterest, and Calibri … looking for pictures to add, downloading books to my Kobo … when I’m supposed to be writing. So the iPad will win out as my best avenue to focused writing. It was truly wonderful in NOLA.
What is your favorite writing space? How does where you write help you write?
Do you have a fantasy writing space? I often imagine myself going on a retreat of some sort, preferably one where everyone has to take a vow of silence. Or a lonely cabin in the woods … or on the beach … or in the desert. For me, location would not be so important as solitude. While I got a lot of writing done in New Orleans, it was NEW ORLEANS and so my afternoons and evenings were spent walking and eating and talking with my husband. In other words, I could have gotten a lot more writing done if I had been in a city I really didn’t care for and if I had been by myself. Then again, you could argue I had the best of both worlds for a few days ;)
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In an earlier post, I wrote that I do feel regret over some things I’ve done (or not done) in my life. These posts are driven in part by the fact that I have less than half of my life to live and I’m still not living the way I want to. Of course, it’s taken me this long to figure out what I want to do for the remainder of my life (besides eat great food, have great sex, read great books and listen to great music, most of which I do enjoy now). What I want to do it be true to myself. Perhaps my biggest regret is feeling that I’ve been living (and am still living) a lie for the past 20+ years. Career-wise, I’ve taken a path far away from where I originally started. I was never good at math, abysmal at statistics when I was high school and college, but today I am a “health statistics analyst,” spending my days writing SQL code to make disparate data sets “communicate” so my state can eventually have a complex understanding of the health and health outcomes of its citizens. Nice work, actually, and it pays well. But it is not at all what I had intended, and even though the work is interesting and my coworkers are wonderful, supportive, dedicated people, I could walk away and never miss the job, never think to myself, “if only I had written more code.”
My detour began when I was a teenager. I grew up in a very small, sparsely populated area of the Northeast where the local jobs tended to be at fast-food restaurants. I hated high school but I loved community college and often wondered if I could make a career out of being a college student. (I nearly succeeded, having been to five universities/colleges, obtained two masters degrees, finished two years of doctoral coursework and a spattering of miscellaneous classes.) The problem is I didn’t want to teach, and all my advisers argued that the only way I could write was if I also taught. As I’ve said in previous posts (and I will say often), I am a shy, sensitive introvert. I spent most of my childhood trying to disappear into corners and shadows. In college, I would drop classes if any of the assignments involved presentations (except for those classes I was compelled to take in order to get my degree). Ironically, because of my foray into public health, the list of presentations I’ve given over the last ten years is longer than the body of my resume. But I still hate giving presentations.
I just wanted to write, but I was too naive and introverted to figure out how to make a living at it without having to teach as well. I was the only one in my immediate family who had even set foot in a college, and for that I was an oddity. Becoming a teacher would have made me even more odd in their eyes. I kept trying to come up with more marketable plans, ideas for jobs that my family would appreciate and understand (like owning a greenhouse or working in a hospital), but I was very unhappy at every thing I tried. The only times when I was happy was when I was reading literature, writing, and sitting in class.
So I made a hard left at a detour and moved to the other side of the continent, upsetting my family, not finishing college (yet), not knowing what the hell I was getting myself into. On the West Coast, I had the opportunity to be true to myself but unfortunately I got stuck in a rut with drugs and drinking and general flaying about. I was a mess. It’s a long story about how I eventually cleaned myself up (with plenty of help from someone who is still in my life). But once I was cleaned up and again thinking about how can I make a living as a writer, I took a hard right on another detour and wound up in the Southeast. It’s too embarrassing to say exactly where I am. Although the current fix I’m in has paid well and allowed me to save and anticipate a comfortable if modest retirement, it’s taken a chunk of my life. Worse, it has nearly destroyed me as a writer.
While I was studying writing and literature, I felt validated as a writer and encouraged by my peers and professors. But at the time the local job market for writers and editors was pathetic and eventually I embarked on yet another detour, this time into the social sciences. You don’t write up research findings like you write a short story. It didn’t take long before I was convinced that I was a mediocre writer. Only by participating in NaNoWriMo a few years ago, did I realize how I had screwed myself as a writer, let myself down by internalizing the judgments of others.
And now that I’m facing retirement in a few years (hopefully with the same good health that I have now), I want to stop taking detours. I want to get back on The Path and not believe it’s too late. This blog is one step in that direction. Zoetrope.com has made it possible to participate in a writing group without having to change out of my jammies, and NaNoWriMo gives me that somewhat gentle kick-in-the-butt to just sit down and write. Times like these, I have regrets, but they just give me more drive to make up for lost time.
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Another thought-provoking blog post from Eric John Baker … this one on writing groups.
The first writing group I ever belonged to was in my community college and we actually called ourselves a “literary guild.” We had a faculty adviser and a small stipend to produce a literary magazine. They were a very encouraging, supportive group and the faculty adviser provided much needed guidance. Everyone was published in the journal. No one was left out. We also had quarterly readings and met for group readings and critiques about once a week. For a very young writer, it was a wonderful experience. But I was very young (still in my teens) and everyone was so much older (like 20 or so) and I was pretty much treated with kid gloves which was fine because my skin was very thin. I wrote more than I would have without them, and my writing improved because they did offer constructive criticism.
That said, I haven’t had quite the same experience since. I’ve tended to “join” groups such as university writing workshops, probably trying to replicate the experience of my community college days. I like having a faculty member who guides the group; the faculty is usually the one (for me, anyway) who offers the most useful advice. And I have gained, both in quantity and quality, from the workshop experience. But occasionally someone rakes you over the coals, and having that happen in public is unnecessarily humiliating. It can stop your writing dead in its tracks and has no useful purpose. I don’t think a writer has to have a thick skin. She just has to keep writing.
I recently commented on Eric’s blog about an experience I had many years ago but still resonates with me today. I was taking an Article & Essay Writing class for my graduate degree in English. We had been assigned to small groups where each of us would read and critique the other student’s paper. A couple of students in my group were PhD students. I chose to write a book review of a biography of Virgina Woolf and was quite pleased with the scholarly style of my paper (omniscient third-person). I believed the PhD students would like it, even praise it for being far advanced for your average Masters student. But they were not pleased. They tried to be kind but before they could even get the words out I knew what they were going to say: it was boring. My paper was boring. I don’t know if there is any more devastating critique of writing but to say that it is boring. They did try to be kind (they actually were very nice people), but their struggle to find something redeemable in my review was painful to watch. And I was devastated and I know I didn’t hide it very well. Later that day I went home and cried and cried and cried. I would have stopped writing, too, except that this was for a class and I didn’t want to flunk it.
I had to revise my paper. That was part of the course. That was the purpose of the groups: to get feedback and then revise. But every time I sat at the computer and started to revise, I broke down crying. I felt ashamed that I had even thought of myself as a writer. Still, I had to do something. And then I remember one thing that each of the students said to me: “I want to know what you think of the biography. What did the biography mean to you?” And then I realized what they meant and why the review was boring to them. It was such an objective review that there was no life to it. It was as dry as the desert. So I threw away the original and started over. I wrote about my personal interest in Virgina Woolf and why I thought this particular biography was the best of all that I had read. I wrote about why it interested me as a writer. I used “I” throughout my review.
I submitted the final paper to the class at large and had the pleasure not only of hearing that it was wonderful to read, but also that it was far, far better than what I had originally turned in. On a lark, I sent the review to the Journal of Biography and a year later it was published. When I received the galleys for my review, I compared the edited copy to my original. They had only changed one word.
I came so close to just giving up. Fortunately, I had an obligation to deal with that paper and, fortunately, I had received excellent advice. I had only needed to be open to it. I only had to write the kind of book review that I would enjoy reading!
So groups are tricky. I’m partial to university-style writing workshops but maybe that’s because they are so familiar to me (having spent the bulk of my adult life in college). I shy away from local writing groups because I’m shy. I’m not physically or psychologically comfortable in group settings. Instead I prefer online writing groups such as Zoetrope.com. I’ve gotten a mix of feedback from writers on Zoetrope, but there’s always at least a couple that provide good, solid criticism. And I can read those critiques in the comfort and solitude of my room.
[Full disclosure: I do not belong to a writing group]
Writers are often told by the experts to join a writing group. Having other writers critique your work can help you identify your weaknesses and improve your ideas, so the reasoning goes. Therefore, writing groups are good. That makes sense to me.
I’m not convinced it’s true, though. In my recent post about self-doubt, some people commented that they lost their motivation to write or otherwise had their confidence shattered after being bashed by other writers in a writing group. I’ve encountered similar claims in the past.
Speaking broadly, the problem with expert advice in an arts-related field is the lack of supporting science for its validity. How do we know writing groups are necessary? Because an expert said so? Because it seems logical? It’s very possible that, if you took a random sample over an appropriate time frame, a…
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For anyone who is self-publishing in the hopes of attracting a publisher, here’s a horror story for you: If A Publisher Offers You a Contract for Your Self-Published Book, Will You Be Forced (By Amazon) To Refund Past Customers Who Bought It?. You can also read the writer’s original post here: http://www.jamiemcguire.com/amazon-beautiful-disaster-emails/. What is happening to this author doesn’t make any sense at all. The original book isn’t “defective” like a short wire in a waffle iron (and then those companies rarely inform their customers of the defect and offer a refund). Is (part of) the lesson that one avoid doing business with Amazon?
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Spoiler Alert! I am a huge fan of Louise Penny, author of the Inspector Gamache series and in the following post, I talk about her most recent novel. If you have not yet read it, then you may not want to read my post since I give too much away. This is an abridged letter I wrote to Ms. Penny after finishing A Beautiful Mystery.
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Dear Ms. Penny,
I have loved your Inspector Gamache series since first listening to Still Life from Audible.com two-and-a-half years ago. You are a master at blending the standard structure of a mystery with the philosophical underpinnings of a literary novel. I deeply admire your skill in character development as well as plot formation. Since I listen to your novels, I’ve been able to “whip” through them while driving to work or knitting or taking walks. I’ve just finished A Beautiful Mystery and now I have that long wait ahead of me until the next novel.
I am writing to you after some careful reflection and a long talk with one of my closest friends, who is also a great fan of yours. I found A Beautiful Mystery troubling in a few ways that I want to share with you. It’s a testament to your writing that Inspector Gamache and Beauvoir have gotten under my skin to the point where I felt strongly affected by this last novel.
I was devastated by Beauvoir’s decision to leave with the Superintendent. His agony, his self-destructiveness was nearly unbearable. I had grown so fond of Beauvoir and was thrilled at the beginning of the novel to find that he and Annie were in love. I can understand that his injuries (both physical and emotional) from the raid would leave him vulnerable to the Superintendent’s manipulations, but was it inevitable that he would leave with him? I want to beg you to tell me that he will be all right in the next novel, that he will be redeemed, that all will be resolved and then all would be right in the world, but I know you can’t tell me that, whether or not you already know his fate.
Maybe my reaction to Beauvoir’s breakdown says more about me than the novel, but I do feel so “invested” in this series. Not financially, but up until now, the novels have been an escape for me. Yes, terrible things happen, like murder, like Clara throwing Peter out, like Ruth having to give up her duck, but the murders are resolved, Clara probably needs some time away from Peter anyway, and Ruth showed she was capable of nurturing and loving by caring for the duck.
And the murders were central to the stories as well, whereas, in A Beautiful Mystery, the murder became incidental, almost unnecessary except as a vehicle for putting Gamache and Beauvoir in a closed environment where they had no choice but to face their demons in the form of the Superintendent. By the time the murder was solved, I really didn’t care any more. I would have preferred that Gamache and Beauvoir had left together, leaving the murder for the Superintendent to investigate. The murder just didn’t matter to me once Beauvoir started falling apart.
The cliff-hanger ending also left me feeling distressed. That probably sounds funny, and I do feel a bit embarrassed to admit it. Really, this is just a novel, but the characters are so true to life. Gamache is not perfect; if he was, he would have been more forthcoming with Beauvoir, addressed his anxieties instead of just ordering him about as if the raid had never happened. He is partly to blame for Beauvoir’s breakdown and it makes sense that he is.
I guess I’m really writing this because I want to understand why you chose to end the novel the way you did. I don’t think you needed a cliff-hanger. This was your 8th novel and you are such a celebrated writer that surely you know that your next novel will be a bestseller as well. Really, if Beauvoir had regained his senses and chosen to stay with Gamache, I would still be eagerly awaiting novel #9. I would just have a more happy anticipation. As it is, I’m worried, even scared, that we will lose Beauvoir entirely to the “dark side.” So I await novel #9 with some trepidation, now that I know I care (too) deeply about these characters that you have painted with such skill and love.
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If you’ve read this far and have your own thoughts on A Beautiful Mystery, please share them. I am eagerly awaiting How the Light Gets In (due to be published in August of this year), but part of me also dreads it. What does it mean when a writer, as a reader, can’t handle things going bad?
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After a 3 years’ absence, I’ve decided to re-enter the blogosphere but with a different purpose. I simply want to write, and I’m tired of writing in my head. Initially, this blog was to be a resource to me and anyone who happened by, a writing resource with links to websites and other blogs devoted to the art and science of writing. I wanted to be useful. I didn’t want to write about Me. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in Me. But recently I finished reading Quiet by Susan Cain and now that I have a better understanding of myself (shy, sensitive introvert that I am), I want to make the jump from thinking nobody would care to I don’t care if nobody would care … about Me. I want to write.
Writing used to be a way to hide from a world that frightened and confused me. I was very introverted as a child, no doubt in part because I needed but didn’t get glasses until I was 10. Everything scared me. Life scared me. And yet there were times when I could act outgoing, although I don’t think anyone much liked me when I was like that. I was very emotional, would cry if anyone looked at me the wrong way, and crying wasn’t something tolerated very well in my home. It was a sign of weakness. Which meant I cried a lot.
I wrote trying to imagine having some control over my life, wanting to believe I had a better relationship with my family than I did. Wanting to believe that at the end of the day, they loved me. As a young adult living away from home, I wrote in journals, trying to decipher the world around me. I had moved to a place radically different from the one I grew up in. I embraced “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll” and spent too many years making a mess of myself. And writing very little.
I went back to school, took writing classes, tried using my writing as I had in the past, to work through and survive both physical and emotional trauma. What I always lacked was confidence. I never wrote with any real confidence in my writing. When anyone did try to support me (most often, a teacher), I almost literally ran the other way. I don’t know what I was afraid of: most likely, failure, but what kind of failure? I grew up feeling like a fraud, and I still harbor some of that today. I’m afraid I will disappoint. I disappoint myself every day, but I’m used to it. I hate disappointing others. And without confidence in myself, I couldn’t very well use the support given to me. Only a fraud would do that.
So now, decades later, I have very little to show for my writing. I’m way past the halfway mark of my life, and I do have many regrets, not the least of which is I didn’t write more. I might have had a different story if the internet had been around when I was young and isolated. Although there is a lot of crap out there, I’ve come across writers that I never would have known if it wasn’t for the internet. They are not all published writers, but they write. They seize the opportunities that the internet provides. I think some of them might even be shy, sensitive introverts like myself.
I have regrets and some of those regrets I can do nothing about. But the regret that I didn’t write more … I don’t have to die with that regret. That one I can change.
Marie at 1 Write Way 