Getting Into the Groove

I just received a really nice note from a Goodreads friend named Alex who has the itch to write but doesn't know how to start.

We've all been there, haven't we? Think about all the skills you've learned over your lifetime--reading, riding a bike, cooking a pot of pasta, driving a car--and what it felt like at first. The word that comes to my mind is overwhelming. I remember, vividly, my first driving lesson: hands on the wheel trying to steer, foot on the gas (or brake, more often), eyes bouncing from the road to the mirrors to the dashboard, my brain on overload. It seemed impossible that I would ever be able to drive with ease. But eventually I did--and I never would have if I hadn't gotten behind the wheel in the first place.

And so it is with writing. You'll learn by doing. The trouble is that learning to write, or learning to create any kind of art, feels different than other skills because our thoughts and feelings are so exposed. Emotionally, there's more at stake. We're afraid of appearing idiotic or dull to others--or, even worse--to ourselves. Spoiler alert: No matter who you are, at one time or another both are going to happen. But you will also experience moments of joy when you turn out work that surpasses your expectations. If ups and downs are a given for all of us, why not stop fretting and just get to work?

Whether you're picking up a pen for the first time or returning after a long hiatus, here are a few baby steps to help you get into the groove. 


Step 1.  Buy yourself a beautiful notebook and a bunch of your favorite pens. 

Even if you think you'd rather work on a computer, I urge you not to skip this step. For the first several months it's best to stick with paper and pen. Nothing is more discouraging than a blinking cursor, or more distracting than knowing the Internet is just a tab-click away. Lovely paper and a smooth-writing pen are a pleasure to use. By purchasing good writing materials, you are making a commitment to taking yourself seriously as a writer.


Step 2.  Schedule your writing time.

No matter how busy you are, I guarantee you can find ten minutes a day to write. You can either block out the same time every day or you can choose to be flexible--as long as your ten minutes are done by bedtime. No excuses. For the first month, I recommend sticking to ten minutes only. Even if you're on a roll and could write for an hour, shut it down after ten minutes. It's always best to stop when you're hot--it makes it a lot easier to sit down and write the next day. In fact, it will make you look forward to writing the next day. Getting the motivation to sit down and write is half the battle.

After the first month or so, up your time to fifteen minutes. Then twenty. Settle into a block of time that is comfortable for you. Most writers I know only write for a maximum of about four hours a day. How long you write for is less important than keeping a consistent schedule. Some writers insist that you must write every day. Personally, I take weekends off. If your schedule allows you to only write on weekends, do that.


Step 3.  Give yourself permission to be bad. 

Oh, the hours I wasted, staring at a blank screen, afraid to write a single bad sentence! It would have been so much better to just give myself permission to write the worst possible sentence and then fix it later. You can't edit what isn't there. Every writer writes junky first drafts. The real art, the real skill is in the editing. You have to write garbage--a lot of it--to get to the good stuff. To learn how to write, you'll need to be a garbage-producing machine. In my college oeuvre of junk-writing I produced a schmaltzy story entitled "Pink Soap and Lilacs", that still makes me want to gag whenever I think about it. I will not be sharing the awful details of this particular story with you, which brings me to the next step:


Step 4.  Don't share with anyone--yet.

As you begin to churn out your requisite pile of word-sludge you may suddenly strike gold. You might suddenly hit upon an idea for a nail-biting thriller or you may turn out an exquisite sentence that makes you proud. Your instinct will be to share it with someone, but I urge you to keep it to yourself. As I've said over and over again, you will rarely get the ecstatic reaction you are hoping for and early on your writer's ego will be too fragile to handle it. When you find a golden nugget in your junk pile, hoard it. Keep this treasure for yourself. Keep hoarding your literary gold until you have enough of it to feel confident in your ability. If it pleases you, that's all that matters.


Step 5.  Read, read, read. 

When I got my first ghost-writing job, I still wasn't quite sure how to intersperse dialogue with action.   I wasn't even sure how to properly punctuate dialogue. To learn how, all I did was open a book and see how it was done. Every book is an instruction manual. Unsure how to open a story? Or create suspense at the end of a chapter? What about using page breaks? Everything you need to know is sitting on your bookshelf. Take down a few of your favorite books and see how it's done. I still do this all the time.

You should also be constantly reading for pleasure. Read what you like, not what you think you're supposed to read. Fill your head with words and they will be accessible to you when you need them.


Moving Forward

Once you've practiced enough to produce a rough draft of a short story or several chapters of a novel, then you might want to consider finding a writers' group in your area. Don't rush this step, but when you're ready writers' groups can be an invaluable resource for every skill level. For more info on choosing (or starting) the right group for you, see my post about writing groups.

Do you have a question about writing or publishing? Leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer it in a future post. 

Happy writing!

There's Never a Perfect Time

A friend of mine, who is a school teacher, once mentioned that when life settled down she would love to write a children's book. "Why wait?" I said. "There will never be a perfect time."

My answer was a bit simplistic, I know. My friend is very busy with the demands of work and family.   I understand what it's like trying to find a little time for oneself and how the muse doesn't always cooperate when that sliver of time opens up. Right now, I'm watching my daughters run through the sprinkler on the front lawn and I'm holding my breath, hoping it will occupy them long enough for me to jot down a few thoughts. This is the only quiet time I will have today. If I don't seize this brief opportunity this week's blog post will never happen.

This is life. We have so many responsibilities we forsake the things we really want to do. Yet how many of these responsibilities are truly necessary? Maybe fewer than we think. How much free time do we actually have? Maybe more than we realize. A little web surfing, a little TV. There is breathing room in our days, but we've found ways to fill it. Ways that might feel like we're doing something substantive but leave us feeling drained, dissatisfied. Why do we compulsively check our email all day long when we say we'd like to spend more time reading? Why do we rob ourselves of even things that bring us pleasure?

Time isn't really the the obstacle--it's fear. It's easy to postpone our dreams by blaming our schedules. It takes the pressure off. Deciding to finally take that leap into the unknown is terrifying. We are afraid to fail. Committing to action is to court disaster. So we hide behind our to-do list. It's safer that way. The decision seems to be made for us.

Time is our enemy in that we have only a finite amount of it. How much? No one knows. When we are young, we foolishly believe time is a luxury. This is not to say we should spend every minute being productive. We should spend as much of our time as we can doing what fulfills us--not on empty habits or on pleasing those who do not occupy a place in our immediate circle of family and friends. If we don't act now, then when? There will always be a problem or two plaguing us, an inbox that never empties, another holiday around the corner. There will always be an excuse we can point to  if we allow it. Years can slip away before we notice.

The perfect time is now. But it doesn't have to happen all at once.

I suggested to my friend that she buy a beautiful notebook and a pen just to jot down a some ideas. Spend a few minutes every day or week on it. Let go of outcomes, expectations. Make it fun. Just start.

Now.

Performance Skills

Recently, had the honor of being one of the judges in a writing competition hosted by my local library. At the awards ceremony this weekend, each of the winners read their work aloud. It was an interesting mix of performances--some of the writers (more than I would have expected) obviously had lots of public speaking experience and were comfortable reading before a crowd, while others looked a little bit nervous and out of their element. Unfortunately, the winner of the category I was judging--fiction--was away at a writers' conference and so I didn't have the opportunity to meet him. His story was read by my friend Emma, a librarian and organizer of the event.

While I'd really enjoyed the winner's story on the page (obviously), Emma's reading was stellar. As she read the piece she was bringing the story alive, elevating it. It wasn't just that the words were being read aloud, they were being read well. Emma was hitting the comedic beats with such impeccable timing that she was taking a sweet, humorous story and making it hilarious. The audience went wild for it.

After trying to figure out how I could hire Emma to do all my future readings, I began to wonder how some of the other pieces we'd heard that afternoon would have come across if she had been the reader. Conversely, I wondered how some of the pieces that were presented by confident readers would have sounded in less capable hands. This really drove the point home for me that author readings were less about the writing and more about the performance.

One of the best readings I've been to in recent years was by Monica Wood, author of WE WERE THE KENNEDYS. While many readings follow a simple format of introduction/10-15 minutes of reading/Q and A, Monica talked about how the book came to be, techniques in memoir writing, and her recent trip to Ireland. She even sang a duet with her husband! She interspersed these anecdotes with five-minute bursts of reading. Truth be told, I don't think she read much at all--just enough to whet the audience's appetite for the book.

The thought of having to perform for an audience probably strikes terror in the heart of most writers--I know it does mine. We are, by nature, a more introverted breed, better suited to sitting alone at our desks than getting up in front of a room full of people. But publicity is part of the job, and with some practice, it can actually be fun.  I took a reading seminar with author, playwright, and actor, Howard Waxman, and here are some of the things I learned:

1) THE AUDIENCE IS ON YOUR SIDE. It's in their best interest to root for you. Think about it--if you do well, they'll be entertained. If you're shaking and mumbling, they'll be squirming in their seats, feeling your pain.

2) YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE SHAKESPEARE. Don't apologize for not being the greatest writer who ever lived. There will always be someone better than you and someone worse. It's not a contest. Simply say to yourself that this is the best work you are capable of at this moment and be proud.

3) BE SELECTIVE. Pick a scene that will sound good out loud. Dialogue, action, and humor all play well to an audience. Long narrative description will put them to sleep. Don't be afraid to edit your scene for brevity, clarity, and time constraints. Don't forget to explain anything in the scene that the audience won't understand out of context.

4) PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE! Time yourself. Slow down, then go half that speed. E-NUN-CI-ATE. Exaggerate. Animate. Give each character a different voice. What feels over-the-top to you will most likely just barely register with the audience. A good exercise is to practice reading children's books aloud as if you are reading to a group of preschoolers (or, better yet, find a real group of preschoolers to read to!). Taking an acting class is also helpful.

5) HAVE A FEW ANSWERS READY.  Instill confidence in yourself during the Q and A period by having the answers to the most frequently asked questions ready. At every reading I've ever been to, someone has asked about writing habits, the creative process, favorite books, etc. Know your answer beforehand. Also have a few comments ready in case no one in the audience is brave enough to ask questions.

6) ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE. Think about how lucky you are to have the opportunity to share your work. As nerve-wracking as public speaking is, it's a nice contrast from the lonely work we have to do from day to day. You may even find, with enough experience, that you'll love it.

The Mid-Book Crisis

Now that my novel is chugging along well past the midpoint, I've decided to plunge back into social media--and I'm quickly discovering it's still the same time-suck that made me temporarily abandon it in the first place. I've just joined Twitter (@stephdoyon) and I'm thoroughly enjoying the distraction. When I start looking for ways to procrastinate in the middle of a project it's a sure sign that I'm facing what I like to call "The Mid-Book Crisis."

For those of you who don't know, I spent my formative writing years as a ghostwriter for a teen series called Sweet Valley University. I also wrote a few books for a series called Fearless and a quartet of my own called On the Road, about an eighteen year-old girl who takes the year off before college to travel the country (or at least she was supposed to, until the series was canceled--but that's a future blog post). The point is, I've written fifteen books and it doesn't matter whether the story outline was handed to me or I developed the plot on my own, whether it was a teen book or a literary novel, I've always run into a crisis of confidence at exactly the same point in every book--right around the middle.

Beginnings are tough in their own right--there's nothing tougher than facing a blank page. On the other hand, there are so many ideas and hopes and characters that beginnings are also full of excitement and energy. An unwritten story is full of limitless potential. Characters develop and situations unfold. It's an exciting process of discovery.

After the beginning is established, characters assert themselves and conflicts arise. There are past details to fill in, threads to follow. Tension mounts. Then the plot starts moving toward a climax and  characters must make a key decisions. Action must be taken. This is the big moment...

And that's when the crisis hits. This is the moment when I freeze.

I know when I start to approach the midpoint of a book because suddenly I'll find myself cleaning the house, surfing the Internet, blowing off my work schedule. I'll get an idea for another book or a short story and start writing that, instead. Right now I have an idea for a humorous memoir about the writing business and I'm just itching to get started on it. And before that was an epic I started set in San Francisco and Shanghai at the turn of the twentieth century. Both of those sound like more fun than what I'm currently writing. Anything to avoid the work at hand.

Why is this the midpoint so difficult to face? Because it signals the death of possibility.

Every story starts with an infinite number of choices (characters, genres, plots, point of views, techniques, voices, etc) and slowly, through decision-making and the process of elimination, I am now confronted with the product of my choices. Worse still, if I'm true to my character, there is really only one perfect choice he can make at the climax. It's all been building to this moment. The grand story that used to exist only in my imagination is now specific and concrete. It's also flawed and not quite what I thought it would be and there's a fear that all the work I've put in is not quite adding up to something worthy of all the years I've spent on it.

But here's what I've learned: No creative endeavor ever quite lives up to our lofty visions. Every artist is afraid of failure. Some believe that it's better to shelve the piece and always wonder, than to complete it and be disappointed.

This is the real point of failure for most. Ask any writer and they'll admit to having at least one unfinished manuscript tucked away. But you have to press on. You're so close. The groundwork has already been laid, the hard part is over. Once you reach the climax of the story, the consequences of the characters' actions are inevitable. And then a beautiful thing happens--the last third of the book nearly writes itself.

Do you have a story you're afraid to finish?

Time to Start Blogging Again...

It's kind of shocking how long it's been since my last post (don't look), but now that I'm well past the mid-point of my latest novel, it feels like the time is right to revive this puppy. My hope is that within the next several months, as I finish the first draft and attempt to get my second novel published (second adult literary novel, that is--I've written 13 young adult novels) I'll be able to share the process with you. Publishing a book is a wild ride--the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It's full of fantastic surprises and crushing disappointments. So why not share all the juicy goodness?

Part of what will make this particular journey interesting is that it's been eight years since my last book came out. It has also been eight years since my twin daughters were born. Notice a correlation? Some people are able to juggle a career and family at the same time, but I was not able to do that very well. So I decided to enjoy my children, write when I could, and try to forget that I was falling behind my peers. I have to constantly remind myself that life is not a contest and that comparisons are damaging.

The reality, though, is that I've essentially been out of the publishing business for eight years and during that time it has become a completely different animal. People I've made connections with have moved on. E-publishing is now a big deal. Social media has exploded. I'm fascinated by the changes and terrified, too.

Will you join me? It should be an interesting ride.

Elizabeth Gilbert On Creative Fear

First, I want to send a hearty congratulations to my fellow Mainer, Elizabeth Strout, who has just won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of short stories, entitled OLIVE KITTERIDGE. This brings our state's grand total of Pulitzer Prize winners to around four or five. Not bad for a small, rural state.

My dear friend Bonnie sent me this link to a video of Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of the wildly successful EAT, PRAY, LOVE) talking about creativity and fear. She also addresses the problems related to writing a follow-up to a huge bestseller, which made me think back to the old Lee vs. Patterson debate. The video is about 20 minutes long and I highly recommend you take a look.

You Can Have It All--Just Not at the Same Time

The winter blues have officially set in—and not just because we're buried in fifteen inches of new snow and vacation is now a fading memory. It dawned on me this morning that in June it will be five years since my novel, THE GREATEST MAN IN CEDAR HOLE, was released in hardcover.

Oh, my. Time has certainly slipped away from me.

Knowing that five years have passed and I have not published anything makes me feel quite panicky, I assure you, though I’m a little less panicky than I used to be. The first and second anniversaries of the paperback edition gave me the prickly sweats and led to many sleepless nights. If I had had a project in the pipeline, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But I had nothing. I was losing momentum. The more I white-knuckled it, the harder it was to write.

So, I relaxed. An idea finally did come to me, but the problem was more about time than will. Being the mother of very active, preschool-aged twins leaves me with very little mental or physical energy to be productive. It used to be that when I had a moment to be still, a narrative would constantly be flowing in my head. Now, when I find that rare moment of quiet, I hear nothing.

When I started my writing career, I was single, living in New York, and producing four books a year as a ghostwriter in addition to working full-time at a literary agency. I lived with a constant adrenaline rush, always facing a deadline or having a book coming out. It felt great to be doing the very thing I loved the most. In six years, I produced 14 books, though I won’t pretend for a minute that ghostwriting teen books is anywhere as difficult as writing an adult literary novel. It took me five years to do that, largely because I am a very slow, deliberate writer.

I remember a conversation I had with some housemates (I lived in a boarding house) about work and relationships, and someone brought up an old adage that has many different permutations, but his version was this: “You can have a great relationship, a great social life, and a career, but not all three at the same time.” Everyone at the table looked at me, as though I was the apparent exception to this, but I assured them that even though I had a great relationship and a career I loved, I had no social life at all. This seemed to bring great relief to my housemates, who all felt that they were lacking in some aspect of this trinity of happiness.

I used to think that people who complained about not being able to “have it all” just weren’t trying hard enough, but now I’m thinking that the rule of three is probably true for most of us. I still have the great relationship (and now family life), I have a great network of friends (though some of you keep moving away), but at the moment, no career. There are some people who appear to have no trouble with this balancing act—Soule Mama, for example—but I have yet to figure out the trick to having success on all fronts. Every time I focus on one aspect of my life—writing, for example—something else goes to hell, like the housekeeping. Every time I put out a fire, I inadvertently start a new one someplace else.

I take the edge off my panic by telling myself that there is a time for everything, and right now, it’s my time to be a mother. In two years they’ll be in school full time and I’ll have a much easier time with my juggling act, so enjoy the moment. And I really do. But I’ll never fully surrender to literary idleness, either. My moments of creation are so rare but they still give me such deep satisfaction that giving up just isn’t an option. As far as my career goes, I'm thinking I may have to re-adjust my expectations just a little.

(P.S. If anyone familiar with Blogger can help me with my inconsistent fonts, I would really appreciate it. For some reason, I can't fix this problem.)

Good Enough Opportunities

A few weeks ago I watched an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and the show had me in fits. For the uninitiated, Ramsay is a famous chef and TV personality with restaurants all over the world, who swoops into troubled eateries and saves them from financial and culinary ruin. Ramsay’s style runs somewhere between foul-mouthed drill sergeant and exasperated life coach. With a little cleaning, some blunt advice, and a whole lot of free publicity, Ramsay usually manages to turn the restaurant around.

Not so with Piccolo Teatro, a tiny vegetarian restaurant in Paris, which was the subject of the episode that made me crazy. The restaurant was bleeding money, yet it appeared that no one was making any effort at all—not even with Chef Ramsay standing by and pointing out the problems. The cook was goofy and unprepared. The restaurant’s only waitress quit the second Ramsay criticized her. The owner, the worst offender of all, was lazy and had no authority. At times, it seemed as though she cared about saving her restaurant, and then she’d do something like stay home all day (without informing anyone) because she said her cat was having kittens. Instead of making an effort, she was full of excuses.

Despite revamping the menu, hiring a young, talented new chef, starting a lunch service and making the restaurant profitable again, even Ramsay couldn’t save Piccolo Teatro. When he returned to Paris a few weeks later for a follow-up, he discovered that the owner had closed the restaurant.

Arrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!

It seems inconceivable that someone with so many great opportunities, with a road map to success spelled out explicitly, would just throw it all away. I can’t begin to speculate as to her reasons for giving up, but I do know that some people are so afraid of success or failure that they’ll sabotage every opportunity that comes their way, sometimes without even consciously knowing it. I truly believe that what separates successful people from the rest of the pack is not talent or money or connections—it’s hard work, perseverance, and most of all the ability to seize opportunities, no matter how small.

When I moved to New York City from a small town in Maine, I hardly knew anyone. I was 22 and timid, largely unfamiliar with city life, and had no connections. I had just enough money to last in New York but a few months. I knew my time was limited there. I also knew that if I went back home right away, my chances of having a career in the publishing business would be zip. Back home, I had been offered a great position in sales by someone who had seen me working at my summer job. The offer included a car and a great salary, and the security of being in familiar territory. All I had to do was say the word and the job was mine. The problem was, this opportunity didn’t coincide with my goal of working in publishing and becoming a writer. I was scared to be in New York, but the thought of giving up on my goals—without giving it a real try—was even scarier.

I made a promise to myself that whatever publishing opportunity came along I would take it, no matter what. It didn’t have to be a perfect opportunity, just a good enough opportunity. I didn’t have resources to wait for something perfect, which may or may not have materialized, anyway.

I found my first job through the New York Times’ classifieds. The position was for a file clerk in the accounting office of a small literary agency. It paid very little. I wasn’t sure I could handle the accounting they wanted me to do. It wasn’t a perfect opportunity (or so I thought at the time) but it was good enough. Jump in first, I told myself, and figure out the rest as it comes. I had nothing to lose.

I wasn’t there but five months when I co-worker told me about one of the agency’s clients—a company that packaged book series for teenagers. She told me they needed ghostwriters. That’s all I needed to hear. I asked around and got more information about the process. I made a phone call. I wasn’t really interested in writing books for teenagers, but I was interested in writing, period. Good enough.

Within a few weeks I had my first ghostwriting contract and was writing at night in addition to my day job. My income doubled and I was leading a comfortable existence in New York. Soon I was writing, building valuable contacts, learning everything I could about the publishing industry, and writing books along the way. Good enough opportunities turned out to be perfect opportunities. I ended up spending six productive and fun years in the city, and used all that I learned along the way to get my first adult novel published.

And as far as Kitchen Nightmares goes, the episode did end on bit of a bright note. Even though Piccolo Teatro closed, Gordon Ramsay saw tons of potential in the young chef he had hired for the restaurant, and offered her a new job in one of his own kitchens. I’m happy to say that she jumped at the opportunity.

Knowing When to Stop

I just received a nice e-mail from a fellow blogger who describes herself as someone who has spent nearly four years working obsessively on a single screenplay, writing and re-writing it in various genres. Without knowing very much about her or the screenplay it’s hard to judge if all this re-working is necessary—it very well could be. But her situation did get me thinking about a question that all artists are forced to answer at some point: When is it done?

While I’m a firm believer in meticulous and sometimes drastic revisions, there comes a point in the creative process where re-writing produces nothing but diminishing returns. Perhaps you dwell too long on your choices, changing a word here and there, over and over again but not adding any real meaning or quality to the work. Maybe you hack the piece to death repeatedly every time you’ve found yourself stuck, hoping a new approach will help you find what’s missing. Or maybe you’re like Grady Tripp, in Michael Chabon’s WONDER BOYS, who just keeps writing and writing until he has a 2,600 page manuscript with no end in sight. No matter what the problem is, there comes a time when you have to think about letting go.

Unfortunately, writing is so subjective that there’s no definitive way of knowing when a piece is finished. There is no such thing as perfection, so one could argue that there is always room from improvement. That said, if the story is solid and the voice is clear and you’ve re-read the piece for mistakes, it’s fair to say it’s ready to send out. Don’t fret about a word here and there. If you use that as an excuse, you’re doing nothing but procrastinating.

If your story runs on and on with no end in sight, it’s time to take stock. Three things could be happening: 1) You love your story so much you can’t bear to see it end 2) Your self-worth is so tied-up in this project that you’ll be devastated when it’s over, or 3) You took a wrong turn somewhere and kept going when you should have ended it.

The third reason is easy enough to remedy; just find the point in the story where it should have naturally ended. The other two reasons are a little more complicated. I would suggest a trial separation. Put the piece away for at least three months. Give yourself a chance to fall in love with a new story. If you invest your energy in something else, you’ll have more clarity when you return.

Finally, if you’ve tried every which way to make a piece work and it’s still not happening, it might be time to call it quits. Perhaps, somewhere down the road, you can return to it again and you’ll have no trouble seeing the problem. Or, better still, there are probably a few parts that are worth salvaging, pieces you can take away from the story to create something new. It’s painful to give up when you’ve invested so much emotion, time and energy, but even with the best of intentions, but the truth is that sometimes stories just don’t work. Sometimes you’re better off just letting go.