Writing

Friday Fictioneers From Oregon

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Oregon is truly one of the most beautiful states in the union. The coast is an amazing collection of eclectic little towns and medium-sized cities. It is a bit reminiscent of the Maine coast in places–just a bit more spectacular. I’m staying in a small beach town called Rockaway Beach, about 100 miles west of Portland. The beach is gorgeous and not the mass of packed bodies like most east coast beaches–great for walking and contemplating, as well as for the wedding which was the purpose for my trip out here.

The Astoria Column, whose murals commemorate the history of Oregon.

The Astoria Column, whose murals commemorate the history of Oregon.

The amazing scenery along the Oregon portion of the Pacific Coast Highway is almost indescribable. Tunnels through mountains, shoulders that drop off to the Pacific below, roads that cut through hills, leaving oddly shaped pieces on either side. Then, there’s the magnificent port city of Astoria. Astoria was a must-see for me and my kids because I took them to the movie The Goonies when they were little, and it was a big hit for them. There is an informal Goonies tour of the various locations in Astoria used for filming, and the kids hit them all. It was great to hear their laughter and giggles. I could close my eyes and see them as little again, enjoying the Goonies’ adventures for the first time.

One of the small towns near Rockaway Beach is Garibaldi, a fishing village, which also has a history of wood milling. It has an interesting vibe about it, and it would make a wonderful setting for a story some time. I’ve taken some pictures as reminders and for later use.

Friday Fictioneers LogoI got an idea for Friday Fictioneers almost as soon as I saw today’s photo prompt. Finding quiet time (away from toddler grandkids, or, as I call them, The Hooligans) to write was another matter. Even now, I’m writing under the deadline of getting ready to go do some more touristy things (Tillamook Cheese Factory for one), but perhaps that’s just the impetus you need on vacation. It’s been almost a week since I’ve written a word, and I’m feeling the withdrawal.

That withdrawal brought forth “Judas Goats,” a little horror story for mid-July in the Pacific Northwest. If you don’t see the link on the story title, scroll to the top of this page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Friday Fictioneers Fireworks

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The thing with having a holiday fall in the middle of a week? I spent all day yesterday thinking it was Saturday. Since I thought it was Saturday, I was excited that vacation was only one day away. Reality crashed in when I sat down to watch the NASCAR race at Daytona and realized, nope, it’s Thursday. However, the good news is, I have more time to pack.

The vacation to the Pacific Northwest is mostly relaxation (even though I’ll be sharing a beach house with my kids and their kids) with a wedding thrown in, also in the middle of the week (the date is significant). The laptop will be along and although I won’t be working on the novel revision I’ve mentioned, I hope to work on some stories for Spy Flash 2. No wi-fi at the beach house, so my contact with the outside world may be limited, though I’ll stake out a coffee shop or two to spend some time in.

I also plan on walking on the beach, seeing some sights, walking on the beach, and, well, walking on the beach. There’s something about a beach and waves and sand beneath my feet that relaxes and soothes me.

When you see today’s Friday Fictioneers photo prompt, note the body language of the two people on the right. That’s what inspired today’s flash fiction “Carpe Diem.” Unfortunately, it was a posture all too familiar, and whereas today’s story is not autobiographical, it is reminiscent. If you don’t see the link on the title above, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Unexpected Paths will be on hiatus next week, and a new Friday Fictioneers post will depend on finding a wi-fi hot spot. Cross your fingers.

Revisions, Revisions, Revisions

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Whoever said revising is the hardest part of writing, give him or her a cigar. The odd thing is, I don’t know why that 1) surprises me and/or 2) annoys me. After all, I’ve been writing/revising something for close to forty years. Not a single one of my government reports or magazine articles made it to print without multiple revisions. I suppose in that case because the revisions were engendered by third parties rather than being self-induced, I just accepted it and moved on to the next one.

Every writer–no, don’t deny this because it’s every writer–grumbles when it comes to polishing that rough draft. Some people erroneously decide that first cut is good enough and rush to Smashwords or Kindle Direct Publishing and bestow on us a rough draft full of plot holes, inconsistencies, typos, grammatical goofs, putrid punctuation, and sloppy style. They are usually the first ones to wail that self-publishers get no respect. Well, duh, accept some responsibility for that. And I’ve self-published three collections of genre short stories. I agonized over every word, used the services of a proofreader, and some typos still got past us. I felt as if I’d betrayed the reader in that case. The advantage of direct publishing, though, is that I can upload a corrected version and only lose maybe one day of availability.

When my workshop instructor at Tinker Mountain praised my novel excerpt, he made a point of declaring how polished it was–and then suggested some line edits, ones that were necessary. He didn’t ask me for a copy of the entire MS as is. He told me to go home and revise it then get back in touch. I didn’t and don’t resent that feedback. This is a person whose opinion I respect, and he’s right. It’s a decent rough draft, which needs a lot of work to be a final product.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from grumbling as I go about Revision Round One.

What, you ask, you’re going to revise it more than once? Yes. I have a lot to digest about it: the instructor’s critique but my fellow workshoppers’ critiques as well. As I reviewed their comments, I saw they, with their fresh-eyed attention to the MS, made some good points which I have to factor into a revision. That means at least two revisions, perhaps more because I always hand off a “finished” MS to someone who will look at it from an editor’s perspective.

Why am I grumbling, then? Well, this novel is very different from what I usually write, which are historical thrillers. This novel is a combination of literary fiction and historical fiction (because it has a present-day and a past timeline interwoven), with a strand of mystery added, and the revision is taking me away from my characters, Mai and Alexei, who are like friends. Go on, admit it. Your characters become larger than life to you, too; otherwise, you’d write them with one dimension.

In this novel I’m also exploring a subject I never thought I’d address–race relations, historically and in the present day, and that’s by no means easy. Not that I’m tiptoeing around anything. I’m working very hard to be honest, and it’s difficult. My usual characters are just as bleeding-heart liberal as I am, so to be inside the head of a woman from the 1940’s to whom white supremacy is a given is very, very challenging. I’m trying not to make her a caricature and to show her as a human being, but that’s a trial as well. It’s too easy to just make her evil and not explain why she is the way she is.

However, doing something different from what you usually write expands you as a writer. It opens you to other possibilities, makes you look at your writing differently and more critically. A few years ago, I would have told you I could never have written a story of fewer than 500 words, much less 100 words, but I do it, twice, every week. I never disdained literary fiction–I read a lot of it–but I never thought I’d write a novel-length literary fiction work. But I have, and I’m very proud of it. Better yet, I’m excited about it, and I’ll be even more excited about it when it comes through the other side of the revision process.

Where revising your work is concerned, resistance is futile. You’ll be a better writer through revision.

June’s Final Friday Fictioneers

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Can it be possible we’ll soon be halfway through this year? Where has the time gone?

The novel revision is going well. Ahead of schedule in fact, which is good since I’ll be on vacation July 7 – 15. I think I’m about at the point to take a break from it anyway, so vacay will come at a good time for a lot of reasons. I’m sure I’ll come back to it refreshed.

Tuesday, I taught a one-night workshop on putting suspense into your writing, and that was enormous fun. We did it on a Facebook Event page, which didn’t go as smoothly as I’d like, so if anyone has any other suggestions, I’d appreciate it. Still, it was pretty cool to be “teacher” again, and I was honored someone asked me to do it.

Friday Fictioneers LogoMaybe because I’m about to take a cross-country flight and maybe because in my old job I worked a lot of “unruly passenger” issues, I came up with “On The Road Again.” Not exactly an homage to the Willie Nelson song of the same name, but I think you’ll see it’s apt. The photo prompt has a lot of layers to it–the POV and the implied motion. Simple yet complex, and my little story probably doesn’t do it justice, but it was fun to write.

As usual, if you don’t see the link on the story title in the paragraph above, scroll to the top of this page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select it from the drop-down list.

A Little Respect for NaNoWriMo

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During the critique of my novel excerpt in my Tinker Mountain workshop, I mentioned I’d completed the rough draft during National Novel Writing Month, and a small discussion ensued. The instructor, Fred Leebron, had a dim view of NaNoWriMo based on other workshops where people had submitted excerpts from their own NaNo works. Needless to say he wasn’t impressed.

Another workshop member sneered that NaNoWriMo emphasizes “quantity over quality.” That’s true, but it doesn’t necessarily mean quantity can’t become quality, I pointed out. I referred that person to the website, where the Office of Letters and Lights emphasizes editing and revising a NaNo draft, but I conceded you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink.

Later, during my one-on-one conference, Leebron admitted that he had a new respect for NaNoWriMo, given the quality of my work and another person’s workshop piece, also from NaNoWriMo. I explained that I do nothing with a NaNo draft for six months, then I pick it up and start revising. I also explained that the first twenty pages I’d submitted for the workshop had been worked and reworked during a writing retreat in May and honed especially for Tinker Mountain. The rest of the draft, I explained, needed a lot of work. Nevertheless, Leebron conceded he had new respect for NaNo but wished that every participant didn’t rush to publish or to submit to workshops before editing. I agree.

Of the two NaNoWriMo-ers in the workshop, I’m the seat of the pants writer. The other was an outliner. Now, I’ve done both, and, in fact, the only other NaNoWriMo MS I’m particularly proud of is one I meticulously outlined before November 1. Last year’s effort came from a germ of an idea in a piece of flash fiction I did for Friday Fictioneers. Either way works, but in some ways it’s the aftermath of NaNoWriMo that matters. The hype goes toward the build-up to November, to the daily word counts, and hitting that 50,000-word mark in thirty days. OLL can’t force you to behave like a professional writer and edit that MS–edit as in critically look at it and revise it into a polished MS. That’s up to the writer.

There are very few–I’d say negligible–writers who can go from a rough draft to a viable published work in those thirty days. For one, since the word count is what’s important, I’m finding that in my revision of last year’s MS, I’m eliminating about three-quarters of the dialogue tags. Using them for every line of dialogue is great for word counting but distracting when reading. Sometimes it’s the small things like that which distinguishes a professional MS from a rank amateur one.

So, I offer this challenge to fellow NaNoWriMo-ers: Do your part to enhance NaNoWriMo’s image in the literary world. Don’t publish that MS right away. Polish it. Edit it. Revise it. Run it through a critique group. Do whatever you need to do to make certain it reflects well on you as a professional writer. Making NaNoWriMo look good is just a pleasant side-effect.

Friday Fictioneers First Day of Summer!

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Now the hard work begins. Now, I’m coming down off the high of the positive remarks about my novel excerpt and beginning the revision of the first draft. I have the workshop instructor’s marked-up copy, plus my notes from our one-on-one conference, plus the comments from my fellow workshoppers, and those will be a big help, but revising is the hardest work of all.

Since the key to any good work of fiction is to get the reader to turn the page, the extraneous dreck has to go. I think Fred Leebron’s words will have to become a mantra for revising: “The first draft is for the characters; the final is for the reader.”

So, here’s my process. The first revision is a re-type of the MS, editing as I go. Then, I’ll put it aside for a couple of weeks to get it out of my head. Next, I’ll print out a double-spaced copy and do a physical line-edit. (I’m old school; I still need to have a hard-copy version and a red pen.) While doing the line-edit is when I’ll read the MS aloud, and it’s amazing what you find when you hear your words spoken. Once I incorporate the changes from the line-edit, I’ll either pass the MS through my critique group or have a couple of folks from the workshop review it. Finally, it’ll be off to the workshop instructor for review, and then the process will probably start all over again; but that’s the writing life.

Another hard part of the hard part is that for the next several months I’ll be focused on this MS alone, and I know I’ll miss working on the Mai/Alexei novels. I’ll still be doing Spy Flash stories, but delving into my world of spies and intrigue will have to take a back seat for a while.

Friday Fictioneers LogoAnd I’ll always have Friday Fictioneers! I know I’ve praised this exercise before, but it has allowed me to delve into genres I thought were beyond me–sci-fi, fantasy, horror. Today is one of those times, even though it’s a fairly straight-forward photo prompt: a soldier standing guard. What you don’t see is what the soldier guards, and that’s what got my imagination going–and you get, “The Unknown Soldier.”

As usual, if you don’t see the link on the story title above, scroll to the top of this page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Tinker Mountain Days Four and Five

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The craft lecture on Thursday was by my workshop instructor, Fred Leebron, and was entitled, “Achieving Complexity in Narrative.” Fred had said his workshop didn’t need to attend because we’d already heard it, but most of us did show up. And a good thing, too. The second time around you realize all the things you missed the first time.

Though Fred had some interesting things to say about plot (“Plotting can be a literary straightjacket–it makes you think as if all stories have already been written.”), he emphasized his standard points about how to make your fiction transport the reader into your world and to resonate with the reader, i.e., go on beyond the end and stick with the reader. Fred then described the various ways to create the complexity needed to both transport the reader and have your work resonate with him or her, and it can be anything from judicious line editing, to multiple POVs and narrative arcs, and many more until, he says, “you get to the end of your narrative after exhausting all the possibilities.” Exhausting all the possibilities is the point where you can finally begin to revise.

The craft lecture concluded with an exercise we could take home with us to help with characterization, an exercise designed to develop the “shades” of a character: Describe what the character is most ashamed of, what haunts him/her the most, when he or she came close to doing someone harm, when he or she was the most humane, what he or she wants the most, and what he or she doesn’t want at all. You may never use the answers in a story, but you’ll understand the character better and make him or her layered and complex.

Day Four’s workshop session focused on dialogue and the various ways you can layer time in a story with dialogue, enlarge the cast of characters, and reveal things a character doesn’t know. Tension, important to story structure, can be both created and enhanced by dialogue that contradicts, is passive aggressive, ignores, or even agrees with.

Day Five’s craft lecture was on screen-writing, and I’ll write something on that later. The final day’s workshop session began with a discussion of drafts of our work. “The first draft,” said Fred, “is what the character wants. The final draft is what the reader wants.” I’d never quite thought of it that way, but essentially that is the case.

The rest of the time before the final critique of the week was a free-wheeling Q&A about writing–using substory, flashbacks and flashforwards, when to use dreaming (“economically,” says Fred), and how to give your endings “bite.”

After the last person’s critique, it was time for goodbyes. The week flew by and, for me, is immeasurable in terms of what I learned. Fred Leebron gives you a lot to think about and not just for the five days of the workshop; for the rest of your writing life. I’m already looking forward to next year!

 

A Tinker Mountain Friday Fictioneers

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I’ll post reflections on Tinker Mountain Days Three and Four once I get back from a meeting I’m attending in Northern Virginia this weekend. Yes, after workshop is over this afternoon, I’m hitting the road and driving almost 300 miles to attend the American Ethical Union assembly in Fairfax. Oh, joy.

Friday Fictioneers LogoBut here’s today’s Friday Fictioneers story, “Simon Sez.” As usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tag, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Tinker Mountain Day Three

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Wait. Day three? Hello, didn’t we just arrive? How can it be Day Three? Rather proves the cliche about time aviating when you’re entertained.

The craft lecture today by Jim McKean was about including suspense in your fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Perfect for me since 1) I write suspense, and 2) I’m giving a one-evening workshop next week on incorporating suspense into your work. So the “Nine Tricks for Incorporating Suspense” and the “41 Ways to Create and Heighten Suspense” were perfect for me–and not just for the workshop. I’m certain I’ll keep both at hand when I’m writing/revising stories about Mai and Alexei.

Before the critiques started today, Fred Leebron talked about the relationship of the title to the remainder of the work then about Risk = Ambition in novel writing. They are essentially equal, he said, but one also leads to the other in a loop.

Some of the ways you take risks in novel writing are altering the form or structure, using an unusual voice, the content itself, how you use time, and how you treat what’s absent from the novel.

For using an unusual voice, for example, he cited Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. It’s written entirely in second person. Then he had us do an exercise where we took something from our novel excerpt and put it in a voice opposite to what we’d already written. Amazing how that changes perspective and meaning.

When taking a risk, you need to ask yourself if that risk is necessary or gratuitous; a reader rebels against gratuitous risk. In other words, like the inclusion of sex and/or violence, it has to work within the story. Then, our exercise was to identify what risks we had and hadn’t taken with our novels.

Finally, we discussed how to keep our novels from becoming obsolete. For example, how do novels like Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, or Heart of Darkness still resonate today, decades, even a century or more after publication? The writer “got the details right”–in other words, verisimilitude.

Tomorrow’s craft seminar is by my instructor, Fred Leebron, and his subject is “Achieving Complexity in Narrative.” He indicated his students didn’t have to attend, since it will be a summary of what he’s told us the whole week, but I have a feeling we’ll all be there. After workshop, we have our class photo out by the famous campus rock, then open mic night for those who didn’t read on Tuesday night.

And then, it will be almost over.