Pot Holes and Aha Moments in Your Writing Career

A writing career, just like any other kind, starts at the bottom and works its way to the top. It's a journey, filled with pot holes (hee hee, plot holes), and Eureka moments. 

My first Aha moment as a writer came after I penned my very first novel. It took me from 2003 to 2008 to finish it. Yeah. No, I wasn't working on it the whole time. I belonged to the someday-I'll-write-a-book club. My pot hole was that I didn't have any discipline. From August to October, I finally finished it.

In 2008, my Aha moment said, Writing on a daily schedule yields faster, better results.

Duh, right?

When you write every single day, or close to it, your story simply has more cohesiveness, more natural flow, than it will when you put months between each chapter. Not to mention how your writing style will change over time, even if you're not writing regularly. If you want to see what it looks like when 19-year-old me writes Chapter 1 and 23-year-old me writes Chapter 27, I've got a manuscript that can demonstrate it palpably. An unpublished manuscript. A terminally unpublishable manuscript. I will never do that again.

Another pot hole I faced as a writer was my essay training from high school, which told me to seek out the fanciest word to drive home my point. Never, ever use was or said, my teachers said. If you try to take every was and is/were/are out of a paper or manuscript, you will end up with some funky variations on sentence structure and some even funkier word combinations. Or maybe it's just me.

(e.g. It was proven that the chicken pox are contagious.
becomes-- The researchers found that chicken pox bore communicable properties.)

Stilted much? Yeah, this won't sound good in your YA novel. Thus, my next Aha moment came after my third book (we'll skip right over the sequel I wrote to the first book which had all the same problems as the first, but with a catchier ending).

It said, Stop trying to sound smart.

I am smart. You are, too. But we don't have to prove that to our readers by using words like ruminated where it would sound more natural for the character to say thought or pondered. Sure, if you've got a narrator or character who would use that word, like John Green's child prodigy in An Abundance of Katherines, then by all means, say ruminated all you like. But not because you're too good for boring words.

A Pot Hole 

A meandering hell of word-vomit at the end of that book taught me this:

A rough outline is better than no outline at all.

Which leads me to today's Aha moment. Two books later, I am still learning the importance of story structure and planning in creating the elusive perfect novel. Meandering? Still happens to me, unfortunately. I'm finally frustrated enough to do something about it. Enter Larry Brooks of storyfix.com:

"In essence, story development separates into two sequential realms: the search for story… [followed] by the rendering of story."

otherwise realized as...

If it took you half the book to figure out your plot and character arcs, the reader has no hope.

Smart guy, that Larry Brooks.

What Aha moments have you had lately? What road blocks or pot holes have you hit?

If you're about due for another epiphany, check out Larry's article: A Mindset Shift That Can Get You Published, which inspired this post.

Originally published on Operation Awesome, January 2011.

The Crux of Great Writing: Moderation in All Things

I've been ruminating (love that word) on what makes good, easy-to-read, beautiful writing. Mostly, this is due to my own current stage in the writing process: revising a manuscript for the third time. I think I've fixed most of the big-picture ideas, and now have only to work on issues of style and voice.

Style according to French writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Gillet:
"The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it."

and

Voice according to English novelist and clergyman Laurence Sterne:
"Writing, when properly managed, is but a different name for conversation."

One how-to article will tell you to show actions creatively, while another author might be convinced that internal monologue is the way to filter just about everything your point-of-view character is experiencing.

One writing manual will extol the virtues of simplicity in language, while another will preach fresh and inventive prose as the only way to stand out from the crowd.

The way we choose to say our theme, our character's thoughts, his actions, and our villain's dastardly deeds--it all comes down to choices.

So as far as your word choice goes...

Use the word said. Just not too much.

And use the word dastardly. But only once.

Use conjunctions, commas, double-dashes, and sentence fragments. for. dramatic. effect.

Just don't do these things ad nauseam. Moderation in all things.

Above all, be true to your own voice, and to the voice of each character. After all, we write to share. The language needs to facilitate that, never inhibit it.

Focus on writing the tightest plot, most relatable characters, and on telling the story that lives in your head. Then revise it. Ask others to read it, and hope their insights will help you realize that you typed "blustering" when you meant "blistering", or "said" when you meant "screeched". But don't anguish over the perfect language. I fervently believe that voice and style are things picked up like accents and slang--through communication. So read and write. Write and read. And stop stressing about perfect words. They don't exist. There are only people, personalities, and preferences.

Isn't it wonderful?