Faust on writing or "Does this novel make me look fat?"

Back in the comments on an earlier post, I asked Joe Clifford Faust whether he started out writing shorter works or novels when he was getting started writing. He turned this into an interesting blog post and I promptly forgot to mention it here. So I'm correcting that now. Check out Faust's post called Size Matters. He talks not only about his start in writing, but also the advantages and disadvantages to the different sizes of story. Here's a quote:

I know this belies all of our notions of bigger is better, but bigger is also harder, but that's the way it works with writing. Bigger is easier because the smaller you get, the more important each word becomes. It has to bear a greater weight, a greater burden, and must be sufficiently powerful to contribute in the most efficient way possible.

Therefore, at one end of the spectrum you have the novel, which allows you to stretch out with words, with story, with subplots and characters and place and theme. It's a leisurely walk in the park. Wordwise, then, a novel is easier to write than a play, which is easier than a short story, which is easier than poetry, which I suppose is easier to write than something like a tombstone epitaph. And note that by the time you get down to writing poems, you're the watchmaker, sweating over every word with a pair of tweezers and a jeweler's loupe, praying that what you're assembling will keep time and have the desired impact.

As for me, I'm still trying to work on short stories, though maybe I should go back and read my three Nanowrimo "novels" and see if there's anything salvageable from any of them. I'm thinking probably not, but it never hurts to look.

Encyclopedia Fantastica and Sword and Sorcery

Paul Jessup has started a new wiki, Encyclopedia Fantastica. Here's what he says about it on the homepage:

A literary resource for Fantastic Literature in all its guises. This wiki-based Encyclopedia is meant to create discussion and arguments of intellectual merit within the fantasy community. Inside you will see ideas explode, terms implode, and criticisms argued and debated.

The purpose is debate and knowledge. Consider this a community resource, a scholarly adventure.

Inspired, I went over and created an entry on Sword and Sorcery. I've been reading a lot of S&S lately and thinking about what makes it work. I'm sure I've written something in there that will make me groan later, but I'm hoping it can get some people talking about the genre and thinking about what makes it work. I'd love to see a revival of S&S that created more interesting settings and characters.

Enter the Groovy Age

The Groovy Age of Horror is a fun blog I found a while back and have been enjoying immensely ever since. Curt is reading through tons of trashy paperbacks from the late '60s and early '70s that are helping him create his own aesthetic. He's using that knowledge to write a novel (potentially a series of novels in the best trashy paperback tradition) and has blogged a draft of it at Night Falls on a Fairy Tale.

Anyway, this week Curt started his first contest. He wants people to write a Nazisploitation nanofiction. This sounded like a ton of fun, so I submitted a story that has been posted as Entry 9. My little scene isn't nearly as lurid (or NSFW) as some of the entries, but I hope it's fun. It was to write! Give it a try. Curt's also looking for fan art entries. Chip in and do your best nasty, sleazy Nazi fiction (or art) for the Groovy Age.

2007: My year of writing, no really

So, about this time last year, I wrote this:

This year, I resolve to write, send out and see a story published. At least one, but hopefully more.

Well, I failed miserably. For the better part of the year, I wrote regularly and even finished one whole short story (and yes, I know that's pretty pathetic.) I did manage to send it out to a friend, who gave me some good advice on what was wrong with it. Shortly thereafter, I was inundated with wedding planning and real estate issues. I'm making no attempt to say those things should have stopped me, only that they did.

My other writing, blogging and journaling, was pretty miserable as well. I was strong blogging at the beginning of the year and faded away. By May, I had completely stopped. Journaling, on the other hand, I kept up regularly up until October. Even then, I'd find the occasional time to slip in a paragraph in a notebook here or there.

This year, I'm making a resolution again. It's not much different from last year, just more specific:

I resolve to write every day with an aim to creating good fiction.

The main difference here is the resolution is all focused on doing the work. Forget anything else until I'm writing regularly and getting better. Besides, I have no control over whether something will be published. I can only work on my own craft until I write things that are publishable.

A short note to say I miss you all

I haven't written since May? Geez, I've really let this thing go. Unfortunately, that's going to continue. Right now, I face an upcoming wedding, a house sale, a house purchase and general chaos besides. Of course, this is no excuse. If I wanted to, I could squeak in a few minutes every day for the blog, but right now, I'm just not feeling up to it. Sorry. Also, I really want to focus on fiction writing and getting myself away from the Internet can only help that.

Expect me to return sometime after the beginning of 2007, I think. I may pop in occasionally before that, but no promises.

Still out there writing

For a while, I was posting updates on my writing. The last one was in March. Nobody's asked me to post about it again, but despite the silence I venture once again into navel gazing.

I've been busy since March. That story that I was hashing over for weeks and weeks I finally finished. I ended up going to my notebooks and writing it longhand to get it done. It helps me to get away from easy access to the Internet. The next step for that story is typing it into the computer, making a few changes, and sending it out to friends and at least one more objective reader. (If anyone is interested in reading what may be a horrible waste of your time, or possibly my first genius work, feel free to e-mail me.)

So now, where to go from here? I've played with some flash pieces. I'm trying to take Jay Lake's advice (PDF) and write a story of some kind each week. This isn't the way I've worked up to now. I seem to be a slow writer, I work in fits and starts. I'm attempting to do more to see if that's just how I write, or if that's me being lazy.

My big problem at the moment is I've created this great fantasy setting. It's unusual and, with any luck, it's a fun place to read about. But I'm finding that I don't know what story to tell there. I keep starting things and then backing off. These false starts add new information and descriptions to the world, but don't get me any closer to having a story about it. I need a character who springs from this place and has a tale to tell. For now, I'll keep playing with the idea and I will hope to bump into a character along the way.

So, how's your writing going?

Writing update

I'm getting back on the horse with my writing. I still haven't rewritten the story I was working on previously. But it's still there waiting to be attacked. In the meantime, I've been writing a spontaneous story in one notebook and putting the pieces of another story together on my computer. I've also been journaling in notebooks and practicing some parts of my writing. So I'm back on track with writing every day, though my output is still not real stories. The writing keeps me happy though, so I'll keep it up.

Apologies

Sorry for the absence. I just haven't felt like it lately. Plus, I haven't done much with my writing, so I'm pretty ashamed of that. And besides that, March is absolutely the worst month of the year. It's not quite spring yet, but I'm horribly tired of winter (even a warm winter like this one). It teases you with bits of warmth before taking it away again. Then there's the wedding being planned and worries about my house going up for sale. Too much on my mind. (Not that these are good excuses for the writing failures.)

I've been reading lately, despite the unchanging nature of the box to the left. (Blogger was giving me problems changing the template.) After "Engines of God," I read "Snakes and Earrings" by Hitomi Kanehara, "With Respect to the Japanese" by Bill Condon, and am currently reading "Rashomon and other stories" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. If you're looking for some good reading, check out storySouth's notable short stories of 2005. They've lined up some of the best short fiction found online over the last year. Strange Horizons and SciFiction get special attention for their work. Also, Elizabeth Bear has posted the first chapter of her upcoming book "Blood and Iron" online.

Hopefully, I'll start doing more in the next few days. See you soon.

Write how you need to write

Meg McCarron takes issue with the writing every day edict. What she has to say is smart and gives an alternative for those who don't like writing every day.

Personally, I think each person needs to try out different methods and find out what works for them. That's what I've been doing. I find that I can keep myself to a "write every day" schedule if I'm working on a story. It's between those stories, or weeks like now when I should be revising a story, that I find I skip days and have a hard time concentrating.

Each writer is different and each one needs to explore how they write. What's important is that you are dedicated to it, whether you write once a day, once a week or for a full month at a time nonstop when you've come up with an idea. Whatever works for you, as long as you are serious, that's the only rule.

Odds and ends

What a lousy weekend. Don Knotts, Darren McGavin and Octavia Butler died. They were all good at their respective crafts and each was important to me in some way. Unfortunately, I've not read much Butler, although I have at least two of her books on my shelves. I guess it's about time I corrected that oversight. (And if you're interested in Butler, be sure to check out the Bat Segundo Show interview.)

In my writing life, I've actually gotten a little bit done. I've pieced together all the parts of my current short story. It doesn't add up to a first draft. There are holes in the narrative, there are parts that I wrote at least three times and there are plenty of parts that just don't work. The worst thing is that the ending is not earned, either for the character interaction or the supernatural aspect. I need to add foreshadowing and character work. So writing and revisions continue.

This may be the most true truest post on writing ever.

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Not much to say

I've been writing, getting closer to a finished draft, but I'm not there yet.

New writing gadget

I downloaded something new. It's called yWriter and it's a program to help you create writing in a project format. (Link found via Paperback Writer.) It breaks down your stories scene by scene (or chapter by chapter). This was a perfect thing for the work I've been doing on my current story since I approached it exactly that way. Plus, yWriter allows you to add character notes, goals and conflict notes for scenes, and even allows you to keep track of the time elapsed in your narrative.

I must admit, downloading freeware like this is mostly a way for me not to write. I fidget around with the program, get everything sorted in it exactly right. All of which just eats away my writing time. Despite that, the program actually was helpful. I started going through the pieces I've written so far and editing them. They're not as bad as I thought. This will hopefully put me back on track. I've been writing different versions of the same scenes, over and over. And it's not helping. Getting organized with this program helped me get it all in order and figure out what I'm doing. I may even be nearing a finished first draft, just some connective tissue needs to be added. I can hardly believe it.

Actually, maybe that first draft should be amended to say "zeroth draft." When I read writers' blogs, they seem to write a first draft and then send the thing out to their first readers. I don't think my first draft of this story would be ready for anybody. Is this me being too cautious over my drafting? Or is it that writers get better over time and their first drafts are just cleaner and better?

writing

Catching up

I haven't posted anything on my writings in the past week or so. Sorry about that, for those of you who are interested. I haven't stopped writing, however. In fact, I've been writing and writing and writing on this story, though I'm still nowhere near completing a single draft.

I started this story writing out a plot outline, writing character sketches and getting a solid idea behind what happens at the end of it all. And I've found out that those things don't corner you at all. In fact, I've found a million different ways to go with this story and I've already tried hundreds of them. I keep writing the beginning of the story and then start over from a different perspective. I've tried third person omniscient, third person from each character's point of view, first person by one character and first person by the other character. I've also written in different voices, not quite finding the character's voice I'm looking for.

This is both good and bad. The bad is obvious. I've been laboring over the same story for a few weeks now with no real results to show. The good is I'm learning. I'm learning what can be done, I'm learning where I'm weak and I'm learning I don't know all I thought I knew.

That last one is especially important. I've been writing nonfiction for newspapers and blogs for the last 12 years. You'd think that would help me. It doesn't. I'm learning what I've read a million times over the years from writing books and author interviews: You learn to write fiction by writing fiction. That's it. You can study and that will help, you can pick apart other stories. But until you keep at the keyboard and create characters and have them interacting, you don't learn anything.

So I'm struggling. I haven't grown weary of the story. This is a good sign, I think. It means there's something to it, something I'm trying to reach. I have confidence in the rickety plot and ideas I'm working through. I just need to keep working.

I also need to focus. I write every day now. Now I need to spend more time each day. I waste much of my day and only spend about an hour on a day's writing. This is terrible. I get antsy. I'm working on getting control of this.

One day at a time, I'm working to become a better writer.

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Pieces coming together

So I spent some time listening to Akira Ifukube's fine themes as I wrote. I quickly learned that thundering marches aren't the best listening when writing scenes of two people talking. Too much epic going on in the room. But once I turned it off for a little while, my writing went smoothly.

I now have about seven different pieces of this story in separate Notepad files. I think I need to write a little more before I try to bring them all together. It's almost a certainty now that I will try writing the story from a first person point of view when I get to my first rewrite. It will add a different perspective and might help me get the flow of the story right.

I read a great Ramsey Campbell ghost story in The Dark (for links, see at left under "What I'm reading"), "Feeling Remains." Structurally, it seems to be similar to what I'm working on, except done from the first person perspective. When I started writing, I thought stories like "Canavan's Backyard" by Joseph Payne Brennan and "The Black Gondolier" by Fritz Leiber had similar structures to what I was working on. Those two stories have something supernatural happening to a main character that is viewed from a distance by a second character. That's the way I approached writing this story.

Now, I think the first person perspective, like in Campbell's story, may help me get closer, more emotionally involved in the story. It certainly will bring the fear forward.

Of course, my story isn't going to be half as good as any of those. If you're in the mood for horror, by the way, all three of those stories are great.

But I'm still feeling good about the story and I don't have any urge to back out of it or throw it away. If I can at least continue to tolerate the story through a rewrite or two, I'll have achieved something.

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Emerging from inactivity

Today was a day I felt like writing. I wrote a whole section of my short story and I feel the pull to write more. This is good as it comes after four days of inactivity (in writing). Those are always dangerous times for me, when I'm away from a story for that amount of time, the inspiration, the love of the idea, can all float away.

This story though, I have good feelings about it. I intend to finish writing this first draft and then really revise it. This is territory I've not much explored. I'm terrible about a) not finishing stories, b) not doing anything with finished first drafts. So once this story gets past the first draft stage, it will be revised. This may be the first story I feel confident enough in to send out. We'll see.

In the meantime, I have a few more pieces to finish, then I have to assemble them into a semblance of story. I've been writing in the third person. I'm going to read it over when the first draft is finished and see if I think it would be better in first person. I've thought about even just going ahead and doing a second draft in first person.

All that will be decided later though. Right now, I just have to keep my eyes on the prize and get to the end.

Building things out of words

Some good blog entries about writing (or simply "writer's porn" as I've heard others call it.) Elizabeth Bear writes about writing better than almost anyone else. Read her
journal. This entry on thematic and narrative concerns in fiction is
absolutely terrific. I've been listening to Mur Lafferty's podcast I Should be Writing lately and have been enjoying it. As the title puts it:

A podcast by a wanna-be writer for wanna-be writers. Let my stack of rejection letters and battle scars benefit you.

And so far, it has at least helped me feel better about my writing to know others go through similar things. Author Tim Pratt is pretty great too. I've only read a few of his short stories, but I've loved them. He posts about writing his novel and the pit of despair he hit after rereading some of it. That's the way I feel most days I reread my stuff.

But today, I feel pretty good. I reread what I wrote yesterday and I thought it was quite fine -- for me anyway. I started on another section of the story.

I've been taking an unusual approach to writing this story. I first plotted it out, which I've never tried before. Then I wrote a possible beginning for the story (though, now I think it won't be). Yesterday, I wrote the climax of the story. Today, I started writing an incident that happens half way through the story. Each of these sections of the story have been written on seperate Notepad files. When it's all written, I can combine them all and figure out how they should properly be arranged. In the meantime, I can open up any file on any day and pick up on a different part of the story, or edit a different part of the story.

I don't know if there are any benefits to writing this way, however, it does give me a more tactile sense of the structure of the story. I have all these pieces and then I'm going to build my story from them. It's like I'm building a desk, but it's made of words. Or something. I'm not sure I'm describing this well, but I'm enjoying this method. Your mileage may vary.

More writing tomorrow.


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A climax and thoughts on genre

Another day's writing is done. Today, taking a cue from yesterday's thoughts, I wrote out of order. I decided to write the climax of the story, when the narrator is confronted with the transformed protagonist. It came out more soft, less scary than I hoped. I'm wondering if maybe I'm writing a fantasy story rather than a horror story? I won't know until I write more of it. Even if it's purely fantasy, it will have some dark moments.

The question about whether this is a fantasy or horror story brings me to something I've been thinking about. In a podcast of The Agony Column's interview with The Rolling Darkness Review (Glen Hirshberg, Dennis Etchison and Peter Atkins), Etchison says that when he sits down to write, he never thinks "I'm going to write a horror story," he just thinks "I'm going to write a story." I've heard this from a lot of professional authors, and with some it shows. (Etchison is one. Many of his stories, always sold as horror, could be published in literary magazines with ease.)

But as a wannabe, new writer, I sit down and actively think "I'm going to write a horror story now, in fact it will be a ghost story and it will be about the transformation of a character." When I'm deciding on a story, that's the starting point. If it strays
off from that genre course, I let it. It doesn't have to end up a
horror story, that's just my initial idea.

John Gardner in his book "The Art of Fiction" tells young writers (I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head) that the easiest way to begin is to pick a genre -- a ghost story, a relationship story, a romance -- then combine it with another genre or an unusual technique.

So, I don't think I'm completely wrongheaded to start out thinking about what genre a story is. I just can't become caged to a genre.

Tomorrow, with some knowledge of what's going to happen, I'm going
to write other sections of the story, whichever parts interest me. I'm
thinking I'll write about the protagonist and his dreams. I'll also go
back and edit what I've written so far. I've been doing a little of
that every day. Maybe I can make better sense of the climax I wrote today.


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Small update

Not much to say today. I wrote a few hundred more words on the story. It's moving along, but I need to spend more time with it -- which won't happen tomorrow, unfortunately. But I'll fit in what I can. So far, I haven't run into any problems with using an outline for my story. But then, the plot hasn't progressed much yet.
I do think that I may be writing this in the wrong order. Currently, the story follows the chronology of events. But I think the story will have to start in media res in order to attract people's interest in the first page. I don't think it's necessary for me to change the order I'm writing it in now. That will be something I can approach in the rewrite stage.

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New story begins

I've been very inactive online today, but this was for a good reason. One, I needed to build a bookshelf and wash some dishes, but two I managed to get some writing done on the story. It's the first section of the short story and I know what I'm leading to tomorrow. I always feel pretty good with all of the story before me, let's hope I keep feeling good as I go along. Again, right now the goal is to finish the story and edit it. The last story I wrote I've put aside with the potential for editing at a later date -- when I don't hate it so much. I want to make this story a complete process, continuing from creating the outline to writing the story, to editing it and then sending it out somewhere.
Anyway, I've got a bunch of things I want to write about on the blogs (especially Giant Monster Blog, I've watched a slew of giant monster movies latey) but it has to come second to the writing. So expect things to remain slow here for the next few days, with the exception of these writing updates. (Hope I don't bore you too much.)

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Background set, story to begin

I didn't do too much writing today, but I think I accomplished something with the background of this story. I have a reason for everything to happen, a history of what's happening to the protagonist. That history won't be revealed, only hinted at in the story.
Starting Monday, I will write the actual first draft of the story. A plot has been built, point by point. The story could veer from that, but it creates a solid skeleton for the story. I also think I have both main characters pretty solidly set in my mind. Now the real work begins!

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