Publishing wannabes, be optimistic but not foolish

Never thought I'd be referring to the Harvard Business Review for a creative writing blog post. But I ran into this inspired post at work offering great advice for those who've set challenging goals for themselves. What could be more challenging than publishing a novel--conventionally?

Anyway, in this article called "Be a Optimist Without Being a Fool," motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson* believes that while it's good to be optimistic, it is a ridiculous posture to think you'll easily succeed at most difficult tasks.

"But there is an important caveat: to be successful, you need to understand the vital difference between believing you will succeed, and believing you will succeed easily."

In other words, be a realistic optimist. Believe you will succeed, but at the same time, take steps to ensure success happens. For writers, that means submitting, networking, continuing writing, joining a writing group, taking a craft class or workshop, building your platform, etc.

None of us knows our own timetable for success. A friend's book may get picked up far sooner than yours or mine. Rarely does success follow just because we really want to be published. Don't be discouraged. Be heartened because you are a realist with the wisdom and maturity to needed to accept that difficulty lies ahead.

"Believing that the road to success will be rocky leads to greater success because it forces you to take action." Halvorson said. "People who are confident that they will succeed, and equally confident that success won't come easily, put in more effort, plan how they'll deal with problems before they arise, and persist longer in the face of difficulty."

Keep putting in the effort. Keep keeping on. Eventually, your persistence is likely to be rewarded.

*Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011)

Ten quick craft tips learned in online writing groups

Today I'm sharing ten tips I've picked up from other writers in online writing groups or from their critiques of my work. I don't do online groups anymore (that's a whole other post topic).

 

But I've never forgotten some of things I learned from other writers I encountered online.

1. To make your prose more graceful, in a series of items, put the longest item last.  Example: wide eyes, a pert nose, and lips as tempting as a ripe peach.
2. In describing someone follow the natural path of the eye (unless of course your viewpoint character has a strange optical tic) from top to bottom, bottom to top, near to far or vice versa.  Example: She wore pink lip gloss, her curly dark hair fell to her shoulders, and a low-cut cashmere shell showed just enough cleavage to distract any man she happened to want something from.
3. Lighten up on the -ing verbs and the participial phrases.  Example: Crashing into the Christmas tree, she began spinning around the room. It would be better to say: She crashed into the Christmas tree and spun around the room.
4. Drop "began" and "began to" phrases wherever possible (see previous example). People don't "begin to." They just do.
5. Most adverbs can and should be written out of your prose. Look for -ly words: hauntingly, hurriedly, calmly, briskly, etc. Only keep an adverb if you'd pay $100 for it.
6. More than one or two adjectives (modifiers) weakens rather than strengthens the writing. It dilutes the power of all the others. Example: The sad, tired, old woman rested on the park bench. Now none of the modifiers--sad, tired, or old--makes an impact.
7. Description can be too lush. If you describe every detail in a scene, there's nothing left for the reader's imagination to fill in.  Painstaking description can be painful. Example: The quarter inch gold plated locket on the 20 inch 14-karat gold chain with feather weight links was perfect for a cameo about the size of a small child's middle fingernail. Aren't you in pain already?
8. Adjectives, if used, are always stronger without qualifiers. Forget the really happy's, very well-off's, too beautiful's.
9. Most writers have habits or idiosyncracies such as overusing one or two words. I slip the word "just" into many sentences. Now I use the find function in word processing software to take them out.
10. Words are diamonds. Showcase their beauty by sloughing off the carbon around them. Or as one of my writing teachers put it, "Words are stones. Feel the weight of them." Diamonds. Stones.You get the idea.

If you have a quick craft tip to share, feel free to leave it as a comment. And thanks to a whole host of online writers who shared your wisdom with me earlier in my career. 

Take a writing lesson from the B-I-B-L-E

Yesterday, I told another creative writer who'd stopped in my office that I'm ruined when it comes to reading books.

He stared at me quizzically.

I went on to explain that now that I've studied and aimed to be a practitioner of creative writing, I can no longer experience a book the way I used to--innocently, wholly, naively. Now, anything I read is interpreted through the gimlet eye of the writer searching for craft.

If no longer reading thrillers for sheer enjoyment weren't bad enough, now I can't even participate in readings from the Bible during a church service without examining the craft evident in the text.

Maybe that's because the Bible is so well crafted, especially when it comes to the use of fresh, figurative language.

Last Sunday, the first reading was from the book of Isaiah, chapter 35. Look at the first several verses through the lens of a creative writer:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.

(skip to verse 5):

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy,
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

First, I really responded to the personification in the passage: desert rejoicing; crocus rejoicing with singing; the land shall be glad.

Next, I love the comparisons that are fresh and unpredictable: the lame shall leap like a deer; the tongue of the speechless sing for joy; burning sand shall become a pool; haunts of jackals shall become a swamp.

In the book of Isaiah, the writer takes us places we don't expect to travel. Forget the lame merely walking. No, they're going to leap like deer! How powerful is that? Plenty powerful.

The the speechless won't just recover their speech. They'll sing for joy.

The burning sand doesn't cool down. No, that's not potent enough to express what God's chosen people can find once God leads them out of exile. The sand must become a pool to be impactful.

The language "the haunts of jackals shall become a swamp" is evocative. A few well-chosen nouns (haunts, jackals, swamp) and a clear image forms in the minds of readers!

The other piece of craft worth noting is the prophet Isaiah's attention to audience. He is writing to a people who have been in captivity in Babylonia for so long--for generations--that they are past hope. His language must capture their imaginations, and in describing how their homeland will transform so completely to welcome them, he captures our imaginations, too.

If you're looking for a new source of craft, try reading passages from the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, which is laden with powerful and lovely prose. It couldn't be more instructive--in more ways than one.

Living by the Chicken

This time of year is especially vexing because of all the extra things we must do on top of what we normally do--shopping, wrapping, decorating, even baking. But if productivity is important, no matter the time of year, than you should try living by the chicken. Just like me.

I read a blog post at work about how much more a person could accomplish if she or he had two more productive hours in a day. If you could carve out just two more hours towards a significant project, you could change the world, rock your manuscript (you fill in the blank with something important to you).

So, when my friend gave me a chicken timer, I thought I could put it to excellent use to make my time more productive.

I'm hardly the busiest person in the world. I do work full-time, I host two blogs, and I am a writer. I'm not particularly social--don't run out for a lot of parties and social functions--but I see the value in keeping up a social media presence because the contacts and information are really invaluable. Occasionally, I try to be Suzie Homemaker and yes, that happens around the holidays. But I don't have any children at home any longer. I also try to see my elderly mother two or three Sundays a month--take her to church and to lunch--that sort of thing.

So, other friends of mine who write have more schedule constraints than me--getting their MFA's, constantly traveling for their jobs. But I'm still not as productive as I need to be. My husband might disagree with me, but the most important thing I need to carve out time for is my writing.

I'm living by the chicken.

My little black chicken timer goes room to room with me. Even as I write this blog post, I have the chicken set for twenty minutes. I'd better hurry if I want to finish this post because when the chicken dings, it's time to move on to another task, in this case tidying up and then getting cleaned up. You would be surprised, even if you tend to watch the clock, how much time it takes to do simple tasks like checking your vitals--all your email and social media accounts.

She's completely portable, loveable, sweet to look at, and helps me to avoid the time-suck of too much Internet surfing, excessive tweeting, or trying too many Facebook memes.

Need to carve more productive time out of your day? Then get one of these babies (they come in lots of colors) and start living by the chicken. And that's all I have to say about this because my chicken timer just went off.

Five Big Nevers from George Orwell

In the past week, I listened to two audio books. One uses lots of fresh figurative language--it's a thrilling police procedural, so the attention to comparisons surprised me. The other uses lots of expressions you and I have seen in print before also known as clichés.

They can feel comfy, easing into metaphors or similes that we've all heard before--like pulling on a well-worn sweater. I'm not sure how the second writer got away with using so many clichés in a published work.

All I know is unpublished authors are held to a higher standard than those who have work in print. Yes, rules are made to be broken. However, it's still worth rereading your WIPs and looking for the FIVE BIG Nevers from George Orwell.

Never say never, you say? Valid argument. Then how about rarely.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Out of the entire Serengeti of writing advice available on the Internet, I thought these were five predators worth pursuing. (Just so you know, I could have said “pantheon of writing advice,” but then I would be violating number one of the big five, so I tried to go for something fresher since I violated number four in saying “were worth pursuing”.)

If we could at least edit our work adhering to these five rules, our writing would improve. How about you, Scrivengale readers? Are you stalked by any of these big five?