Posts by Anna Elliott
Originally posted to Flickr as Girl. By Ray_from_LA
Yesterday was Halloween, which in addition to the trick-or-treaters and piles of candy, seems to call out some very strong opinions, especially all over social media. People who love Halloween and people who hate it. I’m probably somewhere in the middle, myself. I love carving pumpkins, chilly weather, changing leaves, and my kids’ excitement. I don’t love the over-priced costumes (we always wind up making our own out of odds and ends we have on hand; this year I had a water spirit, a pirate, and a super hero) and the candy that no one in my family can eat anyway due to food allergies. (I’m also generally pro on the great pumpkin-spice debate issue, but my husband is legit allergic to even the smell of cinnamon, so that’s kind of out in our house). BUT there is one aspect of Halloween that as I was considering the holiday, I realized actually related to a writing issue I was having this week, and that is the fun of playing dress-up, the sheer freedom and excitement of pretending to be someone you’re not for a few hours.
For me, that’s really what writing is: sinking deep down into a character until I know her inside and out, letting myself become her while my fingers are touching the keys . . . letting that connection fill me with experiences and abilities I’ll never have, being carried away to a world I’ve never seen. At root for me, writing is magic. It’s fun, in the same way that hot-gluing seashells to a headband or donning a mask is fun for my kids. I’m immersed in a world where literally anything is possible, where the only bounds are those of my imagination. That doesn’t mean that my writing never takes me to a dark place or a raw or uncomfortable one, but still, even in those moments . . . it’s magic, and there’s just nothing else like that thrill of being fully immersed in a world I’ve created.
And yet . . . it’s that very magic that’s sometimes easy to lose track of along the way in the writing process. Because although it’s true that while writing fiction, we’re bound only by the limits of our own imaginations . . . it’s not as though there are no external pressures to be considered. Publishing contracts, the ever-changing market, sales numbers, reviews . . . and then of course there’s just the pressure, if you’re someone lucky enough to write as a full-time job, to produce a finished book on schedule, because your family is counting on the income. It’s an amazing gift to be able to earn a living at writing, don’t get me wrong, but still, it comes with the price-tag of that kind of pressure attached.
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photo by Vincent Lock
I’m at the stage where I don’t really look any different. I feel different. (Oh, belieeeeeve me, I feel different, i.e. starting to feel better but still pretty much at least slightly queasy all. the. time.) I’m also at the stage (early second trimester) where I’m past the ‘holding my breath’ mentality and moving into the ‘cautious exhale’. But it’s still too soon to be feeling any of those reassuring kicks or flutters, and it’s easy to catch myself looking down at my not-yet-all-that-different stomach and thinking, Are you still there?
When that happens, I reach for my phone and play a recording I took during my last appointment with my midwife: a hummingbird-rapid but steady thump thump thump that’s– incredibly– the heartbeat of our fourth baby. I don’t usually go for book/baby or writing/pregnancy comparisons, because although everyone is different, the way I love my books and the way I love my babies = not at all the same thing. Also, I would approximately one million times rather write a book than go through all day “morning” sickness. (Although like I say, baby #4, so clearly I’m either a slow learner or insane). However in this case, I’m going to break my own rule, because listening to that little reassuring thump thump thump on my phone, it’s occurred to me that sometimes we need that kind of reassurance during the writing process, too.
I’m also in the early stages of writing a new book, the potential start to a new series. 20,000 words in, I’ve got a good start made, one I’m happy with and having fun with daily. It’s a solid enough beginning that I’m feeling pretty confident that this book isn’t just a will ‘o’ the whisp idea that’s going to die on the vine. But it’s also a bit of a crazy idea, one I’m not entirely sure it makes sense for me to be writing right now, at this point in my career. I absolutely loved Therese’s post this week, That Time Jane Friedman’s Advice Saved My Novel, because I’ve been there, too, one hundred percent. The publishing world is so changeable and uncertain. Actually, the ultimate outcome of pregnancy, though not guaranteed, is pretty much far more assured than the outcome of writing a novel. It’s so easy to give in to the moments of doubt, but so important, I’ve found, to instead tune into that beating heart of your book in progress: that tiny spark of life that made you fall in love with the idea in the first place, the certainty deep down inside you that this is a story you just have got to tell.
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Adrian Anghel, Flickr Creative Commons
I recently read a quote on writing I absolutely loved. It’s from Joe Beernink, who said, “Don’t write to become famous or to make a lot of money. Write because you love it. Write because not writing for more than a few days feels like you have abandoned a puppy in a mineshaft. Save the puppy.” The words resonated with me so much, because that’s exactly how I feel. I don’t take days off from writing. Ever. Others may feel boxed-in by strict self-imposed word count goals, but I love them. Having a set word count for the day inspires me, makes me stretch and push past my own equally self-imposed limitations and is my #1 antidote to feeling creative block. I write at least 1,000 words a day, 7 days a week, every single week, every single year, basically no matter what. And to be clear, I’m certainly not suggesting that anyone who doesn’t is less of a writer or less dedicated to their craft. That’s just my own process, what works for me.
I write in good times and bad times. For years, now, I’ve written 1,000 words a day through sickness and new babies and logistical life craziness and tragedy and grief. Even at the lowest, darkest moments, I’ve written because quite simply, however hard life feels in that moment, however hard it is to pick myself up and sit down at the keyboard, not writing would be harder still. And there’s obviously a practical benefit to keeping to a hard and fast writing schedule. Since this time last year, I’ve published 5 books I love and am so happy and grateful to have released into the world.
And yet. There’s always that little, and yet, isn’t there? Because there’s also, in our culture, the very prevalent worship of the “hustle.” We wear busy-ness as a badge of honor, take a certain strange pride in the length of our to-do lists, and convince ourselves that if we just hustle hard enough, we’ll somehow unlock the magical keys to success, riches, rainbows and happiness or whatever our goals might be. Now, of course I believe in the power of hard work and discipline. But the answer isn’t quite as simple as that.
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At this point in my writing career, there isn’t much writing advice out there that I haven’t heard or read. Which is not to say that I am an expert at implementing everything there is to know about writing, by any means. Far from it. Really far from it, some days. But it’s almost unheard of for me to read a post on writing process or craft and think, I’ve never heard/tried/read that! Sometimes, though, I find that I just need to be reminded of tips and strategies that I already KNOW are good ideas . . . I’ve just somehow lost track of them along the way. So here are two of my favorite tips on writing that I just this past month have needed to take out and dust off and re-learn all over again.
1. The 20 Minute Win. Life gets crazy for all of us. It’s often hard to find time to write, period, but in my current season of life it’s hard for me to find time to write first thing in the morning before the demands of the day need my attention. And yet if I can get my head into the story first thing in the morning before having to think about anything else . . . it helps SO much with being able to keep the story simmering in the back of my mind throughout the day. Which means that I’m ready and able to jump on any pockets of time I have to just sit down at the keyboard and WRITE. So I need to remind myself of the 20 minute win. Or even the 15 or 10 minute win. If I can get just that short amount of time right away, first thing. . just write a few hundred words . . . It’s not a full workday by any means– which can feel discouraging, because it’s easy to think, Oh, I’m only going to get a few minutes, why bother? But those few minutes will make my overall workday so much more successful.
Read MoreProbably like most authors, I read as often and as much as I possibly can, but lately I’ve been noticing something about my reading habits: For every book I finish, there are probably five or maybe even more where I download the free sample onto my e-reader, read anywhere from the first page to the entire sample . . . and then set aside, without the slightest desire to read the entire book. Of course, that’s probably not so unusual, really. That’s the entire point of the sample feature after all, so that you as a reader can get a sense of whether or not a book is for you. But it’s gotten me thinking about what exactly it is about the books that I have no desire to read further that leads me to put them down? What is it about them that didn’t hook me as a reader?
I’m not, by the way, talking about issues where a book is rife with editorial mistakes, amateur writing, wooden dialogue, etc. I’ve read the samples of plenty of books that were well edited, had fluent, above-average writing, and even opened with what should have been an exciting “hook” in terms of a plot that jumped straight into fast-paced action. And yet I still didn’t click the ‘buy’ button at the end of the sample. Of course, everyone’s mileage varies, and the books that didn’t work for me may well be another reader’s favorite read of the year. But in trying to analyze what determines whether a book is a must-read or a did-not-finish, I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, it boils down to emotion; I need the book grab me on an emotional level.
So below are my top 3 tips for kicking your reader right in the feels and ensuring they don’t put your book down:
1. Emotions: your characters should have some. This may seem eye-rollingly obvious, but you’d be surprised how many books I’ve started where the first several pages were either pure exposition– explaining where the characters were and how they got there– or else pure action. That second one is a particularly easy trap to fall into if you’re writing in a genre where action is prevalent in your plot: fantasy, distopian, sci-fi, thrillers, mysteries. All of those genres– and of course others as well– very often include big exciting scenes that involve battles or fist-fights, murders, abductions, and other high-stakes action sequences. All of which can work great at hooking a reader, but it can’t be just straight action. I’ve read loads of books that open with a super high-stakes, thrilling action scene, and yet it falls flat for me because I might as well be watching a video-game character running through a demo. What’s missing? Emotion. You can have all the action in the world, but if your character is just moving through the motions like a robot, readers still aren’t going to care. Show your characters’ desperate fear, their pain, their determination and triumph or even their crushing loss.
Even better–and this brings me to tip #2– show at least two of those at once:
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Somewhere around six years ago, I had a story idea pop into my head. As most writers will tell you, that’s not exactly an unusual occurrence. Story ideas fly into (and often out of) my mind like flights landing at Kennedy Airport. But this idea felt . . . special. It had that x-factor sparkle that demanded, Write me! Write me now! So I did. And the book just . . . totally. did. not. work. I tried it in first person, I tried it in third person with multiple narrators. I tried a myriad configurations of the plot, and all told probably re-wrote the story ten times. I finally hammered out a semi-workable draft that I was semi-happy with, and at least worked better than anything else that had gone before.
Now, don’t get me wrong, within that draft were elements that I really liked. I loved my two main characters. There were scenes that made (and still make) me smile. Even my agent liked it, so at least I knew I wasn’t entirely fooling myself that there was something there. But it was the start of what I intended to be a series, and when I tried to move on to write book #2, again, it just. did. not. work. The foundation I’d slogged through to build in book #1 just became a pure slog when I tried to advance into a continuation of the story. 4 years ago, almost to this day, actually, I finally quit. Closed the file, opened up a new one, and started an entirely different book in what turned out to be an 11 book series (that’s not published under this pen name). Suffice it to say, I had absolutely zero regrets about quitting on what I now thought of as my Impossible Book Idea.
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E.L. Doctorow famously said, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” I’ve always loved that quote on writing because it’s so vivid and atmospheric, but for me, at the beginning of my writing career, it wasn’t especially true. In the age-old plotter vs. pantser debate, I would have said that I was a plotter all the way. I loved outlines. L-o-v-e-d them. I would not only outline the book in detail, I would outline each chapter before I wrote it, and then each scene of each chapter, too. I don’t think that effort was at all wasted; it helped me write my first books and land my first publishing contracts, and even more importantly, I think it gave me a deeply ingrained sense of story structure and plot. After writing several books, though, I noticed something: no matter how much I outlined and plotted and planned in advance, a certain percentage of my outlined plot points never made it into the book, because when it came to actually write them, they either just didn’t work– or else more often in the course of the writing process, I would come up with something that actually worked better than what I had originally planned.
Because I like outlines, like I say, and because I also love learning more about story craft, I tried stepping up the plotter game, using things like beat sheets and pinch points and all-is-lost moments. And to be clear, I’m not criticizing any of those things, I think they can be vitally important story elements, I think that using them to structure your novel in advance might work great for some authors. It just . . . didn’t work for me. At all. When I tried to outline my story with that level of structure and detail in mind, all I ended up with was a giant, unworkable mess that I eventually scrapped. I really did love the basic story idea, so maybe I’ll go back to it . . . someday. For now, though, I’ve come to realize that my writing process actually works better if I let go of a little of the control and allow a bit of the pantsing side of things to creep in.
For me, personally, writing is all about knowing the emotional journey that my characters take over the course of the book. So before I start writing, I have three key emotional points in mind:
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Thomas Edison famously said, “None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met, and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”
In my experience, that is somewhat true of writing books, too, in that all the inspiration in the world won’t save you if you can’t sit down and do the often hard work of getting the words onto the page. I feel like I’ve talked often in my posts here on WU about the perspiration side of things, and shared my own strategies for getting the work done and avoiding burnout. Daily word count goals, writing routines and schedules, outlines . . . those are all strategies that I use and have found invaluable in the course of all the books I’ve written and published over the years.
This month, though, I’ve been thinking about the inspiration part of creative invention, that part that Edison identified as being only one percent of the equation– and yet I think most authors would agree is every bit as invaluable as the other 99 percent of dogged hard work. (I’m actually not sure that I personally would put the split at 99% and 1%; maybe more like 75%/25%? But that’s beside my point.) My point is that the inspiration side is somehow much harder to pin down. At this point in my writing career, I’ve written a bunch of books and sold a fair few, too, and I suppose I can be cautiously optimistic that I know the mechanics of how to write a book. Not that I mean to suggest that anyone reaches a point where all writing is some kind of cakewalk . . . at least, if they do, that someone is not me, because I definitely haven’t hit any kind of cakewalk state of mind when I sit down to work.
But as much as I can come on here and offer tips and suggestions for getting the words on the page . . . that vital 1% or 25% or whatever it is of inspiration . . . the lightening bolt of a story idea that suddenly hits you, saying, Write me! Write me now! . . . I’m honestly not sure where those moments of inspiration come from– and yet I’m equally fascinated by them, at the same time, just because they are so illusive and intangible. I can do a good job of being organized and disciplined enough to write a story, but the inspiration that offers me the vital germ of a story idea? I’ve never been able to track that down on my own; I’ve never really tried that I can remember. Every book I’ve written, the inspiration has just streaked, meteor-like, through my head, leaving me frantically running after it, trying to keep it in my sights as I type.
I’ve written books that were inspired by a dream, books that were inspired by my love for classic works of literature, books based on retellings of fairy-tales. I have an entire series (under a different pen name) that jumped into my head while watching Blade Runner with my husband, so I […]
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Usually– well, almost usually– I have my Writer Unboxed posts done in advance of the day before I’m scheduled to post. This month, though, I’m kind of glad that the time got away from me, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to craft my post in response to Larry Brooks’ excellent article from Tuesday, The Big Lie About Writing Compelling Fiction.
If for some reason you weren’t spending your 4th of July hanging out here on WU and haven’t had a chance to catch up since, I highly recommend reading the article and also the excellent discussion that went on in the comments.
I found Larry’s article fascinating, and agreed with so much of what he had to say. In part because I could talk about my process in the way that Larry describes: “I just sit down and write, each and every day, following my gut, listening to my characters, and eventually the magic happens.” Heck, I have described my process that way– and the thing is, on some levels, it’s true.
I’ve read books on writing craft, our own Donald Maass’s among them. I think many of them are terrific. I read them, highlight them, scribble notes like, YES in the margins . . . and then utterly fail when I try to straight up implement the principles in my own work.
Have you read Save the Cat? Another terrific, terrific resource about story structure, albeit from a film-writing perspective rather than a novel-oriented one. Still, I read it and was amazed by how much wisdom Blake Snyder had to impart. I tried my hardest to apply his ‘beat sheet’ structure of plot points to the novel I was working on at the time, because I honestly thought it was a brilliant way of making both the internal and external journey of your main character as compelling as it can possibly be. It was an utter disaster. I probably re-wrote and re-outlined and laboriously re-wrote that novel half a dozen times, struggling to make the Blake Snyder Save the Cat system work for me. Eventually I just scrapped the whole thing. Maybe I’ll get back to it . . . someday. In the meantime, I’ve written 15 other novels, not one of which I outlined according to Save the Cat’s advice.
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My Short Pencil Collection, by Hugo Cardoso at Flickr
This is somewhat embarrassing to admit in public, but we’re all friends here at WU, so I’ll go ahead: not long ago, one of my books was being made into an audiobook, and during the recording process the producer pointed out how many times my characters nodded in agreement to something. I don’t have an exact count, but it was a kind of horrifying amount of nodding I had going on. Like, to the point where you would have thought I was confused as to whether I was writing about a bunch of bobble-head dolls or human beings. And this was after the book had been gone over by me multiple times, beta read, and read by my editor. Eeek.
I took another look, and probably 90 percent of those nods were entirely unnecessary, too. I cut them— thank goodness the book hadn’t been published yet— but it was an eye-opening experience, and one that reminded me that even 20+ books into my career as an author, I still have bad writing habits that I need to watch out for.
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Some days when I’m writing, I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep because I feel like an entire swath of my story– a scene, a chapter, sometimes even more– has just been downloaded into my head. My mind is so filled with lines of dialogue, descriptions, and plot points that I can almost feel my brain creaking trying to hold it all, and when I sit down with my computer my fingers fly over the keys, frantically trying to capture everything that’s so crystal clear in my imagination. I call those times visits from the muse (even though yes,I know, muses are really just manifestations of the authors unconscious mind, etc. etc). Regardless of where it comes from, it feels like magic. It’s the way we always want to feel when we write.
Although before I get to the heart of this post, I do want to say one thing. Yes, the visits from the muse are great, but I have other writing days where my children interrupt me 600 times in twenty minutes, or I have a cold or some other real-life intrusion, every paragraph feels like a chore, every page is a slog, and I will literally stop writing mid-sentence just because I’ve finally hit my word-count goal for the day. And then again somewhere in the middle, I have other days when I know exactly how I want the story to play out, but it still takes forever to write because I somehow can’t quite find the words to match what’s in my mind. And you know what? At the end of the day, when the story is all finished, I honestly can’t tell which chapters were written on which types of writing days. Nor, I don’t think, can anyone else. I get just about the same number of editorial compliments and criticisms on scenes that were written on pulling-teeth kinds of days as I do on the writing that happened during a visit from the muse. The muse isn’t the be all and end all, is what I’m saying, and if she’s just not showing up for you, don’t despair. I honestly think that just your showing up and writing each day, no matter what, is the single most important component of what makes a successful author.
That said, though, it’s easier (not easy, but easier) writing when the muse is willing to pay us a call. And magic or the unconscious mind, I do think we can, to a degree, make those visits more likely to happen. So here are my top three favorite strategies:
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The title of this post isn’t actually a rhetorical question. I’d love to hear what other writers have to say to the question: do your characters talk to you while you’re writing their story? Because I know that answers vary. I know authors– wildly successful authors– who will give you a funny look and an, Uh, no, because they’re . . . fictional? response if you ask whether they hear their characters’ voices. I know other authors– also wildly successful– who swear that they’ve had entire books thrown into disarray by a particularly “noisy” character who refuses to cooperate with the planned story. I’ve also read books and articles on craft– some of them here on WU– that are fairly dismissive of the idea that a fictional character can, or should, influence the direction of a story. Writers, these articles suggest, should take responsibility for their own plots, be the captains of their own ship– and I’m not sure that I necessarily disagree.
But I do tend to hear my character’s voices. Now, I don’t think either answer to my question makes you more or less of a writer or better or worse as a storyteller. Every author is different, and everyone has to find the writing process that works for them. But I have had characters entirely hijack my plot before. Villains who insisted that they were going to reveal themselves as heroes in the end. Romantic pairings that I never planned for, because one character simply pointed to another inside my head and said, “I want that one.”
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By now, most writers are at least somewhat familiar with the basic logistics of indie publishing. Today, though, I wanted to talk about another venue that indies have for sharing their stories that may not be as widely known and thought about: audiobooks. If you’ve published an indie novel or are planning on publishing one– or like some authors I know, retain the audio rights on a traditionally published book– you have the option to have your book made into an audiobook and sell that, too. It not only offers another way for readers to connect with your stories, it can be an added significant source of income.
Now, right up front, I should say that the process of having an audiobook made represents a quite significant time commitment on your part, even if– like most authors– you hire a narrator and sound engineer. As a homeschooling mama of small children ranging from 2 years old to 9, I frankly don’t have that kind of time at all. I would never have been able to even think about audiobooks if my amazing parents had not stepped in and surprised me with the offer to take care of everything. So this article is really a collaboration between me and my dad, and when I say “we” what I really mean is “my superhero mom and dad with unbelievably minimal help from me.”
At any rate, here’s a look at the process that “we” went through:
First, you’ll need to pick an audiobooks distributor. (Google ‘audiobooks’ and you’ll find a lot of them.) All will take a percentage of the sales, the percentage depending on whether you distribute through them exclusively or not.
We picked ACX,one of the largest and probably best-known distributors.
Stéphane Magnenat via Wikipedia Commons
If you’re a writer— professional, part-time, aspiring, or something in between— then chances are you got into the job because, not surprisingly, you love to write. My husband and I were just this week talking about doing the job that you’d do even if you were never payed for it— and definitely writing is that for me. I write seven days a week, year-round, simply because even on the hard days I couldn’t love it more.
But we all have experienced those hard days: times when we feel like we’ve lost the spark of delight in what we’re working on. It might be a scene, a chapter, or an entire book that suddenly feels flat or empty or just lifeless on the page. So here are my top four strategies for bringing back the joy and getting back on track when it feels like your spark is gone.
1. Don’t despair. Things may actually not be as bad as you think they are. Just this week, my writing partner and I were remarking that it’s practically impossible to write a book without at some point being convinced that it’s utter crud. But those are dark, desperate moments. Don’t trust them! Put the work aside for an hour or a day— take a walk, watch a movie, do something to relax— and then approach your story with new eyes. In my experience the chances are extremely good that you’ll find the book isn’t nearly as much a mess as you thought. In need of edits, sure, but anything can be editing and fixed. Just remember: you can’t edit a blank page.
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