Posts by Kathleen McCleary
As a writer, it can be remarkably helpful to spend time around kids. When I’m not doing my own writing I work with kids ages 8-18 on everything from short stories to college essays, and at least once a week something happens that takes my breath away.
Young kids—eight to eleven-year-olds— who love to write, REALLY love to write. “Writer’s block” is an unknown concept; they’re open about sharing their work; they delight in other’s work; they laugh a lot. Adolescents are trickier. Some are so shy they barely speak during workshop, but then they write vivid, bold, incredible stories. Others can’t wait to tell you how wonderful their writing is, but then their stories are tentative, stilted. They are all incredibly brave. You know how hard it is to share your writing as an adult? How vulnerable it makes you feel to have your soul there on display? Right. Imagine doing that as a 14-year-old.
Here are three of the best lessons I’ve learned about writing from kids:
Don’t be afraid to play. A big part of working with kids is playing writing games. Writopia, the non-profit creative writing organization I work with, has its own games, but you can easily search for “creative writing games” online and find dozens. Playing writing games pushes kids to write scenes and stories and characters outside their usual comfort zones, often with surprising results. I play every game along with the kids, and it’s pushed me outside my comfort zone, too. One student of mine wrote very serious, deeply philosophical fiction. (He’s 13 and reads Albert Camus “for fun.”) One day I had students write down a single “Aha!” moment that could happen to a character (I learned to tell the truth, I understood parents make mistakes) and then write a character and scene leading up to that moment of insight. But first I had the kids swap “Aha!” moments, so they had to write something based on another student’s idea. My very serious student had to create a story leading up to the insight “I stopped believing in Santa Claus,” and wrote a delightful, sharply funny piece about a little boy walking down the stairs expecting to meet “the Fat Man himself” only to run into his father. “This is nothing like what I usually write,” the student kept saying. And he smiled the entire time he was writing.
Read MoreI was sitting in D.C.’s Lincoln Theater about three months ago, listening to The Milk Carton Kids and Sarah Jarosz, talented folk musicians who sing some of the most gorgeous harmonies I’ve ever heard. The theater itself is a visual concert—a beautiful 1920’s-era building, with gold ceilings and crystal chandeliers and lovely arched moldings and walls covered in gold-patterned fabric. I wasn’t thinking about anything really—other than how good the music was, how lovely the theater was, how pleasant it felt to be in that particular place at that particular time.
And then I was struck by lightening.
Not literally. But the idea for a new novel came to me, all at once and fully formed, after months and months of the longest writing drought I’ve had in my life.
I’ve written before about how important it is for writers to take breaks from writing. But there’s a big difference between not writing to give yourself a break and not writing because you have no ideas and nothing to say and everything you write is dry and flat and uninspired. The first feels good. The second feels awful.
After I finished my third novel, I took a break from writing. I’d published two books in two years and been under deadline pressure for a long time and I needed a rest. And after my break I came back, ready to write better than I ever had before. I read books on how to write, everything from John Truby’s Anatomy of Story to Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat and Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life. I underlined and took notes and wrote Wish Lists and Premises and Outlines and Character Studies. I developed Designing Principles and Themes and Heroes and Antagonists. I bought markers and index cards and sticky notes in 12 different colors and a magnetic white board. I wrote scenes on my index cards and outlined plots on my white board.
I had never been so organized and done so much preliminary thinking. But when I sat down to write, the story came slowly and involved a lot of false starts. I liked my characters, but I didn’t really know what they were doing or why. It took forever to get the main action off the ground.
Six months later I had 100+- pages, which I sent to my agent. She felt it wasn’t quite there but agreed to show it to my editor, who said she was sorry but this was not a book she was interested in.
Read MoreI’m fascinated by personality tests, you know, the kind you run across all the time online or in magazines. I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test twice (I’m an INFJ), the Keirsey Temperament Test (also an INFJ) and studied the Enneagram (I’m a 2). And while all of this is fodder for good cocktail party conversation and self-analysis, one of the biggest benefits of thinking about personality types is the way it’s helped me create characters in fiction.
My fiction is character driven. If I can get a handle on my characters and truly understand who they are—what they like and dislike, what loves and terrors drive them, what strengths and weaknesses define them—then the plot often flows naturally from the choices these characters make. But one of the biggest challenges in creating believable characters is making sure they are themselves, not me. And this is where personality typing can be very useful.
There’s plenty of science to back up the idea that we are born with certain temperaments. For example, the New York Longitudinal Study (Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess) followed infants from age six months into their early forties, identifying 9 temperament characteristics that remained constant throughout the decades. Our characters, too, are born with certain temperaments. The story lies in how those inborn personality traits lead characters to make choices that shape the events of their lives and, in turn, how events work with temperament to shape character. It’s an intricate dance, and when executed well in fiction it creates characters that linger in our minds (and readers’ minds) long after a book ends.
A few tips on creating characters:
Read MoreWhen I was in the midst of writing my first novel, I gave up. I’d never written fiction before. I had never even taken a class on how to write fiction. I had no idea what I was doing, and I knew I would never get published. I explained all this to my husband.
“You know, even if you never get published,” he said, “It is a huge accomplishment just to finish an entire novel. How many people actually do that?”
And I thought, he’s right.
Sometimes in writing we can get so focused on what recognition and success look like in the world around us that we forget what success looks like to each of us, on our terms. Of course I want my books to be published; I want readers and reviewers to adore them and I want to sell a million copies. I’ve published three novels now, and pored over every review in every periodical and blog, compulsively checked my Amazon reviews and rankings, scrutinized my royalty statements, and done endless marketing and PR for my books, including once driving 1400 miles in seven days to visit 28 indie book stores.
But with each book I’ve gotten less and less invested in the outcome, because I realize that the only part of the whole process I can control is the writing. I have learned that there is great satisfaction in writing as well as I can every day, and in challenging myself to make each book better than the last, and in celebrating the accomplishments that matter to me.
Celebrating ourselves doesn’t come easily to many people, especially writers, who are often (stereotype alert!) smart, introspective, shy, and yes, insecure. All those adjectives fit me to a T. I am a nice Mid-western girl. I am polite. I often defer to authority (or at least I used to, before I became middle-aged and cranky). I am modest. Self-promotion makes me queasy, and I’m uncomfortable being the center of attention. But I have two daughters. I see how hard they work, and I see how eager they are to please. I want to show them that there is nothing wrong with cheering for yourself when you’ve earned it.
I sold my first novel when I was 47, on a day when I had such a bad head cold I couldn’t breathe. What I remember most about that week is going to the dress rehearsal for my daughter’s Odyssey of the Mind competition, the day after returning from New York, where my agent had introduced me to several editors and publishers who, to my amazement, wanted my book. At that point I was so sick that all I wanted to do was sit propped up in bed with some Vicks’ Vapo-rub and a glass of orange juice. Instead, I had to go to the dress rehearsal, lugging cardboard scenery and a hot dog costume. When I arrived, my friend Steve pulled out a bottle of champagne.
Read MorePlease welcome Kathleen McCleary to Writer Unboxed as a new regular columnist! Kathleen is the author of three novels—House and Home, A Simple Thing, and Leaving Haven—and has worked as a bookseller, bartender, and barista (all great jobs for gathering material for fiction). You can learn more about Kathleen in her bio box at the end of this post.
Three years ago, I had one of those summers in which everything that could go wrong did—and on a colossal scale. I was under a tight deadline to finish my second novel, which had been four years in the writing. My editor wanted me to add a second point of view, which was basically like writing another novel and weaving it together with the one I’d already written. I had four months to get it done. And during those next four months, the following happened:
Of course my agent and editor both told me not to worry about the book and the deadline. And indeed, I wasn’t sure I could even remember what I was doing with my story in the face of so much heartache. But when I sat down to try and work on the book, I found that all those feelings—anger at the bullies who had wounded my girl, grief at losing my father and father-in-law, gratitude for the wonderful men they had been and all they had done for me—fueled my writing in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
No one in that book loses a parent or in-law, or gets sick and misses a funeral, or stands vigil at a parent’s hospital bed. But the characters do suffer losses, grieve, cherish each other, try to find solace in small moments—all the things I felt that summer, even though none of the situations in the book were based on my own life.
[pullquote]There is an immediacy and honesty to writing that comes out of adversity. That kind of immediacy and honesty connects readers to your work in a visceral way.[/pullquote]
I have found this to be true again and again in writing, that some of my deepest sorrows have led to my best writing. There is an immediacy and honesty to writing that comes out of adversity. That kind of immediacy and honesty connects readers to your work in a visceral way.
One of my favorite sayings about writing is that “all the feelings are facts, it’s the facts that are fiction.”
Read MoreToday’s guest, Kathleen McCleary, is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ladies Home Journal, More, and Good Housekeeping. She has written three novels: House and Home (2008); A Simple Thing (2012), and most recently Leaving Haven (2013). Kathleen has taught writing as an adjunct professor at American University, and she’s an instructor with Writopia Labs, a non-profit that teaches creative writing to kids. She has also worked as a bartender, barista, and bookseller—all great jobs for providing material for fiction. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two daughters and Jinx the cat.
Writers so often hear the advice that there’s nothing like putting your butt in the chair day after day in order to get something done. And that’s true, but it’s not the ONLY truth. The other truth is that creative work requires periods of rest, time during which all those things that simmer beneath the surface can percolate and bubble and burst or ripen. Rest is a necessary part of the creative process, and one we too seldom grant ourselves.
Follow Kathleen on Twitter @KAMcCleary and Facebook, and check out her blog.
Taking a Break
For the nine years I’ve been writing fiction, I have read (and written) plenty of advice on how to write and complete a novel. But it wasn’t until recently—after finishing my third novel—that I understood something elemental about writing: It’s equally important to not write. At all. For an extended period of time.
Writers take breaks every day—churn characters and situations and obstacles over and over in our brains until we have that moment (typically in the shower or out walking the dog) when what needs to happen next springs into place. That’s the process—put your butt in the chair for so many hours, walk away for a while, and put your butt back in the chair to forge on, the hokey-pokey of creation. But you never leave it for long.
I sold my third book before I wrote it, based on a first chapter and outline. At the time the deadline was more than a year away—very doable. Until my elderly mother moved to town and my “easy” teaching gig turned out to be hard and my kids needed the time and attention kids need. I missed the deadline, but my editor understood. I missed the next deadline, too.
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