My writing library

I'm on holiday. Sort of. Many busy exciting things are happening and I'm not at home. If that's a holiday, here I am.

Right now I'm in Victoria, B.C., which I tend to visit about once per year. Victoria has marvellous bookstores including independents Bolen Books and Russell Books, as well as a massive Chapters with a good view of the main downtown street (go upstairs, have a coffee, and people-watch your heart out.) Because of this, or because I'm a bibliophile anyway, my tradition when I'm in Victoria once yearly is to go through all of these bookstores and buy myself a magazine, the newest Get Fuzzy collection, and a writing book.

I have very few writing books that I find useful. I could spend ages reading through other people's advice on writing, but for reasons related to my previous post on editing, I think it's a bad idea. My time will be better served writing, or at the very least getting involved with a community of other writers, not authors far away, where I have their words but can't discuss or get feedback or question what they've said.

The few books I like, I adore. They include On Writing by Stephen King, Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown, and How Not to Write a Novel by Howard Mittelmark. Each of these titles have helped me with my craft to an extent beyond making me feel good about thinking about writing. I think the first two are absolutely necessary for fiction writers, and the latter is both useful and pretty damn funny, too.

I also have a few favourite books that act more like writing prompts. The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood provides photos and words to nudge creativity without giving explicit writing exercises. The 3AM Epiphany by Brian Kiteley is full of real writing exercises, each explained and put in context of the part of the craft they exercise. Both of these books can be taken seriously or not, and I love that type of prompt, when it's still mostly up to my own imagination.

It's this latter kind of book I picked up on this trip. In fact, the first book I picked up was The 4AM Breakthrough, again by Brian Kiteley. More lovely exercises! More wonderful thought-provoking prompts!



But then I broke my own rules. Because another book caught my eye. And then I bought it. It's the Writer's Guide to Character Traits, by Dr. Linda Edelstein.



This book is sort of a Psych 101, while keeping in mind writers creating characters. There are lists, explanations, sections on childhood to sexuality. It's written by someone who has been in psychology since the early 1970s and who arguably knows what she's talking about. I don't know how it's meant to be used, but I intend to browse through it, letting my ideas spark, letting characters speak up when something speaks true. And also I plan to put my previous characters to the test, to see if they're as realistic as I hope. Because like all human beings, most of my characters have enough "traits" to worry their mothers.

And now I'm not allowed to buy any more writing books. At least until next year.

The new woman in fiction

Something about this article doesn't sit right with me. Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune is remarking on the "feisty, reckless, rootless women" increasingly dominating television, movies, and books. I should love it. I should be revelling in all the women who break convention, and unlike similar characters of entertainment past, are "not depicted as witches, shrews, hags, evil stepmothers or shriveled-up spinsters who eventually get their comeuppance."

Yeah. But I don't like it. I think it's the language. This new breed of woman is described as a "cheeky, tough-talking, hard-drinking renegade with good biceps and a bad attitude." Arrogant, brash, brassy, pushy, toughminded, pugnacious, "able to knock back a half-dozen Budweisers and fill up a trio of ashtrays in a single night." How about, "notoriously short-tempered and ill-mannered." And this is all boiled down eventually to "female freedom." Really?

Hey, I'm as glad as the next female for the right to imperfection. But at the risk of sounding repressed by centuries of patriarchy, I've got to admit that these "new" women sound unlikeable to me. And not unlikeable in an "Ooh, aren't they fascinating" kind of way. Although there are other words tossed around, like strong and complex, knowledgeable and alluring, the majority of descriptors are not complex. They're basically repugnant. Is that the real accomplishment here? Having women that can be unlikeable not just for "traditional" reasons, but new, usually male-oriented reasons? Hey look girls, we can be pushy alcoholic bastards, too! It's totally what we longed for when we were darning socks in the 18th Century!

And they're "dominating" current entertainment. So instead of all kinds of characters, all kinds of women, this ill-mannered woman is becoming most popular. This is what we want to see, apparently. We want the majority of our female characters to be arrogant and short-tempered. Never mind that the system of machismo in male culture this emulates has been shown to be damaging to the way men see each other and themselves.

The article quotes observers who believe that Hilary Clinton and her 2008 political run is responsible for the shift toward the acceptable bitch. I find this bit fascinating, as I don't remember a single interview Clinton chain-smoked her way through and then tossed a beer bottle at the wall and told Katie Couric to get the hell out of her way.

I enjoy not liking a character. I don't love most people anyway, so when someone in a book or movie shows me they're flawed, frustrated, or otherwise freakish, I see it as verisimilitude. And I don't think the author of the article was trying to suggest that being a jerk is the epitome of female depiction. But I still don't like the article. I don't feel revved up to watch those shows or read those books. I just don't enjoy purely repugnant characters any more or less no matter which chromosomes they carry. I need more.

Princess Leia Organa:
Not "feisty" enough to make the cut.

My reaction to the article is made more interesting to me by how much I adore the trend of damaged or dark women in fiction. Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects, for instance. Flynn wrote a fabulous essay on acknowledging the darkness in women.

"women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we've left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids. So Sharp Objects is my creepy little bouquet."

And I agree with this. I love her for saying it, and for writing both Sharp Objects and Dark Places, novels with women who are not just dark but downright scary. But they are also more complex, and more real, than the descriptions in the article, and that too should be acknowledged. It isn't enough to be a mess. You have to be a mess for reasons, reasons you may or may not ever overcome. Then you'll have my attention.

Further thoughts on further editing

As noted in my last post, I've recently finished the re-write of a book. I've been working on this book for over a year and I think the changes are improvements, but I'm anxious to move on. Curious about how much other writers re-write and edit, I discovered some advice.

"Give yourself an editing deadline, like six months, or three months. When it's finished, stop. You could edit forever, and you shouldn't."

"A first draft is nothing. A second draft could be anything. You could spend a decade on a book before it's right but you don't want to send it out when it's not right. Keep editing until it's the book you want it to be."

"Three drafts, nothing more. After that, you're just beating a dead horse."

"Allow yourself to edit a manuscript for as many weeks as it took you to write the manuscript. Then stop."

Oh, okay. Well as long as editing advice is always consistent we should be all right.

*bangs head against wall*

When I became active in the writing community one of the things that made me proud or ashamed, depending on who I talked to, was how much I'd actually written compared to other people. Compared to some, who loved the idea of writing but had never actually gotten beyond page one, I was already a superstar. Compared to others, who had neatly edited whole manuscripts and continued to send them out for representation, I was an amateur. But one thing was very certain: I was writing a lot, and that was good, but I had not given enough attention to the words I'd written.

So what's enough? Unfortunately no one seems to have a final formula for how much attention each word deserves before you let it go. And you can easily get mired in agonizing over syllables. A common situation in any re-write: adding a word you think sounds good, removing it, and adding it again, only to have your first reader circle it and write, "Unnecessary?" in the margin. Yes. It fascinates me how easy it is for other people to pick out the words I've carelessly strewn throughout, as if those words have little neon signs on them saying, "Danger, editing shrapnel."

And as selling authors occasionally point out, you might be able to spend a leisurely decade on your first book but when you are asked to produce one or even two per year - not an unusual demand from publishers - you don't have that kind of time.

Of course, it isn't always a case of fiddling too much. If your readers smile and nod and appreciate your work and seem impressed with its potential, for what it could possibly eventually be, but don't ever say, "Hey have you sent that piece out yet?" then it's time to stop thinking about the next project, and the next, and the next, and sit down and actually work. I know of more than one best-selling author who have a book or two that even their most devoted fans will say, "Yeah... I really wish they'd edited it more."

So there is no formula. No consistency. It's case-by-case, every time. And if you really care about your work it's doubtful you'll ever be quite certain that you've got it right. You should be thinking about whether it needs a bit more work, and you should also be thinking about your next project, and whether this one needs its breathing space before you smother it with tiny insignificant changes. If you're not thinking, if you don't care, if you don't notice the warring pieces of advice out there on the subject, if you think, "My gut instinct is always obvious and always right," then, well, it's unlikely you've read this far through this post, that's for sure.

Applied Chaos

Last year this time I was finishing a book. I was absorbed into the world, dissolved in the mind of my hero. We were spinning through our last chapters together. The heady rush of the last few pages was just crashing along.

This year I'm finishing the same book. Except it's nothing like the same book. It has the same mystery, the same characters. But so much has been added and traded away, so many threads and layers teased out of each player, that they might have been written by a different author. Like a writing exercise, a prompt that produces a different result from each participant. This year, I guess I'm a different author.

A story is always there, in the ether of imagination, waiting to be discovered. The writer chooses how to tell it. And this telling is a glowing coal next to the grey ghost of the first draft. Last time I spoke with my first reader I told her, "I like this book but I don't think I did it justice for all it could be." This time when I give her the manuscript I will feel very differently. This time I think I've done it right.

I may feel very differently again, and soon - the moods of a writer judging their own work are scattered and unpredictable. But today I want to celebrate, and cheer, and mourn the entire process, because the tale has been told and can never be written in exactly the same way again.

And I want to start writing something new.