A Writer Writes

I’ve mentioned the writing habits of some famous authors in a previous article, here, but I wanted to dig a little deeper.  All writers have things that work for them, to make the hard art of staring at a blank page and filling it with thoughts a little easier, but habits can become a crutch and an excuse not to write. There’s always something or someone that comes along and kicks the crutch out from under you.  But if you want to write, or call yourself a writer, you write, no matter how hobbled you are.

                There’s a debate as to whether F. Scott Fitzgerald drank while he wrote.  Personally, I don’t think he did.  Or, if he did, he certainly cleaned it up in a sober draft.  It is a fact, however, that when he was on the wagon in Hollywood and working for the movie studios, he drank Coke-A-Cola constantly while he suffered away in his office, trying to conform to what the studios wanted.  Both of those are crutches, even if one is worse than the other. 

                Suffice it to say, the man was out of his comfort zone.  He lived most of his life on the east coast, or abroad in Europe, writing when he wasn’t too drunk or occupied with his manic wife, who was in and out of asylums (say what you want about Zelda, but she did try to kill them both by driving their car off a cliff after a party – and that’s only one of the documented episodes of their tumultuous life together), so the man had his hands full. 

                But, he continued writing.  And he wrote a lot. Maybe the quality of the old Fitz wasn’t always there in the short stories he was hacking out to pay for his daughter’s schooling and his wife’s medical bills, but he kept writing.  At the end of his life, when the most popular writer of the Jazz Age was all but forgotten, he managed to produce another classic novel from his sick bed.  The Love of the Last Tycoon, though he died before it was finished, is considered by some to be on the level of Gatsby, or better, if he had lived long enough to finish it.

                The point is, he was a writer who didn’t let his own habits and crutches get in the way of producing words. He wrote.

I wrote my first novel on a typewriter.  I found the rhythm of punching keys conducive to putting words on the paper.  The thing about typewriters, though, for all you kids out there who have never used one, is they use ink ribbons, which run out of ink.  These days you can’t exactly run to the corner store when you need a new one.  You have to order them and wait for them to come.  So, when the ink ran out, I was stuck.  I would have to break out of the habit, grab a pencil and notebook, and try to find that rhythm without the clackity clack of the typewriter keys.  It was hard, at first, but I managed to keep going until the mail arrived with my ribbon.

Another habit I formed was writing outside.  In the summer, when the mornings are warm and the sun comes up early, I would go out on the patio with my typewriter, or computer, or whatever other habit I had found necessary to help me get the words down, and write until the sun was to high and bright, or I had spilled to much sweat onto the paper.  It was glorious.  When I was stuck, I could light a cigarette, take a puff, and the word I was searching for would just come magically from the atmosphere.  (Smoking is a bad habit.  Don’t do it.)

I started that habit (the writing outside one) when I lived in California.  I live in the south now.  One big difference between the two, is that it rains a lot in the south.  So, when the rains come, and I stare outside at my flooded patio, pen and paper in disappointed hand, I get stuck.  How will the words come if I’m not outside to catch them?

Well, I sit on my couch, put pen to paper, and they come.  Not easily, mind you, but they do come.

If you want to be a writer, even one who only writes for themselves, you have to put the words down.  It’s not always easy.  You won’t always have your crutch.  But if it’s something you have to do, you’ll do it.

Five Things That Influenced Me As A Writer

I get asked a lot why I write, or where my ideas come from.  I don’t know the answer to either of those questions.  I started writing at an early age.  It’s something I’ve always known I wanted to do, and I’ve never given it up. 

                While I can’t answer either of those questions with a satisfactory answer, I can give you a brief list of what has influenced me as a writer.

1.        Comic Books

Comic books were my first literary love.  I discovered comics when I was a little kid.  My father worked the flea market circuit and took me on a trip to Canton, Texas.  There was a comic dealer there who had boxes and boxes of them, all for a quarter a piece. The cover art drew me in and the stories kept me going.  I’d devour the stories about super heroes, beg a quarter off my dad, and go back for more.   I was enthralled. 

                It wasn’t long after this I started writing and drawing my own.  First, I wrote stories about Superman and the Incredible Hulk duking it out, then I graduated to my own set of heroes.  The first stories I sold as a writer were comic books, written for my dad.  He’d give me a dollar to find out what happened in the next issues. 

                That counts as self-published, right?

2.       History

History is another influence that got me at an early age.  History is full of fascinating stories about heroes and villains.  Great adventures that lead to great discoveries.  It was always one of my favorite subjects in school, and when I got my hands on the history book I’d be studying that year, I always skimmed through and picked out the most fascinating stories.

                I’m still a history buff, and read biographies when I get my hands on them.  It used to be the Civil War, or Native American histories, but now, it’s just about anything I can get my hands on.  History is so much more fascination than fiction, because it really happened.  Lewis and Clark jumped into the great unknown west and mapped rivers and mountains no American had seen before.  John Dillinger escaped from jail, locking up thirty people in the process, and rode out of town in the sheriff’s car.  You can’t make those kinds of things up, but you can draw inspiration from them.

3.       Books

Books.  I just love them.  I love the smell, the feel, the covers, and what’s inside them.  You’d be surprised how many people there are that want to be writers who refuse to read.  Not me.  I read every chance I get and go through withdrawals when I don’t.

                I can’t name a particular book that made me want to be a writer.  I will tell you a brief anecdote about Earnest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.  In my freshman year of high school, we were given a summer reading list, which I almost immediately lost.  The only book I could remember being on the list was, For Whom the Bell Tolls, so I picked it up and read it.  I loved it.  I had no idea who this Hemingway fellow was, but that book changed everything for me.  It wasn’t just good versus evil.  It was, why is there good, and who is evil.  There were questions posed.  Nothing is clear cut. This was life put into fiction. 

                Turns out For Whom the Bell Tolls wasn’t on the reading list.  It was an optional, or something.  But I’m glad I read it, and I’ve been a Hemingway fan ever since.

4.       Teachers

I have bad teachers and I’ve good teachers.  The bad ones don’t care.  They go through their lesson plan and rarely look away from the board to the little faces staring up at them, or lost in their own world waiting for the bell to ring.

                The good ones pay attention to the faces.  They give feedback.  They listen.  The ones who inspired me to try my hand at the craft of writing weren’t all English or Lit teachers.  Some of them were history teachers, and some were science.  But they infused imagination in their lesson plan.  They saw what their pupils were good or interested in and encouraged them to pursue it.  Teachers play a huge role in a person’s formative years, and this is no less true for a writer.

5.       My Dad

I’ve already mentioned him in this article, but he bears mentioning again.  The Old Man could tell a tale, as they say.  He was so good at it, it was hard to tell where fiction and fact merged.  He knew how to put a little bit of truth into every tale.

He was a natural storyteller and a voracious reader.  My interest in history comes from him.  He encouraged me to write and draw and supported my comic book habit even when he only had a few dollars in his pocket.  He wasn’t a perfect man.  We had our fights and disagreements, as fathers and sons always have and always will, but I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for him.

 Aspects of him turn up in my writing probably more than I am aware and I wish he was still here to read my stories, and give me a quarter to finish the next chapter.

Five Ways to Handle Rejection (From a Writer’s Perspective)

We all face rejection.  It’s a fact of life.  Nobody gets everything they want, even if they seem like they do.  As a writer, or someone who struggles to be a writer, we face it with every word we type.  How we handle the constant stream of rejection letters and just straight-up snubs can play a crucial part in our writing.  Here’s a few ways to handle rejection, and you can apply it to any area of life where rejection is a constant factor.

1.       Give Up

So, you’ve written the best piece of writing ever.  You’ve sent it out to all the publishers you can think of, and even a few agents.  This is going to be your big break. 

You check your inbox everyday for three months.  Finally, you see it.  A reply.  With a tight smile on your lips, you click the email.

                “Thank you for Submitting.  Unfortunately, the novel you’ve spent three years writing does not suit us at this time…”

                Well, a week later, you get another reply.  

“Thank you for Submitting.  Unfortunately, the novel you’ve spent three years writing does not suit us at this time…”

                And then a week later, you get this.

                “Thank you for Submitting.  Unfortunately, the novel you’ve spent three years writing does not suit us at this time…”

                In the world of writing, consider yourself lucky if you get that much of a reply.  There are, after all, a thousand other writers submitting to the same houses (or more, I’ll pulled that figure out of the air, but you get the idea) so what are the odds they’re going to pick your story?  I don’t know, to tell you the truth.  But if you’re not ready for a constant stream of rejection letters, then give up.  At least the slush piles the editors wade through will be shallower, and they can send me my rejection notice that much quicker. 

                You might want to remember this, though.  It took Jack Kerouac ten years to get On the Road published.  Sure, he went through a few drafts along the way, but it got published and he became a literary star.  I’m not saying this will happen to you, but I will say it won’t happen if you give up.  That’s a certainty.

2.       Come At It From A Different Angle

You’ve sent the same story out to twenty publishers, and every one of them sent you a rejection (or just never replied -  I hate those the most).  This is the time to sit back and re-read your story.  If you’ve sent it out to that many publishers, I can only imagine you’ve had time to put it away and forget about it (which is helpful to do before sending it in the first place).  By this time, reading your story should be like reading it for the first time.  You’ll see what makes sense and what doesn’t.  You’ll catch typos that, somehow, even after reading it a hundred times, you somehow missed.  Or you’ll that one paragraph you loved so much doesn’t move the story at all, and doesn’t add anything to it. 

When you’re too close to a story, you’re blinded by it.  You see things that aren’t really there, or miss things that are there.  It’s like not seeing the forest for the trees.  If you love writing enough to want to have it published, you’re going to have to put the work in.  I know writers who re-work a story twenty times before sending it out.  They change perspective, write it from different points of view, switch main characters.  All just to see which works best for the story before ever sending it out.  You’d be surprised how much better your story can be, if work at it from a different angle.

The worst that will happen is you’ll get another rejection notice.

3.       Get Angry

Who do these editors think they are anyway?  Don’t they see how ingenious my story is?  I’ve got themes upon themes, in this.  Symbolism you’d have to be blind not to see!  I’ve touched upon the isolation of the common man and the unity of societal woes all in under 5000 words!

This is gold baby! Pure gold!

                Who knows why the editor didn’t pick your story.  Could be it just didn’t fit in with the theme of their issue or publication.  Could be they filled their quota before they even read your world changing manifesto.  Or, it’s possible, and even likely, they just didn’t like your story. 

                Let that sink in.  They didn’t like your story. 

                It happens.  It happens a lot. 

                There are an infinite number of writers out there, all trying to break into the same small market as you.  In a field where everyone is doing their damnedest to stand out, to be seen and heard, your story has to scream and shout and then, maybe you’ll have the ball thrown to you. 

                Anger can help.  If you use it constructively.  Don’t let it eat you up, and don’t let it make you throw your laptop through the window.  Use the energy anger gives you to write your story and to make it shine.    

                One of the rules for writing is to show, not tell.  It gives the page an energy that keeps the reader reading.  Keeps them from getting bored.  Anger is conducive.  Let it flow onto the page. 

                And if you still get rejected?

                Throw the story out the window, and start again.  Angrier, this time.

4.       Get Sad

Sadness has an energy to it, too, and it can be just as useful.  Put these emotions into your characters.  What does your character do when they are sad?  Do they cry, or become withdrawn and sullen? 

Think about it. 

If you want the characters you’re writing about to have depth, to really pop off the page and into the mind of the reader, they need to have range.  Think of all the emotions you go through in one day.  Or even just a few hours.  All the highs and lows.  How do you express them?  Probably in different ways to different people.  So should your characters.

                I’m not saying your characters need to be a copy of you.  In fact, they probably shouldn’t be, depending on what it is you’re writing.  What I’m saying they need to feel real.  Emotional highs and lows, and how your characters handle them, go a long way into showing, not telling, who a character is, and why we should give a damn.

                Don’t let sadness at being rejected get in the way of your writing.  Use it.  Harness it.  As a writer, you have to you use all your resources.  Sadness is just another tool in the shed.  Pull it out when you need it.

       5.        Get Even

So, you’ve been rejected by every publisher you can find.  You’ve written story after story, polishing your prose and sharpening your writing skills, and still, no one wants to let you in the writer’s clubhouse.

                You’ve given up, tried different angles, got mad, and then broke down and got sad.

                Well, now it’s time to get even. 

                “How do I do that?” you ask.

                I’ll tell you how. 

                Start writing on your own terms.  Don’t wait for the approval of the literary magazines or publishing houses.  Don’t even worry about being published.  Just write and write and write.  Write the best you can.

We’re in the age of do it yourself writing.  We have avenues for writers our predecessors never had.  Self-publishing has existed for as long as the printing press has, or longer, if you count cave paintings (unless those guys were commissioned) but never have writers been able to reach such a massive audience.

 I’m not saying self-publishing is for everybody.  You’re most likely not going to get rich or offered a movie deal.  The chances of those things happening are slim, even if you get a book deal through a publishing house.  There’s also a certain level of cache at being accepted by one of the major publishing houses you don’t get from self-publishing.

But now the big houses are looking more and more to self-published writers who make a name for themselves.  You still have to do the work, just about all of the heavy lifting, but self-publishing is becoming more and more a viable option.  If you want to get even, then a successfully self-published book is about the best way to do it. 

And if you don’t make a dime off your self-published book?

Well, you’re not in this for the money, are you?

Ten Tips From Famous Writers, Interpreted by Me

A lot of people will offer you advice when you show them your work.  Some of it is useful, and some of it isn’t.  In the world of writing, different things work for different people.  Here, I’ve collected advice from some of my favorite writers, and thrown in my opinion for each one.  Some of them are interesting from a historical standpoint and some may even by apocryphal, but if you get anything out of what they have to say, you’ll be a better writer for it.

1.       Earnest Hemingway - “Write drunk, edit sober.”

This piece of advice isn’t the greatest, and is probably one of the apocryphal ones I mentioned above.  Hemingway wasn’t prone to doling out advise about writing.  Another one of his famous quotes, “There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” was, I think, a cheeky way getting around giving advice.  One thing I did pick up from Hemingway, is that he wrote standing up.  I don’t always do this, but sometimes it helps to get the blood flowing.  And like the man said, you got to bleed.

      

2.       F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald was a sickly fellow and wrote a lot in bed.  I’ve never managed to be able to do that, but it seemed to work out for him.  The advice I found most helpful was a piece he gave to his daughter, Scotty.  He told her when writing a short story, get it all down in one sitting.  It helps to preserve the emotion and tone of the story.  If you can’t get it all down, then always read up to where you left off before beginning again.  Getting it all down in one sitting is hard for me, because I’m a slow writer.  But it does help to read up to where I left off before beginning again. 

He also told her, “Nothing any good, isn’t hard.” Ain’t that the truth.

3.       John Steinbeck

Steinbeck was a bit of a curmudgeon.  He wrote everything in pencil and the only person who could read his handwriting was his line editor.  When she died, his publisher forced him to start using a typewriter.  To get back them, he sent in a few pages typed in Russian.  One of the more useful pieces of advice I got comes from him.  Pick one person, and write for them.  For Steinbeck, it was his wife.  I like to change it up, depending on the type of story I’m writing.  But if you get stuck, its helpful sometimes to think about what that one person would find interesting and kick the ball that way.  Even if it’s in Russian.

4.       William Faulkner

For a man who didn’t do many interviews, Faulkner had a lot to say about writing.  He worked as the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia in the mid-fifties, and much of what he had to say to his students has been made public.  What he had to say about stopping for the day has proved useful to me, especially when I’m working on a longer story.  He said, “Never write yourself out.  Always quit when it’s good.  Then it’s easier to pick up again.”  Basically, don’t exhaust yourself.  If you burn to bright one night, it’s going to be harder to get the flame going the next day.  That’s not an excuse to write one paragraph and call it a day. 

5.       Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler, author of hard-boiled detective stories who became a writer because he was broke, had this to say about writer’s block.

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning.  Clean it every noon.”  Chandler was an alcoholic, but I don’t think that’s what he was referring too.  If you’re struggling to get started, just sit down and start typing words.  Something will come of it.  And if nothing does, do it again the next morning.  Eventually, if you keep at it, something will come.  Remember, nothing any good is easy.

6.       Elmore Leonard

Elmore had a lot to say about writing.  In fact, he had a list of ten rules he liked to follow.  I’ll let you look that up for yourself.  It’s short, and worth the time.  The one I like to keep in mind is “if it sounds like writing, I re-write it.”   If it sounds like writing, its boring.  It’s hard enough to keep someone’s attention, and if you bore them, they’ll close the book on you.

7.       Stephen King

This guy’s written enough books to fill a library, so even if you aren’t a fan, his advice is worth listening too.  He’s even written books about it.  The one I live by is, “Kill your darlings.”  Kill them.  This pertains to editing.  Once you’ve written your story, put it away until you forget about it.  Take it back out once you can read it objectively.  Kill anything that doesn’t move the story.  Even if it took you two hours to write that paragraph, if it sounds like writing, kill it.  The delete button is there for a reason.  You’d be surprised how fast your story jumps when you take out the first few paragraphs.  Those first paragraphs were for you, not the ready.  Kill them.

8.       Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy is one of our modern recluses.  Aside from his appearance on Oprah promoting The Road, I have found very few interviews, either live or in publications, that he has done.  I did come across one quote that applies.  “I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.”  If you’re familiar at all with his work, you’ll know he doesn’t believe in quotation marks, or translating Spanish dialog.  But the man is a genius and The Crossing is one of the best books I have ever read.  What you can take from this quote, is keep it simple.  Don’t try to thrill your readers with grandiose phrases and hundred-dollar words.  If it works it works, but remember what Elmore said, if sounds like writing, rewrite it.

 

      9.       Larry McMurtry

Another reclusive and another curmudgeon.  At least he appears to be in his interviews, but that might be the old Texas sense of humor.  His advice, and I’m sure all the writers I’ve mentioned so far would agree, is “Read, read, read.”  Read everything you can.  Even if your favorite genre is horror, or steampunk, read something you would never read.  Bust out a historical romance.  Or a fantasy.  Or true crime.  Just read everything you can, especially the classics.  See how the masters did.  See how the contemporaries do it.  If you’re not writing, then you should be reading.  It’s the only way to learn what works. Read!

10.   Truman Capote

“You must get into the habit of writing, even if it is only a paragraph a day.”

This is a must.  Capote, who wasn’t really very prolific, was one of the sharpest scribes who ever put pen to paper.  The only way to do that is to keep the pen sharp.  Exercise it every day.  If you only have time for a paragraph, then write that paragraph.  But write it.  You’ll be surprised at how much easier it gets if you do it every day.  Soon you’ll be doing a page a day. Some writers set a word count for the day.  Some do a page count.  Do what works for you, but get it down.  Anything.  Start a journal.  Make a list.  Just write something everyday to exercise that muscle and keep it in shape. 

These tips aren’t for everybody.  Use what you can and discard the rest because no two writers are the same.  I think some of these tips are universal, especially the write everyday one and the reading one.  Do both of those as much as you can and see where it takes you.  The rest is up to you.