I get by with a little help from my friends

 

A citron

New or old, close or only online, relationships are the only thing that will sustain you in the literary long haul. You will benefit from mentors, other writers and artists can inspire you, prop you up, drag you kicking and screaming into risks you know you should be taking anyway and on and on. At Antioch, we had a new cohort each semester. I’m part of the mighty Citrons and we still keep in touch and, unlike many with MFA’s in Creative Writing, we’re still writing and submitting to agents, journals and publishers.

Barbara Nicolosi has written a great piece on Friendship and the Artist. Yes, it’s from a biblical perspective. Get over it. It’s worthwhile, even if you don’t believe in “that stuff.”

Friendship’s shelter for an artist is a place to retreat amidst the chaos of your creative process to find peace. Friendship’s shelter offers the shade of acceptance when the artist is laboring under the burning heat of criticism or rejection. It is a place where there is the warm light of counsel and perspective when the artist’s soul shivers in the cold darkness of doubt. Friendship is a wall of security against the tearing wind of instability that is the life of the creative person.

Be a good friend too. Promote the work of other writers, other artists. Not because it will come back to you. It might and that’s great. More importantly, that kind of generosity is good for you as a person and good for your writing.

 

how do you do it?

Are you stuck in the doldrums and cannot finish your book? Welcome to the club. I don’t know a novelist who doesn’t get bored, fed up, finds the energy is gone, etc. in the middle of a novel, not to mention sick to death of the thing after going over it repeatedly in the rewrite process. In a way, I never “finished” any of mine, no artist finishes a work, you just have to stop when you cannot stand it another second and it’s as good as you can make it for now – which is just another way of saying it cannot be perfect because there’s no such thing.

I keep going by keeping going and sometimes I fail and other artists (often painters, sculptors, not to mention fellow writers in weekly check-ins) get me going again either through inspiration or pep talks … and sometimes I have to go for a drive by myself and scream at the top of my lungs. Another thing that helps is word or page count races with other writers or some other kind of accountability. Make a contract for yourself, sign it and give it to someone who will hold you to it.

Exercise helps too. I don’t ask about why I write or whether makes me happy because what makes me happy is having done the work, which is not that different from exercise. If I thought about how I feel about exercising in the morning, I’d never do it. I just start and feel better after. Take good care of yourself, but don’t fall into self indulgence. I’d argue you cannot be creative and sleep-deprived. Get some rest, but don’t get lazy.

Writing, painting, sculpting, music, etc – it’s all about communication. There are ways to get your work out even if you do it yourself. That’s what Smashwords is for. You have an audience. Someone is waiting for your book. Hopefully many someones. You may never know about it, but you owe it to them to get that book done and out into the world because somewhere – and maybe not even in your lifetime – there is someone who will read something you wrote and it will have an effect on their life. Maybe it will make them angry or happy or inspired or less alone or feel understood or maybe they will swear they can do it better and get of their butt to write their own damn book. Who knows?

Do your part. Finish your novel.

 

time out for love

Great story that includes Proust, books, a library and handwritten letters.

 

Writing tics

You’re probably familiar with verbal tics – we all have them to an extent and they are part of what makes a person’s speech unique. Lately, I’ve met a number of people in a wide variety of settings using the word yeah repeated three times in quick succession (part of a movie or TV show I’ve missed?) That’s one example of how you can use a tic to distinguish a character. But tics in the writing itself weaken your narrative and annoy the reader.

Once you’ve developed your voice as a writer, consider taking a look at your writing tics. Some of it belongs there, but you may be surprised at what you don’t notice along the way and what needs to go. I’ve been doing some revisions my first novel in order to publish it as an ebook (more on that later), and noticed a heavy reliance on “very”, ”really” and “actually”. How heavy? 226 uses of the word “very”. Well, that’s embarrassing. The good news is my writing has improved since then.

Advice? Use the Find function and search your manuscript for common adjectives and adverbs. Then check your dialog tags. “Said” or “asked” only please. None of that “she retorted” nonsense. After that’s done, read your manuscript out loud. Yes, the whole thing. It’s invaluable. You can also put it all in another font and/or color when editing in order to spot mistakes that have become so familiar, they are hard to see. Clean up your act. Writing tics will suck the juice out of your work.

 

Back in the USA!

Kenya was amazing. If you want to know more about that trip, I have a dedicated blog (hope to add more travel in the future). The name comes from the Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

It may take awhile to get my head back into fiction writing. We’ll see. First, I need sleep! Also, while I was gone, Annotation Nation expanded into poetry. Check it out. There’s also a group blog