GENREALITY

Being a writer means that some part of the brain is always at work. Stories take shape in the unconscious mind, storehouse of memories and ideas and sensations and emotions and patterns and insights. This means it takes more effort to actually take time off and recharge that brain consciously so that the unconscious always has lots of raw material to work with.

So what does a writer do on a weekend? Probably, writes. Writing is just not a 9-5, M-F kind of gig. I even get business emails on weekends I have to respond to. And I honestly can’t remember the last time I went through a major holiday or long weekend without edits or something to proofread or something I had to just stay with, even if it was only to write 100 words, so the story would stay fresh in my head.

But writing and proofing and researching and revising can’t be done 24/7, either, so when the writing is put away, it’s time to go get immersed in sounds and sights and sensations, emotions, experiences. Hang out with friends and family. Cook a meal. Go to a museum and look at art. Study the lines of sculpture. Wander a fabric shop and touch the different textures; feel the difference between denim, linen, fleece, velvet. Look at the range of colors; not just blue but indigo and turquoise and sky blue and navy.

Wander through a store and really look at clothing. Have all your characters started to sound generic in their dress? Examine something different. Try to find an outfit your character would need for a given scene.

Go to an art store. Look at all the different paints and charcoals, all the pastels, all the papers. Buy some to play with.

Get your camera out and shoot whatever catches your eye. Take a close-up, then a wide angle view. Write about the difference in what you can see from just changing perspective in the same scene, a little five minute exercise.

Read. It doesn’t matter if it’s history or poetry or science or astronomy or astrology or a mystery or science fiction or fantasy or a book written for middle grade children. Read. Watch a movie and see how visual information is conveyed. Listen to the way music creates mood and heightens drama.

Take a nap. Sit under a tree. Look up at clouds in the sky. Sit in a chair and do absolutely nothing but breathe. Listen to music. Really look at a blade of grass, a leaf, a flower.

All of these details and images go into the unconscious to be drawn on the next time we describe a setting, bring a scene to life in words. How a writer spends a weekend determines how the writing goes when official work time rolls around again. It’s easy to say that writing consists of butt in the chair, fingers on the keyboard, but the raw material of fiction requires getting out of that chair and touching something else to gather in.

Charlene Teglia is the author of multiple romances for multiple publishers. Her most recent title, Claimed by the Wolf (St. Martin’s, Dec. 09) is in stores now.

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Pinch-hitting here at Genreality gave me two reactions. I’m thrilled at the opportunity. But I also immediately asked myself what I could contribute. Since I’ve been a writing pro for five years and have experience with both new markets in epublishing and traditional markets, I have a background that’s very relevant to the changing times.

So for my first post as a substitute, I’m sharing 10 things I’ve learned about the writing biz.

1.  Keep your day job and your benefits as long as possible. I didn’t have this option; I started my writing career working around a special needs child and getting a “real” job and putting her in daycare was not an option. But if it is an option, understand that it doesn’t make you less of a pro. It actually goes a long ways to protecting your pro career by buying you time to wait for the right deal instead of latching onto one that might not be a good fit because you need the money. And once you’re paying for your own insurance and supplying all your own benefits, your costs increase significantly. Unless you can sell enough books per year to make up the difference in salary and benefits, it can make a lot of sense to hang onto that corporate position. The myth that having a day job means you’re less serious about your career or in some way a lesser pro than somebody who doesn’t is just that, a myth. The hard reality is that bills don’t wait for six months while you wait for a publisher to pay. Unexpected medical expenses can sink you. And you’re at risk for making the wrong call for your long-term career goals in order to meet your immediate needs.

2. Don’t expect anybody else to care about your interests the way you do. Your agent might be the nicest person in the world, but he/she has interests that don’t include you and sometimes might directly conflict with yours. Same for your editor and publisher. You can respect the people you work with (and if you don’t respect them, don’t work with them) and you can listen to their input and consider it, but at the end of the day, your publishing career is yours and it’s up to you to make the best choices you can for yourself.

3.  Sometimes the best you can do is make a well-informed and hedged guess. This business is full of unknowns. If you second-guess every decision, you’ll make yourself crazy. You can only make choices based on what you know at the time. Do your best to investigate the real risks and benefits, make your call, and know that sometimes you’ll make the wrong call. The possibility of a mistake can’t be allowed to paralyze you.

4.  Writing is a business. If you want to be an artist more than you want a viable career, publishing may not be for you. Or you may be happiest self-publishing and having complete creative control. Only you know what will make you happy. Sometimes achieving a goal and getting a taste of what you wanted makes you realize you need to readjust your goals or reevaluate your plans. Sometimes life changes and impacts your plans. If you know your values and goals and make choices that are in alignment with them, you can find a good fit or make one.

5.  Your life should include writing but not revolve around it. You need time for your friends and family, time for yourself, time to take care of your health, time to read, time for hobbies. If you let writing eat up all that time, not only will you wear yourself out (and possibly write yourself out), you’ll be less resilient when you have career lows. Every career has ups and downs, nobody just has a straight upward progression. If your career is all you have, it’s time to make some life changes or you may be in a real personal crisis when a career crisis hits, making you less able to cope with the downturn and plan your next move.

6.  Surround yourself with smart, resilient people. Even though I’ve lived in relative isolation from other writers, the internet has allowed me to connect with writers and readers, to learn from people who have more experience than I do, to stay informed about changes in the market and see who is experimenting with what, and the results. Not only does it help to have community, you can avoid re-inventing the wheel. And we become like the people we associate with. So if you want to make smart choices, be resilient, and have career longevity, find people with those qualities and hang around them. I’ve been learning from Lynn Viehl and Holly Lisle since I made my first sale. Their advice via their blogs has been invaluable. Lately I’ve been reading Penelope Trunk’s blog because she has a great handle on what it takes to be successful in today’s business environment, and the difference in values and viewpoints between Gen X and Gen Y.

7.  Don’t take it all too seriously. It’s only a book. It’s only a career path. If your book tanks, if your career derails, it’s not the end of the world. Truly. See #5. It’s so easy to have tunnel-vision, to place so much importance on the outcome of this book, that deal, that when things go wrong it’s devastating. Things go wrong. They do in every business, and writing isn’t special and protected from bad things happening. We care so much about our words, our work. But we have so little control over the outcome. This can make us crazy.

8.  The publishing business really can make people nuts. That’s been a theme in these ten points, but it deserves one of its own. It’s because we have limited autonomy and limited control, but total responsibility for the outcome. If you at least know the business can make you crazy, you can compensate and be careful about getting too caught up in it. Following every trend, paying attention to every bit of news is a straight path to the nuthouse. Be informed, sure, but don’t obsess. Don’t lose sight of your goals, your values, what you want to do. If everybody says it can’t be done, ignore them and find a way to do at least most of what you want.

9.  We’re creative thinkers. This means we can apply creativity to business problems and come up with innovative solutions. Creativity is not limited to the ability to plot and write a novel. Business can benefit from creativity, too. Don’t discount your business abilities and leave that up to other people because you’re “just a writer”. You’re also an independent business person and uniquely gifted with the ability to come up with solid ideas.

10.  Writing fiction for a living really is a worthwhile goal. After five years, it’s still the only thing I really want to do. Writing a book is still the only thing I’ve ever done that fully engaged me and took everything I had. It’s the only job I’ve ever had that hasn’t gotten boring after six weeks.

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I’d like to introduce our special guest today, the lovely Jaye Wells, who wrote one of my favorite books from the past year, THE RED-HEADED STEPCHILD. I love Jaye’s perspective on the world, and she is here to share a little of that with you today.  Please show your appreciation by commenting below. -Candy Havens

Discipline is a Dirty Word

By Jaye Wells

Everyone knows that being a writer requires preternatural levels of discipline.  Why, to hear some writers talk about it, you’d think we were all martyrs to our keyboards– St. Wordy of the Perpetual Finger Cramp.

Personally, I hate the word.  Discipline. Say it out loud right now. Go ahead, no one’s around. DISCIPLINE. I dare you to say that word with a smile. It’s almost impossible. Why? Because guilt and duty weight down those ten little letters.

For me, it conjures images of ruler-wielding nuns and drill sergeants screaming for me to drop and give ‘em 20,000 words.

The truth is, to apply discipline to writing connotes that there’s something inherently lazy and flawed about being creative. Artists are flaky after all, right? Our muse must be flogged into submission until we’re afraid not to write.

Here’s a fact: Anyone who tells you discipline alone will make you a better writer is full of it. Hell, even the original sadist–the Marquis de Sade–managed to tear himself away from his quill for some (admittedly scandalous) fun every now and then.

So if we can all agree discipline is a crappy word to impose on our creativity, what’s the alternative? What other word can we apply to writing that will result in word count? One that gets our butt in a chair regularly? One that overcomes the doubt monster and the rejection flu so that we forge ahead?

ENTHUSIASM

Now that’s a word I can get behind. Enthusiasm. Enthuuuusiasm. Unlike it’s authoritarian cousin, enthusiasm dances off the tongue. If discipline crosses its arms and says no, enthusiasm throws its hands in the air and yells YES!

People always say write what you know. That’s great and all, but I prefer to write about things I want to know. I want to write about things that amuse me or intrigue me or inspire me. I want to write about things that scare, thrill and confound me. In short, I want to write about ideas, characters and plots I’m excited about.

But, Jaye, you’re thinking, aren’t we supposed to write for our audience? Well, yeah, but your first audience is you. And if you aren’t excited about what you’re writing how in the heck can you expect anyone else to be?

Here’s another fact: Enthusiasm will get your butt in the chair just as easily as discipline. But I guarantee you’ll have a lot more fun while you’re there.

That isn’t to say being excited about your stories will mean you’ll never have another bad writing day. It doesn’t mean writing won’t ever be hard. I guarantee it will be. But at least you’ll be working hard because you want to be–not because discipline shamed you into it. Not because guilt told you to write or else.

As writers, we understand the power of words. So why in the world do we constantly impose negative ones on this creative thing we’re supposed to love? Enough, I say. Starting today, focus on how to be more enthusiastic about your writing. Your muse will thank you.

And so will your readers.

For more information about Jaye Wells and her upcoming books check her out at www.jayewells.com

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Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book Bunnicula and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious vampire stories. She loves reading and writing anything paranormal, anything fantasy, and nearly every kind of romance. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with her family in the midwest.

Museless

By Shiloh Walker

I’ll be honest-I don’t quite get the idea of a writer’s muse.

I don’t have a muse…I am museless and I finally figured out why, or at least, I understand why a little better.

My writing is mine. I am greedy. Mine, mine, mine…now granted, when I think my work sucks, I can only blame myself, not a muse. If the story takes a strange turn and readers don’t like it, I can’t go with… Well, the muse made me do it. It’s on me. Only me.

But when it’s good? I don’t have to share the credit with a muse, and I like that. It seems like a lot of writers who do have muses treat them as a separate entity, so to speak…even if it’s their creativity driving the muse. So they have to share the credit.

Does that make sense?

I’m actually pretty glad I don’t have a muse. Because I think it leaves me in a little bit more control. Yes, the story is going to often try to dictate how it should go, but I don’t feel like I’m a slave to a muse.

Once, I heard a reader ask a writer a question about a book. The reader asks, ‘Well, why did you have to do that?’ (The reader wasn’t pleased with how a certain book had ended). The writer responded with, ‘It was the muse.’

I’ve heard similar questions asked before, and have heard similar responses.

Another thing about muses-I’ve read/heard discussions where a writer is frustrated about changes an editor requests that go against what they feel their muse is telling them to do. Fighting these because of a muse? I don’t know, but it seems counter-productive.

Sometimes, author muses seem to come in the form of the characters-so the muses change for the writer from book to book. I can say that when I’m writing, my characters, and the story itself, tends to take on a life of its own and I am just putting it down on paper. But I still don’t feel that a muse is driving it. It’s the story…or it’s my overactive imagination.

A while back, I decided to do a little mini-poll on muses at my blog… a)yes, I have a muse b)nope, no muse, just an imagination…etc, etc, etc.

One of the commenters(mutltideofm) made this comment (in regard to whether or not she had a muse):

“I used to think so. Now I don’t. I think it’s given me an objectivity that I wouldn’t have in my writing otherwise. The no-muse model appeals to me because your fiction is your construct.”

And while I hadn’t thought about that aspect before, it’s a very valid one, and it kind of goes hand in hand with the ‘mine, mine, mine’ concept I concocted.

Since the story is my fictional construct, if there’s something that is holding the story up, or something that’s bogging the story down unnecessarily, once an editor/proofer/beta reader helps me to see what and (most importantly) why, I’m likely to be very open to change…and I can change it, because it’s is my construct…not a muse’s construct. I guess it’s my inner control freak-I want be in control (or at least delude myself into thinking it) and I can’t do that when I’m sharing the writing seat with a muse.

Shiloh’s latest release is part of her popular Hunters series. HUNTERS NEED, is out now! You can read an excerpt HERE.

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I’d like to welcome the lovely Rosemary Clement Moore to the blog today. She has something incredibly fun, educational and helpful in store for you.

Thanks, Candy, for letting me play in your space today. Since it’s November, I wanted to share something earth shattering I learned from the concise little book, No Plot, No Problem, written by the founder of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty.

Seriously. This is was a breakthrough idea for me.  Ready? Here’s what you do.

Draw a line down the middle of a page to make two columns. (I’ll wait while you do that.)

At the top of one put: Things I love in books. List all the things that you love in a story. Do not edit yourself. No matter how trite, cliché, cheesy, un-feminist, un-macho, or what your mother would say about it… put that on your list. (For example, I love witty verbal fencing between the hero and heroine. Also, books with dogs.)

Got it? Okay. Title the second column: Things I hate in books. List all the things that turn you off, bore you, or make you throw the book against the wall. No matter how classic and erudite, or how popular or trendy, write them down. (My example: I have an arbitrary dislike of present tense, despite many wonderful books being written that way.)

Remember! These aren’t things that are bad writing, just things that you don’t like. The whole point is, these are subjective. Your may love something your best friend hates, and that’s okay. Neither one is “wrong.” (For both lists, it’s more useful to list general things rather than specific books/authors. If you dislike a book, try and figure out why.)

Okay, so now here’s the complicated part. Sit down and write your book. Put in everything (well, maybe not everything) you have on your “love” list and don’t put in what’s on your “hate” list.

What happens sometimes when we write–All of us!–is the inner editor says: That’s a dumb idea. That’s cliché, no one likes that but you, you freak. And in the other ear, the inner English Teacher speaks from the part of your subconscious where she’s been living since the ninth grade and says, “These things you hate make great literature. They are Worthy and Important. You just hate these things because they’re Good For You.

(Or alternately, your inner bookstore clerk will say: Everyone loves Lovelorn Vampires except you. What’s wrong with you? Do you hate kittens, too?)

Oddly, when I do this exercise in writing classes, the “hate” list seems much easier for people than the “love” list. I think that’s because we’re so conditioned to look for flaws, but we’re so busy thinking about what makes “good writing” that we may dismiss our personal fancies and passions as unimportant. But what could be more important? These are the reasons we write.

The first draft of any novel, whether you write it in a month, year, or decade, should be a selfish thing. As an author, you first need to entertain, enlighten and stir  your own soul. Because, trust me, if you don’t enjoy your book, no one else will.  Second drafts are soon enough to cull the clichés, or rein in your id (or ego) and amputate that scene you love so much but doesn’t advance the plot.

Funny thing is, when you write about things that tickle you, please you, and move you emotionally, it’s going to be a better book, because your love of the material is going to shine through. And here’s another secret. Whatever it is you love in a book, chances are, you’re not the only one.

Rosemary loves mystery, ghosts, magic, plucky heroines and smart, handsome heroes, all of which she put in her most recent novel, The Splendor Falls.

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