[Tuesday Reading Room] Man of The House by Frank O’Connor

from Fifty Great Short Stories(Milton Crane, Ed. Bantam Classics reissued 2005)

This story, originally published in The New Yorker in 1949, is a wonderful example of how every line in a short story should contribute to the story, the plot or the characterization. That’s tough to do, so don’t be discouraged if your first draft isn’t as good as Mr O’Connor’s New-Yorker-ready version! It is, however, a goal worth keeping in mind.

Man Of The House

The story’s opening is crammed with short, efficient sentences that do an amazing job of setting the scene,

“When I woke, I heard my mother coughing, below in the kitchen.”

We don’t know yet, when the story is set, but we have a setting – a home, where the main character still lives with his/her mother. The mother is up early, in the kitchen, probably fixing breakfast.

“She had been coughing for days, but I had paid no attention.”

That sounds callous, but consistent with what we discover about the narrator: that his is a ten year old boy. It also sets up a tension that carries right through to the end: what is wrong with the mother. Will she survive? Will he be paid back for his callous disregard of her? When a line like “I had paid no attention’ is offered up right a the start of the story, it makes me nervous!

The third sentence (we’re still only 24 words into the story here) is completely natural and conversational, easily rooting the story in its geographical place, painting a picture of it and, at the same time, letting us know that this was happening some time ago,

“We were living on the Old Youghal road at the time, the old hilly coaching road into East Cork.”

All that from 19 words. I love it!

The rest of this paragraph paints a picture of both the mother and the narrator that puts us firmly on their side and rooting for them both,

“The coughing sounded terrible. I dressed and went downstairs in my stocking feet, and in the clear morning light I saw her, unaware that she was being watched, collapsed into a little wickerwork armchair, hoding her side. She had made an attempt to light the fire, but it had gone against her. She looked so tired and helpless that my heart turned over with compassion. I ran to her.”

Isn’t that a great opening?

Voice

The story is mostly told in one voice — that of the 10 yr old boy — but from time to time the voice of the older version of the boy creeps in, now grown up and telling us the story, judging, explaining. In one glaring example the narrator voices an opinion that will enrage most of the women (and some of the men) reading it, when he casually opines,

“It’s a funny thing about women, how they’ll take orders from anything in trousers, even if it’s only ten.”

Not a very modern, politically-correct attitude and it is the one line that makes the story seem old-fashioned. The rest of it seems fixed in a particular time, but also pretty timeless: a small boy is struggling between childhood and responsibility; sometimes he’s good; sometimes he fails; how he feels about it all. We’ve all been 10 [1. with apologies to any younger readers out there. You’re even better placed to understand this character!]. We’ve all struggled with the passage from childhood to adulthood, whether in rural Ireland or a suburb or a city.

But even that one jarring line serves an important purpose in the story. It’s not just in there because the writer wants to tell us something about his character’s attitude towards women. It tells us the age of the boy in the story, and that there is no way he should be the titular man of the house. It also tells us a thing or two about his mother in particular, (and you could argue that it talks about her only, rather than women as a whole, if the line makes you uncomfortable).

Most of the time, though, the world is presented to us through the voice of the ten year old from a particular time and place.

“In the afternoon, my mother wanted me to run out and play, but I didn’t go far. I knew if once I went a certain distance from the house, I was liable to stray into temptation. Below our house, there was a glen, the drill field of the barracks perched high above it on a chalky cliff, and below, in a deep hollow, the millpond and millstream running between wooded hills — the Rockies, the Himalayas, or the HIghlands, according to your mood. Once down there, I tended to forget the real world…”

He notices the things a ten year old boy would notice: the barracks where the soldiers live, the millpond where you could find creepy crawly things, and the hills, a setting for imagined adventures.

Plot & Suspense

The story continues to take our likable little hero away from home and into temptation. Whether he resists and whether he has to pay for his sins are the questions that kept me turning the pages faster and faster until I reached the end.

Is your writing economical or more wordy? Which point-of-view do you use most often in short stories? Are your ‘voices’ distinctive?
Tell us in the comments:

[Markets for Writers] Postcard Shorts

Inspired by a postcard-length short story by science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke, Postcard Shorts accepts stories that are, well, postcard length.
PostcardShorts.com screenshot

(That translates to about 250 words)

Pretty much anything goes, as long as it’s not completely devoid of merit (in the Editor’s opinion). The Editor’s decision is final.

The copyright for anything you submit is wholly yours. You own it. This site just displays your work.
– from Postcardshorts.com

This is not a paying market but it is bite-sized and very tempting.

How To Become An Insanely Productive Writer

How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice!

Laptop lady
Laptop Lady by Aidan McMichael (used with permission)

If you really want to become a good writer, in this lifetime, you have to write. You have to write a lot.

Here are seven of the best tips from last year’s StoryADay participants, to help you become an insanely productive, happy and sane writer. Plus one bonus tip and a question for you, at the end.

“Nothing will work until you do.”
-Maya Angelou

Insanely Productive? Yes, Please!

1. Have ideas ready to go

There is nothing worse than carving out some time to write and then being stuck for a place to start. So start now: pay attention to all the ideas you have, all the time, when you are away from your desk. Carry a notebook around. Capture snippets of conversation, what ifs that occur to you as you people-watch, thoughts spurred by other people’s stories. Write them all down, ready to be picked up again when you sit down to write.

2. Write First

When you sit down to write, actually write. Don’t check email, don’t check Twitter, don’t even check the StADa site (unless you need the daily prompt). Just leaf through your ideas until you find one you can work with, and go. Turn off your email notifications, close all the browser windows. Don’t worry about fonts and formatting or whether it’ll be any good. Just write.

@Gabi If I think too much about writing before I actually start doing it, I tend to psych myself out. Instead I just start writing and before I know it, I’ve got a bunch of words on the page and it’s time to call it a day.

3. Keep writing until you finish

Starting stories is all very well, but anyone can do that. The point of StADa is to help you learn to craft a whole, finished story. Keep writing until you finish. Even if you hate it, keep writing. You’ll thank me later.

4. Unless you must take a break

Obviously, if your kids are screaming or someone comes to the door to tell you you’ve won $10million in the lottery, or your boss calls to ask where you are, you might have to get up from your desk before your story is finished. In which case, go. But keep thinking about your story. Leave it in the middle of a sentence, so that you’re ready to leap back in, and go. But keep thinking about it. When you’re walking to the coffee machine, wonder what your characters will do next. When you’re doing some menial, mindless task (can you tell I’m a mother?) let your mind wander and picture how you’re going to resolve the central mystery of your story. If someone turns on a radio, listen to how people talk and steal yourself some dialogue.

@KristenRudd says: “My trick so far is to mull my story all day, while I’m doing whatever it is I do. I think about the directions it could go, but I mostly think about how to open it. Then, when I can finally sit down after the kids are in bed, the dishes are washed, and I’ve done everything else that needs doing, I’m excited about the story that’s been buzzing all day.

5. Make it priority #1

You can put off watching TV shows and you can turn down an occasional invitation for coffee without your life falling apart. Tell people you’re working on your writing this month, that you’ll be a better friend next month (maybe). Take some time to make your writing your top priority. You’ll always wonder, if you don’t, what you could have achieved. Explain to friends that you are investing in your dream of becoming a writer, just as they might make time to invest in a course of golf lessons or an art workshop. If you want to take your writing seriously you will find that something’s got to give, but the good news is: that could be the housework!

StADa: How do you make time for writing?
@AdorablyAlice This is a good question. And when I have an answer that doesn’t involve neglecting chores/cooking, I’ll let you know.

6. Write Wherever/Whenever You Can

It’s tempting to think that you need solitude, silence and a particular pen to be able to write, but that’s a rookie mistake. Professional writers write wherever and whenever they can squeeze in some time.

  • Ray Bradbury rented a typewriter in a typing room in the basement of a library and typed until time ran out. That couldn’t have been quiet or private or relaxing, but he’s one of the most prolific writers around.
  • Stephen King wrote in a passageway in the back of a trailer, with two toddlers, a wife and a full-time job in a laundry jostling for his attention.
  • PD James worked for the Home Office by day, visited her sick  husband in hospital on the weekends, and put her two daughters to bed alone, and wrote her first novel — all during the London Blitz!

You may need some peace and quiet to get a story started, but once you’re up and running, write! Write when ever you have 15 minutes, wherever you are, with whatever comes to hand. Write!

(Hint: you full-time workers have the gnawing envy of stay-at-home parents of young children: you get a lunch break. Are you sneaking off somewhere and using it for writing?)

7. Be realistic

You’re not going to write an epic or a polished draft in a day. You’re going to write something and it’ll likely be bewtween 30 and 2000 words. The more frequently you write and finish a story, the more you’ll get a sense for how to pace yourself and your story. Don’t waste time on backstory or explaining anything at the  beginning. Jump in half way through and unpack the story as you go. Some of it will be terrible, some of it you will learn from and some of it might even be quite good. On a good day you’ll write a character you’re proud of or make yourself smile with a twist, or discover you can write really convincingly about a gardener.

@GabiOnly a handful of the stories are worth keeping and working on. One of them has spawned into an idea for a middle-grade book that I am in love with.

Every lesson enriches your writing. Every day you practice, you’re one step closer to Carnegie Hall.

Bonus Tip: Be part of a community.

I know a lot of us are loners (I certainly crave my ‘alone’ time) so the idea of joining a community seems strange. But one of the most valuable lessons I have learned in the past year is the value of having people on your side, people who understand what it’s like try to write, people who are rooting for you (because if you can do it, maybe they can too).It was incredibly inspiring to drop in to the StoryADay.org forums during May – and afterwards ‘meet up’ with people on Twitter – and trade stories of how our writing day is going.

Join our Serious Writers’ Accountability Group (SWAGr) and post your goals for this month…today! (We’re “Serious”, not sombre. All are welcome!)

Thanks to all the previous participants for their comments and suggestions, quoted here or otherwise.

What do you do to keep writing? Share  your best tips in the comments.


To be among the first to hear when sign-ups open for this year’s challenge sign up for the Advance Notice List. (No spam. Just StoryADay.org news)


Write-On-Wednesdays – Embrace Your Inner Sadist

If you saw the comments on last week’s post 6 Reasons You’ll Never Be A Writer, you’ll know that one reasons touched a nerve with a lot of people:

#6: You’re Too Nice

Commenter Michelle Kobayashi captured the mood when she said:

“My first 17 chapters were very nice. There was little conflict and the characters worked out their issues reasonably.

“It sucked.

“Then I learned about inciting incidents and the need for conflict. That’s when the fun began. One character in particular is so rude I cringe when I reread her scenes. And I wouldn’t change a thing. Embrace your inner sadist indeed!”

(Thanks to Donald Maass for the catchy slogan at the end there!)

Seems like this is something ia lot of us need practise with. So,

The Prompt

Shout ! ! !
Photo by lempicki.maciek

Write a scene featuring a truly loathsome (but believable) character. They don’t have to be a Disney Villain. It could be that really annoying person at work who has no redeeming qualities that you can find, no matter how hard you try.

Dig deep. Remember how annoying, frustrating, irritating your least favorite person in the world is. Pair them up with your favorite hero-type and give them a scene.

Then let your hero say all the things you’ve rehearsed in your head but would never say, because you’re just, well, too nice.

Let it all out. Make us (and yourself) cringe.

The Rules:

  1. You should use the prompt in some way in your story (however tenuous the connection)
  2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
  3. Post your scene in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
  4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Embracing My Inner Sadist: http://bit.ly/ehx03t #WriteOnWed #storyaday

I never knew I could be so mean! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://bit.ly/ehx03t

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is “Embrace Your Inner Sadist″: http://bit.ly/ehx03t

Come and write with us today: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday

See my story – and write your own: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.

With thanks to my friends at Creative Copy Challenge for inspiration and support. Go to Creative Copy Challenge every day for a new writing prompt and supportive community of writers.


Tuesday Reading Room – Brooksmith by Henry James

from Fifty Great Short Stories (Milton Crane, Ed. Bantam Classics reissued 2005)

I don’t know much about Henry James, though I have struggled through more of his short stories than I have novels. I’ve never formally studied his writing, so don’t know what the prevailing literary criticism theories are…but I can tell you this: I dislike his characters and I dislike his outlook and I always end up, as I did at the end of this story, wanting to punch at least one of the characters in the nose.

Which is, I suppose a kind of a compliment to the writer.

Brooksmith by Henry James

As much as I say I don’t ‘like’ Henry James’s stories, I do recognise the work of a master craftsman. (I wonder if I would have liked him any better if he had been writing today [1. Probably not.])

The first thing I admired about this story was the way he pulled me in right from the first sentence. You might not think of the slow-paced Henry James novels as belonging on the same shelf as Ian Fleming or James Patterson, but there is, nonetheless, plenty of suspense to keep the reader hooked:

We are scattered now, the friends of the late Mr. Oliver Offord, but whenever we chance to meet I think we are conscious of a certain esoteric respect for each other.

Who was the late Mr. Oliver Offord and why do his friends only ‘chance to meet’ and share a ‘certain esoteric respect’ – and what does that really mean?

James continues to ratchet up the suspense in the very next sentence,

“Yes, you too have been in Arcadia,” we seem not too grumpily to allow.

Why was it “Arcadia” (and why would they ordinarily be grumpy with each other)?

The story turns out not to be about Mr Offord at all, but about his butler, Brooksmith and the perils of allowing the servant class to rise above their station.

I’m not sure which side Henry James would really have taken on the issue of class and station, but his narrator has a very fixed, extremely anti-egalitarian viewpoint that makes him supremely unsympathetic to the modern reader.

He is, however, so unrelentingly shaped by his societal norms that he is absolutely believable and ‘true’ – and loathsome, I might add.

It really struck me — after putting down this book with a sneer on my face and a punchy urge in my fist — that my writing could benefit from a bit more loathesomeness. I’m really a very nice person, trained in life to be fair and tolerant and to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. But being well-brought-up can create a tendency to be too nice to my characters, too forgiving.

If I want to create characters as ‘true’ and real as Brooksmith‘s unworthy narrator, I have to risk creating characters that someone 111 years from now might want to punch.

What do you do to make your characters ‘real’? Please do leave a comment!

[Markets for Writers] Six Sentences

Six Sentences is a place to publish just that: six sentence stories.

Six Sentences screenshot

It has been one of Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Sites For Writers and publishes a new six-sentence story every day. It’s a great (non-paying) market for flash fiction writers.

It offers readers the chance to vote the story “good”, or “spectacular” (a ratings system I love) and provides a link back to the author’s site.

Check out the writer’s guidlines here or read some recent six-sentence stories.

6 Reasons You Will Never Be A Writer

Wondering when you’ll reap the fame and fortune that come with your dream of being a writer? Well, probably never. If you’re making any of these six classic mistakes…

Wondering when you’ll reap the fame and fortune that come with your dream of being a writer? Well, probably never. If:

1. You don’t read

The Writers' Museum
The Writer's Museum, Edinburgh by Peter Nijenhuis

At least, not the right things. You read all the books on writing and polishing and publishing, and all the books that literary critics are praising, but nothing of any real value. You don’t read books that light a fire under you, you don’t read in your genre, you don’t read non-fiction for fun and inspiration.  You don’t have an Audible membership or a library card and you couldn’t name a book that has meant anything to you since you turned 20.

If you were learning to be an accountant you’d study accounting law. If you were studying to be a doctor you would read medical books. Stephen King, in On Writing calls it the Great Commandment: Reada lot, write a lot.

“Read, read, read, Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”

-William Faulkner.

2. You’re too busy to write

You’re not independently wealthy: you’ve got a job, a family, commitments, a social life, a pressing engagement with the cast of Glee! You can’t possibly squeeze any time out of your day to write.

Jon Scalzi, current president of the Science Fiction Writers of America puts it bluntly and truthfully:

So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

You can make time to write, but something else is probably going to have to give. It might be sleep, it might be ‘watching Ellen in the afternoon’, it might be having lunch with the same people every day in the dreary work cafeteria. It might be ‘feeling bad about yourself because you’re not getting any writing done and eating ice cream instead’.

But, chances are, you can make time to write.

3. You have no original ideas

Every time you sit down to write you are paralyzed by the overwhelming feeling that everything has been said before. Well, you know what? You’re right. But it hasn’t been said by you, in this time and place, at your age, and in your circumstances. Agent Donald Maas talks a lot in The Breakout Novelist about the difference between ‘original’ and ‘unique’. You don’t have to be original, but you do have to be ‘unique’.

I once interviewed Daniel Pinkwater and he said the same thing: only you can speak in your voice, and if you write for a while you’ll discover what that voice is.

I love that what my readers need, they can only get from me. It’s riskier, but much more ego-gratifying
-Daniel Pinkwater, 2003 interview

He also said,

Ideas are everywhere. I have 60 ideas a day. So do you. So does everybody.
-Daniel Pinkwater, 2003 interview

The trick is paying attention, taking those ideas and developing them into the story only you can tell.

4. You have no qualifications for this. You don’t know what you’re doing

No writer does. Every artist is engaged in creating something unique and new. Experienced writers say this all the time: I don’t know what I’m doing until I’ve done it. Here’s a little evidence:

The only way to write is to write… Stupid b*****d job.
-Russell T. Davies, Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale

Very few writers know what they are doing until they have done it.
-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

You can’t completely understand what good writers do until you try it yourself…Write from the very beginning, then, and keep on writing…The next story will be better, and the next one after that still better, and eventually—
-Isaac Asimov, Gold

5. Your Writing Sucks

When you do make the time to write, it’s hard. The words do not come dripping off your pen easily; all the elements in your story don’t come out in the right order; your characters are flat and uninteresting and they speak in cliches; you want to give up.

And that is what Anne Lammot calls your ‘shitty first draft’. It has to be got through in order to get to the second draft, the third, and the polished end result. If you are too scared to suck, too scared to fail then you will never be a writer, because all writing involves putting some truly terrible prose on the page — and excising it later or, like William Faulkner, throw it out entirely and start again,

Write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
-William Faulkner

Sure, it’s scary but even the great and prolific Isaac Asimov says, of the writer’s daily task:

We sit there alone, pounding out words, with out hearts pounding in time. Each sentence brings with it the sickening sensation of not being right.
-Isaac Asimov, Gold

Can you allow your first drafts to be less than perfect?

6. You’re Too Nice

In real life it’s nice to be nice: people like you, you offend nobody and your mother is proud of you.

In literature, being nice doesn’t pay. It’s boring if nothing happens, if no-one gets upset, if no-one is threatened, insulted, shamed, murdered, even. Your writing can be your playground. Be nice in real life if you must but, in your writing,

Embrace your inner sadist.
-Donald Maass, The Breakout Novelist

I’d love to hear which of these touched a nerve with you. Let me know in the comments which part of your writing life you’re struggling with the most at the moment? Has it changed over time?

Get a free 17-page creativity workbook when you sign up for more articles like this



If you’re feeling inspired to write now, why not check out some of the StoryADay Writing Prompts? You might want to start with some Flash Fiction, to warm up.

Write-On-Wednesdays – 2001: A Short Odyssey

Introducing Write On Wednesdays: a weekly warm-up for all endurance writers.  Wednesday is the day we limber up for the challenge of writing a story a month; or keep the muscles warm after the challenge is over. No point getting all those creative muscles in shape only to let them atrophy!

The Prompt

What might you – or a character very like you – have been doing on this afternoon ten years ago? Write a short story that springs from a circumstance or character from your life in February 2001.

OK, so we weren’t traveling to moon bases and stopping off on rotating space stations, but there was a lot of other stuff going on. Remember, this was post-Millennium Bug, pre-9/11 (but only by 7 months), after the first dotcom bubble had burst but before the banking/mortgage collapse. Friends and Seinfeld were still on the air but American Idol was not. “Reality” TV was just about to take over from quiz shows as the new money spinner for networks and no-one was watching video online yet.

What was life like all those years ago? Take us back.

The Rules:

  1. You should use the prompt in some way in your story (however tenuous the connection)
  2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
  3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
  4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Travel back in time to Feb 2001: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday #wow

What were you doing 10 years ago? Is there a story there? #WriteOnWed http://t.co/OpHsJ04

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is “2001”: hhttp://t.co/OpHsJ04

Come and write with us: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday #wow

See my story – and write your own: http://t.co/OpHsJ04 #WriteOnWed #storyaday #wow

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.

With thanks to my friends at Creative Copy Challenge for inspiration and support. Go to Creative Copy Challenge every day for a new writing prompt and supportive community of writers.

Tuesday Reading Room – The Standard Of Living by Dorothy Parker

from Fifty Great Short Stories(Milton Crane, Ed. Bantam Classics reissued 2005)

I’m working my way through this short story collection which was first published in 1952 and starts with a lot of what would have been quite ‘modern’ writers’ stories: Dorothy Parker, Katherine Mansfield, Ernest Hemingway, V. S. Pritchett.

Only one story so far has featured a moment that seems as if it might change the main character for life. The rest are moments in time, even missed opportunities, made fascinating by the writer’s attention to the tiny details of their worlds. It strikes me that this is something you can do with a short story that you couldn’t do with a novel – at least not without annoying most of your readers. Novel readers expect something transformative to happen. Short story readers? Well, maybe they’re more forgiving because they haven’t invested quite so much time in the thing. But I still get annoyed with a lot of modern ‘literary’ stories where nothing happens and there is no sense of an ending. These stories all seem to pre-date that trend, thank goodness.

The Standard of Living by Dorothy Parker

I’m not usually a fan of descriptive writing, but in these short stories I’m finding it is making all the difference.

The Standard of Living by Dorothy Parker is a fabulous example of how a writer can flesh out a story whose plot is basically a build up to a simple punchline and turn it into something that stays with the reader. Parker creates two ordinary, shallow young women (girls, really), who are creatures of their time and trends and who think they are oh, so very sophisticated. They walk together on Saturday afternoons and play a sort of ‘imagine if you won the lottery’ game. Close to the end, something happens that reveals how far from sophisticated they are. That is the punchline, but the way they handle it is…well, I’ll leave it to you to discover.

What make the story, is the luscious, descriptive writing. It starts with a literal feast of words:

They lunched, as was their wont, on sugar, starches, oils, and butter-fats. Usually they ate sandwiches of spongy new white bread greased with butter and mayonnaise; they ate thick wedges of cake lying wet beneath ice cream and whipped cream and melted chocolate, gritty with nuts. As alternates, they ate patties, sweating beats of inferior oil, containing bits of bland meat bogged in pale stiffening sauce…”

And it goes on. Are you starting to get a feel for who ‘they’ are yet, from this description? Who might they be? Parker gives us another big clue.

They ate no other kind of food, nor did they consider it. And their skin was like the petals of wood anemones, and their bellies were as flat and their flanks as lean as those of young Indian braves.

Ah yes, they are those despicable creatures: young women! (Can you guess I’m staring aghast at the rapidly approaching 4-0?)

Only now, half a page in, does Parker give our characters, names, station, a bit of backstory. In one paragraph she tells a lifetime. She says a lot with few words ending with:

Each girl lived at home with her family and paid half her salary to its support.

Aha! These are not high-society misses at all. These are working girls affecting a life of leisure.

(I’ll freely admit I loved that sentence in part because it captures the lives my grandmothers lived before they were married, but how many young women – or men – would do that today?)

Every description of the girls is full and sensual and tactile and fixes them in time and space.

They wore thin, bright dresses, tight over their breasts and high on their legs, and tilted slippers, fancifully strapped.

Even their state of mind is shown viscerally from:

they held their heads higher and set their feet with exquisite precision, as if they stepped over the necks of peasants.

to later, when things are not going so well. Parker never says, “they felt bad”. Instead she writes:

Their shoulders dropped and they dragged their feet; they bumped against each other, without notice of apology, and caromed away again. They were silent and their eyes were cloudy.

It’s not how I write. It’s not my style. But I loved this story and definitely want to try out a story where I try out something more phsyical and real, like this one.

Do you write in a very descriptive way? Is your style similar in most stories? Do you like to read stories in the same style as yours, or do you also enjoy stories in a radically different style? Tell me how you read.

[Markets For Writers] Ploughshares Emerging Fiction Writers Contest

Ploughshares literary magazine was founded in 1971 at Emerson College. This years Emerging Fiction Writers Contest is open for submissions from Jan 16 -Mar 15 2011

Ploughshares

Ploughshares Emerging Fiction Writer's Contest screenshot

Eligibility

We define an “emerging writer” as someone who has no book, has won no major awards, and who has published fiction in less than five national publications. (A national publication is any magazine or journal, online or in print, with an ISSN number.)

Works should be less than 5,000 words. Entry fee:$20

Full contest rules

How A Subsidy POD Company Made Publishers Pay 50% Royalties

The Author’s Guild last week declared that no contract should offer an author less than 50% royalties on ebooks[2. They seem to have <a href=”http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/the-e-book-royalty-mess-an-interim.html”>modified</a> their stance a little].

15 years ago, it was rare to see a number larger than 12.5% in any publishing contract for primary rights. It was common to see 10% or 7.5%.

How Did We Get From 7.5% to 50%?

Let me tell you a little story about the ancient days of the Internet.

In 1997 John Feldcamp, a digital printing guy and Chris Kelly, a finance guy, decided to set up Xlibris as an ebook and print on demand service (the first time anyone had figured out how to offer true POD services directly to authors) .

In 1998, they hired me to help them change the world. Whatever else Xlibris became or did right or did wrong, it was founded — and operated for a long time — on the burning beliefs that:

  • No-one had the right to tell any writer to sit down and shut up.
  • We were going to help every writer master the new methods of delivery technology was opening up to them.
  • We did not deserve any ownership of their intellectual property in exchange for helping them distribute it.
  • The author should get 50% of the proceeds[2. On print books 50% of the profit was a lot less than 50% of the list price, which is why the company eventually started using different numbers and the word ‘net’, and sounding a lot more shady, even though it was the same thing. But on ebooks? 50% was 50% of list, minus transaction fees, and we didn’t even bother charging for those at first].

50%?!

Barbarians At The Gates

Most people in the publishing industry, even many established authors, predicted that POD and ebooks would mean the end of civilization, that the world would be filled with dross and that not all writers deserved to share their stories with the world.

Three years later, in 2000, the big kahuna of traditional publishing, Random House, made a substantial investment in Xlibris. I listened with astonishment and pride as their spokesman started saying things like “Yes, we’ll be offering 50% on ebooks. That sounds like a fine deal”. I grinned to myself because behind Erik Engstrom’s words I heard the strong “Feldcampian” influence (John was not only extraordinarily clever, he was incredibly convincing).

From 50% to 25% in 8 Short Years

Eight years later Engstrom was long gone and Random House was changing the policy to 25%. Lots of other things have changed too: Amazon, Kindle, Nook, Apps…It looks like ebooks will eventually replace print books as a major sales stream. But authors will only get 25% royalties on ebooks, and the big publishers will get moremore of the profit than ever before.

Last week the Author’s Guild finally snapped and issued this outraged math lesson to illustrate the realities of the 25% royalty:

“The Help,” by Kathryn Stockett
Author’s Standard Royalty: $3.75 hardcover; $2.28 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -39%
Publisher’s Margin: $4.75 hardcover; $6.32 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +33%

“Hell’s Corner,” by David Baldacci
Author’s Standard Royalty: $4.20 hardcover; $2.63 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -37%
Publisher’s Margin: $5.80 hardcover; $7.37 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +27%

“Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand
Author’s Standard Royalty: $4.05 hardcover; $3.38 e-book.
Author’s E-Loss = -17%
Publisher’s Margin: $5.45 hardcover; $9.62 e-book.
Publisher’s E-Gain = +77%

from The Author’s Guild site

The Rights Of Authors

The fact that my bosses convinced Random House, 12 years ago, to use the words ‘fifty percent’ is huge. I believe that Feldcamp and Kelly made 50% a number we writers can ask for today without being laughed out of the room (they endured that several times, on our behalf).

Some of the authors who hailed the ‘publishing services’ companies as Visigoths are now listing their own out-of-print titles with Amazon (at a 70% royalty rate) and keeping them in print independently via POD. They are demanding their due from their publishers, on a scale proposed by the former barbarians at the gate.

I am proud to have been one of those barbarians. And I am proud to have been friends with the men who smiled up at the publishing Caesars and convinced them to agree, for eight shining years, that 50% was, yeah, equitable.  The royalty and distribution debates of the future will be shaped by what they did back in the 1990s.

Writers, join me in raising your glasses today in a toast to Mr. John Feldcamp and Mr. Chris Kelly, founders of Xlibris, Kings of the 50% royalty.

Do you want to become an insanely productive writer? Need a big boost? Need a challenge? Sign up for the StoryADay Advance List to be among the first to hear about this year’s StoryADay May Extreme Writing Challenge. Or read more at www.storyaday.org

[Markets for Writers] Fiction Fridays at Write Anything

This one is less a true ‘market’ and more a community writing opportunity.

Fiction Fridays at Write Anything

The excellent folks at Write Anything (a multi-author writing blog) put together a challenge every Friday. You write, you post it at your own blog and you post a link at their site. Simple!

Upcoming themes include: “The Million Dollar Idea”, a Valentine’s theme, and a challenge to write a story in an 1880s, Western town.

From the website:

How To Play:

1. Check this page for the weekly challenge.

2. Write for a minimum of 5 minutes… AND THEN KEEP GOING!

3. NO editing. ( well.. do the obvious spelling and punctuation.. but nothing major)

4. On Friday, post it to your blog.

5. Come back to Write Anything and leave the link to your post using the Link generator.

6. Visit other’s posts and leave constructive comments.

7. Use Twitter (with our hashtag of #fictionfriday) or Facebook etc to tell your network about the stories posted up….

They also encourage you to record your story and submit the link for Spoken Sunday. I’m a real sucker for both reading aloud and listening to other people read aloud, so I’ll definitely be doing this!

Writers’ Corner: How Do You Feel About Contests and Facebook Groups?

Thanks for all the great feedback about the user blogs. It’s a relief to know I can sidestep that technical challenge. Your comments helped me stop worrying and move on, so thanks. On that note, here are a couple of other questions up for discussion:

chat

FACEBOOK GROUP

Popular writers’ blog Writer Unboxed recently opened a Facebook Group to complement their website, so now their readers can start discussions, not just comment on blog posts.

I have some opinions on whether or not StADa should start a Facebook Group, but I would like to hear yours. Should we have a Facebook Group?

COMPETITIONS

I also wondered if people would be interested in a StoryADay May competition, with judges and prizes and all that. You could opt to submit your best one or two stories at the end of May and we’d have judges and prizes and all that good stuff. Would that seem like fun or would it introduce an element of “Oh crap, this needs to be good’ into what is supposed to be a free-floating writing extravaganza?

Thanks again for your feedback!

Delegate Your Way To Writing Success

Part of the Time To Write Series. Interested? Subscribe to the blog

Inside the Box 2289
Do try to make sure the tasks you delegate are age-appropriate!

When my children were tiny I didn’t do a lot of writing. But there would come a day when I simply HAD to write. With a toddler in two, however, it became almost impossible to get through a full sentence without hearing that darling little voice yap,

“Mama? Mama! MAMA!!!”

I got to the stage where it was quite a relief when my boy unexpectedly ditched “Mum” and started calling me by my given name. At least it took a while for that to start to grate on my nerves!

The Delegation Revalation

One fateful afternoon, when my son — previously happily playing with toy cars at my feet — suddenly popped up and asked for a drink. For the third time that hour. I groaned and tore myself away from my half-finished sentence to fetch him a drink.

Then it hit me. My job as a parent was not to raise him to be helpless. My job as a parent was to teach him self-sufficiency. So what if he was only 3?

I started delegating.

That day I moved some plastic tumblers onto a low shelf in an under-the-counter cabinet and made a big deal of at last unlocking the water dispenser on the fridge. Sure, I had to clean up a few spills, but it was a price I was willing to pay to get a few uninterrupted minutes.

We quickly moved on to solo hand-washing, using a stool to get the toothbrush and toothpaste (creating a few precious extra minutes before bedtime). Then I packed away any trousers that didn’t have an elasticated waist and presto! I was freed from having to accompany him to the bathroom!

How Much Can You Give Away?

As the kids have grown, so has my hunger for writing time.

I now delegate all kinds of things.

  • Where I used to be in charge of bath-time and bedtime, my husband and I now share bedtime duty.
  • When I was deep in the crunch of StoryADay last May my seven year old, a-hem, learned how to make peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.
  • While I toiled on my novel last November, my husband taught the boys how to fold their school clothes and put them away neatly.

I could feel guilty about deserting my family when I feel the need to write. Or I can celebrate my awesomeness as a mother who cares enough about them to teach them the life skills they will need when I eventually kick them out of my house. (Ten more years, Eldest. I’m counting.)

Delegation can be fun!

It’s not always, easy of course. Things go wrong. There is often a learning curve for the people you’re delegating tasks to. There might be occasional tears.

But stick with it. You CAN find ways to nudge the people around you become more independent, while also clawing back some of your precious writing time.

What about you? What one task will you try to offload this week? What poor helpless soul will you set on the road to independence?

Part of the Time To Write Series. Interested? Subscribe to the blog

[Writers’ Markets] EveryDay Fiction

EverydayFiction.com sends short fiction to readers via email every day of the year.

Everyday Fiction screenshot

I was really excited when I read about this, because what are writers without readers? It’s all very well for someone to slap up a website and hope readers come, but this one has a built-in distribution system and it has over 2000 subscribers.

They pay $3 per story and take First Internet Rights and an option on First Anthology Rights. They have published two print anthologies so far.

They accept stories of up to 1,000 words and use the standards SFWA boilerplate contract (this is a Good Thing).

from EverydayFiction.com’s guidelines:

We believe in the importance of being paid for your writing, even if it’s only a token amount. At this time, we are able to offer three dollars for each published story, to be paid via PayPal, with the option to donate it back to Every Day Fiction if you are so inclined. In addition, if requested we will set up a free Author Forum for you right here at EDF where you will be able promote your own writing.

More importantly, publication also includes an opportunity to promote your writing beyond Every Day Fiction. We will gladly provide a link to your blog or website, and if you have a book on Amazon, we can link to that as well.

Finally, the author whose story is the most read in a given month will be featured in Every Day Fiction’s monthly Author Interview–a chance for our readers to get to know you, and a further opportunity for you to promote your blog or website and any books or other publications you may have out there.

[Markets For Writers] Portland Review Online

What to do with your stories once you’ve written and polished them?
Submit, of course! Here’s this week’s market:

The Portland Review

The Portland Review has been publishing exceptional short prose and poetry since 1956. The most recent issue featured poetry by Ursula LeGuin.

They read submissions from Sept-March update: Reading period has been extended until April 1 2011

Full submission guidelines

Special notes for the online edition:

We’re looking for new or established authors of flash fiction/micro/prose-poetry and poetry for our website. We need your scannable, digitizable art. We need your willingness to interview and to be interviewed. Most of all we need your attention.
Written works should be under 1,000 words. Neat on the outside, hot like a Mexican jumping bean on the inside.
Art (graphic, mixed media, etc.) should be in pdf, jpeg, gif, tif form and reasonable in size. We don’t necessarily need ideal beauty, but evidence of an attempt at mastery or sloppiness in leaving at least your heart or brain in the work you produce.
Both art and written work may be sent to: portlandreviewonline@gmail.com

I’ll Write Any Damned Thing I Want, Thank You Very Much

This tweet and the article it links to got me all riled up on Sunday[1. With all due respect to Colleen Lindsay who is an extremely generous tweeter and knowledgeable publishing person who you should totally be following.And I do sympathise with her points, from her perspective.]

Now the thread goes on to make some valid points, from the point of view of a publishing insider. The article she links to however, gets my hackles right up and I call for a rallying cry of:

“Yah boo sucks to you! I’ll write any damned thing I want”

And so should you!

The Problem With New York[2. Not the whole city, obviously. Just the centralized publishing industry part of it]

The publishing machine exists for a reason (to help authors distribute their work to the masses). For some authors that still works just fine.

For the vast majority of writers, however, the publishing machine is broken. They don’t have a big audience, so they don’t fit the economic model.

The problem comes when publishing insiders forget that the limitations of their system are exactly that: economic.

If something is deemed ‘unpublishable’ it does not mean that,

  • That people aren’t interested in it,
  • That it’s bad,
  • That you shouldn’t write it

It might mean that,

  • Not enough people are interested in it to justify a huge print run, distribution deals and a massive marketing campaign.
  • You won’t sell very many copies. (Although you may. You never know.)
  • It will be intensely interesting to a tiny number of people, who are easily identifiable because they a, live in the place you’re writing about or b, join associations of other-people-who-do-similar-pastimes, etc.

The Soul-Eaters

My problem with “Oo, the peons shouldn’t write their stories” articles [3. Apart from the short-sightedness, a lack of awareness of subaltern studies school of historical research and the insufferably smug arrogance, obviously]  is that they are destructive to the very soul of humanity.

I’m not exaggerating here.

We are a story-telling people. It’s how we make sense of our lives and our world. It’s what separates us from the brute beasts. It is an essential part of our nature.

  • Think about the friend who makes you laugh the most. What is she doing? Telling stories — stories with pacing and suspense and great twists.
  • Think about the most boring person you know. What does she do? Tell stories — terrible, unending, pointless, rambling stories.

Sometimes we make up stories about our origins and pass them on to our progeny. Sometimes we write beautiful epics that explain the human condition. Sometimes we unwittingly preserve a way of life that is destined to die out and be forgotten, except for our stories about it.

What does it do when some arbitrary gatekeeper says, “No, the story of your life growing up in Hicksville with a quirky family isn’t important enough to be published. Don’t even waste your time writing it down.”?

What arrogance! What utter idiocy!

Take Back Your Stories

We’ve been trained by a couple of generations of TV, music labels, and yes, publishers, to believe that we little people aren’t qualified to tell stories, make music or entertain our friends.

  • Homer [4. or the composite historical phenomenon that has come to us in the stories handed down] kept people spell-bound around the fire with tales of Ulysses and his epic journey.
  • Jane Austen catalogued a lifestyle long since extinct but nonetheless fascinating to us all these years later.
  • My grandparents hosted get-togethers where my grandmother played the piano for sing-a-longs, my grandfather told uproarious lies and everyone had a great time.

What do we do? We watch pre-packaged, fake ‘reality’; we listen only to homogenous music on stations that only play one style of music, and we read only the stories that an intellectual elite has chosen for the universality of their appeal.

There’s Room For Everyone At The Digital Inn

There is nothing wrong with best-sellers, nothing at all. I love me some pulpy paperback mystery and sci-fi, and I read the big ‘literary’ hits whenever I can stomach them.

The problem I have with the top-down model of publishing (whether books or music or art) is that it stifles the creative lives of ordinary, gloriously creative people. Because that’s what we are, us humans. Endlessly creative and passionate and social animals.

Luckily, we live in a great age for do-it-yourself distribution of creative products, whether stories, music or video.

No, not everything that people put out into the world is my cup of tea.

Yes, there is a lot more dross to sort through these days.

But it’s also a lot more likely than ever before that I’m going to find something fascinating to read, on a topic of my choosing, by asking around online and getting recommendations from people with similar tastes.

And One Final, Not-Insignificant Point

This flowering of creativity and distribution is going to be an absolute gold mine for anthropologists in the future.

As someone with an MA in History, I am incredibly excited about the breadth of primary sources we are leaving to future historians[5. Part of my Masters’ research was on the travel journals of explorers to the New World in the 1500s. Some of my other research invoved the shopping lists of Ventian guilds and what they could tell us about what was going on in the city and the world at the time. I’m betting the people who wrote those documents never imagined they’d be considered important by scholars 400 years into the future] Imagine if everyone in the Bronze Age had had a handy, dry cave wall where they could have documented their daily deeds. How much more would we know about our ancestors than we do now from a few scratchings in Lascaux and the occasional stomach-pumping of a frozen ice-mummy?

So go. Write your memoirs. Make them as detailed as you like. Make them as vivid as you can. And don’t listen to anyone who tells you it’s all been said before. Because it hasn’t.

Not by  you.

And your story deserves to be written.

Can I Kill The StoryADay User Blogs?

This post is a house-keeping one for people involved in the StoryADay challenge. I would love to hear comments from past and potential participants as I work to get the site ship-shape for the 2011 Challenge.

The Way It Was

Last year each user could sign up for both a member name and a blog at storyaday.org/membername. Some people used them, some people didn’t. Spammers snapped them up like nobody’s business, which put a huge strain on the sites’ resources and my time.

The good thing about user blogs were:

  • Having a dedicated place to post your Story A Day writing
  • Any posts you made at your StoryADay blog were automatically noted in the Activity Stream, so all members could see that you had posted.

The bad thing about user blogs were:

  • Spammers moved in by the metric ton and registered all kinds of blogs. This put a strain on resources and on my time.
  • A lot of people didn’t use them because they were posting at their own sites instead.
  • If a lot more people sign up this year, the back end of the site is going to need a lot more technical TLC than I am qualified to give it, and my host might shut me down if too many blogs get created.

So the questions are:

  1. Do I stop new members from creating new blogs?
  2. If you already have a StoryADay blog would you care if it went away altogether? (Assuming I give you fair warning and let you export all the content to somewhere else — I would provide instructions and help if this becomes likely)

Please do chime in, in the comments, if you have any thoughts one way or another.

I’ll have more questions about the design and functionality of the site in the weeks to come, but lets start with this one:

To blog, or not to blog?

Are You A Writer Or Just A Wannabe?

Nobody finds time to write. We make time for everything we have to do. Do You Really Want To Write?

Nobody finds time to write.

Few people have spare hours just lying around in the back of the closet, waiting to be discovered (and if you do, you probably have more trouble with motivation than time-management. That’s a different blog post!)

We make time for everything we have to do.

The crucial lesson, however, is that unless someone else has give us a deadline, we only make time for the things we find important; the things we enjoy.

Do You Really Want To Write?

Ask yourself: of all the things you did today, which of them mattered most to you?

  • What did you get out of reading all those tweets?
  • Did you get lost in Wikipedia doing ‘research’ for your novel? Did you really need all that information?
  • Did you need to watch another repeat of The Simpsons tonight, when you can already replay it, at will, from your memory?

Or would it have been more satisfying
to sit down and write something?

Do you even know where all your time went?

Part of the Time To Write Series. Interested? Subscribe to the blog

The Difference Between You and a Published Writer

What IS the difference between you and a published author?

Time.

In one sense, linear time: they were discovered before you were. Bad luck for you, good luck for them.

But in another, more useful sense: they made time to write. Have you?

Who Do You Think Does Stephen King’s Laundry?

Well OK, maybe HE can afford a housekeeper. But it’s just as likely that he still has to schlep down to the basement himself with a load of unmentionables whenever he runs short.

And you can bet your boots that your favourite midlist author doesn’t have a housekeeper. Or a nanny. But they still keep churning out the books year after year.

Things only get worse for your favorite author if they happen to be writing Literary Fiction. They are almost guaranteed to be a commercial failure and have to subsidize their income teaching rich kids at private universities to appreciate the rebellious soul of art. If they’re lucky they might negotiate a semester’s sabbatical in which to write their next book, but only if  they agree to eat nothing but oatmeal, turn off the heating and bust out the fingerless gloves.

And even if your favorite commercially-successful author can afford an assistant to make sure the cat gets fed, they  can’t pay her to write the book, do the revisions, talk to the agents and editors, catch the planes and go on the book tour for them.

When Do Authors Find Time To Write?

Just like us: in the gaps between Real Life’s obligations.

If you’re commercially successful one day (or have no life) you might be able to wedge those gaps open a little wider.

But life is happening to everyone. And somehow, thousands of people finish books every year.

When Will You Make Time To Write?

Part of the Time To Write Series.

Get a free 17-page creativity workbook when you sign up for more articles like this



How It Feels To Be Published

StoryADay alumnus Mart Pelrine-Bacon shares her submission success story: how she worked on the story, how she found the market and how it feels to be published.

StoryADay May alumnus Marta Pelrine-Bacon shared some fabulous news yesterday: one of her StoryADay stories has been accepted for the May 2011 issue of Cabinet Des Fees, a journal of Fairy Tales (and a paying market, at that).

I got in touch to ask Marta to tell us about how she worked on the story, how she found the market and how it feels to have a submission accepted — hint: there was a lot of ‘all-caps’ on Twitter yesterday 😉

Cabinet Des Fees banner

What is the story & when did you write it?

The story is titled The Fear of Apples and I wrote it fairly early during Story-A-Day May.

Have you written others like it?

I thought writing a story a day would be easier if I had a overall idea–in this case, fairy tales. Every story that month was a modern fairy tale.

Did you do much revision after StoryaDay?

That particular story I went over about three times–though I did not make any major changes. Most of my edits were attempts to fix an awkward sentence or add (or delete!) a detail for the plot.

Hw did you find the market?

I found the market when I friend told me about Duotrope. I’ve always been intimidated by figuring out the marketplace, and duotrope made the process seem manageable.

How did you feel when you heard?

Shocked–because I’d gotten so many rejections for other stories. And I almost cried I was so happy, and then I danced into work and told everybody. I am not a cool character.

Are you submitting more stories now?

I will be. This has certainly spurred me to realize publication can happen and not to give up.

Thanks for sharing Marta!

Have you had success submitting any stories the past year? Drop me a line: julie at storyaday dot org or leave a link to your ‘bragging page’ in the comments. Everybody loves to hear how other writers ‘just like us’ are making things happen!

If this has inspired you to write more, or maybe sign up for Story A Day May, take a look at my free, downloadable workbook The Creative Writing Challenge Handbook – 31 Days to A Writer’s Life. It’ll help prepare you for this year’s challenge.

One Simple Rule For Writing Success

Photo on 2011-01-11 at 10.36

Ever have one of those lessons that you know, but you need life to kick you in the face with again and again, because you can’t make yourself learn it otherwise?

I’m currently letting life kick me in the face with this one:

Write First. Then Let Life Happen.

It’s hard to make time for writing. It’s harder when you’re worrying about all the other things you have to do as well.

  • Do you peek at your email before you sit down to work on your current writing project?
  • Do you do a survey of all the projects you want to work on?
  • Do you check Twitter, because, c’mon each tweet is only 140 characters long?

And do you end up finding it harder and harder to start work on your actual writing?

Join me in my new pledge: Write First.

As much as I possibly can, I pledge to Write First.

The rest of life will catch up with me as soon as it possibly can, whether or not I invite it in. So when I sit down to write, I will write first, email later.

To help me with this pledge, here are some things I’m going to do

  • Plan what I’m going to work on before my next writing session begins – I don’t want to sit down and think ‘hmm, what will I work on today?’. I want to sit down, knowing that I’m working on that scene where my main character is doing this thing. Or that I’m going to take this story idea and turn it into a first draft. If I have to plan this the night before, fine. If I have to plan it while I’m driving home from a day of Real Life, that’s OK too. But I need to be ready to go as soon as I sit down.
  • I will not have any social media windows open until after I have reached my goal for the day.
  • I will not give up until I have reached my word count or project goal for the day. Even if I’m feeling stabby.

How about you? Will you join me? What will your ‘rules’ be?

The First Thing Writers Should Do Every Day

Beach Inspiration by Debbie Ohi
Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.

It’s hard enough to find time to write. Then, when you finally do, you face the paralysis of the blank page/blinking cursor.

The most useful tool I have discovered for getting past that frozen moment of potential is to do some warm-up writing.

Morning Pages And The Truth Point

I first discovered this technique in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way in the form of her morning pages.

Cameron advises you to sit down first thing every morning and write three pages’ worth of nothing in particular, just to see what come out. She lets you get several weeks into the program before asking,

Have you discovered the Truth Point yet?

And I had.

I discovered that somewhere on the second page (if I was writing longhand), my writing went from being awkward to flowing. Try it. After a page or two, you’ll find something to write about or you might just find your descriptions getting more interesting, your turn of phrase more entertaining and natural.

After writing ‘nothing’ for three pages, you’ll be able to plunge into an actual writing project and be at your best on the first line.

750Words.com

Flash forward a decade or two, and the website 750words.com offers an online version of Morning Pages, complete with somewhere to do your writing in case you don’t want to write on your blog or in a notebook that someone might find.

The host of 750words.com credits Cameron with inspiring the site, and says that 750 words is the ‘truth point’ for many people.

I have writing friends who blog first thing in the morning just as a way of warming up. Other people write letters to friends.

Tips For Warm-Up Writing

The only thing I would add is that, like 750words.com, you should be free to protect your warm-up writing. It’s not meant for display. It’s meant as warm-up. If you’re happy posting your warm-up writing to a blog or posting it off toa  friend, great. But protect yourself as much as you need to.

And no sneaking off and reading Twitter or Facebook, or your favourite author, now!

Write1Sub1 – A New Short Story Writing Challenge for 2011

This week I’m bringing you news of a great new short story writing challenge from StoryADay member, Simon Kewin.

Next year Simon and his friends Milo James Fowler and Stephen V. Ramey have pledged to Write1Sub1 – that’s Write One Story and Submit One Story every week of the year (actually, Simon’s taking Christmas off, but still…). You can submit to magazines, websites, or short story contests – anywhere that takes writing seriously.

And they’re not keeping this challenge to themselves: they’re inviting everyone to kick their writing career up a notch by joining in. At the end of this year of intensive writing, you certainly should have figured out how to write a short story, don’t you think?

Here’s an interview with Simon to tell you more. Links to more short story writer’s information are at the end.

What were your inspiration and your personal motivation for this challenge?

Ray Bradbury was our original inspiration. He is supposed to have completed and submitted a short story every week for a year while establishing himself.

The idea for Write1Sub1 materialised during a comment discussion on Milo’s blog and it took off from there. The point is obviously to help our own writing : to provide a focus and an incentive, a sense of community. We’re all keen short story writers and this seemed like a great way to motivate us to write more.

What are the ‘rules’?

The idea is to write a story and submit a story every week for 2011. It doesn’t have to be the same story as obviously it can take more than a week to polish a piece! Those taking part can define “story” as they like : it could be as short as a flash or nano piece for example. It could even be a poem. Whatever works for you.

Some people like the idea but have decided to Write1Sub1 on a monthly rather than a weekly basis, which is fine. Hopefully the challenge will still be a help to them.

How do people join in?

There’s the Write1Sub1 blog to follow and there’s also a Linky there to “sign up”. We plan to do a weekly check in post on a Sunday for everyone to share their experiences of the week. We’ll do a monthly one too for those doing it that way. There is also a Twitter hashtag people can follow – #Write1Sub1 – and there are banners on the blog folks can download.

Where will you submit?

Good question! The people who’ve signed up write a wide variety of different things, so I suppose we’ll all have our own target markets. But we’re putting together a page of useful resources on the blog for tracking down markets, and obviously, sharing our experiences on the blog should be a great help.

How will you stay motivated (esp when the inevitable rejections come in) ?

Hopefully being part of the Write1Sub1 community will be a big help here. It’s definitely a help to know others are going through the same experiences! And of course, the thought of receiving the end-of-year “winner” banner will be a huge incentive!

Thanks, Simon!

There are so many articles in the world already about ‘how to write a short story’,  but I’m a firm member of the ‘learn to write by writing’ school or thought. (And reading, of course!). This is one project I’m not going to be able to resist, although I’ll be signing up for the monthly version (there are banners for that too, at theWrite1Sub1 site).
It should ensure that I don’t get lazy and forget how to write a short story between now and May, when StoryADay starts up again!

Useful Links and Writers’ Markets

Write1Sub1 Rules

About the guys behind Write1Sub1

Market Listings from Write1Sub1

2010 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market from Writer’s Digest (aff)

Writer’s Market listings from Writer’s Digest (subscription required. Free email newsletter)

Writers Weekly Market Listings (mostly non-fiction, but occasional fiction listings)

Writing In The Real World – Interview with Gabi

iggi & gabiStoryADay participant Gabi (and her alter ego Iggi), also known as Gabriela Pereira is a writer/teacher/entrepreneur living in New York City.  She has just graduated from an MFA Program in Creative Writing with a special focus on Writing for Children.  She writes middle grade and teen fiction, with the occasional short story for grown-ups thrown in for good measure.  She has several post-graduation schemes up her sleeve, many of which include a Do-It-Yourself MFA program.

Before you started StoryADay how would you have described your writing life?

I would say my writing life was pretty busy. I was in a full-time MFA program and my writing life was very school-centric. I was looking for something to break me out of the MFA mindset. Don’t get me wrong, the MFA was a great experience, but I saw graduation looming at the end of May and I knew I needed to shake things up or I was going to have major separation anxiety come summer.

What made you decide to do StoryADay?

I was in the middle of rewriting my thesis for the third time and I needed a break. I also needed something to propel me into life-post-MFA and StoryADay came at just the right time. I wanted to do a project that was outside of school and outside my thesis, to force me to write for myself and not for school (because that’s what post-MFA writing is all about, right?)

What did you expect to achieve? What did you actually achieve? What did you learn during the challenge?

I expected to write a whole story every day. It lasted only a week and then my thesis deadline reared its ugly head and I had to reorganize my priorities. But the great thing I realized in StoryADay is that I didn’t need school deadlines to make me write–I could motivate myself. And that lesson was probably the most valuable thing StoryADay could have taught me. This is why, even though I didn’t come close to winning the challenge, I still see this past May as a success.

How do you make time for writing?

I try not to think about it. If I think too much about writing before I actually start doing it, I tend to psych myself out. Instead I just start writing and before I know it, I’ve got a bunch of words on the page and it’s time to call it a day. Also, I find that writing “out” is much more productive. My little paper notebook doesn’t have all those pesky distractions like email and twitter and blogs. Ooh, and a little trick I’ve learned: I try to end each writing session at a cliff-hanger or in the middle of a sentence so that when I sit down the next time, I can jump right in and keep writing.

Why do you write? What keeps you motivated?

I write because if I don’t, I start missing my characters. Also, I write because I want to know what will happen next. I live for those surprise moments when the characters do something I wasn’t expecting, or those a-ha moments when some pieces of the puzzle finally come together. It’s that constant feeling of discovery that keeps me motivated.

What are your aspirations?

The realist in me has dreams of writing and teaching and being able to make a reasonable living.
The dreamer in me hopes that DIY MFA might someday take the writing world by storm.

Tell us about your DIY MFA project. It sounds fascinating.

DIY MFA stands for Do-It-Yourself MFA. The premise is that while MFAs are great for some writers, they aren’t necessarily feasible for many writers out there. Either because of logistics, or finances, or family/work responsibilities, many writers who want to do an MFA end up not doing one. The idea here is that since I did an MFA, I wanted to share what I learned and help interested writers put together their own individual writing plan. The DIY MFA method consists of 4 branches: Reading, Writing, Community and Critique, which I divided into “classes.” I posted weekly articles on my blog through the month of September, each day of the week representing a different DIY MFA class. Now in October, though the September extrabloganza is done, DIY MFA will continue in a more organic fashion. But never fear, all the DIY MFA posts and classes will still be there so writers who missed the September fun can catch up. For more information on DIY MFA, visit iggi U. We also have a DIY MFA twitter hash tag (#diymfa) and an online community: http://diymfa.spruz.com/

For more information about me and my many projects, check out my blog at: iggiandgabi.blogspot.com

You can also follow me on twitter: @iggiandgabi

Thanks, Gabi!

 

Becoming A “Real” Writer – Interview With Heather Muir

Heather MuirAnother inspiring interview, this time with Heather Muir, a StoryADay alumnus who made it to 31 stories and then went off to Writer’s Camp and is working on her YA novel now.

Heather says she used StoryADay to help her “make the transition from student writer to ‘Real’ writer”. Yay!

Before you started StoryADay how would you have described your writing life?

Very sporadic. Just before StoryADay started, I had graduated with a B.A. in English with a creative writing emphasis. I only wrote for deadlines in class and I occasionally wrote something on my pet project, a fantasy novel I started when I was 16 that has been reincarnated so many times I don’t know what it is anymore. I needed a challenge.

What made you decide to do StoryADay?

A few weeks before StoryADay started, I had been accepted into Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp that would start at the end of June. I knew I needed to pump up my writing muscles as much as I could before the camp and StoryADay seemed like the answer.

What did you expect to achieve? What did you actually achieve? What did you learn during the challenge?

By the time I had heard about StoryADay, May was only two days away. My goal was to write a story every day as well as come up with the story idea every day. I wanted to test my ability to come up with stories quickly and from anything and everything.

I did write a story every day. I wrote a total of 10,987 words. On a few days my stories were only a few sentences long. Some I look back on and say “What was I thinking?” Only a handful of the stories are worth keeping and working on. One of them has spawned into an idea for a middlegrade book that I am in love with. Another is going to be incorporated into the motivations of the evil queen in a retelling of a fairy tale I want to work on.

What I learned from the challenge was that I could write everyday. It was hard certainly. But it really helped me make the transition from student writer to “real” writer. I no longer had school to fall back on, giving me deadlines. StoryADay was a great way to get that deadline and prove to myself that I was a serious writer.

How do you make time for writing?

Making time for writing is easy when you don’t have a social life and you are a bit of an insomniac. 🙂 I work at a 24-hour pharmacy so I never have a consistent time to write. Usually I try to write in the time before or after work. It’s never more than an hour or two but it is enough to stay consistent.

Why do you write? What keeps you motivated?

I write because I love stories. I was the kid who loved read-a-thons and going to the library. I write because I have to. I have tried to stop. I tried to start pharmacy school, to upgrade from technician to pharmacist but I could not get the story ideas out of my head. They haunt me until I write them down. And I also learned I could never be a pharmacist because I would hate my job. I don’t even want to hate my job. I want to live the dream and create for a living.

As far as motivation, I keep in contact with other writers. I have a writing group. I attend local conferences. I listen to a great podcast, Writing Excuses. I read a lot of books and remember how much those stories mean to me, how they have changed who I am. Now it’s almost unthinkable to not write.

The desire to create is too strong to ignore.

What’s Next?

As I said, I attended OSC’s Literary Bootcamp and returned triumphant. I’m now working on a YA novel about ghosts that I started at the camp. I hope to have a full draft finished in the next 6-8 months (judging by my pace so far). I have two other novel ideas on the back burner (one of them that came from story a day) as my next projects when the current novel is being submitted.

I hope StoryADay continues to be a success. It was very helpful to me though I don’t think I’ll participate again, now that I’m working on larger projects. It is perfect for the writer who lacks the courage to write and needs that support. StoryADay helped me. I hope it helps others.

Thanks Heather!

[And one more thing: I’d love to interview you about your writing, no matter what stage you’re at or whether or not you’ve done one of these creative challenges, so leave me a comment below if you’d be willing to chat.]

Make Time To Write — Because You’ll Never “Find” It.

Time
Time by Robbert van der Steeg

Acres of Internet space have already been devoted to this topic, because it’s a tough one. There are as many solutions as there are people who want to write, so there is always room for one more blog post on the topic.

In this 3-post  series, I’m going to give you some thoughts, some links and some tools, to help inspire you to find time for your writing.

 

TIME FOUND UNDER SOFA CUSHIONS!

There is a reason you never see that headline. Time is never found. Time is made, cadged, scrimped, stolen, begged, borrowed, spent.

There is always something else you could be doing. Always. The trick is, finding ways to make time for the things that really matter to you.

Make Tough Sacrifices

I’m saying this first, to get it over with because it sounds awful, but you will have to make sacrifices if you want to make writing a priority. Some of these sacrifices will be hard.

Today I turned down a walk with a friend, which I know would have been lovely. Sometimes a walk with a friend is the perfect thing to boost your creativity. But for me, this week, it would eat into the only clear time I have to Get Stuff Done. Some of that stuff is mundane, household stuff, but part of that Stuff is Writing & Writing Prep.

No matter how nice that walk would have been,  I had to say ‘no’.  Next week, I’ll budget my time differently to make sure I can say ‘yes’.

Make Easy Sacrifices

Some things will be easy to give up, or at least good for you.

Me? I overeat. When I’m stressed or bored I head for the pantry and strap on the nosebag. It uses up time and leaves me comfortably numb. But if I’m serious about my writing, I resist the nosebag, make light, healthy meals and get back to my notebook. Good for productivity and good for my heart.

An ‘hour long’  TV show is actually 42 minutes of content. The rest is commercials. Why not record your favourite shows or download them from iTunes? Even if you still watch two shows in an evening, you could carve out 36 minutes for writing just by watching it commercial-free and still get to bed at the same time.

What changes could you make, even if occasionally, to create more time for the thing you really love to do?

Accept That You Can Write In Bursts

You don’t need long swathes of time in which to write. In fact, that can be bad for productivity. As someone who has suffered prolonged bouts of enforced inactivity (lack of a work visa, looking after small children) I can tell you that more free time does not make writing easier. You just get more creative with your excuses.

Jamming in 250 words here and there on your commute — a 1000 if you’re lucky on a lunch break — keeps your writing feeling like a treat, not a chore.

Plus, it’s how most full-time writers started. Stephen King wrote after shifts at the laundromat. Scott Turow wrote bits and pieces while working as for the US Attorney’s office. Most ‘literary fiction’ writers have quite demanding schedules teaching at colleges and conferences. Even if they do get to take a semester off to finish a novel, they can hardly wait for inspiration to strike during that one precious semester.

Accept That You Can Write In Big Long Jags

If you do get the chance to write in a big binge on the weekends, go for it. Don’t feel guilty. Some people spend hours watching sports every Sunday. Do what you enjoy; what makes you a better person. Negotiate with family/friends for writing time if you have to, and write as fast as you can for as long as you can, whenever you get the chance.

Separate Your Thinking Time and Your Writing Time

On that note, don’t put off thinking about your story even if you don’t have time to sit down and write. When do get some writing time, you want the ideas to be flowing. You can think about the next plot development while you are doing any menial task (of which we all have plenty).

But do try to focus. It’s hard to stop your mind wandering off to the sequel or what you’ll do with your wealth when people are using your name where they used to use Stephen King’s. Rein it in. Focus on the next scene, the next bit of dialogue, the next plot twist. Make notes if you have to.  Better yet, commit the ideas to memory, then you’ll be turning them over and over until it’s time to write.

Then, when you do carve your 36 minutes out of the evening’s schedule, your fingers will be twitching. You’ll be ready to jump right in.

Scare Yourself Straight

If you find yourself frittering your time away on Facebook or Twitter or in front of the TV when you know you could be writing, take an excellent piece of advice from Jon Scalzi:

“Think of yourself on your deathbed saying, “well, at least I watched a lot of TV.”

Take a moment now. Picture it. Use that fertile imagination of yours.

If you aren’t already sweating, then maybe there is a whole other reason why you can’t and won’t find time to write.

And that’s OK, too. Maybe you’re really a reader, a critic, an enthusiastic conneseur of the narrative form. Join a book group or a film society and have fun with your life. Just stop beating yourself up about not finding time to write.

But if you’re a writer, make time. You’ll never “Find” It.

Am I being glib? Smug? Wrong? Have you found things that work for you? Tell me in the comments.

Writing In The Fast Lane – Interview With AdorablyAlice

As writers we’re curious. About everything. About people, technology, history, our neighbours, everything.

I’m particularly curious about other writers and how they work, what keeps them going, why they do it.

So here’s the first in a series of interviews with writers, starting with writers who took part in the StoryADay challenge last May.

AdorablyAlice was one of our most active writers during the first challenge. In this interview she gives a lot of credit for her writing success to her secret weapon: her friend and mentor: Cid (also a StoryADay veteran). I’d love it if you’d leave a comment below, picking out one thing from this interview that stood out for you: something that sounded sooooo familiar it made you smile, or something you’d like to try in your own writing life.


Before you started StoryADay how would you have described your writing life?

I used to write a lot when I was younger. Sometime after high school, I stopped. It wasn’t until NaNoWriMo 2009 that I began writing again. So between NaNo and StADa, I was still trying to find a balance between work, school, life and writing.

What made you decide to do StoryADay?

Cid. I found out about StADa through her, and because short story is my weakest point, I thought it would be a good challenge. Plus, I thought it would help me get into the habit of writing daily.

What did you expect to achieve? What did you actually achieve? What did you learn during the challenge?

I wanted to write something every day, and I wanted to get stronger at writing short stories. I did write everyday, but I think I’m still weak in writing short stories. I learned about Twitter fiction, which intrigued me, and I actually wrote a few TwitFic pieces.

How do you make time for writing?

This is a good question. And when I have an answer that doesn’t involve neglecting chores/cooking, I’ll let you know.

Why do you write? What keeps you motivated?

I am most productive on #writersdatenight (yes, I have to include the Twitter hashtag). Once a week a group of five writers (including myself) meet at McAllister’s to eat, socialize a little and write. Because the other four ladies have been writing longer than I have, I feel motivated to write a lot when I’m around them. The sound every one typing is motivating. I’ve tried other writing groups, but they’ve been more socializing than writing, so I don’t enjoy them as much. Lately, Cid has been setting goals for me. Write 5K and get a book. Write 5K and have a Glee marathon. It works. She’s awesome.

What are your aspirations?

Well, I’d love to be published and that’ s definitely a long term goal, but more short term…I’d like to finish a story. Well, I’ve finished a few, but I don’t revise. So a good aspiration would be to go back and revise…lol

Do you have a project or website you’d like to tell people about?

Well, there’s Book-Addicts. There are four of us (Cid’s one of them) and we basically review books across all genres, interview authors, have guest blog spots and book giveaways. It’s a pretty awesome place for people who are as addicted to reading as we are. www.book-addicts.com – get your fix!

I also have my personal website, www.adorablyalice.com, I keep up with how I’m doing as a writer, offering the lessons I learn as I delve into the mysterious ways of The Writer.

Thanks, Alice! (And you can read more about Alice’s experiences with her writers’ groups and productivity in this blog post – which features a fun cartoon from my own writing friend and secret mentor, Debbie Ohi.)

[And one more thing: I’d love to interview you about your writing, no matter what stage you’re at or whether or not you’ve done one of these creative challenges, so leave me a comment below if you’d be willing to chat.]

NaNoWriMo or No?

What are your best tips for approaching NaNoWriMo?

I love short stories

I love writing them, reading them, dissecting them.

…but for the past 10 years or so I’ve been tempted by National Novel Writers’ Month: Write a novel in a month.

I’m put off by the time commitment – with two small, demanding kids, a part-time job and a husband i actually like to spend time with – I can’t imagine making time.

But now I have writing friends from Story A Day who are urging me to try it for reals this year. And, for the first time, I don’t have a baby, visitors or crisis hanging over me.

So what are your best strategies for approaching NaNo, all you veterans and pushers?

What do you do before November, during November, when things are going well, when things are going badly? How do you pace your novel? What are the absolute must-do tactics for you? What are the traps and time-sinks?

Please comment below, or write your answer on your own blog and leave a link here. Remember: complete newbie here. Tell me anything, even things you’d forgotten you once didn’t know

What Every Writer Ought To Know About The Writing Life

I’ve been reading Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale by Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook, which is a rollocking, inspiring come-along-with-me look over the shoulder of one of the busiest writers in British TV…Here are some excellent insights for less-experienced writers, pulled from the book:


I’ve been reading Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale, , which is a rollocking, inspiring come-along-with-me look over the shoulder of the busiest writer in British TV. The book contains correspondence (mostly email) between Davies, the show-runner of the modern Doctor Who series and Cook, a journalist. The emails are written while Davies is in the midst of dreaming up, writing and producing not just one but three concurrent TV shows. It has a breathlessness and reality that you wouldn’t get if you just sat a writer down and said,

“So, how do you write?”

I came away from the book with a sense that successful, highly-paid writers have it no easier than the rest of us, even though we daydream that they do. They still get blocked, they still have to sit down and do the work, and in fact, it might be harder for them because the stakes are higher.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts about writing so far.

On Procrastination and Blocks

I spent all day stuck, not writing, because I couldn’t work out a way for the Doctor to meet Miss Hartigan… I couldn’t work out how to do it, where to do it, when. All day, gone. Pissed off. Then I sat down to write, with no solution and… thought of it! Immediately. Obvious. Simple. If I’d started sooner…Ah, the only way to write is to write. For all my banging on about what to do if you’re really stuck on something, there’s nothing dumber than sitting there writing nothing at all. Stupid bastard job.

(My emphasis.)

Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that someone as apparently prolific and actually successful as Davies still forgets this? I know I do.

Finding The Confidence To Write

I was astounded to run across the following line from this seemingly-somewhat-arrogant writer, written the night before a meeting to lay out a new series’ story ideas with other writers and production staff.

Oh god. I am dreading it. I feel out of my depth.

(Now bear in mind that Davies has been working in TV, very successfully, since the 1980s. He has created and written around 10 original TV productions,before he even got to the mammoth 5-series of Doctor Who and its two spin-offs. )

Most of the correspondence in this book is florid, energetic, conversational. This staccato yelp really leapt out at me. It seemed both true and familiar. Only Davies has a contract and a budget and a huge staff of people relying on him for their employment so he can’t scurry away from his fears and just stop writing.

On why we write (and why it is so hard):

…truth, in writing, is the only important thing. That’s what it’s for. The whole time, every day, all these pages, all my life, means sitting here looking for something – some line, some insight, some microsecond – that makes me think: yes. Yes, that’s true. That’s real. I recognize that. I know it. That’s all I’m after! It might be a truth discovered ten million times before by other people, but that doesn’t matter. If you discover it for yourself, then that makes everything worthwhile. No wonder writing is such hard work! You’re strip mining your own head, every day, searching for this stuff – and then those moments of revelation are like a godsend.

The discovery of a truth like that doesn’t come along often, though every other moment is spent working towards it.

It’s so worth it, when it happens. Oh my word. Gold dust. It feels like vindication.

I think I’m going to tape this one up above my desk.

 

Writers: Daydream Your Way To Success

On Writing

You want to write, and yet you find yourself reading other people’s writing, putting off writing, talking about writing, reading about writing… even writing about writing, but not actually writing.

Why Aren’t You Writing?

Writers have vivid imaginations, but we’re not always good at pointing them in the right direction. Instead of imagining what our characters eat for breakfast (or who they eat it with), we fritter away our creative energy on ourselves, our imaginary future careers and our disproportionate fears:

  • Fear of failure (“What if my writing is no good?”),
  • Fear of other people’s opinions (“What if my non-writer friends think I’m stuck-up? Pretentious? Ridiculous? Selfish?”)
  • Fear of success (“What if I am successful once and people expect me to do it again? What if I can’t? What if I can but it feels too much like work?”)

Daydreaming is what we do, though (Einstein called it ‘thought experiements’. Doesn’t that sound nice?)

So let’s take that skill and use it to propel you into a state where you can’t wait to do some actual, honest-to-goodness writing!

Think about your current project. The one that gives you butterflies in your stomach when you think about it. The ambitious one you really want to start but are stalling over.

What Are Your Goals?

  • Are you writing to prove to yourself that you can finish a piece in this style (a novel, a poem, a play, a short story?).
  • Are you trying to develop your style?
  • Are you trying to make one little girl in her bedroom feel the way you felt the first time you read “A Wrinkle In Time”?
  • Are you trying to win the Newberry Award?

(Hint the latter one is an outcome, not a goal. Shelve it and focus on finding what you love).

What Will Happen If You Succeed?

What will happen? How will you feel? Will you be more or less confident? What will you be able to do next?

Take a moment and be honest with yourself. Grab a pen and write down the answer to those questions. Now look at what you wrote and think about what you didn’t dare write.

For those results, isn’t it worth taking the risk?

Now go! Get writing!

If you’d like some free tools to help you explore these ideas more fully, sign up for the Story A Day Creativity Lab: a low-frequency mailing list containing workbooks and practical exercises to get you closer to your writing goals.