Does Your Writing Cut The Mustard?

The first restaurant I worked in was an American-style family restaurant – pretty exotic for the southwest coast of Scotland in the 80s, a place festooned with fish’n’chip shops, where ‘chicken tenders’ sounded like a new language.

One of my jobs was to set out bowls of condiments before the customers came in…and not just salt, pepper, vinegar, and the two sauces known to us (red and brown), but things like ‘hamburger relish (it was green! Who had ever heard of such a thing?!) and three types of mustard: one classic yellow, one fancy ‘Dijon’, and one totally alien grainy concoction that I fell in love with.

Tonight, I opened a jar of that grainy mustard and its tangy smell transported me back 38 years, to the service corridor between the kitchen and dining room of my first job, when mustard was an exotic new experience.

It reminded me of a truth in writing: we spend so much time in our own heads that we take for granted the way we think, the way we talk, and the way we write.

Sometimes, when we show our work to someone else they are thrilled by a throwaway phrase or a description that took no effort at all…because it’s normal to you.

Sometimes we need other writers to push us to try the mustard, when we’re accustomed to always reaching for the salt and vinegar. 

And yes, this is my fancy way of letting you know that Critique Week is coming up, and that if you would like to get some fresh eyes on your writing you should consider joining us.

But more than that, it’s my way of encouraging you not to take your own writing for granted. It might be the new flavor someone else is looking for!

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. I’ll be opening up registration for this round of Critique week, soon. Get on the waitlist here.

How To Be A GREAT Critique Partner

There’s a memorable scene in the movie Silence of the Lambs, when Jodie Foster’s FBI supervisor points out that assumptions are treacherous “Because when you assume, you make an “ass” out of “u” and me…”

I was thinking about that today, as I prepare for another Critique Week, here at StoryADay.

When I interviewed Matthew Salesses, author of Craft in the Modern World, he talked about the difficulty of giving meaningful feedback to other writers if we don’t root out our unconscious biases.

Chances are, if you’re like me, most of the literary greats you were exposed to at school were white, male, and dead. 

“Good stories” were those that were modeled after Faulkner or Joyce, or Poe. 

But what if you’re being asked to read a story by your friend who is queer, 25, and an immigrant from Nigeria? How do you ‘judge’ that story?

How To Be A Sensitive Reader

In my experience, the best way to give helpful feedback is to get into conversation with the writer.

Some useful questions include:

  • Who are you writing this for? (Accepting, humbly, that I might not be the target audience.)
  • How do you want the reader to feel at various points in your story?
  • Are there any cultural storytelling norms you’re using that I might need to know (if I’m not your target audience)?

I hope this gives you confidence to say ‘yes’, next time someone asks you for feedback.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. If you’re interesting in getting great feedback from some talented and thoughtful writers, find out more about the StoryADay Critique Week.

Please don’t do this…

I popped into a writers’ group on Facebook this morning and saw something so awful, so muse-crushing, so career-killing that I had to write to you and beg you not to make the same mistake.

Sound dramatic? 

That’s because I feel so strongly that you shouldn’t do what these two writers did. I’ve seen it stop writers in their tracks for years, if not forever.

What was this horrendous thing?

In two separate posts, this morning, I saw writers post their tender first efforts at writing (in their words “the opening of my novel”)  in a forum full of strangers and ask for feedback. 

Here are some of the responses they got:

Continue reading “Please don’t do this…”

What People Are Saying About StoryADay May 2014

What strikes me about this, is how often the words “fun”, “happy”, “yes!”, “accomplished” and “glad” come up in people’s comments about the StoryADay challenge.

It’s not to late to join in. Just pick up a pen, and off you go! You won’t regret it!
What people are saying about StoryADayMay 2014

“I have a slew of new things to write that I wouldn’t have thought of if I hadn’t tried StoryADay, so this is pretty great.”
-k.c.

“I’m very much looking forward to spending May with you again! Should be great!”
-s.c.

“I’m so glad I found out about this. Thank you xxx”
-l*

“Great post, exactly what I needed…Thank you!”
-l.n.

“I have surprised myself wit the creativity I have produced.”
-m.r.

“I have been looking forward to May for months, now I know why! I love having a new writing experience every day,”
-c.l.

“Haven’t written fiction IN A LONG WHILE, and I’m glad I came up with something!”
-y*

“Today’s prompt really helped me get over a block for a scene I needed for a larger work I am writing.”
-c.jr.

“I like being forced to get something down…good daily discipline.”
c.g.

“mission accomplished!”
-k.d.

“I loved this – brought a delighted grin to an old lady’s face…thanks for a good start to a sunny morning.”
-a.r.

“the guest prompt was excellent.”
-m.s.

“…only 706 words, bt I like where that prompt took me.”
-e*

“Hooray! I’m having such fun with Drabbles.”
-c.k.

“It’s late in the day, but I got a story done so I’m happy. I feel a sense of accomplishment…”
c.g.

“yes yes yes. I did it. Woo-hoo!”
-k.m.

“…a good warm up for the other writing on the agenda today.”
-s*

“glad I tried it…”
-s.j.b.

“…not bad for a first draft, I think!”
-s.j.m.

“I’m not really happy with [this] story…but it was fun to write.”
-c.s.

“Thank you for another good story idea,”
-s.c.

“Very rough, but…I feel good about writing it.”
-r.s.

“So much fun.”
-s.c.

“Missed a few days, but I’m back on track!”
-m.l.

“Loving StoryADay!”
-k.l.

“Happy dance !!!!!!”
-b.o.

Special thanks to all the people who are writing, providing feedback, supporting each other and inspiring me to keep writing!

10 Days To Go

OK, so ten days to go and we’re all at various stages of “success” and we’re all still turning up.

It’s getting harder though, isn’t it? …

(Wow, it seems like no time at all I was posting that headline in my promo efforts for the yet-to-born Story A Day challenge!)

OK, so ten days to go and we’re all at various stages of “success” and we’re all still turning up.

It’s getting harder though, isn’t it? Finding a whole new story every day drains the well pretty quickly. We need to work on staying encouraged, finding new ideas, new angles, and remembering what inspires us to write.

@CidWrites wrote this really helpful self-pep-talk that I certainly benefitted from reading (so thanks, Cid)
(and then she went on to write a really fun and intriguing story that day)

@AdorablyAlice wrote a great blog post on writing during slumps, that I’m sure you’ll find something of use in.

@dorlamoorehouse has an upbeat, celebratory post here that makes me grin and think: I want some of that!

Don’t forget these posts from the Story A Day Blog archives:

Finding Ideas For Stories

Finding Time (and Ways) To Write

StADa participants’ Feedback After Week 1

and the Resources page which includes links to sources of Inspiration, Prompts, Productivity Tools and Tips from Great Writers.

If it helps, why not take a few minutes to read other people’s stories right here at Story A Day. OK, you might get intimidated, but on the other hand, you might just get inspired.

Onward!

Week 1 – Story A Day So Far

Thanks to everyone who responded to my questions about how your week is going. I’ve collected some of the responses…

We’ve made it to Day 7! Congrats to everyone who has written anything, or still plans to! And thanks to everyone who responded to my questions about how your week is going. I’ve collected some of the responses below.

When I had this idea to write A Story A Day, back in March, I knew I was going to need a crew to keep me honest, because I knew it would be hard. My non-writer friends a families gave me that ‘uh-huh!’ look and said things like “that’s ambitious”.

With the help of a few people like Debbie, Carol, Robert and Eden, and the Twitterati, word spread rapidly and I discovered that there are tons of writers out there just as hungry for an excuse to focus on their writing as I was. Tons of people who took “That’s ambitious” and made it a cheer, not a groan.

So now, I have — according to my Story A Day Dashboard — 77 new friends, who are all serious enough about their writing to want to do this challenge. Not everyone is writing every single day and not everyone is finishing a story every day they start one, but everyone is serious about their writing and that is such an inspiration to me.  (Sorry, I’m gushing)

FEEDBACK

Story length:

The shortest story people are laying claim to is 25 words. The longest is over 3000

Tips for keeping going:

@mapelba says  “As Ann Lamott said–butt in chair. It helps to listen or read an interview with a favorite author sometimes. Oh, and I’ve given up a lot of TV. That helps.”

@Cidwrites says: “The excitement of my friends who are doing this helps a lot!”

@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. If I have the opener, I can sit down and just WRITE (That said, neither story went where I had planned. Characters kept popping in and announcing themselves, changing the story). Who knows if this will hold up – we’ll see! Ask us again in two weeks!

“My other trick was to sign up my kid. I have too much pride to be outdone by a seven-year-old, so I’lm guaranteed to write every day.” (I love this one!)

@Wendolin says: “I keep going because every day I wake up and the first thing I think about is . . . what will I end up with today? I go about my morning chores thinking about possibilities. I make this challenge the focus of my day, and though I have many other things to do, I keep the story in the back of my miind, cogitating, adding and subtracting, until at last, I just have to sit down and start writing, no matter how much laundry there is in the hamper.”

Thanks everyone! Keep writing!