A Writing Tool You May Not Be Using (Yet). Hint: It Involves Robots.

Posted on by Erin Bartels

It can be difficult to find the weaknesses or errors in one’s own writing. We read over missing words because our brains know they should be there. We write mind-bogglingly long sentences, those great structures built of words, nesting clause within clause within clause, little knowing how someone who is coming at it fresh, who hasn’t seen the blueprint, will work it all out and tease the correct meaning from our tangled strings of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. One important way to get feedback is to pass our work along to willing readers who will be encouraging and yet honest, and who also hopefully know a thing or two about plotting, pacing, and prepositional phrases.

But before passing your tender, raw writing on to another human being, perhaps you should be trying robots first.

One of the best ways to really hear your writing for what it is is to make use of the increasingly sophisticated text-to-speech capabilities of your word processor, your e-reader, or various programs you can download. My preferred method is something called NaturalReader. You can download a free version here, but I recommend buying a few voices (I use Crystal) that sound less like robots and more like…um, let’s say cyborgs. Simply cut and paste any text into the program and you can listen to it, either via your computer speakers or converted to an mp3 file that you can listen to on your iPod.

I probably listen to close to a hundred book-length manuscripts using this software every year for work. I do my work reading this way for convenience and as a time-saver. Listening to a manuscript rather than reading from a page, I hear things that I wouldn’t necessarily always notice (which I might then decide to pass on to the editor if it becomes too distracting). Irritating repetition of a word, phrase, or way of describing something (such as “Her heart fell along with her valise”), sometimes a mere paragraph away.  Missing helping verbs or spots where an author changed the sentence structure at some point but missed the removal of a now superfluous word. Overuse of a description, as though the author had forgotten that the “lawman” had already been described as “blonde” many, many times in the book (as though the color of his hair somehow had anything to do with his professional competency).

And everything I pick up in others’ manuscripts I can pick up in my own using the same technology. Hearing your work read aloud, even by a slightly robotic voice, brings into sharp relief those little mistakes and irritations that you want to fix before you send your work away to another human being. It makes you notice when you need another paragraph of transition. It shows you that you forgot an article or changed tense or forgot to pluralize something. It shows you misspellings you already read over ten times without noticing.

If this tool isn’t in your toolbox yet, I strongly encourage you to add it. It’s free or cheap, it can save you small embarrassments, and it can make you a more efficient self-editor.

Plus, there’s just something about hearing a robot read your story that is bizarrely satisfying.

The Way It Seems to Work

Posted on by Erin Bartels

FlakeI’m sure you’ve had this experience. You make a plan to do something, you start executing that plan, things are working, things are cooking, and then someone comes along with an “opportunity” for you that, when it comes down to it, you just can’t pass up. It will take time, energy, and creativity (which you have already earmarked for your planned work) but you just can’t pass it up because it will give as much as it takes–more experience, connections, and, oh yeah, money. And suddenly your perfectly apportioned calendar becomes bloated and more complicated. You start to get nervous and you think to yourself “I don’t know about this…”

Ever happen to you?

As you may have guessed, a nice, paying writing opportunity was dropped in my lap this week and I have decided to pursue it. I have also decided to keep my promise to myself and any potential readers out there to write and self-publish one short story each month. I also need to finish pulling together a proposal for a writing conference, make a quilt for a friend, clean my house up before my mother arrives for a visit (today), and, what was that other thing? That’s right, my full time job. Thank goodness there are still three more months before I need to think about yard work.

Just like that the very lovely January feeling of finally having your calendar and your goals under control dissipates into a vaguely uneasy sense that you will get it all done (because you have to) but you might not always enjoy it.

There you have it. Opportunity comes along at inopportune times. But you still need to grab it and run with it and realize that, with a little crazy ambition and an understanding spouse, you are hard at work blazing the trail to the life you truly want–the writing life.

You know what? 2013 is going to be a great, crazy year.

Sneak Peek at January’s Short Story

Posted on by Erin Bartels

I’m already hard at work writing January’s short story, which I’ve tentatively titled Winter Weeds. And because procrastination is an integral part of writing (and because I have to get to it at some point in order to upload everything to Amazon) here is my current cover mock-up. You may recognize the photo.

Winter Weeds Cover Mock-Up

As I’m plugging away at this story, I am enjoying the challenge of capturing a setting in vivid words. The temperature, the way the light hits, the thin, faint smells of winter. This is probably my favorite kind of writing. Such a fun challenge to try to describe the essence of something physical and visual in mere words on a white page.

When are you at your very best as you write? Dialogue? Action sequences? Bringing emotions to life? Think about whatever type of scene you like most to write, the kind of thing that got you jazzed about writing in the first place. Are you still writing scenes like that? Has the joy of writing slipped away? Has your technique stalled or improved over the years?

Today, write something you absolutely love to write, whether or not it is attached to any work in progress. It may just take on a life of its own and become your next great work.

The Editing Secret You Know (But Are Trying to Forget)

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Balancing the Baby

The observant among you will have noticed something rather off about the photo above. The rest of you are wondering why I would post a boring photo of my fireplace. If you are in the second lot, look again. See it now?

That baby should not be there. And really, it’s a pretty poor Photoshop job anyway, so you may be suspecting that the weeks-old baby on the mantel is not in actuality sitting up there under his own power. Two photos taken, one with my husband on either side, holding up our infant son several years ago, knit together quickly to make it appear that the boy just jumped up there on his own and was casually relaxing. In hindsight, we should have used a tripod.

I post this photo to illustrate a writing truth that you have probably already heard, but of which we all need to be reminded now and then. Sometimes you write a scene, a chapter, or an entire book and place a baby somewhere it doesn’t belong. A turn of phrase you are particularly proud of that really doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of your work, a supporting character you love but can’t justify because he doesn’t move the story along, a bit of melodramatic indulgence in place of hardworking, compelling storytelling.

These are the babies on your mantel. They don’t belong there. You need to remove them. And you know it (usually). If your babies blend in too much, perhaps a reader with keener eyes can help you identify them.

You don’t have to toss your babies out in the cold and forget about them. You just can’t leave them up on the mantel. It’s distracting. Tuck them away in their cribs until you find a better place for them in another work. Keep that turn of phrase, that great character, that bit of melodrama in your notebook; they may all someday turn into new stories where they fit perfectly.

An Ambitious Writing Plan for 2013

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Edison's LightbulbIt seems to me that there is quite a push to get writers to believe they can write a novel in a month. NaNoWriMo, blog posts, books. If you’re a full time writer or someone with an already thoroughly sketched out or outlined idea, I think that is true. Or maybe if you just type ultra fast. But I don’t think I’m among your ranks.

I have my own fairly ambitious writing plan for this year, however. In May or June I plan to release a novel. But that’s not the real ambitious part (because it’s already written). By the end of 2013 I would like to have a collection of short stories to put into book form. And I would like to release them throughout the year as Kindle Singles, little ebooks for $0.99 each. And I would like to do this once a month.

To think I can pull this off strikes me as ambitious, but not quite foolhardy. So I plan to break up each month of 2013 in such a way that I can write, revise, edit, format, and release a short story into the cybersphere regularly, like the slow drip of an IV.

How will I accomplish this? I believe it may work out this way:

  • Weeks 1 & 2 – Write
  • Week 3 – Revise and edit
  • Week 4 – Format and release

This seems reasonable to me at the moment, in the glow of a fresh new year. We shall see as we go, I suppose, if it is in reality. I already have ten stories partially imagined or scribbled about in my notebook. One of the stories that will be in the collection is already written, though I cannot release that one until after a particular contest is finished in March. So I will save the release of that one to be my one cheat, my back-up in case of a bad or very busy month.

Does this strike you as a little naïve? Am I fooling myself here? Perhaps. But you can’t fail or succeed until you try.

What are your writing goals for 2013? I’d love to hear about them.

Perception Is Reality . . . Well, Almost

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Tea“This smells like an old timey poultice that has just been removed from a wound.”

This is what my husband said as he walked into the living room with a mug of Sleepytime tea.

“It’s chamomile. It’s supposed to smell like apples,” I countered as I drew near to sniff the offending liquid. It smelled exactly how it was supposed to smell. Like yummy, soothing herbal tea.

My husband is not a tea drinker, and is especially not an herbal tea drinker (why bother if there’s no caffeine?) but he was going to muscle that poultice tea down anyway. The night before he had not slept at all. Not one blessed minute. So this night he was doing everything he possibly could, piling on all the useless advice he’d heard over the past five years, in a desperate attempt to trick his mind into shutting down for the night. Magnesium, valerian root, sleeping pill, sleepytime tea, and a few other things I don’t recall now. As he rattled of the ingredients to his sleep-inducing cocktail, I remarked that he was probably the world’s foremost connoisseur of insomnia cures. Much good that did, though, as whether they worked or not seemed to be a bit of a crap shoot.

He did sleep that night. But insomnia is not really what this post is about. It’s about perception. Specifically, perception of writing. Your writing, perhaps.

I thought the tea smelled fine. My husband thought it smelled like it had just been extracted from the germ-infested seeping wound of some filthy Dark Age peasant. I like tea. My husband does not.

In writing, as well as any other field that seeks to involve other people’s senses, desires, prejudices, and emotions (think advertising, movies, music, just about any media you can imagine) a stark black and white sense of reality does not matter, and many would argue it cannot be determined anyway. What matters is how people perceive what you’ve created.

In other words, if I write something I think is unique but others think is commonplace, it is commonplace. If I write something I think is edge-of-your-seat but readers put it down because they don’t feel the drive to keep reading, it is not edge-of-your-seat. If I write something I believe takes on deep issues but the reader dismisses as shallow and sophomoric, it is not as deep as I think it is.

Ouch. Criticism reveals our writing’s most persistent flaws. It’s hard to take at times, just as it was hard for my husband to swallow that tea. But criticism, even the mean and spiteful criticism, can strengthen our writing if we apply it correctly. Even a tirade can be turned into constructive criticism if we read it with the right spirit and thick enough skin.

But here’s the kicker. You are a writer. You are an artist. And even if people do not receive your work as you hoped they would, you have a message and a vision. While properly applying criticism to our writing does produce better writing, there is such a thing as too much compromise, when your writing and your story become someone else’s because you are trying to please too many people.

If you are confident that an element of your writing is right for your story, that it serves your story in a way that it would not if you changed it (perhaps the way a character acts or your point of view or the style in which it is written) then leave it alone. Sometimes people criticize things because they are not exactly like everything else they’ve read. Sometimes they criticize because they had a really crappy day and they need to lash out at someone. Sometimes they criticize because they are trolls. Be courageous. Be willing to be different. But only after you have truly and honestly considered your reader’s opinion and have a good reason for disregarding it (and there are many legitimate reasons to reject other’s opinions).

When I initially gave my novel manuscript to a few friends and colleagues to get feedback, there were a couple things that everyone said I did really well. And there were a couple of things that were distracting flaws. I had to choose how much of those perceived flaws I was going to change. If only one reader mentioned it, I might leave it as is. But if almost everyone mentioned it, I knew I needed to think hard about how to address it. And then I had to decide if I had really addressed it adequately once I did make changes. (I’m still not sure.) But I also had to decide if I was willing to sacrifice something I felt was necessary to retain the style of the storytelling.

Perception is reality for the reader. You can control the reader’s perception up to a point, but you cannot change the lens through which they read. So do your part to make things understandable. Do your part to create and mold the perception. But accept the fact that another reader may see your work differently, may catch your vision in a way the first reader didn’t. Maybe every single reader isn’t really the right audience for you. Maybe you’re happy with a smaller audience that truly understands and appreciates your writing for what it is because you are all looking at it through similar lenses.

I’m the tea drinker in our family. My husband will never like tea, no matter how many different kinds are out there, no matter how much sugar, no matter how it’s dressed up. He is not the “audience” for tea. And tea growers don’t grow for him. They grow for me.

Who is your audience? Your real audience. Write for them.

Why didn’t I think to describe someone as “mouldy?”

Posted on by Erin Bartels

After a rather long hiatus, I have once again picked up Virginia Woolf’s abridged diary in the evenings. I’m absolutely enraptured with Woolf’s ability to use a few precise, often unexpected words to describe a person or a situation. Here are a few I’ve underlined.

“Roger is becoming one of the successes of the day as a painter of perfectly literal and very unpleasant portraits.”

“I doubt that anyone will say the interesting things but they can’t prevent their coming out.”

“Whether people see their own rooms with the devastating clearness that I see them, thus admitted once for an hour, I doubt. Chill superficial seemliness; but thin as a March glaze of ice on a pool.”

“Being an editor has drugged the remnants of ambition in him, and he is now content.”

“Sometimes everything gets into the same mood.”

“In my heart, too, I prefer the nondescript anonymous days of youth. I like youthful minds; and the sense that no one’s yet anybody.”

“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.”

“It annoys me to be like other wives.”

“She has been working over these old stories so often, that they hold no likeness to the truth–they are stale, managed, pulled this way and that, as we used to knead and pull the crumb of bread, till it was a damp slab.”

“Ethel’s [tea] was a ghastly frizzly frying pan affair.”

“No I don’t trust him; I don’t trust any human being, however loud they bellow and roll their rs.”

“Such is human nature–and really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.”

“I know why I am depressed: a bad habit of making up the review I should like before reading the review I get.”

“Here at the age of forty-five are Nessa and I growing little wings again after our lean years.”

“And now there’s the Femina prize to record–an affair of dull stupid horror.”

I’m happy to be once again immersed in the world of a very thoughtful writer who truly considered everything in her life and felt the compulsion to write about it–parties, visitors, scenes on London’s streets, the impact of a solar eclipse, books, homes, hairstyles, the subtle interplay between couples. Everything was literary. She inspires me to see all of life through the lens of what I might write about it.

On Being True to Your Muse

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Here’s what I don’t want to write: vampire stories, tales of the coming zombie apocalypse, stories about dystopian societies, YA fiction about wizards and witches, bodice rippers, cozy mysteries, romantic suspense, historical romance, romances in general, crime stories, murder mysteries, courtroom dramas, sadomasochistic fanfic, or almost anything else that seems to be commercially viable today.

Here’s what I do want to write: thoughtful, slow-moving, character-driven literary fiction that subtly asks the reader to examine herself, ask the hard questions, and think deeply about the world she lives in.

Here’s the problem: does anyone publish what I want to write? Hmmm.

Publishing is a business and businesses are all about making money (as they should be). I’m not making any judgments against publishers; I work for one (and so them making money = me getting a paycheck). But as I read about what deals are in the works at the big five (seriously, more publishing contracts for Twilight fan fiction?) I am slowly coming to the realization that if I don’t want to write what most traditional publishers want to publish, I must come to grips with the fact that my writing will perhaps not find a home at a big traditional publisher, even if there is an audience for it out there. After all, I am not so self-centered as to think that I am the only one in the world who wants to read something that is subtle, thoughtful, and literary rather than something that is sophomoric, simplistic, and pandering. (Oh, crap. Did I say that out loud?)

If this is the case, folks, then why write? Why spend the time and creative energy on something that will not bring enormous profit and sudden fame? Here’s why: because good writing is worth doing for its own sake. I know, I know, that sounds like a mother soothing her child after he is passed over for the lead in the school play (“Sweetie, you did your best and that’s all that matters.”) but stick with me here.

It feels good to be praised for our work. When we are young, praise is available from parents and teachers. We are rewarded for our diligence and creativity with good grades, a spot on the refrigerator or bulletin board, a merit scholarship, special cords to wear on graduation day. As adults, we are rewarded with a few pats on the back at work, perhaps, and hopefully a pay raise or a promotion. And for creative artists of all kinds, who are not getting a grade or a paycheck for our work, what gives that sense that others care, that others value what we create? Why, what better measure of our worth than the fact that people will pay for it? After all, if someone doesn’t want to buy what I make, what good is it?

Some food for thought: Vincent Van Gogh produced more than 2,000 paintings and sketches. During his lifetime, he sold just one painting. One. It was his Red Vineyard at Arles, which I’d wager most of us have never seen because it is not one of his more iconic works. Today, along with Picasso, Van Gogh paintings garner the highest prices at auctions, with several recently going for more than $100 million each.

The fact that he was commercially unsuccessful in life did not mean he was untalented. It doesn’t mean he didn’t create beautiful works that would one day be appreciated. And even if his work had never become posthumously popular, those who ended up with his paintings in their homes would most certainly have displayed them because they thought them beautiful and meaningful. His worth is not measured by his slim bank account in life–it is measured by his genius, his enduring expressions of beauty.

The lesson should not be lost on writers of less commercially viable genres. Commercial success would be lovely (or really, some aspects of it would be lovely though I can think of several I’m glad to live without) but it does not determine someone’s talent or worth. Just as blockbuster movies are often (though certainly not always) shallow, pointless, and artless escapades dressed up with copious special effects, some New York Times bestselling books are not art. Some are. But many simply are not.

If you, like me, are a writer who finds herself or himself creating in a non-commercial genre for a more niche audience, don’t give in to the temptation to compromise your vision for commercial success. Yes, you could manufacture some of that stuff blindfolded. But don’t. There’s enough of it out there already. Create your art for its own sake. If you want it to be available to others and are having trouble getting the entrenched world of traditional publishing to take a chance on you, you can always self-publish in ebook and/or print-on-demand format (after you know it is absolutely your best work and you’ve had several conscientious and intelligent readers and an editor look it over to suggest revisions and make corrections). Art is meant to be shared, after all. But don’t silence your muse. Because if you don’t write what is in your heart, who will?

If Writing Is Packing Your Bags, Editing Is Taking the Trip

Posted on by Erin Bartels

I love writing. I enjoy the actual process of putting thoughts down in words on a page/screen, and especially that mysterious reverse aspect of writing–when the act of writing actually drives your thoughts. It is fascinating to be part of the interchange between process and product, the fluid state where you aren’t sure who is in charge of the story that is taking shape.

But even more than writing, I have to admit, I love editing. Writing can never achieve on its own what writing and editing achieve together. Writing is only the very first part of the journey. You might compare it to a hiking trip. It’s packing your pack and reserving campsites and planning how far you will hike each day. It’s making sure you have everything you need, gathering the essentials of your story–characters, setting, plot, etc. But just like a hiking trip, you don’t want to stop with the prep work. You want to actually go on the journey. You know it will be hard work, but that it will all be worth it in the end.

I’m not talking about overarching revision, though that is often important, especially when you push yourself to write at a quick pace as so many of us are doing for NaNoWriMo. And I’m not talking about proofing, that necessary nitpicking that gives you a clean manuscript.

I’m talking about  looking at individual words and judging their merit. Are they hardworking or lazy? Are they unique or commonplace? Do they truly mean what you want them to mean? Is there a better one, a more complete one, a more interesting one that could be substituted to bring your writing to the next level? This is like looking down at the forest floor on a hike, noticing the individual plants and flowers and mosses, spotting the snake slithering away or the butterfly sipping nectar. It’s paying attention to the little things, because the little things are what make up the whole of the experience of the trip and they are important. If your readers are tripping over the roots or rocks that are poorly chosen words, this is your chance to  level the path.

I’m talking about looking at individual sentences with that same critical eye and asking yourself if that sentence is truly the best it can be. Does it say something important? Does it say something true? Does it say something necessary? Is it essential? Does it move the reader forward? This is like looking at everything around you at eye-level. This is seeing the path ahead, seeing the deer tip-toeing among the trees, seeing the play of sunlight and shadow on the water. This widens your scope from individual words and takes into account the somewhat larger landscape of your story. If your readers have come to a river with no bridge in sight, this is your chance to build one for them so they don’t have to slog through the mire of unclear sentences.

I’m talking about examining a paragraph and then a chapter and applying the same criteria to it. Is it unique, necessary, dynamic, clear, interesting, and compelling? These are the breaks in the trees that allow you to experience the bigger picture. They are the overlooks, the vistas, that you miss if you are too focused on the ground. These are the points at which you (and your reader) can get a glimpse of what is coming ahead in your story.

So, writers, if your bags are packed (you’ve written your story) it’s time to enjoy the editing journey. The lovely thing about editing is that this is your chance to reshape your literary landscape, to remove obstacles that trip readers up, to improve the scenery and make the path clear. And, just like a hiking trip, you can start from the beginning again, make the same hike, and notice new things every time, so you’ll want to plan multiple trips through your story.

My own penchant for editing has thrown me way off my NaNoWriMo schedule and I’m quite behind now. I took a break to finish an edit on an earlier work (possibly my 20th time doing that hike) before sending it off to a literary agent. I also succumbed to the temptation to go back in my current manuscript for NaNoWriMo and do some revising and editing. But, in my defense, in the early stages of writing a novel, sometimes that really does have to be done or else you will find yourself lost in the wilderness days later having taken a wrong turn way back in chapter 3. Better, I think, to retrace your steps now, consider your options more carefully, and take the right path. After all, blazing new trails is hard work and if you’re going to do it you want to end up in the right place. Or, to put it in terms of our packing metaphor, I don’t want to get too far into my hiking trip and find that I neglected to pack my water purifier or my tent.

Not sure where to start on your editing hike? One of the best books I’ve read lately on the subject is The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. It’s a veritable field guide to editing success. If you take his advice seriously and apply it to your manuscript, you will end up with a far better product than you started with.

Enjoy the trip!

Things I’m Discovering During NaNoWriMo

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Several years back I dabbled in NaNoWriMo but I didn’t commit. That story never got finished and it never will (mostly because I’ve been pilfering scenes and characters here and there for other, better stories). So I didn’t really get the full NaNoWriMo experience. I wasn’t connected to the larger NaNo community and I didn’t post word counts on the website and I didn’t live, breathe, and eat my story for a month.

This year, I’m committed to the full package. And so far, this is what I’ve discovered:

1. Writing from 1st person POV when your protagonist starts the story in his teens (and isn’t a serious student) is extremely limiting. I want to use the kind of vocabulary I have as a 30-something-former-English-major-turned-copywriter-and-novelist…but I can’t.

2. Must…fight…urge…to…edit.

3. Writing mostly at night after the boy is in bed often means posting word counts on the NaNoWriMo website after midnight, thus skewing my numbers to look like I’m not keeping up. But I am! I swear!

4. I’m jealous of people who have the time to blow by the daily word count goal. I was happy with 6,591 on day four until I saw someone post on Facebook about passing 17,000 on day four.

5. Enjoying the sensation of having my story on my mind in kind of a low grade constant way just like I did in late 2011. I didn’t do NaNoWriMo for A Beautiful Fiction, but I did write nearly every day. That kind of story immersion is like a creative snowball rolling around in your head, picking up material all over the place, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Feels great, if slightly imbalanced.

6. When words won’t come, procrastinate with art. The other night I had to get myself back into the fledgling story when I didn’t know where it should go next. So I mocked up a cover for it to stall and to give myself an image to write to.

 

That’s enough for now. There are more lessons to be had later in this month. But I did want to give you an update on my writing. It’s a different animal than my last work, but different is good. It feels fresh and challenging and I think I will be pleased with it once I’ve had the chance to revise and edit, oh, let’s say…fifty times.