### ICK!!! ###

When I'm making notes to myself in a draft of any piece of writing, I've taken to using three hash marks front and back to make it stand out.

After one particularly pungent, overwritten phrase in my novel, I wrote
'### ICK!!! ###' and simply moved on.

I find that the more willing I am to do that, to note my dissatisfaction and then charge on with the work, the more work I get done.

'Well, duh!' you might say. But the story's a little more complicated than that. It's not simply that I write more words, but that, in the end, I write better words, too.

This gets back to the point I've made in a couple other posts that it's necessary, if I want to actually get something done, to allow myself to write utter crap. The more freedom I give myself to do that, the more I write and the more good stuff I write.

This works from two angles. The first centers on the fact that you can come back and rewrite (and you will be re-writing, no matter how brilliant the first pass feels to you). The second is that fact that, as a writer freed from his overbearing internal editor, I give myself a chance to write more freely, a chance to have better stuff come out the first time.

Basic Dialog Mechanics

Dialog seems to have a particular reliance on a sensible rhythm for its power. This is true of all writing, but especially true, I think, for dialog.

I can't generate a useful definition for good rhythm, but like the supreme court justice said about defining pornography, I know it when I see it.

There are certain very low-level mechanic aspects of writing dialog that can make a good difference, though.

Attribution Styles

How do you attach a given piece of dialog to a given character?

There are, mechanically, a handful of methods.

Basic Tag

"I know," he said.

He said, "I know." This one seems to have fallen into disfavor. It feels anachronistic.


"I have no idea," Danny said. "But I'll let you know when I find out."

"I have no idea, but I'll let you know when I find out," Danny said.

I prefer the first of the two above. It's a common mistake to push the tag too late into the character's dialog. We need to know quickly, for both rhythm and understanding, who's speaking.

If you're going to use this style of tag, you are, for the most part, best off sticking to 'said' and 'asked.' There are obvious times, liked a shouted sentence, that you should say they shouted. But don't get much more creative than that. Said and asked have the added benefit of being essentially invisible to most readers.


Action Tag

Here's an action tag--rather than the basic he-said, she-said approach. It tends to be closer to invisible (a very good thing) than those tags are.

Danny winced and shook his head. "I have no idea, but I'll let you know when I find out."

"I have no idea." Danny shook his head. "But I'll let you know when I find out."


No Tag

There's currently a strong preference for tagless runs of dialog. Readers like for pages to move, and it works, as a sort of artificial trick, to make the story feel like it's moving along, as well.

Carla stood nearby, simply staring. "Why?"

"I like glue."

"Again, I'll ask you, Why?"

"Curls my toes. And my nose hairs."

The risk, in long runs of this kind of dialog, is that it can feel very thin. It's also easy to write scenes that have no rhythm save an unchecked gallop.


Tid-Bits

* End with a comma if the tag is a continuation of the sentence, a period otherwise.

• "I hate it when you do that," Janey said.
• "I hate it when you do that." Janey turned an angry look his way.

* Get the rhythm of the tag's placement right:

"Why in God's name are you sniffing glue?" Carla asked.

"I like glue, because of the way it curls my toes and my nose hairs," Nick said.

In the previous sentence, the tag comes too late (though this is not a terrible example).

Instead, something like the following would work better.

"I like glue," Nick said. "Because of the way it curls my toes and my nose hairs."

This is an improvement because, most often, it's best to finish with dialog, rather than a tag. And, in this case, the tag is in the best place rhythmically.

* Forget the editorial

"I love you with all my heart," she said lovingly.

This is obviously intentionally bad. But the point is, either the dialog carries the tone or it doesn't. Your editorial only gets in the way. If the dialog hasn't carried the intended tone, it's too late for your editorial to help. I've already read it and, if I'm paying attention, had it ring in my ears in my own way.

If the dialog doesn't say what you'd intended, in the way you'd intended, the editorial aspect of the tag is unlikely to fix the problem.


I'll paraphrase John Gardner here--though I think he was quoting someone else--and say that writing should create a vivid and continuous dream in the reader's mind. When you're dealing with the mechanics of dialog, do your best to make those mechanics invisible, to avoid interruption of that vivid and continuous dream.

I'll refine this article and add a few thoughts soon, but I thought there was enough here to be worth putting out.

Newsy Bits

I've just started pulling together the short stories I've written that I don't look back on with scorn. I'm planning to publish them as a Smashwords book and link it from the main page of this blog.

Smashwords is a free platform for publishing e-books to multiple platforms (including Kindle and Barnes and Noble's Nook).

It should be a fun exercise, and it will give any readers of this blog a chance to figure out if they'd be smart to ignore every piece of advice I have about writing. I'm planning to have this book together in the next few weeks. It will be woefully short, but, on the bright side, free.

I've also started working on a series that I wish I'd had when I was a true neophyte writer. It's a bunch of short posts about the mechanics of writing and possible solutions to story-telling problems. I'll cover things like, How do I decide how much physical description to give in a scene?, How do I deal with the attribution of dialog to characters?, and How do I figure out where to begin and end a scene?

I don't pretend to have the 'right' answer to any of these questions. But I do have an answer. And when you're new to story-telling--and you're struggling--any help seems . . . well . . . helpful.

These articles will start trickling in by the end of the week.

The Solitary Pursuit

Writing is an alone experience.

I don't say lonely because, I suppose, some people might be built best for time alone and might never feel a moment of loneliness.

That said, there's no denying that it's a solitary, isolating pursuit.

Novel writing, particularly, tends to isolate. So long between inception and any kind of feedback.

The novel has always been the holy grail to me. Being a writer meant being a novelist.

But in the last couple years, thanks to a friend's influence, I've occasionally written short stories targeted at contests.

The discipline of trying to tell a compelling story in a confined space, and to do it on a deadline, has been very good for me.

I have, for a long time, thought I could write, that I had a decent facility with words on paper. What I lacked was the ability to tell a compelling story (a far more important skill). Chasing the short story contests has helped with that.

The contests have also helped with the isolation. In a relatively short span, you can conceive a story--often based on a promt--complete it, and get some kind of feedback . . . even if it's only that you didn't place.

And, occasionally, you just might perform well enough to get happy feedback. This, too, is a cure for the isolation. And it is wonderful fuel for the long, silent road to a finished novel.

Try it and see if it doesn't make your writing better and make you a happier writer.

In service of this little tid-bit of advice, I'll be posting links to contests now and again.

10 Rules for Goal Setting

Over the last few weeks, I've been talking with friends about goal setting and trying to formulate my own set of goals for the new year and beyond.

This is not a simple exercise.

Self improvement is an evergreen industry, spewing pablum, nonsense and magical thinking throughout the land. That's not all it does, of course, but the stuff making the most outrageous claims seems to find the end-caps at every big-box retailer in the USA.


So the question is, How can I craft a set of goals that will actually help me improve my life, rather than smothering me in regrets when I've failed to climb Everest, conquer Broadway, or cure cancer?


So, here's the set of rules I've come up with for myself (the fact that there are ten is an accident... honestly).

1. Don't set impossible goals. What could be a surer way to feel lousy about yourself than to set goals you can't possibly accomplish?
   
   
2. Big goals are fine, but there needs to be a clear, rational path from here to there (see the next rule for clarification).
   
   
3. Create a set of goals that allows for a series of accumulated victories. If all the goals are huge, you've crushed yourself before you taking your first step.
   
   Accomplishing the short and mid-term goals gives invaluable encouragement along the way to bigger, more challenging goals.
   
   Any long-term goal that doesn't have short and mid-term goals leading to it is doomed to failure. You might as well pray for a lottery win.
   
   
4. Don't shy from big, tough goals. The trick is to build a path of small-goal stepping stones to get there.
   
   
   Big victories (accomplishment of ambitious goals) are made of a series of small behaviors. To paraphrase John Wooden (very imprecisely, I’m sure), there are no big things, only a series of little things that add up to something big.
   
   
5. Don't set too many goals.
   
   What’s too many? I have no idea (and I’m sure the number differs from person to person).. But just like setting impossible goals, setting too many can be utterly self-defeating. It’s best, I think, to go after a small handful of the most fundamental goals you can imagine for yourself. Keep in mind that the point is to stretch without guaranteeing your own failure.
   
   
6. Goals should be effort-based, rather than results-based. You can't always control the outcome, but you can control your input.
   
   
7. Goals should not be all-or-nothing affairs. Don't allow yourself to be made miserable for failing to achieve goals. Failure, in this regard, is relative, anyway. It’s certainly possible to make meaningful progress in life without fully achieving your goals.
   
   
8. Goals are meant to be constructive. The minute they become destructive, you have to rethink what you're doing with them.
   
   
9. Don't let days go by without thinking about what you're trying to accomplish. The act of creating, and chasing, goals requires breaking old habits. It’s far too easy to fall back to old behaviors if you don’t continually remind yourself of the steps required to get where you want to go.
   
   
10. Occasionally revisit your goals to ensure that the short and mid-term activities still feel like they’re aligned with the longer-term goals.

Building a Better Structure

Yesterday, thanks to the encouragement of a very capable writer friend (and after a several-month-long detour), I became a member of an online flash fiction critique group. It's a group limited to 70 members, and it has a very disciplined structure. As a member, I'm required to submit one story a month and critique four others.

Based on the limited experiences I've had with flash fiction this year (some of which I've documented in earlier posts), I expect to learn a lot. The requirement to stay engaged with consistent critique--and to routinely produce new material--should have wonderful side-effects beyond improving my skills.

As a man who claims to love writing, a large part of me believes, at some barely conscious level, that inspiration--and wonderful stories--should flow without a battle. But the truth is, I'm happy to have some external encouragement to produce stories.


An aside: Groups like this would be a particularly great outlet for writers who can't find others to commune with in their own hometowns.

Languor

passing car

I'm working--without nearly enough vigor--on my novel still. Waiting for the publication of a piece of flash fiction that came in second in a contest for an online lit magazine (I'm avoiding mentioning the details here until it's actually out in the world so I don't risk jinxing the thing).

Unfortunately, the children's book I want to write is continually nipping at my heels, demanding attention I don't want to give it until my current novel is out in the world.

Lacking Inspiration? Try a Contest

This past Saturday, WritersWeekly.com had their quarterly (I think?) flash fiction contest. The contest kicks off with a prompt and a twenty-four hour window in which to respond. This particular prompt centered around a campfire ghost story that gets interrupted by a disheveled man and an infant who come creepily out of the dark woods.

It's a fun, tense challenge to be boxed in by both story and scope, and I think it's particularly good for any writer who's struggling with the burden of ideas-from-nothing.

There are many other prompted flash fiction contests, most of which don't have the tight time constraints. It's nice inspiration and good for your writing discipline.

I can't recommend the experience highly enough.

Flash Fiction Failures, Part I

In a recent post, I mentioned how difficult I find it to write a coherent story in 250 words. Below, I've inserted one of two stories I wrote for (but didn't submit to) one particular contest.

I wrote this story in a short, undisciplined fury. I thought the basic notion, and the punch-line, would be strong enough to make it work. Everyone (I believe it was, literally, everyone) in my writing class disagreed.


Splash, Indeed

I hate the ocean. Its romance is totally lost on me.

What’s to like, really?

Sand wedged up your crack? Seagull crap in your French fries? Hypodermics floating ashore?

So why am I here, you ask?

Fair enough.

I’m here to take advantage of half-witted tourists who leave their valuables tucked in shoes as they wallow--like pale, obese slugs--in the surf. I don’t get why these numbskulls think that, simply because they’re on vacation, they don’t have to exercise common sense.

I can’t swim, if it’s anything to you. So I try to work well away from the shore. Normally, this is no problem, since most of the touristy saps arrange their blankets well up into the dry stuff.

But today, the rip tide is strong, the beach steep and narrow. So I’m closer to the water’s edge than I’d like when all of a sudden this long-haired, bare-breasted creature comes charging out of the surf and right the hell up to me.

She’s beautiful, I suppose, for an animal out of that giant cesspool they call the Pacific. But she smells like seaweed. And her slimy fins are coated with wet sand.

I’m stunned when the crazy bitch leans in like she’s gonna give me a kiss or something. Before I know it, I’m swinging my cane like a mad-man and sorta grunting for help.

Why she acts surprised, I have no idea. I’m a total stranger, after all. And I hate the ocean.

What You Already Knew

Several times in recent weeks, as I've been working on stories for contest submissions, I've had trusted reviewers offer a critique that mirrors something I had already thought, at some level, about the story in question.

Typically, what has happened is that I've thought a given section (a turn of phrase, a bit of character behavior) didn't quite fit/didn't quite work. But I kept it anyway because I had a fondness for the intention, rather than the execution.

I'm almost entirely convinced at this point that it's universally a mistake to hang on to something you know isn't working (typically hoping that no other reader will notice the weakness).

Oftentimes, the offending section isn't even central to the story, but is simply a stretch of prose we've come to love. In this case, particularly, give it the ax.

But what if the broken part is central to the story? In that case, I suggest re-writing in the simpliest way possible, a de-gimicification, if you will. Just give it a plain-Jane presentation to get the point across. Perhaps something better will come along later. But, if it doesn't, at least that part of the work won't stand out like a pustulent sore thumb.

Addendum to Handling Criticism

I think that last post sounded more somber--dare I say negative--than I meant it to.

A review with meaningful criticism is Always a good thing... and so it is with this one. I'm grateful for the input, both the directly stated stuff and the things I've inferred from it.

The opportunity to take corrective action on a story is exactly why we ask for feedback in the first place (or at least it should be).

Handling Criticism

I just received my first critique of an extended stretch (nearly 100 pages) of my suspense novel

The verdict:

There was no ticker-tape parade for me, the conquering hero. No key to the city. No line-up of fatherless strippers come to do my bidding.

Though I suspect, way down deep inside, that some things went unsaid (I should clarify that by saying, some bad things went unsaid. Good things always find voice), overall I would characterize it as a soft good review.

Now, just in case you're wondering, soft good is a whole lot closer to dreadful than it is to really good, at least from the perspective of getting your book published. In order for a company to invest energy, money and brainspace in your novel, they’ve got to love it. Lukewarm affection just ain’t good enough.

A soft good review means--once you accept that your reviewer has a point--that you’ve got serious work to do.

In my case, several of the complaints were relatively minor (and some addressed issues I already had concerns about*). But there was also the more surprising issue of a major character not working and her decision-making seeming inconsistent.

Beyond the criticisms that were raised (and perhaps buried in the unsaid stuff mentioned above), I got no sense that this book would be burning a hole in the reviewer’s desk, demanding to be read.

This, of course, is where the waters get murky, the traveling tough. It’s as if I were a doctor presented with a patient who has a general malaise, a patient with non-specific, I have no energy, Doctor, kind of symptoms.

It’s valuable input, just like the more directed stuff, but it requires more work on my part to divine some corrective action. Before I send this book out into the cruel world for assessment, I’ve got to believe that, for my trusted readers at least, it sings.



*a lesson for another time… Don’t ignore the stuff you already know is broken, hoping that for everyone else it will work.

More On Stragety*

In my recent post A New Voice, I detailed how enthralled I am with the notion of writing an enduring children's story and mentioned that I had started my first children's novel.

Later, when I was talking this over with a friend, I started to feel foolishly misdirected. I had, after all, talked about the mainstream suspense novel that I've been working on for a good stretch, a novel that's over 80,000 words and should, if I had my wits about me, be nearing completion.

How, I thought, can I sensibly charge ahead with a new novel?

It felt like a serious loser's gambit.

I decided, after some abusive self-assessment, that I would park the new novel and turn my attention back to the nearly completed one.

My first order of business was to print out the 400+ pages and give it the first clear-headed read I've ever had. Predictably, parts of the novel felt like they need serious attention. Not so predictably, the excitement I'd felt for the story when I first started writing it came charging back. I rewrote a couple scenes, rearranged some story elements, and wrote a couple new scenes that felt immediately at home.

Even after having completed two unpublished novels, I've never been sure how to handle the pacing of the work necessary to craft a such a long work of fiction. Stephen King, in On Writing, recommends that we simply tear through a first draft--seeking no outside critique--in order to protect the fragile energy required do the work.

John Gardner, in On Becoming A Novelist, recommends parking a novel for at least six months after its initial completion in order to be able to read and edit with a clear head.

In the case of my suspense novel, I hit a flat spot--not so much with the story, but with the writing energy--some months ago and then began to wander. On the good side, it served the purpose of giving me some editorial distance and allowing me to see the story fresh. On the bad side, it allowed my mind--and eye--to begin to stray.

Not smart for a writer with serious ambitions. And not a move I plan to repeat any time soon.

As part of my quest for discipline in the writing process, I've set a goal of July 15th for getting this book finished and out into the world. In the end, it's pretty clear that bits and bytes--even hundreds of thousands of them--have very limited value. The story--in printed form--has got to get out into the world for evaluation. The final goal, after all, is a sale.

I'm hoping that the act of stating my intentions publicly--and writing the finish line on the calendar--will help encourage my drive to completion.

Along the way, I'll let you know if I learn anything that I find interesting or useful. And I'll tell you when and how I stumble.

Wish me luck.



*My apologies to Bugs.

A Superhero Worth Watching

I went with wife and son to see SpiderMan 3 today. I've been a big fan of the series and wasn't disappointed with this one.

Spiderman stands alone among the superhero films because of the human complexity of it, both for the heroes and the bad guys. Superman, by contrast, has always been populated by simple-minded lunkhead thugs and a star whose complexity only shows itself when he's deciding whether to wipe with double or triple-ply.

Heroes shouldn't be unwaveringly perfect. Their lives and quests should involve real internal struggle. There must be moments of weakness.

Bad guys shouldn't be bad through-and-through, or maybe it's fairer to say that they shouldn't be bad without interesting reasons. Being bad, alone, is not interesting. The why of it might be.

Even if you're not typically drawn to the genre, the Spiderman series is worth studying for this effect alone.

A New Voice

For the longest time, I’ve dreamt of writing an enduring piece of fiction for children. It represents the Holy Grail of writing achievement for me.

Why, you ask?*

The opportunity to surprise, to enthrall, to drive a thirst for stories is immeasurably bigger with the young.

In our youth, we are more easily and more deeply influenced by the stories we read (or have read to us). The good ones—the moving ones**—stay with us in ways that nothing we read as adults ever will. That impact is a result both of our un-cynical innocence (how else would the simple-minded preachiness of the Hardy Boys move so many generations of boys?) and the very limited history we have with stories—we haven’t yet grown hardened to the tricks story tellers will play on us through the years.

And beyond our innocence and clean-slatedness, we are also unshakably receptive to the absurd in our youth.

The potential for such remarkable and long-standing influence draws me to children’s fiction like I’m drawn to no other form. I always had a vague pull in that direction, but in recent times—perhaps it’s a response to my 7-year-old son’s burgeoning love of story—the drive has grown immensely stronger.

In response, I’ve started a novel for children. The biggest challenge I’m faced with, in the early going, is a question of tone. I can play the story--a realistic-fantasy, for lack of better-tuned language--straight, like I would a mainstream novel, or I can attack it with an absurd tone through-and-through, like much of Roald Dahl’s work(James and the Giant Peach, The Twits).

Tone is something I’ve never given this much attention. Its exploration opens up all kinds of possibilities and challenges that I’ve solved on auto-pilot in the past.

In the next few days, I’ll post more about the specific scene exercises I’m planning to undertake, and I’ll post a few different permutations of specific scenes.

Stay tuned…



*I know the question didn’t even occur to you, but play along with me here.

**for me, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlotte’s Web, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings leap to mind

Hope Is Not A Strategy*

As tight-fisted as Mother Time is, those of us who pursue writing as a sidelight have some particularly hard decisions to make.

In my writing life, I've tended to shoot for the moon, writing spec scripts and novels in the hope of inducing heady auctions that end in six figure deals and an ocean view home in the hills of Malibu.

The difficulty with such a strategy, if you can call it a strategy at all, is that it carries the stench of desperation, much like the dreamers among us who will be saved by the big lottery win.

Even ignoring the financial aspects, the external rewards for novelists and screenwriters are very few and far between. It's possible, even likely, that a writer will labor for months and years at a time without having any real sense of whether he's doing publishable work (or even work that has any drive, makes any sense, deserves to be written).

Another strategy, one that's making more and more sense to me in recent days, is to take a more balanced approach, writing both long and short-form fiction, submitting to markets both small and large.

The benefits, on the feedback side, are immediate and obvious. If you're doing good work, you have an opportunity to be told so, and to be rewarded in the short term. If, on the other hand, you're crafting dreck, you'll know that soon, as well, and won't have wasted months of your life chasing something that has no prospect of publication.

Another nice side-effect of chasing the smaller story is that this kind of writing demands precision of craft that you may well not develop writing only longer stories. The efficiency necessary to telling a good story in 500 words forces a level of craft that few people who've only written novels can understand. And this skill ultimately extends very well to the longer forms, when the backbone, high-pressure scenes require all the craft you can muster.

I have no idea, yet, how to ballance the work on my novel with the shorter forms. For now, I'm probably leaning too heavily toward the latter. But I am utterly convinced that a solid balance between the two will give me the level of feedback I need from the world and will improve my craft.


*This is the title of a book on sales. While I am not a salesman, the thoughts implied by the title alone nearly convinced me to buy the book.

For A Song

by Renee Holland Davidson

Kayla slouches in the passenger seat, staring out the bug-splattered windshield. The newly tarred highway stretches in front of the Buick, the afternoon heat steaming from the road in shimmering waves. For hours, they have passed nothing but scrub brush and the hard dirt of the desert.

Her mom is singing along with the radio, her voice cigarette-smoke husky. The last few notes dissipate into the stale air-conditioned air, and almost immediately another one begins.

"Honey, listen, here's our song!"

Our song? Her song, she means. The one she auditioned with--the one that won her the job with the band. The band that is leaving tomorrow for a three-month tour of the South.

Kayla's mom reaches over to squeeze her knee, then frowns when her daughter's body stiffens. "Come on, Kayla, don't be like that. You'll have a great time at your Grandma's. You love her, don't you?"

"Yeah," Kayla says in a bare whisper.

"You know how much she spoils you."

"Yeah," she says again.

"This could be my big break, Kayla. You know that. I might never get another chance."

Kayla sighs. "I know, Mama. I know."

"Okay, then. I'll be back in no time, just you see." Kayla's mom pats her leg, then turns the radio louder. Her voice blends smoothly with the woman crooning over the airwaves.

Ahead of them, a red mini-van pulls onto the highway. A small mountain of duffle bags is tied to its roof and a complicated-looking carrier holding four bicycles rises up from the trailer hitch.

The Buick catches up to the van and Kayla peers inside as they cruise side by side. The family looks like it belongs in a corny commercial--the dad behind the wheel wearing a fishing hat, lures dangling from its rim, the mom in the passenger seat, a red bandana tied around her neck. Behind them, sit two little kids--a blond-haired boy and his freckle-faced sister.

Kayla can tell they're singing The Itsy Bitsy Spider because their fingers are crawling through the air in front of them.

The mom isn't half as pretty as her own mom, Kayla thinks. Her hair's frizzy and her bare arms jiggle with each spider step. But she's got a pretty smile and her eyes sparkle behind round glasses as she turns in her seat to look at her children.

Even though Kayla can't hear them, she knows they're singing loudly because their heads are thrown back and their grinning mouths are open wide.

Kayla's fingers move in her lap. She sings under her breath, stealing a glance at her mother.

Her mom's singing loudly too, a wide smile covering her face. And her eyes are sparkling, just like the lady in the mini-van.

Except Kayla's mom isn’t looking at her--her eyes are staring straight ahead, focused on a place far beyond the cloudless desert sky.

"For A Song" was originally published in the Summer 2006 edition of flashquake. www.flashquake.org

Begging for Help For 'Beg the Question'

For reasons I couldn't begin to explain, I'm hearing people (from journalists, to fiction writers, to co-workers) use the phrase 'beg the question' with numbing regularity. Or rather, I'm hearing people mis-use the phrase 'beg the question' with numbing regularity.

To 'beg the question' does not mean to invite the question, to prompt the question, to encourage the obvious question. To beg the question is to answer a question with circular logic (i.e. 'the federal government is inefficient because it wastes so much money.' Wasting money is another another way of saying that it's inefficient; it does not answer the question 'Why?'

See here for a more thorough explanation.


Coming Soon... debunking the myth that ree-la-tors actually exist (and sell houses for a living).

My Fan Club Shrinks By One

A couple days ago, my wife and I were arguing about something or other—maybe it’s fairer to say we were arguing about everything or other—when she moved on to an editorial of my writing life.

It neither started nor ended on a happy note.

“You’re a failure,” she said. “As a writer you’re a complete failure. You should give it up.”

ahem…

Not exactly the unflinching, hard-nosed criticism* I was talking about in this post.

Perhaps I can get her to go back and re-read my thoughts—a quick refresher course, let’s call it—just to be sure she really gets the gist.

Or perhaps not.




* not really a criticism of the writing, at all. She hasn't read any of it since I came back to writing after a long hiatus.

Call Me Sybil

Yesterday was an odd day. I spent a fair bit of my working day writing code, something I don't do much lately but enjoy tremendously when I get to take on an interesting challenge.

I drove home blasting The Fixx' Reach The Beach--a favorite from way back--and feeling pretty high.

After an hour at home, I headed off for the writing class. Even before class started, I had two interesting conversations with nearly-perfect strangers.

But, soon after the opening bell, my mood began to change--collapse would be a better word for it, I suppose. I made a few comments on other people's writing that sounded insipid or absurd, and I couldn't seem to connect solidly with the going's on around me.

Then my mind wandered a bit as I began to get annoyed with myself for my general lack of focus. I wondered if my new-found interest in flash fiction was a deflection from the hard work I still need to do on my novel.

Eventually, my most recent story, a 500 word piece of flash fiction destined for an online writing contest, came up for critique. Mostly, the reviews weren't good. This didn't bother me, really, since I do take my own advice about seeking out and taking advantage of strong criticism. But there was an awkward sort of vacuum at the beginning of the discussion of the story. Is that pity I hear ringing in the silent air?

It was only thanks to an insightful suggestion at the break that I came away having any clue how to improve the story.

In the second half of the festivities, I braved the waters again and commented on another writer's work. This time, as I heard myself, I thought, Am I as big a bloviating half-wit as I sound to my ears? And thus, my commentary came to an end.

I'm not generally a moody person (ignore the derisive cackling you hear in the background; it's my wife and she takes issue with that statement. It's My Blog. My Story.) I'm also not usually riddled with all-encompassing self-doubt. But last night I felt incompetent to even take command of the simplest conversation. A fraud as far as the eye could see. A tortured genius minus the vital genius part.

Bedtime couldn't come soon enough.

Fortunately, this morning I awoke with the clouds having parted. I even felt mildly optimistic.

As I drove to work, I remembered a blog post I had read very recently and a quote that was its central theme:

If I don't feel like a fraud at least once a day, then I'm not reaching far enough