All writers and artists think that they are the only one who struggles with their muse. In the case of writers, they see the finished book of a published writer and compare that to their own work-in-progress. They don't get to see the early drafts of that book; if they did, they would sometimes barely recognise it as the same work. Only the published writer of any particular book knows how many drafts, how many long hours were spent bringing it up to publication standard. We've all heard of an 'overnight sensation' who points out that it didn't happen overnight at all, that they had been there all along, polishing their craft so it gleamed amongst all the other struggling artists, until they were finally 'noticed'. It's the noticing that seems to happen 'overnight' not the polished performance, or book, or work of art.
A word of warning here: do not show your early drafts to family. If they love you, of course they are going to think it is wonderful. Generally, friends don't work either, so unless you know someone whose opinion you truly value, don't show it to friends either. Until your work is in book form you should not be seeking readers who will only offer you approval. When you are getting to final draft stage, and you need constructive criticism, you need other writers. At the beginning of your writing career, a writers circle or club is ideal. My post tomorrow will talk about these, and other options.
Forget about other writers and their muse and concentrate on the job at hand, the draft of the manuscript you are working on right now. In my opinion, muse is just a term that covers many aspects of writing. Here's my recipe for you to create your own muse (the proportions are my own; yours may be different. Experiment until you have it right.):
Creating a Muse
10% determination
10% commitment
1% inspiration
1% motivation
Add to the above - 78% perspiration and a sprinkling of passion
Use this mix on a regular basis, daily or weekly, whatever suits your program. Applying it in the same location each time will help your muse rise to the occasion.
As you progress, you will discover that you need less of one component and more of another. Everyone's muse is different; you just need to experiment to find your perfect mix. It's natural to feel insecure about your work, everyone does and just knowing this helps me over those days when my muse mix is a little off. I just adjust it and move on.
As you write, remember that nothing worthy of creation happens overnight.
Wednesday, 17 January 2007
Tuesday, 16 January 2007
A Pearl of an Idea
Where do ideas come from? How does a writer fill a pile of blank pages into a story or a book? These are questions most aspiring writers ask but the answers they receive will be many and varied.
"There's nothing new under the sun," the old saying goes; ideas are not the be all and end all of writing. You - the writer - need to present story and book ideas in a fresh and new way to your readers. Just as perfect grammar and a pristine manuscript will not ensure publication, neither will a good idea if it is not giving the reader a new look at something they usually know quite well.
Ideas are the fuels that feed our writing. How do you find them? Once you begin to look for ideas, you will see them everywhere. At the beginning of your writing career, you might keep an ideas notebook. Look at newspaper headlines for germs of ideas. Brainstorm on paper, letting the thoughts flow, writing until the flood dries up. When one thing doesn't work, try another. Change your location, and/or your method. If you write sitting down, try standing or walking as you scribble. You could even lie on your back and study the ceiling, or the clouds. Change the times that you try reaching for ideas. Do you need to be in a busy place, or do you prefer to be alone? Keep experimenting until you find what works for you.
Most of my ideas come from my own life experiences. Often, I use one moment of an event and build a fictitious story around that. At other times, I turn an actual event around and say: "What if I, or he, or she had done this, instead of that? What might have happened?"
Sometimes I feel that my idea is not worthy, that nothing will come of it. That's when I remember the oyster. A pearl begins life as a little piece of grit that worries the oyster so much that it covers it with layers and layers of its essence. An idea that grows into a story is like that little piece of grit -it's when it is finished that it is a thing of beauty so don't worry your ideas into extinction before you see what they might become.
Find your little piece of grit and cover it with enough words to change its shape so that it becomes more than it was. Like the oyster, you just might end up with a thing of beauty.
"There's nothing new under the sun," the old saying goes; ideas are not the be all and end all of writing. You - the writer - need to present story and book ideas in a fresh and new way to your readers. Just as perfect grammar and a pristine manuscript will not ensure publication, neither will a good idea if it is not giving the reader a new look at something they usually know quite well.
Ideas are the fuels that feed our writing. How do you find them? Once you begin to look for ideas, you will see them everywhere. At the beginning of your writing career, you might keep an ideas notebook. Look at newspaper headlines for germs of ideas. Brainstorm on paper, letting the thoughts flow, writing until the flood dries up. When one thing doesn't work, try another. Change your location, and/or your method. If you write sitting down, try standing or walking as you scribble. You could even lie on your back and study the ceiling, or the clouds. Change the times that you try reaching for ideas. Do you need to be in a busy place, or do you prefer to be alone? Keep experimenting until you find what works for you.
Most of my ideas come from my own life experiences. Often, I use one moment of an event and build a fictitious story around that. At other times, I turn an actual event around and say: "What if I, or he, or she had done this, instead of that? What might have happened?"
Sometimes I feel that my idea is not worthy, that nothing will come of it. That's when I remember the oyster. A pearl begins life as a little piece of grit that worries the oyster so much that it covers it with layers and layers of its essence. An idea that grows into a story is like that little piece of grit -it's when it is finished that it is a thing of beauty so don't worry your ideas into extinction before you see what they might become.
Find your little piece of grit and cover it with enough words to change its shape so that it becomes more than it was. Like the oyster, you just might end up with a thing of beauty.
Monday, 15 January 2007
Discipline, Determination, and Commitment
It takes discipline to be a writer, particularly if you are freelancing or working from home. There's always something lurking nearby that is screaming out for attention, such as lawns to be mowed, washing to be done, the house to clean. This is where determination and commitment come in. Having your own 'work space' helps; I find it easier to get to work if I treat it as a separate environment. After breakfast and necessary chores, I get ready for work, then I go to work. I give myself regular breaks for tea and lunch, and I structure my work day to get the most out of it.
Deadlines help too and if I don't have a deadline from an editor, I set one for myself. Some people work well under pressure and will leave the work until the very last thing, rushing to beat that looming deadline; for me, deadlines spur me on in a different way. I have to beat them and will do everything in my power to make sure that my work is finished well before time. To my mind, this allows me the freedom to leave my 'completed' draft alone for a day or two, or even a week in some cases, before I come back to it with a fresh eye for a final edit. If I put myself under pressure, I make silly mistakes.
Keeping a work diary also helps me with commitment. In it I record what work I began on a particular day, with a note as to when I expect it to be completed. I then write a note ahead in my diary on the selected date for that deadline. When the work is finished, I note the date it was actually finished, where I sent the finished article, and when I expect to receive a reply from that editor or competition organiser. If the work, in my opinion, is not good enough to be sent anywhere, I file it in a folder in "my documents" and may come back to it at a future date, to work on it some more.
Reading through my diary now and again shows me where I can improve my work practices - and there is always room for improvement. I know that if I commit and am determined, and if I discipline myself, my writing will improve. Success breeds more motivation, and if inspiration is lacking, I'll work without it.
Deadlines help too and if I don't have a deadline from an editor, I set one for myself. Some people work well under pressure and will leave the work until the very last thing, rushing to beat that looming deadline; for me, deadlines spur me on in a different way. I have to beat them and will do everything in my power to make sure that my work is finished well before time. To my mind, this allows me the freedom to leave my 'completed' draft alone for a day or two, or even a week in some cases, before I come back to it with a fresh eye for a final edit. If I put myself under pressure, I make silly mistakes.
Keeping a work diary also helps me with commitment. In it I record what work I began on a particular day, with a note as to when I expect it to be completed. I then write a note ahead in my diary on the selected date for that deadline. When the work is finished, I note the date it was actually finished, where I sent the finished article, and when I expect to receive a reply from that editor or competition organiser. If the work, in my opinion, is not good enough to be sent anywhere, I file it in a folder in "my documents" and may come back to it at a future date, to work on it some more.
Reading through my diary now and again shows me where I can improve my work practices - and there is always room for improvement. I know that if I commit and am determined, and if I discipline myself, my writing will improve. Success breeds more motivation, and if inspiration is lacking, I'll work without it.
Friday, 12 January 2007
Motivation and Inspiration
Most writers I know are not filled with, or struck by, inspiration every day, so where do they find the motivation to write? Someone much wiser than I once said that he sat down in front of a blank page every day, and if inspiration hadn't arrived by 9 a.m. he began without it! Writing is a little like exercise - one has to get into the habit of doing it often, or one doesn't do it at all. Like our physical muscles, the mind needs a warm-up routine; once our muscles are warm they are ready to work-out.
Motivation, for me, comes after I begin to work. When I first began writing, fear held me back. The words in my head were brilliant - I thought - but when I put them down on paper, once they became concrete, they were sadly lacking. But I stuck with it and in time the fear faded. To compare writing to exercising again, once you build up your muscles, the work-outs become easier. So it is with writing.
With any exercise routine, we begin small and increase the repetitions, or the speed, over time; so it is with writing if you find yourself without motivation and/or inspiration. Set goals for your writing; begin with a paragraph a day and gradually build this up until you are writing at least a page a day. Don't think too much about what you are writing, just do it. Soon it will be a habit and, like most habits, hard to break.
Keeping a journal also helps; a journal is for your eyes only and you will not be so critical. Record whatever you like in there: observations; snippets of overheard conversation; ideas; cuttings from magazines or newspapers; photographs ... and so on. If you prefer to look for inspiration, rather than wait for it to come to you, go through your journal on a regular basis; you might be surprised at the writing ideas your jottings will inspire.
Another way to get into the right frame of mind for writing is to read over what you wrote in your previous writing session. Don't worry too much about editing at this stage, just read to put yourself back into the world of your story, and then begin to write.
Try to write in the same place, and at the same time every day, or every week if that's all the time you can manage, and if possible don't use that space for any other activity. In time, just being 'there', in your writing space, will be all the motivation you will need.
Motivation, for me, comes after I begin to work. When I first began writing, fear held me back. The words in my head were brilliant - I thought - but when I put them down on paper, once they became concrete, they were sadly lacking. But I stuck with it and in time the fear faded. To compare writing to exercising again, once you build up your muscles, the work-outs become easier. So it is with writing.
With any exercise routine, we begin small and increase the repetitions, or the speed, over time; so it is with writing if you find yourself without motivation and/or inspiration. Set goals for your writing; begin with a paragraph a day and gradually build this up until you are writing at least a page a day. Don't think too much about what you are writing, just do it. Soon it will be a habit and, like most habits, hard to break.
Keeping a journal also helps; a journal is for your eyes only and you will not be so critical. Record whatever you like in there: observations; snippets of overheard conversation; ideas; cuttings from magazines or newspapers; photographs ... and so on. If you prefer to look for inspiration, rather than wait for it to come to you, go through your journal on a regular basis; you might be surprised at the writing ideas your jottings will inspire.
Another way to get into the right frame of mind for writing is to read over what you wrote in your previous writing session. Don't worry too much about editing at this stage, just read to put yourself back into the world of your story, and then begin to write.
Try to write in the same place, and at the same time every day, or every week if that's all the time you can manage, and if possible don't use that space for any other activity. In time, just being 'there', in your writing space, will be all the motivation you will need.
Thursday, 11 January 2007
Marketing your Work
You're a writer and you've written a wonderful piece - a short story, an article, a novel - and now you need to send it out to an editor or a publisher. Who do you send it to? In America, and increasingly in Australia, publishers prefer to read work submitted through an agent. Agents, however, often require the writers they place on their lists to have a publishing history. It's a catch 22 situation but there are ways around it, and there are people who have submitted work directly to the 'slush pile' and found publication.
If you need to find an agent, first build up a publishing history with smaller works, published in quality anthologies, local media, university publications and the like. Join a writers group in your area - through them and/or their newsletter you will receive news of competitions you can enter; a prize in a prestigious competition can earn you cudos. Do some research on agents, either online or via a plethora of books that contain information about this subject. Talk to other writers about agents and see if one of them is registered with one you like the look of. Sometimes, an introduction by anther writer will get you a foot in the door. If you 'known' in any area of your life for any speciality you are expert at, and it is about that that you are writing, this too will be looked upon favourably.
If an agent is not for you, submit to the slush pile by all means; but make sure that your work will stand out from the crowd. This does not mean that you should print your manuscript in fancy font, or on coloured paper, and bound with ribbon! Doing something like this screams 'amateur' and the editor you hoped would read your work often sends it right back - unread. That's if it gets to the editors desk; publishing houses employ staff to go through the slush pile, weeding out manuscripts like that.
Of course, some publishing houses miss out big-time on brilliant manuscripts from their slush piles by not reading everything sent to them, but they often receive many thousands of unsolicited manuscripts and just don't have the time or the staff to go through them all, so they take the risk.
As for who you should submit your manuscript to - this also needs research. Some writers choose their market first; others write first and look for a market afterwards. Go online to see what publishers are looking for. Does what you have written fall into their genre? Look at the back of the title pages in books on the shelf at your local bookstore (the reverso); here you will find the publishers’ name. Don't make the mistake of sending your brilliantly written piece about Gardening in Drought to the editor of a sports publication - unless your garden is set around a sports playing field and is somehow relevant to a particular sport, in which case you will need to reflect this in the title of your piece.
Send your manuscript to 'the editor', but first ascertain the editor's name. This shows professionalism. If you've written a query letter and have been asked to submit some sample chapters, make sure that you submit only what is asked for. If they like your work they will ask for the rest. Make sure you have read and understood the publisher’s guidelines, which are available from publishing houses online, or by request.
If you have written a piece that stands out from the crowd and it is professionally presented, you are well on your way to publication.
If you need to find an agent, first build up a publishing history with smaller works, published in quality anthologies, local media, university publications and the like. Join a writers group in your area - through them and/or their newsletter you will receive news of competitions you can enter; a prize in a prestigious competition can earn you cudos. Do some research on agents, either online or via a plethora of books that contain information about this subject. Talk to other writers about agents and see if one of them is registered with one you like the look of. Sometimes, an introduction by anther writer will get you a foot in the door. If you 'known' in any area of your life for any speciality you are expert at, and it is about that that you are writing, this too will be looked upon favourably.
If an agent is not for you, submit to the slush pile by all means; but make sure that your work will stand out from the crowd. This does not mean that you should print your manuscript in fancy font, or on coloured paper, and bound with ribbon! Doing something like this screams 'amateur' and the editor you hoped would read your work often sends it right back - unread. That's if it gets to the editors desk; publishing houses employ staff to go through the slush pile, weeding out manuscripts like that.
Of course, some publishing houses miss out big-time on brilliant manuscripts from their slush piles by not reading everything sent to them, but they often receive many thousands of unsolicited manuscripts and just don't have the time or the staff to go through them all, so they take the risk.
As for who you should submit your manuscript to - this also needs research. Some writers choose their market first; others write first and look for a market afterwards. Go online to see what publishers are looking for. Does what you have written fall into their genre? Look at the back of the title pages in books on the shelf at your local bookstore (the reverso); here you will find the publishers’ name. Don't make the mistake of sending your brilliantly written piece about Gardening in Drought to the editor of a sports publication - unless your garden is set around a sports playing field and is somehow relevant to a particular sport, in which case you will need to reflect this in the title of your piece.
Send your manuscript to 'the editor', but first ascertain the editor's name. This shows professionalism. If you've written a query letter and have been asked to submit some sample chapters, make sure that you submit only what is asked for. If they like your work they will ask for the rest. Make sure you have read and understood the publisher’s guidelines, which are available from publishing houses online, or by request.
If you have written a piece that stands out from the crowd and it is professionally presented, you are well on your way to publication.
Tuesday, 9 January 2007
The Query Letter
A query letter is an outline of your idea or story; You will send a query letter to an editor when you are writing non-fiction. You don't need to send a query letter if your work is a short piece that does not need extensive research, but if your idea will require a lot of time and effort, and is longer than 1,000 words, a query letter is a good idea. If an editor likes your idea you will be armed with a powerful tool when approaching people for interviews; you can truthfully say that "Ms X, editor of xxxx, has shown interest in this piece."
A query letter is short, formal but not stuffy, and professionally presented. It will be as polished as you can make it, and will be written so as to catch the editor's eye. Don't just rush off a letter to a publisher without first doing some research.
Will the piece you are planning fit the publication you are approaching? Why will it appeal to the reader's of that publication? You could speak about this in your query letter, and quote some of your research to show the editor that you have done your homework, and that you are a professional.
A query letter is short, formal but not stuffy, and professionally presented. It will be as polished as you can make it, and will be written so as to catch the editor's eye. Don't just rush off a letter to a publisher without first doing some research.
Will the piece you are planning fit the publication you are approaching? Why will it appeal to the reader's of that publication? You could speak about this in your query letter, and quote some of your research to show the editor that you have done your homework, and that you are a professional.
Monday, 8 January 2007
Synopsis or Outline?
A synopsis is a way of outlining your story in a logical, chronological manner. The synopsis will show the high points of plot, the development of character/s, and the resolution. The outline is very different. An outline of a story tells what happens in a detached manner. It is often in point form and can be a dry rendering of your story.
A synopsis, on the other hand, is a narrative and it will show your story’s progress from beginning to end by describing how the plot and character development are affected by each other.
A synopsis is a tool, a selling tool. The synopsis will probably be your only chance to sell yourself and your writing, or your writing technique. Most publishing houses only want to see sample chapters of your work so the synopsis is your opportunity to demonstrate your talent for writing. If the editor reading your synopsis likes your writing style, and the sample chapters are as well done and in the same tone, then chances are s/he is going to want to see more of your manuscript.
That’s the whole idea of the synopsis, to get an editor interested enough to want to read all your manuscript, which will increase your chances of a publishing contract, so give the writing of your synopsis as much attention as you gave to your manuscript.
Bookmark these pages for coming posts that will give you some helpful tips on how to write a winning synopsis.
A synopsis, on the other hand, is a narrative and it will show your story’s progress from beginning to end by describing how the plot and character development are affected by each other.
A synopsis is a tool, a selling tool. The synopsis will probably be your only chance to sell yourself and your writing, or your writing technique. Most publishing houses only want to see sample chapters of your work so the synopsis is your opportunity to demonstrate your talent for writing. If the editor reading your synopsis likes your writing style, and the sample chapters are as well done and in the same tone, then chances are s/he is going to want to see more of your manuscript.
That’s the whole idea of the synopsis, to get an editor interested enough to want to read all your manuscript, which will increase your chances of a publishing contract, so give the writing of your synopsis as much attention as you gave to your manuscript.
Bookmark these pages for coming posts that will give you some helpful tips on how to write a winning synopsis.
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