Almost an Author

I'm Back!

2007-11-30T21:18:00.000-08:00

I’m back!

The holiday season is officially here. It’s an interesting time. It’s fun. All sorts of Thanksgiving food, families coming together. Party tonight. Party tomorrow night. Time to get the Christmas tree up. Time to have a Christmas tree party.

I’ve been having a blast. Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. I had a few of them, depending on the side of the family we’re talking about. And then another at my girlfriend’s house. This coming week I’m going to Disneyland for four days for my dad’s birthday. Then I have to shop for Christmas presents. The worst thing about this season is that it’s likely to cost me a few hundred dollars, but even as far as that goes I’ve been careful to plan for.

So my personal life is awesome during the holiday season. Awesome. My professional life is slow, though. Of course it’s slow, though. I’ve been busy with my personal life, and the professions have been busy with their holiday schedules. That doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Out of frustration that I’m not getting call backs for more of my applications, I spent a lot of time recently rewriting and honing my cover letter template, making my resume more aesthetically available, and adjusting my approach (from attitude to routine). I am still submitting applications. I’m still probably being too picky and I’m still figuring out how a lot of this process works.

But for the first time in a while, my confidence is growing. I know that my biggest obstacle is that I’m underqualified on paper to be an Editorial Assistant. But the more jobs that I see and the more people I talk to, the more I discover I am only underqualified on paper. With the normal amount of training, I already possess all of the skills to succeed at these jobs. And somebody is going to look at the paper, and then look at me, and make a really good decision.

So I’m still frustrated. But I’m feeling ok about it.

And I can’t wait for Disneyland. And I can’t wait for Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

Leaving Stasis

2007-11-14T00:35:00.001-08:00

Here’s what I’ve come to. And this has something to do with the Writer’s Block I was talking about before. See, I keep thinking about practicing this and practicing that by doing short-shorts or by editing some old piece of junk, and even when I’m getting myself to make progress, when I’m beating the block, I’ve been feeling like I kind of don’t care.

And it’s not that I don’t care about writing. That’s blasphemy. It’s terrible. It’s the kind of thought that leaves me cold inside if I keep it in my head for too long. No, I’m not not caring about writing. Hell no, I’m not doing that. I’m just not caring about what I’m writing.

I’ve run into this before. It’s usually happened when I’m trying to force a character type or turn a plot point that I’m not naturally inclined to turn, and it usually happens because when I do that, I’m actually forcing myself to write something I’m not interested in. I have written a story where I said “this guy is a jerk” and then followed that mission statement, letting it override every other inclination I have. And then I don’t care about the guy. Because he’s a jerk. Because he’s not redeemable. Because I’ve strayed so far from what I care about that there is nothing in that character for me. I’ve done that, and when I edit I always end up changing it, because a whole hell of a lot of the joy of writing is knowing that you’re writing something you would buy if somebody else’s name was on the spine. And I wouldn’t buy a story about that jerk.

This isn’t that, though. I keep trying to do something new. I keep trying to add to my pile. I have stories. I have documents that need to be edited. That need to be finished. And lately, more and more strongly, I don’t want to leave them alone.

I think that it might have to do with the fact that the rest of my life is in stasis. The Holiday season is sucking the opportunities out from under me. I got another rejection e-mail today. I want something to go somewhere. And the one thing I have the most direct control over is my own writing. So I can write new things and watch the pile grow, or I can finish an older thing and try to get published.

And I really feel like finishing something right now.

So I’m going to do that. There is a story that I care about enormously. It is about a fictional version of myself (pretentious, no?). It is probably the best thing I’ve written to date, and I desperately want people to see it. I desperately want people to see it finished. In print. I’m going to work on that.

And I’ll care about what I’m writing. Which will be a nice change.

Writer's Block

2007-11-06T23:13:00.000-08:00

Holy Moly am I suffering from the worst case of writer’s block I can remember. I sit to write stories, they die on me. I sit to write blog entries, they die on me. I sit to write e-mails, nothing doing. Nothing comes out, and when something does it feels like the crappiest crap that’s ever been put down to type. Writer’s block, like editing, is a son of a bitch.

It makes you want to punch things.

But usually it’s not really anything more than a total psych out. Don’t get me wrong, it is a real doozy of a psych out, but most of the time it’s still just head games. And we’re playing with ourselves. And I’ve been thinking about why. I guess I think there are three reasons, and I’ll list them in the order of likelihood from least to greatest.

1) You actually don’t have anything to write. This makes up about 1% of cases of writer’s block, by my estimation. Your imagination is always working, and it always wants to do something. Given the chance, it will take advantage about 99% of the time. The other 1% is probably a good time for a nap.

2) You’re scared. I talked about fear before and it’s a real problem for writers. Even real, popular ones. You get scared. You get scared that you’ve already written the best parts of something, that you’ll make the wrong choice with character x, that if you finish you’ll have to show it to somebody. You’re scared about something, and it makes you hesitate at some point during the process. It would be easy for me to blame block primarily on fear, but I think that fails to give credit to a bigger problem. Fear is probably about 39% of cases, I’d think.

3) You’re self-critical. Every author is self critical. You’re your own worst critic, and that critic is your own worst enemy. And I’m not talking about being critical of your own talent, or critical of what you think you’re going to write. That’s fear. What I’m talking about is actually looking at the words you have written and being disgusted by them. Starting a story with a few sentences, paragraphs even, and dumping the whole thing because reading it over you feel like it was written by a hack. This is what’s been getting me, and according to my math about 60% of other cases out there.

But it stops you. It stops you to read your own words and think “this is bad.” I must have gone through five stories and three blogs last week because I felt like a hack reading it. During stretches like that I forget that nobody is more critical of my words than I am. I forget that I’m only writing a first draft. I forget that if I just keep writing, no matter how bad the beginning is, my imagination will get over it and do some really good things a few pages later.

I forgot all that. I’m starting to remember. Just write. Then rewrite. Every story looks like crap the first time around. I have to keep that in mind.

Kind of All Over the Place

2007-10-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

It's really, really difficult not to want to do everything. And I mean everything. It starts small. Normally you write nonfiction stories. Maybe you're working on your novel. An autobiography. You know, the kind of thing you write. Then you read this awesome fiction story, get an idea, open a file and start making up a world.

Then it snowballs.

You and your friends watch Transformers and you start to think about what you would do if you wrote a sci-fi, and you start to like the idea. You go home to think about it. Grab your copy of Watchmen to pass a few minutes and start thinking about writing comics. Putting it down you flip on the TV. Script writing. Everything looks good!

I know that, fudging a few details, that pretty much describes me anyway. I get so worked up about all of these things. Fantasy, sci-fi, lit-fic, light-fic, non-fic, erotica, script writing, comics, children's books, choose your own adventure, video game scripting…

It goes on and on like that. I just want to get into it because I like it all. And if I like it, and it can be written, it kills me not to try. And I'm sure I will try. I know I will. I just can't do it now. I think there's something to be said for pacing. Getting to things by steps. Starting small and building big. More than that, though, I think it's just sound strategy if you're serious about what you're doing.

And part of it comes down to marketability. People won’t be willing to ask you for work if they don’t know what kind of work you do. There is a good reason that so many authors only writ sci-fi, romance, non-fiction, etc., and it’s not usually because they just don’t want to do anything else. It’s because they get published the most often by being consistent. It’s the same idea behind a novel writer who gets huge advances for every novel, suddenly writing a children’s book and finding the advance is a mere shadow of what they usually get.

And when you’re just starting out it is especially important. You need more than anything to build a portfolio that somebody will be able to look at and see that they can sell you. And since people usually sell to a genre or a niche rather than a variety of things, you can’t get picked up if you don’t fit their model.

So you have to start with one or two things and stick to them. The real benefit of this is that as long as you’re only doing one or two things, you should get much better at them than if you were doing a bunch of things. And that will again increase your chances of getting picked up or published. Once you’re settled in. Once people know what you have to give. Then fulfill your creative fantasies. But keep your priorities first.

Although I do really want to try writing a comic…

An Update, Of Sorts

2007-10-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

So what am I up to, exactly? I’ve been at a temporary assignment for a little over two months now, and that is about a week from ending. I’m sure the agency will have another place for me to work after that, but I’m going to take about a week off because that is a week of valuable “daytime” time that I haven’t been getting. It’s time that I will be able to spend applying for internships and the occasional job. It’s time that I will be able to spend writing.

Which is not to say that I am doing neither in the meantime. I’ve gotten into the habit of finding and applying for roughly one internship a night. It’s probably still not as much as I should be doing, but time is murder, isn’t it? Still, it’s better than where I was a month ago. My focus has shifted from internships and work with publishing houses toward ones with magazines. The reason, pretty simply, is that there are more. The work is pretty similar and magazines also tend to give you a higher chance to contribute with your own writing, which I see as a benefit.

Still, I look forward to this week when I will have the daytime to 1) sleep in, 2) perhaps triple my application rate, and 3) do some writing. Almost all of the writing that I have been doing recently (aside from blogworld) has been casual. It’s good because it is writing, but it’s bad because it’s not exactly serious.

Following the week off, I want that agency to focus on placing me in assignments where I can build new skills. Too often they want to place me at an assignment that simply takes advantage of the skills that I do have, and even though it gets a paycheck the work isn’t particularly useful for me. If possible, I need to work with Filemaker Pro. It would be advantageous to be forced to make phone calls rather than just answering phones. Those kinds of things.

And hopefully something comes of these internships. I’d like an interview. Somebody? Just one, you know, maybe two, or all of them would be nice.

On the writing front, I am getting into a mutual agreement with one of my closest writing friends by which we will share and critique each other’s writing on a weekly basis. This is going to be great for both of us, because it is an environment that neither of us have been in since we graduated. An environment with deadlines and constructive, timely feedback. And I think that both of us have been severely missing that environment. Craving it, even. I know I have.

So there you have it. I haven’t talked a lot about what I’m doing because it’s a little embarrassing that I seem to be in the same place I was five months ago. But that’s my update for you. Of a sort.

Editing

2007-10-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

While we’re talking about writing, I think it’s a good idea to talk about editing a little bit. Editing is a son of a bitch. I actually think after a while it starts to get a little fun, spinning things around, turning a mess of a sentence into something indispensible, seeing a story grow from a first draft into something approaching good (and believe me, I’ve never written a worthwhile first draft in my life, and I don’t know anybody who has). But it is a son of a bitch.

And it is because the thing you’re looking at when you start editing is almost always completely different from what you end up with. For example, I have a story on the burner right now that is about 17 pages long, and before even starting the rewrite, I know that I have to completely scrap half of the storyline. The first draft is essentially an A story and a B story that run parallel to each other. One is grounded in reality, and the other is low key fantasy. Feedback that I’ve gotten has sounded unanimously like this: “The two stories are redundant, and the reality based one is by far the stronger of the two. But my favorite parts were all fantasy elements.”

Ugh. That’s a helpful paradox? The key always seemed to be finding a way to make the two stories relevant to each other instead of simply parallel to each other. But every way that I worked out to do that either turned it into a moral story, or a boring story – both of which would deeply sabotage the weight of the story itself. The other option was to get rid of one half of it and refine the other. But whichever half I got rid of would eliminate a critical element of the story at large. It finally struck me that since the A and B story were telling the same story to begin with, they should just be the same story.

But that means half of the text will be completely lifted from the story right off the bat, with its critical elements reintegrated into the rest of the text, which will then itself have to be edited not only for story and style, but also for continuity problems that the first step might cause. And that will probably force me to completely rewrite about 90% of the remaining text.

But that’s just what editing is. Once you’ve figured out the problem that a story has it usually means that even the parts that are good need to be significantly reworked to account for the changes that need to be made. You should just see the first draft of About as Long… (you won’t, by the way). That story is only about page and a half to begin with, and the first draft would be unrecognizable (unrecognizably bad) to you.

It’s kind of fun. I mean, in that son of a bitchy way.

Flash Fiction: It's Shorter Than Regular Fiction!

2007-10-16T21:50:00.000-07:00

Flash fiction is a style that puts the author in a pretty strange place. You just don't have enough room to do anything that you want to do. There isn't enough room to provide much in the way of exposition. There isn't enough room to develop all three parts of a traditional story: rising action, climax, resolution. There isn't enough room for more than a couple or characters. It really hamstrings you.

That's not a bad thing, though. If anything, it forces you to focus on one thing, rather than all of them, and refine it as far as it will go. Naturally, in terms of marketable skills this makes you better at all of the individual aspects of your longer stories. I don't want to insult flash fiction as a style, but it's greatest asset in the current market really is as a practice tool.

So I want to talk about the one I showed you. The one I wrote.

I'm not going to pretend that what I've written is any kind of high literature. It's just a little story, for better or worse. But it does some things. You can look at it and see what I tried to to deal with the size limitations. There are only two characters, one point of view, and two small rooms for the action to take place. If this is any of the rising action, climax, or resolution, it's the resolution. So everything is very isolated and small, which makes working with the limitations a lot easier.

But it doesn't eliminate them. I still need to show what came before the resolution for anything to make sense. I still need to track an emotion or emotional journey for both characters, and I need both of them to be something with more depth than cardboard. The only way to do this is to have details, thoughts, and dialogue all do more than one thig at a time. When the mother speaks, she is talking to herself and her daughter. When she doesn't pull the sheets up over her daughter's shoulders, it is both letting go and being spiteful. I made as many things as I could work in this way because there's not much choice.

There are still problems, of course. Very little happens. Everything is small and relatively unengaging. The daughter is a bit underdeveloped. And so on like that.

But it was great practice, can act as a solid writing sample in certain cases, and is a hell of a lot easier to post than 15 pages of short story!

Now You See Me

2007-10-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

One thing that I've been pretty anxious to do around here is to actually talk about writing. In my last post, I breached the idea of sharing more of myself and letting the blog be more personal. And as a writer, the most significant way to do this is through your writing. So here's a treat: I'm actually going to post a complete work of original fiction, for you, in this entry.

The story is in a pretty convenient form known as "Flash Fiction." Usually between 250 and 1000 words, flash fiction is a difficult form to pin down exactly. It's easy to think of it as a writing tool more than an actual form because it's so short and has so little critical attention. Structurally, it tends to work a lot differently from longer fiction as well, which adds to the difficulty of writing it.

The form has only gotten any critical attention recently, and falls withing a pretty specific niche market. I think I'll elaborate on all of these ideas in my next entry. For now I'm just pretty anxious to let you see mine. And to let it hopefully speak for itself for a few days.

And just to be absolutely clear, this is specific story that I have written that I do not intend on trying to publish. I'm proud of it, but if I had any reason to protect it for my future, I wouldn't be so casual about putting it on the net for free. This particular story was written and revised as a class assignment, and is no more than 500 words.

So without further ado:

About as Long as the Length of an Arm

Her mother could see that Sam was awake, even though it was one in the morning on a school night. She could see her daughter yawning on the couch, elbow bent so that her arm was propped up as if reaching for the window behind. She would sleep on the couch all night, like she always did when she wanted to hurt her mother. She was impossible to deal with sometimes. Silly highlighted strips of hair draped across her face and would make her nose itch all night, but she fell asleep without moving them. Her shoulders would be cold in the tank top.

Her mother turned from the room and looked around the kitchen. It had been this way since the evening, not dirty but unkept. A bowl of pasta swimming in red sauce had gotten cold on the table, noodles wrapped around a salad fork hanging off the edge. A faint sweet smell was coming from a glass of milk that had also been left out. One of the chairs was pulled away at a sharp angle and a piece of paper had fallen to the floor not far away. She rubbed her eyes, walked tiredly to the table, and looked at the mess. She put her hand out, rested it on the fork, sighed, and then cleared the dishes.

“You have to pick up after yourself better than this,” she whispered. “How will you ever make it on your own this way?”

She sat in the chair to pick up the paper and held it in her lap without looking at it. It had taken a long time to write the resume because Sam had no experience and few accomplishments to work with. There was an entire section titled miscellaneous that listed values like teamwork and cited grade school softball games as evidence. Take it from you mother, she had said, even if they don’t ask for one, you’ll look better if you give them one of these when you apply. It was supposed to make things easier. It ended up being a catalyst instead. She stood up, adjusted the chair to its proper place, placed the paper neatly back on the table.

The other room was cold, and the closer she got to Sam the more her eyes were drawn to her daughter’s bare shoulders. She glanced out the window and remembered the mist that had fallen all day. Tomorrow would be clear. She hoped. She looked back at Sam and lightly gripped the blanket draped across the girl’s chest.

Sam’s mother sighed again, pulled her hand away, almost bent down with a kiss, and decided to go to bed instead. Sam’s shoulders would be cold tonight. Her arm was still resting upright, as though looking out the window while her eyes were closed for sleep, and she snored lightly.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Confessions

2007-10-09T23:06:00.001-07:00

I’ve been away from the blog for too long now. Originally I said that I would update every three days, and then I got in the habit of updating every four, and now I’ve been away for about a week. This is a trend that I don’t like, and I’m determined to reverse it. I may not ever keep up the three day schedule, but a week is one step away from monthly, and then never.

And that scares me a little. One thing I’ve talked about here, one of the first things, even, is the fear of being a writer. But I talked about it with as much confidence as I could. It’s probably not a surprise that this was a bit of a front. The truth is that I’m pretty terrified. Terrified that I might just be kidding myself. Terrified that I might go forever calling myself a writer and never try to publish anything important to me.

I know that the tone of this entry is not in line with the tones of most of my other entries. It’s less guarded and less instructional and that’s important to me. I don’t think I’ve nailed down how personal I want this to ultimately be, but I do know that I need this to be a blog among peers and I can’t do that being as formal as I have been. It can’t work if I detach myself as the writer from the topics that I am writing about. So this is a little bit of a confession in that respect.

When I talk about being careful not to be scammed, it’s because I have been sorely tempted by scam artists, even recently, and have almost given myself up to them. I wanted to because it would be easier if I just ignored the warning signs until it was too late. I know that I can’t be reckless, though. Writing is my baby.

And when I talk about fear, it’s because I know I’m not doing what I need to do. I’m not writing anything new right now. I’m not editing anything old right now. I do have other priorities right now to get my adult life together, but how long does “having other priorities” last before I’m just fooling myself? I don’t know. And now I’ve taken a manageable step forward by starting a blog, which keeps me writing. I do get worried that even this might be a passing fancy, though. And the trend I’ve fallen into of taking more and more time between posts has scared me straight a little.

I wrote about building confidence to defeat fear, as well. I think that bucking this trend and being loyal to my blog will help me build the confidence to know that I can take on writing without dropping it by the wayside. And that will help me break through the other fears I have.

So that’s my confession today. Before today I’ve only really addressed issues. Today I wanted to share. Next time maybe I’ll split the difference.

Tricks of the Trade

2007-10-02T00:05:00.000-07:00

I like it when things happen to me because of this blog. You might remember the first time this happened, when I got my first friend of the blog. The other day, something new happened. And it was noteworthy in another way.

I got an e-mail from a representative at a website called www.slushpilereader.com, a new website that claims it will let you the author upload your manuscript to be rated by the site readers and published as a real book if it is one of the very top rated manuscripts overall. Cool service, huh? No, not really. Honestly don't get yourself involved in this sort of thing.

You have to be careful. See, the e-mail I got specifically referenced my entry called "From Work to the Workshop." You might browse the entry and notice that I happen to drop the phrase "Slush Pile Reader" in the middle of my incomplete list of possible jobs. So they found my blog with a phrase search and failed to check for context. Cool, warning signs!

I don't know for sure if this particular website is a scam, and I have to say that after pretty extensive research they seem, barring further development, to be on the up and up. But that doesn't mean it's a very good thing to get involved in. Now, scams might be the biggest problem for any author. Don't take any service that you have to pay for. Don't take any service that compromises the safety or integrity of your writing (without copyright, for instance). Do not do anything that promises unagented publication - especially if it promises it with a major publisher. Major publisher's do not publish anything if you don't have an agent anymore. That’s the quick and dirty list for surefire signs of a scam. Be safe. Under no circumstances submit yourself to these problems.

But something like slushpilereader is dangerous for other reasons. It gives you no opportunity to ever record an advance through the service, for one. It has very limited exposure, for another. It encourages authors to give up on traditional publishing, for a third. And that is the most egregious offense. Why? Because traditional publishing, with a real agent and an editor, is the only way to make any money or have any widespread distribution. Services like slushpilereader, no matter how legit, are catering themselves specifically to the lazy (who don't want to go through the trouble of finding an agent and editor, writing queries, and getting honest rejections) the desperate (who will take anything), and the naive (who just don't know better).

I wanted to write an entry on scams today. That didn't exactly happen. But as a beginning writer you have to be acutely aware of the population of scams, scammers, and second rate services ready to fleece you for your money and your work. You just have to stay on the straight and narrow track. Alternative publishing is tempting because it is easier than traditional publishing, But it's easier because it's worse. And there are no two ways about it. So please, make yourself aware of the environment you're jumping into. It's a dangerous world for us.

Part Two!

2007-09-25T01:15:00.001-07:00

Apologies for the late post here. I had a busy family weekend and wasn’t able to take much of a minute to work something out.

Last time I talked about why I think that involving yourself in a group or classes that are geared toward improvement is important. It’s tempting to shrug this off and think you can do it alone, but it just doesn’t work that way because the fact is that if you take this seriously, then you are writing for an audience. And you can’t know what an audience wants to read unless they are actually reading it.

Whether you are training yourself formally or informally, there are three things that you have to do no matter what. The first is to listen. You have to listen. People will say things you don’t want to hear. Things that will make you more defensive than you knew you could be. They will be hard to listen to. But they are probably right, or at least onto something, because readers know when they are dissatisfied. And you can’t defend your writing against dissatisfaction. You just can’t. Examining dissatisfaction is hard, but it will teach you what works, what doesn’t work, what needs to change, and sometimes, rarely, when you need to find a new reader.

The second thing is to read. It shows you what a finished product looks like. Reading is studying. The most direct way this works is if you read books on writing (which you should be doing, and I’ll see about adding a new section with recommendations in the next few days). The less direct way this works is if you simply pay attention to the other things you read. Plot has structure. Dialogue has structure. Paragraphs have structure. If you pay attention to how a book is written as you read it, you’re studying.

The third thing is to write. Well, duh.

From my personal position, I would highly recommend at least entertaining the thought of taking formal classes. I took classes for two years at the college level, and I’m 1000x the writer I was when I started. I learned how to listen. I learned how to edit. I learned how to read. And I learned from writers, which is about the coolest way to learn how to write.

The other thing about formal education is that it further broadens what you can do with your life. I want to go back to school and get my Masters in Creative Writing. From there it’s a few short steps to teaching at a college level. And that’s a writing profession in an entirely different ballpark than the ones I’ve discussed before.

But even if taking classes will not benefit you (because of age, work, family, disinterest, money, etc.), you have to follow some course of education that will actively push your skills and strengthen your knowledge. Any reason that you can think of not to is more than likely just an excuse to get yourself out of it.

From Work to the Workshop

2007-09-21T01:30:00.001-07:00

In the last entry I laid out a pretty specific “practical” path to writing, but I don’t want you to get caught up thinking “I don’t want to be in publishing,” because that’s just my own version of a more important idea. I know that publishing can be dull anybody. Or that freelancing can be too fickle for anybody. There are a thousand reasons why these might not fit.

But the idea is that if you're like me this way, then you just need to find something involved in or around writing that fits your practical needs and interests as a writer, and then do it. There are tons of options. Journalist, copywriter, script-writer, literary agent, slush pile reader, advertiser, and that’s just off the top of my head. The important thing is being able to identify your own needs as a writer and then move your life in that direction piece by piece.

If you’re not like me this way, well I don’t know how you do it. But I love that you do.

But it's not all about that, either. Working in writing environments and learning to be a good writer are two different things. The first can keep you sharp, current, involved, and on schedule, but it isn’t there to teach you to be any of these things. The best thing you can do for this is to write, study, and share on your own time. And the most practical way to get that done is to involve yourself in creative programs among your peers or friends.

For me, over the last four years, this meant taking creative writing classes. These classes have a lot of the same benefits of the work I've mentioned. They force you to write, they help you develop a schedule, and they keep you sharp and in tune with your peers. But there is a difference. See, in the work world there is an expectation that you can and will produce a certain quality of work. In a class, or a similar program, there is instead the expectation that you are trying to improve on a certain quality of work. And that makes all the difference.

The thing is, there is nothing more important for a writer than having a group of trustworthy readers who are not only trying to look out for the quality of your writing, but to help you improve it. Because they will always, and I cannot stress the word always enough, always see necessary things that you couldn't possibly see by yourself. And classes, groups, or programs simulate this support system for you in all of the best ways. This is why classes worked for me, why the friendships I made in those classes will keep me in the right direction, and why they should be important to you.

Next time I'll talk more specifically about the education (formal and informal) of becoming an author, because there is a lot more to it.

Today's Theme: Slowness

2007-09-17T20:38:00.000-07:00

See, the thing is that even most established authors need day jobs to support the quality of living that writing usually can’t. I suppose there are two types of people when it comes to this: 1) the person who needs to be around writing to keep themselves connected to that world, and 2) the person who needs to be away from writing to keep from burning out by the time they get to the coveted night job.

So let me tell you a little bit about what I’m doing as far as putting together a day to day career.

I’m the first kind of person, and I’m trying to find a way to shape my future around it even if I never do succeed as an author (terrifying). And the first thing that I’m doing is just plain getting work. The best way for me to do this is to do temporary work. It brings in a steady income. It’s local. It builds necessary office skills. And I can stop doing it when I land the job or internship I want. These are all important things for me. I’m making money and resume building, but I’m not under obligation for any long-term employment in an industry that I don’t enjoy - which is the main danger in “taking the first job that says yes.”

While I’m temping I’m looking for permanent work or an internship in publishing. This is slow. I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we all know that New York is publishing central. There is only so much that is available at the entry level that you can find online or in classifieds. So aside from job listings, the very best thing that you can do is network. This is also slow, and I’m just getting comfortable with the idea. To do it, schedule informational interviews and get referrals. For me, this is the hardest part, and I’m not doing a very good job of it, but I am improving. An opportunity will present itself. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it might be developing as we speak.

There’s more you can do, and there is more that I am trying to do, as well. For a writer, one of the most accessible ways to keep writing and to get paid for it is to do freelance work. I only became aware of the importance of this recently. It keeps you sharp and builds experience while leaving you with a real portfolio of samples. Thing is, good freelancers also need to be good networkers or they won’t get jobs. See the catch?

If you are the kind of person who is like me, who has to be around writing to be satisfied, this is a good way to structure your path. Don’t let yourself get trapped in something unrelated. It’s not the fastest way to work, but it may be the most rewarding. Just do what you have to do, and the rest will follow.

My Mistake

2007-09-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

Shorter post today, but I think it’s important.

See, caught up in my excitement last time, I made a grievous mistake. I got so caught up in telling everybody to put themselves out there that I forgot to talk about the conditions. In a lot of ways, I was actually giving bad advice. And that's because I was talking to everybody, but not about something that everybody should do. It all depends on where you are. What stage of the process you're in.

And I'm saying this because making your work available to the public for free is reckless if you take it as blanket advice. It would be wrong to start posting your novel or all of your favorite, most promising stories. You know, the things you want to get paid for. You have to be careful with those things because they are the most valuable things for your career. Those are the things you submit to magazines, The things that get their first few chapters submitted to the publishing house when they're ready.

And if you're at the point where you have the stories or the novels or the poems and the confidence to get them published, then what I was telling you last time just does not apply to you very well.

But if you don't have those stories/novels/poems, or you just don't have the confidence to take the next step with them, finding something new, something that you don't mind giving away for free can be a very good thing. And it can because it can help you gain confidence in your talents to believe that people want to read your other work. Or, at the very least, it can just help you practice writing. In the end you just have to find something that will keep you writing consistently and build your confidence. There is nothing more important than those two things when it comes what we do.

It's about conquering the fear of being an author. About getting to the point where you can be an author. If you're already there, you're ahead of the game and I really look up to you. Because it's hard, and I know that I have a long way to go.

You Do It For You

2007-09-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

I walked out of my last entry with a few idea of what I wanted to write about next, but it turns out that all of them will have to wait at least a few more days. Something happened over the weekend that energized me, and once it did I realized that it didn't make sense to write about anything else.

And this was a really nice thing that happened to me. Jill (a very clever code name, but I'm sure she can decipher it) wrote me a very nice message to let me know that she’s my first regular reader! And because she's my first official Friend of the Blog, I want to thank her.

The most amazing thing about this is that when I got her message the first thing I wanted to do was sit down and write my next entry as fast as I could. At that moment it felt really, really good to be writing something, to be a writer. The fears of being a writer and all of the difficulties of starting, they were all gone. And it was all because I knew that I was writing something that somebody else wanted to read.

It's almost unbelievable that I didn't realize this before.

See, the first fear that any writer learns how to express is that nobody will like what they write. But I think the hardest thing to deal with is actually the idea that nobody will want read it anyway. I think this is the first thing that we have to deal with. It's easier even to write for classes or for a writing group because the agreement there is that the other people have to read your words, whether they like it or not. The hard part is believing that any of them actually want to.

It's terrifying, I know, and it’s almost impossible to break through it without a strategy. After thinking about it, I believe that strategy has to be to write away from the fear. See, I was enjoying writing this blog when I believed I was just writing into a black hole, and that made the risk worthwhile for me. Now that I know that people want to read it, I want to write it even more. And that's a pretty great feeling.

So find something to write that you can enjoy writing for yourself regardless of who sees it, and then do it publically. Anything is good whether it’s a blog, a web-comic, poetry, erotica, love letters, anything as long as it gets you writing. Then advertise it. Tell your friends to tell their friends. The incentive to write will be there because you're doing it for yourself. The incentive to go public will be there because it won’t matter as much if nobody reads it. And the fear will be smaller for the same reasons.

But, as always, you have to take it seriously. Because if you don't take it seriously, then you're not writing. You're screwing around. And we're writers, not screw-arounders.

Tell You a Little About Myself

2007-09-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

First off, you might notice that the blog as two new sections! I've added an e-mail where I can accept any questions and comments, which I will take care in responding to, and I have added a list of some of my favorite blogs on the web for your convenience. You can always comment directly to the blog, too, though I'm less likely to respond to these.

Second off, my blog is officially rolling. It was important that I laid down my mission statement clearly in my first post, for all of the obvious reasons. Now that you know what I want to do here, though, you still don't know anything about me. You don't know what I've done or what I'm working on.

You barely even know my name.

So let me introduce myself.

I just got out of college. I don't have a real job. I've never been published. I've barely submitted my work for publication. I have almost no connections. The longest story I've ever written is 27 pages long, double spaced, and I haven't revised it yet. And I have almost no idea of how to turn my skill into success - though I'm learning more every day. I am, right now, starting my writing career from scratch.

Here's what I do have. Three days ago I got my diploma in the mail, so I have a B. A. in English (officially!). I have a lot of classroom experience with creative writing, and a fair number of short stories in early drafts because of it. I have a small network of friends who also write, mostly from those classes. I have a folder on my computer dedicated specifically to my short stories. I have ideas.

And I have a blog. My important first step. A chronicle of my progress. I'm excited. I used to wonder if I was going to do the work to be an author, or just always say that I wanted to be one and never bother. Writing this blog, and maintaining it faithfully is one of the early steps that I am taking to get the work done. It's pushing me to do what I want to do. And it is finally pushing me into a writing routine, which is always one of the hardest parts.

The bad, then: I have a LONG way to go.

The good: I have a small, solid foundation of work and friends to build on.

Oh, and my name actually is Garrett. File that under "good." It's very nice to meet everybody. Next time you see me, we'll be done with these formalities and getting down to business. I hope you're as excited as I am!

Starting Out

2007-09-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

When I say "starting out" we all know that I mean more than one thing. On the one hand this is my inaugural blog post for my inaugural blog. Beginnings, and all that. On the other hand, starting out is everything this blog is supposed to stand for. I'm writing for the people here who want to become authors, but aren't. For all of those people who want to be published regularly, who want respectable advances for their stories and novels; those people who want agents and novels and film adaptations, who want name recognition, but who don't have any of it. Or for those of us who have our heads a little bit closer to our shoulders and just want to write, to be published, and to do it without getting laughed at (unless, you know, you're writing for laughs).

So I'm writing it for all of those people. And I am one of those people. I am desperately one of those people. So I'm writing it for myself as well.

One of the hardest things about finding my way to being the kind of author that we want to be is that I have only ever had the examples of people who had already done it. Whether these were authors whose blogs I read or whose interviews I watch, or professors who were teaching me to write, or even family friends, these were all people who could only ever tell me things like "well, when I was starting out." And no matter how hard it was for them to get there, it always seems like it was too easy. And it seems that way because they did make it, and I haven't, and there is an infinite gap between the two.

Even if it's not quite as infinite as all that in real life.

What I needed, though, was somebody who was going through the process, and who I could see going through the process. Somebody who was doing what I was doing, who I could match a pace with and see that I wasn't just floating off in my own strange direction.

Now, that is the person that I am going to be for anybody reading this. And I can take solace in the fact that anybody reading this will be that kind of person for me. And I think this way, riding each other's backs, we can get somewhere.

I will be careful to update this blog for you no less than once every three days, letting you know where I've come from and what I'm doing. When I get better with html, I will customize the layout so things look nicer around here. I will also make e-mail available and do my best to respond when and if they do come in. I hope that everybody enjoys what I'm doing, because I take this seriously. And that's also the point, isn't it? We're getting serious about what we're doing, however long it takes, because we don't want to be "starting out" forever.