Lily, the publicist for gay teen mystery #1, sent some bad news: an interview with me was being cut from a newsletter because of space reasons. So sad! I enjoyed the questions in that one, and it took time away from actual fiction writing, and I actually ended up doing it after class one night while I had a migraine. The newsletter editor offered to run it when book #2 comes out next year but by then we might be in the next Ice Age or suffering the zombie apocalypse or all dead from bat-pig-flu (bonus points to you if you can name those 3 movies).
Anyway, one of the questions I answered was "Do you have any suggestions for new writers?" My first answer to that is always B.I.C. - Butt in Chair. I didn't come up with that, but it's always worth passing on. Butt in Chair, fingers on keyboard, turn off the internet (or use Dr. Wicked's writeordie.com, one of my favorites), and make sure that writing is in your top five things to do each day: if you consistently get the dishes done, but don't get the scenes written, you've accomplished cleanliness but are not any closer to publication.
My second, third and fourth suggestions for new writers have to do with finding reliable critique partners, cultivating a thick skin, and getting things into the mail (or email, since I can't remember the last time I submitted something via USPS). Other people have written about these tips in ways that are much more eloquent than mine, though I tried to be witty and smart.
Suggestion number 5 comes out of the zazen I've been doing this year. Zazen is Zen Buddhist meditation, and it means you sit on a pillow and lower your gaze and put your hands and legs a certain way, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting. There is no goal. Unlike other types of meditation, you don't chant or focus on your breathing or try to achieve stillness. You just sit. And this is the absolutely hardest part of my day. even harder than trying to squeeze out just 500 more words at midnight or trying to write an important email while senile!cat yowls at the walls. Try it for just ten minutes. Hard!
In zazen, we have no hopes or expectations or goals. There is nothing to achieve. The only way to do it wrong (whatever "wrong" means) is not to do it at all.
And so my fifth suggestion is to write without expectations. Write without worrying about whether it will sell, whether others will like it, whether it works or not, whether it achieves anything. Write the story that arises, and write it as truly as you can, and pay attention to every moment of its creation, and then let it go like a balloon into the sky.
P.S. Here's Lily, who is fabulous! She and Bob the warehouse guy went out for Halloween dressed as ElectraWoman and DynaGirl. I'm still trying to get a photo of that.
Anyway, one of the questions I answered was "Do you have any suggestions for new writers?" My first answer to that is always B.I.C. - Butt in Chair. I didn't come up with that, but it's always worth passing on. Butt in Chair, fingers on keyboard, turn off the internet (or use Dr. Wicked's writeordie.com, one of my favorites), and make sure that writing is in your top five things to do each day: if you consistently get the dishes done, but don't get the scenes written, you've accomplished cleanliness but are not any closer to publication.
My second, third and fourth suggestions for new writers have to do with finding reliable critique partners, cultivating a thick skin, and getting things into the mail (or email, since I can't remember the last time I submitted something via USPS). Other people have written about these tips in ways that are much more eloquent than mine, though I tried to be witty and smart.
Suggestion number 5 comes out of the zazen I've been doing this year. Zazen is Zen Buddhist meditation, and it means you sit on a pillow and lower your gaze and put your hands and legs a certain way, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting. There is no goal. Unlike other types of meditation, you don't chant or focus on your breathing or try to achieve stillness. You just sit. And this is the absolutely hardest part of my day. even harder than trying to squeeze out just 500 more words at midnight or trying to write an important email while senile!cat yowls at the walls. Try it for just ten minutes. Hard!
In zazen, we have no hopes or expectations or goals. There is nothing to achieve. The only way to do it wrong (whatever "wrong" means) is not to do it at all.
And so my fifth suggestion is to write without expectations. Write without worrying about whether it will sell, whether others will like it, whether it works or not, whether it achieves anything. Write the story that arises, and write it as truly as you can, and pay attention to every moment of its creation, and then let it go like a balloon into the sky.
P.S. Here's Lily, who is fabulous! She and Bob the warehouse guy went out for Halloween dressed as ElectraWoman and DynaGirl. I'm still trying to get a photo of that.
by Valerie Frankel. This was on the new shelves for non-fiction at the library and I had mixed feelings going in - unleashing your Inner Hater is not really in keeping with my philosophy about life. On the other hand, it's pretty funny. And then I got to the part about writerly hatred, and I fell in love. She talks about the opposite of schadenfreude - instead of feeling pleasure at other people's misfortune, we feel misery at other people's successes.