Advice for a Young Writer

I rarely give out writing advice unless asked and I’m rarely asked. Writers staying at it for approaching two decades with minimal extrinsic success (and by extrinsic success I mean an audience) are probably the best people to seek writing advice from, but to be fair, how would they find us? Last time I gave advice it was to a work friend who mentioned wanting, one day, to write but right then was content to read avidly. My advice was “follow your interest.” Follow your interest might not sound like much but you could do a lot worse for writing advice. Kurt Vonnegut’s writing advice was similar just a tick more harsh: “Read a lot and write a lot and figure it out yourself.” And he was a writing instructor. So it goes.

A friend at work mentioned that his thirteen-year-old daughter had been reading a lot of work uploaded to Watt Pad (? Not familiar with it but I’m guessing it’s a website where people upload work and get feedback) and had posted four chapters of a book she had started. She was discouraged by the response. This is infuriating to me. There is a stage where positive-only critiques are the only feedback a writer should be getting and a thirteen-year-old taking a stab at a first book is in that stage. So I wrote her a letter on break and gave it to her dad to give her. I basically told her she was the only person who could give value to the work she was doing and to let her own sense of having fun be her guide. She must have appreciated it because she sent a message through her dad thanking me but she told him she’d more just run out of ideas and that was why she got discouraged. Oh, ideas! That would have been a different letter.

What works best for the most people is to write on a schedule. Some might do well writing only when inspired but most of us would have pretty bleak writing lives to look back on if we always waited for inspiration. After I finished the first draft of Flowers on Concrete, I knew my prose needed improved. I set out to fill a notebook page every day. I walked to either my favorite coffee shop on Pike street in Seattle or to Charlie’s for a beer, almost panicky most nights, and wrote without ideas. I never expected anything but almost always surprised myself with the kernel of something or at least one line. In two years, I missed six or seven days. I still worry about ideas coming but that habit of sitting down and confronting the blank page was instilled. The earth doesn’t always move but I still always surprise myself with a line here or there. Of course, I wouldn’t tell a thirteen-year-old to write on a schedule. What I would tell her is, when she’s in the mood to write, to sit down with a pen and a blank page (or a laptop or her gizmo of choice), let go of her worry of coming up with something good or even of coming up with something, and just concentrate on enjoying the time and having fun. I would tell her to follow her interest.

A Family Named

I started my fourth “literary” or as I prefer non-genre novel in 2010 with an idea that served its purpose and then not only didn’t end up in the book but was never even written. This would be the first book or even story I wrote that featured primarily the dynamics within a family. So I knew that family would have to be named. Names, for me, have little importance. I find ones that feel right and then I stop thinking about them. Some writers would say names are important, which just means names are important to those writers. I generally hit on names that feel “right” right out of the gate and I’m onto thinking about what feels important to me, as a writer, because that’s the only gauge I have for feeling like I’m on the right path.

The last change I made to Flowers on Concrete was the main character’s name. I came out of the gate without one and substituted “Jimmy” because I thought that name posed no risk of attachment. Then I felt the risk of attachment pulling, so I changed it to Chris. Readers of the novel might recognize “Chris” as the name on Sean’s nametag when Trey first meets him while Sean’s working, because Sean would never wear a nametag with his name on it, but has no trouble wearing a nametag with a fake name everyone will read and think is his real name, because he’s Sean. Inside jokes of this sort, that only me and readers of early drafts would get, are dangerously tempting and should be avoided unless they’re harmless so when they’re harmless, indulge away! I thought of Trey as the main character’s name because “Trey” strikes me as a name that sounds short for something though often enough it’s not, which seemed fitting for a character who interfaces with his social circle without seeming to recognize his participation in that circle. But mostly as soon as I thought of it Trey felt “right” and I’ve never questioned it since.

So for this book I used underlines where the family’s last name would go and waited for a name to feel “right.” None did. And now, on the verge of having a readable draft ready to print, one needed to. I’ve taken multiple walks through the cemetery reading graves and pondering possible names. I felt like I was forcing it so I kept putting it off. Today I thought of one. If you’re reading this expecting this blog to end with what it is, I’m sorry. I’m not going to say because it wouldn’t mean anything. It’s just a name. It’s not like the dude’s rug in The Big Lebowski that ties the book together. It has perhaps a touch of meaning in the context of the novel but mostly it does its job of being the name of the family and drawing little to no attention to itself. I thought of it and it just felt “right” and I don’t expect to think about it again.

I desperately hope, one day, the novel is available for people to read and you’ll know the name then. If I’ve annoyed you with this post, please just ask and I can tell you the name privately but really, I promise, it wouldn’t be a highlight of your day. Flowers on Concrete, my first novel, is available at Amazon, in paperback and as an Ebook. Amazon has a convenient feature where you can read the opening few chapters to get a sense of whether or not the book appeals to you. If it does, you can purchase one there or purchase one from me. Thank you for reading.

The clouds couldn’t have been more cloudy

At a point I felt so turned around wondering if my writing was accomplishing anything I could have written “he went to the store” and if readers were left with the impression someone made it to a store that would have left me in a state of wonder. So when I had the opening two chapters of Flowers on Concrete discussed in a writing class I took in Seattle simply hearing that people were following the story was an incredible feeling. One of the highlights was a guy said he was reading in bed and gave the two chapters to his wife. “Honey, you have to read this.” Kind of a privacy breach since these were works in progress but I didn’t complain or mind. There were also some lowlights, some of which helped me take a fresh look at my writing and see where I could make improvements, but others that I took as confirmation. One lady’s remark I recall giving me chills. At these open talks people are rarely snarky (it’s not the internet; we’re face to face) but there are also writers who won’t blow smoke because they don’t want that from others when it’s their turn. They want help improving their writing. So I believe the woman was trying to kindly point out a problem when she said, of the opening chapter, “To me, it sounded more like someone fantasizing about dying than someone actually dying.”

I couldn’t say “That’s exactly what I wanted you to think!” because at these discussions the writer is supposed to just listen. But the payoff for chapter one comes shortly after the amazon free sample (in chapter seven) where (spoilers) you discover Trey has nothing more than a sprained ankle and a bloody lip. In my mind, for what that’s worth, chapter one is full of clues that Trey is fantasizing dying, as he says, “I’m very good at pretending,” but I’ve always heaped maybe unjust credit to one of my favorite lines from the whole book where Trey is taking in his supposedly final view of the world, describing the beautiful day, and says, “The clouds couldn’t have been more cloudy.”

Faulkner says “Kill your darlings” which is a piece of writing advice writers seem to all interpret differently. Some writers, I suspect, use it to clear out obstructions for potential readers, which can be a wise application and I’ve probably done that. Even a line I love if it’s too jarring to an overall read, if it will potentially take readers out of a story, then what’s to love about it? It does more harm than good. But in other cases it’s your darlings that give your characters life.

Flowers on Concrete is filled with Trey saying quirky things that reflect his odd way of perceiving the world. If the book has them the first chapter has to as well. And the book opens with Trey attempting to delude himself of an alternative reality, as he is prone to do, and I can’t tell readers he’s doing that if he’s not telling himself he’s doing that, so I have to drop hints. This reader got the hint but assumed I was failing to convey something I wasn’t actually trying to convey, something that wasn’t occurring. I kept her in mind during rewrites, but I don’t think I changed it enough to make that much more clear. You can’t please everyone, or try to, or you end up not pleasing anyone, worst of all yourself. The answer at a certain point is that you leave the readers behind who aren’t going to permit certain things and you move forward. You wish them well and thank them for reading but you move forward. You hope other readers’ interest is piqued enough to read on and get to that later payoff. “The clouds couldn’t have been more cloudy” was the first line another reader pointed out that made him chuckle, so that was plenty for me to get beyond Faulkner’s famous, vague writing rule.

Chapter one of Flowers on Concrete can be found here at my blog: https://myfreesentences.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/flowers-on-concrete-chapter-one/

The amazon free sample as well the kindle version of the book for purchase here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MC28L3C

The print version will be available soon. Links below this are from wordpress. Thank you for reading!