The Life of a Hoarder

First off, let me apologize for not keeping up with this blog in recent weeks. Between vacations, some personal issues at home, some hectic weeks at work, and a few other commitments, I’ve had little time for writing. And what time I did have left was devoted to working on my book. Now that my schedule has returned to normal, my goal is to return to my usual Wednesday, Friday schedule.

Now on to the post.

My wife thinks I’m a hoarder. She’s wrong. I just don’t like throwing stuff away.

It’s not as though I never throw things away – although a photograph of my office might suggest otherwise - but every time I do throw something in the trash, I almost invariably need it the next day. Honestly, this has happened so many times I no longer fight it. If there’s the slightest chance I’ll use something again – no matter how broken it might be - I’ll find somewhere else to store it. It gives me a nice, warm feeling to know I can still put my hands on it anytime I want.

Assuming I can find it, of course.

When it comes to Internet links, though, I am an avid hoarder. I just can’t help collecting them, especially ones about writing. It’s no secret I probably follow way too many writing and author blogs, but I’ve learned so much the past few years about writing I simply can’t stop piling up the links.

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee I’ll ever go back to these links again. A quick check of my writing links folder reveals that I have over 900 bookmarks waiting to be clicked. I tell myself I’ll eventually go back and read them again, but I know it’s not going to happen. But that’s okay. I still get that warm fuzzy feeling from knowing the links are sitting safely on my hard drive.

Not surprisingly, I’m still collecting links. I think I’ve saved four of them this morning already – most of them having to do with self-publishing and social media.

Help! Is there such a thing as Link Hoarders Anonymous?

ChemistKen


P.S. Please forgive my excessive use of the word “it” in this post.

The Insecure Writer and Not Having a Clue

Today is September's contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Support Group.




What makes me insecure as a writer this month? The fact that I have no clue as to what makes a book successful.

What helps relieve some of this insecurity? The fact that, as far as I can tell, no one else has a clue either.

The standard answer is that if you want your book to be a success, write the very best book you can. Sound advice, but I’m sure we can all think of good books we’ve read that never seem to gain any traction on Amazon while lesser books make the best seller lists. Agents and editors tell us that sometimes the stars have to be aligned just right for a book to succeed – which I think is another way of saying they don’t have a clue either. So how is a beginning writer such as myself to know if his or her manuscript has a chance to be a success?

I don’t know. And that's the problem.

I can follow all the rules of writing I've learned over the past few years, but will that lead to success? Perhaps, but it seems the books I enjoy most break many of those rules. Consider Harry Potter. Rowling broke tons of rules - lots of telling, more adverbs than you can shake a stick at, imaginative dialogue tags, a first chapter that could well have been a prologue, very little character arc for her MC (I’m talking the first book here, not the overall series), and the occasional drift into a distant omniscient narrator (supposedly a dying POV) - and I think her book did reasonably well. Apparently readers care less about the rules of writing than do writers.

Hmmm. What about social media? If I suddenly became social media savvy and developed an army of followers, would that help make my story a success? Perhaps, but for me, the learning curve for social media is even higher than it is for writing fiction. (Hey, I’ve tweeted three times this month already! That’s progress, right?)

So, in the end, all I can do is write the best book I can, get the word out there as much as possible, and hope for the stars to align.

And people make a living doing this?

Scary.

I'm Guest Posting Today on Strands of Patterns

Today I'm guest posting over at Jeff Hargett's Strands of Patterns blog, discussing my take on Plot versus Character. Drop on by and check it out. If you leave a nice comment, perhaps he'll invite me to come back again in the future.

Have a great weekend!

Back From Vacation!

My family and I just returned from a trip to northern Michigan, so this is going to be a short post. Overall, it was a great trip. We did all the necessary touristy things - climbing Sleeping Bear Dunes, swimming (or at least wading) in Lake Michigan, and trekking through miles of forests. Northern Michigan can be a fun place to visit, but it’s easy to get lost up there, even when you have maps. The locals are rather relaxed about the whole street sign thing, and even when there are signs, you aren’t guaranteed that the naming system used by the signs match the system used by the maps. For example, the road called "County Highway 708" on all of our maps was named Deadstream Rd on the signs.  Took us a bit to learn all the proper translations.

 BTW, I’m going to have to find a way to use “Deadstream” in one of my stories.

Speaking of stories, despite dragging my laptop along on the trip, I did absolutely no writing. I tried working on the manuscript once when everyone else was in bed, but was so sleepy myself all I could do was notice how much rewriting needed to be done and so I called it quits. Still the story was never far from my mind.

When you're walking through woods like this, it's easy to image I'm trekking through the Forbidden Forest. 

Or that I'm gazing at the lake which lies next to Hogwarts?

At least now that I'm home I'll be able to work on my manuscript again. Yay!


P.S.  Thanks to my wife and son for taking these pictures.

Friday Links

Here’s an article which should be of interest to writers. How Paperbacks Transformed the Way Americans Read. Interesting. Makes me wonder if we’ll be reading a similar article about e-books in ten or twenty years.

Madeline Ashby’s debut novel, vN, came out a couple of weeks ago and there is a small writeup about it over at BoingBoing. Sounds fascinating. Perhaps if I were better connected to the reading world (instead of spending all my free time writing) I might have heard about this one before now.

Finally, have you heard of LeakyCon? It’s one of the annual Harry Potter conventions and it wrapped up this last weekend in Chicago. I’ve never been to one, but would love to attend one at least once. It’s probably not going to happen though (unless it comes to Detroit – yeah, right!) What makes me really jealous is that next year LeakyCon will be held in London. OMG! I’d take a trip to London even if LeakyCon wasn’t there.  And this is from soneone who doesn't like airplanes! Anyway, Selina Wilkens over at Hypable wrote a quick article describing her experiences at LeakyCon .

Happy Weekend!

Breaking Up is Easy to Do

One skill new writers have to learn is how to provide a description of a new location or a new character without slowing down the story. Experienced writers have discovered all sorts of tricks for weaving descriptions naturally into the story, subtly slipping them in during bits of action or interior thought or in the middle of dialogue. For those of us who have yet to learn these skills, our descriptions tend to read more like lists. You know what I mean. Three or more sentences in a row whose sole purpose is to list the contents of the room the MC has just entered or to catalog the physical appearance of the character who has just shown up. I’m guilty of this myself. And while this method works fine in most cases, as long as the description is written in an interesting manner, there is room for improvement.

One trick I’ve been using of late involves breaking the description up into pieces and spreading it out over the page. Instead of starting out with four or five sentences describing the spooky room the MC has just entered, I find it works better to limit myself to two or three descriptive sentences at first, enough to give the reader the right impression, and then dispersing the rest of the description over the next several paragraphs (or pages).

Not only does this keep the story moving, but by delivering the description in piecemeal fashion, you make more of an impression on your readers. One thing I’ve learned while teaching chemistry is that you can’t drown the student with too much material at once. You need to spoon it out a little at a time and then build upon what you’ve already told them.

It works the same way when writing fiction. You can only have so many sentences in a row telling the reader the room is spooky before their effectiveness dwindles, but by spreading the sentences out over several paragraphs, their effects multiply. Every time they see another hint that the room is spooky, it reinforces all the earlier references to spookiness.

This technique works for backstory too. Although I don’t mind backstory as much as some, too much backstory all at once can be a drag. By dripping in bits of the backstory a sentence or two at a time, in small doses dispersed over many pages, most of the problems with backstory disappear, especially if you’re good at weaving backstory naturally into the narrative.

Question: Are you one of those writers who weave description gracefully into your story, or are you like me?

Friday Links

Okay, so Friday is almost over in Michigan, but I can't miss two Fridays in a row, so here goes.

First up, we have a letter from Pete Docter of Pixar, in which he writes about how patience and working on your craft can pay off.  Enlightening.

Next, for those of you who enjoy the castle I have on my blog's banner head, here's a link to more pictures of the same castle.  It's called Castle Miranda and it's in Belgium. 

Finally, from my CP, a periodic table for Harry Potter.  This excites me both as a Harry Potter fan and as a chemist.  Thanks Sheryl.

Have a great weekend.