The Perfect Shade of Blue

My daughter is in high school pep band. Not long ago, I drove her to the school so she could play at a basketball game. It was early evening, and the sun was going down. The underneath of the plump clouds were the pinkish-orange of Ruby Red grapefruit, while the tops were a soft pewter.

My daughter didn't notice the clouds, though. Instead, she said, "the sky is the perfect shade of blue."

I asked her what she meant, and she said, "I don't know, that color of blue just makes me happy."

That got me started thinking. Is there a perfect shade of blue? Or green? Or brown? Or purple? Or any color? Or is it entirely subjective?

For her, apparently the perfect shade of blue is the baby blue of a cheesy tuxedo.

 
For me, when I think of blue, I remember the big crayon box from when I was a kid, and the blue I always reached for was Midnight Blue. I loved the dark, rich, mystery of it. I could imagine sinking into a world of midnight blue.

When I'm talking to my composition students about description, and trying to get them to show, not tell, one of the exercises I give them is meant to force them to practice description beyond the simple and obvious.

I tell them, it's easy to describe what someone looks like because human beings depend heavily on our sense of vision. But how do you describe what lemonade tastes like to someone who's never tasted it?

 What a headache feels like to someone who's never had one?

What a cinnamon roll smells like to someone who's never smelled one?

What a rock concert sounds like to someone who's never heard one?

Suddenly you have to reach beyond sweet, tart, painful, delicious, and loud into shared feelings, experiences, and thoughts in order to convey the essence of those things to your readers.

It's not an easy task.

Which brings me back to colors.

I'm going to give you a writing exercise now:

In the comments, write a descriptive paragraph about your favorite color. I don't mean just blue, or red, or yellow. I mean cerulean, or garnet, or goldenrod. Describe it as if your readers have never seen it, exploring what it reminds you of (things and memories), or what it makes you think or feel. Connect with readers on the level of common experience.

I can't wait to read what you come up with!

~Margaret

A Career In Books?

An editor in New York recently said to me, "This is one of the last true apprenticeship fields." Although she meant it as just an interesting aside, the more I thought about it, the more I realized this is both a problem and an unfortunate truth in writing and publishing.

If you're like me, as many in our field are, you spent your childhood with your nose in a book. Late nights under the covers with a flashlight, sitting on the sidewalk while others did sports, and hours at the local library are the bright, shiny, happy spots in your memory.

Books, books, books. Must read all the books.

Sadly for me, as I got older, reading became less an obsession and more of a hobby. My English class in high school was uninspiring, and few of my peers read like I did. I was from a small town and a child of poverty, so although I had dabbled in writing here and there, there was no concept of being a writer for a living. I was privileged enough to go to college, but there was no way I would waste that opportunity on an English major. I didn't know taking a literature class was an option, let alone having a career in books. (This belief prevails. Check out this Slate article: Major Exodus: How do post-recession English departments attract students to a field losing popularity?) Thus I got my B.S. and reading was further pushed into the "something I only do for fun," area of my life.

What am I doing with my life?

Ironically, it was my career in biology that reunited me with my love of books. As a field biologist I got to witness many of the amazing creatures nature has to offer. That being said, I was also twiddling my thumbs, a lot. You do quite a bit of "observing" in the field, which means waiting and watching for something to happen. That's when the ideas for a novel started crowding my brain. I spent my nights tapping away at the computer, and it rekindled the love and obsession I had as a child. One year later, ta-da! My first complete novel.

Ta da! I will be a famous novelist!

I was going to make a living as a writer! This was what I should have being doing all along! Of course as anyone in the publishing world will tell you, it wasn't ready. But I didn't know that. It took 100+ rejections, a MFA in Creative Writing, self-publishing my next novel, and a 2-year unpaid internship at a literary agency for me to understand, six years later, what "ready" meant.

What makes you think your book is special?

All of that experience was my apprenticeship, and it opened my eyes to the world of publishing as a potential career. If you love books, despite what people tell you, teaching English or starving writer are not the only career options. The book industry world needs managing editors, literary agents, book-marketing gurus, book buyers, bookstores, designers, proofreaders, copy editors, ghost writers, book reviewers, writing conference leaders, distributors, publishers, the list goes on.

I only wish someone had pointed this out to the little girl with her nose in a book. I would have started earlier, done the unpaid internship in college, taken the courses in writing/literature, begun my career path sooner, so that the struggle would have been at the age it should have been. The MFA programs are equally as guilty, many of them focus on writing as art, scorning the "commercial" world, which is where most people in the book business make a living.

You write commercial fiction?

Many others who work in the book industry have a similar story to mine. They fell into it later in life, and realized they were in love, but it took some time to get to a moderately successful career and there were many financial sacrifices along the way. And still others don't make it that far. The path to publishing is littered with ex-editors who couldn't survive on such low salaries, ex-literary agents who didn't have financial support in those first few penniless years, ex-interns who had to get a paying job and more.

Why can't being an author and working within the book industry be a viable career path for everyone? Why can't more universities offer programs like Columbia's Publishing Course? Why are we expected to toil away at un-paid/low-wage apprenticeships just to get our foot in the door? Why is it that there is not a career path for novelists the way there are for so many other jobs? Why is there so little money in such an important field? And why is most of it concentrated in NYC, one of the most expensive cities to live in the world?

I don't have to put up with this, do I?

It was luck and privilege that I was able to follow my dream career at an older age, which included a partner willing and able to support me and an educated mother who taught me to love to read. People say that publishing/writing is a career for trust-fund kids and retirees. This is not true, but it is definitely an uphill battle if you don't have those advantages. One of the biggest reasons for this is a lack of information/opportunity available to those with less means. There are not many options for the not-so-privileged, the need-to-work-for-a-living, and the few paths to work in books that are viable for us are buried under negative stereotypes of post-English-major lifestyles.

Hey there. I work with books!

Books are considered a luxury commodity, even though reading and writing have proven again and again to be a crucial aspect of human nature. See the Guardian's Reading Fiction "Improves" Empathy Study Finds, or the New York Times's Writing Your Way to Happiness or NPR's How Orwell's 'Animal Farm' Led a Radical Muslim to Moderation.

Yes, you can work with books.
(And maybe the next doctor will be a POC. Maybe.)

The world needs more (and diverse) people working in books, but how will that happen with the current lack of support in the education system and society in general?

Do You Know Where You Are?

I was late to my first day of class. My prospects of making a good impression with the teacher decreased dramatically every time I ran up to a building only to discover that the class was no longer where it should be. The community college is a campus of buildings spread across small hills. The hills aren’t big or particularly challenging, except when you are late for a class you are hoping to add. Then it seems everywhere you go, you are either going up a hill or down one.

For the second time that morning, I climbed the steps to the student services building to get some help. This wasn’t the first time I’ve been to the campus or taken a class here, but a few years have passed, and I hardly recognized the school. Large areas, once rolling swaths of grass, were now cut up and fenced off with eight foot high cyclone fences, which gave you a sense of walking through a zoo rather than a school. Everywhere I turned seemed to be in some state of construction. A brand new fine arts building unexpectedly appeared before me. I then passed another new building, almost complete. A construction worker called down to his co-worker who yelled back over the din of jackhammers below. Students were scattered, milling around the bookstore, either reading their textbooks or talking to classmates sitting on the weathered wood benches, or gathered around the short adobe-like walls that

carved out small patches of green turf and surrounded the large oak and walnut trees.

I was told the creative writing class was in another building located in another area of the campus. This time, further east, near the parking lot, in one of the older buildings. I climbed yet another hill. Rather this time, it was concrete ramp, leading to a row of classrooms. The 70’s single story, flat-roofed building was unremarkable, except for its stark contrast to the newest building across the campus, jutting forth above the trees, like a trumpet pointing upward, as if to herald its arrival. Around the corner I heard the dripping of water and wondered, when did it rain? It didn’t. I obeyed the cautionary signs and watched my step.

By the time I reached the classroom, the right one this time, class was nearly over. My abrupt entrance interrupted the teacher, who had been in the middle of reading a poem out loud. He pushed his glasses up his nose to look at me. I recognized him immediately. I'd taken his class a number of years ago. Other than a few more wrinkles and a little more gray, he was the same as I remembered. Out of nervousness, I blurted out that I wanted to add his class.

The teacher asked, “Do you know where you are?”

I answered with a yes, but his question took me off guard. I reflexively looked around. Did I know where I was? The room was small and somewhat cramped. The L-shaped student desks were jammed so close together, there hardly seemed any space between them. A dampness clung to the air. The black built-in bookshelves on the back wall were empty, which seemed sad to me, especially for a creative writing class, but there was also a part of me that appreciated the irony of it. Writing students sat elbow to elbow, staring at me. I felt the heat rising underneath my shirt, and now wished I hadn’t grabbed the down jacket in my haste earlier that morning. 

“Do you like to read poems and short stories?” The teacher asked.

“I do.” Of course I do, I thought. I had the student loans to prove it.

“Do you like to write poems and short stories?"

“I do,” I said, except my voice wavered slightly. When was the last time I actually wrote a poem?

“First take a seat and see if by the end of the class you really want to be here.”

I took one of the seats that was off to the side, like a chair in time-out. I ended up sitting next to someone else who wanted to add the class. The teacher resumed his lesson, and I shifted into a “writerly” state of mind. I eased back against the hard, wooden chair, and listened to my classmates deconstruct a Billy Collins poem.

To be quite honest, I was back in community college, taking a writing class in order to force myself to write. It turns out I’d written more in one semester of grad school than I have in the five years after getting my MFA. My focus had since turned to publishing and my creative outlets were replaced more and more with design, mainly book design.

At the end of the class, the teacher gave me my first assignment, which was to write an edible poem or a poem with a sense of place. I chose the latter because I wrote an edible poem the last time I took the class several years ago (which you can read on Fictionaut). In trying to come up with a place to write about, I realized that one of the first things I want to know before designing a book cover is where the story is taking place. I often go into bookstores or stores with book departments to check out the latest book covers. Many books I found, especially genre fiction, evoke a sense of place on their covers.

A sense of place can pull you into the story and place you inside a character's point of view:

My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard-it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion.

 -F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald grounds the scene and situates the narrator with specific, concrete imagery. I’ve never been to a Hôtel de Ville in Normady, but I almost feel I’d recognize Gatsby's sprawling grounds and ostentatious mansion if I did.

Setting or a sense of place doesn’t have to be static either: 

If on leaving town you take the church road you soon will pass a glaring hill of bonywhite slabs and brown burned flowers; this is the Baptist cemetery. Our people, Talbos, Fenwicks, are buried there; my mother lies next to my father, and the graves of kinfolk, twenty or more, are around them like the prone roots of a stony tree. Below the hill grows a field of high Indian grass that changes color with the seasons; go see it in the fall, late September, when it has gone red as sunset, when scarlet shadows like firelight breeze over it and the autumn winds strum on its dry leaves sighing human music, a harp of voices.

Truman Capote, from The Grass Harp

I love the forward movement, like a camera lens moving, recording the landscape it encounters. It feels multi-dimensional and teeming with color. Capote adds texture with an element of sound. He also includes character background, history and uses direct address to pull the reader in further.

For the class assignment, I ended up writing a poem about Kauai, but as I wrote it, I wondered if readers would think it was Florida, so I narrowed the focus, bringing it down to road-level and kept moving as if the reader and I were making our way through the tropical trail, then pulling the narrative lens up for a grander sense of the place, a bird’s eye view. I even titled the poem “Bird Island.”

When I handed in the poem, I felt a sort of anxious acceptance. It has been a while since I’ve written something to share with someone else other than my cats. And it was in that moment, in that classroom with other writers reading, writing, and sharing, when I fully understood the teacher’s earlier questions. Yes, I know where I am now. I am exactly where I should be.

Plotting VS Pantsing SMACKDOWN!

     Welcome to the my first SMACKDOWN! Today I want to take a look at the two processes of writing:

PLOTTING:

Mario, Super Smash Bros Wii U

and

PANTSING:

Link and Yoshi, Smash Bros Wii U

Let our combatants duke it out!

PANTSING:

I want to start with pantsing because it's the process I'm most familiar with. That's right, I'm a pantser. Why? Pantsing seems easy, to begin with. There are minimal notes and not a whole lot of research. Pansting is, by definition, flying be the seat of your pants. In fact, Wikinano defines pantsing as this: Pantsing (also known as winging it) is the term Wrimos use refering to writing without a fixed outline (an outline that the writer will force themselves to follow). A Wrimo who adopts the pantsing approach to writing is called a pantser. 

Pantsing usually occurs when a character, or a plot, pulls at the writer and must be told. Sometimes it can come from a scene, or an ending that the author simply can't get out of their mind. That's how it works for me. I see a storyline, I find my ending and I simply have to write it. I may take a few notes along the way, post-it notes are my best friend, but it's characters and a world that calls so strongly that I don't feel like I have time to write a ton of notes or outlines.

I live in a structured world. My husband is very structured. He likes things in their proper places, at all times. He likes to know where we're going, when we're going and roughly how long we're going to be gone. That's great, in life that structure works. We're rarely late, and the house is in perfect order. I, on the other hand, by nature live in an organized chaos. I choose this on purpose. I don't often care for structure because life doesn't always go according to plan. Same with my writing. I don't want to micromanage my characters. I get enough of that in real life. I like them to be free. I want them to tell their own story in their own way, and it works, but it's not without its faults. Sometimes it opens huge plot holes and character discrepancies that have to be addressed during editing. 

Here are some of my tips on pantsing:

1. Know your genre- I think this is true of both plotting and pantsing. Know who you're writing for. If you think your writing for YA, but the character you're seeing is middle grade, your story is going to come out middle grade. Be aware ahead of time the group you're writing for and what style you're writing. It'll save you a lot of re-writes in the long run.

2. Know your setting- You had a vision of the ending scene of your story. Great. Now you have to figure out the important parts that you're going to need to go back to the story and tell it from the beginning. There are a few parts that every pantser needs to know in advance. Where is your story told? What time is it being told in? If the story starts in the south of France and moves to Kentucky without your character ever boarding a plane, you've got a problem and a lot of rewrites. As carefree as we want pantsing to be, there does need to be a little forethought. 

3. Know your characters- Do you need to write a big bubble outline of every character trait your MC has? I never have. I see the basics of my character. Blonde hair, blue eyes, maybe a little snarky or like Sherlock Holmes (the Robert Downey Jr. version). Great. Write those down. Most of the time your character will develope their own peronality as you write, but it helps to have a few notes so you don't forget, if you step away, that your character has minty green eyes and silvery lilac hair. 

4. Keep writing- This is tough because sometimes in pansting it's easy to get stuck on a plot hole. There are times where you want to take a step back, or when you have to take a step back and then you re-read and you think I hate all of this and want to erase it all and start over. Don't. Pantsing is really about editing. It's about getting the words out of your head and onto paper because your character is screaming to have his/or her story told. Don't stop writing. If you get stuck, skip ahead to a scene you are ready to write and come back, but don't re-read and re-write. Get it all out, then go back and make changes. Keep the momentum. 

You aren't alone. Nora Roberts said, "I never know where my story is going. I sit down at the computer to find out."

Point: Pantsing.

Link Final Smash, Super Smash Bros Wii U

PLOTTING:

By now you're probably thinking she's biased. She's a pantster and she chose Link (her favorite video game character) to represent pansting. How can she objectively look at plotting? 

Well, I've plotted. My first three complete manuscripts I pantsed, but the time finally came where I felt the need to plot. Plotting requires a lot of work. There are spreadsheets and color codings. Robison Wells posted a picture on facebook once of those big science poster boards with a crazy flow chart of arrows and colors for a novel he was working on. Holy Hannah. The thought of all of that work on top of writing and editing blows my mind, but it is often needed. There are a lot of people who have crazy schedules, who aren't stay at home mom's that can write when the kids take naps or go outside to play. A lot of authors have a job or two plus a household to run. Keeping track of a storyline can just add to the already piled workload. That's where plotting and outlining come in.

Plotting and outlining have great resources. Pinterest has helped when searching for the perfect look for a character, or a setting I couldn't quite see. Scrivener has a lot of tools to help take notes or keep track of ideas. Some prefer paper over computer programs. Old school bubble outlines are my preferred method, but whatever method you choose, plotting helps structure and keep organized while writing.

When plotting and outlining for my last ms, I noticed that I knew the ending. The characters had birthdates and astrological signs that pointed to personality traits. Settings weren't just a vision in my head but an actual place that I could research or tour and make notes along the way. I knew all of the plot structure so there was a lot less guessing and stepping away. Was it easier? I don't know. They both felt like they were easy and hard at times, but it was nice to have the notes ahead of time to go back to whenever I got stuck.

Here are a few of my tips for plotting:

1. Get a Pinterest account- I've already said it, but I want to say it again. Pinterest is incredibly helpful for envisioning characters and setting. Create a storyboard to post to. Identify the characters and who they are. Post pictures of outfits, houses, beautiful scenery and anything else that's going to help the story. Why? Because sometimes it's easier to picture if you can already see it. 

2. Find a program that works for you- Maybe Scrivener and Excel are the programs for you with spreadsheets and color coding. Maybe you prefer writing it out by hand with bubbles or bullets. Or maybe you're the kind of person who likes dozens of posterboards stretched out across the room with colors and lines and every point possibly in the ms. Doesn't matter so long as it works for you and don't get discouraged if  the first way you try doesn't work. Keep trying until you find the one that does.

3. Do your research- Plotting and outlining requires research. It's what makes plotting and outlining what they are. It helps the writing to run smoothly and allows the author to be able to step away for a while and come back knowing exactly where they were and where they were going. Plotting and outlining require discipline. Know your characters inside and out, know the world you're creating, know where your story is going. That's why outlining is useful and helps when life gets too busy or for people who just like structure. It may only be a line or two about the plot, but it keeps you on track. If research isn't your thing, try pantsing.   

A lot of well known authors are known for their plotting such as J.K. Rowling, Sylvia Plath and Norman Mailer.

Point: Plotting

Mario final smash, Super Smash Bros Wii U

There is no right or wrong way. Pantsing may work for one story and not with another. Some people may always pants, others may always plot. Find what works for you. Experiment with both types and go with whatever feels more natural. Don't pick one because someone tells you it works better, or they wouldn't ever use the other. Just like every writer and every book, every process is different.

Mario and Link, Super Smash Bros Wii U

Do you have a preferred method? Any other tips you'd like to share? Have opinions on my next smackdown? Leave them in the comments below and look for the next Relentless Writer's post Thursday!

Are You a Loner or a Groupie?

Writing, for me, has always been a solitary practice, one fiercely guarded. Other authors may argue this point, but Stephen King concurs and that was enough for me to feel good about avoiding writers’ groups like the plague. The thought of sharing my work in a room full of people made me twitchy.

 

Then in late October, in order to jumpstart Book Two of a trilogy, I decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I’d done it in 2012 and reached 19K words. But this time I wanted to go the distance, to reach the 50K-word goal for the win. So, taking a last-minute shot, I registered at the NaNo website, scribbled out a rough table of contents - chapter titles to point me in the right direction as the story developed – and announced on Facebook that I was IN.

Soon after, I saw a post by Margaret Bail calling for NaNo’ers interested in forming a Facebook group. It piqued my interest, but remember, I’m a loner, so I agonized for a bit before deciding to give it a try, and then with the caveat (to myself) that if it hindered rather than helped, I would bow out and go it alone.

 

 

In the beginning, I hung back when the other group members “sprinted”, thirty-minute bursts of flat-out writing, but their word counts (and banter) kept appearing in my Facebook feed, and one day when struggling to keep my butt in the chair, I decided to join in. And voila. It worked. On the first sprint I wrote about 380 words, but by the second I hit my stride (540ish) and was hooked.

Photo Courtesy of redorbit.com
 

The group challenged, supported and encouraged me to keep up with the daily word count (the key to winning NaNo). I can’t tell you how many times I woke up in the morning, to see Andrew or Anna’s posts from the other side of the globe (where the day was ending), or signed on in the evening to see the east coaster’s sprinting, and thought, “They did it. They’re doing it. I can do it too.”

And I did. When I reached the pinnacle, the coveted 50K words on November 30th, my group members celebrated out-loud, making the victory not just mine, but theirs. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment at reaching your goal (and writing the first-half of your next novel) multiplied by twenty-three!

Thank you, thank you, to each and every member of our NaNoWriMo2014 Facebook group. You got me to my goal AND changed my mind about groups. I owe you.

Of course, writing, for me, is still a personal experience, but I learned a valuable lesson: the two are not mutually exclusive. I can write alone and share tidbits with others, ask for advice, work out character and plot issues, give my input on theirs, and generally be a part of something bigger that gathers momentum and draws me along with it.

Nothing wrong with that!

~ Olivia J. Herrell

P.S. Happy Groundhog Day! Here's a teaser/trailer from one of my favorite movies "Groundhog Day". Enjoy!