writing

Ten rules for writing fiction | Books | guardian.co.uk

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A member of my writing group, the Internet Writing Workshop, posted a link to this article in the Guardian: collected lists from authors such as Margaret Atwood and Stephen King – their personal rules for writing. One rule is on all the lists – write and then write some more. Write, revise, write, make it as well. I must say I always get a kick out of Margaret Atwood’s. I like her advice to take a pencil on the plane as pens leak. Take two, she says, one may break. A link to her blog is to the right.
Another piece of advice, not in these lists, is to do something “writerly” if you come to a blank spot: look for an agent; write your blog; read about writing; read about grammar; read.

The Globe and Mail reports this morning that the G20 meeting is coming to Toronto in June. Much wailing about the disruption to the city, to commerce, to the life of the people who live and work downtown. It’s only for two days, people. The city has that much disruption from marathons for this cause, and parades for that.
The potential violence is another matter. Earlier this week I blogged about the Black Bloc, the criminals in facemasks allowed to march with legitimate protestors and commit random acts of destruction. I don’t understand why, if it is reasonable to assume that a person wearing a mask in a bank is about to commit a criminal act and should be arrested, or at least called to account, the same individual in the midst of a crowd of similarly dressed people – the Black Bloc – which has a history of random violence, should not. And no, I don’t think hiding one’s face with the clear intention of creating terror and avoiding responsibility for criminal acts is a civil right.

That First Page

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A commentator on this blog suggested Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel to help with revision on my new novel. As always, Amazon suggested another, Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages. I started with that one, because it didn’t come with a workbook, as Maass’ does.
Ha! The work comes at the end of each chapter, when he assigns exercises to be completed before venturing on to the next. First, remove all adjectives and adverbs, he says. Secondly, make a list of all the nouns and verbs, checking for the tired, or cliche. Then revise. Does he know how long that takes? Three hours on Sunday morning, and that was on the first page , which had all ready been revised countless times.
But it’s a much better first page now. Removing words from context showed me where I had duplications or commonplace words.
I long to drop this novel now, moving on to the revision of the one just written, which lies dormant in my computer, waiting for me to work on it’s first page. I won’t though, because this one is a sequel to my first published novel, and I want it to be the better book.
I’ve started Maass’ book as well, curious to discover if a breakout novel is something I can aspire to, and how to improve my writing to achieve it.
I started late at this craft of writing. I’m grateful to Donald Maass and Noah Lukeman, and others for helping me learn it.

Revision

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The revision of a novel can take years, as it did for my first one, or fewer years, as it has for the one under review now. Somehow, I’ve managed to have one published, one being revised, and one sitting in my computer, percolating.
Revision is mainly rewriting, in my hands anyway. The worst is deleting a big chunk of prose, as I did this morning, because I felt it was telling, not showing. I replaced it with a much shorter piece of dialogue. If I keep cutting, i’m going to end up with a novella!

This proroguing of Parliament has irritated me more than almost anything Harper has done, and he has done a lot that I objected to. I think he has shown a contempt for the people that is astounding. And I’m not the only one. True blue conservatives, of the non-Reform Party variety, are also taken aback by this abuse of power. There was no real need, after all, except that he didn’t want to answer the questions in the House. Or maybe he and his minions just wanted a long winter vacation. The rest of us are at work, and want to see the M.P.s at it as well. Besides that, we want him to answer the questions, about Afghanistan and the budget, and whatever else comes up, and answer them in the House, where the people we elected to ask him questions, can do so.
Oh, and don’t tell me he needs the time to consult about the budget. I don’t believe for one minute that anything the people say affects him one whit. Again, that’s what we pay the opposition M.P.s for.

publishing

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My short story, Clarice, will be published at the Gumshoe Review, on January 1. This is my first short story accepted by a paying market!
When I started this year, I wanted to submit something every month at least, hoping that would lead to publishing success, and it has. My new goal is to find a print market for my books, while there still are books in paper. To hold in my hand a book that I have written, would be the best.

Christmas Preparations.

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List-making, shopping, baking, more lists. It goes on for days and the party is over in a few hours. And then there are the decorations and the tree, and the presents, and the drop-over-for-a-drinks. But our children will be home and our friends are coming, and we’ll all have a good time. Or so we hope.

Good news for me this week. My story, Jack’s Luck, has taken second place in the Wynterblue Publishing contest for November, and will be in Confabulation3 next spring.

There was bad news as well. The publishing house found that one of the contestants, who has been submitting for some time, was plagiarizing. This has resulted in many contestants pulling out all together, as well as several judges. It is disconcerting because now the firm is considering legal action, and has not publicized the name of the individual concerned. All I know for sure is that it wasn’t any of the people on November’s short list. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of writing within the parameters of the contest.

Plagiarism steals the thoughts and writing of others, and in this case also robs other writers of their chance for success.

Winter Writing

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Winter has settled in here. Snow days, wind chills in the minus teens, slippery sidewalks, and shivering robins, still hanging around in the crabapple trees when they should be in Georgia or Florida.

It should be a good time for writing, but lately I’ve been focussed on websites and search engine optimization and Google analytics and other such arcane and here-to-fore unknown subjects, all to increase traffic to my website and blog and eventually to sales of my book. Or so I hope.

There appear to be as many people trying to make a dollar from exploitation of a writer’s work online as there are in the print world. I see sites with books by agents and marketers, ezines,  selling the surest route to a best seller, if only the author would take an eight hundred dollar course, and oh, bye the way sign up three friends to  get fifty per cent off,  and  others offering to rewrite the opus, and then it would sell millions of copies and be the next Harry Potter.

As I struggle through SEO for Dummies, and Blogging ditto, I wonder what would be wrong with writing just for me. But then I would just have to think, and remember and never write at all. Writing only has value and purpose, to my way of thinking, if shared.

Se’nnight

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Se’nnight, a word from Middle English that means a week, seven nights. It was derived from Old English, seafon nihta, and has relatives in many languages including Italian(settimana), French(semaine) and Catalan(setimana).
I first met it in a Rex Stout short story, used, not by the erudite Nero Wolfe, Stout’s polymath main character, but by a low level hood. “Where did you pick that up?” he is asked.
“Oh some wag started it around last summer.”
The Oxford English revised says it is archaic, Middle English(1150-1500), but there are references to its use later than that period.
Dr. Donald Straughan, in directing the transcribers of the Bath Chronicle(1760-1800) for the Georgian Newspaper Project, instructs them that the word is se’nnight, sometimes fe’nnight, and means a week, not a fortnight.
Se’nnight is included in the Emily Dickinson Lexicon for her 19th Century poems, and Virginia Woolf used it in 1928’s Orlando. The Rex Stout short story I mentioned is called Easter Parade and was published in 1957.
Perhaps the old words aren’t dead, just waiting to be rediscovered.
I’ll write again, Sunday se’nnight.