5 Misconceptions of Beginning Writers

Picture it:

Nashville, 2013. A tiny black girl fresh out of undergrad sends off her work to different universities to study fiction for her MFA. She writes and waits. She waits and writes. Eventually, she receives letters back from these universities, all rejections. She’s heartbroken — shocked! Surely she’ll never be a writer. Surely her years of practicing have been utterly wasted! Despairing, she gives up completely.

For a few minutes.

She spends her year off working on her writing package, putting together new stories, creating a local writing group and getting feedback and studying her craft.

The next year, she sends off to Emerson College for her MFA and gets in. She gets a bunch of accolades, graduates with honors, and tons of people loves her stories.

Kids, that tiny black girl was me. What I’m saying is, the world of writing is hard and full of rejection and no one is cheering for you. You gotta cheer for yourself. But when you’re just starting out and your skin hasn’t hardened yet, it can be tough to psyche yourself up after a barrage of rejections. You might immediately think, Well, I’m no good and there’s no point.

Hey, maybe you aren’t any good! Yet. No need to give up. To brighten your heart, here are some helpful tips from your friendly local storyteller to combat the

5 Misconceptions of Beginning Writers

1. “This story I thought of is too big and scary for my current skill level!”

Well, you might be right. Maybe it’s full of things you don’t know how to do — world-building, a faraway place with rules you have to make up, a strange narration decision, time travel mechanics… scary stuff. And surely over your head. But you’re never going to grow if you don’t challenge yourself. Part of leveling up is grabbing something bigger than you can handle and riding it until it throws you. Then you do it again. Then you do it again. Your past is your best teacher — when you look back at what you’ve written, just watch when you catch yourself saying, “Yikes, I wouldn’t do that now. I would probably handle it like this…” Allow yourself to struggle.

2. “I can’t watch TV/movies and be a good writer. I can only read!”

Um, who told you that? Some asshole who doesn’t know anything and thinks that good storytelling revolves around stodgy, humorless prose. Certainly not the case. Great storytelling can be found anywhere — narrative is not something limited to the written word and acknowledging this and using it to your advantage will give you a leg up over that asshole adjusting his glasses in your MFA class. Yo, fuck him!

Sorry but I just have a virulent hatred of people who hold their noses high over any other type of media. These are literally the same people with paragraphs so bogged down in Faulkner Lite 2-for-1 discount bin nonsense. Their opinions don’t matter. Next!

3. “Good prose matters most!”

See above. I’m not saying good prose doesn’t matter at all — you do need to have a grasp on the language and know how to express yourself in a calm and clear manner, and pretty flourishes are fun as all get out. However, this is always true: the story matters most. Case in point, sometimes at the magazine, we have fiction in the slushpile where I read the first paragraph and say, “Ooh, what nice prose,” but then we’re on the second page and literally nothing has happened yet and it’s an instant rejection. Get to the meat or get out of the fucking street.

4. “No one wants to read what I’m writing…”

Simply not true. Do you know how many people are on this planet? People read with enthusiasm foot porn, how-to manuals on fixing drain clogs, let’s play guides, dime cozies, drag queen biographies, the same hurt/comfort fanfiction they read when they were twelve, poorly written think pieces in Vanity Fair, tweet clusters by 14-year-old girls, mean comments on YouTube… you think people could read all that stuff and yet there’s no one out there perfectly tuned in to what you want to write? Think again.

5. “I’ll never be a real writer.”

Look, kid. Are you a corporeal being? Are you writing things down? You’re a real writer. Hate to break it to you.

Sex Scenes and Immersion

I did NOT believe I would be back so soon with another write-in, yet here we are! Thanks so much for your questions.

Today’s question comes from Mr. Cheese Deluxe Extravaganza (lmao I’m not lying) and they ask:

Hello Robyn! Hope you're warm and snuggly with a nice cup of hot cocoa and cuddles from your pet! I have 2 questions for ya! :

1. How do you write smut scenes? (Plus highlight stuff you love writing about! ) Any inspo you look at that inspire your work? (Manga,anime,movies etc)

2.How do you get your audience to be immersed in your stories? I love that about your work cuz I get really sucked into your characters and their world.

Thank you!

I AM warm and snuggly, but with coffee. Close enough to hot cocoa! My pet is also nearby, nosing around for snacks.

I think it might surprise you to know that with sex scenes in general, I’m more inspired by music than anything visual. (Although, yes, I’m a big fan of anime and manga.) Since writing these scenes, for me at least, relies on simplicity of emotions, I find that best replicated in music. There’s always a certain tempo for sex and it varies based on the couple and where they’re at in the relationship and how they feel about each other. So a hate sex scene is going to have a different sound to it than, say, a ~*romantic*~ sex scene.

The key to this is that I always have a relative idea of what music/genre/band relates to the story. I use music a lot not just in the sex scenes but it impacts the world of the story itself. My characters usually do have a genre of music they’re into or there is a theme of some music throughout. You can find this to be true in all recent examples: Come, Thou Almighty! had hymns; Little Animals had Riots in Africa; Prothalamion had R&B and rap influences. So these carry over into sex scenes.

Personally, I enjoy the differences in all the sex scenes because their characters and their situations are varied. They don’t always like each other and they don’t always get along. They don’t come from the same places or have the same friends. That’s why all the sex chapters come out so wildly different. If it was just the same two identical people going at it in the same way again and again and again… well, not only does that become predictable, but it’s not impressive.

THIS BRINGS ME TO YOUR SECOND QUESTION.

Immersion happens when the world of the story is a complete bubble — I touched on this briefly yesterday when I talked about time period, setting, but this also includes what I just mentioned about music. Your world has to exist on its own, have its own rules. This has nothing to do with realism — same thing could easily be accomplished in a wild and wacky fantasy, of course, but the key is to make even that world adhere to its own rules.

A lot of readers can get pulled out of the zone with something like wonky dialogue or repetitive and boring prose. Editing is its own savior here because no one is immune from the odd bad line — just edit it out before people see it.

Another thing I would say here is that it’s about command of the language. Readers respond to a storyteller with a firm grasp on what they’re saying, what they know to be true about the story in motion. If you have iffy/waffling language or use only a light touch when handling a bigger story, that’s an innate turn off and the reader may not even know THAT’S why but it is. Confidence is something that comes from doing this a lot and often. My confidence has been built up over years! It certainly wasn’t always this way.

Thanks again so much for writing in and if you would like to ask a question, hit that Contact button.

I DO Know Something About Birthing Babies, Or: How I Plan Novels

I’m back in the house with a new request from a beloved reader. All you have to do to get me to come out of my hole these days is write in with a question! So, let’s begin.

Reese Anon writes:

Hello Robyn, I hope you're doing well. I was wondering if you can do a post about planning or writing a novel. You mentioned before that the story comes first, but do you always know the plot? How do you flesh it out and know when it's ready?

Thank you for your question and I AM doing well — aside from the bouts of existentialism, panic, and insomnia. But this is a great question and rides the line of generality and specificity in that people approach this different ways so I will have to mainly give my process.

Now I’m not saying my way is the only way, but it’s definitely the best. (Is she kidding? Who knows.)

So, here’s my usual trajectory from nothing going on in my head to I’m going to write a novel:

1. Get beaned in the head with some essential part of the story — this differs for everyone. It can be a scene (pretty common), or a piece of dialogue with little to no context, or just something thematic or maybe a visual.

2. Let this piece gestate. There’s no real background for it so you start rolling it around in your head to make a background. And a foreground. And a midground.

3. Suddenly, your main character appears — flawed, terrible in their glory. They surely fit in… somewhere.

4. Their flaws start growing vines and thorns. Now they’re not flaws, they’re outright problems. And the problems and that first essential part of the story tangle up.

5. This is causality. Either the problem of the story (the conflict) is because of your main character or your main character is because of the problem. Go where it feels right. Use your Spidey sense.

This is the basis I usually have before I start writing. I usually grab other things off the shelf like setting and time. These things aren’t just window dressing but can directly impact the plot of your novel so choose them with care — if your novel’s set in, I don’t know, fucking Miami, it’s unlikely that a snowstorm is going to blow by and unhinge things but you can count on hurricanes depending on the time of the year. Time also dictates how people talk, the slang they use, the media they have ingested. All important.

Setting out writing it, actually birthing your new novel onto the paper, is messy business. At first glance, your child is bloody, covered in mucus, head like a potato. Unpleasant to look at. But fear not, because literally everyone’s first draft is like this (yes, even that famous writer you’re thinking of) and if they say theirs is not, they are a nasty liar.

As you go along your first draft, you learn what the story is actually about. Because the truth is you have no idea after just the steps I’ve said — maybe you pick up characters along the way, maybe you drop them. I can remember in one of my novels, completely combining two characters into one in the second draft because I realized they were almost doing the same job, story-wise, and it would be more economical and clean to have just one.

This is when the plot starts churning. I don’t put a ton of stock in plot when I’m just beginning, honestly. It’s something that rears its head depending on the characters’ decisions. By having (like in step one) essential set pieces, scenes, lines that you want to hit, you begin to pick up a timeline. You have thing A, G and M that you want to happen. Now you have to find the pieces between them to connect those larger parts.

The important part is to not bore yourself. This is something that can take a backseat until draft two, but once you start looking back through it, if you find yourself yawning, cut. Cut, cut, cut. I don’t care what you have to do, just don’t ever bore yourself. You’re, simultaneously, boring everyone in the room. Nice people won’t tell you that. But it’s totally what’s happening.

I don’t consider something ready until you’ve edited three times. Once, to rewrite. Twice, to finetune. Three times a lady.

Well, Reese, I hope this was somewhat helpful.

And if you’d like to ask a question, hit the Contact button!

Top 5 Things I Learned From My MFA

… Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, hi!

Yes, for all the morbidly-minded, I AM still alive. And I’m still answering your questions! My form is still open, so you can always send me any questions or ideas for blogs! I’ve just lately been so busy with my other writing that I have been scarce on this side of the internet.

Let’s get on to a prompt sent in by Kelly. Kelly writes:

Hi Robyn! I was wondering what were the top five valuable lessons you learned from your MFA program days? Lessons that helped shape you into the writer you are now. Thank you in advance!

Thank you for writing in and I hope these five top tips are in the ballpark of what you’re looking for!

1. You don’t have to take editing advice from everyone. As a matter of fact, that’s deadly. I would never take editing advice from someone whose writing I didn’t respect. You know, it’s weird; when you’re first tossed into critique groups, your mindset is usually (with the aid of the teacher) to accept everyone’s input. You should do that OUTWARDLY. No one’s saying be a dick. But when you’re at home, looking at everyone’s line edits and notes, toss away the notes of the people you know aren’t who or what you aspire to be like. Really.

2. You don’t have to read ten doorstoppers a month to be a good writer. People will posture and list off all the Pulitzer nominees they’ve read but is that doing them any good? Maybe, maybe not. Writing is about the world, it’s not just about other writing. If you’re ingesting media in general and going out and listening to humans talk and noticing the leaves changing, you’re doing the work.

3. That being said, write a lot. Write all the time. Write when it’s sucky and write when it’s hard. Write when you don’t feel like it, even a paragraph a day, even if it’s just to describe your favorite TV show to a friend who really doesn’t wanna hear it. Write anyway.

4. Publishing your short stories in physical journals and magazines is nice and it impresses people in your program but when you get OUT in the real world, nobody reads those things except your family, so find other ways to get your writing into the world.

5. You need to learn the rules before you can gracefully break them. It’s an old adage but true. Studying older literature is good to learn how to twist it and how to build on it. Nothing exists in a void and everything you do will be considered referential anyway, so you might as well know what you’re doing.

Well, I hoped this helped! These five things are not only things I learned while IN the school but things I’ve realized since leaving. They’re what I realized when I looked around myself to see how far I’ve come.

Hindsight is 20/20.

If you’d like to ask a question, just hit the Contact button here on my site and send one in!

Return of the Complainer

Sweet Jesus on a plaid donkey! That was a long hiatus!

I return to you on the eve of February bringing glad tidings: one, I am, in fact, not dead.

Two, I’m still writing, of course.

Three, I finished my Nano with time to spare in November and came out of it with a first draft. Now, have I edited that draft? Of course not. But that’s only because I’ve been busy writing elsewhere. I have a short story coming out in New South here in a few months — the project was delayed by COVID, go figure — and luckily for all of us, some of my old magazine contracts are coming up on their end. You know what that means! Rights revert back to me and I can post them so you, the people, can enjoy them.

So that got me thinking. I should make a haven or hub for my writing. And so I’ve done it. If you feel like reading some of my work — currently working on a story called Come, Thou Almighty! , posted chapter by chapter — or just supporting me, you can head over to my kofi below. Just click that black button. There you’ll find stories, OSTs for stories, some of my more audacious writing tips, et al.

That being said, I will return to writing here as well! With a more regular schedule. Seasonal depression will not defeat me. The show must go on.

The Time is Nigh

Whoa, it’s almost the end of October! How’d that happen?

This month of pre-Nanowrimo prepping FLEW BY. Maybe it’s that October’s my favorite month and nothing good lasts. Maybe I just lost track of time.

What’s happened this month?

My agent loved my revision and we sent it out on submission! It’s out in the inboxes of editors and there’s nothing I can do about it anymore, except wait and see what they say. So I turn my attention to the project ahead.

Things I’ve acquired during prepping:

• A moodboard for my project.

• A playlist for my project.

• Lots of notes.

• Peach tea.

• I made a cover for funsies too!

My biggest tips for prepping what is essentially a 50,000 word sprint in a month is just to immerse yourself. This is a luxury, of course, because a lot of people have children, responsibilities, lives — I have none of those things, so I’m able to just cannonball in. If you are struggling with outside annoyances, however, try locking yourself in a room for fifteen minutes a day and devoting this time to jotting down notes on your own. Characters, setting, era, all of which helps. And even when you’re out running errands, daydreaming at odds about your newly blooming world is a precious resource as well.

I’m going away for the weekend but will be back just in time mid-November 1st to get my wordcount in.

Remember that all you need to win is about 1,667 words a day. Don’t let yourself skip too many days as the snowball effect can be daunting. Pace yourself and get it how you want it!

Let's Get Writing Again.

Welcome to October! Welcome to autumn! Ring in the new season! Ding ding, bitches!

My new computer!

Revision Month went off without a hitch so let’s give a big round of applause for ME, who went so hard I pinched a nerve in my back and was completely out of commission for the first 3 days of October. Literally, I finished that revision on Sept 30th and my body said, “I’m out,” and left me a broken shell of a person. I’m on the mend now.

My gifts to myself for finishing my Revision Month:

• a deep tissue massage at my favorite spa

• a new computer rig with gamer keyboard and mouse and camera

• a fall refresher for my wardrobe

So besides my back going the way of the dinosaur, I’m pretty content. As we leave the revised manuscript and wait for my agent to read it, what do we do in the meantime? Well, get ready for Nano, of course… for those of you who don’t know, Nano is short for Nanowrimo which is short for National Novel Writing Month which is an event in November where you write 50k words of a novel in 30 days. It’s fun, it’s stressful, I’ve completed it 3 times! This upcoming one will be my 4th.

To prepare for such an undertaking, I usually take all of October to plan something out.

What do I need to plan? Lots of things. Let’s list them:

• a fresh notebook

• music relative to my upcoming project

• specialty coffee

• a comfortable writing environment (hence me setting up my new space)

I have all these things! The key to planning a whole new novel in a month is just to really relax into it. I don’t write while I’m planning; in fact, I give my poor abused fingers a break. I don’t put much pressure on myself to actively have an idea. Instead I put myself in situations where I’m not thinking about anything too hard. The ideas come racing out of the ether and smack you right in the head.

For example, last night I was just sitting around like a bump on a pickle with my fresh notebook nearby and jotted down nearly a whole page of plot happenings along with some things about my main character. In this stage, what comes comes. I don’t talk much about the plot or the summary of it at this point, to anyone. It’s like bad luck almost, like telling someone you’re pregnant before the first trimester has ended. I keep it to myself and don’t feel any pressure to stick to one idea just because I’ve said it aloud.

As we get closer to November, I’ll post more tips and tricks on planning! Keep in mind that I am a planner, and there exist people in the world who like to go into November with no plan whatsoever and just write whatever comes to mind.

I don’t advise this for a myriad of reasons: accelerating into a wall, incoherency, it’s particularly stressful, etc…

But hey, do whatever the fuck you wanna do. :D

One Scene at a Time

I’m in the mighty grip of my revision month. My back constantly hurts from hunching over the computer, my eyes have gone wonky, I’m tired and irritated and having one long rolling existential crisis.

But everything’s okay, because I’ve got my workflow!

A workflow is a pattern, a rhythm, something to be adhered to even in the face of terrible, seemingly unconquerable monsters/manuscripts. If you hang on to your workflow and apply it to every kink you encounter, surely you will prevail.

(Someone from the audience: “Don’t call me Shirley.”)

Okay, guys, let’s look at the facts. Every writer I’ve ever met has a book, right? Like, a notebook of some sort where they jot down ideas, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes with purpose. Of course I have one too, it changes every year or so once I fill it up. Here’s a gander at this year’s model. It’s got my first draft notes and now my revision notes as I go along!

Yes, yes, Mario stickers. Customization!

Anyway, the way I attack my revising is, after I’ve gone through all my agent’s notes and such, to look at each old chapter and make notes inside my book of what needs to change. Obviously, since I’m now revising chapter 14/15, a lot has been added/taken away and the changes are getting bigger and bigger. How to keep up with all that mishmash? How not to get wildly confused in the tangle?

Sticky notes and willpower! Observe:

I take each chapter, make notes of what I want to change and what I want to keep, this way. The sticky notes are things to keep in mind that have already changed and what I can do to build upon them.

As for the writing you see, I head the chapter notes, and make personal notes about the scenes. I have a shorthand so this won’t take forever. BEHOLD:

Yes, that disheveled young woman in the corner is none other than yours truly.

So I can add these in and not lose my mind too much! The great thing about your own notes is they’re YOUR OWN and no one will judge you for the awful things you put in there! For example, one of my character notes just says for him: ‘gay and likes Melissa Etheridge.’ And for this character’s revision, his notes just changed to ‘VERY gay and likes Melissa Etheridge.’

Every day, I start the workflow over again. I look at the old chapter, make these very colorful notes, and then realign myself with the current revision through my past very colorful notes. I’m always going back into the notes proper to make sure I haven’t overlooked anything huge. This also saves time because I don’t have to inch through the original doc in search of miniscule shit.

My process works for me! What works for you?

Creating Space

So I’m in the middle of revisions for my last completed MS and I had to not only rethink elements of the story but elements of how I’m creating the story. I needed a soft, welcoming place to put myself through the ringer again. And what with the timeliness of my favorite season’s arrival….

My side of our home office.

Revamping my office space! Pumpkin and book-scented candles, soft lighting, new chair, new atmosphere. I figured to change the work, you change the workspace.

It’s hard to think about changing something from the inside out, really. Revision has always been an unwieldy word for me because the scope of it can be so large. But I’m no stranger to it. We did it all the time back in MFA land, back when profs told you there was nothing to salvage but the characters’ names. (Ugh.) You get through it.

My agent gave me tons of extremely helpful line notes in the doc itself and also a long write-up. From there, I went into my notebook and wrote out in bullet points the main changes suggested, and then wrote a side of it that were the main changes I wanted to make. Then, I circled everything that needed to change for it to work.

The hard part about getting revision notes from anyone — whether they’re your agent, editor, critique buddy, prof — is that you’re not always going to agree. You, as the creator, have to examine why you don’t agree.

Is it because you really think it’s fine?

Is it because you’re being lazy?

Or is it pride?

And it’s a new ask every time you look at a problem. At some point, the revision verges, carving its own path. You can think of it a lot like building a person; the first time you built that person, when they rose from the workbench, and you told them to walk, they almost fell down because their legs weren’t strong enough to carry them — low muscle mass, or the heart isn’t pumping enough blood. In this case, for this MS, the limbs seem to all work, and the face is cute, but there’s a real problem in the heart.

The heart of the story changes a lot. If you go in and fiddle with the heart, you’re also fiddling with arteries and blood flow. So many new things pop up. The great part is this is more about building than tearing down, so it is in scope easier than if I had to, say, cut 20,000 words. (Always low-ball the first time around.)

I find myself playing Can You? daily, too, which tells me I’m going in the right direction. What also makes me smile is seeing the story get better in front of my very eyes. A second go-around gives you a chance to embolden characters and let them go off and do things they may have been too scared to do the first time, or you were too scared to let them do.

There’s a fine line — for the changes you know the story needs but may not actually be fun to do. The challenge then becomes: you need to make them fun to do. You’ve almost got to. If you aren’t having fun writing it, no one is having fun reading it. Slog for you is slog for everyone.

There are a few things I hold back on, because I know I’m right about them. It’s certainly possible I didn’t express them correctly, and it’s also my duty to say them more clearly. But when I heard those words the first time, I knew they were true by the way they felt.

Wish me luck! We are 100 pages in and counting.

Hintlord Series #4: Character building 101

Your Hintlord returns! I’ve had a request from a reader who asked about characters and how to build original ones! Here’s her note:

I'd love to hear if and how you manage to create characters who not merely represent a part of who you are or would like to be. I really struggle with creating someone new who is independent from who I am.

This is a great question and I am AWARE there are many schools of thought on this. Even some from my own alma mater that may differ from what you read here. But what you have to understand is: I̶'̶m̶ ̶s̶m̶a̶r̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ I do things differently and they’ve worked out for me so far. :)

For example, some may say that good characters inform the plot; their choices direct the plot and therefore the character’s personalities come first. That’s all well and good in theory but sometimes it doesn’t work out. What if you’ve started your story with a couch potato character who sees something going on out of the corner of his eye but Maury’s on and he doesn’t wanna go check it out? That’s the end of your story unless your “something” comes barreling into Couch Potato’s living room. But that is a conscious choice of the author, so don’t give me that spiel about characters being voodooish and moving around on their own. That comes later.

So, instead, try out this lesson from the School of Robyn: try thinking about your story first. What does the story require?

I’ll be the first one to call myself out on this — my stories often require a blushing, rather submissive twink to be anxiously receptive to another guy’s advances. So I build one. Now, for the reader’s question. How to do this without your character being you/someone you want to be? Well, first of all, don’t make them look like you and there’s a world of separation there to begin with. Second, there’s a difference between who you ARE and what you KNOW. Just because something is in your wheelhouse — for example, characters I have that are into poetry/drawing/yoga — doesn’t mean the character is exactly like you. You use this to add spice, not meat.

In terms of “who you want to be”, hopefully you don’t want to be a shitty person, so you can make the character a shitty person! Trust me, this is always fun. And shitty people are good for a story because they inherently bring conflict with them. They pump in new blood.

(There’s seemingly this stigma against “negative character development” in this new day and age, which is just stupid. There’s nothing wrong with a character deteriorating over the course of the story, becoming less and less someone you’d feel comfortable meeting at night in a parking lot. But that’s a rant for another day.)

So let’s do it how I do it: first, we start with the story. The story always comes first. What do I need to make this idea in my head pop off? Well, let’s use my last published story Impossibly Tender as fodder. The story idea was: man kidnaps kid. That’s pretty basic, huh? To embellish it, I needed a flourishing, multi-layered character to pull that kind of thing off. He would need to be well-liked at least locally (so: teacher), deemed non-threatening to law enforcement (read: white), and he’d also need to be the kind of person who’d do something like that (unhinged) and also have an internal reasoning so that it seems reasonable in both his head and the reader’s, for a time (his own moral compass). And, why would he do this? (Past transgressions.)

When we use the story to build the characters, you’ll be hard-pressed to build one that’s like you.

Now: for all you voodoo purists out there, that’s not to say that building characters this way ensures they never do their own fantastical things and make choices on their own that informs the story in turn. Of COURSE they do. But they can only stand on their own feet if you give them bones and tendons and muscles. It’s not magic, it’s storytelling.

[Would you like a writing hint from the Hintlord? Just send in a request here!]

New Story Alert

Hello, hello! We are due to get back on schedule here in a minute. Upcoming, the next in the Hintlord series will be on characters who are not you, and how to craft them! A request from a regular reader! So look forward to that. But before that:

Click here to read my new story over at Crack the Spine.

Impossibly Tender by yours truly is about a man who negotiates fatherhood in the worst possible way. :)

Summer Update

The summer is GRUELING. Beat after beat of sun on my poor body. I mostly stay inside, these days.

Rather than complain about my sequestering during Corona — as I am wont to do — I will list the good things of this week:

1. I finished my MS and sent it off to my agent. (!!)

2. I have a short story coming out next week here.

3. My dog got a bath and he smells like a toasted marshmallow.

Things aren’t always as bad as they seem. In other news, I’m vastly cutting down my involvement with social media, and soon I will be deleting my Twitter account. I never really use it anyway and the amount of bullshit discourse I see on there only makes me angry. You can’t fight everyone, I’ve learned. You can only put a box over your head and pretend they don’t exist.

In other other news, I’m continuing with my Hintlord series, so if there’s something writerly you’d like me to discuss, hit me up in the contacts!

Hintlord Series #3: Way down in the hole

Ever hear the saying that there’s only two types of writers: gardeners (the nurturing) and architects (the planners)?

Well, it’s BULLSHIT. Know what that is? Archaeologist erasure and I’m. Not. Having it. Of course there’s not only those three either, I’m sure; somewhere out there, there’s a deep-sea diver and a space explorer and a hobo type of writer. But me, myself, I am an archaeologist.

“Beautiful and wise Robyn,” you say to your screen, hands clasped between your breasts, “whatever do you mean by that? What does archaeology have to do with writing?”

Why, I’ll tell you, my needy reader!

First off, we’re gonna use my current project as an example. I just wrote a first draft of a manuscript (no, please, you don’t have to throw your underwear at me) and I’m in the resting phase before I move on to the second draft. But in the first draft, as an archaeologist, what did I do? How did I approach it? We all know first drafts are a mad word vomit, a blueprint, a layout, nothing fit for other human eyes to witness. But when I come to it, it’s a constant dig. Not always down, sometimes out, sideways. There’s something there, I know it. Something hard and strange under the shifting sands. A first draft is me coming by with a giant leafblower and sending the dust away so that I can see the bony ridges rising up.

When writing, often people will get stuck on revising chapter by chapter or bit by bit, knowing that whatever they wrote just now won’t make it to the final draft. Okay, who cares? Who are you showing this to? Nobody, right? If I think a subplot that started in chapter two has hit a dead end by chapter five, I drop it. Just stop writing it. Obviously, that bone has chipped off and is lost, or the rib ends there. Keep it moving.

It’s feeling the creature out. Following lines. One of my favorite things to do is, if I encounter something that I didn’t start digging up earlier but obviously is too good to pass up, I just write it like I’ve been developing it the whole time. Again: who cares? The first draft is supposed to look like a half-unearthed dinosaur. It’s not supposed to be pretty, it’s supposed to tell the writer WHERE things are.

Here’s a good tip, as well, and this does have to do with being an architect instead:

• Build rooms! When you start writing your world, hint at stuff, give people things, give people too many things even. Set up a big important place. And then never go there, if you don’t need to. The point of this is to have recourse later on in the story and to encourage recursion. Having the characters relying on someone, something, somewhere that was set up and developed before will save you in a pinch and if you don’t use it, on your second draft, cut that shit. The first draft exists for you!

And finally, I don’t write the ending in the first draft. The last twenty/thirty pages? Nope. I just stop there and call it a draft, because what’s the point? When I go through the next time, the ending will probably change so dramatically that I’d have to rewrite it bottom up anyway.

Okay, so now your first draft is done. Time to wallow in should-haves, could-haves. This is great! You have the opportunity to get your ass in there and bridge things that are gaped, fill in those ghastly plot holes, explain why Mickey keeps stealing Patty’s panties and how he gets in her room. People tend to look at the second draft like it’s this horror coming for them, but it’s your salvation. You’ve got to look at it like learning from your mistakes.

More on my archaeologist ways after I finish the second draft. Keep digging, friends!

100 Pages

There’s a couple milestones for me when I’m on a new project.

1. 50 pages - a testing of the waters. Does this idea suck giant monkey dick? Well, you’ll know it within fifty pages, trust me. Some things just won’t be able to be smoothed out or over and if things don’t work out, best to cut the losses. But if I do make it here and feel strongly or stronger, that’s a good sign to keep going. Around this spot is when the world of the story starts opening up, I can see my way forward and realize some things I did wrong in the beginning.

2. 100 pages - woo! A real save point if there is one. Now I’m really into it and trying desperately to keep momentum going. If I were to stop here, for any amount of time, it would probably go downhill like if I stopped rolling a boulder up a mountain and tried to take a breather. Just got to push.

Right now I’m on that second milestone. My new project is breathing steadily and I’m working everyday with a minimum word count of 2k. See, here’s the thing.

I was talking to a budding young writer yesterday and she asked me how I draft, as she was having trouble managing drafting one chap at a time. I don’t know how they do it elsewhere and, to be honest, I don’t care. Don’t edit chapter by chapter, you’ll be driven insane. It sounds like a lot of work.

As I told her, I write out the whole first draft, ugly bumps and plot holes and all and I really don’t care how bad it is. Everything comes out in the wash. The first big edit, I start from the top and smooth out plot holes, missing scenes, all the big stuff. When that’s done, the third paving is for texture and smaller faux pas. When I say how many times I tend to go over things, it sounds like a lot of work but it’s waaaay less work than attacking it piecemeal.

The best part about considering the manuscript in save points and drafts is that it’s like standing at the summit, surveying the mountain trail you just climbed. There’s a clarity about it. Next save point is at 150 pages. See you there.

Another MS Bites the Dust

Remember the manuscript-in-progress I mentioned here? Well, today it took the leap off the cliff. That’s right! My agent sent it on its way to some unsuspecting and no doubt terrified editors.

It’s one of those feelings that’s a five in one. I’m happy, of course, and relieved this version is done with, excited to see what people might think, scared out of my fucking mind that no one will like it and also just like WELP DEAL WITH IT.

Usually now I’d like to take a break to… just be without any characters taking up space in my head but alas. I have to be searching for something else to write, because it would be… a misstep to just not write during the time it’s being submitted. At least I can say my stuff is out there somewhere, and not just this book but about twenty-five short story submissions as well. All I know is some eyes better be reading my work at any given moment of the day. READ ME, dammit. Love me or hate me, I do take up space in one’s head.

But there’s another feeling too, and that’s one of longing.

It’s stupid, probably, and pretentious on some level, but I miss my characters from that last book. I can’t dwell forever and with any luck I’ll get to revisit them with some edits but they’re largely gone and I know that. I faced such hurdles with it. Having such a hard time with the initial birth and facing a Great Depression in the middle where I stopped work on it for months. It’s literally a tiny miracle I managed to finish at all and I’m so fucking proud of doing that, come hell or high water. It’s so me it almost hurts.

Now, turning towards the future…

So, how I normally get ideas is getting beaned. I’ve mentioned this before — maybe briefly — but beaning is essentially walking about your day as normal and then experiencing a baseball to the back of the head. It comes out of nowhere, with no reason or origin behind it: the perfect idea, nearly fully formed. That’s how it’s always worked. But I’ve recently come to understand that maybe I have to have the ability to drive myself into writing something, powered by… imagination?

The fuck is that about?

But I digress.

So I’ll be actively looking for something to turn into my next book. I’m a little… fearful. And confused. And worried. I’ve never had much luck in forcing it. But I know I can’t just rely on the sky to produce something for me. In these uncertain times, I turn towards my manual for writing, Misery by our lord and savior, Stephen King. Paul Sheldon struggled with having an idea to jumpstart the revival of Misery book, one that would satisfy Annie. He knew trying to have an idea in the middle of books was common but was unsure if trying to have an idea for the start of a book would work. In the end, he was able to do it through a combination of beaning and being open to the universe. But I feel there was something inside Paul, the great Can You?er, that made that necessary. I was a good Can You?er once upon a time.

If there was ever something in me that had the power to produce on command, now would be a great fucking time for it to announce itself.

Isolation Update

I opened this up to see when the last blog post was. Exactly… one month ago.

Um.

Well, let’s pretend that sabbatical didn’t happen. As it happens, since the last time I updated the blog, I finished a whole short story. It only took me a couple days, so there was a marked spike in my productivity but i recently plummeted with the arrival of quarantine. I live in New York so you can imagine how tight it is. I went out for the first time today in weeks, just to get some gas, and it improved my mood.

Lately I’ve just been idling, playing games and drawing, trying to stave off the looming curtain of depression.

I don’t know, man. I know this quarantine is for the long-term good but fuck if it isn’t hard. And that’s coming from someone who lives on a cushy pillow with video games at her disposal so no clue how other people handle it.

Just taking the endless desert before us one day at a time.

Hintlord Series #2: Publication for beginners!

So I had another request for my Hintlord series!

As a disclaimer, this Hint will focus on short story publishing for those who HAVE NOT ever published anything before, or maybe they got accepted into one magazine and haven’t had luck since — maybe it was an act of God or the condition of a coven with a demon. Whatever. You wanna do it again.

The initial ask had to do with which magazines are best for someone who has not been published before, but since I wouldn’t consider any mags a “beginner’s” mag, I will just give some helpful hints and how-tos below.

I have like seven writing spaces.

So, what do you need to do first?

• Finish your story!

  • I know this sounds very DUH but no, no… finish your short story. Make sure it’s edited to within an inch of its life. Keep in mind that while typos are never a bonus, one or two will never keep you from being published if your story is really stellar and resonates with the editors, so if you later find you said effect but meant affect, chill.

• Find a magazine or fifteen.

  • Two things! One, you can either find mags by searching “lit mags” and will find some arbitrary lists, or you can use Duotrope.com which has a searchable database. It’s five dollars a month but you can get a free trial if it’s your first time. There are other sites like this, like Poets & Writers, and The Review Review, which is currently under construction. You shouldn’t have a hard time finding them.

    And TWO, only submit to mags who encourage simultaneous submission.

    “What does simultaneous submission mean?” you wonder, fearing that it sounds painful.

    It just means that you can submit your story to different magazines at the same time. Most mags are okay with this, as they understand it’s a waste of the writers’ time to sit with their thumb in their ass while one diffident mag hems and haws and ultimately rejects the piece. Any mag that doesn’t understand this is a waste of time, if you ask me, and you’re on this page so you did ask me.

    “But, Glorious Leader Robyn, how will I know if they accept sim… sima…”

    Simultaneous submissions! And you’ll know because they will say it on their…

• Read the Submission Guidelines!

  • Please read these. Please! Everywhere is a little bit different but they mostly all tell you the same shit. The only reason you read these is so you know approximate response time, if they accept simultaneous submissions, how to submit, i.e. via email or Submittable, and if they have some sort of credo that you do or don’t agree with. Some like you to put your name and info on the first page of the story, others don’t want any identifying info. Some want you to include a summary, MOST do not and don’t do it if it doesn’t specify.

• Write your cover letter!

  • All the info on that I’ve already covered. Get it?

• Don’t be afraid of submission fees.

  • Unlike finding a lit agent, it is rather normal for lit mags to charge a $3 or so submission fee, particularly if they use services like Submittable. That shit costs money. A lot of them don’t, though, and so you shouldn’t have trouble avoiding fees if you try. Duotrope is especially good at filtering these.

• Finally: PUT YOUR ASS INTO IT.

  • No, submitting to two is not enough. Nor is five. Ten is a good amount to try for a round, but if something’s open, submit to it. It’s really a numbers game. Don’t get discouraged by rejection. You have to eat it like breakfast. It feeds you. You exist from it. Acceptance is only a sugary dessert, and we wouldn’t want to rot those pearly whites, would we?

The Common Man

I wrote more when I knew fewer writers. That’s just the truth of it.

I’m not saying that knowing writers or communicating with them is bad (well, I am kinda saying that but) but for me personally it makes me forget why I even started writing in the first place. Because it sure as hell wasn’t so some jumped-up MFA grad boy can shout “CRAFT!” at me every two seconds, or even so I could edit other peoples’ work or even to give talks on writing at all. I’ve touched on it before, but the only reason I ever picked up a laptop was to harass people. That’s the point, that’s the juicy spot. If I’m not harassing anyone, then the goodness of writing is lost on me.

Florida nostalgia from my recent trip down south.

All this to say that knowing writers and being around them overmuch drains the point. Because really, the common man is where it’s at. The guy who couldn’t tell first person plural from third person omni is the guy I wanna talk to about my writing.

“Tell me, Common Man, why isn’t my plot working? What’s going on with this character?” I ask him over a steaming plate of fries at Steak n Shake.

And Common Man will sniff it out every time, more reliable than a trained hog after truffles, and more straightforward than Craft McSentence Level on why he should be up for a Pulitzer. I miss my friend, Common Man. I don’t know him any more.

Back when I was in undergrad, when I was the DEFINITION of prolific, Common Man was my constant companion. That’s not to say Common Man was never knowledgeable in his own field—he could be a biologist or a waiter or a hostess or just a soon-to-be college drop out. He saw my blind spots. He sees yours too. He may not know what to call it, but I could always count on him to do a better job in talking light and straight than the average writer.

And I look on Twitter and cringe sometimes. I see these hashtags and this fucking DISCOURSE. Why the fuck do we have to have discourse? What does it have to do with writing? With storytelling? The writer’s head is so far up their own ass that they NEED Common Man to pull them out again, to gently wipe the shit from their eyes.

I remember going to Waffle House at 1 AM and looking at Common Man over coffee and pecan waffles.

“So, what’d you think of the story?” I asked him.

“The main character’s trying to fuck his friends.” Common Man inhaled a sausage link. “Sounds gay to me.”

“Yes, you’re right,” I said, tears in my eyes. “You’re so right.”

I love him. I miss him. I’m fairly lost without him.

Cover Letter Tips and Tricks!

Look. I’m gonna make this short and sweet. I’m currently on each side of the submission game: writer and editor, so I get that every time you send something out there’s this ITCH to tell the faceless noodnik on the other side of the screen that yes, this is the piece you’ve been waiting for, and no, you’ve never seen fiction/poetry/nonfiction like THIS before. Like, I get it. But submitting is like dating. Don’t put your heart in the game and fuck everyone you can, raw.

Here’s some rules of thumb from your friendly neighborhood pervert:

Don’ts:

• Don’t tell me your life story. Cute facts in your bio is one thing but I don’t need to know your 3rd grade teacher thought you were a Stephen King in the making.

• Unless the mag specifies to give a summary of the story, don’t give one. You’re gonna make the story sound boring.

• DON’T TELL ME YOUR AGE. Seriously, this will never go well for you! If you’re 15, I’m gonna be like, “Welp, this is gonna go great.” And if you say you’re 95, I’ll probably be looking out for slurs.

• Don’t brag about how you’ve edited your piece to perfection because WHEN I find a typo, hoo boy.

• Don’t say anything controversial in your cover letter. Come on, man, you have no idea who’s reading this, and if you paid money to submit, you’re wasting it by pissing people off. If you didn’t pay, I guess, then whatever.

• Don’t try and shame editors into publishing you because you’ve had a rough life. Seriously, what the fuck.

Dos:

• Open your cover letter with the editor’s name! It makes us pay attention at least a little more!

• Tell us your story’s word count, name, and if it’s out on submission with other places. This is standard but sometimes people just leave that out in lieu of telling us their cat’s name.

• KEEP IT BRIEF. I’m not gonna read a two page cover letter anyway so you’re wasting your air.

• ACTUALLY WRITE A COVER LETTER. Don’t just send shit with no preface, that’s rude!

• Include your website, previous publications, etc. Hell, couldn’t hurt, right? Unless you’ve linked to questionable porn. Plus, if you don’t plug yourself, no one else will.

• Include contact info!

For your pleasure, I’ve included a template that I’ve made and always use! I get rejections just like everyone else, but I also get acceptances, so it can’t be too awful, right?

Dear [editor],

My short story, [TITLE], is complete at [X] words for your consideration. I have most recently appeared in [PUBLICATIONS]. This is a simultaneous submission.

Thank you for your consideration.

Robyn Ritchie

robynritchie.com

[CONTACT INFO]

Nice and painless. Try out these tips!

Also, a short story of mine is forthcoming in Crack the Spine so be on the look out!

Why You Annoyed Every Girl in Your MFA Cohort

It was your first day of your fiction MFA and you knew this was it; the first day of the rest of your life. You made it. Through all the hardship of high school where no one understood you — and the horror of undergrad at the local state school where no one gave you a second glance just because you couldn’t throw a lousy football or run long. You made it. Out of the gutter and into the sunshine — where you belonged. Smooth sailing from here on out. All you had to do was get that piece of paper at the end of the stage and editors and agents would be throwing themselves at you. Hell, maybe sooner than that, if you played your cards right. It happened to Bret Easton Ellis, and after all, you were way better than him.

When you walked into your Short Story Workshop, no one applauded. Strange. That was okay though; they’d learn.

You sat across the long table from the professor. As she would soon learn, you had as much wisdom to share as she did, and students would gradually turn from her end of the room to yours, waiting to see what you would say.

Students filed in and chatted unnecessarily. Wasting words, wasting words. You sat there quietly in your tweed jacket, with your leather bound notebook and quill pen at the ready. Class began when the professor glided in — she was edging on fifty and grey-haired and tall with easy eyes. You’d read one of her short stories in The New Yorker six months ago and thought she had some things to learn. You wrote down some edits on a piece of parchment and planned on delivering them to her with your thesis at the end of your stay.

She looked around the room pleasantly and invited everyone to take turns introducing themselves. She started with the girl to her left; a lithe young thing who you could see yourself having a one-week bohemian affair with and then dumping when you saw her woefully minimalist writing style.

“I’m Ann,” she said, smiling. “I’m from Tampa originally, went to Florida State for undergrad, and I have three dogs. I love Netflix and dubstep.”

The room welcomed her. All but you. Your thoughts of the affair were instantly dashed. She hardly deserved your scorn.

The rest of the room proceeded in a similar fashion. No one listed their favorite author, their favorite book, their favorite review. TV, movies, streaming, games, stargazing — what oh what was the writing world coming to? You all but swooned in your chair at the state of this school’s MFA program if this is what they’d let in beside you. But you were given a fellowship, so at least you knew the committee had some sense. Surely these people had to pay their way in. They would not last long.

Finally, all eyes turned to you, as was your due.

“Greetings,” you said, relaxing your shoulders down. “I’m Craft McSentence Level. My nom de plume will be Crafterson, however, so please address me thuswise. I don’t have favorite authors, as I feel we all can improve, but those I most identify with are Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace. My writing style has been described as torrid. I’m twenty-one years old and plan to be out of this program in a year and a half. My thesis will be an enlightening treatise on the unjust affairs of the middle east. I don’t like wasting time, as time is a finite resource, so I’ve copied some flash fiction pieces I worked on over the summer. I was hoping we’d have time to review them.”

You held up your stack of papers. Everyone looked at you wide-eyed, breathless. Surely even they could recognize it — the hot white flame of greatness. John Updike’s classmates must have felt similarly.

Class ended without any time given to your materials but that was okay with you, deep down. Best to space out the important stuff or else its importance might be lost. Your fellow classmates exited quickly, none looking at you. The poor things must have felt embarrassed to have given such paltry first impressions.

Before you left, the professor called out to you.

“Craft, that was—”

“Crafterson, please.”

She smiled wider. “Crafterson. That was quite an introduction.”

“Yes. Please expect more of the same from me.”

“I surely will.”

You left the room with your breast full, your mind at ease. You went home to check your email. An agent must have heard about you by now.