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.

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!

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?

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.

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!

A Female Deer

So I did have a request to talk about my latest (definitely) and greatest (hopefully) project.

For obvious reasons I cannot post a snippet, but I can post an elongated blurb that allows me to do three things at once: 1. procrastinate; 2. explore my feelings on it; 3. post the moodboard.

Here we go!

Picture it, kids: The lowlands of Tennessee. An autumn. A darkness more felt than seen. Mid-to-late-’90s when Walkmans were clipped to everybody’s hip and the cool kids listened to AFI. And nine high school boys all arrive by caravan to the mouth of the wildlife management area to begin the Doe Hunt of their generation.

The story follows Farley West, a 15-year-old long dismissed and regarded as less masculine than his peers. He’s ready to prove himself a real Young Buck to his friends, his dad, and, above all, his uncle who has been there for him since childhood. But when the Doe Hunt starts, his friends immediately turn on him and from the way they salivate and call him, "Doe," with those sugar-choked voices, Farley has a feeling that they aren't exactly looking to shoot him.

Here’s my glorious moodboard for it; it’s really hot so bring a cold Gatorade.

I have a lot of love for feminized boys/men; how their society tells them what they are because they seem to fit into a certain category by either personality or body type (twinks, for example), and how the guy himself responds to that. Is it easy to wear other people’s expectations when you’re conventionally attractive and you’re rewarded for fitting into the box? Is it heavy? Is it both at once and what does that mean for him? And does he ever resent being placed on a pedestal? How much is he thankful to the pedestal when he sees others struggling in the mud down below?

Because of all those things buzzing through me when I wrote this, they’re pretty prevalent themes in the manuscript. The amount of violence in this isn’t new or special for me, because I’ve done a lot of it before, but I think the speed at which it happens is rather novel for me specifically. The events in the main storyline happen over a weekend, and there’s a second stream that takes place throughout Farley’s life growing up in Red Creek.

My first novel took place in White Hill, which is the sister town of Red Creek, both separated by about fifteen miles of turnpike. If anyone starts a rumor that I want to build a world around these two towns a la Derry and Castle Rock, you let them know THEY’RE RIGHT.

I like familiarity, I like to have already been oriented in a story when I start writing it, and this is the best way for me. One of the main characters in this novel is also a satellite character in the first novel, which is nothing if not fun. I just want to get back to enjoying my goddamn writing life for once.

If I ever had a class of kids who asked me if I would recommend becoming a writer, I’d tell them fuck no. It’s awful and lonely and sad and you lose your innocent love for it. You gain a forced love for it, like a marriage you know you can’t exit, like one from the old days before women could divorce. You stew in it and have to live with it because if you don’t, people will say, “Well, what was it all for?”

So then you look around the room of your own and you see a little love. Something you can hold in your hand. You cup it carefully to try and keep the wind from blowing it out. It warms your face. And you remember the roaring firestorm of your youth and think, This will do. For now.

That’s this novel.

The Hole in Your Sex Scene

What the fuck’s wrong with you people?

… Okay, that’s not very nice. But it’s how I feel — and I have a lot of feelings about this hole business. I’m honestly flabbergasted whenever I see it, or maybe that isn’t even a strong enough word. Bamboozled? Is that stronger than flabbergasted? Will the world ever know?

Let’s take a step back. Let’s set the mood.

You’re feeling a little introverted tonight. Your roommates or family or dogs are either away or in another room. You’ve got a hot beverage beside you which works only as a temporary balm for the post-Christmas doldrums that have descended over your hemisphere. It’s cold outside, and dark. You’ve recently dived headfirst into a new fandom and have heard the fanfiction scene is lit, or so your white friend on Instagram says. You head over to AO3 and settle in for a night of steamy sex scenes with little to no plot because who gives a good goddamn, you just wanna imagine two hot guys going at each other like the world’s gonna end. You find a story, scan the first paragraph to make sure they can put a sentence together, and say to yourself: Good enough!

Everything’s coming up roses. The main characters find each other in the woods and are inexplicably horny. They give little consideration before tossing away their heterosexuality like ill-fitting uniforms and start rimming each other on the ground. Then—

It happens.

You see it.

And your once flooded basement shrivels painfully with the sudden lack of moisture.

Jojo slipped his fingers into Dio’s used hole…

Agh, God, why!? Why, Lord? Why would the writer do that? And you know, it’s not a sometimes thing, for people who don’t regularly debauch themselves. I’ve seen it in published novels too. I’ve honestly got no idea about why this is such a phenomena, because it’s universally awful.

And don’t @ me, okay, I’ve never done that shit. Even when I was FOURTEEN, I knew better. Holes are holes are holes, and we’ve all got them on our bodies, but first of all they do have NAMES. You don’t call what you breathe through your nose hole, do you, you degenerate? What about your food hole? Hear holes?! How ridiculous does that sound in normal tone? Now you wanna throw it into something sexy? The hell’s wrong with you?

Sexy is subjective, I get it. I’m the first one to say it. But who honestly thinks of a hole and thinks, Ooh la la?

Big holes.

Gaping holes.

Sinkholes.

It’s all either ridiculous or disgusting. Where did young girls learn this kind of language? Is there no such thing as finishing school anymore? Where are the goddamn debutantes?

It’s an easy enough fix. You literally do not have to say hole. The human imagination and context of a reader is what helps your writing along. We know what you mean when you say:

Jojo slipped his fingers into Dio.

That’s literally all you have to do. Take words out and it instantly becomes better. Readers around the world will be thankful. I’ve had tons of girls compliment my sex scenes because, as filthy as they can be, they don’t require the flicker of an image of a character fucking SPELUNKING.

Motivation, or: What I Talk About When I Talk About 2005

Picture it: Nashville, TN, 2005. A young black girl has recently discovered soft-core porn and her parents don’t know she has access to Skinemax on her bedroom TV. She's new to the area. Her love of Yugioh is in full swing. She has a chalkboard on her wall full of fanfiction titles, plots unknown. She’s often naked and wears plaits. She writes and she loves to write, with no real expectation of the activity besides happiness and fun. She will not live forever.

Lasses and lads, that young black girl was me.

And that unmolested love of writing is… gone.

That’s not to say it’s always gone. It does come back every once in a while. A glimmer of it, or a ghost only hinted at on the edge of a photograph. It’s hard to touch, anyway, and it doesn’t like to be touched. I haven’t been that girl in so long.

The hardest part of writing, we think, is motivation. Which isn’t wrong, it is hard to find time enough and inspiration enough but I think the crux of it is finding love enough.

Back in those days, I had enough love for 1,000 yaoi girls. I just enjoyed it so damn much and lately I’ve been trying to examine why. Why don’t I feel that way anymore? It’s hard to put your finger on if you don’t admit to yourself why you write or have ever written in the first place. Why did you ever start?

For me, it’s easy.

I do it to harass people.

That’s as straightforward as I can be. And there’s no open forum I can really voice all my opinions in, so it’s a good thing I paid for my own domain, eh? Yeah, I like harassing people with my writing, always have. That’s what got me started, what kept me going, and posting, and amassing readers. I’ve had legit thousands of people subbed to me and I was delighted to be able to write just outrageous, disgusting, ridiculous things and have people show up week after week to read and respond to it.

Let’s take it past fanfiction — when I started writing original, I was in undergrad, attending my first fiction writing class with the great Dr. Mini. I was scared shitless but there was this fire in me: look, new people to harass! I glanced around the room shiny-eyed, salivating. What a great opportunity.

I remember, specifically, my second fiction writing class at MTSU where one of the other students was a total prude. He, for some reason, despised anything with sex in it. He simply was not having it, dahling. So I latched onto that and wrote about sex the entire semester, going so far as to start off a story with it and I drank in his discomfort like an aged Italian wine.

Fast-forward to now.

What am I now?

• an adult

• usually alone at home

• writing original

• barred from sharing original work outside of sending it to editors because putting it online suddenly makes it unpublishable

• ergo no one but editors reads my stuff

So what does that mean?

I HAVE NO REAL REASON TO WRITE.

It’s cause and effect. I know you’re supposed to want to write for yourself, for your -gag- ART, oh Jesus save me from ART, but fuck man, do you know what this does to me? I have no one to harass, It’s like a predator alone on a desert island with no sheep to eat. I’m dying, oh, I’m dying.

And my agent wonders why my next book is taking so long, but that’s another post.

…

No, fuck it, it’s THIS post! I’m lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself and I don’t want to. At this point, the only way I motivate myself into writing and finishing this goddamn book is by sheer force and threatening but there is no JOY in it. Writing is joyless for me now and so when I think back to 2005, what was arguably the height of my fervor for writing, I don’t just think of the scene and emo kids, the Death Note AMVs, the long nights spent on MSN while rewatching the L death scene, the Hot Topic trips, discovering masturbation, the hot Tennessee summers, the ice cream sandwiches, the giant house shoes I wore, my hair in long braids, the sound of a locker door slamming, ringing down an empty hallway, a Snickers bar melting in my hand.

I think, I wish I could love it again.

The Irrelevance of Irredeemability, or: No One Cares About Your Feelings, Becky

Here’s a secret about yours truly: I’m kind of a shy writer. Not like the “No, I can’t bear for anyone to look at my work!” way but more the “Maybe other writers won’t like me so I’ll just kinda sit over here,” way. I’m a lurker. I’m a creepy perverted lurker and I’m in your forums, judging you and keeping myself out of it. So I’ve been creeping and lurking, as I do, and the thing that really has come to my attention is this new obsession with redeemable characters.

More secrets about me.

Ugh. And who knows if it really is a new obsession; it could be I’m just behind the times which happens more often that I’d care to admit. But I’m seeing this from people who don’t write a lot, like maybe they only do it at Nano or they’re working on their first stab at a book or something like that. They seem to get caught up in asking people, “Is this character still redeemable?”

And people (of the same type) have the nerve to tell them, “No!”

No?!

Okay, first of all, I’ve seen this asked about the villain, which, if you want your villain to pal up with the hero at the end after many a hardship and battle (channeling Pokemon, I suppose) then… okay, that can be hot too, I guess, but then these aren’t typically the villains/rivals who are mass murdering people or setting off on raping sprees or hurting animals. Typically they steal something or like, I dunno, call the hero a naughty name.

Villains, real villains, don’t need to be redeemed. The best book villains I can think of off the top of my head: King Haggard, Humbert Humbert, Patrick Bateman, Leland Gaunt, Annie Wilkes, none of them needed redeeming to be satisfying, and two of those are also protagonists and this brings me to my next point!

If you’re asking if your protagonist is redeemable, this tells me two things:

1. Your protagonist has done maybe some bad things while also trying to make his way in the world and get what he wants in the novel, which makes him cool and hopefully well-rounded and go you, babe, go you.

2. But you’re trying to nuke him by possibly watering him down the first time some person who may not even be your prospective audience tosses a bitch fit.

(Sidenote: Yes, your prospective audience matters. Your stories are not for everyone. Mine certainly are not. Nor should they be. When you pick people to look at your story for mishaps and pink gaping holes, you have to pick someone who’s aesthetic lines up at least a bit with your own or else they might tell you to lose necessary parts for the story you want to tell. At the end of the day, who are you telling this story for? Who are you telling it to?)

So, your protagonist has done some nasty shit, but haven’t we all? Haven’t the people who’re looking down their noses at your protag in the forums? But, okay, for the sake of exploration, let’s give this some leeway.

Your character is irredeemable.

To who?

There’s only two answers; he could either be deemed irredeemable by the characters in his story or by the reader. If it’s the characters, that sounds like it has branches. His best friend can’t forgive him for fucking his grandmother? For quitting his job, ditching responsibilities just as the economy collapses, and joining a tribe in Papua New Guinea? For stealing his winning lottery ticket? Sounds good to me. Then if you want them to fix their friendship by the end, how does he make up for being a colossal douche? Or if you want them to go separate ways and live to be terrorized by the memory of what happened, that’s great too. You could do almost anything with characters who can’t or won’t forgive or want to forgive but don’t really know how.

If he can’t be redeemed by the reader… uh. SO?!

I mean really, who gives a fuck? As long as the reader is entertained and moved in some way, who cares if it doesn’t fall into this hippy-dippy we-are-the-world redeemable and everyone lives happily ever after schlock? I’ve had it! Officially!

…

Zen.

Okay, okay, okay. Look, here’s the thing. I just get so worried. In a forum the other day, I saw a girl describe her main character, and he was a total dick. He was a blond twink dick who thought the world owed him everything and was a bit ditsy to boot. And that sounded magnificent. I was literally salivating. But then you have these people popping up who are literally just random assholes telling her, “I dunno, he may be too unlikable.” Or, “Well, okay, but how’s he going to be redeemed at the end?” Filling this young girl’s head with NONSENSE.

And I wished I could take her aside and tell her her story is good and her character is boss and as long as she writes well, as long as each sentence makes me want to read the next, and as long as her blond dick of a protagonist fights like hell to get whatever his spoiled little heart desires, then those people in the forums can redeem this dick.

Saying Goodbye to the First Draft

Picture it: Boston, 2016. There was a young female—in fact, 3 years younger than she is now. She was in the midst of an MFA in fiction writing at Emerson College and, like most arts-focused people, had very little to do outside of her chosen art and playing video games. There were definitely times in that young girl’s life where she had forsaken writing for the aloof hobby that it is, but when she was in the MFA she was all in. She wrote in that year alone about 300,000 words on various projects both for professors and in secret. She drank coffee and Red Bull all the time. She feared the oncoming of carpel tunnel.

Readers, that young girl was me. And one of those projects… just got edited.

So what do we talk about when we talk about editing? See, the thing is, this whale started at 95,000 words when I picked it up, dusted it off, and said, “You know, this can be something. Just because it was an idea formed by my younger self, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit.” (And if we’re being honest, a lot of my ideas were formed by my younger self — my sense of humor never grew up.)

I took the project on a long journey of hacking, tamping down, molding. Basically editing. It went from 95K to 80K throughout this journey and that son of a bitch is looking lean and sexy. I didn’t take out that much of the sex though, let’s be honest.

15K words of superfluousness. 15K words of didn’t need to be said. 15K words of what was I thinking.

Everyone likes to talk about killing your darlings like it’s such a big deal and, hell, it is, but only when Time has not tempered your love. Think about it, when you knock out a first draft, ratty as it may be, you see a newborn. A baby you made yourself without any pesky sperm getting in the way. Something your own. You’re not going to want to kill that.

But let’s do what my prof said once: Put it in the drawer for six months. If you’re on a time crunch, you could probably wait a bit less but you have to give yourself a substantial amount of time to love it less. That’s just the bottom line. Because when you pull it out again and read it through, like I did with my project from three years ago, you see that your child is a bit ugly.

Let’s talk about my child’s blemishes for a second.

For example, I spent a lot of this second draft paring down my wordiness and, basically, changing the narrative’s voice which not only took away a great repetitiveness but made it seem cleaner immediately. I’m a great proponent of setting the scene and I like to know where and what characters are doing, so stage directions are used often, and I continue to, but there was an overwhelming amount. I had to trust that my reader has enough imagination and willingness to use that imagination to fill in the gaps.

15K sounds like a lot, and it is. But it’s the difference between so much fat it doesn’t taste good to just enough fat to make you savor. If I had to say, between writing the first draft and writing the second, writing the second is probably even my favorite. Yes, the first draft can be ballistic fun and it’s private and doesn’t have to even make much sense, but the second draft is where your brain starts understanding what your heart was trying to do.

4 Tips for Receiving Criticism in the Fiction Workshop

I’ve been in many workshops – high end, low end, undergrad, graduate, fiction, poetry, with bestselling writers and unknowns. Ones in which it seemed everyone was a professional and capable of handling constructive critiques and ones in which people were giant titty-babies who couldn’t handle one negative point made.

I remember when someone cried.

She was younger than me, not by much. This was in undergrad where everyone was nervous, anxiously wanting to prove their capability. The concept of relaxation hadn’t yet worked its way into our skin.

She was obviously proud of her story; you could tell because she talked about it beforehand with us which is something of a faux pas. Do not discuss the work outside of the workshop, particularly with people you don’t know! Because chances are they don’t care. Something else you should know: s/he whose work is being discussed is not to speak during the discussion. S/he is not to defend, plead or bargain. ‘Take what you are given and expect no more’ kind of deal. She was breaking all kinds of unspoken rules.

As we were discussing (and at this point, you could tell this story was not a class favorite) she spoke up. The point being made currently: this part of the story is unrealistic for the kind of character we have thus far been shown. The girl said, “But this really happened! This happened to me and this is how I responded!”

Now, at this point, everyone was, one, annoyed at being interrupted and, two, inly rolling their eyes because this defense is as lame as they come. The “this really happened” line is a non-sequitur. Never is it appropriate in a fiction workshop. I don’t care if it did happen and neither does anyone else. Fiction is not real life and the two are not interchangeable. If we as an audience cannot believe it on the page, it needs to be changed, end of story. I said so. Others did too.

Then came the waterworks.

I went to LA for a screenwriting job.

The professor agreed with us and we hurried to get to the end of her workshop. I can still see her sitting across the circle from me: patchy red and soggy-faced, looking sullen and angry. I knew she wasn’t going to use any of the edits. I’ll never get back the breath I used that day.

Here’s how to accept and be one with critiques:

1. Be open.

Openness is something you have control over. Can you control how other people see your work? No. And I’m not heartless – I’m always the critiquer and the critiqued, so I know it’s frustrating when people divine nonsense from your work, when you’re dying to say, “That’s not what that means at all!” There’s no control there. There is control in how you respond to it. One of my grad profs said that during your workshop, when your story is being discussed, you are to sit on your throne and observe. This is some of the best advice you can get. Sit there, look regal, and nod and take in what people are saying. Don’t spend time scribbling notes; they won’t do you any good. Openness works in many ways. You are open to their opinions and readings. You are open to seeing your work through their eyes. You are open to change.

2. Be gracious.

Smile, goddammit. This isn’t wartime; it’s serious, yes, but this is your day! Your work is being looked upon, scrutinized. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you? So many wanna-be writing cadets would kill to have a proper workshop look at their work, to guide them towards publication, which is the real goal of any good workshop. People in these workshops have taken time to read, re-read and consider your work. To think about how best to give you their opinions. To show you there may be a better way to get across your point. You are so lucky.

3. Be faithful.

To you, to your work. You know where you wanted to go with this in the first place, don’t you? You know what you wanted to say, right? If the consensus among the workshop is that your point did not come across, look for how they suggest alternative routes. Take these routes. Use the workshop’s ideas – bridges, high roads, low roads – to get to your destination. Having a story critiqued does not mean giving up ownership. It means strengthening your claim and learning from your missteps.

4. Be discerning.

You can’t take everyone’s advice. That way lies ruin. It may take you some time, but you will learn by reading others who you share ideals with and whose writing you admire. Obviously always give particular consideration to the workshop head/professor, as they are the most experienced and will… probably not steer you wrongly, but on a second tier, look to the people in the workshop who you feel kinship with. If you admire their work and they give you a point to look at or advice on sentence structure, value theirs above someone who you aren’t sure about. You obviously wouldn’t say these things aloud, just keep it in mind and take everyone’s criticisms equally graciously.

The day of your workshop is a great day for you and your writing. There is no where else you will get this kind of treatment. I don’t care if you have a group of friends you trade stories with; I don’t care if you write fanfiction and someone gave you a good comment; no one looks at your work the way a coherent and serious workshop will. But this advice also extends to taking criticism from your editor or agent. The relationship between the critiquer and the critiqued is a constant and measured push and pull. Allow yourself and your writing to be taken care of.