Why Bother #3

No one's reading it now, and likely no one ever will

This one held me back for years. My husband wasn't that interested. I was shy about sharing with anyone else -even my parents. How could I give them proof that their only child wasn't the next Virginia Woolf?

And I most assuredly am not that. My tastes - you might even call them proclivities - run to a shelf far from Virginia's, at the back of the bookstore. Browsers there make furtive selections. They ask for bags.

More on that tomorrow.

You can write a novel without an audience, but it won't be as good as it could be. Why? Think about it. You clean up your house for guests. You dress up for a date.

Writing improves if it will be read. It will be better still if someone reads it thoughtfully. And comments, gently but firmly.

A very intimate assignment.

How do you satisfy intimate desires, absent willing volunteers? You pay for services rendered. You could hire a reader. That's straight-up prostitution, of course. With the attendant pit-falls.

I put down (a good deal of) hard-earned money to join a script-writing workshop. The authors' equivalent of a singles dance. I was prepared to bail if it was in an way a downer.

I'm lucky. Its just a few other souls, sitting in mis-matched chairs around a battered table. But it works. I'm a regular now, class after class.

Never again will I dance without a partner.

Why Bother #2

Because I'm a miserable person if I'm not writing something.

I won't notice that its about the writing. Not at first. I get mad at my husband. And my kids. And my job. Also politicians, the beauty industry, major corporations, newspapers, courts, television shows, films, etc. etc.

And myself. Especially myself.

Then I get back to writing, and I even out.

That's worth the bother.

100% Unguaranteed Anti-Block #1

I'm reading a book on writing. I don't do this often. Most writer's guides take a "you must" approach. Lots of rules.

This one is no exception, and its a bit preachy, to boot.

I'm still reading because the book considers the problems writers encounter. That's right - problems. Like math, or physics.

How do you introduce a character? How do you get backstory across without boring the hell out of people? How much dialogue is too much? Or too little? When does reproducing a regional accent cross the threshold of annoyance?

The author gives her take on how other writers (none of whom are my favorites) solve these kinds of problems.

These solutions interest me only very little.

What does interest me is the problems themselves. If you can identify a problem, you can fix it. Next time you're blocked, try identifying one problem with your work (even if its only a little one). Then fix it. Now repeat.

Works for me.

Not enough

Not enough time today.

That phrase plays in my mind most evenings. Not enough time to write. What I really mean is perfect time, of course.

Not enough peaceful, uninterrupted time, during which I'm wide awake.

What's too little? A half an hour? Fifteen minutes? Isn't something better than nothing at all?

Not always, at least for me. I have kept personal promises to write daily, even when it meant weeks of writing for less than half an hour at a shot. The result? A lot of fragmented bits, most of which were crap.

I can resign myself to writing a bad novel. I won't write a crap one.

I'm not winning this battle. I think I need to leave the house at least 2 nights a week and write for a few hours.

Which means commitment.

Or I can just keep blaming my lack of progress on not enough time. Funny, that was an appealing option until I admitted it was what I was doing.

Which happened just now.

Day Jobs

I've been busy with my own for the last few days, hence no posts. Dressed in my suit, under flourescent lights, with a bunch of other folks dressed in the same drag.

I like my work. Mostly, I mean. As much as anyone does. By global standards, I'm amazingly, staggerly, heart-stoppingly lucky. I try to remember that. I suppose billionaires try to remember that, too.

I'm a lawyer by the way. For a trade union. That means good pay, great benefits, job security, and a pretty office with walls. And work that's about 80% interesting. I get to help people, which feels great.

But the law does suck up the time when I could write.

I'm way over resenting that, though. I'm certainly not letting it get in between me and my bad novels.

And I am confident that I will eventually evict my nagging fear that it might be getting in between me and a good one.

Why Bother #1

Why Bother When Books are so last Millennium?

Soon even good novels won't sell, right?

Wrong. People need stories. Stories will always sell.

Books, however, are another matter. A quick review:

Most of history. No one has texts. Priests and King's scribes, maybe. No one else. Paper and binding have yet to be invented.

1100s. Books (mostly Bibles) take forever to make by hand. New stuff sneaks in by the marginalia - like that great story about Mary Magdalen.

1400s. Printing = more books. 1880s.Industrialized printing = even more. But books are still pricey. They have to be worth it - leather bound and filled with colour plates, pasted in by hand. Margins are wide. Paper is thick and creamy.

1900s.The Penguin revolution. Cheap paper, cheap covers, thin margins, no pictures. Great, affordable ideas. Genius. 2000s. The net supplies all those ideas, plus an infinity more, cheaper, better and faster.

What a computer can't do is put something beautiful in your hands.

Books need to be beautiful again. We need books that look, feel and smell like luxury. Books that are a status symbol and an accessory. Books that are expensive.

Designers like Chip Kidd aren't the last practitioners of a dying art. They're the wave of the future. We need them to transform our books into masterpieces.

Because there's always a market for masterpieces.

Actually, I'm deadly serious

This is not one of those tongue in cheek things - you know what I mean. I'm not going to go all cutesy and parody common writing errors.

I have many failings. Cutesy isn't one of them.

There is some good writing of this type out there. My personal favorite is a comic called How to Avoid Making Art, by Julia Cameron. An added plus - you can read the whole book in, oh, let's say 10 minutes. Cuteness, like Bailey's, is acceptable only in small and infrequent doses.

If I knew about all those common writing errors, I'd stop making them. I don't know how to write a good novel. I'm not promising good. I'm promising what I can deliver.

If you somehow discover greatness of your own here, please take all the credit.

I'm assuming your current state of progress lies between complete paralysis and a few sputtered sketches or chapters. I can get you beyond this. That may not be much, but its what I've got.

Why bother writing a bad novel? Look, would you want your first girlfriend to be Angelina Jolie? Would you take Versailles as a starter home? Would you consider Secretary-General of the UN for your internship?

Of course not.

So strap on some training wheels. Set your expectations at low to abysmal.

That way, you and I may one day be able to dazzle each other with our adequacy.

The last thing you MUST do...

....to write a bad novel.....is...... .....You MUST.....

5. Finish the God-Damn Thing.

I don't have a lot of tips on this one. I'm still struggling to bring my own ships into port.

Allow me to introduce the fleet:

1. Untold Stories

The odds on favorite to actually get finished, it stands at 79, 649 words - long enough to be a novel already. Not sure why I chose a working-class Austrian as my protagonist or why I made his Dad such a skunk. But I love this story.

And I would love to finish it. And I will. I really, really will.

2. Sickness and Health

The runner-up, length wise, at 38, 332 words

Tom, the main character, is a union lawyer. He's got the hots for a co-worker. She is, at least to all appearances, mentally, ah, ahem....(searching for polite words) unbalanced. But maybe Tom, who prides himself on having all his shit together, isn't as balanced as he thinks.

3. Before and After

Started 15 or so years ago. Yes, really. (Sigh.) Set in the afterlife. Yes, really, again. Some good scenes, but the plot is hip-deep in mud. Stalled at 28, 232 words, each of which flowed like blood.

Am I really writing a how-to for something I haven't done? I mean, how dare I?

Yesterday, I blithely told you (my dear and, so far as yet, non-existent, readers) to find your own "how," and your own "why." Remember?

That's what this blog is all about, for me. That, and high-octane procrastination.

The Musts, continued...

Continuing a List of Five things you Must Do to Write a Novel

3. You must be willing to follow some rules

"But why?" you're asking. What if I want to break ALL the rules?

You not only won't, but you can't. Yes, there are rule-breaking (and ground breaking) novels. But they don't break ALL the rules. However loosely some novels conform to the genre, they are still recognizable as novels because they are 1) stories, 2) conform to a certain length and 3) reference certain aspects of human existence.

So a novel-writer, even a bad novel-writer, needs to know a few rules. That's why I'll be talking about some of them.

If you want to break all the rules, then you aren't writing a novel - you're writing something else. Go ahead with my blessings, and good luck.

4. You must be able to break some rules

On the other hand, if you're looking for a step-by-step, how-to manual, abandon hope now. Your inspiration, your working methods, your characters, your settings, your dialogue - all these things are unique to you. No one can manufacture your voice for you.

Others can help; you can (and should) seek out, and try on, techniques that work for other writers (and writers luv to write about writing, so that's easy pickings). Just don't pretend that these "try-ons" can substitute for real comfort with writing - the sort of comfort that will give you the stamina needed for a novel.

In the end, no one can tell what, or how, to write. You have to figure that out for yourself. You even have to figure out how to figure it out for yourself.

That's the fun part.

Final "must" (drum roll, please) coming tomorrow....

There are a few musts......

Not many. But there are a few things you absolutely must do to write a bad novel.

1. You must write.

Obvious, no? But so easy to get wrong. The novel can't happen in your head. It happens on paper. Aside from the need to (eventually) show it to readers, or submit it to publishers, there's a good reason for this. I don't care what your IQ is, or how amazing your memory may be, you can't keep a whole novel in your head. No way.

Writers write. If you're not putting a pen to paper at predictable (and preferably daily) intervals, you're not a writer.

Its ok not to write much. Its ok if its bad.

Just write.

2. You must write stories.

Not outlines. Not character sketches. Not snatches of dialogue. Not scenes. Don't get me wrong, these things are all fine, if they're useful. They are the lumber with which stories have been built. They are not stories, though.

What's a story? A story is a narrative in which something or someone the reader is curious about is revealed. That's it. Whatever you have on paper, if you can't squeeze it into that model, its not a story.

This is long enough, already. More musts tomorrow......

Anything really worth doing is worth doing half-assed

I know, I know. You'd rather write a good novel. A nobel prize winner or a GG, a least. Me too.

I can't tell you how to do that.

I can tell you how to write a bad novel. There's no fame in it, or cash. Sure beats sudoku, though.

Think of all the things you do, but not so well. Your dinner last night - was it gourmet? Your ride to work - a ferrari? Does your job come with an oval office? Is your work-out preparing you for the Olympics? (If the answer to any of the last three is yes, please make my day by commenting).

I'm not even going to bother to ask about the quality of the sex you had last night, or whether it involved a partner.

Here's the point - adequacy is often compatible with fulfillment. A bad (but written) novel is way more satisfying than an unstarted one.

So stand-by. I'll be revealing all my literary secrets, and welcoming you to share yours.