The Confabulator Cafe

Author: slundberg

  • The Unfaithful Hobbyist

    My number one hobby is writing. The rest are really all just to inform my writing, if I’m frank.

    I have commitment issues when it comes to other hobbies. I pick up a bunch of hobbies long enough to learn about them but never master them, then move on to the next thing. I love to learn about everything, but I’m never dedicated enough to become an expert in anything.

    This does help me as a writer, believe it or not. I can include these hobbies in my story with just enough detail to be convincing, but be able to get away with not being proficient. Usually I use writing as an excuse to learn different hobbies more than I use my hobbies to inform my writing.

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  • My Point of View on Point of View

    As I’ve developed my writing style, I’ve played with several different points of view in order to figure out what works best for my way of storytelling.

    For a long time, first person was my poison. It was easy to write that way – it helped me relate to what happened to the character. Besides, when I first started writing, I was writing about all of the adventures I wished I could have myself, so I was the star in all of my stories.

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  • Tools of the Trade

    This list will probably look different for every writer, but here are some of the tools that I can’t write without. These, along with several others, are linked on the right side of my personal writing blog, Prospective Writer. In this post I’ll explain why these resources are invaluable to me.

    Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com

    When I’ve been using a word excessively, or if I use a word but I’m not quite sure if it means what I think it means, or if there is a precise word that I know exists for what I’m trying to say but I can’t seem to pull it out of the depths of my brain, I plug in variations until I find what I’m looking for.

    Wikipedia

    Probably not the most reliable source for information, but it gives me a starting point, a foundation, which I then build from. And actually, new scenes and plot twists have resulted from stuff I’ve read in Wikipedia articles.

    Babynames.com

    I am abysmal at coming up with names. At my job, I see a lot of names, so I collect the ones I like, but sometimes I exhaust my list and need a fresh supply. I often use this site to find names based on what I want a character’s name to mean, or if I know I want it to start with a particular letter. This site also has a brilliant section on Character Names, Tips for Writers, that I read through now and then to remind myself that not every one of my characters needs to have an exotic name.

    Pandora

    Sometimes I need mood music. And sometimes it’s a nice distraction if it keeps playing crappy stuff I don’t want – then I can spend time cultivating the perfect mood music station by disliking and skipping the stupid songs.

    Goodreads

    I include this because so much of what I write is influenced by what I read, and without Goodreads, I’d be lost in a sea of all the books I own, need to read, and have read. There are also author pages, ratings for books (which is useful when searching for a reputable book about writing), book summaries, and I can keep track of what books all of my friends are reading

    Youtube

    You can learn how to do anything on this site. Taught me how to pick a lock. I think I needed this information for a character once…honest!

    The Confabulators

    Last but not least: my writing friends. All those blogs you see linked in the corner on the right? Yeah, them. I’ve learned a lot about writing by reading their blogs, and they are especially wonderful to bounce ideas off of and to offer feedback on my drafts. I wouldn’t be the writer I am without these wonderful folks.

  • No Warm Fuzzies from Writing Right Now

    I have to be completely honest: I haven’t felt that great about my writing for a long time.  Part of the reason for that is because I haven’t written anything more than a blog post or flash fiction in a long time. While I love the fact that the Cafe keeps me writing, there’s not a whole lot to these posts, and sometimes I only feel relief that I’m finally caught up with my assignments than any pride in their creation. Some assignments, like this one, are difficult to respond to because I’m not doing any writing outside of this, certainly nothing I’ve felt good about.

    But it hasn’t always been this way. I used to feel good about my writing. It used to be that just the act of writing was what felt good.

    I also really liked when I read back over something and I found something that made me laugh out loud. Knowing that even if nobody else in the world thought that particular joke was funny, at least I was able to catch myself off guard and make myself laugh at something my subconscious mind came up with when in the writing zone.

    I miss the writing zone.

    My best writing came when I got lost in the zone and wrote without even thinking about where I was going. It might be my biggest strength as a writer, letting thoughts flow and let the flow take me to places I didn’t necessarily expect. Trusting my instincts, my subconscious mind, to craft artistic sentences while still expanding plot with good pacing and developing characters.

    But I haven’t been able to do that for awhile. I haven’t been able to let go, and I haven’t trusted myself enough to get lost in the zone lately.

    I’d give a lot to be able to feel good about my writing again. Just thinking about what I used to love about it, thinking about what used to make me feel good about it, might be enough to motivate me to try again. Maybe it’s time to let go and see where the writing zone takes me again.

  • The Douchebaggery Virus (Flash Fiction)

    I think I got everyone. I cocked my head to the side, listening. Silence as the smoke cleared. I held my breath for a moment, and that’s when I heard it. The tiniest squeak.

    I yanked back the door that had been partially knocked off its hinges to reveal my terrified assistant. How had she gotten away? I lowered the gun, aiming straight for her face. She screamed.

    It was short-lived. My rifle was louder and put an end to it.

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  • Obstacle or Excuse?

    The biggest obstacle that keeps me from writing is the same thing that enables me to write in the first place: my mind.

    My mind never stops. Even when I’m trying to sleep. Especially when I am trying to sleep. I worry and doubt and question and berate constantly. I have an idea, but as soon as I have an idea I have another idea. But then I worry that I should be doing something else. Or I really should be doing something else, so guilt keeps me from writing. Or my mind gets distracted. Shiny! Internet. Work. Friends. Family. Sleep. Eating. Chores. Errands.

    My mind constantly tries to prioritize all of the things going on in my life, and most days, writing ends up at the bottom of the list.

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  • Saravision

    One of my dearest writing friends, Jack Campbell, Jr., told me once that there is nothing fictional about fiction. “Fiction is just a distortion of our dreams and nightmares.” Every plot, every character, every snippet of dialog contains a part of me. If you were to dissect everything I had ever written and put it all together, you would know me better than my closest friends and family who haven’t ever read any of my work. Especially if you were a writer.

    Writers understand what goes into writing. We understand each other on a level our normal friends and family never could. They see us in our day to day lives, in a real life setting, making the most out of the lives we are given, while other writers can see the world how we envision it by looking at what we’ve created. They can interpret what is hidden deep within our subconscious mind. Zero drafts in particular are the most telling – they are almost flow of consciousness style writing, seen before the author has a chance to edit or censor their thoughts.

    There really aren’t new ideas as far as stories. Everything has been done. The difference is every single one of us has a different view of the world. Our backgrounds shape who we are which in turn shapes how we write or even what we write about. Only I can tell a story a certain way. It is my point of view that makes it unique. A cliché might be cliché, but my particular spin on it makes it somewhat new and different.

    Everything in my life has crept into my writing. My hopes and dreams, as Jack said. My bitterness, my pain, my happiness, my sense of humor. The people I know, the conversations I’ve had. My writing is an amalgamation of everything I’ve read or watched or listened to chewed up and spat back out. It’s the world seen through my particular rose-colored glasses. When you read something I’ve written, you put on my glasses and see the world in the particular tint that I see it.

    Saravision.

    It may not always be obvious, but what I write is me. Distorted, translucent, inverted or twisted, substituted or hyperbolic. Everything I write is a seed taken from something of myself and cultivated into something somewhat recognizable, if you know what to look for.

  • Let’s Talk

    I think one of the most challenging aspects of writing is dialog. It has to sound natural, but not as natural as a normal conversation. It has too many “ums” or “buts” or interruptions or awkward pauses. Nobody wants to read that. There’s also the question of how much dialog to use. Some authors use it sparingly or not at all. It’s easy to overuse, as well.

    Dialog is important to me because I’ve always been one of those people who thinks of the perfect thing to say in a conversation hours after the fact. A witty retort, or a profound punchline, a clever segway or a thought provoking question. I always want to go back to that person and be like “hey, remember when you said this? Bam!” and hit them with my brilliant line. (more…)

  • No secrets here

    Editing secrets? I don’t have any editing secrets. In fact, I am really excited to read everyone else’s posts revealing their editing secrets this week so that I can steal them.

    I have no editing process because I have yet to significantly edit anything. In general, when I’ve “edited” a manuscript, I’ve made cosmetic changes: grammar corrections, delete extra adverbs/adjectives and unneeded passages, and make the remaining sentences prettier. Maybe tweak dialog a bit. But I honestly haven’t ever taken the editing process past surface level.

    Don’t get me wrong. I’ve tried. I always make notes for bigger edits, send out my manuscript to my trusted writing friends for their feedback, and I always have big plans for revision. At first. But then I get overwhelmed and never make them. The Novel Graveyard gets bigger every year as I write and drop project after project.

    Maybe nothing I’ve written has been worthy of the edits needed. Maybe I’m just a lazy writer because I won’t actually do the hard work that’s needed to perfect a manuscript. Maybe it’s my fear of success as much as my fear of failure that keeps me from ever polishing anything beyond Zero Draft status. I don’t know.

    My editing goal, of course, is to someday edit a manuscript within an inch of its life and actually submit it. Hopefully someday I’ll get out of the lazy chair and do that. In the meantime, I have smaller goals: like write some short stories and edit them. And edit them again and then submit them places.

    I suppose my biggest editing secret right now is that I need practice. And confidence. My fellow Confabulators assure me that working with something smaller than a one-hundred-thousand word manuscript will give me the editing skills I need, while getting published will give me the confidence I need. Baby steps, right?

    For now, I am listening to all of my fellow writers’ editing secrets with open ears. Enlighten me, friends.

  • Breathtaking (Flash Fiction)

    For the photo that inspired this flash fiction story, please visit Flickr: L’Albufera: Momentos #16.

    Nothing is quite as beautiful or breathtaking as a sunrise.  Well, nothing quite as beautiful, anyway. Lots of things can take your breath away. Like an unexpected dip in the road, or a punch to the gut, or really bad news.

    But mostly being plunged face first into cold water.

    It was an hour before dawn. Father had set the fishing nets out overnight, and it was my job to rise before the sun and pull in the catch.

    Half asleep, I yanked on the lines to cinch the nets. I stubbed my toe on a rock and muttered a curse.

    The water cursed back. (more…)