The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Process

  • Small Presses and Hope

    I submit to the proper authorities, which is to say, none of them. I submit ideas to my audience/friends and family on social networks and blogs.  But to this point, with the exception of a poetry.com incident and a couple of dreadful entries in my college literary magazine, I do not submit my work anywhere else for consideration of publishing.

    The main reason for this is that I haven’t yet produced anything that I consider publishable. Not much to say there.

    But I have started looking into small presses where I might submit work someday.  Presses and publishing houses are a subject of much more interest to me as a writer than me as a reader; now, at The Dusty Bookshelf, I glance down the row of books for publishers I trust, rather than a limited smattering of  authors and titles already in my acquaintance. I know that a book from Verso or Haymarket Press is probably worth my time.  Poetry from New Directions usually merits a glance, if not intensive study. For fiction, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux publishes several of the authors I enjoy.

    I don’t believe that the rise of e-books spells the end of traditional publishing, nor that the demise of traditional publishing would necessarily be disastrous for writers and readers.  But I do hope my favorite small presses can continue to do their important work of connecting niche markets with niche writers, and helping the writers and editors involved at least make enough to eat or to supplement a day job.

    When I do revise some of my work to a satisfactory level, I would probably submit to PM Press, an anarchist press that is more sympathetic to spirituality than most; Ice Cube Press, which is out of Iowa and focuses on Midwestern writing; or my church’s publishing house, depending on the nature of that work.  (I mean, I would submit to these guys first, then pray a lot, and bite my nails while the inevitable rejection letters rolled in and I tried to find other presses of possibility.)  In the meantime, I support the heck out of them with my book buying.  They need to stay in business a few more years!

    Otherwise, where will I submit?

  • What’s Wrong With Asking the Crowd?

    When I was in library school, about half an Internet generation ago [0], we were warned, very specifically and repeatedly, against relying on Google or Wikipedia or any other online resource authored by “non-authoritarian” sources. Instead, we were directed toward proprietary academic and professional databases— EDGAR, Dialog, Lexus/Nexus, Westlaw, and the like.

    I chalked up a great deal of this propagandizing to existential angst amongst an older generation of library professionals. The unwashed public having direct access to raw information without the kindly and professional intermediation provided by suitably indoctrinated gatekeepers? Quel horreur! [1]

    I had been an IT professional for about 10 years by then [2] and had nothing but the deepest respect for the free-form conversation that is the Internet [3]. Sure, plenty of the information you find may be wrong, but if so, somebody else will be along shortly shouting at the top of their CAPS LOCK key precisely how wrong it is, with illustrative asides and digressions into the quality of the original poster’s intelligence, reading comprehension, research methodology, and parentage, including hyperlinked footnotes to, for example, the website of the guy who invented whatever the heck you’re talking about. If you have a high tolerance for alpha-geek posturing, the Internet can give you one hell of an education.

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  • It’s the Data, Stupid!

    The coolest thing about being a non-fiction writer is all the research I get to do. I love being a lifetime learner; it’s like I’m getting paid to grow a little smarter every day.

    When I’ve done my research, when I’m confident of my facts and my references, and the story has revealed itself to me, the words come easy. If they come grudgingly, or not at all, it’s a signal that I have to go back to the library, or the museum, or archives, and figure out the missing pieces. My notes are sprinkled with questions I need to find answers to: What if this were the case? What would account for the timing here? What did these people do, and how did they do it, and would they have done it under these particular circumstances, and most importantly, how can I figure out what those circumstances were? It’s like detective work, only without the dead bodies and wisecracking medical examiners.

    It’s storytelling about what is, not about what should be, and that’s a powerful thing.

  • Can I have my settings back?

    When I can make myself laugh on a read through six months later, I know I’ve done something right. Either that or my sense of humor hasn’t developed any. There are moments in my writing that I’m quite proud of, moments where I go “I wrote that? That was me? Damn I’m good.” Sadly those moments aren’t quite as frequent as I would like, but they happen, and that is what is important. They’re often enough to satiate my ego.

    My first writing instructor complimented me on my settings and then suggested I work on improving my dialogue. It was both the best and worst advice I could have received, because I went on and took a play-writing class. If you’re not familiar with what happens in a play script, it’s a lot of dialogue, a few directional cues, and the briefest amount of setting instructions possible. I spent an entire semester learning how to write dialogue. By the time I came out of it, I was actually pretty good at it, or at least, that’s what I tell myself. (more…)

  • When All Is Said & Done

    There’s an exact moment when I read something I wrote and I go, “Damn. I am so right for this business.” Or I suppose, more accurately, there are two moments.

    The first comes during the raw writing process. When everything is still in idea form, and you’re just cruising on the adrenaline of creation going Yeah! No one has ever been this brilliant or creative or well-written ever! I like to think that’s about a third of the actual writing process — cruising on pure ego. The other two thirds are agonizing through the parts in-between, when you realize this story is ridiculous and derivative and your parents were right, why didn’t you just go into accounting like your sister?1

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  • Experiments in Composition

    I felt really awful about my last NaNoWriMo novel—its plot too outlandish, its protagonist not quite snarky enough, the rises and falls of action uneven and poorly planned. I thought it so dreadful that I preferred to forget it entirely until I realized that it was my first extended narrative that followed a single character and a single story line.

    The realization that it was a new task, that I had pushed my boundaries and expanded my skill set, made me feel better about the work. Nothing about the work itself changed, just my perspective.  Overall, I feel good about my writing when I accomplish something new. I have been proud of particularly concise blog posts. (I tend to wordiness). I felt good about attempting to draw the paranormal into a story. At various times, I’ve experimented with rhyming poetry and with free verse, and whenever anything remotely adequate has surfaced in those experiments, they have satisfied me.

    Pushing my boundaries makes me satisfied in my work. Overall, I’d say my fiction benefits from my “know-it-all” quiz-bowl-champ side. Maybe my readers disagree, but I enjoy the Neal Stephenson, “push as much extraneous information as  possible into fiction” approach in both my reading and writing. I try to keep my sentences varied. My diction precise.  My villains not quite villainous, my heroines not quite nice.

    I have been told that I portray women’s friendships well, which certainly is one of the goals of my writing. Feminism informs a lot of my work, and the more that I can celebrate that tradition and work its ideas in, the prouder of it I am.

    So as long as I write about friendships between women in new experiences, where all those new experiences and the characters involved include a lot of background information that is actually connected to the world, I can be quite happy about my writing.

  • ex ante, in praesenti, ex post

    I’m about to get all Latin up in this place!

    Q1: When do I feel good about my writing?

    Ex Ante

    At least once during the conception phase of my writing experience, I’ll have an “Aha!” moment. If I’m lucky, it’s more than one of those moments for the particular manuscript I’m contemplating. And every once in a great while, it’s a series of Aha! Dominoes, where a new idea generates another, or resolves a dilemma, or presents a completely different take on a story.

    My “before” moments are spontaneous and adrenaline-inducing. Unfortunately they’re rare, but when they happen…whoo boy.

    In Praesenti

    While I’m writing, I will occasionally describe a scene, jot down a line of dialog, or wrap up an action sequence in such a way that I sit back from my computer and just start grinning. A clever turn of phrase, tidy summation, or witty repartee between characters will just feel right while I’m writing it, and give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. I live for these moments during NaNo, and revel in them (as evidenced by my prolific contribution to the “favorite passages” forum threads during November).

    Ex Post

    After November is over, my manuscripts typically languish in the “written but not edited” pile. It’s my major stumbling block to getting my work out to publishers and agents – once I’m done with my zero draft, pursuing it to a more coherent state is just not very appealing to me. However, I will sometimes muster the gumption to at least read whatever I’ve written a few months after I wrap up. I’m almost always shocked by what I read. The injection of time provides a more distant perspective, and that more often than not results in a feeling of foreignness to my writing. I’ll read an action passage and think, “When did I write this?” It’s very strange. Fortunately, the mystery writer that contributes to my manuscripts when I’m not looking does a pretty good job most of the time. I treasure those moments of surprise when reading my own stuff.

    Q2: What are my strengths?

    Competentia

    I feel like I’ve gotten reasonably good at writing believable, interesting dialog. I think I’ve managed to write stories that get out of their own way and let the reader just enjoy the experience. And I’ve worked hard to cultivate a motto: “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.” I let that mantra steer both my attitude towards writing, and my actual writing itself.

    Postscript

    Look, a lot of what I’ve posted this week is old material. I’m a firm believer in leading by example. As a municipal liaison for NaNo, I feel obligated to have a framework for successfully pursuing a November novel year after year. None of what I’ve written above is anything new for me. It’s tried and true material I’ve used to motivate my WriMos for years. I’ll let you decide how much is the truth, and how much is…creative interpretation of the truth. 🙂

  • This is not “A Finished Product.”

    One time I was talking to a painter and as I watched him work I asked “When do you know it’s finished?” He laughed and laughed and never gave me an answer. I don’t really understand what the problem was with that question, but maybe it’s similar to my experience writing.

    I write on a piece until I’m done with it, then I set it aside and it becomes “A Finished Product.” I will always talk about “A Finished Product” differently than I talk about writing because they are separate things to me. I always feel good about the act of writing, but I never need to feel good about “A Finished Product.” The finished product for me is separate from the experience of creation. So when I talk about writing for this essay, I will be talking about the verb not the noun. I will be discussing the process of creation, not my finished products.

    One of my strengths as a writer is being able to instantly get in touch with my creative source. I just write and write and it comes out like water comes out of a faucet. I guess another way to say this is to state that I am never at a loss for inspiration. Of course, this does not mean that I create an infinite number of finished products. Most of this writing that occurs will never be part of a finished product.

    And that’s ok. I do enjoy this part of writing. I like that I have something that brings me fulfillment and joy that does not cost any money. I like that I can create something that wasn’t in existence before. Having something that I practice every day and get better at over time makes me feel like I am doing something meaningful with my short time on Earth.

    Another strength I have as a writer is creating a two way street for discussion of ideas. I don’t want to preach to an audience. I think asking questions and planting seeds that will grow in the reader is a much more interesting thing for me to do with writing.

    I am better at “What if?” than at stating a thesis and backing it up with evidence, etc. My strong suit, in a word, is fiction. I enjoy writing fiction very much because I practice watching things. Then when it’s time for me to write, I write about what I’ve seen and heard. These things that I’ve seen and heard and want to write about are usually true but unspoken. When I do this correctly it has the effect of perking up a sense of recognition in the reader. Something they had noticed too, but never put into words.

    This is when I feel good about “The Finished Product.”

  • The Best Part of Writing

    I learned to type on an old typewriter just like this one. Still have it up in a closet. Image credit: Benjamin Chan at Flickr

    When the voices chatter in my head, and the words come so fast I can barely capture them with the keyboard — that’s when I feel good about writing. That’s the “ah” moment when I remember why I do this.

    But that’s not the only time.

    When I’m writing index cards like a woman obsessed, piling them on top of each other and moving to the next fresh card as each new idea or previously unknown fact emerges into consciousness — that’s when I feel good about writing.

    Then later, hovering over my big white board with cards spread out and held in place with brightly colored magnets, I can see a hole in a plot, an unanswered question, or a character missing from a scene. My hands blur as I shift and slide the cards, remove dead ones, add new ones. That moment when the plot lays straight and true, and the seemingly unrelated scenes and snippets of dialogue on the cards melt together into one coherent story — yeah. That’s when I feel good about writing.

    When I reach the end of the story, knowing the end is exactly how I imagined it, yet so much more, and my fingers tap out the last word, something it took me so many years of my life to do—that’s when I feel good about it. I beat the fear again. The deep, debilitating fear of sucking. Knowing that I will never again fall prey to that little voice in my head, so prevalent for over three decades, the one that whispered in my ear that if I didn’t finish, I couldn’t fail.

    But most of all, more than any other time, is the moment when someone else reads what I have written, and my words make them happy. Or sad. Or frightened. Or simply entertained.

    When someone else enjoys this thing I’ve made, that’s when I feel best about writing.

  • 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.