The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: writing

  • Hitting the Reset Button

    I liked that this was a switch more than a button. I spent way too many hours playing games on this old console.
    I liked that this was a switch more than a button. I spent way too many hours playing games on this old console.

    “Butt in chair, fingers on keys.”

    I don’t know who said that first and I guess it doesn’t really matter. It’s true. It’s how I have motivated myself to spend the time I need to writing. My Twitter feed tends to be filled with people who are also writing stories and when I’m distracted from actually making words into stories, I can usually find some motivation in there. The You Should Be Writing meme is helpful, sometimes, too. Especially when it’s Neil Gaiman glowering at me. I don’t want to give you the impression that I make time to write exclusively out of guilt because that’s not the case but sometimes it’s true. Like most of us, I’m easily distracted.

    You played what in Words With Friends? Who beat my high score in Solitaire Blitz? (more…)

  • Time and Teaching

    Once, when I was in teacher-training school, my class had to read an article about English teachers and writing. This article expressed the belief that such teachers should not pursue their own writing projects, because any time spent on self-centered expression was time taken away from lesson planning and grading, the true purposes of life for any educator. My classmates and I condemned this concept vociferously, both from a personal sanity perspective and from an educational perspective. For how does one teach a process that s/he does not experience? How can adults model a literary life they do not have?

    Alas, now that I am a teacher, I understand the article’s perspective, even as I disagree with it. Teaching is a time-consuming job. In the current environment we are asked to do more work with less funding and less time, and the powers that be would rather we think of every moment we are not teaching or preparing to teach as a moment stolen from the kids. Several educational consultants have even suggested that if we do ever go on vacation, we must record the vacation and turn it into a lesson for the kids. Of course the kids deserve the best education I can possibly offer them. But it’s easy to start thinking of myself purely as a work machine, here to revise lessons endlessly and integrate new technologies seamlessly and innovate constantly to improve. The constant admonishments from the media and neoliberal organizations about the dangers of bad teachers ring in my ears every time I sit down with a book, every time I pull out my keyboard, every time I journal rather than grade. (more…)

  • Making Time

    Have you ever had an overpowering urge to do something at the expense of everything else in your life? If you have, then you’ll know how I feel about writing… well, at least about two percent of the time. The rest of the time writing almost seems like it comes in last place of my priorities. That’s why I frequently feel like I have to make the time to write.

    Shhh, don’t tell Belgarath the Sorcerer that I’m making time! He’d start lecturing me on the dangers of messing with magic that is way over my head! It’ll be our little secret. Seriously though, if I could fit extra hours into the day, I would, consequences be damned. There simply isn’t enough time to do everything that I need, or want, to do.

    It’s not that I don’t want to write, it’s just that there are so many other things I could be doing. I have friends that want to spend time with me. I have to go to work. There are TV shows I have to watch so that I can fangirl over them with my friends when I spend time with them. There are books to read. There are rooms to be cleaned and dinners to be made. And by the time I’m done with all of that, all I want to do is curl up with a glass of wine before going to bed. (more…)

  • The Desire to Write

    Judging by the lateness of this submission, I could simply answer, “Not very well,” and leave it at that. However, a one sentence response probably won’t fly, so here goes an attempt to elaborate.

    While in college, I found the best time to write was during class. Not every class, but the long boring lecture halls were a creative gold mine while pretending to take notes. Instead of being bored, I filled a lot of notebook pages with outlines and the beginnings of stories that would never get finished.

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  • Time in a Bottle (Week of February 10)

    I'm afraid my desire to write is interfering with the time I spend drinking.The one thing that all writers wish they had more of is time. Whether finding time to write, or re-write, or edit… it always seems that deadlines are looming and there’s not enough minutes or hours in the day.

    We all want to spend time writing, but most writers have obligations. We have work, families, and some even try to cultivate that rare, exotic flower called “a life.” So, time management and prioritization are critical skills to have. But what is the key to success? Is it having time or making time?

    Here at the Cafe, we’ve asked our writers to give us their tips for carving out chunks of time. In turn, we hope they provide you with good advice to help you make — or find — the time you need to write.

    Until Next Week,

    The Cafe Management

  • 5 Changes to Succeed in Writing

    When you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done.About 20-some-odd years ago, I decided I was going to be a published author. After many mistakes and missteps, this dream finally became a reality in 2012 with my first sale of a short story. (My story will be published as part of an anthology in August.)

    Now, 20+ years is a long time for such a dream to come to fruition. Certainly. But to be clear, this was not some arbitrary self-imposed deadline. I never said 2012 was going to be “the year I get published.” (In truth, I’ve been saying that for several years.)

    So, what made this year different?

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  • The last year or so…

    Hello everyone! What a great way to make an introduction to this blog, by explaining how my writing has changed over the past year.

    The first and most recent change is I’m writing here now. Yay! I’m looking forward to sharing this space with some of the great people I’ve gotten to know over the past several months.

    The biggest thing that happened to my writing life was participating in National Novel Writing Month for the first time. And I totally kicked its ass. I don’t know if what I wrote is any good, but I know that before November, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to write fifty-thousand words in a semi-coherent structure with a beginning, middle, and end. Now that I can mark “Write a novel” off my bucket list, I have a lot more confidence in my writing than I did before.

    This year I’ve written a lot more than I have in the past couple years combined. Thanks to good friends, I’ve been motivated to take some of the crazy ideas bumping around and to put actual pen to actual paper and get some of them written down. Most didn’t pan out to anything more than interesting diversions, but just the process of regularly writing again has given me a focus that I sorely missed having in my life.

    I started out the year by beginning a journal full of whining and angst, and ended the year making the planet die a slow and suffocating alien death. I call that progress.

    Hopefully this time next year, I’ll have a lot more to say about how my writing has changed and improved. The biggest and best change this year though is that for the first time in a long time, I feel like I can actually call myself a writer. And that’s pretty cool.

  • A New Year’s Self-Evaluation

    You never stop learning as a writer. I firmly believe Hemingway when he says “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” As you read, write, and then read and write some more, you change as a writer.

    Sometimes, that change is barely perceptible, like a rock in a desert that moves only a couple of inches a decade. Only by looking back at the trail can you even see movement. Other times, change comes in spurts. I think a lot of us at The Confabulator Café are at the stage where our writing changes in spurts.

    Go back and read your writing from a year ago. Look at its rhythm, tone, voice, and even its content. Chances are, if you were to write that same passage today, there would be something different about it. Language, structure, or something else would change. Maybe there are passages you wouldn’t have written, at all.

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  • Ephemera – Writing Resolutions for 2013

    Here we are, the first weekend of 2013. The Cafe has survived it’s first year, and most of us are still here. This past week we wrapped up the end of the year talking about our favorite topics. For this first Ephemera of the year, we asked the Confabulators what their resolutions as far as writing were for 2013. We all have big dreams, and lots of us reached them last year. This year, we’ll all continue to work towards even bigger ones.

    Ted Boone

    Finish NaNo 2012. REVISE NaNo 2012. Write every day. Pick a manuscript to Pitch at Backspace 2013 in NYC.

    Christie Holland

    I hate resolutions in general, but I have several that are very specific to writing for the year.  The most significant is that I will read and/or write something every day this year.  I spent too much time in 2012 sitting in front of the television when I could’ve done something better.  I also plan on editing/rewriting my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel and I want to start submitting my short stories for publication.  I’d like to say that a resolution is to get published, but seeing as how that is out of my control and is slightly terrifying, I’ll focus on baby steps.  To get published, I have to start submitting!

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    2013 will be another tough year. I will still be working on my master’s degree. That severely cuts into writing time. However, this year has been very productive as far as short story submissions. I should have several pieces published this year. I would like to continue that run of success, as well as finish writing the first draft of Heaven’s Edge. I am also eager to edit my first novel, Kill Creek Road, but school comes first till August of 2014.

    Sara Lundberg

    I’m hopeful that 2013 is the year I learn to edit a full length manuscript. I have two novels that I wrote in 2011 that deserve attention. I haven’t decided if I want to continue to submit short stories for publication or not, or if I want to focus on novel-length works. I’d also like to take a crack at writing another novel or two this year, since I ended pretty much novel-less in 2012. It seems that 2012 was Year of the Short Story, since I wrote at least one a month over the course of the year, had one published, once accepted, and three short-listed.

    Kevin Wohler

    Practice, practice, practice! My biggest goal for 2013 is to be more consistent in my writing. I’m setting aside two nights a week (and one day on weekends) to work on my novel or short stories. I actually made a short story sale to an anthology last year, and it felt great. I’m going to try to do more in 2013.

    Jason Arnett

    I’m determined to see the novel in the hands of a publisher. I really believe that’s going to happen this year. Additionally, I’ll be sending out more and more short stories (inspired by Jack’s and Sara’s success) so that they’ll be published somewhere. I need to finish the sequel to the novel (still have 50K words to go as of this writing) and then I’m inspired to go back to another unfinished novel and work that until it’s ready. And more short stories.

    Larry Jenkins

    Write more frequently and get something accepted for publication. The two go hand in hand, but that last one is especially important. My fellow Confabulators are kicking ass in the publications department, and I’m starting to feel the pressure.

  • Confabulating is a Calling

    http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/03/rainbow-brain-map-science-aaas.jpg
    Somewhere in there are the stories waiting to be discovered and told. Some of them are beyond me right now and that’s pretty exciting.

    It’s been a year since we launched the Confabulator Cafe. The meetings we had leading up to this launch were fun and filled with lots of writers who were interested in contributing and some others who were looking for something different from the group. It took us a while to separate the Cafe from the writer’s group but that’s finally happening thanks in part to NaNoWriMo but that’s another story for others to tell.

    Over the first year of the Cafe we’ve covered a ton of topics and done a lot of writing. By my count I’ve written well over 45,000 words for the site on everything from the politics of writing and storytelling to flash fiction to my influences and so many other things. I’ve unknowingly echoes thoughts of my fellow Confabulators and been far afield from the majority, too. I’ve learned a great deal about how I write, why I write and even when I write best.

    As a storyteller, the monthly fiction assignments have been the most fun. I missed one assignment early on, but I’ve had the most fun writing every story. Being ‘forced’ to write short/flash fiction on a monthly basis has been sometimes nerve-wracking, but it’s always paid off. I’ve always gotten something I can be proud of despite the amount of sweat that’s gone into the writing.

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