The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: writing

  • 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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  • Ignoring the Obstacles

    This week has been a difficult one for writing. I could share with you a tale of woe, lamenting the various obstacles that have kept me from my writing. But it would only be half true. You see, while there are a number of obstacles to writing, I alone allow them to distract me. I am my biggest obstacle.

    Bengal tigers at the Topeka Zoo
    Forget about the obstacles between you and your goal. They don't matter. Unless they're hungry.

    You know writers. We all have ADHD and are easily distracted by shiny objects. I’m no different.

    The truth is, I’ve been working for several months to simplify my life. I’ve tried to remove myself from every obligation that didn’t help me achieve my goals as a writer.

    I stopped writing film reviews. I ended my web design consulting. I curtailed my Facebook activity. And I’ve tried to cut down on my weekly consumption of television.

    So you’d think I’d have plenty of time for writing, right? Not so.

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  • How do you balance your busy life with time to write?

    Every year we all get the same amount of Time: 12 Months, 52 Weeks, 7 Days, 24 Hours. Everyone gets this, not just writers or athletes or the person behind the counter at your favorite bookstore. It’s what we do with that Time that differentiates us from one another. Some of us have families and significant others and day jobs and clubs and we can barely find Time to keep up with what we’re supposed to do let alone what we want to do.

    So it’s not really about having Time to do Things at all, is it? It’s more about taking the Time to do Things.

    This week, the Confabulators are pondering how they do it: how do they find the time to write when life  is so full? If there are tips in here that we can find useful, do you think we’ll take advantage of that? Or will we be too busy?

     

    Muriel Green

    I have found that no matter how important I say something is, waiting around for free time to do that thing will lead to it never happening. Instead of waiting for the moment to arise, I schedule time to write. I believe in scheduling things that are important to me and writing is important to me. If anyone reading this thinks “I wish! There is no free time!” I would strongly encourage trying out a month without cable tv,, netflix, etc. I thought I was busy before when I had those things, but cancelling them helped me find upwards of 2 extra hours per day.

    R.L. Naquin

    My busy life consists of staring at the dirty dishes and writing novels. I’m very lucky. Right now, writing is my job. If I’m not making an effort to track down that weird smell hiding somewhere in the house, I should be writing. My husband works to support my writing, sort of like when one partner puts the other through med school. If this all goes belly up, I’ll have to get a real job. But if everything falls into place, he can eventually stay home and write, too.

    Kevin Wohler

    There is no balance. My life (family and work) comes first. Any time that’s left over is what remains for writing. Of course, the nice thing about writing is that I can steal little bits of time (a car ride, a long shower, a few vacation days) to write. For me, writing has to be separate from my busy life, not a part of it.

    Jack Campbell, Jr.

    It is nearly impossible. There has to be a constant effort to make time for writing. It isn’t going to happen just when I have time. If I don’t work it in with a couple of hours here and there, nothing is ever going to get done. I think it is that way for most writers who don’t make their living just by writing. You have to get creative with your creativity.

    Jason Arnett

    I’m a Libra. My whole life is about balancing everything. I can try to schedule things but that gets blown up pretty quickly. Instead, I look for the moments: a few minutes here and there to do the things that need doing. I’m better about telling my wife that I need time to write and she’s good about letting me do that but if I never spoke up and said anything, I’d never have finished the draft of the novel that’s waiting to be edited on my hard drive. When I do that, though, I have to make sure she gets equal amounts of time, too. In a nutshell, speaking up is how I do it.

    Nancy Cayton Myers

    I don’t.  The busy life (read: kids)come first. Since it’s not my main livelihood, writing takes adistant backseat.  Partly because it just has to be that way, butalso because I’ve learned I’ll be too frustrated if I expect it to beany other way at this point in my life. Having said that, I know I’ll go crazyif I don’t write, so I’ve pushed down the guilt that I should betaking care of something else, joined writing groups for support ,and have forced myself to leave the house to carve out an hour or twoevery other day for writing, sometimes more in the form of retreatsand conferences.  It can be done!

  • 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.

  • You wouldn’t know me from my writing

    Palm trees and an ocean view
    I prefer to write about places I know well. Someday, all of my stories will be set here.

    For years, I heard my writing teachers telling me to put more of my own experiences into my writing. I’ll be honest with you, though. My life was pretty boring. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to read about me.

    I don’t like writing about real life. I prefer the odd, the strange, and the fantastic. I’m more at home talking about people with superpowers than work, relationships, or my efforts to catalog my DVD library.

    But here and there, my real life has started slipping into my writing. A woman in my short story reminds me of my wife. And the banter she shares with the protagonist is reminiscent of the way my wife and I finish one another’s thoughts.

    Other characters, too, reflect certain aspects of people I know: an old friend, a mentor, or an obnoxious guy at work. Of course, I have to do something to make them interesting. So sometimes that guy in my office turns out to be a tasty snack for a demon or an early casualty in an alien invasion.

    Mostly, though, it’s settings that I steal from real life.

    I’m no good at imagining cities I have never lived in. I couldn’t write a hard-boiled detective noir set in 1950s L.A. I can’t write about New York City. I’ve tried writing about Florida, but it’s been 20 years since I lived there. I’m sure it’s changed a bit.

    The only reason I set my current novel in Chicago is because I’ve actually visited there recently. Well, that and the fact that I destroyed half the city before the story began. The streets of “New Chicago” don’t have to bear a strong resemblance to what exists there now. I have kept a few of the neighborhood names, and some landmarks. But I had to spend hours pouring over Google Maps and  Wikipedia pages to make sure I managed to get those details right.

    For now, I’ll stick with people and places I know, even if I have to change them up a bit to make them more interesting.

    As Jimmy Buffett once sang:

    “Don’t try to describe the ocean if you’ve never seen it.
    Don’t ever forget that you just may wind up being wrong.”

  • Don’t give it away. Make them pay.

    Mark Twain
    Mark Twain. Despite what you may have heard, he didn't always dress like Colonel Sanders.

    Over the years, I’ve collected a number of great quotes from writers teaching the craft. One of my favorites, from Mark Twain, comes in handy now and again:

    “I never write ‘metropolis’ for seven cents, because I can get the same money for ‘city.’ I never write ‘policeman,’ because I can get the same price for ‘cop.’”

    For a writer being paid by the word, it’s a good economic argument. We should be more judicious with our vocabulary choices, avoiding a ten-dollar word when a shorter one will do.

    Writing isn’t just about conveying an emotion or telling a story. For some, the lucky ones, it’s a business. We make our daily bread based on the words we write, and it’s difficult to give them away for free.

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  • Tell Us About Your Current Work

    Every week we take a gander into the Confabulators’ worlds to see what they’re thinking. This week we’re asking what they’re working on because, well – we’re writers and we should be writing things. As usual, you get an interesting range of answers from the specific to the vague.

    Sara Lundberg:

    I start. I stop. I despair. I try again. I beat my fists upon the keyboard. I scream. I fling pages of notes across the room. I stare blankly at the pixilated words on my computer screen. Are my eyes watering from fatigue or anguish? Will I ever write again? Will these words strung together with my blood, sweat, and tears ever become a book? How can I call myself a writer? I despair.

    I try again.

    Jack Campbell, Jr.:

    I am working on an idea tentatively titled The Dream Catcher. The owner of a hotel is plagued by a sort of psychic ability. When he sleeps, he picks up the dreams of those around him as if he is an antennae picking up radio waves, the dreams of those physically closer to him are stronger. Because of this, he works nights, choosing to sleep during the day when everyone else is awake. One night, after two days of lack of sleep due to the stress of his wife leaving him, he falls asleep at the desk. He picks up a horrific dream, but unlike most nightmares, this one gives it dreamer great pleasure. Our hero find himself in the middle of the sinister cravings of a sociopath, whom no one else can find.

    Paul Swearingen:

    My current work in progress has been in progress since about 1980. Or actually it was stalled for about 30 years until I pulled it out of the drawer, literally, and started back to work on it.

    It’s a post-apoctalyptic young adult novel (please don’t ask me to say that aloud!) set in SE Kansas. All but a few people in North America have been killed by neutron bomb explosions, and a 16-year-old boy, who had his own problems before everything went down, now has to apply his farm-boy living techniques to be able to survive.

    So far I’ve managed to come up with an ending to the story, after about 73K words and reviving two characters whom I’d killed off, and I’m about halfway through the first total-book revision, but I’m not sure that the current chapters leading up to the ending will survive.

    Kevin Wohler:

    I’m sorry. [Insert Name Here] has been unable to work on his novel. Lately he has been spending his spare time:

    • A) Preparing for the upcoming Mayan apocalypse
    • B) Fearing a man-made “Big Bang” created at the Large Hadron Collider
    • C) Trying to broker a Middle East peace accord
    • D) Debating with UFOROSWELL47 the location of Area 51
    • E) Spending too much time coming up with this list

    Larry Jenkins:

    Imagine Elmore Leonard, Christopher Moore, and the Coen brothers met at some seedy, roadside motel and got their ménage on.  I’d like to think my book is what would come out of that most holy of unions.  It’s got rednecks, racists (is that redundant?), and buried treasure.  There’s a floating strip club named The Love Butt, a sheriff’s deputy who thinks he’s the second coming of John Wayne, and a couple of friends who are in desperate need of change of venue.  A little found money may just be what the doctor ordered, provided they can survive the week.

    Jason Arnett:

    I just finished a story that should be published sooner rather than later (announcement soon, I hope) and I’m working on a sequel to Evolver: Apex Predator that’s nearly done. I’m also deep in revisions on my novel, The Cold Distance, which is a science fiction about about two thieves who are unwittingly hired to steal elements of a machine that, when assembled, will destroy the universe as we know it. She’s an orphaned girl filled with a sense of betrayal and he’s a quantum-computer Artificial Intelligence and they’re chased by galactic law enforcers who have no sense of humor whatsoever.

    Ted Boone:

    I’m trying to recover from the post-NaNo blues and get my current manuscript completed. It’s at around 66%, which is a common stalling point for me. After getting the zero draft complete, I’ll vet it with my regular readers and then start the hacking and chopping phase.

    Muriel Green:

    I am still working on my National Novel Writing Month novel from 2011. It is a young adult hard sci-fi story. I think it’s time that more hard sci-fi for young adults came out. Hard sci-fi sparked my imagination when I was in middle and high school, and I think it appeals to a lot of adolescents who aren’t interested in reading novels about dating.

    R.L. Naquin:

    Right now I’m working on revisions for the second book of my Zoey series. Book three is already coming together in my head at the same time, since the parts need to fit together. I should have book two submitted by mid-March, so I’ll start writing book three in a few weeks.

    Amanda Jaquays:

    It’s not a “work in progress” so much as a “story mired in severe procrastination,” but I’m currently working (procrastinating) on editing a young adult novel. The story follows a girl as she grows up in an Academy for the gifted. However, she can’t seem to figure out why she is supposed to be there and rather than trying to fit in and make friends, she strives to be the girl nobody knows exists. Fate has other plans in store for her, though, and while she doesn’t have to save the world, she has to decide if saving the life of the crown prince is worth giving up her anonymity.

    My goal is that by the time any of you read this, I’ll have actually figured out what dusty corner of my room I threw my notes in and have begun working on editing it again. If I haven’t, somebody please give me a swift kick in the pants!

  • Character Development (Week of 20 February 2012)

    Characters walk in and out of the cafe all the time. Some are interesting, some merely background players in a larger story, but all of them get some time on the stage here. Guitar-slingers, demon hunters, chrononauts and closet monsters alike mingle with main characters running gauntlets that real people would quail at. The Confabulators paint every character in our stories with the same care but to varying degrees of completion.

    Some of us need to know more about some characters and some a little less. This week we’re going to share our process of learning about people we create out of thin air and then do horrible things to. Bear with us if it seems as though we’re enjoying our godlike powers of creation. It’s one of the things that makes us what we are: storytellers. Come on in, rub elbows with our characters. The coffee is hot and your table is right here. Maybe you’ll recognize yourself in something we write.

  • Combo One

    I seem to keep coming back – again and again – to this laundry list of authors: Robert A. Heinlein, Alan Moore, Ian Fleming, Neil Gaiman, Alan Lightman. These are the writers that have inspired my attempts at writing stories and influenced how I put one word after another as well as how I organize one idea against another.

    Back in the ancient days of the early to mid-90s, I first tried to write comics exactly like Gaiman and Moore and boy did I fail miserably. Once I got over trying to create the next Miracle Man or Sandman and settled in to telling stories that were occurring to me I did a lot better. I toyed with the idea of writing fiction, too, and that’s when I tried aping Heinlein.

    When I was a songwriter for the bands I played in, I would tap Heinlein again for song titles and themes. A couple songs were pretty successful though anyone listening to them and looking for a hidden meaning or if I was trying to adapt a book into a song would be disappointed. (And don’t bother trying to find any of my songs anywhere. I have copies and so do the guys I played with but this was way before the internet and music software were so ubiquitous.)

    As I started trying to write fiction on a dedicated word processor (anyone remember those?), I used thinly-disguised characters and settings from Heinlein and Gaiman, especially. I was trying to write fantasy and science fiction so it was natural to turn to masters of those genres. Later, after I discovered Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman taught me how to write emotions and so it was natural to pull from him, too. That led to me really dissecting Moore and Gaiman’s comic stories for emotional content. Goldmine. I was attending Fiction University.

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  • The First Thing You Wrote

    Creative tendencies often show up in youngsters. If they’re encouraged, they can find a way to blossom soon and the world is graced with prodigies that we don’t need to name as we don’t want to compare ourselves to them. If creative tendencies are left to flower or flounder on their own, it may take years or decades for the person who has such tendencies to realize that’s what they need to do. Creativity must find a way out. 

    Every week we ask the Confabulators a question that may further illuminate the blog question or give you some further insight into our working minds. This week we wanted to know about the first attempts our writers made. You’ll find as wide a variety of answers as there are Confabulators answering the question but a common thread was school. Let’s not underestimate what schools can do for creative people. Perhaps our answers will help you understand why…

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