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Questions from Book Clubs – Part 1

I’ve been doing more book club visits, and I absolutely LOVE the questions that members ask me. I thought I’d do a roundup of some of the most popular questions and answer them in a couple of blog posts. Here are the first three:

Q: Do I outline?

A: Not in the traditional sense. I don’t start with an outline. But with Granite Creek, after getting 80 percent of the draft done, I went back and did a chapter-by-chapter outline so I could see what happened, where the gaps were, and double check the timeline (dates, ages, etc). I didn’t do this for Forgotten April.

However, at 23,000 words into my current WIP, I’ve stopped and I have started a skeleton chapter-by-chapter outline, because it’s clear that I need to move things around, and I feel ready now to write things in order. Most of the 23K words I’ve written so far are necessary, but I’ll be gutting, deepening, and revising. The outline is helping me map it out.

Q: Do I ever suffer from writer’s block?

A: I don’t believe in writer’s block. That doesn’t mean a writer won’t have tough writing days or pain-in-the-ass scenes that require some distance or moments when the prose isn’t coming out as easily as other times. But that’s not a block. Usually, for me anyway, it’s a sign I need to walk away and take a break. Often, just a mere 24 hours away from my desk provides the distance or the rest my noggin needs.

Q: Do I ever read something after it’s published and wish I’d chosen a different word or used a different phrase?

A: Absolutely! And I know I’m not alone. I’ve attended readings where the author is reading from his or her printed, bound, published book, and the author is making notes/changes in the margins as he/she reads. Perfection is the goal, but impossible to achieve.

I’ll have more Q&A next week. If you have any specific questions for me, feel free to leave them in the comments or email me directly.

Writers, how ’bout you? How would you answer some of these questions? Share in the comments.

Walk-on Characters in Fiction – Good or Bad?

One of my Granite Creek beta readers questioned my inclusion of two minor characters. These characters were essentially “walk-on characters,” meaning they appeared in one, and only one, scene. The beta reader didn’t feel it was right to introduce characters who had such a minor role.

I disagreed, and the characters stayed. (Note: I also questioned my other readers after hearing the comments from the first beta reader…none of the other readers agreed with the assessment, so I felt my decision was the right one.) My characters, though minor, were essential to the plot and provided context and even a little bit of intrigue. I liken it to the scene in Shakespeare in Love with Judi Dench. She had eight minutes of screen time, but eight crucial minutes, and eight minutes that she OWNED (and ultimately won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress). Yes, I realize Dench was playing a “known” character — Elizabeth I. However, I think the example still has legs.

What are your thoughts? If you’re a writer, do you ever include walk-on characters? Why or why not? Readers, do these sorts of one-off characters annoy you, or can they enrich the storytelling (when done right)? Share in the comments.

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Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

One of the hardest things for a writer to learn is when a piece of writing isn’t working. It could be a whole novel or simply a portion — perhaps a chapter or a scene. If it’s the latter, there’s hope. With some effort and TLC, you can salvage it. But when it’s a whole novel — and there’s no hope — it can be incredibly painful.

It’s similar to when a relationship isn’t working. You know it deep in the pit of your stomach. It causes you anxiety. You dread talking about it or seeing the person or dealing with what you know will be the inevitable: the break up. But you know that you — and your sanity — will be better off once you do it, once you pull the trigger, once you have the “we need to talk” conversation.

What happens after you break up with your writing is similar to human relationship break ups. With some, you can still be friends afterwards, or, at least, after the pain subsides and you’ve had some space. With others, you walk away and never look back. Good riddance, you think. Occasionally, you encounter the “one” that becomes the elusive lover who got away, the one you think about years later, even though you know in your heart you can never go back.

And finally, and rarer still, there’s the possibility you get back together with one of those you broke up with. Perhaps when you’re older and wiser and you have perspective that can only come from time spent apart. And you find it works. And that you’re happy.

Any of this is possible. Part of being a writer — a good, smart writer — is knowing when you have to let go, even if you don’t know how the break up will ultimately play out. It’s one of the many risks you take every time you dive into a piece, or start a new relationship: it might not work out. But that’s okay. You dive anyway. You try. That’s all you can do.

Of course, sometimes magic happens: it works. And you’re happy. You’re happy in a way that you can’t put words to, despite the fact words are your life and this is what you do. Kinda like being in love.

If you write, have you ever had a break up? Did you see it coming? Are you still friends, or is the love (for that piece) lost forever? Share in the comments.

 

 

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Drafting Novels: Sometimes You Have to Abandon Them

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for. ”

—Ray Bradbury

I’ve been quiet here. My last post was the end of April, and now it’s the end of May. As many of you know, I’m a marketing copywriter by day and fiction writer by night. (I realize this sounds redundant.) The marketing copywriter bit has been keeping me extra busy, as it usually does this time of year. But I’ve also been working on novel #3.

Okay, so it’s really novel #3.5. See, the book I’d been working on since last August just wasn’t coming together — at least, not in the way I needed it to in order to continue with it. Then, this other idea came to me — hit me in the face, actually — with such force that I was left standing and saying, “Well, duh. Of course I should be writing about that.” So, I began writing and have been ever since. Things feel good in the same way they felt good when I was drafting What Happened in Granite Creek (side note: I started another novel in between Forgotten April and Granite Creek, so maybe this is part of my process).

I’m not giving myself a firm deadline for finishing this draft, but my soft deadline is end of July, which is quite doable. That said, I’m not going to rush through it just so I have another book to put out there. Quality matters. I’d love to have another book out at the end of the year/beginning of 2013, but the writing comes first and will dictate the release.

Anyhow, now that I’m slowly emerging from the weeds, I’ll be getting back to regular blogging and also tweeting again (I took a much needed break from that as well). One place I’m always active is Facebook, so connect with me there for the latest news on my work, book chat, and the occasional debate about things like swearing in novels.

What have you been up to and what do you have planned for June? Share! 🙂

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How Titanic Saved My Life

Okay, the title might be a little overly dramatic, but let me explain. First of all, this memory has come flooding back (see what I did there?), thanks to the re-release of Titanic in 3D. I saw the original for the first time in December of 1997 (with my beloved) and was wowed, just like everyone else.

I then went on to see the flick another three times (at least) in the spring of 1998, and here’s why: my beloved and I had broken up, and I was, quite simply, devastated.

I was a young pup — I’d just turned 25 — and my heart was breaking, and no, Celine Dion, it didn’t feel like it would go on. This was before the Internet had taken off and everyone had email. Facebook didn’t exist, nor the smart phones and texting and online Scrabble we’ve come to know and love today. Time went by so slowly back then, but even more so for me in that stretch of spring circa 1998 when every minute it seemed my tender little heart ached and broke some more. I needed distractions, something to fill the endless, empty hours. Enter Titanic. I mean, there’s nothing like a 3.5 hour movie to kill off a chunk of time.

Yes, it might seem odd that I opted for a flick with a love story — and a sad one — at its heart, but I had few choices. So off to the theater I went, by myself, when I didn’t think I could stand another moment in my body. The hours I stared at the screen with glazed, red, and puffy eyes saved me.

I’ve seen the movie probably a dozen times since then and know much of the dialogue word-for-word. I haven’t seen it in 3D and don’t know if I will. The memories it’s stirred up are enough.

But it’s those memories and experiences, I think, that shape and complete us (corny sounding, even as I write it, but it’s true), and, for me, all of it has inspired me, my writing, and my vision for my future.

It’s taken me fourteen years to feel this way, but I’m grateful for all of it, and I am, finally, at peace.

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Inspiration, circa 1980

When I was kid, I loved going to the movies. General Cinema was the big theater in town, and one of my favorite moments was after the previews and before the movie started when the General Cinema clouds would appear with this soaring music — music that made my skin tingle and my heart beat faster and my imagination spin with possibilities.

I knew at a very young age that I wanted — that I needed — to create, and this “thing” inside me stirred whenever the clouds appeared and the music played, almost as if the two were a trigger to remind a dormant piece of my soul what it was being called to do.

I was thinking about the clouds and the music the other day, struggling to describe them and wondering if I could somehow find them online. I googled “general cinema clouds,” and the first item to show up was a YouTube video of what’s called “the policy trailer” (I never knew it had a name). I’m embedding it below. About 32 seconds in you’ll see my clouds and hear my music, and if you listen closely, you might hear my soul singing, too.

 

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Elizabeth Gilbert on Creativity

I’m late to this party, but in case YOU haven’t seen this inspiring TED talk with Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love), then watch it here. It’s for anyone who creates. Enjoy!

 

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Love is in the Air…But Not on My Page

I’ve had some readers who wanted more heat in both Forgotten April and What Happened in Granite Creek. I prefer — as a reader — the less-is-more approach, since I have an extremely vivid imagination.

As a writer, I find it challenging to write sex scenes well, which is one of the reasons I haven’t included them in any of my work. To be honest, I think this is challenging for MOST writers, not just me (Anais Nin being one exception…she made erotica artsy, methinks.)

In fact, there’s even a bad sex in fiction award from the Literary Review out of the UK.

How ’bout you: do you like writers who take chances and include sex scenes, or do you prefer just enough to get the juices (ahem) flowing and then letting your imagination take it from there? Or does it depend on the writer, the genre, etc? Know of any writers who craft particularly good sex scenes?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Where I Get My Ideas From

I get this question a lot from readers and fellow writers. For me, ideas are everywhere: websites like Post Secret. Snippets of overheard conversations. Weird stories on the news. “What if” questions. Real-life situations, like the other day, a woman from my building came running up to me in the parking lot with her three kids, one in a stroller. She was begging me for a ride to work because her car wouldn’t start.

At first, I was going to drive her, but then I realized she wanted to take the kids, and my car didn’t have a car seat for the baby bucket. She told me she’d hold onto the baby carrier. I told her I couldn’t take the chance because what if we were in an accident? She pleaded. Instead, I gave her car a jump and we got it started (with the help of another neighbor). But the scenario launched a whole bunch of what-if scenarios in my head.

As you can see, I’m never at a loss for ideas.

I’m going to go through my existing titles and share where the idea came from:

  • What Happened in Granite Creek is based on the short story “Support Our Troops,” which is about a woman who has an affair with a quadruple amputee who lost his limbs while serving in Iraq. Back in 2007, I saw a clip on TV of a soldier returning home and how he was assimilating into his “new” life without arms. Don’t ask me why, but my mind went into a rather “odd” direction. I didn’t wonder about things like how he would brush his teeth or put on his pants. Nope, I wondered about more prurient things, if you catch my drift. The story evolved from that prurient thought into something that is (I hope) so much more.
  • My short story “Crush” is about a woman who is mourning the death of her son — a son who died tragically after falling into a hole on the beach. The hole collapsed and the sand crushed him. This is based on real stories I hear about every summer. Freak accidents that result in death have always fascinated me.
  • “A Touch of Charlotte” — this is my story about a woman suffering from severe postpartum psychosis. I actually reveal the seed for this story within the story itself — it’s based on a secret that was sent to Post Secret. (Go ahead — read the story to find out what the secret was!) There’s also an unusual syndrome that I talk about in the story — it’s real, and I had heard about it and it always fascinated me and it got stuck in my memory. Came together in this story.
  • “The Object” — I used to teach public speaking (same as the narrator in the story, and no, it’s not autobiographical). The core event that involves the “object” in question is based on a real story I’d heard about from a social worker friend of mine.  But trust me when I say that this little piece of flash fiction is just that…fiction.
  • “Orange Pineapple” — we hear about inappropriate relationships between adults and teenagers…is it always black and white or are there ever shades of gray? That’s what this story explores.
  • Forgotten April — I think it’s been said that one in 10 Americans is adopted. In the late 90s and early 2000s, I began hearing about lots of people who were discovering half siblings they never knew existed. That’s fodder right there.

If you’re a writer, where do you get your stories from? As readers, do you ever think about the genesis of the story? Would you rather not know or do you like hearing about where the author draws her inspiration from? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Dear Writerly Dream: RIP

I recently emerged from a textbook case of the five stages of grief.

I’d been grieving my dream of writing fiction full time by the end of 2011, a goal I had set for myself in the late fall of 2010.

I can honestly say I gave this dream my all. One hundred and fifty percent. But it didn’t work out. And it’s quite possible I held onto this dream a bit too tightly. Like love, dreams need room to move around and grow. Holding on too tightly or smothering it (even with happy thoughts and TLC) is not healthy.

My dream officially died as the clock struck 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 2011.

What I didn’t do:

I didn’t drink or drug or go on eating binges or seek out unhealthy relationships. Instead, I sat with the raw pain and felt every single stab until, one day, I didn’t.

The Five Stages of Grief

Backing up a bit: I was in denial for a bit back in September, blitzed through bouts of anger and bargaining (“Oh, things will get better when this sponsorship happens”), and wallowed in a deep, dark depression for two months — two months that occurred during a hard time of year for me to begin with: Thanksgiving through New Year’s. It was tough and messy and full of tears and snot and angst and manic episodes, but I survived it. And I’ve finally reached the other side: acceptance.

Acceptance, and What I’ve Learned

I haven’t talked too much about my dead dream, because what I don’t want are the well-intended-but-still-misguided platitudes: “You shouldn’t feel that way” or “But you are living the dream!” I’m a compassionate person, by design and environment, and one thing I’ve always known intuitively is that you don’t invalidate people’s feelings by saying stuff like that. (This was reinforced through my training with Samaritans, a suicide prevention organization that I used to volunteer for. The worst thing you can say to someone who is depressed and/or suicidal is that he or she shouldn’t feel that way or that he or she should think of all the things he or she DOES have.) Sometimes things suck for a person, and the best thing you can do in that moment is bear witness to his or her pain.

But back to the dream. The dream – that dream, my dream – is dead. I’m not writing fiction full time. Nowhere near it. This acknowledgement should not lead to the illogical conclusion that I’m “giving up on writing.” That said, the dream is still dead. Time for a new one, or perhaps, it’s time to let dreams go for a while and settle into a place called No Expectations. It’s hard to be disappointed when you have no expectations, and it might be a smart way to live, for me, at least for now.

I realize that I have little control over this writing venture, and I think that’s been the hardest thing to accept. The only thing I can control is what I write, my output. I can follow marketing strategies – blogging, doing updates on FB, buying advertising – but those are just strategies, and the results are out of my control. So, it’s back to basics, back to blocking and tackling, otherwise known as writing and revising. Writing novels and short stories and the occasional poem and, yes, writing marketing copy (sigh!), for now. The writing-fiction-full-time thing will either happen. Or it won’t.

And I also know — and believe — it’s a marathon, not a sprint (this isn’t an original thought; I know Konrath has said it before). I’m in it for the long haul. I’ve said that from the beginning and never wavered from this philosophy, even in those dark days a couple of months ago.

A Word About Failure

I used to be a fan of those people and famous sayings that encourage you to take risks and not to be afraid of failure because it’s a learning experience. I’m still a fan, but I think it’s important to let people know that when you take those risks and when you do fail, it’s gonna hurt like hell. Yes, you’ll learn. And yes, you will (or should) eventually pick yourself up and try again. But that doesn’t change the fact it’s going to hurt when you fall. It’s the ugly little truth people forget to tell you. I was not prepared for how profoundly painful failure would feel. Perhaps there’s no way to prepare for it. But I think it’s important for the brain to be aware of the possibility, if only on an intellectual level.

A Word about Numbers

Sure, it was hard to ignore Hocking’s or Konrath’s incredible sales numbers. But I was (mostly) much more realistic, even in my dream stage. Besides, I wouldn’t need hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to replace my day job. The numbers I’d need are attainable — I still believe this — thanks to the new publishing landscape.

I’m also incredibly fortunate. I always knew I could easily ramp up my copywriting business again if I needed to. Through the summer and early fall, I was operating as if I’d already attained my dream. Call it The Secret, foolishness, an experiment, or a dream that just wasn’t quite ready to blossom yet, but there you have it. In the fall when I realized “it” wasn’t happening and I needed to start making some cash, I swallowed my pride and began making calls/sending emails. I’m good at my day job — some might even say I’m great at it — and I’m fortunate that the work was there and waiting for me. Very lucky.

What I Have Accomplished

This isn’t a poor-me missive, trust me. It started out as a pity party when I began drafting this post after the new year when I was still straddling depression and acceptance. But I’m in full acceptance now and a-okay. And I do realize there are highlights from the last year that I shouldn’t ignore. I’ve sold over 2,000 books — 2,463 to be exact (all titles, including electronic and print). No, not a huge number by any stretch. But it’s something. Reviews have been positive for the most part; all have been fair. I’ve gained some true fans (who aren’t related to me or friends!). Buzz is starting to build with Granite Creek. I’m working on my third book. And that’s pretty much where things stand, to date.

Not a bad place to build from.

Editor’s Note: I worked on this post for several weeks and gave it one final read the morning of 1/21 (and scheduled it to appear on 1/24). After I scheduled it, I happened to go to CNN.com, and lo and behold, this was the cover story: The Success of Failure. (This is the type of thing that makes me believe in the universe, in God, in The Secret. It’s hard to call it a mere coincidence.)

So tell me: how do you handle failure and dying dreams? Share in the comments.

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Robyn Bradley, Writer

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