A SOLUTION TO WRITER’S BLOCK MIGHT BE FOUND IN THE POWER OF MUSIC

by El Ochiis

I had had a traumatic experience as a young college student, one that drastically impacted my writing life. For some time, I was unable to sit down at a typewriter or computer and write with the voraciousness that I had written throughout high school. Until, I discovered a piece of music that rekindled my creativity. I had always stood in veneration of: blues, opera, jazz, classical and blues rock. John Lee Hooker, Rosetta Thorpe and BB King helped me practice guitar licks; Vivaldi’s Four Seasons picked me up; Les McCain, Eddie Harris and Nina Simone infused a desire to travel - to Switzerland – just to see them on stage; Beethoven’s Concerto in D Major made me think; Pavarotti’s "Nessum Dorma" transported me to another galaxy.

 

That painful experience, which stifled my writing, was assuaged by Aretha Franklin’s gifted voice and astute piano virtuoso. Aretha sang a song called “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep.”  When Aretha’s song ended, I had written the beginnings of a powerful, short story, based on that horrific incident; this piece of prose won several awards and I started writing, again, with avidity – thanks to a woman who could play and belt out despondency, redemption and hope, faster than keys on a keyboard could make an impression.   

 

You see, artists borrow from each other:  Chuck Berry’s pianist, Johnnie Johnson, took some of his inspirational chords from Rachmaninoff. Few took Chuck literally when he “told Beethoven to roll over and tell Tchaikovsky the news” – he was hinting to his listeners about the origin of his and Johnnie’s chords – their way.

 

It’s also my opinion that Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1873-1877) was influenced by Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). For Tolstoy and Flaubert, the high arts of literature and music stood in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy – rather like a long-term marriage. I’ve spent my efforts trying to copy the storytelling style of both men. But, it was James Baldwin whose prose that I longed to emulate; Baldwin could turn a phrase like James Brown could sing lyrics whilst doing complicated splits. If you’ve ever played an instrument and sang at the same time, you’d know why James Brown had to be an extraterrestrial to be able to sing, and, to perform the way he did – no human could accomplish that.

 

This got me to thinking about prominent writers and what they had to say about the power of music. Susan Sontag stated: “Music is the best means we have of digesting time.” Igor Stravinsky once remarked (one that’s often misattributed to W.H. Auden). “Music is the sound wave of the soul.” Kurt Vonnegut wrote that music, above all else, “made being alive almost worthwhile” for him. Friedrich Nietzsche declared: “Without music life would be a mistake.”  Aldous Huxley wrote, “After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” So, next time you find yourself stuck, feeling like you can’t write another word, sentence or paragraph, don’t stress, "just take those old records off the self and listen to them by yourself." Aretha can tell you a story about two sisters, named Mary and Martha – if you’re not moved with inspiration, check your pulse.

THE MAGICAL DAY KNOWN as #PITMAD

By Kasie Whitener 

This past Thursday was #PitMad. Not sure what language that is? It’s Twitter speak and the “#” is called a “hashtag.” When put before a word or phrase, the hashtag connects tweets from unrelated users into a single conversation.

 

When we use the hashtag in a tweet, we are making our tweet visible to anyone who looks at the hashtag. This is as close as Twitter comes to a magic wand. If you’re watching a football game and go to Twitter to read tweets with the hashtag #CLEMvsOSU you’ll find conversations (tweets) about the NCAA playoff football game last December between Clemson and Ohio State University.

 

In the writing world, hashtags are used for a few different purposes: 1) to organize an event such as #wschat or #LitChat, 2) to identify genre such as #YA or relevant character groups such as #LGBTQ, and 3) to create communities of writers such as #WritingCommunity and #amwriting.

 

Writers are all over Twitter and for the most part, they’re friendly, supportive, and enthusiastic. During events like #PitMad, writers are given the chance to bridge the divide between their own wild ambition and the gatekeepers. Agents read #PitMad. Publishers troll #PitMad, too. (Troll like in the boating use of the word, not the hideous online bullying.)

 

Sponsored by PitchWars.org, the #PitMad event is a single day during which writers are encouraged to tweet the pitch for their manuscript complete with comparable titles and relevant hashtags. A few examples:

 

@Lydia_Writing tweeted:

Dee can't stop talking to her dead ex-boyfriend, Cam. When Cam's siblings recruit her to help clean out his apartment, she fears that grief might just be driving all of them mad. Little do they know that a messy apartment isn't the only thing Cam left behind. #PitMad #WF

 

@EvelynHail tweeted:

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE + LOST IN TRANSLATION Two commuters. Two trains. Iris and Evan randomly see each other through the ups and downs of a year, misunderstanding the other's gestures. Still, a bond forms. Once they realize it, time is running out. #pitmad #A #R #RS #HA

 

Lydia received 14 “likes” and Evelyn earned 20 and this is where #PitMad works its magic. Those “likes” – signified by a reader clicking the heart icon on the tweet – are supposed to be from Agents. Those agents are saying they want the writer to send them a query. Sometimes people who don’t know what #PitMad is will like the tweet, so that might not be 14 agents asking Lydia for a query, but it might be.

 

The regular querying rules apply and writers should visit the agent’s site get that query letter instruction. But #PitMad opens the door. It’s yet another channel for writers to reach agents who might be able to shepherd their work to publication.

 

I didn’t participate in #PitMad this week but I learned a lot: what agents want, what people are writing, and what makes a good pitch. Query on!

DO AUTHORS LOVE AMAZON?

 

By Bonnie Stanard

 

Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it. Is a great relationship going bad?

 

We writers, ignored by NYC’s legacy publishers, fell for Amazon in a big way. It seduced us with promises of newfound horizons, priceless connections, and a way to publish our manuscripts. We could forget the painful past. Didn’t matter that agents and publishers refused to accept our queries. Nor, as it has turned out, did it matter whether or not we could write. Amazon arrived on the scene and gave us the means to publish and sell our books.

 

Last week several organizations delivered a letter to the chairman of the US House Antitrust Subcommittee asking the government to look into Amazon’s unfair business practices, which have resulted in its controlling as much as 50% of all book distribution. The letter is signed by organizations representing booksellers (think independent bookstores), publishers (the big and little guys), and writers (Authors Guild).

 

They have accused Amazon of:

1) below-cost pricing of books to squash competition

2) refusing distribution unless the supplier purchases advertising

3) requiring publishers to offer Amazon similar (or better) terms as any competitor

4) requiring publishers to restrict price discounts to consumers

5) steering customers to illegal sellers of counterfeit/unauthorized books

6) manipulating discovery tools to make books hard to find without purchase of ads

7) steering consumers toward Amazon's own products

 

We might ask, “What does this have to do with me? I don’t publish books. I don’t own a bookstore. I haven’t written a best seller.. or second best or third best. So what?” Only the writer with no expectation of reaching an audience has nothing to lose.

 

We may be tempted to say this letter is just sour grapes from the losers. Amazon has taken on the competition and out produced and out distributed books. Now the losers are appealing to the government for help.

 

Should the government curtail Amazon? Let’s consider another question. Where do you buy quality books? Not at a local bookstore. We know what’s happened to them. Online alternatives to Amazon? Wordery, Barnes & Noble, Powell, companies struggling to stay alive or hoping Amazon will buy them. What has happened to retail booksellers?

 

Do we writers have viable options to Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon) for self-publishing? There’s Apple, but if you go there, you have to figure out how to sell the book once it’s published. Amazon cleverly unites publishing with selling, a move that puts a squeeze on other print-on-demand (POD) publishers. In other words, those publishers survive by making a deal to distribute with Amazon. Which is what IngramSpark and bookbaby have done. Does this sound like a bottleneck to commercial traffic?

 

Regardless of how much Amazon has done for us writers, to suppose it can do no wrong is naive. Its position in the marketplace should be secured by innovations, not suppression of the competition. I like Amazon, but I don’t want to be forced to like it, whether to publish a book or buy a screwdriver.

 

 

 

 

  

THE RUSH to PUBLISH

By Sharon May

To learn about using social media as a writer, I started following some writing groups on Facebook and Instagram. On one group, I noticed many questions from group members that make me wonder about their critical thinking and decision-making skills. I try not to be judgmental, but some of the questions make me shake my head.

“Where or how do I start?” This is usually accompanied by “I’ve always wanted to be a writer.” Reminds me of my students who think writing is a magical, yet formulaic task. There is no one, simple answer for such questions. “It depends…” is the only way to start an honest answer. And beginners don’t find that response satisfying, preferring a standard, fill-in-the-blanks recipe.

 

Respondents to beginner questions really don’t have much of a grasp on the nuances of writing either. Just this morning, one writer said he had completed a plot outline, but wasn’t sure what to do next. Most respondents advised him to start at the beginning. Maybe that will work, maybe not. Depends once again.

 

Most of these exchanges reveal that many writers haven’t yet honed the craft. Being from Appalachia, I grew up around storytellers and I am talented one, but I have to learn to be a writer. We all come to the profession with some talents and ambition, but the majority of us have to work hard to get a good product ready for publication. For some of us, that takes years. I’ve seen many comments bragging about how few days it took to write a book as if writing were simply a race to publication.   

One Facebook commenter said she had finished her novel, and asked if she “had to edit.” Really? For the love of writing, you should edit unless you plan to publish a draft, which brings me to my next point. There is too much trash being published because for many, the lure of money and the thrill of being published are more important than the quality of the writing.

Many writers don’t spend the time doing the hard work. Instead, they want the words to leap magically from brain to screen. Sometimes the words may come like that, but rarely for an entire book. And, what if it did come that quickly? I would think you’d still need to edit. I know the “magic stuff” I wrote during my earlier attempts to become a writer is quite horrible. 

To finish a work, writers must read and research (By research, I don’t mean asking Facebook pals.), write and write some more, then revise and edit repeatedly. Even after all that work, there is usually more to be done if we want to be respected authors. 

If you plan to publish, you need to devote time and energy to the craft and make every effort to produce the best writing you can. You owe the reader that much. 

 

 

DO THE WORK: TWO STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVED WRITING

By Jerry D Pate

 

In his Fiction Writing Master Class, William Cane encourages new writers to copy the styles of various writers until they find their own voice. He notes the practice is common in music and art, so why not writing?

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, he notes, began playing together in 1957 performing songs done by other artists until they perfected their own style and songs; and were suddenly discovered six years later. They did the work.

Painters are encouraged to study and copy the works of others until their skills are honed. Writers could do the same.

Cane’s point in all of this is keep working at it.

I thought, Do the work.

A few years back I sat in on a class an English professor/instructor at UofSC opened to the public. The professor read various passages from a book and made comments.

After one reading she observed, “Here the author is using this as a metaphor for…”

I thought, Metaphor? Writers use metaphors?

The next day I was in the gym on a treadmill next to Pat Conroy’s brother and was still puzzled about the professor’s comment. I asked him if Pat ever said he was looking for a metaphor to use in one of his books.

He gave me a strange look. “Metaphor? He never asked about metaphors. Hell, when Pat was working on a project he would write and write until he came out the room and said, ‘I got three pages done today’.”

I thought, Maybe you just have to write to be able to write?

My own creative process at times gets stymied by the don’ts, do’s, and you musts of punctuation, grammar, voice, etc. Perhaps getting the story down first and worrying about the format later, might help.

But only if I’m willing to do the work. Writing is a process, not an event.

Resource:

To master the fundamentals of writing, try emulating the work of great artists – William Cane, Fiction Writing Master Class, Writers Digest, 2009, 2015.

ISBN-13:978-1-59963-916-1

 

 

WHAT WORDS MEAN

By Shaun McCoy

 

We huddled around the table, shoulders hunched, our faces hovering over heaping plates of pad thai and panang curry. It wasn’t just any awkward silence we suffered through, it was the worst kind of awkward silence. It was the peculiar flavor of awkward silence that can only happen on a first date—and not the kind which is pregnant with tension and possibility, either. Oh no. This was the kind that follows the moment when you both kind of know that there’s not going to be a second date.

 

And this during the plague times, when even meeting had been a risk. Really, how had we gotten each other so wrong? 

 

Well, because we met online of course.

 

Text—which until this very day had been our only method of communication—just didn’t convey everything we needed it to. There are acres of context in a hello, a thousand tiny character details in the way a person smiles, a Wheel-of-Time-novel-sized-backstory hidden in whether a person’s tone rises or falls at the end of a statement. All these things and a billion more are accessible to us when we meet in person, or when we’re experiencing a scene in person, or when we’re listening to dialogue in person. 

 

The silence was loud, not because silence can really be loud, but because by some auditory trick, things that were normally quiet were yelling at us. The wood of chopsticks as they tap a plate, the quiet chewing, the sound of the air conditioner cutting off.

               

“The food’s good,” she said.

 

And it was. The panang curry was sweet with coconut milk and spicy with the touch of chili powder and the essence of the sliced green peppers which had been soaking in it. It was warm. The jasmine rice was nice and sticky. 

               

Our eyes met for a moment, both of us somehow communicating to the other that we knew this date should never have happened. There wasn’t much we could do, though, other than attempt to enjoy the company of a perfect stranger, a person we’ll never see again, as we ate.

 

“The spring rolls particularly,” I said.

 

She grunted a little because she agreed but couldn’t say so while she was chewing.

 

Interesting, isn’t it, that here we were, eating together because we weren’t better writers. Because we couldn’t convey to each other what we were like in text. And that’s the moral of the story, as if written by Aesop himself. It’s important to take the time to make sure your words convey all you mean them too. But don’t worry. Sometimes, when you mess up, there’s still Thai food.

 

A SIMPLE EXERCISE for PINPOINTING YOUR AUTHOR BRAND

By Kasie Whitener

 

The first question in the exercise is, “Who are you?” and while it’s only three words, the question is a really big one. As I get older, the answer gets clearer, but it’s always evolving. 

There’s a great scene in Moana when she has given up on her mission and on herself and her grandmother’s spirit comes to her and says, “Do you know who you are?” 

Is this not the greatest pursuit in storytelling? A protagonist discovering her passion, her proclivities, her personality are all part of the gift she is to the world around her. 

In this week’s episode of our radio show, Rex Hurst and I are discussing Author Branding. The idea came out of the Jane Friedman book, The Business of Being a Writer, which I’m using as the course text for my fall class at the University of South Carolina’s Honors College: “The Business of Writing.” 

I love the exercise: Who are you? How did you get here? What do you care about and why? 

Friedman suggests we answer these questions to look for our deeper purpose as writers, to understand why we write and what we have to offer through our work. She says our branding is emergent in our work; if we pay attention, we’ll see patterns and themes that point us toward the gift we are offering. 

My bio reads, “At her core is fantasy romance and not quite getting over the nineties,” and “fantasy romance” isn’t a genre, it’s the imagined relationships I bring out of my past and reanimate in my work. I write GenX fiction. My work has echoes of the 90s, a reluctance to forget the decade that shaped me. It’s about freedom and not being constrained by archaic rules. It’s about loss and forgiveness and love. 

Of my debut novel After December, Jonathan Haupt said the book, “questions just how far the bonds of platonic and romantic love can be stretched before breaking beyond any hope of mending. The answer is both redemptive and well worth discovering.” 

The exercise works for my characters, too. Who is Brian? How did he get here? What does he care about and why? Answering these questions for each of the people populating my imaginary worlds helps me to deliver authentically motivated characters. 

Moana sings that she is a girl who loves her island, and a girl who loves the sea. She does not think these things are mutually exclusive. Her dichotomy is what makes her a compelling character and her journey of discovery is the entire premise for the film. 

I want to write more of those stories: characters discovering who they are through a journey in pursuit of what they really care about for reasons that are clear to my readers. As I continue to write those GenXer experiences, not-quite-historical and sometimes mid-life-crisis-y, I remain true to my brand: Unapologetically X.

 

What is your author brand?

FINDING YOUR MUSE

By Raegan Teller

Creative types talk about having a muse, and I used to wonder what they meant. Is a muse an actual person? In Greek mythology, nine goddesses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, were muses who presided over the arts and sciences. In more recent history, muses were typically women who inspired male artists or writers and were often their lovers or spouses. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, credits his wife Zelda Sayre as being his muse.

But not all muses are women, and in fact, not all muses are people—at least not living, breathing beings. In fact, the Oxford dictionary defines a muse as a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative person. If you happen to have a real person as your muse, congratulations. I often get inspiration from friends and family, but what I want to discuss here is the “personified force.”

The muse lives in the right side of the brain—the creative side. Our critic lives in the left hemisphere—the analytical side. Most of us can easily tap into our critic, but how can we access our creative side where the muse lives? For some, their muse can be invoked through a ritual, like lighting a candle, playing a certain type of music, practicing meditation, or through right-brain-sparking exercises like freewriting.

I found my muse, whom I named Daphne, through an exercise called subdominant handwriting, recommended by a creative life coach. Since I’m right-handed, my left is subdominant. My process was to write a question I wanted to have answered (e.g., a troublesome plot point) with my dominant hand. Then I switched the pen to my subdominant hand to respond. According to some neurological research, this process allows you to access the lesser-used region of your brain. I can validate the research by saying that when I tap into my subdominant side, I manifest creative, expressive, and insightful thoughts.

The more I practiced subdominant handwriting, the more the ideas came to me, and the clearer the messages became. My creative juices flowed from a much deeper place. Eventually, this inspirational force became a personified presence, and I could shut my eyes and see my muse’s face (“hello, Daphne”).

To be clear, I don’t write an entire story or book with my left hand. This exercise just helps me tap into my right brain more easily than simply writing, which is a linear, left-brain process. If you want to know more about subdominant handwriting , I recommend The Power of Your Other Hand.

You can access your own personified force through freewriting or other right-brain exercises. Or you might try adding a ritual that signals your brain you’re ready to connect with your muse. I encourage you experiment and find whatever works best for you. When you make contact, then nurture and treasure your new friend.  

Do you have a muse? I’d love to hear from you.

THINKING about WRITING

By Sharon May


I imagine professional writers sitting for long hours each day, pounding out words. Actually, most writers have other obligations and have to squeeze writing in when they can. I have reduced my commitments quite a bit, especially during the COVID-19 period. But I still word-process for only three or four hours a day. However, my mind really never stops writing.

As Eugene Ionesco says, “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.” The phrase “thinking about writing” isn’t simply the mental beating yourself up to get started writing, which is what we hear from beginning or struggling writers. It is important not to let that be the only type of thinking you do. Instead, the mind should still be intensely focused on how to produce a well-written product, even far from the computer.

Once you start writing or working on an idea, then the mind becomes a little obsessed. Characters follow you when you leave the computer behind for a while. Conflicts play out in your head as you watch the six o’clock news. When you lie down to sleep, thinking about writing seems to take over completely. Characters make noise sometimes to the point of keeping you awake.

Other times, you may write while dreaming and wake up with an answer to a problem. I have a friend who writes poetry in his sleep. He will wake up with lines for a poem, and simply jot them down on a notepad by his bed. Occasionally, the dreamy writing is so good that he heads to the office immediately.

I don’t write in my sleep, but I do think best in a prone position in a recliner, on the bed, or on the couch. When I’m working out voices for a narrator or working on the scenes needed to drive the plot, I don’t write out all possibilities, I first think deeply about them first. At times, I have had to figure out what to write next so often or for so long, that Peggy worries I’m sleeping too much. The cats, however, prefer me to lie down, but hate it when I suddenly jump up to start word processing once I have solved my writing problem.

When thinking about writing, the biggest problem is how to retain ideas. As many of you know, sometimes the best ideas come in the shower and when driving. Be sure to keep an audio recorder or notebook with you. A friend bought me a waterproof notebook. If you have nothing to record your ideas, try repeating the key words until you are able to write them down. The more you practice just “thinking,” the more apt you are to remember the ideas and wording for longer periods of time.

For me, this the most productive aspect of my writing process, and it leads to better writing. I hope you “think” productively too.

SUBJECTING NATURE

By Bonnie Stanard

The Plum Tree Tavern publishes poetry that focuses on “specific images of physical nature...[which are] preferred over the writer’s judgments of the image.” I revised my submissions because of Plum Tree’s guidelines and one poem was accepted, which is not the point here. The guidelines suggest more than just an approach to writing a poem.

A TREE AS ME

Editor Streur writes that “the personification of nature trivializes nature.” Personification is evident in some of my poems which, upon consideration, I can see shows a lack of appreciation for the inherent value of nature. Just consider Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees,” which gives a tree arms, hair, a mouth and bosom.

POEMS WITHOUT I

According to Plum Tree Editor Russell Streur, “Once the writer injects his or herself into the picture, the poem often becomes more about the image of the writer than about the image of nature.” Obviously we can’t completely remove ourselves. What would be left? Textbook descriptions? However, he admits that “sometimes the I works” and makes the point that writing about nature is different from writing your thoughts about nature.

WRITING YOUR THOUGHTS

You can write about cockroaches until your fingers are blue, but it won’t be as fascinating as a photo or video. A strength of the written word is its ability to reveal notions and feelings that aren’t visible or audible. Personally, I’d rather see a glowing sunset on Netflix than read about one in a poem. Unless, and this is the caveat, the sunset is used to inspire human reflection.

NATURE’S DECLINE

We don’t write about a flock of blackbirds landing in the hay field or the vigor of kudzu because most of us live in suburbia where nature is imprisoned. We write our experiences. We write about a cardinal at the birdfeeder, which is more favorably met by editors who live in suburbia.

NATURE AS VICTIM

Nature’s beauty is for me to enjoy. Animals are to be eaten. Minerals to be mined. Plants to be cultivated. Do we look at nature as a means to accommodate our needs and comfort? Editor Streur’s guidelines warn us against putting our ego above ecology. It’s “the same arrogance that allows the pipeline to be built across the tundra.”

LAST WORD

A quote from Albert Einstein: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe”; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

BECOMING a FAN of FAN FICTION

By Kasie Whitener

I just delivered a “Fan Fictions Basics” class on Outschool wherein I told three tween girls to think about a specific who in a story they loved and then consider all the peripheral questions about that who.

For example, we meet the Wicked Witch of the West through Dorothy’s point of view in the Wizard of Oz and are never told 1) why she is wicked, or 2) why she is green. Enter Gregory Maguire’s book Wicked (and the Broadway musical it spawned) to address both the Witch’s backstory and her unique bathing ritual. Not to mention giving us her name, Elphaba Thropp.

Fan fiction is born of a reader’s experience with a writer’s missed opportunities. The reader says, “Yes, but…” and questions the writer about something. The writer, responds with disdain, “That’s not the point of the story.” Or, in George R.R. Martin’s case, simply sneers at the reader or the daring novice who dares to write in Martin’s world.

Fan fiction is that often maligned effort of novices to stay engaged in a writer’s world a little bit longer. In the class, my students said they thought the writer should be flattered that people wanted to stay engaged. I tend to agree. The questions Maguire had about the Witch are what led to his writing Wicked.

What is The Mandalorian but a Disney-studios-backed fan fiction? Rogue One, Solo, and The Clone Wars animated series are all Star Wars universe stories that grew out of fans’ love for the world George Lucas created. In Martin’s defense, fans can get a little silly. Fifty Shades of Grey started out with vampires because the author wanted more Twilight and decided to write the Bella-Edward sex scene we all deserved.

Tweens write fan fiction because they identify with the character, the situation, or the place and want more story. But authors sometimes finish with a character, situation, or place and move on. What’s a fan to do except try writing their own story in that writer’s world?

Platforms like Wattpad have developed communities of fan fiction writers wherein hungry readers can find satisfying re-tells, one-offs, and side-stories for their favorite worlds: Harry Potter, all the Marvel Comics, Keeper of the Lost Cities, and of course, Game of Thrones. Here fans connect with other fans and share complaints of unfinished storylines or underdeveloped characters. Here they reimagine what authors have put forward for consideration.

I am learning to love fan fiction in all its novice awkward tweeness. Though it’s been around for a long time (it’s where we get the phrase “Mary Sue”), it has largely been ignored or derided by the literary establishment. Real writers write new stories, we usually say. But there’s something just fun about jumping in, feet first, to the indulgence of fan fiction.  

You cannot make money on fan fiction, so why do it knowing you’ll never sell this? Because finding insatiable readers can be a payoff of its own.

MORE on DIALECT

By Sharon May

Recently, I’ve had two occasions to discover more about dialect. First, I “zoomed in” on the SCWA Summer Series, which addressed dialogue, and naturally, the conversation turned to dialect. Second, I received a critique of a chapter of my novel. The reviewer suggested I limit the use of dialect. On both occasions, I realized many people think dialect is best found, or only found, in dialogue and in alternate spellings. That is a too simplified and limited interpretation of dialect.

I have learned over the past 60 years that readers and listeners of English apparently believe there is no dialect being used if the tale is told in Standard American English. Not being flippant, but that is a dialect, and actually, the privileged dialect, and thus, preferred by editors, publishers, and maybe even readers because that is what they are most used to.  

After trying to read William Faulkner or James Joyce, most people may hate works that are written in other dialects. These authors take on the task of writing phonetic spellings, which complicates the readers’ task even more.

My narrators, who are also characters, have unique (I hope) voices, each using a form of eastern Kentucky Appalachian English. Note that someone from the mountains of Maine will have a different dialect than someone from my hometown, though both are geographically Appalachian. A speaker in Maine is apt to speak quickly, and often use run-ons, while Kentucky hillbillies tend to mumble at about medium to slow speed, and like my narrator Lafe drop words and thus, have more fragments.

Dialect is more than just some odd pronunciations and spellings. I tend not to use phonetic spellings, which the reviewer suggested as an alternative, since they can mark the narrators/speakers as lower class and/or uneducated, which are both stereotypes of hillbillies.

Dialect is also about word choice, colloquialisms, and sentence structure, which mirror the way a character or narrator thinks and engages with other characters and the audience. Lafe has a tendency to drop first-person pronouns at the beginning of sentences. The reviewer suggested no one really talks like that and thus somewhat distracting.

I know several people who speak, write, and I assume, think the way Lafe does. While I may reduce how often he drops words, I do plan to use this pattern for his voice. It is the way he thinks and speaks. Sounds weird, but he’s been that way since the first time he spoke to me.

The use of dialect isn’t simply to establish characters’ speech, but to immerse us in new worlds. My goal for the novel is to depict eastern Kentucky as it was in the 1980s. To do so, I want to create authentic voices to emphasize the diversity and complexity of the region. That requires the use of dialect to its fullest extent.

Read Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove for examples of effective use of dialect.  

GET A CAT; PREPARE FOR SLEEPLESSNESS; STAY CLEAR OF STRONG ELIXIRS - SEVEN TOP WRITERS’ TIPS ON WRITING

By El Ochiis

Cats are mascots for writers. More importantly, Edgar Allen Poe had one; Hemingway had twenty-three; and, TS Elliot wrote a poem to them.

I have a cat, yet, I haven’t written anything since the beginning of the pandemic; then, the unrest of protesting for justice came crashing down, tearing at my moral responsibility to fellow humans, further spiraling me into writing silence. I reached out to an old guru who was stuck in self-isolation and asked him for advice to try to get my writing mojo back.

He told me to put down what I was trying to complete and just write, anything. I took this advice, which propelled me into researching other writing advice. It occurred to me that there isn’t a correct way to set about writing creatively. Some writers thrive in isolation; others can hammer out award-winning prose at local coffee shops; whilst others, though a struggle, are able to snatch time between chores and cleaning little, runny noses.

Conversely, it became abundantly clearer that along with a variety of approaches, there are specific ideas and pieces of advice that many writers hold in common.

Here are seven that held my attention that I feel will help you as a writer:

1.  “Writing anything is better than nothing,” -Katherine Mansfield. Don’t get it right, get it written – “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you are doomed,” -Ray Bradbury.

2. “Just take a page at a time,” - John Steinbeck. This advice is spot on: “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day. It helps.”

3. “Get offline,” -Zadie Smith – Take a long hard sigh, and, turn off the Wi-Fi – it’s so much more productive if you can “Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.”

4. “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it,” -Elmore Leonard; Steinbeck too.  

5. “Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action." -Kurt Vonnegut.

6.  “You constantly hurry your narrative … by telling it, in a sort of impetuous breathless way, your own person, when the person [characters] should tell it and act it for themselves,” -Charles Dickens. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” -Anton Checkhov. “Show don’t tell.”

7. “…what grabs readers isn’t beautiful writing, a rip-roaring plot, or surface drama; what grabs readers is what gives those things meaning and power:  the story itself,” -Lisa Cron.

The best writing serves the reader, not the writer, so don’t sit there waiting for perfect, beautiful sentences – you’ll be sitting there forever. Start out by tripping, you will fall, then get up and fall again – the key is to keep getting up after you have fallen, then, keep writing. Oh, if you were thinking about taking a sip of hard liquor, Leo Tolstoy and F Scott Fitzgerald warned: “Don’t write and drink.”