Kristin Janz

From Nick Mamatas, ten bits of advice writers should stop giving aspiring writers.

Though I wonder if it would be better to rephrase this as “Ten Bits of Advice Aspiring Writers Should Stop Listening To.”  I’ve received a lot of the advice on the list.  Some of it has been helpful, some of it hasn’t.  My advice is to ignore any advice that you think is wrong (including this).

The comments thread for the article is also worth reading.  One point that comes up is that too much advice about the mechanics of writing (write likeable characters, don’t use adverbs, don’t use verbs other than “said” for dialogue, show don’t tell, go through and trim 10% off the wordcount once you think you’re done–that last one is one of my writerly advice pet peeves) can lead writers to produce stories that are adequate, but not very distinctive.  The best thing for your writing career isn’t necessarily to quash your individual voice and end up writing stories that are just like everyone else’s.

Mamatas’s bottom line is that the only generally applicable advice for writers is:  “Write something publishable, attempt many times to get it published.”

It’s been 5 weeks since I officially started my new job as a full-time writer. What have I learned since then?

(1) Distractions are everywhere. Here’s one.

Still Life With Black Walnut

I went for a morning run/walk, and found these on the ground underneath a tree along the bike path. Although I’ve labeled them in the picture as black walnuts, my dad thinks they might actually be butternuts, from the way I described them to him. Butternuts are sometimes called “white walnuts”.

Doesn't that look walnutty to you?

Now that I know what to look for, I’ve found a bunch more trees. The nuts look like green tennis balls. Some of them are falling off the trees, but if you look up, you can see a lot more up in the branches. I’d never seen one before, so of course once I got it home I had to cut and then smash it open to look inside. When you first cut into the skin around the walnut (which is like the pit), the cut surface is green, but it soon turns brownish-black on exposure to air. Back in olden days, people used to use these husks to dye their clothes. I ended up dyeing the cutting board (I also dented it from smashing at the walnut with a meat cleaver. The shells are very thick and hard!). And my palms and fingernails. The brown spots are mostly faded from my skin, a week later, but it still looks like I haven’t cleaned under my fingernails in a few days.

Oh. I was supposed to be talking about writing. Right.

(2) There aren’t as many hours in a day as you think there are.

I had all these fantasies about how much free time I’d have once I was a full-time writer. I was going to spend 7 hours every weekday working at my computer (6 hours writing, 1 hour blogging and/or reading other writers’ blogs), an hour a day reading, 8 hours a night sleeping, and still have all the time I wanted for exercising, cooking, reading cookbooks, spending time with Donald and friends, staying caught up on my email … perhaps I’d even have time to take up new hobbies, like gardening, or soapmaking.

I sometimes manage to spend 7 hours a day writing or doing writing-related work, and an hour reading, and I’m getting better at it. I’ve also been sleeping more than I used to, and getting exercise most days. Cooking more, for sure. (I like cooking as much as I like writing. More, sometimes.) But I’ve certainly had to adjust my expectations as to how much additional free time I was going to have.

(3) It’s possible to spend 6 hours trying to work on a story without actually writing anything.

Most writers seem to set productivity goals for themselves in terms of number of words written. I don’t find this particularly helpful, for me. I’m often a very slow writer. I’m also rather unrealistic in the expectations I set for myself, in writing and in other things. If I expected myself to write, say, 2000 words a day, some days I wouldn’t be finished until midnight. (Other days I’d be finished by noon, and when I’m having a good day, and I know where the story’s going, it seems to make more sense to ride the productivity wave for the rest of the day. Why stop at 2000 words when I can write another 2000?)

On the other hand, since the daily goals I set for myself are “hours spent” not “words written”, it’s a little too easy for me to spend 5 hours clicking through Wikipedia and calling it “research”. Of course, I’m then consumed by guilt and self-loathing for the rest of the day, and Donald has to reassure me that his love for me is not based on my daily word count.

Today I wrote about 300 words over 6 hours. I did a lot of “research”, though. Ask me about European polecats.

(4) When you don’t meet your daily productivity goals by bedtime, it’s better to go to bed and remember that tomorrow’s a new day.

Initially, if I hadn’t spent enough time working by the end of the day, I’d stay up later. Unfortunately, Donald has a day job, so the alarm still goes off at the same time the next morning. And I’m trying to get by without being addicted to caffeine. (I think using caffeine to manage your sleep deprivation is a losing battle, anyway, though I still sometimes fall into the trap. It works for a few weeks, but only until you build up a physical tolerance to the amount you’re using, and at a certain level of sleep deprivation there’s just not enough coffee in the world.) After too many unproductive mornings trying to write new material while dozing off at the computer, I decided that if I hadn’t gotten enough work done by the end of the day, I just had to let it go.

(5) You’ll never be happy with the number of stories and/or chapters you finish.

In my first month as a full-time writer, I’ve finished two novel chapters, a novella (short novel), a novelette (long short story), and a short story. The short story I did from start to finish in the last month. The novelette and novel chapters were mostly written in the last month (at least two-thirds of each). The novella was mostly done, but I added a few thousand words to wrap it up. This is nowhere near what I’d hoped to accomplish, which was more on the order of two novel chapters and a new short story every 2 weeks. But it’s important for me to remember that, in the past three years, trying to write in my spare time while holding down a full-time job, I managed to write and finish 2 novelettes and 1 short story. I did spend a lot of that time working on the novella that I didn’t finish until recently, and editing/revising stories I’d already written so that I could submit them to magazines. Still. I have to keep reminding myself that I really am getting a lot more writing done now that I’m doing it full-time. It’s not nearly as much as some of my friends manage to accomplish even with full-time jobs. But … I’m not them. Maybe I’ll improve, maybe I won’t. One thing is certain: guilt gets you nowhere. Except feeling bad.

(6) Variety is good. Have several different projects to work on, so that if one isn’t going so well, you don’t feel like you had an entirely unproductive week.

Somewhere on the internet, I read that “All advice is autobiographical.”  A lot of what I’ve learned for me isn’t helpful for other writers.

My week goes something like this:

Monday–Work on a new short story.
Tuesday–Find new places to send any stories that have gotten rejected in the last week. Revise and edit stories I’ve already written (or old stories that I’ve decided suck so badly I have to rewrite them from the ground up).
Wednesday–Work on my novel.
Thursday–Novel again.
Friday–Critique stories for writers group, or for friends. Check market listings and see which magazines have opened or closed for submission, or if there are new magazines coming out that sound interesting. Work on website. Other miscellaneous stuff that’s not actually writing, but still needs to get done.

This can vary from week to week, especially if I decide to take a day off. Also, since I’m currently doing my grocery shopping on Tuesday afternoon to fit in with my CSA vegetable pick-up, I usually end up doing a lot of my Tuesday work on Saturday. (I might switch my grocery shopping day back to Saturday once the CSA ends in late October, though it is kind of nice not to have to deal with crowds and/or traffic at the grocery stores.)

Sunday’s usually my day off, at least that’s the plan right now. We’ll see how consistent I can be with that.

I’m definitely enjoying this new adventure! It can be stressful and frustrating, but so far it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Even though I’m not really getting paid for it. Yet.

Just for a change from boiled corn on the cob, I decided to use this week’s corn from my CSA share to make creamed corn for lunch.

A bowl of creamed corn, with fresh corn off the cob and heavy cream. And butter. Because heavy cream just doesn't have enough fat.

It was yummy, though I’m feeling maybe I ought to have a double portion of salad tonight, with no dressing, to make up for it. (In case you’re wondering, I didn’t only eat corn and heavy cream for lunch; I also had leftover Greek vegetable stew and salad (with dressing). And a peach.)

Maybe next time I’ll try the variation with blue cheese and bacon.

On the writing front, not such a good day. I was working on the novel, and only got about 1800 words written. Considering that Donald can write 800 words just in the evening after coming home from a long day at his regular job … well, not so good! This is why I need to be a stay-at-home writer in order to accomplish anything, because I’m so slow. Though today was especially bad. I just wasn’t into it, and in the morning I kept dozing off at my desk. And I didn’t have any caffeine in the house. I took a 20-minute nap, which was probably a better idea anyway, and actually helped a lot. (My theory is that using caffeine to stay awake is like curing a hangover with the hair of the dog; it only prolongs the inevitable.) I did force myself to sit at my desk for 6 hours staring at the file of my novel, though. So discipline was okay, just not inspiration.

Today was the first day of my new job as a full-time writer.  The long-term benefits aren’t as good as with my old job as a pharmaceutical industry chemist.  But you can’t beat the commute (up a flight of stairs to the attic, until Donald and I get around to switching offices, at which point it will be a few steps down the hallway from the bedroom).

I tend to measure my progress in hours spent writing rather than word count written, for various reasons.  But today I was pretty happy with both:  6 hours, and 2800 words.  (Maybe the word count seems low to you, but I’m not a very fast writer.  When I was writing an hour a day, 400 words was pretty typical for me.)

I did have a few bad moments early this morning where I failed to resist the lure of the internet, and spent a while reading about caviar and foie gras.  Not because I was planning to buy any, at least not in the immediate future, just … it’s the internet, do I need a reason for wasting time?  Then I spent a bit of time around lunch researching various CSAs in the area and how they work (still liking the idea of CSAs and having trouble admitting that Donald and I really don’t need so many vegetables).  Perhaps I spent a little more of my 6 hours than I needed to, researching different kinds of nuts and where they grow (this counted as “writing” because it was relevant to the story I’m working on; the caviar/CSA excursions didn’t).  But for the most part, I was pretty disciplined.  I sat down in my chair in front of my computer for two 3-hour blocks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and I didn’t get up except to go to the bathroom.

I’m pretty sure I won’t always do so well, but I felt that it was a good start!

Oh, and last week I had another story accepted.  I’ll say more once it’s confirmed and I’ve gotten a contract and all that.  It’s the 9th story I’ve had accepted.

My story “Woman Moving to the Country” was published in Prairie Fire magazine at the beginning of this year, and I promised in my blog post announcing the publication that I would write about the other stories in the issue once I received my contributor’s copy. Well, um, they weren’t that slow in sending it. I just haven’t been able to make time before now. The first few months of this year were rather busy, for some reason.

Prairie Fire is a quarterly Canadian print literary magazine, publishing both short fiction and poetry (the issue I was in featured 6 stories, an essay, and 21 poems). I feel I should offer the disclaimer that I tend to write and read mostly genre, not literary, fiction; which means that I might be looking for different things in a story than the typical target reader of a literary journal such as Prairie Fire. So don’t assume I know what I’m talking about here!

For me, the most memorable stories were Colin Snowsell’s “The Driver” and Kirsten Madsen’s “The Cold Snap”. Snowsell’s story makes effective use of an unreliable narrator, and a twist ending that the reader sees coming soon enough to appreciate the poignancy of the situation, but not so soon that the twist feels too obvious. “The Cold Snap” is primarily about the narrator’s affair with an older married man (37 years old! Ancient!), but also about her relationships with the other people in her life. I appreciated how we see her assessment of other people change and deepen as she comes to know them better, particularly her younger coworker at the coffee shop, and her lover’s wife. I wasn’t convinced that the titular cold snap was an essential aspect of the story, though. Madsen’s descriptions of the frigid northern Canadian winter were richly descriptive, but I ended up feeling that the same story could just as well have been set in any small, remote town.

Interestingly, all the stories in the issue were written in first person. I don’t know if this is more typical of literary fiction, or just coincidence; in the fantasy and science fiction world, we certainly don’t avoid first person, but I’d say the majority of stories are told in third person, and in fact, some prominent f/sf editors actively dislike first person. Maybe the intimate nature of first person works better for the more internal sorts of stories that literary fiction tends to feature? (Or maybe I should read a few more literary magazines before venturing such a judgment.)

It’s even harder for me to judge poetry than literary fiction, since I read even less of it. And since I tend to be more interested in plot and character development than in imagery or beautiful language, I’m really out of my depth with poetry. Having said this, among the poems in the issue I particularly liked “Harry Mayzell’s Suit” by Harold Rhenisch (because it tells a story), Ellen Shearer’s “Hydrangea (after Plath)” (I found the imagery striking, and I liked the bitter edge), and R. Johnson’s “cat walk” (possibly because of its scorn for those who don’t love cats, and because it’s also the story of a relationship, in all its brevity).

Anne Simpson was the featured writer for this issue, with 4 poems and an essay. I loved the gorgeous use of nature imagery in her poems, and found her essay on “Poetry and Community” challenging and thought-provoking in its exploration (among other things) of how writers, whose work is so often inward-focused, also need to look outside themselves into the lives and experiences of others.

The next issue of Prairie Fire is out now, featuring, among others, poet Neile Graham, whom I know from the Clarion West Workshop. It would have been lovely to have been in the same issue as Neile, but alas, it was not to be! If you didn’t have a chance to read the issue with my story, and would still like to, back issues are orderable here. The one you’re looking for is Volume 31, Issue 4, featuring Anne Simpson.

My story “The Shoemaker’s Daughter” is now out in Mystic Signals. You can download a PDF version for free right here.

If you like paper, a hard copy of the magazine is also available for $12. Once you get to the link, scroll down a little, and you’ll see it on the lower right.

“The Shoemaker’s Daughter” is another traditional fantasy, set in the world in which I’m writing that long fantasy series I’ve been working on forever. The story contains a brief shout-out to elves (so to speak), but no actual elves appear onstage.

The genesis of the story is perhaps a little odd, in that it was inspired by an NPR interview with a well-known former child celebrity whose career had been closely managed by his overbearing father. For some reason that stuck with me, and as it was tossing around in my head, I also started thinking about the part in Les Miserables where Jean Valjean rescues Cossette from the Thenardier family, who are supposed to be looking after her, but instead are working her to death as a servant. In that case, it turns out to be a good thing for Cossette that the mysterious stranger takes her away; but the Thenardiers don’t have any way of knowing that. What if the stranger’s motives were (possibly) less benevolent?

Enjoy!

My story “Sons of God, Daughters of Men” is now online at e-zine Strange, Weird, and Wonderful. It’s kind of creepy, and some people might find it disturbing. Reader discretion, etc etc.

People who’ve read my blog in the past might have noticed that I’ve been really, really bad about blogging the last few months. This is because I’m getting married in about a month’s time. Hopefully I can start blogging more after we get back from the honeymoon!

I’m featured in the latest installment of Lynda Williams’s “Writer’s Craft” series at the Clarion Foundation blog. If you’re interested in the process of writing, feel free to stop by! Today’s article addresses the question of whether it’s better to push through the first draft of a story without stopping (planning to revise later), or if instead you should do some revision as you’re going along (producing a better first draft).

Conventional wisdom, as handed down to new writers, often insists that you must just get through the first draft without worrying about how bad it is, and revise later. But I’m not convinced (though I’m not entirely convinced that this is wrong, either). I do think that experienced writers often fall into the trap of thinking that their way is best for everyone, and this can be disheartening to new writers if that way doesn’t happen to work for them.

Those who, like me, tend to do some revision along the way as they’re writing a first draft, or can’t continue with a scene until they’ve researched some worldbuilding detail, should be encouraged to know that not all successful authors belong to the “full speed ahead on the first draft” school. Several months ago, I listened to an interview on NPR with author David Mitchell (“named one of Time‘s most influential people”), who said he can’t keep writing a scene in an historical novel until he’s figured out how the room would have been lit at night.

If you have a writing technique that works for you, don’t let anyone else tell you you’re doing it wrong!

My story “Woman Moving to the Country” is in the current issue of Prairie Fire, a Canadian literary magazine. Although I do write mostly fantasy and science fiction, I decided to venture into the mysterious realm of literary fiction for this one. Which I forgot to warn my mom about when she read an early draft: “I liked it, but I kept expecting something strange to happen.”

Those of you who live in Canada will have the easiest time finding this magazine. A friend of mine mentioned that she’s seen it at Chapters in Toronto. Libraries (especially university libraries) may also be good bets. It’s published in Winnipeg, so that’s probably the best city in which to find copies. (What? Not planning a trip to Winnipeg in February? For shame!)

It’s also possible to subscribe to Prairie Fire, saving 50% off the newstand price, and helping them to support more authors in the future.

Unfortunately I cannot yet comment on the other stories and poems in the issue, as I’m still waiting for my contributor’s copy (thank you, Canada Post and United States Postal System!). But I look forward to reading the work of all the other authors.

“Woman Moving to the Country” was originally written at Clarion West in 2008, and my workshop classmates had a lot of great suggestions for improving the story, as did that week’s instructor, Chuck Palahniuk. So, thanks! Also to my local writers group, BRAWL, who all insisted with one voice that I really needed to fix the ending. (I fixed it.)

Okay, this is starting to sound like a really dull Academy Awards acceptance speech. Enough of that!

I won’t say too much about the actual story, except that it has some funny bits, and a lot of avocados. And that there’s a sequel, of sorts, coming out in Aoife’s Kiss in December. (I’m back to fantasy with the sequel; that literary fiction stuff is just too weird!)

While thumbing through the Lonely Planet guide to Italy on my new Kindle, Donald found a reference to this book.

From the Publishers Weekly review:

‘Colorful frescoes, metal objects or ceramics are shown in 114 illustrations (95 in color), divided among nine chapters explaining ancient societal attitudes toward sex (“Woman on Top: Women’s Liberation in the First Century A.D”; “Laughing at Taboo Sex in the Suburban Baths”), while subheadings like “Priapus, Protection, and Penetration” offer scholarly and personal anecdotes.’

Since we both write about fantasy worlds inspired by ancient Rome, it would probably be a very useful reference for both of us.

We’ve not yet added it to our wedding registry, though.

(Oh, yeah, in case you didn’t notice on Facebook, Donald and I are engaged now. Yay! It’s very exciting, though a little overwhelming.)