Everybody's Talking

by Sheila Connolly

Sandy's still recuperating, but she'll be back on Wednesdays by next week.

Time was, writers huddled in freezing garrets, scribbling with a quill pen, a lead pencil, or, later, pounding on a manual typewriter. They were solitary creatures, listening only to the voices in their heads (when they weren’t out working at menial jobs to support their creative habit) and trying to set the words down on paper. There was, of course, only one copy originally, or maybe a smudgy carbon copy or two once the mechanical device came along. This soon-tattered document circulated amongst editors and publishers, one at a time, gathering coffee-stains and dog-ears along the way, until it was judged too pathetic and the poor writer had to laboriously reproduce it.

I grew up with the oft-repeated tale from my parents, that when they were first married and living in New York City, they lived in the same building as A Writer (this was said in reverent tones). As I recall, it was Robert Ruark, who enjoyed some small fame in the 1950s and 1960s. Maybe he actually lived in the building, or maybe it was his New York pied a terre—it doesn’t really matter. What I remember is the attitude my parents held toward their neighbor, even though I don’t think they ever exchanged a word with him. He was A Writer; he was Special.

Writers were for centuries mysterious, enigmatic figures. But that’s not true any more, because, thanks largely to the Internet, we all know each other now, or at least, know of each other. What’s more, we all communicate with each other. A lot. We blog together, we email each other, we follow each other from list to list. There are no secrets any more.

This is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, we have a terrific support network—people who know what we’re going through and can commiserate about our rejections and celebrate our successes with us. We also pool agent, editor and publisher information (which I’m not sure those people have quite figured out yet, but that’s fine). Most of us who have books in print know that publishing houses dole out details with a small spoon. We have to fight to find out how many books we’ve sold, how many returns there have been, how our paper darlings are performing when compared to the rest of the herd. So to be able to compare notes with our peers; to get a glimpse into what “success” is; and to be able to cheer for a struggling newcomer, is wonderful and immensely helpful to us all, wherever we are in our career path.

But the easy availability of information also has a downside, or at least a potential one.

We all know the rules: grab the reader up front with a strong hook; if you’re writing mysteries, put the body in the first chapter; avoid backstory at all costs; show, don’t tell; end each chapter with a hook; end the book with another hook so the reader will want to buy the next book in the series. And so on. We all participate in the same online classes, for plotting, building characters, constructing the hero’s story arc. We all know which books on writing are recommended—and there are plenty of them. We all know which blogs to follow for insider information. We all know which agents are hot, and which publishers are cutting lines. In other words, we all know too much.

One of the things we know is that agents—the gatekeepers to publication—reject 98 per cent of the submissions they receive because they don’t stand out. They may be in the correct form and format, they may be competently written, polite and businesslike—but they’re all saying the same thing. Paragraph 1: please consider my time travel romantic suspense, complete at 102,000 words. Paragraph 2: Voluptuous Jane meets Hunky John on a space platform somewhere in time and they fall instantly in love. Unfortunately they both lose each other’s temporal spatial coordinates (for 287 pages). Will these star-crossed (star-crossing?) lovers find each other again without disrupting the time-space continuum? Paragraph 3: Eager writer is uniquely qualified to write this book because s/he has extensive experience in time travel, love, and IPS (that’s Intergalactic Position Systems).

And this is the norm. The swamped agent eyeballs the email query and hits delete in a nanosecond, because she’s seen it literally thousands of times before.

In short, we’ve homogenized writing. Are we better or worse off than we were when we writers labored in isolation? Or, are the books that do make it into print better or worse? We’d love to hear your opinions.

Writer's envy...

By Lonnie Cruse

Ever read a book by an author you admire and wish you could write like that? Wish you had the same way with words? Wish you could make readers laugh or cry that easily? Remember a scene you wrote years later? Me, too. Sigh.

All authors have different “voices.” And no matter that the book jacket says, “Writes like Shakespeare,” or “Will put you in mind of Hemingway,” we’re all different. All unique. Nobody really writes like anyone else, even when covering the same subject. But there are ways to develop our talent, polish our prose, and improve our writing, taking it to a much higher level. Maybe as good or better than our favorite authors? Maybe.

One way to improve our writing is by taking classes, either online or by attending workshops in person. Another is to read what other writers have to say on the subject, and there are dozens of how-to books on writing, editing, pitching, selling, and getting a manuscript published. Working with other writers in a critique group situation is also an excellent learning tool.

But possibly one of the best ways to improve our craft is to study the fiction of the writers we admire. What is it in their books that makes us laugh, or cry, or remember a particular scene forever? How does the author present a setting or a character? Has the author done his/her homework about real life facts? Are there any “speed bumps” that pulled us out of the story, and if so, how would we avoid writing them?

Studying how a favorite author pulls us into their story and keeps us there until we reach the last page, probably slightly worn out from the ride and definitely wanting more, will help us learn how to do the same in our own writing.

War and Peace, anyone?