Trying to Write Everyday?

A piece of advice that keeps cropping up all over the place is: "Write everyday". What does this exactly mean? Does this mean to become a good writer one must always pursue a first draft, setting a specific word count goal per day? But as we all know, editing is vital for actually writing something which is publishable - so what counts as writing everyday? Does editing count, even though it's less about word count and more about analysing one's work? While editing is actually a process which tends to involve significant re-writes, in the day of word-processing it's become only a matter of editing and inserting/deleting text on a screen; it feels less fluid than writing a first draft.

Is it best to have multiple projects on the go? Editing and pure, unadulterated writing? Something to satisfy both  the unbridled creative process of just writing something, and the analytical and critical work of editing a pre-written piece.

I've taken on a new project this weekend, I've started another first draft of a brand new novel. A compulsion has taken over, and I feel I have to write it down and NOW. I made a pact with my flatmate, also a writer, and we've set the goal of writing 1000-2000 words per day. In addition to this I still plan to edit my pre-existing short stories and come April to start editing the novel I finished back in November. Certainly this way I am getting my "write everyday" quota in and fulfilling all the possible specifications which could be interpreted from this phrasing.

But does editing count? I suppose it does, but for some reason for me editing doesn't feel like writing; relevant, and probably the most useful part of the writing process, if anything the most important tools to help one grow as a writer. But I don't know, maybe it's something personal but nothing feels as exciting as just sitting down and writing something down for the first time without picking it apart. I guess we must embrace all the facets this craft requires: writing, editing, re-writing, and reading, and somehow apply them everyday. 

Write for Yourself

While getting feedback and criticism from multiple sources can be an excellent way to improve your writing, often, you will find that there will be differing opinions. Just because person A says one thing, and person B says another doesn't mean either of them are right or wrong. Writing, like all art, is subjective.

Some people can only talk about their likes and dislikes, and may not even have any place to judge what is good and bad writing, or are biased because they are your friend, even people who are experienced writers and avid readers will still have conflicting points of view when it comes to analysing and critiquing someone's work.

So what do you do when you are inundated with contradicting advice? The best thing is to take every piece of advice seriously, and think about the reasoning behind each point. For example, someone might comment that you use too many different points of views, and another might say they like getting all sides of the story? Think as to why each point was said. Multiple points of view can be choppy and confusing, and it's a hard thing to actually pull off well. Even a genius like Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway,  leaves me confused as I flip back and forth between the pages trying to figure out whose perspective are we looking at.  But seeing things from all sides also allows for a more complex story. I think one of the successes of Ian McEwan's Atonement was seeing the story from the different points of view, however each change was categorised by a chapter, making it obvious when one thing changes to another. In a short stories, chapters don't tend to work.

Think about criticism, particularly if you get conflicting views, question why those points were made, but ultimately the person doing the writing is you. You need to see objectively what criticism to trust and which one doesn't work for you. The danger of this is that our pride can get in the way of seeing clearly and we feel we are above criticism - hence why criticism must always be examined with the ego out of the way. At the end of the day, you can't please everyone; learn what you can from advice, but decide to implement it if you agree with it and think it will improve the quality of your story/writing; but ultimately you should be happy with your own work.   Open to suggestion, smart enough to question and implement that suggestion if it works for you.

Being Unafraid to Experiment

I've been trying different things out in my writing. I essentially get the most enjoyment out of writing novel length pieces - I like complicated stories and character development which I find I can't do in short stories. This transition for me has been the hardest to adapt to in writing short stories. The rules change because everything becomes more compact. The good thing is with short stories is that you can dedicate less time to them and use each one to focus on different aspects which interest you.

Sometimes when I write a short story, the plot is my focus and other times it is the language; ideally I will one day be able to combine both efforts and actually write something which is good. I think though, something I have to accept is not everything I will ever write will be worth pursuing.

I wrote a story recently which was pretty much biographical; an anecdote which I like to tell at parties and some find mildly amusing. I wrote it down in a short story form and found I wasn't enamoured with it. I had that mental block of changing what happened - since writing from real life makes me feel its forbidden to change things, a big mistake I am trying to get around - so focussed on using it to work on the writing. I went through the 6000 word piece I worked on it line by line trying to come up with the best sentences I could get. Even though I was rather happy with the writing style of the piece, something about it made me hate it in a way. I couldn't put my finger on it. The feedback I got was interesting, as in some people didn't know what I was trying to do with it - was it supposed to be a short story or not? What was the point of the piece? At least I had feedback the writing was solid, which I guess was the point of this exercise for me.

I did get some good ideas on re-working the story. If I can take the advice to kill my darlings and think of writing it in a story form instead of it being a well written anecdote I could do something with it. I just have so many different projects on the go and in April I plan to start re-writing the novel, I might put it in a draw for a while and come back later. It might get re-written and do something with it, or maybe I wont. But was it a pointless exercise? No. I learned a lot from it. It was a good exercise to go through something and really thing about the writing and form. 

I think when starting out it's good to experiment, even if the experiments don't yield something great, there is a lot to be learned from them (I should know this being an experimental physicist and all). Even just writing for the sake of it can help one improve a lot since the more you write the better you get. Experimenting helps us grow in different directions and acquire skills from trial and error. I think a lot of crap gets written that way, but there is a lot to learn from bad writing, and even mediocre writing which have some things which work in it.

Rant: Stupid Names

I'm in a cranky mood as it is right now - no particular reason, just have a black cloud over my head for the last few days, so a rant seems appropriate. I need some way to vent frustration and such so I'm going to take it out on books with annoying character names.

Some names are pretentious or just straight annoying, but you can live with them. Often these are books which are guilty of the Mary-Sueism which seems to have consumed  modern "literature" like a blood sucking, sparkling parasite. I'll read something with names which cause my eyes to roll, but I'll keep reading if the story or book is good, and I can forgive the poor name choice eventually. Even if the names are beyond ridiculous and the story is redeeming, the atmosphere effective, the writing style is good or I just enjoy the book (i.e. Poppy Z. Brite - Lost Souls), I can let it go and not be bothered too much by it.

But yesterday I was reading a short story from the anthology of Vampiric Erotica, "Love in Vein", which had names so horrible, I couldn't read the story. I didn't care - the names stuck out at me in a way which made my eyes hurt. It might have been a piece of literary genius, (although chances are probably not) I just stopped reading when the third ridiculous name came up.  Now you might think me over dramatic but let me list the culprits: Eeesheeea, Neeeneeeiah, Beeetheeeor and Reeezthorreee.

Yes - horrible aren't they?

I literally winced while reading them. While names are a trivial part of writing and writing classes don't preach about dodgy names, having a name that is actually painful to write down with about 500 Es is just taking the piss. The fourth ridiculous name made me go to the next story - I just didn't care any more. Fortunately a lot of the other stories in the book are actually good.

Funny scenarios cropped into my mind envisioned by these names - an ambulance going down a hill at fast speed with someone shouting the character's name and being distorted by the Doppler effect or a shirtless William Shatner *shudder* screaming "Kaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnn!"

So yes names, ridiculous names, if the spelling isn't raping the alphabet are annoying, but liveable... but as soon as you are inserting a stupid amount of eees or ssssss or whatever stupid letter that your keyboard is currently stuck on to give you more than the appropriate sum then - please don't write, love bitchy me xxx

Kill Your Darlings!

Last night I had a very interesting discussion at my weekly writer's group, about a couple of short stories I had written. Two of the stories had roots in my own life - one a biographical anecdote written down in prose form and the other, although fictional, had a lot inspired from real life in terms of characters, and 70% of the story was true. I got some very thought provoking feedback for tightening up the writing/plot in order to make the stories more interesting and thematic. I guess when I write inspired by real life, I tend to become imprisoned by it, and I have trouble thinking outside the box. I don't want to cut characters because to me they are real people, and combining them seems like a wicked thing to do.

But real life is not always as enticing as fiction, and the day to day characters you see are not the larger than life people who stay with you after reading a novel. Unless you are writing a biography, then real life is allowed to get twisted and distorted if it makes things more interesting and entertaining.

I first reacted to the suggestions with a mental block, reluctant to change things beyond recognition. I think this is a common feeling when criticism  contradicts your own ideas. But as I said before, sometimes criticism can show you things you failed to see before that could actually take your work to another level. After a good night's sleep, I realised the suggestions I received were REALLY good. I now have the opportunity to turn my OK stories into really good ones. Sacrifices will need to be made: scenes will get cut, characters will get combined or eliminated, and the original vision might be changed significantly; but those sacrifices will be worth it in the end.

I think it's good for me to question my own work. Yes, I have a vision for a story, but is that story effective enough? Can it be better, more interesting or thought provoking? Do I know something doesn't work but don't do anything about it, because I have some attachment to that scene/person? The thing I am learning about editing is that it's not just stylistic - it's not just about whether I have enough showing/telling, too many adverbs or clichés or decent grammar, it's also about trying to do the best with your story.

But it's good I am learning about these things. I think making mistakes is better than no mistakes. You can read things in books and think "yeah yeah I know" but you don't learn it - not unless you've done it and caught out for it and I can guarantee you won't consciously do it again! It's not bad when someone tells you "it needs re-writing, but it's worth re-writing".  I just need to remember not to be a pussy and kill my darlings if they are really not necessary.

Put it Away!

Writing is like telepathy: you convey stories, places and people from the vivid depths of your imagination, and you hope to God/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Deity of your choice, that the person reading your work also sees what you see. This is why editing your own work is so hard, because you already know what you are trying to show - what your protagonist looks like, and you probably know the intimate workings of their mind better than your own, so it goes without saying that you are going to be a little bit biased looking at your own work. It becomes hard to see when the lines of clarity in your writing blur over with your own perceptions you mistakenly believe to have put down on the page.

Having other people look through your work is a good way to over come this - to address anything that doesn't come across as clearly as you thought. What might be obvious to you wont be obvious to everyone else reading it. Although if we were to give every single draft of our work to beta readers and friends we wouldn't be very popular - I know I feel guilty with emailing my friends drafts of my work frequently and bringing in something for my writing group to look at every other week. It's ideal if you learn to edit your own work as if it were not your own - so you can give it to beta readers when its the best you can get it (then there still might be issues of clarity and points missed but hey we're trying our best and learning in the process).

Putting your work away and not even looking at it for a month or more is a good way to wipe the memory clean from story; even a couple of weeks is better than nothing with a short story. By the time all pre-conceptions about your writing and personal vision of the work has been forgotten, when you pick up that manuscript and it seems fresh to you, then its the time to start working on it. Words leap off the page you didn't notice before, a plot hole here and there, a contradiction too, and parts when you think "what the hell is this about/what was I thinking?" - this new clarity will yield good results when it comes to tying your work up properly. Still we are bound to miss things another person would see - it is still our intellectual brain child - but it's still a good way to tackle the editing process.

So put away those first drafts for a while and work on something else. When you trust you have forgotten your vision then it's time to come back to it.

Humour: "I may freely address you as piss-midget!"

Black Books ..Bernards letter

BitBatty | Vídeo MySpace

Just a bit of humour for a Sunday night, but I think all of us can appreciate this. Taken from the hilarious British show "Black Books". If you have never heard of it I beseech you to check it out.

The Road to Hell is Paved with Adverbs

Every single book and article I've read on writing has preached damnation to the adverb. It seems to be one of the golden rules of writing - kill the adverb!  Gabriel García Marquez refuses to use them, point blank, and will happily commit mass genocide to the adverb.  Stephen King also hates adverbs, although he's forgiving in the occasional use in the context of dialogue. Other writers can accept the occasional adverb every 50 pages or so.

Why are adverbs evil? The use of adverbs is perfectly legit when it comes to constructing a grammatically correct sentence. They convey information, so why are they made out to be literary pariahs? The simple answer is: adverbs make for lazy writing. Adverbs used in conjugation with weaker verbs could be expressed with a stronger, sophisticated verb and still mean the same thing, only it will be more effective.

Adverbs tend to end with the suffix "-ly", so it's a simple stylistic error that can be one of the easiest to clean up. Using the find application in the word processor can bring up all the guilty words ending with "-ly", or even go through a hard copy with a highlighter and mark them. Then one can go back over and replace the adverb + weak verb combination with the correct verb. Just by cutting out the adverbs, or at least culling them, can raise the quality of writing from amateur and lazy, to something more sophisticated.


In the context of dialogue attributions, using "she said nervously" could be conveyed by using "she said" plus a beat to show she is nervous. Immediately this calls the show don't tell rule into effect - just by eliminating adverbs.

But sometimes adverbs do work. But it is best to tackle adverbs with a critical eye - see if they can be improved to tighten up the writing.

Setting Goals

I realised the other day I feel overwhelmed: I have 5 short stories in the works (3 drafted a few times and 2 first drafts), 1 novel I want to work on but haven't touched since writing the first draft, and about 8 poems. It's good. I have a lot of material to work with, but it's a lot of work to get them up to scratch to think about publishing. I'm still in the learning process right now and I'm satisfied I've already improved significantly since last November. I've still got a lot of work left to do though.

I started writing short stories to teach myself to write and edit. I felt that until I could master the short story, I should not touch the novel - build the houses, then the city.  Slightly different crafts, but a lot of the learned skills can be applied to both.

So I've tried to split up my writing tasks into different deadlines. I like deadlines - I work well under pressure. At the moment these are split into the days when I plan to hand in my WIPs to the writing group. Some of my stories have already been critiqued, but still need working on and others I haven't even edited yet. It does help to focus my priorities.

Also I've set a date to resume working on the novel - 3rd of April. If I don't start working on the novel by that date - please kick my ass.

Another relevant goal is to up my reading. A huge part of writing is reading! As I mentioned before, reading is a great tool for learning to write. I read more than the average person on the street, but not enough. So my plan is to read about 3 books a week... depending on the length of the book that is. I'm not going to make it through a thousand page novel in a week. I'm going to be reasonable and realistic. Also I plan to diversify the type of books I read.

1. Fiction. I intend to read a lot of fiction, but I guess that should go without saying. I plan to read the classics, good modern literature and even some trash. I think badly written novels have a lot to teach us along with the good ones i.e. what not to do. Also they are ego boosters - they make you think "I can write better than this bozo!"

Also I think a balance between modern literature and the classics is needed. When I was younger I was an intellectual snob: only reading classics by dead white men. The trouble is, the books you read tend to influence your writing, and while the classics are classics for a reason, it might not go down too well if I try to write in the same style in the modern literature market. It's good to learn from the best, but prose should still be fresh and modern - that's just my opinion. Modern literature has a lot to offer, so striking the balance between the two is healthy and useful.

2. Fiction in different languages. My aim here is not so much to help with my writing, but with my language skills. My Hungarian is rusty, and I also want to improve my Spanish. Reading in a different language is perhaps one of the best ways to level up in a language. Also, I think seeing how prose is approached from a different linguistic perspective helps with writing too. I think it helps to see literature from a different view because reading in another language makes you slow down and focus on words, sentences and details.


3. Non-fiction. This wont help me become a better fiction writer, but knowledge is power. I think learning a lot about other areas helps equip you with tools to write with better authority. I think being well educated and knowledgeable in many areas can help add depth to writing. Although I am including a few "how to write" books in the mix here as well.

So there it is - my writing goals. Whether I'll stick to them or not is now another question, but at least writing them on here means I'm more likely to keep to them otherwise I'll look like an idiot. Will see if I'm all talk and no trousers soon enough.

I'm a scientist, but I don't write sci-fi!

My friend Liz Miller, talked about me to a student of her's, telling him that I am a physicist and a writer. His reaction was that of disbelief: he couldn't imagine a physicist writing. For some reason that was an image to difficult to comprehend - a creative scientist.  Evidently he's never heard of  a  polymath, which clearly I am (\sarcasm).  I don't think the two things should be mutually exclusive.

There are a lot of preconceptions about scientists - that we are all nerds who resemble the cast of the big bang theory: obsessed with Star Trek, comics and computer games. So when I tell people I am a scientist and a writer the natural assumption is that I write science-fiction. Understandable I suppose, since I have the background and the know-how of real science to back me up on that.

Truth be told is that while I respect good science-fiction, it's not really my cup of tea. My inner physicist starts questioning whether things are plausible or not when reading sci-fi, and I get so bogged down in the scientific details I find it hard to focus on the story or the writing itself. I hate writing sci-fi, because I would probably try to incorporate as much real physics into it as possible and really, I don't want to take my work home with me. Writing is a huge passion of mine and I dedicate a lot of time to it outside of my PhD. If I wrote sci-fi I would be drowning in physics. I had a discussion with a writer who is writing a science fiction novel, about the plausibility of the physics of his story. That was already a lot of work for me to think about, even though it was a very interesting discussion. Also writing about spaceships zipping in and out of galaxies raping Einstein's theory of relativity in the process, when you have a Masters in Satellite technology, seems a bit hypocritical to me.

What would be interesting for me to write, is about the dynamics of physicists in a lab. You wouldn't believe the drama that goes on down there. One experiment I wanted to place a hidden camera in the lab and sell it to someone who handles a reality TV show. I am more interested in psychology and interaction between people. I love the work of the modernists and stream of consciousness style writing (if done well!) so you are more likely to catch me reading Henry Miller, Anais Nin or Ernest Hemingway than Isaac Asimov, but that has more to do with my personal taste rather than which author/book is better.

Maybe I should do that - write a book about physicists - real, batshit crazy physicists, or a romantic comedy with physicists. Although maybe when I am out and away from the scientific community that is.

Maybe I should give sci-fi a chance. There are some very good sci-fi writers out there, and not all sci-fi is set in space with photon-torpedos and warp drives. I loved Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, for example. Anyone willing to convert me with a good book?