writing Archives

The Mighty Pen vs The Purposeful Keyboard by Jenny Jensen

April 19, 2018 by Jenny Jensen in category On writing . . . by Jenny Jensen tagged as creativity, handwriting, writing

The Mighty Pen | Jenny Jensen | A Slice of Orange

When was the last time you wrote anything in longhand? Jotting a note, shopping and to-do lists don’t count.

Since writing, no matter what tool we use, is the expression of ideas does the tool you use affect those ideas? If you write out your novel in longhand would the creative process be the same as if you’d clicked it out on a keyboard? Would it be the same story?

Reams have been written (by hand or keyboard?) about the cognitive difference between the two methods. I’ve read articles by neuroscientists who point out the different mental skills each requires; a keyboard is automatic once you’ve learned where each key is and that makes it fast enough to capture a word the second it pops to mind, while handwriting is linked to the creative part of the brain, problem solving and critical thinking. And it takes a bit more time, time for your brain to make more sense of those rapid-fire thoughts. But there’s no denying the ease of the keyboard.

Cursive isn’t taught in schools much anymore so it’s pretty clear we favor the keyboard over pen and paper. Cursive handwriting, where the pen is not raised between characters, has been replaced with learning to use a qwerty keyboard. Are there advanced classes covering the various methods of texting — thumbs versus one-fingered hunt and peck? I could do with that.

A friend of mine died recently. It wasn’t quick or unexpected. I sat down to my keyboard and in 15 minutes clicked out a letter to her husband. There was a lot I wanted to say in as few words as possible and I hoped the words would bring him some comfort. It wasn’t right at all. By the third draft I realized the words might as well have come from Miss Mourning’s Official Book of Sympathy Letters. My words felt clinical. That’s when I took up pen and paper.

I don’t know if it was the weight of the pen in my hand, the feel of the paper or the sight of the words mirroring my thoughts as they appeared beneath my hand. Maybe it was the time the act of writing allowed me to consider before the thoughts appeared as words, but the first handwritten attempt was exactly right. The words were genuine and personal and I knew they would touch my friend’s husband in a good way.

There have been thousands of wonderful writers since the advent of the typewriter — the first keyboard. It’s obvious that the method hasn’t harmed creativity. I do wonder if the works of Louisa May Alcott or Dickens would have been different if they’d had Microsoft Word. (I suspect they’d have loved it for the revisions alone.) Of course there are those contemporary authors like Joyce Carol Oates, who only write in longhand. George R.R. Martin is another. He must have developed Olympian hand muscles by now. The pen trumps the keyboard for some mighty talented writers.

I’m sharing these wandering thoughts because I did learn a lesson with that letter. If you find yourself stuck over a scene, uncertain where to take a plot or floundering over some critical dialog, take up pencil and paper and write it out by hand. There’s a more direct, more personal connection to heart and mind that may well help the right words flow – provided you’ve been taught cursive.

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STUMPED

April 15, 2018 by Rebecca Forster in category Writing tagged as Craft, fun, help, mystery, psychology, thriller, writing

The other day I came home to find the men I hired to build my patio sitting in my backyard looking at a stump. This was not a normal stump. This was a giant. Paul Bunyan, Big John kind of stump. I sat down with them and I, too, considered the stump.

“George had to get his chain saw for that sucker,” one of them finally said.

“Took two hours to get it out,” another offered.

“I think it broke George’s saw,” the first chimed in.

“Why didn’t you leave it in the ground,” I asked. “You know, pour the cement around it?”

“We thought about it,” the third said. “It wouldn’t have been right.”

They told me that they had managed to cut it up into the piece we were looking at but that it had been twice as big and buried deep in the ground; a remnant of a primordial tree. Their task had been Herculean. They told me that if they poured the cement over the stump, the darn thing could rot and my steps would fall in, and I would be upset with them because they had poured cement over a stump the size of San Francisco.

“It looks petrified,” I said. “How many years do you think it would take to rot?”

The first guy shrugged, “Twenty. Thirty years.”

I shrugged back. I would probably be dead by the time the stump rotted and my stairs fell in. I guess it was the principal of the thing. They would have known the stump was there.

We sat in the hot sun a while longer. Someone suggested carving the stump into the likeness of the contractor. I liked that idea but no one knew how to carve. I thought we could make it into a table. Eventually, we all stopped looking at the stump. The men moved it out of the way and started work again; I went inside to make dinner.

That stump has now been in my backyard for months. I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. But, like all things that are hard to get rid of, it eventually served a purpose. It taught me a few lessons:

1) Everybody has a stump. It might be in your real backyard, your professional backyard or your personal backyard, but it is undoubtedly there.

2) What you do with your stump will tell you a lot about yourself. Either you will dig it up and deal with it, or you will leave it to rot.

3) If you’re stumped and need help there is always someone willing to work hard with you to take care of it as long as you work as hard as they do.

4) You can never go through a stump but don’t panic. You can go around them, over them and sometimes even under them but that takes the longest.

5) Sometimes stumps are not as big as they look and sometimes they are bigger. Size doesn’t matter. Stumped is stumped.

SECRET RELATIONS, book #3 of the Finn O’Brien Thriller series is available now.

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A Writer by Any Other Name…

April 10, 2018 by Tari Jewett in category Charmed Writer by Tari Lynn Jewett, Writing tagged as confidence, Writer, writing

Charmed Writer | Tari Lynn Jewett | A Slice of Orange What makes you a writer? Is it the act of picking up a notebook or sitting at the computer and filling a blank page? The desire to put the fantasies in your head on paper? Does it happen when other people read your work? Or when you see your work in print? How about when you’re paid for your writing? Is it a writing degree? What makes you a writer? And are you a writer even if you feel like everything you write…well, it sucks?

I’m pretty sure I’ll never feel like I’m A Writer. I mean who the heck am I to call myself writer? I’m certainly no Anne Rice, or Danielle Steele, but I know that nothing can keep me from writing. I eventually turned nearly every ‘real’ job I had into a writing job.

I was hired as a secretary for the marketing director of a luxury automobile accessory catalog company. Catalog copy crossed my desk every day, eventually I started writing my own copy and putting it on her desk, and before long, I was writing most of the new product copy that was written in house.

Later I worked for a high end furniture store in customer service and began an employee newsletter. Then I worked in human resources for a medical staffing company and wrote an employee handbook, a newsletter and a television infomercial. I worked as a receptionist at an advertising agency where I slowly started writing television commercials instead of answering phones.

And eventually I freelanced for magazines and wrote regular columns in four different publications.

My first fiction released in February! Such an amazing feeling, but I still can’t say that I feel like a Real Writer.

So what does it take? What makes you a Writer? Does it even matter? At this point I’m pretty sure that no matter what else I do in my life, I’ll always write. Maybe when I see my book on the shelves at Barnes and Noble I’ll know I’m a writer, or if I’m lucky enough to make a best sellers list. In the meantime, I’ll just keep writing.

Tari

#PLEASE SAY YES (#HermosafortheHolidays Book 1)

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Dear Extra Squeeze Team, How Do I Know When to Stop Writing?

March 31, 2018 by The Extra Squeeze in category The Extra Squeeze by The Extra Squeeze Team tagged as editing, first drafts, writing

How Do I Know When to Stop Writing | The Extra Squeeze Team | A Slice of Orange

Dear Extra Squeeze Team, How Do I Know When to Stop Writing?

Rebecca Forster

USA Today Bestselling author of 35 books, including the Witness series and the new Finn O’Brien series.

This is an interesting question because it implies that the problem is with the end of a book. If that is the case, then I have never had a problem knowing when to stop writing. Before I begin I know the end. I even know the last sentence I want to type. But when it comes to overwriting, there’s more to the story (okay, pun intended)

In the thirty plus years I have been a working novelist I still overwrite the middle of the manuscript. I intrude on my own work with asides, philosophy, research information, angst and whatever else comes into my mind in the throes of creation.

Thanks to a wise editor (our own Jenny Jensen) I have learned to recognize this problem and deal with it as follows:

1) Don’t worry about it during the first draft.

2) On your first self-edit identify and cut what you believe to be extraneous information and place this in a file in case you wish to reinsert it later.

3) Read again. Keep cutting or reinsert information with an objective eye.

4) Send to your editor who – intimately knowing the author’s propensity to overwrite the middle – will identify anything that slows the story, creates questions or bores the reader.

Overwriting is not just a function of the end of the book but of the book itself. A story always has a beginning, middle and a resolution. Do not start writing before you know what that resolution is because it gives you a point on your literary horizon. That is where you must stop. The problem for me is that getting to that point is sometimes messy. Instead of writing that straight line from A-B, I zig-zag and overwrite.

P.S. In the years since I adopted the cut and save file I have never once gone back and used anything, but it sure makes me feel better to know it exists.

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Jenny Jensen

Developmental editor who has worked for twenty plus years with new and established authors of both fiction and non-fiction, traditional and indie.

When the story is told. The rest is editing.

The goal is to tell the story that lives in your head. Keep writing until you get it all out and down on paper (or pixels). Length doesn’t matter at this point; it’s the story that counts. Once you type ‘The End’ and find yourself with 40,000 words you may have a novella. If the tally is between 80 and 90,000 it meets the average length for a novel in most genres. When the word count tips to 120,000 + you may have an epic (Sci Fi and Fantasy are often longer) or the need to lose 20 – 40,000 words. You’re now at the stage of the brutal self-edit.

There are no rules for how long a novel should be, but readers do have some expectations. Given those expectations of length the choice is yours as to which literary format you want. Regardless of bulk all successful fiction shares one characteristic: good structure with clean flow. A successful novel has a beginning where the characters and the problems are introduced, a middle where the characters evolve and the problems are dealt with, and an end with confrontation and resolution. That path is smooth and enjoyable for the reader because the flow is good – it carries the reader along seamlessly.

Overwriting is usually the cause of a too long word count and the cause of disjointed story flow. It’s all right – we all do it. You had to get it all down on the page. Now it’s time for some honest self-editing.

Dialog tags are a common cause of overwriting.

“Don’t,” she said with a fierce glint flashing in her eyes. Eleven words that flow so much better as three: “Don’t,” she hissed.

Too many words dampen the impact.

Do you have descriptive passages meant for mood and setting that are so elaborate they distract from the action? Cut, tighten and move the story along. Do you find you’ve written back-stories and sidebars meant to enlarge on character or setting but are actually an unnecessary detour? If you’ve got your heroine on a dark country road when her tire blows and then she falls into memories of a frightening slumber party from her past you’ve broken the flow of the tension for something that doesn’t add to the story. Delete it. (Oh I know, it’s hard to kill your children but you can always copy it into a file marked for future use.)

Read your work with an editor’s eyes. Every word, every scene must help carry the story along; it must add to the plot, build the tension, build on a character. Make certain your words all carry the necessary function for the story to flow so smoothly that the reader can’t look away. If you don’t get an editor, get a strong beta reader to help you peel away the extraneous dross. Once that’s been done correctly, what you have is the best your story can be.

Robin Blakely

PR/Business Development coach for writers and artists; CEO, Creative Center of America; member, Forbes Coaches Council.

H.O. Charles

Cover designer and author of the fantasy series, The Fireblade Array

When to stop writing—is that just when completing one book or…forever?!

With one book, I don’t think it’s a problem for most writers because they tend to construct their books out of order, and the end is often completed long before the middle. For me it is, anyway! From there, it is just a case of connecting the dots and making sure there aren’t any incomplete subplots or character resolutions. If your book is overshooting 300,000 words and you’re not writing epic fantasy, however, then it’s probably time to stop!

Ever wonder what industry professionals think about the issues that can really impact our careers? Each month The Extra Squeeze features a fresh topic related to books and publishing.

Amazon mover and shaker Rebecca Forster and her handpicked team of book professionals offer frank responses from the POV of each of their specialties — Writing, Editing, PR/Biz Development, and Cover Design.