>NaNoWriMo RE: Using real towns?

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Home » Forums » NaNo Tips & Strategies » Plot Doctoring

Using real towns?

 

cornflakegirl	Using real towns?
0 / 50,000 Official Participant Joined: Jul 21, 2010 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 14 Posted on: Oct 11, 2010 – 22 47	My plot involves a California coastal road trip, where a good chunk of the novel happens. I’ve been on this road trip once, although I’d want them to stop more places than I did, and my memory isn’t amazing. Should I use real towns and do heavy research or just make up a bunch of towns for them to visit? I’m worried making places up will cause the novel to have a false feel since it’s such a well known area and route. Any opinions on this? ———-
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I always use real towns, always towns I know well or have visited enough to feel comfortable writing “about” them. That said, I don’t stick 100% with accuracy either. I mean, if my story needs a mini-mart on Main Street and the real town doesn’t have a mini-mart on Main Street, well, I just drop one into my story anyways.

I’ll tell you what I do in this sort of situation, because it’s exactly the sort of thing I deal with all the time.

For some reason, I just can’t write about a place until I have actually visited it, walked around the buildings, seen the people, taken note of the types of trees and flowers that are growing – ect, etc. I mean, I can read about the town in books and I can look it up on Google and everything, but somehow it’s not the same as actually standing there. To make this just a bit more difficult, I’m a borderline agoraphobic; I’ve only left the house on a few rare occasions in the past 30 years, and when I do leave the house, I can’t go alone and I can’t go very far. So, this results in some problems, since I can’t write about places I haven’t been, and I can’t leave my yard without a massive panic attack sending me back into my garden.

Well, when it comes to my books and stories, they are pretty much, almost always, set in a small coastal Maine town somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, by the ocean to one side and a forest to the other. Guess where I live? Yeah, in a small coastal Maine town somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, by the ocean to one side and a forest to the other.

Problem is, my stories are not always suited to my town. Sometimes I need a bigger town with a lot more bustle. Sometimes I need a smaller town, a lot more secluded. Sometimes I need the house to be a beach cabin right on the sand. Sometimes I need the house to be a castle on a rocky cliff battered by the shore. Sometimes I need a dense forest, sometimes a busy city. Sometimes I need deep dark caves. Sometimes I need sprawling swamplands. Sometimes I need huge deserted cemeteries. But no matter what I need, always is my story set in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, whither it has what I need or not. Always.

Whither it’s an accurate description of the town or not, does not matter. I could give the town a different name, say Rockland, and suddenly I find I can not write about it anymore, even though it’s the same setting it was when I was calling it Old Orchard Beach! It’s the weirdest case of Writer’s Block I’ve ever heard of and I can’t explain, it, but it happens every time. If I don’t set my story in Old Orchard Beach, I just can’t write about it.

So, if you read my stories you’d think the real Old Orchard Beach was everything from a big city to a tiny fishing village, with beaches and mountains and thunder-holes and castles. You’d also think it was overrun with werewolves, vampires, phookas, faeries, aliens, ufos, serial killers, ghosts, haunted houses, morbidly depressed emo-goth Edwardian dudes, and psychotic sex crazed mermen. What is the real Old Orchard Beach? The real Old Orchard Beach is nothing like I write it as!

Here is the real Old Orchard Beach, the one I actually live in: When I was a kid, it was a tiny Victorian beach front township, complete with amusement park and a train station, cut off from the world by a 3000 acre forest. By the time I was a teen, out of state developers bought the forest, cut it down and put up skyscraper condos.

Today, 30 years later, I still live in Old Orchard Beach, I live on the last farm, in the middle of the last 26 acre section of forest. There are no mountains or cliffs or castles. The Thunder Hole is real, but it’s not in Old Orchard Beach, it’s about 100 miles north of here, on the Canadian border.

Old Orchard Beach had about 2,000 residents when I grew up, most of them farmers and rifle toting lobster men.

Today there are 12,000 residents, most of them souvenir shop owners or hotel managers.

Voted the World’s Finest Beach (scientifically – meaning it has the world’s tiniest grains of sand; not meaning it’s the best place to visit!) Old Orchard Beach, now gets an average of 2 million tourist visitors each and every summer.

Our winters are cold, fierce, and last nearly 8 months, and filled with blizzards, snow squalls, and Northeaster Atlantic Ocean Ice Storms, when the power goes out it could be out for months, and so our tourist season is very, very, VERY short, averaging 2 to 3 months. The town is shaped like a horse shoe, and so while neighboring towns of Biddeford and Saco get cold at 32F, we get cold at -48F due to ocean ice storms getting trapped in our bay and blasting us. In the winter Old Orchard Beach is a ghost town, with only a few thousand residents braving off the sub zero winter season.

This town has grown and changed a lot over the years. It expanded and evolved. A hundred years ago, it was predominantly “Black”, being a safe haven for escaped slaves, and most of the business owners and town council men were Black (a rare thing in the early 1900′s). It’s most famous residents were the Jazz singers Louis Armstrong and Billy Holiday and writer E.E.Cummings. . . I live 4 houses down from Louis Armstrong’s summer house, which was owned by E.E.Cummings, and am a 15 minute walk from The Pier (a casino 2 miles off shore and standing in the middle of the ocean) where both Louis and Billy got their start, and had concerts every Saturday night.

Today the town is .0001% non-white! The Pier is a little over 100 feet long and Casinos are illegal. What a turn around!

My town has a hell of a long history, since it was settled by my pirate great-great-great-great-great grandfather Thomas Rogers in 1657. The land I live on is the oldest in Maine to still be in it’s original family. (Very original, since he married a local Native American girl.)

So, now that I’ve told you all this, how does it help you and what was my point?

My point is this – write what you know. It may seem that you can’t remember enough details from your trip to write your story, but if you are writing fiction – what does it matter whither or not the real village is exactly the same as your fictional one?

So, you want to write about your road trip but you can’t remember the details good. I say, so what? Write it the way you DO remember it, and if you forget a few details, well, write it the way you would have liked it to have been wither it really was that way or not!

Take what you know about these towns/cities/villages and blend them together, and create a town that perfectly suites your needs, out of something you already know about. You will write it best, if you stick to writing what you know, and being a novelist, you can move buildings/trees/lakes/etc around to fit your story, you can take a mountain out of France and stick it in a Georgia swamp if you want to! (I grab mountains out of France and drop them smack in the middle of Old Orchard Beach, all the time. I also grab castles out of Scotland, caves out of Tennessee, trees from California, volcanoes from Oregon, and snowstorms out of the North Pole and stick them in Old Orchard Beach, too. Damn – half the time it seems like I’ve condensed the entire United States and squished it into my tiny 7 mile long by 2 mile wide home town! LOL!)

Remember: it’s fiction, you can write it any way YOU want to. You only really need the ESSENCE of the place, not every single detail about it. You don’t have to be exact, you don’t have to stick with the facts – you would only have to be exact and stick to the facts when you are writing a NON-FICTION story. In fiction you can take real places and do whatever you want to make those places fit your story.

Remember it’s YOUR story and you want the town to match the story, not force your story to match the town. Story first, town later. And if all else fails and the town no longer resembles the real thing, just give it a new name.

The point is, don’t feel that you have to write the village just exactly as it really is. You are a novelist after all – no one expects you to write an accurate travelogue – they expect you to tell a good story, set in a world that SEEMS like the real world, but is a place they would rather be instead. I know it’s not exactly the answer you were looking for, but hopfully this will help you take the villages you like best and find a way to make them the village you are looking for.

Hope this helps you out some. I think all of that made sense – it made sense in my head at least. =/

———-

The 13 Step Method
Writing Totems For Sale!
Creating Character Profiles

Need help with NaNoWriMo?
Check out these:
The 13 Step Method
The Top 5 NaNoWriMo Tools
Creating Character Profiles

Want to network with me?
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http://eelkat.wordpress.com
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http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

This blog is part of:

The NaNoWriMo Blogchain!

NaNoWriMo RE: Using real towns?

Home » Forums » NaNo Tips & Strategies » Plot Doctoring

Using real towns?

 

cornflakegirl	Using real towns?
0 / 50,000 Official Participant Joined: Jul 21, 2010 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 14 Posted on: Oct 11, 2010 – 22 47	My plot involves a California coastal road trip, where a good chunk of the novel happens. I’ve been on this road trip once, although I’d want them to stop more places than I did, and my memory isn’t amazing. Should I use real towns and do heavy research or just make up a bunch of towns for them to visit? I’m worried making places up will cause the novel to have a false feel since it’s such a well known area and route. Any opinions on this? ———-
Add new comment Flag as offensive Subscribe to this post.   Write to author quote

I always use real towns, always towns I know well or have visited enough to feel comfortable writing “about” them. That said, I don’t stick 100% with accuracy either. I mean, if my story needs a mini-mart on Main Street and the real town doesn’t have a mini-mart on Main Street, well, I just drop one into my story anyways.

I’ll tell you what I do in this sort of situation, because it’s exactly the sort of thing I deal with all the time.

For some reason, I just can’t write about a place until I have actually visited it, walked around the buildings, seen the people, taken note of the types of trees and flowers that are growing – ect, etc. I mean, I can read about the town in books and I can look it up on Google and everything, but somehow it’s not the same as actually standing there. To make this just a bit more difficult, I’m a borderline agoraphobic; I’ve only left the house on a few rare occasions in the past 30 years, and when I do leave the house, I can’t go alone and I can’t go very far. So, this results in some problems, since I can’t write about places I haven’t been, and I can’t leave my yard without a massive panic attack sending me back into my garden.

Well, when it comes to my books and stories, they are pretty much, almost always, set in a small coastal Maine town somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, by the ocean to one side and a forest to the other. Guess where I live? Yeah, in a small coastal Maine town somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, by the ocean to one side and a forest to the other.

Problem is, my stories are not always suited to my town. Sometimes I need a bigger town with a lot more bustle. Sometimes I need a smaller town, a lot more secluded. Sometimes I need the house to be a beach cabin right on the sand. Sometimes I need the house to be a castle on a rocky cliff battered by the shore. Sometimes I need a dense forest, sometimes a busy city. Sometimes I need deep dark caves. Sometimes I need sprawling swamplands. Sometimes I need huge deserted cemeteries. But no matter what I need, always is my story set in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, whither it has what I need or not. Always.

Whither it’s an accurate description of the town or not, does not matter. I could give the town a different name, say Rockland, and suddenly I find I can not write about it anymore, even though it’s the same setting it was when I was calling it Old Orchard Beach! It’s the weirdest case of Writer’s Block I’ve ever heard of and I can’t explain, it, but it happens every time. If I don’t set my story in Old Orchard Beach, I just can’t write about it.

So, if you read my stories you’d think the real Old Orchard Beach was everything from a big city to a tiny fishing village, with beaches and mountains and thunder-holes and castles. You’d also think it was overrun with werewolves, vampires, phookas, faeries, aliens, ufos, serial killers, ghosts, haunted houses, morbidly depressed emo-goth Edwardian dudes, and psychotic sex crazed mermen. What is the real Old Orchard Beach? The real Old Orchard Beach is nothing like I write it as!

Here is the real Old Orchard Beach, the one I actually live in: When I was a kid, it was a tiny Victorian beach front township, complete with amusement park and a train station, cut off from the world by a 3000 acre forest. By the time I was a teen, out of state developers bought the forest, cut it down and put up skyscraper condos.

Today, 30 years later, I still live in Old Orchard Beach, I live on the last farm, in the middle of the last 26 acre section of forest. There are no mountains or cliffs or castles. The Thunder Hole is real, but it’s not in Old Orchard Beach, it’s about 100 miles north of here, on the Canadian border.

Old Orchard Beach had about 2,000 residents when I grew up, most of them farmers and rifle toting lobster men.

Today there are 12,000 residents, most of them souvenir shop owners or hotel managers.

Voted the World’s Finest Beach (scientifically – meaning it has the world’s tiniest grains of sand; not meaning it’s the best place to visit!) Old Orchard Beach, now gets an average of 2 million tourist visitors each and every summer.

Our winters are cold, fierce, and last nearly 8 months, and filled with blizzards, snow squalls, and Northeaster Atlantic Ocean Ice Storms, when the power goes out it could be out for months, and so our tourist season is very, very, VERY short, averaging 2 to 3 months. The town is shaped like a horse shoe, and so while neighboring towns of Biddeford and Saco get cold at 32F, we get cold at -48F due to ocean ice storms getting trapped in our bay and blasting us. In the winter Old Orchard Beach is a ghost town, with only a few thousand residents braving off the sub zero winter season.

This town has grown and changed a lot over the years. It expanded and evolved. A hundred years ago, it was predominantly “Black”, being a safe haven for escaped slaves, and most of the business owners and town council men were Black (a rare thing in the early 1900′s). It’s most famous residents were the Jazz singers Louis Armstrong and Billy Holiday and writer E.E.Cummings. . . I live 4 houses down from Louis Armstrong’s summer house, which was owned by E.E.Cummings, and am a 15 minute walk from The Pier (a casino 2 miles off shore and standing in the middle of the ocean) where both Louis and Billy got their start, and had concerts every Saturday night.

Today the town is .0001% non-white! The Pier is a little over 100 feet long and Casinos are illegal. What a turn around!

My town has a hell of a long history, since it was settled by my pirate great-great-great-great-great grandfather Thomas Rogers in 1657. The land I live on is the oldest in Maine to still be in it’s original family. (Very original, since he married a local Native American girl.)

So, now that I’ve told you all this, how does it help you and what was my point?

My point is this – write what you know. It may seem that you can’t remember enough details from your trip to write your story, but if you are writing fiction – what does it matter whither or not the real village is exactly the same as your fictional one?

So, you want to write about your road trip but you can’t remember the details good. I say, so what? Write it the way you DO remember it, and if you forget a few details, well, write it the way you would have liked it to have been wither it really was that way or not!

Take what you know about these towns/cities/villages and blend them together, and create a town that perfectly suites your needs, out of something you already know about. You will write it best, if you stick to writing what you know, and being a novelist, you can move buildings/trees/lakes/etc around to fit your story, you can take a mountain out of France and stick it in a Georgia swamp if you want to! (I grab mountains out of France and drop them smack in the middle of Old Orchard Beach, all the time. I also grab castles out of Scotland, caves out of Tennessee, trees from California, volcanoes from Oregon, and snowstorms out of the North Pole and stick them in Old Orchard Beach, too. Damn – half the time it seems like I’ve condensed the entire United States and squished it into my tiny 7 mile long by 2 mile wide home town! LOL!)

Remember: it’s fiction, you can write it any way YOU want to. You only really need the ESSENCE of the place, not every single detail about it. You don’t have to be exact, you don’t have to stick with the facts – you would only have to be exact and stick to the facts when you are writing a NON-FICTION story. In fiction you can take real places and do whatever you want to make those places fit your story.

Remember it’s YOUR story and you want the town to match the story, not force your story to match the town. Story first, town later. And if all else fails and the town no longer resembles the real thing, just give it a new name.

The point is, don’t feel that you have to write the village just exactly as it really is. You are a novelist after all – no one expects you to write an accurate travelogue – they expect you to tell a good story, set in a world that SEEMS like the real world, but is a place they would rather be instead. I know it’s not exactly the answer you were looking for, but hopfully this will help you take the villages you like best and find a way to make them the village you are looking for.

Hope this helps you out some. I think all of that made sense – it made sense in my head at least. =/

———-

The 13 Step Method
Writing Totems For Sale!
Creating Character Profiles

Need help with NaNoWriMo?
Check out these:
The 13 Step Method
The Top 5 NaNoWriMo Tools
Creating Character Profiles

Want to network with me?
http://www.keen.com/EelKat
http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

This blog is part of:

The NaNoWriMo Blogchain!

>NaNoWriMo 09 Post: Short story or novel?

>

Found a question on NaNoWriMo today. Here’s the question and my answer to it:

Short story or novel?

How do I know whether a particular story idea is better suited for a short story or a novel? Some of my stories change from one to the other, and some, I can’t decide which to write.

How do you all handle this?

I usually start out not knowing how long my story is going to be. I just have an idea and I start writing and stop when I get to the end. Sometimes it’ll end at 10 pages, other times it’ll go one for 200 or more pages, most of my stories seem to end between 30 and 75 pages, I’ve noticed. I just write and let the story lead me to where it wants to go. I never start out thinking “I’ll write this to be a 100 page book.” or anything like that, because than I’ll have to stretch a story after it ended or water down a story that should have kept going, and really that shouldn’t happen. A story should end when it’s ready to end not at some pre-appointed spot.

Well, that’s how I do it at least and it works for me. I don’t know about any one else.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

. . .

Hey, you know what? I sell Avon! I’m an Independent Avon eRepresentative and that means you can buy Avon from me, 24 hours a day, from your computer, from anyplace in the world, and Avon will ship it to you.

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
.
.

.

NaNoWriMo 09 Post: Short story or novel?

Found a question on NaNoWriMo today. Here’s the question and my answer to it:

Short story or novel?

How do I know whether a particular story idea is better suited for a short story or a novel? Some of my stories change from one to the other, and some, I can’t decide which to write.

How do you all handle this?

I usually start out not knowing how long my story is going to be. I just have an idea and I start writing and stop when I get to the end. Sometimes it’ll end at 10 pages, other times it’ll go one for 200 or more pages, most of my stories seem to end between 30 and 75 pages, I’ve noticed. I just write and let the story lead me to where it wants to go. I never start out thinking “I’ll write this to be a 100 page book.” or anything like that, because than I’ll have to stretch a story after it ended or water down a story that should have kept going, and really that shouldn’t happen. A story should end when it’s ready to end not at some pre-appointed spot.

Well, that’s how I do it at least and it works for me. I don’t know about any one else.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

. . .

Hey, you know what? I sell Avon! I’m an Independent Avon eRepresentative and that means you can buy Avon from me, 24 hours a day, from your computer, from anyplace in the world, and Avon will ship it to you.

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
.
.

.

>How Many Characters Is Too Many?

>

When writing a story-book, how many characters do you feel are too many?

I feel that it depends on the story itself. A lot of character can be a good thing in one story, but a bad thing in a completely different story.

For my own stuff, I find it best to have no more than 3 main-major characters and no more than 5 minor-supporting characters, but one shot-cameo characters can come at will and 20 per story is not unusual.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

How Many Characters Is Too Many?

When writing a story-book, how many characters do you feel are too many?

I feel that it depends on the story itself. A lot of character can be a good thing in one story, but a bad thing in a completely different story.

For my own stuff, I find it best to have no more than 3 main-major characters and no more than 5 minor-supporting characters, but one shot-cameo characters can come at will and 20 per story is not unusual.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

How Many Characters Is Too Many?

When writing a story-book, how many characters do you feel are too many?

I feel that it depends on the story itself. A lot of character can be a good thing in one story, but a bad thing in a completely different story.

For my own stuff, I find it best to have no more than 3 main-major characters and no more than 5 minor-supporting characters, but one shot-cameo characters can come at will and 20 per story is not unusual.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

How Many Characters Is Too Many?

When writing a story-book, how many characters do you feel are too many?

I feel that it depends on the story itself. A lot of character can be a good thing in one story, but a bad thing in a completely different story.

For my own stuff, I find it best to have no more than 3 main-major characters and no more than 5 minor-supporting characters, but one shot-cameo characters can come at will and 20 per story is not unusual.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

>Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

>

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Conventional Writing Advice that Didn’t Work for Her (or Me Either!)…

Is Conventional Writing Advice Always Right? Listen to your heart.

While searching for advice for writers, I can across the home page of Patricia A. Duffy, who says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me. After reading her article, I have to say that basically, she has said pretty much what I would have said, and what I do say, whenever someone asks me.

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

1) Write every day.

This piece of advice is repeated in almost every book on how to write. Maybe some people need this sort of discipline, but I would find it counterproductive. Sometimes I write feverishly every day. Sometimes real life intervenes. I have a demanding job and a family. If I believed I had to write every day, even when I absolutely had no time, I’d quickly grow to hate writing and I’d stop doing it. Mostly, I have more ideas than I have time to process, so forcing myself to write is not a problem. And during those periods when real life heats up and I can’t write, I don’t feel any guilt. Why should I? Writing isn’t a religious penance or a health routine. It’s something I enjoy.

My response to what she says:

You’ve heard it preached from the pulpit of every sacred book on writing: WRITE EVERY DAY!!!

Now ask yourself this: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A hobby?

If you think of writing as a hobby, than who cares when you write? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if your writing gets sloppy? No one. If you write as a hobby, than who cares if you ever get published? No one. If you write as a hobby, than by all means writer seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, because you know what? If you are writing because writing is a hobby, no one cares. Why? Because hobby writers write for their own pleasure. If they get published, it’s a great big WOO-HOO! for themselves and their family. But very few hobby writers ever get published. Why? Because they are content to post their stories on message boards and web-sites and blogs. They are happy to see their work on the internet. Writing after all is just a hobby to them. They are content with what they do. So, for writers who write as a hobby, it is not important when they write, because their family is not dependent on the writing. Just search on Google for Fan-Fiction. Millions of stories are posted all over the internet, but because they are written by hobby writers, those stories well never be printed in books. They well never be published, but no one cares, not even the writer. So why than does it matter if the hobby writer writes every day?

Let’s look at the other side of this story.

Now ask yourself this once again: What does writing mean to you? Is writing a hobby or a career? How did you answer?

A career?

I ask you: What is your day job? Do you wait tables? Drive a school bus? Are you a cashier at the local super market? Maybe you teach high-school geography? Whatever it is that you do for your day job, ask yourself this: How many days do you work each week? A few well say three, some well say four, almost all of you well say five. By law your employer is required to give you at least two days off each week. That’s a law. That law is enforced. If an employer asks you to work more than five days a week, they are required to pay you time and a half. That too is a law. Why? Because even the government knows that you can’t get the job done if you are not given a day or two of rest. If you work seven days a week, you well run down, wear out and get sloppy. Your work well suffer, because you didn’t get a day off.

So, we come back to your answer: Why do you write? Hobby or career?

If you said career, than you know that being a writer is just like every other 9 to 5 job. Nine o clock you sit down at your desk and you start writing. Around noon you take an hour break for lunch. After lunch it’s back to your desk to write until five. Five o clock comes around and no matter how compelled you are to keep writing, you put down your pen, turn off the light and don’t go back to your desk again until tomorrow morning when nine o clock rolls around again. Like any other job, you take the weekend off. Why? Because for you writing is more than a hobby. For you writing is what puts food on the table. For you writing is what puts clothes on your children. Writing just paid for your teenager’s PS3. Writing pays the mortgage. Writing pays the vet bills caused by the recent pet-food recall. You write because writing is your career, your job, your livelihood. For you writing is not a hobby. You can’t afford to let you writing get sloppy and you know that, which is why you also know that it is foolish for you or any other writer to think that it is in your best interest to write every day.

And that is  why I do not write every day.

Moving on to myth #2…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

2. Don’t Edit Until the First Draft is Done.

I edit obsessively as I go along. I like rewriting things. I can’t imagine another way to write and would be utterly incapable of completing that first draft if I didn’t do it this way.

My response to what she says:

This, I think, depends on the writer and what they are writing about at the time. Personally I do not believe in editing as you write, as a general rule. Why? I find that when I am writing, I write better if I don’t stop. I have learned to ignore typos and spelling mistakes, to turn a blind eye to bad grammar, and to not listen when my mind says I should go back and re-write what I just wrote. Why? Because if I stop, it creates a speed bump. That speed bump slows me down and causes me to go lose track of what it was I was writing. So I find myself going back to where I had stopped, because I have to re-read what I wrote several times before I can remember where it was I was going with that train of thought. In a since by stopping to edit while I was writing, I have now derailed my writing train, and put it back on a new track, and it just can’t get back onto that old track, because the old track for some odd reason is no longer there. On a road, a speed bump just jostles your car a bit and make you slow down, but on a train track, that same little speed bump not only jostles the train, but knocks it off track and sends it flying into the oncoming train on the other track. That speed bump is now a mangled mess of crumpled train cars, which ow must be towed away and tossed into a junk heap. A huge rusted junk heap towering high above your head. The next thing you know you can’t write anything at all because all there is is a pile of mangled wreckage. You have hot a writer’s block.

So, where are we now? Well, for me, stopping to edit while I’m still writing is the deadliest thing that can happen while I’m writing. Usually, but not always. This is just me though, and as I said, all writers are different.

Moving on…

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

3. Use Note cards or Notebooks to Organize Ideas

Even the thought of using index cards to organize fiction ideas is almost enough to make me run screaming into traffic. In my mind, these little cards will forever be associated with undergraduate term papers. I don’t use notebooks because I hate to write longhand. I do all my writing on the word processor — even background notes for novels. Actually, I prefer to do background for novels as short stories, even lame short stories with no chance of selling. I see things better that way.

My response to what she says:

As most of you know, I never went to school. I can’t identify with term papers because I’ve never had one, let alone seen one, and I’m not really sure what they are, except that everyone who talks about school talks about term papers too. I’m not sure what an undergraduate is, I’ll look it up next time I’ve got my dictionary at hand. For those who have followed my posts on the net since 1997, you already know that when I joined the internet world, it was my first time typing. I had never used a keyboard before in my life. Likewise, I had also never learned how to spell. I wrote at that time in what I have since been told is a form of a native lingo of my own invention, cause by lack of contact with humans. In 1997, I first I joined the internet, and became an over night celebrity, not because I posted on every forum and chat room I could find, but because people were fascinated by my complete and total lack of any ability to spell. In the years since that time, my fan following grew to a cult status as people set out to teach me how to spell via online forums.

Than came a revelation to the world, that no one had before known: My books, the Twighlight Manor series, several thousand pages, and countless drafts of each, had never seen typewriter, I had written all of them in longhand. The manuscripts where totally written in bright colored notebooks with Lisa Frank art on the covers: thousands of them. Some 40 boxes worth of notebooks, stacked floor to ceiling. Notebooks that I have been writing in since 1978. Thirty years worth of notebooks.

Today, I still write my books in longhand. I still hand write all of my manuscripts in bright colored children’s note books. To date, I have only ever written one outline. I have never used index cards. I do not type my manuscripts until after having hand written several drafts. I do not organize my ideas, my ideas flow from my mind at a rapid rate, and I write them as they come. No notes. No note taking. They are not my style. They do not work for me.

And finally we come to:

According to Patricia A. Duffy:

4. Keep a Story Circulating until it Sells.

This is another piece of almost universal advice that I don’t follow. I tend to select my markets rather carefully. If something is rejected at the market I’ve thought most probable for it, I will normally only try it on one or two other markets before giving up (or in some cases no other markets). Although there are a lot of magazine markets for speculative short fiction, there are actually relatively few professional markets for speculative short fiction of any given type. I guess my economics training makes me weight the possible benefit (payment for a story) by my subjective evaluation of the odds of being published in that magazine. If the weighted payoff is less than the postage, I put the story in a drawer and work on another one.

My response to what she says:

In some cases, this is true, in others it is not.

Some times I write for copyrighted characters not of my own making. For these stories there is only one publisher that I can legally send the stories to. If they reject the story, than that’s it. It can’t be sent to anyone else.

More often I write stories of characters of my own invention, and for these, I can choose any publisher I damn well please. I can also choose who I DO NOT want to publish it. Than again I can also choose to do what I usually do, and that is to self publish my stories. That is how I came to own my own publishing house. It is through owning my publishing house that I came to become an editor. Today I am a writer, a publisher, and an editor, because I reserved the right to choose when, where, and to whom I sent my manuscripts too: no one!

Well, that is my take on what Patricia A. Duffy says that when it comes to writing, "Conventional Advice Wouldn’t Work for Me.

~~EK

This article Copyright  Wendy C. Allen 2007

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.