How To Train Your Muse (guest post)

Today's guest blog is written by K.M. Weiland! She writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in the sandhills of western Nebraska. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, editing services, workshops, and her recently released instructional CD, Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

I first "met" K.M. online through her blog Wordplay -- her videos in particular give solid advice, and I highly recommend that everyone drop by and check it out!

How to Train Your Muse (The Demerit System)

We’re accustomed to think of our muse as a whimsical and erratic fairy-like creature, or perhaps a wise old prophet forever stroking his beard and poking his spectacles up higher on the bridge of his nose. Either way, the muse often seems untouchable. Fairies and prophets aren’t likely to listen to the entreaties of mere mortals like ourselves, so all we can do is wait around until they start thinking kind thoughts about us. Right?

Actually, I tend to think of the muse more along the lines of a child prodigy: brilliant, but still in need of a firm guiding hand. Just as it’s our responsibility as parents to train our children to develop good habits, it’s also within our capabilities as writers to train up our muses in the way they should go. And, as I discuss in my recently released CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration, they should also go toward making our jobs as writers that much easier.

Just as with bringing up children, the best way to train our muse is to map out a course of punishments and rewards—a demerit system of sorts, if you will. Actually, this isn’t so much about training our muses as it is training ourselves to have to good habits. It’s a proven fact that humans are motivated exclusively by two factors: pain and pleasure. So let’s put that knowledge to good use, shall we?

The first step is put some goals in place. Figure out what it is you and your muse need to achieve. Finish that novel? Write on a more consistent schedule? Come up with a new story idea? Submit your finished manuscript to twenty new agents? Whatever the goal, you can then break it down into bite-size pieces, perhaps adding deadlines where appropriate. For example, if your goal is to finish your novel, and if word count goals work for you, you might assign yourself a certain word count every day.

Now that you’ve sat your muse down, given it a talking to, and explained what you expect of it, it’s time to start putting that reward/punishment system to work. What’s going to happen if you fail? Perhaps failure means no more television for a week (now it really sounds like we’re talking about kids, doesn’t it?). Maybe it’s something as radical as the word-erasure punishments on Dr. Wicked’s ridiculously effective Write or Die interface. Whatever the punishment you decide on, make sure it’s something you’re going to regret going without.

But don’t forget the fun part of this exercise. The rewards! If you knock down those word count goals like so many bowling pins in a strike, you deserve something splendiferous at the end of the game. Chocolate and ice cream are always good motivators. But maybe you’ll want to reward your muse with something extra special: that hardbound book you’ve been craving, a vacation, a new laptop? If the punishment should fit the crime, then the reward should fit the triumph.

The whole point of pushing and pulling your muse via the punishment/reward system is to convince it to develop good writing habits. Once the habits are in place, they’ll be hard to break. Not that you still can’t reward yourself with ice cream after every good writing day!

Published Author: Ask Him Anything! (guest blog #4, with CONTEST!)

"Vivid and accurate prose, a gripping, imaginative story, a terrifically inventive setting, a hard-bitten, indestructible hero, and an intelligent, fully adult heroine -- We haven't had a science-fiction novel like this for a long time."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

Last Monday, you heard from my best childhood friend, Sarah, on the perils of loving a writer. Today, you get to ASK THAT WRITER ANYTHING! Felix Gilman will tell you his background himself, but you should know that he's British, so that you can imagine this post read aloud to you with the driest of Jeremy-Irons-esque accents.

Hello, all. I’m Felix Gilman, and this is a guest post while Carrie’s in wherever. [France! Back next week. -ed.] My own blog is at felixgilman.com/wordpress and gets updated essentially never. [Which is why he's written more books than I have. -ed.] I’m the author of two novels published by Bantam: Thunderer and Gears of the City. My third book, The Half-Made World, will be published by Tor in October. About a week ago I finished a fourth book, and my agent sold it to Tor. That one doesn’t have a title yet. These are what you might call fantasies, or secondary-world fantasies, if you prefer. Thunderer was billed on the hardcover version as a “High Fantasy,” which with hindsight was probably a mistake: it makes people think of Dwarves and Elves, which I don’t care for. [These novels are in fact in urban settings! The New Yorker in me loves this immensely. -ed.] Later it got described as New Weird. I don’t exactly know what that means. [Felix also has a short story in a collection called The New Weird, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, and I read it, and I don't know what it means, either. -ed.]

The Half-Made World gets described as steampunk. I don’t know exactly what that means, either. But everything has to be called something. People ask, and I say, I don’t know, just books. But that doesn’t work, they keep asking. There has to be an answer. Whereof we cannot speak, we cannot market. Anyway, I suppose all this means I’m in early-mid-career as a writer.

"Career" -- probably the ugliest word in the English language.

So far I’ve got by on blind luck and also not caring all that much if it doesn’t work out. Also, everything I’ve published so far was written or begun or at least substantially committed to before my first book was published. Now, for the first time, I’m planning out a new book with some sense of the shape of the market and my place in it and where I might want to be in five years’ time and where I might actually realistically expect to be... It’s a very different experience. There are things to balance that I’m not sure really can be balanced.

I suppose I don’t really have a point here. Does anyone have any questions about publishing or my views on writing after a couple of books? Boy, have I have got some vague and unsatisfying and potentially inaccurate half-answers for you.

Also there should be a contest. A copy of my first two books to (1) the best cute animal YouTube posted in comments; (2) the best song posted in comments, according to my own arbitrary tastes; (3) any person who proposes a workable and cost-effective solution to the Deepwater Horizon leak.

Please note that the video below is the most recent one sent to me by Felix, so the standard for cute/funny animal YouTube is HIGH, y'all.

I'm keeping this contest open until the end of next week, July 9th at midnight EST, to give the first contest some time to settle before the winner of this one is announced. TWO BOOKS! Enter now!

Who's In Charge Here? (guest blog #3)

The Scene Stealer

Today's blog post is brought to you by Lisa M. Palin, who I met at my last law firm job. We were good friends and working in offices directly adjacent to each other for MONTHS before we each realized the other one also wanted to write... while sharing a taxi home from a firm holiday event, we realized we had both done NaNoWriMo that previous November. She writes primarily romance, but usually a genre-blend version of romance rather than straight category (including overtones of mystery, literary fiction and supernatural YA/"New Adult"). She blogs about solo hiking and camping at Her Side Of The Mountain, and can be found on Twitter: @joanarc4. She hopes to be around today to chat with you in the comments. Enjoy!

Let's face it. Characters can -- and frequently do -- take on a life of their own. This can be fun. That's when writing is like a wild ride, and as the writer, you hang on for dear life and enjoy the thrill. Sometimes, however, you're confronted with characters who simply. won’t. cooperate.

What then?

There are several different kinds of unruly characters, including:

• The Scene Stealer: though she's not supposed to be the center of attention, she captivates everyone, including the other characters;
• The Mule (i.e. stubborn as a): he refuses to do what you want him to do and you have to drag him kicking and screaming though the plot;
• The Lazy A**: he'll do what you ask, but with the energy of pea soup; and
• The Control Freak: she thinks she's directing the action and knows better than you.

Today, we'll talk about the Scene Stealer. The Scene Stealer is perhaps the most difficult to deal with, because, let's face it, she's so gosh darn cool.

About a year ago, I got an idea for a novel. I put fingers to keyboard and began to write. At first, it was going really well. The heroine was interesting, the hero enigmatic. I had a great villain ready-and-waiting in the wings. The action was exciting, the world interesting, and I thought to myself: Lisa, you have an incredible thing going here. Finally!

Then, she walked in. And ruined everything.

It happened so quickly, I barely had time to catch my breath before the story came to a screeching halt. Her name was Lily, and she glowed. Without my having thought too hard in advance about her -- she was a supporting character, a means to an end, after all -- she swept in and stole the scene. When it was time for her to go her own way, I found myself looking longingly after her, wanting to follow her and see what she would do next, rather than staying in the scene with my main characters.

As a test, I gave the first couple of chapters of the story to a frequent beta-reader of mine. He read the chapters, and said, “this is great. But that Lily, she’s something. What happens to her?”

Darn it.

Suddenly, my story was at an impasse. I couldn’t move forward because Lily was there, on the sidelines, being sexy and interesting and smug about her awesomeness.

So what do you do with the Scene Stealer? How do you keep him or her from derailing your really quite great story?

• Make her less awesome. You could go back, force her into submission by making her less dynamic and interesting. I don’t like this, because it smacks of Harrison Bergeron. Why snuff out a shining light in order to even out the playing field? Feels like a waste.
• Distract her. When I was a kid and raising hell, my dad would distract me by giving me something different and new to focus on. It can work on unruly characters as well. Take your Scene Stealer and put her in a different -- maybe uncomfortable, if you’re feeling spiteful -- situation. Write a few pages, let her get tangled up in some new mess with other characters. She’ll like the attention, and then perhaps be distracted long enough for you to make headway on your story while she’s otherwise occupied.
• Give in. Temporarily, anyhow. You want to follow the Scene Stealer for a while? Do it. See what happens. At worst, you might end up with unusable but insightful character study. Maybe you’ll hit on a seed for a new story (to work on LATER, once you finish what you started). And who knows? Maybe you’ll end up with some usable nuggets that will make your story better. (Just make sure you don’t get too carried away and get back to the original story before too long.)
• Make your other characters better. What makes the Scene Stealer so interesting and dynamic? That something is clearly missing from your other characters, or else she wouldn’t be so easily able to steal the spotlight. Instead of handicapping the Scene Stealer, look hard at how you might solve the problem by bringing your existing characters up to the level of the Scene Stealer. Give her some competition.
• Smack her into submission. You can do it. You’re the writer. She may think she’s in control, but it’s an illusion. Ignore her long enough and she’ll settle down. If she doesn’t, then you’re probably looking for a distraction, and that’s an entirely different subject.

I brought Lily into submission, and saved my progress on the story, by giving in for a while (I gave Lily her own story, which I sketched out and set aside) and by making my hero and heroine more interesting. Turns out, they were just waiting for the opportunity to shine.

Have you ever encountered a Scene Stealer? What did you do to deal with this unruly character?

Writing About Real People (guest blog #2, with CONTEST!)

BIO: Audrey Beth Stein is the author of the memoir Map, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award (the Oscars of queer books). She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and is a two-time national prizewinner in the David Dornstein Memorial Short Story Contest. She teaches memoir and novel development at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Direct links to order Map can be found at http://map.audreybethstein.com.

GIVEAWAY: Audrey will be giving away one copy of Map to a lucky blog reader chosen at random. Enter by commenting on this post by July 2nd, midnight EST. (That's BEFORE the long weekend, people. I'll announce the winner when I get back on July 6th.) Anyone who intelligently references and links content from Audrey’s websites (start browsing at http://map.audreybethstein.com or http://audreybethstein.com) in one of their comments will be entered twice. Fine print: Winner must be at least 14 years old and must provide a U.S. mailing address upon being chosen or an alternate winner will be selected.

PERSONAL STATEMENT: Audrey's memoir made me cry. The same chapter that caused her mom to cry (in a good way!) when she read it, in fact. It's really a great piece of writing, and I highly recommend it. Now... onto the guest post!

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When I teach writing classes, whether memoir or novel development, invariably someone asks about the legal ramifications of writing about real people. I worried about the legal stuff myself for quite a while, and then someone pointed out that here in the United States anyone can sue you for anything. Even if you’re completely in the right and have documented proof, it’s the mere existence of a lawsuit that wreaks havoc and drains resources. I’d also read somewhere that a lot of times when people sue doctors for malpractice, what they really want is an acknowledgement of hurt, and an apology. So I made a decision to concentration on the moral issues in writing about real people, and let fate handle the rest.

Our writing has consequences—often good, sometimes harmful. Not writing has its own consequences. There are some people who argue art above all, but I disagree. We are human beings first, living in the world and in community with other people. Our art grows out of that, out of the relationship between our self and the world we inhabit. And thus I believe we have dual loyalties.

Do whatever you need to do to get the story out, I tell my students. Lock up the manuscript, give yourself permission to burn the pages later, write in secret in the middle of the night, eat lots of chocolate, whatever. You owe yourself the space to explore and express your truth, to get it onto the page without anyone’s censors. If you’re not doing that, what kind of artist are you? But once it’s out, I say, and you are ready to share it with others, then you have a responsibility to consider the potential impact of your words. If your story is going to drive a reader one step closer to suicide, cause a family rift, or tarnish someone’s character, you don’t escape responsibility by hiding under terms like “artist” or “truth.”

It’s not for me to make anyone else’s decisions—I wrestle enough with my own—but I advocate for those decisions to be made thoughtfully, maturely, bravely, with respect and kindness for ourselves and for the others who will be touched by our stories in many different ways. Here are a few resources you might find helpful as you do so: The Courage to Write by Ralph S. Keyes; “Peering at Privacy in Creative Nonfiction” by Kaylene Johnson (in the September 2004 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle); and the memoir Half the House by Richard Hoffman.

In the case of my own memoir, Map, I rewrote scenes with minor characters over and over until my writing group saw my own vulnerabilities coming through rather than the hurtful descriptions I’d camouflaged them with. Over a period of nine-and-a-half years and sixteen revisions, I reached out to each of the main characters with an offer to read the manuscript. “Tyler” helped clarify facts and reminded me of a couple of events that were important to include. My parents confirmed that I’d captured the coming out scenes accurately. “A.J.” sent a vote of confidence and encouraged me to tell even more. “Jake,” reading the final draft, thanked me for bringing back some good memories. It took me a long time, though, to get in touch with one major character--my first love, “Catrina”--and even though I had changed names and identifying details, even though I had written from truth and revised with care, I was nervous. What would she say? Would she--my biggest fear, dubious in retrospect, stemming from my twenty-one-year-old insecurities--ask me not to publish, and what would I do if she did?

(This is the point where I refer you to Map for the rest of the story. Isn’t shameless self-promotion the point of a guest blog?)

Amazingly, when it came to writing my (as-yet-unpublished) novel, the decisions were in some ways even harder. Memoir is at least straightforward—you’re either writing about someone or you aren’t. But fiction? Where characters inspired by real people or amalgams of real people transform into fully-realized fictional entities? Where you use this made-up stuff to get at the truth of your life and the lives around you?

I was terrified I’d hurt my mom. And I was terrified that my fear of hurting her would stunt my own growth.

In order to find the book I needed to write, to delve deep enough to reach the emotional truth, to use my words to help me understand my family, I gave myself permission to work on the novel for an entire decade and still destroy the results at the end.

I certainly couldn’t have made such a pact if this was my first book, or if I didn’t already have a failed novel under my belt. And I knew the odds of me actually turning a manuscript into garden compost after so long were rather slim. But it gave me the room I needed for the next eight years of writing. The room my characters needed to become whole. The room my novel needed to become about much more than its beginnings.

I still don’t want to hurt my mom. But I’ve grown enough through these eight years to be ready to have the conversations, and now that I’ve found my own voice in the family through this novel, I want to hear hers in response. Is the book done? I don’t know. After she’s read it, I might know. I might have more to say.

How do you navigate responsibility to your writing and to the people around you? How do you get the hard stuff onto the page? When and how do you share it? What compromises have you made, and is there anything you’d do differently next time?

The Perils of Loving a Writer (guest blog #1)

Greetings, friends of Carrie! Let me first introduce myself. My name is Sarah and I met Carrie during a mommy play-date. Not a play-date between our children, but one between our mothers back in nineteen-seventy-something. [I have photos of Sarah at my 2nd birthday party in 1975. -ed.]

We had a lemonade stand together. We played with Barbie dolls together. [Technically, I believe they were Sindy dolls that I got for doing a commercial for the toy, plus Jem and the Holograms dolls. Because Jem is truly outrageous. -ed.] I met Carrie's husband before he grew his first beard, and she met mine while he still had inappropriately long hair. (Yes, we both married teenage sweethearts. Everybody say aww.) Carrie is the closest thing in my life to a sister. [The first time I met Sarah's husband, he watched us for a while, then said, "Oh, God, there's two of you." -ed.]

So what I’m saying is, I was here first. But I’ll share because Carrie is too awesome to not share. [Aww. -ed.] Besides, you make me feel like an incredibly hip early adopter.

I’m not a writer myself, but my husband is soon-to-be-famous author Felix Gilman so I’m going to talk about his first book. He’d talk about being a writer back when he was 20, but by 30 that seemed to be over. Then, with a three month gap between jobs he announced, almost sheepishly, that he was going to write a novel rather than find temporary employment. He’d apparently been planning for some time and had a plot, characters, and a genre all mapped out. I was elated to find that his lifelong dream had not fallen by the wayside of adulthood as they so often do.

And then as sequestered a section of the desk for his reference books, the fear set in. Was that [book] by [author]? And the sequel? I hate those books. They go on and on with prose like dense jungle undergrowth and nothing resembling plot or character development. Of course, my husband feels differently about them…

“Oh lord,” I thought, “I’m going to hate his book.”

I had lobbied unsuccessfully for the right to read early drafts, but as time passed I began to be relieved. This gave me time to plan my faux-compliments and the appropriate adoring gestures to go with them.

Fortunately my plans were unnecessary; I loved his novel. I would actually struggle to stay awake just to keep reading. But I wonder sometimes what I would have happened if I’d felt differently.

I’ve noticed Carrie usually ends with a question of some kind and so following her example I offer this chance to get it off your chest – although you might not want to name names. Have you ever hated a book written by a loved one? What did you say when they asked for your opinion? Or, since many of you are on the other side, did anyone close to you hate your work... and how did you manage to forgive them for their bizarre lack of taste?

You can find Sarah's husband Felix at his blog, and I highly recommend that you check out his author bio. And then hit refresh. And then hit refresh again. I think he has eight different bios on there, and they're all HILARIOUS. ALSO! Wednesday of next week Felix himself will be guest blogging for us, complete with a TWO-BOOK GIVEAWAY! So cool. Come on back now, y'hear?