Category: Somebody Else Says

Posted in Reading, Recharging Your Writing, Somebody Else Says

Somebody Else Says: Nathan Bransford on Distractions

Posted on by beckylevine

Today, Nathan Bransford blogs about letting yourself be distracted from your writing, giving yourself recharge/refresh time away from the current WIP.

You can read his excellent, realistic post here.

I’ve been thinking lately about how I’ve been having at once the most relaxing summer I can remember AND managing progress on two WIPs and non-writing work stuff. It’s good, you know. And thinking about the one thing I consciously added more alloted-time to in the past year–reading. I think this has a lot to do with my productivity.  With the recharging that Nathan talks about.

If you follow my blog or my Facebook updates and tweets, you know I read a LOT. I also read fast, so it’s not as many hours as it probably seems, but still…it is the crucial distraction/escape in my life. Yes, I can justify it in other ways, because reading and writing are so interconnected, but to be honest, that’s not why I do it. It’s the one thing (after family & friends) that I do completely by choice and am unwilling/unable to give up. I realized last year that I had cut down on it and that, consequently, I was a lot more stressed. I missed the escape that I get from all the wonderful worlds other writers are creating for me.

So I read.

What’s the distraction that you know, takes you away from extra writing hours, but that there is no way–for good reasons–you’re giving up?

Posted in Publishing, Self-Publishing, Somebody Else Says

Somebody Else Says: Jane Friedman at CCYW

Posted on by beckylevine

Quick Reminder: There’s plenty of time to enter my contest for a copy of THE WRITING & CRITIQUE GROUP SURVIVAL GUIDE, a critique, and other goodies. Click here to comment & enter, but make sure to come back and read the good stuff at today’s post, too. 🙂

Yesterday, at the Capital City Young Writers conference, I heard Jane Friedman talk about publishing. Jane is a wonderful speaker, with enough energy and enthusiasm to keep the kids completely hooked in, as well as those of us non-kids who were–most likely–hoping for some golden drops of wisdom, some absolute, about the future of books.

And, of course, what Jane told us is that there is no absolute. Not today and, even if there is one down the line, nobody knows what it’s going to be. Not yet.

The cool thing was that Jane is excited, upbeat, about this. And it’s infectious. To her, it’s not scary or intimidating or worry-inspiring. It’s exhilarating and mind-whirling. It’s the amusement-park ride you want to be on.

I’m going to do my best to summarize a couple of Jane’s main points. Hopefully, if I get these wrong, she’ll stop by to correct me!

Basically, the old world order is crumbling. The power of the gatekeepers–the publishing companies–to direct readership is going away, and it’s being replaced by…us. I’ve been hearing this angle for a while now, and I’ve resisted it, because so many people come at this with a bitterness and an well-those-powermongers-deserve-it attitude, and I truly believe that publishing is NOT just made up of $-hungry greedyguts, but by many editors and book-readers who love what they’re doing and want to bring us stories we’ll like as much as they do. Really. Yesterday, Jane was able to make me see this change outside the let’s-get-revenge attitude, more as just a fact of the world, a wave that’s growing with every blog review, tweet about books, or entry at GoodReads that we each put out there. It’s just happening. And, really, those editors and book-readers are just trying to figure out what to do with it, about it, as much as we all are.

She talked about the complaint people make that all this self-publishing ease will do is put more “bad” books out there, and the worry people have about how they’ll filter through it and find the books they want to read, not to mention the thinking writers should be doing about how, once published, they’ll get their titles TO readers. They’re not going to come buy it at your website, folks, if they don’t know it’s there. Jane pointed us to this law:

 If you look up at the top end of the curve, this is the end we need to be aiming at to actually get our books read, not just published–WHETHER we publish traditionally or for ourselves. And you’ll see that the top end if narrower (don’t ask me to use mathematical-graphy terms, because that’s not going to happen), because this is the harder work to do, and fewer people will do it and get their books/sales up into that corner. It’s a goal, though! 🙂

Jane’s other big point is that we should not let ourselves be intimidated by the fact that nobody knows where this is all going. The title of her talk was (I think I’ve got this right), “We Are Experiencing Revolutionary Difficulties: Please Don’t Wait.” In other words, grab that merry-go-round ring, whichever one you’re looking at today and wondering about whether it’s worth reaching for. Don’t let fear or uncertainty stop you.

As usual, when I listen to Jane, I was thinking, Wow! That is so RIGHT. And then I was thinking, and how does this apply to me. What do I want to do with this information, this angle. I don’t actually have answers to those questions yet. Go figure. :)What I do know is that I think Jane’s absolutely on track with her attitude–that this is exciting, that we should open our ears and eyes and brains to everything that’s going on in Publishing today (yes, another item on your to-do list!), and that we should be ready, with knees bent and jumping muscles ready, to GO when we see the opportunity we want.

The best place I know to get this kind of info is Jane’s Writer’s Digest blog, There Are No Rules. If you’re not reading it yet, start. And maybe add this book she recommended to your reading pile: Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky. I’m going to.

Enjoy the excitement, guys. It’s going to be here for a while!

Posted in Revising, Somebody Else Says, Uncategorized

Somebody Else Says: Beth Revis

Posted on by beckylevine

Beth Revis’ Writing it Out blog is one of the regulars on my read list. She’s got a couple of posts this week that I wanted to share. She’s looking back at her latest BIG revision, and she’s posted about the things that did and didn’t work (with ideas about how to fix the latter, next time around). Beth has really thought this out and–while I’m not sure all her steps would work for me–she’s got some great ideas and analysis of the process.

Stop by and check out these posts:

Posted in Somebody Else Says, Writing Rituals

Somebody Else Says: Writing Rituals

Posted on by beckylevine

I hear a lot of writers talk about their rituals–the process they go through every time they sit down to write, the steps they take before they put their fingers onto the keyboard.

I’ve never set anything up like this for myself. It helps me to have a cup of tea. This is probably mostly about giving my hands something to do while my mind is (hopefully) busy thinking. And I do need music, but it doesn’t seem to be connected in any way to the particular story I’m working on. It goes more with my mood–if I need something melodic in the background or something a little noisier to get my brain actually fired up. And, yes, probably Step #1 does need to be–for all of us–Shut Down the Internet, but I’m not quite there yet.

Anyway, I scanned around & came up with some links for us all to check out. I’d love to hear your rituals, too, in the comments!

When you are ready to write, do you just sit down and dig in? Or are there specific steps that help you warm up and alert your brain that it’s time to start?

Posted in Promotion, Somebody Else Says, The Writing Path, Uncategorized, Writing Fears

Somebody Else Says: Jo Knowles & Bubble Stampede

Posted on by beckylevine

Two seemingly very different posts to link you to today. I think, though, that they’re actually pretty strongly connected by being BIG parts of the writing path.

Jo Knowles is a wonderful YA writer. Her Lessons from a Dead Girl is incredible, and Jumping off Swings (Due this August) is high on my to-read list. In her most recent blog post, she talks about how hard it can be to get seriously constructive feedback on your writing and how wonderful it is to remember what you can do with that feedback. A must-read for anyone who knows that discouraged feeling.

http://jbknowles.livejournal.com/319123.html

A year ago, Laura Purdie Salas and Fiona Bayrock created Bubble Stampede, a LiveJournal blog about their upcoming months of promoting their to-be-published books–Stampede!: Poems to Celebrate the Wild Side of School and Bubble Homes and Fish Farts . The year’s posts are definitely worth skimming, but they’ve also just posted a summation of the year-what worked, what didn’t. Lots of valuable insight.

http://community.livejournal.com/bubblestampede/13237.html

Happy Monday. I’ll be back soon with some more of my own thoughts!

Posted in Publishing, Somebody Else Says

Somebody Else Says: Interview with Jane Friedman

Posted on by beckylevine

Just a quick post to link you to an interview that Tad Richards did with Jane Friedman, of Writer’s Digest. The topic is “Writers & the Recession,” something–as worrisome as it is–we should all be keeping up with. Jane doesn’t pull any punches about where she thinks publishing is going, and she always has something interesting to say.

The interview is here.

Posted in Publishing, Somebody Else Says

Somebody Else Says: Some Good News is Trickling In

Posted on by beckylevine

Well, Spring is here. How do I know? Because we’re all on our allergy nasal sprays, here in this house. Because our windshields are coated with pollen every morning when we go out to drive. And, because, when I get into the car in the afternoon, it’s actually toasty and warm from the sunshine.

Usually, to be honest, at this time of year, I’m not all that excited. I don’t hate winter (probably has something to do with living in California), and I don’t like thinking too much about the hot, upcoming summer. This year, though, I seem to be welcoming spring with unexpected, um…warmth. We’re going camping sometime in the next month, and I have dreams of laying in the sun with a book, climbing up hills under blue skies, and–yes–using my nose spray!

I’m guessing this new attitude has more to do with the gray, gloomy economy of the last few months, than with any of the gray, gloomy weather.  And, so, to complement my good feelings about the brighter sunshine and warmer temps, a few tidbits of economic–if not upturn, maybe a little less downturn.

Note that I do not want this to turn into any kind of political argument about who should be doing what or where money should/should not be going. If you must go there, you must, but I won’t be joining in. This is make-nice day, here at the blog! And be forewarned–any nastiness will get deleted! 🙂

So this weekend, wake up, go outside, and smile at the sun. (Even if it’s hiding behind a few clouds!)

Posted in Character, Heroes, Somebody Else Says, Writing Books

Somebody Else Says: Nathan Bransford (and Me) on Redeemability

Posted on by beckylevine

Okay, I know it’s starting to feel like this is a bit of a cheating week for me. First, I the WONDERFUL and BRILLIANT Shrinking Violets guest post for me. (I know how much you all loved that, though, so no guilt here!). Then I resort to a visual image, no words, about my workday, and I didn’t even find that image myself–Nastassja Mills did! And now, I’m sending you over to read Nathan Bransford’s blog.

Still, no guilt. Because Nathan is always worth listening to, and also because I am going to throw my own two cents into the pot here. Nathan’s basically talking about how to make it work that your hero does something horrible or has a pretty nasty flaw. And his basic idea–although he says it much better and in more detail, so you MUST go read the post–is that you do this by redeeming your hero.

What I started thinking about, though, as I read the post is that this implies another need, perhaps. And that would be the need to have our hero do something “bad” to start with. Yes, I’m still buried in Donald Maass’ workbook and theories, but this seems to me to fall under that big umbrella of pushing our heroes past our their limits.

I am having the sense as I think about my fiction WIP and draft out a few early scenes that I’m making my hero pretty darned, well…heroic. That’s okay. In fact, that’s good. Some pretty nasty things happen to her, and she’s going to have to be strong, or to repeat the highest praise I’ve ever heard about any heroine from literaticat—kick-ass. But…

She can’t be Wonder Woman. (For one thing, the story is set in Chicago, 1913–in MARCH, and that outfit would be completely inappropriate.)

One of my goal for this character is to find out what she does wrong. It has to, I think, be a necessary wrong and one that is ultimately a critical part of her quest and growth, but it does have to be bad.

What about your heroes? Do they wear cloaks because they’re hiding something? What’s really under that mask? How bad can you make them? And how will you, as Nathan says, redeem them?