Category: Writing Projects

Posted in Blogging, The Writing Path, WIP, Workshop, Writing Conferences, Writing Goals, Writing Projects

How Many Balls Should You Juggle…and Which?

Posted on by beckylevine

Last year, I guest-posted over at Shrinking Violet Promotions about the pluses of saying Yes. I believe firmly that it’s a much better word than No. Especially when you’re talking to yourself.

But how many yes‘s can you handle? As you move further along your writing path, opportunities are going to multiply.  Here are just a few things you may want to jump into as you get deeper into your writing and your writing community:

  • Writing on multiple WIPs
  • Taking writing classes
  • Going to some writing conferences
  • Volunteering at a writing club or conference
  • Writing a blog
  • Getting out onto Facebook and/or Twitter
  • Contributing to a newsletter
  • JOIN A CRITIQUE GROUP 🙂

And there are 24 hours in a day?

How many times can you say yes without feeling like those balls you have in the air are transforming into chainsaws and unhappy cats? How do you pick which things to say yes to, without a crystal ball to tell you how it will all work out.

You listen to your gut and accept that Baby Steps can win at “Mother May I” just as well as Giant Steps.

If something sounds fun or you really think it’ll help your writing (craft or career), say yes. If an opportunity has a sour “taste” to it, think twice. Or thrice. Either way, though, if you decide to go for it, remember you can go slowly. You can start with one class, not three. You can pick a local, one-day conference, not a four-day event that requires two days on a plane and another for recovery. Ask your conference coordinators if they can use another person at the registration desk, the day of the conference, instead of offering to handle catering for the entire event.

If you inch forward, even several inches at once, you get a chance to try things out, to test your gut with the reality, not just the picture your nervous imagination is painting. You’ll see what you enjoy, what you’re good at, and what makes you feel like you’re moving forward…versus hitting a dead-end.

You’ll be doing more and you’ll be enjoying it.

What about you? What yes’s are you considering this fall?

Posted in Bravery, Getting Organized, The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, The Writing Path, Writing Fears, Writing Projects

Taking Risks…Come On, Just a Few

Posted on by beckylevine

I am by nature an extremely cautious person. I’m also not so good with change. 38 years later, I’m still not so sure my family needed to sell our smallish tract home and move to the much bigger house, on the top of a hill, with an ocean view and a bedroom for each kid, that my parents had designed and built just for us. Really.

‘Cause you know, why swap out the old for a new? Why take the chance, when where you’re headed might be worse than where you are?

Well, obviously, because it also might be a lot better. Or just really, really good and mesh in beautifully with the happy life you already have.

The last few years, I’ve taken more risks. Nothing huge, from a lot of people’s perspectives, but from Little Miss “Okay, Mom, I’ll get nine books I’ve already read from the library and one new one,” some of the choices I’ve made have been a big deal. And they’ve gotten me to some very good places, including the writing and soon-to-happen publication of The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide.

So, this week, with school starting, more time to focus, and a year ahead in which I want things to be different, I’m putting myself out there. I’m digging deeper into my WIP, reminding myself how important this story—and my fiction—are to me. I’m working on a couple of basic pitches for two nonfiction projects, to send to my agent. I sent an email off for some consulting work. I’ve got a list o children’s nonfiction-book publishers that I’m going to contact.

You can see where the risk comes in. These are all projects I’m qualified to do, and they’re all things I really love doing. But, yes, it’s a lot. The old me would say I was insane, diving head first into all these options, instead of maybe sticking a toe (or just the tip of a toe) into that water. The new me takes a look at the possibility of insanity and does some reassuring. Here’s what I tell myself:

  • You can do these.  You can. [Sigh.] Yes, honestly.
  • None of these are sure bets. To be realistic, some—if not many—are longshots. The odds of you getting to do all of them—get real. You’re not that good. (Yes, sometimes, a big of ego-deflation is actually necessary these days. When did that happen?!)
  • They won’t all happen at the same time. Projects take weeks, months, even years to come to fruition. You’ll probably be bored, waiting for anything to do.
  • A full, exciting life is better than a quiet, dull one.
  • “Yes,” is better than “No,” much of the time. And for your writing path, just about all of the time.

Do I still get nervous? Of course. Do I let that stop me, as it would have when I was young, from reaching out, from stretching myself for the things I really want. Not any more. I may not race ahead and grab it at full-speed just yet. I do, however, hold out my hand and say, “Please.”

What about you? What risks have you taken, or are you facing, that can add to your writing path, bring you more of the happiness that it already gives you?

Posted in The Writing Path, Uncategorized, Writing Projects

Sampling: Getting Started with a New Writing Form

Posted on by beckylevine

For years, I did two kinds of writing. During the day, I wrote software documentation. At night, my alter ego came out (or, too often, just went to bed), and I worked on the mystery I’d been writing for years. Then, life–with its twisty-turny surprises rearranged things, and I stopped being a technical writer and switched over to writing a middle-grade mystery.

Among other things.

I’m in my forties. It took me a while, but I finally realized that “I can’t…” and “I don’t know how to…” are not phrases I want coming out of my mouth too often. Or making their way very far into my brain. I’d rather say “sure,” at least to myself, then go off and learn something new. Like writing a picture book. And writing some biography and history for early elementary-school kids.

Which is probably why I find myself doing a lot of what I call “sampling” this year.

Sampling is what I call the start of my learning process, each time I decide to check out a new form of writing. It’s really just a fancy word for reading, but reading of a very concentrated and purposeful sort. Here are the basic steps:

  • Find out if there are specific examples of the form that you should look at.

    This usually comes into play when you’re writing for a publishers that has a set format, or reading-level, they want you to match. These biography and history books I’ve been looking at come with recommendations for books I should read, before I start writing.

  • Hit the library or bookstore and get a stack of books, either the recommended books or books that fit into the genre you’re exploring. Look for award winners and books that just catch your eye.  

    Pros and cons: The library has due dates, which can mean a structured schedule for you to follow or some hefty late fees! The bookstore costs more (unless those late fees really start to add up), but you get a few resources that you can hang onto for as long as you need and that you can refer back to as often as you need.

  • Read.

    If you’re working in a longer genre–novels or full-length memoirs, you will obviously need to do this over time. If you’re checking out some shorter forms, like me, try to set aside a chunk of time to read through all your books at once. Things like language and structure will seep into your more quickly, I believe, if you read without interruption.

  • Take some notes on the commonalities you’re seeing in the books.

    I noticed today that the biographies I was reading all started with an active sentence about the subject, things like: Daniel flung the ax into the stump. May dropped the last of the blueberries into her basket. Character and action, in an immediate scene.

    In the picture books I’ve been sampling, I’ve seen how short a time we have to set up the start of the story, and how many more words are given to the end crisis and resolution. I’ve found out that the pacing of the mini-problems each picture-book hero must face can be rapid—like a ping-pong battle, or slower—like a lilting folk song.

    When I was reading magazine articles, as research for The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, I was amazed at how few words the author had to spare for a hook. Oh, sure, I’d been told that, but I hadn’t seen it.

Where did I first learn this technique? From a creative writing teacher? From a workshop? Nope. I started doing this when I was a new technical writer, when I had an introduction to write and had to say something clear and (hopefully) intelligent about a product I knew very little about. I went to the shelves and pulled off other manuals and read through their opening lines, focusing on what that other writer had pulled out to highlight and what they’d left out as unimportant. I scanned the length of the passages and checked out the voice the author had used.

I sampled.

I know, believe me, that a novel–a picture book, a biography, a magazine article–none of these are software manuals. And I know that truly learning a genre takes much longer than a few hours trying to pull a recognizable structure out of a few pages of words. I also know, though, that that structure is a must-learn, no matter what type of writing you’re trying out. We’re not playing copycat; we’re not working to a formula. We’re learning to get the feel of the thing, both in our brains and coming out the tips of our fingers onto the keyboard.

We’re taking one of the many necessary steps to go forward into something new.

Posted in Memoir, The Beginning, Writing Goals, Writing Projects

Matilda Butler’s Interview with Me

Posted on by beckylevine

Matilda Butler is a teacher (and student!) of memoir. She’s the co-publisher of Rosie’s Daughters, a collection of memoir pieces by women born during WWII. She has as many shelves of women’s memoirs in her library as I do children’s books–maybe more! I first met Matilda at the last East of Eden writers conference, and–when I was developing the memoir chapter in The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, I asked her if I could pick her brain about things writers should be thinking about. She was kind, generous, and incredibly helpful. And she asked me if I’d do an interview with her for her Memoir Moments at http://womensmemoirs.com.

Matilda just put up the interview, so if you’d like to take a listen (Yes, it’s in AUDIO!), hop over to the post here.

Posted in The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, Writing Projects

Spring & Writing: What’s Growing with You?

Posted on by beckylevine

Yes, Spring is here. I know, it was official a few weeks ago, and some of you are still dealing with cold rain and snow, but the green things are trying. And out here, they’re growing and blooming.

My son’s spring break was this last week, and we took off for a couple of days of camping here and hiking here and here. It was perfect. Well, maybe not absolutely perfect for my son, who doesn’t really fitto sleep on the floor of the Vanagon anymore, but he didn’t complain, and we didn’t step on his head getting in and out, so, really, it all worked fine.

Tomorrow, school starts up again, and we head into the end of April. I hadn’t realized how much I needed a break of pretty much nothingness. Even with the sore muscles, I’m feeling seriously rested and refreshed. And ready to look at Spring with welcome. Ready to face my writing projects and say, “Bring it on!”

What will I be doing, with the sunshine bouncing off the greenery into my office window?

  • Revisions on The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide. I’ll be getting feedback from my Writer’s Digest editor and digging back into the book. After this weekend, I feel ready.
  • Getting ready to write the first draft of my historical YA (feeble “working” title: Caro’s Story). Several writing friends are sort of getting to that place where we need to write, and we’re talking about pulling out all the stops in June and blasting through our first drafts. On one of our hikes this week, my husband and son helped me brainstorm some story problems (hey, you NEED something to talk about when you’re trying to climb 3,000 feet in 3 miles!), and, boy, their help was HUGE! I had several recordings on my cellphone with ideas about the ending AND the middle. So I’ll be more than ready to go in June. (I know, that’s officially summer, but prep will happen in May!).
  • Going back to the picture book I started this month. I did some basic plotting of the beginning and end, and wrote a few hundred words of early ideas. Next step: figure out some problems my heroes can face across the middle.
  • Start getting organized for my RESEARCH TRIP to Chicago this summer. My YA is set there in 1913. My sister lives a couple of hours south, and the plan is to take a couple of days in Chicago to hit museums, visit neighborhoods, talk to historians. We think we’re even going to go by the apartment where our grandmother lived as a little girl. I am so excited about this–it’s going to be better than the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland. And, you know, that’s the best.

It’s been a tough, long winter. Not for us, thank goodness, but for so many people all across the country, and the world. I want to face this Spring with optimism. I want to stay open to whatever new things may come along.

What about you? What projects–writing or otherwise–are you gearing up for this Spring? What’s calling to you?