Brrr, the ancient floor furnace has gone kablooey and I’m relying on those oil-filled radiators that plug in.  Not quite as good, but they work.  Hopefully it’s just the thermostat, because no one will work on the damn thing, and I don’t have $10,000 to spare for a new furnace and ductwork.  Come on, Publishers Clearinghouse!

Today’s post is about cutting. No, not the kind you do to your wrists, or your enemies, but to your manuscript.  It’s all part of revision, the bugbear for so many writers.

How do you know what to cut?  You can start with the obvious: material that doesn’t belong.  Let’s say I wrote a story about a mad killer in the Batman universe, who strikes during thunderstorms, and Batman has to figure out how to catch him before any more innocent Gotham citizens are harmed.  And imagine I wrote a long section explaining atmospheric disturbances during thunderstorms, how lightning works, etc.  Would it belong in the story? Only if Batman needed it to find the killer.  Otherwise, it’s only a digression.  No matter how excellently the thunderstorm trivia is written, it shouldn’t be there.  Its only purpose is to move the plot forward and if it’s not doing that, it has to go.

A more elegantly written, literary work might have a bit more room for meandering, but in plot-driven commercial fiction there is little time for asides. No one cares. They only care whether Batman will find the guy in time to save the pretty heroine, or perhaps his beloved Alfred, who is knocking about Wayne Manor, unaware that the killer, posing as kitchen help, hid in the pantry during the ball and the thunderstorm is raging and he is now sneaking up on our poor, unsuspecting butler/father figure with a huge knife—EEP!

If I stopped that kind of suspense to tell you how lightning is formed and it had nothing to do with Alfred’s rescue, you would clout me with my own book and I wouldn’t blame you.

Words and phrases that are extraneous clutter your manuscript.   In William Brohaugh’s excellent Write Tight: How to Keep Your Prose Sharp, Focused and Concise, he reminds writers to watch for unnecessary adverbs. Look for phrases like pulled off (or off of, which is especially heinous), called out, dropped down, etc.  The verb is fine by itself; it doesn’t need the extra word, because we know what is happening.

He pulled a piece from the crusty loaf.

Alice called to the White Rabbit.

The knife dropped and the killer began to cry.

Most of these modifiers come from the way people speak. But you’re not going to write the way you speak, are you?  I confess, I’m very bad with this, and I must have cut thousands of extra adverbs, adjectives and prepositions from my book.  Since I’m cutting again to reduce word count, I’m sure I’ll find many more that I missed.

Another thing Brohaugh mentions is checklists in your descriptions.  I had trouble admitting that I did this one.  Here’s an example from the first draft of Rose’s Hostage, a scene where the captive Libby has been allowed upstairs to take a shower:

This bathroom was white, with a colorful floral shower curtain and matching window dressings, and green towels. White wicker accessories – a tissue holder, magazine rack (empty – didn’t anyone read around here?) and one of those tall toilet paper reserve containers that held several rolls – studded the room and the walls were decorated with faded flower prints. The overall effect was of a garden.  It was much nicer than the bathroom downstairs, with its silly ceramic fish and light-devouring blue walls.  She wondered who had done the decorating.  Obviously it hadn’t been updated in some time, but at least someone had tried to make this room a pleasant one.

And now in the fifth draft:

This bathroom was white and green with floral trim. The accessories were white wicker and framed botanical prints decorated the walls. It was much nicer than the bathroom downstairs.

Better, no? Obviously no one cares if the bathroom has a toilet roll holder; we all know what accessories are usually found in a bathroom, and it’s not necessary to list them.  Three sentences and only twenty-nine words.   I hope you can see it just as well.

If I described the bathroom too well, the reader would not have his/her own unique picture of it.  When I read The Lord of the Rings, I see the Shire in a very different way than someone else might.  It’s not that Tolkien’s descriptions are sparse, but that each person has his/her own filter and my vision of the bathroom or the Shire will be my own.  It will remain in my mind and I’ll revisit it each time I read the book.

Try a bit of cutting on your own work. I promise it won’t hurt.  Not much, anyway.  If you have any tidbits to share on this topic, please feel free to post in the comments.

Poaste number ten! Wow, that went quickly.  When I started this blog, I worried that I would have nothing to say.  Of course, anyone who knows me knows that’s not entirely true!

At a loose end, I was paging through some old school papers and found a hilarious English assignment that apparently was about colloquialisms, the countrified version in particular, although I can’t for the life of me remember exactly what the assignment was.  About ten years ago (boy, time flies), I dated Farm Boy, who lived in a rather rural area round these parts.  Their family was close-knit, practical, loyal and hilarious.  I learned a lot of new words from them.

There was you’uns, as in “You’uns come over here for Christmas.”  I had NEVER heard that before I met Farm Boy.  I reckon is another one, but I hear that from my dad, who hails from Texas and says rinch for rinse and warsh for wash, as well as light bub for light bulb.  Most of these seem to be a matter of pronunciation and not words in themselves, as do others like cain’t, aigs (eggs), and idear (idea).

Holler is another one, as in “You’uns go down in that holler and get a deer.” Crick is a good one, as in “Get them cows across the crick.” That’s another one my dad says. Other assorted phrases include “Git’er done,” “Rode hard ‘n put up wet,” “I gotta pee like a rushin’ race horse,” “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age!” and, said in response to someone’s glee that the speaker didn’t share, “If I had a feather up my ass, we’d both be tickled.”

Entertaining, no?  A bit much for fiction, however.  I’ll explain why.

The use of colloquialism and dialect in writing adds color and character to dialogue, but a writer must be careful not to go too far.  Probably the most famous (and the most parodied) is the slave dialect in Gone with the Wind.  Mitchell’s dialogue may or may not be authentic, but it’s certainly hard to read.  Critics have said that her portrayal of slaves is racist.  All I know is reading all those gwines and Ahs drove me bats the first time.

Pages of phonetically-spelled dialogue require the reader to concentrate and can thrust him/her out of the story.  Dialect should never be obvious; when you’re striving to capture a character’s voice, it needs to reflect that character, not exaggerate or parody him, unless you’re trying to poke fun.  Exaggeration is irritating, stereotypical and even insulting.

Mark Twain was well known for using dialect; he could be heavy-handed with it at times.  For example, in Chapter 14 of Huck Finn, Huck is educating Jim:
I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, ‘stead of mister; and Jim’s eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says:

“I didn’ know dey was so many un um. I hain’t hearn ’bout none un um, skasely, but ole King Soller-mun, onless you counts dem kings dat’s in a pack er k’yards. How much do a king git?”

The first paragraph, Huck’s first person narrative, is relatively free of hyperbole, but in the style of the day (and still perhaps in Margaret Mitchell’s time), the slave dialogue is rendered in such a way as to emphasize the difference between the two.  It’s too much and has also been vilified as racist.  But dialogue aside, Huck Finn was a landmark work in that it portrayed the black character, Jim, as a real person and not a caricature, albeit seen through Huck’s (a young white boy) innocent eyes.

Twain did not use a great deal of dialect in his book Roughing It, but the language is colorful.  He wrote character-revealing dialogue which was almost as good as a tape recorder.  Take an exchange with the ruffian Arkansas in the protagonists’ mining company:

“Mr. Arkansas, if you’d only let me –“

“Who’s a-henderin’ you?  Don’t you insinuate nothin’ agin me! – don’t you do it.  Don’t you come in here bullyin’ around, and cussin’ and goin’ on like a lunatic – don’t you do it.  ‘Coz I won’t stand it.  If fight’s what you want, out with it!  I’m your man!  Out with it!”

It walks the line, but Arkansas is still perfectly understandable and his voice is clear in the reader’s head.

When writing dialogue using colloquialisms or dialect, you still need to follow the rules.  What many writers don’t realize is that it needn’t be written the way people actually talk.  This is never truer than for dialect; the idea is to suggest a regional or cultural flavor in speech.  If your character has a Southern accent, for example, you don’t have to write this:

“Well hay-ell, Honey, you-awl don’ need ta put yaselves ahwt on mah account.”

when this will do:

“Well hell Honey, y’all don’t need to put yourselves out on my account.”

Y’all is familiar Southern speak. It lets us know a bit about the speaker’s regional origins.  He could be from Georgia or Texas or somewhere else below the Mason-Dixon Line, but we know it as soon as he opens his mouth.  Or if you’re writing a mystery, his right-on-the-money phony accent completes his disguise and conceals his sinister intent.  If you combine the cultural elements with other traits consistent with the character’s personality and upbringing, you can achieve your local color without straining your readers’ eyes.

Stay away from stereotypes.  Not all Southerners are polite and not all New Yorkers talk fast or broaden their A’s. Stereotypes cheapen your characters; they should have traits that are uniquely theirs, including their speech.  In Stephen King’s latest novel Under the Dome, the power-mad second councilman refers to people he doesn’t like or respect as “cottonpickers.”  It’s a tag that is peculiar to him and tells a lot about his personality.  (By the way, read that book.  SK is in fine form and I couldn’t put it down.  I hope I learn how to build tension that well someday.)

Read as much as you can. Pay attention to other writers’ dialogue.  See what works for you and what doesn’t.  If you’ve noticed a stellar example of dialect and colloquialism in fiction, or a terrible one, tell us about it in the comments.

Ah, the New Year.  A time to start over, to make promises to ourselves we may or may not keep, to beat our heads against the blank page of a new project.

I like to call this state of being before the outline is completed “stuckityness.”  (So it’s not really a word; shut up, Spellchecker.  I meant to type that.)  I’m always stuck at first; it takes time to get into the mindset of a new world and wrap my thoughts in the fog of a new set of characters.  In order to do that, I have to eliminate distractions.  You know what they are.

• The TV.  When I’m working it’s usually on but muted, because for some reason I can concentrate better if I have something to ignore.  I’m sure that comes from multitasking at work.  Receptionists and admins rarely get the luxury of closing an office door.

Usually I listen to music while writing, but since the TV is on all the time when I’m home, things just don’t seem quite right when it’s not.  But I park it on a rerun-heavy channel like Nick at Nite, so I don’t get distracted by a hot guy or exciting reenactment.

• The Internet.  This is so hard for me; I love the Internet. I’m on it all the time.  If I can’t get online, I freak as though I’ve lost a limb.  God forbid I can’t get my email, read Cracked.com or Consumerist, or message my peeps. The Web brings its own set of distractions, especially chat and videos. One feeds off the other and there goes three hours or more.

I set a limit of 45 minutes to an hour to surf and check all the sites I regularly haunt.  Then I must work for at least two hours before I can go back online, even to look something up.  When it’s going well, I often work longer.  Chat is limited to a quick greeting and a check back at the end of the session.

• The phone.  It never fails; as soon as I sit down with my laptop and headphones, someone calls me. I just have to remember to bring the cordless handset with me in case a call is a welcome respite.  I hate getting up once I’m settled.

I can and do ignore the phone, so I tell people to leave a message. I usually check it and call back the first time I get up to take a break.

• Neighbors or solicitors banging on the door.  I can’t do much about the former, but I dealt with the latter by posting a sign that says “NO SOLICITORS; NO PROSELYTIZING; NO LEAFLETS; NOW GET OFF MY LAWN.”

A guy knocked earlier this fall and said “I know you mean it on your sign, but I was wondering if I could pick up your brush pile for $5.”  Hell, yes.  That’s a great deal.  Just keep the candy, magazines and preaching far, far away.  I don’t need any of that.

Discipline is the watchword.  Without it, no book would ever be written because it takes time and effort to do it. If you want to write, you have to realize that it is work and you are the boss.  No one will make you sit your tookus in the chair and do it except you.

What tactics do you use to eliminate distractions? Tell us about it in the comments.

My cell phone rang yesterday at work and I dived for it, sure it was word on my latest query. Turned out to be my doctor’s office with a question.  Nuts!

I wanted to write a post about feedback.  A lot of people join writer’s groups in order to present material, discuss writing problems and get feedback from other writers, published or not.  I’ve not done this yet; there is one I’m interested in but it meets when I have another commitment.  It’s intimidating to put your work out there for public consumption, but even more so to ask for someone’s opinion.

With the popularity of shows such as American Idol, criticism and schadenfreude are big right now.  It’s fun to watch people fall flat on their faces, unless it’s you.  Anyone presenting work or performance in public is bound to have a few critics, but the harshness of unfettered vitriol can make some people quit.  From what I understand, many writers’ groups have rules about criticism; one I looked at recently and ultimately dismissed said it didn’t accept any criticism, only encouragement.  That’s another side to the coin.

Receiving no feedback won’t help you grow as an artist.  Neither will being unable to accept it.  On the very first audition show for American Idol, one of only two times I ever watched it, a young woman performed.  She had a pretty good voice, but as a trained singer myself, I could tell by her lack of breath control and phrasing mistakes she had had no formal study in voice. With training she had a real shot at making it, as the judges told her with great enthusiasm.

Was she excited to hear it?

No.  She thought her voice was perfect and needed no training or improvement of any kind.  I could see she had probably received empty praise and indulgence rather than genuine support and advice.  Her attitude condemned her to obscurity. The writer who can’t bear to change a word of his/her masterpiece because the first draft is perfect will quickly follow her.

There are some kinds of feedback it’s best to ignore.

• “Oh this is brilliant; you don’t need to do a thing to it!” Yes, you do.

• Remarks that stem from jealousy, competitiveness, or spite. You’ll know it when you hear it.  In between two projects, I was noodling around with something for fun and was told I should get over that and write something saleable. I knew at that moment I could never trust that person’s opinion again.

Same goes for reviews or comments. Don’t take these to heart. A good review or comment will give you honest observations that can improve your work.

• Feedback targeted at you personally, not your work. Agenda time, anyone?

• Feedback that is vague, or offers nothing beyond “I don’t like it.” That’s a personal opinion and should be respected. But unless concrete reasons are articulated, it is not useful to you.

What you want is constructive feedback. In my grad school education program, we learned how to give a criticism sandwich.  It’s just what the name implies. Put the suggestion between two positive statements. Start by finding something encouraging about the work, to put the person in a receptive frame of mind.  Then slip the suggestion in the middle, and end on a positive note to maintain that encouragement.

Example: “This is a great premise. Start with the action, not the exposition, and watch the head-hopping [shifts in point-of-view in the middle of a scene].  Good use of metaphor.”

Ideally, the person will listen to the suggestion and focus on improvement, not shortcomings. It works much better than “This blows” or “Go study POV, moron.” Seek out people you trust to look at your work.  My beta reader for the book is also one of my skating coaches. She herself writes, and she knows me and knows how to instruct me without tearing me down or giving me false praise. I believe her input made my book better.

If you’re submitting and your story is returned with specific critiques, pay attention to them. You want this kind of attention.  It shows that someone thinks you’re worth encouraging.

Don’t let feedback define you.  It’s just a tool you can use to make your writing better.

Even with a degree in English (which I always say makes me a professional bullshitter– ha!), I can’t paint myself as a grammar or punctuation expert, but people, please.  If you’re going to have a career as a writer or even just blog for fun, please, PLEASE take the time to learn the basic, fundamental rules of English.

I have read so many blog posts where it was obvious the writer didn’t take the time to proof his or her copy that it makes me want to scream.  Every single thing you put out there, an email or a blog post, a business card or a query letter, is a writing sample.  Everything.  Everyone will see your mistakes, and if they’re online, that’s a lot of eyes.

The immediacy of blogs makes it tempting to write a post directly into the page and then publish it.   I can understand typos; we all make them.  Hence the admonitions to read your manuscripts over and over, and print them out and look at them on the page, to give your eyes the chance to catch something you didn’t see on the computer screen.

Errors happen.  No one is perfect, and if you mess up, that’s an opportunity to learn something. I would not squeal if I made a mistake and someone pointed it out to me.  (In fact, if I do, please let me know.  If it’s a factual one, especially I want to know, so I can correct it. I don’t want to be the bearer of erroneous information.)

In certain venues, it’s easier not to properly punctuate and proof what you write; in my chat room, for example, the chat often moves faster than I can type, especially if I’ve been working particularly hard.  I often talk to my online buddies without capitalization and in abbreviations and shortened phrases.  My meaning comes across perfectly clear, because everyone else is doing the same.  And I’m sure you’re familiar with textspeak, even if you don’t like it and refuse to use it.  Personally, I’d rather just talk to someone than text him/her, since I’m on the phone already.

Anyone who reads blogs knows there are a ton of grammar Nazis out there making their little corrections in the comments.  To avoid them, write your blog entries in your word processor, so that you can check your spelling and edit a little. No one is too busy to properly present him/herself.

Here is a list of the most annoying things I see online.  Feel free to add your own pet peeves in the comments.

Loose for lose

Loose means something is coming apart, like your sentence.  Lose means to be unable to find something.

It’s vs. its 

It’s is a contraction, short for it is.

It’s not going to snow.

Its is possessive.

He picked up the dead frog by its leg.

The Comma Splice!

Here is what it looks like:

Tom went to the store, the family was out of bread and he wanted a frog sandwich.

NO NO NO NO. Use a semicolon or a period and make it two sentences.  It IS two sentences.

Their, there and they’re 

Their is possessive.

Mom took their coats to the hall closet.

There indicates placement.

Put the coats there next to the body in the closet.

And they’re is another contraction, for they are:

They’re not going to need their coats any more.

Affect vs. effect

Affect is a verb.  You can affect the TV by hitting it with a hammer.  Or, you can affect a British accent while you hit the TV, to make yourself seem like an expert.

Effect is a noun.  The hammer has an effect on the TV.  Your fake accent gives the effect that you are a phony, pretentious douchebag.

You’re and your

When you see an apostrophe, look very hard at what follows it.  “re” looks kind of like part of “are,” doesn’t it?

“You’re not going in there,” Bob said to Karen, right before the killer smashed his head in with an axe.

Your is possessive.

Your axe is over there, Charlie.

Too, two and to

Two is a number. Must I point this out?

Karen ran two blocks before she flagged down a police car.

Too and to could easily be messed up due to sloppy typing; that’s understandable, but if you take time to proof, chances are you’ll catch that one.

Too = means also, and an excess of something.

Sanjay had some chicken too.

The chicken was too spicy and now Sanjay has heartburn.

To = usually indicates going toward something, i.e. to the movies, to the second level.

And finally, the one that bugs me the most, the misplaced apostrophe!

The apostrophe stands in for omitted letters, as in a contraction.

“I’m [I am] not getting in your car,” Karen told the cop, seeing the zombie crouched in the back seat.

It also indicates possession, both for plural and singular nouns.

Singular:

“That zombie’s bite is deadly!” shouted the cop.

Plural – make the noun plural before you add the apostrophe.  If the plural noun ends in s, add the apostrophe after it.

Zombies’ hands are usually covered in rotting flesh and gore.

If the plural noun does not have an s at the end, don’t add one before the apostrophe.  Put it after.

She wiped the zombie children’s faces.

NOT

She wiped the zombie childrens’s faces.

For more help, see the following websites and books.  They helped me.  Now go, and sin no more, little bloggers.

Grammar Slammer – help with grammar and punctuation.

http://englishplus.com/grammar/

The OWL at Purdue – a great resource for all kinds of writing problems

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss – an often hilarious approach to proper punctuation, complete with stickers one may use to correct improper signage!

http://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592400876

The Chicago Manual of Style -University of Chicago Press Staff (Editor)

http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Manual-Style-University-Press/dp/0226104036/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261347799&sr=1-2

I want this one.  My little pocket guide is sadly outdated.  It’s online but requires a paid subscription.  Check your local library.  If you have a college near you, see if you can get a pass to use their library.  They may have it.  If you are an alumnus, you might even still have library privileges.

How does a novel, story or poem come out of someone’s head and make it to the paper or the computer screen?  How does an artist face a blank canvas each day and find the will and the vision to daub pigment on it until a masterpiece emerges?  How does the composer know which notes will become a symphony or simply noise?

It’s the universal problem that all writers face: what to do when the muse deserts you. How do you catch that fickle butterfly of creativity and harness its iridescent beauty into your work?

If you Google writer’s block, you’ll find a host of suggestions. Some of them, like “begin in the middle,” offer concrete solutions.  Simply skip that bugaboo opening scene and write another.  You can always go back, and the middle might be where you need to begin anyway.

Others are vague.  “Meditate,” or “Right a social wrong.” How does that help with writer’s block?  I think the intent is to clear your mind, or distract yourself.   But meditation takes practice, and writers with families and day jobs don’t always have time to play Batman or Mother Teresa.  It can be difficult to find time to write even when you’re on a roll, if your life is full.  Easier not to, especially if you’re stuck.

Ralph Keyes, in his excellent book The Courage to Write, makes a great case for writer’s block stemming from plain, ordinary fear.  Fear of offending someone, fear of failure (that’s a big one for a lot of people), even fear of success.  I must admit, I’m no stranger to shifting perceptions of my own efficacy.  Sometimes I feel brilliant; other times, completely mediocre and trite. When inadequacy squeezes the breath from me, I can’t seem to focus on anything other than how much I suck.

Writers who get a break can sometimes choke on their next project.  They second-guess themselves: What if it’s not as good? What if everyone hates it?  What if nobody buys it and my promising career goes down the crapper? Some writers are afraid that success will bring criticism; Mom and Uncle Bob may love their writing, but if other people don’t like it, does that mean they are bad?  Not necessarily.  It may only mean that Neighbor Jake or Online Critic Susy doesn’t care for allegorical stories about giant interstellar ants ravaging the world, or whatever the subject might be. To them I say, buck up, little camper.  Obviously, someone thought your work was good enough to publish, for money, contributors’ copies or both.

Any writing keeps the machine oiled.  Blog posts, homework, tweets, emails, everything counts.  If I can’t get to work (did you guess yet why I’m writing this particular post?), then I turn to a different project.  It’s a trick I learned in college.  Take a break from the subject or element that has bogged you down.  Do something else for a little while.  When you return to your assignment, you’ll be lubed up and ready to go.  That’s the idea, anyway.  Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.  You might have to stop and tackle it another day.  But that’s okay, as long as you recognize that it’s a problem with the work, and not with you.

I’m sure people in other media have the same issues.  Creativity can be fleeting for anyone attempting to spin something from the air.  When I asked a very talented artist friend of mine what she did when she got stuck, she said ” Sometimes I’ll get re-energized by looking at my old work, and find new energy to drag the [unfinished] things out and bring it to a good stopping point.” (While you’re here, check the Blogroll for Playing with Crayons and see her beautiful illustrations.)

I can get behind her concept.  An old story or essay might be good enough to remind me that I don’t really suck, or show me how far I’ve come if it’s not.   Something in it might spark a new idea.

What helps you break through that wall of despair and capture the butterfly?  Leave a comment and let us know.