Excuse the faux-artsy photo, folks. It’s the first nice night of Spring and I’m out on the porch enjoying the weather. This is the best I could do in such low light.

This month, Joanna Young, the fantastic writing coach behind Confident Writing is running a group writing project called Writing Lessons:

The topic is writing lessons – in particular the writing lessons you’ve learned from your blog community.

Those writing lessons might be the ways in which your blog writing style has changed and developed, new forms that you’ve tried, or writing experiments you’ve done off the blog as a result of feedback and interaction with your community.

What a timely post.

With my recent change still looming large, I’ve spent a little time reviewing how far I’ve come in the last year. And, in perhaps one of the biggest coincidences of all time, I received an email today from a new reader asking me about a post I wrote nearly a year ago, “What to do when the one you love hates your writing?”:

I guess the question I ask when I read that is, if you know she is going to hate it, then why do you make her read it? That’s like requiring my wife to watch a bunch of guy movies with me when I know she doesn’t like them, and then being annoyed when she still doesn’t like them.

F.R.R. Mallory asked basically the same question in the comments on that post. If you take a peek, you’ll also see that my comments in reply are still running under the name “editor“.

A year is a long time…

In the last year, I’ve learned not to push my work on people who don’t want to read it. I’ve learned I don’t need that kind of validation (even if it is nice). I’ve also learned not to hide behind anonymous pen names (unless the pay is right). I’ve also learned to accept the kind of writing I do as just fine. And finally, I’ve learned that learning is a constant process: a writer is never complete.

The community here at How Not to Write has grown, especially after I stopped hiding behind “editor“. I mentioned this transformation in “Why King Moonracer is My Hero”:

After that post went up, HNTW sort of went from an obscure place where I spoke mostly to myself and a handful of friends, into an experiment in connecting with people. It is still growing, but I can say that it is a wonderful little community of writers. I share with these writers my thoughts and struggles, my triumphs and failures. Together we overcome the fear that is so prevalent in the world of would-be writers.

Perhaps this is the greatest lesson I’ve learned here on my blog: I’ve learned not to be afraid, even if I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve learned not to hide, even when I’m bound to make a fool of myself. I’ve learned that being a part of the broader writing community is so much more than just retweeting posts and leaving comments. It’s about helping and learning, because a writer is never complete. It’s about learning to live and be happy with who you are.

Thank you, everyone!

No, it’s not a beret, but it might as well be.

Now that I’m supposed to be a serious and devoted writer, I’m going to focus on writing only the most serious and dedicated of posts on the austere topic of the writing life.

Yeah, I’m not buying it either.

To those of you who worried that my change in status from employed dreamer with novelistic ambitions to gentleman of leisure and still-unpublished writer extraordinaire would somehow alter the content of this site, this post should put you at ease.

It’s a nice rambling post for a Sunday morning… Enjoy!

Yesterday, I was just signing off to spend some time with the Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s excellent SF/F pirate anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails.

When I got a tweet from a fellow who used to work for me a long time ago. And, well, you know me…

One tweet leads to another and suddenly Dustin Wax of Writer’s Technology Companion gets in on the action:

And now I’m left with a rather interesting visual: Dustin’s singular, well-defined ab.

We can all laugh at the joke because writing, well… writing really isn’t a contact sport, now is it?

A Writer’s Ab(s)

No, there’s nothing I like more than sitting at the cafe, pecking away at the keyboard with a nice demitasse of espresso and a cinnamon roll decorating my little table. Yep.

So, the writing life doesn’t lend itself to keeping fit… or does it?

Below is a picture of Cory Doctorow and Jeff VanderMeer (swiped from Cory’s Flickr page). While these guys may not be in the next Calvin Klein skivvies poster shot on Times Square, they’re in pretty good shape for a pair of wordslingers.

[NB: Jeff, if you're stopping in you can thank me for retouching the original. ]

If you follow Jeff VanderMeer, you probably know that he does a bit of weightlifting. If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you know that I used to be a pretty avid runner.

I’m pointing this out, because part of focusing my life on writing is getting another shot at being healthy in every sense. When I was really running, I used to do 6 miles a day in about 30 minutes. For the non-runners, that’s pretty fast. Of course, I’m a long way from there today, but I’m committed to working my way back.

My wife and I just joined a new gym. She has a pretty amazing story of her own, which I’ll introduce in the not too distant future when we launch her blog. For the moment though, I’ll just pop in a promo video from the gym:

After just a few weeks (of less than regular attendance, but attendance nonetheless), I’m already feeling the benefits. I’m running at less than a third of my former pace, but I am running. I have more energy. I’m crackling with ideas and plans.

I feel more alive.

I’m always up for some reason not to be writing. Most of those reasons are a matter of simple avoidance or fear. However, working on my writer’s ab (singular) is one that I’m not willing to lump in with the rest. While the sedentary work of writing may not provide natural opportunities for exercise, working on the Writer’s Ab(s), is as vital as any other writing exercise.

YOUR TURN: How are you working your Writer’s Ab(s)? What advice do you have for others?

So happy!

Sort of dramatic, I know, but this is a big day. Today is the first day of the rest of my life and I’m so happy to share it with all of you.

Many years ago, I dreamed of devoting myself to writing. That day has finally arrived.

I’m not going to spill the beans here. You’ve got to go over to JamieGrove.com to find out more.

What you read there changes everything here, and yet it also changes nothing. I’m still the writer I was yesterday. I’m still devoted to writing about not writing (HNTW is not going away). Now though, it’s time for something new and amazing, something completely awesome…

Me!

A big thanks to all of you who have supported and encouraged me as I’ve grown as a writer. I’m not done with you yet, either. Read “What’s Next, Jamie?” and give me some love!

I know some people have romantic ideas about studios. At least, I did when I first decided to get one.

For the last six years, I’ve maintained a writing studio, a room of my own where I can create without boundaries. I wrote a novel in my studio and many short stories. I worked on other types of art there too, rediscovering a long forgotten talent for drawing.

But now, it’s time to go…

Before I Got My First Studio

I used to have a hectic job that included intense periods of overseas travel. Because of my travels, I essentially missed an entire year of my son’s life. I lost contact with friends. My mother passed away while I was abroad. My wife and I drifted apart.

When I realized just how far things had gone, I took action. I changed jobs and dropped down several rungs on the ladder. It was a relief and I firmly believe the change saved my marriage and my life.

Yet even with all the craziness of those years, I always had time to write. I wrote in hotel lobbies and cafes, in airports and on airplanes (I still have miles I may never use). I worked on drafts during deadly boring meetings.

Many people who do shift work learn to go to sleep at a moment’s notice. They have to in order to survive. My writing was like that – survival – and I could drop into the zone in half a second.

Returning to a more normal life, I found that I’d lost all the pockets where I used to write. I no longer had the snatches of time where I could write as I pleased. I learned that if I wanted to write, I’d have to make the time to do it. I began by going to coffee shops, but they didn’t open early enough or seemed too crowded. It was strange because I’d written in some of the busiest places you could imagine, but now I’d somehow lost the ability to drop into the zone. I thought perhaps it was the familiarity of my surroundings, so I decided to isolate myself by getting a studio.

The First Studio

My first studio was a converted janitor’s closet. No kidding.

The room was 5×7, enough room for a desk, a chair, and a very small sofa. There were no windows, and both restrooms for the building were just on the other side of the one “long” wall. Since the walls and doors were paper thin, I eventually learned the footsteps of most of the people in the building. I’ll spare you the details about the other things I heard and how easily I could place a sound with a face.

During those three years, I wrote my second novel. It was arguably better than the first, written some seven years prior, but still pretty awful. I wasn’t deterred. When the book was done, I opened a new file and started on the next.

When the lease ran out on the janitor’s closet (it sounds ridiculous, I know), I decided I wanted to treat myself to a window and maybe fewer auditory distractions. A building just down the street had just what I was looking for and I went in on a larger space with a writing friend.

The Second Studio

I worked incredibly hard in the second studio, but I found that I was making less progress. The novel I started in the first studio died a grizzly death. I started and stopped several projects. I sputtered and fizzled out.

I suppose I’m making it sound a little worse than it was. I did manage to write several short stories. I also blogged the whole time. But these were writing activities I’d done for years and not what I considered the main event: I was trying to become a novelist.

It’s Not About the Room.

It wasn’t until this past summer that I realized how much time I’d spent agonizing over my work in that room. I felt guilty about the money I was spending and the paltry output. I felt guilty about the time I was spending away from my family and not seeing the breakthroughs I so desperately wanted. Then suddenly, it became so clear…

I was more proud of having achieved the possession of the studio than I was of the work I created within its walls. I wasn’t writing because I wanted to. I was writing because I wanted to hide in the room. The writing had become an excuse to go to the room.

I quit writing for a good part of the summer. I’ve written about that here before, so I won’t dwell on it. Let me just say that break taught me that I had plenty of stories that wanted to be told and that the room wasn’t what I needed.

The Next Studio

When I got back to writing last fall, I took a new approach to my work. I can’t say I’ve been more productive in terms of volume, or even a better writer for that matter, but the sense of what my work is about has become clearer.

At the end of June, I’ll be moving out of my current studio and I’ve decided not to take another lease. It was a difficult decision to make, as it would be for any artist. We create many memories in rooms like this and they are difficult to leave behind. Even the bad ones.

I’m sure that some day I’ll find myself back in a room of my own and when I do I’ll have a better idea of why I’m really there.

A flower shop occupies the first floor of this building. In turn, a cat occupies the flower shop. This feline, a sleek, black puss named Boo, is the most friendly sort of cat. You can’t help but call him Boo Kitty, which seems a little feminine but he tolerates it.

Image credit: fofurasfelinas (Flickr)

Quite often, I am the first person to see Boo Kitty in the morning. He stretches and slowly makes his way over to the window, rubbing his head against the flower-filled wicker baskets in the window. I say hello to Boo Kitty. In return, he looks up at me with wild, yellow cat eyes as if I am insane, but then resigns himself to merely blinking his eyes languorously.

As I understand it, cats say hello by blinking. I’ve also heard this behavior described as “sending kisses.” It seems rude not to return such affections and so I to blink slowly at Boo Kitty, taking care not to close my eyes completely just as he does.

This reminds me of something I heard regarding the Japanese custom of bowing: that one should not entirely break eye contact when bowing. I have no idea if this is true, but it does lead to thought about a recent observation I made at the airport.

A few weeks ago, I went to the airport to pick up an arriving family member. While waiting outside the gate area, a young woman arrived with a sign of welcome addressed to delegation from the University of Tokyo. She took up a position near the secured exit and held the sign tight against her chest.

As we waited for our respective parties, I watched the woman shift her weight from one leg to the other. Because she was quite tall I couldn’t help but notice how small the poster-board looked in her hands.

When the students from Tokyo arrived, there were muddled hellos accompanied by much nodding and smiling. When the formal introductions began, the bowing progressed from round one to round two, then seemed destined for a third round. The Japanese looked uncertain and then uncomfortable. Two of the Japanese began ignoring their host entirely, looking around the atrium with a sort of distracted sense of despair.

Thinking about Boo Kitty, I wonder what he must think as I try to greet him with my feeble impressions of cat sign language. He does not appear to be uncomfortable or resent the fact that I am blinking at him.

But when should I stop blinking?

In practice, I usually stop when he turns away and begins studying the silk flowers. His detached intensity reduces me to a state of non-being. When he does this, I often tap the glass to get his attention, so that I might continue my obsessive winking despite is clear indifference.

—–

Now that I am observing this bit of prose at a distance, I see an interesting pattern evolve which is not unlike the “double-slit” experiment in quantum physics.

The double-slit works this way (at least in my feeble mind):

Begin with two sheets of metal parallel to one another and separated by a certain distance. Cut a slit in one sheet and then shine a flashlight through the slit. On the the second sheet, you will see a pattern shaped like the slit. The definition of that shape is controlled by the distance between the two sheets. If you move them further apart, the shape becomes more diffuse, closer together more distinct.

Now, add a second slit to the first sheet. When you shine the flashlight through both slits, you might assume that you will end up with two shapes on the second sheet that bear a resemblance to the first experiment. However, something else happens instead. You get a banding affect across the whole second sheet.

How does this happen?

In the case of a single slit, light flows somewhat freely from the slit to the second sheet. There is no interference save for the distance. When a second slit is added, the diffusion I mentioned earlier is complicated by two streams of light touching one another. This interference causes collisions which in turn radiate outward as a kind of lattice. When the lattice reaches a plane (i.e. the second sheet of metal), it imprints the banded effect on the two-dimensional surface.

This is really too technical though. I think that a better way to describe it is to look at the checkout lanes at the grocery store…

If you have a single checkout, customers stream out one end and generally head to the exit. If you observe the line over the course of an hour or so, you will see certain deviations. For example, some customers return their carts while others might step to the side to investigate a product that is only visible after one has completed a purchase. As a side note, the latter customer is oddly confused for it is not apparent how one actually goes about buying the thing if it is not in the established path to purchase. The vast majority though head for the door.

Now, add a second (or third checkout line) and things change. Instead of a fairly smooth path to the door, carts pile up, people get in the way of each other, and if there is more than one exit customers may change direction completely. So instead of an even distribution of people exiting, a minor chaos evolves in the tiny collisions that occur after the successful transaction.

Literature evolves in a similar fashion.

In this post, I begin with a man (me) standing outside a shop window. There is a cat inside the shop. The man, who would like to pet the cat, is prevented from doing so by the presence of the glass. Unable to interact with the animal in his preferred manner (i.e. scratch the kitty’s head) he tries to establish a connection with the cat through the non-verbal cues he’s learned from observing the habits of cats. The man and the cat are the first slit.

To this scene, I add a reminiscence of witnessing the Japanese greeting at the airport. As the shape of the piece evolves, these two threads produce different offshoots.

For example, the cat in the first part is black and sleek. Though it may be stereotypical to say so many Japanese students have a look that may be describes as black and sleek to western eyes. Their hair is black and their facial features are smooth. They are usually thin and dressed in black. And in fact, all of these things are true about the students I saw (though they are not universally true). To a person, they were dressed in black and though in unfamiliar surroundings they did not move like shy people do. They sort of floated through the terminal, gracefully taking in their surroundings.

What I do not tell the reader is that the woman who greeted the Japanese was decidedly unattractive. I elude to the fact that she was tall, but I do not point out that she had dull red hair. I avoid mentioning her clothes, which were far too tight and accentuated the fact that she was grossly overweight. Lastly, I have spared the reader any trace of her horrific case of adult acne.

Well, why did I do that?

And this is a good question because the first version of this work contained all of those details. You see, as I was writing the piece these two streams of imagery collided and produced a lattice of essential and non-essential information. All of it was transferred to the page, and what should have appeared as two distinct story lines became a series of bands.

My essential story is about the mistakes we make when trying to connect with others and the untouchable magic of the Other which compels us to make those mistakes even when we know that we are making them. That sentence may be a bit confusing. Let it sink in for a moment.

So, as the bands of the composition process evolved, I found myself staring at a bit of a mess. I needed to clean it up. Fortunately, writing is not like the rest of the universe. Though a pattern evolved, I can make revisions by erasing the non-essential bands. I scrubbed out the details about the woman, and those about myself. I removed the parts where I touched the glass to “pet” Boo Kitty though I kept the rapping on the glass at the end because it was similar to the woman’s incessant bowing.

What if we took this approach to other things in life? What if we allowed the diffusion of so many threads to rest upon the surface of the moment and then went back and scrubbed out the non-essential. Does life become more interesting? Is Boo Kitty more interesting with the rather cruel observations about the woman, or do we fade those cruel observations into the background so that the main message is made clear by example?

I think these questions are not easy to answer, but they’ve done a fine job of keeping me from writing this morning.

On a cold morning, it’s difficult to get excited about running. The bed is warm, but the alarm goes off anyway. I might lie there for fifteen minutes trying to convince myself to just go back to sleep while simultaneously picturing all the things I ate the day before as evidence to the fact that I really do need to go.

The winter was mild, but I haven’t kept up with myself. The reasons are strange, complicated, and thoroughly mixed up with one another. Perhaps it is best to leave these bitter roots beneath the soil.

[photo credit: quiplash @ Flickr]

Though I’m not feeling up to the challenge, I take The Long Run.

The long run begins at the top of the ridge, winds around to the bottom of the park, and then spirals down to the river. Here, the way turns mostly flat, and I run along the service road until I come to a dirt trail that follows the contours of the bank. An old post stands at the end of the line, a talisman drawing the runner forward. It becomes ritual to touch the post before turning back.

A thin layer of ice lays on the river. In the darkness, I hear the water groan beneath the slick surface. Besides my chuffing this is the only sound.

The dirt trail begins at a low point, susceptible to surges. Bits of garbage and driftwood spread out like echoes of the storms that tossed them onto the shore. The mess is frozen but spongy. I tramp across with an uneasy gait.

Further on, the trail rises. Gravel crunches under my feet. I notice a view once crowded by thick brush is clear. Only the saplings are left, and their silhouettes look like cracks against the backdrop of the ice.

A quarter of the way through the run, I feel like a steam engine out of its shed for the first time in years. My wheels are tight, but they are loosening. I pass below the stone shelter house where on autumn evenings you can sometimes see a fire in the hearth. It is dark.

There is a older man on the trail ahead. He’s coming back from the far end. He has a dog with him. When he sees me, he calls the dog and puts a leash on it. As I get closer, he begins to jog. We exchange our good mornings and pass on. I wonder if I will see him again, or how far he is going. I don’t recall seeing any cars parked along the way.

Just before the end, which is actually the middle, there is a gentle slope upwards, a dip, and then a short but sharp climb. It is at this point I always feel I catch my second wind. I have no idea if it is psychological or just a matter of getting warmed up, but I feel stronger and I make for the post and slap it hard as I turn back.

The sky is lighter. Dawn does not creep across the sky with rosy fingers. It’s more like a dimmer switch raised slowly. Black becomes blue and then orange. The trees no longer look like shadows. There seems to be something left in the rest of the run that I could not see beneath the covers half an hour before.

When running north, one can’t see too far ahead because the river bends just slightly. On the return, the way is clear and the water always in view. I can see the blue arches of the bridge I passed under from a good distance. I can see where the river meets the reservoir dam.

I’ve not run this far in a long time. My muscles and my lungs seem fit, but my knee is not. A dull throb begins at the same point where I passed the old man a few minutes before. By the time I pass the stone shelter house, the throb becomes an ache. I keep pushing. My body wants more. I keep pushing until the pain becomes intense enough to cause white specks to float in front of my eyes.

I sigh. I walk until I reach the place where the trail turns soft. The river groans beneath the ice and I feel wet from my efforts. I pass the carcass of a goose half-eaten by coyotes or raccoons or other things that scurry about in the dark.

Off and on, I try to run. It’s more like a hobble but it keeps me warm. Ahead is the climb uphill, back to the ridge. I run on the balls of my feet. The angle of the road takes some of the pressure off my knee.

I’m heading east now, and surely I must look like I’m in pain. I suppose that I am, but as crest the hill the sun breaks loose on the horizon. I feel nothing but the warmth of a body in motion.

[Note: This essay is one of the "lost posts" from AuthorStore, a site I ran for 10 years. The Long Run originally appeared on 3/5/2006.]

In 1922, Ernest Hemingway lost a suitcase filled with stories and a fragment of a WWI novel.

Well if he did, it obviously it didn’t work. The incident appears in each of his posthumously published works. In other words, he spent the rest of his life lamenting the loss and writing about it incessantly.

I know exactly what this feels like… I have my own trunk-full of stories and the idea of tossing them out the window fills me with terror.

Fear of lost luggage

When Ava Gardner asked Hemingway if he ever had an analyst, he replied:

I’ve said before that writing is cheap therapy. I’ve used it as such myself. In fact, I’ve often thought that people who major in Psychology are just trying to figure out why they’re screwed up while English majors already know why — they just want to figure out how to tell everyone about it.

After years of journaling, I have a pretty good idea about the ways destructive patterns can ruin your creative work. For example, mixed into the 2MM words in my journal, three particular themes repeat over and over again.

Reading through old entries, it’s easy to see how each obsession takes the stage. It’s almost comical because the journal entries often recognize the fact that the pattern is beginning, and then I go on for days writing thousands of words to describe things I’ve already written about perhaps two or three dozen times.

I’m tempted to list those problems here, but then that’s bound to set me off on my usual holding pattern. I have stories to write and ideas to share, and getting rid of the baggage is the whole point of this little piece.

In general, I think it is possible to pin the recurring themes in my journal to the more general idea of being afraid of abandoning the past. I’ve lived with these pains so long that they have formed an identity of their own. They have a mythology and a gospel. They are sacrosanct.

I know, I know. It’s psychotic. So, let’s figure out how to get rid of or make peace with the beast and move on.

The quick fix: get me through today

Below are three things I do to get back on track quickly. It doesn’t get us to clean, but let’s start by removing the urge to play the fiddle on our wrists with shiny razors.

1. Step away from the keyboard

The phrases I use in my journals are so predictable that I should write a program that shuts down the computer when I type them in.

When you find yourself falling down the rabbit hole, it might be time to simply take a break. Go outside and take a walk. Draw a picture. Fold the laundry. Do lunch with your friends. Hell, do your friends. Whatever it takes. Just get away from the work for a little while.

2. Put it in the drawer

The story isn’t bothering you but you might be bothering the story. Try putting it in a drawer and write something else. Not that the something else should be your journal. Try writing some non-fiction, something structured and direct that will take your mind off of the flowing abstraction of fiction.

3. Change your music

Simple but effective. Sometimes I go from Jazz to Classical, or Classical to Funk.

Avoidance will not save you

All right. That was peppy and clever but in the end you’ve got to face the real troubles weighing you down. You have to tackle them head on and release yourself from the hold they have over you.

It means that you have to allow the past to fade and realize there is nothing you can do to correct what has happened. The only path forward is through the present and the choices you make today on your journey to tomorrow.

The baggage of the past is what is keeping you from writing today. Let it go and write clean.

[Ref for Hemingway stuff above: Trauma Theory and Hemingway's Lost Manuscripts by Marc Seals]

Lots of visitors this last week, so I thought I’d put up a little note of welcome!

But before I start, a quick note of thanks to Dustin Wax for including HNTW on the list of writerly sites in today’s Lifehack post, The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource. (check it out if you haven’t read it – awesome stuff)

I’m a techie by trade so I’ll be keeping a close eye on Dustin’s new site: The Writer’s Technology Companion.

The Nickel Tour – Just the Good Stuff

HNTW got it’s start as a place for me to put up huge reviews of writing books I’ve read over the course of the last 20 years. You can find those reviews in the aptly named category of Big Huge Book Reviews. The most popular series in the book reviews has to be my 27 part review of Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel.

If you’re looking for Clarion West posts, you will find them all in the Writing Workshops section of the site.

I watch about 900 feeds now and posts from other places get filed under Others Not Writing

Thoughts On Writing is where I digress. I digress a lot, which is why there are so many posts there. Not sure if that qualifies as the good stuff, but there’s plenty of stuff there to keep you busy.

One of the strangest posts to get traffic on this site is Cutting and Mixing: Prose-Style Wu Tang. The variety of keywords that brings people in on this one is truly amazing. Of course, I highly doubt they were actually looking for this particular content. It’s an odd post.

Enjoy!

Last year I spent a month drawing eggs.

The egg thing was part of a little program I created for myself to reconnect with an old interest in visual arts. It was also a great way to dodge any serious writing for awhile, so all the more fun.

It all started with a story that I thought would be better-suited to being a graphic novel, at least that’s what I thought. So, I began by hunting around for some information about the art. I read any number of books and even attended a lecture by Scott McCloud (awesome). However, like writing, you eventually need to your butt into the chair and do some scratching on paper.

JohnK (Ren and Stimpy) has a series of posts about learning how to cartoon, so I jumped on board and started drawing eggs.

Drawing the eggs over and over again until they were “perfect” was difficult, but I understood the value. While practicing, I saw the exercise as a reflection of what helps a writer improve in the art. First, I was copying a master’s hand (Preston Blair). Second, I was learning how to eliminate my own mind from getting in the way of execution.

I carried these lessons forward into further drawing books, copying pictures from Goya and Rembrandt though with far less success than I had drawing eggs. Still, what I began to see was the process of revision and editing playing out between the lines I drew and ultimately had to redraw over and over again until they were just right. I also began to see that my hand learned how to draw certain lines and that when I doodled on my own the pictures became more distinct and unique, less cumbersome and forced.

My own drawings are really quite different from anything I practiced. They look more like the joyful randomness in a semi-schooled hand that is allowed to play. And that makes me happy.

So while the practice-practice-practice method will surely hone your skills, the thing you’re really going for is to learn how the whole thing works as one. When you get deep into the practice of writing, you begin to see that good stories naturally work themselves into certain patterns. You can encourage that pattern and create a richer experience for the reader as a result.

Robert Campbell is one of the contributors in the Writing Mysteries book I’m reading right now. His essay describes his technique for outlining. It’s a bit dry for my taste. He talks about the kinds of files he stores in his word processor (remember this is 1992) and that’s all well and good, but what I really sat up for was his discussion of learning how to paint way at the end of the essay.

Before I became a writer I was a painter. When in art school, we were told to go to museums and paint reproductions of the old and new masters.

It was astonishing how much could be learned in the process. In learning how to achieve results similar to those in those skillful paintings, the student learned how color worked. We learned how to achieve certain textures. We saw that shadows contain the complement of the sources of light. But most of all, I think, we learned the conversation of painting, the interaction of one corner of the canvas with another, the far distance with the near distance, this color and value and texture against the others.

I love this idea of conversation of painting because it translates so well to the foundations of writing. Yes, I realize that a story is a conversation with an unknown reader, but I’m talking about the mechanics of the work itself. How one paragraph speaks to another, how themes blend with one another, how repetition and rhetorical devices assist in weaving a substantial fabric of fiction.

And it all starts with drawing a few eggs.

So, did I ever finish working on that graphic novel? No, not really. I’m talented in drawing the way some people are really good at cooking at home but have no intention of ever opening a restaurant. I’ll keep at it of course because it’s fun, but in the end I’m really just a writer.

The deadline for Clarion West is approaching quickly (3/1 – 2/1 for $100 off).

This year boasts another super fantastic lineup of instructors for the 25th Anniversary workshop. Check it out.: Paul Park, Mary Rosenblum, Cory Doctorow, Connie Willis, Sheree R. Thomas, and Chuck Palahniuk.

[By the way, I couldn't help but notice that Chuck Palahniuk has grown quite a mane, despite a rapidly receding hairline. Brother looks good. Maybe there is hope for me yet!]

For years, I’ve dreamed of attending a workshop like Clarion West. First, there is the chance to meet and work with other writers struggling to make it and serious enough about the process to fork over some serious coin ($3200). Next, there are always fascinating authors and editors on the faculty list (see above). Of course, the idea of actually doing it scares the crap out of me.

Why I’m Terrified of Clarion West and Workshops in General

1. I’m scared of admitting how much I love speculative fiction – My writing cycle is usually a) fantasy/sci-fi story b) kill self c) serious, existential work d) kill self e) fantasy/sci-fi story… And so on. Kind of crazy, isn’t it?
2. I’m scared to meet other struggling authors – Even here on the frontier, I occasionally run into a would-be writer. At first, it’s a bit of a thrill but then I realize that we might in fact, well, you know, talk… about writing. My writing? Oh no.
3. I’m scared to meet published authors (instructors), especially those I admire – See above but scale that by a factor of 10 (to start with). Now, I know this is crazy. Perhaps even crazier than meeting others who are struggling to make it.
4. I’m scared that people will like my work – Ok, so now we’re really not getting anywhere useful, are we? But really, why on earth would I be scared that someone would like my work? If you ask yourself a question like this, and the answer is “I don’t know” you’re not being honest with yourself. You’re being evasive. Alright, so, I’m afraid that people will like my work because that means I might have a future doing something I enjoy. That means I might have what it takes to make it. This is scary because it is important to me… [I do realize that this makes no sense whatsoever.]
5. I’m scared that I might be all talk and no action – I spend a lot of time writing about writing an as for doing actual writing (at least of late) the work has been quite sparse. So, what happens when I arrive at Clarion West and nothing happens? I mean, I don’t produce anything (stage fright).
6. I’m scared to escape from my life for 6 weeks because I might not come back – I don’t mean abandoning my family or anything so silly as that. I just mean that once I really start down the road will I ever come back? Then what happens?
7. I’m scared that I will have to come back – Well, graduating from a workshop doesn’t mean that you’re anything other than a workshop alumni. It doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly {poof} a published author. It just means that you’ve acquired new skills and honed others under fire. In theory, you are a better writer, but then when you return to your work-a-day world what do you do with your new found knowledge? How do you sleep at night?

Looking over the list, none of it really makes that much sense and yet I’m sure that these are probably the same fears that every writer feels at one point or another (or all at once like me).

Those of you who sort of know me personally are probably scratching your heads right now. I certainly don’t come across as someone who would harbor these sorts of fears. Of course, those of you who know me personally are probably shaking your heads because you know me all too well.

After all, this is the same song and dance I’ve performed for the last 20 years. My shoes are worn through and my blistered feet are cracked and bleeding. Even I can see that.

Perhaps there is nothing left but to cast myself out there and see what happens.

[Via: Boing Boing and Eileen Gunn.]