Category Archives: General Writing Thoughts

#MyWritingProcess #BlogTour

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“My Writing Process” Blog Tour

My friend C.D. Mitchell tagged me as part of the Blog Tour. I always appreciate the opportunity to publicize my work and that of other writers, so for whatever it’s worth, this is my contribution.

What am I working on these days?

I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Due to spending several years in graduate school without much time to submit my work, I’ve got a pretty good backlog of text that I’m shopping. My somewhat-experimental novel-in-stories The Subtle Dance of Impulse and Light dropped about this time last year. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine online retailers. I’m spreading the word about it as much as I can.

I’m currently submitting two works to independent publishers. One is Mulvaney House, another somewhat-experimental novel. It traces the (d)evolution of a single house in southeast Arkansas from the late 19th through the early 21st centuries. It is first inhabited by ill-fated Irish immigrants; later, its ownership passes to a disillusioned World War I veteran. Because that situation does not end well either, the house becomes the local “haunted,” “cursed” place that all the smart kids avoid and that all the cool kids want to explore. In the 1960s, it becomes the setting for a star-crossed interracial romance, and in the early 21st century, three teenagers spend the night there just to prove that they can. Serious carnage ensues.

I’m also submitting my second story collection, tentatively titled Bedtime Stories for Insomniacs. Most of the stories therein have been published. In terms of subject matter, it’s a pretty eclectic book. There’s a serial killer story, a couple of tales that make use of mythological creatures, some gritty realism, and some humor.

I’ve gotten some kind words about the projects, but whether they will ever see the light of day is anyone’s guess.

Oh, you thought I was through? Not yet—I’m also shopping The Dead House, a literary ghost story. It’s a novel-length work set in central Texas, though many of the characters are from south Louisiana. The book is a supernatural thriller detective fish-out-of-water story. I’ve gotten a few nibbles from literary agents; I’m hoping to land one soon.

In terms of new work, I’m currently drafting a post-apocalyptic novel set in the South. I’m also three stories into a new cycle that will, I hope, become a book one day.

I recently submitted a screenplay that I adapted from one of my published stories. As I have no contacts in Hollywood, I don’t expect it to go anywhere, but hey, they have to option somebody’s script, right?

How does my work differ from others of its genre? 

I’ve always thought that this kind of question is best answered by critics and scholars, not writers. I just tell stories. Some editors have compared various stories I’ve written to writers as diverse as Jack Kerouac, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elmore Leonard, and Ernest Hemingway. (I’m not egotistical enough to say that I agree, but I really appreciated their saying it.) I think a couple of my stories read like they were written by the love child of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy. What all this means, I think, is that you can get a pretty good read on my basic format and style, but the content and how I employ that style may vary widely from piece to piece. I try not to write the same thing twice, and if I do delve into an area that I’ve visited before, I try to change perspectives, or voices, or tones, or something that will make the work seem a little fresher.

I don’t know what my genre is, other than “literary,” so no matter what similarities and differences a given reader sees between my work and that of any other serious writer, they’re probably on the right track, even if what they say contradicts somebody else.

Why do I write what I do?

Why does anybody write what they do? I never know what to make of this question. I can only tell you this: I believe that real writers do what they do because they are compelled. You don’t do it for fame. Writing literary fiction for money is a mug’s game. You don’t do it for all the groupies because most of us don’t have any (well, maybe Chuck Palahniuk). You do it because you can’t imagine a life where you don’t do it.

When I don’t get my two daily writing sessions in, I feel incomplete and guilty. When I don’t get at least one session, I feel out of sorts, angry with myself, despairing about the time that has passed. When I don’t write at all, I want to punch somebody, often myself. I have stories and people and dramatic situations in my head. Some of them are funny or sad and sick or cool. Others will probably never really go anywhere. But I have to find out what might work, or I go a little nuts.

As for where I get my ideas, my standard answer is, “A warehouse in Poughkeepsie. Don’t tell anybody.”

Seriously, though, they come to me as I live—sometimes from a bit of conversation I overhear, sometimes from an image I see in life or a movie or a magazine, sometimes from that place deep within my imagination where everything begins with “What if…?”

I write down every idea that I can. I’ve got files of them, ideas for stories and novels and essays and screenplays and comic book series and TV shows. I add to the piles fairly regularly. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to all of them. Some of them probably suck. My job is to write as many of them as I can, and to write them to the best of my ability, and hope that some agent, editor, or publisher will believe in me, in my story. After that, you pray that the piece will find its audience, but you can’t really control that, or the publishing side. You can only write and submit and not give up.

How does my Writing Process work?

I look over my list of ideas and see which one speaks to me at that given moment. Sometimes I’ll outline how I imagine the story will go, but even when I do, I allow for organic and spontaneous growth, when the people in the story do something that I didn’t expect. Most of the time, I just write until I complete the narrative arc. I do a full draft without worrying too much about how well it all holds together.

With my book, I revised extensively, several times. With the novel I’m currently shopping, I revised ten times before I ever submitted it. I’ll tinker with any given story for a couple of drafts until it seems to chug along pretty well.

Then I submit.

In this business, you have to expect rejection unless you’re already a household name. To succeed at any level at all, you have to strike the right combination of talent, learned skill, perseverance, and luck—getting the right piece to the right gatekeeper at the right time. Unless you have personal contacts at an agency or publisher, that’s about all you can do.

I’ll generally send out a piece to a half-dozen places. If nobody takes it, I revise again and find other places to submit. I keep doing that until I find the right home for it or I decide that maybe it isn’t as good as I thought it was. I have yet to self-publish anything, but I’m not above it if the industry never accepts what I truly believe is a story worth telling.

Once someone accepts a piece, I am perfectly willing and able to tinker with it if an editor sees areas that need work. Sometimes I insist on leaving something as is if I feel changing it will fundamentally undercut my integrity as a writer and the story I want to tell, but I pick my battles carefully. I have yet to meet an editor with whom I could not work amicably and productively.

As for my day-to-day process, once I’ve chosen a project of any length or type, I try to write at least twice a day for an hour each time. It isn’t always possible, but I do my best. I tend to work on a couple of projects at once—a potential novel chapter and a story, a story and a screenplay, etc. In grad school, I was forced to multi-task, and I have yet to break the habit completely. Right now, for instance, I’m revising a text and working on a new story. I’ll revise for a session and write for a session. I’ve found that setting time limits, rather than specific word counts, works better for me because of my other time constraints.

I’d like to thank C.D. Mitchell for tagging me.In turn, I am tagging two of my writer friends who occasionally blog, Robin Becker and Sean Hoade.

Robin Becker is a graduate school buddy of mine. She has recently accepted a teaching position at Ole Miss. Her zombie novel, Brains, is available in bookstores and online.

Sean Hoade is a fellow Las Vegan. He has been a prolific self-publisher; his latest work, Deadtown Abbey, is hilarious and weird, and I mean that in the best possible sense. He has recently contracted to write a series of undead-themed books for a traditional publisher, so look for them in the near future., coming to bookstores near you.

An Introduction #poetry

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Back when I thought I might be a poet, I wrote this as an introduction to a collection that I might publish someday. These days, I’m confident in my prose, but not so much in my poems, so I don’t know that any of those works will ever appear in print, other than on this blog. I offer the introduction here because it tells you how I feel about poetry–why I read it and still try to write it. Your thoughts are welcome.

Introduction: On the Club Tour and other Figures of Speech

     To most everyone but poets and academics, poetry is effectively dead. It’s part of our past, something that should be on display in the Smithsonian. And like many such displays, it is easily overlooked, a hulking shape that fades into the scenery of the great Museum of our lives. Most people look at poetry and nod, stifle a yawn, and move onto the next exhibit. Occasionally they might spot an item of interest, one that beckons them to pause and consider. But for the most part, they seem ready to get the tour over with so they can get home in time to catch the Yankees and Red Sox on ESPN.

     This elaborate conceit is not my metaphor of choice, though. I liken poetry to 1980s hair-metal bands. The genre ain’t dead; it’s just not playing arena shows anymore. Now you’re more likely to find it jamming on stage in the seedier part of town, where the smoke is thick and the pool tables have so many blood stains that they look like relief maps and the beer is stronger than the odor of the bouncers. Poetry looks older now, its hair streaked with gray, its eyes crow-footed and seemingly always on the verge of tears. The audience consists of die-hard fans with beer guts and twenty-year-old concert shirts; of the odd suit from the label, the one dispatched to measure how many tickets are sold and, therefore, whether there might be enough interest for a greatest hits package; of ambivalent drunks who hope to score with the slutty chicks with the big hair and fake boobs. In a lot of ways, the scene is pathetic.

     But put poetry in front of the right crowd and the old magic can reappear. Sometimes the singer drags that old barbaric yawp from way down in the diaphragm. At times like these, the lines and stanzas sometimes seem to come fully formed, without conscious thought or action. It’s the moment when emotion and human experience condense into a few well-turned phrases, when the raw truth of being erupts from the singer and into a deep place in the audience, so that all they can do is bang their heads, raise their hands in unison, and shout

     Yes!

     Moments like these are what poets live for, when just one reader finds that, for the space of a line or a phrase or a word, everything is exactly right. And one great, tragic truth of writing is that you seldom know whether or not such moments occur.

     Of course, for many readers (and for far too many alleged writers), poetry is nothing so transcendent. To them, poetry is cute. It’s the roses-are-red love poem or its bawdy parody that we all memorized in sixth grade. It’s the patriotic screed set to rhyme, inspirational didacticism in ABAB. These so-called poems have no rhythm, no meter, no reason to rhyme except that that’s what so many people think poetry is supposed to do. It’s enough to make you cry, and you would, except that somebody might write a bad poem about it.

     Others seem to have some idea of what poetry can and should be, yet they seem intent on ruining their own work by throwing in some all-knowing, here’s-the-point-I’m-getting-at statement. These lines hit the reader about the head and shoulders like a brickbat. Forget image and repetition and symbol; what we apparently need from these writers is meaning, and only one meaning at that. No room for growth, for interpretation, for experiences other than one’s own—even the reader-response critics could do little with these.

     I try to avoid these pitfalls when I’m on stage. I hope I got some things right. I don’t know if my work is another sad club date in a genre whose time is passing or a gig that proves the old band can still crank it up pretty well. I hope for the latter. All I know is that I’m still ready to pull up my stool and jam.

     This club’s got no drink minimum and a pretty small cover charge. Imbibe with me and let’s see how long the party can last.

We Really Like Your Work, But…

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If you look up the word “bittersweet” in the dictionary (or, as most of my students do, at dictionary.com), you should see a picture of a “good” rejection letter to a writer.

Every working writer likely keeps three piles of letters from journals, magazines, agents, and publishers. Pile #1 consists of standard rejections–the kind that begin with “Dear Writer” and go on to explain that your work simply doesn’t meet the editor’s needs at this time. When you get one of these, you’re disappointed, of course, but unless you’re already a household name, it’s pretty much what you’ve come to expect. After all, writing success often seems like one part talent, one part sheer perseverance, and two parts sheer luck. You have to get the right piece to the right reader at the right time, a process that is often rewarding and sometimes maddening.

Pile #3 contains all your acceptances. Some of these come in letter form, others in emails or even phone calls. Unless you’re Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King, you probably still jump for joy whenever you get one of these, no matter how small the journal or how low the pay. An acceptance means that someone “gets” your work, that they’ve trusted your voice to enhance their publication, that an audience will see your story or article and know your name.

Pile #2 is where “bittersweet” lives. This pile is where you keep your “good” rejections–the personalized ones that call you by name and speak to your work specifically. Sometimes they come in the form of a personally-written rejection; sometimes they consist of handwritten notes on a boilerplate rejection notice. Most of the time, they tell you that while the piece you sent was not accepted, the editors liked your work and would like to see more.

The bad news? No publication. The good news? Somebody liked your work enough to talk to you, to encourage you, to let you know that you don’t suck. I keep good rejections close to my heart–not as close as acceptances, of course, but pretty close nonetheless. When you’re in between publications, they give you enough hope and confidence to keep on writing.

I got a good rejection today. I’ve been shopping a novel for a while now, at a time when agents and editors are understandably gun-shy about taking on new writers. I’ve gotten some boilerplate rejections and a few nibbles, but I haven’t reeled in the big fish yet. These days, it’s a victory when you can move past the query letter stage. I got that far again, and with a New York agent to boot.

In the end, she passed on the project because the kind of story I was telling simply didn’t appeal to her. But she told me that I was a good writer and that she would love a look at my next project. There’s no guarantee she’ll like it better than the first one, of course; you can’t control your audience, and I’ve always felt that trying to leads only to ulcers and bad writing. When you try to please everyone, you please no one, especially not yourself.

But she’ll get the first look. She was professional and personable, and she responded promptly. I’ll remember that, as I hope she remembers her kind words the next time I’ve got a book-length work to shop. If she doesn’t, I’ll be sure to remind her. How? I’ve saved her response. I can quote from it verbatim. I can even forward her the email if necessary. But I don’t think it will be, because she doesn’t view her job as a gatekeeper charged with fighting off bad writers. She seems to believe that her job is to support stories that she loves. I can get behind that attitude, even if she doesn’t love mine this time.

If she ever stumbles across this post and recognizes herself in it, I hope she’ll see this as my expression of my admiration and my thanks. As a writer, it’s part of my job not to take rejection personally, to use any feedback to get better.

I hope we both keep doing our jobs for a long time.