No Excuses

I hear it all the time, and not just from would-be writers, but from would-be potters and artists and gardeners, and well, from just about everybody who claims to want to do something he or she isn’t doing. “I just don’t have the time. But someday, when I do have the time, I’ll write (or paint, or make pots, or grow my own vegetables).”

Bullshit.

We make time for what we want to do. Funny, I rarely hear people say they don’t have time to watch TV, or have sex, or post on Facebook, or eat ice cream. Somehow they find time in their busy lives for those activities. But when it comes to creating something of value, something lasting, suddenly
there isn’t time.

Is Dancing with the Stars more important than writing that novel you’ve been talking about for 10 years? Is what’s happening in twitterverse more important than the half finished canvas in your garage? Is sex or ice cream more important than… OK, so maybe you could make a case for the importance of sex and ice cream. (But you could always make time for artistic pursuits by eating your ice cream and having sex simultaneously. Just a suggestion.)

Tell me how hard writing is, or tell me it hurts too much to do it, or tell me you’re tired of being rejected, or that your butt is tired of being planted in the desk chair. But DO NOT tell me you don’t have time. Everyone can find an hour somewhere in the day to do something important. Get up earlier. Stay up later. Turn off the TV. Get off the internet. Get off the phone.

And if you don’t make time for it, don’t talk about it. Don’t whine about how busy you are. Everyone in this world is busy. The people who create are the ones who really care enough to make time to do it, regardless of the sacrifices. Either you want it badly enough or you don’t.

My writing motto is “no excuses.” I don’t accept them from myself, and I don’t accept them from others. So beware. If you tell me you will write one day when you have time, all you’re going to get from me is “Bullshit.”

On earthquakes, hurricanes, and hyperbole

It’s hard to talk about anything much but the weather this week. Between the earthquakes in central Virginia and the hurricane on the east coast, it’s been pretty exciting. Everybody here in Virginia has an earthquake story they’ll tell you, and I could share mine, too, but I won’t. I prefer to use mine, embellished and exaggerated ( I have a real gift for hyperbole), in my fiction.

Because that’s what writers do. We take an experience and we shape it into something that fits into a story, we use it to underscore and provide an anchor for the story itself.

As I tried to explain to someone once, a war story is not really a story about the particulars of war, but rather it’s a story about the people who live through that war. (If you’ve never read Tim O’Brien, you should.) If we want history, we can read nonfiction. Fiction is not about reporting an event. It’s about finding the truth and meaning of a character’s life through the lens of the event. It’s about tossing characters into a hurricane and watching how they react.

I read a wonderful short story once about the breakup of a marriage in the midst of a hurricane. The hurricane was real, and powerful, and I could hear the freight-train rushing of the wind outside the house, feel the fear of the dog the couple was fighting over. But it was the characters themselves that gave the story meaning.

Anyone can describe what it feels like to be caught up in a hurricane, or feel the earth move under them as it shifts and buckles in an earthquake. But writers do more than report the experience. They give it meaning within the context of a character’s life, use it to expose weaknesses or show previously untapped courage. Writers use their experiences to enrich their writing, to add veracity to their fiction.

So if you want to hear about my experience sitting in the upstairs of an old house while the walls shook and groaned, don’t look for it here. Just keep reading my fiction. It’s sure to show up there sometime.

Reading and Writing in C’Ville Again

Charlottesville doesn’t seem to be finished with me yet. In a matter of days, the entire universe has conspired to get me back up here for a little while, so I have to believe there’s a reason.

Whatever purpose the universe has, I’ll use this time to take advantage of the wonderful community of writers I have here to get some feedback on a couple of stories I’ve been struggling with. So beware, my writing friends, manuscripts are on the way.

Writing groups and trusted readers are a valuable part of any writers’ life. I have a group of readers who know my work and I know theirs and I would trust any of them to give me a tough but constructive critique. They make me work harder to get at the truth, they make me a better writer. (well, except they can’t seem to get me to stop using comma-splices.) If you’re ever lucky enough to find readers like that, hang on to them. They are rarer than you might think.

When I first started getting serious about my writing, I took a workshop with students with a wide range of experience and skill levels. While there were many wonderful writers in that class, there were some who had no business commenting on other writers’ work. They just weren’t ready. I probably wasn’t ready myself. But many of the comments from a select few were vague, confusing, or downright idiotic.

My favorite was a guy who was deeply offended by a story of mine in which a woman sets fire to an art gallery showing her ex-boyfriend’s photography. Instead of making suggestions about the writing or the structure or even the plot, he fixated on the fact that arson is illegal, and therefore I shouldn’t let my main character be an arsonist. Now, as far as I’m concerned, I can have my characters do whatever I please if it feels right for them. Not right for me, and not right for anyone else. Right for the character. Besides, IT’S FICTION! If you are so bothered by my character’s illegal act, just imagine she’s arrested when the story ends. “Because it’s against the law” is not effective critiquing any more than “because I said so” is effective parenting.

Finding the right readers is not easy. Don’t be afraid to walk out of a group if it’s not right for you. And don’t feel compelled to let just anyone read your stories. It’s like giving birth and holding up your baby on a street corner and yelling, “So, what do you think?” You want to know from the doctors and nurses if the baby is healthy, but don’t ask all the bums on the street how they like him. You don’t need to hear that they’re just not connecting with him or that something is wrong with his head, but nobody’s quite sure what.

Once you do find readers you trust, listen to them. You don’t have to do everything they say, but do pay attention. If more than one reader tells you, for instance, that you use way too many comma-splices, you might want to take them seriously. Then again, they’re your own damned commas, you can splice them if you want.