{"id":761,"date":"2016-08-03T08:45:16","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T12:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=761"},"modified":"2016-08-03T08:45:16","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T12:45:16","slug":"with-friends-like-me-who-needs-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/03\/with-friends-like-me-who-needs-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"With friends like me, who needs enemies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 18, 2016, Lady Laisa wrote, I cannot finish anything I start writing. I know lots of people have asked about this and many, many authors have made blog posts and books written from both sides of the plotter\/pantser perspective, but my trouble is that I am neither. I am smack dab in the middle, and I cannot seem to get out.<\/em><\/p>\n

See, in one way I\u2019m a plotter. I can\u2019t write if I don\u2019t know very well where I\u2019m going. (Kind of like my dad on a trip. If he doesn\u2019t have a very, very good idea where he\u2019s going, he won\u2019t go\u2013unlike my mum who doesn\u2019t mind wandering around a bit.) I need to know my destination and how to get there, or I cannot start out.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the other hand, I find plotting tedious. I will plot out my story until I hate it so much I would rather take a weed whacker to it than a pen. I may write for a while, but the loathing intensifies until I sometimes I literally hurl the manuscript at the wall. I then crumple it into an envelope and leave it to molder in my closet for years. Sometimes I\u2019ll pull it out (not often) and take a peek, and then get excited about it and write on it for a little while, but then I get drained all over again, and try instead to work on a less taxing story.<\/em><\/p>\n

This has been going on for roughly six and a half years, and it just gets worse over time. I have about three hundred loose stories, all at various stages of completion, (I even have a whole first draft! But it is so hideous it turns my stomach to even look at it) floating around in the abyss of my closet.<\/em><\/p>\n

Does anyone have any tips for how to write a story without knowing the plot in advance or how to outline a story without becoming desperately bored?<\/em><\/p>\n

First off, I think congratulations are in order for about 300 stories in one stage or another. That\u2019s a lot of writing! An accomplishment.<\/p>\n

Christie Valentine Powell answered Lady Laisa, and an exchange between the two followed, but I\u2019m going to save that for the next post. For now, I want to address part of the question. I\u2019ll start by relating an incident that happened in my writing workshop last week that troubled me.<\/p>\n

In class I gave the kids a prompt that combined dialogue and ending and asked them to write for twenty minutes. One of my very few boys finished early, so I asked him to show me what he\u2019d done. He said it wasn\u2019t any good and didn\u2019t want me to read it. I tried to persuade him otherwise but didn\u2019t push it. He said he\u2019d work on it at home, which he may or may not do.<\/p>\n

I felt terrible for him. For one thing, how could I be helpful about something I wasn\u2019t allowed to read?<\/p>\n

But also, what kind of expectations did he have for himself? In twenty minutes I didn\u2019t expect anyone to create deathless prose. I wouldn\u2019t expect it of myself, and I’ve been writing for a long time.<\/p>\n

And I had this thought: He is unlikely to keep writing. Why would he, if it\u2019s the cause of such unhappiness and self-condemnation? Then, I confess, I had a follow-up, evil thought: That\u2019s okay. There are enough writers already. He can just be a reader. We need more of them.<\/p>\n

When everyone finished writing, I launched into the spiel I\u2019ve delivered here: that asking whether our work is good or not is the least useful question we can pose. I asked them why, and they got it. If someone tells us we\u2019re wrong, that our story is good, we\u2019re pleased maybe, but we don\u2019t know what made it good, and we may feel suspicious. We see problems, why doesn\u2019t this person? On the other hand, if the judgment confirms our own condemnation, we just feel bad, but we don\u2019t know how to make the piece better, and we\u2019re probably not in a state to work on it then anyway\u2013too painful!<\/p>\n

Not long ago, I heard an interview on the radio while I was driving. A woman with a young voice was interviewing a physicist about multi-verses, which are part of a theory that there may be other universes in the deeps of space that are identical to ours and also many others that may vary only in small details. The physicist said that there could be a universe in which the same interview was going forward but with different questions and different answers. And the interviewer, to my astonishment, said something like: \u201cIn that other universe, the interviewer would be asking better questions than I have.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t crash the car. Reggie didn\u2019t bounce around in the hatch, but he did pop up from his snooze when I pounded the steering wheel and yelled at the interviewer, \u201cWhy did you say that? What was wrong with your questions? I didn\u2019t notice anything, and I\u2019m a good noticer.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a poetry workshop I took years ago, the teacher said anyone who prefaced reading her poem with a warning that it wasn\u2019t very good would be fined five dollars. No one had to pay up, but a couple of people came close and had to reel their words back in when they started with self-criticism.<\/p>\n

Some of you may not agree with this, and my exemplar in the workshop was a boy, but I think girls and women are more prone to the self-put-down than boys and men. Please weigh in with your thoughts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not suggesting that everything we write is gold. First drafts need improvement. My second and third drafts, too. And no book is perfect. I\u2019ve been listening to a new audio version of FAIREST to see how I like it, and I heard a sentence that I\u2019d like to revise. It\u2019s been out for ten years!<\/p>\n

So here is the first strategy to help us finish our stories: Be nice to them. Don\u2019t call them lousy.<\/p>\n

But how do we combat this habit of undermining ourselves when we\u2019re just getting started as writers?<\/p>\n

\u2219 We can become self-aware of our self-attack. We can notice when we do it to. We can ask friends and family to point it out. We can pay attention to it in other people, which will help us generally be more alert to it. You may be surprised at how often self put-downs\u00a0crops up.<\/p>\n

\u2219 The last post was about getting useful criticism. That will help. When we see where the problems are\u2013that they aren\u2019t global\u2013we can set about making matters better. If we\u2019re also critiquing the work of other writers, we see that we\u2019re not the only ones who struggle.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Books about writing may help. I love Writing on Both Sides of the Brain<\/em> by Henriette Anne Klauser (at least middle-school level, I\u2019d guess), which spends a lot of pages on the inner critic and how to get it out of the way. As\u00a0beginning writer, this was my go-to book when I got discouraged. Bird by Bird<\/em> by Anne LaMott is also great\u2013high school and up.<\/p>\n

The point is, it’s hard to finish anything when we’re constantly passing judgment. I\u2019m going to call out on the blog when someone bad mouths her writing, maybe not every time, but beware! You risk being caught!<\/p>\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n

\u2219 Let\u2019s re-imagine \u201cRumpelstiltskin.\u201d Instead of having to spin straw into gold, the miller\u2019s daughter is commanded to, in a single day, create a masterpiece of a painting. Rumpelstiltskin comes along, but neither of them knows what the king considers great art. Does he like still lifes or landscapes or portraits, or is abstract art his thing? Write the story.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Cinderella thinks her stepsisters are right when they criticize her. This may be a tragedy. Write the story.<\/p>\n

\u2219 Your MC\u2019s brother is trapped in a magic tower. Your MC\u2019s stallion has magical powers, but he has ideas of his own, and rescuing the brother isn\u2019t among them. Write the story and rescue the brother.<\/p>\n

Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On May 18, 2016, Lady Laisa wrote, I cannot finish anything I start writing. I know lots of people have asked about this and many, many authors have made blog posts and books written from both sides of the plotter\/pantser perspective, but my trouble is that I am neither. I am smack dab in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[86],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}