Category Archives: Writing Tips

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Writing Tip #111

Invite your writer-self to your evening out, but don’t let her monopolize it. One of the most difficult things about being a writer is trying to live your life in the moment and, at the same time, try to mentally record everything that you see for your current and future projects. There’s a constant struggle between living and observing. Last night I attended a local fire department event with my husband, and it just so happens that one of the characters in my next novel is a volunteer firefighter — which meant that although my intention was leave my writer hat at home for the night and just have a good time, I observed lots of things during the evening where the hatless writer in me would whisper in my ear, Oooh, that’s good! Remember that.

Generally, what I do in those situations is whip out my cell phone and then email myself whatever observation I’m trying to capture, so that I know it’s safe and preserved and then I can go back to the living part of the evening. Sometimes I’ll take my phone out ten times within the span of a few hours, but then once the business of writing is done I can go back to my herb-crusted salmon and dinner conversation. You might think that’s a bit disruptive (or obsessive), but for me it’s better than spending the entire night worrying that I’ll forget whatever it is I want to remember — I’ve tried it, and in the end I neither live nor observe, because I wind up spending the night worrying and forgetting.

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Writing Tip #110

Don’t imitate. Interpret. Today’s writing tip comes from Peter Beston, an East Quoque, New York-based artist I had the pleasure of meeting during a recent taping for The Writer’s Dream. “Don’t imitate. Interpret.” It’s the advice Peter gives to aspiring painters, but of course his words can apply to any creative artist. When you imitate, you aim to replicate what another person has done; you essential take yourself out of the creative process. When you interpret, you embed your own viewpoint into your creation — you make sense of, add to, depict, question. When I think of “imitating,” I think of an assembly line, the mindless act of placing images on a canvas or sentences into a Word document — an act of the body rather than of the mind. When I think of “intepreting,” I think of a collaboration, a synergy between the mind and body. Although I’m sure there are those who believe that the act of trying to imitate alone will yield an interpretation, my feeling is that if the intention is only to duplicate what is already there, then the artist is not utilizing her most important asset: her point of view. And a well-developed point of view is what separates a beautiful work from a singular work.

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Writing Tip #109

Make your chapter endings count. A book club member recently commented that she enjoyed the ending of each chapter in Baby Grand: “They made me want to keep reading.” Yay, I thought, I’ve done my job. The way I see it, chapter endings should serve two functions:

  1. To end whatever scene is going on in the book at a logical place that feels satisfying to the reader — the plot has moved forward and the reader had learned something new.
  2. To keep the reader engaged enough to want to turn to the next chapter.

I’ve read books, particularly thrillers, with chapters that just seem to end willy nilly, as if the author took a knife and just randomly cut one big chapter into two. Perhaps the author thought some of his chapters were getting a bit too lengthy or unruly and needed to be shortened — thriller readers seem to like brief, tidy chapters. Still, to me it just seemed like a waste of a new chapter heading.

Chapter endings need to make sense, need to bring a scene to a close. They should make readers stick in their bookmarks and wonder, Hmmm, what will happen next? And if they’re really good, the reader will reopen the book to find out.

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Writing Tip #108

Always remember why you became a writer. Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking to prospective MFA students at Hofstra University about my experiences in grad school there and about publishing as a career. I got to see old professors and old friends, but perhaps the most exciting aspect of the afternoon was the opportunity to hear current Hofstra students perform readings of their work. How inspiring it was to see these students recite their poetry, their creative nonfiction and fiction. How proud I could tell they were to have been asked to showcase their stuff. You could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices. It’s been, gosh, almost four years since I graduated from Hofstra, and I had forgotten how exciting it was to be in a place where the written word was cultivated and so valued. (Can you tell I miss being there?) As I struggled with my current work-in-progress this morning, I thought about the faces of those students I saw yesterday who didn’t seem worried about agents and publishers and readers and sales. They just seemed to be enjoying the moment, the opportunity to share their thoughts with others. That’s why most of us have become writers, isn’t it? Because we thought we had something to say, stories to tell. Good. Bad. Long. Short. Funny. Sad. Whatever it is that we’re struggling to say, we have to always remember that it deserves to be written.

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Writing Tip #107

Feeling ‘trapped’ when penning a sequel. A fellow writer, Betsy Arnold, sparked a very interesting discussion on my FB page today. She said — with regard to penning a “companion book” to a novel:

“I keep having to go back and check the facts from my first book which were throwaways at the time. Now they are parameters with which I’m stuck. Is that true for you?…I keep having to consult my maps and timelines. Ugh. I want to change a few things in the first book, but can’t. It’s a strange feeling.”

Indeed, it is. And she is totally right. In a sequel, or companion book, you are confined by the “throwaways” (good word!) that you created in the first book — your character was born here, in a place and time that you provided for him, whether purposefully or arbitrarily (it makes you realize how very important every decision you make in your novel is!). As I told Betsy, you can always have a character dye his hair or decide he doesn’t like mashed potatoes anymore. But it’s true that that character has to be born where you decided he was born in the first book — unless, of course, the entire first book was a hallucination or dream (Bobby Ewing, anyone?). Although the novel I’m working on now, In the Red, is a stand-alone, my next book will be a sequel to my first novel, Baby Grand. I’ve started working on it a bit, and already I’m experiencing the things Betsy mentions: Having to check back to the first book to make sure I’m being consistent so that fans of the first book won’t be standing outside my house with pitchforks demanding a public apology or a new edition.

Yes, it can feel confining, but remember that only those starting points have to remain the same (character names, descriptions, etc.). Characters can move, change their minds, denounce their families, find a time machine and do just about anything they want to do. Although some things may be etched in stone, the rest is a wonderfully blank canvas.

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Writing Tip #106

No Naughty and Nice lists here. One of the most interesting comments I’ve received about Baby Grand came from my 15-year-old son. He said that he liked that there was no underlying message or moral to the book, that the bad guys weren’t always punished and the good guys weren’t always rewarded. And it’s true. I tried to create very real characters, put in real-life situations, in Baby Grand, and to do that, I think, you need to recognize that there’s good and bad in all of us and that nice guys do sometimes finish last. Separating our characters into Naughty and Nice does a disservice to them in that it doesn’t allow authors to fully realize their potential and it does a disservice to readers who may be looking for something other than the usual knights in shining armor and evildoers in black hats and wiry mustaches. While it’s tempting to take sides, we need to treat our characters, both good and bad, with the respect they deserve. Leave the playing favorites to Santa.

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Writing Tip #105

Don’t be alarmed if your writing process changes from book to book. As many of you know, I wrote the second half of my first novel, Baby Grand, fast and furiously — 1,000 words a day for six or seven weeks. So, naturally, when it came time to write my current novel, In the Red, I planned on doing it the same way — you know, stick to what works. The plan was to sit my butt in a chair and crank out 1,000 words a day, every day, no exceptions.

And I have. Sort of.

For some reason, I’m finding that the 1Kaday writing process doesn’t seem to be working for this book. Some days I’m on track. Others not so much. Sure, I’m distracted and full of self-doubt, but I was while writing Baby Grand too. That’s not the problem. Things just seem… well, different:

  • The music I used to motivate myself while writing Baby Grand doesn’t work this time around. While a song seemed helpful and inspirational two years ago, now I listen and think, This song reminds me of Baby Grand. In fact, it sort of feels like it belongs there. In that world. It would be like asking Bailino to make an appearance in my current work-in-progress.
  • With Baby Grand, I wrote often at night. With In the Red, I find that I write more during the day — and I like to write out of the house, particularly at Panera Bread.
  • With Baby Grand, I pretty much stuck to a linear process. I wrote the book from beginning to end. Now, I’m all over the place — writing the ending before the middle and then heading back to the beginning.
  • The other day, I wrote and wrote and wrote and ended up netting about 200 words, because I had cut a lot out during the process. If this had been Baby Grand, I would have sat there until I had written a net of 1,000 words. This time, though, I felt it was enough to have netted the 200 and, guilt aside, decided to power down until the next day.

What gives?

With regard to that last point, at first I thought I was just slacking off. But now I’m not so sure. I’m well into In the Red. It seems silly to chastise myself for not sticking to a schedule when whatever it is I AM doing seems to be working: As of this morning, I have about 61,000 words written (227 pages), which somehow I managed to do without my closely monitored 1,000-word-a-day regimen. (Baby Grand was only about 79,000 words when I finished the first draft back in August 2010).

In other words, I’m close, and I’m getting there. And I think in the end that’s all that matters.

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Writing Tip #104

Write anyway. This is a big catchphrase of mine: Write anyway. And I say it to myself lots these days as I try and finish my second novel, In the Red. Not a writing session goes by where I don’t think, My first book was a total fluke. I’m a hack. I’m a no-talent. Why am I bothering? Who’s going to care? Oh, it’s fun to be me, trust me, when the writing isn’t flowing. But each time those kinds of thoughts float to the surface, I answer them with, “Write anyway.”

  • Am I a hack? I’m going to write anyway and see.
  • Who’s going to care? Maybe no one. But I’m going to write anyway now and worry about that later.

Write anyway helps me barrel through and finish writing my thousand words every day until somehow, some way, I manage to eek out an entire novel. And although I’m not always happy with what I’ve written, I am always happy that I HAVE written.

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Marketing Tips #2 & #3

Promote your author events on social media. Very important. Which leads me to today’s companion tip:

Don’t over-promote your author events on social media. Equally as important.

Today’s marketing tips go hand-in-hand. Those of us who do most of our book promotion online, particularly through social media, know the fine line there is between promoting and over-promoting our work. I’ll bet many of us can point to Tweeters or Facebookers who bombard our home or newsfeeds with nonstop ads for themselves. As supportive as the publishing industry is — and it is! — it can get pretty annoying after a while.

Give and take is what social media is about — and, actually, more giving than taking. The general ratio I strive for — and this differs, depending upon what website you consult — is 7:1. In other words, for every seven tweets or Facebook posts I do, I will do one promotional post, which may mention a new 5-star review Baby Grand has gotten or a contest I’ve entered (did you know that I was nominated for Best Long Island Author?) or a guest post I’ve done. I strive for the vast majority of my posts to be informational (the sharing of interesting blog posts or articles I’ve stumbled across, as well as my own experiences and lessons) and supportive (retweeting good news for fellow authors).

Last Monday, I had my first book signing for Baby Grand — an event I promoted heavily, mostly on Facebook and Twitter. Again, I tried to straddle that fine line between promoting enough and promoting too much. In the end, the event was successful; more than 100 people attended, and I sold a ton of books.

I’ll tell you now… I don’t think anyone would have showed, other than my husband, mom and kids, if I hadn’t promoted this thing for months (periodic reminders, I’ve learned, are good). But I also feel that no one might have showed if I totally alienated all my friends and colleagues with a constant bombardment of promotional posts.

We want people to be happy to see our tweets and posts and blogs. The last thing we want is for people to roll their eyes or, worse, to unfollow or unfriend us because they’re fed up. Although there are those who think that any publicity is good publicity, my feeling is that too much promotion can be worse than none at all.

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Writing Tip #103

If it ain’t broke… I have a confession to make. Generally speaking, I’m not a big reader of “how to write” books or articles or blog posts. (Ironic, I know, considering I pen writing tips every week.) I find the amount of information out there on any particular topic overwhelming — and often contradicting. I’ll be cruising along and minding my own business and then read about the enormous success another writer is having doing something in a completely different way from the way I do it, and I’ll think, “Should I too be doing it that way?”

More often than not, I’ve found the answer is no, that how I’m going about things is perfectly fine, because it developed organically, in a way I didn’t really think about because it just happened. Trying to emulate someone else’s process can be like trying on someone else’s clothing because you like the way they look on that person — problem is, they may not look the same on you.

Therefore, I tend to seek out writing help only when I need it — if I’m in trouble, stuck on something, at my wit’s end. For example, I remember when I was working on the first draft of Baby Grand in the summer of 2010 and I was stumped on a death scene. I felt like what I was writing was so cliche and uninteresting. So I went to Twitter and asked if anyone had any suggestions, and someone replied with this: Do something that would otherwise be humorous if the situation weren’t so dire. And just with that advice, written in under 140 characters, a light bulb turned on over my head, and I finished my scene. (I am forever grateful.)

Another example: Recently, I was interested in turning Baby Grand into an audiobook, so I attended a recent ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) seminar on audiobooks. My research tends to be very focused and concentrated. If I have a question, I’ll seek answers. Otherwise, I treat writing like I do parenting — I just go with my gut. I keep my eyes and ears open, yes, because sometimes you come across information (hopefully, on this blog) that can help you out, but overall I find that all the answers to the questions I haven’t asked I already have.