Writing 101: What Does Write What You Know Actually Mean?

Doesn't it seem like every famous author or artist has some dramatic life history? You hear all about how this one struggled with depression and alcoholism, how that one decided to go live in the wild one day, how so-and-so was the daughter of an actress and traveled all over the world. Here's the thing: we can't all have a totally fascinating and interesting life. Some people are, in fact, basically pretty normal: suburban neighborhood, standard high school, part-time summer job working at a fast food joint. So when you hear trite advice like "write what you know," it's perfectly fine for you to roll your eyes.

Reality is Boring

Not all of us know what it's like to see the hills of Spain lit with the afternoon light (lookin' at you, Ernest Hemingway) or grew up listening to fascinating Civil War stories from people who were actually there (but good for you, Margaret Mitchell). Some authors can only dream of being on a fully-rigged sailing vessel, storming across the seas...but should they never write about it just because they've never done it?

No. The much-parroted advice write what you know doesn't necessarily mean that you should go roam around a drafty English castle before you pen that romance novel, and I definitely shouldn't run right out and kill someone before I craft my next mystery book. A great many authors have very successfully written historical fiction novels; obviously, none of them are in possession of time machines. And while I can't say I ever knew the man, for he died well before I was born, I'm pretty darned certain that Jules Verne never actually went to the center of the Earth or 20,000 leagues under the sea, either.

Live and die by the write what you know cliche, and you're limiting your range of topics severely. If everyone followed that adage to the letter, it's extremely unlikely the world would have any science fiction stories, vampire romances, or Stephen King (unless you want to believe he was actually attacked by fog while at the supermarket).

However, write what you know is still decent advice -- but only if you understand that sentiment for what it is.

What Do You Know?

Whether you're writing about a girl named Sally, talking animals who live on a farm or an inanimate object (and those are all real books, by the way), there is always some human truth in the tale. After all, love is love whether it's happening in a drafty castle in 14th century England or in a college English class in Michigan. If you've really been in love and you really feel like you know romance, write that romance novel. Set the scene in an enchanted forest, 200 years in the past, or even on the moon if you like. If you know love, you can pull off a love story -- use your research skills to fill in the blanks when it comes to setting, daily life, and what gravity is like on the moon.

Write what you know is really just an easy way of saying that all writers have to draw on their own experiences and their own histories, wrap that all up in fiction and put it on the page. If you have a very complicated love-hate relationship with your sibling, it can become interesting conflict in your next book. If you've ever had a crush on someone who didn't crush back, you can include that unrequited experience in your work -- and, because you actually had that experience, it will feel very believable. That situation is universal, and it can happen on a pirate ship in 1760 or a futuristic colony on Mars in 2760. The emotions you've felt are always real, and they can always be used in your writing -- whatever you might be writing about.

From the Trenches: Brutal Rejection

"Tell [her] to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a writer." These were the words of James T. Fields, then the editor of The Atlantic magazine. According to legend, the Boston editor wrote to the father of a young, aspiring novelist with these very harsh words. She'd just completed work on her first full-length novel, a monster of a volume containing some autobiographical elements and deep, gut-wrenching tragedy. 

The novel in question eventually did get published, and Hollywood has immortalized it in film more than once using some of the city's favorite actresses (including Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor). And even if you've never read it, I'm pretty sure you've heard of it.

It's called Little Women, and it's considered to be a classic piece of literature. Louisa May Alcott, who famously penned the book while living in Massachusetts, eventually became a writer for The Atlantic magazine. Looks like she sure showed Mr. editor James T. Fields. 

A Big Little Woman

Louisa May Alcott wrote prose all her life, though she is still best-known for Little Women and the three books that followed; a group of books known as the March Family Saga. It was published, over two volumes, in 1868 and 1869, and still delights readers and film lovers to this day. Little Women has been adapted in three big-budget Hollywood productions: 1933, starring Katharine Hepburn; 1949, starring Elizabeth Taylor, June Allyson, Janet Leigh and Margaret O'Brien; and one in 1994, with Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Kirsten Dunst and Christian Bale. That's right: 125 years after Alcott was told she would never be a successful writer, Batman was the leading man in the movie adaptation of her book.

Louisa May Alcott was in the writing trenches well before Twitter and word processors, back when everything had to written by hand, and she still had haters to contend with. Thank goodness she didn't listen to them!

Writing 101: Setting Daily Goals

I look through Facebook status updates at least once a day, mostly to see what other writers are achieving while I'm wasting time with social media. One writer in particular, whom I can't name, has a habit of posting the amount of words she's managed to get down on paper during the day. She does it every day, and sometimes the numbers sound positively staggering (four digits and above). And she's not alone; lots of writers offer similar updates, word counts and all. All of it got me to thinking, and now I'm wondering if I'm undisciplined. Should I be setting daily goals? 

Daily Writing Goals

Discipline and motivation are mercurial mistresses, and they can be expensive to keep. Many, many indie authors have to split their time between a paying full-time job and their somewhat-paying writer alter ego. The process of writing itself is exhausting; it takes much longer to write a book than to read one. Editing and re-reading the book can be a tedious chore. Since many indies are also obliged to work at a day job, not to mention spend some time answering emails and promoting their work, it's a lot to do. 

So why not set a goal for yourself that you feel like you've just got to meet, and pour on the pressure? Inspiration and creativity can be forced, right? 

Okay...clearly I'm not a fan of setting daily writing goals -- but only up to a point. I keep a list of tasks that I follow to the letter every day, so in the control freak competition I feel like I'm definitely in the running to place. But assigning a certain amount of words to yourself on a daily basis is just wrong. 

Don't do that to yourself. If you're going to set a goal, go by the clock and not by the count. Discipline is something that can be forced; you can make yourself sit in front of a computer screen for an hour or two hours every night. But you can't always force motivation, or creativity, or inspiration. So you might find yourself just...sitting there. I certainly have. If you're trying to force yourself to write 500 words, or 1000 words, or any words at all, you're putting enormous stress on yourself. That's not very inspiring, is it? Imagine pulling a gun out on a composer and screaming at him to write you an original song. 

You may scoff at the comparison, but it's not far from wrong. We have a tendency to be harder on ourselves that others would ever be on us, and creative types in particular can be highly judgmental of their own talents and abilities. Add a daily goal on top of all that, and you're just borrowing trouble -- you're punishing yourself. What happens if you just can't meet that daily goal? Are you now a failure, a wastrel, a miserably poor author? 

Daily goals can be dangerous, so if you play with fire learn to be careful. If you truly have trouble making time to write and getting motivated to do so, setting a goal of one to two hours a day (or more) may be a very helpful way to keep yourself on track. But if you know you're going to write for six hours on Saturday and another five on Sunday, why burden yourself with something else to do if you're just not feeling the writing itch during the week? Setting daily goals does work for some indies, but don't let that force your hand, and don't ever make writing a stressful chore or a habit that you're enslaved to. Always remember that you're supposed to love it.

Writing 101: The Truth About Prepositions

There are certain grammar myths out there that can make even the best writers go bad. English teachers have learned how to strike fear into the hearts of their students, but there's no reason you should be afraid of prepositions. It's time to find out the truth about the proper way to use prepositions in your writing.

Prepositions

Remember the rule? A preposition is anywhere a mouse can go. This includes words like from, under, to, above, as, into, out, through and on -- to name just a few. Prepositions are one of the most-used elements of the English language...and they're used to invoke terror in the minds of writers everywhere.

 It's a commonly-accepted rule of English, and writing in general, that it's simply not okay to end a sentence with a preposition. This rule renders such common expressions as "what's going on?" and "what's up?" inherently flawed, not to mention renders oft-heard phrases like "what is that from?" and "what's that for?" all but useless.

If I was going to make the above proper, according to the preposition rule, those phrases would read read more like "from what is that?" and "for what is that?" And doesn't that sound absolutely outlandish? Who speaks like that, except for people in old Shakespearean plays? Throw around enough "that which" and "where from" into your book, and it's going to sound like you were born back in the 18th century.

 This is my long way of saying the rule is bunk. In common English today, pretty much everyone ends their sentences with prepositions every single day. If you want to be Polly Perfect and make your grammar spot-on throughout your prose, you don't have to end your sentences with prepositions if you don't want to -- up to a point. But when you're writing dialogue, none of those stuffy old rules apply. The only rule that really matters in dialogue-writing is this: write it the way people talk. I've never heard anyone ask me "for whom is that gift?" and I sure as heck don't expect to read it in a contemporary book, unless the character in question is some sort of rigid English professor.

Prepositions aren't scary...only grammar rules that aren't really rules, and don't really make any sense. So the next time you're getting ready to work a sentence around to shove a to in the front instead of the back, stop and ask yourself if it's really an improvement. If it sounds right and flows naturally, stick your prepositions wherever you like.

My Writing Secrets

I visited the Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile blog recently, and shared some of my secrets in a new guest post. 

Go read my Confessions to find out how, and where, I hide many little clues in my books that just might help you solve some of the mysteries. There are tons of clues in my upcoming book, Death (Deck of Lies, #3).

Writing 101: What Makes Writing Bad?

Bad writing. Everyone's afraid of it, and everyone's seen it at one time or another. It's always a threat you're going to have to face if you want to write books, and it's always out there lurking inside sentences and paragraphs. But if you want to avoid it, you've got to know exactly how to spot it. In order to keep your work free of bad writing, you need to understand it.

What Makes Writing Bad?

Saying that a piece of writing is "bad" is really ambiguous, and not at all helpful. Learn how to spot specific elements that make for bad writing, and you'll know exactly how to fix them.

• Telling a scene. One of the first rules of writing is show, don't tell. I covered this at length in a previous post. Basically, the trick to good writing is to be descriptive. Don't tell me that Sarah walked down the sidewalk, feeling angry. Show me Sarah, angrily kicking rocks out of her path and glaring at the trees as she walks past them. What do the trees look like? How hard is she kicking the rocks -- where are they going? Add detail and description to every line.
• But don't over-do it. I don't want to read too much description; I mean, I pretty much know what tree bark looks like. So remember to paint the scene, but give me plenty of action, too. If you go too many paragraphs without adding a verb, I might just fall asleep. Remember that in books, things need to happen, so keep pushing the action along.
• Do the research. Have some idea of what you're writing about, and do the research. Readers are going to know if you're just making it up as you go along. The beauty of the Internet is that you can ask it any question, so if you want to know exactly how long it takes for a girl to paint her nails or how many hours a flight to Cairo lasts, you can find out. 
• Be consistent. Maintain the same tense throughout the book, and don't randomly change your point of view unless it's central to the plot. Always be consistent with your writing; otherwise, it'll just be all over the place.
• Edit. Always read and thoroughly edit your book, more than once, to check the way the words flow and the mechanics of each sentence. Bad grammar and poor editing always make for bad writing.

Sometimes, the best possible thing you can do for your work is to separate yourself from it. When you're writing and editing and thinking about plots all day every day, it's easy to become so wrapped up in a story that you forget how to be objective. Take a break from your own work, read a book you didn't write or just forget about reading for a few days, and come back with fresh eyes. The more you re-read your writing, and work at perfecting it, the better it's going to get. Even the best writers are capable of bad writing, but through re-writing you can make your work great.

Jade's Best Reads

If you're a regular visitor to the blog, you may notice that my Amazon widget keeps changing (it's on the right side, under my list of followers). The widget shows a smattering of the books I've reviewed here on the blog, but Amazon limits the number of books I'm allowed to include. Because I can't possibly put them all on the list, I've come up with my own system of choosing which books are featured, and for how long.

When I add a new review to the blog, unless I don't want to recommend the book it'll be put on the widget right away. But I will start taking books away from the list as I add more to it. Which books will be removed? It's not necessarily based on time. Books I really like will stay on the list, so the longer a book stays on the widget the more I like it! I don't do a rating system on this blog, but if you keep an eye on my widget you'll know which indie books are my favorite and which...aren't so much my favorites.

Review: Subterfuge in Heart

I probably wouldn't have found this book, or decided to read it, if the author hadn't contacted me through Twitter. Since Subterfuge in Heart met all my review requirements, I decided to go ahead and agree to review it. I'm pleased to say the decision paid off; this is a wonderfully well-written book. When I review it on Amazon, I'll give it five stars -- but it really deserves six.

   

From the first page, it became clear to me that this book was a cut above the rest. To be perfectly honest, as a writer it made me feel like a bit of a hack. So I decided, quite early, to leave my own literary leanings at the door and look at this book like a reader instead of a writer.

It was impossible not to get swept away in the narrative, anyway. Like Charles Dickens, Tobias Troy begins the story with the birth of the protagonist, immediately introducing the reader to a fascinatingly complicated mind. Our hero is a genius, and his storyteller (Troy) is brilliant. I felt deeply emotional during the first part of the book, reading about the hero and his best friend, David. Their relationship grew more complex, as most relationships do, as they grew up together, and Troy presents the tale beautifully. Throughout part 1 of the story, there is a hint of the fantastical elements that will come in part 2. 

That's when the story takes an amazing turn, and becomes something else entirely. I'm never going to be accused of being a fantasy book lover, but I didn't consider putting the book down for one moment even when everything changed. Part 2 introduces action, deep pathos and vivid scenes that do justice to the majesty of human emotion.

Troy is truly a gifted writer, and his particular use of language creates an enthralling voice. I will read anything he writes.