Why Writers Need to be Organized

We produce. 

We produce. 

And we produce some more. 

We get inspired and write; 

some things get finished, most do not. 

We set pieces aside with the intention to return to them, 

but often, 

when we try to go back, we can’t find them.

There are journals and stories and poems and growing piles of great ideas. Before we even realize what is happening, we suddenly find ourselves in a tangle of storylines, as if being choked by weeds.

Yes, weeds. 

All those things we write, no matter how great they are, become weeds when they turn into piles that cannot be deciphered. Eventually they grow up around us like an untamed garden. The very life of our work can be choked by the sheer volume of our wonderful productions. Where is that masterpiece I was working on two years ago? Where are my roses??

Let’s run with this garden and weeds imagery here for a moment – would you ever plant a tomato and a rose seed in the same hole? No. And yet, we write grocery lists and poetry in the same notebook. That’s OK, but only for a short time being. We have to maintain our garden – pull out the weeds, throw them away, and prune our vines. We have to because that is the only way visitors will want to come. And let’s be honest, don’t we ultimately want to attract “visitors” (readers)?

So rip out those old “to do” lists and throw away the ramblings that once helped to clear your head. Put finished stories in labeled folders, works in progress in easy-to-reach files, works ready to submit on top of your desk to serve as nagging reminders to send them out. Put poetry in folders categorized by themes and ideas in a special “IDEA” container.

Spend the time to do this and keep up with it regularly so your mind can be supple and sponge-like to absorb new ideas. Free up your physical space so you can free up your mind because 

a writer with a free mind is most productive!

Receiving Criticism: A Personal Story

I got a direct shot-in-the-heart kind of critique last night. Floundering with a piece of work I’ve been laboring over for years now, I submitted yet another section of it to my writing group. The piece is lacking conflict. CONFLICT! This absence of conflict stops me everything I get into a good rhythmic flow in my work. I fill my head with self-cursing babble and repetitive litanies that damn and condemn my inability to create a CONFLICT for my characters to solve. Resolved to being a loser then, I eventually put my work on a shelf and write other things instead.

Of course, it doesn’t go away; relentless visions have their way and once again, I pull it out to write some more. Before long though, my own conflict wrecks havoc on my psyche and I crumble under the weight of self-loathing.

I have been encouraged by my writing group to silence the voices in my head and keep the work out on my desk. I am trying. Still, the word CONFLICT won’t go away. It trips me and captures me and wrestles me down like a violent assault. I am not a battler; I will recede every time.

But tonight I got a different message: I have to stand up and fight one battle or another. I can fight the word CONFLICT or I can fight the internal condemnation. There is no other choice. Either way, I cannot retreat from one battle or another.

Linda’s critique was soft: she read to me from a book titled Shimmering Images by Lisa Dale Norton.

“The trick with this kind of structure [collage structure]is that each of the

shimmering Images has to explore some shared larger topic…

What happens with this collage approach is that the whole collection of little stories,

their flow, and the unspoken but implied juxtapositions and connections within that flow

take the readers to a place of greater understanding in the end.

You don’t have to tell readers what you want them to ‘get’ about your life experience.

You just show them a bunch of Shimmering Images, like a slide show of pictures”

- - Lisa Dale Norton

Sherita’s critique was a blunt-force blow like a wrestling coach throwing me back into the ring. After a tirade listing a string of conflict options, she concluded with a climax to her passion-filled voice, “it doesn’t matter! Just do it, damn it!!” We all laughed, but I felt a shift in my brain as I saw the villain in my head put down his megaphone.

“OK!” I said. And I meant it.

Thank you, writers, Thank You!

Editing: Expand

Sometimes we write out all we have to say and yet, it falls flat. There are several possible reasons for this, a major one being passion (or a lack of it), but first let’s just consider clarity and how you can expand your writing to make it come alive. (I think I’ll talk about passion in a separate blog.)

In this discussion on editing, we are going to play with strategies for expansion.

Description plays a major role in writing. You want your readers to experience something, not sit in a lecture hall and be told something. So as you write, you need to place yourself in the setting and experience it for the first time. As you actually experience the message in your writing, it will flow out of your mind and onto the paper so that your readers can also journey along with you.

I think that description is the first place to look at a piece of writing that you want to expand. So let’s start there.

Take a piece of writing you have already created and start by noting the word count. Our goal will be to double that. 1500 words is a good size for this activity.

Now, take a colored pen and circle all the nouns. Take another colored pen and circle all the verbs. With a third color, make notes in the margins to identify noun-like phrases and whole pieces of action.

Begin working through your piece taking one noun or noun phrase at a time and analyzing its presentation. Consider all the senses: Can you see it clearly? What sounds does it make or conjure up in your mind? What sort of smell would make it more vivid? Even inanimate objects have aspects that ignite feelings and emotions. Tap into those feelings. Taste is a difficult one, but can certainly be associated with even unlikely nouns. For example, disgust or deceit may be described as “bitter”. Then take that a step further – does the deceit of a lover cause a hot belch to explode in the back of the throat leaving the bitter taste of bile on the tongue?

Don’t hold back with the words and images that come to mind for fear of being disgusting or shocking or whatever. Instead, play with exaggerations as you bring each of your nouns to life. Be corny or silly; be horrifyingly shocking. It’s all OK, even necessary, as you trust your talent to breathe life into your work.

After you have gone through the nouns, do the same with the verbs. Add adjectives and adverbs before them; add more sentences full of more verbs that work like arrows pointing to the main action creating a choreography of movement in your scene. Even if it is a quiet, still scene you want to create, there are a thousand plus more ways to describe that.

Next, rework the whole piece adding and changing, expanding images and actions. Count the words and see if you doubled the count. Did you add even more than that? Then sit on it for a week before you reread it.

A week later, get comfortable and read your new work. Isn’t it fantastic!?

Editing: Try This – Cutting

Take something you have already written and rewrite it with half as many words. Start with something that is around 1500 words and cut it down to 750.

It is difficult to cut out pieces of your writing to meet a particular word count limit, yet it is often necessary. What you learn to do as you practice the cutting aspect of editing is to clearly identify what it is you want to say.

When you first begin to cut, it seems that everything is important and you may feel anxious about taking information away from your readers. As you struggle with this, you are forced to clarify, simplify, be more direct, specific, and concise.

The first step is to identify the subject, problem and solution of a piece of work. Summarize it in one or two sentences. Next, identify statements that support each of those aspects. List them in columns headed subject; problem; and solution. Then order the supporting statements according to importance: what bits of information and ideas are absolutely necessary to make your point? What is interesting? What is complimentary, but not exactly essential? What can you let go? Order these on your list.

Reread the piece of writing and see if you can combine two or more pieces of information in one sentence. Cut out some adverbs and adjectives (but not all of them!), and cut anything not relevant to your main storyline.

Put the two pieces aside and in about a week, return to them and read the shorter version first. Make final edits to insure it accurately expresses your idea and intention. Then you can finally read the longer one, your original, to see if all that extra verbiage really makes a difference or not. Keep to your word limit and work with the shorter one until it satisfies your intentions.

Write Before You Speak!

How many great ideas have you had that never get written? Like a first impression, inspiration really only gets one chance. That’s why I’m a firm believer in selfishly hoarding and protecting all great ideas! I never share them, no matter how excited I am when they pop into my head.

I have found over the years that if I talk about an idea before I write it, it requires tremendous labor to put it on the page. And then, once written, I’m stunned by its crappy appearance. It’s dry, dull, dead. It’s stilted, stale. And there is no return, not way to go back and redo it. No amount of scratching, waiting, editing, or rewriting will ever bring back the charm and magic of that initial great idea.

When editing another writer’s work, I do so with questions. “What do you mean here?” “What does this feel like?” “What is the character thinking now?” “Why…?” Inevitably the author wants to tell me all about it, right then and there as soon as they see my questions. I understand this desire. It’s only natural. We writers spend so much time in isolation that it’s really hard to resist the energy that flows between two passionate souls. And when it comes to our writing, yeah, our souls are unleashed in a playground of passions.

But hold back! Grab the passion and run to your favorite hide-out where you can break free – totally free – like belting out your favorite rock songs in the shower. Run! Bunker down! And Write!

These are not rhetorical questions, however. I really do want the author to answer them. In fact, I hope that the questions inspire elaborate answers that then trigger more questions! Play with the ideas; play with the words; play to your heart’s content, but for now, play alone!

Whatever you do, don’t answer any questions about your work with words that speak through your voice! Use instead the silent words inside your head, the words that can only come alive on the blank page. Trust me, these words are much better than the words that stumble out of your mouth.

If you want to be a writer, write first and speak last (or, in some cases, don’t speak at all). If you want to be a writer, shut up, sit down, and WRITE!