Ah, those lofty New Year’s resolutions. For many of us, if written down, they’d make great birdcage liners by February. Unfortunately, I no longer have a birdcage and the hens prefer wood shavings.
I’m pleased to say I’ve learned a thing or three in the nearly sixty years (gulp) I’ve been alive. One thing I’m finally accepting is life is a marathon, not a sprint. Another thing I hold to be true is that one tiny, inconsequential decision, good or bad, can change your life.
Case in point: Many moons ago, I saw a notice in the local paper for a writing workshop. This was before I started writing in earnest and was just playing around and had less than a clue what I was doing. I almost talked myself out of attending due to a combination of introvert tendencies and fear of the unknown, i.e. real writers. Who’s to say how my life would have evolved if I’d hesitated? I did go, discovered a whole new world, and now have good friends and a strong support network. One two-hour meeting of an RWA chapter slowly and gradually (that marathon thing) changed my life. I believe my evolution as a writer hasn’t ended, but I feel stuck. I’ve set goals for this year, both writing and non-writing, but they’re similar to last year and the year before, and the year before that. I need another “two-hour meeting”, except it’s not safe to breathe the air of a bunch of strangers for that long!
Funny story. I was scrolling through my Kindle the other night/early morning when Mother Nature’s furnace woke me and I couldn’t get back to sleep. And what did I find? A whole bunch of unread or partially read writing craft books that I’d been excited to buy but never got around to reading. I’ve decided that this year’s writing “two-hour meeting” is the challenge of reading and absorbing one of those books per month. I even created a page in my planner to keep track. Perhaps I’ll learn something that will be life-altering, or at least settle once and for all where the blasted commas go.
5 comments:
What a great idea, Luanna. Those challenges will provide information and inspiration for the year. (And don't worry--most of us don't know where those blasts commas go either!)
LOL, thanks Lynn, I'm glad I'm not the only one.
Hats off you to, Luanna. You've mastered the colon, semi-colon conundrum. As for me, how many "just" can you have in a 100K word manuscript? Just pop in any of the "weasel words" that writers spend hours and days if not weeks rewriting to eliminate ... is there a difference? In other words is it a "it depends" situation?
Those craft books can be helpful, even if you did already read them. The thing about writing craft is that you can never take in all of it at once. The brain just goes into overload. So, when learning a technique, you take in what you can and start using it in your writing. But then you forget there were fifteen other things to learn as well.
One way to identify your peccadillos (and I don't mean weasel words or the comma vs semicolon) is to have a knowledgeable person to a developmental edit for your book. That is where you learn what really matters--character, pacing, structure, arc, themes, setting, dialog. If you have all those down, it won't matter if you goofed on a few punctuation places or used the word "lovely" fifteen times.
Readers forgive small errors if the story is good. It the story is not good--doesn't satisfy their expectations--it doesn't matter how beautiful your prose is or perfect the proofreading. I'm 26 books in. My first reader is a developmental editor. She ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS finds things that can be improved. It is true that she doesn't find as many as she did when I was only on book three. But there is still something that can make a difference.
Just my two cents on craft.
Maggie, I smiled reading your comment therefore your two cents on craft is priceless!
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