Louise Cusack

- Advanced Writing Tips

Below are notes from a workshop I gave at the RWA National Conference in Sydney 2001.  They should prove helpful for those novelists who are beyond the beginner stage but are as yet unpublished.  Be warned, I'm a quotation girl so there are lots of quotes interspersed.

Passion, Persistence and Potent Prose Workshop

by Louise Cusack (c) August 2001

The first topic I'd like to cover is:

Passion:

But before we talk about how passionately (or not) we feel about writing, we first need to revisit why we're writing in the first place.  Is it:

1.  Because we think we'll make a lot money out of it? (reality check - the average Australian author         earns $8000 a year - don't give up your day job just yet)
2.  To see our names in print? (articles, letters to editor, magazine short stories could provide that)
3.  Because we believe we have something to say? (now we're talking about novels)
4.  We want to prove to our mother/husband/8th grade English teacher that we were right and they were wrong? (do we need to start working on validating ourselves instead of seeking it from outside?)
5.  Because we've been told that we're talented? (doesn't mean you have to do it - do you want to? )
6.  Because it's cheaper than therapy? (this is a very valid reason for writing!)

These are all reasons to become involved in writing and they're helpful motivators when things get tough, but none of them are enough to keep us writing if we're not enjoying it – if it doesn't make us feel good.

So let's look at that - feeling good about writing:

Is it the feeling of satisfaction that comes from a good day's work achieved in front of the computer, or produced by the delight of finally having your characters tell you what they want to do, or from creating a beautifully crafted line?

Whatever it is, it lights you up inside and you feel the wonder of creation – the sure knowledge that not everyone on the planet can do this.  But you can!  And in that moment it makes you feel more alive than anything else you've ever done.  THAT'S YOUR PASSION, hold tight to that and try to remember it on the days when things aren't going so well: when you're hopelessly distracted, you've had a story rejected, you mother tells you for the tenth time that you should 'stop mucking around' and concentrate on your job/children/spouse.

This is your life, not anyone else's, and unless you want to reach your deathbed with regrets weighing you down, you need to give yourself permission ASAP to do what you feel passionate about - writing.

This permission, however, is only going to work if the writer in question is committed.  So let's look at commitment as well:

What exactly is commitment, and how can we work out how much is right for us?

In life, we're only going to put as much effort into something, as we feel that 'something' warrants, whether it be a marriage, a job, or a diet.  Take a diet for example – you'd have to be more motivated to lose weight if you had your wedding coming up, than you would simply for the start of summer.  That desire to fit into your bridal gown would be what kept you munching celery while your friends were having potato wedges.  It's the same with writing.  Your motivation and commitment to writing is what keeps you at the computer when your family settles in to watch the Sunday night movie.  But it can only be as strong as your desire to write.

Beware of fixating on goals and 'success'.  If, like the dieting bride, your desire to write is goal-oriented (let's say a book accepted for publication), bear in mind that you're going to have to sustain your desire a lot longer than she is.  It can take years to reach publication standard – she's not going to be dieting that long!

If, however, your desire to write is motivated by the way writing makes you feel (special, talented, creative, passionate) – you'll have a much better chance of persisting to reach that dream of publication.  At that point you'll discover that it wasn't the glory and the "I told you so" that you needed to make you happy.  It was the quiet feeling of satisfaction that comes from sharing your story with other people and knowing it means something to them as well.  Believe me, that's worth waiting for.

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."  Sydney J Harris

On a practical note, it's hard to be passionate about your writing if it bores you, so let's also talk about boredom:

I know we've all been told to "write what you know", but if what you know is secretarial work and it bores you senseless, that boredom will permeate your work.  Instead, my advice would be to "write what you love" letting your own opinions and idiosyncrasies influence your work.  Never preach to the reader, but if you want your heroine to be a vegetarian because you are, do it unashamedly.  Your passion will imbue her actions and your 'authors voice' will be loud and clear.

Another way stories can become boring is if you know too much about the characters.  We've often been extolled to do character questionnaires before we start, detailing family history, favourite food/ clothing/ music (shoe size on one - I ask you!), however each time I've done this I've lost my curiosity about the character, and my passion for a great story idea died with it.  I got bored.

Nowadays I start with a character's appearance and a few motivations and I put them into scenes so they can interact with other characters and reveal themselves to me as they go along.  That's not to say that I don't do detailed plotting before I start, however once I do start, I prepare myself to be surprised and I very often am.  I know this 'seat-of-the-pants' method will not work for everyone, but you'll never know if it can work for you unless you try it.  Believe that the characters are real and then let them do their own thing.

It might drive you crazy but I promise, you'll never be bored.  And if you don't believe me that you can do this and get away with it, ask a few best-selling authors how they created their characters.  You'll be surprised how many memorable heroes and heroines evolved this way.

Persistence:

Mary Shelly once said, "Nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."

Persistence isn't something you're born with.  It all comes down to priorities. Some people are able to be endlessly patient and persistent in relationships (raising teenagers comes immediately to mind) because they love their offspring and want them to be happy, yet that same patient mother may not be able to persist with writing because rejection letters make her feel bad.  Never mind that her fifteen year old puts her through the wringer three times a week and that feels pretty terrible too – she's prepared to persist with her child because that relationship is worth the effort.  But writing…?  It's so time-consuming and there are so few pats on the back.

"The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves."
 Logan Pearsall Smith

What each and every one of us has to decide is, is writing worth the effort?  Knowing that we might never receive the recognition we crave, should we pour our passion into writing and struggle to get better, to get published?  Or are other facets of our lives more important?

Only you can make that decision for yourself.  But once you've made the decision to commit yourself to writing - to give yourself permission to pursue writing as a career rather than as a hobby - don't be apologetic about it.  This is your passion.  Not everyone will share it and there are likely to be family and friends who will try to talk you out of it.  Don't let them.  As stated earlier – this is your  life.  You decide how much passion to expend on your writing, your partner, children, pets, hobby and your day job if you have one.  You decide how and when you will fit those pieces of your life together.

And fitting things into your life brings me to the next section I'd like to talk about, procrastination:

Tchaikovsky called inspiration "the capricious guest".  If you wait for him to arrive, you may be waiting all day.  Most authors agree that when reading back over their work, there's not much difference between the 'inspired' day's work where the words flowed like wine, and the ordinary days where it simply 'ticked over'.  As Nora Roberts is so fond of saying, "I can work with a bad page, but I can't work with a blank page."  I can only concur.

Now I'd like to give you my most important piece of advice for becoming a successful writer:

SHOW UP

That's it.  Just show up.  Get into the habit of writing at a certain time, or for a certain time, each and every day.  Show up.  Sit at your computer (or at your desk if you write longhand) and don't allow yourself to do anything else for the period of time you're supposed to be writing – no checking emails, no computer games, no letters to friends.  Just write.  If you continue to do this, you will eventually get into 'the zone'.

This feeling differs slightly from author to author, but all seem to agree that being 'in the zone' is like a drug.  The rest of the world completely disappears and the story is very real and immediate to you.  But you can't get into the zone if you don't connect with your story on a deep level, away from distractions.  This commitment is well worth the effort, as once you're in the zone you'll need far less time to write.  In fact, the story will practically tell itself.

"When you are deeply absorbed in what you're doing, time gives itself to you like a warm and willing lover."  Brendan Francis

A daily calendar with a cumulative word count can help.  It's motivating to see how much you can get done but don't forget to list reasons why some days have no progress, that way you can see if you're 'wasting' too much time and not prioritising properly.

Potent Prose:

Publishers want something different.  They want to hear 'your voice' in your work.  They want to be not only moved by what they read, they want to be bowled over.  They're asking a lot.

But they're not asking too much.  It took me a long time - ten years in fact - to have a novel published, even though I'd written quite a few.  But once I got the right combination of skilled writing and a story I felt passionate about, my agent had no trouble selling my "Shadow Through Time" trilogy.  Those three novels are not only of publication standard, they are a really good read, and the way I did that was to write bold.  Whenever I felt uncertain about a scene or a character and was tempted to think "Ursula LeGuin would know what to do here," (which inevitably made me feel like an inept amateur), I would remember what a fellow writer had shown me - something she'd written out and stuck on her computer:

NO ONE IS MORE QUALIFIED TO WRITE THIS STORY THAN I AM.

Think about that.  You made up the story, so you are the most qualified person on the planet to tell it, no matter what your level of expertise currently is.  You absolutely have to be confident about your story or it will show.  Don't be half-arsed.  Write with passion and be over-the-top in the drafting phase.  You can always tone it down later if it's bordering into the melodramatic.  But it's much harder to inject passion into a blah manuscript.

"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."  D.H. Lawrence

I've made that sound a little too easy - writing bold - so let me warn you that it's not.  Oh, the writing part might be, but when you look back over what you've written, you'll discover that you've laid your heart bare.  You've 'unmasked' yourself and that could be the point when you might start thinking "What will my crit group/spouse/mother think?"

What we're talking about here is risk - you letting other people see into your heart and your mind via your story.  I know people who will say that if you're not prepared to take that risk you shouldn't be a writer.  I don't believe that.  Sure, the most moving writing is that in which the author has laid their soul bare, but there's also some great light-weight stuff that's not too emotionally taxing.  Just be aware that if you're not prepared to risk revealing yourself, you won't have any luck writing angst-ridden emotional pieces.  Better stick with romantic comedies or action adventure stories.

The other element of risk involved in writing is risking rejection and failure.

Ambrose Redmoon said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.”

The only way to overcome your fear is to focus on your goal (publication) rather than on your fear of failure.  Imagine that your child ran out into the traffic.  Would you be paralysed by your own fear of being hit, or would you run out without thinking, to save it?  Of course you'd go after the child without a second thought because it means so much more to you than your fear does.

If writing means that much to you, don't think about the risks, just run after it.

One of my all time favourite quotes is attributed to the NASA team involved in the Apollo 13 rescue, and it's been my own personal mantra for the past ten years:

"Failure is not an option."

It all comes down to how important writing is to you.  Once you've defined that, you'll know whether it's worth the risk.  I've been rejected steadily for ten years and the goal of being published was worth it for me.

Only you will know if it's worth it for you.

"The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore." Vincent Van Gogh.

Good luck with your writing and above all, remember to enjoy it.  Savour the excitement of your story unfolding, and laugh and cry with your characters.  If nothing else, it will keep you sane.