First Impressions

May 7, 2011December 22, 2014 / Lisa / 4 Comments

Margie Lawson has this great technique for editing your work called the EDITS System. A person can go to her website and download her seminars for a very reasonable price, and the course comes by email or as Word documents so you can print them out and go through them at your leisure. The theory is great, the reality less so.

EDITS teaches you how to assign highlighter colors to things like dialog, description, action, etc. When you edit your work, you take the pages, highlight, and then lay the paper out. It’s a great, immediate visual to see where you have too much or not enough. I learned a lot from her course on this and would recommend the copyrighted course with the following reservations.

Margie must be a powerful speaker in person as her energy shines through on the pages. Lots of smiley faces, LOL acronyms, and exclamation points. I felt exhausted after reading. I also found them distracting and at times, immature, as if I was spending time with a teenager and cell phone.

Distractions that eventually resulted in me deciding not to order any more courses from her, no matter how much I learned, included the errors of misspelled words, grammar mistakes, and typos. Lots and lots of them. It was obvious that someone typed them up totally ignoring the little red underlined words. And then never took a moment to read through the document before presenting it, breaking one of the first laws of writing. If something was submitted to an agent or publisher with that many mistakes, it would have been tossed. Plus, it leaves the impression that if she didn’t care enough about the material to edit it, why should I care enough to pay for it? And I have to admit, being tight with money, that it annoyed me to pay for something that didn’t feel professional.

The course was many pages long, but as I got into the material I realized it could have been condensed down to at least half that, because the majority of the course was using other writer’s stories as examples. A few would have been perfect, but pages and pages of them became almost as distracting as the typos.

And yet with all these serious problems, I did learn from her system and I use it when I sit down for a first read through, for first rough impressions of chapters. I love the visual aspect of the highlighter system, and Margie is very correct when she explains that dialog, for example, should be broken up with bits of internalizations, body language, senses, and so forth. I’m glad I paid for the course, I’ll continue to use it, but I doubt I’d purchase another from her because the quality of work simply sets my editing teeth on edge. And after that sentence Margie would type, ‘Cliche Alert!!!’

I live and learn and write and grow as a writer, no matter the quality of the materials I learn from. In spite of first, last, and continuing impressions. And one of the things I’ve learned from Margie is the importance of those first impressions.

This is Such a Chore

May 3, 2011 / Lisa / 8 Comments

During the process of resurrecting writing from wherever it went, my oncologist told me to think of it as a chore. I had told him that by the time I finished with the day’s chores, I was exhausted and too empty to write. So he suggested that I add it to my list of chores, and give it a time that it had to be done. For example, at eight at night I tell myself, now it’s time for the task of writing. If I think of it as something I have to do rather than something I want to do, then it feels less like a selfish act. I know it’s all semantics but it did help start the words flowing. Well, at least trickling.

It reminds me of a quote from author Karen E. Peterson, who wrote a book called The Write Type. She said ‘We get 168 hours every week and if you only give the world 167 hours, no one’s likely to notice.’ She then followed that with, ‘If writing is relegated to the last thing on your list you haven’t learned to respect or cherish yourself as a writer enough to make writing an integral part of your life.’

Ouch. That makes me squirm.

It also makes me wonder how I define myself. When asked what I do or who I am, I rarely answer ‘writer’. Instead I list my job running a town, or talk about my husband or son, or where I live. Why is that? Well, because I can’t move past the feeling that writing is a selfish act. And do I want to be known as someone who is selfish? Someone who leaves dirty dishes to go write? Someone who doesn’t fix dinner for the son, to work on that chapter? Of course I don’t. In spite of the fact that my husband does dishes and my son cooks. Well, actually, he can microwave. The point is, I don’t define myself by describing something that is a deep part of my soul, that gives me peace, that has been part of me as long as I can remember.

This makes me question what it takes to be selfish for an hour each night, without guilt. Well, maybe the ‘without guilt’ part is asking too much. Maybe the question is, what does it take to write in spite of guilt. I haven’t figured out the answer yet. But one thing I have figured out is that writing at night is much harder now. It used to be my favorite, and most productive, time. But now I prefer writing on Fridays, after the son leaves for school and before the husband gets up. I know it’s only one day, but that’s not saying I don’t find other moments to write. It’s just that this is a scheduled time. And it works in spite of chores and guilt because I can tell myself I can write while he sleeps because any chores will make too much noise and wake him up. See? I’m still having to justify writing time.

So yes, I force myself to write and call it a chore, and justify it in the mornings by calling it a quiet chore. But whatever works, right?

It’s a Mystery

April 21, 2011 / Lisa / 4 Comments

I’ve been chafing under the mystery genre for a while now. Don’t get me wrong, I love mysteries. Reading and writing them. But lately I’ve had a hard time finding new authors because when I read the jacket blurb, they feel too formulaic. In reading the short blurb I can tell exactly how the story is going to go and no longer feel the need to read the book. That’s not true of all of course, just many. It’s almost as if the mysteries out there these days are falling into the ‘Harlequin’ of the mystery genre. You know, the author looks up the required template, changes the names and the book is written.

I’m starting to wonder if that chafing feeling means it’s time to stretch as a writer and try something new. The problem is, I can’t switch to a genre that I don’t read and am not familiar with. At least that’s the common school of thought. Plus, I still love mysteries, and anxiously await new ones from my favorite authors. Which then begs the question, what is it about the formula mysteries that bugs me?

Something awful happens, the woman gets involved, a man shows up to help or hinder, becomes a romantic conflict, there’s a big drama where she almost dies, either saves herself or the guy saves her, and then she solves everything.

If that’s the basic premise of most mysteries, and the basics are bugging me, then maybe the problem is not switching genres, but figuring out how to take some of those elements and turn them on their head. Not a unique idea, I know. Some of the best mystery writers do just that. The problem for me is figuring out how to accomplish that, without copying someone else, and with still keeping the story uniquely mine.

And doesn’t that boil down to the basic problem for all writers? How to create a story that is original, unique, and alive, when there are only so many basic story structures out there? I’m thinking in particular of the structure of The Hero’s Quest, which is where almost all mysteries get their underlying plot structure.

Maybe the problem isn’t me getting bored with the mystery books out there. Maybe it’s actually me getting bored with my writing. Not with writing, but with my skill level. Maybe that chafing feeling is actually the need to grow as a writer.

Mystery solved.