One of my weak points in writing is putting the sequel before the scene, or the reaction before the action.  A very basic example of this is having the person jump, startled, and then door slams open.  Rather than having the door slam open and then the person jump.  I think the reason for this is that subconsciously I feel I am startling the reader as well as the character, by not clueing the reader into what is happening.  In other words, if I have the character react first, I somehow think that is going to make the action have more impact.

Of course it doesn’t work that way.  Instead it is like those sudden moments when you are left thinking, ‘hey, what just happened?  what did I miss?’.  I certainly don’t want to leave a reader feeling like they’ve missed something.  So why do I consistently write this mistake into my stories, and then spend an inordinate amount of time editing them back out?

In my mind, the action has already happened, and I’m more interested in how the character is going to react, and what’s going to happen next.  My fingers can’t write as fast as my brain sees the action scene and so I skip ahead.  Well, that sounds good, but in reality I don’t even think about it.  I write blithely away, and then wait for my friend, fellow writer and editor, Susan, to point out the areas in her very gentle way.  She usually prefaces this with a compliment to make it hurt less.  But still, compliments aside, I cringe because I’m repeating the same mistake.

Will I learn?  Probably not while I’m in the midst of writing.  But hopefully my eye will be trained to start catching it before I send it off for a kind friend to find kind ways to say I did it again.  Meanwhile I’m going to return to that manuscript and do some editing.

What are your weak points in writing that you struggle with?  Why do you think you make those mistakes, and how do you plan to change?  And finally, are those mistakes truly mistakes or are they bending the rules to create a fresh new voice, add a unique twist, enhance your story, or build your character?  Sometimes breaking the rules benefits the story.  But I suppose that’s a subject for another day.

Many years ago I attended the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference.  This was shortly after starting to peek out of the closet and admit that I was a writer.  As anyone knows who has attended this conference, it is huge.  So there I was, a timid writer, listening to the crowds around me talking about their novels, their manuscripts, their synopses, the difficulty of making their pitches.  Right next to me was one young woman, very excited, telling a friend she had pitched a magazine article and it had been bought on the spot.

I sat in the back of the panel discussions, as close to the door as I could get, terrified I would be expected to produce something.  I felt like an imposter.  I left devastated.  I created O-Pen writer’s group shortly thereafter, in order to have a place that was safe and non-threatening for writers like me, just toddling out into the world. 

I didn’t attend another conference until a couple of years ago when I went to the Idaho Writer’s Conference that was held in Wallace, Idaho that year.  I went because I was writing a mystery set in Wallace, loved the town, and could add research to the time spent there.  I had tons of fun. 

What made the difference?  For starters, the size.  The Idaho conference was limited to a set number of participants.  The panel discussions felt intimate and safe.  No speakers demanded that you write something and read it out loud, like a few at the Pacific conference did.  The milling about in the lobby consisted of writers  anxious to talk to others about the excitement of writing, not their latest sale.  It felt like a supportive environment.  I’m sure the Pacific conference is like that, too, and my initial reaction was because of my newbie status and lack of self-confidence.  Some day I might attend again, just to see how I respond as the person I am now.  Although it is very expensive.

Stephen King, when talking about conferences in his book, On Writing, asked if we really need to have a name tag on our chest that reads ‘writer’ in order to feel like one.  I loved his comment, and it made me feel like I could be a writer even if I never went back to a conference.  In spite of that, though, these small ones can be beneficial.  Have you attended writer’s conferences, and what reactions did you have?  What benefits did you receive? 

Anyway, today I registered for the Write on the Sound conference, held in Edmonds, WA, in view of the Puget Sound.  Enrollment is limited to 200 people.  I am excited about going, even though it doesn’t happen until the end of September.  But I have learned that these small conferences work for me, that they don’t crush my writer’s self-esteem, and that I can relax and learn.  Not to mention visits with other writers.  Small, intimate, educational, and respectful of all level of writers.  That’s my recipe for being able to attend with confidence, and walk away excited to be part of the writing family.

Thinking about the recent post regarding members of my writer’s group has made me think a little more about the writer’s path. So I wanted to add a postscript to the previous post.

Quite a while ago I read a book on writing that I believe was actually called The Writer’s Path.  To be honest I wasn’t too impressed and felt the whole book would have been stronger as an article.  It seemed like there was a lot of repetition.  But one thing that stuck with me was when the authors compared the writer’s path to musical chairs.  They drew an image of a circle of chairs and writers sinking down onto the chair that was right for them at that moment.  They talked about beginner writers and polished writers, but they said that we revisit that beginner writer chair every time we start a new piece.  Hence the circle of chairs rather than a linear path.

I believe that to be true.  There are two beginner writers in us.  The one when we are first starting out as a writer, and the one we become each time we face a new, unknown, unwritten story.  As we move along in our writer’s life we of course collect tools to improve.  In that way we leave the beginner behind and grow into that intermediate writer.  But when we start that new piece, our tool belt hangs on the back of our chair until we have faced that new beginning.

When I talked about the members in the writer’s group in the previous post, I’m not sure I was clear enough about what I was thinking.  A beginning writer means so much more than simply someone new to the craft itself.   Each word we place in our story is a symbol of both the growth of the writer and the growth of the piece, from beginning, through  middle, to end.

I suppose that means that after ending the story as a confident, polished writer, we must walk away from the story, bury ourselves in the editing process, and then resurrect ourselves in the next, brand new beginning.  Interesting.  I’ve thought of writing as beginning, middle, end, but never as birth, life, rebirth.  Makes the craft of writing sound mighty lofty doesn’t it?

Anyway, just wanted to add a further thought on what it means to be a beginner at writing.  At least for me.