Tag Archives: Writing

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Writing Without Shame

Last week, a book I requested arrived at my library. I can’t remember who suggested the book, but I’m glad I paid attention. The book, Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing by Les Edgerton, has caused me to mentally shout YES! several times, and I’m only a third done reading it.

Because I haven’t read the whole book, I can’t say I’ll agree with all Edgerton has to say, but I want to share something that made me put the book down and start writing this post.

I used to rail against the writing rules a lot around here. As a newbie writer, I tried to obey most of them. With more experience, I learned to follow what worked for me and ignore what didn’t, but there was one rule I felt conflicted about every time I bucked it.

Ever since I decided to write seriously with the aim of publication, I’ve read one particular bit of writing advice consistently. Write fast. Get the story down. Don’t worry about it being a sh**ty first draft, you’ll fix it later.

That Fast First Draft advice has always horrified me. Truly. Horrified. It’s so at odds with my nature that I think I’d rather quit writing than write that way. So, I don’t write fast first drafts. That’s a Writing Rule I never obeyed, but the advice to do so is so prevalent, I questioned whether something was wrong with my brain.

Not so, says Edgerton. That advice doesn’t work for him either. He says:

All my instincts told me this was the wrong approach for my own prose. Rushing ahead, getting stuff down just felt wrong. What I wanted to do was find the perfect word for what I was trying to say before continuing. I had this uneasy feeling in my stomach that I’d forget to change it if I went on. Even if I marked it. I just wouldn’t be able to recapture what I was feeling or “seeing” then. I got a feeling I ignored, but one I should have paid attention to. I’ll bet you’ve experienced the same thing, at least occasionally. You know what you’re doing is “by the book”, but it just doesn’t feel right.

Trust those feelings! Your wonderful, smart, cool, learned mind is telling you something important. Pay attention to it.

EXACTLY! If I don’t get the sentence, the paragraph, the scene down at least 90% right the first time, it’s likely I’ll lose the “magic”. I know this because it happens nearly every time I leave myself a “fix this” note and push on.

The popularity of NaNoWriMo, in addition to most blogs and books for writers, tells me that Les Edgerton and I are in the minority on this, but that won’t nag me any longer. I’m relieved. There’s nothing wrong with my brain—at least, not in this instance. :-) I will hold my head up while I write in my slow and precise way. The only “wrong” way to write is the one that doesn’t work.

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Two fences, three dogs, and one literary journal

It’s a holiday weekend, so I’ll keep this post light and breezy—like Spring. Speaking of breezy, it’s been more than breezy on this side of the valley lately. Unfortunately (for every reason except shade), we have two gargantuan sycamore trees in our back yard that love to drop sizeable limbs on our roof, so it’s been a boomrattleshake month.

Last month, we had a real guster that took down our ancient privacy fence. How weird to see our neighbors’ back yards. I grew up with back yards separated by waist-high wire fences. Neighbors had no outdoor privacy. They spoke to each other, which was good or bad depending on the neighbor. Anyway, we have a bright new six-foot high board fence now. Fort Lewis is secure once again.

The strong new fence comes at a good time because we are dog-sitting three dogs for the next week. Three. 3. The dogs are a family, so at least we don’t have to deal with canine territorial wars—though I suspect our cat is planning a bombing mission. When our Lizzie was still alive, we had two dogs in the house when we sat for our son’s dog, but three is a first. Let’s hope I survive this adventure.

If you were around here in January, you may remember that I announced Vine Leaves Literary Journal had published a vignette of mine—without the last line. The editors apologized, of course, and promised to reprint it in the next issue. Well, that issue is out now, and it’s a lovely mixture of vignettes, poetry, artwork, and photography, so check it out here:  Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Issue 2.

Happy Easter, however you celebrate it!

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My decision to quit writing

Last week, I had lunch with two other writers and came home totally depressed. I don’t blame them. They didn’t do or say anything directly to bottom me out. As I listened to them speak, I realized I felt disconnected from their world. That night I told my husband I’d decided to quit writing. He told me to sleep on it.

For four days I didn’t write a word, not even a blog post. Instead, I read. And I played a lot of games on Facebook. At first, that felt weird. I was anxious. By the end of the second day, I relaxed. It felt right not to be writing. I could just walk away. Let it go.

On the third day, I realized I’d returned to the way I’d told stories for most of my life— in my head. I continued with the story I’d been trying to force into a novel for months. It flowed without effort. I enjoyed it. But not until late on the fourth day did I actually “hear” the story, and when I did, I knew why I’d quit working on the version for publication.

Let’s back up a bit.

I’d been writing that novel in my head for months before I sat down to begin entering it into a Word file, so I wrote the first few chapters quickly. I opened with a short chapter in third person past tense  and then moved to first person present tense (FPPT) for the next chapters because that was the way I “heard” the main character’s voice. I would use three short third-past chapters spaced throughout the book, but the bulk would be in first-present.

Then I read that most current novels for the adult market are written in third-past, and a first person novel is hard to write well, and present tense is tiring or boring or some other negative for the reader. I questioned my wisdom. I revised. I changed all the chapters to the “best” person and tense. I pushed on.

I wrote a couple of chapters more, and then got distracted by other projects. I wrote another chapter of the novel, and then I worked on something more pressing. I wrote a paragraph or two for the novel, and then I got this great idea and worked it into a short story. I wrote a few words on the novel, and then … and then … and then I gave up on it.

I stopped writing the novel. I stopped writing. Period.

Why? Well, it seems if you stop listening to your character’s voice, eventually that character stops speaking to you. She says, “You don’t like the way I’m telling this story? Fine. Tell it without me.”

Silly me.

Do over. Stop being a sheep. Revise the revision. Start listening again. Write.

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How do you punctuate after a terminal ellipsis?

We tackled this question with the em dash in the last post, so this time let’s turn our attention to the terminal ellipsis. Like many writers, I use an ellipsis at the end of a line of dialogue to indicate the character’s voice trails off. Since this leaves the sentence unfinished, it seemed logical to me not to use any end punctuation. Like this: “I love you, but …”

As I read, I noted the terminal ellipsis used with and without punctuation. I’ve only recently begun to use punctuation with such an ellipsis, but I’m waffling. It just seems odd to punctuate an unfinished sentence.

The book that sparked my previous post also sparked this one. I thought I’d finally learned the rules about using punctuation after an ellipsis, but I saw something in that book, I’d never run across in reading. The author used a dialogue tag after the ellipsis, so she used a comma. Like this example:  “I love you, but …,” she said.

That looked odd to me, so I immediately started searching some of my work to see if I had omitted the comma in such instances. I discovered that apparently I’ve never used a dialogue tag after a terminal ellipsis. Of course, I pulled books off my shelves and continued my search.

One of the writers I checked used a dialogue tag without a comma. Another didn’t use dialogue tags, but did sometimes continue the sentence with an action after the trailing off speech, and in those instances, she did use a comma after the ellipsis.

What about the use of other punctuation with a terminal ellipsis? Some writers use the ellipsis to indicate trailing off speech with no punctuation. Some do use punctuation. One of the writers I checked, Anne Tyler, uses punctuation only sometimes—and I’m annoyed that I can’t figure out her rule for that!

To muddy the waters more, even writers who do use punctuation after the ellipsis don’t all agree on its placement—before or after the ellipsis. When I researched this in the past, I read a rule that said if the completed sentence would have been a statement, place a period before the ellipsis. If it would have been a question or an exclamation, place the appropriate punctuation mark after the ellipsis. (I don’t remember that they explained this difference.)

In my recent search, I found two authors who used punctuation with a terminal ellipsis when they used no dialogue tag. Anne Tyler, who used it only sometimes, placed the period before, but the question mark or exclamation point after the ellipsis. Joyce Carol Oates, who punctuated always, placed all marks before the ellipsis.

I know we should all be conservative in our use of the ellipsis, but when we do use it at the end of a line of dialogue, it seems the rule is up for grabs. We have:

“I love you, but …”

“I love you, but. …”

“I love you, but …,” she said.

“I love you, but …” she said.

“You love me, but …?”

“You love me, but? …”

Okay folks, surely you have an opinion on this one, so please share. Do you use an ellipsis to indicate trailing off in dialogue? Do you use punctuation with that? If so, where do you place that punctuation?

UPDATE: In the comment to this post, someone posted a link  to Grammar Girl’s advice on punctuation with an ellipsis. She quoted The Chicago Manual of Style, but the ellipsis use she cited was mostly to indicate words left out of quoted material. When I googled for the CMOS take on the trailing off ellipsis in dialogue, I found this in their online Q&A: If you use the ellipsis merely to indicate a voice or thought trailing off, you would not use the period with it: “I’m not sure . . .” [http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Punctuation/Punctuation03.html]

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How do you punctuate after a terminal em dash?

A particular use of punctuation jumped out at me as I read a recently published book.

In general, I observe punctuation rules, so I’d like to know if the one used in this book follows an old rule, a new rule, or a house style. I question whether it’s a house style though–unless those change depending on the author—because I have books published by the same house in which this particular style is not used.

EM DASH — This author, as many of us do, used an em dash to indicate interrupted speech. But what struck me was a difference in the punctuation used after that dash. For instance, I would write such a sentence this way:

“I couldn’t possibly let you—”

“Let me? Let me!” His outrage jerked him to his feet. “Since when do I require your permission?”

But if those lines appeared in this book, the first would have been punctuated this way:

“I couldn’t possibly let you—.”

“Let me? Let me!” His outrage jerked him to his feet. “Since when do I require your permission?”

You’ll notice the period after the em dash. I’ve since pulled novels off my shelves searching for sentences with interrupted speech. I haven’t found one yet that duplicates this author/editor’s construction.

Am I behind the times or have I, and countless other authors, been doing it wrong all along?

Your turn: Please tell me, how do you punctuate after a terminal em dash?

(See my next post on using punctuation with the terminal ellipsis.)

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One question too many?

Lately, I’ve spent more time thinking about writing than I have writing. Though exactly what I’m thinking about is probably not what you imagine. I’m questioning why. Why do I write fiction? Why does anyone?

Non-fiction has an obvious reason to be. What is the purpose of fiction? Would you say it exists to explore the human condition? To illustrate the beauty and complexity of language? To convey universal truths? Would you say those reasons best describe literary fiction?

So then, what of commercial fiction. Is this fiction meant to simply entertain? Does it matter that it’s only a temporary thrill, fright, mystery, heart throb? So what if none of these books will ever be deemed a classic, they serve a purpose, right?

Of course, many books fall in-between those two categories. Every book has its readers . And with the ease of self-publishing nowadays, all authors have the opportunity to share their stories. They don’t need permission. They’ve deemed readers as the gatekeepers now. Should they have?

I question why I write, why I think my stories have any reason to exist outside my own head. Is it an act of hubris to foist my imaginings on others? Who am I to take such a step? Who am I?

Forgive me for thinking aloud in this post. I’m not seeking affirmation. I’m just wondering. And I’m thinking this is something I should have questioned long before now. Don’t you think?

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The first rule of blogging

A week ago, I wrote a post titled Writing without writing, which is possible to do, but is it possible to blog without blogging? I’ll answer that question. The first rule of blogging is—you have to blog! You have to write something. Words, if possible.

If you’re keeping track, (humor me) you know I’m not doing so well at blogging. We’re two weeks into the month and I’m three posts behind. My mind is blank—well, no, it’s not blank, but nothing on my mind right now is a topic worthy of blogging about. Um … like now. (That was ninety-seven words about nothing, if you want to keep track.)

Hey, here’s an idea—I’ll blame it on Leap Year. Yeah, that’s it. The extra day in February threw the earth off its axis … or something. Threw me off my axis, maybe. That explains my recent equilibrium problem quite nicely. It’s hard to think straight when you’re staggering around.

Oh ho! Then we had that time change thing, doncha know. I was rudely flung forward an hour into the future. Seems that could mess with your brain, don’t you think? I mean, what could have happened in that hour I missed? I’ll never know. That question will haunt me for the rest of my life.

(Add 107 more useless words on your abacus.)

Do I need mention the weather? Weird, aint’ it? We only toyed with winter here, and now we’ve flung open the door to spring. When the natural progression gets disrupted, I wander off track, whistling aimlessly. Only I’m not, because I can’t seem to pucker like I used to.

So, yeah. I was supposed to be cleaning while I wrote without writing, but sadly, I haven’t accomplished much on that front. I did write a couple scenes for the new novel, but given my state of being, they’re probably nonsense. Maybe I could use them in Words With Friends.

May your days be balanced and productive, friends.

(Total worthless words: 322 … and now you know how to blog without saying anything.)