Writing in General

Identity is Essential

/ J.R. Roper / Leave a comment

There is something strange about creating. And the writer identity is wrought with imposter syndrome. No matter if one sets aside a specific time daily or is “too busy” to create, producing on a consistent basis is challenging. Is it writer’s block? Lack of motivation? Depression? Kids who destroy quality sleep? I’m not sure. I’ve had two painfully slow years as a writer, so I started 2020 with something different. I stopped trying to force a project and rekindled the excitement of creating something. Anything! I went back to writing what I was excited about, finishing work, and submitting for publication. I now have five pieces of work on submission with plans for more for the first quarter of the year. Despite the guarantee of rejection, the opportunity of acceptance for publication has me more motivated than ever. I feel like a writer again. And to some degree, I feel like me again. 

If you are struggling to write, try going back to the beginning. Forget about what you should be doing and focus on something you are excited to create. It might inspire you. It might help you establish daily self-discipline again. Most importantly, it might help you feel like your writerly self. You become exactly who you decide you are and taking action proves it to the most important person. You.

When to Write?

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The most common writing advice I have come across since I began writing in 2008 is write every day. Confession: I am a miserable failure following this advice.

I don’t lack the desire to write. And even with a full-time teaching job, a wife, a two-year-old son, and graduate coursework, I can find time to write. So what is it? What is my problem? Why am I not producing as I should be? Being busy is no excuse because all writers are busy.

I think the problem is scheduling. As much as I want to, I can’t get up early and write. I’m not a morning person. Mostly I’m a night writer, but during the school year, night writing is hit or miss and I often find distractions due to exhaustion. So, what to do?

When am I motivated to write and have the energy to produce? Right when school gets out! Of course, I’m tired from being on stage all day in front of students, but it’s kind of like the beginning of my personal life each day. I can grade papers and work on graduate homework at night when I’m tired and my son has gone to bed.

For now, I’m carving out an hour after school. Will this schedule be best for me in a month? Or during the summer? Maybe not. And certainly there will be days when meetings, helping students, and picking up my son will interfere. But if I want to produce I must adapt and make time for writing when it best suits my energy and motivation.

Here’s to making time to write. Best of luck, all!

Joe the Planner (I thought it was plumber…)

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I’ve been wasting loads of time trying the write “organically” and not planning my story. I finally sat down and started mapping each character’s arc and underlined where their parts were the most interesting. Now I’ve got several scenes to add and lots of junk to cut, junk that was sending me down the wrong path and has been frustrating me for the last few months. And just in time for summer! This book will be done by August, when I will start a fresh project to complete during the school year.

Planning equals productivity.

Character Intimacy

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Creating characters and listening to them as I write their stories is one of my favorite parts of the writing process. But not every character feels as intimate as the next, which begs the question–why? Quite simply, underdeveloped backstory has not allowed me to discover what really ticks off my failing character. I have not figured out what or who they resent and why.

According to dictionary.com, resentment is the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc., regarded as causing injury or insult. To feel resentment is to be human. How we react physically and emotionally when faced with the person who has injured us in some way ultimately reveals character. We can bottle our emotion and fight the battle internally, lash out at the person violently, or act anywhere in between. Resentment can eventually lead to forgiveness and healing, remain the same throughout life, or lead to acts of revenge.

Regardless of how you create characters for your stories, do not forget to consider who or what induces a negative reaction and how that will play a role in your story. It’s an easy topic to research. Just pay attention to your own feelings for a day.

Feed Your Writing Soul

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Today was supposed to be the last workshop for my group of middle school writers, but they insisted on a final meeting next week during the last week of school. Of course I said YES! They are doing a phenomenal job of writing and roundtable critiquing. Not that I expected anything less from them, but they are simply awesome.

This winter I taught them six workshops on the craft of fiction. Now we are sharing pages, reading them aloud, and providing constructive feedback. And the amazing part is the honesty and care they have been critiquing with. At ages 12-14 they are now speaking and writing with the vocabulary and insight few high school students possess. I used the acronym POV when critiquing a student’s work and by the next meeting many of them got the concept!

Why am I sharing this?

Treating people kindly (especially young people) and helping them with skills they want to improve upon will bring one more joy than one can hope to provide for others. Do something kind for someone else, it doesn’t matter whether it was planned or random. It will come back to you.

And writers, use the experience as food for your writing soul. You can bet that I’m building relationships with these young people and that the interaction will strengthen the characters in my middle grade and YA novels.

How have you combined acts of kindness with your stories? Try it! The experience will revive or maybe reawaken the sluggish muse on your shoulder.

And They’re Off

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Finally! Copies of my latest edit on Treasure Hunter Tales: The Family Legend will be in the hands of critical readers this week. I’ve been editing intensely since October after receiving feedback from a literary agent and starting another critique group. I’m extremely excited about the improvements in my writing and in the story.

Time for a final (quick) read.

What I’m working on: A polish of The Family Legend.

What I’m listening to: The dish washer.

Why I’m happy: My story is the best it has ever been.

The devil on my shoulder says: Just go to sleep and read the entire story tomorrow night!

Teens Writing Creatively

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So I wanted to give my students an opportunity that few have during middle school; the chance to learn the basics of fiction from someone who has penned a novel (or 2 in my case). I am far from an expert, but through my years of writing, editing, critiquing, reading novels, and reading about writing, I have gained valuable experience that will make their early start run more smoothly than mine did.

After six craft workshops, the students will have a writing period of a month and a half with check-in dates. Then we will come together and critique/workshop their pages and hopefully end with each one having a solid short story or first chapter of a novel.

It is extremely exciting to see kids engaged in creative writing and to provide them with guidance and advice that few middle school students have access to.

My recommendation: If you love writing, share your love with others. Join a critique group. Work with kids who also love writing and encourage their excitement. I am finding immense joy in sharing my passion of writing.

Manuscript Overhauled

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The major manuscript overhaul is complete (cheers fill the air) and with my data from the rewrite, I’ll make some important resolutions for the New Year.

1. Kill the adverb: I eliminated over 250 ly adverbs.  

2. Don’t overwrite: My manuscript is 10,700 words lighter with several useless scenes taken out. Watch out for phrases like nodded his head. He nodded is appropriate (what else can you nod?).

3. Replace the junk: Whether it’s a scene or a sentence, if it’s not your best, fix it. I rewrote more than 11,000 words. No more began to look or was looking. Make it looked.

4. Write from your main character(s) to your audience: With a thirteen-year-old male protagonist in a fantasy novel, my story will be marketed as middle grade when it sells (yes, when). I wrote the novel with the YA market in mind and without fully understanding point of view; therefore, I have a list of deleted words that wouldn’t come out of my characters mouth or enter his thoughts. Please laugh at me….

Contempt, rationalized, loathsome, nostalgia, magnitude, pronounced, zeal, subsided, dismay, subsequent, contemplated, commence, confiscating, assimilated, epiphany, improbabilities, feverishly, aggravating, periodically, reluctance, anomaly, impulsiveness, utterly, reassuringly

Stop laughing now!

5. Show, don’t tell: Exhibit A for beginning-writer-extraordinaire…Me. Yes I was telling emotion, and character qualities, and bashing my reader over the head with over-telling. I even told my reader something was a frightening phenomenon and something else unbelievably terrible. If I haven’t tickled my reader’s spine through action, emotion, and description, then I haven’t done my job as a writer. I could write a book on how bad I was at this, but I think you get the idea.

In the end, I changed thirty-three percent of the manuscript in this overhaul through deleting and rewriting and now have a 56,073 word story (from 66,798) that sounds better, flows better, and hopefully keeps readers turning pages into the night.

 More to come after I recieve reader feedback and complete a final polish.

Editing, Rewriting, Learning, Oh My!

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And I thought I knew how to edit (laughs at self). The truth is that I had no idea. I was afraid to cut words and rewrite and instead focused on being grammatically correct and proper word choice (which I still wasn’t too good at). Now I know better.

Ten chapters into my latest edit (two months of work) I have cut and rewritten at least 1000 words per chapter. If this trend continues I will have rewritten about thirty-seven percent of the novel. Add in a reader edit and a final polish and I could easily rewrite forty percent of a story I thought was complete a few months ago. A few tips if you are interested:

1. Read a good book on editing or fiction writing in general. Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell is a good resource (his book on plot and structure is also recommended). Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us by Jessica Page Morrell is also a fun and enlightening read which explains the major reasons for rejection.

2. Read your favorite book(s) in the same genre and compare your amount of description, dialogue, internalization, and action. Notice the flow, the emotion, and how quickly it reads and compare it to your story. (I read The Lightning Thief and The Sorcerer’s Stone again)

3. Take the reader with you by SHOWING them the scenes and connecting them through the characters and all five senses.

4. DON”T be afraid to cut the extra words and unnecessary information.  You’re scared of harming your baby, I know, so save your original story as is and then start a new file with your cut story. This was my biggest stumbling block, but I took the plunge and so far my story is the better for it.

Good luck and take your time.