Through writing and critiques come improvement and success.

Mistake number one was the internet connection.  I can’t stress to you enough how important it is to have a distraction free environment while writing.  I’m not new to this by any means, but there I was, telling myself that I’d only use my internet connection for good!  I’d just research the stray word or idea or two and thus add believability and extra dimension to my work.  Yeah, right.  It wasn’t an hour before I was surfing Craigslist personal ads for a cheap laugh and posting status updates on facebook.  I tell you, I don’t care how disciplined you are, you are undermining yourself if you don’t disable that connection before you sit down to write.  Here’s my argument, and then I’ll move on:  There is research time and editing time and writing time and these are very different stages.  If you try and combine them, you’ll get bogged down.  Even if you are the perfect soldier and won’t stray from looking up information important to you story, you’ll still find that you’ve cut your speed in half.  If you have a question while working, write it in the document and flag it.  Come back to it later.  Just keep pushing on and get those words on paper.

Mistake number two was not having a window I could see out or open.  I think its important to be able to look up every once and awhile.  No one is a machine.  If you try and just write for hours on end, you’ll either fail, or end up with list-like stories.  “She went to the table.  She sat at the table.  She ate a meal.  It was good.”  A window is a good way to quickly center yourself when you find your speed flagging.  Just a quick glance up and you can reconnect with the real world.  Open it up, and you can experience new smells and the stray voices of other humans wafting in on a gentle breeze.  I wouldn’t really know because the dumpster is sadly close to my window.

Mistake number three was assuming that posters on the wall or mini desk gongs was going to make me a better writer.  I honestly may have put too much effort into my nook.  While several of my stories now prominently feature gongs, cats hanging from branches, and eagles in the sky, I can positively say, that these items have proven a shallow inspiration.  As I said earlier, a window is about all you need, because the view changes every day.

My last mistake was the chair I chose.  It reclines, it’s cushy, it have a cup holder, I assumed it was the writer’s dream chair!  Well, dream chair is right, I found myself slipping off into a sort of stupor where I was scrolling through what I’d already written and didn’t really produce anything new.  Office chairs go in an office, recliners go in the living room.  Your posture directly effects your mood and your attitude.  Sit in a comfortable, yet upright position while you write, or risk losing concentration and focus easier.

Anyway, I hope this helps for any of you who are looking to create a perfect space for writing!

I am of the firm belief that the definition of a writer is someone who writes. To illustrate this, I’m going to go down the list of stages for a writer, each of which I believe should be celebrated completely and with much chocolate.

Ahem, to be a writer, one must:

1. Write. Put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, Daydreaming is not enough, outlining is not enough. Start that story, and you are a writer.

2. Finish something. First the draft, and then the edited work. Celebrate both the finish of the draft and the finish of the edits. I think this is where most people stall out. Once a writer finishes this stage, she develops staying power, and the will to finish another work and then another. Putting The End on something is critical. Some people switch this with number three.

3. Show your work to someone. There are people who edit as they write, before they finish, and those people sometimes reach number three before number two. I don’t recommend this, though, as I believe it slows the creative process and can even prevent someone from finishing a project. However, whether you edit as you write or whether you finish a draft and then edit, you must show your work to someone after you have edited. Here you begin to take criticism. Let’s hope you take it well. ^_^

4. Show your work to other writers. Sometimes people skip this step, instead showing their work to friends and family, but unless your friends and family are writers, they can’t give you a writer’s perspective. This is why writing groups (whether online or in person) are vital to a writer’s career, IMO. Here is where a writer really begins to absorb critiques. Other writers can help with grammar or plot or continuity in a way that family or friends might not be able to. They also can give you more precise critiques which you can then filter, deciding which to take and which to discard. This will all thicken your skin for the inevitable submission rejection to follow.

5. Craft a query letter and a synopsis and submit. With writing comes a fear of completion. Once you’ve finished a work, people (mostly those other writers you’ve met) will expect you to do something with your writing. You’ll expect yourself to do something, and the submission process can be terrifying. You’ll get rejected. It’s a fact of life, and dealing with those rejections can be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. It is here that a writer finally begins to separate self from work. The showing of the work to other people and other writers stages help this, but not totally. In the submission stage, the writer must see her work as something outside herself if she is to come through with ego intact. I think this is where the second largest group drops out. They’ve finished a work, they’ve made it this far, but they get rejected ten times or twenty times and then give up, thinking they’re no good and not realizing that even successful writers might have been rejected hundreds of times before the next step.

6. Attain publication or representation. And here’s the crapshoot part of our program, the part that takes luck as well as hard work and dedication. I’ve been published in a magazine, but I’ve yet to crack representation. I’ll still lump them in here together because they’re equally hard. Also, people who are at the first step are as much writers as those here at number six. And it’s important to remember that the process repeats all over again, even after you’ve gotten here. Hopefully, you’ll have so many ideas that it will repeat again and again and again, getting a little easier each time.

And there ya go. This of course could be expanded. I think Edit will get it’s own number if I ever do it again because editing is very important to me, and I think it should be important to all writers. I hope someone out here found this helpful.

Barbara Ann Wright

Just because you’re “critiquing” doesn’t mean you have to be ugly about it.  Corporate America has a few tips for giving performance reviews that are useful here.  Before saying anything negative, try to start with what’s good about the piece.  As writers we all start somewhere and are at different levels of excellence, but despite this everyone has something good about their work – so emphasize that first.  It’s also important to carefully phrase your words when delivering a critique.  Said correctly, the right comment could really uplift members and give them good insight on where they’re getting off track.

In Writer’s Ink we’ve developed a few ground rules to keep everything honest and civil.  We don’t use red ink for one thing.  Sure, it stands out, but seeing their hard work all marked up in red doesn’t really do much for group members, other than make them want to jump out a window.  So we keep it simple in black, blue, and even occasionally a nice soft green.  We also make sure that when something doesn’t work for us, we explain why – if possible.  It’s better to be specific when critiquing so the writer can have a better sense of what isn’t working, why it isn’t working, and how s/he can fix it.

It’s all about being honest and polite, people!  Remember, what goes around, comes around.  And you want to treat others the way you expect to be treated.  You get what I mean.  Happy writing!!!

Don’t leave them. Take them. Smuggle them in your suitcase wrapped in something else if you have to. Make up a reason if your spouse or traveling companion asks you why you’re taking a laptop to his family’s Thanksgiving extravaganza. Say it’s just to check your email. Barbara has been sick (and I’ll back you up here) and you just want to make sure I don’t die without blogging about it first.

You can sneak a little writing. In the morning before no one else is up. In the night when everyone else has gone to bed. When the turkey’s still cooking but you’ve finished with the yams and asked, “Anything else I can do?” and Aunt Bess has said, “No, I think that about covers it.” Run like hell for that manuscript! Fifteen minutes or so every now and again will be all you need to save your sanity and make sure you don’t get out of the groove.

The thing about writing is that it doesn’t look like much from the outside, and so “Everybody” might think you’re being antisocial, or lazy, or something when you go off to write. They might prefer that you clean the house, or get a real job, or answer the question they just asked you three times. Even the people who love and you and want you to be happy and successful aren’t that invested in your writing. If you suddenly took up Mexican Hat Dancing or Weevil Collecting or Intricate Sock Knitting, they’d be just as supportive and might even attend the recital where you dance around that Mexican Hat in your Estonian Lace Socks with a Weevil in your hand (ugh!). Sometimes at work or playgroup or church you might feel like “no one” else writes and “Everyone” wishes you would either give them a copy of your published book or get a life.

There’s a huge emotional payoff in going to a place where “Everyone” writes, and “Everyone” expects that you do, too. The act of writing may be a solitary endeavor, but living a writing life shouldn’t be. Can’t wait to see you all tonight!

In Writer’s Ink we have a good group of women with a variety of ages and races. We all majored in/studied different topics in school, and I’d go out on a limb and say that we each had an array of experiences growing up. And what’s even better is that we write a variety of things! We have horror, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and teen lit all stewed together in one amazing melting pot of a group.

So, why is this so important? Because we all see the world in a different way. There have been so many times when I’ve given pages to my group and they’ve gotten something from them that I’d have never imagined. Now, sometimes it’s thrilling when it happens (“Yeah, sure. I meant to make that amazing reference to a deeper theme with that passage.” *smiles sheepishly*), and other times it’s a bit scary. But even when your group seems to be on another page, one thing’s for certain – it’s all helpful! That’s what a good critique group is all about. They help you sculpt and mold your works of art into a finished, polished, and publishable product.

So one reason (not the most important, just the one for today) to join a writing group is to surround yourself with people who know what writing feels like from the inside. Thrilling, scary, action-packed.

“Risin’ up, straight to the top. Have the guts, got the glory. Went the distance, now I’m not gonna stop.”

When there is nothing “new under the sun,” it becomes harder and harder to be a unique voice rising above the din.  If it has all been done before, how do you differentiate between creative license and plagiarism?  In academia, the rules surrounding what constitutes plagiarism are so strict that common sense is no longer a safe way to judge.  In the world of fiction, plagiarism seems to be determined by whether the victim has the means or the motivation to do something about it.  My point is, the morality keeper for plagiarism in creative writing is the threat of being sued.  I think that’s why many writers fear putting there work out there.  Court is a lose lose situation and proving that something was ‘yours’ originally can be tricky.

Plagiarism can creep into many author’s creative works by accident.  Copy pasting material that you intend to go back to but overlook; taking just a line or phrase you liked; taking entire sections and rewording them, but keeping the same meaning and spirit; all of these things are technically plagiarism.  I know it sounds pretty self-explanatory but you’d be surprised how easy it is to trip up.  Here’s an example that is more blatant than accidental, but the pure hilarity of it craves mention.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/94543

Basically, the best things you can do for yourself is to copy source material into a separate document so it won’t be lost in a larger work.  If you’re using any source material, even if you’re not directly quoting, remember to sight.  Lastly, there is not way to avoid other works having similar ideas or themes, it is simply your duty as an author to expand and grow those ideas.

Man, this blogging thing is hard, maybe I should just copy the definition of Plagiarism from Wikipedia to fill space.  Let me know what you think.

To me, Barbara, writer’s groups were always an important piece of the writing pie. The entire pie represents people who want to write. Cut off some, and you’re left with people who do write. More, and there are the people who finish. Still more, and those are the people who show their writing to other writers. I think a lot of people skip that step. They go straight from finish to submit, and I think that’s a bad idea.

No matter how skilled, every writer forgets to tie a character’s loose ends or cuts and pastes the same paragraph twice or something equally boneheaded. A writing group can not only spot those things, it can help you see things you never even thought about like if a plot twist is too convienent or too predictable, or if you have a thirty-six hour day hanging around in your manuscript, and you never even noticed. ^_^