Karen Sandler

Tag: story

  • Horse Shopping, Or, Choosing Among Writing Projects

    I recently sold my beautiful Andalusian/Morgan mare, Belle. She and I had been together for eight years, and we learned a lot from each other. Now she’s off to a new home, helping another rider learn the fine points of dressage.

    So I’m horse shopping. I have a clear idea of what I want in a new horse: not too young, not too old. Not located too far away (not going to check out that great horse in Vermont). I definitely want an easy-going gelding. Size matters–neither a 13H pony nor an 18H draft horse will do. And there’s only so much I can spend (sadly, I’m not independently wealthy yet). Which means it might take a while to find the perfect partner. But here are some of my current options:

    TOSHIBA Exif JPEGThis is Sequoia Mambo Man, an 8-year-old, 15.2H palomino Morgan. Very cute, and sounds like the easy-going temperament I’m looking for. But not a whole lot of miles under saddle yet.

    Bentley JumpingThis is Bentley, a 6-year-old, 15.3H Quarter Horse Paint. I don’t jump like you see Bentley doing in the picture, but I’ve seen videos of him ridden dressage too. He seems to have a decent amount of training under his belt.

    Kato cropThis is SQR Kato, a 9-year-old, 15.1H bay Arabian. The owner says he’s very quiet, and he looks quite talented as a dressage horse. This one seems to have the most training of the three.

    There are a few others I have my eye on, but you get the idea.

    So what does this have to do with choosing writing projects? Well, imagine that you’ve just finished a book (let’s call it THE BEST BOOK EVER). Finished as in, TBBE is completely polished to a quality where your agent is now shopping it around, or you’ve submitted to your editor. Or if you’re an indie-pubbed author, TBBE is completely vetted and ready to be uploaded to the various online booksellers.

    Now what do you do? All those story ideas that have been shoved to the back burner while you were getting TBBE to a publishable stage are now competing for your attention. Do you work on that hysterically funny romantic comedy you’ve been dying to start? The young adult paranormal that wakes you up in the middle of the night, the scenes so clear they’re begging to be written? Or that thriller that’s so powerful you can visualize it as not only a novel, but a film?

    How do you decide? One way is to do it the way I will probably choose amongst those horses I told you about. I will probably use something like the following checklist:

    • Which one do you feel the strongest about, with which one do you have the strongest connection? Just as it will be easier for me to work with a horse I really like, it will be much easier for you to spend the months it takes to write a novel if the concept is one you feel connected to and excited about.
    • Which one is the most developed? With a horse, I’ll consider how many months or years of training or under-saddle work he’s done. With a story idea, you have to think about how well fleshed out the plot is, how developed the characters are, and how comprehensively you’ve imagined the settings or world of the characters.
    • Which one is most likely to get you where you want to go? With a horse, the one that’s best trained and has the conformation and movement for dressage would be my best choice. When it comes to story ideas, you really have to look at the reality of your career and the marketplace. Have you got two books of a thriller series out that’s just begging for a third, but you’re considering detouring into a romantic fantasy novel? Maybe not the best choice, career-wise. Better to write that third thriller, and get back to the romantic fantasy later.

    It’s possible to fall in love with the wrong horse, and quite possible to become enamored with a story idea that’s not to your advantage to pursue. Go into both transactions with a level head, a clear eye, and you’re sure to make the right choice. And remember, with story ideas (unlike horses), the one you set aside will always be waiting for you to explore later.

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  • RTW – Writing Books & Writing Advice

    This week,  YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks us to Share your most inspiring and/or motivational video, book, or quote on writing. All those NaNoWriMo participants out there nearing November’s half-way point could probably use an extra push toward the finish line.

    I have not read very many “inspirational” writing books. Back when I was just starting out, I tended to buy the nuts-and-bolts how-to books, read partway through, or just bits and pieces, then set them aside. I did read The Elements of Style (by William Strunk & E.B. White) cover to cover many years ago (it’s a real hoot), and back in 2000, I devoured Stephen King’s On Writing. I highly recommend both of those.

    There are a couple of inspirational/how-to-write books that most people rave about, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Story by Robert McKee, that I started but couldn’t finish. I’m a severe plotter who does lots of advance prep. Then when I finally start chapter 1, I switch gears and become a very instinctual writer. Lamott’s and McKee’s books just made my eyes glaze over. However, many, many people have recommended these books, so I’m sure they have much of value in them. Just not for me.

    Now on to some writing advice. The first is from romance goddess Nora Roberts, and came to me via a talk given by the incomparable romance author, Anne Stuart. Back when I was writing romance, I belonged to Romance Writers of America, and Anne came to speak to our local chapter. She quoted something Nora Roberts had said: I can fix a written page. I can’t fix a blank page. This one piece of advice has pushed me through book after book, shutting up the little editor in my head with the clear knowledge that I can fix it later. Nothing is set in stone. Nora said so.

    As a companion bit of advice, Anne herself said something that night that has bolstered me many times when I have struggled to write even one page, when the words sit sullenly at the back of my head and refuse to step into the light. Anne said (and I paraphrase here), If you look the pages that were like pulling teeth to write and compare them to the pages that just flowed easily and beautifully, you won’t be able to tell the difference between them. In other words, even though you’re certain that pages you struggle to write are awful crap, they’re not. They’re just as good as those breeze-to-write pages and just as ready to be “fixed” as advised by Nora.

    If I may, one bit of my own advice. As I mentioned, neither Bird by Bird nor Story resonated with me. By the time they came along, I already had a methodology that worked. I’ve tweaked my writing method over the years, but the basic system has remained the same.

    If you’re just starting out as a writer and checking out various methods/structures to find what works, that’s great. But every writer is different. Some things you try will not work for you. Other methods that you find are perfect for you won’t work for others. Never judge yourself because you’re, for instance, a pantser, when everyone else in your critique group insists you should always plot first. Don’t freak out when you go to a conference workshop and the speaker tells you about a work style that doesn’t sync with yours. You’re not necessarily doing it wrong just because you’re doing it differently. The only real must is to continually improve the quality of your writing and storytelling.

    So how about you? What books or advice have inspired you?

  • Why I Can’t Write Your Story

    I got another one of those e-mails the other day. If you’re a published author, you’ve probably received one or two. It always starts out with some variation of “I have the most incredible story to tell, and it’s all true.” Or the writer will state, “It’s like a cross of Popular Book A and Popular Book B, except better.” And somewhere in there it will say, “I’m not a very good writer, so that’s why I’m contacting you.”

    Even if they don’t spell it out, the intention of the person who sent the e-mail is clear. They think their idea is so terrific that they want me, Ms. Published Author, to write it as a book. They believe their idea is so great that they’re sure I will jump at the chance to write the book on spec (i.e., with no payment) for the opportunity to make big money down the line.

    I usually ignore e-mails like this one because it’s never something I want to pursue. There’s never anything in the e-mail that tells me the person is a fan of my work. They just found me on the web, or in a listing of authors somewhere and threw out an e-mail to me.

    In the case of this particular e-mail, I did respond because of one line: “I am completely clueless how to get started, or where to go with this.” That meant to me that although she claims she’s not a very good writer, she was open to information. And it turned out I was right. When she responded to my e-mail, she was grateful for the information I’d passed on.

    Here’s a little of what I told her, and a few other points:

    • Professional writers don’t work for free. If we don’t charge for our work, we can’t make a living.
    • I have no shortage of ideas. I’m not looking for ideas from other people. In fact, I wish I had the time to write all the ideas that are floating around in my own head.
    • Ideas are actually the easy-easy-easy part. Constructing a novel-length story around that idea is what’s really hard and time consuming.
    • Sometimes people’s life stories aren’t as interesting as they seem to the person who lived it. Not to mention you will have to fictionalize parts of it to make it fit into the above mentioned story.
    • If your life story truly is that interesting, you ought to be the one to write it. Because you are the one most passionate about it. Because you’re the one who really cares about it.
    • Sometimes people say they’re not very good at writing when they really mean they don’t like to write. And maybe they don’t like to write because they were never properly taught how. The best solution to that is to take a class–at your local community college, online, at the library, wherever you find one offered. Learn enough to see if you actually do like writing, then you can write your story yourself.

    What if this person does learn the craft of writing, writes her life story, and it turns out to be so fantastic she gets a giant book deal? I will be thrilled. I’ll be proud that I might have had a tiny bit to do with that. But truly, it will be her own hard work that got her to bestsellerdom. And that will make the victory all the sweeter for her.