Failure is not an option–Part 2

Last week, I talked about failure and what it means to your story and your characters.  This week I’d like to talk about what failure means to you as a writer.

There are a lot of things out there that might look (and feel) like failure.  Here are a few:

Rejection.

Not making your writing commitment.

Not feeling like working on your current project.

Not feeling like working at all.

And so on…

At some point we’ve all experienced the above.  We’ve also experienced the hundreds of other little things that might make us wonder if we’re really cut out for this sort of thing.  Does any of that make you a failure?  Hell, no.

There is one thing, and one thing only, that will make you a failure in this business: Stopping.

That’s it, there’s nothing else that will do it.  It doesn’t matter how many times you get rejected, how many times you finish a work, only to put it away without submitting it, how many times you get knocked down by Life and all it’s messiness that keeps you from putting your butt in the  chair to write.  All that matters is that you GET UP and KEEP GOING.  Do that, and you’re a success.

Seems simple, right?

It’s deceptively simple, because it puts the burden of responsibility squarely on your shoulders.  No one can make you stop writing.  No one can make you stop telling stories…

Except you.

And it happens.  It happens all the time.  Somewhere out there, someone can’t find it within themselves to get back up.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of, this is hard work.  Really hard.  I’ve heard more than one author state that if you can do anything else, you should go do that instead of writing.  So what do these folks do that can’t get back up?  They pull the plug…decide to do something else.

They make a conscious decision to kill their dream.

Now I’m not talking about folks that walk away for a bit and come back to it in a couple of weeks, months, or years–the world of writing has many prodigal sons and daughters.  I’m talking about the folks that walk away and never come back–the lost ones.  I say “Lost” because it’s not only they who have lost, it’s us as well.  We’ll never hear the stories, never come to love (or hate) the characters that live there and that is a heavy loss indeed.

So what do you do when the tide is rising against you and, once again, you find yourself on the ground spitting out the dust of another rejection and you’re not sure if you’ve got it in you to get back up?

Remember why you started in the first place.  Go back to the stories that moved you, made you laugh (or cry), and filled you with the sense of excitement that made you feel like you had to get up and do something.  Visit these old friends, then go through your old stuff.  Track down the first really good scene, paragraph, or line that you wrote.  Look at it and remember what it was like when you first got it down, how it felt reading it, and then remember that it’s YOURS.  No one else can make that claim and, if you had that in you, what else might be in there?  What other stories are waiting to get out?  Who might be out there, right now, waiting without realizing it for your story to come along and knock them head over, freaking heels.  Just like you were.

That’s the path…the road less traveled, as it were.  It’s not easy and it’s not always clearly laid out before you, but it’s worth it in so many ways.

The alternative is failure and, for me, that simply isn’t an option.

Now go write…

Failure is not an option — Part 1

Picture this:

The stage is set.  The bad guys (and gals) have put their End-Game plan in motion and all the good guys (and gals) have gathered to devise a plan to put the brakes on it.  There’s discussion, plans are set, equipment gathered, teams formed and, finally, they’re all about to go kick some serious bad guy (and gal) tukus when somebody (usually the one in charge) says it:

“And remember: Failure is not an option.”

Sound familiar?

What’s funny about that statement (Which should be avoided like the Red Death…but that’s another post) is that in situations where it could (but shouldn’t) be said, failure is not only an option, it’s a rather plausible (if not probable) outcome.

This is a good thing.

The possibility of failure should be there, not only at the end, when the tension is highest, it should stalk your characters throughout the entire story like a rabid wolf.  In fact, failure should be allowed to sink it’s teeth into your characters from the get go.  Why, you may ask?

Because failure, if I may be allowed to steal from the movie Wall Street (Directed by Oliver Stone, released in 1987) is good.  If success is a given, there’s no emotional payoff and the thrill of victory is deflated and meaningless.  These are things that you do not want happening to your story.

Think about what an epic story like The Lord of the Rings would be like if there were no possibility of failure.  Frodo’s trip to Rivendell is reduced to the equivalent of a lazy walk in the park.  The trip to the Black Gate is a little more strenuous (maybe Sam stubs a toe).  Yes, the gate is locked but there’s a secret door (along with a pretty good sized spider…no problems there) and Frodo does, in fact, simply walk into Mordor.  He strolls up to the door of Orodruin (maybe he’s starting to breathe a little heavily, but he hasn’t broken a sweat or anything) with Sam and, with a flick of his thumb, flips the One Ring into the fire.  High-Fives all around.  Quest completed, time to head back to the Prancing Pony for a beer.

Total Snore-fest.

But that’s not the way it went.  Tolkien ran Frodo through the ringer before he was done and that’s what you have to do with your characters as well.

Very rarely should something your characters do turn out exactly like they expect.  Ideally, you’d want to have the end results of whatever they try to do, either blow up in their face or set fire to something else that they hadn’t intended.

This is a difficult task for you.  Why?  Well for one thing, these are YOUR characters.  You’ve spent a lot of time creating them, coming up with history, getting to know them to the point where they’ve almost become friends…

Then you have to knock them down.  You’ve got to jump up and down on them and then tie them to a set of railroad tracks while you get the locomotive warmed up.

It means that you’ve got to stay on your toes as a writer.  It is SO much easier to take the dark path and succumb to the temptation of  Deus ex Machina or the improbably learned skill that just happens to bail the characters out at the last second (Oh, yah, a couple of years ago I took a bomb defusing class.  Never thought it would come in handy until now…).  This is bad Juju of the highest order.  Your readers will spot it, regardless of how you spin the explanation for it and if you get caught, maybe they’ll forgive you.  Then again, maybe not.

You’ve also got to find balance in your story.  Just as you can’t have everything coming out roses for your characters, it can’t all come out as stinkweed and carnivorous plants either.  Your characters need a rest while you prepare to bring the pain again, otherwise you’ve gone in the opposite direction.  Certain failure.  Frodo trips on the door sill on his way out of Bag End right into the arms of a waiting Nazgul.  Game Over.  That’s no good either.

This is a lot of work, but it is oh, so worth it.  What you’ll have at the end of it all are characters that your readers can get behind and root for as they march off to face seemingly impossible odds with a plan that has a real chance of blowing up.

What you’ll end up with, if you’ve been good, is the failure of your reader to get to bed on time because they HAVE to know how it all ends.

And that, my friends, is certainly not an option…

Now go write.

The End ???

The End.

I can’t think of two words that are more satisfying to string together.   I mean think about it: As writers we spend A LOT of time writing thousands and hundreds of thousands of other words, getting to the place where we can type or write those two little words and (for me at least) sit back for a moment and revel in the accomplishment for a few seconds.

But is it the end?

On one hand, the answer is a resounding “Heck No.”  What’s in front of me is a first draft.  It needs to be read and re read and edited and all those Face-palming grammatical, typographical and continuity slip-ups need to be corrected.  All that, however is fodder for another post.

On a second hand, the answer is an even more resounding “Hell No!”  As the saying goes, there is no finish line, only another race.  Even before the words are completely cooled, hell even before I typed those two satisfying little words, somewhere in the back of my mind are the seeds of another story starting to take root…but, that’s not what I’m talking about either.

The third hand (yes, I know I’ve run out of the usual number of hands, but I’m a Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer.  I can have all the hands I want :)), I have to ask myself is this really “The End”?  Have I really come to the point where the story stops?

That’s a deceptive question.

On the surface, it seems like you’d write until you get to the end of the story and then you stop, but that’s too simple.  It reminds me of the Skiing instructions given to John Cusack in Better off Dead (Directed by “Savage” Steve Holland, released in 1985): “Go that way, really fast.  If something gets in your way…turn.

Simple, right?  Sure, but what if the something is the mother of all pine trees or the edge of something the locals call “Little Ginnungagap”?  I’d like a little more detail, wouldn’t you?  Well, the detail is in what you’ve written up until that point.

Let me tell you a story (because that’s what I do :)).

Three days ago, I finished the first draft of a short story.  I had been at it for a while, had very nearly written myself into a corner, and then written myself out of it again (Fantastic feeling, by the way) and I had come to what looked like the end of the story.

What I had actually come to was AN ending, but not THE ending…and there’s a difference.  For me, it came as soon as I had a chance to settle down for the evening (just before bed, actually).  My mind went back to the story and worried away at the end of it, like my dogs will sometimes do with the frayed end of a toy.  The last thing I remember before I fell asleep was the realization that I wasn’t really finished with the story.  There were loose ends and, honestly, more that needed to be said.

That’s what you have to ask yourself.  Is this THE end or is it AN end.  Did a character get dropped, any loose ends that might not have been tied off, is the ending the right ending for the story?

This last one is really important.  Let me say that I am a BIG fan of happy endings.  I will not try and explain or defend that.  It’s who I am as a reader.  I want the Good Guys (and Gals) to come out on top and the Bad Guys (and Gals) to go up in an immensely satisfying explosion.  Part of my job as a writer is to make sure that who I am as a reader doesn’t interfere with what I’m writing.

That sounds a little counter-intuitive.  When you’re starting out, you most often start out writing what you love to read and there is noting wrong with that.  If you stick with it, though, you will come to discover that the story is in charge.  Let me say that again.

The story is in charge.

My short story (rough draft finished, really finished, on Wednesday :)) that I’m looking forward to starting the second draft on this weekend, ended on a different note than what I, as a reader, would have preferred.

Does that mean that I don’t like the story?  Hell no.  I had a blast writing it and I’m looking forward to getting back in there, polishing it up and spending more time with those characters.  What it means is that the story called for something different, taking me in a direction that I wouldn’t normally have gone.

Subconsciously, maybe the reader in me saw what was coming and tried to nudge me in a different direction.  I don’t know.

What I do know, is that it was a learning experience for me to realize that just because I had gotten to where I wanted to be, it wasn’t necessarily where I needed to be.

Now go write…

Well…Back to Reality

The title of today’s post is (based on sheer volume of usage), by far, my favorite line from the movie Time Bandits (Directed by Terry Gilliam, released in 1981).

It’s a pretty good summary of the first week after the holiday season.  The usual routine sets in, reality reasserts itself and a once-a-day blog turns into a once-a-week blog.  That’s what I want to talk about today–some of the realities of writing as I see them.

Let me get this out on the table right now.  Writing.  Is.   Difficult.  There really isn’t any way to sugar coat that and remain honest with you.  DO NOT let anyone tell you otherwise–especially those that have never done it outside of High School (or maybe even College) Lit classes.  Nothing that is really worth doing is easy.  It takes time, practice (more on that later), and discipline.

I won’t call it “Work”, though.  That is a four-letter word I reserve for the day job (you know, the one they keep telling us not to quit) and let me tell you that the worst day I’ve ever had writing has been–hands down–better than my best day at work.

Why not quit you might ask?  The answer is easy:  Reality.  We’ve all got bills, and mortgages, and kids, and pets, etc and all those need to be taken care of.  Quitting the day job also puts a big dent in the health insurance side of things and that can add up pretty quickly.

The reality of it is that very few authors earn enough from their writing to be able to quit the day job.  Are there exceptions that that?  Sure.  I’ve read that Tom Clancy quit his day job when The Hunt for Red October took off.  I think that James Patterson did the same thing after he wrote The Firm.  BUT…

I am not Tom Clancy, nor am I James Patterson.  Neither are you…If, however, you DO happen to be either Tom Clancy or James Patterson…Wow, thanks for reading my blog.  Um, I don’t suppose you’d care to introduce me to your agents…

Anyway.

When you’re first starting out, that shouldn’t be your focus.  It might be your goal (like mine), but it shouldn’t be your focus.  Your focus should be making the time to get your butt in your chair (my favorite term for this is BIC-time) and practicing (See, I told you I’d get back to that).  Accounts vary, but the general consensus is that the average writer (that’s you and me folks) doesn’t really start hitting their stride until they’ve written one MILLION words.  No joke.  How to you get there?  The same way you get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, Practice, Practice.

Here’s the kicker: Reality tries to keep you from reaching that one millionth word.  Actively.  You may be ready to sit down and start cranking and–Oops–there’s an email, or the phone, or the dog, or the dishes need doing, you need to play with the plants, or water the kids, or paint the house, need I go on?

Your focus needs to be to find a time to write and protect it from reality.  Here’s where the discipline comes in–and a small amount of cooperation.  Talk to your family, friends, dogs, plants, whatever and let them know that you’re freaking serious about this (You are, aren’t you?) and that this time is your writing time and other things can wait.

Now, having said that, you have to remember that Life is not a support-system for art, as Stephen King wrote in On Writing, it’s the other way around.  Reality is going to get in, despite your best efforts, and that’s a good thing.  Two days ago, I took the night off to celebrate my daughter’s birthday.  I didn’t make my New Years goal (Not a resolution…) of writing 500 words a day that day.  Does that mean that I’m not committed to the goal?  Does that make me a bad writer?  Hell, no.  Besides, how am I going to write about life and draw from my own experiences if I don’t actually get out there and live?

Oh, and in anticipation for that, I got a couple hundred words in, long hand, during my lunch break…not quite 500, but I’ll still call it a win.  You do what you have to do to reach that million milestone.

By the way, the word count on the blog here tells me that this post is over 700 words long.  Getting closer every day.

Are you?

 

Go write…

 

 

The Day After

So, Yesterday, I had this great idea: I’ll start a blog about writing.  Today, I sat down and was hit with a pretty major detail that I hadn’t quite worked out yet.

What am I going to write about?

Annnnd here I sit… staring at the screen and wondering and then it hits me.  I’ll write about the one thing that every one of us faces, every time we sit down at the computer or at the desk with pen in hand.

The Blank Page…

The seemingly endless expanse of white staring us in the face that we’ve got to deal with whenever we sit down to our craft.  It’s gotten something of a bad reputation over the years in tales of writers struggling with writers block.  It’s a reputation that is quite undeserved.  The Blank Page isn’t so bad and it’s certainly nothing to be afraid of.

It is something to be respected though.

When you think about it, that space is large enough to contain anything, and I mean anything.  When I look at a blank sheet of paper, I see potential.  Potential that rivals the night sky on a summer night.  Anything can be happening up there, just beyond the limits of our vision, and that’s the way it is with the Blank Page.  Buried in the depths of all that white you can find your wildest dreams, your worst nightmares, careers, and so much more.

In short, there’s magic there.

Real.  Serious.  Juju.

All you’ve got to do is reach out and find it.  Sounds easy, right?  Maybe not.  It takes a lot of courage to make that first stroke.  One might even argue that writing those first letters, typing that first word is an act of supreme arrogance.  Once you break the “Silence” of the page, there’s no going back; even if you erase or delete everything you’ve written, nothing will be the same.

But that’s what it takes to wrangle dreams and, as I find myself doing it more and more, my respect for those that have gone on before me, grows.

So, today, I honor the Blank Page and those brave souls that venture out into it with me–often without a safety net.  I’ll see you when you get back and we’ll swap stories, because that’s what it’s all about isn’t it…

Its a Brand-New Day

This is my first attempt at doing any kind of blogging and, even as I’m sitting here typing, I’m double checking my motivations for even starting such a thing.  I mean, I find it hard enough to find the time to write consistently on stuff that I’m hoping to send out for publication, so why would I want to try and dedicate time to writing something that I’m giving away for free?

I’ve got a couple of reasons for that:

The first is that by doing this, it’ll keep the writing in the foreground of my life.  There’s a lot going on that wants to push writing onto the back burner (if not off the stove entirely), preventing me from achieving my New Year’s Goal (Notice I didn’t say “Resolution”) of writing a minimum of 500 words a day–5 days a week. and I just can’t let that happen.  I won’t let that happen and I’m hoping that this will help.

Secondly, any practice that I can get a typing will be good for me because, dear gods, I am so freaking slow when it comes to typing.  On top of that, I’m a “Hunt and Peck” typist to the point where I’m wearing the fingerprints of my left and right index fingers down.

Third, and most important, I’m hoping that this will turn into an ongoing conversation about not only the art, but the craft of writing.  I love talking about it, and reading about it, and talking about it some more.  I love it because there’s a chance for learning something new every time it happens and that’s never a bad thing.

So, here’s to trying out new things…I hope you get as much out of this as I hope to.