ONE DOWN

Wow, it's been a while.

Tonight I wrote the final words for the first draft of my new book.

It created a crazy confluence of emotions: relief, victory, excitement, fear, responsibility (really?), you name it, I'm feeling it.

Suddenly I'm committed. Suddenly I have this entity to mold and massage and make into something readers will enjoy.  Maybe that's where the responsibility piece comes in.

Thank goodness for beta readers and editors. It's not all on me.


But...


It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"If most writers were honest with themselves, this is the difference they want to make: before they were not noticed; now they are." —Tom Wolfe



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space." —Orson Scott Card

It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." —Martin Luther King


It's also stepping off the roof of a high-rise and trusting you'll figure out your wings on the way down.



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"When you're making a film, you have an obligation to fill the frame with life."—Joss Whedon


It's the same with making a book. You have an obligation to fill each page with life.



It's all better with friends.

Process: When I Must Pretend

I'm at a fairly recognizable place in my manuscript.  I've been here before. It's the place where I'm suddenly unsure about the direction this manuscript is heading. It doesn't quite match up with what I'd planned, and I only know two things: it will either be better or it will be worse.

But in order to find out, I have to write it. I have to finish this first draft.

And here's where the pretending comes in. I need, right now, to pretend I'm a writer who knows what she's doing. I need to plow ahead with all the confidence of a Stephen King or a John Sandford or a Karin Slaughter or a J.K. Rowling.

Right now it's important not to let missing research pieces hold me up. Write the story, then fill in the holes and make the changes later. Trust the process.

Do you have stumbling places with your work? Places where you have to fake it until you make it?



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!"—Marie Windsor

It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I am irritated by my writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within." —Gustave Flaubert


When I write, I often see the scene playing out in front of me on a movie screen. I want to reproduce what I see and hear.

Donald Maass teaches writers that if it's not on the page, it doesn't exist. That's so true! On the other hand, too many details bog the story down. The trick, in my view, is to bring just enough to the page leaving the rest to the imagination of your reader.





It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape." —Ray Bradbury

Sounds like a good diet to me.

It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper." —Steve Martin



I like his confidence.





It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December, right?" —Catherine O'Hara



I can safely declare I'm behind on my goals for the year. But I'm equally certain I would not have accomplished what I have without them.

How about you?



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary in ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary. —Boris Pasternak



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance. —Calvin & Hobbs

It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. —Neil Gaiman

Which is one reason writing for a living can be very confusing.



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. —James Baldwin


This brought tears to my eyes. I have nothing to add. Except maybe to recommend you read it again.





It's all better with friends.

Podcast

I met Laura Brennan when I went to Hollywood for a special Sisters In Crime conference. She recently started a series of podcasts for mysteries. Here’s mine, but check out the others as well, and maybe sign up to receive free books: http://destinationmystery.com/episode-5-peg-brantley/



It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"It's up to the author to intertwine the craft with the creative and find the balance that touches the soul of the reader." —Edie Melson


Damn.


It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." —Don Marquis

This is in honor of my mother-in-law, Inez Frances Brantley, who turns 100 on April 24th. Her volume of verse will be a special gift for every person at her celebration.  You can check out her book here.

And I, for one, can hear the echo.

It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining but the feeling of being rained upon." —E.L. Doctorow



While I love this, sometimes in a fast-moving scene, the fact that it's raining is only a small point that needs to be made. Sometimes it's best to tell rather than show, and move ahead with the story.




It's all better with friends.

Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."
—Gustave Flaubert



Without the balance and security I get from my family and close friends, a tether if you will, there's no way I could venture in to some of the dark places my stories demand.




It's all better with friends.