Noël Lynne Figart » writing

Practice, Tedium and Performance

Noël — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:48:36 +0000

My non-fiction words for the day are written. (Though frankly, when you’re writing about possible uses for developing technology, I think it’s more in the realm of science fiction. See, my youth wasn’t wasted after all!)

On to fiction. It’s kind of my reward for the duller stuff, even if writing can be tedious no matter what.

I think it’s something that we writers don’t talk about with any great clarity, and I think we should. Getting good at anything requires daily tedious practice. It’s not all about when the words are flowing and we feel godlike in our ability to express ourselves. Those moments are awesome, but that’s not how we get better at what we do. It’s when it’s a slog to meet the word count. It’s when we re-write a sentence five times before we feel like we’ve conveyed our exact meaning. That’s when we are getting better.

I read a book recently called “Talent is Overrated” that talked about stellar performance, and the make or break in almost any endeavor was not about the moments when it was good and wonderful, but when you were willing to tolerate the repetitive and tedious. I keep that in mind a lot when I write. Yes, I love to write (obviously), but I don’t love it all the time.

I was thinking about this also when I read an article talking against having word count goals when working on fiction. Now, I’ve never completed a single project that did not have a daily word count goal. I’m in favor of them. If I write when the Spirit moves me, in general I neither write much nor well. The author was arguing that if you’re meeting those word count goals, maybe you’re just vomiting out drivel and that’s hardly going to make for good writing.

I guess my argument is, “What the heck do you think editing is for?”

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E-books and Print

Noël — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:33:51 +0000

In Glory Road, Heinlein has a character who can’t go to sleep and he asks for something to read. “Words in a row” is the way he put it. I remember that really resonating with me, as I have had a similar habit since even before I got into science fiction.[1]

So, I’m a pretty voracious reader. When I started carrying a purse regularly, purse shopping took on some serious specifics. It had to be large enough to fit a couple of paperbacks. Even so I had to leave some of my favorite epics at home whenever I travelled.[2] I disliked that.

When e-readers became popular, I cheered. Most of my favorite books really are words in a row. Not too many diagrams or illustrations needed to supplement the text[3] and formatting page by page wasn’t a real issue. It was the text that was the important thing.

So, I’m a big fan of e-readers. I get a little frisson of delight when I slip my Kindle into my purse with its library of hundreds of books to choose from. I like it even better when I am reading long computer manuals on travel and don’t have to carry those brick-like things with me and crowd out my fiction weight!

Does that mean I hate “dead tree” books?

Not in the least. My copy of The Lord of the Rings in its red leather binding is a treasure to me. I love the marriage of the art of the book craft as well as the story. A book on origami or knitting is pointless on a Kindle. The color illustrations that are large enough to see and understand are integral to the usefulness and beauty of the book.[4]

But when it’s words in a row that make the story and make the art, my oh my do I love my e-reader.

[1] I read my first science fiction story in the fourth grade. “The Fun They Had” by Isaac Asimov. That “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury were in our reading books that year. I was hooked.

[2] Shogun, Mists of Avalon, a few others…

[3] Well, elvish rune, sure. But other than that, not really.

[4] Yes, I know. A tablet computer would handle those things much better.

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What Editing is Supposed to Be

Noël — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:35:02 +0000

I had a rather unusual pleasure today. I edited a piece for a friend.

Now this chick can write. Funny? Oh very yes! Clear? Yep. Has a specific voice. My goodness yes.

So, when I saw it and asked if I could edit it, it wasn’t because what she did sucked. It was because it was good and just needed a few rough edges sanded down and polished.

Something that is a real myth about the writing world is that an editor will just ruin your piece. I even believed it for awhile. Blame it on some of Heinlein’s snarky comments if you want. But the truth is that no editor wants to ruin your piece, kill your voice or anything like that. That’s not the editor’s job.

It’s the editor’s job to make you look brilliant. Well, insofar as possible. Can’t make bricks without straw. But what an editor wants is for anything that passes her desk to be readable, instructive, entertaining or whatever might be the goal of the publication.

Her comment was, “Oh wow. Ok that’s amazing. I totally see. You sort of turned it into the piece I wanted it to be in the first place with the editing.”

That means I managed to do my job in working on it!

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I Have Come to a Decision

Noël — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:38:40 +0000

I’ve been reviewing my work Screw Skinny, Get Fit and I realize that I’ve been messing around on this project for too long. I need a big, huge deadline that’ll embarrass me if I don’t meet it to get my lazy butt in gear about this thing.

So, here’s the deal.

I’m going to be offering ScrewSkinny for sale in PDF or PRC (that means you can read it on a Kindle, or in Mobipocket) starting April 1, 2010. I haven’t set a price yet, but it’s going to be under $10. If I get another big contract, I’m just gonna have to give up some knitting time. This is gonna happen no matter who else wants my literary excellence.

This book is not for the athlete. It’s for someone who is sedentary who wants to build or maintain health and fitness. If you have an active, outdoor lifestyle, you’re all good and don’t need this. It’s for someone who’d rather knit or play WoW. Yes, there is a strong geek focus.

I discuss levels of ability, including handicaps of various sorts, and explain why The Perfect Workout is nonsense.

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Lectures and Classes

Noël — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:58:15 +0000

I gave a talk on Search Engine Optimization and Content Management Systems at Lebanon College yesterday. Yeah, I know, the topic was a little too broad for an hour’s lecture. But it was a decent overview. greendalek said that it got his students excited and engaged for the rest of the class, so I think I did okay. I’m glad I brought my computer, though. I’d brought the Powerpoint presentation on a memory stick, and I found that the software on the drive interfered with the computer at the school seeing the files on the drive, confound it. So we just plugged my netbook into the projector and I did the lecture from that.

If anyone was wondering about Powerpoint presentations and netbooks, I can say that mine (minimal animation, no animated media and no sound) did just fine for the talk. I think I want a wireless slide advance thingie (how’s that for a technical term?) for the next time I do a lecture. I prefer to stand in the front of the class.

It makes me more comfortable for the social networking class. Most of the teach I’ve done has been exercise-based. While I’ll have several exercises in the class, it’s going to be mostly lecture-based, and I was wondering how I’d do for lecturing without talking people through physical exercises.

It’s funny how perspective can change. I used to marvel at people who could speak “spontaneously” and fluidly on topics. I ran across a comment once in Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein that sounding spontaneous is often a matter of careful preparation. That’s so true. I kept track of how long I spent prepping for that talk. I spent just shy of eight hours for a one hour talk — and that was on a subject I knew pretty well. Now, if I give the talk again, it’s unlikely that I’ll spend more than an hour and a half or so reviewing and tweaking.

Still, it was fun. I find that I almost always learn more about a subject just from researching for lectures. *chuckles* and looking at this pile of books on various elements of social networking and online interaction at my elbow, I expect I’ll experience the same thing in my class come January.

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Traveling with a Netbook

Noël — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:27:36 +0000

I’m on a bus traveling down to the airport to catch a plane home. I have a lot on my mind about the trip, and to distract myself, I’ve been working.

I often joke my office is my purse. Okay, that’s not really a joke. I’ve been reading a book to get ideas for a course I’m developing, checking my email (the bus has wi-fi) and generally just doing a lot of the things I ordinarily do as part of my morning’s work.

I’d gotten a netbook with an eye to the fact I travel a few times a year and wanted something not too expensive and easily portable. So far, I’m liking travelling with a netbook. The good battery and the compact machine make it nice for crowded travel. The fact that it’s light to carry and fits in a purse doesn’t hurt, either.

I think my next “big” computer is going to be a desktop I’ll sync with my netbook. The desktop will deliver lots of computing power cheap, for when I need that. Then I can do 90% of my work on my portable machine. As a writer whose work is often web-based, I just don’t need the computing power you’d require for video editing or high-end gaming.

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The Real Vampire in Fiction

Noël — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:52:41 +0000

A certain very popular publishing company of women’s romance novels has decided to offer a new line of vanity publishing. This link goes to Writers Beware, which might give you a clue to my opinion on the matter. You pay to get your novel published and possibly edited if you’re paying at the higher tier. No, you don’t have the full force of the marketing department behind the book. Neither are you going to be able to count on the big chains stocking the book.

Vanity publishing has been around a long time. As a business model, it’s great for the publisher. The author almost never breaks even.

I’m fine with a business turning a profit, what with being a small business owner and a greedy capitalist meeself, and all. What I’m against is an unethical product that preys on emotional weakness, which this vanity publishing scam does.

I had an interesting epiphany in a Border’s a couple of weeks ago. I’m a very small-time writer. I do technical writing, SEO-type stuff… Any fiction writer who manages to make a living at it would probably call me a bottom feeder, and fair enough. But, this perspective does give me a “marketing mind” in a way that the stereotype of the writer from the coffee shop might not have. It got me to thinking in the YA section of that store. There was a Twilight display with books and merchandise and another dedicated to Harry Potter. I started looking at the newer titles in the section. Right now the trend in YA is dark fantasy and stuff with a Goth feel.

“This is all just product,” I thought, as I was looking around. Product follows trend in the entertainment world, and fiction is most certainly the entertainment business.

I think we’re trained that there’s something holy or elevated about books. In a way that’s true. The printing press spread ideas in a way that had been impossible before. The fact that a book is an expression of a human mind is pretty damn awesome. But not every thought we think is necessarily a priceless diamond. Often it’s just a drop of water. It’s when it’s taken in a wave that the water becomes an impressive force.

We’re also trained to think there’s something holy or elevated about art for art’s sake. Does art have value? Yes. Again, art is an expression of what is not only uniquely human about us, but is often a deep expression of the times in which we live, the joys we celebrate and the pain we mourn. But just because it is an expression of our mind doesn’t mean that art always expresses well.

We have always had to look for gems amongst the garbage when it comes to actual art. That’s not new. Dickens was a hack to the Victorians, remember. So was Shakespeare. Do we remember all the playwrights from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries? Of course not. Have you ever read some random fiction from Victorian times? Some of it was pretty awful. Most of it was “mix as before” that the publishers hoped would make them a pile of money.

The problem is that this vanity publishing scheme is not going to give writers who otherwise had no chance a real chance at publishing a novel. Unless you’re really great at selling, you’ll never recoup your production costs, much less your time costs of writing the damn thing in the first place! If you’re really great at selling, you have a better chance at the traditional method of publication, where you’ll be paid more anyway. This, like all vanity publishing, preys on people with a handful of dreams and a hatful of ignorance.

Addendum: L’esprit d’escalier gives an excellent analysis of why this business model sucks. As Ms. Brown so eloquently puts it, “Writers sign the back of the check!”

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Writing and Real Work

Noël — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:04:35 +0000

Cranky introvert that I am, I can get tired of staring at the same walls sometimes at home.

I decided to treat myself to a workday at a coffee shop. My office is a netbook, so I can do that with the greatest of ease. The change of venue was enough to get me happy and excited about bidding, which was great. I got my day’s quota of work done in a lot less time than it usually takes. Forcing yourself to get your work done before your battery runs out is a great motivation even if you have ample battery power.

As I was wrapping up and treating myself to a couple of sessions of working on some material for which I have no direct client, I ran across a LiveJournal entry from another writer who has a hard time considering writing fiction “real work”.

I get that. I have a hell of a time forcing myself to work on StoneFlower and Screwskinny if I am not meeting my income quota for the month. Never mind that if I get the damn things done I’m looking at a month’s income or so from advances. Fiction doesn’t pay what work for hire until you’re at least a midlist writer — a classification of writer that’s swiftly disappearing anyway. Screwskinny likely has more marketing tie-ins than merely the book, so we’re looking at a lot more money — if it sells.

Notice the language I was using in talking about working on my self-assigned projects. I was “treating myself”. Indulging. That’s nonsense, of course. I’m writer. I mean, it’s my job, not my hobby. Yes, the money comes quicker from the directly-paying gigs, and I do need to take them on to pay rent. Money-wise, they’re important.

Career-wise? It’s the writer who has the guts and self-discipline on spec that manages to get her stuff in the bookstores. So the fiction and the other self-directed projects are very important to my career.

I’ve been asked to develop a specific course that I’ll be teaching in January. Will I have a hard time working on that? Nope! That’ll be directly to a specific project for which I’ll be paid, both as a writer and a computer instructor. I’ll feel virtuous every time I open that file, take notes, do interviews, or wander around the house delivering the pretend lecture¹. I have a client already there for it.

I think this is part of why breaking into writing books can be so hard, especially fiction. Disciplining oneself to write and take that writing seriously when you have no idea in the world whether or not you’ll be paid for it can be hard when you have a million things demanding your attention, or when you’re looking at your bank account. Once you’ve sold your first book, you might very well get an advance on the strength of an outline. Once you know you’re going to be paid, buddy, you have no problem at all calling it work.

¹By the time I am in front of a class with a new course, I’ve taught it about four times. Then it gets blown all to hell because the students ask questions and have difficulties I’d never anticipated. Nature of the beast.

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Writing and Knitting

Noël — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:14:38 +0000

I had a really nice morning this morning.

I’d been drying up, writer-wise. When that happens, a change of scene is often a good idea for me, so I took my netbook (have I mentioned I love it?) to the coffee shop, got a big ole plain cup of coffee and wrote for several hours on Screw Skinny, Get Fit. God, that felt good.

I notice I get a lot more writing done when there’s no wireless (the place is a t-mobile hotspot but I didn’t want to pay for that). I may disable wireless during writing hours and draw more serious boundaries between research time and writing time.

I also did some necessary shopping before I came home and found a cheap winter coat, which I desperately needed.

Shopping was a funny experience today because I wore a sweater I’d made a couple of years ago for the first time this year. It’s a gray sweater with dark purple ljus (those dots you see on Nordic sweaters), and a modified We Call Them Pirates pattern around the yoke. It’s one of those subtle things where you don’t realize the pattern is skulls and crossbones at first. It has become a fairly popular design among the hip knitter set. (Usually the only thing hip about me is the ampleness of my slacks…)

Why would this sweater make shopping a funny experience? Well, the internet-connected knitters come out of the woodwork to comment on it. First in the coffee shop, I was asked if I made the sweater, as the pattern looked familiar. I said that yes, I’d shamelessly stolen the chart from Hello Yarn. Then, when I went into a department store next to the coffee shop, two twenty-something sales people and three older ladies all commented on the sweater, the pattern and asked if I’d used Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Seamless Yoke Sweater as the template for the actual sweater design (I had). One of the older ladies expressed delight that “youngsters had taken up knitting” (at 40, I’m not sure I count as a youngster, but anyway…) and that she liked seeing people knit unique creations.

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What I’ve Been Waiting For

Noël — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:49:34 +0000

I have wanted a truly portable computer since I was about 12. When laptops got lighter than ten pounds, I used to fantasize about getting one, but didn’t for a long time until the price on a mid-grade laptop dropped to what I was spending on a desktop.

I was in my late thirties before I finally sucked it up and bought a laptop. Now the one I bought was okay, really, for its time. But it weighs about six and a half pounds, has a crappy battery (an hour if I am very lucky) and it runs hot enough that I really can’t use it without an external notebook cooler. I can use it on an airplane, but I don’t like to. I do use it on the train, but I’m lugging at least ten pounds worth of material and taking it out to use is a bit of a production.

That laptop is starting to show the Blue Screen of Death at about weekly intervals, which means it’s about to go to that Great Computer in the Sky in the next few months. I want to hold off on getting a new laptop for several reasons, and have been in Serious Gadget Lust for a netbook since I first saw one. Because of the gadget lust, I didn’t trust my justification for getting a cheap machine that is not a true replacement for a full-powered laptop.

When I got accused by the World’s Worst Overthinker of overthinking the matter (I think I bored him to tears analyzing it out loud), I just went ahead and bought the damn thing — an Acer AspireOne. It’s the cheapest netbook on the market.

This is what I have been waiting for all my life. I can put the freaking thing in my purse. I get more than three hours on a battery. How much more I don’t know. It’s 3:35 and counting right now and I still have half power left. I can reasonably take this to the park and write. I wouldn’t have to be a contortionist to get it out of an overstuffed bag on an airplane. I don’t have to lug around the heavy notebook cooler. I don’t need something that can run World of Warcraft. I need something that can handle writing a book. I need something that can read a financial spreadsheet. I need something that I can use on the Internet to get email and bid on jobs.

Oh, and I’m writing this piece right now on it