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Question – Annie, where have you been?
Ask Annie
Ask Annie
Question: What writing books do you recommend?
Answer: That depends on what and why you want to write. Writers who are interested in commercial publishing or free-lance writing might find a subscription to a good writers’ magazine, like The Writer or Writer’s Digest very helpful. If you have other writing friends, you may wish to go together on a subscription – I have found it’s a great way to find topics of interest to practically every writer.
Writers’ Digest offers a great series of books on the mechanics of fiction – with titles like Plot, Character, Dialogue and so forth – as well as other books focused on the mystery, science fiction or romance writer among many, many others.
For a less commercially focused approach, I have always enjoyed rereading Rita Mae Brown’s Starting From Scratch, and Stephen King’s On Writing. Brenda Ueland, Anne LaMott, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, John Gardner are other women and men whose writing on writing I have heartily enjoyed. I also want to mention my agent, Don Maass, whose three books on writing commercial fiction I found extremely insightful as well. Happy Writing!…. Annie
Annie Kelleher is the author of 11 internationally published novels. Her latest release, a translation of her time-travel romance A Once & Future Love (Berkley, 1998) was in Spain 2008. Please send your writing questions to Sited&Blogged@gmail.com and put ANNIE in the title. Visit her blog at: http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com.
read my blog! http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com
Ask Annie- What is part of being a good friend?
it’s not often i look for confirmation in the pages of the political press, but i have to say my heart was lightened when i happened to read this quote from obama: “part of being a good friend is being honest.”
aye, there’s the rub. how do you be honest and spare the other person’s feelings? how do you speak your truth and allow that someone else’s might remain different from yours?
yesterday i met with a dear friend and had a very hard conversation. i had to explain how my feelings were being hurt, even while i understood it was not intentional. it’s hard to sit with someone you care about and tell them they are, at least in your world, messing up. it’s even harder to say it in a way that they can hear it and not throw things at you, retreat into silence or launch accusations of their own.
and now comes the hard part… because i’m second-guessing myself now, wondering if i did the right thing, if i said the right thing, if i handled myself in the “right” way. i must allow my friend the courtesy of sitting in her turn with all i said. i must release all expectation of any outcome, positive or negative.
so it was very nice to turn to a random web page and see that no less a person that the president of the united states – someone i can actually respect, for a change, no less! – had had this to say in the last 24 hours: “part of being a good friend is being honest.”
and furthermore, the war WILL end. blessed be.
Thinking about becoming a writer?
Question: How much do I really need to know about a place or a profession or any subject at all, really, in order to write about it?
Answer: That depends on how big a part the information plays in your story. If you have a heroine, for example, in a profession you personally know nothing about, you’re probably going to have a hard time imagining what it is she does all day. or, you run the risk of presenting your heroine in a cliched kind of way – for example, you base a character who’s a detective not on real detectives, but on fictional portrayals of detectives. That’s when characters run the risk of coming across not as real people but as caricatures of real people. And you never want that.
A long time ago, one of my first writing teachers said that the writer needs to know 75% more about any given subject than appears in a story. I found at the truth of this myself when I decided to set a historical romance in early 18th century Ireland. Although my academic background is in primarily British history, most of what I studied happened much earlier. I learned just how much i DIDN’T know when I found myself continuously reaching for a reference book to check facts from what their underwear was called to how the individual counties and towns were governed.
So when you’re planning your story, take into count what you DO know, what you ARE familiar with. Rather than set a story in a tropical locale you can only imagine, consider the place you vacation – or a fictional place like it. Consider what you do for a living, or have done for a living or what your friends and family members do. If you choose something you have first-hand knowledge of, make sure you know how to find the information easily, unless of course, you’re an avid researcher. Happy Writing!…. Annie
Annie Kelleher is the author of 11 internationally published novels. Her latest release, a translation of her time-travel romance A Once & Future Love (Berkley, 1998) was in Spain 2008. Please send your writing questions to Sited&Blogged@gmail.com and put ANNIE in the title. Visit her blog at: http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com or at http://eatingtheangelway.blogspot.com
read my blog! http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com
ask annie
Question: I’ve finished my manuscript, I’ve gotten feedback and polished it until I’m sure it shines. I know i want to submit it for publication, but I have no idea how. Now what? What do I do next?
Answer: Hopefully, along the way, you’ve begun to attend writers’ conferences, lectures or book signings at bookstores and libraries and maybe even joined a writers’ group or two. As in any other profession, it helps to network. You never know who the person sitting next to you knows, either, so be nice to everyone.
One of the first places I’d go to find out how and to whom to submit my work is to writing magazines and books on writing and publishing. Bookstores, libraries and even online communities have great advice on what proper manuscript format looks like, and directories where you can find out who is acquiring what and in what format they’d like to receive it.
Depending on what you’ve written and to whom you want to submit it to, you may or may not need an agent. Children’s literature and short fiction, for example, are traditionally not handled by many agents. And, in this brave new world of Internet communities, you may decide to that a non-traditional route – e-publishing or Print-on-Demand – may be right for you.
So keep an open mind, ask a lot of questions and never take “no” for a final answer. Happy writing!…. annie
Annie Kelleher is the author of 11 internationally published novels. Her latest release, a translation of her time-travel romance A Once & Future Love (Berkley, 1998) was in Spain 2008. Please send your writing questions to Sited&Blogged@gmail.com and put ANNIE in the title. Visit her blog at: http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com.
read my blog! http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com
Ask Annie
Question – How important is good grammar to a writer?
Answer – How important are good tools to a carpenter? It’s a sad fact that most of us, if we were taught grammar in school, found it so boring we couldn’t wait to escape the class. It’s also a sad fact that many schools are squeezed in so many directions, old-fashioned grammar lessons are disappearing. I’ve met a lot of writers who are aware their grammar skills could use some polishing, and more than a few who aren’t.
As I always tell my students, there’s no shame in starting out as a writer lacking skills. No one begins anything as an expert. We all started somewhere. But a good grasp of grammar is essential for all aspiring writers. A mastery of grammar gives the writer an understanding of the only tool we have in our kits to tell our stories – our language. A grammatically correct manuscript tells an editor that the person she’s reading is a professional, in the same way the condition of a workman’s tools tells someone a lot about the quality of his work. This is not to say you can’t break the rules, or that there’re writers who don’t break rules all the time, with impunity.
But you have to show you know the rules, before you break them.
If you know your grasp of grammar is a bit rusty, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Seek out a basic Grammar 101 class at a community college or adult education department. Many communities offer them through libraries or schools. Find a group of writers – chances are, there’s at least one grumpy grammarian just dying to pounce on incorrect usages, clumsy clauses, passive voices, and subjunctive moods, not to mention the misplaced comma or semi-colon. Ask a relative or a friend you trust to offer you tips. I personally rely on Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. This little book has been my trusted companion since high school. I still consult it more regularly than I usually care to admit!
Happy writing!…. Annie
Annie Kelleher is the author of 11 internationally published novels. Her latest release, a translation of her time-travel romance A Once & Future Love (Berkley, 1998) was in Spain 2008. Please send your writing questions to Sited&Blogged@gmail.com and put ANNIE in the title. Visit her blog at: http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com.
read my blog! http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com
ASK ANNIE
Question: Last week you suggested upping the amount of conflict in my story. But how do I do that? How do I know what kinds of conflict my story needs?
Answer: Begin by analyzing what kind of conflict you already have. Most novice storytellers are quite adept at what i call second-tier conflicts – which are conflicts with other people. These tend to be the central conflicts in most mainstream fiction and drama – good girl (or guy) vs. bad guy (or girl).
First tier conflict, as I like to think of it, is the character against him or her-self. Remember Hamlet? Hamlet knew his uncle killed his father and usurped his own throne, but still he hesitated. Hamlet’s self-doubt is the fatal flaw that brings about the tragedy. In my own much more recent novels, Silver’s Edge and Silver’s Bane (Harlequin, 2004, 2005), Cecily, one of the story’s three heroines, must claim her own power and take control as her country is collapsing into chaos. Her self-doubt, like Hamlet’s, holds her back at crucial moments. It’s not until she loses the man she loves she realizes exactly what’s at stake. Cecily’s final test comes at the very end, when she is asked to choose between having her love returned, and the wisdom that makes her Queen.
So one of the first places you might turn to look for conflict are the characters themselves. Take some time to analyze your character’s strengths and weaknesses. Look for places you can make them want to change. Look for beliefs that could be changed in some way as a result of the story. Ask yourself how the character can grow.
The third tier of conflict is the characters against anything bigger than they are. Remember Frodo and Sam in Lord of the Rings? The Dark Lord was so big and powerful and scary all you ever saw, even in the movie was his burning eye. For Captain Ahab, Moby Dick was the embodiment of all that Ahab raged against – God, Fate, even all of Nature itself. In my Silver trilogy, the backdrop of both stories is war and imminent societal collapse. In Gone With the Wind, it’s the Civil War. Thus, another way to beef up your conflicts is to look for ways to more deeply involve your characters in the greater world around them. How does what’s happening in your greater story-world affect what your characters need and want and strive for?
It may help to create a chart to map out these three concurrent conflict levels. I find that when a story really starts to flow for me, these three levels appear almost organically on their own. But sometimes… that can take a lot of work. Until next week… happy writing!… Annie
Annie Kelleher is the author of 11 internationally published novels. Her latest release, a translation of her time-travel romance A Once & Future Love (Berkley, 1998) was in Spain 2008. Please send your writing questions to Sited&Blogged@gmail.com and put ANNIE in the title. Visit her blog at: http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com.
read my blog! http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com
Ask Annie
Question: I have lots of great ideas and even some stories started. But then I seem to run out of steam, and even I lose interest. Or I get so frustrated, I just have to quit. What’s wrong? How can I keep my stories going all the way to the end?
Answer: This is a common problem, and one I sometimes experience myself. It always feels to me that I’ve “run out of story,” so to speak. That’s when I’ve learn to back up, and add more conflict. Conflict is the heart of all drama and fiction. We dont’ really care about people without conflicts – we may be happy for them, but we aren’t so interested in reading about them. They don’t hold our interest for very long. Like Tolstoy said, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, and that’s what makes them interesting.
So when you find yourself “running out of story,” go back to the beginning, and see where you can beef up the conflict. maybe the heroine isn’t so happy about her job. maybe she just got handed a big assignment. maybe your hero isn’t handsome. try taking away something that’s really important to the character. maybe they have a great relationship with a really supportive friend. put that person out of the country. in other words, look for places where they can have problems. make sure that what they want is something they really care about. then show us how much they care about it, by upping the amount of conflict around their achieving the goal. john grisham’s book The Firm is an excellent example of how to build tension and interest by heaping conflict after conflict around the main character.
Next week, I’ll talk a bit more about the three levels of conflict as I like to think of them, and how you can move up and down the levels as a way to power up your plots. Until then… happy writing… annie
Ask Annie!
Question: I think I’m ready to start sending my work out to publishers, agents or magazine editors. I’m worried I won’t be able to handle rejection. You’ve been writing professionally almost 20 years, Annie. How do you do it?
Answer:
a few days ago, a writing friend of mine asked me something very much like this when she asked me where i got my courage. where do you get the courage to continue in the face of unrelenting rejection and seemingly insurmountable odds? she asked.
ive been thinking about how to answer for a few days now. i’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not courage that keeps me writing. i’ve been “writing” as an occupation for nearly 20 years, now, but i’ve been writing all my life. on some level, i can no more stop writing than i can stop breathing, but i don’t have to keep “writing.” i can quit (and have quit) and find work that pays a lot more and a lot steadier – say, for example, waittressing. so the understanding that there’s a difference between the art and the craft of writing, which is what i do on my blog, and the business of writing, which is publishing and that doing the one doesn’t mean one needs to do the other, is fundamental to my ability to continue to do what i do.
there’s a difference, too, to the way i write what i write. here, the words flow, sometimes too quickly, and what i mean isn’t always clear. when i know im writing a piece for publication, i slow down, take my time. its WORK what i do for the marketplace and that WORK can sometimes be so laborious, it could drive a saner person over the edge.
it took me 8 hours of writing time and 20 or more drafts before i was satisfied with the first three sentences of chapter one of my second novel. i was facilitating a writing workshop at the time, which is why i was keeping track. and gentle readers of this blog may have noticed that once i decided my current work in progress was a novel worthy of publication, my pace on it slowed considerably. it’s still a delight to write, but i’m doing so with a colder, keener eye, shaving and shaping the material into something (hopefully) more commercially viable than just an episode from my own life.
over the years, i’ve developed a lot of coping mechanisms to handle rejection, and i will use this column to explore more, but the understanding that my “writing” is separate from my writing is a very critical part of how i’ve been able to continue to write.
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http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com
