Busted -- Kelly

One of my deep writerly fears has been realized.

Someone, mentioned during my period of blogging anonymity, has expressed dissatisfaction with his or her portrayal.

During those years, the blog was a protected outlet. When I joined Lithia Writers Collective I needed to link my name to my personal blog for administrative reasons. I thought I'd "scrubbed" any significant identifying references to others; apparently I did not.

I haven’t told many of the stories I hold inside for exactly this reason. I’m not skilled at “fictionalizing” things. Something to work on, I suppose. It’s times like these when I sorely miss a weekly, in-person, critique group.

I know the LWC women could kick my butt right over this hump.

Initial responsibility for the words I write lies with me. But only I know my intentions. Final responsibility lies with those who read. While I never bought into Reader Response Criticism, all readers shape their interpretations through their own experiences.

I hope readers now and in the future will understand that I mean no one harm.

Tense -- Jennie

My first book was the typical, never-gonna-get-published work. It was a solid first effort at a new hobby for me. After never have taken a creative writing class, I learned a lot while drafting this YA novel, particularly about about character and dialogue. Needless to say, the plot was severely linear. And the whole manuscript was written in one verb tense: the present.

For my second work, the characters were slightly more developed. Dialogue was a bit more important. And I expanded the present-tense plot by integrating some flashbacks, sprinkling "-ed" endings throughout.

I'm still learning.

This new piece I'm scrawling probes the consequences of human suffering. I'm keeping the motivation of my main character at the center of plot this time. I'm trying to return often to her thoughts, feelings, and reactions. I'm reminding myself to have her talk to the other characters with the same vernacular and tone in which she narrates to the reader. And in addition to using present- and past-tenses, I'm throwing in glimpses of the future.

Now, I'm wondering if I could have better polished my craft if I had just stuck with one tense all along. It's difficult to focus on character and dialogue when you're straddling three kinds of verbs. The whole thing makes me, well, tense.

The way I see it, though, is that for the next novel, I'll have to move on to character and dialogue. Because I've run out of verb tenses, right?

Maybe, unlike my fictional first character, I'll take a cyclic journey, winding up, where I started, only deeper, and in only one tense.

Out From Under? -- Jennie

I don’t think my problem is plot. I have a million ideas for stories, a million ways to begin and end them, a million conflicts and resolutions.

It’s everything else that kills me: picking that perfect word to convey meaning, creating well-crafted characters who are deep and fully developed, who are relatable but also unique. And scripting rich dialogue between these characters, dialogue that shows the conflicts and resolutions without my telling it.

It’s setting, too—slowing down the action, so the reader can see the scene: letting the rivers rage, and the owls call, and the carcass of a cat sink slowly into the dirt.

Once Christy told me that the first three books go under the bed. This means that it takes writing a few novels before actually publishing one. Since Christy’s so clever (she published her first), I told her I’d give her my plot—all of my plots--and she could work her word choice, dialogue magic, etc., etc.

She chuckled.

So I’ve had to apply all these tedious little things to my plot by myself.

It’s been interesting.

Wherever I go (the mall in Eugene, a museum in San Francisco, my classroom on a test day), I’ve found myself studying people, and I’ve listened to what those people say to each other. I’ve taken long walks to hear the crack of ice under my feet, to the sound of sticky tires on pavement, and to the air trapped under a pigeon’s wings as it took flight above a bridge.

I breathed in hay after a rain.

I’m reading Poe before bedtime, and scaring myself silly.

I’m crying over loss.

In essence, my senses have become heightened, and I’m trying to transcribe that in my writing. This book, in turn, has slowed down. It won’t be tied up in the two months in which I usually complete a manuscript.

It has grown up; hopefully enough this time, to stay out from under the bed.