My story “Pretending,” which won the Flash Fiction Chronicles String-of 10 Three Contest, is published today at Every Day Fiction!
I also did an interview in connection with the story (my first writing interview!), and that’s up too, at Flash Fiction Chronicles!
X-Men, as in the movies, which I’d thought of as recent until I looked them up and realized the first one came out in 2000! And the fourth one, X-Men: First Class, is coming out this year.
What does this have to do with writing, you ask? Well, every now and then, it’s fun to take a break from the written word, and movies are a great way to do that!
I’ve noticed sometimes when I feel tired and uninspired, immersing myself in another creative medium can give me a sudden spark of inspiration in writing. It doesn’t have to be movies – it can be walking through an outdoor garden, looking at photography, visiting an art museum, listening to music, finding a fun TV series, or even arts and crafts with the kids. What inspires you?
Writing is like anything else. There’s no magic pill or secret formula. You can read all the books in the world, buy a special pen, find a quiet corner, surround yourself with talismans, rituals, coffee and souvenir mugs, and none of it will do a thing, if you don’t Write. Not for most of us, anyway.
I used to have a ritual I’d follow before Writing – it involved waiting for quiet, alone time, making coffee, setting up my notes just so, lining up my three writing rocks for luck, and, finally, starting to Write. Any interruption shut down the whole process. Then I had kids. Bye-bye rituals. Bye-bye quiet, alone time. Bye-bye little choking hazard rocks. Hello, coffee constantly in hand! Now I try to take whatever time I get. (And I wonder what the heck I was doing all that time. Procrastinating? Switching gears? Luxuriating in free time I didn’t even know I had?)
My point is that no matter how much we want to Write great stuff immediately, we have to practice. And Writers practice by Writing, no matter what else is going on. Revising counts too, as long as you don’t spend so much time revising that you never Write anything new.
So, no lining up rocks and waiting for silence – off to the Writing!
(Only three more letters to go! Wow!)
Vivid, as in strikingly bright, intense, animated, realistic. (Vivid defined.)
I’ve noticed a lot of writing advice boils down to this – make your writing Vivid. When you’re setting scenes or creating images, choose language and descriptions that put your reader there, in the middle of it all. Remember to invoke the five senses – sight, sound, scent, feel, taste. Remember to use specific, concrete details. For example, “Joe swung the Chevy into the graveled lot beside Ma’s Diner” invokes a clearer picture than “Joe parked at the restaurant.”
The old saying, “Show, don’t tell,” gets at this. Take Joe again. If you can show us Joe, as he shrugs out of his polyester suit jacket, yanks loose his tie, and breathes deeply, the greasy tease of home cooking on his tongue, and Betty in his sights, well, then, we know he’s relaxed a little, without having to be told.
This applies to dialogue too. Add descriptions of all the things people do when they talk to each other – facial expressions, gestures, multi-tasking, looking out the window at the kids climbing the tree. Again, put the reader there in the room, show the speakers’ emotions, hint at their agendas, and make it Vivid!
Understand what your story’s about, whether it’s flash fiction, a short story or a novel. A useful exercise is to sum up your story in just one sentence. But not just any sentence. It needs to be one you wouldn’t be embarrassed to have other people read. One that doesn’t go on half a page or pull in subplots and minor characters.
I know you’ve probably heard this before. I know I had, and I’d always thought, oh, I know what my story’s about. Come on, I wrote it! But when I finally tried it, on a short story I’d already revised several times, I discovered that thinking I knew what the story was about and putting that down on paper weren’t quite the same! Being forced to distill the story to its essence made me see it much more clearly, and helped me figure out how to fix it.
