Writing Advice From the Trenches
Much of what I post here is for writers or those curious about writing. No secrets there. But it comes with this caveat; I am a foot soldier in the trenches of the writing landscape.
Is this a war? In some ways, but it’s not the ideal metaphor. I use it in the sense that writing is not only a fight or a struggle of sorts, but one that by. many metrics I am neither winning no losing per se. I am just an unknown doing his very best to get over an increasingly muddy, challenging hill. Firing at me constantly are lack of connections, notoriety, resources, fame and so on. You know, many of the things people expect from a writer in order to care in the slightest about their advice.
I am no general in this fight. I am not even an officer for that matter. A volunteer, yes, but one that offers the only perspective he has for you for the time being–that of someone plugging along with many many others en masse as we hope to obtain the same goal of increased readership and recognition. And because we are not officers, we can only dig, climb, shoot, duck, repeat.
We blog. We post to writing websites. We publish and market out own work as best we can. We steel ourselves against the potent discouragement of not getting where we want to be while continuing to insist on attaching our names to quality, memorable work. Work that perhaps one day will transcend the life in time in which we toil for appreciation and recognition of any consistency.
Oh, my advice and thoughts on the craft will parallel much of what the “generals” would say. The influencers and the viral sensations sometimes attain their rank through such endeavors and knowledge. Yet while some may have forgotten, (or never knew) the essence of subjecting themselves to the proverbial barrage of ignored or forgotten writing, or at best small-to-modest readership, I live that life every day. Year after year in most cases I gain not miles, not even feet, but inches over challenging terrain. Inch by exhausting, discouraging inch.
My advice and offerings spring from that experience. And if you too feel like you are still fighting in the lowest, hottest, dirtiest parts of the writing battlefield, not wanting to give up everything and still hungry for how to improve your craft if not your lot, what I say and consider here may be for you.
I can offer you honesty even if I cannot offer you glamor. Mind to word, word to page, page to book, I have opinions and warnings to share.
Are you also enlisted personnel fighting for every inch?
Tell Me About Yourself…If You Must
If you’re a writer, you are lightyears ahead of the game if you love to talk to strangers, especially if you love talking about yourself. The great irony of a words-based calling is that the need to construct sentences and words in an efficient, evocative, memorable manner does not stop even with the completion of your final draft. In many ways it has only begun.
Which is why, I say again, if you are both an author, and someone who counts yourself as among your favorite topics of conversation, along with your work, you are way out on front.
You are twice as far out front of the likes of me; I don’t tend to talk about myself fro an extended period of time unless asked. And I am usually not asked.
It is not at all hyperbole to say I never initiate talk of myself or my work. It does not happen. And if this is under “never,” approaching a stranger to do so would fall under the highly scientific category of “never-ever.”
You might be under the impression I never market my work. That’s not true, as you can find me talking about projects and products here on the website, and on my increasingly unused TikTok account. I play up my accomplishments as best as I can given the nature of both my personality and my brain. (I have written about this previously in my Autistic Writer Series from last year if you’d like to check that out.) But when it comes to soft sells, and conversing and “getting out there,” for the most part I don’t because in one part I can’t.
I was not cursed/blessed with the Autistic trait f not knowing when someone is listening. If anything, when people are not listening to me, truly not processing and seeking to learn from what I’m sharing, I tend to know it. Sense it. And talking in most cases to people I barely/do not know is enough of an energy suck. When the other party is clearly not interested in what I’m saying it goes well beyond an energy drain—it’s becomes mentally crippling.
You can perhaps imagine why then I don’t engage in such conversation, talk, chatter, whatever, when the risk of enduring the “I’m only pretending to care,” aura from the other person is so high.
And it is high.
I like to hope that in at least half the cases nobody pays much attention to anything or anyone anymore—that we are all adrift in the flood waters of polite-but-empty attention somehow simultaneously with a drought of interest in other people and their story. That in the social media influencer society of smart phone ubiquity and Brand Name Noise, the sort of imagination and wonder, interest and intrigue I hope to inspire with my craft is dying up more and more each day.
Yes. I tell myself that, not willing to consider the alternate in full—that I’m a bore that produces boring things nobody cares about.
In either sad case, the reflex within me to say less and less about what I do and create multiplies almost with every thing I make available. This is turn feeds the Oblivion Monster, swallowing what chances I have to catch the eye/ear of those most likely to enjoy my work.
Because I also want to avoid vacuous blather when I speak. I have to listen to and watch and read enough of it today, the last thing I want to do is contribute to that mind-anesthetizing glut. I want what I say even about my own work to have substance. So I opt to say even less.
All this by way of saying that there are times we as creatives, and consumers or creativity have to make the choice to be interested. Interest and attention will not always grab us and shake us anymore. There is too much out there competing for our five seconds in the Starbucks line. We need to seek out and engage with people with sincerity. We may not buy their exact product, but we should want to know why they made it.
Nobody owes me or you anything, but in a society of AI and junk-streaming-services of the month, I’d like to see all of us actively choose to embrace and discover, not merely stumble upon independent creative endeavors. With this mindset, you might just find more that speaks to you.
And it would make it a hell of a lot easier for me to speak to you about what I’m creating.
Mechanical Writing.
I do not mean tech writing here.
A lot of mechanics goes into good writing, writing that works well on the brain, writing that seems to have written itself.
Grammar. Syntax. Word count. Sentence length. Oxford comma’s and participles that do not do not dangle.
Significant concepts all.
Be that as it may, if i were given ten minutes only to advise any writer, especially those only starting out, I would include none of that.
That’s because writing advice can, and for whatever reason lately often seems to be too mechanical. Some approaches to writing education approach strangulation on rules and preferences, style manuals and 500 dollars for a proofreader. I am not at all suggesting you should ignore those things, but if this is the extent of the advice someone is giving, (or getting, for that matter), the very essence of writing–the emotional impact it has on both reader and writer is missing.
The heart as an organ may be pumping, but there is no blood to send anywhere.
Can you follow only the so-called algorithm, the pattern, the formula of readable writing and still succeed? Yes, it happens all the time. That may be the problem. Agents, magazines, conventions and forums all seem to advocate first and foremost to the craft, the tools, the procedure of writing, while giving the passion, yearning and drive to create for the world as a secondary consideration.
Follow these steps, and worry about the nuance later, is that in most cases they advocate. And I am here to tell you that is ass-backwards. Believe in it first, bring it to the page and then figure out the “industry standards.”
Or don’t.
If you converse with an obviously passionate person, and stop them to correct their misplaced modifier, you are choosing not to listen. There is a reason very few people in the heat of enthusiasm pause to remember not to rely on adverbs; they are trying to say something and say it now!
By all means be familiar with the mechanics for maintenance. Check the oil, kick the tires of your writing. Make sure it’s ready for the road trip. But removing the engine and taking it apart before every trip to the store is in fact an excellent plan for going absolutely no where.
Announcing Nazi Lavender, My full stage play now on New Play Exchange,
In the last few years of novel work, I have had less time to focus on or even mention my other writing. That ends today with the announcement of my play Nazi Lavender now appearing on New Play Exchange…a site that lets interested parties read script by up and coming playwrights for possible production. Here is the link.
All of the information about the play is there, ad I have mentioned it here before on occasion. I won’t repeat everything here, especially since coming up with taglines and marketing pitching for the submission drained me of what little daily commerce acumen I have for the day. Suffice to say, its themes of Nazi criminals and examination of our tendency as people to not recognize evil when it comes in a charismatic package are just as relevant, if not more so today than they were 80 years ago.
I am as committed to this project, which I have worked on and revised for several years now, as I am to any of the novels. But as it is a harder sell in person on the daily because it is literally a production instead of a guy mentioning his book to you, I felt a different tack was needed. Hence putting it on the NPE.
If you are interested in more, and especially if you are interested in staging a potential debut production, give the above a follow, and let’s see where it goes.
Seek Out Unknown Authors (Like Me)
Discoverability is an enormous factor in one hopes of even modest success as a writer, especially, (but not exclusively) for the indie writer such as myself. We hear it all the time:
Your stuff must stand out among literally millions of other options out there.
Well, yes and no.
If the reader (or consumer) is entirely unwilling or able to explore, or deep dive into the creative oceans that surround us today, you might need to be a unicorn just to be considered as a creator. More power so such one-horned legends.
But if we as a creative collective encourage consumers on the whole to investigate their options, to really delve into the weeds to find hidden gems, we increase the likelihood of grand discoveries. This is true not only for writers who very much long to be discovered, but for readers who want more options than merely the most easily detected possibilities at the front of the line.
To put it another way, I’d like to see consumers of all the arts, but readers in particular in this case, put in actual labor more often to finding new voices, ideas, settings, characters for their fiction-reading endeavors.
Now I want it to be a labor of love, naturally. Such an attitude may help me and other indie authors of limited means, true. This is not a mere selfish appeal however.
You see, just as we writers with smaller audiences are encouraged to “embrace the process” of creating even if it is never seen, (easier said than done) I encourage readers to embrace a new process of deeper introspection followed by more intense work at discovering the “less discoverable.” Delve into the process of not only discovering a new book by a new (to you) author, but one of grander consideration of your own tastes–a wading out into the marker but richer waters of the (near) anonymous content creators and authors out there.
Your chart toppers and Booker Prize winners are not going anywhere, so consider enriching your relationship with story, poetry, prose by leaning heavily, if only for your next few reads, into obscurities that match your preferences, where most of us authors reside.
You may find you want to stay, and I assure you there will be plenty of those of us unknowns that will welcome you.
Ty Unglebower 