Subtraction is a Plus.
When I’m writing the first few drafts of a fiction piece, I find it much easier to take things away than to add them.
That isn’t to say taking away is always easy. I can fall in love with my stuff as much as the next writer. But if I get to a “done” type of feeling with a draft, in the majority of cases I’d rather be told I need to lose 2,000 words than have to come up with 1,000 more.
Lest you think this relates only to tight plotting, I’ll mention I feel the same way about some of the literary pieces I have written as well. I’m sort of allowed to meander if I am going the literary route, and believe me sometimes I do. Yet even when it’s all about the metaphor or the prose, I’d rather be consolidating than expanding the piece.
Maybe I don’t love my darlings as much as most writers. Or maybe I don’t see them as my darlings until the story itself is complete. (Maybe I’ve never liked the often quoted “darlings” metaphor anyway.)
Whatever the level of “darlingism” in my words, it’s obvious that making things shorter is less labor intensive to me than adding spacers and making them longer is. (At least 90% of the time this is true, anyway.) I’ve often told people than some of my best 5,000 word stories were former 7,000 word stories.
Shorter is not always better, though. I haven’t totally deified brevity as some do. In fact, making something shorter doesn’t always make it short, does it? It just means that upon further review, I’m able to rid my piece of a character, a plot twist, a setting, a conversation that turns out not to improve things. By so doing, the piece is tighter at any length. After all, a 1,000 word story can drone and ramble just as much as a 30,000 word story can do so. The opposite is of course true as well; a 100,000 word piece can in fact move quickly, so long as most of those 100,000 words are operating at maximum efficiency, and not taking my reader too far off course. My readers don’t always have to know where I’m going, but they should always feel that they’re on a road, and not bumping around in the cornfield somewhere. Shortening my work is sort of like avoiding the cornfields.
Silly as it sounds, I feel I am accomplishing more, and have in fact gotten more work done when I am cutting things out then when I am adding them. Taking away and slimming down and quickening a piece means that I’ve probably already produced most of what the story needs in one form or the other. I just have to tidy up. If I find that I need to add scenes to future drafts, however, I tend to feel I wasn’t really done yet. Or that my idea, as stated, has to be changed into something else, and that is more draining. Worth it sometimes, yes, but far more draining to realize, “this isn’t done yet.”
I won’t claim this is the best way for a writer to feel. I happen to be a planner most of the time. I’m also someone who finished a first draft without ever looking back until it’s done. I don’t know if this view of editing and revising would work for pantsers or for people that edit each page as it comes. Not that it has to, naturally. But if you’re unsure about whether or not you have written anything worth keeping if you find yourself cutting and cutting it down to sleeker, smaller pieces during revisions, you can take heart from my experiences.
Writers: is it easier for you to add or subtract from you work as time goes on?
An Open Letter to My First Internet Friend
For the purposes of this open letter, the subject will be addressed as Courtney. –Ty
Dear Courtney,
You may remember me if you stopped to think about it, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised or too offended if you didn’t though. Until I happened to read about your obscure hometown last year, I hadn’t thought about you in years.
Looking back on things all this time later, I realize I reacted poorly, though it was under false pretenses that you could have prevented.
I was much younger when we happened to meet each other in that online chat room years ago. The whole thing was rather new for me, and not especially enjoyable. The percentage of people online that are dull, or mean, or total wastes of my time is about the same as it is in so called “real life.” (Or IRL as people used to say.) But when you and I started talking, I knew something was different. You were funny, you listened to what I was saying, you shared my disdain for the way most people acted, both on line and offline. Public chats led to private messages. Then emails. Even snail mail here and there. Then you asked for my number some months later, and thus began, (with far less awkwardness than is normal for me) a long, at times intense telephone friendship. A few times a week we’d talk several hours into the night about all kinds of subjects. I even talked you through a few life events that were, according to you, difficult to deal with. And you were there for me, most of the time, when I was simply tired of being alone.
Then one day we broached the subject of meeting in person. So deep were our conversations over the months and such trust had been built up, we both, it seemed, felt that it was the next logical step. We knew each other. When we decided to go for it, I remember how enthusiastic you were. I remember how excited you were, along with me, when we would talk about the sort of things we could do when I came to your town. The people you’d talked to about me who wanted to meet me. The possibilities. My planned visit was the subject of most of our conversations for about a month I’d say. After some shuffling, we had a date picked that would work for both of us. I sunk what little money I had into the bus ticket to take me to your town. You knew where the bus stop was.
I guess a highly insightful or more astute person than myself would have put things together right about then.Maybe not, I can’t be sure. Nonetheless, even I knew things had changed in just a few days.
You didn’t respond for days to my email telling you I had the ticket. When you did, it was friendly, and played the part of excited, but was uncharacteristically short. The same with our phone calls over the next week or two. Again, nothing in your voice that I could detect indicated anything, but I noted the shortness and the less frequent nature of the calls. But being in college, I knew about how busy life could get at certain times of the year for a student, so I thought little of it.
About a week before the date on my bus ticket arrived, though, I started got a bit concerned. I asked you for specifics about my visit. Where you’d find me, what you’d be driving and all of that sort of thing. This wasn’t just excitement for visiting, this was important information. And you weren’t responding. Days went by, my departure time drawing ever closer, and still no word from you. I knew you had been going through some difficult personal circumstances, and I wondered if that had kept you away. I hoped everything was all right when I’d leave you voice mails about once a night in the days leading up to my visit.
About two days before I was supposed to leave, I made my part of the mistake. I left several messages on your voice mail throughout the course of that day. I can understand, looking back over the years now, how that would have made you uncomfortable. Again, a more astute person would have probably just given up days before, having come to the realization I had yet to come to. But you have to understand that because you had been my best friend for a year or so by that point, and had at least claimed you looked forward to my visit so much, I had no reason to suspect otherwise. I trusted you, and assumed you trusted me. So that final day, when I left you too many voice mails at one time, it was not out of anger, or a desire to control you. It was not because I felt I owned you or could run your life for you. It was, quite simply, because I was worried. Given everything that we had been through up until that point, I figured your lack of response, almost as soon as I bought the bus ticket, was due to something unfortunate having happened to you, or maybe your family. I didn’t have a specific picture in my mind about what that could have been, but I was still operating from a place of trust. So when you just never got back to me in regards to the grand plans we had made, I felt justified in assuming something beyond your control had happened, and I just wanted to know you were okay.
That’s why I left you so many voice messages that day. That’s why they were hurried and anxious. And in a moment of confusion and concern that had been building to some degree all that week, thinking foolishly that somehow my presence would help you with whatever was happening, my final message stated something along the lines of, “whatever is happening, I’m coming, regardless.”
Quite a while later I realized that could have been construed as a threat, though it was far from it. But as I mentioned, at the time, I was getting worried.
The following afternoon, you called me for the first time in two weeks. Contacted me at all for the first time in just about one week. I was thrilled to hear your voice and to find out what had happened.
The thrill was over in a few moments when you told me that your friends and family had gotten together, read my messages and listened to all my voice mails, and decided I was a danger, and that you should have nothing more to do with me.
Assuming I had not understood it properly, I sought clarification. Indeed, you were not merely telling me not to come visit, but telling me not to contact you through any channel ever again, that you would not be contacting me anymore, either.
I felt my chest tighten as I asked you how you could do this to me, after everything we had been through. Asked you why you had decided on such short notice to be done with me. You claimed then that it was your family more than you, but that leaving so many messages was “too much” or something like that. You said you had to go. I ended our conversation with the same cutesy catchphrase we had always used together. You actually returned the cutesy catchphrase, in one final moment of our two year friendship. Then you hung up.
I wept, and I don’d do that often.
So the first purpose of this letter is to apologize for all of those intense messages. I meant well, and thought you may have been in trouble, but still probably should not have left them. If my zeal freaked you and your family out, I take responsibility for that.
However, the other main reason I wrote this letter, is to let you know that it didn’t have to end that way. You allowed it to spin out of control like that. The messages part of the mistake was mine, but at least it came from a sincere place of concern. What you did, or failed to do, was deliberate and not at all necessary.
So it wasn’t obvious to me at the time, but it is now; you never had any intention of letting me come to visit you in person. You didn’t want to see me, and you, it would seem, merely pretended to be excited about the possibility. Perhaps you gave your assent, assuming I was being just as insincere about a visit as you were. But once I had the ticket, and you realized I was serious, you shut down. Took steps away from me. Threw up walls and tore down what we had built. You hoped, it seems to me, that be being evasive I would suddenly just wash my hands of the whole thing, eat what little spending money I had spend on the ticket, and move on. After two years of strict confidences and openness, and four hour phone calls, and sending gifts to one another by mail, I guess that was easy enough for you to do. For me it was so foreign, I didn’t even suspect it as a possibility until everything blew up.
Of course you had every right, as all people do, not to see me. You were not obligated to host me. Or for that matter call me, write me or have anything to do with me. But Courtney, why not just say that? Why not be an adult and say at the first mention of a visit, that you were not ready for that? No, you don’t have to tell the truth either, I suppose, but it certainly makes you less of a person for not doing so. Especially given that you had more than one chance to do so, and still didn’t. You just left me hanging. You were hoping I suppose, that I’d put it all together and just go. Yet your way of handling it, if that’s what you did, was the way of a coward and a child.
My heart was pained over that issue for about a year afterward. I couldn’t understand, and still don’t, how and why a person would pretend to trust someone, pretend to be fond of them and to care about them, when they so clearly did not. It’s not like you were getting any money from me, or some kind of particular privilege. All you were extorting from me in the end was me.
Of course people play games, and maybe that’s what you were doing, stringing me along for the pure pleasure of doing so. I can never know. I only know that your game, if you can call it that, came to an abrupt end just as I was about to come visit you. Did the stakes of your game become to high at that point?
Or wasn’t it a game to you? Were you perhaps sincere all the while, and suddenly found yourself scared of my coming to visit? I’ll allow for that possibility. I allow for the possibility that just like me and my overzealous messages, you too were a possible stupid kid who did a stupid thing. Yet to be honest with you, I think the bigger strike is still your own; it should have been no mystery that doing what you did would hurt another person. That is something you could have considered, and from what I can tell, you never did. If you did consider it and cared about the outcome, you came to one of the most absurd conclusions I’ve ever known. Furthermore, you never sought me out, even much later, to apologize for hurting me.
But, that’s long over, and all that truly remains of you within me now are the lessons on human relations. What not to do. What not to expect. To not trust until many more, much stronger reasons have been discovered. That, and the slight desire after all of this time to address you once more to offer the explanation of my feelings and actions that I was never allowed to give you back then. How you could fear I would hurt you after everything we talked about back then is beyond me. But certainly I cannot hurt you now. I haven’t the slightest idea where you are, and believe me, I don’t care, so don’t get skittish again.
With no ill will toward you per se, I bid you, at last, a proper goodbye, Courtney.
-Ty Unglebower
This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.
The Why of Progress Reports
Sometimes I post updates on here about my various writing projects. This isn’t of those updates, though. Rather, it’s a post about such updates. That is to say, I wanted to share some thoughts on updating the world on one’s writing.
I’ve heard plenty of people say that unless you’re famous, nobody cares about what you’re working on, how it’s proceeding, and what issues you may be having with it. I think the various messages boards, and the success of Nanowrimo negate that viewpoint somewhat, but I concede that unless one is a writer, concerns about someone’s writing progress may not be the most engaging material to read. Usually.
Yet, as I said, I post updates everyone once in a while. Sometimes it’s because I feel better about a problem when I let the world know about it. Sometimes it’s a matter of quasi-accountability; I let the world know about a writing goal of mine, and I am more likely to accomplish it. But another, less obvious reason I share how things are going sometimes is to demonstrate that I am a writer even when I am not in the actual process of writing.
Not that you didn’t believe me. I’m sure you did. Still, letting the world know every once in a while that I am ahead of schedule for my short story, or behind schedule on my novel is part of my writer’s identity, if you will. I am more than a writer, but as a writer I want to make it clear that my work is not simply an internal consideration. I’m laboring to accomplish demonstrable outcomes here. The work I produce will hopefully make its way someday to readers who will enjoy it. Like the body builder who shares his lifting program, or the amateur cook that blogs about how the latest recipe worked out, I keep the readers of this blog informed as to where I am every now and then, with various projects. It makes it all seem more real, in a way, even if those posts aren’t the most exciting posts I’ll ever write.
Plus, writing isn’t always pretty. There are struggles, pain, problems, hindrances. A serious writer gets his hands dirty, skins his knees, loses sleep, stubs his toe on a regular basis. I don’t need a medal for that. I just want to share the struggles as well as the successes. And all of the progress in between. It’s a process. It’s a job. It’s a marathon, (even if you write flash fiction sometimes.) Letting all of you know how I’m doing doesn’t make it any easier, nor does it make me a hero. It just makes me another artist, and indeed another person in the world that puts energy and time into something they believe in. Someone that shares the journey with the curious and the not so curious. Not every stop is am attraction. Sometimes you just need to stop for gas, and take a leak, and reprogram the GPS.
That’s a bit reason why I let you know how far I’ve gotten any given week. I encourage any writer with a blog to do the same thing, and no worry about whether or not such posts are interesting. Get your progress, or lack thereof out there. Share with us in the world. We writers will understand.
In Praise of Finishing.
The writers community would be well served if we spent a bit more time encouraging and praising the simple act of completion.
There are many valuable resources out there pertaining to plot, characters, dialogue, grammar, tension, how to get an agent or how to self publish. Voice, point of view, style, genre. Conventions. Marketing. Networking. All of these of course play their part in the career of a writer.
Yet how often do we recognize that just finishing a short story, (and certainly a novel) is an accomplishment in its own right? We talk about “butt in chair” and crack our whips at one another to make sure we are reaching word counts each day. We offer tips on how to plow through when we don’t want to be writing. And of course there’s no shortage of reminders that a first draft of anything is crap. Ad infinitum writers tell themselves and other writers not to fall too much in love with the first version of your piece. Kill those darlings, and what not. Edit, edit, edit.
Let’s not, however overlook one significant truth in this writing life; finishing a manuscript is a big deal. Before we edit, find beta readers, seek representation, define out voice, master pacing, study three act structures and all of that sort of thing, we must first be proud of finishing something. It’s not that easy to do, and I think sometimes we in the community forget that. Sometimes the be all and end all of our encouragement and praise of other writers needs to be about finishing.
New writers would be especially served by this. Those who are just starting out as writers are inundated with advice, pointers, tips and admonishments. “Ten Things That Will Make an Agent Laugh at Your Attempts” and so on. No wonder so many people are scared off of writing before they even try it.
It takes time, energy and discipline to do any kind of writing. I’ve known about a dozen people who “wish” they could write. They haven’t because most of them lack said time, energy and discipline. Yet these are things that a writer must summon on their own. They will not be bestowed upon anyone. They must be demanded. And when they are, and someone alters their life, their mindset and comes to a true end of a piece, (as in not having quit before it was over), something rather uncommon has occurred. Most people, fellow writers, don’t bother. I know that’s difficult to realize sometimes when you sit in the middle of a writing world, but the majority of people don’t get anything done. When they, or you, or I finish something, even if it goes no further than draft one, it’s cause for some celebration.
So if you’re a writer, remember to breathe a bit once you finish something, and congratulate yourself. If your friend finishing something, congratulate them. If you have not written anything before an would like to try it, NanoWrimo is coming up. If you can’t take part in that, ignore all of the advice coming at you about how to write. Just finish, and I personally will be impressed by that fact alone.
Autumn: The Introverted Season
Autumn is here. I prefer autumn to “fall,” though I’m not sure why. Perhaps because as a word autumn seems more spiritual. More artistic. Even more introverted.
Naturally a word cannot be introverted. That doesn’t however, stop me or any one of you from feeling certain human qualities emanate from certain words. Words evoke different things to different people, and “autumn” to me is more introverted than “fall.”
Whatever you choose to call it, it is the introverted season. Seasons of the year cannot be introverted anymore than a word can be. Yet from this introvert’s perspective, if any of the four major sections of the year can be said to be introverted, I’d go with autumn/fall.
Summer is straight up extroversion. People outside, rushing about, meeting people, parties, barbecues, swimming pools, baseball games. Children out of school, laughing and hollering outside all day. It bursts with external activity.
Winter is isolated. Closed off. Maybe a degree of introversion there, but more of an “up yours” to anyone and everything. (Though for some of us, it grins for a moment during holiday season.) Winter is the recluse.
And spring? Well, as we all know, spring has some difficulty making up its mind about what it really wants to be. Sometimes rushing out to the dance floor only to find nobody else is out there. Summer would dance anyway, but spring just as often walks back to the snack table to wait for others.
In true autumn, one can go about one’s business in comfort, but not without regard to the weather. Not bundled and cocooned in winter clothing, we nonetheless can no longer subject as much of our flesh to the elements as we did in summer. By necessity we must all be a bit more self-contained, not allowing as much of ourselves out into the world. We can’t be quite as open anymore.
Autumn is the cooling off period. It’s the quieter, more intimate after-party following the bustling blowout of a party you just survived. The slow dance after all the rock and roll.
Time for stouter beer for those who partake, and richer, warmer foods. Things that require us to slow down and savor the experience of consuming.
Most of the thunderstorms are behind us by the time autumn rolls around, replaced by chilly breezes that sting our eyes for a moment, and make them water, without it being a wholly unpleasant experience. The slight discomfort leading at times to a certain type of contentment that cannot quite be described, only known by those open to same. A wind that also scattered fallen leaves over every surface, their “clickety-scrape” a near constant, a seasonal white-noise that keeps us from feeling alone, even when we are alone.
The world does not die, or give up in autumn. It’s recharging. Thinking. Building its potential. Withdrawing into its room for a while.
Sort like a certain temperament we all know and (mostly) love?
Ty Unglebower 