Be a Fan of Your Own Work

♦ July 14, 2014 ♦ 2 Comments

-All first drafts are terrible.

-You need a beta reader or two, or five in order to help you see your work more objectively.

-Invest money in an editor before you either publish a manuscript yourself or before you send it off to an agent; you’re too close to your own work to see it for what it is.

-Take to heart the changes that an agent or an editor tells you to make to your work, even if they are painful and a bruise to your ego. They are professionals and know better than you do how to turn your work into what it should be, a manufactured product that can be sold.

-Kill your darlings.

If you’ve been a writer for I’d say, at least 45 minutes so far, you’ve encountered some variation of each of the above pieces of advice. You’ve also encountered advice I haven’t included here specifically, but which points in the same direction. In short; don’t fall in love with your own work. Keep a distance from it, be skeptical of it, detached from it. Hand it over to others in order to get a true sense of what it should be in the end.

There’s some wisdom and practicality to this advice. Anyone, not just a writer, can get too close to the forest to see the trees when it comes to their projects and creations. A little help and some constructive criticism from those we trust will benefit us more often than hinder us, if we are open to what they have to say. Editors and agents are useful people for those who pursue that route. And if you’re only in it for the money, by all means abdicate your own personal preferences. The problem is not with the advice itself, but with the culture that has sprung up from its accumulation over the years. That culture, though not universal, can be damaging to writers at any stage. It’s this notion that loving and enjoying our own work is de facto suspect.

We aren’t going to love everything we write. Some things are just going to be there. Some things are going to get shelved. There are even a few things we may write and get out there which readers enjoy more than we do. All of that is normal, as is a desire for a more objective assessment of our work, as noted above. But when writers begin to feel that something must be wrong if they love what they’ve slaved over, (as opposed to merely pronouncing it marketable and professionally competent), something has gone off of the track along the way.

I’m quite fond of some of the things I’ve written over the years. I’ll reread my work at times, and enjoy it even more the further I get from it being written. Some things I’ve written I admire so much in their totality that I see no reason to change them. Not for an agent, not for a writers group, not for anybody. And certainly not merely for the sake of changing. I don’t assume that because I, the author, enjoy the result, there must be something amiss with either me, the piece, or both. There’s no nobility to blindly eschewing my own creation until someone else alters it, makes it “marketable” or gives me permission to love it. “Kill your darlings” has morphed into, “If you find it darling, you have to kill it,” and that wasn’t the original intent of that now ubiquitous expression.

When I do love my work, that is to say when some of it is a “darling” to me, it’s not because I wrote it. That’s the lesson here; don’t assume that because something came from you that it must be fantastic, because it won’t always be. I’d venture to say it may usually not be fantastic. Yet if you’ve written something, put thought and energy into improving it, and it feels complete to you, then by all mean let yourself enjoy it. Be a reader of your own work. That’s what I do. Like any work by someone else I read, if my work has attained a certain mood, rhythm, pace and purpose that speaks to me, why shouldn’t I enjoy it? Because “kill your darlings?” I don’t think so.

Any writer will tell you that a certain percentage of what they do is outside of their conscious effort and understanding anyway. When we enjoy our own work, we combine pride in our accomplishment with an admiration for how well it blends with that transcendent quality. At least that’s what I do.

I may be wrong on this, but we don’t deride a baker for indulging in her own desserts, or a fashion designer for wearing his own clothing. When exactly did it become detrimental to the craft for authors to enjoy their own writing? Or shall I say, enjoy some of their own writing, because I can promise you that any sane writer also hates plenty of their creations. A little bit of love should be permissible in wake of that.

In the end, I, the author, know what I like, and I need to trust that. If people don’t like my current book, I can only say that they aren’t seeing in it what I see in it, just as I would say about any art that I enjoy but other people dislike. Yes, this may sound delusional to some, but I don’t think I care. If I can be the only person in my family or circle of friends to have heard of and enjoyed a movie that bombed in the box office, I can also be the only one who likes my own stuff any given time. Not out of ego, but out of personal taste. That’s one reason I self-published this time around; so I could follow my own tastes and not those of an accountant. I am proud of and enjoy the stories in Thank You for Ten, even though I wrote them. I killed plenty of darlings along the way, had several restarts, and scrapped a few ideas altogether. But in so doing I got to a place I could be proud of, not to a place of total detachment and lack of interest in what I wrote as the fad seems to be.

So be all means, seek beta readers, get advice, learn from the best and the not-so-best. Restructure stories and listen to your agent if you’ve got one. You’re not perfect and neither am I. But once you’ve put the work into your creations, you’ve got as much right to be a fan of it as anyone else does.

It’s Crucial to Write When You Don’t Want To.

♦ July 10, 2014 ♦ 1 Comment

I don’t write every single day. Nor do I write at the same time every day that I do write. If doing either or both of these things helps you as an author, by all means continue. If you think my rejecting both creeds and stating as much on my blog is heresy, then label me a heretic. I happen to feel that a writer understands their own proclivities and routes to producing work better than I, or any instructor or online writing guru ever could.

One thing is certain, though. Whether you take the hard-nose daily route at the same time each day, or you take the slightly more chaotic approach of this writer, the time will come when you will not want to write. It will probably come often.

This can happen as a whole, when you find yourself not wanting to write anything, or it can be confined to a specific project. (As it has been with me lately. I blog with ease, but tiptoe around some of my longer fiction.)

Who knows why these doldrums arrive when they do?  There are plenty of superficial reasons, such as wanting to be outside, or engage in petty distractions like Twitter. Then there are more substantial reasons; you might be ill, or fatigued. There are also psychological reasons for you not wanting to write any given day or week; maybe you’re experiencing doubt as to your worthiness, or you can’t stand being unsure how to fix the current chapter. You fear the failure or success that may come with finishing the piece. There are even a few instructional reasons why you could be putting it off; perhaps you’re brainstorming, or you’ve been sucked into a research black hole out of which you cannot, (or do not wish) to escape.

Whatever the reason, you will at times totally lack any desire to write.  If you’re like me, you indulge that feeling here and there. Yet the time will come when you will have to write when you do not want to write.

Writing when you don’t want to is not a choice when you’re on a deadline. You do it or you get fired, or don’t get paid. No need to explore that motivation. But what about the times when you are accountable only to yourself and your creative vision? If you don’t have a deadline from elsewhere or yourself, what’s the big deal about avoiding work that isn’t setting your creative soul on fire? I’ll tell you.

First, you’ll never get it done otherwise. Unless you are willing and able to spend a literal lifetime on one or two projects that you don’t need anyone else to ever see, you’ve got to get on with it. For a change, I agree with the conventional writing wisdom, when it states you cannot wait for inspiration. Writing is work and like any work it doesn’t do itself on days you don’t feel like doing it. Some days you’re sculpting the vase, and other days you’re just lugging that dirty, heavy, unseemly hunk of clay onto the potter’s wheel. But no clay, no vase.

Making yourself write on days you don’t want to write is not just about getting on with it, however. It’s about your identity as a writer.

By working on a piece when you’re too tired, too sick, too occupied or distracted, you’re sending a message into the ether. (Define that according to your own belief system.) You are telling yourself and anyone/anything else out there that the act of writing is a priority-a priority over minor health issues, a priority over fatigue, over boredom, over distractions, over whatever else you want to be doing that moment. By projecting such priorities, you are also projecting your identity as an author.

The product during these times of no desire may not be voluminous; it may only be a paragraph or two. Nor is the work you force yourself into likely to be your best writing. It’s often not even going to be your mediocre writing. (Though sometimes when we force ourselves to write when we don’t want to, we find ourselves suddenly inspired a few minutes later.) Either way though, doing this represents a commitment to the process of writing, and it leaves an impression on the universe, or the deities, or the ether, (whatever persuasion you happen to be in such matters.) Before long, that impression reflects back at yourself, and you will then see yourself as a writer more clearly. Which in turn feeds your writer’s identity that you project into the world, and so on.

Your desire to write is not what makes you a writer. I suspect about 90% of humanity on some level for at least a few minutes desires to be a writer, and they may even write for a few days or a few hours. It’s one of those things, like New Year’s resolutions that nobody keeps. But they stop when they don’t want to do it anymore. (Like me watching the World Cup here and there.) What actually makes you a writer is a steady commitment to identify yourself as such by actually writing whether you want to or not on any given day. If you never want to do it, and have no stories to tell, than of course don’t write, now or ever. But if tales live within you and wish to see the rest of the world beyond your heart and mind, give them, and the craft what it deserves and requires; priority status.

 

The Story That Still Insisted

♦ July 7, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

About a month ago I wrote about a story that that insisted on being written. So I finally wrote it, after the concept had been moving around in my mind for a few years.

During the weekend I edited and revised the same story. It hadn’t been knocking on my door quite as loudly as it had been before I wrote the first draft, but after a break of about a month, I felt called to work on it some more.

Just like last month, I’m unsure to what end I’m working on this piece. I keep telling people it’s not my usual type of story, and now that it’s polished I feel the same about it. The disturbing parts are no less disturbing now that I’ve edited it, though there does seem to be more light shining from the ending than before. I can’t decide intellectually if the end justifies the rest of it, but on an emotional level I have to say it feels as though it does. On that level, I find the story satisfying, something of which I can be proud.

Yet even now I don’t feel immersed in it. Even now that it’s revised and edited I don’t get that feeling relief and admiration for having at last completed a story idea I loved and appreciated from day one. It feels more like having served on a jury and done what i thought was right; I wouldn’t line up to be in a jury, and would find some aspects of being so uncomfortable and inconvenient. Yet I would not bend over backwards to get out of it, either, in most cases. It’s something that should be done when it is asked of me, and that’s how I feel about this story.

How does one perfect such a story? When I’m, for lack of a better phrase, “in love” with the material there is that moment when I know, “I’ve got it,”. Does that moment ever occur when you feel responsible for a story you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself? I’m thinking that it is at least possible, since I can in fact detect improvement between the first draft and the current state of the piece. Perhaps I am able to view this story from a more detached perspective and will know all the earlier when I’ve “nailed” it. That is my hope, at least, because I don’t want to go on feeling this story is unfinished for years to come.

Even if the “nailed it” moment comes, then what? Do I wait to see where this story “wants” to go next in terms of publication? Do I post it on my Wattpad and have done with it, or do I do extra research and try to find a match in places i don’t normally look for submissions? Or do I just hold on to it forever and share it with nobody?

I doubt it is the last one, as after all of this I have gone through with it, I at least want someone to read it to tell me if it’s anything. But that doesn’t solve much, because I don’t know who this story is for. Granted, I’m not as precise with my target audiences when writing as most authors are, but in this case I really don’t know who the audience is. It seems mostly literary. Sin and redemption would be the broadest theme I could ascribe to it. It’s under 4,000 words. Certainly it’s dark for much of its length. But not horror, and not Gothic.

What is this story??

I assume I am getting closer to an answer, as I’ve completed one set of edits, and will probably proceed with the next set in the near future. Already I have some suspicions as to what it may all really be about, though when i sit down to work on it, those reasons seem to vanish, and I once again find myself wondering why i wrote this.

That’s probably why it seems so detached, and the answer so elusive…one of those times when it’s so obvious I miss it.

If I do figure out more, I’ll let you know.

*

There is no mystery, however, to the purpose of my recently published short story collection. If you’d like a copy of Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater all you need is 99 cents, and one of these links. For Kindle, for Apple, and various formats from Smashwords.

An Open Letter to My First (And Worst) Bully

♦ July 3, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

For the purposes of this open letter, the addressee will be referred to as 45217. A subsequent person will be referred to as Jake. -Ty

Dear 45217,

One of the least surprising things I ever learned in my life some years ago was that you ended up in prison. Robbery, was it? I don’t remember exact details, but I think it was for 15 to 20? That would mean you’re still locked up. Whether you in fact are, or if your rich parents once again did something to help you out of trouble, I don’t know. I do know you probably deserve to still be in prison for any number things other than that for which you were convicted. And wherever you actually reside now, you still warrant no further identification from me than a prison number.

I’ve known several people in my life who I believe in my heart are psychopaths. Most are simply without morals, but have adjusted to society in such a way as to not cause much trouble. You obviously never made that adjustment, but then again you are not merely a psychopath; you are evil. I have no compunction at all about saying so if you are no different than you were as a child.

That label, evil, obviously means nothing to you, being what you are. So I expect no regret, and indeed would expect you to be somewhat entertained as I remind you that you were not my only bully, but you were the first, and the absolute worst. I would assume that if you could remember who I am, the memory of the psychological torture through which you put me on a daily basis would put a smile on your face, even as you sit rotting in your prison cell.

It’s probably the exact same smile you had on your face every day in grade school when you would see me coming: your friends, and those who pretended to be my friends in tow, just before you launched into whatever relentless verbal assault you had planned for me that time.  A smile that gave birth to the words you shouted, whispered, hissed and vomited onto me from however far away you were when you saw me. The smile that increased every time a friend walking with me would laugh at what you said instead of defending me in some fashion, as though such laughs were returned investments in your bank of emotional violence.

That same smile that you wore when, in 8th grade, you were already manipulative enough to convince teachers that it was only harmless teasing, and that it was in fact funny. The smile you wore when they walked away from you, either saying nothing or laughing with you at some of your comments you’d used to once again talk your way out of any punishment. The smile that even as you said nothing, and faced no consequences once again, was in and of itself more torture to me as I observed it from a never-quite-safe distance of a victim; a victim who was told time again by authority figures things like, “it’s just words,” or “he doesn’t mean it.”

My guess, though I can’t be sure of it, is that you wore the same smile when you got home from school, having escaped from trouble because your wealthy parents had once again marched into the office with their furs in springtime and their Rolexes reflecting the fluorescent school lights back in people’s faces and issued reminders of how much they contributed to the school in addition to your tuition. The same parents who would be thanked profusely in the annual report, all the event flyers and at many school assemblies and evening programs. Each thanks being yet another way your very existence tortured me without you having to say a word or even so much as look in my direction, making the brief times when I didn’t have to see you just as painful as the many, many times that I did.

The smile was also present with agonizing frequency when teachers and staff praised your alleged “giftedness,” though in what, I’ve never understood. Perhaps they meant in the “gifts” your parents gave the school all the time, because I noted no particular intelligence in you to warrant the example everyone made of you of, ” being gifted” to the rest of us.

I’ve wondered at times, 45217, if that smile was anywhere to be found when you committed the crime for which you were at last arrested. Did you show it when the idea for your crime was first hatched, as you pondered who your victims would be? Was that smile there when you thought you’d gotten away with it, and did it appear at any point when you met your lawyer? (Undoubtedly the best money could buy.) How about your mugshot, are you smiling in that?

Truth be told, I don’t much care. Smiling or not, you were put away and there is some satisfaction for me in that. Even a psychopath would rather be free after all. What I’d really like to ask you about is something from years and year before that.

I’d left the school in the middle of my 6th grade year, due in no small part to your bullying and your smiling. But in the final year or so I was there, I met your younger brother. I was convinced that the two of you would make up some kind of double-team of bullying. That fear nothwtihstanding I couldn’t help but notice from the first moment I saw him that though there was familial resemblance, he seemed, for lack of a better word, fuller. More complete as a life form. The prospect of him being around still worried me, but until I saw him in comparison to yourself, I didn’t realize that he possessed some sort of consciousness of the world behind his eyes, whereas you had only a violent vortex into which you sucked up all of the emotional turmoil and pain of innocent people you created. I wouldn’t have put it that way as a child, of course, but even then I knew there was something vastly different between you and Jake, and that he was closer to decency.

Sure, he was more sarcastic than he should have been, laughed a few times at someone tripping up the steps when it wasn’t the nicest thing to do, so I avoided him. Yet unlike you I didn’t find him lying in wait for me. If he saw me, he saw me, didn’t usually have much to say to me when he did. I don’t think he put any effort into finding me. And what is most significant, he did not torture me.  True, he didn’t as far as I know, try to stop you from doing it, but he didn’t assist you either.

When the school started a bowling league, he joined it, as did I. Though I don’t think he and I were ever friends, (he was still a few years older than me) he actually had constructive things to say to me. Tips on how to bowl better. Where to place the ball, when to let go. “You just need a little more spin to it,” he would say to me and many of the others over and over again. I can still hear him saying it today-the small but enthusiastic nod toward his student, his hand twisting slightly at the wrist on the word, “spin.”

He didn’t smile as often as you did. If I recall he smiled less often than a lot of us, and yet I found more humanity in that slightly distracted expression of solemnity he seemed to carry than I ever found in you as you smiled.

I almost liked Jake. Maybe I would have eventually if I had stayed at the school longer, I don’t know.

My question to you, 45217; did you have that fucking smile on your face when you killed him?

Oh, I read the newspaper accounts like everyone else  a few days after I found out. (Someone at my new school had heard about it and told me, as they were also acquaintances of your family.) How you were both out hunting in a nearby field with a rifle, (with nobody else.) How your brother had turned slightly at the exact moment you dropped the gun on the ground in front of you, and how it went off right into him.  How you called for help and began CPR. How it was ruled an accident, and how you were not held responsible for it. I’m aware of the official accounts. To tell you plain, 45217, sitting here today, I don’t believe them.

You see, knowing what I know of you and your capacity for inflicting pain, victimizing the weak, and showing no remorse for doing so, and given that I still have scar tissue on my soul from your assaults to this day, I have all the evidence I need to conclude Jake’s death was no accident. At very best you were goofing off and kept waving the gun around at him threatening to shoot when it went off by accident in your hand, or you were firing warning shots at him for something and got to close. At worst, (and what I suspect most of the time) is that you had a gun, your quieter, more civilized brother pissed you off somehow, you were in a field without witnesses and you shot him Then, as so often was the case with you, you got away with it.

Are you smiling now?

I can say you were not smiling the last time I ever saw you. It was the very day the news broke, may have even been the very day it happened, I’m not sure. My mother had picked me up from my new school and taken me back to my old one, where I had dealt with you for so long. I don’t know why. She probably asked me if I wanted to go, or suggested that I do and I agreed, though deep down I didn’t want to go back there. The place was understandably like a funeral parlor when I got there, everyone milling around in tears and shock. A few of my so called “friends” came up to me briefly to discuss things, but that was the last time I ever saw most of them.

Then I saw you. You were in the office, for whatever reason. As I said you were not smiling, and your head was down, and your eyes sort of half-open in what appeared to be fatigue to me. I’m not one to judge someone’s grief, if you were in fact grieving. But I did wonder why you would be there, at the school, once again the center of attention only a short time after such an event. I won’t assume much, but again, if you are anything like you have ever appeared to be, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all part of an act: a chance for you to try on “grief” and see how it worked.

Jake did not deserve to die, however it happened. Your parents, obnoxious and condescending as they were, did not deserve to lose a son. Yet in my estimation, they have in their life actually lost two sons: one of them to death at the hands of the first, and the first to whatever warped sense of  reality that you projected onto the rest of existence. A reality that justifies any action and any thought so long as you are entertained or advanced by it. Nobody anywhere deserves to be subjected to that, and that includes me.

Could I be wrong? Could you be now, and as a child when you knew me, merely a lost soul? A soul who remained unable to attach, to love and be loved? Someone who never found a way to be a productive human being? Is it possible you are a gifted soul not properly nurtured within the cradle of wealth and privilege into which you were born? Might you have really dropped that rifle, and continue to mourn your brother to this day?

I don’t know, but frankly in the time I knew you I never got the impression, even for a moment, that you are anything but a sick, heartless waste of human DNA capable of anything and everything. For years I looked at you, and felt you looking at me and sensed nothing approaching even troubled humanity. I’m willing to risk being incorrect about that, especially if for a moment it tortures you.

Go to hell.

–Ty Unglebower

 

This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.

 

Nine Days Out: The Self Publishing Experience (So Far)

♦ June 30, 2014 ♦ 2 Comments

Unless you happened to just today discover me and this blog, you already know that my short story collection, Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater launched a week ago Saturday. It’s my first self-publishing experience and while there is still much to do to promote and sell copies of the book, I have in the last ten days had a bit more time to take in the experience, and asses my feelings on same.

To begin with, despite the work that remains, (the work only just begins once you launch) I can’t help but feel some degree of relief since the launch itself. There is no more formatting or techie stuff to deal with. It’s all been approved, and the file clearly works on all devices I intended it to work on. It’s clean, professional copy with very few oddities to speak of. It’s been priced and posted correctly. My sales reports are reflecting sales, as they are supposed to. As I’ve said before none of that was as bad as I sometimes feared it would be before I started it all, but I’m happy that for this book it’s done.

I was telling a friend the other day that it can be a bit of a time warp. Not unlike getting to opening night in the theater. You put all this work into a project, and while you’re doing so any given day seems like drudgery or endless work that isn’t leading anywhere. Then one day you wake up and you realize it’s complete. The book is launched, in this case. In the first few days I found myself mentally checking off things I had to do to prepare for the launch, forgetting for a moment that i had already in fact launched the book. I can go to the page and see it sitting there on Amazon or Goodreads. (And most recently, on iTunes as well, if that is your preferred location.) It won’t sell itself, but it’s there! (And there, and there, etc.)

I’ve posted about it in several; free directories so far, and have a few more to look into over the next few days. It can’t appear i too many of those. One never knows where the person who will tell all of their friends about this great short story collection may happen upon it first.

For the first few days I was fierce in promoting it every few hours, as I knew I would be. At this point I mention it about once a day on my Facebook feed, and maybe twice a day on Twitter. The slight awkwardness with self-promotion that I sense I would feel is in fact present. It may become more so as time goes on, depending on the medium. But it had not crippled me, and i have been able to justify it most of the time. I probably still err on the side of “not enough self promotion,” but it’s greater than zero, and I’m all right with that for now.

The most significant result of my first self-publishing experience may well be the comfort it brings me as I think about my second self-publishing experience. Barring some major change of plans, that experience will be my first official novel, Flowers of Dionysus which I intend to have out late spring, 2015. It of course will take longer, but as it is still a simple structure with no pictures or charts, the process for formatting it should be much the same as my experience for this collection of short stories. Much of the intimidation such things have is in their total newness. I’m sure there will be problems along the way the next time I do this, but none of those problems will be related to the novelty of the experience. The proof is there that I’ve done this once, start to finish, within the deadline I set for myself. That fact will be half of what i need to get through the process the second time.

In conclusion, there is a huge amount of work that goes into something like this just to get to launch. There is even more work to do to promote and market and convince others to buy the book and talk it up. (You can help, blog readers, by please buying a copy and spreading the word for me!) Still, there’s an undeniable satisfaction in concluding this process successfully, and within the time frame I wanted. I do feel empowered moreso than i ever would be going the agent route, and control and power are important things to me in my creative endeavors. The difficulties are not lost on me, but they are the difficulties I chose to subject myself to, as opposed to those someone foisted upon me.

In conclusion, this first experience in self-publishing has for me been neither magical nor shameful. It feels right now exactly as it is; a creative work into which I put much effort and imagination that has now come to at least the initial stages of fruition. Though I have nothing with which to compare it right now, I have to feel that I’ve made the right choice.

Stay tuned for periodic updates on how the experience is going.