I am not generally a celebrator of my own accomplishments. I am a do-er by nature and so when one thing is done, even when it was finishing all of my anatomy and kinesiology classes or competing in a triathlon, it is on to the next task. In an attempt to enjoy the process I am celebrating my progress on my book! I decided that every day I will write at least one entire page, no matter how brilliant or awful. And so I have. I am excited about the direction my story is taking and I am getting better at showing my points through my characters instead of allowing the narrative voice to state all my points, which have made all of my past stories something closer to an opinion essay.
While attending the University of Oregon I took a creative writing workshop where every student wrote three stories over the course of the term and we all read and critiqued each others stories. (There were maybe eight people in the class.) Since I was nineteen at the time I'm pretty sure I left every class where my work was critiqued, crying. While I was traumatized then, I am thankful for the critique now because I remember, quite well, the overwhelming amount of comments in regard to how my story telling can and should be improved. First, as a fore mentioned, if I want my story to have a point show that point through the characters. Second, don't assume that because a transition makes sense in my mind that the transition is obvious to my readers. Give as much detail as necessary and possible. Third, and this is my favorite, every character needs a background whether you include the background in your story or not. When a character has a background you don't have to spend so much time thinking about their reaction to a situation because just as with real people, it should be pretty predictable.
I gave also been reading, On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. The whole book is full of applicable advice and my favorite thus far is; "The secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what - these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence." (pg.7) After reading this it dawned on me how guilty I am of adding extra words. My most used being; just, such, quite, very, a bit, obviously and so on. I have so much editing that needs to be done that thinking about it is enough discouragement to stop me from writing. But I shall press forward. As Mr. Zinsser says, "If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard."(pg.9)
I will also begin doing writing prompts once or twice a week to get my imagination and creative juices flowing more freely as they have been stagnant for sometime. If anyone has a good writing prompt to share, please do so! The Internet only offers so much.
Until next time.
