Too much writing advice?

When I first started to realize that a lot of the authors I liked had web sites, I found myself reading a lot of writing advice. Every author seemed to have something to say- from Sherwood Smith to Shannon Hale and Diana Wynne Jones- and each one had their own distinct approach, often contradicting each other.

There were just so many of them! Covering all approaches- from the authors with a story arc that appears in their head and forces them to write it down, to the ones who make it up as they go along (Ellen Raskin of Westing Game fame said she got too bored to write unless the ending was a surprise to her, too), to the ones who outline and plan and brainstorm their way into an organized plot.

So does all this contradiction mean that reading about how to write is a waste of time? Maybe there is no right way. Maybe it's all a matter of personal style.

Maybe so. But I'd like to venture an idea that I've come to, after reading a lot of articles proffering knowledge about writing and the publishing industry. It is worth doing your research, and knowing all the rules, even if lots of authors do things differently. Sort of like grammar- you have to learn proper English, really know it well- and only then can you start playing around with it.

No one says ee cummings was an illiterate ignoramus, not if they know what they're talking about, despite the fact that he breaks all the rules of normative English. If a sixth grader tried handing in work following ee cummings's rules of grammar, he'd get an F, and that wouldn't be unfair, despite how it might seem to the sixth grader. It's because you have to understand what you're doing, and break the rules only when it means something different because you did it.

I'm not trying to say the difference is just in your intent and understanding of what you're doing, because I do also think there is a recognizable difference in the objective quality of your work. To readers - your target audience - who really do know the rules, see what you've accomplished as a work of art, instead of just a lazy attempt to get out of learning the rules, and cheat the system (and failing to actually produce anything worthwhile, in pretty much every case).

What does this mean in terms of writing style- what should you do?

You should learn all the rules. Understand their sources and the effect on your writing when you follow them. Explore all their highways and byways, good or bad or contradictory as may be.

Then: let all that advice wash over you and drift away. You're hopefully now a better writer, but once you've studied and practiced long enough, it's time to stop worrying about emulating the styles of others and figure out what works best for you.

First or Sequel?

I'm heading back to the spring semester, so as I bid a fond farewell to winter vacation, I want to talk about first books vs. second books. (Ha, I wish I'd written even a first book. But as a reader, for now.)

I read Graceling, by Kristin Cashore, before it was quite so popular. I thought it was good, nice writing, good characters, nice plot, but it didn't really stand out for me. I was sort of surprised as it rose up the best seller list. And then I picked up Fire. Wow. The prose scintillates, the characters are so much more interesting and compelling than Katsa and Po ever were for me. I haven't actually finished it yet because I no longer had access to the copy of Fire I was reading but I am seriously impatient to get back to it.

There are other authors, though, who work the other way around. For example, Maria Snyder wrote Poison Study, which I loved. Yelena and Valek are the perfect characters (not in an annoying way either) and the setting of Ixia was well thought out and interesting. I totally love Valek and the Commander's conversations. And the evil is real (unlike some books where the villainy is contrived- not like that here). I was eager for the sequels- and while there was nothing wrong with them, they just didn't compel me to keep reading as the first had. I was in love with Poison Study from the first scene. (Snyder is publishing a new book soon, Inside Out, which is set in a completely different world and looks really good, and I hope I will like it as much as Poison Study.)

I loved Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle, but when I read the sequel Castle in the Air I was so impatient for some Howl/Sophie action to show up, that I couldn't appreciate the book in itself. If it was set in its own world, I'd have loved Flower and Abdullah for themselves. But now they paled next to my anticipation for the characters I knew and loved already. I guess she felt there wasn't enough of a story left to tell for Howl and Sophie. But is it better to have them as guest stars then not at all? (Although Christopher Chant, I'll take in any form. He's possibly my favorite character in all of fantasy.)

So why does it work that way? Why do some sequels work for the story and characters and have that magical combination of elements that make a book really excellent? (In Fire's case, pushing Graceling higher up on the bestseller list as well even though you don't need at all to read them together.) And others just fall flat or land in the shadow.

Speaking of shadow. I just read Ender's Shadow over break and loved it as much- but differently- as I'd loved Ender's Game. I like that he calls it a parallax, that name works well to describe its function. (Midnight Sun, anyone? I couldn't finish that, I tried it after SM posted it and it wasn't as good as the main books. But Midnight Sun isn't really a parallax proper, as it's not that different from Twilight itself.)I believe there are more books about Bean, right? Always wanted to find out what happens down on earth after Ender leaves. I read Game, Speaker, and Xenocide and I would love to read more of those too.

It would be great if every book you read was just as good in different ways. Failing that, we tend to go by author. Sometimes, this works, and sometimes, it doesn't. And sometimes you can be surprised. Maybe it's better that way.

In other news, I now have a twitter account. I begin with haiku but will go far from there. If I feel like it. I'm heatherlette if you want to find me.

Writer's Block- version 2.0

I have a new form of writer's block, and it's a doozy. It might not be new to the world, but I'm pretty sure it's new to me. I simply can't write more than a few pages of any one story without freezing up. I come up with a million and a half reasons and excuses of why I'm not ready to write just now, and go and read one of my endless forms of procrastination online.

This has resulted in a large number of files with stories just-begun, or nearly done but I somehow can't bring myself to finish them. I flit between one and the next like a hunter-shy bird, not able to stay longer than it takes to type a few words and then I come up with an idea for a new story, or I cast around for something to read in a book or online.

How do I get out of this pattern? How do other people do it? Usually I'm pretty good at concentrating on only one thing for a long period of time if it interests me. How can I get my stories to interest me again? One at a time, I mean.

So much for new year's resolutions, right?

Endings

A lot of my posts have been about politics, and I've decided I'd rather talk about something more fun- story.

I've been thinking about endings. It's very easy to talk about and analyze beginnings, but for endings you have to read the whole book first to really get them, so you'll end up with a lot of articles and discussion on opening sentences, the endings are a wee bit neglected. With exceptions, of course.

It just occured to me that this question is very fitting for the end of the calendar year. That wasn't why I was thinking about it, though.

So what is the purpose of an ending? Are you trying to satisfy readers or keep them wanting more? Tie up all the loose ends or introduce a surprise twist? There are many ways of writing a good ending, but what makes an ending good? And what should an ending be trying to accomplish?

When I used to write short stories in high school my teacher would ask me to fix the endings- she invariably would think that my ending was too abrupt and I left the reader hanging. I'd argue, but this is what the story needs! I wanted to leave some things ambiguous, let the reader be able to imagine variable endings. It's a fact that only established authors can get away with this, as in a tenth grader it looks like you just couldn't decide on the ending instead of an artistic choice, but I came to realize that a lot of times she was right and my ending did need something more, and there was usually a way to fill it out a bit without compromising my artistic deliberate ambiguity.

With novels it's harder, and the truth is, with all the novels I'm always trying to write, I have yet to reach an ending. I don't know what I will do when I get there- I have to think about what an ending is and what it should accomplish. It might depend on the book, true, but surely there's something all endings share. Does it vary so much between short stories and novels, do you think?

Now I just have to keep working long enough to write the middle...

Mystery Post-it notes

Kristin Cashore wrote an article about writing. I will quote an excerpt here, hopefully with permission:

The house is strewn with post-it notes on which are written about a gazillion important reminders of things I must somehow remember to find a way to weave into the novel at some point, although, where, I can't imagine. Some of the post-it notes are written hastily in a code I have since forgotten. ("He is temperamentally sweet, but dangerous, like Jake." That would be very helpful, if I had the slightest idea to whom "he" refers, or if I knew anyone named Jake.)

My life, people. She hit it. I'm thinking about this and coming up with far too many examples.

• My white board that I can't use because it has notes on it full of useful ideas, but I can't erase even though I'm no longer sure what half of them are for, because I need them! My story might need them!
• My random post-its floating around helplessly.
• My notebooks full of random pages with snippets of plot and characterization- I frequently have to read through an entire notebook to make sure I'm not missing something crucial.
• Or something that the entire climax will build off of but is currently existing as a scrawl in the margin of my notes from English class.

Look, I don't have all my ideas sequentially. I don't plan to come up with ideas like this! Better randomly written down and possibly found when needed, rather than lost forever, right?

Right?

Author reading

So I went to an author reading, which I enjoyed considerably. Hearing books read aloud by the person who wrote them, besides the cool factor of seeing the person behind the book, is particularly interesting because they read it the way it is meant to be read, the emphasis and focus exactly how they pictured it in their own heads, not diluted or filtered by the reading and interpretation of a stranger.

I found the experience more compelling than I expected. Normally I hate listening to books because I read so quickly, myself, that the aural factor slows things down and I get impatient. But somehow, at the reading, I let myself be drawn into the story- all the authors did such a good job reading that it wasn't hard- and I felt almost as I do when I read it myself.

And now I can't wait to read Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld. Any book that starts out with a character saying his father is Archduke Ferdinand, and he's currently in Sarajevo...did I mention it's 1914? Yes, awesome setup for a book. And awesome illustrations.