Thought for the Day

The Conundrum of 'Style' in Writing

In my forced regimen of self-education in writing, I've managed to pin down the basics in the last few months. If I try real hard, I can write a decent story when I want to. However, I don't want to settle for a passing grade when it comes to my work. If that's the best I can do, then it's not worth any further effort.

What separates an 'okay' writer from a 'good' writer, and a 'good' writer from a 'great' writer?

In my experience, mostly as a reader, it's how they convey their thoughts and message within their writing. It's not just a matter of getting it right any more, it's a matter of setting my work apart from the 7,000,000 other writers out there trying to be published. There are two things I still need to really grasp before I'll be noticed by anything more than a POD service:

1. Narrative 'voice' - or, in other words, how the reader 'hears' the story in their head. My author-voice is pure Southern California Neutral. No voice inflections, no accents, nothing to set it apart from pablum save for a spare curse word or two. This is a style issue and it's hard to understand, but that's my goal - to wrap my brain around this concept and utilize it in the most proper and effective fashion.

2. Setting and a novel's overall 'Tone' - I've just realized, after reading some of my 'older' stuff (from '98 and '99), that the tone is almost always the same: flat and devoid of any emotion whatsoever. If I write a story about two kids exploring a haunted house, you might as well hear circus music playing in the background for all the tone I've injected into it. Setting and Tone go hand in hand, from what I've learned. Dialogue and action from the main characters, as well as the tertiary character who does nothing more than lean against a lampost and spit tobacco juice into the gutter, contribute to the Tone of a story. I'm giving mixed messages in this department, and I need to get it together.

There are so many little, teeny things to consider when writing a novel. I read once that writing a good novel is akin to putting together a symphony orchestra and having them perform perfectly (not a single instrument out of tune) on the night of their debut. Ever see an orchestra play? It takes months and months of work and practice. Every single part of it has to function on it's own, as well as a part of the greater whole so that the resulting music is pitch-perfect and pleasing to the ear. In my novels, the orchestra is playing, but it's badly out of synch. The horns (empathy for my characters) are too clunky, the woodwinds (setting details) are screeching and playing another tune altogether, and the violins (the Tone) can't be heard over the cacophony of the other two. In short, the orchestra (my authorial voice) is loud, confusing and grating to the ear. I've gotten the drums (pacing) and the flutes (dialogue) pretty well-organized, but they're (again) drowned out by the louder problems.

I'm trying to think of the novels I'm currently working on as musical symphonies because that helps me to distance myself from the story, allowing me to step back and take a hard look at what I've completed thus far. I still miss the 'little' things, though. Critique groups help, but I can't post an entire novel to a crit board. ***Mainstream publishers will not touch a book if they even suspect that it's been posted online somewhere.*** Not to mention, crit groups ARE NOT editing services. I've gotten a lot of good advice from them, but I've gotten a lot of misguided and just plain stupid advice there, too.

In the meantime, there's the problem of overall 'style.'

Style is something so intangible that I'm having a hard time translating it into terms I can understand. What is Style? My best guess is that it's essentially the symphony itself and how it sets itself apart from all the other ones out there.
What makes my writing MY OWN?

I posted some poetry on a popular critique board once, on a site that's listed in the Writer's Digest Top 101 Web Sites (I'm regular on that board, by the way). Several people took a look at it for me, and though they all said it was a sensitive, 'heartfelt' piece, the consenus was that it lacked style. One woman, an artist/musician/poet/something or other from Europe told me that it was 'cute, but unfortunately boring.' She went to tell me that there was nothing about any of my writings (prose or poetry) that made it stand out as 'art.'

Well, what the Hell is 'Art?' I asked, later on.

The reply I got was:

'Imagine your poem 'Grandma' as a painting made of words. What you've got so far is an image of a woman laying in her bed, dying. The golden sunlight filters in through a curtained window, and her dutiful daughter is sitting at her bedside. This is not a remarkable painting, especially if it's hanging in a museum next to a Picasso or a Cassat. Basically, you've got a Norman Rockwell: sad yet hopeful, redolent of fine down-home memories, but nothing of substance.'

And so I said: 'What's wrong with Norman Rockwell? I think what he did was Art, not some splotches on a canvass, or a woman with part of her face protruding from her chest and a breast where her knee should be."

She replied: "If you don't understand what sets Picasso above Rockwell, then you'll never understand Style, and you'll never be anything more than a mediocre writer that spews out hackneyed, uninteresting crap."

That was my first-ever discussion on Style, with a renowned artist from Europe.

I think Art is subjective. Art is supposed to be something that grabs the viewer by guts, twists them and makes them think about what they've just seen or experienced. Does Rockwell's art or Stephen King's writing make you 'think?' Not really. You think it's nice to look at or entertaining to read, but that's about it. When you look at a Picasso or read James Joyce's 'Ulysses,' you think about it. What you might think at first (especially if you're new to 'Art') would run along the lines of: "What IS this sh*t?

But if you look at it and then think about it for years on end, and discuss it with others interested in figuring it out as well, you start to get an idea of what the artist or writer was trying to convey: ideas, emotions, things symbolizing other things, and more. People will argue over the meaning for ages, and it will always be recognized. Even the most mundane of blue-collar workers can recognize Munch's 'The Scream.' That painting makes you think. Writing should make you think, as well. If you can make people think about something you've created, then it remains in their minds for a long time to come. This was what my semi-famous European acquaintance was trying to tell me. It took me well over a year, but then the light came on and I 'got it.'

With that figured out, how do I inject 'Style' into my writing?

One of the most common criticisms that I've received is that my stories are too 'mundane' and the underlying theme is usually too 'safe.'

Safe? So what the hell does THAT mean?

It means that I go out of my way to pick subjects and characters that don't challenge people's comfort zones, and the underlying message behind just about all of my stories is overdone, hackneyed and trite. I don't choose themes that reach into people's guts and twist, forcing them to pay attention to what I want to say.

So, how do I do that? How do I wander away from that which is 'safe' and walk on dangerous, more interesting ground?

Well, I've decided that I must first begin to write about things that *I* want to write about. I need to quit trying to write 'for the market' and instead write to please my own curiosities. Everytime I've sent of a story that I feel will cater to 'the market,' I'm told that they've seen at least forty or fifty stories of a similar plot line that week. I have to come up with something original, or at least a unique take on a previously covered subject. My novel "The Rose and the Dandelion" is a unique story, but it's not ready yet. Far from it.

I also need to experiment with my wording. In trying to strictly adhere to the so-called Rules of Writing as put forth by Random House editors and those like them, I've sacrificed the raw emotion that used to fill my writing. I became worried that I would offend people. I became afraid to be criticized.

What have I written about in the past? Safe, 'cozy' type of mysteries that I couldn't give away to people. True, these sort of stories have their place in the publishing industry, but they're not 'great.' I want to write a novel that is so spectacular that when the average reader puts it down, they say, "Now THAT was a kick-ass book!"

They say (and by 'They' I mean literary critics) that Stephen King is a hack, and that none of his works are worth the paper they're written on. I beg to differ. I think King has his own unique voice and writing style that brings readers back in droves, time and time again. They say that just because an author appeals to 'the masses' it doesn't mean that he's a 'great' writer. I beg to differ, again.

Whenever I've read a Stephen King book, I usually want to read it again sooner or later, because it was that damn good. Besides, if you're rich, what the hell do you care what the f-ing critics think? Will King's novels stand the test of time and become 'Classics?' Maybe. If people are still reading his books a hundred years from now, it would be safe to say yes, they will be classics. In my opinion he's the Edgar Allan Poe of our time, and generations from now, people will still read his work.

So, the question remains. Can I learn to write in an edgy, gut-grabbing style that makes people sit down, shut up and read? Maybe. But I'll have to reach deep inside my past to find the experiences and memories that I'll need to draw on to make that sort of thing happen. As I mentioned in my previous post, I've led a strange and twisted life, once drenched in alcohol and dusted in dope. I've seen violence that would scare the sh*t out of the ordinary minivan-driving soccer mom and hockey dad. I've done things to myself that would make my mother faint from shock and my father spin in his grave. Maybe this dark, seedy, never-to-be-forgotten part of my life is worth bringing back into the light and given a thorough examination. But, can I handle the reappearance of those old ghosts? It's worth a shot, if it finally gets me somewhere.

Thought for the Day

For the Love of Storytelling

When did you first realize that you wanted to write, not just for fun, but for profit?

The answer in my case is somewhat clouded. I began writing in my journals when I was ten years old, and attempted poetry around that same time period. Another reason I began to write stories is directly due to an encounter with a teacher I had in the fourth grade.

Not too many people remember their fourth grade year, but two incredible things happened to me that influenced me to write. The first thing was that my fourth grade teacher caught me tossing an airplane in class, and then rightly called me a liar when I denied doing it. The second thing was that I visited the inner chambers of a newspaper for the very first time, during a class field trip to the Press Enterprise, located in Southern California. Now, bear in mind that normally I am a very honest person - these days - but when I was a child, I would often bend the truth to save my butt whenever I got into trouble, something that happened quite often back then.

The Paper Plane Crash

As a child cursed with Attention Deficit Disorder and high-functioning autism, I was always the first one to grow bored in class and the first one picked on. There was never a time in my recollection of my childhood that I ever did things 'right.' No matter what I did to impress people and make them notice me, it always backfired. When I'd try to prove to people that I wasn't stupid by always rolling off a litany of useless factoids, other kids accused me of showing off. I was just a weird kid, period. I usually behaved in class, though, despite my boredom. But when I messed up, I usually messed up BIG.

One afternoon, in April of 1976, I took my math sheet and used it to create the finest example of paper aeronautical engineering to ever cross the room in Miss Milly's class. It was awesome: shaped much like the Concorde jet, it had a paper clip for ballast at the front end and cut-out spoilers in the back. When I tossed it, it floated through the air with both speed and accuracy. The landing was perfect; the nose of the plane buried about two inches deep into the afro of a boy named DiShawn, who sat in the front row. He turned to give me a wicked, slit-eyed look and the airplane turned, too, sticking up from the top of his head like an exclamation point. Miss Milly rose from her desk and charged at me when I promptly laughed out loud.

Her hands clamped down on my shoulders before I could react, and she shook me. "Did you throw that piece of paper?"

"No, I just laughed because of the way it landed," I said. I tried to squirm away from her, but her fingers dug in. All around me, kids stared. The second hand on the clock seemed to stop, and I felt a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. I couldn't help it. Miss Milly, the fat blonde thing with glasses once told us that in India, overweight women were considered very beautiful. I was willing to bet that those men from India wouldn't think she looked too pretty at that particular moment. Her face blanched and her blonde curls bobbed when she spoke.

"You're lying."

Unable to hold back my grin any longer, I relaxed and let it blossom. "So what if I did?"

The class responded with a stereophonic "Ooooohhh..."

She hauled me up and out of my seat, amidst the cackling and giggling from the class. "You're going to see Principal Griffin, Young Lady. He knows how best to deal with liars."

Minutes later, she brought me into the gray-carpeted waiting room outside the Principal's office and dropped me into a cold metal chair. "Wait here," she said, "I'll talk to him first and then he'll call you in." She patted down her unruly curls. "Don't you dare move," she added. With that, she turned away and stalked into Mr. Griffin's office, slamming the door shut behind her.

She isn't my mother, I remember thinking. Jeez, all I did was throw a paper airplane.

Of course it never dawned on me, even though Miss Milly called me a liar, that I was in trouble for lying. Lying came as second nature to me. I'd told some real whoppers in my time, mostly to amaze and impress people that I wanted for friends. The practice never seemed to work, though, as I didn't have any friends.

They came out to fetch me moments later. Mr. Griffin looked like a rumpled paper sack, tired and not happy about having to deal with another defiant kid. Miss Milly stood behind him, her thick arms folded across her ample bosom, head nodding like a sprung jack-in-the-box. My heart dropped within my chest and settled somewhere near my feet. Mr. Griffin took my hand and led me into his office and Miss Milly brought up the rear. He settled in behind his huge metal desk and shoved a stack of papers aside, folded his hands and stared at me. His eyes were strange blue fish swimming around behind his thick glasses.

"Now Jill, why did you lie about throwing the paper airplane? Throwing it was bad enough, but then you fibbed to Miss Milly. What do you have to say for yourself?" He drummed his fingers on the desktop, and for a moment I thought about telling him he needed to scrub his nails.

"I don't know," I said. Then the words came to me, as if in a vision. "I'm poor, Mr. Griffin, and I don't have much of anything, like the other kids do. I'm sorta jealous, you know. They got nice clothes and cool shoes, while I got nothing. I threw the airplane because I was mad about that.'

His face crinkled up and his eyes closed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if what I'd told him was painful. Good, I thought, it might work.

"Being poor is no reason to throw things in class," he said, finally.

I shrugged. "DiShawn made fun of my skirt this morning on the bus." My throat felt ready to close up. That part was true. "He said I looked like I was on Welfare and that my mom buys clothes from a thrift store."

Mr. Griffin glanced over at Miss Milly and nodded. They seemed to speak to each other with mind-beams, because she then turned and left the room. He sighed. "Be that as it may, you've still got punishment coming."

I swallowed. "Why?"

"To teach you that lying is never the way to go in resolving a situation. If you do something wrong, then you have to admit it and then take the consequences." A light knock came at the door and Miss Milly stepped back inside, carrying Mr. Do-Right.

Mr. Do-Right was a ping-pong paddle, with a smiley face drawn on one side, and 'The Board of Education' written in block letters on the other. She handed it to Mr. Griffin, who took it and beckoned me to come around to his side of the desk. I rose from my chair and with my legs shaking, I did as told. He bent me over his knee in one swift motion and paddled me. Ten quick whacks, and I was allowed to stand up. I left the office moments later to wait for my mother. Griffin decided to sent me home for the day, so that I could consider what I'd done. I stood by the window for a while until Mom's green Oldsmobile chugged into the school parking lot. Both sets of my cheeks burned - one with pain and the other with shame. The school's receptionist, a kind-eyed Grandma of a woman named Miss Betty, stood beside me and patted me on the shoulder.

"If it's any consolation," she said, as we watched my scowling mother stomp through the rain toward the building, "you've got a vivid imagination and you should control it rather than let it control you."

"Huh?"

"I'll just bet that you'll turn out to be a writer one day, or maybe a lawyer. You gave an almost convincing argument in there."

I was amazed. "You heard what I said?"

"These walls are thin, Child." She turned away and greeted my mother when she came in through the double glass doors.

That incident didn't stop me from telling stories, and as time went on, they only became all the more grandiose. To make them seem more realistic, I began adding small details. Still, Miss Betty's words resurfaced in my memory from time to time. At the time, though, I didn't understand what she meant until I visited the newspaper building, just before school let out for the summer of my fourth grade year.

Epiphany at the Press Enterprise

I climbed onto the bus and took my customary seat behind the driver, with the false hope that he could protect me from the tossed spitwads and chunks of gooey pink bubblegum that others aimed at me as soon as the bus began to roll.

Mrs. Milly sat in the seat across the aisle from mine, but she kept her gaze locked on the unfurling highway before us. I knew she didn't like me very much and on some level, the idea of not being liked by a teacher saddened me. I kept my mouth shut and picked a dripping spitwad out of my hair. Glancing back, I spotted the perpetrator. DiShawn winked at me, his handsome brown face lit up with a megawatt grin. He packed another chunk of chewed paper into his straw and brought it to his lips, preparing to fire. I ducked and stifled the urge to cry.

Several miles and a couple dozen spitwads later, I caught sight of the newspaper building when the bus pulled into the parking lot. The newspaper office wasn't as impressive as I'd expected, just a long, squat building, maybe two stories tall at most. Stepping down onto the sizzling asphalt, I took my place at the end of the line of kids preparing to go inside.

"Now people, you stay with the tour guide and me at all times," Miss Milly said. "There's some dangerous equipment and chemicals in there, and I don't want anyone to get hurt."

Dangerous equipment and chemicals? The mention of these items sparked my interest right away. I picked up my pace and hurried into the building with the others.

"No running!" Miss Milly shouted from somewhere behind us. We entered the Press Enterprise, a gleaming palace of steel and plastic, smelling of new paint and old paper.

Our tour guide turned out to be a skinny college-age guy with thinning brown hair and a smattering of pimples on his face. His eyes darted around when he talked. "Welcome everyone," he said, his voice high and squeaky, reminding me of Mickey Mouse. He held a clipboard in his hand and when I stood on the tips of my toes to see what was written on it, he snatched it away. "We're going to show you all the various stages in which a newspaper is made here, every single day. Stay together and follow me."

I followed, lagging behind the rest of the group. The nerdy little man didn't interest me. What interested me was the sight and sounds of the different machines arrayed in the huge room we entered first. I looked around and my jaw dropped open. Rows of people sat at typewriters and drawing tables. The clickety-clack of fingers on keys and ringing of phones filled the air. At one wall, an older man with thick white hair tacked photos to a length of corkboard. The tourguide led us past the photo-wall and he explained that once the stories were finished, they were put on the 'storyboard' and then sent to the paste-up room to be assembled on the pages.

The frenetic energy of the room filled me with an indescribable emotion. Was it longing? I didn't know. Photocopiers rattled and hummed, people darted from their desks to the photo-wall, then to another person's desk and back to their own again. The tour guide droned on about the editors and reporters that inhabited the room, and one notion stuck in my brain: they were writing about the events of the day - and they LOVED it. While the guide yakked at Miss Milly and the other kids, I wandered away. I couldn't help it.

I went to the far end of the photo-wall and saw that someone had marked 'Page One' on a sheet of typed paper and tacked it on the wall, beside a photo of a group of policemen and men in suits. Miss Milly came out of nowhere, latched her claws into my arm and dragged me away. I'd only had time to read one sentence: 'Zodiac Killer sends latest letter to SF Chronicle."

"What's the Zodiac?" I asked Miss Milly as she led me back to the group.

She furrowed her brow and shook her head. "You don't need to know about such things. Stay with us, or I'll take you back outside and you can wait on the bus until we're finished."

I bit my lip and nodded. The Zodiac fascinated me, and there was no way that I would let her boot me out of the tour now.

The guide led us through the building, down a seemingly endless maze of corridors and into a room where a giant black camera sat on a tripod, aimed at a blank wall. He picked up a huge sheet of dark plastic and held it up to the light for us to see. I gasped. It was the front page of yesterday's paper, but it looked funny. The type was white on a dark background, and the photos of people looked odd, almost ghostly.

"These are negatives," he said. "They will be sent to the Plating Room to be made into one of these..." He held up a sheet of super thin aluminum. I looked closer and saw that it was covered with letters and shapes, raised like Braille bumps. He went on to explain that the sheets would be placed on the drums in the press and inked, printing the pages as they rolled through. That's when he led us into the press room.

I'd never seen such a monstrous machine in my life. It filled the entire warehouse-sized room. Workers tinkered with various parts of it, some pouring ink into small vats that the guide called 'wells.' Giant rollers sat silent, waiting to print that day's batch of pages. Somewhere inside the huge metal beast, engines burred, idling like the world's largest car.

"Will we get to see it print?" I asked the guide. Several kids around me murmured their interest as well.

He blinked at me. "Maybe. They usually do a test run before the actual print job. I'll go and check." He trotted away towards one of the men tending the machine.

Miss Milly shot me a nasty look. "You need to be quiet. We can't stay here all day, waiting for the press to run."

"Why? It was just a question." I didn't understand her. She'd brought us here, so why didn't she want to let us see the most interesting thing in the building at work? I turned to see the guide jog back to us, his face lit up with excitement.

"They're going to start a test run in about twenty minutes," he said, craning his head around to glance at the machine. "If you want to wait, that is."

We all whined at once, begging to see the press in action. I jumped up and down, eyeing Miss Milly. She clapped her hands over her ears, and nodded.

"Fine, we'll wait."

We cheered. To kill time, the guide led us out of the press room and showed us the Paste-up room, where several workers assembled the pages for the camera. They took typed pages and fed them into a machine that coated the back side with hot wax. Then, they cut the waxed sheets into pieces and pressed them onto a blank sheet of paper, using a tiny rolling pin with a handle. I watched as one woman positioned a photo of the group of policemen to the page and pressed it firmly in place. Above that, she placed a strip of words that the guide called a headline. I inched forward to read it and Miss Milly gave me a warning look. I backed away and wrinkled my nose at the sour smell of acid that wafted in from the Plating room. The guide refused to let us see that one. Before long, he led us back to the press room and we filed in behind a glass partition.

"You have to stay back here because the press can be dangerous," he told us, looking up at the great machine with utter reverence. "See those drums? They've been known to catch people by the clothing or hair and pull them in. One of our line mechanics got his hand smashed last year. It wasn't a nice thing to see, I assure you."

We all gasped at that. The image of a man being crushed to a pancake in between the rollers rushed through my mind, and I shuddered with a combination of terror and excitement. Heck, this was better than Disneyland. People could die here, if they weren't careful.

One of the men tending to the press shouted a warning and everyone backed away from it at once. My stomach tingled as the drone of the engines built to a roar. Then, slowly at first, the drums began to turn. The floor shook beneath my feet. A flurry of panic went through the class; kids shuffled, some prepared to run.

"Is it an earthquake, Miss Milly?" DiShawn asked.

I snickered.

"No," the guide replied, before she could open her mouth to reply. He shouted over the growing rumble. "The press is a very heavy piece of equipment, and it feels like an earthquake once it gets going."

My face pressed up against the glass, I watched in awe. The machine growled, gaining speed. Couch-sized rolls of paper fed through it and the drums stamped entire pages at once. The press vibrated and the building quivered around us. My classmates and I gaped at the spectacle, unable to speak. I knew then that when I grew up, I'd work at a newspaper.

I knew then that I wanted to write and I began recording my stories and poetry in a small red notebook I'd received that year for Christmas. By the time I reached fourteen, I'd written over a million words in journals, poetry and short stories. Granted, they weren't publishable, but looking back on it now, I have to admit I'd gotten pretty good at it and even won a writing contest or two at school.

The age of ten is when writing became my chief obsession. All of a sudden the goofy 'Robot Girl' (as I was often called) stopped talking to anyone who would bother to listen and withdrew. I wrote down everything that happened to me. I carried around a cheap tape recorder wherever I went, made verbal notes of all I saw or heard and I read newspapers and books voraciously. Eventually I learned that the Zodiac was a serial killer who plagued the San Francisco area and (much to my relief) that he was nowhere near the part of the state where I lived. It wasn't until many years had passed that I discovered that the Zodiac's first murder took place at Riverside Community College in 1966, mere blocks from where I grew up a decade later. A young college student named Cheri Jo Bates had been murdered in the parking lot beside the campus library. The Zodiac's first letter had been sent to the Press Enterprise, then known as the 'Daily Enterprise.'


So when does a born storyteller decide to put their mental creations down on paper rather than use them to verbally astound and amaze their family and peers? When does a storyteller decide that true stories can often be far more fascinating? Maybe the trip to the Press Enterprise had been life-changing, but then again maybe not. I didn't get into the newspaper business until I finally grew up at the age of twenty-nine, after recovering from a long period of drug and alcohol addiction. Still, even as I weathered those 'rough' years, I wrote. I stayed with writing after I got my head screwed on straight and it helped me put my shattered life back together. At twenty-nine, I recalled that fourth-grade trip with clarity one lazy summer afternoon. Inspired with a renewed sense of purpose, I marched in to the local daily paper with my horribly inadequate resume. I took a typing and editing test, and they hired me on that day as a proofreader.

Storytellers - at least the good ones - have the unique ability to invent a situation and add just enough detail to make the story seem all the more realistic. These days I try to use my 'abilities' for entertainment's sake. I still write about the truth, though, and I find it much easier to do than writing fiction. Each week, when the small newspaper I currently work for goes to press, I think back on those days when I told outlandish stories to win friends and influence people. I think back to the days of the Zodiac and how I realized right then that maybe some people are born to do certain things. Some are born to be the news, while others are born to write about it. Thing is, when you're dealing with the news, you can't lie - not once, not ever. In my case, I prefer to live in the country of my mind and my sole mission in life is to bring back my tales of what I found there and tell them to every person I meet.

Sooner or later, we all must follow our calling, and this is the undying dream that calls to me each and every waking moment.

Thought Topic for the day:

Writer's Critique Groups

I belong to several writer's critique groups, but I'm heavily involved in only two of them. They're tough, with a standing policy of unrestrained, unfiltered, ego-killing feedback. The owner of my favorite one (which I can't name here for reasons of not wanting my membership revoked) is a no-nonsense gentleman from the UK, who is a brilliant writer. He's not published, though, due to an admitted fear of rejection. That doesn't mean that he or the other members are soft on each other's writing, or anyone else's. Before I submit a short story there, I make sure to edit it to the best of my ability because they can and will tear it to pieces. When a wannabe writer joins a writing group of that calibre, they must know their sh*t or face total humiliation. I've learned a great deal on that particular list, though.

Joining a Critique Group -The Pro's and Con's

Pro:

- You'll learn to get over your fear of showing your writing work to total strangers. Friends and relatives will almost always say that your writing is fabulous. When you show it to a stranger that knows good writing (and bad writing) when they see it, it's an awakening experience. This is helpful for that time when you screw up enough courage to send your bouncing baby MS to an agent or publisher and it comes back with a photocopied form rejection letter. Rejection is part of the process - one that I had to learn to deal with or else give up on this ridiculous daydream of becoming a published author altogether.

- Your work is looked at in an unbiased fashion, with several sets of eyes, and every critique you receive is usually helpful in some way, shape or form. An honest critique will help you find problems with your story's elements that you may never have noticed before. The most difficult thing about writing a fictional story is getting it out of your head and onto paper (or screen, for that matter). There are times when I've submitted stories for critique that I thought were clear to the reader, only to find out that my characters were too flimsy and necessary setting information left out. Take this sort of criticism seriously. If you find yourself having to defend your story over misunderstood information, then there's a problem.

- You find yourself in a community or 'brotherhood' made up of struggling writers, many of which are in the same phase of learning that you are. You can talk about problems, work on solutions, kick around ideas and offer moral support. You find people that are willing to cheer for you in your victories, and console you in your losses. That is, if you find the right group.

Cons:

- The slings and arrows can be hard for a new writer to take. I've seen many a person give up on a writing group after reading their very first critique. One must be open to any and all criticism, and learn the ignore the ones that are done out of spite (yes, that does happen, usually by a newbie - offended by a critique you might have given them previously). Learn to accept criticism and take it for what it's worth.

- Crit Burn. This is an issue recently discussed in of my writing groups. It's a phenomenon that occurs when a wannabe writer is eager to please the core group of founding members. You find yourself writing stories that 'they' like, rather than what you like, and before long you find yourself smack out of ideas. This has happened to me. A people-pleaser by nature, I found myself trying to write a Fantasy short story, which is something that I'm just plain unable to do. It was torn to pieces, and I couldn't write anything for nearly two months. When it gets this bad, back away from the group for a while until you find your footing again.

- Too much criticism is killing creativity. This follows along the same line as above, but with different repercussions. This is what happens when you've received so much negative criticism that you begin to doubt your ability to tell a good story, and wonder if you should give up on it, period. This happens in critical writing groups, where they will almost always find something wrong with your story. Again, this is where you either grow a thick skin, or else move on to a less demanding group. I had severe writer's block for the longest time, and when I forced myself to write something (anything) and submitted it to one group, it was thrashed to bits, killing my desire to write and drying up my 'idea well' for months on end. I got over it when I stayed away from critique groups for a few weeks. When I returned, my writing received kudos from several people and my confidence crept back in.

In short, I'd recommend joining a writing group to anyone that wants feedback, but with an addendum: pick the right one. They must be honest - pointing out both the bad and good in a given writing piece. If it's all love and light, they're not being honest. If it's all negative, then chances are you've found a clique, not a writing group. Keep searching for the right one - they're out there. Writing groups are helpful, but like a fine whiskey, one must take them in moderation.

My name is Jillian and I'm a nobody from Nowheresville, USA. I've been writing short stories and poetry since the age of ten, but nothing published yet. I'm still trying, though.

In 2002, I sent off three stories to be published, and all came back with very nice form letter rejection slips that encouraged me to 'try again soon!' I cried for an hour after reading the first one. Why didn't they recognize my literary genius? Why am I not already the next J.K. Rowling? I'm being facetious here, of course. The publishing world has since proven to be a tough nut to crack.

I've spent the last year haunting writer's critique groups in attempt to refine my craft. I have gotten better over the passing months, learning the finer points of 'Showing' VS 'Telling' and eliminating 'passive' sentence structures from my writing. Let me tell you, this hasn't been easy. Writing, by far, is the hardest thing I've ever attempted to do. In my journeys, I've discovered the following:

- Three of my completed novels, totalling approximately 560,000 words, are pure 'telling' garbage.
They need to be rewritten completely, or else ditched altogether.

- I'm a glutton for punishment and a lover of cliches.

- People hated my writing in the beginning.

- People 'like' my writing now, but I'm still told that it needs work.

- I actually find joy in writing still, even though it's been made exponentially harder by all the
'rules' I must learn.

- My 'genre' seems to be Mystery or possibly Horror, as those are the ones that people enjoy the
most when I post them online.

A note of hope: I recently won a small-time contest for my horror story, "Getting Their Kicks on Route 666." Sure, it's on Writing.com, but hey, that's something. (Sniff... I never won anything before that.)

If anyone's got any thoughts on the publishing industry, or just want to vent about not being able to get into it as easily as they once thought they could, tell me about it. I'm all ears. (Drat it, another cliche.)

My current, most promising WIP's:

'The Rose and the Dandelion' - Novel, 5th draft, 130,000 words. Genre: Mystery. Status: Submitted in 2003, came back rejected, working on cutting it down to 90,000 words or less, and straightening out some issues regarding wandering POV.
Super-quickie synopsis: A high school teacher is accused of kidnapping and murdering nine girls over the period of a year. He proclaims his innocence, but is eaten alive by the press. A distraught, mentally unstable mother of one of the missing girls takes the law into her own hand and the teacher goes missing as well., His brother (a private detective) must not only find him, but also prove the man's innocence.

"Cold January Mourning" - (yes, that's 'mourning,' not 'morning') Novel, 1st draft completed, 102,000 words. Genre: Mystery. Status: Cutting down word count, working on resolving a massive plot hole that I hadn't previously noticed (LOL- hate when happens).
Super-quickie synopsis: A small town church and its surrounding community is in an uproar when a young, charismatic preacher is found dead in the most unflattering of circumstances. A troubled young woman who witnessed the murder is formally accused by the local P.D. and now she's on the run, fleeing into the dark wilderness of rural South Carolina. Two women, one of them a friend of the victim and the other, a friend of the accused, must form an uneasy alliance to solve the murder and find the girl before the real killer tracks her down.

"A Circle in the Sand" Novel, 18 chapters completed, estimating a total of 25 or so. 72,000 words at this time. Genre: Mystery, or maybe a thriller? Status: still working on this one.
Super-quickie synopsis: A madman lurks in a sleepy town in the southern Arizona desert. This perp leaves choice body parts of his murder victims for people to find in their mailboxes. Dubbed 'The Postman' by the local P.D., the killer focuses his attentions on a family of three; a Hispanic mother with two teenage children. When one of the kids (a thirteen-year-old boy) witnesses the killer leaving the scene of the latest murder, he runs home to tell his mother what he's seen. She doesn't believe him. By that evening, though, the boy returns to the scene and subsequently goes missing. The frantic mother and the boy's elder sister find the police moving too slowly in their efforts to find the boy. They enlist the help of a retired private detective to locate him. Time is running out, as they soon learn that the Postman delivers his grisly packages within seventy-two hours of kidnapping a victim ...and they only have one day left.
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There are more novels, some finished, some not, because I usually have too many irons in the fire. If I can complete at least one of these three within the coming year, I'll resubmit again. Crossing fingers....