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How Do You Want Your Novel to Change the World?

November 29, 2016 By Julia Munroe Martin

The very last question Don Maass asked us at the end of the Writer Unboxed UnConference earlier this month, was:

How do you want your novel to change the world?

“The purpose of writing a novel is not to get published. Every person has a story and purpose, a powerful message,” Don said, then asked us to write the question at the top of an index card. Then, to answer the question…and keep the card near where we write, to look at often.

More about that later.

First, let me ask you a question. Do you think that writing fiction is a worthwhile—a really important—endeavor? Even if you don’t get published—ever? Even if no one else ever reads a word you write?

As a child I was told I would be a scientist, a doctor to be specific. It wasn’t that simple, though. My parents told me that if I didn’t “do something with my life that helped people,” specifically helped people in a very direct way, I had wasted my life. Not my abilities. Or talent. My life. This was a given. Not a question to be discussed. A given.

And a recipe for failure.

Perhaps needless to say, when I went to college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I finished three years of pre-med, then switched to journalism, and that’s when I realized: I wanted to write. To be a writer. It was the only thing that made me feel good. It was the only thing that made any sense to me.

But how the hell was it saving anyone or anything?

Fast Forward a Few Years

I finished my journalism degree and started working as a business and technical writer for a large corporation. It paid the bills, but then a funny thing happened. I started writing stories to pass the day. I’d send stories to my friend Carolyn, in the next cubicle over. A story about a man who worked in a box factory, a story about woman who had a Baby X, a story about a woman who finds a workmate dead in his cubicle. Murdered. [Read more…]

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Exploit Your Vulnerabilities to Finally Complete Your Book

November 21, 2016 By Jan O'Hara

There’s a one-mile circular route in my neighborhood that I’ve been walking for twenty-four years. I began by waddling its length when we moved into our home in my late third trimester and it was all I could manage in terms of exercise. After open-heart surgery for a faulty valve, I did the loop with a pillow clutched to my chest, seeing my ability to complete the circuit as a sign of imminent healing. I’ve used the route in a pre-nap ritual to tire my children. Of late, it’s become a quick way to perk myself up between writing spells.

But to whatever purpose I trod this path, until this summer I’ve always accessed it by turning left out of our cul de sac.

World-narrowing Mindsets Can Begin for Good Reason

There are good reasons for that consistency. If you complete the loop in a counterclockwise direction, you are granted a better view of a man-made lake.

It’s easier to peel off to get a cold drink, access a bathroom, or buy a treat—critical considerations when you’re hauling little people along with you.

But the biggest reason of all, and a clear illustration of my order in the pack hierarchy, was that turning left made it easier to walk a dog. This was a matter of sidewalk and grass placement. Walking counter-clockwise meant fewer canine temptations, so that after my pooch had a chance to complete their business, I wasn’t being jerked to a halt every few steps while they sniffed vegetation.

Hope Enters the Scene

I have been dogless for over a year, though, and this summer something broke my conditioning. When it did, and I turned the opposite direction, I discovered a strange and enticing land.

Houses which seemed “meh” from one angle turned out to be carefully tended and picturesque. (The converse was also true.) One particular home, which I considered strictly utilitarian, turned out to have vines entwined around a mullioned bow window and woodland plants beneath, like a cottage from Hansel and Gretel.

How This Connects to Writing

Turning left was a such a minor change to make, yet the results were both disorienting and hopeful. It was as if I’d been a forest dweller my entire life and suddenly discovered the existence of moss.

For me, moments like these crystallize the understanding that with the tiniest shift in perception, left can become right, up can become down, and insofar as writing goes, a serial non-finisher can end the year with not one but two publishing credits to her name. (I had the joy of being a contributor to Author in Progress in addition to independently-publishing my debut novel.)

An Accidental Weaponization of Vulnerabilities

So what happened to allow the necessary changes in my life? I’ve given this a lot of thought because I have no intention of regressing to the less-than-productive writing pattern of the last many years.

My conclusion is that, quite by accident, I created a new environment in which the very things formerly preventing me from writing became the forces driving me inexorably toward it.

In other words, not only did I stop fighting my nature, but to borrow Lisa Cron’s favorite adjective, I endorsed it with a full-throated Yes!

Harnessing the Caregiving Impulse

For example, I’ve spoken before about my tendency to get into caregiver mode and place others’ needs above my own. I use acts of service as a way of showing esteem and affection. When in this mindset, taking the time to write fiction can seem the ultimate act of selfishness.

But what if the desire to serve can be harnessed for the good of the book? What if the desire to caregive can be fed directly into the creative impulse? [Read more…]

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Doing Diversity Right

November 20, 2016 By Guest

Can writers in the dominant culture be confident that they are speaking authentically, meaningfully, and vitally about this real America? In September at Bouchercon, Sisters in Crime held a workshop addressing the challenge of diversity. Panelists Frankie Y. Bailey, Cindy Brown, Greg Herren, and Linda Rodriguez join us at Writer Unboxed today to share some of the highlights and major takeaways, including, LGBTQ characters, disability in plotting, diverse settings and the extraordinary challenge of dialogue.

Frankie Y. Bailey is a criminal justice professor at the University at Albany (SUNY). A native Virginian, she writes a series featuring Southern crime historian Lizzie Stuart. Having spent much of her life in upstate New York, she also writes near-future police procedural novels featuring police detective Hannah McCabe–most recently What the Fly Saw. Her non-fiction focuses on crime history, and crime and mass media/popular culture. Frankie is a past president of SinC and a past EVP of MWA. Connect with Frankie on Twitter and Facebook and on her blog.

A former theater professional, Cindy Brown was the first director of ARTability, a national-award-winning organization that provides access to the arts for people with disabilities. She’s worked as an ADA consultant, written about accessibility for the Smithsonian Institution and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and received the Mayor’s Award from the City of Phoenix Mayor’s Commission on Disability Issues in 2004. Cindy became a full-time writer in 2007 and is now the author of the Agatha-Award-nominated Ivy Meadows series, most recently Oliver Twisted, a madcap mysteries set in the off, off, OFF Broadway world of theater. Connect with Cindy on Twitter and Facebook.

Greg Herren is an award winning author and editor from New Orleans. He has written over thirty novels under his own name and various pseudonyms, edited twenty anthologies, and has published over fifty short stories. His most recent novel, Garden District Gothic, is the seventh Scotty Bradley mystery, He also edited this year’s Bouchercon anthology, Blood on the Bayou. Greg says, “As an out gay man who has been writing about gay and lesbian characters for over fifteen years, I would love to see more LGBT characters in mainstream works by mainstream writers.” Connect with Greg on Twitter, Facebook, and on his blog.

Linda Rodriguez’s book, Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, forthcoming this month, is based on her popular workshop. Her fourth mystery featuring Cherokee campus police chief, Skeet Bannion, Every Family Doubt, will be published in June 2017. Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, and Every Last Secret—and her books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in the anthology, Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film. Connect with Linda on Facebook, on Twitter, and on her blog.

Doing Diversity Right

Naomi Hirahara speaking this year as part of Sisters in Crime’s Report for Change said, “Diversity is not something extra. This is what America looks like and crime fiction needs to reflect it.”

But can writers in the dominant culture be confident that they are speaking authentically about this real America? At Bouchercon in September, the SinC into Great Writing workshop addressed the challenges. Frankie Y. Bailey, Cindy Brown, Greg Herren, and Linda Rodriguez share highlights from their sessions here. [Read more…]

Adapt to Change and Become More Productive

August 29, 2016 By Julia Munroe Martin

13832022_d808814a11_o — evolution by Esther Dyson, from Flickr’s CC

Mud oozes out of primordial swamps. Fish drag themselves out of the mud, grow legs, and crawl up the hill to the beach. A little farther, there are amphibians…then reptiles…Fast forward millions of years to one human writer sitting in front of her blank computer screen.

I may have skipped a few years (and evolutionary steps), but I’m talking about adaptation. According to Wikipedia, “adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation. Adaptations enhance the fitness and survival of individuals.”

That’s biological lingo. But in writing? Adaptation is more like Nicholas Cage sitting in a small room, a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter on the desk in front of him, desperate to figure out how to adapt The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. That’s Adaptation the movie. And for the purposes of this blog: how we as writers adapt to be more productive in times of change.

Even Good Change Can Cause Ripples

I used to be a work-at-home mom—I wrote when my kids were at school. After our kids went to college, it took me a while to find my stride, but I did, and I wrote a couple of novels at a local coffee shop. Then, when my husband lost his job and became depressed, my writing spiraled down, too. I’m not going to lie, that was the hardest adaptation of all, but bit by bit I was able to carefully craft a schedule that got my writing back on track.

Lately, though, my writing schedule has been scattered to the wind. Sometime last spring, I lost confidence in my current work-in-progress. I was mid-way through, and I tried to get a rhythm going, but nothing really worked; every word felt forced. Then much to my joy, my daughter moved east after living in California for three years, and I didn’t care about writing—all I wanted was to spend the summer having fun with my daughter and the young, energetic dog she adopted. The last time we had a dog in the house was our very old and very lame lab, that we lost two years ago, and to be honest, I’d forgotten what a puppy is like.

I had been getting up at six every morning, exercising for an hour, then sitting on the couch to write. Although I have just as much time in the day and the puppy is only with us sporadically these days (my daughter has started grad school two hours away), I work hard to find a moment to write let alone to have a cogent, cohesive thought. For instance, as I was writing this, I had the brilliant idea to include something about not being able to concentrate and my time disintegrating into binge watching Netflix and eating Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars…but then I got a foot cramp and forgot why it mattered at all. (See what I mean?)

To be honest with you (and myself), the fabric of my writing life had begun to unravel long before Milo (the very cute and sweet rescue dog) appeared on the scene. Still, she’s a handy metaphor for the purposes of this blog. Case in point, I like to write sitting on one corner of the couch, but that’s become Milo’s preferred sleeping place—and I need to write while the puppy sleeps—hence, I’ve adapted and write on the footstool.

Adapting Like Crazy

I’ve identified three kinds of adaptation a writer may have to make. (Note that I’m talking here about figurative adaptation, not the literal kind. I’m not adapting a book into a screenplay, and I’m not evolving out of a swamp.)

On a daily basis. Or…the forty-five-pound-puppy-in-the-lap kind of adaptation. Whether it’s puppies or your in-laws staying with you for a few weeks, these are the daily ebbs and flows, or how we squeeze in writing when everything else needs more attention, whether it’s partners, kids, or broken washing machines.

Over the long run. Or…the transition from mom of school-age kids to empty nest. Don’t downplay the emotional adaptations you need to make—it’s not only about time. With an empty nest, there’s more freedom (of time), less freedom of spirit. That is, it’s also adapting to how our hearts and souls are pulled and what’s weighing on them—like when my husband was depressed, you have a new baby, or you’re caring for aging parents.

The way we write. Pantser vs. plotter, word count vs. timer, solitary vs. group—all of these are up for grabs as you adapt to changing circumstances. When I started writing fiction, I outlined everything. In detail. Chapter by chapter. Then I wrote one novel as a pantser. I’ve now adopted a more hybrid approach. This has changed with how much time I have available but also with experience and with input from other sources (blogs, classes, conferences, writer friends’ advice, etc.).

The Only Constant is Change

Sometimes it feels like the only constant in writing (and life) really is change—and the real skill is how to adapt our minds to deal with that and still be productive as writers (even when you can’t do things in the same way you always have). Here are a few things that work for me (right now) while I’m learning to adapt. [Read more…]

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