Writer to Writer: From Think to Ink

• SECTION ONE •

Being a Writer

• CHAPTER 1 •

Writers’ Advice Column

In 2009 I started a new adventure, creating a blog—short essays, really—which I’d never done before. That I could do it is proof that if you write one kind of thing, you have a leg up on writing another. When I began, I didn’t know what I’d talk about. This is from the first paragraph of my first post:

Fear of the blank blog is as bad as fear of the blank page. For my blogging life, I intend to post once a week, and I will probably blog about writing, but I don’t know that for sure. I’ll see how it shapes up. If you are reading this, I would welcome a post to tell me what you’re interested in reading from me.

And people did. You’ll meet some of them here; their names are more various than in any baby-naming book. The blog became a writers’ advice column, as you can see for yourself if you care to go online:

www.gailcarsonlevine.com/blog

From early days to today, readers posted questions and I posted responses that reflect my approach to writing. A discussion of the topic followed my answer as readers added comments and more questions. Soon I noticed that I was getting even deeper into the how-to of writing than I had in my first book on writing, Writing Magic, and I thought, There’s a book here.

Except for the chapters on poetry, which I added because I love to read and write poems and to teach poetry writing to kids, this book is the blog’s greatest hits, according to me, rearranged and sometimes expanded. I’ve loved hearing from other writers—some experienced, some beginners. If you’re reading this book and you’ve chimed in on the blog, thank you! I’ve especially enjoyed the mutual support in your replies to each other.

Soon after this book is published, the blog will celebrate its sixth birthday. When I assembled all my posts, the result was over 450 single-spaced pages, more than twice as long as any of my novels. There’s a lot to say about writing stories.

A lot, because people tell stories constantly. We are forever shaping what happens to us into anecdotes and sometimes into grand sagas. If we can tell a good spoken story, we cast a spell over our listeners, who forget where they are and the people they’re with. Instead, they picture the characters, real or imaginary, who populate our story. Our audience may be in our bedroom or on a busy street, but the scenery recedes and is replaced by the setting of our tale, which may just be somebody else’s bedroom or a different busy street, or it may be an island in the middle of a stormy sea or a castle clinging to the side of a mountain.

When we write the story down, we weave the magic tighter. The more powerful our writing, the more fully we’ll bring a reader into our wizardry. That’s what this book is for—to make the enchantment binding.

With a little help from Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth, I wrote a writers’ spell poem:

Mutter, mutter, dream and ponder;

Writer writes and fingers flutter.

Starting words of a startling tale,

On the paper, laugh or wail,

Days of joy and weeks of woe,

Mountains high and vales below,

Hero’s hope, villain’s might,

Evil’s plot, virtue bright.

With this spell of flash and thunder,

In a vision, write the wonder.

As I’ve been writing this book, I’ve made a habit of starting work by rereading this spell, and sometimes I say it out loud. You can too! Try reading or reciting it when you begin. A quick ritual can slide you into your concentration zone.

In a moment we’re going to begin to write, but first, a few words about the writing prompts in these pages. They’re just jumping-off points; don’t feel you have to be faithful to them. You can change as much as you like: the names of the characters, the setting, the action—anything.

Whatever you write from my prompts belongs entirely to you. If an editor should want to publish a story you wrote based on one, you don’t need my permission to go ahead. Naturally I’d like to hear about your triumph on my blog or my website, and I will be mighty proud of you.

Now, let’s do it. Writing time! Try these:

• Pick an object in your house—could be the stove, your violin, your grandmother’s running shoes, a parent’s computer. Anything! Separate it in your mind from its real history and invent a history for it. Think of the drama, the tragedy, the comedy that went into its creation, its passage from owner to owner, its effect on their lives and maybe even their deaths. Write the history as a story.

• Pick a different object, which can be from your house again or your yard or the supermarket—anywhere!—and move it in your mind to a far-off location: a desert, the bottom of the ocean, the surface of an as-yet-undiscovered planet, the cellar of a castle in a fantasy kingdom. Write a story about how it got there and how it was discovered or rediscovered.

• Give either object a magical property and write a story about how it became magical, who knows about the magic, what purposes its magic can serve. Invent characters who need the object for their virtuous or nefarious purposes.

Have fun, and save what you write, whatever you write!

Almost every chapter in this book ends with these two commands: Have fun, and save what you write! I have reasons for issuing them.

Let’s start with the first command. Writing isn’t always pleasurable, even for people who love to write. Sometimes ideas flee to another galaxy and won’t come back. Sometimes the perfect words evaporate. Have fun is a reminder of why we write: to explore ideas, to follow a story, to find out what our characters will do, to entertain ourselves and our readers. The fate of planet Earth doesn’t hang in the balance. We can loosen up, relax, even have fun.

Save what you write is important! When you save your work, you show yourself that you respect and value your efforts, even if you hate what you just wrote, even if it embarrasses you.

Keeping your writing means you’re building a body of work. Story fragments are a resource you can mine. Finished stories are trophies. You can look back at them—and at your unfinished attempts—to chart your progress. Don’t rip up your pages or turn them into a bonfire or hit delete! The consequence, sooner or later, will be regret. Pity your future biographers, who will pore over your every phrase and write dissertations on the scene you saved even though you cut it from your third novel.

Remember this about saving if you write on a computer: your writing should also be backed up somewhere, in case the computer crashes. You can’t save it if you lose it.

Those are the commands. These are the rules. They appeared in Writing Magic, and they still apply. Here they are again:

1. The best way to write better is to write more.

2. The best way to write better is to write more.

3. The best way to write better is to write more.

4. The best way to write more is to write whenever you have five minutes and wherever you find a chair and a pen and paper or your computer.

5. Read!

6. Reread! There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become part of you, in a way that words in a book you’ve read only once can’t.

7. Save everything you write, whether you like it or not.

• CHAPTER 2 •

The Spark

I’ve been asked on the blog, and also in schools and at conferences, to say what inspires me. I suspect that there’s another question locked up in this one, and that is: What tips can you give me so I can find inspiration and sustenance for my writing?

My first inspiration is my childhood reading. Reading ranked just below breathing in importance when I was little. Privacy was in short supply in our cramped apartment where I shared a bedroom with my older sister, who believed I had been created to plague her. Reading gave me privacy. The books I read then made me a writer for children now; I’m not even half tempted to write stories for adults.

Today is a great time to be a young reader, because so many marvelous books for kids have been written in the last fifty years. The ones I adored were classics: Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Bambi, Black Beauty, Peter Pan. I relished books about Robin Hood and King Arthur, tall tales, and, of course, fairy tales. If I liked a book, I read it over and over. Through my favorite books I absorbed plot, character, language, even grammar. The old books didn’t limit their vocabulary to what a child would know. What a gift!

So that’s one tip: Sample some of these books and see if they inspire you, too.

I try to give readers the kind of story I loved, and still love, which brings me to another tip: Write for yourself, the sort of stories you like to read. Don’t worry about other people’s taste.

And don’t worry about imitating. Writers can’t avoid it. On our pages we imitate life and books and movies and TV. Being a good imitator is valuable, even essential. Imitating isn’t the same as plagiarizing. We shouldn’t copy another writer’s exact words because there’s no achievement in it, since the other person has done all the work, and because plagiarism is unethical and illegal. Our writing and that of other authors is protected by copyright law. Once you write whatever you write, it’s protected whether or not you publish it. The words belong to you alone. Note that copyright covers words, not ideas. For example, you can write your own story about a girl who always obeys; the idea doesn’t belong to me.

I still go to fairy tales, like Cinderella, for ideas and inspiration. My recent novel A Tale of Two Castles was inspired by Puss in Boots, leaping off from the improbable role the cat plays in the fairy tale.

Think about where you get your ideas. Fairy tales, as I do? Movies? Novels? Comics or graphic novels? Use them!

In 1987, when I started to write seriously, with hopes of being published, I read many of the Newbery Award–winning books at the library. I found in them the same old-fashioned approach to storytelling that I knew from my childhood, which made me feel right at home and as if I could join in. Another inspiration. And another tip: Catch up on your Newbery books. Your library will have them.

I took writing courses, too, and met fellow writers. My favorite class was a workshop. Every week our teacher, Bunny Gabel, would read aloud three or four selections of student work that had been submitted to her the week before. After she read, the class would comment and then she would tell us her opinion. Many published writers took this course. The same writing issues (like the ones that come up on the blog and in this book) would appear in different guises week after week, so advice would be repeated. The effect was much like rereading books; I absorbed the comments from Bunny and the more experienced writers, and now their voices are in my mind when I write. I hear them ask me what my characters are thinking and feeling or whether I’ve written information that the reader doesn’t need to know. My teachers, Bunny and others, and my classmates are another inspiration.

You may not be able to take a writers’ workshop, but you may be taking English or Language Arts in school. Pay special attention to teachers’ comments on your work and also on the work of other students. If you don’t understand a criticism, ask questions. When you hear something that rings true, remember it. Write it down and keep it handy. Let it permeate your consciousness when you write again. Let it inspire you.

If you don’t do this already, discuss books with friends. Join a book club if you can. Analyzing books and sharing opinions will open you up to new ideas and also solidify what you believe.

Research can get me going, too. For example, I’ve been reading a book about the history of the Jews in Spain. I’m looking for seeds that will germinate into a story. Already I’ve learned how important poetry was to medieval Spanish Jews and that Jews often collected taxes for the kings, which made them hated. Both suggest ways my story might go.

And life generates ideas: overheard conversations; animal behavior; people watching; an argument you take part in; stories in the newspapers, on the radio, on the TV news; a comment by a teacher or a parent; a discovery made while completing a homework assignment.

My writing friends inspire me. Every month, two writers I’ve known for years come over for lunch. There’s no purpose. We don’t critique each other’s work. Sometimes we talk shop about publishing. Often our own writing comes up. Writing is rarely smooth sailing for any of us, which is a comfort and, in an odd way, an inspiration. We’re all in the same boat, and if they persevere, so can I.

Cultivate the friendship of other writers. Mostly we work alone, but our fellow strivers make us feel part of a team.

Although I enjoy being with my writing friends, I relish working alone. What keeps me writing may be the internalness of the process, the communion with myself. Like reading, writing is intensely private. We’re digging in the garden of our own minds, where the bulbs and seeds we’ve planted with our reading, our research, and our living are sprouting, sending up flowers and veggies that have been miraculously changed from their origins, with extra petals or surprising colors or flavors never tasted before.

Writing time! These are classic topics, the sort I read about as a child, the kind that never go out of style. You’ve seen them in books and movies and on TV. Write a story about one or more:

• A dog, cat, or any other pet who thinks in language and is separated from its owners.

• An orphan traveling to an unknown place.

• A child separated from her family by war.

• A stowaway on a ship.

• A family struggling with poverty.

• An outlaw set against an unjust society.

Have fun, and save what you write!

• CHAPTER 3 •

Drops of Blood

The imaginatively named and spelled Bluekiwii wrote on the blog about the struggle that sometimes comes with writing: "I always have the problem of actually starting to write. The story I want to write blanks from my mind, and I freeze before I’ve even begun to write a word. Or I’ll write something, realize it’s rubbish, and cross it out and begin again, and I’ll continue on this way through the story until I give it up halfway. Or I sit in front of the page thinking of ideas/possibilities and reject each one. Have you ever felt this way, and what have you done to get rid of this feeling in order to write? How do you start the process of writing a story? Do you outline what you are doing first? Do you plan each chapter? How do you visualize what you’re trying to write before you do it? Do you make a rough sketch of what your characters are like before fleshing them