The "C" word

CHANGE, not that other word you adults were thinking of...

Changes are needed, changes are unavoidable, changes are often beneficial in the long run and should be appreciated. But I am a stubborn, headstrong person who has a system for everything and generally resents change. I've had a lot of changes in my life recently and everything's a lot more uncertain now, and I'm having to adjust. Part of the changes I'm making is becoming more aware of myself and my surroundings. This is facilitating my creative nonfiction writing, but it's something that will be helpful when I return to fiction also.

But it still took my roommate's inability to sleep to the sound of my typing (I have 18 writing assignments due in the space of 8 days) as a catalyst.

Every day I have spent in this particular dorm complex (almost 2 academic years now) I have spent some amount of time typing on my laptop on my desk by the ethernet connection. When I was taking my novel workshop class, it was close to 3 hours a day. Every day. Same spot. I have spent time writing in other locations, but usually out of necessity, not by choice. The desk is in the most advantageous spot for research and minimal distractions. Because I share my bedroom, it is also one of three spaces I can truly claim as mine.

So yesterday I disconnected from the internet (gasp!) and went into the living room to write a press release. The simple change of venue from the lightless, silent bedroom, to the soft grey morning sun and wide couch made me feel much more open and eager to finish the project.

I did the same thing again this morning, so hopefully I don't turn one rut into another, but it was a simple test of mindfulness and an affirmation that not all change has to be fought.

New Year's Resolutions--Trimming

What's the one, sure, no-fail way to lose weight? Burn less calories than you take in.
The burning's not that much of a problem for me these days. I like to run and swim and play frisbee. But food is just so tasty and social and easy, I love cooking.
So the hardest--and most effective--thing for me is cutting unnecessary calories. That second bowl of cereal, that extra cup of juice, or--god forbid--M&Ms left out in candy jars. Before I eat something, I really have to stop and evaluate not only what I'm eating but why. If I need a quick snack to hold me through accounting, that's fine, here's an apple, but if the cookie in the cafeteria is calling my name just because it's sitting out there and I'm not really hungry, I need to turn around and run the other way.
Words are just like calories. You need a certain amount to be healthy, to build up plot and realistic characters. But too much and your readers start getting turned off and if you're not writing for readers, then what are you doing?
I know I’ve talked about this a lot, but I truly believe that being concise is something a writer must be in control of and it's my biggest obstacle. They might start out slowly--an adverb here, a series of adjectives there--and I might pout, "They're just so good! Surely one wouldn't hurt..." That's how it starts. Nix it.
So how many is really too many? JA Konrath says to eliminate everything that doesn’t move the plot forward. That's easier said than done when they’re your words and you’ve really come to like them, whether they’ve still got their shiny new gloss, or have become as old and familiar as Grandma’s afghan. But really, you don’t need to describe your main character from head to toe, or their life history or the exact floor plan of their house. I will always come into your story with connotations for girl, retired, home. Sparse, unique details are all that’s needed to shape the impressions the I started with into the images you want me to see. Too much information brings the pace of your writing to a screeching halt as I struggle to hold all these details into my mind at once.
Sidetracking is equally distracting. Just as it’s difficult to focus on a lecture when two people behind you are having a separate conversation, unnecessary information interrupts the flow and causes me to lose track of what's important, and muddles my understanding of the story.
As I've admitted, It's difficult for me to do my own editing. If I have to sit and labor over whether to keep a phrase, I generally keep it because that's easier. And the next time I read through the piece I sit and fidget over the same words again. So I suggest cutting out any and all questionable words, saving them somewhere else or saving the document under a different filename and going to sleep. Wait until the next day, then read over your chopped piece. See if those details are necessary for the story or were just necessary for you to write it.
Or try what I do and delete the words completely, wait, and try to write them again. I promise you won't completely forget your story overnight, and the writing will almost always be more condensed the second or third or howevermany times around.

Next up: scheduling

New Year's Resolutions--An Introduction

If you can't tell by the sudden influx of advertising for exercise machines and diet plans, probably the most common New Year's resolution is to lose weight. While I didn't put it on my list of writing resolutions, it's on my personal list.
I've got a little more incentive than most people. I've got an ultimate frisbee team expecting me to haul my ass up and down a football field but I did more working--and eating--over the break than I did working out. Also, I'd like to look a little more trim at AWP next month.
So over the past week of last-minute sprints and lifting, I've been thinking about the correlations between getting my body in better shape--and getting my writing in better shape.
We don't have practice this week and I don't have to turn in any work for nonfiction workshop until a week from today, so I'll take this time to document my training--not in minutes on the treadmill or in the lap pool--but in these traditional techniques work for my writing.
First up: Trimming

Sacrifices

I've experienced the accuracy of this statement countless times in the past 3 semesters.

Welcome to college! You may only choose two of the following:
1. Good grades
2. A social life
3. Adequate sleep

I could add quite a few more things--a love life, good health, money--but you get the idea. With life comes sacrifices. To get what you want, you have to give up something else, and you're lucky if it's ever easy.
Not only do you have to sacrifice time, comfort and possibly friendship to write, within writing itself there are also sacrifices to be made. We talked one night in my novel workshop about how we deal with cutting and editing our work, especially those beloved lines that read so poetic and lyrical but just refuse to fit in the overall piece. While they're making edits, some writers rename their word documents as they go, preserving a timeline of revisions. Some writers cut the lines and paste them at the end, only to reach the end and find they still have nowhere to put them. Some take it further and have an entire document of orphan lines and paragraphs waiting for the perfect story to adopt them.
Sacrificing words for the good of the whole is a frequent function of my writing process. After a workshop, I don't think I've ever had to go back and write more, it's always cut, cut, cut. My best work to date, which was published in my university's literary journal, was cut in half after its first workshop. Since it was under 1000 words to begin with, it took some time to build up enough courage to press the delete button, but the result was a very polished, compact piece that I am proud enough of to submit it for publication. The deadline for the next issue of the literary journal is in January and I'm really struggling with deletion for the piece I'm working on now. It's about 20 shy of the 3,000 word limit, but not only do shorter pieces just fit better in this format, I think the story is sagging in the middle. Rather than work on it, I'm expounding my troubles to the world.
So, world, echo back. Are you a deleter or an appender? What have you sacrificed for your writing?