Reading or writing?

Over the years I have had a number of conversations with writers about their habits when they write. I have noticed two types of writers: those who continue reading other novels while they are in the midst of their writing, and those who cannot read anything else while they write.

I fall into the first category. I always have at least two or three books on the go, usually a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. I am currently re-reading The Fox, part two of Sherwood Smith’s Inda series. I am also reading Pathfinder, the first in a new YA series by Orson Scott Card. It is my routine to read a chapter or two before I go to bed, as it helps me take my mind off what happened during the day and what I have to do tomorrow.

Rather than take my focus away from my current project, I find that reading in the same genre helps to focus my attention on my own writing. When I read quality writing by another author, it inspires me to aim for the same quality myself. When I read writing that is not good quality, I contemplate what it is that makes it so and use that as a reminder of what to avoid.

In the past I found reading and writing at the same time caused difficulties: I would constantly compare my own writing to the published author, and the comparison almost always left me feeling dejected. Perhaps it is an increased confidence in my own ability that has changed this, but I don’t think that is the only contributing factor. Part of it is that I am more actively working on building my skills in the craft of writing, and so I see my reading as an opportunity to learn what could make my writing better (or what could make it worse).

Some writers, I know, find that they cannot read within the same genre (or at all) while they are working on a project because it is either too distracting, or else the writing of another author influences their style too strongly. I understand this paradigm because I have been there myself. I don’t think there is any right or wrong way—there is simply the way that works best for each individual.

One element that I think has influenced the change in my reading and writing habits is the fact that I have started planning my writing rather than writing by the seat of my pants. When I was writing as a SOTP, I was easily influenced by whatever I was reading at the time. Now that I am using the Snowflake method, I find that it is much easier to stay focues my own writing goals and style even though I am reading other authors on a regular basis. I get the best of both worlds: I can read new authors and authors I already love, and I can develop my own craft at the same time.

What type of writer are you? Can you read and write at the same time, or only focus on one area? Are you a SOTP writer, an edit-as-you-go writer, a Snowflaker or an Outliner? (See my previous post, Knots and plots, for a full definition of each of these terms.) Please feel free to use the comments section of this post to tell me what kind of writer you are—I would love to know how you approach your writing.

Knots and plots

In the past, all of the writing I have done that has been of a significant length (5000+ words) has been written with little or no plan. I simply began with an idea or image and then started writing, letting the characters and situation go where it wanted. This led, more often than not, to writing myself into a corner and feeling as if I had no way to extricate myself. In spite of the amazing buzz that the initial burst of creativity would bring, after I passed a certain point I always felt myself hurtling toward that corner with no way to backpedal. I suspect this may be part of the reason why I stopped writing for a couple of years I was sick of feeling tied up in knots with no way of unravelling the mess.

This year has been a revelation for me. Early in the year I started seeking out sources of inspiration and writing advice on the internet, and I came across Randy Ingermanson’s Advanced Fiction Writing website. I had read Randy’s article on The Snowflake Method a few years before and found it interesting, but I wasn t at the point where I was ready to put those ideas into place.

Reading the article again highlighted in my mind the power of planning. One area of writing that I have always found difficult is plot: it has never come as naturally to me as characterisation, and I think that my struggle with plotting contributed to contracting writers block on a number of occasions. It may be that this year I was in the right head-space, but Randy’s ideas about planning a novel turned a light on in my brain.

Not long after this I decided to purchase a copy of Writing Fiction for Dummies (co-authored by Ingermanson). In one section of the book he talks about different ways of approaching writing, outlining four main types: the Seat-of-the-Pants writer (SOTP), who writes straight through without editing; the Edit-as-you-go writer, who writes without a plan but then edits thoroughly along the way; the Snowflake writer, who has a general plan that may change along the way; and the Outline writer, who meticulously plans details before starting and adheres to the plan at every step.

Looking at these four approaches, I realised that I had been a SOTP for much of my writing life. Yet experience had shown me that it actually didn’t work, for me at least. As a teacher of senior English students, I feel like a broken record when I tell my students to plan their writing before they begin, and yet most of the time my words fall on deaf ears. When I realised that I hadn’t been practicing what I preached to my own students, I decided it was time to try a new approach.

When I took up the opportunity to work on a collaborative novel a few months ago, my co-author and I quickly realised that, for it to work, we had no choice but to plan significantly before we began writing (especially considering the fact that we live on opposite sides of the world!). This included developing much more detailed backgrounds for our characters, as well as coming up with an outline of all the main plot points in the story, from start to finish. I feel incredibly grateful that my co-author is much better than me at seeing the big picture, and so I have been able to work with someone who is brilliant at making sure all the plot dominoes just work. The process of going back and forth between the details and the big picture hasn’t always been easy, but the payoff has been incredible.

Incredible because, after having just finished the first two chapters of the novel (now sitting at 11,000 words) I realise that there is no knot in sight. Even as I was writing, I always had clear sense of where the story was going, and yet the outline was general enough that I didn’t feel restricted and the characters were still able to surprise me (in the best possible way).

We haven’t used every step of the Snowflake process, but we have taken the parts of it that worked for us and used them to create a solid skeleton to start building the story on. The thing that excites me the most is that I know, already, that I am not going to write myself into a place I can’t get out of. I may have to push through at some points writing really is hard work but I am not afraid of reaching those points because there is always the plan to fall back on. This approach to writing gives me the freedom to let my characters grow and develop in surprising ways, while making sure that the story is always headed toward a solid and satisfying conclusion.

When the time comes to focus again on my solo projects, I no longer have the nagging doubt that I will write myself into a corner. I know now what it will take for me to start the race and keep going to the end. And that thought is exhilarating.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that every writer will work the same way. Plenty of successful writers have used each of the approaches outlined above. The important thing is to figure out what works for you. If, like me, you have struggled with your writing in the past, perhaps try a different approach for a time. Who knows? You might just write yourself a novel as a result.

Pushing through the wall

This past weekend was the most productive writing weekend I’ve had in a long time, and yet it was incredibly difficult. For the past two weeks, since finishing my assignments, I have been struggling to find my writing rhythm and succeeding only in feeling like an uncoordinated failure. I could hardly bring myself to sit at my computer, let alone write words of substance or quality. It was writer’s block, pure and simple.

On Wednesday evening last week I forced myself to sit at my computer and continue with the scene I had been working on up until a few weeks ago. I managed 850 words in five hours and felt like I was trying to squeeze water from a rock. As soon as I finished I wanted to press the delete button and wipe the words from my memory and my hard drive because they just felt ‘wrong’. Thankfully my brain wasn’t entirely disconnected from sense and so I pressed the save button and hauled myself off to bed feeling discouraged and exhausted. I let the writing compost for a day and then returned to the piece on Friday, managing another 350 words and finally getting to the end of the scene (and the chapter).

On Saturday, with no other pressing commitments, I sat down again at my computer and started tackling Chapter 2. The first 1,000 words came slowly and with painfully. I felt as if I were trying to force my head through a solid brick wall. The resulting headache was no surprise. I kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing. At 2,000 words I realised that the end was closer than the beginning, so I kept pushing. Finally, at 2am, after 8 hours of fighting with a wall, I made it to the end of the scene. I re-read it, made some minor changes, and then finally gave my exhausted brain the rest it deserved. When I woke up on Sunday, I realised I was going to pay for my owlish hours the day before but I discovered that I didn’t care. I had come up against the dreaded writer’s block and I had won. Not only had I won, I had actually managed to write something decent.

When a friend asked me how I managed to keep going in spite of the feeling of the writing being ‘wrong’, the best answer I could give was that I forced myself to ignore the feeling and just keep going. Writing drivel might be painful, but it is infinitely better than writing nothing. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to figure out what wasn’t working until I actually had something solid to work with in the first place. I had to give myself permission to write crud.

I think there are two things at work when a writer faces the dreaded block: first is the innate desire to write well becomes so overpowering that the inner-writer refuses to pen a word unless it is incandescently brilliant. I liken this to something that happened to me in my first year of schooling (related to me by mother): I refused to write any word unless I could spell it perfectly, and so the teacher couldn’t get me to write. As a teacher of ESL students, every day I come across writing errors. Yet those errors are part of the learning process for students, and a big part of my job is to help students feel confident enough to have a go even though they will make mistakes. I help them by giving them permission to write crud—and I need to do the same for myself.

Second are the two hats that a writer has to wear: the creative hat and the editing hat. Both are important, but it is vital that a writer doesn’t try to wear both hats at once. In creative mode, getting down ideas and letting the flow of the writing move you along is paramount. If the editing hat interferes with the creative hat, the results can be painful at best and crippling at worst. If you have ever written a sentence or two and then felt the irresistible urge to go back and revise them until they shine, that’s the editing hat taking over. Don’t let it! The editing hat will be important later, but not now, when you’re trying to get those ideas out of your head and onto the paper. The editing hat can be a jailer that locks up your creativity and refuses to offer bail. Tell it to rack off, or if you’re the polite type, to go buy itself a latté and come back when you’re done.

Even though I managed to beat the block this time around, I’m well aware that it may return again in the future. I don’t expect that writing a novel will be easy or painless. Yet it is the difficulty that makes the reward sweet. I don’t want to be one of those people who says, ‘I’d like to write a book one day’—I’ll want to be someone who actually pushes through the wall and writes.

Roads

‘The Road Not Taken’, Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I have never been a great poetry fan. I have never actively disliked poetry, but my experience of this form of writing has often been one of perplexity. It is not that I dislike subtlety in words or images, but I think my early experiences of poetry were of frustration—of images too convoluted to create anything but vague or distorted pictures in my mind. I realise this is likely my own fault for not applying myself to understanding; I have to be honest enough to admit that when poetry was hard, I was found wanting.

Given this confession, it may seem odd that I began this post with a poem. Let me explain: during the years of high school, when I fully decided that writing was something I wanted to pursue, I took a class in Literature and was introduced to the writing of Robert Frost. The experience was like turning on a light. Not only did I discover words and images that I could understand, I also had the feeling that I had discovered something beautiful and profound, something that expressed deep truth in simple words.

As I sat this week thinking about writing and the choices I have made this year, the lines above entered my head quietly, taking up residence in the comfy armchair sitting next to the window in my mind. Even though I have already finished a year of my writing course, I feel as though I’m at that fork in the woods. Down one path is a wide, clear road; down the other is an overgrown, less-trodden track.

I have always felt a little guilty at the thought of wandering down the second road; and for practicality sake, I can’t abandon the first road entirely. Yet I feel ready to explore, to start wandering down the lonely road and see where it leads. Frost suggests that, as way leads on to way, one might never come back to this particular fork. That idea has the ring of truth, and the fearful side of me wants to take the wider road.

I don’t want to live afraid.

So I am taking steps down the second road—the road of a writer—and I admit am nervous about where it might lead. Yet I am not going to let worry rule. I will take the less-travelled road, looking past the undergrowth, in hope that it will make a difference.

I think I can

Last week was the end of a rather gruelling period of study for me: I had seven assignments and a test to complete in eight days, plus my normal full-time work and other commitments. I’m still a little baffled that I managed to complete everything and not have a breakdown along the way, especially considering I am still not drinking caffeine (and haven’t done so for 13 weeks now). But finish I did, and the feeling of relief last weekend when I had no more pressing work to complete was euphoric.

A week later, though, I have come across an interesting conundrum: I have been intending all week to complete a couple of chapters of a novel that I had to put off during my studies, and yet in spite of my significantly diminished workload I haven’t finished it.

I asked myself this afternoon why that might be, and a truckload of excuses drove into my head: I’ve been struggling with hayfever that has affected my eyes (making me want to scratch out my eyeballs for half the day), I’ve had meetings and regular commitments, and I’ve simply been taking some time to rest. Yet those chapters are sitting on my computer with a puzzled look saying: ‘Why haven’t you come back? You promised.’

When I thought about it a little more seriously, I realised that part of me had suddenly decided that I couldn’t do it. That my first spurt of energy was just the blast of excitement that came with starting something new, and that this was now gone. The sense of ‘I think I can’ had looked at the steep slope above me and decided that ‘I think I can’t’ was much more reasonable.

What a load of rubbish.

I’ve spent the past thirteen weeks proving to myself that something that seemed impossible was actually quite possible—giving up caffeine. I spent last week proving that I could finish an assignment a day and not die. And I’ve spent the past two months working on this project, planning and creating in a way that I haven’t done in years, and everything I’ve done so far demonstrates that I can.

I can’t guarantee that I will never again feel that it’s too hard, but I do know that, with every step further down the road I have even more reason to keep walking, to keep writing. Every time I pen a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter (or a blog), I am demonstrating that I can write. That doesn’t mean it’s brilliant (in fact, more often than not it’s either ordinary or just plain terrible), but that’s exactly what is needed to work toward mastery. Any skill that is complicated requires practice, practice and more practice. The book I recently read about motivation suggested that a minimum of ten years of dedicated practice was required to begin to master any complicated skill—and writing is one of those skills.

So the next time I’m tempted to feel like I can’t, I’m going to look at all the steps I’ve taken so far and throw that despair out the window, because it’s not true. I am aiming to write a significant chunk of my current novel project in the upcoming holidays, if not finish it. I’m ready to put in the work required, and I don’t just think I can—I know I can.

eBooks

One of my biggest weaknesses is books. All my family and friends know that if I walk into a bookstore it is highly likely that I will walk out with a new book in hand. As soon as I had an income at age 16 I began purchasing books. When people walk into my house and look in my room, the first thing they see is the wall of bookcases opposite my door; most of the shelves are double-lined. If I added up the cost of each book I have purchased, I’m sure I would be able to purchase a small car with the equivalent amount of money.

I thoroughly enjoy the experience of reading a book, from the smell of new paper through to the weight of the words in my hands. It is not until this year that I considered purchasing eBooks; my love of the physical act of reading had turned me away from considering eBooks as a viable alternative. However, since purchasing my iPhone a couple of years ago I have slowly come around to the view that having the books I enjoy reading with me whenever I want them is a good thing; a great thing, even.

Earlier this year I decided to try out my iPhone as an eBook reader, for two reasons: I wanted a first-hand experience of reading from such a small screen, and there was a particular book I wanted to read that wasn’t easily available in Australia at the time but was available as an eBook (this was Sherwood Smith’s A Stranger to Command).

After making a few minor adjustments to the text size and look of the eBook program on my phone (I was then using Stanza), I began reading. I soon discovered that, despite the small screen, the size of the iPhone was perfect for reading with one hand. I was able to curl up in bed with the phone in the palm of one hand, and use the thumb of the same hand to easily move to the next page. At times the eBook file did not render perfectly (with blank pages appearing at odd places) and the navigation setup in the file was quite bad (it wasn’t possible to easily jump to a particular chapter), but this was the problem of the file itself rather than the eBook app. Overall, I found the experience to be a positive one, positive enough to remove my inhibitions about reading eBooks on a screen (of any size).

Since that time I have found myself, more and more, seeking out opportunities to purchase eBooks. If a book I want to purchase is not easily available in hard copy I quickly go searching online for an eBook version. I have purchased a number of fiction and non-fiction books this way, downloading files in a variety of formats: ePub (the open standard eBook format), Adobe Digital Editions PDF (a PDF with added security that allows the publisher to specify whether text can be copied, highlighted or annotated) and Kindle Editions using Kindle for Mac and iPhone (which syncs between my devices so that I only have to purchase the book once and automatically receive it on all my devices). It doesn’t bother me to have my eBooks in multiple locations on my computer or phone; the very fact that I can have them there at all is a plus.

I think (although I have no hard evidence of this) that part of the reluctance of publishers to make their books readily available in eBook format is a generalised concern that eBooks will somehow make the hard-copy market obsolete. Randy Ingermanson wrote a very interesting article in his monthly e-zine that put forward his personal predictions about the future of eBooks (available in his July issue here). Overall, his view of ePublishing is incredibly positive, and I find that his predictions ring true.

Here is my own experience as a buyer of eBooks: I generally choose to buy an eBook because it is something I am keen to read but that is difficult for me to access in hard copy. Living in a country town, this happens a lot. Much of what I am interested in reading arises from recommendations I read on the internet, and such recommendations are usually for titles that are either not kept on shelves in stores in my city, or are else not published in Australia at all. My choices are then to purchase the book, sight-unseen, from Amazon and have it shipped over (with shipping costs having increased in the past year, this now feels exorbitant because I have to purchase at least four or five books to make it worth the cost), or else to find the eBook version. More and more I am choosing the latter.

The other plus of purchasing eBooks is the cost: if I spend $10 on a book and find I don’t like it, I don’t feel like I wasted too much money—this was never true when I spent the usual retail price of $18–$25 for a paperback. On the flip side, when I purchase an eBook and enjoy it, I generally feel that I would then like to purchase the paperback as well, primarily so I have the opportunity to share the book with my friends. I am quite happy to have both a paperback and an eBook copy of the same thing: the former because I want to share with others, and the latter because it makes fantastic sense to have as many of my favourite books with me as I want when I travel somewhere. Thus, for me, the eBook market is not about choosing one format over the other, but about having both formats available—one for the experience and one for the convenience.

The one area, however, where I find myself frustrated with eBooks is in the formatting, in particular formatting of ePub files. One of the good things about an eBook is that the text will re-flow to fit the size of the device, whether it be a phone or a tablet or a laptop screen (this is achieved using code akin to HTML). What I have not found thus far is an eBook in this format that shows much attention to the design and format of the book. Two areas that have been particularly lacking are in typography and navigation.

In an eBook I just finished reading, a Kindle Edition of Dan Pink’s Drive, the body of the text was formatted in italics. When I started reading I thought this might have been a slight coding error in the first few pages; it turned out that this was the case for thewhole book. Now, I still enjoyed the content of the book, but this typographical anomaly did make the reading experience a little frustrating. Who has ever seen a printed book set entirely in italics? It doesn’t happen, and anyone who is aware of the principles of good typography would cringe to see such a thing in print.

In relation to navigation, one of the first eBooks I read had been set up simply with chapter numbers, but these chapter numbers had not been set correctly into the code so that when I scrolled through the document I had no idea what chapter I was in. If I wanted to figure out what chapter I was up to, I had to flip through each page by hand until I came to the text title for that chapter—highly frustrating, and made finding a specific place in the book very difficult. Again, this was not an error in the content but an error in the formatting. When a book does not have page numbers, navigation by chapters is essential. Imagine trying to read a printed book with no page numbers and no chapter markings.

So, while I am now a solid fan of eBooks—enough that I have purchased an iPad, which my brother will bring home for me from the US in six weeks—I am not a fan of the way eBook files are being created (other than PDF eBooks, which are basically electronic versions of what you find in print). The eBook market is not a side market, but one that has huge potential to actually increase the sales of printed books. It makes sense to me that publishers would put as much effort into making sure that their eBook files are as well organised and formatted as any printed book. I’m not a design or typography expert, but I know enough to see bad design and typography when I see it, and at present most of the eBooks I have read have fallen short in one or more of these areas.

I hope that, in the near future, I will be able to purchase eBook versions of all of my favourite novels, to have with me wherever I travel. It would certainly be easier than carting 500+ books around in my backpack.

Interview with editor Alice Barker

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of interviewing editor Alice Barker. The purpose of the interview was to find out about Alice’s role as an editor. As an aspiring writer, it was great to be able to gain insight into exactly what an editor does.

Alice Barker is an editor currently working with academic staff at the University of Ballarat, as well as providing freelance services to Hardie Grant Egmont and Allen & Unwin in Melbourne. She has four years of experience as an editor of children’s and young adult fiction at Egmont in the UK, one year at Hardie Grant Egmont as Senior Editor and one year as a freelance editor.

What specific tasks do you carry out in the publishing process?
My current work with academic staff at the University of Ballarat involves mentoring staff members who are working on research pieces and academic texts. This includes helping them edit work for language use and overall structure.

After my time at Egmont in the UK, I worked as Senior Editor at Hardie Grant Egmont in Melbourne for a year; for the past year I have done freelance work for Hardie Grant Egmont and Allen & Unwin, providing editorial services such as structural editing or copyediting as required by the publisher.

My role at Egmont in the UK involved reading manuscripts, maintaining an awareness of market trends and the competition, copyediting and project management. As an editor I was responsible for managing a project from start to finish, including working with the author to edit a manuscript, working with designers for the cover and typesetting, creating marketing copy for advertising and organising proofreading.

What are the key skills of an editor?
I believe that one of the most important and essential skills in an editor is communication, both written and oral. Without effective communication the process of nurturing an author and their work through to publication can be difficult. An editor also needs to be an intelligent reader, pay attention to detail, show excellent analytical skills, be willing to ask questions about a manuscript (relating to pace, characters and consistency), be passionate about championing someone else’s cause, be creative and have excellent diplomatic skills. Being able to write well yourself is also a great advantage.

What are some of the contractual issues you deal with?
In my previous role at Egmont I was somewhat separated from contractual issues; the Publisher and the legal department tended to look after contractual issues in relation to the author. However, at times the editorial role involved dealing with contractual issues with designers, freelancers, typesetters and illustrators.

Issues relating to contracts usually dealt with deadlines. The most important thing in drawing up contracts is being specific; this is particularly important in making sure deadlines and monetary issues are clear for all parties involved.

How do you think the role of the editor has changed in the last few years?
It seems that editors need to be more marketing-savvy than ever before. An editor needs to know the market for a work and be very aware of the competition.
Increasingly, some publishing companies and their editors don’t have as much of a role in mentoring authors; this may be due to increasingly demanding deadlines. It seems that nurturing an author doesn’t happen as often as it has in the past. However, I believe editing is about the whole process, about seeing an author move from being a writer to being an author.

The change in technology in the publishing industry has also had an impact on the role of an editor. While many of the most significant changes occurred during the 1980s and thus were before my time, it is nevertheless important for an editor to have knowledge of a range of software, both for communication purposes and to be able to give intelligent input during the design process; knowing some design software such as InDesign can be helpful.

Finally, the role of the editor has also changed in relation to manuscript acquisition. Due to the sheer volume of unsolicited manuscripts received by publishers, the emphasis has shifted so that in most cases a literary agent will work with an author before a manuscript is contracted. This can be an advantage to an author in the situation that, if a good quality manuscript is submitted to multiple publishers there may be a rush to acquire the manuscript.

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Thanks again to Alice for giving her time for our discussion. It was wonderful to remove some of the mystery about what an editor’s job involves, and to meet someone who is as passionate about the writing of the authors she works with as she is about her job.

Motivation 3.0

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear a number of world-class speakers talk about leadership at the Global Leadership Summit. One of the speakers whose ideas resonated most with me was Daniel Pink, an ex-White House speech writer who has spent the past couple of years researching and writing about the science of motivation.

Pink outlines three levels of motivation in humans: biological motivation (including food, safety and sex); reward and punishment (external motivators, such as ‘carrots and sticks’); and what he calls intrinsic motivation (incorporating desires for autonomy, mastery and purpose).

In a nutshell, Pink suggests that traditional ways of motivating people in work or education—offering more or better rewards—not only don’t work (except in a limited range of circumstances), they can actually hinder the ability for people to think creatively. That is, when a large reward is offered to someone for solving a problem or working on a project that requires creativity, that person’s ability to solve the problem quickly or well is reduced as a direct result of the reward. This is not just conjecture on Pink’s part—he cites numerous scientific studies over the past fifty years that demonstrate again and again the principle that higher rewards reduce a person’s ability to work on tasks requiring creative (or non-mechanical) thinking.

On the other hand, work that allows a person autonomy, the opportunity for mastery and a sense of greater purpose—work that is intrinsically motivating—produces much higher levels of creativity and often superior quality work. This is what Pink calls ‘Motivation 3.0’.

Now that I have read the first third of his book, Drive, and watched a couple of video presentations that capture the kernel of his ideas, I find myself thinking about these ideas often. As a teacher I immediately saw the relationship between the ideas and my work as an educator. It is often a temptation to give students external incentives to finish their work: read X number of books this month and you will receive a prize, or complete this task quickly and you can spend the rest of the lesson in free time. The desire to use the ‘carrot and stick’ motivation with students is strong because there (often) seems little hope of encouraging intrinsic motivation in students.

Aside from the application to an educational context, I have been reflecting this past week on my own experience. Over the years since I finished secondary school I have pursued a number of areas of personal interest, often at considerable monetary cost to myself. One of these has been my interest in photography. I bought my first DSLR three years ago with no knowledge of the craft, and with the intention of simply using my entry-level camera to take pics that were better quality than your standard point-and-shoot camera. I spent the first month with my camera reading anything about photography I could get my hands on, trying to understand how my camera worked as well as the principles of good composition. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn and the more I began to spend on expanding my kit (camera equipment). I now have four lenses (including two beautiful, fast primes), a hotshoe flash and a bag full of accessories. I started practising by taking my camera everywhere; now I seem to be the designated go-to person for functions for my friends (birthdays, engagements). And people have begun to offer to pay me for more formal photography (portraits and weddings), which stuns and scares me a little but which also gives me a sense of mastery—not that I am a master, but simply that others recognise that I have a certain level of skill in the craft.

I can clearly see that my motivation for pursuing photography has been entirely intrinsic: the desire for mastery and a sense of purpose (offering those skills to others simply for the joy of giving) have fueled a ‘hobby’ that has cost me thousands of dollars with little or no expectation of monetary reward. And I don’t regret one minute or one dollar spent.

For me, writing also falls clearly into this category of being intrinsically motivating. Even during my early school days I enjoyed writing for writing’s sake. That doesn’t mean it has always been easy or fun or that I have always been good at it; yet there is still something inherently satisfying in writing. (Something so satisfying that I stay up until 12.30 am to write a blog entry after just having finished an assignment where I had to make significant corrections to three slabs of text requiring editing for punctuation.)

Writing is most often a task that requires a high level of autonomy; most authors must learn and practice their craft in private before the finished product will ever reach the hand of a reader. Although, I will admit that my recent experiences working on a collaborative project have been just as rewarding as those pursued on my own; in some ways more-so because I have the benefit of objective feedback during the writing stage, whereas usually a writer won’t receive that feedback until they have finished their work and presented it to the outside world of crit groups or editors.

It also requires a significant level of mastery, which as already noted most often occurs in the long hours and intimacy between the pen and the page. This year I feel as though I have pursued mastery with much more focus than I have in the past, and the pay-off is considerable. There is always more to learn, of course, but the learning feels more like a vacation than a chore.

And finally, I am starting to believe writing also requires a sense of purpose, a sense of something beyond oneself. I imagine every writer finds this sense of purpose in a way that is unique to their own personality.

For me, one of the things that drives me to write is the sense of connection to something larger than myself. Tolkien expressed this beautifully in his story ‘Leaf by Niggle’. In the story the curmudgeonly Niggle spends his life labouring to re-create, in a painting, the mental image he has of the perfect leaf. He labours and deliberates long over his leaf, always being interrupted by others who think him odd and obsessive. Then, at his death, Niggle travels to a new country and discovers that the leaf he had struggled his whole life to capture actually existed, real and whole, on a tree that was not just a figment of his imagination, but was very much alive and even more beautiful that his deepest imaginings.

This sense of struggling to re-create a glimpse of something transcendent resonates with me because it is the same sense I often have when writing, particularly within my own created worlds. The sense of there being something more real and more beautiful just beyond the horizon is part of why I love reading and writing fantasy; the thought that hope is not a cheat but is based on something breathtakingly real never ceases to give me a sense of deep epiphany.

Tolkien himself expressed this in his poem Mythopoeia, one of my personal favourites. Here is an extract:

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land ‘twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:

The imagery here is rooted deeply in Tolkien’s Christian faith, and this is (in part) why it resonates so strongly with me. It is a poetic re-creation of the Bible verse that states: ‘Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known’ (1 Corinthians 3:12).

Even if you don’t connect personally with the Christian imagery, I believe that every person who has ever found joy in an act of creativity can sympathise with the sentiment: with the feeling of transcendence, of capturing something beyond yourself and reflecting it back into the world.

I have heard and read numerous writers express the feeling that their characters ‘walk onto the page fully formed’, and that they are as surprised as their readers with what their characters do and say. And the thought that follows never ceases to give me a thrill: what if, one day, my characters actually did walk into my room and start telling me their story?

Back to motivation. I’ve shared a little of my motivation for pursuing the things I love—photography and writing—but I am well aware that others will be intrinsically motivated toward other interests. So my question to you today is: what thing (or things) are intrinsically motivating for you? What things to you find enjoyable and satisfying, just because? Where do you seek autonomy, mastery and purpose?

And to use (and twist) the words of a wise person: when you find it, just do it.

Characters or plot?

I love reading character-focused stories. I appreciate stories with compelling plots but the stories that press my buttons, that keep me reading until 3am in the morning, are the ones with complex and organic and real characters.

Within the fantasy genre it can be difficult to find novels with strong, believable and complex characters. It is not so difficult now as it has been in the past, but it can still feel like a challenge. Some of the fantasy novels I have read that have intricate and believable characters include: Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy and Tawny Man Trilogy, Sherwood Smith’s Inda Series and basically anything by Orson Scott Card. These three authors have become my touchstone of what constitutes good characterisation. I find myself turning to their work again and again, reading both for enjoyment and to try to discover just how it is that their characters turn from two-dimensional scribblings on a page to three-dimensional people of flesh and blood who walk freely through my imagination.

I think that part of the reason I never tire of reading these authors is that my own tendencies as a writer lean toward characters rather than plot. While both of these are essential parts of the craft of writing, I find that characters come more naturally to me. Characters seem to grow out of my imagination almost organically; plot, on the other hand, at times feels like a form of cruel punishment. I am learning but it still doesn’t feel natural. I thrive on details—in my job and in my writing—but the ‘big picture’ stuff is just darn hard.

This week I had an interesting discussion with a friend about our ‘default’ modes of storytelling. I am character-focused; he is plot-focused. Here is a snippet of something he mentioned that caused me to think again about the differences between these two approaches:

Put it to you this way: the way my characters tend to come into being is, I have the idea for a story in my mind; I let it brew for a while until I’m happy with it; then I create a character specifically designed to fit into that scenario. Everything about him is designed to get the story from A to B, and if the story changes/one of his traits conflicts with the plot, he gets edited.

You, on the other hand, start off by creating your characters, then come up with external circumstances (e.g. relatives) and work them into the character bio, then design those other characters and etc. etc. etc. so that, before you even think about the story, you’ve got an entire family of characters who are inter-connected and have their own motives/beliefs.

So, by the time you come to plan the story, you’re in the reverse position to me; your story is designed to meet the needs of your character, rather than the character being designed to meet the needs of the story. Which automatically means your stories are going to be more character focused, while mine tend to be un-complicated battle scenes!

And my response to those thoughts:

Sometimes I feel like a spider: building a web and then watching in slight astonishment at all the stuff that gets caught in there. Sometimes it’s a mess and needs cleaning, and sometimes it just works. I used to have trouble changing any little thing about my characters, but now (I hope) I’m not so precious because I can see the benefit of altering characters if the way they currently are hinders the story rather than helps.

The important thing for me is that the organic feel remains, and paramount in my mind is relationships with other characters—which is probably why I always seem to drag in whole families of peripheral characters, even if they never see the light of day. Putting a person inside a community is what makes them come alive for me. And if that makes them feel believable, then I’m glad! Because character-driven stories are the ones I like to read the most.

As I reflected on this apparent dichotomy during the week I came to the conclusion that there are actually benefits of both methods.

The benefit of beginning with plot is that the story never gets away from you. The plot may be complicated, but it is much less likely to get lost somewhere along the way and end up eating its own tail (which is a problem that plagued me quite a bit in my early years of writing). The down-side of this approach can be that characters come out feeling like a piece of cheap cardboard forced to fill a pre-determined space where they have little or no room to breathe.

The benefit of beginning with characters is that each individual’s story can be organic and messy and complicated—just as people are in real life. A writer may only ever show the tip of the iceberg that is a character, but the reader always has an awareness that the motives and beliefs and history of that character are lurking somewhere beneath the surface. Such characters can feel as if they leap off the page. The down-side of this approach is that when it comes time to write the story, there isn’t a clear purpose to the plot or events—they meander along, and eventually end up at a dead end.

What I am discovering is that it is possible to marry the benefits of both approaches. Working with someone who comes at a story from the plotting angle has forced me to keep a reign on my characters so that their personal stories don’t rampage over the plot until we lose sight of the ultimate goal. It has helped me to be less precious about the details that I often find so fascinating and amusing, while still allowing me to keep the core of the characters so that they always feel real and connected to the world around them. And hopefully the end result will be a story that has a characters that leap off the page and a story that keeps the reader engaged and guessing to the very last line.

So, what approach to stories feels more natural to you? Character-focused or plot-focused? Whatever your bent, I encourage you to explore the other side and discover the benefits it can bring to your writing.

Life in a nutshell

This week has been crazy for me, with fifteen assignments on the go for four subjects, plus full-time work. (I’ve finished three, so only twelve to go!) I realise that this is indication of mental instability but somehow I am managing to stay on top of the workload without having caffeine, without losing sleep and without being worried. All while working on a novel.

Amidst this insanity I was inspired to have a go at writing ‘Me in a nutshell’—to tell my life story as concisely as possible. I must say that I found the experience quite illuminating: to see my own life encapsulated in this way helped me to realise some of the core reasons why I am the person I am today.

So here’s me in a nutshell.

I was born in Wollongong, a large-ish city on the east coast of Australia about an hour south of Sydney. Wollongong (pronounced WOOL-uhn-gong) is sandwiched between the Pacific and a mountain escarpment, with the widest space between the ocean and the mountains being about 10km (if you google it, you’ll see just how spectacular the landscape is). So I grew up by the sea, and even though I’ve been living inland in another state for fifteen years now I still miss the salt tang of the ocean and the crash of the waves at night.

My dad works in IT (hence my seeming-obsession with technology—it’s kinda in my blood) and when I was twelve he got a job in the USA so we moved to Dallas, Texas for a year. Even though it’s now more than half my life ago, I still remember that time incredibly well. I started high school there (or junior high, as they call it) and it was kind of refreshing for me to discover people who were genuinely interested in me, even if it was initially because I was ‘the girl with the funny accent’.

I grew up going to church with my parents (my grandfather was a Uniting Church Pastor and my parents met in a youth group), but it wasn’t until we lived in the USA that I actually made the personal choice to believe the things I’d been taught since I was a kid. While living in Texas I had the opportunity to go on a short mission trip to the Texas/Mexico border with the youth group of our church.

That experience transformed my view of the world and my place in it. Seeing poverty first hand, at the age of twelve, made me realise how incredibly fortunate—and selfish—I was. I’ll never forget the church service during that week where people who were literally dirt poor came up and gave offerings of their money to me for overseas missions in Australia. Someone even gave me an earring. One earring. It still makes me cry to think about it now, that pure generosity of spirit.

That’s when I decided I didn’t want to waste my life—I wanted to make sure that I did something worthwhile, something where I could give back to others. And because it seemed I had a talent for teaching, that’s where I eventually ended up. Also, as soon as I was old enough to earn a regular income, I began sponsoring a child—a little girl in the Dominican Republic.

We came back to Australia at the end of 1995 and my dad hunted for work but couldn’t find anything in Wollongong. Then we found out that IBM was opening a big new IT centre in Ballarat, Victoria and a couple of months later, at the start of 1996, we moved. I did most of my high schooling here and now it really is home.

We found a great church and became connected. I spent some time helping out in the kid’s program during my final years of high school, and then I joined the music team (I play piano and sing), and then I was asked to be a Youth Leader (which I enjoyed but I’m not doing any more). Now I’m helping to lead the music team, the Young Adults group, I preach on an occasional Sunday and I also do quite a bit of media work. I’ve done a lot of photography and design stuff in the past few years; I’ve never had any formal training, but as with all my other hobbies, I bought the equipment I needed, searched the library and the internet for information, and just practiced. A lot. And now I seem to be the go-to person for photography and design stuff, which I love but I wish I had more time for!

In amongst all that I went to Uni and did a BA with a major in Literature and a minor in Linguistics, and a bunch of other stuff thrown in (Anthropology, History, Maths). Then I had to do a post-grad qualification to be a teacher, and I chose English and ESL as my methods. The year that I finished my teacher training the government had just begun sponsoring migrant and refugee families to settle in Ballarat, so there were a couple of ESL teaching positions advertised through a local school—and I haven’t looked back.

I love that my job lets me give to kids whose lives have been so horribly messed up by war and trauma and unspeakable things (look at me, I’m crying again!). I’m constantly amazed by how gracious and unselfish and loving they are. Even though it is darn hard to teach English to kids who haven’t even learnt to read and write in their own language (either because of disrupted schooling or because their first language isn’t written), every minute of hard work is worth it. I really do love my job.

Plus, of course, while I was uni I realised that my other passion was writing, and in my last blog I told the story of how the Fantasy Writing Message Board was started. I made a handful of good friends from all around the world who shared that passion, and spent four years developing my skills as a writer while having a truckload of fun.

After taking a couple of years away from writing to find my feet in my career, I decided that this year I wasn’t going to put it on hold any more and I started a course in Professional Writing and Editing, which will take between three and four years to finish. Hopefully over the next couple of years I’ll get a novel or two finished—or perhaps even published!

So there’s me in a nutshell. Not a small nutshell, I know (about 1,000 words). I don’t mind being a slightly larger nut than usual; certainly makes for an interesting life.

My challenge to those reading this blog: Why not try writing your own nutshell? Where have you come from that has led you to where you are today? I promise you that the process of condensing your life will help you to think about the things that are truly important to you. Happy writing!