The Official Author's Hangout 2015 Summer Lovin' Contest Support Thread

sheablue said:

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” Stephen King

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He's one heartless bitch.

I have got a story I've been meaning to write up for a while that's set in summer! I might even get a chance to write it up, as there's a brief break in full teaching duties just now on my module. Although I do have this flatpack sofabed to build and my course I'm studying to do, and I have to finish posting my novel ...

The Soulful Bard said:

Mine is still at 18,582 words. First Time Romance.

Just hope I can post this on time.

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Just sayin', baby - check your email

oggbashan said:

jeanne_d_artois is writing one of her stand-alone Laundry Tales.

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Dirty laundry, one hopes?

TxRad said:

I'll open with a pair. Uh... two stories that is.

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Mmmm, you can swing a pair of yours across my eyeline any day, big boy.

sheablue said:

For tradition's sake, I will say I have two half-finished stories that could fit this contest. I hope to finish them! Or one! That would be novel!

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Go, girl, go!

summer of 1976 - heatwave britain.

stand-by ... GO!

geronimo_appleby said:

summer of 1976 - heatwave britain.

stand-by ... GO!

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Yayyy! I remember that one. I had a pair of red hotpant shorts

Can't wait to read it.

NaokoSmith said:

Yayyy! I remember that one. I had a pair of red hotpant shorts

Can't wait to read it.

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Shame I missed them.

Summer of 1959 (I was dodging brush fires on Holyhead Mountain); Summer of 1940 (The RAF few fighting Luftwaffe in the blue skies over Kent)...

NaokoSmith said:

Yayyy! I remember that one. I had a pair of red hotpant shorts

Can't wait to read it.

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pics, or it never happened!

Back to the top above the fake thread.

Yes, yes he is.

The Soulful Bard said:

He's one heartless bitch.

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sheablue said:

Yes, yes he is.

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He also knows that established authors have to come up with pithy statements like that--whether they hold water or not--to maintain their reputations and publicize themselves.

If you really killed all of your darlings in constructing a literary work you'd wind up with something useful only to line the bottom of a bird cage with.

sr71plt said:

He also knows that established authors have to come up with pithy statements like that--whether they hold water or not--to maintain their reputations and publicize themselves.

If you really killed all of your darlings in constructing a literary work you'd wind up with something useful only to line the bottom of a bird cage with.

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He didn't come up with it, he gave it his own spin. That phrase has been passed down for eons. His version appeared in his book, "On Writing."

And obviously you don't kill ALL of your darlings, just the ones that don't work for your story, no matter how pretty they are. Editing is a painful, necessary process. Kill those darling characters, scenes, descriptions and turns of phrase that drag your story down. Kill them dead. (Or save them in a different file to hopefully be given a better life somewhere they belong.)

Or have a mind organized not to go off in flights of fancy tangents to begin with. Write succinctly in the first place.

sr71plt said:

Or have a mind organized not to go off in flights of fancy tangents to begin with. Write succinctly in the first place.

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That's easier said than done. If this is the way you write, you're in the minority. Rarely does one get it done right, succinctly, the first time. Sometimes those flights of fancy and tangents are actually helpful. They are for me, at least. I can write something in a story, know it's not quite right, but writing it helps me get to what IS right.

I don't know any professional, published author who gets it right the first time. Not one I would want to read, anyway. A "mind organized" might miss those perfect little details that happen when you let your writing wander a little bit.

sheablue said:

That's easier said than done. If this is the way you write, you're in the minority. Rarely does one get it done right, succinctly, the first time. Sometimes those flights of fancy and tangents are actually helpful. They are for me, at least. I can write something in a story, know it's not quite right, but writing it helps me get to what IS right.

I don't know any professional, published author who gets it right the first time. Not one I would want to read, anyway. A "mind organized" might miss those perfect little details that happen when you let your writing wander a little bit.

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Agreed, Shea. It's like the creative boosting concept that "if at least half your ideas aren't bad ones, you need to come up with more ideas."
Those flights of fantasy that didn't work out have led me to other stories where they did work. Nudity is for the Birds was the third birdwatching themed erotic story I started, and the only one worth finishing, though it canibalized parts of the other two.

Kethandra said:

Agreed, Shea. It's like the creative boosting concept that "if at least half your ideas aren't bad ones, you need to come up with more ideas."
Those flights of fantasy that didn't work out have led me to other stories where they did work. Nudity is for the Birds was the third birdwatching themed erotic story I started, and the only one worth finishing, though it canibalized parts of the other two.

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Exactly! The creative process works like that. It's a process. First drafts are supposed to be flawed, vehicles to get your story to where it needs to be.

I love the idea of a birdwatching themed story. I'm really looking forward to reading it.

sheablue said:

That's easier said than done.

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No harder than "killing your darlings."

Guess we know different groups of writers then. Most of the ones I workshop with and edit for aren't flabby writers.

sr71plt said:

No harder than "killing your darlings."

Guess we know different groups of writers then. Most of the ones I workshop with and edit for aren't flabby writers.

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Guess we do. But isn't workshopping a form of editing? Are you saying all of your writing colleagues get it right the first time, are perfectly succinct, and don't need to do editing or rewrites? Ever? I find that hard to believe.

Perhaps you are misunderstanding the phrase, kill your darlings, or taking it too literally.

sheablue said:

Guess we do. But isn't workshopping a form of editing? Are you saying all of your writing colleagues get it right the first time, are perfectly succinct, and don't need to do editing or rewrites? Ever? I find that hard to believe.

Perhaps you are misunderstanding the phrase, kill your darlings, or taking it too literally.

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Workshopping is more beta reading--and discussing--than editing. I'm saying that experienced writers--and that would include Stephen King, I'm sure--don't have to toss out a lot of their original drafts, nor do they find it necessary to throw out a lot of ideas that come up when they are writing. When you do a lot of writing, it isn't the chore you (and others) seem to make of it--and I meet as many writers who write as I do--expanding in reviews rather than cutting--as I do the others (and they agonize over writing a lot less in my observation).

I don't "rewrite" extensively, I try not to review more than three times to keep the freshness of the original flow, I write up nearly every story idea my Muse drops on me, I rarely experience writer's block (at the most "best word" block), don't keep half-finished works around in files, and I don't have to do too much personal editing on what I've written--I'm a professional editor, so most of it falls in place as I write (but there are always cases of typing the wrong word, which is what my editor usually catches, not me).

When writing is what you do, it's not a mystery or an agonizing process. If I found it agonizing, I'd go off and do something else I enjoyed doing that was more pleasurable. And professional writers who toss out phrases like "kill your darlings" are either trying to produce memorable phrases attached to their name or are trying to make what they do sound a whole lot more difficult for them than it is.

Once you've found your style and voice, you'll be spending more time and effort in research, plotting, and fact checking than the actual writing, and, no, established writers aren't thinking perpetually about "developing" their writing. At some point they reach their writing zone and they (and those who seek out to read/buy their writing) are comfortable there. (And, no, seeking to develop their writing--which I so often see stated here as the "of course" goal of posting a story to Lit.--isn't why all who submit their stories to Lit. do so--not by a long shot.)

If you find you are tossing a lot of material out between multiple drafts, you are just being scattered and not keeping your eye on the story arc--or you are thinking in terms of being paid by the word. (or, as on Lit., rewarded for being verbose.)

Yes, I think you do misunderstand.

Which is fine. Your process is yours, mine is mine (and your presumptions of mine are wrong) and each writer has their own that works for them. I know writers who write 10 drafts of a novel before it is published. I know short story writers who write one draft and never look back. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

Many famous authors have written books or articles with advice on how to or how not to write. Famous, revered authors who have spoken of spending half a day putting a comma in, and the other half taking it out. Hemingway said first drafts are shit.

It's advice to be taken, or not, whatever moves you. All that matters is that we are all crazy and we all need to write. How we get it done matters not at all, and no writer should judge another on how they craft their stories.

And as for mysterious and agonizing? Yes! And No! And it doesn't matter when it's something you must do. I agonize over my writing because I care deeply and feel passionately about every single word, I want it to be my best, even when I'm writing silly smut stories for Lit.

But that's the way I do it. You do it differently and that's cool by me.

sr71plt said:

Workshopping is more beta reading--and discussing--than editing. I'm saying that experienced writers--and that would include Stephen King, I'm sure--don't have to toss out a lot of their original drafts, nor do they find it necessary to throw out a lot of ideas that come up when they are writing. When you do a lot of writing, it isn't the chore you (and others) seem to make of it--and I meet as many writers who write as I do--expanding in reviews rather than cutting--as I do the others (and they agonize over writing a lot less in my observation).

I don't "rewrite" extensively, I try not to review more than three times to keep the freshness of the original flow, I write up nearly every story idea my Muse drops on me, I rarely experience writer's block (at the most "best word" block), don't keep half-finished works around in files, and I don't have to do too much personal editing on what I've written--I'm a professional editor, so most of it falls in place as I write (but there are always cases of typing the wrong word, which is what my editor usually catches, not me).

When writing is what you do, it's not a mystery or an agonizing process. If I found it agonizing, I'd go off and do something else I enjoyed doing that was more pleasurable. And professional writers who toss out phrases like "kill your darlings" are either trying to produce memorable phrases attached to their name or are trying to make what they do sound a whole lot more difficult for them than it is.

If you find you are tossing a lot of material out between multiple drafts, you are just being scattered and not keeping your eye on the story arc--or you are thinking in terms of being paid by the word. (or, as on Lit., rewarded for being verbose.)

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I think developing writers get suckered into what established writers choose to put in their "secrets of writing" books.

If you find you are tossing a lot of material out between multiple drafts, you are just being scattered and not keeping your eye on the story arc--or you are thinking in terms of being paid by the word. (or, as on Lit., rewarded for being verbose.)[/QUOTE]



I also find this to be a little narrow minded. There are endless reasons a writer might toss material between drafts, aside from these you listed. And as long as the end result is a compelling story, what does it matter how it got there? Sometimes being scattered is the best way to get to an incredible story.

sheablue said:

Yes, I think you do misunderstand.

Which is fine. Your process is yours, mine is mine (and your presumptions of mine are wrong) and each writer has their own that works for them. I know writers who write 10 drafts of a novel before it is published. I know short story writers who write one draft and never look back. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

Many famous authors have written books or articles with advice on how to or how not to write. Famous, revered authors who have spoken of spending half a day putting a comma in, and the other half taking it out. Hemingway said first drafts are shit.

It's advice to be taken, or not, whatever moves you. All that matters is that we are all crazy and we all need to write. How we get it done matters not at all, and no writer should judge another on how they craft their stories.

And as for mysterious and agonizing? Yes! And No! And it doesn't matter when it's something you must do. I agonize over my writing because I care deeply and feel passionately about every single word, I want it to be my best, even when I'm writing silly smut stories for Lit.

But that's the way I do it. You do it differently and that's cool by me.

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I think word processors may be the best thing that ever happened to my writing. In pre-WP days, I used to find all of the crossings out and caretted inserts quite depressing. The WIP always looked like a mess.

The Soulful Bard said:

DIY.

I'm done giving suggestions to this website.

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Done. I'm waiting for a reply now.


ETA: She took barely five minutes to reply. In her words:

"We're in the process of a full redesign of the site. One of the things we'll be doing is standardizing the story listing across the site - so that a story listing looks the same on all pages, from New to Category to Hub to Author Page, and most likely the Contest pages as well.

Once we launch it (a ways off, I'm afraid), please check things out and let us know what you think!"

The Soulful Bard said:

On Topic:

As for my story, I cut my heart and deleted a whole part. The word count stands at 15, 000 -- 3,000 lesser.

It's not easy deleting a portion you really liked. But I think it's looking better now.

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I think you should write the complete story first instead of cutting things out before you even reach the finish. I thought the development was all good. I personally like a nice history and morbid male protagonists.

sr71plt said:

I think developing writers get suckered into what established writers choose to put in their "secrets of writing" books.

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I think that's ok. If it gets an unsure writer writing, cool. It's not being suckered if you take the advice of an established, published, popular author. It's taking advice from someone experienced. As the new writer gains experience he or she will probably find their own way, but won't be any worse for wear for taking the advice of someone who has been there.

I recently read writing tips from Elmore Leonard. It was great advice ... If you want to write like Elmore Leonard. Not everyone does. I couldn't if I tried. But it worked for him and could work for someone else.

There is nothing nefarious about a famous author dispensing advice, or an aspiring one following it.

SamScribble said:

I think word processors may be the best thing that ever happened to my writing. In pre-WP days, I used to find all of the crossings out and caretted inserts quite depressing. The WIP always looked like a mess.

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See, I'm just the opposite. I used to only write long-hand, and I still do when I need to get the juices flowing. I loved the mess, the crossed out words and phrases and arrows pointing everywhere. Sometimes I would cross something out, but realize later that I needed it for somewhere else, or that I needed it still in a different form. If I had just deleted it I would have never remembered what it was.

I still do it to an extent, even on the computer. I cut and paste to the end of my draft if I think I might need it later.

sheablue said:

It's not being suckered if you take the advice of an established, published, popular author. It's taking advice from someone experienced.

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I think it's often naive to think that the writer actually does what he/she puts in a for-profit vanity "how to write" book. And to assume that they actually give two hoots about anyone else's writing development. I've edited books by authors with "how to" books out (and laughed when comparing what they sent to me in relationship to how they've told others to write). Hell, I have a "how to" book out myself. I wrote it to beef up my cv.