Saturday Writers

             Now and then I receive an email which marks such a place in my memory that I can’t seem to put it aside.  This is one of those emails. 

             Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room.
            One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.  His bed was next to the room’s only window.  The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.  The men talked for hours on end.  They spoke of their wives & families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.
            Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.  The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened & enlightened by all the activity & color of the world outside.  The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake.  Ducks & swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color & a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.  As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes & imagine this picturesque scene.
            One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man could not hear the band - he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.
            Days, weeks & months passed.  One morning, the nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.  She was saddened & called the hospital attendants to take the body away.
            As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch & after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.  Slowly & painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.  He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.  It faced a blank wall.  The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.  The nurse responded the man was blind & could not even see the wall.

 Author Unknown

             This is what we are compelled to do as writers.  Like the blind man we describe a scene, a character, a feeling, etc.  We paint pictures with our words so readers can see what we are seeing in our minds eye.  We strive to make our readers see what details we need them to see in order for our story to be intriguing enough to continue turning the pages.  Better yet, buy our book(s).       

            What drove us to be a writer?  What happened to us in our childhood?  What act of nature effected our development in our mother’s womb which drives us to feel the compulsion to put words down on paper for other people to read?  We have all asked ourselves these questions.  Not only do we open our souls for other people to critic our inner thoughts but we leave them in written form for all future generations to access. 

            Is it seeing your name on something you have poured your heart into?  Is it the feeling that your name will live on long after you are gone?  I don’t believe so.  I believe the reason we put ourselves in the position of being a writer, or as all of us hope a published writer, is because we can’t seem to stop the words from coming.   In spite of writer’s block, having to work a full time job to pay the bills, dealing with rejection after rejection, we all love to write.  We feel if we don’t get the words out into written form we will literally explode.  Some of us feel more comfortable saying what we need to say on paper.  Some of us appease our muse by putting down on paper a story which has kept us awake night after night plotting and giving characters life.   

            If you have a writer in your life please be patient with them.  Learn to give them the respect they deserve but above all let them tell their story.  Allow us to be the blind man in your life so you can see the world as we do expressed so vividly in what we love – our writing. 

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

-Robert Bresson 

Deanne Williams

In my ongoing efforts to be a more organized writer, which in my fantasies means I’ll be a more effective writer, I’m test-driving various programs touted to help me structure my story, envision my plot, tackle my characters and organize my research. These programs hint that by using them, I’ll steer clear of the middle-of-the-book sag, the curse of the lifeless character and the gaping plot holes big enough to jump a herd of sharks through. 

     In my quest for organization, I’ve tested three programs, all in the $45-$80 range. I did not try Dramatica. As Amy, another Saturday Writer, so eloquently put it, “for the price you’d think it’d write the book for you.”

     First up is Black Obelisks’s Liquid Story Binder XE. We try to pretend we don’t care about looks, but let’s make like John Edwards and tell the truth: we do. This is not a visually appealing program. In fact, whenever I open it, I feel a sense of dread because the page is so stark and demanding and cold it’s worse than starting a new file in Word. I don’t know how to explain it, but it makes me feel stupid and unworthy, that screen. Desperate to make it do something, anything, so I don’t feel so bad, I click on one of the pull-down menu options (Library, Files, Create, Open, Planners, Associations, Listings, Playlists, Workspaces, Shortcuts, Tools, Display, Preferences, About, aaaaaaahhhhhhggggggggggg! It’s just too much!). Under each menu option, there are at least a dozen more options. For example, under “Create” I can create a New Chapter, New Note, New Outline, New Checklist, New Builder, New Timeline, New Sequence, New Dossier, New Storyboard, New Image, New Song, New Gallery, New Playlist, New Recording or New Shortcut. Honestly, after muddling through all that I’m too tired to write. I want help, not a nervous breakdown. And what’s the difference between a Sequence, a Storyboard and a Timeline, I ask you? Even at the bargain price of $45.95, this isn’t the one for me.

     Next up is Write Way. I like this program. It’s okay to look at… a bit on the Plain Jane side visually (and lord knows there needs to be a place for us Plain Janes of the world), but it’s well organized and not brain-scrambling in its complexity. It has many of the features I found helpful in the third program, with the added benefit of being able to write directly in it (you’d think that would be a core function of any of these programs but alas, it is not). This is a program for organizing your actual text more than designing a complete novel. One of the most helpful features is that you can store your book by scene, within chapters, within acts. This is great because if you decide to move a whole chunk around, you don’t have to retype, or cut and paste. You just drag it where you want it and et voila, it’s done. There are some cool printing features, too; you can choose Draft, Galley or Manuscript. The character charts are nice, again a bit plain to look at but plain has its place in the world. There’s a storyboard function but I haven’t quite figured out – so far it won’t play the way I like to play but I have hope. There’s a research area where you can store images, URLs, text, etc. Handy. Now, the good news is, this is the least expensive of the programs at $39 for the basic version. The bad news is that to get Outline, Storyboard, Synopsis, Research Folders, Future Book Idea Folders, the Galley print option and the ability to import your work from a word processor, you have to bump up to the Pro version which is the most expensive of all at $79.

     Lastly we have Anthemion’s Writers’ Café, an attractive little program that can be had for under $50. Writers’ Café is attractive to look at. You wouldn’t think that was a big deal, really, but after working in Liquid Story Binder, you realize like size, it matters. At the main screen of the program, you have a number of tabs to pick from: Scraps (notes, photos, whatever); Storylines (visual and verbal storyboards that you can drag around, organize by plot line, color by character or scene type); Journal (doh); Notebook (a place you can type, but not like a word processor, unfortunately); Cookies (which are cute little quotes about writing and creativity – there’s a lot of cute going on in  Writers’ Café); and Bookshelf, which is “help” plus the basics of writing, 101.  There are templates for tracking character information. You can see your Storyboard in outline form. You can print it in manuscript form – but only the bits that appear in the Storyboard. Writers’ Café’s biggest flaw is a huge one, in my opinion: There’s nowhere to store your manuscript. It’s strictly a plotting and organizational tool. If it had but that one piece, I’d consider it as close to perfect as this sort of software can come.

     Now if I can find software that’ll keep my butt in my chair and temporarily lock me out of any other program connecting me to the outside world (DSW is having a sale? I’ll just take a quick peek! I have got to unsubscribe from  Harvey’s Horse Hut before I get one more hay sale email…)

Sara Ennis

Beings as I am that “second family” that comes so late in a couple’s life, I had fun playing on “antiques” as I was growing up. I used to sit and push the keys on an old, old typewriter. It took forever to type one sentence.

When I went to college I was given my first typewriter. It was a portable, manual typewriter. It was a graduation present, and the electric models were too expensive. I was so proud of it. Some of my friends thought I was spoiled because they didn’t have one. About as many students had television sets as typewriters.

Skip to 2008. (I used to say fast forward, but that is becoming outdated with advent of CD’s)

What I am trying to say is that I’ve been typing most of my life. It’s second nature to me. The only problem is that I had surgery on one of my fingers a couple months ago and I can’t type with that finger. After all these years using 10 fingers (well, actually 8 fingers and 2 thumbs) I can’t use one of my fingers to type with.

My laptop has Windows Vista on it. I was looking through the help file when I saw something that sounded interesting - speech recognition. My mind jumped to alert status. Speech recognition. Did Windows Vista actually have that built into the program?

I played with it, but couldn’t get it to type as good as I thought it should. I bought a better set of headphones to use, but it still didn’t do what it should. Sometimes I started the program and it wouldn’t recognize anything I said. (I wasn’t drunk or high on pain pills.) I dictated something into a story I was writing, and it typed about the Civil War. Nothing related to what I said. I then had to restart the program and sometimes it worked better. Sometimes it didn’t. When it worked decently, it would suddenly stop recognizing anything I said. I told it to “refresh speech commands,” but it asked, “What was that???” Those are the words the instructions told me to use. So much for that solution that didn’t work.

I googled for a speech program and found Dragon Naturally Speaking. Research said it was one of the better programs. I bought it, installed it and found it to be much better. It still isn’t perfect, but it is acceptable.

Sometimes I don’t want to sit straight up when I dictate. When I’m in a recliner, I don’t want to sit straight up. I want to recline. And other places. The headphones made that impossible. I googled microphones. I found a decent one that works. It comes with Session Music Producer. I haven’t installed the music program, but the microphone works great. The only thing I have to watch is where I position it from my mouth. If it’s too close, the computer doesn’t recognize anything I say. It seems that it needs to be about two feet away.

Now that I have everything I want and need to write my story, all I need to do is stop procrastinating. Anyone know how to do that?

One of the things I like most about our writers group, the Saturday Writers, is that we are each at different stages with our writing. And because of that we each bring unique insights to the group.

For me, I’m still in the hobby stage of writing. Writing has been with me for many years, but it is still a dream, not a goal. I dabble in it, I don’t seriously pursue it. And knowing that about myself I can throw off the guilt that we women take on too easily.

No “I should be writing more.” No blame, no guilt trips. Just writing for fun. Writing for the sake of writing. Because I want to work on a story, not because I have to. And that is an okay place to be. When I’m ready to make writing a bigger part of my life, it will be there.

But like any good hobby, I spend a lot of time thinking about writing and studying books on writing. If I pack enough writing knowledge into my brain, then when writing takes center stage in my life, all that learning will be there, ready to use.

The book I’m currently reading is One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers by Gail Sher. I really like her four truths. They are:

1. Writers write.
2. Writing is a process.
3. You don’t know what your writing will be until the end of the process.
4. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is to not write.

I understand #2. After all this study and reading on writing, I understand that writing is a process. You don’t just flip a switch and instantly become a bestseller. It takes time and effort, like any occupation or hobby.

#3 also makes sense. You have to finish the story to see what it actually becomes. It certainly never looks like the story I had in my mind when I started. But if it bears some resemblance, I’m okay with that.

#1 and #4 are my sticking points. I don’t have the daily practice of writing. When I did write daily, even just in a journal, I found that my “official” writing, whatever story I was working on, came out so much easier. So my challenge is to get back into the daily habit. Because I want to work on my story daily, not because I have to. Less guilt, more fun, more writing.

Where are you at on your writing path?

I’ve attended my fair share of writer’s conferences in the past 10-15 years.  I had always wanted to write but never knew where to begin.  I played around with writing when my kids were little and I was stuck home with them during the winter, kind of like Nora Roberts story.  I read once where that exact thing happened to her. She pulled out a pad of paper and a pen and started writing a story and the rest is history.  I pulled out a pad and pen but never got anything that lengthy completed.  I have had a short story published and I had a column in the Altoona Herald for a time.  I enjoy writing short pieces but feel a real desire to create something that is novel length. I sought out other writers in the area and joined several local writer’s groups before I found out about writer’s conferences. I attended a few and became hooked.

I am an advocate for writer’s conferences.  So far, I’ve attended a couple of RWA chapter conferences, one in Omaha and one in Kansas City.  I’ve attended a Regional RWA conference in Chicago and a National RWA conference in Anaheim.  That’s with the Romance genre.  For Mystery, I’ve attended Love is Murder in Chicago and Mayhem in the Midlands, in Omaha.  I’ve also attended the Maplewood Writer’s Conference in Kansas City twice.  Maplewood was a non-genre specific conference. Unfortunately Maplewood has disbanded. 

What can you expect at a conference?  Seminars and workshops during the day.  Most are geared toward writers looking for basic guidance but they also tend to cater to the published author with seminars on marketing and the business side of writing.  Seminars alone are worth the conference fee.

It depends on the size of the conference but most organizers try to lure agents and publishers to participate.  If you have something completed, it is a wonderful way to get a foot in the door to the industry.  You can sign up for either group or individual appointments to pitch your story.  What more could a writer ask for? 

Some conferences use Saturday night as the night for an awards banquet.  It’s a great chance to dress up and network with fellow writers.  You never know.  I met a local author at Mayhem in the Midlands.  At the time, she hadn’t published yet.  The publisher had accepted her book but it wasn’t out yet.  She shared with our table some of her marketing plan for the next year.  She had it detailed out to what she would be doing each month to sell her book for the next year.  It was a good thing.  It’s now two years later and her sixth book will be in the bookstores before December.  In case you haven’t read her yet, her name is Shirley Damsgaard and she writes a series of mysteries with a librarian protagonist and her grandmother. They are witches who use folk magic to help them find out who dun it.  By day, she’s the Post Mistress in Stuart, Iowa.

Did I mention networking?  You will have a chance to network during the entire conference with both published and pre-published authors.  Yes, it is exciting meeting someone whose book has kept you up half a night but it can also be exciting to meet someone who may be starting out in the business with you.  You can develop friendship bonds that can be far-reaching when it comes to marketing your own book.  Instead of one website, think of having links on a dozen or more.  Each website you are linked to is a chance to boost book sales and help guarantee that you will not be a one book wonder.

If you’ve avoided conferences for whatever reason and you are serious about a writing career, I advise you to rethink it.  Pick up this month’s Writer’s Digest, Writer Magazine, Poets and Writers, or research the internet.  If you have to use a day or two of vacation for you and your writing career, take it.  I promise you won’t regret it. 

Virginia Gruver

Being a new writer I realized I suffer from the following fears of writing:

• I don’t know where to start.
• What if people don’t like what I write?
• What if my Characters aren’t believable?
• I’m really not as talented as other writers I know.
• Writing seems so easy for them but I struggle.

If you suffer from any of these fears like I do I may have some suggestions to get you past them. You don’t have to know where to start – just start.  Start anywhere.  You can always go back and fix it.  Don’t stop writing.  There are so many articles, books, magazines available which answer any question you may have about writing.  If you feel you aren’t good enough, help build your confidence by taking a class.  You will find there are always beginning writers who are struggling just like you.  By all means join a writing group.  Be around people who have the same aspirations as you.  Not everyone’s talent is the same.  Whether it’s writing, acting, singing there will always be someone better or worse.  When the words you have writen strike an understanding and emotion in a reader you have accomplished the dream of every writer. Give yourself some credit, believe in your abilities and by all mean —- WRITE!!!

Keep writing, Deanne

I read somewhere that it’s very difficult to get an agent to look at a manuscript. In fact, people often spend big bucks to go to conferences just to have the chance to get in front of an agent for five minutes. That’s why, when it came time for me to consider looking for representation, I was a little – or a lot – lackadaisical.

I did my homework, poring over Publishers Marketplace to determine who might best help me sell my stunningly brilliant novel, Living in Bliss. I queried the deal database every way from Sunday to see who did well selling debuts, who was especially interested in comedy (nobody, it seems!), and who repped my favorite authors. Then I checked out each of their websites to learn whether my favorites were accepting new clients (alas, many were not), if there were other people at those agencies who might be a match, and if each individual agent as a whole looked like someone I would like to get into bed with, so to speak.

That task accomplished, I whipped up (okay, cried and slaved over) a query letter. Query letters are a challenge, but I felt good about mine: charming, fun, an enticing and brief overview of my plot, ended with a character sketch of who I am as a person and a writer. For good measure, I included the first 10 pages of the novel in the email; might as well tease them with my talent. Ta da! I was ready.

My logic was as follows: Send electronic queries to my top 4 choices. Wait weeks for them to respond, which would give me time to – ahem – FINISH THE BOOK.

That’s right. I was 90% done, but not completely done. Some twisted part of me thought that if I sent off agent queries, I’d have no choice but to finally wrap up the little bitty loose ends that had been torturing me for a year.

Let me tell you, this is not a good plan. Why? Because three of the four agents responded within hours, requesting full manuscripts and a synopsis. Holy crap. Those were my exact words (uttered at the top of my lungs as I jumped up and down, freaking out my dogs and cats and sending the bird into a tizzy of flapping wings). Woo hoo! I didn’t suck! Or, at least my suckiness wasn’t such that they didn’t want to read more…

And then it hit me: I hadn’t finished the darned book, much less written a synopsis.

Fortunately it was Friday. And I’ll admit, I used the Iowa floods to my advantage. (I wasn’t lying, exactly; my basement did have nearly a foot of water in it.) I asked each of the three requesting agents if I might send along the information on Monday… and then spent every waking moment of the next two days writing, editing, polishing, writing some more. I added 10,000 words that weekend. And that’s not counting the 7 page synopsis.

Did I screw up? I’m sure I did. I’m sure there were things I could’ve polished even more. In fact, I have a scene in my head that needs to be inserted into the final act, which I’ll probably do, although that makes me very nervous with the manuscript out. There’s a very good chance rushing like a madwoman lessened the strength of the book as a whole. But if nothing else, I learned a big lesson: don’t pitch a book that isn’t finished. Because in this era of super-fast technology, you never know when you’re going to be called upon to produce what you’ve promised. It may be a lot sooner than you expected.

Happy writing! Sara

Welcome to the Saturday Writer’s blog! We’re a group of writers in and around the Des Moines, Iowa area. We write in many different genres, but we all love writing.

Stay tuned as we talk about writing - what works for us and what doesn’t.