Dear young and aspiring author,

Ever wished you could go back in time and share something with the younger you?
This month we decided to share some wisdom we've gained since writing that first chapter, things we've learned since our 'decision' to become writers.
Read Robin’s inspiring blog here if you’ve missed it.

I scribbled my first ever story in a notebook. In pencil, and I remember it like it was yesterday, not eighteen years ago. The words flowed. Sentences followed and paragraphs were created that evolved into chapters. I thrived! I wrote about five more ‘novels’ in notebooks. Back then I thought it was simple. I was so blissfully happy in my ignorance.

Then I started studying the craft and realized how much there was that I didn’t know. How very little I actually did know about this dream I wanted to pursue. Things that I’ve never even considered plagued me. It overwhelmed me. And it terrified me, but I persevered. Somewhere between joining ACFW and now, I’ve managed to gain some form of foothold. I’ve experienced just how up and down a writer’s life can be.
There are hundreds of things I would tell that starry eyed thirteen-year-old. But if I have to narrow it down, here’s the things that would’ve made a lot of things easier.

1.   Please do not compare yourself to other writers. Ever.

We’re all different. That's how God made us ;)
Some writers have a knack with descriptions. Others flourish with dialogue and some manage to create well-developed, larger-than-life characters. You have your strong points - you really do - don’t belittle your strengths. Appreciate the talent the Lord gave you and work on improving it.

2.   Don’t aim for perfect.

Allow yourself to write terrible first drafts. Writing a novel is going to take time, sometimes a lot of time. For some writers it takes multiple rewrites before they have a manuscript that’s publishable. You're one of those writers. And it's OK. If you always stress about writing a perfect first draft, you’ll never have anything to work with.
Good things take time.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time.
Nothing kill's creativity faster than perfectionism, especially during the first draft.
~K.M. Weliand, Conquering writer's block and how to summon creativity.

3.   You can’t make everyone happy – 

you’re not coffee!

Don’t let your people pleasing tendencies influence your writing so much on so many different levels. I have several examples that I won’t bore you with. The brutal truth is if you’ve received feedback you don’t necessarily agree with, then so be it. Unicorns aren’t going to keel over because you’re not accepting every single suggestion you receive. The sun will still rise. The birds will still sing in the morning. One day you’ll decide not to implement some suggestions you’ll receive from an author you admire and your book will be OK. You’ll be OK. The critic will be fine too. I promise!

4.   Enjoy the ride.

Don’t rush. You’re still young and naïve and have so much to learn. And yes, receiving that desired publishing contract is awesome. It really is. But so is the ride. And the people you’ll meet on the journey. Your speed doesn't matter. Forward is still forward!

Since I know we're not the only writers with some wisdom to share, I’ve asked a couple of my good friends to share their answers as well. Check out they're websites if you have a moment.

(Thank you ladies for sharing so willingly.)

Find a writing community. You will need it. There is so much to learn, and writing can feel like a very lonely endeavor. When the amount of work becomes too daunting or the rejections start coming in, you'll need a writing community to turn to. Supportive family members and friends are a huge blessing, but only fellow writers can completely understand and give you the reassurance that you're not crazy, and you're not alone.
~ Laurie Lucking

Knowing now what I didn't know then, if I could start over I'd start creating my platform much sooner and pay closer attention to the business end of this business, including marketing/promotion techniques. Writing a great book is vital, but not knowing how to promote it renders it moot.
Believe me, having to play catch-up where marketing techniques is concerned is my biggest regret.
 ~ Author, Linda W. Yezak

I think it was Steven James who said something to the effect of, "Worry about the story, not the sentence." I agree. A compelling story will get readers to forgive a multitude of sins if you can sweep them away. I would urge my younger writer self to (1) really explore plot structure sooner, and (2) make sure every scene raises the stakes, builds tension, and moves the story forward. #2 would have saved me a lot of re-writing. Oh, and one more thing: PLOT your story. I'm a huge convert now!
~Author, Heather Blanton

If I could turn back time (yeah...Cher's now stuck in my head), I would tell myself to pay more attention to what I was reading so I could answer the old cliche questions, who, what, when, where, and why?
Who: Who are the characters and why am I finding them so appealing? Then bring those qualities to my own characters.
What: What makes the story so good in my eyes? Is it the setting, the period, the plot, the characters?
When: When am I reading the most? Morning, afternoon, evening, night? If that's when I'm most drawn to story, maybe that's when I should be doing my writing.
Where: Where is the story taking place? What geographical area do I read about most, and why? Should I be setting my story in a similar area? Or maybe "where" could be where am I reading? Maybe think about writing in that spot. If that's where I feel most relaxed and open to imagery and story, that's where I should probably sit to do my writing.
Why: Why is this book important to me? How can that translate to my own writing?
~Mikal Dawn

Dear self-

Hello...it's me. Just wanted to drop you a note at the beginning of your writing journey. You probably already noticed that I said "journey," not "career." I won't throw zen statements about a journey being one step in front of the other or that it is a long haul. Don't be so hard on yourself when you fail, because you WILL fail. A lot. You will get unhelpful critiques and never hear back from agents or editors who asked you to submit. Yes, silence is the worst.

But...

Keep going. Even if it's a blog post or a chapter on a fanfiction story because your heart cannot find your book characters for days (even weeks). Write inspirations, even a sentence or just a word, because your characters WILL come back. Keep learning and step out of your comfort zone for a short story or two because you will surprise yourself.

Above all, be faithful to the vision God has laid on your heart. He has given you a story to tell. Tell it. He has given you desire to write. Write it. These words, they are not yours or mine, they are His.

~Sarah Bennett

As always,
Be Blessed
~Lucy

Advice To a Newbie Writer

This month the writers at Quills and Inkblotts are thinking back to their early days of writing, and sharing advice they would give themselves if they could.

I have to go back nearly five years, to Fall of 2011. That's when my husband listened to me falter, and shrug, and attempt to explain this writing "thing" which I didn't even fully understand. He was gracious to give me two full days alone to write (with three children under 7, that was an extravagant gift to me). I cranked out 10,000 words in those two days. When the weekend was over, I emerged from my cocoon smiling, exhausted, and excited about what I had created.

I've added hundreds of thousands of words to those first ones, in the form of four complete manuscripts (and one partially written one), two blogs, and pages and pages of journaling. 

If I could go back to that faltering, excited newbie writer, I would tell her three things.

1.  It's not ready yet. It's not even close.
Stop fantasizing about your adoring fans, and how much they are going to love your work. You think it's great. It's not. Don't waste a single second thinking about querying (silly me, you don't even know that word yet), contests, and publication. You're not there yet. 

This will be a long process for you. There will be starts and stops, and massive "life stuff" that suffocates the writing flame. Let it happen. The flame won't go out entirely. It will be a pilot light, fragile, blue, and flickering in cobwebby shadows in the basement of your mind. When the time is right, the flame will roar to life again. You will successfully knock the cobwebs away, and open the document. The story will change in ways your mind can't conceive right now. After all this time, you will have eyes to see how much you've learned about writing, about life, and about God. That has to happen. You can't rush it, so just keep pinging away on the keyboard for now, and know that it's not ready yet.

2. You are not alone.
I know you feel like the only person on earth who has had this crazy idea: I think I'll try to write a book. You walk past shelves at the library, lightly touching the cellophane-wrapped spines as you pass them, convinced those authors are mythical beasts. They don't exist in your world. Normal, suburban nobodies like you don't dream this dream. They don't devote copious isolated hours to this strange task which may never come to fruition. 

In a few short years (they will feel long to you, but they aren't), God will make you see that your greatest need as a writer is to have a reader. You will pray for that constantly for a while, feeling acutely lonely, and then He will direct you to ACFW. You will discover a whole world full of people exactly like you, the ones who dreamed this dream, devoted themselves to their creative labor, and came together online to encourage, critique, and remind one another that they are not alone. This will change everything for you. Remember to thank God for this when it happens.

3. Take the pressure off yourself. God is sovereign over this.
You will read Ephesians 4:1 "I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge to you walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." And you will hope writing is what God has called you to do. You will wonder, what does it look like to walk in a manner worthy of it? A thousand words a day every day? A blog post every week? Post clicks, likes, and shares? Saving up for conference? The Almighty Book Deal?

This verse will weigh heavy on you as the years of striving pass with nothing much to show for your work. You will begin to doubt this is what God called you to do. "I'm trying!" your heart will cry out in shame that you were wrong, and in fear that you've wasted your time, your witness, your life.
 
Then one Spring day in early 2016 God will pry your eyes open and make you see the pride in all your striving. He'll show you how your heart was tangled up in self-righteous knots, and how your ambition, though it has always been sincerely to please him, was also bound up in your own glory, the work of your hands, the thing you would create. You hoped it would please him, but you also hoped it would please a publisher; that it would make you feel satisfied, productive, and accomplished.  

That's not your calling, my friend. Your calling is so much bigger than writing, so much longer-lasting. It is eternal.

Your calling is to live a life justified, in fellowship with Christ Jesus. It looks like patience. It looks like obedience. You don't need to strive. The striving is done. It was done by One more qualified and able than you.

But there is work. If your calling is to live in fellowship with Christ, then your work is that which builds up the body of Christ. This can be done through writing fiction; through creating characters who struggle with disunity, who learn, and who grow in their faith. It is right to use this writing gift to tell the story of a people who loved the Lord. It is a fitting labor.



This I know today, after five years of writing: I am at rest.
I still don't have it all figured out. I still have made very little of myself in the writing world. Truthfully, I am not worthy of this writing work. I confess that to you, Dear Reader, and to God. Yet the work continues, and will continue until God takes from me this dream, and sets my heart on another. Until that day, this work of my hands, this thimble of foam, I offer trembling to Christ, to do with what he will--to keep it hidden, or to give it wings--whatever would be to the benefit to his beloved people, the Church. I can rest in that.

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The Secret To Really Good Descriptive Layering

By Robin

Lucy's blog post last week has me thinking about my own first draft, how much it's changed during revisions, and how I got it from there to here.

Writing a novel is, I think, like building a house. When you begin you have little more than a vision of how it will look when it's done. You're not thinking yet about paint color, counter tops, rose bushes, or crown molding.

All you know to do is take a shovel in your bare hands and break open the earth by writing these magical words on a blank page: Chapter One.

I had a lot to learn about writing when I began, but I wrote at a fever pace with a self-discipline I can only attribute to God, dumping everything from the shovel into my story, lumps, roots, and all. I guessed at some of it, skipped over things that were beyond my imagination, and a few months later, I was finished. I held it out with pride to my first and dearest beta reader, my sister.

She was polite about it, I'm grateful to say. But when I look back on that first draft, I see nothing but wall studs, sub floor, and ceiling rafters. There were so many gaps in the plot. The setting was vague, and could have taken place anywhere. I had written a bevy of under-developed characters with under-whelming problems.

But it was done, and that's not for nothing. Studs, flooring and rafters are good and necessary components, after all. You can't move to the next stage without those foundational things in place.

In the last two years, I've been adding layers to the foundation. Plumbing, electrical wiring, and yes, crown molding.

My story gets better, richer, with each revision.

Take this excerpt from the first draft:

“Wait.” She stopped and pulled on his hand until he turned to face her. “I’m not entirely sure this is a good idea.” She knew she should say this but she had longed for this moment and could not be sure how emphatically she would refuse his offer if he persisted.
“What is it?”
“My father.”
“He disapproves?”
Disapproval was an understatement. He expressly forbade exactly what they were about to do. Mara had not set out to defy her father but no amount of obedience had yet earned his approval. She’d always followed his lead and done as she was bid and it seemed to make no difference to him. "Father can’t know,” she said quietly.

It's not bad, but it's not great either. Lots of "telling," right? Do you have a picture in your mind? Probably  not.

Now compare it with this:

"I don’t think I can.” She pulled her hand from his grasp and let her empty fingers drift between them in the air made thick by all the words she couldn’t say.
"Why not?”
“Father.” She gulped and fixed her eyes on the buttons of his shirt. She hated the sound of the word coming from her mouth, the obstacle it created.
He gently opened her fingers, which were still curled in mid-air as if they held something in them. He pressed his flattened palm against hers and slid his solid fingers between her slender ones until their hands were clasped.
“Please?”
“He can’t know,” she said.
She could feel his smile without looking up at him because the air between them grew thinner somehow, simpler.

Can't you see the tension and tenderness in their hands? You "see" the male character too, even though all she really describes is his buttons.
  
This did not come to me during the second revision, or the third, or fourth. It will probably morph again before I'm done with it. I can't say exactly when the moment sprang to life in my mind. There's no easy way to do it, no switch to turn on.

But there's a secret to writing really good descriptive layering, and this is it:

STEPPING AWAY FROM YOUR WORK

I know it sounds contradictory, but it's true. Just as the architect can only improve his design by looking up from the draft board and taking inspiration from nature, other designs, and other designers, the writer must also close the laptop and take in the world around him or her.

I've gotten into the habit of doing these 4 essential things to facilitate and feed the creativity needed for descriptive layering.

1. Live your life. 
-Go out to dinner: notice the scraggly, chewed fingernails of the waitress. There's an unusual character description.
-Do the dishes: take note of the stinging cut and the way the blood pools on the counter when you accidentally slice your finger on the knife hidden beneath the suds. How do your kids react? Your spouse? This is all useful writing material, despite the difficulty typing for the next few days.
-Spend time maintaining your home: pull weeds and watch them pile up, shriveled, dead and useless next to you. There's a useful metaphor there, I'm sure.

I could go on and on. Your characters are living their lives in their world, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, watching. You need to do the same.

2. Go outside.
Wherever you are, go outside. You may be writing an exotic locale, or a fictional world, but you don't need to be on location to be blinded by sun, or to feel it warm your skin, or to feel sweat trickle down the middle of your back. You don't need to be in the city your story takes place to watch the storm clouds move in, or hear the screeching of cicadas, or smell the sweet earthiness of fresh-cut grass. Yes, you can imagine those things, but something special happens when you're feeling and seeing it, doesn't it? It breathes life into your setting with believable, unmistakable authenticity. Don't miss it.

3. Be intentional.
I have an hour long commute to bible study twice a week. That time is for thinking about my story. The night before, I re-read whatever chapter I'm working on, and I get a place in my head to begin. Maybe it's a line of dialogue. A setting. Part of a scene I've been struggling with. The layering and complexity flows from there during that quiet, uninterrupted time. I keep a notebook with me to jot things down when I get there.

I also go for walks. I use a four mile walking path near my house several times a week, and that time is exclusively for thinking about what I'm writing. I can't begin to number the wonderful literary gems that have come to me during that time. That's when I get to know my characters best.

4. Read good writing.
This is nonnegotiable. You must not neglect reading. You can't. It's unthinkable that a writer who expects to be good would not be continuously learning from the greats, whose contribution to our craft line the shelves of every library. Don't just read things in your genre. You'll settle into a comfortable place, thinking your writing is just fine, thank you, and you won't be challenged and convicted to do the hard work of getting better. And it can always be better.

You're probably reading this and thinking, "All that time! Pulling weeds? Walking four miles? That must take, like...hours! Who has time for this?" True, it's a lot of time away from the screen. But I've discovered that roughly 50% of what I write happens at the computer. The other 50% happens when I'm living my life. Standing in the shower. Folding laundry. Swinging my daughter at the playground. Stirring pasta at the stove. I'm always thinking intentionally about my characters. Real life filters into the story and descriptive layering flows out of that.

I would love to hear some tips and methods you use to enhance the descriptive layering in your own writing. Please leave a comment below.

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