A Writer’s Journey

This is the first group write project I’m taking part in. The “What I Learned From…” groupwrite is a monthly project by Robert Hruzek at Middle Zone Musings and the Adversity theme is outlined here.

So, why do these? For a few reasons:

• Firstly, it will be a challenge to me as a writer and will hopefully help in my growth as such.
• It’s a great way for you, my blog readers, to find out about new places to visit.
• Links back here will help the blog to grow rather nicely.
• It’s fun and will allow me to meet more new people.

The lesson.

I think that for all of us adversity has been a part of our lives at least once. The American Heritage Dictionary defines adversity as, “A state of hardship or affliction; misfortune.” This, I believe, would fit what most people automatically think of. For me, however, I prefer the Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary’s definition of, “Opposition; contrariety.”

In this sense, I think we reach the core of what adversity truly is. It is something either in your control or not that is working in opposition against you acheiving your goals in life. Whether it be abusive parents, difficulties in school, poverty, war, or such conditions as depression. Even writer’s block. All these things are a hindrance to your growth as a person, or writer, or in relation to your desired career path.

Or, to make it a little simpler, adversity is simply hurdles in your path. You have two options, really: Run directly into them, or leap over the hurdle, ready for the next.

This isn’t as easy as it is looks, I know. But no matter the size of the hurdle, it can be done. All it takes is mental, emotional, and sometimes physical, strength to manage that leap of faith. It can be hard at times to know what you’re going to land in, but one thing is for sure - you’ll come out stronger.

Beating writer’s block will reveal to you new ways to keep that creativity flowing, as an example; strengthening your ability to write. Battling depression and winning will help you see new light and joy in life, making it easier to fend off such things in the future: Your defenses are stronger.

And that is what I’ve learned form adversity: Strength.

Saladin Akara Group Writing Projects

Following on from my previous post on realism, I was reading an article by Vicki Hinze on the Fiction Factor website. It discusses suspension of disbelief when writing fiction.

But, what is this idea of suspending disbelief? It’s all about making your readers be able to believe that what you are writing is, or could be, real. Whether it’s a romance, action-adventure or fantasy piece you are writing your readers need to be able to believe in what they are reading. Elves? Not in the real world, that’s for sure? Don’t be silly! If you can suspend their disbelief, however, then it could well be possible that elves do exist in reality.

It’s all in the detail.

How do we do that for a novel without an atypical or unusual element?
In a word, details.

And in that quote, Vicki sums up the concept perfectly. It is the tiny, seemingly unimportant details that are key to suspending your reader’s disbelief. From making sure your characters are believable and relatable through giving them ‘real’ personalities, to giving enough prior background for an event to be plausible.

An example by Vicki speaks of snow in Florida. Sure enough, a snow storm in Florida wouldn’t happen in real life (I think. Do feel free to correct me if otherwise), in your novel it could well be. A change in weather fronts and well developed plans by Organisation X to affect weather against the natural order? Sure, that could well make snow fall in Florida.

Consistency is key.

Throughout your novel or fictional piece you need to be consistent to maintain the suspension of disbelief. To continue the the ’snow in Florida’ example: Suddenly throwing in this Organisation X and all related factors in the chapter immediately before or after the snow storm will look very much like a desperate ’saving grace’ attempt that will make the reader stop, think and still believe it couldn’t happen.

Before and after the event, you need to continue suspending disbelief. As another extreme example: There is snow in Florida for the above-stated reasons one day, on the next, blistering heat once again. No, doesn’t sound real to me either, considering the information we’ve been given already. “Boo!” at the writer!

Informative delivery.

Vicki goes on to speak about how you give this details and ‘facts’ to the reader, and brings up an interesting point:

It’s widely accepted as fact that a reader believes what one character says to another far more readily than the reader believes what an author says to them.

And that, I think, gives point enough on how best to deliver the information that builds believability.

Over to you.

What methods to you use to suspend disbelief as a writer? As a reader, what are you most likely to notice that will reinstate your disbelief? Or what do you like to see to enable suspension of disbelief?

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Having seen George Angus’ review of the e-book publishing service Smashwords over at Tumblemoose Writing Services, I knew I just had to give it a try. E-books, while still only making up a very tiny percentage of book sales, are a growing industry. The proliferation of such gadgets as the Sony Reader and the iPhone’s Stanza application will only help the e-book industry to grow.

A free service that takes your Word document and converts it into various e-book formats, then, sounds very enticing. Especially to a writer like myself, trying to get into the industry beyond hobbies. I was itching to give it a try.

A Decision Had To Be Made

What, exactly, would I make an e-book out of? As a first attempt, I knew it best to follow George’s “An Inspired Query Letter” and make my ebook free. I didn’t, however, want any of my ‘real’ work to be readily available for nothing. So I had to decide on a subject matter.

I finally decided to compile an anthology of various roleplaying posts I had written. I did this for two reasons: Firstly, the content was readily available and required very little work on my part. Secondly, it would serve as a great way to display my writing ability.

So off I went, finding various roleplay posts from the two and a half years I’ve been taking part in the past-time. Organising them by date order, I made the rest of the content: An introduction to the e-book, and a small paragraph of background to each post.

The Process

I typed everything up in the Ubuntu equivalent of Notepad, then formatted the e-book as outlined in the Smashwords Style Guide. Or so I had thought (more on that later).

Registration was quick and easy, taking all of about three or four minutes including ‘account activation.’ The easy-to-use navigation gives a nice “Publish” link that, you got it, is where you publish your ebook. Allowing you to add a synopsis (400 or so characters long), tags, and categorisation the first page is nice and simple. You can also add an image to act as the front cover; something I opted out of.

Uploading your Word document is as easy as you’d expect: Browse to the relevant file, click okay, then click upload. Then your file is run through what is fondly referred to as the ‘Meat Grinder’ to be converted into the various e-book formats on offer. This took a couple of minutes for my 33 page e-book.

The Value of Proof-Reading

A greatly important lesson was taken from this little outing into the e-publication world: Proof-read, proof-read, proof-read!

I did have some initial formatting issues that meant the HTML Reader on Smashwords didn’t recognise any paragraph returns in my book; making it just a single block of text! This was my own fault, for not fully following the Style Guide, but I managed to fix it.

Then, the worst thing happened when I re-checked the HTML Reader (which thankfully was now working)! My actual roleplay posts, some of which were from as far back 2006, were riddled with various errors: Typographical, missing or added words, spelling errors etc.

I knew that none of my ‘new’ content in the e-book had any errors, and I had been sure that all my older stuff was proof-read back when I originally wrote them. Not the case. I had to read through everything once more to correct any mistakes, and then re-upload the e-book once again.

For this, it is really easy: There is an “Upload new version” option in your ‘dashboard’ on the site, and takes only a minute or so; needing only to upload the file and convert it - After all, the rest of the information is still there.

Finally, I’d Finished!

“Excerpts From Role Playing Endeavours” was at last published and suitable for being read.

Overall, the process was an enjoyable, and my own errors aside, the Smashwords service is fantastic. Simple, easy to use, intuitive and most all… Free to use! I expect that I will be using it again in the future. Perhaps to even publish some of my work non-free.

Thanks must be given to George, though, for sharing such a great discovery with us all.

Saladin Akara General, General Writing, Roleplaying e-book, proof-reading, smashwords, writing

For the past two or three weeks, I’ve been getting myself involved with Twitter for the first time. It’s certainly an interesting beast: 140 characters to get your message across. Anything from what you are doing at any given moment, to chatting with other Twitters in the ‘Twitterverse.’ Think of a heavily simplified Facebook and you pretty much have Twitter in a nutshell.

Yet, I cannot help but wonder what it actually does for me. It allows a much more open networking facility than Facebook, is less full of gimicks like poking and sheep-hurling while still maintaining that sense of connection. But what does it do for me as a writer?

• Teaches me to be concise. An average of 20-ish words isn’t a lot to convey what you’re thinking or feeling.
• Connections with other writers. At the moment I have only a small network and a fair few are writers. Who better to make friends with and have the opportunity of learning from.
• Offers inspiration. Such people as Joanna Young and Amy Palko and a few others near constantly seem in a good mood with motivating things to say that can inspire. Links posted from blogs or other such things also offer sources of inspiration: Be it photos, articles, funny stories, it all adds up to inspiring me to write something.

And on that last note, I must make mention of the Confident Writing community’s lessons from blogging, summarised here. A great collection of experiences and something I, as a new blogger, will find greatly useful in the learning process.

Your experiences?

How have you found the Twitter experience? Has it helped you in any way? If so, how?

You can follow me on Twitter: @MattHaywardUK

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A couple of days ago I was discussing with a few people over on Roleplay Gateway about an idea to write something collaboratively, but with a slight twist on the usual roleplaying basis. The main jist of the idea can be found here and a thread for discussion here.

Essentially, myself and four other writers will be planning and writing a story entirely collaboratively, writing either a chapter or scene at a time each. Besides the usual roleplaying I do, this will be my first collaborative project. I have to wonder just how well it will work out. Will the other writers be to my standard? Will they be able to ‘keep up’ in terms of post frequency? Will differences in writing styles pose a future problem?

I’m not sure quite how it works when you see a book written by two people (David and Leigh Eddings, for example). Do they each write certain sections, or work together on every aspect? One person plans characters and the other writes the plot? So this will work as a nice experiment for me and potentially a nice journey of discovery. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the progress.

Your own experiences.

Have you ever done any collaborative work? What did you find worked well? What didn’t? Any tips, advice or warning that could be helpful? Do let me know.

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Jamie over at How Not To Write wrote an interesting article on Sunday about receiving a critique from an external service, and his view on the critique given was certainly enlightening.

It can be difficult at times to take criticism. To be told that something we have spent time, effort, sweat and maybe even blood on is flawed can be a hefty blow. The tendency in a critique, as displayed in Joanna Young’s post about feedback on her Confident Writing blog, is to be told all the things done correctly. All the positive points. Focus tends to lead away from the negative. As that is what’s expected, so too is it delivered.

But, Jamie expects something different:

To me, a successful critique does three things:

1. Tells me something I don’t know.
2. Hammers me with examples of my failures over and over again
3. Tells me something I know, but have tried desperately to ignore.

These three points got me thinking about what I expect from a critique and what is a suitable balance. And as a part of that balance, I’ll go through each of the three points made by Jamie.

Tells us something we don’t know: Often we already know all the good points of our work. Pride can make us blind to any errors we might see if we look with a purely objective eye.

Hammers out examples of failure over and over again: The same pride that makes us blind to mistakes also wants us to write a perfect piece. The only way to do that is to correct our mistakes, which we can’t do unless we know them.

Tells us something we know but have tried to ignore: We can probably apply this to both of the above. We know something is wrong, but for whatever reason we try and ignore it. Having it pointed out to us by someone else makes it more real so we can’t really ignore it. Allowing us to get as near to perfection as possible.

Of course, however, we need to consider that we write better when confident about our skills. So, how can we keep balance? We need to be told what is wrong with our writing so we can change/improve it, but we need to know what we are doing right so we keep doing it.

Perhaps the way to do it is to have two critiques: One focused solely on the positive, the other focused entirely on the ‘negative.’ That way, we can see clearly how we are performing.

What are your thoughts on this? What would you suggest? After all, without critiques how will we ever grow? They are paramount to developing as a writer.

Saladin Akara General Writing, Hints and Tips

Browsing through a website designed for fiction writers like myself, I found an interesting article about the use of horses. This got me thinking about my own writing and that of others. Despite writing fiction, we must remember that certain rules still exist.

Whether the world we are writing is full of vampires, demons, elves, magic, or spaceships and laser guns, we must remember that our readers need to be able to suspend disbelief (something that will be covered in upcoming articles) to remain interested in our work.

The use of horses is a brilliant example:

The average reader might not pick up on mistakes like these but horse owners/riders will. They will be quick to point out the mistakes to their friends as well

So, what can we do to ensure that we keep a realism that will ensure our readers continue to read? The most obvious thing to do is research what we will be writing about. This way, we know the constraints available to us, and should we wish to stretch those constraints we can do so with a sure background knowledge. This again will ensure that our readers can maintain that all-important suspension of disbelief.

The lesson to be had here is a simple one: Though writing in some fantastical world, we need to apply basic rules of reality throughout. One other example is the laws of physics.

What other examples can you think of? What do you do/like to see kept ‘real’ as a writer/reader?

Saladin Akara General Writing

The past couple of days, I’ve been catching up on the blog archives of Joanna Young’s Confident Writing blog, which centres around developing confidence in writing. This got me thinking about the numerous young writers I see on various roleplaying forums.

It can certainly be intimidating to join a writing community where there are more experienced writers than yoursef. Will you meet the standards people expect? How can you integrate into the community? Will you be shunned? I imagine that these are all questions being asked by new roleplayers and writers in general. In a community setting like a forum (probably one of the major media for roleplaying online), how can we as more experienced writers help build young peoples’ confidences?

• Take an active interest. Of course, within a community, we should take an interest in the person. How much onus should be placed on taking an interest in their actual writing?
• Offer critiques. I’ve always been of the belief that a critique should highlight where something is good, and areas for improvement. We should offer this to new and young writers, but what can be done to ensure that we keep a balance?
• Encourage them. Take the time to say well done, or that you like a particular post or piece of writing. Let them know that people do read their work who are established members of the community and experience writers.

The realm of roleplaying has a massive range of members. The ages can spread from as young as 12 to as old as early/mid 40s. It includes people who have been roleplaying for a decade or more, or have just started to discover the hobby. It also attracts brand new writers and those, like me, who have been writing since childhood.

The younger members of the roleplaying community are still learning how to write yet can be among ‘masters’ of the art. How can we build the confidence of these young people? It can be a difficult task at times. What have you found works for you when dealing with younger writers? What enouraged you when you were young?

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This is the first step of my journey as a writer. My first blog entry! I’d like to thank primarily Joanna Young over at Confident Writing for inspiring me to actually write a blog.

The purpose of this blog is to document my progresion as a writer. My thoughts, inspirations, problems (writer’s block and what not), and how each step taken helps me to grow as a writer. And, along the way, I hope that you will be able to discuss, learn and teach as I take you along for the ride.

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