Keep Your Eyes On Your Own Work

It is the 14th of January, which means that it has been 20 days since I wrote a regular blog entry here (by which I mean one that is in paragraphs and is non-Schmoetry/Phoneography/Five Star Friday/Canadian Weblog Awards). I think this may be the longest I have gone in the nine years, four months, and 20 days that I've been at this blogging gig.



Something in me froze up at Christmas. I'm searching. I don't know where to put my feet next.

You see, this year I plan on revamping my whole online deal, because it's grown over all this time, and it's developed appendages, and it's starting to feel a little like the hair on Medusa's head. My house has grown cluttered and makeshift.



So, while I let plans percolate in the back of my mind, I decided to take on publishing one poem every day during 2013, and this has started pulling some pretty deep chords within me already, 13 poems in. It has made me take a second look at how I tell my stories and why I tell them, and it has made me listen to the changing tenor of my voice as my writing and online real estate grow into something else again. It's also making me look at how all of you tell your stories and why you tell them, and it has made me listen to your changing tenor as we all move in this medium together.

It's very distracting, and so outside my specific time-sensitive projects, I have been quiet here. I'm a bit of a publishing maniac, so you may not have noticed my lack of paragraph writing, but I really have been quieter.



While I've been quieter, I've been thinking about:

• blogging and the deep sexism that often runs behind confessional writing, and
• how marketers still struggle to define women by their relationship to children even when those women don't have them (I'm looking at you, PANK), which just shows again how people still don't know how to value women as individuals with their own merit the way they do men, and
• how so many people decry the state of blogging as having gone down the marketing toilet, destroying authenticity and the power in not selling stuff, but how that is a myopic and cherry-picked opinion not based on the thousands of examples of bloggers who aren't selling stuff or who are but who aren't spam-sleazy about it, and
• how some online blogging critics more often than not conflate criticism with conjecture and insult, and, while criticism within the medium is important, it is equally important that that criticism move beyond sophomoric snark, and
• how I need to find my way through all the arguments I have up in my head so I can find constructive pursuits guided by love to put out there with my hands.

One of my guiding statements this year is this:

Keep your eyes on your own work.

Constantly altering measurement of the joy in my own pursuit with perceptions of how others are doing it better or less well than me means that I also alter my perception of my own work based on either how I am failing measured against someone whose work is not what I do or against how others are failing based on what I think they should be doing.

How about we all do something that makes more sense? Like make stuff we believe in? Yes?



NUMBER ONE RULE FOR HOW TO KNOW YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG:

If you are more obsessed with how other people are failing or judging you for failure than you are with improving your own work, you need to recalibrate your priorities.



So, this entry has been a rather meandering and disjointed journey, but it means this: I'm figuring my stories out, I'm working to understand what words should go where and why, and I'm learning how to centre it through the force of love.

And it feels damn good to write even a disjointed mess after 20 days without paragraphs. Goddamn.

You Are a Writer: Stop Resisting, Own Your Work, and Invest In Your Craft

Do you fill notebooks? Do you write a blog? Do you write short stories, books, poems, essays, plays, screenplays, or copy? You are a writer.



As I said on Twitter:

Don't put too much weight on the word "writer".
You don't have to be good at it to be one.
You just have to do it.

The word describes what you do, not how well you do it or whether or not you get paid for doing it.

There is no objective scale of quality by which to measure your writing and legitimate your status as a capital-W Writer. A writer might write absolute shite for seven months and then bust out a short story that brings humanity to its veritable knees. During that seven months of shite? They were still a writer.

If being paid for your writing is what makes you a writer, the bar is too low. My first paid gig had me writing about wheat quality, and, let me tell you. that's not my birthplace.

As with paid writing, if being physically published in a newspaper, magazine, or book is what makes you a writer, we need a new system. We cannot rely on an industry to be the arbiter of what is considered real writing and who is a real writer that prints books by celebrities most noted for being drunk and unintelligible.

Use the fact that there are a lot of terrible writers out there calling themselves writers as a catalyst to improve both your craft and what it means to be a one. It is unjust to let poor examples lead the herd.

You can be a writer regardless of your level of education. People regularly graduate from colleges and universities with terrible writing skills. Some people just don't have it, and some people do, whether the diploma says so or not.

You might hate nearly everything you write down. So what? Who are you to judge? Writers don't love every last thing that dribbles through their keyboard. They do the work and keep going.

That real writers must love writing is a horrible piece of misinformation. Forget you ever laid ears on it. Some writers do love the act of writing, some pursue it as a means to an end, and others, like me, have a love/hate relationship with it. Language is a complex tool that doesn't always behave itself, so it's okay to be a writer that struggles with his or her affection for both the craft and the tools.

If it makes you feel too vulnerable to introduce yourself as a writer, be more specific with how you describe what you do. People don't always know what you mean when you say "writer". I'm a writer, and I don't always know what you mean when you do that. Tell people that you are a novelist or a copywriter or, god forbid, a blogger. They will better understand what you do, and you will come across as the more purposeful and accomplished writer that you are.

Are you reticent to call yourself a writer? It might be because taking ownership of your creative work means owning both its successes and its failures, its strengths and its shortcomings. If this is the case, stop wasting your time in the shallow end. You won't become a better swimmer in the kiddie pool. Dive in.

Again, as we began: do you fill notebooks? Do you write a blog? Do you write short stories, books, poems, essays, plays, screenplays, or copy? You are a writer. You are a writer.

You are a writer:
stop resisting, own your work, and invest in your craft.

9 Building Blocks of Good Writing [updated]

The list below outlines nine generally recognized rules for good writing. Opinions may differ, but these are what I look for at Five Star Friday, my curated weekly roundup of better blog entries, and if you write with the intent of having other people read your work, these are good points to brush up on:

9 Building Blocks of Good Writing

1. Interesting ideas

A piece of writing must do more than adhere to the conventions of language and readability. It must also be interesting, which means that it has to do more, for example, than rehash other people's ideas or rely on snark as the force behind it. Originality is heart.

2. Proper use of spelling, punctuation, and grammar

There is leeway here, of course, but unless you are a grand master of the English language and its creative use, adopting alternate styles as an affectation, such as repetitive use of incomplete sentences, does not work well. Conventions of language are important for consistency, clarity, and coherency in any piece of writing, and they will lend authority to your voice.

3. Active voice over passive voice

There are times when passive voice is a valid choice within a piece of writing, but it can often be more awkward, vague, and unnecessarily wordy, which detracts from the story. Make active voice your habit, and use passive voice mindfully. Grammar Girl has a good write-up about it.

4. Sentence fluency

Sentences, for the most part, should flow well so that they can be read easily and with expression. A sentence that is difficult to read out loud needs work.

5. Effective organization

A piece of writing works best if its ideas are well-organized and flow organically from one to the next. Poor organization or jumping back and forth between ideas without following them through can affect a reader's ability to understand what you are trying to say.

6. Appropriate word use

Poor word choice robs a piece of clarity and coherency. If this is happening, you might have a thesaurus problem. Step away from the big words and keep it simple.

7. Length

Brevity is a good goal to keep in mind, because wordiness without purpose can lose readers, overcomplicate your idea, and lessen the impact of your point.

8. Voice

By voice, I do not mean grammar's active and passive voices, as mentioned above. Voice refers to the unique flavour of a writer's work. Voice is what allows a reader to sink into the experience of reading a particular author, and a well-seasoned voice will keep them coming back again and again. Just as with learning to talk, voice can only be developed by writing and writing and writing some more, so keep at it. Eventually you'll feel your voice coming through.

9. Editing

Editing is writing. If you're not editing your work, it is likely only a hopeful start and nothing more. It is during the editing process that you can work with the language to find the rhythm and meaning within a piece. You have the opportunity to grow your thoughts into beautiful, mature things, so take it, because remember: your thoughts are not so precious that they don't need work.

I ran this list by the Palinode this afternoon, and he warned me that it sounds like I'm telling people how to write. I replied, "I am!"

If you feel that the above rules don't matter, to quote the Palinode quoting some other guy, "your subjective opinion is not objectively correct."

There is, of course, leeway with each of these rules, because nothing is absolute. I will concede that some authors are masterful enough (see: ee cummings) that they can play with language successfully in ways others cannot, but 99.99% of the time, our layman attempts at bending the rules amount to little more than clumsy screwing around. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing, and it can be a very good thing when it stretches our understanding of the tool we work with, but if you're writing something that you would like an audience beyond yourself to understand and pass on to others, it's usually better to err on the side of coherency.

Is there anything you would add to this list? What would you change?