This is the July entry for The Insecure Writer's Support Group Blog Hop.


The hop takes place on the first Wednesday of every month.  All are welcome to sign up and participate, and visit the blogs of the other participants.

This month's co-hosts are Tamara Narayan, Pat Hatt, Patricia Lynne, Juneta Key, and Doreen McGettigan. Go visit their blogs, and join in!

The question for July 5 is:

What is one valuable lesson you've learned since you started writing?

That one is easy, though I find I have to cut my way through various good lessons I have learned in my writing path.  You know: setting the scene correctly, keeping your characters straight, avoid cliches, allow for development, let the plot unfold skilfully...  Lots of good lessons that will help you to write better, keep your stories unfolding properly, clarify characters...

A few of my notebooks

But the valuable lesson that underlies all of that, without which I, for one, can't write, is easy and embarrassingly basic.

Write it down.  

To expand: if you get an idea, preserve it in a form that you can retrieve.  

Have access to something that will help you capture the ideas.   Carry a pen and a notebook.  

Wax tablets and stylus: the past never leaves us

Wax tablets and a stylus are rather  cumbersome, but they have served over the millennia.  And if you are writing about the distant past, you can get a feel for how they worked. (Some stores actually still sell them, like this one...)

Enable the dictation feature on your iPhone (if you have one).   Or call yourself and leave yourself a message.  (But do tell your family not to delete such messages until you have had a chance to listen to them.)

  

The important thing is to capture your thoughts.  I have had too many times where I had a brainstorm - a plot twist, the answer to something that had been puzzling me - and thought 'Oh, yeah.  That is perfect!  I'll write it down when I get home.'

A few of my notebooks

The thing is that I often get busy and forget to write that scene when I get home.  In fact, I find myself trying to recall what scene it was, what story line, and what characters.  

We all have a lot going on, whether or not we are writers.  Things that snag our attention, and we're all to willing to succumb to a lovely distraction.  Or a disgusting one.  Sometimes we get tired.  And sometimes life really gets in the way and we lose our focus while dealing with concerns like death, unemployment, friends' celebrations and scooping litter pans.

I started carrying a notebook around with me and jotting down whatever I thought.  Over the years I developed a system with notebooks that were dedicated to whatever I was working on at the moment.  I would date the note, jot whatever it was that I thought and then, once I got around to transcribing it, making a line across the entry.  But what if you are working on, say, a story involving the Cat Show world and you have an idea for something a French veteran of the Napoleonic wars might say?  Write it down as you can.   Or...  Get a notebook with different sections and jot it in there.  It doesn't matter, so long as the idea is captured.

Paper towels work, too...

I worked for a clothing store, part time, a few years back.  I had long stretches where I had to monitor the store's dressing room.  I was working on one of my Egyptian stories at that time, and ideas were coming thick and fast.  I had no way to carry in a notebook, and I needed to capture the ideas/ clarifications/ brainstorms as they occurred...  So I used paper towels.  I wrote a post about it a few years back.  Here's a photo of the notes.  Some are crumpled from being shoved into my pocket.  

Sometimes, if I am at loose ends with a story, I will leaf through my notebooks.   For me, it helps to rekindle the ideas, the sense of adventure.

That is one of the most important practical lessons I learned when I started writing.  Other lessons?  There were plenty.

I'm off to read everyone else's insights.

Another Writer's Tool Discussed

"This is a very good story," the Editor said quite a few years ago.  I was fresh out of grad school with a story I'd written and wanted to shop.  "It isn't in our line of business - " (they were a company that printed a lot of inspirational material.  They were one of the well-known companies, and if I were to name them, they would be recognized.  They had printed fiction in the past).  " - but this is too good for you to send to a Vanity Press.  Keep submitting it - and don't let yourself get discouraged.  It's tough out there, but you're good."

Grieving

That was nice to know, of course, and she gave good advice, though issues arose that kept me from submitting for a number of years.  She hesitated, as though carefully considering what she wanted to say, then went on.

"Are you only working on the one story?"

I said I was.

"Oh no, dear.  You need to have more than one underway.  Otherwise, when you finish your current work, you will be knocked sideways.  Grieving, actually, and there will be nothing to distract you. and you'll be lost."

Well, that was nice of her, I thought.  But it sounded strange.  I was, as I said, fresh out of grad school, and I knew everything (just ask me at that time).  I didn't give it another thought until I finished my story, finally and for all.

She was right.  I was lost, at loose ends, missing my characters, following them, forming them, making sense of my ideas and getting acquainted with them.  Seeing where they were going and helping them get there, polishing their descriptions and speech, making them as wonderful as I could (Reveling in polishing, I'd call it now).  And when the last word was done, the last paragraph polished, there was nothing more to write, the story was told -

I was empty.  And, as she said, I was grieving.

I remember that month or so.  I wandered around, doing my bread and butter stuff, riding the train into the city (1 ½ hours daily in which to jot and polish and daydream - gosh, I miss it!), walking through a season of rain (the sun was, actually, shining) and wondering what, oh what I was going to do.  Grieving, she said.  What?  These weren't real characters, for heaven's sake!  I mean, I made them up out of my head.  Didn't I?  (Did I?)

Ultimately, I had another project underway, but it took a while.  I was ready this time.  I'd had an idea for another story, and I wrote up some notes about it - character thoughts, notions on where it was going - what I call 'blips' now.  I housed them in a notebook.

Be careful what you start.  I am a pack-rat.  I started notebooks for everything I was working

on.  I liked the ones I used in college: 6" x 9", three subject notebooks, or 5" x 7.75", all spiral bound.  They were fairly portable, but not too small (that gives me a hand cramp). 

Three ring binders didn't work, even when I was in my briefcase-carrying mode because (1) they were cumbersome even with a shoulder strap briefcase, and
(2) someone apparently laid a curse on me at birth: 'All her three ring binders will end up with one bent half-ring, which will cause her manuscript pages to jump off the ring and tear'. 
It is a dreadful curse, and if you combine that with my dislike of misaligned punched holes, three ring binders, even the expensive ones that hold The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, are ruled out.  Marble notebooks are nice, but if you muff an entry, it is a  bit of a production to tear out the offending page.  If you do it too well, the corresponding page on the other side of the stitching will cast loose its moorings, and if you do not, there is a rather odd-looking flap of paper left.(Warning: the spirals in spiral-bound notebooks end up squashed and distorted and will also foul up your paper.)

Writing instruments are important, too, I've learned:

• Pencils smear (I don't like smears, whether on my forearm or on a page)
• Fountain pens, which I happen to love, have water soluble ink that tends to fade rather badly. (see the image at right, which I had trouble reading when I photographed it) 
• If you use permanent ink, your pen will get gunked up rather badly.  This is not a problem with the kinda-sorta throwaway pens, but with the Mont Blanc I inherited from my father, which has the 18K nib, it is not optimal.
• Rollerballs have ink that sinks through the paper, so you can only write on one side of the page.  The other side is a complete loss.
• Felt-tip pens can be fun, but they can smear.

This leaves me with good old ball-point pens, preferably blue.

Over the years I have developed a good system:

When you have an idea, jot it down.  If it seems to have possibilities, jot it in a notebook.  (Some kind of minor ideas are jotted in separate sections of three-part notebooks. 

When you transcribe a page, mark it.  I draw a diagonal line across it.  If the whole page is transcribed, cut the upper corner off.

Never throw them away.  They may be worth something in five hundred years.  On the other hand, I myself won't be worth much by then.  Sigh.

Still, it's another tool writers can use.  (And it beats paper towels - see THIS POST...)