In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Years Ago
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Years Ago
As I’ve mentioned before, probably ad nauseam, for a period of years (about two decades) I taught private in-person seminars on poetry and language and fiction.
During that same time, I was flying or driving all over the place teaching the same stuff at writers’ conferences across the nation.
My private seminars typically lasted either all day or a half-day. My presentations at conferences were typically two hours long.
The one common aspect of most of those (thankfully, not all) was that I spent up to a half-hour or so of my speaking time entertaining what I saw as silly arguments.
Most of the time the arguments were about the myths:
- “Writing fast produces crap” or
- “You should always rewrite at least X (or XX) times” or
- “You should always do at least three editing passes” or
- “I take a year to write a novel because I don’t want to produce garbage” or
- “The more critical input I can get the better” or the ever-popular
- “Heinlein’s Rules don’t apply to me. I don’t write science fiction.”
Sigh. That stuff just makes me tired all over.
Most often I’d rebut those as quickly as possible, but I almost always gave up: “Hey, do whatever works for you.” But even as I said that, I was thinking Why did you pay money to come to this seminar or session?
And then sometimes attendees asked things like, “Well so and so does this, so why shouldn’t we?”
The one I remember most plainly of those was, “Why should we put quotation marks around characters’ spoken dialogue? Cormac McCarthy doesn’t.”
So I spent the next several minutes explaining that to the best of my knowledge Cormac McCarthy omitted quotation marks around dialogue in only six novels.
Why? According to AI, “This stylistic choice [was] aimed at reducing punctuation clutter.”
Okay, three quick facts:
- Quotation marks don’t create a pause. So most readers hardly even notice quotation marks when they’re reading. The opening quotation mark simply signals the reader that what he’s about to read is spoken aloud.
- Literally millions (maybe billions) of short stories and novels include quotation marks around dialogue and sell perfectly well.
- You are your own writer and whether to use quotation marks is a stylistic choice, so if you want to omit them, knock yourself out. Who knows? Maybe you book will be a bestseller.
I personally try not to make any “stylistic” choices that draws the reader’s attention away from the actual story. To me, that seems like shooting myself in the foot. Of course, I might be wrong.
Another writer crossed her arms and said adamantly that she would never publish her work to ebooks because “I don’t like ebooks.”
That’s fine, but it’s a little like the owner of a flooring store choosing not to offer carpeting or tiles because she personally prefers wood floors.
Of course, it’s your store so you can sell whatever you like. But if you want to make money, you have to sell what the customer wants, not what you personally like or don’t like.
In those same seminars and conference sessions, I’ll bet I said a thousand times (as I wrote yesterday) “Why not write the best draft possible your first time through?”
And of course, a few members of the audience took umbrage:
- “NaNoWriMo says you should write messy and fix it later” and
- “You do that just to get everything on paper for your word count and then fix it later”
- and there were several other thoughts, all in support of ‘writing messy.’
My response to that was usually a shrug, a smile, and “Okay.”
Anyway, that history and all the other goofiness I’ve heard over the years is probably why I bothered to post my “rebuttal” to Dr. Diana Stout’s post in yesterday’s TNDJ.
But I received a few comments and a dozen or so emails about that post too. Frankly, I was a little surprised.
Folks, don’t get me wrong here.
As I’ve said time and again, I don’t care personally how you write. With TNDJ, I see my ‘job’ as offering you my best writing advice. And with that, an alternative to almost every other source of writing advice out there.
I’m very seldom going to agree with what you find on other posts or websites or writer boards. Many of them are after your money. Many of them support the myths so they can sell you books on how to follow those myths. I don’t.
But you’re free and clear either way. You can take my advice and/or my suggestions or you can leave them all lay and go on about your business with “whatever works for you.”
My only recommendation in that regard remains that you define “works.” But if not defining that word works for you too, that’s fine.
If how you write does work for you, good. Keep doing whatever you’re doing. And if it doesn’t, whether you make some adjustments to “what works” is strictly up to you. None of that’s going to affect my own process or my bank account, so I’m good with all of that.
Would I like to look out over my little kingdom and see two hundred and some fiction writers all writing into the dark and turning out unique, original stories and novels one after another?
Of course I would. But I also know that probably isn’t gonna happen.
Do I mourn a little and feel bad when I see a brand new baby writer drowning in all the myths?
Of course I do, but there’s nothing I can do to save them from their fate. And I honestly hope they’re wildly successful, however they personally define success. BUT…
- In my personal estimation far too many writers work for weeks or months or even years on an outline and then end up not writing the novel at all because they’re bored with it.
- And far too many simply give up writing fiction and go find something else to do because the myths make writing fiction seem like (or actually become) such hard work.
- And I’ve been there (trapped in the myths) and now I’m not so I can make an actual valid comparison.
Yes, for myself. But feel free to use my experience to cut your learning curve if you want to.
Those bullet points above are the three main reasons I keep plugging away at TNDJ and trying to teach people there’s an easier, freeing, more fun way to write fiction.
Or, as one writer theorized in an email, maybe I’m just a grouchy old guy who likes the sound of his own voice. (grin) Hey, y’know, that might be it too.
One thing’s for sure: No matter how you accomplish it, if you want to actually be a fiction writer, you have to put new words on the page.
Happy writing!
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Comments (and Responses) on Yesterday’s Post Some good stuff there.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1180
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1180
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for January………………………… XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for January.…………………… 4210
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 23800
2026 consumable words………………… 23800
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29