Retreat! RETREAT!!!

Writing is, as I've said before, largely a solitary process.  At the end of the day, it is the writer, alone, in front of his keyboard, typing until his fingers cramp and eyes bleed.  Those who are not like us don't understand, can never understand, why it is that we shun the light or the company of our fellow humans.  But (and believe me, I am loathe to admit this), we do occasionally need human contact.  We do need the validation and camaraderie that comes with being amongst those of our kind, to step out of the "normal world" and into the crossfire of absurdity that only occurs when a room full of creative people are together with the goal of pushing each other to greatness.  And thus was born the concept of the "writer's retreat."

This past week, it was my honor to teach at Seton Hill University as an adjunct professor in their MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program.  I've been doing it for a while, and I always enjoy it, but this time was one of those times I particularly enjoyed because every June, the alumni of the program come together for the In Your Write Mind retreat.  Guest speakers in the industry, pitch sessions, workshops, all that is fine and dandy, and what the retreat is about.  But there is another thing that cannot be overstated in importance:  The participants themselves.  I admit, I'm a bit biased because many of the writers at the retreat are former students of mine, and I consider them no longer students, but colleagues and dear friends.  But the very presence, the interaction, is something all writers need.  In a way, it's validation.  We learn from each other, feed off each others' creative vibe, pick each others' brains, toss around ideas and recharge ourselves from the year's burnout of going through the daily grind.  It's one part support system, one part dysfunctional family.

I go to writing workshops all the time, and I have yet to find one that is as tight-knit as the In Your Write Mind retreat.

And while we're on the subject, I'd like to mention the root of the retreat, the WPF program itself.  You want to be a writer?  You want to write horror, or sci-fi, or romance, or YA, or any of a dozen other "genres" at which the literary community scoff?  Did you think you'd never get an MFA because your tastes run darker than those of the bearded academics who feel that authors like Barker and Lovecraft have no place in the learned world?  Guess what.  Seton Hill has the WPF program that awards an MFA on graduates, and there are two notable differences between this program and every other MFA that I've seen.  First off, students are not handed theory by people who have degrees but have never published, or who have published, but only in an academic or literary environment.  The teachers in the Seton Hill program are WORKING WRITERS.  I should know.  I am one.  Students are taught how to build a novel from the ground up in the genre of their choice by people who actually do that.  They're also paired with one of these writers so as to get real mentoring from one of them.  Go back and read that line again.  Do you realize what a wonderful opportunity that is?  Go look if you don't believe me.  Second, the goal of the program, the "thesis" if you will, is to complete a market-ready manuscript.  To date, five of my former "mentees" have sold their theses to publishers.  And I can't even count the number of novels that come from the program.

So here's my challenge to you:  If you want to be a writer, write your little shriveled heart out all year long, but make time to be around your fellow crazies.  Step into that crossfire of absurdity once in a while where the ideas fly and people actually want you to succeed.  You never know who you will meet.  This past weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Knost, whose book Writers Workshop of Horror I frequently assign to students.  The man is a bundle of laughs and good will.  I met agents, publishers, and, most importantly, other authors.  I met up with my old friends and we laugh about what a hardass I was to them.  It was a week needed, and I feel reborn.

If you don't believe in magic, go to a writers retreat and watch the sparks fly.  Watch the creative muse dance around our heads, and see the creations that come out of our collaborations.  Watch what happens when a group of writers get into a single room together and are left to their own devices.  And you will believe in magic.

Four Things (Every Guy Should Learn to Do)

I've been married (quite happily, I might add) to my wife for a long time.  We've been together for eighteen years now, and there are just a few things that, through nearly two decades of living with her, I feel every guy should know.  I listen to our single friends and hear what they say they want, so here is the SFW list of things that every guy should learn how to do to get the woman of his dreams.  There is an NSFW list, but this isn't the place for me to put that.  Guys, listen up, because this is pure deep-fried gold here.

1. Learn how to do your own laundry.  Nothing turns a woman on less than to bring her back to your apartment (which smells of feet and armpits) to find piles of unwashed skivvies laying about.  And for you Cro-Magnon types who think that she'll do the laundry after you've landed her, I've got one word.  Evolve.  They're your sweaty drawers...You wash 'em.
2. Learn how to cook.  You want romance?  Don't take her out for dinner, bring her back for a candle-lit dinner in your apartment.  Especially one you cooked.  Women (actually, people in general) like the feeling that they're special, that you're interested in making them feel good.  Put some effort into it.  And no beans and weenies.  I'm talking about REALLY learning how to cook.  Start with a salad, move on to Rosemary-Red-Wine chicken on a bed of rice pilaf with almonds, go toward desert.  Seriously, learn to fend for yourself in the kitchen.  She's your potential girlfriend, not your mother.  No woman wants to be your slave, and no one wants to hear you tell her to go make you a sandwich.  
3. Learn to give a good foot massage.  I know what you're thinking.  Ew.  Feet are gross and sweaty. True, but no moreso than any of the other things you hope to do with your lady-friend, so hitch up your big-boy britches and get in there.  I have only ever met one woman in my life who didn't enjoy having her feet massaged.  Moreover, it's a selfless act that says "hey, I care about you."  Plus, think about this:  High-heels are not comfortable.  In fact, most of women's footwear was designed by men, not for comfort, but to make their legs and butt look good.  Women endure this kind of torture for the sake of some unrealistic ideal, and the least we can do for them is to massage the ache out of their feet to let them know that it's appreciated.
4. Learn to dance.  I'm a big believer in dancing.  Slow dance, jitterbug, waltz, swing, it doesn't matter.  Learn to dance.  There's a whole litany of reasons why, but it boils down to this:  It's romantic.  You're going to have to trust your weird Uncle Scott on this one.  Believe me, suck it up, and just do it.  And (here's a secret that non-dancers don't know), it's fun.  

So that's it.  My hard and fast list of four things that EVERY guy should learn to do.  Whether you're married or single, let your partner know how much you care about them by learning to do these four things.  It makes a big difference.

Got other suggestions?  I'm all ears.  Add 'em in the comments below. 

Oh yeah...And buy my books.

Doing What You Love (or: If You Don't Love It, You Only Have Yourself to Blame)

The other day, I was in a social situation (I know...shocking, ain't it?) and overheard a couple fighting about...well...everything.  When the guys all retreated to a local pool hall, the fellow in that relationship did nothing but gripe about his significant other.  I learned later that his girlfriend did the same thing.  It seems the two of them make each other miserable.  It reminded me of another conversation I overheard (yes, I eavesdrop often) in which a person who wants to be a writer told a friend how much she hated writing.  "I'd love to go, but I have to work on this stupid story."  Both conversations hit me in a peculiar way...The first because the guy managed to bring a really dark cloud over an otherwise fine night of beer and billards, and the second because it was hard not to hear her pretentious rant because of the volume of her voice...because of how similar both situations were.  In both cases, the solution was simple, yet the sort of solution that, apparently, few people think of.

If you hate it so much, stop doing it.

Why do people put themselves in positions in which they know they'll be miserable?  Simply put, if you hate the person you're with, find someone else.  If you hate writing so much, quit.  It's that simple.  Here's my thought process:

First off, we (human beings, children of the Goddess, God's creations, beings of light, whatever you want to call us) were not, in my opinion, meant for suffering.  Sure, into every life, a little rain must fall, but that's why we invented umbrellas.  Perhaps we really can only measure the good times if we have something bad to compare them with, but that doesn't mean we must continue to be downtrodden.  There is nothing anywhere that says that you, John Q. Netreader, must spend all your life growing more and more bitter and angry just to keep comfortable.  It is the pursuit of happiness that makes things bearable.

So let's go back to the above conversations, or specifically, the latter one.  If you hate writing, then quit.  It's not worth the struggle, the anguish, the pain, the disappointment, or any other thing to call up such gruesome emotions, no matter what you think you're going to gain from it.  If it makes you miserable, don't do it.  Take up fencing or knitting instead, something that doesn't drive you disrupt a Starbucks by loudly proclaiming that you're a writer, yet you hate doing it.

See, writing is supposed to be fun.  It's a release, a joyful expression of the self.  But mostly, it's a hoot and a half to play God for a little while and see how mean you can be to your characters (ever read a book where nothing bad happens to anyone?  It's boring.).  No one forces you to do it, no one puts a gun to your head and says "You MUST write!" and then flogs you when you don't.  It should be something that you look forward to doing every day, something that you contemplate sneaking time from work to do, something that enflames your passions.  Typing the words "the end" when you know you've written a good story should be equal to the biggest orgasm of your life.  That's what it should be.  The same holds true for relationships.  Why on Earth would anyone stay with someone that makes them feel miserable?  And I'm not siding with either one, as they both seem to do a good job making each other unhappy.  Your life partner, spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, hetero-life-mate, or whatever, should evoke in you a feeling of warmth and happiness when you see them.

Forgive me if I sound preachy here, but I've been remarkably lucky (blessed, whatever) in my life to find three things that ignite my passions.  The first one (in chronology) was martial arts.  I could train every day, all day, and be happy doing it.  The second one was when my wife came into my life (the second time...The first time I was dating her best friend at the time and that was in Junior High School...nevermind...long story).  Tabatha brings out the best in me, and while I can't say we've never fought or that we don't occasionally get on each other's nerves (sometimes, I go out of my way to get on her nerves...It's called "fun"), I can honestly say that, at the end of the day, I look at her and know that I'm glad she's with me.  She makes me happy, and we share too much happiness for me to even think of looking elsewhere.  The third one is writing.  Oh, sure, I get frustrated with it, and I've been accused of overloading myself, but I enjoy it.  Genuinely.  Enjoy.  It.  I can't picture myself doing anything else for the rest of my life.

So that's it...Either love what you do, or you have only yourself to blame for being miserable.  And by the way, this isn't an open call for people to abandon their families or practice ass-hattery by any means.  What I'm saying is that life is too short to make yourself miserable.  In the words of philosopher, poet, and genious "Weird Al" Yankovic, sometimes you just have to grab life by the lips and yank until your satisfied.  Start yanking.

Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle

from the New York Times' Writers on Writing Series.

By ELMORE LEONARD

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather. - If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2. Avoid prologues. - They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck'sSweet Thursday, but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. - The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated", and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . - . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs".
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. - You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". - This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. - Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. - Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephantswhat do the "American and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things. - Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. - A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character - the one whose view best brings the scene to life - I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in Sweet Thursday was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. "Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts" is one, "Lousy Wednesday" another. The third chapter is titled "Hooptedoodle 1" and the 38th chapter "Hooptedoodle 2" as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: "Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want."

Sweet Thursday came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.