Posted on by ajbrown · 3 Comments

Breathing One Word At a Time

You may have heard of this writer I’ve liked since I was a kid. His name is King. Stephen King. He’s written a handful of novels that you may have heard of and he’s also penned a couple to a few short stories.

If you haven’t heard of this guy, Stephen King, you may want to look him up.

King is one of the most prolific writers, dare I say, ever. His novels have sold millions. He has inspired thousands of people to give writing a try, myself included.

Unlike most, it’s not King’s novels that inspired me, but his short stories. I love his short stories, his novellas. I devour them. Since I’m a slow reader, you have to understand my version of devour is more like nibbling on a candy bar you want to savor.

What’s this all about, you ask? Is this another article about Stephen King?

Absolutely and absolutely not.

King has been quoted as saying:

When asked, “How do you write?” I invariably answer, “One word at a time.”

That’s a good idea. One word at a time. So often, we as writers, think about the big picture without really thinking in context of how we paint the big picture. Well, if you’re going all literal, then you get your canvas out and your paints and brushes and you paint one brush stroke at a time. But when using writing to paint that picture it starts with the first word and ends with the last one. And those words come one after another–one word at a time.

Remember that next time you sit down to write. You can’t create a story if you don’t write the first word of the first line. And you can’t end a story until you’ve put a period after that last word.

Too often we bog ourselves down because we want our writing to sound intelligent or to beautifully worded, instead of just writing word after word after word. For me, it kills the process when I try to be all pretty with my writing. I’m not a pretty person and I choose not to write prettily on purpose. It’s just not me. Yes, I know I used pretty about four hundred times just now.

I prefer to let my stories breathe, to let them tell themselves and I just ride along in the passenger’s seat. It’s a lot more fun that way. I’ve often called this The Breathing Method.

That brings me to King.

In his novella collection, Different Season, he has a story called, yes, that’s right, The Breathing Method. Granted the two aren’t really related, other than titles, but in the story King writes something very important, that I think holds true to all stories:

The arch was broken in the center by a keystone which jutted out slightly. It was just on the level of my eyes, and although the light was dim, I could read the legend engraved on that stone with no trouble: IT IS THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT.

The important part of that passage is the last sentence:

It is the tale, not he who tells it.

We all have our favorite writers. Mine has always been King and I like most everything he has written. There have been portions of books I didn’t care much for, but the way his words go together so effortlessly, so smoothly, brings me back for more every time. It makes his one word at a time statement feel real. It makes his tales feel real.

That’s how we should write. One word at a time.

Writing is easy. Writing well is difficult. But one word at a time… one word at a time is simple and effective and as long as we write that way, we will reach the end of our stories.

Ah, but wait a second. What about this Breathing Method I speak of?

Simple: if you get out the way and let the story tell itself, the story breathes and lives and develops. It may not go in the direction you wanted, but I find most of the time, that’s a good thing. At least with my writing.

I’ll back this up a little with something King said in his book, On Writing:

I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it’s something I never expected. For a suspense novelist, this is a great thing. I am, after all, not just the novel’s creator but its first reader. And if I’m not able to guess with any accuracy how the… thing is going to turn out… I can be pretty sure of keeping the reader in a state of page-turning anxiety.

When I read that the first time I’m sure my face lit up. That is what I’ve always thought about writing and characters and stories. If I let the characters dictate the direction of the stories, then the stories will turn out the way the characters want them to. That’s a good thing.

So, one word at a time and the Breathing Method go together. And, as writers, we just need to get out the way. It’s not about us, but the story.

Until we meet again, my friends…

Posted on by ajbrown

Be Brave… A Lesson Learned

Since the beginning of July I have been rewriting stories I wrote years ago, back before I really knew how to write or even cared. For me, writing was just something I did when I had nightmares and didn’t wish to have them again. I had no intentions of ever pursuing a writing career.

Obviously, things have changed…

And to be completely honest, what I wrote five years ago sucks compared to what I wrote four years ago and is appalling compared to what I write now. In order to make some of those older works publishable, I need to rewrite them.

As I stated in the opening paragraph, I set out to correct the many mistakes I have made in the words I wrote so long ago. As of this writing I have rewritten two stories and am almost two thirds of the way through a third one.

That may not seem like much, but in that same time period, I also wrote a novel titled, Cory’s Way, which I hope to one day get published. I’m not really sure what genre the novel would fall under. It’s not my usual horror, per say, but it does have a couple of horrific elements.

I started all of this after reading Stephen King’s On Writing, a book I gleamed many important lessons from. One of those things is quite simple and something I had never thought about before: To write bravely. In other words, don’t be afraid to tackle a story. No, no, no. I’m not talking about being afraid to write a story because of its content, but more along the lines of looking at a story and not being intimidated by the possibility of its length and scope or even how much time it may take.

I admit that every time I tried to write a novel over the last couple years, I froze up. The very thought of writing something so large didn’t necessarily intimidate me. It did put a mental road block in place and there was no way around that. Let me see if I can say it the way my friend John Miller once did:

Writing is like relationships.

Flash fiction stories are like one night stands. You get your sex, then move on. No strings (or emotions) attached. Just kind of Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am. Flash Fiction stories are more or less quick thoughts jotted down. Glimpses of stories that could be grander in scale. No strings (or emotions) attached.

Short stories are like dating. You put more effort in to the other person, trying to impress them and hoping for a second, third and fourth dates and who knows what from there. With the short story you put more effort into crafting the story, giving a little more details and character development, getting attached, if you will. even getting a little more emotionally involved.

Novellas–that happy place between short stories and full blown novels–are relationships. You’ve dated enough to realize that you might just like the other person and you want to take that next step. It’s going steady and putting all your marbles into the other person’s marble bag. With the novella you’re making more of a commitment, but not THE commitment. You’re saying, I’m really going to look into creating the characters and scenery and the plot. You give the story more of your time, your heart and a fraction of your soul.

The novel is like marriage. This is full blown commitment, ’til death do ye part, brought together by God and let no man break the binds that God has created. This is like the holy grail of relationships. You are saying, babe, I’m yours and yours alone. It is supposed to be forever. Key words there: supposed to be. When writing a novel you are committing yourself to a long term goal of conflicts and resolution, plots and subplots, multiple character development, scenery and details and many, many (oh so many) words. I have quite a few failed novel marriages. I could give Elizabeth Taylor a run for her money.

I’m not afraid of commitment. I’m happily married and have a job I’ve been at for 7 years now (the previous job I worked at for fourteen years). But, when it comes to writing, I like the short story. Anything below novel length I’m happy with. The moment the word novel comes into play, I freeze up, much like men who are terrified of marriage do when the woman mentions it. I run from novels as if it were the alter that threatened to steal away my freedom.

I never realized that until reading On Writing.

Part of me thought, “I can write ten short stories in the same time it takes to write one novel.” That part of me is correct. It also bellowed, “You’ll never finish a novel so why even start? You’ll be wasting all of that valuable time writing something you’ll never finish.”

Most of the time that would be true.

I realized then that my problem wasn’t that I could write ten short stories in the same time span it would take to write a novel. It was that I was afraid of losing that time to an incomplete task. I hate when others waste my time and even more so when I waste it.

The day after my birthday I sat down at my computer in the bedroom, a blank document open and the cursor blinking. It laughed at me, telling me I wouldn’t get ten thousand words in before I scrapped the idea. The cursor was wrong. I sat down, not intent on writing a novel, but intent on tackling a story that had novel potential. My goal was to simply write the story. If it turned out to be a short story I was fine with that. And if it turned into a novel, I was fine with that also.

Thirty days, 64,000 words and 225 pages later I wrote The End on the last page of the story. It had turned into a novel after all, albeit a short one. I had conquered the beast, that hideous dragon that stood between me and a novel.

Don’t click that mouse yet. There’s more.

I realized I avoided rewriting stories for the same reason I avoided writing novels: I didn’t want to waste my time rewriting something already written. Not when I could put my efforts into something new and better and… This is a stupid way of thinking.

Editing a story is one thing. Rewriting it is another matter all together. It’s starting over and keeping some parts of stories and scrapping others. In order to start rewriting, you have to view a story differently. It’s a different mindset. Just like writing a novel is different from writing a short story. It’s a commitment.

I have wanted to put out a short story collection for a while now, but so far I have no takers. That’s okay and I understand why: all the collections I had submitted had no real theme, nothing really tying the stories together in one book. I scoured my computer of almost a thousand short stories and novellas, most of which I had written since 2004. I came up with a list of forty or so stories that I thought could fit nicely in a collection. Then I started trimming the list down by rereading the stories and determining if I liked it enough to add it to the list of possibles.

In my mind that list was going to go through Hell. Each story was going to have to convince me to rewrite it, to make it better, to consider it for a golden ticket. Hey, this isn’t Hollywood, but it is A.J. Television where reality is a nonfactor and imagination is everything. For me to actually rewrite the pieces, they were going to have to stand out.

At the moment, four stories have made the cut and none of them are under nine thousand words. Three of those four stories were previously published and two of those have been completely overhauled. The endings aren’t the same, the characters are more alive and the situations are more thought out. Yes, situations, not plots. Life is not a series of plot lines. Life is a series of situations (You guessed it, I got that from On Writing as well) that we put ourselves into and get ourselves out of. Shouldn’t stories be the same way?

I’m happy with the two finished pieces and the third one looks pretty good as well. One of those four stories I didn’t have to rewrite at all, just kind of clean behind its ears a little and make it presentable. By the end of the year I should have somewhere between ten and twelve pieces completely rewritten, something I thought daunting before, but not so much now. I hope to be able to shop this around at the beginning of next year, and I already have a title for it: Southern Bones.

For the first time in my writing ‘career’ I am excited about rewrites and novels, something I never thought would happen.

Before I let you go and get back to rewriting Yellow May, a cool little story (well, big story) about a world covered in mold and what it is capable of doing to folks, I must make a confession. While reading On Writing, the part where I sat back and thought awfully hard about how I write came, not in the middle of a portion about actually tackling the story. It came in a part of the book about writing what you know. Not lecturing, mind you, but writing what you know. In that part, King mentions another writer, John Grisham. John Grisham knows lawyers and he writes quite well about them. It was in the middle of King mentioning Grisham that I sat back and did my deep thinking.

What you know makes you unique… Be brave. Map the enemy’s positions, come back, tell us all you know…

The epiphany: I was my own enemy; that it was myself, my mentality, that kept me from writing a novel or rewriting my short stories. I’ve mapped that enemy’s position and even cornered him against the wall in my head. I have my gun trained on him as I sit to write. If he so much as twitches… mentally, he’ll get it and he won’t like it when he does. No, no, I’m not going to kill him. Maim him maybe. I want to keep him around and look at him when I start to get wary of tackling a writing project. Besides, I need a punching bag every once in a while.

I’m sure that’s not what King meant, but for my interpretation of those words, it’s made all the difference in my writing…

Now, I’m off. I have stories to tell and, hopefully you’ll come along for the ride…

Posted on by ajbrown · 7 Comments

It’s Our Problem–We Created It…

I hold in my hand a wooden crate. It is black. Or, rather it was black. At one time it was simply a bunch of boards nailed together with large holes drilled on two opposite sides for handles. A little sanding, some gray primer and then some good old fashioned black spray paint, and voila, a crate was born of my own two hands. Over the years I have used this crate, not for carrying stuff around in or storing items, but for something else all together.

I now flip the crate over and set it down, open side to the ground, flat side up. It is just large enough for me step up onto with both feet mere inches apart. Now I am standing on this crate. Have you figured it out yet? I’m sure you have.

For those who haven’t, this is my soapbox. I only pull this out when I want to discuss things. No, not rant. If I want to do that I just go off, no soapbox needed. People scurry away when I rant. Some of them laugh because I am very animated when angrily running my mouth.

For those who do not know me, I am AJ—no, that is not Aj. It is A and J. I just prefer no periods behind my initials (I may have to reconsider that, though). I am one of the great pretenders. I, like many others, think I am a writer, though truth be known, I am not. That’s not entirely true. I do write, but I think most everyday average folks think of a writer as either a journalist or a novelist. I am neither of those. However, I am a story writer.

I think that is an appropriate term for me. I have no desires to write a novel and I don’t limit my stories based on word counts. I do not write for editors or publishers. I write for readers. I write stories. I am a story writer. Yeah, redundant, I know. For the sake of this piece I will say I am a short story writer.

If you have followed me at all, you know that I have lamented about the quality of stories being published by both big and small markets. Let me say this: ALL OF US ARE PART OF THIS PROBLEM. If you think you aren’t, then you don’t look in the mirror too often. At one point or other we were/are fledgling writers wanting to get published somewhere… anywhere. It is the nature of the writer to desire to have others read their work. It is also a bit of validation when an editor at any publication likes our story enough to say, ‘hey, I want to publish this.’

Don’t believe me? Answer a question then. When you receive an acceptance, what is the first thing you think? Come on. What is it? Is it, ‘oh, I just made some money.’ Or is it, ‘yes! They accepted my story!’ Which one? I bet it’s the latter of the two. Our validation doesn’t come in the form of money tendered for a few well written words. It comes in those well written words being accepted by someone other than your friend, mom or significant other.

This brings me back to the all of us are part of the problem bit. Many times our stories are not ready to be published. So, Mom or Bob or Sally say they like the story and that you should get it published. Not so fast. I know I’ve gotten stories published and then saw a glaring issue with the logic of the piece or saw a typo that not only I missed, but the editor missed as well or saw how poorly I had written it… I look at stories of mine that were published two or three years ago and I cringe at some of them.

As writers we are blind to our own words. We think everything we write is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Umm… no. It is a pot of something, but gold it is not.

I have strayed from my original thoughts, which I tend to do, so let’s try to get back on track here.

Quality is defined as the general standard or grade of something. This means that something with a low grade is generally held as low quality. Think about it. If you spend four bucks for two McDonald’s cheeseburgers, fries and a coke, you are really getting about four dollars worth of quality, right? However, if you go to Fuddruckers and spend seven bucks on a burger and fries, the food is going to taste better and be more satisfying. The quality of food and tastes is higher at one establishment than the other. (Disclaimer: No offense meant to those who like McDonald’s or for those who work at or own a McDonald’s. Tastes and quality are subjective when it comes to things like food and I think Fuddruckers is better than Mickey D’s. Personal opinion there.)

If you send your kid to a school known for it’s teachers not being all that great and for the rampant rate of violence or teen pregnancies, then there is a good chance your kid is not going to learn much, get beat up or knocked up or all of the above. I know it’s kind of an extreme example, but you get the point. Quality.

This brings me to the quality of fiction that is out there—more importantly the quality of the short fiction form. Or maybe the lack there of.

Let me present you with Exhibit A, an article written by Stephen King in 2007 titled, What Ails the Short Story. It appeared in the New York Times or at least on their website. (Disclaimer #2: Before anyone says this was just his way of ramping up more publicity for Best American Short Stories of 2007, which he edited, read it for what it is, and for what he said.) Read the article here:

What Ails the Short Story

If you read through the article, I hope you gleamed from it a little of what I did. Granted I’m going to be taking a few things out of context, but not by much. If you did not read through it, I would like to quote bits and pieces of it. Fortunately, this is not a book of fiction, so I should be able to quote from it without being sued for stealing/plagiarizing.

What’s not so good is that writers write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and The New Yorker, of course, the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there.

Hey, you writers, did you catch that? Don’t make me knock on your monitor. That means I would have to get off of my soapbox and right now I don’t wish to do that.

How many times have we read in the guidelines of a publication for us to ‘buy a copy of our publication so you know what we like.’ There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. We should buy the publications we are submitting to, if anything to support them, because most of us short story writers are published in the smaller markets where the owners/publishers/editors are folks with one or two jobs who put these products out as a labor of love. They shell out their own money in order to put out their product. Many of the good smaller markets go for years on the negative side of the profit barrier or fold altogether.

Go back and think about it for a moment. How many publications have we purchased just so we can find out what a market likes so we can, in turn, submit to them with the hopes of getting accepted by them? I have done just that: purchased a copy of a magazine or anthology just to read the stories in them and see if I even stood a chance in getting into them. That’s the wrong reasons to read anything. People should read publications because they enjoy them. We should read with breath held and minds racing, trying to keep up with the words and the images in our heads. My opinion, folks. Just my opinion.

That quote also mentions the dwindling audience that we writers are writing for: other writers (and in many cases, editors). So, herein lies another part of the problem. What about the average reader, or as King puts it, the Constant Reader who wants to be entertained? Have we forgotten about them?

Let’s take this a step further with another quote from that article:

Last year, I read scores of stories that felt … not quite dead on the page, I won’t go that far, but airless, somehow, and self-referring. These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers.

There it is again, a reference to writers penning stories for someone(s) other than real readers. There have been times that I have disagreed with some of the things King has said in interviews or articles, but for the most part, I think he hits the nail on the head. As he does here. King wouldn’t say that stories were dead on the page, but I will. I have read many stories—mine included—that have been lifeless, one dimensional wastes of words; stories with no feelings, no mood, no real direction. I am guilty of writing some of these and I try to keep them hidden on the hard drive of my computer. But a few have escaped and now I can’t seem to kill them off. Or at least reel them back in.

As a writer I wish to get published, but am I—are you—writing for the readers enjoyment or just in order to get published? Are you writing stories that hop off the page and grab the readers by the throats or do you go for the tried and true methods? Are you a cookie cutter writer?

Think about it.

Stop staring at me like that. I don’t need to be knocked off my soapbox just yet.

A writer friend of mine, I’ll call him Mr. W. so that he remains anonymous, had this to say when I presented the King article to a group of writers:

He has an interesting take on it. I find I have to agree with him up to a point that a lot of “literary stuffs” is a lot of hubris, filled with a sense of its own importance and relevance.

Something I’ve been mulling over lately is a pattern of stories I’m seeing accepted by a lot of the pro-level sci-fi and fantasy publications.

It might be just me, but it appears that the kinds of stories most of them are taking are pretty much “video games” short stories.

A lot of action, not much character development. A good bit of ho-hum dialogue and no real depth to the stories.

Read that last part again. Go ahead, I have time. There’s not much entertainment value in stories with lack of character development, so-so dialogue, no mood and no depth. Sure, there is action, but if we don’t care about the characters then, really, why should we keep reading beyond the first page? What attachment do we have?

If my friend thinks that a lot of the paying pubs have developed a pattern of stories—never mind that they are ‘ho hum’—then writers will gear their writing in that direction. It is at that point where the art of writing becomes a finger painting instead of an oil work. And, please, remember that writing is an art form, not just putting two words together with two more words and then two more after that and so on. Writing—story telling—is about conveying a message in a manner that leaves the reader wanting more, not just of the story, but of you, the writer.

One of my favorite writers is a guy by the name of Dameion Becknell. Hell of a writer. Hell of a good guy, but I bet you’ve never heard of him. You see, Dameion is a friend of mine who writes vividly brilliant stories that suck you in and leaves you breathless. However, Dameion isn’t in the habit of submitting stories to markets. I fuss at him, nag him, chastise him for keeping his art to himself. If I had the choice between reading something by Dameion and reading ANY well known writer, I would choose Dameion every time. He’s that good. But, you see, Dameion doesn’t write for an editor. He doesn’t write to get published. He doesn’t write to fit the mold of any other writer out there. No, Dameion writes because he loves telling stories—and he has it down to an art form.

And there lies the answer to the short story’s popularity. If you’re a writer and you’re in this business for the dollar bills you can make, then you’re probably in it for the wrong reason. However, if you are a story teller and you want to entertain readers and you write for them (as well as yourself) then you’re probably on the right track.  If you want to tell a story, well, I think you’re ahead of the curve.

The majority of us writers have become those cookie cutter writers. We’re sugar cookies, at best—maybe even just the dough. We need to add some life to those cookies. Put in some chocolate chips. Maybe some nuts or peanut butter. How about some white chocolate or M&M’s?

I’ve often refused to write the way editors and publishers have wanted things written. I’ve always stated that I enjoy writing the way I write, with mood, with feeling and less action than most folks who decide the fate of my submissions care for. But, that’s okay with me. I want to write. And I want to get published. But if that means writing the same boring words that every other writer who wants the same thing, then it’s not for me. I’ve written for editors. I’ve written to get published. And, to be honest, I hated it.

Now, I write to tell stories. I write to entertain. I’m not King—I don’t want to be. But, I also don’t want to write those same self absorbed words that everyone else writes.

A couple of years ago I wrote a story just to write it. I had no intentions of getting it published, but after a year or so I sent it out. It was picked up and a few months later I received an e-mail from the editor. He had forwarded an e-mail he received from a woman who read that story. She said that it so touched her by its beauty and sadness and redemption that it made her cry. As a writer, that is the best thing I could have ever asked for from a reader. To feel my words. I gave that lady an experience in my story and it moved her to tears.

As writers, shouldn’t we strive to move people to feel something? Anything? Shouldn’t we feel something as well? I’ll never be the great American author. I’m not so sure I want to be. A story teller however… now there’s something I can strive for…

Okay, now to hop off the soapbox… I have stories to tell…