Karen Desrosiers' Blog - Archives
Writing and the Writing Life
If You're Going to be a Writer...
If you're going to be a writer, you have write. It's common-sense wisdom that is echoed time and again by writers who have "made it." Write every day, they advise. But, HOW? I want to ask. How do you write every day, when life is constantly in the way?
I made it a point, years ago, to work at my writing every day. But that doesn't mean I'm physically writing every day. As long as I've done something to further my writing, something to make the next step in my quest to be a successful, well-published, full-time writer, I feel good. And if I get a page or two or more actually written in the process, all the better.
So, what qualifies as "working toward my writing"?
- Mental writing, day-dreaming, and fantasizing - Writing is about story telling. Sometimes the best I can do toward my writing is to develop my stories, so I allow them to play out in my mind while I'm doing other things, preferably things that don't require my total focus.
- Research - A lot of writing, fiction and non-fiction, requires research, whether it's some time on the Internet searching out the slag of the 1970s, talking to people who were in Vietnam, or trying an activity that a character enjoys.
- Reading - Not just reading for enjoyment (which is always good), but also reading to learn the craft of writing, reading books that successfully accomplish some of the techniques or craft elements I'm working on, be it voice or point of view or a particular theme.
- The business of writing - Some days I spend on the business of writing, searching out calls for submissions, working on query letters, catching up on the state of publishing, or attending workshops.
Posted by Karen at 8:15pm November 20, 2010 {0 Comments}
November 2010
What Inspire's Me?
With Thanksgiving upon us, I've been thinking about what inspires me because I think inspiration is a gift to be thankful for.
I am inspired by those who went before me - my grandparents, my parents, artists, and writers. I am inspired by family and the connections that bind people together, for better or worse. I am inspired by the strength of color and texture, whether described in words or piled on a canvas in oil paints. I'm inspired by a sense of place and how people connect to a place, what you can learn about people from place. And I'm inspired by all things Irish and Celtic.
Posted by Karen at 7:30am November 26, 2010 {0 Comments}
Visual Writing
At a reading, someone in the audience asked me how my being a visual artist changes and informs my writing. An interesting and good question. I answered it at the time, of course, but have been thinking about it for a while since. Is my being a visual artist related to my writing and how?
One obvious way in which my visual art influences my writing is in that I visualize everything I'm writing. I paint the picture in my mind. I can literally "see" the scene, and in theory could probably paint it on canvas if I chose to. I am able to think in pictures, even when I'm making it all up in fiction. Then all I have to do is put what I'm "seeing" into words.
My visual art relies heavily on color and texture - my oil paintings use strong colors and thickly, texturally applied paint. One of the aspects of good fiction is when the author is able to evoke the senses through language. When I'm writing, I visualize a scene in the way I would paint it, with color and texture, and enough detail so that I can bring all the sensory details to life in my mind. I can smell the scene, taste it, feel it. And once I have it all conjured up in my mind, all I have to do it paint it with words on my paper.
These were the immediate, obvious answers that came to me, when originally asked. But I discovered another whole layer to the relationship between my visual art and writing that is about processing the world and maintaining balance. Through both I try to deal with the human experience, people, place, relationships. My visual art tends to look more at place, and the relationship between place and the community that lives there. I attempt to capture the character of a place, through it's color and texture, while trying to represent the personality and emotion of a place. My writing tends to look at the relationships between people. While my art is often full of bright color and joy, my writing deals with a lot of the negative aspects of life, the darker sides of relationships. And therein lies the balance.
Neither my writing nor my painting are complete without the other.
Posted by Karen at 2:10pm December 15, 2010 {0 Comments}
December 2010
Process
I've been talking a lot about process lately, teaching students the importance of finding a process that works for them, and stress the idea that writing is a process. And for the first time, a student asked specifically what my process is when I write. I was taken by surprise. I had to really stop and think about it for a bit. I hadn't really thought much about my process, or if I really have a process. I mean, obviously I go through a process in writing... we all do. I have a friend of vacuumes as part of her process, another whose process involves a tea tray. I've thought about this a while and have come to the conclusion that my process is more about a lack of process. I write when I can, where I have to. I have paper and pen with me all the time so as not to lose an opportunity or idea. When snippets of story come to me I write them done. When I have a whole story written, beginning to end, I start the revision work. New writing is always easier and more fun for me than editng and revision. And when I'm too tired to write or edit, I read. Sometimes I'm doing all three within a short span of time throughout the day. Regardless of what part of the process I'm working on, I need a lot of water, coffee, and back ground noise. Give me a coffee shop on a busy day and I'm a very happy writer.
Posted by Karen at 7:30pm February 10, 2011 {0 Comments}
February 2011
The Importance of Reading
All experience writers know the importance of reading if you want to be a writer. As a writing teacher, this is somehting I have struggled to help my students believe and understand. You have to read to write. It's the same with other forms of craft as well... Artists often learn to draw and paint by studying and copying the masters. And writers can learn the craft of writing - plot, character development, detail, description, dialog, structure, and much more - by reading other writers. If you are writing a mystery, you should be reading mysteries. If you are writing historical fiction, read historical fiction.
Some writers worry that reading too much while writing will influence their voice and change their story. I don't buy into this. Your voice is your voice, your story is your story, and you'll stay true no matter what you're reading.
At the New Hampshire Writer's Project Writer's Day on March 5, Pulitzer Prize willing author Paul Harding said, "Your writing can only be as good as the best stuff you read." So read good... and write great!
Posted by Karen at 7:30am March 12, 2011 {0 Comments}
Too Many Ideas...
My writing friends often get mad at me when the topic of writer's block comes up. The truth is, I've never had writer's block. Maybe I've just jinxed myself, but I don't think so. I don't get writer's block because of a couple of peculiarties in my personality. First is that my mind spins with stories and ideas. I have way too many ideas than I can work on. I keep a running list of things I'd like to write one day. The second is that I am not only good at juggling multple projects, or multi-tasking, but I need it. I have to be working on more htan one project at any given time. I ususally have two or three projects going, in different states of progress, so that when I'm struggling with editing, I can work on new writing, or do some restructuring. For me, the key to avoiding writer's block is just that... avoiding. If I keep busy with a variety of projects, I seem to avoid getting stuck on any of them.
Posted by Karen at 10:30am March 1, 2011 {0 Comments}
March 2011
Interesting Insight
I went to a book talk/reading this week, at my favorite local independent bookstore, Water Street Books in Exeter, NH. The author was Noah Boyd (Paul Lindsay), who is a retired FBI agent turned writer. Someone in the audience had commented on his command of the English language in his writing. As always happens, someone in the audience asked him what he reads. His answer was both surprising and enlighting... He said he doesn't read mystery or suspense novels, though you'd expect a mystery/suspense writer to read the genre. This is something I think and talk about all the time. You read what you write. You want to know what others are doing, you have to know your genre and the expectations of your audience. So this was an interesting contradiction. But the answer was obvious. He doesn't have to read the genre to know how to write it... he was a career FBI agent, he lived the genre. His reply was basically that he enjoys reading literature, he reads literary fiction. And there's the insight... what he gets from the literature is his strong use of language. The reading is always a critical part of the process... just not always in the same way or for the same reasons. But we, as writers, can always learn our craft, in one way or another, from reading those that published before us.
Posted by Karen at 11:30am March 18, 2011 {0 Comments}
Writers are Crazy
I often tell my students that writers are crazy. They think it's funny... they think it's a joke. But in many ways, writers are crazy. We hear voices, we talk to our- selves, we fantancize, sometimes to the point of hallucinating, and we often lose large chunks of time, almost as if we'd had a black out. I was writing one day, really in a groove, and couldn't understand why I was suddenly uncomfortable, in a bit of pain. I looked at the clock in the corner of my computer screen and realized hours had passed. I was starving and in need of a trip to the restroom. But halfway across the room I was over come with an urgent thought. My protagonist's husband was calling her, it was important, and she had to answer the phone right away. I had to go right back to my laptop, and write that scene, holding my breath and biting my lip against the discomfort. Not exactly the behavior of a sane person.
Posted by Karen at 12:30pm March 22, 2011 {0 Comments}
Hobby or Job
I was at a conference on publishing over the weekend, and there was one message, or question posed, several times over the weekend, which really stuck with me. "Is this a hobby or a job?" I repeated the question to myself for the rest of the weekend. Is writing, and publishing, just a hobby or do I want it to be a job, a career. I didn't have to think about it, I knew the answer. To me, this has to be a job, a career. That leaves only one thing to deal with... treating it as a job. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. If it's a job, there has to be a schedule, goals, and performance. It makes it much easier to push back on the rest of life when I say "I'm working" with not further explanation, rather than just saying "I'm writing."
Posted by Karen at 10:30am March 28, 2011 {0 Comments}
