ÿþ<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta name="description" content="Ross Willard"/> <meta name="keywords" content="Author, Writer, Writing Reviewer, Books, Book author"/> <meta name="author" content="Donna Merwarth"> <title>Ross Willard</title> <link href="basic.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div align="center"> <div class="main"> <div class="header2"> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="menu2">| &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="index.html">Home</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="samples.html">Writing Samples</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="reviews.html">My Favorites</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="blog.html">Blog</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="links.html">My Links</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="feedback.html">Feedback</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="games.html ">Games</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; | &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="contact.html">Contact</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;| &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="lessons.html">Things I've Learned</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;| </div> <div class="content2"> <!-- All your text for this page goes below this line --> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h2>Weekly Blog:</h2> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 02/05/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 2/12</b></u> <br> <br>Again, not the most glamorous job I ve ever had, and seeing as how the most glamorous job I ever had took less than an hour a day and had me standing around in the parking lot of a bank under a hot Texas sun, we re looking at the lower end of a depressingly un-glamorous spectrum. <br> <br>The downside to being a nighttime animal caretaker was that I was really only coming in to check up on the animals and make sure none of them were acting weird and to give them fresh food and water. That meant that if I walked slowly and double checked my work I was out of there after about an hour. Since there were two nighttime caretakers and we each worked half a week, that meant that I worked less than forty hours a month, but since our shifts changed from week to week, I couldn t have any regularly occurring evening activities. <br> <br>The upside was that I rarely even saw another human being. My boss had clocked out hours before I showed up. A few of the veterinarians might be around, but most of them were looking after the truly sick animals, not the ones I was supposed to look in on. So I could relax. <br> <br>But what, pray tell, was the lesson? <br> <br>Well, for starters it s a lot less fun to play with animals on a nightly basis when  play means clean out their cages. But I can t think of a good way to relate that to writing, so let s delve a little deeper. <br> <br>Like most of the writers I know, I have a lot of story idea. I mean, a-lot-a-lot. And like the animals I used to take care of, they spend quite a bit of time in their cages. Now, there are a lot of people who might be drawn to the idea of being an animal caretaker because part of the job involves, well, playing with animals. And yes, that is a very real, actually important part of the job. In the same way, people are often drawn to the idea of being a writer because it s all about telling a story. But that isn t all there is to it. As with looking after animals, there is a part of writing that is long, tedious, and often unpleasant. <br> <br>Specifically, editing. Whether you are going back over old stories, or getting the most recent thing you ve done examined by friends, it is a common occurrence to every writer I know to find out that the story that looked all clean, sparkling and new yesterday, now looks trashed and ridiculous. The ideas don t make sense, the clever dialogue is clunky; everything is a mess. And fixing a mess like that is work. Hard work. Unpleasant work. It may be the inclination of a writer, from time to time, to ignore that part of the work, to try to just experience the fun parts of writing, but, as with animals, the stories will suffer for it. Eventually we ll find that the happy, healthy, vivacious puppy that we originally brought in has become filthy, despondent, and sickly because we ve been ignoring the part of the job that keeps them healthy. <br> <br>I m not saying that you have to look in on every idea you have every night to make sure it s in good shape. If I tried to do that, I wouldn t have time for much else. And sometimes stories that we thought had a lot of potential are actually in bad enough shape that we just need to let them die (don t draw any comparisons to the puppies, please). What I am saying is that every story takes work, and most take a lot of it. If you want to have a story you re happy with, you re going to have to get your hands a little bit dirty. </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 08/13/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 3/12</b></u> <br> <br>So, my third job (approximately, I may be forgetting something), was in a grocery store. I worked in the produce department. An odd place for a dedicated carnivore, but I have to admit, the work wasn t bad, my boss was a nice guy. Overall, I liked it. Most of the time. <br> <br>One of the more interesting tidbits I remember from my time in produce was the horse box. At least, that s how I thought of it. My immediate manager, a nice guy who did his work, did it well, and didn t give anyone grief as long as they did their job without giving him any grief, lived on a small farm, and for him one of the perks of the job was that every day we ended up with a lot of bits of fruits and vegetables that were perfectly alright for his horses, just not pretty enough to put on the floor. So every day as we were cutting the ends off of celery and picking out the bruised apples we d be filling up a box for him to take home at the end of the night. <br> <br>Ideas are a lot like vegetables. When they first show up they look . . . perfect. They re bright, they re shiny, they smell like . . . um, well, vegetables. It takes a little time for the intrinsic imperfections to become apparent. It takes a few days before you start to see the dark spots, and for the ends to get all . . . icky. But eventually it will happen. Eventually you ll look at that idea, the one that you swore was the greatest, coolest, most awesomest idea that anyone anywhere ever could have ever had and you ll realize that you re going to have to chop off the end. You ll have to cut out that dark spot. Heck, you may have to scrap the whole thing. <br> <br>That s fine. Actually, it s important. Just don t be too eager to throw it away altogether. Every once in a while I d suggest gathering up a bunch of different ideas that didn t quite work, throwing them in a box (either figuratively or literally) pull out a few at random and see if they fit together some way you hadn t originally realized. </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 08/20/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 4/12</b></u> <br> <br>I spent around a year and a half working in a warehouse. It was a decent enough job. I received and stored items, told the computer where they were stored, took orders and shipped items, told the computer what I d taken from where, and when I wasn t busy with that, I preoccupied myself with trying to figure out why the computer had no idea where anything was. <br> <br>It was more fun than it sounds like, except when we were doing monthly or yearly inventory. Monthly inventory meant making sure serial numbers matched. Hundreds and hundreds of serial numbers. Yearly inventory meant checking serial numbers on absolutely everything in the warehouse. <br> <br>That was not fun. <br> <br>But what was really interesting, at least for me, was the daily inventory. I did that pretty much every morning for about a year, and the interesting thing about counting thousands of products day after day was the diminishing effort that I put into the act itself. See, here s the thing: the first time you count the products, you re very careful. You need to get it right. It s important. It s your job. You look at the eight boxes on that pallet and you say,  two by four, that should be eight. Better count it to be sure. <br> <br>After about the fiftieth time, you start to take shortcuts. Five pallets all stacked the same. Five boxes per tier, seven tiers, that s seven times five times five, one hundred and seventy five. <br> <br>How close do you check to be sure that all the tiers are exactly the same? Depends how long you ve been counting those same pallets. And by the time you ve done the job two hundred times in a row? Well, there are days when you find yourself wondering what the point is in counting something that hasn t been touched in six months and looks exactly the same as it did yesterday. Don t get me wrong, I usually did it, but when you ve had a bad morning, and your afternoon schedule looks like more of the same, and you d like to get a jump on the actual work of the day because you don t want to be stuck working late . . . . You get the idea. On a certain level you have to ask yourself if there s really any point to daily inventory. Sure, it s important to know how much you have of what, especially those really expensive, really hard to get items, but that isn t what you re finding out. Not when you make the same person do the same thing day after day after day. <br> <br>Diminishing returns happen in writing too. Especially for those of us looking to get published. Why? Because writing is an art, and a business, and while most if not all of us came into this because of the art, the business is a very real thing, and it s something that has to be addressed. Like counting boxes in my warehouse, I need to stop occasionally and take stock in my writing. I need to ask myself if I m what I m writing is marketable, where I should submit it, the best information to put in my query letter. A thousand little things that I don t want to deal with. <br> <br>But they need to be dealt with. It isn t an easy thing. The reason I have to keep writing query letters is that publishers aren t publishing me. It s hard enough to try to figure out how to fit everything you want to tell them onto a tiny sheet of paper, but when you get absolutely no positive feedback for your effort, you have to wonder why. So it s easy to phone it in. It s a science fiction project, so I write this paragraph. It s a mystery, so I toss in this paragraph. I cobble together a halfhearted attempt to convince somebody to read my latest work, knowing they probably won t. <br> <br>There s a lot to be said for experience, but the more experience you get at something that wasn t fun the first time around, the harder it is to get excited. But why should an editor get excited about your project when you aren t? <br> <br>So, how do you get excited about the eighty-kajillionth book proposal? You might get together with friends and write them in groups. Ask people who ve read it to describe the story back to you. Making it a group effort will make almost anything easier. Or find a friend, someone you really trust who really REALLY knows your writing, and switch with them. You write their query letter, and they write yours. Then switch back and edit. <br> <br>In short, keep things fresh. Try new ways of doing the same thing. </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 08/27/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 5/12</b></u> <br>I find it odd to admit, but the most rewarding job I ever had, hands down, was on a farm. Not because I m a particularly adept farm hand, and not because I like to watch things grow. It s because the farm I worked on belongs to my family, so, to an extent, I was working my own land. I m not saying I was good at it, but the weeds I sprayed were weeds on my land. The fences I put up kept in my cattle. The trees I watered were my trees. Not mine mine, but I had a stake in them. I had partial ownership of them. <br> <br>That was one lesson I learned, that working on something of your own is very different than working on something for somebody else. It s a good lesson, and one I d advise everyone to take to heart, but it s also a bit obvious, so let s look a little deeper. <br> <br>So the farm is, as so many farms are, a pretty big place. Big enough that nobody wants to walk across it, so most days we drive. But sometimes, in the course of a days work, you can get a car or a truck stuck somewhere. Or you can spend hours working and suddenly find yourself a very, very long way from the truck. Or you could head out with somebody else who takes the truck to take care of something else leaving you a long way from home. Bad enough to be that isolated when you re digging, or picking up limbs, or building fences, but keep in mind that my family farm is in Texas, so you tend to get really, really hot and really, really thirsty. <br> <br>It wasn t rare for me to find myself very tired, very thirsty, very hot, and with a very long walk ahead of me. A long walk that often included a steep hill. <br> <br>You may think that patience and taking things one step at a time in your writing is too easy a lesson, but it has been a lasting one. The simple truth is that the big picture tends to look . . . . big. When you re standing at the beginning of a long walk in the hot Texas sun, or when you ve got an idea for something to write, something that requires research, and writing, and rewriting and revisions, and advice, and query letters and proposals, when you re looking at a giant, time consuming mess, it s easy to get overwhelmed. So take the first step. The first step isn t hard. Neither is the second. Accomplishing anything grand looks terrifying before you start, and it looks amazing after you re done, but on a very basic, very real level, no matter what it is you re trying to do, it consists of a lot of very small steps. Every once in a while you may need to look around, acknowledge the big picture, try to figure out the best way to get things done, but most of the time all you really need to do is focus on that one, little, tiny piece of space right in front of you, that minutiae that you can get out of the way now so you won t have to deal with it tomorrow. </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 09/3/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 6/12</b></u> <br>So the most glamorous job I ever had was at a deposit puller for a bank. Now, when I say glamorous I don t mean that I met important or famous people . . . unless you count assistant managers at banks, and I sure as hell don t count them. I don t mean that I wore fancy clothes or got a lot of attention, the most attention I ever got was  what do you mean I can t make my deposit while you re in there? When I say glamorous, I mean that it was the only job I ve ever had where anyone showed any respect for what I did. Technically that isn t  glamourous, but it s as close as I ve ever come. <br> <br>The thing that always struck me as strange about the deposit pulling job was that it was a position that shouldn t reasonably have existed. <br> <br>Here s the low down. I serviced two ATMs. And when I say that I serviced them, I m not saying that I fixed them, or refilled them, or that I got a phone call when there was a problem with them. I m saying that once a day I went to both of these ATMs, opened them up, ran an inventory check on them, pulled out the deposits, and took them to the appropriate banks, oh, and in both cases the  appropriate banks were less than fifty feet away from the ATMs I was working on. If something was ever wrong with the ATMs, they told the people who employed me. Actually, I almost never had any kind of contact with the people I worked for. I only had contact with the bank. But I didn t work for the bank. See, ATMs are kind of funny in that a lot of banks find that hiring an outside company to service them is easier and often less expensive than servicing them in house. But an outside company that s been hired to take care of someone else s ATMs is responsible for the ATM and everything inside of it, so they aren t about to let someone who doesn t work for them into that ATM. Including somebody who works for the bank. And since the town I lived in at the time was isolated enough that getting one of their regular deposit pullers down there would have taken a commute of several hours, they were forced to hire somebody (me) to spend about forty five minutes a day, five days a week, dealing with two ATMs. <br> <br>As for how exactly this is related to writing, let s talk about sub-sub-genres. A lot of writers that I talk to compare their work to Harry Potter, and Star Wars. Books and movies with mass appeal. Books and movies which, in fact, almost everyone has read, watched or listened to in part or in whole at some point in their life. Let s be honest, I m not likely to write the next big, mass appeal book, and neither are you. It isn t a question of talent or skill, it s a question of hitting just the right tone, and having the right people notice at the right time, and frankly it s a damned hard thing to have happen. But that s okay. There are a lot of authors out there who make a decent living, and some of them, you haven t even heard of. Part of the business of writing is marketing; getting your product to the people who want to buy it. <br> <br>Marketing is a tricky, oft humbling experience, as it requires a writer to really look over their work. It requires them to really think about what they ve made and figure out who out there wants to read it. In the same way that my ATM job was only useful for two banks in a very specific situation, your writing might only appeal to a particular group of people, whether they be physicists with an interest in erotica and the supernatural, or Chinese immigrants who live in the bible belt. The thing is, if you are unaware of who you re trying to sell to, you re likely to cast your net too far and too wide, wasting time, energy, and money, trying to catch the attention of people who just aren t interested in your work. <br> </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 09/10/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 7/12</b></u> <br> <br>So one of the ways that universities make money involves grants. The government has all of this money set aside to give to people who are going to do something fairly specific, and universities are more than happy to take that money. I m not clear on the details. What I do know is that grant writing is like looking for a job or trying to publish a book (check previous blogs, I did a thing about this before), which is to say that the skills involved in getting a grant have very little to do with the skills involved in doing whatever you got the grant to do. So there are institutions that specialize in writing grants. It s actually a lot more reasonable than it sounds. A person who has taken the time to learn how to play the game has a much better chance of convincing the bureaucrats involved to give money to someone who has a good idea of what to do but doesn t know how to play the game, and given the amount of money involved, it makes perfect sense to do anything you can to increase your chances. <br> <br>Which makes me wonder why there s nobody out there who will go to job interviews for me for, say, twenty bucks a pop, and sell me to potential employers . . . hmm, an interesting business proposition, no? <br> <br>Now, I didn t write grant proposals. Ever. Never-ever. But I was hired to write grant proposal overviews (or something like that). Basically the people who went out and got the projects were supposed to write short little blurbs about what they did. That way the guy in charge could take the blurbs, file them. If somebody came up to him and said,  I d like to get a grant to study the migratory patterns of emus brought to the U.S. for breeding, but which escaped captivity. Why should I pay you to write the proposal for me? the guy in charge could flip open a file and say,  Why, isn t that interesting? We wrote four proposals over the last five years related to bird migration studies, and we got all four grants. Here take a look at the blurbs, and make the sale to . . . whoever. The thing is, none of the grant writers ever wrote the blurbs. I don t know exactly why, but for some reason they all hated that part of their job. So I was hired. As you may be able to tell from my description of the job, I only have a vague idea of what went on there, and I only have a vague idea of what I was supposed to do. But I did the job anyway. <br> <br>The thing that was interesting about that particular job was that it was the first time in my life anyone paid me to write. It wasn t exactly the sort of thing that I dreamed about getting into, but it was a step, of sorts, in the right direction. And it taught me a valuable lesson about working with people. <br> <br>I know a little bit about artists in general. I ve met a few people who were into the idea of making movies, who were good with a brush . . . I even met a decent actor or two (nobody remotely famous) and I know a little bit about the egos that can accompany even the most minor of talents. In some cases that ego makes sense. If you re good, if you re very good, and you know that you re very good, it isn t entirely unreasonable to expect people to acknowledge that from time to time. But however good you are, from time to time you re going to have to work with people. <br> <br>Whether you need to interview grant writers or you re trying to make a movie and need someone to play a part, other people will occasionally intrude into your world. When they do, be ready to give some ground. <br> <br>It may seem like an odd lesson, or a lesson that doesn t apply to you, or a lesson that doesn t apply to you yet, but it s a subject that bears discussion. Taking a step back from actual jobs, I did spend a few years writing scripts with friends and acquaintances, and one of the things that time taught me was the importance of being able to work with people. I don t want to go into too much detail, but one of the people I worked with was intelligent, and clever (yes, two different things) and very difficult to spend time with. Going into a job, especially one where you are doing what you are good at, something where you know you deserve some respect, it s tempting to let your ego out, but keep in mind that every job you do is part of your application for your next job. If I had done the best job in the world writing those blurbs, but I d been an unsufferable ass, the next time that an opportunity to write came up I would have the unfortunate choice of not mentioning my last job, or having to worry that my attitude would affect my chances. Remember, when it comes to writing especially, that most of the time you re thought of as hired help. There are people who need a job done, and if you do the job, but make it harder for them to do what they consider to be  the real work, they might very well not invite you back again. <br> </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 09/17/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 8/12</b></u> <br> <br>I ve never been much of a people person. Please understand, I have no problem with a person, but people bother me. And when they don t bother me, they make me nervous. I blame my discomfort on social anxiety, but I ve never actually been diagnosed with it, and I m fairly certain that I m a psycho-hypochondriac (by that I mean somebody who is always diagnosing themselves with mental disorders, not a psychotic person who s always sure they re sick), so who knows. The terms and definitions are a matter for the medical community to debate, all I really know is that I was well into my twenties before I could be surrounded by people without having a panic attack, and I prefer to do my shopping at two o clock in the morning because I really hate crowds. <br> <br>It s the kind of thing that really puts a cramp in job hunting, and it means that I usually look for a position that doesn t involve meeting a lot of new people. With that in mind you can probably understand how uncomfortable I was when I found myself as a floor worker at a bingo hall. <br> <br>Assuming, of course, that you know what a floor worker at a bingo hall in Texas does (oh, I lived in Texas at the time. Did I mention that?). The thing about bingo in Texas is that it s one of the few legal forms of gambling. There are, apparently, a few Indian reservations in the state that have casinos (never been to one, know crap all about it), but aside from those you re looking pretty much at lottery tickets, scratch-offs, and bingo. And for a while there, bingo wasn t doing so well. As I understand it, the issue was payouts. Simply put, the amount of money available to be won wasn t high enough to draw in enough people to pay for the payouts that were available. Well, not after you include the overhead costs, like renting the building, paying for callers and managers and sales people . . . . So one day they came up with pulltabs. Pull tabs are to bingo what scratch-offs are to the lottery. They re games between games, and they re designed so that, if you know your crowd, if you know how they do their sales, you consistently make a predictable amount of money with them. But you need to sell the pulltabs to make the money, and if you re only selling the tabs between the bingo games, then you re not going to sell nearly as much. So they hire floor workers to run around with buckets full of pull tabs, selling them while the regular games are going on. <br> <br>So that was my job. It wasn t a job I would have looked for, but a friend of mine ran the place and told me that I should give it a shot. I m grateful for the experience, but I m also glad to be done with it. <br> <br>But what does running around with a little bucket full of tabs have to do with writing? I have to admit, a few years ago I might not have been able to come up with much, but I ve learned a little these last few years. The kind of writing I want to do, writing for a living, is a job, and like pretty much every job I ve ever had there s a variety of things that go into the overall. The writing itself is important, but there s sales as well. And sales is a tricky bastard. Or maybe I should say that sales is a tricky bastard for me; I ve met a few people who can sell snowshoes in the Bahamas -- I just don t happen to be one of them. <br> <br>I do, however, know more than I did before I worked at a bingo hall. <br> <br>Rule one: people buy the package, but they re-buy the product. Common wisdom may tell us all not to judge a book buy its cover, but we do it anyway. And on a certain level, it makes sense. Presentation isn t as important as content, or to put it another way, form is less important than function, and there are plenty of examples of situations where people have focused on function to the expense of form, but while a well maintained exterior doesn t guarantee a well maintained product, a poorly maintained exterior often indicates a subpar interior. <br> <br>What am I saying? If you re buying a crystal figure in a box and the box is in perfect shape, that isn t a guarantee that the crystal figure inside is in perfect condition, but if the box is in horrible shape, chances are the figure isn t in the best of condition either. And the same often goes for other products. I ve read plenty of crappy books that had good cover art and an interesting review on the back, but when the blurb sounds horrible and the art looks like it was done in a junior high art class, the book is almost never good. So pay attention to the details. <br> <br>Rule two: Go to the customer. It s pretty basic for the bingo job, especially when you re working out of a bucket, but it s an important thing to acknowledge for writing. Publishing companies are businesses, they want as much as they can get with as little effort as possible, and that means you have to find your own audience. <br> <br>Rule three: Sell where they re buying, but don t-not-sell, where they re not. So to speak. In a bingo hall there are a lot of different types of customers. Some of them will begrudge you the ten bucks (or whatever it is, I forget exactly) that it takes to buy the basic package. Some of them will spend as much in a night as you make in a week. It s easy to focus on the big spenders; it s easy to put all of your attention in the big things. But if you only focus on the big spenders, you ll miss the regulars. Regulars don t usually spend as much, but since they don t spend as much they don t have to take as much time off to recoup from a bad night. They know your name, and they ll buy from you all the time. They ll even buy a little extra if you make a point of taking care of them, even when the big spenders are there. It takes more work, to go to every table, to go to every person, to make sure as many people as possible get some kind of personal attention, but that s what sales is all about. It s what I m worst at, but it s what it s all about. <br> <br>Rule four: Don t let your customers down. It was important, as a floor attendant, to make sure to keep your bucket well stocked. When somebody hears you advertising a particular card, and it turns out you re out and just didn t realize it, they get annoyed. Being stocked as a writer means being prepared. Don t promise anything you can t deliver. Always deliver what you promised. If people feel they can t rely on you, they ll move on. Quickly. <br> </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 09/24/2009 </td> <td><b><u>Life Lessons, 9/12</b></u> <br> <br>A few months into my career at the bingo hall, I got a promotion. My boss promoted me to assistant manager. It was an interesting move; there were a lot more responsibilities, but there was more money too. Not as much more money as I d have liked, but when is it? <br> <br>My manager, a good friend of mine who knows me almost too well, handled most of the major stuff, firing people, dealing with unruly customers, etc, etc. Most of my job was basic job maintenance. Making sure everything was set up to sell, that we had enough of the right tabs, that everything was easy to find and easy to retrieve. Actually, I did the majority of my work when the bingo hall wasn t even open. <br> <br>Organization isn t something that comes naturally to me. Ask anyone who s ever lived with me. My idea of cleaning involves moving piles around until I can walk from one side of the room to the other without having to jump over anything. <br> <br>But while I require a basic level of chaos to function, there s got to be a certain amount of order, too. I mean, I may keep most of my clothes on the floor next to the closet, but I keep the dirty pile a good inch and a half away from the clean one. When it comes to writing, the muse isn t always on your shoulder. I have yet to meet anyone who can do quality work anytime anywhere at the drop of a hat. It just doesn t seem to work that way. But even when the front doors are closed, there s work to be done, because when the time comes, when you feel the spirit move you, so to speak, you don t want to have to go digging for that note you wrote yourself six months ago, or that chart you put together outlining the secret organization bent on world domination. <br> <br>In any job, whether it s feeding the gambling habits of little old ladies or trying to come up with the next great American novel, the big moments, the grand moments, the moments that you get into business to experience, they re few and far between, and they require a lot more background work than most people realize. <br> </td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: 8/12/2010 </td> <td><b><u>The fine art of starting a story</b></u> <br> <br>So, at the last writer's conference I went to I talked to an agent, after getting back home I sent her the first chapter of the book that I'm currently trying to get someone to publish. Now, all I got back from her was a polite rejection, but I found her online blog. My story wasn't mentioned specifically, but one of the complaints she made about her recent submissions is that if the inciting incident isn't in the first x number of pages, then she probably won't be interested. My inciting incident is not in the first x number of pages. Here's the thing that bothered me about that: in the classic story format, the book begins something often referred to as 'the normal world.' In order for the inciting incident to strike the reader as big and important and worthy of their time and attention, they have to see that it is separate, distinct from what the characters normally endure. That is to say, if you have a story set on a pirate ship which attacks people regularly, pillages regularly, sets the sea ablaze and bloodies the water on a daily basis, you might want to take a moment to establish this fact, so that the reader has a baseline of what the characters are familiar with and comfortable with. <br> <br>Now, one of the current trends in writing is to begin a story with the inciting incident, and establish the ordinary world in the past tense after you've hooked the reader. That is to say, you start with men in hoods breaking into the boardroom and kidnapping, not the president of the company, but the 15 year old intern who just brought in the tray of coffee, then, as the story progresses, you tell us, through flashbacks, interviews, or general commentary, what this world is usually like. <br> <br>I understand the purpose of this new system, people often pick up books and read a page or two before deciding whether or not it's worth reading, and beginning with a bang, beginning by establishing the question or problem that the book sets out to resolve, that is certainly a good way to entrance your potential readers, to force them to stay with you, to read intensely . . . to buy the friggin' book. <br> <br>But this is my problem: It isn't the only way. Consider, MacGuyver, long running television series, very popular, began each episode with a brief story which had nothing to do with the episode as a whole. The man character is shown using his famed intellect to take care of a problem in a unique way. It served as an excellent hook, not by establishing a problem, but by establishing a character. In the story I wrote, I spent a chapter establishing the world in which my story was to take place and the characters that we were going to watch. I spent that long on it because the world is a complicated place, and serves, in and of itself, as the hook for the reader. <br> <br>That said, I will have to agree that if my first chapter failed to interest the agent in questions, either it isn't strong enough, on its own, and I should move the inciting incident forward, or this isn't the right agent for my writing, and I should move on. <br> <br>However I would like all of you writers out there to take a moment to reconsider the beginning of your stories, whether they are novels, short stories, novellas, screenplays . . . whatever. The established rule of writing is to get us into the heart of the story as fast as possible, if not faster, but I have to disagree, the beginning of your story has one main point, one true goal, to get your reader invested. To get them hooked. Today's assignment, for those of you willing to put the time in, is to reconsider the start of three to five of your stories: How does it hook your reader? Are the invested in the story, the characters, the world, your style of writing, your sense of humor? Think of another way to open. Try to hook them on something else, and then compare the two, which way works better? Which one will keep them reading? Which one do you prefer? <br> <br>Remember, one of the most important rules of writing . . . one of the most important rules of any kind of art, really, is to stay hungry. Always look to be better. Always look to learn. </tr> </table> <hr> <table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td width="20%">Date: check back in a while </td> </tr> </table> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <!-- End text edit area --> </div> <div class="footer"> <p>Contact at ross_writer@yahoo.com</p></div> </div> </div> </body> </html>