Story Versus Craft, in a Cow Pasture

We’ll consider story and craft first, then relate them to a cow pasture.

Impetus

Image generated on www.perchance.org

I read Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, hoping to learn to become a better writer. The book’s second half helped with that. The first half, which I read first, differed. It enumerated a list of grievances with a writers’ workshop that the author attended.

To understand the gist of his complaint, let’s start with definitions.

Story

For our purposes, let us define a ‘story’ in broad enough terms to encompass all human cultures across all human history. We could say a story is a text narrative featuring one or more characters in one or more settings, in the course of which, one or more events occur.

Craft

Craft, we’ll say, is the way a writer writes a story. It includes the techniques the writer employs, the story aspects the writer emphasizes, the words the writer chooses, etc.

The Universal and the Particular

We’ve defined ‘story’ in a universal manner so it includes campfire tales told by prehistoric tribes, Gilgamesh, The Story of Tambuka, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and King Lear. ‘Craft,’ by contrast, varies across cultures and time periods. A particular technique, word cadence, or plot structure might resonate in one country but not another, one century and not another.

Controversy

A difficulty might arise when a writers’ workshop or Master of Fine Arts (MFA) course teaches craft suited to its culture, but a student accustomed to another culture’s craft attends.

That occurred when Matthew Salesses, a Korean-American, attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. To him, the workshop seemed too prescriptive, too intolerant of other approaches.

My Take

Never having attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I can neither validate nor dismiss Salesses’ experience. That workshop, founded in 1936, produced graduates who went on to earn Pulitzer Prizes, Booker Prizes, National Humanities Medals, and MacArthur Fellowships. Five graduates went on to become U.S. Poets Laureate.

Matthew Salesses has written six books and dozens of essays, been named one of thirty-two Essential Asian American Writers, and received multiple awards and fellowships for his writing. He runs his own graduate-level workshops in creative writing.

Perhaps the Iowa Writers’ Workshop had been teaching craft suited for modern-day tastes of U.S. readers. Perhaps Salesses found that approach too rigid and inflexible, based on his experience with Korean literature. If so, his dissatisfaction appears understandable, despite the success and staying power of the workshop.

As I’ve noted, though, craft changes, often based on reader whims and sudden fads. A given formula works well for a while, then readers tire of it and it becomes stale. A different kind of novel catches on, perhaps one from a foreign country, or one written in a foreign style, or a nostalgic return to a previous style from long ago. Other authors then write in that vein to capitalize on the trend, to catch the wave. In time, that style fades in its turn, soon replaced by another.

Why do these fads, these literary waves, occur? The fickle nature of readers doesn’t explain it all. I suspect some influential readers, eager to experience fresh books, seek something unusual, find it, and enjoy its newness. They see beyond craft to the underlying story. They spread the word, sparking a trend.  

The Cow Pasture

Permit me a silly, Iowa-based simile. Think of story as a cow pasture, one of vast size with grass growing in every acre. Readers are the cows, gathering to devour grass/stories in a particular area. We’ll call that particular patch of grass the craft. In time, the cows consume the grass in that place, and have deposited cow-pies there, rendering that grass less desirable.

One cow moves on, finds a fresh patch with tall, tasty grass and begins munching there. Other cows notice and join the loner.

The process continues, cows moving from zone to zone. They drop fertilizer as they go, so previously grazed parts grow and become fresh again later.

Takeaway

Writers generate stories. They grow the grass, but don’t control the cows. Writers can create stories using currently successful craft. Or they can write stories outside that craft and hope a straying cow notices and draws the herd. A writer might dislike the popular and crowded area, and might fume that his favored grass zone attracts no cows. But cows go where they go.

Hey, cows! Over here! The tastiest grass is grown by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 3, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Select Your POV Character in 6 (or 7) Steps

You’re planning to write a story, but you don’t know whose point of view (POV) to tell it in. Author K.M. Weiland wrote a wonderful post on the subject, and I suggest you start there. I’ll wait here while you read that. The rest of my post supplements hers.

Credit to www.perchance.org for the images

List the Contenders

Weiland’s 6-step process starts with identifying the contenders. You could choose any character in your story, or even select an omniscient, god-like POV.

Winnow Down the List

Next, Weiland suggests you think about which contenders matter least to the story’s drama. For example, a servant or guard who rarely speaks and whom you’ve only included for authenticity—a ‘spear carrier’ in literary lingo—makes a less useful POV character.

Rate the Stakes

In the next step, you consider each character’s stakes. What do they lose if they don’t get what they want? You’ll get more dramatic impact from characters with the most to lose.

What Type of Narration?

Choose from among first person (I/me), second person (you), third person (she/he), and omniscient (god-like). I’ve written about these before.

Pitch Your Tense

Most writers chose past or present. In past tense, she ran, she sat, she said. In present tense, she runs, she sits, she says. More stories use past tense, but you may choose either one.

Final Auditions

After going through the above steps, you might still face a choice between more than one possible POV character. Weiland suggests you write a few paragraphs of the story in each of the remaining contenders’ POVs. They don’t know it, but they’re auditioning for the POV role. Choose the one with the most interesting voice, the one who tells your story best.

One More Consideration

The post by K.M. Weiland addresses all the above points better than I have, but I’ll add another thought. Nothing limits you to one POV for an entire story (though in flash fiction, you should restrict yourself to one).

You might choose a different POV for each chapter, or even each scene. As you do so, use the same six-step process mentioned above in selecting the appropriate character.

Also, make transitions between POV characters clear to the reader. In the first sentence of a section with a new POV character, include a thought, or a feeling, or both, from that character. That alerts the reader about the POV shift.

Of course, throughout the literary world, experts agree the very best point of view is that of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 27, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Ain’t Our First Rodeo

Once again, some stories of mine got published. The anthology Ain’t Our First Rodeo: Another Fort Worth Writers Anthology just came out.

They roped me into co-editing this anthology, the third for which I’ve served in an editorial capacity. With any luck, another geological epoch will pass before I edit another one.

We wrangled a lot into this volume. Altogether, seventeen authors contributed eighty-six works, including poems, essays, chapter excerpts, and short stories. They hogtied every mood, topic, style, and tone you can imagine, and then some you can’t imagine.

As a rule, I don’t put my own stories in anthologies I’m editing, but, well, it’s more of a guideline than a rule. You’ll find three of my short stories cluttering this book.

“Voyage of the Millennium Quester”

A time-traveling duo ventures back to record the most incredible astronomical sight in history. If they’re not careful, the dumber one of the pair might mess things up.

“Weathervane Wally”

A Texas farmer claims his weather-forecasting armadillo surpasses Punxsutawney Phil in prognosticating prowess. Can he prove that to a Pennsylvania TV reporter?

“Bringing the Future to You”

Doctor Edison Thornwhipple couldn’t see anything in Doctor Rachel Clairvaux’s crystal ball, but what she saw changed the next ten minutes…and the world. First published (with some text differences) in the anthology Cheer Up, Universe!

Y’all can lasso your own copy of Ain’t Our First Rodeo here and get a good roundup of stories by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 20, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

3 Tips for Compelling, Shareable Writing

Everyone who creates an online post, tweet, or meme hopes it goes viral. That occurs when others read it, like it, and share it. Viral posts often contain three key attributes. Do these same attributes apply to fiction in general?

Author, speaker, and producer Shane Snow blogged about these attributes and gave them an easy mnemonic to remember—FIN.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Fluency

The F in FIN stands for fluency. Snow means this in the sense of smooth, flowing prose, rather than familiarity with a language. He advocates plain, easy-to-understand writing.

Go for a low number in the readability index. Don’t force readers to wade through flowery phrases to grasp your meaning. Shorter words, sentences, and paragraphs make life easier for your readers. Read your writing aloud to check for awkward phrases or other stumbling points and edit as needed.  

Identity

Here, Snow refers to how well the reader identifies with the characters or topic. To engage readers, connect with universal themes and struggles.

Give readers something familiar to latch onto. Often, novels begin in a familiar setting to orient readers to an identifiable locale—home, office, neighborhood, etc. They give characters commonplace problems readers can relate to. Having grounded the reader in a familiar place, the novel can then launch into the unfamiliar.

Novelty

Speaking of the unfamiliar, Snow includes novelty as the final third of the acronym. We call them novels for a reason. Be bold and creative. Strike off in a new and different direction.

Take an old idea and give it a fresh twist. They say there’s nothing new under the sun, but ‘they’ haven’t read your book yet.

Putting FIN Together

Shane Snow focused on FIN as a technique for giving your social media posts and memes a better chance of going viral. Fiction stories can be sharable, too, in the sense that fans get a buzz going and that increases sales.

For a short story, novella, or novel, consider applying these attributes in reverse order–NIF. First, think of a new and fresh thing to write about. Then, begin your story by giving readers something to identify with. Last, as you edit, work to keep your prose clean and fluent.

Soon, you’ll FINish a wonderful, sharable tale, thanks in part to Shane Snow and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 13, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Revive Your Open, Creative Mind

How often do you read a book, watch a TV show, or see a movie, and think, “How clever! I wish I could come up with ideas like that.” You can. I’ll tell you how.

Seeing the World a New Way

Creative people share a trait. Their brain neurons connect in a different manner than those of other people. When you sense the world around you, it is what it is. Creative people sense what the world could be.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Psychologists talk of ‘trait theory’ and the ‘Big Five’ personality traits. (For information, those are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.) Of those, creatives seem loaded with an excess of Openness to Experience.

In this post, Luke Smillie and Anna Antinori explain how we all form mental models of the world. The closer our mental model matches the real world, the better we can deal with things.

Creatives play with their mental models. They think about unusual connections between unlike things. They imagine different possible worlds. They see in a way most don’t.

Binocular Rivalry

As one example, psychologists showed a group of test subjects a different image to their right and left eyes. The subjects tried to make sense of what they saw as one image rivaled the other.

The test revealed the more creative test subjects ended up ‘seeing’ a combined picture, one sharing attributes of both images to a greater extent than less creative subjects did.

Inattentional Blindness

In another test, psychologists gave test subjects a task requiring focus. They showed the subjects a video of six young people passing two basketballs around. The task—count the number of times people wearing white pass the ball.

Half of the test subjects concentrated so much on the task that they missed a bizarre event occurring in plain sight during the video. Those with more ‘openness to experience’ saw the event. Creatives saw what others screened out.

The Openness of Writers

The best fiction writers see what the rest of us see, but combine unlike things. Micheal Crichton merged his children’s interest in dinosaurs, then-current genetic engineering research, and mathematical chaos theory when writing Jurassic Park.

Suzanne Collins had been flipping TV channels between a reality show and coverage of a war when she combined the ideas and wrote The Hunger Games.

The ideas lie out there waiting for all of us, but fiction writers join and twist things and ask ‘what if…?’

Opening Your Mind

Can you train yourself to think like that, to see the story ideas others miss? I think so. In fact, I believe we’re born with the ability, and most of us lose it over time.

Most five-year-old children teem with creative ideas. They see animals in clouds, monsters under the bed, imaginative uses for sticks and stones and acorns. For some, that ability never fades, but most grow out of it, abandoning their magic dragons.

By increasing your creativity, you’re not learning a new skill, you’re re-learning a forsaken one.

Travel, especially foreign travel, can expose you to different ways of thinking that might spark creative ideas.

I like another technique, one much cheaper than flying overseas. Psychologists call it the ‘divergent thinking task’ but I call it ‘brainstorming twenty ideas.’ Take a common object and write down twenty alternative uses for it. Your ideas need not make practical sense, but don’t stop until you reach twenty. You can do this for any problem you face, not just imagining uses for things. By churning through the absurd and crazy ideas, you might hit on a brilliant one you wouldn’t have considered otherwise.

But That’s Not All

Disclaimer—writing a book requires more than just creativity. If you’re able to bolster your imaginative ability, you’ll generate good story ideas. But you still have to buckle down and write the novel or TV/movie script. Many writers consider that the hard part. Still, if the techniques in this blogpost help you over the first hurdle, that’s a win for you and for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 5, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Uptime for Writers

You’re a fiction writer who wants to crank out better books faster. Maybe this blogpost will help you do that.

Intro to Uptime

I just read Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing by Laura Mae Martin. The author worked as a productivity expert at Google who helped employees do more work faster, with less stress. Could her techniques work for fiction writers?

She packed her short book with numerous techniques, and many might work for you. I’ll focus on one of those here.

Power Hours and Flow

She discussed the concept of ‘power hours,’ the few hours of highest productivity in your day. That sounded a bit like being ‘in the flow’ to me. I’ve blogged about that wonderful feeling before. Picture the flow state as focused concentration, effortless action, a lack of self-consciousness, unawareness of time, and obliviousness toward bodily needs.

When I wrote about it, I imagined doing the more creative phases of writing while in this flow state. But fiction writing includes more than creativity and that complicates the picture.

Off-Peak Hours

In addition to power hours, Martin discussed off-peak hours, during which fatigue sets in (or continues from the night) and you’re less productive. Each of your workdays contains power hours and off-peak hours, and they’re somewhat stable, occurring at the same times each day. However, these cycles vary between people, so you’ll have to experiment to discover your own power hours, if you haven’t already identified them from past experience.

Uptime, Downtime

Uptime, if I understand her concept, can include both power hours and off-peak hours. During uptime, you’re performing work, but not always at the same level of productivity.

However, for your health, you require downtime, too. Downtime includes non-work-related activities, particularly those requiring little concentration. Examples include meditating, showering, walking, mowing the lawn, gardening, etc. Unlike power hours and off-peak hours, you can schedule downtime. You’re in control.

Funny thing about downtime. People report their most creative ideas occur then. Fiction writers can use that to their advantage.

Fiction Writing Tasks

The fiction writing process contains many tasks, including generating ideas/brainstorming, outlining/researching, writing the first draft, editing later drafts, and marketing. Some require more creativity, some less.

If you had the option, you’d choose to accomplish your highest priority writing tasks during the power hours—in the flow, ideally. You’d save routine or less vital tasks for off-peak hours.

Don’t forget the advantage of downtime, which you control. Say you get stuck while writing—a plot problem, a character motivation issue, etc. Take some downtime, a few minutes off from writing. Your subconscious may work on the problem and solve it when you least expect it.

Get Real

I know—most fiction writers have day jobs. You seize as much writing time as you can, cramming it in among all the other obligations of life. Some days you barely write for half an hour. Perhaps your writing time varies from day to day. How are you supposed to make use of this uptime/downtime/power hours/off-peak hours concept?

Maybe you can’t. But perhaps just being aware of your daily productivity cycles and the creativity-laden power of downtime will help you reschedule as close to your optimum writing times as you can. Also, this knowledge may help you squeeze the most from those rare days you can devote to writing.

Uptime over. It’s now downtime for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 29, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

Authorial Reticence—Why Writers Hold Back

You’re asking if you read that subject line correctly. Hold back? Aren’t writers supposed to explain things? Aren’t they supposed to…you know…write to be understood?

I’d never heard the term ‘authorial reticence’ until last weekend, when I listened to author Michael Scott Clifton talking about it at a conference.

He spoke on the subject of ‘magical realism’ and dropped ‘authorial reticence’ on his audience. Intrigued by his description, I decided to blog about it.

Definition

Most often associated with magical realism, authorial reticence refers to a writer refraining from explanations about a fantastical setting or event. The story proceeds as if the astounding, magical thing happened every day. This encourages the reader to accept it and keep reading.

Antonyms

If that seems confusing, it might help to understand the term by exploring its extreme opposites. Think of a story where the author used an As-You-Know, Bob or an infodump to give a detailed description. Or consider a story where the author wrote out the moral. In each case, the writer took you by the hand and told you what to think.

Authorial reticence is the opposite of that.

Example

Authorial reticence can apply to sub-genres beyond magical realism. A classic example from science fiction occurred in Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Beyond This Horizon with this three-word sentence: “The door dilated.” No further explanation or description. Heinlein expected readers to form the mental picture, accept it, and read on.

Pros

Done well, this technique fosters engagement on the part of the reader. The author says, in an implicit way, “I trust you. If you’ll go along with me, I’ll entertain you without moralizing or boring you. No spoon-feeding, though. You may have to stretch your mind beyond normal credibility limits.”

Benefits include a shorter, tighter story that highlights action and drama. Readers get a sense of being welcomed into your story’s world, as if they’ve lived there for some time. Also, readers who feel trusted might well buy your other books.

Cons

Like any good thing, you can stretch authorial reticence too far. Throwing too many bizarre or fantastic elements in at once can confuse a reader, who now will be less likely to finish the story, or buy another.

Also, if you fail to establish authorial reticence in your writing style at the story’s outset, introducing it later can prove jarring.

Reticence and Me

Given my engineering training, I suffer from a tendency to over-explain. I fear the reader might not form an accurate mental picture, or might reject my story element as too far-fetched. I’ll strive to resist this impulse. I’ll try to trust the reader’s imagination to fill in gaps.

From now on, if you’re looking for authorial reticence, you’re looking for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 22, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

What are Animals up to in Fiction?

Animals don’t read. People do. Why, then, do authors include critters in their fiction? First off, most readers like animals. But what literary purpose do animal serve?

Diogenes from Ripper’s Ring, created using perchance.org

I’ve blogged before about the pets owned by authors. But authors write about animals as well, and my topic today is about how animals make stories better.

The Talking Kind

From ancient times to the present, authors have penned tales about talking animals. Though they make endearing characters, I’ll gloss over them in my post today. For the most part, talking animals merely substitute for human characters. Speech serves only to make these animal characters more relatable and places the story in the realm of fantasy.

An author may, however, write about normal, non-magical animals that have been given the power of speech. Science fiction author David Brin exemplified this in his Uplift Universe series, where humans biologically manipulated some Earth animals and designed in the ability to speak.

In any case, according to editor Mary Kole, stories with talking animals aren’t trending. She suggests including a talking animal only if your story won’t work any other way.

Purposes

Why include regular, non-talking animals in fiction? In a valuable post on the subject, editor Moriah Richard listed three reasons: tool, weapon, and companion. Richard noted these purposes overlap and do not constitute all possible uses. I’ll explore the ones Richard listed and add some of my own.

Tool

For any attribute humans possess, (except speech, higher level thought, and manual dexterity), you can name an animal that surpasses us. Access to narrow places, burrowing, seeing, flying, hearing, smelling, speed, strength, and swimming—certain animals have us beat. Often, in stories, we read of a human using a trained animal as some sort of tool. For hearing and smelling, writers often choose dogs. Easy to train and readily available, dogs are also well known to readers, so require little description. For transportation, horses seem ideally suited, though other animals can suffice.

Weapon

I suspect this use occurs less frequently in fiction than the tool use. A weapon is a kind of tool, though, so you can regard this as a subset of the previous use. For attacking other people, dogs again represent a good choice, due to their trainability, their speed, and their teeth.

A writer may use all types of other animals as weapons in a story, including bears, bees, hawks, lions, sharks, and dozens of others. However, these belong in the difficult-to-train category, and might just turn on the person who releases them.

Companion

Perhaps the most often used purpose of animals in fiction, companionship provides the author several opportunities. When a character enjoys a companionable relationship with an animal, it endears the character to the reader. It also portrays, by inference, the kind and caring nature of the character.

Examples include the film Hachi: A Dog’s Tale and the book Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, by John Grogan. A stranger example might be Life of Pi by Yann Martel, featuring a tiger as companion.

Antagonist

I’ll add this purpose to Moriah Richard’s list, though the traditional role of antagonist doesn’t fit most animals. Animals do not often oppose a human through hatred or malevolence. They act according to their natures, but humans may hate them for that, so it’s more about the human’s feelings than those of the animal. In stories with animal ‘antagonists,’ often the real antagonist is another human or a psychological struggle inside the human protagonist.

Examples include Moby-Dick by Herman Melville and Jaws by Peter Benchley.

Symbol

This blogpost at MasterClass.com explains the use of animals as symbols in literature. As metaphor, the animal represents something else, often some quality of humanity, without stating the comparison in an overt way.

The albatross in the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge symbolizes good luck. The bird in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe symbolizes the persistence of grief. The owl Hedwig in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling symbolizes Harry’s innocence, which he loses when the owl dies.

Conscience

An animal may also serve as a sort of unwitting conscience for a human character. The character who talks to a pet may arrive at a solution to a problem without any reaction from the pet, and nevertheless credit the animal with providing valuable assistance.

My Own Animal Characters

Mutant from “The Cats of Nerio-3” created using perchance.org

I’ve rarely included normal animals in my stories. Not sure why. Mutated cats serve as ‘antagonists’ in “The Cats of Nerio-3,” a story appearing within In a Cat’s Eye. A basset hound named Diogenes assists a detecting in locating an invisible murderer in Ripper’s Ring. In that story, the dog serves as tool, companion, and conscience.

Whatever you do, don’t write a shaggy dog story—then you’d be barking up the wrong tree. Okay, I guess it’s off to the doghouse for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 15, 2024Permalink Leave a comment

The Inner Drives of Fictional Characters

You should know the motivation of each fictional character you create. What do they desire? What inner need compels them to act the way they do? I’ve blogged about motivation before, and I’ll build on that today.

Motivation versus Goals

Every major character may pursue a goal, too, but that differs from motivation. A goal is the outcome a character seeks, and motivation is why the character wants it.  

Maslow’s Hierarchy

In my earlier post, I mentioned Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The pyramid shape suggests a character must meet lower-level needs before pursuing higher levels. If an antagonist or other circumstance deprives a character of a lower-level need, the character will revert down to that need and pursue it.

Russell’s Theory

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell discussed motivations (calling them desires) in his 1950 speech accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature. He focused on the motivations of political leaders, because these, he thought, influenced human history the most. If you include a political leader in your fiction, Russell’s thoughts may interest you.

The philosopher named four major desires of political leaders—acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power. Put another way:

  • acquisitiveness = I want your stuff
  • rivalry = I want to surpass you
  • vanity = I want you to worship me
  • love of power = I want to control you

As Maslow did, Russell put his list of desires in a specific order, but in a more negative way. Perhaps an inverted pyramid makes more sense, for he ordered his group by strength. He rated acquisitiveness the weakest and love of power the strongest.

Moreover, he considered these needs insatiable. Like a snowball rolling downhill, the more you feed any of those needs, the bigger they get. No satisfied contentment awaits at the end.

Combining the Theories

Despite the differing approaches, I see parallels between Maslow’s positive list and Russell’s negative one. Acquisitiveness connects to Psychological and Safety needs—both concern material things and feeling secure. Rivalry connects to Belonging and Esteem—both concern relating with others. Vanity also connects to Esteem as well—both concern how the character is seen by others. Love of Power connects to both Esteem and Self-Actualization—both concern the achievement of full potential through creativity.

It’s Complicated

Perhaps, in trying to categorize and group motivations, both Maslow and Russell oversimplified matters. Humans exhibit a wide array of motivations, not just the ones listed by those two thinkers. Your fictional characters may act out of any motivation you choose, from an infinite list.

As you create characters, you may find Maslow’s pyramid and Russell’s list useful as a starting point. Feel free to add nuance and variation when determining what drives your characters.

Whatever my own motivation, concluding this blogpost is the immediate goal of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 8, 2024Permalink 2 Comments

Is it Really About Who You Know?

In the fiction writing business, how much depends on what you know and how much on who you know? (Yes, English teachers, I know that should be ‘whom.’ Sorry.)

In a recent post, poet Damiana Andonova discussed the importance of establishing and maintaining a network of useful contacts to help your writing career. That caused me to wonder about the what-you-know/who-you-know dichotomy as it applies to fiction writing. The age-old conundrum exists for people in all fields, of course, but I’ll limit my discussion to authors.

Generated at www.perchance.org

The who-you-know method conjures the image of hitching your wagon to a star. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson coined that phrase, though he meant something different from aligning yourself with an up-and-comer so you can rise. I’m referring to that modern interpretation.  

Who You Know

Advocates of this school believe in the power of networking. Where’s the value in writing amazing prose if the right editors never see it? You can learn so much by connecting with other writers, editors, and agents. Not only learn, but—let’s face it—editors and agents would rather not take a chance on a fresh unknown, and would prefer to work with someone they know and can depend on. The sooner you become that someone, the sooner your writing career will succeed.

Those who hold this view contend that all famous writers, every one of them, established and maintained a strong relationship with one or more editors, agents, and publishers. How could a writer become famous without that?

What You Know

Adherents of this school believe everything starts with what you know. Unless you write well first, you’ll never form the network at all. No agent or editor will champion a writer who crafts low-quality prose, and they won’t stick with a skilled, one-book writer after the pitcher of creative juice runs dry.

Hone the craft, they say. Put your effort into churning out product. If you write it, they will come. Yes, famous writers can point to a network, but they didn’t become famous without a lot of readers, and readers want good writing.

Taken to Extremes

You may stretch both views too far. A who-you-know writer may schmooze and flatter while dashing off mediocre drivel. A what-you-know writer may scribble in the basement by candlelight, generating wondrous masterpieces that crumble to dust, unread. Neither extreme appeals to me.

The Elusive Balance

A compromise seems the wise course. But where’s the balancing point? To be specific, what percentage of time should a writer devote to writing versus networking?

On a line segment with ‘who you know’ at one end and ‘what you know’ at the other, the optimum point between them will present a problem no matter where it lies. In general, extrovert writers enjoy networking and introverts hate it.

As with many other areas of life, success requires leaving your comfort zone and enduring the distasteful but necessary tasks.

Worse, I suspect the optimal balance point varies from writer to writer, and even shifts over time. In other words, you have to find your own optimum, and wherever it is, you won’t like it. Even if you learn to accept it, it will move somewhere else on the line to a place you won’t like.

Don’t Get Me Wrong

I mean no disrespect toward Damiana Andonova and am not criticizing the points she made in her blogpost. I’m delighted she found success. She attributes a good part of that to networking, and no doubt she’s right. I suspect she writes marvelous poetry, though, and therefore what she knew played a role as well.

My Own Balance

Though I scribble in the basement by candlelight, I must acknowledge the people in my own network. The employees at Gypsy Shadow Publishing and Pole to Pole Publishing as well as several editors at other publishers have been of enormous help to me. I’m grateful to them all.

Each of those stars has towed the wagon of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 1, 2024Permalink Leave a comment