Category: Writer

Last weekend I went to Brooklyn to visit two of my sons (the musician and the writer). We were flaneurs. We flaneused. (That should be a word.) We walked, and talked, and laughed. We ate and drank. (oh, did we they drink) It was a wonderful, non-touristy weekend in the city.

On our seven-mile journey each day, we slipped into several indie bookstores. Little bits of heaven, each one. I would rather be surrounded by books than jewels. But here’s the thing: Being surrounded by so many fantastic novels made me feel conflicted. Part of me shouted, Why bother writing, Karolyn? Why work so hard to add one more drop into this ocean of literature? Will it even be noticed?

The other side of me whispered, Go home and write.

Funny how a whisper can overpower a shout.

What’s more important than character? Nothing.

As Warren Buffet once said, “It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” In life, your reputation is of utmost importance; it is your character. And it’s not so different in fiction. Characters (People) are the most important part of any story—short, long, realistic, or fantastic. Readers want to know about and relate to the characters. Then and only then will they follow along with the adventure you’ve created for them.

I’ve made the analogy that characters in novels are like people in photos: people will look longer at other people than they do at even the most beautiful landscape. Likewise, no matter how beautiful the writer’s prose, if she doesn’t create fascinating, believable, relatable characters, then readers won’t really care about the story. Have you ever noticed (of course you have) how much longer we focus on ourselves in pictures than we do on anything else? It’s the same with characters in a novel; people want to see themselves in the characters. They want to say, Yes, I do that, too! I’ve thought the same thing. I feel exactly like that.

A brilliant writer will then do horrible things to the characters so the reader is compelled to see who triumphs in the end. Bingo—bestseller!

But it’s not quite that easy. So …

This weekend I will be taking a class at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City on Creating Compelling Characters with Jonathan Blum where I will learn to make my characters just exactly like YOU.

I sure hope you’ve been nice to me over the years—because not all characters triumph in the end. Some die.

(tee hee)

Most people—okay, everyone hates dieting; they just want to be fit. Similarly, many writers hate writing; they just want to “have written” something. I’ve often thought we should change the word “diet” to something without the negative connotation it brings. Like T-I-D-E. Just rearrange the letters. We could say, “I’m on a healthy tide.” Better, yes? Or this: E-D-I-T. Change the letters again, and we could say, “I’m editing my food intake.” Still better than saying, “I’m dieting.” If we edit our food intake, and edit our writing, it’s easy to see a connection.

Taking this one step further … If a person, say me, for example, gets a little lax in monitoring her food intake, and at the same time gets a little lax on the exercise front, soon she will start feeling a bit blubbery discouraged. I need to snap my priorities back in line. Similarly, if I take days (okay, weeks) off of writing, I start feeling like a failure discouraged. The trick again is to snap my writing priorities back in line, too. Just never, never, never give up, as the wise Winston Churchill once said. I’ve had that magnet above my desk for years. It’s one of my mottos. Another favorite is from George Eliot: It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Speaking of George Eliot, and my lack of productivity of late … I have a new writing coach: Her name is also George Eliot (I call her Georgie). As soon as she’s done being a puppy, she will anchor me at home, at my computer. She has also motivated me to read Middlemarch, the original George Eliot’s best and arguably THE best English novel of all times. It’s one of those novels I would have read if only I’d been an English major. But it’s never too late …

There’s one more reason I’ve been in writing limbo lately, and it too shall soon be corrected. My “fourth debut novel,” A Reasonable Price, has been out to lit agents for the past several months. I’ve had seventeen (!) requests for the manuscript. I’ve also had nearly that many passes. However, the last rejection letter I received mentioned a key point as to why agents are likely passing: religion. My protagonist is very religious; my antagonist is a doctor who’s playing God. You see the conflict. It makes for a very intense battle! It also possibly makes the novel too explosive for a publisher to buy it. So, because I am not championing a Catholic perspective, it’s time for another E-D-I-T.

Ten days from now I’ll be participating in an Iowa Summer Writing Festival workshop. As soon as I get my feedback from the wise and recently published Julia Fierro and my fellow classmates, I will do a rewrite and send it out to more lit agents.

How about you? Have you gotten off track of any of your goals? Hey, summer happens! We’ve given ourselves a break. Now we need to refocus. Just remember this: Never, never, never give up.

In my last blog post, I asked the question, Who Do You Think You Are? Since then, I’ve asked several people that question face-to-face, and the answers have yielded new insight. Some people (like myself) answered with nouns (writer, traveler, etc.), more external descriptions. Others, like one man I spoke to, answered with adjectives (thoughtful, generous, etc.), more internal descriptions. This man began his list with personality traits, not hobbies, pastimes, or occupations.

A psychologist could have a heyday with this dichotomy, I’m sure. But I’m no psychologist. I just get to ponder this, and ask you what you think this says about people. Did you make your list of five quick words to describe yourself? I’m sure you did, so … did you choose nouns or adjectives? Neither answer is wrong; in fact, no personal description would be complete without both lists. It’s curious, though, what this says about people. Could it be that people who view themselves via external criteria first tend to be insecure, thus more concerned with the way the world sees them? Or maybe they’re just private people who want a shell around them. Hmm …

When it comes to writing, adjectives are almost as villainous as adverbs. But don’t take my word for it. Stephen King once said: The road to hell is paved with adverbs. And here’s strong advice against both forms of qualifiers. Good writing happens in the nouns and the verbs. Yet as a writer, when I am creating characters, I must know ALL about them. I need to know their nouns and their adjectives. In fact, I need to know their verbs and adverbs, too. I was once told I need to know when my protagonist lost his virginity. And not just when, but where, with whom, and how the experience was for him? Facts like these don’t need to be included in a novel, but a writer needs to know her characters as deeply as she knows herself—probably better than she knows herself!

This leads me directly back to how well does anyone know him- or herself? This may sound ridiculously simple, but it’s not. This is a matter scientists study relentlessly. There’s a new book out on just this topic: Mindwise, by Nichols Epley, that explores how well we know others, and in turn, how well we know ourselves. It’s one of those, the-more-you-know, the-more-you-know-you-don’t-know topics that fascinate me to no end.

Maybe I should have been an anthropologist.