Big News Postponed

I've spent most of my writing time today finishing up the Kickstarter I'm launching, but it looks like it can take up to three business days to review. So unless that's a guideline for big projects (and the little ones get approved in just a few hours) I'll be running a normal schedule until the middle of next week.

The Message Trap

Image Description: Claire Youmans
Holding part I and II of
The Toki-Girl & The Sparrow Boy

An interesting thing about books for young people is the prevalence of “Message” books. “Susie Takes On A Bully”, "Jeff and Jennifer Make Lunch",  or “Ricky Makes A Friend.”  When I read these books — gotta keep current in my genre — I feel like the author had a Big Message about “Healthy Living” and “Appropriate Behavior”  to send and created a simplistic one-note plot to deliver said “Message” with heavy underlining, sparkles, and explosions of fireworks underlining it on every page.  I want to toss them out the window.  Boring?  Oh, so very boring.

Contrast that, if you will, with a Story. A Story is about events that affect people, and how those people respond to those events. What happens next depends on those responses and how those create new events. It’s a sequence of causes and effects. People don’t always respond in the Psychologically Appropriate way. However, the way in which they respond sets up the consequences they face and provides the all-important What Happens Next. How the protagonist reacts, how the antagonist reacts to THAT, and the mistakes characters make that result in their own crises, changes, climaxes and resolutions all make up a Story. A Story lets its message or messages develop through themes and through character arcs interacting to form the overriding dramatic arc of the Story. The message may be different for each character. The overall Theme or Message may be very subtle, almost unrecognized by the conscious mind. There might be hints, but the author won’t rub the reader’s nose in it. It shouldn’t be underlined. It shouldn’t need to be.

These “Message” books exist in adult literature, too, though many of them are confined to the “self-help” shelves. There’re out there, though. And they are still boring.

So many people have A Book Inside Them. It’s usually a Message Book, often Inspirational and based on Their Own Real Life Experiences. Those books rarely get beyond first draft and don’t often get published, much less sell. But they’re IMPORTANT, the struggling writer cries. Maybe they are, but you, writer, are going to have to make your book Not Boring, and that means escaping the Message Trap.

To get around the Message Trap, forget about your Message and start with a Story. Best if it’s a Story about someone who isn’t you, though the story and characters can be based on your experiences. Find a big event, or one that’s at least big to the characters. Stick some characters in it. How does the event change each character over time? How do the characters change the event? How do the characters change other characters? How do the changes in the characters recreate the situation as it was into the situation as it is? Is that generally good or bad? For the characters individually or the Story as a whole? A Story has a story of its own, into which the individual character’s stories fit. Don’t begin with a Message. Begin with a Story and let the characters reveal the Message to you, writer, as the story develops.

As the Story grows and builds, as the characters become real and experience changes in a real way, the themes will reveal themselves in a multitude of ways. This creates a Book that contains a Story that isn’t boring, yet does deliver a Message with no sparkly rainbow underlining required.


The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy Book 3: TOGETHER

The title is final.  Check it out.  http://claireyoumansauthor.blogspot.com.

The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy
A series of fantasy-adventure novels set in Meiji era Japan by Amazon Best-Selling author Claire Youmans.  For tweens through adults.
http://www.tokigirlandsparrowboy.com
Hard and e-formats available at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010F01B52

Book 3 will be out towards the end of June, with soft launches through the summer as different venues make it available.  

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Best "Surreptitious" Non-Man Writer (Poll Results)

The results are in!   

Rowling took an early lead and hung on and any time I waited to see two of the runners up who were tied would get some distance between them, another would end up tied instead. Finally I just called it.

Thank you to everyone who participated. For next month's polls, consider the non-traditional fantasy you know and like. I'll be calling for nominations very soon.

	COUNTRY	OVERALL
JK Rowling	24	14.81%	14.81%
CJ Cherryh	19	11.73%	11.73%
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)	15	9.26%	9.26%
Andre Norton	14	8.64%	8.64%
Harper Lee	13	8.02%	8.02%
James Tiptree, Jr (Alice Bradley Sheldon)	13	8.02%	8.02%
CS Friedman	10	6.17%	6.17%
NK Jemisin	8	4.94%	4.94%
Louisa May Alcott (A.M. Barnard)	8	4.94%	4.94%
Charlotte Bronte (Curar Bell)	7	4.32%	4.32%
JD Robb	6	3.7%	3.7%
PD James	6	3.7%	3.7%
SE Hinton	5	3.09%	3.09%
Robin Hobb	5	3.09%	3.09%
C. L. Moore	3	1.85%	1.85%
Ellis Peters	2	1.23%	1.23%
Emily Bronte (Ellis Bell)	2	1.23%	1.23%
Anne Bronte (Action Bell)	2	1.23%	1.23%

Plans. And Other Destroyable Things (Personal Update)

Some man or mouse must have laid these silly plans!
Image description. Me in an "Introverting.... (quiet please)" shirt

I had plans you see. Plans!

I was going to launch a Kickstarter this week. But I was not going to launch before an outrageous spate of productivity. That was supposed to give you all an idea of what I can do when I'm on fire. So you would have an idea of what you were "buying." (A writer...ON FIRE!!)

Instead, I'm afraid, I'm only able to offer you up a sad and tragic example of why I'm hoping this Kickstarter is successful–because my life can get pretty fucking busy if I am working fifty or sixty hours a week, and that's going to be "scrape by" hours if I have to pick up a fourth gig to make ends meet.

Excuses. Yeah I guess have a few of those. I let one of those spinning plates of mine fall to the floor, spilling Mongolian goulash all over the upholstery. Now I'm using metaphorical baking soda to help deodorize....if you know what I mean. I started the week with some light days, and quickly got writing posts like one of those furiously typing GIFs . Then shit went pear shaped. (And I mean one of those Bartlett bad boys, not that Comice crap–those things are just confused apples.)  Uberdude had to go to a Superhero Combat Simulation convention to practice deescalation and proportional response techniques for dealing with henchmen, which left me doing double shifts with The Contrarian in order to pick up the slack. I wrote of course, but by the weekend when the convention started, I was falling behind on my blogpostapoloza.

My move out date is coming up in only a month. (Well, my "soft" move out date. I may take a couple of weeks to fully move since I am going to be in the middle of summer school too.) Summer school is coming up. And the deets are not mine to share, but I spent today biting my nails to the quick waiting for the first major post-chemo CT results.

At least I'm still writing every day.

On the bright side–and here is your dollop of folksy writing wisdom for the day folks, so listen up–I learned that sitting down every day and cultivating the discipline has served me. As soon as I had the free time, my writing easily filled up the space. Take a thousand writers who are complaining that they don't have enough time to write, give them that time, and 998 of them will just find more ways to waste time. By writing every day, and maintaining that discipline, the minute I had more time, I was able to fill that space with more writing without the slightest effort.

I'll still get some stuff up (because I am nothing if not the type to get something up at 10:45 at night), but the real excitement for this week, the month, the year, and my next major project should be landing on Friday.

Stay tuned!

How To Be A Writer By Kaitlyn S. C. Hatch

Image Description: Writer's at work on a computer
with a mountain, wolf, and moon coming out of his head. 

How To Be A Writer 

(By Kaitlyn S. C. Hatch)


I’m sitting next to my dad on one of those standard conference chairs — metal framed with cushioned seat and back, but not at all comfortable, especially for my boney twelve-year-old self. I wiggle around, pulling my legs up, folding them underneath my butt, rising above the heads of everyone in front of me so I can get a glimpse of the Authors.

There they are, a row of five sitting behind a table on a raised platform at the front. I’ve forgotten now, or possibly never knew, who the Authors were, except for Spider Robinson. I’d met him earlier, in the lobby. My dad introduced himself, introduced me, told him he loves Callahan’s and all the quirky characters that go along with it.

I didn’t say anything during this exchange, just smiled and held my dad’s hand. I’ve not read Spider Robinson’s books but I know about him. My dad has told me his story, how he started out. “He was a security guard and he used all the downtime on his shifts to write his books.”
This is a story I am familiar with. Writers write, regardless of what they do to earn an income. There’s the job that puts food on your plate and a roof over your head, but also provides time for the job that defines you, the one that feeds your soul.

There is a critical distinction in my twelve-year-old mind, between a writer and an Author. When a writer becomes an Author their writing is no longer their own but something shared with the world, bound in paper and sold in bookstores, checked out of libraries, held in the hands of The Public. I know I am a writer, have always known it, but to be an Author is entirely different. If you asked me, as a child, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d give you the answer without hesitation…

So I strain to see these Authors, these celebrities that hold far more clout with me than anyone on television or the big screen. I’ve been raised without a television, you see. In fact, at twelve, a TV is a sudden new addition to the household. My entire childhood has been decorated with books — a long shelf in the living room, dominating the wall most people would fill with a screen. Not to mention weekly trips to the library where I eagerly consume everything on offer. I read voraciously, have since I was five or six. I find an author I like and commit to reading every single thing they’ve written.

This is what I tell the panel of Authors before me, when my hand stretched to the ceiling is noticed and I’m invited to speak. “I read all the time,” I say. “And I’ve been writing since I can remember. But how,” I implore, I query, I ask with longing and desire, “do I get myself published?”

There is chuckling. Like I’ve said something sweet, amusing, naive.

“Keep writing,” they say, or one of them says, and the rest nod in agreement.

“Keep reading.”

“Yes, that. You’re doing everything right.”

I am satiated and I sit down, this time letting my legs dangle over the too high seat, my question supposedly answered.

A few years later I’m in a bookstore with my parents. It’s late, the store is closed to the public but lit and full of people. We are there for a book launch of a neighbour and friend. There is mingling, glasses of Champagne, the book on display for all to see — non-fiction, historical, about the Canadian Pacific Railway.

I do not read non-fiction and historical things bore me because I am a teenager and victim of an education system that presents ‘history’ as dates and names with little narrative and therefore not much to hold my interest. But still, I am jealous. I have a pang of envy to see this person I know, this fellow writer, step away from that title and assume the shinier, more interesting role of Author.

My completed manuscripts (two or three at this point) are all Young Adult fiction, inspired by the gaps I find in the YA section at the library. I want to tell the stories of teenagers honestly, without the ‘after-school special’ message I so often encounter. I’m a volunteer at the library now, reviewing publisher’s proofs and feeding back to the head librarian of the Children & YA section as to which books should be bought and which are so dreadful I’m appalled they were published at all.

These books give me hope, of course. I am not terribly confident in my writing but I know that it’s better than a lot of what I read for this volunteer role. And I know I’m writing to fill gaps. I write about the outcasts, the freaks and weirdos and non-conformists.

There are speeches at the book launch. People who worked with the Author on the book — an editor, someone from the publishing house, the Author himself.

Later I approach one of these people of import, perhaps it was the publisher, my memory fails me now. I tell them about my work and that I’m interested in getting published. “How would one go about that?”

“Do you write every day?”

“I do,” I say.

“Keep writing.”

I am now an adult. I have been a youth worker, an administrator, project manager, fundraiser and most recently begun to do design and social media consulting.

I’m doing a consulting job for a small company, a start-up but not a techie one. The hours are minimal and I’m being paid in trade. One day the owner asks me if, before I go, we can have a chat. I tell them that’s fine but that I have to leave by 4:00pm, at the latest, no matter what. We agree to chat at 3:00pm.

3:00pm comes and goes, though, and they are still on the phone, popping in and out of the office, exuding busy-ness.

I catch their eye as they pass my desk, phone to their ear. They hold up a finger to indicate one minute, as if they won’t continue their usual pattern. I’ve been doing this consulting with them for long enough to know that the person on the phone always takes precedence and I’m going to be forgotten.

It’s four o’clock and I start packing up to go. They’re chatting on the phone and give me a look, surprised. “Hold on one moment,” they say to their caller, and then to me, “You’re leaving? I thought we were going to talk.”

“Me too, but I did say I have to go at 4:00pm today, it’s already three minutes past. I really can’t stay any longer.”

“Really? Not even for the greatest job offer of your life?”

I smile, a small smile, a tight, bemused smile, “Sorry. I just can’t.”

They shrug, eye brow raise, smug, as if to say, ‘your loss’, but I find it unaffecting. I grab my bag and walk out, thinking to myself, “Best job offer of my life? What would that be?”

The answer is obvious. It’s always been obvious. If someone were to tell me I could have a salary and any job I wanted for it, could be comfortably earning an income to feed and clothe and house me and what I did was entirely up to me, there is only one thing I would choose…

I am thirty, a grown woman, confident and more assured than I’ve ever been. I look back on my younger self with fondness. I was naive, silly sometimes, often arrogant or full of false confidence.

Now I am forever cultivating awareness of what I don’t know. Embracing and admitting to my arrogance as a way to practice humility. I no longer consider sixty to be ‘old’. I think dreams are great but goals are better. I am fiercely independent but learning, always learning every single day, that it’s okay to accept help and okay to ask for it. I can differentiate between a contract full of expectations and a genuine offering of support. I have come to realise success is not how other people see you but how you see yourself.

I was always asking how to become an Author. How to get paid for my art, my creativity, my words written down, composed to inspire and lift and delight and intrigue and entertain. But something has shifted.

It’s not that I don’t want to earn a living this way, not at all. If anything my focus on this is stronger than it’s ever been because right now, for the first time in my life, I’m actually doing something about it.

But it hadn’t occurred to me that I was so focused on what it meant to be an Author that I hadn’t considered what it meant to be a Writer. I figured I’d always known how to do that. And I did, in a way.

But it’s only been recently that I’ve truly recognised it. Because I’ve suddenly seen that while I was working all those other jobs, filling my 9:00 to 5:00(or 8:00 to 4:00) doing stuff for other people, I filled my 5:00 to 8:00 or my Saturday or Sunday with writing.

This distinction is key because I have spoken to so many people who mention their idea for a book or character or plot but never get beyond that. They have an outline, maybe, or some notes in a journal, but they have not written their book(s) down.

Here is where all that advice, which didn’t tell me one thing about getting published, came in handy. They were saying, regardless of what you do to pay the bills, regardless of how long it takes, regardless of anything else: You must write.

Agents can’t sell ideas. Publishers don’t want character sketches. The public won’t pay for a plot outline.

So if you ask me today, what my ideal dream job is, if you ask what I want to be when I grow up or simply what I ‘do’, I’ll answer you proudly, confidently, with ease:

I’m a Writer.

Since you’ve read this far I DO want to offer a little something on how to go about getting published, for those of you with finished manuscripts:

• Get an agent. Send your manuscripts to agents regularly, with tailored letters and genuine interest in working with the agents you approach.

• Publish online in blog form to gain a following. If it’s well-written people will want to read it and it could get picked up for publication and may even eventually become a film.

• Approach a publisher directly, but only if they accept work without an agent and if they’re a good fit for what you’ve written.

• Self publish. If you’ve got the money to do so and are willing to put in the work to edit, market and promote the thing so it might actually generate an income for you, this is easily done through sites like Lulu.com and blurb.com.

• Crowdfund your book to build a following, possibly get a publisher interested and to fund the cost of editing, marketing and promotions.

And in all these things, whatever approach you decide to take, be willing to do the work. There’s a big difference between doing what you love and getting paid for it.

For those of you who still have a book inside you? I can only say one thing:

Write. Write now. Write often. Write terribly. Write beautifully. Write regularly.
But write.

Always, always write.


Kaitlyn Hatch is a Canadian-Brit Creative Polymath and Buddhist. She’s currently running a campaign to get her first fiction book (Friends We Haven’t Met) published. 

For a full bio and her crowdfunding page, visit: https://publishizer.com/friends-we-havent-met/

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Philosophy of Writing Posts

[Yesterday ended up being about ten hours of kid wrangling and housekeeping (which doesn't include my session of writing in the morning), so I'm still working on that Star Wars: The Force Awakens post I promised you. But since there's no teaching this week, and the weekend looks to be somewhat relaxing, I'll just mix up the schedule a bit and dribble into the weekend.

Here's the first of those menus I promised to start posting.]  

These are manifestos, rants, edicts, warnings, fundamental precepts and more. I claim no authority of fiat (in fact, sometimes that's what I'm most objecting to), but they are as close to the core nuggets of my personal philosophy of writing as anything is likely to get.  Some are several articles surrounding a core idea like Dorothea Brande or politics.  Some are very (very) long, some are obviously papers I wrote for college, and many are more than a little self indulgent.  But all are fundamental to what I understand of writing.

Earning Your "Er."
No Apologies: A Defense of Why Speculative Fiction Should Need No Defense.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing- It's much more than just the writing part.
A Fish, a Rat, and a Prescriptivist Walk Into a Bar Why most linguistic prescriptivism bothers me.
Ten thousand hours It takes a lot of work.  A LOT of work.
NaNoWriMo: The Good, The Bad, and the Really Really Ugly
The A to Zen of a Writer's Life
The Modern Artist's Survival Guide
An Open Letter to Lynn Shepherd
The 17 Rules of Writing
A Passive Aggressive Memo to Other Artists
On Sister Act 2 and How to Know If You Should Be a Writer
Ten Reasons to Write Daily (Accentuate the Positive)
Don't Make It So Damned Hard

Series Articles

The Lessons of Brande Dorothea Brande's book Becoming A Writer has shaped how I fundamentally approach writing. 1 The book and what it's about.  2 Cultivating internal dualism.  3 Morning writing.  4 The Floating Half Hour of Writing

Writers and Politics Be careful when dealing with politics. The truth is a casualty of political writing.  Avoiding politics entirely isn't the answer.  But there are reasons to be cautious.

It's Really Okay NOT to Write. Really  Intro & Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Best Surreptitious Non-Male Writer (Don't Forget to Vote)

Image description: Charlotte Brontë

Who is the best woman (or NB) writer who wrote under a name that disguised that fact?  

Less than a week remains in May, so get your vote on if you haven't yet! Or get your vote on again.

The poll description can be found here.

The poll itself is down on the left hand side at the bottom.

Please don't forget that our poll program will only track your IP address for one week, so since I can't stop shenanigans, I'm asking for as much of it as possible. Vote early. Vote often.