2025 - July - Writing, A Life-long Endeavor

 

Being a writer—with all its successes and failures, raptures and rejections—is a life-long endeavor. Less a career choice than a calling, its rewards are often so private and ambiguous as to be unexpressible. – Dennis Palumbo Writing from the Inside Out 

Writing? A life-long endeavor? Are we talking womb to tomb?

Some might say it's a person's genetic predisposition to become a writer. Others say the writing ability sparked in early childhood from being read to by a parent or caregiver or being surrounded by books. 

Whatever the spark was, it took learning to read and then years of education to master the English language. Likely at some point, a love of words led to writing stories. 

But what about having a talent for writing? Unfortunately, talent takes one only so far. It is learning and honing the devices and techniques of the writing craft that enhances and liberates creativity. Mastering craft elements requires a stick-to-it-ness, a commitment to striving to become a really good writer—or storyteller or essayist or memoirist.

Writing and storytelling can be a life-long endeavor resulting in successful publication. Writing can also become the self-satisfaction of never publishing but knowing one writes well and tells a story well.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

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I'll be giving two workshops at this year's Writer's Road Trip #13, October 4, 2025, Zem Zem Shrine Club, Erie PA  www.pennwriters.org 

The workshops are:

A Fine-Tuned Engine: Learn the secrets, tips, and tricks to cutting words, tightening prose, and staying within word counts and page limits. This will be a hands-on session---bring 3 hard copy pages of a work in progress, double spaced, 1" margins all around, the widow-orphans feature turned off, and three highlighters (yellow, blue, and pink).

BACK TO THE GARAGE - Flashbacks, recalls, remembrances, and recollections. How not to stop the story's flow and still get in the necessary back-story elements.

And - 

THE PITCH DOCTOR WILL BE IN! Known in Pennwriters as The Pitch Doctor, I will be available to conference participants who want to practice or hone their pitches before going to their pitch appointments. 

REGISTRATION OPENS JULY 1ST. 

LUNCH IS INCLUDED IN THE FEE.

https://pennwriters.org/writers_roadtrip

Spread the word!

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2025 - June - Writing Habits

 The Law of Habit states that it is inevitable that you will be published if you cultivate good habits and break bad habits. —Elizabeth Lyons

Habits are established customs. Psychologically, and for writers, it means an automatic pattern of behavior that can be good or not so good when placing words on a page. For example— 

Procrastination is an undesirable habit. (The do it later syndrome.)

Writing every day is a good habit. (Word counts or pages are achieved.)

When it comes to procrastination, it's considered a deliberate act of finding or creating an excuse not to write.

Then there is Writer's Block. It comes in the form of the fear of a blank page or the fear of deadlines, either ones self-imposed or a publication's. Writer's Block can also be the fear of failure, telling one's self that the writing isn't good enough or perfect enough for publication so why complete a novel or submit something for publication?

And yet, cultivating the good habit of writing every day can be extremely difficult. Life intrudes— Jobs. Family. Kids. Pets. Holidays. Hobbies. Emergencies. Weather disasters—and a host of other issues take their toll on one's desire and ability to write that poem, that memoir, that essay, that short story, that novel, or that saga.

No one answer fits all situations.

Maybe it's all a matter of desire. As Brihadaranyaka Upanishad said, As your desire is, so is your will. So— 

What do you desire to achieve as a writer? 

Do you have the willpower to form good habits that will get you to that goal? 

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2025 - May - Prologues

 

This month's quote comes from Elmore Leonard— 

        Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. 

A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

Did you know there are reasons why few how-to-write books mention prologues, why editors don't like them, and why readers skip over them? 

I'll bet when you look at a book for the first time, and it has a prologue, you flip over the prologue to get to the good stuff of the first word of the first line of the first chapter. Like you, readers want to meet an interesting character in an interesting situation.

And basically, prologues are ineffective because:  

A) the information in that prologue initially came to the writer as a message in disguise from the writer's imagination. That message was meant strictly for the writer to get the story underway. Often such information is about the story world, back history of a character, an important legend or curse, etc. 

B) again, the reader (and many editors) skip over a prologue to get to the good stuff which is Chapter 1, the beginning of the story and the introduction of the problem and the protagonist.

C) the information in a prologue often misleads the reader as to who the important characters are or what the actual theme or conflict of the story is.

D) having a prologue means extra work to create two effective hook openings, one for the prologue and one for the first chapter.

This will sound harsh, but— 

If anything in the prologue

is repeated somewhere in the story itself, 

ax that prologue. 

But you're thinking— What about the other stuff in the prologue that isn't repeated in the story, doesn't that mean the prologue stays?

Sorry.

No.

What's needed are better writing and storytelling skills coupled with good craft techniques and devices so the prologue information can be incorporated, that is, woven into the story.

After all, isn't the writer's goal to keep a reader enthralled and reading on?

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2025 April - Got Conflict?

 

The essence of story is conflict. — Donald Maass 

April 1st is April Fool's Day, but there is no fooling around when it comes to a story's conflict. 

Take the two ducklings above—two potential characters—but is there a story to be had? Technically, not yet because nothing substantial is happening between them or to them. 

Conflict is the missing ingredient in a character sketch and in a vignette (a slice of life). After all, a story is about an interesting protagonist (the central character) in an interesting setting, who is confronting or about to confront an interesting problem. That problem is the conflict.

There are three basic kinds of story conflict: mind-wrenching (psychological), heart-wrenching (emotional) or physically wrenching (physical danger). Conflicts range from the simple (like going on a job interview) to the complicated (like a gunfight at the OK Corral).

Take a moment now to look at the idea you're working on. What's the central conflict or the ultimate goal? Be honest. If what you've written is a character sketch or a vignette, consider what kind of conflict would turn the work into a story.

As to how much conflict should a writer put on the page or in a chapter, or in a book? At a Donald Maass workshop I attended a few years ago, Maass said there was no such a thing as too much conflict. I heartily agree.

Conflict is a problem to be solved. 

        Conflict is the essence of a story. 

        Conflict makes or breaks a tale.

Happy Easter, Happy Spring, Happy Writing!

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2025 March - A Writer Is . . .

 

What is a writer? 

Sol Stein defined a writer with just eight words. 

Over the years and in meeting writers from the novice to the award-winning, I've seen the proof of those eight words. And if I never publish or sell another work, I will still write because I cannot not write.

How about you?

Catherine E. McLean

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