My Writerly Achilles Heel

My Facebook friend, Al Boudreau, posts daily questions to writers on Facebook. His question this morning was:






Writers/Authors: We all have strengths and weaknesses in our writing. What are you most deft at, in terms of winning readers over to make them fans? What are you striving to improve about your mad skills? 


Several authors have given their interesting, often self-deprecating answers. Reading them, it's good to know I'm not the only one out there. Here was my answer:


I think "voice" is my writing strength. My weakness is getting that shitty first draft on paper without being compulsive about getting every blasted sentence perfect. Most writers talk about over-editing their manuscripts. I over-edit my sentences.

I thought it was interesting that I had to think A LOT longer about my strengths than I did my weaknesses. Maybe that's because I'm experiencing one particular weakness full-on in the last few days. For over a week now, I have been stuck in the thick sludge of re-writing sentences over and over as I try to move forward with a story. I don't know if I should blame it on my obsessiveness with trying to get each sentence just right, or if I should blame it on my character's stubborn refusal to tell me her story.

In my Monday Mashup, I posted a link to an article by Jhumpa Lahiri called "My Life's Sentences." In the article, she states, "Constructing a sentence is the equivalent of taking a Polaroid snapshot: pressing the button, and watching something emerge." It is the same for me. I see mini stories within each sentence. Perhaps that's why I like to write haiku. (Click here to go to my haiku blog.)


I felt a little better after reading Ms. Lahiri's essay on her own struggle with sentences. She says:

My work accrues sentence by sentence. After an initial phase of sitting patiently, not so patiently, struggling to locate them, to pin them down, they begin arriving, fully formed in my brain. 

Still, it hasn't helped me to get more sentences down on paper. I suppose it's just one more aspect of waiting that tries the patience of a writer. Waiting for replies on queries. Waiting for a publisher or agent to call. Waiting for a character to tell her story. Waiting for a sentence to come.


So . . . back to Mr. Boudreau's question: What are your writerly strengths and weaknesses?

Morrill's Monday Morning Mashup - 3/19/12

MASH-UP

A creative combination

or mixing of content

from different sources.

Writers are often bombarded with information on what we should and shouldn't be doing in our writerly lives, especially with all of the turmoil in the publishing industry today. The posts I've listed this week reminded me that right and wrong is not black and white. It's a big, foggy gray area, and it varies for each individual.

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Jenna Blum writes "The Tortured Soul: Do You Need To Be One To Be A Writer?" in a post on Grub Street Daily. In this post, she muses about the caricature of the tortured soul, but the best part of the article is where she lists qualities you actually DO need to be a writer. http://grubdaily.org/?p=4944&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GrubStreetDaily+%28Grub+Street+Daily%29

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The post "How to Write Readable -- And Retweetable -- Tweets" by Dave Copeland on ReadWriteWeb.com includes some of the best advice I've seen on tweeting, including where to place your links within your tweet. Did you know it should not be placed at the end of your tweet? Read on! http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_write_readable_-_and_retweetable_-_tweets.php

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I love the New York Times article, "My Life's Sentences," by Jhumpa Lahiri. In this post, Lahiri discusses her love of sentences, both in reading and writing them, saying, "The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life." And though we're often taught that only after we complete our "shitty first draft" (Anne Lamott) should we then go through and perfect our sentences, Ms. Lahiri admits compulsion to analyze and perfect each sentence as she goes along. "All the revision I do — and this process begins immediately, accompanying the gestation — occurs on a sentence level." I felt better reading this article, because I admit, it's my natural way to write, also. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/my-lifes-sentences/?emc=eta1

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

Your assumptions are

your windows on the world.

Scrub them off every

once in a while,

or the light won't come in.

                            

                                         ~ Alan Alda