WRITER’S DROUGHT

 

I don’t get “writer’s block,” which in my not humble enough opinion is clinical depression as manifested in a writer. But I do have chapters of what I call “writer’s drought.”

 

Writer’s drought is when the sentences don’t flow. When the sentences are halting, the paragraphs come to a crawl, and the pages barely move. The joy of being “in the zone” is nowhere to be found.

 

What to do? I can only speak of what I do.

 

The first thing I do is believe. This will pass, and soon. That’s crucial.

And so, it does. Always. Faith is not just for the supranatural or accepting the word of God.

 

The second thing I do is look around and find a device. A device, in this case, is something that will intrigue and restart the flow of questions. It can be an object or a photograph. It can be a sentence. Once the questions begin to trickle in, the writing does as well.

 

Because, at the core, stories are asking and then answering questions.

On the plot level, the question is, “what’s next?”  

On the character’s arc, the question is, “Who or what is driving you?”

On the theme, the question is, “Why?”

 

A good device bubbles up questions. The questions are like dew drops, covering the parched surface of the writer’s drought’s shell. Before long, it’s raining.

DISTINCTIVE SPEECH PATTERNS

 

One of my first beta readers, way back when, suggested that my plotting was strong but that characters lacked distinctive speech patterns.

 

I so took this to heart that the result of my revision yielded awkward dialogue lines. I was even dinged on this in a Kirkus review. I continued this misguided effort in a subsequent manuscript only to be asked by my first agent to change (as in completely alter) the way one of my secondary characters’ speech represented on the page. This character may be speaking Gullah Geechee, but on the page, I better have her lines be standard English.

 

I have more writing experience now and have (thankfully) learned a few things. One of them is not to capture distinctive speech in any way that jumps off the page. Write-it-as-I-hear-it-in-my-head does the job. If I don’t hear a distinction, I don’t force any.

 

I think this excellent post brings up the question a writer would do well to ask themselves when considering distinctive speech. The gist of what we should ask ourselves is why we wish to highlight the distinction, and the how to do it will flow from that.

WORLDS GONE TO ETHER

 

A dear friend told me more than ten years ago that her physical bookshelves were emptying. For reasons of space saving, she had gone from squeezing in more volumes to replacing them with eBooks. She’s an avid reader, for whom books are not an occasional pastime or a distraction. Books are her passion.

 

 Mind you, she’s also a librarian.

 

The day a librarian is giving up her stacks of physical paper books is also the day our reality has moved to the ethernet.

 

That day is almost here.

 

Has your bank been imploring you to forgo paper statements? Have your utility companies stopped sending paper bills and even offered discounted bills if you go to “autopay?” Has your doctor been sending medical test orders to the lab virtually, no paper orders anywhere? Have your plane/train/bus tickets gone to an app on your phone with no paper backup needed?

 

You know what I’m saying.

It saves some trees. Hooray. It also saves space. It moves records of reality from our physical spaces to another realm, one that is microscopic by comparison.

 

This post from some months ago got me thinking about my post today. Even traditional publishers have realized the precious space of weatherized warehouses need not be, because POD books (Print On Demand) have become indistinguishable in quality and will do for those who like to hold a physical paper book. They print a physical book only after it’s ordered and paid for/sold.

 

Despite the title of this post, it is not about the afterlife. It is about the digital world replacing the physical in many spheres. This leaves more room for us, wretched creatures, while we’re still inhabiting the physical.