Jenny the Pirate must cross a rickety bridge while on medication…

The hardest thing to deal with when writing is that you have to find your own way. Nobody else can do it for you. You can read about what other writers do, you can certainly be helped by others, but in the end only you will know if it worked. And the only way to know is to try and, most likely, fail.

I hear from professional writers that what works may also vary from work to work. So even if you do figure it out, the ground will change out from under you anyways. Enjoy!

In this way, writing reflects what I’ll call hard-core problem-solving. You may know them as brain teasers. To deal with problems such as cross a rickety bridge in 17 minutes or die, you need to find a way to frame a representation of problem components and relationships in your mind, and thence come up with ways of attacking a problem that you, as a problem-solver, feel most comfortable with. Not to mention that the actual solving of any single problem is unique to that problem, so you must be adaptable.

I’ll go further: writing is problem-solving, with the representation of a solution being the story. The problems posed are more poetic—less the mechanics of splitting sixpence amongst logical and untrustworthy pirates, and more detailing the tale of Jenny the Pirate and the Treasure Everyone Wants to Kill Her For—but they are at their heart, very hard-core problems. To make things more difficult, usually hard-core problem-solving deals with problems that have a “trick”, that once you know makes the solution fall into your hand. As far as I can tell, while this can happen with stories, it seems to take at least several tricks to untangle a story. And unlike manufactured problems, you can’t know that there is even a trick in the first place; the story may be unviable.

This comparison between writing and problem-solving, while mostly untrue, has helped me cope with my current difficulties in spinning a story-length yarn, or rather what appears to be a novella-length yarn. For instance, in hard-core problem-solving, it’s quite acceptable to come up with multiple failed approaches, only to return to the first one as being closer to a true solution, while incorporating the lessons of the others. It just takes a crazy long time compared to figuring out which of your meds is which without pill differentiation and is more complex to boot.

I wouldn’t call myself stupid for backtracking in a problem-solving situation. Why should I do so when I’m writing?

Turning On Keyboard Sounds on Mac OS X

I’m old enough to have typed on an electric typewriter. I used it to type up papers for high school; it was a used model, and I still remember the mechanical smell when it was turned on and purring. And of course, the sounds when I hit each key, hard, which had a lot of feedback. That was before I learned to touch-type. ((Even in college, I still used a word processor, i.e., a hardware word processor, not a computer until much later; my family was poor, and this was a splurge.))

I missed that sound for some reason, probably because my soft keyboards on my Transformer tablet make a typing sound in lieu of physical feedback. So, as I’m writing fiction, I sought a way to bring back that typing sound.

Incidentally, the method of bringing it back makes using the delete key for more than a couple letters very slow and annoying, which is turning my writing thoughtful. This is either a good or a bad thing, but at least it’s different enough that I may find it useful for a change of pace.

This apparently only works in Mac OS X, Panther and up.

• Step 1: Turn on “Play user interface sounds” in System Preferences, under Sound -> Sound Effects.

• Step 2: Turn on “Slow Keys” under Universal Access -> Keyboard, turn on “Use click key sounds”, and move the acceptance delay slider all the way towards the “Short” end. Unless, of course, you’d like to play around with slow keys to see what it does.

• Step 3: Type until the sounds are maddening again, and then turn off Slow Keys in the same place.

It’s quite easier to type on most keyboards these days than it was on the old typewriter, which really developed your finger muscles, even electronic ones.

And now I’m going to go type stuff for a while longer. Tappity, tappity, tappity.

Retyping the Speckled Band, Part 6: Action, Climax, and Epilogue

Originally published April 3, 2010.

Previously we discussed how Doyle deals with suspense and the rising of stakes.

This time we’ll look at his action sequences. In large part, however, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” is one of the quieter, arguably saner stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon. But you know, it has a cheetah and a baboon in it.

Let’s roll.

Retyping the Speckled Band, Part 5: Suspense is a Good Thing

Originally posted April 3, 2010. Yes, that’s quite the time skip.

Previously we looked at how Doyle dealt with description as we began to descend into the Muddled Middle that plagues so many works, including published ones.

Today we’ll deal with the aspect of suspense.

Man, it’s been over a year since I wrote the previous part of this series. Let’s hope I’ve actually scraped together enough experience to deal with this bit….

Retyping the Speckled Band, Part 4: Description with Purpose

Originally published May 6, 2008.

Previously we looked at how Doyle revealed character depth in the flow of the story, rather than breaking flow to drop in character information.

Today, we’ll look at Doyle’s skills at description, atmosphere, and suspense as we lead into that part of any story, so maddening to many a writer: the middle.

Let us type.

Retyping the Speckled Band, Part 3: Revealing Depth

Originally published January 31, 2008.

Last time, we looked at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s techniques of:

• the information dump as extended inner story; and
• pacing between inner and outer story.

Today, we’re going to look at Doyle’s adeptness at revealing character depth through multiple narrative means.

Let us type.

Retyping the Speckled Band, Part 2: Information Dumps

Originally posted January 16, 2008.

Last time, we looked at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s techniques of:

• opening the story;
• non-direct dialog;
• laser-focused description;
• establishment of character.

Today we’re going to look at how Doyle attacks one of the most difficult methods for any fiction writer: the information dump.

Let us type.

Retyping the Speckled Band, Part 1: Beginning with Style

Originally posted January 14, 2008. My thoughts these days are that writing is not a physical skill, but through this exercise (and the painting one, for that matter) you naturally study in more depth what’s going on. The mystery serial’s dead and off the net, and maybe it’ll stay that way.

When I first started writing fiction again in the middle of 2007, after a hiatus of over a decade, I realized that I had lost the cadence and flow of writing a story. Story writing is inherently an entirely different process from that of non-fiction. As a result, I had a tendency to stall, and stall badly.The damage was spectacularly bad on a couple of short mystery stories I wrote. I was filled with sadness and despair, but I kept going ’cause I’m like that.

One day, I stumbled across the thread of a wise writer, by the name of James D. McDonald, over at AbsoluteWrite called Learn Writing with Uncle Jim. One of his suggestions is to retype the first chapter of a novel:

Now, retype the first chapter. Do this with your writer’s eye, not your reader’s eye. Think about the lengths of the sentences, the lengths of the paragraphs, the sounds of the words. Think about the order of the scenes. Notice the dialog. How are the dialog tags rendered? Where is the point of view?

The point of this exercise is this: Have you ever gone to an art museum and seen the art students sitting there with their easels and oils, copying the great masters? The point isn’t to turn them into plagairists, or to make them expert forgers. The point is to get the feeling into their hands and arms of how to make the brush strokes that create a particular illusion on canvas. Writing is no less a physical skill than painting.

I thought that was pretty crazy, and didn’t try it at first.

One day I decided, what the heck.

Well, I don’t think it’s crazy anymore.

So let me take you on my journey of retyping “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”.

I Know Nothing: Why I Call It That

Nick Mamatas, a wise man, has written of the tiresome advice that writers write for other writers. I am guilty of, in the distant past, writing about these. That’s why I’ve backed off nowadays, declared that I Know Nothing, and am now writing about what I actually have experienced as a writer (a really young writer) or have analyzed through other people’s works.

The “Show Don’t Tell” item is particularly amusing to me, as the authors of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers had to, in their second edition, go back over when to show and when to tell, because people took their initial advice way too strictly. People who claim “show don’t tell” as a strict principle do worse than my own outing in 2008 exploring description and show/tell in a Sherlock Holmes story. And as I know nothing (I was, after all, relying on my own analysis of a story written by someone better than me), while they know things, that’s really saying something.

I’m guessing if a writer has something to say about writing, they should illustrate the point rather than throwing it out there with little context. And through illustrating the point, they can, I kinda hope, figure out whether it applies personally or globally, or whether the point they’re trying to make is actually another point. For instance, “write every day” is actually “practice a lot even when you don’t feel like it”. The terms of practicing are up to the individual temperament and skills of a writer. “Revise, revise, revise” is actually “if your internal and/or external feedback says that you suck, then suck it up and revise, or throw it out and do something else.”

It’s just easier to wrap everything in soundbites, isn’t it, especially the more complex and nuanced something is, and writing is complex and nuanced. I’ve never thought of writing as a “spooky art” before but that particular sound bite fits.

I really… really quite like, possibly to unwise degrees, the admonition that “aiming for the top” isn’t the key to happiness as a writer. You’re better off aiming for what you want. This and other points remind me of Keffy’s post about targeting specific markets rather than aiming at what is likely to be rejection. Working out what you really want is harder. For instance, I have a strong desire for my work to outlast my life because I will leave no descendents on this earth except for the imaginary ones, and traditional publishing is not necessarily compatible with this ideal.

As for most redundant aphorism, “Don’t Give Up” gets my vote. Because the people who won’t give up pretty much won’t give up, because we are insane, and you can’t smack sense into insanity. I should know. I came back to writing even though it eats into my free time outside of a day job that makes me money.

Some young writer somewhere will say, “But then what can I give advice on?”

And I guess the only answer is to admit you know nothing and go on from there.

I Know Nothing: Five Things I Do Know

I know I need to practice. There’s a reason I do the Terrible Minds challenges, but I also need to just start writing short stories (longer than the typical 1000-word flash), and I also need to learn the pace of the longer novella, and the endurance of the even longer novel. Lots of this stuff will be crap, but some of it will be crap with potential. That said….

I know I need to rewrite. I’m not one of those writers who can get something off pitch-perfect unless it’s less than 1000 words (and sometimes not even that). I think there are, actually, very few of those. I’ve seen too many people apparently piss away their early first drafts in onslaughts on agents and editors.

I know that I need to read. That the writer who stops reading, and reading widely, loses something valuable. That includes non-fiction and reading outside of the genres I normally write in. ((If I could be said to have a habit at this point.)) Books about writing go in the next point, actually…

I know that I need to learn from other writers. I said, a long time ago, that writing is an apprenticeship art. Whether it’s through workshops (unlikely!) or groups (unlikely!) or hard study on my own (already doing) and reading other writers’ screeds about writing (and taking the advice with a moderate amount of salt)… there’s a whole lot of experience out there to learn from, and I’d be foolish not to take advantage of it. And finally:

I know that publishing is not the end. Whether I get published professionally or if I publish myself, it’s not the pinnacle of my writing track. I need to keep growing, to go beyond, to not rest on my laurels.