Tag: writing

Workouts For Writers

Stefanie Snider

Brew coffee.
Hop from one leg to the other while waiting for percolation completion.
Open the cupboard. REAAACH. Grab the big mug, the one meant for soup.
Fill that bad boy up, and lift. Be careful, here, to put your back in to it. Full mugs are heavy.

Now to the stairs! (don’t forget to count the nine steps from the kitchen through the living room)
And climb. And climb. Clench those buttocks! And climb. Where the hell did all these stairs come from? Whose idea was it to buy a house with a million stairs?!

And dowwwwwn the long hallway. And pullllll out your chair.
Shove the cat off. Shove the cat off. Shove the cat off.

Sit. Get back up for notebook. Sit. Get back up for sweater. Sit. Get back up for music.

Return. Shove the cat off.

Crack knuckles. All of them. Maybe go over them a second time, just in case.

Tense muscles, and PUSH thumb drive in. And PUSH. And PUSH. And LIFT laptop and realize you had it in upside down.

Set laptop down. Breathe. Shove the cat off your lap.

And LIFT coffee mug. And LIFT.

Type for exactly fifteen minutes. Realize you left some notes downstairs. Shove the cat off…

How Long Should Your Story Be?

Stefanie Snider

“One common question asked by many writers is: “How long should my story be?”

The simplest answer is: As long as it takes to tell the whole story.

However, there are certain word lengths that editors prefer to see when submitting work.”

Continue reading at FictionFactor.com. Even if you’re an indie writer, it’s a great idea to know how to classify your work.

No, You Can’t Borrow My Pen

Stefanie Snider

A writer needs a totem: a lucky charm that ensures the Muse keeps showing up. It’s like the athlete’s lucky socks, and I wouldn’t do without one. Mine? Pens. Getting the right one makes all the difference between free-flowing thought and maddening scratchiness. It’s imperative to never, ever be without a pen.

This pen costs $825.00.

I think I’ll stick with my Space Pen.

Write Your Words

Stefanie Snider

(This is mostly me trying to motivate myself. But if you need a good kick in the pants, feel free to join me.)

So you wanna be a full-time author? Wanna get paid to do this all day? Wanna work from home, with your cats and your coffeemaker?

You’ve done the planning. You know where you’re going, and how to get there. Now what’s the first step?

Write your words.

Tired? Too bad, write your words.
Cat threw up? Clean it up, then write your words.
Feeling uninspired? Start with something, anything, and write your words.
Other things to do? Self-doubt? Not enough time in the day? Worrying about whether this whole thing will even work out? Just plain don’t feel like it today?

Too bad, so sad, get off your lazy ass and write your fucking words.

You don’t get there by being lazy. You don’t get there by being hesitant.

You get there by working your ass off, sacrificing, and then working some more.

You can sleep later. Now it is time to WRITE YOUR WORDS.

How to Talk About Your Story Without Giving Details

Stefanie Snider

As you know, I’m working on a new project.
As you also know, I don’t talk about stories I’m working on.

Sometimes I want to talk about the work, especially when I’m happy with the way it’s falling together, but I loathe giving away details before the story’s basically finished. Instead, I have this bad habit of making really awkward metaphors, which probably don’t tell anyone why I’m so excited in the first place.

I was trying just now to tell my husband about the new book/stories/thingy that I’m working on, and I didn’t want to jinx myself by telling him what exactly it’s all about.

This is what happened:
“Okay, so there’s a really obvious…thing…that connects the stories. Like BAM! right in your face. Say it’s a bunch of stories about dogs. ‘Kay? Now, there’s also a more subtle theme; like, say the dogs are like metaphors for the soul or something. Whatever, just listen. Okay, so I just figured out how two of the stories connect, specifically…like, Lassie is the dog in the first story, and she has puppies, then in the second story WHAM! one of puppies is there! There’s like…layers.”

So to those of you who have been asking…there. That’s what the current project is about. Glad I could clear that up for you.

The Most Prolific Author You’ve Never Heard Of

Stefanie Snider

Henry Darger. Ever heard of him? I hadn’t either. I was browsing online and stumbled across his story. Immediately, I was in awe at the sheer dedication he showed as an author.

But you’ll never see his work in bookstores.

You’ll never see it, because his most famous epic, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion is 15,145 single-spaced pages long. Not only did this unassuming man (a janitor by day) manage to pen more words in one epic than many will during their entire lives, he also painted hundreds of pictures to accompany it, which went on in turn to influence other artists.

Oh, by the way…he then went on to write a sequel that exceeded 10,000 pages.

And then a semi-fictional autobiography topping out at 4878 pages.

A documentary about the man and his work, In the Realms of the Unreal, was released in 2004.

What have you done lately?

What I’m Writing These Days

Stefanie Snider

So, if you’ve followed the blog for any length, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted a new story in a while. (And by “a while”, it’s really not been that long, but I’m the type who has to be producing constantly so this is driving me nuts and oh my this is quite a run-on sentence.)

Anyway. You might not see any new shorts here for a bit. Why? Because I’m working on a new project, one that will hopefully straddle the line between short and novel length work. I’ve got this idea for shorts with a uniting theme that will go together to make a proper book-length…book.

Yeah. I promise it’ll be better written than this blog post.

Write the Words and Solve the Puzzle

Stefanie Snider

I don’t plot my stories. Not in any real sense; I find if I have the whole thing written down and planned from A to B to C, the story is robbed of its magic and it’s no longer fun.

Instead, I have a very vague idea of what I want the story to be about, some spark that’s going to serve to set it off. “Murder”. “Sociopath”. That kind of thing. Then I’ll decide what big event I want to have happen in the story (hint: people often die). Then I get to sit back and write the thing.

It’s an adventure, not knowing exactly where the story will go. I’ve heard it said by other writers and I can vouch for it myself: half the time I’m just as surprised as (I hope) the reader is. Things will turn at the last moment and suddenly it’s a whole new story. (For example, What’s Inside was going to be about a terrible little boy mutilating animals in his backyard. Then I thought, don’t many kids who torture animals grow up to be murderers? I skipped a step and BAM Cody kills his teacher. I had no idea that was going to happen when I sat down to write.)

The reason I’m talking about this today is that I’m stuck again. It doesn’t have the sense of frustration that often accompanies being stuck; instead I have a couple pieces that I like and I need to solve the puzzle of how they tie in to one another. It’s fun instead of frustrating, because once those pieces click I’ll be off in an exciting new direction.

So I’ll sit back and wait. I’ll trust in my brain, my Muse, wherever the hell these ideas come from, and know that the puzzle will fit together at some point.

If you happen to catch me smiling to myself today, that’s a pretty good sign I’ve figured it out.

Writer’s Clog

Stefanie Snider

I’ve been sitting here for hours, trying to write.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas. It’s that I have too many. I have a growing list of ideas that I’ve been toting around, and frankly I’m in love with them all. I have characters and plots climbing all over each other in my brain, and it’s like I’ve gone into creative overload and just shut down.

I can’t seem to focus on one single idea, so my brain has decided to strike and not create anything.

I’ve been staring at a blank screen since dinnertime, and all I’ve managed so far is six open tabs with snippets of six different stories.

The popular notion of writer’s block is that the writer is blank, unable to come up with anything to write. So what is it called when you have so many competing ideas that they get jammed on their way to your fingers? Writer’s clog?

I know, I should be thankful for the ideas I have. I am. But in its own way, writer’s clog is just as frustrating as writer’s block. I want to do everything, but instead I’m producing nothing.

Ever had this happen?

On Copyright and Concept

Stefanie Snider

So, yesterday I had a sudden flash of inspiration. A concept for a story that was so crisp and detailed and visual that I started to worry I’d seen it somewhere before.

Like, literally seen. Like maybe it was in a movie I’d watched and then forgotten.

I don’t talk about stories I’m working on, so no, I won’t be talking about the concept itself here. (Superstitious? Maybe. But I come from a home where putting shoes, even brand new ones, on a table is inviting misfortune and bad mojo to rain down upon you. Hi Mom!) Anyway, because I don’t talk about works in progress, that also means I can’t ask around to see if the concept seems familiar to anyone else. I Googled, which turned up nothing. I wracked my brain. I finally caved and reluctantly told my idea to C, something I very rarely do, and he assured me he’s never heard of it.

Still, the worry nags at me. It’s not that I think there’s anything new under the sun (hell, I even have a super-trendy zombie story under my belt). It’s just that the details of this concept feel reasonably fresh, and frankly I’d hate to find out later that someone beat me to it.

It’s the idea that writing a story about a hotel is fine, but writing about a haunted hotel where a snowed-in writer loses his mind has been done, and even barring legal issues, to write the same story would be stale and redundant.

I asked for advice in an online writing community and was reassured that I should write it anyway: that ideas can’t be copyrighted and that shy of actual plagiarism I should be safe from getting my ass sued off.

It’s a new feeling. I’ve never been so hesitant to write before, and it’s bumming me out.