Confessions of a Premise Writer

by Rob Hines

That’s me. I’m a Premise Writer.

It sounds like a real job, doesn't it? Premise Writer. It almost sounds like you could make money doing that.

Nope. Not even remotely.

Trust me. Being broke does NOT look this good.

Premise writing is what I've been doing since I decided to start writing fiction, and I've only recently come to grips with this label. It’s a sickness, kind of like rabies, I think. You can cure it, but it takes some gnarly treatment and you should probably avoid people for a month or so.

Are you a premise writer? Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you have a billion ideas written in piles of spiral notebooks and/or an incredibly cluttered note-taking app on your phone?
2. Have you written any more than about a page or two of any one idea?
3. Do you waste time at work organizing your ideas in fun Google Drive folders instead of actually turning them into thought-out stories?
4. When you do write a story, do you tend to jump right to the “million dollar idea” and linger there for a while before jumping right to the end?
5. Have you had a story about a problem gambler who acquires a golden touch rejected because an editor feels “it all comes too easily” meaning the premise happens with no real conflict or consequences?

Okay, that last one is pretty much exclusive to me, but if you feel any sympathy pains for the other four, you may be a Premise Writer too. Hope is not lost, though. You and I can break from a fate of being buried in an avalanche of hoarded notebooks full of neglected concepts. The key is (cue dramatic music) OUTLINING!

Yep, there they go. The artists are leaving now. The ones who want their writing to be an expression of their inner beings have given up on me.

Okay, the rest of you? You’re professional writers. You’re the ones who know you have to plan a project to achieve consistent results (read: get paid to write)

I’m not dissing anyone who doesn't plan their writing. Hell, until about a week or two ago, I WAS one of those people. At least, I was that way in my fiction writing. My revelation came when I realized that I’m more than just a fiction writer. I’m a corporate writer too. I write copy for advertising, corporate blog articles, web copy, and even a corporate comic book! And you wanna hear a secret? I plan each of those projects before I write them. Why? Because I like to eat horrible food and my paycheck allows me to continue buying said horrible food. If I'm that committed to horrible food, why shouldn't I be just as committed to fulfilling my writing dream?

My cubicle-mate at the above-referenced day job is also a writer and he has published two non-fiction books (if you’re a baseball fan, you can buy one of them here). He’s a relentless planner when he writes and I guess I thought there were different rules for non-fiction. There aren't. Well, except for the whole factual thing.

No matter what you write, the best way to make writing more efficient and less torturous is to effectively outline your plot and your characters. I’m not talking about the high school research paper method with Roman numerals and A’s and B’s and all that. All I’m suggesting is you know what’s going to happen from start to finish as well as the major events in between. It may be a bulleted list. It may be a detailed list of acts and scenes. It may even be a mind map that starts with a central theme and bursts in all different directions. The key is putting your whole story on the page before you try to write 100,000 words around it.

I’m not saying it’s for everyone. I know many great writers just sit and write. Good for them. I’m a Premise Writer. If I do that, I will do a fantastic job of writing down a plot with terribly boring characters and little to no exposition or resolution. In other words, I will suck.

So now I’m outlining. I’m giving myself a chance to hear the story from start to finish and understand my characters so I have a blueprint to guide my actual writing. I’m giving myself a chance to not suck.

Words to live (and write) by

Well, at least not suck as much.

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A day in the life of a writer

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by Kelly DeBie

This month, we are supposed to be sharing our writing routines and habits with you all.  As a blogger with four kids, I absolutely have to have structure to my day in order to get anything done, let alone sit down and have uninterrupted time to write.

As I write this now, I am sitting alone in the living room after having sent off my youngest daughter to summer school. All the rest of the kids are still asleep, as has become the norm around here this summer. They sleep in, I peck away at the keyboard. It works, and I'm not asking any questions right now.

I thought I might share with you today how being a writer works, at least in my universe, on any given day. I'll have to warn you though, I very much have adult ADD and get distracted easily. Try and keep up.

3:30 a.m. - Wake up. Stare at the ceiling for a good long time. Struggle to go back to sleep because mind is racing so much. Tell self that you will write down that wicked plot summary that you just dreamt of when you get up in the morning. Yawn. 

4:30 a.m. - Repeat. Forget whatever awesome story you thought up an hour ago.

6:45 a.m. - Alarm goes off, hit snooze button every five minutes for at least half an hour.

7:15 a.m. - Hook up coffee IV.  Do dishes. Check dryer. Make mental note of the day of the week, what you have to write about, and whether anything is started yet.

Good morning, beautiful.

7:45 a.m. - Feed small humans, attend to their needs, shuttle them to and fro. Refill coffee.

9:30 a.m. - Take a deep breath and open the laptop. Check Facebook page, write some witty status update, send daily birthday wishes, open Blogger, check for comments, start new post. Stare at blank screen. Refill coffee.

10:00 a.m. - Depending on which day of the week it is, I'm either researching things, writing, ranting, creating a million hyperlinks or still staring at a blank screen. Tuesday is my designated rant day, appropriately titled Things That Piss Me Off Tuesday. Thursday is Nerdsday, where I write about something geeky I love. Fridays are for fiction when that group is going, which is on a summer sabbatical right now. I intended to run my Wonder(ful) Women series on Fridays instead, but got distracted by something shiny last week, so it ran Monday instead. 

10:30 a.m. - peck, peck, peck, peck. Finish pot of cold coffee. Think of something totally unrelated, but profound to write about later, add that to running topic list. Start three different posts before finishing the one you are supposed to be writing. Add a few paragraphs to current book chapter.

11:00 a.m. - Post for the day is usually published by now unless something else came up in the meantime. Which it usually does. Find news articles to write about, add to running topic list. Squirrel!

11:30 a.m. - Schedule status updates on Facebook for the rest of the day, share post, log off. Remember something, log back on. Shiny! Log off. See something on news, text it to self.

12:00 p.m. - Feed small humans, attend to needs, shuttle to and fro. Witness something insane, write about it on napkin in car.

1:00 p.m. - Read for an hour with the kids. Right now, we are doing a 12 week summer reading challenge, where we read the book first, then watch the movie version when we are done. This week, we are on To Kill A Mockingbird. Geek out for a while over reading favorite book, talk about notions of justice and inequality with oldest child who's eyes start to glaze over eventually. 

2:00 p.m. - Sit on youngest until he naps. (not literally, of course) Enjoy the fact that he still snuggles up in lap and falls asleep there, make sure phone is within arms reach. Check for comments, write witty status update, find news story, add it to running topic list. How did writers function before mobile apps? I'm imagining lots of napkins.

4:00 p.m. - Watch news. Yell and throw things. Scribble notes down on whatever paper is nearby with whatever writing instrument is available. It's usually an envelope and a crayon, by the way, and almost always gets lost, spilled on or thrown away before you can get back to it.

6:00 p.m. - Make dinner, do laundry, do dishes, wrangle small humans, think of some parenting issue to write about, forget it immediately, yell randomly out the window about putting pants on to at least one child.

7:00 p.m. - Sit on porch and read while kids play outside. Congratulate self on surviving another day of motherhood. Think of something witty to say, realize phone battery is dead. Forget whatever it was.

9:30 p.m. - Kids to bed. Check for comments. Get into some argument with a troll online. Give up and walk away. Add "troll fighting" to running topic list.

10:30 p.m. - Get ready for bed. Think of something great to write about. Send self a text or email.

11:54 p.m. - Actually fall asleep. Dream of plot line that you'll forget in a few hours. Repeat.

Sounds pretty glamorous, right?

Do it yourself, for yourself

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By Clark Brooks

I published a book last week. What's that? Why, thank you! Yes, I'm very pleased. It's on sale at Amazon.com and at the on-line store at my personal web site among other places. Again, thank you very much. What's that? Oh, I decided to go the self-publishing route. Hey wait! Where are you going?

Are you one of those people who still attaches a stigma to self-published books? Aw, come on, don't be that way. Listen, I know there are stereotypes out there:

• Self-published authors are lazy: They lack the ambition necessary to get their works published "legitimately"
• Self-published books are vanity projects: Some authors just want to be able to see their name on the cover of a book.
• Self-published books aren't good: A self-published book was probably rejected several times by "real" publishers, because it didn't stand up to standard quality control processes like editing or proof-reading and/or it just sucks.

As is the case with all stereotypes, there's some truth there. However, I can assure you, at least in my case, my book was thoroughly scrutinized by professionals (they cashed their checks, that's for sure) for quality control purposes. Whether it's any good or not is for the reader to determine, but it went through extensive edits. Vanity? Not to brag (honestly), but between my blog, my sportswriting and various other published works, the novelty of seeing my name on something has pretty much worn off. Okay, it's still a thrill to see it on the cover of my book, but that's not the reason I did it. And as far as being lazy... well, all right, I'll cop to that, to a degree. I simply didn't want to go through the whole query letter-rejection-find an agent-more letters-more rejections procedure. Not because I have thin skin and fear of rejection but because that stuff just doesn't interest me. I don't care about it. Writing query letters takes time away from writing content and days are too short as it is. I didn't want to do it so I didn't do it. Just like so many writers conferences and workshops that focus on How To Get Published (ie: navigating the quirks and perils of an archaic system designed to stack the the odds heavily against you even if you do everything exactly correct) instead of How To Write More Gooder, it's a waste of time.

Personally, I wanted to put my material into a traditional format (a book) that I could put in people's hands. I wanted to work with people (editors, illustrators, etc.) with whom I wanted to work. I wanted complete control over what the final product would look like. I wanted to retain full ownership of every piece of it. I wanted to be actively involved in the marketing and distribution of it, on schedules set by me. I wanted all of that and very little of it would be afforded to me by submitting to the traditional publishing process. In exchange, I might have gotten my book on the shelves at Barnes and Noble for a year, maybe. For me, that trade off wasn't good enough.

Someone who gets their hands on a lump of clay is a sculptor. Someone who puts paint on canvas is a painter. Someone who can get sounds out of a guitar or a piano is a musician. Yet when it comes to writing, someone who doesn't follow the one long-established path from point A to point B doesn't deserve to be considered a legitimate author? That's nonsense, but writing is the only creative discipline where that provincial mindset still holds sway. One need look no further than the crumbling remains of the music industry to see that not only is it not necessary, it's probably not even sustainable.

The gatekeepers of the traditional publishing process still serve a purpose for those who feel it suits them, authors and readers, and that's fine for them. But if you think there's still just one way to get things done, you're simply not paying attention. After all, why should anyone wait to be let in through a gate when there are so few walls to keep them out?

Opening up to criticism

by Clark Brooks

I get critics. I understand them. I appreciate that they have an important role to play. People are busy, money and time are scarce. Recommendations, pro or con, can be invaluable to readers. I also know there's a very fine line between critics and trolls, especially now when anybody with an internet connection can cast themselves as a person of influence. This little tidbit from an interview Prince did with Rolling Stone way back in 1985 has always stuck with me...

"One time early in my career, I got into a fight with a New York writer, this real skinny cat, a real sidewinder. He said, 'I'll tell you a secret, Prince. Writers write for other writers, and a lot of time it's more fun to be nasty.' I just looked at him. But when I really thought about it and put myself in his shoes, I realized that's what he had to do. I could see his point. They can do whatever they want." 

My first book isn't published yet so I haven't had a real personal stake in the review process yet. I'm not looking forward to it either. Not because I have thin skin and I dread the idea of people I don't know judging me and saying mean things about my work (that doesn't mean that I'm rough, tough and immune to that kind of thing; I have skin like toilet tissue and I'm already planning on spending a great deal of time in the fetal position in a darkened room once the critics finally get hold of the stupid thing) but because it's one of those things that's part of the deal and everybody has to go through it. I hate that kind of crap, especially the politics of it. All that stuff that isn't actual writing but necessary components of the writing "biz" seem so time consuming and counter-productive in that it has nothing to do with The Creative Process (I put that in caps in case it wasn't clear that I'm an artiste who is in love with the smell of his own farts). All the business parts of this business bore, confuse, frustrate and/or intimidate me. I know I have to sit down and grow up soon, though. A big part of that is embracing critics and reviews. That means taking time to really figure out all the nuances of Good Reads and Amazon and make connections with people whose reviews could be beneficial to me. All of that is going to be time not spent writing and creating product. "Tough luck, Suzie", you're saying (which isn't very nice and you haven't even read my book yet). "It's something every author goes through. Put on a helmet and shut up." And of course, you're right.

That doesn't mean I'm looking forward to it, though.

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When all the critics love you

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"You liked my mermaid
story! You really liked it!"

By Clark Brooks

Hey writers, let's talk honestly about a relatively unattractive trait that many (most? possibly) of us share: our insecurity. Specifically, our desire (need? probably) to be loved. Whether it's a dominant part of our personal make-up or just a small facet, many of us do this writing thing so we can show off to others who will respond by telling us how wonderful we are.
Don't worry, this is not an article about treating that psychosis. What would be the fun in that? Our idiosyncrasies are a significant part of our charm! Look how interesting we are! Weeee! What I'm saying is that writing in order to elicit the positive feedback that is lacking in other areas of our lives is a perfectly healthy activity. Unless it isn't. I'm no doctor. What do I know? It just seems to me that anything that motivates you to create can never be dismissed as being all bad, so there's that.
But what happens when we get that love in bigger doses than we anticipated and from sources we never expected to hear from? I mean CRITICS! What happens when these anonymous, high-minded, judgmental people (who are extremely charming, highly intelligent and impeccably well-groomed, I must say) come out of nowhere and bestow praise on our work? Pretty great, right? Sure! Soak it up and enjoy it. Just be aware that good reviews can be as potentially damaging as bad ones, just in different ways. Some things to keep in mind when dealing with critics who praise you...

• Appreciate it! - Don't be suspicious or incredulous. Somebody liked your work and took time to say so. That means something! Let that give you a warm fuzzy or two. But...
• Don't overly appreciate it - The absolute rule you must follow when it comes to criticism is that you're not as bad as they might say and you're also not as good as they might say. Sure, you can be proud of a good review. Print it out, frame it and hang it on your wall. Just don't make the mistake of thinking they're telling you that you can't do better. You can always do better. Remember, there is no middle ground. You're either improving or regressing. Good reviews can motivate you and tell you that you're on the right path. They can't tell you that you've arrived. The same way you shouldn't let a bad review send you into a spiral of despair, you need to be careful that a good one doesn't give you an inflated sense of satisfaction.
• Don't let it alter your focus - Let's say you wrote a story about mermaids. Your next project is a Civil War epic. The mermaid story gets a rave review! Do you abandon the Civil War project and devote yourself to writing exclusively about mermaids? Well, you could. The positive review indicates that you've done something right. You might be on to something and who's to say that mermaids don't replace vampires as The Next Big Thing? That's not necessarily wrong... unless your passion is the Civil War and you really couldn't care less about writing about mermaids. Sure, I suppose you could spend the rest of your days churning out mermaid fiction. You might even make money doing that. I'm willing to bet that you won't be that happy. Further, I'm willing to bet that a lack of passion about your subject means the writing won't be all that great. Not as good as it could be if you were writing about the Battle of Fort Sumter, anyway.
• The critics DON'T love you - Don't take that personally. The next thing you write could cause the very same critics to rip you to shreds. That doesn't mean they hate you. They're just doing their jobs. What you wrote this time caught their attention and they enjoyed it enough to give it some acclaim, but they don't love you. It's nice, but it isn't love in any way, shape or measure. The insecure, needy part of us probably doesn't like that but needs to know it. That's just the way it is. 

Love in the Time of Self-Publishing

By Rob Hines

Oh, it’s so easy now.

No, not love. That’s never easy, and anyone who says otherwise is a filthy liar.

What’s easy is putting your written work in front of the entire world’s eyeballs in seconds. Before you can say “slander suit,” you can publish to your blog, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and dozens of other social media sites. That means everyone you know, everyone THEY know, and millions of people you don’t know can read your innermost secrets.

Scary, huh?

Add the complication of trying to express those innermost secrets while not letting your loved ones know they’re the subject of your work, and this literary instant-gratification can be downright terrifying.

How many times have you written something you think is brilliant, possibly the greatest story ever in the history of stories, but instantly close the file and drag it into your “Not Ready” folder because “What if my girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/mother/father/second cousin twice removed reads this?  They’ll know it’s about them!”

Been there, archived that.

So what is a writer to do?

Oh, you actually want some answers? Fine, let’s see what I can come up with.

1.       Be Fearless

Don’t worry, I’m not just preaching “truth in art” and telling you to be absolutely transparent in your writing. Once you’re ridiculously rich and can afford to buy friends, you can try this, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

However, I don’t believe in simply avoiding the opportunity to write about your real-life issues. Previously on PPM, you may have read a fantastic article about putting your qualms and quandaries to work for you, and I totally endorse this concept. You can take a much deeper and more engaging approach when writing about your own problems, so don’t miss the opportunity to add this extra dynamic of honesty to your work. Just...

2.       Be Smart

Come on, you’re an f-ing writer! You make up stories for a living, so find a way to talk about real stuff in a creative--and covert--way. Have a horrible boss and need to vent through your story? Go ahead and give the antagonist some of his or her qualities, but be smart enough not to use his or her real name or any variation of it. If your horrible boss is Andy, you’re not fooling him or your nosy co-workers by calling your villain Randy.

The same goes for true-life situations. If you’re stressed about a holiday argument you had with the family, you may not want to write a scathing short about a familial flare-up over Christmas dinner. Switch it up. Write a medieval farce about a battle between villagers that takes place during a solar eclipse.

As long as you creatively disguise the actual inspirations for the people and events in your work, you can still have the cathartic release that makes writing so thrilling.

3.       Be Careful

No one says you have to send everything you write to everyone you know, and if you’re truly worried about certain people seeing what you've written, pick your placement carefully. You don’t have to link a liberal-leaning piece to Facebook if your conservative “friends” would take issue with it, and vice versa. Sure, you should be proud of everything you do, and we all have freedom of speech, but we’re not free of the social consequences of what we write.

That brings me to the most important point of this piece.

4.       Be Honest

To paraphrase a great poet of the 90’s “If they were angry, you don’t need them, because they’re not good friends.”

Will Smith, you truly are the Prince of Freshness.

As a writer, you’ll ruffle some feathers. You’ll write something that pisses somebody off, even if you didn't mean to. That’s part of the job. You just have to be able to stand behind what you write and let your loved ones decide if they can handle that.

Like I said, love’s not easy, and when we decided to take the writer’s path, we added about ten levels of difficulty. The question is whether the joy of sharing a fulfilled life with our close friends and family is worth the pain we’ll inevitably endure along the way.

I think it is.

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February - Self Love Means Kicking Yourself Out

By Molly Field

The Peevish Penman prompt for February (really? I'm so sorry about all that alliteration -- I'm slaying myself over here ... ahhh, someone give me some air) is revolving  around:

Love. 

Come back!

I have chocolate!

I lied.


I ate it. It was good. Sorry. Here's the wrapper. Ghardelli.

Moving on, nothing to see here. Oh go on! What I just wrote above does NOT remind you of "This Is Just To Say" by William Carlos Williams about the plums. That was a love note.  

♥ ♥ ♥

We are writing about Love and how we create and write in the face of it... whether that face be a marriage, a new relationship, or with our loved ones around.

Because I am elegant weird, I am going to write about it today in terms of how we show ourselves and our writing love in one simple step: break up with yourself. Show yourself the door and don't come back until you've had time to think about what this relationship with your book or your writing or your blog or your art means to you! You better learn something about how you've been treating that book, art, blog or writing. And when you're ready, show yourself.

And bring chocolate. 

♥ ♥ ♥

This will all make sense shortly, but in the meantime, indulge me as I provide the backstory: so my household has seen its share of airborne illnesses the last few weeks. I will spare you the amoebic details, but the fact of the matter is that since Christmas, I've not spent one week at home without one of my three sons home sick with me or home sick on his own. What this has done for my social life: you don'twannaknow. I've had the frequent displeasure of canceling a lunch four weeks in a row. With the same person. Yes, we're still friends.

I'm back to feeling 100% now, so please stay the hell away from me.

Don't worry, I'll get back to love. Gimme a minute. 

I had an epiphany whilst in the throes of a bout and while it might seem rather pedestrian, it can't be ignored: life is for living and for me (and maybe you?) to be a successful (whatever that means -- it's all subjective, so play nice) writer requires we get the hell out. Ironically, I say all this at risk of sounding myopic.

Surely observations and insights from disabled or impaired people are extremely valuable, but for the overwhelming majority of the able-bodied, we must kick ourselves out of our relationships and dependencies with the everyday and kick up the dust in our own lives, and not let that door hit us on our way out if we are truly going to see results.

We must unfriend ourselves from Facebook, unfollow ourselves from Twitter and unwhatever ourselves from whatever other social media engine within which we frequently engage if we are to bring value to ourselves, our craft, and our readers.

I once challenged a writer to describe an approach to a barn door in 500 words. She couldn't. She did it in 300, which is good, because this writer has limitations when it comes to descriptions. Me? I love them, I get swept up in them and they are like poetry chocolate to me.

We must get out and step into the sunshine, squinting our eyes from its sobering glare in the dead of winter, bracing ourselves against the biting, life-affirming chill and wind which buffets our bodies and whips through our souls. We must take a walk to the pond near our house and when we arrive, we must take off our leather glove, the one with the cashmere liner and touch the massive alabaster rock; and run our chapped index finger along its veins of black coal and crushed quartz as our eyes follow the lines and then wander to the park bench with the flaking paint and rusty legs, barely making purchase of the nails and screws which fasten it to the concrete platform.

We must walk past the bakery with warm and salty aromas of fresh Italian bread, crusty and golden on the outside and downy soft on the inside, the air bubbles inviting our nubby and chilled hands to grab a chunk and devour it; when it's fresh-from-the-oven warm, it tastes better than with any amount of butter on it and the smell alone is an elixir to our souls.

We must pack up our cameras and make sure the batteries are ready. We must bundle up in our trusty pea coats to get into our old cars with seats of faded leather. Turn the key and wait for the engine to start, but turn off the blowers with their frigid air because the crank case isn't warm yet.

We must drive to the old weatherworn and abandoned barn in the countryside, listen to classic songs from Frank Sinatra or Doris Day on our way; keeping that timeless appeal so we transcend the moment in which we exist: 2013, to imagine the world we seek: 1958, so we can embody that lonely farm girl whose eyes linger a little too long on the moon and whose mind tickles the memories of her moments in that barn, with her beau now at bootcamp in Georgia.

We must go to fondue dinner with loved ones during "Restaurant Week," a local week-long program born from post-9/11 sadness and fearful diners when restaurants were shuttering hourly. We must laugh despite our reluctantly transplanted waiter named Nigel who was charming but inattentive. We must kindly ask his peers for water, use our debit cards to pay the check, and hesitantly walk to the car together, wondering what we will do next and then decide, as we approach the interstate sign, with Donna Summer playing in the background, chant, "Go north or go home!" take the onramp to the city, giggle at our spontaneity and feel like teenagers again for our collective recklessness. We must park the minivan, pretend it's one of our parents' car and venture out into the vibrant, windy and pulsing city, seeking tickets to a hockey game already in progress only to discover that once we pass the security check and the baggage search that that game is sold out. But we must decide together undaunted, to go to a bar around the corner, open a tab, have a beer and watch the game on plasmas strung along the walls. See the bartendress with four-inch hoop sparkly earrings scan her smartphone and watch the bar-back in the black longshoreman's knit cap restock the frosted pint glasses; his muscles stretch and contract beneath his t-shirt's rolled up sleeves. We must turn and have no choice but to watch an older man who confessed he was on painkillers and too much beer, dance with a sweet young thing fifteen years his junior, only to see him slow down a bit, get a little too dizzy and then see him maintain his dignity as he surrenders to his age and to the night as he zips up his hoody, walks up the steps and bids the bar goodnight.

We must do these things. We must get out of our own way, even in the face of love: lovers will understand when we need to do these things, to get away. If they are worth having around, they will be there when we get back.

The fact of the matter is that if I love myself, I need to break-up with myself and kick myself out of social media, and make myself take me out on a date, or for a drive, or for a walk, without the computer but only with my eyes and my memory. Same goes for my writing, my art. The only way to get anything gritty, good and new for my work and for my soul is to turn away from what I already know and look boldly into what I see out there.

Take a late-night romantic ride in a crowded car with some coeds here:
http://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/friday-fiction-6-the-car-ride-dream/

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