"Write what you know."

Heard it before? Most students get that message over and over again. But there's a lot of satisfaction in writing what you don't know. In fact, that's the basic idea behind many paying writing gigs. Newspaper reporters, for example, don't know everything about everything before they get started. They ask questions, get answers, and in the process, gather material they can use to write their articles.

When you open your mind to writing about subjects you're not familiar with, you can write about anything. There are no limits, and that's exciting. There is, however, one major hurdle to overcome. That would be your ignorance about the subject matter you plan to tackle. How, for example, can you write a story about a girl living on a horse farm if you've lived your whole life in the city or suburbs?

The answer is simple: research. 

Once you know what you want to write about, no matter how little you know about it, you can find out more. There are many ways to approach your research. In the case of the horse farm story, you could actually visit a horse farm to get some details. You could also interview a horse owner, read about horses and their care, attend horse shows, watch youtube videos of equestrian events, and the list goes on wherever your imagination might take you. 

It doesn't matter if you start writing the day you start researching or when you decide you're done. (Some writers get really caught up in research - it's fun to learn about something that interests you!) The point is, once you start, you'll know more about your subject than you did the day before. That knowledge allows you to write about it. 

So in the end, maybe once you do some research, you're writing what you know after all! 

Got your own ideas about how to research writing topics? Please share!

Writing Dialogue

Last weekend, I visited my sister-in-law and brother-in-law who have an idea for a screenplay. Or possibly a stage play. When they said writing dialogue was the hard part (compared to developing the plot), I said I thought writing dialogue was much easier. Then, of course, they asked me how I do it. I had to think for a minute, since for some reason I never think of myself as an expert on anything. But then I realized I really do have some tips and ideas about this topic.

1. Let characters talk about themselves. This exercise can help you get to know them. The better you know them, the easier it is to understand how they speak and what they want to say.

2. Imagine characters as people you know. Maybe you've already based your characters on certain friends and family members with colorful personalities. As you're writing, it can help to simply imagine what the real people you know would say in your invented situations.

3. Write tons more dialogue than you need. Allow characters to go off on tangents and say whatever they want to say. You can edit down later to make sure the dialogue moves the plot along and actually belongs in your story.

4. Read dialogue out loud. That way, you can hear whether it flows and sounds real. (Actually, I'd say reading anything you write out loud is a good idea.)

5. Eavesdrop! Listen to people around you having interesting conversations. If you want to get really sneaky, write down what they're saying. When you read it over, you'll see how the interesting parts of a real conversation are often buried among asides and interruptions. Those are the parts that make dialogue sound real, but they can also be distracting if you don't do a bit of editing when you write.

So those are my tips and techniques for writing dialogue. Do you have tips of your own? Please share in the comments - I'd love to hear your ideas!

A Lesson From Party of Five

Remember that show Party of Five? Oh, my God - that was such a good show! Remember the one where Claudia gave up playing violin? Remember when Charlie wrecked his relationship with Kirsten? Didn't he leave her at the altar? I couldn't believe that!

But I digress.

The reason I'm bringing up this show in the first place actually has something to do with writing. And jealousy. Yes, I'm ashamed to admit I suffer from a serious attack of author envy whenever I perceive that some other writer has already achieved what I'm working toward. When this happens I:

1. want to read the author's book, but stall instead. What if it's better than anything I could ever write? What if it's not?

2. research the author's age and background. Let's just hope the author is much older than I am, and has paid plenty of dues (ie. more dues than I have paid to date).

3. dig up the author's hometown in the process of researching. Let's just hope the author lives far away, so I can imagine he or she achieved greatness with some geographical advantages I simply don't have.

Looking over this list, it's clear my jealous feelings actually stem from insecurity. I'm looking for excuses, reasons why it might make sense if I never achieve my goals. Jealousy is silly. Ridiculous. Self-defeating.

But I'm not a lost case. Because there's also...

4. think back to that episode of Party of Five, where Bailey was jealous of his girlfriend Sarah's success. I forget what she was doing - acting? voiceovers? singing? - but the point was, she didn't have a lot of free time for Bailey anymore. And when he got on her case about it, she told him off. The gist of it was something like, "Don't sit around being jealous. Do something to make your own life better. Do something to get what you want."

And that's the part to really remember when you're a writer with goals.

Recommended Reading

Since attending Pitchapalooza at Oblong Books, in Rhinebeck, NY, on Sunday, I have about a million things I want to share. But I don't have time to do that right now, because I absolutely must make revising my MG novel top priority. And that means moving those revisions above not only this blog, but also preparing my messy house for a realtor tonight, occupying my four-year-old with something other than TV, eating properly, and possibly washing my hair. Possibly.

So, I don't have time to share everything I want to share. I can, however, recommend an excellent book purchased at Pitchapalooza and written by the couple who puts on said event. The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, is a thick tome that delivers on its promise. If you want to get published, buy it. Seriously. We all need to know this stuff.

And now, a quick Bakugan brawl with my son before getting to work.

Who's the Seuss?

That's the name of the amazing workshop I attended today, given by Coleen Murtagh Paratore (author of The Wedding Planner's Daughter series, among other books) and Eric Luper (author of Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto, also among other books). I learned much, much more than I can write here tonight, as I am exhausted, but I will most likely be writing about it for several posts to come!

A few words of advice I can share in the meantime:

1. If there's a local writer's workshop held in your town, make sure you go to it! They don't happen that often in many smaller communities, and chances are you'll learn something useful. Maybe you'll learn a lot.

2. Bring along some of your own work when you attend a workshop. I didn't realize we would have the opportunity to share the first page of our manuscripts today. (I probably should have read that flyer over more closely!) Luckily, I happened to be carrying my work with me, so I was prepared anyway.

3. Speak up! If you get a chance to voluntarily read any of your work aloud, do it. Take every chance for feedback from professionals in the field.

More to come... next time!

My First Book Signing

It’s official—I’ve scheduled my first-ever book signing!

Where: The Book House, Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, NY

When: Saturday, July 9, 3 p.m.

I don’t know why I haven’t done this before. I started writing books back in 2004, when I co-authored Bridal Guide Magazine’s How to Choose the Perfect Wedding Gown. It never occurred to me to promote my books. I just wanted to write them.

Now that I’m doing this, I can see the benefits definitely go beyond selling books, which is the reason I thought authors did signings. I emailed friends and family about this, and everyone is so excited. Excited! Congratulating me!

I have to say, it makes me feel good. You need a little validation sometimes when you write on your home computer for editors who live across the country. Sure, they’ll email me that I did a good job. But this interest from people who know me and live nearby is really, well, great!

What I’ve realized from all this: I’ve been too shy about sharing my successes. (The kicker was when a friend of a friend emailed back to say she never even knew I write—I’d never mentioned it!) That’s no way to go about building a career. Better to actually tell people you write. Show them the books when they come out.

That may sound simple and obvious. But I'm not too shy to say it wasn't so simple or obvious to me—up to now!

Writing for a Living - Entry-Level

Enough about Twitter! I’m actually here to share some of what I’ve learned during the past 17 years I’ve been writing professionally.

I started my career after graduating college... OK, that’s leaving a lot out. First, I held a series of jobs I found seriously unrewarding (telemarketer, secretary/receptionist, front desk clerk, and house reinspector among them—no offense to anyone who holds these positions. They just weren’t for me.).

To escape the madness of my career-going-nowhere, I enrolled in a Master’s degree program in literature. Not being all that interested in literature, I was unmotivated to actually earn the degree and realized by the end of the first semester that I had to change my situation. After class one day, I went downtown to the newspaper office and asked if they were hiring. The answer was yes—
and I got the job.

I had no real interest in news, newspapers, or newspaper writing either. But I did want to write and this was a way to write and earn a living at the same time. For a year, I wrote to nightly deadlines five or six days a week. I wrote on all sorts of topics: zebra mussels, school board meetings, house fires, fashion, criminal cases, politics, etc. Not all of these topics spoke to me personally, but it was one of the best jobs I ever had, for both personal and professional development.

What can you learn from my meandering experience? Hopefully this:

•    Writing every day and sticking to deadlines is good practice for a writer. It doesn’t really matter what you choose to write or what you get paid to write.

•    Learning about writing doesn’t have to cost money. With the right entry-level job, you can hone skills while earning money instead. (Too bad I didn’t learn this one before investing in that degree I never got.)

•    People are always saying, “Write what you know.” Writing what you don’t know can be rewarding, interesting and lucrative, too. You just have to research. And learning new things makes writing much more exciting than typing on a computer has any right to be.

Joining the Larger Community, Part 3 (I promise, a new topic next!)

My first tweet was basically, "Hi!" My second tweet offered information about the reduction in self-employment taxes for 2011. Maybe a lot of people know about this already, but I thought it would be nice to share. After all, I only learned about it a short while ago.

As soon as I tweeted this information, I realized I’d left out a whole bunch of people I should be following. Why wasn’t I following self-employed people? Other writers? I quickly searched and added to my list. Now, I was following more than 75 accounts. I felt overwhelmed.

I turned once again to my husband, who advised grouping them into lists. Which I did. I made them private lists because I can’t figure out why anyone would make them public, and private is my default setting. Maybe I'll change my mind as I learn more about this. While I had his ear, I asked my husband what to do about my followers. (Yay! I have followers!) He recommended a short note thanking them for following. It’s proper etiquette, he said.

Twitter can easily get pretty time-consuming, but I think it's going to be worth the effort. On my first day following only editors, I learned many were at BookExpo America. Without Twitter, I never would have even heard of the event!

Definitely a sign I’ve been too isolated as a writer.

Joining the Larger Community, Part 2

When I went to twitter.com, my intention was to do exactly what I'd heard I should do: follow editors. I didn’t realize that meant opening my own account, but quickly found out. So I opened an account. I found a bunch of editors, agents and publishers to follow, and suddenly, I was part of this bigger community.

If I was going to be there, I figured I’d like to contribute, too. But what to tweet? I grilled my husband, who tweets for work, and he advised the idea behind Twitter is to offer something, not try to promote or sell or anything like that. Sounded good to me. I wasn’t sure at first what I might have to offer, but then I realized Twitter is kind of like saying, “Hey, did you see this interesting thing?” So whenever I find out anything interesting about writing and related topics, I’ll be sure to pass it along.

Tweet it, I mean.

Joining the Larger Community

A few nights ago, I attended a meeting of SCBWI—Eastern, NY. Supremely beneficial. I met other children’s book writers. I took away some advice from the critique session about how to create an arc in each scene, avoid small talk among characters, and write major transitions into chapter beginnings and endings.

I learned about the value of certain upcoming workshops and retreats. (Namely, the Highlights Foundation Workshops and the Falling Leaves Retreat.) I’d heard of these— and others—before, of course. But I’d always let the cost to attend sway me against considering them. Now, I see the value. It’s a chance to spend focused time on your piece, work with editors, and network with other writers and editors in an intimate setting.

I also heard it mentioned during the meeting that Twitter can put writers in touch with the larger community of writers and editors. Apparently, editors sometimes offer to answer questions on Twitter.

So I've decided to start using Twitter, and there’s definitely a learning curve. I invite anyone who’s learning Twitter to follow along. Maybe we can help each other!