What I Learned from the Muse (Part 1)

Thanks for hanging in there everybody. Life and farm sort of got in the way this week. But perhaps that's a good thing, because I think I've finally gotten enough distance/perspective to put together a sort of Muse and the Marketplace recap.

First off, I want to thank Grub Street Writers for putting together an awesome conference. The thing that distinguishes "the Muse" is the combination of craft (muse) and publishing stuff (marketplace) and also the quality of the presenters and participants. And I got to hang out here:

This time around (my 3rd) I wanted to focus on plot (my big struggle) and revision. So I signed up for 3 plot related seminars and 3 revision/critique related events. I also attended an agents' Q&A panel and a face to face meeting with an agent, met a bunch of old friends and a few new ones and totally (totally!) exhausted myself because really I am sort of an introvert and schmoozing is HARD work.

So, where to begin?

With plot, I guess.

I attended Lynne Barrett's "Understanding Plot: The Fundamentals." Lynne was wonderful. I'd met her at Saturday's breakfast, and despite all my first day jitters, I think I managed to be coherent. Lynne talked about plot in context, using Cinderella as a model because, as she said, fairy tales are narrative in their most basic form.

We graphed the action in the familiar story and among other things, assessed when the "situation" became a plot and which characters acted on the plot. Expendable characters were those who did not "plot" or act to influence the events of the story. (An interesting aside: In some versions of the story, Cinderella has a father. But because he never "plots" he is expendable and dropped from most versions)

This was a great first dip into the intricacies of plot (Thanks, Lynne!)

I also attended Hallie Ephron's "Plotting a Page Turner." At first, I felt like I might be in the wrong class for this one, because we kept talking about "The DaVinci Code" and "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (my novels are more literary-ish).

But although Ms Ephron IS a suspense writer, she used these books as examples because most of the audience had read them. The class was not about a certain genre so much as using good plot technique to keep your readers engaged. We reviewed Aristotle's three act structure

and how it might apply to our own work.

Ms Ephron talked about "penny drop" moments when reader sort of get a small surprise or thickening of plot and how scattering these moments throughout the story makes it more engaging.

One of the practical things suggested in this seminar was to revise/assess plot by highlighting action in green, exposition in red and building suspense in yellow. You should have more green as the story progresses and more red in the beginning. (I'm going to have to give this a try!)

I also attended Micah Nathan's "The Essentials of Plot." Now, I must confess that when Mr. Nathan pulled out his own fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, I gave a little inward groan, expecting the same sort of information as in Lynne Barrett's seminar (Which had been wonderful; I just didn't want the same info twice). When he started talking about the three act structure like Hallie Ephron, my groan may have become audible.

But then Mr. Nathan did something awesome: he talked about the way plot and character are linked and that really we can't talk about one without the other. (I really needed to hear that I think, because I approach writing in just this way and I'd begun to get the sense that I was just plain wrong.)

Instead of recapping "Hansel and Gretel", we developed it-- asking ourselves a series of what ifs and why ifs and connecting the actions to "conflicts of noble ideals" and bigger moments of decision. In our Hansel and Gretel, for example, the children were abandoned by their father during a famine. (Backstory: Their mother was hung for stealing food while the father did nothing and is now wracked with guilt. He believes they have a better chance with the old lady in the forest.) But although Hansel is happy to live in the forest with the nice old lady, adolescent Gretel doesn't trust the old woman who she believes may be a witch and she conspires to trap the old lady in the basement and escape, only things go horribly wrong and... etc etc. You get the idea.

What was so cool about this plot stuff was that it was, as Mr Nathan said, "like playing in the sandbox." I can't tell you how freeing it felt to just try stuff out and see where it might take me. Usually, once I establish my characters, it's hard for me to see anything else but my original plot idea.

I spent the last session of that day playing in the sandbox, building (and wrecking) castles of what ifs.

Here are a few more random gleanings from the seminars on plot:

Micah Nathan said that basically stories are about getting your characters stuck in a tree (a metaphorical tree, of course) and throwing stones at them. This image has helped me think about how all the little twists and troubles (the metaphorical stones) help the narrative.

credit

Lynne Barrett talked about how all fiction is "contrived" but that readers hunger for interesting contrivance and are willing to suspend disbelief for it.

Ms Ephron talked about how each scene contains its own story arc. Even at the scene level, characters move from one state to another, never staying static.

In a discussion of outlining. Mr Nathan talked about how outlining the major events of plot shouldn't stifle creativity. He talked about the plot as being like a road map for a cross-country trip.

It doesn't describe the sights along the way, the conversations and music, cool diners and seedy motels. It just keeps you from getting lost. There's lots of room for creativity and you can always choose a new route when necessary. I found this really helpful as I am trying to evolve from being a "pantser" to a more careful plotter.

Okay-- Whew!There's lots more I could say, but this is probably already a bit much. I will talk about the revision stuff next and then the "Marketplace stuff" which was.... wow, intense!

Whew and Woo-hooo!

Ah, The Muse! I have a looong post coming about the conference, how wonderful and horrible, exhausting and energizing it all was. I will even try to decipher my handwritten notes and put up a bit of what I learned about plot and editing and the world of publishing. But I am not quite there yet: back in my work week and seriously dragging.

Here's something that put a little more pep in my tired typing fingers:

I got this brand new shiny blog award-- twice! Thanks, Jenny Phresh and KO. This was just what I needed today.

This award's only requirement is that you pass it on to some other fiery folks.

So here goes:

Nina Badzin at Nina Badzin: The Writing Life, Married Life and Motherhood This blog may literally catch fire thanks to a kind (and well-deserved) mention by Janet Reid.

Mary Frame at It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Gets an Agent (Great title, huh? This blog is new and lots of fun.)

Amie Kaufman at Amie Kaufman, Writer, Buccaneer, Etc (Tremendously helpful, this one)

France Rants at FranceRants (Who doesn't enjoy a good rant now and then?)

and...

Saumya at Left and Write Brained (Love the variety over there!)

Meeting the Muse

This weekend, is a big one. I'm heading over to Grub Street Writers' Muse and The Marketplace conference. This is my 3rd time at The Muse, and there are a lot less jitters. Partly, this is because I know that whatever happens, it'll be an instructive and interesting, and partly because I am practicing my Zen conference attendance skills.

Though I am meeting with an agent, I am approaching my 20 minutes without a smidgen of that do-or-die bustle. Rather, I've attained a state of reasonable detachment. I chose an agent who's focus is my weakness (yep, you read that right). She emphasizes the importance of plot. And, I, dear friends, get caught up in character and setting and voice and sort of struggle with plot. Rather than hawking my first 20 pages-- which I suppose I can do by email when the time comes, I am hoping to learn a thing or two about what makes a good plot tick and how she assesses the tick. I mean, does it have to look like this? How do I get it there?

Also, I want some feedback on my much-revised query before I start sending it out.

Also, I plan to take a bunch of seminars about plot and revision, hang out with some old writing friends, and meet some new ones.

There are many, many blog posts out there about making the most of a writers' conference. Most involve how to pitch and dress and optimize. I have no idea how to pitch.

And my clothes are Salvation Army issue "eh."

So I can't help you there. If you are going to a conference, it would behoove you to check out this or this. (I love using "Behoove" in a sentence!)

My tips mostly involve taking a few deep breaths and...

1) Have realistic expectations. It's alright to dream about some high-powered agent clutching your manuscript to his/her chest and declaring "This is absolutely perfect, I MUST have it!"

But perhaps you might set out some goals that you yourself can control, to learn something, to find out if a particular plot point works or doesn't, to meet 3 new critique partners. Maybe that agent will find you, but if this is the sole focus, anything short of it will be disappointing.

2) Meet and greet and meet and greet and meet and greet. When you are at a conference, talk to everybody! How often do you have a chance to mingle with so many serious writers-- in person? You never know who will stick and who you'll never hear from again, but let me tell you, I met the most wonderful critique partner and friend in the line for the bathroom at the last Muse.

3) Push it. I am a sort of shy person (people never really believe this, but at one point I very seriously wanted nothing more than to live alone in a remote cabin in Montana ala Ted Kaszinsky. I truly am a natural-born recluse.)

But when I am at a conference, I push myself to do things I normally wouldn't. Like participate in an open mic reading (gulp!) and attend a mixer alone. Push that envelope because, if you are going to all the trouble and expense of a conference, you don't want to go home with even one woulda shoulda coulda.

That's all. I can't tell you how to take good notes (Mine are always illegible) and can't figure out how to tweet for crap, but I can tell you to go into the thing with an open heart and Zen sense of whatever and enjoy!

What experiences have you had at conferences? Any additional advice?

Happy, Happy, Yikes!

I attended the WriteAngles conference last Saturday and, first off, would like to say a big thank you to all the local folks who made the conference possible. WriteAngles is a not-for-profit event put on by writers, and it was refreshing to see the proceeds go to support local arts programs. Makes me extra glad to be a part of it.

I went to this conference in a (relatively) Zen state. It was local and reasonably priced, and I'd lucked upon it just a few weeks ago. I was determined not to get my hopes up. I sent my query in to the waiting list (in case a slot with an agent should open up) and submitted my first page to a public critique panel.

I woke up and went. No fanfare. No fuss. This in itself was something of an improvement. I'd worried myself into a sinus infection several years ago while attending one of those pricey, stress-central pitch conferences in New York (Definitely WON'T do that again!). I managed to maintain my Zen even when I had to backtrack home to drop off a birthday present I'd taken off with (Three kids= at least one kids' birthday party a weekend). Kept my balance even when I got lost in the wilds of Holyoke and arrived with not a minute to spare.

The speakers were fantastic. Magdalena Gomez and Andre Dubus III inspired me with their focus on writing as art and the mystery that is at its core. (I will have to dedicate another post to the content of their keynote addresses.)

I enjoyed the panel on internet publicity, although all this twitter, goodreads, podcast, vlog, content, link, etc world is churning a bit too fast for me. Here I thought I was doing alright maintaining my two blogs, plugging away at the novels, raising a family and working. Evidently, we writers have to do more, a lot more. And if we can't, we maybe should hire someone to get our names out there in the blogosphere, make the rounds of comments and content and..... um. Well, that was the gist of it anyway.

I enjoyed hearing Ellie Meeropol, Elinor Lipman and Richard Michelson talk about their processes and purpose.

And then I had my agent meeting. I was still in my Zen mode, more or less. But I experienced an absurdly irrational brain fart when the wonderful agent I met with asked me to tell him something about myself that wasn't in my query bio. Um.... all I could come up with was "I commute two hours to get to work." (Really! I have a slight blush of PTSD just thinking about it.) This could have been a sort of interesting tidbit, maybe if I described what it's like to be driving down the dark highway at 4 AM, working through plots and characters, scrawling illegible notes on the notebook beside me before heading into the heat and clamor of Seaport Academy. But I didn't I just sort of stared. Blankly. (The Zen had dissipated by then, let me tell you.)

The agent, an incredibly kind man, moved on. "Tell me about the book" he said. And I did. Things went smoothly from there. In fact, we had a great conversation. I could tell he appreciated the quirk factor (big in this book) and he said he liked the details. At the end of the ten minutes, he asked me to send him the full manuscript. Forget Zen, I was giddy with excitement when I walked out of the place. (Whew!)

During lunch, I met some lovely writers all at various stages of the process. Three of the conference's four agents sat at our table, and we got to chat with them (though I could not bear to pitch, it just seemed so crass). Instead we talked about Western Mass and the lovely town of Shelburne Falls. And I got a chance to thank Jenny Bent for her wonderful blog post about pitching.

Things were just so darn perfect!

Then there was the public critique panel. (If this post was a movie, here's where the music from Psycho would start up). In this panel, the agents comment upon first pages of manuscripts submitted by the audience and read aloud. The agents loved the first submission and liked the second and slowly, slowly, they started to look at the pages with a more critical eye. Mine was last. The very last one in the conference.

They said it was overworked. Which it totally was. In my enthusiasm to grab an agent's attention I had gone back and added enough verbal pyrotechnics to choke a horse. I had, like, three metaphors in that thing. And a lot of... well, convolution. Though I was blind to this fact back home, I could hear it immediately. I waited, heart pounding in my ears, for the specifics of my failure. Two agents were totally not into it (These were the two that I figured weren't a good fit anyway) and the other two agreed that it was overworked but liked the tone and the writing (I wish I could say more about this, but the notes I took-- of course!- were all about the bad things).

And that was the end. Whew! I wasn't crushed by the agent panel. Not totally anyway. Instead, I tried to be thankful that I now knew what to fix, that I had a chance to pare down the showboat writing before I sent it out.

On the way back home, I was supposed to pick up a pizza for the houseful of kids and frazzled husband. And so eager was I to fix that durn first page I sat in the pizza place and tore into that thing while the pies cooled on the counter.

I'm better now. Really. (And, yes, I do have the most wonderful, understanding and supportive husband in the world.)

So that was the WriteAngles conference. If you are attending a conference for the first time, my advice would be reign in your expectations, make the most of every panel and discussion, meet some new writing friends and just, basically, be a little Zen.

Conference Call

Next Saturday, I'll be attending the WriteAngles Conference at Mount Holyoke College.

Though I found out about the conference and registered last minute, I'm pretty excited about it. Andre Dubus III is one of the keynote speakers and some terrific agents will be there as well. I've submitted my first page to an agent panel (sort of like a kinder gentler version of Grub Street's Agent Idol") so I'm also experiencing a slight anticipatory nervousness. How else could it be, really?

I'm not much of a a Writer's Conference veteran yet, but I have been to Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace and long ago attended the Stonecoast Writer's Conference, which is much more workshop focused.

I have to say there is nothing finer than networking with a bunch of writers! We tend to be quirky, kind people, starving to talk of our secret literary passion. Many people hope to write a book someday, but the writers at conferences have taken more than a few steps in that direction and can identify with the immense, giddy joy (and also the profound misery) of the enterprise. Also, I don't really get out much.

How do you feel about conferences?

Anyone else planning to attend WriteAngles?