The Writing Group

My big adventure this week was going to my first writing group get-together! I was one of six women eating cheese, drinking wine, and talking about writing.

(Which eventually segwayed, somehow, into a huge discussion on online dating?)

I thought the girls in the group were fantastic. The host, Maria, is the former roommate of one of my former roommates, which is how we connected. Sitting in her envy-inducing apartment in the village, I learned that Maria’s working on a memoir about emigration from Russia. Another girl, Ally, submitted a piece about the drinking differences between her native Australia and the US. Priya is writing about her two grandfathers, and just returned from a book research trip to India. Still another girl, Stacey, is writing about her real life mis-adventures in the world of dating, which may soon include one stormy week spent at SXSW with a semi-ex-boyfriend who works as a rock poster artist.

Are you picking up on a theme? All non-fiction.

I hadn’t realized this when I submitted a piece to workshop, which was a totally fictional, somewhat violent story I wrote four years ago and promptly put away and never looked at again – until now. I think people were horrified when they first started to read, thinking it was real.

So it’s not a group that I’ll be bringing a script to anytime soon, but it was really valuable for a few reasons:

1. It’s important to have a circle of writers to talk to and exchange ideas with. Not only can they share stories about their own creative struggles, but they know how to critique creative work.
2. As for critiquing, they’re fantastic! I submitted a short story, not a script, but we still debated over dialogue – which is the core of script-writing. What’s more, since I don’t think a writer should really fall under ‘scriptwriter’ or ‘story writer,’ but rather, be able to use whatever form is best for the story she's telling, it’s good to workshop things in different styles. Short stories can eventually be written as scripts and vice versa.
3. After being out of school for a few years, a writing group is a great way to get back into a ‘school’ mindset. In creative writing schools, the process is much the same as in a writing group. People read your work, then offer praise and criticism. You start to learn to read their work in the same way – what works, what doesn't? You develop an awareness of how to improve writing and provide intelligent feedback, which will help you, too, in the long run.

We’re meeting again on April 27^th. This time, maybe I’ll do something I’ve only done a very few times before, most recently with Memoirs of Meanness – write some non-fiction.

When Inspiration Does/Does Not Strike

A word to the wise – when you’re feeling inspired, don’t stop!

Although, inevitably, there are going to be things that make you stop. Desperate need of sleep. Plans with friends and loved ones. The afore-mentioned day job. But when you really hit your stride and just get going, it is a magical experience – and one that’s not always easy to recreate a few days later.

This is what happened to me last week. I had the most amazing night of writing. I got completely sucked into my script, and rattled off about 12 pages with little to no effort. (I find that amount of pages is a bit harder to do when in the middle of a large project than if you have one strong idea and blast out one short, focused script.) I finally forced myself to stop – it was getting late, I knew I needed sleep – but I was so wired, it was impossible to sleep, anyway, and by the time I sat down to write again, the streak was gone. It took about a half hour of sifting through my notes, re-reading what I’d written before, and getting into the right mindset before I could start.

Part of being a writer, though, is also forcing yourself to do the work even when uninspired. Being able to pick up the voice even after you’ve dropped it. With this project, I’ve been forcing myself to do this more than at any point in the past, and it’s been good for me. Writing – to the point of completing a large project that no one is paying you to work on – is as much an act of intense discipline as it is anything else. Any good writer will tell you to make time for it every day if you ever hope to improve. Stephen King says it takes at least 4-6 hours a day to be any good (and FYI, SK, that’s literally all my free time in a day).

I feel that a big part of it is just developing such a steady writing routine that your mind begins to automatically shift into the right place when, say, the clock strikes 7. Setting an easy goal – say, two pages a day – is also helpful, since usually, with a script, I find you’ll go much beyond that, then feel like a champ. (A page a day when we're talking prose is probably good.) One other helpful tip I picked up while reading about Hemingway’s tactics earlier: stop writing mid-sentence so that the next day, you have an easy way of getting started, and of slipping right back into the voice you’d been using previously.

I’m curious, from all the other writers out there – what helps you stick to a writing routine, even when uninspired?

To Quit or Not to Quit

All creative types have probably at one point or another been faced with this question: should you quit your day job?

For two years, I worked as a freelance scriptwriter, in addition to being an adjunct English teacher at two universities in my home state of PA. I loved this time in my life. I spent a summer in Alaska while writing a script for a tour guide company, was flown out to New Mexico when a small production company filmed the ‘sizzle reel’ for a screenplay I’d written, and had weekly assignments churning out episodes for the web show Stock Rockets and the Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s Access Asia (that last one never aired, but it was still a blast and provided me with many all-expenses paid weekends in NYC).

The problem? It wasn’t enough to make a living. (Or, at least, to make a decent living.)

Enter my day job, which is in international marketing for a publishing company. At least it’s tangentially related to books, but the sad sorry truth is that I feel like it pulls me further from my goals. I’m often there late (once until 1a.m.) and have been known to go in on a couple of Saturdays. Every so often I stop and wonder, what am I doing this for? The pay is low (publishing is notorious for this), the work is tedious, and it has nothing to do with writing.

There are pros to having a day job, though – beyond the benefits and steady pay:

1. It helps you learn more about business, which is crucial for creative people who might otherwise be clueless on this front. In my case, I now know all about publishing, which is good for a writer.

2. By extension, I have lots of contacts in publishing, so the next time I complete a manuscript, I know who to talk to.

3. A day job helps to keep you social. Many full-time writers are alone all day, having little to no contact with others, and as a result might be far more awkward when it is time to go network. (Also, you don’t want to contract “The Shining” syndrome and go crazy from all the solitude.)

I have the opportunity to teach again, starting mid-May, and it’s very tempting. I would have so much more time for my writing and the related projects that have started to spring up. (Extra tempting is the fact I’m getting married in September, which in and of itself is a bit stressful and going to require a lot of time in the summer.) I could go back to freelancing while I teach, this time with the added incentive of having done the 9-5 and not wanting to return. I could do this, and I bet it would be great.

But in the long run, is it smart?

First Quarter Evaluation

It’s been a full three months since starting the No MFA Project, so I thought it was as good a time as any to evaluate how things are going.

When I was in college, I had a professor who would grade in two ways…. The obvious way was on the overall quality of the work. The other was to look at how far the student had come. A paper might not be the best in the world, but if it was a 100% improvement over what the student had turned in at the beginning of the semester, the student could still get an A. I’m going to evaluate myself in both ways.

As for the quality of my writing, it has remained pretty much the same as it was when I first began this project. It’s good, it’s solid. For quality, I’d probably give it a B+. For improvement, I’d give it a D. I haven’t done much to push the quality of my writing beyond what it was – I’ve been more focused on just making sure that I actually AM writing to worry about taking it further. Don’t get me wrong, the sheer act of devoting time to writing is a big step, but this project is about becoming a sell-able scriptwriter, and to that end, I need to hone the writing so that it’s not just good, but great.

This first quarter was a lot about establishing the project and figuring out where to go from here. It was about learning new things, things I’d never done before, like sound editing. It was also about networking, meeting new people, and lining up new projects. Overall, I’ve met maybe ten people in the industry. I’m now going to be helping out on the web series ‘50 to Death’ and organizing the production and filming of Brooke’s short project ‘What Do You Care?’ I’ve reconnected with a Manhattan director who directed a small stage piece of mine last year to work on one of my scripts that he’ll be using for a short film, and I’m helping a friend to move her documentary project forward. For trying new things, meeting new people, and lining up projects, I would give this first quarter an A.

From here on, things will become more challenging. I’ll need to balance projects with making time to write and, most importantly, improve my writing. I’ll be going to writing groups and reading up on the craft. While the first quarter was about setting things up, the second will be about getting things done.