Big Ed's Place“What are you practicing this novel?”
I found an enjoyable set of blogposts by Dean Wesley Smith on “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing.” The one that caught my attention most was on practice, and included the quote that headlines this post.
The premise of the post is that every story and every novel should be practice, preferably focused practice in which the author is trying to consciously get better at one aspect of writing. That doesn’t mean the works aren’t published along the way, because gawd knows that perfection is the enemy of good enough. It simply means that instead of doing writing exercises, one makes all writing an exercise.
I like the philosophy. A lot of that is because I don’t see the value of writing exercises for the sake of putting them in a drawer. If I’m going to ‘practice’ I should give it enough of a shot to have something I can put out to readers. At a minimum, that makes me take the practice seriously. More likely, it gets me feedback on how well I did (even if I didn’t solicit it).
But I was also hooked by the value of ‘focused practice.’ I’ve been spotty on that, sometimes being focused and sometimes not. A lot of my recent practice has been on maintaining a commitment to the ‘crappy first draft’ and not letting my internal editor get in the way of the first draft and sabotage the story’s flow. I’ve also deliberately aimed for length and deliberately tried to see if I could incorporate specific elements or techniques. The Devil in the Details, in my queue, is specifically there so I can practice writing erotica from a female point of view. Its predecessor, Dealing with the Devil was explicitly written to see if I could tackle morally ambiguous characters. And let’s not kid ourselves, Deep Dish is nothing more than jumping into the deep end of a new medium (graphic novels), which kind of goes beyond focused practice into focused trying-not-to-drown.
Unfortunately, the ‘nots’ have also showed, and I think those are the ones I struggle on the most. Like Unmasked. I pick it up and I find I’m wandering a bit too much. I’m not exactly sure what I’m practicing with that work. As a result, it’s harder to write and I question whether it will be as good.
Because, despite Dean Smith’s comments on another post about talent being just hard work and practice, I also think there’s an element of putting your soul into it. My better stories are more than purely intellectual affairs. I have to throw in something from the gut/heart/soul or it comes across flat. Now maybe other writers do this automatically, but my creativity really requires me getting my logical/language side of the brain out of the way. That’s the second hardest thing for me to do (finding meaningful time to write being number one).
Focused practice may be able to help with that. It’s throwing a bone (what I’m practicing) in front of that logical junkyard dog and letting the spirit sneak around the other side.
It’s something I will definitely keep in mind as I go forward.