So, last week I took a little writing hiatus. Partially, I made the decision because I felt I deserved a little break after my recent determined (translate: bordering-on-obsessed) efforts to enter a couple writing contests. (In the spirit of Nacho Libre, insert: GULP, GULP, gulp, gulp, gulp, GULP, gulp, GULP, GULP.)
And also, I just needed a little taste of freedom. And by “taste of freedom,” I mean, free time to do things like buy groceries and clean out my walk-in and rearrange my dvds. (Believe it or not, all three of these constitute enjoyable time for me!)
And oh yeah, I watched about a dozen episodes of “Full House” during my hiatus too. Nothing like a little hair-crazed Uncle Jesse to smooth the frazzled edges of a girl’s spirits!
By Friday I was entirely and completely ready for a fun-filled Easter weekend with family. We celebrated the Resurrection with food and games and food and church and food and an Easter egg hunt and food…
Now that the hiatus is over, I’m back to work at my “second job” and happy to be. I might’ve shied away from the laptop last week, but I sure didn’t stop thinking of Georgia and Case and Cullaway…and of course, my return includes a reappareance on Tag(g)lines after a good week away.
We’re still plugging away on those Totally Stolen Writing Tips…and I lead into tonight’s topic with a little reflection on my week off. See, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things I can “trim” out of my life – the nonessentials, the things I let take me away from what I really want to be doing. Things like playing Tetris online or lazing around on facebook or, well, watching half-season of Full House in one week. Even scouring book reviews on Amazon.com. Love doing it, and sometimes it might event count as writing-related research. But it can – and does – keep me from my own writing at times.
I want to spend my time wisely on the things that matter, that propel me forward – not only in writing, but in my faith, relationships, career. That doesn’t mean nixing relaxation or even the occasional lazy hour or two. It does mean examining how I spend the hours in my day and making good choices.
Enter, Totally Stolen Writing Tip No. 5: cut out the nonessentials – anything that doesn’t add to your character journey, anything that doesn’t propel the plot forward. (Yeah, all my tips tilt toward fiction, but I think they’re pretty relevant to other genres as well…journalism, essays, non-fiction…)
I did talk about brevity a bit in the last post, but this is different. This tip isn’t so much about saving space as much as it is about making sure each scene in a story has a purpose.
And this one’s been hard for me, I’ll admit that! I’ve had a few Georgia/Case scenes I loved but upon second examination, I realized there wasn’t a whole lot of point to them. They didn’t reveal something about Georgia and Case’s characters. They didn’t push the plot into a new place.
Susan May Warren has some great material and tips in her My Book Therapy resources for making sure each scene in your book has a purpose. She talks about looking for the stakes in each scene, examining the goal of your character in that particular scene, measuring how the scene fits into the overall “story question.” I highly, highly recommend her workbooks!
In the end, it’s about “cutting the fat,” putting your writing through a workout that burns away anything that weighs down rather than strengthens your piece. I’ll be working on that very thing in the next couple weeks as I examine each and every scene in my current WIP!
(And in case you’re like me and can’t quite use those virtual scissors to their fullest, consider starting a “deleted pieces” document and place all those cut scenes there. Who knows when they might come in handy in a future piece?)
Tip No. 4 coming soon!