Christina Katz's Path to Joyful Writing

In the last 18 months, three-time Writer's Digest book author Christina Katzhas helped twelve writers self-publish thirteen e-books. In only six years, this talented writing coach has enabled many other wordsmiths to write their way to a traditional book deal. Fortunately, for us, Christina, who recently published The Writer's Workout, remains committed to helping others on their writing path.

"Bringing new voices to the masses is not something I am likely to tire of any time soon. I see my job as inspiring and empowering mom writers and that’s exactly what I do on a daily basis," says Christina, who graciously agreed to share her unique brand of inspiration today on The Writing Well.  

If you're looking for ways to discover or rediscover the joy of writing, be sure to take part in her "21 Moments Writing Challenge," which begins Friday. 

 

Q. What got you into writing, and what made you decide to use your experiences to help others succeed as writers?

I’ve written since I was young as a way to process my feelings and express myself. I have not always had an easy time expressing myself and it is still something I have to work hard at to do well. Maybe this is why I became a writer, so I could get rewards for expressing myself clearly. For me, there is nothing more satisfying than getting exposure and money for striving to say something so clearly that it reaches and impacts others.

Q. What's the biggest hurdle writers face, based on your own experience as a writing coach?

The biggest hurdle writers face is the desire to have written rather than simply wanting to write. In other words wanting all the glory without doing any of the really hard growth work will get your career nowhere. I think this is human nature to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, the reality trumps the fantasy. So I recommend letting go of myths and fantasies about success and getting to work.

Q. Tell us more about The Writer's Workout -- who did you target, and how does it differ from other writing how-to books out there?

The Writer’s Workoutoffers 366 practical tips, tasks and techniques for writers who are eager to succeed but can’t always find a clear path stretching out ahead of them. Once a writer realizes that she is creating the path as she goes, the journey becomes a lot more fun, and a lot more of a professional adventure. When it comes to doing the real work that creates writing career success, The Writer’s Workout lays it all out for the reader without apologizing. I don’t think you can read The Writer’s Workout without feeling inspired to get on with it, already.

Q. Given that you have written three books for Writer’s Digest Books in the past five years on how to have a more satisfying and successful writing career, what are three fun exercises that can get writers who may be struggling back into a can-do frame of mind? 

1. Stop making your goals so big and set out to accomplish one small goal that you can achieve this week. If you lower the jumps, you will succeed, and one success will buoy you up to try something a little harder next time. Real results repeated and built up over time create lasting success and genuine self-regard.

2. If you are stumped for something to write about consider a how-to. The quickest way to find out what you might write about it to fill in this blank ten times:

I know how to __________________________________.

Be specific rather than general in your response. Sometimes it’s not just what you know, it’s your signature way of doing it that makes the how-to appealing and fresh for editors and readers.

3. Keep a list of the next twenty-five steps you need to take in your writing career, so that when you have an idle moment you can tackle one. I have been offering this tip to writer’s conference attendees for years, because it’s so common to walk out of conference completely mentally overloaded. And this method of breaking things down into just one proactive step at a time really works for writers. So pace it out. I offer a grid-method of keeping this list in The Writer’s Workout (on page 179).

Q. What was your inspiration for your 21 Moments Writing Challenge?  What do participants get out of this experience?

If a writer can’t write well short, she can’t write well long. If she can’t enjoy writing short, she can’t enjoy writing long. If she can’t learn to let the writing lead and get out of the way, then everything she writes will be unappealing to readers. My inspiration for the 21 Moments Monthly Writing Challenge was to get the whole world writing for the sheer pleasure of it.

Everyone has to start somewhere. I’m teaching anyone who wants to write how to enjoy writing and how to do it every day because that’s what successful authors do. The 21 Moments Monthly Writing Challenge gives a writer of any level somewhere to start today, excellent writing to learn from, and a simple goal: to enjoy writing today. Your readers can learn more about it here.

Q. Who inspires you?

My students inspire me the most. When a writer is ready to make the leap from hired pen to publisher, the shift can be challenging and thrilling at the same time. The future of publishing is that everyone is a publisher. I am very proud to be a leader in the micro-publishing movement. It doesn’t make publishing easy, like some claim, but micro-publishing helps publishing evolve by lowering the jumps and allowing more room for worthy writers at the table.

A Conversation with the First Ladies of Fantasy

Standing L-R, Nancy Knight, Laurell K. Hamilton, Sherrilyn Kenyon and Mercedes Lackey. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, sitting.

Four groundbreaking New York Times' bestselling authors – Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Mercedes Lackey, Laurell K. Hamilton and Sherrilyn Kenyon -- gathered this past weekend at DragonCon to talk about their craft and journey as novelists in a genre historically dominated by men. Insightful and funny, these talented women spoke candidly about their trials on the road to literary acceptance. 

Fighting for Acceptance

 

Yarbro, a multi-faceted writer best known for creating the heroic vampire, Count Saint-Germain, sold her first mystery in 1968. At the time, the “climate for women writers was chilly.”

Female fantasy writers began to get a better reception after Anne McCaffrey's won her first Hugo, but even then many male writing counterparts called it a “fluke," Yarbro added.

The first woman to be named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild (2006), Yarbro spoke highly of her mentor,  Robert Bloch, who penned Psycho, which Alfred Hitchcock later made into a cult film classic.

“If you were a beginning writer, he was very helpful – he would talk with you. If you published something, he would read it and send you a note. I adored the man,” she recalled.

Riding the Romance Boon

 
In the 1980s the publishing field started to open up for women – and several panelists said they were pressured to write romance – and many did --under pseudonyms -- to pay bills (one panelist said writing a romance helped pay for her divorce).

Kenyon, who published her first novel in 1978, still experienced rejections from book publishers even after six New York Timesbestselling books.  The mother of three sons added that there are two things with which she can terrify people  – “pregnancy and publishing -- I will scare you off both.”

“Thank God I’m a southern Cherokee – we don’t give up, ever. My whole philosophy is there’s always a way around any obstacle – over, under and around,” said the 16-time New York Times' #1 bestseller, who has more than 25 million copies of her books in print. 

Hamilton said that her publisher waited four years before publishing her first novel, Guilty Pleasures, in 1991, because the bottom had fallen out of the fantasy market. Before then, it had been rejected more than 200 times. When she first envisioned the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series, paranormal fiction and paranormal romance as genres didn’t exist. 

“My editors told me that the vampire market is dead. What they didn’t realize is that the monster always comes back,” Hamilton quipped.  Hers was a steady climb up – with each book sold, she gained more readers. Now Hamilton has transcended genre, according to her publisher, meaning she’s sold enough that she can write whatever she wants.

Finding Your Voice

 

The panelists shared insights on how their distinctive voices evolved as well as those who influenced their writing voice.

"Writing a lot was essential. I came to writing out of the theater," said Yarbro, explaining that you can do anything with dialogue and punctuation in dialogue if that tells your reader how a character sounds.

"The thing about narration is it has to support everything that's going on without participating in it. You are not a character in your own book -- you are a support for the characters who are."
 

For Kenyon, inspiration came early from her mother, who was a huge horror fan. She  explained that her father was the kind of man “who dressed up as a zombie and tapped on my window and scream, ‘Ah!’” 

“To me, any book is a two-way experience.” When advising her 17-year-old son, who is working on his first novel, Kenyon tells him to leverage the internal dialogue in his head – the comments that you never say out loud.  “It’s almost like method acting – it’s like, ‘What would Acheron do?’ ‘What would Simi do?’ You sit there and let that flow and that’s what should end up on paper.”

The other advice she gave him was that “you can fix a bad page but you can’t fix a blank one.”  

Hamilton loves the clean language of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, her favorite book growing up, and the dialogue of Robert Parker’s Spenser series.  The Anita Blake series author writes exclusively in first-person narration. To get into character, she often will pull out her penguin mugs or wear weaponry while writing.

“Do not pick a day when I’m writing Anita to break into the house,” she told her fans, laughing.

Lackey said after 80+ books in print, she has developed her own voice.” Writers she admires include Charles de Lint and Judy Tarr -- “amazing craftspeople and writers.”

All the authors agree that there is no magic formula to finding your voice. “What I think you cannot learn – except by practice and almost by accident -- is your voice and an idea that is fresh and speaks to you and is something that only you can write. That is the hardest to come by,” Hamilton said. 

Writing Anywhere 

Once you find your voice, you can write anywhere. In Kenyon’s case, she wrote through chemo treatments with her mother, during her sons' soccer games, and while pregnant and hooked to an IV.

Louis L'Amour.

Lackey loves to recount a story about Louis L'Amour, who once was challenged to write in the middle of a highway intersection to prove he could write anywhere.

“His agent and publisher set him up with a table and folding chair and stuck him on an island in an intersection in New York City. He’s typing away and LIFE comes and takes pictures. In 15 minutes, everyone has gone away and his editor came over and said, 'Louis, everyone is gone.’ And he said, “Shut up and let me finish this page.’”

Looking to today’s current publishing environment, the panelists had differing views on the way forward and the merits of e-publishing.

Debating Merits of E-Publishing, Podcasting 

E-publishing your work was the kiss of death two years ago, they say.  Not so anymore. “If I was starting out now, I would be e-publishing,” said Lackey.

She believes creating podcasts of your book is an even smarter strategy because there are a lot fewer writers using that platform to get their stories out. “Putting (an excerpt) up as a podcast for free will winnow down 95 percent of the people you are competing with.”

While acknowledging that e-publishing has changed the landscape, Hamilton said first-time authors should still pursue traditional publishing first.  "Before you say, 'I can't take the rejection' and go that route, suck it up and try it first. Study the markets - don't send your manuscript to someone who doesn't accept your genre. You have to be tough, otherwise, they (publishing industry) will crush your soul."

Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, authors are closer than ever to their audience and the first to receive feedback -- good and bad.

“We get it first. Technology is a mixed blessing,” Hamilton said.

The panelists' universal advice to writers is to read – constantly. “Don’t just read fiction – read non-fiction; read widely; read words because they’re your tools,” added Hamilton, who even advocates studying dictionaries and encyclopedias to increase your vocabulary.

Writing Tips from the Masters: Part I of My DragonCon Wrap Up

I am still in recovery mode coming off the high of DragonCon 2012, which drew more than 60,000 SF and fantasy fans this weekend to downtown Atlanta.While the “people watching” at the world’s largest fantasy/SF convention never disappoints, the real highlight for me is hearing from leading storytellers today in these genres.

Panels that stood out for me this year were a Young Adult (YA) author panel that discussed The Hunger Games’ journey from paper to screen, a “Creating Memorable Characters” panel, and a Saturday morning chat with the “First Ladies of Fantasy.” The Writing Well will be featuring highlights from these sessions in my expanded DragonCon wrap-up coverage starting tomorrow.  

Writing wisdom from Richard Hatch

 

Richard Hatch.

I also met one of my childhood heroes -- actor and writer Richard Hatch, who played the character, Apollo, in the original “Battlestar Galactica” TV series and who first brought the story forward 20 years into the future with his novels.  Richard was a fount of information and inspiration for the writers in the room.

“Great writing is like great drama – being in situations where you don’t know what the solutions are,” says Richard, who urged us to get out of our heads and “tap into the deeper well of creativity.”

“Do you know how many artists paint, write, and it’s wonderful but nobody gets it. I think the art of the writer is to take something complex – something profound – and find a way to translate into a language that is understandable by people on a number of levels.”

Case in point: the film, “The Matrix,” could be enjoyed as an action flick on its own merit, but it also offered something else to others who could delve into the deeper aspects of the movie.

“When you have the ability to communicate on multiple levels, you really have found that art form that is the art form of life – it’s really what leverages you into the marketplace,” Richard says. “The greatest joy you will ever have is sharing your work with someone who gets it. You have to have the courage to step up to the plate, de-cloak, become visible, and share your work.”

 

Aaron Allston and Mike Stackpole.

My biggest time investment was attending several one-hour writing workshops taught by talented SF novelists, Aaron Allston and Michael Stackpole.   

 

Strive for Unattributed Dialogue

In his “Talk to Me” dialogue workshop, Aaron advocates establishing a distinctive voice to your character so that readers will know the character without you having to use attribution. You can accomplish this by repetitive use of language patterns in how the character speaks, and even through unattributed dialogue. You can also do this through punctuation, by having your character end a sentence as a question.  “You want as much unattributed dialogue as possible – it shows your proficiency as a writer,” Aaron says.

A sudden change in how your character speaks lets the reader realize that something has changed or is about to change. “Always be aware of what your character’s normal vocal mode is and deviate from it to get impact,” he says. 

If you think your dialogue is going on too long, set their manuscript aside and come back to it with fresh eyes later, advises Aaron. Generally speaking, action scenes should have shorter dialogue while “sitting” scenes can be longer.

Write -- Don't Rewrite

 

One pointer from Mike Stackpole’s Writing Rules session that stood out to me was “don’t rewrite before you finish writing.” How often do you find yourself self-editing mid-chapter or even mid-page? For me, plenty! Mike urges you to avoid that practice and just get your story down first. If you have a question in the area of research, highlight it in yellow –you can always go back and fill in those details later.  “Never take the easy way out – have characters change or grow due to their experience. Readers have to connect with them,” Mike says.   

I found his session, “Writing a novel in 21 days,” amazing. The session included 21 exercises that address all the major building blocks of your story – the first 11 days focus on characterization; the next four days deal with world building; and the subsequent days focus on plotting. At the end of the 21 days, you have an outline from which to write your book.  

“Every single word you put down is one word closer to the end,” Mike concludes. He advises you to keep chapters short – targeting 2,500 words and then “get out.” His reason? It keeps readers turning the page. Novels are approximately 100,000 words, while digital books are 50,000. You should also focus on three viewpoint characters not any more given the target book length.

“Speed is not important – every writer writes at a different speed. As you write more, you will get faster,” he says.

 

Identify these 13 Plot-clogging 'Sins'

The final workshop I attended on Sunday was Aaron's 13 sins that clog your plot.

Whether the culprits are issues of preparation, characterization, plotting or writing, the outcome is the same: “your characters stop interacting with you,” he says.  

Common culprits that stall a plot include not doing your research, not laying out the rules of your story, or leaving out an essential ingredient, such as writing characters that your readers can’t get behind or villains who aren’t identifiable to readers.

“Conflict is also important – a novel without a conflict is kind of like a novel without readers,” he says.

Two major plotting sins are setting up a situation that is too simplistic that leads characters to interact in very predictable ways, and plotting with what Aaron calls “Styrofoam peanuts,” or relying on overused plot twists that are cliches.

The most memorable of his sins was #13 – being unwilling to abuse your characters as your plot demands.  “You have to be willing to inflict pain on your characters.” Growth only comes with pain.