Tag: writers

The Blank Page

~ susanoleksiw ~ 5 Comments

Like many writers before me, I get a deadline for an assignment and spend the days, weeks, or even months leading up to it thinking about what I’ll write. If I pick something lighthearted, I have to consider just how far to go in the humor direction. If the topic is serious, I worry I’ll sound earnest (Oh, the shame!). Either way, I let my mind wander, make a few notes as I go along (and try to keep them on the same pad of paper), and sit down to write with ample time to revise and edit. And then on the day when I’m supposed to post, I plan to finish the essay with a light and quick rewrite, just to keep it fresh. I open a new page, and there it is. The blank page. I’m catatonic.

What is it about the blank page that makes my brain go blank as well? I look at that white sheet which now has the vastness and strangeness of the Sahara covered with a blanket of snow, and I haven’t a thought in my head. Not even an idea that I’m looking at a blank sheet of paper on a computer screen. Nothing. 

I had so much to write about this morning at 5:30 a.m. I woke up to the morning sun lightening the New England sky, reminding me that today was supposed to be a nice day, upper 50s along the coast, possibly even hitting 60 degrees. A good day to be outside tackling the weeds and cleaning things up for spring planting. I had the luxury of just lying there thinking about all that I could do today after I posted my blog for the fourth Saturday, my regular day for Ladies of Mystery.  But by the time I got to my desk and laptop, something unbeknownst to me was draining my brain of every idea I’ve ever had.

I’ve thought about ways to cheat the blank page of its power to cripple me. It’s possible that pulling up a page from an earlier post will stimulate my tired synapses to get popping, but then I have to make a decision and choose a page. Nope. Still crippled. I could pull up a page from the novel I’m working on (and have been since last summer—what’s with that?) but then I’m liable to fall right into my usual funk of trying to figure out what’s wrong that scene or the other one in the same chapter. Not good for morale, which I need right now.

If you, reading this, are also a writer, you’ve probably already shut your eyes hard against a painful memory of a blank page, the one that just wouldn’t let you get started on what you hoped would be your greatest ever WIP. This experience drives me to question, what is the purpose of the blank page? And I’ve decided it’s the Universe’s way to test us, to make sure we know what we’re doing. If I pulled up a new page and started tapping out advice for ingrown toenails, the Universe would be telling me I’m in the wrong business—I’m not a writer; I’m a frustrated podiatrist. Perhaps I decide to explore the drawing or designing function on my computer. Okay. Problem. No words. 

The blank page is the test for me every time. I don’t know what I’m going to write. Even if I think I do, I don’t know what’s going to come out. No matter how much I plan, no matter how much energy I waste on sample paragraphs or opening lines, the minute I look at that blank page, I go blank, white, empty, nothing. And then something comes up, something not planned, not expected, not even understood sometimes. There it is, and a wonder among wonders, For me writing is like breathing. I don’t really know how it works, but I know that it does and that’s enough for me. I thank the Gods of Desperation and go on typing.

Facing the blank page forces me back on myself every time—challenging me to trust that whatever shows up, making my fingers wiggle and stretch, spreading those black squiggly things across the white space, has to be what matters to me at that moment. On this I have no questions, which is good because I also have no answers. I take it all on faith.

I write because I have to, and I accept what comes also because I have to. It’s me.

What Makes A Writer? Nature or Nurture?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

What makes a writer? Is it genetic? Or the way we are raised? Or something we choose that we feel we must follow? Or all of the above?

To begin with let me say I am the third generation of a wordsmith family. One grandfather was a small-town newspaper publisher in a time and place where that was a position of power. Both grandmothers were at one time teachers. My father was editor and/or publisher of several Texas newspapers, taught journalism at Texas A&M (he also separated the journalism department from the English department and made it a separate discipline) and, with my mother started and owned one of the top 300 advertising agencies in the US. My mother was an English teacher, a play producer and a magazine columnist. I started working in the family agency when I was nine – as a stripper, no less. (And no, it’s not what you’re thinking, but it is a great line to use at a cocktail party!) I graduated to writing copy when I was twelve.

Obviously I didn’t have a snowball’s chance of becoming anything else but some variety of wordsmith!

But was it nature or nurture? Yes, our house was full of books. It still is. The Husband and I live in a house with two dedicated libraries and a hobby room with five enormous bookshelves. For that matter, little drifts of books stacked on the floor and almost every flat surface seem to breed in our house. But not all readers become writers, so I ask again, is it nature or nurture?

I don’t know, but the question did strike me a couple of days ago. I was going through some papers of my late father’s and there, between two of the radio scripts he had written long ago, was a copy of my birth announcement.

It’s a simple thing, a plain white piece of paper with black print with a left-hand fold so it opens like a book. On the cover is the image of a book with the title “Janis Susan – Announcing a New Edition – Best Book of the Year.” There is also a picture of a rather startlingly disgruntled looking stork in a top hat and glasses. I always wondered why he had such a peculiar look on his face.

Open the ‘book’ and it says “The Author and Publisher proudly announce the issuance of their 19XX (no, I’m not going to tell you the year!) edition entitled Janis Susan May.”

Below that, it says “Author – Donald W. May – Publisher – Aletha B. May.”

Below that it says “Publication Date – (the date of my birth) – DeLuxe Edition, with pink and white binding weighs X pounds X ounces (I’m not going to tell you that  either, then or now!). Cover jacket – white, removable. Reprints and Second Editions not available this year.”

See? I was doomed from the beginning. Nature or nurture makes no difference, for when one’s beginning of life is announced as a book, one really has no choice but to become a writer.

In the for what it’s worth department, my father did the announcement himself. He had a telling wit and I personally think the concept hilarious. My sentimentalist mother loathed it and, once recovered from her ordeal, sent out very proper handwritten announcements herself, probably confusing a lot of people as to whether the Mays had had one child or two.

Sometimes, knowing the many dichotomies of my nature, I wonder that myself. But then, I am a writer.

Writing Would Be Perfect If…

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

I mean it. Writing would be so perfect if it weren’t for the readers.

I know, that is a very incendiary statement, but it’s true. We’re asked to live up to readers’ expectations without being given much of a hint as to what those expectations are. Or what they’re going to be in six months or a year, after some big unexpected blockbuster shows up and turns everything we thought we knew into a fruit salad.

Have you ever noticed how so many of those big unexpected blockbusters are usually done by people who have never published a book before? Without the need to cater to a pre-conceived notion of what readers (and publishers!) want, they write what they want. But I’ll bet there are many many more who write what they want and never get by the second reader at an agent’s or publisher’s office. It’s the one that gets through that messes everything up for us working professional mid-list writers. We’ve finally (we think!) worked out the reading habits of our demographic and adjusted our plotting/writing accordingly and some of us make a fairly decent living doing that.

Then – boom! Some off the wall writer hands in a new style of book and suddenly that’s what everyone is wanting. I’ll bet all those writers who hit the jackpot aren’t trying to make a living off their writing, that they have jobs to pay their rent and bills, but they don’t mind messing things up for the rest of us. Humph!

It has become a bad joke in the writing industry that publishers are eagerly seeking something like [insert name of current bestseller here] – something just the same, but different. I have known writers who start to growl menacingly when told this and publishers don’t seem to understand that such a statement is not really good corporate communication.

Sadly, though, it isn’t just publishers and agents. I have talked to readers about this phenomenon and am astonished at how easily the little darlings are led – of course, they are the same people who rush to buy a detergent that screams “NEW” and “DIFFERENT” when the only things new and different about the product are that the boxes are smaller and the price higher.

I have talked to readers (in both romance and mystery, as I write both) who are upset with the new fashion of genre bending. I recall one most decisive woman who hated the idea, saying “When I read a story I want this to happen, and then this, and then this.” She was not happy when I asked if she were so rigid in her reading desires why didn’t she just read the same book over and over again and save herself some money.

Her reply was fit for neither print nor pixels.

I guess you really can’t please everyone. Sigh.