The Difference

by Kaye George

A lot has been said about the difference between a published and an unpublished writer. I’ve come up with a list of things that can be different. These pertain to writers who are published by a publishing house, since anyone can self-publish. Nothing against self-publishing--I’ve done it myself and intend to continue to do so. But some people want the extra boost of a publisher behind them. I’m also one of those.

TIME

It takes time to learn the craft. Sometimes the difference can merely be that the published writer has been writing longer and has learned how to polish up the prose. Where to insert hooks, how to pace the action, how to work descriptions and explanations into the text with dialogue or actions.

LUCK

I’m convinced that there’s a certain amount of luck involved. You have to connect your work with a publisher or agent who is receptive, on that day, at that very time, to what you’re offering. And the publisher or agent hasn’t just accepted a project so similar to yours that he has to turn yours down. But if you keep showing up, you have a better chance at hitting it lucky.

NETWORKING

This is so important. You don’t even know that it’s normal to take 10 years of writing before you’re published unless someone tells you. You also don’t know how to fix the glitches in your writing--sometimes don’t even notice they’re there--unless you find a good critique group, or critique partner. You also don’t know who is looking for what kinds of projects unless you buddy up with people who know these things. My solution is to buddy up with everyone in the writing business that I can. You never know who will have good info.

PERSISTENCE

This is the most important. The main difference between a published and an unpublished writer is that the published writer didn’t quit. Here’s a self-serving illustration. I wrote a novel I called SONG OF DEATH. I wrote it and wrote it, then queried the heck out of it. Finally, after many agent rejections, I shelved it and went on to write other novels. A few months ago, I dusted it off and decided that it still sounded pretty good to me. I did another rewrite and submitted it to Barking Rain Press. After about 10 years, that novel was published this week! It’s now called EINE KLEIN MURDER and has been through extensive editing at BRP. If you’d like to check it out, here’s more information on my newest release: http://travelswithkaye.blogspot.com/p/eine-kleine-murder.html. 

I’d love to know what’s made the difference for you, if you’ve made it to published author.

Curing Writer's Block

I’m fortunate to have started my writing career as a news reporter, so writer’s block was never an option. I sat at my manual typewriter and pounded out articles in a very noisy press room with one eye on the television set—at one of my first jobs—to make sure that there were no breaking news stories on any of my beats.

I don’t recommend the experience as a way to prevent writer’s block, but persistence (determination) is the best way to counteract the old writing bugaboo. When I'm writing fiction, I find that reading the chapter I wrote the day before is a good way to carry the plot forward as well as making any changes that my subconscious comes up with overnight. Like most novelists, I live with my characters 24/7 and they sometimes talk to me in my sleep.

If editing a previous chapter doesn’t break the proverbial log jam, get something down, even if you have to completely rewrite it the following day (or next writing session). It’s important that you write something every day, even if it’s only a scribbled note on a napkin or notepad that you carry with you at all times. That, in itself, can give you the confidence to write something worthwhile. It also helps to erase the fear that you’re permanently blocked.

Another good way to prevent writer's block is to work on several projects simultaneously. I’m currently working on several and when I tire of one, I go to another.

Blogging is also a great way to keep the writing juices flowing. Writing for one or more blogs not only builds your confidence, it acquaints you with potential readers and gives you valuable feedback. I realize that those who hold down full-time jobs have little time for writing, let alone blogging, and more than one writer has been fired for writing during working hours. But lunch time and breaks are a good time to make notes about your weekly blog, and giving up some TV watching will also help to solve the problem.

Believe in your ability to create. I came across some old writers’ magazines while packing for a  move. In one of them Lawrence Block had this to say on the subject of talent: “A feel for language, an intuitive understanding of how to arrange words in their best order, a sense of what is and is not dramatically effective—all of the elements that make up what we call talent are enormously important. But a great many writers with a generous supply of genuine talent never get any place in this business, while other writers who haven’t been so abundantly supplied with talent become astonishingly successful. So talent helps, but its presence is no guarantee that it’s absence [will bar you from success].”

Persistence is the most important characteristic in a successful writer’s makeup. If you’re not willing to hang in there for the long haul, don’t even attempt to begin the journey.

The Root of All Great Character-Building

The Fully Realized, Completely Materialized Character (steps onto the page)
Posted By Robert W. Walker

The Root Mon & How He Came into Being....

You hit on an idea, and it surrounds a character, right? Something in his swagger, his manner, his appearance, his carriage, his stage presence…or something in the way she talks or walks or balks--something undeniable in the sense she will not be denied as the one character that insists on being fleshed out, fully realized, completely materialized. The one of many “character” voices that will demand or claim the LEAD role in your next story or novel. She steps up and onto the stage of your mind-right smack dab at the frontal lobe, and when you either wish her away or try to put her off, or go off and do various chores to put her out of your mind, because you had other plans for the story or a life to live, she is still there, lurking-if not in the frontal lobe, someplace else in there, and you know it because she isn’t going anywhere until you pay her the attention she demands and claims of you. She may flatter you, call you her creator, her God, or she may bedevil you and claim she is your creator, your God. Either way, she or he or it has a stranglehold on you.

I know it sounds weird, especially to those who do not write or create, but it’s oh so true. When you listen to a psychic like John Edwards speak of those “spirits” who are all rushing in at him at once, all of them demanding attention and shouting, “Take me! Take me!” -you understand where he’s coming from even if you don’t understand where the “spirits” are coming from. Writing can and does often feel like channeling spectral voices out of the past or out of the psyche or out of the collective psyche, but that’s too deep to go into here. Still, it is a lot like that when an author is fishing around for a new lead character to cast in his next novel or story-that the casting couch can get extremely crowded. But always one voice, one powerful character drowns out the rest for the duration of a story or in the case of The Root Mon from the Root Heaven Store-a poem crafted around such a truly noisy, irritating character that not only demanded to be heard, but demanded it at the oddest of times and over a long, long period of time that I NOT shut him out try as I may….

In fact, I originally wrote the poem long years ago just in order to get The Root Mon out of my line of vision and out of my head, so that I could go on and live a normal writer-ly life, if there is such an existence. But before I banished him, it would take months and many return engagements, and just recently he mysteriously returned. I came across it, made the mistake of picking it up and reading it, enjoyed it, and wham, he was back! Kind of smacked me on the back of the head The Root Mon did. He had yet two more stanzas to add to the piece! After all these years! He’d been lurking in the dark recesses of my mind all this time, awaiting the day I should revisit him, and bada-bing, he jumps out at me and claims my frontal lobe again; abducts me and forces me to come to terms with two stanzas that needed adding! Confides that I got it wrong the first time around. All this and I have not cracked up in any meaningful F. Scott Fitzgerald fashion as yet.

Now mind you, when he first showed up, it was just to do three stanzas and boom, I was to be done with The Root Mon and poetry! How very often had I been warned off the writing of poetry as anything I attempted stank to high heaven. Warned off it as a tone deaf person is warned to stay away from any attempt at music or song. So after those few stanzas, I felt confident that The Root Mon’s visit had come to an end; that bye-bye meant bye-bye. That I could write something easy now-like a mystery novel. The next in my Instinct Series. Besides, I wasn’t terribly impressed by The Root Mon’s poem anyway. But like a horror film, I found him in my head again while I was trying to sleep, while I was trying to shower, and while trying to dress! At every turn of my day, this crude guy demanded another stanza. Done! Go away now! Again done with The Root Mon, I went out to hoe the garden out back and wham, he came again with yet another stanza demanding I jot it down. Standing in the check-out line at Wal-mart, bam, another stanza. Just demanding as hell.

This went on. At breakfast another stanza, at lunch, at school, at the dental office, in the library while researching anything else! At the beach…in the ocean…no pen at hand! Again and again he came back at me, always demanding: “Com’on, mon…you gotta do dis one. Dis gotta be in de Root Mon’s poem!”

My wife was beginning to become suspicious. To be sure, I was distracted-living with this wild and crazy Root Mon in my head. He was telling me that I hadn’t “fully realized” who he was or just how much “ju-ju” he possessed, and that he wanted to “completely materialize” on the page I prayed, so I had to put up with him wanted me to fully flesh him out (on the page). That kind of magic meant another stanza, and another, and even now years later, he has COME BACK! Scary, yes. Exhausting yes, but in the end, I’m proud to present The Root Mon of Root Heaven below and you tell me if “living with your characters” for a time does or does not pay off. I think this is a cogent and quick example the “fully realized, completely materialized” character-as in a nutshell. Here is the Root Mon in his own words and on the stage that he built:

The ROOT MON --a poem by Anton “Mystic Ruler” Dupree aka Robert W. Walker  (*to be read to the sound of Reggie music playing in your head; the poem and character also makes an appearance in Pure Instinct, pre-Katrina New Orleans)

ThE RooT MoN

You carrying a curse?
Got urgent pain?
Can’t make de water?
Head a bustin’? wife a-fussin’?
Jus’ you come to Root Heaven…
the famous Root Mon’s Store

Here’s a broth,
here’s a stew
you want both
for what you gotta do.

You got needs?
Plannin-a-big sacr-o-fice?
We god seeds
and chickens on ice!
We got bugs, scrubs, and herbs,
and all kinna spice!

Need dem magic words?
Have a dose-a-crawlin’ lice.
Eat a canna magic rice,
a-pinch of snuff
for dat ol’ wart
and to kick-start the heart.

Toad sweat’ll get you up’n'fit
wid no shivers, shingles, or sneeze,
so get whatever you please
wid heavenly-heavenly ease
at the Root Mon’s store-
Root Heaven.

We got fat slugs
and tobacco plugs.
Got fuzzy cut worms
for cuts, scrapes’n'burns.
For fever it’s the poltice
and the crucifix cross.

Got many things for stings:
herbs, toots, roots’n'things.
Go-head, make my day
wid dat bottle
of turtle-nip-spray.

Toss a snake rattle
o’er your left shoulder
onto a big boulder
beside a flowin’ river
at the midnight hour.
So get whatever you need-
no talk, guilt, nor greed.

Join de Root Mon’s club!
Special on de belly rub,
and on de herb’n'potion.
Jus’ whisper who gets
dis notion, dat lotion.
Hex on/off as you please
to get ridda that sneeze.

Get stalks and stone,
min’rals and bones,
cat tails in pails
wid good’n'plenty snails!

Got a clip of royal bangs,
eyelashes from de King,
Bob Marley’s gol’ ring!
All’s at Root Heaven!

Take dat magic tobacco,
wrap it in calico and
fill it wid cat gut.
Den find a cemetery,
and dig a deep rut,
to just bury it up.
Prescription filled!
Got de enemy killed!

Fix you up wid a hex sign,
tack it to de nearest pine.
Throw a magic lotion
into the nearest ocean.
Chew eyes of black raven
whenever your cravin’
the really big ol’ cure.
All at your Root Mon’s Store!

Swallow de snail slime!
Ain’t no crime
to be fit and prime,
and in self-help
there’s protection
and at once
you be sheddin’ dat
godawful middle-section.
In de health we trust.

Guard your fleas
Curses come in threes!
Get even however you can,
And glory-be, mon
If’n you want
joy, and prosperity,
then you lis’n to me!

Fatherly Root Mon advice,
in other words so right!
Forget dat old 7-Eleven!
Get yow-self to Root Heaven!


THAT’S my story and I’m sticking to it.
Happy Writing and Reading

Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/