If you’re like me, you are an organizing fiend who relies on a combination of notebooks, Post-it notes, and iPhone apps to keep all of your notes straight. This works for some things, but not all. Case in point: Industry Research.

The thing about researching the writing industry is that it’s all so convoluted and interconnected. Who can keep track of all the different imprints a publishing house might have, and what they print? How do you zero in on the right agent (or publishing house) based on similar sales and client lists? As I try to navigate these waters, I rapidly find my eyes crossing at all the switchback arrows I draw trying to make sense of the relationships between any author-book-agent-publisher combination.

One tool I’ve been trying out is The Brain. The Brain is a free mind-mapping software tool that lets you organize thoughts, nuggets of information, documents, and anything else you might want to add, into a network-like structure that more closely resembles the way our brain works. The beauty of this organizational structure is that you aren’t confined to a linear hierarchy where the only directions you can go are up or down. In The Brain, you can create thoughts, jump from one thought to another, or add as many branches as you’d like. Your thoughts can even loop back on one other, or let parent thoughts become child thoughts of their own children. Freaky.

Fig 2. Authors who have made it into my brain.

For instance, the name of my brain is Writing Industry and it has several high-level nodes or “thoughts” to it: Agencies, Books, Literary Agents, Publishers, Resources, and Authors. The screenshot to the right shows my brain with the Authors node expanded. These are all the authors I have put in my brain for some reason or another. Maybe they wrote a book in the same genre as my work in progress (WIP), or perhaps they are a client of an agent who represents similar works.

The nice thing about thoughts is that they can be easily manipulated. When two thoughts become one (*cough cough* Random House and Penguin publishers), it’s a simple thing to drag thoughts from one node to another or rename thoughts as they evolve.

Fig 3. Book-specific information and jump links

From here, I can drill down into each author (in this case, Neil Gaiman) and and even further into one of his books (American Gods.) I’ve tagged this book with the genre “fantasy fiction.” (Tags can be used as filters to sort for specific keywords.) To the left of the book, I can follow jump links to two other related nodes, Gaiman’s literary agent Merrilee Heifetz, and the publisher HarperTorch.

For every node, I can add notes, URL links, documents, folders, and tags. This is great for keeping track of what genres different agents are looking for, or linking to author webpages. In the premium version of The Brain, you get a few other extras (like the ability to describe the relationship between nodes, like the connector line that says “Represents” between Heifetz and Gaiman.)

But I think the free version is just fine for what I need: a non-hierarchical network-like framework for tracking dynamic relationships within the writing industry.The only down-side is that there is no mobile version, so I can’t look up an agent on my mobile Brain at a conference and impress them with my encyclopaedic knowledge of their sales history as it pertains to my WIP. But I will be able to find that information and mention it when I sit down to write my query letter back home.

So, has anybody else played around with The Brain (or any other mind mapping software) for organizing industry research?
-BB

Wow.

How gorgeous is that description? Can’t you just see the deep red and glossy sheen of a wet lollipop? The fact that he’s describing a 12 year old girl’s lips makes it all the more provocative and disturbing. Perhaps that’s why it works on so many levels. When I heard that line for the first time (I was listening to the audiobook) I stopped and rewound it four times just so that I could appreciate how utterly amazing Nabokov’s writing was. And then I set fire to my current manuscript in a fit of despair as I realized I would never come close to the level of descriptive mastery that writers like Nabokov showed.

No, not really. I wouldn’t do that. But I felt like it.

Once I got past my inferiority complex, I sat down and thought about other ways I might overcome a lack of imagination when it comes to descriptive writing. It occurred to me that I was in a rut when it came to my mental library of reference objects. Reds were always compared to apples and fire engines, and yellows were always lemon or sun-like. How cliché.

If I had a huge database of random things that I could sort by color, I might use it to spur some novel and provocative comparisons. But where to find such a database? I tried Google Images- one of my favorite tools for inspiring descriptions of specific scenes like “dirty car interior.” Unfortunately I found that Google Images didn’t work well for generic colors like “red.” All it produced was tons of the most common examples of red (e.g., uniform red fields, rose petals, images of the word “RED.”) Not quite what I was looking for.

Then I turned to stock photography. Stock photography is the business of leasing images to media outlets like websites or magazines who need to illustrate stories or concepts. What does this have to do with me as a writer? Many stock photography websites put their searchable collections online. The beauty of these websites is that you can type in a generic color to search for and get pages and pages of highly diverse, color-specific examples.

The result is that I no longer have to rely on apples and fire engines to describe the color red. I can scan tens of thousands of images that feature red objects until I find the perfect descriptor. If I want something closer to rust rather than apple red, I can tweak the search and narrow it by hue or color range.

When I searched for “red” on these sites, I got pictures of threadbare theater seats, chilli peppers, rusting high school lockers, a dog’s tongue, wet maraschino cherries, a drop of nail polish, shiny knee-high PVC boots, the velvet ribbon of a medal, etc etc.

As comparative objects, I would never have come up with any of those on my own. Yet each one made me think about a different mood or characteristic of the color red that I might want to bring into my writing.

Now, I don’t think I would use this visual tool for enhancing descriptions while writing a first draft. That would probably slow down the process and bog me down in details. But I could see myself using this tool in revision where all the clichés and boring stuff get weeded out, primped and polished. Revision is where “the woman’s red lipstick” becomes “the woman’s lipstick was the color of chipped red paint flaking off of an old tool.” Or something like that.

If you’d like to give it a shot, here are some excellent stock photography websites I found: iStockphoto, Gettyimages, and Shutterstock.

Good luck and happy color inspirations!

-BB

PS- Please do not use stock photos for anything other than inspiration unless you’ve purchased the rights to them. Stock photographers work very hard to create images that will generate revenue and don’t take kindly to people who steal their images for blogs and such. Please respect their copyrights the way we hope others will respect ours.

Sugar. It’s everywhere. Too bad we can’t run cars on it.

My main character, Roland, goes through quite a transformation over the course of my novel. He cleans himself up, stops acting like a dick, and quits smoking… all for a girl. He also loses a bit of weight and starts exercising. This is a painful process for Roland. He’s never exercised a day in his life.

As the author, I owe it to Roland and the readers to paint a picture of Roland’s roller coaster ride of ups and downs as he goes through this transformation. Part of me can use my imagination. I watched my dad quit smoking so I can draw from that, but I’ve never successfully quit a bad habit myself. I think it’s time to put myself to the test, all in the spirit of getting inside my character’s head.

Soo… two weeks ago I decided to give up sugar for 8 weeks.

I know, impossible, right? It’s everywhere. Literally everywhere. Pick up a jar of something in your fridge and chances are there is added sugar or some derivative in that jar. They even put it in bacon, for pete’s sake. (Maybe that’s why bacon tastes so damn good…) It’s in yoghurt, salsa, mayonnaise, deli meats, and dried fruits. Try finding unsweetened dried cherries at your grocery store. Seriously. They’re cherries. Why do we need sugar added to them? But it is. A little bit here, a little bit there, it all adds up to a lot of sugar over the course of a day. And that’s just the sugar I’m unaware of. Then there’s the sugar I readily take in by the spoonfuls for my tea (of which I drink several cups a day.) It can’t be good for me. It can’t. Time to pull a Roland and make a choice to give it all up.

So, two weeks into this little journey of discovery and what have I learned? Giving up sugar means giving up a helluva lot more than just sugar. It means not eating the ready-made, super convenient stuff you find on the shelves or the refrigerator. It means preparing a lot of foods at home so that you can control what, exactly, goes into your meals. It means not adding it to your coffee/tea. But those hardships, and all those little pangs and cravings I’ve gotten and will get over the next 6 weeks, are exactly what Roland will be experiencing as well. I won’t have to imagine what it’ll be like to be Roland; I’ll know.

I’ve been keeping a little journal to record my feelings, cravings, moments of weakness….. Yes, there have been weaknesses, and there will be more, I’m sure of it. I’m not perfect and I don’t have an iron will. But those moments are fodder for the book, too. And hopefully at the end of my little challenge I’ll have a more realistic character to write when I get to those chapters of Roland’s metamorphosis. And who knows? I might be a little healthier for it, too.

Sometimes it’s good to let the sun set on a project for a time. That’s what happened this summer. I had every intention of keeping up with my writing and making progress on my novel, but other things came up. Vacations, mostly. And that’s a good thing. I spent a lot of time with my family, a lot of time with friends, and little bit of time in some mud (intrigued?) and, of course, some time at work. (Gotta pay the bills, don’t I?)

Last night was my first night back at the keyboard and it was refreshing. I went back to the beginning and re-read Chapter 1. Not the latest Chapter 1 of countless revisions, but the very first Chapter 1 I ever wrote. This was first light on my main character, Roland, and how he almost got shot in a diner. And guess what? It wasn’t that bad. In fact, it had a tone and a quality that I recognized as “me,” but that I’ve lost along the way. I remember some early readers suggested the chapter was over-written, and it was. But in classic newbie author over-reaction, I swung the pendulum to the other extreme and removed all aspects of my personal writing style in an effort to “just say it plainly.”

I doubt I would have noticed that without a few months away from the project to help reset the gauges, so to speak.

So I’m going to revisit my original writing style and allow myself to indulge a little bit more from now on. At the time I got the advice to simplify my writing, it was well-needed and well-heeded. But now that I’ve got a few tens of thousands of words under my belt, I’m thinking I can afford to be a bit more, well, me.

What does a helium balloon have to do with running a writing group? Read on to find out.

I have writing groups on the brain because my friend (and fellow writing group member) Ranee Dillon, just wrote an excellent piece on writing group etiquette. She makes a lot of good points, especially when she recommends that you ask yourself if you are really ready to receive criticism. Some people aren’t, and they don’t do themselves any favors by soliciting feedback they don’t want to hear. I’m proud of her and her piece, and I’m also excited for her since she just signed on with Evolve Publishing and will be my writing group’s first novel publication since we started meeting in November.

And then a few days ago, Tina (another writing group member) made us aware of Nathan Bransford’s piece called The 10 Commandments for Editing Someone’s Work. It was very apropos since it came out at a time when our group could have used such an essay on the front page of our meetup site. For me, Bransford’s Commandment #9: ‘Remember Personal Taste is Personal’ is critical when providing feedback to other writers in a group. When I first became a member of a writing group and started critiquing others’ work, I freely crossed out and replaced any word I personally wouldn’t use. I was a novice and didn’t appreciate the importance of voice and style yet. I wish somebody had pointed me toward these resources earlier on; I just didn’t know any better.

Both essays made me smile, and got me to thinking: what can I contribute on writing groups? Well, I know how to run one. I didn’t start my writing group; I inherited it from the original owner when I proposed moving it to a daytime hour and a public location. I’ve been running it for five months now, so I don’t presume to know all the ins and outs, but I have learned a few things along the way. So I decided to write down some tips based on my own experience.

The Most Important Thing To Know About Running A Writing Group

The first and most important tip for running a writers group is this: You don’t have to be a great writer to run a writers group; you just have to be willing to run a writers group. That means you have to be willing to do all the dirty work like find a location, advertise, coordinate the meetings, and mediate personality conflicts. Yep, I said it. You don’t hear about that last one very often, but if you want people to play in your sandbox, you have to make sure it’s a welcoming place.

Location

Unless your writing group is open only to personal friends, I suggest finding a public location to meet for two reasons: First, it helps draw in members by building community awareness. Public libraries, community centers, and churches all offer their spaces for free or for very cheap, and usually allow you to post fliers advertising your meeting times. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it’s safer than meeting at people’s houses. Yes, hosting the meeting at your house is easier than finding and renting a public space, but what happens if you have a falling out with one of the members? Now they know where you live. Yikes.

Time & Duration

Pick the time that works for you. If you’re the one who has to pick up the key to the community center once a week, or set up the chairs in the church hall beforehand, make sure the time fits into your schedule. And then don’t be late. Before I took on my writing group, we met every other week in the late evening. Half of us couldn’t make it due to other commitments, and the other half routinely showed up late or had to leave early. It just wasn’t working out. Finally, I asked the owner if I could try a weekday meetup and he said sure. Only two of us from the original group could commit to the daytime session I scheduled, but we gained 5 more members who could, so it worked out in the end.

As for frequency and duration, we started out every other week, but after we moved to our daytime slot, the members requested weekly meetings. I was thrilled. Not only did it mean more opportunities to get my work critiqued, but it also meant more fellowship (and food! See below…)

We meet for 2.5 hours and this seems to be just about right. Anything shorter and discussions get truncated; anything longer and people start to get antsy.

Advertise

Thank goodness for the Internet. Facebook and Meetup are probably all you need to start. Be warned, Meetup.com is not free. They charge a fee for their service, but it is a very nice service and allows you to upload submissions, RSVP for events, and hold discussions. We started out on Meetup but now that we have established a good-sized group, we are considering cheaper solutions, such as Google Groups. Facebook is good for a public presence, but doesn’t have all the features you might need, such as document sharing (ie, Doc, PDF, etc).

If you prefer to stay low-tech, you can always post fliers in libraries, coffee shops, and community centers. We’ve never felt the need to do that, since most people just search for writing groups online and find us through Google or Meetup. We did put a (free) ad in our community newsletter, but so far our numbers haven’t changed because of it.

Size

The ideal size of your group really depends on how prolific your members are. If you struggle to get people to submit every week, you might want to recruit more members until you have 3-4 submissions every meeting. If you have active, prolific writers, then I’ve found that five to six core members is perfect. This gives everyone a chance to submit and receive feedback every meeting, without straining the reading limits of your members too much. It also helps prevent awkwardly low numbers if one or two members miss a certain day.

Fellowship

A writing group isn’t just about writing and critiquing; it’s about fellowship with others who share your passion for writing. We encourage this in our group by spending the first twenty minutes or so visiting and catching up with each other over coffee/tea and snacks. We coordinate snacks every week using Signupgenius (free) and so far it’s worked out wonderfully. We’ve had Dunkin’ Donuts, store-bought fruits and breads, home-made quiches and German pancakes, and even mimosas. Dare I say the good eats are my favorite part of the meeting?

In addition to light food and drink, we try to start each meeting with announcements like upcoming contests, poetry readings, and other community events that our members might be interested in. This helps to foster a connection with the community and motivate ourselves to participate in writing activities outside of our comfort zones.

What’s in a Name?

Some might argue that you should name your group before you start meeting, but I think you should wait to see what personalities and inside jokes emerge after a few meetings before you settle on a name. Until then, use a generic name like “Springfield Writing Group” so that new writers can find you easily. Once you have a sense of the group’s personality, tap into that creativity to choose a new name that reflects the goals and ideals of your specific group.

Submission Rules and Guidelines

This is important. Try to get your submission guidelines clearly posted early on, reiterate them for all new members, and enforce them. Nothing will poison a group faster than somebody who routinely pushes boundaries and disregards the groups conventions. Here are the ones that work for us:

• No helium balloons. Ever.
• RSVP for each event so we can plan on enough food or cancel if numbers are too low
• Upload 4 days prior to meeting, or else we can’t guarantee that yours will be read (this one gets bent alot, but it comes in handy for prioritizing who gets critiqued first)
• Formatting should be double-spaced, 12 pt font, ten pages or less. Name/Title on page 1, and page numbers on every page
• Files should be uploaded as PDF and named using the following convention
  • 2012-MM-DD Descriptive name.pdf
• Feedback will be tailored to the author’s needs (eg, is it a rough draft or nearly final revision?), and constructive criticism will be directed toward the words on the page, never the author
• Any member may comment on posted submissions, but only members who have attended at least 2 meetings may upload submissions for review

That last bullet is important. You may not be able to do that for your first few meetings, but once you’ve established your core members, you will want to put that rule in place. It discourages random people signing up for one session just to get their stuff reviewed, and then disappearing forever. It also prepares new members for the kind of feedback they will receive on their own work once they are able to submit.

The first bullet is important, too. Our community center expressly forbids them and I could lose my $50 deposit if somebody brought in a helium balloon, so I take that stuff seriously. Your mileage may vary on that one.

How to handle personality conflicts

Unfortunately, this is part and parcel of having an open writing group. You hope for compatible personalities to walk through that door, but occasionally you may get someone who just doesn’t fit in. I’m not talking about the odd bird who is a little off but generally harmless. That’s me. I’m talking about the one person everybody else complains to you about individually because they said something inappropriate, made them feel uncomfortable, or repeatedly disregarded the rules. The problem person may not realize it, or they may just not care that they ruffle people’s feathers, but either way the issue must be addressed. As the writing group leader, this is your job.

It may mean pulling aside the problem member(s) for a little pep talk, or sending a discreet email with a carefully worded message that educates rather than attacks. I know this is not enjoyable and personally, I hate playing mediator, but it must be done for the health of your writing group.

This doesn’t mean everything will be fine afterwards, either. Feelings can get hurt, people can be embarrassed; it’s almost certain somebody will come out of it feeling miffed. But it’s almost always preferable to clear the air rather than let bad feelings fester. I’d rather hurt a new member’s feelings with a gentle chiding than lose my dedicated core members because they felt uncomfortable around that new member.

If the problem member adjusts their behavior, then problem solved. If the problem member quits, well it’s unfortunate, but problem solved. My personal feeling is that an open group should never ban a member, or as we say, “Give them a Golden Balloon” (see what I did there?), but neither should they tolerate members who consistently bend/break rules, hurt others’ feelings, or make discriminatory comments (even in a joking manner). It’s not always pretty handling such issues, but it is necessary to keep the whole group healthy and moving forward.

FUN

It’s not all work! Sometimes we meet outside of the normal meeting venue to keep things fresh. Now that our group is established and we all know each other, we have met at each others’ houses and restaurants. The new environment almost always results in a more giddy atmosphere, but sometimes it’s good to have a fun, light-hearted meeting to help open up members and get to know them in a way you might not have within the normal meeting space.

I can’t say enough good things about my writing group. It’s been my pleasure and privilege to get to know its members, and I count all of them as my friends. Not only has my writing improved, but I’ve made several good friends in the process. We all share the same goal of seeking publication and I have no doubt that we will all achieve that goal. Personally, I can’t wait to see where this group takes us.

Long post short: Welcome to Virginia, Shuttle. It won’t be like flying, but you will be surrounded by a team of caretakers, nostalgic grown-ups, and happy children for the rest of your days.

We should all be so lucky.

After an hour of uneventful flying, you notice a gradual but distinct loss in altitude. The pilot announces that there is a mechanical problem and he has to land. There is barren wasteland out of your window except for a dusty road. A cloud of dirt kicks up off toward the horizon.

Do you trust him or do you pull the pistol from your waistband and order him to regain altitude and continue as planned? Write what happens next.

BB

Imagine you are this man. Why do you summon the condor today? What do you search for that requires the condor’s all-seeing eye? What song do you play to convey this message? What is the significance of the red sweater? Who lives in the valley behind you, and why do you not venture into it yourself?  Lastly, what happened to the last condor whisperer?

What do you hear? What do you smell? How does the ground feel beneath you?

What is the first thing you do? Try to remember what happened? Check for your wallet? Call out for help?

You discover you have no wallet, no cell phone, and no hair. It’s all gone, completely shaven clean. (You had a full head of hair last night.)

You get up and look around to discover three other similarly hairless people waking up around you. You don’t know them. They look as confused as you feel.

Write the dialogue that allows you to piece together what the hell happened last night.

BB

Who are these guys? Brothers? Cousins? School friends? What city is this? What language do they speak to you? What language do they speak between themselves? Who does the guy on the right see? What’s the middle guy thinking?

Which one is saving up to open his own restaurant? Which one would you complain to if something was wrong with your food? Which one gets the girls?

Look at the photo and imagine it starts moving like a film. Watch the men work for a minute or two. What are their mannerisms like? How do they interact with each other, and with you? What gestures does each one favor?

Now pick an event and imagine what happens next:

1) An older woman enters the scene and complains vocally about them not wearing gloves. That person also has a misbehaving dog with them. What happens next?

2) A group of PETA protesters arrive and start drizzling red paint all around the fire pit and tables. What happens next?