Okay, I’m being lazy. I’d rather repeat this old post than think of something original. But it’s a good post, and I’m right in the middle of revising something I wrote years ago, so this re-posting an old post fits perfectly into my writing life right now. Even so, it does offer some valuable advice, not only to you, but to those irritable people who keep interrupting you to say, “What is it you do in that room all day’?” Arrrgh! So this should help you answer them. Because the first step to a cure is to admit you’ve got an addiction. But in this case, a very good one. Read on…

No, you’re not crazy, even though your friends and family think you are. Even so, you have to admit that at time, you do seem a bit “off.” Still, how do you measure crazy against what accurately borders on obsession? I was thinking of this last weekend while lunching with some fellow writers, wondering whether they’re afflicted with similarly bizarre affectations, or if I was I suffering in silence. Odd or not, it’s made me realize that dammit, I must be a real writer, because although I’m not cutting off an ear or anything for my art, I sure am suffering some peculiarities. Such as:

1. Post-it Note Addiction – It’s true. I carry them everywhere. I have pads of them on my desk, in my purse, in the pocket of my course binder. I whip them out to jot down lines of dialogue, character descriptions, plot lines–even the premise for this post. They’re all over the place in my office, and when I’m on  the road and inspiration clocks me, I jot down my genius and stick them to the inside of my wallet so I don’t forget. By the way, they’re also good for shopping lists, as you can stick them right in front of you on the inside of the shopping cart.

2. Drinking Hot Liquids Cold – During the winter months I usually have a cuppa something at my elbow while I’m writing, but I have to tell you, I can’t remember the last time I actually sipped it while it was still hot. Usually the cream’s left a sheen on the coffee, or the tea’s soaked down the string to the tag, an “accident” puddling on my desk, whatever’s in the cup long, gone cold. The opposite effect is true in the summer, when I never seem to sip anything cold: the ice just a memory, the glass dripping condensation. I should probably just yank a bottle out of the cabinet and forget about it. Either way, it all ends up the same place: room temperature.

3. Vitamin D Deficiency – My last routine blood screen had everything come back normal except my Vitamin D level. Apparently deficiencies of this vitamin, which is created by sunshine, can cause depression, chronic fatigue, weight loss (I wish), diabetes, heart disease, stroke and osteoporosis. In addition to a disease I thought went out with the nineteenth century–rickets! “It’s not unusual to see decreased Vitamin D levels in the winter,” my doctor had said. “But yours? Don’t you even step out on the porch?” All right, I guessing the LED glow from my laptop isn’t enough, so I suppose it’s supplements until the snow melts and I’m hitting the sidewalk again.

4. Plot-related Memory Loss – Has this happened to you? You’re driving along, trying to work out what exactly Protagonist A is going to leave on Protagonist B’s doorstep, and the next thing you know you’re sitting in the parking lot at work, with no idea how you got there. Or you’re in the shower and you’ve just thought of the perfect setting for your heroine’s vacation. But there’s this bottle of conditioner in your hand, and you can’t remember if you washed your hair first. Whether you’re staring at blank walls or losing threads of conversations, it’s not early dementia–it’s Plot On the Brain. And trying not to think about it only makes it worse. Better to lock yourself in the closet and get it down and over with.

5. You Do It Anyway – This I have found the most telling. You’ve written a bunch of novels, a dozen short stories, more than a few essays, innumerable blog posts, even kept a journal for more years than you’d care to own up to. And although you’ve had some limited success, though nowhere near where you’d like to see yourself, you keep doing it. You finish one piece then start another, because you know if you don’t your axis will tilt and forget the Vitamin D–you’ll feel a deficiency worse than if all the chocolate in the world suddenly disappeared. You can’t help yourself, even on the days when that rejection shows up in your inbox, you still want to do it. You’ll cry and curse and hate the world for stopping you from doing what you can’t seem to give up. But then all of a sudden that perfect line plants itself in your head, and you’re back to doing it anyway. You’re so pathetic. Maybe. Maybe not. But oh man, sometimes it’s such a bitch being us.

Okay, enough whining. Back to work.

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

I found this online and it made me feel so inadequate (temporarily) that I just HAD to share it with you. I hope it either spurs you into action, or you’re already so infinitely superior you scoff at such meager amounts. Either way, get to your keyboard, you’re wasting time with me.

I’m sure you’ve had this happen to you. You have this fantabulously good scene inside your head, practically playing like a movie, so you run to your keyboard and write it down, the words shooting to the screen like rivets, convinced you’ve just birthed genius. Exhausted by the effort, you save and exit, pondering the multitude of ways you’ll expand on it next time. But when you go back to it, whether the next hour or day or week, it reads like something out of a kindergarten class. The transitions make no sense, the characters are running into each other, the continuity seems out of a time warp. What happened to your genius?

The inability to write outside your head is one of the most common causes of angst I see with my young writing students. Oh–no angst for them–for me is what I mean. They don’t see anything wrong because until I point it out, that scene is playing in their head just as fresh as if the action were taking place right in front of them. But what they don’t realize is that there’s blanks they have to fill in, like facial expressions, reactions, settings, time of day, transitioning from one place to another, who this person is they’re suddenly talking to and how they relate to the scene. Then there’s technical things that may relate to a character’s profession or action they’re currently in. Like what is that tripod or data set or NMR tube is for. Sometimes what a writer doesn’t realize is your reader may not understand what comes so clearly to you. I say to my students that sometimes you have to explain things like your are writing to kindergarteners. With the average news site at a sixth grade level, sometimes you just have to dip a bit lower.

This doesn’t mean you have to dumb down your writing. That’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m saying is that sometimes your writing needs you to step back and let it simmer for a little while, so when you go back to it you can look at it with a fresh eye. Sometimes you need to forget it just a bit, to see where you need to fill in the crack. Like mortar, it’ll only make it stronger.

Hello class! It’s a new school year, and with it comes a new edition of Tips from the MFA Pit, actual advice to actual MFA students. This edition is on Deep POV versus Internal Dialogue, and all advice is from my brain alone, and NOT the official voice of anything outside my head. So please feel free to add a large grain of salt!

Let’s look at Deep POV before we get to Internal Dialogue. Both are intensely personal. You’re literally putting yourself into the character’s shoes. When you write within a character’s POV, you can only see what they see, and all the other character’s actions are just what that character can hear or observe. Deep POV goes beyond that. It’s what they feel, how they react, their gut feelings of pain, pleasure, anger, calm. It’s also how they react cognitively, psychologically and physically to another person, a situation, what’s said, observed, etc. For example:

Lauren opened the front door, the hills rolling out before her. Her fingers tightened around the knob and her pulse raced, tears flooding her eyes as Tom’s car rounded the last curve. Her heart burst with joy. He’s here.

If you’ll notice, no one outside Lauren herself could feel her pulse racing or burst with joy. They could observe her fingers tightening or tears flooding her eyes, but what she feels internally – or the reasons for it – is hers alone. Then we come to the last sentence – He’s here. That’s Internal Dialogue. It’s things that could be said orally, but are kept inside the character’s head.  It’s the difference between feeling – Joey knew there was no way he could talk his way out of this – and saying to yourself – I’m sunk.

A best practice, at least the way I see it and no way is this a rule, is to use Deep POV more and keep Internal Dialogue to a minimum. Using Internal Dialogue too much is like “telling” not “showing.” When you’re in a character’s POV, you want to know how they are feeling inside, or what would be the point of being in their head? Usually it’s best to keep the internal dialogue short so it has more of an impact, and most publishers place it in italics to separate it from the Deep POV. It is ALWAYS limited to the character whose POV you’re in, and it is always in first person.

Words of wisdom indeed! Till next time — keep writing because ===> WRITERS WRITE!