#stabbylove

If you're a writer who is active on Twitter, you already know where I'm going with this.

If the moniker #stabbylove is foreign to you, allow me to clarify: It has nothing to do with vampires, sparkly or otherwise. Nor is it a reference to mass murderers, zombies or mosquitoes. For committed writers, #stabbylove is a way of life.

As you may already know: In the world of Twitter, a hashtag (#) prior to any word or phrase (always written as one long word) will list a person's status line in that thread. #stabbylove is a thread directed specifically to writers.

The gist of #stabbylove is simply this: We, as writers, all love our manuscripts. Of course! If we didn't, we wouldn't write. During that tenuous first draft, we must cling to that bookish affection like a lunatic if we wish to finish what we started. But at some point you must, in the words of Sir Thomas Quiller-Couch, "kill your darlings." In other words, we must stab our manuscript where it hurts, in order to further our craft. Every manuscript needs several layers of #stabbylove before it's finished.

Courage to "kill your darlings" is part of the writer's life. To #stabbylove your manuscript means to take those passages of which you were initially very proud, maybe even ludicrously proud, and realize those "darlings" do nothing to further the story. Readers can spot when a writer is full of himself. It is our responsibility as writers to recognize that same tendency in ourselves, before our final product goes to the presses. If we don't, our manuscript will settle into the literary sediment at the bottom of the Everchanging Book-River, along with thousands of other books which were equally printable and forgettable.

How can I show #stabbylove to my manuscript? Editing is such a necessary, bittersweet pain for every writer. Once you endeavor to treat your manuscript seriously, one of the things that should evidence itself is the need to edit your work not just once, or twice, but several times.

     * Accept up front that your manuscript will need several edits. This is non-negotiable. No matter how savvy and polished you think you are, there is always a way to improve your work. You don't want to edit endlessly, but don't make the mistake of thinking you're above the need for correction.

     * Line up several beta readers to critique your work before you start querying. Close friends and family are good for an ego boost when you first want someone to read it, but they should not comprise the sum total of beta readers. Be sure to enlist people who not only have a strong grasp of grammar and story structure, but who also don't feel quite so obligated to praise and applaud. You want to know what you're doing well, of course; but not to the neglect of receiving that hard-but-necessary constructive feedback.

     * Kill your passive voice. Of all the suggestions I'm seeing from editors and agents on Twitter and blogs, this is the one that is repeated the most frequently and fervently. For a great short primer on passive vs active voice, see the post by @sirra_girl on her blog that went up just last week.

     * Follow the #stabbylove thread on Twitter. This thread doesn't move as quickly as some others, but there are a few people who post great tips there from time to time, editor @sirra_girl being one of them. (And if you haven't already, be sure to add her to your list of Tweeps!)

    * Learn to walk away from your manuscript once in a while. Put it in mothballs and let it marinate a couple weeks, maybe even a month or two. Start another project while you wait. Then go back to it, and give your work a cold read. You will likely find that some of those "darling" passages you thought were so phenomenal before actually need some serious work.

     * Above all - never give up. This part of the editing process is when writers often get frustrated, think they're in over their heads, and quit. Don't do that. Remember - the only difference between a published author and an unpublished one is that the published author never gave up - not even when the going got tough, then brutal.

Brutal editing is the writer's crucible. If we want our literature to be proven as gold we think it is, and shine out among the collected heaps of forgettable books, we must go through it.

Those who endure #stabbylove survive. Their books are published. Those books are remembered, and stick in the guts of those who read them. That's why we're doing this, after all - isn't it?

What about you? How do you show your manuscript #stabbylove when editing?

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Argotal Acumen

The other day I was celebrating a fabulous word sprint with some other NaNoWriMo die-hards, and one Tweeter asked what I was being so smug about. I told him: "I am celebrating our literary prowess and argotal acumen." He thought that was funny. I'm glad - because usually when I pull that retort out of my hat, most people look at me like I have Brussel sprouts growing out of my nose, or something.

The "argotal acumen" snark is something of an inside joke between me and my dad. He's the one that came up with it - I can't take credit for it. But it's our little catchphrase for any smart use of higher vocabulary that we somehow, amazingly, manage to pull off in a quasi-normal sentence.

You know - something you drop into conversation just to see if your audience is still paying attention.

I do this all the time with my students. I'm always dropping odd words into my history lecture, very specific words with extremely specific meanings, just to see if they are paying attention. After fifteen years of teaching school, I can pretty well gauge by their expressions if they caught it or not. Whether they're confused by it, or are actively sifting out the context clues and filing it away for later use - I can pretty much tell they heard it (and how they're responding to it) by the look in their eyes. Sometimes they ask me to define words, but I rarely do - and never flat out; I just give them more examples. Sooner or later they piece things together...usually sooner.

This is a good thing to keep in mind as you write - or rather, as you edit. With every novel there comes a need, in some form or fashion, for a kind of specialized vocabulary that your average reader may or may not know. The trick is to:

     * Drizzle in specific information gradually. In his book On Writing, Sir Thomas Arthur Quiller-Couch said that readers are like large, narrow-necked bottles - capable of holding a tremendous amount, if you have the patience to drizzle in the information a little at a time. Be sure you don't strangle your readers with vocabulary overload.

     * Be certain that your vocabulary is appropriate for the work. Don't make it sound like an owner's manual, and don't go so prosey that you lose the narrative amidst your quest for sensual or textural details. There is a place for both, but either can be horrendously overdone.

     * Sometimes it's the combination of words, not the specificity, that works best. Maybe you could get very technical about the mechanisms in the uber-villain's laboratory; but for a wider audience consider using your specific knowledge to masterfully manipulate more ordinary words in unusual combinations.

     * Make sure that your super-cool vocabulary actually furthers the story. Do we really need to know about the uber-villain's machine? If it is central to the plot, then - by all means, give us the details. If it's just a background example of the kind of wickedness we can expect from the villain, then generalize more. Just don't lose sight of your overall goal.

Again --- for those of you hip-deep in your NaNoWriMo efforts just now, this is something that will be attended to after November draws to a close. Vocabulary tweaks are best managed in the editing stage, anyway. But it's still worth noting at the composition stage, because it is when you're doing a long, hard brain dump that you set the tone for things that come afterward - not only in your plot, but in how and what you should edit.

Of course the rough draft will be rough - as ugly as a warthog's backside. They always are. But thinking through such semantic rules beforehand, even in the midst of the wordmongering battle, will save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

Am I the only one who continually wrestles with this aspect of writing? What about you?