Natalia M. Sylvester

One of my first jobs was at a magazine that basically had a typo for a name. Of course, it was done on purpose, you know..because it was so clever.

So clever, that at a meeting with a potential client last week, I was asked if that was a typo on my resume.

This happened a lot while I worked at the magazine. I usually had to spell out the name mind numbingly slow (a as in apple, n as in Nancy, for ten whole letters) every time I gave out my email address.

And the thing is, half the time people didn’t get the play on words the magazine was going for. The other half would hesistantly ask, “You know that’s not how it’s really spelled, right?” So then we’d have to explain it to them, and they’d just nod and smile.

The thing with good writing is that it’s like a joke—if you have to repeat it and explain why it’s good, it’s really not that good. Writing shouldn’t need to be read twice (though people should want to), shouldn’t need to be analyzed over and over to find meaning. The message needs to hit a reader the second their eyes register the words, because they won’t often give it more time than that.

Now I know it’s true that being clever is often what will catch a reader’s attention. I’ll never knock clever. Some of my favorite writing is witty and funny and sarcastic in all the right places. But it has to serve the message first.

Otherwise you’ve just got a bad joke (in print!). And you’ll find yourself wishing you could put an asterisk at the bottom of your resume—

*To whom it may concern: I realize that this word is misspelled, but I assure you that it was done on purpose, and, more importantly, I was not in any way involved with that decision.

It’s funny the random things we learn from. Last night, while watching supplements for the first Harry Potter movie (I think I’m one of the few who watch supplements, thanks to my film-loving husband), one of the writers said something that got me thinking. While adapting the book to a screenplay, he was impressed by the wealth of information J.K. Rowlings had about the world she’d created. He said that the book was like a tree that only those above the ground got to see, while Rowlings knew every detail of every root.

What a great way to describe the relationship between research and writing of any capacity. After all, you’ll never get a tree without the roots. And, even though they’re essential to a tree’s growth, the majority of roots stay underground, where no one would ever suspect how far down they reach, or how much they ground the tree. My first thought was that this is how crafting a character works in fiction—authors should know details about their lives that readers might not ever learn, but they’re the details that shape them.

But then I realized everything we ever write starts with a seed (an idea) before it spreads its roots (the research) and then branches out into a tree (the writing). Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I went to a reading by the poet Maureen Seaton, who read from her book of poems, Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen, her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls and her chapbook, America Loves Carney. The theme of these readings at the University of Miami is “Lyric Hybrid,” because all the writers have stepped outside of their usual genres to explore new forms of writing. You can listen to last night’s reading and the previous one by A. Manette Ansay on UM’s Creative Writing website.

My favorite part of the night was when talk turned to whether or not Seaton had thought of writing a novel. She replied that she’d tried, that she had a lot of scenes written, but no plot. She joked that she was waiting for the Plot Fairy to bring her one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I’m writing about family relationships as part of a mass blogging event.*

One of my favorite first lines (from a book I’ll admit I haven’t finished reading) is from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina—

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Writing about family relationships in some capacity is almost inevitable when you’re writing a work of fiction. Even if your story isn’t about family relationships, we usually end up learning about a character’s family life and childhood because it’s part of what makes them who they are.

I think of  Tolstoy’s words often because they apply so well to writing, and not just to writing about families. Every well-developed character has their own version of what happiness is and what happiness isn’t. One person’s hell might be another person’s bliss. Everyone’s happy or unhappy in their own special way.

One of my favorite memories is from the summer when my family and I lived in Texas. Being from Peru, then living in Miami, we weren’t used to living far from a beach, so we’d drive two hours every weekend to South Padre Island, listening to the Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night” album on cassette. We’d pack a huge cooler full of chips, sodas, and sandwiches, and we’d play volleyball and paddleball, and when the sun was about to set and we’d run out of food, we’d drive back home.

To me, it was bliss. But maybe to some other kid, in some other family with a different family relationship, it would have sucked. Maybe he was afraid of the water, or his parents were too overprotective of him, never letting him step outside of an umbrella’s protection. Maybe a summer like this would’ve been like dangling a carrot before his eyes, reminding him of a childhood he could never have.

Which brings me to the exercise: Write a scene about a character’s happiest family memory, then use the same events to write about another character’s worst family memory. Both memories are the same, and the only variables are the characters and their family relationships—but that makes all the difference.

Feel free to post your scenes below or link to your blog so we can read them!

*Today I’m participating in a mass blogging. WOW! Women on Writing has gathered a group of blogging buddies to write about family relationships. Why family relationships? We’re celebrating the release of Therese Walsh’s debut novel today. The Last Will of Moira Leahy (Random House, October 13, 2009) is about a mysterious journey that helps a woman learn more about herself and her twin, whom she lost when they were teenagers. Visit the Muffin www.wow-womenonwriting.com/blog.html to read what Therese has to say about family relationships and view the list of all my blogging buddies. And make sure you visit theresewalsh.com to find out more about the author.

On a trip to San Francisco over Labor Day weekend with my husband, we were having Clam Chowder and Crab Dungeness at this  little bistro on the Wharf. The tables were small and very close to one another, and pretty soon, instead of focusing on how romantic it was, I found myself eavesdropping on the conversation next to my table. I couldn’t help it — they were talking books! And, I reasoned, it’s part of my work. The best way to write great dialogue is to listen to how people talk. It was a mini-lesson in in how dialogue can reveal character.

These two women, let’s call them Jan and Tina, were talking about Jennifer Weiner’s books. Tina had read only one of her books, but Jan was a huge fan, so she used the opportunity to talk for about ten minutes about Weiner’s entire collection, and what she liked/disliked about each and every one. Tina mostly nodded and smiled politely while Jan described at length and in unnecessary detail for this level of friendship, how her boyfriend was totally the same as the boyfriend in Good in Bed. The few words Tina got in to the conversation were “That’s usually what’ll keep me reading an author, if I can really relate to the people in them.” (Proof that you can say a lot with very little words, or say very little in a lot of words).

Jan kept talking about said boyfriend, then transitioned into yogurts, how she’ll only eat X type of yogurt and is thankful that X type got her into yogurts in the first place, because she knows yogurt’s good for her but has hated every other type she’s tried since. When the check came, she suggested they split the bill evenly, even though she’d had much more to eat and drink than Tina. Tina agreed.

I was fascinated because, had this been a book, there were many conclusions we could’ve come to about these characters. Read the rest of this entry »

In bird by bird by Anne Lamott, Lamott wrote that in order to not worry that what we write might offend people, we should “write as if [our] parents are dead.” Which is funny, considering that my parents probably would die if they were to read some of my writing.

It’s not that I write about them. It’s not even that my writing is incredibly risque. It’s just that when you’re a writer, the people in your life will always look for the bits of themselves that pop up in your work, and in my case, they wouldn’t have to look for long.

Much like a dream will take random pieces of my day and swirl them into a completely nonsense narrative as I sleep, I’ve realized I take pieces of my life and swirl them into my fiction. They’re usually memories, people, or even words of dialogue that for some reason have resonated with me throughout the years. These things stick with me, and I can’t think of a better way to make something of them than to interpret them in my writing.

I’ve given a character one of my childhood memories, only in her case it affected her in a totally different way than it did me. Something a friend’s mom once said to me inspired an important piece of plot. I even have a story that was born out of my wondering what would’ve happened to me and my best friend one summer had the people around us been different.

In each case the writing became its own fictionalized version of the truth. The pieces of my life took on a life of their own, and even if the people closest to me could see pieces of themselves in it, they would just be glimpses, caught on their way to a transformation.

Fiction might be make believe, but the best convinces us it’s true.

Meeting publishing pros at writers conferences is something that can’t be duplicated no matter how many agent blogs and tweets you follow, so imagine my excitement when agent Colleen Lindsay posted a contest on her blog, The Swivet, for a scholarship to the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in NYC! It’s a chance to have your query letter and first two pages of your manuscript read and critiqued by agents and editors! Sign me up! Right now!

Right?

Maybe not so fast. All excitement put aside, I know my manuscript just isn’t ready yet. I’m still in the revision stages, and you know rule number one about querying: Don’t do it too early. This also happens to be one of the rules in the contest (only finished novels!), which confirms my suspicions that these contests are plagued with premature works constantly.

Putting your work in front of an agent before it’s as close to perfect as it’ll ever be is kind of like an actor stepping onto the red carpet without their best outfit on. You can’t risk making a bad impression, unless you want to be the literary equivalent of Bjork’s swan dress:

Source: Marie Claire's The Oscars Best and Worst Dressed List

That was 2001, by the way, and we STILL haven’t forgotten it, because poor choices in how you present yourself and your work leave an impression ten times more easily than good ones will. Most literary agents agree that if they’ve turned a work down once they won’t reconsider re-reading even if you’ve revised. Even if you’ve taken off that swan dress and slipped into Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace.

Of course, if you’ve got your query letter and manuscript ready to go then by all means you should enter the contest, and any other contests that pop up occasionally on the publishing blogs that I’m always tempted to enter before I slap myself on the wrist and say: “One day, oh impatient one, one day.”

If not, be a sponge in the meantime. Learn everything you can about the writing and querying process so that once you start it, you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. There will be plenty of other contests in the future, and the best time to enter isn’t now, but when your work is at its best.

The key to giving a great writing critique isn’t pointing out the problems in the work–it’s trying to figure out why they’re happening. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done when you’re dealing with something as fluid as writing.

It’s not like a math problem where you can trace a person’s steps and see where they put in the wrong number. If a character has no character, there’s usually no easy fix. And if the story is just coming off as boring, there’s no easy way to tell a writer that. So can there really be a formula for giving constructive criticism? Read the rest of this entry »

I often hear writers compare their book-in-progress to a baby, to a child they’ve conceived, carried and birthed after months (or years) of labor. They’ve suffered the sleepless nights of typing away at their computer or lying awake wondering what their character will do next, and by the time the first draft is complete they feel an attachment only a parent could for his child, full of unconditional love and pride.

This is where the book/baby metaphor can either go really wrong or really right. Because any parent knows that after you’ve given birth to a child comes the really hard part: raising it right. And after you’ve written that first draft of your novel you need to do the same: revise it right. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago I posted about the difficulties in making a writers group work. Getting a group of like-minded writers to commit to meeting periodically and coordinate their schedules can be challenging, but it’s worth the effort if you can get it to work. And if you can’t, it’s really not the end of the world.

In one of my writing groups, after several attempts at meeting, we decided to embrace our aversion to scheduled meetings. Now every first Thursday of the month (used to be the last, but we switched it) we get together for “non-meetings.” Not everyone shows every time, and there are no hard feelings. We don’t turn in work to critique because not everyone has something ready to hand in, and that’s okay, too. The point is to get together with other writers and do writing exercises on the spot, so even if we came in with no new work we may walk out with the first paragraph of something great.

So basically, we took all the rules for forming a writers’ group and did the exact opposite. It’s now the longest-running group I’ve ever been in. Read the rest of this entry »