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What’s Your Writing Superpower?

Thanks to The Lone Woman for stripping away my drab Lois Lane daily wear and revealing my writing superpower!

…sex scenes are Serena’s superpower. I think I might choose something less time-intensive, like laser-beam shooting eyes, or super-strength. But Serena’s power should not be underestimated. Imagine how the bad guys might be distracted by the sudden appearance of a smoking hot sex scene. Maybe she could magically implant the audio version in their brain, and as a velvety-voiced narrator read it aloud, the other superheroes could swoop in and snare the paralyzed perverts. Not that reading, or writing, sex scenes is perverted. Mostly, it’s just hard. I mean difficult.
 

That’s the nice thing about having a superpower–it means that something that other people find difficult is easy for you–at least most of the time. I discovered my superpower young and got my 10,000 hours (of writing, people) in long before the world (temporarily) convinced me to write staider stuff. When I started writing novels where the bedroom door was thrown wide open, I felt like I’d come home. No strain, no pain. Of course, it doesn’t make all the rest of it–desk discipline, witty dialogue, accepting criticism–any easier. But at least there’s one thing I don’t sweat (figuratively) over.

My only regret is that I can’t post an excerpt that showcases this particular superpower because I’ve decided that my desire to share it with the blogosphere is superseded by my desire not to have my children and my children’s friends (and the rest of the world’s children) read it out loud at play dates.

So what’s your writing superpower? The black moment? Capturing emotion? Setting? Character? Internal monologue?

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Left Brain, Meet Right Brain

When I was in my early twenties and working on magazines, co-workers said that I was a perfect combination of my author mother and computer-programmer father: exactly half creative-type, half geek.

Apparently, this genetic legacy was also good preparation for my current mission: going paperless with the writing/revision process. There are two catches: 1) I want to end up with my copy just as clean as if I were reading on paper, and 2) I’m stuck with the limitations of Mac for Word.

The short version is that I’m editing & taking notes on the Kindle, then entering changes on my Mac, then asking my computer to compare the old and new manuscripts so I can check to make sure I’m not introducing new issues. Here’s the long version:

1) I dump the manuscript to Kindle (third gen) and have the Kindle read it aloud to me while taking notes directly on the device. (This gives me a break from my computer, because in the absence of paper, I spend waaaay too much time in front of the screen. You can also have your Mac read out loud to you. )

2) I save the original Word doc under a new name, then enter changes by propping the Kindle up against my screen and using Cmd-F to search for the sections I want to alter. (The Kindle generously provides me with a few sentences of context along with my notes, so I can find them easily by searching on less-frequently-used words.)

3) I keep running notes on which sections of the MS have been changed most so I can reread them. If you use Word on a Windows machine, you can skip this step AND section 4 and just compare versions in Word itself.

4) I use the Mac’s command line to do a comparison between the original Word doc and the revised one (which I saved under a new name :-)). I save both files as text documents, choosing the “Other encoding” option, selecting “Western (ASCII)” in the drop-down, and checking the “Allow character substitution” box. For ease, I save the two docs as “TitleA” and “TitleB.” Then I launch the Mac Terminal program, CD to the directory my files are saved in, and type, “diff -w TitleA.txt TitleB.txt >compare.txt” You substitute your own file names for TitleA and TitleB and call the compare.txt document whatever you want–that’s the document that will show you the changes you’ve made.

5) I read the compare.txt file (you can open it in Word), making sure I haven’t introduced any new mistakes, then re-read the sections of the manuscript I’ve flagged in step 3 to check for flow issues.

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And the Number One Reason I Love My Kindle …

I’ve been searching for a way to make re-reading and revising easier and more fun, and I think I’ve found it. I loaded my manuscript onto my Kindle (3rd generation; see this link and scroll down to “Sending Personal Documents to Kindle”) and have been using the text-to-voice feature (see this link) to have the Kindle read my book out loud to me.

So far I’ve caught a bunch of teeny-tiny typos I probably would have missed (“imagation” instead of “imagination,” and repeated and omitted words), and I’ve also heard word repetitions and other rhythm issues that would have been hard to catch without reading the entire manuscript out loud.

As I work, I take notes directly on the Kindle, and later, when I’m ready to enter the changes, I can look at a list of all the edits I’ve made with enough text from the original that I can Edit>Find the sections easily.

Suddenly, I like revising almost as much as I like the first rush of writing.

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Literally, Part II

Small boy: Mommy? Where is your imaginary friend, the agent?

Me: The real agent? or my imaginary friend?

Small boy: Your imaginary friend.

Me: I sent her back to New York to live. That’s where she lives, really. I was only borrowing her.

Small boy: Is that really true?

Me: Well, it’s a really true way of explaining it to you.

Small boy: Can I have some chick peas? Heated up in the microwave for 5 seconds? No, 30 seconds?

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Literary License, Taken Literally

Earlier this week, I got a great rejection letter from a terrific agent I’d love to work with. It’s still early times for me with cold querying, so I haven’t entirely figured out a strategy yet for hedging against disappointment. By the time this agent rejected my full manuscript, I’d managed to construct quite a fantasy life around how she was going to ride into my life on a white horse and launch my career.

To try to explain to non-writer friends how I could be elated by the agent’s praise but still bummed out over the lost connection, I told everyone I talked to that I felt as if someone had sat on my imaginary friend and squashed her.

Yesterday morning, my warm, sleepy five-year-old son climbed into bed with me and rested his head on my shoulder. “Mommy,” he asked, his sweet little voice full of worry. “Who squashed your imaginary friend?”

“Oh, bud!” I said. “No, no. No one really sat on my imaginary friend. I was just trying to explain a way that I felt. I felt sad the way I’d feel if someone did that. But–” I put on the tones of total maternal authority. “No one can sit on your imaginary friend. It just can’t happen.”

Reassured, he snuggled up against me and threw an affectionate arm over his imaginary friend, resting on his other side.

The moral, I think, is to use extreme caution in constructing both fantasies and analogies.

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