Entries tagged with advice

Entry tags:

Key Points: Advice? How to do it? Rooting it in our own experience. Weasel wording, or just say it? Do you have to do it this way? No. Tools, not rules. Students want clear answers. Show your work when you give advice. Show, don't tell, except... Tools as recipes. What do they want to tell? Beware the oxtail debacle! It's all these balancing acts. Make space for people to figure out, "Here's my intent. Here's what I want to do. Here's how I'm going to do it."

[Season 18, Episode 23]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Our advice on giving advice.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're full of it.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm… Pretty full of it. Yeah.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I'm Howard. Hi, everybody.

[DongWon] So I wanted to spend a little moment at the end of this deep dive talking about what are we actually doing here. Right? So this is a thing that I think about a lot. When I started my newsletter in 2019, one of the first posts I wrote was that this newsletter is not about advice. I don't want to be someone in the world who is out there telling you this is how you do it. Right? What I want to be doing instead is saying I have experience. I've gone through certain things, here's my perspective. Right? So I think one thing that we're really good at on this show… Or I hope we're good at on this show is rooting what we talk about here in our own experience. Because that's the only lens we have. Last episode, Mary Robinette was talking about the metaphor of the forest, and you have your path through the forest. It's useful to talk about that so people can take their learnings from it. All of that said, it's hard not to slip into it. It's hard not to come at some point, be like, "All right, all right. Here's how you do it." Right? Here's like this writing trick, this tip, this career advice, whatever it is. So how do we balance that? I guess I'm just curious, sort of, from the group, what's everyone's thoughts on this?

[Howard] Can I… In the very first season of Writing Excuses, and this isn't something that was recorded, it was something that Brandon and Dan and I talked about around the table. The principle was stop weasel wording. People know that the advice we're giving is just stuff that's worked for us. We're all going to have… We don't need to frontload everything with this might not work for you, but it's worked for me, and I've seen it work for a lot of other people, and here's this thing. The point was we want to keep the podcast to 15 minutes, so just prune all that and get straight to the thing that's worked for you, and people are smart enough to throw their own filter down. The fact of the matter is, there are people who are not yet aware that they need to throw that filter in front of the things that we say. So we weasel word a lot. But we continue to give advice.

[Dan] Yeah. I find when I teach classes, story structure in particular, I have to say, "This is just my experience and something that works for me. It's a tool you can use if it is helpful." Because if I don't, that is the first question every time, is, "Do I really have to do it this way?" No. No, you don't.

[DongWon] Yeah. For me, when I've had sort of a social media response to something I put on a newsletter kind of go in a direction that I didn't want it to go in has been people who've been like, "Oh, this person said this is how we have to do it. This is how you have to market your books." It's really hard to find that line sometimes between acknowledging my own subjectivity, my own flaws, and also not falling into imposter syndrome. Right? Like, I do know stuff. Right? I've been doing this for a minute. I've had a number of my projects sell copies, win awards, whatever it is. Knowing that, I do have experience and learnings to share, but not also talking myself down and also not artificially hyping myself up is a tough balancing act.

[Dan] Yeah. Kind of the mantra that I use as I teach is tools, not rules.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Love that.

[Dan] That these are… This is something you can use if you want, this is something you can ignore if you want, but please don't be… Don't feel obligated to do things the way I did it, because the odds are good, the way I did it is not going to work for anyone else.

[DongWon] Everyone here teaches, but, Erin, I think, you're the one who is most in the trenches, teaching students all day every day. What's that experience like for you in terms of sharing these learnings?

[Erin] I think a lot of what folks have said is telling people… My job, as a teacher, I believe, is to help you tell the best story you can. Not help you tell the story I wish you were telling. I explicitly tell my class that. I also do a lot… If we ever do a podcast just on teaching… In letting students guide the learning and say what is it that you want. So, for example, when I workshop stories, I ask students to say, "What are the questions you want us to talk about in our workshop? Not just tell you we like this, we like that, but do you want us to talk about the characters? Do you want us to talk about the plot?" What's hard with something like a podcast is, like, there's only so much guiding that can go on…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Because it is one way. But I think that's why we love to sort of… We have a message board where people can write things, or we're trying to with our newsletter, with our website, encourage more conversation because we want to know what is working, what is the thing that you would love for us to hear more about, or to talk more about. I also think just having a lot of different voices here helps, because we don't always agree on everything, or we'll put things differently. I think that shows that there's room for many ways to tackle a particular issue.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I love what you're talking about. I do the same thing, I asked them, like, "What are you trying to accomplish?" The thing that I also know is that what a student wants is a clear answer. Like, because I know that this is the thing I want. I want someone to just tell me how to do it, so that I don't keep messing up. I… Again, puppet metaphor. My mentor, my internship project, I was building these puppets for my project made out of sculpi, and their fingers just kept snapping off. Like, it became very much a gaffer's tape is a design element to hold the puppets together. I was complaining about it, and he's like, "Yeah, you should have put wires in the fingers." I'm like, "You watched me build them. Why didn't you tell me?" He said, "Well, I thought you would learn more, just making the mistake yourself. Now you know for certain." I'm like, "No!"

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] "No, I would have learned from you watching me do one, and saying, hey, for your information, you should put wire in the fingers instead of watching me make all of the puppets with the same mistake." So when I'm giving advice, I'm like, "Here's mistakes you don't need to make. You can make a lot of mistakes. Here's a tool that you should know. Like, maybe you want the fingers to snap off of your puppets, in which case, don't put wire in. This is the tool, this is the effect it has, these are the times that you can use it, and there are cases where it won't apply."

[DongWon] This is the thing… I mean, this kind of goes back to the mentorship conversation we were having last episode a little bit, but the thing that's a tough balancing act for me is trusting the person to be smart and figure out their own solution, but also wanting to be like, "Uh, that's not going to work, and here's why." But maybe it will work for them. Right? For me, it's such a balancing act of, like, not trying to dominate how someone else is going to solve a problem, but also wanting to make sure that I am telling them that like, "Yeah, you can't build fingers that way. They're going to break." Right? So, knowing what the line between what is actionable advice versus what is sharing experience is a trick.

[Howard] Yeah, there's what kind of cooking oil goes best with frying meats and "No, wait. Don't put a frozen turkey in the deep fryer."

[Chuckles]

[Howard] "You will explode the deep fryer and burn down the house." There are very few artistic situations that are frozen turkey in the deep fryer advice for me… Not many cases where I'll say, "Oh, no. Never do that. Absolutely not ever." But when I see one, I will step up and say, "Maybe you shouldn't do that. It's going to blow up."

[Erin] I also think a lot of it is about showing your work when you give advice. Not just like giving the advice and then running out. I mean, like, "Don't do it. Bye!" But explaining, like, here's the situation you may be having for yourself. So, you're like, "If you decide to do this this way, here is some pushback that you may be getting, here's the way readers may react to it, here's what you may then need to work with like on the other side." So it's sort of like if you were like, "Oh, I definitely don't want to put wire in those fingers," you're like, "Okay. Well, gravity is going to work this way. So if you definitely don't want to have those wires, you may need to use a lighter substance, because, ultimately, you can't do anything about gravity, but you can work around it."

[Chuckles]

[Erin] So I think that you're going… Apparently. So, I mean…

[Howard] Would you like to see this video of someone putting a frozen turkey in a deep fryer? Because, yeah, sometimes you do need to offer evidence.

[Erin] Yeah. Sometimes you just need to say, like, "Here's…" A lot of the writing advice that I think is out in the world is a shorthand for a longer conversation that isn't happening. So, people distill it down to, like, show, don't tell, but they don't explain why and what they mean and why should you show here and tell there. That's the conversation that doesn't happen, and that's the advice we need to give more of.

[DongWon] I love this thing about like, you can't change gravity. Right? Because a lot of times I'm seeing writers talk about certain things when I'm talking to them… I'll at some point kind of shrug and be like, "Yeah, that's capitalism." Right? I think in some ways the publishing industry, the logic… This goes back to me talking about understanding what publishing is for is understanding that… That's the rule of gravity. The… At the end of the day, a publisher's going to want to maximize profit. You can't change that. So what do you… What can you change? What piece of advice builds around the fact that gravity is going to pull you in a certain direction, and therefore you need to do X, Y, or Z? I want to get a little bit more into sort of details of ways in which advice can be a little bit of a trap or involves us contradicting ourselves. You're going to hear us disagreeing with the things we said three episodes ago all the time. I think there's some stuff to be unpacked there. But, let's take a quick break first.

[DongWon] So, the thing of the week this week is one of my favorite newsletters, Stone Soup by Sarah Gailey. The thing that Sarah does is try and build a lot of community through the work that they do online. The Stone Soup newsletter this year is doing a thing called The Personal Canon's Cookbook. I'm contributing an essay to it, it's a really delightful thing. The Personal Canon's Cookbook idea is a series of essays that highlight the way food shapes us in our relationship to ourselves and our communities. It's featuring a wide range of voices of people who will talk about what certain dishes mean to them in their personal history and personal sort of cultural associations and then include a recipe of how you can make that yourself. Their goal is to have this as an ongoing online series, and then to publish a cookbook collection of it at the end if there are enough subscribers for it. So, again, that's Stone Soup by Sarah Gailey. I would go check that out.

[DongWon] So, as I was talking about before the break, the thing that I really want to get into is the way in which I think… One of the reasons I don't like to give advice is because all publishing advice tends to be inherently contradictory. I think sometimes success in publishing is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time and execute on both of them at the same time. Right? The example I always give is show, don't tell. Right? So, we hear this advice all the time. Show, don't tell; show, don't tell; show, don't tell. Don't tell us that someone's feeling an emotion, show us. Show us how that person's body is responding, how they're talking, how they're breathing. The flipside of that is that a book is mostly an author telling us stuff. Right? A book is 90% tell. Right? When I find myself, like, glacially moving through an opening scene, it's often because there showing me every single thing, when what really I want them to do is, like, just tell me what time of day it is. Tell me what this person's doing. Tell me who they are, why do we care about them. So, finding that balancing line is you have to do both at the same time. Show, don't tell is accurate. You need to be showing. But also, you have to tell. You can't just do one. You've gotta do both.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Sorry. That is one of my biggest pet peeves as writing advice. I have a whole TikTok, you can go watch me rant about it. But the thing is with that, that for me, it's the show, don't tell comes back to the question, like, what are you trying to accomplish, and that I feel like the writing advice, that when we give it to people, that we… When I… What I try is to give them the right questions to ask rather than giving them the answers. So, unpacking show, don't tell, it's like this is the effect of showing, which is that it will slow the pacing down, it will give you… It will often root you more in a character's emotions, it can have these effects this is the effect of telling, it can speed the pacing up, it can gloss over things, it can distance you from the emotion, because you're not giving the character… The reader, time. Both of these are possible outcomes from showing versus telling. What do you want to happen in this scene? Is this a place where you need things to pick up, is this a place where you don't? So, like, I'm writing a scene right now where my main character is… Has just gone through some trauma and is disassociating. I am telling every… Like, I am flipping everything for show, don't tell. She watched her body leave the room. Because I need that distance. So I'm using that tool in the inverse. Whereas if I had just taken the "You should always do this, this is a flaw," I would not do that scene. So it's… For me, giving advice is about giving them the tools and the questions to ask.

[Howard] One of my favorite places to criticize the whole giving of advice is in a critique group scenario. Where it's almost always inappropriate to give advice to the author whose manuscript you are reading about what needs to be changed. The reason for this tends to be that what the author needs is to know how you reacted to what they put on the page, not what advice you would give. How you reacted to what they put on the page, so that they can evaluate whether there intent for your reaction was correctly executed. Now, that's a pretty complicated recipe. So, sometimes in a critique group, I will ask, "What did you want me to feel after this scene? Because I'm not sure how to tell you what I felt in a way that's meaningful." I would only have that discussion with someone whom I have been in this group with for a while where we already have a relationship, we already have a syntax. That's the point at which we've grown to where I might actually be able to give advice. Because I know a thing that I didn't know before. It's always tempting to look at a thing that you feel like it's been done wrong because you didn't respond to it the way you feel like you should have and give advice. That's an easy early career writer trap to just step all the way out of and say, "Oh. I don't have to give my advice at all during a critique group."

[DongWon] Yeah, well, I mean, I think this goes back to tools, not rules. Right? Like, here are principles that can be useful. But the thing is, no one can tell you how to do the thing exactly. You gotta navigate that yourself. Take these different learnings and apply it. Remember, just because somebody says so, just because an agent said so, editor said so, famous writer said so, some guys on a podcast said so, doesn't mean that like you have to do the thing.

[Dan] I had the opportunity, just this week, to help my daughter write a protest speech. She was involved with a protest at her university. She had the opportunity to give a four-minute speech and she wrote a 10 minute speech and sent it to me and said, "This is way too long. Help me." So my main job was to cut that down. Well over half of it. But another part of my job was to make sure that the parts that were important to her were still there. This had to still sound like her and it had to still be an emotionally resonant in order to really matter, in order to serve her and serve the audience. So I remember one story in particular that she told, I cut that out. I said this story's boring. She's like, "That's my favorite story in the speech." Then that gave us the opportunity to talk about, well, it doesn't fit from my perspective. It is long, you need to make up this time somehow. But how can we change it in order to make it fit? If that's what's important to you, then rather than just cutting it out, which was my gut instinct, how can we tweak this, how can we build toward it, how can we draw a better line under it so that the thing you want to bring out comes out?

[Mary Robinette] I… Going back to the kitchen metaphor, the professional kitchen metaphor from a couple of episodes ago, I often think about the tools as recipes, and that when I'm giving advice, I'm like, "This is a recipe." But the danger is that it's very easy, especially when giving like structure advice, it's very easy to give someone a recipe so that they just keep… Their restaurant serves nothing but cake. It's like maybe they want to make a really nice soup. Maybe they want to make like lasagna. There's a bunch of different things. Then you get into the world of molecular gastronomy where people are doing things with techniques that should not normally be applied to an ingredient and coming up with magical amazing effects. So if you know the science behind the recipe, then you can apply that to your own thing. For… Again, I'm going to just keep coming back to this, and the thing you were talking about with your daughter, it's knowing what is important to them and helping them get to the story that they're trying to tell.

[Erin] I think that's actually perfect, because I was just thinking that how do you expand also the types of advice that you get? Because the recipes that we know came from the kitchens we were raised in. You know what I mean?

[Yeah]

[Erin] So, it's… So a lot of times, like because of the way the publishing industry is in life is, you might see the same recipes over and over again, the same types of advice. But thinking about that path through the woods, we might all get really good at walking one path through the woods and have great advice for it, and not realize, number one, that there are people coming from another path who might need different advice. But also, what those people see on their path might, even though it doesn't seem like it has to do with an obstacle we face on our path, be an amazing tool that we could be using. So I love getting advice from folks who are coming from a completely different storytelling tradition than the one that I'm use to come or it's coming from a different country. Just people who are telling stories differently, because then they have different advice and different tools and different recipes that are going to make my offerings so much better.

[DongWon] This is where I read a book a couple of years ago called Craft in the Real World, I believe the name is Matthew Salesses.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] I don't know how to pronounce his last name.

[Mary Robinette] You are correct.

[DongWon] Wonderful, wonderful book, that completely transformed my teaching practice, because so much of it is talking about, hey, we teach in a certain way that's very top-down. Here's how the Western sort of culture wants things to be, versus accepting people as coming from different places. So I think going back to tools, not rules, is understanding that these writing rules quote unquote are in place and it's good to know what they are. I think it's very important to know the structures, why people do certain things. The best reason to know it is so that you can break them. Right? My favorite type of fiction is when somebody takes a thing that you know they're not supposed to do, and then they just charge headlong into it, and be like, "No. Forget that. I'm going to do the thing that you told me not to do, and I'm going to do it in a way that's exciting, interesting, and organic." That sometimes produces the most exciting type of fiction, for me, at least.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. At the same time, I will also say that there is benefit when you are starting out…

[Yeah]

[Mary Robinette] To trying on a rule set for size, and doing things on the easy setting, and just tweaking one parameter. Because one of the things I will see people do sometimes is, like, I'm just going to try to… I'm going to try to subvert everything, without actually understanding how things connect to each other, and the ramifications. I think that you should, like… I also think that you should experiment. But I don't think that you should expect all of your experiments to be successful and interesting.

[Howard] Yeah. Once in a generation, maybe, you'll find somebody who can break all the rules and create a new paradigm. Sorry.

[Mary Robinette] No. I was just going to say, Lord knows, I've made some cocktails that are hot messes.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] Sometimes we talk about being experimental and how exciting being experimental is. Sometimes experimenting is experimenting with the rule set. It's playing within the boundaries. I was lucky enough to be on vacation in Paris recently and I went to the Rhodin museum which is one of my favorite museums in the world. I love a single artist museum because you get to see so much of the arc of their career. The thing that always strikes me whenever I go to these, like, Picasso, Dali, Rhodin, whatever… Their earliest work is so traditional. They started from a place of being so good at the normal formal thing. Then, you could see the little seed of where they're going, and then watching them, bit by bit, figure out which rules they can break until you get to these incredible masterpieces that transformed aesthetics, art, all these things, and culture, but they started from somewhere. That somewhere usually was a much more traditional practice.

[Mary Robinette] But then you've got outsider artists as well.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Mary Robinette] Who never followed any rule set at all, that are doing things… Except for the ones they are discovering and chasing down with joy, who are doing fabulous, interesting work that is very hard to get.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Mary Robinette] A home for. Like, a good experiment is not the same thing as publishable.

[DongWon] Well, this is… We're demonstrating the thing that we're talking about. We're demonstrating the traps of talking about advice because there's so many different ways to do it. Right? There's so many different paths to success. Sometimes what we're doing is optimizing for what's most likely, what will be applicable to the broadest part of the audience. But, as we were talking about with Craft in the Real World and some of what Erin was saying, sometimes that can mean that we're deliberately disregarding a section of the audience over and over again. So, how do you find that balance, how do you manage that? I think the answer is you bring in as many voices as you can. Which is something that we all try to do here. And to read really broadly. I try to ingest as many stories from different places, different media, different cultures, different genres. That, I think, helps me to do the thing that I focus on.

[Howard] John Kovaleski and I went back and forth briefly on Twitter talking about what a delightful luxury it is at this point in our careers to have people look at our artwork and praise all of our flaws and shortcomings and shortcuts as "I really just love your style." Yeah, that's cute.

[Laughter]

[Howard] I'm so happy you feel that way about it. There are so many things that I wish I could do better, that I continue to try to do better, and I have lucked into being in a position where I can get away with, in large measure, not doing a lot of that stuff. It would be a mistake, I think, for a young artist to look at my artwork, for a young writer to look at my writing, and say, "Well, this style works for so-and-so, so I will just emulate them." I'm like, "Oh, please. That's not what I would do if I were where you are."

[Mary Robinette] So I think that the only actual mistake you can make in writing, and this is broadly stated with great authority…

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] The only mistake that you can actually make in writing is if the work does not have the effect you want it to have on the audience that you intended it for. That's the only time you've made a mistake.

[DongWon] I like to talk a lot about how certain commercial writers will sort of get talk down, but I actually think they're sort of the best writers in the business, on a craft level. I use Lee Child as an example all the time in my writing classes, because I think he is so precise about the thing that he's trying to do. It may not be as aesthetically beautiful as Cormac McCarthy for a certain set of tastes. But, boy, is it effective. You can learn a lot from watching how someone like that accomplishes what he's trying to accomplish. At the same level, I think that what Cormac McCarthy's trying to accomplish for what he's trying to accomplish. Right? I think having… I think, in terms of the criticism sometimes intent isn't always the most important thing. But, in terms of craft, watching someone achieve what he set out to do, I think is a beautiful thing, and one that we should all be paying attention to.

[Dan] I keep going back to what Erin said about getting food and recipes from different traditions than your own. What immediately jumped to mind was, it feels like maybe two or three years ago, American chefs discovered Gochujang…

[Man]

[Dan] It was like this huge, "Have you guys tried this?" Which has been in Korean cooking forever. Now, all of a sudden, everyone's like, "Oh. Add this." That idea of I now have access to this ingredient I've never had before and I can learn so much from the people who developed it and use it every day and what can that do, how can I change that, how can I change my own food? That's such a fascinating topic for me.

[DongWon] One thing I do want to flag, though, is that if I have to go to one more Brooklyn brunch spot that has the saddest kimchee I've ever seen in my life, I will literally explode. This is part of it, you have to pay attention to the rules. Right? I saw a cooking video on YouTube a few years ago that was a white chef who was teaching people how to make kimchee. At the end, he held up this brown goopy mess. I was looking at it, I mean, like, "What the hell did you make, man? That ain't kimchee!"

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] I mean, that's not right. It's the wrong color, it's the wrong materials, it's the wrong technique, because he didn't take the time to sit down and learn how do the people who've been doing this for thousands of years make it.

[Dan] Yeah.

[DongWon] You have to really internalize these techniques, and then you can innovate.

[Erin] I also think, like, you need to make sure not to leave the people behind that you're taking these recipes from.

[Chorus of yeah, yup, yes]

[Erin] You don't want to end up with what I would call the oxtail debacle which is where I don't know some people discovered oxtail and started buying it to the point where like oxtail is a delicious… No, it's horrible. There was this whole part on Twitter where actually people were trashing oxtail purposefully to try to drive prices back down.

[DongWon] Hey, Whitey. $15 a pound.

[Erin] Because they're like…

[DongWon] It was like a dollar a pound when I was a kid.

[Erin] Part of the reason we worked with it, we loved it, was that it was cheap. Now, like, other people are driving up the prices and the folks who you learned your oxtail recipe from can't afford the meat that you are now using in your high-end restaurant. So it's like that can happen. It happens to many things. It can happen with writing traditions. It is amazing to learn from other people. It is horrible to learn from other people and then not give them the opportunity to also express that part of the craft by shutting the door behind you.

[DongWon] Exactly. I think this is where… When I get didactic about advice, it's when stuff like this is happening. I see people being harmed by the practices being put into place. So the only time I feel more comfortable really saying do this, don't do that, is when I see acts of appropriation happening, when I see reifying certain colonial practices in terms of how people write about certain things or just overt phrases in one of the pages sometimes, those are the moments when I find that I have to stand up and really flex a little bit from my position and be like, "Hey, this is a problem in these ways." Right? So, as with everything we've said here, it's all a balancing act. Right? It's all [garbled traditions]. Never give advice. Unless somebody's really messing up, in which case, give that advice. Right? Take from other cultures and learn new practices, but don't do it in a way that harms other people or removes opportunities for other people. Right? It's all these balancing acts. That's why doing a show like this is so much fun for me, and it's so dynamic, but it's a thing that I am very live to in all the conversations we have, about how do we balance these things, how do we make sure we are supporting the people we want to support. We're giving tools, we're not giving rules. We're doing all these things and making space for people to figure out, "Here's my intent, here's what I want to do. Here's how I'm going to do it." So, on that note, Dan, I believe you have our homework?

[Dan] All right, your homework today, there's two parts to the homework. The first one is this. We want you to write a letter to yourself a year ago, describing to that person what kind of skills are they going to need in order to confront the challenges that are coming in the coming year. What kinds of advice would you give to yourself if you could do that? For yourself one year ago. So, write that letter. The other thing is we have now finished this wonderful eight episode series deep dive into DongWon's newsletter and all of the wonderful topics that spun off from that. We're starting a new one next week. We will be doing a deep dive into my audiobook, Dark One Forgotten. We mentioned this a couple of months ago. We're reminding you now. Find that somewhere and listen to it. It's only six hours long. Starting next week, we will be digging deep into that project.

[Mary Robinette] In the next episode of Writing Excuses, we learn what it was like for Dan to hear the un-bleeped version of his audiobook and why he knows so much about cults. Until then, you're out of excuses. Now go write.

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 18.22: On Mentorship: Sending the Elevator Back Down

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-22-on-mentorship-sending-the-elevator-back-down

Key Points: How do you break into publishing? Well, when you do, hold the door open for someone else! Dismantle barriers. Build a cohort and take the world by storm. Get more voices in the room. Talk about the paths in the forest. It's not just how to break in, it's how to keep going. Listen! There may not be a solution, or a magic secret. Boost people. Share advice. Begin your practice of solidarity now. Keep an eye on your bandwidth. Practice things you're not good at. Inspire people by pointing out what they are good at, and challenge them by pointing out things they need to improve. Be available and be excited. Recommend people! Put your oxygen mask on before assisting others. Not everyone has to be everything to you.

[Season 18, Episode 22]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] On Mentorship: Sending the Elevator Back Down.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] And I'm holding the elevator...

[Laughter. What! Wait, you're not supposed to do that.]

[Dan] That's a misuse of the metaphor.

[Howard] I pushed all the buttons. What are we supposed to be doing?

[DongWon] All right, we found the problem. So we solved ours. Episode's over. No? I wanted to…

[Mary Robinette] [garbled] a time machine.

[DongWon] So, after a few episodes, last few episodes, of talking about working in publishing, what it's like to be in publishing, one thing that's kind of come up a few times is both the perspective of, like, how do I break into this industry as someone coming into it from the outside, but also, sort of, what is the experience of being a marginalized person working in the industry. Again, a lot of this will apply to writers. I'm talking about it specifically from the perspective of working in the industry. Obviously, I am a person of color, I'm a queer person of color, I've had my own experiences in the industry. I've been very fortunate in most of my interactions and had a number of privileges that I think helped me get ahead in certain ways. So, one thing that I think about a lot is how do we make this industry more inclusive. How do we create opportunities for people who don't have the same backgrounds as everyone else in the business, who don't have the same privileges as everyone else, and who may be aren't even in New York City. Right? I mean, the geographic location of most of the industry is a huge barrier to people breaking into it. I mean, you go back to when we were talking about networking, how do you network with publishing people if you're not in a place where publishing people live. Right? So this is where I start thinking about what are the explicit structures we could put into place to accomplish this. That's where mentorship comes into play. This is where the metaphor of sending the elevator back down comes from. Right? It's holding the door for the person behind you. It's not just I got in, close the door, holding the elevator on the top floor is enough…

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] No, I know that's not what you were saying, Howard. But it's how do we make sure that structurally we're not just creating opportunity, but we're explicitly inviting people in.

[Howard] It's the opposite of the how to break into comics metaphor that was used years ago and has stuck with me, which is, every time someone breaks into comics, everybody who's already in asks, "How did you get in?" Then they look at wherever that hole is in their secure facility and they patch it up so no one else can use that one.

[Well, and…]

[Howard] You want the opposite of that.

[Dan] Yeah. Back when I was breaking into publishing, that was the exact metaphor that people would use. I remember David Hartwell talking about that on a panel at World Fantasy. That was a common sentiment. I take it is a good sign in the industry that that sentiment seems to be changing. That it's more about figuring out how to let more people in rather than trying to keep people out.

[Mary Robinette] That was one of the things that, when I was on the board at SFWA… For new listeners, that's Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association… Is that we made a shift in our mandate, kind of internally the way we framed it, when we were talking about the requirements for membership. That what we wanted was to be not gatekeepers, but gate openers. That meant adjusting the membership requirements to make it easier for people to join. So, like, we… That's the point when… I just want to be clear that it's not me that was doing that, that was a group effort. But thinking about, okay, what are the barriers that keep people from getting in? What can we do to dismantle that barrier?

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] I think that one of the things with this… I love the metaphor of the elevator, but sometimes it makes you think that you have to, like, be at the top floor. You have to be in the penthouse, before you can sort of send the elevator back down. But sometimes you can just hold it for people who are coming in at the same time that you are.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] Like, actually work with your peer group as well too, like, give each other opportunities. See other people as part of a collaborative cohort of creativity that's going to take the world by storm, not as competitors who are all seeking to get to the same place and have to drag each other down in any way.

[DongWon] Right. I mean, I think you're hitting on one of my problems with the metaphor, as much as I do use it, is a lot of times when I'm reaching out to my peers for mentorship in some way, either me looking to someone for an assist or me reaching out to someone else to assist them, it's not that I'm seeing myself as I'm up here and you're down here, it's actually ICS is peers and I want to help you out. Right? I know that if I help you out, you'll probably help me out in the future. Right? There is that community aspect, there is that collaboration aspect of this place will be better for us if there are more voices in the room. Right? If there's more opportunity created by other perspectives being there. If I'm the only one in the room, is so, so difficult to speak up about certain issues. I remember, back when I was an editor at Orbit, I was working with a South Asian woman, [Debbie Palai]. Just having that extra voice in the room was so transformative to me, so that when I would say, "Hey. I think this is an issue." Or, "Hey, I think this is cool. I'd love it if we did more of that." Even if she didn't say anything, there was someone there who had my back. Right? So I think being the only voice in the room versus their even being just one other person, it makes such a difference in your ability to speak up, to get things done, and to make a difference in that way. So, for me, there is a self-interest in it, too. Right? I… I think I'll be able to do my job better if there are other people I can talk to who see the world in a way that's closer to how I see it.

[Mary Robinette] The metaphor I use is not elevator, it's a path through a forest. That where I am in my career, I'm on a little bit of a rise and I can see back over the path that I've been on. I can tell people about the obstacles that they're going to hit on their path. But everybody's starting from a different point.

[DongWon] Right.

[Mary Robinette] Everybody's coming from a different house. So if there's two people who are coming from the same neighborhood, they're going to be able to give each other advice that I can't give because I didn't walk that path. I can talk about, like, there's going to be the forest of despair but I don't know the specific boulders. I can give you bouldering techniques… I can't, actually, by the way…

[Laughter]

[Howard] I think it's key here to recognize that… In our episode title, we talk about mentorship. The things that I, is a 55-year-old mediocre white male who landed a cartooning career through sheer luck 20 years ago… The things that I can tell you about breaking into the industry are probably irrelevant. The things that I can tell you about working every day and learning how to craft a joke and learning how to work through pain without further injuring yourself and a million other things that I learned over that time period… Those have value. As a young creator, as an aspiring creator of anything, you often will feel the need to jump straight to how do I break in. But I have to offer as a mentor would be I don't know how to break in, but here's what you need once you've cleared that. Here's what you want to have in your backpack when you drop, Tom Cruise style, on the cable into the secure room. Whatever. So, as a mentor, I love talking about craft, and I always feel very uncomfortable when someone asks me, "How do you get to be Internet famous?"

[DongWon] Well, I think Mary Robinette and Howard are hitting on really important things. That mentorship isn't about like teaching someone, "Here's the 10 steps you need to do to break in." Right? You don't know what path they're coming from, you don't know where they're starting from, and also, the paths have changed a lot. Right? What I see in the writing community mentorship is a little awry is when I see a writer being like, "This is how I did it, so you have to do it this way. These are… This Is How Things Are," capitol letters. Right? Versus, a lot of times, when I'm in a mentorship role with somebody, so much of it is just me listening, honestly. It is transformative. This kind of is going back to what I was saying earlier about having two people in the room, it is so transformative just to be able to have someone to complain to. Right? Complaining is a huge part of mentorship. Right? Because solidarity is a big part of it. Just the emotional awareness of, man, someone else is going through it. Someone else is experiencing things like I've experienced. They may not have a solution, because, you know what, a lot of times there isn't a solution. A lot of times we're talking about big structural stuff, and there is no like, "Oh, here's the secret. If you say this one thing in a meeting, suddenly things will get better." You know what I mean. That just doesn't exist. We're working against huge entrenched patterns that have been there since… For decades and decades and decades.

[Erin] I love that you said the word solidarity, because I think mentorship is a practice of solidarity, but there are so many other practices of solidarity that you can be doing all the time.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Erin] Even if you feel, "Hey, I'm not in a position to mentor," you can always be bringing people's names up in rooms where they're not. You can be talking up what other people are doing. You can find a piece of advice and share it with someone else. There's so much to be said, I think, about beginning your practice of solidarity the minute you are living life at all. But, in this industry, the minute you start out, be in solidarity with others some of those people may have more experience with you… Then you, some may have less. Some may have the same. But when you're doing that, I think for one thing, it's, like, it helps your soul.

[DongWon] Absolutely.

[Erin] To be in solidarity with others. I think it helps other people to want to be in solidarity with you, and it means that as you move sort of through your career, it's not so much like, "Oh, I've got to a point, how do I reach?" You've been reaching the whole time.

[DongWon] Some of my favorite things that I've managed to do on sort of that front, are things that the person who got that opportunity or got that gig or whatever it is, never knows that I was involved at all.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] No idea that I said something or advocated for them or even just was like, "Hey, have you thought about that person?" You know what I mean. It's my favorite thing to do. It's just like I see somebody doing something cool who I feel like could use a boost in one way or the other, and I'm going to talk that person up because I'm excited that they're there. Right? I think I default to mentorship as the way to think about this, which is sort of this explicit hierarchical relationship. You're right, I want this to look as much like neutral aid as it does, and solidarity as it does, that sort of like top-down way. Corporate structures have given us mentorship, but, what I would love for us to have our stronger connections with each other, and we all help each other out in this flow. Right? The people who've mentored me, I have turned around and help them back. Right? That's the thing that is beautiful to me about the system, is I have such gratitude for the people who were looking out for me, who taught me certain ways, who introduced me to certain opportunities, and then I was able to advocate for them and provide opportunities for them later. On that note, I want to take a break here and when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about how do you actually build those relationships, how do you actually execute on providing solidarity, providing community, providing mentorship to folks.

[Erin] So, I'm excited because this week's thing of the week is a newsletter from, I'm going to call a frienditor…

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Someone that I sort of see as a peer, but so knowledgeable and amazing, who is Suyi Davies Okungbowa. He has an amazing newsletter called After Five. So we've been talking about newsletters and talking about learning and he has such brilliant things to say about craft. It's like a once a month newsletter and you're like, "How did I not think of this?" You can read what he's reading and actually see his writing, but I also just love the way that he thinks about how to support each other, how to find healing and inspiration, how to, like, figure out story ideas. So, absolutely go and check out Suyi Davies Okungbowa's After Five newsletter.

[DongWon] So, while we're talking about mentorship and solidarity, one thing I want to focus on is how do we actually do this. One thing I want to flag is to keep an eye on your bandwidth. There have been times where I've gone so hard on trying to, like, help people out, producing a mentorship program, this that and the other, that I actually dropped the ball and wasn't able to provide the support that I think some folks needed in that moment. It's a huge regret for me of, like, I didn't execute on the things that I wanted to be doing. It forced me to step back and really look at what I was doing and how I was doing it. I think it made me really think about, like, okay, what's the ways in which I can be most effective at boosting the people I want to be boosting.

[Howard] In craft terms, I'm a big fan of the focused practice model, which is the idea that we tend to practice the things that we are already good at. We need to practice the things that we're not good at. When I'm given the opportunity to look at someone's work, and they asked for feedback, I try to inspire them by telling them this is a thing that you're already good at, and challenge them by saying this is the thing you need to focus on. I well remember someone bringing me a portfolio and I went through it and my first thought was, "Wow, these renders are all awesome. This is amazing. What… Oh, there's no backgrounds. Oh! Here we go." I was able to say, "Hey, you're doing great work, but all of these are white space pictures. You need to show us that you can draw backgrounds. Whether it's a forest, or cityscape, or whatever it is." So, from a mentoring standpoint, and again with bandwidth in mind, I try to come down to those two things, so that I can say something encouraging and something directional and send them on their way, so that I haven't signed up to be their tutor.

[Mary Robinette] So I… I find… I've done mentoring both in a very structured formal way with puppetry we would do internships where you'd come, you would have an internship project, there was this whole thing. I've done the thing where it's like you're going to be my mentor for a year and… But I've also done much more informal, what I think more of as nurturing than mentoring, which is just being available to answer questions. That a lot of times if you're like one year, even a month further along your career path than someone else, you can answer questions. Being available and being excited to share that knowledge with them, that's a gift. The other things that I've found that I can do that are very low impact are introducing people to each other, who are… Would be good to have a cohort. It's like, "Let me introduce the two of you so that you have someone to run with." Then, I also keep, not any kind of like super formal Rolodex list, but I keep a list of people that I think should be signaled as to they're not getting the attention that I think that they should get. Because I can't… It shouldn't always be me. So that I get invitations to do things, and if I'm turning it down, I'll say, "Here's some people that you should look at." But also, if I'm accepting, I will say, "Here's some other people you should think about inviting." I keep a list for the same reason that you were advising us earlier to think about comp titles for books. Because the ability to think in the moment of who is… There's smart people, but who are they? It's really easy to just reach for your close friends. But reaching for someone who's like just let me make a little bit of a gap for you here.

[Dan] Yeah. I do the same thing. I love that. One of my favorite things in the world is recommending somebody else. I said in the previous episode I get invited to a lot of anthologies. I love being able to say, no, but please reach out to these people. I keep a list because if I don't, I find myself recommending the same two people every time.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, exactly.

[Dan] I don't want to do that. I want to make sure that I am helping as wide a net of people as possible.

[DongWon] Essentially, after the last few years of isolation and not going to cons and things like that, because we were not able to, I find my list is getting shorter right now. I'm in this moment of like, oh, I've got to start reaching out to people and this is part of the cycle to, is realizing that that Rolodex of people that you're looking to boost, who you're like who's coming up, who's doing cool stuff. A lot of that requires a very active way of being in the world, of making sure that you're meeting people and being really intentional. I think as we get farther and farther along in our careers, it gets harder and harder to make sure that you're making that space for people and that you're being aware of what's going on. Whenever I send out a submission, I really try hard to keep at least one junior person in the mix. Right? As my friends become more and more senior, and as we're longer and longer in the business, that means I'm submitting to executive editors, publishers, more. But I also want to make sure there's at least an associate on there somewhere. Right? Somebody… It's a way for me to keep an eye on who's the new talent, who's coming up, who do I like interacting with, how do they respond. Also to make sure that those people are getting opportunities. So they're going into their editorial meetings being like, "Hey. I got this cool submission." I cannot tell you what a difference that makes for a young editor to be like this cool project is coming to me and came to me directly. So what are ways that you can use your institutional power to make sure that other people are getting attention and… That's not the only reason I do it, I don't send it to people who I don't think are interesting. Right? Like, I have to think you're cool at the base for me to send you a project because it is my client's work. But it is a thing that I try to make a deliberate practice as well.

[Dan] I'm in a leadership position on a huge role-playing game project right now. A couple of months ago, the kind of lead designers came into us to present their list of these are all the people that we've vetted and that we think would be awesome that we want to hire for this project. I thought I really want to get Erin on to this project. I'm going to make sure to take a moment and recommend her. She was already on the list!

[Laughter]

[Dan] It was so great. They showed the list, it was like Erin Roberts. I was like, "Oh, well. My job here is done. This is wonderful."

[Mary Robinette] Now you need… Now there's an opportunity to recommend somebody else.

[Dan] Which I did, and now we got her on the project too. So, it's… I love doing that. It's one of my favorite parts of being in this industry.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] So we spent a fair time talking about why we all think it's important to mentor other people, to make space for other people. What's the flipside of that? Who were the people who been toward you, how did you find that, was it a deliberate thing? Did somebody just pluck you and just be like, "Hey, I'm going to take care of you now," or did you seek those people out over the course of your career?

[Mary Robinette] So… It's interesting because, like, most of the… There are people that I definitely think of his mentors that were in the writing community that were in no way, shape, or form did we have any kind of formal mentor relationship. It was just someone that I looked to as … Mmm, every time this person talks about how to move the world, I feel like a better person. What I find for me is that that… The best mentors are not the ones who are talking about the nuts and bolts of the craft. The advice that I got… Like, some of the best advice that I got from my puppetry mentor, which was a formal relationship, was, again, about the way to move through the world it's like when something goes wrong, he's like, "Someday you're going to look back on this and laugh, so you may as well laugh now." That has been, like, such a part of how I move through the world. Same thing with writing. It's like… The person for me that comes immediately to mind is Connie Willis and Jay Lake. Those two people just basically made room for me to enter a conversation and made sure that I was introduced to the people around me, and then gave me room to talk, to feel like I belonged. That was… Being able to just feel that is something that it is difficult when you're entering a new space. I was lucky because I was coming from an established profession where I understood how to make space for myself. But if you're coming in brand-new and much younger, or from a marginalized community, making that room for people and making them feel valued, is, I think… That, for me, has been the greatest gift.

[Dan] Yeah. At a very early World Fantasy Con that I went to, I was in an elevator with Connie Willis. She introduced herself. It was so… In hindsight, it was so clearly a I know what I'm doing, I know that your new, let me reach out and help you. I was too starstruck to do anything other than, "Hi, I'm Dan. It's nice to meet you." Did not do any kind of follow-up, left the elevator as quickly as I could. I look back at that and think, "Ah. What opportunities did I miss out on?" Because she was such a helpful part of the industry.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Dan] I missed that.

[Mary Robinette] She's still… I mean, she's…

[Dan] On the other hand, when I Am Not a Serial Killer came out, Tor brought me out to BEA. They do those huge signings where they just throw free books at people and people get in line. I was sharing the booth with Kevin J Anderson and Patty Garcia, who at the time ran PR for Tor. Had the opportunity basically to impress them both. I clearly know how to talk to people. I know how to sell my own books. Then, for the next several years, the two of them would at every opportunity… Here, let me explain something to you that you don't know. Let me invite you to this opportunity that you don't have. Both of them, I'm incredibly grateful for, for that.

[Howard] Okay. Dirty secret… DongWon, when you asked the question, "Who have our mentors been?" I had to think about it and think about it and think about it. I realized, "Oh. That's why I don't have a good answer." Fairly early in the part of my career where I was figuring out what I was doing, I got roped into doing this podcast with Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells.

[Laughter]

[Howard] And had Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells, and then Mary Robinette Kowal and at times… You know what, I'm not going to try and laundry list the guests, because we've had so many guests. Had all of those people as unwitting mentors and I'm a sponge and I just listened and listened and listened, and tried to carry my own weight by restating things in a way that was funny. I cannot overstate how valuable that has been for me. No, this isn't a great path for you, fair listener, to go get mentors. But then again, those people that were talking during the podcast… You can listen to them too.

[DongWon] I want to… I know we're running a little long, but I want to flip things a little bit for one last minute, which is, Erin, you were talking about framing this less as mentorship in a hierarchical way, more about solidarity and kind of a community driven approach. So, to flip the question a little bit, like, what does that mean for you, how do you find these spaces or have you found those spaces? Or is that a thing you're still looking for?

[Erin] Yeah. Actually, I was, as you were asking that question, I was thinking, like, I feel that I've had a very… Like, I'll probably insult 20 mentors right now, but…

[Laughter]

[Erin] I don't feel like direct mentorship relationships and a lot…

[DongWon] Especially Brad out there, who's very hurt why you don't appreciate his advice.

[Erin] Brad! But, like, a lot of like fairy godparents and people who have done me a solid on a particular day. I have some really cool friend groups where we all are in different… We're doing different things within fiction writing. You know what I mean. So, like, I'm… May know a little bit more about teaching. This person's published a bunch of novels, so they will tell me what it's like doing a publisher. This person is, like, does a lot of audio. So, kind of similar to what Howard was saying, like, it's by… Whenever I meet somebody, everyone has something to teach you. That's the way that I try to approach life. I think maybe because of that, or just the luck of the draw or that I don't look threatening, like, people teach me things. I feel like I've learned a lot from a lot of different people, and then try to teach where I can. Like, I think in trying to approach it that way, it's been great. I will say the thing about solidarity is it's amazing. It can also be, and this is just sort of a warning, especially for marginalized folks, put your oxygen mask on before assisting others. Sometimes you can want to be so much in solidarity with others that you lose yourself in the process. Because you want to help everybody, then you're like I'm tired and I've lost who I am and what brought me to the table. Which is why I think it's as important to think about what you bring to the solidarity table, and some of that is your own creative power. Which means sometimes you gotta shut the door and write the work, and then come back refreshed so that you can be part of sort of a mutual community.

[DongWon] I remember that the more that you build a place for yourself and the world, the more firm your footing, the more you're going to be in a position where you can help people out in the future. Right? Putting your mask on first is always a metaphor that I really love, because it means that if you take care of yourself, that is an act of solidarity and kindness to other people, so that they don't have to take care of you. That's another part of it, too. Right? If you're in a position where you are cared for, and in a position where you can help other people, then I think that's a beautiful thing and that's a way to be part of a community, and maybe our first responsibility of being part of a community.

[Dan] There's a point I really want to make before we're done. Going back to what Howard said about Writing Excuses. It seems ridiculous in 2023 to suggest, "Oh, you need a mentor. Just be on a podcast with Brandon Sanderson." But you gotta remember, when we started this in 2008 or whatever it was, Howard was the most financially successful and most famous guy on the podcast. By a significant margin. I wasn't even published yet, and Brandon only had one book out. This was before Wheel of Time, this was before everything. So, a lot of the solidarity that were talking about, it doesn't have to only point up. Look around you at the other people that are with you. Look more for talent than for success, because you never know where your peers are going to be 10 or 15 years from now. Finding that solid support group of people who will eventually be in a different position than they are right now is a really, really, I think, crucial part of finding that mentorship and support.

[DongWon] Well, one thing is that I think you might be at home sitting there being like, "I haven't done anything. I don't have any experience in me yet. I don't know what I can give back. I don't know what I can teach at this point." I just want to remind everyone that sometimes one of the kindest things you can do, one of the most helpful things you can do, is just sit there and listen and take in what someone else is saying, and say, "I'm really happy for you," or, "I'm sorry that happened." Right? I think being able to bring that into a conversation is such a thing that can be really inviting and help someone on their road in a way that isn't about explicitly, "Here's some advice, here's me teaching you how to do this thing."

[Erin] I would say, I know we're running late, but I think that the important thing about community, too, is that not everyone has to be everything to you. I think sometimes one of the reasons I like sort of solidarity over mentorship is that sometimes a mentor, it's like that person has to be like cheering you on and the person you can complain to and giving you a job. But, like, sometimes you can have… It's like when you're going out on the town, you've got that friend who you call up when you want to go to the club, because they're great for that. That might not be the same friend that you have a deep conversation with over coffee the next day.

[DongWon] Totally.

[Erin] Having all of that in your writing community, seeing what it is that you think you need out there, and then looking for people who can give that to you and who need things from you that you can give to them, I think really makes your community powerful and strong, and makes your writing career a happier one.

[DongWon] Know which group chat is for talking shit and which group chat is for advice.

[Chuckles, laughter]

[Howard] Oh, dear.

[DongWon] On that note, Mary Robinette, I believe you have our homework.

[Mary Robinette] Yes. So your homework this week is to kind of think about some of the areas of publishing. But think about one thing that you can do that will make someone else's path easier. Something that doesn't have to be a hard lift for you. I'm not asking you to come like, go out and start a charity or something like that. But some small action that you can take that will make someone else's path easier. Then do it.

[Mary Robinette] In our next episode, DongWon talks about when you should tell, not show, and Erin explains how she lets her students guide the learning. Also, Howard tells you when you shouldn't put a frozen turkey in a deep fryer. Until then, you're out of excuses. Now go write.

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 17.19: Working in a Collaborative Environment

From https://writingexcuses.com/2022/05/08/17-19-working-in-a-collaborative-environment/

Key points: One part of collaboration is meetings and suggestions. One reason to collaborate is to tell stories that you just don't have the time to tell. Sometimes the other people can bring things to the story that you can't. One nice thing can be ideas and advice. Beware creative squabbling, making creative disagreements personal. To collaborate effectively, you have to let it go.

[Season 17, Episode 19]

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Working in a Collaborative Environment.

[Brandon] 15 minutes long, because you're in a hurry.

[Meg] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Brandon] I'm Brandon.

[Meg] And I'm Meg.

[Dan] We have Meg Lloyd with us today, who is one of my favorite people. Meg, tell us about yourself.

[Meg] Well, I am a storyboard artist and a screenwriter working in animation out in California. That means I'm one of the first wizards on call when it comes to making movie magic. It's usually my job to take the scripts from the writer and then turn them into the pictures, the designs, the sets, and the camera work that will be turned over to the other departments in order to make a final animated scene.

[Dan] Cool. What are some of the things you've worked on that our audience might be familiar with?

[Meg] Yeah. So, some of the stuff that I've worked on… Well, a lot of it is still a secret because since I'm at the beginning of the process, I don't get to talk about it until a couple of years after it's all done and out of the way. But some of my released work includes boarding on Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous and Star Trek: Lower Decks. This week, Nickelodeon finally title dropped a show I worked on for them called Transformers: Earth Park.

[Dan] Whoa. Awesome. So, we are going to talk about creating in a collaborative environment. Whether that is authors collaborating with each other, like Brandon and I are doing, or you working in a whole company full of creatives who are constantly having to be creative together. How is… This is such a dumb question. But, how is that different from just making something on your own?

[Meg] Well, I get a lot of other people telling me what I did wrong.

[Chuckles]

[Meg] Instead of being able to gauge that for myself. One of the things is where you're positioned on a creative project, because… I've directed as well as like boarded. There is a very clear chain of command. It differs from show to show on how much you're allowed to pipe up in a meeting and make suggestions. Like, I've been with some directors and some heads of story that really welcomed jokes and riffs in a meeting. But I also remember with a great fear my very first job when I raised my hand and made a suggestion, and the supervising director, and then later my director, and then one of the producers pulled me aside, one by one, and said, "You can't talk in a meeting."

[Laughter]

[Meg] I was like, "Whah?" Which is like a real shame, because I talk all the time.

[Dan] So conducive to the creative process, as well, is, like, telling people to shut up.

[Brandon] Yeah, I've… Hollywood's this weird place where it feels like everyone knows the rules but you. I've been in some of those meetings too, and I'm like, "How do you know?" And it's different in every meeting. Yeah, I don't envy you trying to navigate some of these things, because it gets really weird.

[Meg] So, animation and just moviemaking in general is one of the biggest team projects that there is. There's a reason why our credits are 10 minutes long. If you're in a short schedule hi rush production like TV, you only are going to be touching an episode for a specific amount of time, and then you have to pass it down to the next person. The only thing that stops this from being an absolutely garbled game of telephone is the people who are sort of steering this ship, which would be your director and your head of story. So, a lot of times you have to gauge the water yourself, to be like, "Okay. Can I… What can I bring of my own flair?" Or what do they need me to just get done and pass on to the next person?

[Dan] Let me ask Brandon, you have recently, in the last few years, started to do a lot more collaborations.

[Brandon] Yes.

[Dan] With me, with Jancey, with others. What prompted that decision, and kind of what got you into that frame of creative mind?

[Brandon] Yeah. So, this was kind of a very specific thing, which involves the explosion of audiobooks, and several of the audiobook producers, the companies, coming to me and saying, "Hey, Brandon. We would love some exclusive content. Is there something of yours that you can provide?" Meanwhile, I had been having various stories that I wanted to write for years that I'd never been able to get to. The one I'm doing with you, the one I'm doing with Mary Robinette, these are stories that I had outlines for. I'm like, "Someday I'm going to write this story." Then, other demands just kept taking me away from them. These two things intersected, where I said, "Well, maybe if I brought on a friend, I can take one of these stories that I really think is really cool that I've wanted to tell, but I just don't have the time for because the Cosmere's dominating more and more of my attention." So, for me, collaboration was a way to tell more stories that I just don't have the time to tell.

[Dan] So, question for both of you then. Can you think of something that the collaborative process brought to a story that you hadn't seen there or you wouldn't have come up with on your own?

[Brandon] Well, I definitely have one, but I don't know… I'll go ahead and go first, then you can. The story I wrote with Mary Robinette, we'll just bring that up because she's one of the other cohosts. So, this is a story about a woman, who, for reasons mysterious, has murdered her husband. Right? She… A clone of her wakes up, with missing… Her whole life she remembers except the week that led to murdering her husband. The clone's like, "I would never do that. I love my husband. Why would I ever do this?" They're like, "Well, that's why we brought you. Your job is to figure out why you would do this." It's that kind of story. Never having had a husband, Mary Robinette was able to… Like, I wouldn't have been able to approach this from the same direction she could.

[Dan] She has had a husband, but you have not.

[Brandon] I have not.

[Dan] Okay.

[Brandon] So, she was able… Like, in the mindset of a woman in her… She's in her 30s. Mary Robinette isn't, but she has been a woman in her 30s, which I never have been. As a writer, we're trained to get in the heads of people that aren't like ourselves. That's what we do. That's one of the main things. But in this specific case, I knew I couldn't write this story as well as she could, and that she would bring certain things to it that I could never approach. Lo and behold, when I read the story, I'm like, "Those are the things." I could point to them. Say, this is what Mary Robinette brought, that I didn't even know I was missing. Otherwise, I could have maybe faked it.

[Dan] Yeah. A lot of times we just don't know what we don't know.

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Dan] What's the name of that story, if people want to go look at it?

[Brandon] It's called The Original.

[Dan] The Original.

[Meg] Something that's been really hard during the pandemic is working all alone at my house with my cats who don't know the first thing about moviemaking.

[Chuckles]

[Meg] Because I usually get to do it at a studio with all of my friends who are very good at making movies and TV. So I really like working in a collaborative environment with other artists because when you just get stuck on something, it's really easy to reach over and be like, "Hey. What's wrong with this picture?" They can, like, literally tell you, "Oh, your composition's off." You need to like lower your camera, or fill it out, or all these other jargon thing that I could fire off 50 times in a row.

[Chuckles]

[Meg] It's very fun because at the storyboarding level, we're all on even footing, we're all like this portion of the team is we're [off and days?] Oh, wait. Am I allowed to sing copyrighted…

[Dan] You are totally allowed to sing copyrighted things.

[Meg] Probably not. So one of the things I value the most out of collaboration is building elements of trust with the artists that you know and admire. That it's easy to ask for advice and it doesn't feel like they're criticizing you when they give you ideas and feedback.

[Dan] Yeah. That's something that I've seen with Brandon as we worked together on Apocalypse Guard and now on Dark One. We know each other very well, we know each other's creative process very well, and we know each other's strengths very well. So it's easy for me when he says, "Hey, the ending to this absolutely doesn't work." I can think, "Yeah. You're right. It doesn't. You're better at endings than I am." That's one of the reasons why we work so well together.

[Brandon] Yeah. You shore up one another's weaknesses. Right? Like, Dan is really good at voice. The reason I went and brought him onto Apocalypse Guard, which we haven't released yet, but we're going to…

[Dan] Yeah.

[Brandon] Is the voice was broken. Dan's the best person I know when it comes to writing narrative voice for a character. So I went to Dan and said, "Dan. Help." In that specific case, because the book was broken and I'd pulled it from the publisher because I couldn't get it fixed. Now the ending of that one was also broken. So Dan fixed the voice, but Dan's like, "I don't do endings."

[Laughter]

[Dan] I mean, I do, just… Technically. But…

[Brandon] You have lots of really great endings.

[Dan] What I don't do are Brandon Sanderson endings.

[Brandon] Yeah.

[Dan] Which are distinctly different in flavor. So, to make sure that works. We're actually… Now, we forgot to tell you this in our intro. We are currently at LTUE.

[Cheers]

[Dan] That was very hesitant cheering. We actually read from… An excerpt from Apocalypse Guard at this con two years ago.

[Brandon] Two years ago.

[Dan] It's still not published.

[Brandon] Still not published. This is my fault, not Dan's.

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] Dan kicked it back to me and said, "I fixed the voice. The ending's still broken. You need to fix that." I'm like, "I do."

[Laughter]

[Brandon] But the whole point is I don't have time to work on things anymore.

[Dan] Yeah. Which makes it tricky.

[Brandon] Which makes it tricky. But we will find a time.

[Dan] Okay. Now, Meg, we did not prep you in any way for this, but we do want to do a thing of the week in the middle. This can be something of yours you've worked on. It doesn't have to be a book. It could be a book you've read by somebody else. It could be whatever you want to recommend for people to go out and see.

[Meg] Okay. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but I deeply enjoyed Arcane on Netflix.

[Dan] Yes.

[Meg] I mentioned before about how TV schedules are so crunched. They had five years to do their storyboards for their episodes. I only get six weeks at a time per episode. So I was both blown away by the artistry and also incredibly jealous of like the flexible creativity everyone showed. I would check out Arcane. It's an animated series inspired by the League of Legends videogame, and it's on Netflix now.

[Brandon] They cheated though. Right?

[Chuckles]

[Brandon] When you have League of Legends money, which Riot did, and they just said, "We're going to make our own show, and you're going to publish it." People are just like, "Okay. We don't have to pay any money for it. Do what you want." So they just… They spent through the roof, and just made the cool thing that they wanted to make, because they wanted to make a cool thing. It's off a budget that no one would ever pay for that.

[Meg] Yes.

[Brandon] Except for the people who are like, "We don't have to care. We have League of Legends money."

[Laughter]

[Brandon] So, it shows. It's… The music in that show, and just how they integrate the music original songs by big bands and thing. It's just really cool.

[Meg] [Provo loco], Imagine Dragons.

[Brandon] Yes.

[Dan] Now, kind of germane to our discussion, usually when someone roles in with a ton of money and says I'm going to make whatever I want to make and screw you all, it often turns into a very self-indulgent kind of piece of nonsense. It didn't in this case because they were willing to listen to each other. They didn't have to listen to Netflix, but they listened to each other and said, "Okay. Let's tone down these things. Let's make sure that everything lands as perfectly as possible."

[Brandon] Yeah. That's what made it work. Right? Like, League of Legends is… Has the advantage that it's not one person rolling in with a bunch of money, thinking they know how to tell a story and then not doing it. It's a videogame company, which is another big collaborative environment where everyone knows and understands they need to collaborate, deciding to make something together and therefore being willing to collaborate to make it good.

[Dan] Yeah. So, Meg, let's ask then, what are some of the pitfalls of collaboration? How can it go wrong, and how can we avoid those things going wrong?

[Meg] It's very easy to disagree over creative thing. Because all creativity starts internally, and it's very hard to make it something external from yourself. I think the biggest pitfall is… I don't want to say infighting, because that sounds way more dramatic than it is. But...

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Squabbling.

[Meg] Yeah. Taking a creative disagreement and making it feel personal. Sometimes you just have to take one or two steps back from what you're making. It's almost like you have to shut the feelings… Turn down the volume on the feelings part of your brain in order to talk things through with someone. I don't think great art comes from argument. Great art can become an argument. But if you're not enjoying your collaborative process, you will forever look back on the thing you made with the same negative feelings that were stewing while you created it.

[Dan] Brandon, do you have any collaborative pitfalls?

[Brandon] I mean, that's a really…

[Dan] Juicy stories about when you and I went at each other?

[Brandon] Good one. Well, yeah.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] We don't, actually.

[Brandon] [garbled] The first thing I had to do in order to collaborate effectively was I had to let go. Right? The first of these I did was The Original, which I pitched earlier. This was an interesting experience for me because I had had the story in my head for years. I had been planning to write it, I had an outline, and I just could not find the time, couldn't justify it. For whatever reason, it was never the right project to do. Then I thought of this, and then there was a moment that I'm like, "But if I do that, I don't get to write it." That actually is… It's… Painful is the wrong term, but there is something there where it's like giving the other person permission to let it be theirs, too. This is a different kind of collaboration, because I have a thing and I'm giving it to someone else. But I think this is a really important thing. If… Our mutual friend, Kevin J. Anderson, once tells the story of collaborating… I'll leave out the other collaborator. But Kevin was going to write with another author. He wrote with this author, and he came up with something really cool, and he gave it to the other author. The other author's like, "Nope." Put it aside and wrote it again from scratch. Kevin's like, "Why did you bring on a collaborator if you're just going to do this?" The other author's like, "I realized that I just can't let go. I know how this story's supposed to go in my head. You can't do it because it's not in your head. I just have to do it my way." So you have to be excited by the prospect of what the other person's going to bring, not expect the other person to do the things the way that you exactly would do them.

[Dan] Exactly. I would add to that, that clear definitions of responsibility or domain have also helped a lot. If you know that it is one person's job to do the outline, and a different person's job to do the first draft, or however it is that you divide things up… The way that Brandon and I are like, "Well, you are going to do this ending, and you're going to do this other part." Then we know that we're less likely to step on each other's toes.

[Meg] It's very enamoring to think of the idea of a solo, solitary creator that's an absolute genius. Everyone else around them is… If we're talking about filmmaking, that you have a director who's just head and shoulders above everyone else, and everyone on the team just bows to their will. There's no way that a single person can create every aspect of a movie themselves. Even if they have a say in everything that goes on, there's no way they can fabricate all the costumes, there's no way they can location scout all of the places. So the idea of a genius solo creator on a collaborative project is a myth. Because they're not a creator, they're a dictator.

[Dan] Exactly. That is a great note to end on. Meg, what homework can you give to our listeners?

[Meg] Listen, you're going to have to find a buddy.

[Chuckles]

[Meg] So, your homework is to find one of your friends and pull up an old idea that maybe you haven't been able to get off the ground, or the nugget of a new idea you're not sure which direction to take it. It's to sit down with them and talk it over. Figure out with them what the next step on your story is going to be.

[Dan] There you go. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses 15.51: Feedback -- When to Listen, and When to Ignore, with special guest Mahtab Nar

Writing Excuses 15.51: Feedback -- When to Listen, and When to Ignore, with special guest Mahtab Narsimhan

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/12/20/15-51-feedback-when-to-listen-and-when-to-ignore-with-special-guest-mahtab-narsimhan/

Key Points: Prescriptive advice, suggestions about how to do it, are going to come your way. But when do you look for it? Until you show me you can articulate your reactions in a way I understand, I may not accept your advice on how to rewrite a scene. Tell me how you feel, then tell me how to rewrite the scene. Arrange your readers by the type of advice you want. Subject matter experts, sensitivity readers, tell me what's wrong and how to fix it. Most readers, just tell me your reaction. Editors, suggest how to fix a problem. When you get feedback, you decide whether to accept it or not. Follow your vision. How do you find people you trust to tell you what to do? Professionals. Agent, editor, writing group. Organizations can help, but you have to pick and choose. Audition, or vetting, process. Start with media you both consume, and see what they think of that. Reactions, fresh perspectives, the feedback echo chamber... stay true to your vision. You know how to fix your story better than anybody else. But be open to brilliant ideas from someone.

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 51.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Feedback -- When to Listen, and When to Ignore, with Mahtab Narsimhan.

[Howard] 15 minutes long.

[Mahtab] Because you're in a hurry.

[Brandon] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Mahtab] I'm Mahtab.

[Brandon] And I'm Brandon. Which I keep telling you and I'd like you to take that feedback.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] So, we talk all the time about how to give feedback, how to construct a good writing group, how to train your alpha and beta readers, and one of the points we hit on a lot is that what you're looking for in that feedback stage is reactions rather than specific prescriptive advice. But, as one of our listeners pointed out in an email, asking this question, "Prescriptive advice is incredibly valuable and we all do it and we all get it." So, we're clearly not saying ignore every suggestion that comes to you. What we need to talk about now, then, is how do you decide which pieces of advice you're going to listen to and which ones you're going to discard. When should you actively seek out that kind of specifically prescriptive feedback? So, first ideas, like, when do you seek it out? At what point do you say, "Hey, I need you to answer this question for me?"

[Howard] Approaching it from a different angle, until I have gotten reader reactions from someone and they been able to articulate their reaction to me in a way that I understand, I'm not going to accept feedback from them. If someone hasn't yet told me that this scene made them feel a certain way, I'm not ready to accept their feedback on how to rewrite the scene. I want to know that you can tell me how you feel before you tell me how to rewrite the scene so that you feel what you're supposed to.

[Brandon] Yeah. That's a good piece of advice. Although one thing I do is I kind of arrange my readers by what type of advice I want them to give me. For example, when I use a subject matter expert… I recently wrote a story about someone who's paraplegic. I went and I hired several people to read this story. To them, I said… They were paraplegic and I said, "I want you to tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it, specifically, how this differs from your life experience in the life experience that you know other disabled people have. I want you to tell me." For other readers, though, I say I just want to know your reaction. I want to know if my characters are working and my story's working. The way you help me with that is by telling me your just feedback emotionally. I'm looking for different things from different people. From my editor, I want them to tell me what they suggest I do to fix a problem when they've noticed it, because I might not take that, but there's a much better chance that I will take it when it comes from an editor who really knows what they're doing.

[Dan] Let me follow up on that subject matter expert thing. When you've got feedback from them, how much of that feedback was just kind of the mechanics of daily life of a para… Someone who is paraplegic and how much of that was the story or the characterization are broken, and here's how you can fix those? Because that seems like it kind of straddles that line between subject matter and storytelling.

[Brandon] It was actually weighted toward the latter. I would have thought it would be weighted toward the former. But those things are very easy to fix. When someone says, "I usually keep a pole next to me so I reach things and pull them across the desk to me," that's like, "Oh, that's really handy. I will do that. That's an easy fix." But when they say something along the lines of… A piece of feedback I got on this piece which was really helpful was all of them noticed… They say, "We work in a community. We talk to other people." A lot of people write… When they write a story like I had done, they talk about this person in isolation, which is not how we do it. It makes it seem like this person is the only person who is paraplegic in the whole world. That's very common. I hadn't realized that's what you do, but of course, you're part of a community. I'm part of a community of writers. I'm part of a community of people who share a faith with me. I'm part of a community of people who are parenting. We look for people who have a shared life experience so we can help each other. This is something that I had done flat-out wrong that required a really big revisitation of how I was viewing the character and the story because it was just… It was flat-out wrong. That sort of thing was a harder revision, but it was also more surprising to me, and it's the sort of thing that needed a subject matter expert to explain to me.

[Mahtab] Okay. I would call those instead sensitivity readers. I mean, that's what happens when you're writing a piece, middle grade YA fiction, and your writing someone with whom you don't share the identity or a marginalized status or what have you. I mean, you just… You do not have a similar background. That's when you get someone who we call like a sensitivity reader, who's going to look at your story and tell you, "Okay. This is what it is," or "This is what you need to think about as you write." You said, Brandon, they're not in isolation, but sometimes when we're writing from an outsider's perspective, we almost make that kind of an issue story or the issue with that character is their disability or whatever. Sometimes having someone with that background read it often gives you a whole different perspective because they do not see it as an issue, because they're part of a community where this is not the center stage. You can get other feedback from it, but just coming back to your point, Dan, as to when do you seek feedback. When I've taken a story to a certain level and I do no more with it, is when I would actually send it out to my critique group. One of the good things is I have a group that has different strengths. Someone is really good with the big picture perspective. So they would like really look at the forest. There are some who actually look at the trees, and they go down to the bush level, and they will absolutely look at the pacing and the plot and the characterization. So that's when you take the feedback from these people which is… Each one gives you a different idea or a different facet of what your story is. Then once it comes back to you, I think the onus is on you, and it goes with your gut feel of should I accept this feedback or shouldn't I. If it does not fit with your vision, no matter who's given it to me, I would probably not follow it.

[Dan] Okay. I want to pause now for the book of the week, which we get from Howard.

[Howard] Yes. It's not really related to the topic, but I really, really enjoyed Dan Rather's book What Unites Us. Dan Rather has been a fixture in American and, let's be honest, world news broadcasts for… I want to say 50 years, at least 40 years. His experiences… It's kind of a retrospective of the way he sees the American nation and the people who are in it. I really loved it. I needed it when I listened to it. I don't know if you do, but the audiobook was quite good, and that was the way I experienced it. So I can't speak to reading the words on the paper with my own eyeballs and brain.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] That's for other people to discover. But the book is called What Unites Us by Dan Rather.

[Dan] Thank you.

[Dan] Now, the common thread between all of your comments in the first half of the episode were heavily kind of focused around this idea that you have curated your groups of people that you get feedback from and that you… When you look for specific feedback, you are trying to get it from specific people and for specific reasons. So let's talk just really quick about that. How do you find these people that you trust… Not talking about specifically subject matter experts or sensitivity readers, but just, in general, how do you find those people and how do you decide, yes, I trust what this person is going to tell me to do?

[Brandon] Well, with beta readers in particular, them, it doesn't matter, right? Because I'm not asking them to tell me what to do. So, people who tell me what to do, that I let… That I'm looking for, are professionals. Right? Which is a different sort of thing. I find my beta readers, generally, they are people who have been long-term friends, people who are active in fandom, or people that other beta readers have recommended. We do that a lot. We try to add a few new people every book that I do and not have everyone do every book, right? So we shake it up. It's just a process of watching who makes astute comments on forum posts about the books, who are active on our Facebook posts, those are the people I look for. But for alpha readers, they're giving me direct, fix this, I'm generally only looking at like my agent, my editor, or my writing group for that.

[Mahtab] I think, for me, I join a lot of organizations, and again, we've got forums, so you can connect with people on the forums and say, "Okay, I'm looking for… I'm looking for a critique partner," and everyone kind of just exchanges emails and then goes for it. In case… That's how I started with, but then, over the years, I kind of got closer to a group of people because they write similar stuff that I do, and I like their work and they like my work. So we kind of broke off and formed our own groups. But if you're looking at the children's section, SCBWI, CANSCAIP, these are the… I guess for the US, it's SCBWI, you join those groups, there are areas where you can exchange information and find critique partners. I would say, start out with maybe a chapter or two, see what the feedback is like, see if they're on the same wavelength as you are, before you go deeper down the rabbit hole, and then become good critique partners, because sometimes… What if you're not at a similar level or if the level of feedback that you're getting is not what you're looking for? Then that relationship or that critique is not really helping you. So you also have to pick and choose. Don't just say yes to anyone who says they're going to give you feedback.

[Dan] That kind of audition process, so to speak, I think is really important. Because, we've talked before about how to find fellow writers and form your little groups and things, but going through that kind of vetting process, of saying, "Okay. You know what, I really like your feedback," or "You're giving me feedback that I don't think is valuable," that's a big step. It can be difficult to say, "You know what, this relationship isn't working. I think we should break up."

[Howard] There is… To my mind, there is an easier and much lower pressure way to get to that point. That is to socialize… And I guess Zoom may be the way that we're doing this for the foreseeable future… Socialize with people right and who consume media that you consume, and talk about the things that you're consuming. If Dan and I both sit down and talk about The Mandalorian, and I say, "Oh, my gosh, it's my favorite Star Wars ever, because it's like a cowboy movie Star Wars," and I don't know what Dan's going to say about it. But if Dan's feedback about Mandalorian makes me feel like the two of us watched a completely different show, he's out of my group.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Because… Not because he's wrong, but because connecting might be so very, very difficult. Initially, for seeking feedback, I want to get feedback from people whose critiques I'm able to understand. We both watched a movie and we both agreed, "Wow. The protagonist fails to protag for the entire first act, and by the time the second showed up, we were… We didn't like him anymore," and we both get that. Oh, yes, this is someone I… Because when they critique my work, I'll be like, "Oh. Oh, yes. You're right." And when you prescribe something to me, I'm more likely to get it. Now that, that initially is going to create kind of a bubble, and you want to branch out from that. But start friendly first, I think.

[Mahtab] Yes.

[Dan] Yeah. It is a very tricky line to walk, because you don't want to get into that feedback echo chamber. I always really value opinions that are different from my own. Because that, I think, is going to help me look for new solutions and new answers. But on the other hand, someone who is constantly suggesting ideas that don't fit with my style at all, that's not going to be valuable to me. So, it all comes back to this idea of just very carefully deciding who you're going to talk to. Well, I guess, who you're going to get that prescriptive feedback from. The person whose ideas are super different from mine, yes, give me all your reactions. Please. But when it comes to how am I actually going to change this, that's when I do tend rely on people who have similar sensibilities to mine.

[Brandon] Or, I would add, the further someone gets in the professional field of writing and storytelling, the more it seems they are able to help a story become a better version of itself, rather than trying to push it one direction or another. That's not to say that all agents and editors are perfect at this, or even all writing group members, but I've noticed that people who write a lot… For instance, Dan tends to be better at looking at one of my books and saying, "Here's what I think you're trying to do. Here's how to make it better." Where there are other people who are longtime writing group members of mine who like my books, who often give good feedback. But if you give them a book that's outside their normal reading comfort level, they'll give bad feedback on it. Where I've never gotten bad feedback from Dan, because as an industry professional, he reads a lot of things and even things he doesn't like, he can say, "Here's how I think you can make a better version of this thing that I don't necessarily like." Which is a really great skill for a storyteller to learn, I think. But it is not something you can expect from your average even writing group member, I think.

[Dan] I want to print up business cards that say, "Dan Wells. I will help you make a better version of a thing that you're doing that I don't like, even though you're doing a thing that I don't like."

[Mahtab] Where do I sign up?

[Laughter]

[Mahtab] But just very quickly to say something about what you said, Dan, was sometimes you can get that same feedback from the same group that you're with. So getting a totally fresh perspective, even if it does not gel with your own thinking, I think is very valuable. But at the end of the day, you have to decide am I taking it or leaving it, and that decision rests entirely with you. So you just stay true to your vision. No matter who gives you feedback.

[Dan] Yeah, well and…

[Howard] One of… Sorry. One of the things that Brandon said, the ability to say… As a critiquer, the ability to say, for instance, it feels like in this scene you are presenting me with a red herring and you want me to feel doubt about this and you want me to become convinced of this. If that's the case, you need to punch this bit up more and punch that bit down a little bit in order to adjust the balance. But if this isn't meant for a red herring, whatever, then ignore everything that I said. I will give feedback like that to Bob all the time, because I don't know where Bob's book is going. But I will tell him this is my response and this is where I think maybe your levels need to be set. Bob will smile and nod, and I have no idea if he's going to take my advice or not. But he knows what to do with it.

[Dan] So, as a final word, I suppose more than anything else, I just want to give you as a writer permission to get prescriptive feedback, to take suggestions from other people. Don't feel like we have told you you're not allowed to. I do believe that at the end of the day, you know how to fix your story better than anybody else. But that doesn't mean that someone is not going to come along with a brilliant idea that will solve your problems for you. That does happen, and absolutely be open to those experiences.

[Dan] So, let's end with some homework from Howard.

[Howard] Okay. Bear with me.

[Laughter]

[Howard] You're going to want to do this with a friend. Okay? Step one. Each of you prepare a quick written critique of a movie. Maybe one… I mean, they can be different movies, but something that you've watched and has problems that you're willing to critique. Now. Share your critiques with each other, swap them. Now you take the critique that your friend gave of this movie… Oh, and when you wrote the critiques, you anonymized it, you didn't say like character name, you just say like protagonist or antagonist. Anyway. So you get this feedback from this movie. Now. File as many of the serial numbers off as you can. Set it down next to your manuscript and treat this bit of random, utterly random, feedback as if it was aimed at your manuscript. Why are you doing this? So that you can see what absolute nonsense looks like with regard to your manuscript AND so that you can have the broken watch is right twice a day experience of "Oh, my gosh. That thing that you said about the phantom menace applies to my book."

[Laughter]

[Howard] Oh, no. It may seem really weird, but by doing this, what you're going to do is refine your filters for the sort of feedback you receive and it's going to knock you out of the box and maybe make some of your writing better.

[Dan] I really like this homework. I think it is a cool idea to teach you how to sort through the value of a bunch of feedback. So, cool. Anyway, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses, now go write.

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Writing Excuses 13.20: Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman

From https://writingexcuses.com/2018/05/20/13-20-fear-and-writing-with-emma-newman/

Key points: BIC (butt in chair) is not that easy! Between the desire to write and the ability to begin writing, we need to unpack the reasons why we procrastinate, and look at ways to handle them. Specifically, what are the fears that keep us from writing. Sometimes you may also find depression or other blocks, and need different tools for those. Watch out for unprocessed wounds from one's past, the fear of failure, and the fear of success. Be aware of what's happening. Try using one fear to combat another, e.g. fear of regret overcoming fear of success. Give yourself permission to be selfish, to carve out time for your work. Negotiate with your fears, trick them. Think about the advice you would give a friend who was suffering from your fears. Promise your inner toddler a reward when you finish!

( What else could go wrong? )

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman.

[Mary] 15 minutes long.

[Aliette] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're terrified.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Mary] I'm Mary.

[Aliette] I'm Aliette.

[Howard] [squeak]

[laughter]

[Dan] With us, we have our special guest, who's terrifying Howard so much, Emma Newman. Emma, I'm excited that you're here. Tell us about yourself.

[Emma] Hello. I'm an author, an audiobook narrator, and a podcaster. And also a role player.

[Dan] Well, awesome.

[Mary] Yay!

[Dan] Okay…

[Emma] I think I paid for the latter one, though.

[Dan] We… Dear audience, who is not actually here with us while recording. We are currently on the Writing Excuses retreat. Let's get some love from the audience here.

[Whoo! Applause!]

[Dan] Okay. One of the things that we have heard nonstop… This is the last day of our weeklong thing. Emma's was the very first class at the retreat, and people have not stopped raving about it. So we want to talk about fear and writing. What do we want to talk about here?

[Emma] Well, the whole reason I created the talk that I did at the beginning of the week was just sheer rage at all of the people who I saw tweeting or blogging who were professional authors who were saying, "Well, all you need to do to be a professional author is to just sit down and write. Like, butt in chair, darling." I would just get so furious because it's not that easy for everybody. I don't actually believe it is easy for anyone, and that's just a very glib thing for them to say, to kind of emphasize the fact that there is an element of self-discipline. I understand that, but I feel that it kind of shut a lot of things out of the dialogue that we need to have about what nee… What work you need to do between the desire to write and the ability to actually begin writing. So the talk kind of unpacked all of the reasons why we procrastinate, and then what we can do when we've identified those underlying reasons, on a practical level and an emotional level, to enable us to be able to write as much as we want to.

[Dan] Awesome.

[Mary] I was really glad to hear you give that talk. I think that you were absolutely right to have it at the beginning of the week. One of the things that I want to highlight for you listeners is one of the things that can happen to you when you start to unpack the reasons that you are not writing is that you can discover that there's some other stuff going on. I went on this journey myself, and I've alluded to it on the podcast, that I for years was like, "Oh, I'm… I'm a procrastinator, and sometimes I get burnt out, or I'm in a funk." Then realized, after hearing other people talk about it, that actually what I was dealing with was depression, and that I needed different tools to deal with that, because it was getting in the way of me writing. The analogy that I often use is that it's much like having dysentery. That you're afraid to leave the house. It makes everything a mess. You're miserable. And no one wants to talk about it.

[Howard] And you're going to lose the game of Oregon Trail.

[Laughter]

[Mary] And you're going to lose the game of Oregon Trail. So that's one of the reasons that I was so excited to have you on, is because people talking about the various aspects of fear and depression is what got me to go to the doctor, at the age of 45. So hopefully, listeners, this… Don't be… Hopefully this will help you, and don't be surprised if you're listening to this and thinking, "Oh, no, this doesn't concern me." And then suddenly go, "Oh. Oh, this is me."

[Emma] One of the things that I wanted to achieve with the talk was opening a dialogue about mental illness as well. I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, so I was kind of speaking from experience with writing despite pretty much constant anxiety. And to continue the metaphor, to extend the metaphor with dysentery, there is also the fear that it will happen again.

[Mary] Yes.

[Chuckles]

[Emma] And that, at least, if you have a really terrible stomach bug, there's always the worry that it'll happen again at the worst time. It is exactly the same with mental illness. When you're feeling better again, and if you can feel yourself returning to that state that where you were incapacitated the first time, one of the things that is oddly reassuring about going through a cyclic journey with your own mental illness is that when it happens again and again, you can say, "Actually, I did recover the last time, and this too shall pass." But the first time that that happens, you don't have that experience or that kind of knowledge. So there's the fear of being afraid, as well, that has to be unpacked in all of this process. That's important as well.

[Mary] I think that one of the things that you listeners should pay attention to is that a lot of the coping tools that we're going to be talking about, and a lot of this is something that you will have experienced or have already experienced… We label it as imposter syndrome. But it is completely… That imposter syndrome is basically anxiety about writing and depression about your skill level as a writer, all in a really ugly little bundle.

[Chuckles]

[Mary] Life is a terrible user interface.

[Aliette] I mean… Sorry.

[Dan] Nope. Please.

[Aliette] Part of what strikes me about that some of the corners of Twitter that you mentioned was always like people are mentioning like there's this narrative that you can conquer your fears and that you can… Like, this is like a battle, you're at war with like your fears, your depression, and then there's this kind of definite victory. I'm like, "This isn't how this works." Like, you're afraid, and you still write. This is how this works. Like, it's… Well, you know, you mentioned about cycles, it's like… It's always there lurking, somewhere. Then you have to… Either it's like very strong or very weak, but then you have to find tools to deal with that.

[Emma] Yes. Because it isn't a linear progression, and there are so many narratives that [garbled]

[Aliette] It's not a videogame.

[Emma] Exactly. It's not a videogame. There are so many narratives where you encounter that monster and then you can go and find the thing that will enable you to go in destroy the monster and then everyone lives happily ever after. But it's like doing that over and over and over and over and over again. Until you die.

[Laughter]

[Emma] I'm really sorry about that.

[Mary] Of dysentery.

[Aliette] Really like Oregon Trail.

[Dan] Fantastic. I have some very specific questions I want to ask, but this is a great time to break first for book of the week.

[Emma] Everyone's looking at me. So, the book of the week, that I feel slightly embarrassed about suggesting because it's my own, is After Atlas. That is a sci-fi crime. It's set 80 years in the future. It follows a detective, Carlos Moreno, who has been assigned to investigate the murder of a cult leader. The reason he's been assigned is because he escaped that cult when he was a child, but also because he isn't an average detective. He's an indentured slave to a corporation. So as he unravels the mystery behind the death of the cult leader, he is also processing a lot of issues.

[Mary] It is a fantastic book. I recently got a… Got my hands on a copy of it and basically was like, "Oh, great. Emma's got a new book. I'm just going to read the first chapter… I have to pee now because I've been sitting in this chair for days."

[Laughter]

[Mary] It's really good. Highly recommended. I also have to say that you do not have to have read the previous book, I think, to read this one. You can step into it cold. There's obviously some nuance that you get from having read the previous one, but absolutely… It stands on its own. It's fantastic.

[Emma] Thank you.

[Dan] Awesome. So it's After Atlas by Emma Newman. What was the first book called?

[Emma] The first book is Planetfall.

[Dan] Planetfall.

[Emma] So they're both set in the same universe, but they are genuinely standalone.

[Dan] Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you very much.

[Dan] All right. So I would love you to tell us some of these specific things, like you did in the talk. What are the reasons that we don't write?

[Emma] So, what I think of when I talk about the fear that underpins procrastination is that procrastination is kind of symptomatic of something that lies beneath. So it can take all sorts of forms, but it's the roots that are important. I see that there are kind of three primary roots, and then lots of little sub-ones. But the three primary ones are unprocessed wounds from one's past, the fear of failure, and the fear of success. Perfectionism is kind of like clinging onto the coattails of all of these. But those are the main kind of roots where it all comes from. If you start to kind of unpack all of those, then you can increase your own conscious awareness of what is actually happening, what is causing the procrastination behavior. Then I have kind of practical tools for, like once you figured out some of it, or even before you figured it out consciously, things you can actively due to be able to work despite the fear.

[Howard] One of the most difficult ones for folks often to wrap their head around is the fear of success. It's related to the paralysis of choice that happens when you're at a buffet and everything is delicious, but you do just have to pick one. If you succeed, suddenly you will have to make a decision about whether to pursue this as a career or perhaps whether to quit the day job. It opens a door and… You know, our caveman ancestors, when they opened the door and stepped outside… Well, there wasn't a door, but when they stepped outside…

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The first thing they had to do was make sure they weren't going to get eaten by something new. Success is scary. It's like… It opens a whole new world of things to be afraid of.

[Emma] It does. For me, the fear of success is very much having to leave the house.

[Laughter]

[Emma] I hate leaving the house. I'm on a cruise ship, I'm on a stage in front of people, so there's a bit of me now that is absolutely furious that I have done things that have brought me into this situation.

[Laughter]

[Emma] Even though I welcome this and I love it and I'm very happy to be here. I've had a fabulous week. It's that kind of weird, they live against each other and rub against each other, that you are actively working to invite these things in, that you also maybe don't want. This is not my natural state. My natural state is to be alone at home, writing, when no one can see me. I hate being seen. So that is where the fear of success plays out worse for me.

[Dan] Awesome. So you said you had some specific tools? What is one, for example, with fear of success, that you could give our listeners, of how to deal with that?

[Emma] So, for me, I think about whether I would be able to live with myself if I allowed the fear to win and didn't achieve the goals that I have. So it's kind of the well, you could… You can stay at home. Thank you, fear, for wanting to keep me safe and being at home. But am I genuinely going to be happy in that state? Or in my going to be there on my deathbed regretting everything? So I kind of use one kind of fear and repurpose it, and fire it at the other fear. So the fear of living with regret often outweighs the fear of having to go and do all of this. I also remind myself that a lot of things that I actively fear are all totally manufactured by my awful brain. So I actively remind myself intellectually that this is not real. It's like somebody said to me this week, "Oh, it's like Labyrinth, when she turns and says you have no power over me." That there is an element of that process going on. It's really hard, and sometimes I will be really grumpy with my husband for days because I have to leave the house at the end of the week and go and be in front of people. Then I go, "Oh. It's because I have to leave the house and go be in front of people…"

[Chuckles]

[Emma] "I'm really sorry."

[Dan] That is brilliant, using fears against each other. They deserve it.

[Howard] If you have one problem, you need to find a solution. If you have two problems, make them fight.

[Emma?] Yep. [Garbled] it's like [tried and tested for grabbing roles?] Well, not on me…

[Dan] All right. I want to try this, and maybe this'll be a disaster, but… Aliette, why don't you give us some of the reasons that you find to not write? And we'll see what Emma can do to help.

[Aliette] There's always something that needs to be done in the house, oddly enough. The lawn needs to be done, and I should prepare the meals for the kids, and then maybe I will sit down at my computer and I will like go… Maybe I can go on to Twitter because I need a break now…

[Laughter]

[Mary] Ah, Twitter.

[Emma] It always… It never ceases to amaze me how pressing those domestic chores become at the moment you're about to start writing.

[Laughter]

[Emma] I can ignore a pile of laundry for days, until the moment comes when I really have to sit down and finish that thing. I think there is also a dialogue we have to have with ourselves about giving ourselves permission to be selfish, and to not give all of our time to the domestic sphere and to our families and to all of the other people in our lives. To say, "No, it is okay to carve out this time, and to have this time just for my work." Yeah, mostly I'm driven to domestic chores when I am actively trying to run away from writing. It's not so much being driven towards them. It's actively sprinting away from the looming word count need behind me. But again, in those situations, I always say become aware of it. If you stop yourself… If you're in the middle of washing up and saying, "Well, why am I doing this at this time, when it is the designated time I was going to write?" Becoming aware that you're actually being a victim of the fear, and then saying, "No. I would actually like to negotiate now." And saying, "Okay. I am afraid of this. Is this something I genuinely need to be afraid of?" Can you negotiate with it? Sometimes, can you trick yourself? Because sometimes, I find myself being terrified that the next book I'm going to write is going to be a terrible failure. So I trick myself into saying, "Well, no, I'm not actually writing my next book. I'm just messing about with the first scene. That is not what I have to worry about." You kind of trick yourself. Trick your own fears.

[Mary] Sometimes… I have two tricks that I use when I am sitting down to write and then suddenly find myself in the kitchen doing the dishes. Which happens a lot. One of them is a phrase that my therapist gave me when I was going in first. She said, "What advice would you give to a friend who was going through this?" I was like, "Oh. That's a dirty trick."

[Laughter]

[Mary] Because I do, in fact, know the answer to these things. I just forget that I can apply that advice to myself. So, that's one thing. The other thing is that I will say, "Well, why don't you sit down and write about why you're not writing?" I'm like, "Okay, so what are the barriers that stand between me and the next scene that I need to write?" Eventually, what winds up happening is that I start noodling on the scene, and then suddenly the part of my brain that is delighted by writing is like, "Oh, wait. Waitwaitwait. Can I have the driver's seat now?" And away I go.

[Emma] If you can tailor it to whatever the fear is. But I do genuinely believe that a lot of it is either negotiating like adults or cajoling a toddler.

[Laughter]

[Emma] It's somewhere between the two, the kind of the inner toddler, like, "Well, I know you really don't want to do this now, but if you do this, then…" And then you can reward yourself. But the key is to try to constantly experiment and to be agile in your negotiations with your own fears.

[Howard] My… The place where I noticed fear the most in my own work is when I am moving from pencils to inks. I've laid down a bunch of pencil, and now I need to begin inking, which is the point at which I am committing to one of these many, many lines and deciding that the rest of them are wrong. We could brand that as a fear of commitment, if we wanted to tell a joke that's been told a million times. It's really the fear of being wrong. It's the fear of having made the wrong decision. The thing that broke me out of this was I found a good source of white gel pens. I tell myself, "You know what! I'm not actually committing. If this line is wrong, I'll just color over it with some white and make another line." Will Eisner did that, and he was using white paint and scraps of paper glued to his comic. I've seen those originals. The best people do this. I'm not actually committing. Then I will sit down and burn through white pens like they're candles.

[Chuckles]

[Emma] Well, that's the…

[Aliette] I actually have this file that's called like bits and pieces of the story. I will like put bits and pieces that I cut off, and also like the bits and pieces that I'm just noodling on. You know what, I'm not really writing, right? The funny thing is, with all the bits and pieces that I'm cutting off that never make it back into the story and all the noodling that actually does…

[Laughter]

[Aliette] It's just a crutch. I don't care. It gets me writing.

[Dan] I just finished a huge revision pass on one of my novels, and I did that. I kept… Because my editor says, "Cut this. It's unnecessary." But I love it. So instead of deleting it, I put it in a different folder. That kind of gives me permission to cut it out of the main work. I know I'm never going to go and use it. But now I have permission to cut it out of the work.

[Mary] I was just working on something that needed to be 45 seconds long. I got it down to 60 seconds. I'm like, "Oh, but I'm going to… I love these two lines that I have to cut to get it to 45." So I just turned in a 60 second version and a 45 second version. I'll let them make the choice about that. They chose the 45 second version. It's fine, like you don't miss the two lines. But I couldn't cut them myself. I had to let someone else do it. Which is often what it means by just putting it over in the folder.

[Dan] So, I'm sure, five authors up here, we could talk for hours about all the reasons we don't do stuff. But we need to be done with the episode. So, Emma, do you have some homework for us?

[Emma] Yes. So, aside from unpacking your own fears and trying very hard to overcome those, I would like to invite you to read a poem called The Listeners by Walter de la Mare. It was mentioned in a talk yesterday by Justin Ford, and it reminded me of how much I love it. I'd like to invite you to read it, and to write the back story that is implied in the poem.

[Dan] Nice. Okay. That is The Listeners by…

[Emma] Walter de la Mare.

[Dan] Awesome. So. That is excellent homework. This is Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

Current Mood: snark

Entry tags:

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode Three: How to Manage Your Influences

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode Three: How to Manage Your Influences

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/01/24/writing-excuses-4-3-how-to-manage-your-influences/

Key points: we are surrounded by influences, media, people, etc. Being aware of them and conscious of what you select is important. Be conscious of your decisions, what you are doing in your fiction, and why you are doing it. "Create the art you want to create, and then make it good enough that other people like it." There are lots of great things to do, but they don't all belong in your story. Be selective. Readers may know that there is a problem, but it's your job as the author to figure out which knob to turn to fix it, or even if it needs fixing. Consider advice very carefully.
( Influence peddlers? )
[Brandon] It's my turn to come up with a writing prompt. I'm going to suggest that you write a story in which you pretend a famous literary figure or historical figure is sitting over your shoulder giving you feedback on it, and you're writing according to what they are telling you to do. So come up with a plot, an outline, and then write your story, pretending that Abraham Lincoln walked in and is telling you feedback as you write. I don't know what that's going to do, but it should be interesting. This has been Writing Excuses that's gone way too long. You're out of excuses and so are we. Thanks for listening.

Writing Excuses 18.23: Our Advice on Giving Advice

Writing Excuses 18.22: On Mentorship: Sending the Elevator Back Down

Writing Excuses 17.19: Working in a Collaborative Environment

Writing Excuses 15.51: Feedback -- When to Listen, and When to Ignore, with special guest Mahtab Nar

Writing Excuses 13.20: Fear and Writing, with Emma Newman

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode Three: How to Manage Your Influences