Weekly Writing Memo: Inciting your Story

The inciting incident is the event in the story that causes the main conflict of your story to happen. Choosing the incident that starts your story is important because it is the foundation for all events that happen from that moment on. If you don’t write the inciting incident correctly, your story may not work or make sense. To know if your incident is working, ask yourself these questions:

Is it big enough?

The inciting incident has to be something big enough that it changes things for your character. It may seem small when it happens, but the event has to create a cascade of events for the rest of the story. Basically, the inciting incident is starting an avalanche, so it has to be powerful enough to get things moving.

An example of this which most people will know is in Lord of the Rings. The inciting incident for the trilogy can go all the way back to Bilbo Baggins finding the ring, or it could be considered to be when Bilbo leaves the ring to Frodo. It seems inconsequential, but it’s a major thing because of what the ring really is. Basically, because the ring is not just any ring, it’s THE ring, it’s a huge event that leads to the endless conflicts throughout the rest of the series.

Is it small enough?

While it’s important that the inciting incident is big enough that it can cause a huge series of events that will fill a story, it doesn’t need to be so big that it feels like the climax of the story. There are some stories that have huge inciting incidents, but the inciting incident should never be so big that it overshadows the rest of the story. There has to be somewhere for the story to build to. In most cases, the inciting incident is something small, that could almost seem inconsequential to the reader and the protagonist, but it has much bigger implications.

Returning to the Lord of the Rings example, when Bilbo leaves Frodo the ring it seems like such a small unimportant thing. It’s just a ring! But there is foreshadowing with the way characters interact with it that shows there could be something more about it.

Is it realistic?

Whatever your inciting incident is, it has to be something that is believable for your story. Being realistic and believable is, of course, subjective, but what matters is that it fits YOUR story. If the inciting incident doesn’t fit your world and your characters, it will feel like the author is forcing the story to go in the direction they want it to go; it’ll make the story feel unnatural.

If you worry about making something realistic, just remember that anything can be believable in a story if set up right. Sticking with the Lord of the Rings example, Bilbo finding the ring could be considered unbelievable, except that the ring is set up to have a sort of will of its own that makes people do things. This sets it up for every character who possesses the ring, or who is even in the same vicinity of it, to act in certain ways that can help move the plot forward. It works because it was set up that way from the beginning.

Does it matter?

The final thing to consider for your inciting incident, is whether it matters. If the inciting incident is something that changes nothing for your character, or the plot, then it is not really an inciting incident at all. As mentioned in the previous sections, it has to be something that is big enough to lead to future events. Beyond that, though, it has to be something that impacts the protagonist in a way that is significant enough to force them to act in some way. This is the incident that propels your protagonist to make some decision or change that leads them on the journey of the story. If the inciting incident isn’t something that does that, then it doesn’t matter to the story or the character and isn’t an inciting incident.

In Lord of the Rings, when Bilbo gives the ring to Frodo it matters immensely to Bilbo. He doesn’t want to give it up, and almost doesn’t. Frodo knows how much this ring means to Bilbo, so it matters greatly to Frodo when he is given it. He knows it’s something special, even if he doesn’t know what.

Final notes:

Whatever your inciting incident is for your story, as long as it fulfills the requirements above it should be a successful event to get your story started. The thing that matters most is that your event fits your story, and that it can be the first domino in a chain that causes future conflicts. Your entire story hinges on that first incident, so make sure it is solid before you get started writing or your entire story could falter.

Robin Conley offers great writing advice most Wednesdays on Writing to be Read. If you just can’t wait until next week to find out more, you can pop into her blog, Author the World, for more tips, or a weekly writing prompt.

Weekly Writing Memo: Where’s the Story?

As I’ve touched on in previous posts both here and on Author the World, the setting you choose for your story can be pivotal to your story’s success. The setting of a story can have just as much impact on character and plot as an antagonist could, so it’s incredibly important to think carefully about where you set your story. The three biggest ways the setting can influence the story is through tone, character, and plot.

Tone

The tone of your story can help tell your audience how to interpret everything that happens. If your narrator has a flippant tone to how they tell the story, it can tell audiences not to take things too seriously. If the narrator has a serious, dark voice, it can tell audiences that the story will be dark. The setting is a major part of declaring the tone. Think of any story, movie or book, whichever comes to mind. Where is it set? What if you set it somewhere completely opposite? How would the story change?

A great example of this is the TV show Burn Notice. I heard somewhere that the original script had the show set in a city like Chicago (I can’t remember if this is the right city, but at the very least, it was similar to Chicago in tone). Imagine how that setting would change the story compared to where it actually was set, Miami. First off, visually it would be very different. Instead of the bright sunshine and beautiful beaches, you’d get the cold concrete and grayer tones that Chicago has to offer. Instead of brightly dressed citizens in sundresses and bikinis and laid-back suits, you’d get city folk bundled up against strong winds and even snow now and then.

The story taking place in such a bright sunshiny place creates a contrast between the serious spy drama with the laid-back atmosphere. It makes things more humorous, and allows the story to have some brightness in what is really a dark story if you think about it. If the story was set in Chicago as originally planned, then not only would the drama be more serious because the setting would be more serious, but the overall appearance of the show would be more serious.

Character

Setting is not only important for tone, but for character as well. If your character is a hardened detective in a small town, he’s going to be out of place and his tactics might not work. Of course, if that’s the point then that is a perfect set-up. If you want your detective to fit in, though, then you might reconsider where you place him. The setting has to highlight something about your character. Does it show how perfectly your character can navigate their world, or does it show how out of place they are? Whatever it is, make sure you’ve thought it through.

The other thing to consider is how the setting helps create your character into who they are. If this is a setting that your character has lived in for a while, then it will have an impact on their personality and past. If this is a setting they are new to, then remember to show how the setting your character has come from contrasts to the setting they are in now.

Plot

One of the final things to consider when choosing a setting is the plot. How does the setting you choose affect the plot? If you are writing a big spy thriller but you set it in a small town, it’s going to be hard to have the kind of espionage needed to really make a spy thriller succeed unless that small town has some sort of national secret to it. Similarly, if you’re looking for a big chase scenes with lots of chaos and people, you’re going to be hard pressed to find the right setting for it in a small town setting.

When choosing where to set your story ask yourself a few questions. What kind of people does this setting allow my protagonist to interact with? What kind of conflicts are inherent to this setting? What kinds of locations does this setting provide for me to work with? These three questions are all vital things to consider when choosing a location, so make sure to consider them carefully.

Final Notes

Ultimately, wherever you set your story will influence every other part of your story. If you’re ever doubting a choice, or if you want to check if your choice is a good one, try asking yourself what your story will look like if you set it in the complete opposite location. If your story doesn’t work at all in this location, then your original location is probably best. If the opposite location does work, then compare the two and see which one works better overall. Sometimes there will be more than one optimal setting for a story, but the important thing is that you’ve considered your options, and that you’ve chosen your setting carefully and with deliberate purpose.

Robin Conley offers great writing advice most Wednesdays on Writing to be Read. If you just can’t wait until next week to find out more, you can pop into her blog, Author the World, for more tips, or a weekly writing prompt.

Writing Horror is Scary Business

For my summer semester, which will complete my additional screenwriting emphasis for my M.F.A. in Creative Writing, it was left up to me to decide what project I would like to work on, either feature film or television series. Since it is my final semester and I’ve already written both, it’s kind of a “whatever you want to do next” scenario. I’ve written a spec television script, for The Odd Couple, created an original television series, Unhappily Ever After, and written the pilot episode for it, as well as written two full features, one action, Across the Border, and one bio-pic, Bonnie. I’ve tried my hand at writing comedy with the television scripts, and I’ve delved into a couple of different genres in film. Now, I want to try my hand at horror. I’ve loved horror films since I was a kid. This summer, I want to write a monster in the house that will keep viewers awake until the wee hours of the morning.

If you’re writing a comedy, you write jokes and hope somebody laughs at them. But, how does one write scary? I think it is as much of a challenge as trying to make people laugh. The movie was pretty lame, but if you’ve read the book, The Blair Witch Project, you know that the story is actually pretty scary. When I read it, it left me with an eerie feeling that brought it back to the forefront of my thoughts for several days after. They had a good story, but they didn’t do it justice on the screen. That’s when I started thinking about how I might write a screenplay that would leave viewers with that same eerie feeling.

Robin Conley, who shares writing tips here, in her “Weekly Writing Memo”, did a three post series on writing horror on her own blog, Author the World. In her first post, The 3 Acts of Horror Stories, she talks about introducing the monster, increasing the threat, and the final face-off. No matter what kind of horror story you are writing, there must be some kind of monster, even if it’s the human kind, or the spectral kind. The bigger and meaner and scarier the monster is, the greater the threat for the characters. I definitely want a monster that will keep the tension ratcheted up and keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

In his book, Save the Cat Goes to the Movies, Blake Snyder points out that our monsters must be “evil” and the more that is at stake for our characters the scarier the monster must be. He suggests, “This is also why the tiny spiders in Arachnophobia, or the ones that can be dispatched with a baseball bat in Signs or die of the sniffles in War of the Worlds, are so unsatisfying.”¹ And, I must admit, he’ got a point. Although I have always had a fear of spiders, in Arachnophobia it’s hard to be too worried about the characters, because this is a monster which can be easily escaped. The characters could get up and leave, or just step on the damn spiders, or buy a can of Raid™, for heaven’s sake.

I will definitely make my monster bigger than a spider. My monster will be of the supernatural, other worldly type, because they leave more to the imagination. Supernatural monsters can appear in many different forms, so you have open possibilities for making them really scary.

In her second post on writing horror, 4 Elements of Horror, Robin talks about how setting, senses, contrast, and imagination are important elements in horror, making your scarier by increasing tension and creating anticipation. It’s easy to see how the setting affects tone and sets expectations. A graveyard is definitely a scarier setting than a botanical garden. Although you could make a botanical garden scary by placing scary stuff within, a graveyard comes scary and you don’t have to anything to create a scary atmosphere and tone.

Blake Synder says, “the more cramped the space – the more isolated our heroes – the better.”² That’s what the term he coined for this type of movie, Monster in the House, is all about. The characters must be trapped with the monster in some defined space, be it a house, or an island, or an isolated cabin in the woods. In The Shining, it’s a secluded hotel. In Cabin in the Woods, it’s, you guessed it, a cabin in the woods. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it’s an area surrounding the house and extends to include the whole town. Going back to the example of Arachnophobia, if the characters can just get up and walk away from the monster, there isn’t much of a challenge.

One of the scariest movies to me, when I was young, was Legend of Hill House, and later there was Amityville Horror and Rose Red. To me these were even scarier than the slasher movies, like Halloween or Scream. Since my monster is of the supernatural kind, it seems only natural that my setting would be a haunted house. In haunted house movies, the setting becomes a character, in fact it becomes your antagonist. It’s not easy to battle against a house, or a ghost in a house for that matter.

Robin also mentions using the senses to create tension. Screenwriting is a visual medium, and certainly characters can see things which are scary, but you can also use other senses to your advantage. It’s not hard to see how scary sounds could be worked in to your story, but there are also ways to work in the other senses, and is a good trick if you can pull it off. Obviously, you cannot make the audience smell the scent of freshly dug earth, but you can have a character comment on the odor and, thus clue the viewers into the fact that such a smell is present. Ditto with the sense of touch. If you are clever, there are ways to do this.

This will come in handy for me, because spectral monsters may not always be visible, but their presence can often be detected by a smell or odor that accompanies them. If you’ve ever walked through a room and detected the faint odor of perfume or pipe tobacco for just a moment, and then it was gone, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s as if someone just walked through the room, but when no one did, it’s kind of creepy. Feelings, such as chills or cold spots in a room are also known to often accompany specters.

Robin talks about balancing the horror elements, presentation and the stakes, in her third post, 3 More Elements of Horror. Not only do you need to have all the elements Robin mentions in her posts in a horror story, but you need to present them in a way that will give the audience the urge to hide their eyes, yet be unable to resist peeking through their fingers because even though it’s scary, they need to see what happens.

This is accomplished, I think, by having the right combination of horror elements and lulls in the storm, and by starting out small and building the tension and increasing the stakes in increments. At first, your characters may not take the threat seriously, but as more and more things happen and the severity of each event increases methodically, it forces them to eventually admit that something is amiss. You can even throw in some false alarms in the beginning to make it feel like there’s danger before there really is, but be cautious with this one. You want to build tension, but too many disappointments may cause viewers to lose interest before the real fun begins.

In her first post, Robin talks about having a death in the first act, perhaps as a catalyst to send your hero on his journey into the second act, where his normal life will be turned upside-down. She mentions that you want to do this in screenplays where the monster is of the serial killer kind and the threat needs to be established right up front, but I feel this puts the writer at a disadvantage, because there’s no bigger threat to build up to. Maybe this is an advantage of the supernatural monsters. There are so many little things you can do to build up tension and increase the threat little by little.

Blake Snyder also says that there must be some kind of sin, committed by at least one of the characters, which brings the monster down upon them. In a lot of horror movies, it is greed, a lust for money, which prompts them to go where they don’t belong or awakens the monster. In Friday the 13^th, it is sex. The councilors were off doing the wild thing when Jason drowned, and the new councilors’ presence arouse his mother’s anger just by being at the camp. In Witchboard, the characters play around with the Ouija board and summon the monster, and in Nightmare on Elm Street, the kids get to pay for the sins of their parents. I plan to fall back on the good old dependable sins, greed and ambition, for my screenplay.

I don’t think you need a lot of blood and violence for a movie to be scary. I believe that if I play on the primal fears of my viewers, I can make a movie so scary, they’ll be wetting their pants. But I guess I won’t know until I write the darn thing, so I’d better get to work, and we’ll see if I can succeed in my goal to make a good old fashioned scary movie for modern times.

1. Save the Cat Goes to the Movies. Synder, Blake. McNaughton & Gunn, Inc. 2007. p. 3

       2. Save the Cat Goes to the Movies. Synder, Blake. McNaughton & Gunn, Inc. 2007. p. 3

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Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Exposition

I know at this point a lot has been said about the movie Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, but as a writer I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the story issues I felt were a problem within the film. The three largest issues in the film, in my opinion, was the exposition, the protagonist/antagonist confusion, and the some of the transitions.

I shouldn’t really have to say this, but SPOILERS BELOW…

Exposition

This movie had an uphill battle as far as trimming exposition from the very start because there was a lot that needed to be set-up. They had to set up Batman’s new past, his vendetta against Superman, Superman’s hero worship in the public, Lex Luthor’s role in the world, Wonder Woman’s presence, and a ton of other minor elements as well. Almost all of these really big elements deserved a proper set up because they are major story parts that will potentially carry over into future stories, however, setting them up in one movie led to a very long build up in the film before the action started. The long exposition and set up in the film makes the story drag and hard to stay involved, no matter how many interesting elements there are.

Protagonist/Antagonist Confusion

Many stories have multiple protagonists without there being any sort of problem, but in this story the protagonists, and antagonists for that matter, are warring for the focus. Batman is originally set up as the protagonist of the film, with Superman as his antagonist. Then it switches to Superman as the protagonist with Batman as his antagonist. That wouldn’t be such a problem, except there is a bigger antagonist in the film – Lex Luthor.

So much focus is on Batman and Superman being at odds, that Lex Luthor’s plot line is shafted somewhat and pushed until later in the film. There are elements early on, of course, but the Lex Luthor plot feels week because he gets so little attention. He is also painted as the minor threat in a lot of ways, because both of the protagonists don’t even see him as a threat until very late in the film. If Lex’s plotline had been worked into the story a bit earlier, so his plan was clearer earlier (at least to the audience) then I think it would have helped balance out the conflicting antagonists. Audiences know who Lex is, most likely, so they know he’s the villain, but if he had been more involved in the feud between Batman and Superman, instead of just an opportunist about it, then it would have helped strengthened his plotline.

Transitions

The jumps back and forth between Batman and Superman’s plotlines were some of the main rough transitions in the film, however the ones where Bruce is getting a vision of some sort are the ones that really don’t work for me. Things transition into these visions and then it throws the viewer off balance as they try to figure out what is going on. It’s only clear once we come out that we’re in a vision or dream of some sort, but even then it’s not really explained. If you know some of the comic lore then you might understand what is happening, but without it there isn’t enough to set up the visions to explain why they’re happening, or what they mean. Which is really a shame.

Overall, the film is not a terrible one. There are a lot of great moments, and acting, and I’m excited to see what future films come from this. If the exposition had been more balanced and condensed in the beginning, and if Lex Luthor’s role had been better intertwined, I really think I would have loved this one. As it stands, though, I think it’s one I won’t watch again until I’m feeling like a Superhero marathon.

Writing Comedy for the Screen is a Risky Proposition

You read that headline right. Writing comedy for the screen is a scary business in this day and age, when every time you open your mouth, or your characters’ mouths, you risk offending someone, somewhere. Seriously.

Last semester, for my original pilot series, I created a series that takes place in a backwards fairytale land, where the fairytales are all wrong, called Unhappily Ever After. My main character, Cassandra, who is stuck there, tries to fix the fairytales in hopes that by doing so, she will find a way to get home. In my pitch, I listed ideas for several more episodes to show my idea could be sustained for thirteen episodes, or at least one season. In the notes my instructor sent back, he pointed out that I could be in trouble with my idea for my second episode, where one of the things that must be fixed is that a prince falls for Cass’s geeky sidekick and she has to find a way to make him fall in love with his princess, so the story can end with its happily ever after.

My instructor felt that I would be portraying a gay relationship as something that “needed fixing”, and that it might be offensive, although it would be clear that the reason it was “wrong” in the episode wasn’t that they were gay or bi, but that the prince and princess must marry, because that’s the way the fairytale goes. It’s funny, but it’s not intended to make fun of gays, or saying anything negative about being gay.

The episode ideas I listed flowed from one episode to the next and this second episode was designed to follow off the story line from the pilot episode, picking up right where we left off the week before, and the third episode would pick up from the second episode. To change that one idea would be to change the entire series story line, and I didn’t want to change it. My response to him was that no matter what you say these days, someone will be offended.

And I meant it. It’s true.

Not long after that, I saw a t-shirt advertised on Facebook that said, “You find it offensive, but I just think it’s funny”, and I realized that shirt summarizes the whole problem. I grew up with blonde jokes, and I loved them. Does that mean I believe the stereotype about blondes being lower on the IQ? No. I like blonde jokes because I find them to be funny. Now days if I tell a blonde joke, it’s almost certain that somewhere out there, there will be a blonde who will be offended, and then watch out. And half of those who are offended are likely to be bleached blonde, but they’ll identify as blonde and be offended, just the same.

In the past, bigoted characters like Archie Bunker endured because he was funny. You didn’t have to agree with his character to laugh at his jokes. Archie’s humor may even have helped to break down many stereotypes and biased thinking, because the Archie Bunker character was so extreme, that the ridiculousness of the opinions he expressed was apparent. Today, they broadcast things on television that would make my grandparents cringe, but when it comes to humor, you have to walk a thin line, for fear of being offensive.

In Hollywood, we’re hearing cries for more diversity in the industry, but as a writer, I hesitate to create a diverse character, for fear that when I reference them, it will be politically incorrect, especially when the politically correct terms change from day to day. When I was growing up, those with darker coloring were called Negros. In my twenties, the term to use was black. Now, I think it’s African American, but it may have changed again and I just haven’t got the memo. I’ve never been much for political correctness anyway. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’ve always been a bit of a rebel. According to my instructor, that needs to change or I won’t sell my script. The studios may not be willing to take a chance on something that might be offensive.

My point is that, no matter what term I use or how I portray my character, there’s no offense meant.  It may be easier to write comedy for a stand-up routine than it is to write comedy for television, because stand-up comedians can poke fun at themselves and that’s okay. Nobody will be offended if a Jewish guy gets up on stage and jokes about what it was like to grow up in a Jewish household, or a Latino woman pokes fun at the Cinco de Mayo festival. If I go by that rule, I can only poke fun at poor white trash and starving artists.

The thing about writing for television though, is the audience can’t tell if the writer of the low rider joke is Latino, and therefore immune to public scrutiny. Where I might use it to my advantage is in writing diverse characters. When the Asian characters of Fresh Off the Boat fun at Asian culture, or the African American characters of Black-ish joke about being “brothers”, no one gets offended. It’s okay for Max and Caroline to make jokes about the female anatomy because they’re female, even though the persons writing the jokes may not be. We don’t see the writers, so it doesn’t matter. The humor is funny, so we give ourselves permission to laugh. The characters are joking about themselves, so it’s okay.

It seems to me the basic problem here, is we, as a society have become so over-sensitive about stereotypes, that we are now limited as to what it is acceptable to laugh at. For a culture that prides ourselves with open mindedness and acceptance of other cultures, it seems to me that we’re pretty uptight. In order to embrace our differences, don’t we have to be able to laugh at them, and ourselves?

I think, as writers, we have to realize something. No matter what you write or what your characters say, somebody somewhere is going to be offended. Unfortunately, the people in the business who make the decisions about which shows get made and which don’t need to realize this, too. Right now, they are all so afraid of offending, that they may be passing up shows, like mine, which may be genuinely funny. As a society, we need to lighten up and give ourselves permission to laugh again, at ourselves and at each other. We need to get our collective sense of humor back.

A Writer’s Life is No Bowl of Cherries

So, you want to be a writer.

This is something I’ve aspired to for years. With the emergence of the Internet, things shifted radically, and today, there are more opportunities for writers than ever before and submitting your work is often as simple as a few keystrokes and an attachment. This is good for me, the aspiring writer, right? Well… maybe. The thing is, as I look around today, as I browse social media sights and check out Facebook groups, I find I’m not the only one trying to take advantage of all the new and emerging possibilities out there. Everybody andtheir brother seems to be calling themselves a writer and they’re all trying to take advantage of the numerous ways which are now available to get their words into print. After completing a M.F.A. program in Creative Writing and learning a few things about the business, I have to ask myself, why? Why does anyone want to be a writer? Why do I want to be a writer?

It certainly isn’t because I think I’m going to become rich and famous from the crafting of words. Only a select few ever become a household name from their books, and if there’s one thing I learned while going through my graduate coursework, it’s how the world of traditional publishing works. If I’m ever lucky enough to have a publisher pick up one of my books, I’d better hope for one that gives an advance, and many don’t, because unless my work goes viral and sells a million copies, that’s probably all the money I will ever see from it. What I didn’t realize before I got my graduate degree was how the system really works. With enough royalties, a person could theoretically, live comfortably for years to come, but what a lot of people don’t realize, what I didn’t realize, was that you don’t see any royalties from your book until you have sold enough copies to pay off whatever advance you receive. That means your book must do really, really well in order for you to see any profit. So, the chances of getting rich from your writing through traditional publishing avenues are quite slim.

With the emergence of the Internet came the self-publishing boom. It started with vanity presses and P.O.D. publishers, like Lulu, and progressed with the birth of the e-book through Amazon and Smashwords, to name only two of the many e-publishers out there today. Amazon makes self-publishing in electronic format look very tempting, offering a much higher percentage of royalties than traditional publishers. Surely, if you’re making 70% on every book you sell, you have to come out better than the minute percentages traditional publishers offer, right? Not necessarily. I’ve asked several of the independent authors who I know, and most are making very little off their books. You see, the book has to sell before you can make any money of it, and with the market swarming with new titles and more coming out every day, independent publishing is a tough road to take. Independent authors can’t rely on their publisher to promote their work and develop marketing strategies for their book, because they don’t have one. They are writer, publisher and agent for their work. They must fill all these roles themselves, and it is both difficult and time consuming work to get the word out about your book. Certainly for some it pays off, but the majority of independent authors are lucky to sell even twenty copies.

Of course, part of the appeal of being a writer is the idea of being your own boss, making your own schedule, working from home in your pajamas if you choose. But, I believe most writers today, whether traditionally or independently published, live the life of the starving artist, scrambling for work, or for a publisher, or for an agent to get them a publisher. I certainly am. I try and try, shrugging off one rejection letter, or e-mail, after another, always holding out hope that the next one I open will be an acceptance. Occasionally, my perseverance pays off and I do get something published, an article or short story, or maybe a poem. But I still have to ask myself why I endeavor to persevere if not for the money?

I think many of us who strive to become writers do so because there exists a creative force within us that needs to be expressed, a story that must be told. We are creatives, and when an idea or image takes hold of us, there is no pushing it to the side until we pound it out on our keyboards, or scribble it out on a notepad, or a napkin, or whatever is at hand. The urge to create is a part of who we are. It’s as much a part of our beings as are our preferences in music or favorite foods. And a large part of the appeal of being a writer is the desire to share our creations with others. Why else would we keep pounding away at our keyboards, submitting our work in the face of repeated rejections, and laying our souls on the line?

I’m not saying it isn’t possible to make a living from your writing. Certainly there are authors out there who do. But, it isn’t the stereotypical write in your p.j.s, make your own schedule, and party until the early morning hours that we may have come to believe a writer’s life is. No, my friends. It is hard work. It is writing until you can’t see the words on the page, hustling to meet deadlines, selling yourself and your work at every opportunity, continuing to submit in the face of rejection, and searching your soul to make every word you put on the page ring true. That’s the life of a writer, and it’s no bowl of cherries, but it’s what we want more than anything, because the words must flow out of us onto the page. I say that’s why we write. What about you? Why do you write?

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