Steering the Craft

Since I finished editing my Nanowrimo novel, I decided to focus a bit more on honing my writing craft. Instead of biting my nails while I wait for the feedback from my wonderful beta readers, I'm writing, albeit much shorter fiction.

Steering the craft combines the wisdom of Ursula Le Guin and a collection of exercises to make you more conscious of the structure of your writing. It is informative, challenging, and inspiring. I stumbled upon it at my local library, and decided to give it a try.  I've tried various other books on craft, but have had mixed results. This one seems to be the perfect blend for me. As an added bonus, it's a short book instead of an intimidating tome.

An example of one of the exercises is to write 100-150 words without using any punctuation. It is far more difficult than you might think. It is instinctive to place periods at the end of sentences, at least it is for me. I had to mark many of them out because I placed them there out of habit. Le Guin recommended writing about an event that is filled with action or chaos.

the metal twisted around his legs and he struggled to free himself from its grip the smell of gasoline was in the air so potent that his eyes began to water somewhere in the recesses of his addled brain he recognized that the smell of gas meant danger his heart began to hammer in his chest and his efforts to extract himself from the wreckage grew more desperate it was all he could do not to weep with joy when his legs pulled free of the mangled mass in fact he could have been weeping given the wetness that poured over his cheeks he assumed it was due to the sting of the gasoline fumes he ignored the possibility that it might be blood

As you can see, without punctuation, everything gets a little crazy. If you can't at least tell that it is someone escaping their vehicle after an auto accident, then I have failed. The lack of punctuation does give the passage a sense of urgency and mimics the chaos that is in the driver's mind as he hurries to free himself, but it's a little too confusing for readers to follow. It was fun to play around with though.  Le Guin recommends coming back to add punctuation in later. I might just do that, though if I revisit this, I will expand it into a full length story.

I have found that books on writing craft are beneficial for me in two ways. One: they make me more conscious of my writing as I write. I was very aware of the lack of punctuation as I wrote and it was difficult to push myself to exclude it. Two: the exercises open a floodgate of ideas. I have snippets of stories scribbled on bits of notebook paper and stuffed into the book. I'm only about a third of the way through. I expect there will be many more scraps of paper to follow.

While I'm not a published author, and am barely figuring out this whole writing thing myself, I would offer this piece of advice to other new writers: do not pass up opportunities to learn more about writing. Whether it's by attending workshops and conferences, or just self-teaching through books borrowed from the library, the effort you put into learning your craft will be reflected in your work. 

(And that's a good thing.)