Walt Whitman’s use of free verse became appreciated by composers seeking a more fluid approach to setting text. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is a poem? Some may think a poem has to rhyme. (I disagree.) Others believe the syllables must be counted, or that a poem must be stuffed full of alliterative language. But what about free verse? What makes a block of words, a sentence chopped up onto several lines, a poem, rather than a mere chopped-up sentence or a paragraph scattered over several lines?

To me, writing a poem is about capturing a moment. It could be a feeling, a natural occurrence, or a quick glimpse into the life of one person. Most of my poetry describes just one, very small moment. These moments might last only a few seconds, or as long as several minutes. Rarely does the poem capture more than a very short block of time.

What makes these descriptive sentences poetry, at least in my mind, is the fact that these moments mirror life. They often mirror human nature. What makes a few lines of free verse poetry is the fact that what began as a single captured moment can also be interpreted as a metaphor for life at large. The ability to interpret that moment on a wider, deeper level is what makes it poetic.

What constitutes a poem, in your opinion? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

~Mandy Webster

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Guest blogger Ryan Rivera exercises daily to keep his anxiety well under control. | Photo courtesy of Ryan Rivera.

By Ryan Rivera

At some point, most writers feel they are not cut out for this thing they are pursuing. Whether they regard it as their passion or something they’ve always wanted to do, some often feel they do not possess enough skills to produce material that’s worth reading. Self-doubt can be crippling, and writers are not exempt from being bogged down by this feeling. Once it sets in, your vision is clouded with thoughts of inefficiency, not being good enough, and just not being meant to do it. This will hinder you from reaching your maximum potential.

At the same time, you can use it to propel yourself toward improvement. Conquering self-doubt is no easy feat. It comes in bouts, which can be hard to shake off your system. It can be healthy on occasion, if you learn to use it to your advantage. Claim those ill thoughts and unleash your power over them. You must kill it before it kills you.

Don’t think that you’re not good enough or that you’re not doing anything to contribute to society. Writers often experience social anxiety when asked about what they do. The trick is to not listen to these people’s judgments and strengthen your own voice. Show them that while you are not saving the world with your craft, you are offering something beautiful and worth their time. The world could use some words strung together perfectly to brighten up their days or inspire them, so continue with what you are doing and give them just that.

Conquering self-doubt takes time, and every so often, when you are faced with this monster, you can employ some tricks that won’t derail you from working for your dream or passion. Here are some ways through which you can overcome self-doubt:

• Surround yourself with positive people who will motivate you to get better. Don’t waste your time on negative souls who won’t do any good for your self-esteem or self-worth. Find people who will push you to do your best and let you become who you want to be. These people will guide you and show you what you can do.
• Make sure you work to continue to grow. Don’t settle for what you already know or can do. Self-improvement will help you get over thoughts of inferiority. Improve your skills and hone your talent. Hard work will pay off, and it will yield rewards like you’ve never imagined. Just push yourself to do more than what you normally would, and you will see the change in the way you think, and ultimately, in the way you write.
• Don’t get stuck in one writing style or genre. Explore other things and dabble in them. Try your hand at different types of prose and poetry, just to add spice to what you do. You might find that you also have the knack for these other types of literature. If you’ve always written young adult stories, maybe you can try creative non-fiction. See how you will fare in other realms.
• Admit defeat when you don’t succeed. We are all going to fail in some things. But this doesn’t mean we should stop doing what we do. Just work harder and continue to improve your skills, and better things will unfold for you.

Self-doubt can be shaken off, but it can be triggered and could come right back. Learn how you can conquer it and use it to your advantage. Don’t ever stop it from letting you do what you’ve always wanted to do. Use it to become better.

Ryan Rivera exercises daily to keep his anxiety well under control. He runs a website about controlling anxiety at www.calmclinic.com.

Would you like to write a guest post for my blog? Please contact me via the contact form on my website. Tell me who you are and what you would like to write (it must be writing related,) and provide links to your blog, writing samples, or other relevant materials.

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Does anyone really want to hear stories from my dreams? | I… Dreaming (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last night, I dreamed I was reading a novel synopsis on the cover of a book. I woke at 2 a.m. with the words of that synopsis echoing in my head. I lay in a half-sleep thinking, “That sounds like a good book, I should really read that one.” Then it occurred to me the synopsis had come from my head, not from any now-published novel, and it hit me: I’d better write that down!

I tapped my tappable bedside lamp for some light, reached for my bedside pen and notebook, and started scribbling the words from that dreamed synopsis before they could dissipate into the night. I filled one notebook page then, thinking I was done, put it aside and shut off my lamp. I thought I would drift back to sleep.

A few minutes later, the “what-ifs” hit. What if my protagonist was an old Vietnam vet who still struggles with his memories of the war, even after all these years? What if the secret he is trying to expose is a local terrorist cell? Or what if the reader only thinks that’s the secret, but it’s really the government who is trying to kill our protagonist? What if this? What if that?

And then the characters started talking to me and giving me details.

I rushed to write down all of my what-ifs and story details while secretly wishing I could shut the voices off and go back to sleep. These characters want me to tell their story, and they want it now, damn it!

The problem is, if I try to tell the story of these very insistent characters before I finish the novel I’m working on now, chances are a new batch of insistent characters will get the idea that they can interrupt *this* new story. Next thing you know, I’ll be one of those novelists who owns a huge stack of “great start” manuscripts without a single finished work to her name.

I don’t mind when characters wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me something important. I just wish they would learn to wait their turn!

Does this ever happen to you? Please share your experiences in the comments below.

~Mandy Webster

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It’s true. So stop staring and write something!

Do you ever find yourself staring at an empty page, afraid to put down that first word because you do not know if it is exactly what you want to express in your story? Do you worry about each sentence, afraid you are going to write something that (heaven forbid) tells rather than shows your story?

I know you want to sit down and write a complete and perfect story. We all do. But most of the time it just doesn’t work that way. If you let yourself get bogged down in the details of perfection in the first draft, your first draft will never be complete.

Sometimes we may feel as though we are wasting our time if what we are writing isn’t any good. We think the story should show, not tell, from word one. We agonize over each and every word because we know we’ll have to come back later and revise all those telling sentences. And isn’t it always better to do a task right the first time so you don’t have to re-do it again later?

Well, I hate to break it to you Kitten Head, but that’s not how it works in the writing world. Sometimes you have to tell your story before you can properly show it. You have to stop staring at that blank damn page and just start telling your story. You have to accept the fact that you may need to tell your story to yourself before you can show it to your reader.

And that’s okay.

Next time you find yourself staring at a blank page, I want you to say the following phrase to yourself: It’s okay to tell my story.

Then start writing. You may even choose to start with these words: This is a story about…

Then TELL your story.

*GASP*

That’s right. I am telling you that telling is OKAY.

Telling may not be acceptable in a final manuscript, but it is often vital to the first draft. The first draft is for you. It is not meant for an audience. Thus, I hereby grant you permission to tell in your first draft.

What’s the worst that can happen? Will the literary police swoop in and haul you off for daring to TELL? Not if you don’t let them see your first draft. Remember, the first draft is for you and you alone. It is not for public consumption. You’ll show your story in the second draft, develop it in the third, and then allow the literary police to have their say.

Yes, you must keep your telling to yourself. But that doesn’t mean you should eradicate it from your writing for all time.

I invite you to join my summer novel writing challenge at Write Your Novel this Summer. You don’t have to write a perfect draft this summer. Just sit down and tell the story from start to finish. The entire first draft can be full of telling if that’s how it comes out. That’s okay. We’ll make it show in the second draft. The important thing to focus on in the first draft stage is getting your story out of your head and onto the page.

Don’t ever feel like every word you scribble must be valuable enough to make it to the final cut. And never underestimate the value of a freewrite. You never know when a telling paragraph scribbled in a burst of inspiration might lead to something greater.

How much time do you spend freewriting in a given week? Please share in the comments below.

~Mandy Webster

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What this story needs is a theme, something for the literary geniuses to expound upon in Freshman Lit. | English: Chimpanzee Typing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This morning, I’m typing up a couple of “found” scenes I wrote in a notebook almost four years ago. (I mentioned these scenes in an earlier post.) When I wrote these, I wasn’t really thinking about them in terms of scenes, but was scribbling out a freewrite with some ideas I had for a novel.

Many of my freewrites begin with me telling myself about something I want to do, and then they morph into scenes as I enter “the zone.” So it was no surprise to me when the first few paragraphs I typed up were back-story. But as I was typing, it occurred to me that what I had on the page at this moment was a theme, not a scene or even back-story.

These paragraphs will never make it into my novel in their current form. They’re telling, not showing. And we all know telling is bad, bad, bad. But these paragraphs are good. Not good writing, necessarily, but good thinking. They’re thoughts spilled on the page, meant to point out to me what I’m missing in my story.

What I wrote in those few paragraphs is a theme that I’ve probably touched on a bit throughout my current 225 double-spaced pages. But I haven’t fully developed it yet. As I read these paragraphs, a picture developed in my head of what my story needs. I have so many ideas all of a sudden, of how to increase the tension in scenes that have fallen flat. It has become clear to me that what I need to do is take this theme and develop it throughout the entire novel.

If you had told me four years ago that I would be consciously weaving themes into my novel, I might not have believed you. I have hated every literature course I have ever taken because of my professors’ focus on themes and motifs. I refused to believe that any entertaining writer ever sat down and intentionally wrote a story with a theme. That’s not how ideas come to me.

I realize now that, even though you may not intend to incorporate specific themes in your writing, they are usually there. You don’t have to think about themes in your first draft, but once you have your full story on the page, you really should dig through and figure out what they are.

Once you have your themes in mind, you will be able to develop your scenes in ways that may never have occurred to you before. Writing with a purpose in mind will provide a richer experience for your reader and a more satisfying accomplishment for you. Who knows, some literature professor may someday torture her students with discussions of the themes in your novel.

Do you think about themes before you write? In the middle, or after? Maybe you don’t think of them at all? Please share your experiences in the comments below.

~Mandy Webster

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Do you outline first, or just start writing? |writing blue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At Write Your Novel this Summer, we just launched our Featured Writer series where we will feature individual writers who are participating in our summer novel writing challenge. To become a Featured Writer, all you have to do is ‘like’ our Facebook page, look for Featured Writer Prompts, and submit a response to the prompt along with a link to your blog or online writing portfolio. If your submission is chosen, we will feature you and link to your page from our Facebook page (see the Notes section of our Facebook page for more details.)

Yesterday, I posted our first Featured Writers Prompt, but I have yet to receive any submissions. So I thought I would answer the prompt myself to try to get the ball rolling. I want to also encourage my readers to submit. This is a great opportunity to drive readers to your blogs and writing portfolios. It’s also a great way to find out about other writers and learn how they approach the novel writing process.

Our first Featured Writer Prompt

How do you go about preparing for a new novel writing project? Are you an outliner? Not an outliner? If you are an outliner, is there a specific style of outline you use? Or do you follow some other method?

My response

I have never been much of an outliner myself. But, when I began to really get serious about writing a novel, I found that I did need some kind of plan to follow to keep the project going. I tried traditional outlining, but that never really worked for me.

Last semester, in Advanced Novel Writing, my professor had us do an exercise in which we put our stories into the framework of Joseph Campbell’s 17 Stages of the Hero’s Journey. This got me thinking about the arc of my story and how I could build tension in all the right places. I think this is a useful tool to help the novice novel writer get started.

I also like to sit down and write a brief synopsis of the story I am planning. In this first stage, I focus on telling the story rather than showing it. I literally write, “This is a story about…” and then put down a beginning, middle, and end. Of course the story will evolve as I write it, but this gives me a jumping-off point. After all, you have to start somewhere. It also helps me keep my focus when I find myself running off on irrelevant tangents. It is helpful to occasionally remind yourself what your story is really about.

It’s your turn

So, how about you? How do you prep for a new novel writing adventure? Join the conversation on the Write Your Novel this Summer Facebook page.

~Mandy Webster

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Here’s a nice view of the Milwaukee River from the dining room at Fiddleheads Coffee Roasters in Thiensville, WI.

Today I’m writing to you from Fiddleheads Café in Thiensville, WI. I first heard of Fiddleheads a week ago on the local news when the overflowing Milwaukee River was threatening to flood the café. I loved the idea of a coffee shop so close to the river’s edge and knew I had to check it out.

Fiddleheads is located in an old converted house that sits just feet away from a bend in the Milwaukee River. It’s a bit chilly to sit outside today (unless you’re here to snuggle up in a sweatshirt with hands clasped around a hot cup of coffee, then it’s perfect,) so my writer friend and I picked a large, round table inside.

The dining room where we chose to sit was a bit stuffy when we first came in, so I opened a window by our table and brought some outside in. Fiddleheads’ dining room is bright and airy, with white painted walls and lots of windows. It seems like a great place to sit and write in any season.

I arrived already fully caffeinated (silly me,) so I settled for a glass of iced tea and had a tuna sandwich for lunch. My friend says the coffee is “really good,” so I may yet end up having a cup before I go.

It’s hard to find a café that offers both good food and good coffee, all within an environment that’s conducive to writing and offers free wi-fi even during busy meal-time hours. But Fiddleheads is the full package.

This place to write is definitely a must-do-again.  Fiddleheads has additional locations in Cedarburg and Mequon, so I’m adding those to my list of places to try as well.

Where is your favorite place to write? Please share in the comments below.

~Mandy Webster

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Join the Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge and write the first draft of your novel between June 21st and September 21st.

I recently wrote a blog post in which I discussed author Stephen King’s view that you should never take more than a season to write a novel. In that post, I posed a challenge to my readers to “write your novel this summer.” I’ve been thinking about this challenge, and I think it might be fun to make it a real “thing.”

How cool would it be if a bunch of us banded together to support each other in knocking out that first draft of the novels we’ve all been meaning to get around to? It could be kind of like NaNoWriMo, only we get an entire season rather than just one month. I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to write a novel in one month, November is just about the worst month of the year to do it in!

I consider myself a writer, despite the fact that I am currently teaching for a living. And it seems to me like a lot of my writer friends are in the same boat. We have to support ourselves somehow, and teaching can provide us with the flexibility we need to continue with our writing.

This is never more true than in those summer months when so many of us are hard pressed to find work. The past few years, I have knocked myself out every summer dredging up freelance writing work that barely paid enough to cover the amount of time I spent looking for the work to begin with.

This summer, I’ve decided not to do it. Why beat myself up only to work for pennies on someone else’s project when this could be my opportunity to focus on my own writing?

Furthermore, why do it alone? I am quite certain there are a number of you who could just as easily write the first draft of your novels this summer as well. I bet you’d like to have a support system in place to help you do it, right? So, I have decided to put that support system in place for you (and for myself.) I would like you to join me in my official Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge.

This is FREE, by the way. So stop holding your breath. Stop breezing through the rest of the post to get to the part where I tell you how much I want you to pay me. This is JUST FOR FUN.

(Unless you really want to pay me, then I’ll happily give you my PayPal address. I am a starving artist, after all. I don’t turn away free money.)

Now, when I say I want you to write a novel this summer, I don’t mean you should try to have a perfect manuscript by the end of the season. Instead, I want you to simply focus on putting your first draft on the page. Your entire story: beginning, middle, and end. Let’s just get through that first step together, and then we can work on revising and editing come fall. If enough of us finish, maybe we could even throw together some online critique groups to help each other clean up those rough first drafts we completed over the summer.

You can’t call yourself a writer if you do not write. You will never be a novelist if you don’t put one foot in front of the other and take the steps required to actually write a novel. Let’s take that first step together, shall we? Whether you are already working on your novel or are starting from scratch, I challenge you to join me and Write Your Novel this Summer.

Are you ready to accept the challenge?

1. Hop on over to the brand new Facebook page I just created: Write Your Novel This Summer.
2. Take the pledge.
3. Join the conversation.
4. Get featured…

Featured Writers on Facebook

Do you want to drive more readers to your writing blog or portfolio website? My plans for the Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge include featuring a writer on our Facebook page on a regular basis (daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the number of submissions.)

To become a featured writer, all you have to do is “like” the Write Your Novel this Summer Facebook page and watch for topic prompts. You should then answer the prompt in 100 words or less and submit it to me via private messaging on Facebook. You should include a link to your blog or portfolio website in your submission. If your submission is chosen, I will share both your response and link as a Featured Writer post.*

Ask your friends to take the challenge

Please feel free to mention the Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge on your blogs and invite every writer you know to take the challenge.

Throughout this challenge, I am going to take you through the novel writing steps I have learned in my creative writing Master’s degree program and help you figure out how to finally get your novel started.

The time has come to stop focusing on the end product and just take one little step to get started. Novels are not written all at once. They are written one word at a time. Let your first words be, “I take the pledge to write my novel by the end of this summer.” Now, go to the official Write Your Novel this Summer Facebook page, like the page, and type in those words. Let’s do this!

~Mandy Webster

*Rules: This is not a contest, so there are no contest rules. You will not “win” anything by taking part in the Featured Writer exercise. By submitting a response to a Featured Writer Prompt, you give me permission to use your public Facebook name and share both your response to the prompt and link to your blog or portfolio website via all of my social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress.

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I want magnetic words like this so I can carry poems on my car with me wherever I go. | Poetry (Photo credit: Kimli)

It’s funny how I write a lot of poetry when I’ve been reading a lot of poetry. I don’t really read much of it at all, unless I have to for school. But this month, several of the blogs I follow have been posting poems as part of the Poem-a-Day Challenge. So, here I am, popping out poems when I should be working on my novel. But I guess I could use the distraction. Who knows, maybe my prose will be the better for it.

Here’s my latest:

Love Long Distance

Have you
ever noticed

that the
time
between now
and last time
we met

flies faster

than the
time
between now
and next time
we’ll meet?

By Amanda L Webster

Don’t ask me why I call myself Amanda when I’m writing poems and Mandy when I’m writing anything else. That just happens to be what my fingers always end up typing for some reason.

What are you doing to celebrate National Poetry Month? Please share in the comments below.

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I am only sharing this picture because it is cool. | Example 1. Optical feedback (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Feedback is so depressing because it always means more work. It doesn’t matter who you are, or how good you are, every round of feedback will point out *something* that needs more work.

Unfortunately, I am not yet at the point where I can decide to call it finished and just be done with it. I have yet to finish my complete first draft, so there will be a lot more revisions to come before the work is done.

I just received feedback on the first polished draft of my thesis. Frankly, I’m just too damned tired right now to even open the document. Tonight, I give myself permission to let it sit in my e-mail inbox and think about what it’s about to do to me before I open it. Tomorrow, I will revise.

This is it, ladies and gentlemen. Nine days left to revise and submit my final thesis draft. You probably won’t hear much from me until after that. I’ll see you on the other side.

~Mandy Webster

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