Category: Writing

My First Writer's Retreat: Write Doe Bay

1/30/2018

by Jennifer Karchmer

Plenty of time for writing exercises at Write Doe Bay. Photo courtesy: Casey Sjogren.

I'm hot and cold about writer's retreats. This is pretty funny because I've been a professional writer for more than 25 years, so you'd think that I would jump at the chance to share a comfy couch with fellow scribes and commiserate about the craft.

But my relationship to the weekend escape known as the retreat is more like a "Sam and Diane" connection (think TV show "Cheers") rather than a hand-in-glove love affair. I'm a writer in passion, talent and career, but I tend to resist the meta — the bird's-eye view of writing.

This ambivalence is rooted in two precepts common to many writers — fear and procrastination. What if I find out that my writing sucks, that everyone else is better than me? Am I just stalling by getting away from it all, when what I really need is to get my butt in the chair?

"A writer writes, right? How could attending a veritable break get more words on the page," I thought?

Last fall, I decided to drop all of this psychological baggage to attend Write Doe Bay, a writer's mecca in Washington state that dubs itself, "an intimate artists' retreat and multi-workshop event..." Now that the dust has settled, I can say this three-day weekend (Oct. 6-8, 2017) gave me ...

Comments

Slow Writing: Why I Write At A Snail’s Pace

5/1/2017

Comments

This is an excerpt from Jennifer’s upcoming book,“Take (Your) Time To Write: The Path to Peaceful Writing,” based on the concept of slow writing.

I’ve always been a slow writer. In the 1990s, at my first job as a reporter, I would take hours to finish a 500-word column that should have taken an hour or two after sifting through my notes. I would return from a school board meeting or a run-of-the-mill press conference and toil over the lede (first sentence of a news story) and every sentence. I would rewrite and rewrite until everything was just right. Of course, accuracy is critical in journalism, so I checked, rechecked, and made my quotes perfect. Still, my editor pulled me aside one day, and while assuring me I was doing a good job, she said I needed to produce more quickly. They were paying me by the hour ($5) and wouldn’t be able to afford me if I kept up this tortoise pace.

Thankfully, I learned to speed it up. After putting in more than a decade in busy newsrooms, I can say I have never been fired for missing a deadline. (Admittedly, as I work on this post, I see out of the corner of my eye on the TV, three episodes of Seinfeld have passed in addition to at least half of “Dirty Dancing” so we’re moving in on three hours and I’m only halfway finished.)

Several years ago, I made the transition from a “Just the facts, ma’am” reporter to a personal essay freelance writer. Today, I make my own deadlines – a dream come true for a writer, but with the autonomy comes discipline. So I’ve turned to other writers for guidance.

Frightfully, at a cocktail party, I overhear one writer say she jumps out of bed at the crack of dawn to get her butt in the chair before the family begins to stir. Similarly startling was the time a fellow scribe tell me he neurotically crosses off “Wrote 1,500 words!” on his daily To Do list. Getting up before the roosters? Hitting a daily self-imposed word count? Is this discipline or competition?

Realizing these conventions are not for me, I try to build my confidence, and my writing practice, around a slower, more relaxed pace that seems more in tune with my molasses gait. I admire you early risers, I really do. But it’s just not my style, so why force it? Writing is not only a career but an art, a passion–one that inches along to the tune of the muse whom I invoke when the sun and moon align.

Well, it’s actually not that magical but I put a lot of stock in how I am feeling. I am a productive writer, but these laments make me feel stressed out and depleted. Am I really a writer if I don’t adhere to these routines? I had left the busy newsroom grind and didn’t want to replace it with tortuous rules that seemed to leave me with a wet blanket of guilt draped over my shoulders.

Getting up before the roosters? Hitting a daily self-imposed word count? Is this discipline or competition?

Along the way, I have adopted some precepts that seem to keep my writing in tune with my natural (slower) stride:

Write when you feel like it. If I go a day or two without writing, I don’t beat myself up. I trust my body to know when I need a respite. Often, I will have a marathon writing session later in the week so I consider the earlier rest period a necessary recharge.
Writing is writing. Period. Some days I'm bummed out that I haven’t written a lick on an essay I’m been mulling around. Then, when I reflect on the day, I see 27 emails in my Sent folder. Writing is writing, whether it is an email to client, a pitch to an agent, a handwritten sick note for your kid, or a FB post asking for travel advice. I consider all of these ways in which I am exercising my writing muscle (I actually love writing emails).
Do a 7-day reset. Take off an entire week from your writing schedule and habits and allow yourself to do whatever feels right. Maybe you write one day and then not come back to a manuscript for two or three days. If it feels right to get up at the crack of dawn and put in some butt time, then go for it. Or perhaps writing feels really good at 3 pm with a cup of coffee as the afternoon light reflects off the trees. Give yourself a full week to see what develops for you and use that as a baseline for your writing habit. This is your “natural” schedule so use it to your advantage to be productive.

Not only do I hold the dubious distinction of being a slow writer, I am also a slow reader. I take months to finish a novel (although I did finish “Fifty Shades of Grey” in three days…shhh). So I try to mix up my pleasure reading between fiction and a nonfiction magazines so I am getting a regular dose of different genres including some longform or “slow” writing.

Here are some resources and examples I recommend.

Delayed Gratification magazine: http://www.slow-journalism.com/
Longform magazine: https://longform.org/
Excellent storytelling by Matt Wolfe: “The Last Unknown Man”
Mac McClelland, former Mother Jones writer

Jennifer Karchmer is a creative writer, book reviewer, and editor, based in Bellingham, WA and Brooklyn, NY. When she’s not writing first-personal essay, she is a volunteer correspondent for Reporters Without Borders defending and protecting freedom of the press and freedom of speech around the world. Find her latest work here: http://www.jenniferkarchmer.com/essays.html

This post originally published on Dec. 19, 2016 on Red Wheelbarrow Writers website: http://www.redwheelbarrowwriters.com/blog/slow-writing-why-i-write-at-a-snails-pace/

Comments

Self-Editing When Your English Major Roommate Is Not Around

12/15/2016

Comments

First edition of The Elements of Style, the classic writer's compendium.

Perhaps you were the math geek whizzing through your trig homework. But when it came to English class and object pronouns, subject-verb agreement, and the correct spelling of cemetery (all “e”s), you failed miserably.

Enter your college roommate who walked around reciting the auxiliary verbs while toting a marked-up copy of Strunk & White (writing geeks know this). Every term paper and research report had you calling her for last-minute proofreading and checking whether you were using who or whom correctly.

Now though, you’re a big shot, running a business. You’ve got an hour to finish that sales pitch for a lucrative client and the English major ain’t around.

Here are some tips to help you clean up your memo, research paper, or company-wide email when mutual aid isn’t in sight:

Run the darn spellcheck. We all know relying on spellcheck alone is not a good idea because it cannot discern errors of context, like weather/whether. But, it does serve a purpose in identifying some minor mistakes that, if left unattended, can make your paper look like crap. The key is to pay attention. Spellcheck points out extra spaces and punctuation inconsistencies, like a period instead of a comma. These errors will make your paper look sloppy and kill your credibility, so consider spellcheck your baseline cleaner-upper.
First things first. Be sure to reread, proofread, and read out loud your very first line, headline, and opening paragraph. Sure, the entire project is important, but a typo or misprint in the beginning will turn off your client right away. It’s possible (and probable) your reader will only skim the paper or memo, but an error on the first page will send the job down the drain, so spend a little extra time checking the introduction.
Print (aka, kill the trees). If you have access to a printer, go ahead and make a hard copy. Studies show that errors are more likely to be caught when they are on the printed page rather than on screen. (This is my personal experience too.)
Larger Than Life. Of course, if you don’t have time to get to Zippy’s Corner Printshop (or you want to save the trees), you will do your proofing on your monitor. Use the Magnify function (sometimes labeled Zoom or View) to bump up what you see on the screen to about 150% or larger, depending on your screen size. I go to 165% on my 13” MacBook Pro laptop. At this perspective, the bigger text allows you to notice inconsistencies and promptly correct them.

Of course. hiring a proofreader is the most reasonable and practical answer here as a professional would lend credibility to your work and save you lots of headache. You hire a hairdresser to pretty up your coif and go to the mechanic to repair your car; why not seek out a grammar and spelling expert when it comes to presenting yourself on paper?

Hopefully, in the end, a typo or two won’t make or break the sale or ruin your chance to impress the boss. But if you get her name wrong on the cover, or misspell a word like “public” (like this school in Indiana did in a huge billboard), it could be disastrous to your career, and garner lots of laughs at your expense.

Jennifer Karchmer is Editor in Chief of Over The Shoulder Editorial,
where she specializes in proofreading business documents, client memos, sales pitches, emails, and annual reports. Read her column on avoiding typos and comment below with your grammar and writing questions.

Comments

My First Writer's Retreat: Write Doe Bay

Slow Writing: Why I Write At A Snail’s Pace

Self-Editing When Your English Major Roommate Is Not Around

Jennifer Karchmer

Categories

Archives