craft – Page 4 – Julie Liddell Whitehead

Playing with ChatGPT

So I decided to be one with the cool kids and see how well ChatGPT worked. I had it do several blog posts “in the style of Julie Liddell Whitehead”.

I was not expecting much, and that’s what I got.

It produces clean copy. But it’s very airy copy. No substance, all glitz. i asked it to write a blog post “about the book Hurricane Baby”. It gave it a glowing review that–oddly enough–sounded a lot like reviews handed out for books on Amazon. No specifics, no details, just airy copy how what a wonderful book it was! (I also got a lot of discussion about all the places that had interviewed me about the book and all the accolades it had won) Pretty good for a book that hasn’t been published yet. 🙂

Apparently it’s been trained to sound authoritative by using a lot of words. I tried getting paragraphs in the style of some other authors (like John Grisham and Anne Lamott) and got much the same results. It would not be hard to imagine it being written by a real person, as long as that person’s last writing class had been Business Communication in college. As far as imitating other authors, it didn’t have much of a range beyond a few big names.

I think what will always distinguish great writing from just good writing is specificity: details. quirky characters who sound like actual people, a sense of place. If you want boilerplate language, I think ChatGPT may can deliver that error-free. But the sense that an actual person is behind the writing? That’s up to us, the writers, to keep our writing fresh and exciting–and real.

Writing Is Hard

Not to sound all fuddy-duddy and get-off-my-lawn-ish, but I don’t think some people understand how hard writing is.

You have to do so many things well to write well.

You have to be able to research your topic. You have to know how to research your topic. You have to be committed to researching your topic, despite all the challenges that may be thrown at you. You can research by reading books, talking to people knowledgeable about the topic, doing internet searches, poring over primary sources and records. And each research method has its own skill set to master before it can be effective.

Gone are the days of the copy pencil and paper and two-finger typing on a manual typewriter. Soon the qwerty keyboard may be on its way out the door as well. Adapting to the speeded-up pace of publishing is a must. Adapting to technology is a must. Adapting to your physical environment is a must, whether you work in a dedicated space in your home, or a coffeeshop, or a busy office environment. Writing is a physical act, not for the fainthearted.

You have to be able to recall, synthesize, and highlight information that is important to the reader’s understanding. A plain recitation of the facts is NOT writing. Beguiling, seducing, and entertaining the reader is what writing is all about. Sometimes it feels like you have to trick your reader into understanding what you want to get across; other times you have to trick yourself into believing that anyone cares. The writer’s job is to make them care, even if they aren’t interested.

It’s lonely–writing as a group activity is almost never good writing. It’s isolating–often the writer needs time and space to just think about the work, rather than talking about it to someone or bombarding their consciousness with noise. It’s often excruciating–when the perfect word or turn of phrase is just out of reach of the writer’s mind. It’s alienating–the writer has to believe in themselves when others wonder when the writer is going to give up this obsession and get a job.

But if you show up and do the work, magic can happen. That’s the writer’s payoff–not money, not fame, not bestseller status. The magic of a craft practiced well is the best payoff there is.

Read-Thru

So I didn’t post last night, because I was doing something kind of nerve-wracking.

I sat down and read Hurricane Baby again, all the way through, from start to finish.

It was so gratifying. because the stories held up to scrutiny.

I had wondered if when I read it again, I would discover lots of problems. Continuity problems, poor story construction, tone-deaf dialogue–I was prepared for the worst: that I would see that it really wasn’t in my best interest to publish it.

That’s not what I saw reading it.

Are there places that could be better? Probably. One place in particular I thought I might need to add a scene that is referenced early on but not played out.

Typos? Yep. But not nearly as many as I was afraid of.

But the stories still felt true. I’m sure if someone picks it up, it will need to undergo some revisions. But the stories are there: meaningful, impactful, and oh so human.

That was a good feeling. I wish i could bottle it for when I find myself doubting my skills and talent. Hurricane Baby might not be Great Literature, with capital G and capital L.

But it’s good. And right know, that knowledge is enough.

Doing a Little Research

I read an article recently talking about an illustrator who lost the ability to visualize what he was supposed to be drawing–for him, it happened after he went back to work from a three-week bout of COVID.

Going through the article, I learned a new word: aphantasia.

It means the inability to visualize images in your mind.

I found out that most people are able to “see” imagined images.

Now I have heard all my life about the “mind’s eye”–where you can recall how a person looks or imagine a scene in your mind to relax. I’ve read a lot of literature talking about visualization–imagining the outcome you want, and that imagining preparing you for various scenarios, such a public speaking, etc.

I never knew, however, that most people, when closing their eyes and being asked to visualize something, ACTUALLY SEE SOMETHING. This bit of knowledge was surprising because–

All I see are the backs of my eyelids.

I don’t see ANYTHING when I try to visualize. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Why am I talking about this? Well, it seems that most writers do a bang-up job imagining people, places, and things and are then able to narrate what they see in their mind’s eye, describing their characters, settings, and action.

I have always been told my writing is missing that kind of description. It was something I worked hard to try to do in my writing for graduate school for my MFA, something I tried to learn as a matter of craft.

But now I know it’s a case of my brain, again, being different from other writers’ brains.

I’ve been chewing this insight over for a while.

And right now, I am in a bit of despair about it.

Do I need to give up fiction? And on the hope of succeeding with my fiction? Are readers now so addicted to visual stimuli that if I can’t do this thing, I don’t have a writing future?

What should I do?

Writing Resolutions

I’m not typically much for New Year’s Resolutions. I tend to take a random day out of the year and think over the past year’s successes and then make a list of ways to improve whatever it was I felt could use more work in my life (I usually do this on my birthday).

But I am finding myself trying to think of ways to improve the writing experience for next year regardless.

–I plan to start back my podcast Imaginary People, Places, and Things. https://anchor.fm/julie-liddell-whitehead

It’s a podcast of short Southern fiction by various writers, but mostly by me. I have a pretty long short story I want to serialize for it. I am of two minds if I want to do it weekly (like I did last year) or monthly for this year. I am going to have to think on that some more.

–I have fifteen more presses I want to send Hurricane Baby to in the new year. I have them written out with the day the press opens to submissions again and will start sending out when we get back from Florida visiting my oldest daughter’s family during New Year’s.

Depending of course on what kind of responses I get between here and next year :). I figure a lot of people will try to clear their inboxes before the end of the year, so I am bracing for a lot of rejections in the next two weeks as well.

–I want to read more books in the New Year. I plan to take my new books into the bathroom and read while I am soaking in the tub to relax after taking a bath. I hope that will help stir my creativity more in the new year as well.

–I also want to complete my new story idea in a first draft by this time next year. I’m not sure where I’m going to squeeze in the extra writing, but either I am serious about it or I’m not. Long past time for getting serious about it if I’m going to do it.

What are your new writing resolutions for the new year?

Facts About Planning to Write

I struggle with a particular problem whenever I start a new project–planning vs. writing.

Planning sounds good, right? We plan for trips, plan for our day, plan for retirement. Why is “planning to write” so deadly to some writers?

Because “planning” isn’t actually writing–and therein lies the rub.

I am by nature a planner. I planned out all the classes I would take for my MFA before I even embarked on the six years it took for me to finish my degree. I plan meals, workdays, life events. I don’t deal very much in serendipity–just seeing what happens when I don’t follow a plan.

But planning to write is not the same thing as actually writing. You can plan out what you want to write and how you’re going to write and when you are going to write, but when you’re done–what have you accomplished to the goal of writing your book (or article or term paper or life story)?

Nothing.

Whereas, if you just sit down with a blank page and start typing, that same amount of time planning could have been spent generating a page of prose (or poetry, whatever your flex is) however imperfect it might look to a trained eye.

That’s where I am right now with my nonfiction project. I have found myself reading the manuscript I already have and inserting scenes I PLAN to write to go in it. This tendency, along with my realization that I’m going to have to find a new entryway into my story since I won’t have the previous 200+ pages of exposition/description/action I now have in the work, I find myself nine days into October with nothing new actually written. And that’s not good.

How to get over it? For me, no other way works except jumping into the cold water of my manuscript and swimming for my life. If I just stick my toe in the manuscript, I will get scared and never get into it and make it all it can be.

So today I will write instead of plan. It’s the only way anything ever gets done. Write today.

Next Stage

So all of the writing contests that I’ve already entered closed on September 30. Some have already undertaken a review of my manuscript, some will probably start reviewing on Monday, and others may not get to it for a long time. So what am I going to do in the meantime?

I’ll get busy on something else.

Waiting around for publishers/agents to get back to you is rough. You check your email every day. several times a day, to see if you’ve heard from anyone. Or you check QueryTracker and Submittable multiple times a day. Or you resist the urge to write follow-up emails asking if they received the manuscript.

Keep resisting. No one wants to be pestered. What you need to do is keep writing. On something else.

This method works on several levels–1) You distract your mind from the constant drumbeat of “I haven’t heard anything yet; what is taking so long?” 2) You have a fresh store of enthusiasm for the new project that may have been simmering in your mind for a while now. 3) You actually accomplish something in the waiting period, besides driving yourself crazy over the finished project.

Am I done with Hurricane Baby? Maybe not. I have two people who agreed to read Hurricane Baby but said they couldn’t do it right then when I was looking for feedback for these contests. So one has gotten back in touch, and I sent the manuscript to him just for kicks. Another lady from my summer workshop had agreed to swap manuscripts with me but didn’t think she would have a complete draft until December. So I will get back in touch with her then and see if she is ready.

Why am I doing that? If Hurricane Baby isn’t picked up in its current form, having another batch of feedback by the first of next year will enable me to revise again to get ready to enter another string of contests that open in the first three months of the year. Remember: writing is a long game. Persistence pays off.

So I have started another project in the waiting. I will keep writing here weekly to discuss different craft ideas, to update you on Hurricane Baby’s progress, and maybe to discuss the new project. We will see. But I hope you hang around for more ideas, insights, and if-not-this-then-that about the writing life. Stay tuned.

Asking For Help

I recently sent Hurricane Baby as an entry in to an open call for manuscripts and one of the items requested in the call was a list of published authors who might support the book’s publication with a book blurb. I thought it was awfully early in the process to be asking that question, but I sat down and thought: whom should I ask?

It’s a question that can come up at any point at the manuscript selling/publishing process, and it’s a way for the publisher or press to get an answer to another question about you as a writer–who do you know that supports your work so unreservedly that they would be willing to lend their name to its publication?

I immediately had an answer to the question because I had workshopped and read parts of Hurricane Baby in my MFA program, and I emailed three of my instructors to ask if they would be willing for me to put their names down for that list. Each one has their own relationships with the writing community and have published books in their respective fields, and each one is intimately familiar with my work due to having served on the thesis committee for my degree. I also wrote down a couple of other names in case any one of those three felt they could not help me support the book.

It’s a good idea to develop relationships throughout your literary community (whoever might be included in that catch-all term) because so much of this business depends on your ability to form good relationships. You need to be able to form relationships with those editing your work. reading your work, and marketing your work. You need to be able to trust that every part of your team wants the same thing you do–for your work to succeed.

But we writers are often a crochety lot. We have assorted hangups, opinions, and neuroses about our work and about other people’s work. (Roxane Gay is famous for cultivating nemeses as well as supporters). It can often feel impossible to communicate with other writers–we may feel left out of the club for any number of reasons. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying to have relationships because every writer needs a supportive community of other writers–be they mentors, classmates, internet buddies. or simply friendly faces in your particular crowd.

How did I go about asking? I emailed all three and simply explained what the press wanted, and would they be willing for me to list their names as possible blurbers for the work? Within forty-eight hours, each one had returned an email expressing their support. One even said he appreciated being asked! So that was good. I will also email the other three on my list who are a little less familiar with the story to see if they could also be resources if when the time comes for blurbs, any one of those three had to back out.

Other more established writers may have different ideas about asking for support. But my main message is this–it is easier to ask people you already have relationships with to support you than to try to invite people you barely know into your fold. Just my two-cents worth.

So How Do You Do It?

How do you take on a long project and stick with it to completion? Good question.

One way to NOT do it is to talk about it too much. I try to reserve my initial enthusiasm for the project by keeping it under wraps. I actually started revising Hurricane Baby in January of this year but didn’t blog about it until much later. Why? Because I was afraid that I would lose enthusiasm for it if I talked it out too much, exposed too many of my ideas to scrutiny before they were fully formed.

Another way to keep the enthusiasm strong is to think about it in terms of craft and process instead of results. I used to find myself so carried away with the future of a project that I lost sight of the project itself. This phenomenon happened to me with this manuscript as well, which is why I abandoned it for a bit in April and May–I thought too much about where I wanted it to publish and who I wanted to pitch it to that I forgot I needed to spare my creativity for finishing it first.

Another way to keep the enthusiasm is to limit the project to something achievable. If you set out to write the Great American Novel, I guarantee that somewhere along the line you will freeze up because you will realize that the project is not living up to the hype you have put on it in your mind. I set out to write a series of short stories that were linked by Hurricane Katrina. I limited it to twelve stories. Only after finishing that initial plan of those twelve did I allow myself to think about how I could make it longer and bigger and more extensive.

As you get further into the story and the initial enthusiasm begins to wane, then it’s time to think about enlisting an accountability partner. For me, having a deadline is a blessing because it means I cannot take off too many days from writing or dawdle too long over any one particular story problem. And having someone eagerly waiting to read what you’ve written can be a boost to your productivity in that the audience is no longer just you–it’s someone else whom you are now accountable.

Just a few suggestions that have helped me sustain energy to stick with this project and finish it.

Editing Slowly

I am still doing edits to Hurricane Baby, making comma and quotation mark changes throughout the document. I’ve discovered the limits of search-and-replace edits–you can insert as many errors as you fix this way. Now I am down to the reading the entire document again stage of proofreading. Finding all the periods that need to be commas and vice-versa. Correcting the backwards quotation marks throughout. Trying to make sure the right character names are attached to the correct dialogue.

I hope next week to be able to report on the newest revision direction once I get feedback from another beta reader, someone who can tell me what is working on a deeper level than maybe the ones who’ve read it so far. I think the next edit will not involve huge revisions but probably smaller, sentence-level deepening of character motivations and making areas that I feel are clear and understandable even more so.

It’s all important when it comes to getting the attention of an editor–characters, plot, story, grammar, arcs, climaxes, denouments, endings–they all fit together to make or break a book, and what I need to know is what more needs to be done. Hopefully I will find out this week. Wish me well on my journey!