The Artist at War
Hold tight to vision on the literary battlefield of creation
A Behind the Scenes post on the tension between your artistic vision for your story and the pressures that inevitably arise as part of publishing. How do you hold this tension? What are a few strategies for holding true to your work?
Welcome back:
This is another open door post to all readers. Thank you for being with me as we continue our conversation with Becky Ellis, the author of the soon to be released Little Avalanches, who shares, in this short interview, more about her creative process and how, over a ten year period, she was thrown off vision by her desire to get published.
Questions we consider:
What does it take to push the genre of memoir forward and create truly new work that stands out?
When does adapting your work (and your vision) in order to get published make sense?
When do you need to hold true to your own dreams?
This interview offers some wonderful tips that will serve you all of your writing life.
When I met Becky, ten years ago, she was on fire for the accomplishment of Jeannette Wells who wrote Glass Castle. I believe Becky had recently attended a book reading Wells gave, and after was determined to get published at that same level. Becky, unlike so many others, did it, but was it just determination?
No.
It was hard work. The hardest work was her study and creation of scene (without the interference of exposition). Scene is showing. Exposition is telling.
We’ve been talking about this non-stop here at Flight School and here are a few of those lessons.
I’m working these scene lessons here on Flight School to prep for a live workshop (hopefully in April) where we look at your pages in real time.
That prep work continues this Wednesday, live, when Becky joins us (and you, the paid subscriber) to talk about her discovery and practice of scene writing. She will be the first to admit that exposition often took over her work (and why). She’ll answer all your questions about writing and also about the publishing journey, as well as her thoughts on the business of publishing.
Save the date: Wednesday, March 6 at 11:00 a.m. PST
Paid subscribers will get an invitation Tuesday evening, March 5th.
If that is not you, consider making that transition and upgrade. If you already have done so, get ready for a great conversation with Becky to include your questions.
This is a great interview, Jennifer. Thanks for doing it! As a writer starting off here, I feel like there is so much wisdom shared here. Blessings to you and Becky both for sharing all the war stories!
I like writing scenes, probably too much. My developmental editor told me there was so much dialog in my memoir manuscript, that I needed to cut down and summarize/ tell more.