Move at an ancient pace

Gems of wisdom and inspiration from a weekend at the San Francisco Writers Conference

This past weekend I gifted myself two days at the San Francisco Writers Conference. After a completely exhausting work week, I took a vacation day Friday and immersed myself in panels, talks, social time, and lots of chit-chat about my favorite topics, writing and publishing.

My brain came alive. You should see my notebook—full not just of notes from the talks, but of story ideas, self-talk, lists of books to read, and many doodles as I tried to channel my concentration. Plus I pitched my mystery to a (truly amazing) agent who wants to read more.

I always come out of conferences like this believing the universe is delivering meaningful messages to me. Here are a few that stood out:

Great storytelling takes time

In a session on navigating the “occupational hazards” of self-doubt, panelists spoke about resilience, insecurity, self-comparison, and the dangers of society’s message that we need to “go faster.” Nayomi Munaweera put it beautifully:

“This is an ancient job. There’s always been the storyteller at the center of the tribe who’s holding the tribe together with the story of the people, and the people are coming together at night around the fire. We are the people that knit together personhood and community. Now, how we do that in capitalism is the trick, because we live in a society that doesn’t honor or understand the importance of it, especially at this moment.”

What I took away: a story takes the time it takes. There’s an incubation period it must go through—time for an author to learn who the characters are, what they need, and what the story is really about. Rushing that process steals from the depth and meaning of the work.

This session inspired me to move a developmental editor appointment from next week—a deadline I was going to have to panic to meet—to a couple of months from now. I want more time with my characters. I want to feel like I’ve truly taken the manuscript as far as I can take it before handing it off.

I’m resolved to fight against this fallacy that I have to produce faster. I want to move at an ancient pace.

Resist the urge to write “on trend”

I heard this from writers, editors, agents, and publishers throughout the conference. Keenan Norris said it plainly:

“Write what you’re going to write, you know? A book takes way too long to just do something because you think it’s going to be popular. That makes no sense. It’s very possible your vision for your project will be trending later. Nobody knows what trend is going to take off, until it takes off. Nobody knew until Gone Girl blew up, and then there were a hundred Gone Girls. So your book might be the thing that takes us off in a different direction. And nobody knows.”

Our keynote speaker Raina Telgemeier, the graphic novelist, talked about her journey developing autobiographical graphic novels that no publishers could figure out how to sell for years. She kept at it anyway, setting up at little comic book fairs and developing a tiny niche following—until graphic novels took off and she found a fanbase among school kids at the Scholastic Book Fairs.

The point: write your truth, the story only you can uniquely write. It will find a way, and a readership, even if it’s not “on trend.”

Always put the character at the center

Time and again, panelists reminded us that what we’re doing is telling the story of characters—through their eyes, based on what they’re seeing and how they feel about it. If you need a change of scenery while writing, take your character with you so they can sense the place you travel to. If you’re writing about the world—politics, history—what you’re really writing about is how your character is affected by that world. An atmospheric setting only moves readers if they can feel how the character moves inside it.

More important: there needs to be a story about what happens to the character. The book can’t just be about white supremacy, or the Trojan War, or depression—it has to be about what happens to a person living through those things.

One writer said he keeps a sticky note on his computer that says “It always gets worse.” Because he has to keep adding new challenges and conflicts to deepen his character’s story. Another panelist pointed out that a character is made up of culture plus trauma.

Hone two brains

Many panelists pointed out that we must cultivate a practice of creating without inhibitions or limitations, without self-editing or trying to meet a mold. But it’s also important to hone our sentences, get closer to our characters, understand what readers are feeling, and know the market we’re writing for.

Romance writer Rebecca Hunter talked about how she separates these modes:

“I find that I really need to separate. The creative brain and the analytic brain really work differently. The creative brain is really exploration, it’s generative. Whereas you’re narrowing your possibilities with the analytic brain. For me, it’s really important, so that I can keep writing, that I really need to separate those.”

She dictates her story plot on morning walks, then returns to edit that into actual written prose, reads it out loud, then edits again. Every writer finds their own way of switching between generating, structural editing, sentence-level editing, and marketing. The key is recognizing these as different phases requiring different brains—and knowing when to employ one over the other.