{"id":2105,"date":"2008-02-12T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2105"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:28:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:28:26","slug":"it-has-its-ups-and-downs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2105","title":{"rendered":"It Has Its Ups and Downs…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…does that rickety elevator we call life. Not much in the way of down time right now–I’m woefully behind on visiting all of your lovely blogs, but I thought I’d grab a few minutes to post in between grading essay paragraphs and spiffing up my website<\/a> and gearing up for the big Cybils announcement<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So, writers: we spend a lot of time working on those little details of characters to make them fully come alive. One of those many details–one which I don’t consider often enough–is laughter. How do your characters laugh? I don’t mean a mere giggle vs. a guffaw. Do they wheeze? Squeal? Snort? Do they sound like they’re on the verge of hysteria? Today on my local NPR station I heard a segment from Radiolab’s most recent program on laughter<\/a>. The part I caught included a group of “professional laughers” who, essentially, have found themselves increasingly out of work because of the decline of the sitcom in favor of the rise of reality television. There’s something very sad about that; the end of an era. <\/p>\n

Then I went into the grocery store. When I came out again and got back into my car, the Laughter program had gone on to a new segment, about a mysterious epidemic of contagious laughter that afflicted a community in Tanzania in 1962. The story was fascinating, and not, as it turned out, particularly funny, but it reminded me of another great component of laughter–its ability to spread, to make us silly, to remind us of childhood and of good times. Maybe, next time you’ve got writer’s block, try laughter?<\/p>\n

It’s a good thing I listened to this wonderful program, because in a way it fortified me for the “down” part of today’s ups and downs…today I got my “Dear Writer” letter from the Delacorte Press Contest<\/a> for a first YA novel. I wasn’t as sad as I sometimes am when I get a rejection letter; I honestly didn’t expect to win this time. But I did start asking myself uncomfortable questions, and I wonder if other writers have struggled with these: How many rejections should one accumulate for a novel before calling it quits and shoving it in a drawer? Or, at that point, should one consider more revision, even if you’ve done all the revision you feel you can do without turning the piece into something entirely different? Is there ever a good time to decide that a piece should be entirely different?<\/p>\n

That’s one I struggle with a lot. I find it difficult to judge how far to take revisions before the story I have isn’t the same story any more–and whether that’s a bad thing. Or whether it’s better to start afresh. I don’t know. There’s probably no one answer to that question, and for me, every project is different so I can’t imagine there’s a magic formula. Doesn’t stop me wishing for one, though…<\/p>\n

Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for a special Sherri L. Smith guest post, kicking off her blog tour for Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…does that rickety elevator we call life. Not much in the way of down time right now–I’m woefully behind on visiting all of your…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,10,52],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-views","tag-writing-daze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4702,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions\/4702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}