Wednesday, September 23, 2015

That Really Deep Writing Post


A few weeks ago, I started working at a classy inn, and from the start I knew that this would be great for writing research. After all, what better way is there to observe the oddities of humanity than to clean someone’s messy room? And let’s not forget the added prestige points you get when you straighten up after a semi-famous person and help give them directions to the nearest post office.

But in all seriousness, every day I go to work and think about the parallels between housekeeping and writing. So, I figured I should share some of those with you.


Tidiness. People tend to notice tidiness as a general concept, but they’re much more likely to clue in to individual mistakes. For instance, we could spend half an hour sweeping the floors, making the beds, sanitizing the bathrooms, and dusting every single surface. But if we miss that one little hair on the pillow, we’re probably going to hear about it the next day. (Okay, I’m exaggerating, but you know what I mean.)

It’s the same with writing. You can comb your manuscript a dozen times and catch almost every typo and inconsistency and awkwardly phrased sentence. But the few mistakes you miss are going to stick in people’s minds a lot better than the overall neatness of your prose. As the writer (and the housekeeper), you can think of hundreds of errors you’ve fixed, but your audience isn’t going to know about those. And because most people don’t realize how much work goes into a finished manuscript, they won’t be as forgiving of mess-ups as you, the writer, will be. Unfortunately, that’s life.
 

Pickiness. At the inn where I work, we’re very picky about cleanliness. This means we’ll often dust stuff that isn’t dusty and wipe down surfaces that aren’t dirty. Likewise, in writing, it’s a very good idea to give your manuscript at least one last read through, even when you’re certain it’s finished and ready for other eyes. You’d be surprised by what you find when you make that final, seemingly unnecessary pass.


Minimizing Distractions. In cleaning a hotel room, the goal is to make the area seem almost unlived in, as though your current clients are the first people ever to use those facilities. It’s not that we want to dupe our customers into thinking they’re being given extra special treatment when they aren’t, but it’s nice for them when they can forget that they’re sleeping in a bed dozens of others have used before. The general neatness and freshness creates a relaxing atmosphere of renewal and comfort.

With your writing, you want your prose and grammar and spelling and all that fun stuff to be so tidy that nothing distracts your reader from the story. Essentially, as a writer, you want to disappear, because you aren’t describing the world, you’re creating a window to it. Sure, it’s important to leave your own special touch, just as it’s nice when we make flowers out of the tissues and fold the towels into pleasing shapes, but you don’t want your presence to be so overpowering that the reader can’t really focus on creating their own experience.

 
Attending to all the Little Details. Tidying up a hotel room can take a team of three anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes, depending on our energy levels and the extent of the mess we’re dealing with. There are lots of little details that need our attention—the above-mentioned towel folding and tissue origami, the little soaps, the coffee tray, the dusting and glass cleaning and furniture polishing, the sweeping and mopping and bed-making, the shower and toilet and sink, the rug, the smudges on the walls from careless luggage lugging, the fingerprints on the door paint, the stray hairs on the fresh duvet covers and pillow cases and towels, etc… While it’s possible for us to move quickly and efficiently, we can only do so to a point, and the more we rush, the more we’re bound to miss something.

In writing, you don’t have to force yourself to go slowly, but you don’t want to jump the gun, either. As you edit, especially, you want to make sure you take enough time to notice all the little details, and you want to make sure everything gets its fair share of your attention before you move on.

The small things may not be that important on their own, but added together, they make the difference between a messy room and a clean room, a messy manuscript and a clean manuscript.


Popularity. Last but not least, when it comes to hotel business, the more popular you get, the more work you have to do. Lately, the inn has had a steady string of no vacancies each night, which means we have to clean every single room every single morning. So, while that means more money for us, it also means more labor. You really can’t have one without the other.

Writing, especially blogging, can turn into a give-and-take relationship like that. The more comments you get on your blog, the more time you have to invest in answering them and, possibly, visiting your commenter’s blogs. As your page view counter begins to rise, you’ll be happy, but you’ll also have the added stress of knowing that if you blow it now, you’re blowing it in front of a larger audience. There’ll be that greater pressure to provide interesting and original content so as not to let your readers down. (I imagine this is much the same for popular, published authors.) And you’ll probably find it rather disappointing if your success rate plummets for a time.
 

Well, there you have it, my little coffee beans. I’m sure I could dig up other parallels (co-workers and characters, for instance), but I don’t want to bore you. If you have any work/writing comparisons of your own, I’d love to hear about them. In the meantime, to all my writer coffee beans, best of luck with your novel editing. I’m off to clean some rooms.

18 comments:

  1. I love that point about having everything else perfect, then missing that single typo on page 273 and people get upset. *frowns* I guess that's life, though. And I never really thought about the fact that having a bigger blog meant you had to spend more time on it. I kinda assumed that once you got so big you didn't have to comment back and stuff for people to keep coming back (I suppose I picked that up on some of the huge blogs where they get like 3000 comments, though, so that might be a bit naive of me). I'm seriously impressed that you managed to come up with such great parallels to writing with your job :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :) Thanks! It totally is life, and I know I can be super picky at times. But my job has definitely opened my eyes to what it's like being on the other end. And it's not guaranteed that you're going to be extra busy, but I think you will be a little bit more at least, and probably more stressed as well. That's been my experience, at least. But yeah, it might get a little better if you stop answering all your comments--but it really does help you reader relationship if you take the time to answer comments when you can, even if you're super huge (take Cait @ Paper Fury, for instance). And thank you--I actually have a few more up my sleeve. I guess, if I can't be writing, I'll spend my time thinking about writing, no matter what, and this is what happens. :P

      Delete
  2. This is awesome. And, in fact, a job I've never thought about a human being having to do before, but I guess it makes sense... xD

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! XD I never really thought about it as a job before, either, except when I saw the housemaids in the big hotels with their cleaning carts. But I was relieved to find that this job is so much nicer than what I'd seen before.

      Delete
  3. This is so true! I never thought of it this way.

    I especially like your last point about popularity. I've never given it any thought. But authors who are popular, since their being noticed and people want their books, they have kind of a higher demand on them. If they don't have a book coming out or the talk of a book in the works, their fans start wondering where the author went. They always want more, so the author has to do more work/writing than if he/she was less known.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was a little worried, when I wrote this post, that people would think it was weird and off base, so I'm glad you liked it. I've been thinking a lot about that last point lately, because I'd never realized that even a bit more traffic on your blog can make you so much more busier. And just imagine if you were a published author. Like you said, once an author has a lot of fans, they have to keep producing or people will wonder what happened to them. And all the rabid readers can get super impatient. Not to mention the stress that comes with interviews and signings and the like.

      Thanks for commenting!

      Delete
  4. These are excellent analogies for writing! Especially about the errors -- people notice what's gone wrong in a book far more often than what's gone right. And I once heard a good book described as expensive make-up -- you shouldn't be able to notice the make-up, but the effect should be profound anyways.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! Yeah, it's so much easier to clue in to the errors, and it's so easy to forget that tons of errors were fixed along the way, and the author and copy editors weren't necessarily being sloppy or anything. The make-up analogy is totally great. I can just picture it, like with movie make-up, where actors look great but not like they're necessarily wearing a ton of make-up. But then if you see someone with tons of poorly applied make-up, it's really distracting from their face.

      Thanks for commenting!

      Delete
  5. Ohh, I do like these parallels and that first one...AGH SO TRUE. It's always the little mistakes people pick up. Like no one would write in a review " this book was super well edited" but they'd totally say "there was a typo". I mean, I don't think books SHOULD have typos, but we humans can seem very negative about it sometimes. AND OH YES AND YES TO THE LAST ONE. There's always a bit of good and bad with everything, right?!
    This post = so much awesome.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. *bows deeply* And you're right--people tend to take a good editing job for granted, and it seems like that one typo makes the author a klutz with words. I feel bad, because I've probably acted like that in the past, so I'm glad that now, at least, I know what it's like to be on the other end. And yeah, authors and copy editors should strive to make sure they catch all the typos, but let's face it, people are busy and fallible and a typo doesn't spell the end of the world. Unless it does.

      :P I figured you'd be able to relate to the last one especially. I'm still not sure how you manage to do all that you do, even with you clones.

      Thank you, and thanks for commenting!

      Delete
  6. I wish I had a cool job to compare my writing life to. XD Ah, well. I love that you point out that as writers we don't get paid based on the work that has been done but the product that comes about, just like your hotel rooms don't get measured by how long you were scrubbing but what the room looks like at the end. I think it can be a little discouraging for us to think about the world like that in some ways, but at the same time I find it really impressive that authors do end their stories with such awesome things at the end. This was a great comparison, Liz!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :P Unfortunately, I won't be able to keep this one for much longer, because I'll be moving soon. :( Thanks--and I agree, it can definitely be very discouraging to realize that people think less about the effort and more about the finished product. No one really considers all the hours we spend drafting and polishing, but at least not everyone is critical all the time. And criticism does help.

      Thanks! And thanks for commenting. :)

      Delete
  7. This is an awesome analogy. And I totally agree, especially with things like small details. I can't tell you the amount of times I've been away from home, and the place has been amazing, except there were only four forks, not six, or there's something left in the fridge. The same with books. It can been amazing, except for that moment where the main character's name is misspelled, or a person's name is mentioned in a scene but they're not actually there, and the author forgot to take it out. Those things really bug me. Well, I can honestly say that I've never compared writing to hospitality work, but it totally works for me!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! :) Yeah, it can be super easy to clue into the little mistakes, because they show up so well, especially if everything else looks super great. And having an eye for mistakes is great, especially when you're editing your novel or cleaning a room. I'm glad you like the comparison. :)

      Delete
  8. This is really cool! It's neat that you work at an inn! I especially agree with taking it slow with editing. I think that's what bugs most people about it so much that unlike writing where you can type 500 words in 10 minutes in editing you often take 20 minutes on one paragraph. But if you speed through it, you're probably missing something.

    storitorigrace.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! I really enjoy working at the inn, even more than I thought I would. Yes, I totally agree. With drafting, you can fly through it, like ripping a Band-Aid off, and even if you really enjoy editing (like me) it does take a super long time to do it thoroughly.

      Thanks for commenting!

      Delete
  9. Cool post! I'd've never made most of these comparisons, but they're all really great points. Especially the one about people noticing all the little mistakes. Even the smallest error can keep people from seeing the masterpiece, so you really do have to be careful to keep things tidy.
    Again, awesome post! :D


    Alexa
    thessalexa.blogspot,com
    verbositybookreviews.wordpress.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! It is so easy to notice little mistakes--they just tend to stick out, even when you aren't necessarily looking for them. And you're right, they can be so distracting from the general beauty of the rest of the work. Thanks again!

      Delete