Letter from Camp! (Camp NaNoWriMo)

So, I am deep in the midst of every writer’s favorite July activity, Camp NaNoWriMo! Okay, perhaps not every writer’s favorite July activity. I can’t even say it’s my favorite July activity, as it is the first time I have participated in it. I have done NaNoWriMo twice and won once—though the time I didn’t win, I was so close. I loved-hated both times, as it was a lot of work, and to be honest, the quality was sub-par. However, that is what revision is for! Camp NaNoWriMo is a little less stressful.

One of the nice things about Camp NaNoWriMo is that you can set your own word count, and you can even choose to edit instead of write (where you monitor time spent and convert that to words at the proposed rate of 1,000 words per hour). I chose to work on revising my novel Charybda, part of which I wrote during NaNoWriMo. Funnily, I had the bulk of the book written and used NaNo as a push to write the last part of the book. The unrevised manuscript of Charybda, in need of repairs and continuity fixes from start to finish, sat on my hard drive patiently waiting for me to finally get around to revising it. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I got off my behind (or put my behind in the writer’s chair, as it were) and started to work on it in earnest.

It has been a difficult road for me. I envy the writers who write quickly and require little revision on their drafts. I will never be one of those writers. I’m meticulous, which is good, but self-critical, which is not. It takes me a little time anyway, but I have occasional bouts of depression that bring all of it to a grinding halt. However, I am pleased to report that since the beginning of the year, I have made my way through thirteen or so chapters of the novel!

Camp NaNoWriMo was a fun way to motivate myself to work on my revising even more. I decided that, for me at least, 500 words per hour was a better conversion rate for time spent editing. Then, I set myself a goal of 10,000 words—which, by the by, is the minimum goal—equaling 20 hours of revision time. It sounded doable, and like a goal I might even surpass with a little dedication.

Another benefit of Camp NaNoWriMo is that it helped me realize something about revising. Revising, or content editing, if you will, is difficult to quantify. When you write, you have this nice concrete word count as your measurement. When it comes to revising, all you can measure is the time you spend working. Prior to Camp NaNo, I was setting goals based on the amount of the manuscript I got through—x number of chapters. However, each chapter is different. There was one chapter that took me two hours to ‘fix.’ There was another that took me two weeks. You see the inevitable problem.

I had been resisting the idea of measuring my revision in time, because there are times where it takes me an hour just to make a single change. That can be very depressing. How can one change really count for anything? I would be really hard on myself for things like this. Nevertheless, you have to quantify the work somehow, and it turns out that a time goal is a lot more manageable than a ‘distance’ goal. If not for Camp NaNo, I might not have ever realized this.

Even better, setting a time goal helps me work more efficiently. With the distance goal, I would get distracted and take a long time, so discouraged by how far away the endpoint was that I would give up. With the time goal, I find that the first 20 minutes or so are the most difficult, but once I’m past that, I get sucked into what I’m doing and work much harder than I would have otherwise.

I feel like I finally stumbled onto the answer for which I have been searching for some time now. There is always an abundance of advice on how to stay motivated while writing, but their is little said about the revision process. “Just keep writing—don’t worry if it stinks, you can fix that later.” There is a lot of silence when that later finally arrives. (Maybe there is a lot of advice out there, but I never seem to find it.) The answer for the “fixing it later” is to set small, manageable, quantifiable goals rather than looking at the big messy manuscript as a whole. Perhaps this should be obvious—the adage of eating an elephant one bite at a time has been around forever. For me, the problem was the quantifying of the goals. Now, I have finally settled into this system which works, and allows me to define the amount of work I’m actually doing. It allows me feel good about myself even when a single change takes an hour—because I have spent that entire hour working diligently to determine which change should be made. It gives me time to read the manuscript and make a plan for the next phase, while still feeling good because even if I make no changes, I have set myself up for success. I still get to count that hour as an achievement.

Another thing that has aided me in the revision process is giving myself rewards for achieving goals. At the end of every month, I give myself a prize if I meet my goal. Not just any prize, like going out for ice cream or something. No, this is a prize I’ll work my butt off in order to get. That’s right..a new My Little Pony! I bought a lot of ponies off of eBay, which are sitting in a box waiting for me to free them by achieving my goals. I only get one pony as a prize, though, so there are enough to keep me motivated for the next year or so.  It has worked well so far—there was one month where I did most of the work in the last week because I was so desperate to get that pony. (I don’t know if that’s pathetic or not, but I don’t care.) Now that I have a better system worked out, thanks to Camp NaNo, I’ll be well on my way to successfully earning ponies at the agonizingly slow rate of 1 pony per month. Even if the prize winning process is slow, the revising process has sped up, which is a prize all its own.

One more thing of note is that I have changed my terminology when referring to what I am doing to my manuscript. I had been calling it editing, which is not completely inaccurate. I am, after all, content editing. But since editing can also refer to line editing—going through line by line and fixing grammatical and stylistic errors, my subconscious was confused about what I was really doing. I would feel bad that I wasn’t at the final stage of perfecting the work. Now that I have changed to the term revising, I feel that it is a more accurate reflection of what I am doing. It also takes off the subconscious pressure that comes with the word ‘editing.’

It has been an enlightening summer, to be sure, and I feel that the rest of my year will be filled with even more successes.

What helps you out with revising your writing?

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The Number One Rule of Writing

Trust yourself to put that first word on the page.

Trust yourself.

That is all.

What, were you expecting it to be something far more elaborate and detailed? Perhaps something rigid and defined?

Well, there certainly are a lot of rules for writing, and they are all very useful rules to keep in mind. Things like: use proper grammar; avoid contractions in formal writing; avoid redundant adverbs and eliminate weak verb-adverb pairs; use 'said' as your default for speech tags; do not have your characters constantly say each other's names; have a defined beginning, middle, and end; raise the stakes for your characters and put them in jeopardy...

The list goes on and on and on. Rules about POV, rules about style, rules, rules, rules, rules.

The only hard and fast rule of writing is that there are as many rules as there are writers.

What do I mean by that? I mean that every writer out there is going to have their own idea of what makes writing good. Writing rules are subjective. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a sucker for the rules. I believe there is such a thing as good writing and bad writing. However, which is which really depends on who you ask. There is a sort of 'canon' idea of what makes for good writing, but people work outside of that all the time and still have success.  Bad writing exists, but not everyone agrees on what makes writing bad.

The commonly agreed upon reasons for bad writing are: weak plot, weak and flat characters, inconsistent style, poor grammar, and similar things. But again, people still disagree as to what is what.

So, here you are, trying to navigate the waters of being a writer. You will be given conflicting advice. How do you know which is right, which is the way to go?

This is where trusting yourself comes in. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? Even if you follow all the supposed rules that you have read about, if you don't trust yourself, your writing will be weak and shaky. Do you really need to do something that breaks a rule, because you think it will make your story more powerful? Break that sucker.

Trust yourself.

Because you will never be as good at being your favorite author as that author is. But you can most definitely be the best at being yourself. And to do that, you will have to trust yourself.

It is not easy. I still struggle with it every day. It is especially difficult when you are editing something, and when a self-imposed deadline looms over your head like a Sword of Damocles, threatening a sense of failure.

I try to remind myself that there is no failure as long as I keep plugging away at my work, as long as I do not give up, as long as I do my best...

...as long as I trust myself.

So keep the rules in mind--because rules are useful and will make your writing stronger--but remember to trust yourself, even if that means stepping outside of the rules.

That is the number one rule of writing.

Lessons from Bikinis

Sharing your writing is a lot like wearing a bikini. You’re exposing parts of yourself you normally keep covered, parts you might be worried people will judge you negatively for.

Now, to fully set the stage for today’s post, I need to give you a little background about myself. Ever since I can remember, I’ve hated my body. I’ve gone through extreme diets and less extreme diets, unhealthy amounts of exercise and an eating disorder. In other words, I have a lot of baggage as pertains to my body image. I have since recovered from eating disorders and uncontrolled yo-yo dieting, but the fact remains that my body is outside the societal norm for what people consider an “appropriate” weight. By a significant amount. Dare I say it…yeah, I’ll come out and say it. I’m fat, by any measure of the word.  (And fat is just an adjective, like blonde or brunette. I don’t say it with any derogatory meaning.)

Surprisingly, though, through lots of counseling and prayer, I’ve made peace with my body.  I make sure to eat lots of vegetables and try to make sure that I get exercise. Thing is, I haven’t lost weight because of it. Now, the old me would find this terribly disappointing and would probably start engaging in dangerous, extreme behaviors. But the new me? I just accept my body as it is, and do my best to treat it well.

One of my favorite forms of exercise is swimming. And I mean, I love swimming. A half hour of any other exercise, even walking, is a huge drag for me. But put me in the pool, and I’ll stay in there until I’m wrinkly, swimming laps and having an awesome time. I love listening to my heart pound, and I feel strong and capable and graceful. Like, an hour of swimming is nothing. I love it that much.

This is where I confess that I’ve always wanted to wear a bikini. But I’ve denied myself that privilege my whole life, telling myself that I could only do it if I was a certain size, and that I would offend people with my horribly disgusting body if I did wear a bikini unless I was a size 0. Then, just recently, I came across this phenomenon called #curvesinbikinis, all about plus-sized women unapologetically wearing bikinis.

So, I bought a bikini. I’m still working up the nerve to wear it to the pool, because I’m really truly afraid of what other people will say about my body. Which is weird, because it’s exactly the same body I have when I wear a one-piece. But there’s a lot of stigma against people of larger size, so it makes me nervous. It took a lot of nerve just to buy the thing, but I did it.

Thing is, I think I could wear it in front of strangers, but the idea of people I actually know seeing me in it terrifies me.  What if they all tell me to start exercising and eat a salad (even though I do both of these things regularly), or say negative things to me?

That was when I realized that wearing a bikini is a lot like presenting your writing to the general public, then letting your friends and family see it. Writing offers a lot of insight to an author’s private thoughts, aspirations, and firmly held beliefs. It can be scary to imagine people seeing that side of you that most people would rather you keep covered up.

What if people say negative things to you about your writing? What if you get nasty reviews on WattPad or FictionPress or FanFiction.net? What if people leave you horrible statements and one-star reviews on Amazon? What if your friends and family look askance at you and ask you, “What is wrong with you?”

That’s a really scary thought, and it may make you want to hide your writing in a locked box in between the cushions of a bed in a secure facility, preferably one guarded by scary dogs, such as ill-trained Rottweilers. (Or even worse, angry Chihuahuas.)

The secret to sharing your writing with the world is the same secret to wearing a bikini. You have to be confident and brave to do it, but the most important thing is to be satisfied with it yourself. If you love and believe in your writing, it won’t matter what the haters say. If you love and accept your own body, it won’t matter what the haters say about your awesome new fatkini.

Confidence. That’s all it takes.

Does that confidence spring up overnight? No. Heck no. In fact, it might be easier to share your writing with the public than it is to work up the nerve to wear swimwear at the public small-town swimming pool.  At least with writing, you can use a pseudonym (pen name) to keep your true identity a secret. But even if you do that, be confident in your work.

If people see that you are confident, they’ll respect you because of it.

If you’re a writer terrified of sharing your work, take courage. I never thought the day would come where I would even own a bikini, let alone seriously consider wearing it.

So how do you build up confidence for sharing your writing? Work with other writers – it can even be anonymously, such as through Scribophile or similar websites. Sometimes it’s easier to interact with faceless strangers than it is with your friends or family. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with that, move on toward IRL writers’ groups. You might be surprised to find that one is in your area.

There’s no need to have your work guarded by Rottweilers or angry Chihuahuas. Don’t hide yourself from the world. 

Share any thoughts in the comments.

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Slow and Steady

Hello, readers. As you may have noticed, I did not exactly get back into my proper posting schedule. I really, really wanted to, but it just didn't happen. You see, I have a big editing project to tackle now and on top of that I took a job, so my life is busy. I will try to get something up here once a week, but I can't make any promises. If this post is your first experience with my blog, please check out my many other (hopefully) useful posts in the archives.

However, I'll leave you for now with a brief thought:

“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”
― Anthony Trollope

This is really thought-provoking. For example, if you write 250 words per day for 365 days, you'll wind up with 91,250 words. That's almost two rounds of NaNoWriMo, and it's a heck of a lot more manageable. Yes, it's every day, but it's 250 words. That's nothing. That's a little shorter than this blog post is. So this whole "small daily task" thing is actually quite encouraging to me, since I have a document of about 500 pages to edit (12 pt font, double spaced, 1 inch margins). I have committed to working on this project for an hour per day, every day. It doesn't seem like much, but an hour of editing is actually pretty exhausting, at least for me. And this isn't the "easy" kind of editing, either - I'm not just checking for grammar mistakes. No, I'm making sure that the whole thing flows properly, that there are no plot holes, that my characters always act in character, plus I'm rewriting the entire opening.

As a point of reference, it takes me an hour or more to compose one of my standard blog posts, so you can see why the editing is getting priority over blogging. I set myself a goal of getting through at least half my big document before the end of the year, so I can't procrastinate on the editing thing. Combine that with my new job (which is really stressing me out - I hate being 'new'), and you have a recipe for not blogging very much. Combine that with higher stress directly corresponding to higher absent-mindedness, and...

Yes, I really am writing a post full of excuses for not writing my blog. Shameful, I know.

But anyway, the point is that a small daily task beats an occasional sprint - think the tortoise and the hare. It's an old fable, but it's stood the test of time for a reason.

(By the way, this post is 458 words, and it took me around thirty minutes to compose it.)

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What Editing Feels Like

Oy. So clearly, I haven't been very good about getting back to my posting schedule. Real life seems to keep trying to get in the way of blogging. But, today, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on editing.

Have you ever taken a drawing class? There's a recommended way to draw the picture. First, you lay in your basic lines and shapes, then start to sketch out what you want the picture to look like. Then, you go in and refine and finish your picture. The refining and finishing takes the longest, and you can spend a long time fussing with one tiny little area trying to get it look just right. If that little bit is off, it can mess up the whole drawing. 

This is very much what editing is like. Your first draft is the basic skeleton, and editing provides the finished product.Or, to pick up my theme from last week, your first draft is like learning a music piece, and editing is like going back and adding dynamics.

So, which is easier? Writing the first draft or editing?

Honestly, they are both difficult. But if you want to talk about time investment, editing takes a lot more time than writing does. Sometimes, the difference between writing and editing feels a little bit like this:

Little people are courtesy of Microsoft Office ClipArt. I did the rest.

But don't despair - editing might seem fruitless and frustrating, but what actually happens during this process is an amazing thing. You watch your skeleton turn into a fully realized living thing. You listen to the once choppy sound of your first draft turn into beautiful music. It's really incredible.

So if you're intimidated about editing, or discouraged because editing feels to you like that little cartoon, keep in mind that you're crafting something even more amazing than before.

Thoughts on the First Draft

I don't have much of a Word-Craft Wednesday for you today. These are just some thoughts on writing that have occurred to me over the last few days. They're unorganized, but I thought I would share them with you anyway. 

I’ve been working on learning a new musical piece on my guitar. Learning the piece is just one step, though. Once you know what to play, you have to focus on how to play it.  It’s not enough to know, “Okay, I hold ‘B’ for an eighth note, then ‘E’ for a dotted quarter note.” Granted, that’s a huge part of it, but there are other factors that go into performing. For example, which note should be played more loudly? Is one accented over the other? Sometimes, the composer writes this type of information for you. Other times, well, you just have to figure out what sounds good for yourself.  

I was working on this piece the other day, and suddenly it hit me that I was playing all of the notes equally loudly – to where the canto forte (“strong song” or melody) was totally lost. It should have been totally obvious to me that this was happening, but it wasn’t until I’d practiced the thing a bazillion times before I’d noticed it. Then I felt kind of dumb. Now I’m realizing that I’ve imposed absolutely no dynamics (volume changes) on the piece whatsoever. It’s totally flat.

The writing process is very much like learning a new musical piece. First, you have to have all your mechanics in place – who does what, what happens, how long, and so on and so forth. This is what happens when writing the first draft. At least for me, when I write my first draft, I feel like I myself am learning about my story for the first time. I’m not always sure where it’s going, and sometimes it surprises me.  

Once all the mechanics are in place, you have to revisit your writing. This is when you’ll notice that the story might have a theme – a canto forte, if you will, that you didn’t even realize that you’d put in. You need to rework your writing so that this shines through, but you also don’t want to drown out the other elements. Everything has to blend harmoniously. This is what the second draft is about.Unfortunately, you'll probably notice lots of things that should have seemed obvious and you might feel kind of silly about the whole thing. However, it's fun to watch your second draft come together as you watch it improve.

But what you’ll notice about all of this is that before you can tweak the dynamics and really bring it to life, you have to have the mechanics in place. In other words, don’t put the cart before the horse. You can’t have your second draft before your first draft.

So, when you write your first draft, you ought not be thinking about it as something that people are going to read, just like when you first learn a piece, you aren’t going to perform it until you’ve polished it.

This is something that it took me a shockingly long time to figure out, believe it or not.  I wrote with the idea that I needed to polish as I go, so that when I was done writing, all I’d need is a quick once-over and Bam! my writing would be ready for publishing.  As a result, it took me a really, really long time to get everything written. There was so much pressure that writing wasn’t even fun, and consequently, I got very little writing done. Telling yourself that you need to get your writing right the first time is about as much fun as sitting down at a musical rehearsal with music you’re looking at for the first time and trying to play it in front of people. It’s stressful and embarrassing.

So you have to let go and give yourself permission to make mistakes, because right now, you’re just learning what your story is all about. Don’t go in expecting the literary equivalent of a concert performance – right now, you’re just practicing and learning.  Don’t worry about the dynamics until you have the mechanics.  Hey, that could be a slogan or something, huh?

I’ll write more about how to change the dynamics next week, but I wanted to really emphasize the fact that your first draft is your playground. Have fun. Experiment. Nobody is watching you but yourself, so write with your eyes closed and your imagination open. 

Share any thoughts in comments. 

  

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"Stealing" Ideas

Image courtesy of chanpipat at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What would you say if I told you that you could rip off major plot points from other sources and get away with it?

Would you say, “But that’s stealing and violating copyright laws”?

Would you say, “That would make me an unoriginal hack writer”?

What about, “People will know it’s a rip-off and no one will like my story?”

Let’s break this down.

“That’s stealing and violates copyright laws.”

Copyright laws are dodgy things. If you write a story that is basically exactly the same as somebody else’s, using the same characters (even if you change their names), then you have violated copyright laws. There’s no way around this. But if you were to look at Lois Lowry’s The Giver and think that forced hormonal therapy is an interesting concept, and you decide to use that in your story, that is not violating copyright laws.  You’ll probably want to do your take on forced hormonal therapy differently – that’s why it’s your take on it.

But isn’t it still stealing?

Let me tell you a secret. Nothing is original. Nada. Zilch. Zero.  Have you ever heard of William Shakespeare, a man still hailed today as a master of literary genius?

Yeah, he ripped off a bunch of other stories to make his plays.

So, yes, maybe it is ‘stealing’ story elements, but don’t think of it as stealing. Think of it as ‘drawing inspiration’ from another source. It’s not immoral or illegal – not the way that selling a story with Frodo the Hobbit in it would be.

I promise you, even if you come up with an idea all by yourself, the likelihood of seeing that somebody else has done something similar is really high. Does that mean you’re stealing? No. It just means that somebody else had a similar idea to you. Nobody has a monopoly on ideas, and nobody can copyright an idea like forced hormonal therapy. 

Now, if you put it in the exact configuration as The Giver, well…that’s  different story. Then it does become stealing.

You see, there is a definite difference between stealing and drawing inspiration from a source. It might seem fuzzy, but it is definitely there.

“That would make me an unoriginal hack writer.”

Was William Shakespeare a hack? The debate on this rages, but most people think highly of Shakespeare. Would you say Suzanne Collins is a hack? She borrowed a lot of elements for The Hunger Games from Roman history. Oh, and have you ever of J.R.R. Tolkien, a man widely regarded as the father of modern fantasy? He lifted a lot of stuff from Norse mythology. Does that make him an unoriginal hack writer? What about Rowling? Harry Potter took a bunch of stuff out of mythology, too.

So, what is it that makes these authors original, if they have so much unoriginal stuff in their writing?

It’s the way that things are configured. It’s sort of like starting with a ball of yarn. Give five different people a ball of yarn and tell them to knit a scarf. At least one of those scarves will be different than the others. It’s all about the way you tell your story – the way you spin a yarn, if you will. Yours will be unique, because it’s told by you, and you’ll make sure to tell it in a way nobody else has told it. That’s where the originality comes in.

As long as you tell the story your own unique way, you won’t be a hack.

“People will know it’s a rip-off and no one will like my story.”

Okay. This is just patently false.

Tolkien practically has a cult following, even after his death.

Shakespeare is studied in schools all around the world.

People liked their stories. Even though they heavily borrowed from other sources.

So what is it that really brings the originality to these stories – what is it that makes them original?

Two major things: setting and character.

I’ll give you an example – and this was what gave me the idea for this blog post in the first place.  This story begins with me admitting to the fact that I occasionally watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (I’ve collected ponies since I was four, and I just never stopped liking them.)

Courtesy of HasbroStudios.com. Used for review purposes only.

On Saturday, a new season of My Little Pony started, and I decided to watch. It was actually a really interesting episode. The main characters went to a village where everybody had the same cutie mark. If you don’t watch the show, suffice it to say that cutie marks reflect each pony’s individuality and special talents.

Everybody had the same cutie mark so that no one was special.

Nobody had special talents, so that nobody was better than anyone else.

Everybody had to think the same way and have the same beliefs.

Is this starting to sound familiar?  The more the episode unfolded, the more this town started to look communist. They even called it a ‘utopia’ in one of the songs. But it was clear that it was anything but a utopia. It was a classic dystopia, vaguely reminiscent of 1984 and Animal Farm. Nobody could say anything that went against the status quo, and if somebody did, the other ponies were supposed to rat them out.

It started to have even more elements of dystopian novels, such as brainwashing. The main characters were locked in a room and forced to listen to a loud recording of what they were supposed to believe – things like “To excel is to fail” and various other maxims of this dystopian society.

Finally, the leader of everything was revealed to have her own unique cutie mark, which she kept hidden from everybody else. The first thing that came to mind when I saw that was, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” (That’s from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.) This pony argued that she had to have her special talent so that everybody else could ‘enjoy’ life without theirs. That made me think of Napoleon from Animal Farm, who argued that he had to have more power so that everybody else could live in harmony.

So yeah. An entire episode of My Little Pony that basically took classic dystopian novels, put them through the grinder, and reshaped them. They didn’t even try to be the least bit subtle about it. It was super obvious where they were getting this stuff from.

But you know what? I loved it. I bet the other adults who watched it still loved it. I bet the kids who watched the show loved it.  So what makes is special and unique?

Because it’s a show about frickin’ talking horses! With songs and dance routines! With magic! It’s the characters and the setting that makes it what it is, that makes it fresh and fun and original, even when it’s obviously a rip-off.

So there you have it. Don’t freak out if your idea is similar to someone else’s. Draw inspiration from other places all you want – just be unique in the way that you put it together.

 Don’t use talking, dancing, magical, brightly colored horses, though. I think that might have been done already.

What do you think about the idea of ‘ripping off’ other sources? Share your thoughts in the comments. 

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Some Good Advice on Writing

Well, my life is still busy, but I was reading my favorite websites the other day and saw this article by Nina Amir about writing a book.  Since I just recently started my own exercise routine, the author's comparison of writing to exercising really resonated with me. Check it out!

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So You Want to Write a Book? Just Do It!

Start with page one. Then write page two and so on. Before you know it, you’ll have a manuscript. As author Donald Murray once told America’s Writing Coach, Roy Peter Clark, “Remember: A page a day equals a book a year.”

I admit I’ve simplified the task a bit. There are the ideation and research that go into writing a book. You have to determine the structure and content. Some writers need a gestation period before they begin writing. And you may feel you need time to learn how to write a book. But the best way to become an author—actually the only way—involves producing a manuscript. You must write.

As the adage goes: Writers write. If you want to be a writer or an author, there’s no way around this fact.

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Check out the rest of the article at http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2015/03/so-you-want-to-write-a-book-just-do-it/

Share any thoughts or questions in the comments. 

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Hiatus...Sort of

Hello, everyone. I have a big writing project with a deadline that I am getting behind on, and so I need to step up my time commitment on that.  Unfortunately, time budgeting is a zero-sum game, which means that some other things have to go if I'm going to do this.

So, what this means is that I'm going to be doing a semi-hiatus for at least the rest of February and probably some into March. I'll still be doing Word-Craft Wednesdays and the Word of the Week, but Mondays and Fridays are temporarily on vacation. All being well, I'll go back to my regular posting schedule in April, but I'm going to have some big editing projects then, so I can't swear in a court of law that all will go back to normal.

I want to be able to have posts for you as often as possible, but as you can imagine, blogging takes a huge chunk of writing time and energy. So don't despair, if you're the type who's prone to do so (or if for some bizarre reason, not having posts from me would actually cause you to despair). I'll still be around! If you don't want to have check back to see whether I've posted something or not, feel free to subscribe and get notifications sent straight to your inbox.

See you on Wednesdays and Thursdays!

Writer's Block

Let’s talk about some ways to bust through writer’s block!

No, seriously.  I’m all ears.

I’ve had more than one request for covering the topic of dealing with writer’s block – but I’m afraid that it’s pretty much the blind reading the blind. Writer’s block is one of those mysteries I have yet to develop a solution for.  I’ve read countless articles, blog posts, books, etc. about how to overcome it, but I really haven’t found a solution that works for me, every time.  Here are a few of the things I have seen suggested, so feel free to give them a try.

• Exercise before you sit down to write
• Write while standing (put your notepaper or computer on a high counter)
• Write while sitting on an exercise ball instead of on a chair
• Brainstorm while exercising (this one works for me most frequently, when the exercise is walking)
• Think about something else for a while; clean house, watch a TV show, etc. before going back to your writing
• Work on a different writing project temporarily
• Try meditating or deep breathing exercises to relax and clear your mind
• Do a warm-up writing exercise
• Listen to music that motivates or inspires you
• Find a friend who can be a sounding board for ideas

I have personally had success with these in varying degrees. But a lot of times, writer’s block feels like a antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, where each type of ‘treatment’ works partially, but then results in a vengeful relapse.  Most frequently, I have success with walking around while brainstorming, trying to act out how scenes will go. Then, I have all of these great ideas…

…which somehow don’t make it through the keyboard.  Sometimes, I just sit and stare at the monitor.

Most of the time, I have project-specific writer’s block. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this might be the more common problem. There are some people who are of the opinion that if you have a long period of blockage on a specific project, then you need to dump it and move on to another, in the same way that you would dump a bad relationship. However, I think this is a bad policy.  It leads to a cycle of starting things and never finishing them, which has honestly been a problem for me my whole life.

My problem is that I tend to give up at the first sign of mental resistance, when perseverance would probably make a difference (in the same way it does with housework or chores).  This is especially crippling when I have true writer’s block – where I really can’t seem to write anything. But for when it’s just a specific project, I tend to work on frivolous side projects in an effort to break through the writer’s block on the main project. Sometimes, it works.

Usually, it doesn’t.

What this says to me is that perseverance is really the only way to actually get through writer’s block. There is one solution that tends to work, but it requires pushing past that resistance: fake it ‘til you make it. It seems disingenuous. You’re not writing from your soul! But let’s face it, if the soul isn’t writing when you need to be, then you need to take action.  You can’t edit a blank page, etc. etc.

All of this great advice won’t do anything for you unless you’re willing to try to crash through the brick wall yourself.  So that’s that. Can’t write? Write anyway! It seems to overlook the main problem, which is that you can’t write.

Why?

This is the real question. Why can’t you write? You’re capable of it, so what’s the issue? A lot of times, it goes deeper than that simple feeling of helplessness you have when you look at your computer screen.  This is where we get to talk about fancy psychological stuff.  Victoria Lynn Schmidt, author of the book “Book in a Month,” suggests that the reason we have writer’s block is because we actually are resisting the writing.  It’s not that the writing eludes us – it’s that we are subconsciously holding it back.

If you have a project that you really hate, it’s obvious where the resistance is coming from.  But what if it’s a project that you’re really passionate about? What then?

Well, what happens when you’ve finished writing something? You have to edit it. You have to critique it. You have to be mean to it. You’re going on a quest to find all of the flaws in the work you’ve done.  And, chances are, you’re going to have other people help you in this process, which is even worse.

In other words, when you finish a writing project, you are rewarded for your labor with even more grueling labor, and it can be really depressing.  Subconsciously, you think, “If I never finish this project, I’ll never have to criticize it.” This is really unproductive thinking. Criticizing it can’t be any worse than sitting there feeling miserable about the fact that you can’t write.

Schmidt suggests that if you find the true core of your writing anxieties, acknowledge and address that fear, then you will be able to break past the writer’s block. Once you’ve done that, then all of the tricks that I listed above should be able to help you.

But, it’s not a one-and-done process. You have to keep working on it, or it comes back.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that writer’s block doesn’t have any one single cure. It’s a constant process.  It doesn’t matter what method you use – the point is that you keep trying anyway.  Don’t resign yourself to it. 

I hope that this has helped some. Like I said, I’m all ears for methods of breaking through the block.

Maybe someday we’ll find the cure.

Have you tried any of the methods I listed above? How did they work out for you? Do you have a favorite writer’s-block-busting technique? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Time Management

Hi! Does everybody else know it is Wednesday?  I'm hoping not, because then no one will notice that it's supposed to be Word-Craft Wednesday, and then no one will notice that due to my poor time management skills, I won't have my post on third-person POV written.

Crud. You noticed.

So, since I hate to leave you without anything to read, I'm re-blogging my previous post about time management. It seems kind of appropriate. Don't worry, I'll actually read it myself, and hopefully it will remind me to actually make time in advance when it comes to important writing...like, you know, blog posts or whatever.

I promise I'll be back with all kinds of POV goodness next time.  We'll have Wednesday on a Friday! (Admittedly, this is not nearly as fun as having Friday on a Thursday.)

So. Without further ado, a little advice on managing your time as a writer.  Have a great Wednesday!

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Image courtesy of digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When it comes to being a writer, you have to deal with time management issues a lot.

If you’re a younger writer, in high school or college, you already have a lot of demands on your time.  Classes, homework, and extracurricular activities occupy a significant amount of your attention. Then, if you live at home, there are the chores that your parents insist you help out with.  If you’re at college, eventually you will have to deal with the fact that your dorm room is so messy that you couldn’t swear in a court of law that Jimmy Hoffa is not buried under your pile of junk. Plus, you probably have some friends or family who want to spend time with you, or your favorite show is on, or you want to catch up with all of the latest posts on lolcats or FunnyorDie.

If you’re an older writer, you probably have a full time job. You might be working on a post-graduate degree.  Possibly, you have kids.  You are solely responsible for taking care of your residence (unless you have a significant other or kids, but they make almost as much work as they help out with).  You have to do all or some of the shopping.  If you have a family or a significant other, there’s good chance that they’ll want to spend time with you, or your favorite show is on, or you want to catch up with all of the latest posts on lolcats or FunnyorDie, or, if you’re really sophisticated, you want to read the news.

Then, there are all the other things you want to do or might already be doing.  Say you want to get into an exercise routine.  Well, that’s at least another 30 – 45 minutes out of your day, or an hour if you’re taking some kind of class.  Maybe you want to pick up a musical instrument.  That’s an additional 30 minutes per day, if you really want to put practice into it.  Maybe you want to spend more time reading. If you want to get through a book in any decent amount of time, that’s going to be at least an hour a day, and maybe three or four hours on the weekend.

All of this in sixteen hours a day.  That’s already pretty stressful.

And you want to be writing on top of all of that?

When it comes to writing, I think that I and several of the writers that I know allow our writing to fall by the wayside before anything else.  Writing isn’t necessarily a priority, and even some of things we have to do are easy by comparison.  Exercising can be difficult, but you sure don’t have to concentrate as much while you’re doing it.  If you’re in school or work, you spend close to eight hours working your buns off on things that require a lot of concentration.  That can leave you drained.  What are you going to choose after that? Writing, or lolcats?

Probably lolcats, if that’s your thing.

Clearly, writing is difficult to make time for, at least once the thrill of a new project has worn off.  Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m speaking from my own personal experience and nobody else deals with this.  But I’m operating on a pretty strong hunch that I’m not the only one.

So how do you make time for writing? The same way you make time for anything else.  This requires planning ahead (something I’m not terribly good at).

First, set a goal of how many hours per week you’d like to work on your writing. The most important thing here is to be realistic.  If you have forty hours worth of school, work, or whatever, don’t set a goal of twenty hours a week on writing.  Depending on how busy you are, ten hours might still be too much. But if you can swing it, five hours will still get you quite a long way.  Try to budget some time every day, but if you have a specific day where you have more free time, plan to do the bulk of your work that day.

For example, let’s say that you have a lot of time on Saturday mornings, most of which you spend sleeping in.  Get up earlier (but still later than you wake the rest of the time) and put in two hours of writing between when you wake up and noon.  If your goal is five hours a week, now you only have to divide 3 hours between the other six days. That’s only thirty minutes a day. How much time do you spend dinking around on the internet?  Probably more than thirty minutes.  If you normally spend an hour on the internet, cut that down to 30 minutes and use the other 30 minutes for writing.

It’s not about abandoning other activities in favor of writing.  It’s about balancing out the other ‘time wasters’ like video games, internet browsing, or whatever your favorite time-suck activity is.  As the old saying goes, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”  You don’t want to take away your favorite activities, or writing will not be fun anymore.  But if you cut down on some of your favorite things to make room for writing, you will still be able to have fun and you’ll be more likely to actually write instead of putting it off.

Now, five hours is not a magic number.  The truth is that ten minutes of writing a day is better than no writing.  (I’m always trying to convince my guitar students of this when it comes to practicing their instrument.)  If you can only swing 60 minutes for the whole week, that’s better than none.  It will take you much longer to get projects finished, but if you hadn’t been writing at all, 60 minutes is in fact infinitely more.  One minute a week would be infinitely more.  Math is fun like that.

If you want to make more time for writing, it can be done.  It’s not about finding time for it, it’s about making time for it.  And no amount of time is too small, unless that time is zero.

You will eventually finish something in ten minutes per week.

It is impossible to finish something in zero minutes per week.

On the other hand, if your schedule varies, you might put in no minutes one week and 10 hours the next.  This is okay.  Nevertheless, you need to plan ahead.  Planning ahead can be a pain, but won’t it be worth it in the end?

Develop these skills now, while you’re young.  You won’t regret it.

How would you describe your current time management skills?  What would be a realistic goal for you to set, and how could you divide that based on your current schedule?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

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