Category Archives: Writing

Motivation and Writing Every Day

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Motivation’s a tricky thing.  Sometimes, it seems like staying motivated is the hardest part of writing.  Like when I’m stuck in a scene and three days into a migraine, or when my favorite author’s latest book just came out and it’s so much more interesting than what I’m writing.

I’ve tried various schemes to keep myself going.  For a while, setting a daily word count goal and reporting in every week to an online crit group worked.  I drafted The Null Prophet in twelve weeks that way, and it was great.  But straight word count goals don’t work for editing.  And what about the time spent plotting and researching for the next book?

I had a rockier time drafting Unborn, and I found I just couldn’t make the same word counts as before.  Instead of changing my goal, I kept beating myself up about it.  By the time I did change my goal, failing had become a habit.  All of these tricks are just mental games we play with ourselves, and this one had lost its power for me.

Editing Schedule

My failed editing schedule

After wallowing along for a while, I finally decided I needed a new trick last fall.  I Should Be Writing is a pretty good source for these, so I tried Mur’s “don’t break the chain” trick.  I printed a couple months’ worth of blank calendars, and I put a big green X through every day that I wrote.  No word counts, just a yes or a no.  And below the X, I kept a running count of how many days in a row I had written.  It worked for a little while, but every time I took a day off for a migraine or for my writing group, the chain would break, and it’s a little depressing when it never rises above 13.

In the new year, I tried giving myself a deadline.  Finish the revision by the end of March.  I made out a schedule and hung it on my whiteboard, but after an initial rush, I stalled out and fell behind.  March ended, with weeks still to go on my revision.

Turns out, these tricks only work if I never fail.

Well, I think I might have found one that works.  A couple ideas got mashed together in my brain, and instead of taking someone else’s trick whole, I custom tailored it to me.  Idea #1: Chuck Wendig wrote two posts on a writing plan and an editing plan, the basic idea of which is that you can set a very reasonable daily goal for each of these tasks (Chuck uses 350 words for writing and 5 pages for editing).  Idea #2: Mur Lafferty started talking about her friend Tony’s Magic Spreadsheet on I Should Be Writing, which combines a daily writing goal of 250 words with a weighted point system that rewards you for keeping up a long writing streak.

My Custom Magic Spreadsheet

My Custom Magic Spreadsheet

I mixed these two together to make my own version of the Magic Spreadsheet.  I have two goals: 250 words written or 1000 words edited (I write in Scrivener, so there are no page breaks).  When I feed in my numbers for the day, my spreadsheet calculates my combined progress, so if I only edited 500 words but I wrote 140, it says I met my goal and gives me my points for the day.  First day, one point.  Today, 42 points.  If I double my goal, I get double the points.  That’s my motivation to keep writing once I’ve hit 250, and I know it works, because several times I hit 350 or 400 words, and thought “Wow, I’ll get another 13 points if I just write a little bit more.”  And then it turns out I hit 700, and I’m so close to another 13 points, or 15, or 22…

The last feature of my spreadsheet may be the most important.  If I skip a day, I get no points and the streak starts over.  But if I write a little and don’t hit my goal, I don’t get any points, but the streak doesn’t change.  If I come home exhausted from my writing group and eke out a single sentence, I get to keep the streak alive.  I’ve had three days like that so far, and it’s probably the reason the spreadsheet is still working.  And just as soon as I get a handle on how quickly the points add up, I’ll start bribing myself with prizes when I hit the big targets.

Yes, I designed the spreadsheet to give me as many points as possible.  But it’s not cheating when I’m only playing against myself.  The points are just a sideline, anyway—the writing is the objective.  And right now, I’m at 18,594 words written and 13,804 edited.  Not bad for a silly mind game.

Staying Healthy as a Writer

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Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

One of the unavoidable hazards of writing is that it’s almost always a sedentary activity.  There are exceptions—Kevin J Anderson dictates his first drafts while hiking—but that kind of process doesn’t work for everybody, and all drafts eventually need to be read and edited.

I get a double dose.  My day job has me sitting in front of a computer for nine hours a day, and then I spend another hour in the car.  I’m a very visual person, so when my writing time comes around, I have to sit down again, and I spent most of my leisure time curled up with a book.  It worked for a while, but lately bad habits have been catching up with me.  For the last year or so, I’ve been in pretty much constant pain.  Back pain, neck pain, and I’m not even going to get into the chronic headaches and allergies.

This post is not about complaining.  Think of it as a public service announcement.  This kind of stuff is all too common, and you don’t want it to happen to you.

I guess the first thing you should know is that I’ve never been an active person.  I hear about people feeling energized when they’re done exercising, but it’s never happened to me.  I mostly just feel sore and tired, and if we’re talking aerobic exercise, sweaty and gross on top of it.  I’ve never had a weight problem, so I always regarded exercise as an unpleasant waste of time.  I mean, I knew it was good for me, but I never saw the benefits, and I never had enough time for things I wanted to do, much less something I disliked.

Bad idea, in case you were in doubt.

It’s been an excruciatingly slow process, identifying the problem and deciding that no, it’s not getting better on its own, and then figuring out what to do about it.  The pain started in my neck, so my first move was to change pillows, and then change again.  I may have to try a third pillow if this latest one doesn’t do the trick.  I’ve slowly become more aware of the strain placed on my body when I contort it into my habitual fetalesque sleeping position, and I’m trying to train myself into a more neutral posture.

The backaches snuck up on me.  The first acute pain happened about a year ago, bad enough to send me to the wellness center at work. They gave me an icepack and a prescription for muscle relaxant, and in a few days it was back to normal.  I figured I’d pulled it somehow, and went back to worrying about my tension headaches.  It wasn’t until last fall that the back pain became strong enough and constant enough to catch my attention again.

I got an ergonomic evaluation of my workstation.  I tried lumbar support pillows.  I finally started seeing a chiropractor, which at first made things worse, and then a little better.  But I didn’t see any real hope until I found the discipline to start doing yoga every morning.  I changed up my entire schedule in order to form the habit, but yoga’s a great gateway into exercise: low impact, minimal sweat, and I can do it on a mat in my living room where nobody can see me.

It’s slow going.  I’m definitely improving, but six weeks in, my back still hurts almost constantly.  The difference is, it’s dialed back from Something Is Really Wrong to Wow I Haven’t Used These Muscles in Forever.  And as I keep using them, I have faith that the pain will become less and less.

So, the point of all this is, take care of your body.  For years, I coveted that half hour a day as time to write or relax, but when you’re not healthy, it gets damn hard to do either.  When the body gets sluggish, so does the mind.  There’ve been a lot of days this past year when I didn’t write at all.  Now, slowly, that’s starting to improve as well, and I’m happy to say that I’m on an 18-day writing streak (and counting!).

Sometimes, giving up a little writing time really can help you write better.

Happy New Year

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Happy new year

Happy new year (Photo credit: Amodiovalerio Verde)

Happy New Year!

I’ve been kind of quiet lately, most of which I can blame on the holidays (Three weeks off work!  Snow!  My annual Christmas cold!), but not entirely.  This wasn’t intended to be the kind of blog where I talk about everything that’s going on in my life, and unfortunately, most of my energy this winter has been spent dealing with Things That Are Not Writing.

I don’t really go in for New Year’s resolutions, but I did take a little time to think about my writing goals for the year: finish my rewrite of Unborn by April 1, get a first draft of my next novel (working title: North) finished by October 1.  It also seemed like a good time to reassess the website.  Breaking news: I’m probably not cut out for a regular, post-a-week schedule.

And you know what?  I think that’s fine.

When I started the blog, I read a lot of advice, most of which focused on Building a Platform, i.e. how to get as big an audience as possible, and of course they all stressed the importance of getting good content out to your readers on a regular, predictable basis.  But that was never really the point for me.  I never expected my blog readers to be potential fans who would start clamoring for my work before I’ve ever been published.  No, I’m pretty sure the readers I’ve managed to attract are all writers like me.  (And family.  Hi Dad!)

Ultimately, the blog is for me.  There’s no point in writing posts just to be writing.  I’ll save that for my fiction, thanks.  The internet at large, and the writing community in particular, don’t need me regurgitating the same old advice, retreading the same tired topics.  Instead, I’m hoping to dig a little deeper.  I read constantly, but I tend to get lazy, and not spend much time thinking about any one book or article.  One of the reasons I started the blog was to encourage myself to slow down and establish a coherent opinion on Things I Think Are Important.  I know myself.  That’s not going to happen once a week.  But over the course of 2013, I’m hoping it’ll start to happen more often.

Advice for New Writers

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Overwhelmed yet?

A couple weeks ago, my mom asked me for advice on setting up a writers group for some of her students. She’s a language arts teacher at a small middle school, maybe 60 or 70 kids total, and at least a dozen are really into writing. She asked about how my own writing group functions, but with kids that age the emphasis really needs to be on encouragement rather than critique. It got me thinking about how the advice that will work for a given writer depends so much on where they are in their journey.

For the very new and the very young, for those who may not be sure this writing gig is really for them, I say: write. Don’t worry about if it’s any good. All the craft in the world won’t help if you don’t love it. Writing is hard. Take some time at the start to be sure it’s what you want, to strengthen your resolve; it’s the only thing that will get you through the tough spots.

For the new and determined first-time novelist: forget about publishing. I know it’s super-easy these days and everybody’s doing it, but put it out of your mind and focus on actually writing the book. Lots of people start writing a novel, but it takes real determination and hard work to finish.

This is also the stage when a new writer will start to need help. I’ve been doing this for almost four years now, and it’s tempting to make a list of every book and website and podcast I’ve ever found helpful: Everything You’ll Ever Need to Know About Writing. But that’s the last thing a newbie needs. Reading about how to do something doesn’t automatically translate into skill; that takes time and practice. When a writer’s knowledge far exceeds their skill to put it into practice, well, that is frustrating. That’s when they’re most in danger of tearing their hair out and ripping up their manuscript and quitting, because their writing sucks, and they’ll never be able any good, and what’s the use of even trying.

So, experienced writers: resist the temptation to drown newbies in your font of knowledge.

Newbies: resist the urge to buy all the writing books and read all the writing blogs and never get around to actually writing your book. Pick one or two to get you started. Focus on what you’re having trouble with, and leave the rest for later. When writing feels like a breeze, you know you’re ready for another dose of learning.

A final piece of advice: all the so-called “rules” of writing are made to be broken. There are as many ways of writing as there are writers, so if something doesn’t work for you, ignore it.

Dealing with Hope

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I know, I know.  The line’s supposed to be “dealing with rejection.”  But to be honest, the internet had me pretty well braced for it by the time I got around to asking for critiques, let alone querying.  The first couple times did sting a little, but I got over it surprisingly quickly.  Getting back to writing and keeping things in perspective really does help.

Photo © Linnéa Marks

Hope, now.  Hope’s a trickier beast.  It’s not quite acceptance—which I’ve heard comes with a whole new set of troubles—but it’s definitely not rejection.  It’s when you get that first request for a partial manuscript, and then a second, and then a full.  I don’t know about anybody else, but that’s when I start to imagine what if.

What if she really likes it?  I’ve heard stories about agents calling right away, excited to read the full manuscript.  What if that happens to me?  What if he offers representation?  What if they both do, how will I choose?  And then my mind goes spinning away into a fantasy-future where the agent of my dreams calls to say she loves my book, and what else am I working on, and she’d like to offer representation, and then my book goes to auction…

I have kept myself awake at night, more than once, because I am unable to stop my mind from playing through the entire hypothetical conversation.  Or the scenario where such and such editor just happens to be at the convention and I somehow become an amazing conversationalist and he loves my pitch and wants to buy my book.

Right.

It’s good to be prepared, but in the long run, dwelling on these kind of overinflated hopes will end up hurting more than the rejection ever could, because they’ll make any modest success look like it’s just not good enough.  I think I’m keeping my actual expectations pretty reasonable.  I’ve seen the statistics, I know how long it can take and how few writers really make it big.  Still, sometimes I can’t help but dream of the what ifs…

And then I dig back into my drafting, or editing, or synopsis-writing.  Nothing like a little fantasy to ground me in the realities of a writer’s life.