Mental Swine Flu

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Where in the world have I been? Well, I didn't really go anywhere, I just took one of my communication vacations. Before the age of the internet I never felt that they were necessary. I used to call up friends all of the time, go out every weekend, had to have the television on in the background even if I wasn't watching it.  

Something to do with the constantly plugged in reality that we live in now has changed all of that. As I've said before, I don't have a television. Whereas getting a telephone call used to be a treat, I now find them annoying. And going out? HA! I'm actually going to be ditching out on a Reno bachelor party because I'd rather save the money for a camera. Obviously, things have changed.  

As I endeavored to reach out to every possible writing vein I could, I found that I submerged myself in communication. At night I'd have a conversation with you via the blog, during the day there was chatting with crit partners, then I started up the critique group that crashed and burned, but while it was going I had three chapters a week extra to critique and then there was infighting and head butting and headaches. When I finally put my foot down and said “that's it, this isn't going to work,” and took the group out to the back forty and put it down, I'd had enough.  

The choice at that point was either to try and keep struggling on with everything else even though I wasn't 100% or just stopping altogether. I guess it was kind of like being sick. Doctors don't usually prescribe that you stop doing one thing but continue doing everything else when you're laid up with swine flu. They tell you to sit your ass in bed and don't get up until you're better. Well that's just what I did, only I did it mentally. And you know what, I think it worked. I feel much better now.  

And there's your thought as I return to blogging after something like a two week hiatus. Take a real break from whatever it is that is wearing on you, not a fake one. The fake one's don't get rid of the bug.  

Back-Burners

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How many things do you have on the back-burner? Me? Tons. I had to go out and get extra stoves just so that I could have more back-burners to put things on.  

Take a moment to consider how many things you have on back-burners. Right them all down. Make a big long list, (you might want to do this in a word processor). Then organize that list, not from most important to least, but from most frustrating to least.

For instance, I have dogs that keep getting off of their tethers and wreaking havoc (still can't find my other hiking shoe). While finishing off the inside of the house in preparation for winter is more important, I'm going to focus on getting the dog kennel done first because it is a constant source of irritation.

One by one, pull those pots and pans on the back burners up to the front. Focus on them one at a time, dedicate time and energy to completing one project rather than simply making progress, and I think you'll find the stove-top of your mind a little less messy and a lot more manageable.

Tomorrow I'll reveal my plan for going forward with the blog. Stay tuned.

Writers Are Known For Their Writing

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I grew up with a man that can do anything. When I was little he was a bus mechanic, I got a little older and he started building houses, older still and he went back to college to become a science teacher. My dad knows way too much about politics, dietary health, and exercise. When other dads were buying their first computers my dad was bringing home the components so that he could build his.  

That same can do attitude has haunted me through much of my life. There's never been something that someone else can do that I looked at and didn't think, “Anything you can do I can do better.” Some might call that conceit, but I think it's a great attitude to have in life, just so long as you don't let it go to your head.

I honestly believe that anyone can do anything they put their minds to. It's not that I think I'm amazing, it's that I really don't think that there is much that separates two people in what they do aside from the time that they've spent working on it. And there in lies our problem. Time.

You see, each one of these new tasks that I take on requires an investment in time. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not the time spent learning something new would be better spent furthering progress in something you already know. Concert pianists don't learn their trade, get some diploma, and then stop learning and practicing.

If you want to be the best at something, or even noteworthy, you have to dedicate yourself to it. There is no special Jack-Of-All-Trades award presented every year. Thomas Jefferson might have been a great politician, architect, and thinker, but he only became recognized for the second two because of his dedication to the first.

So as you're getting ready to code and design your own website and blog, then quickly pick up Photo Shop so that you can design your book cover, and oh, while you're at it become a master at digital photography so that you can shoot all of your own photos, try to figure out how much of that time might be better spent on honing the craft of writing. You know, that thing on which all the others hinge upon.

If you have the money, it might be a wiser decision to find someone who has chosen one of those aforementioned fields and made it their own. Especially when it comes to marketing. Take it from a graphic designer turned carpenter turned writer turned. .  . okay, so I don't practice what a I preach. Sue me. But wait till after I take the Bar. (Kidding)  

Valuing Your Freelance Work

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So many of us talk about valuing life, but I don't think that we really do. As a matter of fact, I think that most people, at least in the states, see the life of another person as rather worthless in practice. Sure, when we stop and think about it we would say the opposite, but our actions speak otherwise. 

This post had been on the back burner until I read something by a successful author who was trying the self-publishing route. Said author (who shall remain nameless to protect MY safety) talked about his own venture into self publishing. He gave a long and interesting list of expenses and headaches suffered along the way. Freelancer after freelancer bailed on him at the last minute for flaky reasons. But two stood out.

The first was an artist who was approached to do the cover. While not all of the details were given, concepts were produced, a specific design chosen, revisions were made; but in the end the author felt like it was going to take too long and be too expensive. So the author made his own cover and paid for some touch ups to be done to it. As for the original artist, no money is said to have gone his way.

Our second freelancer, “turned out to be a bargain. I [sic] friend at a publishing company recommended a freelancer who was nine months pregnant. She did not go on vacation and did the job for $20 per hour—about $160 total. Earlier bids for typesetting had been between $1000 and $2000.”

Now, if you're waiting for the part where the author says that he gave her a bonus because he felt both bad about taking advantage of a pregnant woman, and grateful for the services she provided . . . don't hold your breath.

We All Do It

Kind of makes you cringe, doesn't it? But this author is actually a really good guy. He seems to do his best at helping out other authors, in fact the whole point of him sharing his ordeal was to steer others away from the same mistakes. He shares information freely, and in the end only hopes that you'll pick up one of his books. He's an artisan just like you and I, but he's also got bills to pay, a family to take care of, probably even a mortgage or two. If he can get a break, he'll take it even if he does have enough money tucked away on the side to experiment with self-publishing.

This is an unfortunate fact of life, folks. If you don't value your time, no one else will do it for you. In fact, they will knowingly take advantage of you if they think they can get a “bargain.” These same people may very well be members of the artistic community just like you and I. They want their work and time valued and paid for appropriately, but when it comes time to doing the same in kind there's a good chance that it's not going to happen.

I know this sounds a bit pessimistic, but it is Friday, and this is snark. Along with that, this is true in many cases. If you don't stand up for yourself, you will be taken advantage of. I was going to use examples from my own life, from being a freelance graphic designer and doing construction. People that know me are always asking me to bid jobs for them hoping I'll do it on the cheap, and frankly, I usually do. The most recent one I bid in at nearly half the going rate which was still too high for this person. Rather than cutting my price, I wished them luck on getting the job done right.

What You’re Paying For

You see, we have to remember, you're not just paying for the person's time, you are paying for the years and years worth of study and practice that went into them being able to do what they can do. A person might look at a job quote and choke at the price compared to the number of hours spent doing it. Well you're not paying for the hours; you're paying for the experience.

Take a person that knows nothing of the craft and ask them to do the job for you. See how long it takes them and what kind of quality you get out of it. Unfortunately, people don't think in those terms. They think in terms of a Walmart bargain culture where cheap prices come at undervaluing the work used to create said product. They want the best, (or what looks like the best) but they don't want to pay for it.

So as you head out in your freelance ventures, keep that in mind. Do the appropriate market research. Know what price your quality of work is going for, and bid appropriately. Then stick to your guns. It's rather tough to ask for more money after the job is done.

If you really need the money, then you have to do what you have to do. But consider this, in the above typesetting example, if we take the going rate for the job as being $1500, that poor woman would have to do nearly ten jobs before she made what she was worth. On the contrary, had she held out for one person to pay her the appropriate wage, she’d have the same amount of money and would have done one tenth the work.

Please keep this in mind when you become rich and famous and can afford to pay people what they are worth. I know I can’t, that’s why I do everything myself.

 

Just as a side note, if that driveway looks like a good job to you, please don’t ever touch concrete. EVER. Don’t even look at it. In fact, I’d suggest not walking on it either.

 

 

Baby Steps to Completing Your Story

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I've never understood spring cleaners. The sun is out longer, the air is sweet with wildflowers, why in the world would you want to be inside cleaning? I'm a fall cleaner. The way I see it, I'm about to be stuck inside for a very long time, hiding away from short days filled with rain and long, cold nights. There's no better time to get the house organized if you ask me.  

With my wife heading back to school and our son now able to entertain himself, this stay at home dad finally has time to clean and organize. But oh my what a daunting task. It's overwhelming the amount of work that needs to be done just to get it to the point of being maintainable. Then a lesson from Your Own Worst Enemy sprang to mind.

In the book the author talks about how we often don't start projects because they appear too large to tackle. He suggests that you work preemptively and put things away as you go. One of the core lessons is, “never put off for tomorrow what can be done today.” But let's say it's too late for preventative measures. What then?

That's when you break things up. Take the house, for example. I started in the kitchen on my wife's first day back to work. We had a sink piled high with dishes, with even more dishes left around the house. They'd built up over the last few days because we were trying to conserve hot water because the propane tank was almost empty and we were waiting for the gas man to come fill it back up. Well, he came and went, and with him went my excuses.

So rather than looking at the whole house when considering my house cleaning project, I decided to look at just the kitchen. Beyond that, I looked at just the kitchen sink. Once those dishes were done and drying, I turned my attention to a counter. Then I moved to another counter. Each time thinking to myself, “Well, I'll just do this one spot, even if I do just this one spot the whole rest of the kitchen will look a lot better for it.”

After the counters were cleared, scrubbed, and reorganized I looked at the floor. Oh how it needed to be scrubbed. But there was so much of it. “What if I just do this section right here? I can always do more tomorrow.” And so I did just that section. Today I scrubbed all the rest of the floor and worked on another counter. Just a few small things, a little extra work each day, and I'm starting to catch up.

When I sat down to write tonight I thought about all the things that I had to do, the blog, Spark, revising my flash piece, revising another short, the novel, so much to do. But I took the lesson of the kitchen and applied it to writing. “What can I work on that doesn't require a huge time commitment?”

My crit partner (see adjacent photo) had shot me back a crit on my flash fiction piece. I'd been putting off looking at it because I was dreading rewriting things and didn't think that I could find the right words. So I started out by saying, “Alright, I'll just look at the line edits. I won't worry about rewriting anything or coming up with new prose, I'll simply go through it and clean up the comments, errors, and anything else that is small and requires little thought.” 

What resulted was very satisfying. Essentially, I moved from one counter to the next and then to a third, made my way to the floors . . . by the end of my the time that I thought was too short to work on anything I'd finished my revision.

It's often difficult to look at writing in this way, especially when it comes to novels. They can seem so oppressive. But what if we break our writing down? We take the novel and split it into three acts, then split those acts into chapters, the chapters into scenes, the scenes into character exchanges. Suddenly we don't have this oppressive novel looming over us, we have how Silas looks at Jan the first time he meets her. That leads us to consider how Jan reacts to his look? So on and so forth until a scene is completed, then a chapter, and so on.

It's just a subtle change in the way we look at things, but it's one that can make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting things done and staying caught up.

Here's your assignment for today (since I don't do writing prompts): Take whatever you've been avoiding working on and break it down. Say it's submitting. Figure out all the steps that need to occur before you can submit your story and then pick the easiest one and do it. Let's say it's finding a single publication to send off to. Once you've done that you might as well open a document and type the header for a cover letter. Come to think of it, you've pretty much got the experience section already figured out, might as well do that too. See if that doesn't snowball. Who knows, you might get through this little exercise and find that tomorrow's small task is going to be getting to the post office to mail a query.

The Last Five Minutes of Writing

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You’re writing along, the words are flowing, one eye watches for typos while the other watches the clock in your taskbar. Not much time left before you leave for that appointment. If you can just keep typing, fingers speeding along across the keyboard, you can get out the rest of your thoughts, and beat the clock. 

More often than not, this does not work. You hit save and rush off to other things promising yourself that you will get right back to your story as soon as you’re done. But then one of the kids needs help with their homework, the dog managed to escape from the yard, and the toilette clogged while you were out and overflowed turning your bathroom into an amusement park fountain filled with 2000 Flushes blue water.

Days pass, maybe even weeks, and you finally sit back down to pick up where you left off. Only one problem, you don’t remember which way you were headed when you left off. You stare at that blinking cursor and the words that come before it and wonder, “What the hell was I thinking?”

That’s exactly the predicament I found myself in recently. It’s that special case of actually having something planned out before you were cut short, not the more common case of running into a wall.

I find that the only way to get back into the story is by reading over it again, lining up all of the elements of the story so that they are fresh in my mind. It’s something that you have to be careful with because if you’re not careful you’ll start revising things. Once you start down that path you open yourself up to a whole host of concerns, completely changing the direction of the story, getting stuck in a cycle of continuous revisions that deny further progress of the storyline, running out of time to get actual writing done.

If you know ahead of time that you are going to get to sit down and write later on in the day, I suggest printing out your WIP so that you can read through it during those mundane moments on the train or while waiting for your car to be worked on (like I’m doing at this very moment, though I chose to write a post with my spare time). This maximizes our writing time so that we aren’t spending a huge chunk of it rereading when we could be writing.

It also limits the amount of revision we can do. I find it far more difficult to get caught up in serious revisions when I don’t have the magical ‘delete’ key at my disposal. And while I do have the back of the page available for more additions and rewrites, I generally tend to stick to the margins.

Another helpful tip is to take preventative measures. While we can’t be sure when life will interrupt us, or how well the writing will go, if we know that we have to stop at a certain time, take those last five to ten minutes to free-write your remaining thoughts. Don’t pay attention to spelling, grammar, punctuation, just write. Send your internal editor on his coffee break and let the thoughts flow.

S needs to get to hospital going to wrong oone. Meets strange old man tells himhe is going in the wrong direction somethinginside doesn’t agree. like B is trying to tell him something, it is drawn to J. Moment of crisis, what should S do? Follow logical directions or follow the internal calling? Moves to follow directions but the pulling inside turns him around.

That's how the last paragraph of my WIPs usually look when I come back to them later on. Just a bunch of rambling thoughts poured out of my head and onto the screen. (Note: I have no idea what that image says, I swiped it from some obscure corner of the net)

And so on. It’s an example of what I should have written last week when I had to stop working on Spark. I was sure I was going to get right back to it. But life is filled with uncertainties. Granted, it might not make complete sense, (okay, so it doesn’t really make any sense, life or my rambling) but having something to start with is much better than nothing, especially when you’re staring at a blinking cursor at the bottom of a page with the white pit of nothing hanging below it.

Beware the Writing Prompt

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Ah, the writer’s favorite time wasting technique. The perfect way to dodge progress: writing prompts. We own books filled with them, join message boards where we chomp at the bit waiting for the next one to be posted, some of us even take the Writing Excuses guys seriously when they prompt us to “write a story in which you kill Sauron in every chapter.”

We convince ourselves that we are bettering our craft. Practice makes perfect, right? Although practice does indeed lead to something like perfection there comes a point when you have to pull off your warm-up gear and step out onto the pitch (sorry, soccer reference, for the many Americans in the group, that’s what the Brits call a soccer field).

Now, let me point out that I do indeed realize that different people write for different reasons. Some write just to be heard, others write for the joy of it, fanfic folk frequently flock to their forums (I sooooo could not miss out on that alliteration) because they want to continue journeys, whereas I, and I’m guessing most of you have this same motivation, want to see my name in print, to share my thoughts and words with as many people as possible. I want to bring about some form of change in the reader, in the world. Many of these snarky rants are directed at those who think as I do, so if that’s not you I suggest you stop reading this because I’m probably going to offend you.

Consider yourself warned.

Of course, there are different kinds of prompts. For instance, when they come from me, they are obviously of great literary value . . . . Anyone buying that? Alright, seriously, when I propose a writing prompt I am more or less offering up a different way of looking at something. I’m usually trying to understand my characters better, often in a piece that I may have stalled out on. I don’t necessarily intend for them to be done, I just want you to look at something of your own in a different way. The trouble with many writing prompts is that they have nothing to do with your current work in progress (WIP).

Let’s look at some from “A Writer’s Book of Days” by Judy Reeves. (I tend to read these in an airy voice that floats on wisps of marijuana smoke, incents and the romantic memories of flower covered hills in springtime)

• January 1: Write about Sunday afternoon.
• February 15: Write about a brief encounter.
• April 9: You’re asleep. You’re not at home.
• May 24: Write about something you see every day.

I’ll stop there. What in the world do those prompts have to do with our goal of getting published? They’re just an excuse to write. But those are just the prompts, right? The rest of the book must be filled with great information on “how” to write, riiiiight? Not so far as I can tell. The entire book seems dedicated to this fluffy bunny crap.

“What’s the big deal, David? Like you said, it’s just practice.”

No, it’s a distraction. In fact, it is an entire year of your life dedicated to distraction if you follow this book. Add it up, the time spent checking the forum or reading Judy’s musings before you start your prompt, add the writing of the prompt itself, and then, more than likely, if you submit it somewhere for others to read, you’ll go back and edit it before you post. How much of your WIP could you have finished in that time? How much could have been edited? How many markets could have been researched?

It’s an excuse to avoid your WIP. It’s “I’ll get started on my story just as soon as I finish this writing prompt.” And then the next day, it’s the same thing. We only have so much time in a day. If we spend our best hours cranking out pieces on what we did on Sunday, or how we felt when we slept someplace that wasn’t home, our real writing, that world changing stuff that we want to get done, doesn’t get done. Or worst, it’s weakened because we’ve already used so many good words on describing something we see everyday.

I mean, seriously, how many collections of writing prompts do your favorite authors put out? Have you ever heard of any of them actually using them? The Writing Excuses guys offer them every week, and they’re often nonsensical. I’d venture to guess that they don’t take them seriously because they don’t expect us to take them seriously. Real writers put out collections of short stories, not collections of “What I did on Sunday” (unless it’s a collection of Tuesdays with a guy named Morrie but of course not even that is a collection of Tuesdays).

The point here is, real writers write. If you went into work every day and told your boss that before you could actually start working you had to practice working first, he’d fire your ass. More than likely, when you got that job, you didn’t know what you were doing. Most of us go through “on the job training” because we learn best by doing. So spend your practice time actually doing as opposed to practicing it. Or as one of my professors once put it, “Those who talk about doing, often don’t. Those who do, simply do.”

Now then, your writing prompt for today is: Write a story in which a character finds the meaning of life through a series of writing prompts.  

A Tip on Getting Back into Writing

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There’s something about any creative profession, especially when done from home, that let’s those around us think that they can interrupt us whenever they see fit. I’m trying to understand it better myself in hopes to figure out how to head it off at the pass. 

You’ll be in the middle of a scene, words flowing smooth like honey, a steady stream of golden excellence when all of a sudden, “Did you hear me?”

You shake your head, as though hearing things. “What?”

“I asked if you’d . . . .” And it really doesn’t matter what comes next, it can be anything. The problem is when we turn back from this conversation and look at the screen again, we find that train of thought thoroughly smashed into the side of a mountain (did I just mix metaphors?) Oh the carnage.

It’s at this point that we sigh, look at our taskbar and think, “Might as well check my email.”

Our loved ones don’t understand why we get so cranky with these distractions. They think it some flaw in our artistic nature that makes us volatile. But in all honesty, if you were to call them at work every five minutes to ask what they wanted for dinner, then to tell them about an interesting story you saw on the net about a woman who saw Jesus in a tub of Crisco, then to ask what they were doing that weekend, then to ask if they could hold the baby, then to ask if, . . . they would go nuts and start screaming their bloody heads off. “I’m at work. You can’t call me every five minutes. It’ll have to wait until I get home.”

But we aren’t at work, are we? We’re already at home. If we’re not getting paid for what we’re writing it adds another complication because no one sees potential profit as pay, they see it as a hobby, and frankly, it is. It remains a hobby until we turn it into a business. So in that respect we have to learn to shoulder some of the irritation.

No matter how you try to explain it to them, they either don’t understand, or simply forget. This is why I try to write late into the night when everyone’s asleep. Of course that draws complaints about improper sleeping patterns, but I can put up with that if it means that I can get out a complete thought without it being interrupted. Besides, I also tend to stop on my own when the baby is around. If he comes to the door and hangs out there, “Ba ba ba baaaaa!” (no, he’s not trying to say bottle, he’s breast fed) I’ll often stop what I’m doing to hold him or play with him because I know he’s not going to be doing this for long.  

One of the methods that I’ve come up with for getting back into my writing is to have several documents open at the same time. This very entry came about because of an interruption during my Fatal Flaw post. I was nearly at the end of it when my Step Mum, who was over to take the little guy for the day, came over to the office asking for me to come and give my son a kiss goodbye, then to comment on the progress on the garage again, then to comment about how nice it was outside and how I should get out and get to work, all of which occurred after her telling us about her latest attempt at matchmaking, and talking about my son’s shoes and needing me to find him another shirt despite her knowing where they were and so on and so forth, so that by the time it got to the “come give your son a kiss,” part, I was on my last nerve. When I sat down to finish the post, I had no idea what I had been talking about or where I was going with it. The entire post would have to be reread before I could continue writing.

What I did instead was open a new document and titled it “Interruptions.” As writers we often have several projects going at once. Articles for magazines, short stories, a novel or two, a blog we have to keep up with. If we keep several of those things going at the same time, when we stall out on one, we can jump to another. Once you stall out on that one, switch back to the last one and you just might find that the honey has thawed and is flowing once more.

Life it seems is a grand juggling act. The more things you’ve got in the air the more “oooo”s and “aaaaaah”s you’ll get from your spectators. And you’ll probably make more money too when it comes time to drop something into the hat.

Do you guys and gals have any special restarting habits? What do you do with interruptions? No really. I want to know. Comments in the top right corner of the post.

(Picture snagged from http://www.rubengazki.com/stage/)

When to Write: or adapting with life

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As anyone who’s read this blog from the beginning knows, I have a little ritual when it comes to writing.  Briefly, it involves a dark room, movie soundtracks and classical music, lit candles, and it being late at night so that my wife and little one are off to bed. But life is anything but static, and I’ve found myself in a writer’s funk for a good long while.

It’s not that I haven’t been getting any writing done at all. I’ve just been getting very little writing done other than the blog. And as my crit partner pointed out, the blog isn’t supposed to be the main focus (saucy left leg).

The change seems to have to do with changes in sleep patterns, most specifically those of my wife and child who have been sleeping in later and therefore going to bed later. Not too late, it’s not much different than when I was trying to rock my son to sleep when he was an infant. I’m still getting around to writing at about the same time, I’m just too drained from the day to do any writing.

My mood reminds me of when I was working as a signmaker by day and doing freelance graphic design by night. I couldn’t generate ideas at night because I’d spent my best hours during the day at my job. That job happened to be for a tyrant that I loathed, and didn’t help my mood any when it came to giving up that vital creativity to something other than what I was excited about. Mind you, I don’t feel like I’m working for a tyrant right now, just drained when it comes time to write. I’ll sometimes lie down on the office floor to quickly “rest” my eyes only to wake up an hour or two later in much worse shape than before.

I’ve decided that I need to find a way to get those good hours back and give them to writing. My solution: get up earlier rather than stay up later.

That might sound like a simple thing to a lot of people, but those people obviously don’t know me very well. I’m a night owl for one, and I also love sleeping in. I’ve always been that way. Somehow my body has changed its internal clock on me. I’ve found myself waking with the sun, going around the house to open or close windows and the like, and then heading back into bed and making myself fall to sleep. Then I thought, what if I just stay up and write while everyone else is still snoozing?

So far, so good. Anyone that has been paying attention to those rather static progress bars at the top of the blog, will notice that yesterday Spark’s status bar jumped forward a little bit. That has to do with not only the use of mornings to write, but also using the quiet time to focus on my story and what needs to happen. As I hoped would happen my imagination worked to fill the space left by the silence. It did so time and again during road trips this weekend going to different family events.

In conclusion, writing is not a Catholic mass; you don’t have to go through the exact same steps each time in order to call on the spirit of your story. In fact, sometimes you have to do the exact opposite.

 

 

Focus

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One of the things that I’ve been working on lately with regards to my writing life is focus. Of course, I haven’t tackled the other issue related to writer’s block, fear, but I’m getting there. For right now let’s focus on … focus.

 

As I’ve noted before, the first thing that I got to work on was creating a writing space, complete with flickering candles and music cued to set the scene of what I’m working on. Quite often I play the scores from movies, sometimes I go with straight classical, and then there are the times when I just want to hammer out the prose and I go with electronica. I can never seem to write with words being sung in the background as I find those words often crop up in what I’m trying to write.

 

Then there is Tai Chi, the ancient art of fighting in slow motion. Just kidding, don’t tell my Sifu that I said that. But I’ve found that, aside from the health benefits, it has really helped me to bring peace to my mind before I sit down and write. You spend the entire time focusing on breath and the memorization of steps. You can’t help but forget your troubles. And there are folks from all age groups in the class, so it is very accessible to writers both young and old.

 

The Tai Chi also relates to something that one of my writing group partners from NaNoWriMo had suggested, and that was physical activity jumpstarting the writing process. For her it is getting up and dancing, but I’m not much of a dancer, witnesses or no. For you it could be yoga, jumping jacks, maybe even a little cleaning. There’s something about getting the blood pumping and oxygen circulating that helps one think clearly. Just don’t go overboard to the point of exhaustion and “I need a short nap before I can write.”

 

So working on focusing was something that was already in the forefront of my mind when I happened to catch NPR’s Marketplace and an interview with Winifred Gallagher about her new book “Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life.” It was a very interesting interview that you can read or listen to here. She talks about the need for humans to realize that not only can we only focus on one complex task at a time, but that we also have a limited amount of focus that we can spend from day to day and in life overall. She asserts that, “(y)ou have enough attention for a 173-billion bits of information in your whole life. It's life money; it's like cognitive cash. And you've got to spend it carefully.”

 

She suggests that when you are sitting down to get serious work done, you turn off all distractions, cell phones, pagers (does anyone still have those), email popups, the internet, anything that might distract you from what you’re focusing on and get down to work. Doing so will free you up to be the most productive that you can be. She would like us all to aim for 90 minutes of uninterrupted time. The idea is that we can only focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking is a myth. What you’re doing is paying attention to one thing and then jumping to the next while you ignore the first and vice-versa. And if you really pay attention to how multitasking works, you’ll notice that when you try to go back to the first thing, it takes you a moment because you’ve derailed your thought process.

 

(If you’d like to hear me make a snarky comment about her detractors on national radio, tune in to Marketplace on May fourth, 2009 and catch the mail section. They rang me up and had me read a comment that I posted to the site so that they could play it on air during their mail montage Tuesday.)

 

This has been echoed before on Writing Excuses when they’ve talked about habits. As writers we have a tendency to think of things that need more research, and being that we do our work on computers, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of surfing the net while doing that research. “Well, I found the name of the islands that the U.S. conducted their nuclear bomb experiments on, but while I’m in this window I might as well check to see if anyone has commented on my most recent Facebook status,… and check my email,… and look up names from medieval England,… and check my calendar,… and, you get the point.

 

The point of all of this is: stop kidding yourself. If you want to create something great, or in my case, passable, you need to focus.

 

So here’s the question: What do you do to help you focus? What’s your routine? Better yet, what traps do you fall into that steer you away from the task at hand? Please share so that we can all learn from each other. After all, that’s what this blog is all about, sharing in the learning process that is writing. 

My son, the ultimate distraction going for a ride in his new red wagon along the canal and the family farm.

The Dreaded Outline turned Toolbox

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Those few passersby might have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. It’s because of not having adequate time and because of guilt. The time excuse I’m sure anyone with a child can understand. The guilt issue might require a little explanation.

Even this lovely writing scene was interrupted by an emergency,

"Aiden's learning to crawl," episode.

 

You see, I’ve been stuck with my writing. For the past month I was trying to get my rewrite of “Covers Can't Hide You” done so that I could submit it to my Crit group. If I don’t get a lot of writing done, I don’t feel like I should be posting much on the blog. I feel sort of like a hypocrite sitting here telling others, “write write write,” while I’m trudging through my own work. Which brings us to the point of this post.

This image pilfered from sharirobinson.com

Having been gone from my novel for so long I find myself needing to reenter it. What was flowing nicely before has suddenly grown murky and stagnant. So what do I do? Normally I would reread what I’d already written, all 20,000 words of it in this case, and dive back in. However, that’s dangerous for a few reasons. First, there’s the constraint of time. Second, I run the risk of going crazy with revisions as I am reading, (because I have done this in the past with other projects). And third, I have to try and keep track of all of that information in my head. As the story progresses, the amount of information that I am trying to keep track of is getting overwhelming.

 

That led me to a decision to try something new. First, I decided to start from the end. In the Writing Excuses podcast they spoke to this point once upon a time. Brandon has always started his books with an ending in mind and then written to it. Dan, who used to have very weak story endings, just winged it. He has now gone to Brandon’s way of thinking and finds that it produces a much better end product. So I figured, what the hay, I’ll try it too.

 

But in trying to get the ending down I found that I needed to poor over everything that I know about the two worlds and all the characters inhabiting them. This led be back around to one of my original problems, keeping track of it all. So, I decided to try another first for me, outlining.

 

So the first thing I did was trolled the net trying to find what an outline actually looks like. Is it that Roman numeral thing we learn in school, is it something more organic, are their specific things that definitely should be in it? Well, those answers are not all that easy to find. I found several websites dealing with the issue and each of them in their own way and none of them gave a visual example (I’m a visual learner).

 

As fate would have it, Dave Farland sent out a kick in the pants dealing with this very issue while I was … dealing with this very issue … only he didn’t say how they should look either, just talked about the general idea of not wanting to do one and how you should. “But I do want to do one, I just need to know how,” I wrote back. He sent out a follow up the next day responding to an email that he got … about getting stuck writing from the outline. Seemed I just couldn’t win.

 

That’s when I set my mind, late last night at about 1:45 in the morning, to coming up with my own outline guide. I decided to use the tools in Word 2007 to develop a roman numeral styled outline that would cover everything that I’ve been hearing and reading about. It has sections for the worlds, governments, magic systems, characters, try fail cycles, acts I, II, and III, story worthy problems, just about everything that I can think of is going into the outline. Will I use it all? Probably not. Will I fill it all out? No. But it will all be there if and when I need it.

As I was going through my books, I came across an anecdote by Stephen King where he talks about bringing a toolbox filled with tools to do a simple job that required a screwdriver.

“Yeah, but Stevie,” he said, bending to grasp the handles, “I didn’t know what else I might find to do once I got out here, did I? It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”

Having worked in construction, I can completely understand this example. I can’t list the number of times that I’ve started working on something only to wind up finding that I needed a tool that I left behind. That inspired me to call this, not an outline, but a TOOLBOX. In it, we put everything we think we might need, and even some stuff that we think we won’t need. It has the shop drawings that show us how the project should be completed and all the tools we’ll need when we find that the ideal world that the engineer who came up with the shop drawing lives in doesn’t match what we find out in the field.

 

I’m not sure how to post it as a downloadable link, so until I take the time away from writing to do that, send me an email at noceti.david@gmail.com and I’ll send you out a copy of it. What I love about the Word 2007 formatting is that the outline is expandable and contractible, so you can close down certain strings of information much like a folder tree. That way, when you’re not worried about the intricacies of your government, you don’t have to let it clutter up your screen.

The first 21 pages of my outline for Diviner. Now I

can see how people get to 100 pages plus for these things.

A word of warning though, don’t let this lead to WBD (World Builders Disease). Don’t get lost in the outline and never come back out of it to write.

 

Now then, I’m going to head over to the outline and work on it some more. Maybe pull out some of my many books on writing and see what else I can add to it.

 

If any of this is helpful, please leave me a little note. As Philip Difranco used to say at the end of his videos, “Comment, Rate, Appreciate.” Or something like that. And be sure to tell others. 

Next up: Brainstorming in reverse. 

 

The Folder of ID

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No, this is not psychology; Super Ego and his side kick kid Ego will not be swooping in with a guest appearance for this episode. And this has nothing to do with my Oedipus complex.

My ID Folder happens to be where I store all of my story ideas. Say I lie down for a nap and dream up the best story idea ever, because, come on, don’t we all? Or maybe I have a conversation with a kindly old man whose words sing of originality and a long ago story that needs to be told. Rather than stopping my current project and starting in on the new one, I’ll sit down and write a brief summary. First comes the [ID] tag. Then I’ll give it a date [081225] that for me always goes in a logical order, Year, Month, Day, so that when I sort them by name they’ll show up in order. And finally, the clever title [Space Elves Rule XMass]. All together it looks a little something like this: [ID 081225 Space Elves Rule XMass].

 

Apparently these are Jumping Space Elves,

care of http://flickr.com/photos/vertigogo/2174058965/

My ID’s are usually not full fledge stories, they’re not necessarily novel concepts or short stories per say, they’re just interesting ideas that have struck me. Later on, when I’m in need of something new to write, I’ll come back to my ID Folder and scan through interesting titles and find something that I can work with. It keeps me away from the black pit of “Oh oh! I have an exciting new idea for a story that is way better than what I’m working on right now and so I have to stop what I’m doing and go work on this new idea so that I can come up with another great idea and ditch this new one for that one and continue the endless cycle of never completing ANYTHING! YAY!”

 

Beware the unending cycle that leads to . . . 

The Pit of Despair!

This process developed from a class I took in college where we were assigned to live “writerly lives.” Basically, we carried around note cards and whenever an idea struck we were to jot it down and date it. I really got into it for a while, even purchased a small receipt holder so that I could divide up my inspired bits into different sections. There was a section for project ideas (the chicken coop would have gone there), lesson plan ideas, story ideas, scenes, and who knows what all else. At some point along the line I decided that I was going through way too many note cards and simply storing them away. It wasn’t manageable. I ended up going through the cards, pulling out the ones I really liked and typing them out as ID documents.

And that’s today’s time saving technique. Maybe it’s more of a story saving technique. Perhaps I’ll develop two new folders, one Super Ego, in which I store all my critiques and hyper self analyzations (add that last word to the list of Davidisms … along with “davidisms”) and then a final folder called Ego, where I come to terms with the differences in the ID’s and what lies in the Super Ego.

 

Perhaps not. 

Finding Time to Write

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I’m sitting at my writing group right now and though I’ll likely post this later, I thought I would take a breather to work on another blog. I find that I sometimes get a little too much writing in and have to stop to take a breather. I don’t necessarily want to stop writing, I just need to stop writing so carefully. So sending out emails or blogging is always a nice reprieve.

I’ve found a lot of time lately to write. Actually, it would be more apt to say that I’ve made a lot of time lately to write and seized opportunities when they presented themselves. Although, I often hear from other writers that they just don’t have the time. It always reminds me of something that Dan Wells of www.writingexcuses.com said during one of their podcasts.

“You can’t do anything professionally during your spare time.” 

Dan Wells in all his writerly glory.

I had to listen to that episode a few times before it finally sunk in, then a few more times before I actually did something about it. The first thing I did was set up a calendar on google calendars specifically for writing that I share with anyone who asks. (If you have a gmail account and want to keep tabs on me, send me an email and I’ll tell google to let you watch over me.) I set aside specific times of the day and night when I assume I’ll be able to write, usually ten to twelve every night after everyone has gone to bed. The house is dark, quiet, and free of distractions.

Lots of writing today! 

Of course, sometimes the little one throws a wrench into that plan and I have to kick the start time back. Or maybe something else comes up, guests from out of town, holidays, simple fatigue. Any time I miss my scheduled writing, I adjust or delete my entry accordingly. I find that this helps to keep me accountable. I can look back after a couple of days and see that, “Hey, you haven’t done anything!”

I’m also a typist. I tend to write best when sitting at a computer and typing away, mainly because my freehand is so painfully slow (just like how I read). Still, when left with no options, I find that keeping my journal with me helps immensely.

Ah sacred journal, what treasures do you contain?
And how many bad ideas will you keep secret?

Just yesterday I went with Mel to San Francisco to find a bride’s maid dress for my sister’s wedding. I broke out the trusty journal (a gift from Mel) and started writing away on a new short story concept. Time that would have otherwise been lost was capitalized on.

One of the best ways to insure writing time is to set it in stone with peer pressure. I know that it’s something that we’re taught to stay away from in grade school, but sometimes there is nothing like it to make sure you get done what you need to. I make sure this happens by involving myself with two groups, the first is a weekly meet up group that formed during NaNoWriMo. Once a week we meet at Panera’s and write away. You don’t have to share, or show anything that you’ve done, you simply have protected time to do what you need to do, write.

By being away from the house you can be sure that no one is going to ask you any questions, kids aren’t going to come crashing through the door, nothing save for a major catastrophe at home is going to interfere with your writing (especially if you turn off your phone).

Late night writing on the laptop in the kitchen.

Dark, quiet, peaceful, and above all warm 

because it's near the fireplace. A cup of cocoa 

is always a necessity. 

This writing group is supplemented with another, a fantasy writing group that I found on Yahoo. We meet every other week and critique one person’s work. Honestly, this schedule is a bit slow for me, but the feedback has been great. Eventually I would like to start a local meet up group that meets once a week and in which each of the participants get’s their work critiqued. It would be geared towards those writing a novel and each week we would all present one chapter of our work. And there you have it, the final piece of the puzzle, deadlines.

Deadlines are great for making sure that you set aside time to write. While writing is fun, it’s also not easy. So stop waiting for things to get easy and get to writing.

Just as I should be doing right now.