Writing Tip #7: If At First You Don't Succeed... Take a Break Before Your Brain Explodes.

This will be a short one, written while I'm waiting to get a ride back home, but this is possibly the most important lesson I've learned in the last year of stresses of "real life" getting dumped into a blender with my brain, my free time and my first failed attempt at a novel, and all of it getting puréed together, so I wanted to share it with you all: I'm here to talk about the paramount importance of taking a breather after you've written that first draft of a book.

I'm sure we've all grown up hearing the expression about "try, try again", and I won't argue that that's not an important part of success; you get your butt kicked the first time by something you really want/need to achieve, then you pick yourself up and tackle the thing full-on again. That's how you get the things really worth having.

Of course, tackling something hard more than once hurts. A lot. Especially if you're unprepared, and still getting your breath back from Round 1. 

Case in point: writing a book, then having that agravatingly clear hindsight inform you that all that effort didn't plop out that instant hit your were hoping for. 

Your stomach sinks. Round 1 kicks your confidence in the gut. But you're down, not out! So up you get, and back to it you go.

You want it to go like this: 

Image courtesy of jasadaphorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

But it ends up ending more like this:

Image courtesy of num_skyman at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

...with varying degrees of tears and tissues. Round 2 (and maybe 3, and 4... depending on how big of a glutton for punishment you are) leaves you in emotional traction.

Not good. And certainly bound to make you far exceed your allowable budget for whichever comforting deliciousness you subscribe to, to deal with feeling squashed by what used to be bright and sunny aspirations of awesomeness (e.g: pizza... wine... pizza with wine... lots of pizza with lots of wine... your weight in peanut M&Ms - not speaking from experience of course... sigh).

So this week's writing tip in a nutshell: pace yourself. Seriously. 

There may be those among you who write something and have no problem at all getting it polished and good to go. I commend you and envy you in equal parts! But then there are those (myself included) who pour a lot of time and energy into something that ends up not working, and the task of fixing it ends up being something they're not quite up to just yet. From my own experience and many fellow writing nerds I've spoken to about this, that second kind of writer is a lot more common than the first.

The important part is to cut yourself some slack, and give your brain room to figure it out. Finish writing what you're writing of course (no matter what you think of it), then go through it afterwards with a forgiving eye. If you find yourself wanting/needing to fix the poor sucker but at a loss as to where to start, take a few big steps back for as long as you need. Put it on a shelf, and start something else in the meantime. Come back to it later and try again - I guarantee the time away will have cleared your head enough for you to work your way through whether to scrap it, fix it, or rewrite it altogether, and it'll do it without leaving your delicate writer ego as a pile of quivering mush.

Be better than mush. You'll live longer, feel happier... and not have the local pizza place know your name and usual order off by heart.

Not that that happened to me... damnit.

Writing Tip #4: Want to Fill Those *Bleeping* Plot Holes? Just Gotta Know Your Own Rules.

Some things you can only really come to know once you're neck deep in them...

...like what happens to your driver's license if it takes a trip through the washer and dryer in your jean pocket...

...like what becomes of your stomach when you polish off that container of leftovers at the back of your fridge that you weren't too sure about...

...but especially, and horribly, just how many plot holes one story is in fact capable of producing. And how many is that? A freakin' whole heck of a lot. Plus fifty more.

In fact, it is scientifically proven (...alright, it's not proven anywhere, but I swear by this...) that plot holes feed off of climbing word counts and are spread like the common cold of the typeface world - one loose end sneezes on a perfectly healthy plot twist, and before you know it, everything's a congested mess of literary phlegm that hacks its way to a stand-still. And at the end of the day, this poor phlegmy manuscript is so miserably ill, that it almost seems like the kind thing would be to put it out of its misery, cut it loose and put a stop to the wheezing.

Photo courtesy of Ideago/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sounds pretty bleak, indeed. But like with any cold, there IS a way to beat these suckers. And here's how, in three basic steps:

1) Figure out what world your story is unfolding in.

                     (**This goes hand-in-hand with figuring out what story you're telling - a 

                  matter of geography, point in time, and degree of balance between realism 

                  versus fantastical.)

2) Write down the rules that govern your story's world. 

                    (**The number and types of rules varies by story based on your story's 

                  complexity and/or how out of the ordinary its world is, but write as many 

                  as you can think of, and keep adding to it as you go, as needed; everything 

                  from your character's personality quirks and hangups, to any restrictions 

                  placed on the character by society and their station within it, to what levels

                  of technology/magic/poverty/etc. your character is used to, to what kinds 

                  of problems people in this world might run into if they were in the wrong part

                  of a town/countryside late at night. Whatever parameters you can think of 

                  that will dictate what can happen within this world and within your 

                  characters, put them in there.)

3) Use those rules as your story-writing GPS - listen to them, ALWAYS, and update them as needed.

                       (**Ultimately, this is your world. You decide what is and is not possible. 

                       But the most important part to filling those plot holes is to make sure your 

                       world's/character's rules make sense with each other with little to no 

                       contradictions - adjusting them as necessary if you notice any - so that if 

                       and when you come across moments in your plot that suddenly don't 

                       seem to fit with previous or planned events, or you realize you've written 

                       yourself into a corner where you're not sure how your character could 

                       handle or escape a conflict, or you've run into any of many roadblocks, 

                       you can go back to your established rules and use them to navigate. The

                      more detailed you make them, the more you can plug in whatever plot hole

                      you've run into and ask yourself, "What isn't working? What rule[s] is it 

                      breaking that makes it not work, and what do I need to change so that it 

                      works again?")

And that's really it: know your world, know its rules, and write according to them.

This works.

I swear.

Nine out of ten dentists recommend this, and the tenth dentist is coming around as we speak.

Give this a shot against your plot holes, and if it doesn't clear things up... 

...well, remember that I'm no expert. I just claim to know stuff. Blame my university profs for convincing me I had so many brain cells to rub together.

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 55,962