Writing Tip #10: Flex Those Little Writer's Muscles Wherever You Can

One of the biggest traps we can get into as writers? Finding a comfort zone, and sticking to it.

Yes, today's going to be getting right to the point again, since I've only got a few hours before it's back to retail purgatory I go, I've got a pile of work to get to for my two current clients (contracts, and edits, and website builds, oh my!).

But anyway: comfort zones = BAD NEWS. 

I remember when I was finishing elementary school and then starting high school, I was still really figuring out how I could write and the kinds of emotions I could get across. Around this time, I discovered FanFiction.net, which was insanely helpful in getting me writing in a way that forced structure, and exposed me to feedback from actual readers (who weren't related to me, and so didn't feel obligated to tell me I was great even if I stunk). 

For those not familiar with the site, it's one where you go to write your own stories based on existing stories and characters - anything from books, to movies or TV shows... you name it. You take established universes, and you get to play with them in a way that gives you invaluable practice in working with voice, tone, character arcs... all of the essential story building blocks. Can't stress this enough: if you're getting going as a writer but need some warming up, that might just be your golden ticket (it sure was mine).

Anyway, at the time I started on that site, I was reading all sorts, but was mainly watching a variety of law enforcement-based shows (NCIS, Numb3rs, CSI, Bones, etc.), and really took to writing stories around my favourite characters within those. And it served me really well for years as I found my footing as a writer and pinned down a style for myself. 

The problem was however that I got so used to writing those cop dramas/action-adventures/comedies that after a while I found I had a hard time thinking in other terms; I had found a lovely comfort zone, and gotten good at it, and gotten better and better feedback and stuck with it for a long time because of that, but in consequence, I hit a block when I tried to branch back out to working with strictly my own characters and scenarios.

The answer? I had to use what I had learned, and carve out new avenues for myself to write my way down. Time and time again since then, I've found myself writing just one type of story for so long, that when that one type runs dry, I find myself stuck on where to go - and again, I have to purposely change direction to kick-start my little writing engine once more.

Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So this week, especially if you have ever or recently found yourself in a writing rut, consider the fact that you may have gotten yourself too comfortable in your personal writing niche. 

The best thing you can do for yourself at that point is to deliberately step outside your comfort zone and explore other directions; when writing muscles hit a plateau, switch up your routine - if you only ever write short stories, try writing a novella/novel, or vice versa; if you only ever write gritty dramas, try for a comedy; if you're used to strictly doing action-driven work, try exploring more character studies; or any combination thereof.

Even if you try one or even a dozen avenues that don't work out for you, or if you never quite find another good fit, the efforts to write outside what you know will help you develop new skills, build on those little writer's muscles in a way that you can incorporate into your pre-existing niche to drive your writing to new heights.

What've you got to lose? Go. Caffeinate. Pump literary iron. Be writing-buff. Chicks (and dudes) dig that.

~\\//~

Writing Tip #9: Don't Get Too Hung-Up on Your Heroes Being Hero-y

There's something I've started to notice in a lot of newer books I've read in the past several years (both professionally published, and not): a lot of people have a really hard time knocking their heroes off their pedestals. 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What do I mean? I mean the heroes are too darn hero-y... too darn perfect. All the time. And it's terrible.

It's not to say that the authors don't give them flaws... but... even they're perfect; by and large, they're not so much flaws as quirks, things (like being antisocial, or awkward, or excessively and damagingly snarky, or nosy and invasive, etc.) that end up being endearing and/or earn the respect of others in whatever way, and are not treated as flaws at all but as acceptable elements that move them along through the plot in a way that distinguishes them somehow from their co-characters. The heroes and their flaws/quirks go through some sort of emotional character arc, granted, but their flaws/quirks never factor in enough in as pivotal way as to be recognized as problems.

And this is what irks me: real people, with real flaws, are affected by them; their lives and actions are affected by them; they draw real setbacks and real struggles and real consequences that they are forced to deal with. With real people, their flaws are not synonymous with their strengths, as much as they may play parts with each other sometimes.

So what irks me is authors taking heroes that they've clearly fallen in love with and regard in a certain way, and not trying to make them into people with genuine flaws that hurt and genuine strengths (whether inherent and/or earned/learned) that redeem. They love them too much to want to make readers think less of them in any significant way, for any significant amount of time. So instead, they give them a few quirky drawbacks (to varying degrees of severity) that ultimately don't even significantly change by the end of the story. But "all's well that ends well", and we have our climax, and "The End".

This takes away any real element of humanity. They're not a hero any more - they're a caricature of a hero. And that makes them forgettable. A dime-a-dozen.

The most memorable and wonderful characters I've ever read and absolutely gotten attached to (and hurt/healed by) don't work like that. They work more like real people do, and so it makes us value them like we would real people: when they do good, we're happy; when they do wrong, we cringe; when they hurt, we hurt; when they screw up and hurt others, we're angry that they've let us and themselves and those others down; when they redeem themselves (if they can) we are wrapped up in their struggle to do so, and any success or failure feels like our own, and it damn well sticks with us.

Granted, not all stories have room for characters like this, and may actually be a better product without them; you have to know your audience, know your story's tone and intent, write with that in mind, and adjust the depth of your character accordingly (e.g: books like the Goosebumps series, or Agatha Christie novels, or any standard feel-good kids' book). But when the room is there and the story is built on the backs of the flaws and strengths of its characters (e.g: Game of Thrones), you write the shit out of those characters. You make them real people.

So today's tip in a nutshell: lose the pedestal. Bring your heroes into the real world; you and your readers will be grateful you did.

~\\//~

Writing Tip #8: Don't Wait for Inspiration - Seek It Out

So it seems getting back into the blogging habit is still harder than I give it credit for - no surprise there! I've got to stop underestimating this thing.

At any rate, two Writing Tips to post this week to make up for the lack of one last week. Alright. We've got this.

For this one, I'm going after the notion of "inspiration". This is one of the things I've heard about the most from people who've struck a wall and can't seem to get any writing out: "I can't get inspired", "I'm waiting for inspiration", "I'm waiting for a muse", etc.

For this tip, we're going for short and sweet (mostly because I only have so much time this morning, since I have to be at my retail day job soon enough - *sigh*): stop with the waiting, get with the doing. Simple enough? Well, let me explain anyway.

Image courtesy of kdshutterman at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sitting around waiting for inspiration will very rarely pay off. It's not to say you can never just come up with an idea staring at your blank page/blank screen/blank wall/etc. and willing it into being... it is just so much more frustrating than it needs to be.

You know how people always harp on about the adage "write what you know"? Well, they're right. But how do you think you get to "know" things you can write about, if you can't come up with stories or characters or scenes just from what you've already got floating around in your skull's mushy grey matter? Go out and look for things to experience, to observe, to discover. 

Image courtesy of Geerati at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Discard the hours of tormenting your brain trying desperately to make magic out of a blank writing surface - read books about the world; go for a walk someplace in your city you've never been and imagine the things that could have taken place there; watch documentaries about anything and everything and imagine a character/characters neck-deep in a situation involving whatever you're watching; peruse through collections of photography or paintings or whatever and create stories behind the works; people-watch in a bus terminal and write down a character sketch and a mini story for every person you creepily stare at... anything that breaks you out of your normal thought patterns and gets you seeing new things/things from new angles. 

Go out of your way to expand your friggin' horizons, and you'll find that inspiration hiding in just about everything; new things equal new ideas, and/or new ways to tackle old ideas. So go forth, young grasshoppers - end the torture, and get to nerding out over writing again!

~\\//~

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 #6: Just Plain "Characters" Can't Do the Job Right - Give Your Reader More to Work With

You want to know who the most two-dimensional, unconvincing, static, uncompelling, forgettable, inauthentic, jaw-droppingly boring, least relatable characters are?

Here's the answer: ...they're the ones who are Characters.

Let me explain.

When a reader sits down with a story, there is already a suspension of disbelief that needs to happen for them to accept the fictional backdrop you create for it. From the start, you're asking them to believe in whatever truths you establish in your plot and the dynamics of your plot's world, however out-of-the-ordinary they may be. And they want to believe it because it'll give them an experience to enjoy. That's why they and we read any fiction at all. But you need to help them along. And the best way to do that is to populate that plot and that world with the most realistic characters you can manage.

So what's the problem with writing characters as just Characters, just people who exist in your fiction? Simple: when they're just "Characters", the only things that are really set up about them are things the author feels are immediately relevant to the plot and the other supporting characters. This means that they get a grab bag of quickly identifiable traits that the reader can remember them for and that the plot can pull from (for example, a Young Adult novel hero who is simply established as tall, handsome, brave, pining after whatever generic love interest is nearby and coherent enough to reciprocate something, and capable of surviving ridiculously dangerous things... the end). It's not to say that Characters won't get the job done - they serve their purpose of serving the reader their story, using that Trait Grab Bag to nudge the plot along from one point of conflict to the next, and on to the eventual resolution that their traits dictate they can accomplish.

But that's all they'll do... serve a purpose as a cog within a bigger picture. They won't engage the reader like they could be engaged, won't suck the reader into their lives and get that pull of empathy or hate or hope for their journey or whatever you want them to get. They won't make the reader truly care about what happens to them and their world, at least not as much as they could. Characters that are just Characters leave the reader on the outside of a story, looking in. They put up walls. They make suspension of disbelief harder, and work against your passion for the story you're telling.

So what do you write instead? Well, you scrap those Characters, and you write PEOPLE.

Take any character you're trying to write, and don't think of them in terms of how they'll serve your story. Give them a name, and go all Dr. Frankenstein on them, and give them life. Make the inanimate, the fictional real by giving them not just the Trait Grab Bag, but all the parts that make a person an actual person, and make those parts a functioning whole.

Start here: What's the context for the world that your plot and characters exist in? Is it in the past? Is it futuristic? Post-apocalyptic? 

Next step from there: Whatever it is, what kind of people can exist within it? What are the different classes of people? Are they separated by income? Nobility of birth? The city they live in? What differentiates groups of people from each other?

And next after that: What class of person is your character supposed to be? Once you've got that figured out, you can set up the Grab Bag of traits that go with that particular class as a foundation of characteristics (for example, if they're of a poorer class, then they know what it is to be hungry, to struggle - so they're tougher in order to survive, and maybe a bit bitter against those of higher class or against the system that keeps them poor). And after you've got that Grab Bag out of the way, make that character a person with traits unique to only them - traits shaped by their family lives within their class of people, the friends they have or haven't had, the mistakes they've made in the past, the hopes they have for the future. Take example from your own personality if you'd like: whatever you can think of that makes you, well, you, use all those different types of elements to fill in the blanks and make your character a living, breathing person.

After that, you use whatever you can of what you've worked out within the story itself, and whatever you don't use still serves as an influence for how these characters act within the story, interact with each other, and influence the overall story itself. If every character you create is written as a Person, not a Character, then what you have for your plot is a living population that will make your reader give a crap as to whether or not things turn out for them, and where they end up by the time it's over. Nothing generic or forgettable. Something unique, fresh, engaging. Everything the Doctor ordered for "Hell yes!" fiction.

Image courtesy of MisterGC/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So do your story and reader a favour, and go be Dr. Frankenstein - give your creations life!

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 66,231

Writing Tip #5: Keep Those Gears Shifting and Stop That Progress from Stalling Out

Ever try to learn how to drive stick, in all its manual-shifting glory? (I hope so - if you haven't, the metaphor that backbones this post might well be gibberish to you.) If you have, probably one of the things that stands out most in your memory of the early days is just how many friggin' times you went to shift gears and stalled the sucker (unless you're one of those that picked it up almost instantly - in which case, lucky you!... hmf). I got my start on an automatic, and I know the stall-outs on manual cars haunt me. The sheer number of traffic lights and stop signs I've gotten myself stuck at is funny in hindsight. At the time of the actual stalling? Not so much. Lots of colourful and enthusiastic cursing ensued.

There's a point to bringing this up. I swear. A decent one, too. And I'll come back to it in a minute.

First, I'm going to go ahead and state a few painfully obvious facts: writing a novel takes time, and it is work (fun work for the most part, granted, but work nonetheless).

What doesn't get as much consideration sometimes is just how tough it can end up being to power through and carry your story from page one right to "The End", without screeching to a halt somewhere along the line and dumping it into your "on hiatus" pile for a while (or permanently). I know that when I went to start this first novel that I'm working on now, I went in with this rosy idea that because I had what I thought was a worthwhile plot driven by characters I was excited to write, all I needed in order to do this thing was a mighty roar and a "Can-do!" grin, and I was set.

Heh. Not so much. You know what I'm talking about.

Because here too, with the exceptions of those that have things come easily to them, when you really get into trying to do it, you come to truly realize that, holy crap, writing a novel really is work. Tough work, that you alone are responsible for putting yourself through and that's almost impossible to predict how long it'll take to get through. Something that demands plenty of time and energy and afternoons/evenings/wee hours of the mornings that could be spent doing almost anything else if you weren't frying your brain with research or beating your head against the wall over your latest bought of writer's block, and...

...and you may inevitably think (during those times where you're progressing so little you'd swear you're moving backwards) something along the lines of this: "I may love to write, but The Beatles had it wrong when they said 'All you need is love.' What I need is something to keep me at this *bleeping* thing before, in a moment of weakness, I drop my laptop/pen-and-paper in the nearest fire pit with a lit match and a healthy supply of kerosene. Kaboom."

Now, this is where we come back to car stall-outs. Stall-outs suck. Big Time. You're driving along fine, then after you've slowed down, you hit that gas pedal and get a horrible clunk. And go nowhere. And curse the universe - loudly - while still going nowhere. But there's that one magical thing that when you remember it's there and you remember how to use it, your life spent stick-shifting involves significantly less swearing and more going: that spectacular little third pedal that makes all gear shifting in stick-shift cars possible, its highness The Clutch.

 Image courtesy of Feelart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Writing a novel, or anything of a significant length, is no different than driving stick. You need a Clutch: at least one particular thing that's there to keep you moving, and to get you moving again whenever progress slows down.

For me, my Clutch is a little magnetic whiteboard on my fridge where I've written "Novel Word Count" at the top, with "Goal: 75,000 words" underneath it, and my current word count going just underneath that. That board is my magic tool, the thing where I can see how far I have to go, but especially how far I've come and how much closer I get every time I get some writing done for the day. Whenever I need it, I look at that thing and it gets me proud and freshly motivated. Because as much as I love to write, sometimes motivation is a tough thing to find when it's such a long haul.

Of course, yours doesn't have to be a running word count. If that just feels like it puts undue pressure on the whole thing, get creative! If, for example, your characters are embarking on some kind of physical journey across a distance, draw up a little map of their route and mark off each spot along the way as the characters reach them in your story. Or, as another example, if your characters are in a survival novel where they're up against, say, a zombie hoard, and you know which people will be zombie kibble before you reach the end of the story, put together a Zombie Kibble chart, with some sort of zombie cookie jar you can stick each character into as the story progresses and one by one they get munched.

Anything. Anything you can come up with that you can use to mark your progression and prove to yourself that you're making headway, draw it up, write it down, print it off, whatever. Just have it there, so when you get to stall-out levels of "Kaboom" proportions, you have your Clutch there for you to use to its fullest.

Less swearing. More going. No kerosene.

Worth a shot. Give it a try!

~\\//~

Word count as of today: 61,978

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

Writing Tip #3: Never Too Early or Too Late for a Few Voices of Reason

I've been reading a lot of posts around writing forums lately about the value of receiving critique on your work from outside sources. The most common thread twining through all of them seems to be a variation on the following key points: that critique is not only a good idea but rather an essential one in the process of ensuring your work is at its best before considering it for publication, and that it's a good idea to get several opinions but also to keep in mind that opinion is subjective and to limit the corrections made to your work only to those things recommended by more than one or two of your readers.

And do I agree with all that?

Absolutely.

Further to that though, I want to address a question that I didn't notice anyone really focus on too much in their discussions: when during the writing process should a writer reasonably start seeking outside opinions on what they write and how they write it? My answer is that if you've got yourself at least somewhere around a page (give or take), then enlist test-readers to your heart's content. Or even after a paragraph, if you just don't feel like waiting that long. It's not so much a matter of how much you have - it's a matter of what you can get from running it by someone else.

Obviously, I can't speak for all (or even most) writers in this area since we've all got our preferences and our processes, but for me, for the debut novel I'm working on now I enlisted a friend as a beta reader after the first four or so pages were written. And I honestly can't say just how invaluable her critique was. 

At that point, I'd just decided on a radical personal change in my writing style - I'd struggled for years (and in vain) to emulate the authors I look up to, whose stories are often written in literary, almost poetic prose, and had finally come to the conclusion that their style just wasn't mine. Mine was more cut-and-dry conversational, with a more subtle bit of flair mixed in. With this change, and with a re-imagining of what my novel would now be portrayed as, getting my friend's honest feedback set me on the exact track I needed to solidify my personal writing voice with confidence, and charge ahead in writing it. The parts she liked and that worked as a clear narrative, I used to address the weaknesses and cliches she mentioned (which were also mentioned by the people I had read it after her). The result from that initial critique is that I'm the happiest and most confident with this project than I've been with anything I've written in my life, helping me to tailor it into something I can be proud of from the get-go.

Since then, I've had seven different people read each chapter I've written, and their advice when they have any to give hasn't ceased to be enlightening, calling on a consideration for things I may never have realized on my own. If I could give these guys salaries for this stuff, I would in a heartbeat!

Image courtesy of StuartMiles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So, today's writing tip in a nutshell... well, the above picture is pretty self-explanatory: SHARE. Whether you do it near the beginning of your work like I did, or near/at the end of it doesn't matter - what matters is that outside critique of your work can help you in ways that you can't even imagine if you haven't gotten any yet. Lending you positive affirmation in your strengths and methods for improving your weaknesses, proper critique will absolutely shape your work into the best of what you can deliver.

Have you had any experience, positive or negative, with receiving critique? What are your experiences with getting those outside opinions? Comment with your stories below!

~\\//~

Novel Word-Count as of Today: 20,900

Writing Tip #2: Invoking Your Writing Mojo

What's this? Two posts within days of each other?? Craziness. I wonder what's come over me. Maybe I'm coming down with something. That's gotta be it - I'll take my temperature and go lie down somewhere after I've posted this.

Speaking of crazy actually, the other day I was chatting with one of my fellow writing nerds that I meet with once a week, and we got on the topic of one's so-called "writing process". That's right, the mysterious super-top-secret techniques that all those annoyingly productive writers seem to have figured out, while all us sad sops off to the side wonder, "Why do they have it figured out and I don't?? What am I doing wrong??"

From what I've seen, the answer to that question is this: you need to unleash your inner weirdo - in other words, the eccentric but lovable crazy person that lives in all the fine folks that have that creative edge to their brain.

This is certainly no easy task, since everyone's inner crazy person has a different way of operating. An example? Well, you know Victor Hugo, the guy that wrote Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame? He wrote naked. The man had his valet hide all his clothes until the completion of both of the aforementioned novels, so that he would have no choice but to write since he couldn't leave the house. 

A little nuts? Yep, and we can only hope he invested in curtains for all his windows, for the sake of his neighbors. But effective? Heh, I'd say so, wouldn't you?

So today's writing tip in a nutshell: you must (while allowing still for personal and public safety, of course) unleash the inner eccentric! Try stuff out, see what works for you. It could end up being any of all sorts of combinations that could do the trick. Maybe hop on a subway or a city bus and ride it around town all day while you work on your laptop/tablet thingy; maybe spend the day in the park writing in between scaring pigeons and sitting upside down on a bench. For me, I usually end up with a giant bowl-sized mug of coffee or tea and pulling an all-nighter in front of my computer in my PJs, box of pizza open on my left, research and rough notes on my right, and a 10 hour recording of a rain storm playing over Youtube. I'm still working on perfecting the weirdo in me to get annoyingly productive like the rest of 'em, of course.

As everyone says, there's a fine line between genius and insanity. Well, go skate on it a bit - creativity awaits!

Image courtesy of StuartMiles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Novel Word-Count for Today: 20,075

Writing Tip #1: Start With a Plan of ATTACK!... Then Take a Breath, Grab a Coffee, and Decide What You'll Actually Do

Do I have any technical Writing Workshop teaching credentials that make me specifically 'qualified' to dole out advice? Not so much, no. But what I do have, for whatever it's worth to the faceless blogging and blog-trolling crowd, is 15 years of trial and error in working towards writing for a living. So, for anyone who's desperate enough to pay any attention to this random internet blogger (are you really that desperate?...really?...my condolences), "Writing Tips" will be an oft-updated series of short segments of helpful little things I've learned for myself that just might do the trick for someone else as well. So, here goes - and if anyone has any luck with these, or has any of their own they'd like to share, feel free to drop in on the comment section below!

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We've all been there before, many, many times: you have that moment, that burst of pure, electrifying inspiration, and you make a lunge for your pen-and-paper/laptop/pen-and-nearest-bare-wall because you're going to map out your goals, and you'll stick to them, and you'll write and write and write, and finish that fantastic project you've been trying to finish since forever...

...then by the next afternoon - Day 2 of your Master Strategy (very emphatically capitalized), or maybe by Day 6 or 7 if you're especially determined - the unshakable faith in said Master Strategy has mysteriously dwindled and you forestall filling that poor blank page/screen/wall any further in favor of ordering a pizza and watching reruns of How I Met Your Mother in your pajamas. 

That last part may be a bit more personally specific, but the principal's basically the same: plans may work for a lot of people, but for many others, it seems making out a writing schedule or a cast-iron story outline is like making a New Years resolution to get a gym pass and use it every day or a few days out of every week - it has a tendency to get neglected before you can actually get anywhere with it.

Image courtesy of suphakit73/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So, Tip #1 In a Nutshell: don't prescribe your writing. Whatever your project, whether poetry, essay or fiction (short or long), just set aside enough time to write exactly one sentence/line of poetry every single day to start with. It doesn't matter what it is - a line of dialogue, a random tidbit about a character or back-story, or an idea for a plot twist or something that you haven't even decided where it'll fit in yet. Get that one sentence out every day at minimum (certainly more, if the inspiration strikes), and keep it all collected together. And at the end of every week or two weeks, peruse everything you've written, and put in a little time on organizing what you've got to date to see where you stand. And then keep on adding to it as you go. You'd be amazed at how quickly your thoughts and ideas stack up into a bigger picture!