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