Fiction Scribe

I began reading a fantasy trilogy early last year and in the first book I became rather attached to one character. She wasn’t a major character – at least not at the level she should have been after the first book – but I identified with her all the same and looked forward to the chapters with her in it.

I finished the first book, then the second, and hoped that in the third book, there would be something great for her. Her own happy ending. Unfortunately for me, she was (quite literally) ripped apart toward the end of the book along with her lover.

Needless to say, I was a bit upset and nauseated at the turn of events.

As a reader, I felt a bit pissed off for a while, but the writer in me emerged eventually and calmed me down. See, the writer in me recognized the brilliance of the move. Of course it would be more potent to kill her and her lover off because first, she was expendable, and second, it just might get the reader to feel something.

Goal accomplished.

Writing within your comfortable boundaries might satisfy your grandmother and Uncle Dick, but it won’t get your reader to feel much or take anything away from the story once s/he is done reading. (That’s assuming you’re talented enough to keep their attention through an entire story.)

The quote “Kill your darlings� is actually a lot better advice than you might think. In fact, it might be one of the more important pieces of advice you’ll ever hear.

If you need a little exercise in the killing department, take a character you like from your current work in progress and create a scene in which s/he dies. Violently. If anyone thinks you’re a bit off, you can tell them I told you to do it.

While Mr. Reasons of 101 Reasons to Stop Writing would love it if I talked about this as a permanent thing, that’s not the case. However, I am going to tell you what you think I’m going to tell you.

It’s okay to stop and put the pen down.

Yesterday I went to the air conditioned library to escape the brain melting 100+ degree heat of the Australian sunshine. While there, I had one of the best writing days I have had in a long time, finishing up the work day at over 3,000 words typed for the day.

Do I attribute this to a fabulous muse? The delicious smoothie I had while there? The wonders of air conditioning?

Perhaps, in part, but by and large I attribute it to the fact I took a few days off writing. I tried not to think about it. I relaxed. I went people watching.

Basically, I did what every writer needs to do now and then not only to write better but to manage to keep whatever amount of sanity you have:

Get out of the writing room!

Yes, writing is about putting your ass down in the chair and getting some writing done, but it’s also about living. If you never get out of the writing room and experience life, then who do you think you are going about as if you have something to write about?

If possible, sometime this week get out and go somewhere new. Or, at least, go somewhere you rarely go. On your lunch break, after work, whenever works best for you. Go somewhere new and live it up. Experience things.

Do it because this is one of the few times I’m going to tell you to get your bum out of the chair.

…then I have the money, honey.

Isn’t that how that song goes? I can’t quite remember and I really can’t be bothered to Google right now.

I have touched on the subject of time to write not being something you find but rather, something you make. However, I didn’t talk about ways you can make better use of your time when trying to make that precious time to write.

And let’s face it – we’re all ‘too busy’ for a lot of things, but that shouldn’t be the case with your writing.

Here are some quick tips from posts of the past to help you on your way to making more time for your writing:

*Make your to-do list - quickly, don’t use it as a stall - before you start writing. That way you don’t have to worry about trying to remember all you have to do along with all your characters have to do, where your plot is going, etc.

*For one entire day - the whole day - take a notepad or note cards with you everywhere. (You should be doing this already, by the way. Tsk, tsk.) I want you to document the times and events of your day. Even how much time you sit down to watch television to how much time you allow yourself to enjoy your chef salad at lunch time.

Don’t adjust yourself in any way. Take the day as you would always do it, and try not to pay attention to what you’ve written until the day is over.

*While brushing your teeth. Staring at yourself in the mirror can be fun, but you could be writing down notes while you’re doing it. It also gets you to brush your teeth longer (usually) which will be good for your dental hygiene.

For more on time management, check out Turn Off Your Brain and Time Management Part One, Two and Three.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

“You will never ‘find’ time for anything. If you want time you must make it.� – Charles Buxton, English author (1823-1871)

Even in the 1800s people understood that ‘we’re all busy’ and no one ever seems to have enough time for anything. That’s why when it comes to writing you can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to come to you.

You have to go out and find it.

The same goes with ‘finding’ time for your writing. It’s up to you. If you are dedicated enough to your craft, then you will make the time. Even if you have to give up some of your sleep hours to do so.

Yes, it’s all find and well for me to talk about how you have to go out and find inspiration instead of waiting for it, but where do you look?

If you honestly need to ask me that, then you either have a long way to go in the world
Writers write about life. The world. People. Anyone, anywhere, everything. As a writer, you are an observer. You shouldn’t expect to sit holed away in your writing room for all eternity and write masterpieces.

At one point or another, you have to get out there and truly look at the world. Connect. Therein lies inspiration. In the everyday, in observations, in people watching.

Try going out somewhere at least once a week to observe and listen to people. Explore places you’ve never been. Listen to what people are talking about. Find things that interest you and the things that interest them.

Find inspiration.

Ah, it’s finally happened; you have written your first draft.

If you follow the Stephen King method, you can finally open the door of your writing room and reintroduce yourself to your family. Order a pizza, open a bottle of wine, bake a chocolate cake… Do whatever it is you do to celebrate a good occasion.

The next day, when you’re getting past the hangover and the sour stomach from too much wine, pizza, and chocolate cake, you once again enter your writing room/space.

There it is. Your manuscript. Draft numero uno. Ugly/beautiful thing.

You’re now faced with the question many writers are faced with: How long do I wait before I write the second draft?

Fantasy author Karen Miller surprised me when she said she didn’t wait between drafts. When she finished her first draft, she went right back to the beginning and started working on the second draft.

In On Writing, Stephen King recommends at least six weeks of rest time between the first draft and the second.

I find myself caught in the middle. I see the point of doing it right away. The characters are still fresh in your mind with voices stronger than ever, you know more or less for sure what your ending is going to be, and you’re more familiar with the steps of the story than you were in the beginning.

But then again, the break between drafts lets your mind have a break so you can come back to things with ‘fresh eyes’.

Call me traditional, but I highly recommend the break somewhere along the line. Whether it’s between draft one and two or two and three, there is no self-editing tool like taking a break and coming back to it with the mind of an editor instead of a writer.

Do you take a break between drafts? If yes, how long? Why? If no, why not?

You sit down to write wearing ____ with ____ in view, ____ on your music player and a bowl/plate of ____ to one side just in case you feel a bit hungry while you’re writing.

Does this sound at all like you?

And we wonder where the stereotypical writer with a glass of bourbon (a bottle if he’s been published a few times) to one side and a cigarette (unlit if the muse has taken over for a brief, blissful moment) in his mouth.

Many writers, to write, feel the need to have their favourite pen in hand or absolutely have to have that bowl of M&Ms nearby for that chocolate/sugar fix when the going gets tough.

My thing used to be that I wrote longhand and I needed to write with the same pen through the whole thing until the pen ran out of ink. If I lost this pen (which only happened a couple times before I realized how stupidly uncomfortable it made me), I would not write until I found the pen again.

I think my family should have feared more for my sanity than their reputations when they figured out I’m a writer. (Frankly, their reputation had been screwed quite thoroughly long before I took pen to paper.)

Most of us have our habits, whether they’re like my old pen habit (oh, did I mention I had to write stories, no matter how many pens ran out, in the same colour ink from beginning to end?), the spaces we need to write, the music, the noise, or whatever else.

If you need things that don’t involve things like ritual sacrifice, then habits are fine. We all have them.

What are your writing habits? What do you ‘need’ to write? What makes your writing experience feel ‘not quite right’ without it?

One of the hardest things for aspiring writers (and some accomplished writers) is to complete this equation.

As we know all too well, doing the laundry or washing the lawn never looked as good as it does when you’re supposed to be writing.

So how do you get yourself in the chair? Here are a few tips:

1. Just do it. Yeah, I know you’re groaning now, but give me a second. It’s obvious that a big part of this is getting yourself in the habit, right? Well, you can’t start a habit by waiting for motivation to come, that’s for sure.

Whether you write or end up doodling for half an hour, sit at your desk at the same time every day. If you can’t swing the same time every day, at least do it for the same amount of time every day. It takes three weeks to get into a habit, so start now.

2. Mind drain. This is useful no matter what you’re doing. If you find yourself getting distracted or caught up in other things, take some time to do a mind drain. Pick a notebook and for a certain amount of time or pages (I usually do it for a half an hour each morning before starting work) write without stopping.

Get everything off your mind and onto the paper. Keep a notepad there, too, if you find you are checking back to the page because you wrote a to-do list.

3. Close the door. This advice comes from Stephen King. The first draft of any story you write is strictly for you. You are telling the story to yourself. When it comes time for working on the following drafts and editing, then you can open the door.

Get to it and get writing.

Fear. That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it? The reason you’re not writing?

Oh, I used to tell myself that I was just too busy to right, too. There was just too much going on for me to think about writing. I mean, not only do you have to sit down, then you have to think about what to write, and then? Then you actually have to write it.

Sound familiar?

Well, whether you know it or not, the most likely reason you’re not writing (or doing whatever artistic activity brings you pleasure) is not lack of time but lack of confidence.

I’m not trying to criticize you. I’ve been there. I avoided my creative writing for months by drowning myself in as many writing related tasks as I could. That way I could still say that I was writing, but I could also avoid my creative writing.

I didn’t want to consciously avoid my creative writing; I was simply afraid. Why? Well, part of getting past the fears, doubts, and blocks is figuring out your own personal reasons for not writing.

Do you think you’ll never be successful? Is your past filled with people cutting you down and telling you that you’ll never be what you want to be? Did you have a childhood focused on being told you need to do something that will pay the bills?

Take some time and think about why you’re not writing. On of the best ways to do this, courtesy of The Artist’s Way, is to write “I [your name] am an excellent writer who will get published.” Doing that will bring out all your little fears and doubts so you can snatch them and figure out what’s behind them.

This could be the first step in unleashing your creativity like it has never been unleashed before.

Though humorously portrayed, too much blogging, like too much of pretty much anything, can be bad for you.

You knew that.

But could your blogging be ruining your writing abilities? In writing communities, this can be a very hot topic. What writer would want to do something to permanently ruin their ability to write?

You writing stopping your creative writing sounds a bit far out there, and it is. Blogging in itself won’t ruin your creative writing abilities by any means. It may influence them, but it won’t ruin them.

As a blogger, what you have to worry about is blogging too much. Do you spend more time blogging than you do creative writing? And no, you can’t count your character blog(s) as creative writing. It’s still blogging.

Do you blog more about what you’re going to write than you do actually writing? Do you spend more time reading other’s blogs than you do writing?

As with everything, moderation is key. I’m a feed reader woman myself with entirely too many blogs on it, but I still only spend a half an hour maximum reading it. I have a weight loss blog site, a personal blog, and a book/character interview blog. With those three combined, I still don’t spend more than an hour blogging.

The thing about blogging is that it can easily sweep your time away. If you want to know how much time you’re taking for both blogging and creative writing, keep track of the times and what you do during the day. If you’re spending more time blogging than creative writing, then something needs to change.

That is, if you want to get that novel done any time soon.

But everybody is doing it…

Yes, even I am doing a list of the top ten posts on Fiction Scribe in 2007. These posts are not the most viewed, the most dugg/netscaped, the most anything other than the most memorable to me.

I have put up a lot of posts this year, so there are probably a lot of posts people like that I’m not going to mention. If you have a favourite, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also feel free to link to your top ten post lists for your site.

(Listed in no particular order.)

1. Eight Ways to Kill Your Characters - This is definitely one of my favourite posts because it was one of the most fun!
2. Sandi Kahn Shelton Interview - Sandi is a lovely lady and was a pleasure to work with. She’s a great writer and I’ll always remember her book as my introduction to women’s fiction.
3. Pet Peeve #44 - Anti-”said” Writers
4. Book Burning - I am still outraged that this happened. Thankfully, my sweet, sweet husband bought me a new copy.
5. FanFiction
6. Creative Spaces - This is actually the whole category. I love seeing what other people’s writing spaces are like.
7. Pet Peeve #16 Discussion - There is a great discussion in the comments section about making money, traditional publishing, and more.
8. Making An Honest Blogger’s Dollar - This led to the above post.
9. Take Your Prozac - An important post about writers and depression.
10. Clippy Knows All - Just hilarious.

Do you agree? Disagree? Do you have a favourite post I missed? Let me know.

On Write Anyway, I had readers write about Christmas (or other recent holiday experiences if they didn’t celebrate Christmas) yesterday. I didn’t want them to write about ones from years past; I wanted them to write about yesterday while it was still fresh in their minds.

I was reminded of something Mr. Scribe reminds me of all the time – and is completely justified in doing so because I have a thick head sometimes – and that is the value of writing down experiences while they are fresh.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about she is like the crazy old cat lady except with note cards. She has stacks of them all over the place with memorable moments on them.

I have the name thing with ideas on random pieces of paper all over my desk and tucked away in various places.

What am I getting at?

The reason these ideas and memories are written down on various scraps and sheets is because they were written while the information is fresh. Perfect situations don’t always give you perfect writing conditions.

It’s good to get things written down when they are fresh, though, because time muddles memories. Will you remember the snap of twigs and brush on the mountain climb if you wait to write about it until you get home from your vacation? Will you remember how wonderful the random cool breeze felt so incredibly refreshing that you closed your eyes and savoured it each time it happened?

You might remember a few details, but probably not all of them.

Remember to write down memories when they are as fresh as possible. This will help you tap into them easier when you come back to use the experience in your writing.

Ah, it’s that wonderful time again. Little reminders, the week before Christmas edition.

When it comes to such busy times of year, I always like lists (heck, I like lists anytime) to remind me of things, so I don’t think you’ll mind this list.

Win Books
You can win books and, in the process, help keep an awesome book review site going. What more could you ask for?

Project Blog
Allison from Reality on Bravo has worked so hard to bring you the coolest contest ever. I couldn’t do what she’s done. That’s why I’m entering the contest(s) and not hosting it. Get in there for your chance to win some fabulous prizes.

200 Words, Weekly Writing Challenge, and Other Fun Stuff
Christmas is crazy and I’m not going to pretend to do anything but get work done. Work, work, work my arse off to cover for the holidays so I can give my arse and my computer chair some separation time and my husband and I some cuddle time.

Things like 200 Words and Weekly Writing Challenge might be taken off the list. Or maybe they’ll continue.

Honestly, I have plans for 2008, but they’re not, at this point, well planned out. If there’s something you like – and yes, I know most of you like unconscious mutterings – let me know. I like mail.

Fiction Scribe Authors of 2007
Remember that ebook I’ve been talking about? Well, I haven’t forgotten, and it just might go out in a rewards program for buying books on another site. I won’t mention more than that because it’s all in the works, but don’t worry – FS readers will still get a free copy from yours truly.

That’s it! Easy. Now back to work.

Today, before I get into anything, I’d like to send out some love to my dieting buddy Jenera. She stepped away from the weight loss a while ago due to finding out she was pregnant. Unfortunately, she lost the baby. She is being braver than I could ever be after such an event. Please stop by and give her your love and support. (She knows me as Spunk, not JM, in case you drop my name in.)

I am still planning on having a 2007 author interview PDF available in January for everyone. Leave a comment and let me know if everyone is still interested.

I have yet to get to reorganizing the categories like I want to, but I haven’t forgotten.

If you haven’t checked it out already, you need to check out Project Blog on Reality on Bravo. Allison has worked so hard on the massive contest, and it’s your chance to very easily win some fabulous prizes while voting for your favourite blogtestants.

Are you a writer who has something to say about knitting? Then head over to Knitting Passion because Barbara needs your help! (And guest posts.)

Finally, I have recently been awarded a spreader of love award (go here for details). “This blog has been awarded The Spreader of Love Award created by The Love Blog, for an outstanding demonstration of blogging love.” To pass on the award, I am nominating:

Elisa of Watching Dr. Who
Dorothy and Cheryl of Virtual Book Tours
Randi of Brad Pitt Watch
Zoot of Miss Zoot
Catherine of About San Jose, CA

Thank you to Auria, who nominated me. Now go spread the love!

Like any other writer, sometimes I sit back from my current project and wonder what the heck I think I’m doing. Why am I writing? Why write? Why don’t I do something that will pay bills like…anything besides writing.

It’s usually about that time my itunes player decides to play me one of the songs that takes me back to when I was writing my first novel. Back then, I let the music take me to whatever mood I was going for, and then I wrote. Why did I write back then? Because I could. I loved it like I loved no other activity. Writing served not only as my escape but as my beloved art.

In writing, I discovered a way to convey to others my dreams for myself, for other, and for the world. Without directly saying a word about myself, I could convey my beliefs about how I thought the world worked then and how I thought it should work.

The time was a truly wonderful one of spending my summer vacation home alone typing away and dreaming of wonderful things and of late nights spent desperately trying to keep my eyes open so I could finish that one awesome scene or chapter.

When I get stuck or wonder why I’m writing in the first place, the problem is usually that I’m trying to please too many people. I forget that I write for myself because it’s my art. It’s forgetting my passion that I get into trouble.

So the next time you feel down or unsure about yourself, go back to the roots of your beginning days of writing. Why did you write then? Tap into that initial passion and find your way back to your art.

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