Archives for November 2017

I have been listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, and talking to writers about the craft.  But the most effective tool that I believe a writer can use does not involve studying writing.

It’s reading.  Plain and simple.  Nothing alluring.

Stephen King says the two things a successful writer must do is write a lot and read a lot.  In my opinion, writing helps you find your voice, reading helps you develop the tone to your voice.

Why is it so valuable to read a lot?

1) Every book you’ve ever read and enjoyed remains a part of your experience.  Yes, those treasured texts that you’ve read time and time again become bookmarks in your psyche where your imagination takes rest stops to relieve itself from being totally original.

2) You’ve learned what to do and what not to do from books that you’ve read.  Our minds already contain the ingredients that we love and don’t.  We need to flesh out what makes those techniques special – or what makes them altogether avoidable.

3) Situations you’ve read about that move you will spark creativity.  I don’t need to elaborate much here, but every story you’ve ever connected to becomes a springboard for a potential plot line.

For instance, I grew up reading and loving Stephen King.  One of the elements of the plot of my NaNoWriMo novel borrows slightly from the concept of one of his earlier novels, Misery.  The part of the plot that sticks with me is the obsessed fan doing harm to the novelist.  It’s a little flip-flopped for my story considering it’s the obsessed fan harming the would-be novelist.  And the novelist is not being held captive and tortured (in that way).  If I didn’t mention Misery, you’d probably not know I was even influenced by it; but my mind pulled that out of its own creative file cabinet.

The moral of the story: if you feed your imagination, it will fill your pages.  Keep writing and don’t stop reading!

You’re busy.

Yeah, you are.

I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry.

Your life isn’t going slow down for you to write.  Your kids aren’t going to give you a month off of raising them.  Your boss isn’t going to come into your office and tell you to take the month to work on something you’ve always wanted to work on and give yourself a break from the priorities of the office.  Your health isn’t going to cooperate; it’s cold and flu season, so count on a sinus infection or two.

Oh, and if you live in America, there’s Thanksgiving, which means that you can throw a couple days out the window while you travel and stuff yourself with turkey and Aunt Edna’s mediocre stuffing (no one ever told her that Stove Top was better, and no one ever will).

But I’m here to tell you that you’re looking at your busyness the wrong way.  When it comes to NaNoWriMo, the busyness happens to be a blessing.

I decided to begin NaNoWriMo this year knowing that this is the busiest I’ve ever been.  I’m going to give you several things I have on my plate (but I am sure you’re busy too, I’m not undermining you, I’m simply telling you this is the busiest I’ve ever been in my life).

• I just finished up a nonfiction book proposal and am in the process of querying agents to try to sell it (completely unrelated to NaNoWriMo).
• I am in the process of preaching the biggest and most involved series at my church that I’ve ever done (including 21 days of video content released on a daily basis).
• I am editing the videos for an upcoming church service that’s video-based (minimum of 20-25 hours of work).
• We are preparing the site for a $10M sanctuary and as of right now, I’m the lead on the project.  I have some gifted people I’m working with, but I’m still the point person.
• I am facilitating two Dale Carnegie Courses on two different evenings.  Each session is 3 and 1/2 hours not including prep or administration time.
• I started this blog and committed to writing it for 30 days.
• I have two kids under two years old.

So, when I put it in writing, I feel pretty overwhelmed just typing it.  But, believe it or not, if I wasn’t busy, I wold have trouble participating in NaNoWriMo.  This is also a theory offered by Chris Baty in his book, No Plot, No Problem.  He’s the creator of NaNoWriMo.  He knows why it works.

With all that being said, can I tell you why busyness works to your advantage.

1) Prioritization becomes a matter of survival.  I have to set my day according what is most important, and next to my time in prayer in the morning, those words I’ve been laying on paper have become my highest priority.

2) Elimination becomes easier.  When you’re busy and you’re trying to knock out 1,667 words per day, you say “no” to a lot.  In another post, I’m going to tell you what I’m giving up right now.

3)  Revelation of what’s going on in your heart surfaces.  If this is important to you, busyness won’t keep you from it.  And I’ve found that on the things that I’ve given up to do this, my heart wasn’t as serious about those things as it is about the writing.  Next to my ministry work and my time with my family, the words are my thriving passion.

So, you’ve read enough.  Now get busy!  I mean, cut through your busyness and slay some pages.

Welcome to Video About a Book: On Writing by Stephen King.

 

 

Order Here on Amazon!

Keep writing!

 

Make no mistake about this.  I think as writers, we have a tendency to rely heavily upon the artistic part of the writing.  We love that.  We love being inspired and being creative.

All of those things are important and they work together to produce your unique voice.  That’s some magical stuff, for sure.

However, here is something that may appear contradictory to that.

This is work.   It really is.  It’s work and it requires effort from you.

Before I started writing my novel, I wrote when I “felt led to.”  It was a cool way to say that I did it only when I felt like it.  However, now that we have those deadlines set in place, I “feel led to” every morning between 6:30 and 8:30 am.

While this idea may appear to weaken the excitement of writing, I’ve found it does the opposite under the right perspective.  Here are my tips to help you put some work into your writing.

1) View it as a scheduled responsibility instead of something you do when you have time.  What gets scheduled gets accomplished.  I know my schedule and when someone makes an appointment with me, I keep it.  I am treating my writing like an appointment with a person.  This keeps me from blowing it off.

2)  Write without regard for emotion instead of under the direction of it.  I’ve gotten up every morning between 5:00 and 5:45 am.  I know how my day is, and I know that if I waited until I felt like writing later on in the day, my schedule may not agree with that sentiment.  I also know that I like sleep, and when my bed has a womb-like warmth and the sun still isn’t up, I don’t feel like getting up and sitting in a stiff office chair in front of a computer.  But I refuse to let my emotion get the best of me.

3) Get the words on the page regardless of how the words feel coming out.  Anne Lamott (we’ll examine her book on writing in an upcoming Video About A Book) says that every single rough draft is – well – it’s her saying.  But they’re not perfect.  Every writer ever goes through intense periods of believing that they are writing the best words ever written and the worst garbage ever produced.  Write anyway.  It’s work.

You might write 1000 words and 100 of them are good.  Don’t focus on that right now.  Focus on words meeting paper and you having more words today than you did yesterday.  As writers, it’s our job!

If you’ve chosen to write an entire novel in the month of November, you’ve probably examined some of the stats.  While those that finish are in the minority, it’s interesting to note how many people begin a novel:

Hundreds of thousands.

Did you catch that?  Hundreds of thousands!

This is the second secret fuel of NaNoWriMo.  Did you catch what it is?

Community.   Yep.  Community with people that most of us have never met, and most likely never will meet.

One of my biggest motivations to take myself seriously as a writer resulted from an invitation to a Facebook group created by someone I met (digitally) in a book launch group.  This person invited me to a group for writers.  Just being in a group with them, and being invited by another writer changed the way I viewed myself.  That group took me seriously as a writer when I, myself, hadn’t.

But that all changed.  Because I changed.

Community changes us in so many ways.  I could go on and on about this, but I want to offer you three tips to take advantage of the NaNoWriMo community.

1) Be encouraged that while you struggle, someone else is struggling, too.  Writing is such a solitary activity.  It’s so comforting to know that as you strive to lay words on the page, there are others right along with you.

2) Do not be discouraged by someone with a high word count, but be encouraged with their willingness to share that part of their life with you.  I look at published authors in our group, published authors that I see on Facebook and Twitter, and even literary agents.  I have chosen to feel encouraged knowing that everyone had their start somewhere; and I get the privilege of seeing where they are going in their literary journey.

3) Don’t focus just on your benefit from the community, focus on a way to serve that community.  This adds the greatest power to community, in my opinion.  This is what prompted me to begin a blog about NaNoWriMo.  I am not doing this because I want to have more to do.  I’m doing this because I’ve been blessed by those who have chosen to let me walk alongside them on this journey.  Some have told me about software they use, books to read, YouTube videos to watch, and they’ve done so with absolutely no selfish motive.  They have just reached out to me to motivate me to become a better writer.

That’s the power of community.  Think about that as you’re laying words down on paper.  Stop and realize that there is someone with you, doing the same thing.

Have you figured out one of the reasons why November produces so many first-time novelists?

I did.  There are actually two reasons, but we’ll cover the second one tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo offers you something you never had before in terms of your creativity.  Do you know what it is yet?

A deadline.  Yep.  A deadline.  Sure, there isn’t an editor that’s going to chew your face off if you miss it, but many productivity resources state that making even an artificial deadline is just as effective as having an authority-enforced deadline.

I realized this after my birthday last year.  I committed that I would give myself a birthday gift of a completed manuscript before I turned 35.  I made a deadline.  So every day that passed I realized I was getting closer to that deadline.  And do you know what happened?

My behavior changed.  Urgency was introduced to this nebulous idea of “one day I’m going to be an author.”  Now, I had something concrete.

Long story short, I completed a non-fiction book proposal on October 31 of this year.  I didn’t realize at the time that non-fiction book publication is based on a proposal and fiction is based on a completed manuscript (this is whole other discussion).  However, something else happened, I realized that I also wanted to write a fiction book.  NaNoWriMo gave me a deadline for the completion of the book proposal because I didn’t want to be be working on a proposal and writing a fiction manuscript.

Now I have a manuscript deadline for NaNoWriMo and I have a completed book proposal!

Deadlines produce urgency, and unfortunately, creation is an art.  Having a deadline just doesn’t sound as sexy as saying “I’m creating art.”

Here are some guidelines for deadlines that are working when it comes to the NaNoWriMo deadline motivation.

1) Use the daily deadline word count.  Getting that 1,667 in really helps to spur motivation.  This also helps to chunk down that 50K into bite-sized pieces.

2) Use a “scene deadline.”  Work on three scenes a day and bounce around.  Who said you had to work on one scene to completion?  Let go that rule and build a robust creative work space.  You’d be surprised how quickly your world populates when you’re bouncing around.

3) Use an hourly deadline when you’re working.  For instance, if you start writing at 8:00 am, say that you’re going to write 500 words by 8:30 am.  It’s easy to let your “writing time” become your “distraction time.”

4) Cut the quantity of what you’re doing in half.  This I still from Jon Acuff’s book, Finish.  If you can’t write around 1667 words per day, write 850 per day.  NaNoWriMo will not benefit you if perfection is your goal.  Make progress your goal.  Let’s say it’s November 30 and you have 20,000 words of your novel complete.  That’s 20,000 more words than you would have had apart from NaNoWriMo.

So start looking for ways to use the deadline to your creative advantage and win!  Get to writing.

You’re adulting  way too much and it makes your writing suck.

I said this to myself when I started on Day 1 of NaNoWriMo.

Then something happened. I tapped into that childish imagination that has been buried by responsibility and rejection while simultaneously unlocking a bravery that I didn’t know existed.

I was working on my novel yesterday morning, and realized that I created a world.  A completely unique world.  I sat there looking at these characters that were not in existence seven days ago and realized that I brought them to life, and now their future hangs in the fate offered by my words.

That’s insane.  It really is.  To think that we can sit at a desk, in front of a MacBook, or a notepad and create a world and shape destinies.  What a glorious concept!

But then soon after, it happened.  I started to ask all of those logical questions and demanded of myself that I know exactly how this world works and what the monetary system is, government, religion, etc.

Then I repeated myself,   Stop adulting, you bore.

I decided instead to use my lack of knowledge of this world to give my characters the opportunity to show it to me.  They have to navigate the terrain in order to satisfy their motives.  Unfortunately, just like with our world, theirs may not cooperate.  And that is what’s driving my story.

I have no clue how it’s going to shake out.  And to be blunt, I’m just as curious about how the conflicts will resolve as I feel the characters are.

And is it perfect?  Ummmm, heck to the NAW.  Not even a little bit.  However, I feel like I can cage that inner-adult for a little longer, and maybe I’ll let him back out again once I start edits.

So here are four things I’ve done that have made me comfortable with imagining a new world.

1) I am not trying to become an expert in the world.  When my wife and I visited the Bahamas once on a cruise, we left on the port and explored the island with some friends for about 4 hours.  I didn’t stop at the information desk and get a PhD on the Bahamas and its history before I explored.  I didn’t need to know it all to experience its beauty.  Though I’m a new writer, I believe that this rings true for the worlds we create.

2) I’m not afraid to build a building that I will then blow up.  I checked my budget in this world and it’s unlimited.  I have SO MUCH ENCOURAGEMENT knowing that I can edit the crap out of this thing.  I might make a weather pattern that doesn’t fit, and as the owner and the creator of said world, I can change that at the click of a keyboard.  This has made me braver.

3) I’m as excited to discover the world as the characters are to thrive in it.  I’ve not been having a ton of detail about the world yet (though I may later), but I try to reveal its qualities through the characters’ dialogues and conflicts.  This has given me a creative buffet of things that may or may not have any bearing whatsoever on the overall plot.

4) I take vacations from the world and come back to mine.  I structured my story with a wraparound (not sure it’s a correct term or not) story that is set in Pittsburgh, PA.  I’m pretty familiar with Pittsburgh because I have lived here all my life.  When I start to get consumed by details of the world, I’ve jumped out of the world and envisioned the Pittsburgh skyline, and wrote about the characters in the wraparound story.  This has helped me to keep words hitting the page and my brain to pursue different creative avenues.

Keep writing!

In Stephen King’s horror classic, The Shining, the central character, Jack Torrence goes a little crazy.  He is a recovering alcoholic author, and he takes the opportunity to be the caretaker for a haunted (he doesn’t know that) hotel in Colorado with his wife and son.  He accepts the opportunity because he wants to work on his book.

[Spoiler alert]

He goes freaking insane.  In one of the famous scenes from the movie adaptation, Jack’s wife, Wendy, finds the manuscript that he’d been working on throughout their entire horrific stay.  She discovers hundreds of pages with just one line, written in dozens of different ways.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Watch the YouTube Clip of the scene here.

Now, if you’re a writer, becoming homicidal is not a good idea.  I strongly recommend against that.  But I do believe that spending time writing fiction gives us an opportunity to use our mind in a way that we wouldn’t normally do.  Maybe even go a little crazy, perhaps?

I started down a road with the characters and something happened: I started to watch them move instead of move them.  I let them do what they would want to do in their heart.  A world materialized that I never deliberately conceived and then I had a thought:

This is crazy!

Then, another thought crossed my mind.  There are people all over the world doing the same thing – going a little insane.  How cool!  NaNoWriMo offers the opportunity for us to do something we wouldn’t normally do.  So, I want to offer you three things that I encourage you to try in your race to 50,000 words.

1) Create a character in your story that you might have trouble befriending.  If you work in an office, create a farmer.  If you are bad at math, make him a genius when it comes to numbers.  Then think about his motives, desires, and watch his behavior in the situation you put him in.

2) Imagine a world that’s different from yours.  This is something that I just tried that I never thought I would.  I’ll talk more about it tomorrow.  But think about a place that you could only imagine: then imagine on paper.

3) Get comfortable with imperfect details.  A great excuse that I hid behind for not writing a book was that I am not very detailed, and couldn’t imagine creating a perfectly detailed story that someone else wanted to read.  But I realized that perfection is elusive.  Art is messy.  And people are moved by passion, not perfection.

It seems insane, but doing something the opposite of what you’d normally do is fun!  Let’s go a little crazy and remember: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  Keep cranking out those crazy words!