Category Archives: Ace Jordyn

7 Ways to Score with Your Goals

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Goals Motivation Self-Awareness Self-Motivation The Writing Life No Comments

We all set writing goals, but being able to achieve them means we need to understand how we work and how to make our goals work. Here are seven things I find helpful:

1) dress properly
You don’t wear a winter parks in +40 weather so why would you wear the editor’s hat when creative juices are running high? Stay immersed in your world and tell the story. Story structure, world building issues, exposition issues, line edits – all these ‘imperfections’ should be dealt with in the revision and final editing stages.

2) flip flops or hiking boots?
Do you get a better work out strolling on a beach or hiking up a steep mountain? Or a little of both like setting a large goal of one novel a year with smaller goals of 2,000 words a week? Know what motivates you and know that there is much flexibility in how you reach your goals. For example, you may only be able to write a few hundred words a day but if you set aside a weekend every month or two as a writing weekend, you can more easily reach your goals.

3) befriend change
Life happens. Rethinking a concept happens. Writer’s block happens. We get thrown off our goals and every doubt we ever had about being a writer sets in. So never cower before change. Understand why the change has happened. If it’s writer’s block, perhaps there’s something you haven’t thought through well enough. Sometimes our characters take the story in a different direction and we must rethink it. Illness strikes, work changes, any number of things can happen to throw us off our goal. And as with point #2, you may need to decide if it’s time to wear flip flops or hiking boots for a while. But remember, befriending change isn’t permission to procrastinate because goals, like business plans, are moving targets.

4) become a guru
When you are at your paying job, you aren’t in a position to write your story. Conversely, teach yourself and others that your writing time is a job not to be interrupted. Eliminate distractions like phones, emails and social media. You need to focus and to be in your groove, so become your own guru and facilitate channeling your own creativity. Our brains like routine so find something that works for you: meditate, choose background music that inspires creativity, have a special cup of tea and set a specific time for writing.

5) even a sloth is accomplishes something
We write about life, not directly perhaps, but all we experience and observe is translated into our stories. The themes in our stories are our ruminations about how we see and understand things. When telling a story, we sometimes need to pause and to consciously or subconsciously think through those themes and their implications. Down time can be problem solving time and sometimes, it’s just a need to recharge your batteries for the next burst of creative energy.

6) let your fingers do the talking
Fingers on key board – need we say more? Yes for what happens when the fingers and brain aren’t quite connecting? Try it the old fashioned way for a bit and use a pen and paper. There is something to be said for the older, slower method of writing. The hand and brain connect at a different speed (generally slower) and there something more methodical, more organic about the process. Sometimes when I do this, I write about things unrelated to the story but which, on some level, I needed to say or think about. Free style writing, whether by hand or keyboard, can loosen writing blocks and free up creative energy. But truly, write your story one paragraph at a time, one chapter at a time and soon, you’ll have reached your goal. If you’re not trying, it isn’t happening.

7) go play!
Life happens and we need it to happen. We are complex creatures needing inspiration, family and friends. So make time to play with others – and to do the dishes! Never feel guilty about having to do so unless you let it shamelessly distract you from your goal. Writing time for many of us is a form of play time so embrace it as such. For many of us, writing is play time for our creative spirit. Embrace it. Love it. In doing so, you’ll make those around you understand how important it is for you, the creative artist, to have this time. Your writing goals will be more easily met if your family and your creative spirit in you aren’t neglected.

Permission to play! Now, that sounds like fun!

6 Ways to Sabotage Your Goals

Ace Jordyn Craft & Skills Failures First Drafts Goals Motivation Self-Awareness Self-Motivation The Writing Life 1 Comment

There are things which keep us from achieving our goals, and sometimes we’re not aware when we’re being our own worst enemy.

1) be a good friend
Be a good friend to everyone but yourself. Always check email regularly, answer the phone and respond to your social media pings – as important as these are, they’re all distractions from writing. Set a time for them and that should be when you’re in your least creative head space, you can’t write another word or you need a break. There are days when I don’t check in with anyone or even look at emails because they’re an easy distraction and shift my thoughts on other directions. There are no short phone calls with close family or friends. The danger of the distraction is the changing head space. When I’m writing a world, I need to stay in it – the travel fatigue between realities is strenuous and counterproductive.

2) pretend you’re back in elementary or high school
At some point, we learned not to believe in ourselves. We can be our own worst enemy and critic. Somewhere deep inside a kernel of doubt niggles, of not being good enough (whatever that means), that we won’t succeed, that the stories will never measure up. Remember those elementary and high school teachers who red inked your assignments? In an effort to teach us the basics, they unwittingly hammered fragile creative egos. Make them the ghosts of your past, not your present. So, drop the hammer and the red ink and use the keyboard instead.

3) sweat the details
The devil is truly in the details. It’ll bring your world alive or it’ll totally swamp you. Researching a world thoroughly is fun and it stimulates creativity. Done to excess, however, it can be a distraction from both writing the story and the protagonist’s journey. The details must contribute to the plot and not be superfluous. Sometimes you don’t know what details you need until the story is being written. Use the premise and a rough outline to guide your research. If you really like research and world building, know that it isn’t over until the story is published – there will be times when you need to deepen the world with a little more research.

4) fear heights
Fear climbing the ladder of success. Fear writing ‘the end’. Fear sending your work to beta readers and editors. Two things happen when we get closer to our goal – the dreaming stops and we are forced to leave our now comfortable, creative world for the business one. The business side demands skill sets we’re not always comfortable with such as revision, editing, submission and marketing. Rejection or criticism, at any level, feels like falling off the ladder for the higher we go, the harder the fall. But it doesn’t have to be. Learning the business side, climbing that ladder – it’s a skill set that once embraced creates possibilities and enthusiasm for new goals, new stories and opportunities to realize your highest goal which is that of professional writer.

5) believe it’s a just hobby
If you don’t take it seriously, neither can anyone else and the support you need (time to write, encouragement, feedback) won’t be there. Worse still, you’ve created an environment designed to sabotage your goals. Most of us need to work to pay the bills so we can’t write full time. But treating it like a profession isn’t justy about having endless time – it’s about taking it seriously, setting regular times to write, learning the craft and business. So set your goals and take them seriously. Most importantly, decide what it is you want from your writing – is it a hobby or do you want something more? Then, set your goals accordingly.

6) read 15 how-to books and conscientiously apply them to your first draft
That stopped me cold. I didn’t need to read 15 books, just one how-to at the wrong time gave me a very painful writer’s block that took a week to work through. Of course we need to know craft and basic story structure and a few things which will make revision less painful. But sometimes we must trust we know that intuitively and let the story be told. Whether you outline or not the story must be written with all its flaws and gems all mashed into the manuscript. Revision, not the first draft, is the perfect time to analyze the manuscript and apply all the how-to advice. The danger, however, is that there are books 16, 17, 18 and more, and that the goal of finishing the novel isn’t realized. Revision, like this blog, must come to an end and the best way to do that is to write …

The End

Islandia – A Utopian Love Story

Ace Jordyn Reading Setting and Milieu World-building 1 Comment

Masterful in its attention to detail and a very human story, Islandia is a quiet classic – quiet in that it hasn’t garnered the publicity that many classics have, but a classic because its story and writing endure. Considered utopian literature, Islandia is a pre-industrial civilization which respects women and that confronts early twentieth century colonialism. However, it’s much more than a commentary on political and economic realities in the early 1900’s, it is world building at its best – of not only the geography, social, economic and political structures, but of a society and its heart. The depth of its world building has been compared to Tolkien.

IslandiaJohn Lang is hired as the American Consul at the behest of his uncle and other parties, with the expectation that he will promote their economic aspirations and will convince Islandia to end its isolation. Excited to reunite with an Islandian friend he made in college, Lang is still shocked to find himself in an agrarian, low-tech world. As he learns about this strange new world, he learns about himself and finds himself at odds with his mission, his values and his heart. Lang’s struggle is best summed up in a review on Goodreads by Terry:

‘Lang finds himself divided, a part of him struggling to be a good consul, loyal to his home and profession with the ulterior motive that his success at winning his country’s desires will also bring him his own personal ones, though at the cost of all that his closest Islandian friends hold dear; and so an even stronger part of himself fights against his own ‘better’ judgement and all concepts of what is realistic or pragmatic in the name of a beautiful ideal that will mean the end of his own personal hopes and dreams.’

Islandia was a world imagined by Wright since his childhood. He never shared it with anyone and he had written thousands of pages about the place and its people. Upon his untimely death, his wife taught herself to type and created a 2,000 page novel. Their daughter edited it to 1,000 pages and it was first published in 1942.

This novel is not an action adventure with a fast paced plot and some readers may find the initial story set up a little slow. Neither does it fit into the modern romance genre. It is a captivating drama which draws the reader into a world so completely that one longs to visit it. Thus, it is more than a utopian exercise on the values of the industrial society, its politics and impact on its people – it is a story about personal values and understanding one’s and another’s heart. Perhaps that’s why this novel has so quietly endured.

It is also a tribute of love to a man who so fully imagined and lived this world. Had it not been for the love and dedication of his wife and daughter, this poignant society which so richly understands itself, would never have been realized so that we too may experience it.

For all these reasons Islandia has so quietly endured and become a classic. On so many levels it is a Utopian Love Story – about falling in and out of love with one’s family, oneself, another, one’s country and with a world so different from the one we know. Islandians would tell you that there are four words to express love: amia – love of friends, alia – love of place and family land and lineage, ania – desire for marriage and commitment, and apia – sexual attraction. These are indeed, utopian concepts of the heart.

Take Control – Please!

Ace Jordyn Character Craft & Skills Ideas & Plotting No Comments

Letting your character take control is essential to maintain the illusion that the events in your story are real. Yes, every story is an illusion and what makes it believable are the details as perceived by the character. When writing a representational story (where the writer never addresses the audience), you will need to let the character not only tell but experience story events in their fullest. That experience becomes believable to the reader when the characters actions, reactions, thoughts and perceptions feel genuine. The only way to make that happen is to let your character take control.

Letting your character take control doesn’t mean the story will run afoul and destroy your plot – it’s about enhancing the plot by making it and your character feel real and not contrived. It is about choosing and placing the important details. It’s about the details that make him tick, that color his world, that give him motive and have created his common sense and hence his intuition.

There are three things you can do to let your character take control effectively:

1. Understand how a character perceives and relates to his world

  • Physically through the five senses of touch, taste, smell, sight and sound.
  • Common sense which integrates what we’ve experienced through the five senses. It also helps us see the patterns in our life.
  • Intuition which recognizes the patterns in our lives and allows us to see or project where those patterns may lead us. Your character makes decisions for a reason which must feel genuine to the reader.Emotions which build upon experience and learning and provide a basis for motive and motivation.
  • Emotion is a reaction and colors how information is integrated. For example, a character may react to a strict upbringing by either always being afraid and leery of authority, or may have a total disregard for it. Either way, this will affect how he reacts in specific instances, the words he uses (metaphors) to describe places, people and events.
… larger than life characters … have a sense of self regard. Their emotions matter to them. They do not dismiss what they experience. They embrace life. They wonder about their responses to events and what such responses mean. They take themselves seriously…Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass

As your character lives in his world, he’ll perceive it through is senses, color his experience with his emotions, use his version of common sense and apply his intuition to move forward. When he does this successfully, he’ll be in control, his responses genuine and readers will love him for it.

2. Explore your character
This goes beyond the standard descriptions some writing advice advocates. As Les Edgerton points out in Hooked, a character’s physical description – unless markedly different from the norm – does relatively little to draw the reader in. A character doesn’t usually describe himself. He may describe someone else which in turns grounds the reader. But HOW he describes someone or the scenery around him tells us a lot about him and the lens through which he sees the world. He may even have physical reactions such as running his fingers though his hair when he sees someone’s unkempt hair or a desire to vomit at a certain smell. Thus, you can show rather than tell when you know your character well and you let him take control.

…possibilities only emerge when we demand more from the idea, when we ask more why and what result questions. Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card

The easiest way to do this is to write a detailed background history for your character as if you were there. As you get to know his trials and tribulations, the major influences in his life, his fears and desires and yes, even the little things that comforted him, it will become easier to show him in a genuine and full way because the all the important WHY questions become answered. Why does he do that? Why does he feel that? Why wouldn’t he…? Why, if he’s in a responsible position, acting irresponsibly? Why is he so caring about x and then so obtuse and mean about y?

3. Use the things you know about your character against him.
This puts him in a situation which shows who he is and compels him to act (whether running to or from the situation). If your character takes control of the story, his reactions may surprise you. The added benefit is that it cures your writing of the murky-middle syndrome. Often times I’ll ask my character what he sees and how he feels about things. Between his perceptions and his gut reaction, the story moves forward and I have little work to do except to write.

Fictional Characters come to life by giving them individual traits, real weaknesses and heroic qualities that readers can recognize and empathize with. You play these against each other to achieve drama. For instance, a man who is afraid of heights but who must climb a mountain to save his love. The Fiction Writer by Nina Munteanu

In his book, Writing Fiction for Dummies, Randy Ingermanson sums up why you should let your character take control: A character’s past determines what sort of person you have coming into the story. The past is only the imperfect guide to the future, though. Your character has a free will and can choose to break loose from his past and pursue a new future. But will he succeed? Your goal as a novelist is to make it plausible that he might without making it a certainty.

When you know your character this well, he’ll control the story without you losing control.

Happy Writing!