Category Archives: The Fictorians

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

June 12, 2014

Ace Jordyn

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

Writing Spaces

June 10, 2014

Brandon M Lindsay

Brandon M. Lindsay The Writing Life Writing Tools No Comments

When I moved to Tokyo late last year, I expected some things in my life were going to change.

Among the more obvious changes were the fact that I would look vastly different from everyone else, sometimes enough to warrant a long, uncomfortable stare, as well as being functionally illiterate. Then of course there was the living situation, the job, the food, the language, the lack of a car, the weather, the… well, pretty much everything.

One thing I thought wouldn’t change, however, was me. Particularly, my writing habits.

Yet after I had gotten settled in to my new life, I found that it was difficult to write. Part of this could be attributed to the change in job. For the past several years, I had worked in a call center, where the word “downtime” usually meant “do whatever you want as long as you stay at your desk.” For me, that meant a lot of reading (and thus inspiration to write) and, when I discovered the power of cloud storage, writing. My new job is rather different. I’m not sitting at a desk anymore, and there is never downtime, especially not the kind that I had before. But I had worked jobs like this in the past and still found the will to write quite easily. I figured it had to be something else.

Tokyo has a reputation for being crowded and cramped, and I suppose in a lot of ways it is. The word “megacity” conjures images of fantastically high skyscrapers clustered together from horizon to horizon, a la Judge Dredd. But Tokyo is pretty normal, especially in the more suburban areas. My apartment isn’t huge by any standard, and I have to get really creative with how I use the space in my kitchen, but I’ve seen smaller apartments in Seattle. Size wasn’t really the issue, but I figured that the root of my problem lay somewhere in my living space.

My apartment came furnished, but by more or less Japanese standards. There was no bed, only a futon (one very different from those you see at Ikea, no doubt) for sleeping on the floor. And there was a couch, a TV stand, and what I thought was a coffee table, but actually turned out to be a coffee table with a heater built into the bottom. This glorious invention, called a kotatsu, keeps your legs warm throughout the winter without blowing up your electricity bill. Provided, however, you are okay with sitting on the floor.

It turns that I wasn’t. I’ve enjoyed western comforts, such as chairs and desks, for most of my life. Sitting on the floor did not feel natural to me, and took a lot of adjusting. I mean, a lot. No, really, a lot (what I’m saying is I never fully adjusted). I thought I would tough it out and learn to adapt to my situation, as one should after moving halfway around the world, but eventually I said, “To hell with this.” And bought myself a desk/chair combo.

What a difference that has made. I immediately began cranking out chapters and outlines and ideas like I was still sitting in that call center, patiently waiting for some irrational customer to complain about the bill they never paid.

You may find yourself asking, “Why didn’t you just get a desk to begin with?” First of all, taking furniture on the train always involves logistical challenges, as well as the occasional dirty look. But more importantly, I didn’t realize how much of an effect my environment would have on my writing until I actually saw the difference in output.

If you ever find yourself suffering from writer’s block and having difficulty getting in the zone, it may not be you that’s the cause. It could be your writing space. After all, your butt is only half of the butt-in-chair equation.

Join Brandon on the blog tour for his recently-released novella, Spear Mother: A Tale of the Fourth World! Spear Mother is the third release taking place in his epic fantasy world. Details of the tour can be found on his website: http://brandonmlindsay.com

Go Big or Stay Home

June 9, 2014

Frank Morin

Frank Morin Goals Motivation The Writing Life 3 Comments

The official definition in the Urban Dictionary for “Go Big or Stay Home” is that it is used to goad someone into an outlandish or awesome act.

It’s a challenge phrase.

This month we are checking in on our progress with the goals we set at the beginning of the year. It’s also a great time to reflect on whether or not we set the right goals. Did we choose to do something beyond the normal and really commit to getting it done? Those are the scary goals, the ones we aren’t quite sure we can meet.

Those are the challenge goals, the ones that drive us to accomplish something.

So you set a writing goal or a personal goal this year? Was it a challenge goal, or was it a safety goal, one designed to make an incremental, tiny step forward, using the same stride used in the past? One that let’s us celebrate repainting the same-old situation?

It’s easy to plod along doing the same thing we’ve done before and celebrate minuscule progression, but sometimes the only way to really get where we want to go is to completely change and try something totally different. To challenge ourselves to take the leap we dream of taking but which scares us to death.

For example, when I first started writing seriously, my first novel took way too long, partly because my writing was just awful, but partly because my schedule did not allow much time for writing. So I set the goal to rearrange my working schedule to allow more writing time. It took a few years and some pretty big risks and sacrifices from the entire family to accomplish that goal, but I did it.

This year I realized I was not taking enough advantage of that newfound freedom, so I set a huge goal of completing four new novels this year. Sure I had started outlining them, but did not have any first drafts completed. And yet, that’s what it would take to reach the next level. So I set the goal and began to work it. Last week I wrote 26,000 words to complete one of those novels on time. One piece of the overall goal is complete. Lots more to go.

No matter our individual circumstance, we can all set change goals and decide if we’re going to go big or stay home. Most people don’t bother.

They stay home.

Most people are content to go to work, fill an honest eight hours, and then literally just go home and watch tv. Those people have a safe existence. They do not have to take risks, do not have to stretch and grow, do not risk failure and ridicule. But they also never go big. They never accomplish challenge goals to celebrate incredible victories and learn to take control of their lives.

Of those who decide to make a change, who say they are going to Go Big, most of them don’t make it. Sure, from a writing perspective some people are just so bad that they simply lack the capacity to do it, but those are the exceptions. Most people COULD write a competitive book if they REALLY wanted to, yet most of them fail. It’s not because they CAN’T do it, but because they lack staying power. Like the graph illustrates, saying you have a great idea is nothing. Starting a book is when we first get some skin in the game but doesn’t mean a whole lot either. Actually finishing a book is huge, but even that’s not the ultimate goal. We want to finish something someone else will pay to read. Challenge goals are the vehicle to take us there.

So what if you have to write ten years before you make a sale? Those ten years are going to pass anyway. So what if you get rejected? The best writers rack up dozens, if not hundreds, of rejections. It’s not the rejection that defines success but the overcoming of that rejection and the continued consistency.

I spoke with Brandon Sanderson earlier this year and when I mentioned I had been writing for almost ten years he nodded and said, “Great, then you’re just about ready to break in.”

Before lightning can strike, you have to make yourself the lightning rod.
Before you can be the lucky winner, you have to compete.
Before you can become an overnight success, you have to work for years to prepare yourself and develop the skills to break out big.

Some people just need a push, someone to challenge them to make a change goal. If you’re one of those, the music video by Switchfoot for their song “I Dare you to Move” might help. Check it out here.

So this month as we reflect where we are with our goals and compare that against where we want to be in six months or one year or ten years, let’s ask ourselves, “Am I going big or staying home?”

Go Big.