Category Archives: Self-Awareness

Managing the Attention Deficit Thingy

a-d-d-attention-deficit-disorder-funny-retro-posterI find little in life more enjoyable than discovering something new, a character, a world, a scene. I love watching how things develop as I discover write them. I’m what they call a Pantser. I wrote of my writing disorder a couple months ago in A Pantser’s Plight.

In one of David Farland‘s workshops he said something to the effect that discovery writing was to him the most enjoyable and the least productive. I have found that to be true. So I’ve worked hard to develop a plot, outline the direction, but I still discovery write the scenes. I’m finding that the story develops and takes life.

Just this past month I wrote a scene that I had loosely outlined for my protagonist who started a new job on Wall Street. As the scene unfolded, a cute red-headed receptionist entered the mix. And suddenly my protagonist took interest and next thing I know they’re digging on each other. I did not see that coming in my outline but it works nicely.

I developed two other characters who, according to my outline, were scheduled to be killed later on in the story. These characters have grown and become significant in the story. I’ve used them to bridge plot gaps and deepen side plots. Now I’m not sure I want to kill them off. I probably still will, but I could see some spin off stories developing, so I’m going to keep discovering where it goes.

This last month I’ve written about 30,000 words on the same book. I haven’t touched anything else. Not the two short stories, brewing in the back of my brain. Not the other three novels half finished. This is pretty significant for me and I wanted to share my newly acquired trick to stay focused.

The Problems

First, as I mention earlier, I get really excited about discovering something new and tend to lose interest in something that I’ve already figured out in my mind though I haven’t written it yet. This usually leads me to ping-ponging from project to project but never finishing anything.

Second, squirrel. I get easily pulled onto something else more exciting and I have a hard time focusing my mind on what it doesn’t want to focus on.

Third,  sometimes I discover write my characters into a situation that just doesn’t work with the rest of the story and I get stumped. And sometimes my characters get into a situation they just can’t get out of.

The Solutions

First, I do a light outline to give myself direction. And I try not to over develop. When I do, it usually becomes cliche or boring.

Second, I noticed awhile ago that whatever book or movie or television show I was into would effect which of my projects my brain thought important at the moment. So, as I’m writing a financial thriller, I’ve tricked my brain to staying focused on this book by reading two John Grisham books, watching shows like Better Call Saul and movies like Wall Street. And more importantly I won’t let myself read or watch anything science fiction or fantasy related. It’s working quite well.

Third, I used to revere what my brain discovered as sacred. I credited inspiration. But I’m learning now that sometimes it’s crap and I need to chuck it out the window. I hated rewriting a scene that I had already thought out a different way and I still don’t enjoy it, but the end result makes it worth it. Sometimes I’ve got to suck it up and push through.

Funny thing, writing this post has gotten me excited to discover more on this particular project. It’s called Unknown Soldier and if I can keep it up, I’ll finish it in a couple more months.

 

jace 1I live in Arizona with my family, wife and five kids and a little dog. I write fiction, thrillers and soft sci-fi with a little short horror on the side. I’ve got an MBA and work in finance for a biotechnology firm.

I volunteer with the Boy Scouts, play and write music, and enjoy everything outdoors. I’m also a novice photographer.

You can visit my author website at www.jacekillan.com, and you can read some of my works by visiting my Wattpad page.

 

The Truth of Work/Life Balance through Life’s Storms

A Guest Post by Kate Corcino

Point A: We’ve all heard them—those pithy sayings meant to get us through the rough patches. “When it rains, it pours” and the like.

Point B: As writers, we’ve all heard the impossible counterpoints, too. “Write every day. EVERY. DAY.”

What happens when Point A wipes out Point B? I’m not talking about feeling swamped. I’m talking about a tidal wave of life events that crashes over you and those you love with a destructive force that leaves you sobbing as you pick over the detritus. Whether it is one huge event, or a series of smaller events that just keep coming, you are utterly overwhelmed.

How do you manage work/life balance when that happens?

You don’t.

And that’s okay.

But how can I be a writer if I’m not writing?

Because you’re learning.

Neither life nor writing happen in a vacuum. The things that you are learning when you’re in coping mode enrich both your person and your writing. I have so many writing friends forcing themselves to work through upheaval simply because they think that’s what writers do. They push themselves into exhaustion and beyond. They agonize over every moment spent away from their manuscript.

The bear of it is, sometimes you can’t help it.

In 2005, at seven months pregnant, I tripped while unloading groceries (they don’t call me “Grace” for nothin’). The impact caused a placental abruption. Our son was born at 27 weeks. The next three months were a blur of hospital corridors, medical forms, two-steps-forward-three-steps-back terror, and gratitude. Later, when I had time to reflect and not simply ride the daily waves, I recognized all of the lessons learned during that time that inform my writing and my life as a writer. Foremost among them was perspective. No matter how terrifying my tiny son’s odyssey was, the spectre of loss that left me breathless with fear was very real to other parents in the NICU. My son survived, then thrived. He came home. Other precious lives were lived in their entirety in that unit.

In 2008, when I was barely five months pregnant, my water broke early. The team at the hospital informed me that they had no choice but to deliver my still “unviable” daughter. We refused. They quoted a 90% fetal mortality rate in ruptures before 22 weeks, but we were steadfast. We were dismissed, sent home with antibiotics to keep infection at bay, instructions for total bed rest, and informed that I should drink at least 120 ounces of water per day. IF we made it to 24 weeks, they’d hospitalize us then, when there was a chance of saving her. When we went back three weeks later for the ultrasound, an eternity of tears and fears having passed in those weeks, my membranes had resealed. Our daughter wasn’t just viable, she was perfect. Lessons learned? Belief in myself, in my instincts, in my right to say no to experts determined to tell me they know better.

In 2011, my husband suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night. A day and half later, he underwent a quintuple bypass. Four and half days post-surgery, as I sat by his bedside, I received a series of calls that makes my heart ache to this day—our 15-year-old son had been in a horse riding accident. He was taken to a different hospital because he required the highest level of trauma care. Two days and a full craniotomy later, I stood by my son’s bedside at midnight as he came out of his anesthesia, disoriented, terrified, and in pain. He begged me with slurring words to hold his hand, to sing him his baby song, to stay with him. I stood leaning into the metal bars of his bed in the PICU until dawn, holding his hand and singing “You Are My Sunshine” until my voice failed and all I could do was hum. At dawn, he finally fell asleep. My day, to be spent managing my loves in two hospitals and at home, was just beginning.

Lesson learned? I am mighty. There is nothing that cannot be handled, so long as you keep your focus on the moment you are in right then. Do not look up. Do not allow yourself to be overtaken by what-ifs and possibilities. All that matters is one moment. If you can do that, you can do anything.

2015 was meant to be a great year. I had that work/life thing on cruise control. My first book, Spark Rising, and its related collection of stories had been released at the end of 2014 and the response to the novel exceeded my expectations by miles and miles. It won awards while I was deep in writing its follow-up. At the same time, I balanced managing the household, homeschooling my two youngest children, cheering on my oldest (who’d recently flown the nest to begin his adult life across the country), and nurturing a handful of animals. But I didn’t merely balance. I didn’t manage. I excelled.

And then our household crashed, again. My chronic health condition (also nicely managed) decided it was done cooperating. I was hospitalized for a week that summer. And then again. And then again. Even as teams of doctors surrounded my bedside and told us gravely that we were done managing and I risked death if they didn’t intervene surgically, I still managed.

I finished two sets of revisions on the manuscript and scheduled both edits and my surgery for early Fall. I co-wrote a short story. I made arrangements for the kids, the animals, the household. And then I was hospitalized again, and the surgeon moved up my surgery. It couldn’t wait.

Unfortunately, it would have to.

A week before I was supposed to return for elective resectioning of my innards, an inattentive driver swerved in front my husband on his way to work. His motorcycle went down, and it took all my careful management skills with it. We began an odyssey that would span gross malpractice, finding another doctor, another hospital, and two surgeries to repair him. The morning of my birthday, I kissed my husband and went to wait in a waiting room while they replaced his shoulder. Five weeks later, he leaned over to kiss me and wait while they wheeled me in for my own surgery.

During our recoveries, I did not write. I did not think of my once-looming deadline, now postponed. I did not work in spare, stolen moments. I allowed myself to heal, for him, for our children, for me.

Because sometimes work/life balance means putting everything you have on one end of the scale because that is the side that matters most.

The miracle of it is that when you turn back to the scale, somehow both sides are still hovering, somehow still balancing. How can that be?

That’s the most important lesson I’ve learned. As writers, we are so much more than butt in chair, fingers on keyboard output. We watch, we synthesize, we learn, and we dream, even through the nightmare times. And every experience, every moment away from our manuscripts and our internal worlds, returns again to us two-fold in wisdom, and depth of character, and fullness of experience that allows our writing to grow.

Work/life balance? I’m here to tell you, my friend, that if you’re alive, you’re balanced. When the storms stop thundering and the water recedes, when you have time to rebuild and breathe again, the words will be there. And they will be so much richer because of where you’ve been.

 

Kate-Corcino:

Kate Corcino is a reformed shy girl who found her voice (and uses it…a lot). She believes in magic, coffee, Starburst candies, genre fiction, and descriptive profanity. A former legal videographer, teacher, and law student, she believes in chasing dreams and the transformative power of screwing up and second chances.
She is currently preparing for the imminent release of Spark Awakening, the second book in the Progenitor Saga, a futuristic fantasy series with romance, science, magic, and plenty of action.

She lives in her beloved desert in the southwestern United States with her husband, several children, three dogs, and two cats.

Find Kate at…
Website/Blog: http://www.KateCorcino.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKateCorcino
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KateCorcino
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8381085.Kate_Corcino

An Obsessive’s Balancing Act

I often find it funny how much time is spent talking about “balance” in the writing life, and how often that equates to finding time to write. Me, I actually have the opposite problem. I don’t have much in the way of a social life. My family expectations are minimal and my day job hardly impinges on my off time. I only do the dishes or clean my house when I absolutely can’t stand the mess anymore. I’ve got time to kill. I’m an obsessive when it comes to stories.

Raise your hand if you have a tendency to become enamored with something (an idea, a story, your own personal real life macguffin) that is so completely awesome that you eat, sleep and breath it. You’re friends get tired of hearing about it. You’re distracted at the day job, lose focus in conversations, and are generally lost in the niftiness of your new “thing” that it pretty much takes over your brain.

I know I’m not the only one this happens with. As writers, I think just about all of us have that period when we absolutely fall in love with something to the point that we want to delve deep and write about it. The issue for me comes when 1) I can’t let go of the idea until I get so completely sick of it I can’t bear the thought of going near the thing, 2) while I’m in the throws of my obsession even talking to people can be irksome and I start entertaining scenarios in my head where I thwart my antagonist with something heavy and suitably cathartic, and 3) nothing else gets done…at all.

Now, while I’m in no real danger of going postal on some bystander who innocently asks me a question while my concentration is attempting to focus on my current obsession, the first and third issues stated above can be something of a problem.

Like I said, I think all writers have the eureka moment when they find a truly cool idea for a story and dive right in. That’s great when it happens. I love those bursts of writing frenzy when I just have to get it all down. But, inevitably, the burst will end. When this happens with me it’s incredibly difficult to get back into that story idea. I start floundering around until I get so frustrated that I give up on it. Not good.

The other issue with this particular scenario is when I obsess about things that I will never…ever…write about. I’m a habitual daydreamer, and most of my daydreams, while vastly entertaining to me, would not a novel or short story make. And like in the story idea, I can’t let go of it until it’s run its course, which could be days or weeks. Days or weeks when little or no effective writing is being done.

What have I learned from this happening again and again? Mainly that those writing ideas that I get so excited about are usually not the ones I finish. It’s the stories I make myself sit down to write, without the obsession driving me, that I stick with. The obsessions I can sometimes go back to after a long break, but it’s rare. As for the non-writing obsessions? I’ve started using those as writing exercises. They take me places that my normal writing practices don’t, so even if I never use them in a book, I’m still writing–still practicing the craft while I lose myself in a fancy.

As for the last issue, where nothing else ever gets done…well, with all the focus on trying to avoid distractions and finding time to write, I start to wonder if this is an actual problem or not? Perhaps this is just the inevitable conclusion to ignoring the distractions. The TV will go unwatched, the dishes unwashed, that cat’s litter box un…okay, maybe that’s not a chore anyone wants to skip, but my point is that there are only so many hours in the day. If you want to make time for one thing, something else will most likely go unattended. I feel guilty about dusty shelves and laundry splayed over the bedroom floor like a teenager on summer break. I’m an adult, I should have learned by now to make my bed in the morning, but in reality, should I be balancing out my day by doing these chores or is it okay to get it and let myself feel free to rampage through fantasy land?

What it comes down to is what exactly “balance” is to each of us. Is it catching that movie with your family rather than writing or indulging a new obsession with a story idea rather than gossiping with coworkers at the day job? Is it getting in a certain number of hours writing vs a certain list of chores in a day?

It is in the end about priorities. What is truly important, and what are you willing to sacrifice to make it happen? I am aware that my tendency for obsessing is excessive, but to be honest, I don’t think I can turn it off. And I’m not really sure if I would want to. I mean, really, why would I want to sacrifice the stories in my head for the humdrum of every day? To me, stories, whether they be written down for others to read or kept securely locked in my head, are where my bliss is. Perhaps that’s the “balance” that keeps me sane and happy. Maybe that’s all right and I should just accept that about myself. Or maybe I’m just crazy, in which case acceptance is probably a symptom of the insanity and it doesn’t really matter in the end. I don’t know, but I’m going to enjoy it either way, housework be damned.

Making Tea…and time to write.

Here’s a stupid joke:
“How do you identify a writer in a crowd?”

You call out “Shut up and write!” and wait for them to wail back “But I don’t have the tiiime!”

Haha, I’m so funny.

But also, I’m that writer. We all are at times. We think, “Oh man, if I could just quit my day job, then all I’d have to do is write! I could wake up at the crack of dawn, grab some coffee after a nice brisk walk to get my blood flowing to the creative part of my brain, and just sit at the keyboard until lunch and bleed.”

Oh and how I dream, readers. I dream of this idyllic life. All that free time just to sit and write and write and write…

If that’d be the case, if I were so disciplined and motivated, on my days off of my Breadjob, I’d be doing that. I mean, wouldn’t I? 

But what do I do oftentimes? Get some coffee, sit down at my keyboard, and not write a single word.

Oh sure, I’ll type out some things on Facebook. To people. I can tell them all the words. I can tell them all about my story and my thoughts and my feelings and what happens in this particular scene. Meanwhile, my manuscript is sitting all alone in its little folder, quietly sobbing to itself and wondering why, if I love it so much, I tell other people and not it?

So what am I doing, really? Waiting for Calliope herself to descend to this mortal plane and wrap her arms around me, sing sweet hymns into my ears to inspire me? Not even inspire me, just tell me what to write! It’s not like writing is work or anything. Make her do all the work and complain when she doesn’t.

That’s the ticket to success right there.

JimCHines_Writethestory
One of the things that helps is to prioritize what needs to be done today, and what my needs are for the week. For example, on my days off from work, is it more important for me to recover and rest from whatever is going on and spend time on myself, or is it more important to get my deadline done for my long-term goals?

But in our drive to succeed, we can’t forget that we need to nourish ourselves. Not just our bodies with food and sleep, but our connections to the things and people we love. The story isn’t more important than the person writing it, and oftentimes seeking out new experiences or conversations will refill your creative well, so to speak.

Authors often talk of rituals that work for them, and you should find what works for you. I have mine, but they don’t always work.

For example:
“I’ll brew some tea. A little caffeine to help me focus. Also, tea.”
“I’ll just check Facebook while it brews!”
“…Aww those rat pictures sure are super cute.”
“A political argument? On the internet? This is important and I should join in!”
“Ooh, this article my friend linked is super interesting.”
“I should talk to them about it.”
“Well, they’re afk, so I’ll check on Wattpad.”
“Maybe another episode of my favorite TV show will inspire me…”
“Aww my friend is back! I love talking to friends!”
“Oh man! What time is it? Jeez, what have I been doing. I never have any time to write. I don’t know how other authors do it. It’s not fair.”
“I’m going to go write and be a Good Writer.”
“I should make some tea before I write.”
“…Oh.”

But the better one that works involves eliminating those distractions:

“I’ll brew some tea. While it brews I can look over what I have and edit the outline a bit more and organize what scenes I plan to get done.”
~Two Hours Later~
“Well, got 1,000 words done, about half the chapter. I’ll give it a look over tonight before I post it.”
“Didn’t I have some tea? I should make some tea…”
“…oh.”

When I get distracted, what gets me back on track is to realize how much time I’m wasting and eliminate those distractions. I turn off the WiFi and go find a secluded spot where I can put on my noise-canceling headphones and just write. It takes about 15 minutes to get really focused on a task, and then once I’m focused I dedicate the next 45-55 minutes to it, since that’s about how long something can generally hold attention.

Then I like to do something else that doesn’t take much thought, such as walking, errands, or chores. I get my work done so I’m not neglecting other aspects of my life, and it gives my brain a chance to recharge and refresh for when I sit down to write again.

So when are you going to find time to write?

WRITE-NOW-LOGO-AWI make no apologies for puns.