I admit it. I’m a slacker. I have no discipline in my life. It practically takes an act of Congress to get me to do my dishes. I’d rather sit around and spend my days swimming through a sea of imagination. Whether reading books, watching movies, or daydreaming, I’m not big on the real world, and as I live alone, I don’t have anyone around to tell me I can’t. But, that doesn’t help me get the stories in my head out. It doesn’t help me get to the next level.

Oh, I could just wait for inspiration, or that terrible urgent need that comes along that makes me write because, if I don’t, my head will explode. That happens, but not often enough to produce any complete story with any speed. I have friends who do that. Who complain that they can’t finish anything because they had “writers block” or they’re living with world-builder’s disease.

My particular demons aren’t original. I get knocked down often by periodic depression. I get mired in the difficulties of trying to construct a plot from the myriad wonderful moments I’ve concocted in my head and often like a complete failure. I forget how much I love writing. But I’ve learned the best thing for it is to keep plodding along. Even when I’m not feeling it. Even when I’d rather be reading that new book I bought. Even when I know the scene I’m writing is complete crap and will probably get cut in the next revision. It doesn’t matter. Every crappy line is one step closer to the good stuff. Every cliche is one sentence out of the sludge that keeps me down.

I’ve said it before on this site, and I will probably say it again and again. The only way to truly defeat the nagging doubts, the distracting delays, the fear that the story will never be ready, or whatever the current issue that keeps the story locked away where no one can read it, is to plant my butt in the chair and keep writing.

So, whenever I get a little lost or down or frustrated, I remind myself that no one is making me write. If I’m having trouble, it’s my own damn fault. I might feel as if writing, when I’m especially inspired, is a need rather than a want, but like the doubts that eventually creep in, that’s really just in my head. Thus, it’s up to me to get over whatever is holding me back. It’s a heady and terrifying thing to think about. It’s also easy to forget.

But even when I do forget, eventually, my inner critic slaps me in face and shouts at me to sit down, shut up, and write. This ridiculous story isn’t going to write itself.

I Want It This Bad

September 6, 2013

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Mary Pletsch The Writing Life 1 Comment

There’s a scrap of paper taped over my computer with five words on it in blue ink: I Want It This Bad. This is the reminder that took me and my writing from amateur to professional.

Five years ago I was a hobby writer. I liked to write and did so for my own amusement. I wrote fan fiction. Text-based role-plays. Half-finished stories and concept outlines. Occasionally I’d dash off a newspaper article or submission to a contest, but for the most part, I wrote what I felt like, when I felt like it.

Other times I felt like playing Halo marathons. Not a lot got written those weeks.

I got a lot of positive feedback on this hobby writing. Comments like “you should be a real writer.” Which led me to ask…why wasn’t I?

I wasn’t actively looking for markets. I wasn’t actively creating original works that I could sell. I wasn’t doing much to learn about publishing as an industry, or network with those already in it. In short, I was a writer, but I wasn’t a professional.

I know people who love to write, and have written incredibly entertaining stories, who have no interest in being professional writers. One of them has accepted that his heart lies in his chosen career, and writing will always come second. Some of them write because they love a franchise, and they want to continue the stories of those characters. One of them said, “Writing is fun for me. I don’t want it to feel like a job.”

These are all valid reasons. None of them were my reasons. I would have been happy to pitch my day job to write, and, in fact, I wanted to. So why wasn’t I doing anything that would get me to that point? I had taken Step One – write – and I had stopped there.

That moment was my realization. If I ever wanted the opportunity for writing to be my real job, I had to make writing a real job – at the very least, a part time job – right away.

What did I want to do with my day off – play Halo 2 for the 24th time, or lay down some words on a novel? What did I want to do with my vacation – lie on a beach, or attend a writer’s conference? What was a better way for me to spend that spare hour – gawking at Facebook, or looking for short story markets?

I’ll be honest. There were times I would rather have picked Option A. And that’s when those words play through my mind: How bad do you want it?

I want it this bad.

Bad enough to put down the video game controller, lay down the money for the conference registration, knuckle down and do the research. Bad enough to weigh whether I’d gotten my day’s writing done before I accepted the invitation, turned on the TV or spent an afternoon reading comic books. Bad enough to turn (full disclosure: 99%) of my plot ideas into sellable fiction rather than fan fiction.

In the interests of work-life balance, I do still play video games when I’m too sick to write a coherent sentence. I do take days off to lay on the beach with my family. I do noodle around the internet from time to time. However devoted I am to my writing, I swore I would not let that devotion leave me divorced, socially isolated, and sick from neglecting my loved ones or my health. And yes, I made time for that fanfic 1% so I could get it out of my head and have a decent night’s sleep already.

Still, that’s left me with a significant amount of time to write professional-quality, marketable stuff. I’ve had three paid publications so far, and I’m gunning for more to come.

Sometimes I do miss those Halo marathons. When I do, though, I think about my story sales and ask myself, “How bad do I want it?”And then I park my butt in front of the word processor, because I Want It This Bad.

The Monster Looms

September 5, 2013

fictorians

Craft & Skills Guest Posts 1 Comment

A guest post by Mary Villalba

The monster looms. The “to-do” list is long and the day short. Armed with coffee and good intentions I begin to tick off tasks. The pile before me like the Sorcerer’s brooms inexplicably grows. By noon, I have managed to lob off more than just those items listed, but I have also laid down another twenty to fill the space between noon and eleven pm, when I will fall exhausted, but satisfied, into bed looking back on the day with pride in my productive behavior!

The problem? The have-to list crowds out the want-to list. I want to do a final edit on my first novel and fine tune the synopsis. I want to sell millions of copies of my book. I want to post “author” legitimately on my FaceBook profile. Why can’t I?

Another writer and lecturer whom I greatly admire, Barbara Sher, came up with the term “resistance”, which pretty much sums it up. What is it that creates resistance to doing the things you want to do? As an overachieving, type-A personality I have gone through my own life determinedly setting goals up on fence posts and shooting them off. At twelve I determined that I would live in the most exclusive neighborhood in Denver; at twenty-nine I moved in to the house I built there. When it became clear to me that there was a great need for services for the hearing impaired in third world countries a doctor and I created the World Hearing Network, which is today the most successful outreach program for the hearing impaired in the world. I decided the Rocky Mountain District of Kiwanis should have a female governor at the helm, and became the first female elected to the position in eighty-five years. The ridiculously long list of accomplishments goes on and on. It should be easy for me to apply the same ambition to my writing, but it isn’t. So, as much as I hate to be introspective, it must be time for me to look at why I am holding myself back.

Yes, I am the reason I have not overcome the monster inertia. We, I, reach plateaus where the level of risk and reward become just about even. I don’t anticipate a greater reward for my writing than there is risk in exposing my inner-self and my writing to others; so I stop. I suppose that if there was a champion cheering me on with a contract for a million books I might be more motivated to take a chance on myself. Risk versus reward. Ah ha! In the rest of my life I create my own rewards, but when it comes to writing I can’t envision a real world reward coming my way.

Crawling back into my head and rummaging around I see the box labeled “get a job”. When I open it up it contains letters from parents who grew up pre-depression era. They want me to set concrete goals and they want me to be realistic about what I can and cannot do. The letters indicate they don’t think I can live in the neighborhood I picked, they don’t think I can build my dream empire, but, wait………I did! They were not my champions, I was my own champion.

In my mind, I set that box on fire and sweep the ashes out of my head.

Hmmmm; now what? See the problem, solve the problem, move on! Eureka! I can approach writing the same way I have approached every other goal in my life. So, today, right now, at the top of my to-do list I have written “finish synopsis.” It will get done today, because I will give myself a reward for getting the task done and because the risk of negative feedback burned up in the mental box I’d been carrying around for the last sixty-five years!

Take a look in your own attic and see what you can clean out! Then get to work!! You have a lot to accomplish and I, for one, will be your champion! I believe in you and know you can do it!! And, BTW, I’m posting “author” on my FaceBook profile right now!

Guest Writer Bio:
“It’s about time” is a good description for taking up novel writing at her age! Mary started writing stories and poetry when she was about six years old, and over fifty years of her professional life as a real estate broker and owner of her own strategic marketing company she has used language as a communication tool, even holding press credentials, but writing a novel was beyond her wildest dreams. It was a group of inspired writers half her age who threw her off the cliff and into the waters of authorship. She is very grateful they didn’t stop to ask her if she knew how to swim!

Inspiration by Imitation

September 4, 2013

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Guest Posts No Comments

A guest post by Brenda Sawatzky.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you,
whose presence calls forth your best.
—Epictetus

I’m relatively new to the world of writing, still a fledgling searching for my deep, commanding, authoress voice, beckoning readers to visit the world as viewed through my eyes. I long to be regarded among the Ann-Marie MacDonalds of fiction, the Erma Bombecks of humour writing. How do they do it? Is it a latent talent bestowed on a few lucky stiffs? A creative gene passed on from the early Neanderthal cave sketchers or Sumerian hieroglyphic scribes?

While I work out the troubling answer to that, I pen my thoughts, just in case while jotting down my grocery list one day I find myself crafting an exceptionally creative work of genius and say, “Eureka! I think I’ve got it.”

I’m really too new to the craft to be plateauing just yet. From my position somewhere near the base of the steep, craggy hillside, the plateau isn’t even visible. I’m still longing for the plateau. But I do understand what it’s like to desire to do better, to keep my eyes focused on the prize, to search for the genius within. I’ve joined writers workshops, registered with an online writing course, looked to mentors, and created a blog to feel the thrill of finding forty-odd people in cyberspace who want to read my stories.

I’ve read books on writing, editing, and grammar. One of my favourites is titled On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. Zinsser says, “Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.” And so, I turn to the great sages of the written word, authors who captivate me page after page with descriptive metaphor and sublime prose. Authors who know the craft of taking a simple grouping of alphabets and weaving them into a picture in my head that leaves me breathless and wanting more.

I look to classic novelists like John Steinbeck, carefully analyzing his ability to spend the first four pages of The Grapes of Wrath telling me that there was a drought and the crops were poor, and holding me mesmerized throughout. And I turn to Erma for a whimsical look at the everyday, who teaches me to find the ludicrous in the fundamental truths of life. And on to Ann-Marie for a sensory adventure, first allowing myself to be drawn deeply in, then re-reading, underlining and objectively dissecting under a microscope.

These authors, and others, uplift me; their words call forth my best. In a writing slump, I always turn to a good read, revelling in how their writing speaks to me and how I might imitate what they do.

But at times, even then, when the blank page of the computer monitor stares back at me, when I struggle for the bait to place on the hook of my opening line, when I’ve blown a circuit in my creative juicer, sometimes I just need to walk away. As writers we may not have an “on” button but we do have a “kill” switch, and sometimes it’s best to turn off the computer and get our negative selves out of the way of the creative processes. Invention often occurs when we’re not “in the lab.” Answers often come when we’re not looking.

Author Bertrand Russell described it succinctly: “If I have to write upon some difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with great intensity—the greatest intensity of which I am capable—for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind), that the work is to proceed underground. After [some time] I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.”

I do this by finding a physical outlet where I can quiet my mind from distraction—walking or cooking. Some of my best ideas come to me when lying in bed just moments before my brain shuts off for the night. The key is to have a pen and notepad beside the bed.

Other key creativity boosters are self-imposed exercises, such as focusing on an item in its simplest form and describing it in as many delicious, sentient words as possible.

Recently I discovered the Bulwer-Lytton contest, challenging writers to pen the worst possible opening line to a fiction novel. Entries come in from around the world and it’s truly amazing just how crafty and creative bad opening lines can be. I’ve submitted a few and it’s an enormously fun challenge. This, also, is great distraction that keeps my writing muscles flexed and oiled for the real task at hand—serious writing.

Most important of all is to release the steam from my self-imposed pressure cooker, to take my time, and to remember Zinsser’s words: “You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for.”

Guest Writer Bio:
Brenda Sawatzky is a relatively new, unpublished writer hailing from the wide-open prairie spaces of southeast Manitoba. She and her husband of thirty-one years are self-employed and parents to five kids (two ushered in by marriage). She is presently working toward fiction and non-fiction writing for magazines and manages a personal blog.