Tag Archives: Writers Block

What makes you think you’re so special?

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I’ve been in writer forums, workshops, blogs and more, and invariably there is someone who says something like this:

“I want to write, but I’m afraid to write a bad story.”

One… no you don’t, or you’d be writing.
Two… why the hell do you think you’re so special?

Stephen King writes for years in the corner of his living room before he finally produces something worth selling. But you’re going to produce awesome prose on the first try?

Do you know how many times an author re-writes, re-vamps, throws out, and tries again… on the same project?

But you’re special. Right? Whatever comes out of your head must be perfect and wonderful the first time or you’re not going to write.

Let’s look at it from the view of an author who writes, puts out, and publishes a book, or several books. I’ve labored for hours, months, and possibly years to produce this book. I’ve tortured myself about what to write on that page, or who to kill on that page. I’ve lost sleep because of deadlines, skipped dinners, and missed out on fireworks… all to finish a novel.

And it sucked. The first draft was horrible. The second draft less so, and the third draft finally started to look like something worth publishing.

But you…. you think you should be special and everything out of your hands should be pure bliss to read?

I think it’s time for you to re-evaluate what it is that you really want. Do you want to write? If so, WRITE! That is all you can do. It will probably suck. People might laugh. So. If you are writing because that is what is inside you to do then none of that matters.

Unless you are Motzart, Pascal, Akrit Jaswal, or John von Neumann, you’re going to have to fumble and screw up just like the rest of us poor mortals.

I wasn’t a prodigy. I write. I suck sometimes. But I still pick up that keyboard and write.

What’s your excuse?

The Camera is OUT!

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camera2“The Camera” is finally out.

Ever have a day when you know what you need to do, you know the process, and how you’re going to get there, but you just can’t seem to do it?
That was this book.

I knew the plot. The characters. What was said, when it was said, and who got hurt because of it. All of it. But when I sat down to put it together my mind froze. I’m not even sure that I know why.

The idea for “The Camera” actually pre-dates “The Ring”, which is the first book in this series. When I first started writing it I didn’t really know where I was going with it though, just that a boy bought a camera that actually stored things within the film, and it was going to cause him some trouble.

I had “Needful Things” in mind when I started it. Or “Friday the 13th”, or “The Room”, or “Warehouse 13″… you take your pick. They all have one thing in common. Cursed items that seem to give you what you want, but come at a price. The camera didn’t give Anthony anything he needed or wanted, it just happened to do something unexpected.

So I had this story idea, and I thought it was a good idea, but it was born during my “stress induced writers block” years, so it never went anywhere.

I wrote “The Ring” years later. It was one of those stories that just flowed out onto the page, and I think that is why it is one of my better stories. It took about five hours to get the entire story written, but I wasn’t publishing when I wrote it. I didn’t even think about it when I first started publishing, and I’m glad I didn’t. If I had, I would have put it up as a stand alone story and “Illicit Gains” would not exist.

After “Flight of the Griffins” and “Twilight Tales” were out I did an audit of all the stories in my files, and found “The Ring”, and several other stories. I started grouping them together to form books, and noticed the five stories revolving around cursed items. It was too perfect. I went back and added some foreshadowing in “The Ring”, edited it, and published it.

I thought “The Camera” would be easy to finish. I had three-quarters of it already written, and already knew what happened in the middle. Easy. Right? WRONG!

Every time I sat down to write it something would just scream “wrong” at me. The plot wasn’t right, lets tweak it. This character isn’t right. Lets tweak him. This could be worded a LOT better, tweak. Tweak. Tweak some more.

The entire plot (beyond boy finds camera, boy discover camera does something weird, boy has a horrible thing happen because of camera) changed at least four times. At first there was a thief, then there was a bully, then there was… Well lets just say that I didn’t have the true plot until I started fleshing out the 5th book in the series, “Marco”.

Those of you keeping score, I’ll actually give you the titles of all five of the stories in this series:
“The Ring”
“The Camera”
“The Scarab Necklace”
“The Pocket Watch”
“Marco”

If you read “The Ring” you’ll know who Marco is. He ties the whole series together.

Pressing publish on “The Camera” was a huge weight off my shoulders. After three weeks of saying “it’s going to be out this weekend” I finally got to say “It’s OUT”. I was starting to wonder if it ever would be.

But, this is a good thing. It means I don’t want to put out just any old crap. I want to tell a good story. Maybe there’s a missing comma, or I screwed up a homonym, but the story itself, the characters, the plot and setting, I’m proud of that. I can go back and fix the typos and polish the grammar a bit. But I can’t retract a bad story. I don’t even want to put out a story I’m not proud to call mine.

Now, ten years down the road I fully expect to hate everything I wrote and want to rewrite it. But I’m going to resist the urge. I’ll definitely be hiring a pro-editor, when I can afford it, to re-edit everything, but I won’t be changing the core story. I will let it stand as a testament to my progress because I fully expect each story to be better than the last.

Around the Web

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And I need to do another “Around the Web” post, because I have a few interesting links to share, and i don’t want to forget.

Smashwords is allowing “pre-orders” of books published through them to any platform.

KDP select is adding support for Japanese, and a couple other changes.

4 real inventions inspired by SF, a video from SciShow.

Garrett Robinson put up a fantastic formatting tutorial for print and ebooks. (there are several on his website.)

Templates for all the headers, avatars, icons and backgrounds on social media.

A great example on world building with map making.

A flow chart on how to break free of writers block.

Cliche Book Covers… Don’t do these, seriously.

Watch Neil Gaiman read his book, The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman discusses being disappointed by books (writing or reading them.)

The Round Table Podcast is back with an episode about “The ‘Death’ of Cyberpunk”

Joanna Penn shares her experience taking a traditionally published book back to self publishing.

Charting Progress

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It has been a long time since I shared my progress in writing every day, but I think it’s important, at least to me, because it is an act of accountability. I hope it also serves to inspire others to start on the journey of “writing every day”.

A few things I learned….

  • Completing a project is like coming to the edge of a cliff.
    • Once you reach the edge, where do you go? I am starting to see little ledges and paths below so that I can just continue to write on another project, but this takes practice.
  • Editing, formatting, book covers, and marketing SUCK!
    • I don’t mean they suck, as in they are terrible, I mean they suck time away from writing. Some of these things only take a few minutes a day, but editing… man that’s a time suck. At which point I write a lot less.
  • When I’m stuck, I need to switch projects for a little bit.
    • As long as I continue working on the “PRIME” project a little every day I have given myself permission to go nuts on something else, often adding 1500 words to another project in my list, or coming up with another idea for later.
  • My word count is improving!
    • The best part, that rising blue line marking “average word count” is going up and up and up, and it’s awesome! I am really close to 1000 words a day on average. If I keep this up eventually I can write a book a month instead of short stories.
  • Can’t wait for NaNoWriMo this year!

chart

 

Around the Web

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It’s long past due for an “Around the Web” list.

Here are some of the things going on around the web.

Judge says: Apple Conspired to Fix eBook Prices

Harper Lee, author of “To Kill A Mockingbird”, scammed out of her author rights, trying to get them back.

An Op-Ed piece on “state of publishing“. A very interesting read actually, and why the mega-publisher “Penguin Random House” isn’t good for readers or authors.

A great article about research showing that copyright kills books!

What Makes People Put Down a Book

TedEd talks, “If Super Powers were Real” including super speed, flight, and immortality among others.

22 Productive Tricks

7 things D&D Taught me about Storytelling

Is ANGST the secret ingredient in new adult fiction?

 

 

Letting Go

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I’ve been working through a back log of old stories, trying to complete them. There are two that are complete, finished stories… and I will probably never publish them.

They aren’t horrible stories. They just don’t fit me anymore. One, “Grimalkin”, I might use as a bonus some day because I think it’s a silly little fairy tale like story, and a fun read. The other, “Contract”, is… controversial in nature.

I don’t write silly little fairy tales, for the most part. And “Contract” just isn’t as good as I would like.

I have a whole file filed with story ideas. Some times I go back to those files and read them, and they spark new and interesting ideas. Other times I wonder why the heck I’m holding onto them.

Letting go isn’t that easy. Especially when it’s something you worked hard to build or create. But knowing what is and isn’t worth pursuing is part of growing as a creator. Sure, I could say “This is done” and post the story, but what would my readers think? Would it be a good experience for them? Would they continue reading other stories?

No, probably not. So it’s best to shelve. Let it spark other ideas. But I won’t be releasing those particular stories.

If you missed it, there is a free story, “The Pretty Leaf”. It is about memories, and life long love.

Also, “Twilight Tales” will be available for free on the 21st and 22nd of this month. If you haven’t read it, grab it then. I’ll be using up the last bit of my KDP select free days for that.

Stats

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year graph
Half way through March, and I thought I would share my progress.

Now that I am tracking my daily word count I am having a lot fewer days with zero word count. I have had a few days, this month, of less than 200 words, but a lot more of them have been over 500, and I see it growing.

Last night I sat down to write and kept checking my word count after ten minutes or so watching the numbers go up hundreds, not just tens and twenties. I was thrilled! The words are tripping off my fingers with ease now. It isn’t a struggle to sit down and write. It’s more of a demand.

I bought a new game. Tropico 4. Instead of playing it I dangled it as a reward to get myself to write. Now that I’m in the habit of this it is completely natural for me to deny myself something until I write.

I do not yet have a set word count that I need to reach each day, or else. That is my next goal. At the moment I have a monthly goal of 9000 words for March. That’s about 300 words a day. I am just about half way there, so I think I need to increase my expectations.

What I’m learning is that just putting that expectation that I will write, no matter what, each day has been the most effective way of getting the words down on paper. And the more I exerciser the muscle that is my brain, my fingers on the keyboard, my imagination, and my story telling skills… the easier it all comes.

I’d been fretting and lamenting my writers block for all these years. And I am going to give myself a small… I guess it’s an excuse, but I really did have a reason to fall into the trap of writers block. I did not, however, have a reason to STAY in that trap, especially for as long as I did.

I think I’m going to talk about the trap of writers block, and the exercising of the brain like a muscle next blog post. It’s been on my mind a lot lately.

About word counts

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I spoke a little about word counts yesterday, and how writing every day is part of the secret to success.

Here is a visual to go with it:

wordcounts

 

They say the “sweet spot” is 1000 words a day. If you can manage that you would actually write over 300k words every year. That is three full length, 100 THOUSAND word length books…. a year!

And most “books” aren’t 100k anymore. They are generally the 50-80 thousand word variety. that is 4-7 full length books. In a year!

If that doesn’t get you to write well…. What will?

I am at 250 a day right now. That’s averaged, not every day. But I’m working those writing muscles till I can get to that 1000 a day sweet spot.

What is your writing goal?

How to be a Success

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I was having a conversation on Twitter last month about making writing your day job, and I sent this to the guys over at SPP:

I thought I’d expand upon this “simple” idea, because out of all the writing books, blogs, articles, websites, podcasts, and videos, everything distills down into these four points.

1. Write Well.

“Well” seems to be such a simple word. But it includes a lot of things. Grammar, spelling, characters, plot, and everything else involved with a story. It also involves knowing the difference between a workable story, and something that you should just let go.

You can always get help with the mechanics of a story. Workshops abound. Editors are for hire. You can even hire a ghost writer to write up the idea/plot/storyline you came up with and stick your name on it (not generally recommended.)

If you have a compelling story, with characters your readers care about, then you are headed in the right direction.

2. Write a lot.

Be PROLIFIC! I can not stress this enough. I don’t care if you are writing in your journal every day, but the fact remains the more you write, the more you will write. However, you shouldn’t JUST write things in your diary. Practice writing short stories, articles, blog posts, and anything else. Write as though you are writing to someone, expecting someone to read it.

Writing also helps you improve your ability to write. Grammar and spelling, as well as just coherence. This goes for reading as well. If you don’t read, or hate reading, then how can you write well?

3. Publish often.

Some of the best selling authors are there simply because they write a lot of books. The more books they write, the better visibility they have. The better chance someone has to see something they wrote that was great. 

Here is a list of some prolific authors, many of which are well known.
4. Engage readers.

Email lists. Blogs. Fan mail. Twitter. Facebook. Websites… really it doesn’t matter how you engage your readers, but the internet makes it incredible easy to do just that. If you don’t do so, or come off as a grumpy old guy/gal who doesn’t give a half a penny for their fans then it is less likely you will grow your reading ranks.

Look, we live in a connected world. I actively talk to some of my favorite writers now. I send them tweets, or comment on their Facebook status, and they answer me. It’s awesome. I love the fact that they know their fans are their bread and butter, and they love interacting with me, and all the other people who love their work.

Kim Harrison got feedback for, and changed the cover for one of her new books. Sean Platt and David Write added three chapters to the end of their series to clarify their writing. Piers Anthony has answered every single fan letter he could, and even included characters, puns, and small plot lines to really engage his readers.

Will all of this get you tons of fans? Ultimately only time can tell, but these four things will get you closer then any one of them by itself.