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Writing: How to Keep Going

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Someone recently asked me how I could keep working on a story after eighteen revisions.

Some would say stubbornness tenacity, others that I might be a little crazy.

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Honestly, it’s a combination of both with a sprinkle of inspiration and perfectionism.

 

Perfectionism

In writing, as with many creative endeavors, perfect is the enemy of good. It’s also the enemy of done. But, I do have a strong need to have things as perfect as I can make them. I won’t be happy until I feel like I’ve created the best thing that I can. Letting go and releasing things that are as good as I can do, even if not perfect, has actually been a journey for me. It’s one of the reasons why I sometimes struggle to reread my older work. It was the best I could do at the time, but I’ve gotten better since then.

 

Tenacity

Sometimes, the writing just doesn’t come. Sometimes, I stare at the blank page and no more than a few words appear on the screen. I still make myself sit and spend at least thirty minutes a day trying. And, I have set myself up to succeed by purposely arranged those thirty minutes to be at a time where I am not exhausted. Yes, it has meant rearranging my schedule, but it’s also increased my productivity. And, if I’m lucky, those thirty minutes will lead to more. But I have to apply bottom-to-chair to have any hope of making it happen.

Tenacity

I Love My Characters

Not sure I’m allowed to admit that I love them, but I can’t spend days, weeks, even months on ends trying to create characters I don’t love. I want them to get their happily-ever-after, so I keep working.

 

Inspiration

Sometimes inspiration guides me, and when it does, I can’t type fast enough to get the words on the page. Those are truly glorious moments. As a writer, you live for them even though they are rare and precious.

 

Crazy

Anyone who can read the same book eighteen times and still be willing to rewrite it again? Yes, we have our share of crazy.

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How about you? Any of you have tips on how to keep at something you know needs to be done but may have lost the inspiration to do?

 

That Moment When It Clicks

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We all have those moments when it clicks. When doing suddenly becomes infinitely easier.

Perhaps it’s the moment when you are learning to ride a bike and you finally make more than a few inches before scraping your knee.

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About how it’s going teaching my daughter.

Maybe it’s the moment when you can finally see the image a differential equation represents without needing a graphing calculator. Yeah, that moment didn’t happen for me either.

A friend of mine makes and sells jewelry, and she has repeatedly told me how she’ll be bombarded by ideas one day and then will have no ideas for weeks after. She has to quickly write down the ideas as they come because they are flashes of inspiration. If she doesn’t write them down, they’re gone.

I have my own experience with this on a regular basis. My muse comes and visits me, and together, we can produce one-thousand words in less than an hour. Good words. Stuff that will get refined, but stuff that I think will still be there in the final draft.

Then, there’s the days she doesn’t visit. Like a Saturday not long ago where I managed to squeeze in three hours of writing. I got less than a thousand words during those three hours, and I’m not sure any of them are good.

Magic

But, I did get them down. So, progress. I can edit something that exists, but I can’t edit a blank page.

Still, I understand why people get discouraged. When the muse is here, we can create in hours what would take days of toil. Yet, those days of toil are still important.

You don’t get to ride the bike without the hours of learning put in beforehand. You don’t understand the differential equations in a moment unless you’re that one kid in my second semester calc class. Okay, maybe you never understand them completely, but if you don’t do the work to get there, you’ll never have the chance understand them.

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Yeah, I know they’re not differential equations.

I sometimes think this is what inspiration is all about. Basically, the motivational poster that says it’s 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration, yet, I think it’s true even if I’m not much for motivational posters.

I’m trying to treat the hour my muse visits me as the reward for the previous three hours of grinding work. If I just wait for her, she won’t come. She’s waiting for me to put in the work before giving my prize. Maybe I’m right on this, or maybe its complete garbage to make me feel better, but at least it gets stuff done.

 

How about you? Do you find you have to struggle for things and then there’s a magic moment where it clicks? Do you wait for inspiration, or do you plod through? Maybe you were the kid in the back of my class that just “got” differential equations so your muse is always ready to go?

 

 

Where's the Obsession?

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I finished up my revision over two weeks ago. Normally, I’d be plunging ahead into my next project, flush with the excitement of something new.

Except this time, the creativity isn’t coming.

inspiration
You and me both.
Reminds me of the song Where Have All the Cowboys Gone by Paula Cole, just replace Cowboys in the song with inspiration. Interesting that I’ve never been a big fan of the song. Kept trying to figure out why the singer needed a cowboy rather than making her own happily-ever-after if she wasn’t finding it from her partner. I listen to lyrics too closely, sometimes.

Still, I have several characters floating around in my head, but none of them are really meshing with a solid story or a love interest. I write Romance, so the love interest is critical.

Not sure what’s causing this. Perhaps I’m trying too hard. Or not hard enough. Or I’m feeling burned out with the book I wrote, the other I revised, and having a full time job.

Or, perhaps, I’m having a bit of a book hangover.

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I spent a lot of time with the last set of characters. Really working hard to put them on the page and bring them to life.

Normally, the way I deal with loss is move right into the next story. But it’s not working this time. The first few weeks of writing a new story is what carries me through. The excitement. The freshness of the project. The need to get the swirling maelstrom in my head onto paper.

I normally love starting a new project. The time to create. To make something out of nothing.

So far, no fabulous ideas begging to be put on paper have usurped my every waking moment. I tried reading a couple of novels for inspiration, but I couldn’t get into them either.

Not sure what’s creating this sudden lack of creativity, but it can go ahead and be on its way now. I’m ready for my next obsession.

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How about you? Ever have your creativity suddenly dry up or just lose interest in something? What did you do to rekindle the spark?

Morning Children: A Special Torment to Writers

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My husband and I are both night people. We’ve learned to adjust our internal clocks to take into account work and other grown-up responsibilities. While it’s not nearly as hard to get up at 6 am now as it was when I was a teenager, I didn’t have to get up at 6 am on Saturday when I was a teen.

Our oldest child is a morning person. Always has been, and she’s never had a concept of “weekend”. We had to get her a digital clock before she was three so that we could forbid her from leaving her bedroom in the morning before her clock said 6 on it. And yes, she learned numbers early so we weren’t getting up with the sun in the summer. Where there’s a will, there’s a way…

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While I’ve been able to adjust myself to getting up long before a night-person should, I haven’t convinced my muse to join me.

As much as I’ve sat diligently in front of my computer during afternoon nap-time on the weekends, my muse is nowhere to be found. Sure, I can pound out a few words, but it’s not the same. Whether you write, paint, compose music, there’s this creative zone that you get into that allows you to achieve more in an hour than you can in three. There’s something magical about this time. It’s like fairy wings and unicorn farts have jumped into the mortal plane.

For me, this ultra-creative time always, always, always comes after 8 pm. Usually later, but given my current need to be up with the birds, I try to be in bed before 10:30 because 6 am comes around awfully early.

There are those days when inspiration strikes, and I seize upon it, blowing through my bedtime even though I know will pay for it in the morning. And oh do I! Nothing quite like a chipper preschooler bouncing around the house rather than getting ready for school to put your previous night’s choice into perspective.

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Of course, my preschooler isn’t making the beds, eating her breakfast, or getting ready for the day. Heck no!  These are days that she requires the most wrangling. It’s like she knows I’m struggling and chooses that time to drown me rather than throw me a rope. Because children smell weakness and will exploit it at every opportunity.

I wish I had something insightful to offer. Some way that I’ve conquered the muse and brought her to my side before the owls come out. But I haven’t. I still have to make the choice most nights as to whether I’m on a roll and have to keep going, or whether I need to be a grown-up and go to bed. I’d love to say the grown-up wins most nights…

 

How about you? Are you a morning person or a night person? Does it work for you? When do you find yourself most creative? Have you figured out how to get your muse to come on your terms?

Me and My Big Mouth

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Ever say something you wish you could take back?

Most of us do, and this happened to me the other day. Don’t even remember where it came from, but I said I had managed to put 50,000 words on the page for a new story in a month. I figured another 10,000 words should take me to the end of the first draft (I write skeletons, remember?).

My muse heard that, because of course she did, crossed her arm over her chest and flew away.

muse
In case anyone’s seen mine.

I am not sure what to do to convince her to come back. Perhaps she needs me to eat a bag of oreos while trying to finish the chapter I’m working on, knowing full well I don’t like oreos.

Not sure what her demands are as she’s made herself rather scarce.

It’s not writer’s block because I can still make some headway, but it’s not the magical page devouring progress I was making.

And no, I know better than to take a break and wait for her to come back. Uh-uh. Played that game and lost more than once.

So, time to apply bottom to chair and bleed out as many words as possible.

Perhaps when she sees I’m sincere, she’ll return. If she doesn’t, I’ll scratch out the rest of the words to the ending of the story the hard way. Even with her inspiration, when it comes time to edit, there’s no easy way about it.

Magic

But if you’ve seen her, please tell her I’m sorry. I’ll shut my mouth until the book is finished, and she’s booked her vacation to Cancun while I start the revision process.

 

How about you? Have you ever lost your muse? Why? What did you do to get him/her back?

 

5 Things I Have Learned from Writing Book Reviews

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At the end of this week-long book review fest, and all of the other reviews I have posted over the last few months, I thought I’d share some things I’ve learned for my own work from writing them.

Alone

  1. Characters, characters, characters – I can forgive A LOT in a story if I am in love with the characters.
  2. Plots can be simple – I write and read a lot of romance novels. The romance comes first in the story, but there is usually a plot holding it all together. This can be as simple as: find the murderer. Find the thief. Free the hero from a curse.
  3. But there needs to be a clear plot – simple is fine. Preferable, even. But there needs to be one. And it needs to be believable.
  4. Adverbs aren’t all bad – One of my favorite books was filled with “ly” words. Overflowing with them. I still loved it. I am not entirely sure how the author pulled it off, but her work was sensuous and was one of the best seductions I have read.
  5. Show, Don’t Tell is Real – Most of the stories I disliked the most were ones where what I was told about a character contradicted what the character did. Brave characters who then cower over mean words said to them. Witty characters who never say a funny or insightful word. Kind characters who hang out in ballrooms the whole story. Perhaps it is the cognitive dissonance this creates that makes me dislike them so much. Interesting, as I am sure the author was telling me these amazing things about the characters to get me to love them.