Writing inspiration: A lesson in conflict

Nothing has been easy this week. And it's only Tuesday.

Case #1: I went to the gym this morning for the first time in three months. I got up early, braved the cold, spent what seemed like hours (but was probably only 10-15 minutes) scraping frost off my car windows. I thought about giving up several times, but in the end I got into my frost-free car and drove to the gym...only to find out that they couldn't unfreeze my account. They'd have a manager call me, they said. But she didn't, so it was on me to call back this afternoon. Sorry, but only the primary account holder (i.e. my friend) can authorize this. Friend contacted, but she's incredibly busy, so no idea when I'll hear back about when she can find time to go reactivate my account.

Case #2:  I just moved, so I called my health insurance company to report a change of address. They got a new system recently, and now the only way to change my address is to reapply. (Really?!?) But that's okay: you can reapply online! Super easy! Except I don't have either of the two supported browsers. But that's okay! You can print the application! Except that I don't have a printer, so I'd need to go down to a photocopy store and pay bunches of money to print it out, and then pay to mail it in. But that's okay! Here's a list of people nearby who can help you! Look, this one has an appointment available this week! Next page: No appointments available. Sigh.

Cool tools for writers: Timeline software

The other day I hit the point in my current WIP (a historical series) where I need a timeline to keep all the events straight: characters' birth dates, major events in their lives pre-Book 1, historical events relevant to the story, major events in the storylines of the books, etc.

On past projects I'd attempted to use paper and pen(cil) to draw my timeline but found that to be unwieldy. I changed my mind about when things happened, changed it back again, had a bunch of things happening in a short period of time and the writing got all cramped, the tape holding the pieces of paper together ripped, the tape prevented me from folding the timeline up into a portable size...you get the idea.

What I'd love is a home office with walls covered in whiteboard paint, but since that's not going to happen anytime soon, I decided to look into timeline app for writers. After researching several options and asking fellow writers for recommendations, I bought Aeon Timeline because:

Quality Assurance by Soramimi Hanarejima (a guest post on writing)

Once again I'm delighted to welcome Soramimi Hanarejima back to the blog this week. Soramimi is intensely interested in the how, why, and what of creativity. His first post, "Where Creativity Meets Productivity," explored the How: natural tendencies, rhythms, and habits that writers can foster to maximize productivity during our writing time. In his second post, "The Purposeful Writer: Creative Writing Meets the Golden Circle," he explored the advantages to articulating our Why for writing. In the third and final post in this series, Soramimi discusses the What. In his own words: "How do we make sure that what we are producing—what’s on the page—really shines?"

Quality Assurance

by Soramimi Hanarejima

…we have to use the right words and the right words in the best order.—David Morley

Writing consists of a multitude of individual decisions, massive and complex control of language in depth and considerable personal responsibility…—A.L. Kennedy

A coherent text is a designed object… Like other designed objects, it comes about not by accident but by drafting a blueprint, attending to details, and maintaining a sense of harmony and balance.—Steven Pinker

So far in this series, we’ve looked at the importance of (a) identifying the fundamental impetus behind one’s writing and (b) the importance of regularly, effectively acting upon that impetus.

A writer who has grappled with these knows why she writes and how to get crucial work done, but how does she ensure that her work is in the end truly excellent? Her Why, the deep motivation driving her work, provides some assistance here; her work may be falling short because it isn’t channeling her Why as fully as it could. But clarity of intentions alone can’t keep the caliber of one’s writing reliably high. Writers need to have specific skills and resources to firmly establish the quality of their work. This brings us to the final part of Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle: Consistency of What. How do we make sure that what we are producing—what’s on the page—really shines?

"The Purposeful Writer: Creative Writing Meets the Golden Circle" by Soramimi Hanarejima (guest post)

I'm delighted to welcome Soramimi Hanarejima back to the blog. Soramimi is intensely interested in the how, why, and what of creativity. His first post, "Where Creativity Meets Productivity," explored the How: natural tendencies, rhythms, and habits that writers can foster to maximize productivity during our writing time. In this post, he explores the advantages to articulating our Why for writing.

The Purposeful Writer: Creative Writing Meets the Golden Circle

by Soramimi Hanarejima

It can feel like as writers we go where inspiration and curiosity lead us, to the vistas craft can take us. Purpose, then, could seem transcendent or irrelevant. Yet a sense of purpose, whether majestic or mundane, can be essential to a writer as a way to focus on producing more meaningful work. But how do we go about identifying and enacting purpose in our creative work?

When it comes to leading a purposeful life and pursuing meaningful endeavors, Simon Sinek’s Start With Why is full of insightful and actionable perspectives that can structure how we approach our work. Central to this book is The Golden Circle, a framework that aligns and integrates motivation, action and outcomes—the Why, How and What:

• Why we do the activities we feel are meaningful.
• How we act upon that motivation. 
• What we we ultimately produce, the outcome of enacting the motivation. 

Here’s how The Golden Circle might look when applied to creative writing:
Clarity of Why: Why do you write? What deep purpose drives you to tell stories?
Discipline of How: How do you act upon that purpose? How do you strive to accomplish this vital calling?
Consistency of What: How do you maintain a high level of quality in what you are creating as a writer?

The last blog post I wrote for Sione focused on the Discipline of How, and this one addresses the Clarity of Why.

Writing uphill

I had a deadline, but the stories wouldn't come.

Getting to butt-in-chair in itself was a challenge because I had so many other things going on. And every time I sat down to work on the stories it was like trying to squeeze water out of a rock. On a good day, I could write several paragraphs *about* the story - who the characters were, what I wanted to the story to do, what I thought the narrative arc should look like - but very little of the story itself. Writing these stories was taking a ton of effort, and to show for all that effort I had maybe a few sentences. It made getting to butt-in-chair even harder.

Being an indie author has its perks: I moved the deadline. But they still wouldn't come. Feeling discouraged, feeling like a failure, I moved the deadline again. And again. Still next to nothing. A flash of dialogue or scene here and there; I'd get excited, sit down to write more, but nothing more would come.

Guest post: Where Creativity Meets Productivity by Soramimi Hanarejima

Today I'm thrilled to bring you a guest post by Soramimi Hanarejima, who writes amazing short speculative fiction that takes abstract concepts and gives them physical form (e.g. the man who goes on a city-wide search for his creativity) and blends the mental and emotional aspects of human experience. His first collection of short stories has been accepted for publication by Montag Press Collective.

Over the past several months, Soramimi and I have been sending each other reading recommendations and resources to enhance creativity, and that's where the idea for this blog post - and two more that will be coming in the next few months - came from. Soramimi is intensely interested in the how, why, and what of creativity. This first post addresses the how, the coming posts the why and the what.

Where Creativity Meets Productivity

by Soramimi Hanarejima

You have now begun to walk in the open space of the page. The journey becomes an elaborate series of gambles, and there is no forward progression as such; there is shaping and reconfiguring, stepping backing, inking in and beginning over.—David Morley

Creative writing can be messy. There can be countless ideas, aspirations, doubts and dizzying decisions to be made regarding plot development, tone, the psychology of characters and much more. Research beckons, the urge to outline flares up or gets suppressed, scenes spring to mind, scuffles between spontaneity and structure erupt. There are so many facets of craft to grapple with.

Then again, writing is on some level about getting work done, about creating a product. So while I love discussions about craft and activities that hone our literary sensibilities, the resources that have been most valuable to me recently are books, podcasts and talks that deal with the pragmatics of being productive as a creative individual, of carving out time and space and practices to fill that time and space in the service of accomplishing meaningful work. Here are my favorites, the ones that keep me coming back for their effective frameworks and processes.

Writing group alternatives

The other day I received a message on Facebook from a writer who lives in rural England and wants to improve her craft. She asked if I know of any online writing groups she can join. I don't know of any specific online critique groups looking for new members, but I do have several ideas for how she (and you!) might find sources of feedback, community, support, and/or encouragement. Here's what I told her:

1) Bookworks is an interesting site that offers a variety of services, including the ability to post 2,000-word excerpts of your WIP for peer review. I don't have personal experience with that feature, so I don't know about the quality of the feedback or how many people are engaged in it, but it might be worth checking out. There is a membership fee for some of the site's features, but the Work-in-Progress feature is part of the free Core membership plan.

2) The ROW80 community is active and supportive. Most people only use it to post updates on their writing goals, but I have seen people post - and get comments on - short excerpts from their WIPs. This community is more about encouragement than critique, so the feedback might not be as constructive as you need. That said, this is another free option and a great way to connect with other writers and get some support for remaining accountable to your goals.

Writing prompt 65

You know how sometimes a couple of words or a phrase pops into your head and your mind gloms onto them? It rolls them around, feeling their shapes, and explores all the random memories, images, and other experiences that your brain somehow associates with them. This happened to me while I was driving the moving truck up to Portland, and I thought these two words might make a good writing prompt for other people, too. I'm guessing they occurred to me because I'd spent the last week packing up and making decisions about what to keep and what to discard.

Prompt

Writing prompt 64

I don't post writing prompts as regularly as I used to, but this on popped into my head yesterday and I thought I'd share it with you. My mind takes it in the direction of a horror story, but if you manage to write something *other* than a horror story/poem out of it, I'd love to hear about it!

Prompt

Guest post: Jolene Haley on the characteristics of good writing

First off, I’d like to thank Sione for having me today. I’ve been a follower of her blog forever and I’m just delighted to contribute to it!

As an avid reader and writer who works hard at my craft, I’d like to offer up one piece of advice that I’ve learned while writing, publishing, and working for publishing houses. The most important thing you can do for your writing and your writing career is this: Write well.

Now, this piece of advice may seem elementary but really, it’s not. In the age of Amazon, where anyone can publish a book, this is the simple magical ingredient that will set you apart from others. It doesn’t matter if you have the most brilliant cover art in the world or if you’ve spent a million dollars on marketing, if your book isn’t well written, you’ll run into problems.

How can you create brilliant words? Well, some of the great authors and poets like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or Joyce may tell you that the secret is a typewriter and a strong drink (or five). That certainly may get the words buzzing but here are characteristics of great writing in my book.

The writing process in charts & graphs

Every so often on Facebook I see someone else's clever depiction of the writing process. For example this one:

Or this one:

Priorities

Sometimes you have to choose. For example, when you're trying to finish up the next-to-last draft of the novel you've been working on for two years and it's going much slower than you anticipated and you're late getting it to your copy editor...

 ...do you take time out to write another blog post, or do you let the blogging slide for the week and devote all your mental and creative energy to finishing the damn book? This past week I chose the latter.

Hence, it has been two weeks since my last ROW80 Update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

Ray Bradbury & writing prompts 44-63 (or 73)

This week I stumbled upon this article containing 12 pieces of writing advice from Ray Bradbury. I like all the advice there, but this one in particular caught my attention:

"List ten things you love, and ten things you hate. Then write about the former, and 'kill' the lat[t]er — also by writing about them. Do the same with your fears."

It's a writing prompt! Or twenty. Or thirty, if you also list ten fears.

When I started thinking about listing things I love/hate, the obvious things occurred to me: chocolate, wine and writing/talking about writing would go under love, while things like spiders, kale and being woken up from a good dream would go under hate.

Goals for the writing life (ROW80 Round 2)

It's the start of another round of A Round of Words in 80 Days, "the writing challenge that knows you have a life." The next three months will bring about at least two major events: 1) another move, and 2) the publication of my pseudonym's next novel.

Creative Projects
Work on my creative projects this next round will involve a little bit of everything: drafting, receiving feedback, revision, editing, submitting, and publishing. Below I've broken down my project plans by month.

April

• Line & copy editing of pseudonym's WIP1
• Set up WIP1 blog tour for June
• Draft WIP1 book description
• 1st drafts of dream prose poems while WIP1 is with editors

This week's tasks: Line edit WIP1; make initial book blog tour inquiries.

May

• Self-publish WIP1
• Put together WIP1 media packet
• 1st drafts of 4 short stories
• (If time: work on dream poems)

June

• Promote WIP1
• Revise 4 short stories
• Revise & submit 2 dream poems per week

Writers' tools: Character interviews

What?
A character interview is pretty much what you might imagine: a creative exercise in which you ask your character questions and "listen" for and record their answers. It's an exercise in letting go of what you *think* you know about your characters and story and letting your subconscious mind (which, at least in my case, is WAY more creative and awesome than my conscious mind) do the talking.

Why?
There are SO MANY REASONS you'd want to do character interviews, dear fiction writers. By which I mean there are at least seven.

1. Create conflict. You can use character interviews while you're brainstorming/plotting to help you get to know them and the conflicts they have - both within themselves and with each other. This can lead to clearer thinking around: (a) what your characters want and how they need to develop over the course of your story in order to get it, (b) how they might react in certain situations because of their triggers, and (c) what kinds of challenges will create productive conflict in the book that helps them grow as well as moves the plot along.

Starting where you are

The other day I was watching the season 1 finale of of Project Runway: All Stars (a fashion design reality show and one of my many guilty pleasures), in which Mondo has the fashion designer equivalent of writer's block at the absolute worst possible moment: he has only four days to design and make a collection for the runway show that will end the competition and decide the winner.

But there he sits (or rather paces) in his studio, hating all the fabrics he's bought and repeating to the cameras, "I'm just not feeling it." He spends the entire first day that way, at some point finally giving into his apathy and fatigue and deciding he's not going to agonize over it anymore. He's not feeling it, and he's going to give himself a day off, despite the fact that he's under a serious time crunch already.

The next day he comes back into the workroom with the realization that the pressure from the competition has made him feel a little crazy. That's where he is at that moment - feeling a little bit insane - and that's what he decides to use as inspiration for his collection. Bam. He knocks out a cohesive and interesting collection over the next three days that [SPOILER ALERT] wins him the grand prize. And you know why? Because he didn't try to fight himself. He met himself where he was and used it.

As a writer, I find myself constantly struggling to *not* fight myself because I have so many ideas and so little available time and energy comparatively. 

ROW80 2015 Round 1 Wrap-up

This is the final week of ROW80 Round 1. Time to reflect back on my goals and report the overall progress for the round! Below you'll find my original goals in black, changes in red, and progress in blue.

Creative projects
I have SO MANY WRITING PROJECTS I want to get done this year: two novels, a collection of short stories, and 2 books of poetry. Because I still have not figured out how to clone myself, I must work within normal human parameters - for now - which means breaking it down into manageable chunks. This round I worked on a novel under my pseudonym (codename WIP1) and a collection of short speculative fiction stories under my own name (codename SF). Goals:
1) Finish drafting and editing WIP1. Beta draft of WIP1 complete, feedback received, and I'll be done with the next draft by the end of next week, at which point it goes to my line editors. Round 2 starts April 6th, so I'll still be finishing up this book.
2) Finish writing the 1st drafts of the stories for SF & begin to revise them. I finished first drafts of 3 more stories and made progress on a couple more, though they haven't reached first-draft status yet. I plan to work on one more first draft in the next round, but I'll be focusing mainly on my book of dream poems and my pseudonym's projects for the rest of the year.

Recap of "success as a writer" series

What is success for a writer? Is it plugging away at 500 words a day until you finally finish that book you've had in your head for the last 10 years? Is it getting signed with an agent or publisher? Getting a good review in the New York Times? Publishing a book that becomes a bestseller? Establishing a loyal readership? Selling the film rights to your book? Making millions? Becoming required college reading? Maybe it's all of those things. Maybe none of them.

Over the last several months I've been soliciting and publishing guest posts about different authors' definitions of success as a writer. Here's a quick recap:

For Kristen Strassel, who has seven books out, success "is a moving target" that, for now, means "to have people reading and enjoying [her] books."

Kiersi Burkhart, who already has an agent and an international book deal, defines success as writing full-time and making a living off it.

Ruthanne Reid's definition of success has changed over time from being a bestselling author with a movie deal and fanfic based on her work to writing something that she's "proud of and happy with" and that doesn't "leave [her] burned out and angry when [she's] through."

For Ebony Williams, who's on the verge of self-publishing her third novel, success means having "a nice following of people who believe in all that [she does]."

Although Scott Burtness has self-published one novel and has a second on the way, he doesn't consider himself to be an author yet, much less a successful one, nor will he until he's made more money on book sales than he spends on publishing and marketing.

For me, success means making just enough money writing what I want to be able to justify spending the time on it that I want to, making a difference in people's lives with what I write, and continuing to challenge myself and grow as a writer.

Nancy Christie also has several criteria for success: being happy with what's she's written, having it accepted for publication, and getting positive feedback from readers.

To finish off the series, Maree Miller confessed that although she's in the process of querying her first novel, for her, it felt like a huge success just to finish it so she could move on her to writing the next one.

What's your definition of success as a writer? How will you get there?


Need help figuring out what success looks like to you? Or maybe you already have your definition but need some support to achieve it. Writing coaching can help you articulate your goals, identify what you need to learn to accomplish them, break goals down into manageable tasks, stick to your timeline, navigate challenges and celebrate your accomplishments.

A less-than-productive week

My energy has been ZAPPED this week, not only by last weekend's festivities but also by mega-allergies and a family emergency on top of all I originally had planned (i.e. editing and coaching work, business envisioning work, pseudonym's branding process, revising a novel). The result was that I spent a lot of time just trying not to feel tired and the rest of the time - and what little energy I had - doing work for clients.

The good news is that I feel like I'm snapping out of my energy-drain and have a good plan for the coming week that involves resuming my ritual of getting out of the house for 2-3 hours every morning to go write in a coffee shop or the library. I'm not exactly sure why it helps me feel more energetic and focused to do this, I only know that it does, and I haven't done it in something like three weeks. Time to rectify.

Now for this week's...

ROW80 Update

"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."

[Note: This update only includes the past week's tasks and the coming week's tasks. If you'd like to know how they relate to my goals for this round, you can read my 2015 Round 1 Goals post.]

Creative projects
Past week's tasks: Finish re-reading WIP1, making notes & formulating revision plan Mon-Tues; Wed-Fri begin carrying out revision plan. On Monday I decided that re-reading WIP1 would distract rather than aid me at this point in my process, so instead I formulated my revision plan and began to implement it. However, due to the aforementioned factors, I got no further on the revision for the rest of the week.
Coming week's tasks: Email line editor to see if I can have an extension; if not, rework revision plan to fit two weeks. In either case, continue WIP1 revision.

Birthday week

I am so tired. Just spent the last three days partying it up nonstop (i.e. dancing to live music, singing karaoke, floating, playing pool, eating delicious food & drinking delicious drinks) with friends and family. I danced so hard on Thursday night that I woke up the next morning with head-banger's neck and shoulders (ouch!), which continued to plague me for the next two days. One of the many perils of getting older: longer recovery time.

In related news, this year's birthday mustache was incredibly soft. It kept tickling my nose, so I eventually repurposed it as a uni-brow and then a sideburn until it lost its stick and fell off. But while it was on my upper lip it did make me look a lot like my dad did in the '70s, so...I guess that's a plus?

It's been a wonderful celebration of life, but I might need a week to recover from all the fun I had. Which of course may affect the coming week's productivity regarding my ROW80 goals.

ROW80 Update
"A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life."