Cindy Dees's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-advice"
WHAT BOOK TO WRITE
I get asked this one a lot. What book should I write? It's usually followed by dithering about what's selling in the marketplace right now, and what type of book spouses, relatives and friends are telling that person to write, and then…heaven forbid…the dithering devolves into rambling descriptions of three or four partially thought out premises for possible stories.
To all of which, I say, WHATEVER.
At the end of the day, you need to write the book that's burning a hole in your gut demanding to be let out.
I don't care if the market is saturated with exactly the type of story you've always been jonesing to write or if all the experts are saying that the kind of book you want to write is dead and never coming back.
Where great books come from is the heart. Great books are written with passion. And here's another secret…great books sell, no matter what the market is or isn't doing in that genre.
My writing partner and I wrote a 700 page epic fantasy novel at a time when the epic fantasy a la Lord of the Rings had been declared officially defunct. The editor who bought that book and two sequels even said she hadn't bought one in a decade and never expected to buy another one. And then along came ours. And voila. A book of the heart sold. (And to forestall a lot of queries, it's called THE SLEEPING KING, due out in hardback from Tor in Fall of 2015.)
Above and beyond the fact that books you write with love will sing to readers, they're fun to write. They nourish your soul. They cleanse you. Heal you. Make you reach deeper inside yourself and learn more about yourself.
With the advent of self-publishing and ebooks, market trends are going to shift monthly or even weekly in the future. As for chasing trends, down that path lies madness. They'll will come back around to whatever you're writing soon enough if you just wait a few months.
Screw chasing market trends or following anyone else's advice. Find the story you WANT to tell. That you're dying to read for yourself. That's shouting at you to put it to paper. THAT's the book you ought to be writing.
To all of which, I say, WHATEVER.
At the end of the day, you need to write the book that's burning a hole in your gut demanding to be let out.
I don't care if the market is saturated with exactly the type of story you've always been jonesing to write or if all the experts are saying that the kind of book you want to write is dead and never coming back.
Where great books come from is the heart. Great books are written with passion. And here's another secret…great books sell, no matter what the market is or isn't doing in that genre.
My writing partner and I wrote a 700 page epic fantasy novel at a time when the epic fantasy a la Lord of the Rings had been declared officially defunct. The editor who bought that book and two sequels even said she hadn't bought one in a decade and never expected to buy another one. And then along came ours. And voila. A book of the heart sold. (And to forestall a lot of queries, it's called THE SLEEPING KING, due out in hardback from Tor in Fall of 2015.)
Above and beyond the fact that books you write with love will sing to readers, they're fun to write. They nourish your soul. They cleanse you. Heal you. Make you reach deeper inside yourself and learn more about yourself.
With the advent of self-publishing and ebooks, market trends are going to shift monthly or even weekly in the future. As for chasing trends, down that path lies madness. They'll will come back around to whatever you're writing soon enough if you just wait a few months.
Screw chasing market trends or following anyone else's advice. Find the story you WANT to tell. That you're dying to read for yourself. That's shouting at you to put it to paper. THAT's the book you ought to be writing.
LET'S TALK BACKSTORY
A writing friend wrote me in some distress yesterday because she'd been told that backstory was forbidden and against the rules and to be avoided at all costs in writing a novel.
I have two reactions to this. First, there is NO SUCH THING as a hard and fast rule in writing. You have permission as a writer to do whatever you need to in order to tell your story in the best possible way. If that includes backstory, so be it! Second, there's nothing wrong with using backstory, although I do have a couple of caveats regarding backstory.
Okay, a quick definition for the new writers among us. Backstory is when you pause in the middle of the current action of your story and digress into describing something that has happened to the character in the past.
Note the words "pause" and "digress". Those should be warning bells to any writer. Pausing means stopping your forward movement. As in slowing or even stopping your pacing. We live in a fast-moving, on-the-go world, and readers are exceedingly impatient at anything that slows down a story. Inserting backstory into your book can kill your pacing if you're not very careful about how you do it.
The trick is to keep your digressions into backstory as short as possible. Tell us what you need to, but don't wander around in endless reminiscences about the past that are not germaine to the current story you're supposed to be telling. With my apologies to Tolstoy, this is why that whole middle section of Anna Karenina that's essentially a treatise on the state of farming in Imperial Russia really had no place in the book.
Another potential land mine with backstory is where in your book you use it. Too many authors start their book with backstory. They feel a burning need to catch the reader up on everything in the past that they need to know to move forward with the story. Yeah. Don't do that. Except in rare cases (remember my no such thing as hard and fast rules comment?) it's usually a terrible idea to start the reader out in the past.
Why? Because if you're in the point of view of the character whose past we're exploring, they're obviously alive and kicking in the present time. They survived whatever trauma you're describing in their past. There's no suspense in it. There's no question of "Will they make it out of the mess? Will they be okay?" That's an elaborate way of saying Backstory KILLS your forward pacing in an opening.
Remember, openings are about sucking the reader into the story as quickly and deeply as possible. So fast and so far they can't put your book down. Backstories do none of this. It's fine to make references to past events that the reader doesn't understand, yet. It plants the question of, "What was that guy/gal referring to when he recalled that moment when XYZ happened?" Or "Who is XYZ whom the character just remembered with such terror?" You can drop in tiny hints at backstory and even confuse your reader a little. They'll frantically read forward to understand the events unfolding before them and around them.
So what purpose DO backstories serve? Usually, they tell us something about the character that makes us understand why a present situation has such a powerful effect on them, or why the character is acting in an otherwise inexplicable manner in the present time. There are, of course, other reasons to devolve into backstory.
How should we use backstory, then? Once you've actually got your present action moving along, you've planted a bunch of questions in the reader's minds that will pull them forward all the way through the book to find the answers, and we're in love with the characters, or at least in firmly in like with them, then you can afford to reveal a little more to the reader about what makes the characters tick. You can drop in bits and pieces of backstory here and there to flesh out the person more fully. Sometimes, a bit of backstory may be a single sentence or even a phrase in length. As the character floats in an out of the present and of recollection of the past, you can insert glimpses of their backstory as appropriate.
Full-blown scenes in backstory are often differentiated by being printed in italics in their entirety. I also find that doing it this way makes me vividly aware of how long the backstory scene is running. Page after page after page of italics is a warning to me to winnow down that backstory scene to its essential and most important moments and to toss out all the rest.
So, in summary. Backstory is fine as long as you remember that it kills pacing. Be careful where you use it and how much of it you use. But don't be afraid to use it if your story calls for it. We can all climb down off the backstory bridge now and get back to our regularly scheduled writing...
I have two reactions to this. First, there is NO SUCH THING as a hard and fast rule in writing. You have permission as a writer to do whatever you need to in order to tell your story in the best possible way. If that includes backstory, so be it! Second, there's nothing wrong with using backstory, although I do have a couple of caveats regarding backstory.
Okay, a quick definition for the new writers among us. Backstory is when you pause in the middle of the current action of your story and digress into describing something that has happened to the character in the past.
Note the words "pause" and "digress". Those should be warning bells to any writer. Pausing means stopping your forward movement. As in slowing or even stopping your pacing. We live in a fast-moving, on-the-go world, and readers are exceedingly impatient at anything that slows down a story. Inserting backstory into your book can kill your pacing if you're not very careful about how you do it.
The trick is to keep your digressions into backstory as short as possible. Tell us what you need to, but don't wander around in endless reminiscences about the past that are not germaine to the current story you're supposed to be telling. With my apologies to Tolstoy, this is why that whole middle section of Anna Karenina that's essentially a treatise on the state of farming in Imperial Russia really had no place in the book.
Another potential land mine with backstory is where in your book you use it. Too many authors start their book with backstory. They feel a burning need to catch the reader up on everything in the past that they need to know to move forward with the story. Yeah. Don't do that. Except in rare cases (remember my no such thing as hard and fast rules comment?) it's usually a terrible idea to start the reader out in the past.
Why? Because if you're in the point of view of the character whose past we're exploring, they're obviously alive and kicking in the present time. They survived whatever trauma you're describing in their past. There's no suspense in it. There's no question of "Will they make it out of the mess? Will they be okay?" That's an elaborate way of saying Backstory KILLS your forward pacing in an opening.
Remember, openings are about sucking the reader into the story as quickly and deeply as possible. So fast and so far they can't put your book down. Backstories do none of this. It's fine to make references to past events that the reader doesn't understand, yet. It plants the question of, "What was that guy/gal referring to when he recalled that moment when XYZ happened?" Or "Who is XYZ whom the character just remembered with such terror?" You can drop in tiny hints at backstory and even confuse your reader a little. They'll frantically read forward to understand the events unfolding before them and around them.
So what purpose DO backstories serve? Usually, they tell us something about the character that makes us understand why a present situation has such a powerful effect on them, or why the character is acting in an otherwise inexplicable manner in the present time. There are, of course, other reasons to devolve into backstory.
How should we use backstory, then? Once you've actually got your present action moving along, you've planted a bunch of questions in the reader's minds that will pull them forward all the way through the book to find the answers, and we're in love with the characters, or at least in firmly in like with them, then you can afford to reveal a little more to the reader about what makes the characters tick. You can drop in bits and pieces of backstory here and there to flesh out the person more fully. Sometimes, a bit of backstory may be a single sentence or even a phrase in length. As the character floats in an out of the present and of recollection of the past, you can insert glimpses of their backstory as appropriate.
Full-blown scenes in backstory are often differentiated by being printed in italics in their entirety. I also find that doing it this way makes me vividly aware of how long the backstory scene is running. Page after page after page of italics is a warning to me to winnow down that backstory scene to its essential and most important moments and to toss out all the rest.
So, in summary. Backstory is fine as long as you remember that it kills pacing. Be careful where you use it and how much of it you use. But don't be afraid to use it if your story calls for it. We can all climb down off the backstory bridge now and get back to our regularly scheduled writing...
LISTEN TO YOUR INSTINCTS...OR NOT
I've been working on a new book the past few weeks, and last week, I abruptly hit a wall where the story didn't feel right. It was as if the train just jumped off the tracks and refused to move forward any more.
I've learned over the years to recognize this as a sure signal that my story has taken a wrong turn. It's time for me to stop, go back to thinking about the plot of the story, the overall arc of the characters, and the relationship between the characters. There's a fatal flaw somewhere in the mix.
It's a waste of my time to keep writing forward until I figure out where I've gone wrong. I have to circle back and fix the problem before my story will flow naturally again.
Yay! I listen to my instincts and they save me every time. Right? Maybe not.
So here's the thing. You have to know enough about story structure and character development and relationship dynamics and a host of other technical aspects of story writing to correctly identify where the story has gone off track in the first place.
Some people have a sense of story rhythm developed from lots of reading, or maybe from a family of storytellers, or maybe from actual instinctive knack for it. But I humbly think this is the exception rather than the rule.
This is my pitch for reading books on how-to-write, for taking classes, workshops, or seminars on writing, and for learning the technical craft of storytelling. It's not fun, and it's not glamorous, but it is important to be able to deconstruct your story either before, during, or after the drafting process to discover its critical weaknesses.
Plotters, of course, will love this advice. They're all about being organized before they put sentences on paper.
Pantsers, however, may hate this advice. Thing is, I'm not telling pantsers to force themselves to write in a technical way. I'm saying pantsers need to have enough knowledge stored in their mental hurricane of creativity for their instincts to warn them when they're drifting off course.
Both types of writers would do well to develop an acute and sensitive feeling for when the story isn't going well. It's something to specifically watch out for as you write.
I think this sense of intuitively feeling problems in the story structure is one of the skills that distinguishes successful writers from those who struggle to get stories right.
How to develop it? Learn the craft! For most people, this "intuition" has nothing to do with actual intuition at the end of the day. It has to do with having enough knowledge to spot a big story problem right as it starts to unfold instead of writing hundreds more draft pages before realizing your story doesn't work.
Writers talk about this skill in words like instinct and intuition, but ultimately, it's a learned ability. It's a synthesis of technical knowledge and your creative "feel" for your story. You need BOTH.
I've learned over the years to recognize this as a sure signal that my story has taken a wrong turn. It's time for me to stop, go back to thinking about the plot of the story, the overall arc of the characters, and the relationship between the characters. There's a fatal flaw somewhere in the mix.
It's a waste of my time to keep writing forward until I figure out where I've gone wrong. I have to circle back and fix the problem before my story will flow naturally again.
Yay! I listen to my instincts and they save me every time. Right? Maybe not.
So here's the thing. You have to know enough about story structure and character development and relationship dynamics and a host of other technical aspects of story writing to correctly identify where the story has gone off track in the first place.
Some people have a sense of story rhythm developed from lots of reading, or maybe from a family of storytellers, or maybe from actual instinctive knack for it. But I humbly think this is the exception rather than the rule.
This is my pitch for reading books on how-to-write, for taking classes, workshops, or seminars on writing, and for learning the technical craft of storytelling. It's not fun, and it's not glamorous, but it is important to be able to deconstruct your story either before, during, or after the drafting process to discover its critical weaknesses.
Plotters, of course, will love this advice. They're all about being organized before they put sentences on paper.
Pantsers, however, may hate this advice. Thing is, I'm not telling pantsers to force themselves to write in a technical way. I'm saying pantsers need to have enough knowledge stored in their mental hurricane of creativity for their instincts to warn them when they're drifting off course.
Both types of writers would do well to develop an acute and sensitive feeling for when the story isn't going well. It's something to specifically watch out for as you write.
I think this sense of intuitively feeling problems in the story structure is one of the skills that distinguishes successful writers from those who struggle to get stories right.
How to develop it? Learn the craft! For most people, this "intuition" has nothing to do with actual intuition at the end of the day. It has to do with having enough knowledge to spot a big story problem right as it starts to unfold instead of writing hundreds more draft pages before realizing your story doesn't work.
Writers talk about this skill in words like instinct and intuition, but ultimately, it's a learned ability. It's a synthesis of technical knowledge and your creative "feel" for your story. You need BOTH.
WHY COPY EDITS MATTER
They ain't sexy, and they ain't glamorous, but spelling and grammar matter.
A few days ago, I was getting ready to put up my first self-published book on Amazon, and a spell checker during the conversion of the file to mobi inserted the mother of all typo's into my story. The original line reads that the hero and heroine are going to eat poolside, and it auto-corrected to "eat poopsite." Took me two days to figure out how to fix that freaking typo! But there was NO WAY I was publishing the book with that glaring of an error in it.
Getting the spelling and grammar right shows a reader that you care about your work. It marks you as a professional. A "real" writer, as it were.
The idea is to convey that, if quality of technique is high on your radar, maybe high quality of story will be, too. Also, you want the reader to lose themselves in the story, not get hung up on the words or punctuation marks on the page.
The best way to ensure that your manuscript is free of typos and grammar errors is to get several different readers to proofread your story. I work with some of the best editors in the business, and even they miss errors from time to time.
And you, the writer? You're going to miss catching more mistakes than you can believe. The problem is you're too familiar with the story and too familiar with what you thought you said/typed. You won't see what's actually on the page.
Every story, and I mean EVERY story, needs an impartial outsider to copy edit it. NOTE: copy editing is a fancy word for proofreading. A copy editor will also point out word repetitions and verify dates, facts, and technical details, but the copy editor's main job is to get the commas right and catch the typos.
If you can't afford to pay a professional copy editor, find a friend--or better, several friends-- who are REALLY good with spelling and grammar, and barter, beg, or bully them into going through your manuscript as carefully as they can.
One reason traditionally published books tend to be very clean is because many people see the manuscript before it's published. There are multiple opportunities for errors to be spotted and corrected. If you're self-publishing, you need to mimic this part of the process as closely as possible. Get lots of eyes on the manuscript before it's finalized.
The fastest way to pull a reader out of the story is to have them stumble over a glaring error in the writing itself. Getting the spelling and grammar right matters. A lot.
A few days ago, I was getting ready to put up my first self-published book on Amazon, and a spell checker during the conversion of the file to mobi inserted the mother of all typo's into my story. The original line reads that the hero and heroine are going to eat poolside, and it auto-corrected to "eat poopsite." Took me two days to figure out how to fix that freaking typo! But there was NO WAY I was publishing the book with that glaring of an error in it.
Getting the spelling and grammar right shows a reader that you care about your work. It marks you as a professional. A "real" writer, as it were.
The idea is to convey that, if quality of technique is high on your radar, maybe high quality of story will be, too. Also, you want the reader to lose themselves in the story, not get hung up on the words or punctuation marks on the page.
The best way to ensure that your manuscript is free of typos and grammar errors is to get several different readers to proofread your story. I work with some of the best editors in the business, and even they miss errors from time to time.
And you, the writer? You're going to miss catching more mistakes than you can believe. The problem is you're too familiar with the story and too familiar with what you thought you said/typed. You won't see what's actually on the page.
Every story, and I mean EVERY story, needs an impartial outsider to copy edit it. NOTE: copy editing is a fancy word for proofreading. A copy editor will also point out word repetitions and verify dates, facts, and technical details, but the copy editor's main job is to get the commas right and catch the typos.
If you can't afford to pay a professional copy editor, find a friend--or better, several friends-- who are REALLY good with spelling and grammar, and barter, beg, or bully them into going through your manuscript as carefully as they can.
One reason traditionally published books tend to be very clean is because many people see the manuscript before it's published. There are multiple opportunities for errors to be spotted and corrected. If you're self-publishing, you need to mimic this part of the process as closely as possible. Get lots of eyes on the manuscript before it's finalized.
The fastest way to pull a reader out of the story is to have them stumble over a glaring error in the writing itself. Getting the spelling and grammar right matters. A lot.
FINDING LOST WRITING MOJO
Where does the mojo go, anyway, when it decides to leave? If only I had the answer to this one. Then we could track it down and drag it back, kicking and screaming, into our brains.
I do know that creativity picks the darnedest times to just up and run away from home, though. It particularly likes to flee when a deadline is looming, or I finally have a chunk of time all to myself to actually write without distractions or interruptions.
It's one of the hardest parts of being a contracted author with deadlines stacked up for months or years into the future. It's also not something authors often complain about in public. Seriously, who wants to listen to anyone bitch about how many deadlines they have when the rest of us would love to have just one of those same deadlines? It's akin to celebrities griping about how rich and famous they are.
Here's the thing, though. Deadlines do stack up. They do exert tremendous pressure upon authors, and they do contribute to making creativity on demand difficult to achieve. Life also stacks up. Stress and distraction and other commitments suck the joy and creativity out of writing as surely as missing mojo does.
It's not a half bad idea to impose an artificial deadline upon yourself and see how it feels before you accept a publishing contract. Pick a date a reasonable amount of time in the future by which your book MUST be done--as in drafted, revised, edited, and polished. DONE. Then, get writing.
If you make that deadline, turn around immediately and set another deadline for yourself. But just for fun, make this one a little tighter. To the point of being a bit uncomfortable and requiring discipline from yourself to make.
If you make that one, just for fun, set a godawful deadline for yourself that will force you to grab every spare moment to write, that forces sacrifices and productivity even on the worst days, that will keep you up at night fretting over what comes next and how to fix the flaws in the scenes you just wrote.
I'm not saying that all writing is miserable. Far from it. But there is value in teaching yourself to hang on to your love of writing and your ability to be creative in the midst of deadlines, distractions, and pressure. Even if you're self-published, the advent of the pre-order button for everybody has now shared the deadline phenomenon with millions more writers.
Here's the reality: Deadlines do happen. Mojo does take off for parts unknown. Mojo or not, successful authors have to find a way to write in spite of their missing mojo. Writing in that mode sucks. But do it anyway.
I do know that creativity picks the darnedest times to just up and run away from home, though. It particularly likes to flee when a deadline is looming, or I finally have a chunk of time all to myself to actually write without distractions or interruptions.
It's one of the hardest parts of being a contracted author with deadlines stacked up for months or years into the future. It's also not something authors often complain about in public. Seriously, who wants to listen to anyone bitch about how many deadlines they have when the rest of us would love to have just one of those same deadlines? It's akin to celebrities griping about how rich and famous they are.
Here's the thing, though. Deadlines do stack up. They do exert tremendous pressure upon authors, and they do contribute to making creativity on demand difficult to achieve. Life also stacks up. Stress and distraction and other commitments suck the joy and creativity out of writing as surely as missing mojo does.
It's not a half bad idea to impose an artificial deadline upon yourself and see how it feels before you accept a publishing contract. Pick a date a reasonable amount of time in the future by which your book MUST be done--as in drafted, revised, edited, and polished. DONE. Then, get writing.
If you make that deadline, turn around immediately and set another deadline for yourself. But just for fun, make this one a little tighter. To the point of being a bit uncomfortable and requiring discipline from yourself to make.
If you make that one, just for fun, set a godawful deadline for yourself that will force you to grab every spare moment to write, that forces sacrifices and productivity even on the worst days, that will keep you up at night fretting over what comes next and how to fix the flaws in the scenes you just wrote.
I'm not saying that all writing is miserable. Far from it. But there is value in teaching yourself to hang on to your love of writing and your ability to be creative in the midst of deadlines, distractions, and pressure. Even if you're self-published, the advent of the pre-order button for everybody has now shared the deadline phenomenon with millions more writers.
Here's the reality: Deadlines do happen. Mojo does take off for parts unknown. Mojo or not, successful authors have to find a way to write in spite of their missing mojo. Writing in that mode sucks. But do it anyway.
WRITING IS A HABIT
Whether we want it to or not, life intervenes from time to time to stop your writing. In my case it was an unexpected surgery and an even more unexpected reaction (or non-reaction) to any pain killers afterward. I'm fine now and the surgery was a success, but back to my point.
I fell out of the writing habit. And may I just say, man this sucks. There's a reason I religiously sit my butt down and write every single day in my regularly scheduled life. Getting back into the writing habit is worse than trying to establish an exercise regimen. At least I can bribe myself with good music in the headphones while I sweat or a treat after a workout.
But forcing myself to write again is like giving myself a root canal without anesthesia.
Here's the thing. I love the book I'm working on. It's completely outlined, so I know what comes next. I need to to get this thing turned into my publisher who's eagerly awaiting it and being totally nice about when they get it. I enjoy creating this story.
But I've allowed bad habits to creep into my life in place of actual writing. I built an awesome website to go with the fantasy novel franchise I'm writing on. I got caught up on my fave TV shows and found a couple of fabulous shows to binge watch on Netflix. My house is clean. Well, clean-ish.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: WRITING IS A HABIT.
There are any number of ways to form a habit, and some of them may make you completely crazed and do nothing to help you write. I encourage you to find your own methods to get yourself writing consistently. For me, I've had to resort to a timer and forcing myself to stare at my computer and do NOTHING else until that stingy little bastard of a bell finally rings. I bored myself into actually producing new words.
I've had to forbid myself from editing any previous part of the current manuscript. I've bribed myself with chocolate-dipped frozen bananas. I've stayed up late to write, I've gotten up early to write, I've left the house to write. I have written long-hand, I've written in my favorite leatherbound journal. I've outlined, I've used writing prompts, I've written scenes out of order. I've disconnected my laptop from the Internet.
I've resorted to every trick I know to get my butt back in the chair, my hands back on the keyboard, and words appearing on my computer screen.
I'm not back to anything near my usual level of productivity, but I know that will come with time. Until then, I'm trying to be patient with myself. I'm managing to get anywhere from three to ten pages a day written. But I'm finally doing it again every single day.
Writing. Is. A. Habit.
I fell out of the writing habit. And may I just say, man this sucks. There's a reason I religiously sit my butt down and write every single day in my regularly scheduled life. Getting back into the writing habit is worse than trying to establish an exercise regimen. At least I can bribe myself with good music in the headphones while I sweat or a treat after a workout.
But forcing myself to write again is like giving myself a root canal without anesthesia.
Here's the thing. I love the book I'm working on. It's completely outlined, so I know what comes next. I need to to get this thing turned into my publisher who's eagerly awaiting it and being totally nice about when they get it. I enjoy creating this story.
But I've allowed bad habits to creep into my life in place of actual writing. I built an awesome website to go with the fantasy novel franchise I'm writing on. I got caught up on my fave TV shows and found a couple of fabulous shows to binge watch on Netflix. My house is clean. Well, clean-ish.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: WRITING IS A HABIT.
There are any number of ways to form a habit, and some of them may make you completely crazed and do nothing to help you write. I encourage you to find your own methods to get yourself writing consistently. For me, I've had to resort to a timer and forcing myself to stare at my computer and do NOTHING else until that stingy little bastard of a bell finally rings. I bored myself into actually producing new words.
I've had to forbid myself from editing any previous part of the current manuscript. I've bribed myself with chocolate-dipped frozen bananas. I've stayed up late to write, I've gotten up early to write, I've left the house to write. I have written long-hand, I've written in my favorite leatherbound journal. I've outlined, I've used writing prompts, I've written scenes out of order. I've disconnected my laptop from the Internet.
I've resorted to every trick I know to get my butt back in the chair, my hands back on the keyboard, and words appearing on my computer screen.
I'm not back to anything near my usual level of productivity, but I know that will come with time. Until then, I'm trying to be patient with myself. I'm managing to get anywhere from three to ten pages a day written. But I'm finally doing it again every single day.
Writing. Is. A. Habit.
THE PROS AND CONS OF CONFIDENCE
I had the opportunity to hear a business coach talk about the mental aspects of success recently, and the speaker talked at length about the importance of being confident in yourself and your work and believing that you are the absolute best at what you do. Cue the mental cringe from me.
This speaker does a lot of work with salespeople, and I can see the point of needing to project confidence whether you have it or not. There was even a reference to the importance of faking it if and until you have it for real.
But it got me thinking about how this applies to writers and other creative artists.
Certainly, there is huge value in believing in your writing and loving the stories you create. I expect it's helpful to your self-promotion and marketing to project confidence, or at least to infuse confidence into your sales efforts and reader interactions.
However, I also think there's a potentially deadly downside of confidence in writers. And that would be when it becomes over-confidence or false confidence.
Being convinced that you're a fantastic writer to the exclusion of being able to take an honest critique is a problem. (I'm being polite here. In reality, this one is an epidemic among first-time authors.)
Being convinced you're so good that you do not need to learn and grow...big problem.
Being so confident that your book will be the one to break out big that you spend money you don't have to produce it or quit a job that you'd otherwise need or spending promotion money that you can't reasonably expect to make back...yikes! The more insidious manifestation of this one is when a writer is so convinced their book is the next big thing that they invest their entire ego and sense of self-worth in how the book performs.
I'm not trying to say to anyone that you suck as a writer. I love you all and think everyone has a fantastic story locked away inside them trying to get out. But I am saying two things:
1) The publishing industry is NOT logical. Great books often flounder and horrible books occasionally sell millions of copies. You may be absolutely correct to be confident that your book is outstanding. But that's no guarantee of success. In simple terms, confidence does not necessarily equal success in the publishing business.
My January release, FEVER ZONE, is by far the best book I've ever written--this book kicks butt and takes names. It ROCKS. But it's not selling well and nobody's reviewing it. The few reviews it has are raves, but for some reason, this terrific story is not gaining traction. I have huge confidence in the book. But that does not automatically translate to success.
2) Being an artist is an ever-evolving process. Confidence is not a steady state of existence for a creative personality. It is not something you can "be" or "not be."
I find that my confidence is tied to periods when I am being highly productive, when I know where my story is going, and when I have learned something new about my craft that I feel like I have mastered and am being able to apply to my work. I am less confident in periods when I'm struggling to produce pages, don't know where I'm going with a story, or I feel like I'm stagnating or have some aspect of my work that I need to improve.
At the end of the day, you need to believe that a) you do have a story to tell, that b) you are the right person to tell your story, and c) you can work hard and tell your story in the best way you know how.
You cannot control your sales, your reviews, your financial success, or your fame. You can have all of the confidence in the world and never achieve tangible goals that equate to success (as measured in traditional business models).
Confidence matters. It can help you finish your book or, maybe, help you achieve your goals. But do not let yourself become a slave to any false promises of "having confidence."
Do not let confidence blind you to your flaws as an artist. Believe me, we all have them. Do not mistake having confidence for being blind to the areas in your creative expression that need improvement, growth, and old-fashioned hard work.
Use confidence as a tool to help you be productive and to help you put yourself out there in front of the world with your story. Make it work for you and not against you.
This speaker does a lot of work with salespeople, and I can see the point of needing to project confidence whether you have it or not. There was even a reference to the importance of faking it if and until you have it for real.
But it got me thinking about how this applies to writers and other creative artists.
Certainly, there is huge value in believing in your writing and loving the stories you create. I expect it's helpful to your self-promotion and marketing to project confidence, or at least to infuse confidence into your sales efforts and reader interactions.
However, I also think there's a potentially deadly downside of confidence in writers. And that would be when it becomes over-confidence or false confidence.
Being convinced that you're a fantastic writer to the exclusion of being able to take an honest critique is a problem. (I'm being polite here. In reality, this one is an epidemic among first-time authors.)
Being convinced you're so good that you do not need to learn and grow...big problem.
Being so confident that your book will be the one to break out big that you spend money you don't have to produce it or quit a job that you'd otherwise need or spending promotion money that you can't reasonably expect to make back...yikes! The more insidious manifestation of this one is when a writer is so convinced their book is the next big thing that they invest their entire ego and sense of self-worth in how the book performs.
I'm not trying to say to anyone that you suck as a writer. I love you all and think everyone has a fantastic story locked away inside them trying to get out. But I am saying two things:
1) The publishing industry is NOT logical. Great books often flounder and horrible books occasionally sell millions of copies. You may be absolutely correct to be confident that your book is outstanding. But that's no guarantee of success. In simple terms, confidence does not necessarily equal success in the publishing business.
My January release, FEVER ZONE, is by far the best book I've ever written--this book kicks butt and takes names. It ROCKS. But it's not selling well and nobody's reviewing it. The few reviews it has are raves, but for some reason, this terrific story is not gaining traction. I have huge confidence in the book. But that does not automatically translate to success.
2) Being an artist is an ever-evolving process. Confidence is not a steady state of existence for a creative personality. It is not something you can "be" or "not be."
I find that my confidence is tied to periods when I am being highly productive, when I know where my story is going, and when I have learned something new about my craft that I feel like I have mastered and am being able to apply to my work. I am less confident in periods when I'm struggling to produce pages, don't know where I'm going with a story, or I feel like I'm stagnating or have some aspect of my work that I need to improve.
At the end of the day, you need to believe that a) you do have a story to tell, that b) you are the right person to tell your story, and c) you can work hard and tell your story in the best way you know how.
You cannot control your sales, your reviews, your financial success, or your fame. You can have all of the confidence in the world and never achieve tangible goals that equate to success (as measured in traditional business models).
Confidence matters. It can help you finish your book or, maybe, help you achieve your goals. But do not let yourself become a slave to any false promises of "having confidence."
Do not let confidence blind you to your flaws as an artist. Believe me, we all have them. Do not mistake having confidence for being blind to the areas in your creative expression that need improvement, growth, and old-fashioned hard work.
Use confidence as a tool to help you be productive and to help you put yourself out there in front of the world with your story. Make it work for you and not against you.
HOW DOES WRITING MAKE YOU FEEL?
Seems like a no brainer question, doesn't it? And yet, you'd be amazed at how many writers I run into who love the idea of having written but don't like to write at all.
We get so wrapped up in giving ourselves minimum daily word counts, deadlines in which to finish a manuscript, and other self-imposed homework-like writing assignments that we often lose sight of why we started writing in the first place.
I'd venture to guess that most writers start writing for the sheer love of it. For the rush of writing down that story racing around in our brain demanding to get out. Sure, it would be great to pay off the house or be famous, and that's a draw, too. But the writing itself--ahh, that's sheer joy.
After you've been writing for a while, learned a bunch of technical stuff (that ought to guarantee your success if you master it, right?), and you've gotten a few manuscripts under your belt, are you still writing because you love it? I'm continually surprised by how complicated the reasons become to keep a person writing.
So here's a thought. What if, before you sit down to write tomorrow, you take a moment and ask yourself, "How do I want to feel when I'm done writing today?"
What if your goal, instead of being x number of words written, is "I want to feel productive, or creative, or clever?" Or maybe if you're on deadline, your goal is, "I want to be less panicked and feel like I made progress today?"
How will that shift your outlook while you're in the act of writing? When you get stuck in a scene, will you be more inclined to stay in your chair and struggle through it, knowing that the reward of feeling good about your writing awaits you?
I have to wonder if a good portion of writer's block isn't caused by feeling bad about our writing. If you have a crappy writing day and feel unproductive and worthless and terrible at writing, how much less likely are you to subject yourself to that torture tomorrow? And the next day and the next day as all the negatives stack up?
It's undoubtedly the topic of another post to consider how to feel good about our writing. But it's probably enough for now to ask you to be aware of how you feel after you're finished writing each day and how you WANT to feel after you're finished writing for the day.
We get so wrapped up in giving ourselves minimum daily word counts, deadlines in which to finish a manuscript, and other self-imposed homework-like writing assignments that we often lose sight of why we started writing in the first place.
I'd venture to guess that most writers start writing for the sheer love of it. For the rush of writing down that story racing around in our brain demanding to get out. Sure, it would be great to pay off the house or be famous, and that's a draw, too. But the writing itself--ahh, that's sheer joy.
After you've been writing for a while, learned a bunch of technical stuff (that ought to guarantee your success if you master it, right?), and you've gotten a few manuscripts under your belt, are you still writing because you love it? I'm continually surprised by how complicated the reasons become to keep a person writing.
So here's a thought. What if, before you sit down to write tomorrow, you take a moment and ask yourself, "How do I want to feel when I'm done writing today?"
What if your goal, instead of being x number of words written, is "I want to feel productive, or creative, or clever?" Or maybe if you're on deadline, your goal is, "I want to be less panicked and feel like I made progress today?"
How will that shift your outlook while you're in the act of writing? When you get stuck in a scene, will you be more inclined to stay in your chair and struggle through it, knowing that the reward of feeling good about your writing awaits you?
I have to wonder if a good portion of writer's block isn't caused by feeling bad about our writing. If you have a crappy writing day and feel unproductive and worthless and terrible at writing, how much less likely are you to subject yourself to that torture tomorrow? And the next day and the next day as all the negatives stack up?
It's undoubtedly the topic of another post to consider how to feel good about our writing. But it's probably enough for now to ask you to be aware of how you feel after you're finished writing each day and how you WANT to feel after you're finished writing for the day.
REAL TALK ABOUT WHY MOST AUTHORS WON'T SUCCEED
Now that I've got your attention and you're already irritated, let's have a little real talk, shall we?
The fact of the matter is that most authors won't succeed because they're not good enough. Boom. I said it. They're not good enough. For some reason, this seems to be the 600-pound gorilla in the corner that no one's willing to talk about.
Close to a half-million self published books will go up on Amazon this year, and the reality is that most of them aren't good enough to garner fans who would buy another book from that writer. You would think everyone knows that to be the truth, but I'm amazed and appalled by the number of writers I encounter who agree that it applies to the other guy, but NOT to them.
If you're not selling ANY books except those you've coerced your family, friends, and a few co-workers into buying, it's time to ask yourself the question of whether or not you're one of those writers who's not good enough yet to succeed.
I am the very first person to agree that a FEW excellent writers will just have bad luck or bad packaging or bad marketing that kills a great book, and it sells for crap. But MOST writers who claim to be one of these writers...I did say real talk...are delusional.
In the good old days of print publishing way back, say, ten years ago, writers had to submit their stories to publishers and have their story purchased before it saw the light of publishing day. Something like one in 5000 books made it out of the slush pile and onto book store shelves.
Was this always a fair filter? Certainly not. Great books didn't get bought because the publisher didn't know how to market them, or the author's voice just wasn't right for that particular editor, or other reasons. But I daresay that at least 4900 or so of those rejected manuscripts were rightfully rejected. Frankly, I think the number is closer to 4990, but I'm willing to give my fellow writers the benefit of the doubt.
In today's publishing environment, every last one of those 4900 books is now being self-published.
It worries me that writers don't understand the disservice they're doing to themselves by publishing their works before they've become good enough to earn fans and build a career. Once you've put a book out, particularly in ebook format, it's out there forever. In years to come, anyone can go back and read that sub-par book and have a chance to be turned off by it and decide not to read any more of your books.
Everything you do contributes to building your brand. When you put out bad books, the brand you're building is "WRITER OF BAD BOOKS".
Let's say you write a dozen novels, and six or eight books in, you figure out what the hell you're doing and start writing pretty decent stories. Readers who like your new stuff and going to go back and buy the crap from the early days, assuming it will hold up to the new stuff. Their enthusiasm evaporates, and now they won't recommend you to a friend over the water cooler at work. It's hard to give a recommendation that says, "Read this author, except only read this title and not that title, because some of Author X's stuff is great, but the rest is drek." The other guy at the water cooler won't remember all of that. He hears, "Author X. Writes drek."
I know everyone's shouting about how great it is to get to self-publish while you learn the craft and how cool it is that writing can pay for itself while you learn how to do it. I just heard someone crowing about what a great gig it was for these very reasons. To that person, I say, a) I doubt you'll make a decent living writing crap en route to writing something decent, b) if being a good writer were that easy, everyone would actually BE good writers, c) you're wrecking your brand, and on a purely personal note, d) you're clogging up the marketplace with crap that's preventing the decent books out there from being found.
I know it's going to be a wildly unpopular point of view, but I really think most authors would be better off writing their bad learning books and storing them in the safety of their own closets forever, rather than sharing them with the rest of us.
And yes, I have four manuscripts under my bed that will never see the light of day.
Author's Note: After I first posted this blog, it took under a minute for someone to post that I hate indy publishing and am a slave to NY print publishing. Impressive. I'll say it again. I think some of the BEST books being published today are being indy published and I wish them massive success. They're helping break the strangle hold that print publishing has held over publishing for far too long. But I stand by what I said. MOST self-published books aren't good enough to build a working career on. We're talking a half million books a year, here. 15 million total or something insane on Amazon right now. MOST of those are not selling and most of those writers are NOT making a living at it. Why is that? We all know the answer. Everyone's too afraid of being that author to answer the question truthfully. I'm just the moron who dared to say it out loud.
The fact of the matter is that most authors won't succeed because they're not good enough. Boom. I said it. They're not good enough. For some reason, this seems to be the 600-pound gorilla in the corner that no one's willing to talk about.
Close to a half-million self published books will go up on Amazon this year, and the reality is that most of them aren't good enough to garner fans who would buy another book from that writer. You would think everyone knows that to be the truth, but I'm amazed and appalled by the number of writers I encounter who agree that it applies to the other guy, but NOT to them.
If you're not selling ANY books except those you've coerced your family, friends, and a few co-workers into buying, it's time to ask yourself the question of whether or not you're one of those writers who's not good enough yet to succeed.
I am the very first person to agree that a FEW excellent writers will just have bad luck or bad packaging or bad marketing that kills a great book, and it sells for crap. But MOST writers who claim to be one of these writers...I did say real talk...are delusional.
In the good old days of print publishing way back, say, ten years ago, writers had to submit their stories to publishers and have their story purchased before it saw the light of publishing day. Something like one in 5000 books made it out of the slush pile and onto book store shelves.
Was this always a fair filter? Certainly not. Great books didn't get bought because the publisher didn't know how to market them, or the author's voice just wasn't right for that particular editor, or other reasons. But I daresay that at least 4900 or so of those rejected manuscripts were rightfully rejected. Frankly, I think the number is closer to 4990, but I'm willing to give my fellow writers the benefit of the doubt.
In today's publishing environment, every last one of those 4900 books is now being self-published.
It worries me that writers don't understand the disservice they're doing to themselves by publishing their works before they've become good enough to earn fans and build a career. Once you've put a book out, particularly in ebook format, it's out there forever. In years to come, anyone can go back and read that sub-par book and have a chance to be turned off by it and decide not to read any more of your books.
Everything you do contributes to building your brand. When you put out bad books, the brand you're building is "WRITER OF BAD BOOKS".
Let's say you write a dozen novels, and six or eight books in, you figure out what the hell you're doing and start writing pretty decent stories. Readers who like your new stuff and going to go back and buy the crap from the early days, assuming it will hold up to the new stuff. Their enthusiasm evaporates, and now they won't recommend you to a friend over the water cooler at work. It's hard to give a recommendation that says, "Read this author, except only read this title and not that title, because some of Author X's stuff is great, but the rest is drek." The other guy at the water cooler won't remember all of that. He hears, "Author X. Writes drek."
I know everyone's shouting about how great it is to get to self-publish while you learn the craft and how cool it is that writing can pay for itself while you learn how to do it. I just heard someone crowing about what a great gig it was for these very reasons. To that person, I say, a) I doubt you'll make a decent living writing crap en route to writing something decent, b) if being a good writer were that easy, everyone would actually BE good writers, c) you're wrecking your brand, and on a purely personal note, d) you're clogging up the marketplace with crap that's preventing the decent books out there from being found.
I know it's going to be a wildly unpopular point of view, but I really think most authors would be better off writing their bad learning books and storing them in the safety of their own closets forever, rather than sharing them with the rest of us.
And yes, I have four manuscripts under my bed that will never see the light of day.
Author's Note: After I first posted this blog, it took under a minute for someone to post that I hate indy publishing and am a slave to NY print publishing. Impressive. I'll say it again. I think some of the BEST books being published today are being indy published and I wish them massive success. They're helping break the strangle hold that print publishing has held over publishing for far too long. But I stand by what I said. MOST self-published books aren't good enough to build a working career on. We're talking a half million books a year, here. 15 million total or something insane on Amazon right now. MOST of those are not selling and most of those writers are NOT making a living at it. Why is that? We all know the answer. Everyone's too afraid of being that author to answer the question truthfully. I'm just the moron who dared to say it out loud.
