How To – StoryADay

Should You Sign Up for that course or challenge?

Cover image workbook: should I take part in NaNoWriMo or other creative writing challenges, courses

So Many Challenges, So Many Courses

Have you ever lost an afternoon reading all about how to market your novel…before writing the novel, never mind figuring out how to revise or publish the thing?

Or figuring out if you should take part in the latest writing challenge all your friends seem to be doing?

Or maybe you spent way too much energy deciding whether to invest in a new writing workshop or class instead of buckling down and practicing our creative writing skills.

Yeah, me too.

Instead of trusting that the work we’re doing will inevitably lead to progress, we get distracted by Shiny Object Syndrome!

But going down endless rabbit holes will leave us no closer to our goals than we were before.

In fact, it can leave us overwhelmed, discouraged and stalled.

How can we make the courageous choices that really lead to progress in our writing life? And how can you decide if that new writing course, challenge or book is Shiny Object or a Shiny Opportunity?

Spend Some Time With Future-You

A writer dreams of having already won NaNoWriMo...in October — Photo by Leighann Blackwood on Unsplash

What do you hope for when you open a new book about writing, sign up for a course, or embark on a new writing project?

You don’t just hope to complete the course, or the book or the challenge.

When tempted to try a new Shiny Object, you probably build an image in your head of Future-You, a you who has unlocked something with a magical key that is this Shiny Object.

What does Future-You look like? Happy? At ease?

When they sit down to write, does it feel inevitable that they will write and write well?

Hope motivates us to learn that new thing, take that new course, or start that new project: the hope that we will become the writer we’ve always wanted to be.

And that this Shiny Object will be the one that gives it to us.

And it maybe it will be, if we do it properly

(Download the workbook for some tips on how to do that).

But sometimes it backfires and we end up discouraged, and no closer to our goals than we were when we first caught sight of the Shiny Object.

The ABCs of Learning The Writing Craft

We can’t absorb everything at once, nor can we progress faster than we progress!

When considering how to learn the craft of writing, we should do it with care.

ASSESS

What are you trying to achieve?

Be specific.

Ask yourself when do you want to achieve it by/when you will reassess and see how much progress you’ve made?

BRAINSTORM

Ask yourself what resources you already have on tap? A bookcase full of books on writing? The StoryADay site’s prompts, feature articles and podcasts? Online courses that you have signed up for but not completed? Course notes from conferences and courses you took in the past?

What wealth is hidden in those treasure chests?

Might you find the answer to ‘how should I show that my heroine’s heart is breaking, without saying that?” in one of those resources?

CELEBRATE

Sometimes we’re tempted by Shiny Objects because of our own lack of confidence.

Can you become your own best cheerleader and give yourself permission to keep working on what you’re working on now?

Ask yourself:

What do you already know how to do well?

In writing – what are you doing when writing seems easiest?

In life – and how might those skills support your writing. Are you already an expert organizer? Can you schedule (and stick to) writing/learning time on your calendar? Are you excellent at connecting meaningfully with other people? Can you use that to write powerful emotional scenes? Or are you the one people trust to set up writing dates, for accountability?)

Now that you’re feeling secure in the skills you already possess, you should be able to more clearly assess whether or not you really need the Shiny Object and whether it’ll really help you, right now.

A Process For Investing In Yourself

Sometimes, of course, a great opportunity comes along: a teacher you’d love to work with, a writing challenge that seems exciting, a book recommendation that you can’t stop thinking about.

Sometimes taking advantage of those opportunities is the right thing to do.

How can you tell which Shiny Objects are actually Shiny Opportunities?

Don’t stress, I’ve got you covered. Here’s the StoryADay Shiny Object Decision Flowchart. Go through it any time you need to make a decision. But, before you go, download the free workbook that goes along with it and expands on each of the flowchart questions.

Download the StoryaDay Shiny Object Workbook now
(with bonus Decision Flowchart!)

StoryADay Shiny Object Decision Flowchart - Should you take part in NaNoWriMo, StoryADay, or other creative writing challenges and courses

Download this flowchart and the accompanying workbook now

Leave a comment: what Shiny Object/Opportunity were you most recently wrestling with? How did you make your decision? How did it work out?

Creating Compelling Characters

Plot happens outside, but story happens inside
Donald Maass, The Emotional Craft of Fiction

For people to love your story, they need to love (or love to hate) your character.

The most beautiful writing in the world, the most exciting action sequence in history, neither of these will make people love your story.

But a compelling character will steal their heart, sneak into their memory, and make them come back to your writing over and over again.

Wouldn’t it be great to have raving fans?

How do you make your character compelling without spending too many words tracing their inner thoughts? How do you balance character growth with action?

Step 1: Know Your Character

None of us step out into the world in the morning as a fresh new creation.

We walk out of the door with hang ups and passions and prejudices and ingrained behaviors, all of which come from a lifetime of having experiences and reacting to them.

Lisa Cron, in her excellent book Story Genius, talks about this brilliantly:

You have to know your character’s childhood damage, she says, and the protective behaviors they created. If you can set your story at a point in their life when those behaviors no longer serve your character, you have automatic conflict built into your story (and conflict makes stuff happen!)

Top Tip: do some ‘discovery writing’ about your character before you ever try to write the actual story. It will make your first draft go soooo much faster.

Resources:

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman
Psychology Workbook for Writers by Darian Smith
Sacred Archetypes by Carolyn Myss

Step 2: Nobody’s Perfect

In our quest to make readers love our protagonist, we can forget to give them flaws.

But how do you give them a flaw, without making them unlikeable?

The best resource I’ve come across came from the podcast Writing Excuses, where they talk about playing with three different characteristics as if they were sliders on a mixing board. Your character can be competent, proactive, and sympathetic, but they can’t be 100% (or 0%) of all three at the same time.

Contractors say, “You have have a job done well, fast, or cheap. Pick two.”

At any one moment in a story, a character can be extremely competent, extremely proactive, or extremely sympathetic. Pick two.

And then play with those levels throughout the story. (Think about how Hermoine Grainger changes over the course of the first Harry Potter book. At the start she is the most competent and proactive of the three friends, but nobody likes her. By the end, she has given up some of that proactivity and learned to lean on her friends. She acknowledges that Ron is more competent at wizard chess, and lets Harry be the one to face the last big challenge…and we like her a lot more, for it.)

Top Tip: Playing with character competencies is a great way to make them more or less sympathetic without having to give them a ‘tragic flaw’.

Resources:

Writing Excuses episode on character ‘sliders’
The Negative Trait Thesaurus by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman

Step 3: Show Their Inner Conflict In Action

In critique groups I usually hear two opposing critiques of character, depending on the writer’s natural tendencies:

The writing’s beautiful but it’s a little…slow (translation: nothing happens!!) OR
It was very exciting…but I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care (translation: explosions and chases are great, but your character has no inner depth)

Whether you naturally write lots of action, or spend a lot of time dwelling on inner feelings, a good writer needs to be able to balance action and inner conflict, to create compelling characters.

One of the best ways to do this is to turn off the inner dialogue and show your character taking actions or interacting with physical objects that

Are symbolic of their inner struggle
Matter to this character for a specific reason (which you know, and can reveal to the reader)
Remind the reader of the stakes, without you having to spell it out.

For example, in the beginning of the movie Die Hard, a watch-word for action-based storytelling, John McClane picks up a picture of his happy family from a desk in his wife’s office…and winces.

In that moment (right before he gets embroiled in the explosions and flying bullets) the viewer remembers that this is not just a wise-cracking action hero. He’s a man who is losing his family and isn’t sure how far he’s willing to go, to put it back together.

That’s the question the rest of the film answers.

And it’s the reason we, as viewers, care.

Top Tip: Turn off the inner dialogue and give us a moment, filled with all five senses, where your character demonstrates their emotions, on the outside.

Resources

Die Hard (watch how the film makers slip in little actions that remind you of the inner journey of the main character, even as the bullets fly)
The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass
Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Victoria Lynn Schmidt

Big Final Caveat

All of this kind of craft-based instruction is useful for developing your writing…but only if it doesn’t slow you down while you’re creating first drafts.

If you’re writing the first version of a story do not stop to worry about ‘showing not telling’ or whether your character is sufficiently proactive in this moment.

All of this can be fixed in the rewrite.

And one of the best ways to figure out what’s working and what still needs work in your story, is to show it to other readers.

Perhaps the idea of a critique group terrifies you. Or maybe you’ve been in groups in the past that were frustrating, or just ‘meh’.

If that’s you, I have a gift for you: a free guide to critique groups, including:

All the personality types you’ll encounter in a group
How best to interact with each
What you need to know to to give and receive great feedback

Don’t waste time being afraid of feedback, any longer. It’s the single most important thing you can do to get your writing closer to the point where you can really begin to delight readers and build a raving fanbase.

Download the Critique Primer Now

StoryADay+NaNoWriMo Livestream

Catch the replay of me and Marya Brennan from NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program answering questions about short story writing!

Mastering The Magic of Opening Lines

Get the full report here

Opening lines are hard to write because they have to do so much:

What Opening Lines Must Do:

Set up the main question the reader is going to be asking all the way through
Establish the voice of the protagonist/narrator
Set the tone
Ground the reader in a time or place

That’s why I advocate writing the first lines last—or at least tweaking them after you’ve finished the story, when you know what it’s about.

So, how do you make your first line reflect all these things?

Let’s look at some examples. Continue reading “Mastering The Magic of Opening Lines”

Video FAQs – Where Do I Post My Stories?

Here’s a live video I did earlier to address this question. If you don’t like video, there’s a written answer below.

Also, I’m around all weekend, answering questions and soothing nerves. Just post questions in the comments here or in the community (or at Facebook) and I’ll get to them on and off over the weekend. Consider this my “Office Hours”!!

The Short Answer

Writing Flash Fiction Gems – Small, Precious, and Slower Than You’d Think

What Is Flash Fiction?

There are, of course, as many definitions of Flash Fiction as there are writers.

Continue reading “Writing Flash Fiction Gems – Small, Precious, and Slower Than You’d Think”

How To Set Exciting Writing Goals for Next Year — And Actually Meet Them, This Time!

This time next year, you could be staring at a list of achievements that are directly related to the goals that matter to you…

Listen to the podcast episode that goes along with this post:

The Allure of the Fresh Start

I love the idea of a fresh start, don’t you?

It doesn’t matter when it happens (New Year, the first day of spring, the start of a new academic year), I’m always ready with my list of “this time it’ll be different” resolutions.

This time I’ll get my assignments done ahead of time!
This time I’ll write every day, even if I don’t feel inspired!
This time I’ll floss three times a day!

And What Happens Next?

You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?

I’m excited to follow through on my plans for about three days.

Then I start to force myself to stick to the new regime.

Then I start to miss a day here or there…

…and suddenly it’s June and I’m flipping through my journal and I find that massive, guilt-inducing list of Things I’m Going To Do Differently This Year, and my shoulders slump, and I spend the next three weeks in a slump, wondering why I can’t get anything done.

Sound familiar?

Beyond Word Count – Other Ways To Log Your Writing Progress

I’ve made a case for logging your word count to keep yourself accountable, to give yourself a pat on the back, to encourage consistency and good writing habits.

But it doesn’t have to be word count.

WHEN WORD COUNTS HELP

Setting a word count goal makes sense if you’re working on a novel and want it finished by X date.

It also makes sense if you want to become a faster writer.

WHAT IF THAT DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU?

It might not make sense to set a word count goal if you’re still struggling to create a writing habit. Or if you’re writing flash fiction.

And what if you’re int he editing (or marketing) phase of a project, but still want to feel productive?

In these cases, you might want to to track the number of days on which you worked, to see how your writing practice is becoming part of your life.

HOW TO LOG YOUR DAYS

Set a goal for the number of days a week that you will Write Something (or Work on Project X).

Use the ‘butt in chair” column or the “hours spent editing” column in your StoryADay Writing Log.
Any day when you work, just type the number for the time spent, in that new column.
If you want to get fancy — set up conditional formatting to turn the cell green when it finds that text in the field).

If you like to keep your logs in a more tangible form:

Buy a discounted calendar just for your writing log (you can find them in abundance in January!).
Throw in a packet of cute stickers (gold stars are great, but you can pick ones that match your personality).
Decorate your calendar with a sticker every day you write.

At the end of the month, step back and gaze at the ‘heat map’ of your work progress. Hopefully there’ll be enough ’stickered’ days to make you smile. If not, make a commitment now to do better next month.

KEEPING YOUR GOALS REALISTIC

If you can make an unbroken chain of those days that’s great. But bewarE! Setting so high a bar can backfire. What happens the first time life gets in the way and you miss a day? You feel terrible. You get demotivated. You quit.

Rather, I’d suggest setting a goal to write on a certain number of days a week.

WHAT TO DO WITH THE INFORMATION

At the end of the month, look back at your log see how much you achieved and if any patterns emerge (are weekends good or bad for you? Do you write more when you’ve had more sleep? When the kids are in school?). You can see where you might make changes or improvements.

NO GUILT

Again, try to not use the log as a weapon to bludgeon yourself with guilt. Use it to analyze and study (and to face) what’s really going on. Try to increase your goal a little from what you actually achieved this month (not some abstract and possible unrealistic ‘ideal’).

Whatever type of log you choose, use it to keep yourself accountable, spur positive changes, and reinforce good work habits.

Because all of these things get you closer to where you want to be: writing.

Are you logging your writing days or word count? What methods do you use, and how do you use it to help you progress? Share in the comments, below!

Get the Annual Planning Bundle

10 Tips for Writing A Story A Day Without Losing Your Mind

You’re trying to write a story a day. Some days will be harder than other.

For those days, here is some tried-and-tested advice from the StoryADay archives.

[tl;dr version: The world needs your story. You need to write. Don’t quit.]

10 Tips To Help You Keep Writing Every Day, Not ‘Some Day’

Lessons from 5 Years of StoryADay Writing Challenges

…from How To Write A StoryADay Without Burning Out
…from It’s Only Painful Until You Start
…from Help! I Missed A Day, What Do I Do?
…from How To Write A StoryADay Without Burning Out
…from How To Set Your Writing Rules
…from Writing With Confidence
…from 6 Reasons You’ll Never Be A Writer
…from The Difference Between You And A Published Writer
…from The Price Of Quitting

Now, go and write something!

Writers’ Conferences: The Introvert’s Guide

Conference season is upon us! Here are 3 essential tips for surviving a writers’ conference, as an introvert.

Writers’ conferences are wonderful places for learning, connecting, being inspired and reminding yourself to take your writing seriously.

They also have cringe-making moments of high-school flashbacks, with you cowering in a corner, wishing the earth would swallow you.

After the event you’ll remember and value the connections you made and the people you met. In the moment, for introverted writer-types, all that enforced socializing can be torture.

But if top spies can withstand torture with a little training, why not us?

1. Stop Thinking About Yourself

When I think about my favorite people in the world it strikes me that they are not just my favorite people. They are a-lot-of-other-people’s favorite person too. They attract people to them. How? By being interested in us.

Take a leaf out of the book of the most charismatic person you know: make eye contact, ask questions about the other person, have a response ready (or a follow-up question — and yes, you can rehearse these things at home. That’s what successful sales people and successful charmers do!), smile and do whatever you can to make the other person feel great about themselves.

Here are five ways to make the people around you feel great, courtesy of Dale Partridge (click for a bigger view)

2. Find A Bubbly Friend

(Use this with care. You don’t want to be a parasite.)

If you can connect with someone whose skills complement your own (i.e. an extravert), do so. Ride their coattails. Let them introduce you to people as you go around the conference.

The best way to do this without becoming an actual pest, is to hang with this person a little bit, then give them some space, and connect with them again later. (Maybe you can find two or three extraverts and float between them).

Think about what you can do for them, to repay them for being your ice-breaker: once you’re in a new group of people, tell other people about your friend’s writing, or talents or ask them to tell that funny story you heard them tell earlier to a different group. You can also ask them about their work or their challenges, and keep an eye out for information and opportunities that will help — especially if you’re attending different sessions. Pass on information, contacts and resources you think might help your friend.

How to find your bubbly friend: see if any of your internet friends are going to the same conference. Arrange to meet up, at least once. If none of your friends are going, check out the conference’s hashtag on Twitter (smart conference directors will always have one). Follow the bubbliest Tweeter and, if you make a connection online, suggest meeting up at the conference too. (Naturally, the same rules apply here as in real life: only approach if you sense a real connection. Don’t be creepy. Don’t smother people.)

3. Understand Your Introverted Nature

Don’t berate yourself for needing to crawl off to a dark, quiet space from time to time during the conference.

We introverts need quiet time to recharge. If you need to get out of the hotel for lunch alone, or if you need an afternoon power nap, go for it. Just get back out there when you’re refreshed.

Also, don’t think that just because you’re a bit of an introvert, you can’t be sociable. Some of the most charming people I know are introverts. But they do need to take time to recharge or they become cranky and unhappy. Be yourself. Pay attention to your body. If you’re getting fidgeting and cross, take a break. Alone. It’s OK.

Keep In Touch After The Conference

If you’ve made a connection with someone, keep in touch after the conference.

The good news is, you’ll probably be able to do it online, which will be a relief, won’t it?

How To Write A StoryADay in May Without Burning Out

Writing a story a day is hard. No doubt about it.

In fact, I had long been scared to commit to writing a novel, but after completing my first StoryADay back in 2010, I said, “Surely writing the same story every day for a month has to be easier than that!” and plunged into NaNoWriMo later that year and ‘won’. (I recently completed that novel – my first!)

So Why Keep Writing A StoryADay Each May?

Writing 31 short stories in a month drives you to the brink of desperation…and it’s right at that brink where interesting things start happening.

You stop caring about whether the story is good and just get it written.
You try crazy ideas that sometimes turn into highly original stories.
You find yourself seeking out story ideas all day, every day, because you know you’ll need a new one tomorrow.
You discover that the more you write — the more ideas you use up — the more creative you become. You never run out of ideas. There’s always another one coming along right behind it.
You discover you can write more than you thought you could. Even if you’re exhausted every day, it’s only one month. You’ll be amazed what you can do with a deadline, a community and little bit of stubborn. And it will feel exhilarating.

Keeping Things Fresh

Past participant Sarah Cain had just finished a novel and was deep in the business of revising the manuscript and looking for an agent, when she found herself in a creative slump. She heard about StoryADay and was intrigued.

“[I thought] would be a change,” she says. “Give me a chance to get some creative energy flowing, which it did. I had great fun with it, and now write quite a lot of flash fiction.”

In addition, she went back to her novel revisions, refreshed and reinvigorated. The following year she landed an agent and signed a two-book deal for that novel and its sequel.

So How Do You Write A StoryADay Without Burning Out?

There are lots of ways to keep writing. Here are some that other StoryADay writers have used:

Accept that these are first drafts — Don’t revise as you write. Just keep moving the story forward, every day until you get to the end. No revisions, no backtracking. Finish with a flourish, drop your pen and walk away. You have the rest of the year to revise these things!

Finish each story — Do your heroic best to get to the end of each story. Even if you have to write something like “[get Frank from the school to the roof of the hospital. Car chase! Explosions]” and skip to the resolution, get to the end of the story.

Resolve as many loose ends as you can and put it on the ‘to be revised’ pile for June. There is an energy about finishing a story that buoys you up for the next one. “You can do this,” it whispers in your ear as you sit down to write the next day. “You told a complete tale yesterday. No reason you can’t do it again today.”

Allow yourself to experiment—Write short-short stories, longer stories, stories that are all dialogue, stories that rhyme, retelling of old stories, retellings of your own stories (in a different point of view, or setting…the possibilities are endless).

Some days you’ll need to do what feels like ‘cheating’ by rewriting a fairytale or reimagining a story of your own, just so you don’t have to work out all the detail. That’s OK. It worked out fine for Gregory Macguire and for Walt Disney…

Allow yourself to fail — You will have some days when it is torture and you when you get to the end of a story and think “what was that?!”. Learn to laugh it off. If you can, figure out why it didn’t work. (Did you forget to give the character something to root for? Did you not know enough about the exotic setting you tried to use? Did you start writing when you were too tired?)

Write down the lessons learned and save them for future reference.

Have A Backup Plan To Help You Start Again—There may be days when time gets away from you and you don’t finish a story. Or whooosh! The whole day goes by and you just forget to write. Prepare for this by having an “if/then” plan in place (an idea I came across in Gretchen Rubin’s excellent new book Better Than Before). Tell yourself “If I miss a day, then I’ll pick right back up the next day. I won’t try to catch up, I’ll just move forward”. Or maybe you can say “If I miss a day, then I’ll confess my sins in the StADa community, and get back to it the next day.” Or some other (positive) “If/then” cycle. All is not lost when you mess up if you have planned for what you’ll do after the inevitable slip.

Join the community — Yes, yes, I know. There’s a danger here. You could spend so much time reading other people’s posts that you never get around to posting, yourself. BUT, there is nothing like a little pat on the back, or a little peer pressure, to make us better than we think we can be. At least post in the Victory Dance group every day after you write something. Congratulate a few other people who have posted, and post a micro-update about your own day. Use the other boards to ask for help, or find a shoulder to cry on when the day didn’t work out as you had hoped.

Don’t ‘quit’ — If you get to day 14 and your life implodes, don’t quit. Change the rules. Admit that life got in the way and you can’t write a story a day this month, BUT commit to writing at least two more stories this month, or one, or whatever you feel you can manage. Come back to the challenge at least one more time.

You’re not failing. You’re learning. Write down what you’ve learned about your writing habits, needs, preferences, struggles, successes, so far this month. Post them somewhere you can find again (a blog is a great place, since it’s archived). Then commit to writing at least one more story before the challenge ends.

Make a note in your diary to check in to the community before the end of May and celebrate the progress everyone has made. Print out your winner’s tiara and wear it with pride, because you showed up. You wrote. You win.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about story sparks, writing prompts and what you can do NOW to make sure you have the best chance possible of writing 31 stories during StoryADay May. I’ll also be reminding you ~~that I’ll be releasing~~ I have published the StoryADay Guide: A Month of Writing Prompts 2015 ~~on Monday, April 20~~. Until May 1, 2015 it’ll be selling at a steep discount, so don’t miss that!

Hint: it’s going to look a lot like last year’s edition, but with all-new prompts, tips and pep-talks.

If you want to make sure you receive the rest of this series and notifications about the discounted ebook, and the opening of the StoryADay Community for 2015, join the Advance Notice List:

From Idea To Story: 7 Ways To Develop Great Stories From Sparks

So far this week we’ve talked about How To Decide What To Write and How To Justify Your Writing Time (To Your Friends and To Yourself).

Now that you’re all keyed up to write, we turn to the tricky question of how to take all your good ideas and turn them into story drafts.
angelou-untold-story

From Idea To Story

Ideas are great.

Story Sparks are great.

Writing prompts can be great.

But anyone can have an idea.

It takes a writer to develop and idea and turn it into a story. Yeah, uh, how do we do that, then?

The Right Way To Write A Short Story

There is no one right way to write a short story.

That’s the beauty of the short story. It can be anything from a classic three-act narrative to a loosely connected collection of nouns verbs and prepositions.

There are as many ways to write a short story as there are writers. The only right way to write a story is to tell it the way you want to tell it.

Writing a short story that readers want to read, however, is a little more limiting.

1. Play With Structure

Short stories don’t have to follow a particular structure. With a short story you can forget about plot diagrams and character arcs and still end up with a satisfying story.

Why? Because short stories exist to immerse a reader in a moment in a character’s life. Or to make them question an assumption by illustrating its absurdity in miniature.

A list can be a short story. A diary entry can be a short story. A tweet can be a short story. But none of them work without the active participation of the reader.

Think about it: in writing short stories, you have to leave a lot out. You can’t spend a lot of time describing the six layers of undergarments worn by ladies of the court, the way you can in a novel. You can’t give much (any) backstory. You can imply, hint and leave spaces.

It’s up to the reader to slow down, pay attention and supply those details. In that way, the short story is a lot like poetry. Even as you play with the structure you must write for the reader.

2. Write For Readers

I don’t mean ‘write for acquisition editors and publishers’. I mean write for your ideal reader.

Readers expect certain things in a story. They expect setting and character and something to happen. Depending on your reader’s preference and tolerance level, they may expect suspense (or not), character development (or not), and a resolution of sorts (or not).

Literary fiction can get away with more of those ‘or not’s than genre and mainstream fiction. Mainstream readers tend to be looking for a less intense escape from reality than literary readers who are willing to study every line as if there’ll be a test on Friday (which they intend to ace.)

But it’s OK for even mainstream or genres readers to expect their readers to participate in the story.

What Do You Mean, Readers Have To Participate?

Read this oft-cited example of the shortest-short story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

So what? On one hand, it’s just a classified ad. But if you, the reader really start to think about it, you start filling in the details: why the shoes were never worn; who might have placed the ad; and inevitably, how they must have felt, doing so.

You, the reader, are telling the story in cooperation with the author.

This is a pretty extreme version, of course. But you should be aiming for the same effect in every story you write, no matter its shape or length.

I’ve been hosting StoryADay since 2010 and I’ve read a lot of stories in that time. The stories that immerse me in a character or a world or a moment are the ones that stay with me. The stories that ask a question and make me care about the answer (whether or not they supply it) are the ones I seek out and re-read.

So how do you take an idea (either from your own head or from a writing prompt, or from some combination of the two) and make readers keep wondering about it long after they’ve stopped reading the words on the screen?

3. Ask Questions

If you start with in idea about a particular character or setting, next ask yourself “who cares?”. Who will be interested about a story about that character or setting?

Then ask “why”? What makes this situation different? What makes this person interesting?

For example, The Care And Feeding of Plants by Art Taylor, opens with two people who are having an affair, one is married, the other is not. Ho-hum, right? Except that “During one of their trysts…Robert told Felicia to bring her husband over for a Friday night cook-out.” Wait, what? DURING? What kind of people are these? I don’t know about you but I had to keep reading!

Next take your idea and ask yourself “if…then” questions.

In the example above the author might have asked himself: if the husband does come over, what could happen? If the wife refuses to invite him, then what happens? If the lover changes his mind, then what? Follow this line of reasoning down its most interesting, tangled alleys and see what you can come up with. (If you’re like me you’ll need to start writing round about now, because you’ll be too excited not to!)

4. Leave Gaps

Not literally (though maybe, depending on your story). But leave gaps, as in the six word short story above, and readers will start to ask the questions you leave lying around for them to find.

It might not be necessary to tell readers in the first sentence why your character is standing on a bridge, wind whipping her hair around her tear-stained face, one hand on the thin guide rail behind her. Just put her there and then make us care. You can supply the reasons (or not) later.

You might not need to walk through your character’s entire day to make poignant the moment when they walk through the front door of their home, mussed-up and frazzled.

Think about the minimum amount of information you can give the reader in order to pull them in, and keep them interested, yet still give them room to search for clues in the context as to what’s really going on in the story.

In “Orange” by Neil Gaiman, the entire story is told as a set of responses to questions that the reader never hears. Bob Newhart did a series of comedy sketches based on a one-sided phone call (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnO1lnPH3BQ). He never tells us what happens at 1:41, but I’ll bet you, along with the laughing audience, can guess. You can replicate these ideas or you can use them to remind yourself to leave some things unsaid in your stories, to draw the reader in.

5. Try Something New

If you always write narrative stories with a character encountering an obstacle that clashes with their desires/needs, take a break. Try something different. Instead, write a story made up only of dialogue, or in the form of a memo to the staff, or a series of social-media posts or voicemails.

Challenge yourself to create complete characters or illustrate an absurdity, without talking directly to the reader.

As you write, keep asking ‘what if’ and ‘so what’ questions of your ideas.

6. Getting Unstuck

There’s a point, somewhere in the middle of every story, where it’s very easy to get stuck.

You’ve set up the characters and the situation, but now you’re starting to get tired and the thought of fighting your way to the end (with all the digressions that crop up as you think of objections and things you’ve left out, and things you want to explain) is just too much to bear. (A bit like that sentence.)

At this point, we go back to the questions.

If you don’t know what should happen next, ask yourself: what does your character want? What is standing in her way? How can you make it worse? What is she not prepared to do? Can you force her to do it? How can you resolve the reader’s question of “does she get what she wants” as quickly as possible?

If you’re really stuck, simply finish your sentence then write the words “But then” Finish that sentence and write: “And so” Finish that sentence. Repeat as necessary. You can edit out these phrases and clean up the prose in the rewrite (what else do you have to do in June?), but sometimes a crude, structural approach forms the foundation of a what turns out to be a strong story.

7. Keep Writing

If you are really stuck, the only thing to do is to write. Not brainstorm. Not diagram. Not sketch ideas. And certainly not turn to the next, bright shiny idea.

Write your way out of the problem and get to the end of the story.

It’s a short story. What do you have to lose? No one dies if you get it wrong. No one even needs to see it. But by finishing it, you will have learned so much more than if you give up.

I promise you, from bitter, joyful, exhausted experience, this is the truth.

Use the tactics in this article to blast past your fear, push through the mushy middle, and get to the end of today’s story. It might be a mess. It might be the foundation of something great. It might be a complete mistake.

But the biggest mistake of all is to stop writing.

Fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living.

-Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide To Getting Lost

Tomorrow we talk about how the heck you keep doing this over and over again for 31 days in a row. With tips from past “winners” (Plus: how to be a winner even if you don’t write 31 stories)

~~At the end of this week I’ll be telling you about how you can get your hands on~~Available now a tool to help you sit down and write every day: the 2015 StoryADay Month of Writing Prompts ebook.

Want more articles like this?

How To Justify Your Writing Time (To Friends and To Yourself)

Yesterday we talked about how to decide what you’re supposed to be writing. You can read it here, but the big lesson was: write a lot. Try new stuff. Don’t let your inner-anti-cheerleader stop you.

Well that’s all very well, but what if your life is busy? When are you supposed to find the time, not to mention the discipline, to sit down and write?

The Lie That You Can Find Time To Write

You can’t.

No one finds time to write. Or to play the guitar. Or to be a rockstar. Or to be a successful investor.

You make time.

Everyone successful, fulfilled person who ever lived, made time for the thing that was important to them.

Justifying The Time

I could give you all kinds of tips for scraping together some free time to write (delegate chores, turn off the TV, say no to invitations to go out) but that’s not the hard part.

The Hard Part

The hard part is convincing yourself that you are allowed to take the time to write.

Writing is personal. You do it alone. You don’t look like you’re working hard. You look like you’re surfing the internet or sulking in your bedroom or shirking your responsibilities.

Worse still, you might feel that way inside.

But I’m here to tell you: if you want to write, you must write.

When you’re writing, no matter how hard it is, you are more truly yourself than at any other time.

And when you finish a writing session, no matter how exhausted or wrung-out you feel, the rest of your life seems just a little bit easier. You are fulfilled. Your mind is clear. You have a sense of achievement. You are a better person when you’re writing.

And that’s the real payoff.

Not internet celebrity. Not publishing contracts. Not the legions of fans. Not the multi-millions in movie-rights sales.

The actual payoff for writing is that you are happier.

Which makes you a better person to be around.

Convince Yourself, Convince Your Crew

You have to try this for yourself to really experience it. And once you have, feel free to point it out to the people around you. If they’re smart, they’ll become accomplices in making time for you to write. If you keep at it long enough, there will come a day when you’re rampaging around the house barking at everyone and, instead of barking back, one smart housemate will say, “Hey, why don’t you go and grab a notebook. You need to be writing.”

Trust me. It happens. And if it doesn’t, perhaps you need to surround yourself with smarter, kinder people.

Resources

Here are some resources to help you convince yourself that your writing is not only important but vital to your continued existence — and some suggestions on how to overcome three common obstacles.

If you’re wondering why you can’t get anything written when you’re setting aside a whole 20 minutes every lunchtime, watch this video from John Cleese. It’s his process for being creative. There may be times when 20 minutes can be productive for you, but there are other times when you will need to listen to Mr Cleese’s advice. https://vimeo.com/89936101

If you can’t get past the suckiness of your first drafts, you need to watch this interview with Ira Glass (again). I get the impression he’s a bit bemused that this is rapidly becoming what he’s most famous for, but it’s because it is so very, very true. (Hint: You need to write a lot!) https://youtu.be/PbC4gqZGPSY

If you don’t believe me that your art is worth doing for its own sake (for your sake), then you need to watch this talk by last year’s StoryADay Guest of Honor, Neil Gaiman. Watch it now. https://youtu.be/ikAb-NYkseI

When The Pencil Meets The Paper

Of course, having bought yourself time to write, doesn’t make it go easily.

If I’ve convinced you that you need to write a lot and that you need to make time for your writing, your next question is probably going to be: but how do I turn all this time and dedication into actual stories?

Tomorrow we’ll talk about The Care and Feeding of Ideas, and how to turn those ideas into fully-fledged story drafts.

Until then: do you have a friend who’s always talking about wanting to write, but never quite getting around to it? Why not share this post with that person? Maybe, between the two of us, we can get them to where they need to be and you two can spend blissful afternoons on writing dates, instead of kvetching about how much writing you’re not doing. Share this now!

How To Decide What You Should Be Writing

This week I’m posting a series designed to help you through the emotionally-charged business of deciding whether or not to commit to writing a StoryADay in May this year.

(Actually it may not be emotionally charged for you. Maybe you already know ‘heck-yeah, I’m onboard’ or you’re sure you can’t/won’t/don’t need to take part this year. Good for you. Also, you’ll probably still enjoy the series. You just get to read it without the angst!)

We’ll be talking about:

Then I’ll be telling you all about how you can get your virtual paws on all my writing prompts for StoryADay May before it even begins!

How To Decide What To Write

You feel, in your gut, that you should be writing. You know it’s something you want to do. But how do you know what you’re supposed to be writing?

To non-writers, that sounds like a stupid question. Have you ever tried talking to a non-writer about this?

You: “I want to write but I don’t know what to write.”

Them: “Can’t you just, like, write about a wizard or some vampires or a sex-crazed billionaire and become a best-seller and split the profits with me? Can I start planning our round the world cruise for next year?”

Or, more likely.

You: I want to write but I don’t know what to write.

Them: So stop whining and do it. ‘K?

But what should you be writing?

The problem is you could be writing about ANYTHING. And that’s paralyzing. You know you need to pick something, but what?

And The Answer Is…

I don’t know.

I don’t know you. I mean, on some level I kind of do, because you’re probably a bit like me: someone who thinks a lot, worries about other people’s feelings, and finds yourself standing in the middle of the kitchen with the phone ringing and no idea why you’re there but you know that damned phone has just interrupted the Best. Daydream. Ever. And that if you could just get some time to write it down you’d be happy and fulfilled and probably rich and famous to boot.

But on another level I really don’t know you. I don’t know what you like. I don’t know what matters to you. I don’t know what gets you so wound up you stay up all night blogging or researching or fretting about it. I don’t know what makes you laugh, or what you love to read, or what kind of writing makes you throw books across the room (then pick them up and smooth out the cover apologetically because, hey, it might be terrible, but it’s still a book, you know?)

I don’t know who your favorite writers are; what genre you couldn’t live without; what you like in a hero; what you love in a villain; whether a galloping plot or deep introspection is more important to you; whether you like a happy ending or prefer something that feels more like real life.

But oh, look. I just gave you a list of things you might use to find a way into writing your own stories.

(If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend digging out your copy of the Creative Challenge Workbook. It walks you through a lot of this and helps you build a roadmap for the future. You can download another copy here if you need to.)

The Big Secret…That Isn’t Really A Secret

Here’s the thing. Even with all of that information you’ve just gathered about yourself, there’s no way to be sure what you should be writing until you…yup, sit down and write.

The best and only way to find your way to your best style/topic/length/tone is to try everything.

Write A Lot, Write Quickly, Finish Everything

How StoryADay Can Help

How many stories did you write last month? How many last year? What did you learn from writing them? Do you even remember? I know I don’t. (I do remember for 2013 though. 2013 was a good year. I wrote a lot in 2013 and I learned a ton!)

Trust me when I tell you: if you write and finish even 20, even 12 stories in on month you will win so much more than bragging rights. You’ll win a free pass into the Secret Society of I’ve-Discovered-What-I-Want-To-Write.

Write Quickly To Defeat Your Inner-Anti-Cheerleader

Writing quickly and writing every day over a sustained period exhausts your inner-anti-cheerleader.

Sure, on the first day, she’s all perky and energetic. She jumps up and down telling you how worthless you are and how you can’t write and you shouldn’t try.

But your anti-cheerleader thrives on attention. When you turn your back on her and start writing, she can shake her pompoms all she likes, but she can’t really do anything more than distract you and make things difficult.

The next day, she’s looking a little less fresh. Maybe her hair’s not quite as neat. Maybe her jump-kicks are a little sloppy. She’s still trying, but you turn your back on her and ignore her once again.

By the fourth day, she’s getting frantic. Frankly, she’s a mess. Her eyeliner’s smudged and her hair’s all poufy, and the only reason her pompoms are shaking at all is because of her rage that you’re ignoring her.

You’ll think you’ve defeated her, but beware: she’s going to rest up for a few days and let you think she’s gone, but really she’s just waiting for you to get tired. Somewhere in the second week of your writing surge, she’s back: revitalized and vengeful. Don’t listen to her. Keep going. This is where you pull out the big guns:

Finish Everything

There is a power in finishing stories that you need to experience for yourself. I can tell you about it but you won’t believe me until you do it.

Finishing teaches you what each story is about.

Finishing shows you that you’re not a terrible writer, no matter how desperate you felt in the muddy middle of your story.

Finishing gives you a first draft you can revise.

Finishing each story gives you a biochemical surge that triggers your brain’s reward centers and makes it more likely you’ll finish the next.

And sitting down, every day*, to start the next story is what defeats your inner-anti-cheerleader. The routine of it tells her firmly that you are going to ignore her again today. She can’t stand up against that kind of ritual snubbing.

(*’Every day’ doesn’t mean ‘every day’. But having a routine is a powerful thing. More about that later this week…)

It’s all very well for me to tell you to sit down to write every day, but what about the rest of your life? You have responsibilities, right? People who rely on you? Deadlines and obligations unrelated to your writing. How on earth are you supposed to find time to write as well?

Stay Tuned

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the big lie in that question, along with a shift in thinking that will allow you to make your writing a priority at long last.

Make sure you’re on the Advance Notice list (check the “Creativity Lab” group option to make sure you receive this series every day), or check out the blog tomorrow to find out how to justify your writing time to friends, family and yourself.

At the end of this week I’ll be telling you about how you can get your hands on a tool to help you sit down and write every day: the 2015 StoryADay Month of Writing Prompts ebook.

P.S. If you found this useful, why not forward it to a friend? You know, that friend that’s always saying they want to write, but never actually does…

A Month Of Writing Prompts – The eBook!

A Month Of Writing Prompts 2014

Writing a story a day for a month is a crazy endeavour, but one that hundreds of writers have signed up for every May since 2010. During month of courageous creativity, writers learn how to write every day (not ‘someday’), how to craft a story, how to write in different forms, how to fail and dust themselves off, and write again.
Are you ready to join them?
The StoryADay Month of Writing Prompts book shares the daily writing prompts for StoryADay May 2014: 31 writing prompts, meditations, lessons and pep talks to accompany on your journey to becoming a more prolific, creative and fulfilled writer.
Use these prompts during the StoryADay challenge, or any time you need a creativity boost.

Making Time To Write – Success Stories

I find it useful to read case studies from people who have actually WRITTEN books (and possibly had them published and worked on a sequel). Theory is all very well, but hearing from someone who has actually done it? Much more inspiring. They also tend to be more passionate, less forgiving and much, much more practical.

clock face image — Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash

Here are a bunch of articles from working writers who answer the second-most-asked question they hear. [1. The first, of course, being “where do you get your ideas?”]

Jon Scalzi is a speculative fiction writer, Hugo award winner and creative consultant on the SyFy Network’s Stargate: Universe. He wrote an energetic answer to the time question which includes this choice paragraph,

There are lots of things I think I’d like to do, and yet if I don’t actually make the time and effort to do them, they don’t get done. This is why I don’t have an acting career, or am a musician — because as much as I’d like those, I somehow stubbornly don’t actually do the things I need to do in order to achieve them. So I guess in really fundamental way I don’t want them, otherwise I’d make the time. C’est la vie.

Jackie Kessler has written 12 novels (not all of them published, but hey, that’s a lot of writing time) and refuses to apologize for taking time to write [link no longer valid].

Screenwriter John August shares his work-a-day experience of becoming a professional writer. (“my general point is that you need to actively clear time in your day to write, which means giving up something.”) It’s not sexy, but it worked.

Jane Friedman talks about what it takes to make time to write.

Chip Scanlan talks about writing in small chunks, lowering your standards, rejecting the Soup Nazi.

And to finish things off for today:

Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn (@creativepenn on Twitter) shares this personal story, which debunks the ‘if I only had time’ myth a bit:

I once decided that I needed time to write my book. I had some money from the sale of my house, took 3 months off and tried to write every day. It didn’t work. I didn’t have anything to show for it, and went back to work disheartened at my inability to write. It was 4 years until I actually decided to try again.

Then I wrote “How to Enjoy Your Job” in 9 months of evenings, weekends and days off while working fulltime.”.

You can find the time – you just need to re-prioritise!

[updated 3/3/2020 with corrected and new links]

Finding Your Ending

Just a quick tip, today, from my own writing experience.

Today I was writing a story for Five Minute Fridays[1. Yeah, I love a challenge. So what?!]. I wrote my first sentence and then a second.

As soon as I tried to write a third sentence I realized I had already written my last line. I had the essence of the story in those first two sentences. I had simply arrived at the end too soon.

So I put my cursor in between the two sentences and filled in the rest of the story.

Having the last line — the destination — already in place made it so much easier to stay on track in the middle.

Why not try this as an exercise?

Write “Once upon a time there was a _________”

Then write “And in the end_________”

Then go back and fill in the middle.

If you like what you wrote, leave a comment so we can come and have a look.

Paper or Plastic? How do you write?

I’m often asked how I write—how, physically, do I write? Pen and paper? Computer? Portable device? Onto my blog?

This is a question you, too, should consider for yourself before you set yourself any kind of writing challenge (like, for example, writing a story a day for a month!)

How will you:

* Write whenever and wherever you get the chance?
* Keep track of everything you’ve written?
* Find a way to work that is comfortable for you?

So should you commit to writing in a notebook? ON a netbook? At your trusty (or flaky) computer?

Honestly, the answer for you (as it is for me) is probably a mixture of all of them. So here are my tips and tricks for:

* Using all the writing technology at your disposal for maximum productivity (without losing your mind)
* Keeping and retrieving your masterpieces for later editing.

Paper and Pen(cil)

The pros and cons to this are pretty straightforward.

Pro:

* You can get a paper and writing implement pretty much anywhere.
You don’t need batteries, a network.
* Nothing pops up on your page to distract you.
* Editing as you write is difficult. You’re pretty much limited to crossing things out and writing in the margins. Getting to the end of a first draft before editing, should be easier than on a computer.
* You can do it pretty much anywhere (except, perhaps, in the dark.)
* Handwriting fires up areas of your brain that are associated with deep understanding and memory. It is a very different experience from typing.

Cons:

* You need to have a paper and pen(cil) handy. What if you can’t find your favorite pen? Will you spend so long looking for it that you don’t write?
* Editing after the story is finished is going to require you (probably) to transcribe the story into a computer or write it all out longhand again. Not necessarily a con though, as that can help with the editing process. Definitely a con if your time is severely limited.
* Scraps of paper are easy to lose and hard to find once they’re lost. This is less the case with computer files.

Tips for Working With Pencil And Paper

* Set up a system now for retrieving your work later. Some options include:
** only using one notebook (or series of notebooks) for each project. Don’t write a little bit here and a little bit there.
** Designate a StoryADay notebook and carry it everywhere. Only use that blue-covered copybook from Staples that you like, for your novel.
** Using looseleaf paper can be helpful if you write in different places or like to edit on paper. You can get hold of binder-sized paper pretty much anywhere. When you get home, file your stories in one binder, and you should be able to keep track of things. This requires some discipline in promising you’ll always file the stories away but it’ll be worth it three months from now when you try to find them again!
* Find paper that is a joy to write on, if you’re that way inclined. Have a cramped notebook with lines that are too dark or too light or too far apart, and a spine that doesn’t crack open far enough, or pages that are so small that you have to turn them every couple of sentences? This is just one more way to make it easy to skip today’s writing. Make writing a physical pleasure as well as a mental one, by treating yourself to some paper that you love and will want to spend time everyday caressing.

Desktop Computer

Again, the pros and cons are fairly straightforward:

Pros

* You know where it is and how to use it (you do, don’t you?)
* You probably have a decent word processor built right in and, chances are you are very comfortable typing at a decent speed.
* Even if you can’t remember how you decided to organize your file folders last week, you can easily search your computer for errant stories.
* You can easily edit and save multiple versions.

Cons

* It is all to easy to get distracted by the Internet
* It is very easy to edit, leading to you fussing with bits you have already written and never moving forwards.
* It is tempting to play around with formatting when you’ve got a nice powerful word processor that you can use to show you exactly how your story will look when set in the format used by Glimmer Train or The New Yorker (not that I’ve ever…oh shut up!).

Tips for using a computer

* Designate a folder for all your fiction writing, another for non-fiction, another for semi-thought-out blog posts. File your work.
* Save often. Seriously I cannot stress this enough. And still you’re going to need to experience the pain of losing a masterpiece before you put this into practice. But Save OFTEN. Train your fingers to mash the ‘ctrl’ and ‘s’ buttons together every paragraph or two. You’ll be glad you did.
* Use the simplest program you can. I use IAWriter when composing (I’m using it now). Use the full-screen mode in your word processor-of-choice.
* Turn off the Internet (Unplug the LAN cable, turn the sound down, turn off wi-fi, whatever you have to do). Do nothing but write when you are writing. No checking email, Facebook or Twitter. Ever.
* Name your files sensibly. You can call them all “StADASept12 The One About The Woman And Her Garden”, “StADaSept12 The Dog In The Ditch” if you think that’s likely to help you remember which is which, and where you put them. If you are writing a series of stories about the same characters always name the file with the same character’s name “Sarah stories – fishing in the creek with Grandma” “Sarah stories – Going to the corner shop”

Using A Laptop/Netbook/iPad/Tablet

If you move around a lot and are comfortable with a mobile device (and don’t want to hand write) it probably makes a lot of sense for you to use one of these devices.

Pros

* They are with you all the time or easy to move to wherever you are.
* You don’t need good lighting.
* Spellcheck.

Cons

* Battery life.
* If they are connected to the Internet you risk getting distracted.
* Comfort. Smaller keyboards and screens can make for a frustrating experience. Though I find them great for writing, less so for editing.
* Version control. If you’re using a mobile device and a desktop you run the risk of having (and working on) different versions of your story at the same time.

Tips for Using Mobile Devices

* Decide on how you are going to handle version control. If you work both on an mobile device and a desktop, consider saving all your work to Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud or some other remote location (not your computer’s hard drive). This way, you’ll open the same file on either machine. By all means periodically copy all the files to an archive folder on your machine but call it something like ‘archive’ so you don’t get confused about which file is the latest version.
* Pick programs that play well together. I tried using Scrivener on my desktop and iaWriter on my iPad and ended up spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to learn/figure out how to sync the two. (My fault, not theirs, but not something I was willing to spend the time to learn properly during a challenge!). If you have Word or Pages or Scrivener or a simple text program on both your machines, use it. You can always export them to something else when it’s time to edit and submit.
* Get a bluetooth keyboard for your tablet. Yeah, yeah, they have onscreen keyboards and hand-writing recognition and speech-recognition, but a neat little keyboard still trumps all that for most of us.
* If it works for you, consider downloading something like Dragon Dictate which will transcribe your stories. (Way back, the desktop version of this was quite good because I could train it to understand my Scottish-American mongrel accent. The iPhone app version doesn’t seem as versatile, so this doesn’t work for me).

On A Blog

Some people post their stories every day to a blog. They may even write them write in the blog-software window. There are some fairly big (and non-obvious) pros and cons for this one.

Pros

* You get to share your work immediately – especially good if you have a writers’ group or a bunch of dedicated readers.
* You can easily find your stories again. Even if your hard drive dies.
* There is a off-the-cuff, relatively uncrafted esthetic to blogging that might help you write with abandon every day.

Cons

* Publishing your work on a blog may cause some editors to consider the work ‘previously published’ and render it invalid for inclusion in magazines and competitions.
* Writing in the blog window leaves you at the mercy of your internet connection and the host’s servers. One blip and your whole story can be lost otherwise.

Tips For Writing On Your Blog

* Consider writing offline and then pasting the content directly into the blog window. Write in a plain text program and then pretty it up once you’re in the blog window.
* Save drafts obsessively as you work on them.
* Use your blog software to set up categories and tags for your stories. That way it’ll be really easy to find all the stories you wrote during StADa Sept ’12, or all the stories your wrote that were autobiographical, or all the fairy stories…
* Consider password-protecting or marking as ‘private’ any entries you think you might rework for submission to magazines or contests. If no-one else can see them, no-one can consider them ‘published’.

So how do YOU write? Have any tips for keeping your writing flowing?

How To Set Your Writing Rules

The point of doing this challenge is to push yourself to do more than you thought you possibly could.

The point is to unleash the flood of creativity that comes when you have to write every day.

The point is not to give you yet another way to fail at a creative endeavor.

So yes, you should set yourself a goal that seems momentous, preposterous, monstrous even. And maybe for you that will be: writing 30 stories in 30 days. But maybe it will mean writing a story on five out of seven days.

The StoryADay Rules say there is one rule, “Write and finish a story every day. That’s it.”

They then promptly go on to talk about all the ways you can add to — or subtract from — that absolute.

I know it’s a bit confusing. It’s my fault. I appreciate rules, but I’m just not very good at being told what to do and I fail to see why I should expect other writers to be any better. Hence…

So, here follows my attempt to make sense of the part where the site says “set your own rules.”

What Do You Mean “Set Your Own Rules”?

The point of doing this challenge is to push yourself to do more than you thought you possibly could.

The point is to unleash the flood of creativity that comes when you have to write every day.

The point is not to give you yet another way to fail at a creative endeavor.

So yes, you should set yourself a goal that seems momentous, preposterous, monstrous even. And maybe for you that will be: writing 30 stories in 30 days. But maybe it will mean writing a story on five out of seven days. Or limiting yourself to 100 word stories. Or taking Thursday’s off.

If you know that your Saturdays are packed with people and obligations, sun-up to sun-down; or if you have tried the challenge before and noticed that you always failed to finish a story after five days of successes; or if you are a member of a religious group that takes the holy day extremely seriously, don’t torture yourself. Write it into your rules that you get to take certain days off.

How Do I Know What A Good Set Of Rules Is, For Me?

And if you haven’t done the challenge before (or if you haven’t written anything for a while) I strongly encourage you to stick to the basic rule: write and finish one story every single day for a month.

I know that sounds ridiculous in itself: surely if you haven’t been writing you should warm up a bit, ease yourself in? No. Sorry. This is not like running a marathon. You’re not going to pull a muscle or ruin your knees.

If you haven’t pushed your short-story writing before, you have no way of knowing what your boundaries are. Only by trying to write a complete story every day for 30 days can you know whether or not you can do it. Or how close you can come. And the effort is its own reward.

If, however, you took part in May, you’ll have a good sense of how much time you could make for writing, and what your goals need to be.

Just be honest with yourself. If you wrote 12 stories in May you might be secretly disappointed in yourself — or you might be thrilled. It all depends on you, and your circumstances. Just set yourself a goal that’s a little more ambitious than whatever you accomplished before and promise yourself you will push and push to get to it.

The Second Rule

The second absolute rule you should set yourself is to treat every day as a new day until the end of the month.

No going back to finish yesterday’s story – until next month
No berating yourself for yesterday’s shortcomings
No looking ahead and saying “I’ll never make it!”
Try your utmost to stick to your writing rules today. Forgive the past, and forget the future. Just write today.

What If I Fail?

Well, first of all, I have a problem with that word: “fail”.

Did you try? Then you didn’t fail. Did you complete a story every day for a month? No? Hmm, well, did you learn something about your style or your voice or your writing method? Did you write more than you wrote the month before (or in any month before. Ever.)?

There may well be days when you fail to finish a story. Forget it. Forgive yourself and move on. You are in pursuit of a great challenge here. Keep after it.

It’s entirely likely that some of your stories are great steaming heaps of passive voiced, prepositionally phrased, tedious prose peopled by heroes who wouldn’t know a plot point if it pointed right at them. Don’t give up on them. Keep writing until you get to the end. Even if you have to kill someone (in fact, that can be kind of fun). Pushing through to the end of a story teaches you so much more than giving up and starting afresh. Finish.

And if it gets to midnight (or whenever you go to bed) and you simply cannot finish today’s story: get some rest. Let it go and vow to start afresh tomorrow.

When the month is over, you can revise what’s worth saving, and learn from what’s not. While the challenge is still running, just keep writing. Strike the word ‘fail’ from your vocabulary. So long as you are writing, you cannot fail. Pat yourself on the back. You wrote. You got complete stories out of your brain — where you didn’t even know they were lurking — and on the page. You are courageous and to be congratulated.

Can I Adjust My Rules?

Yes. Absolutely. This is your challenge. I’d rather you adjusted your rules than gave up. Just don’t be too easy on yourself. This is meant to be a, er, challenge!

In Conclusion

Set ambitious goals
Try to meet them. At the very least, put some kind of ending on each story.
Be hard on yourself every morning and kind to yourself at the end of every day.
Treat every day as a new challenge (don’t look back!)

I Don’t Feel Like Writing – Part II

Last week we talked about the importance of writing even when you don’t feel like it. Well, enough theory. This week I bring you seven practical strategies for making it happen.

Goals, rewards and accountability buddies form part of the big picture in this scheme. They are sensible parts of your writing’s career plan. But as for the actual “starting writing” part? That’s when you need to be a bit more tricksy.

Try some of these tricks to shake loose the “sensible”, lose the “logical” and get your brain into that devil-may-care creative zone you need for writing.

1. Give Yourself Enough Time

I’ve always loved a deadline — as long as it came with a sleepless night between the two of us. But sit down to write knowing I have to have something completed in an hour?! That’s enough to induce a mammoth case of writer’s block (aka panic). Comedian John Cleese talks about this in this fabulous video on creativity (it’s long, but worth watching). He recommends no less than 90 minutes as a window for creative work, asserting that your brain will try to sabotage you for at least the first half hour…It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it does point out the necessity of allowing more time than you might otherwise plan, for creative ventures.

2. Letter To a Friend

If you’re really having trouble knowing how to get into your story, put all thoughts of readers, editors and publishing out of your head. Instead start writing a letter to your best friend, explaining what this story is going to be about. Write it as if you were describing something that had really happened. You don’t need to finish the letter (or mail it) because the act of writing it out will help you find a way into the actual story, and start writing.

3. Switch Up Your Writing Method

If you usually write on a computer, try turning on the microphone and dictating your story instead (you can transcribe it later). If you usually dictate stories, grab a good pen and some nice paper and write a few paragraphs. If you habitually write on paper, pull up a keyboard. Just the act of writing in a different physical way forces your brain to fire in different ways. You may find yourself “writing” in a different style than usual, or you may simply jump start your writing day. (This will feel awkward. That’s kind of the point. Try it.)

4. Stand Up

Sitting down is not a natural attitude, in evolutionary terms. Humans are made to be upright, to be walking around. So stand up for a while. Pace the floor, muttering like a mad person about the plot point that has you foxed. If you can swing it, put a plank across the arms of a treadmill and balance your laptop on it (I recommend walking very, very slowly until you get the hang of this). Either way, regular movement-breaks help you write by getting your blood pumping and letting your mind wander. Creativity requires thinking-time as well as working-time.

5. Write Nonsense

Some days getting started feels like torture. It feels like a physical impossibility. Put your pen on the paper, put your fingers on the keyboard and just talk. Talk about anything. How hard this is, how much you hate it, what sounds you are hearing outside your window, the feeling of your hair sticking to your neck in the summer heat, anything. Eventually you will relax (and get sick of the navel-gazing, self-absorbed, pity-kitty you have become and start writing the damned story).

6. Outline one scene

Every story has scenes. The bit where we walk in to the characters’ lives. The bit where they are forced to make a decision. The bit when they have a big fight. Take one scene and outline it. Promise yourself that you’ll write this one scene today even if you don’t manage anything else. Figure out who is in the scene, where it takes place, what the characters want, why they can’t have it (yet) and what function the scene plays in the overall scheme of the story (is it a set-up scene? Does it contain the inciting incident? Is it the climax?). Don’t worry about how you’ll write the rest of the story. Outline this one scene. Then write it.

7. Visualize Success

This is the most hippy, nebulous piece of advice I will give and its a bit more ’big picture’ than the other techniques here, but used in conjunction with them it can be extremely powerful. We are a product of our beliefs about ourselves, so let’s make sure we spend some time on the positive ones. Yes, writing is hard. No, we’re not big successes yet. So why do we do this to ourselves? What do we want? Answer this question then spend some time imagining how it will feel when you get there. Use those anticipated good feelings to propel you towards your goal.

Your goal might be as grand as seeing yourself doing book signings and readers to adoring fans. Or it might be as simple as remembering the thrill you always feel when you finish a piece.

And remember, you’re a writer. It is your job to imagine things all the time. If MBA candidates and captains of industry can use this technique, how much more successful will you, a writer, be?

—

What techniques do you use to jump start your work on a day when you don’t feel like writing?

Need more help jump-starting your writing day? Check out the ebook: The StoryADay.org Guide To Breaking Writers’ Block

What If I Don’t Feel Like Writing?

You love to write, right?

Except when you don’t.

What’s a writer to do on those days when your inner writer is being a cranky toddler, plumping it’s big fat bottom down on the floor, screwing up its face and wailing,

“I dun wanna wri-i-ite!”

Today I bring some tough parenting love for your inner child-writer. Next week: seven practical strategies to jump-start your writing on the days when even The Mommy Voice won’t cut it.

Tough It Out

D’ya think the dairy farmer always leaps out of bed before dawn, whistling and praising the winter wind that whips away his breath on the way to the byre? Nope, but you need milk for your coffee, so he drags himself out of bed.

Readers, no, the world needs your stories, so get your fingers on the keyboard.

But Julie, you say, writing is a creative pursuit! How can I be expected to turn out something wonderful if writing feels like work?

In answer I say: how will you turn out something wonderful if you aren’t sitting down every day and learning how to get through the reluctance, the fear, the slog? You don’t have to write something wonderful every. You do, however, have to write. Whether you feel like it or not.

Do whatever it takes to get yourself past the reluctance and into that happy place where the words flow. Stay in your chair until you are happy to be there. Your readers will thank you.

Rewards

If you are not writing for a steady paycheck and legions of crazed fans, you need another reward structure.

It IS hard to start and finish a story. It IS hard to face the revision process. You DO deserve a reward for putting in the effort – beyond the satisfaction of knowing you did it.

So, set up some incentives for yourself. Be generous, but canny. Your rewards should enhance your creativity rather than take the edge off.

Examples of creativity-enhancing rewards:

-a call to a like-minded friend,
-a new notebook,
-some guilt-free time contemplating a thing of beauty,
-a walk in the woods

Stodgy, counterproductive “rewards”:

-a half-pint of ice cream,
-two hours flipping through the channels,
-a free-flowing bitch-session about how hard it is to be a writer.

Goals

Yes, goals. Set regular goals and meet them.

Any or all of the following – especially when you pair them with the accountability of telling a more-bossy friend about them – can help you break through the barriers on a day when you just don’t want to write:

-a daily word count or ’scene goal’. Commit to write X number of words or complete scenes every day. You will progress, even if you end up revising heavily later.
-a weekly goal can make the whole ’goal’ thing less stressful than a daily goal. Struggling on Tuesday? Make up for it on Wednesday, Thursday AND Friday.
-write down mid-term and long-term goals: “finish three stories this month”, “revise and submit stories to ten markets by October”, “self-publish a story collection in 2013”.

Refer to your list as you sit down to work. Remind yourself it’s not just about the slog or the word-count: you have goals for your writing.

And if one of your goals is “support myself through my writing, full-time” then it’s even more important that you figure out, now, how to write even when you don’t feel like it.

Next week: seven specific techniques for getting yourself in the mood to write even when your inner child-writer is saying “I dun wanna!”.

Then, let me bust your writing excuses. No more excuses!

So tell me, what do YOU do when you don’t feel like writing?

Climbing Mount Revision One Step At A Time

As we sit here, there are only seven days left in May. Seven more stories and then you’re free to take a break, keep writing, set your stories on fire or, preferably revise them into works of genius. To help you out with that latter option I’ve recruited Gabriela Pereira from DIYMFA.com to give you some tips on revision.

OK, I’ll admit it. When I was in high school (and college and art school and grad school) I was definitely guilty of turning in work before revising it. Sure, I would do a quick spell-check and maybe give it a once-over for grammar, but rarely did I ever roll up my sleeves and do serious revision. And I totally know why I was so resistant to revision for so long: revision is flippin’ scary. The goal for this post is to make revision a little less scary. Let’s get started!

Principles of Revision
Before we dive into the how-to part of this post, here are a few things to keep in mind as you revise your work.

1) Let your writing cool down before you revise. Revision allows you to add rational choices and strategy to the frantic bursts of creativity that came out in the first draft. Take at least two weeks (maybe longer) after writing your draft to let it cool down before you revise. Step away and work on something else, then come back to it when you’re able to look at it with an objective eye. The beauty of StoryADay is that by the time you get to Day 31 of the challenge, the story you wrote on Day 1 is probably cooled off enough that you can go back and revise.

2) You need to finish first. Nothing you write is etched in stone… you can always come back and make it better later on. You can do fix just about any problem in revision, but you can’t revise a blank page. Finish first. This is why StoryADay is such an awesome challenge: it forces you to finish. Once you’re done with the challenge, you’ll have 31 finished pieces that you can pick and choose from when you start to revise.

3) Do a first read-through. Try to create a relaxing reading experience, similar to how you would read for pleasure. Make sure you’re not focused on the fact that you’re reading your own work. Make minimal notes. Your goal is to absorb the story as a whole, not nitpick over minor details. Tip: I put my drafts into Kindle format and read it on the kindle. This makes it feel like I’m reading a “real book” and not just a printed out draft. With the Kindle, I use the footnote function to make my notes, and since I’m lazy about typing notes with my thumbs, this forces me to keep the notes short.

4) Extract an outline. Write an outline of what you’ve got as a way of getting a handle on what you have written. Then adjust the outline according to the notes you made in your read-through and implement those changes in the draft.

Revise in Layers
I like to think of revision as climbing up a mountain. As you go up the mountain, you focus on the challenges and struggles of that one section. You don’t think about climbing the whole mountain at once (or else you’ll psych yourself out) but instead, only worry about that one small slice of the mountain. Revision is the same way. You start at the base of the mountain, revising the most basic elements of your story, then work your way up until you’re focusing on the nitty-gritty details like word choice and grammar. In my mind, revision looks a little bit like this:

The advantage of approaching the revision process in layers is twofold. First, you avoid overwhelming yourself because you’re only focusing on one layer at a time. Second, if you’re working with a deadline and you don’t have time to address each layer, this method can be especially valuable. If you start at the bottom and work your way up, at the very least you’ll have covered the most important elements of the story whereas if you focus on line edits first, you won’t have time to work out those bigger problems. Here’s a quick summary of each section of the revision mountain and how to address it.

Narration: This is where you consider how you’re telling the story. Is the point of view (POV) right for your story? Should it be in past tense rather than present? Is the voice of the narrator working? The best way to figure that out is to take the first page of your story and rewrite it according to the different options you’re considering, then decide which you like best.

Character Development: Don’t try to juggle all your characters at once. Start with the protagonist and figure out his/her arc, then look at key members of the supporting cast (like the villain or other important supporting characters). Work on each character separately to keep things manageable.

Plot: Here’s where extracting an outline can be extremely useful. If the typical list-format doesn’t work for you, there are many other outline options out there so you’re bound to find something that works for you.

World Building, Dialogue Description and Theme: Focus on these elements one at a time. Is the setting for your story clear? Does it feel real to the reader? How about dialogue and description? Do they flow and ring true? Finally, what’s your theme and does your story convey it?

Take-Home Message

Ultimately, revision is where you add the strategic elements to your story. Now that you know who the characters are and what’s going to happen, you can plant foreshadowing moments and hint at themes that will be important later on. You can’t do all this in your first draft because during that stage of the process you don’t know your characters or the story completely. It’s only once you know the ending and who your characters are at their core that you can manipulate the story in a strategic way.

Once you’ve revised your story, you’re ready to think about submitting it. For details on the submission process, you can look at this handy guide on How to Submit to Literary Magazines over at the DIY MFA website. And don’t forget to join in on the Sub2Pub challenge! Write on!

Gabriela Pereira is the Founder and Instigator at DIY MFA: the Do-It-Yourself Program in Creative Writing. DIY MFA is dedicated to helping writers improve their technique and build the benefits of a traditional MFA into their everyday writing lives.

Gabriela has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School with a concentration in Writing for Children. She works as a freelance writing teacher and has taught workshops throughout New York City. Her fiction has appeared in various literary magazines and one of her lesson plans was included in the anthology DON’T FORGET TO WRITE, published by 826 National. She writes regular columns on writing for the STORIES FOR CHILDREN newsletter and CURIOSITY QUILLS PRESS.

Visit DIYMFA.com for more information or connect with Gabriela on twitter (@DIYMFA), Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. For weekly writing boosts, signup for the newsletter WRITER FUEL and stay in the loop with all the latest at DIY MFA.

Host a Writing Sprint

Having trouble getting started with your writing today? Why not host a writing sprint?

WHAT IS A WRITING SPRINT?

A writing sprint is a focussed block of writing time. Ideally you announce it to the world and invite others to join.

It’s usually pretty spontaneous. A writer announces that they’re doing a writing sprint at :15, for example (meaning ’15 minutes past the hour wherever you are’), and says ‘join me?’

I see writing sprints mostly on Twitter, because that’s where I hang out, but there’s no reason you can’t host one on your favourite social media network: Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, LinkedIn, even the StoryADay activity stream.

WHY HOST A WRITING SPRINT?

You’ll inspire other people to join you in real time, as you write.
You’ll feel like you’re not in this alone.
You’ll be accountable to the other people taking part and less likely to abandon your own efforts.

HOW TO HOST A WRITING SPRINT

Start It

All it takes is a simple announcement. You can give people some notice (if you know you’ll be writing at 7 AM EST, say so) or you can just say “Go”.

Here are some sample messages you can send

About to write my storyaday story. Want to write with me? #WritingSpring at 0:15.

I’m #writing RIGHT NOW. Join me?

The hashtags are a Twitter thing: they let people easily find other people who are interested in the same things. the ‘Writing Sprint at 0:15’ part lets people know you’re starting at fifteen minutes after whatever hour it is now, wherever they are. (Obviously you can make it 0:00 or 0:23 or any time you like).

Set A Time Limit (optional)

Some people say they’re going to ‘sprint’ for 30 minutes or an hour or 15 minutes. That lets people know how long you’ll all be writing together (though anyone should feel free to write for more or less time). This is optional, though it increases the sense that you’re all in it together for at least that amount of time.

Write

This is important: get offline and write.

No, you won’t actually know if anyone is writing along with you because you’re not checking your messages (right?!). But just imagining a squad of other writers out there writing along with you is kind of fun.

End The Sprint

When your story is finished (or your time is up), send another quick message to let your followers know you are done, and invite them to check in. Sample messages:

#WritingSprint finished! I got a lot done! How about you?

That #WritingSprint was bit of a slog, but I did get 523 words written. How did you do?

Enjoy The Feedback

Sometimes you’ll hear nothing (especially if your network is small and not populated by writers) but sometimes you’ll hear from people you don’t even know, who just saw your hashtag, or message, and jumped in because you gave them the motivation they needed to get going today. And even if you don’t hear from them, there mayl be writers out there who saw your ‘writing sprint’ announcement and buckled down to write a story that would not otherwise have been told.

And trust me, it’s a pretty warm and fuzzy feeling, knowing you’re helping motivate people to write.

Save Our StoryADay!

Sending out an SOS to writers who are struggling with StoryADay this May

Maybe you haven’t started yet. Maybe you’re eight stories in. Maybe you started and then, well, life got in the way and…

But where ever you are, there are still 23 days left in May.

What will you do – in the next 23 days – as your gift to your Writing Self?

Here are 9 Ways To Save (or Support) Your StoryADay May:

1. Reset Your Goals

Only you know what’s going on in your life. If you know (or have discovered) that you simply can’t write a story a day, ask yourself what you could write. Three stories a week? One story, but worked on four days out of the week?

This is your challenge. Make it what you need it to be.

2. Forget The Past

Missed a day (or eight)? Forget it. Forgive it. You have today. Write something today.

3. Forget The Future

31 stories in 31 days sounds like a lot – and it is. What if you’re tired? What if you can’t face the idea of having to do another story tomorrow?

Well, what if the world ends and there is no tomorrow? What if aliens abduct all the writing materials on Earth tonight?

Just write for today.

4. Forget Your Audience

Nothing is more paralysing than thinking about what someone might think of your writing. On a first draft you must shut out all those voices. Don’t worry about the snooty woman in your book club who thinks First Person stories are lazy. Don’t worry that your sister will recognize herself in the portrait of the uptight pain in the posterior you are writing. Write to entertain or amuse yourself, to exorcise your demons, to distract yourself from having that drink or eating that fourth slice of pie. Whatever.

You do not need to share these stories with anyone. Write for yourself.

5. Write Rubbish

Really. You are allowed to write something truly terrible. Because if you allow yourself to write badly, you can laugh at yourself, and laughter is powerful voodoo. And then you can learn what not to do tomorrow.

And, the chances are, somewhere in that steaming midden of middling prose, will be a phrase, a clause, a character, an image — something — that you’re just a little bit proud of and that will make you come back and try again tomorrow.

6. Read & Comment On Someone Else’s Stories

Go to the StoryADay blogs and pick one. Read a story. Leave a comment. Admire the double bravery of your fellow writer who both wrote a story and put it out into the world. Encourage them. Imagine how it might feel to get a little of that love in return. Want it? Write something!

7. Get A Buddy

If you do read and comment on some other StoryADay participants’ stories, you’ll probably find that you’ve just built yourself a personal cheering squad.

It’s a pretty awesome, supportive community over at StoryADay.org. Comment on someone’s story and they’re liable to come looking for yours. Ask them to check in on your progress and they will. Knowing that someone is waiting for your story (or to see your post in the Victory Dance group) can work wonders for your productivity!

8. Use The Prompts

Even if you hate the idea and sit staring at them for ages before anything comes, prompts can be a great way of getting you started on your day’s writing. Even if it’s just to shout, “This is stupid. I’m writing X, instead!”

You can subscribe to the StoryADay Prompts By Email service (this week they’re focusing on ‘character’), or check out these other prompt sites on the Resource Page.

9. Take the StoryADay SOS Course

I’ve run this course in April for the past two years, with good results. It’s a guided writing course with lessons and a dedicated private forum. You write three stories each week, starting with micro-mini stories and building on your successes. If you are really having trouble knuckling down and writing, this might be just the jump-start you need.

I’m going to run the course again starting this Friday, May 11, and it will run through until May 31 as a Save Our StoryADay Rescue course.Click here for more details.

BONUS CONTENT: I’m including in a weekly one-to-one Accountability phone call with me – a 10-15 minute check-in each week to chat about how you’re getting on, and what might be holding you back.

Limited to 20 people so don’t delay!

How To Become An Insanely Productive Writer This May

Seven of the best tips from previous StoryADay participants, to help you become an insanely productive, happy and sane writer.

If you really want to become a good writer, in this lifetime, you have to write. You have to write a lot.

Here are seven of the best tips from previous StoryADay participants, to help you become an insanely productive, happy and sane writer. Plus one bonus tip and a question for you, at the end.

Read More

You Can’t Write Well Without Writing A Lot

“If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story.”
– Ann Patchett “The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life (Kindle Single)“

I had barely started reading Ann Patchett’s short treatise on writing, when I wanted to adopt her.

We, as writers, can spend all day reading about writing (or just reading, for that matter), but there is nothing like the act of writing to teach us how to do the job.

WRITE A LOT

And not just writing, but writing a lot. My new buddy Ann puts it perfectly:

“Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment: The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stores, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the fresh water underneath.”

What?! There’s no reason to apologize or feel bad about all the trite, self-indulgent stories that bubble up to the surface? There is no reason to expect that any of what we write will be good, especially if it has been a while since we did any serious writing-in-quantity? We can write without being perfect? What a concept!

TEN THOUSAND HOURS

And it’s not just m’buddy Ann.

Malcolm Gladwell points out, in his fascinating book Outliers: The Story of Success, that experts become experts not by being talented or smart, but by loving what they do and putting in lots and lots of practice. He refers to a study into musical talent and preparation by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson:

“Ericsson and his colleagues then compared amateur pianists with professional pianists…The amateurs never practiced more than three hours a week over the course of their childhood, and by the age of twenty they had totaled two thousand hours of practice. The professionals, on the other hand, steadily increased their practice time every year, until by the age of twenty they, like the violinists, had reached ten thousand hours. The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any ‘natural’, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.”

(And you thought a story a day sounded like a big commitment!)

Gladwell applies this theory to all kinds of experts and ‘geniuses’ including Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and The Beatles.

“And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyeone else. They work much, much harder.”

THE JOY OF WORK

But don’t let that word “work” scare you. After all, you are a writer. You love to write (or at the very least, you love having written!).

The reason the Bills, Steves, John-Paul-George-and-Ringoes and Yo-Yo Mas of the world “work” so hard to become world-class at what they do, is precisely because they don’t see it as “work”. They love what they do.

Not every second, I would imagine — any more than you love those moments when you want to bang your head off the desk then throw your computer out of the window. But we love what we do, in the sense that we will do it forever, for the joy of it, whether or not anyone ever pays us for it.

LEARNING TO DO IT WELL

So we might as well do it well.

The consensus seems to be that to do something well, you have to do lots of it. You have to practice. And you have to learn to love the practice, not just the promise of future rewards. Steve Jobs famously celebrated his meandering approach to education, saying that if he had never stumbled into a typography class (and loved it), the Mac would never have become what it did – and nor would Apple, and nor would Steve Jobs.

StoryADay is here to help you get back into the habit of practicing your writing. It’s not here to promise you publication, or fame or riches. It’s not here to promise you’ll write anything throughout the whole month that will be worthy of publishing. But StoryADay May is coming to help you push yourself to practice. Think of StADa as the parent who made you play scales between piano lessons; the coach who inspired you throw endless pitches at the side of your house in the evenings; the teacher who made you do fractions over and over and over again until it finally clicked and you started to see the music between the numbers.

Use StoryADay in place of the teacher Ann Patchett still celebrates for teaching her,

“..how to love the practice and how to write in a quantity that would allow me to figure out for myself what I was actually good at. I got better at closing the gap between my hand and my head by clocking in the hours, stacking up the pages.”

Are you ready to start stacking up the pages?

Writing With Confidence – Imagine The Perfect Reader

When you write, if it is to be any good at all, you must feel free, free and not anxious.
-Brenda Ueland “If You Want To Write”

Some of my best writing, before I started to concentrate on my fiction again, was done in hand-written letters to my childhood friend, Linda.

She is witty and clever and very different from me in many ways, but we share a long history, and she understands all my references. She is unfailingly supportive, except when I’m being an idiot and need a kick up the rear, which she will happily – and gently – administer.

Writing letters to my friend is effortless because I want to entertain her, I know her, and I know she will be a generous reader.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could be sure that all your stories were met with such an audience?

Well, of course, you can’t. But the best way to assure a good response to your writing is to write your very best stuff. And the only way to write your very best stuff, is to come at it with confidence, as if it were going to be read by your ideal reader.

Do you know who your ideal reader is? (Hint: it might be you).

Sketch out a few characteristics of you Ideal Reader now.

Do you actually know someone who would be your ideal reader?
What authors does she like?
How does he like his characters to act?

Now, keep this image of your ideal reader in mind next time you sit down to write a story.

If this technique helps you, leave a comment and the description of your ideal reader, below. I’d love to see what you came up with.

17 Ways For Writers To Use Pinterest

Intro: What Is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a bookmarking site that lets you save images, rather than text links.
Find a page (or picture) you like on the web, ‘pin’ it and add one of its images to a visual pinboard
Pinterest is also a social network: find interesting images and links based on what friends with common interests are ‘pinning’
Images on Pinterest automatically link back to the original page where the images was posted (creating the ‘bookmarking’ part).

As you browse Pinterest it becomes clear that most people are using it to create ‘idea vision boards’ for projects like home-decor and craft projects. But there are plenty of ways for a writer to use Pinterest to, from building a collection of inspirational quotes to building a following as a high-quality ‘pinner’ in a particular niche.

So, how do you use Pinterest? As well as browsing Pinterest and repinning other people’s images, I recommend grabbing the ‘bookmarklet’ and putting it in your browser’s links bar. Then, as you browse the web, ‘pin’ images and arrange them in boards, adding new material to Pinterest.

As with every hot new social network, building a reputation early is key to becoming influential on that network. Allocate some time every day to building quality links and soon you’ll be a Pinterest guru. People are inclined to feel personally invested in the ventures of people they ‘know’, so gathering a large audience on a social network can ultimately lead to sales of your work.

Here are 17 ways you can use Pinterest to inspire and improve your own writing, and build an audience for your work.

1. Create an Ideas board

Never again sit down at your desk and think “I don’t know what to write!”.

Browse the web and ‘pin’ pictures that suggest an intriguing starting point (or climax) for a story.

Browse other people’s boards on Pinterest, always thinking about characters, settings and story.

Add all these pictures to one “Writing Prompts” board and refer to it as often as necessary.

2. Create a vision board for your characters

What does your heroine look like?
What are the various aspects of your hero’s character?
Where do your characters live?

3. Create a vision board for story settings

Houses
Interiors
Exotic locales
Mundane locales

4. Collect inspirational posters and sayings

Lots of people collect and pin posters of inspirational sayings. You can create your own writing related board.

You can also easily create visual version of favourite quotes that you come across while reading.

Fire up your image software
Create a nice background,
Overlay some text in a nice clean, readable and a large enough size that it’ll catch someone’s eye when they are browsing lots of little thumbnails.
Post to a page on your own website.

When people click on the pin (and the repins) they will be brought to you site, so make sure there is something good for them to discover on the page as well as the picture!

To see an example of how I used this technique click here, then click on the image.

5. Build a board full of pictures of your mentors

*Collect pictures of authors: those you love, those you aspire to be like. Look at them for inspiration

I recommend collecting three tiers of mentor. (Some days you won’t be able to stand looking at anything but the bottom rung…)

Writers you know you must be able to equal,
Writers who are more practiced than you, but who you don’t hold in complete awe,
The gods of your writing life. You can’t imagine being like them, but reading their work always inspires you.

6. Collect pictures of beautiful libraries and bookshelves

You’re in this business because you love books and reading, right?. There’s nothing like gazing at a beautiful space filled with books to fill you with dreams of seeing your book among them. (Also, these are popular pictures, often ‘repinned’ by avid readers, and isn’t that your target audience?

Untitled — Start your own “writing spaces” board on Pinterest by pinning this picture!

7. Collect pictures of authors’ workspaces, for inspiration

There’s nothing like a little solidarity to make you feel you’re not alone in your writing journey. Why not pin some pictures of other writers’ workspaces? Or start your own board with this one ->

8. Collect funny comics or pictures to give yourself a break

There is a lot of humor and comics online aimed at readers and writers (and librarians). Pin a few!

9. Create a vision board for your story’s antagonist

Back to the writing! Start working on your antagonist. Collect pictures of

People (mean people, nice people, overbearing parents, sweet grandmothers. Antagonists come in all forms)
Expressions of emotion
Mean-spirited quotes
Places that typify your antagonist or evoke the difficulties your characters get into.

10. Collect beauty

Who says everything in your pinboards has to be connected to writing?

For inspiration – to get you in the creative zone – collect pictures of things that you consider really beautiful. Art and beauty tend to feed each other.

If you only focus on books and writing you’re inviting creative block. Look at all the beauty in the world and art, and feel those creative juices flow again.

11. Collect cover art of books similar to your story

It can be easy to lose your way while writing, and lose the ‘tone’ you were striving for. A quick glance at a board full of the covers of books written the style you’re aiming for can get you right back on track. (Imagine looking at a screen full of hard sci-fi books versus a screen full of historical romance covers. Instant mood-change!)

12. Create a board for pictures of your work ‘in the wild’

If you have already published work, appeal to your fans for pictures of your work out in the real world. (You can do this through Twitter or Facebook or some other social network if you have a following there).

Collect pictures of your book being read, on shelves, on benches, in boxes arriving from Amazon.

Sharing these pictures oing this creates ‘social proof’ that other people are reading your work: a powerful marketing tool to encourage readers to try your work.

13. Create a board for fan art

Sure they’re dinging your copyright, but you’ll create more raving fans with a compliment than a ‘cease & desist’ letter
Best-selling author Neil Gaiman regularly posts links to fan art, and his following is the kind of cultish, raving fans you want to create!
Allowing not-for-profit derivative works gives people a sense of ownership of your characters. They will love them (and you) all the more if you acknowledge them.

14. Create a board about something you really love, whether or not it’s related to writing

Yes, it’s off-topic but there are two very good reasons for doing this:

Readers like to get to know the authors, to get a look behind the scenes
You’re more likly to keep updating a board filled with things you are passionate about, rather than one you think you ought to be doing

15. Don’t go, ahem, overboard with this

One or two off-topic boards are great – they let readers see another side of you. However, if eight out of ten of your Pinterest boards are off-topic, you risk your followers missing the message your’re trying to send (“I write. You might want to read my stuff if you like my taste”.)

16. Create a board of other books like yours

*This might seem counter-intuitive, but you’re not really competing with other authors. If someone is a dedicated reader, they’re always looking for more titles like the ones they love. If you become a valued source of recommendations, they’re going to learn to trust your taste, and are more likely to give your books a try.

17. Create a board that will appeal to a particular interest of your readers

Promoting yourself and your work doesn’t necessarily mean talking about yourself and your writing all the time (in fact, I would argue that talking about yourself and writing shoudl be the least of what you do). Think about what your readers like, and pin those things.

Debbie Macomber, an author who knits and often inclues knitting in her books, could create a board of beautiful kniting patterns, accessories or humor (yes, there is knitting humor!)
Sophie Kinsella might create a board full of images from the latest fashion shows and blogs

If you like to read in the genre you’re writing in, think of the other things that interest you. Chances are your fellow readers in that genre are also interested in some of them. Create an awesome board in that niche and start building followers.

WARNING COPYRIGHT ISSUES

There is a brewing controversy with Pinterest since people are taking and repinning other people’s (possibly copyrighted) images. Also, Pinterest’s terms of service have all kinds of silly things in them that say they can reuse and sell anything pinned on Pinterest. I remember a similar controversy back in the stone age of the intenet when Yahoo took over Geocities. These things usually get sorted out when a few stroppy creatives stand up to the lawyers writing the terms of service. (I’m not downplaying the importance of this issue, but I do believe it will be sorted out by a change in the language in the terms of service).
UPDATED 3/24/12: Pinterest has announced an update to its terms that addresses the silly “we can sell your stuff” clause and have announced tools to make reporting of copyright infringement easier. These are good signs that Pinterest is evolving and should survive, and is therefore worth putting time into.

More damaging, however, is the idea of using other people’s work without permission. The consensus so far seems to be that you should only

Pin artwork from the page where it was originally posted (this way, the ‘pin’ leads back to the original site and the original artist gets credit. For extra credit yourself, look at any images on pages and try to make sure that they are not violating someone’s copyright before you give that page more publicity by pinning the image’. If the image is clearly from a professional photographer yet is on a 13 year old’s fan site, with no attribution, you’re probably looking at a copyright violation.)
Create your own artwork
Find images that are marked as being available under the Creative Commons license (for example, you can do an advanced search at Flickr and check the box that says ‘search only within Creative-Commons licensed content”)

So that’s it. Now you have no excuse to say “Oh that Pinterest thing? I don’t know, maybe I’ll get to it later.”

Go now, start pinning!

How are you using Pinterest? I’d love to hear your comments!

Have Fun Storming The Castle – Writing Lessons From The Princess Bride

Writing and crafting a good story is hard work. But there is joy in it too. Otherwise what would be the point?

I was reminded of this when quoting one of my favourite lines from the movie, The Princess Bride.

The heroes are off to take on bad guys. The odds are against them and they have a hard, painful and probably futile fight ahead of them. Neverless Miracle Max and his wife Valerie wave them off cheerfully, crying,

“Bye, boys! Have fun storming the castle!”

Writing a story is a lot like storming a castle and there is a lot we writers could learn from Wesley, Inigo, Fezzik, Buttercup and yes, even Vizzini, as we storm the gates of our stories.

Have a good reason to storm the castle

Castles are strong. They were built specifically to withstand a good storming, employing all kinds of tricks to repel attackers. You had to have a damned good reason to want to storm a castle. As we know, Wesley had the most important reason to storm his castle (‘true love’). No lesser cause would have compelled him to overcome the difficulties of overpowering enemy manpower, a locked gate with only one key, and having been mostly dead all day.

You need a good reason to write. Even if you lose faith at times, at one point you believed enough in this story, this character or the lesson you felt you could share, to begin the audacious process of breaking through fear, apathy and laziness and begin writing this story. Hold fast to that reason. Your story is worth fighting for.

Formulate A Plan

It may not seem like the heroes have much going for them, but they take stock of their resources (“If only we had a wheelbarrow”), examine their strengths (“your brains, Fezzik’s strength, my steel”), and come up with a plan, long before they take their first step towards the castle gate.

Don’t assume that, just because you like to write, you can sit down and create a whole story without doing any planning. You don’t have to know what will happen at every step of your plan but you need something to build on. Every story needs a hero, a setting, and some movement (something must happen or change between the beginning and the end). Do you know what must change for your character? (even if you don’t know *how* it will change).

You don’t even have to form a plan before you begin writing (the heroes have left to storm the castle before Wesley even wakes up, never mind begins to form his plan), but perhaps, like Wesley and his friends, you should pause at the edge of the woods to take stock, and plan the next stage of your battle every so often.

Be Flexible

WESLEY: Now, there may be problems once we’re inside.

INIGO: I’ll say. How do I find the Count? Once I do, how do I find you again? Once I find you again how do we escape?”

FEZZIK: Don’t pester him. He’s had a hard day.

Just because I’m saying you should plan a little, doesn’t mean you need to be rigid. Once you have stormed the gates of your story (the beginning), you still have to find your enemy, rescue the princess and find a way out. You do not need to know how all these things happen before you start to write. You may find that circumstances within your story take you in unexpected directions. You will need to be flexible. But bend too far and your story can break.

To avoid this that each of your characters, and you as the writer, stay true to your goals.

Stay True To Your Goal

When Count Rugen is at the point of Inigo’s sword, he offers Inigo money, power, all that he has and more, anything he asks for. It’s a pretty tempting offer for a drunk with no prospects (“there is not a lot of money in revenge”). Inigo, however, does not hesitate. He knows exactly what he wants, and that is: to avenge his father.

As you are writing, your story and your characters will offer you little side trips, new characters may pop up and tempt you with their fascinating foibles, new elements may demand to be included. Take some advice from Vizzini (“When a job goes wrong, you go back to the beginning”). Take a breath and ask yourself what was your goal for this story?

However much it loves being endlessly written, this story’s fate (like Count Rugen’s) is to be finished off. Stay focused on the main idea, the main theme, the main direction of the action, and ignore all its false promises of goodies if you just keep writing it, if you let it live, forever. You know, as well as Inigo, that the only way to satisfaction is to stick with your goal until the end.

Trust That An Ending Will Present Itself If You Keep Moving Towards It

At the climax of The Princess Bride, things are in a bit of a mess for our heroes. Sure, they have successfully stormed the castle and Inigo has his revenge, but it seems that Buttercup has married the evil prince after all, Fezzik has disappeared and Inigo can’t find Wesley. Buttercup is about to kill herself, Wesley cannot move and is at the point of Prince Humperdink’s sword in a tower room with no apparent exit.

Does Wesley give up? No, he does not. Instead, he vamps.

That’s right, he keeps talking, until something changes, until he finds the strength to take action. And when that moment comes, everything changes for the better: Humperdink surrenders, Inigo reappears and Fezzik turns up with the perfect means of escape.

The “all-is-lost” point is a classic narrative technique. Unfortunately it tends to hit us writers hard, too. The only piece of advice I have ever heard about how to get out of the pit of despair while writing a story, is to keep writing. It’s about as appetizing as that Miracle Pill cooked up by Miracle Max, and ultimately just as effective.

Even if you stumble, like Wesley, or end up editing out some of what you write, keep moving and a solution will spring from your characters, your situation or both. Trust me on this. Just keep writing and an ending will appear. If you start to question this advice, remind yourself of what Buttercup says to Wesley when he first reappears in her life:

“I will never doubt again.”

There are so many wonderful moments in this movie that I’m sure I could have kept writing on this theme all day. What writing lessons would you draw from the characters and scenes in The Princess Bride? Please do share your Princess Bride writing tips in the comments 🙂

Grammar Resources for Writers

Later this week I’m running a teleseminar on Editing and Revising for Short Story Writers

(You can find out more by signing up here)

This seminar won’t be a grammar lesson because I’ve noticed that most of the writers around here are, well, pretty good writers. But, in case you need a little help, or have that one rule that always trips you up, here are some great grammar and style resources for you:

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tricks

Mignon Fogarty is possibly the most famous grammarian around these days and this page is a great start for those little grammar niggles that plague you.

Grammar Grater

This is a fun grammar and words podcast from Minnesota Public Radio. It’s short (6-8 minutes) and entertaining. Just the thing for a quick drive or during your morning shower!

Grammar Bytes!

Straightforward, clear definitions plus a test-your-own grammar section. Oh, and a gorilla.

Chicago Manual of Style

If you write for magazines or newspapers in the US, this is the style guide they probably use. The site requires a subscription but it is exhaustive — and you can get a free trial.

Purdue Online Writing Lab

A great resource from Purdue University. Lots of good stuff in here.

But for all this, the absolute best thing you can do to improve your grammar is read lots and lots of really well-written books: immerse yourself in awesome grammar. (I recommend Dickens, P. G. Wodehouse, Norton Juster, John Steinbeck, Stephen King, A.S. Byatt, oh and many, many others).

You cannot immerse yourself in wonderful writing and come away worse off. You cannot read perfect grammar and not absorb it.

So, I repeat the best advice ever give to any writer: read, read, read!

The Myth Of The Solitary Writer

Today’s article is a guest post by Kirsten Simmons, host of The Interactive Novel. Thanks, Kirsten!

“The first professional writing job I ever had, after seventeen years of trying, was on a movie called King Kong Lives. I and my partner-at-the-time, Ron Shusett, hammered out the screenplay for Dino De Laurentiis. We were certain it was going to be a blockbuster. We invited everyone we knew to the premiere; we even rented out the joint next door for a post-triumph blowout.Nobody showed. There was only one guy in line beside our guests, and he was muttering something about spare change. In the theater, our friends endured the movie in mute stupefaction. When the lights came up, they fled like cockroaches into the night.”

~Steven Pressfield, Do The Work

The movie, as Pressfield goes on to describe, was an unqualified disaster. It was roundly panned by the critics and barely registered on the gross lists.

What The…?

How did something which had such promise in the eyes of the authors go so totally wrong?

I’ve never spoken with Pressfield, so I can only guess at the reasons behind the tanking of King Kong Lives. But if I were to guess, I’d say it has something to do with community.

We tend to believe that writers work in seclusion. Think of the stereotypical writer pounding away at the keyboard all by his lonesome. This is especially true when there’s money attached to the work. The people paying us don’t want too many people to know the story, after all, otherwise who would buy it down the road?

But this brings up some problems, because the worst person to judge a piece of writing is the author. We’re far to close to our work. When I’m trying to edit anything I’ve written, I either think it’s brilliant or I see flaws that don’t exist. In my earliest writing days, I ruined dozens of perfectly good stories by tearing them apart to fix perceived flaws in the ideas. (My mechanics, on the other hand, were rarely the target of my edits, despite needing a fair amount of help.)

Fixing The Problem

What’s changed since then? I found a community.

All writers need people they can turn to for additional opinions when they run into problems. Outside eyes can offer a fresh perspective and are much more likely to identify the problems in our work. Communities like this one are essential to achieving a finely tuned, structurally sound story.

When you find your community, love them and hold them tight. Thank them profusely for their input (even if it’s not what you want to hear) and offer at least as many insights as you receive. Every amazing writer has a strong community behind them. We are nothing without our people.

Kirsten is a student, entrepreneur and author taking the idea of community to a whole new level. The Interactive Novel, about a girl who disappears without human touch, is evolving entirely in public with audience feedback. Come check it out!

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So Many Challenges, So Many Courses

Spend Some Time With Future-You

The ABCs of Learning The Writing Craft

ASSESS

BRAINSTORM

CELEBRATE

A Process For Investing In Yourself

Download the StoryaDay Shiny Object Workbook now (with bonus Decision Flowchart!)

Wouldn’t it be great to have raving fans?

Step 1: Know Your Character

Step 2: Nobody’s Perfect

Step 3: Show Their Inner Conflict In Action

Big Final Caveat

Download the Critique Primer Now

What Opening Lines Must Do:

The Short Answer

What Is Flash Fiction?

The Allure of the Fresh Start

And What Happens Next?

WHEN WORD COUNTS HELP

WHAT IF THAT DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU?

HOW TO LOG YOUR DAYS

KEEPING YOUR GOALS REALISTIC

WHAT TO DO WITH THE INFORMATION

NO GUILT

10 Tips To Help You Keep Writing Every Day, Not ‘Some Day’

Lessons from 5 Years of StoryADay Writing Challenges

1. Stop Thinking About Yourself

2. Find A Bubbly Friend

3. Understand Your Introverted Nature

Keep In Touch After The Conference

So Why Keep Writing A StoryADay Each May?

Keeping Things Fresh

So How Do You Write A StoryADay Without Burning Out?

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From Idea To Story

The Right Way To Write A Short Story

1. Play With Structure

2. Write For Readers

What Do You Mean, Readers Have To Participate?

3. Ask Questions

4. Leave Gaps

5. Try Something New

6. Getting Unstuck

7. Keep Writing

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Justifying The Time

How To Decide What To Write

And The Answer Is…

The Big Secret…That Isn’t Really A Secret

How StoryADay Can Help

Write Quickly To Defeat Your Inner-Anti-Cheerleader

Finish Everything

Stay Tuned

A Month Of Writing Prompts 2014

Paper and Pen(cil)

Pro:

Cons:

Tips for Working With Pencil And Paper

Desktop Computer

Pros

Cons

Tips for using a computer

Using A Laptop/Netbook/iPad/Tablet

Pros

Cons

Tips for Using Mobile Devices

On A Blog

Pros

Cons

Tips For Writing On Your Blog

What Do You Mean “Set Your Own Rules”?

How Do I Know What A Good Set Of Rules Is, For Me?

The Second Rule

What If I Fail?

Can I Adjust My Rules?

In Conclusion

1. Give Yourself Enough Time

2. Letter To a Friend

3. Switch Up Your Writing Method

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(with bonus Decision Flowchart!)