News – StoryADay

The Contrary Writer

If you’ve been wondering why it’s hard to write: it’s because it’s hard…

I always thought that an artist’s was the hardest life of all. Its rigor—not always apparent to an outside observer—is that an artist has to navigate forward into the unknown guided only by an internal sense of direction, keep up a set of standards which are imposed entirely from within, meanwhile maintaining faith that the task he has set himself to is worth struggling constantly to achieve. This is all contrary to the notion of bohemian disorder.”
Lucian Freud (via Austin Kleon)

Creative Contradictions

Creative people don’t like to be told what to do…so we opt for a lifestyle where we have to be self-motivated—on good days and bad—or nothing gets done, only to long for someone to tell us exactly what to do, some days.

We love novelty and discovery…so we end up living lives that require us to work really hard to figure everything out ourselves—there’s no template for a best-selling story and if there was, we wouldn’t use it, because that would feel like factory work!

We prize our vivid imaginations…and curse them when they block us from writing the majestic, soaring words we long to our onto the page.

Making it Harder…And Easier

Recently, writer and literary agent, Kate McKean turned back to her work-in-progress, after letting it sit dormant for a few months. Here’s a list of things that ran through her head as she sat down to work:

What the hell am I writing about?

I have to read this whole thing through before I start again.

I have to read my whole outline through before I start again.

Maybe I can write a newsletter about this experience.¹

This is why I say touch your manuscript most days because if I’d taken my own advice I wouldn’t be in this mess and I could have been writing for the last hour instead of dragging my feet.

I am anxious and this sucks.

I can’t believe I only have 6000 words. I would have 30k by now if I had stuck to my plan from January.

What if I have to rewrite the whole thing already?

What if I just rewrite the whole thing right now? Start over so I won’t have to go back and reread these 6000 words?

Great, now I only have half an hour to write.

Oh hey let me go see what’s going on in the group chat.

Great, now I only have 20 minutes to write.

(Kate McKean, Agents + Books )

Sound familiar?

(McKean has vowed to take her own advice and ‘touch my manuscript every day’, to keep it more ‘alive’ in her mind, going forward, a piece of advice I’m happy to pass on to you here.)

3 Thoughts For The Week Ahead

Keep going

You need to write.
There will come a day when you REALLY need to write.
Keep your muscles flexed and your belief high.

Writing is hard

And that’s OK.

We chose the path less traveled by

Though we may slip on the occasional leaf and trip over the odd hummock of grass, it will, I think, make all the difference.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. I am lining up writing prompts from some amazing writers for this year’s StoryADay May. I am so excited to share their names and their prompts with you (soon, my precious!). But for now, make sure you’re signed up to get all the prompts this year, but entering your email address here (yes, even if you’re on this list. I don’t spam everyone with the prompts. Only people who sign up for each year’s challenge)

Maybe You SHOULD Be Writing

Some weekend reading and listening to inspire you to write…

I’m in the midst of asking writers I admire to contribute prompts for this year’s StoryADay Challenge. It’s nerve-wracking, and takes a little courage, but I do it.

Then, inevitably, when they say ‘yes’, I experience Big Emotions: Happiness and, weirdly, overwhelm. And I want to run away from my computer!

Today I caught myself feeling those feelings. I took a deep breath and asked:

What if I don’t let the Imposter Syndrome rage?

What if, by creating StoryADay May, I really HAVE created something awesome that people love to support and take part in?

What if I am doing good, and that’s good enough?

And so, I ask you the same question: what if you ARE good enough, as a writer?

Some Weekend Reading/Listening For You

I wrote about this here: What if you ARE good enough?
I talked about ‘How good does your writing have to be?’ on the podcast here
Here are some suggestions in case your writing really isn’t good enough
And if you want a gallery of encouraging quotes about keeping going, outrunning the Imposter Syndrome, here you go:

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Creative Encouragement

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Discussion Time: How Do You React?

Do you ever struggle with receiving positive feedback on your writing?
Do you ever demur and dismiss people’s praise with an “oh, go on, you’re just being nice…”?
What if you could stand your ground, sit in the discomfort, and let their praise sink in?
What would it do for you, if you could truly believe that your writing is good enough, of service to readers, and that you can accept praise?
Would you become an arrogant monster? Or would you become invigorated and want to write more stories for people to enjoy (Hint: it’s not the first one).

Leave a comment and let me know

Be Precise (Not Merely Concise)

While concise writing can be a useful skill, precision is more interesting to readers.

This email is an excerpt of the Be Precise Workshop, a benefit of being in the StoryADay Superstars group. Interested? Find out more.

Sometimes when I talk about precision in writing, people worry that I want them to write in a formal, clinical, or clipped fashion. Not so!

If you want readers to be interested in your characters, you need to bring them alive. One way to do that, is to use exquisitely targeted facts about them, including showing us what they notice.

The Things They Carry

The details that characters notice and obsess about are specific to them and their experiences.

Here’s an example, in which a young research associate observes his colleagues. As you read, notice: What do we discover about how Daffyd feels about each of them, from the details he notes?

Tonner Freis—with his tight smile and his prematurely gray hair that rose like smoke from an overheated brain—was, for the moment, the most celebrated mind in the world.

“From where Daffyd stood, the distance and the angle made it impossible to see Tonner’s face clearly. Or the woman in the emerald-green dress at his side. Else Annalise Yannin, who had given up her own research team to join Tonner’s project. Who had one dimple in her left cheek when she smiled and two on her right. Who tapped out complex rhythms with her feet when she was thinking, like she occupied her body by dancing in place while her mind wandered.

-James S. A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods (The Captive’s War Book 1), Orbit 2024

Here are some exercises to keep you company this weekend, and to help you sharpen your powers of observation in writing:

How does Daffyd feel about Tonner?
How does Daffyd feel about Elise?
If he were to approach them, what might he be feeling?
Write down five precise details that give you a sense of each person and how Daffyd feels about them.
Go into a passage of your own writing and try to replicate this idea: which details does your character notice about other people (or the setting), and what is it about your character that makes them choose those detail to notice?
Have you used the most precise language you can, to highlight those details?

What did you discover? Join the discussion

(Why Most) Writing Prompts Suck

Most free writing prompts suck…and worse than that: they waste your time and energy. Here’s what to do instead…

Last year I excitedly signed up for two different ‘a year of free writing prompts’ from sources I have turned to for writing inspiration and instruction for decades…and every time I open the weekly email, they make me sad.

The prompts kind of suck.

They feel worth what I paid for them: nothing.

In fact it’s worse than that. The cost isn’t 0.

The cost is my time and energy, spent opening the emails, looking at the prompt, and losing a little more hope every week.

Every time I see an offer for one of those free prompt subscriptions, I feel like I should sign up, if I’m serious about my writing. Shouldn’t I be doing everything I can, to advance my writing.

If you feel the same way, let me help you out: no. You should feel no guilt about walking away. Why?

It’s Not You, It’s Them…

Maybe you’re like me: I’m a lifelong journaler who doesn’t need prompts to journal. Many people throw out ‘writing prompts’ that are really just instructions to ‘write about a time when you…’.

There’s little direction about how to make that writing time useful, or ways to develop your skills, and really, what writer needs more ideas?!

Or maybe, like me, you’re a short story writer or novelist.

While you can use journaling prompts to hone your description and dialogue skills, wouldn’t you rather be doing that while writing a story? For some reason, few writing prompt writers bother to spark actual stories.

Some writing prompts give you a genre, a character, and an object and tell you to write a story from that.

But, while that might help you come up with a premise for a story, there’s more to a story than that. For example,

How do you decide what the character wants?
How do you know what the character decides to do with the object?
Why does the object matter?
What are the genre norms?
Do you even want to write in that genre?

Does the prompt help you think about any of these things? Rarely.

Ideas are easy. Crafting them into a compelling piece of writing is the part that matters. And it’s frustrating when a prompt leaves you high and dry.

Frustrated No More

If you’ve found writing prompts as frustrating as I have, I have an invitation for you, this week, and that’s to check out a free sample of my StoryAWeek newsletter.

In 15 years of running StoryADay May, I’ve learned a lot about what helps writers to start and finish stories.

And it’s more than giving you a simple idea or a premise and saying, ‘good luck with that! Seeyabye!”

It’s also

Supplying brainstorming questions to help you find a way into your writing
Teaching craft and writing-practice techniques in bite-sized chunks, tailored to the prompt
Sharing examples of stories that exemplify the best of the craft
Sending words of encouragement, that help you remember you’re not alone, and that you can do this. Of course you can!

A prompt should, er, prompt you to write. It should inspire you; spark connections in your brain; send you scurrying to the page, eager to craft a new piece of writing.

Torturing A Metaphor

Prompts that give you ideas for fragments are like plastic pony beads you buy from the craft store:

Mass produced
Colorful, but uniform, inspiring nothing unique
Not something that often contributes to creating a valuable finished object.

A prompt that inspires you to craft a written piece readers will enjoy, is more like a natural pearl:

Created by a slow but reliable process,
Subtle in its variation as you hold it up to the light of your imagination
a treasure that can be used to create other treasures.

Am I over-selling the importance of NOT wasting your time and energy on crappy writing prompts?

Forgive me. I feel strongly about this.

You don’t have to subscribe to the StoryAWeek Newsletter (52 weeks of hand-crafted, lovingly spun writing lessons, prompts and letters of inspiration taken from my years of experience), but I hope you will at the very least give yourself permission to walk away from all those worthless writing prompt offers, and trust your own writerly instincts.

If you are looking for a weekly reminder to sit down with your writer-self and develop some new stories and scenes, delivered to your inbox, please do consider the StoryAWeek Newsletter

…But also: “How?”

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that knowing ‘why’ you are writing makes figuring out the ‘how’ easier.

But it’s not a magic spell. It’s not that having-a-clear-vision-of-what-writing-means-to-you suddenly leads to National Book Awards and infinite riches, or some zen-like state of contentment with your writing practice.

You do, also, have to think about how you will fit writing into your routine.

Simply believing you’re meant to be a writer doesn’t get the job done.

Why Without How

Recently I came back from a longish trip to Scotland, full of clarity about what I want to work on. It was exciting…in the abstract.

But each day, when I got up, I was unsure of what I should work on today, and each day I found myself pottering around with tasks that felt like ‘writing’, but weren’t actually helping me progress towards my (clear) goals.

I hadn’t ‘reduced to practice’ my desire to write. I hadn’t thought, specifically about how I would get it done.

Every day I fell into that old trap of asking myself what I felt like writing today.

Decisions, decisions, decisions…

Making decisions uses up energy (literally. They can see it on brain scans).

Writing, it turns out, is a series of decisions that we need to make on behalf of all of our characters.

If we waste all our creative juice on making ‘how will I work today’ decisions, we leave ourselves less energy for the important creative decisions that go into our fiction.

What’s the way around that?

Have routines.

And I know many of us rebel against routines, as creative people, so I’ll be talking about that more in upcoming issues.

But for now: what habits and routines do you have in place to help you get to the page? What do you struggle with?

Leave a comment and let us know:

Wear Your Life Jacket

How writing keeps you afloat in the rough seas of life

On the US Coast Guard’s website, there’s a whole page dedicated to why and when to wear your life jacket.

(tl;dr: always wear a life jacket if you are on or around water.)

I think our writing is exactly like that life-jacket: something not to be ignored and neglected because when we need it, we NEED it.

How does a life jacket help?

By providing buoyancy if you unexpectedly find yourself in the water.

By providing buoyancy if you purposely jump into the water to save someone else.

By providing buoyancy when you are no longer able to keep yourself afloat due to fatigue, injury, or cold.

By providing buoyancy if you are a weak or non-swimmer.

–US Coast Guard

Why Wear Your Life Jacket?

No one on a boat hopes to need their life jacket, but the most experienced boaters will always put one on, just in case.

Writing is our life jacket on the rough seas of life.

Writing keeps us buoyant. It keeps our head above water. It keeps our hearts strong.

Public life is often — if you’re paying attention — choppy.

Private life goes through calm spells and then suddenly, out of nowhere: a giant wave threatens to capsize your vessel.

You want to have your life jacket on — your writing practice up and running and ready to sustain you — at all times.

Dealing with the Unexpected

If you find yourself dealing with an unexpectedly challenging moment in life having a writing practice can keep you afloat and steady while everything else is a mess.

It might be journal, or it might be taking some time out to visit your imaginary friends, but either way, it gives you a way to deal with the complexities of being human, and to exert a little control .

Your writing might help you get out of the situation

by selling a piece of work that provides much-needed funds,
or by helping you examine and analyze the facts that are driving your emotions about your situation. Writing balances heart and head.

Writing keeps your head above the water.

Jumping In To Help Others

If you intentionally wade in to a challenging situation, to advocate for others, or to right an injustice, having your writing skills in tip top shape gives you the tools you need.

When your writing is fluid, you can persuade people

When your writing flows, you can regulate your own responses.

Whether you are penning editorials, or creating fictional worlds that show a better way, you don’t want your writing to be rusty when your moment arrives.

Keeping your writing life jacket on, means you have the ability and confidence to jump in, if someone else needs you.

When You’re Tired

When you get tired or sick and feel you don’t know what to do, knowing that you can write about it (or about something that is absolutely not the ‘it’ that is dragging you down) is a healthy way to keep afloat.

Our writing life jackets keep our hearts strong.

When You’re Still Learning

If you’re not a great writer (yet), developing a consistent practice of playing with words will keep you bobbing along, as the current pulls you closer to your cherished dream of being a writer that you and others admire.

“Which Life Jacket Should I Wear?”

The Coast Guard site has a whole page of information and specs for different types of flotation devices for different people and purposes, with strong recommendations.

But before all of that they start with the simple line:

“The best lifejacket is the one you will wear.”

Likewise with your writing practice.

The best writing practice for you is not the one Stephen King has developed, or that I have developed, or that your favorite author talked about in that article you read, once.

The best writing practice is one you’ll a, do and b, enjoy.

And, like a kid growing out of their Type III PFD Life Vest, you’ll grow beyond whatever writing practice you start with, and that’s OK.

There will be times when Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages work great for you and times when you don’t need that practice.
There will be seasons where writing after everyone else has gone to bed works, and times when you only have that energy first thing in the day.
There will be times when all you can do is journal, and times when fiction surges up powerfully, like a fair weather waterspout

But keep writing.

It’s your life jacket.

What practice will you begin to build, this week, to help your writing serve as your life jacket? Leave a comment and let us know!

No Matter What

A sensible sailor wouldn’t let their kids talk them out of insisting on life jackets, even if the weather looks fair.

Don’t let your inner critic talk you out of writing, even if you’re not sure what purpose this particular piece will serve.

More Resources

People in the StoryADay Superstars group have been having having a lot of success lately working on 100 word stories lately. Want to give them a try? Here’s some instruction and inspiration.

Want to spend 52 weeks getting writing lessons and prompts in your inbox? Sounds like you need to sign up for the StoryAWeek newsletter!