Motivation Isn't Enough

A friend of mine asked me recently, "What motivates you to continue writing?"

That could have been taken in a number of ways. He didn't mean the question negatively, or so he assured me. It helped that he gave me three options to choose from:

1) Did I continue for the eventual recognition? He knows me well enough to know my ego, and how much it likes to be fed.

2) Or was it the allure of eventual money? I've not hidden my desire to eventually make writing my primary source of income.

3) Or finally, was my ongoing motivation the craft itself? Did I continue what I did for the sake of art, or (if you will,) the sake of ART?

To all of this, I replied, "Yes."

First off, I love that he saw all of these as eventual realities. It doesn't seem to occur to him that I might not find success.

Of course, people will eventually recognize how fantastic my writing is. They'll giggle at the right places, cringe at the purposefully cringe worthy sections, and crave more. This will result in my stories selling, and some amount of monetary success. And obviously, none of this will happen without the craft improving. Unless I create good stories, there's nothing worth recognizing or buying.

Honestly, each of those motivations feed the others. And, I've begun to see the motivations bear fruit, to some degree.

First off, I can tell the stories are getting better. Partly, this is due to feedback from my beta readers and occasional publishers. But moreover, I'M enjoying them. I've mentioned before, how I used to believe that being a good reader naturally made me a good writer. Then I'd write a story that might have been good enough, but good enough never is.

The craft is improving. If I'm honest, I'm finally (consistently) writing stories that I would buy and read myself.

I'm also receiving some recognition beyond my beta readers. Form rejections are turning into personal rejections. Stories are making it beyond the first rounds of editorial slush piles and competitions. It's not a given, but it looks like one or more of my stories might make it into a real-honest-to-goodness-professional-anthology. More on that when and if it actually happens.

Oh, and a story finally sold.

Sold.

At pro rates, no less, which is an important distinction. At least, to me it is.

I've self published stories. I've had stories accepted in non-paying online publications. With apologies to those publishers, most of those stories wouldn't have made it in a pro market.

But at least one has. (I'll post about it in January, when it's available.)

All of that means that within this past month, I've achieved, to some small degree, each of those 3 motivations. People are liking my work. Some of that work has sold. And, through writing daily, the craft itself is continuing to improve.

So, now that I've tasted a small part of success, I asked myself which of the options continues to provide the most satisfaction and motivation?

I can't say. All I know is that I'm hungry for more. Hopefully, that's a good sign. I've heard of writers who sold one or three or so stories, and figured they had it made. I'm quite certain I don't. Since starting writing again a little over a year ago, I've been adamant about continually producing and improving. No more shortcuts to success. There's no substitute for striving to get better and hard work.

If I had to choose one I'd pick #3. I'm glad to be one of those writers who enjoys writing as much as having written. At least, I do on most days. And I can immerse myself in a story I'm writing as much, or sometimes more, as I can in one that someone else has written. It's harder, but it's more fun.

I still want to make this my primary income source one day. So #2 remains part of the long term goal. And my ego hasn't been fed all day, so we mustn't forget the importance of #1.

But yeah. It's the craft.

At least, at this moment it is.

Back to the novel...

David Farland, Grounding, and WOTF

David Farland, a judge for Writer's of the Future, wrote an amazingly helpful blog entry, on Grounding Your Reader.

Dave FarlandPresumably, he's pondering the
genius of my WOTF contest entry

It starts thusly:

"Today I'm going to discuss a bit about what I call “grounding” the reader. Quite simply, grounding is the fine art of letting the reader know what is going on. You need to focus on some basics: Who is in a scene? Where does it take place? What is the major conflict?"

Now, I am entered in the Writer's of the Future contest, and am included in the entries he's reading that apparently brought about these particular tips.

He mentioned a few stories that go on for pages without giving a setting. That used to be a weakness in my stories, and panicked, I pulled up the manuscript. *whew* Got out of that one.

Then he mentions not naming the protagonist early enough. Two thoughts came to mind. First, Neil Gaiman wrote an entire novel, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane," without once naming the main character. And, two, I'm not Neil Gaiman.

My story is in the first person. Did I, in fact, name the narraror? Check! Very early on. Good for me. I patted myself on the back.

I waded through each of his examples, assured myself that I wasn't among them, and then thought through the advice for the rest of the story. I think I'm okay there.

Then, I thought about the story I'm currently writing. It's fine too, but needs some tweaks, particularly in the arena of showing the conflict earlier.

Take a look at the article, and let me know what you think:

Grounding Your Reader.

Longhand and Terry Pratchett

I've figured this writing thing out again, if only for the moment. It frightens me to think that, perhaps, I will need to relearn what works every few months.

I love my current method, even more than I despise it. Certainly, it's proving more consistent than what came before.

Photo By LeeGillion

Almost a year ago, when I started this blog, I knew what worked. The writing started anywhere from between 10:00 pm to 1:00 am. It stopped after I'd reached 1000 words. Not much of a method really, but it worked, for as long as I could sustain the pace.

A couple of problems arose. First, I would often get 4 hours of sleep. While the ensuing hallucinations made for vivid prose, some of the plots I came up with could only be understood by the reader similarly being deprived of sleep. Well, that, or (I suspect) recreational drugs.

The second issue was, in spite of consistently sitting down to write, I found myself all over the place with the actual methods. This went beyond experimentation, which I still play around with. What I mean is, I employed no real routine. And, I'm finding, routine works well for me. No. Very well.

Even if I don't want it to. Stupid pen and paper. *sigh*

Here is something I've discovered. I can write on the computer, or with pen or paper. Much to my annoyance, the writing is always better if I write it out longhand first. I think differently in longhand. The scenes flow in a way they never seem to on the computer. I'm a computer guy too, so that's hard to admit.

I learned something else. Given the correct amount of time in my schedule, I do well with word counts. Something that Neil wrote seems to have helped me find the right goal.

Yes. Him again. Neil Gaiman, may he write forever, co-wrote Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read much of Terry's work to date, but that's something I'm fixing. Specifically, I've read Good Omens multiple times, along with the graphic novel adaptation of Color of Magic, and also Terry's book on writing.

He's good, but I've been busy. I'm 1/4 through the novel Color of Magic now, and plan to read all of Discworld. Terry is a genius too.

I've digressed again. At the end of Good Omens, Neil mentions that when Terry still had a full-time, non-writing job, he wrote 400 words a night. It was the only way he could work and become a novelist. When Terry finished his first novel with only 200 pages written for the night, he started 200 more words on his next novel.

Brilliant.

I average about 400 words in a writing session anyway. 400 is easy. Well, except when it's harder than hammering a nail with a Phillips screwdriver. It's sometimes easy.

It worked for Terry. I'm making it work for me.

Here is my method:

First, I read. Right now, I'm reading Discworld. It might be one page, or several. Enough to enjoy the story, but not enough to keep me from writing.

Partially this is to study the craft. It also jump starts creativity.

After reading, I dive directly into at a writing session. Sometimes it's at lunch. Sometimes it's at night. The time matters less, because with longhand, I can do it pretty much anywhere that's free from distractions.

I come up with 400+ words on pen and paper. I do this consistently each day. Sometimes I'll do more. One of the first nights I tried this, I matched my previous 1000 word goal. But, I make sure the day ends with no less than 400. Two nights ago, I finished with 380, and it was all I could manage. I counted the words, and realized it was short. Even though one more word would have been impossible, I somehow came up with 50 more for the day.

Eventually, usually after 2 or 3 days, I find that I need a reminder of the story's details. That's when I transfer from longhand to the computer. This has the effect of an additional edit, as I can't help but correct as I type the story out.

On the days I transfer, I typically allow it to count as my writing for the day. Some writers, when editing, are "put-iners," while others are "take-outers." My first drafts tend to be minimalist, so I'm a put-inner. I don't count these words, but after three days, I estimate that I add about 400 if I'm typing out 3 days worth anyway. If I go beyond that, great. If not, it's okay. That's built into my new system.

It's working. A few months from now, I may share a new and improved system. Eventually, I'd love to be doing this full time, and be amused at the notion of only producing 400 words a day.

WOTF Deadline

The deadline for the Writer's of the Future contest is the 30th. I have a completed manuscript to send, but there's a problem. It needs a lot of work. In it's current state, I'd reject it myself, if only for the ending.

This time, rather than try to write the thing perfectly, I went ahead and wrote the end. Now I have something to fix. And, after restructuring the beginning of the story, I'm beginning to see how it should actually conclude.

I'm glad for this deadline. At the same time, it's creeping up pretty quickly. Wish me well.

By the way, check out my other blog for some Doctor Who references: http://s300h.blogspot.com/2014/09/pfft-who-needs-rest.html

New Blog: Regeneration and Transformations

Hi everyone. It's me again. I haven't posted in a while. I'd love to say that I've been too busy writing, and that's marginally true. While I have continued to write, if you took the word "writing" out of the the previous sentence, it'd be more accurate.

Look for some new writing posts in the near future. In the meantime, please check out my new blog, Regeneration and Transformations. Long time readers of this blog, and you know who you are, will be aware of my love for fitness and all things geeky. Particularly Doctor Who things. Well, and Star Wars. And Star Trek. Um... comic books, scifi novels and the Matrix also come to mind. You know what, the list doesn't have to be exhaustive.

Rather than continue to divide my attention here between regenerating into a better body and the writing, I'm starting the new blog to feed my need to share about fitness. As I mentioned in the new blog, I've been ghost writing at blogmutt.com, and getting paid for it to boot. But I'm a tad egotistical, so I want to be able to share some fitness & health ideas as myself.

If you enjoy workouts, eating healthy, or otherwise improving your body, I hope to see you over there. Tune in next time here for a review on blogmutt. That's the plan anyway. I never really know what I'm going to blog until I actually write it.

Live. Achieve. Repeat.

Write. Finish. Repeat.

It's the most simple writing advice you'll find, and perhaps the most profound. It changed my course as a writer, and it just might change my course in life.

Here's what I mean. A common theme of this blog is momentum. You discover the end of your story by writing continually until it's finished. Work ethic beats inspiration nearly every time. Keep moving forward. I blog about that idea frequently, and to a lesser extent, I practice it in my own writing. Because, "life."

Life gets in the way of everything, including living your life. You name it, the issues are there. Drowning in the massive amounts of hours worked. Fighting a lingering illness, and the illness cheats. Reeling from an unexpected loss. Finally, FINALLY, breaking down and buying that 6th book in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy and discovering you were right- it's nowhere near as good as the stuff written by Douglas Adams.

All that can get in the way. If you're not careful, it can get in the way of far more than just writing.

It occurred to me this weekend that life is as much about momentum as writing.

Write, finish, repeat? Yes. Apply the same principles to life and what do you get?

Live. Achieve. Repeat.

Write/Live
Repeatedly, Neil Gaiman has told aspiring writers, "You must write." Too many get this part wrong. I've even had people argue with me over this point. The truth is, if you never write, you never write.

And if you don't live, well that's even worse, isn't it? Admittedly, "live" has several connotations. Here's what I mean by it.

Live to the max each day. This is not simply about enjoying life. It means making positive steps in your life. What's important to you in your life? Writing, family, friends, Doctor Who, church, health? Make sure you're making a positive step in one of those areas, minimum, each day. Most days you'll be able to make positive steps in multiple areas. And you know what you're doing? Living.

Finish/Achieve
Neil also said, "You must finish what you write." This, more than anything changed the way I looked at my craft. I finished lots of stories, and I got better with each one. Hmm. In retrospect, I've kind of moved away from finishing everything I start to write. Guess what the end result has been? I haven't written nearly as many stories since I stopped focusing on that. That's a good reminder.

In life, focusing on achieving has the same effect. Take health. I've written about fitness a few times here, because it's one of those areas I had to focus on. Doctor's orders. And you know what I couldn't do? I couldn't do it all at once.

So, I focused on daily achievements. Regular workouts. Reducing sugar intake. Blah, blah, blah. Once I finally accepted the need, I had mini achievements each day. So far they've added up to 40 pounds of weight loss, with adding muscle definition.

Repeat
It's so easy to just give up. This can come after a great accomplishment, or a painful setback. Both circumstances can make a person sit back- the former to enjoy and the latter to wallow.

But you know what? If we focus on moving forward in life, becoming better at what we do and who we are, we'll achieve far more.

Writing's worth it. So is living.

Tooth: Hurty

Brace yourselves. There's some dental puns in here. Feel free to extract the bad ones.

About 3 or so years ago, I chipped a tooth. It didn't hurt much, after the initial incident, so I figured it could wait. After all, I didn't have dental insurance at the time. Yeah. Time to wait.

Fast forward about a year and a half. The pain grew, and now I had insurance, only they didn't cover major work until after a year of coverage. Would this constitute major work? Heck if I know. Cause you know what? I didn't ask. Instead, I opted to wait.

Sometime after that I ended up switching jobs, which meant I switched dental insurance again. You'd think I would know the drill by now, wouldn't you?

Fast forward again. After getting a cleaning, the prognosis is a root canal, and a filling in the tooth next to it. Here's the problem. For the root canal, the insurance required 100% of the payment up front. That was more unnerving than the procedure. Now, if I had the means for that, I might have gotten this taken care of years ago. No way was I fast forwarding again though.

I took the antibodies, and held off on filling the pain prescription. Here's how that conversation went.

"Do you need pain pills?"
"I don't know. If it keeps getting worse, then probably."
"I'll go ahead and write you a prescription for them. Just take them if you need them."
"Sure thing. And if I don't need them, I can get $5 a pill on the street, right?"

Okay. I made that last bit up.

Instead of getting the root canal in a week, it ended up being more like three weeks. By the end, I'd run out of the antibodies, and started taking the pain pills. No favors for me there. Haven't had any since somewhere around 3:00 am Tuesday morning. They tore up my stomach. Vomiting, constipation, cramps, and those are just the upsides. Even today, I can barely eat from whatever that did to my insides.

To complicate matters, I started putting heat on the mouth. It felt better. Apparently, that's the worse thing you can do- it builds up the infection. Seems like the dentist's office should have told me the whole tooth about that.

Nevertheless, at 10:30 Tuesday, I had the procedure. Dentists don't believe you when you tell them, "I have one of those jaws that don't numb easily." But guess what? I have one of those jaws that don't numb easily. I'd call them names for that, but dentists have fillings too.

She gave me the gum gel, inserted the needle with the heavy duty stuff into my jaw, and then did it again. The second time, it I thought she was trying to disembowel me through my mouth. Sorry, but the constipation wasn't that bad yet.

They told me to raise my hand if I had any problems. So, at one point when I started feeling sensation again, kind of ike someone is trying to pull a nerve out of your tooth, I held up my hand. The dental assistant shook her head, "no" and lowered my hand. I think they gave me more medicine though, because the pain stopped shortly after.

Since then, I've been out of it. My mouth is swollen even more than before. It still hurts, though not as much. Think I'm going to have to get that other cavity taken care of soon. Food doesn't taste the same, and even though I know I have to eat, trying to eat makes me sick to my stomach.

No, I'm not going to try to tie this into writing, except to say, this is why I haven't written for a few days. It's a shame too, as I'd built up some pretty good momentum. I'll get back to it soon.

In the meantime, thanks for letting me vent. This tooth issue still leaves me unfulfilled.

Write What You Feel (and more)

You know that old saying, "Write what you know?" If you're interested in writing, and the fact that you're reading this blog suggests that you are, then the answer is probably "yes."

You've probably also heard multiple remarks about the saying, some funny and others not so funny. If not, I'll give an example and let you decide if it's funny or not.

"Hey Scott. Why do you write these weird stories?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, like this one about alien cat people who use their advanced technology to invade our timeline, starting the zombie war decades before it originally happened in 2032?"
"Oh. Well like they say, 'write what you know.'"

I know. You saw that coming a mile away. That's the advanced time technology at work.

Here's the thing. "Write what you know," doesn't mean only write what you're familiar with. Otherwise, we'd never have stories about a police box that's bigger on the inside, carrying an alien with two hearts across time and space. And you know what? That'd be a shame.

Write what you know means write what you feel.

Here's some examples. Do you know the elation you feel when you see your child for the first time? Can you recall a time when your heart was torn in two by the loss of a loved one? How about the bone chilling terror of someone sticking a gun in your face and demanding your money?

Write about that. AND HERE'S THE BEST PART! You don't have to write about a newborn child anymore than you have to write about a robbery or anything else from your life. You can, but you don't have to.

Take the joy of the newborn child and use those real emotions to describe the happiness of a long awaited reunion. Take that loss of a loved one, and draw on those feelings when your character looses her job. Take the terror of the mugging and show the fear of dangling over the edge of a cliff.

Write what you feel. Sometimes, even write about what made you feel that way.

I'll add this to it. Write what you feel like writing about. That'll carry you through 90% of your writing duties. Yes, I made that statistic up on the spot, but it feels right, doesn't it? Sometimes, you have to push through as a writer and finish projects (or start them. Or continue them.) However, most of the time, your passions can carry you through the work.

Another example. I wrote a long outline for a story last night. It's a good outline of a story that I've wanted to tell for a few months now, but couldn't figure out what really happened. Now I know. But guess what? It's still not ready. I could have started it, but I didn't want to. Something else was on my mind. That's okay. It'll wait.

Instead, I finished and submitted another story, which I'd also put aside temporarily. And, like my last blog entry, I made progress.

Take those feelings-- the grief, the triumph, the hope and the despair. Which one, or ones do you want to write about? Which idea has you jumping up and down inside? When possible, write about where those passions are. And always, write what you feel.

Slightly New Approach

Life has been, well, it's been too much like life lately. That's almost as great for a writer like me as it is terrible.

Life's woes create powerful emotions to draw from and pour into my craft. At the same time, those woes and emotions war with the will to write. That doesn't even allow for the hectic schedule I maintain.

I hear you thinking out there. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Life stinks. So does mine. So does everyone's at some point. Get over yourself." And you know what? You're correct. If that's all this post was about, then it could be a wasted post. We're making our way to the writing inspiration in just a moment.

And, I'm not saying that life is completely terrible. For instance, as of this morning I've lost 32 pounds from the heaviest I weighed myself. Since, at some point  I stopped weighing myself because it became too depressing, I suspect I've lost even more than those 32.

I'll tell you how I did it, partly because I like talking about it, but mostly because it's a nice transition to the new writing approach.

I made a lifestyle change. I'm not dieting. I'm not doing crazy fad workouts or starvation plans. The doctor said I had to change my lifestyle or take blood pressure medication, and I didn't want to go on medicine for that.

Two changes. That's it. I started eating right, and started exercising right. (It would have been just as accurate to leave off the second "right" in the previous sentence.)

Briefly, the eating changes include increasing my water intake; lowering my dairy intake; removing all wheat and most whole grains; sticking primarily to meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. I only drink water, almond milk, green tea and the occasional milk. I've increased my (good) fats and protein by a wide margin.

As far as the exercise go, I alternate days. The on days includes HIIT, heavy weights usually performed in a circuit and laps in the swimming pool. In the off days I only swim.

Beyond all the built in health benefits (which I've ghost-blogged about with some success over at Blogmutt.com) of these choices, there are two reasons they have worked for me.

Persistence and consistency. I don't miss a day exercising. Eventually I will, and that's okay, the body needs rest. But, you'll find me back at it the next day. Same goes for eating. I allow myself treats from time to time, but even then I try to choose healthier alternatives to my previous habits.

My muscle gains and fat loss were dramatically fast. At first. I continue to see the same changes, although it's more gradual.

Gradual is good.

Light-bulb.

I reached the point in writing where I was writing in spurts, or not at all. More often than not, it was "not at all."

But, as I posted earlier, writing is a lot like going to the gym. In this instance, steady progress that is consistent will lead to results. My new approach is simple. Work on writing every day. I used to hold myself to amounts of time, or a certain amount of words. That worked for me, but only when I could maintain the incredibly busy pace of my life.

Now, I'm not going to let a day go by without working at the craft. Sometimes the words are going to flow super quickly, like the first ten pounds or so that I lost. Sometimes they'll trickle, but the progress will be gradual.

If I make progress in a day, then it's a good day. Just before this blog, I nailed down a 500 word outline to a new story. I'm not usually much of an outliner, but this story required it. I have little in the way of actual prose (just a few lines of dialogue) but you know what I do have? Progress.

Oh, and I also have all those fantastically powerful emotions I started this blog with. They'll come in handy as I continue to write.

Just a Poem

     tomorrow
silently screaming in the
desert of solitude
peeking through slivers
of this empty soul
     just like today