How To Come Back. How To Stay Motivated.

Before we start: I looked dozens of articles in research for this one, hoping to find at least one tip that wasn’t drivel. Across the board, every article was utter shit. Apologies for the bluntness of those words, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the only good list on author motivation available on the internet.

Okay, ranting aside, we all try to keep writing - we really do - but the fact is, life happens. “In-between projects” is a state that, if the author isn’t careful, can become permanent; worst of all, it can happen to anybody, completely irrespective of the author’s innate ability (see Harper Lee, Emily Brontë, Ralph Ellison).

Whatever your personal reasons are for not keeping up with your writing: time, stress, et cetera... the following step-by-step guide won't just help you get started again; it'll keep you writing!

1) Write What You Want To Read

I love challenging myself. I really do. It’s fun to write something that is outside of your normal comfort zone… but there is a reason why Stephen King wrote primarily Horror, and Philip K. Dick primarily Science Fiction: these are the genres that felt most natural for them to write.

Especially when you’re coming back from a long hiatus, you should be writing in genres that you know inside and out.

2) Don’t Just Plan… Write Yourself A Prompt!

Write out a brief sequence of events for every chapter before you begin. Keep it short, but precise. Don’t write things like, “I’m going to introduce my main character.” That's too vague to be helpful.

If I’m writing the first chapter of a greek tragedy, I should write something like--

“Open on a conversation between King Theitis (our main character), and King Linus of Zebanee. King Linus boasts that his top warrior can beat any two of Theitis’s. Theitis, in anger, responds by saying that Tralis, his general, could beat his warrior with one arm behind his back. The battle is set up, and Tralis dies - solely because his arm is tied behind his back.  

Point of Scene: This does many things; most notably, the scene shows Theitis’s pride and introduces the conflict between General Tralis’s troops and the Royal Crown (which will eventually lead to Theitis’s downfall)."

With this self-written prompt, we know where the chapter is going, and we know WHY it is being written… that takes a lot of pressure off the writing, which makes us far less likely to procrastinate.

3) Always End On A Cliffhanger

Conversely, never EVER stop at the resolution of a plot point. Mini resolutions are the death of motivation. When you reach a plot resolution, force yourself to keep writing to the next cliffhanger.

When Tina has a gun to her head, it is obvious that something important will happen. The urgency is omnipresent. In seminars, when I talk about this idea, people always complain that one shouldn’t stop when their writing is flowing. I totally disagree. If you know what happens when you stop, you’ll know what happens when you come back.

For myself, I almost always stop in the middle of a sentence. I’ll leave urgent half-sentences hanging for days, waiting desperately to be finished. Eg. “In a sudden burst of speed, she smacked the gun away and leapt behind...”

Go ahead. You know you want to.

 4) Utilize The Technology-Free Hour

Everyone in my life has great respect for my writing hours, and this is solely because I, myself respect my writing time. Here’s how I do it--

A) I tell everyone who is likely to contact me that I will be writing for the next hour.

B) I turn off my phone.

C) I turn over an actual hourglass (See Tip #7), and don’t leave the chair until every grain of sand has fallen.

D) I limit my internet access to searching for synonyms or doing specific, relevant research on my writing. You might think, if you have writer’s block, that you will stare at a blank word document for the full hour… you’d be wrong. I have never, not one single time, stood up from one of these writing hours without having written something. Fact is, you can only stare at a blinking cursor so long.

Stop worrying about finishing your novel. Just plan that next hour, and slowly, it WILL get done.

5) If You Can’t Force Yourself To Write…

So you’ve read the above tip twenty times, but it hurts you to even think about writing. It’s never as good as you want it to be. You schedule the hour, but can’t make yourself respect it, and find yourself doodling or watching TV…

Well, if you can’t force yourself to write, use your writing time better. Watch something related to your project. Read something that will make you think about the ideas you want to include. The more stories that you burn through, whether in film or the written word, the more excited you will get about the many things you can incorporate into your own fiction.

 6) Join A Writer’s Group

Okay, okay. Not everyone has the time or the inclination. I, myself, haven’t been in a LONG time. That said, when I was writing Tiny Instruments, knowing that the writer’s group was eagerly awaiting the next chapter gave me some kind of motivation when thoughts like, “But the odds of me becoming successful are so slim!” and “But nobody reads books anymore anyway!”, came creeping in.

If your primary motivation comes from others, there’s especially something to be said about surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals who are all working toward the same goal. There’s a certain energy that gets your thoughts flowing.

As far as joining a group goes, my advice is this--

If it speaks to you, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t.

 7) Buy Yourself A New Pen, A New Hourglass, Or A “New” Typewriter

Weird advice, huh?

If you can’t afford it, I wouldn’t recommend doing this one often. Still, this tidbit is far more effective than you might first believe.

The logic is simple. If you have a REALLY nice pen, you’re going to want to use it. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be just dying to put that Mont Blanc on the paper… go ahead. Feel how smooth it glides across the sheet as you crank out the world’s next great novel!

8) Realize That Crappy Writing Is Better Than No Writing

Perfectionist tendencies in writing are wonderful. They allow you to bring your writing to a whole new level as you constantly search for that perfect turn of phrase… but if you don’t knock it off, you’ll never publish a damn thing! Repeat after me: The more you write, the better you get.

There’s nothing wrong with taking pride in your work, but over-perfectionism can strangle a writer’s career; believe me, I’ve suffered with this throughout all of mine.

It's that simple. Follow the above, and soon, you’ll be holding your finished novel in your hands.

All About Multiple Characters

Long time followers of my blog know that I am a proponent of singular protagonists. In one of my earliest blog posts, Common Writing Styles That Cause Problems, I talked about several issues involved in having too many protagonists. I still believe everything I said back then, but the fact is, some stories do call for several main characters, and not telling my readers how to correctly write them isn’t serving anyone. Should you choose to take your story in this direction, here are some tips for keeping things clear and elegant--
 

Write As Few Protagonists As Possible

Just because your story necessitates several plotlines doesn’t mean you should just run free with it. Having ten protagonists instead of five is not just twice as confusing. Believe me.

Pick Your Tense Carefully

Beware of using different tenses for different characters. Only too often, writers go into projects thinking, “Well, Ralph is the main character, so he can be first person as long as the others are in third”, only to discover that other protagonists become more important as the story progresses, or that the readers are confused by the sudden changes in tense from chapter to chapter. Be careful. Multiple characters can be confusing enough!

Differentiate Between Your Characters

I understand that making every character a complex individual is a lot harder in multiple viewpoint novels, so I’ve come up with a very simple piece of advice for flat or copycat characters: if it’s too hard to give a character a unique sense of self, remove that character. There. That simplifies things.

 

Make Sure They Have STRONG Connections With Each Other

Back when I was still doing reader reviews, I ripped Cloud Atlas a new one. The writing wasn’t the problem, but rather, the incredibly weak connection between the characters. It seemed to me as if they existed, not only in different time periods, but in different worlds. Luisa Rey is in a campy, 1950s-style detective story, where commedia dell'arte character archetypes are fully acceptable, but Robert Frobisher is in a fully realistic story that takes place in the early thirties. These two people, apart from the fact that they are members of the human race, quite literally have nothing in common.

 

Read Good Fiction With Multiple Points of View

It is always helpful to read stories that are told in a similar way to what you want to write. If you want to write about multiple characters in a first person perspective (God forbid), read As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. If not, possibly consider Dune by Frank Herbert. Don’t stop there either! Get a grasp on what you’re looking for before you begin.

 

Thoroughly Plan Scenes Where Characters Meet

If Gregory and Ruth are both main characters, whose perspective will you write from when they meet in the park under the glow of fireflies? Gregory’s? Ruth’s? Third limited on one character? Perhaps a neutral or omniscient third? If you are going to have characters meet throughout the course of your story, make sure to put in your work.

Carry Over Emotions

Nobody will ever advise you not to end a chapter on a cliffhanger, but it can be rather annoying to a reader when chapter 13 ends with John on his back in an alley with a knife wound in his abdomen, and chapter 14 begins with Sussie wondering if Matt, the cute boy sitting next to her in English class, is going to ask her to prom. It’s fine if this happens every once in awhile - building up a sense of urgency can be good… but, in general, try to stoke the emotional flames of the previous chapter in any way you can. You don’t want to have to start each chapter from emotional ground zero.

All this said, don’t tell a story from multiple perspectives unless that’s the way the story is screaming to be told (Game of Thrones comes to mind). Despite a few exceptions, the less characters there are in a piece, the greater the focus is on the characters that remain. 

How To Read Like A Writer

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

-Ernest Hemingway

In thinking about how I personally learned the craft of writing, it’s hard to minimize the impact of books. For all the classes that I took, and all the seminars I attended, the simple act of reading is responsible for easily 85% of what I’ve learned. At first glance, this might not make much sense – there are lots of prolific readers out there who aren’t remotely good writers – but that’s because not all reading is created equal. The better acquainted you become with the craft, the easier it is to see devices for what they are, to spot the sentences that make a work sing, to notice the strengths and weaknesses of characters… in short, to read like a writer. The following are things you can do to start yourself down one of the most important journeys in any writer’s career, and they are available to you anytime you pick up a book.

Slow Down!

In high school we learn to read things as quickly as we can. Individual sentences don’t matter. A teacher will never ask “What color was Hester Prynne’s dress in The Scarlet Letter?” They ask instead, “What important decision did Governor Bellingham make, and how did it affect the plot?” This trains our minds to look for plot points when we read. It’s great if we can get through a work of fiction and understand what happened, but in reading for events, we lose so much of what brought those events about. Reading isn’t a race! It’s better to understand a single book on a deeper level than finish three books in a row without taking the time to study them.

Guess Where It’s Going

Many writers, myself included, do this subconsciously. If you don’t at first, that’s okay. For now, do it consciously. Put the book down in-between chapters and ask yourself what you think will happen and why. You might find that you’ll not only get better at predicting plots, but you’ll get better at seeing devices such as foreshadowing, that move the story forward from behind the scenes.

When Your Emotions Become Affected, Question Why

If something strikes you, either because it draws you in or is completely unrelatable, take a second to scrutinize it. Is the language bare and direct or filled with a preponderance of vernacular that enthralls you? Is it the characters, the plot, the dialogue or the description that caused you to feel something? Particularly when we become excited, the tendency is to rush through the words. If you’re overtaken in the moment, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t speed through a section – but make note of it and read it again later when your mind can better focus on what it is that makes it so thrilling to read. Can you incorporate their styles in your own writing?

Only Read The Best Fiction

People don’t like this advice. Whenever I tell this to writers, they respond with a list of their guilty pleasure books, telling me how fun they are to read, even though they know they’re terribly written… My advice to anyone considering becoming a writer is this: don’t read any books that you wouldn’t have been proud to write. If you see yourself exclusively as a science fiction writer, what could you hope to get out of a horror? If you want to write like James Joyce, why are you reading Nora Roberts? When you make the choice to become a writer, you should be aware of how your entertainment affects your writing. As writers, we are constantly drawing on the things around us, whether we know it or not. This means that the mere act of reading Twilight could, theoretically, damage your prose!

Don’t Put Writers On A Pedestal

Writers are human. If something bothers you in a book by Dostoevsky or Hemingway, don’t give that writer the benefit of the doubt. It’s quite possible they’ve made a mistake! Millions of readers every day are convincing themselves that when they get confused reading Faulkner, it’s because they read the passage wrong, or because they weren’t alive during the same time period as the author… many of these things may be true, but sometimes, even the best authors make mistakes. I’ve caught misplaced commas in Steinbeck and instances of passive voice in Fitzgerald – these things don’t detract from the excellence of these writers, but it’s important that you see their work, however excellent, without rose-colored glasses. By convincing yourself of their abilities, you risk misleading yourself in your own work. If you think it’s okay for Victor Hugo to go on a twenty page rant about architecture in the middle of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, then maybe it’s okay for you to depart from your own story to talk about the history of the town that your story is set in. If you think Proust’s 150-page-long chapters are okay in his work, why not do the same with yours? Don’t put aside your critical mind. I promise you, even your favorite book has flaws.

Don’t Ignore Grammar

Yes, this is coming from an editor – I’ll give you that. Even so, too many writers ignore things like punctuation and sentence structure when they read. I recommend that instead of skipping over punctuation as if it doesn’t exist, you occasionally study its placement. This might not sound particularly exciting, but at least until you become a master of grammar yourself, it might help you to see how your favorite authors handle it. Do you tend to use more or less semi-colons than your favorite author? How long is his/her average sentence? Given that the best grammar is practically invisible, it’s all the more important to pay attention when it doesn’t seem like there’s much to notice.

Don’t Worry About Books Losing Their Allure

Does following the above advice ruin the time you spend reading? Absolutely not. Knowing where something is going means you’ll be surprised less often, but it will make you all the more appreciative when an author does surprise you! When you’re reading as a writer, you’re “chasing the dragon” of literary fiction. Instead of just reading and accepting the world an author tries to paint, you look beyond their portrait and at the colors themselves, and the act of truly understanding a work of fiction makes it all the more beautiful.

Writing Prompt

The following is the opening to Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. What do you like about it? How is it different from your own writing? Is there anything you can learn from it?

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall—soon—it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.

Inside the carriage, which is built on several levels, he sits in velveteen darkness, with nothing to smoke, feeling metal nearer and farther rub and connect, steam escaping in puffs, a vibration in the carriage’s frame, a poising, an uneasiness, all the others pressed in around, feeble ones, second sheep, all out of luck and time: drunks, old veterans still in shock from ordnance 20 years obsolete, hustlers in city clothes, derelicts, exhausted women with more children than it seems could belong to anyone, stacked about among the rest of the things to be carried out to salvation. Only the nearer faces are visible at all, and at that only as half-silvered images in a view finder, green-stained VIP faces remembered behind bulletproof windows speeding through the city. . .

Look for positive things. Did you notice the powerful opening sentence? Did you notice how Pynchon alternated the standard order of things as in “Above him lift girders old as…” instead of “Old girders lift above him, old as…”? Did you notice that Pynchon is describing a character as “he” without giving his name in order to increase tension? Did you note the interesting way “soon” was separated by dashes? When you read “Only the nearer faces are visible at all”, did you notice how everything in this Third Person Present never leaves the eyes of our character? How about negative things? Did you notice the considerable use of the word “But” in the first paragraph? Whatever your stance, did you notice how Pynchon occasionally strings on sentence fragments, such as the following: “But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.” It’s okay if you didn’t immediately take these things in. Reading as a writer takes a lot of practice at first.