Entries from January 2009 ↓

Another week gone, another story completed.  When I finished my latest story, "A Tale of Two Musicians," I went back and read all three of the stories I’ve written to date for 52SS.  Although the plot of all three stories are completely different, the characters are different, and even the storytelling methods are different, there was a certain sameness to all three.  I guess this what many people call a writer’s voice.  Having a particular voice is very important as a writer, but I think one has to be careful about getting too comfortable with one’s own voice.  Even more generally, I think one has to be careful about getting too comfortable with any aspect of one’s writing, or one’s life. 

I’m a strong believer that to evolve as a person, one must try new things, and most specifically, try things that make you uncomfortable.  In order to evolve as an artist, I believe that the same thing needs to be done.  One needs to try new things and new techniques, things that one is unfamiliar with, and in the end one will be better for it.

Here are just a few of the reasons I think it’s important to break out of your comfort zone.

1. Get a fresh perspective

Trying to do something different gives you a fresh perspective on things, and allows you to see things with the attentiveness and awareness of a beginner.  For example, I’ve been driving for many years now, and consider myself to be a good driver.  A couple of years ago, I learned how to ride a motorcycle.  As a rider, your view of the road is completely different.  You are much more vulnerable, much less visible, and have much more ability to kill yourself.  Learning to ride a motorcycle gave me a new perspective on the way I looked at the road, and changed the way I drive a car.  I am more alert, anticipate better, and am more aware of my surroundings, and that is all because I’ve seen the road from a different vantage point.

2. Skills carry over across disciplines

In many cases, the advantages to training in various disciplines are obvious.  If you are a hockey player, and you take up weight training or boxing, the benefits are obvious.  However, many times, there are skills gained by cross-training that are not immediately apparent.

A friend of mine has painted as a hobby for as long as I can remember.  Two summers ago, he took up photography, and got really into it, pretty much abandoning painting for that whole summer.  When I asked him if he was going to give up painting, and take up photography, he told me that on the contrary, part of the reason he took up photography was to be a better painter.  He said that photography teaches you how to view your surroundings or your subject in order to capture it in the best way possible.  This general aesthetic sense can easily be applied to painting, or just about any other visual art I would imagine, but photography was the easiest way for my friend to hone this particular skill.

3. Keep things interesting

The hardest part of any craft is staying interested in it.  Some people are lucky in that they are so passionate and love what they do so much, that they could do it for 12 hours a day for the rest of their lives without getting bored.  Personally, I could never do that.  I enjoy my job, but there are still days where I get bored doing it.  I love writing, but if I continue to write the same way for the rest of my life, I know that changing the story will not be enough to keep me interested.

By changing things up, you keep things interesting.  The same rules apply to just about everything in life, from sex to exercise.  Do anything the same way for too long, and you will get bored.

4. Challenge yourself

This is a bit of a combination of all of the above points, but I think challenging oneself is a worthy reason to do something in and of itself.  No one ever got better at doing anything if they kept doing it at the same level all the time.

Taking yourself out of your element, and forcing yourself to do something different challenges you to use different muscles, different thought patterns and different techniques – or you just need to give it that little bit of extra effort.

If you want to become a better basketball player, you can’t just keep beating your little brother in the driveway court, you need to play against better players than you.  If you want to become a better cook, you can’t keep making the ready in under 30 minute recipes.  If you want to expand your business, you can’t keep selling to the same customers.  You need to challenge yourself to get better.

5. Discover new loves

As an added bonus, doing something different will often result in discovering new loves or passions.  My painter friend who took up photography, now splits his time between both disciplines and is enamoured with his lenses tripods.  I’ve met many a skier, who tried snowboarding and switched camps. 

A few years ago, I hurt my knee, and while I used to run for cardio exercise that was out of the question.  Out of necessity, I started swimming, and discovered that I actually prefer swimming as a form of exercise to running. 

All of the above reasons can just as easily be applied to writing or any discipline.  The bottom line is, if you ever want to be successful at anything, you need to try different ways of doing it.  None of them might ever be as good as your way, but I guarantee that you’ll learn something.  For my part, my next story is going to be a complete departure for me, so wish me luck.

Photo by Kaptain Kobold.

Almost every writing guide, or h ow-to recommends some form of scheduling time to write. Whether it’s scheduling yourself a block of time, and stopping as soon as the time expires (apparently Dan Brown uses an hourglass), or setting yourself a word limit and trying to hit that limit, writing advice is generally accompanied by some form of advice on structure.

The romantic ideal of writing is that of a writer who wanders through life seeking inspiration, and then writes in inspired bursts. Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, one of my favourite novels, in just such a burst of short prose.

When I started the 52 Short Stories project, I didn’t have a plan as to how I was going to write, whether it be in scheduled time blocks, specific word limits, at pre-appointed times, or whenever inspiration strikes. However, I have found myself finishing two consecutive stories on two consecutive Sundays, and writing two consecutive blog posts, on two consecutive Mondays.

I’m not a strong believer in flashes of inspiration. I think writing, just like anything else, is work, and you need to work at it. When you hit a block, you need to push through it.

So, that being said, what is my own writing process?

Long story short, I don’t have one.

I started off attempting to write for an hour per day. However, while on some days I found that to be very fruitful, on others I found that an hour could have been better spent watching cartoons.

Then I switched to trying to write 1,000 words per day. Hemingway would write 500 words per day. That turned out to also be a little difficult because on some days, I’d blow by my 1,000-word limit, and on others, I’d be checking the word count every two minutes, and groaning that I had only added another ten words (no way to write, I assure you).

The other issue I ran into was when to write. Many writers swear by writing before breakfast, such as Joyce Carol Oates. Others stay up until the wee hours of the morning. Still others, write in marathon all-day-long sessions, like Don DeLillo, who writes for four hours, goes for a run and then keeps going. Well, I’m not a morning person, so even if I tried to write before going to work in the morning, I guarantee it would be garbage. Writing in the evening works well for me on most nights, except that I tend to like to go out in the evenings. Writing late at night would just make me useless at work the next day.

What’s the solution? Write whenever you can.

The only thing that I stand by as far as a schedule is that I need to write everyday. If I don’t, I lose the habit, and feel like I’ve lost progress and momentum when I come back to it.

Everything else needs to be flexible to my surrounding circumstances. I have a full-time job, and so I can’t write from 9-to-5. Even if I could, I know I wouldn’t. I do other freelance work, and so I sometimes need to bump my fiction down a notch on my priority list. I have a social life that I would rather enjoy than putting it aside to write. I have a girlfriend who I’d rather spend time with whenever I can, rather than locking myself in a room and writing.

So, you must be thinking to yourself, how can I possibly find time to write, then? Well, like I said, I write whenever I can. It might be in the morning before my girlfriend wakes up. It might be after work, before dinner. It might be after coming home from watching the game at the bar. It might be during my lunch hour. It might be while I’m waiting for friends to be ready.

There are a lot of advantages to writing this way.

The first is that you’re not a prisoner to your muse. The muse is the death of any artist. You must work at her will, and that is a big price to pay.

The second is that you can still live your life. I don’t understand writers who sacrifice so much in order to write. If you’ve sacrificed your life and all the experiences that go with it, what do you have left to write about?

The third is that you’re free to write anywhere at anytime, and that does wonders for creativity. If you associate writing, or any other creative process, to a certain environment, you handcuff yourself. You will find it hard to be creative in any other setting. Also, that environment, and the act of writing will begin to feel like work. Don’t get me wrong, it is work, but it doesn’t need to feel like it.

At the end of the day, there is really only one thing to remember. Live first, write second.

Photo courtesy of kodama.

The hardest part of writing, for me, has always been getting started.  As a matter of fact, that’s always been the hardest part of anything.  It was the hardest part of doing homework; it was the hardest part of practicing the guitar; it’s the hardest part of working out; it’s the hardest part of my work day.

Yesterday, I finished my first short story for 52 Short Stories, and I think it was probably the hardest one that I’ll have to write.  I have not written fiction in over a year, and I had to jump head first into it, find inspiration, and start producing words.  The end result is nothing that I’m proud of, but I know it’s a step in the right direction.  Rereading the piece, I can see the prose tightening up as the story progresses, to the point where the end feels like it was written by a completely different person than the beginning.

What follows are a few tips that I find helpful in overcoming the dreaded blank page/canvas/slate/etc. 

1. Set a deadline

Whether it was back in school, or freelancing, or working my day job, I have never been able to get anything done unless I knew there was an impending deadline.  The stress of a deadline gives me the mental focus I need to get something done.

If I don’t have a deadline, I will procrastinate indefinitely, and something will never get done.  "Put up blinds," has been on my to do list forever.  Unfortunately, I haven’t bothered to give it a deadline, so it will probably continue to live there indefinitely.

Setting deadlines is more than just selecting an artificial date for when something needs to be done.  It also means making yourself accountable for that date.  Myself, I use this blog as a means of staying accountable (as well as posting a progress sheet).

Another simple way of creating accountability is by telling someone that you intend to have something done by a certain date, and making them ask you on that date, if it’s done.  For most of us, the desire to not fail in the eyes of another is enough to get our asses in gear.

2. Ease your way into it

I stumbled across a neat website the other day that is a tool for writers who have a hard time getting started.  OneTwoFiver tries to slowly coax you into writing by asking you to start by writing a single word.  Then two words.  Then five.  Then ten, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500.  By the end of the exercise, you’ve written 888 words and are pretty much in the writing groove.  I don’t use the site, but the idea behind it remains the same.  Even if you can’t imagine where you’re going from the blank page, start by putting a single word down.  Just the act of writing something, even if very little, psychologically eases the burden.

3. Create your own writing prompt

Part of the problem with starting a creative project is that from nothing, you can go anywhere. The magnitude of options open to a person is enough to awe him into shock (not the same as shock and awe).

A prompt is simply a way of giving yourself a topic, any topic, to focus your creative energies on.  I have started keeping a document that I call an idea dump. Any time a cool idea, a catchy phrase, or an interesting insight occurs to me, I jot it down (if I’m not at a computer, I jot it down on plain ol’ notepad), and at some point, I collect all my jotted notes, and transcribe them into the idea dump.  The dump is just a collection of random ideas, and thoughts.  The great part about it, is that if I need inspiration, I can go into it, grab one of the dozens of bits that’s in there, and expand upon it to form a topic.  Two or three words are usually enough to narrow the scope from anything to something.

If you don’t have an idea dump, there are plenty of places you can get writing prompts from.  The front page of a newspaper is full of content that can be used as a starting point.  If you’re in a public place, spend a few minutes people watching and someone will eventually inspire an idea.  If all else fails, grab a dictionary, open it up to a random page, and pick a word.  Now create something that has to incorporate that word.  The idea is not to stay as focused on the prompt as possible, rather it’s to use it as a starting point from which to build something that could very well be completely unrelated to it.

4. Give it 10 minutes

Part of the problem with starting something new is regarding the enormity of the project, and being overwhelmed by a project that seems impossible – or at the very least like a whole lot of work.

Instead of thinking of finishing the thing, tell yourself that you’re just going to work on it for ten minutes, and then stop.  Anyone can find ten minutes to work.  And it should not be hard to produce ten minutes worth of content, whether it be words, art, or any other project.  The idea is to make "starting" as ridiculously simple as possible.

The next time you come back to your work, your goal may be to work on it for two hours, but it will already seem infinitely easier, because at least now, it’s been started.

5. Reward yourself

I will admit that I don’t really do this, but I know many people who find it highly effective.  Set yourself a goal, say to write the first 1,000 words of your short story, and if you accomplish it, you reward yourself with a snack, or watching a TV show, or anything else that you might enjoy.

The idea is that most people don’t work for free, so by rewarding yourself, you’re giving value to the work that you’re doing.  You’re also providing positive reinforcement for yourself, so that you associate getting a project started with a positive outcome (the snack, the TV show, the romantic evening, etc.).

Although there’s something vaguely unsettling to me about training myself the same way dogs are trained, this method works very well for many people.

6. Just Do It

My final tip, and the one that is usually the last resort if none of the above work, and I need to stop being lazy is to "Just Do It."  Sounds stupid, right?  "If I could ‘just do it,’ then I wouldn’t need this damn list," you’re probably thinking to yourself.  Well, guess what?  You don’t really need this list.  Just get off your ass, stop reading this blog, and go produce.

Tough love is sometimes the only thing that works.  Artists and creative people can often be a whiny lot. We constantly complain how hard it is to be creative. I say, suck it up.  Writers and creative types need to toughen up and just realize that if they don’t get it done, then it just won’t get done.  If you crank out widgets all day, and you decide you don’t feel like doing it anymore, someone else can be found to crank out widgets.  But, if you don’t write your novel, no one else will write it for you. 

Essentially, you need to force yourself to produce.  This will likely cause what you create to be total crap at the very beginning, but once you get into a rhythm, the initial friction of getting started will give way to free-flowing creative juices.  Later on, you can go back and edit that crap and bring it up to par with the rest of your masterpiece.

So?  What are you waiting for?   Get to it!

Photo courtesy of amypalko.