by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” – Thomas Berger
So how can you get gas these days for under $4?
Eat at Taco Bell.
Ba-dump-bump.
And where do you get fuel for your writing? That’s today’s question.
Some of the ways are as follows.
Caffeine
Not everyone begins the day with a cup of joe, but it has been a mainstay of many a writer, starting with Balzac. He overdid it, of course. Drinking up to 50 cups of heavy-duty mud during his writing time, which was generally from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m., he produced nearly 200 novels and novellas before succumbing to caffeine-induced heart failure at the age of 51.
But the benefits of moderate coffee intake are now well known. It wasn’t always so. I was looking at a 1985 edition of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which had a headline about how a couple of cups of coffee posed a danger of developing heart disease.
Which reminds me of that scene in Woody Allen’s Sleeper, where a health-food store owner is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and wakes up 200 years later.
There he sees doctors smoking and talking about the benefits of tobacco, steak, and hot fudge.
“Those were once thought to be unhealthy,” a doctor explains. “Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.”
That’s coffee for you. In moderation, caffeine boosts alertness, powers up short-term memory, accelerates information processing, and increases learning capabilities.
I have a multi-published friend who favors diet, decaffeinated Coke. To which I say, “What’s the point?”
And to you I ask:
Do you have a favorite beverage to sip when you write?
There is also inner fuel that motivates writers.
Something to Say
There’s an old axiom in Hollywood: “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Meaning story comes first. A “message picture” can devolve into preachiness or propaganda if one is not careful.
Same for fiction. If you’ve got an issue you want to write about, go for it. But don’t let your characters become one-dimensional pawns in a hobbyhorse chess game.
My advice is to give your hero a flaw, and your villain a justification. Remember, a villain doesn’t think he’s pure evil, except for this guy:
Write a “closing argument” for your villain, as if he’s arguing to a jury to justify everything he’s done. This is great psychological backstory, and you can drip some of it in. Believe me, this will make your villain more chilling and the reading experience more emotional, which is your goal.
Fun
Brother Gilstrap has said on more than one occasion that he is tickled he gets paid to “make stuff up.” That’s not a small matter. When you have joy in writing, it shows up on the page.
“In the great story-tellers, there is a sort of self-enjoyment in the exercise of the sense of narrative; and this, by sheer contagion, communicates enjoyment to the reader. Perhaps it may be called (by analogy with the familiar phrase, “the joy of living”) the joy of telling tales. The joy of telling tales which shines through Treasure Island is perhaps the main reason for the continued popularity of the story. The author is having such a good time in telling his tale that he gives us necessarily a good time in reading it.” – Clayton Meeker Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction (1919)
A Healthy Brain
Another reason to write is to fight cognitive decline. This has been mentioned here several times, by Sue and myself.
When you exercise your head through the rigors of writing a coherent and complex story, you keep it in fighting trim.
Last Friday was the 98th birthday of Mel Brooks. He and his partner, the late Carl Reiner (who died in 2020 at age 98) were trained in the Catskills style of improv comedy. Always on, always with the word play. At parties they started doing an improv skit about a 2000-year-old man, with Reiner as the interviewer. It got so popular they made a comedy album that became a huge hit, and they did their skit well into their 80s. Here’s a bit:
That’s why I’m skeptical of letting AI do your creative thinking. Every time it makes a decision for you is a time when your brain is lounging in a hammock, getting fat.
Money
Yes, some people write because they want to make money. It’s a hard gig for that, but if you treat it as a job and approach it like a business, you have a shot.
The old pulp writers knew this. They had to approach writing for the market like going to work each day, because they needed to put food on the table during the Depression.
But to do it, they had to know how to write stories that pleased readers. It’s a simple, capitalistic exchange: the product (a good story) sold to a customer (the reader) who is looking for a respite from the angst of the current moment.
“In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape, moments of delight and forgetfulness.” — Dean Koontz
Legacy
Mr. Steve Hooley has talked about writing for his grandchildren. My grandfather on my mother’s side was like that. He loved history, and wrote historical fiction that didn’t sell to publishers, so he published it himself for his family and friends.
He was especially interested in the Civil War. One of his stories was titled, “The Civil War Did Not Necessarily End at Appomattox.” Yeah, he need to work on his titles. But I’m glad to have the stories!
Without fuel, our writing is flaccid, uninspiring, boring. So I ask:
What fuels your writing?
I was thinking about drinking and writing this weekend but for a different reason. I was talking to a friend on the phone and I told them I was grateful that I didn’t drink alcohol because if I did, learning all about the *business* of writing would’ve made me an alcoholic. Now I know why I spent all these years dabbling at writing and not worrying about actually publishing. LOL! The writing is FAR more interesting than the business of getting it out there for people to read.
I, too, love history and that’s a big part of what fuels my writing. Maybe I’m forgetting an example but I can’t think of a single modern day story that I have written. I want to write about the times I didn’t live in. I want to explore it and time travel myself back to it through my writing.
And trying to understand humans is a lifelong task—I can think of no better way to do that than through making up stories and seeing where they take you. The motive of justice has a lot to do with that—regardless of genre and not just mysteries or thrillers. Writing is about conflict and that means ‘somebody done somebody wrong” as the song says. It’s how you solve those conflicts/problems that makes writing endlessly interesting.
I may feel like the world’s slowest writer, but I’ve never been tempted to give up, though I’ve set aside other types of interests. Writing fuels itself because the very act of it is a curiosity.
Writing to learn, to understand. Both good reasons, BK.
My favorite drink to sip while I am writing is Medium Strength filter coffee. This beverage gives me the Adrenalin to continue my writing for as close to 2 hours a day as I can make it.
What fuels my writing is not the money or the worldwide acclaim it can earn, but the sense that writing is my vocation. Creative writing is my passion, and it is “not about the money, not about the fame” (viz. Luke Combs) but the satisfaction that I have produced a coherent novel or short story.
Satisfaction. 👍
Great topic, Mr. Bell. I love puzzles, both constructing and solving them. I’m unable to leave a good puzzle unsolved. I have patents on two, Guenther’s “4,534,563” AKA “Guenther’s Cube,” and the “OZCANVEXUS” alphabet puzzle. (Google search will find them.)
My WWII thriller, In the Mouth of the Lion, includes several puzzles, one of them a real-life locked room mystery: Who killed Hitler’s niece, Geli Raubal? Not much of a who-dun-it–“Could it be the guy with the mustache?”–but how he did it and got away with it had me up past 3 a.m. several nights in a row.
Who was Hitler’s mystery grandfather? Another puzzle I solved. Maybe. I at least came up with a logical candidate, a man known to have lived in the same town at the same time as Hitler’s paternal grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber.
My latest puzzle was this: Why do alcoholics relapse, even after 10, 20, or 25 years of sobriety? I believe I’ve solved this one, too. My book is in the hands of my co-author. The title and cover are being considered. Possible titles include:
1) Alcoholism Redefined
2) The Guardienne & Alcoholism
3) Cunning & Powerful (Note the omission of “Baffling.”)
Any suggestions?
Interesting history questions there, jg. Tracking down answers was well worth it.
Re: Nonfiction titles. The real meat is in the subtitles. That said, #2 is obscure, and #3 no indication of the subject. #1 with a good subtitle would be my pick.
Thanks, good point, Mr. Bell. I’ll be expanding with subtitles.
The Alcohol Conundrum
Good one! So good, it’s already been used!
“The Modern Alcohol Conundrum: Navigating 21st Century Drinking Culture . . . ”
Note the use of a subtitle.
AM – coffee
PM – cherry coke. If I stay up late enough, I go back to coffee.
Something to say – Oh yeah. So much is depressing these days and that gets all the attention. I want to give people hope, make them laugh, make them forget their troubles for a little while and maybe sneak in a couple of things that can help them.
Fun – That’s how this creative has kept my sanity in corporate world – by escaping into writing, theatre, music, dance, and going to the beach.
Money – Yes, please. Elin Hilberbrand is retiring as queen of the beach reads. Maybe I can take over. My family’s CFO tells me I can retire when I want, so I really can write for fun. My high school friends and I were talking yesterday about wanting to move back to our beachside home town, but it’s gotten so expensive now none of us who grew up there can afford it. They’ve given up. I haven’t. It’s not Nantucket, but we love it.
Legacy – Here’s where I need to live up to what Daddy told me and I told my children: “If you want something hard enough and long enough, you’ll get it.” My now adult children keep telling me “It’s your time, Mom.” Maybe it is.
All good, Cynthia. Except for the cherry Coke. I never liked it. Or New Coke. Classic for me, fully leaded, but now only on rare occasions. I want to keep my teeth.
I enjoy Turkey Hill Diet Green Tea when writing.
Never heard of that, Warren. Wild Turkey, yes, but I don’t recommend it as fuel.
First, coffee. Later, ice tea.
I just never developed a taste for ice tea. I can tipple an Arnold Palmer, though.
Thanks for the mention, Jim.
Yes, leaving a legacy, writing stories my grandchildren will enjoy and can look back on and be proud of, is my number one fuel. Number two is the addiction of creative pursuits. And there is nothing as creative as building an entire world (a story world) out of nothing but imagination and words.
I hope the weekend recharges your battery and has the words/ideas flowing like a river.
There’s the negative side, too, Steve. I don’t want my grandboys to be embarrassed or ashamed of anything I write.
For me, it’s fascination with a particular scenario. A corrupt scientist who falls victim to his own disregard for public safety. Feuding twins who volunteer for brain scans and realize they share more than they realized. An aging pilot who bets all in a race with an alien to the outer Solar System.
Once I’ve visualized the characters and the fix they’re in, the stories pretty much write themselves. And I have a blast putting them together.
That’s a good “formula.” Interesting characters facing life-challenging situation…then write and see what happens. Personally, I also need to know a possible ending and explanation so I don’t end up in the slough of implausibility at the end.
I always have an end in mind. As Bevin Alexander phrased it, the best strategy is a plan with horns, a clear objective with enough room to maneuver so you can deal with contingencies.
I just like the writing. I don’t do caffeine, but I like the taste of coffee, and there are some decent decaf blends out there.
Thinking about the other things I “should” be doing, but don’t want to be doing gets me back at the keyboard. Write or clean toilets? That’s a no brainer to me.
Ha. Procrastination/avoidance. Very practical reasons!
Sitting here with a large mug of strong black tea right now ….
I write because I love seeing my story unfold. I don’t know anything at all about it going in, and watching small threads unspool and weave themselves into characters and stuff happening and everything hanging together — it feels like magic. There’s nothing else like it.
So writing to entertain…yourself! Legit.
A few cups of coffee in the a.m. then I have to stop or I can’t sleep at night. The rest of they day, boring but healthy water.
As Brenda says, “trying to understand humans is a lifelong task.” Taking different characters with varied backgrounds and different wounds (psychological and/or physical) and having them crash into each other’s lives is never boring.
Jim, your “closing argument” is one of my favorite tools, esp. for villains.
Curiosity (or maybe it’s nosiness!) drives me down a lot of rabbit holes where I always learn something unexpected and fascinating. That’s my continuing education.
Money would be nice but it’s only a means to support my writing addiction, not the end goal. I’m llivin’ the dream–what else could I ask for?
Glad you mentioned the curiosity factor, Debbie. It’s good for us and good for the writing because readeres love to learn something interesting in a story. I try to “educate” on at least one interesting item per book.
Peet’s Major Dickason whole bean freshly ground, and it’s all your fault JSB. Maybe not the whole bean, but I gravitate toward obsessive compulsive. I wasn’t always like this, but caffeine has no effect on me, never has. Wife on the other hand can’t have black tea after 4pm or she won’t sleep.
After a 2-week bout with the Covid bletch I’m back at the keyboard full throttle. And getting friendly again with Ham Beach–that’s my coffee maker’s name, y’know. Says so right on his name badge.
The challenge always is which book to finish first. As Jimmy Durante once said, “I got a million of ’em.” Of course he was talking about jokes.
Maybe I am too…
So I turned you on to Major Dickason’s Blend? Cool beans (literally). My wife and I enjoyed a pot of it this very morning.
Hey, maybe you should write an alternate-history novel featuring Jimmy Durante as a WWII spy.
Funny, that’s exactly what ChatGPT suggested the other day.
Major Dickason’s Blend comes in decaf, too. 🙂
Coffee.
Coffee.
Did I mention I like to drink coffee? 🙂
What fuels my writing? These people in my head scream to get out, I guess. They’ve got something to say and they say it to me first, then I open the gate and let them out.
BTW, Jim, that quote from Dean Koontz: In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape, moments of delight and forgetfulness. It seems surprising that he, the creator of so many frightening villains, would talk about moments of delight and forgetfulness. Maybe, reading his novels puts my fears and anxieties into perspective. There’s always someone who has it worse than me. Count my blessings, etc etc.
Anyway, makes me think. Now, gotta go dump my brain out of the hammock.
Happy Sunday!
Part of the great caffeine brigade, eh? It’s a big club.
Yes indeed, someone always has it worse. But as Arlo Guthrie once mused, “What about the last guy?”
Black tea blends fuel my writing, starting with Tazo’s Awake English Breakfast first thing.
I write because I love putting stories together and sharing those with readers. Money would be nice but regardless, like Jimmy Buffett sang, “It’s my job.” In my case, It’s my job to be writing the best novels and stories I can, because that’s what drives me.
I will on rare occasions drink Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder. That has the most kick.
Thanks for quoting the late Jimmy Buffett. Talk about a great gig, he had it.
Nice guy. He used to be our paper boy.
One cup of Peet’s French Roast in the morning. After that, it’s iced tea or a blend of ginger ale and sparkling water for the rest of the day.
Like J Guenther, I love puzzles, and I guess that’s why I write mysteries. If I can offer a few hours of entertainment to a reader in the context of a problem-solving exercise, I’m happy. And there’s a sense of satisfaction that comes with creating something new.
Agree on Peet’s French Roast. Also Sumatra.
There’s nothing quite like the thrill of putting clews together, ferreting out the murder’s identity, and, finally, realizing how obvious it was from the start, looked at properly.
I’m fueled by Dragon Well Green tea and the desire to tell a story.
Lots of tea drinkers out there. Whatever works…..to tell a good story, of course!
What fuels my writing?
I got into writing fiction quite by accident. I had been quiet about so much for so long, it became my natural state. The thaw began when my wife was 3,000 miles away tending to family business and my close neighbors invited me over for dinner.
The conversation came around to their college aged daughter bemoaning that one of her girlfriends was on a month long European vacation with her rather rich parents, “It must be nice.” I saw the twinge of pain in her parents’ faces with the regret they had not provided her with more.
I countered with, “Be careful what you wish for.” In the give and take that followed, I recounted my experiences from 50 years previously when a couple of very rich girls conned me into becoming their approved male escort so they could escape the confines of their finishing school.
Truth is, I didn’t qualify. No blue blood pedigree, silver spoon in mouth since birth, background investigation equivalent to a top secret security clearance and character references from two religious leaders. All presented to the girls’ parents for review and approval before the first kiss. The girls fabricated a cover story for me and voilà, pauper became a prince.
I asked the daughter how she thought her social life at college would have fared if she had to follow those requirements. I asked her if she was worried her current very serious boyfriend might not have true feelings for her but rather he might only be after her family’s money and influence. This drew laughter from her parents. She responded that such concerns never occurred to her.
I told her, “I knew many of these top shelf girls and they all had those concerns. They would give any amount of money to have the certainty you do.”
Since that time, the father was diagnosed with recurring cancer. I suppose as a distraction he has asked about that time in my life and I have indulged his questions. I committed to write a book and let him read it.
That’s what fuels my writing. The manuscript is complete.
Yes, sometimes it’s fuel for one book. The trick after that, if one wants to continue, is to find other fuel sources and tap into those.
Early morning fuel is coffee–a huge mug thereof in a Yeti mug that will stay hot for hours. On radio mornings, the coffee comes from a convenience store on the way to the studio. On non radio mornings, it’s home brewed Dunkin’ Donuts brand.
Midday libation of choice is unflavored sparkling water.
Then, when the workday is done, it is time for the elixir Brother Bell has so graciously named the Gilstrap: Beefeater martini, straight up, olives.
As for why I write, I don’t know of another way to get the story out of my head.
Ah, coffee in the morning and a Gilstrap in the evening, with story fun in between. Ideal day!
The wish for legacy – and no more than two Diet Cokes (WITH caffeine, should anyone wonder) before 3pm).
I live in a lot of pain, barely manageable except with stronger drugs than I’m willing to take (because, among other things, my brain on them CANNOT write), and have been working on my mainstream trilogy for twenty-four years and two finished volumes.
God willing (literally), I’m going to finish Pride’s Children.
It’s been a daily struggle – I refuse to quit until it or I are done.
Several of my predecessors wrote the same way – I can’t imagine the Brontës expected to live very long, and Flannery O’Connor died at 39 of the complications of the lupus that bedeviled her life. So be it.
Or I could play mahjong. Somehow that doesn’t appeal. Maybe later.
Write on, Alicia, write on.