Category Archives: the writing life

How to Feel Miserable as a Writer

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On her website, artist and writer Keri Smith generated a lot of blog noise with her list of 10 ways an artist can feel miserable (h/t to agent Rachelle Gardner for referencing the post).
I thought the list perfectly applicable to writers, and wanted to see what you think. I’ve changed the wording slightly to reflect the writing life:
1. Constantly compare yourself to other writers.
2. Talk to your family about what you do and expect them to cheer you on.
3. Base the success of your entire career on one book.
4. Stick with what you know.
5. Undervalue your expertise.
6. Let money dictate what you do.
7. Bow to societal pressures.
8. Only do work that your family will love.
9. Do everything your editor asks you to do.
10. Set unachievable, overwhelming goals — to be accomplished by tomorrow.
So what do you think? Any of these resonate? Anything you’d add?

Storytelling Magic

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Over the weekend, one of our neighbors a block away had a loud party. The music reverberated through our house. As our bedrooms faced the direction of their home, I took refuge in the family room with a pair of earplugs and a sound-making machine. I turned on the steady rain sound and curled up on the couch. Around 1:00 am, I woke up and crawled into the bedroom for the rest of the night. The house was blessedly quiet. Ah, Silence is Golden.

Wait a minute. I’m getting a mental message.

Silence is a treasure beyond words.

This sentence popped into my mind. Of course, silence is a treasure, and the absence of words may describe the quiet state. But this phrase means something more. It relates to my Work in Progress, a paranormal romance based on Norse mythology. My characters are hunting for the legendary Book of Odin, while other characters in my trilogy search for a fabled rune.

What if the rune translates to the above sentence? What does it mean? Does it refer to a real treasure? Or is it the silence that will ensue once the evil demon Loki is defeated and the final battle is over?
It’s wonderful when your subconscious supplies you with ideas. Usually, these gems come to me when taking a walk, in the shower, driving, or nearing sleep. This is the magic that occurs when your story inhabits your head and it just can’t wait to come out. You think that all you need to do is sit at the computer and let the words pour through your fingers. But unexpected ideas seep through the barriers when your defenses are down. They can provide you with solutions to plotting problems or add a new wrinkle to complicate your tale.

Twice in the midst of mysteries, I’ve tossed in a new character that wasn’t in my original synopsis. Then I had to relate this character to the story. I’ll do the same with the above sentence, but oh, what a delightful challenge. Hey, my characters don’t know what it means when they interpret the rune. Why should I? We’ll discover its significance together.

For those of you who are writers, can you recall instances when ideas related to your story have flashed into your mind like a neon sign, begging you to incorporate them into your tale?

When Did You Decide to Become a Writer?

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James Scott Bell
Twitter.com/jamesscottbell

Can you identify the moment in your life when you made the decision I am going to be a writer?

What did it feel like? 

 
 
Perhaps the best novel about a writer, Jack London’s semi-autobiographical Martin Eden, captures this singular passion. Early in the novel young Martin is at sea, returning to San Francisco, when the idea takes hold:

And then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea. He would write. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears through which it heard, one of the hearts through which it felt. He would write–everything–poetry and prose, fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare. There was career and the way to win to Ruth. The men of literature were the world’s giants . . . Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to San Francisco was like a dream. He was drunken with unguessed power and felt that he could do anything . . . To write! The thought was fire in him. He would begin as soon as he got back . . . There were twenty-four hours in each day. He was invincible. He knew how to work, and the citadels would go down before him.

Back on land, Martin sets out with zeal, up to 18 hours a day of it, to realize his writing dream:

He was profoundly happy. Life was pitched high. He was in a fever that never broke. The joy of creation that is supposed to belong to the gods was his. All the life about him–the odors of stale vegetables and soapsuds, the slatternly form of his sister, and the jeering face of Mr. Higginbotham–was a dream. The real world was in his mind, and the stories he wrote were so many pieces of reality out of his mind.

I can pinpoint the day I took the big dive into writing. It was in 1988 and I went with my wife to see a double feature. The movie I really wanted to see was Wall Street. The movie it was playing with I didn’t know that much about, except that it starred Cher.

That movie was Moonstruck, and it knocked me out.

I was a practicing lawyer at the time and had been told writers were born, not made. I had believed that for ten years.

But Moonstruck was so good I knew I had to try to learn to write, even if I failed. I was determined to use the study disciplines I’d picked up in law school to find out how to write fiction. In my journal I wrote: Today I have decided to become a writer.

And I was soon lost in the joy of creating, like Martin Eden. I still remember those early years of writing and discovering as primarily joyous.

So when did you decide to become a writer? Was it a specific moment? A particular influence? And what did it feel like when you started on your quest? 

Inspiring Self-Confidence

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorne


Following on from Jim’s terrific post yesterday, I was thinking about the methods I use to try and push aside my doubts and foster self-confidence. I can’t say that these methods work on the truly dark days, when writer angst can almost paralyzes me, but they do help me get back on track and (as Jim so wisely advises) write through it.

As Samuel Johnson wrote: “self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.” It is certainly critical to being a published writer these days. You need it to project a professional image to your agent and editor. You need it to get out there and promote the hell out of your book. And you most certainly need it to help pull yourself out of any writer pot-holes you might fall into such as rejection, writer’s block, panic and doubt. Another great writer, Anthony Trollope,once wrote: “Never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.”

In publishing, editors and agents will, likewise, take you at your own reckoning, but this doesn’t mean you should be either cocky or arrogant. No, I believe self-confidence requires a balance between ambition and humility. You can believe in your work without forgetting the need to continually learn and strive for excellence. So how to I try and maintain my self-confidence?

  • Well, first off I make sure I draw upon the support of peers and mentors. Despite being ‘Down Under’, I continue to keep in contact via email and Skype with authors whose work I respect and whose support continues to be invaluable. When I am plagued by self-doubt I turn to them for validation. They help remind me that writing is my profession and that I can, and will, succeed as long as I continue to explore and hone my craft.
  • I focus on the process – whether it be drafting or editing or promotion. I focus on the satisfaction that comes from achieving ever a minor milestone – the first page, that first chapter, the first completed draft etc. Often rereading material I have written actually inspires hope too:)
  • I surround myself with inspiration – from copies of my published books, to goal charts that I can aim for – or brainstorm ideas that keep my imagination chugging along. Rather than dwelling on what isn’t working in my writing, these things can help remind me on the things that have succeeded and help fuel the excitement that comes from pursuing my dream with passion and ambition. Nothing is too cheesy for me either so I’ll be looking up the top leadership quotes to read every morning to get my day started in a positive way.
  • Finally, I continue to seek a reality check. A lack of self-confidence is a feeble excuse for not writing. So when I start feeling sorry for myself I know it’s time to pull my socks up and get hard at work. I think the great athlete Jesse Owens, sums this up nicely when he said: “The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself – the invisible, inevitable battles inside us all – that’s where it’s at.”
So do you struggle with finding sufficient self-confidence to pursue your dreams? If so, what do you do to keep (or get yourself back) on track?

Writers and Doubt

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James Scott Bell


“Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.” – Satchel Paige 


You want to be a writer? You are a writer? Welcome to the world of doubt.
Dick Simon (of Simon & Schuster) once said, “All writers are scared to death. Some simply hide it better than others.”
Why should that be? Even after one has reached the hallowed halls of publication? Even while in the midst of what might termed a career?
Because there is always lurking the idea that the rug may be snatched away. That some little dog will pull aside the curtain and reveal you there, a fraud after all. Even the top writers in the game get this feeling. No less a luminary than Stephen King cops to it.

Another reason excellent writers experience doubt is, ironically, excellence itself. Because these authors keep setting their standards higher, book after book, and know more about what they do each time out. That has them wondering if they can make it over the bar they have set. Many famous writers, unable to deal with this pressure, have gone into the bar itself, and stayed late.
Jack Bickham, a novelist who was even better known for his books on the craft, put it this way:
“All of us are scared: of looking dumb, of running out of ideas, of never selling our copy, of not getting noticed. We fiction writers make a business of being scared, and not just of looking dumb. Some of these fears may never go away, and we may just have to learn to live with them.”
Yes, you learn to live with them, but how? The most important way is simply to pound away at the keyboard.
You write.

As Dennis Palumbo, author of Writing from the Inside Out, put it, “Every hour you spend writing is an hour not spent fretting about your writing.”
If a writer were to tell me he never has doubts, that he’s just cocksure he’s the Cheez-Wiz of literature, I know I will not want to read his work. That’s why I think doubts are a good sign. They show that you care about your writing and that you’re not trying to skate along with an overinflated view of yourself.
The trick is not to let them keep you from producing the words.
Don’t ever let the waves of doubt stop you. Body surf them back to shore, let the energy of them flow through your fingertips. That’s the only real “secret” to this game.
What about you? Ever feel doubts? What’s your preferred method of handling it?

The Parade of Life

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On Monday, July 4th, I came out of my writer’s cave to join the crowd lining the town streets and to watch our Independence Day Parade. My husband and I are at the stage where we look for new things to do. We have little to shop for and have been to most of the tourist sites around, so fairs and festivals often are a free and fun excuse to leave the house. Otherwise, it’s difficult to get me to emerge from my writing cave.

It’s easy to forget about the outside world when we’re immersed in our story, thinking up blog topics, or working on promo for the next release. Time can slip by. We have to remind ourselves to step out and smell the flowers, to watch the clouds scud by, and to cherish that moment as it will never come again. Imagining people and places in our minds is no substitute for the real thing, but it’s natural for writers to become isolated when we’re more at home with our characters than the outside world. But once these hours at our desks crawl past, we can never experience them again.

Good friends will call and coax us out of our caves to meet them for lunch or a coffee break. Otherwise, we have to force ourselves to get out of the house, to make a play date, to emerge into society. Usually, this short break recharges our creative batteries and we return to the computer refreshed. At the parade, I remembered how exhilarating it can be watching the motorcycle police zoom around on their vehicles, the firemen cruising past in their monstrous red trucks with sirens blaring, the legions of veterans with their funny hats drive by. Children scrambled for candy tossed onto the swales by parade drivers while families held tailgate parties, watching the parade from the back ends of their vans and SUVs. The steamy humidity made us all sweat and our skin itch, but we didn’t notice the discomfort. It was a joyous moment of feeling alive, of being united in our human experience.

Really, we full-time writers should get out more often. What do you do to push yourself out the door?

The Writing We Leave Behind

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James Scott Bell

Something got me thinking about what I’m leaving behind as a writer. It was the death a few days ago of a dear friend, the novelist Stephen Bly.
Steve and his wife, Janet, were two stalwarts in a group of novelists I’m part of and a lovelier couple you will never meet. They had been together since high school in Visalia, California, where they sat next to each other in a first year English class.


Steve was a man’s man, John Wayne-size. He was a real westerner, and came by his cowboy hat honestly. He was born in 1944, grew up on a farm and ranched a good part of his life. But he also graduated summa cum laude in philosophy from Cal State University, Fresno, and went on to earn an M.Div. from one of the premier theological seminaries in the country, Fuller. He had a deep, resonant voice, the kind that made you sit up and listen.  He was an ordained minister and served as mayor of the small town in Idaho (pop. 303) where he and Janet lived.
I heard a story about him once that went something like this. A woman called his house late at night. She was distressed because her water had been shut off for lack of payment to the water company. Steve said there was nothing he could do and that the bill would have to be settled.
She huffed at him. “That’s not what I expected to hear from a minister.”
Steve said, “Oh, you’re calling the minister? I thought you were calling the mayor. I’ll take care of it for you.” And he did. That was Steve Bly.
He loved to write, especially about his beloved West. He was a stickler for authenticity. Once, when we were at lunch together at a writers conference, I mentioned one of my favorite films, Shane. Steve didn’t care for it (he thought, for example, that Jean Arthur shouldn’t have been wearing pants). “Them’s fightin’ words,” I said and stood up. Steve stood up across from me. We looked like we were going to draw on each other. Then we cracked up and so did everyone else.
Several years ago, at a writers retreat, Steve talked about why he wrote. First and foremost, he said, it was for “Jannie-Rae,” his wife and partner. Then, he said, it was for that single mom who has put in a hard day at work. She picks up the kids from day care, brings them home, feeds them, gets them washed and in bed. And now she has a few moments to herself before falling asleep, and picks up a book. If it was his book, he wanted it to be an uplifting story, fully captivating and life affirming. Reminded me of something Dean Koontz once said: “I write to entertain. In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape.”
That’s a great testimony for a body of work, I think. Our sojourn on this earth is brief. It’s good for a writer to stop every once in awhile and ask, What sort of writing do I want to leave behind?
Steve’s writing and life were noble in the truest sense. People who came into contact with him personally, and through his books, were the better for it.
I’ll remember Steve as a consummate professional, the kind of workman I admire and try to be myself. He’d been in a battle with cancer for several years, fought a good fight, then took a turn for the worse a few weeks ago.
Even so, Steve kept writing. Right up to the end. His last post on Facebook, a week before he died, was this: “Despite being poked, prodded, tossed and turned every hour by numerous nurses while I bide my time in a quarantined hospital bed, have managed to complete 5,700 words rough draft on Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot. Only 69,300 more words to go.”
Well done, good and faithful servant. 

The Void Between Books

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I’m in between books, and normally, this makes me anxious. I feel lost, adrift without a goal. But this time I am enjoying the freedom. Maybe it’s because I’ve set other goals. I am revising my last backlist book so I can get it into e-book format. Now that I’m off my regular writing schedule, I can devote myself full-time to finishing the revision. It’s a long story, over 500 manuscript pages, so it’s been tedious. I have to compare the printed book to my Word file, which does not include the edited version. Besides making these editorial changes, I’m also tightening up the work. It’s amazing the difference a few years of experience makes. I’ll feel a sense of relief when I’m done, but then begins the confusing array of choices re book cover design, formatting, etc. One step at a time. 

Meanwhile, I’ve done a list of suspects for my next mystery. I have already turned in the first completed book in this series. I’m only dabbling at the synopsis for book two because the next couple of weeks will be a washout for creativity. Window installers are here this morning and they’ll be making noise and havoc for two days straight. Plus, we have other events going on that might prove to be too distracting. So it’s a good time for a break. Eventually I’ll just sit down and write the whole synopsis.

And then what? I’ll probably write the first three chapters of this next mystery and then move on to book three in my proposed paranormal romance trilogy. Or I could tackle Smashwords for the backlist book. Or…you see, there’s always something to do.

How do you feel about the void between books? Are you relieved to have reached the finish line and to be mentally free of your project, or does the freedom cause you anxiety until you plunge into the next story?

Where Do You Write?

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James Scott Bell

Here is a picture of the noted screenwriter and novelist, Dalton Trumbo. He’s in a nice bath, his pad and coffee at the ready. He looks like he’s enjoying the whole writer thing.


Not sure I’d like to write in the tub. I split my time between my home office and my branch offices all over the world, the ones with the round green sign.
Here is the table at my local Starbucks, where I wrote several books. 


I loved that table. But they recently remodeled the store, and my table is gone. The new tables are a tad smaller and the chairs have lower backs, not nearly as comfortable. No one got my permission to do this, by the way.
So I got to thinking, if I could design my perfect writing environment, what would it look like? I think I know. It would be at Dean Koontz’s house, in the guest room upstairs, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Dean would be kind enough to let me use it whenever I wanted to.


Then again, would that be too distracting? Would I spend more time gazing than writing? Maybe my home office, with the blinds closed and the familiar mess surrounding me, is still the better idea.
So where do you write?
If you could design your ideal writing spot, what would it look like?

Introducing Hamish

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The timing could have probably been better (though who could have predicted the house flooding?!) but last Thursday we picked up our new collie puppy, Hamish. We were going to get an australian labradoodle but after much deliberation, we decided on a collie. Followers of TKZ may recall that we had to put down our previous collie but now we have finally welcomed a new puppy into our hearts and home. It’s been a while since we’ve done the whole puppy thing and I’d forgotten how much like having a baby it can be – crying in the middle of the night, potty training and, of course, all the delightful curiosity and playfulness. I’m so glad we got a puppy! I’ve been reading articles on websites like zooawesome.com to get some tips on how to keep my puppy happy but he seems to be enjoying his new home!

Despite the potty training trials, Hamish is an lovely, friendly, mellow puppy and hopefully his presence will bring the same comfort our old dog, Benjamin, brought to our home. More importantly I hope he heralds the normalization of my writing schedule (finally!! Please!!) – Jim’s post yesterday actually made me a bit depressed as I would love to type faster but life seems to be getting in the way lately (sigh!). In fact it feels rather like trying to walk up a slippery slide…but enough about me…back to Hamish…
I can’t say I am a huge fan of pets in mysteries – especially not the pseudo-detective types – but I do believe pets can be excellent muses. My old dog was always happy to sit and listen to me talk about plot issues or offer me a ruff to hug when the middle of the books started to sag. I think pets provide writers with a myriad of support services – and besides who else would sit by hour after hour as you type, asking only for a small tummy rub now and again in return?

So do you have a pet ‘muse’? Do you have a cat, dog, horse, guinea pig, chicken, fish or exotic pet that supports you as a writer?