Tag Archives: #amwriting

Brain Science Offers Solutions for Writer’s Block

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Have you ever sat in front of your word processor, waiting in vain for words to flow? How can a writer reclaim her creative muse when her “boys in the basement” go radio silent?

This topic–breaking through writer’s block–is of particular interest to me. I’m one of those people who alternates between periods of intense, almost compulsive creative activity, and long stretches of floundering in a creative trough. So it was very heartening to read that  science offers strategies that can help people like me produce more consistently.

Rewiring the brain

In an article published in WD in 2012, Mike Bechtle argued that mere willpower is not the most effective solution for breaking through writer’s block. He suggests that we rewire our brains to get back into the “flow”.

Here were my major takeaways from Bechtle’s article:

  • Write first thing in the morning, when alertness and energy levels are typically at their highest. (My note: If you can’t write first thing in the morning, try to write at the same time of day every day. Your brain will “learn” to kick into gear at its regular writing time)
  • Fuel your brain with a nourishing breakfast (Think eggs and fruit, not an apple fritter)
  • Limit distractions (Don’t check email or messages before writing, and don’t read a newspaper, turn on the TV, or listen to radio, either)
  • Keep writing sessions short (The brain can focus intensely for only short periods of time, according to Bechtle)
  • Apply glue to butt (Stay seated while writing, that is!)
  • Don’t set your expectations too high

Other strategies

In my first foray as a fiction writer back in the 90’s, I was a contract writer for the Nancy Drew series. The schedule for those books gave me little leeway for writer’s block. As soon as the chapter outline was approved, writers were given six weeks to complete the novel. Six weeks! I had to write those stories so fast, I felt as if I was hurling words at the word processor. Every project was a race to the finish line. “Writer’s block” was a foreign concept.

Then my editor left, and the publishing landscape changed. I stopped writing NDs and began to vaguely contemplate writing something on my own. Inertia quickly set in. Months became years, and I hadn’t written anything new.shutterstock_156007538

15 minutes a day, that’s all we ask

I happened to read an article by Kate White, who is an author and former editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Her advice to getting started? Write 15 minutes per day, first thing in the morning. No. Matter. What.

To act on Kate’s suggestion, I had to set my alarm for five a.m. instead of six. That extra hour gave me enough time to down a cup of coffee and generate 15 minutes of quality writing time, before I headed off to my day job.

White’s advice worked for me. Fifteen minutes of writing daily eventually became an hour. Soon I was producing a minimum quota of a page a day.  (Yes, I know: a single page a day isn’t impressive as a quota. See the last bullet point of the previous list about lowering expectations.) A few months later, I had completed the first draft of my new novel.

Your strategies for breaking a creative logjam?

How have you broken through a creative dry spell in the past? Any tips you can share with the rest of us?

First Page Critique: Timber Ridge

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Today we are critiquing the first page of a story called TIMBER RIDGE. After reading the page and my notes, please add your thoughts in the Comments.

Halloween, dead hand coming out from the soil

Timber Ridge

Digging a grave is thirsty work under the high summer sun, even when it’s your own.

“How about a break, we can both grab a drink? Five minutes, eh? I’m dying out here. Haha.”

Silence. It was my funeral, but he was being the glum one.

We picked this spot because the shade from the evergreens covered most of the rutted road shoulder, but over the course of the morning every worry from the past two days — every dead end, every lie, every person I couldn’t save — had hardened into a single, pure lust for water. The fact that I wasn’t likely to be thirsty for very long, or ever again, wasn’t any consolation. I couldn’t keep myself from wanting it.

Rice dropped his cigarette onto the dry pine needles that covered the road and smothered it with his boot heel, a good citizen. “There’s Coke back at the truck. In the cooler, on ice. A couple of beer bottles too.” Too much kindness hung off his high voice like an ill-fitting mask. “You know what you gotta do to get to it.”

Rice was not a bad guy, in fact I still thought of him as a friend. But he was a conscientious worker in a bad line of work. If this was the business for the day, he wouldn’t know how to neglect it. He’d feel bad about it later.

A Stellar’s jay sidled nervously across a low tree branch and screamed at us. We both looked vaguely past it, to the east.

The road was poorly maintained ahead, pitted and overgrown with thorny brush. Nature held court on both sides. Brambles were the only buffer before trees started jabbing into each other in a decades-long fight for position. The losers lay on the forest floor, damp and soft and rotten, where mushrooms and small bugs could use them. I looked down into the dirt and saw myself, blue-white and cold in the black topsoil, growing quickly soft next to them.

“Alright then.” I stepped out of hole and looked at him for a while. “Let’s go see about those beers. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

I wouldn’t though, not for anything. I had one beer, maybe ten minutes, to make sure that Rice would be the one feeding the bugs and melting into the roots of the pine trees on Timber Ridge.

My comments:

There’s some good tension in the setup of this opening scene. I like the self-deprecating humor of the narrator’s thoughts as he’s forced to dig his own grave. I also like some of the imagery: the Stellar’s jay sidling nervously and screaming at the men, as if he knows what’s happening below; the fallen trees portrayed as losers in a battle, which foreshadows the coming battle between Rice and the narrator. I admire the way the writer uses these images to add layers of depth to the action in this scene.

On the other hand, the imagery didn’t work for me in the following sentence, “Too much kindness hung off his high voice like an ill-fitting mask.” I had to pause to make sense of everything that was going on in this sentence: the high voice with “too much” kindness, an ill-fitting, hanging mask.

Avoid confusing the reader 

On my first read-through, when Rice said (in reference to the drinks in the truck), “You know what you gotta do to get to it,” I thought he meant getting physically to the vehicle. This confused me until I reread the page and realized that Rice was demanding  information from his would-be victim.

My initial confusion made me question whether the narrator was actually in danger. This section should be revised for clarity.

Break up long sentences to enhance pacing and tension

While there’s nice tension in the scene, I think it could be strengthened by tweaking some of the longer sentences.

For example, instead of

“Rice dropped his cigarette onto the dry pine needles that covered the road and smothered it with his boot heel, a good citizen.”

Break it up as follows

“Rice dropped his cigarette onto the dry pine needles that covered the road and smothered it with his boot heel. A good citizen.”

Nits

This is a minor point, but the first sentence, “Digging a grave is thirsty work under the high summer sun, even when it’s your own” might be stronger written as “especially when it’s your own.”

Overall

Good tension, fresh imagery, an appealing narrator–overall, I found this first page to be a promising start. Thank you to the brave writer who submitted this page to us for review today!

TKZ’ers, do you have additional comments or notes for our writer today?

Internet Fame Doesn’t Always Drive Book Sales

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shutterstock_175846916Have you ever wondered whether “going viral” with a video or Tweet would boost your book sales? Think again. The impact of sudden fame on a writing career can be fleeting as well as fickle.

Author Jami Attenberg recently wrote about her experience with instant  Internet fame. Attenberg, who has written around a half-dozen novels including a NYT-bestseller, became an overnight sensation when she set up a successful sting to recover a stolen bicycle. So how did all that media attention affect her book sales? Nada much, according to the writer. Attenberg’s “fame” faded quickly, and she eventually returned to the daily, unglamorous grind of writing.

It’s a different story with Zoella Sugg, a YouTube “vlogger” who built a large following with her online tutorials telling young women how to apply makeup, do their hair, and deal with personal issues. According to an article in The Guardian, sales of Sugg’s first book, Girl Online, made her the fastest-selling debut author on record. Her forward progress hit some bumpy air when it became known that Girl Online had been created in collaboration with a ghost writer. Happily for Sugg, her online fans didn’t seem to care about the news of a ghost writer, any more than they cared about her Tweet asking her fans to “Bare with me” as she took a hiatus from the Internet to uncloud her head.

There’s a scary side of Internet fame as well. You’re probably familiar with the story of how one ill-considered Tweet upended the life and career of a corporate communications executive. That story shows that when we take a false step on the Internet, we can quickly find ourselves swimming in uncharted waters. Such areas of risk on the Internet map should be marked with the cartographer’s ancient warning: “Here Be Dragons.”

Here’s my take on the benefits of Internet celebrity. If you become known for posting make-up tutorials, grumpy cat videos, or quitting a job in a dramatic fashion, you might be able to cash in on that celebrity with fans of make-up, grumpy cats, or dramatic exits. But if you’re an author who writes fiction for a living, don’t expect a passing burst of Internet attention to push your books. For that you need to focus on your writing, instead.

 

Five Inspired Gifts for Writers

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If you’ve ever struggled to find a perfect gift for a writer friend, Buzzfeed has come up with a list of 32 suggestions. I surfed the web and turned up five more interesting gift ideas for the writer in your life:

1. Aqua Notes

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Every writer knows that some of the best ideas occur to us while we’re in the shower. Aqua Notes notepads contain waterproof sheets of paper– now you can scribble down those great ideas before they go down the drain.

 

 

 

 

2. Antique Book Leather Case for a Smart Phone

1iphonecaseThese distressed leather cases for smart phones make it look like you’re toting around a vintage book. You can even customize some of these cases with your own text.

 

 

 

 

3. Bamboo Bathtub Caddy

1bathrub A spa caddy lets you read in the tub while you’re drinking a glass of wine. What could be better?

4. Shakespeare Insult Generator

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My favorite. The Shakespeare Insult Generator suggests creative ways for telling off any “obscene rump-fed horn beast” who cuts you off in traffic. I had to buy one for myself.

 

 

 

 

 

5. Night Writer LED Pen

How many times have you wished you had one of these? These LED pens let you write in the dark without disturbing others.

Let us know if you have any more gift ideas to add to our list!

Creating Tangible Connections in an Online World

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Chaucers-2Later today I’ll be driving north up the coast to attend a book signing in Santa Barbara. The event will be held at Chaucer’s, which the LA Times has called “the little bookstore that could“. Chaucer’s has flourished and grown during a time when other local retailers, including mega-bookstores such as Borders and Barnes and Noble, have faltered and closed their doors in the wake of Amazon and the advance of online marketing.

I’m enthusiastic about the prospect of enjoying some tangible, human interaction that is centered around reading and books.  I should seek out this experience more often, I  suddenly realize. In years gone by, I used to make regular pilgrimages to bookstores, if only for a fly-by and to grab a cup of java. Nowadays, most of those bookstores have disappeared. Seldom did a month go by in the past when I didn’t find some reason for dropping by our local library. Today, I always seem to be hunched behind my laptop or iPad.

When did the reading experience become so solitary? (Let’s not even mention writing–the craft of writing has always been a lonely road.)shutterstock_62915473

So here’s my epiphany for the day (you’re probably already aware of it): when we replaced our physical reading venues with virtual ones, we also lost a quality of personal connection. Those connections may have seemed fleeting and minor in real time, but they added real value, I think. I miss them.

So tonight, I’m planning to set things back to rights. I’m going to honor and celebrate the human connection of reading, by driving two hours to attend a book reading at Chaucer’s. (Tonight’s author, by the way, will be Robin Winter. She will be signing and reading from her latest science fiction novel, WATCH THE SHADOWS. If you’re in the Santa Barbara area, I hope to see you there!)

Am I alone in feeling that something important has been lost during the gradual transition to an online reading world? Please share your experience about what has changed for you as a reader in recent years.

First-page Critique: THINGS NOT FORGOTTEN

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Today we’re critiquing the first page of a story called THINGS NOT FORGOTTEN. I’ll add my comments at the end, and then I invite you all to add your thoughts in the Comments.

THINGS NOT FORGOTTEN

normanbates_thumb2Wednesday, 10:30 p.m.

But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

James 3:8

Keep running. Don’t stop until you know the madman is gone. But he was still alive.

Jason smelled his own sweat…pungent and sour. And vomit. He’d thrown up, splattering the front of his plaid flannel shirt, the taste still in his mouth. Urine soaked the front of his jeans. He couldn’t believe he’d pissed himself.

How could he run away and leave his best friend?

Eric’s screams still echoed inside his head.

His feet pounded the earth. He glimpsed over his shoulder to see if the maniac chased after him. His heart pulsed in his ears.

When he turned back, his forehead slammed into a branch. Jason staggered but stayed on his feet. Eyes watered from the pain.

Got to keep running. Don’t look back.      

His feet obeyed despite the dizziness swimming in his head. Moonlight flickered patches of light through the trees. Instead of providing a path, it only contributed to the vertigo. It had been two years since he and Eric came to the cabin to hunt. If only he somehow had grabbed his rifle when he escaped, but there was no going back.

As he ran, he used his hands as battering rams to clear a path. Knock down any low hanging branches. Twigs and brush slashed at him but he refused to stop. Blood trickled down his face and arms. It mixed with sweat and stung his eyes. He swallowed. His stomach lurched, threatening to spew whatever contents remained.

His mind replayed the events in short, choppy segments. Eric and he had been drinking beer, swapping sea stories in the navy when someone knocked on the front door. If only they had never opened it.

Now his best friend was dead, or soon would be. He didn’t know for certain. As the psychopath tortured Eric, Jason worked his hands and feet out of the rope binding him to a chair.

The nearest neighbor was five miles away, but he didn’t know in what direction. In his haste, he rushed into the thicket of trees and brush, running as fast as he could. Nothing else mattered.

But he must be far away from the cabin by now. Rare streaks of moonlight revealed glimpses of the ground. He tripped over a fallen tree. He tried to catch himself, arms flailing to catch anything his hands could grasp. He went down hard, his body spiraling across leaves like a helicopter until it crashed into a tree.

Pain shot through his ankle.

Get up!

His leaden legs wouldn’t obey. A twig snapped, then a rustle, soft and subtle. Then the crunch of leaves and footsteps like someone closing in on him.

It’s not possible. How could he have found me?

My comments:

I have to say my stomach tightened as I read this page, which is good news for the writer. The use of short sentences and strong verbs (pounded, slammed, staggered, flickered) are appropriate for an action scene. The punchy verbs and short sentences used in this example help underscore the sense of urgency and panic that is being experienced by the character. (An aside: this scene reminded me of a newspaper story I once read about a mass shooting that took place in Australia. The story included an unforgettable description of a mother and her two young girls fleeing into the brush, trying to escape from the shooter.)

I did get distracted by a couple of things in the writing. As I first read the third sentence, “But he was still alive,” I wasn’t sure if “he” referred to to the victim or killer. That unclear pronoun reference should be fixed to avoid causing potential confusion.

I found the references to the actual encounter with the killer to be generic, and therefore a bit of a let-down. Imagine that a maniacal killer has suddenly appeared at the door of your remote cabin in the woods, tied you up, and tortured your best friend. Wouldn’t you have a vivid impression of the experience as you attempt to flee? Each moment spent with such a  monster would be burned into into your brain cells. I think the writer could improve the scene by finding a stronger way to convey that experience to the reader.

The sentence, “It had been two years since Eric and he came to the cabin to hunt” was confusing. Had they been living in the woods for two years? The writer needs to rework that section, or simply edit out that line.

The phrase “dizziness swimming in his head” struck me as a bit off the mark. Same comment applies for the image of the body spiraling like a helicopter. That sentence  comes off as a bit of overreach. (Also, I think one tends to think of a person’s arms flailing in space in a circular pattern like a helicopter, not the entire body.)

This comment is a really tiny nit: I stumbled on “rare streaks of moonlight”, probably because I initially misread it as “rare steaks.” (Silly, I know, but you don’t want to lose any reader for a reason that can easily be avoided.)

Overall, I think this page is in promising first-draft condition. The writer just needs to sharpen the language here and there, and do some polishing with an edit.

Now I’d like to hear from the rest of you. How do you like this first page? Please add your comments and suggestions. And thank you to the brave writer who submitted this work!