Just Sit Down and Write - Motivation and Distraction

So often I hear the words, sit down on write. If you want to finish a book, short story or whatever it is, it takes hard work and sometimes there are just many shinny distractions available to take up that time and effort that it takes to write. Many of those distractions that am thinking of now, why because those distractions are so much easier (and fun) than writing this blog post.

Now distractions can take a number of forms – the internet, social media (facebook and youtube – you are very guilty of this), television, computer games make up the less ‘noble’ (for lack of a better term) forms of distractions. When you are taking part in these activities then at least you know that you are being distracted – you can’t play minecraft or watch the TV. And as well as this being the most recognisable distractions, you can walk away from these – you can turn off the TV, the broadband or even go out to the café or the distraction free library to get those words out. And the other good thing about these distractions is that they can be used as rewards after you have done your writing.

That brings us onto the more noble types of distractions – the things that have to be done e.g. cleaning the house and the things that help you write. Background noise can be a big one here. Peacefully on, it can help you to write but let that music get too loud or too interesting and it quickly becomes a distraction. And then we come quickly onto the topic of research. We all need to do research to write, especially those of us that write genre fiction to help us build our worlds. The trick is judging when you have done the right amount of research and when to start writing. If anyone can actually fully do this, well then I’ll take my hat off to you.

Then there are the emotional distractions – as one member of our group described it this the crippling self-doubt; an unconscious aversion to sticking my head up above a non-existent herd, that even if it did exist, wouldn't actually give a crap what I was doing. The comparison to others and the belief you just aren’t that good. I find personally that this distraction often comes midway through first draft and the only way that I get rid of this is reminding myself that no one other than me has to see the first draft. By the time others see, well it will have been through several more drafts, so it didn’t matter that the first draft pretty much sucked.

The worse type of distraction are the ones that pop around from one too another. What do they say about the grass being greener?

Incidentally, no one listed, reading as common distraction too, probably because that’s not an easy lay on the sofa activity either.

So if it is this hard and there are so many distractions in the way, then why do we do it. Well, for me, it’s because for lack of better words then – I’m a storyteller. My brain jumps from creative idea to creative idea and I need to share them, so why not write, so I can make room for more little gems. But what got me going originally was travel and bad books. I was backpacking around south east Asia – Penh Penn in Siem Reap to be exact, and there was no English language TV in the evenings, so I was stuck with books. And I read this book, which shall remain nameless, and it was dreadful – I didn’t even finish it, which given the lack of alternatives is saying something. Instead my head created this new world, I gathered all the basic details of the story and when I finished travelling it was fully formed and I needed to start writing it. I still need to write it, to tell that story and that is a key motivator for me.

Others have similar motivations to this. Writing keep you sane, helps you figure out ideas in your head, continues and develops on something that you love, in short writing is what you love doing.

And there are the smaller motivators, encouraging words from friends, word count goals, getting into the flow of a story, catching a new idea (quite often when you wake up with it at 3am), reading, fresh air and that feeling of achievement when you have done.

So in conclusion, if you are a writer, then you write and you tend not to get caught up in those distracts for too long. Now all, think about why you started writing and go write – you’ll feel better after you get those words down.

A description of my writing process. by Matthew Presley

My writing’s terrible.

When I first write down an idea, I’m usually rushing through to get it down on paper before I forget things. My sentences run on, description becomes a torrent of florid adjectives, as superfluous and unnecessary as X-Factor contestants in February. Dialogue isn’t there; I have lines of exposition between speech marks, but characters aren’t talking to each other. They’re talking to the script, hitting a bunch of marks before the next set piece lumbers in. Because I write by hand before typing up, I’ll equate that 1 page will be 500 words, but this is rarely the case. Speech lines of two or three words are common. Hyperdense black holes of description can be so tightly written as to exert gravitic mass. I’ll write scenes out of order and guess what the characters will be talking about, or sometimes who’s in the scene, so the first draft is often an incomprehensible mess of one liners and exposition over the same point as well as sentences going on for too long while making similar points to however I started the sentence.

So once I’ve got the first full-length run-through of the story, I print out the lot, and edit. Once I’ve got a sense of what the story is and where it’s going, I know which bits to cut. Sometimes information needs moving round; plot important knowledge is needed at a certain point in the story, so I have to find a space to slip it in. One thing I’ve found recently is that I’ll repeat the same idea. For instance;

                Run Away! => Escape => Caught => Escape => Caught => End of Chapter

I do this when I’m writing a scene and I’m not sure when the chapter ends going to fit in. It can be simplified to;

                Run Away! => Escape => Caught => End of Chapter

No matter how interesting the second escape and capture are, they’re not needed for the story. I might even question if the character should run away in the first place if they’re going to be captured again in the same chapter.

Also once I’ve got a full run-through of the story, ideas may change. Characters won’t blindly follow the story just because it’s the simplest course of action. Occam’s Razor has no personality. It doesn’t get angry, frustrated, scared, or doubtful; it just does. Unless you’re writing about Terminators, your characters should have their own downfalls. As snappy as the one-liner I wrote a year or two ago was, if it doesn’t fit the character, it goes. Lines I stole wholesale from somewhere else? These don’t often fit what’s happening after rewrites. And then there’re characters who, in the grand scheme of the story, are utterly pointless. Plots that go nowhere, or little details I added thinking it’d lead into something else, often have to be cut or reworked to have a pay-off. Sometimes its intentional; a character will be working on something meaningless to the story, a gunsmithing contract for some guy called ‘Chekhov’. Other times, it’s more like Chekhov’s discarded armoury. Sometimes a character in story one is more important in story two; either they should be made important in story one, or cut out entirely.

At this point, I’m ready to read out my stuff at writers group. I have deemed it not as terrible. If I have time, I’ll do minor adjustments before the read-out. Sometimes stray run-on sentences crept through. Sometimes a suggestion was made in group at the last meeting and I decide to follow it. Often I’ve changed details in the previous chapter that need changing from that point on.

Then comes read out; I have to say, even though the writers group is very supportive and encouraging, until I’ve read something out, I don’t know if it works or not. I’ll never forget the first major time I read something out that fell flat; it was the first scene I’d written in that story, and the point to which the story had been working towards. I’d been so happy with it, and in my arrogance I thought ‘this can’t be improved!’

I read it. There was an awkward silence. I recognised that silence immediately; everyone was trying to think of an encouraging, constructive way to say ‘that was terrible’. It was a wake-up call, and that’s when I started editing and redrafting as heavily as I do.

I rewrote the whole scene; all the dialogue changed, for a start. I thought hard about each line the characters said; each line had to be important. I cut out an unnecessary description at the start, to make the scene flow a bit faster. The ending punchline remained the same, as did the basic topic of conversation, but there was more character to it. I reread the same scene at the group a few weeks later, and got a much better reception. Since then I’ve realised that yes, my writing’s terrible. That’s why I keep working on it until it’s not terrible, occasionally to the point of being okay.

 

Continuing with Nanowrimo when you fall behind

So as expected this week, I fell behind with nanowrimo. In fact earlier this week when I found myself 7545 word behind where I should be and posted the phrase on my facebook status that nanowrimo was kicking my ass. But thinking about it that phrase wasn’t completely true, what was slowly down my word count was work getting in the way, the fact that the days were busy and sucking my creative energy and the fact that at the weekend, I had a lot of work related jobs to do instead of working on the book which were completely unavoidable.

 

Now the easiest thing to do at this point would be to give up. But I had a writing run to keep going and no matter how slowly the word count was growing. Writing 112 words is not a lot, and its 1555 words below the nanowrimo daily target but trust me it is better than no words. The important thing was that no matter how busy I was the words were going down and I know that my evening are due to free up a bit more in the next week.

So I guess what this short post is saying, is that no matter how hard it gets, some words are better than none. And that’s it for now as I’m cutting things short tonight as I have a chapter to finish and another 1420 to write.

Why Join A Writers' Group?

I'm a writer. That probably conjures up an image in your mind - the starving author, alone in a draughty garret in the middle of the night, laboriously hammering away on the keys of an old manual typewriter, half-drunk coffee and cheese sandwiches off to one side, a waste bin overflowing with screwed up manuscripts under the desk, a malcontented cat glaring down from the shelf...

It doesn't have to be like that (except for the cat. There's no getting around the cat). You can write your masterpiece on your own, sure, but you're probably much better off getting some outside input along the way. Even Byron didn't live up to the Byronic Ideal of the writer's garret - what else was the Villa Diodati but the ultimate writers' group? As well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, that meeting also produced Polidori's The Vampyre.

Following in the footsteps of Byron and the Shelleys (now there's a band name...) may not result in a work of that calibre, but there are several good reasons for aspiring authors to seek out writers' groups of their own. And you won't have to go as far as Geneva, either...

It's social. No (wo)man is an island. Alone, we starve ourselves of inspiration. Not that anybody is going to steal your ideas if you go to a writers' group - that sort of behaviour is thankfully rarer than hens' teeth - but watching and listening to other people talk about their writing, their ideas, their plots and characters, can sometimes kick-start your own creative processes. And while no (wo)man is an island, the corollary is that together we are archipelagos of enthusiasm (Alasdair Stuart's phrase), which means there's the added bonus that when you say "I write epic fantasy/urban fantasy/hard SF/Wolverine erotica" in a group of writers, people don't draw back for fear of getting geek cooties (normal people are so over-rated).

It broadens the mind. Reading about stuff on the internet is no substitute for actually talking to real people about it. And yes, I am fully aware of the irony in that statement. You'll learn about pacing, about info-dumps and character motivations, and you may even meet published authors in workshops (Open Road Writers in Chesterfield recently had both Rod Duncan and Emma Pass running workshop sessions).

It thickens the skin. Your mum likes it. Does she, really? Or is she just saying that because she's your mum? A good writers' group will deliver constructive criticism. A good writer won't wilt under that criticism. If you have any ambition to submit your work for publication, you'll have to get used to criticism and a face-to-face writers' group is one of the best places to learn that skill.

It strengthens discipline. From a personal point of view, this has been important. Because this group meets twice a month, I've got definite deadlines. Twice a month, I need something I can read out, something that can be critiqued. It gives my writing some much needed impetus.

Those are the most important reasons I've got for joining a writers' group. You may have your own: let us know what they are!