Battling

For once the other day things were going fine. I caught up on my chores and made my guy's favorite dinner (which he deserves because he works in retail and for him every day from now until Christmas is a bad day.) I also took the pups out for a long walk and had a chat with a friend who's out of work and needs the moral support. I felt great and was ready to knock out some words. Only the minute I sat down to write crickets began chirping in my head.

Besides the crickets there was nothing. I had plenty to write, but no idea on where to start or what to put on the page. My brain flatly refused to cough up a single word of fiction.

Sometimes I do go blank like that, like the page I'm not writing, and there are a couple of ways I shake it off: I get up and walk around for a few minutes, or I listen to a song from my novel playlist, or I fold laundry or do some other mindless task. Then I go back and try again, and usually that works.

Not this time. I repeated my shake-it-off routine until I ran through everything that usually works and I was still drawing the blank.

I have a long-standing agreement with my creative side; I do not abuse it and it does not bail on me. Even now and then one of us violates that agreement, and then it's time to engage more directly. When I overwork my creative side, it messes up everything I do until I take a break. When my creative side runs out on me, I go after it and drag it back to work.

When all my gentler methods fail, I sit down and start typing story. What comes out on the page is always boring and mechanical and about as much fun to write as an obituary. My internal editor immediately rears her pointy little head and starts blowing raspberries at the page. I churn on, typing whatever makes sense because I know writing badly is not just bad writing, it's bait.

My creative side is smug, full of herself and generally thinks she can do no wrong -- she has to be that way, and I accept it because she makes the magic happen. I'm just the dumb assistant who does the grunt work, and that's all I'm ever going to be, and that's fine because I know what every other stage hand knows: can't have a show without the stage.

The time I spend writing absolute crap varies; sometimes it's an hour of plodding, other times it's a few minutes. At some point in the process of typing, my creative side shows up to have a look. If she had any sense at all she'd let me trudge on for hours, but no, Ms. Busybody can't stay away. Naturally she zeroes on something particularly lame so she can sneer and make fun of it.

I let her have a few snickers as I back away from the page and let her get in front of me. See, I've got her now, and I know what she's going to do: tell me how to rewrite it. Which I do, and then continue on until she makes another snide suggestion, and another, and then loses all patience with me, pushes me aside and takes over from there. No matter how many blank cards I draw, writing through them until the creativity shows up and takes over always works.

How do you get your creativity to kick in when it wants nothing to do with you? Let us know in comments.

NaNoWriMojo Ten

Ten Things to Help Restore Your NaNoWriMojo

Change Locations: Moving your writing to another space may eliminate whatever is distracting you. Think of an alternative place that is different from where you're writing now (i.e., if you're hanging out in a busy coffeeshop and getting nothing written, try the quiet room at your local library. Or if your quiet spot at home isn't working, try a busy coffeeshop.) If weather permits, find an outdoor space (the backyard, a park, a lake, the beach, etc.) where you can commune a little with nature while you write.

Clean Something: Vacuuming a room, doing a load of laundry or even tidying up your writing space restores order to some part of your immediate environment and, unless you like being a slob, makes you feel better about it. That good feeling can carry over into the work once you start writing again.

Emergency Reward: Often that carrot you've hung over the finish line seems too far away, so set up one that's a bit closer. Promise yourself a small reward for just making your writing goal today. Make it something good, too; the more you want it, the more you're likely to work for it.

Exercise: Another good way to vent some frustration is to get moving: take a walk, go to the gym, jog around the block, put on that workout DVD and follow along for twenty minutes, etc. Your goal is to work up a sweat, then take a warm shower and get back to the writing (hopefully in a more relaxed, refreshed state.)

Make Something Minty: Mint is naturally soothing, so drinking a cup of mint-flavored tea, chewing a stick of mint gum or otherwise indulging in a mint treat may bump you from crabby to calm.

Muse with Music: Play your favorite CD while you sit and relax for ten minutes. Don't think about anything; just listen. If you have a soundtrack made up for your story, that's a good choice -- or just listen to the sort of music that puts you in a positive mood. If you can write with the music playing, take it back with you and listen while you work.

Project Switch: This is one of my personal mojo restorers; I stop work on one project and write on another for a short period of time. I always switch to something I enjoy writing but I'm not especially invested in so it doesn't steal me away from my NaNo novel.

Scene Skip: At least once a week without fail I hit a scene that for whatever reason I can't write. If this happens to you, instead of letting it become a brick wall between you and the rest of your story, skip it and go work on the next scene. Mark the place in your manuscript with a notation [I use square brackets and a one-line description of the scene like this] so you can easily go back and write it later.

Switch Creative Gears: This past weekend I had a particularly dreary writing day during which I fought to get every word on the page. I took regular ten minutes breaks and used them to work on a small quilting project. Switching gears like that gave me little creative/spiritual boosts, which kept me from giving up.

Write Past It: This last idea is tough, but if writing stories was easy everyone could do it. You just keep writing. Doesn't matter how well you write, or if anything you do write will be salvageable. You're not going to think about how you're writing because you're going to be too busy writing. Keep working and moving forward with the story until your mojo returns (and yes, if you push on it generally does. If it doesn't, you can always edit brilliantly.)

Blockbuster Ten

Ten Things To Help You Bust Through Writer's Block
(dedicated to L., who requested some ideas)

Change Locations: The space you're writing in may be interfering with your process (and is generally because of bad lighting, uncomfortable temperature, noise, family or co-worker traffic or any other element that distracts you.) To discover if it is, take your work and go somewhere else. Coffee shops are the default, but if you have time check out your local public library, outdoor parks, school media centers, employee break rooms or cafeterias at work, tea rooms, etc. Or ask a family member or friend if you can borrow an empty/spare room or office of theirs to work in for a few hours.

Clean Something: This is a method I use to work out whatever is getting between me and the page that my morning meditation doesn't clear out; I get up and do some housework like fold a load of laundry, vacuum, mop, dust, etc. It improves my mood, helps me keep up with my chores and makes me feel better after the task is done. For really bad writing days I'll stop and go clean an entire room.

Get Physical: If you do some regular type of exercise, try taking a break and working out for fifteen minutes. I have a Tai Chi video tape I pop in the recorder that helps me enormously when I'm too aggravated to write or meditate. If you can get outside that also helps; I've found taking the dogs for even a short walk improves my mood and calms me almost 100% of the time.

Listen to Music: I put together a playlist for every book I write, and when I get mired down I'll listen to one of the songs. This is fun and also can help you focus and visualize; music is one of the most direct methods of finding inspiration. If I'm having a particularly difficult time with a specific scene I'll put on a calming instrumental song and loop it to play over and over until I work out the kinks.

Meditate: My favorite definition of meditation is this one: Prayer is about talking to God; meditation is about listening to Him. There are innumerable methods for and philosophies about meditation, and not all require you to be a person of faith; if you don't believe in a higher power it can simply be a time when you listen to yourself. I meditate every morning, and my method evolved from a technique called the thousand-petal lotus (and here's an article where the technique is explained and used for weight control.) This is a great way to deal with the frustrations that get between you and the page, as well as the most proactive thing you can do to prevent writer's block. Try it; you might find that as little as 10 minutes of meditation before you write can help you disperse a lot of the negative thoughts and energy drainers that might mess with you later.

Pick a Reward: Aka dangle a carrot in front of your nose to get yourself moving. I use books I want to read, music CDs I want to listen to and movies I want to watch as incentives to finish my weekly writing goals, and I always reward myself with something fun when I finish a novel. It doesn't have to be a reward you have to purchase, either; if money is tight you can make your carrot something you love to do at home, such as watching an hour of television, taking a long hot bubble bath or baking a batch of homemade cookies for yourself.

Skip Ahead: If there's a scene you simply can't write no matter how often you try, it may need to percolate a bit more in the back of your mind. To give it time to do so you can skip past it and write the next scene. Be sure to leave behind a note for yourself on what the skipped scene was supposed to accomplish, what characters appear in it, etc. Naturally you can go back to the scene whenever you feel ready to try tackling again, but I recommend giving yourself at least 48 hours before you have another go at it.

Talk it Out: This is a trick I learned while training myself to write by voice. If you go back a few paragraphs or pages of story that you've already written, and read it out loud up to the point where you were stopped by the block, you may find you can keep going and tell more of the story by saying it versus typing it. If you don't own voice recognition software, you can record the new material on a handheld tape recorder or with your computer microphone and a recording program. Then all you have to do is transcribe what you've said onto the page.

Timed & Reward Breaks: You'll need a timer or an alarm of some kind for this one (I use an ordinary kitchen timer.) When you're in writing space and nothing is happening, set the timer or alarm for five minutes and go do something else. You can do anything you want for five minutes. When the bell rings or the alarm goes off, go back to your writing space try to write again for the next fifteen minutes (and don't do anything else; you're just there to write.) If nothing happens again, reset your timer or alarm for five more minutes and take another break. Now here's the reward part: if you write a full page, as a reward you earn a ten minute break. If you write two full pages, you get a fifteen minute break. And if you write until you reach your daily goal, you get the rest of the day off.

Unplug: The internet is a wonderful thing. It's an endless universe of neat stuff waiting to be discovered. It can also be one of the worst distractions a writer has, especially when you're wrestling with a block. To get it out of your way, shut it down, and don't log on again until you've written at least a page of new material. Then get that timer or alarm out and give yourself a reward of ten minutes of internet time, because you deserve it.

Related links: Hack Your Way Out of Writer's Block ~ Overcoming Writer's Block ~ Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block ~ Writer's Block: Is It All In Your Head?

In the Trades

The February issue of The Writer was a bit of a wash this month. Several articles in the issue focused on self-publishing, but I didn't feel they presented the reality and downsides as well as they might have. It's nice to hear about the handful of authors who make it big via self-publication, but hard stats on how many don't make it, how few writers earn back their investment, and exactly how time-consuming and aggravating the self-pub process can be would have provided more balance.

On the plus side, there are the six pages in the back with 47 concise agent listings with the latest contact info, query specs and so forth. It was a last-minute redemption, but it saved the issue for me.

Poets & Writers magazine was also a downer this month, as their Jan/Feb inspiration-themed issue was not at all genre-friendly. Granted, they're celebrating their 40th anniversary, and they're firmly entrenched in the lit pit, but I think genre deserved at least a nod (and of course, I'm prejudiced, but there you go.) I think the pages devoted to congratulating winners of grants and awards should be eliminated entirely. Vanity year book pages were cute in high school; in a writer's magazine they're a waste of good space.

What saved this issue from the trashcan was one article about writer's block by Dennis Cass, How to Get Unstuck (checking P&W's site to see if they have a free copy of it online. And they don't, rats.) Dennis explains the psychology of writer's block from a cognitive perspective, and the exact mechanism of thought that may cause so many writers suffer from it. I'm not a fan of writer psychology, because a lot of it seems to me like dressed-up excuses for Lazyass Syndrome. That said, this is the first time the problem has been defined in such a way that I finally understand and see it as a legit process. I'll also never look at a pair of pliers the same way again.

Regarding the shrinkage of the trades in general, I know most print magazines now are a lot thinner because they're not getting as many advertisers. This is good and bad; I can live without the ads but there are several magazines I don't want to see disappear, and The Writer and P&W are two of them. At the same time, I think both magazines could up the practical quality of their content. So:

P&W: It's all well and good to wax-on wax-off about how wonderful and frightful and life-changing the literary experience is, but enough already. If we want more, we'll just go hang with the laptop coffee shop brigade. FYI on your list of the 50 most inspiring living authors, there are plenty of genre authors who have also shaken up the industry, started trends, created readers where there were none before and inspired innumerable other writers. Off the top of my head: Sue Grafton. John Grisham. Thomas Harris. Linda Howard. Stephenie Meyer. And for that matter, you put Susanna Clarke on your list, but not J.K. Rowling? Not that I mean to be rude, but really, what planet are you guys living on? This eye-to-ceiling whistling you do while you pretend genre isn't in the room is unworthy of you.

The Writer: You've been better than most of the writer trades, so don't blow it now and turn into another Writer's Digest. Please, we beg you. One is already one too many. As working writers we want facts, market info, tools that actually work and a practical GPS for the career. The nuts and bolts stuff is the reason why most writers buy or subscribe to the trades, and now more than ever we need that kind of content. Writers are poor, and we can't afford magazines that don't work for us. So quit with the advertiser-slanted stuff and work for us.

Not that I think anyone is going to listen to me, but just in case Kevin Larimer or Jeff Reich are Googling their names today, there are my two pennies.