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You Will Always Regret The Book You Didn’t Write

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I almost didn’t write today’s post.

Today is parent/teacher conferences, I had a ton of family obligations this week, so I’m not where I want to be in my work in progress… you know, the normal excuses.  But I’d made a goal for myself at the beginning of the year.  I’d blog once a week about writing, usually about motivation.  I also knew that I’d kick myself if I didn’t meet my goal in March – not meeting goals should be something left for December 😉

All the time people tell me they want to write a book.  I’ll ask them about it later, and they haven’t started, or wrote a few pages and then stopped, and the regret is there.  Writing isn’t easy.  There’s always something I could be doing like reading or binge watching some great TV show everyone around me is talking about, but then I’d regret the book I didn’t write.

If you enjoyed this post, I have several others on motivation and writing you may like: Begin, 72 Hours a Year, A Page A Day and Write Like A Champion.

The amazing Candace Havens helped out last week with her wonderful post on writing.  Check it out here if you haven’t already.

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Lose Yourself

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This week, the wonderful Candace Havens shared her thoughts on writing.

There is so much truth and insight in her words.  It’s interesting, that so many people have told me one of their favorite books of mine is SEALed and Delivered, and I wrote it at pretty crappy time in my life.  So writing as therapy – Candace has something!!

I can’t imagine not having the creative outlet of my writing.  So many of my friends have knitting or the adult coloring book craze.  Of course, there is also READING or gaming.  Do something that gives you joy!

514BHvZ4oTL._SX314_BO1,204,203,200_Candace’s books are as amazing as she is.  Check out Her Sexy Marine Valentine out this month!!!  She managed to get 3 of my favorite words in one title 🙂  Available on Amazon and Kindle and at eHarlequin.  Coming in July is Make Mine a Marine

You can visit Candace at her website here.  She has some excellent writing free workshops as well a class you can take for a small fee, and you can learn all about that here.

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72 Hours A Year

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I love my writing space.  It’s a desk and hutch where I’m surrounded by all my books and pictures.  I’d share a photo, but it’s also covered with 3 notebooks, my taxes and tons of loose papers I can’t get rid of (have I mentioned my slight hoarding tendencies?).

Sometimes I use my desk as an excuse not to write – because I’m not at it.  I had this great professor in college, Deborah Chester, who would tell us to get rid of our crutches.  My desk was my crutch.

Once I got rid of that crutch, I could write anywhere.  Gena Showalter and I plotted Dating the Undead while I sat in my car on top of a canyon (the only place I could get cell reception while chaperoning at a youth camp).  I wrote Lord of Rage in a cafeteria and edited Naked Thrill stuck in a tornado shelter.

Lack of time is the biggest crutch most of us use for not getting words on the page, yet we can write anywhere.  We’re not tied to a desk or our electronics – grab a notebook and write while you’re waiting for your kids to get out of school or practice.  Write on the train to and from work.  Write during lunch.

If you liked this post, you may enjoy Begin and You Can’t Write Yesterday.

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Inner Editor

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Lock Up.001I’ve talked some about the inner editor in the Write Like A Champion post, and yeah, that IE is a jerk.  But a useful jerk.  Just not when you’re in the initial stage of getting the book on paper (or doc).

Your IE can challenge you to take risks and be at your most creative, but can also become like the toxic friend who you used to like hanging out with in small doses, but now the self critique has morphed into constant criticism.

In that first draft frenzy of getting ideas out of your head, lock the internal editor away.  Some of my friends won’t even correct their spelling so they can keep moving forward.  I usually will stop after the first chapter or so and examine my idea – will it sustain a full manuscript?  Am I still interested in it?  How much research will it require?  I may let my IE out just to put her toe in the water, not a full dive.  If I want to move forward, I write a loose synopsis, lock the IE away and get right back into frenzied first draft mode.

Once that the first draft is done, it’s time to face your IE like that one relative you try to avoid until it’s Thanksgiving – with cautious open arms.

It’s still not too late to start your book and have it completed by the end of the year.  Check out Begin and A Page A Day!

 

 

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I Just Didn’t Love It

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Choose passion over perfection.001For #WriteLikeAChampion today, I’ve asked my dear friend, Gena Showalter, for a quote.  I love it!

A few years ago, a friend of mine shared a rejection letter she received.  On it, the agent said, “I just didn’t love it.”  Ouch!  “But what does it mean?”

As someone who trained as a journalist, I feel the frustration of that question.  Was it the writing?  Was it the characterization? Problems with the plot?  Those I can fix.  Not loving something… not so much.

Everything about a book can be perfect, the plot, grammar, and characterization etc. and completely passionless.   I know I’m not alone in watching a movie or beginning a new series that should hit every one of my hot buttons, but just left me with meh.  So I began a list of things I think takes us away from the creative passion of writing.  (Feel free to add!)

  • Ruthless self-editing makes your prose tight, but is it also slashing away at the passion while aiming for perfection?
  • Avoiding risks and following the writing “rules” in an effort to make your work rejection proof.
  • Listening too much to your inner editor and allowing self doubt seeps into your writing – Write Like A Champion
  • No longer writing what you love.

Gena has published over fifty books since her first came out in 2004, hitting the New York Times and USA Today lists.  Her latest book, Firstlife, hit the shelves this week.  You can buy it from Amazon, Kindle or iTunes.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to read Begin, Say It Loud! Waiting for the Muse, Write What Scares You and You Can’t Write Yesterday.

 

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Write What Scares You

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I talked about fight or flight in my last post, Write Like A Champion.  Fear is one of our most primal emotions and kicks in our survival instinct like nothing else!  As an author, you can harness all of that in your writing to connect to your reader and create the shared experiences that keeps someone up past 3am (even with work the next morning) for “just one more chapter”.

But the kind of scary I’m suggesting is not just serial killers or whether or not to put your bare toes in that gap between the floor and the cabinet in the kitchen at night (don’t!).  It’s the emotions and memories that we don’t want to face or remember – experiences we don’t want to relive – anything we want to run away from might be something to explore in your writing.  That’s you at your most primal and that’s when readers respond.  Of course, some pasts are too painful.  Maybe you’re not ready, maybe you’ll never be ready.  That’s your journey.

Writing from deep emotion applies just as much to comedy.  At its heart, The Wedding Crashers deals with many deep themes of acceptance, loneliness, getting older, etc.  Write down five things that scare you.  Then crumple that page up and write five more.

If you liked this post, you may enjoy my others including Begin, A Page A Day, Waiting for the Muse, You Can’t Write Yesterday and Say It Loud!

Also, Naked Pursuit is out this month on Amazon and Kindle.

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Write Like A Champion

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I grew up watching sports (not playing – yuck 🙂 ) – and you can’t find better motivational sayings than in athletics.  The advertisers around sports can be pretty amazing, too.  Just Do It by Nike (or most commercials really by Nike)  transcends.

Of course, you need a lot of motivation when most likely you will fail.  68 basketball teams were involved 2015 March Madness, but only one took home the championship trophy.  67 other teams ended their season on a loss (ugh).  With those kinds of stats, self-doubt creeps in, so coaches and players need some stellar motivation.  Both the University of Oklahoma and Notre Dame have a sign in their locker room and take on away games.  It simply states – Play Like A Champion Today.  Players touch (or often hit) the sign on their way out to the field to remind them why they are there.

I have never met a writer (or almost anyone for that matter) who doesn’t have at least a little self-doubt.  When you first begin writing, phrases like “You’ll never be as good as XX” or “Do you really think anyone will ever want to read this?” float through your mind the moment you pick up the pen.  Then as you become more seasoned, there’s the always pleasant “This will probably get rejected, too”.   It doesn’t stop when you become published, now it’s “This won’t be as good as your last book” and “your agent is going to drop you” as well as every 2 Star review or bad comment you’ve read on the Internet join together.  Many people call this your internal editor, and he or she is the worst kind of jerk.  My plan used to be get up at 5:30 every morning because the editor just isn’t awake that early.

Why does self-doubt have to creep into everything?  My personal view (cobbled together from dozens of articles I’ve read over time)  is this is survival at its most basic.  Your mind is preparing you for all that can go wrong so you can be aware, plan, prepare and survive.  (Thank you self doubt!) You’ve seen the danger, now it’s fight or flight time.

Only your project isn’t a charging mastodon, so sometimes that fight or flight instinct doesn’t engage and we’re stuck in self-doubt.  Here are a few things that have worked for me (and feel free to share if you have your own).

  1. Recognize doubt for what it is – part of the process – thank it and move on.  IMG_9417
  2. Remember what made you excited about your project in the first place, harness that joy.
  3. Create a motivational ritual.  Now normally, I’m against having writing rites because sometimes these can be used as excuses, “Oh, I can’t write today because I didn’t drink my special coffee.”  But I have a little sign near my computer that says Write Like A Champion and if I’m writing in a notebook, I usually jot it down somewhere – today I will fight the mastodon, I will write like a champion.

Now go WRITE LIKE A CHAMPION!!!

This month my latest book released – Naked Pursuit.  You can read an excerpt here or purchase from Amazon here or Kindle here.

If you like this post – I have others!  Begin, A Page A Day, Waiting for the Muse, You Can’t Write Yesterday and Say It Loud!

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Say It Loud!

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I’ve been asked to add a few craft posts to #WriteLikeAChampion – so here’s the first one, and it pertains to dialogue.  Dialogue is my absolute favorite thing to write.  (My least favorite is clothing descriptions as I have zero sense of style.)  To me, dialogue is where I truly connect to my characters as a writer.  Usually, I just let them speak, and love it when I’m surprised at what they say.  When it feels like I’m transcribing a conversation I know I’ve hit the sweet spot.

Okay, okay okay, I know.  I’ve read the studies that most human communication is nonverbal – and everyone who’s lived with a teenager knows this is very true.  Our words don’t always convey what we’re really thinking and feeling.  Your characters will also spout off things they don’t mean, and while character expressions and tone of voice and other body language adds layers to the scene, too much will drag your dialogue down and slow the pace.

Dialogue should sound like a conversation between people, and to make sure it rings true, you have to read it out loud.  Over and over.  Cutting out the things that don’t sound natural or are just plain boring.

And yes, people will catch you talking to yourself.  They might even tease you.  I’ve been so involved reading a scene I’ve called a kid by a character’s name.  “Just a second, Breena!”

At the revision and final edit stage of a manuscript, read the whole book out loud.  Anything that trips you up or makes you pause – reevaluate whether it should stay in your manuscript.

Happy Writing!

If you found this post helpful, you may want to read Begin, A Page A Day, Waiting for the Muse and You Can’t Write Yesterday!

Also – Naked Pursuit released this week!  Please check it out here!

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You Can’t Write Yesterday

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This week’s #WriteLikeAChampion message is short and simple – you can’t write yesterday.

To tell you the truth, this was going to be a much longer post.  I had written a lot of stuff (in my mind) about watching my teens learning about procrastination or talking to someone about regret for the things they’ve never done.  But really, what are you and I both waiting for? Write. Now.  Then we can both look at yesterday and smile.

If you’re interested in writing, I have other posts.  Check out Begin, A Page A Day and Waiting For The Muse.

I’m also super excited about my next book coming out in just a few days!!  Check out Naked Pursuit.

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Waiting For The Muse

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“What was the best writing advice you ever received?”

Last week I was asked what advice was most helpful to me when I began writing.  Without a doubt, it was: Butt in chair, Hands on Keyboard (BIC-HOK).  I’m not sure who came up with that phrase, but like how some use the Godfather as the answer to all of life’s questions, BIC-HOK is usually the ticket to all writing quandaries.

How did you finish your book?

Butt in chair, hands on keyboard.

What was the secret to making the bestseller list?

Butt in chair, hands on keyboard.

Of course, writing is creative, wrapped up in myths and legends about inspirations and muses, and I must respect the creative process.  But there’s also realities, like mortgages, bills and your kids’ looming tuition that comes around like clockwork every fall and spring.

I’ve heard and yes, even used, phrases like, “I’m waiting for my muse” or “I’m just not feeling inspired to write”.  But what I’ve found is that for me, those are excuses and permission to myself not to write.  Because although butt in chair, hands on keyboard is simple advice, it’s not easy advice to take.  Writing can be agonizing on a dozen different levels.

But what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right?  So write.  Write through the plot holes, and the lack of character development and that you have no idea how the book is going to end.  Don’t worry that what you’re writing sucks.  As my dear friend, Gena Showalter likes to say, “You can fix suck.”

No more waiting around for your muse.  Be your own muse.

If you enjoyed this post, you may like Begin and A Page A Day.

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