That New Page Smell

Writers' Wednesday!!!

No matter what writers write or what tools they use, they all start from a singular point - a blank page.

A blank page has a lot in common with pristine new snow, an immaculate new car, or even a fresh-from-the-box cell phone.  Many people don't want to disturb it's perceived innocence by altering its state in any way.  Until you violate that space, you're not a writer.  You're a... uh... modern art admirer.  Or something like that.  But, definitely not a writer, which was my point.

Here are a few tips to get you going using that space for its intended purpose:

1. Tromp through it, carve it up, and leave your mark.  Don't write on it.  Draw.  Completely free form.  Use your non-dominant hand and scribble like a snowboarder or snowmobile driver that doesn't care where they're going.  Just fill up the page.  Eventually, you will start writing words.  The process will invoke clarity of intent and you won't even know where it came from by looking at your mess of a doodle.
   
2. Spill, stain, or stink it up.  I think we all have the same thing in mind when we get a new car.  "I'll never eat or drink in it.  I won't track any dirt in.  I'll keep it clean as long as I own it."  The irony there is we never truly own it until we've trashed it.  The reality there is we never really own it until the lending institution writes the title over to our name.  The point here is to slap words down in any order that comes to mind.  Play a one-person game of word association if you have to.  Just fill that puppy up with a big ol' block of words.  Chances are, they'll start to make sense to you and you'll be writing.
   
3. Drop it.  You know that feeling you get the first time you drop your mobile phone/handset?  The frantic putting back together of battery and case.  The close inspection of every square millimeter of surface area whilst it boots back up.  The sinking feeling of failure over the scratch that took you ten minutes to find.  Now...  Do you know that feeling you get the thirty-seventh time you dropped it?  That's the feeling you want when you write.  To get there, write "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" until you either get to work or grab an ax.

Blank pages aren't a writer's enemy.  They're our canvas.  It's up to you decide if you want to go for photorealism or a single brush stroke.  (Or it might be up to whoever hired you, but that's another discussion for another day.)

Use the "F" Word

Writers' Wednesday!!!

Look to your right and your left at the same time.  No?  Okay, without the use of mirrors, keep your eyes forward and look behind you.  Still not happening?  Hm...  Try holding onto every word, character, concept, conflict, and plot point in your mind at the same time.  (Sure, if you're writing copy for a "got milk?" print ad, you might could do that.  But, you get the point.)

Even if you are writing third-person omniscient, respect the fact that your readers/audience have the same limitations of visual space that you have.  They can only look at what you tell them to look at and where you tell them to look for it.

Focus!

In visual media, they can cut between shot/reverse-shot and multiple camera set-ups.  Occasionally they try (and fail) to make the audience feel like they're in the movie through POV.  The important thing to note is that everything is still revealed in a logical one-at-a-time sequence, often limiting what is seen to the director's specifications for tone and pace.  Not to mention, seeing registers much quicker than reading. (Half-a-second is plenty of time to hook a visual and it's probably taken you four or five seconds to read this overly long parenthetical.)

You and your readers/audience will appreciate it when you write with tunnel vision.  Ask yourself what nugget you're describing right now.  Describe it well.  What's the next nugget?  How can you transition from this nugget to that nugget without getting whiplash?

And please, please, please, please make those nuggets important to the story.  No paragraphs about a lamp that turns out to be a red herring.  No sweeping purple, apricot, and gunmetal blue landscapes unless they have a pertinent B-52 approaching through them.  Because, if there isn't, I'm sending one to really make your setting interesting.  If it doesn't add to your characters, advance the plot, or heighten the conflict, cut it.

I trust you will find that concentrating on each little moment in turn and not trying to look all over the whole story at once helps your writing flow immensely.  You won't even need to write chronologically.  Take whatever section is poking through your forehead.  If you structured properly before you started writing and can trust the editing and revision process, it won't matter.

What Have You Been Reading?

Writers' Wednesday!!!

Read.

On one hand, it's kind of weird that people might call themselves a writer when they aren't actually writing.  I guess that "writer" sounds better than "thinker" or "talker."  But, that will be a topic for another day.

On the other hand, it's kind of sad if a writer can't remember the last published thing they read, regardless of his/her daily word count output.

Read.

Reading familiarizes the mind to valuable writing processes such as sentence structure, grammar, spelling, flow, voice, clarity, and much, much more.  Better yet, most of the published material has already been edited to death.  The more you read and the more your mind can start implementing techniques naturally, then the less you'll wind up needing to edit (maybe four drafts instead of fifteen).

Read.

Don't like your writing?  Reading can also help you start finding what you like versus what you don't like.  When you read something that knocks your socks off, put your thinking cap on and figure out why you liked that.  If you just can't seem to get through a work (and everyone you know thinks it's brilliant), try to explain what's bogging you down.  It will help you write the way you love.

Read.

Listening does not count as reading.  I love a good audio book, myself.  Still, you can't expect your brain to arrange words on a page properly if you won't keep reminding it what that's supposed to look like.  You know all that good stuff you watch?  It was written, rewritten, and edited long before you had a chance to watch it.  Especially if you want to write for visual media (movies, television, commercials, vlogs), seek thee out the scripts for that type of media and read it.  Reading can elevate your content from the mindless ramblings plaguing the internet to national ad quality.

Hey!  You've just read this post!  Congratulations!  You're already following the advice.  Keep up the good work.

Argue With the Voices in Your Head

Writers' Wednesday!!!

Remember all those news stories where people defended their atrocities by claiming the voices in their head compelled them to commit such acts?  Kinda doesn't make it better, right?

Ever hear yourself, or another writer you know, say that the characters tell you/them the story?  That you/they just go along for the ride and see where they take you?  Kinda doesn't make it better, right?

Characters have lives.  Like real people.  And.  Just like real people.  Most of their life is not as interesting as they think it is.  If you let your character tell you the story, start feeling around for the cool spot under your pillow.

Being a writer is not (or should I say, "shouldn't be") the same as being a cab driver.  It's more like being a tour guide.  For truly compelling writing, it's like being a tour guide where the characters don't really know what they signed up for and probably wouldn't have signed up had they known.  Imagine getting into a cab, telling the driver where you want to go, the driver speeding off, driving like a complete lunatic in the opposite direction, getting into a barely survivable accident, discovering things about yourself you never knew, and giving the driver a good tip for the experience.

Don't let the voices in your head tell their own story.  Fight them on it.  Challenge them.  Make them convince you that doing what they originally wanted is the right way to go.  Something like this:

You:  Don't go up the stairs.  It's overplayed and makes you look ridiculous.
Protagonist:  I have to go up the stairs.
You:  No you don't.  Call the cops.  Go to a neighbors for help.  Anything that hasn't been done a million times.
Protagonist:  But, my kids are up there.  No one will believe a mother left her kids upstairs with a monster.
You:  Good point.  But, we don't know the monster is up there.
Protagonist:  I heard him.  Even if it wasn't him, I just want to see my babies and make sure they're all right.
You:  Fine.  Go upstairs.  But you're turning on a light.  None of this fumbling around in the dark crap.
Protagonist:  If I turn on a light where I am, I won't be able to see into the dark areas of the house and I'll give up my position.  I have a better chance of seeing my kids or the monster first if I keep it dark.
You:  That's why they always turn off the lights?  Well, fine.  But you're going to have to explain that to the readers because it sounds cliche and psychotic.  Especially because we don't even know the monster is up there.  You're probably going to just scare your kids.
Protagonist:  I can feel him up there.  I'm going.
You:  Hey, monster!  Are you up there?
Monster:  We don't know yet.
You:  Ha!  You answered.  You are up there.
Monster:  Well played.  lol.  (someday I'm going to dedicate a whole blog post to the misuse of 'lol' and other acronyms.)

Okay.  So.  Arguing with your characters can help you solidify your story and make it more interesting than just "channeling" their spirits.  It can also help you skip over the boring non-essential details and focus on the good stuff.  Don't let them coast through their life on easy street.  Check out my blog post on conflict for more on that.

Now... how to get psychos to stop going along with the voices in their head...

Now Boarding for Good Intentions

Writer's Wednesday!!!

How do you plan a vacation?  Drive to an airport, scan the board, pick a flight that sounds nice, see where it takes you, deal with changing money and finding lodging after you arrive, and then try to find out what you're even going to do while you're there?

I'll concede that some people can and do work that way, but they are in the minority.  Most of us first plan a vacation by what we want to do when we're there.  That's the reason to go.  If it's a generic want (beach, ski, someplace new...), then it comes down to how far you're willing/able to travel.  Is there a particular location where you want to be generic?

First knowing your intention before you write is paramount in writing.  If you wander aimlessly through the lexicon of the English language, seeing where it might take you, and then hope to find your intention once you get into it, then pretty please, with a cherry on top, destroy everything you wrote before you found your intention.

Your intention can be generic:

• I want to write a story where a boy meets a girl, they fall in love, they separate, and then get back together never to be separated again.
• I want to write a story about a group of powerful men that conspire to withhold true control of the world from everyone but themselves and only one person armed with plucky charm and a disbelieving sidekick can bring them down.
• I want to write a story about the heartwarming drama of simple small lives that make us realize what being human really is and teaches us to want what we have, not have what we want.

But, if you're going to be generic, you better have some interesting destination or a platypus will repeatedly smack the back of your leg with a garden spade until you think of one.  Give us (your readers/audience) some indication that we haven't read this story, like, a bajillion times (even though we have).

It's important to note that the intention is not the pitch.  The pitch tells the whole story in one sentence (okay, maybe sometimes two).  The intention is the raison d'etre for what ever you are writing.  Having a clear intention, especially having a specific, unique, and clear intention, will bring you one step closer to realizing there's no such thing as writer's block.

Does everyone have their intention written out?  Good, now you're ready to go on vacation!

A Brand New Routine

My daughter is three months old now.  That means several things are changing.

• She sleeps longer at night.
• She tries to talk more.
• She's getting better at laughing.
• Tummy time can be fun.
• She's starting to grasp this whole hand thing.
• We get to break out a whole new wardrobe.

But, the biggest change is that wifey is going back to work.  We've worked it out so that she will work Tuesday through Saturday and I'll work Saturday through Monday and nights.  Grandma will watch the bug on Saturdays and, booyah!  No expensive childcare!  Mwahahahaha!

Oops.  That means wifey and I won't have a day off together.  And what about my writing?  All those hours of statuesque staring at a computer screen have to fit in somewhere.  I'm in the middle of writing a novel.  These things don't just write themselves (trust me on this, I've waited for it).

This blog will chronicle my newly acquired role of write-at-home dad and the struggle to keep up with word count in spite of diaper count.  I'm not the only one going through this.  Can I get some help?  Is it possible to be a responsible father, responsive husband, keep up with a job, and maintain some semblance of productivity with writing?