Category Archives: writing advice

by

Life interfering with art

Busyness has caused me to delay my new short story collection, Grinning Cracks, several times. Originally, I had hoped this would come out over the summer, then pushed it to fall, then the holidays, and now we’re looking at March. Fortunately, as this is a small-press publication and the goal is to release the best product possible no matter the time frame, I have some wiggle room here. As life caused me to have to push this and other writing and editing projects back, I had the luxury of putting this collection on the back burner until I could get a better handle on my free time.

But there’s the rub. There is no such thing as truly free time, even if you’re spending an hour doing little more than staring at a wall. Sometimes you need to spend an hour staring at the wall because things are hectic and insane and you need some time to meditate on your place in the universe or something. The human brain can only process so much; stress and overextension are very real things. If you truly spend days, weeks, even months not writing because to do so would be to add one more item to an already over-full calendar, then by all means, don’t write. It’s okay.

Still, the whole concept behind NaNoWriMo and other such challenges is that not writing is, at its core, an excuse. An excuse to not indulge your creative side. An excuse not to risk failing at a project. An excuse to procrastinate or needlessly worry about things unrelated to writing. Basically, the lack of desire to write could indicate a whole lot of things, including but not limited to a serious problem of lack of enthusiasm for beloved activities, which is a symptom of something more serious. If you’re a writer who writes and writes constantly and you’re suddenly no longer inclined to do so? Something is stressing you out, probably.

Or maybe you’re not a writer. And that’s okay.

There are folks who think they’re writers but who actually aren’t. They’re in love with the idea of writing, the romance of living in a garret and pounding away on a keyboard to acclaim that only greets their reputation after their tragic death. Or they’re sure there’s a fast-track to fame and money, not realizing that, no, not everyone is going to be J.K. Rowling, especially these days, and that if you’re going to still go for it you have to love the process.

I can’t say that enough: you have to love the process. Because sometimes the process is the only reward for this endeavor.

With getting my short story collection released, most of the process part of things is long done and it’s just the proofreading part I’m hung up on, the final approval of formatting and putting the finishing touches on things. I’m not particularly worried that this lull in my output is because I don’t still love the process. In fact, I’m comforted by the fact that I’m not as worried about getting the final hard copy out there and in people’s hot little hands. For this very personal collection, the process of composition really was my best reward; everything else is icing on the cake.

That said, March. I promise. No later than March.

by

Endorphins and Creativity

There was a study conducted by multiple British universities in 1997 that established that both mood and creativity are enhanced by physical activity. A quick review of what endorphins are responsible for would seem to support this. I’m not a doctor or scientist, admittedly, but I am a creative person as well as a person who is occasionally prone to feeling blocked in my creativity. I spoke about the benefits of yoga on one’s writing (and vice versa) recently, but much of yoga’s benefit is meditation-based. If you also want to release feel-good hormones and get your creative juices flowing, just thirty minutes of cardiovascular exercise is the way to go.

As we hit the midpoint of NaNoWriMo, you may be racking your brain for ideas. Why not take a stroll around the block and do a few sun salutations? It can’t hurt, and more likely than not, it’ll actually help.

 

by

Five Things Yoga Has Taught Me About Writing

This is a series I wrote about a year ago when I was blogging exclusively on a different platform. I’m migrating it over here, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how exercise and meditation can help one’s creativity and thought it could be helpful. Since I first wrote this, I’ve made a lot more progress on publications and novel writing, yet I’ve somehow gone backward with my yoga practice. This is a reminder for myself as much as for any readers out there that a balance between the intellectual and the physical is incredibly important if you want to grow, change, and deepen as a complete person. Yoga is not the only path toward this integration of body, mind, and spirit, however, and in the coming weeks I’ll be writing more here about other ways to reduce stress and enhance creativity through exercise.

###

I’ve been a practicing yogini since the mid-1990s, even before I knew I wanted to be a professional fiction writer. Back then, I mostly worked with videos (and yes, I mean actual VHS tapes!), but I did take the occasional short-term class in a variety of styles. My favorite styles usually focused almost entirely on flexibility and didn’t deal much with either the other physical benefits (aerobic and strength) or the philosophical, spiritual, or psychological advantages of a regular yoga practice. It’s only been in the last few years—as both my yoga and my writing has become more serious—that I’ve begun to see the ways in which each supplement and help the other…and about life in general.

The current state of both my yoga practice and my writing could be described as semi-professional. I’m now at a stage with yoga where I’m deeply immersed in working with several teachers of different styles (all of whom I love), and I’m researching teacher training options so that I can eventually teach yoga part-time. With my writing, I’m also feeling very semi-professional. I have lots of short pieces published but nothing full-length, though I have several novels almost completed. I see my yoga teacher training possibly coming through at the same time I sell my first novel, as these two creative outlets in my life seem to keep flowing together so beautifully.

1. Be willing to hurt. Yoga poses are strenuous. Sometimes the asanas are uncomfortable when we’re not familiar with them. But they end, even the hard ones. When you’re struggling with getting something published, you feel desperate, anxious, and alone. When doing a tough pose or waiting for an answer on a story I’ve sent off to a market, I always remind myself that the tough part will be over soon, and I will be stronger for it. The difficult asana taught me something about my body’s mechanics. When a story is having a tough time selling, I revise with each rejection and make a better story in the end. In both cases, I have learned through the pain.

2. Be mindful of your breath. Breathing is the ultimate relaxation tool. When writing, taking a breath (physical/literal or metaphorical) can refresh you. There is a reason pranayama works: it forces you to bring your mind back to the present moment and set aside other concerns. Sometimes it’s just a lack of focus that is causing writers block.

3. Be flexible. An editor tells you to cut something, you cut it. Your yoga teacher tells you to try upward-facing dog, that he thinks you’re ready for it, you try it.

4. Be here now, wherever that is. The current piece is the most important one. The current pose is the only one that matters. When you write in one genre and feel you’ve mastered its conventions, it doesn’t mean you’ve mastered the conventions of all genres. Doing a beautiful Warrior I pose with perfect alignment does not mean you’re a master of the full lotus. Your abilities and talents are individual based on what you’re doing. This teaches you to have goals, and also to exhibit humility. We do not learn all of the yoga; we continue to practice it as students, even if we teach it. So, too, a writer is always practicing her craft, never fully perfecting it, and even when teaching it is simply working on it with students. In both cases, sometimes the student teaches the teacher, which beautifully illustrates some of the tenets of karma yoga.

5. Be the strong creature you already are. As in tree pose, you must bend and sway without falling, but even falling involves simply readjusting yourself. Writers must weather the winds of rejections and reviews and dry spells and writers block, but it in no way diminishes you as an artist or yoga student.

Ultimately, the most important thing about both yoga and writing is to do each every day to keep the body and mind limber. Namaste.

by

NaNoWriMo advice in one handy spot!

Since we’re now in the thick of NaNoWriMo (and thanks to a helpful tipster who reported that my advice posts are being picked up by bloggers, tweeters, and authors), I thought I would link to each part of my ten-part NaNoWriMo advice series in one handy spot.

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: Brainstorm your protagonist before the beginning of November

Part Three: Write what you know

Part Four: Keep the word count in mind

Part Five: Catch up on the weekends

Part Six: Get some cheerleaders

Part Seven: Freewrite in a different genre; engage in ritual behavior and reward systems

Part Eight: Reread and flesh out

Part Nine: Visualize your scene

Part Ten: You’ve got a lot of editing to do!

by

Steampunk October: What the Heck is Steampunk Anyway?

Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction involving a reimagining of the late Victorian era as a time of innovation powered by extant technology, such as steam, clockworks, repurposed mechanical items, and is at times also infused with either time travel or “scientific romance” in the style of H.G. Wells or Mary Shelley or even the trajectory of romantic horror moving from Poe to Lovecraft into the early twentieth century pulp fiction auteurs. There are also variations on these ideas that set the action in either other dimensions, universes, or the future, though there is usually still a strong Victorian aesthetic at work. Steampunk visual style has much in common with the gothic subculture of the 1970s-1990s, though there is a sense of optimism and whimsy that was often lacking at the height of popular culture goth ideology (and I say this as a recovered goth). Cosplay, music, and art are huge components of the steampunk movement, though the heart and soul of steampunk remains the literature, television, and film.

Authors with multiple works on lists of “best of steampunk” include K.W. Jeter, Michael Moorcock, James Blaylock, China Miéville, Toby Frost, Chris Wooding, and Gail Carriger. Carriger is notable for being one of the only women on such lists, because despite the aesthetic of the movement being very popular with female fans, there is a distinct lack of female voices on the literary side of things. This is a shame, because many female-centric media properties with strong steampunk influences exist outside of the hard-SF realm (Alias, Firefly, and Doctor Who come to mind, all of which feature incredibly strong female characters and had many women on the writing staffs) but don’t seem to have fully proliferated the literature.

Later this month, I’ll give some more steampunk literature recommendations and discuss my steampunk series The Curiosity Killers.

by

Ten Tips for Getting Through NaNoWriMo without Losing Your Mind (Part X–the conclusion!)

This is the last in my series on NaNoWriMo! I hope this has been helpful and inspirational. I strongly encourage anyone considering participating in National Novel Writing Month this November to read Chris Baty’s excellent book, No Plot? No Problem! for even more helpful tips.

10. When the clock strikes midnight on December 1st, you’re done, whether you finished your 50,000 words or not and whether your story ended at that 50,000 word mark or not. Congratulations, no matter how you did! And realize that what you produced, I’m sorry to say, is not good. It’s not a finished product. It’s a hurried exercise is quantity over quality, and that’s okay. It’s all about the process, after all, and it’s all about establishing a writing discipline. A professionally written, edited, purchased and further edited and published novel takes far, far longer than thirty days to create, regardless of the author, the publisher, and the editing team. It’s just a fact of the business and the art form. No matter how tempted you may be by today’s technology, do not hit “submit” on a self-publishing platform with this first draft of this first book that you wrote in thirty days. It isn’t even the best version of this particular work you could produce. Set your manuscript aside for another month at the very least and return to it in January or February with clearer eyes and a healthy supply of red pens. Show the draft to multiple people. And then once you and all your beta readers have had a go at it, fix it. Fix it lots. If you still want to seek publication, go for it, but it should be your second, third, fourth draft, and it should probably be longer by at least ten or twenty thousand more words, minimum. It’s also okay if this first effort never gets farther than your own computer. The point is the work itself, the practice, the exercise. The point is that now you can say the following: you wrote a novel in thirty days, or you made the attempt. You know that about yourself now. What are you going to do with that knowledge? How will you let this shape your writing life going forward? And are you going to give it another shot next year?

Check through my other writing advice tags for the entire series and other pointers for making your fiction better.

by

Ten Tips for Getting Through NaNoWriMo without Losing Your Mind (Part IX)

9. Visualize your scene. Don’t skimp on detail. Some of the most beautiful prose is that which sets the stage so well that the reader feels like they’re watching a film. Do this in your own mind. Give us all five senses. What do you see, smell, taste, hear, touch? How does the season affect the weather? Is it autumn? Is there the subtle scent of wood burning in the air? Is that something you can almost taste as you move through the space? What is the light doing? If you’re feeling really stuck here, go outside (or go to an interior space that’s similar to the one you’re describing), and do a freewrite on every detail around you. How do shadows play against the walls? What is the exact color of the sky at the horizon? At the uppermost part of the sky? What is the sun or moon doing? Are there animals anywhere? How does the carpet feel under your hands or your feet? Is the room dusty? What if you were describing the room as part of a police investigation? What does the room tell you about its inhabitants and their lives? Don’t be stingy. Let it all flow and continue to be in this habit of noticing everything so that when it comes time to inventing these details in fiction, you’ll have a wealth of things to draw from.

by

Ten Tips for Getting Through NaNoWriMo without Losing Your Mind (Part VIII)

8. Reread. This may seem like a waste of time, but if you’re feeling spectacularly stuck, reread previous pages and consider adding detail. This is not “padding,” which I find such an ugly term anyway. I prefer to think of it as “fleshing things out.” Don’t always resort to this and don’t always spend hours and hours looking backward, as the whole point of NNWM is to plunge bravely ahead no matter what. But if you really feel like your plot needs help, adding things in earlier can give you more places to go later.

by

Ten Tips for Getting Through NaNoWriMo without Losing Your Mind (Part VII)

Two tips today, as a little bonus since I haven’t updated this list in a while!

6. Write a poem in a very formal style from the perspective of each of your main characters at the moment you’ve left off with them. Something short, like a haiku or a sonnet. Sometimes working in a different genre can get you out of the rut of prose and force your perspective to shift, even if only temporarily.

7. Engage in ritual behavior. I’ve seen this suggested in countless other places as a cure for writer’s block in general, but this could be especially helpful when you’re engaged in an already overly routinized writing exercise, which is ultimately all NNWM really is. If you’ve already set aside a specific time of day for writing, as I suggested in earlier entries, then divide that writing time even further by setting little alarms and doing a specific action at the end of that smaller period of time. Write for 20 minutes, do 5 pushups. Write for 20 minutes, eat an M&M. Write for 20 minutes, walk up and down your stairs twice. Whatever it is, this little micro-break will serve a couple of purposes. First, it makes your writing time seem even less intimidating. You think an hour sounds tough? Well, 30 minutes is way easier, and 15 is even easier still. The physical action or activity will also allow you a second to breathe, to stretch, to clear yourself out of your intensity space and come back with just a tiny bit fresher perspective. Also, you may find that some days your ideas are flowing so well that you hear the alarm sound and you opt not to take that micro break, that you’re too invested in what’s going on with your plot, and you just plunge ahead. It’s kind of like getting awakened ten minutes before your morning alarm goes off. Some days, you’ll decide to just go ahead and start your day ahead of the game, and some days you’ll decide you’re glad you woke up because you’ll appreciate that extra bit of sleep. Either way, you’ve been jostled a little and can make that decision on your own based on your specific needs. Personally, my back and neck usually need a second every so often to move and shift, and I’ll grab a yoga pose or a drink of water or just do some mindful breathing. Whatever I do, I return a minute or so later feeling just a little refreshed.

by

Ten Tips for Getting Through NaNoWriMo without Losing Your Mind (Part VI)

5. Try a support team. The NaNoWriMo forums have lots of threads during November for “word sprint” challenges where you’re tasked with dashing off a certain number of words in certain number of minutes and then reporting back on how you did. These can be incredibly motivating. Another motivator could be meetups or bootcamps, where you meet either in person or virtually and hold each other accountable for your word count, or at least report on your word count at the end of your day or week. Writing support groups are incredibly important for a variety of reasons, but they can be especially motivating during NNWM season. Even if you’re not discussing the content of your work too much with your accountability crew, at least you’re commiserating on the basics. Did you get done what you said you would? If not, you have a few friends who will duly embarrass you enough that next time you’ll want to get the job done. If you know you have the psychological homework of having to tell people whether you met your goal or not, you might be that much more likely to do so.