I Offer Unsolicited Writing Advice!

On Thursday I will be submitting my latest piece to Indie Ink, a website that takes writing submissions based off  writing prompts that are matched with authors. I have submitted to Indie Ink in the past - nearly of my Hannah Sketches are based off of the Indie Ink challenge prompts, and this week I will add another, my first since the end of January.

I'm not sure what it is about writing prompts that make it so much easier for me to write a short story. Though I've been writing for years, what I write tends to swing between short blog posts and 60K+ word novels. I have never considered myself a master at the short story, and I am only starting to believe I have any talent in it at all based on the feedback I've gotten from Indie Ink. Hannah's story has become really important to me, though. I guess I am just musing that perhaps I am creatively blocked lately, and without a little push from a prompt or a friendly suggestion, I may not write anything at all. 

Working for Scope, it seems that it may be the same for a lot of other writers. I've heard a lot in the past few weeks, "I really want to write, but I just don't know what to write about!"  Could it be that we all work better under a little guidance and pressure? Can the expectation of others be what is really driving me to create?

At any rate, I am thrilled with the burst of creativity I've seen among my friends and peers lately. People are starting blogs left and right, submitting to Scope all sorts of great opinion articles, blogs, and amusements.. It feels really great to be at this place I am in right now, surrounded by like minded people who seem to actually get it, you know? 

We aren't all going to be published. We aren't all going to win awards for our writing, or be paid for it, or be recognized outside of our own little community.. but in my opinion, that isn't the point. Well, it's not the most important point. 

To be creating - to be putting oneself out there to be seen through words and pictures and ideas - it's awesome. And we should be proud. Because we are the brave ones. 

Writing, like all forms of artistic creation and expression, takes time, patience, and determination. To those who have tipped their hats to writing, you are my comrades. So, if you are struggling with self-doubt over silly things like talent, I give to you the best piece of writing advice I've ever encountered, from Brian K. Vaughan (who was a writer for LOST!)

WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS

That’s it. Everything else is meaningless. You can take all the classes in the world and read every book on the craft out there, but at the end of the day, writing is sorta like dieting. There are plenty of stupid fads out there and charlatans promising quick fixes, but if you want to lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. Period. Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.

By my estimation, I've only purged about 2,999 pages of shit out of myself. I have a long way to go, but at least now I get to make this page shitting journey with friends.

Mac Freedom

For the last few months, every since the end of November really, I haven't written much, not as much as I have wanted to. I guess you could say I got distracted by any number of things, and it would be true, and I hate to admit that I know full well that the biggest thing keeping me from writing is Netflix Instant - I just can't seem to stop watching TV shows online. It makes me a little sick and embarrassed for myself. 

Nova Ren Suma, one of the authors whose blog I follow, because it is just amazing, had mentioned something called Mac Freedom a few times, and I decided to check it out. It's a program that will shut off internet access to your computer for a period of time that you determine - it will basically just block you from connecting to the internet - the writer's worst distraction of all time.

I read a lot of the comments about this program before spending the $10 bucks to get it, and momentarily questioned my motives and sanity. 

"It's pretty sad that someone doesn't have the self control to just stay off the internet, so they have to buy a program to do it for them. Oh, the humanity!" 

And I thought, yeah, it's true, it's pretty sad that I don't have that self control. But what would be sadder is if I bought this program and then actually restarted my computer just so I could check Facebook or Twitter or watch a YouTube video. THAT would be sad. 

Anyway, I downloaded it, I set it for an hour, and I wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. And now I do this for at least an hour a day, and Mac Freedom has changed the way I write and how I've been living life this week - basically, it's awesome.

Writers - you might not think you need this, but let's face it, you probably do. 

It used to be so easy, I never even tried.

This was a very low-key weekend. I had big intentions of finishing my read through The Eternals first draft, and of reviewing two indie books I have read lately (I'll never, EVER insinuate that I think of myself as a good reviewer - sorry!), but instead I read, and I plotted. Sort of.

Yesterday morning I decided that I didn't want to do much of anything besides read. I picked up a book that I bought a while ago and never started reading - Divergent, by Veronica Roth. Well, I read the entire thing cover to cover yesterday and I was blown away by it. I couldn't put the book down, seriously. It was like The Hunger Games, only better, I swear. 

Something about Divergent really got to me, though. In the beginning of the book, Beatrice, (Tris), has to take aptitude tests and go through a Choosing Ceremony to decide which faction she is going to belong to. All I could think about when I sat there rapt, reading it, was The Picking. The Picking - the ceremony that takes place in my book, The Eternals. 

Now, the ceremonies are not alike at all, and neither are the overall concepts of the book. My book is about vampires, after all. It was just the way that Veronica writes and I don't that had me all fershnickered. She shows, doesn't tell. I tell, I don't show enough.

I know that if I pick up my manuscript and read through it with a red pen in my hand, I would cross out more than half of what is written there. I need a read through, I need some notes taken, I need a rewrite.

I can see it plain as day now, what I need to do. 

***

To me, this is the last day of summer.

Elise starts kindergarten tomorrow, so that means it's back to waking up at 7a.m. every morning until June, because if I don't do it every day, I don't do it at all. This means earlier bedtimes for Elise and more writing time for me. This means I go back to pretending that I have two full time jobs - one as a slave to Quickbooks and email and furniture, the other as a novelist. 

And this is the reason that I have never been able to take myself seriously as a writer - I write every day, THEY SAY, because I can't not do it. I've never had that sweet not-problem. 

Here's A GREAT PIECE OF WRITING ADVICE FROM BRIAN K. VAUGHN:

WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS.

That’s it. Everything else is meaningless. You can take all the classes in the world and read every book on the craft out there, but at the end of the day, writing is sorta like dieting. There are plenty of stupid fads out there and charlatans promising quick fixes, but if you want to lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. Period. Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.

This means one thing to me: saying no more often.

It's the last day of summer. The last day of the time I yearn for (and live for) every year. This usually feels like a time of things dying and ending for me, because winter, so bleak - it is past the end, it is the dark and nothingness of winter. But this year, the last day of summer feels more like the beginning of some other season I am not quite familiar with yet.

But know this: I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year - and I'm going to win it.