Advice on Writing Supernatural Suspense

The new draft I'm working on is a step away from what I've been doing for the past few months. I'm trying to write a supernatural suspense/horror, as scary as I can make it, but with a good ending. 

I started Sunday and since then have learned a number of thing about writing and the genre which I feel are worth sharing. 

The first thing is never start a Stephen King after 5pm at night. No matter what you do, the writing will suck you in and by the time you absolutely have to go to sleep, you will be in the middle of the scary bit. I started Pet Sematary at 6pm, got to the first major scary bit right before needing to go to bed last night, spent most of my day off today curled up reading, wept my eyes out in the middle sad bit, then had to go to the gym and then dinner.  I now have the dilemma: am reasonably near the end, so possibly could finish it tonight, but will be coming into the super scary bit. But I might not get a chance to read it tomorrow morning, and then I will be faced with the same problem tomorrow night! These are serious problems, people.

I do hope, though, that someone might face the same dilemma with my book, because it is a good problem to have. 

Another thing, more based on writing, came from doing some research into how horror stories usually start. I haven't read all that much, because I scare easily and have an overactive imagination. So the question came up: is it better to start with something creepy, or have it all seem perfectly normal and slowly show the cracks through which the horrors arise?

 

So, to do some research I pulled up the beginning of Stephen King's 'Carrie' (first full novel he wrote) and 'The Slab' by Michael R. Collings (I had heard an interview with him on Writing Excuses and it sounded interesting and related to what I wanted to write).

Let me just copy out the first pages of both for you to compare:

First, from 'The Slab'

Chapter One

The House Alone,

29 October 1991

A Time of Reckoning

1.

It was a day made for death.

Brittle shards from the slanting October sunset stabbed at the quiet street. Brassy gold stained shabby lawns a murky, coppery brown. The dying light fingered naked limbs of rain-blackened elms and fruitless mulberries and peaches and skeletal jacarandas. It rested heavily on the dropping branches of the occasional valley oaks that had survived construction of the subdivision two years earlier. It tinted vibrant stucco walls not yet faded to earth-mud brown by interminable summers of suns, not yet hidden behind luxuriant passion vines or junipers or the creeping jasmine so popular in this part of Southern California.

In the odd, quirky light, the Charter Oaks subdivision became an enigma of striated shadows, dead black pinioned against muted October color in the late evening of a day that had been more cloud-ridden than otherwise.

Ace McCall squinted. The sun sliced through a bank of clouds low over the horizon, as if day were pleading for one last change at life before giving up and dying painfully into night. Blinking and cursing under his breath, McCall slapped the sun visor down.

And now Stephen King:

Part One: Blood Sport

News Item from the Westover (Me.) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966:

Rain of Stones Reported

It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17^th. The stones fell principally on the home of Mrs. Margaret White, damaging the roof extensively and ruining two gutters and a downspout valued at approximately $25. Mrs. White, a widow, lives with her three-year-old daughter, Carietta.

Mrs. White could not be reached for comment.

Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow. On the surface, all the girls in the shower room were shocked, thrilled, ashamed, or simply glad that the White bitch had taken it in the mouth again. Some of them might also have claimed surprise, but of course their claim was untrue. Carrie had been going to school with some of them since the first grade, and this had been building since that time, building slowly and immutably, in accordance with all the laws that govern human nature, building with all the steadiness of a chain reaction approaching critical mass.

What none of them knew, of course, was that Carrie White was telekinetic. 

Okay, which one actually gave you any desire to read on? 

Now I don't want to bash other authors, but looking at it purely as a piece of writing, if one of my students had given me Mr. Collings beginning, I would have taken a big fat red pen to it and possibly just cut the first few paragraphs all together or at least taken out most of the useless description. It was way too much. Did it make a fundamental difference to the story how the light hit the grass? Is there a reason we should care?

So, I took away from that exercise that beginnings are much better being short and sharp. The newspaper article doesn't make an awful lot of sense, but there is the definite feeling that it will, which makes it all okay. King also demonstrates the two key aspects of his story (which I haven't actually read yet, as the library didn't have a copy, so will have to find one) - the darkness in human nature, and what happens when that is met with telekinetic power. If the story had just been about one or the other, it wouldn't have been so interesting. Perhaps one element could have been introduced here and the other later, but I think it worked well as a hook to bring in both. 

Entranced with King's writing, I then went and got Pet Sematary yesterday afternoon from the library and have been enjoying greatly the story so far. Further, it has caused me to look at and totally refocus the story I'm working on.

The largest lesson I learned from it about writing horror is that it is not necessarily the supernatural element of the story which makes it scary. The scary part is how human nature deals and accommodates the supernatural. 

My story had focused around my main characters and a house (not haunted, more possessed which calls the eldest female of the family every generation to come and waste her life away watching out into the woods). But I've realised it would be a much more interesting story if I have my main characters, the possessed house, and the town that has been feeding and protecting it all these years, and how they justify their actions.  The small town where most know, or should know, that there is a woman trapped in the house, but that covers it up, and protects the house for some perceived good (I'm still working on this, but it is through the woman's sacrifice to the house that the rest of the town flourishes somehow). It will, of course, only work with pretty good writing, and I might not yet be up to that level, but I'll work out a draft and then see if it works enough that some day I might be able to make it into something. 

So those are my lessons so far:

- be careful when you read good horror, because you won't want to put it down and you will be too scared to sleep.

- don't over flourish beginnings (in any writing, not just horror), and don't be afraid to lay it out on the line: this is the situation, now follow me to find out how it works out.

- The human aspect is as important if not more important than the supernatural aspect. 

If anyone has any tips for me on writing this genre, feel free to let me know, I'm open to advice!

Yours,

Buffy.

 

Words, Words, Words: Why You Should Get Them Out

Stephen King used to say in interviews that he wrote everyday except Christmas and Easter. He reveals in ‘On Writing’ that this is a lie. He writes everyday, full stop. He aims for 2,000 words a day.

Dorothea Brande recommends writing 1,000 words a day.

Ray Bradbury in his book ‘Zen in the Art of Writing’ states that he has written 1,000 words a day since he was eleven.

But why? Should we all be doing this if we want to be writers? Is it the daily factor that’s important, or the word limit, or both? Can we write 2,000 words every second day and still get results?

From my research into motivational methods, development of talent, and sports training, I think there are three major aspects behind the commands to write everyday (I’m leaving myself some leeway in case I think of more later).  Hopefully spelling them out will help you to devise a writing program that will turn you into the best possible writer.

First, as pointed out by Writing Excuses Season 1 Episode 3: your first one million words are probably going to be crap. Only after that will you get better. So, might as well get them out of the way as soon as you can.

Second, if you want to become an expert at anything, studies across the fields show that it takes around 10,000 hours of good practice. That’s three hours a day for 10 years. It’s not just words, but amount of time actually practicing that pays off.

Finally, writing is like any exercise: one day off and you notice, two days off and your critics notice, three days off and even your fans notice. Your abilities to find the right word, express things just so, keep in the voice of the characters etc. start to fade much faster than we would like to think.

So, it seems that there is good evidence to support writers’ claims that you should write everyday and aim for a specific number of words that seems high to you.

And by writing a draft every two weeks, I’m hoping to speed up the process. I’ll have my first million words out in a year (not counting all the words I’ve done already, or the words I’m doing for blog posts, emails, work etc) and hopefully knock over my 10,000 hours in the five years while I’m at it. Just need to get myself more into the habit of writing everyday.

Next time I'll do a post on essential tips for forming a habit.

Well That Solves That Problem: I'm Not Meant to Be a Full Time Writer

Today was my first day back at work. 

It was also the first time in a week that I wrote for about 4 hours. 

I had a total of two, maybe three, successful full days during my holidays, and a lot of that included working on this blog and writing agent query letters etc.

The concept of a full day where I have nothing to do but write I thought would be amazingly liberating, would let me write so much more!

Wow, was I wrong. 

It was horrifying. 

But then I started to think that maybe all writing had become horrifying, that maybe I had just lost my will to write.

But no, do not fear. I just needed to be a bit more busy.

Was listening to Writing Excuses last night, an episode called 'pantsing'. They were talking about discovery writing, also known as by the seat of your pants writing, which is what I am currently doing a lot of. One of them was pointing out that when you do discovery writing, you really need to have a large block of time so that you can really get into the narrative flow.

Then another pointed out that this wasn't always good. Writing expands to fill the amount of time you have, like a gas. Having very strict writing times can actually help you to write more.

Wow, I thought to myself, wow. It's like they are talking about me!

Though, that was not all of my problems. It is definitely true for me that if I give myself too long a period, I just slow down and also get intimidated by the amount of time. However, it is also true that if I say I can write at any time in the day, I can very easily end up not writing at all. 

The third thing I found out today is that part of the problem might be the Castle Innis series. Well, not it, but me, but me to it, not just me. If you see what I mean.

I sat down again this morning to continue the amazingly slow work on book 3 (slow, largely because I haven't spent that many hours on it but also slow because it just isn't coming out). I then got a text from my sister saying I should try to get my first book published in Australia, and John Marsden's publisher, Pan McMillan has Manuscript Monday, where anyone can submit the first chapter of the manuscript along with a 300 word synopsis, and they promise to read it. 

So I went back to my first novel, Sally Hunt Book 1. I had spent quite a few hours yesterday editing it (how did it STILL have so many typos?) and had gotten to the part where I knew I had to re-write an entire scene. This morning, after spending about half an hour on Castle Innis, I then went and spent an hour and a half editing then beginning to write this new scene. 

The speed and easy with which it came out was like watching champagne overflow down a pyramid of glasses; beautiful, delicious, bubbly. And it wasn't because I knew what was going to happen, because I didn't, I hadn't expected what happened at all! 

And tonight night came home from work and said I would start writing at 7.30. Since I finished dinner at 7pm, I started reading Stephen King's Gunslinger. However, after finishing the intro, I decided I wanted to move straight into working on Sally Hunt, just because I felt like writing.

I spent the next two hours and think I have nailed most of the new scenes.  I just need to weave it back into the old text. I also need to change one or two more things later on (evidently my readers did not like that I left a lot of things until book 2, so will give some hints at how they are going to work out). 

So, obviously my mind is just in a young adult's language mode. I have had no trouble writing in regency period English before, so it is strange that I have it now, except perhaps I needed more time to switch over. 

But this is the end of the fortnight. And since my next book is a children's story (think E Nesbit style of thing), I might keep the simplified language and come back to Castle Innis after I've done some other historical practice. 

So, back to work, back to writing, back to trying to have it all.

Something New! Pre-Giveaway Giveaway!

This is something I haven't done before, but I feel it is time. I feel that I am really ready now. I'm still a bit shy, a little bit nervous. You all seem so scary, distant, unknown. I bare my soul to you and am greeted with only silence (except for you Ben, because you rock.) 

Another author is going to be doing a guest post in November (which, by the way, I'm super excited about. It's like I'm a real blogger and stuff!) and she asked if I wanted to do a giveaway on my blog. A giveaway? Yes, a giveaway. For the best comment related to her post, she would offer a signed copy of her new book, posted anywhere in the world.

Sounds awesome, no? But then I thought: but no one comments. Is very embarrassing to tell another, much more established blogger that you don't actually get comments. So, before doing that, I thought I would test out this whole idea of a giveaway.

So, welcome to the Pre-Giveaway Giveaway!

The purpose is not just to make you comment on my blog. I am quite happy that you even stop to read it. However, if this is a non-commenting blog community, I sort of want to know before my guest asks for comments.

Also, I have been thinking about doing it for quite a while, just because giving away stuff is fun.

So, for the person who comes up with the best (as judged by me) 3 words describing their writing life I will send them a copy of Stephen King's 'On Writing', because it is one of the most awesome books about writing I have read and I think all writers should have a copy. (I could just send you a link to Dorothea, because I do love her, and she is free to download, but that feels a bit scummy. So if you want, you can download Dorothea Brande's On Becoming a Writer without having to leave a comment. Also, you could just google it if this link doesn't work).

(Cannot promise that this is the edition you get, there are various covers, but the stuff inside is the good bit.)

3 words on your Writing Life.

In exchange for Stephen King's 'On Writing: Memoir of the Craft'.

Good deal, huh?

You have one week, starting today. Entries close Next Tuesday 18th Sept 2012, 10pm Melbourne, Australia time.

Look forward to meeting some of you.

(And if it doesn't work I'll still believe that you love me, just in that stalker-ish mute sort of way. I'm an optimist like that.)

Also just drawing attention to my awesome skills: as this is my first picture. I have stolen it, it's not actually my work, but I think it is pretty self-publicising so shouldn't infringe copy write. 

If I'm wrong, I'm sorry Stephen! (or dude who designed cover!)

A Writer's Recreation

I have to admit that occasionally I feel like saying to you all 'yeah don't bother reading my blog, just read Dorothea Brande's book' because of the number of times I refer to her. I am still working my way through it slowly, just reading a few pages before I start writing every few days. Having said that, in my insane writing craze I can definitely tell you which parts are most important to take note of, and this is definitely one of those parts.

I'm now in my fifth week of writing 3-4 hours a day, roughly 6 days a week, along with working 6 hours a day 4 days a week in a job that requires me to read large amounts of information and summarise it into key points. I'm also trying to follow Stephen King and others' suggestion that as a writer you need to read a lot (which is completely true and what I am going to say in this section does not negate that.) For the past four weeks, the only time I have basically not been reading or writing has been when I've been asleep or at the gym (where I do sometimes take a book). 
 

At the end of last week and the beginning of this week, I was finding more and more that I had to pause in my writing and just sit back because my mind felt totally dry, like I was trying to suck water out of a desert.

Then Dorothea came to my rescue and pointed out my mistake.

A writer works with words. Therefore, a writer needs recreation which is wordless. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But the truth of it has much more depth than you would think. Dorothea challenges her reader to test this out. Try to spend some time with no words: do not pick up a newspaper or magazine to read it, or even turn on the radio. She appears to be including even spoken words into the equation, so no TV or nattering away to friends. Try and be completely wordless for as long as you can. And very soon, she argues, you will find your mind overflowing with words again. It can get drained of its words if used too much, but quickly refills to overflowing if given a chance.

And I have tested this unintentionally myself while away at a retreat. We were given the challenge of not speaking from the end of dinner to the end of breakfast, while staying in a group. It was strange because you were constantly interacting with people, but had to just smile and nod and not say a word. Much more quickly than I would have thought possible, I could not shut my mind up from having conversations with itself. It made me realise that I would never find peace in silence, though now I think I could find writing inspiration.

So, on Wednesday, when Jenny came over to stay the night, I was explaining this concept to her and we started thinking about the variety of activities that you could do that were wordless. Dorothea notes a few writers who practiced this, citing one who started off lying on his back looking up at the sky for two hours a day, until he found his family saw that as an invitation to disturb him because he was obviously not doing anything important, so moved to sitting on a bench in the park feeding the pigeons. Another she referred to used to knit, rather like Penelope in the Odyssey, using the same piece of yarn, and when she got to the end, if she hadn't solved the problem in her story yet, she would undo it all and start again.

Unfortunately for me, I have finished knitting my two large throw rugs and need a new project that will take longer, as I cannot bring myself to unweave them and start again. I am also working on a rather large cross stitch, which I am less than halfway through, and probably has a couple of hundred hours already dedicated to it. But it does take more concentration which is good at times but not at others.

Jogging, rowing, swimming, those repetitive actions are meant to be great for releasing the mind. I have found at the gym if I watch TV while doing them the mind freshening properties are lost but listening to music is completely fine. Perhaps it would be even better if I listened to music without any words, but I haven't tested that theory yet and see some problems with doing so.

Jenny pointed out the usefulness of gardening in this respect: it is productive and healthy, and can take hours without people complaining for you to do something else. It is, therefore, a pity I live in an apartment.

I understand that for some people cleaning and ironing probably have this value, but they are strange, strange people.

I do think cooking works for me, and my sister suggested it might work even better if I didn't use a recipe. As long as she is prepared to eat the disaster at the other end, I'll try it on Wednesday and report back.

My other hobby which I have not done at all since I started writing (and actually for about year now for various reasons) is painting. My verdict is still out on doing another creative pursuit like that, which works on a lot of the same fears I have about writing (that I will stand at the canvas and won't be able to produce what I see in my mind, or that I will stuff it all up etc. etc.) and draws on a lot of the same will power to get myself going. I hope at some stage to take some classes, because I think actually knowing what I'm doing might help a lot. But until then, I might put it on the back burner to my writing.

Another activity which I used to do, which was very strange, but was satisfying beyond all measure of its usefulness or creativity was going through magazines and cutting out pictures of houses, furniture and gardens etc. that I liked and sticking them into folios. (As a habit it used to drive my mother mad, who would open her house magazine to find large gaping holes, but what use was it just lying in a magazine anyway?) How this had the ability to make me so happy, I don't know. I assumed it was through the recognition of beauty and the search then ordering of it. So, I might try that again.

But for now I have decided to try and rearrange my schedule just slightly. It takes me 30 mins door to door to get to work if I train. In just under an hour I can walk it. It's also a very nice walk, most of it along beside the river. I have been put off this recently because of the cold and the wet, and the fact that it was already getting dark by the time I left work. The times that I did do it, I took it as a chance to listen to podcasts on writing and sermons etc. I now realise this would be a perfect opportunity to factor in some wordless time everyday. No one disturbs me as I walk (except for cyclists who think it is cool to zip past as close to you as possible) and I have no other obligations than to arrive at the other end. Also, added bonus, it saves me a train fare, which is a hot chocolate a day (as well as having burnt the extra calories for it. Win-win!). The only downside is that it means finishing writing 30 mins earlier each morning and starting 30 mins later each night. But, if I am more refreshed and have the words bubbling out of me, it might be worth it. So will try walking at least one way, with no podcasts or lectures to listen to, for this week and report back on how it goes.

As to my own writing. On Wednesday morning I did probably only 1,000 words, and then realised that I really was just worded out. So I spent the rest of the afternoon doing my cross stitch and then some cooking, Jenny came and we went to the gym, and I never got back to writing for the rest of the day. Thursday morning I got up and had only 40 mins to write because I needed to get to work early. Was a bit depressed that it was Thursday and I only had 5,000 words written. Was meant to be tutoring Thursday night (which is why I had to get to work early) but college cancelled at the last moment, which meant I could come back and write. Managed to get just over the 10,000 mark by the end of the day. Compared to the weeks before, I should have done a lot more than that, but compared to the few days before, it was a big improvement.

Friday morning just could not get myself out of bed until I was already running late to work (had to buy breakfast at the train station I was that sort of late), and didn't get to sit down to write until after 8pm because I went out for work drinks. However, just over two and a half hours later, I was just over 15,000 words.

Today I sat down for three hours in the morning/early afternoon, and then 2.5 hours this evening, and have added another 10,000 words. So, feeling it is slowly coming together. Am writing from beginning to end at the moment. The other thing I learned today which I will share quickly is to trust your characters for help.

Had one character which I really didn't understand, couldn't work out why he was acting like that or what his motivation was. So just got one of my other characters to ask someone else saying 'I don't get him, why does he act like that?' The other one replied 'not really sure, but what if it is because this and this happened to him?' And from that came out a beautiful explanation of this character's motivations and a possible part of the ending for the book. Glad someone knows what I'm writing about!

If you have any suggestions for wordless recreation, please feel free to share, unless it's dirty, then just keep it to yourself. 

Is Imitation the Greatest Form of Flattery for Writers?

Last night when I found I couldn't get to sleep, I pulled out a book I've been reading on and off for a few months now. It's 'Unlimited Power' by Anthony Robbins. Disclaimer here: Robbins has some good ideas and great exercises, but some of his science or logic is not so strong. However, I still recommend it if you feel you are in a rut. (Just to clarify: it's not about writing, it's about positive thinking for all things).

So last night I was reading his chapter 'Syntax for Success'. Let me briefly summarise his point so you know what I'm talking about. If you want to be successful don't invent the wheel again, watch the actions and methods of those who are successful. Like baking a cake, if you can get the recipe with ingredients, amounts, and the correct procedure, you too can make the world's best cake.

He states: 'The point here is for you to realize that even when you have little or no background information and even when circumstances seem impossible, if you have an excellent model of how to produce a result, you can discover specifically what the model does and duplicate it – and thus produce similar results in a much shorter period of time than you may be thought possible.' (p. 119). The example he was using referred to creating a training course in firearms for the army.

I began to wonder if it applies exactly the same to more creative pursuits.

There is a rage in books at the moment (well, starting a few decades ago) which argue that talent is overrated, that most of what we perceive as talent is actually the result of work and good coaching. I'll probably discuss this idea more later because I do find it fascinating and is part is one of the motivators behind my writing challenge: to test the argument that says anyone can become an expert at anything if they dedicate an hour a day for 10 years (I think that's the time frame suggested).

However, I do also agree with Stephen King when he says that there are bad writers and brilliant writers, and you can't move between these two. I think is is particularly obvious in writing, where there are a lot of prolific writers who never get much better and then there are a few brilliant writers who only ever wrote one book. Having said that, I am sure that I can turn myself from a competent writer into a good writer through more practice. But what type of practice?

As I'm sure all teachers have said for most of eternity: only perfect practice makes perfect. This, I think, is what Robbins is getting at. If you want to become better at something, you can't continue just doing what you have always done. You need to improve your practice methods. And for this he suggests modelling. But does that work in writing?

The ancient Greeks started teaching rhetoric through extensive modelling, playing with form and content. Students would take well known stories or speeches and have to keep the style of them the same but change the content, or keep the content but change the style. This was the basis of their studies and until they had mastered this, were not allowed to go on and try creating something original. (See Aristotle's Rhetoric, he goes into a lot of detail.)

The confusion is, as Dorothea points out, most people imitate the wrong aspects. She argue that 'the philosophies, the ideas, the dramatic notions of other writers of fiction should not be directly adopted...' (p.105) Any author that claims they are writing 'like so and so...' is generally falling into this trap. If I see one more awful romance that states they are writing in the style of Georgette Heyer, I might do physical damage. They do not mean they have her technical excellence in writing or historical knowledge, but they have copied her boy-meets-girl plot lines, and usually not very creatively at that.

According to Dorothea, what you should try to study is Technical Excellence. 'But technical excellences can be imitated, and with great advantage. When you have found a passage, long or short, which seems to you far better than anything of the sort you are yet able to do, sit down to learn from it.' (p.106). (Yes, I am personally directing that to anyone who thinks they write Georgette Heyer's better than Georgette Heyer.)

I believe the essential difference can be seen in Robbin's cake metaphor. If you follow all the ingredients and all the same steps, you get the same cake. In this case, you get a book that someone else has already written. So therefore many people take a famous book and try to keep all the same ingredients but change the sequence or amounts. What sort of cake would that make? The same basic flavour, but badly cooked. If people wanted that cake, they would just eat the one made by the expert. But writers who want to make quick money always try to make the same flavour cake as the best seller at the time. Bad writer, bad!

What the ancient Greeks and Dorothea Brande and doubtless others have realised is that in writing you want to learn the ordering and techniques of cooking, so then you can add in your own ingredients and make a completely different but excellent cake.

Therefore, the concept of becoming an expert at writing through practice must still require you to be able to invent your own ingredients, but study the techniques of others. However, there will be some who are just not able to do this part of invention and no amount of training will give it to them. So, I do not entirely agree that everyone who practices enough can become a good writer. However, if one has a little invention, then the technique of writing can be learned.

Therefore, am dedicating myself to trying to improve what I can. Now, I just have to work out ways to practice the technical elements of writers I like. I might read a bit more Aristotle and see what he suggests.

Summary of my weekend's writing:

Yesterday was a great day of writing, making just over 10,000 new words for only the second time (I think) since beginning. Today I got 4,000 done, but also managed to do all my washing, and hopefully cook enough food to get me through the week, so I count that as a win. I'm over halfway through my next book, and have been surprised a few times by twists and turns my characters have taken me on. Still can't see the end, but am learning not to let that worry me. 

I also got to read quite a bit of Connie Willis' Blackout, though I'm afraid of finishing it before I can get the next one as I've heard it is a cliff-hanger. The verdict is still out on cliff-hangers between books. I hate it enough at the season's end of TV shows, but I feel a book can have a lead into a sequel, but to make a reader wait at least a year for the next to come to get closure should come with a warning on the front. 

Sweet practice my little writers.

Buffy. 

2 Essential Exercises for Becoming a Writer

Everyone who has done any writing classes or read around on the topic will know that teachers/authors always have exercises for you to do. These are to train up particular technical aspects of writing. Some are quite helpful, some come at the wrong time and are annoying as they don't answer your specific problems.

These exercises are not like that.

Once again I turn to my new old friend, Dorothea Brande 'On Becoming a Writer'. As mentioned before, her intention is not to talk about the actual technical side of writing, but the more practical and developmental aspects of turning yourself into the sort of person who sits down for sustained periods of time and writes, and then continues to write even when they aren't sure it's working or when better offers come along.

Of course the technical aspects at some stage will be important. Though as a side note, Stephen King argues in his memoir 'On Writing', that there are four levels of writing: a bad writer, competent, good and brilliant. If you are a competent writer, you can learn and train to become a good writer. However, if you are a bad writer, that is pretty much that, and unfortunately there is no way to train yourself from good to brilliant. However, before you can even know if you are good, bad or brilliant, you need to be able to sit down and write.

For a long time I thought I couldn't be a writer because I didn't seem to get those brilliant flashes of inspiration that sent you flying to your study, doors locked, and scribbling for days on end. And so I found I didn't write very much at all. This image of the inspiration driven writer is actually a bit of a myth. It is now my belief that this might be true for a very select few, who probably have a lot of experience of just sitting down and writing particularly in the early stages. For the majority of great writers their life was making themselves write. The skill of being able to sit down on command and write is therefore one of the most precious a new writer can cultivate. As someone once said (sorry to the person I'm now stealing from because I can't remember who you are, but I at least acknowledge it's not my line):

Bad pages can be made better, blank pages cannot.

If you can train yourself to sit down and write, then you can work out the technical stuff later. If you have all the technical stuff sorted but can't sit down and write, you will never be a writer.

So, after that introduction, let me present for you Dorothea's 2 Essential Exercises for Becoming a Writer. After doing these for a month or so (I just made that time frame up, but it seems good) you will be able to work out two very important things: 1. Should you be a writer. 2. What you naturally like to write.

With those brilliant promises, the first exercise:

For a month, everyday, the moment you wake up, start writing. This is not 'start writing your great opus'. This really is 'start writing whatever is on your mind'. And keep writing. Let your mind write whatever it wants, don't refrain it. When you start to dry up a bit, stop. Then you work out how much you wrote, say it is 200 words or for 15 minutes. The next day, do exactly the same thing, letting your mind write whatever it wants, not trying to carrying on from last time. However this time, push yourself to write a little bit more, either words or time.

The important steps:

1. Don't restrain your mind in what it wants to write.
2. Do not read over what you have written for the period of the exercise (a month or so).
3. Always try to write a bit more than the day before.

Before I explain this exercise (beyond the obvious), let me outline the second exercise:

This is to be done within the same time frame of the first exercise. Every night, before going to sleep, look at your plans for the next day and schedule in a 15 minute block to write where ever is best. Then the next day at a minute past that time you must be writing. If you are in the middle of a conversation, well that was badly planned of you and you must excuse yourself and walk away. Dorothea describes it as a debt of honour. You must write exactly when you said you would write and for the full fifteen minutes. She paints the delightful image of the in training writer hiding out in a washroom with his writing notebook as it was the only space he could find at short notice. Once again, let your mind write whatever it wants to write, but keep it going for the full fifteen minutes. She even suggests if really stuck starting with 'I'm finding this exercise really difficult because...' and going on from there.

As she notes, there will be plenty of excuses to change the time, make it a bit later, do it the next day because you are too busy/stressed out/tired etc. But no. Don't listen. It is your career as a writer at stake. Do not miss even one session or put it off by as much as five minutes. It's just for a month. And yes, some of your friends/family may believe you are strange as you keep walking off in the middle of conversations. But I wouldn't worry. If you really succeed as a writer, you will only become even stranger, so it is good that they get used to the idea now.

The thing to note with this exercise is to try and pick a different time everyday. You are trying to train your creative youth to produce on command, any time, any where.

So, set a time frame (eg. a few weeks) and commit to doing these two exercises.

At the end you will have trained yourself to do two things:

The first exercise, if you kept increase the amount your wrote, should have trained you to sit down for extended periods of time and write and just keep writing. It is like Dory from Finding Nemo sings 'just keep swimming, just keep swimming...'. The biggest necessary talent for a writer is to just keep writing.
 

You should also have found that despite all expectations or feelings, you can make your mind write on command anywhere, anytime. It will have grumbled at first and possibly not churned out a great deal of anything very good. But you should have found that it churned out something. And as you went along, it grumbled less and churned out more.

Also, at the end, you should be able to find out the following things about yourself as a writer:

First, if you couldn't do it, if you found excuses came up too frequently, that you skipped your debt of honour, according to Dorothea (and while it is harsh, I agree), give up the idea of becoming a writer. You might be technically very good, but you do not love it enough. Most writers agree that sitting down is hard, but if even when you have settled on a time and only have to do it for fifteen minutes you still can't make yourself, you would be happier doing something else.

As another side point, as an emerging writer, I often hear/read people who say that you should try to be anything else before being a writer, or that you have to love it more than anything else. I don't entirely agree with these. First of all, I think the act of writing and the self discipline involved is good for you even if you don't ever get anything published. I wouldn't give up my day job without proof I'm going to earn money, but if you have ever thought about writing start it just because it can be fun.

Then, to the second comment I say 'pah.' Writing is work like most other things. No one says 'don't exercise unless you really, really feel like.' How many people come home from a long day at work and think 'oh yah, an hour at the gym' initially? Once you realise the high that exercise can give, once you have made it habit, then you can think 'yah', but before that you just have to go because you know you will feel better afterwards. I find writing very much the same. Afterwards I feel fantastic, before... well, I could read, or watch TV, or just sleep. So, do not be discouraged if you don't immediately jump into writing every day. However, if you can't make yourself do it even when you have said it's only for fifteen minutes, I do recommend you find something that brings you more joy.

Second, you now have a month's worth of writing on whatever your mind wanted to focus on, which you shouldn't have touched or re-read. Now is the time to do that. Go through and note what you write when there is no directive other than to write. Dorothea suggests that this indicates what you naturally like to write and will show the style and type of writing you could do. If you enter into longer descriptions, setting up longer plot lines, or diffuse character descriptions, then your natural style of writing is aimed more towards novels (which doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't write short stories, but that you might be happier writing novels). On the other hand, if you enjoyed doing short character studies, describing small scenes etc., possibly short stories is your natural medium, though you can train yourself to write out longer scenes of course.

So, if you are thinking of becoming a writer, or are a writer but you're having trouble with actually writing, I highly recommend these exercise. Obviously my writing challenge is allowing me to do much the same in a different way. By setting a word target that so far out there, it has made me really stretch myself. I used to find doing 1,000 words a day really difficult. Now, the first 4,000 or so are super easy, it's just the last 4,000 or so I struggle with. But just think what an improvement that is over 1,000!

Brief summary of my day yesterday. Wrote pretty well in the morning, got just under 3,000 words done before work. But then came home and forced myself to the gym and felt better after that but honestly just needed an evening of reading. With my writing schedule, which I'll outline next post, I'm struggling to get enough input to balance with my output. I've only been able to snatch 10 mins here and 10 mins there to read. And I got to the stage where I just wanted to soak in a book for a while. So I did. And today, I feel much better.

Good luck with the exercises, and if you need more explanation, I recommend reading Dorothea herself.

And feel free to let me know how you go at the end of it! If people wanted to set up a little group doing the challenge, I would encourage it. You could even make badges that said something like “Excuse me, I'll be disappearing at 4.30pm, please don't be surprised or offended, but I'm writing.” Or “Do Not Disturb, Writing in Progress”. 

My Day Off So Let Me Present: Stephen King's On Writing.

Today was my day off from work, and accidentally became my day off from writing.

Did spend 2 hours this morning editing what I had previously written so it all connects up, but didn't really increase the word count. I then finished Stephen King's 'On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft' which is awesome. After lunch, I must have been more stressed than I realised, because I fell asleep and didn't wake up for ages. So I decided I would just take today off and read. Continuing my 'research' into young adults fantasy, I finished off one of the Percy Jackson books. It was the first one I have read, even though it was a year ago now some of my students at a summer school recommended them to me. The book definitely had appeal, and inspired me to try writing a really fast paced action series. 

So, because I have nothing interesting myself to say, I thought I would leave you with the final part of Stephen King's book, just because I liked it so much:

'On some days that writing is a pretty grim slog. On others - more and more of them as my leg begins to heal and my mind reaccustoms itself to its old routine -  I feel that buzz of happiness, that sense of having found the right words and put them in a line. It's like lifting off in an airplane: you're on the ground, on the ground, on the ground...and then you're up, riding on a magical cushion of air and prince of all you survey. That makes me happy, because it's what I was made to do.'

If you have never felt like this you might want to consider that you weren't made to be a writer.

I might not have been made to be a successful or prize winning writer, but I'm pretty sure writing is what I was always meant to do. It's sad it's taken me this long to realise, but also great that I can make up for lost time.

Until tomorrow.

Buffy.

Day 2: Balancing Writing and Work.

Yesterday I did 10,000 words, which was a first and super amazing. But today I had to manage 7,500 words along with going to work.

 

After yesterday's success, I had an awful sleep.

For those of you who know me, you will attest to the fact that I have seriously weird, in depth dreams. I sometimes dream I'm me, sometimes I'm someone else, and sometimes I'm watching from an external perspective. I have had dreams that cover weeks or months, and others which are just a flash of an image.

Last night I had a totally new type of dream. It was as if my mind just could not create any more images. I've had dreams where I have been blind before, which is annoying (and you wake up with sore eyes from trying to see all night), but this was not that. All I could see for the whole night was flashes of light. I tried today to explain it to Jenna at work, but had absolutely no idea what it was.

Sitting down to my laptop again tonight in the dark, staring at the bright screen, I suddenly realised. I was dreaming of staring at a blank computer screen. (Even now, though I've turned the screen right down, and have been trying to type with my eyes closed as much as I can, I have a head ache from an entire day looking at the damn thing.) I feel that this is somehow not a good sign.

So, after that weird night I woke up groggy and not at all wanting to write. But I got up, made myself a cup of tea, and got back into bed ready to write. I decided not to have creamy, hot, sweet porridge, as the potential for that to send me back to sleep once it settled in my stomach was just way too high. Sadly, this also seemed to affect my ability to get into the flow. I struggled away for just under two hours, trying to connect the one sentence with the next one. In the end, for all my efforts, I had 1,954 words. It meant that I still had another 5,546 to write that night when I got home. Though I did give myself a shake and remind myself that Stephen King only writes 2,000 words a day, and just look at how many books he's published!

At work, it was my first day back after my holiday, so found a wonderful 60 emails and a pile of work waiting for me to fix up. Add to that my growing discomfort with my computer screen, and by five pm I was very happy to go home.

On the way home I just kept thinking: I had over 5,500 words to write, the beginnings of a headache and no imagination left in me. I needed every bit of flow I could get.

So I just followed the routine. I went to the gym and did half an hour of cardio fitness (am starting to believe that listening to upbeat music while at the gym, instead of watching TV, helps with the runners high at the end, and consequently the flow). I did a short stretch because I couldn't find a spot to stretch in the usual room, so had to do it surrounded by all the muscle guys lifting weights and grunting. I then came back, made a ham and cheese toastie (never underestimate the power of a ham and cheese toastie) and jumped into a hot shower. It was then straight into bed with my laptop, cup of tea, block of chocolate and sadly also a bag of chips (I was congratulating myself that I had appeared to cut down my chocolate in take from half a block a day to a third of a block, until I realised that I've suddenly increased my in take of chips from nothing to half a bag. Really don't think I'm winning in this.)

But anyway, the thing you all want to know: did it work?

And the answer is yes! Was in bed and writing by a bit before 7.45 and by 10pm I had written an additional 5,694, bringing my day's total up to: 7648!

And not only that, they were the easiest 5000 words I've written in the past few days. 

So, all I can say: all hail the flow!

So, quick update, my sequel currently stands are 49,338 words. (and as I typed that, I suddenly thought how I could use something I just wrote to explain something I was getting stuck on. Go brain, you are really picking up.) I have to admit, coming home today, I thought I might have to rethink the whole thing because it just wasn't working. But I shall not give up so easily now!

Well, good night from a tired, but happy, Buffy.