Tag: advice

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Battling Writer’s Block

Battling Writer’s Block

6 Tips and 1 Big Secret

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

Before we address your writer’s block, we need to consider what kind of writer you are and what kind of writing you do.

More specifically, where do you want your career to go?

If you are currently at the hobbyist level, meaning you love writing for fun and have these characters you enjoy working with, that’s great. Maybe you make maps and character drawings and post them on your favorite website. But today, you’re stuck, and you’re looking up how to fight writer’s block. That’s awesome — we’ll talk about the techniques you need to employ to get through it because there are many.

On the other hand, if you are a writer who fully intends to get paid for your work, whether full-time or part-time, we have to address writer’s block from a different perspective.

Here’s the reality:

If you are someone who writes fiction to make money, you don’t get writer’s block.

You don’t have the luxury of writer’s block. Whether you are going the traditional route, the indie route, or a hybrid, you’re doing it at a professional level in exchange for funds. You are a professional writer.

You may experience “project” block, as my friend Michael Stackpole once said. You might be working on a project and get stuck for a second. What’s the solution to that? You go to another project.

Most of my writer friends in the indie world have more than one project going at any one time for just such an occasion. Maybe your urban fantasy isn’t working for you this morning, so you shift to your YA romance. For those in traditional publishing, if you’re doing a book a year, you still probably have more than one project going because you don’t know which one will sell.

In any case, you’re a professional. You are expected to turn over fiction for your audience. There’s no room for writer’s block.

I recently wrote a 90,000-word novel in three months. The first month was for research and outlining. The other two months were for writing. Almost every day, I got up, looked at where I was, figured out what part of the story I was in, and dove in, getting 2,000 to 3,000 words a day. I followed an outline, and when you’ve crafted a really good outline, you don’t get writer’s block.

You might get tired, which is different. Physical or personal setbacks are not writer’s block.

When under contract for that novel, I overwrote as much as I could to build in time for unforeseen events. Things happen, so I wrote as much as I could when I was in the zone. I don’t believe in writing every day as a necessity. For me, I write when I can. But having a solid outline and writing like hell when you can means there’s no room for writer’s block.

I beat my deadline by a week.

Now, let’s talk about the more fun side: What if you’re just working on something as a hobbyist, enthusiast, or apprentice? When you’re stuck, there are a few things I always recommend to my students.

First, get out of your space.

You probably have a space that you typically write in. If the routine isn’t working for you, you need somewhere new. Go to a library, a park, a coffee shop, or even a different room in your home. Change your visual and sensory perspective to kickstart your creativity.

Second, have an outline.

If you have a solid outline, you don’t have to worry about writer’s block as much. You know what’s next. If you’re not excited about a scene in your outline, it probably shouldn’t be there.

Third, get to the good scene.

There’s no rule that says you have to write in order. Write what excites you the most.

Fourth, engage with your favorite media.

Watching favorite movies, reading favorite books, listening to favorite music, or reading poetry can be really good for breaking up a solid logjam in writer’s block. But avoid mindless scrolling on social media. Be deliberate in your engagement.

Your Voice was influenced by movies, by media, by songs, by other things that you’ve read.

So invest back into those. Go read your favorite book. Take an hour, make your favorite food, sit in your comfy chair and get back into the thing that led you to today. Other authors, other storytellers, guided you to today. Go revisit them, hang out with them, read them, watch them.

Which is not the same thing as, “Well, Tom said take a couple hours…” and look at YouTube.

No, no, no, no.

Don’t go to YouTube. Don’t go to TikTok. Don’t go to any of these places. Don’t mindlessly scroll and call it work. That’s not work. You know it and I know it. I’m talking about the deliberate, intentional act of taking an hour or two hours to relax, get back in touch with your self, get back in touch with your heroes, your mentors, and then see how the scene progresses.

Fifth, get outside.

A ten-minute walk or just being outside can change your mindset. Engage with your surroundings deeply, using all your senses. Be safe, obviously. But get out. Get out and get moving. A ten minute walk. A 30 minute walk can change all kinds of things. Put your phone away. Don’t put your earbuds in. Just walk as you’re walking. Or if you can’t walk for whatever reason. Cool. Just be outside and just sit. But as you’re sitting or as you’re walking, notice and take note of the things around you. But dive deep! Don’t just look at the pretty flowers. Stop. Literally smell those roses. Smell the snapdragons. Touch them. What’s it feel like? What does it remind you of? Listen to everythin. Can you if you break off the twig of of a tree, just a little bush — what does that sound like?

What is the texture of that little stick that you just broke off? What does it smell like? Get that stuff into your brain. Don’t worry about the book. Don’t worry about the scene. Just get those sensory things going. And I’m I can’t guarantee, but I’m confident that when you sit back down, you will find a new sort of freshness to the writing.

Lastly, write something else.

If you’re stuck, work on another project or take one of your characters and put them in a new, challenging situation. This can reveal new aspects of your characters and invigorate your creativity.

If you don’t have another project on on the back burner, take one of your characters from this current project and put them in a locked concrete room with some of their character, either one of yours or a character that you like from literature or movies

Lock them in this room and let them start talking to each other and just see what happens. One of my favorite stories about this, about breaking writer’s block, is I took a 17 year old girl who was an artist from my novel ZERO. I put her in a room with a 30 year old space pirate and locked them in a concrete bunker just to see what would happen.

And while you’re never going to see that scene because it’s never going to be published — it was just a three-page thing that I wrote really quickly –the dialogue revealed so much about both of those characters that there are still little elements of that exchange in those two books. It’s weird, but it works. Just throw them in a room, see what happens.

Remember, if you’re a professional, you need to think about writer’s block differently. If you’re just a hobbyist, don’t worry about it too much. You’ll get there. But if you’re at the professional level or planning to be, your approach to getting through writer’s block will change because your livelihood depends on it.

I hope some of this is helpful. Leave me questions or comments. I’m just glad you’re here, and we’ll do this again soon. Take care.

If you found this article helpful, may I point you to STORYCRAFT. Ten hours of hanging out with two successful hybrid authors, talking about everything from story structure, to approaching agents and dealing with traditional contracts, to the highs and lows of indie pub. Check it out: https://tomleveen.store/b/storycraft

Categories
Craft

Create Memorable Characters in Writing Fiction

If you want to create a memorable character, I need you to taste them.

Hold on. Stay with me. I promise this is going somewhere.

This is just a quick little exercise to round out or give some depth to your characters, to your protagonists.

Go to the beginning of the story. It doesn’t matter if it’s a short story or a novel or a series. If you’re working in a series, then start at the beginning of the series, page one of the series, and go all the way to the end of the series. Whether you’ve gotten that far or not doesn’t really matter.

Describe your protagonist in crippling detail in that first page.

Not for the writing, not for the novel. You’re not necessarily going to put it into the book. This is just for you. This is just an exercise. Take some time and describe that protagonist in excruciating detail.

I want you to taste them.

What would they taste like if you licked their cheek or their arm? Like what? What kind of sensations? Not just what they look like. Not her long, beautiful blonde hair. What does she actually smell like at the beginning of the story? Give as many sensory details as you possibly can. Dispassionately, no judgment. This is just for you.

Go in deep with all of your senses, as much sensory stuff as you can possibly squeeze into this description for page one, where they start the story.

Then, very simply, repeat this exercise for them on the last page of the story or the book or the series.

Now what do they taste like, now what do they smell like, now what do they sound like? And of course, what do they look like? Does she have a scar on her face now that she didn’t have before? Does he have a limp now that he didn’t have before? Whatever those things were, how are they different at the end?

Those things should be different because your character has been on a journey, and every successful story has to do with the character going on a journey, right?

Let’s say we’re writing a horror story, and some terrible things are going to happen on that camping trip. How does this character look, smell, taste, feel – all those things – at the beginning of this journey, in the car, on the way to the woods; do you smell the coffee? Versus the last page of a horror story: what do they look like now, what do they smell like?

I am not necessarily advocating for you to include all of these vivid descriptions in the story. You certainly can. They are there to be used, and that’s fine. But the purpose, the goal of this particular exercise isn’t just to create new and exciting ways to describe your character.

It’s to more concretely establish in your mind, as creator of this universe, the journey that your character has been on, having those kinds of sensory details in your mind that you can call upon. “I have to remember that at the end of this book, the end of the story, the end of this series, the target goal I’m aiming for here is somebody who is stronger (or somebody who is weaker), somebody who’s been through hell, but come out on the other side.”

How can you physically indicate what they’ve been through emotionally?

It’s just an exercise. It’s not necessarily something you want to put into the book, although once you have those sensory details, maybe it is something you want to put in the, maybe just in the process of doing this sort of exercise, you’ve discovered something about the character that you hadn’t thought of before. Discoveries are so much fun, especially for those of us who are pantsers rather than plotters.

Having those sort of concrete details can really root you as a creator and show us as the reader the journey that they have taken.

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Uncategorized

Starting My New Writing Career: Writing A Book Is Not Enough

Here’s what I know.

I’m a good storyteller. I published nine traditional (“trad”) novels for a pretty good chunk of change. I got to write on a popular comic book. I’ve been writing in other universes, and get invited back. So I know how to do that part.

What I and most other authors are not so good at:

Marketing. Getting in front of people. Getting in front of the right people, the people who buy books.

Here’s what else I know:

I know that I’m really good at getting a group of people together to make something creative. A play, an audiobook, a short film. I’ve never had the same kind of success with these formats as I have with novels, but it also depends on what our definition of “success” is.

I have a very specific financial goal.

I also have a very specific emotional goal.

I no longer believe the two have to be exclusive.

The plan:

Write several serials at once. Failing and learning in public, per Gary Vee.

Use paid Facebook advertising to test headlines, images, and story ideas.

Use a social media scheduler to post no less than four times per day across the major platforms, with specific targets in mind for each platform (for me, Twitter/X only has good engagement on one type of post, so that’s what I’ll post. No more wasting time trying to drive traffic from a source that has a low time-ROI.)

Outline the serials to fill five or more complete novels.

Take the novels one at a time to Kickstarter.

Use book #1 in each series as a lead magnet and intro to the series.

Use newsletter swaps and paid newsletter advertising, as well as Facebook ads, to drive readers to the first book in the series.

Release for three months on Kindle Unlimited.

Then release wide, including my own storefront.

Once a book is wide and on my storefront, use that as the only link-in-bio…drive traffic first and foremost directly to my store.

…Repeat?

That’s basically it.

A lot of folks will say that’s too many irons in the fire at once. And I’d agree, except that this is how my brain works. I’ve tried all the other ways. Long gone are the days of a trad publisher offering me high five-figure advances, i.e., living wages.

If I don’t take charge now, I may never.

I’ve tried focusing on one thing at a time. I get excited by the new Shiny Thing and never go back. This way, I’ve got multiple projects that all hold my interest in varying degrees.

I get to tell the stories that have been cooking on back burners for so long.

This plan allows me to put to use many of my mentors’ ideas. For example, The Pumpkin Plan: Plant a shit-ton of seeds and prune the ones that don’t produce.

I don’t know which genre will land, but I’m not about to spend years writing a handful of novels, only to discover no one was interested. I’d rather spend one year or so writing a lot of different things, and then double down on the ones that bear fruit.

This also follows most of Gary Vee’s advice: post, post, post.

And by the way…

God help me….

It’s free.

I’ll have subscription options available for people who want more access and who want early access, yes. But otherwise, the stories will fundamentally be and stay free. My shit’s been pirated so much anyway, it’s not even worth the effort to whack every mole that pops its head up. So I may as well give it away.

I say all this with the enormous caveat that we are a two-income household, so I have a lot more room than most to manevuver. If I fail, our family won’t lose the house. This is not a process I’d recommend for someone who just stormed off the job with no safety net.

I think that’s it.

LFG.

Categories
Craft

How To Deal With the Frustrations of Writing

How do you deal with some of the frustrations that come with being a writer?

We suffer beneath many frustrations. There’s the frustration writers block. There’s the frustration of not having enough time to do the work we really want to do. Of course, the ultimate frustration is not having our work published, or perhaps worse: having a published book, but no one’s buying.

I’ve dealt with, and continue to deal with, all of these frustrations (and many others). After wrestling with these frustrations myself—in my own mind, on paper, wandering around the kitchen at 2 AM speaking into my phone—there is one solution that continues to come to mind. It is great and wonderful and terrible in its simplicity:

Keep writing.

I know. That’s probably the most . . . well, frustrating answer I could I have given to you or me. There are plenty of other actionable items we could add to this list: you could take courses, or spend money on Facebook ads for your book, for example. You can read books and articles like this one, and watch YouTube videos about any topic under the sun related to your frustrations as a writer. God knows I have.

But the one solution that I keep coming back to is that I must write.

Gary Vaynerchuk points out that if you really want success with the thing you love to do, design a process you love. There are no guarantees in any pursuit, whether that’s law, medicine, creative arts, financial work, you name it. So, you’d better come up with a process that you really enjoy. I really enjoy the process of writing novels. All of those frustrations I listed at the top of this article are still true—sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis all at once. But I still love the process of writing.

If you’ve gotten this far in this article, you probably do, too.

With no guarantee of financial or emotional success, how do you deal with all of those frustrations? You keep writing. You write because, as Stephen King points out, to not write is death. More than once in the last decade, I have considered quitting altogether. I have thought about going back to school, getting a graduate degree . . . “I’m just going to work full-time at a library or somewhere.” (That’s not a bad gig by the way.)

The problem is, the thought of never writing another word of fiction chills my heart. I already know that I may never ever publish with a New York publisher ever again. But in this day and age, there is no excuse not to write the things that we love and share them with the world. The internet has utterly and forever changed publishing. Find your audience, and you will be fine.

I am not trying to diminish the size or weight of those three frustrations, or the many other frustrations I didn’t even list. They are real. They hurt sometimes. They can cause distress. But if you are a writer, the only way forward is to keep writing. Perhaps we need to try a new genre, or a new format. Maybe it’s time to take a class in poetry, or essay writing, or creative nonfiction. I have taken these classes and gotten a lot out of them. More than once, they’ve reignited my desire to continue writing. I am also not dismissing all of those videos and courses I mentioned. They can be very powerful as motivators, or to inspire us to try something new and different.

Through it all, we must write. We must not just merely suffer anxiety, but rather be anxious to set forth to tell our stories.

If we cannot or will not do that, then the frustrations have won. Let’s not give them the satisfaction.

I say this at the end of most of my articles and posts about writing, but today, it takes on a slightly more serious meaning:

Keep. Writing.

I mean it.