How to Motivate Yourself to Write

These suggestions are geared primarily towards fiction writing, but they can apply just as well to any form of writing. Some of these tips I've learned from others, and some are strategies I've learned through practice and trial and error. You may have heard many of these suggestions before in one form or another, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded, so here's one more reminder you might find helpful.

Always Stop Writing When You know What's About To Happen Next

You're on a roll. You're excited about what you're writing. You want to keep writing until you've gotten all you're ideas down. This may seem counter intuitive, but this is exactly when you should stop: midway, while you're still excited. Make notes of your ideas, and you'll find that excitement will continue to the next day, and if you continue this strategy you can sustain this excitement far beyond that initial inspiration.

When You're Not Writing, You're Thinking. This is Good


So you've stopped right in the middle of that inspiration. You've left yourself hanging, and you're bursting with ideas. But now you have time to ruminate over those ideas. Those ideas will serve as the seeds of other ideas, but they need time to grow. You may not even realize that you're thinking about them, but as soon as you get back to writing, you'll discover that that initial inspiration has turned into an even greater windfall. Like anything, this won't always happen, but it's more likely if you stop writing while you still have that seed.

Write Every Day

This is the most common suggestion that writer's make, but this is for good reason. Inspiration wains and you have no idea what to write, but the longer you put it off, the more you lose momentum. If you write a sentence, you're still writing. Even if you only only have the intention of writing that sentence, now you've gotten started, and starting is half the battle. You might end up writing something you know you'll get rid of later on, but it keeps the momentum going, and it makes it that much easier to start the next day.

 Keep yourself to a minimum word count, but keep your ambitions reasonable. What can you realistically write in a day, considering your other responsibilities and your pace? Keep your minimum at the lowest you can expect of yourself. When you exceed your minimum, it feels like you're really jamming, but when you write less, the times when you do write more should make it easier to forgive yourself when you don't. You're still on track. The high days of productivity make up for those low days.

Keep a Regular Schedule

Routine is key. I write every morning around the same time. I also stop writing around the same time. Maybe your time is the evening or the afternoon, but give yourself a general time line and target time. There's always time for writing. You're never too busy to meet your minimum, as long as your minimum is reasonable.

Allow Yourself Uncertainty

There are going to be times when you feel like you've screwed up, that you've ruined the whole thing and you need to start from scratch. This is healthy. Doubt means you're looking at your work with a critical eye. I usually find that I'm always walking a tightrope between feeling like I could screw everything up, and that maybe it's just working. The best answer to this, is to keep writing. Whether your practice is to chuck the bad writing after the first draft, or as you go, if you keep moving forward, inevitably you're going to write something you feel good about. I'm more of an excise as you go writer. I find that a certain amount of ruthless chopping in the early stages of a manuscript can be motivating, rather than discouraging. Don't get too ruthless--you can save that for the final draft. If there's a passage that you're unsure of but feel may have potential, put it in it's own file. You may never look at it again, or you may end up using it, or portions of it later, but putting it out of sight can help to reinforce your resolve.

Have the Resolve to Finish

There's no end to confidence you'll build by actually getting to the end of a manuscript. This doesn't mean you should never give up on a story, but only give up after you've developed the confidence that you can finish something if you're determined to. As you finish more projects, while at the same time, developing an increasingly rigorous editing process, you'll be well on your way to writing not only more frequently and more confidently but more effectively. Writers need to write, and you have to get a ton of bad writing out of your system before you can write well. Even if you're a very attentive reader and have read widely, the exercise of writing and writing regularly is extremely important.

Should I Make an Outline?


This, again, is a question of personal approach, but I don't tend to. Outlines tends to reduce a character's actions to plot points. If you're going for a character driven story, you may end up having your character artificially adhere to these plot points in a way that is contrary to what the character has become. Of course there is always a risk of taking too many digressions, or going off on tangents, but this is something that I think can be taken care of in the editing process. The other problem with an outline is that you deny yourself the discovery that comes with the writing process, of discovering a new twist or turn in the story that you could have never anticipated. Not that you shouldn't write with a plan, but if you have too much of a preconceived idea of where the story is going next, you may end up feeling like your writing by the numbers, executing the next scene in your outline as prescribed, denying yourself the excitement of that next eureka. This, to me, is what keeps writing engaging and current. I also believe it's what makes the reader want to turn the page. If you're not sure what happens next, neither are they. But avoid writing yourself into a corner--not knowing everything isn't the same as not having options. This falls nicely into the idea of knowing what's going to happen next before your next writing session.

Should I Keep a Blog?

I only write in my blog after I've accomplished my other writing for the day. It's great practice to write a blog, to write anything on a regular basis, but if you're a fiction writer and your blog doesn't contain fiction, the blog could prove to be a distraction. Opinion or autobiography requires a different skill set than fiction, and though any writing can be helpful, you've got to be writing in the mode of your chosen discipline if you want to get better.

Thanks for reading, and happy writing!

Writing: The Audience is Everything

When you write, the audience is everything.

The biggest problem with not only beginning writers, but writers in general, is that they forget to be readers. There's always the risk of falling in love with your own words, of congratulating yourself for how clever you are. And maybe you are clever. Maybe you've written a fantastic metaphor, or a great description, but great descriptions and metaphors aren't a story.

There are millions and millions of books and short stories for people to choose from. The reader has chosen yours. This doesn't mean your book is the best they could choose, but for whatever reason, they chose it. There is a lot of emphasis in commercial writing on "the hook," the simple high concept that pulls the reader in, but the hook, isn't the story. A good hook is not what makes a story compelling to read, it's what compels the reader to pick up the book in the first place, to choose your book. This is valuable in selling a book, but not necessarily the most important way to engage the reader.

The beginning of a story is an invitation, or at least, it should be. That doesn't mean that it should be expository. That doesn't mean that it should be "the hook," though it doesn't hurt if it is. A hook is a promise, and the story is the fulfillment of that promise, but all stories don't begin with a bang. The best stories don't necessarily pull the reading in, but lead them. You give them a trail to follow. Once you've invited them, it's time to let go and give the reader something to do, but giving the reader too much to do too early on intimidates them. You're requiring them to work too hard, which isn't particularly generous. In the beginning, work for them, don't make them work for you, but after that, try not to do all the work for them.

Too much exposition is hand holding. The common maxim that you hear over and over is, "show, don't tell," and in the beginning, what you choose to show them should be what makes them want to read on. If you don't give enough in the beginning--and I don't mean exposition--you put the reader out to sea. In the beginning you need to anchor them. Sometimes anchoring the reader means putting them off balance, but not so much that you lose them. When I say, "putting the reader off balance" I mean leaving something for them to do, such as leaving out information that will make them want to continue in order to discover more, but you still have to put them somewhere grounded. Maybe it's an actual place, and in describing that place, the reader is intrigued. Maybe it's a piece of dialogue that implies, but doesn't reveal. But whatever the implication, the place or piece of dialogue has to be given context, and relatively soon. The more you wait to tell the reader what's going on, the more you leave them out to sea.

Don't Give Up All Your Secrets 

When I write, I think about one person, and I'm writing to that person. Of course that person is always me, even if it's a letter, not because I'm selfish (well, maybe a little), but because when I write, I'm alone. When I write, I have to fool myself into thinking that I have this intimate relationship with this invisible person. I don't assume that they can read my mind, that they know what I intend, but I also try not to underestimate them. I assume they are smart, that they will get my jokes, that they will be able to infer what I imply, as long as they have context to do it. I want to engage them, so I don't give them everything. I hold back. I carry secrets. I know more about the story than they do, and when I can, I suggest, rather reveal. If you're writing about characters, all characters have a secret inner life and a history, and these are aspects of the character that the reader can never know fully. If the reader knows everything they can possibly know about the character, if they know everything you know, you give up your secrets, and deny the reader their imagination. What we imagine is more compelling than what is true, but the writer still has to know the truth so that they can suggest it. Give the reader hints, but don't give up all your secrets.

Fantasy and Science Fiction: Showing and Not Telling when World Building

This is often the problem that I have with sequels. Often with a sequel, the writer runs out of implications, and all their secrets slowly unravel until there's nothing left for the reader's imagination. In the fantasy and science fiction genres, there's this concept of world building. What some writers think this means, is to explain as much about the world they invented as they can. When I was a kid I loved the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, but most of all, I loved The Monster Manual. It was a catalog of monsters for the game, and featured a description and a little story about each character. These stories were by their nature incomplete. They told about what the character could do, and what their habits were, but the story they inhabited was entirely left to your imagination.

So in a fantasy story, the writer fills in that blank, but if they fill in all the blanks, we're back to that essential problem: they've revealed all their secrets. Star Wars was best when we didn't know exactly how Darth Vader became who he was. We were thrown into a story that had a million implications, and given just enough to imagine a much bigger world. When Lucas made all those sequels, he began filling in every gap, exposing all his secrets and in effect, killing the viewer's imagination.

And why is the audience everything? Don't some writers say that they write just for themselves? I never believe people who say this. Even if they're their only audience, they still are writing to an imaginary person. If it's a diary, that person is your future self, even if you never read it. Writing is language, and language is a vehicle for communication, but communication is only communication if it is received. So even if no one ever reads it, even if you don't read it, At one time you were writing for an invisible person, for an audience, for your future self or whomever you imagined might read it, but it's always for someone. So be generous. Be gracious. When you write, you imagine that somewhere there is a person who is willing, out of all the choices that they have of things to read, to spend their time reading what you've written, a real person instead of an invisible one.

You Are the Reason I Write. 

So thank you for being that person. You're smart, and you get get my jokes and you make me feel understood. You really contribute quite a bit to my self-asteem. So thank you, thank you, thank you. It's good to be alive.

Toy Story 3, or How to Effectively Betray Your Audience

Last night I saw the movie Toy Story 3, and there was something about it that really bothered me. If you're going to see the movie and you're someone who doesn't like it when someone else gives away the ending, I'll warn you when that part is coming, but first I want to talk about storytelling in general.

At a recent Society of Children's Book Writer's and Illustrator's conference that I attended, an accomplished writer outlined for the audience the standard formula behind the majority of the stories we read: place the character in some kind of jeopardy--whether moral, emotional or physical, the character is placed in a situation where they are compelled to make a decision. How they choose to deal with the dilemma reveals something about their character or is reflective of who the character is. How they come to the decision, their journey, is even more important than the decision they make, because often in some of the best stories the answer to this dilemma is pretty predictable. So in the end, you have to justify the characters journey, give them unique decisions to make that reflect who they are. And then there's the other way that writers tend to keep their readers engaged: stirring the pot. Adding conflict that further complicates the dilemma. The author chose to describe this concept in a very dramatic way: jumping on chairs, shouting and gesturing to illustrate his point, as if the more dramatic his presentation, the more effective it would come across, but I couldn't help feeling that there was a certain amount of insecurity behind the act, that he was doing his own form of pot stirring.

Good Stories Don't Have to Follow This Traditional Formula

Not all great stories follow this path. One of my favorite stories is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through The Looking Glass. These stories are comprised of a series of surreal anecdotes. Alice responds to each vignette with curiosity, but her character doesn't fundamentally change. Kafka's the Trial is similar--the pot is definitely stirred, but K's responses to the dilemma's of the story are emotionally monochrome--while Alice deals with each dilemma with curiosity and frustration, K also deals with every conflict in the same way, with frustration, but also an unmodulated level of moral outrage. Each is a relentless surrealist drama. The journey and the nuances of the journey are significant, but no conclusions are drawn. The characters are basically cyphers, but using a cypher is an excellent way to engage the reader as a participant.

Songs, Nursery Rhymes and poems can also work this way, for example:

Hey diddle diddle,
The Cat and the fiddle,
The Cow jumped over the moon,
The little Dog laughed to see such sport,
And the Dish ran away with the Spoon

This is very striking narrative imagery, a story of sorts, and though it's more verse than story, I wouldn't discount the fact that there is a narrative, that there are characters, and there are situations, but they have nothing to do with traditional story conflict. This is as valid a way to tell a story as any, and it's not a new one. What used to be called, "nonsense verse" has virtually disappeared in contemporary children's verse in favor of literal narrative, and I think it's a trend that represents a great loss to children's literature.

Margaret Wise Brown's classic, Goodnight Moon is simply a story about a bunny saying goodnight to the world before he goes to sleep. Another one of my favorite books, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, is a journey of sensations, of flying, of playing in dough, and though the bakers in the story are sometimes menacing, it's not about a conflict between Mickey and the bakers. At least not in a traditional way. They threaten him and he escapes, but it's really not about this conflict. You never have a sense that Mickey's jeopardy is what we're focusing on in the story. It's about the journey in a much more personal way. Mickey is not fundamentally changed by the story in the same way that Max is in the more popular Where the Wild Things Are, but it's still an effective story. Mickey, too, is somewhat of a cypher, but he still is a character who makes decisions and has opinions, even more so than Alice and K.

Lazy Storytelling: Do You Have Something to Say, or Are You Simply Stirring the Pot?

But coming back to more traditional story structure, to stirring the pot: how much, and just how should you put your character in jeopardy?

There are two kinds of jeopardy in a story:

1. Jeopardy that enriches the character's dilemma, that reveals something about them and their interactions that is specific to character.

2. Jeopardy that simply pushes the readers buttons, that elicits an emotional response through some universal experience such as a physical or emotional threat.

The second variety usually involves loss or harm in the most superficial sense--the loss of something or someone valued, or the threat of death, or even better: both. I always know that a story is potentially in trouble when it begins with the death of a protagonist's near and dear loved one. This is a hard scenario to pull off without being emotionally manipulative, because it's at its core an emotionally manipulative situation. Before we know anything about the character we are asked to feel sorry for them. To turn that sympathy into empathy, you have to give us a reason to identify with the character and their dilemma that is specific to them. Otherwise it's simply loss for the sake of loss. So everything after that death must justify that death or you're simply eliciting a generic emotional response.

Put a character we don't identify with in jeopardy, and the audience is removed from the threat. Similarly, if you make the stakes too high, you may elicit an emotional response from the reader, but in the end, you don't fundamentally engage them. You simply engage them on a very primal, emotional level. You get them to feel, but you don't get them to think. These kinds of stake building stories tend to be effective in getting a reaction from the audience, and are often successful, but I don't think they're doing the best thing that stories can do. I don't think they engage the reader in a way that is truly meaningful. For me, this was the central weakness of the currently popular Hunger Games series--by book three the stakes have been driven so high, the character has lost so much, that it was hard for me to care anymore. The level of emotional button pushing had surpassed my ability to empathize with the character.



Betraying Your Audience

Which brings me back to Toy Story 3. Initially you have a conflict that involves all the characters in a way that engages them individually, and in the case of many of the key players, how they solve the dilemma, the decisions they make, reveal something about their character. Barbie betrays her love interest, Ken, to help her friends. Woody leaves a happy and comfortable life with the little girl who finds him and abandons his search for Andy, to save his friends. Their decisions are predictable, but it's how they make the decisions and how this process reflects their individual characters that's engaging, or at least, that's the general idea.

Typically, as in most stories and, unfortunately, most children's stories, it's about white hats and black hats. We've got good guys and bad guys, but the main antagonist is made to be the most intriguing because of his inner conflict. He's given his own journey, his own moral dilemma, but makes a different moral decision. Like Darth Vader, Lots O' Huggin' Bear goes to the dark side.

Then it all comes down to stirring the pot.

In bad storytelling, it's all about pot stirring. There's no substance to it beyond the superficial danger. The protagonist is an archetype, and the threats have no real emotional resonance.

But there's nothing wrong with stirring the pot when the characters and conflicts are well established and fully realized, with adding a few superficial conflicts to engage us with the dilemma of the character. That's good storytelling. But in the best storytelling, you must respect the reader. Once you have them emotionally engaged, you've put them in a vulnerable position, and its a position that's easy to exploit. You've got them in your thrall. Now, when you stir the pot, every additional conflict pushes the reader further on an emotional level. But you must respect the reader.

If you exploit this too much, you're doing the reader an injustice. When the new conflicts you introduce have nothing to do with the unique dilemmas of the character, it's all about emotional button pushing. You can up the ante and up the ante, but you're simply working the audience. You're not trusting the strength of the characters you've established to carry the story on their own. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are very effective at this: they feel this need to seal the deal, to make sure that the audience feels something, but they don't trust the characters ability to do this on their own, so they amp up those emotions through superficial conflict. Sometimes, especially in the case of Cameron, this is because the characters are too poorly developed. Spielberg is capable of better, but he just doesn't trust his own story. He always seems to feel he needs the insurance.

(WARNING: THIS IS THE PART WHERE I GIVE AWAY THE ENDING) So Toy Story 3, as well, was unwilling to trust its audience. In the penultimate scene, the characters are headed for the incinerator at a city dump. Before they are saved at the last moment, Buzz Lightyear takes Jessie the girl cowboy's hand and looks at her with a pitiable expression that denotes a very adult emotion--he's preparing to die. And she gets it. And then the other characters get it. And the film holds on to this moment until they're rescued from this horrible fate, but the moment is milked for all its worth. To young children, this moment is more than terrifying. It's more than Pinocchio getting swallowed by the whale. They're being confronted with the idea of real death. It's an amped up version of The Velveteen Rabbit, a story that is similarly emotionally manipulative in a way that betrays the audience, though the Velveteen Rabbit isn't nearly as visceral. Death is a reasonable subject to broach with children, but it must be done sensitively, and this, simply, wasn't.

But even as an adult, I felt my buttons being pressed in a way that didn't ring true. The characters and their dilemma weren't complex enough to justify this kind of emotional ride. It was lazy storytelling. Pixar can do better. And as writers, we can do better. So the next time you're writing a story, ask yourself: am I stirring the pot for the sake of stirring the pot, or is adding conflict justified by character? Is the conflict meaningful, or is it insurance?