5 strategies for moving through “writer’s block”
It is not neurotic to sit at a desk all day devising an imaginary world. It is not even neurotic to sit all day at a desk trying to devise an imaginary world but not succeeding in doing so. What is neurotic is to hate oneself for doing or not doing either of these activities.
—Victoria Nelson
[This post is a follow-up to The art of the coddiwomple (or, “writer’s block” revisited).]
Drafting is joyful again, though it isn’t enough to feel relieved and grateful. I’ve been asking myself, What has helped? And why has it helped? How do you channel your creative energy while you’re waiting on that breakthrough? I’ve teased out several distinct practices and ways of being, which I have semi-consciously employed in tandem. Only one or two of these suggestions may resonate for you, so let’s just say the point is to keep close this one pure nugget of truth:
It may look to all the world like you are “stuck,” but you are actually in DISCOVERY MODE.
Stay curious and reflective and you’ll come up with more than a few solid strategies of your own.
I’ve settled upon my own definition of discipline.
Counterintuitive as it may sound, thinking of myself first and foremost as a “soft animal body” (thank you, Mary Oliver!) has done a world of good for my creative discipline. When I talk to friends about Kate and Nancy’s excellent parenting of my nieces and nephew, I characterize their approaches as love and discipline in perfect balance, and that’s something we can employ in our relationships with ourselves too.
For example, I have often called myself “clumsy” out loud when I’ve dropped or knocked into something. The other night, when my boyfriend dropped something and reacted the same way, I said: “What if we promise we are not going to call ourselves clumsy anymore, no matter what?” He readily agreed.
The next morning, I bumped my elbow into a carton of blueberries, a handful of which went scattering across the kitchen floor. “Aha!” I cried. “I am not allowed to call myself clumsy!” Instead, we arranged the fallen blueberries into an arrow pointing toward the dog, who promptly gobbled them up. We got a good laugh out of it, and though I can’t quantify this, I feel sure I poured that positive feeling into my workweek, which has been extra productive and joyful. (Note to self: research the research on reparenting and creativity!)
What discipline is:
Setting an intention to do a certain type of work (drafting, revising, admin, etc.) at a certain time of day, for a certain length of time (or until I feel jangly-brained, which happens after two to four hours of drafting), with distractions minimized; and following through on that intention to the best of my ability.
Setting reasonable boundaries with regard to my working conditions (see what I wrote in my last post about the DC Writers’ Room).
Preparing for productive work sessions by either packing lunch and snacks for the day (which entails meal prep and grocery shopping) or deciding on a solid takeout option (read: good value and keeps me full for hours, like a Chipotle sofritas burrito) ahead of time.
Also discipline: A willingness to recognize when the work I planned to do isn’t actually the most effective or fulfilling work to be doing that day after all, and pivoting accordingly. Reaffirming the value of scratching.
What discipline is NOT:
Inward name-calling or other forms of self-beratement. (No more “lazy” either!)
Setting up an unnecessarily complicated productivity system that I will inevitably not adhere to for more than a day, leading us back to habit #1.
Trying to adhere to a 9-5 Monday-Friday work schedule because that is what is understood and respected in this culture.
Revising a manuscript from 10am to 11pm (or later) with very infrequent bathroom and meal breaks. (It may look like I am “working hard,” but it is certainly not healthy.) In general, being “so in flow” that I forget I have to pee.
All this amounts to setting healthier boundaries with oneself. Remember Victoria Nelson’s adage that creative discipline arises naturally out of one’s deepest preferences? Many of the most profoundly contented moments of my life occur at a desk in a shared space where silence is the rule, with a pile of notes and a thermos of Earl Grey. Those are my preferences. Notice what your preferences are and then do your best to live by them.
More than ever before, I am continually on the lookout for a reason to laugh.
I want to improve my comedic writing skills, and I want to get better at not taking things personally and taking myself less seriously in general. But the pursuit of these worthy goals isn’t what’s making a difference.
I believe this meme originated with Merry Blacksmith, but please feel free to correct me.
I figured out pretty early on that as a creative person, it is critical to surround yourself with folks who’ll only say “You’re so silly!” or “Man, are you WEIRD!” in a tone of astonished admiration. Admittedly these folks are rare birds, as clearly implied by the Apple Dictionary thesaurus:
Having friends who truly appreciate one’s quirks is necessary for the maintenance of one’s self esteem. Yet it hadn’t occurred to me that being in a relationship with someone who actually enjoys me randomly speaking in cartoon voices, and with whom nonsense song lyrics and groan-worthy puns are a secondary love language, could have such an amplifying effect on my creativity. No coincidence that the middle-grade novel I’m drafting right now is the funniest thing I’ve written (and that includes Petty Magic). Of course, part of this newfound facility with jokes and wordplay is the result of the foundational work of character development, but where do hilarious three-dimensional characters come from?
“Would you still love me if I was a worm?”
“Well, dear, that would all depend on whether the scenario owes more to Kafka or Rick Moranis…”
Or let me put it to you this way: how conducive are etiquette and convention to creativity?
It doesn’t matter if it’s comedy in a more structured form or indulging one’s absurdist tendencies in private—it seems obvious, doesn’t it, that “silly people” are more likely to think thoughts no one else has ever thought before? (Okay, so we won’t ever know for sure—suffice to say it is possible.) Think of the jester of medieval legend, who was the only one allowed to point out the absurdities of the court. In this sense, to be “foolish” is to be wise.
So go ahead and rejig the lyrics to a cheesy ’80s power ballad on the fly. Sing at the top of your lungs. Giggle uncontrollably. Repeat.
And see what happens next.
I have re-immersed myself in children’s lit.
Last Christmas I gave my niece a copy of Phoebe Wahl’s Little Witch Hazel, and we love it more every time we read it together. The summer chapter is the most thematically relevant for (most) grown-ups, but my favorite is the winter chapter, in which Hazel spends all day helping her neighbors (tending to wounds, caring for newborn bunnies, and so forth) in the shadow of an impending blizzard. I revel in the moment when Otis swoops down to gather a lost and tired Hazel up out of the snowy darkness, and I get to hoot like an owl.
When Heather visited last year I shared the book with her, and of course she saw right away how nourishing this book is for one’s inner children. In a recent newsletter she wrote,
“As a child—okay, even now—I wanted to live at the base of a tree, with a rounded hobbit door. I'd wear felt slippers and sleep under quilts and live by candlelight, eating berries from my neighbors, the deer. Braided rugs under my feet, cups of hot cocoa, a roaring fireplace despite the fact that I live in a tree.”
Heather surprised me with this Little Witch Hazel print for my birthday! (Photo by Jason.)
The material comforts and aesthetic pleasures of such a fantasy life are actually about cultivating a sense of safety and belonging, whether the reader is four, a hundred and four, or anywhere in between. Cozy children’s lit puts us in the best possible head- and heart-space for creative renewal.
As for middle grade, I’ve listened to many old favorites on the Libby app, like Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Egypt Game, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (the version narrated by Brooke Shields). I finally “read” Howl’s Moving Castle—I did not enjoy it as much as I expected to, although I will certainly be reading more Diana Wynne Jones—and I can also recommend the audio versions of Karen Cushman’s The Midwife’s Apprentice and Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Da Vinci’s Cat (her Newbery-honored The Book of Boy is one of my all-time favorite middle-grade novels).
In general, when you’re feeling creatively pinched it’s one of the wisest things you can do to immerse yourself in categories and genres you wouldn’t normally read. Little Free Libraries are the perfect resource for serendipitized book selections! (More on LFL in a future post on systematically “redistributing” my home library.)
I have analyzed the narrative structure of novels (and films) I remember fondly.
I’d been wanting to reread my favorite Neil Gaiman novel, and it turns out the plot of Neverwhere corresponds quite neatly to the 15-beat Save the Cat! formula apart from the transposition of beats #11 and #12 (“All is Lost” and “Dark Night of the Soul”). This makes sense given that Save the Cat! is largely (if arguably) a distillation of industry conventions, and that Gaiman conceived of Neverwhere as a television mini-series and novelized it in the midst of the scriptwriting process. Richard’s misadventure in Neverwhere maps even more neatly onto the Heroine’s Journey, since his descent into the underworld is a literal one, and he makes it through his ordeal with help from a cast of newfound trickster-frenemies who eventually become true friends. (There’s more, but in case you haven’t read this novel yet I don’t want to spoil it for you.)
I enjoyed this exercise so much that I want to make this an official (if occasional) practice. Once Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun trilogy is complete (June of this year!!), I plan to analyze the overarching plot strands Book-Architecture-style, though realistically I may not finish this exercise before 2025. (Please leave a comment if this is something you’d find helpful to have in PDF format inside my resource library!)
Depending on the novel (or film) you choose, a closer reading can open up many more fruitful avenues of learning. I gained a whole new level of enjoyment (and more to the point: writerly insight) in reading this feminist essay by Belle Waring on the hidden narrator of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, for instance, and from a fascinating film studies dissertation analyzing the 12-beat story structure Frank Capra used in several of his best-known films. (Thank you, Brian Geoffrey Rose!)
I practice “selfish creativity.”
“Going pro” means that nothing you write is purely for your own satisfaction. Even lines from my private writing tend to worm their way into my novels. (Yes, I want to see how many times I can drop a “worm” in this blog post.) Have I ever promised myself I’d write a story “just for me” without thinking at least fleetingly about eventually publishing it?
…Nope.
With all my talk of creative cross-pollination [here’s a YouTube link from 2021], I’ve been dancing around this concept for a long time now. “Selfish creativity” refers to a creative practice that IS solely for your own delight and satisfaction. It’s not something you’re secretly hoping to make a living at someday, or something you feel like you “should” be “into,” like baking focaccia because everybody else is (apparently) doing it. It’s something you do because it makes you feel radiantly happy to be alive.
(The first thing that popped into your head when you read that last sentence? That’s probably it.)
Since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to sleep under a quilt I sewed for myself. For a long time, I made quilts and gave them away. Often the same with my knitting. I’ve been talking in therapy about my tendency to overgive, so designing (and finishing!) things for my own home and person has become a therapeutic exercise as well.
Working on this project (the pattern is “Minnie Stars” from Quiltfolk) in the midst of “writer’s block” has allowed me to feel much more serene about the situation than I would have otherwise. Because how could I berate myself for not being creative enough when something so colorful and comforting was taking shape under my own two hands?
It’s taking forever to quilt it by hand, and I’m okay with that. I’ve bound it so I can use it on the bed now, and will finish the handiwork next summer (…perhaps? I’ve got a bunch more projects waiting!)
Do you know how good it feels to fall asleep all warm and snuggly on a cold winter’s night, under something you made?
Maybe quilting’s not your thing—it could be something else. But find and do the thing that gives you the shimmers, and watch how it changes your writing practice (not to mention your inner monologue).
I’m going to save a discussion of private writing specifically for moving through “block,” and how best to approach writing about your writing, for a subsequent post, because I know not everyone has the time to settle in for 4,000+ words.
Let me know if you have tried, or intend to try, any of these strategies—and how it’s worked out for you! 🪱
The art of the coddiwomple (or, “writer’s block” revisited)
Properly interpreted, a block is the best thing that can happen to a writer.
Recently my boyfriend suggested we spend part of a Saturday afternoon at a Friends of the Library book sale. Let me loose in a large roomful of secondhand books and will I meander happily, contenting myself with whatever treasures I stumble upon, like a normal person? Of course not. I convince myself that there is ONE book in this room that, the MOMENT I crack the spine, will make me feel as though the author thrust it out into the world ESPECIALLY for ME.
After awhile, I found myself in the self-help section. Of course I did.
I spotted a book on writer’s block. That was the title, actually: On Writer’s Block: A New Approach to Creativity. Early-to-mid ’90s, to judge by the cover. Victoria Nelson.
I opened to a page at random:
I have never felt so seen by a book in my entire life.
In late October 2022, I sent my agent a 360-page partial manuscript. (Yes, partial. It was supposed to be the first third. LOLsob.) In early December my agent emailed me her notes, pointing out (with her customary diplomacy) that this new work lacked a taut narrative through-line. It had no through line, in fact. I’d written some of the best prose of my career thus far, AND YET the pages I had given her amounted to a free-wheeling grab-bag o’ chaos.
I have spent this past year working out how to fix my plot. I’ve remembered my beginner’s mind, gobbling up craft books, essays, and workshop videos on narrative structure. I’ve read for research. I’ve taken several breaks to begin developing other novel ideas. I wrote fragments of scenes I felt certain belonged in the new draft. But for the first time in a very long time, flow was elusive. In A Bright Clean Mind I wrote about the powerful rush of ideas I received right after I chose to become an ethical vegan in the spring of 2011, and though I still believe that what we eat can exacerbate our anxiety, I now know it can’t be as simple as that. Because after twelve years of “easy” purely-plant-fueled click-click-click novel-writing, I had to admit that I was “blocked” again.
The situation is unprecedented. In the old days (2002--2011), my “block” would manifest in a very particular pattern of multiple false starts in between viable novel projects, which I called “trough periods,” and I never wrote more than fifty or eighty pages of a novel I would later abandon. This time I am hundreds of pages into the novel in question, the time-travel screwball dramedy that’s been in the works for over fifteen years. Leaving a novel idea on my mental back burner was my tried-and-true M.O. for a long, long time. After a few months’ “marination,” for example, the whole plot of Mary Modern slotted itself into place in a single instant, double love triangle, twist, and all. If I didn’t know what was going to happen next I would write my way into the answer, but that hasn’t happened this time. Earlier this year I read a ghost story set at the Winchester Mystery House, and I LOLsobbed at the description of the “staircase to nowhere.” Some days that’s exactly what working on this book has felt like.
Connie Willis, who is one of my favorite writers, said in a 2021 interview, “Early on, I thought, someday soon I’ll figure this out and then writing will be a breeze, but that’s never happened. Every story and novel has a whole different set of things you need to learn how to do. It’s like you’re starting from scratch every time.” I thought I knew how to plot a novel, but to be precise about it, I knew how to plot Mary Modern, and Petty Magic, and so on. With the time-travel novel, I am (almost) starting from zero.
Most advice I hear or read about “writer’s block” identifies fear as the root cause. This is either so obvious as to be completely unhelpful, or in my case, only like 3.5% accurate. I’ve written about so-called “block” on the blog before, but I tailored that advice (still valid, I think) for beginners. Comparing myself to other writers hasn’t been an issue for me for a long time now, and I can catch myself whenever I’m on the verge of trying too hard. The concerns and underlying conditions are (for the most part) quite different when you’re twenty-five years in.
So here is a distillation of the lessons of the past year—a run-down of the practices, attitude adjustments, and pertinent reminders that have actually helped—with some beautifully-worded assistance from my new friend Victoria Nelson, whose book, in a kinder world, would still be in print.
Self-flagellation never (EVER!!!) leads to the desired outcome.
[M]aking art isn’t in every case an act superior to not making art. That belief comes out of the same production-quota mentality that most writers adopt at any moment in their lives when they are not actually producing something.
Why do we conflate discipline and punishment? The usual perpetrators—Puritans and capitalists—but you’ve already heard that rant, so I’ll just say it’s a tendency that warrants continual observation. Nelson writes that discipline arises naturally out of honoring one’s deepest preferences, which is an elegant way to reframe such an unjustly tarnished concept.
Some authors write three to five (or more) novels per year and say they never experience block. They’re probably telling the truth. But the sort of writing they do draws upon a rather different skill set.
You will be so busy calling yourself unprofessional that you will not be able to hear the lower-pitched inner voice that is attempting to explain the real problem.
Once I become aware of my inner-monologuing about being a professional and professionals doing the work no matter what and why can’t I GET! IT! DONE! when I have literally no other responsibilities, I label this self-directed trash-talk as problematizing, then ask myself: what is the flawed premise underneath this pointless gnashing of teeth? Here is what I needed to remember:
1. Met or exceeded, a daily wordcount protects us—we believe it protects us—against all those old insecurities, the I’ll never be good enough and the who the hell do I think I am. A wordcount legitimizes—again, seems to legitimize—not just our efforts, but our very conception of self. Writers write, right? I used to share Bukowski’s poem “air and light and time and space” with my workshop students, but now I have to wonder if the message isn’t halfway toxic. Not every reason is an excuse, and an intuitive writer can instantly tell one from the other. Raising three kids on welfare is actually a TERRIFIC excuse, ya know?! For the hypothetical aspiring-writer/mom living on public assistance, that is the season she’s in.
2. As embarrassing as it is to have to admit this, there is a part of me that is still smarting at my jerk flatmate back in 2008 making a shitty comment about my hanging around the house all day. (When I offered to show him my books, he declined.) I moved out of that apartment as soon as was feasible, and yet that aggressively unimaginative individual is still living rent free in some dank little broom closet in my brain.
Someone who is not a writer will probably not understand that the work of writing often does not involve the act of writing. Notice that I did not choose the word “sometimes”—I chose “OFTEN” because that has been my experience from day one. I’ve joked that writers are always working and never working, and I still think that’s pretty accurate. I just need to remember that in this context, “never working” means “writing is usually enjoyable,” although it’s not a problem when it’s not, and “always working” means “I get many of my best ideas while I’m doing the dishes.” Therefore, doing the dishes counts towards work-time logged. (Not that I’m keeping a spreadsheet.)
So like I said, the Rx for me here is to recognize—not “fix,” just notice—my cultural programming around what does and doesn’t look like work from the outside.
Even when things are going swimmingly, the desired outcome ALWAYS takes longer than you expect, so either adjust your expectations accordingly or chuck them altogether.
Your long-term productivity will increase in direct proportion to the care and acceptance you lavish on your short-term silences.
In a 2014 interview Connie Willis said, “My two-volume novel BLACKOUT/ALL CLEAR took eight years to write, DOOMSDAY BOOK took five, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG four. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Every story basically takes your whole career to write, both in the skills you acquire and where the stuff comes from that the stories are about.” Skills take years to sharpen. Research can take a long time too. I like “short-term silence” formatted like so—“short*-term silence”—because a “short” period of time could be a week, a year, or a decade. It’s all relative, right? The only long-term silence is death.
Also, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: YOU ARE NOT A ROBOT.
To underscore another point I’ve already made:
“Scratching” counts as work.
This is the choreographer Twyla Tharp’s term for exploratory activity—some light research into whatever topic has stimulated your curiosity today, or reading in an unfamiliar genre, listening to music, or looking at other people’s art—that you engage in either before you’ve settled on your next project, or when you feel stuck. More broadly defined, scratching is anything you do in lieu of giving into despair. (Am I being facetious? Ask me again tomorrow.)
For more on the concept of scratching, check out another blog post from my friend Heather. Also, the 2014 Connie Willis interview (here’s the link again) includes a scratching case study.
Treat yourself as a whole human being. You probably have needs that supersede your desire to feel productive.
The key to the dilemma lies not in any failure of will power—blocked writers tend to have more than their fair share of will—but in the relationship we have cultivated with our unconscious selves. This is the unpleasant moment when we learn that this invisible but inalienable inner kingdom runs on its own priorities—priorities that are not always or even often the same as those we hold consciously.
I found a new therapist at the beginning of this year, and my general outlook is so much clearer and brighter for our our twice-monthly sessions. She asks questions that draw dotted lines between my present habits and longstanding emotional patterns, leaving me space to develop the insights for myself. For instance, when she characterized my childhood creative practices as a “life vest”—“Who would you have been without your drawing and writing? What would have been your experience of life?”—it occurred to me that I couldn’t have called myself a happy child, and that I might very well have been diagnosed with depression. (As it was, I had some fairly weird psychosomatic symptoms—foot pain, back pain, fingernails falling out, etc., no vitamin deficiencies or anything like that—and because of those symptoms and persistent insomnia, my parents took me to see a series of mental health professionals.) My daily sketches and what-ifs were an effective coping strategy in the fallout from my parents’ vicious divorce, but it was also A LOT of pressure to put on my creativity—a pressure I might still be experiencing here in the present.
The truth is that this is no passive condition; it is an aggressive reaction, a loud shout from the unconscious calling attention to the fact that something is out of adjustment. The block itself is not the problem; it is a signal to adjust the way we approach our work.
I’m not necessarily implying YOU need therapy to “work through” your “block,” but it’s worth looking into. (Also, if you already have a therapist but responded with a sense of longing to what I wrote about mine, it might be time to look for a new one.)
Consider that something else wants to come through.*
(*This is not a poop joke, although joking about poop will probably help with your “blockage.”)
I know a bunch of people in the self-help space have posed the following question, but my favorite source is Campbell Walker (a.k.a. Struthless): “In what respects might this challenging situation be ‘the best thing that ever happened to you’?” I am aware this could be a very callous thing to ask in certain contexts, but “writer’s block” isn’t one of them.
If I had to choose one item on this list that is pretty much one-size-fits-all, this is it. (Also, yes, find a good therapist.) I asked myself, “If I put the time-travel novel in long-term time-out, what other book(s) could I write instead?” My attitude here wasn’t “well, all right, I might as well think about writing something else.” It was
I made space in my head for the unexpected. And what do you know? I got one dynamite idea after another.
Here is a reproduction of a diagram I’ve been adding to periodically as yummy new book concepts occur to me:
Okay, so I am probably not going to write all of these books (“ruthless realism,” remember!) It doesn’t matter. They are all viable book ideas, and I could get started on at least three of them right now. (And in fact, I have! I know this “block” is specific to the time-travel novel because when I switch to another project I find myself back in flow-state within minutes, although the other novel I’m working on right now has a relatively simple plot.)
Funny thing: if we assess my 2023 productivity using the volume of new-project material as our sole metric, I’ve actually been very prolific. With the number of viable book ideas I’ve come up with this year along with the ones I already had simmering on my mental back burners, I have enough to work on for the next fifteen to twenty years. (And I got ANOTHER idea, craft book #4, right after I uploaded the diagram photo!)
(But what if you throw up your hands and yell “HELL YEAH, UNIVERSE!”…and nothing happens?)
…[T]he active internal state Keats called ‘delicious diligent indolence,’ the silence that falls in the house of art while an idea is developing out of sight, down in the basement.
Let’s talk more about scratching. Heather and I passed a very happy few days in Grand Marais in the spring of 2022, where we browsed around an art gallery stocking this greeting card from a local letterpress:
Coddiwomple is a marvelous word, isn’t it? I can’t remember if either of us said, “Ooh, look! It’s the Fool!”, but we were definitely thinking it. The Fool is card number zero, the very start of the 22-card journey of the Major Arcana. This is a good card for the enthusiastic beginner, but its message is even more relevant for a person of experience who may need to find their way back into a possibility mindset. How can you travel purposefully if you don’t know where you’re going? If you’re responding to this paradox with a flutter of impatience, your brain may want—no, require—a good deal more space to wander. Put aside all thoughts of plots and schedules and pursue a “side quest” (bake every last cookie recipe out of your grandma’s kitchen file? build a sculpture with materials recovered from the county dump?), or read for pleasure (I suggest The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber), or write a dirty limerick and text it to everyone in your contacts likely to reply with the laugh-cry emoji. (Or a skull, if you’re a zoomer.) Do something you’ve never done before and see what happens.
(Also, I would be a terrible friend if I did not take this opportunity to mention that Heather has a Tarot for Writers course!)
Take a snack break with some proof pudding.
What most chronically blocked writers lack is the gut faith in themselves that allows these needed intervals of silence to occur.
This is one of the central tenets of the Provisional Confidence course I put out back in 2020: because even if you’re just starting out, you can always look back to some earlier piece of writing and recognize how you have grown in the intervening months or years. (Dig out an essay you wrote as a high-school freshman. If you are a high-school freshman, go back to something you wrote in elementary school.)
Time to explain why I characterized this current round of “block” as 3.5% based in fear: because there have been moments when I’ve thought, Maybe this novel is too ambitious. Maybe I’m not up to the task. Truth is, I wasn’t—and perhaps I’m still not. But the Camille of 2024 or 2025 (or 2030) will be. I know this pinchy spot has a conclusion-point because my experience of those 25+ years promises as much. I am always learning, and therefore I am usually improving. And when all else fails, I remember that nothing lasts.
Take solace in your creative friendships.
The most effective method of self validation is to surround yourself with people who are consistently loving and encouraging—especially when love is candor, like the time Aravinda handed back the first two chapters of my practice novel saying “This is good, and you can do better.” Heather and Erin and McCormick and Henry and Chantal and Deirdre and Seanan have all given me pep talks over the past year. They’ve shared their ups and downs with me too. As my friend Joelle laughed on a catch-up call a few months back: “If you’ve got ‘writer’s block,’ then there’s hope for us all!”
Back when I was still only thinking about writing this time-travel screwball comedy—fall 2015—Joelle invited me to prepare something for a multimedia science-fiction event she and her partner Jim were hosting at a local brewery. Losing my nerve, I said, “Is it all right if I just read from Mary Modern?”
Her response was exactly what I needed to hear: “Nah, I’d rather you read from the time-travel story you were telling me about.” She lovingly pushed me into drafting the first six or seven (very rough) pages, which were warmly received at the reading. It’s these moments I can circle back to whenever I feel like I’ve forgotten how to do this.
Circle back to craft basics and en-JOY reinforcing that foundation.
I have several author friends who teach at the university level, and I greatly admire their ability to extemporize on craft. When I chose a not-so-competitive school for my master’s program, I retained the bandwidth for researching and drafting Mary Modern inside of a school year, but completing that manuscript came at the cost of academic rigor. Looking back, I see how frequently I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants, making decisions without thinking too much about the underlying why. And because I still want to teach on a regular basis someday, I must be able to analyze and chart out my initially-subliminal reasoning for the benefit of my students.
So I decided this pinchy interval was the perfect opportunity to build a sturdier knowledge-base. I’ve spent the past year listening to the excellent (and admirably concise!) Writing Excuses podcast, and I am grateful beyond measure to Heather for recommending A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (a.k.a. Uncle George). I’ve revisited Gail Carriger’s wonderful guide to the Heroine’s Journey, and I have read other craft books by Ursula K. Le Guin and John Gardner and Samuel Delany. I also can’t say enough good things about Stuart Horwitz’s Book Architecture method.
Notice how your needs and priorities are shifting, and make whatever adjustments are appropriate.
You determine your limits by testing them gently but repeatedly, then respecting them—no matter how unlike anybody else’s they are.
The three-plus years I was a member of the Writers’ Room of Boston (late 2013 to mid-2017) were far and away the most productive of my career. Then I moved to Providence, and I got a lot done at the Athenaeum too. I miss both those spaces, and the lovely people I met in each one.
I moved to D.C. in September 2020, and between COVID and living solo for the first time, it never occurred to me to write outside my home. Between late 2020 and mid-2022, I wrote more than 360 pages of the time travel novel. Sounds like I was productive, right?
…HOWEVER.
I live on the ground floor of a very small apartment building. I like to write in the front room—where almost all the houseplants live, since it’s the only sunny room in the place—and I like to keep the blinds up and the windows open as long as it’s warm enough. I like where I live and I enjoy working at home, but sometimes there are interruptions: my across-the-hall neighbor getting locked out, my landlady wanting to talk about maintenance work, the next-door neighbor blasting the radio, a substitute mail carrier asking to be let in, some random canvasser trying to get my attention through the window. They don’t occur every day, but it has happened frequently enough that I realized part of my brain’s been holding back from the work out of an ultimately-futile sense of vigilance. Working in a more private location in the apartment doesn’t relieve the anxiety. I have tried working at the library, but the fear of interruption persists.
So I finally realized I needed a space like the WROB, and joined the D.C. Writers Room in Tenleytown. The office is clean and well organized, and monthly dues are very reasonable given that it is run as a business rather than a co-operative. The DCWR doesn’t have the lived-in, absentminded-professor vibe or community spirit of the WROB, but that’s not what I need, is it? I’ve been reveling in the delicious sense of purpose I feel as I settle into my desk-for-the-day with my notes and a hot cup of tea.
I’m kind of embarrassed that it took me so many months to see that I needed a dedicated writing-space outside the house. That said:
It isn’t a problem if what worked before isn’t working anymore—it’s an invitation to observe and experiment in order to find out what works best for you NOW.
[P]atience, patience in all things, is the most valuable quality a writer can have.
A writer’s working style is idiosyncratic (which is why, as Victoria Nelson points out, emulating the routines of famous authors doesn’t often yield the results we’re hoping for). Process and practices evolve with time and experience, and it is part of the writer’s job to monitor these changes and tweak her approach accordingly. It will take time to monitor these observations, and more time to implement the tweaks. As I laughed to my therapist: “It feels like I’m ‘rebuilding my search indexes.’” [That message appears when I launch Scrivener.]
I recommend Victoria Nelson’s book for every writer (Abebooks link here), but especially those who, like me, find a great deal of (surprisingly practical) insight in Jungian psychology. I love how Nelson’s treatment of conflicting parts of self dovetails with the Internal Family Systems model (which is how I found my current therapist; if you’re not yet familiar, I like Alanis Morissette’s podcast interview with Dick Schwartz for an introduction.) I wish I had found this book before writing Life Without Envy, because the second-to-last chapter on success is as wise as the rest of the book. (Quick side note: I am super excited to use a Solid State gift card from my friend Jason to purchase Nelson’s book The Secret Life of Puppets, because if I appreciate a living author’s work, I buy it new whenever possible. Gotta represent!)
I still don’t believe in writer’s block, which might sound ludicrous given that I have just written or transcribed roughly 4,000 words on the subject. What I do believe in is the reality of whatever is causing the appearance of block. In my case, it’s mostly been a matter of needing more time to teach myself how to write this novel, of reinforcing a sense of trust that I will know how to write it someday. Victoria Nelson calls this particular variety “the silence of incubation.” The pre-birth metaphor feels especially apt by contrast, because a novel is not a baby. It is nonsense to say, “I’ve been working on this for nine months [or however long you’ve got it in your head a novel “should” take to write], therefore it should be DONE!” If this particular incubation period has lasted longer than fifteen years, well…no sense repeatedly banging my forehead against the brick wall of reality.
Speaking of brick walls: when I wrote, “I can catch myself whenever I’m on the verge of trying too hard,” did you wonder about that? I did too. I know it must look like I’ve been trying too hard with this novel. To clarify, it’s the difference between the overwhelming joy I feel when I am connecting to my characters and the trying to convince myself I feel that joy. If this weren’t a full-body YES!-YES!-YES! type of project even on those blindfolded-in-a-bog-of-molasses days, I’d have (rightfully) given up on it long ago.
As writers we do not want to accept that our life in art is not, and will never be, a steady linear progression into the sunlight—that it is actually a series of advances and retreats, stops and starts, unfoldings and closings up.
So that’s my situation. The underlying reason(s) for your (apparent) block could be something else. You’ve heard this before, no doubt, but the way through it necessitates a mixture of gentleness and curiosity, a complete and unconditional acceptance of the present situation (which is what you are ideally doing in any given moment anyway). SURRENDER ANYTHING TO DO WITH A TIMELINE (I’m so sorry, but this applies especially if you are under contract), and devise a simple yet specific list of self-supportive practices and helpful thoughts to think whenever you catch yourself engaging in self recrimination. (Since this post turned out much longer than planned, I’ll save my sample list for next time.) And for goodness’ sake, just put it away for awhile and work on something light, something that feels easy, something you can play with.
Notes on de-optimizing my life
Hello! I feel like a badger emerging from my burrow only to announce to the great open prairie that she’s been feeling quite happy down there in the cozy dark. I’ve been off social media, quietly re-plotting my novel and spending QT with my family, falling in love (see above image 🥰) and reveling in all my rich creative friendships.
These days I just laugh and shake my head whenever I see mention of “hustling” or “productivity systems” or “optimization”—as a wise person once said, some games you can win only by declining to play—although I have to admit up front that I am writing from a very privileged position as a result of the Bones and All adaptation. It is a lot easier to say “Nahhh, I don’t want to do that anymore” (e.g., stay visible and responsive online; finish a new manuscript as quickly as possible, knowing it won’t be my best work) when royalty checks are paying the rent. It is a luxury to opt out in the way that I have, AND I think it is possible to reorient oneself in relation to the “shoulds” and “have tos” regardless of one’s individual circumstances.
“De-optimizing my life” means doing things in my own time and for my own reasons. Here are some specific mindset alterations to that effect:
I don’t need a fancy website.
A conversation with my friend Forbes Graham (check out our three-part No Bones at All chat over on YouTube!) on the frustrating aspects of “maintaining an online presence” culminated in my declaring that I wanted a new website almost as minimal as Zen Habits, and Forbes offering to migrate my old website to Squarespace for me. (I knew I wanted Squarespace because my friend Heather has been happy using it for hers.) And here we are!
[Note: I’m still tidying up, so you may notice some wonky formatting and a broken link here and there. I’m working on it! Feel free to leave a comment if there’s something you’re looking for and can’t find.]
For anyone only just finding me, here is what my site used to look like:
It was pretty (thank you, Evan!) and it served me well for a full decade. And then I found myself yearning for something VERY simple.
I don’t care about digital marketing.
“Comet Party” is gone apart from the URL—for now, anyway—so I suppose you could say I’ve unbranded myself, since I’m not teaching or coaching or making videos and can’t say when I’ll get back to it. I’ve moved on from the preoccupations I outlined in a 2017 blog post called Email Marketing and “Authenticity.” I don’t have to send an email newsletter when I have little to say, I don’t have to sell you anything (not even my books), and I don’t have to be a “public figure.” The Bones and All film experience, though marvelous in SO many ways, made me realize that maintaining firm boundaries (like turning off Instagram DMs) and a certain level of remove is way better for my mental health than trying to be warm and responsive to everyone. Despite all the oversharing I’ve done on this blog over the years (ha!), I really am an introvert who is happiest either at home drafting a novel in her pajamas or out having real-life adventures with one or two or three dear friends.
Note: If you purchased one of my Teachable courses (THANK YOU!) or are missing my “office hours” videos on Instagram (bless you!), it’s all good—I will be back eventually!—and if you have any questions about the course you purchased, you can always email me.
Having said all this, let me assert that a choice to withdraw (temporarily or not) is not the same as “playing small,” which is a micro-aggressive judgment frequently employed to sell exorbitantly-priced coaching packages. After my main Bones and All event (YouTube link) at the Celsius 232 festival this past July, several young women came to the signing table to tell me how seen and understood my remarks on misogyny had made them feel, and I still feel VERY fired up about reflecting the real-world experience of women in this culture in my fiction. It’s just that a new story (not the time-travel novel, although it will certainly touch on these concerns) is going to take a considerable amount of time in solitude. I’m not going to try to fast-draft a new novel because somebody else on the internet says they can draft a 70,000-word manuscript in thirty days or less. And on that note…
Slowly, quietly, steadily.
As I knit another fingering-weight cardigan for my four-year-old niece, I think of how her great-grandfather used to razz me for choosing such tiny yarn and needles. “That’s going to take you forever to finish!,” he’d laugh, even though he understood that the point isn’t to finish something quickly. As an expression of love and care, there is nothing quite like a handmade garment that fits well and is designed with the recipient’s likes and needs in mind.
And the process of matching yarn to pattern, assembling your tools (needles, stitch markers, waste yarn, my tiny canister of tapestry needles), and casting on: this is a series of pleasurable tactile experiences in and of themselves, and to focus on completing a project in an expedient manner is to diminish that pleasure. There’s also the matter of creative hindsight: when I make something, be it a novel or a sweater, I don’t want to look back five or ten or more years from now and regret the corners I cut. (More on this in a future post.)
When I feel the need to slow down (or whenever I make a mistake), I say to myself (usually aloud), “I am not a robot!” I want to be effective (standard = mine), but I don’t necessarily need to be efficient (standard is external). These days I’m working with the cyclical nature of my own creativity, just as I make a point of taking it easy when my body is in winter mode. I’m hand-quilting a quilt for myself, and yes, we are at seven months and counting. In the kitchen, I put on a fun audiobook or podcast and let food prep and cleanup take however long it takes. And I don’t set my alarm unless I have an early train to catch.
But for anyone reading this post who doesn’t have that luxury, I want to offer a maxim my friend Sierra shared with me back when I did care about the digital-marketing stuff: Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Ever notice how you get more done when you first do the things you need to do to feel sane and centered?
I don’t have to finish what I start.
(You’d think this wouldn’t feel new to me given that I have so many unfinished manuscripts on my hard drive and feel no shame about it.) Recently I checked out a biography of Buckminster Fuller from the library (my protagonist is an inventor and I was hoping for inspiration). But the more I learned about Fuller, the more disgusted I felt. Turns out it is possible to be a visionary and a psychic-vampire-slash-con-artist. I’m well over a hundred pages in, but I don’t want to continue. So I won’t!
I am paying attention to my “completist” tendencies, which result in wasted time whenever I’m not truly enjoying a book or learning as much as I expected to. I couldn’t even tell you how many Libby audiobooks I’ve returned around the ten-minute mark in recent months, because LIFE IS SHORT and there are PLENTY OF BOOKS I WILL ACTUALLY SWOON OVER!
There are way fewer “have-tos” in life than we think.
As a self-employed person with no dependents, I can’t even imagine how much harder boundary-setting must be for folks with Constant Pressing Demands On Their Time and Energy. Because even for me, it is HARD.
If you were to make a list of all the things you think you “have to” do, how frequently would you find you are trying to live up to someone else’s (whether societal or individual) expectations?
I don’t have to cook dinner for anyone other than myself.
I don’t have to say yes to an interview request.
I don’t have to continue socializing once it’s occurred to me that I would rather be alone.
I don’t have to maintain a relationship with a toxic family member.
My time and energy are mine to do with as I please: that’s a hard thing to declare when women are socialized for (over)giving. Oftentimes we’re still seen as selfish for not putting someone else’s needs (or “needs”) ahead of our own. My people-pleasing tendencies loooove to masquerade as generosity, and let’s face it: I am going to spend the rest of my life observing which of those two motivations is in the driver’s seat in any given interaction.
A daily practice of “ruthless realism.”
Since turning forty (today is my 43rd birthday!) I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to have entered a more mature phase of my career/life and how I can best formulate what I’ve learned for the benefit of younger writers. And while it might sound depressing at first mention, it is actually the best thing for my mental health to be ruthlessly realistic about what I can and cannot, or probably will not, accomplish in this lifetime.
I am (probably) never going to read that book, so I’ll leave it in that Little Free Library around the corner.
I am (definitely) never going to write that novel about the burlesque dancer and the chocolatier. Time to recycle those notes!
I am (probably) never going to make that pile of fabric into a garment I will actually wear. Time to post it on Freecycle.
This person I’ve just met seems wonderful, but do I have the bandwidth for cultivating new friendships? Especially considering that I already have several dear friends I’ve been meaning to reconnect with for months?
I have lots more thoughts on this mindset as it pertains to my physical space (there is an “Aspirational Lightness of Being, part 4” in my drafts, LOLsob), but I’ll leave it here for now.
It’s okay to live for pleasure and connection.
I have next-door neighbors who sit out front chit-chatting all day (and evening) whenever the weather’s warm and fair enough. Though they are often annoying (blasting the radio, occasionally throwing a beer bottle over the fence, yelling at their dog), these goings-on leave me reflecting on a daily basis about what it means to live a “good” life. It is a timeless absurdity of the human experience that some folks—my neighbors and me—get to kick back and enjoy ourselves when people elsewhere in the world are living through war and famine.
What can we do beyond trying our best to be a positive presence in the lives of the people around us (and making a donation to humanitarian aid)? What if that is the sole criterion for a life well lived?
I’m not saying it is. Just something to think about.
I’ve been blogging so infrequently these past several years that I don’t know how many people are actually going to read this, but if you’re still here (thank you!), tell me in the comments if any of this resonates for you! 💗
My Patchwork Writing Process
I've been writing novels for more than twenty years now—CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?—but there is always more to learn about the craft, and more to observe of one's natural inclinations. This is how and why I do what I do. Here are some ways I might fine-tune a particular step in my process—for greater "efficiency," yes, but also for greater enjoyment.
As I listened to the audio modules inside my dear friend Heather Demetrios's new on-demand course, You Have a Process, it occurred to me that while I've spent plenty of time charting out my idea-generation process—on YouTube and inside The Bright Idea Kit—I haven't reflected too much on the actual drafting, which is far and away the most intimidating part from most aspiring writers' point of view. If you'd asked about my first-drafting style before going through You Have a Process, this is what I'd've told you:
I bring piles of handwritten notes to the Scrivener document. I don't write in chronological order. Usually I'll write fifty pages or so and then I'll outline the entire book. At the end of a writing session, I try to have a kernel of a scene to start with the next day—something I'm excited to dictate into Scrivener as I'm watching it play out in my head. Maybe eighty percent of the time I slip into flow within minutes, the other 20% being tooth-pulling days, but I don't get down on myself. Doing yoga, going for a walk, taking a shower, cooking dinner, or working on an easy knitting or sewing project helps with a mild case of creative constipation (because I don't experience "block," per se—not anymore). Whatever isn't quite coming together, the solution generally slides in at an oblique angle (i.e., it has nothing to do with whatever is in front of me, but it shows up because mentally I've cleared the space for it.)
This is all true, but it's not as specific (and therefore as helpful for other writers) as it could be.
From the beginning I understood that many (if not a majority of) writers draft their stories in chronological order, and it didn't seem like a problem that I never felt inclined to write that way. In my initial drafting phase, I sit down to write whichever scenes I feel like. I'm only 30% of the way through my first draft of the time-travel novel, but I've already written a pivotal conversation that happens in the last chapter. At some point as I was listening to my friend's warm and reassuring voice coming out of my bedside speaker, I had the most delicious little a-ha moment:
I draft a novel in much the same way I cut and assemble a piece of patchwork!
It's been a long time since I've blogged about my crafting—I have a baby-quilt show-and-tell post from 2019 still languishing in my drafts—though I have shared more on Instagram in this video on creative cross-pollination and this one on "avocational ambition." (Those are YouTube links, in case you don't have an Instagram account.)
Baby quilt for my cousin Jenni, 2019.
The most basic definition of patchwork is cutting large pieces of fabric (usually quilting cotton) into smaller—sometimes very small—pieces, rearranging and then stitching them into a visually pleasing design. Sometimes it's traditional and perfectly geometric and other times (as in "crazy" or crumb quilting) you're making it up as you go. It's not a perfect analogy, but for me it's an illuminating one: because in both disciplines I generate purposeful fragments—discrete moments of connection or observation or insight, without thinking too much about context or finishing—and after months of working in this fashion, I can arrange those many pieces into a sensible order and add the necessary "sashing" so that each scene continues "seamlessly" (har, har) into the next.
My first curved piecing (2018).
Slowly coming together...
Arranging and adding the sashing.
To mix our metaphors here, what I'm calling "sashing" is what many writing teachers would refer to as "connective tissue." In a particular chapter, I might have 60% of scene A, only a half-finished dialogue from scene B, and a scene C that is more or less complete. Because I have my outline by this stage—my self-drafted pattern, in needlework parlance—I mostly know what more is needed in scene A, how to get the characters to the point that they are having the conversation in scene B, and how to segue into scene C. There are still question marks here and there, particularly where the science (or "science") is concerned, or more historical research is required, but as I proceed from here I have every confidence that I will eventually gather the information I need to fill those lacunae.
In essence, I compose my first draft in two stages: there is the initial draft-whatever-I-please, cutting-up-calico-into-itty-bitty-pieces phase, and then there is the arrangement and assembly/filling-in phase. Both are enjoyable, but the second phase is more consistently so because I already have a large bank of material to work with. It's easier to compose a line that sings—a sentence I can feel proud of—if it's closing out a scene I half-drafted three months earlier.
Amazing, isn't it, how long it's taken me to notice just how process-oriented and low-pressure my natural method of drafting truly is! (And of course now I'm thinking about how I can demonstrate using actual writing samples—that'll eventually be a video inside the Bright Idea Kit. I'll include photos from my crumb-quilting, which is an even tidier analogy!)
[EDIT, November 2023: my Teachable courses are no longer available (I gotta cough up to keep them live, and I don’t have the bandwidth for marketing right now), but I will make it available inside my Resource Library; subscribe to email updates to snag the password.]
Hot water bottle cover for my friend Joelle.
The Power of Private Writing is LIVE!
This free workshop is for email subscribers, so sign on up if you haven't already and you'll get the links in your welcome email! 🙌
How to Work With Me (if You Can't Afford to Work With Me)
Inspired by Rachael Rice's question,
“Can we imagine the impact of our work beyond those who can afford it?”,
I offer a clear progression as to how any aspiring writer (or other creative person) can benefit from my experience:
Watch the Life Without Envy mini-workshop and read the essays I've posted on Medium (links are on my Archive page.)
If that content resonates for you, sign up for my mailing list so you'll get access to my free resource library. Watch the The Power of Private Writing and do the prompts. Also be sure to check out the Life Without Envy mini-workbook inside the resource library—the success-to-satisfaction paradigm shift is particularly important.
Ask for Life Without Envy and A Bright Clean Mind at your local library. (Depending on the library, some librarians are able to order books that patrons have requested for the collection.)
By now, you probably have at least a few questions percolating. Ask as many of them as you like, and I'll make one or more videos especially for you as part of my office-hours series. [EDIT, January 2024: I am still on YouTube/social media hiatus, but your question will be waiting for me when I come back!]
Watch the video(s) I've made to answer your question(s), and ask any follow-up questions you may have.
At any point in this progression, you can DM me on Instagram or Twitter or send me an email to introduce yourself; I will be very happy to connect with you, I just ask that you respect my time and psychic energy by refraining from asking me to read your manuscript (which is something I don't even do for paid coaching clients before we've established a rapport) or writing emails that require a long private reply (like many folks these days, my email inbox is a source of anxiety for me, so relatively quick messages are the way to go).
As a white woman from a middle-class background who has sometimes been "broke" but will never be "poor," I also ask that my fellow white writers take some time, in general, to reflect on what they truly can and cannot "afford." I want to practice generosity in sharing my experience with everyone, but I am also trying to avoid being taken advantage of (which has happened more than once, alas, and usually with people who could have afforded to compensate me for my time and insight).
Over the next few years, I'm looking to develop a free group mentoring program for aspiring writers from marginalized communities, and if that sounds like something you'd love to be a part of, then get started now! And if you feel so inspired, I'd love it if you shared my free resources with any friends or colleagues who would find them useful. Thank you, and I hope we'll be in touch soon. 🙏💕
Tips for Better Fiction, part 2
(Tips for Better Fiction, part 1.)
Say it without explaining it.
Whether your story is set in another galaxy or the next town over, build the world for us through dialogue and description. As they say, “Show, don't tell!” This goes for your characters too—if Johnny is a mischievous little boy, show him drawing a mustache with blue marker on a framed portrait of his great-aunt Mildred, or picking holes in his sister's stockings on the drying-rack. This requires much more imagination than simply writing “Johnny was a troublemaker,” and your reader will appreciate that.
Find the joy in discipline.
As children we're implicitly taught to see “discipline” as a four-letter word, and yet we couldn't get anything done without it! You don't have to write every day (I don't know any writer who does, although I'd say most of us do take notes on a daily basis), but if you can stick to a somewhat regular writing routine (and stay offline while doing it!), you're that much closer to actually finishing something. Whenever you put in some quality writing time, take a moment to feel good about what you've accomplished.
Let it marinate.
It's amazing how much work you wind up doing on a subconscious level. With several novel projects I've felt very strongly that their time just hadn't come yet, so I put them on the “back burner.” When I've come back to them months or years later, I've found these projects fully “marinated” and ready to go. Treat your story like a hearty vegetable stew: give the ingredients a chance to mingle for maximum satisfaction!
Use your intuition.
Give that vast unconscious mind of yours more credit: underneath all that doubt, you know what you're doing. The trick is to get out of your own way.
Ask yourself, "Who cares?"
Why does this story matter? How is it different from what's already out there? Make your story richly worth your reader's while.
Enjoy the process!
Don't be in a rush to finish your project. This may surprise you, but I've found the greatest enjoyment in the actual writing of my books, as opposed to seeing them on the new fiction table at Barnes & Noble or doing book signings or other publicity. There's no feeling on Earth like hitting that creative flow state, so relish it while it lasts!
Know when to let go.
Sometimes you wind up writing something just for the practice, and that's totally okay.
Find a community.
Take a class, join a writing group, go to readings, make friends with another writer (who appreciates your style, and vice versa) and give each other feedback and support. Sometimes building worlds inside your head can be exhilarating, and other times it is rather lonely—finding a balance between solitary and social will allow you a sustainable and much more satisfying writing practice.
Remember: you don't have anything to prove.
We are all born storytellers, and because each of us has a unique way of looking at the world, we each have the potential to come up with a story no one else could tell. You don't become a writer only when you've seen your work in print; you're a writer the moment you commit to the story you need to tell.
For more tips and frank talk on the writing life, check out my blog entries tagged “useful writing posts.” I'd love to hear your suggestions for future entries!
Tips for Better Fiction, part 1
I whipped up this handout for my writing class at the Somerville Skillshare. Part 2 coming next week (or maybe the week after.)
Be a voracious (and indiscriminate) reader.
Begin by reading everything you can get your hands on, not just the genre you're interested in writing. As you read, pay careful attention to what does or doesn't “work” for you. Let the book and its author teach you how (or how not to) tell a story—for example, to learn about plotting, read a lot of mystery and suspense novels even if you're not interested in writing mystery yourself. Whether or not it's a “good” book, and whether or not you enjoyed it, you are learning your craft.
Play...
Ask yourself, “What if...?” and see where your imagination takes you. To paraphrase Roald Dahl, those who believe in magic will always find it—but that said, don't be too earnest or serious about this process. The magic happens when you're too busy having fun to notice it sneaking up on you.
...And enjoy the balance between play and work.
A writer is always working, and never working. You get to live inside this neat little paradox!
Observe.
If you can stop and notice the vivid details all around you, your descriptive writing will grow crisper and more evocative in kind. (For instance, lately I have noticed a person outside the State House wearing a teddy bear costume and playing a keytar. There's no way I'd settle on “street musician” when he or she has given me that much to work with.) Which leads me to my next point:
Keep your pen and journal (or at least a piece of scratch paper) with you at all times.
You never know when you'll see something strange or overhear a priceless piece of dialogue you can build a story around. Even if you're just going to the bathroom, something cool might spontaneously occur to you while you're in there!
Experiment with work habits, styles, and techniques to figure out what works best for you.
It's always fun to read about what works for writers you admire, but there's no sense adopting someone else's process or “rituals” hoping for the same success. Also keep in mind that your habits and pet rituals will probably evolve over time, or vary from one project to the next.
Cultivate a sense of urgency.
Fall in love with your story, especially if it's a novel. Give your project the very best that's in you. Don't worry, there'll be more where that came from! And on that note:
Take time to “refill the well.”
When you're “stuck” or just in between projects, get away from your desk and reconnect with whatever gets you excited about life. Go to an art museum, see a play, read up on a topic that intrigues you, or meet up for coffee with a friend you haven't seen in awhile. I guarantee you that somewhere, sometime—as long as you're not looking for it!—your next great idea will tap you on the shoulder.
Invest in your characters.
If your protagonist isn't as real to you as your own best friend, he won't feel real to your reader either. Like a real-life friend, your protagonist should have a personality abundant in both virtues and flaws—but even if he's deeply flawed, make sure we still care about him.
For more tips and frank talk on the writing life, check out my blog entries tagged “useful writing posts." I'd love to hear your suggestions for future entries!
Moldy Oldie: Trash Your Panties!
Awhile back I mentioned this Washington Square News "op/ed" I wrote in the spring of 2000. It was headlined "Trash Your Panties: Going Commando With Camille." Sadly, it was by far the best thing I ever wrote for the paper. Hope you enjoy it.Thirty years ago we burned our bras. We didn't go far enough.I have issues with underpants. They are expensive, unnecessary and often uncomfortable. No one ever seriously considers the possibility that we women could avoid the nearest Victoria's Secret (or K-Mart) altogether in favor of a far more authentic way to live - with perfect freedom.The prospect of going "commando" always makes for a hearty laugh, and it's true that there's no better place for a pair of lacy panties than atop an inebriated frat guy's head. But why do we bother wearing underpants at all? Underwear, if you're in the market for something a little more feminine than a pair of bland white cotton undies, will cost you more money than I consider it to be worth.A girl makes a trip to the lingerie department for one reason and one reason only, whether she admits it or not -- she's looking for the most enticing scrap of something sheer and frilly just in case the opportunity for a certain type of encounter with the opposite sex should arise. In that case, why bother wasting $30 on a pair of underpants that are just going to be ripped off with wild beastly abandon anyway? So what if the joy of unwrapping the present is gone with the panties; we have more important assets to make use of.Not that I'm advocating a panty boycott to make it easier for those crazy boys. It makes absolute sense that female underwear evolved from the chastity belt, the ultimate symbol of feminine oppression. It is for that very reason that we should abstain from wearing panties; such a defiant act would symbolize quite appropriately the social freedom we continue to desire with such fervor.Fetishization of female undergarments is certainly widespread; girls, if you're ever in desperate need of tuition money, you can always sell your panties steeped in that oh-so-attractive "natural aroma" online and make a bundle. (If I weren't so concerned with simple decency, I might advocate ridding yourself of every pair you own by this method; it's certainly more profitable than throwing them out in the trash.) If we were to avoid the wearing of underpants, men would have to find a more productive and meaningful garment to worship. I suggest socks because of their wintry practicality and distance from the danger zone.Reasons of simplicity and freedom aside, we should reject the restrictions imposed upon us by underwear simply because this article of clothing is a constant source of male delight and strange fascination. We still want them to be fascinated, of course -- just not with our panties. Getting rid of them now would force men to hurry a little faster along that evolutionary path. The absence of underwear also makes it easier for the more carnal and filthy-minded among them to get what they want, but I'm not worried. Men like that use newspapers for house-training themselves rather than for reading material, so if this idea catches on, they won't know about it.No more annoying wedgies, no more unsightly panty lines and no more hard-earned money wasted on garments that nobody is ever going to see. (At least that's what your mother thinks.) It's a curious thing that no one ever included the suggestion to "get rid of your underwear" in any of those "Simplify Your Life" books. Spend your money on something more practical, like ice cream, crossword puzzle magazines or itching powder. I'm holding onto my bra though; there's a three-letter word that begins with S and ends with G that scares me too thoroughly to light that match.
More on travel-writing (this is a long one)
This morning my sister pointed me to a very interesting feature article on a confessional memoir by a Lonely Planet researcher called Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? People are asking questions about how thoroughly (and ethically) the guidebooks they use are actually researched, and rightly so. Apparently this writer accepted lots of freebies and engaged in plenty of drugs and sex along the way, and while it's safe to say most guidebook writers are far more responsible than this guy was, there is a great deal of truth in some of the things he's saying. This, for example (from the WaPo article, not the memoir itself), is 100% true:[Kohnstamm] says he's being criticized because he revealed guidebooks' dirty little secret: Authors can't get to every place they're expected to review because publishers don't give them enough time or money to do the job properly. So, he says, he was forced to do a "mosaic job," relying in some cases on information from local contacts, fellow travelers and the Internet.Even the most responsible guidebook writer has to resort to these tactics. I worked really hard on Moon Ireland, but I still had to rely on secondhand information far more often than I was comfortable with. I'll elaborate.First of all, here's the number 1 rule of guidebook-writing: don't expect to make any money. You will subsist and that is all. Number 2: taking freebies is unacceptable. I had to accept comps everywhere I went while I was researching Hanging Out in Ireland back in college, because they gave us all of $3500 to research half the country (originally the fee was going to be $2500, but my co-writer held out for more money. Thank goodness for Tom, who was older than I was and far more sensible). My editors encouraged us to accept freebies because otherwise we'd run out of money after two weeks and we were there for five to seven (only five, in my case--can you imagine covering half of Ireland in five weeks? They told me I'd have to do some fudging. Yes, my own editors told me to cut corners.) This was a shoestring guide on a shoestring budget.Even putting that question of ethics aside, accepting a free meal, room, or tour will not give you an accurate idea of the level of service a typical tourist will receive. You don't want to say "yeah, this place is great!", when the owner is actually not a nice person at all, but was only kissing your butt because you're a guidebook writer.How do I know this? I've admitted I accepted freebies from hostels and restaurants every place I went for Hanging Out, but that's not how I know. In May 2006 I visited--or attempted to visit--a very upscale B&B (with its own gardens open to the public) off the Ring of Kerry, and was shooed away by the owner, who is hands down the meanest person I have ever encountered in Ireland (though incidentally, she is not Irish). There had been a storm the night before, and the garden was closed because of damages. There was a huge sign saying so, but the gate to the house was open. I drove through the gate and was met on the road by this nasty woman, who demanded I get off her property even when I tried to explain that I was writing for a guidebook and was interested in the B&B. I don't think she even heard what I was saying, she just kept snarling that the B&B was fully booked and to get out immediately. Let me impress upon you (as if I haven't already): this woman's behavior was HORRIBLE and I would discourage anyone from staying at that B&B no matter how luxurious it might be. So imagine my disgust when I opened Lucinda O'Sullivan's guide to Irish B&Bs and noticed she'd written about just how lovely and kind the proprietor is. Someday I'm going to write Lucinda O'Sullivan and tell her how disappointed I am in her book. (If anyone is interested in knowing which B&B I am talking about, please feel free to email me. I just don't want to mention it by name and get a pile of angry emails over it.)Out of necessity, I was doing much of my research during low season, when many B&Bs and restaurants were closed, only open weekends, or whatever. Say I stopped on a weekday night in February at a certain B&B, and the proprietor heartily recommended a restaurant in town. I got to the restaurant and found it was only open on weekends until after Easter. So instead, I had pub grub for dinner--adequate, nothing to write home about--and both the pub ('steaks, seafood, and paninis, gets the job done') and the restaurant ('run by an Irishman and his French wife, Continental cuisine, much loved by locals') would get write-ups. Other times I could only budget one night in a certain town, but I might need to write up five accommodations. How could I possibly do this without spending five nights in this town? I couldn't, of course. I might just stop by and have a chat with the proprietor (which would usually turn into a two-hour gab because the lady would be very eager to impress me, so I didn't do this too often because it would eat into my sightseeing time too much--see, I couldn't stop by and ask to take a look around without telling them I was writing a guidebook); or, more often, I might hear of a good B&B from other travelers, or other guidebooks, or Trip Advisor, and do as much internet research as I could to be reasonably certain the accommodation was worth recommending. Then I pledged to visit the place and stay there myself for the second edition. That was the absolute best I could do under the time and financial constraints. I'm not happy about it, but at least I know that, since I'm the sole author of Moon Ireland, I can make sure all the info in the new edition is gathered firsthand. I'm going to go through the whole book before the revision process starts and highlight every pub, restaurant, and B&B I need to visit, and then I'm going to do it. This is a big part of why I think the Moon guides are so great--they're written by only one person, or a team of two, and I believe that higher level of personal responsibility ultimately leads to a more reliable guidebook. Lonely Planet is generally my go-to guide for other locations, but it does bug me sometimes that they don't delete/update write-ups of accommodations and restaurants that have closed (or moved to another location) years ago.According to this WaPo article, Moon researchers get above-average advances, and I believe it. Even though I lost money doing this guidebook (for Ireland is the second-most expensive country in Europe), I couldn't have reasonably expected any more than they gave me--after all, guidebooks have an awfully short shelf life. Mine has been out one year, and already I've found several restaurants that have closed in Galway City alone. It's not an old guidebook, but it's already out of date (come to think of it, these books are out of date even before they're published). When I'm in the travel section at Borders looking to plan my next vacation, I always look at the pub dates on the guidebooks I have to choose from. If I were a tourist looking for an Ireland guidebook, I might pick up a 2008 edition of some other guidebook instead of Moon Ireland. (Even so, the 2008 guidebooks are the product of research done in 2006 or early 2007.) What I'm trying to say is, I don't even think I'm going to earn out on the advance Avalon gave me. The pay is tight because the operation doesn't float if they pay you a liveable wage.Tourists should keep all this in mind. But know this: we travel writers may not be perfect, but we're travelers just like you, so we understand how important a reliable guidebook is in making your vacation a happy one.