Category Archives for On writing

Finding Inspiration Again

The words have gone.

It’s every writer’s secret nightmare: to sit down, brimming with ideas, only to have the words shrivel into dust. The few that end up on the page lie in awkward sentences like jigsaw pieces that don’t quite fit.

They’re dead; there’s no emotion left.

For the last few months I’ve struggled to write — and what’s most frustrating is that I don’t know why.

I’ve tried focusing on one project. I’ve tried flitting between them. I’ve tried outlining and freewriting, skipping ahead and writing in order. Music and silence. Bedroom and living room. Evening and daytime.

Nothing seems to work.

Staying inspired and motivated is no easy matter. With every unproductive writing session I’ve felt gradually more defeated, and it would be so easy to let everything slide, to stop trying so hard, if only to avoid that creeping sense of depression.

Because without words, what am I?

And then I wonder: where can I find inspiration again?

But there is no magic cure, no secret shop of wonders.

The truth is that inspiration is inside of us. We won’t find it anywhere else. And if we lose it, the only thing we can do is to continue to sit down in front of that dreaded empty page — to continue despite every defeat — and WRITE.

Yes, even if all the words are clumsy, mismatched jigsaw pieces.

How To Break Writer’s Block

As I sit here writing this, I’m suffering from the worst head cold I’ve had in years.

My nose is blocked. My ear is blocked. My sinuses are throbbing. A dull, persistent headache thuds beneath my right eyebrow.

So, obviously, my mind has turned to the subject of writer’s block.

A common credence – one I’ve often considered myself – is that writer’s block doesn’t exist. It’s all in your mind. Stress, pressure, fear and anxiety have gotten to you; YOU have blocked yourself.

There might be some truth in that.

But, given my current condition, I’ve begun to consider other possibilities.

What if writer’s block works like a common cold?

Think about it: everyone gets a cold at some point and it affects everyone differently. You cannot immunise yourself against it. There are as many varieties of cold & flu relief medicines as there are methods to overcome writer’s block… and each method’s success rate will change depending on what strain you’ve caught.

Extending this comparison, how then would we cure writer’s block?

The sad news is that — like for the common cold — there is no cure.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do.

How To Cure Writer’s Block

First of all, don’t panic. A cold isn’t the end of the world; neither is writer’s block.

Secondly, resign yourself to letting it run its course. Most blocks resolve themselves; only seek medical attention in the case of prolonged blockage.

Third, just because there is no cure doesn’t mean you can’t treat the symptoms. Go for a jog, drink caffeine, use writing prompts… Whatever method makes you feel less gloomy.

Lastly, eat lots of kiwis. They have the highest Vitamin C content of any fruit, and whether you have writer’s block or the common cold, it’s bound to be good for you.

So is writer’s block all in your head?

Maybe.

But, from the depths of my blocked sinuses, just because something is all in your head doesn’t make it any less real.

The Importance of Words

Wilmer Stone read our stories to us in a monotone as if he were reading from the pages of a phone directory. What we learned with each stab of pain was that the words themselves and not the inflections supplied by the reader had to carry the emotion of the story.
– Solutions For Writers by Sol Stein

I’d like to challenge you.

Take the nearest piece of writing – something you’ve been writing or reading – and read it aloud with no emotion or inflection whatsoever.

How does the story change?

I’ve been on and off reading Sol Stein’s Solutions For Writers, one of the few practical and useful writing handbooks.

Best of all, it makes me think.

The words, and not the inflections, have to carry the emotion of the story.

I have a tendency to overuse italics, forcing a stress onto a particular word to make the sentence have a certain emphasis. When revising, I strip the story of all formatting. The only italics that go back in are the ones I simply can’t avoid – and even those I consider a luxury.

I’m sure others have their own guilty pleasures. A personal pet peeve is exclamation marks; while I don’t subscribe to the drastic rule of having max one exclamation mark every three pages, I’d delete them wherever possible.

Exclamation marks and italics have their place, but if abused they lose their meaning. What’s worse is that they impede you from hearing the true meat of your story.

So be sparing. Strip away all inflections. Listen to what the words alone are saying, and make them precise and clear.

When you’ve finished revising, read your story aloud as if you’re reading from the pages of a phone directory.

You may be surprised by what you find.

Plotting vs Pantsing: Why stick to only one?

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

There are countless blog posts arguing the pros and cons, hundreds of authors who’ve staunchly declared for a side.

Why must it be one or the other?

I freely admit: I pantsed the first draft of Above Ground. I knew where I wanted the story to go, but each week when I sat to write the next chapter, a part of me didn’t know what would happen.

Yes, that’s how I ended up with a (pointless) scene where a werepenguin eats a cheese puff.

That first draft was a badly structured nightmare of inconsistencies and pointless scenes. I had to write an outline from scratch and perform drastic surgery that took as long as writing the draft in the first place. While doing so I vowed: never again.

I vowed that I would be Team Plotter, all the way.

But now that I’m busy hammering out the outline of a second novel, I’ve come to miss the liberty of pantsing. The looseness of spirit. The “I’ll worry about this not making sense later”.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m enjoying outlining. It has saved me from writing (and deleting) pointless scenes. It has made me think about world building, character motivation, and theme – all of which I often neglect.

But writing the outline first is a subtle kind of torture. The closer the outline gets to where I want it to be, the harder it is to resist the temptation to just go for it and write. The only thing holding me back is the knowledge that I haven’t quite figured out the story yet.

But what’s the point in picking sides?

We are writers; we challenge ourselves. We take utterly scary things like zombies and turn them into short stories!

Plotting? Pantsing? I refuse to fit one box, to pick one side.

While I’m plotting Novel #2, I’m going to start pantsing Novel #3, and who knows — maybe I’ll write Novel #4 backwards whilst asleep, hanging upside down from a eucalyptus tree.

What about you?

Writing In First Person

Inevitably, when I get a novel idea, it comes to me in first person.

The climatic moment of self-realisation (which for me generally comes first with a story) simply sounds better in first.

I lie in a daze, following the words, discovering the story… Yet when I sit to write, I write in third.

And if I start writing in first – or try changing a story into first – nine times out of ten, I change it to third.

Why?

Is it because of what I’ve read?
I haven’t come across many good books written in first. Most of the ones I’ve read have been fairly average, so perhaps I’ve subconsciously linked average writing with first person.

Is it because of genre?
A pitfall for writing in first is that it’s easy to get caught up in the protagonist and forget to pan out to the world at large. With a science fantasy like Above Ground, the world is bigger than any one character… and third person allows me to step back and describe the world without the very personal first person point of view distorting it.

Is it aesthetic?
The beauty of third person is the aching distance between reader and protagonist. You feel her pain yet can simultaneously see the bigger picture, which makes the moment all the more exquisite. For me the distance of third person allows for greater immersion and suspension of disbelief; I sink into the character because I want to, not because I’m forced to by the pronoun ‘I’.

Or is it something else?
Perhaps I am making excuses. The more I reread the above list the more doubts I have. The reasons which seemed so solid in my head appear now as flimsy as the screen from which they glow.

Thinking about it, I’ve read many averagely written third person novels – and don’t know why they stick out less in my mind. And a good writer could successfully use first person regardless of genre.

Perhaps it is simply experience. The majority of the books I love are written in third, and that is the sole reason for my unconscious bias.

What about you? Are you biased one way or another?