Giving Up Perfection - the Writer's Task

Are you a writer of any type?  Do you strive for perfection?  Are you slowing yourself down beyond belief?

Yep, well consider this. Sometimes there is just the need for speed.  If you watch a bike race like we saw in the Olympics you’ll see it’s not the perfect, cautious rider who wins, it’s the reckless idiot willing to throw it all to the wind and push it to the limit.

True?

Yes, we saw that young rider wipe out on a curve, but that rider was in the game. And if there hadn’t been that wipe out, if the ride had continued on beyond the point of control what would have happened?  Thrown off course? Yes. But on a track not taken before, perhaps faster. Maybe better.

 

Are you in the game?  

Perfect will never get you fast and in the end, when applying this to writing, it’s fast that counts for the first draft. Get it out there like word vomit on paper. Really, just toss it out there. Get yourself on a roll and let those written words loose – 1,000 words, 2,000, maybe 5,000 or more in a day. Don’t trip up your hot streak. Don’t risk tossing aside a ‘wow’ moment when you, as writer, look back over the day’s work and find you’ve gone way beyond your usual abilities.

Yes, you’re going to have to edit whether you’re an author who waits until the end to go through the whole script in one go or another kind of writer who edits what was done the day before prior to continuing. You’re just (most of you) are going to have to do some clean up. Or someone is going to have to do it for you and believe me it won’t be an editor or a producer.

BUT - Don’t let the magic of that full throttle day disappear. Don’t chance killing the spark that ignited. Your writing begs for you to be reckless. Perfect slows you down. My advice is don’t go for perfect…especially when in the midst of a creative storm.

The other side is the obvious. I’m sure you’ve all heard various complaints about books with typos, misspellings and all sorts of grammar mistakes that throw the reader off and end up causing them to put the book aside. Same can happen with any other writing.  What if you’re a technical writer and hand in a paper filled with errors. 

I’m not saying the driven writer shouldn’t be bothered with such, we have to be. We even have to read galleys with a professional eye to catch the errors the editors at major houses miss. However you accomplish it, do it.

But when it comes to your story, don’t go for perfection, go for the speed and power that make your words sing. You never know what new demon might emerge out of the mist. 

Writers and Avatars on Facebook

As a writer I decided to have some fun and use a cartoon Avatar on my Facebook page for now.  I like changing occasionally.

I’ve always had some picture or another of myself on my twitter and Facebook pages associated with my writer self, and just in case you’re one of the people who don’t,  let me say it kinda makes you less human, more of a non-entity if you don’t have a picture up there to represent yourself. If you’re just you, it’s not very personal. And, if you’re a business or the site is the representative of your business (like being a writer) then not having a photo can really kill your business (as in not having people move to your writer's info). 

It may seem silly, but that blank image is what your customers would be associating with you. So if writer equals blank space what does that convey to the readers who stop by? It also makes it look like you’ve something to hide and that makes people think you may be a spammer.  So it’s best to put SOMETHING up there.

For me, it was fun using Cartoonize http://www.cartoonize.net/ to create the picture and easy as well. Just upload a picture to the site and a couple of clicks later you have it – there’s even a choice of styles. See what you can do with it. Use a picture you like and see the results in moments.

But there are lots of other alternatives.

If you don’t want to be a cartoon there are a number of free resources on the web where you can create an Avatar of yourself  from scratch using bits and pieces they provide.  

Here are a few I’ve run into and explored just a bit. Create a new you and have fun doing it.

Build Your Wild Self is one of my Favorites, but that’s me, others may suite you better. http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

Here are some others:

Avachara

http://avachara.com/avatar/

Face Your Manga

http://www.faceyourmanga.it/

DoppelMe

http://www.doppelme.com/

Montagraph

http://www.montagraph.com/

Visit and see what might work for you – or go ‘googling’ for Avatar creators or another creative keyword and if you find something unusually great go ahead and share the link here.  It would be greatly appreciated.

It’s time to stop being a mystery person and face the crowd – or at least let your Avatar do it for you.

Directions in a Writer’s Life

Namely – mine!

Some writers pretty much stick with what they began with whether it’s novel writing or scriptwriting or journalism for an entire career. That’s great for them, or, if you’re a writer and that’s the way you go, for you.

For me, things keep on a’changin’. It’s not that I move away from one type of writing to another and leave the ‘old’ behind, it’s more like I add to what I’m doing. That can get a bit crazy, but it’s the way I Iike it. Spices things up for me, keeps the fresh and the new ideas rolling.

I began with novels, published with Doubleday, Harlequin and others. 

Then I added script writing and I loved it. Had a wonderful mentor in Larry Brody of TVWriter.com (for whom I'm a Contributing Editor), sold a script, optioned some others and am still working with scriptwriting having completed one a short time ago. All I had to do was know how to type and be creative...and learn the formatting.

But that’s not where it stops for me. I’m also creating a novel from a previously written script. Its great fun and I intend to publish.  I have a romance novel I’m working on finishing up as well. Still typing, still milking the creative juices.

What’s the newest? Comic books. Kid’s books. Yep, an unusual undertaking for me. I’ve partnered up with a great friend and we, together, write and illustrate the comic series Planet Of The Eggs with five adventures published so far and more in the works.  As an off-shot we’re now creating our first ‘read-to-me’/’young readers’ picture book based on the fun characters of Planet Of The Eggs. The first is celebrating the differences in us all, as well as what brings us together, and is as yet untitled, but that’s coming!

The learning curve was pretty steep on comic creation. We’re still using a combination of photoshop, powerpoint and comic life software. Now we’ve also thrown in the free photo manipulator from Paint.net and got a couple of special effects packs so we can create cool pen sketches and other kind of amazing effects.

The results so far is the near completion of the first volume (six issues) of the Planet Of The Eggs comic book series. But wait, there’s something afoot!  The series is about to find itself in a reboot as we evolve from the very young adventurous eggs to the more confident, determined Superhero eggs and their friends, companions and arch enemies. We’re on the very cusp as we complete the first picture book and dive into plotting for the sixth adventure to complete our first volume.  

Oh, and the fifth, Planet Of The Eggs-Eruption 2, Saving Dot has just released in Kindle format and paperback will follow in the next couple of weeks.  Want to keep up with it all? 

Go to our facebook page for Planet Of The Eggs, tell us your thoughts, which heroic egg is your favorite, what villains you would like to see, whatever comes to mind. We love to hear from fans. Oh, and there’s a monthly newsletter as well – just click the sign up button near the top of the page and get access to the first adventure in PDF FREE! Or sign up directly here.

So, my personal writing career has become a fantastical juggling act and I love it. Yep, I’ll be finishing that romance novel, probably creating more novels from scripts and the reverse as well as finding new and exciting things to pursue with my writing.  I’ll let you know what I come up with next.  Meanwhile, happy reading and writing.