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.

Writers Keep Writing

Writer? Screenwriter? Novelist?

I won’t mention writers of shorter pieces because that’s not what I’m going to focus on in this post. 

illustration by Gabriel Hardman

 

The crux of the matter here is do you have a couple of half-finished novels on your hard drive? Screenplays maybe? You get going with lots of steam and a great idea that’s exciting and motivating, but somewhere along the line something happens. Maybe it feels like the original premise hits a dead end or the writer gets confused about where the original destination was or it just isn’t coming together the way it was hoped. Regardless of what it is that happens it gets agonizing. It’s a wrestling match between writer and story. Many times the writer will beat his or her head against a way for a while and then just gives up.

When it happens it can cause the writer to feel worthless. It can cause the writer to believe he can’t write. It’s flat awful.

So what can cause this? There are a number of things that can cause a writer to give up, not finish script or novel, not complete the story.

First, it’s possible there just wasn’t enough story there in the first place. What to do? Give yourself a break, stop beating yourself up and learn to think your story idea through before you start. That doesn’t mean you need to create every little tiny detail of the story, but it does mean you need to consider where that story idea you came up with is going. Don’t just jump in and start writing script or novel. Create some sort of synopsis or treatment that takes the story from beginning to end and weed out things that don’t make sense or don’t carry the story forward. Take it seriously. Don’t leave yourself in the middle of the lake without a boat so to speak. Create that plan and the solid sense of story and the knowledge of craft, novel or screenwriting, you need to carry you to the finish.

If you have a strong premise and you’re still failing to finish consider how you feel about your writing. Are you afraid that when it’s complete and you put it out into the world that you’ll be rejected? That that rejection is failure? You’ve heard it before, read it, and had it shoved in your face in every way conceivable. To be a writer is to face rejection, feel that terrible humiliation, and learn to live with it in some fashion. The very best get bad coverage, terrible reviews and premises that are ripped to shreds by editors or readers. That’s the way it is. If it’s not for you, if you can’t handle it maybe you need to be doing something else.

But keep in mind, many may pass on your manuscript or screen script, but you only need one yes. If you really are a writer and can handle that inevitable rejection and you can’t find a single yes on one project, it’s time to start another. And when you finally get that yes from publisher or producer you know you finally measure up to industry standards. That means you, as a writer, learned not to take negative comments personally and used rejection to learn and do better.

Embrace rejection. Learn from it. Move forward. Take classes, find readers, keep submitting. Keep the faith and keep writing. It takes focus and serious effort. The one shot wonder is just that, and who wants to be a one shot anyway? Dump the self-pity that can accompany rejection and the whining, “it’s-not-fair”, curl-in-a-ball and hide stance of the abused victim.

Be proud of your rejections – it means you’re in the game.

Writers And Readers Websites Wednesday - Script Writing

Hey if you have an interest in screenwriting consider dropping in at ScriptMag It's a division of the Writer's Store (where you can get stuff you need for writing). Yeah, it's that short and that simple this week. Yes, they'll try to sell you stuff, but they have some pretty good blogs (check out Balls of Steel) and podcasts for aspiring writers and for readers just interested in what goes on in Hollywood.

8 Ways to Carve out Writing Time

If you’re a writer (notice I’m not saying ‘aspiring’ writer - a writer writes, if you write you’re a writer) it’s more than possible you’re at a time in your writing career where you have all kinds of obligations and responsibilities like putting food on the table, paying rent, maintaining a car or maybe going to school or a whole lot of other things.

It may be a novel you’re writing or a screenplay or articles for magazines or non-fiction instructional books to help others. Whatever it is it could be you’re juggling like mad and trying to figure out how to write a novel or script or whatever while you’re holding down a full time job or going to school full time. 

Every writer no doubt has his or her own method of coping. I’m a full time writer now, but I’ll pass along a few things I did along the way. Some you probably won’t like to hear (there can be sacrifice involved in being a writer), others will seem more workable. Still others might just jump-start an idea that will work for you while you’re madly juggling. 

First and foremost, think this through. Do you really want to be a professional writer or is it just a whim or a hobby? I’m not kidding. This has a strong bearing on how much time you carve out and how much time you need to carve out. Those possibilities equal very different goals and needs.

Okay, let’s say you’re aiming at carving out a writing career. Then here are 8 suggestions for finding the time to do just that. Remember you don’t necessarily have to have a LOT of time just regular time. 

• You can get up a hour earlier – of course this may well mean hitting the hay an hour earlier as well so you actually get some sleep. But the very quiet wee hours of the morning can be a great time for writing.

• Writing on a bus or a train while commuting to work can be a great time adder for your work. Just make sure you don’t sit next to a ‘chatty Cathy’ who won’t let you work. 

• There was a time when I arranged with my employer to come in to work an hour earlier so I could take a two hour lunch – during which time I ate while I worked on my latest novel.

• Weekends can be precious, but if you’re serious and you can get spouse and family to understand you can carve out a few hours each weekend to get serious and put words to computer screen and write.

• Holidays are a great time to write and I spent many of them doing just that. It works very well when you’re single. I did it a lot when I was in school. You’ll have to be the judge for when you’ve got a family. Anyway, there are many of them throughout the year for the worker who has some benefits. Among them are the usual, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, but there’s also Veteran’s day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, President’s Day, Martin Luther King Day as well as some local holidays.

• Write in the evenings. It can be every week night that you write or it might just be some. Perhaps you have to work out a deal with your spouse for a number of nights when you come home from work, eat dinner early and have the evening to write uninterrupted. It means less TV and you might have to sacrifice “Thursday night Football” but that’s the way of it. Which is more important?

• Those 15 minute breaks at work can be a great time to jot thoughts and ideas and just let them evolve further if you think of writing instead of hanging out in the coffee room or at the water cooler every day.

• See if you can do compacted work days (i.e. 10 hour days at work) with one day off from regular work where you can use the time writing all day.

Be creative, give it some thought. There are lots of ways to carve out writing time here and there without giving in to panic and despair. If you really work at it you’ll make it, just don’t let the time you carve out for writing get frittered away on social media and you’ll do great.

Writers Websites Wednesday - Screenwriting

For those of you who are into screenwriting or thinking about it - today I mention Movie Bytes. An excellent website for screenwriting contests and markets - and a newsletter so you can have them deliver the latest to your inbox. Really, go on over and check it out. 

Why We Like Stories - Ask The Brain

Have you ever sat back and considered WHY we like stories? Why we like reading books, going to the movies, hearing tall tales? This like is universal in that there isn’t a society on earth that doesn’t share stories. Stories, well told, captivate us, draw us in, hold our attention firmly.

But again, why? Sure everyone thinks, it’s fun, it’s entertainment, it gives us escape from our daily lives. But they don’t play a necessary role in our lives today, I mean stories aren’t key to our survival.  Things have changed from the way back, right? 

Wrong.

The brain is an amazing organ. You can read all about it in a whole lot of places, but not in great detail here. Here we’re going to touch on cause and effect in reading and writing, not brain function.

Writers listen up. If stories are good, we pay attention, and from day one in the 'way back' stories gave people an idea of what to hang on to and what to reject. They gave us tools to use to envision the future, to plan for the unexpected, to leap ahead of where we started. 

And what makes a reader want to read YOUR story?  What makes them enjoy what you put down on paper? Is it your colorful, lyrical language? Your robust and well-drawn characters? Touching dialog? Ummm, probably not. 

The brain is curious. It wants answers. Wants to know what happens next. 

So, how to create a story that gives them what they want? 

Here are a few ways – 

Surprise. Surprise is good. Surprise gets everyone’s attention by skipping around the usual expectations. The brain is hard wired to begin figuring out what is going on, like a puzzle. The wiring comes from our general desire to know ahead of time if we’re in danger or possibly about to get a warm hug.  And it’s a great idea to start with the opening sentence.

Feel it. That goes along with a post I did a while back – Make ‘em Laugh, Make ‘em Cry.  Why are feelings so vital?  In everyday life the brain is much more inclined to use emotion than our much touted reason to decide what matters to each of us and what doesn’t. Feelings drive choices. So, if a reader isn’t feeling it won’t be long before he or she isn’t reading. 

When you write, write in specifics. We don’t normally think in the abstract, we think in specific images. Think about this. If folks think about love, they don’t think about a vague concept. Instead each person envisions some treasured images that evoke the concept of love. So if, as a writer, you write in generalizations, the reader doesn’t get hooked. 

Now, so you won’t accuse me of writing in generalizations I’ll give a quick example. 

Take the sentence, The weather was bad.  All righty. Bad what? A hurricane, hail the size of baseballs? Blizzard? Dust Storm?  Readers love specifics, their brains are wired to.

Give them what they want and they’ll love the writer in you.

Tracking The Wild Writer's Ideas

Many writers are so brimming with ideas it’s hard to know how to choose one and continue on, spinning that one story when so many other clamor for attention. 

Other writers are great at the writing part, but are hard pressed to come up with that first idea; that seed from which to grow the organic story they dream of. 

And writers who are published or screenwriters produced are forever being asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” 

So, since I have time only for a short post today I decided to toss out a few ideas on how to come up with those ideas. 

Most good writers are curious. They’re forever asking “What is it?” or “What could it be?” or “What if?” From this curiosity comes wonderful ideas, and those ideas come at all times. The trick is to catch them, get them pinned down down. Keep a note pad at your bedside, in your pocket, in your purse, backpack, whatever.  Stories don’t generally spring forth full-blown. Usually an idea or a premise precedes them. A word can spark an idea. Jot it down, more words will follow.

“What if” is the gate to a magical world. Daydream. Imagine. “What if” vampires were not dark and evil, but good, strong and protectors of the human race? Check out SherrilynKenyon’s Dark-Hunter series of romances. What if a young boy in winning a video game unknowingly wins the war against aliens attacking earth? Check out Orson ScottCard’s Ender’s Game and the series that follows. What if wolves could bond with humans and communicate telepathically? Check out my novel Stormrider. What if Bears once ruled the earth and the conscious memory of that time is returning to them – hey go write that one for yourself.

Some writers need to map out their entire book or script before they begin. Others work best on the fly. Writing, generating a story, creates many of its own surprises. If you’re the kind who works best on the fly you’ll find your characters will take on lives of their own and they’ll surprise you with where they take the story you begin. Surprise - this happens with those who ‘map their course’ as well.

You might see a photo in a magazine or the newspaper. Clip it out. Put it where you can see it. Wait and see what ideas might come. 

You might overhear a phrase spoken in public. Write it down. Think about what it might mean, who said it, what the context is. Does it make you feel there is something going on there, something not visible on the surface? Pursue it. Jot down notes. Some of the most disjointed notes come together to form ideas and from ideas spurts of creative inspiration.

As Ray Bradbury once said, “You don’t build a story, you allow it to explode.” I’m kinda with Ray.

Ideas are everywhere, open your eyes

·      Read a lot

·      observe people

·      take time to daydream 

No kidding. Have at it.