Tag Archives: Tips for writing

Dealing with Distractions Two-legged and Four-legged

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Experts estimate it takes between 10 and 15 minutes for the average person to return to focused concentration every time they are interrupted. Multiply that by two or three times in the hour you set aside for your work, and it is clear how sixty minutes of writing time evaporates.  Whether you interrupt yourself or are interrupted by others, you need to have a plan for dealing with it. You may be caring for young children, parents, relatives, friends, and older/younger pets who require your attention, time, and love. Amid these obligations, it can be challenging to carve out time for our writing projects. This blog post will discuss ways to deal with disruptions children, partners, and family members create.

In addition, if you deal with your personal distraction issues, it is essential to find ways to ameliorate them, or you’ll never “find the time” to finish your writing project.

Here are some methods to stop interruptions or lessen their impact of them. suggestions

Things we cannot control: A short note about things beyond your control: infants and children.

  When children are young, and you are caring for them, you can’t just leave them in another room and ignore them, especially when they’re infants. When my kids were babies, I wrote while they napped and after their bedtime.

 As they grew older, I worked to find ways to entertain them, things that would keep them distracted while I worked. It was slow going and so frustrating working in small bits of time. But all those tiny bits of writing added up to my first novel.  When I get overwhelmed and think that I’m never I’m going to finish writing my book or I contemplate giving up, I have an inspirational photo I look at to remind me what’s possible.

In the photo my twins asleep in their little bouncy seats and I am working at my desk. It reminds me that if I wrote my master’s thesis between the time they were born and when they turned one, I can do anything. When I look at that photograph, I’m reminded of the power of small bits of time.

This works when caring for other family and friends as well. Sometimes, you need to care for other folks, and being a caregiver can become all-consuming. It is emotionally and physically exhausting, yet taking even the most minor bits of time to do something for yourself is self-care. Set yourself up to take advantage of writing in those snips of time and be encouraged, small acts done consistently can accomplish great things.

Things we can control: Here are some suggestions to cope with distractions and interruptions.

  1. Environment. Our environment impacts so much of what we do. If you can work to music, create a playlist and listen to it every time you work on that piece. If you need quiet, noise-canceling headphones or a less expensive alternative is soft earplugs can block distracting sounds. It is essential to create or find a location is conducive to concentration and deep work. If you are fortunate enough to have a dedicated writing space, make it work for you. Have a chair you love, a desk you need/want, music/ambient sound or silence, and lighting that doesn’t hurt your eyes. Many folks who write do not have a dedicated workspace. I did not for years and I used whatever spare corner of the house was available or worked at my local tea shop or library. My solution to not having my own space was to create a mini environment. At the library, I would reserve a study room, at the tea shop, I would find an out-of-the-way table, but the number one way was to work to specific music related to the project. When I put on my headphones, all I can hear is the soundtrack I’ve created for that project, and then it’s effortless for me to sink into what I’m doing no matter what else is going on around me, my brain is trained to go into writing mode when the music starts. I have other friends that are able to accomplish this with nature sounds or by listening to white noise.     There are great free apps, such as Rain Rain (https://www.rainrainapp.com) with all sorts of environmental sounds you can play to block out all other sounds. A search on YouTube will also turn up various playlists and background sounds for writing. If you require silence, an investment in noise-canceling headphones may be worthwhile. Or the less expensive straightforward solution of hearing protectors, either the soft ear plugs or the over-ear variety you can find at the hardware store. Take the time to write down what your perfect writing space would look like. Let yourself go and list everything that would make it perfect. Take a break and then go through the list and figure out your essentials versus luxuries (because who wouldn’t write in a cabana next to the ocean with endless cups of tea?) and focus on what you can fix now. Then do those things. Your environment can be your best help or your worst enemy regarding writing. Take   the time to do what you can to fix what is not working.
  2. Training.If your two-legged or four-legged or at a point in their lives where they can respond to training, for lack of a better word, it is time to establish boundaries. Rehearse saying: “I am working now. Is this an emergency?” Treat “our writing as a job. Remind them you are serious about your writing. Write in your appointment book. Write it on the family calendar as work so folks understand it’s not optional.  This will not be easy in many cases. Stick with it. Most kids are impulsive. Mine also are gifted with ADD/ADHD. For years they would bust into the room and interrupt me in the middle of whatever I was working on to tell me whatever random thing they were thinking about. I always had my door open because when they were younger, I wanted to be able to hear if there was some issue I needed to attend to, but now, they have learned after many, many, many repetitions of “I love you and want to talk with you, but I am working now. Are you bleeding? Is someone in danger? Is it an emergency? Is someone or something on fire?” to not interrupt unless it is a critical issue. Teaching them to respect my work time and helping them understand what an emergency is has enabled them not to interrupt each other when working on schoolwork. With partners, it may involve a very frank conversation with your partner and other family members so they understand that when you’re working you’re not to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency. Explain to the folks you are living with or caring for the impact of disruptions on your writing. Be brave, be bold, and be kind in your discussion. As far as our four-legged companions, if you live with other family arranging with them to have them attend to pet needs while you are working will help. Scheduling their walks or playtime can also stop pets from interrupting you. Your mileage will vary with your pets and your living situation. After living with a parrot, and multiple dogs over the years, most of the time they have been the easiest to deal with when it came to learning a routine. My dog is the first one into the office most days when it is writing time and often comes to look for me if I’m not at my desk at my usual start time. Be patient and consistent with training.
  1. Value your own time. I want to encourage you to value your own time and self-care. No matter if you are writing for publication or journaling for your mental health. You are worth that time. And most importantly you deserve uninterrupted time for your deep work. Stop feeling guilty for taking an hour or thirty minutes or however long you set aside to write for yourself. You are entitled to time alone. So many times, we give our time away without even thinking. We surrender our time to other things and projects that don’t impact our health and well-being. Taking an hour to write can be as crucial to our mental health as taking an hour to go to the gym or a walk around the block. They go hand-in-hand. Give yourself permission for self-care.
  1. Dealing with self-distraction. As someone who deals with ADHD, I excel at self-distraction. For years I didn’t understand how to handle self-distraction, which only worsened with the advent of smartphones and social media. Putting physical distance between yourself and your phone can help tremendously. If you need ideas on how to separate yourself from your phone, I recommend the book {How to Break up with your Phone, (https://www.amazon.com/How-Break-Up-Your-Phone-ebook/dp/B072J77B68/} I put my phone in another room so I can’t random check into social media or fall into the internet void as I research some information. To avoid tumbling down the rabbit hole of the internet on my computer, I work on full screen so I can’t see other applications or tabs while I am writing. If I am writing story notes or working on character outlines by hand, I put all my electronics in another room. Or I work someplace without Internet access. These things may not work for you. Knowing yourself and anticipating what might distract you will help you find ways to deal with yourself.   A note about Research: If I’m working on something and I run across an item I need to research, I put brackets in my document and make a note to myself in the document about it.  I used to keep a notebook next to my computer, but after misplacing my research notebook for several weeks, I started making notes directly in the document. Using brackets, I can do a global search and compile an ‘items to be researched list’ once I finish the project or the scene. If it impacts a chapter or makes it so I can’t go forward without knowing that bit of information, I will write as far as I can without stopping to research. That said, some people can’t continue writing until they know the answers to all their research question. They have to know everything before they can write anything. I am a discovery writer and can write scenes out of order because I don’t work to a set outline. For those who work to a detailed outline, it would cause them immense distress and make it impossible to keep writing. If you are one of those people who has to know the research answers before you can begin or continue your writing, understand that if you interrupt your writing time for research, it will take you at least twice as long to complete a project. My advice is to save your research for a dedicated research time. The mental skills used in crafting words are very different from the skills used in research. Shifting back and forth between them is inefficient.I know too many people who have become so bogged down in research and have never completed their novel. There is always something more to know. Set limits on your research and get to work on writing. As with all suggestions, your mileage may vary, but this tiny change massively impacted my ability to complete projects. Another way to stop self-interruptions caused by internet access is to try an app that will lock you out of social media and your browser for set periods. There are a number of them out there, I can’t recommend one as I have not ever used any of them.  I opted for the simpler solution of placing my phone out of reach.
  1. Goals as Distractions: Setting intentions. Stick with me on this one. Having a set number of words to accomplish in a day can become its own distraction. Constantly checking your word count to see if you have met your goal is not conducive to deep work. It can also create a self-defeating loop. If you constantly do not meet your word count goals. My solution for this is to set intentions versus goals. Word count goals because create stress for many people. Try reframing your plans for the day.  Saying “I intend to write words today,” and is open-ended does not carry the same weight emotionally setting a specific goal. Any words will count and you will have met your intentions. No one will ever know or care that you wrote your novel fifteen minutes at a time or ten words at a time. Writing in the margins, those little snatches and bits of time count. And if that’s all you can eke out of your day because you are mentally or physically drained because of other issues in your life, if all you can do is open the document and write one sentence, you will eventually be finished. If you write one page daily at the end of the year, you will have 365 pages of work. So don’t quit. Take break if you need one but don’t give up on don’t writing if it is what you genuinely want to do.

If you are finding it hard to get back into a writing project after a long break, I wrote a blog post about how to get back to work after a long pause, and you can find it here {https://blog.writingwhiledistracted.com/?p=2244}

I hope that you find some of these suggestions helpful. I’ll be I’ll next month with When the Words Won’t Come: The Writers’ Block and distraction connection, brain dumps, impulse control, and plot bunny wrangling.”

 Until next time keep writing,

Brenda

Please feel free to forward this post to other writers you know, they can sign up here for free writing resources and my newsletter just for writers and those who want to be.

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Getting Back to It: Tips for Restarting a Writing Project

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How do you get back to writing after a long break? I’ve had to take a break from the blog and my current work in progress because I had two sets of edits that came in and I had to attend to those edits. It’s going to be at least another three weeks before I can get back to it. This is not the first time I’ve had to take long breaks in working on projects because of project conflicts, family events, life, events, or my own state of mind. I have developed a system for how to get back to where you were when you’ve had to put a story aside for a while.

  It’s hard to pick up the threads of your story when you are a pantser or a discovery draft writer.  The techniques work well for people who don’t work from a detailed outline because sometimes you’ll be writing along and you have taken a detour. Your characters have gone off script, and suddenly you’re not sure where your story is going and you need to get back to the initial thread. These techniques are handy for those times when brain fog is dense and you don’t even know where you are in the story or what you’re doing and you feel lost in your own manuscript.

 When you’ve wandered into the weeds one of the first things things you can do when you find yourself in that situation or when you to come back to some thing after having not written or worked on it for for weeks or months is to read through your pre-writing, and by that I mean story notes, character worksheets, notebook scribbles, etc, that you created before you started your project.
Then read through what you’ve written so far and create a reverse outline. A reverse outline is based on what you’ve written. It offers an opportunity to compare the scenes you’ve written with your initial plan.

It also serves as a reminder of what you’ve already accomplished. If you’ve just started something, and you’ve only written a chapter or two just read those couple of chapters. Some people suggest simply  reading the previous chapter or the previous couple of pages of your manuscript. This doesn’t work for me because I don’t work from detailed outline. I work from a scene list and if you also work that way a reverse outline will to show you where you’ve  gone off script.
The other thing you can do, if you feel overwhelmed, or if you don’t want to invest the time reverse outlining takes is to just start writing.  Get yourself geared up to sit down at your desk, open your document or your notebook or legal pad or  however you write and just start writing again.
Embrace the attitude that you can fix any problems in revisions. It does work, but you should plan on taking a bit more time in revisions to make sure you’ve fix any plot holes and that your story structure is sound.  

Not all writing breaks are bad, sometimes If you need to take a break from writing because you’ve written yourself into a corner or your bored with your story or you need to take a mental health break. You’ll be less stressed about not writing if you know there are ways to find your way back to the story.  Trust yourself to get back to work.
Sometimes people take breaks is because of what I call shiny new idea syndrome. Shiny new idea syndrome occurs most often when you get to the hard part of the manuscript and you’re like “oh I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m in the soggy middle and why the [email protected] did I ever start this book? I hate it.”
So you put your manuscript aside and you start working on the next shiny thing. The hard truth about this is that the next shiny thing will also get to a hard, sticky part.  My recommendation to you is if you stopped writing something because it became hard to write, is to put it aside for a while.  Take that break. Use it to refuel yourself, to fill your creative well so you can get your brain and your emotions in a place where you can work.
But for the love of all that is good do not start something new while on your break if you already have a pile of unfinished manuscripts. It’s fine to make notes or sketch some ideas down. Collect your ideas in a next shiny thing notebook if you’ve got one of those. Or a document, or whatever way your have to keep track of ideas. I keep a notebook next to my computer so I can write all those ideas down as the bubble up.

Those ideas call to me like sirens, and in order to keep myself from crashing on the rocks of unfinished works, I promise myself that I will start the new shiny thing that once I am finished my current project. 

My best advice is to if you can help it at all is to to not  quit in the middle of a project. To be clear, a pause to attend to other writing business is not the same as abandoning a project.  Another hard truth is nothing ever gets easier as you write.  In  fact, as you get towards the end of the story, trying to tie all the loose threads together and create a satisfying conclusion it is sometimes is exhausting.
Writing  is not easy. Giving people access your imaginary friends and their world, exposing your imagination can be excruciating.  More so if  you’re writing a difficult scene or a difficult topic or when you’re writing middle the of the story arc when you’re torturing your characters so they apprentice their happy ending.

All of that can be really hard to write, but don’t quit. Take a break, and when you come back to your project, try these techniques to  get back to where you were. Or just start again and that’s fine too.

A final word about why folks quit on their manuscripts. Folks quit all the time because they give up, decide writing is  not worth the struggle. And then they beat themselves up about their decision.
 I can’t tell you if it’s worth it or not for you. I know for me, at this point in time even with the advent and rise of all the AI chat programs that will write stories for you and people bragging that they wrote books with it, and all the stress that the discussion has generated, nothing  is ever going to beat a homegrown honest to goodness human creation, because no matter how well we teach the machines they will never truly be us.
Regurgitated rehashed content is not the same as original human stories.  People will tell you there are no new stories. And that may be true but no one else out there can tell a story the way that you can tell a story.  So please don’t quit for good.  Give yourself a break if you need one.  Be kind to yourself and others always.
When you go to get back to your project  either jump right back into it and worry about fixing it later, or wade in slowly with a reverse outline.  Be brave. Have confidence  you actually can finish your writing project.  I believe in you. Until next time keep writing.

Four Tips for Managing Temporal Distortion

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Temporal distortion sounds like the name of an 80s indie rock band, but it is a genuine part of having ADD/ADHD and other mental health challenges that affect our attention. Time for folks who don’t deal with these challenges experience time as a liner event. It just is. Sure, they may seek to manage, organize, or make the best use of it, but very few systems address handling time when your perception it is not like everyone else’s. Temporal distortion can take several forms. Here are three types of temporal distortion.

Hyperfocus is that state of being where time stops for the person who experiences it. It’s those times when whatever you’re doing becomes so consuming that you forget to eat, drink, or go to the toilet because you are so focused. While it can be a positive issue in some cases, in that you may be very productive, it can also create massive problems if you neglect yourself or your family because you let everything go when you are in the groove. 

Contrast this to time exaggeration. It usually occurs when we have to do something that doesn’t grab our attention. It’s as if time is going in reverse. It takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r and a day. This is a symptom of time exaggeration. We exaggerate estimations of the time required to complete a task. We convince ourselves it will take hours, so we don’t even start to work on the task believing we will never finish it.

And finally, what I like to call time evaporation. It occurs on those days we sit down to write, with hours of unscheduled time ahead of us, a blissful infrequent occurrence and a luxury. We then sabotage ourselves by opening a browser to research just one thing. We lie to ourselves that it will only take a few minutes. We fall down the internet rabbit hole, and when we come out, we’ve eight ideas for new stories, learned more about an obscure topic than anyone needs to know, and our writing time has evaporated. 

So, how do we create an environment that can help us improve our perceptions of time so we can get some writing done? Here are my top four tips for preventing/minimizing temporal distortion.

  1. Hyperfocus: Set alarms to combat hyperfocus: Set a timer is the traditional advice for interrupting yourself so you remember to eat, pick up your kids, or whatever crucial thing you may forget to do if you get into your work. However, alarms only work if you don’t ignore them. For folks with attention issues, not responding to and ignoring alarms is not purposeful. Folks in hyperfocus don’t hear or see the world around them. We miss flights, bus, and train stops because we don’t hear the announcements. We lose track of time and miss appointments because we don’t hear the alarm. So alarms may work or not work for you.  For essential things, like picking my kids up from school or meetings, I set my phone alarms with labels so that when it goes off, it does two things, not only does it interrupt me, but it also reminds me why the alarm is occurring, because, in the fog of hyperfocus, it is possible to forget why you need to stop, even for things that are reoccurring like picking up your kids or regular appointments. I also place my phone in a location that forces me to get up from my desk to silence it, put the volume up as high as it will go and set it for an obnoxious sound so that it breaks through my focus. Your mileage may vary but this one thing has worked dramatically for me, in that I can relax and enjoy in my flow state without worrying I am going to miss something important. 
  2. Time Exaggeration: Time yourself doing tasks you dread. I hate folding clothes. Truly hate it. But I hate it a lot less after I timed myself doing it. Taking my time and using our largest laundry basket doesn’t take me more than fifteen minutes. And that is freeing because I know that no matter what, it will not take me more than a quarter of an hour to finish the task. So I can schedule it. Combining it with a labeled alarm means I don’t leave laundry in the washer for days (ugh) and don’t have to dig through a basket of unfolded clothes for the least wrinkled shirt to wear. How does this help with writing? For those things you hate to do, like editing, revisions, or proofreading, time yourself editing a page, keeping in mind that copy editing and story revisions will be different than proofreading. Knowing, on average, how long it takes you to do a task means you can stop procrastinating because you “don’t have time.” You can make the most effective use of your time by scheduling them. It is a way to get through the tasks you don’t like so that you can get on with the ones you prefer instead of fretting about not doing things you hate.
  3. Time Evaporation: One task at a time. If you set time aside for writing, write. No research, mood board creation, character worksheets, or whatever is allowed. Put words on the page. All the other writing adjacent tasks are not writing. The hard truth is that unless you get the words out of your head and on the page, you are not writing, and you will not finish your project. Research, character development worksheets, mood boards, and outlining are all important, but you can become so involved in prewriting tasks you never get to the writing part because, let’s be honest, they are more fun. How to stop yourself from wandering away from your writing? Schedule prewriting tasks separately from drafting. Use an app like Focus (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/focus-time-management/id777233759?mt=12) or Freedom (https://freedom.to) to block access to the internet and other distractions. If you come to a place in your writing and you decide you need to research a topic, or have a question, make a note of it, put it in brackets into the text, and get on with your writing. Preventing distractions can also be as simple as setting your phone to do not disturb, turning it off, or putting it in another room. Numerous studies have shown that mentally switching between tasks requiring different thought processes is ineffective. Multitasking is a myth unless it involves using your body/mind for tasks: like listening to an audiobook while running or answering email while on a stationary bike. 
  4. Create an environment that supports your writing. Do you like to work in chaos? Or does it not matter if you are locked in? I confess to being able to write in just about any place or situation if I have music and headphones. Once I start writing, I don’t notice anything else visually. I realize that for most folks, this may not be possible. I have many friends who can’t write if their kitchen needs cleaning or their house or desk is messy. For those folks, prioritizing creating an environment that supports your writing is vital. Start by listing what your ideal writing space would be. Dream, and let your imagination run wild. After creating your wish list for your perfect writing space, look at the list and figure out what you can do to make it happen realistically. I wrote at a tea shop for years, I would drop my kids at school, and at least three days a week, I would go to Tempelton’s tea shop in my little town and write for 2-3 hours. Over four years, I wrote 12 books in that shop because being there meant I didn’t have anything that distracted me. I treated it like an office. The rent was the price of a pot of tea and a scone. The owners were terrific, and I miss them dearly as they moved back to Scotland a few years ago. After the shop closed, I struggled to get into a groove again. Panic set in as my routine was disrupted. I feared not being able to write as effectively had been. I sat down and made a list of why working at the tea shop worked for me. The bottom line was that I didn’t have to get up to make individual cups of tea, the shop didn’t have windows, and I worked with headphones. All of those things were achievable at home. I purchased a thermal carafe and turned my desk to face the wall. The bonus for this change was more time to write as I reduced commuting time as my house was closer to the school. Nothing lasts forever, and now whenever my routine is disrupted (looking at you pandemic and homeschooling) I go back to list-making and rethinking the situation, focusing on the question: how can I make this work? Check out this video by Struthless (https://youtube.com/watch?v=ikz3ECL5NEk&feature=shares) about your environments and its effect on your art/work/life.

If you are struggling with temporal distortion, I hope these suggestions help you find ways effectively use your writing time. I’ll be back with the next post in this series. Dealing with Disruptions: Two-Legged and Four-Legged.

 

Begin at the Beginning or Not

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Begin at the Beginning or Not, Part One
This is the time of year when everyone starts looking back at the year and wondering if they have accomplished their goals. For years as the year came to a close, I would struggle to remember what I had accomplished. I let myself wallow in negativity and focused on what I had not done, goals missed, and resolutions abandoned. In the end, I would be down on myself and frustrated. One way I have learned to overcome this is to look at my consistency versus my output.
Consistency means sticking to a schedule, whatever that looks like for you. It does not mean, as some author coaches insist, writing every day, writing at the same time every day, or even a specific word count, although those things can work for some folks.
My life and brain are chaotic on the best days. When working full time, after a twelve-hour shift, I would be so tired and brain-dead after work that I only wrote on weekends. When my children were small, I wrote when they were napping unless I also fell asleep, then I wrote late at night or whenever I could squeeze in the time.
If you listen to some folks who pontificate about how to be a writer, they will spew all kinds of rules and imply that there is only one way to succeed.
Here is the number one secret: there are no rules other than getting the words out of your head and onto the page, be it electronic or paper. It does not matter how you accomplish it.
So what does begin at the beginning or not, mean? It means that to start planning for your writing this next year, look back at your consistency and start there. Make your plan to get words onto the page based on achievable consistency and a measure that works for you.
I work to word counts per week, Monday through Friday, because I need to see my progress, and moving the green line in Scrivener motivates me. I don’t write on the weekends because I tried the everyday thing, which led to severe burnout.
Some writers base their work plan on minutes spent writing, for example, fifteen minutes a day, three hours every weekend, or thirty minutes during their lunch break.
The hard part of all of this is that what works for one year, half a year, or three months may not work the entire year. So taking a page from the book The Twelve Week year (https://www.amazon.com/12-Week-Year-Others-Months/dp/1118509234), make a writing plan for the next twelve weeks.
At the end of that time, evaluate how it went. Ask yourself: Did you get words on the page? Were you happy with your productivity? Did you have fun with it, or was it a chore? What could you do to make it work? Or did it work for a bit, and then something changed that didn’t work?
If it didn’t work for you, make a new plan for the next twelve weeks. It doesn’t matter if you follow a famous writer’s schedule or anyone’s advice (including mine, as your mileage may vary). Do what works.
Begin at the Beginning or Not, Part Two:
In the next twelve weeks, set yourself up to succeed. Start slow. If you had never done more than jog to the car when it was raining, you would not start running by entering a marathon. Every year writers set themselves up to fail by choosing some arbitrary number of words to write each day because a multi-published author said that is how to do it.
Unless you know you can consistently produce a specific word count in an hour, or can work continuously for several hours, do not expect that you will magically be able to do that come January 2023.
Start with baby steps because even the shortest step forward will still move you toward your objective. Writing a book is not a race, do not compare yourself to other writers, especially if it is your first or second book. Learning what works for you is part of the craft.
Your homework is to make a plan. Notice I did not say to make a resolution. Numerous studies show New Year Resolutions do not work, so skip that part.
What does work is a plan.
For example:
I will write for an hour every Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
Or,
I will write for thirty minutes every Monday through Friday.
Or,
I will write five hundred words every day
Or,
I will write five thousand words each week,Monday through Friday (this is my plan because it has worked for me for the past twelve weeks.)
These are all examples of plans. Figure out your plan. Write it down, and put it where you can see it. If you keep a bullet journal or planner, enter your planned writing sessions as a date with yourself. Do whatever you need to help yourself get where you want to go and above all do what is right/works for you.
As part of setting yourself up to succeed, check in with yourself about why it might be hard to get yourself to produce words. Are there internal blocks you are dealing with? Such as grief, distraction, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of success? Don’t know what to write? Don’t know how to start?
Or are there external blocks that are interfering with your writing? Such as no desk, crappy chair, lack of privacy, physical discomfort when writing, or no pc/laptop/tablet?Kids/dogs/cats/partners or other household members not respecting your writing time?
There is a page in the Silencing the Voices Freeing the Writer Within workbook that has a page entitled “What is Stopping You” and two columns labeled Internal and External blocks. Take some time to list those and then pick one to work on to remove it from blocking your writing. If you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, you can find the workbook here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/4b1my1xmkd
As this blog series moves forward, I will address some solutions for the above-listed blocks. This is the final post for 2022. I will return in January with the next post in the series, Outlines, Trellises, and Discovery Drafts. I wish each of you a joyous New Year, and I will see you on the flip side.

 

Finish it.

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Whatever you’re writing now, finish it. Even if it takes you two years, finish it. Why? Because every time you abandon a manuscript, it becomes that much harder when you get to the soggy/awful/sticky/why-the-hell-did-I-even-start-this point in your manuscript. This is a lesson I learned from my track and field coach in high school. I had signed up to do field events. I loved field events. I’m built for field events, and they were easy for me. But our team was short an 800-meter runner (that’s a half-miler for you metrically impaired folks), and that was how I found myself having to practice with the real runners, the people who do 400-meter sprints and enjoy running and smile when they run. And I hated it. I was sucking wind one sunny spring day as I rounded the curve having run the first 600 meters, and I stopped running 200 meters from the finish line and stepped off the track. I leaned over a few minutes to catch my breath. My coach’s shadow darkened the ground at my feet. I raised my head and met her gaze.
“Are you hurt?” She said quietly.
“No.”
“If you’re not hurt you need to finish, I don’t care if you crawl over the line, but every time you give up, you will struggle at that mark in the race. Don’t quit. It’s the worst thing for your mind.” She walked away and blew her whistle and had us all lineup and we ran again. And this time, when I hit the mark I had quit at she was standing right there. No way I was going to quit with her right there. So I pushed myself and finished. And a little fist pump from my coach, her acknowledgment of my effort.  And that is how it went for the next week, every day at practice she would be standing at the sticking point to remind me to keep going. To not quit. To push through.

My sixteen-year-old self held on to those words and the look on her face every time I ran through the sticking point and finished. Those words got me through the rest of high school, nursing school, Army basic training, and every other hard thing I’ve ever done since then. Including writing my first book.

Those of you doing NaNoWriMo right now may want to quit. Perhaps you’ve fallen behind in your word or questioned why it’s essential to finish. NaNoWriMo is not about winning, it’s about finishing. No matter what your word count on November 30, complete your NaNoWriMo project. Don’t quit. Finish your draft. Even if it’s terrible and it takes you until next November to complete it, finish it. Don’t quit. I’m cheering for you.

PS Coach K, if you’re out there, thank you for all your life lessons, but most importantly, this one.

Brenda Murphy writes short fiction and novels. She loves tattoos and sideshows and yes, those are her monkeys.  When she is not loitering at her local tea shop and writing, she wrangles two kids, one dog, and an unrepentant parrot.  She reviews books, blogs about life as a writer with ADHD and publishes photographs on her blog Writing While Distracted. 

You can find her on Facebook by clicking here.  Sign Up for her email list and receive a free erotic short story HERE Check out more information about her upcoming releases and appearances at   www.brendalmurphy.com

Books available at

Amazon 

NineStar Press

Complex Dimensions

Knotted Legacy

Both Ends of the Whip

ONE  

Sum of the Whole 

Dominique and Other Stories 

When You’ve Lost the Thread

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It’s been a while since I’ve written about writing, mostly because I’ve found a system for fast-draft writing that has worked with my ADHD. I used my system for seven novels and I’ve been comfortable with the results. I have never been a detailed outliner. I work from a scene list and character goal-motivation and conflict sheets and let my story evolve organically within that framework. I typically draft a 60-65K novel in four to six weeks and then spend three to four weeks revising and editing my draft before submitting it.
Trusting in my system, I used it with my current project, a novella-length paranormal romance with dual points of view. With this project, because I needed to attend to two character’s points of view, along with paranormal conventions, I’ve been feeling my way along the story, and it was going well, slowly, but well.
And then I needed to take some time after my brother-in-law’s death. I set my story aside for three weeks, and when I started working on my novella again, I was lost. I couldn’t remember what I had written, or where I was going in the story.
Because my way of working falls somewhere between a painter and a plotter I used a technique that is a routine part of my revision process, I printed out what I had written and reverse outlined the story as a way of figuring out what I needed to do to complete my draft.
After reviewing my outline I know I need to write six more scenes to finish my first draft and have about 13K words to complete those scenes and stay within my word count limit.
What is a reverse outline? It involves reading what you’ve written and then creating an outline from that document. It can be detailed or brief as it fits your style. For me, it’s a one-sentence description of what happens in each scene.
I don’t stop to edit my work. I merely outline my story as it stands. After I have completed the outline I read over it to assess if my scenes flow as they should, that my story beats are where they should be, and in this case that I’ve given equal time to each character’s point of view. I use highlighters to tag types of scenes and transitions.
It is the simplest way I’ve found to check structure and beats, and if you have lost your way, it is a road map back to your central story and ensures that critical elements of your novel are not missing. If you struggle with plotting and structure, try adding a reverse outline to your routine revision process.
This time a reverse outline was a way of finding my way back to writing after a family tragedy, and another step toward preventing my grief from keeping my words bottled up.
Will a reverse outline work for everyone? Nope. If you are detailed outliner and are able to stick to your outline religiously, it might be redundant, as a plotser (panter+plotter) it is essential for me. Try it the next time you’re stuck and take advantage of a simple way to assess your story structure.

Brenda Murphy writes short fiction and novels. She loves tattoos and sideshows and yes, those are her monkeys.  When she is not loitering at her local tea shop and writing, she wrangles two kids, one dog, and an unrepentant parrot.  She reviews books, blogs about life as a writer with ADHD and publishes photographs on her blog Writing While Distracted. You can find her on Facebook by clicking here.  Sign Up for her email list here  www.brendalmurphy.com

Books available at

Amazon 

NineStar Press

Knotted Legacy

Both Ends of the Whip

ONE  

Sum of the Whole 

Dominique and Other Stories 

 

Guest Post: World Building with Jeffe Kennedy

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It’s always a pleasure to “visit” Brenda here. If only we lived closer in real life!

But, since we can’t meet for coffee to chat, she’s asked me to talk a bit about how I do my world building. I can tell, because she referenced how I am the queen of spread sheets, that she’s imagining elaborate world building spreadsheets tucked away on my computer.

Really, it’s not so.

I mean, I *am* the queen of spreadsheets, so what I do keep track of is partly on spreadsheets, yes. The scary truth, however, is that I don’t do much detailed tracking of my worlds at all.

Most of it is in my head.

There’s a few reasons for this. The first and most relevant is that I believe time spent on world building tracking is time better spent writing. I know some writers, especially fantasy writers for some reason, spend HUGE amounts of time on building their worlds. They do tons of research and write thousands—sometimes hundreds of thousands—of words in world bibles. It’s fun for them, so great! But I know people who’ve spent YEARS working on their worlds. And don’t yet have a novel they’re happy with, if a completed one at all.

So, I begrudge that time, and I spend as little of it as possible on recording world-building details. That said, I know I’m lucky because I am able to keep a lot of it in my head. I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and an active daydreaming life, so my worlds are very real places to me, ones that I can mentally enter and wander around in.

A few things that I do when I need an answer to a world question.

Write

I write for discovery, which means that by the act of writing, I can enter the world and look around. If I need to know something I write about it.

Daydream

I’m a huge fan of “when you’re not writing you’re still writing.” I’m going to caveat that as when I’m not doing something like research, which occupies brain space. I mean while washing dishes, or cleaning house, or driving, or gardening, or even sleeping. I daydream about my worlds and that fills in fun details.

Ask My Assistant

This is my big cheat. I don’t want to spend my time recording details, but I’m perfectly happy to pay my assistant to do it! She keeps track of stuff. And if she doesn’t have it written down, she goes and looks it up in the books and comes back with an answer.

Ask My Readers

Sometimes I throw a question out to my readers via the private Facebook group we have (https://www.facebook.com/groups/JeffesCloset/), or sometimes on my public pages. I’ll do this when I’m looking for a nuance that’s not easy to look up, like if I ever gave the impression one character was another’s aunt or their cousin. I also ask my readers to name stuff if ideas aren’t coming to me. Their suggestions are always a kick.

Record Timelines

The one thing I *do* resort to spreadsheets for is calculating ages and timelines. Especially with The Twelve Kingdoms and The Uncharted realms books, I’m looking at about three generations now, and characters acting simultaneously in different parts of the world. I have to extract from what I’ve written and do the math from there. This feels very much like the conversations I have with my mother when we try to remember where we spent a family birthday celebration in 1996, and who was there. Only I can’t go back to the novels to piece that together!

But that last detail is revealing in that my imaginary worlds are as vivid—sometimes more so—than my memories of real life.

Sometimes I think they’re very much the same.

About Jeffe KennedyJ

effe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include novels, non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her award-winning fantasy romance trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms hit the shelves starting in May 2014. Book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review and was nominated for the RT Book of the Year while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose received a Top Pick Gold and was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014. The third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books followed in this world, beginning the spin-off series The Uncharted Realms. Book one in that series, The Pages of the Mind, has also been nominated for the RT Reviewer’s Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2016 and won RWA’s 2017 RITA® Award. The second book, The Edge of the Blade, released December 27, 2016, and is a PRISM finalist, along with The Pages of the Mind. The next in the series, The Shift of the Tide, will be out in August, 2017. A high fantasy trilogy taking place in The Twelve Kingdoms world is forthcoming from Rebel Base books in 2018.

She also introduced a new fantasy romance series, Sorcerous Moons, which includes Lonen’s War, Oria’s Gambit, The Tides of Bàra, and The Forests of Dru. She’s begun releasing a new contemporary erotic romance series, Missed Connections, which started with Last Dance and continues in With a Prince.

In 2019, St. Martins Press will release the first book, The Orchid Throne, in a new fantasy romance series, The Forgotten Empires. Her other works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion; an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera; and the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, which includes Going Under, Under His Touch and Under Contract.

She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.

http://jeffekennedy.com

https://www.facebook.com/Author.Jeffe.Kennedy

https://twitter.com/jeffekennedy

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1014374.Jeffe_Kennedy

 

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Block Scheduling, Pomodoro, and Word Counts, Oh my!

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What do these things have to do with each other? As a someone who struggles with focus and attention issues, the first two things have resulted in consistent word counts. I know some folks are not as worried about word counts, fearing it stifles them, or leads to writer’s block and if that’s you, just look away. But if you are one of those people who need firm guidelines with wiggle room in place this is the post for you.

What is block scheduling? Blocking out a period of time to do whatever it is you need to do. It might an hour or two hours, or fifteen minutes. The important part of block scheduling is to make it consistent, this doesn’t mean every day, it could be every Saturday or Sunday, but when you block off the time, the time is ONLY to be spent writing. No social media, no marketing, no other distractions.

The second technique is Pomodoro, named after the tomato shaped kitchen timer. In Pomodoro, you set the timer for a period of time, usually 25 minutes and then for that time period you focus on just that project, in this case writing. The goal being to write as much as you can during the time period. No editing, no going back, just pushing forward to get words on paper. Why? Because you can’t edit a blank page and getting a load of word salad down that you can fix later is better than a blank page. Build the house, you can go back later and hang the curtains and decorate. You can use your phone timer but the temptation to check into social media or email can be strong. Use a cheap kitchen timer, or get a fancy one if you want. I use the timer on my watch, ‘cause I’m old school that way.

Word Counts, or as like to call them, the secret to getting projects done, are the number of words you need to get on paper to finish your project on time. I use Scrivener and it has a delightful feature that lets you put in your deadline for the first draft and days you will be writing and it will figure out how many words you need to write each session to meet your goal. I like many things about the program but this feature alone makes me love it. Before I used Scrivener, I did this on paper, and it worked, but I love that Scrivener lets me know when I meet my goal. Notice I said “First draft”, editing is a different animal, and I will address that in another post. This is about getting raw material down, so you have something to edit.

How do they work together?

  1. Block out your time to write. Treat it like an appointment. Honor your commitment to write.
  2. Use a timer. Set it for 25 minutes or more, no more than one hour.
  3. Start writing. Don’t look back, don’t do anything else, just write.
  4. When the time is up, get up, stretch, get a beverage or snack. Take 5-10 minutes. And then set the timer and get back to work. DO NOT CHECK EMAIL OR SOCIAL MEDIA. Keep your head in the game. Repeat until word count is achieved or your blocked time is up. If you are not meeting your word goals you may need to adjust them. Find a word count that YOU can meet consistently and will let you meet your deadline.

Keys to success: Remember you don’t have to block schedule all at once. Maybe you only have thirty minutes in the morning, and thirty minutes in the afternoon to write. My point is when it is time to write, write. Don’t do anything else.

  1. You can set the timer for less than twenty-five minutes, do what works for you.
  2. When you set your word count goals and deadlines make sure you are realistic. If you are someone who averages 250 words a day on a good day, don’t think you will suddenly be generating 1000 words a day or more. Use a calendar or planner or if you have Scrivener set up your project target dates. I use Scrivener and am also a big fan of spreadsheets (thank you Jeffe Kennedy) and use my planner every day, but you do you.

This works for me, it might not work for you. If you have been struggling to get a book/shorts story/screen play/ written give this a chance. Don’t quit.

 

 

 

Slow But Steady: Any Progress is Progress

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I love this turtle because he helps me to remember that no matter how slow you are moving, if you keep moving you will get there. Through kids being sick, through family illness, through birth, death, and all of life’s messy bits, and most of all through your own inability to focus, if you keep moving you will reach your destination. Remember this when you are frustrated with your creative output: keep going.

I had a short fiction piece accepted this week for publication in an upcoming anthology. My kids think it is pretty awesome that I’m going to have a story in “a chapter book”, and so do I.   I’m not going to go into how long it has been since I had a piece published, or how many rejections proceeded this acceptance, or how many times I have submitted manuscripts, because none of it matters. The point of this post is this: all those days that I squeezed in fifteen minutes of writing made a difference. Not giving up is what matters. If you quit writing, it is impossible to get anything published.

I will confess to struggling mightily in the warm months to stick to my writing schedule. The lure of outside kicks my ADHD into high gear. After a winter of being inside all I want to do is play. My kids are home in the summer time, and that cuts into my writing time as well. I have some ways of dealing with kids at home and last year I posted some tips for sticking to your writing schedule when your kids are out of school, and you can read them here .

Even if you take some writing breaks over the summer, make it productive, read that To Be Read Pile, collect photographs, experiences, and memories to feed your writing later.

Most of all don’t give up, if you keep writing you will finish. Just keep moving. If you can only write one sentence, write a sentence. Like snowflakes it will add up. It may take years for you to accomplish what others accomplish in a month, it is okay, just keep writing.

Stick with it. Keep going, don’t quit, enjoy the journey as much as the destination.