Turbo Mind Booster: Exercise Your Brain

Your brain, like many other parts of your body, requires a constant workout. Sometimes, when you're stuck or facing a wall, the best way to get out is to exercise your brain.

And so, I present to you, Turbo Mind Booster 3000! (Because honestly, doesn't that sound super difficult and exercise-y?)

Exercise One: Restaurant Dialogue

Stuck for dialogue in your MS? Next time you're in a restaurant take a notebook and write down the snippets of conversation that you hear. Nothing is better than hearing real life, candid conversations.

Exercise Two: Brutal Ending

Can't figure out how to start your new WIP? Start from the ending. Write that brutal death of the main character that's been percolating in your brain. Start with that fatal last line. Figure out the overall goal for your MC. Will you keep the ending? Probably not. Will it be utter trash? Maybe, but it will give you direction for when you start.

Exercise Three: Diary of a Journalist

Stuck on how to write your character? Try writing a blog or diary from their perspective. Go through their day to day.

Exercise Four: Group Therapy

Take a few people you know, five to ten and write one sentence about them. Strive for things that make them unique or noteworthy.

Exercise Five: Talk Radio

Record five minutes of a talk radio show. Write the dialogue and add narrative and action as if you were writing a scene.

Exercise Six: Room to Room

Write 300 words about a room in your house. Make sure to pick out things that describe you and your personality.

Exercise Seven: From 1st to 3rd

Take a scene from your WIP and rewrite it. If you're writing in first, try writing it in third and visa-versa.

Exercise Eight: Tabloid Break

Flip through the tabloids at the local grocery store. Choose a story that sticks out in your mind and write it. The story may end up crap, but it'll sort of reset your brain.

If all else fails, hop on a treadmill with your favorite jams and hope that you don't end up like the guy above.

Got any writing exercises and getting away from the writing wall? Leave it in the comments below.

Care and Feeding Instructions for Your Favorite Author aka Reviews

Today we're going to talk about how to give your favorite author a long, happy, and stress free life.

Okay, maybe not stress free, but it'll hopefully at least keep them writing more books.

I'll let you in on a little secret. Human beings are like sharks that smell chum. It's human nature to want to see what happened with that train wreck. Why do we have traffic jams? Because of rubber-neckers. We want to see what the fuss is all about. 

Same thing with books. If a book has a ton of reviews, it's going to garner attention. It helps the author get noticed, hit lists, come up in search engines, etc. All of which are so very important for a new author to make their way in the vast book jungle.

Reviews not only give exposure and help with sales, but they also give that author support and encouragement to keep on writing. You may not realize it, but authors are human beings (Well most of us are, the jury's still out on Anne Rice, she may actually indeed be a vampire.) We have feelings, and often times you'll find us circling the drain of self-doubt. A review may just save an author from setting fire to his/her computer. A review may give them the encouragement needed to write that sequel. A review may even save their career. 

Because, guess what? We get just as excited when we see a new review hit as you do fan-girling over the book!

That was pretty much me when I saw my very first review. It's a feeling unlike any other in this world when a perfect stranger picked your book out of the millions of books available and decided to take the time to write about it for the world to see. That means something huge. Reviews help bridge that gap between the reader and the author. Let me tell you, I can guarantee you even Anne Rice, or Jennifer Armentrout will never forget their first review. Or even their five-hundredth, if it made a fan squeal with delight those words left will stick with us. 

If you think your words don't matter, think again. Every review matters. Every fan matters. Especially to us little guys out here just starting out in the world. We're like weebly toddlers, unsure as we take our first steps into the world. Even if it's one or two lines, it makes a difference to that author. It doesn't have to be a novel of gratitude and undying love (all of which are okay if you chose to do so). Just enough time to stop by and say, hey, I liked your words. Keep it up. 

And now, in return...authors...I want to talk to you. Let's remember to keep ourselves in check. 

1) You're going to get a craptastic 1 star review at one point in your career. Even the great authors out there have gotten 1 star reviews.

Watch this if you think I'm lying.

Go look up your favorite book on the planet. There was someone who gave it 1 star. It's a right of passage. Remember all those rejections from the query trenches so long ago before you had an actual book published? Yeah...channel that thick skin. Sometimes while riding the high of a 5 star review, you'll hit turbulence, and a 1 star will dive bomb you. Embrace it and move on. Do not be this person!

2) Also, try and not be this person as well. 

It's really hard trying to get your name out there. It's really hard to do promo and drum up a readership when you're just starting out. But let your work speak for itself. Let friends, family, and your author network of support get the word out. And it's really hard not to try and remind folks to kindly leave a review when they're done reading. Because, let's face it...life gets busy, people get side-tracked like a dog seeing a squirrel. Book reviews often get forgotten about. But if you have to relentlessly hound your street team, family, friends, coworkers, FB friends, Twitter, etc to write a review, you're going to turn off your potential readership. I guarantee you. 

I'm writing this blog post for you, on your behalf. Don't resort to groveling to try and get folks to do something. It will always have the opposite effect.

3) If someone does you a solid and actually gives you a review? THANK THEM, and leave it at that. Do not try and hunt them down and figure out why they didn't give you a 5 star review when they only gave you 4. Thank your lucky 4 stars they took the time to give you that.

ALL of publishing is subjective. If you haven't figured that out as an author, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate your career path. Not everyone's going to love your book baby as much as you do. Mainly because it doesn't play out in their mind like the movie did in your head when writing it. You can't please everyone all the time. So make sure you're writing the story for you. And if someone happens to interpret it the way you intended, celebrate!! If someone liked it, but doesn't want to marry your book boyfriend....do not try and change their mind or beg them to give you 5 stars instead of 4. It will only devalue yourself as an author if you have to beg, borrow or steal those 5 stars. If you don't want an honest review of your work, don't ask for reviews. Oh wait, you shouldn't be asking for them to begin with. Didn't we already cover that?

And, lastly.....Back to readers...Please don't be this person:

The power of the interwebs runs rampant. Some people feel the need to hide behind their screen names and make up for the time Santa refused to bring them that Cabbage Patch Doll when they were 7. Or disgruntled author can't handle success of fellow author. Or their cousin left them at the alter for the family goat. Whatever the reason people feel the need to lash out and tap into their inner douchecanoe....it happens. It happens a lot. People who didn't even read the book leave a 1 star review. People rate a book 1 star before it ever even comes out. 

Just, please think about the author on the receiving end. That's all I ask. Because, as we've discussed....word of mouth is the most powerful tool you have as a reader. Use that power wisely. 

So, in closing, here's a helpful check list to help out your favorite authors, or your soon to be favorite authors. 

Just step AWAY from the manuscript. **EDITING OBJECTIVELY**

It's not you, Manuscript, it's me. I think we need some space.

You may be asking yourself this same question. But it's true. 

This post is going to let you in on a little golden nugget of wise advice: 

Put a chunk of time and space between you and your manuscript before you edit.

Repeat after me: I will not edit for a minimum of 4-6 weeks. 

Now say it again!

Okay, realistically, this isn't always going to happen. If you're an established author on deadline with your publisher, you may work down to the wire. But even so, if you're an established author, you pretty much know this rule of thumb anyway, and hopefully those are the revisions that are down to the wire, and not the first draft to your editor. Give yourself enough time to let the manuscript sit, settle, and cool off before you attempt any edits.

I know you're looking at me with this face:

TRUST ME ON THIS! You will only do yourself a disservice if you attempt to edit or revise without clearing your head.

The best editing I've done is when I have put at least six months between me and a manuscript. Hell, I've even come back to ones after a year. It's amazing the things you will see with fresh eyes.

When you come at a manuscript while you're still in the heat of the moment, you won't catch things. While the story is still fresh in your mind, you're too attached to your characters to do any kind of edits objectively. In this day and age of instant gratification and technology, it actually hurts us more than helps us aspiring authors. It makes us send things out into the world well before they're ready.

EVERY author will tell you they've queried at least once, often times more than once, way before they should have. I know you want to put your book baby out into the world to be loved by an agent or editor and all your adoring fans just waiting to love on it. But don't put something out there you will regret in a year or two. Save yourself the regrets, and double shots of whiskey, while you're drowning in the query trenches up your eyeballs in rejection letters.

Your story plays out in your mind as you're reading it, so as the author, you have a tendency to gloss over things as you're reading. I guarantee you will miss grammatical errors that everyone else, and their cousins, will catch.

You need to be able to distance yourself from your characters, from your plot, from the way the story plays like a movie in your mind. Readers can't see the movie in your head, you MUST be able to put that to the page. If you don't come at it from a fresh angle, you will never be able to see what others see. And you have to in order to make others see what's in your head.

I guarantee it, plot lines happen in your mind without you even knowing it. A large portion of that never makes it into your story. Coming at your manuscript from a distance will allow you to be pulled into your world without being tethered. Your umbilical cord, for lack of a better term, will be cut and you'll be able to read word for word and see what's missing.

It will also allow you to read through it again as a reader, not as an author. If you find yourself skimming, then you know what you have to do.

When you can pick up your manuscript and say to yourself--"Wow, I don't even remember writing that. That was a great line!" Or, similarly, "Wow, what the hell was I smoking when I wrote this?" You're ready to edit.

On more than one occasion I've caught things in a manuscript after coming at it with fresh eyes and repeatedly facepalm myself. If you don't have any WTF moments when you're editing, you haven't put enough time and space between you and your darlings.

If you read through it and think what you've written is absolute gold, go put yourself in a timeout. Start writing something new, or take a writing break completely and watch some reality TV. That will give you some perspective. But that's another post for another time.

If you've read through the manuscript after letting it sit and you find yourself with a goose egg on your forehead from repeatedly facepalming yourself, get that red pen out and start slicing and dicing.

Also, grab your favorite editing drink of choice, you'll be in this stage for a while.

The thought of having to do revisions can be overwhelming. But every manuscript needs an edit. Every author will tell you that. Even the greats don't make a perfect first draft. A beautiful book baby is a lot of work. The majority of that comes from repeated revisions and letting go of your darlings; from characters to what you once thought were genius lines. 

In the end, you will have a gorgeous book you can be proud of. Nothing worth anything ever comes easy. So why put something out into the world that isn't your very best?

Some books take years of writing and rewriting. Some books come out a little quicker, but still need loving care and genuine, objective revisions. It'll be frustrating, it'll be agonizing, it'll be fun to kill off character, it'll give you pride to know you put your heart and soul into a project to make it its very best.

And then the day will come:

But that's another post for another time.

And for those of you ready to partake in the editing phase, after going through your waiting period of course, here's a link to a great month-long editing course: Janice Hardy's FICTION UNIVERSITY

Happy Editing!

Managing Expectations

 

NaNoWriMo taught me a great deal this year.

I shared this fascinating experience with a group of wonderful writers, many of whom contribute to this awesome blog. We would post daily our accomplishments, struggles, frustrations, and/or tears. NaNoWriMo is not a task to be undertaken lightly. In fact, I’d sat on the sidelines for several years, watching other braver souls set forth on the perilous journey of writing 50,000 words in one month. I’d pants around with them in spirit, adding a few words here a sentence or two there to my work in progress, but I did it comfortably from my uncommitted couch. This year, I jumped in with both feet, all the while kicking and screaming, and discovered a great deal about myself and the writing process in general.

The biggest gem of insight this insane challenge gleaned was that as writers, and human beings in general, we are ridiculously hard on ourselves. In order to reach 50,000 words in 30 days, one had to commit to setting down on the page 1,667 words daily. That, by the way, is my extent at math skills, which is why I stick with writing.

At the end of each day we would post our word counts. Some would wallow in defeat and self-torture, others would prance with victory. On days I didn’t make the word count, I felt like I had failed. Days I made the minimum or exceeded it I was ecstatic but felt guilty posting my success because I knew there were others in the group beating themselves up for not meeting the daily requirements. I knew how frustrating that felt.  NaNoWriMo was supposed to be a brilliant kick start to creativity, instead it turned into a mad dash to crunch the numbers, and each day I fell behind left me with a bitter taste of inadequacy and failure. Why? Because the expectation with NaNoWriMo is that you commit to achieving the goal. In order to win, in order to get that shiny NaNoWriMo badge you can proudly display as your profile picture, you had to make the cut.

But here’s the thing. Make the cut for what? We were battling with ourselves and our uniquely creative process (for more insight, check out Anna Davis's post Want More Creative Energy? Pace Yourself). NaNoWriMo forces us to create in a surreal, unnatural environment and then measure ourselves against that ideal.

 

NaNoWriMo is not bad, in and of itself, the problem is how we approach it. Setting goals is a wonderful pursuit, but expecting things to turn out a specific way only sets us up for disappointment and disillusionment if things turn sour. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for 500 words in one day, for many participants (myself included) negative self-talk undermined the process of creating and turned writing into something unpleasant, or at very least a chore, and a tough one at that.

We write because we love to, because our passion compels us to create worlds, people them with a host of quirky characters, and live out our fanciful days in a realm of make believe so captivating that we lose ourselves in our own delightful creations. When we get caught up in the semantics of process and output rather than the experience of joyfully, blissfully adding fresh, compelling, sexy words to the page, in my humble opinion, it defeats the purpose: why we got into this crazy gig to begin with.

As writers, there are a plethora of misguided expectations we may place on ourselves. We might have an unrealistic idea of how long it actually takes to write a novel, screen play, instructional manual, or memoir (months, years, even decades). We might not realize how many drafts it takes to turn a lumpy piece of creative clay into a smooth and polished masterpiece (think double digits here). What about the end result of your blood, sweat, and tears? Do you want to be published? Are you hinging your happiness and sense of accomplishment on whether or not you get picked up by an agent or publishing house? What happens if you don’t sign that contract? Do you throw in the towel, hang up your laptop, and call it a career? Or do you acknowledge that there are other streams, other opportunities to get your work out there? Are you open to new experiences, wild and crazy unconventional options?

If we are constantly hung up on the end result, whether we get there, and the way we envision ourselves arriving (standing on a podium with fireworks and streamer cannons, thank you very much) we’ve lost touch with the passion that drives us to create.

By all means, set goals, have objectives, but don’t hinge your happiness on whether they end up looking like the vision you created in your mind. Instead, go with the flow, take the lessons you learn in the process and attempt something new in the future, try a new tack. No effort is wasted.

Being a writer isn’t easy. There are plenty of challenges both external and internal that we continually battle against, but the journey is definitely worth it if we keep in mind our reasons for starting in the first place. Writing invigorates us. It makes us excited to wake up in the morning, our fingers itch to put those words on the page, to flesh out that story, to sculpt and hone that brilliant idea.

If writing’s your passion live it, breathe it, but let go of the handlebars, loosen the grip, lose the expectations and let the words percolate one letter at a time.

You’re a writer. Have fun with it. xo

In gratitude,

Marissa