Category Archives: Motivation

Anyone ever read Terry Pratchett and his Silver Horde? A sketchy band of octogenarian fighters who, despite their advancing years, still get out for the occasional job. Just to keep the blood flowing. A young man asks one of their members how they can still fight. His response boils down to this, “Be somewhere else when the sword gets there.”

These guys have enough fighting experience that they know exactly what they’re opponents are going to do. Ever.y Single. Time. So it’s easy for their arthritic bodies to be out of the way just in time to avoid being stabbed.

Think about your life. Aren’t there things that always happen? Every. Single. Time?

For instance, it never fails that just as soon as I get my writing grove on, and I’m either busting out a rough draft, or plotting a series or editing a final manuscript, my day job decides to get greedy and they slap extra hours on me. This happens exactly two days after I’ve made a grand plan for finishing my latest book and am ready to jump in with both feet.

Of course there are the holidays. Sure, it’s conceivable that I could get some writing done in the seven weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years. I have days off, after all. My family couldn’t possibly fill all of that time, could they?

Uh, yes, they can. And then some. It’s all great—the food, the fun, the family and friends, the running about and admiring the snow as I tell my husband to go shovel. It’s a beautiful time of the year. Beautiful, but completely unproductive.

Oh, and July…don’t even get me started about July. Wait, too late. Between trips to the local Shakespeare Festival, one of the largest parades in the nation, rodeos, sprinklers, the fourth of July, the local holidays, fireworks, swimming, hiking, family reunions and then recovering from all of that, nothing gets done. Somehow I end up farther behind than when I started. Gotta love the summer.

These are just a few of my life’s tells. If these things are coming up, then I should know that I’m screwed. I should, but more often than not, I forget. My inner optimist overpowers my ornery realist and decides that I can make it work this time. I can write the rest of my novel in July. I can sneak it in between the reunion and the Shakespeare Festival. Or between plays at the Festival. Or on the fourth, when surly no one will want to do anything.

What I need to do—and have done on occasion—is change my tactics. Forget making novel progress. Instead, I’ve found that these are good times to branch out, or finish little projects I’ve been putting off in the name of getting my next novel out.

Projects like researching a new marketing scheme, or reading a couple of books in my genre so I can give my opinion on them to my newsletter victims, or picking up my disaster, er, office, read a book on craft, or browse that non-fiction research book I’ve been ignoring, or plan a random presentation for a conference…

So instead of getting sliced and diced, depending on the severity of the interruption, be ready to move. Be prepared with as many contingency plans as you can. If your July blows up, like mine does, don’t plan to have a book finished in August. Go with either June or September. If your kids tend to break out in the stomach flu every November, be ready to juggle things so that you’re not losing ground. Just change ground and start digging there. Because life doesn’t stand still so you can write. It never has and it never will, and if it does, you’ve probably consumed too much of something.

Not a Secret, Not Surprising

March 29, 2016

Evan Braun

Balancing Acts Day Jobs Evan Braun Goals Life Philosophies Making Progress as a Writer Motivation Professional Behavior Self-Awareness Self-Motivation Starting a Career The Writing Life The Writing Process Work-Life Balance Write Whenever You Can No Comments

Work-life balance? Ha. If I wrote this blog post on a random Tuesday, it might be about the fact that I have finally managed to achieve a fragile balance and I’m working to maintain it. On Wednesday, I might write about the fact that I have no balance at all, and frankly it’s a bit depressing and balance might be impossible anyway. And on Thursday, I might write that I enjoy great balance.

So, as you can see, my thoughts on this subject are schizophrenic and highly unstable.

I love my family and my job is usually slightly better than tolerable (more than a lot of people can say), but like so many of us creative types I still occasionally entertain this fantasy that I could someday devote myself one hundred percent to my chosen work and not have to worry about all the other things. I fantasize that I could write nine or ten great books per year. In this scenario, my preferred cause of death is “creative exhaustion,” something which may but almost certainly doesn’t exist in the real world.

Lately I’ve been working on my writing career only intermittently, but I have big plans. (Don’t we all.) The main culprit is that I’m growing a new business that is flourishing beyond my initial expectations, and my other day job is finally becoming more lucrative than it ever has been before. So I’m a bit consumed with establishing my heretofore nonexistent nest egg. As such, my life is stable and mostly happy, but the outlook of my writing career fluctuates month to month, day to day, sometimes hour to hour.

Of course, this is a normal amount of confusion. And we’re all afflicted with it.

I will be the first to say that the kind of balance we all crave is elusive. I’d like to tell you that I believe long-term balance is possible, and here’s how to do it—but I don’t know if I really do believe that. Like any successful marriage (or comparable relationship), the balance between a writing career and the rest of one’s life must be constantly renegotiated. Solutions and strategies will change over time.

One strategy that works well for me is one of the oldest, so tried and true that it almost doesn’t bear writing about—except that it works so well for me that I still consider it a game-changer. Just break down your tasks into manageable bits, and track your daily process. Just two things, but they change everything.

I’m a huge proponent of tracking daily progress, which I’ve written about before on this blog. I track the number of words I write daily, the number of pages I get edited… even the number of minutes I exercise (as well as distance traveled and calories burned). The numbers make the progress substantial and real.

Because I need goals to succeed at anything. I’m not a good “casual” writer; I’m either all-in or it’s not on my radar. But all-in doesn’t have to mean all-consuming. For me, all-in means that I’m writing or editing a little bit everyday, in a way that I can track.

It’s not exactly a secret, nor would most people be surprised by any of this. But the keys to true success—unlike what those obnoxious click-baity Buzzfeed headlines will tell you—are rarely secrets or surprising.

Evan Braun is an author and editor who has been writing books for more than ten years. He is the author of The Watchers Chronicle, a completed trilogy. In addition to writing both hard and soft science fiction, he is the editor-in-chief of The Niverville Citizen. He lives in Niverville, Manitoba.

The Highs and Lows of Life

March 27, 2016

fictorians

Choice Day Jobs Frog Jones Motivation Self-Awareness The Writing Life Volunteer Work Work-Life Balance Writing as An Emotional Outlet 2 Comments

A Guest Post by Frog Jones

My name is Frog, and I am an addict.

To begin with, I am a full-time public defender. In the course of that job, I spend roughly fifty hours a week wrist-
deep in legal briefs and heroin addicts. When I am practicing as an attorney, I owe it to my clients to be the best attorney I can be. When years in prison are on the line, it’s my job to make absolutely sure that the State gets it right. So when I am working as an attorney, I cannot be anything but an attorney.

When I stand in front of a jury, it’s a rush. I love it, and the whole world melts away into nothing but me, and my voice, and my will. A well-done closing carries you and your jury into a rhetorical ecstasy, and I chase that high on every trial I do.

I am an addict.

I am also involved with the Mason County Drug Court. Here, I’m not just an attorney; I am a part of a therapeutic team. When I’m serving on the Drug Court, or serving as legal counsel for the Drug Court foundation, I owe it to the addicts who are actually struggling to improve their lives to be the best Drug Court team member I can be. So I volunteer for the Foundation, giving extra of my time to make sure that the program has the resources it needs to help those people. And I get to watch people improve from their addictions. Do you know what it feels like to watch a drug addict hit one year clean and sober, get a job, and get to spend time with their child for the first time in six years? Knowing I’m a part of something like that is a glorious feeling, and I chase that high with every participant that comes into the program.

I am an addict.

I am the Chairman of the Board for the Mason County HOST program. Seems pretty technical, but what it means is I volunteer to organize and lead a team of people who are devoted to housing the homeless teenagers in Mason County. This organization has two employees, three community grants, and a Memorandum of Understanding with the County, and is responsible for a budget of roughly $160,000 per year. And as a result, the homeless teenagers who make their way into this program all graduate high school. 70% of them move on to post-secondary education. These numbers are so good that the federal HUD program has inspected us to figure out what we are doing right.

Imagine what it’s like to sit at a high school graduation, and watch ten to fifteen kids walk that aisle. Kids whose drug addicted parents had ejected them from the house, or beaten them until they left, or took other liberties that forced their exit. Kids who were trying to live in a tent, on the streets, and not getting food stamps because you have to be an adult to qualify. Imagine watching these kids graduate, knowing that they’re off to college and putting together an actual life for themselves. And knowing that you had a hand in it. It is a high that I cannot begin to describe, and I chase it with a passion.

I am an addict.

And in the midst of all this, I write. I write short stories. I write novels. Some of them get published, some don’t. But I sit in front of the keyboard, and I create stories that I would want to read. And there’s no high. Presumably there could be. I imagine that the moment I accept a Hugo, or a Nebula, or some other distinction of high honor that there will be a high. This, however, is not likely to happen in the near future. So there is no such thing, for me, as a writer’s high.

You see, all those highs? There are lows to go with them. Losing a jury trial where my client may very well be innocent is devastating. Watching a Drug Court Graduate relapse, overdose, and die wrecks me. And hearing that one of our former students in the HOST program has gotten into a car accident because they were driving drunk, and died? Absolutely depressing.

And I write. I write because it isn’t a high, and it isn’t a low. I write because it is an escape. This is not to say that I write only when I feel like it; I can’t produce like that. I force myself to write whether I feel like it or not, because it allows me to get away from my life. It allows me to leave the highs, and the lows, behind. I write not to chase the high, but because I can find my stability. I write because it is before the keyboard that I can find peace.

The question of the month here is how to strike a balance between my writing and my life. For me, this is an improper question. There is no balance to my life without the writing.

Now, that’s not to say there aren’t practical issues. It has to be scheduled. It has to be pre-planned. The schedule must be followed. But that’s not because I need the money, not because I need to make a deadline, and not because I have to prove something about myself. The schedule must be followed because, without the stability that creating my art provides, my life will spiral out of control. Writing is the thing that provides balance to everything else.

Because I am an addict.

Frog Jones:

Frog Jones writes with his wife, Esther. After a ten-year vow to never show each other a word they had written, they eventually broke down and wrote a novel together. Together, they have published the Gift of Grace series from Sky Warrior Books, as well as short stories in anthologies such as How Beer Saved the World, First Contact Café, and Tales from an Alien Campfire, as well as many more. The Joneses live on the Puget Sound in the State of Washington with Oxeye, who is twenty-five pounds of pure bunny. Frog’s works can be found at http://www.jonestales.com, and he also appears on the Three Unwise Men podcast at http://3unwisemen.com.

Managing the Attention Deficit Thingy

March 17, 2016

Jace Killan

Craft & Skills Finish It! Jace Killan Making Progress as a Writer Motivation Rewriting Self-Awareness Self-Motivation The Writing Life No Comments

I find little in life more enjoyable than discovering something new, a character, a world, a scene. I love watching how things develop as I discover write them. I’m what they call a Pantser. I wrote of my writing disorder a couple months ago in A Pantser’s Plight.

In one of David Farland‘s workshops he said something to the effect that discovery writing was to him the most enjoyable and the least productive. I have found that to be true. So I’ve worked hard to develop a plot, outline the direction, but I still discovery write the scenes. I’m finding that the story develops and takes life.

Just this past month I wrote a scene that I had loosely outlined for my protagonist who started a new job on Wall Street. As the scene unfolded, a cute red-headed receptionist entered the mix. And suddenly my protagonist took interest and next thing I know they’re digging on each other. I did not see that coming in my outline but it works nicely.

I developed two other characters who, according to my outline, were scheduled to be killed later on in the story. These characters have grown and become significant in the story. I’ve used them to bridge plot gaps and deepen side plots. Now I’m not sure I want to kill them off. I probably still will, but I could see some spin off stories developing, so I’m going to keep discovering where it goes.

This last month I’ve written about 30,000 words on the same book. I haven’t touched anything else. Not the two short stories, brewing in the back of my brain. Not the other three novels half finished. This is pretty significant for me and I wanted to share my newly acquired trick to stay focused.

The Problems

First, as I mention earlier, I get really excited about discovering something new and tend to lose interest in something that I’ve already figured out in my mind though I haven’t written it yet. This usually leads me to ping-ponging from project to project but never finishing anything.

Second, squirrel. I get easily pulled onto something else more exciting and I have a hard time focusing my mind on what it doesn’t want to focus on.

Third, sometimes I discover write my characters into a situation that just doesn’t work with the rest of the story and I get stumped. And sometimes my characters get into a situation they just can’t get out of.

The Solutions

First, I do a light outline to give myself direction. And I try not to over develop. When I do, it usually becomes cliche or boring.

Second, I noticed awhile ago that whatever book or movie or television show I was into would effect which of my projects my brain thought important at the moment. So, as I’m writing a financial thriller, I’ve tricked my brain to staying focused on this book by reading two John Grisham books, watching shows like Better Call Saul and movies like Wall Street. And more importantly I won’t let myself read or watch anything science fiction or fantasy related. It’s working quite well.

Third, I used to revere what my brain discovered as sacred. I credited inspiration. But I’m learning now that sometimes it’s crap and I need to chuck it out the window. I hated rewriting a scene that I had already thought out a different way and I still don’t enjoy it, but the end result makes it worth it. Sometimes I’ve got to suck it up and push through.

Funny thing, writing this post has gotten me excited to discover more on this particular project. It’s called Unknown Soldier and if I can keep it up, I’ll finish it in a couple more months.

I live in Arizona with my family, wife and five kids and a little dog. I write fiction, thrillers and soft sci-fi with a little short horror on the side. I’ve got an MBA and work in finance for a biotechnology firm.

I volunteer with the Boy Scouts, play and write music, and enjoy everything outdoors. I’m also a novice photographer.

You can visit my author website at www.jacekillan.com, and you can read some of my works by visiting my Wattpad page.