Tag Archives: inspiration for writers

Last month we explored the many reasons we love being writers and some of the things that help keep us motivated. Now that we’re filled with optimism and eager to get back to work, hopefully we can find ways to work smarter. The reality of writing every day can be tough, but we’re ready to face the truth.

Truth Number 1: Becoming a professional author takes a long time.

Writing is a process, an evolution of skill and craft and voice and a hundred other components all merging together to become something brilliant. It’s one of the few jobs that usually requires years of investment with no real promise of a profitable return to show at the end. Most people who follow the Muse and begin writing a novel never even finish. Those of use who do then learn that the writing of the novel was just the beginning. Still we slog ahead, motivated by those moments of excellence that remind us why we love what we do, and encouraged by the second universal truth of writing.

Truth Number 2: Determination and consistency matter more than simple brilliance.

Every established author repeats the same mantra: keep writing. Those authors who keep trying, keep learning, keep producing will eventually find some measure of success. This is a truth that is easy to lose sight of when we get discouraged by yet another rejection or by those debilitating second thoughts and self doubt. Just keep going and we’ll get there.

Of course some of us take longer than others. Writing is a learning curve, but some writers seem to enjoy a gentler slope. The rest of us make mistakes that delay our progress or we just take a while to learn important foundational principles. Could we have shortened our up-front investment time by learning things sooner, by seeing clearer?

Probably.

So this month we are going to share advice we wished we had received earlier in the process. Imagine finding a way to go back in time to visit yourself as a brand new writer, just starting out. Imagine we handle that time paradox well. Assume that we don’t just decide to focus our energies on making a quick fortune investing in all the things our older selves could predict would be winners. In fact, we focus the brief message only on writing.

What would we say?

What advice or encouragement would we give ourselves? What could we do to help ourselves find a better way to success, a greater mastery of craft? Would we even try?

This month, we’ll find out.

Outside, in the Office

July 20, 2014

fictorians

Business First Drafts Guest Posts Reflection Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life Work-Life Balance 1 Comment

A guest post by Kevin J Anderson.

I write and publish four or more novels a year, and my creative office doesn’t have either a computer or a desk. It also doesn’t have the distraction of a constantly ringing phone, an endless succession of emails that need to be responded to (or marked as spam), doorbells to be answered with the latest UPS package of cat food from amazon prime (and the related distraction of cats who want me to feed them that food), or employees or family members who lie by assuring me “this will only take a minute.”

No, my real creative office is outside on the trail.

After outlining a novel, I take my notes, my digital recorder, my hiking boots, and my imagination and I hit the trail. After a few minutes, surrounded by trees, rocks, or streams, I can sink into the zone, immerse myself into my world, my story, my characters. As I walk, I think up the sentences that I would normally type out… but instead of moving my fingers around on a keyboard, I just speak the words out loud.

I have so programmed myself to write this way that now I find it very frustrating to sit my butt in a chair and stare at a screen for hours on end. When I’m walking, I am inspired by the landscapes in my beautiful Colorado. It may not be a genuine alien world, but I can imagine that—and all without the constant real-world distractions that harass a writer cooped up in a home office.

The only distractions I encounter are the occasional rattlesnake or hailstorm, but I can deal with that better than tedious phone conversations.

When I’m out walking, especially on long hikes, I can sink into a fugue state, entirely into what I’m writing, and when I dictate, the words go straight from my mind and out of my mouth, recorded directly without any intermediary step. I can just reel out what’s in my imagination.

The scenery itself is often inspirational, and when possible I try to be in a place that reminds me of what I’m writing. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado or Death Valley in California as I write my Dune novels with Brian Herbert; I’ve been in a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada mountains while writing about Han Solo and Princess Leia on the polar icecap of a planet, and I spent time hiking around the Anasazi cliff ruins of Mesa Verde while writing about derelict alien cliff ruins in my Saga of Seven Suns.

Obviously, my hiking trips are work-related.

I have a typist (several, actually, because I tend to overload them!) who transcribes my digital file and sends me a Word document back, so that I can polish it…and there’s the tedious butt-in-chair keyboard time I am forced to endure.

But sometimes I extend the getaway into a camping trip, so that I can really move my working office onto a picnic table out in a beautiful National Forest site. That’s where I’m writing this, sitting at a table under a lodgepole pine tree at a perfect campsite next to a river 85 miles up the Cache la Poudre canyon in northern Colorado. An extra battery for the laptop, and no internet connection, a growler of my favorite microbrew beer: It’s the perfect office, alone in the forest (except for a moose visitor who just walked through the campground), away from it all where I can concentrate on being in the worlds inside my head. It’s like taking a vacation in an exotic place with my imaginary friends.

It’s the best office in the world.

Guest Writer Bio: Kevin J. Anderson was born March 27, 1962, and raised in small town Oregon, Wisconsin, south of Madison—an environment that was a cross between a Ray Bradbury short story and a Norman Rockwell painting. He first knew he wanted to create fiction when he was five years old, before he even knew how to write: he was so moved by the film of War of the Worlds on TV that he took a notepad the next day and drew pictures of scenes from the film, spread them out on the floor, and told the story out loud (maybe this is what led him into writing comics nearly three decades later!). At eight years old, Kevin wrote his first “novel” (three pages long on pink scrappaper) on the typewriter in his father’s den: “The Injection,” a story about a mad scientist who invents a formula that can bring anything to life . . . and when his colleagues scoff, he proceeds to bring a bunch of wax museum monsters and dinosaur skeletons to life so they can go on the rampage. At the age of ten, he had saved up enough money from mowing lawns and doing odd jobs that he could either buy his own bicycle or his own typewriter. Kevin chose the typewriter . . . and has been writing ever since.

Find Kevin and his new releases on his Facebook page, the Word Fire Press page, or his blog.

Can You Hear the Voices?

July 12, 2014

Frank Morin

Frank Morin Motivation Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life 1 Comment

Growing up, I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I was such an avid reader, it just made sense. My mind naturally turned to stories and I invented whole worlds. I could see the fantastic places, hear the voices of the characters.

Hearing voice is not considered healthy in most professions.

I tried to drive the imaginary friends away, tried to tell them I didn’t want to hear their stories, and for a few years I was successful. But they kept coming back.

Eventually I admitted I had to write and I dove into the process, not caring how long or hard or difficult it might be. That proved I was in the right frame of mind to become a writer. I absolutely love the process of exploring my own little worlds and actively seeking out those voices that I alone could hear. And even though some people look at me funny when I tell them I write fiction novels, this is the one career where you’re supposed to hear voices, where it’s all right to carry on conversations with yourself for days at a time.

I have so many people to talk to, I could sit silent for days just listening.

But even better than exploring worlds of imagination, I love it when I can bring those worlds to life for other people. I love talking with someone who has read one of my stories, looking them in the eye and seeing their excitement as they discuss a scene or a character that they felt a particularly powerful connection with. They heard the voices and they saw the scenes.

The story came alive for them.

Those are the moments that encourage me to keep writing, keep striving to improve my craft to bring these stories to life. It’s incredible to think that a few marks on a page can trigger visions of unseen worlds and make real the personalities and relationships of people who never existed anywhere except inside my head. A lot of people love a good story, but not everyone is a storyteller.

I am.

A little crazy I may be, but I’m loving the journey and I’m bringing a lot of other people along for the ride.

Go Big or Stay Home

June 9, 2014

Frank Morin

Frank Morin Goals Motivation The Writing Life 3 Comments

The official definition in the Urban Dictionary for “Go Big or Stay Home” is that it is used to goad someone into an outlandish or awesome act.

It’s a challenge phrase.

This month we are checking in on our progress with the goals we set at the beginning of the year. It’s also a great time to reflect on whether or not we set the right goals. Did we choose to do something beyond the normal and really commit to getting it done? Those are the scary goals, the ones we aren’t quite sure we can meet.

Those are the challenge goals, the ones that drive us to accomplish something.

So you set a writing goal or a personal goal this year? Was it a challenge goal, or was it a safety goal, one designed to make an incremental, tiny step forward, using the same stride used in the past? One that let’s us celebrate repainting the same-old situation?

It’s easy to plod along doing the same thing we’ve done before and celebrate minuscule progression, but sometimes the only way to really get where we want to go is to completely change and try something totally different. To challenge ourselves to take the leap we dream of taking but which scares us to death.

For example, when I first started writing seriously, my first novel took way too long, partly because my writing was just awful, but partly because my schedule did not allow much time for writing. So I set the goal to rearrange my working schedule to allow more writing time. It took a few years and some pretty big risks and sacrifices from the entire family to accomplish that goal, but I did it.

This year I realized I was not taking enough advantage of that newfound freedom, so I set a huge goal of completing four new novels this year. Sure I had started outlining them, but did not have any first drafts completed. And yet, that’s what it would take to reach the next level. So I set the goal and began to work it. Last week I wrote 26,000 words to complete one of those novels on time. One piece of the overall goal is complete. Lots more to go.

No matter our individual circumstance, we can all set change goals and decide if we’re going to go big or stay home. Most people don’t bother.

They stay home.

Most people are content to go to work, fill an honest eight hours, and then literally just go home and watch tv. Those people have a safe existence. They do not have to take risks, do not have to stretch and grow, do not risk failure and ridicule. But they also never go big. They never accomplish challenge goals to celebrate incredible victories and learn to take control of their lives.

Of those who decide to make a change, who say they are going to Go Big, most of them don’t make it. Sure, from a writing perspective some people are just so bad that they simply lack the capacity to do it, but those are the exceptions. Most people COULD write a competitive book if they REALLY wanted to, yet most of them fail. It’s not because they CAN’T do it, but because they lack staying power. Like the graph illustrates, saying you have a great idea is nothing. Starting a book is when we first get some skin in the game but doesn’t mean a whole lot either. Actually finishing a book is huge, but even that’s not the ultimate goal. We want to finish something someone else will pay to read. Challenge goals are the vehicle to take us there.

So what if you have to write ten years before you make a sale? Those ten years are going to pass anyway. So what if you get rejected? The best writers rack up dozens, if not hundreds, of rejections. It’s not the rejection that defines success but the overcoming of that rejection and the continued consistency.

I spoke with Brandon Sanderson earlier this year and when I mentioned I had been writing for almost ten years he nodded and said, “Great, then you’re just about ready to break in.”

Before lightning can strike, you have to make yourself the lightning rod.
Before you can be the lucky winner, you have to compete.
Before you can become an overnight success, you have to work for years to prepare yourself and develop the skills to break out big.

Some people just need a push, someone to challenge them to make a change goal. If you’re one of those, the music video by Switchfoot for their song “I Dare you to Move” might help. Check it out here.

So this month as we reflect where we are with our goals and compare that against where we want to be in six months or one year or ten years, let’s ask ourselves, “Am I going big or staying home?”

Go Big.