CREATING THE WRITE LIFE

A writing advice blog with a focus on mental health and the struggles involved in living a creative life. (The goal used to be a new post every wednesday, but this blog's been on a hopefully temporary hiatus for a while due to a lot of personal changes and not being able to put together well thought out posts. However there's lots more I'd like to write in future so hopefully you can enjoy what's here until then) New Posts at Somepoint.

[creatingthewritelife]

I'm writing an original story that does take inspiration from published (and popular) works. I need advice on how to flesh out my universe in a way that doesn't steal too many elements of this other works (or at least makes them original) and make my story seem like a copy :)

Unfortunately I don’t have the experience on that sort of thing to give you solid enough advice on how to avoid your work being to simillar to the work of someone else.However.What I can suggest is the obvious. Change the things that will be easily noticed to begin with. Your characters need to be different both in name and personality. Your world (assuming it’s not realistic fiction set on earth) needs to be something seperate from what is in the work you’ve been inspired by.Let me try and break it down. What you’re doing is really not that different from creating an original world, you just have a baseline to work with. The same as someone who wants to write about, say, vampires or werewolves. You know what your world is inspired by (Vampires suck blood = your people live underwater, or something) and that you need to take enough of it to make not only the story your own but the world. (Werewolves have to carry a tailismen or they can’t control their transformation = your people eat divers, or something).I don’t buy into the belief thaoriginal story ideas don’t exist anymore, there is an infdinate supply of inspiration and imagination on this planet alone. However everything is inspired by something. And somethings that something is another person’s writing. And that’s so fantastic! And it’s fantastic that you’re so determined for it not to seem like a copy, however. I think worrying about if it seems like a copy or not limits your ability to create the story and the world that you want to be writing. You have a story in you so you should write it. Worry about what you might need to change later. Let it evolve organically and watching as you unfold something better thanm waht you first imagined. Once those shackles of worrying about copying anothers work are gone you have the freedom you need to create the best first draft you can. After that you can look back at it - and have others look back at it - and figure out what might need to change, if anything.

[creatingthewritelife]

I'll make this quick... I am currently writing a fantasy/action/adventure/sci-fi novel, which follows the story of a 14yo boy living in an oppressed world. I think I might have some cliches, which are like the plague. For starter's, the exposition is the death of his kid sister which happens on his birthday, which is a huge cliche, but I wanted the death of this cinnamon roll character to be tragic. How should I fix it? Another thing, is it ok for the exposition to be in Chapter 2?

Sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason. Realistically people love cliches. Othertimes they should be avoided, but really no matter what the cliche is it comes down to a matter of personal choice on if it’s a good or a bad writing decision.I think the death of your characher’s kid sister happening on his birthday could be a good way to tell the story, provided that it actually has relevance later somehow. Work that date into his character and into his history, maybe revisit memories of them together on good birthdays before her death as well as showing how that changed his opinion on his birthday or birthdays in general. It won’t work well if all you do is have her die on his birthday and then have him do nothing but angst about his birthday. But if you flesh out his character, her character, their relationship to each other, how they celebrated biurtdhays before, and how his feelings about birthdays change from before her death through to the end of the story then it can be a compelling way to make her death tragic. If you can make birthdays a meaningful part of their relationship or the story then you’ll be throwing the punch you want to with her death. If you can’t, then it might be worth looking into other possible options.As for exposition. It all depends on the story you’re telling it and how you’re trying to tell it. No matter if you’re putting background information in the first chapter or the ninth or even further in you want to be careful not to just dump all the information in at once. Exposition is a poweful storytelling tool and needs to be used wisely as a way to compel the reader to keep reading. You don’t want to give too much away at once. If we’re talking specifically about the death of the kid sister something you might consider is either alluding to her death at first without stating it outright, or stating it outright but not giving out the details until later. Tell the background - as it is part of the story - like you’re telling the rest of the story. In bits and pieces when it’s relevant to what’s happening in the story’s present.Something I like to try to remember when I’m at risk of putting too much background information in at once is that no story actually begins at the begining, but somewhere in the middle. Before the story begins there was a story that lead to it begining. Evenif you’re telling a linear story that’s something worth considering because background information in stories affects characters the same way personal history affects people. It’s not all relevant all at once, and it’s not relevant only once.I hope this is able to help you and good luck with your writing!(While I enjoy answering your asks and helping out please remember that otherwise this blog still is on hiatus so don’t expect any regular postsfor the time being)

[creatingthewritelife]

Hello. Can I ask what would be the best way to start a fantasy fanfic? One that involves dragons and magic. I've got a plot in my head and other future scenes but I just can seem to envision the first chapter. Thank you.

I wish I had the answer for you. But starting a fanfic is like starting any other story. It’s about where your story begins and the best way to tell it. Now with fanfic it depends a little if you’re drafting before you post. because if you’re drafting then there’s room to change your begining if it doesn’t work right at first.I find - for me - the best begining starts with a moment, a single scene, rather than a full chapter. and there are so many options for possible beginings out there.If I were you I’d look at the story and the characters and try to determine who it starts with and why it has to start with them. If you can figure out the why you’ll probably have an easier time figuring out the how.I wish you the best of luck.(I am on a (perhaps temporary) hiatus from this blog but I hope this answer can help somewhat)

[creatingthewritelife]

How can you increase your vocabulary?

Reading is a good way to work on that. Different genres might use different words so maybe look into fantasy or science fiction, action. depending on where you want to increase your vocabulary. Also looking up synonyms can be helpful in increasing vocab plus it gives you a chance to find that perfect word for something.

[creatingthewritelife]

I'm currently writing a sci-fi, and I've got this (femalish) alien character that I fear is slowly becoming "the sidekick that is a girl." Do you have any recommendations for making her more interesting/ stand out from the other characters?

Add more female characters. It’s probably not the answer you want but if your female(-ish) character is starting to feel like “The sidekick that’s a girl” that’s probably because there aren’t enough other female characters.So add more. Also make sure they’re people rather than just one sided cardboard cutout characters. They should have back stories and characters they’re friends with, characters they’re not friends with. Principles or morals, goals, things they like and things they hate.If you have multiple female characters, and your female characters are people rather than plastic then there’s no reason it should be a problem if your main female character is a sidekick. Sometimes women are sidekicks. Just like sometimes women are heros.

[creatingthewritelife]

How do you come up with scenes in a story?

I’m so sorry this took me so long to get to, I had some other things going on the past couple of weeks so I didn’t get to post and I wanted to give this question some thought and write it as a full post which I wrote up seperately right here. I hope you don’t mind that I posted it seperate from this ask; it was just easier to keep it organized that way

[creatingthewritelife]

Creating Scenes

When the question was first posed to me I didn’t understand at first. But the more I thought about it the more I realized just how important it is to understand how to create scenes. If we don’t know what our scenes are, or what to make them, then we can’t effectively build a story because the scenes are the fibers that hold a story together

If you were to take a life and break it into chapters - say maybe a month per chapter - not every moment of that month would make it into the chapter, which means some scenes would never exist in the story but rather in that limbo space between what is and isn’t the story. Other scenes get picked for specific reasons. The car crash on 57th that makes you late for work on your first day? That’s an important moment, an important scene. Spilling apple juice on your homework could be, or could not be, depending on the context. How important is the homework? What was happening around you when you spilled the apple juice? Is spilling apple juice part of something larger? Is the fact that it stained your homework going to be an issue? Which scene is more important and why - spilling the juice or turning in the homework and how the teacher reacts?

Picking scenes for a story boils down to a few things. You start from the biggest picture you have available and chip away at it. Once you break away the larger, more obvious, pieces you start to find the smaller things that glitter to make the whole story shine. What is your story? Why? Who is involved in it? Why? How do these characters know each other, how do they relate? Why? In order to know what scenes build your story you need two things. You need to have an idea of what you want it to look like once it’s finished - as general or as fleshed out as you like - and you need to know what the foundation you’re building on is. Neither of these things come within the first five minutes of the idea, and both of them may change over time. The idea isn’t that they’re permanent but that they’re a place to grow your story from.

So once you have your foundation - your idea, your characters, your world - what happens next? You start building. Look at what drives your story. Is it plot driven or character driven? Both? What’s the goal and how can it be achieved? Also important - what would make it fail?

Planning for your story is not unlike planning things in your life. The biggest difference is that you’re planning the lives of other characters and seeing what's important to them. Say in your life you have an important event coming up of some kind. A job interview maybe. Some important scenes towards that might be applying for the position, receiving a call for an interview, getting ready for the interview, and taking the interview. But there are a few more scenes that can fit in there. Between applying and getting a phone call you might go out with friends - but spend the whole time checking your phone for a call or email, you might oversleep by twenty minutes one morning and be late to your current job and worry about how it might affect the chance at the new job since your boss is a reference, maybe you have to take the dog to the vet one day and miss the call. There are also going to be moments that don’t need including. You’re going to eat a lot of meals, sleep a lot, and talk to a lot of people between the first scene (applying) and the last one (going to the interview). With those scenes it’s about what moves the story along or what highlights aspects of your character(in this case, you). Maybe you have anxiety so you spend a lot of time running back and forth to the bathroom on the morning of your interview - adding a scene like that can be helpful to show readers a bit more of who the character is and plays a role in shaping the story.

So break it down. Take the biggest form you can imagine your story and start chipping away. Find out what some of the plot points are and then then break them away to see what they’re made of because they have just as much substance in them as your life has. Which is probably why they can be just has hard to create and understand. The scenes of our life are, mostly, so natural that we don’t think about them all, but when you piece them together you have our story. When you break your idea down and build it back up knowing what the scenes are it’ll start to feel just as natural. *Note: You don’t need to know all the scenes from the begining. Often times one scene will have something in it that makes it clear to you what the next or another scene should be.

[creatingthewritelife]

The Impact of Fiction

How fiction and reality impact one another is a conversation that has been around forever but it is also one that grows as our access to fiction grows and changes in tandem with the social and political climate of the world we live in. Never has there been a time when we are exposed to more fiction and in more ways than we are right now. Humanity has always spun around stories but in the past access to them was far more limited. Today books, tv, movies are commonplace. So much so that we have access to literally hundreds of stories the moment we turn on our tv, our computer and if there isn’t a bookstore nearby most department stores have at least a small section of books. Fiction is everywhere. And because fiction is everywhere it plays a large and important role in reality and in the shaping of reality.

From relationships, to politics, to technology fiction has some say in shaping all of it. There’s evidence of this all around us. You can look at science fiction to see how technology has grown and changed and been impacted by the genre. Star Trek is a good example both of the impact fiction has had on both society and technology. As fiction impacts reality, reality also impacts fiction. The distress about the political state of the world - particularly america - has been apparent with the rise in dystopian fiction, alternatively if you look back just a few decades you’ll see that utopian fiction was the the preference in fiction. How we see the world, how we see the direction it moves in and it’s ability to change directly impacts our imaginations about the world, the future, and the fiction we write.

So then, if our world as it is impacts the way we write fiction, how does the fiction that we’re writing then turn around and impact the world? Well. From childhood the way we see the world is what shapes us. How our parents and their friends, our friends, siblings, and classmates treat us and each other. The stories we see on the news, the television we watch from Dora The Explorer and Sesame Street to Disney Movies and the shows we start watching as we age. These stories, the characters we see, the way they act, the way they’re treated, who they are, how they look, how they’re stereotyped, all of it directly affects the way we see the world. It is, in a way, our reality. Because it’s how we’ve learned to see the world.

And yes, as we grow up further and interact with other parts of the world. Other friends, interests, communities, and fiction our views on the world, and how it impacts us may change. But that is precisely why it’s important to take not of and value the impact that fiction has on reality. Because it shapes us, and we shape our world even as we continue to grow and change.

It’s why fiction matters. Not just because fiction is an escape, a place to relax and explore and wonder. But because fiction is a way to become. It has the power to change us for better or worse. So when fiction depicts rape as sexy, or black people as aggressive, or asian women as submissive, or white people as always the hero and always without flaw and always forgivable, or characters with mental illness as stupid and lazy or violent  it changes the way our world is.  It saps the richness and vibrancy of a colourful and intricate world and leaves it monotone and bland. And dangerous. Because people end up getting hurt. Crimes go unpunished, people are willfully misunderstood and it changes their world, and their lives. Our world. Our lives. Everyone’s.

The impact of fiction is powerful, valuable, and frequently overlooked. It can make our world bright and rich when we’re inclusive, when our characters are multifaceted, when we research and understand what we’re creating before we put it out into the world. Or it poison the well and turn our progress to ash in our mouths. And as creators - however often our impact and importance as creators is overlooked and undervalued - it’s our responsibility to take our fiction, as well as the fiction created by others, and understand. Understand the kind of impact it is having, or could have, or has had, for better or worse. And strive, always, to do better.

[creatingthewritelife]

Self-Insert Characters

Self insert characters are a long disputed part of fiction and often time get reactions that suggest that there’s no place for them. That a character based on a person, based on the writer as a person, has no place in fiction. That you have no place in fiction. But fiction is among the arts of escapism. It’s the business we choose when we write our favourite characters, or act them. It’s the business we choose when we read our favourite stories or watch them. Whether it’s fanfiction or original, fiction is fiction, and fiction often holds a tone of escapism.

Where would be if we forbade ourselves from imagining? What stories would we lose, and what adventures would we lose if we ceased to allow ourselves to take part. We follow along with the characters we love because they capture a part of our heart or soul, because their world is magic, or a different kind of tragic. What fan has never wanted to be a part of at least one of their favourite stories; what child has never wanted to be a jedi, or superhero, or hobbit? Every year millions of people attend conventions where they can cosplay their favourite characters, and for a moment be a part of that world, that story. We see ourselves in fiction. We see people in characters, and our realities in theirs.

And yet, when we write characters we’re told that we personally can take no part in the story we’re telling. We don’t get to wield a sword or use magic. We can’t be kind to the wounded old lady in chapter three or tell the antagonist precisely what we think of them in chapter eighteen. When we write, we’re told that we cannot be the hero even though when we experience fiction that’s been created by another, we’re welcome to imagine, to take part, to be the hero.

This means that somewhere along the line there’s a disconnect. Where some people - those who are against it - are taking self-insert to mean too perfect. And others - people who feel forbidden from writing it - are taking self-insert to mean that they cannot put themselves into their characters at all. But what if we break down that barrier? And start calling characters what they are instead of finding other things to blame instead of simply deciding whether the writing is good or needs work. A character without flaws is a character that needs work. It may be self-insert, but it also might not be. The problem with that character is not that the writer wanted to see themselves in their work, but that the character is unrealistically perfect. A flawed character can just as easily be self-insert, because people have flaws, or not self insert.

People need to see themselves in fiction. Because fiction impacts reality, and for so many people fiction either doesn’t include them or doesn’t include them well. Or because they need to see that they can be a hero too, and sometimes the only way to see that is to write it themselves.

At the end of the day, characters are people. They don’t live in this world or experience our reality. They might slay monsters, ride dragons, or wave wands, but for us they still need to be real. Because otherwise we don’t believe them or their stories. We won’t root for them. We won’t care if they make get the ring to mordor or if they save the city from from the big bad of the week. Because unless characters are treated as people then to us they’re not.

If you’re a person, if you live and breathe and experience, then you have as much place in fiction as anyone else. Whether a character takes on your whole likeness or just part of it, there’s no reason you can’t choose to see yourselves in them, and in the story. Even if you’re the one writing it.

[creatingthewritelife]

Uh hi, I have a problem in my writing, specifically my characters backstorys. Every character I've written has some sort of daddy issue. I know this is due to my own experience but I'm not sure how to fix this. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Well I’d guess there are probably a few ways to approch something like that. If it’s multiple characters in the same story that all have some sort of issue with their dad that contributes to their life, personality, and/or the plot in someway then it might be an oppertunity to see how you can use it as a theme to drive the story. How do the characters approach their issue differently? Are some aware of it and others not? Do some handle it well and others poorly? How does it impact thir relationships to other characters in the story and affect the plot?If the issue is more that all your characters in any of your stories (particularly protags) always have some sort of daddy issue then it might be that you need to seperate yourself from the character. Personally I don’t think that there’s a problem with writing yourself (or parts of yourself) into your fiction. A piece of me always go into my characters ebcause for me that’s how I make them real. However, it’s important to make sure your not using the same character in every story you write unless your focus is purely for your enjoyment or fanfiction.So maybe look at whatever has cropped up for your characters as some sort of daddy issue and see what other ways their problem or flaw can manifest. Start small by seeing if you can change it to an issue with another person in their life (past and/or present) mother? A sibling? a childhood friend? Teacher? Neighbor? A lot of the time ‘daddy issues’ for a characters backstory has to do with not getting enough love, right? You could flip that on it’s head and instead of having an abusive or absentee father have one who dotes on your character or is overprotective, give them a father who is open and honest with them and can have candid conversations about anything. Or give them multiple fathers. Give them a good father, and a good stepfather, maybe two good stepfathers, and a significantly older brother so he may as well be a father too. Use this to combat the instinct to use ‘daddy issues’ as why your character has certain flaws.Sometimes people just have flaws. It doesn’t always have to step from some deeper childhood trama or issue with a parent or parent figure. Character drinks too much? Maybe alcholism runs in the family (but their dad never drank because he’s religious so it didn’t touch him and they had no idea) or they’re a high stress person and work really gets to them. Anger issues? Bottled everything up as a kid because they wanted people to like them so now that they’re older everything comes out in spurts when someone pushes them just the tinest bit too far. Commitment issues, serial dater? Maybe they just don’t know what they want in a relationship, or had some unlucky ones in the past that hurt them too much for them to fully trust.Daddy issues isn’t the problem itself. What you really want to do is take the flaw that you’re using a backstory of daddy issues to explain and find another cause for it.I hope this helps!

[creatingthewritelife]

The Protagonist in Mary Sue

Witty, competent, strong, charming, attractive. Mary Sue has all the characteristics of a perfect person. Compassionate but tough, beautiful but not vain, beloved by everyone in her story. She overcomes her challenges but doesn’t necessarily grow as a character, because she already appears without flaw. So what’s to change. As a perfect character she can do no wrong, except exist.

The problem with Mary Sue’s isn’t that they exist in fiction. In fact, they exist in reality too. We’ve all known the woman, at some point in our lives, who is loved by everyone. She has an aura that draws people too her and the charm, personality, and talent to keep them at her side. She learns quickly and masters new tasks with an efficiency that puts the rest of us mere mortals on edge. It’s a shame to pretend those people, those women, don’t exist in reality. The problem with Mary Sue, is two things.

The first is when her character never grows. If Mary Sue never learns a single lesson then she may as well be a robot - which is fine if she is, in fact, a robot  - because one thing that never fails to connect humanity is that we all have lessons to learn throughout our lives. Which means there has so be something for her to learn, a chance for her to grow. A mistake made in chapter one that isn’t revealed until chapter twenty-five. Something about her past revealed that makes her understand the reason why she acts the way she does. A single moment where she slips out of character that reveals an extra layer of her character. The way to make a Mary Sue work is to remember that the protagonist must always have two things. Something they want, and a lesson. Your story doesn’t have to be profound, but so long as your character is alive they have some way still in which they need to grow, however small it seems.

The second problem with Mary Sue, is that people forget that she’s the protagonist. The thing about protagonists is that much of the time they are overpowered. Fiction is often escapist, whether we want to be our favourite characters or be their friend (or be their lover) we’re along for the journey they’re on. So the leading character is - traditionally, not always - capable. They’re strong, and compassionate, adventurous, and charming, attractive, and witty. They’re the hero. And the hero is lovable.

The hero is also, sometimes, male. And when the hero is male, when the protagonist is male, we’re far less likely to notice or complain about them learning too quickly, or being too well liked, being too funny or too attractive, or too confident. Because he’s the hero. So why shouldn’t he be lovable? Or funny? He should definitely be confident, and isn’t it nice when he’s attractive as well? What we love in our male characters we resist in our female characters. And while you might occasionally hear a statement calling a character Gary Stu, it’s significantly less common than complaints of Mary Sue.

The only true difference between a Mary Sue leading your story and a protagonist, is that one of them is female and that we’ve been conditioned to recognize excessive positive traits in female characters as a problem, while exalting them in male characters.

On the other hand when male protagonists are flawed and in desperate need of growth become truly lovable from the beginning, they’re often still exalted. A call goes out to protect them, to want for them to grow and see them succeed. Beneath their rock hard shell is a heart of gold that we want to see shine. And interestingly, when female protagonists are cold and unlikable, when they’re not attractive or skilled or compassionate and need that same growth to become lovable just like the aforementioned male protagonist, they’re rejected. They’re too difficult, it’s impossible to see the soft heart of gold beneath their icy shell. We don’t love them despite their inherent flaws and may not even continue along the journey with them as we would for their male counterpart.

So ultimately, Mary Sue is not the problem. She’s just a protagonist. The problem is the tightrope between flawless and flawed that female characters are required to walk.

[creatingthewritelife]

Tell Me When You Get There

“It gets better.”

At our worst those of us who struggle find little comfort in such a common phrase turned in our direction. Our depression rolls it’s eyes and we follow suit, our bank account glances up hopefully before recounting an amount that always comes to ‘not enough’, and the phrase lingers in the air like a joke without a punchline. We look at the people who say it, who swear their worst has looked just like ours, or worse still, and cannot see how they got from here to there. We fail to believe that they remember it even as they promise that if we keep going we’ll be okay.

But for all our eye rolling, and pushing the words and people who say them aside there is always a part of us that wants to believe what they’re telling us when they say that it gets better. When they’re saying that there’s hope, and a future. That we can get from both our current darkest and brightest points to somewhere even better and brighter. Somewhere when we’re doing more than just hoping. It’s that part of us, the part that wants to believe in “It gets better” that we have to hold on to. Because it’s that belief that will eventually get us to better.

It’s difficult to hear people whose struggles and challenges we’ve never seen swear that it gets better or easier. Which is why it can be so difficult to believe that it does. Why it’s so much easier to believe it in fiction than in reality as we follow our favourite characters through hells we can only imagine and somehow come out on top in the end. But if we can believe in them and have hope for their futures than we can come to believe in and have hope for our futures too.

We can find our way forward and a future we want to work towards. By starting somewhere, starting small, we can eventually get where we’re going even if we don’t know where that is yet. But like with anything we have to believe in our hope first, in the possibility - however slim the chance seems, we have to believe, and we have to work towards it however we are able.

Writing is a tool like any other. Whether our dream is publication steady enough to not have to work another job or enough people reading and commenting on our fanfiction it’s a tool that can be used to move us forward. Journaling, escaping for a few hours into our fiction, reviewing and revising before sending to beta readers, however we use it to get ahead there is a place for it in healing. Whether we need to write out out pain, or put it aside for a while our writing is there to aid us however we choose to use it.

And maybe we’re not better yet. Maybe we’re clinging on to the last strands of hope or finally starting to get some solid ground under our feet and desperate for air after a long uphill battle, maybe we’re lost and don’t know where we’re going or what our dreams are. We have a long and difficult road ahead of us wherever we stand and the prospect of it all is daunting to say the least. Though none of that denies hope, or believe, or the promise of “It gets better.” It only reaffirms it. Because we’re still here, still standing, still fighting, still looking for anything to remind us of our courage so that we can keep moving forward. Because it gets better. Whether we believe it or not yet, if we believe in our desire to believe it than we have enough to hold onto, and enough to pull us through. We have our writing to dissolve into when we need, and our favourite characters to lean on for strength. And one day we’ll be the ones promising that it’ll get better. Because it will have.

So tell me when you get there, and until you do promise me you’ll always find something to keep believing in to help carry you forward. I’ll tell you when I get there too.

[creatingthewritelife]

A New Year

Three days in to the new year we may start to tire of the cheer, resolutions, and thoughts of new beginnings as they’re repeated over and over again on a loop by everyone in our circle, but writing is as good a place as any to use the turning of the year to benefit us. A chance to look at the year before and see all that we accomplished, and where we stand to improve. A chance to look at the year ahead and imagine the possibilities. More than imagining though, it’s a chance to begin again; refreshed and renewed we’re left with the opportunity to restart the things we felt we were failing at. Wherever we were last year. Word counts that never matched our goals, characters that fell flat, rejection letters that read like paper cuts, over writing, underwriting, and everything in between. Now is our chance to let it all go and resolve to do better. To write more, practice more, research more, experiment more. To love our writing more, or again. The beginning of anything is full of opportunities far beyond imagination. But resolutions can quickly fail us. It’s almost comical how quick we can go from resolving to do something - or not do something - in the new year to not caring anymore. We let it slide and then never get back into whatever new habit we had just a few days or weeks ago promised ourselves that we would commit to. A resolution for writing - or anything - has to go beyond a statement. The resolution, the decision, it’s just the beginning. We have to commit, and more than just committing, we have to put forth the effort to bring our imagined beginnings into our reality. Although we write fiction imagination doesn’t cease at the end of a page, chapter, or book. Closing out the word processor, or turning off the computer doesn’t snap us immediately into the here and now. We’re human after all. We look off into the distance, at the view, the sunrise, the ocean, the stars, and we wonder. What comes next? What lies ahead? Where are we going? When do we get there? How do we get there? The most important of these is how. Because how is what connects us our present to our future. To what we imagine for our reality. It’s the step on a ladder the takes us higher So when we imagine what the year will bring for us in our writing we have to stop and look at how we can accomplish it, rather than just saying that we want it. If we want to experiment with our writing we have to look at and test out styles different to our norm. If we want better word counts we have to carve out the time and figure out how to push forward to bring those words to the page. If we want to unpack our writing we have to look at how to break down and expand a thought to get more than one sentence from it. Whatever we want for our writing this year there is a way for us to make it happen, we just have to find it. So this year, resolve in your writing to do more than just want it. Figure out how and make it happen. Use this new year, this opportunity, to begin and continue, rather than just begin.

[creatingthewritelife]

The Road Less Traveled

“I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” -Robert Frost

Despite living in a world driven by creativity, at a time when fiction is highly valued, the path of a writer is still the path untraveled. A tangle of thorny bushes and overgrown roots line a somewhat hidden direction that not many choose to take. And those of us who do choose that path, especially in our goals for a career, are often overlooked, or looked down on. Because why would we take the harder path of thorns and roots that threaten to trip us up with every step, when the other direction is free from dangers; we’ll be able to see each step in front of us, and know exactly where it leads.

Still, we choose the unpaved path. We likely choose it for several reasons. Adventure, exploration. Everything our hearts, souls, and favourite characters - original or otherwise - often crave is down that path. It’s a challenge all it’s own but a challenge that calls to us like a siren and tells us to take the risk. And maybe that which waits down the other path holds no home in our hearts. Traditional, stuffy, suits, ties, offices, factories, small talk. The list goes on in a practical and expected direction that for many of us feels like weights tied our feet if we take that road. Though we may experience a fair bit of the practical side of things as we take our unpaved road of risk and adventure, it’s laced with magic and mystery and wonder, which for those of us with creative spirits, is what makes it manageable.

The path we follow goes against the grain of everything we’re told to do. It fights the expectations placed on us and at times threatens to damage our place in the world we live in be it among our family, our friends, the people we live and work and communicate with, because they see that our hearts are elsewhere. But as time goes on the best of them see the best of us. They recognize that as much as they need the structure and balance and predictability of the road they choose to take, we need the curiosity and wonder, and magic of the path we take in order to find our happiness.

For by choosing the road that enamours us most, the path that calls to us like a siren's song, we’re able to find our creative center and allow it to flourish as we live our life in service to it. By not only acknowledging our creative desires, but choosing to live according to them - in whatever way we can -then we allow that sort of magic and beauty to fill our lives. And it’s that sort of magic that’s stronger than the daily struggles that threaten to weigh us down as we explore the path before us.

[creatingthewritelife]

The World of Ideas

Some of us have overactive idea gardens. Everything seems to lead to a new idea for a brand new story for some of us. From the woman sprinting across the crosswalk in front of our car to the show we watched most recently. The couple in the cafe, the science documentary on the expansion of the universe, the strange looking plant in our favourite science fiction movie. They’re all seeds and we’re desperate to watch them grow into something amazing, because we’re easily tempted and lead astray, even when we love the project we’re already working on.

The problem is, as either gardeners or writers, we only have two hands and so we can’t feasibly tend to that many ideas at once. For some of us we may be able to manage two or three but more than that and none of our work is going to be getting the attention it deserves. And yet, there are all these ideas! All these seeds worth growing! Worlds worth building and characters worth developing, plots worth uncovering. To abandon them feels more than just wasteful, it feels neglectful. To ourselves, our writing, and any future readers who may take interest in an idea abandoned.

So when we have an excess of idealings,seeds waiting to take sprout, but not time or space to dedicate to them, what do we do? Some of us may share them off, allow other writers who have room for a new idea take them off our hands, but many of us are protective of our unused ideas. We hoard them, like a dragon with gold. But if we can’t write them, they risk being forgotten. So we do what writers do. We write it down. Physically or electronically, we make a note of the premise of our idea. The scene, the plot, the world, the character, whatever had started to take root in our mind, we make a space for it on a fresh page. And then we move along. Seal it away for later. Stored and safe. While we move on to the next idea that needs to be stowed away for the time being. Leave them all to their own devices, separate and unbothered, hop on a train to a new stop, and store another one. Later, when we’re free of projects, or short on inspiration, we can always ride back and check every stop to see what’s waiting to take root and desperate to bloom.

Keep a folder on the computer, or a pocket-sized notebook and give it a title like it’s a world or story of its own.  A hub of ideas waiting to be explored. Worlds to build, and characters whose names and stories have yet to be learned with a new adventure on each page in a different colour than the last, and just like we can’t experience the whole adventure in a book, a series, or in the world we live all at once, neither can we experience all the stories that we want to tell at once. But they’ll wait for us, if we allow them the space to. And when we come back to claim them, a new adventure can unfold.

[creatingthewritelife]

The Days Without Writing

Sometimes there are days, weeks, months, without a word. Those are the times when we’re angriest at ourselves about our writing. It’s easy to place blame on our own shoulders for simply not doing enough even when we are able to recognize all the different factors at play that may have contributed to us falling out with our writing. From overworking ourselves to hectic lives to health challenges and more there are hundreds of possible reasons why we might come to a period where we’re not writing. And it’s important to accept that not every day, week, month, or year can see us pouring out words as though we have an endless supply.

Especially when there may be positive sides to the times we’re not writing as well. It’s important to acknowledge that not everything can grow year round. Writing, like many other things, has seasons. We may plant in the spring and tend and grow through the summer to harvest in the fall and come winter find ourselves barren. Our summer wells may run dry and disrupt our growth or our spring may start later than usual and back everything up. Our harvest may be small one year, but that doesn't mean we can’t bounce back.

And during those times when our writing simply doesn’t work, whether it’s because of a dry summer or barren winter, we have an opportunity to harness. Actively or not every detail of our lives has an effect on our writing, so when we’re not writing we’re experiencing. We’re learning, we’re understanding. Every movie we watch, book we read, television show we binge, game we play, conversation we have, plays a part in teaching us what we need to know to bring our best works to life. It helps us to see what we do want in our writing, as well as what we don’t want in our writing. If we spend all of our time with our nose in whichever word processing program we prefer actively writing, then we don’t have the experience we need to write what we want to share with the world.

So when we can’t harness any of the tools we need to write - motivation, inspiration, dedication, determination, discipline, whatever - then we are left with two choices. To belittle ourselves for not being a better writer who writes X number of words in X number of hours every day and gets in at least three extra sentences any time they have a spare second. Or. We accept the fact that not every day, week, month, or even year, can be for writing and allow ourselves to experience and trust that the season will eventually end and we’ll be able to find our tools again. Because our writing will wait for us, however long it takes.

The more we hurt ourselves when we find that we’re unable to write - whatever our reason - the longer it takes to return to our words. Just like a physical injury healing takes time, and a period of rest is needed to help us get back in shape so we can write again. And like with a physical injury, the more you try to force yourself to be ready again before you actually are, the worse the dry spell is going to be.

Writing has no time limit. There is no stopwatch counting the moments you don’t write, no counter numbering the words that never reach the page. It will wait for you to come home to it and welcome you warmly when you’re ready. Even when the next few words are hard, your writing will forgive you for the time apart, however long that time is.

[creatingthewritelife]

The Magic of Motivation (for the Unmotivated)

For many writers the month of November feels like it’s make or break for their writing, whether they participate in Nanowrimo or not. If they did then they either spent thirty days cranking out tremendous word counts every day only to find themselves worn out and exhausted on December first or spent thirty days trying (and possibly failing) to keep their head above the rising tide using every word they could but never finding it enough to stay afloat, and consequently found themselves worn out and exhausted on December first. If they didn’t then they likely still found themselves struggling at times throughout the month with managing the day to day and their writing as usual, combined with the start of the holiday season.

Truly, the beginning of December - and many other times - it’s easy to feel unmotivated to write. Whether you don’t feel up to it because you’ve written so much and burnt out, or you haven’t written enough recently and are angry with yourself, or just can’t, there is one thing you must learn before you continue. It’s okay. It’s okay to have burnt out, to have failed, to lose motivation. Life moves in cycles and sometimes those cycles take us to a place where we can’t write. In order to be able to write again another day the best thing we can do is accept the days we can’t, and know that it’s okay.

Maybe it takes time, or maybe it happens over night, but eventually the motivation comes back. That’s not to say you can’t help it along though. The thing with motivation that makes it so different from inspiration is that while inspiration is what makes us write - our imagination, curiosity, fascination, etc - motivation is what makes us want to write. It’s why we’re writers. Inspiration is what makes people think of the magic in writing. It sparkles and glistens and entices, but motivation has it’s own, softer, magic. It’s the shimmering in the air, the electricity in your veins and the cold shiver down your back, the warmth in your heart when you sit down to write and imagine what comes next. Not next in the story you’re writing per say, but next in the story you’re living. See writing isn’t just one story. It is always, at minimum, two. Yours and your writing. And then it’s three. The person who reads it. And it grows exponentially the more people who read it. So, with writing being more than the single story on the page at all times. Motivation centers around reasons. It’s the core of your story. Your backstory, your future plot points. It’s why you write, what started you on your journey and where it might take you. It’s every reader, every side character who has their own story - however unseen in yours, it’s parents, and heros, failures, and triumphs. Remembering that. What motivation actually is under technical and dictionary definitions. That’s what allows us to find our motivation again.

When we lose motivation, it’s not the same as losing inspiration. We can have all the inspiration in the world, but if we don’t know why we should care then that inspiration is worth little more than pennies in our pockets. When we lose motivation, we’re losing a part of ourselves. Our own understanding of what makes us write. Without that we can go no further without resenting every word.

So why do you write? What brought you to the magic of words, and language, and stories. And more importantly, why do you stay? And where do you want to go with it? It’s these questions that carry us home to our writing, and it’s those answers that propel us forward with the motivation to continue on.