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The First Chapter

It’s almost impossible to write a good first chapter first. If you’re waiting around to start writing your book until you know what the first line should be, I think you’re doing this wrong. Most writers don’t know what the first chapter should be until the very last draft. I generally give myself a pass on the first chapter, knowing that it’s my way into the book and isn’t likely to stay. Do I always cut my first chapter? No, but so often that it’s almost a rule. Is my second chapter always my first chapter? No, but it’s about half the time, so I often look at the second chapter carefully to see if it’s the right first chapter.

But the truth is that I don’t even try to start making these decisions until I’ve come to the end of at least the first draft and often times the second draft. Sometimes, I admit, I have realized at the end of the first draft that the first chapter is actually the last chapter of the book. And just as often, I realize after a first draft that the last chapter is supposed to be the first chapter of the book. I wish sometimes I wasn’t such a messy, disorganized writer with a messy, disorganized brain, but the truth is, this is the way it works for me. This is how I find the right story, and the fact that I figure out a way to that at all is a miracle, so I’m holding tight to it.

Bombarded by Ideas

I don't know that all creative types are like this, but I find it annoying that I am bombarded by ideas constantly. I've spent most of my creative life trying to bat ideas away so I'm not overburdened by the weight of all the books I'm supposed to write.

And also so that my nights are not interrupted by story ideas coming to me (or poems, now), demanding that I get up and type them into my computer immediately or I won't be able to go back to sleep.

Sometimes I really feel like ideas have a supernatural life of their own, that if I don't take them, they move on to someone else's night. And I'm fine with that. Really. Go away big green ideas!

I'm trying to accept that ideas coming to me are both a gift and a part of my calling as a writer, and that I shouldn't be so eager to push them away. Not because they won't come back, but because they are of value, even if I don't turn them into a book.

I know there are creative people who struggle to get new ideas, but I really don't know what that feels like. I vaguely remember a brief period in my early twenties when I didn't have ideas, but it's been a long time.

Social Media Evils

Listened to another podcast about how bad social media is and how we're all so distracted all the time that we can't do the "big" work that's important. And to me this is just bulls**t.

When I turn on my computer in the morning, it's like going into the office and greeting friends. Then I can ignore everyone and get to work as much as I like, with or without earplugs.

Like many people, I work best in short spurts (10-15 mins) interrupted by breaks of talking to other humans (for 5-10 mins). I can do this for 3-4 hours before I'm done for the day (if working on early draft stuff--I can longer when the project is in later stages).

I don't feel that my concentration is "ruined" by these breaks. To the contrary, it allows my subconscious to work on things in the background, and I come back to the work fresh and ready to go.

In fact, taking a break almost always surprises me in terms of how easily my subconscious has solved a problem without my need for conscious intervention. I don't think everyone necessarily works this way, but plenty of us do. And it doesn't mean we're not doing "deep" work.

Five-year-old Me

It has only struck me in the last year how truly extraordinary it is that I knew what I wanted to be when I was five years old. I started saying then that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. And then I became a writer when I grew up. I sort of thought that most people knew what they wanted to be when they were kids and then became what they wanted to be. It turns out that both of these premises were wrong. Most people frequently change what they want to be as they grow from childhood to adulthood. And, sadly, many, many people who want to be something don't figure out how to become that thing, or don't have the support system necessary to become it.

I will admit that my five-year-old idea of being a writer wasn't entirely accurate. She thought that it was sitting at home and writing words down on a piece of paper and then typing them up and sending them off to "people" who would publish them. She had no idea how the business side of publishing worked. She didn't know how much marketing had to do with getting published. She didn't know about anxiety or about re-inventing yourself constantly. She had no idea that the internet would come along. She had some idea about computers (my dad was an early, early computer guy).

But you know what? Most days, I still wake up, excited to get down to my computer and to sit and write on my book. Not every day is a writing day. But most of them are. And most days, it is a wonderful part of the day, to lose myself in the words and the worlds I create, to invent fun adventures for my made-up characters to experience. Most of the time, the best part of writing is still what five-year-old Mette thought it would be. So I guess she was pretty smart, after all.

My Daily Word Count

I tend to write 1500-2000 words an hour when I’m working on a new draft. I don’t think of this as particularly fast. It is about the same speed that I started writing twenty years ago when I wrote my first novels as an aspiring writer. I can’t write at that speed for very long (limit of 2-3 hours per day). If I press myself too hard, it tends to backfire on me because then I won’t be able to write at all for days on end because my creative brain is exhausted and needs to rest before it will produce any more words for me.

If you don’t produce this many words an hour, though, that doesn’t mean anything about you as a writer. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never make it. It doesn’t mean your career will struggle. It may only mean that you have a different writing strategy than I do. I know many writer friends who write only 500 words an hour and who spend many more hours a day writing than I do. Some of them are more successful than I am and publish more books a year than I do (not that this is the measure of success as a writer).

A lot of us writers tend to spend too much time worrying if our process is “right” or not. While I have tweaked some small things about my process (I try to outline a bit instead of being a complete pantser now), I think most of it has remained the same throughout the many years I’ve been working regularly at writing. Your process may simply be your way of getting words to the page, and that’s all that matters. What works for you works for you.

Turning Off the Internal Editor

I’m always preaching to writers to turn off the internal editor that is so critical of every word and yes, this has been an important part of me learning to write more easily and to deal with anxiety of staring at the blank page. But it is also true that this isn’t the only way to write. Some writers are very successful at doing exactly the opposite of what I do. All I can say is, if it works for you, keep doing it. But if it isn’t working, maybe consider doing something different?

You don’t have to turn off your internal editor permanently. You’re not going to end up publishing bad writing (lots of people will stand in the way of that). You don’t have to show anyone anything that you’re not ready to show them. I’m very fierce about not showing first drafts of my work to anyone because I’m aware that when I’m writing a first draft, there are going to be a lot of mistakes. You can try out turning off your internal editor and then see if you liked how it felt when you wrote like that. You don’t have to keep doing it.

If you want to experiment, you might try spending one writing day with the rule that you won’t go back and change anything. You just keep moving forward. And then decide the next day, after you reread how bad it was. Worth going on or not?

You also don’t have to turn off your internal editor completely. You can choose to correct typos or smaller problems, without dealing with larger issue problems. Or you can write along until you realize there’s something big that you can’t write past anymore.

For me, I try to simply not pre-judge my work before I’ve had a chance to really see what’s going to happen. That often means finishing a first draft, but not always. There are situations where I abandon a project before I get to the end because I realize it isn’t working (or I don’t want to keep working on it for reasons of my own).

I also like to keep my writing feeling like “play” rather than “work.” That means that I get to experiment and fool around in genres I’ve never tried before, and make mistakes and not worry about it. I can do this precisely because no one else sees my first drafts but me. Sure, there are times when I send off things to an editor and end up being embarrassed. I don’t know that more anxiety during the writing process would stop that from happening, but it might.

My strategy is more about keeping the joy in the process alive than it is about not being embarrassed. And in general, I think that’s a good goal to have, in writing as well as in other parts of life. If you spend your entire life worried you’re going to embarrass yourself so you never try anything new, I think that’s pretty sad.

Work/Life Balance

The idea of “balance” is really popular right now, and people ask me a lot how I find a balance between work and life. First let me say that I’m very fortunate in that I am able to work as a writer full-time even if I don’t make enough money to live on because I am married to a partner who makes a good living and has health insurance. This is very different from most writers, and it means that my experience as a writer and my advice is tinged by these advantages.

That said, I think “balance” isn’t always possible. There are going to be times when you are pulled in one direction and simply can’t avoid being “off-balance” in other parts of your life. Your career may demand attention for a few weeks or months and other parts of your life may languish. Or your family may demand attention for some time and you will have to ask for extensions on deadlines and patience from the people in your career arena. There may be daily shifts on this issue, and that can be frustrating if you expect your schedule to have a similar balance from day to day.

You may at some point need to ask yourself if the choices you are making are the choices you want to be making. You may also need to ask if they are the choices you must be making, as well. Sometimes we need to draw lines in the sand and protect parts of our life from other parts of our life. And sometimes we just make a choice that we’re not spending that much energy on this anymore.

There’s no simple solution to the question of work/life balance that I can give you. I can’t say, work should always take exactly 50% of your time each day, and not a second more than that. The only question I can ask about this is—are you happy with the balance you currently have? If the answer to that is no, then only you can decide what kinds of changes you need to be happier.

Probably if you are asking this question, you’re not happy with the way things currently are. Possibly you feel trapped and unable to make changes, or worried about how asking for changes might rock the boat. These are genuine concerns, but asking is a fair thing to do.

And as a follow-up, maybe also ask what it is that you want to do in the future you’re not doing now. Just making time for those changes may not be the only problem. All the time in the world won’t get your writing in if you’re dealing with other problems.

Remember as you’re re-organizing your life and possibly your priorities, don’t forget to add in time for self-care, whether that takes the form of exercise, hobbies, or relaxing and watching Netflix. This is not a self-indulgence. It’s a necessary part of a real-life plan. If you skip this part of life, you’ll end up finding that a plan without it isn’t sustainable and make backfire by making you ill enough you’ll wish you found time to create a better self/others balance.

Write Brain #45

Do you have a nasty chorus of disappointed, jeering voices in your head while you try to create? I do, too.

http://writebrain.libsyn.com/write-brain-45-the-chorus

So Lucky

It annoys me when people say, “Oh, you’re so lucky” about being a published author. This didn’t happen to me by accident. I didn’t win the lottery. Luck is involved, yeah, but not the way they think.

I was unpublished for 5 yrs before I got my first very modest contract. I wrote 20 novels in those 5 yrs. They were bad. Every day I woke up and tried to figure out how to get better. I accepted criticism and threw lots of words out.

I went to conferences, met people, and still got rejected. Because I was bad. And I was willing to do the painful work to become better. Then when the recession hit, I threw everything out again and reinvented myself.

Was there luck involved? Sure. I can tell you a few stories where I jumped the line here or there because of connections or being in the right place at the right time. But those were blips on the radar.

Most of learning to be a writer is humiliating. It’s accepting that you have to throw it out and start from scratch. It’s caring about details no one else cares about. It’s daring things no one else would write.

Write Brain #44

On Write Brain this week, 21 Reasons You think You Don't Have Time to Write (that have nothing to do with actually having time to write):

http://writebrain.libsyn.com/write-brain-44-21-reasons-you-think-you-dont-have-time-to-write

On Rejections

When I was starting out as an author, I believed absolutely that I just needed to write better to get a publishing contract. I wasn't interested in scams to be published if I paid money and I wasn't interested in local publishing houses. I had my eye on the big prize and I was convinced if I worked hard enough, I'd make it.

There are a lot of good things that came out of my determination to work hard and just throw myself at my dream, writing 6 novels a year and editing and polishing the best of them. I admit, I tended to shelve manuscripts that got more than 10 rejections. Maybe this meant that I didn't have enough confidence in my work, but I don't think so. I had enormous confidence in my potential future. I look back sometimes and am embarrassed at how confident I was in my trajectory. But I tended not to put all my hopes in one basket. If one manuscript wasn't working, I had a couple dozen other ideas I was convinced were better, so I just had to get to those.

Looking back, I'm a little tired at my sheer output of words during this time period. I'm also amazed at the confidence which I somehow have lost as a published author. I've had one really great success commercially and I don't really believe I'll have another, and I struggle every day to convince myself there's a reason to keep working at it, even so.

There's a thread going on Twitter right now about people who persevered and ignored rejections and had amazing success despite all that. I don't think I ever had an experience like that. The books I wrote before the one that was accepted were, well, bad. I wouldn't want to try to publish them. And I've written plenty of stinkers since then, as I try things out and they turn out unsuccessfully.

I guess what I'm saying here is that sometimes rejections are right. Ultimately, you're the one who has to decide. But one book not being publishable doesn't mean that you as a writer don't have a future.

Write Brain #43

Have I talked recently about my meditation practice? This has helped me so much to deal with anxiety and the gremlins authors have to deal with daily in addition to normal anxiety. I spend time letting myself unwind from the day and feel my feelings, even if I have no plan to act on them. I think of 3 things I'm grateful for and 1 thing I'm proud of myself for doing. I invite my besties (friends and family) into my space with me. Then I visualize an experience with God and let something special happen there.

http://writebrain.libsyn.com/write-brain-43-meditation

Write Brain #42: A Hard Year

This is me being honest about some of my physical and emotional challenges this year.

http://writebrain.libsyn.com/write-brain-42-a-hard-year

Books Read in July 2018:

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

American Street by Ibi Zoboi

Jade City by Fonda Lee

Lies Jane Austen Told Me by Julie Petersen Wright

Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowall

How the Light Gets In by Keira Shae

These were all great books in different ways, but I'm going to recommend The Calculating Stars here. It's kind of a cross between The Right Stuff (female version) and Hidden Figures. So much fun!

Write Brain #41

Today's Write Brain podcast is about how to survive in a world where your work isn't valued.

http://writebrain.libsyn.com/write-brain-41-valuing-yourself-and-your-work

18 Excuses Not to Write

I wrote a post a while ago (21 Reasons You Think You Don’t Have Time to Write) that is basically a list of excuses writers make up about why they don’t want to write and call it “not having time to write.” Since I wrote that post, I’ve ended up seeing a LOT more reasons creep up that writers use to tell themselves they can’t write. I feel like one of my jobs is to call out other writers on this and remind us all that they are, in fact, excuses. We don’t want to write because of one basic thing: writing is hard. And writing is hard in a way that other things aren’t hard. Writing makes us vulnerable in ways that all the other things you do before writing don’t. But please take a moment to look that reality square in the face. Writing is hard.

And now, for your excuses:

1. I might get sued.

2. My parents will get mad if I write about them.

3. My friends will see themselves in my books.

4. My family will resent me if I get published and they don’t.

5. This isn’t the right time in my life for me to work on a book.

6. I don’t know if this is the right book.

7. I don’t have the skills yet to write the book I want to write.

8. I need to do research for a few years first.

9. I need to get a degree/take classes first.

10. I need to wait for my kids to grow up.

11. I have to focus on my day job right now.

12. I’m writing books for a commercial audience now.

13. I need to “feel” ready to write.

14. I want to have a guarantee that whatever I work on will sell.

15. I need an outline first.

16. I need to figure out who my characters are first.

17. I need to do worldbuilding first.

18. I’m still trying to decide between my ideas.

All of these really boil down to one thing: you want the writing to be less hard—that is, you want to be less vulnerable when you write. You want some guarantee that you won’t be hurt by the writing, that you won’t feel scared when you write. And let me just tell you right now that the only guarantee I can ever give you about writing is that it will always hurt and you will always feel scared. Always.

Vampires in the Temple now out!

The prophecy in Vampires in the Temple that motivates much of what goes on behind the scenes is this:

"She said that the day would come when the children of God are gone astray and only one can turn them back to the true path. He who speaks with lips of blood and teeth like a wolf’s, who is both beast and man, will be the guide into the reign of the Son of Man and the new, second world of peace and love.”

https://www.amazon.com/Vampires-Temple-Mette-Harrison/dp/1948218046

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