Category: Musings

Musings

Weekly Musing: Today Was a Good Day

DH Hanni

I prefer good writing days to bad ones. So what do I define as a good writing day? A good writing day is one where the ideas, the characters, the dialogue, all seem to come together without much thought. There’s a sense of freedom and it is incredibly energizing. You’re working but it doesn’t feel like work. Nothing is forced onto the page.

A bad writing day for me consists of forcing thoughts onto the page just for exercise. Not that that is a bad thing. Writing something, anything, each day is great practice and if what I wrote is crap it can be fixed later. No, a bad writing day is the feeling your brain has slowed down and you are slogging through extra chunky peanut butter. Everything just feels so wrong.

The past couple of months have seen more mediocre or bad writing days than good. I struggled with the ideas were there but the words failed to materialize appropriately on the pages. Stories I’d written felt ‘off’. The stories were weak. The characters weren’t compelling. Even after revisions, it just wasn’t right. Experiments instead of blowing up like the wrong chemicals mixed in a chemistry lab, instead fell flat on the floor.

It was really discouraging. Too many bad writing days piled up causing me to second guess each sentence. I valued the stories written less and less.

Yet I knew I had to plug along.

When I have a good writing day I find there’s no initial fretting if what I just wrote is good or bad. I don’t care because the joy of writing has taken over. Creativity has spilt out; unleashed, raw, and authentic.

Over the last few weeks things started to turn around. Finding anthologies and contests which looked interesting has helped me have more pleasant writing days. Picking anthologies with themes that would challenge my mind and abilities has been fun. For example, composing a story entirely through dialogue with no speech tags (i.e. ‘he said’, ‘she said’) was a fun and exciting exercise. While winning or at least placing in this particular contest would be awesome, the biggest kick was how much fun I had. Not only did I push myself to write a story entirely in dialogue, I also attempted humor, something I think believe one either has an ear for it or not. I was fortunate to be able to submit it to my writers group before entering it and the response was positive. A nice little extra pep in my step I must admit.

A good or great writing day leaves me in a much better mood. That’s not to say when I’m struggling that I let it turn me into a complete sourpuss, but it does affect me. I find myself thinking more about what I feel was bad product and how to fix it. If I’m having a good writing day I don’t automatically think what I’ve written doesn’t need to be fixed, it certainly does require revising, but I feel the initial quality is better. I believe it goes back to that rush of unrestricted creative energy. It carries over into other aspects of my life.

So, yeah, today was a good day.

Musings

Weekly Musing: Don’t Feed the Gremlins

DH Hanni

Gremlins. Demons. Inner critic. Trolls. Whatever you call it all writers suffer from some sort of self-doubt. That annoying, nagging voice that does nothing but kill productivity and attempts to murder creativity. I refer to mine as gremlins and I like to think of them as resembling what happens to Gizmo if you feed him after midnight or get him wet. Yeah, that’s what sits on my shoulders whispering acid into my ears and scratches at my legs and arms. I hate those things and wish I had a flamethrower to incinerate them. Yet if I did get rid of them, they’d come back like a sequel.

They come to me at all stages of writing and on days I’m struggling with finding just the right words. I’ve had them pop up as I do research. They love that stage. Jumping around questioning me about the time period, is that where I really want a character to be from, look like, and dress. They pop up during just brainstorming. Their favorite phrases are “Um, that’s your idea? That’s crap! No one wants to read that!” As I start a rough draft, they dance around second guessing word choices, the story itself (again), dialogue, and did I mention the story?

But that’s just the beginning. There have been many, many days when I have been editing my work, the time you need your inner critic, when the gremlins start becoming destructive. Their words go beyond constructive criticisms to berating my abilities and dreams. These are the most frustrating and upsetting times for me as a writer. If I can’t figure out how to contain the gremlins, things can quickly spiral downhill.

So what do I do with deal with these bastards? The first thing I try is to refer to my list of 13 Commandments. It used to be 10 then became 12 and recently ballooned to 13. I need a lot of self-reassurance. These help remind me that what I am experiencing is temporary and will go away.

If that doesn’t work, then I turn to my spouse and vent to him. Since he’s not a writer, he doesn’t quite understand why I go through these phases and as frequently as I do but he does his best to be supportive through listening. Unfortunately I can’t ever promise him this will be the last time.

And sometimes the best thing for me is to just let the gremlins come and do their thing until they tire themselves out. I don’t mean to suggest I actually listen to them. What I mean is I allow them to talk but instead of fighting back, wasting all my mental energy, they are given time before (hopefully) slinking away.

Yet even though I know all writers suffer from gremlins, demons, whatever, I still think I can somehow prevent their appearance. I’ve always had a philosophy of learn from other people’s mistakes. That hasn’t worked with my writing gremlins. I can read articles and interviews by fellow writers on how they deal. None of them have ever mentioned how to get rid of them because there is no way to get rid of them. No matter what level of personal success a writer enjoys, the gremlins are never satisfied so don’t feed them and don’t encourage their greedy appetite.

Musings

Weekly Musing: How May I Help You?

DH Hanni

Writing, like any other career, has lots of information and resources designed to help. Information about the mechanics of writing, quotes from famous writers to help motivate and inspire, writing prompts for when creativity is low, etc. Various types of software, books (a gazillion it seems), websites (gazillions raised to the 10th power), and people are available for writers at any level. Since I consider myself a green writer, I’ll only list those resources I’ve found helpful so far for someone at my experience level.

People – One of the biggest sources of help for me has been other writers. Being part of my local writer’s group has helped my writing tremendously in the few months I’ve been attending. It’s a great mixture of published authors, those close to making the leap into publishing, people writing for fun, and optimistic beginners. The group works because of the supportive but honest environment. It’s also been a great information hub for informative books on all aspects of writing from The 10% Solution to character motivation and goals. And then there are the wonderful discussions about books read, favorite authors, and just life in general.

Another group that has been extremely helpful to me has been the local chapter of the PNWA. Each month we meet to discuss a variety of topics from character archetypes to upcoming conferences and to celebrate our successes. This group has provided me a much more formal type of education set in an informal atmosphere and also gives a glimpse into the career of a published author.

Websites – This is a tricky one for me. About 2 years ago when I more heavily considering becomes a writer I went overboard, I think, with bookmarking every website related to writing. But this year I’ve noticed I’ve become pickier about which websites I find useful.

The websites I keep going back to are Writer’s Digest (which I also subscribe to their magazine), Author Magazine , GoodReads, CritiqueCircle(I submitted work here first before joining my local writers group), and WritingForums. GoodReads I go to log what books I’m reading, write a review after I’ve finished reading one, and to see what other people are reading. I enjoy CritiqueCircle because of the daily quote they have as well weekly polls. The other websites I go to because of great information and that connection to other writers.

I’m also using a variety of websites like the local library, Amazon, foreign libraries, and museums for my research. Too numerous to list but as a beginning writer, these have been great tools for me.

Books – Oh boy, where to start on this one. There are the basics every piece of writing advice I’ve ever gotten have recommended: On Writing by Stephen King, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, The 10% Solution, a good dictionary, thesaurus, and recently, a good synonym/antonym book.

In addition I’ve started a small collection of books on plotting, writing a novel, character development, a thesaurus filled with unusual words, books to help describe emotions and character traits, and a book to help flesh out descriptions in general. I plan to add more books as I pinpoint deficiencies in my own writing.

Software– This is one area I don’t use a lot of specially designed for writers software. I’ve heard of Scrivener, StoryCraft, MasterWriter, and others but those seem be above my current level of experience and goals. At this point, I’m content to use Word but I’m open to trying software that will make my life better.

What I’ve been using the last few weeks that is fun and helpful is EverNote. I’ve tried using OneNote and found it cumbersome. EverNote is great for me because I can ‘clip’ pictures from websites, individual webpages, as well as search terms I’ve entered in. Although I haven’t needed this function yet, I can also search everything I’ve already got saved. EverNote stores this information into different workbooks.

Another neat feature is I can insert notes into these notebooks. EverNote has been awesome to get a visual of whatever research I’ve collected and allows me to brainstorm. With saving search terms I’ve entered into Bing or Google, it makes it so much easier for me to go back to something. Personally it is beneficial to me to have a visual of a place or article of clothing so I can describe it as best I can. In the past, if I’ve found a picture, I could never remember the correct phrase to bring up the picture again. Thus the visual is gone.

Finally, a piece of software I’ve discovered recently is Google Earth. I stumbled upon this via an article I read by a historical fiction author who mentioned using Google Earth. He used it to get an overall view of an area he was writing about. He could zoom onto streets, jot down street names, and compare the current streets with historical documents to see if they were around in the time period he was interested in. If they were, then he could see exactly how streets intersected thus lending more authenticity.

What’s really slick about Google Earth is you can click on a city and get directed to Wikipedia with info about the city. What’s also nice for me since I need visual points of reference is I can map out the distance between two towns and see what the terrain looks like. This is valuable when terrain and weather will play a significant part of your story.

These are just a few of the resources I’ve found helpful so far and I’m constantly discovering more. When I first started writing, I had no clue how much information was out there. It’s still quite a bit to take in and I suffer frequently from information overload. While I’m getting better at weeding out what is useful the biggest challenge for me is getting my hands on those resources which are valuable for a historical fiction writer.