Seven Things You Must Avoid If You Want to Write

These three books are on sale right now. THE MARK OF THE TALA, the book that started it all, first in The Twelve Kingdoms series. Also THE PAGES OF THE MIND, my RITA® Award-winning novel, which kicks off a new phase in the overall series, and PRISONER OF THE CROWN, first in a stand-alone spin off trilogy, The Chronicles of Dasnaria. If you've been thinking about reading my books or this series, it's a great time to start!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week regards the writer's Seven Deadly Sins: the list of things you MUST avoid if you want to finish a project on time. Of course, if you're supposed to be writing, and you're reading this, you've already broken three of mine. Oops. But never fear! There is still hope for you. Read on.


1.  Avoid the internet, full stop. 

We all know this, right? And in a different world, we could avoid the time suck and distractions of the internet entirely. But with so much tied to the internet - from our phones to messages to mail - it's not viable to ignore the internet entirely. There's always the cabin in the mountains, but people still want to that you haven't been eaten by a grizzly bear.

2. If you must internet, avoid social media.

So, if you do have to check something connected to the internet, don't open Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. I disable my notifications (which they really hate and are always messaging me to change) so I only see that stuff if I actually go to the site. That takes some willpower, yes, but nothing like what it takes to break free of the gravitational pull once I do look. 

3. Stay away from click bait and rabbit holes (like this).

When I inevitably see an internet something, I have to exercise additional will power not to click on links. Remember: they're designed to make you WANT to click. (I made this post title click bait on purpose to illustrate the point.) Once they have your attention in their greedy clutches, they use all sorts of tricks to keep you there and spiraling ever downward. Best not to look in the first place. If I see something I really want to know about, I save the link. 

4. Prioritize your work over peopling.

There's a good reason so many writers are introverts: because they find it easier to avoid peopling. Even then, however, socializing can really disrupt a writing schedule. For me, I have to block out more time to write than I use actually writing. I need time to settle in, to ramp up, to take breaks. People who don't write rarely understand this. They also don't understand the trancelike focus writing requires and that their "one quick question" can derail a writer for hours.

5. Ignore people who don't (or won't) get it. 

Which is why you have to draw a bright, hard line for the people in your life. Do whatever it takes to get them to understand and respect your writing time. If they still don't get it? Well, I'd venture to say that we don't need people in our lives like that. A hard stance, I know, but if they won't respect your passion and livelihood, what exactly DO they add to your life?

6. Kick other people out of the room.

Not physically, because we did this in #5, right? These are the people in your head who like to yammer on about what you're writing. Some might be positive influences. Others might be severely critical. There's always someone yelling about what you CAN'T POSSIBLY DO. How can a person write in all that noise??? That's right, we can't. So kick them all out and enjoy the blessed silence.

7. Acknowledge fear and let it go.

I have a sign over my desk that says, "What would you write if you weren't afraid?" Sometimes when I tell people this, they reply that they're not afraid of anything. Bully for them. Also, I don't believe them. Any time I worry about how something I write will be received, that's fear. Ignoring that concern does nothing. Instead, whenever I fret over something in a story, I try to acknowledge that fear, look at my poster, and then write what I would if that worry had never occurred to me.

If I can avoid these pitfalls, I just might get my book finished on time. 

Fear the thing, and make your character do it anyway

The thing on my mind is fear.

I'm staring out the wide balcony sliding doors at the summer-sleeping peak at Crested Butte. It knifes the sky, brittle-looking and sharp. An old avalanche or maybe erosion has created a soft bump on one side halfway up, and my guess is that this is where most winter skiiers get their thrills.

But then there are the others.

On the edge of knife's blade, a discernible path carves its way from sharp tip to hilt. It snakes through tall aspens and at times it looks to be almost completely vertical, a fierce, blinding drop through white with sudden death-fingers of hazards grasping at your skis.

I would never even ride the ski lift that scales that peak -- my kids went up the lift yesterday and report back that it was as harrowing as it looks. (Also way fun, they giggle, for they are crazy. I get a spine-shudder just thinking about them up there, even with Dad white-knuckle holding them onto the lift.)

But not even those fearless smallfolk would ski down the steep path. They aren't that crazy.

However, I would totally send a character down it. Face-chapped, sun-blinded, and chased by bears. Hell yeah I would. That scene would totally rock!

Stories are a writer's -- and reader's -- secret cheat, a way for a sometimes-scared-of-toast soccer mom to experience a visceral thrill like that ski path.

And that oft-heard wisdom about fearing a thing but doing it anyway? Is not my mantra. Instead I prefer this version: fear the thing, but make a character do it anyway.

Because authors may be just a touch evil.

Is Fear Holding You Back in Your Writing?

Today is the very last day to catch the AMID THE WINTER SNOW anthology. After today it goes off sale and the stories will only be available as stand-alones.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is Our Favorite Motivational/Inspirational Quote.

Mine is so beloved that I have it hanging over my desk. Let me all-cap it for you.

WHAT WOULD YOU WRITE IF YOU WEREN'T AFRAID?

Any time I hesitate while writing, I look at that. And, liberated, I plow forward.

Now, sometimes when I talk about this, people tell me they aren't afraid of anything, certainly not in their writing. Which is fabulous, I guess.

(Really, I don't believe them.)

It's human nature to be afraid. Fear is a protective instinct that kept us from being munched by tigers back in the day and keeps us in the clear with the IRS now. Being afraid of the right things is healthy.

And I'm not talking about gibbering terror. I mean things like being nervous about walking down that skeezy looking dark alley or hesitating over a funky-smelling leftover from the fridge. Those things are warnings to think twice.

The problem is that we become conditioned to hesitate over social gaffes, too. After all, on an instinctual level, being outcast from the herd means the wolves can get us. In the age of social media, we worry about reactions from other people from sneering reviews to mass outrage.

Some of that is important. We need to observe our own biases and review what our privilege leads us to unthinkingly do and say. But that's for a later stage of the work - for review and thoughtful revision.

Before that, we owe it to ourselves and our creative process to disengage from caution and hesitation, to write what comes out. To write what is in us and wants to be spoken.

Write with courage and boldness, always.

Why You're Not Writing

Just a little blue heron for you today.

Full disclosure: This week's question was mine. That's because so many people tell me they want to write a book but they have no idea where to start. Or that they actually started the book and then read one on the same subject that was so good and they could never, ever do that well so they quit and gave up writing. I have an email file full of responses bleed pain all over my Outlook folders from people who knew what they wanted but believed themselves inadequate to the task of going and getting what they wanted.

Most of these people are women. (I did ask guys, too, I swear! But guys mostly denied every wanting to write books. Of the few who responded with wanting to write, every last one had also given up.)

So. Why aren't these people writing that book?

1. Because they're confused about what writing is.
Those of us who DO write have come to figure out that it's a multiphase process that in its first stage requires you to regress to your earliest and lamest excuse for language in order to get the bones of a story on a page. Don't believe me? Someday we'll auction off sneak peeks at a couple of my first drafts. (The price of my humiliation will be high.) They only barely qualify as language. Most of it has no caps and no punctuation. They're heavy on 'I know what I meant, even if no one else does.' That draft gets edited into something more mature. That draft goes to beta and then gets rewritten again . . . So yeah. The people notably NOT writing thought they could sit down and be, if not brilliant, at least understood from the moment their fingers touched a keyboard. They were deeply disappointed in themselves when that didn't happen. I send these people to Julia Cameron The Artist's Way - something that will ease them into viewing writing as a process.

2. They're comparing their raw drafts to someone else's finished product.
Most of us have been there. Let's pretend I was working on an 'an alien comes to earth and gets hooked up with a group of kids' story. And then ET came out. On the big screen. With a John Williams score and cinematography that plucked every emotional string I had and a few I didn't know I had. Where do you suppose that alien story *I* was working on went? Right. Straight under the bed. Get it back out. Write that alien. Write those kids. Ya know. If the plot is too much like ET, change it up. But your telling of the alien stranded on earth is going to be different because of your voice - that's what readers buy. Oh! You thought it was the story? Or your lovely prose? Nope. Not saying those things don't help - but no one cares if there's a typo on page 612. Your readers care whether your story connected with them emotionally. Did it make them feel anything? If yes, you win. If no, well, you won't likely sell many copies. Readers pay you to make them feel something. Lots of writers who write about writing address this. So I hand over my copies of Anne Lamott, and Stephen King.

3. They're afraid.
We live in a society that demands there be a right answer and a wrong answer. It is the basis of our educational system. It's etched pretty deeply into our psyches when we're young. Most of us have a dreadful relationship with failure. No matter how many inspirational memes we paste on the mirror telling us that failure means we're learning, we've internalized the message that failure means we're bad human beings. Even how we talk about it brands US as failures rather than our endeavors. (We say "I tried and failed" rather than "I tried and the thing I tried failed.") Writing fiction, by definition has no right and no wrong. There's only a story to be told. That's stepping pretty far outside societal conditioning there, pal, you sure you wanna leave the pavement that way?? So that aspect is scary enough. Then you have to deal with the fear of spending all that time and all that effort only to have everyone hate what you did. Or worse yet, roundly ignore it. Those things are pretty fail-y, aren't they? And that kind of perceived rejection is mighty threatening to a social beast like humans. I honestly don't have resources to offer on that one. Nike ads notwithstanding.

If you have any suggestions for assuaging or coping with that fear, I'd love to hear it. A couple of the women have glorious minds and amazing stories to tell. I'm invested in not letting the stories die with them.