A Peaceful Pause

 This Week's Topic: On My Mind, the Winter Edition

It's the time of year when I give myself permission to not write, to pause marketing analysis, and to back off ad management. There's no guilt for missing word-count goals. No stress over skipping editing pages. My book discounts and winter ad campaigns were launched at the beginning of the month and are slated to run through the end of January (yes, I do winter campaigns versus holy day campaigns).  I check my sales mostly because it's a habit and not because I will do anything to adjust campaigns.

When writing full-time--or any type of self-employment--we often forget to give ourselves permission to take a break. As creatives, it's imperative we step back, step away, and step into a place of regeneration and relaxation. Too many of us attempt to keep our work schedules during times of the year that we know will demand a lot of us outside our fictional worlds. Whether it's family obligations, religious observations, charity deliverables, or community interactions, the end of the calendar year is exceptionally taxing. Fighting the inevitable isn't worth my health or my sanity. Thus, I give myself permission to set aside my writing--both the creation and the business--to participate in the season of giving. Giving my time, my emotion, and my cooperation to those who've supported me throughout the year. 

Now, now, I don't give away all my time. I still maintain my restful hours. I even claim a few extras. Because, as stimulating as it is to reconnect with loved ones, it's also exhausting. This recluse can only handle so much of...people.

This winter, dear readers, I wish you the serenity of a peaceful pause.

Me and the Rise of Romantasy

 A weird thing about me: I'm always a bit ahead of my time. I don't know why this is, but it's been true all of my life. And it's not nearly as cool as it sounds (if it does sound cool). In truth, it's not a great thing at all, because it means I'm never in the full swing of the cultural zeitgeist. I'm the odd duck, the one not marching along with everyone else. 

Many of you have heard these stories of my trajectory (which implies a straight course and steady momentum which would be entirely incorrect). In summary:

1. No one knew how to market the weird cross-genre stuff I was writing, starting back in 2007ish.
2. Catherine Asaro told me to keep going and just know that writing cross genre would be like wading through hip-deep snow.
3. Agent at a conf in 2010 told me my work fell in the cracks between genres. I cried. Friends dubbed me "Crack Ho."
4. I didn't know I was writing Fantasy Romance until Carina Press took a chance on a crazy, cross-genre kid and published my books under that genre label.

Fast forward to today and the coining of the term Romantasy.

A number of readers have contacted me recently, having just encountered the term, largely via the new Goodreads Choice Awards category. I'm not sure who coined the term, but the portmanteau of Romance + Fantasy has now come to encompass Fantasy Romance and Romantic Fantasy. This has been occurring first in the Indie spaces and now is moving into traditional publishing as they catch onto the trend. Just last February - on Valentine's Day - Devi Pillai, Publisher at Tor, the notable publisher of science fiction and fantasy (SFF), announced that they'd created a new imprint: Bramble. Monique Patterson, Editorial Director at St. Martin's Press, moved over to head up Bramble, which will be SFF + Romance.

In very cool news for me, Monique was featured in Publisher's Weekly Notables of 2023 and namechecked me! (Along with my friend and colleague, Amanda Bouchet.) Monique said:

Romantasy may be the shiny new portmanteau on the block, but the fusing of speculative fiction and romance, Patterson notes, is nothing novel. She points to series by such authors as Amanda Bouchet and Jeffe Kennedy that would likely be categorized as romantasy now, but came out before the term was coined. It was tough putting out such books in years past, but they “would probably do wonderfully now,” she says.

Isn't that cool? I was so pleased to be mentioned in this context. From Crack Ho to Trailblazer! 

Ain't that just the way it goes?

Websites as Crutches

For the most part, I aspire to keep away from distractions. However, I find that good ambient sound works well for creating a cone of privacy around me while I'm writing. Especially when there are noise cancelling headphones involved. Therefore, I usually have YouTube up in the background. I'll run 3+ hour dark scifi, dystopian, or horror ambient tracks. I have specific needs for those - they need to run long and not allow ads. They can't have a ton of melodic line. These things are more a vibe than they are music, and they're just enough to keep my critical brain busy and out of the way of drafting while they also provide cover for the other noises of the household.

I'm a big fan of Wordhippo.com for word finding. My rule for this is that I must open and close the browser window for every single look up. It's an attempt to keep me from sheering off of making words with rando look ups. Some days, I don't open the site at all. Other days, I may need a little mental jog or two. Those days, I need to find just the right word before I can unclench and move on.

My final favorite website while writing is a website for writing. Consider this my ongoing plug for 4theWords.com. Timed writing, gamified, stripped down to a basic text editor so I can't get too precious about how stuff looks while trying to get x amount of words before time runs out. It's a great place to fast draft and a great place to write about writing. It's a perfect venue for doing a bunch of the prework of writing - compiling research / noodling how that research impacts plot and characters, getting characters hashed out, getting GMCs worked through, etc. I'm on the site every single day.

Once I have a draft, no matter how skeletal and bloody, I shift out of websites into Word. Edits and rewrites happen with fewer website interruptions. By the time I'm in edits, I pretty much know where we're going and how we're going to get there. I no longer need to anesthetize the critical portions of my brain like I do with drafting.  Until that point, though, websites are my crutches, and I lean on 'em.

Ugh

 

I’m sick, so this is what you get. Every inch of my body aches, but this fur ball still found me and hasn’t left my side…maybe he’s taking advantage of my bed bound state, but I appreciate it.

Inigo Montoya and My Favorite Website

 This Week's Topic: What Website Do I Use The Most While Writing?

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.--William Goldman, The Princess Bride

I am guilty of this far more than I care to admit. There's a point at which contextual clues fail, and my vocabulary is filled with those results. Turns out, close is not actually good enough when one is the author instead of the reader. My greater foible is homophones. Greater still, straight up bad spelling. Then there's the whole When to Hyphenate issue. We won't discuss the CapItaLiZatIon iN FanTasY chaos that gives grammarians GERD.

I really ought to send my copy editor an Inigo Montoya plushy. 

{sheepish}

Stay Offline While Writing!

 This week at the SFF 7, we're asking what is the website you use the most while writing?

I'm going to answer this a bit contrarily. While writing - that is, while drafting - I don't use any websites at all. I do my best to stay entirely offline while drafting. Anything I feel I might need to look up, I put in square brackets and save for the revision stage. On my most recently completed book, TWISTED MAGIC, I had nearly 200 square brackets when I stopped drafting and started revising, which was at about 75% through. 

(Sometimes I draft all the way to the end, then revise; with other books I stop at some point and go back to the beginning, revise from there, then go to the end. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Each book is different. But that's another topic.)

Now, when I'm revising the website I use the most is... Plain Ol'Google. 

(What a world we live in now, where I can write down Google search as an old-fashioned method.)

Now, my Google-fu is strong. I use [word] + etymology a lot to find better words for what I'm trying to say, or that word in another language. I look up specifics on things I want to research more. I look up names. I stay away from rabbit holes, even while revising. 

For me, the internet is anti-writing, so I steer clear. Maybe that's true for you?

Getting Unstuck

 

It happens. 

We all reach that point in the story where we feel stuck. For me, it often happens about halfway through the story. And right before the end. Often somewhere in the editing process as well. (It happens a lot.)

It's like the wheels turn into bricks, and the path turns to icy sludge.

And when that happens, argh. I want to set the pages or something on fire. But that is surprisingly not as effective at resolving the matter.

So how do I get unstuck? There’s no one guaranteed way, but here are a few of my favorites.  

Get Physical 

Physical fitness isn't precisely at the top of my task list when I’m in the middle of a deadline. But there’s little better than getting the blood pumping when the story won’t move. Often when my body feels slow and stagnant, it reflects in my writing, sometimes bogging me down even more. 

It doesn’t have to be a lot of activity. Sometimes a gentle walk suffices. 

In some cases when it’s a bad pain day and I need to get a lot more done, deep slow breaths help me clear my thoughts, even if it isn’t enough to resolve it. 

If you need more than that, meditation can also help. The Calm app as well as Headspace provide breathing tracks along with guided meditations to help, and K. A. Emmons provides guided meditations for authors on YouTube. (This is one of my favorites, but each one of hers I have tried has been lovely.)

Ask Someone You Trust for Their Opinion 

This works in two ways. Sometimes there are people in your life who understand what you’re working on and how to get yourself out of the mire. They may have good advice to share. In that case, asking for their opinion can lead to direct solutions.

And sometimes you have people in your life who will tell you what they think and, as soon as they do, you realize you know what it is you really want to do. If this is the case, remember to be respectful and courteous. Most will understand if you explain that other people throwing out ideas helps you spring off the initial concept to new ones as well rather than the implication that you don’t value their advice. (Having been on both sides of this, honesty helps so much and reduces the risk of hurt feelings.)

Mark Down the Motivations

I don't always outline (I adore the discovery process too much to be able to commit to much more structure than a rough outline that gets modified significantly as the story progresses). 

But when a story starts feeling like quicksand, one of the first things I check is whether I'm clear on the motivations of the characters. All of them. Even if they don't have a spoken line in the scene. And the motivations don’t even have to be big. But everyone always wants something.

One of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut quotes on writing refers to this situation: “Make your characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.”

Figuring out the motivations and marking them down on a scrap of paper can go a long way toward breathing new life into the scene and helping you know where to go moving forward. 

Approach It from Another Perspective 

Sometimes I feel stuck because I've started the scene at the wrong point or in the wrong POV. (I like to joke that I start every story two chapters too early or two chapters too late.) 

When that happens, the simplest thing I can do is just start rewriting a bit. I like to try starting the scene from another point or a separate character. As I write in third person deep limited POV, this requires that I consider the details that that character notices (sometimes I combine this with the motivation exercise above). Those added details often bring to light why the scene is not working or what is currently missing to make it stronger. 

Recognize It Might Be Part of Your Process 

Becca Symes often talks about questioning the premise and analyzing why we respond the way we do. In quite a few of her Quitcast videos on getting unstuck and the Stuck List, she discusses how sometimes it is just a part of the process for us to get stuck. Our minds are still working through the story, and really what we need is to just be stuck for a little bit.

While a little alarming to know that you can’t just blast through it, it is comforting to know that it may simply be a necessary stage for your mind to continue processing and refining the story before you can move on.

Feeling stuck happens to all of us. It may even be part of your process. Whatever the cause, know that this feeling and sensation won't last forever. So try not to worry. It may take multiple attempts or techniques to move past the stuckness, but eventually you will get unstuck. This is just a part of being an author. And sometimes it’s good just to know you are not alone. 

So what about you? Do you have any favorite techniques for getting yourself out of being stuck? 

Jessica M. Butler is a USA Today bestselling romantic fantasy author who never outgrew her love for telling stories and playing in imaginary worlds. She lives with her husband and law partner, James Fry, in

rural Indiana where they are quite happy with their two cats and all of the wildlife and trees.

You can find her at https://jmbutlerauthor.com/

Path Out of Stuck

Take it from someone who walked face first into stuck (that was really a kind of burnout I didn't know I had) and then flailed there for a very long time: There's a difference between stuck and burnout. You need to know the difference.

Stuck is frustrating. Stuck is scary. Stuck still has hope of breaking free. Stuck usually means something is wrong with the story somewhere (and that's fixable.)

Burnout is paralyzed. Burnout is numb. Burnout says 'I can't'. Burnout usually means something is wrong in your environment or possibly in your physiology. 

Burnout needs recovery time and effort and may require professional assistance either from a coach, a therapist, or a doctor. Stuck needs a little strategic psychology to pull you free of the mire and can usually be resolved within a few weeks. Burnout can take months or even years. 

Whether you're in burnout or whether you're stuck, the antidote for the poison is the same: So long as you say 'I can't', you won't. The only way out of stuck and out of burnout (eventually) is to begin asking 'how can I?' Example: Going from 'I can't make this work.' to 'How can I make this work?' It's not magic and it's not immediate. You have to ask the question and ask the question and ask the question. Then you have to sit and listen. Free write around it with no rules. Stream of consciousness write around 'how could I make writing work?' 'What would it look like to make writing work again?' 'What do I need in order to write again?' Just keep asking and keep noodling. Initially, the answers will all be I don't know. Then, one day, you'll get an outlandish, crazy idea. Mine was to get some plywood up into the attic and laying it down across the rafters so I could get a desk and plug up there as well as a little damned peace and quiet and solitude for writing. Living in Florida where attics are regularly a bajillion degrees made the idea unusable but it did start a protracted effort to find some privacy in an overcrowded house. It's s process that's still unfolding. Recovery is a process that takes a little self awareness, honesty, and a willingness to ask for help if it's needed.