The Place For My Writers Notes

Writer's Digest, December 2006, pages 37-39, has an article by Jordan E. Rosenfeld with the title, "The Novelist's Survival Kit." Jordan starts out with the suggestion that novel writing is like entering a new relationship -- scary, exhilarating, insecure, worrisome. However, he also points out that the major difference is that you control your novel. You create characters and change them, you manipulate the circumstances and plot, you decide everything (do I hear the twilight zone introduction somewhere in the background? We control the horizontal and vertical... :-)

But you need to be prepared for the first draft being less-than-perfect. Just as you don't get acquainted with a person completely instantly, the first run through of a novel is likely to have some rough edges. So how do you set yourself up and keep going? Jordan suggests a survival kit, building blocks, killing your critic, and beating procrastination. Let's look at each of these.

Survival Kit. This is your collection of things that help you feel prepared for the journey and keep you on the path. It starts off with blind faith: "Faith that you have something important to say, that your competent and capable of writing a novel, and if you don't begin now, then when?" He suggest two notebooks -- one small and portable, for jotting down inspirations and notes. The second is larger, and stays at your work place. This is for all the other details. Timelines, character notes, etc. (Some of us might use an electronic version of this!) Next, a reward system. Design it yourself, make it something that you enjoy, and reward yourself for sitting down to write, for completing chunks, for getting things done. Finally, a schedule. Set up times to work, and take it seriously.

Building blocks. Jordan suggests that the key to your novel is two things. 1. Plot: "a sequence of events with consequences that happen to your characters." You might use the narrative arc -- complication, crisis, solution. Complication: set up problems for the characters. Then add consequences and actions. Finally, work to a resolution and close. 2. Characters. You have to have people. You might want to start with a short biographical sketch of the main characters -- what do they look like, what do they want, what are they afraid of?

Killing your critic. Insecurities and criticism are likely to make you stop writing. Don't do it. Set your own goals and responses to the doubts and procrastination and self-criticism.

Beat procrastination. Resistance, tomorrow would be better, and so forth are sneaky and subtle. Some tricks to avoid waiting:

• Reduce research. A little bit of research goes a long way, but letting yourself chase down just a little more information can keep you from ever starting. Write down the questions, do the research when you have to or during your scheduled research time, but keep writing.
• Revision is for second drafts. Trying to get it perfect before you go on often means you never go on. Plan on revising later, and right now get the first draft done.
• Scene blocking. Pick a number between three and 10. That's your horizon -- the number of chapters or perhaps scenes that you're going to look ahead while you're writing. You need to think ahead and write down basic details to string a plot, but you don't need to know every detail of every piece of the whole story. So lay out enough to reach your horizon, then write that much, and then repeat.
• Quantity over quality. Give yourself a word count goal.

And keep writing.

original posting: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 09:24:01 EST

From Organize Yourself by Ronni Eisenberg...
(p. 6) "Some of the reasons people procrastinate are the following:

• They feel overwhelmed. This usually happens when there is an overload of information or too many details
• They overestimate the time needed. They think the task is too time-consuming, that it will take _forever_. A variation of this is thinking that they have forever to finish something.
• They'd rather be doing something else. Anything seems better than what awaits them.
• They think that if they wait long enough, it will go away. The project will be cancelled; the appointment postponed, and so forth.
• They want to do it perfectly. People often fear turning in a report or finishing a project because they worry about failing on 'judgment day.' They delay until the last minute, and then if it doesn't measure up, they say, "Oh, I would have done better if I'd had more time."
• They don't want to assume responsibility. After all, if they never complete the project, no one will hold them responsible.
• They fear success. If they complete something and succeed, whill they be able to continue to life up to that standard? How will others relate to them once they are successful?
• They say they enjoy the last-minute adrenaline rush. Often people feel that they do their best work 'under pressure.' What they fail to remember are the times when they had a terrible cold or there was a family emergency during the time they had intended to devote to the project."

Eisenburg goes on to suggest that you identify your reasons for procrastinating.

1. Which situations generally cause you to procrastinate? What types of situations? What price do you pay for the delay? When you finally do the work, what gets you going (deadline? reward? outside pressure?)
2. When you find yourself procrastinating about something specific, consider: What about this causes conflict for you? What are you avoiding? If you delay, what will happen? If the question really is _when_ to do it, ask yourself if it is worth paying the price of the delay?

(whoops, that wasn't the right one...let's try this one...)

How to be organized: in spite of yourself by Sunny Schlenger and Roberta Roesch

(this might be the one?) They list ten (10!) operational styles, five time, five space:

Time: hopper, perfectionist plus, allergic to detail, fence sitter, cliff hanger
Space: everything out, nothing out, right angler, pack rat, total slob

(darn, that's a reasonably good one too, but it isn't the one I was thinking of...I don't think I'm going to find it right now, so let's just yackity-yack about it, okay?)

Somewhere, someone had the notion that various people work best with various kinds of goal setting. Some folks thrive with deadlines...keep their feet to the fire and they love it! (not me, but I have known people who really did work best that way) Others prefer the slow steady drop of water, timing the minutes, hours, and days of their appointed rounds...i.e., give them a time-based schedule to keep, and they are steady workers putting in their hours. Yet others prefer piece-work thumping: setting a quota (words, pages, scenes, etc.) per (day|week|month) works well for them.

There may have been more variations, but those are the ones I remember: deadline, scheduled time each day, production quota per day.

I recommend contemplating your navel (being honest with yourself, maybe experimenting a bit--oh, and get the fuzz out, too) as a way to decide which one works for you. Don't dive into it, just consider which one you think works best, and try it for a while...if it doesn't seem to be working, switch!

I also strongly recommend giving yourself room--you need to slow down sometimes. You need to leave yourself the "breathing" times when you put the current piece on the back shelf and let the umbilicus that ties you to it fade away...so that you can look at it afresh and clean up those embarrassing blotches, confusions, and tangles that slipped in when you were too close to see them. You need to allow for Murphy--you thought you were going to work on this over the last weekend before you needed it? And your favorite relative just flew into town...

(interjectively, while contemplating the umbilical knotting, the omphalos around which the generations churn, consider this--time can be considered in many ways, including the notions of being late, procrastinating, etc., but also including the notion that you can neither gain time nor lose it--you are always at the present, not one second sooner or later. I.e., you have 24 hours every day at your disposal--but you can't squeeze one extra second out of that allotment nor can you force one extra iota of time into it to do something extra. So use the now well, but accept that you can only do so much...and don't forget to watch the clouds sometimes, as they dance for you! consider the metaphors of time, and which ones you choose to honor and obey.)

Or, of course, you could try something like this...

Delay of the Land

Procrastination is the game,
Dilatory takes the blame,
But speed kills,
haste makes waste, and
Time fled when you were
n't
having fun.

Don't kill time,
embrace it.

[well, that's helped me avoid doing whatever I was supposed to be doing for a while... hope it helps you, too :]