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How To Make Your Writing Habits Work For You

How To Make Your Writing Habits Work For You

Earnest HemingwayAs a writer it’s important to be true to yourself, both in what you write and how you write it. The most successful writing habits you can have are the ones that complement your natural proclivities in a productive manner. Just like exercising, writing requires you to establish routines that you want to engage in.

Last week I talked about the different types of writers. Lets take this one step further and consider how you can turn your personal style into a successful writing habit.

  1. Identify your style. Are you a Marathoner? A Waiter?
  2. Outline your writing goals. Do you want to write a book? Start a blog? Sell articles for cash?
  3. Calculate your resources. How much time do you have to commit to your writing goals? Do you need a certain environment to be productive?

Common Writing Pitfalls

The best piece of advice I can offer is this: set yourself reasonable goals. This is true no matter what style of writer you are.

If you want to write every day start with a modest word goal—I would suggest 500 words per day if you don’t write regularly already—and as you continue to meet that goal, start to raise it to the level that works best for you.

If you are driven to finish a project once you’ve started and ID with the Marathoner style of writing, don’t forget to eat something. Sleep. Walk around or do a sun salutation once an hour to keep the blood flowing. The last thing you want to do is burn yourself out before you can finish your writing project. Don’t forget, your brain runs on calories and your body needs good circulation to keep the creative juices flowing.

If you’ve ever told someone—or yourself—that you have to “wait for the mood to strike,” try challenging yourself. Start with short freewriting sessions, with or without your muse. Set a short timer and start writing, don’t let your fingers stop until the time is up.

If you work better with a clear deadline and would like to make some money with your work, consider freelance writing. There are many places online that post writing jobs—Yahoo’s Contributor Network and Elance.com are two good sources. If you are more interested in creative writing consider a writing challenge with a deadline and a support community, such as National Novel Writing Month.

Be Flexible

But what if you already know your own writing style and have an established writing routine, and it’s still not working for you? Routines are good but sometimes they can make you feel like you’re stuck in a rut.

Take a day and try out a new style. Take a day off, don’t write anything and read a book. Spend a week making short writing goals—even if they’re just 100 words per day—and challenge yourself to reach them.

In other words, shake things up! Try working on a non-writing project and give your brain a break. Just be careful that you don’t take a single day off and wake up four months later having not written a single word in the interim.

I think most successful writers will agree that the act of writing is a balancing act. Every author is going to have a different sweet spot. As a newish writer, it’s easy to be overambitious, but setting yourself smaller, achievable goals can help build your confidence as well as your “writing muscles.”

What’s Your Writing Style?

What’s Your Writing Style?

There is a lot of advice out there about how to write and how to establish “good” writing habits. But every writer is different, and no amount of good advice will help you if it doesn’t jive with your personal style. I can say with certainty that if you try to write in a manner that’s at odds with your natural inclination, you won’t succeed. You may have a little initial success but you won’t have longevity.

I’ve identified four types of writers and their writing habits. Which style fits you?


  1. Photo by Michael Gäbler
    The Sleepless Marathoner: “If I’m writing, I’m not sleeping.” When inspiration strikes, the sleepless marathoner doesn’t mess around. They start working on their idea almost immediately. They work on it obsessively. They work on it at all hours. They work on it when they should be eating or sleeping. They work on it exhaustively. Like the African Wild Dog, they run that book down for hours until it’s spent and finished.

  2. Photo by Marlene ThyssenThe Waiter:
    “I have to wait until I have inspiration.” This second style of writer tends to write irregularly, because they’re waiting for the right moment or for inspiration. I often hear these writers say that they have to be in the right mood to get any significant or productive writing done. They may start lots of projects but have difficulty finishing any of them because the “mood” changes. They may frequently re-write first chapters or start projects over and over. But for as long as the “mood” lasts, they can be very focused and productive.
  3. The Dailyer: “I write X every day.” X in this case can mean words, pages, scenes or chapters. I see this style most in published authors writing guest blogs on top tier writing sites and doing wide circulation Q&A’s. This type of writer sets a goal for themselves and meets that goal every day. There are two sub-categories to the Daily writer: low-volume and high-volume.

    1. palreyHigh-Volume:
      I’ve heard writer’s say they aim to write 10-20 pages a day. Does this sound like an insane number to you? Me too but I’ve seen a couple of writers do it during National Novel Writing Month. Stephen King says in his book On Writing that he writes 2000 words a day, six days a week. I also like to call these types of writers “job writers” because they treat their writing time like a full time job. They get up in the morning and write for 6-8 hours at least five days a week.This much writing may feel unnatural and does not suit everyone. Like a palfrey or gaited horse who uses a unique non-standard 4-beat gait to cover ground quickly, smoothly and for extended periods of time, the high-volume daily writer will set make large strides in their writing every day without straining themselves.

    2. Photo by Samuel BlancLow-Volume:
      These writers also write every day, or almost every day, but they have smaller daily word goals. They might try to write one scene every day or set a more modest word count goal such as 500 words. The key here is slow but steady progress.

  4. PuppyThe Deadliner:
    “I have to have a deadline.” It doesn’t matter if it’s an academic or work deadline, the deadliner finds it difficult, or even impossible, to get motivated to write without some type of reward. That reward may be a good grade or money. They need clear, well-outlined goals and someone to which they are accountable. This type of writer may be naturally good at writing but it probably isn’t their passion. It’s just a usable skill.

Once you identify the style that comes naturally, you can use it to work for you, whatever your writing goal. Next week I’ll talk about the pros and cons of each style and offer tips for writing productively.

Growing Up in Fandom Part II

Growing Up in Fandom Part II

Now that I’ve word vomited my intro to “fandom and fanfic” maybe I should get to the point of why I’m talking about it in the first place.

My path to becoming a writer is a little circuitous. I originally went to college to study Criminal Justice. I had ever intention to pursue a career in law enforcement. Two really painful years into my degree I moved back to my hometown and took a long hard look at what I was doing. I was miserable, I was bored, and I was flunking out of school. I had turned to World of Warcraft just to get away from the idiots in my program (oh, the irony right?) and I was literally a creative wasteland.

You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling
Image Source

About 9 months ago I cut off my WoW subscription and went strolling through the Inception Kink Meme looking for inspiration. I found a prompt I liked and started writing. It was the first serious writing I’d done in probably three years. Suddenly, a couple months later of small daily updates, I had almost 20k words of fic and a decently interesting and complex story. I had people reading it and following the story and commenting and telling me about how much I was jerking on their heartstrings with this story.

I realized something: I might be able to do more of this. I might actually be able to write something length, stick with it, and touch people with my writing.

As I compose this blog entry, I’m actually taking a short break from this very same WIP (I’ve been too busy working on my original fic Mages to finish it so far this summer which has left my readers hanging a bit, /facepalm).

So why do I still write fanfic even when I have several “real” (and I use that term loosely because I have complex feelings about what makes some real, whether it be art or writing or a day job) projects going on? It’s routed in why I write fanfic at all: it’s a creative brain break. There’s less pressure involved when I write fanfic, there’s the added bonus of instant gratification in the form of reader comments (I also find the author-reader relationship can be more intimate and a lot of fun in fandom), and finally, writing fic can be an excellent way to experiment with you writing. Because you aren’t being paid to do it, because you aren’t trying to market it to anyone other than yourself, you can take bigger risks. You can develop your writer’s “voice.” You can experiment with how you tell stories, how you construct stories. You can work out a lot of the kinks a writer encounters when they write, experiment, and get instant feedback on how other people think these techniques are or are not working.

Not to mention all the sex. All of the sex is a lot of fun to write too.

I think fanfic helps me remember why I write in the first place, because it’s fun.

~Lia

Growing Up in Fandom Part I

Growing Up in Fandom Part I

Fanfic get’s a bad rap.

I should go back, some of you reading this might not have a clue what I mean when I say fanfic or fandom or WIP or a dozen other terms so, crash course:

  • fandom: implies a community of people with similar interests, participating in fanac and interacting in some way, whether through discussions or creative works. The interaction may be face-to-face at gatherings such as conventions, or written communication, either off- or on-line.” source fanlore
    • I’ve always considered fandom so be mini “fan kingdoms” centered around a specific area of interest such as a movie or television show and encompassing all the people who take part in fannish activities (discussions, fanfic, fanart, meta, mixes, fanvids ETC)
  • fanfic: is a work of fiction written by fans for other fans, taking a source text or a famous person as a point of departure.” source fanlore
    • fanfic is essentially transformative fiction, using a common source material as a jumping off point, inspiration, setting etc

For more reading Fanlore.org is a pretty good fannish wiki. It was created and is maintained by the people at  the OTW ( a group of fans who run fan-based projects and outreach programs).

Now, as I was saying. I wrote my first short story with my mother’s help when I was six years old. I dabbled over the following years with writing little stories of dubious quality often on the back of church programs. When I was about 12 or 13 a friend’s parents introduced she and I to a movie. This movie was called Labyrinth, you’re probably heard of it 😉 I remember feeling incredibly sad and unhappy with the ending. I desperately wanted Sarah and the Goblin King to hook but because he was totally into her duh. Through a series of events I don’t remember now, another school friend passed me a note with a web address on it. That web address was fanfiction.net; suffice is to say I immediately ran home and wrote an alternative ending to Labyrinth to post to ff.net. The rest, as they say, is history.

Image Source

From then on I was a tiny school girl fic addict. I wasn’t a very prolific writer but participation in fandom kept me writing small (and terrible, I’ll admit it) short stories through my early years in high school.

So that being said, fanfic get’s a bad rap because there is a lot of bad fanfic out there. Stuff being written by young kids essentially (though also by older people) that’s underdeveloped, that’s childish and rough and being posted without editing or beta reading etc. I would argue that this isn’t altogether a bad thing, because fandom fosters these young, developing writers, and encourages them to keep writing and to write better and to challenge themselves. So ten years down the road they aren’t just writing terrible sloppy sailor moon or Labyrinth fic anymore, they’re writing fully realized and complex, engaging narratives.

Because the other side of the coin is composed of fanfic that is incredibly well written. There are several women in fandom whose writing I have followed for years because they did their time as terrible teenage writers and honed their craft into something sharp and beautiful. There are literally hundreds of fanfic writers out there who have day jobs, who don’t write professional (though they certainly could if they wanted to) but love fandom and therefore write just for the hell of it. For their own enjoyment and their own enrichment and because it makes them happy. And they write really really well.

I can be a bit stingy. I almost never buy a book brand new, I am a hardcore used bookstore goer. If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s spending $10 for a book that is badly written or boring. I hate to break it to you, but there are lot of books being actualfacts published (we’re talking paper and glue binding published) that are not well written. My predicament then is, why should I bother paying for actual kindling when I can get a very well-written story for free from a friend in fandom?

As I’ve gotten older (well, since graduating from my ultra conservative high school and moving out into the big real world) I’ve been increasingly more open. Open about my thoughts, opinions, personal philosophies and proclivities. In the last year I’ve been a lot more open to real life friends about my participation in fandom, honest about the fact that yes, I still write fanfic from time to time.

Like I said way back at the beginning of this post, fanfic get’s a bad rap. “Regular” people (should I call them fannish muggles?) know so little about fandom, all they get exposed to are the extremes: the extreme fans, the extreme stalkers, the extreme kinks, the extremely bad examples of fanfic. Their opinions are shaped by this exposure.

I won’t deny there is badfic out there, that there is a lot of badfic out there, in fact (heh, 50 Shades of Grey is, quite honestly, an example of badfic okay? Misrepresentation of the BDSM community aside, it’s a poorly written story much like it’s source material go figure). Badfic is not the only type of fic out there, and even badfic can be a stepping stone, a learning exercise for a developing author.

I refuse to be shamed into silence because I like geeky things or because I take part in online fannish communities.

Next time on Growing Up in Fandom: why I still dabble in fic writing

World building as an author

World building as an author

Spent most of this afternoon talking world building with a friend and fellow writer. It started as a discussion about how cities themselves are often central characters of urban fantasy and sort of spun out from there. My friend (J from here on out) has read more extensively in the Urban fantasy genre and had a lot to say re: examples in pubished fiction (and also managed to add about half a dozen new books to my “To Read” list) and it was a little humbling.
Our discussion really brought to light that world building is probably my biggest weakness as a writer. I’ve spent a lot of time writing in other people’s playgrounds, and my own personal tastes tend to find world building exposition dumps extremely boring, so I tend to avoid them in my stories. This can be good and bad, on the one had I dont tend to have long dragging places full of exposition, on the other hand it makes me wonder if I’m cheating my readers out of a fully realized experience.
I’m working on a list of things I want to go back and look at before I start the first re-write of Mages , so far that list looks something like this
  • Day trip to Seattle to physically scout the main locations mentioned in the book
  • map out werewolf pack hierarchies and territories in the city
  • finalize a mental headcanon about how magic works for mages vs witches vs gypsies and hammer out an internal logic
  • map out headcanon for how magic being public knowledge has influenced the development of the 20/21st centuries
It’s a little disheartening to see all the places the book needs to be worked on but at the same time I feel that if I take my own shortcomings seriously and work on making them less of shortcomings, I might actually come out of second draft with (overall) a much stronger story.
There’s that old saying, “Write what you know” and I tend not to buy into it much but I think there’s something to the idea “write what you like”. For me, it’s all about characters and their relationships, preferably driven by a good well thought out plot. When I approach a new story, I start with the characters. It makes sense that world building and plot are going to take some extra specific attention for me to get them right.
What attracts you to a story? Characters? Setting? Plot? The mystery?
My Life is Fueled by Coffee, let me tell you about it

My Life is Fueled by Coffee, let me tell you about it

I freely admit it: I am a true coffee addict. My day, productively speaking, doesn’t start until after I’ve had my first couple shots of espresso (or at the very least a cup of strong Irish Breakfast tea during the winter).

traveler's mugI used to work as a barista for an independent coffee roaster. I LOVED my job. I learned so much about coffee, met amazing people who took coffee as seriously as I did, and had what amounted to an all access pass to high quality, hand crafted espresso. Since I left that job to move across the state, I’ve struggled finding a good cafe to call my own. My last six months in Pullman, I did eventually develop a good raport with the baristas in our local Starbucks there (I know, I was shocked but these people actually COULD make coffee).

I recently moved back home to finish my BA at Evergreen and to start writing full time. We have a lot of local indie coffee shops in town but they are definitely not all created equal. It’s a delicate process finding a place that makes coffee to the standards I prefer and has a atmosphere and clientele I find creatively energizing. And it helps if they keep really late hours since my best work is done in the evenings 😉 I found a place that fits these bills. They’re a little expensive but I don’t actually mind paying a little extra for a place where I can sit and write unmolested and find mentally stimulating without being distracting.

The thing about caffeine addicts, when you need it to wake up, when you get the headaches from not having it, when your whole day starts with that first sip: if someone serves you something shitty it has the power to wreck your entire day. Yes, this happened to me this morning and no, I’m not quite over it. I thought blogging about, getting all my angry feelings and frustrations out would help flush the mental block it’s managed to create so I can actually get some work done today. My writing habits aren’t complicated. The fact is I get more work done when I’m working in a public space away from home, so I liked to go into a cafe in the evenings, buy a cup of coffee, and write my mandatory words for the day (anywhere between 1000-2000 words, which usually takes me about 60-90minutes).

It’s in the low-mid 80Fs today and I was craving something cold, blended and creamy so I went in and ordered a dirty blended chai. Mmm, a truly sinful indulgence. I paid $5.86 (with $.50 tip). I was handed something that more closely resembled dirty dishwater, and it TASTED like dirty dishwater too. To say I was upset it understating things. I didn’t yell, though I probably should have demanded a refund. I gagged about an inch of it down before I had to give up, left it on my table and left. I went home, pulled out a packet of Starbucks Via (those little instant coffee packets which aren’t GOOD but are palatable and have caffeine) and blended one up just so I could be awake enough to do anything.

I’ve managed to salvage my mood but this was a real blow to my schedule. I’ve managed no words and I wasted the last of this week’s spending money for nothing (I really do try to ration how much I actually spend on my coffee addiction since I’m technically unemployed right now).

I had an interesting conversation with a former classmate the other day about the “expectancy to tip” she encounters from baristas. I argued that making good coffee really is something that should qualify someone for tipping, that it’s something you should do when you get consistently high quality espresso. Is this terrible experience some sort of bizarre attack by karma? I’m not sure, lol.

Are there things that can make or break your day? Have you had exceptionally bad coffee (or restaurant!) experiences? On the flip side, have you had a barista give you something amazing and improve your entire day? I’d love to hear about it.

Mages & Werewolves, oh my!

Mages & Werewolves, oh my!

69000 / 80000 words. 86% done!

Just hit 69,000 words on the first draft of my Mages and Werewolves story. And yes, before you ask the Scrivener file is actually still titled Mages & Werewolves, oh my! because I’m still not 100% satisfied with my other working title (Bone and Blood, which my writing partner has pointed out could imply vampires, not something I want to really imply with this story!)

I’m still pretty blown away by this word count. I know in the grand scope of writing it’s actually not very impressive but for myself, it’s pretty damn monumental. Prior to this story, the longest thing I’d ever written and come close to finishing hit 21,000 before going on hiatus.

My original goal for this first draft was 65k; that obviously didn’t happen. I’m now looking at about 80k with the idea that at least 10,000 words will probably get cut in the first revision. I know the weakness with my writing style on this story has been unnecessarily wordy action descriptions and I definitely want to trim some of that out before I send the story off to beta. Overall, and at the end of the day, as long as the final draft is 60k I’ll be happy. I think that’s an admirable goal for a debut novel. Not too long or weighty, with hopefully tight enjoyable narrative. If there’s one thing I’ve learned going to Evergreen, it’s that short and good is much more difficult to achieve than long and…less good. 😉

From Bone & Blood

You’ll never find a married witch. Women are just smarter about these things. Occasionally you may run across a warlock trying to make a go of it, but this inevitably ends in disaster. Heavy magic users tend to share a common, and disastrous, personality type: narcissistic, self-absorbed and forgetful. And if you think they make terrible spouses, then the truth is, they make even worse mates. This is something every wolfcub knows, in his gut. 

In his heart.