Writers in the Storm

by Eldred Bird

Let’s face it, writing is tough and sometimes the problems we face in our daily lives makes it tougher. Five years ago, my father-in-law fell and broke his hip. This accident led to two hip replacement surgeries and months of physical therapy. During that time, he also ended up getting a pacemaker. I was his driver and main support for all his appointments.

As he recovered, my mother-in-law ended up having several medical issues. I was her transportation and support as well. While all of this was sucking up my time and the stress was blocking my creativity, I was trying to write my third book. I felt like I was going to lose my mind.

So, how did I keep my writing on track when life kept trying to derail me? Let me share a few lessons I’ve learned the hard way.

Write when you can, where you can.

Thanks to modern technology we can work from just about anywhere and that’s exactly what I did. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that 80% of Cold Karma, the third James McCarthy book, was written in hospitals, doctor’s offices, and physical therapy waiting rooms. Between my laptop, netbook, and cellphone, I was able to steal back hours and minutes that otherwise would have been lost.

I’ve done my fair share of writing in bars and restaurants as well. My wife no longer drives, so when I drop her off at an appointment or meet up with her friends I plan ahead. I have my laptop and current work in progress with me, or at least have a copy in the cloud so I can access from any device I have handy.

Escape into your own world.

When life gets out of control it’s nice to have a place you can run to where you are in charge. When I write, I’m able to let go of the day’s problems for a while. Reading also allows an escape, but someone else is still driving the bus. Writing puts me in control of my own little world where I am God. Characters live and die based on my current mood. I usually go back and revive some of them later, but this helps me blow off some steam in the moment.

Channel your frustrations into your words.

Let’s face it, when the world gets out of whack so do our emotions. I like to use that emotional energy and funnel it into my writing. Jump to the scenes where your characters are dealing with a similar problem and work them through it. I think you’ll find it helps you work through your own issues as well.

When I’m in a heightened emotional state is also when I tend to free-write. It lets me drain my brain of all the turmoil and lift the dark cloud blocking my creativity. Some solid plots have been generated by these sessions, like my short story Treble in Paradise: A Tale of Sax and Violins.

Clear your mind with physical activity.

One of the best ways I’ve found to deal with stress and free my creativity is movement—any kind of physical activity. Take a walk, ride a bike, or clean the house. Do whatever works for you. You don’t have to run a marathon (unless that’s your thing). Put your body to work burning off the nervous energy so your mind is free to wander and find it’s center again.

It’s okay not to write.

One thing most authors forget is sometimes it’s okay not to write. Self-care is one of the most important parts of the creative process. Take a break and read a book or listen to some music. Call an old friend or spend some time with loved ones.

If you force yourself to produce when the inspiration isn’t there it’s going to show up in the quality of your writing. You may get something down on the page, but odds are you’ll spend more time later trying to fill plot holes and fix inconsistencies.

One final suggestion.

If there’s one thing the experience of the last five years has taught me it’s to have a good support system. When the times get tough, lean on your writing friends. They are the ones who truly understand what you’re going through and usually know the right thing to say. If it wasn’t for my weekly video chat with my author friends, I probably would have tossed in the towel long ago. So, to all of you (and you know who you are) I say a big THANK YOU!

How do you manage writing through the hard times? Do you have any tips or tricks that have worked for you? Let me know in the comments below.

About Bob

Eldred Bird writes contemporary fiction, short stories, and personal essays. He has spent a great deal of time exploring the deserts, forests, and deep canyons inside his home state of Arizona. His James McCarthy adventures, Killing Karma, Catching Karma, and Cold Karma, reflect this love of the Grand Canyon State even as his character solves mysteries amidst danger. Eldred explores the boundaries of short fiction in his stories, The Waking Room, Treble in Paradise: A Tale of Sax and Violins, and The Smell of Fear.

When he’s not writing, Eldred spends time cycling, hiking, and juggling (yes, juggling…bowling balls and 21-inch knives).

His passion for photography allows him to record his travels. He can be found on Twitter or Facebook, or at his website.

by Lisa Hall-Wilson

Ever figure out a solution to a problem, and then way over-use it? That’s what happens with rhetorical questions when we’re trying to avoid author intrusion!

Once you become aware of author intrusion, of what that looks like in either limited third person, first person, or deep POV, the easy workaround becomes a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is used to create dramatic effect or make a point rather than elicit an answer. Instead of telling the reader how the character feels or inserting information into the story, have the character wonder about the information instead.

Here’s a paragraph from a mss I’ve stuffed in a drawer.

Laurel slunk deeper into her seat. The two other reporters and the admin glanced at her, but mostly they stared at their notebooks. She straightened in her seat and hooked her hair behind her ears. Why was everyone acting so sullen?

There it is. The rhetorical question that’s slipped in to replace the bit of author intrusion I had there. Problem solved, right? Maybe. Except, when I do a search for question marks, there’s 22 rhetorical questions in eight pages. TWENTY-TWO?? Hmmm…

Maybe you’ve done this too?

Here’s a whole paragraph of rhetorical questions:

But could she do it? Could she go back to the farm—to him? Could they fix their marriage? Did she even want to?

I saw this trend of overusing rhetorical questions in my student’s work too and the question marks began jumping off the page at me. The problem is that the author intrusion or narrator voice we’re trying to avoid by using rhetorical questions, ends up being a crutch that prevents us from taking that next step to go deeper with our character.

So, I challenged myself to limit the rhetorical questions to one a chapter. One. And here are the benefits of stretching yourself in this way.

Rhetorical Questions Aren’t Wrong

Rhetorical questions have their place in internal dialogue, the goal shouldn’t be to completely eliminate them (mostly rhetorical questions are fair game in dialogue). They can offer great surprise for the reader.

Most of the time the character’s rhetorical questions are offering information the reader already knows the character is thinking about. I’m repeating information instead of moving the story ahead. You’ve just tied an anchor to the pace of your novel right there. Why am I wasting valuable space on the page repeating things the reader already knows?

Flip Flopping

Readers want characters that stand for something. They want characters who have decided to press on towards a particular goal no matter what the cost – there’s no turning back. To do this well, your character needs to plant a flag, draw a line in the sand, pick a path, choose a side.

While we hope rhetorical questions help us create tension and uncertainty in characters (and therefore readers), over-using them allows the character to waffle. This waffling or hesitation makes the character harder to cheer for, harder to relate to. Instead, force them to be decisive and live with the consequences. Take a rhetorical question in your mss, and have the character think of the answer to the question instead.

Could she trust him?

Could become: He’d betrayed her before and nothing stopped him from doing it again. But maybe he was her only chance at a relationship. The ache in her chest kicked up, a sharp penetrating throb over her sternum. No, she couldn’t trust him, but she didn’t trust herself to make a good decision either.

The rhetorical question is a shortcut that’s meant to increase tension, but many times the shortcut undermines the emotional potential in a scene. It’s a lost opportunity to go deeper. There’s more emotional depth to the answer than the rhetorical question offered.

Try Starting With The Rhetorical Question

Back to back rhetorical questions point to weak writing or undeveloped characters. I’m a pantser at heart, so my first drafts are riddled with rhetorical questions. Case in point:

But could she do it? Could she go back to the farm—to him? Could they fix their marriage? Did she even want to?

I have begun to see these paragraphs as fluorescent sticky tabs marking a place where I need to come back to and go deeper with the emotions.  

In revisions, get curious about how the character would answer those questions. Start with the rhetorical question as a launching point for going deeper. What are the implications of one or more possible answers?

In the paragraph above, the female character is trying to decide if she should give her marriage another chance. There’s so much depth to plumb there. If she goes back to him, what kind of person does that make her? Would her opinion of herself change if it doesn’t work out? Why is it so hard to decide – what’s at risk? What parts of herself are upset and why is she refusing to listen to them? What would a stronger person do? Why can’t she do that?

Are The Rhetorical Questions Always Coming From One Character?

This was a pretty humbling question to ask myself, because I saw a trend in my first drafts where there was always one POV character who overused rhetorical questions to an embarrassing level. The other POV characters would have a reasonable use of rhetorical questions, but there would be one with back to back paragraphs of rhetorical questions. *womp womp*

Has this happened to you too? It’s a signal to me that I don’t know my character well enough. I don’t know WHY they’re doing/thinking certain things, what’s motivating them, what emotions are involved or at risk, or even what they really want. The rhetorical questions allowed me to waffle and skim, to avoid the hard work of going deeper. I had to stop being a lazy writer and get curious about aspects of this character I didn’t have an answer for yet.

Going deeper with the emotions in a scene is where the reader connects with the character.

Rhetorical questions can be a great starting point to diving deep into emotions, so don’t be discouraged if you find quite a few. Just nod. Maybe do a search and highlight what you find. This is a new starting point. OK, I know what that’s about now and I know how to fix it.

Try it yourself. Pick a random chapter in your WIP and search for question marks. How many rhetorical questions did you find? Have you ever used rhetorical questions as a launch pad to go deeper with emotions?

About Lisa

Lisa Hall-Wilson is a writing teacher and award-winning writer and author. She’s the author of Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers. Her blog, Beyond Basics For Writers, explores all facets of the popular writing style deep point of view and offers practical tips for writers. 

She runs the free Facebook group Going Deeper With Emotions where she shares tips and videos on writing in deep point of view. 

by Jenny Hansen

Does anyone else here do that thing where they worry about their weaknesses too much? I've noticed a worrisome trend in the writing world, and sometimes in my own psyche. It's a disturbing phenomenon that occurs in creative types (especially writers). These creatives seem to think they have to be good at everything. Or that, because they have weak areas, they're not good enough at their jobs.

I have a question for you perfectionist writers out there:

Why is it acceptable for multiple attempts when learning to ride a bike, or dance the tango, or knit but it’s an “epic fail” to write a few books before you get good at it?

Lots of first novels remain unpublished for a reason. They were practice for the other books. 

I don’t get why it’s expected to take years to learn a musical instrument but it’s not acceptable to sit down at the writing page and have less-than-perfect prose fall from your fingertips. I don't get why that so often makes words like hack, imposter, what-the-hell-am-I-doing come to mind.

(If you're still in doubt about this, read Laura's Dust Bunny Books post, or watch my favorite pep talk video below.)

https://youtu.be/Nyhv80HDSj4

Let's Get To Those Strengths

Let me tell you a story about the best job I ever had. Before motherhood, I was a corporate software trainer for almost 20 years. The #1 requirement was the ability to be ON each day in the classroom.

It didn't matter whether I was up all night with a screaming baby or if my best friend and I had a fight. Nobody cares about those things when they come in for a day of training. Those students are focused on what they need to learn and it was my job to deliver.

There are personality types who would hate that type of work. They’d get tired by all that “on” business. I saw it a little differently. Every day that I walked into a classroom, I knew:

• All my problems would get checked at the door.
• I was going to provide a service.
• I'd meet new people.
• I’d have a fun day.
• I’d experience the utter joy of watching people learn, and light up over what they learned.

Do you see a trend with perks I listed above? It was me, me, I, I. Training was a vacation from my own busy head and a chance to focus on other people. It worked for me because it played on some of my innate strengths.

How do I know my strengths?

I went to a training conference several years ago that changed the way I see the world, especially the creative world. The keynote presentation -- “Building a Strengths-Based Organization” -- shined a bright light on another disturbing trend:

Society, starting with our schools and continuing through our workplace management teams, puts a mighty amount of focus on "improving our weaknesses." They use words like shore them up, compensate for them, overcome them.

After hearing some speakers at that conference, I started thinking crazy thoughts....

What might happen if those organizations put the same amount of energy in developing peoples’ strengths?

What kind of mountains could we move as writers if we applied our efforts toward being stellar at the things we’re good at, rather than focusing all our energy on our “faults?”

I’m not talking about turning into a bunch of narcissists who can do no wrong. I’m talking about making it a primary goal to discover your innate strengths and spend more time playing to them.

A Quick DIY Strengths Test

We did an exercise in the conference pre-session where we listed the things we were good at – we had 60 seconds to scribble them down. The first ones that came to mind - no deliberating. We were directed to find the skills we’d always been good at, for as long as we could remember.

Go ahead. Grab a piece of paper, set a timer for 60 seconds, and scribble yours down. We'll wait.

Don't think. Just start scribbling a list of the things that are easiest for you, whether they have anything to do with writing or not. You can do a writing-specific one later if you want.

Now stare at that list and be honest with yourself about how much focus you put on those talents.

It's interesting to me that most people don’t see their innate skills as anything nifty or unusual. In other words, they don’t see their own "specialness."

Just to give you an example, my innate strengths, in no particular order, were:

• Writing
• Teaching
• Motivating others
• Making friends
• Doing hair
• Learning software and languages

I felt extremely lucky when I looked at my list. Life pushed me early into a job I am uniquely suited for. Except for the “doing hair” part, my innate strengths describe the perfect software trainer. No wonder training always felt so easy…it draws on nearly all of my innate strengths!

Back to the conference...

The abilities people came up with in that session were amazing. There was tons of talent in that room. And you know what made me sad? The majority of it was not being used in the workplace, where everyone spent at least 50% of their waking hours. So many of those really cool and rewarding abilities were being relegated to the "someday I'll devote time to this hobby" side of the fence.

My Personal Epiphany

I did that hobby thing with my writing for years. Put it on the back burner...didn't make it a priority...downplayed my talent because words came easily to me. And I did that dumb thing I talked about up at the top of the post...I spent the majority of my time working on my weaknesses, both at work and on the page.

And then I went to that conference and those speakers turned my thoughts around enough for my personal epiphany to sneak in:

It doesn’t mean you’re a slacker just because you like to do the things that come naturally to you. 

In fact, I’m going to take this further and issue you a challenge: Pay attention to the things that are easy for you and try to do them more often. I personally think the easiest way to bring your “A” Game to your writing life is to play to your strengths.

The Need for Perfection

I'm going to use a baseball analogy for this next bit.

A quick primer for the the non-baseball peeps: US baseball has two different leagues - National League and American League. The two have slightly different rules, which we'll discuss below.

In American League Baseball, the rules allow for some weak spots. For example, pitchers are not expected to also be great hitters and they get a pinch hitter. Other players who can't hit the ball for whatever reason are also allowed to use a pinch hitter. They then have to leave for the rest of that game, but for a player who is tiring, this isn't a bad deal. Ditto for a slow poke or hurting player who uses a pinch runner.

Why can’t we do a little of that in our own writing groups? It's a smart strategy to mix up the talent so we have help when we get tired or slow. I've shared some examples of my friends who rock various talents below:

• Pinch World Builder (Fae Rowen)
• Pinch Steamy Scene Pro (Monica Corwin)
• Pinch Description Writer (Laura Drake)
• Pinch Grammar and Structure Queen (Julie Glover) - she is also a sassy dialogue pro
• Pinch Theme Builder (that would be me)

When you get a crew like that together, it doesn't matter so much if you have weak points. As I mentioned above, a strategic writer might build their critique groups or editing groups around a mix of strengths like the ones above. Most writers trade time or pages with each other. Other writers pay an editor. (I'll be interested to hear what our WITS readers do.)

Know Your Weaknesses

Just because you know your own weaknesses doesn't mean you have to dwell on them, even though a lot of us do. Mine drove me bonkers for years, until I went to that conference and got some perspective on my ridiculous need to be good at everything.

Laura Drake finally got through to me with her profound observation on writers: "No one gets it all."

My list of writing "weaknesses"

Here's my list, just to make you smile.

• Writing scene transitions. I've had it take me an entire page to get my characters from an elevator to the front door of a building. (Yeah, it's embarrassing.)
• I want to cover my eyes when my characters’ clothes come off.
• I can’t figure out how to build a space world.
• Fight scenes give me fits.
• The thought of writing a full-length novel makes me sweat. (See my solution in this post.)

Do these weak spots make me a crappy writer? No. It just means that my strengths lie elsewhere. Sometimes I have to go to my A-Team to get my “A” Game. And that’s OK.

I want to know when the Writing Police decided that we have to be great at every single aspect of our writing.

The older I get, the more that notion seems full of the hooey to me.

Do we need to keep learning and pushing ourselves to be better? Sure. But perhaps some of us perfection seekers can get an early start on next year's New Year's resolutions and stop beating ourselves up over not being stellar at every-darn-thing. Who's with me??

What are your innate strengths? I’m not talking about the things you’ve learned to be good at. What were you always good at? Share your uniqueness in the comments section below – we want to hear about it!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides LinkedIn coaching and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20 years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

Top Photo by Ryan Wong on Unsplash