Writers in the Storm

by Kris Maze

Writer’s Block can strike us all in the most inconvenient times, but today I want to offer seven tips to authors prone to procrastination. Some of us are like the tortoise and the hare—racing to the WIP finish line just to get side-tracked by the comforts or distractions of life, like the fabled rabbit’s nap.

Sitting in front of a blank screen can be painful and can make absolutely anything else feel more urgent. But what is more important than finishing your project and completing your writing goals?   

Procrastination is a natural response to an uncomfortable situation when we don’t want to complete work. We may choose to catch up on emails, watch a TV show instead, or alphabetize our bookshelf by color. These are not terrible things to do, just hurdles in the way of completing your next great novel. Whether you relate more to the rabbit or the tortoise, read on for tips to keep procrastination away.

1. Get into the habit.

One way to stay on track with your novel is to write each day or on a set schedule. There are many science-based reasons why writing daily can ease procrastination. Having a regular schedule can reduce Decision Making Fatigue, because your routine automates this part of your thinking. This streamlining declutters our mind and allows us to focus more on our writing task.

Not sure what Decision Making Fatigue is? It’s the result of the tens of thousands of decisions we make daily that wear down our ability to make more. This could be about what socks to wear or skipping them all together for flip-flops, but after making a constant stream of choices all day, the mind goes into overload and even simple choices become too hard.

Another way to reinforce this daily routine is with visual cues. Most people are wired to respond to visual cues, which may explain why we may be attracted to decorative signs that say things like ‘LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE’ (Guilty, by the way!) If you want to start a writing habit (or freshen up an old one) try leaving notes for yourself around the house. 

• Put reminder sticky notes in the places that are most likely to distract you and keep you from writing. 
• Add encouraging messages to your white board as you record your progress daily.
• Tape a favorite writing quote to your monitor for inspiration.

 Let your inner encourager cheer on your writing and you will want to show up and write more.

Keeping a writing habit is essential for productive writers because it has many benefits. It frees up creative energy because of less decision making. It gets writing minds into crafting their novels faster because it trains their minds to work at that time. It makes their writing stronger as they flex their writing muscles more often. Take that, procrastination!

2. Plan your time.

Writing on a regular basis takes planning. Here are some tips for planning your writing sessions that may make them more productive. Use what works and skip what doesn’t, because everyone has a unique writing process.

Ivy Lee Method.

Using this time-honored method, writers can free up their mental energy and prioritize their to-do list daily.

This system requires a person to reflect at the end of their day. They write what they want to accomplish the next day, stopping at a maximum of six items. This forces the writer to decide which things are most important. If you have a doctor’s appointment or need to grocery shop, add it to the list. Be certain you write-a-page or 500-words type goal is also on your list. Items that did not happen go on the list the next day.

Keeping track of the daily tasks and minimizing them to only the six most important has been used in major corporations for over 100 years. It prioritizes the most important tasks and takes the takes away stress. We can use these productivity ideas for our writing as well.

Minimize Interruptions.

Honor your writing time. 

Turn off notifications. 

Wear noise cancelling headphones. 

Do whatever you need to do for your optimal writing time.

Build in wiggle time.

It make take a few minutes to settle in and get into your writing mode. Structure your time so you can spend most of it writing. The goal is to get more words on the page, right? Find a simple ritual that works for you and stick to it. Do you prefer any of these methods to begin writing?

• Many authors begin their writing sessions by reviewing a page or two of what they wrote the day before. 
• Some leave their work on a cliff hanger, one that they are excited about crafting the next day.
• Other writers dive right in, knowing their first paragraph or two will probably get scrapped.
• Pantsers play with their characters and listen to what they say should happen next.
• Plotters find the next scene and build it from their notes.

3. Set false deadlines (and phone reminders!)

One way to trick your mind into working on your WIP is to set up a fake timeline before the real deadlines. When planning for a project, I like to give myself extra time. If I get bogged down with other work or life happens—as it does—I don’t have to stress as much.

Set up reminders on your phone. Mine give me a nudge the week and the day before I need to have a written work completed. This can be done in advance and are helpful ways I keep myself accountable for my writing goals. Saving time and to make your schedule more flexible is important when trying to write more productively.

4. Train your elephant.

This is a reference to a very interesting book called The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt, in which he extrapolates truths from major world philosophies and finds commonalities in how each applies similar life lessons. 

In his book, he illustrates the psychology behind motivation or why-we-do-the-things-we-do with an analogy. Haidt compares our brains to a rider on an elephant and he explains how our brains have two main functions, the fight or flight limbic system and the decision-making frontal cortex.

The elephant represents our more banal brain, full of powerful emotions. The second system is our frontal cortex in charge of sophisticated socially acceptable behaviors. The good and bad news is that creative folks tend to have very active elephants, which is great fodder for the exciting plot lines and romanticized characters, but without working with our rider our writing life can turn into a disastrous three-ring-circus on a bad day.

Making decisions helps train the elephant to work with you as you create your novel. The elephant has a tendency to go find peanut flavored cheese cake instead, so it’s takes time and repeated efforts to enable good teamwork. Training your elephant to work when you need to is an essential underpinning to defeating procrastination.   

5. Make motivational tasks last, (and watch out for avoidance tasks!)

Have you ever heard of doing the harder thing first when you look over your to-do list? I may have to disagree with that conventional wisdom. Although accomplishing the harder task frees up the writer, by getting the dreaded task out of the way, there are some considerations.

1. Look over your to-do list first (Maybe you have your six item list in front of you? Perfect!) Are any of those tasks non-writing related? Don’t do them (yet.) Get the writing done first. The marketing and email responses can wait an hour or two most of the time.
2. Are some of the urgent tasks things you enjoy? If you like creating visuals for social media and need to feed your Twitter, do this as a reward after finishing your writing sprints.
3. Do you have a big, cumbersome project that would take you from writing? You could probably accomplish a writing session without cleaning the top drawer of your desk. This is an example of an avoidance task. It’s procrastination. 

Find what motivates you and follow up your writing sessions with that. It is that simple and that frustrating. (And perhaps a little influenced by the elephant taking a joy ride through an interesting thread of posts!) Keep showing up for your writing, but don’t forget to keep the focus on getting the words on the page.

6. Break the project into bite-sized pieces

Writing a novel has many layers and having an easy-to-understand map of your process can help you manage the stages. It is overwhelming to think about marketing, editing, and social media when you are working on a first or second draft. Take time to pencil out a plan, then break down your goals into pieces. Maybe you have a daily word count, or a scene to complete, but however you break it down, it should contain these elements:

• Can be measured
• Can accomplish the mini goals in a day.
• Can be put in a checklist, spreadsheet, or notebook.

Track your work in manageable chunks and that feeling of accomplishment will keep you from procrastinating as well.

7. Prioritize your health.      

Taking care of oneself will improve your ability to choose to write over procrastination. It makes sense that feeling your best will lead you to better writing sessions. When we get enough sleep, eat a proper diet, and maintain at least a moderate exercise routine, we get many benefits. 

• Increased energy
• Lowered anxiety
• Improved outlook and mood

Take care of you and let the muse take care of the rest. Keep writing!

Has procrastination ever been a problem for you? Have you ever been in an interesting or tricky situation due to avoiding something you normally love to do? Do you relate more to the tortoise or the hare? Let us know in the comments, I look forward to hearing from you.

About Kris

Kris Maze is an author and Spanish teacher. She has worked in education for many years and writes for various publications including Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish and the award-winning blog Writers in the Storm where she is also a host. You can find her YA sci-fi and horror stories and keep up with her author events at her website which is currently getting some new fun features!

Pssst! And here is the newest news: Kris Maze also writes horror, thriller, and mystery under the pen name Krissy Knoxx. Krissy Knoxx.com is currently under construction, but check soon for fun updates and several new projects.

A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors with her family.

by Ellen Buikema

We experience the sixth sense every day.

Driving down the highway, you feel a persistent need to get off the road to take the long way home. Later in the day, you discover that you narrowly missed a horrific accident.

A parent working at home has a sudden feeling that something is wrong. Not knowing why, he runs down the stairs to find his child staring at the edge of a deep, uncovered sewer hole.

A patient opens a new bottle of medication and holds a pill in her hand. Something about it feels wrong, but since her doctor prescribed the medication, she takes it anyway, leading to a trip to the emergency room from an allergic reaction.

Intuition impacts us in a multitude of ways.

Writing using the sixth sense

We are born with a sixth sense used to feel a situation or story. Some of us can better use this sense to perceive others’ emotions and pains. But you don’t need to be an empath to write using the sixth sense.

Writing fiction is a lot like finding a story that is happening somewhere, but you see and hear bits and pieces of it, or sometimes entire scenes, in your mind. We know some details of the story intuitively. The other information lurks about in the dark, waiting to be discovered.

“I see fictional people. And they don't know they're fictional.” – Stephanie Orges

We discover scenes, arranging events around our characters’ personalities and needs. That may be why our characters refuse to do things. I had a secondary character, a dad’s drinking buddy, who demanded a name change. I couldn’t get past a particular scene until he was given a new name. The struggle was real! Now he is Hugo.

I am not alone. According to Jim Davies’ article, “When Alice Walker was writing The Color Purple,  not only did her characters seem to choose their own actions in the plot, but they regularly visited her and commented, sometimes unwelcomely, on Walker’s own life.”

Ways to Develop Your Sixth Sense

Take “Me” Time

It’s hard to hear your inner voice when you are distracted by the constant stream of information from the world via electronics, as well as other folks and situations clamoring for your attention. Get some “Me” time and listen to the silence.

Listen to Your Gut

Pay attention to those “gut feelings.” They tend to lead us in the right direction and out of harm’s way.

Follow the Signs

Is something catching your eye? Do you keep hearing the same tune? These may be signals from the universe, clues to move you further on your life’s journey.

Note Your Experiences

We think we’ll remember the “lightbulb moments,” but we don’t always. Write them down. It’s horrible to have a fantastic plot twist and then lose it in the day’s whirlwind.

Pay Attention to Your Dreams and Daydreams

Your dreams serve you. They might be cryptic and strange sometimes, but they are informational. Dreams can open a whole new world full of interesting stories and opportunities.

Use a Dream Journal

When your subconscious mind comes out to play, in your dreaming state, your intuitive powers enter your awareness.

Writing your dreams may improve your memory in general.

Find tips for using a dream journal here.

Writers Inspired by Dreams and Nightmares

E.B. White

“Where did I get the idea for Stuart Little and for Charlotte’s Web? Well, many years ago I went to bed one night in a railway sleeping car, and during the night I dreamed about a tiny boy who acted rather like a mouse. That’s how the story of Stuart Little got started.”

Mary Shelley

This dream birthed her first novel, Frankenstein.

“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”

Anne Rice

She wrote Interview with a Vampire while despairing over the loss of her five-year-old daughter’s death from leukemia.

“I dreamed my daughter, Michelle, was dying — that there was something wrong with her blood. It was horrifying. Several months afterward, she was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.”

Stephen King

King’s childhood nightmare that inspired Salem’s Lot.:

“It was a dream where I came up a hill and there was a gallows on top of this hill with birds all flying around it. There was a hang man there. He had died, not by having his neck broken, but by strangulation. I could tell because his face was all puffy and purple. And as I came close to him he opened his eyes, reached his hands out and grabbed me.”

Maya Angelou

Angelou, on dreaming in general:

“I do believe dreams have a function. I don’t see anything that has no function, not anything that has been created. I may not understand its function or be able to even use it, make it utile, but I believe it has a reason. The brain is so strange and wondrous in its mystery. I think it creates a number of things for itself — it creates launching pads and resting places — and it lets steam off and it reworks itself.”

The following steps may help to liberate a suppressed sixth sense.

• Have an open attitude. Accept that you can’t control everything.
• Listen to your body. Respect your limits.
• Set aside your reason. Forget about the practical and think about what makes you happy.
• Let go and leave space for chance.
• Relax. Rest your mind by closing your eyes, lose yourself in thought, and listen to your inner voice.
  • Meditation is an excellent technique to use if you have many stressful dreams, which can cause muscle tension and spasms.

If you dream it, you can give it life.

Have you experienced the sixth sense in your life? How do you use it in your writing? Have any of your characters refused to do as you ask?

* * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents and a series of chapter books for children with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, YA paranormal fantasy.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image created from photo by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

by Lisa Hall Wilson

Trauma can create great internal, external, and interpersonal conflict, but readers are not interested in clinical definitions or objective recitations of symptoms. Trauma needs to be more than emotion-theatre. It should make your character’s journey more difficult and be specific to the journey ahead of them.

If you can take out the backstory, the flashbacks, and the character remains unchanged, maybe you don’t need to use trauma in your story. Stephen King wrote that fiction is the truth inside a lie.

Be honest about living with trauma. Entertain with your fiction, but be honest about the lived experience of trauma.

What Is Trauma?

We misuse the term “trauma” all the time in regular conversation. When many people say they struggle with “trauma” they mean they were betrayed, disappointed, embarrassed, ashamed, hurt, sad, grieving – whatever. These are legitimate emotional hurts that can FEEL traumatic, but this is not what is meant by mental health professionals when they talk of trauma.

Trauma is ubiquitous, but it’s also specific. Trauma is any event or situation where a person feels overwhelmed, helpless (loss of agency, voice, autonomy, mobility, hope), a sense of horror, sustains a serious injury, or perceives a threat of serious injury or death. Trauma is a visceral experience.

Trauma is a failure of recovery.

Everyone experiences things that are troubling or hurtful, and that haunt them. Everyone. But not everyone struggles with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, borderline personality disorder (BPD), PTSD, c-PTSD, bipolar disorder, dissociation, panic disorder, agoraphobia, suicide ideation, self-isolation, etc.

These are the real-world consequences of trauma. There’s an escalation of harm, of injury, a sense of being “stuck” or “broken” that is intrinsic to struggling with and managing trauma; an inability to “just get over it.” Be honest!

The Lived Experience Of Trauma

Most people will do almost anything to avoid being reminded of the worst moment of their life. These are not the sorts of things people navel-gaze over. They don’t reminisce about that time they almost died. They don’t share the nightmares or night terrors they relive every night with friends.  Instead, they avoid going to sleep, they medicate in order to sleep, they have poor sleep because their brains won’t allow them to reach deep restorative sleep.

Follow that thread.

What other consequences would one face if chronically exhausted? There are medical conditions, attention, and focus problems. They’re probably prone to overreacting. They may be forgetful, accident-prone, and/or make a lot of errors. They may self-medicate to mitigate these issues, chugging cups and cups of coffee and then drinking themselves to sleep at night for instance.

Show the reaction to the emotions the memory brings up, rather than have your character THINK about the emotion they feel.

“Trauma comes back as a reaction, not a memory.”
~Bessel Van Der Kolk

Writing Tips for Trauma

Instead of your character spending time thinking about their trauma; instead of writing out all that backstory or flashbacks, show what they avoid.

Where don’t they feel safe? What lengths do they go to in order to feel safe? Some people need to have their backs against a wall so no one can sneak up on them. What clothes do they wear to avoid feeling a certain way, to avoid attracting certain looks or certain kinds of attention? Maybe it’s the opposite, and they wear certain clothes in order to attract attention. Do they react to a hard day by hooking up with the first available prospect disregarding their own personal safety – compulsively?

The reader will pick up on how this behavior is about something else that’s happened in the past.

There have been studies done on young men who suffered abuse by priests as young boys. Those who struggle with anxiety (of any sort) often become gym rats because they don’t ever want to be overpowered again. This obsessive need to be strong is the reaction, but they may deny what happened, avoid anywhere that reminds them of what happened, and many won’t talk about what happened.

We FEEL Trauma, We Don’t Dwell On Memories

Our brains don’t record memories like a director films a movie. Our brains crave context, continuity, and closure. So, trauma memories appear unreliable because events are recorded with skips and gaps. Details that are too overwhelming may not be remembered in the moment, but come back after days or months. Things that are too overwhelming might be recorded initially, but then forgotten in time.

You can use the unreliable and faulty function of memory to show a character with past trauma. They may believe they’re crazy, or struggle to trust their own memory of what happened and question everything. They may obsessively seek to create a narrative about what happened or use other sources to fill in what they can’t remember or don’t want to be true.

For those who’ve had troubling experiences, those emotions and memories will often fade over time. But those struggling with trauma will involuntarily relive those trauma emotions over and over and over. Many trauma survivors describe it as a movie in their brain that they can't stop playing.

So anytime the character feels vulnerable for instance, instead of THINKING about how vulnerable they feel, or how this moment feels a lot like that trauma moment, show the reaction instead. 

• Do they immediately reach for alcohol?
• Do they punish themselves (because in some way they blame themselves for what happened) by doing three extra laps around the block when jogging?
• Do they abruptly leave, or constantly cancel?

Jessica Jones is one character where this coping/denial spiral is very clear. The Netflix show Unbelieveable captures this aspect of memory with compelling realism.

Choosing Trauma Details

[Trigger Alert: Detailed trauma in this section. (Labeled for ease of reading.)]

I have watched and read a lot of survivor accounts of various types of trauma: holocaust, domestic violence, natural disasters, car accidents, victims of crime and abuse, terrorist attacks, etc.

The brain captures those details that aren’t as they should be. What is out of place, what is wrong, and the implication of those out-of-place things will be highly upsetting (not forgetting the sense of hopelessness and the real or perceived threat of injury or death).

Holocaust

One holocaust survivor recalled being discovered by the Nazis. She hid, but her mother was dragged outside in winter without a coat. Through a crack in the doorway, she saw a soldier point at her mother’s head and heard a crack (a gunshot). In vivid detail, she recounted how the snow turned red. She stared at her mother for hours from her hiding place after the Nazis left, waiting for her mother to get up.

These were the details that haunted her. These are all details that were out of place, and all pointed to something being horribly wrong. She didn’t remember understanding that her mother was dead, but she certainly perceived a real threat to her life.

Molestation

One survivor of molestation recalled how the hook and eye to lock the bedroom door (in the room where she was abused) was up high, near the top corner of the door. How the weight on top of her was too heavy and she struggled to breathe. These adult memories point to what most traumatized the child – the inability to escape, and the perceived threat of suffocation.

Keep in Mind

When writing memories like these for your character, instead of seeking to capture the complete horror of an event, try narrowly focusing on what would be most upsetting to them. Be visceral with the sensory details. Sound and smell are two senses very closely linked with memory. This will be specific to your character, unique to their experiences and threat levels.

How can you be strategic with the reaction to the trauma emotions your character suppresses or tries to avoid? Do you have questions about writing about trauma? Please share them in the comments if you feel comfortable doing so!

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.