Whether we’re ready for it or not, tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2016 holiday season. Between the end of November and early January there are dozens of celebrations, both religious and secular, and chances are a few of them apply to you. While the world at large is planning menus and wrapping gifts, we writers are worrying about how to get our word counts in on top of all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. For some of us, the holidays simply mean a couple of extra work gatherings and an extra day or two of family time. Others of us are orchestrating elaborate gatherings or are travelling great distances to be reunited with loved ones. Writing during this time isn’t impossible, and I’ve compiled a few helpful hints for you:
Take your time management skills to 11. Plan ahead and do the holiday tasks that can be done early so you’re not in a stress-induced panic later. Stress is not the muse’s friend, nor does it enhance your holiday fun. Bust out your Google Calendar or Franklin planner and put in *everything*. It will make your available scraps of time more apparent so you can use them to your advantage. You have 20 minutes? Use it. Case in point? I wrote the first draft of this very post in the King Sooper’s parking lot. I took my 4-year-old with me to do the Thanksgiving meal shopping and she fell asleep in the car. Rather than rouse her, I busted out my trusty notebook so she could get some rest. Also? Carry a notebook. Always.
Prioritize Holiday Activities. You can’t do every holiday tradition and function justice every year. Pick and choose what is important to you and your family so you can really enjoy what you’re doing. Lose your Pinterest guilt. If you don’t make the Christmas-Card-worthy gingerbread house from scratch every year, you are not Scrooge. The minute you begin to loathe going to another party or making another craft is the moment you’ve overscheduled.
Prioritizing Writing Activities. This is not the ideal time to begin a new project or to schedule a million events, so decide what’s important. It’s not always possible to avoid conflicts, however. You may have a book to launch over the holidays or edits due (I’ve been in both situations) and you have to do your best to get as much done in advance on your projects as possible. Creating launch memes early and having packing lists for book signings are all little things we can do to reduce stress when we can’t minimize our writing life in December.
Keep writing goals realistic.This is key, in my mind. You may not be able to keep up your usual pace, so think about what you can feasibly accomplish. 200 words a day instead of 2,000 for the two weeks your kids are off school? Fantastic. Those are 2,800 words you didn’t have before and you “touched the ball” each day, which is key in staving off writers’ block once you return to your projects in the new year.
Remember, family (biological and otherwise) should come first. For many of us, we wouldn’t be able to be successful in this crazy business without the love and support of our friends and family. If they want our time during the holiday season, we should do our best to honor it. Plus? You never know what stories might be waiting for you around the dinner table.
Wishing you love and peace in 2017,
~Aimie
Any other, 'write through the Holiday' tips for us, WITS readers?
This is not going to be a political post. But I am going to talk about politics. Sort of.
As writers, we’re sensitive souls. We observe the world around us, and as Kimberly Brock called us in a beautiful post earlier this week, we’re lightning collectors. I loved this analogy; it’s so perfect. I wait for the idea that always inevitably comes, whether it be a plot twist, a scene conflict, a character. Our subconscious does most of the heavy lifting.
I have copy edits and a draft to write. My manuscript is due to my editor on May 1. I’ve written eight thousand words, and two weeks ago, was moving at a decent clip.
Then the election happened. My gal lost. Political upset, you know all about it. But now, suddenly, the world doesn’t make sense anymore. Not because my gal lost. But because there are so many people I don’t understand. No matter which side of the aisle you fall on, I imagine we all feel this way. The election has been so divisive that we’re all looking around and saying, wait, I don’t know you. Some of us might be dreading Thanksgiving, or even seeing our neighbors at the mailbox – bracing ourselves for the anger or the gloat, depending on where you fall. It’s draining, no matter where your ideologies lie.
The most fundamental aspect of my job is to understand people. I pride myself on it. Now, it feels like a little bit like the world’s gone mad, and maybe I don’t actually understand anything. As a writer, who needs to tap into human empathy at the most basic levels, this was terrifying.
Thursday, November 10th, I sat down to write. I had a scene in mind and a blank page in Scrivener and nothing happened. There was no lightning. Or rather, there was lightning all around me and I couldn’t catch any of it. Friday was more of the same.
I worked in the corporate world for eighteen years. I still do. On bad days, I can phone it in, literally sitting in my home office, calling into passive conference calls, doing the easy work: trainings and email replies. In the creative business (yes, that’s a thing: the business of being creative), our brains have to be on. All. The Time. The downside to this is my brain is never off. I absorb all this unrest and internalize it. It’s clogging my creative pipes.
By Saturday, I knew I needed an action plan.
Step 1. Channel your negativity. Yes, this is so obvious. But I wasn’t at the right point in the book for so much uncertainty and I didn’t know exactly how to DO THIS. Like most things, when you take a deep breath and clear the brain clutter, the answer is obvious. I opened my Scrivener file and down under “Research” I opened a new file. An unnamed character (not my current WIP) is standing in the middle of a crowded amusement park and a bomb has gone off. What does she see? Feel? What are people doing? I wrote about 1400 words, a scene. She helps a woman with a baby. The paramedics come. Writing this scene, while not related to my character or my WIP, became a weapon in battling my powerlessness. I hope I use it someday.
Step 2. Do something creative besides write. I play the piano. Not well, mind you, but well enough. Sometimes I go months without touching it and it’s badly out of tune. I’m sure you also know, this week Leonard Cohen died. I wasn’t a diehard fan or anything, but it felt like another needle stick: in the midst of chaos, a great artist leaves us. Hallelujah has long been one of my favorite songs (honestly, the Bon Jovi rendition is pretty freaking beautiful. Yes, I said Bon Jovi. Don’t judge). It’s also ridiculously easy because the chord progressions are the lyrics. I figured it out, taught myself to play it. I won’t open Carnegie hall or anything but something about it felt so right.
Step 3. Bring light. I’m an introvert. When people talk to me in public, I smile (seriously not even a real smile, mostly like a terrified don’t talk to me smile) and move on ASAP. This week, I went out of my way to reach out. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. I talked to grocery store clerks, guys pumping gas next to me, toll booth collectors, people in line at CVS. I challenged myself to be ridiculously, over-the-top kind to everyone. I told a woman at the post office that I loved her bag. My kids picked up on my energy, too, and the three of us became a traveling team of chatterboxes. People’s faces transformed and I knew it was because of me (well, us. My kids are pretty cute). I gave a stranger light, just for a second. I bought the car behind me coffee. Step 3 felt so good I haven’t stopped. I wondered why I’d been so afraid, kept to myself so much?
Step 4. Take action and move on. There is always going to be something going on in the world that is out of our control. The past two weeks have felt like a maniacal version of the teacup ride at Disney. In order to get my mojo back, I needed to take back some of my own power. I started my morning by calling my senators and representatives, expressing my views. It’s a small thing, but it’s a thing. It helps me cross off the worry, even if just subconsciously. Just for today, I was able to file my anxiety in a box, put a lid on it. Tomorrow, I’ll repeat. But I know that I’ve done what I can. While my action was political, I realized I don’t do enough of the small things. It’s so easy to let life take over and consume you and feel so helpless. Sometimes, doing the small thing can have a significant impact on your mental state.
Step 5. Meditate. Download the app, get comfortable and for ten minutes, clear your mind. Breathe. Works wonders.
On Monday, after completing my five step sanity program, I’m happy to report that I wrote 1200 words. Are they any good? Well, that’s beside the point. Am I still worried? Uncertain? Sure. Nothing about this is a cure-all. It’s hard to be an adult in the real world. If we don’t preserve our pretend worlds and protect them with everything we’ve got, what good are we as writers?
Your turn, WITS readers. What is your coping mechanism? Share, you could help others.
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Kate Moretti is the New York Times Bestselling author of the women’s fiction novel, Thought I Knew You. Her second novel Binds That Tie was released in March 2014. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two kids, and a dog. She’s worked in the pharmaceutical industry for ten years as a scientist, and has been an avid fiction reader her entire life. Her latest book, The Vanishing Year is available for pre-order and will be out September 27.
She enjoys traveling and cooking, although with two kids, a day job, and writing, she doesn’t get to do those things as much as she’d like. Her lifelong dream is to buy an old house with a secret passageway.
We are so proud and humbled that the Lisa Cron, the author of Wired for Story, and Story Genius has agreed to blog with us on a regular basis! In case you haven't yet seen her TED Talk, you can watch it here. Later. After you read her first installment of 'Ask the Story Genius'.
Hello! It’s thrilling to be here to answer your story questions. I’ll be doing so every other month from here on out, but since I don’t have any of your question on tap just yet, I thought I’d kick it off with a question I’m often not asked by writers – until it’s too late. Here’s how that process usually looks:
I’m reading a manuscript and the protagonist – let’s call her Betty - never gets mad, she always takes the feelings of others into account, she’s always polite, on time, and she never takes an extra cookie, even when no one is looking. In other words, Betty couldn’t be less interesting. After a while, “something bad” happens. Let’s say that Betty’s co-worker Ramona stole her hard-won research and is taking credit for it. Ah, I think as I read forward, now it’s going to get good! But Betty, understanding that Ramona had a hard childhood, takes a couple of deep cleansing breaths and decides that Ramona needs the promotion more than she does, so she ignores the whole thing and spends the evening making calls for Amnesty International.
By this time, I’m not only not on Betty’s side, I’m wondering two things: why Betty is such a wimp, and what is Betty’s behavior actually a front for – like maybe she’s so insufferably nice in order to keep anyone from asking who she’s got locked up the basement.
Here’s the kicker: When I ask the writer what’s going on – like, “Hey, why didn’t Betty get mad and, at the very least, tell Ramona off?” -- the writer will invariably answer: “Because I wanted Betty to be likeable, otherwise, the reader won’t care about her.”
Perfect example: Melanie Wilkes from GWTW
And there you have it: The whole “likeable” question. Writers know that we have to care about the protagonist in order to read forward. Thus, it follows, the protagonist has to be likeable. And by likeable the writer means . . . kind of perfect. As in someone you’d definitely want to invite over for dinner. Someone so safe that you know they’d never say a thing to offend your right wing Grandpa, or incite crazy Aunt Harriet who has a bunker in the basement, or expose the fact that your millennial cousin is playing video games on the phone in his lap, or utter a regrettable word in front of your five-year-old niece Natasha who repeats everything she hears. Nor would you have to worry that when your back is turned they’d pocket the silverware.
In the name of making sure their protagonists are “likeable,” writers prevent their characters from doing a whole host of forbidden things: they can’t shoplift, even once as a child, unless it’s bread and their little sister is hungry; they can’t swear, even when they stub their toe; they can’t be mean to anyone, ever, especially children or pets. Nor, it often follows, can they stand up for themselves or what they believe in, unless it couldn’t possibly offend anyone.
In other words, “likeable” often means sanitized. And while “likeable” people don’t offend anyone, neither do they genuinely appeal to anyone, either. In fact the sanitized, the “picture perfect,” often arouses not benign interest, but suspicion. Because we humans know that nothing – and no one – is perfect. How do we know this? Because we aren’t perfect – at least not by those sanitized never-make-a-mistake definitions. After all, we know that the reason they tell us to “Never let ‘em see you sweat,” is precisely because we’re always sweating buckets about the right thing to do.
So, here’s the scoop: what “likeable” really means is relatable. The reader needs to be able to relate to the protagonist, and to do that the protagonist must be vulnerable, flawed – in other words, decidedly not perfect and definitely not a surface, sanitized version of “a good person.” Otherwise, what do they have to sweat over?
There’s another reason this is so important. In a nutshell: stories are about how someone changes internally over the course of the novel -- leading to an “aha” moment -- which is what then allows them to solve the external plot problem. So if they enter the problem already perfect, why would they need to change? They don’t, which is why when you have a perfect protagonist, you have no story.
The truth is that it’s the baggage they carry – the places where they’re making mistakes – that make the protagonist human. We like the protagonist because of their supposed flaws, not in spite of them.
And here’s the irony – in real life we don’t like “perfect” people. We all know that person – the one at the office who always talks about their spouse so nicely and they’ve got pictures of their kids on the desk, and their always clothes are always neat and pressed, and they always have their work done on time, and they always remember everyone’s birthday (even before Facebook). Do you like that person? Of course not! They’re really annoying because they seem to wear their “perfection” on their sleeve – as if they never Ask wake up cranky or get road rage or snap at the cashier at Trader Joe’s for being too damn friendly. What they make you think is: Okay since nobody's that perfect, I wonder what he's really up to? We don’t like that person because we don’t trust them.
And just in case you’re still not sure – the truth is we are often captivated by characters who are decidedly unlikeable, despicable even. As writer Elizabeth George says, “Characters with the most edge tend to be the most interesting to write and to read about.”She went on to say, “I just read all four Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels in a row, and one of the two main characters is not likable at all. I found myself wondering how anybody could remain friends with her because she's so foul. But as a character she is fascinating and unforgettable."
She needs no introduction, does she?
Are you breathing a sigh of relief about now? It’s liberating to think that your protagonist can be a real person – who makes the kind of mistakes that we all do, but are always trying to keep other people from seeing. It’s like taking off those tight jeans at the end of the day and finally being able to let it all hang out and breathe. And nothing feels better than that!
"Now that I’ve answered a question that I posed, I’m open for your questions. They can be about any aspect of story – something you’re struggling with now, or would like a little feedback on, or are just curious about. Post them below, and I’ll dive in and answer as many questions as I can. Can’t wait! Till then, onward and upward my friends."
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Lisa Cron is the author of Wired for Story and Story Genius. Her video tutorial Writing Fundamentals: The Craft of Story can be found at Lynda.com, and her TEDx talk, Wired for Story, opened Furman University’s 2014 TEDx conference, Stories: The Common Thread of Our Humanity.
Lisa has worked in publishing at W.W. Norton, as an agent at the Angela Rinaldi Literary Agency, as a producer on shows for Showtime and Court TV, and as a story consultant for Warner Brothers and the William Morris Agency. Since 2006, she’s been an instructor in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, and she is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts MFA program in Visual Narrative in New York City. In her work as a story coach, Lisa helps writers, nonprofits, educators, and journalists wrangle the story they’re telling onto the page. She can be reached at wiredforstory.com
