Writers in the Storm

Heather Webb

As I sit down to write this post, I’m racing the clock. I have an essay due for Writer’s Digest, pages due to my writing partner for a book we’re doing together, a full manuscript edit for a client, and my critique partner just sent me her novel for feedback. To say nothing of my children’s activities. Thank God I just unloaded my latest novel on my agent. Writers are busy. We’re stressed. We’re anxious. No matter how much time we have to write, it never feels like enough. So how do we survive it at all?

Below, I’ve shared a few tips that have helped me stay afloat over the years. Also? Drink coffee and wine. Lots of it.

THE WRITER WITH A FULL-TIME JOB

There’s no doubt about it, having a full-time job takes up the majority of our waking hours, making writing a challenge. I would suggest making a list of priorities and how much time you’d like to spend on each activity. Once you’ve done that, create a writing calendar of some sort. (I use a separate planner from the family calendar to keep it all straight. Anything writing-related from blog posts to speaking engagements to actual writing, I fill in on this calendar.)

Treat your writing time as if it’s a non-negotiable appointment. If you tend to get home and want to crash with fatigue, try staying at work one extra hour in the evening, or getting in to work an extra hour early and spend it writing. This way when you come home, you’ve accomplished your writing and can shift into relaxation mode. Perhaps you prefer some down time first, and then write late at night. Set an attainable goal, check in with a writing partner, and get busy.

It doesn’t have to be a long period of time, it just needs to be effective, focused time.

THE WRITER WITH BABIES

I started writing with a two year old and an infant. Luckily, I didn’t work full-time on top of this, but I did do part-time teaching and tutoring, and had no money for daycare and no family nearby. This is a toughie. You’re exhausted from the lack of sleep and barely keeping up with regular routine chores. How in the world can you fit in writing time? Everyone says to write while the kids nap, but for me, that wasn’t possible. I needed sleep then as well. What worked for me was to find an hour or two every other day or so when my husband came home from work. But the bulk of my writing didn’t happen until the weekends. I committed to write every Saturday and Sunday morning from seven to noon. I left plenty of milk in the fridge, packed my computer bag, and parked my derrière at Starbucks. Every.Single.Weekend. It helped eliminate distractions, and my leaving the house became a routine the family grew to expect. Just like a regular work or school schedule.

The most important thing to do during this time is to be kind to yourself. This sort of survival existence won’t last forever, though it may feel like it at the time. Take the time when you can, knowing you plan to move into a more regular schedule when the babies either sleep through the night, or go off to school.

THE WRITER WHO JUGGLES MULTIPLE JOBS

This type of schedule presents its own problems. With fits and stops dispersed throughout your day or work week, it can be tough to find your flow. But just like the others, it’s important to block off chunks of scheduled time that are non-negotiable. Also, consider setting up a strict routine that helps you shift your brain into fiction mode. Clear off any clutter on your desk. Make a soundtrack associated with the book that you play each time you sit down to begin. Light candles. Prepare your mind space with this series of signals that mean “fiction time!” This sort of repetitive practice has been studied at length and is proven to work. It may help you make the most of your truncated time.

THE WRITER WHO WRITES FULL TIME

Believe it or not, many who write full time wrestle with time management. It isn’t that they don’t have enough hours in the day, it’s that staying focused for long periods can be a challenge. For one, everyone is online during the week so Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are pinging like crazy. Your inbox is flooded with emails. There’s also this notion that writers don’t really “work” so friends want to meet for lunch, family wants to drop by, and so on. Distractions abound. Sometimes having less time means you’re more devoted to your writing periods. Isn’t there a saying about the busier you are, the more you accomplish? To you full-timers I say this: make a daily word count goal or page number if editing. Work in blocks of time, just like the others scrounging up time.

For example, my schedule looks like this:

7:00-8:00 is kids, coffee, and social media.

8:00-9:30 is some sort of exercise.

9:30-11:30 is writing time.

12:30-1:30 is lunch, emails, and perhaps a walk or some sort of movement.

1:30-3:30 is writing time.

3:30--- Kid pickups. If you don’t have kids, take a break for an hour and then sit down for another hour or two, or until you accomplish your goal.

OTHER TIPS

• The studies show we stay focused better for shorter chunks of time and that three hours is the maximum quality time spent on a project at one time. Breaking up the day keeps productivity at a maximum.
• Find a writer friend who shares the same schedule as you do. Check in with each other the same time every day and do sprints. You can sprint against each other for highest word count, or you can just set goals for the hour and check in once the hour is concluded to check each other’s progress. Being held accountable to someone is a terrific way to stay motivated.
• Establish a routine to get your mind into fiction writing mode.
• Set a timer after 30 minute or one-hour time periods so you feel the ticking away of valuable time. It’s this weird psychology but it works.
• Use internet-blocker software to keep yourself off of social media.
• Set up a system of rewards when small and large goals are accomplished. (ex: If I write 350 words this hour, I can spend 10 minutes on social media.)

What it all boils down to is HOW MUCH YOU WANT THIS. If you’re passionate about writing, you’ll make time, even in the smallest increments, to spend with your characters. If you find you’re constantly frustrated about how little you’re accomplishing, it might be time to reassess your priorities. Perhaps there are changes you can make to your schedule to maximize productivity. Above all, keep at it! Persistence in the face of frustration is the key to success.

What are your tips for maximizing your time? What challenges do you face when trying to write?

About Heather

Heather Webb writes historical novels for Penguin and HarperCollins,which have been translated to three languages and have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan magazine, France magazine, and Reuters News Book Talk. BECOMING JOSEPHINE follows the life and times of Josephine Bonaparte set to the backdrop of the French Revolution, and RODIN’S LOVER released Jan 27th, chronicles the passionate and tragic story of Camille Claudel, sculptor, collaborator, and lover to the famed Auguste Rodin. A FALL OF POPPIES releases in 2016.

Heather is also a freelance editor and contributor to award-winning writing sites WriterUnboxed.com and RomanceUniversity.org. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.

Twitter: @msheatherwebb

Margie Lawson

Cheers for Laura and Fae and Jenn and Orly. WITS Rules!

Want to be more productive every day?

Keep reading.

Want to take charge of your minutes and hours?

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Want to act and feel like a winner and super star?

Keep reading.

This blog is a new take on To Do lists.

I saw you cringe.

Don’t miss how to be a winner!

KEEP READING!

I included some amazing examples from Immersion-grads at the end of this blog.  Plus, you could win a lecture packet or an online course.

Do not think my Winner and Super Star lists are your average To Do lists.

That’s like thinking Zac Efron is just an average looking guy.

And we know that’s a lie.

What you’ll read below is easy to do, and it could be life-changing.

Yep. It’s that smart.

Divide your day into sections. I’ll call them chunks. Think chunks of chocolate.

Are you smiling?

You may plan one or two chunks of time in the morning, and/or afternoon, and/or evening. An hour or two each.

You may have chunks as small as 15 minutes. See my WITS blog: Power Punch Your 15 Minutes!

You may have chunks as long as 3 hours. That’s the maximum I recommend chunking.

Want to write or edit or do writing-related things for longer than three hours?

Do one three-hour chunk, and take a break. Move your body. Exercise. At least walk around for 15 minutes, or play chase-me with your dog.

Then plan your next chunk.

Create two lists for each chunk of time: Winner Lists and Super Star Lists.

Your Winner list is for things you know you can complete in that chunk. Your Super Star list is used only if you complete your Winner list.

WINNER LIST:

Items on your Winner List are absolutely DOABLE in that time frame. For a two-hour chunk, your list could be as simple as this:

Winner List:

1. Write new scene.

That’s all you will do in those two hours.

You won’t read emails.

You won’t go on Facebook.

You won’t answer your cell phone. You already turned the ringer off and put your phone in another room.

You all know your other steal-your-time traps.

You control these minutes. You control your behavior.

Just write that scene.

You may have three items on your Winner list instead.

Winner List:

1. Find out if some barouches were like convertibles, if the hood collapsed on those 19^th century carriages.
2. Rewrite the last page from last writing session.
3. Write fight scene! Just get it on the screen.

 You know you can complete those three items, unless you get research-crazy and click around in the 19^th century too long.

SUPER STAR LIST:

If you have some time left after you’ve completed items on your Winner List, you can do the first item on your Super Star List. They’re writing and writing-related items too.

You must complete your Winner List first.

No list hopping!  

If you don’t get to any items on your Super Star List, some of those items may move to your next Winner List.

Super Star items don’t always move to the Winner List right away. It depends on your needs, deadlines, and priorities.

It’s important to keep assessing. Do what needs to come next, not what you’d rather do.

What if you didn’t complete everything on your Winner List?

Did you misjudge time? Okay. Put it on your next Winner List.

Did you fall into your time-stealers?

Did you waste 30 minutes supposedly fixing a cup of tea, but you really did five other things too?

Some people make awesome award-winning lists, then they don’t do them.

Aack!

They do what they’d rather do instead of what they need to do to succeed.

Picture this cliché.  Shooting yourself in the foot. Or knee.

Yep. You’re hurting yourself.

You’re postponing success.  And you’re setting yourself up for failure. And depression.

Creating these two lists every day, WINNER and SUPER STAR, will boost your productivity, boost your mood, boost your success!

Take this challenge:  Set Yourself Up to Win!

It takes 21 days to create a habit.

Who will use Winner and Super Star lists from tomorrow through February 5^th?

Are you in? 

Here are some stellar examples from Immersion-Grads.

Enjoy!

DIRTY MAGIC, Jaye Wells, USA Today Bestseller

1. That kind of money could buy a large pack of diapers or some special time with a discount whore.
2. I must have gasped because suddenly my lungs felt too full. Sweat broke out over my chest where my heart thumped like jungle drums.
3. My heart started running before my feet did. The short distance separating us felt like miles instead of yards.
4. He didn’t say anything else. Just watched me, perhaps thinking if he stared long enough he could see through my skin and into the shadowy parts where all my secrets were hidden.
5. All the adrenaline pulsing through me demanded action. I turned to find some.

Super Sekrit Title for November Release, Steena Holmes, NYT Bestseller!

1. The bomb dropped and the power of her words obliterated everything and anyone in its way. 

    Especially him.

2. In that moment, Abby reminded him so much of his dead wife that the sucker punch came out of nowhere.
3. She wanted to be outside, rolling balls of snow in her hands. She wanted to feel ice crystals form on her lashes. She wanted to build a snow family and use carrots for their noses and sticks for their hands. She wanted to create a field of snow angels and have her backside completely soaked.

    She wanted to do all the things she never could when fresh snow fell.

4. She was hungry. Plain and simple. Eat-like-a-pig hungry and she could care less who was watching.
5. She talked about my mom like she was an angel, beautiful and sweet and always there for her. Me? Not so much. I’m the demon child, repulsive and sour and completely unreliable.

DAYS MADE OF GLASS, Laura Drake’s January 11^th release!

1. 
   

She glanced up, her deep brown eyes reminding Harlie of those dime-store paintings of soulful-eyed puppies digging in garbage cans.

2. She lifted the box and laid it in the bed, her stomach jumping like she’s swallowed a cricket.
3. Harlie’s hammering heart sent a flush of heat down her limbs and up her neck.
4. Harlie knew her sister. She felt sometimes they were one person living in two bodies, separated only by a flimsy barrier of skin.
5. A shadow of the emotion she’d felt today passed through her and she shivered in a delicious, secret thrill. Standing in the arena today, she’d breathed in the rare ether of alive. In those frozen seconds before the bull charged, her senses seemed to crystallize — she could touch, taste, savor it – feeling poised on the knife-blade edge of the future.

BLOG GUESTS: Post a comment!

Let us know if you’re in for the 21 day Winner and Super List Challenge!

Or just click in and say Hi.

Post a comment, and you have TWO CHANCES to WIN!

1. Lecture Packet from Margie Lawson. You might opt for my lecture packet on Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors. Over 200 pages of tools for taking charge of your writing life.
2. An online course from Lawson Writer’s Academy – worth up to $75!

Check out the courses offered by Lawson Writer's Academy in February:

1. 3D Worlds on 2D Pages
2. Triple Threat Behind Writing a Scene
3. Pinterest for Authors
4. 30 Days to a Stronger Novel
5. Diving Deep Into Developmental Edits

The drawings will be Sunday, 9:00 p.m. Mountain Time.

Margie Lawson—editor, international presenter—teaches writers how to use her psychologically-based editing systems and deep editing techniques to create page turners. Margie has presented over ninety full day master classes for writers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and on cruises in the Caribbean.

To learn about Lawson Writer’s Academy, Margie’s 4-day Immersion Master Classes (in Denver, Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Canyon Lake, Dallas, San Jose, Melbourne, Australia, and more), her full day Master Class presentations, on-line courses, lecture packets, and newsletter, please visit www.margielawson.com.

 Stephen King reflected on the magnitude of a novel’s first line. “An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story,” he said. “It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”

Preach it, Steve.

I’m not saying a killer first line will get you an agent, get your book sold, or make it a NYT bestseller. But it sure won’t hurt your chances, and I’d make a case that a book that achieves all the above, more often than not, has a great first line.

Why is that? A first line is a promise to the reader, telling them what kind of book this is. What your voice is. Maybe who the main character is. A good first line will pull a reader into a story.

But how do you do that? Here are some suggestions:

Irony - A contradiction or opposite of some kind, something unexpected.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

You just know from those 23 words, how Jane really feels about this ‘universal truth’. And you could guess how she’ll handle it in the book, right? Jane has just shown you her voice - snark, Victorian style.  BTW, many will argue to the death that this was the best first line ever written. Let’s not go there – we've a lot more to do.

Catalyst -  The catalyst is what sets your story in motion. A knock at the door, a phone call, please, just don’t start with a dream!

“When the doorbell rings at three in the morning, it's never good news.” Anthony Horowitz, Stormbreaker

“It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.” Paul Auster, City of Glass

Comparison - A simile or metaphor.

“Unlike the typical bluesy earthy folksy denim-overalls noble-in-the-face-of-cracker-racism aw shucks Pulitzer-Prize-winning protagonist mojo magic black man, I am not the seventh son of the seventh son of the seventh son.” Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle

Dilemma –

“Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones.” Roxane Gay, An Untamed State

“He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.” Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we understood the gravity of our situation.” Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Question – But be careful using this; it’s been used SO much that has to be fresh and intriguing. NO clichés!

 “What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask.” Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

Intriguing Character –

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

Intriguing Premise – The line itself may not mean much, but after reading it, you HAVE to read on!

“Don’t look for dignity in public bathrooms.”  Vitor LaValle, Big Machine

 “Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon, with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat.” Dennis Lehane, Until Gwen

“They shoot the white girl first.” Toni Morrison, Paradise

 “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Here’s mine, from The Sweet Spot:

The grief counselor told the group to be grateful for what they had left. After lots of considering, Charla Rae decided she was grateful for the bull semen.

I screwed up with that line. I wasn’t going for funny. I didn’t even know it was funny until, when I read it at a writer’s retreat, Tessa Dare snorted coffee through her nose and almost wet her pants. See, bull semen is a legitimate industry – just as racehorse semen is. And Charla Rae owns a ranch where they raise and train bucking bulls. The book is emotional, and deals with grief and forgiveness. So, in this case, the first line breaks its promise to readers (unless they know the bull industry). But you know what? When people meet me, they mention that line. They actually remember it. So I can live with that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about first lines, lately. I may not have the perfect first line when I start a book, but if I don’t, it niggles at the back of my mind until I come up with one – even if it’s after I’ve written half the book!

I knew I didn’t have the best first line for my current WIP – it’s a hard-hitting, right to die novel. Here was my first shot at it:

Funny, how knowing the exact time and place of my death makes me exquisitely aware of being alive. 

It’s not bad; it raises a question in the reader’s mind. It’s in the voice of an upper-middle class scientist and professor, which the protagonist is.

But I knew it wasn’t a killer first line. Enter the brilliant Margie Lawson. On a Writer’s Cruise (yes, it was as amazing as that sounds, and they're having another this year! You can check it out here), she worked with me on my first scene. Together, we came up with the first line:

Today, death rides a bicycle. My bicycle.

Oh yeah.

So, do you have a favorite first line for us? Either one of yours, or a memorable one from another author?

Two days ago, Laura released her first novel in the Women's Fiction Genre: Days Made of Glass:

Shared blood defines a family, but spilled blood can too.

Harlie Cooper raised her sister, Angel, even before their mother died. When their guardian is killed in a fire, rather than be separated by Social Services, they run. Life in off the grid in L.A. isn’t easy, but worse, there’s something wrong with Angel.

Harlie walks in to find their apartment scattered with shattered and glass and Angel, a bloody rag doll in a corner. The doctor orders institutionalization in a state facility. Harlie’s not leaving her sister in that human warehouse. But something better takes money. Lots of it.

When a rep from the Pro Bull Riding Circuit suggests she train as a bullfighter, rescuing downed cowboys from their rampaging charges, she can’t let the fact that she’d be the first woman to attempt this stop her. Angel is depending on her.

It’s not just the danger and taking on a man’s career that challenges Harlie. She must learn to trust—her partner and herself, and learn to let go of what’s not hers to save.

A story of family and friendship, trust and truth.

“A powerful and poignant story about sisters, trust, and belonging, DAYS MADE OF GLASS will have you cheering for Harlie Cooper as she struggles to find her place in the all-male world of bullfighting, provide for her broken sister, and accept that she can’t succeed in either alone. I devoured this book!”

Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of THE PERFECT SON