Writing Habit Archives - Stacy Lyn Jensen

The Long Way: An argument for not taking shortcuts

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I think we’ve all come across a million videos about a shortcut for better bread, or a worksheet to help you outline in ten minutes. I was thinking about this last night, and it occurred to me that no one is arguing for the long way. So, I’m gonna do it. Here you go, an argument for not taking shortcuts.

When was the last time you read an inspirational sports story? Did it talk about the athlete–who has achieved so much in their life. That they decided to call it quits every day a couple of hours early; and how they didn’t show up sometimes? Or did it talk about their shortcuts? No, these stories are always about the amazing perseverance, grit, and endurance the athlete has to reach their amazing level of success.

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Author or Hobby Writer

The long way

When you think about your writing goals, are you the kind of person that is looking for a quick fix to put a bandage on a problem for the moment? Or, are you the type of person that is looking to master your craft? The difference in these two ideas is really the difference between the author or the hobby writer.

Mindset Differences: The long way

A person with an author mindset. When faced with setbacks on their writing journey; they will for solutions. For example, if they are mentally exhausted and cannot imagine writing to their 1000 word goal. They may decrease the goal for a time. So, instead of writing 1000, they are writing 200. This may not allow for fast progress. But it will be progress.

A hobby writer may decide to stop writing for a while, or maybe they’ll see if they can find some tips and tricks to help them. But since the writing is a hobby, it’s not that big of a deal if they decide to stop for a while.

Rejection differences

When facing negative feedback, or rejection, there is going to be a difference in mindset between the author and the hobby writer as well. When receiving negative feedback, and author will take some time to process and then look back at their work to see if the thing makes the piece stronger. It’s also possible, when faced with several pieces of feedback from different sources, they may sort through them to find the ones that work best with their overall goals.

A hobby writer may find feedback to be a difficult and painful process, they may feel personally attacked or ridiculed. It is not that an author doesn’t feel these feelings. It’s simply that the author can put them aside in order to make their work stronger. The same basic things happen with rejection. The author can take it as part of the process and then move onward. The hobby writer will have a hard time with rejection, and take it as a rejection of themselves as a person.

Finishing a Draft: The Long Way

Once the author has finished a rough draft, they will put it away, and then start the revision, re-writing process after some time has passed, and they have gained some distance from the work. A hobby writer, once they have finished a draft, they may be so excited to revise that they start right away, or they may want to start querying/submitting, or they may even self-publish right away.

Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone wants to use shortcuts/has used shortcuts. The difference between a hobby writer and an author is time, experience, and mindset. It is perfectly fine to be a hobby writer. It is perfectly fine to be an author or aspiring author. My point here is that the long way around is normally the best way to get to where you want to be.

There are no shortcuts for writing and reading. Is there a time when you couldn’t hit your writing goals? What did you set them at so that they felt attainable?

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Inspiration Part 2

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In my last post, I talked about how I was going to talk about things that inspire me. I feel like it’s a little disingenuous to talk about those things without first talking about why it’s okay to find inspiration or look for inspiration, as long as you have your writing habit.

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First, let’s talk about times when waiting for inspiration may not be a good idea.

You have a deadline approaching.
You are in the middle of a piece of writing.
You are collaborating, and your writing partner(s) need you to write your part, so they can write their part.
Your editor/agent/publisher is waiting on your writing.

Essentially, when you have a piece that you are actively working on, you have a deadline, or you have someone that is waiting on you. You need to write, not wait for the inspiration to strike for the perfect piece of writing.

So it’s important to make sure that you have a writing habit when you have deadlines or when other people are counting on you. Because you can’t just sit around and hope to come across something that will inspire your best work in these cases. It’s always good to have the habit ingrained so that when you come to the point where you have to do it, you are already doing it anyway, so you don’t feel like it’s a huge deal to sit down and do it.

When is it okay to wait for inspiration?

You are in between projects.
You don’t have deadlines.
No one is waiting for you to write your piece.
You aren’t in the middle of anything.

In my opinion, if you just finished a draft, or you just turned something in. Go ahead and give yourself some time. Take a break. Inspiration should be something that you are constantly gathering while you are working on anything, at any time.

Tuck that inspiration away. Make a list on something. Say a movie had a great world, but it didn’t dive into an aspect, you want to know more. That’s inspiration. Write down the name of the movie. But, do NOT start a new project. Finish your current project, write to the end. Then, when you are done, go back to your list of inspirational things, and see what feels the best, what feels like the story you want to write?

If you have a list, you can go back to all the things that were inspiring to you, and you can watch them, or read them again, or look at them or whatever, and they can inspire you all over again. It’s important to allow everyday life to be inspiring, and to remember what is inspiring. But it is also important not to just sit and wait, to keep your writing habit and write every day.

So, in conclusion, it’s okay to look for inspiration when you don’t have a writing project. But it isn’t a good idea to wait around for inspiration when you have a deadline and others waiting on you. It is also very important to keep your writing habit and to write every day. So, even if you are in between writing projects, still write something.

Writing Inspiration: Folklore

One of the common pearls of wisdom about writing is to do it everyday. Another is that you aren’t supposed to wait around for inspiration. However, in my experience, writing inspiration is an important piece of the overall writing journey. And I’d like to start discussing this by talking about folklore.

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Writing Inspriation

Folklore

Folklore is something that is misunderstood. People think of folklore as the fairy or folk tales, or maybe the old wives tales that were told by the people of “long ago” and while those things can be helpful in finding some types of inspiration; I am thinking about the broader definition of folklore, the one that folklorists use today. The one that says that folklore is the expression of the body of culture shared by a particular groupd of people.

Definition

This definition means that folklore is everywhere. It can be as simple as a song that your work team plays every time a new member is added, or leaves. That is a piece of folklore for your team’s subgroup or group culutre at work. And as a writer, you can stuff that little piece of culutre away for future use in a story.

Writing Inspriation:

Folklore and the Internet

Another place rife with folklore and therefore inspiration is the internet. The internet has memes, which are folkloric, in fact, there are folklorists that study memes, meme-culture and where memes come from. You know those websites that discuss the origins of memes? Those have to have been started by folklorists, because they are fascinated–not only by internet-culture–but specifically by meme-culture. These are people who have masters degrees mind you, and they work “in the field” gathering information. Something to think about. I know I do. There are archives, in libraries gathering information on memes for future generations of academics to ponder and write papers on.

One of the internet places that I find absolutely full of inspirational, and also one that is completely folkloric, is the urban legend. There are almost too many to choose from. Typically, when these were told to one another, it was always someone’s sister’s cousin who heard the thing. But now it’s on websites where these legends begin. I want to take some time to explore the different sites, talking about the inspiration that I’ve found. And how they have inspired me and to what end.

Thank you for reading this far, I am looking forward to diving into the things thave have brought me writing inspiration lately and sharing them.

Feedback; Getting, Receiving, Believing

At the beginning of this month, I joined a group that is doing a year-long writing challenge. And, as part of this challenge, at the end of this week I am supposed to post up a chapter for feedback. I have the chapter. In fact, this exact chapter has been with a feedback group before. But, I find myself hesitant to post it.

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Feedback hesitancy Reasons

There are a couple of reasons. The first one is simply that I am a little weird about posting my novel writing attempts online. I’ve always heard that if you want to publish traditionally, that it’s a bad idea to post anything online. I think I’ll have to ask the site manager how this idea is handled. The second one is that, this is a new group of people. I haven’t been taking English classes with them, they don’t know my writing style and I don’t know theirs. I have no way of knowing what it was that they were trying to get at when I read their work, and no way to help them find a better way to find the words. How do I know how to trust their feedback? How do I know what they will do with mine?

Why give feedback

I guess the easiest way to answer these questions are to think about my own intentions when I give feedback on a piece. When I give someone feedback, I am always working from the highest idea my mind can get to for the piece. I assume that the person who wrote the piece wants it to be the best that it can be, that they have aspirations of grandeur for their piece. And, even writing that is struggling in one way or another. There is always a glimmer of a story that is trying to come out and breathe. That is where I will go when I give feedback. I find the thread of story, and I will build on the thread. I tend to ignore grammar. The reason why is because that one of my biggest weaknesses, and therefore I don’t want to correct other people’s issues.

Telescope v. Microscope

Also, when we are looking at the story in a rough form, we are using a telescope, we are going really far away to see the big picture, getting at the whole idea from far away. When you are looking through a telescope, you cannot also grab a microscope and address sentence-level issues at the same time. You always want to look at the big picture things, and then move downwards. This is relevant when we are talking about looking at writing in the rougher stages.

Strangers

The other thing that is important, is, since this feedback is going to come from people who don’t know me; I will need to keep in mind that some people just won’t understand my writing. If one person is an outlier and just doesn’t ‘get’ something, that doesn’t mean it has to change. I don’t have to take everyone’s advice. It is important to take in feedback and learn from it, and better my piece from it. But it is also important to kind of figure out what needs to stay and what has to go. A good rule of thumb is if several people are confused or bored by something, then it should be looked into. But if there is just that one person, then you don’t need to look into it, unless it bothers you as well.

Remember these things

Things to keep in mind when getting feedback from strangers: 1-they don’t know you from Adam (or Eve); so they cannot tell what you were trying to say at any given time. This is a good and a bad thing, while they may not know the best way to tell you as a person what they think you were trying to say; they will be able to tell you if they understood. 2-If the person who is giving you feedback is not doing it from a high level (think telescope, not microscope) they are doing you a disservice, if you are in the beginning stages, that is. I am not done with a rough draft, so that’s why I’m expecting a very high-level regarding feedback. I don’t expect any grammatical corrections. 3-When taking feedback from strangers, you will need to weed out the people that just didn’t get it. There will be people that, no matter how many times you hit them over the head with it, just don’t get it. That’s okay. Take their feedback with a grain of salt. Use the feedback that you see multiple times.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any feedback tips!

Horror-Tober: Horror Movie Madness

So this post does not have anything to do with books or writing AT ALL. But it is merely to “out” myself as a lover of all things Halloween and horror. Which, I suppose, shouldn’t be much of a surprise, if you’ve noticed the kinds of books I usually review or discuss. I do this thing that I like to call “Horror-tober” during which I watch a horror movie every day of the month.

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Horror-Tober

Horro Movie Watching

Last year, I was organized, and I had a calendar at the ready which had the movie for each day on it. That made things really easy, and I was able to just follow my own schedule, watch the movie I scheduled for myself, and it even made it so that my husband and I didn’t have to sit there after an exhausting day and figure out what to watch. Which is nice.

But, this year, right as the month started I caught a bug of some kind, and the bug has yet to let me completely out of its clutches. So, I have yet to get more than a vague list of different types of scary movies together and what streaming service they may or may not be located on. We have had several days when we’ve put a movie on and then changed it because we didn’t like how slowly the plot was moving, or the movie wasn’t doing what it was advertising, so, although I’ve put a movie on every day; I’ve not finished it each time.

Writing Challenge

In addition to this, I signed up for a writing challenge, where I need to make sure to record how many words I write toward my current WIP each day. That is super nice because I’ve made a lot of progress really quickly with that one step. I have had days when I haven’t written, but I am making up that time because I’m paying attention to how much I’m writing, and I am hopeful to have completed that first draft by the end of this year, which was my original goal.

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All the things

To sum up. My Horror-Tober horror movie month is going okay, I can provide anyone with a random list of movies, but I don’t have a wonderful calendar this year though, which is kind of sad. Maybe I’ll put up a final count, like these are the movies we ended up watching. That could be fun. And then I’m super excited about my progress on my draft since joining this writing challenge that requires me to record my word count at the end of the day. I guess, if you are ever wanting to join a writing challenge, but aren’t sure if it’s for you, do it, it’s like when you have to record your miles or your calories or something, you become more aware of them, and so they end up moving in the right direction.

Art from Artist: What Does it Mean to Separate the Art from the Artist, and does it Mean Anything for Writers?

Recently, the idea of separating the art from the artist has been floating around a lot. It comes up when discussing movies, there’s always another director or actor who did something awful. In the fiction novel world, there are times when authors are found to have troubling beliefs or ideas, as well.

When this happens, there’s discussion around two schools of thought on the subject. The first is to not spend any money on the works of the author. The second is: separate art from the artist. The idea is that you–as a person, can take anything from the art that is out in the world. Yes, the ideas of the person behind that creation matter, but only to an extent.

Separating the Art from the Artist

The second school of thought is the one I subscribe to. There is a reason for it, personally, I would hate it if something stupid I said online one day, some idea I had was taken the “wrong way.” Or someone read too much into something I said. And, I was labelled in some way.

If someone is asking questions and seeking understanding, then there isn’t a reason to be judgmental. You don’t have to agree with their belief system to enjoy their creation. You can support your local library instead of them by just borrowing instead of purchasing, if you don’t want them to profit off of you.

Summary

To sum up, in my opinion, it is okay to enjoy the art made by a person who has troubling ideas if it’s inspirational to you. You don’t have to agree with their belief systems in order to enjoy their creations. Take what you will from their works, and leave anything that doesn’t inspire you, behind.

Thanks for reading! What do you think?

Writing Habit, Time Management and Life

When I first decided to do a blog, I got into the habit of writing a post a day. That’s good, but then what about the writing of my current WIP? I got to the point where I was writing for my blog(s) and not doing the more creative writing that I went to school for, the writing that I find to be very important. The question became, how do you use your new writing habit, take up time management, and still have a life? I will discuss what I have done.

Writing Habit

In a previous post about habit-formation, found here: The Habit of Writing, I discuss how it’s important not to try to change everything all at once, and also how good it is to start small. I want to add to that idea and say that it’s also a good idea to prioritize.

Prioritize

I have recently learned that by trying to make sure that I’m posting every day, the more urgent–or creative–or whatever you want to call it–writing got pushed to the back burner, which is not where I want it to be. Because I knew that I wanted to be doing more writing for my novel, I had to re-think which kind of writing I was doing first.

Now, my writing life looks like 1-write AT LEAST X words for my WIP. I have an alert set to let me know when I have written enough. Then, and only then will I move on to post on one of my blogs. The next thing I have changed is to only post on one of the blogs a day. I have two of them. The first one is the actual website (this one) and the other one is a wordpress site, which I have continued to make content for even though I have a website that doesn’t have the .wordpress.com in the name. But, you know, whatever.

Time Management

The time management piece of this whole thing is that I have begun to use a calendar to show me what kind of time I have. What little pieces of time I can use throughout the day. I was hoping, when I started looking at blocking time out on a calendar, that I was less busy than I though, that isn’t exactly true, not if I want to do a good job, be the kind of employee that continues to be gainfully employed, but, at least I know now. I still end up doing writing at night mostly.

There are many ways to use the calendar method for blocking out time. You can plan to do focused work in the morning before you get busy, and I could, in theory wake up and do some writing before anyone in my house gets up. And, actually I used this method when I had only one child. My second one is a bit of an early bird and has a tendency to want to ‘help’ with everything, so that probably won’t work. But, it is a thought.

Conclusion

The ideas here are: 1-begin to block your time-out on a calendar, if you start to feel like you don’t have any time to write. Find those little pockets of time that you do have, and identify the blocks that will actually work for you to write. 2-Prioritize your writing life. If you find yourself working on several projects. Some of which are taking up a lot of time, but are not as high priority to you. Then, put the one that is the highest priority above the others. Only work on your other, lower-priority projects once you’ve reached a certain goal on the highest priority project. 3- Finally, keep your writing goals within reach. As with habit formation, make sure that you are taking baby steps before you are trying to sprint. Walk before you run, if you will.

Thank you for reading…this was my post about writing habit, time management and life. Feel free to share your tips for solving these writerly problems.

Coming up with Story Ideas

I once had a class where an author came and spoke about the differences between writers, and everyone else. What are these differences? Writers take their weird thoughts and expand on them. Non-writers will just shrug them off, and move on. With that being said, let’s talk about coming up with story ideas.

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How?

How does a person come up with an idea for a story? Lots of ways. I will go over a few that I’ve used below.

Writing Prompts

One of the easiest ways to come up with an idea is to look at a prompt. A writing prompt is a couple of sentences. They will usually detail a situation, and maybe a character. Then they will ask the writer to take the situation/character from there. You can sign up to get writing prompts sent to your email, or they can be found through social media.

Pictures

Grab a picture that you really love. It could be anything, it could be a photograph, it could be a painting, a drawing, maybe even a sculpture. Make a story that revolves around the picture. Imagine what the world of the picture is like, if it’s a surreal, imagine a whole where that kind of landscape can exist. If it’s a photograph, if there is a person in it, what are they like (if it’s a photo of someone you know, then focus on another aspect of the picture).

If it’s a beautiful landscape, what can you imagine happening there? What if that beautiful landscape was previously the site of a large battle, what if that landscape was the home of a fantastic creature, or a horrible murder, or what if the children gathered there on the night their parents died, or their house burned, or maybe the mountain is the one that the woman summited after she’d gone through so much, and she was finally gaining her own power back.

Folk/fairy Tales

Re-told fairy tales have been something that people are interested in reading for a long time now. Because they are well-known, they may be harder to get published. However, that shouldn’t stop anyone from taking their favorite folk and fairy tales and then bringing them into the 21st Century and making them their own. You can even ditch the magical aspects, or maybe remain more faithful to the Grim’s version, or alternatively, you can take multiple tales and weave them together. Maybe Beauty is a badass carpenter, and instead of being pressured to marry the town jerk, she gets called to a mansion to make some kind of chair or railing or something, and on the way there she meets up with red riding hood or Hansel and Gretel.

Also, because the fairy tales have been done so many times and are well-known, it may be worth it to look into legends from different areas, or ones that aren’t that well-known in your area. Or you can use it as a framework for the story, without making it apparent that it came from a folk or fairy tale.

Pay Attention

This last idea is simply about paying attention to the world around you when you are out and about. When you are walking down the street, and you see someone that you find to be completely interesting, put them in a work, or use them as a jumping off point for a story. Or when you have weird occurrences happen to you, and you think “what if,” either write those down, or just try to remember them when it’s time to write.

So when coming up with story ideas, one size doesn’t fit all. But, there are enough ways to come up with a story that everyone should be able to find something to work for them.

Thank you for reading! Please let me know if you want to hear more about how to come up with ideas, or maybe a writing prompt? Let me know what you are looking for.

Daily Writing Habit: Journaling

The other day, I was reading a blog about lies we tell ourselves as writers. One of the lies is that we have nothing to say. The author of the blog called BS on that and said that if you’ve eaten breakfast, you have something to say. I want to take that idea further with the wonderful world of journaling. So, let’s expand our daily writing habit. I’ve talked about how to build habits before, but today, I want to talk about subject matter.

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Journaling: Daily Writing Habit

The key to building a habit of writing every day is finding something that works for you. What if the problem isn’t the time or the energy or even the want to write, what if the problem is the concern that you don’t have anything to say? That’s where writing a journal is a great way to get started. All you need is to be among the living.

Tips

Not Fancy

Don’t make it fancy. If one of your issues is that you need to have a particular space to write in, then try and demystify the art of writing. Make your journal entries on the bus, at the zoo, while watching the latest episode of your favorite show. Write them on plain notebook paper, or using an app on your phone, or on a stained napkin. You can start journal entries any and everywhere until the habit is ingrained.

Only for you

Understand that it’s just for you. Journal entries are different than other kinds of writing because they are personal. They are meant to be a kind of free therapy. I mean, at least that’s what I think of them as. Every time I feel like I need to just talk to someone, and I don’t have anyone around that can just be a listening ear, I turn to my journal. My journal has seen some shit, if you will pardon my french, and it never judges me.

No time requirements

You are not required to do it at a certain time. You can stick to one time of day, or several, or change it up. Just like building the habit. This goes back to not being fancy. You don’t need to make sure your entry happens just as the sun is setting over Lake Erie as you drink your first sip of wine for the evening.

It is what you make it

It can contain anything. When I was a teen, I would journal as if someone were going to pick it up and read it, later. As an adult, I know it’s only for myself. Maybe you want to write your journal in Shakespearean sonnets, or haiku. Or you feel like writing your novel in your journal. You can research something and write down your findings in there. Write exactly what you think of every single person in your life, they’ll never see it. You could solve decades-old murders. You can do anything you like. It’s your journal.

At the end of the day, journaling is a great way to get into the habit of writing because they don’t have to be about anything, they don’t have to lead anywhere, it’s really only about getting into the daily writing habit. You may find that you enjoy the benefits of journaling because it has a tendency to be therapeutic and allows you to get at the heart of what you are feeling and why.