Writer’s Life: 5 Ways to be Prolific Without Writing a Single Word

Posted by Nicky Drayden on Feb 21, 2011 in Writer's Life

Photo by Psyberartist, Creative Commons

If you’ve been keeping up with my Year of Insane, Ridiculous, and Nonsensical Challenges, you’ve seen that I’m attempting to write 78 short stories, a novel, a screenplay, plus finish up the two novels that I started last year. If all goes well, I’ll clock in about 300,000 words total, which seems pretty close to approaching prolific. It’s a title I crave, and I’m probably not alone in this.

I recently read this article at io9 about the 12 Secrets To Being A Super-Prolific Short-Story Writer. Basically, it boils down to writing a lot, learning, experimenting, and writing some more. But it got me thinking about what writers can do to be more prolific outside of the actual physical task of writing.

1. Know what you write. Writing what you know won’t get you very far if you intend to be prolific. You’ll end up writing yourself in a circle, producing the same stories over and over again. Knowing what you write, however, opens up infinite worlds and possibilities for stories. But don’t limit yourself to internet research. If your character practices yoga, take a class. If you’ve got a character who rides horses (or even a dragon for that matter), take some riding lessons and keep your writer’s mind open for sights, sounds, and smells that could give your story more texture.

One of my writer pals, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, has even gone as far as to request a tour of a sewer since the London sewer network figures heavily into her novel. Image how much of an eye opener that would be, plus you get the added benefit of building up a wealth of “crazy author stories” in case anyone ever doubts the lengths you’ll go through for your craft.

2. Plot In the Shower. A lot of writing can consist of staring at a blank screen, waiting for inspiration to strike. This is a waste of time since the hours we have to physically sit down and write are limited. Use those quiet little moments you have to yourself to think through your characters and plot points–like while you’re in the shower, walking the dog, doing the dishes, or during down time at the day job. And when you finally sit down to write, the words will be able to flow.

But beware of turning into Author Zombie. If your best friend is bawling over the phone about how she and her significant other just split up, and all you can think is how perfectly her overly emotional dialogue would fit into chapter twelve when your main character finds out that her boyfriend is two-timing her with a sexy vampire, then maybe it’s time to ease off a bit and spend more quality time in the real world.

3. Don’t revise. We’ve all seen Heinlein’s 5 tips for writing:

  1. You must write.
  2. You must finish what you write.
  3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
  4. You must put the work on the market.
  5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Nearly everyone I’ve seen quote these rules has an issue with point #3, because a story can always be better with a little more editing, right? But that’s exactly the pitfall. It’s easy to get sucked into the trap of making a story better in increments, but if you spend just an hour tweaking your story each time it gets rejected, after five or six rejections, that adds up to 6 hours which you could have spent working on a new story. Spread that over a year’s worth of stories, and you could be cutting your productivity in half.

Plus there are additional downsides to constantly revising. One, the story might have nothing wrong with it at all, and it just hasn’t found the right market yet. Two, the story is so inherently flawed that no amount of tweaking will fix it. And three, if you’re subscribing to the top-down methodology for submissions, you’ve probably already exhausted most of the pro-paying markets, so your monetary payoff for the extra effort will likely be minimal.

This doesn’t mean that you should send out draft material or that stories don’t need to be edited at all. It only means that once you have deemed a story fit to see the light of day, it needs to sink or swim on it’s own merit. (And yes, this is easier said than done.)

4. Read. This one sort of goes without saying. If you want to write, you need to read. But the benefits of reading go beyond learning more about craft. Books open your mind to new ideas, which in a way is similar to my number one point, only if you read widely and deeply, you’ll start scratch the surface of knowing exactly how much you don’t know. And knowing is half the battle. Go Joe!

5. Stop thinking about writing. This one I’m horribly guilty of. If I could add up the hours I’ve spent thinking about writing, I could probably have used that time to write at least three or four more novels. This is not the same as thinking about your novel, trying to figure out plot or come up with character quirks. This is about the time spent dealing with things tangential to writing–like worrying about where your career is compared to where you want it to be, prowling writing sites to commiserate about rejection, reading articles on writing rules that you know backward and forward, and of course spending hours putting together gimmicky blog posts on being prolific when your time would be better spent working on your actual novel.

Ahem.

But while we’re here, what does being prolific mean to you? Is it something you strive for? Or do you have better things to do with your time?

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Mood Swings

Posted by Nicky Drayden on Feb 17, 2011 in Writer's Life

Photo by Jonas John, Creative Commons

Yesterday I was in a crappy mood. Coincidentally (or not) my day started off with the frustration of working on a 7000-word short story that was going nowhere fast. I’d spent nearly two weeks working on what was turning out to be a stinker of a story. So I have to ask myself, was my story putting me in a bad mood, or was my mood sapping my creative mojo?

In any case, I think I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I finished the story (though it still sucks) and hopefully when I’m in a better mood, I can find a way for it to suck less. But in the meantime, I’m a little concerned about having the quality of my output affecting the rest of my life. To be fair, I think I pushed myself harder this week than I normally do. Maybe some video games are in order, a little StarJeweled to clear the mind?

Do bad writing days ever put you in a bad mood? How do you cope? Or how do you avoid it altogether?

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Writer’s Life: January Juggernaut!

Posted by Nicky Drayden on Jan 27, 2011 in Writer's Life

JanuaryPhoto by OakleyOriginals Creative Commons

The first month of 2011 is coming to a close, and I am proud to say that I feel rather accomplished. I will ignore the fact that I got so little done on my NaNovel (maybe about 3000 words), but I did write two very decent short stories, one pretty okay flash fiction piece, and something that may resemble some sort of fiction once I take a whip to it. So that’s four stories written for Write 1 Sub 1, plus 14 submissions for the month, and one sale to a semi-pro mag. Not too bad, I think.

On the bike front, I rode every single day, most days a mile, though there were three days that I did less than a mile for various reasons. February, I’m kicking up my daily minimum goal to two-miles, which I don’t think will be hard, but I’ll need to be mindful to schedule it a little better so I don’t end up getting to work later and later. One thing I noticed is that I’ve really learned to appreciate the weather when it’s nice out.

Japanese! Could have been better, but I’m making slow and steady progress.

No reading on my 26 random books. I’ll have to work double time to fix that in February. Lots of other reading done on my book club book and a manuscript critique. I just don’t think I can read fast enough to do them all in one month.

Having a good time being a vegetarian. No meat except turkey jerky the first couple days of the year, and an accidental bit of chicken in some Pad Tai and flecks of some sort of seafood in gumbo. I still need to work on eating more so I can keep my energy level up, and I have to admit, there’s nothing better than having the excuse to eat peanut butter all the time.

Well, that’s my January in a nutshell. Here’s hoping February will be twice as productive!

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