Visualize First, Write Second...

I realize we writers write in different ways...

I was told once that to be a visual writer is to be a rarity, but I think that's only a half-truth. I believe writers who only see words and not the visual images of their tale means they haven't yet developed the ability to see with their mind's eye what they intend to put on paper.

Today, this post is a simple one. Visualize first, write second.

In other words, if you are having trouble getting those words down on the page, STOP. Sit back in your chair and "live" in that world you're creating...

• Who do you see? What do they look like? How are they dressed?
  
• What do you see?
• Where are you? What era in time?
  
• What are the people saying? Is their language foreign? Or do they have accents?
  
• Is there a singular event taking place? Is it good? Or bad?
  
• What are the onlooker reactions to that event?

In other words, let the individual scenes play out before you, before you become the dictation secretary to that tale.

Because honestly, I think that's all we writers are... superb at taking dictation for other worlds and other people in those worlds. So, you think I'm some kind of airy-fairy, artsy-fartsy, huh? Hey, snicker all you want. Try and prove me wrong! :-P

While you are visualizing, or just after your visualizing ends, jot down answers to my questions above. Start to cement, in words, what your mind's eye is showing you, because here's the key:

IF YOU SEE IT, YOU CAN WRITE IT.

That's the plain and simple truth.

If you can hone this ability, it will save you buckets-full of angst and frustration and gloomy thoughts about your skill as a wordsmith.

If I can visualize a scene in its general parts, I will sit down at the keyboard and my lousy typing skills can't keep up with the words that are popping up in my mind I need to use to tell the world what it is I'm seeing.

• There is zero doubt, zero questioning if what I'm writing is correct.
  
• No hemming and hawing about word choice, mechanics, delivery style.
• I'm literally hammering out the words that convey the image in my mind.

The only cursing going on is my brain wishing to heavens my fingers typed faster. (As an aside, I did take typing in college. I made the grade of achieving the minimum 45 words/minute to pass. Immediately after passing, I went straight back to my war correspondent-like hacking of the keys... yes, I'm THAT kind of arrogant so-and-so. In my next life, I'll be nice. I promise.)

HOMEWORK: If this describes you and your slow-as-molasses production of words onto the page, I want you to STOP writing, and START visualizing. The more you do it, the easier it will get, the quicker your fantastic tales will materialize for the rest of us word gobblers to enjoy!

P.S. It works for learning how to downhill ski, too. Less falling on one's caboose with red-faced embarrassment as other skiers look at you and shake their heads. Don't ask me how I know this. ;-)

FOTS - Fear of Time and Space - the Writer Version

 

FOTS - Fear of Time and Space - the Writer Version...

I just invented this acronym. If you find it on Google, I'll be amazed.

 

I invented it to ask you a question:

Do you think that when you sit down to write, the world is moving on without you? That everyone on this Blue Marble is hustling, bustling, laughing, gathering gobs of fun and cool experiences while you grow moss under your butt?

 

Yes, FOTS is Literary FOMO squared, but have you considered switching your viewpoint of the known fabric of Time and Space?

 

Could it be YOU who is moving faster through the universe than everyone else? Experiencing more, feeling more, living so much more that the fabric has severed you from the rest of the world?

 

Maybe in such warped speed you feel like it's you who have come to a crawling stop when it could be everyone else not able to catch up.

 

I think that with every book written, we writers are piloting a jet-fuelled craft achieving warp speed. Maybe that's why when we focus and choose words and craft sentences we are so exhausted after the feat.

 

The next time you sit down, and you think you'll be left far behind in the human experience, think again. You and your work maybe spearheading through the never-before-seen fabric of life.

Your Writing Spot...

 

Your Writing Spot...

Do you have one? One that is specifically carved out for your writing? 

You should. 

And I don't care if it's a TV table and chair beside the basement furnace if your world is packed to the rafters with a thing we humans call life. 

 

Carve out a tiny writer-you lair where your mind and body can be trained to know when it's time to get to work on your WIP - work in progress.

 

And contrary to the pretty pics you've been drooling over in writers magazines and on Instagram, the more perfect and romantic-looking the spot, the lower your writing production level may plummet. You make your hovel too wonderful, and you'll do more day-dreaming than hitting the keys. Fact.

 

Your writing space should have the bare minimum of essentials:

- a desk or a place to lay your laptop

- a chair that will allow you to be comfortable for at least an hour

- table space for a drink and your writing essentials

- a place to fit your book outline/research papers

- (optional) a quiet window view if you need to stare into space for your coffee breaks. Not everyone does.

 * and family knowledge that when you enter this space, unless they are literally on fire, you're not to be disturbed. *It's as much about training yourself to write as it is training your family to know when you write.

 

Writing a long work is about training, and practice stemming from that training, and if you haven't carved out a place in your world to emotionally and physically cue you into knowing when it's time to write, your mind won't get into gear.

 

HOMEWORK: decide on your writing lair locale, fill it with ONLY the essentials, and return to every time your writing session begins. 

 

Your psyche needs to be trained to know when the work should begin.

Follow me. I'll get you there.

Scene Segment Your Writing Time...

 

How should you segment your writing session time? 

 

This is a well debated topic. But with all the varied advice out there, some "experts" force a rational process over a creative one, and that can often hamper the story quality.

 

If you segment by word count or chapter, you are thinking rationally. You will produce prose forced under a numerical quantity and not creative quality.

 

Although you may not be conscious of it, if you say to yourself, I have to write X number of words or X number of chapters, you will draft those segments with glue words - fillers, adjective, adverbs, info dumps, meaningless dialogue, and the like - that will only have to be altered or outright removed in the edit phase. You will literally be wasting your time.

 

Consider writing by scene, in line with the scene cards I mentioned in an earlier post. Apply one scene's details/factoids to one card, and in each writing session, work on the completion of that scene, completely disregarding its length or shape or word count.

If one scene is very small, write out two scenes per session. 

If one scene is huge, segment it into its parts. 

 

As an artist, never lose sight of the visuals/story essence in your tale, and be devoted to their quality presentation, and not some arbitrary numerical delineation.

You do that, and what you produce will be a quality draft that will hold less gaffes to be dealt with in the edit. And your writing session efforts will be satisfying, for you will know you remained devoted to the story's world instead of some meaningless marker.

 

In your next session, follow me, and give this a try. You'll be glad you did!

A Writing Schedule...

 

A writing schedule...

 

It's a mystery to me that people treat writing and playing the piano differently. 

 

Both require practice.

Both cannot be accomplished simply by owning a piano or a pen. 

 

You will not be skilled at writing by having some pie-in-the-sky romantic notion that to simply plunk down fingers on a computer keyboard will make you the next Hemingway. Hemingway wasn't Hemingway when he started. He became himself after years of practice, under deadline, and forcing from his brain the production of completed works whether he felt like it or not. 

 

For the piano, it's playing the horrid scales. OMG, I just type the word, scales, and I break out into a stress rash!

For writing, it's the work of COMPLETING a story — the start, the mushy middle, and the end. 

 

Most new writers never complete any works. They adore the new story honeymoon phase, but as soon as their idea well runs dry, or they write themselves into a plot corner, the work is dropped, to collect figurative dust in some far-off computer file or desk drawer.

 

The ONLY way a new writer becomes an experienced writer who completes works is to start writing, regularly, and with the intention of completing every work they begin.

 

In my in-person process group, I had the members complete a ONE-PAGE ONLY flash story, due every meeting, so they had to work on the Start, Middle, and Finish of a singular tale. 

It lowered their fears of the Unknown in completing a work. 

It forced them to produce by a deadline. 

And like piano scales, it got their mind trained to story-telling completion.

 

** Have YOU scheduled yourself to do the equivalent of piano scales as a writer???**

 

HOMEWORK: This week, craft a writing schedule for yourself. Once complete, DELETE a THIRD of that schedule. I know you. Your eyes and bigger than your stomach right now.

 

If you have no idea what your best times are to write, 

Your HOMEWORK is: keeping a diary for the next 2 weeks to ascertain when you have free time (no job hours), when you are healthy, alert, not sleeping, and domestic responsibilities are completed. In that diary, also diarize when you SCREW AROUND - the minutes and hours you fritter away playing games or watching TV or just staring out a window. Now, take ONE THIRD of that goof-off time and reschedule it to writing. There is no gain without pain, peeps. Losing 1/3 of your goof-off time won't kill you, and it just might make you a successful writer!

 

Comment below any questions you have, but take this seriously. 

 

You want to finish a book, right? Well, follow me. 

I'll get you there if you do the steps I outline. Now get at'er! 

Fear of Writing - Ride the Wave...

 

Fear...

It's the No.1 driving force behind writers not writing.

 

People look at fear as a bad thing, when in reality it's truly your friend. That emotion warns you of perils ahead. *But what if those perils are merely imagined, and not real?*

 

Writers, artists, more than any other societal group, have an imagination that can equally feed greatness and fuel impotency.

 

The solution: welcome it. Ride the wave of fear! 

 

When it comes over you, embrace it. Say out loud to yourself, "I am afraid of screwing up. I doubt my efforts will succeed into anything meaningful," then whip on that imaginary bathing suit, grab your long board, and hit the surf, DETERMINED TO RIDE THAT FEAR by WRITING RIGHT THROUGH IT, like all it is, is another wave that carries excitement and adventure, not self harm.

 

After 4 literary novels, a writer How To, a child's adventure memoir and an edited writers group anthology under my belt, I've retrained my mind to know that when I get nervous before writing, that means I'm on my game, totally focused and alert, ready for anything, and I dig in and start clacking those keys.

 

I know I can always hit delete on those words that carry those negative feelings, but guess what, peeps? I never need to, because it's just my fertile mind playing with me, prepping me for the task ahead.

 

*You need to retrain your mind.*

You need to acknowledge the fear.

Say Hello to it. Welcome it back.

 

Carry it with you to the paper or keyboard and ride those jittery feelings right through to those first sentences like the water tubes they are that only end up crashing onto the shore, into nothingness, and you laugh at the fantastic ride you just survived!

 

This is YOUR chance to take an adventurous ride with your mind. 

 

Are you game? Follow me. Let's go surfin'!

Try this tactic, and comment below.

The 5 Minute Writing Mindset Game...

 

Photo Adelaide Club

Not writing at all? Try this exercise:

 

When it's your time to write, sit down in front of your pad of paper or keyboard, start a timer for 5 minutes, and just sit there, doing nothing. You can drink a coffee if you wish, but do nothing else.

 

Once the 5 minutes are up, get up, and go about the rest of your day.

 

Tomorrow, at the same time, do the same thing, BUT ADD ONE MORE MINUTE to those 5, and now sit there for 6 minutes.

 

Keep doing this every day you don't write, adding a minute more, until you DO write. Even just ONE WORD. That word you plunk down could simply be the word, "the."

 

Every day after that first word day, write TWO WORDS. If you don't, you must start the 5-minute wait game all over again.

 

You think this is silly? That's cool. Do it anyways. Follow me. 

 

And once you have undertaken this process, come back here to tell us your experience with it.

 

We must retrain your brain to remove all the process doubts and fears. 

To be a habitual/prolific writer does NOT happen overnight, and not without mental work.

 

Trust me. Follow me. Try it.

Book Outlines - Scene Cards an Option...

 

How many of you have made up an outline for your book? If you have,

 

Have you considered writing scene cards over any other method? 

 

Scene cards can be switched around far easier than chapters written on a piece of paper, and your mind's eye will better view your tale in a single moment in time, holistically, over mere linear or numerical.

 

I will talk in a later post how to use scene cards, but for now...

 

Tell us what issues have've had in storyboard creation? Comment below.