The Writer’s best friend.

Tomorrow is the anniversary date for when my wife and I started dating.  It’s been 16 years and I never thought I’d have someone support me as much as she has.

For writers and anyone creative, having support for your art is what we need most. Having a person who–no matter what–puts their faith in your creative abilities has been the deciding factor in pursuit of my writing goals.

When I’m stuck she offers encouragement. When I have editing issues she does a read through to help.

These people who stand by our sides, guiding us, helping us and enlightening us to story problems we’d never see without them.

They’re our shoulder to cry one when we get rejection slips our party buddy when we get an acceptance letter and they’re the first we’ll run a story by if we think it’s good.

They’re our parents, siblings, spouse, partner and children. They’re always there when we need them and they never gripe about you not being published, they’re just happy to see you happy following your dream.

When you look at this person remember, they may be giving up their own dreams to let you follow yours. This is true with me and I know a lot of writers whose spouse or partner have given up their dreams–even if for a little while–so you could chase yours.

Thank them regularly.

You may not know their dreams, or you just have an inkling of what their dreams are, but their dream is on the horizon and when you get the chance you should let them follow that dream.

Not because they let you follow yours, but because they stood by and watched you chase the rabbit down the hole with every book, short story or poem and they waited patiently for you to return from Neverland a new you and a new perspective on who you are.

Writing the story that makes you vulnerable.

Sometimes your life ends. Not for any other reason than it does.

My life felt this way for a long time. I never understood myself the way I thought I did.
Ending is inevitable; but how do we want to go out.

I’d think about this when I was stuck on a particular piece of writing, forget about it then it would creep in, the wanting of “The One”.

I’d sit at my desk waiting for “That Story’ the one!

First, chasing the one has nothing to do with writing ability; it’s all will.

The will to write the hard story is one of the toughest things about being a writer. It’s like life laughing in your face, fate screaming your name from a well-walled, distant room.

That one story will resonate with anyone who reads it, or maybe a select few that will love it and love you for it.

The problem with this story, vulnerability.

As creatives, writers are already prone to confidence issues, we don’t need to have anyone or anything else telling us we’re doing something wrong.

The story may come from childhood, teenage years, early adulthood or anywhere else. The worse thing about this story is it opens things up we’ve kept hidden from the world.

Things we’d rather not have opened. Wounds we thought had been closed, but that story comes in, masquerading like a savior to our writing.

If only you could write it!

But you’re afraid to write it. You don’t want to seem vulnerable to others. You don’t want others to see you afraid of yourself and the person you are, were or could be.

The truth is, these people you are, were or could be, they need you to write that story.

They need that closure, they desire it more than anything. I could list the reasons, but there’s not enough space in a post.

Every writer has the story they’re afraid to write. They don’t want the judgement. The fear of being vulnerable keeps us from writing those stories.

The fear keeps us from proving to ourselves who we are, and it always stands up when we’re stuck with another story.

It sits there, the one that got away.

After the First Draft It’s all work.

There are times we have to ignore our research that says, “you need to learn more about the topic” and keep writing.

My current story has taken me into quantum theory, multiverse and to places I’ve heard of but never read about.

These things are a little bit beyond my pay grade, but I’m learning about them…slowly.

I want the story to be good and believable, but sometimes you have to wing it and come back after the first draft to get things done the they need to be.

Like I said before, the first draft is fast and frenetic and stopping to clarify a few things will throw you off and break the stream of writing that you’ve got going.

Writing is hard, but the first draft is all discovery; your characters, your setting, the environment, mood and all the little stuff.

When you have the first draft done, come back after a few weeks, or months and read it again to see what needs fixed, but the only way to get to that point is busting the first draft out in the first place.

The first draft is the magical place of writing, everything else is the work.

2014: Rebirth of Your Writing

A few weeks ago I talked about, “The minutes you have left”, with the new year, there come resolutions; something I don’t believe in.

I do believe in a fresh start, which is what New Year’s is supposed to be about, not this whole thing about changing who you are. Be who you are, love the person you are, but make a fresh start with your writing.

If you’ve been struggling to get words out, write something for yourself and see where it takes you. Quite likely you’ll enjoy the ride more and may want to camp there for a while.

Once you’ve started your new journey, you’ll discover you’ve found something you like; writing for yourself does that quite well.

The year comes with great hope for our projects.

We hope for that breakthrough project. We hoped for it last year, but last year wasn’t this year and we’re going to kick that book’s ass.

With a new year comes new vigor, motivation and hope.

Our hope is to do better than last year.

Make a plan to have that book done within in the first four months. Set aside a time to write, Live your life and enjoy the journey, it’s your journey after all and no one can take it for you, so enjoy your writing the way you did as a child when you told that first story to your friends.

Because it’s a new year, find the time, make the time and write like your minutes are running out, because they are.

 

Writing the First Draft: Fast and Frenetic

Our first draft is always furious and frenetic. It comes out like storm gathering on a plateau and when it’s ready, it pours out of us like a massive supercell destroying what we thought we were capable of and making us think twice about why we write, but in a good way.

We’re sometimes not prepared for the strength pouring from our fingers and it can frazzle our minds and make us drink more coffee or maybe something stronger.

The best part of writing is the first draft, the pace seems impossible to sustain, the breadth of the story amazes us and the characters and their lives remind us why we love to write.

Pacing of the story isn’t our worry in a first draft or spelling, grammar or whether we get the characters names correct, it’s all about the discovery.

Each story happens this way and we keep writing because we love how much our beautiful stories fascinate us.

From the opening sentence to The End, we’re mesmerized by the story.

Finding ourselves wrapped up in the writing, ignoring everything but discovering who these characters are and why they’ve been in our head is the best part of the first draft.

We never have a greater time than the frenetic courtship of the first draft.