Writing For Me

 Now, this is not something I thought would ever be an issue, but it did come up for me when I was writing “Leo” in the fall of 2022. It no longer felt like I was writing for me, and that was an experience I want to share with all of you. 

The reason that I disliked writing the end of “Leo” (and “dislike” is a strong word, since I still love that project and what I was able to create with it) was because I was writing about something that didn’t really appeal to me and was not currently happening in my life: marriage and having children. With other novels I’d written in the past, and am currently writing, the characters are around the same age as me, and experiencing the same conflicts: struggling with university, falling out in friendships, break ups, etc. Having a colicky baby is not something I’m dealing with, and so it wasn’t as interesting to write about. 

Now, another thing about “Leo” is that it’s book four in The Cora Anthology, and I felt obligated to my audience to finish it. I wanted that section of the series to be done, even though I really didn’t want to write the book towards the end of it. This is a perfect example of writing without motivation, because to me, the novel “had” to be written, even if I wasn’t the most thrilled about it. 

At the time of writing “Leo”, I had crazy notions of how many books I was going to publish over the next couple years, and although I no longer want to publish five books a year for the next five years, thinking that way for a while altered how I felt while writing. It took the joy out of the creative process, because that book was just another cog in my production machine. I stopped enjoying writing because I was focusing more on production, rather than just writing something that brought me joy. 

Since I’ve come back to the keyboard this year, however, my attitude on this has changed. As a matter of fact, at the time of writing this, I just shelved a project because it wasn’t speaking to me in the way I needed, and I didn’t want to force myself to write it. I know I’m going to come back to it, but right now is not the time for me to work on it, and I’m okay with that. Right now, I’m focusing on working on projects that excite me, because to me, there’s no point working on projects I don’t want to write. My loyal readers will still be there, even if they have to wait a bit longer to get the next book, and I would rather sell you all something that I also love. 

Also, as an independent author, I’m in the unique position that I get to make all of the decisions around my writing (i.e. what I’m working on, when it gets done, the marketing around it, etc.) and I want to take advantage of that independence as much as I can. Sure, it’s a lot more work for me, but it means that I’m in control of everything, and I get to write what I want, when I want. And right now, that’s one of the most important parts of writing for me. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C

Using Real Experiences in Writing

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to make your characters feel like real people. And though that is incredibly important, we’re focusing on something a little bit different today: using real life experiences in your writing. 

Now, the way that I do this in my own writing is as follows: taking a memory, romanticizing it a little, editing it to fit the context of the novel, and then sticking it somewhere. I don’t do this very often, simply because I’m not making a lot of memories that are relevant to what I’m writing, but I have noticed some things when I’ve done this in the past. 

First, it can really complicate a character. When you’re writing a romantic scene based off of something that truly happened to you, the love interest in the scene kind of morphs into the person you’re basing it on, at least for that scene. Which is all fine and good, unless something happens that complicates your relationship with that person. I could write a whole blog post on this, and I’m going to, so that’s all you’re getting on this subject for now. 

Second, it adds a lot of realism to scenes. I find that having actually gone through the scene myself means I can add extra little details that I may have missed if I was just pulling the idea from my head. That’s not to say that I don’t add little details for the setting of a scene, but it’s definitely easier to come up with them when I’ve experienced it myself. 

Third, using real conversations or people’s dialects makes your own dialogue better. This is another one of those writing tips that you’ll hear time and time again, but it’s true. Studying how real people talk makes it easier to write realistic dialogue. And truthfully, the reason I think that I write good dialogue is because I imagine a lot of the scenes I write in my head before I commit them to paper. If you’re one of those people that come up with fake scenarios in your head before you fall asleep at night, it’s like that. And if you don’t do that…well, I guess that’s just another one of the many crazy aspects of being a writer. 

So yes, using real experiences can have its benefits, but it does get a little tricky when real people get involved. I would recommend drawing inspiration from real memories, but be careful about it.

That's all for now, folks!

-C 

Writing Without Motivation

 Ah, yes. A writer’s worst enemy: motivation, or lack thereof. To be entirely honest with you, this isn’t a huge thing I personally struggle with (knock on wood), but I’ve had my moments, and I wanted to theorize on why I think this hasn’t been a big issue for me. 

I think the first thing we need to look into is why motivation is a tricky thing. Like most things, motivation comes and goes, and if you only wrote when you were perfectly in the mood, you probably wouldn’t write very often. That’s not to say that I force myself to write all of the time, but I view my writing more as a job I really enjoy, rather than something I could do in my free time. As a result, I’m able to get quite a bit done, regardless of whether or not I feel like it. 

I have discovered that, at least for me, having deadlines and a bunch of to-do lists helps me stay motivated to get things done. The deadlines give me a sense of urgency, and make it feel like there’s more of a point to what I’m working on. The to-do lists allow me to mark things off when I’m done with them, meaning it feels like I’m actually making progress on my projects. Both of those things work together to keep me “motivated”. I say motivated with quotations because I know I’m going to accomplish a task for my writing, even if I don’t entirely feel like it that day. 

Although having a bunch of lists (thirteen at my last count) usually helps, there have definitely been times where I just can’t write. Most recently, this has been because of health issues, but honestly, life sometimes just gets in the way of creating. Whether that’s because of working full time, or going through a break up, there’s a lot of things standing in the way of me and my keyboard. But because I love writing so much--and can’t seem to stay away from it--I keep forcing myself to find time for it, and to set up systems that allow me to work on it. It’s not perfect, but I’m making it work--and that’s more important than waiting around for motivation. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C

What I'm Currently Doing (Fighting For You)

So, I sat down today with the intention of writing a very different blog post, but that wasn’t working for me, and I decided to instead share with you what I’m working on for one of my projects, “Fighting For You”. 

First, a bit of backstory on the project. “Fighting For You” originated as a short story that I wrote years ago, back when I was writing a short story every week (you’ll probably hear more about that in the future). However, I fell in love with the characters in the short story, and decided that it needed to be a full length project, and that’s where we are now. 

Getting to this point has not been all sunshine and roses, though. I plotted out an entire outline for the novel, started writing the first chapter…and then promptly shelved it, since I didn’t like the outline, and at the time, I was heavily focusing on The Cora Anthology. And so, “Fighting For You” sat as a draft of an outline on my computer for over a year. 

Flash forward to earlier this year, when I started writing again after some stays in the hospital. I had a bunch of time on my hands to be writing a lot, and I felt the desire to return to some old projects, one of which was “Fighting For You”. I’m not really sure what drew me back to it, but after rereading my notes on it, I saw the potential this novel had. 

So, where does that put us now? The first thing I did was write out the things I could remember not working with the original outline. One of those things actually severely altered the novel, specifically the ending, which I now have to replot. I then went through how the characters were plotted, and fixed those to reflect the list of changes I had written out. Lena, the female main character who is also a boxer, had the most changes to her character. 

Once the characters were fixed, I replotted a bunch of the subplots, and for some reason, I decided that I needed to write them out by hand. I still don’t know why I did this, but the “Fighting For You” notebook is slowly filling up, which is cool to see. And then, because I strongly disliked the original outline, I went through it scene by scene and wrote out the changes I would make to each scene. Once that was done, I wrote out a list of general observations that weren’t already plotted as the new subplots, and am currently in the process of plotting those. Are you lost yet? 

The gist of all of this is that there’s a lot of plotting going on. I have gone back through outlines before to adjust them, but I’ve never completely revamped them like I’m doing now. And this isn’t even the only outlining I’m redoing right now, but this is the one that’s taking up most of my writing time. 

What have I learned from this experience? One thing I’m definitely noticing is that if the outline is a struggle when it’s being plotted, I’m not going to grow to like it. When I was working on the original “Fighting For You” outline, it felt impossible and wasn’t flowing nicely, and ignoring that is coming back to bite me. So, I guess the moral of this post is pay attention to whether or not your outlines are flowing, because it’s not going to get better if you’re struggling along. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C