Tip #1: Find your own “best practice.”

Once upon a time, when I was an itty-bitty baby writer, I read the book On Writing by Stephen King. This is a wonderful book, with a ton of great insights. I highly recommend it to any writer because it gives a window into the life and practice of one of our craft’s greatest giants.

But there is one spot in the book where I have to quibble with Mr. King. You see, about two thirds of the way in, he says that to be a writer you have to write 2,000 words per day and read 80-100 books per year. I don’t know about you, but I can’t rack up those words like clockwork. My process is a lot more erratic, with 500 words on one day, 3,000 the next, and so on. (Lawyer hubby lovingly calls this the “feast or famine” approach to writing.)

And when it comes to reading, I’m a ridiculously slow reader. I can read maybe 30-40 books in a year, but 80-100… there’s just no way. Plus, I’ve got two kids (Little Man and Lady Bug), a full-time job with DIY MFA, and—you know—other life stuff. For me, this advice was completely unreasonable.

But I didn’t know that at the time.

You see, when I first read that part of the book, I thought to myself: “Oh my gosh! Stephen King just gave me THE ANSWER. All I have to do is follow his advice exactly and I’ll be set for life.” After all, if Stephen King said it, it must be true. Right?

Well…

I’ll tell you how I lasted following Stephen King’s advice: three days. The first day, I knocked out those 2,000 words like a boss. The second day, it was a bit more of a grind. By day three, I could barely eke out 1,000 words, much less 2,000. After that, I quickly lost momentum and after another couple of days, I gave up altogether.

Here’s the problem with taking advice or hearing people spout “best practices.” Writing 2,000 words per day might be the best practice for Stephen King, but for me it was a disaster. In writing there’s no such thing as “best practices;” we have to find what works best for us.

The key isn’t to copy-paste someone else’s advice onto our own lives. Rather, it’s our responsibility to weigh out that advice, try it on for size, and then make adjustments accordingly. We need to find our own best practices, rather than simply following someone else’s.

Tip #2: Honor your reality.

This has become something of a catchphrase in the DIY MFA ecosystem. What it means is that we have to honor and respect both our writing life and our non-writing life (AKA “reality”). It’s very easy to beat ourselves up for not writing enough, or not reading enough, or not doing enough work for our platforms, and so forth.

But sometimes reality rears its ugly head and we have to shift our focus away from our writing. During those times, we have to give ourselves grace and recognize that “life stuff” needs to come first, and our writing will be there for us when we’re ready to come back.

A lot of people talk about how we have to “find our writing-life balance,” as if it were as easy as finding items on a scavenger hunt. Creating balance between our writing and our life is a complex, nuanced concept.

When we think of balance many of us imagine scales, like the kind that Lady Justice holds in her hand. This image implies that balance is all about rigid equality. The scale is in balance when the two sides are perfectly level, and to keep that balance we can’t move a millimeter.

But balance is fluid, not rigid. When I think of balance, I imagine being on a boat. Now, if you try to stand rigidly upright on a boat, what happens? You fall on your face. The way to stay upright on a boat is to lean from side to side. If the waves raise the boat on one side, we lean into that. Then, when the waves raise the other side of the boat, we lean in that direction. And we keep leaning to and fro until we achieve what appears to be balance but is actually kind of wobbly.

The same is true with writing and life. If writing and life are like waves outside our boat, we have to lean into whichever side is calling to us in that moment.

For example, sometimes an aspect of our life demands our attention. Maybe we have a sick family member we need to care for, or maybe there’s a big project for our day job, or maybe it’s summer and our kids are home from school, throwing a wrench into our usual schedule. During these times, we have to set our writing aside and focus our attention on the “life stuff” that’s tugging on our sleeve.

But there are other times when our writing demands attention. Maybe we have a big deadline looming from our publisher, or maybe we’re gearing up for an important book launch. In these moments, we forgo things like doing laundry or cooking meals. Instead, we rewear the same T-shirt and order take-out everyday for a week.

And that’s okay.

Honoring our reality and finding balance is about the ebb and flow. It’s not something rigid like Lady Justice’s scales, and it’s not a one-and-done proposition. Instead, we constantly have to choose between writing and life, and shift our attention from one to the other.

Tip #3: Move from instinct to intention.

If you’ve taken any DIY MFA course or workshop, you’ve probably heard me talk about instinct to intention, but this is such an important topic that I had to include it in my top three writing tips. The idea of instinct to intention is simple. DIY MFA word nerds already have good instincts. I say this with utmost confidence because I know the kind of writer DIY MFA attracts.

If you’re here, reading this email, you are likely self-motivated, focused on the craft, and driven to creating excellence on the page. You’ve also probably read a fair number of books in your lifetime and you’ve learned all those writing “rules” through osmosis, just by immersing yourself in stories.

Whether you plan your story down to every detail or you write by the seat of your pants, you know the essentials for how to put together a good story. And when you write by instinct, the result is probably pretty good.

But writing by instinct alone is not enough. Our goal at DIY MFA is to help you get to the point where every nuance, every comma, every turn of phrase is in your story because you put it there on purpose, not because it just happened to come out that way.

I believe that the purpose of a workshop is to move writers from instinct to intention. When you understand the craft concepts and you can identify components in your own work, you are much more likely to make that shift from instinct to intention.

This is why when we critique writers’ work in DIY MFA courses and programs, the focus is always on reflecting back to the writer what we see in their work and what our impressions are. This way, the writer can make an informed choice and go from writing on instinct to writing with intention and purpose.

One of the best ways to make that shift from instinct to intention is to get feedback on your writing, but be careful. Not all feedback is created equal. Many workshop environments ascribe to the notion that we should “tear writers down so we can build them back up.”

Poppycock.

Ripping a writer’s work to shreds is not an effective way to help them move from instinct to intention. All it will accomplish is letting that writer feel miserable and making it more likely that they will give up and stop writing altogether.

At the same time, if all a writer’s group does is wave pompoms and go “rah rah,” that’s not an effective form of critique either. Giving feedback isn’t about making value judgements about what’s “right” or “wrong” with the work. It’s about helping the writer see their work in an objective way.

An effective critique group or workshop is like a mirror. The group reflects back to the writer what it sees and helps the writer identify what’s going on in their work, both in terms of technique and meaning. Once the writer has that objective viewpoint, they can easily make intelligent decisions about what to change (or not change) in their work.

Ultimately, the purpose of moving from instinct to intention is not to force writers to “fix” their writing. A writer might decide not to change a single thing, and that’s okay because now that choice has been made with intention, rather than just through instinct. That’s the goal: to help facilitate those decisions and give the writer agency with their work.

So, there you have it: three top tips for writers. You might be surprised that all three of these tips are mindset-based. I didn’t include any craft techniques or talk about the importance of reading like a writer and building community. Yes—craft, reading, and community are important, but if we don’t have the right mindset around our writing, no amount of technical know-how will help us get those words on the page.

If you do nothing else in your writing practice but work on making these key mindset shifts, you will grow as a writer by leaps and bounds. That’s because mindset is the thing that differentiates the dabblers from the doers. Work on your mindset and everything else will fall into place.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

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If there is such a thing as a golden rule in the writing of fiction, it is that you must keep the reader engaged. A “likable” main character or at the very least a relatable one? Story beats? Genre tropes and conventions or the clever subversion of them? Exposition to help the reader understand and navigate the rules of the world before launching into the central conflict or none at all? All that is window dressing if your reader becomes bored and puts down the book.

To be clear, I am not saying you should toss out all the guidelines, craft notes, and plotting advice you have collected up to this point. What I am saying is that it is okay if your draft doesn’t fit neatly into a three or five-act structure, Save the Cat beat sheet, or other recognized model. It is okay to break a rule or two to serve your story. But the last thing you want to do is waste your reader’s time. You need to keep them engaged.

A Caveat on Subjectivity and “Rules”

With rule-breaking in mind, please take the advice that follows with a grain of salt. I am, after all, just one individual with a particular, sometimes arbitrary set of tastes that will likely change and evolve over time. 

Consider and adopt whichever recommendations work for you, and try not to worry about the rest.

Keep Your Reader Engaged

So if the only rule is to engage the reader, how do you accomplish it? If I’m working on a story that, despite my best efforts, refuses to position itself neatly into a recognizable story shape, I use the following three goals to frame my writing and rewriting process.

1. Be Brief. 
2. Be Specific. 
3. Be Gorgeous.

Brevity

If you are reading this, you probably already recognize the value of brevity in writing. We are counseled by peers, mentors, and editors to ensure each word or sentence serves a purpose and justifies its inclusion in the final draft. There is no surer way to tire your reader than to clutter your manuscript with pages of unnecessary information or passages overburdened with unintentionally pedantic prose.

Do I always love the ruthless cutting and paring involved in the writing process? No, but in doing so, I almost always improve a piece. The pressure of a shorter word limit often forces me to tighten a story’s pacing, momentum, and escalation, clarify its through-line, and craft a stronger ending.

As you revise your next manuscript, I encourage you to ask these questions. Does each line/paragraph/scene move the action forward? Does it add new or key information? Does the piece function or have the same effect without it?

Specificity

For me, specificity is the key to believable, memorable characters who readers care enough about to follow to the last word of a piece. Tell me your main character works in a restaurant, and I might be interested enough to keep reading. Give me the ache in her knees and lower back at hour five of her shift, the flutter of panic in her chest at the start of the lunch rush, the smell of drip coffee hissing on the burner, how her hands move as she anxiously checks and re-checks that her apron ties are smoothed flat against her waist, and I will begin to see her as real. I might even begin to understand her perspective of the world, and I will definitely be engaged enough to keep reading.

It can be tempting, especially when wrestling with a big question or timely message in your work, to widen the scope of a piece. Specificity can keep such work from verging on the strictly didactic and keep your reader engaged throughout. Ground your work in the precise, intimate, partial, flawed, and ultimately human experience of a character and you allow the reader to enter the story, to feel the consequences of larger events on a deeply personal level.

Gorgeous Prose

This final aim to be gorgeous, comes from the sublime Ursula K. Le Guin and an exercise in her influential work Steering the Craft. 

There are times I become so preoccupied with addressing technical or plot-related aspects of a piece that I lose sight of the primary reason I write. And what am I here for, if not in part for the sheer joy of working with language? The truth is too that readers respond to beautifully crafted work that evokes emotion. There’s a reason most of us don’t read technical manuals cover to cover for entertainment.

So write with flair and for pleasure. Manipulate rhythm, repetition, and the musicality of language. Delight in the sound of your sentences. Be beautiful and irresistible, constructing sentences that make apathy impossible for your readers. Write the great, true, gorgeous sentences that speak to both your writer’s and reader’s heart.

A Final Prompt

Write a short but complete story in which some sort of secret is revealed. This secret can be anything from the quotidian (an extra box of holiday chocolate hidden from the children in the back of a cupboard) to the surreal (an intergalactic conspiracy to conceal the formula of a serum that grants immortality).

Aim for between 500 and 1200 words. Be brief, but specific, and of course, gorgeous.

The elder daughter of Korean-Canadian and Austrian immigrants, F.E. Choe currently lives in Columbia, South Carolina. When she is not at her desk trying to craft true and beautiful sentences or piecing together her latest short story, you will find her feeding the dog scraps under the table, reading, or training her backyard flock of hens to walk backwards. Follow her on Instagram @f.e.choe.

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Crap. You promised yourself you were going to write today…or was it yesterday?

And cue the guilt.

OK, that might be a snapshot of my particular dumpster fire, but the point is, there’s about a million reasons your keyboard can have cobwebs. That might be an extreme example, but variations of the no time to write mantra repeat ad nauseam. Especially during the holidays. How the heck are you supposed to get words on the page when you’re torn in a billion directions?

Deep breath. That guilt? Think of it as a priority check alarm, and you, my friend, are number one. This ship ain’t gonna sail without its captain, and sometimes you need to reroute the journey to get through the storm.

First order of business: identifying the chaos. Note, I didn’t say control. I mean, it’s frickin’ chaos. Give yourself a break and start small. Focus on the noise that’s feeding it, then eliminate or reframe those things keeping you from writing.

Yep, distractions. They pretty much fall into two categories, red and green. Green distractions are things that might take you away from your keyboard, but enrich your life in other ways. They’re the necessary things in your life and, believe it or not, to your writing. Family, work, friends, all of that fuels our creativity. This is where reframing comes in. That pot of sauce on the stove and the horde of relatives about to descend? That’s the now. Be in it. Soak it up and channel those experiences into your prose. Yeah, even Aunt Bev trapping you in the kitchen and launching into her two-hour spiel about the nuances of clay vs. clumping cat litter—again. Seriously, you can’t make that stuff up. It’s literary gold.

Red distractions are a different story. They’re the Something Shiny, flickering at the edge of your vision, luring your focus away. You know, like scrolling through tweets while Aunt Bev rambles. That’s the no time to write noise, the chaos, stealing her malapropisms and the cadence of her speech in exchange for getting up-to-date on the Hollywood hot list. Not for nothing, but one of those is going to benefit your writing and it’s not the latest celebrity drama.

Trust me, I get it; the temptation is fierce. I’m a sucker for red carpet fashion. Maybe you’re all about the infinite scroll of social media, or are constantly checking the scoreboards—you know what I’m talking about. That thing that’s just going to take a sec… then three hours pass you totally can’t account for.

Nope, it wasn’t alien abduction. A red distraction just whammied you with the dreaded time suck. Chaos crept in, a siren beguiling you with something that does absolutely nothing to enrich your life, undermining your creativity, and feeding the lie that there’s no time to write. 

But don’t despair over the noise! A wise man once said: “Knowing is half the battle.” OK, it was He-Man, but he wasn’t wrong. Technology is a huge Achilles heel for most of us and chaos’s master opus. Without further ado, here are the worst offenders and some tips on hitting the mute button.

1. Social Media

AKA: The black hole where creativity goes to die. 

Right, so be honest. Even before you got this far, as soon as you read you read the words “time suck” you thought about your feeds. I kind of have to laugh, because social media is so akin to smoking. Everyone who’s on it knows it’s toxic, really wants to quit, but just can’t seem to stop… you get where I’m going with this. 

If you can’t go cold turkey, taper, and yes, you can expect relapses.

2. Streaming On-Demand

As writers, there’s a definite symbiosis with the big screen. It can absolutely help to develop our prose and story telling skills—to a point. 

Binging on seven seasons of How I Met Your Mother in one sitting isn’t doing anyone any favors. Not that I’ve ever done anything like that, I mean, it’s hysterical, but—OK. Busted. 

Look, no one’s perfect, and the key is moderation. If every night you’re zoning out for two hours in front of the TV, that’s fourteen hours a week you could’ve been writing. 

Take a night or two per week to find out if Ted is going to steal that French horn again. That’s the beauty of On-Demand. It will be waiting for you.

3. Apps

I’ll be honest, I’m not guilty of this, though I did have my Candy Crush phase. A friend of mine is a different story. He’s got some game he’ll actually set timers for so he can fight bosses when they’re released and it’s like Pavlov’s bell. Whatever he’s doing he drops so he can attend to warfare. 

There are absolutely things I will do the same for, you know, like taking my kid to the ER, but leveling up isn’t one of them. Priorities here, people.

4. Email

Right. This is my downfall. As in epic fail. I live for the ping. 

As much as I hate social media, my friends and colleagues are a different story, and if they want to talk, I’m there, prioritizing whatever that is over my own work. 

But you know what? I’m OK with it, and you have to figure out what works for you. 

I’ve decided that my email interactions fall into the green distraction category, enriching my life. Social media might serve the same function for you, or cuddling up with someone in front of the TV for an hour each night. 

That said, I’ve cut way back on my email activities. I check it in the morning, before dinner, and before bed. See the above moderation stuff.

5. Text Messages

Yep, this kind of falls into the same category as emails, but there’s an important distinction, given the brevity of the responses. Just like that alarm my friend sets for his apps, it breaks the flow of creativity. I’ve silenced mine, and though I’ll pony up to checking them way more than I probably should, if it’s not urgent, it’s only a glance. I save the responses for when I’m answering emails.

Look, like any good trap, there’s no way to totally avoid technology. What it comes down to is investing in yourself and not what’s feeding the no time to write lie. Starving the chaos while nurturing your creativity. Setting priorities and deciding what serves you. Get rid of what doesn’t. 

In my case, I stopped watching TV and cut out all social media—true story—and over the past three years, those two changes allowed me to take a bunch of classes, complete several novels, find an amazing editor, and have my platform up and running. That dumpster fire that is my life? Still there, but hey, if it’s gonna burn, now I’m roasting marshmallows.

So no more buying into the no time to write lie, and no more excuses. You can do this. Start small. Put down the phone and ask Aunt Bev what she thinks about that new-fangled crystal litter. I guarantee the gleam in her eye will be worth it, and it will keep sparkling when you capture it in your prose.

AK Nevermore is an emerging author of science fiction and urban fantasy. Her books explore dark worlds, perversely irreverent and profound, and always entertaining. She enjoys operating heavy machinery, freebases coffee, and gives up sarcasm for Lent every year.

 A Jane-of-all-trades, she’s a certified chef, restores antiques, and dabbles in beekeeping when she’s not reading voraciously or running down the dream in her beat-up camo Chucks.

Unable to ignore the voices in her head, and unwilling to become medicated, she writes full-time. Her literary aspirations have led her to complete several writing courses, a smattering of mentorships, and has been long-listed by the Australian Writer’s Centre. She also belongs to the Author’s Guild, is a chapter treasurer for the RWA, teaches creative writing, and on the rare occasion, sleeps.
You can find her on her website and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

The post #5onFri: Five Things Feeding the Lie that There’s No Time to Write appeared first on DIY MFA.