Image courtesy of Chocolate Geek

This question was prompted by a book I’m reading, novel in a year, by Louise Doughty. The book is divided up into weeks, and every other week has an exercise. One of the early exercises is to sum up why you want to be a novelist, in one sentence. One sentence – that’s tricky.

The Love of it

I spent some time trying to think of some deep purpose to my ambition; something original, that might sound wise or insightful. But I kept coming back to the fact that I really like reading novels. I’ve always liked them. As far back as I can remember, I have enjoyed getting lost in another world. Novels are long enough to do that, and I find them much more absorbing than any other medium.

And what I enjoy, I want to emulate. Or, if not emulate (although there have been many authors I admire, I only want to sound like myself when I write), at least make my own version thereof.

My Readers Need Me!

No, I cannot pretend that I have some altruistic desire to share the pleasure I get from reading – to impart the same with my own work. In part, that would seem rather arrogant of me, I think. It’s not that I don’t believe that there are people out there that would enjoy my work, but I do not assume that the world is clamouring for a novel by Matt Roberts. And I don’t see it as my duty that I write for these people; that it would be a selfish tragedy to deny them such works of genius!

Apart from that, I do not require readers to want to write a novel. Without anyone to read it, I would likely still write it anyway.

Climbing the Mountain

The challenge might be another part of it, though. It’s a long old process, especially for those of us who can only write in small snatches. But I imagine a day when my novel is finally completed, and know that the relief and pride that come from such an accomplishment will be worth it. That is one of the things that spurs me on. Without relishing the challenge, I believe I would be consigned to writing quarter-finished pieces, constantly starting on the next project, but never finishing.

So, why do I want to be a novelist, in one sentence?
I want to become a novelist, because I love novels, and relish the feeling of satisfaction I’ll have when I finally complete my own.

Perhaps not amazingly profound, but true, and motivation enough. Have you ever taken the time to consider why you want to be a novelist, poet, shirt story writer, script writer etc.? I’d love to read your reasons!

Such has been the problem for the last couple of weeks. I recently smashed my records for the most words written in a month and in a week. Woohoo! Unfortunately, rather than spur me on to even greater things, this has had the opposite effect. Something went click in my brain and suddenly I felt like I’d earned a break.

Well, no actually Matt, you didn’t.

This break was not a conscious decision. It was more like an attitude that seeped in. Of course, I should have confronted this head on when I felt this insidious seepage, but alas, I just carried on doing trickles of writing and feeling guilty. The result is that not a lot of writing gets done, and there is now a general lack of motivation. Bad! Bad! Bad! Two steps forward, one step back (at least).

So, what should I have done? I’ve prepared a short list that I think will help me in future:

• Set out your next goals. Let’s keep that motivation going. You (and I, too. Everybody!) should take a look at the stats and decide what you should be chasing next. What’s the next goal? Play about with it. If this goal is achieved, what does that mean, and what else might be achieved? These are the motivating questions that ensured the last milestone was reached, so they should not be ignored now.
• And if you must take it easy… Then decide to take it easy! Don’t leave it to chance, don’t lose control. Set the boundaries. Are you going to do nothing for a set amount of days, or have a smaller wordcount target this week? What are the exact numbers? Stick to it! And now that you’ve decided on the conditions of your rest, don’t forget to set some goals for afterwards so you’re not left languishing!
• Pay attention! Are you having an unscheduled break? Is your wordcount dipping below acceptable levels? Feeling demotivated? Don’t ignore it! Confront it! Set some new goals or schedule a break, but again, make the decision!

Hopefully I’ll be able to practice what I preach! Motivation is pretty much everything when you’re working on something alone, so it’s important to be aware and to take control! Now let’s get to it!

• How many people break their new years resolution, stop going to the gym after two sessions, fail their diet at the sight of a chocolate bar? Sticking something out requires discipline, and if it’s something you feel can be put off until the next day, it’s even harder. It will never be urgent.Sticking to a writing routine is difficult, especially when starting.
• There’s never enough time. We can carve out a little niche here and there for writing, but the truth is things will never get done quickly enough to keep us satisfied, and there are always other commitments gnawing away.
• There is a lot of competition out there. A lot. How many writing blogs are there by people who haven’t made it yet? How many fledgling writers reading them? It’s no wonder your story hasn’t been picked up. It’s going to take a lot of persistence
• First drafts look like crap. It’s easy for us to write and write and look back and think, oh God, I can’t do this, it’s terrible. It’s difficult to write well, and easy to dismiss something as rubbish and forget the whole thing. But almost every writer writes badly in their first draft. Chill.

So next time you feel like you’ve not done enough, remember that this is hard. It takes a lot of work and dedication. You should expect to struggle occasionally. But you’re still here, you’re still doing it. That kind of attitude is half the battle.

Now, the list above is rather short, there are bound to be many more reasons that you can think of. Share them in the comments, please. And remember, these aren’t excuses, but they are reasons to cut ourselves a little slack every now and again. Not too much. Just a little.

• How long do you spend at work, asleep, playing games, watching TV? It would only take a fraction of that time to write your novel. It’s estimated that on average a writer can manage a page in an hour. Write for just one hour every day and you have 365 pages done in a year. To some, that’s what you call a book.
• You want to write, yes? So, chances are you read a lot, you may have done quite a bit of writing in school. You were good, yes? You may have taken writing courses. You almost certainly have had good ideas worth writing about. You’ve got talent in other words. This is already something you’re good at!
• And have you remembered that you enjoyed writing in the past yet? You probably still enjoy it. Even better!
• You’re here, so you already know that if you’re struggling there is help. Plenty. Between blogs like this, online communities, books, writing courses, there is an abundance of help out there!

When you think about it like that, what’s so difficult, really? I want people to use this list as a little bit of motivation when they need something to help them pull themselves together. I’d like you to look at this list and think, that’s right – writing’s great, and I can do it, I have done it, it’s easy!

Has anyone got anything similar they tell themselves? Add it in the comments and it may make it’s way to the list above.

The blog

First though, a quick look at the blog itself. Let’s say that number again – 51 blog entries! That’s one a week since we started (well, almost – I had a week off last week. Okay, I’m sorry. I’m a bad person). Now I know that in the grand scheme of blogs, that’s no great achievement, but it was for me! Of course I had some help, and you can see my thankyous in my Christmas message (I feel like the Queen), but I’m genuinely proud of that achievement. And it does seem to have been helping. I have at least done some writing this year, and the posts I write have at times been a great tool for reviewing what I have learnt.

It has not been as successful as I would have liked however. Of course, that is my fault. I know the days of, “build it and they will come”, have long since passed, but in truth I have hardly done anything to promote this site. Again, that is largely to do with time (isn’t everything?) but I will just have to build it into my routine. So, that will form the basis for my goals on the blog.

The writing

Way back in May, I wrote about measuring improvement in writing. I have been gathering these stats ever since, so I now have a good half a year of figures to pour over.

Looking at it overall, I can see that I hit my productivity peak during September. This was when I was approaching the end of a story I was working on. However, after that it drops right down. I started a new piece of work then, and I must confess, I have been rather timid with it. This is of course, not the way to behave when approaching a new piece of work. The best way will always be to take the bull by the horns and go for it! Whatever it is I’m afraid of can be fixed later!

I have been rather down on myself about how much writing I have done this year. I have always had the impression that I was not trying hard enough, and not knuckling down. I was right – there is a huge difference between my best week and my average week. This shows the difference between the potential of my current routine, and the reality of not sticking to it. Still, it is encouraging to know how much writing can be done, even in short bursts. When I total up each month, then the year, it is shocking how much can be achieved. I said that I wanted to see how small improvements can accumulate into big gains when I set up this method of measuring, and I can certainly see that!

I wasn’t writing in 2008, that’s the thing. So, as much as I rightly berate myself for not doing more, I am doing a hell of a lot more than nothing! This in itself is an achievement, but before I pat myself on the back too much (let’s not get carried away now), I have also taken a look at how my best week would look over a whole year. What a difference! I took my best week, multiplied that by 52, and was amazed. I knew that my best week was over double my average (meaning I’m not even reaching half the potential that my routine offers me), bit it is still an eye-opener to see the full number there.

Once again, I must recommend keeping some kind of stats on your writing. If you are doing everything electronically anyway, getting a word count is normally a snap, and it only takes a couple of minutes to add that to a spreadsheet. Seeing the effect of small changes to my habits over time is a real inspiration. And being able to extrapolate from that gives further motivation. If you’re not trying it already, I urge you to give it a go.

I would very much like to hear from anyone who has been measuring their writing over the past year and what hey think of the results. Or if this is part of your new year resolution, please let me know, too. And I would really really like to know if you visited getmewriting last year and found it helpful. All feedback in the coments section below, please.

…About Running is, I feel, an absolute must read for aspiring writers. The book itself is a journey through Murakami’s training for the New York marathon, and as the title suggests, it’s partly about how you train yourself to run long distance. However, the parallel’s he draws between training to be a runner and training to be a writer are highly appropriate.

Because this is what I feel I need to do. Of course, some people just have the talent to write, and can do so easily. But as Murakami notes, there is a difference between natural talent and developing the skill. You need not have a vast amount of talent to write as long as you develop the necessary skills. You can train yourself to focus, to concentrate, and to build your endurance. In essence, it’s a lot about what this site is about. I myself feel I have some degree of talent when it comes to – not necessarily writing per se – but in generating interesting material. Of course, its fine being able to generate the material, but it’s pointless if I can’t get it down on paper (or more rather, in my hard drive)

This is where the training comes in. Dedicating a set period of time each day to writing, to focusing solely on the act of getting things written down is essential. Especially for longer works. Writing a longer fiction is a lot like running a marathon. It can take months, perhaps a year to get through a complete draft, and when you look at it in terms of that, it can be daunting, a lot like a runner standing at the starting line and looking to the finish 26 miles away. How can I do this?

It’s all about the training.

I won’t even pretend that I can explain it as well as this book does, but a few major points I took away from what I’ve read thus far concern techniques that Murakami utilises, that were also utilised by Hemmingway and Raymond Chandler.

Firstly is dedicating the time to writing, sitting down at your desk (or in your private writing space) and focusing. Even if you don’t write anything, just dedicating the time, building up your stamina and concentration for writing will serve you well, especially for those longer projects.

And secondly, once you’ve developed this focus and concentration, and you do write, and then always leave your writing at a place where you feel you can continue on. In other words, stop writing before you run out of steam. That way, the next day, when you set out to write, you’ll be itching to continue where you left off; you’ll develop a flow and a rhythm to your writing which will make it much easier.

As someone who used to train extensively at the gym, and get into a set routine which improved my fitness, built my energy and shed the surplus weight, I can’t believe that I never thought of writing in the same way before. I guess it was an unconscious thing, I just wrote, and did so daily, or if not daily, then at least once every few days, but I managed to get through it. But like my training at the gym, my writing regimen slipped, so it feels tough for me to get through a few pages, just like I can slide off a treadmill sweating and panting, because I’ve let it all slip.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book; I can honestly say it has inspired me to concentrate more on my writing…

If I can find the time…

No big drama here; no tragedy in my life (thankfully); no excuse. I simply fell off the wagon for a week. And at the beginning of a new project, too! It’s true that I have been particularly tired and grumpy this week, but the sad fact is that when I got on the train I just couldn’t (wouldn’t, rather) be bothered.

Not wanting to analyse it too much, there are a couple more contributing factors. I’ve been working on the principle that writing begets more writing. I think that’s true. The more practice you get; the more you keep to a routine, the easier it becomes to just fall into that rythm. But I also think that not writing begets… more not writing (there is, undoubtedly, a better way of saying that).

It’s that old formula of, “the longer you leave it, the harder it becomes,” in microcosm. Simply put, if I don’t knuckle down and do something on Monday, I greatly reduce the chances that I’ll do something on Tuesday. And so on.

Of course, the only cure is to just get on and bloody do it. And perhaps it is worth remembering that how I start the week is just as important as how I finish it.

The second problem is to do with the fact that I am starting something new. I have some anxieties about starting something from scratch without knowing precisely where it’s going. On the other hand, meticulous planning saps some of the joy out of writing, so I thought I’d give the more improvisational approach a go. Craig has written a bit about this, and I’ve added some comments if you want to read more.

So, I’ve written a grand total of two scenes for a new novel, and already the anxiety of not knowing has got to me! They’re good scenes, too. The problem here is not that I don’t know what’s coming next (that’s kind of the point, after all), but that each new section is like starting all over again (I want to use the microcosm word again) – a little journey into the unknown.

The way to make this easier, I’ve decided is not to stop writing when I finish a scene (section, chapter, whatever). The pause I take in between makes that first step look much more daunting. Instead, when I finish a section I must plough on, straight into the next one, and stop at a point where I already know what’s coming next; even if I only know as far as the next paragraph. The point is I can start writing as soon as I next sit down and get straight into a flow. I have even seen some writers recommend stopping mid-sentence, just to keep that sense of flow going, and that sounds like a great idea to me.

So here’s a list of notes-to-self to go with this little review:

• Just bloody do it.
• Work hard right at the beginning of the week and I’ll find it easier to continue
• If I do fall off the horse, get straight back on! Don’t let the cycle build.
• Face the fear and anxiety (then kick it in the nuts)!
• Stop mid-scene
• Stop mid-sentence

I hope these tips for keeping writing will help others as well. I’ll stick to these and let you know how it goes. Any other tips are of course very welcome in the comments.

So, my solution is to reward myself when I’ve completed the draft of the story. Or, rather, I am delaying some other gratification. The new Muse album is now out, and I of course bought it, being a big fan. When it came I gave it straight to my wife and asked her to hide it from me until I finished this story.

To be honest, I’m not sure if this is a reward or a punishment! Or whether that matters.

I did make a mistake, however. I think I should have simply said, “don’t get anything new for yourself, or at least don’t allow yourself to use anything new.” you see, I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum the other week also and played it. It’s a great game by the way. But now my “get something new for yourself” itch is pretty much scratched and I’m not so bothered about that Muse album anymore! Oops!

Anyway, I was really wondering what other people do to reward or punish themselves in order to get that extra motivation kick. And which have you found better, stick or carrot?

Now it’s almost 8 years later and it languishes in my flash drive. The few times a month I do look at it, I can barely edit a few pages; and all that involves is reading through it and changing the occasional word! And it isn’t fatigue with my work, or the story, or the characters. God no, I could comfortably live with these characters for many books (though I’m not a fan of serialisation for the sake of it), nor is it that I have particular issues with editing. I’m not such a fan of it as I am of generating new material, ideas, situations, characters and so fourth, but I find it to be an intense slog.

Maybe I just don’t have the stamina for it.

Part of it I guess is the many distractions. Other people may call it “life”. Life totally gets in the way, because lets face it, writing is a very solitary exercise. It takes an incredible amount of focus and determination, and it’s not exactly something that you can do socially. And editing is, well it’s the nuts and bolts of the whole process isn’t it? The actual writing part – generating the raw material, that’s fairly easy, if you’ve got your head on right, and you have a decent idea you can follow through on, but the editing of it – that’s something totally different.

I’ve never been someone who’s suffered from writer’s block before. I know that may not be a terribly big help to someone who does, but I do suffer editor’s block. Could this affliction be worse? It’s fine coming up with new ideas, rewording things, but I usually do so when I don’t have access to a computer, and when I do come to edit, then it never seems as good when I do write it down.

Something else which I’ve recently thought is that I haven’t really written anything new for a long time. All the writing I work on is stuff I originally wrote years ago, and have been caught up in editing since. It’s one of the dangers I guess of writing longer fiction. I mean, short stories – a few thousand words, you can write it in a few hours, do a few weeks of editing on it, and be happy with the result.

A book, or a full screenplay, can be much much more difficult. You have more words to correct for a start, a full complex story, several plot strands, a whole host of characters to round out, clichés to eliminate… And usually, when I’m editing something, I may throw in a new idea, change the flow of the story, which can make radical changes later, so most of the final chapters need to be entirely re-written. I guess this part I don’t mind so much, but just having to adjust one or two little details in search of ‘perfection’…

So how do I get rid of the block? How do I eliminate all these distractions that life will throw at me? How do I find the stamina to blast through to the finish line? Well, it’s strange to think of it this way, but when I write, I never actually write. I type. I uncovered a piece of mine a few weeks ago – one that I’d printed off, and I was reading through it, and found it so much easier to edit on paper than I did on a screen. And as much as I hate to waste paper, I guess I’ve found that actually writing is the best way to beat the block.

The Dip

The dip itself is the moment where your hard work stops giving you rewards. Any venture, says Seth, begins with a period of enthusiasm that rewards your efforts. Learning something new is the simplest example. Soon though, this honeymoon period wears off, praise from your peers peters out, and your efforts seem to go unnoticed. Sound familiar? This is the dip.

The good news is though, that getting through this period leads to great success and benefits. The rewards far out way those you started out experiencing. This is because getting through the dip on the big issues in your life makes you a rarity, and makes you valuable.

By way of illustration, let’s look at J. K Rowling. She is the perfect example of someone who struggled through a dip that lasted years while she created her world and tried to convince someone that others would want to read her stories about a boy wizard. Now look at her. In this case, getting through the dip, and not quitting, led to huge rewards.

The other side of the coin is that quitting is actually allowed, and required. Sure, our example author didn’t quit writing Harry Potter, but she quit an awful lot of other things in order to do it. Seth Godin’s book advocates strategic quitting in order to become the best in the world at something. After all, you can’t be the best in the world at everything.

What use is it?

So, with the nutshell description and example out of the way, how does it actually read? Well, it’s short. But even that doesn’t save it from waffle. The basic concept takes barely a page to explain, after all. After that there is some useful, practical advice about half-way through, and again at the end, but in between it’s a bit woolly. The problem is there’s very little structure, so the middle of the book feels like a series of flash cards, held up in no particular order. Seth seesaws between advocating quitting and sticking, rather than take them in turn. This makes it hard to pick out words of wisdom.

Where it is useful is as a consciousness raiser. He rightly points out that you know these things already, but by making sure that you recognise dips (and potential cul-de-sacs and cliffs), you can learn to react appropriately and with intent.
For example, after reading, you’ll realise
- the dip won’t last forever
- the dip is malleable, and working harder might get you through it quicker
- the rewards will be waiting
- if you’re in a Dip, you are likely on the right track
- working through the dip is actually the shortcut you’ve been looking for

More importantly, you’re more likely to recognise these things whilst in the dip, encouraging you not to quit, or before you start a new writing project if you realise you are not going to see it through. And if you’re not sure, the book is short enough that you can pick it up and give it a good read every now and then to keep you aware of what you are facing and why it is worth it.

And dips are everywhere in writing (and in life I guess). There is likely a dip in each project you do (writing a novel seems like a slog after your enthusiasm for the idea wears off); there is a dip in getting published, or in getting enough copies out there if you’re self-publishing; there is even a dip in just getting a writing routine going.

My experience of The Dip

I had my good writing experiences in primary school, and then later in secondary school. In primary school my stories always took longer than anyone else’s because I loved writing them. In secondary school I rediscovered my talent for it as a young adult, enjoying writing and getting praise for it from teachers.

But, I never got into the habit of writing, and the moments of inspiration, where I felt I had got something right, became fewer as I progressed through university. From then on, any time I started to have a go at writing, I was already starting in The Dip.

So, you can say that when I started this blog, I was already sold on the dip concept. That is the reason I started writing this in the first place – as a means to chip away at the dip of simply getting myself to write regularly. At the time though, I hadn’t read the book and would not have put it that way. Still, like my other recent attempts to motivate myself, this serves to reinforce my reasoning and attack the problem with renewed gusto. For that, I have to recommend it.

I’d like to know how many other writers have read this book. What did you think? Was it useful? Any other books in a similar vein that you can recommend?