Lost in the words?

A marine inversion layer covered Vancouver in a blanket of fog for much of October. When I rode the SeaBus from Lonsdale Quay to Waterfront Station last week I couldn’t see six feet beyond the windows. That felt a bit like writing a novel:

• I couldn’t see where I was going. 
• I couldn’t be certain of reaching my hoped-for destination
• There was a sense of being suspended in time and space with a cast of unknown characters  
• The short commuter ride into the gloom was both frightening and exhilarating.

Word count: 433                                                                               Reading time: 1-2 minutes

Over the years I’ve collected some tools and practises that help me navigate past the obstacles that threaten the direction of my work:

• Free writing. Ten minutes minimum. Don’t lift the pen from the page. Just keep going. Great prompts for free writing exercises can be found here, Sarah Selecky and here, Writers Write Daily Writing Prompt.
• Copy type. I pull out work by a respected author and let his or her words flow through me. Ten minutes minimum.
• Don’t worry about the big picture: look at what is in front of the bow. Write that one small scene. The next day, write another one.
• Get on a bus. Go to a coffee shop. Listen, smell, taste, and feel. Give the brain a holiday from the screen.
• Turn off the ruthless self-editor. Accept permission to write something truly dreadful. After that, there is no way but up.
• Read a good craft book. There are tried and proven ways to improve writing; skills can be sharpened, new techniques can be tried.  
• Go for a walk, a run or a bike ride. Do something to wake the body up.
• Share the work. On Questions Tuesday recently John Green said Curiosity is not the most important human trait. The urge to collaborate is. A second or third set of eyes are often the ones that find a critical weak spot and help a story shine.
• Read the work aloud. From Neil Gaiman’s acknowledgments at the end of his book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane: As this book entered its second draft, as I was typing out my handwritten first draft, I would read the day’s work to my wife, Amanda, at night in bed, and I learned more about the words I’d written when reading them aloud to her than I ever have learned about anything I’ve done.  

What methods do you have for finding light in the darkness? How do you keep your bearings when the path ahead is unknown?

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 Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Burrard Street Bridge & Fog, DougVancouver

What are your bare necessities?

“The hardest part of writing is writing,” said the legendary Nora Ephron. To me, the hardest thing about writing is getting started.

Word count: 303                       Reading time: 1-2 minutes

When I finally get down to work, the walls recede, the rat stops gnawing the door, and I forget everything but the characters in front of me. Why is it so difficult to get out of the starting gate? Are there physical things that draw a person to the desk? Over the past week, I made a list of things that seemed essential to writing on different days:

• a cup of green tea
• a mug of strong coffee
• a glass of wine
• none of the above – water only, please
• a tidy desk
• a desk heaped with notes and reference material
• a free writing warm-up
• jumping right in
• a good pen and a friendly notebook
• a laptop
• sunshine
• rain
• reading a couple of poems aloud, listening to the diction, tripping out on the images, enjoying the poet’s playfulness
• reading no poetry
• a quiet corner
• music
• complete silence
• incense
• open windows and fresh air

So the list revealed nothing more than the lack of a magic formula. In the end, the main thing that gets me working is a looming deadline, usually a self-imposed one. Without it I could and would avoid the pain and the joy forever. After all: writing is 90% procrastination, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. ~ Paul Rudnick

What makes you get started? Do you have a favourite spot that gets your story spinning? Or do you like variety, somewhere new every time? Do you have routines or physical comforts that that entice you to work?