Category: Uncategorized

Posted in Uncategorized, writing prompts

My Favorite Prompt for Writer’s Block

Posted on by Valerie Lute

Writer’s block happens for many reasons. Often, I know what I want to write and I have my goal, but when I sit down to write, I start thinking about the laundry I need to do or a stressful situation from work or some other distraction, and I just can’t focus on the task at hand.

This is a great prompt for redirecting attention. Think of it as a guided meditation for writers that will take you step by step away from your everyday life stressors to a new place where you can focus on creating. I like to do this prompt on the first day of class as it’s a great way to show my students how to clear their minds at the beginning of a writing session.

Step 1: Write Out Your Stress

This is the most important step. Take five minutes and write about anything that might distract you from creativity. This might be stressful situations at work or with your family, it might be the pile of laundry on your floor or your overwhelming to-do list. When I do this prompt in class, I inevitably write about my worries for the semester and any perceived awkwardness I might have had interacting with my students.

When we put our worries in an orderly form, they’re less likely to bother us for the rest of our writing session.

It’s important that you don’t censor yourself. Think of this as a diary entry that’s just for you.

Coming Up Next

For my own writing sessions, I usually just do this part of the prompt. If you already know what you want to write about, often this is all you need to get right to work. If you need more writing inspiration, continue on.

For the next steps of this prompt, we’ll use a piece of visual art to inspire our writing. I’ve used various photographs and paintings in my classes. I’m using one of my favorites here, but you can do these steps with any piece of artwork that appeals to you.

I encourage you to use a timer, and don’t spend too much time on any one step.

Giorgio de Chirico, “L’ enigma dell’ arrivo e del pomeriggio” (The Enigma of the Arrival and of the Afternoon)

Step 2: Focus on the Feelings

Spend a minute or two jotting down the emotional impression that the image makes on you. You can write either words or short phrases, but do not physically describe the image.

Step 3: Step Inside the Picture

Spend five minutes describing the image. Don’t limit yourself to what you can see, but use your imagination for all five senses. What does the air feel like? Hot and dry? Cold and windy? What about the smells and sounds of this place? How would the ground feel underfoot and what is the texture of the walls?

Try to imagine that you are really there, not just looking at a two-dimensional representation.

Step 4: Meet the Characters

Spend five minutes imagining two characters in this scene. They might be the ones that you can see in the image, or they could be someone else, outside the frame. I often do this exercise with images that don’t have people in them.

The important thing is to imagine what would motivate someone to be in this space. Why did they come here? Was it by choice? Were they born here? Do they want to leave or stay? What do they hope to get out of either going to staying? Think about what life goals your characters might have.

Make sure you answer these questions differently for your two distinct characters.

Step 5: Create a Scene

This is the final step. Now that you know a little bit about the setting and characters, spend ten minutes writing a scene that takes place in this picture.

The scene should feature a conflict between your two characters. There are many possibilities, depending on the backstories and life goals that you have chosen for them. A new-comer to the location might threaten the life ambitions of a long-term resident. A parent might want to prevent their child from leaving, or alternatively, encourage their child to leave for a better life.

You can re-use any of your favorite phrases or sentences from the previous steps in this stage.

Wrapping Up

Once you’ve finished, congratulate yourself on sticking it out and focusing on the new scene you’ve created. You might have ended up with a great flash fiction piece or the beginning of a longer story. But even if this piece of writing never sees the light of day again, you’ve learned several important lessons:

  • When life is intruding on your writing, spending a few minutes getting your feelings out can help you focus.
  • When you feel overwhelmed by a writing project, try breaking it into smaller and more manageable steps. You wouldn’t have been able to create the scene at the end without doing the pre-writing steps first.
  • Writing is a product of sitting down and getting the work down, not some magical muse appearing to inspire us.

Thanks for joining me for this journey today. If you want more writing advice and prompts like this one, follow this blog on Facebook or Twitter! I look forward to writing with you again.

Posted in Uncategorized, writing habits

How to Achieve Your Writing New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on by Valerie Lute

Sometimes meeting our writing goals can be difficult. I learned that myself last month when I got sidelined by appendicitis. Today I want to talk about how to achieve your writing resolutions in the New Year. This is a particularly pertinent topic for me, as I’m still getting back in the swing of things after recovering from surgery. We won’t always know what life is going to throw at us, but if we establish good habits, we can always find a way to achieve our goals, whether that means finishing that novel, or simple starting a daily writing habit.

Sign a Contract

And I don’t mean signing a book deal. In this case, I mean making a promise to yourself. The Creativity Contract is a concept that I first discovered in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Her original contract is quite simple:

I, ___________________________________, understand that I am undertaking an intensive, guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the twelve-week duration of the course. I, ________________________________, commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist date, and the fulfillment of each week’s tasks.
I, ___________________________________, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with. I, ______________________________, commit myself to excellent self-care–adequate sleep, diet, exercise and pampering–for the duration of the course.
______________________________Signature
______________________________Date

But I make some changes to the contract for my own writing classes. I find it’s helpful to have my students reflect on their concrete goals for the course. For some of my students, that might mean writing their first ever short story. For more experienced writers, they might want to refine a publishable collection by the end of the term.

So what do you want to achieve by the end of the year? Spend a few minutes today jotting down your goals. Be realistic, but also challenge yourself.

Experiment

When I’m advising my students on starting a daily writing habit, I always tell them to experiment with different elements in their writing routine. Some people like to write in the morning, some at night. Some people prefer to write in twenty minute bursts, while others need an hour to get into a good groove. Some people need to make a cup of tea and curl up in their favorite chair in a quiet house in order to focus, while other people can scribble in a notebook in a crowded cafe. There is no wrong way to write. There’s only what works for you.

It is also important to remember that what works for you might change over time. Before the pandemic hit, I was writing on a novel during my long commute by train. When I stopped going into work, I found it difficult to work on this project that I associated with writing in this very specific space. I decided to take a break from that project and work on other writing while I found a new routine for my stay-at-home lifestyle.

Join a Group

Having a writing group is one of the best ways to increase your accountability. I’m part of a bi-monthly writing on Zoom, and sometimes knowing that my friends are looking forward to seeing my latest chapter is all I need to push through a difficult passage.

Even if an in-person writing group is off the table right now, there are many different kinds of writing groups that can fit your lifestyle. If you are new to writing, taking a writing class online can be a great way to meet other writers. The friends that you make in your writing class might end up being your critiquing partners for life.

Forgive Yourself

Remember, a single slip up doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Unexpected difficulties will always pop up in your life. After I had my appendectomy, I couldn’t write for almost a week. I was groggy from pain killers for the first few days, and my incisions made it difficult to sit upright at a computer. I missed a lot of goals that I had made both for this blog and for my other writing projects. It is natural to feel discouraged. Even after I recovered from my surgery, my routines had all been broken and I’ve had to work to establish them all over again.

But sometimes feeling discouraged can make us give up on our goals altogether, and that is a trap to avoid. I once had a roommate who was always trying to quit smoking. Every time she broke down and had one cigarette, she would think, “well, this attempt to quit smoking has failed, so I might as well finish the pack.” Then she’d need a new pack. Soon the cycle would start again.

It’s inevitable. At some point, you are going to fail to meet your goals. But the important thing is that you try to get back on track as soon as you can’t. Don’t wait for another New Year’s resolution to start again. You can renew your commitment to your writing in any season of the year.

Posted in revision, Uncategorized

How to Revise Your Nanowrimo Novel

Posted on by Valerie Lute

Congratulations! You completed your manuscript during National Novel Writing Month. But now what the heck do you do with your unwieldy 50,000+ word novel? You know it’s not ready to be published, but you don’t know where to begin on your second draft. Do you hire an editor? Do you start revising the first sentence? Well, you can start congratulating yourself on your hard work so far. While it’s true you have a lot of steps to go, once you have a roadmap for your revisions, the process won’t seem so daunting.

Take a Break

Sometimes, it’s hard to see the faults in a fresh draft. When you’ve just written something, it sounds brilliant! But put it aside, at least for a week or two, so you can start to see it with clearer eyes. When you look at it again, pretend that this is a book written by a stranger. Losing your emotional attachment to your first draft is an essential part of the butcher job you are about to perform.

Think About The Big Picture

When you pick up your manuscript again, read it over, not just once, but many times. You can take notes as you go. Don’t worry so much about the small details like word choice and sentence structure in the first round of revisions. You still have too many major changes to make. It would be a shame if you crafted a perfect sentence, only to scrap that entire chapter.

Here are the most important questions to ask:

  • Is the point of view working? If your novel is in the third person, would it be better in first, or visa versa? A first person novel can make the reader feel closer to the characters, and writing in third person can give the reader some more space to reflect and judge the characters. Both can be effective for different types of stories.
  • Does your novel primarily follow one character or more than one? If you follow more than one, are both characters equally well-developed in your story? Are they contributing an equal amount to the plot? You might need to add chapters focusing on the primary character who isn’t pulling their weight yet.
  • Is the tense working? A novel written in present tense can put the reader into the action, but it sometimes leads to awkward sentences. A novel written in past tense gives more opportunities for reflection and larger context. This is one of the most important decisions you can make about your book.
  • Does your draft begin at the start of the story? It’s very common for writers to start out with a lot of backstory, character introductions and descriptions. This can be very valuable for you, as it helps you learn about the book you want to write. But the readers don’t necessarily need to see it. It is best to start the story as close to the start of the central conflict as possible.
  • Are there any plot holes or redundancies in the story? Are there any chapters that should be cut out entirely? Do you need to add another chapter or two?

Break Your Changes Down Into Steps

Now that you know what you want to change, it can feel overwhelming to actually sit down and do it. Just like when you wrote your first draft, it’s best to set manageable goals. If you realize that you need to add three chapters that focus on your second main character, set dates for when you want to finish each one. For me, I like to write a little slower now than when I wrote my first draft.

Set some time aside to work on your first and last chapters. These are the most important parts of your book.

For your first chapter you want to consider the following:

  • Can the reader identify the main characters and do we learn something about their personalities? Make sure that the characters aren’t just introduced with backstory and description. The best way a reader can get a sense of a character’s personality is by watching them interact with other characters and make decisions in real time.
  • Does the reader learn when and where the story takes place? We shouldn’t get three chapters in and then learn that the story takes place in Victorian England. The setting should be established as quickly as possible. Sensory details, like smells and sounds, are important throughout the book, but especially in the first chapter.
  • Is there a hint of danger? The whole conflict doesn’t need to be spelled out in the first chapter, but there should be a mystery or a hook that makes the reader want to keep going.

For you final chapter you want to consider the following:

  • Does the ending come too suddenly? A good ending should feel like a surprise but not a cheat. The crisis of the story should not be resolved with a deus ex machina or coincidence. Make sure your all your main characters are active, not passive, and making choices that lead to the conclusion.
  • Did you leave any loose ends? Make sure you resolve all the subplots and character arcs. Think about the overall themes of the book as well, and what final statements you’d like to make about them.
  • Does the ending leave room for interpretation? Nobody wants to be told “and they all lived happily ever after” these days. Give the reader space to imagine what the future holds for your characters.

Pull Out a Fine Tooth Comb

Now that you’ve gotten the big things out of the way, it’s time to get to the sentence level edits. For a lot of writers, myself included, this is the most fun part about writing. Small word changes can make a big change in the emotional impact of a line. It can be satisfying to learn to pull these emotional punches. Words are power.

You want to find any awkward sentences, redundant phrases and clichés. One pet-peeve of mine is similes that sound pretty but don’t add anything to the story, so I always do a CTRL-F search for the words “like” and “as” to find all my similes and cut any that seem unnecessary.

In this stage, you want to read your novel aloud, maybe many times. It’s a big book, so break it down and do one chapter a day. Instead of reading it out loud myself, sometimes I like to use a text to speech reader while I edit the text. For me, this is the most effective way to find typos and other small mistakes.

Get Feedback

Now that you’ve gotten the best draft that you can, it’s time to see what readers think. There are a few ways to solicit feedback. You can always start by asking your friends and family. They will usually be excited to see what you’ve created and willing to read it without asking for anything in return. However, friends and family are often too generous with their critiques, especially if they aren’t writers themselves. Another option is to hire a professional editor, but they can be expensive.

If you don’t have the money for an individual editor, you can find a writing group or take a writing class. I teach writing classes online and in greater Boston, which you can learn more about here.

In a writing class, you will get feedback on your writing in exchange for giving feedback to others. Reading the work of other aspiring writers is a great way to learn more about writing. Not only are you getting practice examining a manuscript critically, but you now know other writers who can give you tips and tricks. Having a network of writing friends is one of the surest ways to grow as a writer.