Finding Time to Write
By Cara Lockwood
We all have incredibly busy schedules these days, and if you’re trying to write a novel while also juggling a full-time job, a family, and a social life, writing often takes a back seat. In our full-throttle life mode, finding time to write your dream novel can be nearly impossible.
I think it’s vital for every new writer to try to find at least an hour a day to devote to writing. Writing every day helps keep the story fresh in your mind so you spend less time reminding yourself of what you’ve already written. Writing every day also helps you hone your skills. But where to find the time?
I wrote my first novel, I Do (But I Don’t), while I was also working a full-time job and planning a wedding. To say that year was hectic was an understatement! But here are some tips and tricks to carve out that extra hour a day you need to write:
- Unplug your Internet or WiFi or switch off your phone for an hour every day. Everyone wastes time on Facebook or Pinterest or some other social site. Spend less time stalking your high school boyfriend and more time writing! Vow to cut out or trim back social media time, and you’ll be amazed how much extra time you’ve got for writing.Don’t turn on the TV until AFTER you’ve written your hour a day. TV can wait. Once I sit on the couch, I know I’m not getting up. So, I don’t sit there and turn on the TV until after I’ve finished my writing for the day.Put writing in your schedule. If you block out time for it, you can do it. Thinking “I’ll get to it when I can” usually means “I’ll never do it.”
- Schedule writing time on your calendar like you would a yoga class or doctor’s appointment. Write on your lunch hour. When I worked full-time, I’d often take lunch at my desk and work on my novel. And, to be honest, if it was a slow day, I might work longer on it if I could get away with it. I always did my day-job work first, but there were slow days, and instead of surfing the web, I'd pull up my manuscript.
- Take your laptop or tablet with you and write on the go. I’ve been known to write chapters while my kids were at ballet class. Take your laptop with you, or even a journal and pen to jot down scenes. I also always take my laptop with me when I travel, so I can use the airplane time or time waiting at the gate for writing.
- Dictate in the car. You don’t always have to use a laptop. If you’ve got a long commute in your car, get a tape recorder, or use your phone to dictate scenes or ideas.
- And, finally, if your life is out-of-control hectic, look for ways to streamline it to give you the time you need. Out of college, I worked as a newspaper reporter and often worked sixty to seventy hours a week including weekends. I was exhausted and run-down, and hardly had any time to write my novel. Eventually, I decided my passion was fiction writing, but my life wasn’t organized to help me achieve my dream. I quit that job and found a less stressful, and less demanding marketing writing job with more regular hours that allowed me the space to write. If I never made that switch, I would have never found the time to write my first novel. If being a novelist is your dream, you need to structure your life to help make it happen. Time is never going to volunteer itself, you’ve got to make it work for you.
Staying Motivated
By Cara Lockwood
Whether you’re trying to write a novel in a month for Camp NaNoWriMo, or you’re simply trying to finally finish that griping fantasy novel you’ve been working on for ten years, it’s hard to stay motivated while writing.
As a novelist, I find that there are days when the words flow easily, and others when even writing the first sentence feels about as easy as climbing Mount Everest in flip-flops.
While I love writing, and I can’t imagine not doing it for a living, I also know that there are days when I’d rather do almost anything other than face the pages I have to write. Every distraction, even laundry or the gym, begins to look like a more fun way to spend my afternoon. Here are some tips of getting and staying motivated while you write your novel:
Write something every day even if it’s terrible. When I’m facing down a deadline, I don’t take a day off. I try to live with my characters as much as possible so that any time I open up my computer file, I don’t have to waste a lot of time bringing myself up to speed by figuring out what I wrote a week ago and where I am in the story. Writing every day helps keep the characters fresh in your mind. It also will help the words flow a little better.
Tell your inner critic to take a hike. All authors at one time or another have a crisis of confidence in their writing abilities, but when you’re trying to hit a tight deadline the fact is you just don’t have time to worry about whether you have enough talent to even be doing this. Get words down on paper and then worry later if they’re any good or not. It is far easier to edit a bad manuscript than to write one from scratch.
Make reasonable goals for yourself and stick to them. The key here is to be reasonable in your daily page-count goal. I always thought of daily page goals as minimums and I’d always try to exceed them. I didn’t always succeed, but when I did, it felt really good.
Find a place to write that will ensure you won’t get distracted. For me, this happened to be at the local Starbucks with my headphones on and my WiFi turned off. I refuse to let myself check email or Facebook or Twitter until I finish the pages I’d planned to do that day.
Don’t think about how much more you have to do. Concentrate on what you did already. This is the writer’s equivalent of “Don’t look down.” If you start worrying about how many pages or words you have left to write, you might find yourself with a pretty hefty case of vertigo and get stuck from sheer fright. For me, after writing every day, I print my pages out. I like to read over them before I went to bed. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment. As I hold the papers in my hand, I can really see how much writing I am really doing every day. As my stack of pages grows, so does my confidence that I will finish on time.
Remember that deadlines are the world's greatest motivator. Even as you’re cursing the fact that you signed on to make what seems like an impossible deadline, remember that this is just the universe's way of inspiring you to finish. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and write!
Wonder if what you have is good enough? Get a critique today!
What Should You Write About?
By Cara Lockwood
Not all good ideas make good novels.
Writing a novel requires more than just a good premise. Your novel needs sustained conflict with a story nuanced enough that it keeps readers involved for 300 pages. Sometimes, it is best to keep conflict on a general level (boy-meets-girl, but-has-trouble-keeping-girl) which will leave you more room to dial down to specifics later.
Look for side stories to branch off from your main narrative.
The best kind of conflict in a novel spurns other kinds of conflicts in a kind of ripple effect. Think about how a main character might have supporting characters involved, either with their own problems or related problems.
Consider where you want your book to be on a book store shelf or in an online list.
When developing your premise, keep in mind what kind of novel you want to write. Is it a mystery? A romance? Sci fi? General fiction? Genres shouldn’t dictate exactly how you write your novel, but they can help you focus your premise. Is this MOSTLY a love story or a mystery? Prioritize the storyline you want to be most prominent in your book.
Keep in mind the kind of voice you want to use to tell this story.
It’s never too early to think about how you want to tell this story, and from what perspective. Do you want a first-person narrative, which reads like a diary? Or close third-person narrative, where you tell the story mostly from one or two characters, using “he” and “she” and occasionally dipping into their heads? Do you want to choose distant third-person narrative, where the reader NEVER gets inside a character’s head? The voice of your book will also inform your premise.
Get inspired by your favorite novelists.
What about the storyline and basic premise of your favorite novels attracted you the most? Was it the love story? Or the suspense of a whodunit? Get in touch with the nuts and bolts of the stories that you love the most. What kept you turning pages? Think about what drew you into a book AND what made it stick with you long after you stopped reading. Was it the surprise ending? Was it just the happy ending? Was it the humor throughout?
Write what you know (or what you want to read about).
A general rule of thumb in writing a novel is to write about what you know. This means that it’s generally best to write about characters and places you’re familiar with so that your writing sounds authentic. It’s no accident that some of the best legal thrillers are written by John Grisham (a lawyer himself). This doesn’t mean that you have to get a law degree to write thrillers. Do your research and become an expert on what you want to write about. This leads me to my second rule of thumb (or one I made up for me), which is to write about what you WANT to read about. If there’s a story you want to tell that you’d buy at a bookstore if you saw it on the shelf, then there’s a good chance someone else wants to read it, too. Writing about what you want to read about is a good way to gauge whether your topic has appeal.
Use people and places and stories from your real life.
All good writers mine their lives for characters, plots and stories. Most of the characters I’ve created are combinations of people I know in real life. This makes them interesting and real. The stories I write about are often exaggerated examples of what’s happened to me in real life. Writing fiction can be very therapeutic in that you get to explore events from your life in a fictional setting (you can give the characters in your book the happy ending you didn’t get, or, conversely, a not-so-happy ending for the not-nice people in your life). I once killed off an ex-boyfriend in a murder-suspense book I wrote! That was more than a little satisfying.
Don’t be afraid of the drama.
Write this summary in enticing and dramatic language. Think of this summary as something that might even be on the back cover of your book. Use action verbs! Think about ways to describe your story that are inviting and the most interesting.
Have fun with it.
Writing is a labor of love, but it’s also fun. Don’t worry about your premise being absolutely perfect. And don’t second guess yourself too much. The premise is NOT set in stone. After all, sometimes when you dig into a novel, things will change. Writing is a fluid process, which is why your keyboard has “delete” and “cut and paste.”
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