Time to Write

Writing blocks due to your Inner Critic? Blow it up!

The inner critic is the part of you that can be harshly critical when you start something new or when you get stuck. In my book, “Your Writing Coach,”  I suggest some ways to get rid of it, and right now I have an additional one. I call this one THE BLOW-UP METHOD.

It’s really simple: Just listen to the negative statements or thoughts and exaggerate each one, step by step, with each step being worse than the last.

Example: You’re about to start writing or maybe about to start sending you your manuscript. Your Inner Critic tells you, “You’re wasting your time. Nobody will like it or want it.”

Now start exaggerating possible responses: 

“Not only will nobody want it, their rejection letters will insult you.”

“Not only will they insult you, they will hire a billboard to tell the world how bad   a writer you are.” 

“Not only will they hire a billboard, they’ll take out prime time television ads to humiliate you.”

“Not only will you be humiliated on prime-time television, you will be deported and never allowed to return.”

“Not only will you be deported, no country will take you in and you’ll spend the rest of your life on a small island in the middle of the ocean.”

“Even a small island in the middle of the ocean won’t want you; you and your manuscript will be shot into outer space.”

I know that’s silly, but the point is that it’s easy to lose our sense of humor when we really want something to succeed. This little exercise brings back some perspective and some humour to help you avoid being dominated by the inner critic. It’s fast and it’s fun, so if and when your inner critic shows up, give it a try.

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You'll find lots of additional innovative ways to overcome blocks, be more productive, and write well in my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It features writing advice from some of the greatest writers of all time. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

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If you worry about what people will think if you fail at writing

Creativity can save a life--here's how it did

The writer and artist Sark revealed in the introduction to her book, "Make Your Creative Dreams Real," what first inspired her to follow her creative path:

When I was ten my best friend was 80 years old. His name was Mr Boggs. His house was my refuge. He and I discussed my creative dreams and he inspired me to tell stories about what I saw in the world.

Mr Boggs became very ill and went into the hospital. My mother explained that because of his age and health, he probably wouldn’t be coming home. I vowed to create something for him every day that he was in the hospital, and I sent him handmade books, cards and posters.

He did get out of the hospital and when he did, he said to me, “I think you saved my life. No one else called or wrote, and I had to get out to see you.”

I immediately started writing my first book, because I thought that if my art and words could affect one person that much, what might happen if I could share them with the world?”

However, her path was neither quick nor smooth:

From ages 14 to 26 I put my creative dreams on hold as I attended school and experimented with hundreds of part-time jobs…[at the age of 26] I began creating art and writing to share with the world. For years, my art and writing was rejected by magazines, newspapers, and publishing companies. Although it must be said that I didn’t send it out very often, because I was too busy surviving and crafting new work.

In 1988 she finally decided to throw herself whole-heartedly into her work, and to be led by the answers to two questions:

WHAT DID I HAVE TO OFFER?

HOW COULD I BE OF USE?

That led to a best-selling poster and then her first book, "A Creative Companion." But that was not without its challenges, either: 

I finally dared to create the kind of book I’d dreamed of making so many times. I faced massive self-doubt, ruthless inner critics, and nearly paralyzing fear, but I did it anyway.

She's gone on to huge success; it's reassuring that even the most successful people had doubts along the way.

It might be useful to think about how you'd answer her two questions and how the answers relate to your work...and what you could do (even if just part-time) if they don't.

(My book can't make you creative, but it can liberate the creativity you already have and show you how to get into a creative state of mind, give you specific ways to generate ideas, provide tools that will help you turn those ideas into real projects, and introduce you to inspirational stories of how others have done it. It's all in the book Creativity Now, published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

Creative people: when you can't beat the forces of convention...

This is the story of a kind of unconventional collaboration. It also illustrates the principle, "when you can't beat them, join them"...sort of.

Street artist Mobstr is used to having his graffiti painted over. He decided to tell a story one line at a time, with the next one appearing when the previous one had been painted over.

You can see the results here: 

http://designtaxi.com/news/355932/Street-Artist-Teams-Up-With-The-People-Who-Destroy-His-Work-To-Tell-A-Story/

Who or what do you consider the opposition to whatever creative projects you hope to achieve? 

Could there be a way to harness that opposition to make it work for yiou?

Want to write bigger stories or just think bigger? Here's how.

Readers and movie-goers like big stories. That doesn’t mean only stories in which the world is going to be destroyed by aliens or international terrorist rings try to bring down the Western world.

It can be a story about the effect of a divorce on a child but even when the event is small we want to see the big impact. In one case it’s the impact on the planet, in the other it’s the impact on a child.

If you tend to make your stories too small, or in the case of screenplays not visual enough, you can use the BLOW-UP METHOD (blow-up as in inflate, not explode).

It means pushing a particular incident as far as you can, far beyond what is sensible. By expanding the boundaries that far, you can then cut back and still end up with a choice that has more impact than the one you started with.

I’ll give you an example. In a script I’m working on, I have a father who owns a company, and his grown son, his second-in-command. The son expects the father to retire and then the son will finally run the company. In the first draft I have a scene in their boardroom where the father announces he’s changed his mind. He’s not going to retire any time soon.

This is  a feature film, and the scene seemed too small. The problem was mainly the setting—it’s hard to make a scene in a board room very visually interesting. I also wanted to make the son’s humiliation bigger.

I blew it up to the biggest example I could think of: the father pushes aside the Pope on the balcony of the Vatican and announces it to a crowd of half a million people.  Or he goes on a national television show and announces it.

Of course those are not workable, but it got me to thinking: where could he logically announce it, where there are lots of people?

The idea that came up was a big trade show for their industry, which happens to be greeting cards. The father is speaking to a big crowd of people, everybody knows it’s supposed to be his fond farewell, and instead he announces he isn’t handing the company over to his son. Bigger, more humiliating, and visually more interesting.

The key with this method is not to be afraid to expand your mind by taking the situation to ridiculous extremes before you cut back to something that actually works. 

(If you'd like friendly guidance for writing your book or script, get a copy of Your Creative Writing Masterclass: featuring Austen, Chekhov, Dickens, Hemingway, Nabokov, Vonnegut, and more than 100 contemporary and classic ... novels, screenplays and short stories (click for Amazon.co.uk)

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Want to solve a writing or marketing problem? Ask 'How do THEY do it?'

Let's say you have a problem relating to your writing or selling what you write. You're stuck...now what?

I suggest a brainstorming activity I call, “How do THEY do it?” First you think of somebody who does something that’s similar to—but not exactly the same as—whatever you want to do. Then you look at what are the main things they do and translate those back to what you’re trying to do.

For example, let’s say you have finished writing a book or script and now you want to sell it. First let’s pick a “they.” Who sells stuff? Well, salespeople. Let’s pick the kind of selling that probably is the most daunting: door to door sales.

 WHAT THEY DO

What do THEY do? Make a list of their key behaviours and attitudes:

They go from door to door, calling on many potential customers in a day.

They come up with a first sentence or two that is designed to capture the interest of the potential customer so the latter won’t slam the door in their face.

They have a strong pitch that relates the product to the needs of the potential customer.

They have answers ready for the most likely objections, such as “I can’t afford it right now,” or “I’ll have to ask my spouse.”

They know that most people will say no, but that if they persist, it’s likely some will say yes.

They listen to what the non-buyers say and adjust their pitch accordingly for the next time they might make the sale. They learn from the no's.

WHAT WE CAN DO

Now what can we take away from that in terms of selling our manuscript or script? What would be our equivalents to what "they" are doing?

One is that we would approach a number of agents or publishers or producers, not one at a time. After all, a door to door salesperson wouldn’t say, “Well, Mrs Miller said she’d think about it and let me know next week, so I’ll just wait for her answer before I try next door.”

To get our foot in the door we would fashion a strong first sentence for our query letter or our pitch, so we  capture the interest of our potential customer.

We would think about what objections might come up—for instance, maybe that it would cost too much to produce a certain script—and we’d be ready with an answer. Maybe we could even build that information into the pitch or the query letter itself to disarm the objection.

For instance, if you were pitching a novel right now that features zombies, you’d want to be sure to explain very early in the letter or pitch how it’s different from all the zombie stories out there at the moment.

We would not give up after the first few rejections.

And we would listen to the feedback we get, and if several potential customers point out the same issue, we’d fix it before moving on to the next one.

That’s the “How do THEY do it?” strategy and you can apply it to just about any process that you’re finding difficult.

MORE EXAMPLES

Having trouble building a story? Figure out how the people who build houses do it and translate that back to story-building.

Having problems with a story that seems too predictable but you don't know how to throw the reader off the scent? List how magicians deceive their audience and find out which strategies might work in your story.

Finding it difficult to come up with ideas? Find out how advertising agency people come up with them and apply them to your kind of story-telling.

By getting inspired by people and solutions outsideo of your field you will come up with fresh ideas, not imitations of what everybody else in yours is doing already.

(You'll find lots more creative ideas for solving writing problems and creating powerful stories, in my book Your Writing Coach. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

Can you tell a story in six seconds?

Have you read about (or experienced) the success of Vine? It’s a free  iPhone/ iTouch/ iPad app that’s like Twitter for video. You have only six seconds of screen time to tell a story and there’s no going back to edit.

The trick for many of the Vines on the site is not to record six seconds consecutively but take, for instance, six shots lasting one second each (or even less time each, for stop-motion animation).

Your video goes onto the Vines site immediately and you can share it via Twitter or Facebook, or embed it on the web. The six-second clips loop (repeat). You can follow people to see their Vines, and people can follow you.

So, what do people do with their six seconds? Here are a few examples:

A man looks uncomfortable, starts to choke and then ejects an entire orange from his mouth… (119,214 “likes”)

A dog dressed up in a robe and with (apparently) human hands feeds itself little treats…(113,110)

A hand draws an egg that then careens around the page and then turns into a real egg. (11,363)

One of the few that has a story as such shows a baby playing around with a mobile phone. It presses one of the buttons and we cut to a car blowing up (shot of a TV screen playing a scene from The Godfather, I think).

Is Vine another demonstration of our shortening attention span? (You’re still reading this, aren’t you?...Hello?) Or just a bit of fun? Or both? I don’t know, but if you want to challenge yourself to tell a story in six seconds, check it out. It's harder than it looks.

(If you need some guidance for telling a story longer then six seconds--perhaps in a book--get a copy of my book, Your Writing Coach. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Are you on track for your writing or other goal? (Reminder 3 of 12)

Many writers make resolutions or set goals for themselves at the start of the year. Very few are still working on them even one month later.

Often it’s not that they have consciously decided to stop; usually they just sort of forget about the goals because too many other urgent things come up.

That’s why I decided to remind you to remember your goals at the start of every month (which is also a good way of reminding myself of mine, of course). I hope it’ll help both of us stay on track so that at the start of the next year we’re not back to square one.

This post appears on April 1, three months after most people set their resolutions or goals for the year. Of course you may be reading it on some other date. That’s fine—it’s always a good time to check whether you’re moving toward your goals and to take corrective action if you’re not.

If you haven’t set any goals for your writing (for instance, writing a novel, getting an agent, or self-publishing your book) or other parts of your life, you might find it useful to take a look at the posts below in order; even if you have worked through them already, it’s useful to go back to them for a quick review.

 Don’t wait until you’re on your deathbed, the time for action is now!

Take one look back, then it’ll be time to move forward 

Design your writing (and other) goals with zero-based planning

How to think big about your writing and the other parts of your life

Why “unrealistic” writing and other goals are easier to achieve

The seven steps to reaching your goals

 

If you did set goals for yourself, take a few minutes to answer these questions now:

• In the past month, have you been moving toward your most important goals?
   
• If not, what has stopped you or slowed you down? You might find it useful to take a look at thistrouble-shooting guide.
   
• What can you do to get yourself back on track? Don't just do the same things that didn't work last time. Come up with alternatives and keep going until you find what works for you. (If you have trouble brainstorming ideas, see my book, ‘Creativity Now,” published by Pearson and available from Amazon).
   
• What’s the first step you can take today or tomorrow? Commit to it now.

As soon as you have taken the first step select the next step and keep going until you’re making progress.

Once in a while you may find that a goal you thought was important doesn’t turn out to be as meaningful after all. If you’re sure the goal isn’t going to give you what you thought it would, let it go and set a different one. However, the road to every goal is full of challenges, so don’t give up one goal just because you think maybe another one might be easier to accomplish.

If you subscribe to this blog today, in 30 days I’ll be reminding you again. If you have any questions, let me know at jurgenwolff (at) gmail.com. You may also find it useful to read my book, “Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done,” published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.

Good luck and don't forget to enjoy the journey!

Let life inspire you to create quirky characters

Do you want to create interesting, quirky characters for your novel or screenplay?

There's never a shortage of inspiration when you find out the interesting ways of many real-life people.

The only danger is that often people will accept highly unusual things in real life but reject exactly the same thing as implausible if they encounter it in fiction.

What prompted this musing was an article I read on the website of the London Evening Standard. It includes a quote from Olivia Fane's book, "The Conversations: 66 Reasons to Stop Talking":

The rules were: when my husband was abroad for a period exceeding two weeks, he could have an affair providing (a) he had my permission, and (b) the woman didn't live in England. The quid pro quo was that I should be allowed 10 snogs a year and one two-week affair every other year, providing the location of the aforesaid affair was Stoke Newington.

I assume they lived in Stoke Newington, not that it was a particularly sexy place for affairs.

And if you're not English you may not know that "snogs" are sessions of kissing and cuddling that stop short of actual sex.

Alas, this very organized approach went wrong:

What went wrong with my first marriage was that we broke our own rules. My husband asked my permission while abroad for a short affair but it happened the woman lived in London.

It confirms that inspiration for quirky characters is as close as the nearest newspaper.

PS: I wouldn't suggest recommending this kind of arrangement to your spouse or partner unless you're pretty sure it will get a positive response.

(If you'd like advice from the best classic and modern writers on how to create great characters, get a copy of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Creative people: when you can't beat the forces of convention...

This is the story of a kind of unconventional collaboration. It also illustrates the principle, "when you can't beat them, join them"...sort of.

Street artist Mobstr is used to having his graffiti painted over. He decided to tell a story one line at a time, with the next one appearing when the previous one had been painted over.

You can see the results here: 

http://designtaxi.com/news/355932/Street-Artist-Teams-Up-With-The-People-Who-Destroy-His-Work-To-Tell-A-Story/

Who or what do you consider the opposition to whatever creative projects you hope to achieve? 

Could there be a way to make it work with you or for you?

Be a writer right now!

Korean novelist Yung-ha Kim gave a TED talk entitled "Be an Artist Right Now."

He pointed out that there are many reasons that we, as adults, resist the impulse we may feel to tell stories. One is that it seems daunting to write something as long as a novel or screenplay. In answer to that, he quoted Roland Barthes on how Flaubert wrote: "Flaubert did not write a novel. He merely connected one sentence after another. The eros between sentences, that is the essence of Flaubert's novels."

Yung-ha Kim said, "That's right--a novel, basically, is writing one sentence, then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence. And you continue to make connections."

Maybe that makes it sound too simple, but I've found that often when a book or a screenplay doeasn't work it's because the story takes a sudden turn in the direction of what the writer thought might be an interesting scene but that in some way betrays what went before. 

If you're hesitating about writing, start now with one page. Tomorrow write another one. If at some point you feel ready to work out the rest of the story, go for it. Otherwise keep following one page with another and have faith.

(The great writers like Dickens and Austen and Twain had advice to help writers. I've collected it all and added tips on how to apply that advice to your own novel or script. The book is called "Your Creative Writing Masterclass" and you can buy it right now at Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)