Time to Write

The surprising reason literary novels aren't bought

In an article in the Guardian, Mark Lawson writes about the difficulty these days of selling literary novels (vs. ones that are obviously commercial) and attributes it to a surprising cause:

“This has happened largely because of a shift in the priorities of libraries, which used to be a guaranteed haven for several thousand copies of hardbacks that take a bit of brain work, but which are now rapidly ceding shelf-space to Citizens Advice Bureau leaflets or DVDs. And pressure on leisure time has made both producers and consumers of entertainment reluctant to sample a product that does not have some advance buzz.”

Assuming he’s right (and I think he is), what’s the answer for a writer who has written a ‘serious’ novel? My strategy would be to get hold of a list of all the reading groups I could find and do a direct mailing to them, to see whether they could be convinced to be pioneers in discovering a new voice.

(If you'd like to get more tips & techniques on creativity and productivity, email [email protected] to sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm newsletter.)

PS for today only (Early to Rise profiles jurgen)

Today's edition of the popular "Early to Rise" newsletter features an article about me written by Jason Holland. The driving force behind ETR is Michael Masterson, whose books I've found very useful. His new one is "Ready, Fire, Aim" and the article talks about how I used this strategy to get started in Hollywood. You'll find the article here (scroll down to "Don't Wait for a Lucky Break").

More Ideas for Inspiration (When's the last time you used an Etch-A-Sketch?)

Two more excerpts from the Computer Arts magazine supplement, The Book of Inspiration:

REX CROWLE from London says, "When ideas run dry I go outside and play. Just being like a kid at school, you have to let off steam before getting to work."

Jung used to do the same thing--he'd go into his garden and make little buildings out of stones. Playing also brings back memories and states of mind you thought you'd forgotten.

That happened to me recently when playing with my godson and his brother (that's them in the photo) brought an Etch-A-Sketch back into my hands for the first time in a very long time.

BISHBO from London advised something similar: "The best thing is to go do something non-art-related and relax. Once you've relaxed and are not over-thinking things, the flow usually comes back again. It's all about keeping a balance in your life and not over-working things to the point of drying out."

(If you'd like to get more tips & techniques on creativity and productivity, email [email protected] to sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm newsletter.)

Where to Get Inspiration? (Japan & Rhett)

Toward the end of last year, Computer Arts magazine published a supplement they called "The Book of Inspiration," in which they asked artists and designers what inspired them. Here are a few that should work well for writers, too:

STINA PERSSON from Stockholm says, "For inspiration I love movies from the 50s, 60, and 70s with a good story and no special effects. [Yes, I know "Gone With the Wind" is older than that, but I like it...]

JUSTIN MALLER from Melbourne says, "If I run dry, I read or watch films. If that doesn't work, I just go for a walk with a notebook--it's amazing what disconnecting will do for you creatively."

JONATHAN BARNBROOK of London says, "One of the things that makes me want to work really hard on new stuff is going to a very different culture like Japan or India. You can see much more easily how you yourself are a product of your own culture, and it's great for completely reassessing what you do." [If you don't have the time or money to actually travel there, how about immersing yourself in a Japanese or Indian film festival?]

(If you'd like to get more tips & techniques on creativity and productivity, email [email protected] to sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm newsletter.)

A Message If You Haven't Written Today (Sunday Fun)

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Writing Motivation: What's on your fridge?

Some dieters find it very helpful to put an unflattering picture of themselves on their fridges as a way to deter them from pigging out when they’re on a diet. It’s an illustration of one of the two ways we motivate ourselves. In this case, it’s using the negative (what we want to avoid) to push us toward what we do want. Naturally the other way for a dieter would be to stick a picture of their head on a picture of a body that’s in the kind of shape they’re aiming for and put that on the fridge door, and that could pull them toward their goal. Most people find that one of these approaches is more powerful for them than the other.

If you’re more motivated by fear of the negative, find an image or a phrase that encapsulates what you’ll feel/look/sound like this time next year if you don’t steadily pursue your writing goals. Put it where you’ll see it every day.

If you’re more motivated by the draw of the positive, find an image or phrase that encapsulates what you’ll feel/look/sound like this time next year if you do steadily pursue your writing goals. Put it where you’ll see it every day.

(for creativity & productivity tips, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin, by request to [email protected])

Planning Your Writing: Should you hit yourself on the head?

I’m a fan of persuasion expert Kevin Hogan (www.kevinhogan.com) and of his recent “16 Quick Tips for Success” posting. The first one is “Ready, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire.” What he means is that you need to do a certain amount of planning and then get started, correct your course, act again, correct again, and continue until you reach the goal. He says, “If you you plan for more than an hour today, hit yourself in the head hard. If you plan for less than 10 minutes today, hit yourself just as hard.”

Does that resonate? Do you spend more time thinking about what you’re going to write but never (or seldom) get around to writing it? Or do you get an idea, become so excited about it that you jump in and start on it right away, and only later realize it’s not the project you should be working on? If so, try the ten minutes a day planning approach and see what happens.

(for creativity & productivity tips, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin, by request to [email protected])

How to Have a Staff of Writing Consultants

Often the fact that we work in isolation makes writing difficult. One solution is to have a staff consisting of a big thinker, a writing coach, an editor, and a marketing consultant. What—too expensive? Then you’d better be all four yourself. You already wear those hats anyway, the trick is to be clear about who you should be at which points:

When you are brainstorming projects, that’s the time for the Big Thinker to be in charge. At this point, the sky is the limit! Write down every idea—no judging!

When you have to decide which idea to turn into reality, the Big Thinker leaves and the Writing Coach takes over. He or she knows your goals, your resources, your skills, and decides which project best matches all of those. The Marketing Consultant pops in to make sure that there will be an audience for what you want to write.

When you have done a first draft, The Editor comes in and is constructively critical.

The Writing Coach guides you to making the necessary changes.

The Marketing Expert returns and helps you sell what you’ve created.

Then the entire staff has a party to celebrate your success—and goes on to the next challenge.

Just remember that you're the boss, and you decide who is in charge! If the wrong consultant is butting in, chuck them out and step into the right role.

(There are more tips & techniques in my free monthly creativity bulletin—to get it, just email [email protected])

How to be a Lucky Writer (Reaching Your Writing Goals)

Some writers just seem to be lucky--they get their novel or script or memoir written, they find a great agent, they get a good advance or fee... But usually there is a tremendous amount of focused energy and effort behind these 'lucky' events.

The key word is "focus." One of the biggest obstacles to reaching our writing goals is getting distracted. Often we are like little kids—they pick up one toy, play with it for a moment, then spot another one and drop the first one and go over to that one… It’s not necessarily a bad way to play, but it is a bad way to try to achieve anything. I speak from experience!

One solution: have your main writing goals written clearly and concisely on an index card or sticky note and look at them every morning and also every time you are tempted to go off on a tangent. Ask yourself: is doing this new or different thing consistent with the goals I have set for myself? If not, re-focus and put aside the temptation. Put this review of your goals at the top of your to-do list for the day, otherwise it’s easy to forget it and ‘wake up’ a few months later no closer to our goals than when we started.

When you decide where you want to go and then move toward it every day you'll be surprised at how lucky you are.

(want more tips & techniques? Sign up for my free monthly e-bulletin by request to [email protected])

Do You Write Every Day? (How to...)

Do you write every day? Isn’t that part of being a REAL writer? Well, I have a confession to make: I don’t write every day. Yes, I do post here every day but some days I write 3 or 4 posts and schedule them to appear in the future. For a long time I felt a bit guilty about not cranking out pages every day, but now that I’ve been making a good living as a writer for more than 20 years, I guess I’m a writer anyway.

Having said that, I do work on my writing projects almost every day in some form, and I recommend doing that even if you have another job (maybe ESPECIALLY if you have another job, so you keep your identity as a writer strong). Here are three steps to achieving that:

1. Allocate a minimum of fifteen minutes per day to this. I know you can find a quarter of an hour somewhere in your day.

2. During that period, choose between three activities: jotting down notes about what you want to write (I like the mind map format for this), or actually writing, or editing something you’ve written.

3. Remember that you can ‘write’ in your head even when you’re not near a computer or pad of paper. For instance, while you’re on the train or subway or in your carpool (ideally not when you’re the one driving…) you can think about what could happen in the next scene of your novel or screenplay. Jot down these ideas or speak them into a little digital tape recorder as soon as you can, so they don’t get lost.

You can find your own way to write every day—and no matter which one you choose, you’re a ‘real’ writer!

(you can get more tips & techniques by signing up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin, by request to [email protected])

Are You Using the Power of Curiosity in Your Writing?

Here's a headline from an article distributed by the Associated Press: "Nude Couple Grapple Over Dog in Shower."

I'm guessing that even if you don't want to be curious about the story behind this, you are.

Here's another real headline: "Men Shoot Themselves in Tattoo Attempt."

I picked these two because they illustrate the power of curiosity to draw us in to stories. Are you using that power in your writing? Here are a few places it can help you:

* titles of novels, screenplays, plays, and nonfiction books
* sub-titles of nonfiction books (often the title arouses curiosity, the sub-titles explain what the book is about, but sometimes it's the other way around)
* the opening line of your book
* the opening line of your query letter to an agent, publisher, producer, etc.
* the opening line of your pitch

It may be worth taking a moment to check whether you're using this power on your current project. I'm working on a screenplay at the moment and the director and I have been discussing the best title--one that arouses curiosity but also hints at the content. So far the director likes "Global Beach" best, and I like "The Floating Architect" (most likely the final title will be something different yet).

PS: The nude couple were taking a shower together. The man wanted to allow his dog in the bathroom, the woman didn't, and one thing led to another... And in the other story, the two men were trying to trace a .357-caliber Magnum as a pattern for a tattoo and it went off (their injuries were not life-threatening).

(if you'd like more creativity and productivity tips, subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin, by request to [email protected])

Things Writers Hear (Sunday Fun)

Will This Trend Help You Sell Your Writing?

I always warn people to be wary of following trends because often by the time they do so, the trend is over. But there is one that you might want to heed, and that might help you sell projects you already have written, and that's the trend toward more family movies.

An article at SFGate.com, the site of the San Francisco Chronicle, points out that seven PG movies could end up ranking among the 20 highest-grossing films of the past year. And next year has even more such films lined up, including the next "Narnia" film ("Prince Caspian"), "Where the Wild Things Are," and "The Spiderwick Chronicles." Furthermore, some experts feel that this trend will extend to video games and online media as well.

If what you are writing is family-friendly, you may find the marketplace more friendly as well.

Is Your Writing Too Talky?

One bit of conventional wisdom about scripts, plays, and novels is that they should not be too talky--that is, more should be going on than just having your characters talking. I've always felt that if what they are saying is interesting enough, then talking is just fine. This is also why it's so annoying when the producers of factual TV programs are so insecure about whether we will find a 'talking head' interesting that they resort to weird camera angles, text whizzing across the bottom of the screen, etc.

Anyway, in an interview in the Sunday Times (London) director Mike Nichols had some interesting insights about this: "I’m fascinated by this whole thing of things being talkie or not being talkie. Nobody ever thought that All About Eve or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were talkie. It’s not about the words. It’s: ‘Is something happening or not?’ If something’s happening, you can talk all you want and you’ll never think of it as talkie.

The experience of people sitting in a dark hall, all thinking the same thing; the joy of something in the room during a play that’s not spoken . . . that is the reason Chekhov is the best. He invented all this. He said, ‘He loves her and she loves him, and he loves her, and so on and so on. None of the characters knows this; you do. Now watch.’ It was such a great idea. Because they can sit around saying things like ‘Cook doesn’t know how to boil rice’, and it doesn’t matter, because we know who wants to f*** who, and who never will.
Modern theatre was invented that way, and I am heartbroken when those things are erased, effaced, ignored – and happy when they are not."

Are You Allergic? (The Power of Routines)

A friend recently commented that he is "allergic" to routines and schedules. I love the freedom of the free-lance life, but I also recognize that sometimes having no set routine is dangerous. A routine or schedule often also helps the person who has another job and lots of other demands on his or her time. These tend to crowd out writing, which is very frustrating.

One solution is to allocate certain days and times for specific writing-related tasks. Here is an example (of course you can modify it any way you need to):

Monday: write query letters to agents, publishers, producers. (If you have little time, you might set the goal of writing only one).

Tuesday: brainstorm current project--this could mean figuring out the storyline, or planning interviews, or whatever is relevant to what you're writing.

Wednesday/Thursday/Friday: writing. Set a goal of one page or more per day.

Saturday/Sunday: one day off, the other for writing or editing.

You can do this with as little as a fifteen-minute chunk per day. Schedule it and take it seriously. Some people say, "I can't write in tiny chunks of time." You can learn to do it--mostly by just doing it and not being critical of the results. Treat it as a learning experience, and have faith that over time you will develop the concentration to do it better and better.