 For Authors: November 23, 2016 Issue [#7992] |
  For Authors
This week: Getting Back To It Edited by: Jeff  
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"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make
new things familiar, and to make familiar things new."
-- Samuel Johnson
Trivia of the Week: Peter Carey's career has been filled with accolades: he's a three-time Miles Franklin Award winner, and one of only four writers to have won the Booker Prize twice. He's also widely considered to be Australia's best chance at bringing home a Nobel Prize in Literature, a feat Australia last accomplished in 1973.
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"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make
new things familiar, and to make familiar things new."
-- Samuel Johnson
Trivia of the Week: Peter Carey's career has been filled with accolades: he's a three-time Miles Franklin Award winner, and one of only four writers to have won the Booker Prize twice. He's also widely considered to be Australia's best chance at bringing home a Nobel Prize in Literature, a feat Australia last accomplished in 1973.
EDITORIAL
GETTING BACK TO IT
Writing, as it turns out, is a lot like riding a bike. You never actually forget how to do it, but long periods of time without actually doing it can leave you feeling out of practice, unsteady, and really doubting your ability to perform the task with any degree of skill or self-assurance. Until NaNoWriMo started at the beginning of November, I had not written any new fiction for all of 2016. And I wish I could say that was an outlier, but the truth is that I often go through these periods of writing dormancy, whenever work gets busy, the to-dos in my personal life start adding up, etc. I'd like to think I'm not alone in that.
So how does one get back on the bike, or behind the keyboard as the case may be?
I wish there were an easy fix. In fact, if anyone has an easy fix, please send in a comment to this newsletter and let me know!  But to date, the only process I've found for getting back into the habit of writing are the following steps.
1. Start writing again
2. Feel terrible about the efficiency and quality of your output
3. Keep at it until you build your ability and confidence back up
Admittedly, it's not a perfect system. First, it's not very enjoyable. Second, there's a lot of ambiguity involved. The severity of #2 can range from just general apathy toward your own work to downright despair that you've chosen the wrong career path, hobby, etc. The bar with which you graduate from #2 to #3 can vary greatly, from just finishing a new piece of writing to accomplishing a grander and more time consuming goal. And the time it takes you to evolve from #2 to #3 could be one writing session over a matter of hours, or several writing sessions of a matter of days or even weeks.
I suspect that a lot of the particulars have to do with the rut you're in, the goals you're trying to accomplish, and the emotional baggage you're bringing along for the journey. Take me, for example. When I'm in a deep rut (6+ months of not writing), it takes me several days of dedicated writing to get out of it again. On the plus side, the act of simply finishing a piece of writing does wonders for my confidence, so I know that when I'm stuck in a rut, the surest way out is to author a handful of short stories that get me thinking creatively again and give me the feeling of accomplishment that comes from actually finishing something. However, I also have a lot of self-doubt about my ability to actually finish a longer work like a novel or a screenplay, so I have to be diligent about not allowing the "easy fix" of a short story to substitute for the accomplishment of tackling a larger project and more significant milestone goal.
For NaNoWriMo this year, I started then scrapped two completely different projects (and it's doubtful I'll cross the finish line at this point), but I suspect that's because I tried to go from writing absolutely nothing for almost a year to diving headfirst into a novel project with very little planning and preparation. The first few days of November were excruciating, as I struggled to even manage the minimal 1,667 words per day goal and hated everything I was writing. Shaking off the rust took me nearly an entire week, and it was another few days before I felt like I was even generating prose that was up to my usual standards.
I say all this not because I think my particular experiences are noteworthy, but rather because it's important that we all spend a little time in self-reflection, looking at the things that make us tick and the processes that work and don't work for our individual mindsets. Unless you're one of those lucky writers who has the time, energy, resources, and good fortune to be able to write consistently every day without fail, chances are you'll experience a break in your writing schedule at some point for some reason. And when those breaks come, however long they last, they'll be much easier to understand and overcome if you've already been introspective about your process and know how best to get back on the bicycle. 
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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I encourage you to check out the following items:
EXCERPT: I start to write a blog and within a few minutes, I have a blob. My brain goes dead, and I can't think of anything to write. Writing is sometimes painful... so why do it?
EXCERPT: There are many different forms of entertainment from movies to music to sports. One form of entertainment is ventriloquism. Ventriloquism is where a person changes their voice so it sounds like it is coming from somewhere else usually a puppet or a dummy. Another way of ventriloquism is throwing one’s voice. Anyone can be a ventriloquist but it takes a lot of practice.
EXCERPT: Self publishing has been around for quite some time and many famous authors have used it as an avenue to jump start their careers, authors you have no doubt heard of and perhaps even read including:
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
John Grisham, A Time to Kill
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Beatrix Potter, the Peter Rabbit stories and others
Arthur Agatston, The South Beach Diet
EXCERPT: Your BioBlock and Biography are the welcome mat that you lay out for the visitors to your portfolio. Welcome your readers with a brief introduction about yourself, your writing or what makes you tick.
EXCERPT: Recently at Balticon, one of my very cool author collegues, who is also an editor, stopped by my table a couple of times. I asked him why he didn’t have a table this year and he said to me that he decided the trade-off wasn’t worth it to him this time. Hmm, I’ve been thinking about that ever since. You see, when an author chooses to have a table in its Dealer’s Room at a convention there really is a trade-off.
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