Tag Archives: Reading

How to Stay Motivated as a Writer

Keep calm and write it down!

I write fiction. I am not a bestselling author. My work is mostly self-published at the moment and the work I have available sells modest amounts. I write because I love writing, but also because I would like my work to be read by others and I would like to be successful. So I am probably like many other writers starting out on a career in writing. I have had some good feedback and reviews, which is nice, but I also feel that I could reach more people with my work.

How do you stay motivated when success and fulfillment as a writer seems a long way off?

I am not going to offer a secret bullet, a magic cure, but there are some strategies that you can employ to keep yourself going – which I need to keep myself going. Here’s some ideas that are working for me at the moment:

Write Every Day

This really is important, I think. Like anything – exercise, brushing your teeth etc – if you do something on a daily basis it becomes habit forming. If writing becomes something you do every day then you will keep doing no matter how you feel your career is going. You could choose a certain time of day, but it could just be squeezed in during the day in an odd moment in the same way you might check out Twitter for ten minutes!

Keep Going With Projects

What I mean here is don’t give up on stuff just because you’re having a few bad days with writing it and you think its no good. Sometimes you can be writing good stuff and its still a real struggle. You can always take the attitude (used by Neil Gaiman no less) that whatever you write is just a really rough first draft and therefore doesn’t matter – you can always go back and fix it. If there seems to be something fundamentally flawed in what you’re writing then yes maybe stop, but if you can think of a way to rewrite it so that it is what you want to write.

Multitask Writing Projects

This is something that works for me, but may not work for others and I know goes against some other writing advice out there. I know from experience that I get pretty distracted if I’m writing a novel or other long piece of writing. I am also keen to write short stories and develop that part of my career, so instead of trying to fit those in between novel-length projects, I actually write novels and short stories concurrently. I always prioritize the novel-length work, but if I have a second writing session available in a day then I will use that to do some short story writing. I find that it keeps me fresh and also gives me the satisfaction of finishing a piece of fiction every week or two, which I can then send out to editors.

Don’t Worry About Sales and Promotion or Rejection

This is the one that is really difficult to come to terms with as a newbie writer – and after nine years trying to write I still class myself as a newbie! It can feel like you put a lot of effort into writing with very little gain either financially or from praise of readers or editors. The best way to handle that I think is to remember that you are just learning still. I haven’t written a million words of fiction, but I will do one day if I keep writing every day. And I know that I will get better and that the small number of readers who like my work will start to grow and then hopefully my career will begin to grow too.

Cherish the Positive Feedback

When you’re feeling bad go back and read the good reviews or comments you have – don’t use them as an excuse to ignore criticism, but do remind yourself that you have skills and talent as a writer that you can develop and that readers enjoy. Build on that. Spread the love!

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Naked Writer #17: Getting Anglo-Norman

English: illustration intended for the mid-nin...
English: illustration intended for the mid-nineteenth-century history of the European Middle Ages. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So since last week’s update I have started actually looking at the sources for the Pontvallain campaign. First up is the Anonimalle chronicle – an English chronicle written at the Abbey of St. Mary in York, which covers most of the fourteenth century and is best known for its account of the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. It’s written in Anglo-Norman, so this week I transcribed a page of it and started translating it into English. The section that I was started with gave details of numbers of soldiers in Knolles’s army – suggesting that the army consisted of 2,000 men-at-arms (gentz darmes) and 6,000 archers (darchiers) – Jonathan Sumption thinks this can’t be right if you compare it with some of the other figures, so here the chronicler must have been mistaken.

Luckily I did GCSE French so I can just about read most of the text and get the gist of it. For the rest I have been reliant on an excellent resource called the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. More resources on how to use it can be found at the Anglo-Norman Online Hub. Fantastic to have this and easy to use as well – it provides examples of usages and variants of spellings of each word.

I have a feeling I might be using it a lot over the next few weeks!

Reading

Listening to the excellent Sol Stein‘s Stein on Writing and reading Conque

st by Juliet Barker about the English Kingdom of France at the end of the Hundred Years War – I’m thinking GRR Martin might have based a lot of his history of Westeros on these events – terrible intrigue mired with chivalry, assassination, massacres and mystical inspiration!

Also playing Crusader Kings 2 – not sure how I missed this before – shines a light on the convoluted personal politics of the Middle Ages like no other game I have played – the combat system is rubbish (just sums!) Will probably blog about this a bit more sometime.

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Naked Writer #15: But the Rent

Still at the research for the next volume of Stonehearted! Nothing much to report other than that.

Not much done over the weekend, but otherwise I have made some progress on getting ready to read through the source material references I have gathered for the Pontvallain campaign. That includes matching up events with each of the footnotes in Divided Houses by Sumption, and also gathering copies of the source material. Nearly finished on getting the source material, much of it has come from archive.org – which is the historical writer’s friend! (more on that site another time). When that’s compiled I will be starting to translate some of it – most of it is in Latin or French, so the plan is to use the Sumption footnotes to make sure I just translate the few pages I need from each source.

Other than that I am gearing up to produce the next issue of Alt Hist – I have gathered all the author manuscripts together and will be typesetting these this week.

Reading

I am listening to Robyn Young’s Brethren – it’s OK, but I wish it was a bit faster paced. Just started reading an ebook from my local library of People’s Queen by Vanora Bennett, which is based on the life of Alice Perrers, Edward III’s mistress. This is right on the money in terms of the time period that I write about, so its fascinating to see how the author portrays things. As with much of historical fiction a lot of the characterisation and interpretation of what actually happens is speculative. I think the author is doing a great job on this at the moment!

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Naked Writer #10: Baby Steps

Dragon's Flight
Dragon’s Flight (Photo credit: jcc_seveq)

Apologies for not posting more regularly about my writing this week. Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been doing. All words are for Dragon’s Above – chapter 1.

Tuesday, 3rd September – 299 words

Wednesday, 4th September – 371 words

Thursday, 5th September – none! I did do some stuff for the Alt Hist website instead – posting an interview with Priya Sharma, one of the contributors to Issue 5.

Friday, 6th September – 144 words

Saturday, 7th September – 76 words – we had someone over at the weekend, so pretty difficult to write!

What I am finding a bit disappointing this week is that my word count per day is going down. This seems to be partly because I am often only doing a single session a day and leaving it at that. Partly I think that’s explained by having a lot of work on at the moment, but also I think I need to be a bit tougher with myself and force myself to hit a target of at least 500 a day.

I promise to do better this week!

Reading

Finished How to Read a Novel. Not the book I was expecting, but a good read nevertheless and inspires one to read more novels! Still reading A Feast for Crows (which I have been calling Feast of Crows by mistake in previous blog posts!) I am not sure what to think of this book. The writing as ever with GRR Martin is great, but the characters don’t particularly seem to be going anywhere (I am half way through). There’s stuff that they are doing, but none of them are in particular danger as far as I can work out, and I am left thinking so what. I’m hoping it will pick up a bit soon.

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Naked Writer #9: Slow Start to the Week

Monday was a fairly slow start to the week yesterday – quite a bit to do at work and when I did take a break I didn’t feel that inclined to do any writing. My main session was 353 words on Chapter 1 of Dragon’s Above at lunchtime. The words flowed pretty well and I enjoyed what I was writing. I often feel more at ease writing the start of the novel as I don’t feel the same pressure to move the story along fast – instead I can show a scene at greater leisure.

Also I submitted one of my short stories, Bring on the Night, a medieval horror/fantasy to a new market. It’s been to four so far, so I keep bashing away with it and the other ones that are doing the rounds.

Reading

Back to Feast of Crows now that I’ve got through most of the backlog of Alt Hist submissions.

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Naked Writer #6: Exceeded Target and Whole lotta subs

Started off the morning by getting through a whole lot of submissions to Alt Hist – I’m now mostly up to date for submissions sent in May of this year and have started working through a list of about a dozen stories that I thought were good enough to read again. I read three of those more interesting stories while travelling to and fro work and accepted two of them, which is a great return. One of the stories was so good that I had to finish it off as soon as I got home – it’s a corker!

Writing went fairly well too – did 599 in one session at lunch time on Trial by Dream. I am at about 1500 words and reckon about half way through.

I did set myself a goal of doing 1000 words in total today, but I think because I had such a big chunk (for me) at lunchtime, I didn’t push myself to me – I subconsciously figures that nearly 600 was enough!

Must try to sort out the subconscious tomorrow!

Reading

All Alt Hist submissions – and may tuck into a bit of Feast of Crows before bed!

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Naked Writer #4: Endings and Beginnings

Well I finished Time’s Arrow today (referring to 22nd by the way). Wasn’t quite sure how I would end it, but I thought it was sort of nifty, but to my mind an obvious twist, but we’ll see! I think it’s a terrible story, but they say a writer is the worse judge of their own work.

That was 140 words.

Plus I started a new SF story. Just came up with a title and then though of a vague story idea to go around it. The story is called Trial by Dream and I did a paltry 38 words after coming up with the idea.

Other work included doing some research into my Grail story idea. Decided I needed to do a bit of background reading to get me more in the mood and I also fleshed out some ideas about the story – I’m taking more planned approach to this story, whereas for Trial by Dream its seat of the pants.

So not a lot of words, but at least I’m writing a bit every day so far, which I wasn’t doing a few weeks ago.

Reading:

Still feasting on Feast of Crows. I liked the first chapter for Samwell, but wasn’t sure about the next one and the description of Braavos – seems just like a fantasy Venice to me plus the Colossus of Rhodes – I’m not sure if I like fantasy settings that are transplanted so wholesale from our own real world. But I haven’t finished the chapter yet, so maybe there will be something more to it?

I am also dipping into a book called How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland. The idea behind the book is that to really appreciate reading a novel is as difficult as writing well. It’s written by an English professor, so I guess he has a vested interest in telling us that, but I see his point and I’m hoping to get something out of it. Mostly it contains lots of out of date observations about the publishing industry (it was published in 2006), but I’m hoping it will pick up soon!

 

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Naked Writer #3: Writing While Starving

Just to be clear this post refers to yesterday’s activity (21st August), but I’m writing it today (22nd!).

Things did not go as planned – and I blame blood sugar levels and the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet! It’s probably also my own stupid fault as well for not prioritizing writing new words and leaving it until later in the day.

If you don’t know about it 5:2 intermittent fasting, or the Fast Diet, is a diet where you eat normally on five days of the week and then eat a lot less on two days. I have done it occasionally this year and I do think it works, the only problem is that as you start to get into the afternoon the lack of food takes an effect and you feel pretty damn light headed! I didn’t do any writing until I took a break from work at around 2:30 p.m. and as a result only managed about 400 words – and gods now what type of words they are!

Anyway I’m nearer to the end of Time’s Arrow and I have learnt a lesson – do more brain-taxing stuff earlier in the day if fasting, or maybe have a smaller snack later in the day as well. I feel thinner today though, so can’t be bad.

Other stuff I did yesterday was to review a few submissions for Alt Hist. Still catching up with these a bit – the aim is to get back to people within 3 months, but it’s a bit more like 4 months at the moment.

Also I posted another chapter of By the Sword’s Edge on Wattpad

McMahon's illustration of Judge Dredd from 200...
McMahon’s illustration of Judge Dredd from 2000 AD prog 2, (1977) shows his early style, influenced by Carlos Ezquerra (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

. I’m experimenting with this site at the moment and posting a chapter a week.

Reading

Finished Sweet Justice – a very quirky collection of Judge Dredd short stories – and you really need to have been around in the 1980s to appreciate them – there’s one story that features Give Us a Clue for instance!

Slowly reading Feast of Crows and really loving it – also realised that I didn’t have the foggiest what had happened in the previous book so had to go back and remind myself via some online reviews of Blood and Gold. So now I know why Cersei is so upset!

Somehow the writing in Feast of Crows seems a lot denser and richer. I wonder if Martin spent a bit more time on some of the settings before writing, or perhaps was just feeling particularly inspired. One of my writing conundrums is always how much time to spend planning and how much to actually go ahead and write. I’m torn between the two at the moment, and I’m still working out the best approach. Maybe more on that another day.

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Naked Writer #2

Today was a funny day. I thought I’d written a lot more during the day than I had – around 600 to 700 words was my guess, but it ended up being just 402 more words for the Time’s Arrow story about an alternate Agincourt. But at least the words flowed pretty well and I was generally happy with them.

Also I feel that I’m nearing the end of the story, which is a good feeling.

I also did a bit of thinking about the next story – it might be called Broken Lance and will have some basis on the grail legends and a fantasy Morte Arthure feel about it – I think!

Other activity included located primary sources for the next section of Stonehearted, the sequel to By the Sword’s Edge. I’m getting copies of Medieval chronicles that relate the events of the Pontvaillan campaign of 1370, which is the setting for the story. Praise be to archive.org!

Reading:

Not quite finished Sweet Justice and read second chapter of Feast of Crows – loved the third new setting and set of characters – Sand Snakes awesome and very evocative!

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The Naked Writer #1

Inspired by Dean Wesley Smith’s posts Writing in Public, I thought it would be cool (and possibly motivating for me) to write regular updates on my own daily writing, and general publishing and reading experiences. Really what a blog was about back in the day – an actual diary of what I have done each day and collection of my thoughts.

So here goes on Day 1!

I’m currently finishing off a short story called Time’s Arrow. It’s an alternate history piece set in 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt. I’m planning to send it out to magazines when it’s finished to see if I can get it published in a pro market. If not I’ll self-publish it myself. I have been struggling with it a bit and had quite a long hiatus, but recently I have worked out a way to get back in the groove. One of my main writing problems is finding enough time. Usually the only realistic slot I get is first thing in the morning, but if I am too tired to get up at 6 am I have a problem. Writing in my lunch hour at work is problematic. I don’t feel comfortable sitting and writing fiction in an open plan office. There’s a park nearby, but sometimes difficult to get a bench to sit on and scribble.

The alternative that I came up with last Friday was to just use my iPhone. Specifically I’m using the Pages app and just adding to a Word document on that. Initially I thought this was madness, but it’s actually working quite well. I tend to go quite fast when I’m writing so can quite easily knock off 100 to 150 words or so in 5-10 minutes, which is about the time it takes for Outlook to load in the morning or while I’m waiting for a tea to brew. About 3-5 sessions of that a day and I’m easily at my daily goal of 500 words a day.

So that’s what I did today. 3 sessions and that took me to 562 words. I’m near the end of the story I think – just over 4,000 words so hopefully I will finish it this week – it’s been hanging around far too long!

Other things I have done today include:

Reviewing two submissions for Alt Hist – one got declined, the other went into the Maybe pile

Working out why Alt Hist 2 is listed at the price of $2.99 on Amazon and not $6.99. Turns out I mistakenly put it up on Google Play at $2.99 ages ago. I have now since rectified the mistake, but will probably take a few weeks for Amazon to change.

Followed a few people who followed me on Wattpad and sent them messages.

Posted in a Goodreads forum – Fantasy Fanatics

Reading

Started on Feast of Crows. Enjoyed the prologue and the first chapter – both with new characters which was a bit strange to start with. I haven’t read from this series for a while so I was looking forward to being reacquainted with old favourites. That will happen soon, I’m sure.

Aiming to finish reading Sweet Justice (a collection of Judge Dredd short stories) later this evening.

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