Tag Archives: Writing

It happens to all writers, I am sure, but for a beginning writer like me it’s probably the main problem I face. I get into a project, start off with enthusiasm, but then at some stage I hit a wall. It tends not to be a “Writer’s Block”, whatever that means, but more a waning of enthusiasm, or a feeling that I would rather be writing about something else. Perhaps I should ditch what I am currently writing and start on another project that might be more interesting?

I think the problem here is just being able to stick at something for the long haul and not give up. Even if you feel like what you are writing is not the best thing ever, it is probably going to help you more as a writer to actually finish the damn thing rather than to stop a third or half of the way through. After all you can always go back and revise your first draft.

So how can you keep motivated and kick start your writing project again. Here’s a few ideas:

Remember Heinlein’s Rules – #2 of which is to Finish What You Start. A professional writer finishes stuff and then makes it better afterwards.
Revise your outline for the rest of the book – if you’re an outliner. Perhaps the reason that you are losing enthusiasm is that what you have to write doesn’t excite you any more. Freshen up the plot and get back your enthusiasm.
If you’re a pantser then consider getting an outline to see you through to the end. This is my problem when writing without an outline – the initial part of the book goes well but then I have no idea where it is going and I despair. A brief outline can provide motivation by giving you a possible ending. You can always change it as you write and come up with better ideas – in true pantsing style!
Read what you have already written. You might find that its not half bad and it will also give you a reminder of why you started writing it in the first place.
Keep putting words down and don’t switch your focus to something else. Your new baby will suddenly take all your attention and you’ll end up where you started from.

I am going to try all of the above right now!

Craft of Writing, Writing Tips

5 Ways to Make Sure You Write Every Day

April 11, 2014 Mark Leave a comment

I think that writing every day is one of the best ways to stay motivated if you are a writer. But that’s a hard thing to do and the demand to write every day could weigh you down.

Here’s five tips that I find useful for making sure you do write every day:

Have a regular writing time. In the morning is great because then you know you have definitely done some writing during the day. You can always do a bit more writing later if you have time. If you just can’t write in the morning then choose another time when you won’t have too many distractions.
Remember that you write because you enjoy it. Dean Wesley Smith has an excellent post about this – we write because we enjoy don’t we? So try not to forget that and have fun with it. Don’t think of it as a chore – although some days it may feel like it!
Don’t worry about what you actually write. Neil Gaiman says that he thinks of everything he writes as a really rough draft so he just gets on and puts the words down without worrying too much about them. If you’re not stressed about quality the words will
come easier and you’ll end up being able to start writing and write more.
Don’t take time off for the holidays! Just because its the weekend, you’re travelling etc doesn’t mean you can’t spend twenty minutes or more doing a little writing. Learn to write in a notebook, tablet or even a smartphone. Don’t break the habit. Once you do you may lose track of the story you’re telling or forget how much you enjoy writing.
Don’t despair you miss a day! It happens. You get ill or there’s a crisis. Just try to write again as soon as you can, even if it’s just a few words so that you get back into the habit.

Hope these tips help someone – I’m always trying to remember them myself!

Craft of Writing, Self-publishing, Writing Tips

How to Stay Motivated as a Writer

April 10, 2014 Mark Leave a comment

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!

Naked Writer

Naked Writer #6: Exceeded Target and Whole lotta subs

August 28, 2013 Mark Leave a comment

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!

Naked Writer

Naked Writer #3: Writing While Starving

August 22, 2013 Mark Leave a comment

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.

Naked Writer

The Naked Writer #1

August 19, 2013 Mark Leave a comment

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.

Craft of Writing

The Joy of Writing

August 28, 2012 Mark Leave a comment

Sometimes you have to start hitting the keys to remember how fun writing can be. For some reason just getting to that point can be hellish and involves a ton of prevarication, but when you start putting one word after another you suddenly remember that it is not a chore and that creation is inspiring and joyful.

Mark Lord’s Writing

Starting the Editing Process for my novel Hell has its Demons

January 11, 2012 Mark 3 Comments

The last few weeks have been spent editing my historical fantasy novel set in the Middle Ages: Hell has its Demons. At present I am half way through reading the first draft. I am not making too many edits at the moment, unless I spot a glaring typo. This is my first time editing a full novel length story, and I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. But I have found that the most valuable thing to do is to just remind myself of what happens in the novel, what I wrote, and to get an overview of the major things that need fixing. For instance I have realised that there are a number of inconsistencies in the middle of the book – chapters out of order etc. Also there are some characters I introduce early on that die away, so I need to make a decision about whether to keep them in and develop them further in the book, or to get rid of them completely, or at least minimize their importance.

I’m enjoying this phase of the process. It’s nice to read through what I have written again as a holistic exercise rather than just reading bits and pieces here and there to check what I should be writing next. The good thing (or perhaps the dangerous thing) is that I like what I have written so far!

My experiment with writing a novel from different first person perspectives – see the Vulture posts, lead me to realize that it would be a lot of work to do this for Hell has its Demons, and I think not necessary either. My reread so far leads me to believe that the three different third person POVs will work quite well. First person POV writing gives fiction a completely different flavour, especially over an extended piece such as a novel, but I hadn’t appreciated that fully until I started writing the Vulture as an experiment. Who knows maybe I’ll take the experiment further at some point in the future, but I know it definitely has helped inform my writing of Hell has its Demons.