My 2009 challenge to aspiring authors
Time to stop just talking about it or wishing for it or whatever else you do that keeps you from actually moving forward with your dream. I know, you’re sitting there still tormenting yourself over the great, wonderful novel you’ve had in your head forever, and the damn thing just won’t write itself, and it’s not perfect, and you keep falling short, and you hate feeling that way.
So let’s do something else.
Here’s my challenge for you for 2009, and you can play or not, but trust me when I say it will help you with your writing career more than you can believe right now. So maybe take a leap of faith.
Step one: Pick your favorite escapist genre–the kind of book you love to read when you’re on vacation, or in an airport, or waiting for your kid to finish a soccer practice. For me it’s romance and fantasy. For you it might be mystery, thriller, science fiction, whatever.
Step two: Put aside the novel you’ve been working on. Just take a little break for a while. It will still be waiting for you when you get back from this excursion.
Step three: Write yourself three–not one, not two, but three–escapist novels in the next six months. Yes, I’m serious. Write them straight through. Don’t stop to fix the first chapter forty times over, don’t keep going back to edit that one section that’s killing you–just write a story all the way through, as if you were sitting around a campfire and telling the story from start to finish in one night. Don’t outline it, don’t overthink it, just write it fast and completely.
Step four: Take a week off. Watch some movies. Read someone else’s escapist novel. Go back to cooking for yourself and/or your family.
Step five: Gird yourself up again and start on novel two. Because you’re on a schedule. And because it’s time to prove to yourself that not only can you finish a novel, period, but you can finish more than one novel in a year. It’s a huge mental breakthrough, let me tell you. But you won’t know it until you have the experience for yourself. So get in there and tell the next story, start to finish, as quickly as you can. It will be interesting to see if you do it in less time than the first one. Doesn’t matter, just notice.
Step six: Repeat step four.
Step seven: Start novel three. Yes, you think you’re tired, but you’re actually not. Because you discover that you have more than one story in your brain. Maybe for years you’ve thought it was just this one Great Novel, the one you’ve been suffering over, but that’s simply not true. If you want to make a life as a writer, that means you have to admit to yourself that storytelling is a continuous, renewable feature, and it’s time to stop fooling around and pretending if you don’t finish your one perfect novel first, you can’t move on to the next one. This is just an experiment, and you can try it.
Step eight: Notice the time. Is it June yet? Have you finished three quick, escapist novels for yourself? Are they perfect? Of course not. Are any of them good? I’m betting they are. Now you get to go back and fiddle with whichever one you choose and see if you can make it better. And when you’ve done that, we’ll talk about what comes next.
I decided to issue this challenge rather than spend my time and yours on a What Not to Do series. Because I think one of the things that can interfere with our writing is spending too much time thinking and talking about the process, rather than just getting over ourselves and doing it.
This isn’t like a diet, where you have to eat everything you can today so you can start fresh tomorrow. You don’t have to clear the decks, take time off of work, find a babysitter for your kids, anything like that. You just have to decide, “Yeah, I’m going to tell myself a fun story, starting right now. Here’s my first paragraph. ‘Rosie looked down at the bottom of the canyon and wondered how her shoes ended up there.’ ” Or whatever. Something stupid. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t have to be art. Just has to be words, starting right now. Then you can make it up as you go along. Just because you’re a storyteller and that’s what you do.
Okay? If you’re willing to play, then ready, start, go.
Cool challenge,Robin. I’m sort of doing that right now,by trying to sell Book One while working on Book Two(and yes,there will be Book Three).
Since my trilogy has a comic book theme,I plan to see if I can stir up any interest for it at the upcoming NYC Comic Con next month. Wish me luck!
my problem is finishing the book, i start writing another one, and then another one and then another one, i have probably around a hundered stories started, so that would be hard for me to do
i am almost done with part one to one story but i still have part two to write, and most of my stories are only a few pages in.
so i will try but also i am only a teenager and i know i could probably find a publisher if i tried hard enough, but i dont know if i want ppl to read my stories, i am my worst critic, i never let ppl read my stories because i think they are all terrible
Lady T you write books? What genre are they?
Even more curious than her shoes were her socks, which had somehow ended up on her hands like mittens without thumbs. This was very unfortunate because Rosie was very happy when she had first discovered her opposable thumbs and this was such a setback.
One might assume that Rosie left her shoes, as shoes are less likely to leave a person, but Rosie noticed strange things had been happening all day, cars were drivng on rivers, fish were swimming in pavement and trees were leaning into the wind trying to push it back. Birds flew backward and then disappeared. And hard to tell at first, because of all the clouds, but the sky was purple.
As far as Rosie could tell, the world had been like this since she woke up this morning, so one could logically assume she hadn’t woken up yet, but that wasn’t true. She got up this morning and had her oatmeal, because daddy doesn’t want her eating those sugary concoctions like Cocoa Crispies, which Rosie is sure must be good. Anything she can’t have is usually something good.
This is a great idea. Positively daunting, but great.
I might tweak it a bit (in that I write for the screen, not the page), but I just might take on the challenge. No worries about whether I could feasibly produce the resulting script, but just using it as an exercise.
(And I might encourage a certain person I live with to take a look at it as well…)
Okay. Okay….
*blinks*
Patrick, love it! SEE???
Bill, absolutely tweak it at will. The point is to pick your art and then practice finishing and taking the pressure off yourself to make it perfect. A lot of us need that permission.
Carli, this challenge is perfect for you, because what I’m hearing you say is that you start a lot of projects, but don’t finish them. That’s the point of this–practice finishing. That’s why we’re not going to worry about whether a publisher will buy them. We’re doing this for us, to build our writer muscles, to build confidence that we can finish books. Many, many writers get stuck at that one crucial spot.
Heather, yes! I know you can do this.
Lady T, I’m so glad you’re writing what you love and that you’re writing the next thing and the thing after that. Such great progress along this road!
Thanks for the encouragement,Robin. It really helps me to stay motivated with folks like you out there passing on the good will to others:)
Hi,Carli-the books that I’m working have a strong female lead who has to deal with publicity hungry superheroes and persistent bad guys. If I was pitching this trilogy as a Hollywood movie,my line would be “Veronica Mars meets The Incredibles.” I hope that gives you an good idea of what I’m writing about.
Like Robin said,it’s best to start by writing about something you are truly passionate about. My first attempt at writing a novel was a ghost story set in a bookstore. Turns out that ghosts aren’t really my thing(they were all going to have superpowers)but,as they say,you don’t know until you try. Baby steps and all of that.
I know how you feel about not having people read your stories-I haven’t had a lot of folks look at my work just yet(still trying to get an agent)but it is a good idea to have someone you know and trust give you some feedback.
Right now,you should just focus on finishing one project. Seeing something all the way thru is an important part of the creative process. Robin’s challenge is perfect for you. Good luck!
See what?
i will try to finish stories, instead of just starting to write them i am now keeping a notebook that i write ideas in. I’m hoping that will help. I’m also really writing one of my stories, i wrote like five pages last night.
Thanks for all the advice.
I will finish a book in 2009, I will, I will, I will!
Starfish don’t have brains.
M-O-O-N. That spells “write a book”.
You must have missed the brain coral episode, P.
m-o-o-n spells anything and everything
Laws, yes!
I’m in!:) 1,2,3 baby!
Danne, welcome! DO IT!!!
Heather, Carli, and Patrick, I’m out of your conversation. Carry on. Except to say Carli, yes, FINISH!
I will finish a book, sometime in my life, hopefully. Maybe i will even become more popular than you, robin.
thinking…thinking…thinking…
no probably not
Carli, if you’d seen me at the restaurant where I was having dinner just now, and watched me endure yet another awkward attempt at making actual conversation with actual adults, you’d realize it’s no ambition at all to want to be “more popular” than I am. Sheesh–pick something a little harder, will you?
Like finishing a novel this year! How about that? I know you can do it! Stop overthinking it or talking yourself out of it, and just sit down this weekend and tell yourself a story! Pretty please!
fine i will, i will sit down and write my story… i just wonder what story i will write… i think i will work on the one based off of an awesome dream i had
promise me that if you ever see my book on a shelf you will read it, pretty please with sugar on top, well splenda on top if you like that better
My reading development class just finished reading Freaks and loved it. But, I have one question. I noticed many mentions of food, especially at the Connor house and with regards to Josh. What prompted this proliferation? Did you know someone who created the character of Josh? Are you a foodaholic? Just curious.
Thanks for the kick. I will finish and send out.
Vivian, HURRAY! You’d better!
Buzziebeeteacher, I’m so glad you liked the book! And you don’t know how funny this question is to me, because you have no idea that my next novel–the one coming out this year–is ALL about food. So yes, I guess I am a foodaholic. I just think food makes a story so much more fun. I always love to know what characters in other people’s books are eating. It tells me a lot about them.
And I had so much fun writing Josh’s character, for a lot of reasons. In some ways he’s my perfect boyfriend–a man of few words, with awesome computer skills. Love him.
Dark Horse, I’m assuming that thing you sent me was the beginning of your novel. If so, looks good! Keep going!