Three Essential Tools for Getting through Any Post-New-Year's-Resolution Slump

Making New Year's resolutions about my writing is fun.  Energizing.  At New Year's, anything is possible.  I look at what I haven't managed in 2015 and set my sights high for 2016.

I ride the high until around mid-February, usually.  Then I need to have three essential tools in place to help me get through the post-New-Year's-resolution slump.

These three tools are the main reason I've managed to write and publish thirteen books in three genres. 

They are:  (1) accountability, (2) inspiration, and (3) determination.   They usually matter in that order.

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Emotional Peaks: How to Make Sure They're in Your Scenes and Chapters

When you read a great story, you don't even notice how you're engaged.  You just are--right?  But skillful writers plant a rhythm into their writing.  Like breathing, there are peaks and valleys of emotion and tension through all great scenes, chapters, even whole books. 

In a class I taught, I drew a diagram of a river on the board to illustrate this.  "This makes it very easy.  I just put heightened moments of tension at each bend in the river," one student noted.  "Maybe a big decision, a change of heart, a new understanding.  Or an external shift, like a move or a marriage or a big loss."  It made a big difference in her book structure to finally understand these "emotional peaks:" to view her scenes, chapters, and manuscript like a flowing river.

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New Year's Goal: Submit Your Manuscript! But First, Learn to Write a Killer Query Letter and Book Synopsis

Is one of your New Year's goals to finally get that manuscript submitted?  Get off your endless revision-hamster-wheel?  

For your New Year's reading pleasure, check out these three great articles--what you need to know before you submit.

How to write a killer query letter.  A guest article for Writer's Digest website, written by agent Barbara Poelle.  Click here.

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Big Magic: How to Keep Writing When You Have NO TIME!

I'm a great fan of Elizabeth Gilbert's articles about writing, and especially her newest book Big Magic.  This week, I'm sharing one of Gilbert's posts from a few weeks ago on her Facebook page.  It's possibly the most inspiring article I've read recently--effectively addressing the hole we all fall into:

I have NO TIME to write!!

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Character Lists: A Great Way to Coax Your Characters out of Hiding

In her book, Write Away, mystery author Elizabeth George talks about her writing process as she begins a new book.  She first writes detailed ideas about the plot.  She also researches the setting, often with trips to the location she's thinking of using.  And she always puts together a character list.

Her character lists are many pages of stream-of-consciousness ideas about each main player in her book.  If you read Write Away (which I highly recommend), you'll see an example from her novel, In the Presence of the Enemy.  She shows the entire character list for one of her main characters, Eve Bowen. 

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What's Subtext? Learn about This Key Element of Dialogue, Used in All Genres

In real life, we value honesty in dialogue.  Say what you mean, don't make me guess.  Within reason, of course.

In literature, dialogue is all about subtext.  What's not being said.  What's read between the lines, literally.  Learning how to write effective subtext may be the best thing you can do to make your dialogue shine.

Think this is only for fiction writers?  Think again.  Subtext exists in all genres.

Here's a real-life scenario (not mine but a friend's):  A family at the holiday dinner.  The college freshman is home, bursting to share her news about a year abroad.  She's nervous, because her brother is also home for the holidays, and her brother traditionally gets the most attention. 

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A Business Fiction Success Story--The "Buzz" about Lura Fischer's New Novel

When businesswoman Lura Fischer joined my online book-structuring class a few years ago, she told me she wanted to write a business fiction book.  I didn't know that much about this new genre, but I watched Lura build her story over the months we worked together.  This month, her new novel, Buzz, was released and rose quickly to #1 on the amazon Women in Business category. 

Buzz is a novel about "a relentlessly principled young businesswoman" who is "facing ominous threats to both the life of her business and to herself."  In classic storytelling, Lura places us in the business world of Taki Fujimori.  Taki "must draw on her samurai heritage to battle nefarious forces in the workplace and save her young company from dying," Lura says about the book.  "At the same time, a 500-year flood threatens to sweep her away into oblivion."  Taki is also on a quest to piece together her family's past.     

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Where Do You Get Your Ideas? A Basic Primer of a Novelist's Writing Process

One of my online students, new to writing fiction, brought up a couple of good and very important questions in class this week.

1.  How do you start writing a novel?  What are the steps?
2.  Where do you get your ideas?

In this blog I'm going to tackle the second question--about idea gathering--because it's really the first step to writing a book of any kind.  But I'd love to refer my student, and all of you, to Elizabeth George's wonderful writing-craft book, Write Away, where she details her writing process. 

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Three Tricks to Keep Your Book Warm (or Even Hot) This Winter

Here in New England of the U.S., we're getting dire news.  Winter is going to be long and intense again, like last year.   After the holidays, we may be socked in for a while, if the predictions are correct.  I'm hoping they're not, but I'm also hedging my bets.

I want to keep my book cooking--even hot--despite frightful weather outside.  Three motivation tricks I've practiced these past winters, shared below, really work for me.  Maybe they'll inspire you too.

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Omission--The Art and Craft of What to Delete

This week I removed a page from my novel's opening chapter. I'd worked on that page for two years, off and on, and workshopped that chapter maybe a dozen times. It was as good as I could make it. But I hadn't seen that there was material I didn't need, and I couldn't see that in even the eleventh draft, just because the shape was still evolving in my mind.

 

This week, I had a new perspective, thanks to some feedback from an agent. Opening chapters need to do two things, she said. Introduce the character and put them into some immediate action. I had the action, no problem. But I spent too long introducing the character. Now, what I've omitted, makes room for more tension in the storyline.

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