Category: Writing

Pros And Cons Of Writing In First Person (Point Of View Post No. 1)

Writing in first person can be both fun and extremely challenging.

The reader sees directly through the eyes of a single character, usually the protagonist. But there are drawbacks too.

Point Of View Options

You probably remember the differences between third, second, and first person from your high school literature class. Third person POV uses the pronouns “she” or “he” rather than “you” or “I” when telling the story:

John rushed into the room, afraid he’d make a poor first impression by being late.

Second person POV, which is rarely used in fiction, uses the pronoun “you,” as if you were writing about the reader as a character in the novel:

You rushed into the room, afraid you’d make a poor first impression by being late.

First person POV uses the pronoun “I”:

I rushed into the room, afraid I’d make a poor first impression by being late.

Drawbacks Of First Person POV

  • The Bomb Under The Table

If you write your novel in first person, it can’t include anything that the narrator doesn’t know.

That means if your narrator doesn’t know there’s a bomb under the table, you can’t tell the reader the bomb is there.

This limitation robs the author of a means of suspense. The reader who knows about the bomb worries for the unsuspecting narrator sitting at the table. That reader will remain engaged even if the conversation is less exciting or positively mundane (not that you should aim for dull dialogue).

  • What Are They Thinking/Subplot Scarcity

You also can’t directly state what any character other than the narrator is thinking or feeling. Your narrator can guess, as can the reader, based on other characters’ actions, facial expressions, or body language, but that’s all.

Further, the reader only knows what other characters do in the narrator’s presence or as told to the narrator.

Because you can’t get into the heads of other characters or see what they do outside the narrator’s knowledge, it’s more challenging to round out those characters and develop subplots about them.

I’ve been struggling with this after switching to first person in my new series after writing thrillers from multiple points of view. Nearly half of each of the second and fourth books in my Awakening series are devoted to subplots regarding other characters.

Book 2 deals in depth with protagonist Tara’s dad’s conflict between his deep religious faith and the challenge his non-believing daughter’s virgin pregnancy presents to it. Book 4 includes the struggles of a key figure in The Brotherhood of Andrew–the religious order that believes Tara will trigger an Apocalypse–to resolve his loyalty to the order given what he’s learned about Tara and his growing relationship with someone on her team.

Had either book been written in the first person I could have alluded to those conflicts only if Tara knew about them, and I couldn’t have made them key parts of the books.

  • Narrator Love/Hate

If your narrator’s way of speaking or personality rubs a reader the wrong way that reader will almost certainly dislike the book.

It’s like sitting in a room with someone who really gets on your nerves. That person might have valuable things to tell you, but it’ll take tremendous effort to get past the speaker’s manner and listen.

I discovered this point firsthand with a multi-paragraph review of The Worried Man where the reader disliked my first-person narrator. Other reviewers loved Q.C., and I’ve already had readers email to ask when the next book about her will be out. But the reader who disliked her pretty much disliked everything about her, which undermined any appreciation of book as a whole.

So why use first person narration at all?

Reasons To Write In First Person

  • Hold Me Close

First person creates greater intimacy between the narrator and the reader and between you and your narrator.

To write in first person, you need to immerse yourself in your narrator’s life, emotions, voice, and thoughts. You may come to know your narrator better than you know yourself.

The reader in turn hears firsthand the narrator’s thoughts and experiences. The narrator shares directly with the reader physical sensations, smells, sounds, tastes, and emotions.

If the reader enjoys the narrator’s voice and perspective, it’s like hanging out with a friend. Especially one who tells great stories.

Because of that, the reader also is likely to come back for book after book.

As I wrote about in Why I Love V.I. on my author blog, I read every one of Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski  private eye novels as soon as they come out because I want to hang out with V.I. again. The plot is secondary to me.

More recently, I read all six of Jana DeLeon’s Shaye Archer series within two months for the same reason.

  • Mechanically Speaking

First person is the simplest point of view to write from a nuts and bolts perspective.

That’s so because there are fewer decisions to make. You know from whose point of view each scene will be told from page one: your narrator’s. You also know exactly what you can and can’t share with the reader: only what the narrator knows.

  • Creativity Abounds

The limits first-person narration presents can spark creativity and heighten your writing skills.

For example, because you can’t have a supporting character share thoughts, feelings, and backstory directly with the reader you need to find other ways to do so.

Some options include:

  1. Conflict between the narrator and supporting character that reveals that character’s emotions or personal story
  2. Letters, emails, social media posts, or other types of written communication from the supporting character that the narrator discovers or receives
  3. Gestures, facial expressions, and actions of the supporting character that show thoughts and feelings

You can and likely will use all these options and others to some extent no matter what point of view you use.

But first person requires you to try out those options rather than putting the reader in the supporting character’s head. It pushes you to expand your toolbox.

That’s all for this week.

Until next Friday, when I’ll talk about the rarely-used-in-fiction second-person point of view—

L.M. Lilly

P.S. For more on which character’s point of view to use for each scene, you may want to check out Learning About Point Of View From Donald Trump And James Comey.

Size And Scope Matter: Is Your Idea Is Big Enough For A Novel?

Whether you want to write a novel, novella, or short story usually depends on what you love to read. But it’s also about your story idea.

Some ideas spark enough conflict and create enough questions to fill a novel or perhaps a series of them.

Others lend themselves to a quicker resolution. If you try to force one of those into a novel it feels like you’re doing exactly that–forcing. Or stretching, filling, or padding, none of which makes for compelling reading.

How do you tell the difference?

Length

All the points here cover what’s typical, which means there are exceptions to every rule.

Keeping that in mind, a short story typically runs 1,000 to 5,000 words but can be as long as 20,000. Novels for adults are usually at least 45,000 or 50,000 words or more, with fantasy novels often above 100,000 words.

In between short stories and novels are novellas. Below 1,000 words usually is thought of as flash fiction.

Characters

  • Focus

Most short stories delve deeply into the life/mind/heart of one main character.

There simply isn’t space in 5,000 words to develop more than one in enough detail to capture readers attention. The other characters’ actions and words are relevant only to the extent they directly impact that main character.

In contrast, while a novel nearly always has only one protagonist, quite a few characters’ lives are explored.

Some characters have their own stories that intersect with the protagonist’s, but perhaps only in peripheral way. Readers often become great fans of side characters and may read the book as much to see what happens to them as to the protagonist.

  •  Number

The number of characters in a short story is usually limited to a few or a handful. Or perhaps only one.

If you try to use twenty named characters in a short story, it’s likely your reader will be confused or you’ll find yourself expanding into a novel or at least a novella.

Some novels have a fairly small cast of characters as well, so this factor isn’t a black and white answer. But if you have only a few characters, it weighs on the short story side of the scale.

  • Growth

Good stories, whatever the length, feature character growth.

Ask yourself how dramatically your character must grow or change by the end of your story. If you want to show a complete turnaround, a novel will likely give you the space and time to make that believable.

It’s not impossible to show dramatic change in a short story. Your main character can have an epiphany that causes a significant character development.

But in the flip of the number of characters factor, a tremendous amount of character growth typically weighs on the side of a novel.

Subplots

Most short stories have one plot and only one plot. There are no subplots about the main character or about side characters. There simply isn’t room.

Novels, in contrast, almost always feature a subplot or several subplots.

For instance, in The Girl On The Train, the main plot is solving the crime the protagonist believes she’s witnessed. Subplots include her relationships with her ex-husband and the friend she’s staying with, as well as her self-esteem issues and struggle with alcohol.

As another example, the plot in Pride and Prejudice follows protagonist Elizabeth and her relationship with Darcy.

A very well-developed subplot, though, occurs between Eliza’s sister Jane and Bingley. That subplot gets almost as much space in the novel as the main plot. The novel also features subplots about Elizabeth’s younger sister Lydia, her father’s realizations about himself, and her friend Charlotte.

Timeframe

Short stories usually take place in a short timeframe.

That timeframe could be anything from hours to days or weeks, but is rarely longer.

Novels, on the other hand, can span decades or generations.

That’s not to say a novel can’t take place in a shorter timeframe. Right now I’m working on one (The Charming Man) that occurs within less than twenty-four hours. But as I’m doing it, I’ve realized a few times what a challenge it is to compress so much into a short timeframe.

Setting

As with timeframe, a short story often features only one or two settings. Otherwise, the need to describe each setting alone can stretch the narrative beyond the common length of a short story.

In contrast, novels often range across the world (or more than one world).

Point Of View

Most writers tell their short stories using only one point of view. That keeps the reader focused and engaged and keeps the scope of the story narrow.

Some novels also are told from only one point of view, that of the main character.

Private eye novels are often a good example of this approach. But novels allow for exploring multiple characters’ viewpoints because you have enough space to transition the reader from one character’s world to another’s.

If you prefer to tell the story from more than one person’s viewpoint, or if your story demands the reader see through more than one character’s eyes, your idea probably is best suited to become a novel.

Experiment

None of these factors presents an open and shut case for what type of story you’re writing. But the number of points-of-view, storylines, characters, and settings you need, and the timeframe and character growth required, provide good guides for whether your idea will work best in a long or short form.

If you’re still unsure, though, experiment.

If you start what you think is a novel and discover your conflict resolves within a chapter or two, you can always go back and simplify whatever you need to so that it works as a short story.

If you’re up to 20,000 words in your “short story” and you’re introducing a new character vital to the plot or you’ve embarked on a subplot that absolutely needs to be there, congratulations, you’re probably writing a novel.

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

Writing The Zero Draft Of Your Novel

The Zero DraftAt a Sell More Books Show Summit I attended author Rachael Herron used a term I hadn’t heard before: the zero draft.

By this, she meant the initial very rough draft–so rough you’ll never show it to anyone–of a novel.

That phrase fits my first draft of a novel perfectly.

My zero drafts:

  • ramble
  • include storylines that trail off to nowhere and others that start mid-stream
  • include incorrect character names and characters who disappear
  • are filled with errors.

And that’s the good parts.

For me, though, starting with a zero draft is the most effective way to get a novel written.

What works for me may not work for you, but if you’d like to write faster or are having trouble finishing your novel, why not give it a try.

The Zero Draft Frees You

Though I didn’t use the phrase Zero Draft, for all the books I’ve published, both fiction and non-fiction, it’s exactly what I write first. (Typically I do a rough outline before the draft, but you can write the zero draft on the fly if you’d rather.)

Allowing yourself to write a draft that makes no sense and has all the faults I mentioned above shuts off the editor side of your brain.

It’s the best way I’ve found to write and finish fast because you know the draft will be bad and unreadable. You know you won’t show it to anyone. Ever.

So there’s no reason to go back and fix anything as you write. And there’s no reason not to keep writing all the way to the end.

Plot And The Zero Draft

For me, the zero draft revolves around the plot. I want to get my story on paper so I can see how well it works and improve it later.

This draft is where I see if my rough outline truly works.

Usually the first half follows the outline very well, though I often realize there are gaps I need to fill in so that it makes sense. The climax also usually remains as I expected, at least from a big picture sense.

I know who wins and who loses, so to speak, and often where the climax will happen.

Typically I change what happens from the mid-point to the three-quarter point. Sometimes that’s because my feel for the story and characters changes as I write. Or I realize what I thought would be a dramatic turn doesn’t truly grow out of what came before it or feels dull–like merely more of the same.

On the fly, I try out a new three-quarter turn, making notes in brackets about what might need to change in the pages before.

Because of these changes, the last third of the zero draft is often what I think of as thinner than the first two-thirds.

But that’s okay.

Later I’ll rearrange and expand. My changes to the first two-thirds when I rewrite almost always require that and guide me when I revise the last third.

What Not To Worry About In Your Zero Draft

You can write the zero draft fast because there are a whole host of things that usually slow the writing process that you can ignore:

  • Continuity

This is a big one.

When I write the zero draft, I don’t worry about changing a plot line in the middle of the book. If I’m concerned I’ll be confused later I write a note in brackets and bold, something like: [change so Cyril stalks Tara before she meets him].

This approach saves you from going back and revising the early chapters, or perhaps the first half, of your novel each time you have a new idea.

Skipping those on-going revisions saves you a lot of time if you reach the end and realize you don’t need that character after all, or you’re dropping that sub-plot that seemed so brilliant when you were halfway through.

  • Character Development

To love your story, your reader needs to be engaged with your characters. But the zero draft isn’t the time to worry about that.

If I know the character well and the words flow about that person, I include as much about the character as I want.

But if I simply need a character to fill a certain role–sidekick to the antagonist, alternate suspect in a suspense novel, protagonist’s boss–and I haven’t worked out who that person is, I simply write that character doing whatever it is I need the character to do.

Some characters don’t even get names.

I just finished a zero draft of The Charming Man, Book 2 in my Q.C. Davis series, and I’ve got characters “named” Neighbor1 and Neighbor2.

  • Line Editing

Now and then in a zero draft I’ll craft a sentence or paragraph that does exactly what I need and has a nice ring. Those sometimes survive to the final novel.

Most of the time, though, the lines will be rewritten for one reason or another. Many of them will be cut.

So as long as you’ve got what you need so that you understand it, don’t worry about things like perfect grammar, ideal sentence construction, or using the same word too often.

Just write.

After The Zero Draft

Once you have your zero draft on paper, you’ll probably feel two things:

(1) Happy you finished (so celebrate!)

(2) Overwhelmed about what to do next

Rachael Herron suggests going through the zero draft and writing one sentence on an index card or sticky note for each scene. (You can also do this using Scrivener or some other software that allows you to write the digital equivalent of index cards or post its.)

This process gives you an overview of your plot.

I love this method, as it gives me a chance to see the gaps, the disconnections, and the lack of logic. (Did I mention my zero drafts are awful?)

I then rearrange and make notes on what I need to add.

After that, I revise the zero draft, again focusing mainly on plot but also on adding the characters I need and dropping the ones I don’t. I don’t try to write in depth scenes. My goal is for the story and the cast of characters to make sense.

Once that’s done, I set the book aside for at least a week before I start the real revision process.

Which is a subject for a future article.

Until next time —

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If you’d like to know more about the five-point plot structure I use, or want to try applying it to an outline or rewrite of your novel, download these Free Story Structure Worksheets.

Writing A Flagship Series (And Why You Should)

Last weekend I attended the Sell More Books Show Summit. In the first presentation, Author Chris Fox talked about how and why to write a flagship series.

As I listened, I realized that without knowing it I’d started what I hope will be a flagship series. The talk helped me hone in on how best to build that series (my Q.C. Davis mystery/suspense series).

If you’re hoping to make a living writing–or you want to develop long-term fans–writing this type of series can help.

The information below comes mainly from Fox’s talk, but it includes my own thoughts as well. So any errors (or inept explanations) are mine.

What Is A Flagship Series?

A flagship series is one that readers and fans (and often non-readers) know by name. Such a series is as well known as, if not more known than, its author.

Many fans read or follow only that series and not the author’s other works.

Think about the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

Most people know the name of the series even if they don’t recall the author.

Devoted fans not only read everything about Harry Potter and any related characters, many will buy Harry Potter merchandise, post about the world on social media, and see all the movies.

A lot of these fans, however, do not cross over to read Rowling’s mystery series (written under pen name Robert Galbraith), which I love just as much.

Another very well known example of a flagship series is Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. Each mystery features her private eye Kinsey Milhone and begins with a successive letter of the alphabet, starting with A is for Alibi.

Elements Of A Flagship Series

Flagship series should be:

  • Well Branded

The brand should be easy to identify, as in the examples above.

Two other well-branded series are John Sandford’s “Prey” novels (each includes the word Prey in the title) and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series. Either the titles or the characters make it easy to identify that each new book belongs to the series.

This requirement is one reason my Awakening series doesn’t qualify.

While the titles are somewhat similar (The Awakening, The Unbelievers, The Conflagration, and The Illumination), I took the name from the first book in the series. I include it in sub-titles, but it isn’t otherwise recognizable the way Sandford’s Prey novels are.

Also, The Awakening is a title that’s been used far too often for other books and movies, so it’s unlikely readers will associate it only with my supernatural thrillers.

  • Long 

Fox suggests the series ultimately should include at least 1 million words. If your novels are 80,000 words long, which is about average, that would be 12.5 novels.

The idea is that the reader should become lost in the world of the books.

I think it also helps to write an open-ended series. That way you can always write another book in it if you want to.

Mystery and suspense novels focused on the same protagonist have this advantage, which is part of why I started my Q.C. Davis series. If it goes well and I still enjoy it, I can just keep writing it.

  • Designed To Create Loyal Readers

These readers not only buy each book but often publicize a flagship series for the author. They might post on social media, tell friends, buy and display merchandise, or write fan fiction.

Pluses And Minuses Of A Flagship Series

If you successfully create a flagship series, you’ll have lifelong fans.

When you write a new book in the series, readers will be eager for it and excited about it, something most authors dream of. They may even write you to hurry you on.

This demand for additional books will occur without the need to do a tremendous amount of marketing. Built-in demand makes it far easier to earn a living as a writer.

As an example, though not quite a flagship series, I did build some following for my Awakening series.

When I set the fourth and final book for preorder a month before release, I had 50 times the number of preorders as I got for The Worried Man, the first book in my new series.

The only downside I can see of a flagship series is that authors sometimes end up feeling trapped by it or get tired of writing it.

They may want to write about a different character or different world but find that readers are primarily interested only in the flagship series. Also, the longer the series runs, the more limitations there are on what they can do with the characters.

For most of us who are working on establishing and growing an author career, though, the idea of having those types of problems sounds very appealing.

Creating Reader Loyalty Through A Flagship Series

Creating a flagship series means including certain elements that help readers become and stay engaged with the series.

  • Open Loops

Open loops are questions you raise at the beginning of the series that aren’t resolved in the first book or the second or the third….

Wanting the answers keeps readers eagerly picking up the next book despite that the main plot in the current book resolves.

Fox gave the example of the television show Lost which raised numerous questions in the very first episode.

Book 1 in The Awakening Series

Many audience members watched the entire series in the hope of getting answers to those questions. (I personally felt the series didn’t resolve enough of them, but I watched faithfully the entire time.)

Another TV example of an open loop is Fox Mulder’s on-going quest to find out what happened to his sister in The X-Files.

In my Awakening Series, an open question from Book 1 was what originally caused my main character Tara’s supernatural pregnancy. That question isn’t answered until the fourth and final book.

  • Narrative Drive

Narrative drive encompasses the running plots woven throughout the series.

For example, in each of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels, the crime is solved. But Stephanie’s romantic relationships remain a running subplot. For many books, she wavers between a policeman boyfriend and a strong and somewhat shady private security guy.

Wanting to see what happens next in her relationship is part of what draws readers from book to book.

  • Character Growth

Significant changes in the characters keep readers engaged.

In Harry Potter, we see Harry and his friends struggle to learn how to harness their powers. We also watch them grow from children to adolescents to young adults.

Fox noted that all the characters in a flagship series should change dramatically throughout. So the protagonist, antagonist, and side characters should all experience significant character growth.

In some series readers become nearly as invested in the side characters as they are in the protagonist. Think about the hugely successful Twilight series. Readers were Team Jacob or Team Edward.

Likewise, in the Hunger Games Trilogy, Peeta goes through radical changes in his personality, his view of the world, and his feelings for Katniss.

So what are your favorite flagship series to read?

Are you writing one yourself?

Until next Friday —

L.M. Lilly

Reading The Newspaper Can Spark Ideas For Your Novel

I started reading the Wall Street Journal when I opened my own law practice because I wanted to better understand my business clients. But I discovered it helped my fiction writing too. Its articles sparked ideas for plot twists and character backstory.

That’s why now that my work life focuses far more on writing than law I still read it every day — in print.

Why read the news rather than watch it and why read in print?

It’s old school, but there are good reasons.

Beyond The Headlines

Television news tends to focus on headlines. Particularly whichever ones will grab the most viewers and evoke the strongest emotions.

Strong emotions are good for fiction, but they need to arise from the characters and the plot.

Because I don’t write “Ripped From The Headlines” novels, emotions aroused by a sensational news story or outrage over one political figure or another don’t help me come up with good ideas for fiction.

The types of articles that make their way into my novels tend to be on page 3 or 12. Or maybe in a separate special section. They’re not the ones that shout at the readers on page 1 or the top of the news hour.

Today, for example, on page 2 I saw an article about how law enforcement used genealogy websites to track down a man suspected of being the long-sought-after Golden State Killer. The murders occurred over 3 decades ago.

While I’m not writing about that same type of crime, I am working on a murder mystery — The Charming Man (Book 2 my new Q.C. Davis mystery series).

Almost all the action occurs within a Chicago apartment complex, River City. The characters are isolated there during a blizzard.

Inside River City

In the first book, The Worried Man, protagonist Quille talked to a lot of suspects and witnesses in person as she investigated the death of the man she loved. She used her training as a lawyer and former actress to study body language. Because she’s trapped in River City in The Charming Man, though, she can only talk to so many people.

She needs other methods.

When I saw the article it occurred to me that one additional way Quille could research her suspects’ family connections and pasts was through genealogy websites.

Articles that helped me flesh out ideas for my first Q.C. Davis mystery included ones about medical fraud, political corruption in Cook County, and the effects of suicide on family members.

As another example, years ago I saw a Wall Street Journal article about scientists isolating a gene that could allow certain species to live 1,000 years.

The question of whether such a gene could be inserted into a human intrigued me.

At the time I was working on The Unbelievers, Book 1 in my Awakening supernatural thriller series. The article prompted me to include a prophecy about The One Who Will Live Forever.

In an early draft, that prophecy referred to a child my protagonist had conceived in a supernatural way. Genetic testing revealed that the child had that 1,000 year gene.

That gene didn’t make it into the final version of the book. It turned out to be a distraction — one too many threads for the reader to follow.

But the prophecy remained, although with a different meaning. Had I not read the article I probably wouldn’t have thought of it at all.

The Beauty Of Print

I like to read articles in an actual print newspaper rather than online. Reading that way helps me generate more ideas and be more creative.

Why?

  • Relaxation/Creativity

I associate reading online with analytic thinking. That’s because the bulk of the legal research I do is through online databases.

While research and analysis are necessary for plotting, when it comes to generating ideas, I need to relax and let thoughts come freely into my mind. That’s a different kind of thinking.

Reading in print helps me access that part of my brain.

  • Focus

Studies show that when we read online our minds tend to look for the next link to click. That makes it harder to concentrate on the words in front of us.

Reading on paper makes it easier for me to focus.

  • All The Pages

I like to page through the entire paper, glancing at all the headlines.

Often the articles that catch my eye are ones I’d never see if I were on a website. I rarely click beyond the first few webpages. The rare times I do, it’s to follow links in an article or to further read about a particular topic, not to eyeball what else might be on the site.

For that reason, it helps me to look at a print newspaper where I glance through all the pages at least once.

What about you? What’s your favorite way to generate ideas for your stories?

Until next Friday —

L.M. Lilly

Getting Unstuck When You’re Writing Your Novel

We’ve all had it happen. You’re at the end of a scene or chapter, or maybe in the middle, and you just can’t seem to go on.

Maybe you stare at the screen for a while. Maybe you walk away for five minutes, get a cup of coffee or tea, and come back. Maybe you take your dog for a walk.

Yet you still don’t know what to write next.

Or, worse, you think you do know but for whatever reason you’re not sitting down to write it.

This has happened to me more than once as I’ve been working on the first draft of the second book in my new Q. C. Davis mysteries series. So I’ve been revisiting my options for getting rolling again.

Below are the four that help me the most.

What works will vary from writer to writer, but maybe some of these will help you, too.

Live Music

Attending a concert or other musical performance almost always stimulates ideas, brings forth new characters, or causes me to create new plot turns. Sometimes I come up with entirely new stories.

It’s not a conscious effort. That’s the beauty of it.

As the music absorbs me, my mind feels free to relax and drift, and that’s when magic happens.

While recorded music helps too, there’s something about the energy of the performers and of the crowd that makes it easy to let go of day-to-day life, concerns, and anything else occupying my analytic mind and just be.

If you haven’t tried it, in my opinion it’s worth giving it a shot no matter what type of musical performance you can get to.

For me, it really doesn’t matter if I love the music or not. It just matters that I’m there, listening and experiencing and watching.

Museums/Art Exhibits/Random Art

Much like music, viewing art stimulates creativity.

Normally I’m pretty skeptical of concepts that can’t be tested scientifically, but I just feel that the energy the artist puts into creating the work somehow comes through the art itself. Whether I like a painting or sculpture or not I feel like being near it and studying it–getting absorbed in it–transmits some of that artist’s energy to me.

Also, as with attending a live music event, the energy of other people in an art exhibit or museum (or looking at a piece of art in an outdoor plaza) also adds to my energy.

Sometimes it can be a bit draining if it’s terribly crowded and loud in the area, and then I need to take a break for a while. But for the most part I find myself relaxing and focusing on the art.

I also think viewing artwork is helpful because writing is all about words on the page and what we see in our minds.

With artwork we’re often looking at shapes and colors and possibly movement that someone else has created and that’s different from what we see on a day-to-day basis. Anything new like that is almost guaranteed, at least for me, to spark new and different ideas for our own work.

Finally, though I don’t do it purposely, I almost can’t help imagining the emotions of the artist or that the artist wanted to convey. Along with that often come scenes and characters. They aren’t necessarily directly related to the art, but they often speak to me all the same.

When I go back to my own work I find that I am revitalized.

Use Cards With Images

Often when I’m stuck on a scene or story I take out a deck of cards. Not regular playing cards, but some cards with striking images created by artists.

Here’s an example from a set of Soul Cards I bought in an antique and gift store once. There is probably some way to use them for people who want to try to do intuitive or psychic readings, but I don’t use them for that.

Instead, I’ll pull a card at random and stare at it for a while.

I try to let go of other thoughts the same way I would looking at a painting or listening to a concert.

With the card, though, I take it a step further and ask myself how the card makes me feel. I might write down what I feel and think or what story the card brings to mind.

Another option is to imagine you are looking at the card as your character.

How does your character feel? Does it make her feel sad? Does it make him feel happy? What memories does it trigger?

If you’re comfortable with it and you’re using a deck (such as any type of Tarot deck) that assigns meanings to the images, you can use the instructions or search for meanings of the cards online.

You don’t need to believe the cards actually tell the future or give true insight in themselves. (I don’t.) In my view, most descriptions of most cards are general and open enough that you can interpret them in many, many ways.

This possibility of so many different interpretations allows your mind and heart to range freely and bring forth or add on to whatever is already in your unconscious mind about your characters and story.

Take A Train Ride

Another time new ideas or creative solutions to plot or character questions come easily to my mind is when I’m riding a train.

The movement of the train prompts a sort of meditative state of mind for me. I don’t read or listen to music or do work. I simply stare out the window and let my mind drift.

As with art and music, it doesn’t matter if I like the scenery outside the window or not. Whether it’s city, miles of fields of corn (I take the Amtrak through Central and downstate Illinois a lot) or a river or swamp, it helps clear my mind.

I don’t make any effort to think about anything in particular, I just let my thoughts flow.

Often for the first few minutes I’m preoccupied with day-to-day concerns. But soon I let go of all that, and thoughts simply arise.

Sometimes nothing about story or character comes to mind during the train ride, but later when I sit down at the keyboard again the words start flowing.

Why It Works

The key, at least for me, for all of the above is not to try to come up with an answer but to simply take the train ride (literally or metaphorically).

The common threads I see in all the above activities are:

  • being exposed to something new or different
  • changing a daily or weekly routine
  • feeling the energy of other people (at least through their creative work)
  • letting go of the specific purpose and being in the moment

My best guess is that’s why these activities spark ideas that help us get around blocks.

What works best for you? Feel free to share in the comments.

Until next Friday-

L.M. Lilly

iPhones And The Art Of Writing Simply

Consider this sentence:

In order to make a determination regarding whether negotiations should be entered into at this point in time, an evaluation of benefits and detriments was made.

If your brain turned off after the fourth or fifth word, it’s not because you’re not a lawyer. Or, if you are a lawyer, it’s not because you’re not a smart lawyer.

It’s because it’s a terrible sentence.

Try this one instead:

To decide whether to negotiate now, we weighed the pluses and minuses.

The second sentence says the same thing as the first, but using 12 words instead of 26. And the 12 words are simpler and clearer.

The rule of keeping it simple applies to other types of writing too.

Compare my poorly-written version of a sentence from Joy Fielding’s The Wild Zone (see page 113 of Pocket Books paperback edition) to the real thing:

Mine:

At that very moment, she made an identification of the vehicle as the automobile she’d been followed by the night before, which vehicle she’d made the assumption was owned by the detective who had been hired by her husband.

The real sentence:

She’d recognized the car immediately as the one that had tailed her the night before, the one she’d assumed belonged to a detective hired by her husband.

Why Simple Is Better

In both pairs of examples, the second sentence is easier to understand and more likely to keep the reader’s attention. That matters to me no matter what I’m writing.

In law or for business, I usually write to explain something to someone – whether it’s a client, a colleague or a judge – or to persuade someone to see things my way. It’s harder to do either if I make the reader struggle to understand me or, worse yet, to stay awake. When

I write fiction, obviously I want and need to capture and keep the reader’s attention. Excessive words bog down a story and can bury the even most exciting plot twists and characters.

Simplifying my writing also allows me to cover more ground.

In my law practice, I’m usually bound by a page limit. If my sentences are twice as long as they need to be, that means I can make only half the arguments or must cut some of the examples or cases that support those arguments.

And even if I don’t need my whole page limit, I’d rather send a court or a client a well-written 7-page document than a cumbersome 15-page one. In fiction, clearer, cleaner sentences allow me more space to develop character, advance the plot, or describe the setting.

For these reasons, over half my writing time is spent cutting. (I’m not alone in this – the saying “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” has been attributed to many people, including Voltaire and Mark Twain.)

Writing more simply sounds, well, simple, and it is when comparing two sentences the way I did above.

Looking at an entire manuscript, though, can be daunting. So I’ve tried to break down some points I look for when editing.

  • Get rid of words you don’t need:

Lawyers in particular love unnecessary words, I suspect because we spent a lot of money to go to law school and we want to sound like it.

“Attached hereto is the aforementioned contract” sounds like something a lawyer would write. On the other hand, “the contract is attached” is just plain English.

One place to spot words you can cut is in prepositional phrases.

In the sample sentences, I changed “in order to” to “to.” Similarly, “at this point in time” became “now” and “at that very moment” changed to “immediately.”

Using the Find function in Word to search for prepositions, especially “of,” “at” and “to,” is a great way to discover phrases you can simplify. Read each phrase and ask yourself how you might say it in one word or, at most, two.

  • Don’t just be — do:

Another way to make writing sharper is to write in active rather than passive voice.

Active voice: “her husband hired a detective.”

Passive voice: “A detective was hired by her husband.”

“We evaluated” (active); “an evaluation was made” (passive).

Active voice shortens sentences and makes them easier to read and understand. It also keeps the focus on the actor.

If you won an award or a race, don’t you want people to know you won it? And be excited about it? “I won the race” sounds a lot more exciting than “A race was won” or even “A race was won by me.”

Of course, sometimes you want to be anonymous. In his 1987 State of the Union speech, President Reagan didn’t say he’d made mistakes regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, he said “serious mistakes were made….” Who made them? Perhaps no one will focus on that.

Another time for passive voice is when you use it to emphasize the object of the sentence.

For instance, if you and your friend have loved every book that won an Edgar Award, and you want to persuade your friend to read a particular writer, you might say, “An Edgar Award was won by this writer.” The point is “wow, an Edgar Award, that writer must be amazing.”

Yet another reason to use passive voice is when you don’t know who performed an action: “A tower had been built in the village” might be the only way you can frame a sentence if you don’t know who built the tower.

Short of a good reason to use passive voice, however, phrase all your sentences in active voice and see how much more compelling it makes your writing. You can find passive voice by searching for the “to be” words — was, were, is, are. The word “by” also often signals passive voice (think “was followed by” or “was loved by” or “was won by”.

  • Trade nouns for verbs:

I also look for instances where I can substitute a verb for what I think of as a noun phrase. (English teachers or editors out there may know the technical term for what I mean.)

The phrase “enter into negotiations” is an example of what I call a noun phrase – it uses the noun “negotiations” as part of a phrase that conveys an action. But one verb – negotiate – can say the same thing.

Similarly, above, the verb “assumed” replaced the noun phrase “made the assumption.”

As with minimizing passive voice, this type of editing not only eliminates words, it makes the sentences more active and interesting.

While doing this, you can replace a noun not only with a verb, but with a stronger verb or a verb that’s more commonly used or easier to read.

“I talked with Beth” flows better than “I had a conversation with Beth” or even “I conversed with Beth.” Similarly, “I had an argument with Beth,” might become “I fought with Beth.”

  • Trade verbs for better verbs:

Replacing a verb plus an adverb with a stronger verb also helps writing clip along.

A few examples:

  1. Walked swiftly: hurried
  2. Walked casually: strolled
  3. Laughed nervously: tittered

You get the idea.

Find the adverbs by searching “ly”.

Also, even if the “to be” words aren’t part of a phrase that’s in passive voice, consider replacing them with a more interesting verb. “I felt sad” conveys stronger emotion than “I was sad.” “I grieved” sounds even more vivid.

Everything I’ve read about Steve Jobs said he always focused on simplicity in his designs.

I saw this the first time I got an iPhone and compared it to my Blackberry. (Remember those?)

The Blackberry had all kinds of icons for different functions, but after six years I only knew how to do two things on it – call and email. I hesitated to switch to an iPhone because I couldn’t imagine what else I’d do with it.

Within two months of owning one, it had become my daily alarm clock, back up GPS, radio station, oven timer, weather channel, and Internet browser. And, oh yes, I call and email with it.

So borrow a page from Apple’s playbook and don’t clutter your writing with words that take up space and seem too cumbersome to figure out.

Instead, have some fun and write the iPhone version of a legal brief, novel, or business letter.

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

Starting Your Story With A Spark

The first major point of your novel is what I think of as the Story Spark.

It gets the ball rolling.

Your protagonist is going along with normal life as a waitress, a student, a Southern Belle and, bam, something changes.

This also is known as the Inciting Incident.

It could happen on your first page or somewhere in the first few chapters. It needs to happen early, though, because it starts the real story.

What comes before is background or backstory, a glimpse into the character’s normal life and what happened before this conflict occurred or came to a head.

In a movie, the Story Spark typically occurs within the first ten minutes. In a book, it’s often in the first chapter.

The classic example is a murder mystery, where we see a dead body on the first page or at end of the first chapter. As we’ll see, the scene that contains the Story Spark doesn’t need to include the protagonist, though it quite often does. Regardless, without the Spark, there’s no story, and no conflict for our protagonist.

Examples — And Spoilers — Of The Story Spark

Warning: The rest of this article includes spoilers from The Terminator (the first film), Gone With The Wind, and my own first novel The Awakening.

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In The Terminator, Sarah Connor in the Climax will fight the Terminator to the death.

The Story Spark occurs in two of the first scenes of the film, when two naked men, one of whom is actually the cyborg we’ll come to know as the Terminator, appear on earth amid lightning. This is important because when we switch to our hero, Sarah, happily cruising on her motor scooter on a sunny California day, we already know there’s conflict on the way.

My very old copy of Gone With The Wind

In Gone With The Wind, though Scarlett is unaware of either at the beginning of the book, the main story will be about her relationship with Rhett Butler and, on a grander scale, about her surviving the Civil War and the death of the pre-war Southern way of life.

The Story Spark occurs when Rhett pops up off the couch, having heard Scarlett’s unladylike declaration of love for Ashley Wilkes, and Ashley’s rejection of her. Rhett laughs, Scarlett throws a vase, and there you have it. The Story Spark for the more sweeping story also occurs at this time. As Rhett and Scarlett spar, the Civil War is declared. Moments later, a blushing beau asks Scarlett to marry him before he goes off to fight.

In The Awakening, the Story Spark occurs on the first page, which is not unusual with a thriller or mystery (see above: dead body on page 1).

Tara’s doctor tells her she’s pregnant, despite that she’s never had sexual intercourse. Her goal when we start the book is to become a doctor. Her plan is to finish college and be admitted to medical school before marrying her boyfriend, having sex, and risking pregnancy. The very moment we see her, in the first paragraph of the novel, she’s encountering the major obstacle:

Tara folded and unfolded the pink referral slip. Her fingers made sweat marks on the paper. “I can’t be pregnant. I haven’t had sex.”

Right off the bat, Tara must deal with the actual turn her life has taken and struggle to explain it to everyone else in her life. That includes her boyfriend, who knows he can’t be the father.

The Tension Before The Spark
  • Gone With The Wind 

In Gone With The Wind, unlike in The Terminator, there are quite a few scenes before the Story Spark.

How does Margaret Mitchell keep readers engaged until then?

Two ways:

(1) As we talked about in Chapter One, conflict occurs on the very first page—the conflict between Scarlett’s nature and the rules imposed upon women in her society.

This actually foreshadows both the major story arcs in the book. We see it again when Mammy insists Scarlett eat before the Wilkes’ barbecue (where she’ll eventually be rejected by Ashley and meet Rhett), so that she’ll eat only tiny morsels there and appear ladylike. Mammy achieves this by playing on what Scarlett wants most—Ashley Wilkes—implying that Ashley prefers dainty, birdlike women.

Seeds are also sown about the Civil War in the very first scene.

Mitchell doesn’t do that by simply telling us war is on the horizon or by giving us a history lesson. Instead, as she weaves in information and descriptions, she frames the prospect of war in a very personal way for our protagonist. Scarlett is talking to twin brothers who both carry a torch for her. She wants to hear about them being thrown out of school (yet another conflict), and they want to talk about war, a subject that bores her. She becomes impatient and insists there won’t be any war.

(2) In that very first scene, Scarlett becomes upset, but hides it, when the twins tell her Ashley is getting engaged to his cousin Melanie. This is yet another conflict that will feed into the larger story arcs.

  • The Awakening
Book 1 in The Awakening Series

In contrast, Tara Spencer’s ordinary, pre-pregnancy life in The Awakening and her goal of becoming a doctor are conveyed not by pages of description or scenes before the Story Spark, but through a debate with her doctor.

The two debate both why Tara can’t be pregnant and how it could possibly have happened. This maintains tension as the reader learns about Tara.

Once again, conflict drives the scene and keeps the reader engaged.

If instead I started with a long description of Tara’s typical day at college or pages of narrative about how she’s the oldest of four and loves her brothers and sisters like crazy, or how hard she works at her job, most readers would stop reading.

  • The Terminator

In The Terminator, tension is maintained a different way.

In the very beginning, there’s a brief voiceover about the machines taking over the world, with short scenes of a grim future with machines and cyborgs hunting humans—emphasis on brief and short. Nothing will kill reader (or viewer) interest faster than a long download of information about the world of the story.

In some fantasy novels, readers have a lot of patience for world building, as that’s part of what fans love about the genre. Even there, however, if you’re a new author it’s best to hook your reader early with compelling personal conflict.

After the voiceover, some conflict occurs in Sarah’s day-to-day life, such as mixing up orders from customers, a child putting a scoop of ice cream in her uniform pocket, and a call from her roommate’s boyfriend.

Some of it is played for humor, as when the boyfriend starts sex talk with Sarah, stammers in embarrassment when she pretends to be shocked and not know who it is, then starts the very same lines when the roommate takes the phone.

But mostly tension and viewer interest is maintained by the scenes that are intercut with Sarah’s mundane troubles.

We see the Terminator pull the list of Sarah Connors from the phone book and murder one of them. We also see Kyle Reese flee from the police, steal clothes and weapons, and start hunting for Sarah. The first time through, we don’t know if he’s on her side or is another bad guy after her, which adds another story question for which the viewer wants an answer.

Finding The Spark For Your Novel

Now to your novel. Think about your protagonist’s main goal, the one that will take the entire novel to reach (or clearly fail to reach).

When is the first time something significant happens that blocks that goal and starts the story?

Does your protagonist encounter this obstacle on page one? If not, why not?

Even if you don’t plan to do it, brainstorm some ways you could rearrange your plot to get that obstacle onto page one.

If you’re picturing your Story Spark occurring a bit later, what else does your protagonist want on the first page, and what stands in the way? (This creates the conflict you need to keep reader attention until the Story Spark occurs.)

Odds are in your first draft, you’ll start too early, that is, you’ll start too long before the Story Spark.

Don’t worry about it.

After you finish the draft and let it sit for a while, it’ll be easier to see which part isn’t necessary and where the story really becomes compelling.

Good luck starting your novel!

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. For more on the Story Spark and the other key turning points when starting your novel, check out Super Simple Story Structure: A Quick Guide to Plotting and Writing Your Novel.

Figuring Out Your Protagonist’s Goal

Whether readers care about a protagonist almost always rests upon whether they care about that character’s goal.

Your protagonist must have a goal that’s vital to her (or him) and hard to reach so she’ll need to spend the entire novel struggling to achieve it.

Ask yourself: Where does your protagonist desperately want or need to be by the end of the novel?

Not only must your protagonist have a goal, she needs strong reasons for wanting or needing to achieve it. Otherwise the story will fall flat.

In short, the protagonist must care.

Heightening The Protagonist’s Motivation

As an example, let’s start with a goal with low stakes that many readers might not identify with.

If my main character’s goal is to get into a summer internship program in Boston at an international company, but she’d be equally happy to live with her parents all summer and work with her friends as a lifeguard at the local pool, the story won’t be compelling.

If she doesn’t care, neither will the reader.

On the other hand, imagine she has the same goal but the following are also true:

  • her student loans are coming due
  • after thirty interviews she hasn’t gotten a single job offer
  • she’s always wanted to live in Boston
  • the internship has a good chance of leading to full-time employment

Now we have a goal she (and the reader) will care about.

If you want to up the stakes, let’s say:

  • her parents both got laid off from their jobs last year
  • they moved to a one-bedroom apartment in a rural area
  • she’s sleeping on the couch and living far from any urban area with the types of jobs that she trained for
  • she can only afford plane tickets to this one last interview

Now we really have a conflict and so a story.

Active v. Passive

To be engaging, your protagonist must strive for her goal.

That doesn’t mean you need a superhero for a main character. In fact, as I talk about in Super Simple Story Structure, in a battle with the antagonist, your protagonist generally should be the underdog.

It does mean your protagonist must do as much as she or he possibly can to move forward within the limits of the world and the character you’ve created.

Goals And The Terminator

WARNING – Spoilers for the first Terminator film below!

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In the first half of The Terminator, from an action hero perspective, Sarah Connor is not particularly active. She doesn’t know how to fight or have any special skills or knowledge.

But for who she is and where she is in life, she does everything she can.

When she’s out at a bar and grill and sees a television news report that two women named Sarah Connor have been murdered, she immediately tries to call the police. The payphone, the only option in the 80s for calling when you’re away from home, is broken.

She’s made a big deal about seeing the news report, which might make it obvious she’s worried. So Sarah leaves the bar and grill, blending with a crowd and staying alert.

When she realizes someone is following her, she enters a nightclub, paying a cover charge just to get in and use the payphone. She persists in trying to reach the correct person at the police station despite being transferred all over. She follows the instructions she gets from the police, then follows the instructions of a stranger, Kyle Reese, when he’s able to fend off the Terminator. She also listens to Reese’s explanation despite how crazy it sounds.

In other words, Sarah Connor is the opposite of the idiot in the horror movie who is alone in a strange house at night, hears noises coming from the attic, and heads right up the stairs to have her throat slit.

Writer Heal Thyself

Ironically, though most of the above advice–including The Terminator analysis–came from my own book on story structure, I had trouble in my latest novel with the protagonist’s goal and motivation.

In my early drafts of The Worried Man, a mystery that will be out May 1, 2018, my main character found her boyfriend’s dead body in his apartment. The police suspected suicide or accidental overdose. She and the boyfriend’s son rejected the thought that either had happened, and the protagonist set out to uncover the truth.

These aspects of the book haven’t changed.

But in the early drafts she had met the man a few months before and dated him, but they hadn’t spent much time together. She didn’t meet the son until after the boyfriend died.

While she had a family history that made her identify with the son, it wasn’t clear what that history was.

The feedback from agents I ran the story past and the story editor I worked with was the same:

The main character didn’t have a strong enough reason to investigate the death or to doubt that the police detectives in her city (Chicago) could do a good job.

In the current version, I made these changes:

  • the protagonist and the boyfriend are about to move in together
  • she finds his dead body the night before the move
  • she has a close relationship with the son and just finished renovating her condo to create a sleeping loft for him
  • her mother emotionally abandoned her as a child, and she’s determined the son won’t grow up believing his father did anything that contributed to his own death and left the son without him
  • police investigated her parents for a crime they didn’t commit and never uncovered the truth, so she doesn’t trust the police to do their jobs or to be fair

My first reader of the final version had no idea of the feedback I’d gotten about the lack of motivation. He also didn’t know what changes I’d made in response.

I was very happy–and vastly relieved–when his first comment was how much he identified with the main character and how he completely got why she took the investigation into her own hands.

For the next book in the series, I hope I’ll remember what I learned!

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If you’re looking for articles about your goals as a writer or marketer/publisher, try Set A Single Goal (And Stop Managing Your Time) or Hitting Publish: Why Your First Goal Isn’t To Sell Books.

 

Writing When Injured Or Not Well

When I was in my twenties, I developed tendinitis in my hands, wrists, and arms. I was working at a temp job as a secretary to 27 people, typing 90 words per minute all day long at a bad keyboard set up.

I was also writing a novel when I got home and playing guitar.

At the time, there wasn’t a lot of awareness of carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, or other RSIs (repetitive stress injuries) from keyboarding.

Dealing With Advice

A lot of people implied or outright said that it was all in my head or due to stress. The suggestion that I could somehow fix myself simply by relaxing only made me feel worse.

My fingers went numb during the night, my hands and wrists tingled, and pain shot up my arms from my hands. Yet the doctor I saw through the company’s workers compensation policy told me to keep working unless or until there was nerve damage. Then I could have surgery, which was the only real treatment option at the time.

That struck me as a phenomenally bad idea.

I quit the job and moved home to my parents’ house in the hope that a few months of not working would help my hands heal. Instead I plunged into depression and anxiety.

Not Working, Not Writing, Not Functioning

For the first four or five weeks home, I found it very hard to get out of bed.

Once I did, I lay on the couch and watched television until the late afternoon. 

I struggled to figure out some other type of job I could do to support myself again. All my work experience, though, had to do with typing and computers. I don’t remember writing, and playing guitar hurt my hands.

I felt worthless.

The main things that I thought of as being who I was — a musician, writer, a hard worker — had all been taken from me. And I didn’t know how I get them back. (All of this also coincided with a break up with my boyfriend of six years, so I’d also lost my primary relationship.) 

In one way, whether I could write fiction or not “should” have been the least of my worries. I hadn’t made any money writing by then, so it wouldn’t help me back to living on my own and supporting myself.

Yet after my fear that I’d never be able to move out of my parents’ house again was my fear that I wouldn’t be able to write. Without writing, I wasn’t sure who I was or how much I’d get out of life.

Health And Writer’s Block

A while back I wrote an article Six Ways To Get Beyond The Myth Of Writer’s Block on issues that get labelled “writer’s block” with suggestions for dealing with each.

Looking back at the article, I realized it contained an underlying, unspoken assumption. Which was that the person who wants to write but can’t is otherwise generally healthy and physically well. (I revised it to try to address that.)

But many people live with chronic conditions that make any type of work or pursuit, including writing, far more difficult if not impossible. Many others are fortunate enough to be generally well much of their lives but nonetheless go through periods where their mental, physical, and emotional health limits whether and how much they can write.

Because of that, I’m sharing what I wish I’d known when I struggled so much with physical pain, depression, and anxiety. With these caveats:

  • What in retrospect I think would have helped me might or might not be useful for you
  • I’m not a doctor or health professional, and this is not medical, psychological, or psychiatric advice

First Things First

If I could go back, I’d tell myself that to love writing and to write can be a wonderful thing, but sometimes other things need to take priority. Things like physical, emotional, and mental health.

I felt I had to figure out all at once (a) all my health issues, (b) a new occupation, and (c) how I’d ever write again without severe pain.

And I felt like a failure because I couldn’t.

Now I’d tell myself that before I could write I needed to be sure I kept breathing and stayed alive. If I was able to write and it helped me do that, great.

If writing made me feel worse, though, then it was okay, and quite possibly necessary, to mentally set it aside for a while and focus on whatever would help me keep functioning.

No Overnight Fixes

While I rarely feel the extreme anxiety I experienced during the year and a half I moved back in with my parents, I’ve had a few times nearly as bad.

Likewise, life events sometimes trigger weeks or months of depression. It’s like a broken bone that hasn’t quite mended. Stepping a certain way or falling sometimes breaks it again.

And though my fingers rarely grow numb, if I am at the keyboard too long, my hands still get sore despite the many accommodations I’ve made over the years. (Those accommodations include using ergonomic keyboards, dictating, switching computers, stretching more, and taking regular breaks.)

If I’d know that decades later I’d still be dealing with many of these issues, maybe that would have made me feel worse.

Multiple Keyboards and RSI

But maybe not.

Because for me the hardest part was that I kept wanting to wake up one day and have my old life back. I only started to feel better emotionally and mentally when I realized that wasn’t happening. That the only place I could start from was where I was.

Accommodations And Work-Arounds

In the long run, my need to find a new type of work led to my retraining and becoming a paralegal and later a lawyer. As a result, a decade later, I was far better off financially and professionally than I had been when I developed the tendinitis.

For the physical aspect of writing, and generally to deal with my on-going hand, wrist, and arm pain, I made dozens if not hundreds of small changes like the ones I mentioned above, as well as lifestyle changes.

There were changes as small as:

  • leaving the aspirin cap off so I didn’t hurt my hands with the safety top on the bottle
  • paying someone more than I earned per hour to clean my small apartment so that I didn’t cause burning in my arms by scrubbing
  • learning that running cool water over my hands for five minutes or holding a cold soda can could ease pain temporarily

Adjusting Your Writing Routine

I also had to adjust my writing routine. I’d once written for 1-3 hours at a time and focused on writing novels only.

Now sometimes for days or weeks or months at a time I couldn’t do that, so instead I did some of the following:

  • Visualized scenes in my mind
  • Interviewed my characters in my mind
  • Wrote by hand in very short bursts (as writing by hand also made my hands worse)
  • Wrote very short poems (less than a page each)
  • Used an old tape recorder to record scenes (this was before any decent dictation software was available, and I couldn’t have afforded it even if it had been)

Some of these strategies came in handy years later when I was working so many hours that for stretches I could only write in small increments of time. (See Writing A Novel 15 Minutes At A Time.)

Flexible Writing Goals

I also found that I needed to be far more flexible in my goals. Though it definitely took me a long time to make peace with that.

If you’ve read The One-Year Novelist, you know I am big on setting specific goals with time frames. When I struggled with depression, anxiety, and physical pain, I had to adjust that strategy.

During the worst of my depression, I didn’t set any writing goals at all. If it made me feel better to write, then I wrote. Otherwise, I didn’t.

When my depression became more manageable and my tendinitis was slightly better so that I could work at a job though still in a lot of pain, I started writing in a journal when I could. From an emotional perspective, that was an easy way to write because I never show my journals to anyone.

But I didn’t set any goals for writing a certain amount per day, week, or year.

I had a general goal in mind wanting to write another novel. But I didn’t worry about when I would be done. I just aimed to finish at some point down the line.

That was unusual for me, because I love lists and plans. They help reassure me that I won’t lose track of anything and ease my anxiety.

In the darkest times, though, lists and plans made me feel worse. They emphasized what I felt I “should” be doing and couldn’t.

So if I could go back, I’d tell myself to try letting go of lists and plans now and then. They can be useful tools, but they’re not the right ones for every circumstance.

That’s all for today.

I hope some of my story gives you some ideas or inspiration if you’re struggling with injuries or health issues.

Until next Friday —

L. M. Lilly

P.S. For more on anxiety and well-being, you might find Happiness, Anxiety, and Writing: Using Your Creativity To Live A Calmer, Happier Life helpful.