Getting Unstuck: The Krafton Method

For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about “getting unstuck”.

For a writer, getting stuck is an occupational hazard. Our ideas get sluggish and the writing gets stagnant before dragging to a gummed-up halt. Sometimes, being stuck seems like the natural state of things, with merciful moments of productivity and creative flow.

Truthfully, I haven’t had to struggle against writer’s block very much. I’ve found myself in an awkward spot a few times, but it wasn’t because I had no idea what to write—it was because I had too many choices.

I guess it’s just the way I’ve trained the writer part of my brain. It’s always switched on, always whirring, always thinking. (Over time, I've learned that 90 percent of writing is thinking.)

And when I do type up to a spot where my fingers hover over the keyboard and I read and re-read the last line over and over, I don’t wait until I start to wonder where the flow went. I don’t give myself a chance to grow stagnant, or frustrated, or blocked.

I’m a writer. I write through it.

Sometimes that means opening a new document and starting something new.

This has been a very successful practice for me. When I started to pursue a writing career, I had a three-book project in mind. I put most of my effort into writing and editing and shopping the Demimonde trilogy.

But, like everyone else, I didn’t sit down and type out three books without missing a beat. There were plenty of pauses, lots of moments when I needed to sit back, reflect on the projects, think about what would work best.

It’s what I did with those pauses that helped me to remain prolific and productive. I wrote.
I wrote poetry and short stories and I shopped those, too. I wrote down ideas that popped into my head while I was driving. I wrote out quick plot summaries for those new ideas. I wrote pages of scenes and conversations and scenarios. Sometimes, I just wrote character sketches and peered into their imaginary hearts while they weren’t looking.

I wrote anything I could get my brain on and filled flash drives with it all.

And sometimes, one of those files would get reopened, again and again, because there was a potential world to explore and I couldn’t keep away. Eventually it would get to the point where I couldn’t wait to finish one book because there was another I was chomping at the bit to get to.

I guess that’s how my bibliography grew, despite my having a full-time job outside the author’s office—a novella, a few short work and poetry anthologies, tons of individual clips from magazines and journals, and four published novels. Five, actually, because the latest one (a Victorian dark fantasy called THE HEARTBEAT THIEF) just came out today.

And do you know how THE HEARTBEAT THIEF came to be? The same way so much of my other work did: I took a break from writing one book and flipped to a new page.

The first lines I wrote were a conversation between a young woman and a mysterious entity in a funeral parlor on the topic of how to live forever. It was a little creepy, I admit, but it was nothing like what I had been writing at the time. It proved to be the mental palate cleanser I needed and soon I was back to work on my original project.

The biggest cause of writer’s block is mental congestion. Sometimes, a writer gets so wrapped up in a project that it gets hard to think straight. By flipping to a new page, I shift gears and look out a different window. I fluff up the pillow and change the station. The congestion clears right up, allowing the creativity to flow at its natural pace again. Writing through the block is therapeutic, see?

My family asks me when I’ll ever take a break from writing because I always seem to be doing it. They don’t seem to understand that I’ve trained a long time to be able to exercise my craft with this kind of endurance.

Yes, it takes practice. You become a writer twenty-four hours a day when you learn that 90% of writing is mental. You train your writer’s brain to be constantly vigilant, always observant, and you coach yourself to take advantage of down-time by making notes and writing small, unrelated pieces. Keeping your brain aerated and stimulated keeps the ideas from growing stagnant and settling to the bottom.

Ready to get unstuck and stay that way?

Here’s a few tips from the Krafton Method:

• Keep a notebook or digital recorder handy. (Here’s a previous QT article on why you should always have a writer’s notebook handy.) I’ve emailed myself when I didn’t have access to anything else. Sometimes, it’s just a description or a single line. It’s a seed for something bigger to grow.
• Be observant. Notice everything. Take pictures if the words don’t come right away. They’ll follow, trust me. “You see, but you do not observe,” Sherlock Holmes once said. Observing involves taking what you see, ingesting it, and using it to think about something else. Another favorite Holmes quote: "You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles." No better way to describe my own method. I observe the trifles, write them down, and revisit them when I feel the threat of writing sluggishness.
• Opposites are attractive: when you feel your writing is getting sluggish, flip to a new page and write a paragraph about something that is the exact opposite of what you’re currently writing. Change the scenery by writing the antithesis to the emotion, the setting, the occupation of your character. Create something new and cleanse your mental palate.
• Write a poem. It doesn’t have to be good. The majority of poetry is terrible stuff. But poetry is blessedly free of expectation and demand. It’s pure expression and creative simplicity, even when written in its most complex forms. I like traditional forms such as villanelle and sestinas, because these forms have a sort of mathematical equation that goes into the writing. Math, to me, is the exact opposite of novel writing, and really helps to reset the prose side of my brain, thereby relieving mental congestion.
• Move your butt. Go someplace else to write. New surrounding are both stimulating and relaxing and give your words room to breathe.

You don’t have to suffer from writer’s block or mental congestion. You just have to learn how to keep the words flowing. Using these tips will help you train yourself to be a writer 100% of the time.

 

Have a tip of your own to share? Leave us a comment and help us all become a more productive writer.

Ash’s new book THE HEARTBEAT THIEF is a Poe-esque tale of endless devotion—full of dark fantasy, Victorian dresses, and, of course, Death.

Special release day sale price of 99 cents for two days only.

Download your copy today…steals like this don’t last forever.

Writing by the Seat of Your Pants

Writer's block can be like trying to force rusty wheels to turn!

I’ve been struggling a bit with writer’s block, so I’ve been reading books on how to get unstuck. I’m noticing a pattern with them – most encourage you to outline as you brainstorm. I love the idea of outlining, of having a rough (or not so rough) roadmap for where you’re going, and for my last novel, I used notecards to create one (a process I talked about with KM Weiland for her book, Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success). The notecards were glorious, like stepping stones along the way.

Having had a good experience with outlining, and having read all these wonderful, encouraging books that talk about outlining, I’d love to be able to outline to get myself unstuck on the two WIPs I’ve got going.

Unfortunately, it’s just…not…happening.

As much as I’d like to be a consistent outliner, the reality is that I’ve been a pantser most of my life. What’s a pantser, you may ask? Why, it’s someone who flies by the seat of their pants. If the outliners are Planners, the people who make it up as they go are Pantsers.

I’m starting to wonder if my problem is that I'm trying to force myself to be an outliner when that isn't really my nature. After all, being a pantser has worked for me for a lot of years. And I’m kind of a pantser in life, too. I don’t like things to be too scheduled, because what if I change my mind? And when it comes to other forms of creativity, like graphic design, I like to try different visual elements together and see what inspires me most, and go from there. I probably hit more dead ends than a lot of other creative people this way, but I also have some pretty unexpected turns in my stories. 

Although forcing myself to open up that document and put words on the page when I feel stuck and directionless is like trying to force rusty wheels to turn, I’ve discovered that if I’m persistent about it, I can get them to turn. And when I write, I discover things about my characters, about the story, that I’m just not sure I’d get if I were outlining. In other words, it’s the nuances I notice along the way that propel me from one plot point to another.

In an example some of you have probably seen me use before, in one of my novels the villain spontaneously shoots one of the heroes. I never had any intention of killing off the character who was shot (after all, she was one of my heroes!), but after she went down, I couldn’t for the life of me get her back up. I threw medical professionals at her, and I wished along with my other characters that she’d be okay, but in the end, she died. Another hero developed PTSD as a result, and that PTSD not only drove the second half of that novel, but most of the sequel. If I’d outlined, I’d never have killed her off. Yet somehow the actual writing is different, and I realized that it was the right thing for the story.

Of course, you can always make changes as you work from an outline, but I think I might have trouble flying off into these tangents that seem to bear the most fruit if I did. It’s while I’m floundering around in the darkness, writing anything I can think of just to get words on the page that I often seem to stumble upon the best material. I have a wild “what if?” moment, and I go with it because I don’t have anything better planned. And because I don’t have anything better planned, I also feel free to just go with whatever crazy repercussions I see as a result of that wild “what if?” moment.

So if you’re a pantser and you find yourself getting stuck, like I have, what can you do about it? Here are a few things that I’ve found helpful.

• Go ahead and try outlining, if you want. I really enjoyed Gene Perret’s Write Your Book Now!, and KM Weiland’s aforementioned book was also great. If you search Amazon, you’ll find at least a dozen more books to help you learn how. You can also check out the snowflake method. If outlining doesn't work for you, though, don't beat yourself up. You may just be a pantser through and through!

• Get away from the manuscript to think about what happens next. I like to sit down to my computer with some inkling of an idea for where things are going next, but I don’t always come up with those inklings while I’m at the computer. In fact, I find that going for a long walk is one of the best ways for me to find my inklings. (Of course, I have been known to talk to myself while I’m plotting, which can be a little weird for the people walking the same place I am!)

• If you normally type, try writing by hand, and vice versa. For some reason, when that blinking cursor on the screen is making me feel hopeless, I do much better on some notebook paper. For more information about why writing by hand can help us be more creative, check out my post, Thinking Outside the Computer.

• Give yourself permission to write whatever it is, even if you think it might be awful. If I had a bunch of thoughts I knew were brilliant, I’d get them down into an outline! But sometimes I get these ideas, and like I said, I don’t have anything better planned, so down they go. And sometimes they end up being the best parts of the story.

If you’re a pantser, what are your tips? What helps you sit down at the computer, even when you have absolutely no idea where you’re going? 

Carolyn Kaufman, PsyD's book, THE WRITER'S GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGY: How to Write Accurately About Psychological Disorders, Clinical Treatment, and Human Behavior helps writers avoid common misconceptions and inaccuracies and "get the psych right" in their stories. You can learn more about The Writer's Guide to Psychology, check out Dr. K's blog on Psychology Today, or follow her on Facebook or Google+! 

Writer Unblocked

Courtesy of ledomira

Writers Block.

Some people fear it. Some don't believe in it. And some are just getting to know it.

For the purpose of this blog, writers block is not a mysterious ailment that strikes writers, rendering them mute so far as the story is concerned.

In my experience, only three things cause writers block.

Exhaustion: physical or mental. Your creative muscles are like any other muscle in your body. They need to be exercised regularly, and well, but they also need to rest. Or maybe you need to rest.

The cure? Get adequate sleep, maintain a balanced diet, and exercise. Taking care of your physical self will help you take care of your mental and emotional self as well. On the creative side, do something that relaxes your mind. I like to listen to music, cruise through my tumblr blog, and play with my kids. Anything that allows your creative mind to rest for a while.

Taking a wrong turn in the story. This is generally the culprit when it comes to my writers block. When I find myself slogging through words, where it feels like each sentence is stuck in a quagmire of sludge, I know there's a good chance that I took a wrong turn somewhere. I made something happen that shouldn't have or I had a character do something they never would have done.

The cure, go back through the manuscript and figure out where you diverged from the story. Pay attention to events, character development, and listen to your gut.

Procrastination: a writer's best frenemy. Writing a full length work requires diligence and discipline. To be completely honest, there are times when I sit down to work on a story, and I'm just not feeling like writing. I'd rather be checking my email, surfing the internet in the name of research, watching a movie, reading, or even cleaning.

The cure? For me, it's been very helpful to have a specific time set aside for writing. I've had to work at it, but I've trained my brain that during my writing time, I've got to be writing. If my mental restlessness is severe, I bring up my word count widget and set mini goals. For example, for every 300 words I type, I get a two minute break. This only works if I follow through on it, but I've managed to be fairly productive even though my mind is off chasing balls of string.

One last technique in battling writers block is something I learned from Holly Lisle's Create A Plot Clinic. Ask questions. As many as you need to get rolling again. The only two rules are that they have to be open-ended questions that can't be answered with a single word and you go with your muse (your subconscious mind). Before I learned to ask questions, I would just quiet myself and try to listen for the story. But asking the right kinds of questions is a lot faster, and it's amazing how many new details emerge.

What do you do to get rid of your writer's block?

Danyelle Leafty (@danyelleleafty) writes MG and YA fantasy. In her spare time, she collects dragons, talking frogs, and fairy godmothers. She can be found discussing the art of turning one's characters into various animals, painting with words, and the best ways to avoid getting eaten by dragons on her blog.

Writing: It's a Numbers Game

As a past (and future) querier, I've spent a lot of time on the Query Tracker website.

Query Tracker is a database of the most trustworthy literary agents, packed with the tools I needed to track each of my submissions to them. Query Tracker became a valuable part of my novel's road to publication and, at the height of my querying, I spent several hours a week using the website.

Assembling an agent list was the easy part. The search functions narrowed down the group of more than 1200 agents to those who were appropriate for my material. The spreadsheet showed my progress and tracked responses as they came in. The individual agent files contained contact information and links to their online dwellings.

But, after a while, those amazing features began to pale in comparison to the tab so innocently labeled "Reports and Statistics." Like many anxious writers who used Query Tracker, I quickly got sucked in to the stats of the querying game.

Numbers. Everywhere. The Query Tracker database had information on every statistic a writer could imagine. Which agent had the highest request rates. How many days until my own request should come in(ever the optimistic one.) How many lucky writers signed. How many unhappy writers marked their own queries as a "no response". Hard figures and agonizing percentages. Nail biting numbers. Knuckle crunching numbers.

Nasty thing, numbers.

Despite the pretty clear delineation between the left and right hemispheres of our brains, numbers will always want to mingle with the words crowd (much to my math-hating daughter's chagrin.) Word counts. Page counts. Royalty rates. Fun stuff. Essential stuff.

Here's some more "essential stuff" to get your mind off the agony of staring down the query stats.

We'll start at the beginning with the 10 Most Important Things every writer needs to know: while simply stated, there is a lot of down-to-earth advice here. For example, did you know that "your friends and family are not your audience"? Nope, they're not--and knowing it might help you define who your audience actually is. A list like this helps to reset ourselves, gets us to pull away from the keyboard for a moment and try to remember the reason we sat down to write in the first place.

Got blog? Then you got numbers. Here's 3 things your blog needs and 5 things it doesn't. (The comments are noteworthy.) And every blogger wants a bigger audience, right? Average bloggers will appreciate these 8 tips to grab those coveted readers while the over-achievers may prefer a heftier 19. Go big or go home, I always say.

Heck, as long as we're going big, let's go Hollywood. Here's 10 things that may decide whether your book is good enough for the big screen.

Once we're done daydreaming about cinematic fortune and fame, the blog 365 Stories In A Year will give us this more realistic list of 10 things we probably do but would never admit. On the flip side, we still have our integrity as writers—and so we'd be better off sticking to these 10 basics, which includes Wil Wheaton's Law. (If you are unsure of just how tremendously powerful a chaotic neutral overlord Wil Wheaton has become, then you seriously need to catch up. He's going to rule the world one day.)

The numbers get even more serious over at Twenty Palaces, where you can find 10 things that might be the proverbial slap you need to stay focused. However, these 10 magic ideas will inspire you with a much lighter touch. (Read it if you *heart* Voldemort as much as I do.)

Want advice from an agent instead? No problems. Rachelle Gardner has loads of great tips and she gets a perfect 10 for her 10 things theme on her blog. She's got several helpful lists on a variety of topics--have fun with them!

And Rachelle isn't the only one who's got her numbers lined up. Janet Reid lists 10 steps to diagnose your query for a particular agent. Some of us will read this and say, really? You need to spell all that out? Give us some credit! while an equal number of us will say, Now, that's what I call *clear* guidelines. Finally. Why don't all agents do it? (Don't get any ideas.)

Lastly, I'll point out a lengthy 10 secrets you might not have known about agents. There is a very poignant message in this one--if you don't have time to read the entire article right now, take the time to scroll down to the bottom of page 22 and read the last paragraph or so. It may help put querying madness into perspective.


Look at all those crazy digits floating around up there. Can writers learn anything from playing the numbers game? (Besides the apparent fact that writers seem to love the number 10.)

Maybe if we extracted all these numbers we'd realize there is no single magic formula to good writing. Sure, we can obsess over numbers and drown in the QT data explorer. We can calculate and extrapolate and postulate but, in the end, it's the actual words on the paper that matter. Word counts and page counts won't matter in the end if the heart isn't in the story. The words and the numbers must work together to produce a splendid story and it's our job to bring it all together.

Perhaps treat yourself and listen to "Hemispheres" by Rush, with an emphasis on the song The Sphere. Just as the heart and mind must unite, so must our right and left brains. Write the words but don't forget to enjoy the numbers…

And look forward to getting that single, most beautiful number: 1.

One "yes" is all it takes to win the writing game.

Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who resides in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal region, where she keeps the book jacket for "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" in a frame over her desk. Visit the Spec Fic Website at www.ashkrafton.com for updates on the release of her debut novel, Bleeding Hearts, forthcoming in early 2012 through Pink Narcissus Press.

Fear, Rejection, & Writer's Block: Guest Post by Gene Perret

Today we're thrilled to welcome Gene Perret, a legendary writing authority -- he's won three Emmys! Gene was the head writer for the Bob Hope and Carol Burnett shows, and was also responsible for episodes of well-know sitcoms like Three's Company and Welcome Back Kotter.


More than most, Gene appreciates how important it is for a writer to be able to handle fear, rejection, and writer's block, and over time he's developed a system for starting and finishing great projects. Now he's sharing that system with you in a new book: WRITE YOUR BOOK NOW! A Proven System to Start and FINISH the Book You've Always Wanted to Write.


I have to tell you -- I'm pretty excited about this book. Even though I was lucky enough to see an electronic ARC, I rushed over to Amazon to order a hard copy for my library. As you'll see below, Gene is both upbeat and practical as a coach -- you'll want a copy, too!

Shakespeare once wrote, “Doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” It’s one of the best definitions I’ve ever read for the phenomenon we call “writer’s block.” Fear, or doubt as Shakespeare put it, generates writer’s block. We fear that we won’t be able to write what we want to write as well as we want to write it. We fear that even if we do write it, no worthwhile agent or publisher would be interested in it. We fret that even if we did sell and publish our work, none of the readers would like it. Basically, we allow ourselves to be creatively paralyzed by a fear of rejection. We lose “the good we might win by fearing to attempt.”

Writers must realize that rejection is as much a part of writing as the space bar on your keyboard. To be productive we must accept, rather than fear rejection. Certainly a negative response is usually not pleasant, but neither is it catastrophic. It simply is.

One of my writing colleagues claimed that we writers were the only people so self-involved that we named an affliction after ourselves – writer’s block. He said, “Imagine that you’re taking a cross country trip. You fight the crowds and the security inconveniences at the airport. You sit in a cramped airline seat for four or five hours, you arrive at your destination, struggle to get your luggage from the conveyor belt, haul it outside, hail a cab, load the luggage into the vehicle, sit in the back seat, and say to the driver, ‘Take me to the Hilton.’ The driver then turns to you and says, ‘Gee, I’m sorry, Pal, but I’ve got cab-drivers block.’ You’d clobber him with your briefcase.”

There’s no such thing as cab-driver’s block, or plumber’s block, or librarian’s block. There’s only writer’s block because we’re the ones who sometimes begin our task afraid that it will be rejected.

Notice that most of the apprehensions we have concern events in the future. When the manuscript is completed it may not be as superb as we would prefer. Publishers may not want it. Readers may not like it. Why are we deciding now whether the book that is not even written has been written well or poorly? Why are we making management decisions for publishers about a manuscript that they don’t have so they can’t decide about? Why are we assuming what our readers will like before they have anything to read? Forget those fears-to-come. Write your manuscript now and deal with probably mythical roadblocks if and when they occur.

The word “rejection” does have a decidedly negative connotation. That “Thank you, but no thank you” letter or e-mail is unpleasant. It’s disappointing. It’s demoralizing. It’s depressing. It’s all of those and more. At least in our minds and emotions, it is. However, let’s analyze some of the myths about rejection and perhaps diminish the power of its sting.

First, you’ll always have to deal with it. That may not sound very encouraging, but if you as a writer are prepared for a percentage of refusals, they won’t come as a shock. If you’re ready for them they won’t be nearly as unpleasant, disappointing, demoralizing, depressing, or whatever.

Second, turn-downs are not necessarily a condemnation of your writing, your talent, or your potential. As a television producer I once had to audition performers for a single role in a single episode of our sitcom. Agents sent in 20 actors. The math is fairly obvious – one girl would get the role, 19 would not. That doesn’t mean that 19 of the actors were incompetent. It simply indicated that one performer would be hired and 19 would not. In fact, our staff debated for several hours over which performer to hire – many were that good.

There are countless reasons why publishers may refuse your submission. Their schedule is full, their budget is exhausted, they have a similar book in the works, your idea may conflict with the publisher’s established authors, it may be wrong for this specific publisher, publisher may not agree with your concept, they may feel their company is not suited to handle this type of book, or they may just hate the book. Most of those reasons (except for that last one) have nothing to do with your work, or your writing ability.

Third, a rejection is not personal. As they said frequently in “The Godfather,” it’s strictly business.

Fourth, a rejection can often turn into a blessing. Refer back to the case I cited above with the 20 performers all vying for one job. The following year, I produced another sitcom and needed a performer to appear regularly on the show. One of the “rejectees” was hired. Rather than getting a paycheck for one show, she received a salary for several years on the new show.

It can work that way for writers, too. One publisher rejected a proposal of mine, but suggested another book that he would like me to write. I had already written this book but had abandoned it because it had been rejected by several publishers. Now I got a sale through a rejection. Not only did I sell the book, but I didn’t even have to write it. It was already written. Is that not a blessing?

Fifth, no rejection can stop you from producing new writing, and you shouldn’t allow it to. Give yourself a few hours or even days of self-pity (and maybe even calling certain publishers or editors nasty names), but then get back to the keyboard and turn out more solid writing.

I liked the positive way that one writer handled rejection. At a party I overheard him discussing the negotiations for a book of his. He said, “We’re still working things out. I’m demanding a $200,000 advance, and the publisher is refusing to read my manuscript.”

That’s the positive approach we all should adopt.

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Thanks again to Gene for his wonderful advice!  If you'd like to check out the next leg of Gene's blog tour, he'll be appearing on Susan Perry's Psychology Today blog Creating in Flow tomorrow!