Photo by Teo Morabito

One of the greatest qualities of successful writers — as with most successful people — is to be able to perform well in less-than-ideal conditions consistently.

However, many writers believe in something called “writer’s block,” where they stare at a blank page, tearing out their hair. Or, in many cases, they just avoid writing all-together. They claim they are waiting for their muse to strike them.

How do you think that works out for them long-term?

The answer is, besides a few exceptions, “not very well.” The only way to overcome hell or high water is through habit. Habit is something worth believing in. The military will break you down and build you up in Basic for a reason. They want to habituate you to the warrior ethos. They want to make you one of their own.

Well, no one is going to do that in writing. Sure, there’s NaNoWriMo and retreats and workshops and support groups and AA, etc, etc. But no one will ever force you to pound out your word count like a drill sergeant will spit-flecked-scream force a recruit to do fifty push-ups.

To develop a habit you must first choose your writing schedule. Let’s say you choose to write every day, Monday to Friday with the weekends off. Good, now you know that no matter what, you will be writing every day on these days. Period.

Second, you must choose your word count. What can you realistically do every weekday without question? 1,000 words? 500? 350? My sweet spot is 350. In terms of word counts, it is a pittance. But I’m not a professional fiction writer. I work most of the day. I also have (gasp!) hobbies other than writing. If I want to write more, I certainly can, but if I’m struggling to find the words, I know I must produce that amount until the story is finished. And my story will be finished, unlike the times I write 2,000 words in one sitting and then don’t touch the keyboard again for a week. Incidentally, I’ll have achieved my 2,000 words writing a little more than 350 words per day after five days anyway.

See how that works?

Remember that scene in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM where the court doctor is doing the bare minimum to check if the prisoners are worthy of hard labour? He asks each of them, “Can you hear me? Can you see me?” And all the prisoners need to do is grunt a response? Well,  if your level of consciousness is such that you could respond to external stimuli, then you should be writing. Repeat it during your predetermined schedule and achieve that word count consistently, and it becomes a routine. Do that enough times, and it becomes a habit.

Congratulations, you’ve just found the  cure for writer’s block.

This post was inspired by Chuck Wendig’s advice on how to write a novel.

Photo by abe.o

The best book for writers that’s not an actual writing book is MISERY. You could read Stephen King’s ON WRITING — which is an actual writing book–but he wrote that long after he had sobered up and after he’d almost been killed by some doofus in a van. ON WRITING gives you the run-down on what’s what, but MISERY was written in the drug-addled heyday of Stephen friggin’ King — at the pinnacle of coke and booze, where he barely remembered the stories he pounded out  on the typewriter and where he’d have to jam cotton balls up his nostrils to keep the nosebleeds at bay. MISERY is the drug version of ON WRITING. Those where the days when a gallon of beer would fuel ten pages of prose…

As a side note, I was prompted to write this post after reading Ksenia Anske’s blog (@ksensiaanske) and her mentions of the Dark Tower series in her posts and tweets (I’ve only read the first Dark Tower. Amazeballs, BTW).

Sadly, as fans, we can revel in an artist’s struggles to create stuff for our mere entertainment. We can flip through a book and toss it aside with a yawn, or download an album and think it was “meh.” And we can do this without exposing ourselves to the same kind of egregious damage that the artists may have done to themselves.

MISERY is hands down the best book for writers out there. It’s fiction, and it deals with a crazed fan and the struggle of the famed protagonist author whom she torments. It tells the story of the trials and tribulations of poor Paul Sheldon as he attempts to write a story for his number-one megafan, Annie Wilkes. It also teaches would-be authors about writing.

When King, as Sheldon, describes a hole opening up in the paper as he writes and how he actually sees the characters do what they do in the story, it blew my mind! I was like, “I do that when I’m really into my writing!” It was nuts! Who was I to have the same experiences as this great author??

But the key advice comes when Sheldon, via King, explains that the verisimilitude of a novel is created in the lie the author tells. Authors are just writing a string of bull-crap; it’s one lie after another. Except, the good authors find the truth in the lie. It’s that itty-bitty nub of truthiness that makes the lie believable. It’s the itty-bitty truth in the lie where the true rock ‘em, sock ‘em storytelling comes from. It’s that narrative punch to the gut that makes you reconsider your choices in life.

Realism is not necessary, but fairness is, as Paul Sheldon points out explaining his childhood game of Can You?

Think about it: one author’s mental whimsy, if done correctly, can make you think about your life. That is amazing!

If you haven’t read MISERY, go do it. Just do it, already. From the opening line to the closing line, it will grip your soul in its cruel, unforgiving  sausage-like fingers and won’t let go until you are soaked in sweat and gasping for just one more ragged breath.

Photo by street rat

No one goes into writing fiction to get on the New York Times best seller list and make a truckload of cash, do they? That’s like going into acting just to press your grubby little mitts into wet concrete in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

Unless you are very talented or street savvy, in most cases, you will probably just end up destitute and on the street corner, hailing luxury vehicles and asking the lonely, older gentlemen riding in the back whether they “like to party.” In other words: it will be a bad scene.

Then there’s the dream just before the fame, glory and waterfalls of golden coins, which goes something like: I’m going to write for Jimmy Falon or Michael Mann or create my own series of books that will be churned into a quadrology of tween flicks broken up into sixteenths and screened in theatres for the next fifteen years.

Those fantasies are vapours that just got sucked up your glass crack pipe. They ain’t gonna happen, sister.

But…but, that doesn’t mean you will never get paid a decent living to write. Yes, you can still get paid to write! And the beauty of it is that you don’t need anything except your mind and, in most cases, a good pair of typing fingers (but even that’s debatable). You can actually make a decent living and even retire off producing words crafted from the inner sanctum of your cranium.

Now, is this the kind of writing career where you flit about Hollywood on jets woven from Bantha fur while sipping  sparkling wine made from the fermented tears of baby manatees? No.

A profitable writing career is one where you provide value for someone — in many cases a company or organization — that pays you for your services. You throw a bunch of words together in a smart, intelligible way, and you will be valued. People will pay you for this!

“Wait a second!”  you cry. “Isn’t just being a corporate hack the same thing as standing on a street corner waiting for the lonely, older gentleman?”

No, it is not. Unlike the street corner example, one: your mother will actually be proud of you if told her what you did, and two: there is little chance of contracting a communicable inflammatory disease from desk work.

The added bonus of this is that the better-known you are in professional circles, the more freedom  you may gain in the kind of corporate word-sauce you’ll be permitted to conjure. Also, you will still be writing. Sure, it might be an eight-hour day (freelancers have more freedom in this), and you will sometimes be mentally exhausted by the end of it (looking at you, parents), but what struggling actor gets to practice acting while he’s waiting tables in L.A.? And corporate writing gigs pay a hell of a lot better than waiting tables.

My point is that any writing you do is the honing your craft. It’s practice. And you can make money off it! Your fiction writing will help your professional writing and vice versa.

You do your day job to practice writing and pay the bills so that you can be a human who owns pants. It will let you  do what you love, to make that little voice in your head go wheee! — which is writing fiction novels… or creating papercraft anatomically correct anime characters…or whatever it is that makes that cubbyhole holding your brain feel all tingly.

There are no such things as corporate hacks or sell outs. There are only those who value their talents and know how to capitalize off them and those who do not.

Photo by shadowplay

Last month, I discovered Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games, a role-playing game like no other that results in darkly hilarious pandemonium. Rather than rolling dice to determine outcomes from scenarios doled out by Dungeon Masters as in traditional fantasy RPGs, Fiasco is a collaborative storytelling game. Settings can range from a New York night club in 1979 to a football pitch in present-day Scotland. Players choose to either establish the scene or resolve the scene and the dice are used to determine the story outcome — good or bad (usually bad, most fun when it’s bad).

After watching the YouTube video below, a wire in my brain short circuited, and knew I had to use this system to help create a story. I have used it successfully (I think) for the outline of my new novel LOTUSLAND.

The way the system works is very similar to a writing prompt for generating flash fiction.  The reason I find it so powerful is that it can help you create characters with compelling needs and relationships. The needs are what push your character and the relationships are what bind them. The scenario they’re placed into force the characters to one-up each other to meet their needs. And just as things start getting exciting, a monkey wrench in the form of “the Tilt” is thrown into the works, sending buildings into flames and dashing dreams — essentially birthing killer stories.

If you like movies like Fargo, Burn After Reading and The Way of the Gun, then you’ll love this game.

Tips for novel writers include, creating longer acts, creating more than two acts and maybe having two tilts rather than just the one required in the game.

And I’m not the first one to think of this. The Fiasco companion book contains content about using the game to help get screenplays started, and Nathan Russell (@mrnathanrussell) used Fiasco to help prepare his story for NaNoWriMo.