7 GOOD AUTHOR HABITS
G'day guys,
Welcome to some good author habits courtesy of Frances Reid Rowland.
"So, a
story of great potential is whizzing tirelessly in your brain and your fingers
are itching to set it down. But how do you give longevity to that initial burst
of inspiration?
Here are
7 suggestions to help you get the most out of your day.
1. Create the right work space
Pretend
for a moment your brain is a dog and you would like to train the dog to be
disciplined around the food bowl. So you select a special place that becomes
The Area of Discipline and, over time, the dog learns that when it’s in that
space, it must behave and do as it’s told.
Whilst I would fully encourage sitting down and writing anywhere—a park bench, on a flight—training your brain to engage in “Nobel Prize for Literature” mode in a particular place in your home is extremely helpful when you set your mind to producing a novel. It will help maintain momentum and consistency and, whether you are aware of it or not, it will create a form of security blanket: this is my writing place.
That writing place will be whatever works for you—an impeccably tidy desk with a view of the garden, or a claustrophobic corner with a view of the over-stuffed bookshelves—it does not matter, as long as you are comfortable and as long as it gives you that security to let the juices flow.
It is possible that, on occasion, you find that security blanket is just not helping that dreaded writer’s block. When this ghastly moment happens, I would suggest going somewhere entirely new. Rent a cottage in the middle of nowhere for a week, somewhere with a beautiful view and few people, and look at the story with ‘fresh eyes’.
2. Identify your writing time
Most
unhelpfully, my brain decides to be creative around the time I’d rather like to
go to sleep. I cannot tell you how many brilliant lines I have lost by telling
myself, lazily, “I’ll remember that in the morning.”
The moral
of this story is that you might find your creative juices flow at strange
times, early in the morning before the coffee (unlikely) or late at night when
all the lights are off and the imagination is free to roam wild. The sooner you
accept that awkward schedule, the better.
Seize the
moment and get all those brilliant lines down before they drift out of your ear
and into the ether.
3. Be disciplined
If you
are juggling a 9 to 5 job and/or a family, you might not have the luxury of
yielding to the whims of the creative juices. It would thus be prudent to be
disciplined and force those creative juices at regular times. Two hours in the
evening, after the children have gone to bed, perhaps, or an hour between work
and ballet class.
Ernest
Hemingway, apparently, wrote 500 words every day. As per his example, it
doesn’t have to be a large amount, but enough to stay close to the story and
enough to exercise those creative muscles.
4. Keep a notebook on hand
Returning
to my previous story of lost literary gems that I have not remembered in the
morning—the simple solution is to keep a notebook close at hand.
Whether
it be by your bed, or in your bag when, whilst on the bus, you are struck by an
idea, being able to jot down a line or two is sensible.
It is
also helpful should you stumble across a piece of information that would tidily
fill that gap in your historical novel.
5. Edit later
Have you
ever woken up and been rather astonished by the breadth of detail in a dream?
That is the power of your imagination unbridled. There is so much there to be
mined, but so often we miss the seams of gems because we are too worried about
Health and Safety—is it safe to insert a comma there? Surely there’s a more
impressive word for that?
When the
juices are flowing it is much better to succumb to a trance-like state and just
write. Yes, the initial prose might be dreadful, but let the words flow
uninhibited by thoughts of “Where does the apostrophe go again?” You will get
your story down and you might also be pleasantly surprised by the course on
which your imagination will take you.
6. Read out loud
Getting
“the flow just right” leads me to the suggestion of reading your words out
loud. So often a sentence looks acceptable on paper, but, when read aloud, you
find it’s clunky and it lacks rhythm and lyricism.
Pretending
to be at a book signing, with an enraptured audience listening as you read the
first chapter of your novel, is hopefully prophetic and also constructive. If
you find you are embarrassed to read something out loud to yourself, you
stumble over words or a sentence makes you think “Huh?”, it probably means that
sentence or paragraph needs a little tweaking.
7. Take a break
In my
spare time I like to sketch. I am the sort of artist that prefers to draw
things exactly as I see them—I am no Picasso—and occasionally I will have been
working on a piece for so many hours that I have become too close to it. There
will be something that doesn’t quite work, but, because I have spent too much
time with it, I cannot identify what it is.
The best
cure for this: walk away. I will leave the project for a night, maybe even a
few days, and I will go back after my brain has engaged in other projects and
is feeling refreshed. More often than not, my eyes go immediately to where the
problem lies and I know how to fix it.
The same
can be said for a writing project. You might spend so long in each other’s
company that you tire of one another and start to argue. Having preached
discipline, I will be unhelpfully contrary and say allow yourself time apart.
A tricky
moment in the plot or perhaps an unwieldy paragraph that was frustrating you to
the point of tears will most likely be easily dealt with when you have given
yourself a break and thought about something else for a while.
Be strict, be
sensible and be kind to yourself. Piece of cake, right?"
Clancy's comment: Thank you, Frances. Hope this has helped someone. Don't forget. Writing is supposed to be enjoyable. If you are stressed, take a break or maybe it's not for you. Trust me. It's a tough gig.
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