Has your writing been stuck in a rut lately? Feeling completely uninspired? Dreading opening up that document to stare unproductively again for hours at that blinking cursor?
Then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the project in question. Ask yourself WHAT IS THE POINT you want to get across in that work? What is the driving force behind the whole thing? What is the message you want people to take away with them after reading?
If these questions draw blanks in your mind, truly take a little time to find the answers. Finding these answers will help you immensely in the inspiration category… it will give your work direction, aim, a goal to move toward.
Bizarrely, considering how long I’ve been writing something or other, this concept was only first made apparent to me in about 2011-ish, when I picked up Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s “Book in a Month”. In the workbook, she brings up the point that the project you choose to tackle in the upcoming month (or really, any project you want to be serious about getting published, ever in your writing career), MUST be a project you LOVE. MUST be a project you are really, really excited about. Because not only will you be spending at least the next month with this one project, but likely months after that with editing, and months after that with selling and/or marketing, and then years throughout the publishing/marketing/promoting bit, and even onward from there as you continue to gain new fans of the work, are booked for signings and speaking engagements, etc.
Now, to be honest, when I realized the utter truth in what she said, I panicked a little.
DID I actually LOVE my YA Fantasy Novel Idea!?!?!? Holy crap, I’d never asked myself that question!?!?!? O_o
I suppose this is how some people feel when their significant other pops the question, and they are not remotely ready to answer.
Luckily I did not have that problem with my significant other, but I certainly did have that problem with my Cheetah on the Roof. “Book in a Month” confronted me with the reality of a long-term commitment to ANY writing project you might undertake seriously.
Since then, I have come across multiple articles and craft books that reiterate this idea. The second epiphany I had in this regard came from both Alice Orr’s “No More Rejections” and James Scott Bell’s “Plot and Structure”… both books contain a lengthy list of personal questions to ask yourself as a writer.
Yes, that’s right. PERSONAL questions. The answers to which you should always use in your writing. But not as a personal memoir, as a springboard for ideas – ideas that you will LOVE, that will keep you interested and passionate about the subject you’re writing about.
To write a truly gripping book, a genuine tale that readers will identify with and not want to put down, to truly find your own original voice, you MUST write about things that lie close to your heart. Otherwise you will find it surprisingly difficult to maintain interest in writing the thing yourself, and even should you manage to slog through it, readers will feel your disinterest and become disinterested themselves. They will feel the lack of heart in the writing.
What exactly does this mean?
Well, aside from buying the aforementioned books and reading them yourself, ask yourself: what are you passionate about? What pushes your buttons? What do you love? What do you hate? What do you fear? Make a list of everything and anything that illicites a highly charged emotion from yourself.
And then, the next time you have an idea for a book or short story (or even a poem!), pluck something from that list and insert that element into your work. Even if it’s not the EXACT subject, hang on to how that item on your personal list makes you FEEL, and capture that emotion in your writing.
Even still, sometimes I forget to do this. For the Quirk Book’s Looking for Love Fiction Contest, which requires at least a 50K entry by October 1st, I had an idea that’s been simmering for awhile that I wanted to attempt to write and submit. However, upon fleshing out this idea in preparation for a marathon month of writing, I knew it wasn’t the best it could be. Suddenly one day, while sifting through the possible “What if’s” for that particular story, I struck upon The Second Right Answer! (More on that in another blog post…) It was literally like lightning, and it illuminated the path I KNEW this story was supposed to take.
However, in the interest of my short time limit, I decided to leave that Second Right Answer out, as it would complicate the story, and I was trying to keep things relatively simple in order to achieve the deadline.
I tried to force it, even outlined the first three chapters that way. But it wasn’t working. I became irritated, frustrated, unhappy, even depressed. The story was crap. I wasn’t interested in it at all. My heart wasn’t in it. It did not have a driving force behind it that I was passionate about.
After about two days of sulking about and nearly giving up on entering the contest, I decided the heck with it, I would write it like it was supposed to be written, and if I didn’t make the deadline so what! I’d still have a novel to sell somewhere! So, I began outlining the story and incorporated the Second Right Answer.
The ideas flowed. The story came together. The plot thickened all on its own. The characters jumped out at me, vivid and alive. I became excited again, inspired. Thrilled. Impatient to begin.
Because, this Version 2 of this same story covered several points that lie close to my heart, including 1) the importance of family 2) the love of a parent for a child 3) the reliance on drugs in a population 4) big government 5) equality for all 6) misleading cultural taboos.
Look at that! SIX topics on my list, holy cow! No wonder I can’t wait to get to this story! And I can incorporate them without preaching, without going on some boring soapbox tirade. I can let my characters live in this world I created, and the consequences and actions will speak for themselves. In Version 1 of this story, despite the fact some of those points were still covered, it wasn’t enough to make me LOVE this story.
Now, I LOVE IT. I want to spend years and years with it.
So. Go think about yourself for awhile, and make a list of things you hate and love. Then think about your current project, or future projects, and remember to always make them something you genuinely CARE ABOUT, one way or another.
If YOU don’t care as the writer, no one else will care, either.
Stop staring at that blank screen already and put some PASSION onto the PAGE!!!!!
This is so true. It’s such a waste of time and energy to work on something you have no passion for. The quote “it’s better to fail at something you love than succeed at something you hate” comes to mind, although it has a rather–ahem–depressing connotation to it.
With regards to Cheetah, can you tell us what it is about the book that’s spurring you to move forward, since you mention having an initial problem with it? What caught you by surprise that you realized might make the project difficult, and what did you figure out that helped you keep the spirit of your original idea going?
Those are some darn fine questions! 😛 In regards to Cheetah, what caught me by surprise was how much I didn’t know about the story and characters in general. I had no idea where the story was going or even where I really wanted it to go. I knew the characters on surface level only, but they were basically complete strangers to me. It struck me as scary that I had carried this idea around in my head for about six years at that point, and I still hadn’t the foggiest notion about it as a real, valid novel idea! So I panicked a bit. 🙂 But the “Book in a Month” workbook helped me at least pinpoint the questions I needed to answer. At the time, I didn’t even think about writing stories in a three act structure, I just wrote them. So I began to arrange what few ideas I had into that outline. I struggled to come up with conflicts… I was also not used to planning out a story ahead of time, and so found the exercise difficult and exhausting. I slogged through most of it, managing at least to get some bare bones down. I just kept working on it because I told myself I that was going to be my first main project, but really it was participating in NaNoWriMo that finally got things going. It forced me to write in that world even when I didn’t feel like it, and through that I got to know my characters, and the world, and new plot ideas came in EUREKA! moments as I wrote, which in turn made me more interested in getting that story down. Then I read about the personality filter thing, and I decided to work in some of favorite things about family relations and trust, which also boosted my interest. Honestly, that project is still a bumpy road sometimes, because I’m not quite sure how I want to handle some of the later scenes. I find that really snags me up. My plan is to get through the middle, which I do have roughly planned, and then take some time to really think about the ending and get it nailed down. I can always go back and rewrite what needs to be changed in edits, after all! But I guess that’s the story with Cheetah! For me I think it comes down to 1) telling a story I feel strongly about 2) with characters I LOVE and 3) knowing where it’s going. 😉 Strangely, that combination is harder to come up with than you think! AGH!